seeking Solomon...

The Other Part

2012-02-05T19:48:00.003-05:00

I am sitting on my bed eating warm blueberries with a spoon. This bowl of fragrant indigo filling is the only edible part of the pie I baked this afternoon. I’m not a novice baker by anyone’s definition, but I tried a new recipe today and something went awry with the crust. Seriously awry. Copious-amounts-of-butter-leaking-into-the-pan-to-create-something-that-is-mysteriously-both-mushy-and-hard awry.

I don’t especially enjoy failure in general, but there’s something particularly demoralizing about failing at pie. Pie is one of the things I’m good at.

*****

Exactly one year ago today, I was hosting a Super Bowl party. Lauren and David had taken Nate to Disney World for a week, so (with their blessing, obviously) I had invited friends over to watch the game. Sally came early to help me get ready, and we sang along with Sugarland while we tidied up a bit and started making food.

Sal concocted the guacamole (which got rave reviews all night long) while I mixed Ro-Tel with four pounds of cheese. Do you have any idea how much queso you get when you fill a crock-pot with four pounds of cheese? A LOT, is how much. I made dozens of baby pigs in blankets and wrapped bacon around countless chunks of pineapple and water chestnuts.

People started arriving during pregame, their faces alight and their hands bearing drinks and snacks and sometimes babies (just to play with, not to keep). We had to keep rearranging things on the island so it would hold all the food.

By the time the game kicked off, the great room was buzzing with voices. A few of the faces were relatively unfamiliar: some recent graduates from my fellowship program who were new to DC; a couple of friends-of-friends. At one point, a guy I had never seen before just walked through the front door. He knew my name, so I figured he wasn’t a serial killer, but his identity was a complete mystery to me. It took me a couple minutes of really awkward inquisitive small talk before I figured out that he was someone’s roommate.

But most of the people in that room were friends, real friends, people whose stories I knew, who lived their lives alongside of mine. We watched the game, and we ate, and most of all we talked. We talked about everything—football, and faith, and our families, and schools and dreams and books and ideas and beer, even. The only thing we didn’t talk about was Strauss.

The Steelers lost that night, which bothered me at the time (I was going through this strange phase where I really, really cared about football). In retrospect, though, the important thing about that night was not the game; it was the community watching the game. A community that I was a part of. A place where I belonged.

*****

One of the guys from school is hosting a party tonight, and I’ll head over there in a little while. It will be fun, I’m sure. The game should be enjoyable to watch, and the people in my department are mostly really friendly. We will make conversation (probably at least a little bit about Strauss) and eat queso and drink beer, and on the surface it will seem pretty much exactly the same as last year.

Here’s the thing: it’s not the same. In DC, I was rooted in this stable group of people who knew me, who saw my life and understood it and were there to strengthen me when I had difficult decisions to make. Difficult decisions like moving across the country to pursue an education that I know is right for me, that I know will turn out to be good in the long run. And every single one of those people supported my decision. A few of them may have joked about locking me up so I couldn’t leave, but they knew just as well as I did that it was right, and they stood by me. I probably couldn’t have done it without their encouragement.

But now I’m here, and that community is not around me anymore. Don’t get me wrong: folks here are nice. They really are. And I’m honestly trying to develop meaningful friendships, to get to know people and let them get to know me, but it has never been this difficult before. It’s like pie: usually, it’s easy and I’m good at it. These days, not so much.

So this is the flip side. I have things here that I didn’t have in Washington—really meaningful and challenging work is at the top of that list—and small-town Texas is mercifully free of some of the stresses of life inside the Beltway. But I don’t belong here yet, and that’s really hard for me. I need to belong.

This Part

2012-01-13T21:37:00.003-05:00

Earlier this evening, I broke the coffeepot. And then I immediately went out and bought another one. Immediately as in it was the first thing I did after I swept up the broken glass. Grad students, we take our coffee pretty seriously.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon reading in a coffee shop north of campus, so I went to Mass at a nearby parish instead of the student center. The church is beautiful, and the priest gave a wonderful homily about the gospel and the power of Confession, except…he kept talking referring to the moment at which Jesus healed the leopard. Close, Father, very very close. But not exactly the same.

I made myself breakfast for dinner, and the (utterly delicious) aromas must have made their way down the hall to Debbie’s bedroom. Out she comes, all five feet of her, a little blonde fireball: Is somebody cooking BACON?!?

Me, I answer, but stay away. I will protect this bacon with my life!

I’m going to take it!, she announces mischievously. (She probably deserves a piece, given how much I’ve teased her today.)

I’ll poke you with my fork!, I threaten (I would never actually do this). It’s MINE!

Don’t go throwing your property rights in my face, says the roommate, to which the obvious response is I added my labor to it! I own it now!

That’s my life, you guys: I make John Locke jokes about bacon. (Or bacon jokes about John Locke. I’m not quite sure which way that cuts.) I drink too much coffee and go running by the river and I go to class and meet with professors and I read, a lot.

This is the part of me that’s here: in school, loving school. I was telling Arwen yesterday that I just realized I only have five more semesters of coursework left, and after that I won’t get to take classes anymore. I love taking classes! (Her perfectly appropriate response: “Yeah, you’re a total weirdo.” Believe me, babe: I know.)

There are other parts of me, parts that struggle very hard with being so far from my family, that wonder what I’m doing and whether I’ll be happy, in the end. But there’s a part of me—my whole head, and even a bit of my heart—that’s happy now. And for now, I think that has to be enough.

Sometimes I Forget

2012-01-11T12:51:00.003-05:00

I’m sitting in the corner of the couch, my feet propped on the coffee table, the ever-present glass of water set down next to me, my right hand loosely grasping a pen. The book in my lap is a beloved friend—discovered in a political thought survey course my freshman year of college, grown familiar in a sophomore-year humanities seminar, and now dusted off for a graduate class in classical political thought. I am reading much less quickly than usual; getting reacquainted with a book like this is a very slow process.

I remember that seminar room, in the modular building that housed faculty offices. Every Tuesday night for a whole year, sitting around the long table, just ten or twelve of us and the professor. Who, come to think of it, never sat for long—he was always jumping up when he got excited about something, and he got excited a lot.

He would walk into the room at the beginning of class without a word, sometimes (but not that frequently) with a single page of notes in his hand, and start writing a long and usually incomprehensible series of words and phrases on the whiteboard. When he reached the end of his list, he would toss the notes onto the table—he never so much as glanced at them again—put down his marker, turn around, and say, as a grin spread across his bearded face, Let’s rock and roll!! I’m pretty sure that’s when I knew I wanted to keep reading and writing and thinking for the rest of my life.

Fire or ten pages in, I stop to think, looking up from my lap and stretching my arms out in front of me. The sun streams in through the big front windows, falling on the hardwood floor and the red patterned carpet and the rocking chairs, dust particles sifting through the bands of light. Across the street, oak trees cast tall shadows on the still-green grass and the bench and the stone fence and I see blue sky through brown branches and I am stilled, for a moment, wordless.

Beauty.

I want to capture it somehow but deep down I know it will escape—it will resist the constraints of a camera lens—because it is something more than sight. So instead I simply sit, soaking in the power of a graceful creation that tosses beauty around with reckless abandon, as if there were an infinite supply of it.

Oh.

There is.

Too Good Not To Share

2012-01-09T10:00:00.000-05:00

I hate standing in the bathroom while I brush my teeth. It feels like such a waste of time. Yesterday evening, brushing absentmindedly, I wandered out into the living room to set the alarm for the night, at which point the following conversation ensued.

Debbie: Hey, I have a question. What is that…it looks like a container of sugar? on the bookshelf?

Me, baffled, with a mouth full of mint, staring at our big bookshelf: Whuhh?

Debbie: No, the little bookshelf!

Me: Oh, iss a Zen shand gaahden! (imported from my desk in DC, years ago, together with a Rolls Royce and a daughter named Sabrina…)

Debbie: What?!

Me: Iss naht sugar! Iss shand! Oo push it ahround wish a fohk and it caahms you daahwn!

Debbie: …You push it around with a fork and it calms you down? Why not just drink a glass of wine or something?

Me: Try ihht!

At which point I escaped to the bathroom to rinse out my (now sparklingly clean) mouth. Upon my return, I found my diminutive roommate kneeling in front of the coffee table, pushing sand and pebbles round with the back of a wooden rake.

Me: What do you think of it?

Debbie: I guess I sort of see the point. But I think it would be better if it were made out of whipped cream.

Just Thinking

2012-01-08T22:38:00.001-05:00

I’m thinking about…not blogging. Not that I blog that much now, of course, but I mean not doing it as in shutting this place down, turning out the lights and closing the door and wandering away through the dark city streets, the bell in my hand ringing softly as I walk. Requiem for a writing project, you know?

I can’t really explain it. I think the thing is that I can’t find the lines anymore. I believe that honesty and vulnerability are good things. I think a lot of human lives are lived less fully than they could be because people are too scared to say what they really mean, to show what they’re really feeling. But I’m not sure whether the barefaced, public expression of deeply personal experiences is good for me.

Does that make sense? I know I want to write—in some ways I have to write—but I don’t know that the things I most need to be writing right now are things it’s right for random, faceless people on the internet to read. (I’m sure the people I know and love in real life will understand what I mean by that.) So often, I start to write something and stop, halfway through, because I’ve learned what I needed to learn from it and it’s not really anybody else’s business. And I don’t have the desire or the time to write other things just to fill up this space.

I’m not really sure why I’m even posting this now—and for heaven’s sake please don’t interpret this as a cry for validation; don’t take this personally, but I’m apt to do whatever I decide to do regardless of your opinion. I’m stubborn like that. (Unless, of course, any delightful anonymous commenters want to emerge from the woodwork to suggest that I stuff my blog in a hole and go live a REAL life, in which case I will begin a tradition of really annoying daily posts written entirely in couplets and dotted with erroneous capitalization. I’m sure my sister would be happy to help.) Right now, I’m just thinking.

Not Less Than Everything

2011-12-31T12:52:00.000-05:00

*****

Through the unknown, remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half heard, in the stillness

Between the two waves of the sea.

T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding V

*****

I’m sitting on the floor between the filing cabinet and the printer, legs crossed, fingers wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee. My baby sister sleeps on the top layer of the bunk beds that transform my dad’s home office into a bedroom when, like today, the house is full of children and grandchildren. From my makeshift retreat I hear a soft three-year-old voice at the door: Aunt Miriel! Aunt Miriel!

Matthew and Daniel are draped in their superhero capes and searching for adventure. I keep still. They sneak in, eyes full of mischief, and I extort a few sweet kiddo kisses before a watchful grandma discovers them and gently shoos them out again. I exhale and smile. There is not a prouder aunt in the world, but today—when the house will be full of family and friends and laughter—I need a few minutes of quiet.

*****

I read the Four Quartets for the first time in Austria, in the autumn of my junior year of college, curled up with a cup of tea in a window seat overlooking a 700-year-old courtyard. I have read them a hundred times since, poring over the timeless words with the feeling that I will never fully comprehend them. I can’t help loving Little Gidding best but there is a line in The Dry Salvages that I remember every time I think seriously about my life. “We had the experience but missed the meaning.”

We had the experience…but missed the meaning.

*****

Last night after dinner I was pulling on sneakers and locating keys, getting ready for Friday night with my best friend, who is expecting a baby boy in April. My brother-in-law, one of the two kiddingest brothers-in-law in the entire world (the other one is married to my other older sister) said: Where are you going? Clubbing?* To which Arwen promptly replied: Of course. The pregnant lady and the world’s oldest 24-year-old are going clubbing.

I have been thinking about that.

*We actually sat on the couch talking and watching Mamma Mia, and were reconfirmed in our conviction that Mamma Mia is the worst film in the entire world.

*****

I hardly ever make the kind of resolutions that new years are notorious for provoking. There is hardly any time of year when I am not wondering whether I am using my time the way I should be. We only each get one life, you know, and some people’s lives aren’t even twenty-four years long. I’m not trying to be morbid; I don’t expect to die anytime soon. I might live to be a hundred! But one wasted day out of thirty-six thousand is still wasted.

Wisdom seems to caution against taking life, and especially oneself, too seriously, and I try to account for this. I goof around with my housemates and watch movies and even—gasp!—go out, sometimes. (As Christine likes to quote from Sirach, what is life without wine?) I occasionally feel like I ought to be spending that time more valuably—but deep down in the middle of myself I know that recreation is not a waste of time.

The real way to waste time is to worry about things.

*****

"If you knew that all was well, what would you, today, do or stop doing?

When you have found the answer, do it or stop doing it.”

from Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

*****

That’s it. In the warm flickering bustle of family life at holidays and the slow quiet grind of hard study and the terrible, beautiful uncertainty of the future—that’s it. If I change at all in 2012, I hope I get a little bit closer to this.

*****

Quick now, here, now, always--

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of things shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding V

Calling Birds, and Whatnot

2011-12-28T18:32:00.000-05:00

When my siblings and I were all still living at home, we spent every other Christmas with my mom’s parents in Pennsylvania. They were old, as grandparents went, but visits to their house were all kinds of exciting. In addition to stocking apple juice and sweetened breakfast cereal, Grandma and Granddaddy possessed that mysterious and elusive electronic device know as a television.* They also owned three movies: Puff the Magic Dragon, Bambi, and Baryshnikov’s Nutcracker.

We spent many hours sitting on the hardwood floor in their little house, in the second-story living room that looked out over the sloping back lawn and the stand of bamboo and Elmer’s fields beyond that (Elmer, a neighboring farmer, significant in my young mind primarily because he supplied the household with delicious rope sausage that we ate with hash browns and sweet baked apples), watching breathlessly as the (somewhat pompous, we decided) Baryshnikov and the ethereal Gelsey Kirkland brought Tchaikovsky’s timeless music to life.

My five-year-old niece likes to watch it now—she calls it “Clara and the Prince!”—and I love to think of her seeing the same beautiful ballet that we loved growing up, the whirling snowflakes and the crazy acrobatic clowns and the fan-holding, ahem, “Chinese” dancers and the achingly beautiful grand pas de deux. I hope she always loves it.

*****

Christmas is different these days. My grandparents passed away while I was still in high school, and my siblings started getting married and joining the military and having babies and things like that (not all at once, of course), and over the years our beloved family traditions have had to—not change, exactly, but sort of adapt. This year, for the first time, we were not all together on Christmas morning. Brandon is on duty in Alaska and it was (to borrow a phrase from my dad) high time for my married sisters to start developing Christmas traditions with their own families, now that they have a collective SEVEN CHILDREN. The rest of us planned to spend Christmas Eve and morning at my parents’ house, and have family Christmas later on.

