One is Silver

Does anybody remember the Girl Scout song: "Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other's gold"? We used to sing that while we made an arch by standing in two rows, facing each other, holding hands over the middle, and then took turns walking down the center under everyone's clasped hands). If you were ever in somebody's basement wearing a sash covered with little embroidered circles and gluing pompoms to egg cartons, you know what I mean.

I think I made a new friend today. I had been praying for this. Wherever I have lived, including Washington (ahem, Andrew!), I have been blessed with really great friends. And I do mean blessed--I've realized more and more as I grow older how rare and precious it is to have people who will walk through your whole life with you, never faltering, and offer you the gift of themselves. I don't want to take that for granted, and I am praying to have even more of it in my life.

It has not always been thus. I was painfully shy as a child. Once when I was about 4, I was standing around with my parents in this store (Farm and Family Center--the name tells you something about where I grew up). My dad had bumped into a friend of his, and I was too shy to look at the adults as they stood around talking. I wrapped my arms around my dad's legs and buried my face into his knees. I looked down. First disbelief, then mortification dawned on me: "Those are not my daddy's shoes."

I had grabbed the legs of the stranger.

In spite of such inauspicious beginnings, I had to learn to overcome my shyness because I was put in lots of social situations where I didn't know anybody, and it got a lot easier. Today I went out to lunch with a woman in my department who is interesting, honest, funny, smart--just terrific. I had been chatting with her the other day and asked her if she ever wanted to get lunch (because I had always thought she seemed really great--my only reservation had been that I didn't want her to feel obligated to go with me because I was new and therefore potentially a charity case). But she welcomed it, and we planned it right there. And then today, as we were walking back, she said, "I'm so glad you asked me to lunch. I would never have asked you--I'm way too shy." I was floored; her social skills are so good that you'd never have guessed it. But it was so easy, so blessed.

Capote

I finally got around to seeing Capote on Friday night. Yes, Philip Seymour Hoffman gave the performance of a lifetime; he was so sleek and so flamboyant--so different from the various contemporary slackers he's played in other films. And yes, the film was powerful enough to give me the shivers the whole next day . . . but my favorite part of the movie by far was the attention devoted to Harper Lee.

The portrayal only sharpened my already keen admiration for her. I think To Kill a Mockingbird may be a perfect novel. Some literary-scholar types roll their eyes at its sentimentality; they would prefer for a novel about race and class in the South to be radical and inconsolably angry. But this novel, Lee's only one, cuts the heart open with the delicate precision of a scalpel and lays domestic life bare in all its lovely and terrible intimacy.

I love books that stage the high drama of the epic in scenes of the utterly quotidian; the observations seem all the more profound and expert. Some people conjecture that Capote wrote the book and attributed it to Lee, but the film makes clear that Capote was busy with his own book at the time of its composition and that he would have been loathe to give up credit for the success of Mockingbird. And anyway, his style is different. Mockingbird utterly lacks the note of the bizarre one would hear in Capote; it is pitch perfect.

I also liked the way the movie dramatized Lee's role in Capote's life as a friend--how precious and irreplaceable it was, how it made him into something he would not have been otherwise. I was thinking this morning about friends from North Carolina, and missing them was almost overpowering for a few moments. If I had moved away from a boyfriend or were separated from a spouse by distance in my recent move, there might have been familiar, commonly accepted procedures for how to handle the separation, however insufficient they might have been. I think everyone would have expected me to grieve the loss. But I haven't quite figured out how to move on from what I've left behind, or how to carry it forward. What did I leave? Oh, the feeling of walking into the Betts' house on Monday nights and feeling my spirits rise when I saw all those beaming faces. Or seeing Joan and Frank's car when I arrived at church and knowing they'd be inside the building. Or sitting in my office and then hearing Jen's or Lindsey's key in the lock. Or knocking on door B20 and happily anticipating that it would open to someplace I loved to be, no matter what kind of day I'd been having.

Hearing "from" God

I had never encountered this phrase "hearing from God" until some time in college. Though I'm used to it now, it still sounds to me like God is sending us mail from far away. I can imagine myself asking a mutual friend (of mine and His), "Have you heard from God lately?" "Why, I just heard from Him last week. He's doing well, up to the usual."

I do believe that we get to hear Him--through Nature, our consciences, other people, the Bible, other books. I would love to say that when I pray, I hear Him speak back to me about the things I'm praying about. But it usually doesn't work that way. It's more like this: Something is on my mind. I ponder it. I worry about it. I talk to friends about it. I try to forget it by watching TV. I pray a little. Admittedly in that order. And sometimes I hear, and other times I don't, but even when I do, it's usually while I'm thinking of something else.

