The Office: Season 7 --- "I'd like to thank..."

“I'd like to thank all the people who've helped me win this great award ...” – Ray, on getting into the quote book

“I’m just really overwhelmed right now. I feel like this study [of Les Miserables] is never going to be finished.” – Christy
“Aw. Here, take this.” – David
“What is it?” – Christy
“It’s funny.” – David
“Oh.” – Christy
“I haven’t even finished it yet. Greater love hath no boy than this, to let you read his comic book before he does.” – David
::several seconds pass::
“Here. You’ll like it.” – Christy to David
“But did it make you feel better?” – David
“Yes. It did. It’s all good now.” – Christy
“Oh good. See? Trust Davy.” – David
The comic book? Frank and Frank. Caterpillars, the passage of time, and butterflies. ‘Nuff said.

“When I was a kid, Pluto was a planet!” – Dad
“Pluto still is a planet, Dad. Anybody who says differently is selling something.” – Christy, trying to soothe him
“Mostly they are selling textbooks.” – Ben

“What am I doing?” – Christy to herself
“That’s a very good question.” – Sam
“You know what, you’re a very good question.” – Christy, with mild sarcasm
“I’ve noticed that.” – Sam, smugly

“Mrnow. Bdee! Bwow.” – David, commenting to Christy on his own pictures
“Do you have a problem, Dave?” – Dad
“No. I’m just talking with Christy. We’ve progressed beyond the need for words.” – David
“But not beyond the need for sounds and eyebrows.” – Christy

“You know, gloomy ideas. Isn’t there a word for that?” – Dad to Brittainy
“Philosophy.” – David

The David and Sam Show:
“David!” – Sam, invoking on the office fixit deity
“Yes, Sam.” – David
“My computer!” – Sam
“Speak sternly to it.” – David
“It’s being estupido!” – Sam
“A rod for the back of fools, Sam. Kick it.” – David
“If only I could.” – Sam
“I’ll come help you… as soon as I finish the very important job of moving this red line over two pixels.” – David

“Aaargh! You see, if it were enough to be an artistic analyst, I could do that. But it’s not enough. You have to be an amateur theologian, philosopher, historian, writer, audience member, student of human nature, and who-knows-what-else, in order to deal with literature! I can’t do this!” – Christy
“And yet, you love it.” – David
“Well, yes. That is the problem.” – Christy

“A human of student nature?” – David
“Yes! Actually, that would be a great thing for a teacher to say to a student: ‘I am a student of human nature, and you are a human of student nature. We can work with this.’” – Christy
“Yeah, that’s a good one. File that away for future classroom use.” – David

“What did you send me, Christy?” – Mom, who has just received a link via IM
“A brief interlude of hedonistic delight.” – Christy
“No, really. What is it?” – Mom
“Baby.” – Christy
“Oh!” – Mom

“My goal for this back-of-the-book picture is to get Rebecca [marriage] proposals by mail.” – David on the author picture he’s working on
::general chuckling::
“And I think that that’s a good goal!” – David

“This computer is going as slow as a dog that ate a slug that crawled over salt after a particularly depressing Monday.” – David

Enough Already!

Enough of night and dark and gloom and nightmares! Away with you, ugly things! What is the point of having been given everlasting joy if you don't walk in it?

Here, then, bring the golden brimming cups of life! I raise mine to lovely fountains and fierce pillow-fights, to dancing and the delight of song, to hours by the fire and storytellers' voices. I toast my friends Shari and Debra and their children. Ellie, companion of only a few hours but so much Pride and Prejudice, this one is for you! To the Christian life!

And, of course, to Nora... queen of all our hearts. <:0)

Lighten our Darkness

I never thought of it until this moment, but most people write black letters on white paper. I, on the other hand, post white letters on a black page---this blog.

Why did I choose a black background template? There were so many others. Most people who know me a little might have expected me to choose blue. Those who know me very well indeed would not have been surprised if I had chosen green. But not even I, in my secretest soul, could have told you why I chose black. Or perhaps I could, and perhaps it would be a highly prosaic reason. "It looked classy," I might say. "Everything else seemed too ordinary."

