Bumper Sticker of the Day:

DOGS ARE FAMILY!

You wouldn't chain your grandma outside!

Redemption

"All that is gold does not glitter,
   Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
   Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
   A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be the blade that was broken,
   The crownless again shall be king."

It's in our stories, in our songs,
in our hopes, in our hearts,
in all that makes us human.
And it is also real.
Merry Christmas.

 

Snow Day!

I'm angry with myself. We're not speaking... So, while she gets all of her sulkiness out, I am going to read all day long in my cozy, snow-blanketed house.

Being the first part of The Lord of The Rings

This is my Christmas present to myself this year: before I return to JBU, I will read The Fellowship of The Ring. I’ve tried before, and it didn’t work. This time, I think we are a go. I’m only 81 pages into it. I know I tend toward overexcitement about projects at the beginning, but, seriously, this just might work.

I can’t believe I just grouped this experience with other “projects” I have undertaken. I can’t believe that I start my sentences with cheesy and false phrases like “I can’t believe . . .” Cheesy because I say it all the time, and false because I can believe that I would make a project out of reading. It’s usually what I do.

I need to work on reading for the sake of reading. A less analytical approach toward literature is probably in order.

I see something like Peter Pan, and all I can think is, ‘It’s a commentary on adolescent turmoil.  The protagonist is deeply marked by the internal conflict that comes with aging. This is compounded by his obvious Oedipal tendencies (don’t believe me? He’s enamored with Wendy, who is some sort of mother to him and his Lost Boys. His exploits chiefly involve the maiming of Captain Hook, who is always played by a double-cast actor. His other role? Mr. Darling, the father of the three children taken to Never-Never Land. Significant? I THINK YES). Of course the boy doesn’t want to grow up. Not only is he afraid of the real world, he is afraid of the happenings in his own head. Why DEAL with all of that? Why not remain a boy forever? As he is, he is fixed in time. These conflicts are frozen with him, thereby giving him the option to never face them.’

Or maybe it’s just a play about a boy who can fly.

So, back to Fellowship.

Maybe part of my self-given present should be a promise to not overanalyze this one. Instead, I’ll enter humbly into the world that Tolkien crafted – and a wonderful world it is. It runs on a slower, richer pace than the hyped-up Hollywood slideshow. The movie version is (not surprisingly) sexitized. The fifty-year old Frodo and enormous-eybrowed Gandalf from the book would simply not be allowed…

Yep, definitely analyzing again.

II'm not saying my analyses are accurate. I’m not saying everyone should do this to books. I just will. Always. I enjoy my little pretenses, probably too much.

Someday, I’ll make the effort to erase the pretense and presumption. I’ll read this book to my kids when they’re all tucked up in bed, eyes wide in wonderment. Then, the book will just be a book. A great book. A dense book. Maybe too dense for really small ones… perhaps we’ll start with a different world, like Narnia, or Hogwarts, or even Never-Never Land.

But I’ll leave out all the crap about Oedipus.

Miss Scarlett

Sometimes it's fun to pretend that you're someone else.

Makes you think about who you are in real life.

Finally.

The Honors Orientation final was beautiful.

Everyone in the room said what they had to say. Not what anybody told them to say.

We’re changing. We’re growing. We’re being transformed.

Piece of psycho doodle “poetry” (composed during class):

PERHAPS EVERYONE

Is a               

GENIUS ...

Don’t judge.

Don’t judge.
Don’t ever judge.
Don’t ever ever ever judge.
Don’t ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever
ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever
ever ever ever ever ever

                                                                                                judge.

                                                                                                ever.

                                                                                                                                LISTEN TO THEM.

Listen to the people.       à

listentothepeople.

                                                                you’ll learn more than you ever

                                          thought you could.

You want to see His glory?

Doing Nothing.

I was gifted a copy of The Art of Doing Nothing.

Over break, I will discover nothing. And blog about it.

Perhaps this was not the gifter's intent, but there it is.

New Year's Resolution (ahead of the game!)

My New Year's Resolution is to NEVER GET A PINTREST.






We'll see what happens.

Something I'll Regret Posting

You. You have me up at 2 a.m. blogging when I really should be asleep. Up blogging about things that really shouldn’t matter anymore, things that should have stopped mattering to me about 4 years ago, and yet, I’m still typing.

I only pretended to like The Who. Thought you should know.

The brief obsession with Douglas Adams, on the other hand, was genuine.

