Finding the Balance Between My Job and My job

I suppose this is meta- because I'm talking about what I am talking about.

I spent two hours yesterday working on a blog post I had intended to post this morning. When I woke up this morning, I realized that it cannot be published. Not this morning at least. Why? Because the first part of it is clean and neat and flowed out of me in a matter of minutes, like Athena from Zeus's head, though no one would mistake it for divine. The second part is the part I had labored on, and even though it has taken up more time than I have, it isn't ready. It is a treatment of someone else's ideas, and therefore I have to take the time out to make sure it says something I really want to say.

I don't always take that sort of time. Whether I should or not, I don't know because I am still at the very beginning of this process. What process is that? The process of taking my own writing seriously.

There's a struggle here by virtue of the fact that I am not a writer, though that is what I have always wanted to be. I am a wife and mother. As Nancy Wilson reminded us a couple of weeks ago, when she and her husband were in Tuscaloosa speaking at Riverwood Presbyterian, motherhood is a high and important calling, and I don't wish to devalue it. In another sense I am a writer because I write. Besides that I am a published writer because you are published the moment you hand something over for someone else to read. I've been publishing these things regularly, in various qualities of dress, for a couple of months.

Here's something I've been wondering about. Writing is work. It's a lot of work if you do anything more than a quick draft. Occasionally an email will take me 45 minutes or more to complete. If I am to value my primary job, which is running a household, as I should, how do I do this other thing as well? I imagine some people would tell me that I have to wait until the children are older and don't need me as much. I suppose other people would say I have to write because the writing is the most important thing. I'm not comfortable with either of these answers. You have to have something of your own is the accepted wisdom, and I don't disagree. But how do I do both: do them justice (my husband, my family), and have this something of my own (reading, writing, study)? It isn't as though I can really set them, my husband and children, aside when the need to write arises. It isnt' as though I can always write during those times when they are occupied with other things.

I imagine this is something that all mothers struggle with. I'd like to start looking around for other women who have a similar mix of anxieties, because many of them are bloggers, women who also have intellectual goals, but who combine those goals with a high view of the calling to motherhood.

Consider this a call for help. If you've been reading this thing for long, you probably already have an idea of what kinds of blogs I'd be interested in (i.e. writers, readers, University people, theology buffs). If you have any recommendations to make, please submit them now.

Book Review, and Three Books on Prayer

I wrote a review of the book The Papa Prayer: The Prayer You've Never Prayed by Larry Crabb on Good Reads on Wednesday morning, even though I read the book two or three years ago now. I'm not generally very good at book reviews these days, saying more about whether I liked the book or not than what the structure of the book was, what the author argued, whether I agreed. My book reviews have been sporadic over the years, inconsistent in their content, even though I was rather good at them in undergrad and grad school. It's as though writing about  a book as part of an assignment were easier than writing about the book in a responsible way for my own use. Make sense? If it doesn't, know it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. I hope that my work in Adler and Van Doren will cause me to improve.

Years ago a friend of mine gave me a book journal, a lovely little paperback thing she had picked up in California. She told me that I should try to capture my thoughts as best I could, but then I got out of the habit of thinking about books the way I once had, and when I tried to make notes about them in the book I too often felt that I was getting nowhere fast. Again, I hope that as I continue to build this habit of regular writing and careful reading into my life this will change as well. I'd like to fill that lovely little book with ink, the sort of thing I'll want to read in years to come.

I share my review of The Papa Prayer below, with some added details, and perhaps more personal information:

I thought this book was terrific, life changing in fact. My Dad, and another friend of mine disagreed, not that it was life-changing. We didn't discuss it in that way. The disagreement was over whether the book was wonderful or not. She (my friend) said that it seemed to her to be one of those books that revolved around one central idea that could better be expressed in fewer pages. I don't remember what my dad said, but knowing him it may have been something similar. Or perhaps the kind of prayer that Crabb described doesn't fit his relational style. I've advocated elsewhere that we are each of us uniquely made, and that therefore the relationship between God and us will not be uniform. This book contained some things that were bread and meat for me.


What I liked best about this book was the form of prayer that Crabb describes. Instead of trying to guess what God wants in any given situation, or demanding what we want from Him, Crabb advocates a form of prayer that becomes a conversation like you'd have with someone who cares about you. You present your own anxieties about a situation before God, tell Him what you're thinking, express your hopes for a particular outcome if you have them, but in so doing relinquish your concerns to Him. I know this isn't a revolutionary concept, but the way that Crabb describes it is immanently useful. For weeks after I read it I was more aware than usual of how much God values my conversations with Him, which in turn made me so much more aware and grateful that He was near.


Richard Foster presents a different view of prayer in a chapter of Celebration of Discipline, which is also valuable, and contrary to this one. Foster says that in intercessory prayer, which is the form he concentrates on in this book, there is no room for praying "Thy will be done." He says that when praying for others we must discern the will of God first, and then pray that in expectation. I don't disagree. I look forward to reading Foster's book, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home, if I can ever get my hands on a copy. I think the contradiction springs from a difference in focus, and I recommend Foster's view of the subject as well. I also absolutely love With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray, which I read last summer. Andrew Murray's book reads like a devotional, a format that I have historically stayed away from. It's a terrific little book though, delving into scripture and teaching how to pray as Jesus taught and prayed. Each of these books is worth reading. Of the three, Larry Crabb's book moved me more to wonder at the glory and love of God and worship Him than it did claim my intellectual assent, and that is one of the reasons why I liked the books so much.

And now I'm one move closer to learning how to write a useful book review. For those books that I can remember well I now have the opportunity to re-review them, as the website I used to use for organizing my reading is in the process of shutting down. If I can make myself write about plot in the future, I may be able to start reviewing fiction as well, with something more than "I love this book," " I couldn't wait for it to be over but then it got better," and other such uninformative comments.

I tried to compose something about one of my favorite television shows the other day, but I couldn't get very far with it because I wasn't willing to explain the basic plot. It's something I shall have to continue to work on.

Note: I'll go ahead and publish the link below, but know that I have only written a couple of reviews on the goodreads website at this point, because I imported all of my books into their system only Tuesday. Reviews that I had published previously on living social could not be imported, and I had to give star ratings to many books that I had not read in years.


View all my reviews

Music and Homework, Learning how to do these things again

I've been listening to music. And working on a homework assignment. How is it that I used to do this all the time?

Back then I had a room all to myself, and I didn't have to worry about waking someone up from his nap. I could listen to it loudly, I could listen to it quietly, and sing as much as I wanted. It didn't bother anyone. At the time my homework assignments involved line drawings made with T-square and angle, cutting mat board with a utility knife, pasting drawing to page, creating templates for fabric design, laborful but mindless tasks that left mind open to experience sound. My friend Sharon once pointed out to me that each of us only lacked a couple of credits to have an minor in art. Back then I didn't have to make dinner for anyone but me.

I remember when I got my first copy of Five Wise Virgins by 100 Portraits. I lay on the floor of a housemate's room with my eyes closed and listened and cried and prayed through the entire thing. It is a recording that is too rich to listen to over and over again, but just the thing when you're feeling a little lonely, or need a different kind of gateway to worship.

These days I listen to music only when my children will let me, while I'm washing dishes, folding clothes or taking the dog for a walk. It used to happen sometimes while I was waiting without patience for something on the computer to load. Once or twice I closed my eyes and listened while the boys were down for their naps, but not in a while. It takes me thirty exposures before understand all the words. Occasionally it takes that long for me to decide whether I like what I'm hearing or not.

