Tired. Happy. Most of All: DONE

Done with what? Y3U3, for those of you who know what that is. For those who don't, think "90 page paper single spaced" and you'll have it about right.

You know it's unit edits week when:

1. Office humor just keeps getting weirder. Don't believe me? Check out the "Flight of the Conchords" episode entitled "Jenny" on youtube.
2. Fixes that should take 20 seconds take 20 minutes; fixes that should take one hour take two or three or six hours. Etc.
3. Anything, anything that can be a break is a break. Including planning the next unit.
4. You may literally roll out of bed and work all day and be going back to bed around midnight or later before you realize that you never stopped for a shower. Yuck. :-P
5. Something that is long-term and totally irrelevant to the unit edits suddenly has to be decided now, and it takes hours to process that decision because at least four people are involved.

Sufficient to say, we're always super happy when one of these weeks is over. And, for me, it basically is. I only have one thing left: tomorrow morning at 8 AM, Brittainy and I are having a race to see if either of us can complete a day-long project in 3 hours. What is the day-long project? Well, it's writing two pages. I'm not kidding: novel summaries are two pages long and they take a day to write. Only we're going to try to do it in 3 hours. Um... yeah.

Then Brittainy leaves for Thanksgiving with her family and fiance, and I get a whole weekend to---goof off? Don't be silly! I'm going to write an exam and a couple of articles on historical backgrounds of literature, and then start reading Crime and Punishment for (gasp!) the next unit. But don't feel sorry for me, dear reader. First of all, I'm completely hardened to my schedule. Second of all, I have three scrumptious new pleasure books coming in. :-D

Speaking of pleasure books, the one that interests me most right now is Ursula K. LeGuin's latest, called Lavinia. It's about the girl who married Aeneas (think Virgil's Aeneid, the thing that goes with Homer's Odyssey and Iliad). I've never seen any author tackle the subject of Lavinia before (besides Virgil, of course), but I have more faith in LeGuin's ability to handle it properly than I would anybody else's... with the possible exceptions of Rosemary Sutcliff or C.S. Lewis.

So I'm looking forward to reading that. Then there's one or two others from the Christian fiction market that I want to get my hands on, mostly to see if they're any good. Hope springs eternal. It's a funny thing, though----lately I find myself wanting to write the kind of story that I had least use for in college: gritty realism. I couldn't really explain why, but I'm pretty sure Crime and Punishment will only increase the impulse. So don't be surprised if you see both realism and grit showing up here in the next few weeks.

Let me see... what else can I tell you? I should say what else will I tell you; there are all sorts of things I can tell you, but won't, because you are a very public person and I really shouldn't trust you with any secrets. That being the case, I think I'll stop here. May your shadow never grow bulkier, dear reader---except on Thursday. ;-)

Roses in November

Last Saturday, the day we moved, was warm and blustery. The sky seemed to be trying to make up its mind between frowns and smiles. I remember that a tumultuous rainstorm appeared out of nowhere in the late afternoon, but after the rainstorm came such a smile; thinking of it later in our room, Marjorie said to me, "Oh, the trees were made of gold and diamonds!"'

In the sunset, spangled with rain, our many trees do seem to be made of gold and diamonds. This and warm relationships are the wealth of the neighborhood. People here are definitely of the working class, a degree poorer, kinder, and more dangerous than the self-contained propriety of our old street.

On the way back from getting lunch, an Iranian woman standing on the median silently handed us a card explaining that she was out of a job and asking for money to feed and pay rent so that she and her two children could survive. Having no cash, we were forced to smile our sympathy, apologize, and go on. Her expression was closed and she wouldn't meet our eyes.

There are gangs here, on the streets---little knots of young men in black and bling. I can't help shivering when I see them, even though I know that they are just people, like me or anybody. Then too, it is like being in another country: people speak to one another in foreign languages and have foreign customs. I am reminded once again of the extremely sheltered life I have lived, and of my own naivete. How is it possible that I am almost twenty-five and yet know so little of the world? Everywhere I go, here, I'm different. My skin is too white and my veins are too delicately blue; my English is too pure; I carry myself too straight; I know too much out of books and not enough out of harsh realities---in short, I don't belong.