I really hate how almost everything I did for a while was in an attempt to impress you. I really hate how much I still try to impress you. I really hate that I felt that way – like I had to impress you. It was like you wanted something from me, something that wasn’t actually me, so I faked it… It was like I was your little dancing monkey or something.

And I’m starting to sound very like that girl who you once told in an email something like, “You’re just a girl. I should have known. Just a girl, like the rest of them. If you’re not, prove me wrong. Don’t send this to all of your friends in the next five minutes. Don’t tell anyone about it at all.”

I just want you to know that I didn’t send it to anyone. I did, however, print it out and made my dad read it because I was distraught. Just so you know - he wasn’t harsh towards you or anything. I really wanted him to be, but he wasn’t.

A couple years after you sent me that email, I showed it to Breonna, and then I BURNED IT IN MY KITCHEN SINK ALONG WITH A PICTURE OF US FROM THAT STUPID DINNER DANCE.

So, yes, you’re absolutely right, I am “Just a girl, like the rest of them.”

And I’m still trying to impress you.

And failing.

I skip every Jack Johnson song on Pandora. I love salad dressing. I always have. I always will. I always use more of it than I should.

 I care. I care about you. I still care about you, and I’m going to keep caring about you. I can’t stop caring about you. I don’t know why. I’m not going to try to untangle my motives. I just care. I care.

And you decided I was good enough for a few weeks at the beginning of this semester and then, apparently, I wasn’t good enough anymore. I wasn’t impressive enough anymore. I hadn’t earned the right of your royal attention anymore.

And that probably isn’t what happened, but it still feels like it. And I’m going to blog out my feelings in this immature manner because, as you once so astutely observed, I am “just a girl.”

Maybe you’ll read this someday, you have the URL somewhere. The worst part is that I want you to.

Oh!

I want out. I want out of my mindset, of my opinions, of my prejudices.

The hero that was supposed to rescue me can flit and fade across the movie screen, in all his brawn and bravado, brandishing his weapons.

There are other sorts of heroes - 

The sorts of heroes that understand that sanity is weakness and madness is strength. They have dreams, and they rebuild temples; their ideals are loftier than the mountains which they foolishly attempt to climb… They try to remind me that the fruits in the apple cart are not apples but oranges, and the apple cart should probably be blown to smithereens instead of merely “upset.”

The world does not understand, and will always undermine, the kingdom from which these heroes come. The world kills them, because they simply cannot exist here – they do not belong.

And always, always, the unyielding faithfulness and grace of God will exist to save us – but never in the way that we predict, never in the way that we could readily accept.

The grace of God comes out of nowhere. The grace of God hurtles past us, mounted upon a ragged horse, shouting battle cries at windmills. The grace of God is a thirty-something whack job from Nowheresville, Israel, who says that life is death and death is life. The grace of God is for those who are foolish enough to forget what’s impossible and embrace what is.

(blogging to get angst out of my system. J-me, you don't have to read this)

I turned in four papers today...

I don't think I did as well on them as I could have...

I say Evangelicals should pursue the life of the mind... and I don't do it myself...

ANGST ANGST ANGST / HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY/ PRIDE PRIDE PRIDE.

Whooo. Ok, off to Walker's Christmas party.

Mark Noll

Prompted: Do you agree with Noll’s perceptions on the evangelical mind in the United States of America today? Pick a side – either Noll’s or the churches – and passionately defend it (do not provide middle ground or valid points for both sides; pick one stance and defend why you agree – convince me!).

“Unlike their spiritual ancestors, modern evangelicals have not pursued comprehensive thinking under God or sought a mind shaped to its furthest reaches by Christian perspectives.”

                                                                                                                                                ~Mark Noll

He’s right.

Where to start this rant… hmmmmm…

Noll starts his book by acknowledging that the modern Evangelical Church has had “dynamic success at a popular level.” And it has. But, despite this (or perhaps because of it) the modern Evangelical Church is not exactly known as a great institution of thought…

Quite the opposite.

All I really have to draw from on this topic is my own experience with the modern Evangelical Church. Here’s my spin on the facts, whatever they might be:

The literature with the “Evangelical Church” label is penned by Francine Rivers, Ted Dekker, Jerry B. Jenkins, and the like. Or it has “Chicken Soup” in the title. This is bad.

“Evangelical Church” politics seem to involve yelling. And arrogance. And television. And a moral obligation to vote Republican. This is bad.