I love music. I love lyrics. I'd like to learn how to listen to both again.

My husband is only interested in a certain level of technical proficiency combined with adaptability when it comes to music. Trained as a jazz musician and admiring the likes of Charlie Parker and Michael Brecker, if a performance isn't compositionally nuanced and layered it is unlikely to win his approval. I hope he doesn't object to my characterization as such. I'd hate to learn that I had misrepresented him.

I am much more interested in lyrics. I want to hear songs that express the highs and lows of human experience, though narrative songs in the form of ballads drive me batty.

The homework I worked on today came from the exercises at the end of the Adler/Van Doren book. In one such exercise for the testing of elementary reading I was asked to comment on a rather lovely quotation from Sir Isaac Newton, something he said as an old man:

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

I was supposed to comment on this in 250 words. I could only manage 169.

Newton makes this statement because all of his scientific and mathematical pursuits were a matter to him of great pleasure. It was never his intention to make a great name for himself. He did not particularly enjoy the acclaim of his peers or public, or appreciate being made the center of controversy. All he really wanted was to be left alone to pursue his investigations, which for him were a matter of play. The smooth pebbles and pretty shells he refers to are the objects of his desire, which is discovery, and discovery undertaken only for its own sake. He understood only too well that the answering of a singe question could only lead to other questions being asked. Each new discovery was like a water molecule in the vastness of the ocean. He believed that truth existed and that the work he did contributed to mankind's knowledge of that truth, but he also recognized its infinitude and in fact I would think that he was pleased by it.

If I got nothing else out of the exercise at least I got this one lovely quote, which presents me with another way of looking at the world.

Another Disclaimer about My Posting

Readers, I got carried away as usual and hit the Publish Post button when I mean to hit the Post Options button to schedule a delayed posting instead. Be warned. Tonight's post is tomorrow's post in disguise.

A Consideration of Words

This afternoon as I was driving home from the library I was thinking about words. I described something as splendid this past week. On second thought, splendid probably wasn't the right word to use when describing your admiration for a regional vernacular. Something that is splendid is covered in splendor, is it not? Like the grass covered with the final glow of the sun as evening falls.

Sometimes I want to say that a thing is terrific. But then I pause because it isn't terrific. There is no terror associated with the crayon drawings that my son produces during his daily quiet rest time.

Doesn't fantastic mean that something is too much to be believed? It is a fantasy, which is the equivalent of what Napoleon Dynamite promised his classmates, that he would make their wildest dreams come true. I check with IMDB. Was it Napoleon who promised that, or was it Pedro? My hopes are dashed. I remembered it wrong. Pedro made the promise; Napoleon only suggested it to him.

Here's one that Napoleon actually did use. Copied from the famous quotes page on IMDB.com: “That suit, it's... it's incredible.” Doesn't incredible mean that something really is not to be believed? As in, my credulity can only be stretched so far?

Smashing? I know I'm getting really British here, but could smashing mean that all the matter in the universe is so overwhelmed that it explodes under the weight of existence? Something that is wonderful if full of wonder. Something that is overwhelming in actual fact cannot be borne.

Impossible? Well, I think impossible is pretty straight-forward, even though it is usually used to describe things that really aren't impossible.

Can you think of any others?

I was about to quote something familiar which was said by C.S. Lewis, and that I'm fairly certain I have quoted in these pages before about the death of words. A quick internet search finds references to an essay with that title which I have never read. Lewis also writes about “verbicide, the murder of a word...” in Studies In Words, which I have read. But in thumbing through the introduction to Studies in Words this evening (for it is Monday evening as I write), I find something else to quote instead.

After hearing one chapter of this book when it was still a lecture, a man remarked to me 'You have made me afraid to say anything at all'. I know what he meant. Prolonged thought about the words which we ordinarily use to think with can produce a momentary aphasia. I think it is to be welcomed. It is well we should become aware of what we are doing when we speak, of the ancient, fragile, and (well used) immensely potent instruments that words are. (6, Lewis's formatting maintained)

Isn't it wonderful how human Lewis is? That in the middle of a book that would seem technical to most people, he inserts something as regular as an anecdote, but an anecdote that ties in with the matter at hand? He goes on to describe something similar to what I have been describing in my own undereducated way above, by which I mean to say that Lewis speaks with the authority of study, while I speak only from the considerations of my own mind, not having taken the time or trouble to find authoritative meanings for any of the words I have been pondering.

Inflation is one of the commonest [forms of verbicide]; those who taught us to say awfully for 'very', tremendous for 'great', sadism for 'cruelty', and unthinkable for 'undesireable' were verbicides. Another way is verbiage, by which I here mean the use of a word as a promise to pay which is never going to be kept. The use of significant as if it were an absolute, and with no intention of ever telling us what the thing is significant of is an example.... (7)

This is exactly the sort of thing I have been thinking about this week, and it is exactly the sort of exaggerative usage that I am continually guilty of, almost to the extent that I am “afraid to say anything at all.” Is there a whole lot of chance that I am going to weed these superlatives out of my speech? No. Is there much chance that I will weed them out of my writing? Probably not. But I am still going to be caught up short whenever terrific or terrible are the words I feel compelled to choose.

The Story of Our Week (Oh, boy, It's a Long One)

Last week did in fact turn out to be a trying week.

On Saturday I saw that the maintenance required light that had been blinking in my van for three months had suddenly changed from blinking to solid. This was not a good sign. I had been supposed to take it in for an oil change the week that I was sick, and then we had VBS every morning, and then the weekend, so I had to trust my children to ride in a vehicle that I feared, for about five seconds, might not be safe. Michael had commented that the engine sounded different and that it seemed to lose power as he was driving only days before.

Took the van in to the shop. I would have stayed and waited for the oil change if I didn't think there was a good chance something else would have to be repaired. Got a ride home from the shop with one of their drivers and practiced my question-asking skills all three miles. It wasn't difficult as he was the kind of man who takes a question and runs with it. Nice guy.

They were able to fix it for us that day, but it cost about two-hundred dollars more than I had hoped to pay for a repair.

That evening around dinner time we failed to notice that our yellow labrador was needing to go out. Parker, my four year old, was the first to notice her peeing on the rug in the back room, which is also our laundry room. She had never had an accident in the house before. Luckily our sometimes daytime house guest was there, and he was able to tell us what to do to clean it up. After we mopped up as much as we could with towels, he poured baking soda all over the wet area to wick up the moisture. This was scraped and swept, and in the morning the residue was dry enough to clean up with the vacuum cleaner.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday occurred without either positive development business-wise, or negative incident. A good friend brought us dinner. Michael and I got a couple of hours out of the house to attend a short seminar. The children and I met my sister at CHOM and at the public library.

Then Friday. Ah, Friday.

Because I had felt pretty crummy all week, and our laundry room was being used for test-taking by our guest, the laundry had been piling up. In fact I hadn't even folded towels from the weekend before. As Michael left the house for play testing with Jim and errands, I finally put on a load of clothes and got the children ready to go outside.