Only a few things here are familiar, and for the first few days I clung to them. Tall mature trees stretching away to the horizon---In the summer their leaves have been and will be molten emeralds. I embraced them at once. The house itself, though it seems tiny and plain from the outside, is spacious (for a townhouse) and filled with the beautiful furniture we brought with us. My mother makes any house seem a palace. And then, the roses. There is only one sort of rose that I really love, and it is the pale pink one---here both in the front and back gardens there are roses of that color blooming. A sprig that I plucked yesterday is sitting on my windowsill in a bottle made of alabaster and filigree.

At first I felt like the girl in that old version of Beauty and the Beast. Though I am in a strange, foreign, winter-struck place, there are roses that welcome me wherever I turned. I wondered, "Will I have the courage to overcome the strangeness and become part of this culture?" I didn't know. I was only a very little girl the last time we lived in a place like this. I want to touch everything; I want to know everybody; I want to love them. But I feel shy and awkward, and even afraid.

It was odd to find myself once more walking through the once-familiar ritual of transition. I have moved fifteen times now, but it has been ten years since the last one and so I am out of practice. Still, the actions come easily enough. You school yourself to call what was home "the old house" or "the wreck" (after Swiss Family Robinson) and what will be home "the new house" or "home." You don't think about your old bedroom, your old yard, your old haunts. You take great delight in exploring all the new advantages of the place you are coming to; you remember only the disadvantages of the place you are leaving.

The best advantage I have found here, so far, is a secret cupboard hidden in the ceiling of my bathroom. That, and the blue that followed us here. I caused my bedroom in the new house to be painted exactly the color of my bedroom in the old house: a delicate blue that falls somewhere between azure and lavender. Everything in my new room, like everything in the old one, is that color or creamy white, or red like a star bursting, or deep sapphire, or dawn-gray, or rich satiny dark wood.

But on the second night, I was afraid. I sleep on this floor by myself, near a door to the outside, and I had to tell myself over and over "The door is locked. The door is locked. No one can get in. The door is locked." There were also noises from the utility room that make me feel eight years old again.

It is all as different from Middletown Valley as it could possibly be, and part of me is almost sick with longing for that golden sight: the smooth bountiful lap of land like a skirt picked out in criss-crossing patterns of farms, the heady sweet air, the intoxicating heights of the hills, and the feeling that if I were a bird I could tilt my wings up, up, up its cool slopes and plunge DOWN again to flirt them among the feathery grasses.

Oh, to have my horse there in those fields and on those slopes! He and I---we would play a fantasia and measure out the beats of a poem in drumming hooves. We would toss our manes at the sun, so that he would know it was us, and in our hearts laugh fit to rival the bubbling streams, and in our legs run fit to play with the dashing breezes.

Oh, to have a garden there, a flowering garland for one of those lofty-browed hills! "Tell me something I don't know about you yet," Brittainy said to me this morning. I smiled and said, "I love flowers." And I do---I love them passionately. Perhaps that is why the roses were so comforting.

Yet, though I am comforted, I also feel... what's the word... perhaps "intrigued." This place, this place!---it's like a bucket of icy water over the head, or a slap, or a fierce kiss. It makes me tremble with curiosity and a sort of boldness mingled with apprehension. I feel as if I have been wakened up from a long sleep and everything strikes, strokes, teases my senses. There is an electricity in this community where elbows cannot help but be rubbed. I can't keep my distance, not here. I can't hold myself aloof. And that's the strangest, most exhilerating, most terrifying thing of all.

This place makes me feel fourteen years old again, having my first serious crush and on the edge of---well---everything!

Baby Take a Bow

Nope, not the Chris Rice song. Instead it is my pleasure to announce that as of last Saturday, November 8th, Nora is a one-year-old.

Her fond parents had a family party for her, where she was given chocolate cake for the first time and ice cream for the second (it was supposed to be the first time for ice cream too, but her great-grandpa got hold of her last week and, well, these things happen). Uncle Nate presided over the feeding of the cake to my little niece and she promptly smeared it all over her face (how well I remember her father doing the same thing!).