Ordinary. Extraordinary. It makes me think of pastels versus jewel tones. It also makes me think of Victor Hugo, whose style of writing is so filled with jewel tones and dark backgrounds: bursts of vividness and emotion against the grotesque shadow. He was a master of the art of contrast. He understood black and white.

But did he understand dark and light? When I read of his last words, my heart shuddered. They were, "Je vois une lumiere noire”—“I see a dark light.” I shuddered at them because Christians do not see dark lights when they die. They see dawning lights. Or they see through darkness to light. But they do not see a dark light---dark light is what one associates with the ruddy glow of Hell. Thus, when I read those words, my soul feared for Hugo's soul.

But these last few weeks, I have repeatedly felt Hugo's last words echoed in myself. Lately, the old wildness and aching have come upon me again, and where I turn from darkness I find myself in darkness still. I feel lost, like a little one caught out far from home in a storm. It is always this way with me, since I was really a child. It is my old enemy, the one that sent me almost out of my mind with terror of night, of the black skies and cold stars, of death, of not-being-as-I-am.

It sends me back to the time when I was still a child, one rather like both Hugo's Cosette and his Eponine: bitter, paralyzed, stunted, unable to love, a little girl who seemed born an old woman. Only it was not society that did it to me---it was I, my sin, my self. I believed that love could not be for such as I, such crawling sin as I, and I hated God for being just, because I knew what that meant for me: death.

Oh, how death frightened me! Picture a little girl---eight, ten, thirteen years old, all those years---who would lie still thinking and imagining the not-being of death, and the loneliness of it, and the darkness of it, until she woke screaming from a nightmare she had had without even closing her eyes. To this day, my soul surges out in compassion to all those who hate God and fear death with a terrible heart-cracking fear, because I remember. And sometimes, as during these last weeks, I do not merely remember---I regress.

Oh, that I could rip out those years and bury them! That I could have done with them forever! You, reader---do you know what it is to hate God, to blaspheme Him in your heart, to abhor Scripture, to despise wisdom? Do you know what it is to believe, truly believe for all of ten hellish years, that no one could ever love you, because you are too foul? Did you ever become a master of isolation, a person who knew instinctively how to construct a wall between yourself and every person near you---and did? Have you ever taught yourself how to coldly analyze other human beings down to the last detail, so that you may render them incapable of touching your heart? Have you ever lived without a single particle of trust for any being in the universe, believing them all to be bent on causing you pain? Were you ever such a child? Were you ever so wretchedly self-absorbed, so miserably self-deceived? Did you ever tell yourself the lie that your family hated you? Did you ever imagine and pretend yourself into a waking, walking, living nightmare?

And they want vivid imaginations! Reader, when you have lived ten years caught between my imagination and my sin nature, then you will know what a curse an imagination can be. The sanctified imagination, dear reader, is the only kind worth having. The other will drive you insane.

Was I ought of my mind, truly? I suppose not, but sometimes I thought so. Then... ah, then. He. It was a split-shattering bolt of lightning, when God revealed Himself to me one otherwise-unremarkable evening in late summer. He seared and healed me all at once. He undid and remade me with a few words, which were the most impossible words of all for me to hear. People told me all my life, "God loves you." I did not believe them. Then he ripped open the ceiling of my mind, shocked me with a vision of light and a voice---I believe it was His---that said "I love you." And suddenly, I believed Him.

I still do, and more each day. I thought darkness was unbearable, until I learned that light is still harder to bear---to be shattered by joy is more completely shattering than to be shattered by pain. I am learning to endure more and more of light. Oh happy, happy pain!

But sin has consequences, and they are hard to bear. Mine is the recurring nightmare, which now no longer hangs an inky curtain before my waking eyes---thank God!---but does still come to jab at me with black daggers.