We go outside. I see an unaccountable puddle of water streaming from the basement. It looks like it has soap in it. I walk into the basement to investigate, noticing that a lot of the moisture seems to be originating around the water heater, but there's nothing wrong with the water heater. Next thing I know, a rush of water falls from the raw ceiling above the heater. I run upstairs to see what's going on, only to find a stream of water growing out from underneath the washing machine, the wooden floor boards becoming warped around the edges. Since the load of laundry in the machine is in its final cycle, I have no choice but to let it run, even as I have a pretty good idea of what is going on below.

Michael's gone. The children are outside alone. A friend of mine is coming in a couple of hours to cut my hair.

I could drag this out and give you all the details, but the main thing that happened in the hours before my friend got there and Michael made it home from errands was that a $600 car repair that didn't bother me at the beginning of the week suddenly became a frighteningly large expense, as I contemplated the possibility of an even more expensive plumbing charge. For a moment I envisioned the floor collapsing and the siding falling off the back of the house. For a moment I couldn't help but think about the disparity between our income and expenses for the month. We're fine, but it really was a rough couple of hours alone in the house with two tired, and I do mean tired, children.

On Saturday I washed all of our dishes by hand (with help) because I was afraid that running the dishwasher would overload the plumbing. On Saturday Isaac's diaper leaked into my bed, wetting our one and only mattress pad, making the laundry situation all the more urgent. On Saturday Michael worked on the plumbing, and worked on the plumbing, and worked on the plumbing, with the benefit of some good advice from our sometimes house guest, but the problem wasn't immediately fixed. It wasn't a surprise that a plumbing issue would require a lot of trial and error, but it was still disheartening.

More help, this time from my Dad, after which the problem was solved without our having to call in the professionals, and without my having to leave the house to do laundry or grocery shopping or anything.

This was the week that I was dreading, and it turned out to contain things I never would have imagined in advance. I was glad on Saturday that it seemed to be over.

On Friday for a time I wondered why God wasn't providing for us in a more satisfying way. I wondered why the business possibilities that had come up at the beginning of the month hadn't developed into much of anything. I wondered why I had to finally get upset about the cost of the car when I had handled it so well earlier in the week.

On Saturday I remembered that we're supposed to thank God for trials. And I figured something out about the way I was supposed to pray while we wait for our financial situation to change. Maybe this is what I ought to be saying to Him (God): I know that You could provide us with an adequate stream of income any time You want. For all I know You could be planning to solve all of our employment problems tomorrow. Until You do, please just stretch what money we have and in the meantime teach me the lesson that You can be trusted with all our desires and needs.

It's a lesson I've been working on, and I have plenty of ideas about what faith and trust mean in terms of our relationship with God, that lovely old loaded term I'm also trying to cope with.

And then I started to recognize some of the blessings of the week.

My mom came to my house unexpectedly on Sunday night and cut my children's hair after which they got to run around in the sprinklers for half an hour.

A friend who will remain anonymous because I don't know whether he would want me to name him or not brought us dinner one night because I had been sick and because he wanted to do something nice for us. That dinner lasted us for two meals.

The children got a chance to use the computer games at the library because my sister was there with us, which meant that each child had their own adult giving them full attention.

Our sometimes daytime house guest was here when the dog peed on the carpet and was available with good and practical advice when the plumbing went all haywire.

The friend who cut my hair was here when I needed someone to distract me from what could have become a full on panic followed by depression as I described above.

My husband was able to solve the plumbing and problem and my parents were available to help.

We ended Saturday evening in the presence of someone Michael and I both love, who fed us yet again, and who brought the entertainment, leaving fresh vegetables and lemonade, among other things, behind.

In fact it turned out to be a rather good week.

A Story, and How to Fall Asleep With a Book

Many, many years ago when Michael and I hadn't been married very long I stopped sleeping. The attorneys who I worked for at the time had announced that they were going to take me shopping for a new desk, and I think it was on the same day we went shopping and picked out the item that all sleeping ceased.

That night I lay awake with visions of office furniture spiraling my brain, as though I were Alice falling through a cherry paneled rabbit hole. By morning my skull hurt. The next morning it was even worse.

About three days in my mom got me an appointment with a doctor. My doctor gave me a sample of a sleeping pill which I took that night. I slept for two hours until my husband came to bed, at which time he accidentally woke me up, and that was that for the night.

After six days I was in really bad shape. I lost all depth perception, couldn't drive, couldn't even dress myself, and that's when I got on a sleeping aid that actually worked. As it turned out, I was suffering from depression, and once I got on an effective anti-depressant, an effective sleeping pill, and started counseling, things became manageable again. At this point I averaged about four hours of sleep a night, but it was tolerable.

The funny thing was that the sleeping pill I was on only worked if I fell asleep while reading. If I closed my eyes without a book, sleep would never come. If I drifted off in the middle of a page the desired effect would be achieved. It was still a trying time, but things were better.

I have continued to have difficulty sleeping, and having tried every natural remedy I can think of, I find the only thing that works is getting up at 5:00 every morning.  If I get up at 5:00 I'm tired by the end of the day, and so long as I drink a cup of something hot (milk or tea will do) and read a bit, I manage to sleep for a reasonable amount of time.

But the morning and evening routine are only a late development. I cannot tell you how many times I've been told that reading a boring book might do the trick. I've wondered, both innocently and naively, how on earth could I ever find a book boring enough that it would make me fall asleep?

In fact Adler and Van Doren have a prescription for me to read myself to sleep:

The rules for reading yourself to sleep are easier to follow than are the rules for staying awake while reading. Get into bed in a comfortable position, make sure the light is inadequate enough to cause a slight eyestrain, choose a book that is either terribly difficult or terribly boring--in any event, one that you do not really care whether you read or not--and you will be asleep in a few minutes. Those who are experts in relaxing with a book do not have to wait for nightfall. A comfortable chair in the library will do any time (How to Read a Book, 45).

A book I don't care whether I read or not? Where could I find such a creature? In fact I know plenty of people who could provide me with books that I would find quite boring, though I'll tell you that I used to read a textbook on textiles just for fun, so that tells you something. Besides boring books, there are plenty of downright bad books on library shelves. Fortunately I have managed over the years not to encounter very many of those. On the other hand, the seventh chapter of the third part of Atlas Shrugged, '"This is John Galt Speaking,"' could probably do the trick. It's approximately sixty pages in small print of Ayn Rand sharing her philosophy, and even I, who read Les Miserables in full without neglecting the digressions, couldn't make myself read that one, so obviously the book that will put you to sleep can be found.

I offer an alternative strategy for reading yourself to sleep, one that I employed with some success this time last year before the early waking cure was found. Read a book you want to read but know you can't understand yet. Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard is the one I chose, for example. It was a book I knew I would have to read more than once before I could begin to get anywhere with it, and a page was all it took to prepare me to sleep. Yes, I could already follow it in snatches, but that was only enough to make it an interesting read to fall asleep to.

Reading and Re-reading; Please Tell Me You Don't Find This Too Terribly Dry

I took a break from George MacDonald for a few days as I got all caught up in How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. I finally got to the chapter in Adler on "How to Read Philosophy" and was disappointed to find that it wasn't one of the more encouraging chapters. Philosophy is difficult, and isn't commonly written for non-practitioners any more.

