Risky

Dear Friend,

Love is Risky.

I keep running over these words as I finish the last week of my first semester at the School of Theology. As I struggle to finish papers, take mind-bending exams, submit proposals, and work a 40-hour week, I have been overcome by the most intense wave of self-doubt I have ever experienced. Am I smart enough to be here? Is my writing strong enough? Am I strong enough? Have I learned anything? Will I pass my finals with distinction? Will I pass them at all? Can I really keep working while I'm doing this and not go crazy? How much are my relationships suffering because of my schedule?

Never has the riskiness of love been as apparent as it was while I've holed up writing a paper about the beauty and terror of the Crucifixion. People often ask me--despite corruption in the Church, pedophilia scandals, power abuses, degradation of women, in spite of a religion at which any reasonable person would scoff—in spite of all of this, why do I remain Catholic, Christian, a student of theology? While writing this paper, I thought about the riskiness of the Incarnation; the beauty and terror of a God who loved the world enough to say "yes" to torture and death. This, to me, was more than enough to become a Christian, and certainly enough to keep me in a Church with which I so often feel in conflict. My experience with the Catholic Church has been analogous to falling in love. It's risky. I've had to open myself to an uncertain future with nothing but faith in the other party. For an extreme type-a personality, this has been a difficult, but necessary process.

Yesterday an unlooked for and very dear friend stopped by. He knocked in my door in the midst of my cursing Turabian style guides and feeling like I was drowning in a sea of my own inadequacy. Expecting another student, I was near to tears with the thought of another distraction, another indication of how much smarter and self-possessed my compatriots are, when he burst through my door. A graduate of the SOT, he knows much about my frustrations, exhaustion, occasional total and complete apathy toward my subject, and intense doubt about my own scholarly abilities. During these final days of December, when Minnesota is so dark, quiet, and lonely, he arrived as an unforeseen blessing; a small gift to remind me that amid the milieu of papers, exams, sleeping through the alarm, phone calls, mail merges etc. ad nauseum, God is Present. Shaun reminded me what it is to be in real communion with another person. Months worth of emotional crust was stripped away and I remembered what it was like to love someone and allow them to love you just as you are.

I take much comfort in some words of Karl Rahner's which I read in the last week: "And in Jesus he (God) experienced the fact that the mystery of man, which it is not for man himself to control, and which is bound up in the absurdity of guilt and death is, nevertheless, hidden in the love of God." In typical Rahnerian style, he cannot help but obfuscate his own meaning. After much unpacking of and prayer over these words, I think what Rahner is saying is that human nature, despite its fallenness and sinfulness is inextricably interwoven with God's grace and love. I find the idea of a constantly graced existence both compelling and true to my own lived experience. Shaun's vist and Rahner's words came to me at the same moment, each a different and equal blessing as I muddle on the best I know how.

How are you? How are your own joys and small sorrows? Your moments of beauty and terror? Are you staying warm? Finding ways to overcome the darkness? Are you looking forward to the solstice? Christmas? The ending of an academic semester? The beginning of a new year? I would like to tell you more, but the kettle is whistling and my slippers are waiting. I hope you remain safe in your travels and that you embrace love's riskiness, whatever it may mean to you.

You are in my prayers. I hope to remain in yours.

With love,
KMJ

Sabbath

Another draft for my Theological Aesthetics final project.

Sabbath
After Wendell Berry

I spent most of today
tramping through the woods.
I donned my down vest, old boots,
and woolly hat Mother made.
I hunted mushrooms.
Dug around roots and rotting stumps.
Kicked a path in fallen leaves,
watched my breath crystallize in the air.
Now, curled with a cup of hot tea
and a rattling radiator,
I hear church bells tolling for vespers.
I will go, but not yet.
No, it is still too soon.

New Poems

I'm currently working on final project for my Theological Aesthetics class involving Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry's poetry. The last five or so pages of the paper will be my own poems dealing with nature, faith, the transcendent experience, and organized religion. Here are my first two attempts (still in draft form).

Doubt
I do not know if I have a soul.
Or if, when I die I will return
to bits of bone, and dust, and ash.
But is that really so terrible?
To remain as part of the prairie grass and pine trees,
to have a sparrow shake me from her wings
before flight seems, sometimes,
more beautiful than staring off the edge of a cloud.
Please, if I must go, give me a few more moments.
Another nap in the afternoon sun and sweet birdsong.
One more chance to dig my garden in the warm spring dirt
before I am spirited away to harps and halos
or darkness and silence.


The Simplest Thing

It begins so simply.
Quit your job.
The one you've always hated, but kept,
Because sticking things out is what you do as an adult.
Once you've rid yourself of your job, take everything you own
Except a pair of boots, a change of clothes, and the little book
Of Rilke's elegies you've always kept in your pocket.
Tell your love they can follow, or wait,
or leave if they want to,
but you are going. Linger,
briefly at the crossroad just outside of town.
But do not regret your decision.
If there is anything worthwhile in life,
It is this. Only this.
It was always this.

The Unoffical List of Sweet Things I'm Going to Do Over Fall Break

1. Build things: In a few short hours I will head over to Couderay, WI for the annual fall work weekend. I’ll rendezvous with Mother and Father Prosen, Pumpkin, cousins and an uncle. We’ll drink PBR (Hamms if I’m really lucky) and spend tomorrow digging out and building a retaining wall.

2. Read Von Balthasar’s Love Alone is Credible: I am so excited for this book I can barely speak. Theological Aesthetics generally makes my heart explode. This book comes highly recommended from someone much smarter than I am. It’s probably going to be an intellectual reach for me, but I can’t wait to start soaking it in.

3. Watch Ebert's Top Ten of 2007: I’ve only seen Atonement and you can be sure that I’m going to watch it again next week. If the other movies are half as moving and beautiful, it’s likely that I’ll die from an actual heart explosion. This seems like a good way to die.

4. Attend the SOT’s Oktoberfest: Free beer and silly hats—does life get any better?

5. Training runs: I’ve been fighting a wicked case of shin splints for the past three weeks. I “ran” two miles on Tuesday only to spend the rest of the week getting yelled at by my PT and icing and elevating my legs. I have the all clear to give a training run a go on Sunday. 7 miles, here I come!

6. Stew in a Pumpkin:

7. Long Arboretum Walks

8. Learn to Make Mead

9: Finally Get Enough Sleep

10. Read Rahner’s Happiness Through Prayer: If Rahner were alive and had groupies, I would be their queen.

11. Outline My Theological Aesthetics Paper: This requires reading most of what Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry have written while writing poems in their respective styles—I love being able to do an English paper and call it Theology.

I’m willing to take suggestions for other awesomeness that should commence next week.

