My professor’s minuscule office is hung with what look like tapestries. He’s a Gothic Lit specialist. The room was warm and comforting. He knows my name; I knew I didn’t need to ask before I sank into the faded orange plush office chair. He asked me how I was, and he meant it. He always means it. He’s middle-aged, sensitive, theatrical, and everyone desperately wants him to be their uncle. I told him the previous day hadn’t been the greatest.

“Before we get to the paper,” he said, “can I help you with any of that stuff?”

I told him that my stress had culminated, that I had cried, and he said, “Good! You need to.”

He may have used the phrase “purge the poison,” which oddly enough, is something Ibsen, the subject of my paper, thought about. The story goes that while writing the play that I am analyzing, he kept a scorpion in a jar on his desk that would get agitated until he threw a piece of fruit inside the glass. The scorpion would attack the fruit, releasing its poison, and return to a more docile state. Stress is a toxin that must be expelled. I encounter difficulty when I try to think about emotional release as a necessary part of mental health. But I almost broke down again when Dr. Tapestries told me I needed to let myself cry. He freed me by releasing me from the expectation of having it all together. We can free each other, no matter the nature of our relationships. My professor is not my uncle; I didn’t know him two years ago; he knows my name but not much else. And yet he freed me. We build monstrous castles of stress with the bricks of other people’s expectations. Sometimes we need someone else to knock them down.

Graduate school has ruined and saved me. Adulthood is still ruining me; I have yet to find out if I can survive it. I have never known so much disquiet and anxiety. People disappoint me daily. I disappoint myself daily. The world is horrible, horrible, and beautiful. I can’t really see the beauty right now, but I believe it will shine out again.

What profit has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever.

That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.

Having always been a proponent of the benefits of free/alone time and rest, I took the beginning of grad school a bit hard. It took, I think, a semester and a half to resign myself to having little leisure time. My fellow grad students and I made fun of the Sports & Leisure majors in the Writing Center. “You can major in leisure?” I got used to always looking to the next thing when one thing was finished: the next paper, the next reading, the next meeting. I think part of the reason this semester went so well for me was because I finally entrenched myself in that mindset. I was an academic machine, and I would conquer two part-time jobs, church volunteer work, a boyfriend, and family on top! Roar.

Diligence and hard work are really good. Multitasking and managing multiple people's expectations successfully makes you feel mature and accomplished. It IS, basically, the definition of maturity.

Which is why we often feel guilty and childish when we rest. Because to be an adult means to work, and meet demands, and keep up a good reputation. When that breaks down, or we choose, for a moment, to not worry so much about those things, our actions are attended by a strange pressure, something uncomfortable that pulls us in the direction of effort, because we should at least be doing something.

I’m just not so sure about that. I’m not going to dive into fractions or percentages, or say that even God took a day off after creation, but I am convinced, deep in my spirit that ebbs into peace in this quiet, dimly lit room, that we are meant to rest, and to behold both our creations and God’s, and acknowledge, and revere, and see, and listen.

I am so glad Christmas gives me the opportunity to see. I love that it is a season of watchfulness, both a beholding of what is and an expectation of what is to come. We are meant to rest in this.

Magnificat anima mea Dominum,
et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salvatore meo.

Stay here for a little while more
‘Cause it’s a funny thing
Yes, it’s a funny thing
I need a friend, not an angel
What do you do when the drowning stops?

And what you thought was a hurricane
Was just the rustling of the wind
Why do you think we need amazing grace
To tell it like it is?
Well, I don’t need no doctor
To tear me all apart
I just need you to mend my heart

Hang on, I’m trying to look you in the eye
You know you should’ve apologized
Or should I apologize?
Is there an answer?
What do you do when the drowning stops?

Oh, what you thought was a hurricane
Was just the rustling of the wind
Why do you think we need amazing grace
To tell it like it is?
Oh, I don’t need no doctor
To tear me all apart
I just need you to mend my heart
I need you to mend my heart

–Dr. Dog, from Fate

I’m reading H.D. in my Modern Poets class. She writes with ferocity and is said to have been in love with extreme weather; her poems are full of storms and waves. She was one of those who are too much for this world. Even nature couldn’t contain her. She didn’t kill herself–she wasn’t one of those–but had trouble finding lasting love, and her identity suffered the toll of World War 2. She was plagued by violence. She was beautiful.

I’m always going to be a little closer to the ground than H.D. I am well-contented with the autumn wind shaking the maple leaves outside the window just now. I don’t wish for earthquakes. I plan to be happy for a good long time. H.D. wouldn’t have understood, would have called me naive. So be it. I will probably never write as she did–as often or as well. It’s hard to write when you’re happy.

But I will teach others about her. It’s important to invite people like H.D. into one’s mental living room. She forces us to look up. She asks us to deviate once in a while. We might be better off as human beings if we talked to the weather like she did. O wind, rend open the heat, cut apart the heat, rend it to tatters. What is around us? H.D. makes us see what is, and what could be.

If I could meet H.D. at 26, my age, I would want to sit her down with a piece of pie and a cup of tea and make sure she got a good night’s sleep. I wish she could have been happier.

But maybe,

perhaps,

then,

she would not have written.