You may remember from last week that I was really happy to find that I could understand the essays in The Truth in Jesus by George MacDonald at last. There have been further developments in that area.  I have realized something. The reason I was able to understand the first four essays/sermons in the book was not because I had become accustomed to MacDonald's way of writing as I previously suspected. It was because I had read them before, without having much if any idea of what they were about. My reading of the last two weeks had all been second (and in a few cases third or fourth) readings. Since I am committed to finishing the book this time, and since I have been so pleased with the content of the first four essays, I have had to alter my reading strategy in a way that reinforces certain recommendations provided by Adler. I have to read the essay through once, without understanding it, knowing that on second reading his sentences and meanings will become clear.

This is not something I have had much patience for in the past. During my brief stint in graduate school it was something I had no time for. Admittedly, even though I read an excerpt from Foucault's The Archeology of Knowledge many, many times for the sake of a short writing assignment, and even with the help of Doctor Young, I never did get the hang of that one. Reading and re-reading doesn't always work, but when it does, it really does.

And may I say that reading and re-reading George MacDonald is totally worth the effort! Of course it might be of more use to you if I could tell you what the essays are about. All I can say is that most of them are really amazing, and I hope to take the opportunity, now that I know how amazing they are, to go back and really study them after I've done all the marking-up I've been engaging in this time through. At the very least it would be useful for me to write a little summary of each one, something I have been neglecting to do, although a brief summary could never do them justice.

A word of encouragement: in most cases I had read MacDonald years ago, and even though I had not spent very much time at all thinking about them during the lapse, the simple fact of multiple exposure is what brought them to life. Preferably you would take the time to read them once through, rinse and repeat immediately, but even if you don't you may find your initial, seemingly fruitless, effort rewarded. I hope that I will find this true of other books of a similar nature, though I'll also admit to you that I have not found it true of Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach by Michael McKeon.

Another Ramble. I look up words and terms. I talk about myself some more.

Why do I find freewriting to be so myopic? And what does myopic even mean? I'll look it up online, since the dictionary is all the way in the other room, and whenever I bring it out it tends to stay out, though unused, for many, many days. According to wikipedia it originates in a Greek word having to do with shortsightedness. Funny that, because I remarked to my husband only this evening (I write this on Sunday night to be published at a later date, and in the morning) that so many things require you to take the long view about them, e.g. learning to play Yu-gi-oh! for instance, or getting a small business off the ground, or teaching the children to obey. None of these things are any fun in the short term. Well, maybe Yu-gi-oh! is, but only because Michael is taking the time to teach me to play using lots of open hands and the sharing of strategy. His training me to play these games (i.e. Risk, Yu-gi-oh!, perhaps even Dog Fight eventually) is part of our comittment to spend more dedicated time together, just the two of us.

I rely on Grammar Girl to straighten me out on the difference between i.e. and e.g. I can never remember how to use them for long. I'm happy to notice, after looking it up, that I didn't choose the wrong one in the wrong instance above.

Back to my myopia. Though freewriting is an incredibly useful exercise, I notice that what I tend to produce when I freewrite is gross. It's all about me and most of it is whining. And so I wonder what to do about that. Maybe it happens because I don't stick with it long enough to ever really get to the good stuff. I thought I noticed the same thing happening with Peter Elbow though when he shared, in Writing Without Teachers, examples of his own freewriting. So what does that mean? Maybe I don't stick with it for long because I get so very sick of myself when everything I write starts revolving around me, me, me.

One of the great struggles of my life, and there are many, revolves around recognition of my own self-centeredness, which then becomes a revolving door. The more I worry about it, the more focused on myself I get until I reach the point where I cannot possibly get out of it. My friend Damon, over at Greenhorn Gardening, calls this the death spiral. I notice that when I meet someone new, about all I can do is answer their questions about myself, and I have a very hard time remembering to ask questions of them, to get to know them. It's true that a factor of my personality is that I tend to get to know people over time, but geez, can't I at least start with a question? Can't I find a way to worry more about what they think (not about me, but in general) than I am about finding a way to express what I think? When I was in high school I used to go to the occasional party where I had no friends, because I felt that it was important to put myself out there, to risk myself in that particular way. My mother had told me to find someone there to make sure that they had a good time, by that method taking my mind off of my own social awkwardness. It worked at least two out of five times that I remember.

And in the organic and inner-dialogic nature of today's post, I now change the subject again, sort of, in a way, and draw attention to myself by saying that this is one of the reasons why I never became a journalist. Because I am lousy at asking questions. I tend to think that if there's something I need to know that someone will get around to telling me. I expect others to present not just what they want me to know, but also what I need to know, in which case there is no need for me to ask questions. And again, because of my personality, I often fail to think of my questions until later. Somehow I never managed to form the habit.

You'd think it might be because I never had it modeled for me, but that certainly isn't true. My Dad is the master of asking questions. We spent all my growing up years going from museum to festival to monument, with my Dad asking thoughtful and interesting questions all the while, and yet I never learned how to do it. For many years as I visited interior design installations during college, I expected my facial expressions to indicate my avid interest and sympathy with whomever was leading the tour or seminar or whatever it was. These days I am more aware of the way facial expressions can be misleading, speakers and docents don't always realize every detail the audience needs to have provided for them, and that if you don't ask people about themselves, occasionally they get the idea that you aren't even interested.

Do any of you reading this have a similar experience to any of those I have described above? Can you share strategies you've used to conquer your own social or literary myopia? What encouragement or caution or advice are you willing to give me?

For Jim; Finally I Share What I've Wanted to Share about C.S. Lewis

I have a craving for discipline of speech and discipline of thought. Where does the craving come from? I don't exactly know. There are certain influences. My daddy, who I adore, is a brilliant man with an opinion on everything, and usually with the evidence and reasoning to back it up. We spend hours at the dining room table at my parent's house discussing things of a Sunday afternoon. I attend his guest lectures whenever possible, and I often look to him for information when I have a question about philosophy, or natural science, or the food supply, or theology, or whatever else may come up. I tend to dominate his attention when we go to the swimming pool, because I need to desperately to run ideas by him. He answers many questions with a question, usually encouraging us to think things through a bit more thoroughly.

Another influence is, certainly, my lifelong admiration of C.S. Lewis. I love Lewis so much that no matter what I'm reading, whatever the book on whatever the subject, my eye always travels to the initials C. and S. together, whenever they occur on the page. I wish that I could have had him for a teacher, though I doubt he ever had any female students, and he probably wouldn't have been all that impressed with me. The closest I can come is reading his books.

Lewis wrote books about medieval literature, about language, about story-telling. I have a couple of his works of literary criticism in addition to the usual collection of amateur theology and fiction. Though in my circles he is known primarily as a Christian apologist, he was also a professor of English Literature, and a wonderfully accessible writer, which plays a large role in my devotion to him as one of my favorite authors. I was able to use him as a source many years ago when I was writing a small piece of textual criticism on Mallory's Le Morte D'Arthur for a class.

I notice sometimes, when I choose the wrong word or phrase, what that choice of words indicates concerning my state of mind. I would never be so critical of the language used by any other person, but as you know, I am constantly examining myself, looking for intellectual fairness and love and the meeting of duty. For example, several weeks ago I made a comment to my sister that it was foolish to dismiss a particular doubt as foolishness even if the resulting explanation was incorrect. I noticed after saying it that I was doing the same thing to the speaker that I had been accusing him of. Forgive me if that statement isn't as clear as I had hoped to make it. I wonder if this passage from Surprised by Joy, in which Lewis describes his first encounter with his tutor, Kirkpatrick, called Kirk, or The Great Knock, has to do with my self-criticism. You can also read a brief and illustrative passage preceding this one here.