“Evangelical Church” conferences need lights, and popular music groups, and lots of crying. This is bad.

The “Evangelical Church” teen-girl Bible study means ice cream and purity talks. This is bad.

I grew up in “Evangelical Church.” I have never read the entire Bible. This is bad.

When Noll was talking about approaching other subjects besides theology in a distinctly “Evangelical” manner, I grasped for something comparable. How do you study economics in a “Christian” way? How do you study anthropology in a “Christian” way? You can certainly do it in a “secular” way… that seems to be the only way anyone does it these days.

But is there a “Christian” way? Or is Richard Hofstadter right when he says, “In fact, learning and cultivation appear to be handicaps in the propagation of faith”?

Well, as long as the Evangelical Church keeps feeding itself intellectual Ramen, who’s going to prove him wrong?

So, here's the deal...

Working on this "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" chapter... I should probably come up with an intelligent response to this. I will... in the morning...

All I have right now is, "YOU GO MARK NOLL. YOU GO!"

Yep.

G'night.

Intrinsic Good in Practice

My annual turkey nap was cut short this year. “Meredith,” said my brother Stephen, “get up. We’re playing Bananagrams.”

[A brief and entirely unnecessary analysis of Stephen’s motives: my mother had told us that we were going to play a family game, and we were going to do it before he could go over to his girlfriend’s house. I hold no animosity towards him. Madison is wonderful.]

So we played Bananagrams. (def. Bananagrams – a game that’s like scrabble but doesn’t take as long). And it was good.

After Stephen left, I stayed at the kitchen table and fooled around with tiles. My dad came back and sat with me. And I’m not really sure how this happened, but we started playing “Hobbit Scrabble,” which wasn’t actually Scrabble. It was Banagrams, but it was better, because we were making up Hobbit words.

We read our creations, and defined them, and laughed. According to me, “Telpsy” is a feminine Hobbit name. My dad thinks it sounds like a Hobbit disease. He came up with “Bopsak” (a Hobbit’s backpack), “Pogwig” (a sort of mushroom that grows in the Shire), and my personal favorite, “Farquarzone.” That word doesn’t mean anything at all.

I’m thankful for my dad.

Good

Prompted: Use own words to define intrinsic good, list 20 things that are intrinsically good, talk about a time you experienced something that was intrinsically good.

Definition:

Intrinsically good things can be seen as good without having to look at the results. The means justify themselves.

Intrinsic goodies:

-Reading out loud

-Splatter painting

-Baking

-Running

-Gardening

-Taking walks

-Sending letters

-Looking at old photographs

-Laughing

-Hugging

-Helping people

-Listening to music

-Creating music

-Listening to other people create music

-Backpacking

-Reading books you aren’t required to read

-Enjoying books you are required to read

-Sabbath-ing

-Surprising somebody

-Waiting for a long time (if something is worth waiting for, then the wait is worth something)

Storytime:

When I was in third or fourth grade, I spent a whole evening dancing on my deck to the Dragonheart soundtrack. I dragged the boom box out there and plugged it into an old socket on the outside of the house. The trees in the backyard were green, the wind was brisk, and my feet were bare. My mother told me to watch out for splinters. And I just danced. It was only artistic by the standards of not giving a rip about standards. I waved my arms around and pointed my toes. It wasn’t for anybody or because of anybody. But my dad did stand on the deck and watch for a while. I only pretended I didn’t see him.

CHA - CHING

An excuse:

J-me, this is way over 250 words. I skipped the edit because I wanted to rant.

 A prompt:

Write about a time where you felt “banked” in a classroom setting. Describe your experience. No names.

A definition:

Banking – A process in which teachers deposit their information into the brains of the students. If the students store the deposited information correctly, they will have success when the teachers come to make withdrawals. Banks that return what was deposited upon demand of withdrawal are given high scores, and banks that fail to do so are given low marks. It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that the only information that will need to be regurgitated by the little brain banks is the information the teachers have placed there. Anything else would be unjust. The students are only responsible for the information the teacher has deposited in their heads (as evidence: everyday conversation in schools across the nation – Student speaking to other student or parent or teacher or anyone else on the planet: “I can’t believe that was on the test, we didn’t even go over it in class, this is so unfair, I hate that teacher”).