I understood the practicality behind all this, of course, but I wasn’t particularly excited about it. Turns out I’m a goofball, because Christmas 2011 has been really awesome so far. For one thing, we got to go to midnight Mass, which is not really possible with kindergarteners or preschoolers or 8-month-old twins. But mostly I am loving the way that spreading out the celebration reinforces the idea that Christmas is a season. Theoretically, of course, I’ve always been aware of the fact that liturgically Christmas doesn’t end on the 25^th, but it’s hard to remember that when most people have taken down their trees and the stores are hawking Valentine’s Day merchandise like heart-shaped boxes of candy are going out of style (which, in my considered opinion, THEY SHOULD).

This year, we’re four days in and it still feels like Christmas. I took Camilla to the library today and we read Tomie de Paola’s An Early American Christmas (which she loved, natch), and in the car she was telling me all about her third! Christmas!! morning!!!, which they’re celebrating with her paternal grandparents tomorrow. She might have been a little bit excited. (There was bouncing.) And I keep instinctively saying “Merry Christmas!” to baristas and checkout clerks, which I’m sure they find really confusing. But! It’s still Christmas! So I am technically not wrong!

I like it, is what I’m saying. So be merry! Christmas doesn’t end for DAYS!

*Televisions weren’t new and rare during my childhood. OBVIOUSLY. We just didn’t have one at home, the better to read one million books and grow up brilliant and elitist.

Sisters

2011-12-23T20:28:00.001-05:00

*****

Me: If you need me to take you out and buy you beer, I will be more than happy to do it!

Tirienne, who is salicylate-sensitive (and 21): I can’t have beer.

Me: Can you have wine?

Tirienne: I can only have gin, whisky, and vodka.

Me: Oh, and only straight up, right? Because you can’t have fruit juice?

Tirienne: I can have lime juice. And I’ve learned that lime juice and vodka is actually quite delicious.

*****

I Kind Of Wish She Had Blamed It On Pants

2011-12-01T16:04:00.003-05:00

I have a lot—a lot—of work to do in the next two weeks. My first graduate school exam is exactly one week and two hours from RIGHT NOW. I have absolutely no business expending precious time and even more precious mental energy writing social commentary.

But when I ran across this piece at NRO (thanks, Sally!), I couldn’t help myself. Suzanne Venker’s assessment of what’s wrong with marriage (hint: it starts with “w” and ends with “omen”) bugged me almost as much as the Great Trouser Debate Of Twenty-Ten. The post practically wrote itself.

If you are a woman (or a man), or if you like marriage (or if you want to see it destroyed, I guess), or if you’re sick and tired of op-eds explaining why everything is someone else’s fault, you probably want to click through and read my latest piece at Humane Pursuits. Skirts don’t really factor into the conversation, but I can promise you a heartless joke about subject-verb disagreement and at least one wry comment about pie.

We now return to our regularly scheduled finals-induced panic.

Sincerely,

PANTS

As Lights

2011-11-29T21:30:00.004-05:00

I sleep in just a little bit this morning, until after seven, and wake when the sun is gently pushing its way around my blinds. I curl up on the couch next to the heater, sipping orange juice as I pray the familiar words of morning prayer and read through Philippians 2: “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure…” For God is at work in you.

One of the many advantages of this life is its flexibility, and I seize the freedom of an unscheduled morning to go for a run by the river. The day is bright and clear and crisp, and I fall into a comfortable rhythm, breathing fresh air in way down deep. When I’m done and sit stretching on the wide path, I see sparkles of sunlight glinting on the pavement’s tiny stones.

I drive to school for an eleven o’clock meeting and face the unexpected consequences of my later-than-usual arrival: not a single empty space in the garage where I always park. I have to leave my car on the opposite side of campus from my department and now I’m late and I hate being late—but I call the professor who’s waiting for me and he says slow down, don’t worry, no need to rush. So I take a deep breath and decide to see the inconvenience as an opportunity. I would not have given myself these fifteen minutes to go for a lovely walk on a beautiful fall day, but maybe that’s just proof that it’s good I’m not in charge of everything that happens to me.

At the end of the day I drive home with the windows open. I brown sausage and chop onions and stir tomatoes and lentils and spices into the soup that my mom used to make for us. I leave it simmering and head to Mass, slipping into a pew in the quiet darkness, relishing the beauty of the new translation of the old words. Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof…

Then back to the little green house, to soup and bread and wine. To say evening prayer with my roommate in our little dining room, lit by flickering flames of candles. (…shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life…) To study for an hour or two, reading over the words of Joseph Story and thinking through the contours of the federal courts' equity power (shut up!! it's fun!!) And then finally, nourished in body and soul, to sleep—to rest in Him, actually to rest and to begin the new day like a new life (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross).

It is so good to be here.

In Suspense and Incomplete

2011-11-26T11:40:00.003-05:00

The Slow Work of God

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are all, quite naturally, impatient in everything

to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown,

something new;

And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made

by passing through some stages of instability

– and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.

Your ideas mature gradually — let them grow,

let them shape themselves without undue haste.

Don’t try and force them on as though you could be today what time

(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)

will make you tomorrow.

Only God can say what this new spirit

gradually forming within you will be.

Give God the benefit of believing that the Spirit of God

is leading you, forming you, transforming you;

And accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete.

~ Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin~

(via Maggie, who always knows the right thing to say)

Exhale

2011-11-23T19:42:00.001-05:00

Right this minute, I am sitting on the bed in my sweet little room in my lovely little house in Texas. The bed with the deep blue quilt, the color of my eyes. There is a pile of books on my desk, waiting to be read. I left the grocery bags full of walnuts and cranberries and cornbread in the corner of the dining room.

Right this minute, I was supposed to be on a plane.

I don’t really know how to talk about this. I thought maybe I could frame it as something brave, my not getting on a plane. Which is funny, right? Because usually plane-related courage involves taking a flight, not letting one go without you.

And it was brave, I think, to make the decision I made. It was brave of me to pick up the phone, less than 48 hours before I would have landed in Milwaukee, and say I’m not coming. This isn’t good for either of us, and I’m not going to do it any more.

It took courage at the time, anyway. Right now, I don’t feel particularly heroic. I just feel confused.

I don’t like being confused. I don’t like sitting here, on my bed, wondering how a good thing can turn into a bad thing, how such big dreams could have turned so quickly into such low expectations. I don’t like trying to figure out how I went from being beautiful, intelligent, funny, and sweet to being not worth the effort it takes to send an email or pick up a phone.

The thing is, though…I am. Everyone is. And that’s what this is about, at the end of the day: I am not on a plane because I could not surrender the idea that real love is possible.

Let me be clear: I’m not talking about fairy tales. I think contemporary culture cultivates an absurdly naive image of romance, and I think actual relationships with real human beings take a lot of work. A LOT of work. A lot of self-sacrifice. I’m not a little girl playing wedding with Barbie and Ken.

But I also refuse to replace one extreme with the other. I refuse to trade Hollywood romance for a version of love involving lower levels of compassion, communication, and effort than the relationships I have with my roommates. You can cite statistics at me about arranged marriages and the history of mankind, if you want to (somehow I suspect that most of you will not want to), but the bottom line is I just refuse to choose it. Four or five decades of a life bound by a covenant to another person’s life leaves plenty of time for disappointment; resigning oneself to it after four or five months seems unwise.

So today, I didn’t get on a plane. I didn’t get on a plane because I believe that love is a beautiful, joyful, generous, compassionate, demanding, sometimes painful, and infinitely worthwhile thing. And I’m willing to wait for someone who agrees with me.

Somehow, I’m feeling brave again.

Ahem*

2011-11-23T01:15:00.002-05:00

Scene: Ten o’clock on a Tuesday evening. Two erudite graduate students sit in their dining room, the table prepared for a cutthroat game of Scrabble. They pull their letters and then draw to see who will begin.

One of the women looks intently at her letters, then at the board, then at her letters, then at the board, then at her roommate, and finally speaks:

First Student**: Do we allow vulgar slang?

Second Student***: Of course.

(It was a terrible word. I couldn’t even say it out loud.) (But I won the game!) (Only by three points. Crime doesn’t pay, kids.)

Also, for the record: If you ever have a very fancy bar of Belgian chocolate that someone brought you from Brussels, and you have a vested interest in removing it from your house as quickly as possible, it will probably taste delicious melted down and drizzled over popcorn along with some gently warmed leftover caramel apple dip. Just, you know. In case it ever comes up.

*Which is code for: No, I will not tell you what the word was, because my parents (and quite possibly my grandparents—Hi, Nana!) read this blog.

**That would be me.

***That would be Christine.

keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces

2011-10-15T11:31:00.007-04:00

I have been wrestling with some things lately, big-ish questions with big-ish implications. These are questions that—unlike many of my other major decisions—directly involve other people, which means they’re even more out of my control than such things usually are. Given how awesome I usually am when it comes to dealing with stress and uncertainty (which is to say: NOT AT ALL), it’s probably no surprise that I have not been handling this particularly well.

To be fair, I think I am in a genuinely difficult situation, and reasonable people in my life agree. But I wonder sometimes why it is that my responses to this kind of stressor seem to be so much more dramatic than other people’s. I was talking with one of my closest friends over the weekend and when I said, “I’m really struggling with this,” she said: “You’re always struggling.”

To a sensitive person (MEEEEE) that probably sounds kind of harsh, and it hurt my feelings at the time. But the thing is, there’s a qualified sense in which it’s true. The qualification is that, in the absence of negative stressors, I’m a pretty—perhaps unusually—happy girl. But when I encounter tough stuff (as everyone does), I almost always tend to experience it as Tough Stuff—which, in case you don’t speak Significant Capital Lettering, means it’s harder and more awful for me than it might be for the average person.

Of course, part of this is just temperament. Some people are more even-keeled, others tend to experience heights and depths a bit more. But that’s not a blanket excuse; every kind of personality needs virtue. Besides, it’s not as if I like it this way. I would love for these hard things to be a little easier. I want to be able to encounter the inevitable difficulties of my life with equanimity, to approach them from the best possible perspective, to find in them the joy I know is there.

So I am praying and thinking and seeking wise counsel. I want to learn what it means to be steadfast. I want to know how to temper my interior life with patience and courage and fortitude and hope. I want to hold myself to a standard of grace. And I want to glorify my Creator, to bear His love to those around me, to act in God’s eye what in God’s eye I am. Figuring it out means things are a little quieter around here; I'm okay with that. Good things are far oftener ponderous and difficult than quick and easy. Change is a process. I'm okay with that too. A dear friend sent me this:

"When night comes, and retrospect shows that everything was patch-work and much that one had planned left undone, when so many things rouse shame and regret, then take all as it is, lay it in God's hands, and offer it to Him. In this way, we will be able to rest in Him, actually to rest and to begin the new day like a new life." ~St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)~

I am working on it.

Snapshots

2011-10-02T01:17:00.003-04:00

This week I had to give a presentation—a presentation that required me to read an extra book for my Thursday night seminar, in addition to the other book we would be discussing, and on top of the 12-page paper I had to write and turn in by Wednesday morning. Needless to say, I didn’t have a lot of time for blogging, or for celebrating my housemate’s birthday, which was Tuesday night. (She was writing a paper too.)

So we moved her birthday—which means that at this very moment, there is a group of people on my front porch drinking beer and debating hotly whether the South’s reputation for having a slower, more leisurely pace of life is or is not entirely founded on its history as the bastion of American slavery. Oh wait—now they’re talking about Firefly (the show, not the vodka, although we also like vodka).

Earlier topics of discussion have included why one of the guys refuses to read Hegel (he’s too seductive), Israel, academic dishonesty, Dred Scott v. Sandford, why chocolate and milk taste good together (magnesium and calcium balance in your body, apparently), babies, Kant, folk music, blues progressions, Texas liquor laws, and Strauss. Someone always has to bring up Strauss.

(Leo, not Richard. In case you were wondering.)

It’s so strange, to be completely surrounded by people who are all at least as nerdy as I am. I have never experienced this before. It’s weird, but I love it. I just need to go to sleep now.

You Are The Beloved

2011-09-13T09:33:00.003-04:00

Keeping me breathing today, from Henri Nouwen’s Life of the Beloved—the answer to the question “but how??!”:

Speak from that place in your heart where you are most yourself. Speak directly, simply, lovingly, gently, and without apologies. Tell us what you see and want us to see; tell us what you hear and want us to hear…Trust your own heart. The words will come. There is nothing to fear. Those who need you most will help you most. You can be sure I will.

Sigh

2011-09-07T22:03:00.004-04:00

Here is what I am pretty good at: writing about living a good life.

Here is what I am not so good at: living a good life.

I mostly understand the theory, I think—and I ought to, considering how much time and energy I have devoted to thinking and reading about it—but the plain truth of the matter is that life doesn’t always look like the philosophers say it should. Sometimes, even when all your metaphysical ducks are in a row, things don’t work out the way you want them to.

I hate this. It seems wrong that even when your reading is perfectly under control, you can feel stressed about a paper that’s not due for weeks. I protest the cropping-up of mysterious neck pain. And let’s not talk about the fact that going to bed at a sensible hour does not guarantee that you’ll wake up rested—or that you’ll sleep at all.

Someone wiser than I—Marcus Aurelius, perhaps, or Oprah—would probably have a profound answer to all of this, but I am dissatisfied. I do not know how to resign myself to the idea that in real life people miscommunicate with one another and get frustrated and upset, and that the phone doesn’t always ring when you want it to, and that there is not always an easy answer, a quick syllogism to soothe hurt feelings and restore harmony to human relationships. I know this is the human condition, but I object to it. Strenuously.

I know it’s useless to try to study, that when Chick-Fil-A and guitar practice and calling my sister have all failed, the only thing to do is put on pajamas and curl up in bed with some tea and try to sleep. And I know things will probably seem better in the morning, because they usually do. But right now it’s still dark outside.

How to Stay Human in Graduate School

2011-08-30T18:07:00.002-04:00

Live in a house. Not an apartment, not a town home—an actual house, with a driveway and a front porch and trees. Hang a clothesline in the back yard so you can see your clothes wave in the wind through the window while you wash dishes at your kitchen sink. Fill the living room with bookshelves and cozy couches and rocking chairs. Put a table in your dining room and then use it for dining, like human beings do.