If ever a man came near to being a purely logical entity, that man was Kirk. Born a little later, he would have been a Logical Positivist. The idea that human beings should exercise their vocal organs for any purpose except that of communicating or discovering truth was to him preposterous. The most casual remark was taken as a summons to disputation. I soon came to know the differing values of his three openings. The loud cry of "Stop!" was flung in to arrest a torrent of verbiage which could not be endured a moment longer; not because it fretted his patience (he never thought of that) but because it was wasting time, darkening counsel. The hastier and quieter "Excuse!" (i.e., "Excuse me") ushered in a correction or distinction merely parenthetical and betokened that, thus set right, your remark might still, without absurdity, be allowed to reach completion. The most encouraging of all was, "I hear you." This meant that your remark was significant and only required refutation; it had risen to the dignity of error. Refutation (when we got so far) always followed the same lines. Had I read this? Had I studied that? Had I any statistical evidence? Had I any evidence in my own experience? And so to the almost inevitable conclusion, "Do you not see then that you had no right, etc."

Some boys would not have liked it; to me it was red beef and strong beer (135-136).

Did I originally get the idea that words and ideas matter from reading Lewis and Surprised by Joy? What's more likely, did I get them from my father? As I read Adler this month I sometime wonder if I got my ideas from him, or whether the fact that so much of his theory of reading, emphasizing understanding before criticism, expresses things I already believe is only a happy accident and confirmation, even if it is incommensurate with our culture.

One of my favorite things about Lewis is the fact that not only does he say what he means, he has a wonderful talent for explaining what it is he doesn't mean. I admire him as a master of critical thought and of communication, skills that he must have learned under the tutelage of Knock.

Excuses for What Could Turn Out to Be a Trying Week

I may be struggling to post anything to the blog this week. I have plenty of plans for posts, but my general health has not been conducive to writing recently. Sickness all week. Tension headache all day on Sunday.

Some time I'd like to: talk more extensively about the threatening nature of blogging; explain the reasons I don't sing anymore and my visceral response whenever I see a girl with significant musical ability; respond to the article that Lanier sent me in response to this post; talk about my great desire for accuracy in my speech, and where I suspect it comes from; compile some of the theory of reading for understanding that I've been encountering in Adler; and more.

Even though there is no shortage of ideas, and there is always a book or speech somewhere to respond to, my head isn't always in the right place to do the work. It certainly isn't in the right place today. Which scares me a little bit, though it probably shouldn't. Remember what I said last week about making mistakes but staying calm?

Here's my excuse, written in advance. It remains to be seen what comes of it.

VBS Frustration and Lit Crit

I have been sick all this week, which has made it nearly impossible to write. Fortunately I had the first half of the week covered with previously scheduled posts, and was able to fill in a couple even in the midst of feeling lousy. The week wasn't supposed to go this way.

I had envisioned getting all sorts of things done while the children were away at vacation bible school. I was going to have plenty of time to think and read and write. I was going to get some things organized in my bedroom and at my desk. I was going to make a dint in the level of dust that is always in my house. None of those things actually happened, and I started thinking that the week was over even when it had barely begun.

After dropping the boys off at the church each morning I would drive home with all sorts of ideas in my head about things I was going to write. Having gotten a voice recorder for Christmas last year, I neglected to bring it with me, and even if I had brought it with me, I wouldn't have been able to articulate all of the things I was thinking.

I think in both words and pictures, but even when my thoughts do take the form of words, it isn't always possible to articulate them. That's why I can read a stimulating essay and still not be able to discuss it with anyone. That's why I can have a lucid discussion with my husband, but still not be able to write a short essay on the same topic. I wish that these things would happen more organically, but they don't.

I get especially tripped up when I try to write. Writing and speaking are not the same sort of activity, although they do have elements in common. I was reminded of this fact as I was skimming Literary Theory: An Introduction by Terry Eagleton the other day. I had picked the book up in order to find something out about Jacques Derrida. Before you start thinking I'm being all pretentious and dropping names on purpose to impress you, either of my intellectual superiority, or my obsessive craziness, know that I desperately wanted to do a degree in English Literature. I also desperately wanted to read and understand theory. I have a philosophy crush, if it isn't inappropriate to say so. I have tried reading and understanding and, more often than not failed miserably. I'm still trying. The dream hasn't died because of failure. And I admit that it is a peculiar dream by most people's estimation. I guess in a way that it is and it isn't a pretension. One of the things they told me in graduate school is that everyone there feels like a fraud at some point, especially on their first job, and that there is some value in putting on the mindset of writer or critic, if that is the sort of activity you are trying to engage in. If you pretend to be a critic, maybe you can write critically.

I want to read Literary Theory: An Introduction, because when we read an excerpt from it's introduction in a 200 level lit course I took as an adult (as apposed to “as an undergraduate”), the teacher said it was a book read by all English Lit graduate students. I read several chapters of it right after giving birth to my first child, impressing my friend's professor-husband with my oddness, or dedication to abstraction, or something. In the preface to the second edition Eagleton says that it was written with the non-practitioner in mind. The book is full of detail, and I'm not certain how to read it profitably, even if it is written for the non-theorist. I had thought I might use Adler's instructions for inspectional reading, sort of as a proof text or experiment. Yeah, I kinda don't think that it's going to work, not because Adler's instructions aren't good, but because I don't think I'm actually willing to work hard enough to carry them out. We'll see.

Sometimes I speak sensibly to myself about giving up theory, but that is a deception that never lasts. I can not give it up, which I suppose in the end is a good thing. I can't give up trying to write either.

It's Anecdote Time. Hey, I Thought They Were Funny.

Every time I go to Little Caesar's to buy a pizza, I get overcharged. Now, it's true that it is really cheap pizza to begin with, cheaper than I can purchase any other place, and it's also true that I've only ever been overcharged there by a nickle, but still it rankles me.

Michael and I are doing the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace program this summer, and even though we don't plan to give up use of our credit cards as per Dave's instructions, we felt that for the duration of the class we really ought to use the envelope system as much as possible. Which is why I keep losing nickles. Because I've been paying cash. About which I have very mixed feelings.

But here's the sitch: Last week I was going to be smart about it. I couldn't quite remember whether the pizza was going to cost me $5.45 or $5. 55, and I didn't feel like looking it up or doing the math, which would have taken me two seconds, so I took what I had, which was a five dollar bill, two quarters and five pennies. The plan was to give her the change based on what she told me, and this time to be sure to ask for a receipt.

As I near the pick-up window I plan out exactly what is supposed to happen, but then I get to the window and all my plans fly out the window. The pizza costs $5.45. I give her all my money. She doesn't even look at it really, gives me no change. I ask for the receipt. "I should get some change," I tell her. "Didn't you give me $5.45," she asks. I tell her what I gave her and then I say...

Wait for it.

"I should get a nickle back." She complies and I say something to try to make sure she doesn't feel bad about it.

Crap, Crap, Crap.

"Mommy, what's wrong? What's wrong, mommy? What's wrong?" Isaac is in the back seat in the van with me. I'm so amused and frustrated with myself and Little Caesar's pizza that I have to call Michael about it. Which sparks even more questions of what's wrong from my two year old.