There aren't any pictures of the party posted yet, but as soon as Mike and Jess get around to that (hint hint, kids) I will retrofit them in here. Meanwhile, here's a recent photo of Nora playing... um... well, whatever you do play with a tepee. ;-)

The Office --- Season 8: "It's a Brutal Science"

“What’s the matter with you?” – Christy to Dad
“He’s high on democracy.” – David

“Mom, do you think that if I had twenty more years and another degree, I could be a clone of you?” – Christy
“Only if you have a life in the middle.” – Mom

“I refuse to be responsible for de-life-ing you!” – Mom to Christy (Mom thinks she has deprived Christy of a life by letting her work for Lampstand)

"I would respond but I'm too busy superciliously sneering at you and casting you aside like an old glove" – David to Christy

"Make Pluto a planet! Donate dirt to be shipped to Pluto!" – Dad

“You know, if this is important I’m willing to commit 500 generations to it [moving dirt to Pluto to make it a planet].” – David
“I’m glad you’re willing.” – Amy
“All I have to do is become Emperor of the World.” – David

“Why don’t we just go live on those nice, civilized, well-behaved moons?” – Dad

“If you go by size, Ganymede is a planet but it isn’t. If you say it depends on orbiting the Sun, well there are practically any number of bodies that do that…” – Dad
“Planetology is sad and unfair.” – Christy
“That’s so true. It’s a brutal science.” – David

“Well, the problem with Pluto started when they realized that there are three or four other bodies the same size floating around out there.” – Dad
“There are enough river gods and nymphs in mythology. Let’s name the extra planets and bring ‘em in! What bugs me here is that you’re losing a major god [Pluto]. I don’t mind if you add gods, but you can’t take one away!” – Christy

“Wait… so basically Pluto isn’t a planet because Jupiter got mad?” – David
“Yep.” – Dad
“That’s actually very much like Greek mythology.” – David

“Pluto is---“ – Dad
“---A cartoon dog” – Amy

“So all you got to do is put a bubble dome over it and … “ – Dad, explaining his post-Obama plan for colonizing the Moon
“You do realize that Dad found a crater on the Moon named after our family, right?” – Christy to David
“Yeah, I know.” – David

“You don’t like Louis Armstrong?” – Amy to Christy
“I like the melodies and the lyrics he sings, but I don’t like his voice. The guy sounds like he’s being strangled.” – Christy

“Okay, we’re done now,” – David, having finished playing What a Wonderful World
“Thank goodness.” – Christy
“How about Somewhere Over the Rainbow?” – Brittainy, wickedly
“Ohhh---good idea!” – David
“You said you were done!” – Christy
“I was, but then I started again.” – David
“You said you were done!” – Christy
“We’ve sort of covered this ground.” – David

“The point of it was, did you hear him scream like a girl? That was awesome!” – Amy
“Yes, that’s the point.” – David

"Isn't it lovely that we all get to be snuffly together?" – David on the office cold that’s going around
“Yes, and make rummy sniffing noises.” – Mom, referencing Jeeves and Wooster

Feast Night (and Moonlit Fantasies)

Well, dear reader, it's been a busy weekend. On Friday I taught class as usual (starting Les Miserables now). It went off quite well, only of course we didn't get into the half of a third of a quarter of an eighth of all there is to say about the first 100 pages of that magnificent epic. Ah well. That evening I had the opportunity to relax at the home of friends and enjoy fellowship with two or three couples and their children. I got absolutely trounced in a video game playoff with their thirteen-year-old son, but it serves me right for trying to pick up where I left off six years ago---you really do lose the touch after awhile, I guess. Anyway, it was good for my pride.

The next morning was equally pleasant: we had a great Bible study led by the head of the family with whom I was staying; then breakfast and a two-mile walk and suddenly it was time to start getting ready for Feast Night. This particular Feast Night was to involve early nineteenth-century garb, music, poetry readings, pledges, hymns, songs, prayers, a diplomatic game, and dancing.

Through no fault of my own, I found myself Co-MC of the evening. Also through no fault of my own, I was made responsible for three young ladies' hair and teaching the Virginia Reel. I guess I need to stop asking questions like "So, are you all set to MC?" and "Were you going to do a dance or something during the social time?" As for the hairdressing, all I can say is I'm glad I thought to bring my curling iron and pins to do one girl's hair, because otherwise I would've been completely blindsided.

At 2:30 PM the madness began. I guess I swallowed a plateful of food sometime between 11:00 AM and 9 PM, but I don't remember precisely how or when. All I really recall, physically speaking, is that sometime around 4:30 PM my upper back started to ache intolerably from doing hair for two hours and that by 8:30 PM the same sensation occurred in my feet.