Maybe the very attraction of the phrase is the way it acknowledges the distance and uncertainty involved in our hearing His voice. I myself have never heard an audible voice--though I don't think I should start complaining about that until I do what He's already quite plainly told me to do (I'm moving very slowly in a couple of areas--with the basics--so it may be a while before I'm ready for more direct instruction). What I think of as hearing his voice lots of times is not even aural--it's a picture, or a word that seems sort of inescapably clear and applicable, or a sense of one interpretation of a situation that suddenly seems more alive than any others. Then I find myself forgetting the other impressions and thoughts bouncing around in my head, and that's mainly when I know--"that was it."

Alias Life Lessons

In watching Alias, a show I loved because it was about a big-time super-secret spygirl who was also in grad school for English (puzzlingly, her dissertation took less of her time than mine), I have learned a number of life lessons:

1. Fighting the bad guys is easy. Not letting the process change you is the challenge.

2. Loyalties are not always immediately evident. Two corollaries:

2A. Secrets will out.

2B. Time will tell.

3. When your dad says, "Listen to me. He was just a boy. Who was never good enough for you anyway," it means something. Especially when your dad is played by scary Victor Garber!

4. Techno-geeks (a term I use with all affection) will one day rule the earth.

5. Some problems can't be solved by kickboxing. Others can.

Attention, Bookworms!

I really love my job these days--much more than I did even in graduate school, though the work of teaching and scholarship is functionally the same. I love the intellectual stimulation, the academic culture and pace (well, most of it), the libraries and coffee shops, the variety in any given class period/day/year, the seasonal beginnings and endings, the concert of introspection and performance, the period of life in which I encounter my students, the mission of higher learning, and (perhaps most of all) the colleagues whose company I'm honored to keep . . .

But of all that I love about my job, my very favorite thing is this: I get to choose books and make other people read them.

Granted, I don't always quite succeed at that second part. But nonetheless, I'd like to invite all (both?) of you, my friends and loyal readers, to share in this one very satisfying aspect of my job: I'm compiling a list of books to read for now and maybe teach someday, and I'm hoping to add your recommendations.

Most of my all-time favorite books have come to me by way of friends: Jen Joo Park convinced me to open A Prayer for Owen Meany; Dave Perkins sent me Waiting in the mail; the fabulous Thaddeus Ostrowski sang the praises of Traveling Mercies (along with Grant Wacker in a public talk, and I think I'd do just about anything Grant Wacker instructed); Jennifer C. told me the writer of Girl Meets God was practically her alter ego (enough of a recommendation for me). Just thinking about these books and these friends makes me happy.

So, if you could make me (and possibly future groups of college students) read any book in the world, what book would it be? Comments and emails welcome.

Melville; or, Both Sides Now

Ask a group of traditionally educated Americans to name the great American novel, and a fair handful of them will say Moby-Dick. Then ask how many of them have read it. . . . Yeah.

Not that I'm one to judge. I personally didn't read the book until graduate school, having experienced a highly non-traditional undergraduate education. And then I didn't actually like it until I read it for about the fourth time. (Why did I read a book I didn't like four times, you ask? Well, first there were MA exams, and then there was a class, and then there were PhD exams. And still old Melville found no love for his epic in my cold, cold heart.)

Then last fall I was teaching a class on Melville, and everyone (i.e., my department chair. And my conscience maybe) would have noticed if I'd skipped his most important book. And you know, when I asked my students for their first responses to the book, steeling myself for 600-assigned-pages-worth of fretfulness . . . they really liked it.

It was utterly disarming. And the attentive reading I had to give the book to teach it taught me to love it too. The book has these infamous whaling chapters, where Melville describes in minutest detail the anatomy of the whale, the economics of the whaling industry, etc. He connects these details to an array of stunning insights about the Plight of Man (though not before losing a lot of readers in his lifetime, unfortunately).

For example, he considers the position of the whale's eyes on either side of the head, so that the creature can see on both sides, but not directly in front--like having your windshield blocked but seeing out the side windows. In his darkly dazzling way, Melville ponders whether the whale's brain is also able to hold two entirely separate, even opposing ideas at the same time--in a way that men simply cannot, for we must turn to look at one thing, then turn away to look at something else.

And it spoke to me, Melville's anguish over his--our--inability to reconcile opposing ideas, even (especially!) those we know to be absolutely true. I feel that inability acutely in my own life--the constant, uneasy jostling of Justice and Mercy. Fate and Free Will. Hope and Acceptance. Desire and Contentment. Sometimes I feel I'm always shuttling back and forth, and yet even that Uncertainty has its own perfect counterpart in Faith.