So this girl at the window isn't good at making change, but look, it's my money! And I used to work in retail. I know how to make change. It's my own damn fault! What outrages me and makes me laugh all at the same time is that I thought I was going to be all smart and not make a mistake. Epic Fail! Not only that, but the receipt doesn't even show what actually happened in the transaction.  I doubt it would matter to you, but it matters to me.

I meant for this story to be funny, so if I've failed to make it so, please gently let me know in the comments.

Two more anecdotes:

1. Parker is four years old. A couple of weeks ago we're at CHOM and I hear him say to the lady at the craft table, "I'm four years old, but some people think I look older."

2. We've had a daytime guest at our house over the last several weeks, a friend of ours who is using our computer to take an online class. He walks into the living room one afternoon and tells us that he's going to have to find a school-age child to interview, someone six or older, for a class. Parker sweetly offers his services as an interviewee, even though he's younger than the lower age limit: "I'm tall!"

Rule Making & Assumption Setting

When I was in the library one day, taking notes on How to Read a Book by Adler, I made a mistake in my handwriting and made the move to scribble it out with that circular motion I regularly employ. This gets me thinking, and writing:

When I messed up that word and scribbled it out back there, I flashed back to being told in school to mark out errors with a single line, which I automatically codified as a universal rule. Was it for readability? or so they could check over our mistakes? maybe even so they could review our thought processes? or to train us not to obliterate our mistakes, instead to remain calm?

I imagine the truth was probably that student handwriting was generally so difficult to read that the ban on scribbling existed for the sake of teacher's sanity. I think it's interesting, though, how our young minds would tend to hear a recommendation like that, or even a rule, and think that it applied to all of life. Watch out for wrong assumptions. It isn't only young minds that make them.

Regardless of what the teacher's intention was, I am still trying to find an underlying principle in what I have considered above, and I think it relates to some of the other things I've been reading lately. Michael and I are participating in Financial Peace University this year at our church. It is the second time we have gone through the program in going on eleven years of marriage. Anyway, in one of his books Dave Ramsey talks about the fact that successful people are people who haven't let a fear of failure stop them. When they fail they see what they can learn from the failure, and then they try again. Personally, I hate failure. Though I am a recovering perfectionist, I still veer toward not wanting to try things if I don't expect to do them well. I also prefer to avoid cleaning up the resulting mess. Truthfully it is one of the reasons my bathroom doesn't get cleaned more often.

Peter Elbow says that in writing sometimes you have to go ahead and use the wrong word before the right word will occur to you. Sometimes you have to go ahead and write the wrong paragraph before you can make your way clear to the write the better one. It's a good tip. Sometime it's hard for me to follow. At 34 years old I'm learning still not to try and obliterate my mistakes, to stay calm.

Understanding the Words on the Page At Last

It's Sunday morning as I write this and I am trying to reorient myself. I've been sick for the past two days. At first I thought it was because of some chemicals I had used to clean the bathroom. Then I thought maybe it was from the dust stirred up when I suddenly decided to pledge the house. I only got to two rooms with that one. I was all excited to vacuum next because I bought new vacuum bags for the first time in so many years I'm embarassed to say. The label suggests you replace the vacuum bag every thirty to sixty days. I'm assuming that's for people, like my mom, who actually vacuum daily?

I always think I'm going to do better with that, but then I never actually do. Getting sick this time doesn't help me to make the necessary committment.

While I've been sick I've been reading, and I find this really interesting.

I've had this book The Truth in Jesus: The Nature of Truth and How We Come to Know It, written by George MacDonald, with compilation, editing and insightful essays provided by Michael Phillips, for years. I was drawn to this book in the bookstore, well before Barnes and Noble came to Tuscaloosa, for many reasons, not least of which was the cover design. I've tried to read it numerous times, with varying levels of success.

So this time I pick it up to read it and, wonder of wonders, I actually find it making sense. It never did before. In the past it was always, and I mean always, too difficult for me to understand. I'd get through several pages before giving up. In the past Phillips's "Insights into" the essays didn't hold any insight for me. At most I could grab onto one or two sentences.

So what has changed? I don't exactly know. I also don't exactly know how to synthesize MacDonald's ideas with the other reading I've been doing. This may become another experiment for me in the days ahead, because a lot of what I'm reading in MacDonald fits in nicely with other ideas I've been grappling with, this idea of relationship for one. The idea of understanding and accepting my own being for another. It's as though God knew when I would be reading this book at last, what my other surrounding reading would be, what I would be writing in journal and in blog. Because what's cool about the reading this time is that it somehow cosmically appears to be fitting together. MacDonald has had me referencing Kierkegaard, Yancey, Adler, and even Rand as I've been reading him. Some of those associations have been positive, and some of them negative. Anyway, it is an exciting time for reading even as I am ill.

You Can't Just Use a Book Like That, Or Can You?

I read some lady's blog the other day and it pissed me off. If I felt like being nice about it, and considerate of my readers, I would say instead that it angered me. Poor lady. I'm certain, absolutely certain, that she is a very nice lady, but she unblushingly stated that she often doesn't finish reading books. Sometimes she just reads them until she's gotten what she wants from them. What she wants from them? I thoroughly disapprove.

I preceded to post on facebook that I don't like people, and have decided to become a misanthrope. It made my husband laugh, especially when I tried to use every form of the world I could think of. "Are you amused by my misanthropy? Isaac, I am going to put you down for your nap now because I am feeling very misanthropic."

Before you walk away in dread of incurring the wrath of Kelly because you don't finish every book you read either, I will tell you that I do not typically judge those people who I know and interact with in the same way as I would some nice lady I have never seen or corresponded with. I also acknowledge that there is such a thing as a legitimate reason for reading only part of any given book.

The thing that I think bothered me about this woman was the idea that she could start a book, presumably from the beginning and make the sovereign determination that she had gotten all she needed or desired from the author. It didn't for one moment occur to me that she may engage in careful examination before making the decision to move on. The way I interpreted what she said bothers me because it indicates certain assumptions about reading which I can neither agree with or condone, and because I have this peculiar conviction that I haven't really read a book unless I've read it's every word. "I've read that," I might say, but I have to add the qualifier that I read the abridged version, or that I only read the chapters on forgiveness, or that I skipped fifty pages of philosophy at the end. I'd have to explain why I'd read part but not all. I couldn't bear to give the impression that I knew the book if I hadn't taken the proper space and time to get to know it.

So now I have to talk about what I consider the legitimate reasons for reading only part of a book, and I have to explain what that underlying assumption was that I referenced before. I have to tell you that, yes, it is okay if you get half-way through a book and decide not to finish it, as if you needed my permission to do so. I have to confess that I have done the same. These will be the subjects of another day. Want to know how I know? Because I think that if I stopped trying to write about reading and writing I might combust, and that wouldn't be of benefit to anybody, though it might make an interesting experiment.

Rambling, I Like To Ramble. Sometimes I Even Do It On Purpose.

I got to pull out my trusty dictionary on Friday, as I started reading How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. "Hey, honey," I said, "this book was co-written by Charles Van Doren."

"Which one was he?" he asks. "The father, or the son?"

I've had the book in my possession for a couple of weeks, and because of it the name "Charles Van Doren" has been on the periphery of my thoughts. I think that it must be the same one. Teacher of literature. Lover of learning, from famously literary family. Man who was temporarily seduced by his own awesomeness, if the Hollywood version is to be believed. The Charles Van Doren of "21" fame. I even see in the appendix of the book that his father, Mark Van Doren, is referenced. Page 206:

"In poetry and in drama," the poet Mark Van Doren once observed, "statement is one of the obscurer mediums."