A dream that my parents are dead. A sudden waking in the night, afraid that the house is on fire. A shock because of a slight change in sound, light, or vibration. An acute conviction that I have just been struck. Or, worse of all, a dull leaden certainty that the people whom I love do not, cannot love me. A desire to run away from home. A longing for the silence of absolute solitude, where one might be free from the pain of hearing "you don't matter to me," but at the same time a terror of loneliness.

Such feelings always come when I am weakest: weary from long hours of work, or more often from long hours compounded over the course of weeks, as these last weeks have been. Sometimes I lean my eyes against my hand and sit absolutely still, waiting either for strength to go on or for the clamor in my mind and heart to die down a little so that I can go on. My prayers at such times are the simplest of pleas, a silent begging: "Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God!"

No, this is not the first time. That is partly what gives me hope; that I have been brought through this before. I remember a night last winter, a wild, freezing night near Christmas, when my mind and heart were like knives through me, and then I ran and ran through my forest in the bitter cold, longing to feel exhausted by something powerful that was outside myself. I could not bear the tempest of my own emotions. If Cosette in Hugo's story was terrified by the dark forest at night, I was the opposite. I longed for it, for anything that would interfere with my interior struggle and draw my senses out of myself. And I found it, ironically enough, in the black coldness of the night.

For, dear reader, in looking at real sky and real stars, and in feeling a real wind knife through me, and feeling my limbs trembling from real exhaustion, I was forced to think of God. I was too tired to think any more inwardly.

For in such cases it is the inward thoughts that are to be feared. If by grace one can force the thoughts and feelings outwards, towards God, towards truth, towards love for other people, towards anything of that sort, then there is immediate relief, followed by healing. But let the thoughts turn inward, listen to yourself instead of talking to yourself, follow your heart---most fatal choice!---and immediately there is only a black spiral downward, towards a dark light that seems to give off no actual light, but rather suffocation.

Therefore I will look up and away. I refuse the nightmare. If, when I turn from darkness, I find only darkness, I will stand still and quiet, and begin to pray for light. Gentle reader, make no mistake about this: whoever asks, receives. Once God has revealed Himself to you, there is always light available. Always. Only, one must ask.

Petitio, Domine. Petitio.

The Office: Season 7 --- "I'm Naming My Left Foot 'Sprezzatura'"

“I think I just convinced Sam to change his screen name to sprezzatura.” – Christy to Peter
“I just convinced myself to name my car sprezzatura” – Peter
“Wow. It’s like an epidemic or something.” – Christy
“Or maybe it’s just a good word” – Peter

"I'm naming my left foot 'sprezzatura'" – David, before he knew what the word meant

“Why do you have to be so unspeakably cute?” – Christy to David
“It gets me out of a lot of things.” – David

“Would you just put a sock in it?” – Christy to David
“So give me a sock.” – David
“I don’t have one.” – Christy
“You see? I’m very compliant; I’m just ill-equipped.” – David

“You guys are hysterical!” – Marjorie, appreciating the office humor
“We will be very soon.” – David, taking the comment literally

“The boys need to just suck it up. Besides, there are few things that give you as much leverage with a girl as having read it.” – Sam on Pride and Prejudice

“Australia: The Land has been deleted.” – Ray, removing an out-of-print book from the bookshelf
“Thanks so much!” – Dana
“Well, not the continent. Just the book.” – Ray
“Oh, good! I was afraid you misunderstood.” – Dana

“I’m actually psychic. I know things without having to know them.” – David

“I’m all for women’s rights. Women should have rights.” – Peter

“Infatuation and romantic love? I have no opinion on them, except that they’re a good thing.” – Sam

“You missed a very interesting discussion of infatuation and romantic love in Les Miserables, and also whether or not we should include movies, graphic novels, and modern song lyrics in Year 4 literature.” – Christy to David
“Well, you missed us trying to decide whether to codename our shopping guides ‘Virgil’ and ‘Beatrice’ on the new Bookshelf website, and make them animated characters” – David
"Virgil?" - Christy
"Yeah, except the problem is that he leads Dante through Hell..."
“Um… well, but Virgil is the one who leads Dante through Hell…” – Christy
“Right. So he’s the browser guide, and Beatrice is the ‘our recommendations’ guide. She leads people to Heaven.” – David

“And David is making up a tune to Poe’s ‘The Raven’….” – Christy
“I’m not making it up! It’s this tune!” – David, hitting a song on his playlist

The Office: Season 7 -- "Those Deep-Cleansing Sneezes"

"I'm not a big sanity person." – Mom, intending to say “I’m not a big sanitary person,” meaning she’s not that big on sanitation.

