You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June, 2008.
I skipped church this morning, but spent some time reading Philippians and trying to pull myself out a funk. Lately, I like to read The Message version of the Bible. I used to not enjoy The Message, finding it odd and wordy, but in Eat This Book, Eugene Peterson describes The Message translation as being a version of Scripture for Americans. Not that I think Americans are odd or in need of extemporaneous language, but understanding this Americanized context helps me find new revelations in my Scripture reading. I got to Philippians 3 and was particularly struck by this passage:
The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. [v.7-8]
I’ve thought a lot lately about vocation and career, about where I find my self-worth and identity, and about how making comparisons between myself and others is a real joy-stealer. Ultimately I’ve been looking to “credentials” to somehow provide me with joy and worth, rather than finding these things in the “privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master.” I have a hard time wrapping my mind around this, reconciling the goals I hope to achieve in my lifetime and a complete abandonment of worldliness for Christ’s sake. But I know the answer is in Matthew 10:39: “If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.” Deny myself, take up my cross, forget the world, and God will show me my true self, my true vocation, my true joy.
I’m almost finished reading The Cloister Walk. I was encouraged today to read that many monks and nuns struggle with finding a balance between work and prayer. Somehow we feel more productive when we do, not when we just sit with God.
A friend from college left me a message today that said, “you’re beauty.” It was a lovely surprise.
When I woke up this morning, I looked like this.
Now, I look like this.
I knew it was coming, the urge to lop off my locks. This morning I couldn’t do a darn thing with my hair–it was hot and humid as all get out, and it rained. Around noon, I made my appointment and at four, my hair was on the floor. Turns out the girl who cut my hair has this same cut, so it was easy to describe it to her. She also was voted the best hairstylist in Mobile and just found out today. Not too shabby.
I feel about five pounds lighter. And the breeze is hitting my neck.
Yes, it’s true. Three years ago today I was a bride. We had our little backyard tea party and got hitched. I asked Adam if he can believe it’s been three years and he said, “We still have a long way to go.” Yes, hopefully, that’s the case.
[This is not the most flattering picture of me, but it's the only one I have of our wedding day in digital form. My eyes were watering, and it was at least 95 degrees outside, a moment before this picture was taken.]
Unfortunately, we won’t have any time together today because of my exhaustive Wednesday schedule, but I was able to sneak out of work early yesterday so we could spend some time together. We saw Get Smart yesterday afternoon, then went to Wintzell’s for dinner. Get Smart wasn’t quite as goofy as I had hoped (having watched it on Nick at Nite as a child), but it was a decent, fun summer movie. Wintzell’s was what it always is, seeing that we frequent it almost weekly, especially for Yuengling dollar drafts. After dinner, we went home, relaxed, and watched a little TV. Hopefully, Saturday we’ll be able to do something extra special to celebrate.
I’ve found that reading slowly has a cathartic effect that’s lost when I race through books. Reading shouldn’t be merely a consumer exercise, though there are moments when that’s appropriate. Instead the art of lectio, or meditative reading, is a spiritual practice that can be applied to any type of reading, particularly poetry. Good Letters post today is on slow reading:
Remember decades ago when “speed-reading” was all the rage? It was a cultural craze that I felt utterly alienated from. I’ve always read to myself as if I were reading aloud: that is, hearing every word, listening for the rhythms of a line, letting words reverberate with the manifold meanings that a fine author will set off in them.
I just sent off three poems. Earlier today, I wrote another one. I’ve been trying to be more intentional about writing and sending what I have written out for publication. I decided this weekend that it would be good for me to start carrying around a notebook to jot down thoughts, quotes, or verses that strike me and to keep track of poems and ideas I’ve been working out in my head. I never understood until recently how my faith and art are so inextricably interlinked, that poetry doesn’t have to be either secular or sacred. As I used to have a faith journal and kept my poetry writing separate, this notebook is a way for me to blend it all together.
When I wrote my master’s thesis, I tried to touch on this secular/sacred divide but lacked the vocabulary or knowledge base to really explore it. Recently when rereading my thesis, including the research essay introducing the poems, I was struck by the limits of my exploration of these ideas. What I tried to do when writing poetry about women of the Bible was to purposely secularize them, to plop them down in contemporary situations devoid of faith and see how they would react. Thinking back to my life at the time, that’s also what I was trying to do for myself–separate the sacred and the secular, extract the truth of who God is and place it neatly in the corner while I did my own thing. I drank a lot, dated a boy who wasn’t saved, and started lying to everyone. I knew God was there, but I wasn’t ready to face the truth.