Physics aside, I pinned and curled and discussed schedules and fixed cravats and listened to practice poetry recitations and reassured girls that they really did look nice in their dresses and argued and bantered and tried to wrap my mind around the details of the evening (which I only half-understood) until it was time to go. I will say that I was very proud of my young ladies: they looked beautiful in their dresses and I didn't foul anybody's hair (thank God!) and everything was got through mostly on time. What delightful madness it is to dress up for an evening of make-believe! It reminded me of the old days, when we used to have two hours to get a cast of 30 ready for a play performance. And oh!---what fun those nights were! And oh!---how we laughed and joked and teased and bantered! There is magic and mischief and a splendid camaraderie that arise at such times, almost as if the spirit of fun itself gets loose.

To return. On this occasion, once we arrived at the small, rather charming (I thought) community center where the evening's event was to be held, it was time to turn my attention to the dance. I had half-reluctantly, half-eagerly agreed to teach the Virginia Reel if (a big "if") I could remember it, and if I could find the music and if the students could learn it, etc. I was sure that everybody would enjoy it if we could pull it off, but that "if" bothered me something dreadful. My friend and hostess, who has more faith than I, put the dance on the schedule regardless.

When we got there, however, it was time to turn "if" into "yes" or "no" in a hurry. Fortunately, though I only remembered the first half of the dance clearly and completely forgot the "reel" part of the Virginia Reel, my Co-MC remembered the other half, though he was as bad as my teenage boys about doing it in the first place and shocked my students by giving me orders. (As if I cannot be given orders simply because I am their teacher! Silly dears.) The boys tried continually to slip away and we had to haul them periodically out of the bathroom. Fortunately, as I have said, the place was small and there weren't many good hiding spots.

The girls, of course, were as shy as only young girls can be. One of them asked me, anxiously, "You do mean girls partnering girls and boys partnering boys, don't you?"

"No," I said calmly. "I mean boys and girls together."

"Oh."

The only merciful thing to do in such a situation is to assign partners, because otherwise it is horribly awkward for everybody. Somehow, being told to dance with so-and-so obviates the embarrassment---probably because it also removes the responsibility. If you didn't volunteer to dance with Girl A or Boy B, then you can't be blamed for it, can you?

The students caught on to the dance pretty quickly, though I'm sure we were slightly off-tempo every time we did it (which was either my fault or else the MP3 track wasn't arranged for dancing). Anyway, it went off surprisingly well and today I was informed by email that it has started a dance craze which is expected to culminate in contra dancing in my host family's basement sometime in the months ahead. Yikes! More on that in forthcoming posts, doubtless, though really I ought to have foreseen this. Was there ever a small community in which contra dancing did not become a craze as soon as it was introduced? We certainly did enough of it at PHC!

I daresay my teenage boys will put up a fuss. However, I suspect that they enjoy it more than they are presently willing to admit. I suppose their mothers will make them participate in any case and privately I can't help feeling that it's a good thing. Boys ought to learn to dance with poise and skill and enjoyment. Why? Well, I don't know, but they should. How's that for circular reasoning? Anyway, my brothers and father are all excellent dancers, and to me that is enough reason for any of my boy students to learn.

I have to confess that the dressing-up and dancing most interested me, probably because those were the parts of the evening that required an investment of time and effort on my part, and therefore gave me an interest in their success. The diplomatic game was... well... let's call it "tame." The students are either not as stubborn and vengeful or not as enterprising as my own class was when we played the same game several years ago. However, they did their work to the best of their ability, and I was proud of them, and proud of their tall elegance as they went about with glasses of "champagne," arranging last-minute negotiations.

The "champagne" was cider (I had some) and there was dessert (I didn't have any; I never can make myself eat at parties). The tables were beautiful, and so were the displays (I snatched a few minutes to look at them.) There were children dressed up in every imaginable variation of period or semi-period costume. There was even a child who I swear could have passed for a miniature Napoleon!

The role of MC went surprisingly well, much better than I expected. I wasn't eager to take it up, but doing so alleviated some of the strain for the evening's chief organizer, and it was a way to serve and to have something to do, so I agreed. God gave me grace to grasp each thing as it came (and usually just before it came!). I shall never be a stand-up comedian, but ten weeks of teaching have made me a reasonably competent speaker and I had a forgiving audience, so it all went off.

