Pure Worship

It was a wonderful sermon; dearer than ever. How I love to hear Jeff preach! But even the sermon paled in comparison to this morning's corporate worship. They had full choir of 30-50 people, and they taught us a new song "Glorious and Mighty."

We were supposed to sit throughout the choir's rendering of the song and then rise to sing it together. Well, by the time they were nearing the end, there were individuals all over the auditorium already standing, silent, hands raised in an attitude of utter worship. I think the rest of us had tears on our cheeks; I know I did.

I thought that all my passion had been slowly drained away by the last eighteen months. I thought I was too tired to ever feel much of anything again. I've never been so glad to be so wrong!

I don't know what it was, tune or words or the joy of the singers, or the testimony and baptism that we witnessed just before they began to sing... or all these things. Certainly there was the Holy Spirit. I know that I have seldom had a worship experience which so nearly approximated my imagination of Heaven. We threw our voices up, lifted our hands, and sang, as if we could never get enough of praising God.

Dear reader, it was lifeblood. It was joy and flame and air in our lungs and stars blazing and crowns flung down on the glassy sea and God's robes of splendor filling the temple. It was trembling and adoration. It was ecstasy. It was, in a word, worship. Pure worship.

The human soul has its longings. I often find myself agreeing with Piper that God is the Gospel, in the sense that the Gospel's greatest gift is the satisfaction of the soul's deepest need and desire: God Himself.

Magnus es, domine, et laudabilis valde: magna virtus tua, et sapientiae tuae non est numerus. et laudare te vult homo, aliqua portio creaturae tuae, et homo circumferens mortalitem suam, circumferens testimonium peccati sui et testimonium, quia superbis resistis: et tamen laudare te vult homo, aliqua portio creaturae tuae.tu excitas, ut laudare te delectet, quia fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te.

"Great are you, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is you power, and your wisdom is infinite." And man desires to praise you, for he is a part of your creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and the proof that you resist the proud. Still man, only a small part of your creation, desires to praise you. You have spurred him on so that he should delight to praise you, for you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

Augustine, Confessions, Book I

Garden of Bright Images

When I was a freshman at college---how long ago that seems now!---there was a picture on the wall. This picture:
The canvas was simply huge. It must have been about 8 feet by 6 feet, and it hung on the wall on the dias in the dining hall. In other words, it dominated the little elevated platform in a corner of the busiest room on campus, where I spent most of my time.

As a freshman, of course, I didn't study there. I wouldn't have dared. But they set up registration under that picture my very first day on campus, and it presided over my swearing-in as a student. For the next six months, as a self-outcast freshman who did nothing but study, I would sometimes go and stand in front of that picture and try to make it swallow me.

Later, surrounded by happier camaraderie in the heyday of my sophomore year, I and six friends would hold meetings of the Green Apple Club there at dinner. I suppose it was during those hilarious meals that the idea of stepping into the picture was first suggested. The seven of us took turns writing an adventure in which we all found ourselves inside the picture, a la The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It was silly and magnificent.

Under that picture, in my junior year, I became editor of a school literary journal. Under that picture I sat in endless planning sessions for various theatricals that I was involved in, from lowly hairdresser's assistant to director in the course of four years. Under that picture I cared for many a dear friend, and there my friends came to minister to me. Under that picture were moments of triumph, emails of good grades and news of two brothers' engagements and happy times at home. Under that picture too was pain, ended friendships and conversations that left me filled with quiet agony, and piled-up moments of suspense, hope, disappointment... all receding at last into memories, as if they were waves falling back on themselves in ripples on the shore. And once, I sat there with a sprained ankle.

Through it all (and oh, how the memories press in on me!) there was that picture. I suppose you could say that it became my separate Eden, my world apart, the place where my imagination liked best to wander: my garden of bright images. It's strange how a picture or a tune or a movie or a book does that sometimes; how it becomes a part of your life. Since I was fourteen I've been playing on the piano a simple melody that I elaborated from something my brother taught me, and it has become the melody of my life for good or ill. Since I was eighteen I've held this picture, like a door or magic portal, in a special place in my mind. When I need to run away and hide, this is where I go.

And it doesn't matter, you see, whether or not I tell you these things. I don't have to be afraid, or worry about whether or not to trust you with this piece of myself. You can't touch it; you can't follow me there; you can't take it from me. It's safe.

It's beautiful too, isn't it? I've scaled the mountain in the center in every conceivable season and at every time of day, from each different side and angle. Personally, I find it easiest from the left, but more exhilarating from the right. I've swum in those waters, especially of a summer evening when the stars are singing and turning in their spheres for love of God. I've sat under the tree in the foreground, half in shade and half in sunlight---Oh, I don't know how many times!