"You're operating under the erroneous assumption that boys have brains. What they actually have is a stomach, an ego, raw instinct, and a soul. And muscle. Lots of muscle. Beyond that, the girls have the brains. And the looks." –David

“What is it with girls and the horse phase?” – Sam
“It’s a prelude to the boy phase… and, I guess, the child phase.” – Christy
“I have a friend at school who said that 'Girls like horses because they're big, strong, powerful, and they have the minds of five-year-olds. Then they get older, and they realize, "Hey, these things come in guys!'"
"Yup, that." - Christy

“Well, that’s the great thing about them all being dead and me being single. I’m free to have my passions.” – Christy on Dante, Donne, and Frost

“This is in the middle of his life, and normally he'd be doing the bad, mischievous kind of stuff that poets do—but here, all he does is write and publish.” – Peter on Robert Browning

“My next job after this is going to be motherhood, which is kinda freaking me out.” – Amy

“I’ll bet you didn’t know that I have hamsters running around inside me.” – David
“I had my suspicions.” – Christy

“Why are you still alive?” – Sam to a fly
“Go get him, mighty hunter.” – David to Sam

“You see my problem here.” – Sam
“Yes. However, it’s your problem, and that’s the main thing.” – Christy, happy that it isn’t her problem

“I know I’m having a bad attitude, but I just don’t want to do this right now!” – Amy
“Here, let me help you,” – Christy, reaching for the Happy Little Working Song from Enchanted
“You see, things could be so much worse. You could be a Disney princess, singing with vermin.” – David
::David gets hold of the computer and plays Bad Day by Alvin and the Chipmunks::
“Okay, I’m good! Really! You can stop now!” – Amy
“Are you cured yet, Amy?” – Christy
“I am cured five hundred fold! Now make it stop!” – Amy
And the music plays on….
“You know, if Brittainy were here, that music would have been off by now!” – Amy
“Well, she’s not here!” – David
And the song concludes…
“Amy, we’ll comfort you any time you want.” – David
“I don’t ever want to be comforted again!” – Amy
And there was much laughter all round…

“Her last name is bohemian, not Spanish.” – Christy to Amy, about Brittainy
“She is the bohemian rhapsody” – David, about Brittainy

“Ah, you gotta love those deep-cleansing sneezes” – Sam

The Office: Season 7 --- "So Cease Blathering"

“God is outside of time and I like to live that way. I’ve prayed for the Civil War before.” – David
“…. So that it would turn out differently?” – Christy
“No, so that it would turn out the same way. It was a very faith-filled prayer.” – David

“It’s like beating off a herd of hungry beavers with a stick. They just keep eating the stick!” – David on trying to keep his coworkers from stealing music devices

“Yeah, no wonder. I’d have a French revolution too if I were French and living in that time.” ­ ‑ Peter

“You both said funny things at the same moment, so I think they kinda cancelled each other out.” – David
“Actually, what I said wasn’t that funny” – Sam
“Well then, your blathering cancelled out Ben’s witty comment. So cease blathering.” – David

“So what did you say to him? ‘Good job’?” – Christy
“I wasn’t going to congratulate him for that. I was peeved. ‘Badly done, Emma.’” – David on Sam’s blathering.
“I kinda meant, did you say ‘Good job’ in a sarcastic way.” – Christy
“No, I did not congratulate him even in a facetious manner, because I felt that it was a reprehensible act.” – David

“Sam, you have crass American consumerist tastes, and I’m ashamed to know you.” – David

“My parents are actually lizardologists.” – Marjorie

"I will now go find a wet noodle and commence my penance." - Peter