The Great Goldfish War (and Other Items)

“God is so good to me! There’s been a really great movie coming out at Christmas, almost every year since I was about 18.” – Christy, delighted with the previews for National Treasure 2.
“Well, I guess that’s one way to measure it.” – Laura

“I love Buston. His scales are so cute. He has a little burbly mouth…” – Casey, on the office goldfish
“I’m going to tell David about this. He’ll be jealous.” – Christy, who does not love the office goldfish
“Oh, he knows. He likes Buston too.” – Casey

“I love creamer with coffee in it—I mean—coffee.” – Casey

Nathan has studied all things Germanic or Viking, and Christy has studied the history of the English language. Therefore the term wergeld (meaning the price paid to the family of a man whom one has killed) was able to occur spontaneously in the following conversation:
“Nate, I’m thinking of taking up fish-spearing.” – Christy
“Sounds good.” – Nate, absently.
“I thought I’d use Buston as my practice target.” – Christy, looking thoughtfully at the goldfish bowl
“I’ll sue you for a wergeld.” – Nate, calmly
“A wergeld is the price you pay for a man. This is a fish. You can’t charge me that much for a fish.” – Christy
“I thought the term referred to the death-price.” – Nate
“I’m pretty sure it refers specifically to a man’s death-price. Let’s talk about a fishgeld. Now, I can buy one of these at the fish store for about three or four bucks. How’s that?”
“No. There’s history here—sentimental value. You have to pay more than that.” – Nate
And the conversation went on…

Later, when Casey heard about it:
Casey: you may call me Casey, Friend of the Fish
Casey: if i catch you trying to harpoon my little suction lipped friend again
Casey: you will answer to the Friend of the Fish.
Casey: you will be de-harpooned
Casey: and your weapon may be used upon you.
Christy: Casey, Casey, Casey... it's such a simple thing, killing fish
Christy: It's a service to mankind
Casey: monster!
Christy: Fish are evil. They are cold-eyed, disease-lipped, scaly, swimming horrors! Their bones choke people. Their eyes discompose small children and send them screaming to their mothers. Their gaping maws are a breeding-ground for aquatic germs fatal to humans.
Christy: And they're so darn self-contained!
Christy: About the only thing to do with them is to kill them.
Casey: which makes them innocent and vunerable!
Casey: you should protect and cherish!
Casey: think of Buston's bubbly, horror-filled screams of anguish as you sadistically and purposelessly spear him with a bent paperclip.
Casey: does not your heart go out to his smiling, burbly, orange face?
Christy: Um, no
Christy: Not really
Casey: i say again.
Casey: MONSTER!
Casey: i'm calling the ASPCA and reporting you.
Casey: "yes... hi... we have an emergency...
Casey: co-worker is trying to stab cute company goldfish with a paperclip for no good reason."
Casey: "yes... yes, she does work in the Literature department..."
Casey: "a little too much Faust, you think? ah. me too."
Casey: turn to the light, Christy!
Christy: Why yes, I am. Minister Of Needed Sanitation Through Expedited fish Removal.... that's me. Card-carrying member
Casey: he is the cleanest creature there is!'
Casey: he lives in WATER for crying out loud!
Casey: add a little dish soap and there couldn't be a cleaner animal
Casey: you are ruthless.
Casey: it has consumed you.
Casey: thus, like Faustus' last chance to repent...
Casey: i offer you a hand into the light...
Casey: Buston says, "Burble burble, Christy."
Casey: can you resist that gape-mouthed face and those soulful, golden eyes?
Christy: The gape-mouthed face full of bacteria and the golden eyes that are so distinctly soul-less? Why yes, I can.
Casey: if he were a barracuda, he would bite your finger off, leaving your cruel, murdering paperclip useless
Casey: he dreams about being a barracuda.
Casey: will you stifle his dreams? have you no heart?
Christy: Nope, none. Except I decided that his fins are kinda symmetrical and artistic, so I told Nate I wouldn't kill him.
Casey: i'm glad to see you haven't gone too far over the edge.
Casey: we're done. for now.

Dunh dunh dunh….

Later that same afternoon (much abbreviated, somewhat rearranged, slightly edited)…
“No, I said I’d decided to let him live. He has symmetrical fins, which are artistically pleasing. Therefore I will let him live.” – Christy
“Yeah, and that’s the standard of living. Symmetrical fins. We let you live because you have symmetrical feet!” – Casey
“Do you want me to show you where the best shells are? Do you?” – Christy, referring to their upcoming vacation at Grandpa’s beach in New England.
“Well…. Yes.” – Casey
“All right then. Let’s just leave the fins alone.” – Christy
“Wow. This is going to be a hilarious vacation.” – Mom, chuckling in the background

“I’ve been meaning to commend you guys. I think we’re coming to a very special place—spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically…” – Mom to various workers on work habits.
“We’re still working on ‘grammatically’” – Laura, the proofer, mutters to herself.
::The Office bursts into laughter::

“I was deeply crushed.” – Laura on Word morphology.
“What’s ‘deeply crushed’? Would that be ‘flattened?’” – Mom
“I think it’s flattened and made convex too.” – Laura
“I was ‘convexed.’” – Mom

“To me, this is haunting.” – Alex, thoughtfully, listening to My Heart Will Go On by the Vienna Boys Choir

“And this boy is supposed to get married [someday]?” – Alex on the boy soloist who sings My Heart Will Go On for the Vienna Boys Choir

June-fairy

I was winding down a phone conversation with a friend. We had been talking about my upcoming trip to New England (an annual pilgrimage), and fondly remembering the old days when I believed in fairies.

"I want to believe again," I said. "But I've lost... I don't know... perhaps I can't. It's been such a very growing-up sort of eighteen months." And it has---months of heaviness, of great effort, of learning about good cheer and steadfastness and hope while the weight is pressing down.