When I was twenty, I went backpacking in the Rocky Mountains---the same range depicted in this picture---and what do you think I found? A real lake and a towering mountain behind it, not as grand as the one in the picture, but in other respects strikingly like. I sat on the banks of that lake for a whole day, as you can read about elsewhere in the archives of this blog, and learned things about God that struck deep into my soul and have worked themselves into the foundations of my being.

I will tell you what I learned from the picture, and from the day I spent really in the picture. I learned that God not only is, but is trustworthy.

And that's what I go back to remember, in my waking dreams and memories, when I step over the picture frame.

In Celebration of My Married Sisters

There are five Somerville girls in my family: myself, my little sisters (17 and 21, both still in college), and my married sisters (24 and 21, married to two of my brothers).

I adore my college girl sisters, but just now I want to write in praise of my married sisters. Any girl who has been especially close to her brothers knows how hard it can be to give them up to other, and closer, best friends. But not every girl, I suppose, is as thrice-blessed as myself in return for the sacrifice. My married sisters, Jessica and Casey, fill me with joy and thankfulness.

You might say, "What need have you of two more sisters? You've already got two!" Ah, yes, but after a few years with my two new sisters, I wouldn't give them up any more than I would the two I have had for more than a decade. Who would willingly give up Jessica's gentle wisdom and playful warmth? Who would agree to spend less time with Casey, who is ten girls in one and can skip lightly from playmate to counselor to fairy princess?

We have, in the words of a book I am reading right now, such larks! I will give you an instance. Last Sunday, when we were all at the parental house, the boys and Dad were watching football, and the three of us somehow wound up on the same couch across the room, reading books. (Nota bene: my father and brothers are NOT the kind of guys who ignore their wives/sisters/daughters for sports. We gladly gave them up to their game, and they were mindful to serve or entertain us in an instant, should we have asked. So it was all comfortable and not wretched at all.)

By and by (I do not remember how it started), one of us suggested that we get our own movie to watch upstairs. The others agreed, but since all our movies are in storage preparatory to moving, we decided to run over to Nate's house (my sole remaining unmarried brother) and borrow from his several-hundred-movie collection. Then the kissing wars started. You see, neither married couple has any idea of what it means to separate, for however brief a span, without kissing. I don't know where they got this notion, unless it was from my parents, who are just the same way after many years of marriage.

Well, anyway, Mike kissed Jessica and then Casey kissed David more romantically, so then Mike and Jess started in again, and for a moment or two there was a playful competition and quite an orgy of embracing. It is the most entertaining thing in the world, dear reader, to have married siblings in a household where frequent kissing is not only expected but absolutely welcomed and encouraged by long tradition and parental example.

Then we three went trippingly down the driveway, all young and happy in the sunlight, and I thought (for the millionth time) that God has blessed me beyond reason or imagination. In the car I began to share with my sisters about something that has been troubling me a good deal, and immediately they were my wise and sympathetic counselors, full of biblical thoughts and kindness. The memory of it has the power, even now, to move me almost to tears.

When we arrived, the playfulness began again. "Mike says that you always wanted to watch the Ten Commandments when you were kids, Christy."
"Yeah, all right, I was a sucker for the historical epics. What can I say?"
"Where are all the chick flicks?"
"Nate has chick flicks? All I see is war movies."
"I think it's because I already borrowed all the chick flicks."
"Jessica!"
"What about this?"
"You've got to be kidding. What we want here is fluff, not drama."
"These are all too serious."
"Well, what about this one?"
"Strictly Ballroom. Never heard of it."
"It's a cult classic, like The Princess Bride."
"I never really liked The Princess Bride."
"Whoa! You don't?"

After a protracted discussion, and since there was absolutely nothing else, Jess and Casey agreed (with a certain amount of skepticism), to give the Australian cult classic about ballroom dancing a try. I had a good deal of confidence in the movie's power to please, mostly because I've never met a girl who didn't like it. However, my sisters are pretty discriminating and have well-defined tastes in movies, so it wasn't without doubts that I staked my reputation for movie recommendations (which isn't much of one, so I didn't have all that much to lose) on Strictly Ballroom.

Well, when we got home of course the boys' first question was "What are you going to watch?" We told them. David immediately bit his lip and looked anxiously at his wife. "You don't think she'll like it?" I queried. He looked at her. "Well.... no, I don't. Um...just remember that it's an indy, Case." (Later, he admitted that he thought she would hate it.)

So we toted the movie upstairs to my big screen and watched it. Just as things were starting to get romantic, Mike joined us (his football game being over). My brothers are both very well acquainted with this movie, and Mike exclaimed at one point "Oh, this is my favorite part coming up."

"You know this movie? Why didn't you tell me about it!" This from Jessica, who by now was quite engrossed. Casey too. We all laughed a good bit at the mockumentary style of the beginning, but this movie has a way of drawing you in, step by step, until all at once you find that you've fallen in love with it.