Here's to You, Mr. Tambourine Man

8:30 Tuesday night finds me ensconced in my favorite booth at the local coffeehouse, with a large cup of coffee and Kierkegaard open in front of me. It’s been a long day already: a five mile run at 6:00 am, work, a quick bike ride before class, two hours of debating about whether or not we know what “quality” is and if we can make the assumption that God=Quality. Now, I’m sitting with 300 pages of reading that I have to complete before Thursday and a excruciatingly tired brain. God Bless that first person who decided that running hot water over pulverized coffee beans was a good idea. If they hadn't existed I wouldn’t be functioning these days.

I’m too engrossed in my Kierkegaard to pay attention when the bell rings above the door. It isn’t the sudden chatter of a number of voices, or the frenzy of the barista behind the counter that pulls me out of my reverie. It’s the abrupt strumming of acoustic guitar strings that sounds like a death knoll over my studies. I look up only to see an undergrad, probably around eighteen, sitting amid a semi-circle of adoring women of about the same age. He wears a yellow t-shirt that states: "Somewhere in Texas there's a village missing its idiot." He has perhaps the BIGGEST hair I’ve ever seen, and is digging in his pocket for a guitar pick. An ill-suppressed groan and dive for my MP3 player and headphones earn me one of the dirtiest looks I’ve ever received from one of the young women seated next to me. “Some people,” she comments to a friend in a stage whisper, “just don’t know how to really appreciate music.” I roll my eyes as she turns back to the undergrad who’s in the process of saying “This is totally, like, the GREATEST song ever written.” Then he launches into a horrendous version of “The Times They Are A-Changing.”

As I crank up my MP3 player, I acknowledge that there is some truth to the young woman’s words. A quick perusal of my music library would show you anything from Appalachia Waltz to Shakira and Damien Rice. I am entirely tone-deaf, can’t play an instrument to save my life and can’t even tap my foot in time to music. Despite all of these setbacks, I think it’s possible for me to acknowledge some universal truths about music. The foremost is that there are WAY too many protest-song writing, idealistic, mediocre to terrible singer-songwriters out there. In Chuck Klosterman’s words, I have to blame someone, so I’m going to blame Bob Dylan.

A caveat before I go much further. I love Dylan. “Don’t Think Twice” is possibly my favorite break-up song and I’ve included “Just Like a Women” on a disproportionately high number of mix tapes. However, liking Dylan’s music is not incompatible with hating the tuneless, nasal-y imitators he spawns on college campuses every year. Dylan made is possible for guys with big hair and terrible voices to believe that, if only they write enough songs with anti “The Man” slogans in them, they'll be hailed the voice of their generation. I can understand someone who was kicked out of choir idolizing Dylan, but I’m not quite so sure how he ended up as the poster-child of the neo-hippies. Yes, he has some pretty searing social commentary. He also, wonder of wonder, has some great songs about falling in and out of love, faith and modernity, and isolation and lonliness.

I pause my music to hear a little bit more of the young man at the front of the room and between phrases like “bring the regime down!” and something about demilitarization I can tell that this guy’s guitar is out of tune and that he probably hasn’t taken his allergy meds today. Buddy, when I can tell you’re out of tune, you have some major issues. I’m tempted to stop him between songs and offer him a Kleenex, but somehow I don’t think that would go over well

It’s not the fake nasal voices or the untuned guitars that really grate on me. It’s the fact that every single one of these songs sounds the same. If I hear one more song about bringing down the WTO or the military injustice of the Bush Administration I might strangle someone with their spare guitar strings. I dislike these songs for the same reason I dislike God-Pop and angry feminist music. In the whole constellation of human experience, you can only write on one theme? I understand the idée fixe, but for goodness sake, could you occasionally write a love ballad or cover an Elton John song? I’d suggest “Tiny Dancer.” I’ve never met someone who seriously dislikes that song. All right, so Elton John might ruin your street cred, but how about a little Mason Jennings—he has some great non-protest songs. Give your diatribes a rest and sing a little bit about joy, or sadness if you must. But lay off politics for awhile. If you have to vent your frustrations about border patrol or a military presence on campus you could take the highly radical approach of writing to your representatives or having a conversation with a ROTC student about values. If you really can’t contain yourself, why not set some Wendell Berry to music?

Despite the Prince I’m currently blasting into my brain, this guy and his groupies have totally shattered my concentration. It’s back to Emmaus, I guess, to try and finish this round of work before another long day starts. I quickly pack up my belongings, get a coffee refill to go, and head for the door. As I’m leaving, the woman who commented on my lack of musical taste mock-whispers to her friend again. “I’m so glad there’s room now for people who actually want to enjoy the show.”

What can I say? This kind of music, it ain’t me, babe.

Five Realizations During the First Week in Collegeville

1. The Catholic Church isn't what it used to be.

And I don't mean that we've left the Inquisition behind. An old professor of Krista's who teaches at the SOT told her recently "The grad students aren't like you." When she passed this along to me, I became more than a little concerned. Apparently even the SOT is attracting more conservative students which is, I think, reflective of the Church as a whole. People from my generation seem to think that Vatican II went a little too far in one direction and we need to swing things back to the way they used to be. This isn't to say that everyone I meet is for Latin Masses, but the overwhelming sense seems to be that we need to readjust ourselves to get back in line with tradition. I'm pro-tradition, to an extent. If it means that we're heading back to the days where I have to wear a chapel veil and am not allowed to speak because of one misunderstood line in Paul (vs 33-36) I might, in my mother's words, pitch a fit. As one of the professors who recommended me to the SOT wrote later: "Be sure to shake them up! I know you will."

2. Theology is hard.

Even without reconciling the aforementioned issue to my faith life, theology, as a discipline, sucks. I love it to bits, don't get me wrong, but it's so hard that I can't even describe it to you. The best analogy that I've been able to come up with so far is the following. Imagine you're a scientist working on a life or death issue. You have a hypothesis you have to test, but there's no real way of testing it. You don't have the equipment you need because the equipment you need is more advanced than anything we have to date. In fact, it's more advanced than anything you can even begin to fathom. So the absolute best thing that you can do is test it against a bunch of other similar hypotheses and argue about which one is better and why without ever knowing (or even having the hope of one day knowing which is right.) Now imagine that you can be graded on this, that we say some theology is good and some theology is bad an we have a whole rubric for evaluating the relative truth of something that we're just assuming exists.

Shit.

