Here you'll find a collection of things that catch my eye. Things I'm thinking about, reading, looking at.
Jo Seated on the Old Sofa from “The Most Beloved American Writer” Woman’s Home Companion, December 1937 oil on canvas, 32 x 25 in. Collection of George Lucas (via Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg)
While backpacking through Norway one summer while I was in college, I worked for room and board at a hostel in Oslo. I washed a lot of windows, organized a small, full-to-the-brim closet, and discovered mangle irons.
In my memory, the iron is a massive, thundering machine that could take an entire bed sheet (single), no folds.
Sometimes I dream about it.
I’m not the only one who fantasizes about mangle irons: http://www.remodelista.com/posts/the-mangle-rotary-iron
Goodness.
I feel like I’m in the middle of writing a story. When everything is jumbled up and so many things are yet unknown and all the known pieces are lying there in disarray.
We leave in less than three weeks, my sister and I. We have our bikes, most of our clothes, the promise of a euro phone from our brother. We have paychecks coming in, counted on. We have beeswax, two pounds of it, in hand, waiting to be melted, mixed with paraffin, painted on as-yet-unmade panniers, and heated back to melting point, facilitating its absorption into the canvas. Thus waterproofing, or at least making water resistant, our bicycle bags.
Pieces, lying in disarray.
Today we drove four hours to buy the wax. After hours and hours of trying to salvage what we thought would give us pounds of the stuff but turned out to be too old, too wrong stuff.
I’m sure we’ll run into more of this—more wrong turns, mistakes, efforts yielding little visible results. I am trusting that this is faithfulness in small things. Trusting that even through the efforts toward nothing, or very little, some character is built, something is learned, some good thing comes of it.
It’s frustrating to be in this middle place—and a middle place before even beginning. We put pieces together every day, some small piece here, some larger section of pieces there. Soon we will cut actual pieces of fabric and sew them together, another piece, fitted together.
Frustrating, but good. I love this frustration. This working out of what goes where—the putting in place the narrative, the line, the link, the thread that connects the beginning and the end.
Despite his reputation to the contrary, St. Paul can only be awkwardly yoked to the movement to keep church women in their place.
Last snow?
(by aioa)
From July, 2012.
Today my mom and I laid sheets beneath the chokecherry trees, set up ladders, climbed as high as we could, and shook the branches free of their berries. We ended up with about 6lbs of berries. They’re simmering on the stove now. We’ll make jelly later.
As we worked, we talked about “the right way to do things.”
It seems like there’s always a “right way.” In many organizations, especially religious organizations, there’s an established pattern to follow. A best practice. They usually have titles and an established set of rules. You’ll find this a lot in discussions about relationships.
Complementarianism. Egalitarianism. Inter-dependency. Etc.
The rules remind me of writing tips. I love reading lists of tips on writing from established authors. I think I started reading these lists because I was looking for some secret, some method to follow. A pattern, path, or something that could let me know I was doing it right, that everything would work out.
After reading a lot (a lot) of these lists, I can see only one thing that these lists have in common: write. Everything else is personal.
I think it’s the same way with relationships. The common thing is this: love. Everything else is personal.
A host of voices rising in your defense.
Because Carrie asked. And because 40 more to go.
1. Look at the numbers
2. Wish it could be done with pen and paper instead of a grading program.
3. Watch a lot of Maria Bamford videos on YouTube
4. Grade two papers, spending a half hour on each, giving Really Good feedback
5. Kind of, but not really figure out how much time it would take if I spent a half hour on each paper
6. Sleep
7. Fix the lawn mower
8. Mow lawn
9. Go shopping and buy three dresses and two pairs of shoes
10. Go online shopping and buy another pair of shoes
11. Grade another paper, spending an hour this time, running it through Turnitin
12. Look at two more papers and try to figure out how to deal with the paper that is a “compare/contrast debate.”
12. Sleep fitfully
13. Answer a lot of emails
14. Make a list like this one
15. Squander a whole day
16. Squander another whole day because of an extension on the grade submission deadline
17. With 7 hours to go until the midnight deadline, start
18. Use a timer and spend no more than 12 minutes on each paper, which is actually probably enough time…
19. …if it were possible to read more than ten papers at a time and still be able to comprehend anything
20. Vow to start earlier next time
The “sense of life as a mystery” is very different from the certainty that is inherent in most Evangelical denominations. The Mystery vs. Certainty sums up the the pull I feel toward and away from “the church.” (I imagine O’Connor was referring specifically to the Catholic church.)
“I don’t think that anything could be more important than to be reminded that, as Flannery O’Connor used to say, “The church is custodian of the sense of life as a mystery.” We get so used to it that we lose the sense. To have the sense restored to us—which the religious experience does and which the poetic experience at its extreme does as well—is a great boon.”
Fishing on the Mississippi (by aioa)
When people ask, “How are you not exploding with stress with everything on your plate?”, I know they only mean it in the best, most compassionate way. And for those who have beautiful healthy children and gleaming new stoves, I do not discount their heartaches and worries and crises. But what bothers me is the implicit expectation: that people are waiting for our inevitable breakdown, a breast-beating howl against fate that is sure to come once we realize we’ll truly never “have it all” — because of our imperfect son.
For all the people who are puzzled by my seeming happiness, I’ll be glad to let them know my “secret.” I’m not in denial, I’m not on antidepressants, and I don’t live in a fantasy world. I have a wonderful husband and I am pursuing a career I’ve dreamed of since I was nine years old. I have a beautiful son, friends, and a working stove. I am not paraplegic. I have parents who, through luck and fate, had me here in the United States, and not in North Korea. I live in a time where my awful vision can be corrected with glasses. I am a college graduate. I am never hungry unless I choose to be.
Do I have enough? Resoundingly: yes. And I ask you to take a moment: I suspect you might, too.