Melville could never have been a relativist, because he believed in truth, and yet he also knew that the mere existence of truth did not make it knowable . . . and so he made the whale white, "indefinite as God," its pursuit as mysterious as faith.

Absent-Minded Professor, Part 1

I've just topped my most absent-minded act of last semester (another story for another time). It rained here this morning--hard. Roaring-gushes-down-the-sidewalks hard. So I decided to drive to school, rather than taking my usual amble. In a hurry to get to class, I dashed out of the house to the garage, which was . . . empty.

I had driven to school yesterday morning, then walked blissfully home in the afternoon, enjoying the near-60 degree weather without a thought in my head of the vehicle I'd left in the parking lot.

Is my slip showing? Is my dress on right-side out? Do my shoes match? Do I have chalk on my behind? I must make a checklist.

Retreat

I can't remember becoming friends with Julie--just opening my college dorm room door and sensing that we were both equally surprised to find her standing outside it (many, many times). I don't even remember how we started praying together. College was a time of lots of prayer for me--I met my best friends through these daily prayer meetings our fellowship group used to have. Whoever showed up to this little basement room lined with hand-me-down couches at 5:00 each day would pray together and then go to dinner. We were all in the habit of prayer, I guess, and it seemed natural, when we were sitting around talking (even if it wasn't 5:00 in Bond basement), to pray for a few moments if something came up. I loved it. It feels puzzling to me now to talk with Christian friends about serious concerns and not pray--Oh, what? Then why did you just tell me that?

In that context of natural, spontaneous prayer, Julie and I got to know each other extremely well. She hadn't liked me at all when we'd met the previous year (for reasons she's still more than happy to enumerate), and I hadn't really thought twice about her until those knocks on the door--but in prayer we found we were well matched. Julie has few illusions about people, and I'm pretty much unshockable. So I didn't have to pray the kinds of things good girls are supposed to pray, and she could be as outrageous as she is wont to be. Somehow, that combination let each of us be utterly honest. The way we would have been when praying alone, but with the added security, energy, attentiveness, and clarity of having someone else there to comfort, urge, witness, and discern.

She's coming this weekend for a prayer retreat. We've done this before--spent a couple of days talking and praying and maybe going for walks. (And eating. We are not fast-ers.) I told someone about this once, who said, with audible bemusement, "How long do you pray?" It had never even occurred to me to wonder--and I'm not a person who can spend hours praying. But when we're together, prayer feels so easy and so exciting that we'd both be disappointed to miss it.

Cat People

One of my favorite people says that you really only become a crazy cat person with three or more cats: "That's why when I tell people I have cats," she says with cheery confidence, "I always really quickly add, 'Just two!'"

I think she may be kidding herself. Well, not really (just teasing you if you're reading this)--but I think I at least could effortlessly slip into crazy-cat-person behavior with one cat. Not to mention that having Holly makes me want another cat and I'm not sure where things might go from there, numerically speaking.

I have found myself daydreaming of a boyfriend for Holly that I could name Atticus Finch. I shared this with a friend last night. "But what would you really call him?" he asked. Sheepishly I confessed that I was already imagining moments of mutual adoration in which I would call him "Atticus the Catticus." I braced myself for ridicule. But my friend said sympathetically, "I can hardly see how you could resist."

Life List

On my desk I keep a little notebook where one day in grad school (3/31/2001, apparently), I wrote down a bunch of things I wanted to do in my life, big and small. For a while I then entered the dates I'd done each of the things. I hadn't opened the book for a couple of years. But when I thought of it recently, it was fun to see that I had more dates to enter, for things I'd done since then.

There are big things still undone: Write a novel. Be entirely at peace. Have a little girl, take her to the American History museum, and teach her to be great, to be ambitious to do good.

Small things, some done: Finish Linda's sampler (2002). Study Italian (2001). Have plants (2002).

Things that I've recently done: Get a cat. I wrote (2005) next to that one.

Things I will now never do: Paint my closet (I moved instead).

And things that now seem rather odd: Eat more vegetables (2002-2003) (Why the end date?)

Now I have more items to add to the list: Take down the entryway wallpaper. Adopt a baby girl from China? Develop a research project using the New England archives. Plan an adventure for next summer.

