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.

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)

“What ever happened to personal responsibility”

Bravo. It is exactly as Cameron Schaefer writes here: Life’s about choices. A refreshing reminder.

Twitter

I’ve been asked a few times by friends what Twitter actually is. It is only fair, since I harp so often about no one reading my twitter page, to actually explain a little bit of what Twitter is. There is a video here, which does a fairly good job of it, but I will also do my best to articulate what it is (Mike, Matty, Dad, feel free to weigh in with your own explanations of it).

Twitter is what is known as a microblog. I tried to find a nice definition online, but I couldn’t find one I liked (granted, I didn’t look very hard). But a microblog is essentially like this blog, except it consists of shorter and more frequent posts. So rather than posting several paragraphs once a day or every few days, an author might post a couple of sentences several times a day. To read it in order, you would read it the same way as a blog: the most recent posts are at the top, so the further down you go, the further back in time you go.

One thing that is incredibly cool about Twitter and makes it completely unique from a blog is the “home” page. When you sign up for Twitter, you have the option to begin “following” other Twitter users, and they have the option to follow you (naturally, you can control your privacy settings). So when you log onto Twitter, it goes to your home page, which updates every time one of the people you are following makes a new post.

This is a capture of my Twitter home page. At the top, you can see the space for me to write “What I am doing” or whatever else I feel like posting about. Also notice the number “140″ above that box. Twitter limits you to only 140 characters per post. It becomes an interesting challenge getting your point across in a limited space. And you can see below the box posts of some of the people I follow: Felicia Day of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and The Guild, Dr. Horrible himself, Brett McKay of The Art of Manliness, The Pioneer Woman, and Mike Purvis. Every time they “tweet” something, it is added to this page for me to read, and every time I write something, it is added on my page and on the home pages of the people who follow me.

It is a fun way to keep in touch with people that you know, and to read about what they are up to (which is often what we most want to hear anyway), and it is also fun to follow people you don’t necessarily know who tend to be writing for a wide audience of people they don’t know either (ie, evskeys, Wil Wheaton).

If Twitter is something that interests you, you should check it out! Play with it a little, start following people and you’ll quickly figure out how it works. And if you start an account, make sure you go to my page and click the little “follow” link beneath my picture, so I’ll know you’ve signed up and so I can follow you back.

Little bro: Knot Expert ;)

So, I just need to brag about my littlest brother for a minute here. As I may have mentioned before, he is 11 years old.

Yesterday, I took him rock climbing. It was actually a lot of fun. He did a great job, trying a lot of walls and making it to the top of one or two of them (a great feat when it isn’t something you normally do). We weren’t there for very long (we’re working on endurance ) but the thing that impressed me most is what he did learn in the time we were there.

Here is an article on the basic climbing knots, the figure eight and the fisherman’s knot.

And this is the sequence of events:

1. First wall, I tied little bro in (doing the knots for him to climb)
2. Second wall, I demonstrated (just once, mind you) how to tie the knots
3. Third wall, I told little bro I wanted him to try the knots and see how he did.

In a word, flawless. Absolutely flawless.

This video is when he was tying in to his fourth wall of the day, his second attempt at tying the knots. Again, flawless. I was super impressed. When I was working at the gym, there was rarely a person who could tie-in flawlessly on their first attempt, adults and children alike, and here is this 11-year-old, tying-in with all the deftness of someone who has been climbing for years.

So cool. After the move, we definitely need to invest in a membership at the rock climbing gym

also, I really like the song playing in the background—anyone know what it is?

Grooved pavement

The problem with being an English student and a writer is that you cannot help but see metaphors for your life in everyday experiences. Everything means something. Everything matters. Or maybe that has nothing to do with that and everything to do with my idealistic tendencies. Either way.

I was driving home from a friend’s birthday party last night (Happy Birthday, Sarah!). I tend to develop habits pretty quickly, and the one I’m talking about right now is how I drive to and from my University town. I used to always only drive country roads there and back. This summer, because I’ve been finding myself leaving my University town late at night (say 10 or 10:30), I tend to drive there using country roads, but back on the highway. Should something happen to my car, I guess, I’d prefer to be stranded on the side of a well-traveled highway, rather than on some back road somewhere that few cars travel.