"I need to play again," I told my friend. "The weight is lifted now, more or less. My family is through the crisis. Now I need to remember how to laugh."
I heard the smile in her voice. "Yeah, you were kind of in a daze last semester, more than half not here."
"I was working so hard. I had no time to play."
"But can't you? Can't you play again?"
"I don't know," I said again. "But I want to try."

As I sat talking to her on our front step, the summer twilight piled around me, blue and more blue. Flowers in my mother's garden began to seem as pale stars. Fireflies appeared---one quite close---like yellow throbbing diamonds hearted with fire. A graceful deer stood in the shadows across the street. Mama is annoyed with them because they eat her June lilies.

"Perhaps," I thought to myself, "I could make up garden fairies."

We talked a little longer, lingering, our voices vibrant on the small electric cell phones. I told her about my sea, about the lighthouse-like home where we always stay with my grandparents, about sailing and eating lobsters, about running on the private beach early every morning, when there was nothing but myself and the sea....

"I shall be just passionate for a week and a half," I told her. "Nothing but clean passion. Oh, I love the sea! If I could marry a merman, I would do it."

"There!" She cried, "you can still be magic!"
"That was magic?"
"I heard it in your voice."

I laughed. I remembered how to laugh. And I thought, "I will make a June-fairy. I will make a summer fairy. I feel the magic returning. I remember..."

"And now the magic will be only deeper," I told her, "because I have gone through this hard time. It will be better now."

We hung up. I stayed there on the front step a few more moments, soaking in the night. I wanted to fill my bones with it, until they became crystal, and my skin grew silver, and my blood fire---but radiant, gently fierce fire---not the fire that burns you up, but the one that warms you.

I remember....

And I feel again. I'm hungry again. I am ready to make a new fairy.

Children's Ministry Moment No. 451

I go to church twice every Sunday. No, really. First I go to the 9 AM service and learn from my toddlers. Then I go to the 11:30 AM service with my family and learn from the preacher.

Today was full of moments. My half-asian toddler, Ty, was in about the worst mood a child of extreme intelligence can contract: he was bored. Original sin is definitely inherent in two-year-olds. And, it occured to me a few weeks ago, in my children's ministry class I am outnumbered by unbelievers.

It helps that they are two-year-olds.

Ty went after every other child's sippy cup, on purpose. He employed his escape artist skills to the max, and even managed to squeeze around the wall partition at one point. I'm convinced that that child belongs in the CIA.

He's also wonderful. We had a game of tickle-me that left us both gasping, and I think I got more real and simple pleasure out of that one game than I have out of months of more sophisticated entertainments such as movies, intellectual conversation, and concerts or plays. The secret to staying young is to stay with the young, and play with them, and quite literally become as a little child.

I was little-childed today.

But anyway, on to Moment No. 451. Today's lesson took me rather by surprise. I was watching the children, thinking of nothing in particular, when the thought suddenly drifted across my mind: "Parenting can't be about total devotion to your children. If it were, then your children would have nothing to which to devote themselves."

All in a flash, I realized that I have had a wrong idea about parenting for lo these many years. I have been thinking that parenting necessarily means that you live for your children, and only for them. But if you do that---if you give nothing of yourself to other people around you, to service in your church community, to the continued improvement of relationships both with God and with other people (husband, friends, even perfect strangers), then your child will have nowhere to go, because you have made him the center, and have given him no other focus point.

It was quite a revelation. I had somehow thought, in my naivete, that parenthood meant being free to give all one's energies to the nurturing of a small person. And though that's true in one way, it is much more importantly true in another that this small person needs something to grow towards. Thus a parent must not neglect the Gospel for their child, or else the child will not reach for the Gospel. Children copy their parents in everything, quite unconsciously. I wouldn't want my child to copy me by making himself the center of his small world.

This insight shook me and left me profoundly glad that I am not yet a parent. If I had a three-year-old by now (which is possible, early marriage being a trend among homeschoolers), and if my husband had not the wisdom to correct my faulty ideas, or if I had not had the humility to listen to him, what incalculable harm might I have done by now?

And how many other wrong conceptions of parenthood are floating about in my subconscious even as I write this?

These are sobering thoughts, but not utterly bleak ones. After all, God gives grace for today, not tomorrow. If I had had children yesterday, I am sure there would have been insights granted then. Nevertheless, this whole train of thought did have one very salutary effect: it humbled me. Once more I find how limited, how unconsciously foolish, are my own ideas about life and godliness. Once more, I resolve to walk before God with fear and trembling, aware of the awesome mysteries that surround me, brush me, and go on into eternity.

Quotes In Retrospect

I was skimming Facebook profiles of friends this evening. Imagine my shock and (mild) embarassment when I discovered that one of my own more regrettable Sophomore dictums had been preserved for posterity. Sarah's "favorite quotes"---Sarah, this is really a favorite quote? Or are you just trying to help me grow in humility?---include, by yours truly, "Just find a girl you like and like her!"

Courtship advice from me at the advanced, mature, brilliantly perceptive age of 19. As I recall, I was also frustrated with the awkwardnesses of courtship when I said it.

If I were to give the same advice now (which I'm not sure I would), I'd at least modify it to "Just find a girl you like and like her, and then get better at it."

Anyway, that quote got me thinking. Back in the day I used to be a quote collector, and I figured I must have about 100 pages of quotes from all over campus squirreled away somewhere in my files.

Sure enough....

I present a selection of tidbits from my Freshman and Sophomore years. I'd like to note that the people who said these things generally did so under highly extenuating circumstances.

That being said, enjoy the retrospective view of your former foolishness, and let it teach you humility. Believe me, I'm right there with you.