Don’t live alone; share the house with friends, even if they’re the brand-new kind. Get to know them. Make dinner together sometimes, and talk about classes and books and ideas. But have quiet space for yourself too, and retreat to it when you need to. If possible, rent your house from wonderful people—perhaps even professors in your department, whose house is directly behind yours—and then be their neighbors, in the real sense of the term. Bake them cookies and let them give you fresh eggs from their hen house and play with their adorable children.

Do your reading—that’s why you’re here, after all—but don’t let your schoolbooks be the only things you read. Delve deep into American political institutions and constitutional theory, but keep your mind open to history and philosophy and theology and literature and natural science. When you go to bed, leave Larry Kramer on your desk and pick up a novel for fifteen minutes—it’s good for your brain. If you like to write, go ahead and look at your syllabi and calculate how many pages of papers you have to write in the next four months. Realize that it’s almost a hundred. Decide to keep writing for fun anyway.

Try to think of school as your job, because it is. Take it seriously, but don’t let it take over your life. Go out with people from your department. Go out with people from other departments. Try to make friends who have nothing to do with graduate school. Go to Mass every day, if you want. Pray. Exercise regularly—not because your department chair will care (they didn’t admit you because of your stunning displays of athletic prowess), but because it keeps you sane and help you rest well. Get enough sleep—even when you think you don’t have enough time. You can’t afford not to.

Make your life beautiful. Go hiking in the park with your roommate. Listen to music. Pick up your guitar once in a while. Cook real food, and drink wine with it sometimes. Write letters to your far-away friends—actual letters, with paper and ink and stamps and envelopes. Take the extra two minutes to drive to campus along the river, and don’t speed. When you wake in the morning, go outside and look up at the big Texas sky. It's amazing. And when you go to bed at night, say a prayer of thanksgiving—because you are blessed.

They Were Bound to Find Out Sooner or Later

2011-08-26T19:38:00.004-04:00

You know how in the movies when the gangly 13-year-old girl with braces and cystic acne is leaving the house, petrified, on her first day of high school, her mom always shouts after her that he just needs to be herself and everyone will love her?

I like that principle. I think it’s lovely, actually. Not everyone agrees with me, though—some people think that presenting an accurate depiction of oneself, at least in the first instance, is a recipe for social disaster. And for most of my life, all I’ve had to argue with was principles. Truth, goodness, blah blah blah.

Today, though, all of that changed. Now I will have empirical evidence, from my very own life, about whether or not it’s actually true.

See, here’s the thing. My first week of classes went really well. I love my classes, and my professors are all wonderful, and so far I’ve gotten along really well with everyone in my department—but, until today, those people didn’t know the real me, Because, before this afternoon afternoon, everyone in my department probably assumed that I was a normal human being, with the capacities of a normal human being to walk around on the face of the earth without doing serious injury to herself or others.

This is the point at which everyone who knows me in real life is going “ahhhhh”…because, you guys. I do not actually have the capacities of a normal human being to move about in space freely without injuring myself or others. To give anyone I meet the impression that I do have these capacities is the functional equivalent of pretending to speak a language that I don’t actually speak, or something. It’s not fair.

But never fear! The innocent political scientists around me are now undeceived! I made it through almost an entire week without falling down the stairs or accidentally punching anyone in the face, but at the end—at 3:30 on Friday afternoon—the truth demanded to be known. I cannot resist the truth, so I walked full-speed into the corner of a cabinet. My head started to bleed. There is now a half-inch-long gash at the top of my forehead, above my left eye, and a lump underlying it that is roughly equal in circumference to a golf ball.

Only a few people witnessed the actual event—you know, the part where I walked directly into the piece of furniture that was securely attached to the wall—but several more people saw me sitting in the office while the department secretary stanched the bleeding and held ice to my injured noggin. And those people....know other people. It's a small department in a small town. Not a lot happens here. It's a pretty good story.

So…now they will know. And if nobody speaks to me on Monday, I will understand. Until then, I’ll be here, trying to figure out some way to arrange my hair so that people will stop grimacing when I pass them in the hall. Send wine. And ibuprofen.

Bouquets of Sharpened Pencils

2011-08-22T18:46:00.002-04:00

I would apologize for being totally absent for five weeks, except—well, first of all, that would be totally obnoxious, and secondly—I’m not actually sorry. I spent less time in front of my computer over the last month than I remembered being humanly possible, and I totally loved it. Hooray for (relatively) unplugged time!

But now there is stuff on which I have to catch you up. Since my last post (hijacking e.e. cummings doesn’t really count), I have:

Finished my first real job.

Moved out of Casa Petroni (there were tears).

Spent time with the world’s sweetest nieces and nephews.

Celebrated my parents’ 30th wedding anniversary.

Witnessed the wedding of a close girlfriend.

Had my first real North Carolina barbecue experience and my first real Texas barbecue experience—in the same week!

Driven halfway across the country.

Developed a love-hate relationship with my GPS .

Moved into a beautiful house with two amazing new roommates.

Spent a LOT of money, a lot of it on books (this makes me feel better).

Started my graduate program, which I already love. Love, love, love, love, love.

And those are just the parts that I feel like sharing with the whole world. Big changes are never easy for me (Haaa! Also, little changes are never easy for me), but not everything good is easy. And these are good changes. Happy changes. Enriching, exciting, joy-inducing changes. My life is really wonderful these days, and I’m mostly just basking in it.

I want to start talking about school now—my first class was this afternoon, and I’ve already burned through a bunch of reading for a Thursday night seminar—but I don’t think it would be very nice of me. If anyone WANTS to hear about Woodrow Wilson’s evaluation of the impact of the standing committee system on American political debate, or Larry Kramer’s opinion of judicial review, I am glad to write about it, but I think it’s safer to share this (listen to it. trust me!).

Dimples and pigtails and the first day of school. Life is good!

this is as coherent as I get these days

2011-07-30T13:24:00.000-04:00

since feeling is first

e.e. cummings

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,

and kisses are a better fate than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry

—the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then

laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life’s not a paragraph

And death I think is no parenthesis

Seven Glad Things

2011-07-15T11:17:00.003-04:00

One. I’m better! I never want to eat blue cheese or olives ever again in my whole entire life (or at least for the next few months…), but I’m better! Huzzah!

Two. My last day at work is one week from today. I’ll miss lots of things about this job, but I’m getting really excited to move on to new challenges. And since we turned in the revised version of my boss’s massive manuscript on Monday of this week, I’m going on a really high note. I’m proud of what I’ve done here this year.

Three. T-minus 5 on the work calendar is T-minus 8 on the Leaving The City calendar. THIS IS NOT SO COOL. But the upside of imminent departure is the impetus it provides to spend time with everyone I love here. And, for the record, if you’re ever in need of some affirmation, just tell all your friends you’re moving. I have never felt so popular in my life.

Four. I still…really love my car. (But I need GPS recommendations, stat. Readysetgo!)

Five. Here’s what is amazing: friends who drink their coffee with nonfat milk, but make sure they have half-and-half on hand when you’re going to spend the night with them, because they know that’s how you like yours.

Six. I’m reading After Virtue, finally, and it’s soooo funny. Now, I know what you’re thinking: That book is about moral philosophy. What is she smoking? But you guys, it just IS. Here’s an example from the chapter on the predictive failure of the generalizations in social science:

It is of course true that the claim is occasionally made that at last a true law governing human behavior has been discovered; the only problem is that the alleged laws…all turn out to be false and as Stanislav Andreski has trenchantly pointed out in the case of Homan’s formulation so unquestionably false that no one but a professional social scientist dominated by the conventional philosophy of science would ever have been tempted to believe them.

See what I’m talking about? This is hilarious stuff, right here.

Seven. This.

Don't forget to visit Jen for more Quick Takes.

Bright Sides

2011-07-07T17:16:00.002-04:00

On Tuesday night, I got really, really sick. My stomach started to hurt on the way home, but I figured it was just motion sickness from David’s crazy driving (tee hee). But nope! Not motion sickness! Because, you know, motion sickness usually goes away at some point after you stop moving. Whatever this was (still unsure, but guessing a vicious 24-hour bug?) did not go away. It stayed! And made me violently ill! All night long!

Needless to say, I did not go to the office yesterday. I slept, a few hours at a time, and tried to stay hydrated (not all that successfully). While I was awake, in an attempt to not freak out about the fact that I was in bed instead of at work three days before a major deadline, I also made the following list:

I barely ever get stomach bugs. The last time I can remember feeling this sick to my stomach was December of 2007, on the bus back to Austria from Poland. That time, I was on a bus. Today I am in my bed. Obviously this is way, way, way NOT AS BAD.

I have a competent intern. Which is basically like having a second me! Or pretty close, anyway. So stuff is still getting done! I would like to find the man who invented the competent intern, and I would like to kiss him on the mouth. But not until I’m fully recovered.

My head hurts. A lot. But hey! At least I still have a head! Lots of people do not.

Hayley Mills has got nothing on me.

It Does Actually Have A Very Specific Scent

2011-06-29T23:22:00.001-04:00

Confession: I don’t generally enjoy reading blog posts about people’s major purchases. It’s not them, it’s me—I totally understand wanting to write about those things. They’re big, and important, and what is a blog for if not documenting the big and important things in one’s life? I just can’t really identify with the detailed deliberations about houses and paint colors and stainless steel appliances and OMIGOSH YOU GUYS I BOUGHT A CAR.

I…bought…a car. A new car. Not new as in “I didn’t used to have a car and now I do,” but new as in “No one else has owned this car before.” New, as in I’ve been driving it around since Sunday night and the odometer says “37.”

It would take a while to explain how the idea that a 24-year-old who’s launching into five-plus years of graduate school should purchase a brand spanking new automobile—which, I agree, sounds TOTALLY ABSURD—is actually quite sensible in this particular case. But it is. Just trust me.

And, you guys? I totally love it. I would never have imagined being able to drive a brand new car, and I am completely aware of how blessed I am to be able to make this purchase responsibly. Because I have a new car, I am confident that I will have reliable transportation when I’m on my own in Texas, far away from my family. I know that I won’t have to worry about paying for expensive repairs on a grad student’s extreeemely tight budget. I know that I will be safe in this car.

Those are the important things—trust me, I know—and I am so thankful to have peace of mind about them. But…I’m also just having so much FUN, you guys. I didn’t expect to be so joyful that I got to buy the exact car I wanted (a 2011 Corolla) in the exact color I wanted (dark gray), or that it has every single feature on my wish list, or that it’s fun to drive and I feel completely comfortable behind the wheel. I didn’t realize how excited it would make me to have exactly the car I wanted.

Because here’s the thing: there are a lot of things in my life—big things, not just little things—that haven’t worked out exactly the way I wanted them. Which just makes me like everyone else: sometimes we long for things and then we don’t get them. That’s life; it’s normal, and I have experienced it enough that I think I’m starting to understand why: at least some of the time, I want stuff that, if I got it, would make me miiiiserable. So in those cases (and I can think of a few MAJOR examples), it’s actually really good for my desires to be foiled. Other times, I really don’t understand why I can’t have the thing that I want—something that seems like it would be truly good for me—and I struggle with that.

But a car is not the kind of thing that seems to have Major Life Significance one way or the other. It’s…transportation. It’s a way to get from home to school, or from school to the grocery store. If my circumstances had been different and I’d had to buy an older car, or a slightly less beautiful car, it quite probably still would have been fine. I still could have gotten safely from A to B without an aux jack for my iPod or two glove compartments (TWO!!! Think of all the things I can ORGANIZE in there!!!!). Overall, reliability and safety are better than their alternatives, but I’m sure I could have found a trusty chartreuse Buick to ferry me safely to classes and back. There are lots of cars that could have given me what I needed.

So the fact that I have this specific car, and it’s new and shiny and exactly what I wanted? It feels like…a popsicle on a scorching summer day, or a bear hug, or a perfect sunset. It feels like a present. Like an EXTRA present, one I wasn’t expecting, and one I didn’t really need, but I got anyway. Just as a reminder, a little note from the master painter, that He’s got me. That I’m covered. That I’m loved.

Caminar En La Esperanza

2011-06-26T19:42:00.003-04:00

Maybe, when you were twenty years old, you didn’t spend a semester tucked away in a tiny town in Austria, reading Wojtyla and T. S. Eliot and taking overnight trains all over Europe. And maybe during those months you didn’t live with your best friend from college and two crazy Nicaraguan girls, the four of you in a beautiful room with dormer windows and hardwood floors and a view of mountains, laughing and crying and trying to figure out how to change your duvet covers together. So maybe you were never exposed to the magic of Latin pop music, and maybe you didn’t listen to Lucas Arnau at your desk when you should have been studying or put Fonseca on your iPod and dance on your walk to the grocery store.

But I did. And I have loved that music—songs like this one and this one—ever since. Not necessarily because they are musically excellent (whatever that means), but because they are vivacious and colorful, and because they helped me to sing and dance and laugh when I was sad and struggling.

Today I found a new song, by an artist I don’t remember hearing before, and it’s sticking to me with unexpected force. I don’t speak Spanish but I have enough French and Latin to understand some of it, especially in music, and the words of this one jumped out at me:

“pintarse la cara, color esperanza,

tentar el futuro, con el corazon.”

Tentar el futuro...tempting the future. With our hearts.

Isn’t that how it feels, so much of the time? Like wanting things, desiring things and striving toward them, is the best way to insure that we don’t get them? As though dreaming is the equivalent of writing Kick Me! in big black letters across the backs of our shirts.

But it’s not, you know. At least, I don’t believe it is. I think the happiest people are the ones who hope for, and confidently expect to find, great and beautiful joy in life. Not because they escape suffering—no one does—but because they know the secret: that joy is hidden everywhere, even in and through the most difficult circumstances. That the One who creates us has a greater capacity to give than we have to receive. And that nothing good is withheld from us except when He needs that space to give us something better.

That’s the kind of person I want to be: the kind whose hands and heart are open. I want to give, and to receive, and to give again, grateful for the blessings of the moment and strong in faith for the future. I want my face to be the color of hope.