So anyway, a couple of months ago, I was in town for an old roommate’s wedding (which was delightful, by the way). It was very late by the time I left, so naturally, I chose the highway to head home. After being on the highway for probably an hour and a bit, I noticed a sign on the side of the road: “Grooved Pavement”. I didn’t really know what it meant, and in fact, didn’t pay it too much mind until I was suddenly traveling over this grooved pavement. I guess they were in process of fixing up the road. The tires rubbing over this grooved surface made a load loud whir, and the whole car vibrated as it passed over each section of grooved pavement. It was a frustrating experience. I was tired, and this I found to be consternating. And it didn’t stop. I would travel over a section of pavement and once I was back on the old surface, I would breathe a sigh of relief and settle in again, only to be jarred when the car hit another patch. The journey was like this for probably 20 minutes, but it felt much longer.

Since that wedding, I’ve been back in my University town several times for different events, and coming home has always been the same: entering the highway, forgetting about the grooved pavement until the sign and then feeling frustration for that part of the journey.

Finally, this last trip, I think I had gotten used to it. I was heading home and I saw the sign still up, and I mentally sighed. Oh well, I thought. I was used to it by now. I’d just have to go through that frustration for a little bit and then forget about it for the rest of the journey.

I cannot even describe the shock it was when I drove over the dark, blissfully smooth new pavement that had been placed over the grooves in the highway since the last time I drove it. I didn’t believe it at first. I thought maybe that segment of new pavement had always been there. But as the journey continued, and the road switched back and forth from old pavement to new, I was convinced. They had finally re-paved the grooved segments of the highway. And not only that, the old pavement that used to be a relief when there was grooving, was now noticeably bumpy and uncomfortable compared to the new pavement. It was incredible.

The hardships in our life feel like that most of the time. When they first hit us, they are surprising and frustrating and anxiety-inducing. We can’t understand why they’re there. Perhaps at first, we can believe that they are there to fix what was wrong in the first place. But as the days, weeks, months go by, we find relief in what has been left alone. This area of my life is fraught with difficulty, but that area is ever as it always was—ah, relief.

And every time we encounter those difficulties, it hurts and baffles us. Why? we ask. Was it not fine the way it was? And eventually we drift into complacency. Not a happy complacency, but a dull one. Yes, this is hard, we acknowledge, but I am so tired. We learn how to survive, how to get through the hardships while remaining intact emotionally, even if the only way to do so is to dull ourselves to the pain.

And we believe that the pain will always be there. That part of my life is always going to be this way, always grooved and difficult, ruined.

But that isn’t God’s plan for our lives.

I don’t know the purpose for the grooving of the highway, but I understand that it is part of the process of repaving. It is necessary, even though it is inconvenient, frustrating, etc. And even though the grooving seems to be there indefinitely, eventually new pavement is laid. The plan is never to leave the grooving there, but the grooving is an essential part of making the road anew.

That’s the way it is for the pain in our life. The plan is never to leave the pain there, but it is an essential part of refining us. God must tear down the parts of our life that He wants to remake in order to rebuild us the way He wants for us to be. I think we look at those areas, just after He has started working on them, as having been just fine. “You could have left them alone, you know?” we cry bitterly. “They were fine just the way they were.” But at the end of it all, the difference is incredible. The new is better than the broken, obviously, but it is also even better than the old. But to get from old to new, we must go through the process of brokenness. But the result is incredible. It is better than we could have imagined.

Keep traveling, I say. He will make all things new, in His time.

Noteworthy Professors I: Dr. Gary Draper

Dr. Gary Draper was an excellent professor of mine. From what I understand, this past was his last year before retirement. This is what one student had to say about him:

Dr Draper has a one of a kind personality and truly enjoys what he is teaching. It is up to the students if they want to join him in his wonderful world of english or not. He is a hard marker which makes one really feel as if they are earning something in university. Awesome sense of humour and helpful to the fullest.

I’ve always loved writing. From the time I was old enough to hold a pen, I wrote, even before I could form letters. I’ve been telling stories on paper for as long as I could remember, and all of my old notebooks (when they don’t contain the silly “Dear Diary” scribbles of young girls) hold short stories and story ideas. I have easily an entire box of writing on paper, and a lot more in electronic form, but this professor was the first “outsider” (someone who wasn’t family or a close friend) who recognized me as a writer.