But you don’t give your teachers looks. It’s not the done thing.
Carolyn Thomson

You have heard it said, great minds think alike, but I say unto you, so do the gullible masses.
Abigail Hackman

If you can’t beat ’em, outweird ’em!
Matt Thornton

If you’re going to make truth, make it with a lot of chocolate chips.
Paul McNiel

The study of logic and philosophy is anathema to sanity and sleep.
Thomas Wiley

The moral of the story is that you should have frequent fires to clean out the sprinkler system.
Ben Adams

You do NOT have to be courting to be human.
Jonathan Kanary

Discovering Greek is like opening presents. You never know what it’ll be. Could be a toaster…could be a hand grenade.
Doug (Price?)

A beard is not shelter.
Nathan Poe

If life gives you lemons, throw them at someone.
Julia Whitehair

We are all geeks by association.
Gabe Ballard

If you’re carrying six bags of trash to the dumpster there’s never a guy around, but if you only have one bag, they pounce on you.
Murphy’s Law, Megan Kirkpatrick Edition

Breakfast is the beginning of knowledge.
Deborah Knickelbein

Particularly stressful occasions call for high heels.
Deborah Knickelbein, on the first morning of finals

Transcending is like the Hokey-Pokey.
Matt Thornton

You never can tell with balloons.
Helen Wiley

It all comes back to Princess Bride.
Tracy Hacke

Office Humor Reaches a New High -- Millions Astonished!

Wow. Let's start off with a few of the usual type of quotes....

“What you need to do is a critical examination of a camera obscura. Then we’ll all feel better.” – Casey to Mom

“Oh my, what a chart! I need to write a Dr. Seuss book about this chart.” – Casey

Now the above is fairly typical. Yesterday, however, I had the pleasure of watching Casey and David get into a tickling match over a pair of quasi-toothpicks which Casey wanted to use as fangs, and David wanted to use to decorate her hair. At the end of this squabble, which was unusual only in that they weren't so much flirting as just straight-up playing (they usually flirt), I said to David,

"I just figured it out. You got married so that you'd always have somebody to play with."
"Mhm, pretty much," he replied, grinning.

Mom's comment, later: "Well yeah, of course. You have to marry your best friend. That's really the only way to do it."

So that was awfully fun. But this morning took the cake. I was sitting at my computer, calmly typing information about the Hundred Years War, when suddenly something wet squished against my upper right arm. It was Casey, with (I kid you not) one of those temporary tattoos.

A Superman logo tattoo.

“What are you DOING!?!?!” – Christy to Casey
“I’m putting a Superman tattoo on your arm! Hold still!” – Casey,
“What! Why? Why not do it to David? He’s your hubsand!”

(Parenthetical note: we generally call David her “hubsand” rather than “husband.” It’s kind of a nickname thing.)

“Because David already knows that he’s Superman! Oh, sorry, it’s dripping.” – Casey
“Yes, it is! Casey, where did you get this thing? Why don’t you put in on Laura?” – Christy
“Because Laura saw me pick it up off the ground outside. Awww…I think it’s dried out too much! It’s not working. Now you look like you have a tick attack.” – Casey
“Brittainy! Help!” – Christy

::Brittainy is laughing too hard to help::

Now, I ask you, what could possibly, in this life or any life on earth, be more fun than working a place where you sister-in-law randomly tries to tattoo you with a Superman logo?

Sometimes the crazy long hours spill over, and this is the hilarious result. People ask me pretty frequently whether I wouldn't rather be working at "a real job." I'm not sure what they mean by that, but I know that there is only one natural and accurate reply:

"What better, more demanding, and more satisfying job (outside of parenthood and missionary work) could anybody possibly have?"

I raise my glass and toast the Office, source of so many blessings.

Freedom for the Soul in Skill with Words

I have been realizing, since I began work on Shakespeare's plays, how very much we moderns and postmoderns have fettered our souls by our disregard for the art of speaking well.

Though I believe I have had one of the best classical educations (both in primary and secondary schools) currently available, I know really rather little about languages, and even less about the art of arranging syntax, images, and sounds for maximum effect. I know almost nothing about rhetoric, and am only slightly less ignorant of logic.

I used to have a certain contempt for debaters, viewing them as sophists of the sort found in Aristophanes' Clouds. Their word-juggling, especially combined with their logician's premise-and-conclusion play (which was as much sleight-of-hand to me as the tricks of any magician), left me with the sense that no truth lived behind the back of such intellectual sparkle.

But now, oh---how I wish more and more for a little of their art! How many times I have struggled to express the deep thoughts of my soul, and despaired, not because there are no words (though these too fail, eventually), but because I don't know what those words are, or how to combine them. Thank God indeed that I have no husband, for I would not know how to tell him the devotion of my heart. Thank God that I have no children, for I cannot describe God to them even as well as human speech might permit, had I skill in it.

It is a bleak thought. Ah, me, what we have lost! What can I say about trust, honor, duty, truth, pleasure, delight, richness, virtue, beauty, love, faithfulness, grace, truth, fear, safety, change, rest, war, peace, heroism, villainy, and a host of others: what can I say about any of these, except in platitudes that offend the worth of that which they are meant to express? And it is no good saying "well, to excel in words was the fashion of another day, and to excel in images, in computer chips and montages, is the fashion of this"---no, that will not do. Fashions come and go, but words remain. Words, spoken and written, are the natural expressive mode of the human soul. How my soul is imprisoned, lacking words!

It is a bitter realization. It is an aching knowledge. However, I thank God for it, for in it I have cause to thank Him again that He made me a creature capable (through the Spirit) of change. I can learn. I can stretch and grow. I can study, observe, humbly submit myself to learn, and be diligent in practice. My soul can be freed for expression as it has been freed from death. I have been brought from darkness into light, but as a mute. Now I can be taught to sing the praises of that same light that makes me almost to burst with the need to tell about it.