Dialogue

2011-06-19T22:38:00.002-04:00

Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter. Breathtaking. This is near the end:

If he couldn’t pray he could at least talk, sitting there at the back, as far as he could get from Golgotha. He said, O God, I am the only guilty one because I’ve known the answers all the time. I’ve preferred to give you pain rather than give pain to Helen or my wife because I can’t observe your suffering. I can only imagine it. But there are limits to what I can do to you—or them. I can’t desert either of them while I’m alive, but I can die and remove myself from their bloodstream. They are ill with me and I can cure them. And you too, God—you are ill with me. I can’t go on, month after month, insulting you. I can’t face coming up to the altar at Christmas—your birthday feast—and taking your body and blood for the sake of a lie. I can’t do that. You’ll be better off if you lose me once and for all. I know what I’m doing. I’m not pleading for mercy. I am going to damn myself, whatever that means. I’ve longed for peace and I’m never going to know peace again. But you’ll be at peace when I am out of your reach. It will be no use then sweeping the floor to find me or searching for me over the mountains. You’ll be able to forget me, God, for eternity. One hand clasped the package in his pocket like a promise.

No one can speak a monologue for long alone: another voice will always make itself heard: every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion. So now he couldn’t keep the other voice silent: it spoke to him from the cave of his body: it was as if the sacrament which had lodged there for his damnation gave tongue: You say you love me, and yet you’ll do this to me—rob me of you for ever. I made you with love. I’ve wept your tears. I’ve saved you from more than you will ever know; I planted in you this longing for peace only so that one day I could satisfy your longing and watch your happiness. And now you push me away, you put me out of your reach. There are no capital letters to separate us when we talk together. I am not Thou but simply you, when you speak to me; I am humble as any other beggar. Can’t you trust me as you’d trust a faithful dog? I have been faithful to you for two thousand years. All you have to do now is ring a bell, go into a box, confess…the repentance is already there, straining at your heart. It’s not repentance you lack, just a few simple actions, to go up to the Nissen hut and say good-bye. Or if you must, continue rejecting me but without lies any more. Go to your house and say good-bye to your wife and live with your mistress. If you live you will come back to me sooner or later. One of them will suffer, but can’t you trust me to see that the suffering isn’t too great?

The voice was silent in the cave and his own voice replied hopelessly: No. I don’t trust you. I love you, but I’ve never trusted you. If you made me, you made this feeling of responsibility that I’ve always carried about like a sack of bricks. I’m not a policeman for nothing—responsible for order, for seeing justice is done. There was no other profession for a man of my kind. I can’t shift my responsibility to you. If I could, I would be someone else. I can’t make one of them suffer so as to save myself. I’m responsible and I’ll see it through the only way I can. A sick man’s death means to them only a short suffering—everybody has to die. We are all of us resigned to death: it’s life we aren’t resigned to.

So long as you live, the voice said, I have hope. There’s no human hopelessness like the hopelessness of God. Can’t you just go on, as you are doing now? the voice pleaded, lowering the terms every time it spoke, like a dealer in a market. It explained: there are worse acts. But—No, he said, No. That’s impossible. I love you and I won’t go on insulting you at your own altar. You see, it’s an impasse, God, an impasse, he said, clutching the package in his pocket. He got up and turned his back on the altar and went out. Only when he saw his face in the driving mirror did he realize that his eyes were bruised with suppressed tears. He drove on towards the police station and the Commissioner.

Home

2011-06-03T23:16:00.003-04:00

Ed. note: If you commented on last week's Quick Takes post and wondered where your words went--I'm so sorry! I enabled moderation without realizing that I would have to check Blogger for new comments, so they just sat on my dashboard for a week. They're published now :-)

Flying home, for me, is a bit like falling through a rift in the space-time continuum. No matter where I'm coming from or what's going on there, I hit the ground in Michigan and things are different. Slower, and simpler, though not in a romanticized Wendell Berry kind of way. It's just real life: work and marriage and books and babies and faith. This is the place that made me--and because it made me, it knows me, better than anywhere else in the world.

The twins are soooo sweet. Most of the time they're asleep, wearing comically large clothing and wrapped up in patterned blue blankets. They like to be right next to each other, close enough to touch, or bundled together in their bouncy seat. When they're awake they eat--they're champions at it--and sometimes look around with their wide blue eyes, as if to say: what is this? I will feed one while Bryan is feeding the other, or snuggle both of them so Arwen can take an afternoon rest, and sometimes I whisper It's the world, little guys. I think you're going to like it here.

Blaise is at a really awesome age (28 months, roughly) where his sturdy little body can hardly contain his personality. He loves the twins and frequently comes over to gently kiss one on the head, or ask to cuddle one: I wann' hold dat baby! If you prompt him, he will say, in the world's sweetest toddler voice, I love Linus and Ambrose!, except he can't say the -br- combination so it comes out sounding like Amvfrose. But it's also neat to get to see him play on his own. Yesterday he had three train engines lined up in a row and he would push two ahead of the line and then say, under his breath, wait for me! and then bring the last one to catch up. The middle child in me wanted to jump in and shower him with affection, but he just kept playing. I can't wait to see what he will be like in a few more years.

The brief appearance of last week's erstwhile troll-slash-self-styled therapist is still niggling at me, a little bit. I know it's poison to pay any attention to people like that and I'm not putting credence into his words--besides which, a lot of the people who know me in real life read the comment and agreed with me that it was bizarrely off the mark--but the whole thing just baffles me. And it's shaken my confidence a little bit; I keep waffling between some sort of block (which is not what I want) and writing really self-consciously (which is also not what I want) and end up not posting anything (which is definitely not what I want). But this is my space and I refuse to surrender it to someone who, whatever his motives, quite obviously knows nothing about me at all. I write because I love it and because it helps me figure things out. That's good enough for me.

Not Quite Cool Enough For Seven

2011-05-27T16:43:00.004-04:00

~ 1 ~

According to the cool kids, you’re not really a blogger until you get your first troll. So apparently I have arrived! Not sure why our anonymous friend would choose to leave his bizarre comment on a post where I was asking for prayers for my sister—but then again, there are many things in this world I don’t understand. Comment moderation now enabled. Sorry about that.

~ 2 ~

Sometimes on the corner of L and Connecticut I see a man behind a table selling. bed linens. Like...sheets. And pillowcases. In plastic wrappers. Would you buy bedding from a street vendor? Because I would not.

~ 3 ~

I think I’ve been in Washington too long. The other day I noticed that nobody had (yet—I think this is no longer the case) happened to choose Eucharistic Adoration to add to the spiritual bouquet, and as I glanced at the bar chart showing all of the other (wonderful, generous) prayers, my only thought was: oh no! Nobody’s voting for holy hours!

~ 4 ~

Speaking of elections (which, okay, we actually weren’t), I am really excited to leave for Michigan tomorrow, not just because I will get to see my family! and meet the twins! and help paint my parents’ house! but also because MIchigan doesn't have pundits. I’ll be home for two weeks. My goal is to get through one entire day without reading, writing, or thinking a single sentence about the 2012 presidential race. I'm pretty sure this means I will have to avoid Twitter.

~ 5 ~

I’m looking at you, Jonah Goldberg.

~ 6 ~

Now I have to pack. And go to Target. And clean my bathroom. And take every article of clothing I own to the dry cleaner. And clean my bathroom. And pack. Also I have to pack.

More quick takes here.

The Moment of the Rose and the Moment of the Yew-Tree

2011-05-24T21:24:00.002-04:00

Twelve days ago, my beautiful sister gave birth to two sweet boys, Linus Michael and Ambrose John. Arwen was just a little over thirty-four weeks along when the twins were born. Thanks to terrific medical care and her rock-star commitment to gaining weight during her pregnancy (which significantly improves outcomes for twins), the boys were both over 5.5 pounds and had good lung function at birth, which was wonderful news. We are so grateful to God for His goodness in bringing them safely thus far, and we have every reason to believe that the boys will be healthy and happy in the long term.

For right now, though, Linus and Ambrose are still in the hospital. Because of their early arrival, they’re still developing the ability to do things that full-term babies can usually do right away, like digest their food and keep their temperatures up. They can’t come home until their systems mature. Practically speaking, this means that my amazing sister is trying to recover from labor and childbirth while she and her rock-star husband Bryan care for two big kids (4 and 2) at home and advocate for two little kids in the hospital. Camilla and Blaise are trying to adjust to having two new brothers, and the twins are working hard to grow strong and healthy. They’re all tired.

We are so grateful for Linus and Ambrose and their health and progress—they are doing as well as could be expected for their gestational age. But this is a hard time. My sister and her husband have two newborns, and instead of getting to snuggle them (and change their diapers, and get up in the middle of the night to feed them) at home, they have to visit their babies in the hospital. That’s so, so sad.

I know that my sister and her family are struggling, and I know there are a lot of people who are concerned for them and wishing them well. If you are one of those people, I have an idea for you. Some of Arwen’s beautiful friends have put together a spiritual bouquet for the twins, for Arwen, and for their whole family. Would you consider clicking through and adding your prayers to the list? (I hope this goes without saying, but if you’re not a pray-er, a comment with your good wishes and kind thoughts would be so kind and so very appreciated.)

I know how much this will mean to my sister, to her husband, and to their four beautiful children. I am continually amazed by the beauty and generosity of the people we encounter on the Internet, and I am so grateful for you. Thank you.

Seven Quick Takes, Yay! Edition

2011-05-13T16:24:00.002-04:00

One (and Two!): Linus Michael and Ambrose John. I’ve been praying for these little guys (though we called them Hank and Frank, in utero) since we found out they existed. By God’s grace, they’re big and healthy and doing really well, especially for 34-week twins. Also? They’re so cute. SOOOOO CUTE.

Three: So here’s something cool: together, the twins bring the niece-and-nephew total to seven. Which means that my siblings and I have already been outnumbered by our collective offspring, and only two of us are married so far. Give us twenty years and we’ll be able to field our own football team. Or a whole league! (Does one “field” a football team? I’m too lazy to check.)

Four: In the spirit of Actually Preparing For Graduate School, I embarked a few weeks ago on a long road called Apartment Listings In College Town USA. Apparently, though, all of the decent apartments in College Town USA are rented by November of the previous academic year. Those who search in April find only darkness and despair and words like “mold” and “roaches.” (In case you’re wondering, that is not the yay! part.) But it turns out that procrastination can ultimately benefit you, because earlier this week my roommate and I got an email from one of the professors in our department (whom we both love), and he and his wife just bought a house that they want to rent to graduate students (like us?) and it’s close to campus (how handy!) and really reasonably priced, even considering the pittance that is The Graduate School Stipend (but being poor is fun!). It has a washer and dryer (!!!!!!!) and three bedrooms, which means we are also going to room with the other girl in our cohort (with whom we’ve emailed a bit and I think I am going to love her), and! It has a yard! Yards are so humane.

Five: There’s a lot of departmental relocation going on at work, and earlier this week I moved down one floor in our office building. We all know how I feel about change, so I’m sure it’s no surprise that I was Not Looking Forward to being in a new space. But: you guys. I love it. My old office was sort of tucked away in a corner, which meant I didn’t see a whole lot of anyone except my boss. My new desk is in a hallway with a bunch of other young staffers and it’s just a completely different experience. Different in a good way. Fun and lively and good.

Six: On Wednesday, Roger Scruton (<3 <3 <3) debated Tyler Cowen about the effect of social media on human relationships. Before the event, a bunch of youngsters (including yours truly) contributed to a forum on the topic. Pretty astute insights, I think. Also Tocqueville. What’s not to love? You should have been there in real life, but since you weren’t, you should watch the debate here. Trust me, it is worth your time.

Seven: Half-price frappuccinnos, coral-colored daisies, Zac Brown, Garth Brooks, and Brad Paisley on cloudy Friday afternoons, forever and ever amen.

Warning: If you head over to Conversion Diary this week, be prepared to see a rendition of Starry Night made entirely of bacon. It’s…a little bit disturbing.

Pillow Talk

2011-05-06T18:30:00.001-04:00

Scene: 10:30pm, Thursday May 5th, 2011. The lights are off and we’re lying there quietly like responsible adults, fully aware of just how early the alarm on my phone is going to ring. Then, well, this happens:

Me: You know what song just popped into my head?

Julia: What?

Me: “Redneck Woman.”

Julia: Seriously? Mannn.

Me: I know. I’m sorry. But if I have to have “Redneck Woman” stuck in my head while I’m trying to fall asleep, you have to share it with me.

Julia: I cannot believe you.

Me: I know! And it’s not even like I listen to “Redneck Woman.”

Julia: Good night.

Me, chirpily cheerful: Good night!

silence

Me, totally out of tune: and I ain’t no high-class broad…

Julia: …I say hey y’all and yee-haw!...

Both of us: …and I know all the words to every Tanya Tucker song…

silence

Both of us: hell yeah!

stomach-splitting laughter. also, really weird dreams.

A Bunch of Quickly Taken Points

2011-04-30T11:20:00.002-04:00

Because I can never actually manage to get these things done on Fridays…

Onely: Happy Easter! I hope your Holy Week was deep and blessed and your celebration of the Resurrection continues to be full of joy and peace. Also, chocolate. I went home, and it was lovely and quiet and exactly what I needed.

Twoly: I watched Downton Abbey over the past few weeks and yes of course I love it but honestly the strongest reaction it evoked from me was a deep sense of gratitude that my parents raised their children to love one another. It probably doesn’t hurt that I have the best brothers and sisters in the entire world…

Threely: Speaking of which, did you know that my brother is in Alaska? He takes the most beautiful pictures and you should see them. (Pop quiz: “Benny’s got a job in Alaska. He’s been out of the country for three months.” Anyone? Anyone?)

Fourly: Every year the think tank where I work has a huge black tie dinner. It’s at a really cool venue, and there are lots of Dramatically Influential People (DIPs, you know) and a fascinating speaker and an orchestra, and did you catch the part about black tie? Because I am not a black tie person. And I was very un-excited about this fancy schmancy event until (1) I decided to bring my awesome friend Rahul with me (because a good date can make even a horrible event bearable); (2) I borrowed a really pretty dress from one of Julia’s roommates; and (3) I remembered that I have Cole Haan heels. Because Cole Haan heels, my friends, have Nike Air soles.

Fively: It’s a good thing I have grad school to fall back on, because the other day I totally ruined my shot at my first choice career (professional quoter of Meg Ryan movies) by misquoting You’ve Got Mail in a public venue. It was pretty awkward.

Sixly: Grad school! Oh yeah! I might need to, like, plan for that, right? Work out finances, or look at cars, or figure out how to get myself and all of my stuff from DC-slash-Michigan to Texas? Since, you know, I start classes in four months? Nah, I should probably just calmly return to reading this David Brooks book and pretend that nothing in my life is ever going to change. (For the record, resolute avoidance is not my usual m.o.–that would be frantic list-making—so I have no idea how to stop it. Very strange.)