A tangent:

I want to start riots. But I am not lost. I will not be lost. Just because I have been a willing product of this system does not mean that this system is everywhere. It is not inside me always, it just has been before, and will be again, but that does not mean that I have to be lost.

A story:

Once upon a time in the class of an unnamed teacher at an unnamed high school, I answered a question correctly. We were reading the T.S. Eliot poem, “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock.” My teacher had asked, “What is the significance of the repeated phrase: ‘In the room the women come and go/Talking of Michelangelo’?”

Silence in the classroom. I raised my hand. I can’t remember what I said (although, just now, I did try to recreate something impressive). Something about idealized figures and how the speaker feels greater insignificance because he cannot match up to/feels great disdain for the ideals of his society. All I remember is my teacher beaming at me like a person who had received a large amount of interest on a deposit.

An example:

I’m in a classroom (well, an English classroom, this example doesn’t exactly work with math), a teacher asks a question. Students offer various answers, to all of which the teacher says, “Yes, what else?” The yes sounds painful. Finally, a student brings up the correct answer [in this case, “correct answer” is interchangeable with “the answer the teacher was thinking about”]. The teacher changes the tone of his “Yes,” and the teacher no longer feels the need to repeat, “what else?” because the original question has been answered. The teacher is satisfied.

[WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE (to the girl who defines herself by her GPA) BETWEEN TEACHER SATISFACTION AND TRUTH?]

I have always been good at satisfying teachers. It got me into college.

Back to the story:

Looking back on it, that situation was banking. The correctness of my answer hinged (almost entirely) on the satisfaction of the teacher. I had assimilated enough information about him and the way he treated literature into my bank to produce good withdrawals more often than the rest of the class.

The same teacher once asked me, “Don’t you think that most questions are really statements in disguise?”

[I’ll let you enjoy the irony of that one without hindering it with an explanation]

OF COURSE I DO. I think that because YOU think that. I’ll argue with you if you want me to.

Gold Stars

(I was prompted to look at an alternative approach to education and consider the differences between it and JBU/ throw my own life in there somehow. Life is funny, and I just happened to have this little freak out this morning that pertained to the prompt… so I rambled a little longer than normal)

At about 10 a.m., 10/26/11

I am freaking out right now. I am freaking out because I have half of a research paper left to write for my Lit. class by tomorrow and about 30 more pages of Confessions to understand before Western Civ. I am having trouble with Augustine… probably because I’m trying to read it so quickly, but it doesn’t matter, it MUST be done, and it must be done soon. Oh, how glad I will be when this week is over.

Why am I freaking out? Well, because if I don’t understand and read all of Augustine, Dr. Moore will give us one of those in-class reflection questions, and I won’t do well on it, and it will affect my grade… and if I don’t finish that paper, and finish it well, I’ll get a bad grade, which will affect my grade, and GPA, and job/family/happy life in suburbia….

GOSH I WISH THOSE STUPID BELLS WOULD STOP RINGING, I CAN’T CONCENTRATE! Don’t they UNDERSTAND that I am TRYING to get GOOD GRADES HERE!!!!!!!!

Oh, why do I always wait until the last minute to do these sorts of things? It makes everything feel so meaningless. I weary of working for the little gold star stickers (at least the figurative ones, real gold star stickers would be AWESOME), they are never enough, anyway… I think I want understanding for the sake of understanding, but I’ve been hardwired to get straight A’s. After all, is there a difference?

About 12 hours later

So, what this blog was actually supposed to be about:

I thought about going to St. John’s College. I like books, and I like the idea of learning by studying and discussing books, but I was pretty much scared away from the college by the tuition.

The real appeal of St. John’s lies in this: the abandonment of grades and the embracing of the great books leads to a fuller understanding of the intrinsic value of knowledge. The motivation to learn does not have to be divided between the desire for good grades and the desire for understanding. Also, the students have more frequent access to the source of the knowledge found in textbooks. It’s not that I would really want to study calculus out of Newton’s Principia, but there is something freeing about it. The idea sort of tickles my romantic fancy.

I’m not saying that the students at St. John’s have completely pure (understanding for the sake of understanding) motives. Most of them are planning on some profession, and some of them must use what they learn for appearances sake (then again, who doesn’t).

