And it is beautiful.

I used to look at marriage as a very selfish thing. I mean, I knew it wouldn’t just be about me. You had someone to support and be supported by, someone to work with in all of your labours, etc. But somehow I came to see it as, compared to singlehood, selfish.

I wanted marriage and was single, and wanting marriage felt like a selfish desire. I didn’t desire it for the sake of my God or my future spouse directly. I was aware of those factors, but was thinking primarily of myself. Maybe in that context, it was a selfish desire.

But as I am approaching my own marriage, an entirely new world  has opened up before me.

A lot of my own emotional struggles that I’ve been facing (ones that most people probably discover and struggle with in the weeks, rather than months, leading up to the wedding, or even not until after they are married), have had to do with “losing myself”. For an independent young woman, the idea of marriage began to hold fear for me.

But I am suddenly arrested by the beauty of this relationship.

Marriage is used in the Bible as a metaphor for the way Christ loves us and it is incredible. I am not entirely certain how to express it, but God willing, I will be able to convey at least part of the wonder that has been opened up to me.

There is a lot of baggage when it comes to the Bible and marriage. One verse in particular has been viciously abused and causes many women, and men, too, to immediately recoil against it.

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.

~Ephesians 5:22 (NIV)

But this isn’t a verse that sits on its own. It is paired with the instruction to husbands, an instruction that is often missed in the debates against this verse.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

~Ephesians 5:25 (NIV)

Both verses are followed by further instruction, but it is the instruction to the husbands that receives the most explanation, almost as if Paul somehow knew how desperately we would need the clarification.*

I would encourage you to read the entire passage here. Don’t skip past the instruction to wives in anger or frustration. Try to read it and compare it with the instruction to husbands. Both have an equal level of severity and both, I think, are equally difficult.

They are difficult because of what they are each asking: complete and total surrender of the self for the good of the other.

I imagined, when I thought of marriage, that it would feel to me like it was about me and my own fulfillment (and to him like it was about his).

But it isn’t. It is so much more than that. And it is so much more beautiful.

A relationship that is primarily about my own fulfillment is colourless. I know what is going to happen next, I know how to get what I want. There is no mystery, no beauty, no depth in such a relationship.

But marriage is possibly the least selfish relationship there is, second only to parenthood. There is a selfish component to nearly every other relationship. You are friends with people who make you laugh, who make you feel good. You’re friends with people who agree with your perspectives and build you up. You’re friends with people who are the same as you, and you tend to steer clear of those areas where you differ, at least while you’re together. And nearly every other interpersonal communication involves some sort of trade-off where you are benefited as much or more than you are inconvenienced.

What is it about marriage that draws us so deeply into it? It requires this submission of yourself, this sacrifice of your will, laying your life down for the good of the other, and, as it should be, both of you laying down your individual lives for the sake of building one anew, glorious and glorifying to God.

Marriage is not selfish. I felt that way because I did not know what it would require of me. I still don’t know, not fully, and will probably never fully know (though more will be revealed over time).

It is beautiful, too, because I don’t pour myself out and find it spilled and wasted. I am pouring myself into him, and he into me. The source of these springs of ours rests in Jesus Christ– the pouring out is replenished. And eventually it becomes such a beautiful flowing exchange of love and mercy and grace and creation and instruction and growing and nourishing and building and peace and joy and hope and faith and trust and no longer can we tell what is mine, what is his and what is from God above.

I’m not sure what this has communicated. But marriage is beautiful. And… beautiful. I don’t know how else to describe it. We haven’t got there yet, but as we have tastes of heaven here on earth, so, too, can you have tastes of marriage while waiting for its approach.

And it is beautiful.

* Ladies, I hope that the command to submit tastes a little sweeter after reading this explanation of the instruction given to husbands: “Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies… For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and carefully protects and cherishes it, as Christ does the church.” Ephesians 5:29 (AMP).

Dirty Laundry

Christians are remarkably good at forgetting about Christ.