Sevenly: I was going to write about how the new White House press secretary looks exactly like a friend from my fellowship, but the first time I typed it out I called him Jay Cutler. Thank goodness for my precautionary Google instincts, because, well. Jay Cutler and Jay Carney are not quite the same person. And oh my gosh look at THIS Jay Cutler. YIKES.

The Fire and The Rose

2011-04-24T12:13:00.002-04:00

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

~T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding V~

Dispossession

2011-04-23T10:00:00.000-04:00

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

T.S. Eliot, East Coker III

In Spite of That

2011-04-22T20:00:00.000-04:00

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

T. S. Eliot, East Coker IV

You Know How It Is With An April Day

2011-04-15T21:21:00.005-04:00

Today is tax day, which is also the date graduate schools around the country have set as the deadline for accepting or declining offers of admission. As a friend of mine put it: I wonder why they did that. Seriously, they had to know what associations people would make. My decision was already made, of course—award letter signed, employer notified, bridges burned—but now it just feels so final. Five more years of school, y'all. Yikes.

Rewind three weeks. I finish my work, change into my running clothes, drop my bag at David's office and hop on the metro. Three quick stops from McPherson Square—Metro Center, Federal Triangle, Smithsonian—up into the blustery gray afternoon, west on Independence, and there they are: the world-famous cherry blossoms. I was here this time last year, you know, but I never made the time to go see them. This year I've come early, before they are in full bloom, even. There are tourists, but not too many, and my feet pound on the sidewalk and my heart pounds in my ears and I'm right there, ducking my head now and then to avoid flowering-tree-induced injuries. The sidewalk on the west side, past the Jefferson Memorial, is RIGHT next to the water, and I start to get a little dizzy and immediately think: I can't fall into the tidal basin. David will never let me hear the end of it.

(Last summer I walked into a trailer hitch on the back of a pickup truck in the parking lot at the farmers' market, and he asked me if I'd ever been checked for an inner ear imbalance. I can't remember whether that was before or after the time I fell down the front step—ONE STEP, PEOPLE—and got a bruise on my hip the size of a cantaloupe. IF ONLY I had a legitimate medical justification for this.)

But I don't fall into the water, and my legs stretch long and my lungs breathe deep and I see the flowers, the tiny perfect flowers, and I just keep thinking: this is for me. For me. For me. Yes, okay, the trees were a gift to the city from the mayor of Tokyo a hundred years ago, but this blossom, this stride, this moment is a gift for me.

I will never forget that feeling.

Some of these days have been gray and stormy—but my umbrella is turquoise and my rain boots have polka dots on them. Other days the sky is clear, miles high, and smurf-blue, and on those days I walk the four blocks from David’s office to mine a little bit more slowly, soaking up the sunlight and breathing in the new life and watching shadow patterns on sidewalks and studying architectural details I’d never noticed before on buildings I walk past twenty times a week.

I have a daisy in a vase on my desk. It’s fuschia, I think? This deep purplish pinkish reddish color that fades slightly at the petal tips, defying exact description and refusing to be captured by the camera lens. You can believe me that it’s beautiful—but you would have to be here to know exactly how.

Blink

2011-04-10T21:44:00.001-04:00

I got terrible sleep last week, a lack of discipline combined with spring allergies and unexpected circumstances pushing my lights on longer and making the swing of feet to floor in the morning harder than usual: half drowsy Benadryl, half straight-up fallen-man laziness, half genuine need for rest, so thrown off I couldn’t add fractions to save my life. And there was an awful experience in a doctor’s office, so upsetting and alienating that it will either produce a long, tightly argued rant about the culture of experts and the dehumanization of medicine—or nothing at all, because so much of me just wants to press it down and never think on it again.

My body was weary and my soul was distressed and my prayer felt fruitless, and the days passed in alternate periods of drag and rush, slow enough to produce ennui but too quick to get anything accomplished, and I was not really alive, not the best version of myself. I hate that. But there were moments, rushing through aisles of crowded grocery stores or listening intently across a disorderly desk or praying softly, heads bowed together, when I opened my eyes to the faces around me and could see: these are friends here, now. These are what I need, love and encouragement and challenge and support and they are here, right now, when I need them. Even at the low points, when I have nothing to give, they are here.

Someone said once—it might have been me, but I honestly can’t remember—that the fundamental challenge of a human life is coming to know, to understand and receive and live in unconditional love. And I am not there. I’m so far from there. But sometimes there are these moments, little moments, quiet tired flash-fast moments, when I know.

So This Is What Grace Looks Like

2011-04-04T22:31:00.002-04:00

Things have been quiet around here lately. First, because they were busy and exciting, with no time for writing down words—and then, a little later, quiet with sorrow.

I talk a lot about myself in this space, about my hopes and fears and the things I wrestle with, and I think that’s okay. I learn by writing, and I have a lot of learning to do. But today I learned by reading.

Y’all know that I live with a family. An amazing family. David, whip-smart and hilarious, one of the best husbands and fathers I have ever had the privilege to know; Nate, of the blue eyes and chubby cheeks and sweet kisses, eighteen months old and pure joy; and Lauren. Lauren is…well, she is one of the women I love best in the entire world. She’s a wonderful and loving wife and mother. She is intelligent and sassy and staunchly loyal, the kind of friend who will give you honest and thoughtful counsel one minute and dance around the kitchen with you the next. Her friendship has blessed me in countless ways and I am so grateful to have her in my life every day.

*****

One of the things that I love about people is that, even when you live in the same house with them, you never reach their end; there is always something new to learn. You learn about people by seeing what they laugh at; by hearing what they pray for; by sharing meals and cleaning up kitchens and walking together. And sometimes you learn about them by seeing, through your own tears, how they respond to tragedy.

I knew that Lauren is faithful, because I have seen her live her faith. I knew that she is wise, because I have benefited so often from her wisdom. I knew her strength, because it has so often propped me up in times of weakness. None of those things could have surprised me. But surprise is not the same thing as awe. And today I am in awe. Today I read the words of someone who has suffered perhaps the greatest loss that a woman can suffer, whose mother’s heart has lost a dearly loved and deeply prayed-for little baby, and I am amazed.

*****

You had said yes to Jesus – and He has taken you at your word. The Word of God became man – poor. Your word to God became Jesus – poor and so this terrible emptiness you experience. God cannot fill what is full. – He can fill only emptiness – deep poverty – and your Yes is the beginning of being or becoming empty. It is not how much we really have to give – but how empty we are – so that we can receive fully in our life and let Him live His life in us.

~Blessed Mother Teresa~

*****

One of the things I am doing this Lent is looking for the gifts. I’m looking, and I’m finding that they are everywhere. Written across the sky, and embedded deep in the hearts of flowers, and walking past me down the street. But it turns out that the deepest and richest and most beautiful gifts are the ones closest to home.

Lauren. You are strong and beautiful and wise and courageous. But most of all you are full of grace, and your words are vessels of mercy. Thank you.

We're Going To Need Some More Post-It Notes

2011-03-27T22:02:00.004-04:00

*****

When I came home from Austria, in December of my junior year of college, I brought back so many things: a postcard from Lisieux, a little wooden box from Poland, a rosary from Rome. But the one thing I didn’t have anymore was the hand-in-hand dream I had flown over with that August: deep young love, early graduation, marriage, a family. I was going to have to come up with a new plan.

Three or four weeks into that spring semester, I got roped into a lunch with the Board of Trustees (you know, model student and whatnot), and at some point the kind lady sitting next to me asked me what I was studying. Politics, politely, and then because she was genuinely interested; I have a somewhat absurd affinity for the Constitution. And what did I intend to do after graduation? Oh, a Ph.D., maybe, I heard myself say; I’d love to study more, and write, and I think I would like teaching a lot.

Huh.

*****

It’s never seemed fair, actually. So many people long to travel and never get the chance; and I, who would have been perfectly content staying close to home, reading books and running by the river in a small town in Michigan for the whole length of my days, am forever being called away. College 1500 miles away from home; four months in Europe; intermittent travel to Boston, Philadelphia, New York, California, Quebec; a summer in Pennsylvania; fall in Colorado; spring in DC. The moving, the changing, pushing, spinning world—it never seems to stop pulling on me.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful. These are great opportunities and I appreciate them. Truly!

Did that sound convincing? Because sometimes I’m not grateful. Sometimes I just want the change to stop.

*****

It is so hard to see into other people’s lives; to look at their circumstances and gauge their personalities and really understand them; to know their hearts; to suffer in their struggles and rejoice in their triumphs and perceive, with clear honest eyes, the men and women we walk alongside—or brush past, mostly—in the long weary days. How terrifying, too, to turn toward the seer, to pull aside the veil protecting all that matters very most to the tender tentative wary heart deepest inside and take the chance that the one who looks will see, will know and not recoil at what he finds. More precarious still is the attempt to take hold, gently, of the frail fragile inwardness and bring it out, in small single words and long faltering sentences, to be seen and heard and known by whoever might chance to pass by.

And yet…and yet…isn’t that what we crave, in the quiet secret depths? To open the doors of our inmost selves and be known, exactly as we are, with our ugly cracks and our crazy sky-blue dreams and all of our love, so much love, pouring out and overflowing, and to trust that these other beating hearts will not push it away? And the terrible beautiful thing is that it can only be trust, trust instead of mathematical certainty, instead of abstract analytical knowledge. Two and two will always make four but people can only trust.

*****

I have been fighting all of my days to understand, to find a syllogism or a sentence or a word—even just one word. And then one Saturday evening I picked up a book and found this:

Really, when you bury a child—or when you just simply get up every day and live life raw—you murmur the question soundlessly. No one hears. Can there be a good God? A God who graces with good gifts when a crib lies empty through long nights, and bugs burrow through coffins? Where is God, really? How can He be good when babies die, and marriages implode, and dreams blow away, dust in the wind? Where is grace bestowed when cancer gnaws and loneliness aches and nameless places in us soundlessly die, break off without reason, erode away. Where hides this joy of the Lord, this God who fills the earth with good things, and how do I fully live when life is full of hurt? How do I wake up to joy and grace and beauty and all that is the fullest life when I must stay numb to losses and crushed dreams and all that empties me out?

I wake and put the feet to the plank floors, and I believe the Serpent’s hissing lie, the repeating refrain of his campaign through the ages: God isn’t good. It’s the cornerstone of his movement. That God withholds good from His children, that God does not genuinely, fully, love us.

~Ann Voskamp~

*****

This is sometimes hard for me to make people believe: I have tried and failed a lot in a couple dozen of these lightning-fast years. I try and fail at human relationships; I knock on doors that never open; I smile sweetly and juggle torches and maintain the illusion of control for far longer than is good for me or anybody else before I fall hard on my own dreams and my own folly and break, parts of me, and sometimes I think that I never ever want to write another word, never want to be vulnerable to anyone ever ever again.

But even just a few months later I look back and I can see. I can see, with a clarity that ought perhaps to surprise me less than it always does, the unmistakable marks of a faithful guiding hand. I can see the blessing in the broken pieces, the derailed plans that saved me from my own blind willfulness, the flowers that grew in the middle of a desert. And I weep for the people and places I have to leave behind, but the truth is that I know, deep down, why the wildly spinning world is such a pushing pulling place for me. It’s because I need to remember—or learn for the very first time, in the middle of footnotes and post-it notes and beneath the veneer of calm cheery competence—that He has me in the palm of His hand.

*****

You who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy; and turn not aside, lest you fall. You who fear the Lord, trust in him, and your reward will not fail; you who fear the Lord, hope for good things, for everlasting joy and mercy. Consider the ancient generations and see: who ever trusted in the Lord and was put to shame? Or who ever persevered in the fear of the Lord and was forsaken? Or who ever called upon him and was overlooked? For the Lord is compassionate and merciful; he forgives sins and saves in time of affliction.

~Sirach 2: 7-11~

*****

Real love is never safe.

Real love is never safe, and real life is never easy, and sometimes the gifts we ask for vainly in one season are placed at our feet wrapped in shiny gold paper in the peak of another season when the light is different and our dreams have been obscured by busy city life and our first instinct is to count the cost, to think only of the mess that shiny gold paper makes on the living room floor. But then there are these faithful friends who speak simple painful truths with loving words, and there is time to think and wonder, and there is the Gift-giver always there, incapable of turning away, capable only of this perfect faithfulness, and love drives out fear and truth brings freedom, and somehow I am ready to jump again.

I’m going to graduate school.

Snippet

2011-03-14T15:12:00.002-04:00

M: I have figured it out
J: what's that?
M: The reason I'm single. It's because the kind of man I'm attracted to is FIFTY.
J: hahahaha
M: no, I mean...actually.
J: is it the money or the loss of hair?

Names redacted to protect the perfectly innocent.

Dust

2011-03-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Because I do not hope to turn again

Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to turn

Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope

I no longer strive to strive towards such things

(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)

Why should I mourn

The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know

The infirm glory of the positive hour

Because I do not think

Because I know I shall not know

The one veritable transitory power

Because I cannot drink

There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is

nothing again

Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time

And only for one place

I rejoice that things are as they are and

I renounce the blessèd face

And renounce the voice

Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something

Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us

And pray that I may forget

These matters that with myself I too much discuss

Too much explain

Because I do not hope to turn again

Let these words answer

For what is done, not to be done again

May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly

But merely vans to beat the air

The air which is now thoroughly small and dry

Smaller and dryer than the will

Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death

Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

~ T. S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday I ~

This Is A Catholic One

2011-03-06T22:59:00.000-05:00

Lent starts this week, on Wednesday—Ash Wednesday, you know, the day when you see a bunch of people walking around looking like they forgot to wash their faces that morning? I find it interesting that statistically, Ash Wednesday is one of the biggest days for Mass attendance of the entire year, despite the fact that (unlike, say, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which I bet lots of Catholics can’t even locate in the liturgical calendar) it’s not a holy day of obligation. Apparently we find something compelling about a day focused so starkly on our own mortality.

Easter is later than usual this year, though, almost the very latest it could possibly be, and I have this odd feeling that we’ve missed the boat. Actually, that’s wrong. I feel like Lent has missed the boat. Lent is supposed to be the season of grubby winter weeks dragging on and slush and gray skies and drudgery. But we’re a week into March and the weather inside the Beltway is warming up, and the spring rain is here already and I feel like Lent can hardly come now, now that the worst part of the year is over.

It will come anyway. I feel well enough prepared, I guess, but prepared in an odd way, as if I had done all the studying I needed to do for a test I was supposed to take a month ago, and I’ve just been waiting around, fingering my index cards, for weeks on end. The rhythm is off. I wonder what the difference will turn out to be.