Well, a few minutes later the battery died on the laptop we were using, so we switched to the downstairs TV. David had been just coming up, and he immediately joined us. (David likes the movie too, but of course he would have joined us in any case, because that's where Casey was. Married people are like that.) The two couples snuggled up on two couches, much to my private amusement, and watched the end of this surprisingly powerful story about intergenerational redemption, romance, and above all dancing.

"Did you like it?" David asked Casey.
"I loved it!"

Jess liked it too, and my brothers were pleased to discover that their wives enjoyed a movie that they had enjoyed for years. I must admit, I was pleased with myself for having made the gamble to promote it---but I was more pleased that they enjoyed it, regardless of whose idea it was.

So Jack had Jill, nought went ill, and everybody wound up embracing on the dance floor. Or, as Shakespeare did not put it, "hugs and kisses all round." Now, dear reader, who could fail to appreciate such sisters? In the space of just a few hours, they were playful, wise, romantic, humble enough and game enough to take a plunge on an odd-looking movie, and willing to share all they have to give in warm and loving friendship with me, while simultaneously loving my brothers like everything.

Jess and Casey, I think you are the dearest, sweetest, prettiest, funniest, most glorious married sisters a girl could have. Thank you for being so good to me!

My Kids

It's 3:30 AM and even though I should so very very very much be in bed right now, I'm riding too high on Starbucks and the weekplan I just finished to hit the sack yet. Note, however, that Whitman is affecting my prose---I'm writing slangy. :-P

I don't think that any of my co-op kids have discovered my blog yet, which is a good thing because what I'm about to say would swell their heads something tremendous, and I'm saving that for Christmas encouragement notes. I don't subscribe to the theory that a teacher should never crack a smile or a joke until Christmas (at least, not when you have four moms in the back of the room who are ready and willing to crack heads for you), but I do believe that personal authority has to be maintained somehow (my preferred method is by keeping an Evil Overlord persona up my sleeve---my left sleeve, of course), and anyway it's a little too early for them to relax into the realization that I think they're fabulous. It might lull them into a false sense of security vis-a-vis their grades.

So, thus far I've confined my enthusiasm to the corners of their quizzes and emails to their mothers, and that's how it should probably stay until they fully understand that my being preposterously fond of them doesn't mean I'm going to go soft (because after all, going soft wouldn't benefit them).

However as I said none of them yet know about the existence of this blog, and I have to tell somebody or burst. Guess who's elected, dear reader? That's right. You are.

I will give nicknames to all parties in order to protect both the innocent and the guilty. I have thirteen students and four student teachers. (These are actually parents of students learning from me about how to teach literature, if you can believe that. Them learning from me? Try the other way round!) Anyway, when I first counted them---the students, not the parents; but they are four moms in case you were curious---at the beginning of my first class, I turned to one of the moms and said, "Ah. Thirteen. That's a lucky number."

Of course at that point I was shaking (note to self: how can I still be shaking at the beginning of a new endeavor after all those times teaching co-op?), so it was a pretty weak joke, but yes, I will confess it here (and never to my kids, at least not until we've all been together for a year), I was feeling intimidated.

I go about this vilely. Let me back up to my moms for a second. As I said, they form a quartet... or, if you prefer, a quatrain. Each week I meet with them for half an hour before class, then conduct class for an hour and a half. (Then incidentally I have another two-hour meeting with a coworker right after that. I lead all three meetings. Yeah. Let's just say that I come home utterly exhausted on Fridays.) My moms are, basically, the best. Three of them are three of my favorite people on earth (I'll call them Faith, Hope, and Love, which are appropriate names, believe me), and the fourth is a lady I don't know very well, but she's smart and has done a terrific job with her own kids, so I've got plenty to learn from her (let's just call her Lady).

So we kick it for half an hour and have all kinds of fun. I'm planning to tell them this coming Friday that the invisible three-ring Venn diagram we drew on the board last week (nota bene: bring whiteboard markers!) is actually the literary version of a three ring circus. It's great fun to talk shop about what and how and classroom this and students that, and have I mentioned yet that I learn tons from them? You wouldn't believe. Oh, and the best part is that everything we do right is one more thing I can add to the "Teaching R Lit" doc that I'm compiling for the Loom. Sweetness and light for moms all over the country! I love it when stuff works on two or three levels at once. :-D

Okay, so then the kids. By now I'm well warmed up but also starting to reach for my water and looking for a place to kick off my shoes. My kids are used to this now, I hope. Somehow I can only teach in shoes for so long, and being as it were at home with these people, I take the liberty of losing the leather as soon as I think of it after class begins.

(Oh, by the way, there's a piano in my classroom! Do you know how long it's been since I last had a chance to tickle the ivories? ::happy sigh:: Not that I'll have much of a chance between the pre-meeting, the class, and the post-meeting, but hey, I can still dream!)