I’ve been following several Christian blogs, reading different Christian books and listening to the cry of many Christians my age. Love, they moan, is missing from our generation of Christians. And it’s true. But in trying to amend that, we are making an entirely different mistake.

I confess something here that amuses me due to its paradoxical nature, but also bothers me. I poke at it, as one would a cold sore or a scab, dissatisfied with its presence, but relatively certain that time and appropriate care of the area are really the only way to usher these things out. It is this:

I can forgive everything except unforgiveness. I easily refrain from judging others, unless they are judgmental.

You see? A paradox.

There can be an aspect of pride to the above confessions, a pride that I hope I am not in possession of. In the Bible, Christ was compassionate and forgiving to everyone except those who had hardened their hearts and chose to judge those around them. So judging the judgmental and withholding forgiveness from the unforgiving can feel like echoes of Christ’s attitudes. However… I think perhaps we misunderstand what Christ was saying.

Christ’s example is to love everyone, even and especially our enemies. His command is to judge no one, to leave the judging to Him. Jesus knows the heart; that is why He can judge. We don’t; that is why we cannot. And the truth is, Christ’s forgiveness was offered to everyone, but those who had hardened their hearts were disgusted by it. Jesus’s message with regards to those people was one of warning, so that we wouldn’t allow our hearts to get like that: hardened and judgmental.

But it irks us! Christians who judge others really bother us, and so, in an effort to call them to account or to separate ourselves from them, we judge them. But this should not be. We should be forgiving of all and judging of no one.

We never know a person’s story. We never know what their background is. And we don’t truly know what their potential is, so we cannot judge.

And unforgiveness is a chokehold that clamps, not onto the other person’s throat, but onto our own. Holding something against someone rarely hurts them the way it does us. And oftentimes, the other doesn’t even know we are holding something against them. It is a stranglehold on our own lives as we harbour and rehash the bitterness we are holding onto.

We need to love those who don’t know Christ. We need to love those who do. And we need to remember that everyone is dear to Christ, regardless of how they appear to us. As He has forgiven us, so too do we need to forgive others.

Faithfulness

I had a conversation several nights ago about something that has come up many times in the past. Divorce is a tricky issue. I’m not writing about that specifically, but it has led me on to another series of thoughts.

In Matthew 5:31-32, Jesus says,

It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.”

I find it interesting that Jesus doesn’t go on to specify what marital unfaithfulness is. But I think the definition of marital unfaithfulness has probably changed so much across culture and time. Back then, physical faithfulness would have been strictly maintained. Now, marrieds give away hugs, touches, dances, even occasionally kisses, but can still be considered maritally faithful. I think in our society today, there is a greater feeling of betrayal when it comes to emotional unfaithfulness.

But I think marital faithfulness is all-encompassing: physical, emotional, mental, verbal. Every way — every way — in which a couple interacts requires faithfulness to the other and faithfulness to the vows that were taken (i.e., to love, honour and protect). Is a woman being faithful, for example, when she belittles her husband in front of others or vice versa? There’s a difference between belittlement and teasing, make no mistake. Teasing is gently done and done in such a way so that husband and wife are (and know they are) on the same side and is quickly amended and repented of when either side feels wounded. Belittling, on the other hand, is when one party presents the other as insignificant, silly, ridiculous, foolish, detestable, et cetera, either directly to that person, or in front of others, with or without the presence of the person in question.

It is worth feeling convicted about this. Marriage is the single most powerful relationship a person can experience, outside of their relationship with God. You are never more vulnerable with another person than you are in the context of that relationship. Pretending for a moment that the audience I am addressing all believe as I do, in a marriage relationship, that person is the only one who will ever see you completely naked, physically and emotionally. Stripped of your masks, flaws and insecurities laid bare, you are trusting that the other person will embrace you and build you up, that they will encourage and love and be enthusiastic for you and the things you love and will be your trusted companion in working on those things you wish could be better about yourself. This requires truth and honesty from both partners, and more, faithfulness.