3. This ain't your momma's grad program.

Let's face it. I didn't work very hard in college, particularly in my major programs. I didn't work very hard and I got very good grades. My professors seemed to like me (hooray for charm!), I like writing, and read unusually quickly. I wasn't terribly concerned about starting a grad program until I had a conversation with a friend who's a year ahead of me in the exact same program. We chatted about professors, books, standard reading, and what the grade scale was like. He groaned and said: "I didn't get As in any of my classes." Have I mentioned that THIS IS ONE OF THE SMARTEST PEOPLE I KNOW? The guy runs intellectual circles around me and is struggling in his classes (albeit, loves them, but isn't getting the grades he's used to.) In addition to never working very hard in college, I also had a fit whenever I was graded lower than an A (I know, I'm that girl and cringing a little bit) and on one very memorable occasion, cried after getting a B. I had every intention of graduating from the SOT wearing one of those obnoxious red robes that signifies high honors and I'm slowly watching that spin out of sight.

4. I love fundraising.

I mean, I really love fundraising. I began work in Anna Marie's development office and I'm so excited it should be criminal. I love chatting with donors. I love networking. I love writing appeal and thank you letters. I'm excited to dive into grant writing and I can't believe I'm working for a small non profit loaded with radical feminists. I can't believe I don't have to justify things to my health insurance company because I work for the archdiocese (I mean. . .). I love the staff's dedication (many of them have been there 10+ years) to women's issues in central Minnesota.

Pffffft.

5. Stucco Sucks

The new chapel. Stucco, in CENTRAL MINNESOTA? What were they smoking when they decided that one?

In other news, the Brewers are still behind the Cubs and I'm really into the band Big Star lately.

Ch-ch-changes

My life's trajectory has changed drastically since April. Resulting, of course, in a list of changes.

1. I quit my job.
1. Actually. In all fairness, I quit my job close to three months ago.
2. I'm still working at my job
1. In classic Kelly fashion, shortly after quitting I was hit by a tidal wave of Catholic guilt. And the realization that temping is not an option this summer. Between needing a paycheck and guilt about foisting tons of extra work on my already over-worked and wonderful co-workers, I agreed to say on until they found a replacement. Or until I left for grad school.
   
3. I'm going to grad school
1. In April, I dropped the dean of admissions at the SOT an email saying that I would be interested in returning. He called me ten minutes later and invited me to apply for the fall of 2008. I asked if I needed to worry about admission or financial aid and was assured that with my transcripts, and GRE scores, I shouldn't be terribly apprehensive. This conversation occurred two weeks before quitting my job, so while I hadn't been formally accepted, I rested relatively secure in the knowledge that I had a plan for the future.
4. I have a new job.
1. Last week I interviewed for a development position with a non-profit feminist organization in St. Cloud. The interview went well, and on Monday I was offered the job. I'll be the development wench, more or less, but I'll have the opportunity to solicit donors, coordinate a direct mail campaign, and possibly run a special event or two. GREAT experience, particularly for someone so new to the non-profit fundraising world. Major *pfffffffft*
5. MILWAUKEE'S ONE GAME OUT OF FIRST PLACE!
1. Not really a personal change, but I'm rooting for another win against the Cards and praying that Arizona trounces the Cubs.
   

Nine Stories

New creative project. Nine very short stories, vignettes, I guess. Each based in a specific moment in the past nine months that brought me to the decision to leave the city.

Tonight's edition:

"A-t-o-n-e-m-e-n-t"

"Sieben and Gross, how can I help you?"
"It's me."

He imagined her fingers falling from the switchboard She'd shoot furtive looks at the customers before turning her back to them and lowering her head. He continued.

"I thought I'd call now as the office was closing. I thought you'd be less busy."
"How did you get this number?"
"I would have called your cell if you hadn't ripped the page out of my address book."
"Serves you right for being so out of touch with the 21st century."
"Yes, well. You did make it more difficult."
"That was the point."

He could almost see her nervously pushing her short bangs out of her eyes and chewing her bottom lip, the way she did when she was excited. Or terrified.

"When I stopped seeing you at the library sales, I figured you were offered the job."
"Still picking up women at the library?"
"You picked me up, if I remember correctly."

She blushed on the other end of the phone. He could tell. A few months distance and she was already ashamed of her brashness. She cleared her throat.

"What do you want?"
"I'll be in the city next week for business." He paused and collected himself. "I want to see you again."
"I don't think that's a good idea."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not. . ." it was her turn to trail off.
"Not?"
"A floozy," she murmured.
He smiled at the antiquated word. "You're not. And, incidentally, that would have been at least a sixteen point Scrabble play."
"Don't."
"What?"
"You don't get to bring up Scrabble. And don't try to be funny."
"I didn't think I had to try. I would still like to see you. I'll leave my board at home, I promise."
"You can't."
"Leave my board or see you?"
"See me."

He dug the heels of his hands deeply into his eyes. This wasn't going as he had planned earlier in the day.

"Why not?"
"My parents will be in town."
"I'd love to meet them."
"I'm sure you would."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Oh nothing, I'm sure you all would have tons to talk about. You know, you could sit around and have a few beers and talk about the Carter administration."
"That WAS a good administration."
"My parents are Republican. And the first president I can ever remember is George Bush Sr."
"That's unfortunate."
"In more ways than one."

They paused again. She was trying to think of the fastest way to end the conversation without hanging up outright. He was trying to keep her on the phone for a few more minutes, convinced her could let her persuade herself again to do what they both wanted.

Finally he asked, "Did you make a mistake?"
"No." Her voice softened a little now, and to someone else she may have sounded like she was pleading. "I need to run. Please don't call me anymore." But they both knew that she didn't plead.

"Yes. Yes. You're right. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done this in the first place." Then, lamely, "I didn't mean to upset you."

"It's fine. Just never again."
"Sure."

He could hear her moving to hang up and just before she did she said:

"And floozy is at least at a seventeen point play. Remember, the y is always worth more than you think."


Which she followed with a sharp click and a dial tone.

She was right.

Here I Come

Courses for Fall '08

Theological Aesthetics
A seminar course on the theological tradition as it intersects with philosophical aesthetics. Focused readings in philosophical aesthetics (analysis, interpretation of human perception in and through various artistic media) and the larger theological tradition.
Case studies and readings focused around poetry, visual arts, music, liturgical prayer, and fine arts performances.


THY 402 Introduction to the Christian Tradition
An introductory survey of theology employing representative texts from major theological
figures (e.g. Augustine, Luther) that address major theological questions (e.g. nature and
grace, faith and works). Figures and issues selected from various historical periods.


DOCT 406 Christology
Understandings of the person, presence and mission of Christ in scripture, in doctrine and
dogma, and in contemporary theology.

I'm super pumped for the Christology and Theological Aesthetics courses. They sound like they're going to be great. I think Intro is something I'll just have to slog on through.

42 days. . .

LOVE/hate

Have you seen this commercial?