Now, back to the kids. I call them O My Students and privately add (and O the Delight of My Eyes!). Thirteen, as I said, and I wouldn't loose a single one to make it a less dangerous number. Call it a baker's dozen, if the thirteen thing bothers you. Three boys and ten girls. Uneven? Oh my yes, and would you believe the guys were silly enough to bunch up in the corner and on the edge of the seating arrangements? You'd think they would have known that I'd want them right under my eye. So of course I stuck 'em smack dab in the middle, flanked by girls from sea to shining sea.

And reader, would you believe it, they are all three fun? Really! One of them is my firebrand---I'll call him Enjolras. He's smart as a whip and likes to test me at every opportunity, but he also takes it almost as well as he dishes it out and I can always count on him for controversy to liven things up. The other two are much quieter: bases to Enjolras's acid. I think of them as Gawain and Galahad. Gawain is a little slower and not the world's greatest quiz-taker, but he's always worth listening to when he makes a comment, and his questions are spang-on. Galahad is quiet but intelligent like nobody's business, and if I could just get him to talk more I think he'd be one of my best and brightest in discussion.

And then there were ten. What was I thinking of... oh yes, the parable of the ten virgins with the oil. I'm pretty sure that that doesn't apply, but at 3:30---no, it's 4:00 now---some loose allusions are to be expected. Well, what makes the girls more confusing is that I've got two sets of twins (none of them are related, but each shares a first name with one of the others). I'll call them .... um.... well, let's say the Annes and the Dianas (Green Gables).

One Anne is dead silent but as determined a student as I've ever seen. If her work isn't perfect, nobody's is. Now if only I could get her to talk more! The other is brilliant and good in discussion, so I find myself working to challenge her. As a point of fact, I'm toying with the idea of splitting the the thirteen into smaller groups of four or five each so that the moms can take turns teaching, but maybe that's next year. In any case, if I do that, I'll handpick my students to be the ones who need the highest level of challenge and can handle the biggest workload, so that they can go as far as possible in the time we have.

The Dianas... well, they're both intelligent and both quiet. In fact, the combination of intelligent and quiet is probably going to be one of my biggest obstacles. Oh, it isn't that my kids don't talk; they do. But I always want more than I have when it comes to talking. I want each of them to say at least one thing that they really want to say each class. That's kind of my goal.

After the Green Gables Girls, I have six left: The Princess (not because she's stuck up, but because she's beautiful and sweet and brilliant and self-contained), Kitten (the name says it all, except for the part about her being one of my most diligent workers), Shy (because she is, and that's saying something in this group: I'm still working on getting her to talk), the Tsarina (she reminds me of a Russian queen), and the two who are actually sisters, whom I shall describe as Margaret and Elizabeth, after the English princesses of the World War II era. They are from one of Those Families where all the children were born brilliant and only want training to do practically anything. All I ask, where they are concerned, is for Margaret to talk a bit more. But by now you are probably sensing a theme on the subject of talking. 0:-)

A word on geography. After making the mistake a dozen times in a row of referring to the place where I teach as if it were out-of-state instead of simply in a different county, I have decided to treat the whole geographical issue in the manner of the English. Where I live is, corresponding to a map of England, London. Where I teach is up north, which would be "the country" in England, or possibly "York" or "Edinburgh," to give it a name. Now the curious thing about the English is that they always speak of going "up" to "town" (by which they mean London), even though this invariably means going south, and of going "down" to the "country," even though this is north.

I therefore have decided to adopt their charming inconsistency (take that my old enemy, the metric system!) and will henceforward refer to going to teach as going "down to the country" and to coming home as "coming up to town."

To return to my kids. Again. Almost 4:30 now, and I must go to bed soon, whether I feel sleepy or not. Anyway, my kids are simply the brightest bunch that anybody could wish, and have such a delightful assortment of personalities for me to learn and love that I sometimes feel quite embarrassed by these sudden riches. I keep waiting for a squad of parents to appear out of the woodwork and say "Ooops, sorry, we didn't realize that you are only 24 and don't know what you're doing. We'll withdraw our children now." Surely somebody ought to do that, but somehow they haven't. Which leads one furiously to ponder....

Is it possible that I shall really have this joy for the next two years?

I must be dreaming already. :-)

Boo Radley's Front Porch

I'll never forget that line from To Kill a Mockingbird, about standing on Boo Radley's front porch. The gist of it is the importance of being in the other guy's shoes, looking at things through his eyes every so often, etc.

Today, I was coming back to work from something or other (lunch, I think) and Danya said, "Hey, Chris, we've got an intelligent, fun, interesting pagan using Tapestry and writing about it on her blog."

Unique, to say the least. "Shoot me the link," I replied.