What I am trying to suggest is that marital unfaithfulness is not just the big, “I cheated” things. It is also the little digs at each other, chipping away at respect, jumping too easily to offense, carrying a joke too far, etc. Part of the vow of marriage is to protect. While it is protection of each other from the ways of the world, it is more than that. Your spouse or significant other wears armour when facing the world. They do not wear armour when facing you. Do you take advantage of their vulnerability in that circumstance? Or do you protect them? Are you being faithful to the partner you chose in the little things as well as the big?

Washed clean

My brother made a mistake.

It’s interesting, because he made a mistake the way most of us make mistakes: early and oft-repeated. He was working on a math sheet, and in the very first question, he made a multiplication mistake due to an error in carrying the decimal place. All of the questions that followed were similar, and so, because he was so confident he had completed the first question correctly, he carried that same mistake through the rest of the worksheet.

At first, he didn’t understand the error I was pointing out to him. I took a separate sheet of paper and did the question while he watched, and I saw the realization slowly dawn on him.

“Does that make sense?” I asked him.

“Okay, but I’m still confused,” he said.

“What are you confused about?” I asked.

“Well, that means I have to do the whole thing again.”

“Ah,” I said, understanding dawning in my own mind. “So you aren’t confused, but rather frustrated.”

Yes, he was sincerely frustrated.

I told him to take a break — to take ten minutes of not doing homework before he came and tackled it again — and in these ten minutes, I’ve been sitting here trying to determine how to make this a positive learning experience. I am so unbelievably struck by the strong analogy that this situation is for how God deals with our mistakes, but it is an analogy that I don’t think he will be able to see at this point.

As much as he was frustrated that he had to re-do the worksheet, I think sometimes the hardest part about correcting a mistake is taking apart the work that’s already been done. His worksheet was entirely covered in pencil. Granted, pencil can be erased, and often, quite cleanly. But a pencil-covered sheet of paper represents work. And erasing it represents destruction, even if it is of work that is poorly or incorrectly done. He had begun erasing it, but it was in anger and frustration. The paper has a crinkle or two that is evidence of this. So I suggested that he take a break and remove himself from the situation.

From my perspective, mistakes in a math sheet are not earth-shattering. I do remember what it was like to be in his shoes. Having to do a math worksheet in the first place was an arduous and lengthy process, not to mention re-doing it. But years have passed and I have grown a little wiser. My state of mind was significantly calmer and so, while he was gone, I erased the page.

And it was during this erasing that I was struck with the analogy. Our sins of scarlet will be made white as snow, I thought, as I watched clean, white paper emerge from underneath the pencil markings. For this is what God does.

“Everything in your life that you learn,” I told the young one, “you will learn in one of two ways: either because someone tells you how to do it and you listen or because you make mistakes and then learn how to fix them. This is that second way. You’ve made a mistake and now you’re learning how to fix it.”

I didn’t do his homework for him. In fact, I didn’t even help him correct it. In fact, aside from the above, I haven’t said much more than encouragement since he’s come back out to try again. All that I did was I gave him a clean slate from which to start.

The interesting thing about that slate is that he did do two of the questions correctly. I looked at his work and debated for a moment before I erased the sheet completely.

And that is the part that frustrates us about God.

“This part was fine,” we say. “We did it correctly. The answer was right. This was fine. Why did you erase it?”

Because the truth is, even though his method and answers were correct for those few questions, his knowledge and understanding of why they were correct was incomplete. I wanted his new understanding to affect every part of the worksheet.

The situation this evening does not make for a perfect analogy, because I am not perfect and the young one is not perfect. But for just a moment, imagine that I was simply an observer, and that the stakes were higher than merely a math sheet, and instead of me helping my little brother correct his homework, we have God Incarnate cleansing the world of all the mistaken pencil lines, smudges, and blackened sheets.

I’ve written before (though maybe not here) about this world being an echo of the eternal. Our longings are for things that last, for that is how we have been designed. And tonight, the shadows of our interaction painted for me images of incredible colour and vibrancy. While I cleaned penciled errors from a sheet of paper, Jesus Christ cleans the indelible mark of sin from our lives.

Much risk

What is love without much risk?