If you don't know what that means, I'm certainly not going to tell you, because I haven't read that part of the book yet, and so I don't know why he is being quoted, only that he is being quoted. And here I'm shoving you mentally around a bit just for the fun of it, and to see if it works.

The names of the Van Dorens jump out at me because of their association with a movie, Quiz Show, I saw and loved many years ago, starring Ralph Fiennes and John Turturro. Quiz Show tells the story of the quiz show scandals of the early days of television at which time it was revealed that the contests had been rigged for the sake of ratings. Some things change. Some things stay the same.

All three of the movie's lead are very good in their roles. And even though he is a secondary character, I absolutely fall in love with Mark Van Doren every time I watch the film. It may only be because I have a weakness for literary men with gray hair, but he makes me cry, especially when he is confused by the decisions of his son near the end.

At the time that I saw Quiz Show I think that I had never seen Ralph Fiennes before. In fact I had made some snide remarks concerning the pronunciation of his name. After seeing this movie I declared that he could pronounce his name in any way he liked. I was rather young at the time, you understand.

Anyway, there is a bit of a mystique in my mind concerning the character, Charles Van Doren, from the movie. I can only speculate as to what the original was or is like. I expect he didn't actually look like Ralph Fiennes.

I like the film because it shows the sort of mischief a personable and possibly well meaning person can get into when flattery and influence take charge of his will. I like it because he is eventually exposed, doesn't get away with it, and though coerced, he eventually manages to take it like a man, if you'll pardon the expression. I also like the film because Harry Connick, Jr. performs Jack the Knife during both beginning and ending credits. Turturro was terrific in it also, but his character didn't co-write a book I'm reading this week.

The movie represents an interesting little piece of show biz history, even if it is hard to tell the fact from the fiction. And believe me, I haven't done the research necessary to detect the truth when I see it emanating from my television screen.

All this is leading up to the fact that I learned a new word on Friday: desideratum. It does not mean, as I had thought based on the context, the deciding factor, which only goes to show you that contextual clues can lead you astray. Here's the sentence:

One constant [among changing theories about reading] is that, to achieve all the purposes of reading, the desideratum must be the ability to read different things at different-appropriate-speeds, not everything at the greatest possible speed (x)

Desideratum is something that is wanted or desired. What the precise difference is between wanting something and desiring it, I do not know.

Brain Barf: The Beginnings of Letters I Shall Never Write

Dear Heather, My parents met you this past weekend at a Christian Faculty Retreat, and suggested that I contact you with my questions about blogging. I have questions about blogging. Because all my life I thought I wanted to be a writer, but never really got to spend all that much time on it, and now I'm 34 years old and hardly know how to write more than a paragraph or two on any given subject. I have some natural ability, which has probably only held me back because I haven't had to develop the congruent discipline. Complain, complain, whine...

Dear David, If I ever find your email address, I may drop you a line and go into all sorts of rambling detail beginning with how I first started listening to your wife, Sarah's, music in college and thought it wasn't very good at first. The first time I heard her CD it was on a cheap CD player, the kind that plugged into a cassette player, a cassette player that had been inexpertly spliced into the wiring of my dad's car. It was a tape deck that was clamped to the underside of the hatch-back's center console, not sophisticated in any way and with terrible speakers. You know I was grateful to have it, the cassette player I mean, but I was on my way to a building site, the day I first heard your wife's CD, a building site where I was supposed to be taking photos for a photo journal, assigned in a class that was about Technical Drawing and Light Construction for Interior Design students. Only later did I realize that the reason I didn't think it was very good was because it was in fact very good, only something I had not been prepared by my other listening to enjoy, particularly that Victoria Williams song, "Love," which I don't mind telling you was strange the first half a dozen times I heard her sing it. Later my husband, a terrible music snob, and a jazz player, somehow agreed that of the music I listened to before I met him, Sarah Masen's second CD, Carry Us Through, was among the good ones. In other words, I read your book because of a vicarious relationship I have with your wife's music, and now I want to know why you do what you do, and maybe who else does it, because while I didn't much enjoy your political commentary, I liked your book very, very much.

Most of this came out of me in a rush sometime last week, and while these are messages I shall never send to the parties to whom they are addressed, I am glad I wrote them because they relieved some of the pressure I was feeling to communicate with others who are doing things that I may someday get the chance to do. Maybe someday I will actually write that letter to Lauren Winner that I've been thinking about ever since I first read her material on confession in Girl Meets God.

On Being Mean and Getting the Writing Done

I feel really mean this morning. And frustrated. I'm trying to train my boys to stay in their room until 6:30 every morning, because listen, I have to protect this little bit of quiet time I can manage in the morning. Sometimes I can manage it. I need to manage it. Do you hear what I'm saying?

Well, it ain't working out so well this morning.

3:30 a.m. Parker comes into our bedroom saying he can't sleep in his own bed and can he get in bed with us. Once upon a time I would have allowed it, but at 5:00 a.m. my cell phone starts buzzing to wake me up. The very next thing I do before getting out of bed is I take my temperature, but the thermometer beeps steadily until the temperature is taken. I cannot risk it waking Parker up.

So I get up with him and take him back to bed. I feel as though I never got properly back to sleep after that. I had bad dreams. For some reason I dreamed that my husband decided to steal something, and I had no choice but to go along with it. We get separated. I get caught. I lie, which only makes matters worse. By the end of it I've been ostracized by my peers. I've vowed never to return to their presence. I finally find my husband, and my purse, and the dog, who has no collar or leash, and my son's bear, and between the two of us we have to figure out a way to get all of this paraphernalia home while on foot. (I had to use spell-check to find out how to spell paraphernalia. I knew there was an "r" in there somewhere.) When 5:00 rolls around I really don't want to get up.

The children? They hop out of bed at 5:45. I mentally blame Parker for waking Isaac up because he never can come out into the hallway without speaking to me loudly from close to his own door. The door to the room both children share. I send Parker in to get in bed with his Daddy. Isaac pops out of his room next. I haven't been able to focus on the book I've been reading. I don't have a blog post scheduled for Friday. And now both children are awake, and my hopes have been dashed. I send both of them into the room with their Daddy, with very little hope that more sleep will be had.

I've been struggling to compose something for Friday ever since. Isaac has now cried a bit because I won't let him join me in the living room yet. I brought him the milk that he asked for. What more does he want? It seems that they are starting to get used to the idea of playing in their room for a little while before breakfast, but they don't get it every day. For the last two mornings they've slept until the cut-off time and so they haven't had to wait, and that has pleased me greatly, but it has also set back their training. I have a wall clock somewhere that I will put in their room if I can ever find it, and then they'll have some way to measure themselves whether or not it is time for them to come out of their rooms. As yet I have not found it. I prefer not to go out and buy a new one this month because money is still tight.

Isaac is in his room playing and it is time to get him out. I had something already scheduled for today, but I'll post this one today instead and save the scheduled one for tomorrow. Thus Friday's post has been found. Hooray. And I got the writing done because I had to. I've been talking to Damon online this morning, and he spontaneously confirms the fact that having a deadline gets the creative work done. Sometimes it gets the housework done as well. Bless you, Damon. And my boys.