After reading her blog and all the comments on it from her friends, I'm inclined not only to agree with David's assessment of this lady but to add descriptives of my own, such as "wonderful sense of humor" and "open-minded" and "what a delightful person!" I was also surprised to discover that there are more pagans (that's their term for themselves, not mine) using TOG than I ever thought.

"This is what Mom always wanted," David said. Yes, I realized, it is. Somehow, God has allowed us to make a curriculum with so much to offer that pagans as well as Christians are using (and enjoying!) it, yet we have not compromised one iota on presenting classical studies from a biblical, gospel-centered worldview. I believe our pagan mom's term for some of our biblical-worldview-based questions is "gag," but that's a good thing. I'd be concerned if I didn't see that comment somewhere. And wow, she's even using some of those biblical worldview questions because she wants her kids to understand the Christian perspective!

My only question now is, does she realize how seductive the Christian perspective can be?

I really, really like this lady. We all do. In fact, I think she's become a sort of This Month's Favorite Mom. In addition to everything else, she's teaching her kids (four boys) Latin and Greek at the same time. How can I not appreciate such a person?

So here's to you, Mom of the One Sixteenth blog! Thanks for letting me stand on your front porch for a few minutes. It's been a little bit strange, but definitely enlightening and encouraging!

The Saga of the Beetle Scrubber: A Cautionary Tale of Deep Philosophy

Once there was a beetle-scrubber named Gilbert Myle. No finer cleanser of insects existed in all the lands of the earth. Annually this stalwart youth traveled to the fish-market of Sansmens to compete in the Ludi Insectae, and every year he won the prize for beetle-scrubbing.

Gilbert’s charges were the shiniest, best waxed, most elegantly combed creatures in the history of the planets. Rich men brought their pet beetles to Gilbert, where he lived in a little backwater village called Rusticor, and paid him fabulous sums for his effort. Master Myle could have claimed his place in a dozen palaces as a permanent staff-member. Moreover, this young man was an attractive figure, straight-spined and bright-eyed, so that he was the object of much female interest.

Yet Gilbert was not satisfied with justice: the doing of that for which he was best suited. He came of a proud old family, and his father had been a man who bred racing butterflies. The lad felt that beetle-scrubbing was beneath him. This made him surly with the village maids, and churlish with the rich men, and, worst of all, sullen with his mother.

Mistress Myle was one of those women whom one could confidently put forth as Exhibit A in any question of beauty. Although fifty-something, she appeared as fresh as a dewy rose, and not a country-rose at that, but a hothouse rose!

Mistress Myle (her first name was Tabitha, but she felt that this was beneath her) did not tolerate sullenness. Being one of the most beautiful living beings on earth, she felt that surely the rest of the world could make a small effort to live up to her own dazzling charms and at least smile.

Yet Gilbert’s mother – who had married his father because Master Myle Senior’s constant contact with butterflies had made him a man of delicate attentions and exquisite manners – agreed that beetle-scrubbing was no life for her son.

“Gilbert, my son,” she would say, “you must take some of this money which the idle rich thrust upon you, and you must give up beetle-scrubbing.” But Gilbert, although twenty-three and unhappy, had been strictly brought up along Platonist lines, and could not quite bring himself to disregard the perfect justice of his profession.

“Mother dearest, my darling and best beloved only Mother,” he would say, for his father had brought him up to be as perfectly gracious as he himself was, before his untimely demise at the hands of a vagrant and drunken bee (Master Myle Senior was dreadfully allergic to bees), “I know very well that beetle-scrubbing seems to be beneath the son of my father, and I do not deny that I am unhappy in my profession. But Mother, ought I not to make myself happy? If I am truly suited to be a beetle-scrubber, is it for me to overturn The Republic and refuse to be happy, as Plato says that all men engaged in doing what they are best suited to do are happy, and this is happiness defined?” And his mother would shake her head sadly, because she agreed with her son, but did not like it.

So Gilbert brooded, and although he was too conscientious to turn out imperfect work, nevertheless his heart was not in it. Young Myle felt that there simply was not enough in the lot of a beetle-scrubber to challenge and uplift the soul.

“It’s not as if I’m asking so much, am I?” He would ask the well-bucket absently, while pausing from labor to splash a little cool water on his face and the back of his neck. “Is man really meant to plod along dully doing his duty, without any liking for the task? Where’s the pleasure, the passion, the overcoming, the zest?”

Then he would mutter a few discouraged words in Greek, usually from that passage in which Odysseus sat weeping beside the bare horizons of the sea. And Gilbert felt that he too, in his deep heart, had somehow strayed from home.

One day, the area’s itinerant bookseller came to Rusticor. Mistress Myle heard of this while chatting up her butcher for details of his daughter’s housewifely skills, for she had begun to think that only a pretty girl could serve to distract Gilbert from his malaise. Tabitha Myle had no illusions; she knew that there was nowhere in the world a young lady as beautiful as herself. Nevertheless, she had a secret shame. She could not make a good pie-crust. Thus Gilbert’s mother inquired minutely into the pies of the butcher’s daughter.