So says the artist of song I am quite enjoying. For the curious few (or many, whichever way it is), I am sorry that I don’t know either the name of the artist or the song. I shall find it after I post this and perhaps place it in the comments. It is on a CD in our car, thus I listen to it quite often while driving without knowing what it is.

Anyhow, it got me thinking. She was singing of God and His love for us. It runs back to the old question of “why didn’t God just create us good and in love with Him and avoid all of this sin nonsense?” But I think the quote above really captures the essence of the answer to that question.

When you love someone — truly love them — and when you ask them to love you back, it is only love when they can say ‘no’. Imagine if this person didn’t have the option. It wouldn’t be very satisfying, would it, to know that they loved you only because they had to. When the person you love has the option to say ‘no’, it is a huge risk, for… what if they say ‘no’? Yet it is truly most satisfying this way, for imagine if they have the option to say ‘no’… but they say ‘yes’?

God risks so much everyday in loving us and asking us to love Him. But He does so because that is the kind of love He wants. He wants true love. He wants us to have the option to say ‘no’, but to tell Him ‘yes’ instead.

There is risk on our side, by telling Him ‘yes’, but I’ll get into that at another time (or perhaps in the comments?). For now, I just want to dwell on the beauty of that idea.

What is love without much risk?

God loves us so much and He has taken great risks to show us that He does. How beautiful and how deep is His love.

because He has always loved me

The stories that resonate most strongly with me are those of transformation, specifically, of rebuilding. But it makes sense, since that seems to be a primary narrative in life. Every significant change in my own life has come through rebuilding. Every significant change in myself has come through rebuilding.

This morning in church, the pastor said,

God’s salvation is not about renovation.

Renovation projects are always based on the assumption that the overall structure of the building is sound. General improvements and modifications are made to the appearance of the building, updating it or simply changing it. But as soon as the structure is touched, it is no longer about renovation. It becomes a question of rebuilding.

God is not interested in renovation, because He knows something that we would choose not to, if we could. He knows that it isn’t just a facelift, a tidy-up, a superficial improvement that needs to be made; He knows that it is the very thing we have built our lives upon that needs to be dealt with.

I have written about this before here. God doesn’t come in to fix cracked tiles or to replace a water-damaged ceiling. He comes in to level the foundation that is causing the tiles to crack, or to fix the structural imperfections that are causing water to leak through.

The entire course of my life has been, and will continue to be, about rebuilding.

It’s actually really cool. Looking back on certain situations and certain times in my life, I can see where God has come in and completely demolished something. At the time, I would be really annoyed or really hurt by it, but after much stubbornness on my part, He would finally convince me to trust Him. And what He put in its place was always amazing. It is always amazing to see Him rebuild. For me, anyway, I usually can’t tell that He is rebuilding until He has almost finished, and it is incredible to see the difference.

There are also times where He knows the heart and soul I have put into building something of my own. I can’t build very well, unfortunately, so He still has to come and make changes, but in those times, He is so gentle with me. Knowing how much of myself I have poured into it, He does not come with a bulldozer. He comes with just Himself (and more often than not, with a brother or sister in Christ), makes Himself comfortable and spends the afternoon talking with me, about everything and anything, and in among that, about why the wall I’ve built needs to come down. And He spends as long as it takes (days, weeks, months) for me to trust Him yet again, but in this case, I have to trust Him enough that I remove the first brick.

In the first scenario, with the bulldozer, it is a construction that should be there but has been built improperly. In the second, it is usually a building that shouldn’t be there at all. In the first, the lesson is in construction, thus the destruction happens quickly, and most time is spent on learning how to rebuild. In the second, the lesson is a lot harder, for it is learning how to take apart something and to let it go. It is a lesson in deconstruction, thus the destruction is what takes the most time. The same amount of self and effort is put into both buildings, but since the second won’t be coming back, there is a great deal of gentleness in the removal of it.

“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland.”

Isaiah 43:18-19

related post at StuffChristiansLike

New Year’s Resolutions redux

On January 1st of this year, I posted a list of resolutions on my Blogger site. That post can be found here.