There is freedom for the soul in skill with words. It is not an ultimate freedom, nor perhaps an essential freedom. But I am convinced that the ability to speak about God to God, and to other human beings, and to the very rocks and dirt, is among the greatest human pleasures, and is certainly the next greatest human duty, after love.

24 Hours Later

I'm beginning to understand how they can make a TV show out of a mere 24 hours. The last day has been, though not as surreal or surprising as some I could name, definitely kaleidoscopic.

This time yesterday I was staggering into the Office, having broken all my own records by staying up until 4:30 AM the night before, finishing a piece of work that unexpectedly had to be in by 10 AM Monday morning.

"I've never felt like this before," I told Brittainy. "It's kinda exciting, like the first time I had to get my emissions tested. I don't know what will happen next. Will guys in white coats take my car away? Will I ever be allowed to drive again? Will they run the car over little bumpy things? Do I get to stay in it? Is it like a car wash?"

What I didn't mention was that my current state led me to ask questions more like "Is this dizzy feeling going to go away? How about the nausea? How soon can I get horizontal again? Whoa---can I walk?"

It was a trip. I got to work and spent pretty much the whole day on our office "thinking couch," prepping for my next assignment (Henry V) by reading and marking up the play. Suddenly I found myself deeply grateful that on my job every fourth or fifth day is one of solid reading. I don't think I could have managed much more yesterday.

By God's grace (and by means of Starbucks) I got through the work day with only a one-hour nap in the late afternoon, and without complaining (Brittainy had strict instructions to kick me if I complained). Then we went home, did a harsh yoga and pilates workout---ouch!---and made truly amazing grilled chicken salads for dinner. We ate on the deck, admired the flowers, and talked about what literary studies should be and how we can more nearly approximate that in our work.

At 9 PM (our days are such that workout frequently doesn't happen until 6 PM, with dinner finishing up about 8 PM), we strictly charged ourselves to watch only the first two episodes of Dickens' Our Mutual Friend. Brittainy loves it (I love that she loves it, though I expected her to do so), and we are going to stretch it out over the course of the rest of the week, savoring every beautifully-acted moment.

We were in bed by midnight. This morning I woke up to find Emma licking my eyelids, both paws firmly planted on my nose. I let her go on until I figured she had washed them thoroughly. It's as good as putting your face in a bowl full of icy water, for waking-up purposes. Over breakfast cereal and Bible verse memorization (Brittainy and I are working on Romans 12), I had to ask, "So, you put the weasel in my bed this morning?"

"No! Honest! I was in the bathroom."

I believed her, but believing her didn't prevent me from putting the ferret in my sisters' room, where both of them were still sleeping. "Weaseling" is a favorite morning prank in our home.

And now we begin the cycle all over again. Today I must examine the diction and action of Henry V---tomorrow is characterization and themes, and then I shall turn it in, God willing, Thursday morning. After that there will be only two more week-plans on my stack. Only two more... only another week and a half of this grueling schedule.... and then I shall be FREE!!!!

I really, really like my life. Domine mei, te gratias ago!

Ten Seconds of Stream-of-Consciousness

I could spend my entire life (and spend it worthily) in asking and answering the question "What is fitting in this situation? What is suitable?"

Try this on for size: the Gospel is completely unsuitable for humans, but utterly suitable for God. Sounds ridiculous? It is, in one way. It's not, in another.

You know, it just about takes a paradox to make this whole topsy-turvy world come right-side-up again.

I've fallen in love with the color red. I am not afraid of it now.

Clean passion, my friends. Clean passion.

Benedick and Beatrice ... Again

It is strange, how things come full circle. When I began this blog, now three years ago, I was deeply involved in a college production of Much Ado About Nothing. And here I am, three years later, deeply involved in the same play because I am writing about it for my job.

Believe it or not, I actually went back through blog posts and IM logs from that semester, searching for clues to the characters of Beatrice and Benedick. What surprised me most in this hunt was the difference between my own perspective of the lovers at the age of 20, and what I think of them now, at 23.

I was most struck, then, by Beatrice's generous nature. I was amazed that she could remain an "excellent sweet lady" after being abandoned once by Benedick. I loved her for her sisterly love towards Hero, for her quick wits, and for her ability to laugh at herself. I loved the expansiveness, the glowing quality of her character. I felt that this was a woman who could love deeply, and go on loving in spite of pain.

Benedick, I thought, was saved from being a cad only because his extreme foolishness seemed pitiable. I scorned him for leaving Beatrice with a broken heart in the first place, and then for being so reluctant to understand his own heart on his second round with "blind Cupid." I thought him a laughing, grinning, flouting and jesting young man, worthy of Beatrice only because he has the talents to amuse her. If the Prince had had Benedick's tongue, I would have infinitely preferred him.

That is what most struck me then. This time around, I am influenced by the perspective of a nineteenth century commentator named Anna Jameson, who points out something entirely different, and less appealing. Jameson highlights Beatrice's pride and vanity, and even calls her femininity into question. Her comments on Benedick I found even more surprising (and thought-provoking). She writes, concerning Shakespeare's portrayal of Beatrice and Benedick,

“Of the two portraits, that of Benedick is by far the most pleasing, because the independence and gay indifference of temper, the laughing defiance of love and marriage, the satirical freedom of expression, common to both, are more becoming to the masculine than to the feminine character. Any woman might love such a cavalier as Benedick, and be proud of his affection; his valour, his wit, and his gaiety sit so gracefully upon him! and his light scoffs against the power of love are but just sufficient to render more piquant the conquest of this ‘heretic in despite of beauty’” (Shakespeare's Heroines 43).