First Time for Everything

I learned a new word today (not uncommon). From a student (exceedingly rare, perhaps even unique). In an essay (practically unimaginable)! Granted, she used it as an example of a word-of-the-day, but still:

abulia: the inability to make decisions

Yes, my friends, you who have seen me debate over a menu selection know why I loved it. I'm shelving it next to another longtime favorite:

velleity: a desire to do something that is not strong enough to inspire action

Either of these would have made good titles for my blog.

Truths & Consequences

For L and K

A friend of mine wondered recently whether trust, once broken, can ever fully be restored. But all trust is broken, except for that in God; all people fail to be that full version of themselves that when we love them we hope they’ll be. In that sense, the greater the love, the more inevitable the eventuality. What counts is not whether someone fails us, but whether the relationship is worth the costs incurred.

And sometimes, even that is simply a higher math than we can calculate. So we act on faith in part in one another, and in part in God’s ability to redeem—relationships, others, whatever little slights and injuries we suffer. Sometimes what’s rebuilt will be diminished; other times, more glorious. But we can’t know ahead of time.

My church history professor in seminary once spoke of the "illusion of permanence," and in the past year or so, I've been struck by how manifold are the ways we nurture that illusion, shielding our eyes from the truths it occludes. That even the most loving marriages end. That we have so little control over everything important to us. That He promises us nothing--but Himself.

What's difficult is that we'd rather live as if His presence were simply supererogatory, some extra shine in a sunny universe. Or compensatory, a comfort when we didn't get what we wanted (or when we destroyed it). I would prefer it that way; I'd have preferred to have what I wanted and not need Him--except that it would all be a lie, a lie impossible to believe since the day of my surrender to Him.

Sometimes I think He's ruined me for all but this luminous truth.

And then in the stillness of that knowledge, the echo of this refrain: And all these things shall be added unto you.

Dateline: Steelers, PA

Yes, it's true. The name of my town was changed temporarily from W***ton to Steelers, PA, in order to avoid giving unwitting aid and comfort to the enemy during Super Bowl season.

We all watched it at my house, with my usual two football-watching rules in play: 1) I don't have to pay attention the whole time, and 2) There are no penalties for my asking dumb questions. It was great--I learned a lot and we all ate a lot of cheese.

Four of the past 5 Super Bowls have featured teams from places where I've lived. Coincidence? I don't know, but I invite bids from Super Bowl aspirants for 2007.

Good for the Soul

I think maybe what separates out my very best friends is whether I've ever had to cough up a confession in front of them. In my experience, confession isn't really about naming what I've done, or even about "humbly taking responsibility for my sins." What feels like an event, what's more than just passing information back and forth, is when you speak out loud something you're barely able to admit to yourself. Because even though some part of you knows it's wrong and untrue, some other part of you hasn't quite managed to stop believing it in secret.

I tend to think that everyone has these things, little fears they have and lies they believe, and the integrity and trustworthiness of people depends largely on how capable they are of digging such things out, and how inclined, when they become apparent. You don't have to go looking for them in yourself, but sometimes--BAM!--you hit them like rocks in the soil you're plowing. And then you either act unreliably and veer off course, or you pick up the rock, toss it out, and say, "Whew--glad that's gone."

I admire the Catholic perseverance in the art of confession--it's still built into their practice as well as their theology--but I don't like the idea of the little booth. I think part of the experience has to be living surrounded by people whose confessions you've heard and who have heard yours, and who expect to hear a lot more. I have had plenty to confess, but also lots of excellent confessors--among them Arthur, Clare, Deborah, Heidi, Jennifers C and P, Jodi, Julie, Katie, and my mom (the order there is alphabetical, for the one who will want to know).

All of these people are nonjudgmental, forgiving, and discreet. Their love is not utterly unconditional maybe (in a good way), but they've seen enough--of me, the world, themselves--not to be shaken by my sin du jour or the lie I've just disovered lurking within. It feels really good to have these friends in my world. At a Bible study two weeks ago, where I'm a new member, I said something about my long history of anxiety, and someone said, "We just don't see it!" It was almost disappointing. While it's flattering to think that one's neuroses are invisible to the naked eye, it's incomparably nice to be known. And loved anyway.

Sandwich

Wheat bread
turkey
bacon (love the pre-cooked Oscar Mayer--so convenient!)
baby spinach
tomato
avocado
mustard

Yum!

Operation

When I told Julie I had sent out a little invite to the blog, she said, "Now all will see the tortured eeyorish soul within." And I thought I was all daisies and sunshine!

Of course, Jules has dried more than her share of my tears (and let's face it, snot) off her shoulder over the years, so she should know. But I think the reason I'm excited about writing, here and in general, is because I feel really good these days.