Since JBU does give grades, grades will always be a potential motivator for students. So does that mean we eliminate grades? Do we eliminate the factor that has placed me above my peers and told me who I am? Heck yes. Or, maybe I should just eliminate the grades from my own mind… hmmmm…

The Impossibilities

Laying in the ravine next to the Honors house on Sunday at 5:43 p.m. - I started thinking:

1. What if there were gumdrops inside acorns?

2. What if there were people who lived in the clouds and looked down on us and watched all of the things we did? Would they find us funny, or sad, or just crazy? Would they be transparent people, or  blue people, or cloudy looking people, or could they change with the weather?

3. What if one day the world just cracked open like an egg and the center spilled out all over space? (and then I started getting all philosophical and wondering if I could make that image mean something... I think I was trying too hard) But anyway - would the yolk start frying? Is space hot enough for that? Which way would it spill out? How do we know which way is up? What if we had it all wrong all along?

Then I stopped thinking, got up, and walked away. So, that wasn't seven... I am not disciplined with my impossible thinking.

J-me, we have a problem...

When I'm no longer bound by secrecy, I'll talk about it... I think I'll learn from this failure, but mostly I'm discouraged by the amount of time I spend concentrating on myself, and the "mission" is making it uncomfortably clear...

What I Want 2.0

Prompt: (Go outside, then blog) And I want you to be real honest with yourself. Don’t listen to the voices in your head..don’t listen to the pressure you feel from either yourself, your parents, your friends, or any other source. I want you to listen to your heart. To truly listen to your heart. And then after you have spent time with yourself...I want you to go back inside and write. Write about it. Write about your dreams, your fears. Write about whatever tugs at your heartstrings. Just write.

I sat down with myself today to discuss the possibility that I’m focusing too much on introspection.

I am sick of her and her sympathetic expressions, her quiet condemnations.

She smiles at me and says, “Perhaps you do think too much. If you thought less, well, if you regulated what you thought about…” She leans over and pulls the mirror out of her purse and hands it to me. “We could be better.”

I see in it my reflection. “Here,” she says, pointing, “these parts are not quite right.”  She flips open her notepad and begins to write, listing fixes, “Watch fewer chick flicks, memorize a chapter of scripture every week, develop more friendships, try harder in cross country, do more community service…”

I think about lying on the floor of an art museum. I think about three year olds. I think about reading Oedipus the King while sitting in the ruin of a Greek theatre. I think about ice cream, and hymns, and really, really big trees. I think about my dad and how we dance around the family room singing Donovan songs, belting out phrases like, “Antediluvian Kings.”

She hands me her list. “God will just LOVE this, and I know we can do it!”

“Like hell we can.”

I touch the corner of her list to the end of my cigarette.

A Story about a Little Dancing Monkey

Who are some of the audiences for whom we feel the pressure to perform? Given these pressures, how can students perform for an audience of one?

I’m not sure how to start this… it’s pretty melodramatic to say that I feel the pressure to perform for everyone.

But I feel the pressure to perform for everyone. I want them all to see me as good.

I want to be a good daughter. I want to be a good student. I want to be good at what I eventually decide to do. I want to be a good Christian.

I want the entire world to see me as good. I want their applause for something. And at the same time, I’m convinced that their applause, in itself, is a bad motive. In the interest of being extra good, I don’t want to have bad motives. I want their applause for doing something good AND for not needing their applause for the good thing that I did because my motives are above that kind of nonsense. And on it goes.

So, about God…

I don’t know how to perform for an audience of one, but it probably has something to do with motivation… and I’m struggling with it.

To the Most Successful Person I Know:

Dear Aunt Nell,

I almost wish you had stopped by Arkansas on your way back to North Carolina a few weeks ago, but it probably would have been too far out of the way. I’d love to introduce you to JBU.

My college experience has been wonderful. Of course, I’m still in that dreamy-eyed freshman phase. The actual school part of this new life is so different than I envisioned. Instead of being pressured to perform well academically, I’ve been encouraged to take a good long look at who I am.

I’m steadily realizing that I’m not who I thought I was. I'm just now figuring out where to start. This whole process makes me think of people who do know who they are, and you come to mind. Mostly, your love for Christ comes to mind.

You were so kind to me when I was little (and maybe I’m still little). I just remember sitting in your hotel room at that one family reunion and feeling so loved. I remember you reading devotionals to us in the car on that long drive to Florida. I remember your tenderness, your hugs, and your encouraging words.

When I look at you, I see someone content. Isn’t that what everyone is trying to be? I suppose that they, like I did for a long time and still do sometimes, thought that you had to get something to be happy. You figured out a long time ago that deep joy is the result of surrender.