Jameson points out that Benedick is the first and freest of the two to love, and that whereas Benedick is willing to fight for her, Beatrice is willing to risk his life in the fight with Claudio. When I went back to re-read the play in preparation for writing, I had been "converted" to "see with new eyes." Now Benedick appears to me far more attractive, wiser, braver, more generous---the one who truly bears most in the relationship, and bears it so well that his cheerfulness led me formerly to accuse him of frivolity.

Beatrice, whom I thought so generous before, now appears bitter indeed in her endless jabs----and she whose capacity to love I had praised now seems a little more shallow than the Benedick that I so scorned.

And so, in short, I feel like Beatrice herself. I was so narrowly focused on her virtues that I failed to recognize his, and so eager to "spell him backwards" that I never considered whether his face might not be really worth looking at frontwards.

I have learned to love Benedick, and now bid adieu to all my pride. No glory lives behind the back of such! And Benedick, live on! I will admire thee, taming my prejudiced heart to consider thy sweetness, mirth, valor, wisdom, gallantry, and steady purpose. For Jameson says thou dost deserve, and I believe it better than reportingly!

I Have a Niece

Mike and Jess stopped by the Office today to give us the news from their sonogram. There was wild excitement in the air while we waited; we even took a "baby poll" (seven thought it would be a girl and three voted for a boy) on the company whiteboard.

I have a neice. There are sonogram pictures to prove it. And there was jubilation. The board now reads, in addition to the baby poll, the legend "Thor loves Peekah Niece." Thor (Nathan's nickname) has already given his niece a nickname (Peekah). While I'm not so awfully sure about arbitrarily nicknaming one's nieces and nephews either "peekah" or "boo" (depending on gender), I cannot help but be tenderly amused by my brother's enthusiasm.

Indeed, this child is coming into such a company of adoring young aunts and uncles, such a band of not-so-long-ago-children who now want to make her their sovereign queen, that I would fear greatly her spoilment, if it were not that I know well her parents' tempers, and know too that they know the awesomeness of their responsibility.

Who would have thought that my high school friend would become the mother of my niece? Who could have supposed that the boy and girl I knew as children would now be bringing a child into the world? It passes me; I wonder at it in a happy maze of anticipation.

Never was a child so much wanted, or so greatly loved. Dear baby, our own flesh and blood, we can hardly wait to welcome you---and for your sake wish this world a brighter, kindlier one---and for your sake are doubly glad that it has a Savior.

I'm Working Tonight

But by the time I'm done describing the scene in front of me, you won't by sympathetic any more. You'll be envious. ;-)

I am sitting in my room, Michael Crawford crooning something (not Phantom of the Opera) in my headphones, with a 22" screen, a pewter goblet (not kidding) full of ice cream, Sarah (the High Queen) and Brittainy comfortably disposed (one on the floor, the other on the opposite bed) near me, also working, and a ferret companionably licking my wrist (not kidding about that, either).

Oh, and I'm working on The Faerie Queene, which at the moment means quoting C.S. Lewis from an old, rare book of his (in the possession of which I am smugly happy) called The Allegory of Love.

Life is tough all over, ain't it?

Why Is It That...

.... people in love stories are always telling each other to back out before it's too late? How many times have I read of/heard/seen the hero tell the heroine (or, still more often, vice versa) "No, really, you're better off without me. This isn't smart."

Does the other person listen? No! Never. Why is that? Or rather, not "why is that," but rather "Why do we, as viewers, cheer them on in their arrant foolishness?"

I'm just shooting in the dark here, but I think it's because love has nothing to do with worth. I remember Elizabeth Bennet's statement (paraphrasing here; I can't look it up right now): "There are few people in the world whom I esteem, and even fewer who I really love." It is possible to esteem without loving, and it is possible to love without esteeming.

Then why are lovers endlessly praising the worth of their beloveds? Is it because they put so high a value on them that their worth rises de facto?

I dunno. It's a mystery I've just begun to probe. I ran into it by accident while working on Absolute Beauty, and now I'm not sure what to do with it.

Thoughts?

A Vision of Prodesse and Delecta

Sometimes I can see them so clearly.....

He is uncompromising and stern in appearance, yet as illuminated as his allegorical function would imply---pale skin, bright hair (red-gold), tall, straight, solid, completely self-possessed. His eyes, I think, are penetrating. He is the kind of person who sees right through you, but who has no personal ambiguity of his own to hide---at least, none that appear. Transparency and luminosity are characteristic of his skin. When angry, he flushes a pallid red, then becomes whiter than ever. His anger is quiet, no shouting. But his decision and execution are inflexible as death. He reminds me of Luceaferul, the cold, cruel, yet terribly lonely star in a Romanian poem.

Yet he has a beautiful passion---he loves truth. He aches and longs for truth as some men ache for power, or for wealth. Also, where he loves, he loves deeply, fixedly, devotedly. Finally, he wishes to devote his intelligence and truth-passion to the instruction of others, to give them hope. He is attracted to beauty of all sorts, but has a deep value only for the beauty of the real. The chimera cannot long allure him.

Delecta is his opposite, the other half of the human soul. She cares nothing for depths, but only for the sensuous surfaces. If he is sunlight, she is the shifting moonbeam. Her hair is golden but also brown and reddish, with a sheen sometimes as if of silver; and her eyes are blue, but also green and gray. She is no one thing---she is every thing in turn. Delecta is merry, Delecta is charming, Delecta is a liar. She understands little, wants little, is interested only in the way things appear and in their relative beauties. She is vain, observant, clever, obstinate, and quick-witted---also impulsive and generous. Her passion is to please, in all circumstances.

They are a remarkably mismatched pair, but they have been growing for years now in my mind, and their characters are too far formed to be remade.

How is the world to be both taught and delighted by such a team? And how could they ever learn to love one another?