I love the New Balance LOVE/hate commericals. I like the cleverness of describing running as a relationship, and it is an extremely apt description.

In November of 2007, I started training for the Gary Bjorklund half marathon. It seemed like an impossibly distant goal, I doubted that I would even win the lottery and be able to run, but I set the goal anyway. The following eight months were some of the most intense of my life. I found myself dragging my exhausted body out of bed at unimaginable hours in order to don four layers and venture out into sub-zero temperatures. I remember certain markers. Two miles in November was a huge one. The same goes for five in February, and at the end of my eight miles in April, I felt like I had finished a bottle of champagne.

I also remember (vividly) a lot of bad runs. I could finish eight miles on a Sunday without blinking, and when Tuesday rolled around I'd find myself limping home after two miles.

Not to mention all of the skipped runs. I dismissed speed workouts (dumb), skipped long training runs (idiotic), and didn't take care of myself (suicidal). I spent a good portion of the spring laid up alternately with shin splints, the flu, and shin splints again.

Despite all of this, I found myself packing my car early Friday morning to head to Duluth. I spent Friday afternoon with my cousin and his family, chasing his four year old around the backyard and playing matchbox cars. Friday night found me in the fetal position on a cot in the basement, four alarms set so that I wouldn't oversleep.

Speaking of ungodly hours, Gary begins at 6:30 am. I understand the reasoning behind it, but standing in a dark kitchen eating peanut butter toast at 4:00 am, I began to doubt my own sanity. It took most of my strength to force down the toast and slam some Gatorade before barrelling out the door to catch my ride.

I rode the bus out to the starting point with an eight-time Gary finisher. One of the things that struck me most about the entire weekend was the incredible amount of camaraderie among most of the runners there. That and the crazies along the course. There was one bag-piper, several squeeze-box players, tons of frat boys trying to encourage us to do a beer bong, and a guy dressed up as Shrek along the course. Anyway, my bus friend pep-talked me for the entire half hour bus ride, and found me after the race to inquire about how it had gone.

I'll spare you the blow by blow analysis of the entire race. Suffice it to say that I ran too hard on my first seven miles, crashed on mile nine, and hobbled across the finish line. My only goal was that finish line, and I made it. Barely. I'm not sure what shock feels like, but I think I may have had a mild case of it. I limped around looking for water, my sweat bag, and my father. I eventually found all three, and my pep-talker from the morning. We swapped notes on the race and then went to watch the marathon-ers come through. I spent the next nine hours comparing race notes, stretching my aching muscles, and trying to re-balance my electrolyte levels.

For the past two days I've been laying low, dealing with some sore muscles, and recouping. My roommates have practically had to lock me into my house. The weather is perfect, and from my position on the couch I can see people running past. I'm desperate to go out again, but my muscles, better judgement, and roommates are holding me back. For the time being I'll have to content myself with planning my next races.

music

No real post.



Just a list of songs that have been on my Itunes repeat lately.



Gotta Have You: The Weepies

O Valencia!: The Decemberists

The Crane Wife 3: The Decemberists

Number 1: Goldfrappe

Black Panther: Mason Jennings

Delicate: Damien Rice

Jurassic 5: Quality Control

Lloyd, I'm Ready to be Heartbroken: Camera Obscura

Sweet Carolina: Ryan Adams

In My Time of Need: Ryan Adams

Eve, Apple of My Eye: Bell X1

Twilight: Elliott Smith

The Sea & The Rhythm: Iron and Wine

California: Mason Jennings

Your Smile is a Drug: Patrick Park

Starfish and Coffee: Prince

I have an unhealthy love for writing lists.

Additionally, I'm not sure if it's sad, slightly disturbing, or awesome that I can see the final panel of this comic as something I say in the near future. I hope the response is the same as it is here.

I've decided I'm going to start interviewing potential suitors through a committee. I hope to recruit the following individuals to aid me in the difficult, boring, and thankless screening process. I hope that the interviews will screen out the dim, self-absorbed, already engaged, and generally uninteresting men I seem to keep wasting my time with these days.

Mother Prosen: Through Mother Prosen, the gentleman in question will get a decent sampling of Baker/Fitzpatrick female insanity. He'll be forced to confront anything from ADD to odd questions about bowel movements and hobbies. This will be a pretty good snapshot of what my own neuroses will turn into thirty or so years down the road.

Michelle: Best judge of physical and emotional compatibility. Best friend of nearly ten years. Standing up to her indecent questions and laughing at her self-deprecating stories is a must.

Pumpkin: Nerd Alert! Will be able to determine if the suitor is a suitable nerd fit by asking him to finish the follow exchange:

"Fast ship? You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon?"

"Should I have?"
(Answer here)

Wilderness Survivalist (TBD): I'm not joking. I don't date men who can't start a fire, split wood, portage a canoe, fish, or otherwise enjoy the outdoors.

GRE Test Administrator: Well, not quite. But I'm a big, intellectual dork at heart, and a certain amount of compatibility there is necessary to my personal happiness in a relationship.

Applications will include a questionnaire and short essay. If selected for the first round of interviews, the subject will be asked to reserve at least a six hour period for questions from the panel and psychological testing. Interested parties should contact the KMJ Companion Project. Box 129, Minneapolis, MN 55406.


But all jocularity aside, I had a conversation last week with one of my roommates. I confided that when it comes to the opposite sex, I have ridiculously high expectations. She laughed and commented "Hon, those expectations aren't only for men you're dating." Touche.


That said, I've decided to narrow down my long list of requirements for gentlemen callers down to two main points.

1. Must be a baseball fan. At this point, I'll even date a Twins fan. (Although after Friday and Saturday I've had a little bit of the air taken out of my sails. Yost is an idiot and needs to get it together. Hardy is out with a strained rotator cuff. I'm so bummed I could cry. But I digress. Forgive me for the links, but I'm not sure how many people are Brewers fans) Baseball is my favorite sport, and a must in my line-up of summertime activities. It doesn't get much better than sitting in the backyard, listening to Ueck announce a game. If I can't share my love of baseball with someone we're not going anywhere.



2. Must love Jane Austen. Normally, there would be a checklist of books/authors the guy must enjoy. However, for the sake of simplicity I've narrowed it down to just Jane. Tolkien can be inaccessible, and most of the world has never read Theological Investigations, so I needed to get it down to something both accessible and deeply loved. When I have a bad day, I watch some of the A&E version of Pride and Prejudice and smile like a dope throughout the entire movie. During the scene when Darcy and Elizabeth walk to Meryton together, I usually cry and feel like my heart is going to explode. I hold Maggie's hand when we watch it together. I love Austen's wit and her sparkling dialogue. I hope to write like her someday (particularly in Love and Friendship. *pffffffft*) I need someone who won't just walk in, roll his eyes while I cry for the 3,000th time at the end of Mansfield Park, and then leave.