In fact, this may be the happiest time of my life. Over the past few months, it's felt a little bit like Somebody was playing that game Operation on me, squatting there and patiently lifting out all these little tiny broken shards with a pair of tweezers. And you know, when you get a splinter taken out--fear/anxiety/insecurity/name your poison--it's just a big relief each time, and you're so aware of being whole.

And about two weeks ago, I felt this intermittent and unexpected sense of confidence and security. Like I would start worrying about something, and then I would suddenly know what it would feel like to feel confident and full of faith, and I could sort of turn off the worrying (something I'd never had much success with before). I would tentatively reach for it, and it would be there.

At my church a couple of days later, I went up for prayer--we have time after the service where you can ask and people will pray with/for you; it's my favorite part of our service. I said I felt like I was being given a gift of faith. And the woman who prayed, my friend Kim, said she kept sensing this word "confidence" (which was the word in my mind too, sort of like applied faith). It came and went for a few days, and then I had one really awful, anxious day. I started doing a Bible study, reading each chapter that mentions faith in the Bible. And then that day was over, and it was just a day.

And I don't know; it just feels different. It doesn't even feel like it's a stretch a lot of the time; it feels like the gift is in my possession, to inhabit more and more evenly. Not that I won't ever have anxious times, but that they're temporary while the security of faith is mine forever. If I had a different personality, maybe now's when I'd jump up and say, "Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!" But instead I just sit on the floor in my room at the foot of my bed and blush and smile and whisper into my hands, "Wow, I used to feel the opposite. Thanks."

Favorite Things Students Have Said/Written/Had Their Parents Leave on My Answering Machine

From a job letter: "I am an excellent communicator. I know that in sales you have to express yourself in writing and vocally, which I do. . . . . Also, in my courses, I have learned to interrupt data and charts. In fact, I have focused a lot on interruptions." [I just love how that paragraph starts with "I am an excellent communicator"!]

About a business writing course: "This course does not appear to be about business at all. It is mainly about editing and revising." [Which leaves us with what? Business freewriting?]

Same business writing course: "Isn't writing supposed to be about self-expression?" [Not in business, baby.]

From a student evaluating her college experience (Suspiciously): "I've noticed a mix of memorization of facts and encouragement to develop my own ideas." [Sorry about that. Our mistake.]

Regarding an absence: "I had maybe too much to drink and then fell asleep. The only documentation I can offer you as to my absence on the day of my presentation would be my vomit-stained bedsheets, and that would be inappropriate." [Enough said. Really.]

. . . And my all-time favorite, from the parents of a fledgling plagiarist: "What you don't know, that you need to know, is that when he was 9, he had cancer and had to have part of his leg removed." [As my friend Andy said, "the part of his leg that controls plagiarism?"]

My Conversion Narrative (not the important one)

I never used to like personal blogs much. When I first heard about them, I was astonished that people thought others would want to read daily updates about themselves. And their dogs, as it turned out. They seemed mostly either boring or bitter. (The blogs, not the people. And no offense, by the way, to those with blogs, dogs, or both--these were my feelings in my unregenerate state.)

But when Julie started her blog not too long ago, I happened to log on before my prejudices had their morning coffee. For one thing, Julie has a cat. And interesting thoughts and amusing self-deprecations--all of which I've enjoyed throughout the history of our friendship. And on top of it all, she has these cool and original and honest and spiritual friends, whose blogs she had linked to, as I discovered on a day when I had too much time on my hands. I had met Erin and Kate on one (or several) of my numerous visits to DC, so I read theirs, wrote to Kate, and got a note back saying, "When are you going to start a blog of your own?"

I started to write back and say I had nothing to say, but it would have all been false modesty, so I deleted it. After all, I spend half my free time talking to friends (it's not like I'm silent in life), and though I went into my profession in part for the creativity, challenge, and academic calendar, I have to admit that I did choose a career (teaching) where basically I stand around talking about what I think I know, or asking about what I want to know at least.

And the other factor, which maybe is the biggest one, was that I had decided last December that I wanted to get serious about writing. I had been thinking about "what I want to do with my life," and was happy to realize that if I could do anything in the world, I'd probably want to do exactly what I'm doing. Except that I'd really want to write more.

So this is my little practice space. In part because to answer Kate's question by saying I have nothing to say would be to dishonor what God has done for me, to ignore all those parts in the Bible where he says to remember what he's done: Write it on your doorpost, tie it on your hands, pile up these stones so you'll never forget, and others will ask you, hey, what's up with the sign, the string, the stones?