Verbal Snapshots of Our Summer

Well, the nightmare week is over. I regret to say that, as it turns out, next week will be just as bad. The pace will not really let up until late June. Yet somehow, now that my cold has receded and Brittainy and I are used to working all evening as well as all day, I find the rhythm increasingly enjoyable. Let me give you an idea of our days in snapshots...

The alarms go off in the bedroom between 6:45 and 7:45 AM, depending on how late we were up the night before. Brittainy and I have dispensed with traditional headboards and footboards in favor of long, low, wide box-spring-and-mattress beds. Mine just fits under the double windows, and hers is catty-corner against the wall. Most nights the windows are left open.

We also share a bathroom en suite, and a private sitting room (we call it our "study") across the hall, which is at present still in a state of discombobulation, but which will eventually hold our two desks and numerous bookcases.

Anyway, the alarm goes off. Two hours later (more or less) we arrive, usually together, at the office. The commute takes about five minutes. Brittainy works in the "inner sanctum" with David and Yvonne. I work in the outer room with Mom, Casey, Jay, and soon-to-be Laura. We are the Office, but two doors down is the Warehouse, peopled at present by about 15 workers of various types (phone counselors, bookstore manager, warehouse manager, manual labor workers, lapbook production manager, etc.) We perform our tasks with more or less hilarity and office jokes and trotting back and forth to the Warehouse (depending on the day, the mood, the weather, etc.)

Somewhere between 5 and 6 PM we both get home (usually separately) and put on our togs for a run in the historical farm park down the street. It is beautiful at this time of year, and one can almost forget civilization in its "greeny deeps." Sometimes, if the day is muggy, we ditch the run in favor of yoga and pilates in our basement workout room.

Weekday dinners at our house are sketchy affairs. On weekends we have big family meals, but during the week dinner is more likely to be homemade smoothies, with the main meal occuring in the middle of the day. After the workout and smoothie, we read pleasure books a little, or make phone calls and answer emails, or whatnot. At about 8 PM the work recommences, this time in the comfort of our bedroom (later, after we get time to clean it up and finish unpacking, it will be in the comfort of our study).

Choosing music is an important part of each evening, with all of Rhapsody's million-plus tracks at our disposal. Last night we took a foray into Julie Andrews, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Barbra Streisand collections, which left us both goggle-eyed. Once the music has been selected (tonight it is the soundtrack from Much Ado About Nothing), we have nothing to do but spread our books across both beds (which, really, are more like couches than anything else), settle our laptops comfortably on our laps, and start typing.

Sometimes the work goes steadily on until midnight. Sometimes (11 PM seems to be the magic hour for this) we get into a talk that lasts until 1 AM or later. Whatever the case, we eventually pack up and call it a night, only to rise and repeat the performance next morning.

Saturdays are a little more open. For example, we spent two and a half hours yesterday afternoon cooking. Tuesday night is caregroup, Monday is the family Girls' Night, and Wednesday is Parents' Date Night." On Sundays the whole family (including my three brothers and two sisters-in-law) comes over for lunch after church (which begins at about 1:30 PM, and lasts until 6 PM). Today, we played a knock-down-drag-out game of Mafia. Brittainy was Detective for one round, and I was a Serf both rounds. We were rather pleased, I think, not to have to incrimiate one another as Mafia members. Then we went off to Barnes and Noble to look at books, and came home for our yoga/pilates workout. Dinner didn't happen (it was a big lunch). Now she is reading The Faerie Queene, and I am about to start quoting Ryken and Lewis on the phenomenon of "Golden Poetry."

If life is what you make of it, then we have decided to make of it a celebration, a growing worship, and an endless opportunity for fellowship.

Ave et vale to you, gentle reader. When we get a camera and a free moment, we'll post some actual snapshots.

Limits

When I was a sophomore, I remember that Dr. Noe had us translate a passage from Epicurus. I post here a Wikipedia translation for convenience, not having my own--far inferior one--handy.

A Greek [Epicurus] it was who first opposing dared
Raise mortal eyes that terror to withstand,
Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning's stroke
Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky
Abashed; but rather chafed to angry zest
His dauntless heart to be the first to rend
The crossbars at the gates of Nature old.
And thus his will and hardy wisdom won;
And forward thus he fared afar, beyond
The flaming ramparts of the world, until
He wandered the unmeasurable All.
Whence he to us, a conqueror, reports
What things can rise to being, what cannot,
And by what law to each its scope prescribed,
Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.
Wherefore Religion now is under foot,
And us his victory now exalts to heaven. (I, 62-79)

At first glance, all I can think is "That's wicked---blasphemous!" Moreover, I can't relate. As a child, adolescent, and college student, I have never been one of those people who longs to outreach earth, to unravel all mysteries and all knowledge. It just hasn't been the tendency of my particular sin-habits.

But sometimes, nowadays, I wonder whether my lack of what the tragedians call "overweening pride" was simple unawareness. I haven't known that I have limits, at least, not important ones. I was never much good at math, but then I never much cared for math. I enjoy the blessings of a mens sana in corpore sano--a sound mind in a healthy (actually, an extraordinarily healthy) body, with the result that there have been relatively few things that I cannot do. Growing up, I achieved a reasonable degree of skill, a degree consistent with my own effort, in ballet, tennis, swimming, horseback-riding, archery, volleyball, culinary arts, sewing, music (flute seriously, piano by jump-and-guess), Latin, history, literature, grammar, geometry, composition, and political and philosophical studies. In point of artistic writing my sucesses were to a higher degree, even--they tell me, and I have no wish to appear falsely modest--an extraordinary one.

I offer this detailed list in order to demonstrate that, so far, my circumstances gave me the impression that there was nothing I wanted very badly which I could not have.