Violet, your grasp is frail on the edge of the sand-hill, but you catch the light–frost, a star edges with its fire.

Then today at church, we concluded the morning’s singing with one of my favorite hymns, Come Thou Fount. The last four lines of this hymn read:

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it;
prone to leave the God I love.
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.

I’ve always loved these lines and knew well my tendency, the tendency of every Christian, to wander from the goodness of God. I always thought of it in an abstract, distant sense, like…when I sin, I am wandering from God. Period. But today I read those lines more intricately, and realized that even in my daily life, even in decisions like the one I’m trying to make above, I am prone to wander from that which is good. I am prone to wander not just from the rules of God as stated in Scripture, but also from the revelation of his goodness in: nature, relationships, usage of time, whathaveyou. All truth is God’s truth, and I am prone to wander from that truth. I think of Paul and his famous “I do what I do not want to do” monologue. Again, I’ve always loved that passage, but today it became more concrete for me. We’re not just talking about abstract guidelines here. We’re talking about people throwing away committed relationships. Bragging to look better at work. Indulgences of all kinds. Gossip. Judgment of others’ actions when we haven’t walked a mile in their shoes. Procrastination in doing good. Sacrificing the courage of the everyday journey for something ever new and exciting. In all of these things, we are prone to wander, not only from the person of God, but from the avenues of redemption he has offered to us.

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
–from Romans 7

Back to the “situation” I was talking about. I was encouraged today. It’s not the most comfortable thing to know that your “flesh” is working against you, and that “evil you do not want to do” attacks in hordes in broad daylight. It makes me want to run away, to forget everything that is difficult. But I am encouraged that my mind still serves the law of God and I can choose that which is good even when my body feels prone to wander. It is freeing to know that I don’t have to listen to my every impulse. Truth is unchanging. I can stake all of my hope on that.

To finish, a poem from C.S. Lewis (yes, poetry too–what didn’t the man do?) that speaks to this.

As the Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love –a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek–
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

7.6.07
On a vacation where solitude is plentiful and should be welcomed, I find myself missing everyone I’ve ever known. The cabin reminds me of the old, smoky youth retreat cabin where I was invited in spite of my young age because my best friends were older than I. The rustic setting takes me back to Crooked Creek Camp somewhere in the foothills of Iowa, where on church retreats, our congregation seized every day and packed it with swimming, carpetball, and homemade potlucks. Late night movies recall college and putting off homework, and even the little cafe reminded me of my grandmother’s kitchen and how, after a hard day digging away at the backyard creek, she always had homemade rolls and strawberry jelly to give us.

I just read “My Antonia” by Willa Cather (370-some pages in an evening and a day) and it was about the precious and incommunicable past that you share always with those you love, even though you are separated. It’s true. I do have the past, and so do they, and it will always bind us together. But when the memories are so potent you can taste them, it is hard not to want to envelop yourself in them, burying yourself in them, at the expense of the present and the ever foreboding future. The past is so certain. What has been has been, and you can see the purposes–the deeply wrought intent–in every action, experience, meal, thunderstorm. I cling to the past because I love that blessed assurance that we were alive and happy, and even when we weren’t happy, we were strong. The joy of the past. How secure and unwanting. May the future quickly become the past, so I can leave fear behind and revel in bygone days of laughter and living things.

I have become extremely attached to this picture. If I lost it, I would be upset. So many things about it come alive for me: the deep colors–my favorites, the movement of the grass, the brightness of the moon, the subtle stars, the personality of the girl, the solidity of the rock beneath her. If ever there were a picture I wished I could jump inside, this is it. This is me.

It’s a good Fourth of July weekend. Yesterday work at the bookstore moved quickly, and in the evening, Angela, Mariah, and I put on a mini fireworks show for our aunts and uncles, backdropped by some rather impressive and illegal fireworks a neighbor was setting off.

Today I am enjoying a cool and quiet house, baking blueberry muffins, and waiting for Andrew to finally be home. Once I’m satisfied that he’s really back again and not leaving for a while, I’m going to try to persuade him to drive up Mt. Penn to watch multiple fireworks displays tonight.

Now I’m finishing up a summer project on feminism and its relationship to religion. I thought I was going to get somewhere. I thought that by the end of this, I’d have the answers. And I don’t, at all. The deeper I get, the more confused I am. Just like in any subject worth studying, the multiplicity of voices isn’t doing much to provide clarity. To come to any kind of conclusion, I have to start with myself. I have to pick and choose what to think and believe, which is simultaneously disappointing and freeing. But right now, I still just have a bunch of questions.

- I think it’s easiest logistically for married couples to have the same name, but why am I the one expected to give up that part of my identity?

- Why do I have the eerie feeling that, even in the most harmonious marriages, the woman still does more work overall, and is judged on her domestic performance?

- Why is the U.S. still so lame about maternity leave? Read this article. Seriously, people.

- WHY in heckfire* is there still a pay gap?
*heckfire courtesy of Jentry B.

- Why is female emotion frequently disparaged while male rage goes largely unchecked?

- Are men and women so different? Or are we so similar that we just mix ourselves up?

- What will it take to eliminate stereotypes and treat ALL people like whole and valid human beings?