We are just under two months away from the new year and so I think it would be worthwhile to examine my resolutions and how (or even if) I have improved in the course of the year since making them. This is actually the first time I have gone back and looked over resolutions from the past. Other years I have made them, but they were usually on a looseleaf sheet of paper or buried in a journal or school notebook, and so I never found them again before the new year was upon us. Over the past month, I have stumbled across my New Year’s Resolutions post several times, and so I think it is important that I make some examination of it.

The reason I chose each resolution is listed in the original post. Here, I shall simply state the resolution and how I think I have or have not improved.

1. I will be more decisive.

Hmm. Well, as with anything else, it is a work in progress. But I have noticed that my conversation is moving in this direction. Rather than taking an “I don’t care, whatever” approach, I am more able to approve and forward a plan. I am also noticing a greater initiative taken in bringing plans to fruition. As well, I have become far more able to declare when I don’t approve a plan. In the past, it was often the case that I would shrug and say, “Well, whatever” if I really didn’t want to do something. And while that is sometimes the appropriate response, I am learning to be honest with my opinion and perspective, especially when the person I am talking with would genuinely like to know the truth behind where I am coming from. Unless I notice any serious changes that need to be made in the next two months, I think I can safely graduate this from the list. While it is something I need to keep working on, I think I can safely move my focus in the new year.

2. I will remember that physical activity helps with stress management.

I don’t think it has been a conscious decision, but I have adopted regular physical activity into my lifestyle. Let me modify that statement. I have adopted regular physical activity that I enjoy into my lifestyle. As you are probably completely aware, I have taken up swing dancing, something that I do at least twice a week. I attend a weekly dance and I have enrolled in weekly lessons. As I said, it wasn’t a purposeful move. My thought process wasn’t “I need physical activity to help with stress management”; it was more “I love dancing, how can I get more involved?”. As a result, I have noticed that my stress level is reduced. Granted, it probably helps that I have completed my undergrad degree, but there is more peace and more energy in my life now than before when the physical activity I chose was less purposeful and less enjoyable.

3. I will breathe Scripture.

I composed an email several nights ago and in the course of it, I did something I have not done in a very long time: I quoted Scripture. I unconsciously quoted Scripture. I mean, I knew it was from the Bible, but my thought process wasn’t, “Oh, I think a verse should go here, wait, let me find one.” No, it was something that had been on my mind and in my heart, and so it naturally came in the course of my writing.

This, however, is one area that I know I can continue improving on. I still do not spend enough time in Scripture. It is a lot more regular than it used to be, but I am not purposeful in it, and I do not dwell in it as I would like. I re-read emails, poetry and novels with a regularity that puts my Scripture reading to shame. I do not know it as I would like. This, I think, will be something I keep into the new year. But I would like to focus on it differently. I am not sure how, but I have two months to continue contemplating this.

4. I will find a stronger rein for my tongue.

Uh oh. Yea, FAIL. I haven’t been purposeful about this one at all. This I will keep on my list.

5. I will not be afraid to make mistakes.

Another fail.

It’s funny, I have a lot to say about the areas where I feel improvement, but not nearly as much in the areas where I haven’t improved as I would like to.

If anything, I have become more afraid of making mistakes. So, this will likely stay on the list.

6. I will choose to live joyfully and full of hope.

This is a hard-earned success, one that I think is still hesitant in its display. But I think it is very worth encouraging it to bloom. You can either choose to live clouded by despair and fear or you can choose to live guided by joy and hope. I am choosing the latter. This will probably stay on the list, but I am not sure in what form.

7. I will have fun.

Yay, big success. I have had a lot of fun this past year. I wrote in my original post,

There is much to be done, much to be excited for, much to plan and hope and dream.

And how right I was. This will probably stay on, not because I have failed, but because it is important to remember. It is easy to get caught up in all of the to-do’s and should-do’s, but it is really important to remember to have fun while doing them.