As she was engaged in this careful questioning, the bookseller’s cry came hazily across the corner of her ear, and this good lady let out a veritable yip of joy. Books! A new book would give Gilbert some blessed relief, for the lad had been brought up well. That is as much as to say, he loved books only slightly less than life and breath.

“Libellum!” She called. “Libellum! I must see your books at once!” Master Libellum waved his fat hands and shook his fat jowls and beamed a smile from every curve of his rotundity.

“Mistress Myle! How exceptionally pleasing, and how multifaceted a joy this is, to proffer my meager booklings for your superlatively beauteous examination!” He drew himself up to an incredible height of five feet and an inch. Then Master Libellum (whose first name, I regret to inform you, was Mordred) dared a thing which he had long wished to dare. He said, “May I comment, may I indeed comment, Mistress Myle, that the pulchritude of your complexion is such as suggests a dewy rose?”

Tabitha, who had heard this comparison applied to herself upon countless occasions, smiled tolerantly. Master Libellum was dazzled. He resolved upon the spot that Mistress Myle should have only the finest and rarest book in his collection. “Try this one, my dear lady.” His perspiring hands left damp marks on the slim volume, but Tabitha could see that it had a limp purple-leather cover and a scripted title, in what must once have been gilt letters.

“This,” she said to herself excitedly, “this must surely be a work of great excellence and importance, for its title was once gilt!” Without pausing to decipher the lettering, Mistress Myle paid the bookseller and ran to her son’s workshop.

“Gilbert!” She cried, “Gilbert, here is a new book!”

Gilbert Myle looked up from his beetle and his tiny scrub-brushes. The expression in his brooding dark eyes (over which the young village girls would sigh for hours together) was that of a man who does not dare to hope.

“A… new book?” He gasped, opening his mouth to goggle more effectively.

“My son, indeed it is!”

Gilbert left his beetles and seized the book which his mother held out to him, snatched it with eager fingers and devoured the first page in twenty seconds. “This is a wonderful book!” He cried.

“What is the title?” Tabitha asked with a slight feeling of guilt, for she had remembered her maternal duty to guard carefully Gilbert’s reading habits.

“It is called Ethics.”

“A most proper book,” approved Mistress Myle, well-pleased. All thought of the butcher’s daughter and her pie-crusts flew from the good lady’s mind.

And so it was that Gilbert Myle came into possession of Aristotle’s Ethics. Had the name of the author not been rubbed from the cover by long usage, and had Tabitha been less anxious to please her son, she might have discovered her iniquitous crime sooner. For she had committed a sin no greater and no smaller than this, that she put her Platonist boy in the way of discovering Aristotelian philosophy.

The result you may easily conjecture. Gilbert devoured the book, and pondered it deeply. He was nearly torn in two by the agitation of his own mind. At last, however, inclination for an escape from the life of beetle-scrubbing, coupled with a profound conviction that Aristotle (because he was so much more systematic and particularized) must have apprehended the truth more nearly than Plato, brought Gilbert to a momentous decision.

“Mother,” he said to his mother. “Alma mater, who brings forth light in her arms for men and frogs alike, whose eyes are the very distillation of the celestially blue skies, whose face in its austere beauty represents the visions that men of old called goddesses…”

Tabitha, who had been born neither yesterday nor the day before yesterday, immediately said, “My son, what unpleasant things have you to relate to me?”

“Mother, I no longer believe that Plato was right in his definition of justice, and I think that he was mistaken also, most grievously, in his understanding of man’s happiness.”

Mistress Myle instantly fainted, and remained insensible for twenty days. At the end of this period, she was recovered enough to receive from her son his impassioned discourses on the virtue of Aristotle, to curse her own lack of foresight, and to resign herself to consequences.

“But Gilbert,” she ventured only once to ask, “What have you now espoused as the proper end of man, of your own life?”

“Why Mother,” responded the youth with surprise, “I thought you knew! Clearly, as Aristotle says, the only perfect thing for a man to do is to think about thinking. To this task I shall now devote myself.”

Tabitha fainted again.

Shortly thereafter Gilbert sold his beetle-scrubbing emporium and became a potato farmer, for the specific reason that potatoes do not require much looking after, and thus he was free to devote the majority of his time to thinking about thinking. In short, he turned Aristotelian. And Gilbert no longer did what he was best suited to do.

This was melancholy. It remained melancholy until Gilbert fell in love with his Phlogistonian fifth cousin, a very comely young girl, whose hairbreadth escape from consanguinity with the love of her life never failed to be, in her words, “a source of constant amazement, for in this we see not only the fixed nature of ether, but fluctuation of the other four elements!”