The very first class I walked into in my first term of my first year of University was his, and I still remember his opening speech. He walked up to the board and wrote “PLEASURE” in big letters across it, and then turned to us saying that this was why he wanted us to read. Not to analyze it, not to glean some truth from the text (although he hoped we would be able to do that, too). His primary goal in what we were reading was that we would enjoy it. It was a breath of fresh air, because that, after all, is why writers write. There are many who write to make a point, and who have all sorts of hidden messages and meanings, but primarily, writers write to put words to their emotions, and bring enjoyment to their audiences. As an avid reader and an even more avid writer, hearing these sentiments expressed by this professor assured me that it was going to be an excellent term.

I went on to take two more classes from him, and I enjoyed all three, even the Canadian literature class (coming eventually ), and most of the material we covered. And through his courses, I became a better writer, mostly because he came to expect it of me. I didn’t even realize that he did. I just remember speaking up in class, which I had never done before. His classes were often discussion style. He would take our opinions and ideas and pursue them further, pushing us, seeing what we could come up with. He seemed to learn almost as much as we did in a term, and his appreciation for our contributions encouraged me to contribute more.

The next year, I went to speak with him about a scholarship writing contest. It took him a moment to recall who I was. He asked my name and what class I took with him, and immediately recognition came.

“That’s right!” he exclaimed. “Yes, I certainly do remember you. It’s funny, as soon as I saw you, my first thought was ’she’s a writer’.”

He recognized the distinctness of my narrative voice, and in an assignment where we were given creative license to choose our own topic, I attempted to rewrite the ending of a narrative poem we were studying. He complimented my efforts, but said he had hoped to see more of an adoption of the original author’s tone. I spoke with him after class, and said that I had tried. I complained that I had found it very difficult to silence my own voice.

He said, “Yes, I can understand that. You have a very strong narrative voice.”

High compliments for a writer.

Anyway, the long and short of this post is to say that Gary Draper was an excellent professor; I haven’t spoken with anyone who didn’t enjoy a class with him, and I would highly recommend attending any lecture he might give in the future.

Trust

Trust is an active verb.

I was thinking about this recently. A lot of times, we say that we trust someone or trust in something, but we don’t take actions that actually indicate this trust. As an example, say we come to a bridge that we need to cross. We can look at it and analyze it, decide that it is sound and say that we trust it to hold our weight, but if we never put that trust to the test, if we never actually set foot on that bridge, do we really trust it?

Hopefully this tidbit will get your thoughts going Feel free to share musings of your own.

Meditations

What separates the good from the great is discipline.

I was watching this video (yes, I’m a little enamoured of TED talks right now…). I used to play the violin. My teacher complimented my ear and my tone. I was able to produce a clear tone in a very short period of time, and, since there are no markings on the violin separating the different tones from each other, it is very important that the musician develops a good ear to know when they have and have not placed their fingers in the correct position. I watch this video of a child who is half my age, and I wonder, if I had continued with the violin, could I ever have achieved this kind of mastery? My first impulse was to make a throwaway, yes, of course. Strange first impulse… but my reason for making it was that I understand the hours and hours of practice that must be behind her playing, the years of dedication to her instrument (7 years), and let’s not forget the support and probably the assisted discipline, shall we call it (ie, “It’s time to practice!”), from her parents. I had the ear and the ability to achieve good tone from the instrument, but I lacked the passion for violin playing. I love listening to the violin (especially live), but playing the instrument does not stir my soul. I also lacked the discipline for the hours of practice that would have been required each week, and the fortitude to stick with it for years and years. And that is the difference. I was good, or could have been good, but what this eleven-year-old has that I did not is passion and discipline.

And I think that’s a lesson to take with us. For anything we want to achieve or become skilled at, it requires discipline. For an instrument, we can’t play cavalierly an hour a week and expect to improve. I casually play the piano. It was mostly during the school year, and mostly to take a break from studying and to relieve stress. Since the summer began nearly two months ago, I haven’t touched the instrument. Even when I did play regularly, I probably played less than five hours a week, and I was not enrolled in lessons. I did not expect to become a master at the instrument, and would not consider myself good enough to play in front of others. There were two pieces that I learned at separate times, pieces that I spent hours and hours practicing over the course of several weeks, and these pieces I played in our residence coffeehouses, but I wouldn’t ever sit down in front of the instrument and expect to dazzle an audience. But should I choose to improve, should I decide that I wanted to develop my playing, I would invest in lessons, I would actually play above 1-3 times a week, I would devote my time, energy, thoughts, etc. to the instrument.