People seem to like to discuss their plans for Lenten sacrifices and I think that’s fine, and normal. The thing that catches me by surprise, year after year, is the way that my unusually open personality hits a wall right here. I always feel a little awkward talking about this particular thing, about the sacrifices I am going to try to make, about the ways God is asking me to work on letting Him into my life right now. It seems normal to talk about it with the people at the center of my daily life—which right now means Lauren and David—but anything outside of that just jars me somehow, as if I had left my prayer journal open on the table and someone just walked over and started reading. Nobody means it like that, I know, and I don’t mean to make any implications about the general practice of discussing one’s penances with other people. I just can’t feel comfortable with it for myself.

Here’s what I will say, though: I hope I get better. I hope whatever it is that I do will clear out space and open me up enough to let God in, to soften me enough that the potter can do His work. I hope the change will come. I need it.

Love Only Takes A Minute

2011-03-01T09:17:00.003-05:00

I don’t have children. But a lot of you do. A lot of you know the challenges of parenting—the exhaustion, the constant tidying up, the occasional tantrum. And you know that one of the very biggest and hardest things is the illness of a child—especially a mysterious illness, one with elusive symptoms and no clear diagnosis. To know that something is wrong with your little one, and not know what it is? Seems like one of the most difficult parts.

Now imagine that you were facing this burden—an unexplained, or unexplainable, medical problem—alone, without the help and support of your spouse. Because your husband was deployed, in constant potential or actual danger, thousands and thousands of miles away.

Meet Adrienne. She doesn’t have to imagine.

I believe that America’s servicemen and women are some of our greatest heroes. And I believe that their families—especially the spouses and children who wait on the home front while they serve in danger overseas—need, and deserve, all the love and support we can give them. Sometimes that takes the form of concrete assistance: helping with child care, or making a meal, or the beautiful gesture that one stranger at the post office extended to my friend Whitney by covering the cost of the care package she was mailing to her husband.

But sometimes love doesn’t even require that much effort or generosity. Sometimes love just takes a minute.

My friend Adrienne is facing the awful challenge of a sick child, and her soldier isn’t by her side—because he is overseas, defending our freedom. There are lots of things that Addie needs right now, but I think what she needs most of all is the knowledge that she is not alone. She just needs our words. This is not a difficult thing to give.

I know that a lot of us try every day to find ways to be a light to the people around us. Today, can you click through to Adrienne’s corner of the Internet and be that light for her? Offer her your prayers, if you can, or your encouragement—or just say thank you. Because the sacrifices that she makes every day? Are for you.

Seven Quick Takes, Super Fast Edition

2011-02-25T22:26:00.001-05:00

One. There are women—Catherine Zeta-Jones, for example, or some of the girls I went to school with—who are so beautiful that they attract attention just by walking around. I am not one of those women. I don’t say this with false humility or with the desire to elicit compliments—it’s really just the truth. I think I’m pretty, but I’m not striking. There’s a certain kind of man in D.C., however, who doesn’t seem to be concerned about this. I’m not sure whether it’s boredom or just lower standards (what’s that phrase? Washington is Hollywood for ugly people?), but I have experienced more amateur come-ons in the past year than I had in the preceding 23. The “I love your face” story is obviously the best one, but generally it’s just things like “CUTE” or “hey, sweetheart”—harmless, meaningless, sort of funny. One time on Connecticut Avenue a man said “Hey, cutie” to me and I was caught so far off guard that I snorted. But today was momentous. Today I received my first official off-the-cuff, from-a-total-stranger proposal of marriage.

Two. I am sooooo. tired. of this stupid back injury. I’m at the point now where I can work out about once a week without causing significant irritation to my muscles, but I still have to be careful about what I do—no twisting crunches, no weights, lots of modifications if I want to do yoga. This is from an injury that occurred more than a month ago. I know better than to push it (are you listening, Karen?), but I am so tired of being inactive. Anyone have any brilliant ideas for indoor exercise that doesn’t engage your back?

Three. Have you ever discovered that things you were sure would be gross or awful turned out to be excellent? For example: I always thought I would hate lemon curd, because it sounded like it would have a cottage cheese-y texture, and cottage cheese totally freaks me out. Well. It turns out that lemon curd is basically lemon meringue pie filling. And it is DELICIOUS. The moral of the story is: never judge a thing by surface factors like name or appearance.

Four. Except that my hatred for cottage cheese? Is based pretty much exclusively on the way it looks, and my strong intuition that I would really dislike the way it would feel in my mouth. I cannot state with any confidence that I have ever actually tasted cottage cheese. So perhaps the moral of the story is that they should come up with a new name for lemon curd.

Five. I’m pretty excited for Monday morning. At 10:00. Why? You want to know why? I can’t tell you.

Six. Okay, I’ll tell you. At 10:00 on Monday, the Supreme Court will release the orders from today’s conference, and there’s a cert petition that was calendared for conference today that I can’t wait to see if they’ll grant.

Seven. YES I AM A HUGE NERD.

More quick takes at Conversion Diary

Hope For Good Things

2011-02-22T09:42:00.008-05:00

I don't usually post whole chapters of the Bible here, but I read something this morning that was exactly what I needed. Maybe some of it is something you need to hear too.

*****

My son, if you come forward to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for temptation.

Set your heart right and be steadfast, and do not be hasty in time of calamity.

Cleave to him and do not depart, that you may be honored at the end of your life.

Accept whatever is brought upon you, and in changes that humble you be patient.

For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation.

Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.

You who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy; and turn not aside, lest you fall.

You who fear the Lord, trust in him, and your reward will not fail; you who fear the Lord, hope for good things, for everlasting joy and mercy.

Consider the ancient generations and see: who ever trusted in the Lord and was put to shame? Or who ever persevered in the fear of the Lord and was forsaken? Or who ever called upon him and was overlooked?

For the Lord is compassionate and merciful; he forgives sins and saves in time of affliction.

Woe to timid hearts and to slack hands, and to the sinner who walks along two ways!

Woe to the faint heart, for it has no trust! Therefore it will not be sheltered.

Woe to you who have lost your endurance! What will you do when the Lord punishes you?

Those who fear the Lord will not disobey his words, and those who love him will keep his ways.

Those who fear the Lord will seek his approval, and those who love him will be filled with the law.

Those who fear the Lord will prepare their hearts, and will humble themselves before him.

Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, but not into the hands of men; for as his majesty is, so also is his mercy.

~Sirach 2~

If Only I Were This Awesome

2011-02-21T21:53:00.002-05:00

I joked with a friend earlier today that I have made this decision so many times already that the conventional pro-con lists are no longer any use to me. All of the major factors are already so clear in my mind that there’s no point discussing them. What I really need, now, is a good look at the details.

Ergo: I have developed forthwith a genius system of accurately evaluating such factors. For the sake of the requisite ambiguity, we shall call the concrete possibilities Frank and Ted. Behold:

Ted vs. Frank: The Scorecard

Abundant supply of cheap avocados.

Frank: 1. Ted: 0.

Likelihood that I will never have to wear a really ridiculous hat.

Frank: 0. Ted: 1.

Low probability of dying on public transportation.

Frank: 1. Ted: 0.

Availability of public transportation.

Frank: 0. Ted: 1.

Fewer people equals fewer germs? Maybe?

Frank: 1. Ted: 0.

Really really really really really hatred of cockroaches and all other large bugs.

Frank: -7. Ted: 1.

Existence of running routes longer than one mile that do not include hills.

Frank: 1. Ted: 0.

Freedom from handheld computers.

Frank: 1. Ted: 0.

Availability of anything resembling culture.

Frank: 0. Ted: 1.

Availability of anything resembling men.

Frank: 0. Ted: 0.

Frequency of bumper stickers that will make me really annoyed.

Frank: 1. Ted: 0.

Frequency of appropriate hoodie-wearing situations.

Frank: 1. Ted: 0.

Frequency of Starbucks locations.

Frank: 2. Ted: 196.

Math is hard.

Again.

2011-02-18T16:07:00.000-05:00

I remember something my dad used to say when I was growing up: “The hardest choices,” he would observe, “are not between good and evil. They are the ones that require us to decide between two good things.”

Back then, he was usually referring to truly dramatic dilemmas, like the conflict of a friend’s birthday party with a family outing, or the fork in the road that divided Playing The Flute from Playing The French Horn. But it turns out that Daddy’s wisdom also applies in silly little situations like choosing a college, or comparing job offers, or deciding where to live and what to do with whole chunks of my life. Huh.

*****

“A woman's dignity is closely connected with the love which she receives by the very reason of her femininity; it is likewise connected with the love which she gives in return. The truth about the person and about love is thus confirmed. With regard to the truth about the person, we must turn again to the Second Vatican Council: "Man, who is the only creature on earth that God willed for its own sake, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self."[Gaudium et Spes 24] This applies to every human being, as a person created in God's image, whether man or woman. This ontological affirmation also indicates the ethical dimension of a person's vocation. Woman can only find herself by giving love to others.”

~ Mulieris Dignitatem 30~

******

Last month Arwen came to visit, and on her last night we sat talking on the couch until the small hours of the morning, in fulfillment of the sacred compact of sisterhood that demands honesty and vulnerability and promises in return to speak the truth in love. Those roads run both ways but on this particular night I was the crying one and my sister, my beautiful gentle sister, was the one holding out a challenge. You need to ask for simplicity, she said. You are so ready to give away pieces of yourself, but that kind of love only works if it is guided and replenished by the Truest Love.

She was right. It has never sunk in with me that generosity of spirit is not incompatible with stewardship of self; that anyone who is not secure in being loved will miss the mark in loving—that, as beautiful and detailed as we are, sometimes the complicated is the enemy of the true.

*****

When a simple soul is to act, it considers only what it is suitable to do or say and then imediately begins the action, without losing time in thinking what others will do or say about it. And after doing what seemed right, it dismisses the subject; or if, perhaps any thought of what others may say or do should arise, it instantly cuts short such reflections, for it has no other aim than to please God, and not creatures, exceept as the love of God requires it. Therefore, it cannot bear to be turned aside from its purpose of keeping close to God, and winning more and more of His love for itself.

~St. Francis de Sales~

*****

Life is…a little complicated right now, most of the external complications being further complicated by the fact that I can’t write about them with any degree of specificity, which essentially precludes clarity altogether. The interior dynamics are probably more easily share-able, but since one of the things I’m trying to figure out is how to live and speak and write honestly without violating my own mystery, that becomes complicated too.

On top of which, nothing ever stays the same for very long. The things that weighed me down two weeks ago have essentially resolved themselves—or have been submerged, at least for the moment, by the emergence of something new to figure out. And it’s hard to be joyful when you’re tired and uncertain—but it’s hard not to be joyful when the sun is shining so brightly.

*****

“Persevere along your way no matter what happens; persevere, cheerfully and optimistically, because the Lord is bent on sweeping aside all obstacles. Hear me well: I am quite certain that if you struggle, you will be a saint!”

~St. Josemaria Escriva~

*****

There are a lot of things I don’t know. My perennial compulsion to make “the right decision” is handicapped somewhat by my inability to see into the future. I know that the decisions I make today will affect the decisions I will be able to make tomorrow, but I don’t know how. Which means I cannot calculate my life as if it were a complex math problem, or factor people, places, and plans in and out in half-cup increments like ingredients in a cake. I cannot be sure whether or not the things I think will add beauty and joy to my life actually will. And I have no idea why my first response to a new possibility is always to view it as a trick question—as if God were just throwing doors in my path, hoping I would accidentally open the wrong one.

But there are also a lot of things I do know. I know that there are people who will love me no matter what I do. I know, first responses notwithstanding, that opportunities are actually good things. I know that even the very best things in this life won’t completely satisfy me. And I know that when I reach the end of it, the most important question will not be: “How much work did you accomplish?” or “How many books did you publish?” or “How famous did you become?” No. When it’s all said and done, what will really matter is how much and how well I have loved.

*****

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise…”

~Pope John Paul II~

Last Day, First Day

2011-02-13T23:02:00.003-05:00

Here is what I did when I was 23:

Spent my first year in a big city. Started my first grown-up job. (“You know what grown-ups never say? Grown-up. They say ‘adult,’ and they pronounce it ahhhh-dult.”) Went to my first really fancy restaurant. Lived with a family that wasn’t mine, but sort of became mine, and was inexpressibly blessed by it. Bought a capo. Wrote. Made friends. Baked cookies. Acquired my first legitimate athletic injury and sidelined myself for a month. Traveled to Philadelphia. Traveled to Chicago. Traveled to Philadelphia again. Stretched myself. Cried a lot. Laughed a lot. Loved.

Here is what I wish I had done more of when I was 23:

Played guitar. Read poetry. Shown grace to myself. Written letters. Called faraway friends. Spent time with nearby ones. Walked outside. Sat in the silence. Loved.

Here is what I learned when I was 23:

How to drive in traffic. Lots and lots of stuff about football. How to wear color. How very, very misguided was my former dislike of tequila. That there is, in fact, such a thing as too much coffee. Lead with your head, follow with your heart. Love.

*****

I’ve always loved the chance that birthdays offer me to re-evaluate, to look at myself and say this—this thing, I want more of it in my life, or I don’t want things to be like so anymore. It’s like a personalized invitation to change.

Someone, some person far more self-actualized than I (raise your hand if that phrase makes you think of Anastasia Krupnik), would probably say that every day brings an opportunity for change. She would be right—and I think, I hope—that I do make some effort to grow in virtue and in love every day. But a birthday is a little bit different. A birthday is a new beginning.

Five Items Or Less

2011-02-08T22:56:00.002-05:00

So. That book is with the editors. Yippee. After we turned in the manuscript and tidied up all the necessary book-related details, I spent a week researching the Orange County bankruptcy, which was muy muy depressing, and am now spending most of my time at work attempting to impose some semblance of order on the fifty-seven (57) binders full of law review articles that my boss has collected over the past ten years. Please send coffee. And lots of color-coded divider tabs.

If I go crazy and decide I just can't take one more binder, perhaps I shall attempt to make my living like this.

***

The week after the big push, I used some of my comp time to spend a long weekend in Philadelphia with my best friend and her husband. I’m blessed to have wonderful friends in the DC area, but there is nothing like spending time with people who have known you for so long that they just know you, and you never ever have to try to be anyone but exactly who you are. It was so restful. Well, except for this next part:

****

Me: How you doing back there?

My back: Oh, super great! I don't hurt at ALL!

Me: That's fantastic! Perhaps I shall attempt some gentle exercise!

My back: SUCKERRRRRRRR.