Seeing the joy in your life encourages me to pursue Christ.

                                                                                                                                Love,

                                                                                                                                Meredith

Blondes

What I admire about the blondes (everyone in my Honors O. group is blonde, which doesn't really mean anything, it's just a fun coincidence):

Chloe is generous with everything from brownie mixes to hugs. Her cooking supplies and skills made Saturday more fun, and I am so, so glad she's a hugger.

Melissa is full of peace, and she chooses not to freak out about things. Her calm demeanor is relaxing to everyone else around her.

Hayley is humble. She's been a guide on canoeing trips, and she actually knows how to paddle a raft, but she didn't feel the need to lord this knowledge over us on the float trip.She didn't act superior.

Jenna is genuine. She invests herself in conversations and truly cares about other people's lives. Her smile convinces me of this!

I'm so excited to get to know all of you better!

Changing

Prompt: Reflect on yourself and describe how you have changed within the past month.

Here we go.

As far as emotions, changes, blog posts, and pretty much everything else except team sports goes, I tend to err on the side of the extreme.

In accordance with that, I lost my mind when I came to college. I was so excited, and I felt so free. If my life was a movie, the first few weeks here would have been the cheesy montage part, complete with the pop song in the background. I knew who I was and what I wanted. My mind was spinning all of the time, and I had the rest of my life planned out in detail. I was on my way to goodness, wholeness, and completeness. I felt like I had finally won the victory over myself, and was God ever lucky to have me now. I could be of so much use!

Sure, I had been a dolt for the past few years. But two weeks of college prepared me to take on the world, to conquer it, to win. Heck, I could leave. I had a universe to save.

My third weekend here, I was convicted. I received an email that wounded my pride, read a letter that made me realize just how rash I had been, and listened to a chapel session that turned all of my thinking on its head. My pride was checked as in checkmate. As in, I thought I was winning, but now it’s over, and the chess game simile doesn’t work because it’s not a game and there isn’t anything to win. But if there was, I definitely lost.

So, I’ve been on a self-imposed rollercoaster. Now I’m dizzy. I’m also frustrated, because I’ve learned this lesson before. A month ago, I needed to figure out what was best for me on my own. Now I know how poorly that pursuit ends.

To tie the story metaphor back into it, the things that I need have changed. I need another ambition and a better Narrator.

What I Want

Prompt: Answer, “What do I want, what is my ambition?” Work with ideas in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

Donald Miller’s train of thought, if I understand correctly, sounds something like: If we’re all characters, then we all have stories. The stories are about what the characters want. Each story has two possible endings: we get what we want or we don’t.

I don’t really know what I want. I think it’s changing (see blog I’ll post after this one). In the very recent past, I knew I wanted to be good. That’s a pretty vague ambition, but it’s honest. I’m not sure how to be good. I figured out when I was about eight that I was broken somehow.

 I’ve had these moments where I just get confused with myself. I’ve thought, “Other humans couldn’t possibly be as bad as me, and they aren’t this dark. They aren’t this broken.” My conclusion was that other people had it figured out (at least some of them did… others, not so much), and I was doing something wrong.

So my ambition is to fix that vague thing that isn’t right.

I suppose that vague idea that I’m pursuing could be called “wholeness.”  I’ve experimented with a bunch of things that I thought would fix my lack of something, like good grades, and boyfriends, and daily bible reading. The results are pretty scattered.

I should probably define “good.” For the past decade or so, this has been my working definition: to be good means to be kind, generous, and to possess other sorts of virtues. “Good” people talk a lot less than I do. They are also talented and admired. They are loved, and, I suspect, they feel loved all of the time.

I’ve never written that out before. It sounds ridiculous.

Genevieve

Prompt: Describe a scene from my life, exploring the idea that life is a story/movie.

I began to cry.

I was almost a teenager, and I was wearing nice clothes. The chair I sat in didn’t even feel real. She was dead. She was in a box covered in flowers, and we sat under a tent. A man was talking.

And she was dead.

The reality found me and stared at me. For the past eight years, I hadn’t known who she was. She hadn’t either, but maybe I could have tried. Could I have found her in there?  Thinking like this wouldn’t do anything. I was helpless.

So I cried harder. My cousin put her arm around me, and she cried, too. Everyone could hear me, and I knew it. I no longer wept for her only, I wept for myself. I wept for those who would be covered in flowers and lowered into the ground. Tissues were offered, and I faintly heard the kind words said.