Gentlemen who meet these two requirements can skip the questionnaire, essay, and interview process. I'll be in my backyard grilling and listening to the game. If things go well enough, perhaps we'll find ourselves reading some Sense and Sensibility while we're both drifting off.

Until then I think I'm going to start collecting newspapers and cats.

Almighty

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

-C.S. Lewis

I find myself in a bit of a faith bind at present. Not the epic faith crisis of finding out that the Bible is in fact, made up, but an interesting predicament nonetheless. It is mostly the result of two gentlemen, of whom I'm sure one would be infinitely amused if he knew how much difficulty his questions are causing.


The difficulty comes not from any disbelief in the doctrine of the Resurrection, or a deep rooted distrust in the validity of Scripture. Instead, I find myself focusing on something else I've always found particularly troublesome.


Prayer.


My senior year in college I had to take an upper-division theology class preselected by the department. I enrolled in Benedictine Spirituality and embarked on one of the most painfully boring academic experiences of my life. However, one of our conversations centered on prayer and spirituality. One of the books we read was about praying our experiences. I was irritated enough by most of the fluffy class content, but this one took the cake. The book's premise is that we can communicate with God by simply by talking through our day with another person.


Are you kidding? I mean, really? This constituted an upper division theology class? It was so fluffy and seemed like such an insincere cop-out of a prayer style that I wasn't the only person to leave the class feeling like I had just wasted well over an hour of my life. Despite our feelings of frustration, many of use acknowledged that we were bad "pray-ers" and that despite devoting four years of our respective lives studying God, we didn't know how to talk to Her. Most of us pushed this to the back of our minds and went about the everyday business of understanding God intellectually instead of trying to maintain a relationship.

Well, the question remained unanswered and I've always been nagged by the thought that there's something wrong with the way I pray. I've hated intercessory prayer for a long, long time. I've never been able to reason out why some intercessions are "answered" and some are not. I deeply dislike the expression "God has a plan for you" when used as a kind of condolence. It's a more arrogant response than anyone who's been in a position of real pain or distress should have to hear. How condescending can you be?

This is where my difficulty as a Christian lies. We are specifically told to pray for the recovery of our sick and our daily bread (to use Lewis's turn of phrase.) As I became a disciple (so to speak) of Rahner's I thought that I finally found a way out of my difficulty. Instead of praying for the recovery of our sick, we should pray for the grace to understand God's will in the world. This seemed to solve the difficulty for some time. But, again, the more I think about it, the more ridiculous this whole concept of prayer seems. I want, and believe that I am hard-wired to want, a God that I can understand personally. I want to be able to talk to Her the same way I talk to my mom when something's bothering me. I want to believe that there's an answer waiting somewhere for me if I can ever shut up long enough to hear it.

At this point, it seems as though the most intellectually sound thing I could do would be one of the following.

1. Drop the label of a Christian and the necessary prayer baggage that comes with it. (Much easier said than done, particularly as there's still that sticky believe in the Resurrection.)
2. Languish in a state of non-prayer and disregard it. Focus on the more concrete aspects of Catholicism (Catholic Social Teaching, mainly)

I'm not really a fan of either of these options. I don't have my blinders entirely on here. I know that religion is responsible for a number of horrifying things (the Crusades, the degradation of women, wars, etc.). But I've also seen the liberating aspects of faith when it (in my opinion) is used to better understand the world and build the kingdom on earth. I believe whole-heartedly that faith can, and does, help people to transform. My own conversion has transformed my life. It, like Lewis has said, has allowed me to see a number of other aspects of life that were hidden from me.

But it seems as though this transformation cannot occur without a personal God who listens and responds when you talk. But at the same time, I can't quite reconcile that God who listens to any of my intellectual ideas about God.

Perhaps I'm really an apostate and don't want to admit to it. It's possible that studying theology at a master's level is the very last thing that I need to do at this point in my life.

I'll wrap up with the video that really made me pause and try to figure out what my own feelings on prayer are.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/112

Untitled Poem

The days are too short.
Too full of angry voices
or cold disappointment. The best
hours wasted to computers,
phones, mail merges. They slip by,
barely noticed or painstakingly counted
until 4:30 and quitting time.
Today, I will lengthen the day.
Draw a warm bath and sink into it.
There, with eyes closed, I will meet you.
Only known through half-remembered dreams
and second-hand accounts. We've arranged
to introduce ourselves at the edge of the lake.
Together we'll walk in the autumn sunshine
and talk about Wild Geese and why Franny
won't get up from the sofa. Or maybe we can just share
those few thoughts that may have passed unconsciously
between us while one was rising, and the other just falling
asleep.

The Simplest Thing

"Advice? I would say there is one basic idea that should be kept in mind in all the exchanges we make in life, whether of career or anything else. We should decide not in view of better pay, higher rank, 'getting ahead', but in view of becoming more real, entering more authentically into direct contact with life, living as a free and mature human person, able to give myself more to others, able to understand myself and the world better. I hope that these few notes may be of some use."

-Thomas Merton

I've spent the past two days trying to find a better way of saying an extremely simple sentence.

I quit my job on Monday.

More to come.

Life

In the fall of 2005 I took a riverboat trip down the Yangtze River. Living in extremely confined quarters with a group of 28 college students for a week was often trying and occasionally rewarding. While on the trip, a friend and I sat down with our journals and decided that we were going to begin our lists of things we wanted to accomplish with our lives. The idea started when Tom heard a NPR story about a man who had passed away somewhat recently. Early in his life, he made a list of things he wanted to accomplish before his death. During his wake, his family hung the list in the funeral home and every single item on his list was checked off.

After two and a half years, it seems like time to make the list public. I'm happy to say that I've accomplished some of the items, added to the list, and removed things that don't make sense. The things on this list range from academic to personal and from enormous trips to learning carpentry. I'm glad I took the time to write this in 2005 and even happier that I finally took a chance to revisit it now.

The Life Goals List
Bethlehem for Christmas
Cairo
Trans-Siberian Express
Visit the Church of San Giovanni in Laterano in Rome. Climb the stairs on your knees.
Trekking in Bhutan
Week at the monastery in Taize
Learn (or make the best attempt to learn) Biblical Hebrew and New Testament Greek (x)
Biblical Schloar: Gospel of John or Pentateuch
Ph. D.
MA Theology
Complete a book of short stories
Complete a poetry manuscript
Children's fantasy novel
Publish an essay on Sin & Redemption in Tolkien
Spend a week in Thomas Merton's monastery
Backpack the Pacific Crest Trail
Ironwoman
Learn carpentry
Touch all the continents
Be in Mexico for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Kayak around the arctic circle
See Carmen in France
Hug a redwood in California (x)
See the Mississippi Headwaters (x)

Addicted to You

I have a problem.