*****

Lauren, David, and Nate are on vacation this week, so (though of course I miss them dreadfully) I’m taking advantage of the extra free time to spend with friends. I actually had a Super Bowl party on Sunday night, which was a total blast. I always love seeing friends from different times in my life meet and get along really well. I don’t know how I happened to end up with all of the best friends, but I did, somehow.

I also made the largest vat of queso known to man. So, you know. Those are two pretty significant things to put in my obituary.*

*(When I die in a really really long time. Calm down, you guys.)

Elsewhere

2011-01-18T16:57:00.001-05:00

Things around here used to be a lot nerdier. I posted a piece about judicial philosophy and Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court within a week of starting the blog, and and I have been known to use the term "Thomistic metaphysics" around here with a straight face. In reference to pen pals.

That's changed a bit since I started writing regularly for Humane Pursuits. I only have so many meaningful thoughts in a given month, and since I have to produce posts on a fortnightly basis for HP, I've found myself tending to save the politics and philosophy for that space and the highly intelligent populace (*cough* nerds *cough cough*) who regularly read it. I like this arrangement, because it allows me to save my personal blog for discussions about more important things, like bizarrely flirtatious coffee shop employees and breakfast food. Also skirts. Anytime I write something about skirts, you will find it here. Skirts.

(PANTS!)

Anyway. The point of all this is that, while I'm usually perfectly happy to keep the political/cultural/social commentary stuff at Humane Pursuits and the super fun and cool! stuff over here, I want to link to my most recent HP post juuuust this once. (Okay, maybe I've done it before.) But it's not for my sake! It's for yours! I honestly think that this time, the nerdy thing I wrote about over there will even be interesting to the cool people on the Internet (that's you). And I believe this to be true because, this week at HP, I wrote about...

(hold your breath)

horoscopes!

You should go read it. Please don't let the title of the piece, or the quote from Walker Percy, or the picture of a bell tower in the header freak you out. You will still be cool when you're done reading. (And also, you should really read all the way to the bottom of the page, because I had the chance to explain in the comments something that I didn't exactly make clear in the text.) And then discuss! Comment! Ask me a question! Disagree with me! It will be the best time you ever had at a website with the words "culture, religion, politics" in the title.

(Just don't call me names. It hurts my feelings and might induce me to start talking Latin at you.)

Done.

2011-01-17T20:50:00.002-05:00

We ran out of Post-It flags. Like, actually ran out.

I have a document full of citations—just citations—that is thirty-four pages long. Single-spaced.

The structure of the chapters and the flow of the argument is engrained into my brain. I can spout U.S. reporter cites and book titles like a fountain. I never want to see the words “Constitution” or “federalism” ever again. (This will make continuing in my chosen field somewhat difficult…anyone have any career suggestions for me?) My name is there, on the acknowledgments page, along with the names of four other research assistants and oodles of interns who have helped this project reach fruition.

And now?

Well. So we still have to go through the editing and proofreading process. Also there are four or five (only four, I’m pretty sure) TKs in the notes, in places where we need to track down an American Bar Association Journal article from 1933 or a colleague of the boss’s needs to email him back with the title of a book. And technically, the book won’t be submitted at all until tomorrow morning, when I burn the files onto a CD and pop it in the mail (which is the downside of scheduling the final push for a project on a federal holiday). But. BUT.

You guys.

It’s done.

Do You Think I Could Get College Credit For This?

2011-01-12T21:45:00.003-05:00

I went to the chiropractor today, and—other than the fact that it took me NINETY MINUTES to get out of there—it was a rousing success. As a rule, I feel uncomfortable around medical professionals of any kind (except for the dentist we had growing up, who won my heart at a very early age by distributing bouncy balls after every appointment and routinely asking me if I would marry him) (he was married already. he and his wife went to our church. it wasn’t creepy! I promise!), but I looooove my chiropractor. I basically chose him at random from my insurance company’s online directory because (1) his name is Eric and he graduated from chiropractic school in 1995, which I figured would make him young enough to be relatable (grandfather-aged doctors creep me out the most), and (2) his office is three blocks from mine. Also (3) he had an open appointment today and my back was KILLING me.

This is not generally a method of selecting medical professionals that I would recommend, and I was fully prepared to totally hate it and never return after he magically fixed me (cf: CRIPPLING BACK PAIN), but in this case it worked out splendidly. He recognized the origin of my name, treated me like an intelligent adult, and complimented me on the strength of my handshake. He was also really great about explaining what he was doing and checking to be sure I was comfortable, which is a huge thing for me with doctors and really helped to assuage the oh-my-word-a-strange-man-is-touching-my-back creepies. I liked him A LOT.

Also going on the scorecard in Chiropractor Eric’s* favor: he figured out what’s wrong with me! I have a repetitive stress injury. Some kind of muscle something something pulled away from my spine something something shoulder blade something something OUCH. Also maybe something about a trapezoid? I never remember this kind of thing unless they write it down for me.

Anyway, it’s a muscle injury. A sort of big one, I think? And it will heal, but not right away. It already feels better, but "better than excruciating" is still, well, pretty darn painful. I have to ice it and do no strenuous physical activity of any kind for a week, after which I can start doing lower body workouts as long as it doesn’t put any stress on my arms or torso (which, I’m pretty sure, means I can walk) for another week or so, and then I can ease back into actual exercise, as long as it doesn’t cause me any pain. Given the fact that, right now, taking a deep breath causes me pain, I have a hard time envisioning this, but Chiropractor Eric assures me that it will happen! Just not for, you know. At least two weeks.

So that plan I had? About exercising every day? On it the kibosh has been put, as Yoda would say. And it’s so typical of me that this injury, which turns out to be sidelining me for a fair chunk of time, was essentially brought on by my foolish persistence in working out even when I could tell that something wasn’t quite right with my back, just because I didn’t want to be diverted from a goal. This is Pigheadedness Never Pays Off 101: if you mess with an injury, it will mess back, except worse. Consider yourselves warned, okay? Because if you fail to heed this gentle warning, the muscles in your back might just start screaming it at you.

*No, I did not address him as Chiropractor Eric. My life is not a children's television show.

Changing Plans

2011-01-10T21:58:00.003-05:00

So. I made a little secret goal for 2011: I wanted to do some kind of exercise every day. Not necessarily intense exercise, because this was not a Get Fit Resolution—yoga would count, or a walk, or random free weights while I watched a movie. I wasn’t even going to tell anyone about it, because I didn’t need—or want—the “motivation” of other people looking on. As far as I was concerned, any increases in strength and endurance that resulted would be corollary benefits to redeveloping a habit of being active that, for huge chunks of my life, has been a part of the way that I manage stress, maintain energy, and give my mind a chance to wander. And sure, part of me just wanted to know if I could do it.

Well. It was awesome, for the first, oh, week. You know. But then one day I developed this little twinge of discomfort in my back while I was lying in bed, which turned into a big old crick (crick? Surely that can’t be the word I’m looking for) in my back while I was lying in bed, which turned into this persistent pain in my back while I’m doing everything. I pushed through the discomfort for the first couple of days, but today the pain nagged me constantly. By the end of dinner, my back was throbbing, and…yeah. Let’s just say I’m not going to be doing downward dog anytime soon.

Now. I am not insane. I have absolutely no desire to cause myself permanent injury, and there’s no way that I’m more concerned with the fact that I can’t work out tonight than with the fact that I currently feel like someone is pushing on my spine with a Lincoln Log. But a part of me is still disappointed by the fact that I only made it nine days into 2011 before I had to surrender my little plot. And, because I am myself, it sort of made me wonder (everything makes me wonder): what does this mean?

To which the obvious answer is: nothing, Thomas. It’s a back injury, not a sign from the heavens. Right? Except I think that’s only sort of true.

I certainly don’t mean to imply that God smote me on the back to derail my plans. That’s ridiculous, and I don’t think it generally how God works (for exceptions cf. Sodom, Gomorrah). But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something I can learn from this silly setback. Something about flexibility, maybe? About being patient, and not letting things get to me, and looking for the unexpected gifts in frustrating situations? (For example: an ironclad excuse to spend half an hour in a hot Jacuzzi bath with a hard cider and a Wodehouse book? Not a bad way to spend the time in which I otherwise would have been working out.) And in the long term, about how to adjust my goals and plans so that they still have meaning even when things don’t turn out exactly the way I would have wanted them?

Yeah. For someone like me, these are important things to learn. I would prefer to learn them minus the searing back pain—and, frankly, also without this incessant blood-sugar-nausea nonsense—but I don’t rule the world, you guys. (I WAS SHOCKED TOO.) No matter how hard I work, and how carefully I plan, I am not always going to get to pick. Sometimes, life is going to mess me up, and I am going to have to roll with it. Just not onto my side, because that hurts like a [insert Bruce-Boudreau-inspired-expletive-of-choice-here].

In other news: I apparently care about sports now. WHO AM I AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MEEEEEEE?

Everyone

2010-12-16T20:23:00.003-05:00

My parents are poor. I’ve tried to think of a less stark way to say it but the truth is that it is stark: they have never had a lot of money. Their marriage started on a shoestring, homemade dresses and well-worn suits and a tiny little apartment—and then they had six children. There were years in the middle when business was better and we felt rich, rich enough to buy a new car and a stereo system and to put the girls in ballet lessons and the boys on soccer teams. But now their household is smaller—just the two of them, most of the time—and so is their income, and things are tight and there has never been a time, I don’t think, when my parents didn’t have to think about how much things cost. There probably never will be.

*****

Rachel stopped by last night while I was writing Christmas cards and we got into a conversation about how Advent never feels the way we think it ought to feel. I love the idea of this season, a time in the year to slow down and quiet down and open up a space inside for awe and wonder, a place where an infant King could come and rest without bumping his head against my pride or being overwhelmed by the stench of my sin. Every year at Thanksgiving I think: this will be the year I’ll really do it. This year, when Jesus comes, I’ll be ready. And every year, a few weeks after that, I look up from my computer where I am writing papers or sending emails or formatting footnotes and realize: it’s the middle of December. Christmas is mere days away, and I have been so caught up in my stress about this and my self-righteous indignation about that and my all-important busy-ness that I missed it, again. And my disappointment is about the feelings; it’s about wanting to experience that quiet excitement, the joyful nervous anticipation that His Mother must have felt in these final weeks before His coming. But it’s also about the reality. Advent is an opportunity, and I feel like I always miss it.

*****

It's not so bad, Peter Pan. Real Life is a good place for people with childlike hearts. There is a wonder in every day, even in the most mundane workaday places and people. Real Life is a rich place for people who love to learn. You are going to learn way, way more in the next ten years than you have in the last twenty. Real Life is a place of genuine creativity. You will write your message on the hearts of countless people and you will create home for the people you love. Real Life is a place of joy for those who love without limits. So, go do that. Take that childlike faith, that trust in goodness, that heartfelt courage, and love without limits.

~Elizabeth Foss~

*****

I read that on my lunch break today, in a post Foss wrote to honor her oldest son’s graduation from college, and I hate to say this but my first reaction was: No it’s not, Elizabeth. Real life is a place of shattering pain for people who love without limits. Even as the truth of her words resonated in my mind—as I copied those words and surrounded myself with them—something in my heart was protesting. No, it was saying. No, no. This brokenness, this deep wrenching sorrow—don’t tell him to expect joy.

*****

There have been plenty of times in my own young life when I could not have paid for the things I needed without the generosity of others—and it is only through a very deep and special kind of generosity that I can live as I do now, in comfort and safety, free from anxiety about material things. I’m sure there will be other times, lots of them, when I cannot afford to buy lattes or pretty colored pens or good gloves that actually keep my hands warm. It’s so much worse, of course, to imagine the people I love worrying about money, to think about them going without things they really ought to have. The thing that amazes me about my parents, though, is that their paucity of material wealth has never led to parsimony of spirit. Hardship has the capacity to shrivel a man’s soul; I think that maybe my parents’ struggles have stretched and expanded their hearts.

*****

The third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete Sunday, a moment in this season of preparation when the Church stops to remember that the mystery of the Incarnation has already been fulfilled in the miracle of the Resurrection and re-presents itself to us in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Most Catholics connect this Sunday with the pink candle on the Advent wreath and the pink (“rose,” as any priest under the age of 40 will insist) vestments at Mass. I enjoy the sight of a full-grown man dressed in a pink robe as much as anyone, but my strongest association with Gaudete Sunday is a homily I heard on that day one Advent in college. Gaudete, as we all (at least, those of us who paid attention in Latin 103) already knew, is the second person plural present active imperative of the second conjugation verb gaudeo, gaudere, gavisus sum, to rejoice. But the most important part, the priest insisted, is the imperative. It’s a command, not a suggestion, he kept saying. Rejoice! Whether you feel like it or not. Because joy, like love, is not something that depends on your mood. The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us. Rejoice!

*****

My first error, of course, was presuming to place myself among the number of “those who love without limits.” I thought of this a few hours later, as I walked carefully down a snow-covered sidewalk under a low gray sky. What an absurd thing to assume about myself. More likely than not, the reason I stood in Mass this Sunday with a protesting heart and thought: I just can’t. Not this year, in spite of the command, in spite of Your presence. Sorry, Jesus, was not because I had loved too much, but because I had loved too little, or for the wrong reasons, or in the wrong way. In the typical manner of one who achieves consistent success at insignificant things, I spend most of my days blinded by an ill-founded confidence in the rectitude of my opinions and the irreproachability of my behavior. Maybe now is a good time to think about that.

*****

I’m having trouble tying all of this into a tidy little Advent package. There’s something about poverty. Mary and Joseph were poor, too, you know. I posited that my parents’ material privation might have somehow brought about their beautiful open hearts, but maybe it’s not quite that direct. Perhaps the linking factor is humility. Perhaps because they always knew that God would have to do the providing—and He did, which is an important thing to remember; perhaps because they’ve had to learn, over all these years, to accept help where they would rather stand on their own feet; perhaps these things have shaped their hearts in a particular way. And perhaps for me, this year, the poverty that’s shaping me is a spiritual one, an emotional one. Perhaps the brokenness that makes me feel like joy is unattainable is the only way for me to learn that I am not the agent of my own perfection. Perhaps the soul that has no scope for delusions of self-sufficiency is better able to receive—and then radiate—the love that is, really and truly, the only thing it needs.