Stay tuned come January 2009 for a brand new list of resolutions, and I would encourage you to think of some yourself. I think there are always ways that we can improve and by writing them down, it does then beg an examination of them later on. If you choose to write them on a public forum, send me a link, and we can see how we all are doing in the months to come.

God bless!

Solitude

There is something very exquisite about silence. I alluded once before to this quote by Aldous Huxley:

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

I have just spent the day in the house, in fact almost constantly in the same room, with a very active 11-year-old. He is a dear. He also had a P.A. day today, and beyond finishing up the last bits of a couple of projects he has due this week, the day was spent in pure entertainment. He managed to keep himself entertained with various “quiet” activities for parts of it, but there were also parts where movies were watched and computer games were played, and the music and sound effects from both filled the room.
Our current house has one room that has the kitchen, eating area and TV/living room all within the same four walls. It is actually a lovely design. It is nice being able to have all of these areas interact.

However –

This next ties in with a post I attempted to write several nights ago. Unfortunately, when I was writing it, it was into the wee hours of the morning and was not nearly as coherent as I had hoped. –

there is something about silence, after a day that is full of noise, that is simply beyond compare.

The day is coming to a close. We haven’t begun supper yet (we had a late lunch), but I requested that the 11-year-old continue whatever activities he was planning on pursuing in his room. Then I spent an hour and a half cleaning the kitchen, doing the dishes and tidying the random bits of things that scattered themselves about the room while the 11-year-old was hard at work at projects and play. And now I am reclining in one of the armchairs in this room, listening to the dishwasher run and just marveling at the peace that has come from a silencing of the movies and video game sound effects.

It is rejuvenating.

It can be uncomfortable. In the course of writing this, I have been tempted several times to minimize it and pull up my various other online accounts instead, substituting visual noise for aural. But sometimes it is nice being able to turn off the distractions and to give yourself room to think.

What I wrote about several nights ago was the importance of solitude in our lives. We need other people a great deal, but I think we also need time to steal away, to sort through our thoughts, to centre ourselves, to pray.

In the Bible, Jesus was constantly surrounded by crowds, but he often sought times and places to be by himself, to meditate and reconnect with his Father. I think it is a good model.

Writing as a fresh graduate, I recall how easy it is to spend all of your waking hours with other people. Meals in the cafeteria or off-campus with friends, studying in groups, movie nights, dances, etc. It was often difficult to find time alone.

Something I wrote about in the doomed post from a few nights ago was the discomfort that comes with solitude. I had found a coffee shop in my University town that I quite liked, and in my third year, I regularly patronized it by myself with a book or notebook. While I appreciated my time there, I often found it uncomfortable. It was a place I was used to going to with others, and there were not many who went simply to seek solitude. Some were there on their own to study, but most of the patrons were in pairs or small groups.

It is important, though, to have time to examine your thoughts and your actions. It is valuable to carve out time to pray. It is wise to spend time focusing your thoughts and your heart on God. For me, anyway, I struggle most when I haven’t made time for solitude and silence in my life. Purposeful solitude, though it is often difficult, is a discipline that is worth developing.

Noteworthy Professors II: Professor John North

One of the most inspiring courses I ever took was Victorian Poetry with Professor John North. I transcribed more sound bytes in the margins of my notes for that class than I did for any other. This is a man who loves God and who loves poetry, two of the loves of my own life, and so to listen to him speak several times a week was an incredible gift.

I remember attempting to describe this course to my friends. Professor North is an older gentleman who has had many experiences and who has seen much in his life. His students are privileged to hear of his experiences in his classes, and we are even more privileged to be able to listen to the wisdom that he has gleaned from his years on earth. Attending his class was like entering his living room. He invited us in and began speaking, and though he spoke of poetry, he could not help but give us knowledge greater than simply what the poet was trying to say.

Poetry, he says, is a way for us to “read experiences that are like our own, that we can identify with, that affirm ourselves.”

We discussed some of my favourite poets in this class – Tennyson, Hopkins, Arnold, Browning – and through each step of the course, we could see the above-quoted theme carrying through. While discussing Tennyson’s In Memorium and explaining to us why this poem was so popular when first published, North said,

Tennyson explores grief and put into words for people for the first time their internal worlds and emotions.