Until college. Let me list for you a few of the things that I found I could not there do perfectly, nor have completely, no matter how badly I wanted them:

1. An A on a Cicero exam.
2. To be left alone (in my first year I wanted this very badly).
3. A romantic relationship with a guy who would worship me (this desire, thankfully, passed away during the first semester of my first senior year).
4. To want to love people (in my first two years)
5. To be kind.
6. To know how to comfort and hearten with true hope (not false hope) a girl whose parent just died, or who was raped in high school, or who has decided to become a lesbian, or who slept with her boyfriend before coming to school and is living with a guilty, bitter conscience, or who has been cutting her wrists over a lost boyfriend, or who has a problem with alcohol, or a problem with her mother, or with her roommate, or with a guy, or with schoolwork, or with crippling health problems, or with financial uncertainty, or with her own daily sin. All these I have encountered, and all these leave me feeling so terribly limited.
7. To love well, with both wisdom and passion, knowing how to value others in the right way and for the right reasons, knowing how to channel all the enormous energy of my affections into conduits that will truly serve, truly build up, truly love. For I am a creature, I find, of great passions, and great passions are deadly unless they can be guided by wisdom.
8. To obey.
9. To humble myself.
10. To trust another human being at all.

In addition, I find that my body also has limits. This week, because of unprecedented deadlines, I have been trying to accomplish four times my normal amount of work. The deadlines came from nowhere, and are no one's fault. But the fact remains that I must try to cram a month's worth of study and writing into a week. I began Monday, but at the same time caught the cold that has been going around our office. By Friday afternoon, after 4 days of 10 AM to 12 PM (with a two-hour break for dinner) writing, exhaustion caught up with me.

I dissolved into tears. I cried as I have not cried in many months. I cried for the ache in my head and the phlegm in my throat and the cough in my chest, but most of all I cried for sheer weariness and loneliness. I cried for all the days since April 6th, when I began an extreme pace of writing and working that has not really let up from then to now, and is now so severe that I begin to feel deranged, unreal, as if I left a girl I used to know somewhere behind, and have become less than a human being: an automaton for the production of written words.

I cried also for the pain of a dear friend who just lost her mother, for the pain of my housemate Juli, who is suffering under migraine headaches and a bad case of poison ivy, for the pain of a friend whose young student was raped--was it only two days ago?--and for the pain of my younger sister, who is struggling to recover from Lyme's Disease.

I cried for the whole colossal, wretched, ugly, anguished tragedy that is human existence. I cried because in that moment it overwhelmed me, and there was no light, no stars, no sun, no morning---only night, night, night! I cried, too, because I can do nothing. I am not a conquerer. I cannot tell anybody "What things can rise to being, what cannot, And by what law to each its scope prescribed, Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time."

If religion is indeed trampled underfoot, then we of all races are most to be pitied, for assuredly we cannot trascend our torturing limits. The Helper whom Jesus promised us, the Holy Spirit, is so much more than just a piece of doctrine when you confront these walls of human sin, both yours and others. In such circumstances, He is my only hope for transcendance, not of the fiery ramparts of the heavens, but of the despair and weight of pain and guilt, whether my own or that which I experience vicariously (but oh, so vividly!).

Truly man is born for sorrow. If it were not also true that he is reborn for joy, I think I may have committed suicide by now. For I am a creature of great passions, and unchanneled passions can be deadly. But thanks be to God, I have not been led to so great a sin---instead I think of the wisdom of the Count of Monte Cristo: "Wait, and hope." Four words become more beautiful, more precious, more fragile, more powerful, in my sight, every day. They are: "Hope, Obedience, Service, Peace." And one word, one other word, has a power and exquisite beauty that passes all others, inspires hope, makes possible faith, upholds trust, beautifies life, arouses gratitude, compels devotion, humbles my soul into the ground and at the same time inexplicably exalts it beyond all the flaming ramparts of this world or any world. I mean the Word--the Christ-logos--of Love.

Passion

Writing a 90-page paper has made me more careful with words, but I fear it has not taught me to have many fewer of them on my fingertips. I ache to speak of all the impressions, ideas, passions, and reasons, that have brushed my soul in these last few days. They are so many! Yet, because I have learned to be more careful with words, I shall pace myself. Only know that I expect to write very often this summer.

Is it really not yet a month since I put the final phrase to "Absolute Beauty"? How can that be? Yet I believe it. I have lived through ages since then. Whole generations of thought and feeling have risen up, fallen in love with one another, married, born children and grandchildren, and died, all in less time than it takes to tell.

My mind is porous. One moment I think of Shakespeare's childhood, because I am reading his biography. Next, I find myself pondering the texture of leather---now, a blink---my fancy is filled with summer lightning and thunderstorms. I cannot settle; I cannot be still. I am a whisper and a glance and a slight moment. Were I at school, I would go at once to the piano and play until my playing shook its teeth.

I want to talk to you of truth, of movement, of trust, of the vision of Prodesse that increasingly occupies my mind. I want to talk of small children and their enormous eyes. I want to summon fairies---I want to awaken the dawn!---and yet I ask no more than to walk all night, a long, long night, in the singing blue darkness of the summer evening.

I cannot be still. I cannot settle on anything. Don't you hear it? Things dead, long dead, see how they rise again! I recognize that passion---I thought it had long since left my heart. Passion. How long is it since I abandoned myself to any sort of passion? I think it is a lifetime.

"Even Homer Sometimes .... Nods?"

I mentioned earlier that I have begun to wonder whether my mind has grown too Lewisian. I was therefore refreshed to find myself, momentarily at least, disagreeing with something Lewis tossed into an essay on Edmund Spenser (Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature). He wrote, referencing Jung and Freud, "We now know that symbols are the natural speech of the soul, a language older and more universal than words" (137).

Nego! I cried. "Oh come now, dear Lewis, let us reason together. Surely you, the author of Studies in Words, the great 20th-century Defender of the Faith, are not going to fall prey to Jung and Freud!"