*****

Which brings to light, as it turns out, my second error: the subconscious identification of joy with ease, with the absence of tribulation—a transposition so subtle as to be almost imperceptible on first encounter, at least to the contemporary mind. But if that identification turned out to be correct, then the only man who has ever loved without limits, who loved with an infinite and all-encompassing love, would have had no joy at all, for the moment of His love’s fulfillment was the moment of His crucifixion. So it is no contradiction for me to say the love is real, and the pain is real, and to conclude that joy grows out of love. The real contradiction is to foresee the pain, and fear it, and refuse to risk the love that might bring it about. That doesn’t mean I know how to do this right, how to love in a way that breaks me and still find the joy I am commanded to live. But it’s not impossible, because there’s Someone else who knows. And He’s coming—at Christmas.

*****

Rejoice in the Lord always! I say it again. Rejoice! Everyone should see how unselfish you are. The Lord is near. Dismiss all anxiety from your minds. Present your needs to God in every form of prayer and in petitions full of gratitude. Then God’s own peace, which is beyond all understanding, will stand guard over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

~Philippians 4:4-7~

Checking In

2010-12-14T21:57:00.002-05:00

So, my mom and my brother were here this weekend, which was awesome, but obviously left very little time for writing. We watched White Christmas while we helped David and Lauren put up the Christmas tree, and basically other than that we sat around and read books, which is the Thomas family’s idea of having a really rockin’ time. I would say that I’m sad they’re gone, except I have so much to do before I leave for home in a week (six days. Shoot.) that I don’t have time to think about it.

Thanks for all your awesome comments on my last post, y’all! You have much knowledge. I particularly appreciated the Monster-and-M&M’s suggestion, even though it is pretty much the grossest thing ever, and the world’s most poetic description of oatmeal, complete with Homeric allusions. I would give a prize to the best suggestion except the thing that seems to be actually helping is Lauren’s magical egg muffins, which we made on Sunday and of which I have successfully consumed two (two!) both yesterday and this morning without wanting to puke at all. It’s a Christmas miracle!

(Incidentally, since everyone proved so helpful with my most recent question, I am thinking of enlisting the Internet’s aid to solve all of my outstanding problems, which include: really weak fingernails; how to store my many many scarves in a way that takes up neither closet nor drawer space; the magical way to get my Christmas shopping done before Christmas without going to a mall (it must exist, and you know how I feel about malls); and global warming.)

I’m still thinking there’s something up, though, and as soon as I can find a doctor around here, I should go get it checked out or whatever. I know what you’re thinking: You live in a major metropolitan area, Miriel. There are probably hundreds of doctors. I KNOW. That’s why I haven’t found one yet. I tried to use the provider navigator on my insurance provider’s website (Aetna, for what it’s worth) and I got overwhelmed after about five minutes. This is what Roger Thomas calls being killed with overchoice. But I’ll do it! I really will! Just as soon as my life calms down (cue the throwing of things from the general direction of everyone in my family here).

Some of you will probably hate me for this, but I’m a little bit of a sucker for reeeeally terrible Christmas music. (I know. It’s bad! That’s why I love it. Plato would have a field day with my psyche.) Anyway, I was looking for *NSYNC’s “Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays” on YouTube, and the version I found (this one), was adorned with the following comment:

I dont celebrate christmas, but this song... it's one of tehÓ most 'happiest' songs I've ever heard. It makes me miss the late 90's and early 00's so bad it hurts! Music like this was everywhere, and now... well, I remind my siblings everytime I hear Ke$ha or JB that they have one of the worst music generations and that I feel for them LOL!

BRING BACK THE LATE 90S AND EARLY 00S!

I…just. There are no words. The end.

This Is Not A Trap

2010-12-07T22:20:00.003-05:00

Generally speaking, I ascribe to the you-don't-comment-on-my-diet, I-won't-comment-on-yours school of How Not To Offend And Potentially Cause Serious Psychological Damage To The People In Your Life. But in this particular case, I'm stumped, and I need expert advice from genius people. Hey, you! You look smart. Tell me what to eat!

Here's the situation: I have always been a breakfast eater. In high school, when the inhumane policies of our local district required me to be at school kicking bum and taking names (I was student council president, you guys. It's not an easy job) by 7:30 every morning, I'd eat breakfast around 5:45 and be starving again by 9:00. (Conveniently, lunch was at 10:30...but that's another story for another day.)

So breakfast itself is an Institution, somewhat comparable to, say, the federal judiciary, or banks always closing half an hour before you get out of work. But I've never quite nailed down what to eat. For a long time, when I lived in the same house as the man who bakes the bread that makes the world's greatest toast, I would eat toast. With butter. Or peanut butter and jelly. Or cinnamon sugar. Or cheese. Sometimes with a grapefruit on the side, or some other kind of fruit, and always with coffee. Because, well, even in high school, I was a little bit of a busy bee, and the coffee helps you stay awake, you know. And lo, it was delicious. But since I no longer live with my parents, the best toast in the world is not really an option anymore.

Ed. note: Let us all pause for a moment to commemorate the moment when I realized that I just spent a hundred words telling the internet what I ate for breakfast in high school. Then I seriously considered shutting down this blog for ever and ever amen.

Okay, I'm over it.

Anyway. The point is: in the past month or so, I've been having some sort of weird thing going on in the mornings wherein I wake up hungry but nauseated, to the point where I feel like I can't eat breakfast, and no kind of food sounds even remotely appetizing, and the only thing that doesn't sound like it would induce immediate puking is cheese. So I eat a couple of pieces of cheese and feel a little better, and then I go to work. And then (spoiler alert!) the cheese wears off after about an hour I feel yucky and tired for the whole morning, and sometimes I get headaches and sometimes I cry (low blood sugar does this to me, my friends. I'm super fun on hikes), and then sometimes I have to talk myself into eating lunch because it just sounds grosss and yeah. Just...no good.

I think that maybe this problem has something to do with drinking/eating a lot of things with high acidity (coffee, carbonated water, grapefruit), but given that my attempt to verify this hypothesis via the scientific method of not drinking any coffee at all was about as successful as you'd expect it to be (i.e., it ended with me drinking a latte in a Starbucks in Dupont Circle at 6:15 on a Friday night), I have no actual evidence to back it up. I've settled on switching to tea with milk in the early morning, and then keeping it to one cup of coffee with lots of milk at some other point during the day.

My best guess is that this is helping some, but not enough. I'm still feeling queasy in the mornings sometimes, and my blood sugar is still making some pretty big swings, and it's just not cool. And it doesn't have to be like this, right? Right?

This is where you come in. I need a Breakfast Strategy, and it must satisfy the following requirements:

1. Balanced. Ish. Right? Like, I'm thinking that I probably need both protein and complex carbs at breakfast. And fruit? Am I supposed to be eating fruit? HOWTODOIT??

2. Quick. Ish. As in, sub-fifteen minutes. Mornings are busy.

3. Filling. I need to find a meal that's substantial enough to keep my blood sugar steady for several hours. I'm not opposed to the concept of the mid-morning snack, but sometimes I forget, or I'm really busy, and then CRASZHBOooOM! and that's no good.

4. Not slimy. I hate slimy things.

Beyond that, I leave myself in your hands. What should I eat for breakfast?!

(And also, if you have other ideas about what could be causing these weird stomachaches/headaches/blood sugar swings, I would love to hear them. Ed. note: The first person to suggest that I might be pregnant will be the recipient of one very, very, very sarcastic facial expression. I'm starting to think that maybe simple carbs are part of the issue? Maybe? But I really don't know.)

Halp!

Beep. Beep. Beep.

2010-12-01T22:04:00.001-05:00

My sister is having twins. Identical twins! OHMYGOSH the cute twin outfits!! And babies! Twin babies! For names so far I have suggested: Victoria and Albert (clearly no longer applicable); Thing One and Thing Two (rejected on account of being, you know, from a Dr. Seuss book); Stan and Dan or Jan and Fran (depending on their sex); Jessica and Elizabeth; Cyril and Methodius. This is going to be SO MUCH FUN.

***

I can’t write poetry. But my friend Daniel can. Go read this.

***

While I’m bossing you around…no, actually. I need to pull out of joke mode for a little while and ask—beg, really—for your prayers, if you pray. A dear friend is in the hospital awaiting major surgery to repair a serious heart condition, and there are complicating factors and lots of risks and it’s just very grave. Please remember David and his wife and his doctors; they need all the prayers they can get.

***

Oh yeah! I have a new piece up at Humane Pursuits. From a week ago, or something like that. And I’m taking two polls. First: do you think I will ever be able to post anything at Humane Pursuits without putting a literary allusion in the title? It’s sort of obnoxious, EVEN TO ME. And secondly: do you think it’s disrespectful to call an archbishop a cutie patootie?

***

Awesome things I have done lately: heard The Weepies in concert. Heard the TSO in concert. (Although, actually? The TSO was sort of underwhelming. Too much hair. Way too much hair. I would have been happier sitting at home with a mug of cider and listening to Christmas Canon on repeat…so actually not so awesome?) Gotten back into my running shoes. Eaten grapefruit and avocado salad (TRYIT). Purchased teal tights, and worn them. To work.

***

I’m tired.

Lifted Up

2010-11-17T23:16:00.006-05:00

As a general rule, Monday and I do not get along. I have this thing about not liking it very much because it's not Sunday, and it has this thing about hating my guts because...well, I've never figured out why, exactly. But this week, things were different. I sidled slyly up to Monday very early this week and slipped it a peppermint mocha (whipped cream! chocolate! coffee! WHO CAN RESIST?!). I may have promised to rub its feet. I don't quite remember. Anyway, it resisted, initially, parrying my Starbucks peace offering with a blanket of clouds and a pile of footnotes so high and precarious that I believe it may have been some kind of OSHA violation. I was momentarily daunted.

But then! The rest of Monday! It was glorious! I got a ton of work done, I had time to go to Mass, and the guy at the flower shop where I buy my daisies just gave me one. But most of all, and this is the very bestest thing, we found out that my sister is having twins! (Which, incidentally, brings the total number of kids in that generation to seven. There are only six of us. We're outnumbered by babies. Rock on.)

The part of my personality that really, really, really wants everyone to love me was pleased. Monday was being nice to me! Anything was possible!

Today, though? Dudes. It was rough. Wednesday and I usually get along quite well--I like it because it's symmetrical and whatnot, and it likes me because I'm usually wearing some kind of cute outfit since it's the middle of the week and I haven't yet slouched into my totally awesome Friday uniform comprised of this one pair of Banana Republic slacks and a navy blue cardigan. Wednesday thinks I'm pretty. USUALLY. This week, it totally sucker-punched me. Work was rough and the rest of my life was rough and strands of hair kept falling out of my ponytail, and I couldn’t! get them to stay! in! My mood was black. And foul. Putrefaction was involved. It was ugly.

Not that there weren’t bright spots. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure everyone else had gone behind Wednesday’s back and conspired to try to lift me out of my funk. I had encouraging conversations with dear friends, one of which pushed me out the door and into the sunshine for a little while. (One of the conversations, not one of the friends. No one pushed me! I am safe!) I got an email out of the blue from a sweet friend I made through my fellowship’s alumni network. I listened to Yo-Yo Ma play the cello. And the whole time, I absolutely refused to be cheered up. It was as if the universe put out its hand to help me up and…I bit it. Hard. When I left the office at 5:30, frustrated and spent, I looked at the bright red daisy on my desk and thought: what are YOU so cheerful about? Yes, that’s right, my friends. I directed spite at an inanimate object.

The day got better eventually, mostly because of these guys. I’m pretty sure I would have come in third in a Whose Day Was Worst contest (seriously, Wednesday, what’s your deal?), but somehow that didn’t stop them from taking care of me. David made me laugh about footnotes, which I didn’t even know was possible, and played new music for me in the car on the way home (The Frames! How did I not know?!?!). Lauren listened while I let the frustration out and asked real questions—the kind that reassure you that the answer actually matters—and came downstairs to check on me when she thought I might need some comfort. I went grocery shopping and folded clothes and restored some rhythm and order to my life. I’m ready to sleep now, and when I wake up tomorrow I will be armed with all sorts of strategies for getting along with Thursday. But I just wanted to pause for a minute and think about the gifts I received today, and about the things I can learn from these extraordinary people.

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

And let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season

we shall reap, if we do not lose heart.

So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all men…”

~ Galatians 6:2, 9-10 ~

Seven Quick Takes, Jammy Edition

2010-11-12T19:18:00.005-05:00

One. I’m wearing them, that is. At 6:45 on a Friday night. I’m actually going out after this, but I wasn’t going to wear my work clothes to a party anyway, and since I’m babysitting for a few hours before I go, it made perfect sense to me to have some transitional PJ time. The only danger is that I might not want to get out of them, and then I will be faced with the classic “which do I love more, my friends or my pajamas?” question (what? This doesn’t come up for you?), and after the week I’ve had there’s no telling which way it will come out. Intrigue! Uncertainty! This post is exciting already.

Two. Moving on to a totally different kind of jam: if you like to eat it, or you know some people who do, you should really check out this Etsy shop. The creator/proprietor/jamstress is my awesome friend Maggie. Maggie always knows which fork to use and can twist her hair into a chignon with a single bobby pin. Clearly, this is someone you can trust. (Also, I have tasted the jam. And dudes. It’s delicious.)

Three. As a result of the DC traffic and the amount of time it forces me to spend in the car with David (that came out all wrong. Spending time with David is not the bad part. We just don’t like the traffic), I have learned more about the game of football in the past two months than I had learned in the previous 23 years. I now really want to go to a football game…but mostly so I can wear a turtleneck and drink hot chocolate from a styrofoam cup.

Four. A real-life friend of mine who blogs at Three White Leopards had a guest post up today about awkward social situations and the way that men’s behavior can create (or destroy) a sense of security for women. The piece is quick and thought-provoking, and you should read it. (For the record: the part about how we have come to eexpect every man we encounter to be either desperate and awkward or arrogant and insufferable? IS TRUE.)

Five. Last night I saw The Weepies in concert (they were excellent, if you like that sort of thing, which I do—their sound is so much richer live) and now I have some new favorite songs. This is one of them. I love the hand percussion.

Six. I honestly did not intend to make every single item in this post relate somehow to the word “jam,” but it just sort of happened and now I feel like I’m committed. Hmm. Jam…jam…jam…If I had jammed a finger or a toe recently, I could tell you about that, but I’ve been relatively injury-free for what feels like an absurd length of time, given my track record. No jams! Hooray!

Seven. This is getting ridiculous. You should hop over to Conversion Diary, where Jen hosts Seven Quick Takes every Friday, and read her post from today. Particularly Takes 3 and 4. So! Funny!