Last night I went to the St. Joseph the Worker Fundraiser. I managed to arrive in time for the "fill a paper bag with second-hand books for four dollars!" part of the evening.

Uh-oh. In the twenty-four hours previous I had been strongly encouraged to apply for a MA in systematics for the fall of '08. An hour previous I had a lovely dinner and drinks with two long-lost friends. Now I was suddenly offered the chance to go crazy with second hand books for the the rock-bottom price of four dollars. AND I could tell myself that I was really supporting a volunteer program in The Cities. Needless to say, I was feeling pretty wonderful.

Forty some odd books and two ripped paper bags later, I found myself trying to categorize my purchases. I had one truly phenomenal find, some good finds, and some books I thought others would love. The books all fall in to one of four categories.

1. Theology (sub categories will be noted)
4: Literary Theory/Non-Fiction
5. Fiction/Drama
6. Books purchased for others

Because I think that bookshelves are a pretty good indication of how well you can get along with another person (and because I have a sick, sick obsession with making lists), I thought it might be interesting to share the new additions to my already over-stocked shelves.

Enjoy this little look into my Psyche.

Theology (Spirituality)
C.S. Lewis A Grief Observed
Henri Nouwen: Can You Drink The Cup?
Joan Chittister, OSB: Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of Benedict Today
Henri Nouwen: The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

Theology (Biblical Studies)
Synopsis of the Four Gospels
Jerome Biblical Commentary
Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives Vol II

Theology (Liberation, also including Sex & Gender)
Helen M. Luke: Women, Earth, and Spirit: The Feminine in Symbol and Myth
Richard A. Norris, Jr. (ed): The Christological Controversy
William G Rusch (ed): The Trinitarian Controversy
Robert Blair Kaiser: The Politics of Sex and Religion
Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought
Karen Kennelly, C.S.J. (ed): American Catholic Women: A Historical Exploration
Gustavo Gutierrez: We Drink From Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People
Gustavo Gutierrez: A Theology of Liberation

Lit Theory/Non-Fiction
Fredrick Engels: The Condition of the Working Class in England
Susan Brownmiller: Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape
Henry David Thoreau: Walden and Civil Disobedience
Kitty Ferguson: Stephen Hawking: Quest for a Theory of Everything
Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Richard L. McGuire: Passionate Attention: An Introduction to Literary Study
Arundhati Roy: War Talk
New French Feminisms: Writings by Simone de Beauvoir, Helen Cixous, Annie Leclerc, and others
Stanley Fish: Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities

Fiction/Drama
Vergil: The Aeneid
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Antoine de Saint Exupery: The Little Prince
Yann Martel: The Life of Pi
Jane Austen: Persuasion
Madeline L'Engle: A Live Coal In The Sea
Toni Morrison: Love
John Steinbeck: The Pearl; The Red Pony
Jack Kerouac: The Subterraneans
Six Great Modern Short Novels (The Dead: Joyce; Billy Budd: Melville; Noon Wine: Porter; The Overcoat: Gogol; The Pilgrim Hawk: Wescott; The Bear: Faulkner)
Hannah Green: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
Carl Sandberg: The Fiery Trial
Alice Walker: The Temple of My Familiar
Lorraine Hansberry: A Raisin in the Sun
Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew

Books for Others
Bob and Jenna Torres: Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World (For Krista's roommate, Katy)
Steven Spielberg: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (I actually have no idea how this ended up in my bag)
Lee Iacocca: Where Have All the Leaders Gone? (Father Prosen cannot stop talking about how much he wants to read this book)

Rude Awakening #863


You cannot rehydrate from three days of poor hydration in four hours.


I've known this rule since way before I started distance running. However, that doesn't stop me from trying to do it every so often. I forget to drink well for a few days and then attempt to make it all up in a few short hours before I go off to take my run. This usually manifests itself in much the same way it did today--intense muscle cramps, dry mouth, premature fatigue, and general suckiness of the workout. Today was supposed to be an easy run--just a short, slow four miles. It turned in to the run from hell because apparently I'm totally incapable of taking care of myself. Awesome.

That said, it's also important to note that I feel most alive, most authentically myself when I am out for my runs. No boss to perform for, no roommate drama, no room for "what ifs" when you're slamming through eight miles and wondering if you can just shave ten seconds off this next mile. I'm so busy concentrating on how my muscles feel, the traffic crossing the street, the smiles on other runner's faces as we pass to worry about most of what passes for thought these days. There's no boss to perform for, no coworkers to soothe, no roommate drama, there's nothing except for my own breathing and the way my muscles feel at this moment on this run.

I'm not sure what it says that I feel most alive and most authentically myself four days a week. Apparently, I'm an inauthentic, revolting person the rest of the week. Do I really spend the rest of my time divorced from the kind of reality I live in while on a run? I don't know if this is actually the case, but it seems like the world I'm in most of the time is so full of fluorescent light, computers, ringing phones, phone calls, and television that I'm totally out of touch with my body and my surroundings. I'm not quite sure how to to shock myself out of my daily perceptions and into what I feel for the rest of the week.

Squishy

Tonight, I found myself standing in the back of A Fine Grind in St. Paul emitting noises I'm sure only dogs could hear and squeezing my best friend so hard I was afraid I might crack her ribs.


As previously mentioned, my two dearest friends and my soul mate all left for various abroad adventures between the beginning of August and the end of September last year. Naturally, this had made my post-college transition harder than I had anticipated.


Michelle's return to the U.S. signals another, most welcome change.


We spent a few hours tonight munching on chow mein and swallowing chai while catching up on our romantic (mis)adventures. I laughed, had my jaw nearly hit the floor, made a variety of sympathetic noises, and rolled my eyes more than I have in months. As all of our other close friends from WI become parts of couples, it's good to have this one relationship we don't have to plan around a spouse or a child. Both of these are, of course, welcome additions to a tightly knit circle, but it's good to have someone else who can't commit to a stylist, let alone a significant other. It's also good to have someone else's (albeit, "straight up broken") compass to help you guide your own life.


I had forgotten how much I missed this relationship. Having someone who understands your neuroses as well as she understands her own is the greatest blessing I could ever hope to have.









Well, darlin', Here's to nine years of friendship, PBDs, jaw-dropping revelations, NSync sing-a-longs, transatlantic late-night dials, mermaids, and inappropriate comments. I'm glad you're home.

subconscious

On really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion
-Waking Life

I think my subconscious takes 'shrooms.