To me perhaps the the loveliest thing about the whole evening was the thirty seconds or so during which I was able to slip out, alone, onto a balcony overlooking the pool attached to the community center. Parties of all sorts, but especially large and noisy parties, are overexciting to me---I always need a few minutes to myself in the middle of things to recover. This time being no exception, I found great pleasure in the cold night scene of gray stone and glistering midnight-blue water. My imagination had conceived half of a fantastical landscape and a quarter of a couple of characters and the beginning of a scene in a story---then pop! I was interrupted with information about the diplomacy game, then asked whether the children might come out to the balcony too, and suddenly there was no more lonely moon-filled night of water and magic.

Of course this is the sort of thing that happens to grown-ups all the time, but on some other evening I hope I shall be able to just play the child dreamer and finish that fragment of story on the balcony overlooking the pool. It reminded me of a solitary turn I took once in a garden outside the place where our annual college ball was being held. I shall never forget the stillness and fragrance of that chilly April night, nor the exhilaration of being alone in a beautiful dress in a moonlit garden. Anything, anything might happen at such a time in such a dress and such a setting. Of course, in a girl's imagination what is really wanted is what never actually occurs: an unexpected meeting with a mysterious TDS (Tall Dark Stranger).

The conversation between lady and TDS is always vaguely understood, in the girlish mind, to consist of equal parts strangeness and sweetness. It is also supposed to leave the impression of having been all a dream. I wonder what they actually would talk about? The garden itself, probably, and doubtless one another's identities. Yes, I think I can begin to see how it would go... as follows:

Scene: Lady, alone, center stage, unmasked, in a beautiful white dress, vivid against the fragrant dark cypress trees. In the foreground, a fountain. In the background, a large lighted house of stone, from which music emenates. Around the fountain and leading to either side among ornamentally-trimmed groves, a maze of graveled paths. Enter TDS, masked and in a black cloak, at stage right from the cover of the grove.

Lady: Hearing a footstep on the gravel, rises uncertainly but silently (excepting a slight gasp) from her seat on the lip of the fountain.

TDS: Catching sight of her in the moonlight. Don't be frightened.

Lady: Oh, I'm not! That is, you merely startled me.

TDS: There's nothing to be afraid of.

Lady: I was just taking the air.

The lady looks down and away. The TDS scrutinizes her silently.

TDS: Shifting his weight, not awkwardly, but there is tenseness or impatience in the movement. Have you a particular fondness for this garden?

Lady: Oh yes! Especially at night.

TDS: Why especially at night?

Lady: Dreamily. I feel the strangeness of it, at night, both awakens and soothes my senses. I am aware of each separate drop of water and every leaf, but yet they all run together in a rushing and rustling dimness.

TDS: Ah.

Lady: Don't you agree?

TDS: A little mocking. In a way. The night certainly heightens a man's senses, no doubt as compensation for the lack of sight in this dim landscape of yours. However, the setting is seldom as tranquil as this, nor the cause for walking in the dark as tame as that of an evening stroll.

Lady: Feeling that he is condescending or even rude, but of course too courteous to show it. I imagine that under more... dangerous circumstances such as you intimate, the darkness and indistinctness might be be rather unnerving than soothing, whereas the perception of individual things may be heightened to a painful extreme.

TDS: Still more drily. You imagine correctly, as naturally a lady of your rank and good breeding would.

Lady: Determined to be courteous, and also in fact a little curious. I give you thanks for that speech... but would give it more properly if I knew whom I addressed?

TDS: Lightly, to turn aside her question. My lady, why should we not both be part of the enchanting indistinctness of this setting---you a whisp of moonlight in your white dress---I nothing but a shadow?

Lady: Now either truly frightened or truly annoyed, but still polite. In that case, moonlight glides on and so shall I, back to my friends in the house.

TDS: Relieved to have her moving back inside, which was the object of his coldness. It is a shadow's part to humbly attend the light---May I follow you to the door?

Lady: She inclines her head in assent, but is sufficiently stung by his previous comments to say, What a pity it is that humility, a beautiful virtue, should be so common to shadows and so comparatively rare in men. Wouldn't you agree?

TDS: I do, and yet if all men were judged with charity, and circumstances taken into account, perhaps their pride would not appear so great to those observing them. Will you take my arm?

Lady: She does so, silently, pondering his words.

The two proceed back up the pathway to the house, mute but studying each other, their shadows streaming like long black fingers behind them, pointing to the fountain. The TDS hands the Lady to the door and stops just outside.

Lady: Aren't you coming in?