The box descended. We stood and we left.

Later, when we were surrounded by food and light, someone told a story. When my cousins were little, she had given them vegetable crackers as an afternoon snack. She had thought that they were more nutritious than other kinds of crackers.

I didn’t really understand the joke, because I had never heard of vegetable crackers. The others were laughing, so I laughed with them. It made me feel better.

She had been a kind woman, a good woman, but she had not escaped death. Death had left its mark on her life; she had lost a husband and two sons. I wondered if these losses made her stronger. I had never asked her.

My heart had never fully realized that I would die. Now I knew. How would it change me?

Stories

Prompt: Write about what I'm passionate about. Passionate about something defined as, "something you can do for hours without feeling the time."

The other day, my roommate’s mother (who was visiting Mayfield 254 by the power of Skype) asked me, “Meredith, what idiosyncrasies does Kelsey have?”

I laughed. “She brushes her teeth longer than anyone I have ever known.”

Kelsey retorted, “Meredith reads Ernest Hemingway for fun.”

Disclaimer: reading Ernest Hemingway is hardly ever fun. It is an enriching experience, but I submit that mourning man’s helplessness while confronted by an unfeeling universe is not fun.

However, I can take courage, just like dear old Ernest taught me. I will endure anything for the sake of a good story.

It isn’t typically a question of endurance. I want to hear the story, or see the story, or read the story. I feel like a collector who will take tokens but is passionate about gems. Garbage, on the other hand, should be thrown out. I have, on a few occasions, been called a snob. If that’s what it takes to keep Horror movies and Harlequin novels away, then that’s just fine.

I’m too influenced by the lists: the Best Pictures, the Pulitzer Winners, and the 100 Greatest of All Time.  I have sought a story that others told me was good, only because I needed to impress them. Who are we to classify our stories? Our minds are more apt to enjoy them.

I love stories, maybe too much. I finished The Old Man and the Sea on Monday and woke up on Tuesday feeling heavy. “My big fish must be out there somewhere,” Santiago says.

I say it, too.

I want to tell my own stories, and I fear I never will. A gentle Hope reminds me that this life is not about the monuments I can build to myself. I wish I could say that it is always enough, but I am weak and have much to learn.  

To Quote Neil Postman,

"Indeed, as Mumford points out, with the invention of the clock, Eternity ceased to serve as the measure and focus of human events. And thus, though few would have imagined the connection, the inexorable ticking of the clock may have had more to do with the weakening of God's supremacy than all the treatises produced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment; that is to say, the clock introduced a new form of conversation between man and God, in which God appears to have been the loser. Perhaps Moses should have included another Commandment: Thou shalt not make mechanical representations of time." pg. 11-12 of Amusing Ourselves to Death.

ADMIT!

A majority of the ideas developed in the previous post were borrowed from Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.

In Response to Danielle Sallade's "Human Flourishing"

Prompt: Sallade talks about students feeling the need to control every aspect of their lives and future. Discuss whether or not control is a good thing. Furthermore, discuss whether the lives and lifestyles that Sallade describes (and we often live) are actually Biblical. Explore a few key concepts in the text such as busyness, accomplishment, value, success, rest, work etc., and deeply evaluate your personal position on these things.

Americans are wrong.

The ideas encountered in Sallade's essay are, to the mind of an American-raised, Christ-confessing college student, revolutionary. Because of our culture (whether it be our parents, our schools, or our religion), we trained to, as Wendell Berry says in a poem, “love the quick profit.”

Guilt rises when we are not doing something. The practice of rest is ancient and barbaric; this is the modern world, and it moves quickly.  Participate in seven extracurricular activities, or you will get left behind. To change the world, and your own life, you must plan, plan, plan, or nothing will be accomplished. Hurry, they say.

Slow down, cries the Ancient God of our fathers. I watched your ancestors build a golden cow upon which they could depend. You have erected an idol more foul. The clocks of your world are ticking, they mock Me. You wear them upon your wrists, and pencil in their language on your calendars. They stand tall in your squares. Have they the victory?

Have I lost you to them?

He has cared for us forever. He has sent manna from heaven; He has enriched the earth so it can grow food. Water falls from the sky. He has defeated our reasoning with this comfort, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” (Matt. 6:27).

He loves us. We are who he created us to be, so there is no need to find ourselves. There is not a time limit.