As previously mentioned, my nights are unusually eventful. I'm either talking in my sleep, having nightmares I can't wake up from, or dreaming dreams I can't differentiate from reality upon waking.

That said, my nocturnal wanderings have taken on a new twist. I've had a series of particularly vivid dreams that feature a friend of Grace's with whom I have absolutely no connection. We may or may not have had a class together at some point, but I don't think that's true and I'm 100% positive we've never actually been introduced. I've told Maggie about both of the dreams, and she seems to think I'm half cracked.

"Well. Maybe you're secretly in love with him."
"Unlikely. We've never actually met."
"You are the creepiest person I have ever met. You're dreaming about someone you've never met?"
"Well, yes. They're not anything to be ashamed of. He's just in them. Once he yelled at me. Once he slept in a hayloft. This could be awkward if we ever actually do meet. I'll probably introduce myself saying 'Hi! I've been dreaming about you for the past six months. Uhhhh. '"
"You really are going to die alone and be consumed by feral cats."
"At least I can die having fulfilled my dream of spinsterhood."

I'm less worried about the creepiness factor of the dreams and more interested in why this gentleman seems to have become a recurring character in my REM cycle when most of my dreams are about work or or can-can dancers (I can't explain it.) My subconscious obviously thinks there's some important link between this random guy and something happening in my life currently. I can't see the link between my (REM cycle) gentleman caller and my waking life.

For the time being, I guess I'll wait and see where we end up. And hope that if we ever do meet, I'll have the self-restraint to avoid telling him he's the man of my dreams.

Si se puede!

The audacity of hope indeed.

Seven

I.

Recipe

Data Entry Personnel

1 idealistic recent grad
56 hours sleep
15-23 miles of open road
37 hours mind numbing work
.5 Un-fufilling romantic liaisons
3 hours of meetings
1 case Premium
Dash of infrequent conversations with other idealistic recent grads


Take idealistic recent grad. Add 37 hours mind numbing work in equal parts throughout 1 week period. Add 3 hours of meetings. Slow pour one bottle Premium into the mixture every second day. Mix. Distribute sleep. Less in the beginning of the week, gradually adding a half hour or so until the weekend. Place mixture on open road and encourage it to breathe three days a week until desired mileage is achieved. Stir in infrequent conversations with other recent grads throughout the week. On Friday, add three bottles Premium and romantic liaison to stew. Saturday morning, remove romantic liaison. (Note: May be removed Friday evening if the taste becomes too strong) On Sunday, place entire mixture in Church for 1.5 hours. Remove when blood pressure drops back to normal range. Repeat process every Monday.

II.

Infinite

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dreams.png

It's Monday morning and a coworker walks in with a new Coach purse. It's hot pink, and doesn't have much to distinguish it as a Coach, just the pair of mirror image Cs on the clasp. I'd put its price at around $110.00. It's hideous; barely big enough to fit a small wallet and a compact, let alone a book, journal, nalgene, variety of pens, keys, cell phone, and assorted other paraphernalia I carry around in my bag on a daily basis. It's a totally impractical bag. More of a fake status symbol than anything, because Coach is the poor girl's designer bag.

I want this purse.

What? the rational side of my brain kicks in and demands to know what the irrational side is saying. When did I suddenly become able to identify purses based on their style? When did I start calling $110 purse a poor girl's designer bag? WHEN DID I START COVETING UGLY PURSES?

Astonished, and more than a little disgusted with myself, I slink back to my office and into the orderly world of data entry. While I blast Mason Jennings into my skull and disassociate myself from the data I'm entering, I try to process what has just happened to me. When did acquisitive become an adjective that I could use to describe myself? Sure, I've always had a bit of a an Achilles' heel when it comes to books, but that's something I made my peace with a long time ago. There's always Amazon and resale book stores and really, that's really a desire for something more than the book itself. The purse thing is wholly unexpected and totally unlike anything of which I could have imagined myself capable. I'm quickly soaking up a good deal of my environment, and I'm disturbed and saddened by the rapidity with which it's altering my desires. Where I used to want to make some kind of an impact on the people surrounding me, now I'm satisfied if no one yells at me during the course of the day. Self-assurance about my mission in the world has been replaced by doubt about my own gifts and talents and the desire to just get by. I actually feel like the Kel-Tron 6100 these days. Follow the recipe above and you'll have 600-1000 gifts entered in the course of a week, 23 miles run, and if it's a good week, three actually meaningful conversations--the kind that don't include stretch goals and memos to human resources.

There is more to life than this.

III.
Failure to Launch

My mother and I had a passive-aggressive, classically Prosen fight on Tuesday. I called looking for some support in a decision, and I was lectured by my father, which was unsurprising. The same lecture came from my younger brother and then my mother. I was nearly in tears when I hung up on Mother Prosen. We don't fight often, and when we do, it usually upsets me for days. What I wanted from her was a sympathetic listener. What I got was a mother who couldn't help but give suggestions and advice. We talked again on Thursday and I realized again how that human communication is fragile. A long day, poor cell connection, miss-chosen word can damage a relationship faster than a variety of other indiscretions. I'm troubled when I realize how much damage I may have inflicted with a casually cruel remark that I perceived as merely a joke or simply being tired after a long day at work.

I'm amazed that we ever manage to say anything to one another.

IV.
Delicate

Maggie's way into her gentleman caller. There have been a lot of casual jokes about setting me up with one of the gentleman caller's friends, but the other day she actually suggested it as a possibility before leaving for work. I had a mild panic attack as soon as she left. I've been single all my life, and have a level of independence I wouldn't change for the world. The thought of relinquishing even a moment's worth of that independence is enough to give me hives. I often wonder if I'm constitutionally incapable of having any kind of a lasting romantic commitment to another person. My smug coupled friends tell me that I haven't met the right person yet. I want to retort that the right person is going to have to have Sherlock Holmes's wit, Buddha's patience, Pablo Neruda's passion, and Paul Theroux's sense of adventure. A tall order, at best. An impossibility on most days.

Looks like I'm going to end up crushed to death under a stack of old newspapers and consumed by feral cats.

V.
Distance

The shower curtain is a map of the world. While I'm showering, I stare more or less directly at Asia. I often imagine Kevin and Grace are doing at that exact moment. I'm always confounded by the fact that when I'm rising for the day, they're drifting into sleep or vice versa.

Distance changes relationships in strange ways. Despite thousands of miles and an ocean, I feel closer to some folks than ever before. Others, with whom there is no ocean and only a few miles, I feel more distant. Old friendships are drifting away like Avalon (a million awesomness points if you can name that author) and I'm trying to make my peace with it.

It's Sunday morning in China. Kevin's probably at Chinese mass.