And that, my friends, is discipline, and that is what we need to develop to achieve mastery. This is when you hear talk of people waking at 5am for early morning practices or spending every spare moment they have engulfed in their subject of choice. I have several friends who do this, and I honour their discipline and their knowledge and skills that have developed out of it. I also envy it . I acknowledge the importance of maintaining balance, and also of being aware if it is starts to become a burden, but discipline in anything we do is something that is important.

Discipline is the difference between good and great, between one who browses among the daisies and one who digs down to investigate the roots. One acknowledges the beauty of the flower, the other truly understands how it works. Actually, that isn’t a bad metaphor, because it also emphasizes the importance of balance. If you spend too much time engulfed in learning the mechanisms, you forget the beauty that made you want to explore it in the first place. And your enjoyment of the beauty is enhanced by understanding the internal beauty as well as what is on the surface.

And that, I guess, is a challenge for all of us, to examine our lives and to improve our self-discipline and our balance.

You’re doing it wrong

“You’re doing it wrong.”

Probably the single most destructive phrase in a dance relationship.

I must include my qualifiers and disclaimers before I go on. If it is a dance relationship in which both parties know, respect and are comfortable with each other, saying, “you’re doing it wrong” usually comes across quite differently than when it is said in the middle of a 3-4 minute song where you have only just managed to commit your partner’s name to memory.

In the course of a dance, especially when the lead is in the beginning stage of learning, it is very easy for mixed signals to occur, and so the follower sometimes does something other than what the lead intended. As a follower, there are two moves that, if not led strongly enough, are easy to confuse: the circle and the swing-out (in this video, the first three moves, when the couple goes from open position to closed position are: the swing-out, the sushi roll and the circle. Notice in the first move, the swing-out, that the lady leaves the gentleman’s arms. In the sushi roll, the second move, she spins as she leaves his arms, and then in the third move, the circle, she remains in his arms). If the lead hasn’t quite figured out how to lead those moves, the follow (ie, me) is tempted to leave his arms for a swing-out, when he was intending a circle, or to stay in his arms for a circle, when he was intending a swing-out.

I experienced this confusion once with a partner who was eager to learn and to figure out why the moves weren’t working properly. And so I explained to him that his lead for the circle and the swing-out felt the same for me. He thought about that, and when we tried it again, his lead was much stronger. Not overbearing, but when he was intending a circle, he kept his arm strong enough so that I knew he wasn’t about to let me go into a swing-out.

I have experienced it in other scenarios where the lead was convinced that I was the problem. And in a sense, that is true: I was the one misinterpreting his intentions, but by the same token, he is the one leading the dance, and if I do something wrong, it isn’t altogether my problem alone, it is a matter of miscommunication. In a lead-follow dance relationship, any problem that arises is a result of both members of the couple. She didn’t follow his lead well, but he did not communicate it in a way that she could understand. He did not lead a move properly, but she wasn’t paying enough attention to follow it as he intended. When it comes down to it, no matter what the problem is, or where it is arising from, it is a problem for both people and both need to work on improving communication.

I was clicking through a dance club website once, and read through their page on dance etiquette, and they suggest ways for fixing miscommunication problems. They suggested a helpful phrase. When there is a break down in communication, there should not be blame (ie, “You’re doing it wrong!”), there should be a desire to understand and improve, both self and other. They suggested this phrase: “I don’t think that move worked out correctly, what do you think we can do to make it better?” This leaves your partner ample room to suggest the problem they are facing in the dance, without criticizing their dancing or placing blame.

Shall we philosophize by making this a metaphor? Oh, I think we shall.

We can broaden this and look at any relationship between people. Most fall-outs are a result of miscommunication, followed by determined blame-placing, fault-finding and criticism. Perhaps, rather than seeking to place blame, we should seek to understand where the breakdown in communication is happening. I have to believe that relationships would go a lot smoother if we made the effort to determine why the other did things the way they did. That isn’t to say that all pain would dissipate, or that there wouldn’t be any more fights, but it is to say that at least then, the lines of communication would be open. Even if there is still pain crossing the wires, at least then they could talk to each other about it and work towards some kind of resolution.

What do you think?