In Memorium was a poem that Tennyson wrote over the course of twenty years as he mourned the loss of his best friend. We all have these experiences and these “internal worlds and emotions”, but most of us cannot put words to them. With this poem, Tennyson took something that was incredibly well-experienced, but very rarely expressed (that is, grief), and finally put it to words. Poetry touches the ineffable.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

~Aldous Huxley

I would class poetry with music.

I found Professor North’s class to be an incredibly healing one. Through his class, he carried us into the very depths of the poem, often to the core of our souls, inviting us to examine what we found there, and to actually feel the emotions that we carried within us. It wasn’t that he was not content with a surface-level analysis of a poem; it was that remaining on the surface never even occurred to him. He is a man deeply in love with his wife, passionate about his God, and incredibly moved by the pieces he reads, and all of this came through in his lectures.

Poetry gives shape and a voice to our internal world; it affirms us, we are less alone.

The excitement in Hopkins is that his world makes sense. The problem is that oftentimes our world just doesn’t make sense. When the dark sonnets come, we can see that he has made sense in the non-sense. Despite the darkness, there is joy.

Poetry gives us an insight into other people’s hearts and minds, and into our own. It gives all of that shape, brings form out of chaos. We can understand what we never understood before, and through another’s writing, we realize it is true. It is satisfying both to have words for it, and to realize that someone else feels the way that we do. It takes the loneliness out of life.

It’s hard to fight with evil, but consider the consequence of not fighting with evil.

Evil cannot exist on its own; by definition, it is a perversion of good.

Even evil is under God’s authority.

[Poetry helps us to] accept the potential of the future, without rejecting the beauty of the past.

Poetry says far more than the poet knows he or she is saying.

Poetry is so powerful that it affects us to the core, even if we don’t know why.

We often only need to see something or hear something and we are transformed.

Be aware that you can’t study literature without being changed inside, in spite of yourself.

(the above all taken during Professor North’s Fall ‘07 Victorian Poetry class)

PB & J

I discovered this today, scribbled on a scrap of paper in with many other notes of a similar kind:

I’ve learned that strength and dignity are not lost through displays of weakness.

A silly example is when I confess to a friend that I cannot open a jar of jelly. I feel… laughably weak doing so, especially when this friend takes the jar and in one motion, twists off the lid. But to use this as a metaphor (ah, metaphors), in a very simple way, this is how the Body of Christ should look. I am strong in some areas, but I am also weak in others. If I readily display my strengths, but hide all of my weaknesses, two undesirable things happen. First of all, assuming everyone else is also hiding their weaknesses, my strengths become completely irrelevant. As far as I can tell, there isn’t anyone who needs what I have to offer. No one is weak, so what does it matter how strong I am? And the second problem is that we have all sorts of weaknesses, frayed threads, weak links, crumbling walls (whatever other image you’d like) and none of these areas are being addressed. No one is saying, “hey, I’ve got a leak in the dam over here, can anyone help me patch it up?” and so it continues leaking and eroding, growing weaker, spilling over, spilling out, and eventually breaking, sometimes in catastrophic ways. But when we confess our faults to one another (a trusted one another), when we admit our weaknesses, we find people who are strong in those very areas.

“Yea, I can’t open a jar of jelly, but I can whip up a mean grilled pb & j sandwich.”

And my friend says, “I can certainly open a jar of jelly *twist*, but grilled pb & j? I have no idea how to make that, but I sure am hungry.”

And there we are, filling each others needs, complimenting each others’ strengths and weaknesses and building each other up. When that is how we seek to live, our lives become inextricably intertwined, balancing each other out and becoming greater than we were just as ourselves.

Hopefully my metaphor can carry the point I am trying to make, despite being (as I’ve already admitted), a rather silly example

And just for the record, grilled pb & j is for real. And mighty tasty, especially if you’ve got a sweet tooth. If you can help me get this darn jar open, I could be persuaded to make one for you