It’s amazing that I could even write poems at the time and even more that they turned out as lovely and cohesive as they are. Reading back through them, I can seek cracks where my rebellion seeped in, but the poems remain intact. They also remain a thumbprint of a time since past, a time I can’t recapture but that I can look on with fondness.
Now as I learn more about God and faith and their intersection with my art, I am humbled by what I didn’t know then and what I still have to learn. That being a poet could be a calling by God is both delightful and unsettling. I’m realizing, though, that this is part of his plan for my life. And I’m encouraged, most recently by Kathleen Norris’s work as she writes unapologetically about faith, art, and life. As I read Norris’s books, I get sad that I hadn’t found her before when I was writing my thesis and needing to hear voices and poems similar to my own. But as soon as I have this thought, I revise it, reminding myself that I wouldn’t have been ready, that her writing wouldn’t have weighed so heavily on me. If I had read Little Girls in Church or The Cloister Walk, I may have seen a kindred spirit but dismissed her in my rebellion. Now, as a poet, a wife, and a woman of God, I savor Norris’s words and hear her voice in the background whispering, it’s OK. Keep moving on.
I found out today that I’ve been chosen to work for Relief Journal as a proofreader! How wonderfully fantastic. I’m celebrating with an iced coffee and more Viva la Vida.
The last two days I’ve been exceptionally whiny. The last two days have also been exceptionally bad–a terrible headache, lack of sleep, work troubles, uncertainty about the future, feeling like I can never get it all done. Yesterday was a breaking point. Today I feel better.
I often struggle with my first born, type-A approach to life. In some ways, being this way is beneficial: I’m goal-oriented, expect excellence from everybody, think I can take on the world all by myself. But for every good, there is bad as well, and I frequently end up putting so much pressure on myself that I’m virtually debilitated and can’t really get anything accomplished. I’m not really sure where the balance lies between relaxing and enjoying life and trying to achieve goals that require extra effort. Yes, I could work my 9-5, go home, and watch TV all night like many Americans. But I want something more, and I’m constantly striving to find that balance.
My dad calls it “performance orientation,” where a person’s value in life is inextricably linked to what they can do, not in who they are or, more importantly, who God is. I feel guilty about not getting quiet enough with God, squeezing in prayers and asking for immediate answers rather than waiting for him to reveal himself. Whether it’s performance orientation or general impatience, it’s a problem.
At any rate, I’m better today. I made some cinnamon hazelnut coffee that my thoughtful husband bought me yesterday and listened to the new Coldplay album on the way in to work. I also listened to the Poetry Foundation’s podcast, Poetry Off the Shelf, about Grace Paley, a poet I’d never heard of but whose poems really touched me this morning, and did a sudoku puzzle to help clear my head.
I just have to remind myself that his grace really is sufficient.
New standards are being formed for bloggers quoting from the AP. This should prove quite interesting.
The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers’ group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online . . . as part of an effort to create standards for online use of AP stories by bloggers that would protect AP content without discouraging bloggers from legitimately quoting from it.
Today my brain feels all mushy. Sometimes I feel like I take in so much information in a day that my brain gets lazy and forgets how to process it all. That a coworker gave me a riddle/puzzle to solve around midday didn’t help matters. I spent over an hour trying to decipher it and when I finally did thought, well, that was obvious. But, today especially, I have had to remind myself to back off and not get too crazy thinking about things like what I’m going to teach my students tomorrow [and if I've taught them anything so far this semester--I'm constantly revising but getting better, I swear], what creative writing PhD programs I might ever be interested in applying to [UIC has an interesting program, so does UGA], which journals I should send my poems [sent out three yesterday--keep your fingers crossed], and what really is the fate of the sentence. I know, I know–I’m nuts.
I think I might go home and enjoy a glass of wine. Maybe two.
I had a lovely, relaxing, rejuvenating weekend, which I so desperately needed. I was exhausted by the end of last week and feeling buried under all my to-dos. So, I effectively did nothing productive all weekend.
Friday, despite the early afternoon showers, it cleared up enough that Adam and I were able to wander around downtown for the artwalk. There were a few new art spaces and we hadn’t been in a few months, and it was good to have something new to look at. Saturday, I did absolutely nothing except read and watch movies: No Reservations, The Eye, and Chalk. All three were pretty mediocre, though Chalk, a mockumentary about the difficulty of being a teacher, was kind of fun [having been there myself]. Yesterday, I skipped church to talk to my dad on the phone. Then I hit the gym, read a bit, and started season 4 of The Sopranos.
Now I’m back to work for another week. You know how we roll.