Then I began to wonder "Have I simply misunderstood the passage? Is Lewis mocking, or being wry, or meaning something else?" I read it again. No, he was not joking. He did say that psychology understood the matter differently than a Christian would (some comfort there). But in the end, I was staring squarely in the face of something troubling.

Lewis wrote that symbols, not words, are the "natural speech of the soul."

"I'll think about it later," I said to myself, and went on with Spenser. But this morning the topic came back to haunt me. I was drifting through my morning routine; in fact, I had just finished dressing. I happened to look down and noticed a blue-and-silver anklet on my right ankle.

"Now it is summer," I thought, spontaneously. "It is truly summer when I put that anklet on, because in the summer I never take it off. That bit of azure beading and silver wire is summer."

A symbol.

A symbol that was the natural expression of... my soul? The natural speech, even?

Did Lewis nod in this matter of the soul and symbols? Or was he right? And if he was right, what in the world are the implications? For, you know, Jesus is the Word, not the Symbol....

You've Heard of "Simon Says"....

For the last five months or so, I've been playing a continual game of "Lewis says." C.S. Lewis's Discarded Image has been a key book for the 10-week Medieval Unit that dominated my spring (and is now finished), but the DI is only one of many.

I feel marinated, absolutely soaked in Lewis. I was counting up this morning, while brushing my teeth, all the Lewis books that I've read. I was surprised to find how many they are, though I have by no means investigated everything Lewis ever wrote. Still, besides the Space Trilogy and the Chronicles and the Discarded Image, I have read The Great Divorce, and The Screwtape Letters in their totality. My readings in Lewis have also included large chunks of the following: The Four Loves, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Studies in Words, An Experiment in Criticism, Mere Christianity, and Reflections on the Psalms.

That, I realized, is a lot of Lewis! No wonder I find myself responding to so many questions with "Well, Lewis would say," or "Lewis thinks that..." It occurs to me that I shall have to be careful not to make of Lewis a supreme auctor, one of those fellows on a level with Plato and Aristotle. He isn't a Plato or an Aristotle, much less a writer of Scripture, and I must needs remember the fact.

In my next, I shall mention a recent instance in which I actually disagreed with Lewis, as though to prove (silly impulse) that I am not his tabula rasa.

Lesson from a Baby

This morning in Children's Ministry I held an oriental child in my lap for perhaps three-quarters of an hour. He is an orphan, adopted and brought to the US only two weeks ago. He is smaller by a third than the other children. His thumbs are misformed into tiny crooked claws, and his upper lip shows the scar of an operation. When I first saw him draw back in fear at the touch of another child, my heart lurched. He cannot stand or walk well. He is weak, tottering, and will hardly venture into the middle of the room, even for a favorite toy.

I held him; he held me. He held my hands tightly with his tiny misshapen thumbs and perfect fingers. He has the dark eyes of his people, the slanting eyes and long, straight, fine lashes. Small, frightened, he still displayed a sensitive intelligence. The best moment of my day was the moment when I made him smile, and smile again, and even laugh.

He didn't know how to eat a cracker. He made the most terrible faces at his first taste of one, but learned quickly to like it. I sat on the floor and stretched out my legs to make a low but protective barrier between him and the others. Sometimes they toddled over to stare. Often I had to keep one of them from taking his toy, or running into him by mistake.

He was so quiet, and held me so tight, but released my hands when I required it of him, with a sort of resignation (the resignation I have seen in other orphans, who know that they cannot have an adult's protection and touch all to themselves for more than a few minutes at a time). That resignation, more than anything else about him, made me want to cry.

I stroked his hands and head because it seemed natural to do so, with quiet to match his quietness, but also I sang to him softly. When I sang he looked at me with astonishment. I wondered if it was a tune he knew. We began to play with a toy, a blue cardboard block. I set it up on my knee, and he knocked it over. Again and again we repeated this simple game, because it made him smile ecstatically. Whenever the block fell outside the barrier of my legs, I gestured and encouraged him to get it himself, to venture beyond me. That is the only way to learn safety and security---by experience.

When I first saw the expression in his eyes, I loved him. It was that simple. When I saw his hands, I loved him more. When I saw his weakness, I wanted immediately to see him transcend it. When I understood his fear, I became devoted to his protection; but still more to his ultimate freedom from fear. I longed to serve him, body and heart. I wished for the power to communicate my value for him, and intense desire for his good. I wanted to wipe the resignation from his eyes.

All this required no effort, no thought on my part, no will of mine, no intellectual deduction. It was as simple as breathing. I sat in the church meeting and heard a feeling, powerful, Gospel-centered sermon later that day, but even that lesson paled in comparison to the one I contemplated while holding a foreign, frightened baby on my lap, whom I yearned over with all my heart.

The lesson was adoption, and the metaphor was myself and the child. For in the larger picture I am that weak, tottering, tiny, scarred baby. I have been praying to God that I might see my sin---and God showed me, not my sin precisely, but my whole state of need, which is invisible to me. I go about imagining myself healthy, whole, and sound, mature, educated, even reasonably prudent and self-controlled. I don't see my own desperation, soul-loneliness, fear, tottering weakness, and crook-thumbed grasp. I don't understand.

But now, tonight, I think I see a little better, or remember a little more of what I truly am. And just as I feel unspeakable tenderness towards that small Asian boy, so I know, much more, God is loving us both.

I am astonished in a way I have not been for a long time. I remember the first time I asked, in trembling wonder, "Why do you love me?"

How could I have forgotten? How like you it is, my God, to remind me in this simple way! As you opened my heart for a child, so I know your heart opens for me. I am coming... I am coming. Only give me your hands to hold with my misformed hands while I stumble forward. I'll hold them so tightly, and you won't ever make me let you go.

She's Here

Brittainy has come. Now it is truly summer, and I am utterly blessed.