TDS: Visibly agitated now. No.

Lady: Again, good breeding prevents her from prying. Good evening, then.

TDS: Good evening. As she turns to go, he reaches inside and catches her hand, speaking rapidly at the same time in a low voice, and with a sudden earnestness of appeal. Listen, moonlight lady! If you have a forgiving spirit as well as a gracious manner, say a prayer tonight for your attendant shadow despite his lack of humility---will you?

Lady: Caught by his tone and responding intuitively to this strange plea for intercession. Yes, that I will!

TDS: Thank you. Unworthy of it though he is, you may judge him better hereafter. And one word more---whatever happens, don't leave the house again. Promise!

Lady: But what---

TDS: Hush! My time is out in bringing you back. Promise!

Lady: I promise.

TDS: And the other ladies, try to keep them in.

Lady: Yes, yes!

TDS: He bows. For this, I thank you---most truly. Good night.

He vanishes into the dimness of the garden, truly like a shadow for silence and quickness. She reenters the ballroom, a little dazed at what has passed. Five minutes pass slowly, and then there is a sudden commotion in the garden: a volley of shots and a cry of pain. The scene fades to black on the lady, standing at the door with her face to the audience and straining to see better into the indistinct garden.

Anyway, it could go like that. But that is precisely what never happens, and so the dreamer is able to dream it alone in a nighttime garden or on a nighttime balcony---until the party reestablishes its existence and prominence. Which is of course what happened to me, and there is nothing left to tell but that when we were finished with our Feast Night the room was disassembled with remarkable efficiency and we collected everything and went home and took pictures and then I drove back down to my house, turning over in my mind the events of the day and tidying them into various files marked A) pleasant memory, B) for further review, C) add this to that list of traits for such-and-such a student or thus-and-such a parent, D) to be studied in greater detail, E) etc.

Most of all, though, I just enjoyed it.

The Freethinker

From a sermon on the Bible, delivered by C.H. Spurgeon on March 18th, 1855. I was newly saved when I first read this sermon, and when I had finished it I trembled to touch my Bible, because for the first time in my life I was in awe of it. This is one of the passages which then struck me most.

There may be some one here to-night who has come without faith, a man of reason, a freethinker. With him I have no argument at all. I profess not to stand here as a controversialist, but as a preacher of things that I know and feel. But I too, have been like him. There was an evil hour when I once shipped the anchor of my faith; I cut the cable of my belief; I no longer moored myself hard by the coasts of Revelation; I allowed my vessel to drift before the wind; I said to reason, "Be thou my captain;" I said to my own brain, "Be thou my rudder;" and I started on my mad voyage. Thank God, it is all over now; but I will tell you its brief history. It was one hurried sailing over the tempestuous ocean of free thought. I went on, and as I went, the skies began to darken; but to make up for that deficiency, the waters were brilliant with coruscations of brilliancy. I saw sparks flying upward that pleased me, and I thought, "If this be free thought, it is a happy thing." My thoughts seemed gems, and I scattered stars with both my hands; but anon, instead of these coruscations of glory, I saw grim fiends, fierce and horrible, start up from the waters, and as I dashed on, they gnashed their teeth, and grinned upon me; they seized the prow of my ship and dragged me on, while , in part, gloried at the rapidity of my motion, but yet shuddered at the terrific rate with which I passed the old landmarks of my faith. As I hurried forward, with an awful speed, I began to doubt my very existence; I doubted if there were a world, I doubted if there was such a thing as myself. I went to the very verge of the dreary realms of unbelief. I went to the very bottom of the sea of Infidelity. I doubted everything. But here the devil foiled himself: for the very extravagance of the doubt, proved its absurdity. Just when I saw the bottom of that sea, there came a voice which said, "And can this doubt be true?" At this very thought I awoke. I started from that deathdream, which, God knows might have damned my soul, and ruined this, my body, if I had not awoke. When I arose, faith took the helm; from that moment I doubted not. Faith steered me back; faith cried, "Away, away!" I cast my anchor on Calvary; I lifted my eye to God; and here I am, "alive, and out of hell." Therefore, I speak what I do know. I have sailed that perilous voyage; I have come safe to land. Ask me again to be an infidel! No; I have tried it; it was sweet at first, but bitter afterwards. Now, lashed to God's gospel more firmly than ever, standing as on a rock of adamant, I defy the arguments of hell to move me; for "I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him."