Tomorrow, we will run faster.
-The Great Gatsby

It's 8:15 and instead of merging on to I-94, I'm jogging down 31st Ave. The weather is surprisingly warm for an October morning.

This is the first run I've taken post college. The first high intensity aerobic workout I've had since graduating, really. A few walks here and there, but very little that's actually pushed me to any kind of challenge or limit. This feels great.

A couple moms pushing babies in running strollers pass me. The occasional serious runner outstrips me quickly, for the time being I'm content to plod along like a Clydesdale. Slow and steady, right?

While I'm running (plodding, jogging) I mediate on the coming months. Work is winding down a little bit, only to kick it back into gear shortly after Christmas. I've made a lot of mistakes in the past couple months, the past couple weeks in particular. I'm frustrated and ready to cry most of the time. Things just don't seem to be what they were cracked up to be when I first started.

As I watch a man carrying a briefcase balance his coffee and hurry out to his car, I'm suddenly grateful for the fact that it's nearly 9:00 AM and I have the opportunity to go for a run before I head in to work. There's not clock to punch, no supervisor to check in with. As long as I keep the majority of my hours between 8 AM and 5 PM, I'm golden.

Turning back onto my street and breathe deeply and slow into a fast walk. I can tell that I'm already infinitely less tense then I was when I went to bed last night. In fact, I'm feeling pretty awesome. My shower's going to be great.

The day brings about a few more mistakes, but also a great story or four from the woman I share my office with and a slight decrease in the amount of work on my desk. My supervisor, after hearing about my small mistakes and knowing that I'm a perfectionist to the 24th degree stops in to say good night and tell me I'm doing a good job.

On the ride home, I notice that the most irritating part of my days is that MPR is in the middle of its member drive and there's more talk than I would like on the Current. Ahh well. I know how fundraising goes. I'm smiling pleasantly when I get home. Enough to clean the kitchen and keep on whistling.

Sidebar: I've decided that I'm going to train to run 1/2 of Grandma's this year. Today was my first training run. Wish me luck!

Coincidence

I *Heart* Huckabees begins with the premise that sometimes coincidences aren't merely coincidences. Sometimes, random meetings, conversations, etc begin to devleop a pattern.

I don't believe in coincidence.

In the past three weeks, I've had the book The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins brought up in approximately every conversation I've had. A few memorable instances

1. The 1st quasi-theological conversation I had post-college. This could have easily been blown off had it been the end all of the chat.
2. A later conversation about the evolution of the soul with an old professor.
3. While not a conversation, brought up on Speaking of Faith the first time I actually had the time to tune in to the program in the last three months.
4. Again, in another conversation with a friend who's cheerfully agnostic.
5. Finally, last night with someone I haven't spoken face-to-face with since graduation. She informed me that she had a copy and would lend it to me.

This was all too much to ignore. I agreed to take it, and spent last night beginning the book. I can tell already that this is going to be one of the hardest things I'll read in the course of my life. I'm only on page thirty-one and I'm ready to throw the book in the trash for a variety of reasons (I'm really in to lists today)

1. I HATE the implication that I'm somehow lacking in the normal number of braincells because I happen to be faithful. Hello, I know that emperical thought makes the idea of God absolutely nonsensical. I know that I can't prove that God exists, and even on my best days as a Christian, I realize how ludicrious my faith seems to an outsider. I get it. That doesn't stop me from being faithful, and I don't think that it makes me idiotic for believing in something.
2. I think Dawkins grossly misunderstands and misrepresents God as portrayed in the Old Testament. Normally, this wouldn't bother me as much as it does. Scripture is hard to read and even harder to understand. But the fact that he doesn't even seem to try makes me want to throw something. You wouldn't try to read & interpret Shakespeare or Milton without (at the very least) line notes. What makes you think you can do the same with a text that's over TWO THOUSAND years old.
3. I dislike anyone who holds that their position is THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH. Come on, how does asserting that Science=Good and Religion=Evil make you any different from the fundamentalists you revile?

More when I get deeper in to the book. I'm trying my hardest to be an objective reader, but I don't think it's going to work.

Reserving Judgement

Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
-The Great Gatsby

Well, it's no secret that I absolutely adore most things public radio related and definitely love Fitzgerald to pieces.

That being said, I just finished applying for a job as an usher at the Fitz.

Not that Fitzgerald really has anything to do with the Fitz anymore, but I'm excited nonetheless.

I decided today that for monetary/sanity reasons that I need a second job. I have way too much free time on my hands, and it isn't really being used productively. I need to get out and do something kind of off-beat and fun with my time, and I feel like the job at the Fitz would be perfect for that. Some work on my customer relations/schmoozing skills and the ability to see shows there for free. Can you say awesome!?

Unforunately, my cover letter/application were slightly underwhelming. Sigh. We shall see.

Until then, I'm going to buy a second hand copy of Gatsby and try to imagine St. Paul during F. Scott's heyday.

Cheers.

Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.
The Great Gatsby

In a little over two weeks it will be six months since I graduated.

Weird.

That's almost all that I can say. I don't feel like an adult yet, but I have all of these adult characteristics that I never thought I would attribute to myself. I still feel as though I'm on a sort of extended summer break. In another month or two I'm going to step back in to the Quad and start talking about the metaphysics of Rahner and Emily Dickinson's influence on modern poetry.

I'm really still a student at heart. I went back to an old prof's class to give a talk a few weeks ago. The students were incredible--sharp, engaging, and utterly brilliant. A troop of bright young scholars indeed. Midway through our conversation I found myself wishing that I was on their half of the room.

Ahh well. The academic in me needed some time to stretch out and think anyway. It particularly needed the last Harry Potter book to come out to find out whether my meditations on the universality of the Redemption story and Rahner's Theology of Grace were applicable. (They are.) Weeee.

In the past three months my three closest friends have left the country. The longest period I've spent apart from many of them is only a few months. Given that all of them have been frequent guests, it's hard to accustom myself to not seeing or talking to them daily. I find myself with an odd amount of free time; a combination, I think, of having fewer friends within walking distance, and not having homework. Ever. The result has been the following:

1. More poems. Whether good enough to do anything with remains to be seen. But I've never been one to submit anything without the threat of bodily harm if I didn't take them off my bookshelf, so. . .
2. A great deal of reading!!!!! I recently finished Pullman's series His Dark Materials. While extremely heretical, it was still absorbing, well-written, and wonderful. I'm in the process of rerading Franny & Zooey for approximately the 622,000th time. It's a million times more wonderful than I remember. Oh, Salinger, you had me at hello.
3. I've done a tremendous amount of lateral thinking lately (Kevin, have you read Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? After having Rene, you'd love it.) I've had a number of excellent faith questions posed by a tremendous variety of people. Oddly enough, all within the past two weeks or so. It's nice to have the time to muddle over these without having to follow them up with reading immediately. Although, at the same time, it's great to have profs who don't mind the occasional email asking for reading direction.
4. For the time being, I think that I've made a decision about grad school. I think that it's going to be theology, as I can't find a course in the Theo & English. In a dream world, I'd go to Fordham, but any place that will allow me to study systematics is appealing. I think that it would be easier to teach a "Systematics of Literature" (ie, my senior thesis) than it would be to teach a "Literature of Systematics" course. Of course, this will probably change in about two weeks when I decide to go for a MFA in poetry. Ahh well.

Right now I'm really REALLY loving the poem "Nancy Drew" by an author whose name I can't remember. If I haven't already emailed it you, go google it. Now. The last two lines make my heart want to explode all over the place.

Well, I'm off to fall asleep with Salinger and Damien Rice. What a lucky girl.

Blessings.