The only obstacle to their union was, of course, the matter of the fifth cousin’s pie crusts. But that is another story.

The Offender

Several years ago, this voice cried out in agony in my imagination. I wrote down what he said.

The Offender

Let me out, let me out out out out!
A chemical reaction, that’s me.
Why can’t I face it?
I don’t want to be a silly romantic.
There is no transcendence, O my soul!
The face of my beloved is a skull
Wrapped in rubbery skin
And containing a pair of eyes: blue.

I am not a me, I am an it.
There is no measure to this universe,
This trackless empty wasted space
Of men who millions together struggle as before for:
Item one, food. Item two, reproduction.

Once, I thought – I am ashamed of it! – I thought
That love was… something.
Radiance, or rightness.
And now I have: item one, a body.
Item two, another body.
Item three, a collision of bodies resulting in sensations.

Who is there to let me out? – No one.
It is all chaos, for all things are from chaos,
Are in chaos, and are for chaos.
I am then: item one, so many pounds of quivering flesh.
Item two, so many nerve endings.
Item three, a mind, able to know nothing.
Item four, a something – I used to call it “soul”
Signifying nothing.

Why does it still wail?
Death is no change
Only gloomier fire, more lack of light.
And yet it has: item one, unease.
Item two, apprehension.
Item three, fear.
Item four, terror.
Item five, madness.

Oh God! Why does it still call for God?
How can it still return to that?
It snivels, the coward.
How like a mirror it is, bent on itself
And there is nothing there
Reflecting nothing but itself
And itself a nothing bent on
Reflecting itself!
It is only: item one, mass in kilograms.
Item two, some percent water.
Item three, an object in motion.
Item four, a source of carbon dioxide.
Item five, matter taking up space in four dimensions.
Item six, a collection of atoms.

It has no purpose.
Let it eat, slap, rage, kill, betray, lie,
Fail, spurn, spoil,
Be ill, be crass, be cruel, be dead, be damned!
No one to damn it.
Oh, will no one let me out!

Let it out of what?
Save me! Save me!
Save it from what?
From damnation! I have offended!
No one to damn, no one to be offended.
But I am damned!
How does it know it is damned?

How – O my soul!
I did not see a soul in my beloved’s eyes.
I did not give thanks for food;
I did not honor holy love.
I pleased my flesh;
I seared my nerves with sensation;
I refused to know truth;
I sinned in my soul.
I did not learn from my unease;
I was not driven to question my apprehension,
I did not search out my fear;
I repented nothing in my terror,
I ran mad, responsible for it.
I measured mass, percent, motion,
Source, space, and number of atoms
Without asking – what the purpose?
All this I have done, which was one thing:
Offense, offense!

And I cannot bear it.

Oh, My God...

Make me not a Job, Lord.
Not that, not, never that!
To question myself Lord,
Endlessly, I can bear that--
But not to question Thee!

The Office: Season 8 --- "Battle of the Bands: Spotty Bananas vs. David and the Respectful Fonts"

“I know I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes, but I finally saw the Y3 errata chart. I like it 147.2% better than the one for Y2. You have SUCH a better eye for things like this than I do. Just wanted to give you a ‘Good Job Dana!’ award.” – Ray
“Thanks! I like awards and it has been a while since I got one.” – Dana
“Well you're deserving!” – Ray
“I guess I prefer a gold watch to a nice ink pen, if you are wondering.” – Dana
“Really. Good to know. Not that I'll do anything with that information... “ – Ray

“It’s great that we can all work together as the body of Christ.” – Juli to Dana
“I’m the hangnail.” – Ray

Charity mentioned that her IM buddy icon was a spotty banana, to which Ray replied that he was in a band called "Spotty Banana" ...
"Hey, that 404's. Someone should fix it. Wait, that's me" - Ray, on Charity's message that there was a broken link.
"RAAAAY!! My banana will yammer sternly at you if you do not make happy non-404 noises presently" - Charity
"Stanley Yammer is the lead guitarist for my band, Spotty Banana." - Ray

Later:
"I'm totally seeing a battle of the bands between Spotty Banana and
David and the Respectful Fonts!!!" - Juli

"Everything that has a picture or looks nice is David's work." - Ray

“Amy is getting her lunch. This is tremendously convenient for yours truly.” – David

“You’re supposed to be sleeping” – David to Christy, who is cat-napping on the office floor
“I’m stretching” – Christy
“Slumber dear maid. Green boughs will cover thee” – David, quoting an eighteenth century English song
“Prove it.” – Christy
“Mom, I need to go outside and cut some green boughs now.” – David

On the Computer Mouse
“I hate a weak mouse. Weak mice need not apply.” – Mom
“We will not tolerate weak mice in this office. There will be fewer but better mice.” – David, playing off of a flick called Ninotchka