Now Isaac is out of his room. He's forgiven me for making him stay in his room because when he came out he showed me a hurt place on his finger. When I asked him if he wanted a kiss (to make it better), he misunderstood and offered me his lips instead of his finger. Yes, these are some precious babies.

To Be Completely Known

Would you be surprised to learn that I have trouble with the word relationship in the sense of what it has to do with what happens between me and God? We talked about this last week in a gathering of women, and while I had sympathy with the use of the word, I kinda sorta had questions about what they meant when they used it, and I had trouble bringing it up, in fact didn't bring it up because... I don't know why. Why couldn't I ask her the question, what do you really mean when you talk about the importance of the relationship? I'm not saying I dispute the appropriateness of the word, I just wish we could unpack it a little more.

I've even read about what it means to have a relationship with God recently, but I must not have been paying close attention, because I don't remember where it was or when or what was said.

When questions like this come up I tend to think that my experience with God must be entirely different from anyone else's. Then it strikes me that everyone's relationship with God is different from everyone else's, and that is one of the ideas that I have been grappling with ever since the Grace Church ladies beach retreat last summer. We make a mistake when we expect God to relate to us in exactly the same way that He has related in the past to someone else. God made each of us different. Of course there are similarities because there is similarity in every aspect of human experience, but sameness does not reign. There is a Psalm I read not long ago that I felt spoke to this:

O LORD, Thou hast searched me and known me.
Thou dost know when I sit down and when I rise up;
Thou dost understand my thought from afar.
Thou dost scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And art intimately acquainted with all my ways.
Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, O LORD, Thou dost know it all.
Thou hast enclosed me behind and before,
And laid Thy hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is too high, I cannot attain to it....

(Psalm 139: 1-6 NASB)

Why was I reading Psalm 139 at that time, whenever it was that I read it last? I can't figure out when it was because I haven't gotten to that one yet in the course of my morning readings, but I have thought of these words from the Psalm often because it was a comfort to me. God knows my thoughts and is acquainted with all my ways. This is the one that goes on to talk about how I was formed, and known before I was even born. It says the same about you.

I think the reason I often don't bring things like this up in a group is because I worry about needlessly complicating matters for someone who doesn't approach these things in the same way that I do.

How to Read a Complicated Book

An old friend suggested I read René Girard, so I got a copy of The Girard Reader from the public library. This was almost two weeks ago, and I'm still trying to figure out a strategy for reading it. He said it wouldn't be hard reading, but the foundational essay in the collection is titled "Mimesis and Violence" and the editor of the collection says it is "essential reading for the beginner in Girard's work." Look at this first sentence from the essay:

"If you survey the literature on imitation, you will quickly discover that acquisition and appropriation are never included among the modes of behavior that are likely to be imitated."

Now, immediately I have to look up both mimesis and appropriation, having some sense of what they mean, but being yet unsure of their dictionary meanings. The idea of appropriation comes up all the time in any kind of cultural study.

The statement I just made about appropriation though, I realize, is something I've assumed because I've come across it in discussions of race and gender. Do you notice that while you may not quite know what appropriation means, and I don't quite know what appropriation means, that doesn't usually stop either of us from using the word authoritatively anyway? If you're the kind of person who likes to participate in intellectual-type (or scholarly) conversations, that is?

And only now does it occur to me to offer this caution: I'm mapping out a thought process to show the way a mind works when working with material it doesn't comprehend. I ask you only now not to let the language scare you off, or the concepts because the point of what I'm writing isn't them. I say this when it is probably already too late, and I expect that I've scared most of my readers away already.

I look up these two words (mimesis and appropration) in The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism only because I have it handy on my desk where I write. A regular dictionary would do for this purpose just as well, if not better. The reference book I am using is much scarier and more intimidating than an ordinary dictionary, but it does the job too. Mimesis is imitation. Appropriation is taking something, an idea, a concept, a tool, and using it for your own purposes, usually without permission.

This is about as far as I got two weeks ago when I picked the book up. I read the first several pages, and while the language was complex the meaning was reasonably clear, but I did not continue to read it. Other things came up. I skittered away from Girard in favor of David Dark, whose book The Gospel According to America I only barely understood, but all the same, was unable to put down.

In order to read Girard, I suspect I need a copy of this book to underline and write in. I need a copy that doesn't have to be returned in 3 to 6 weeks, because I expect it will take much longer than that for me to read it. And I need to commit to it, because a book like this requires commitment, unless I find to my surprise that, like the David Dark, I don't wish to put it down.

I was inspired to write this little essay before 8:00 in the morning, which is what I find happening most often these days. In the middle of the last paragraph or so I tended to my two year old, who fell off the sofa, and is crying again, this time over something his four year old brother has done. I've also kissed my husband goodbye for the morning. I'm just a mom. A mom who does this because she can't help herself, is compelled to, and because I think it is going to make me better somehow. Keep reading. They won't all be like this one.

I Made a Mistake

I made a mistake and published Friday's scheduled post a day early (yesterday), which means that there shouldn't be anything new posted today. I made the same mistake this morning. It's so easy to hit that publish button when I deem something completed, and forget to change the date and time beforehand. It's possible, because I don't know how this works, that if you're reading this in some sort of reader, you've already received Monday's post today. Someday I'll get the hang of this scheduling option, and maybe that day is today.

He Describes God's Preferential Option for the Poor This Way

I've been reading The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey this past week, and yesterday I read the chapter where he discusses Matthew 5, aka The Beatitudes. I was encouraged to realize that our current situation, what with the irregular and unreliable income, the expenses, the stress, really is a blessing. It may seem trite when you compare our circumstances with those of others who have not been as well-provided for as we have, but I haven't gotten over thinking of us as poor.

Yancey quotes Monika Hellwig, who "lists the following 'advantages' to being poor:

1. The poor know they are in urgent need of redemption.
2. The poor know not only their dependence on God and on powerful people but also their interdependence with one another.
3. The poor rest their security not on things but on people.
4. The poor have no exaggerated need of privacy.
5. The poor expect little from competition and much from cooperation.
6. The poor can distinguish between necessities and luxuries.
7. The poor can wait, because they have acquired a kind of dogged patience born of acknowledged dependence.
8. The fears of the poor are more realistic and less exaggerated, because they already know that one can survive great suffering and want.
9. When the poor have the Gospel preached to them, it sounds like good news and not like a threat or a scolding.
10. The poor can respond to the call of the Gospel with a certain abandonment and uncomplicated totality because they have so little to lose and are ready for anything."

Can you be poor and not share any of these traits. Of course you can, and maybe particularly while living in as affluent a nation as ours. But if you can be poor and realize these advantages, realize as in making them your own, you are truly blessed. The one I really responded to was #8. What would it be like to have only the most realistic of fears? Of course Hellwig's points are problematic and easy to romanticize, but that makes them no less true.

So as I got up out of my chair yesterday morning to get a cup of coffee, I asked God to keep me aware of the blessing that accompanies poverty in all of its forms, to help me not to forget my dependence on Him. I also began to realize that what I consider a lack of personal success really isn't so bad a thing.

An hour later I have already forgotten what I've read, and I am in tears because of the insecurity accompanied by loneliness that I revealed in yesterday's blog post. It takes almost no time at all for me to forget that I am blessed. But then the reminder comes, which is why I am composing this post.