“Hi. My son is six. Is he too young to apply for the chief advisor position?” – Ray, completely randomly, to Christy on IM one morning
“That all depends. He could be chief advisor to a snail.” – Christy, going with it
“That'd work. Should he fax his resume?” – Ray
“I bet the embassy would take it.” – Christy
“SCOTT JOHNSON
WORK EXPERIENCE
None.
REFERENCES
Mommy and Daddy.” – Ray
“Brilliant. I’m sure the snails will get back to him promptly. They’re polite that way.” – Christy
”So I've heard.” – Ray

“My role models: Matthew (from Anne of Green Gables), the stick figure guy, Sam Gamgee, and the octopus from Oktapodi. None of my models particularly trend towards intelligence, now that I think of it.” – David

“Oh, Christy! Now I know what coquette means! I always wondered, you know, in Enchanted, ‘You are my one coquette.’ I always thought he was talking about an egg.” – Lauren, reading Christy's notes on Les Miserables.

“You get a live animal for your first-year anniversary of working here.” - David
“I want a bunny!” – Amy
"Christy, make a note, Amy gets a bunny. It has to be larger than a rodent though.” – David
"I want a pirahna" - Lauren

“’Cause I would have paid money to see Amy in a turban” – David on the recent Saladin caper and Amy’s tragic absence from it

“You get a gold star.” – Mom to Christy
::Insert indescribable sound of envy and protest from Lauren::
“Wow, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard Lauren have a bad attitude.” – Amy

“I’m just tired of being the only one who ever throws a temper tantrum” – Amy

The natives are getting restless. After all, it is the middle of Unit 2 nine-week insanity. Suddenly, a primitive cry goes up:
"Davy has to go get us Starbucks!" - Mom
“STARBUCKS! STARBUCKS! STARBUCKS!” – Amy, Mom, Brittainy, Lauren, and Christy
"I have to finish these pictures! Brittainy, do you want me to finish these or go get Starbucks?" - Davy, trying to be responsible
"Go get Starbucks" - Brittainy
"You weren't supposed to say that." - David
“Everybody IM David and tell him to go get us Starbucks!” – Mom
“He’s just gonna turn off his IM… see?” – Christy

The madness continues: David is now playing “Causi, Causa” from A Night at the Opera, a Marx brothers movie, and Mom has co-opted a salaried person from Production to go fetch Starbucks because we’re all too busy to go.

"I never said that Brittainy couldn't chant!" - Christy

The Dear Wet of Rain

It has been a day blessed beyond measure or desert. I came into it so weary, and withal so tightly strung, that the extent to which it went well is nothing short of miraculous. All glory to God for this, and more on it later, but for now I want to tell you about something else God did for me.

I came home from this magnificent, exhausting day, and within an hour found myself helpless in the hands of the worst headache I've had for some time. It gripped my skull just above my eyes and stretched backwards, stabbing in with the careless, cruel, almost personal torture that these things have, as if a Chillingworth had got inside my brain and was amusing himself by slowly destroying it. I finally broke down and took ibuprofen, which is something I do not do at all as a rule because I don't want to become dependent on it for relief from my not-infrequent low-grade headaches.

I lay on the couch for two hours, trying to make it go away. It wasn't the pain (which remained manageable) so much as the persistence that vexed me. Nothing worked. Charity was having a party, and her friends came in and out. One of them, Sean, was looking for Juli. "I want to roll up her windows for her," he said. "It's raining."

"Thank God!" I replied, and followed him outside. I don't know exactly why I did it---but all at once the dear wet black velvet night was there around me, and the musical patterns of the rain fell gratefully on my ears. You who have been outside in the rain, you know that it is possible to breathe music. Merely to stand there was sweet relief, delicious and delicate. I abandoned myself to it, glorying in the drops wetting my wrists and fingers and the bridge of my nose, my throat and eyelids and chin and most of all my throbbing forehead. I turned my arms to catch the drops in the palm of each hand.

And oh, my feet were bare and they touched the wet ground, and oh, my clothes were dry and now they are speckled with dampness, and oh, the lovely cool unexpected wet of rain!---I never knew where the next drop would land, and for just a moment I wanted to laugh with delight at the thought that I was playing a sort of hide-and-seek game with God.

I remember, now that I am back here on the couch, how often when I was melancholy or sad at college I would go and lie down on a bench in the gazebo, if it was raining, and listen to the wet music. Sometimes I tried to trace melodies in it, but more often I simply accepted it as a murmuring symphony too complex to untangle, yet soothing beyond measure. When I see my Lord, I will ask Him, "Christus, Best Beloved, won't you teach me to speak rain?"

Is the headache gone? No. But my heart has gone beyond it, and all my senses are filled with the beauty of a soft late summer night of rain. Sweet gentle friend, Rain, carry my kiss of gratitude on the wind to Heaven, and tell my Best Beloved that I am thinking of Him tonight.