VI.
Pagan

Moonstones, in addition to a variety of of properties, are said to ward off bad dreams. I have a moonstone necklace I purchased in Duluth over Labor Day. Normally, I change it out when it doesn't match what I have selected for work. These days, I've taken to wearing it constantly, most often to bed. As work becomes more and more stressful, nightmares I thought I grew out of are becoming more frequent and are increasingly difficult to wake from or differentiate from reality upon waking. After staying with a friend in January and screaming so loudly in my sleep that I woke her, I've had to start cautioning people about my nocturnal habits and begging them to wake me if I start tossing and turning or crying. I've taken to my rosary as I fall asleep, and prayer settles most pre-sleep anxieties, but the nightmares are continuing to build to an alarming rate. Hence the moonstone.

I think my priest would say that it's a pagan influence and I should turn my mind only to prayer. It helps (probably psychosomatic, but who knows?) and my conscience is clear.

There are a lot of things I don't tell my priest.

VII.

Living in the Moment

Thoughts before drifting into a nap this afternoon:

This is the first time I've been warm in a long time.
I've don't appreciate my bed enough.
Mmmmmm. Saturday afternoon naps.

Really, St. Ben's?

In the name of everything holy. . .

I received a letter from the President's Office at CSB today. I was pretty excited at first, because I recently wrote Maryann an email venting my spleen about the Vaginia Monologues not going on this year. I hoped that perhaps someone was going to address my concerns about it not happening. Working in development now, I realized that she probably didn't have the time or the inclination to answer it herself, but I hoped that perhaps they put someone on it.

Oh, no, but that's all right too. Instead, it's a letter about how CSB/SJU are striving to become more green. Awesome! It's about freaking time. (Although, there's no mention of how professors were advocating for a green dining center and were told that they wouldn't get it.) All right. Swallow back this reaction. Here's what pissed me off to no end--

THE FREAKING LETTER IS PRINTED ON TWO PIECES OF PAPER.

Really, I know that in the grand scheme of things this probably isn't that big of a deal, but for the love of everything holy. You're writing a letter about how green you are and you couldn't even print on both sides of one sheet of paper? Or ask one of the 23,000 people who are still on campus and have my email for it? With all the freaking questionaires you ask us to fill out on our graduation you seriously don't have my email? Jesus H. Christ people.

I know this seems like a wacky thing to get pissed off about, but honestly. It's the overarching message that gets my goat. "Look at how environmentally friendly we're going to be!" while they overlook some of the simplest things you can do to make things a wee bit better.

Gah.

I'm off to write a sonnet.

I just sent the following text message to Mags:

Darcy and Eliz. are engaged. Pfffft. True love does exist. I'm so happy I could die.

No, Darcy and Eliz are not particular friends of mine. I just finished watching six hours of Pride and Prejudice. My heart hurts.

I've never been one for typcially "romantic" movies. Most of the time I think they're contrived--as one of my favorite English professors once shouted: "Come on, you guys! It's like dumping Lithium on your ice cream!" But Austen's book is so far beyond a happy ending I can't help but love it.

One of the reasons I adore the book so much is because of Austen's snappy dialouge. Elizabeth is pragmatic, almost to a fault, but doesn't let that get in the way of setting loose some zingers. Her wit is incisive and fantastic. Her exchange with Darcy when he first proposes marriage is one of my favorite passages in literature ever.

I love Darcy because, well, he's arrogant and emotionally unavailable, and apparently that's my M.O. Throw in the the fact that he's as quick as Elizabeth and the two of them are perfect verbal sparring partners and pffffffft.

In case you didn't know the "pffffft" noise is my heart exploding.

All right. Enough. I'm so incredibly content with life right now that it's unreal.

It is the first thing

I think I'm going to undertake a new project.

I'd going to read one poem a day; an old favorite, a new poem, one from a favorite author that I haven't read yet--whatever and I'm going to try to write a poem imitating the one I read. Mara once said that the best way to get to know a poet is to try to write like the. Jimmy said that the best way to learn to write is find writers you love and get to know them. This seems like an interesting endeavor. I'm going to try it for one month first. So, Jan 31st-March 2nd. The game is that the poem needs to be psoted by 10:30 PM CST, in whatever draft it's in at that point. If you're interested, you can find me at http://apoetryexperiment.blogspot.com/

The poem for today? An old favorite that felt like a good, challenging way to start.

"Light, at Thirty-Two"

Michael Bluminthal

It is the first thing God speaks of
when we meet Him, in the good book
of Genesis. And now, I think
I see it all in terms of light:


How, the other day at dusk
on Ossabaw Island, the marsh grass
was the color of the most beautiful hair
I had ever seen, or how—years ago
in the early-dawn light of Montrose Park—I saw the most ravishing woman
in the world, only to find, hours later
over drinks in a dark bar, that it wasn't she who was ravishing,
but the light: how it filtered
through the leaves of the magnolia onto her cheeks, how it turned
her cotton dress to silk, her walk
to a tour-jeté.

And I understood, finally, what my friend John meant,
twenty years ago, when he said: Love
is keeping the lights on. And I understood why Matisse and Bonnard and Gauguin
and Cézanne all followed the light:

Because they knew all lovers are equal
in the dark, that light defines beauty
the way longing defines desire, that everything depends
on how light falls on a seashell, a mouth ... a broken bottle.

And now, I'd like to learn
to follow light wherever it leads me,
never again to say to a woman, YOU
are beautiful, but rather to whisper:
Darling, the way light fell on your hair
This morning when we woke—God,
It was beautiful. Because, if the light is right,
Then the day and the body and the faint pleasures
Waiting at the window ... they too are right.
All things lovely there. As the first poet wrote,
in his first book of poems: Let there be light.
And there is.

Dirt

Wake up in the morning in the moonlight grey
We got dirt to break, we got a note to pay
Gonna plow, plow to the end of the row
Wake up in the morning and plow to the end of the row
-Adrienne Young "Plow to the End of the Row"

I have never seen my father's hands entirely clean.

Thirty years as a diesel mechanic does that to a man. Five years will do it. My younger brother is starting to have the same problem, and he's only been working as a mechanic for a few years. It's a combination of callouses, dry hands, poor working conditions, grease, oil, gasoline, antifreeze, you name it, and it's probably somewhere on their hands. Even on holidays, when Dad had a few days off to scrub up, his hands were dirty. He was usually trying to keep one of our five hundred dollar cars running, or chopping wood next to the house, or if he were really on vacation, digging worms and going fishing. There was always a faint line of dirt under his nails or ground into the callouses on his palms.

It wasn't until I started working at Common Ground that I realized the beauty of a good layer of permadirt. That good Sterns County soil found its way deep into the cracks on my hands and built up around newly made callouses. My nails were usually short and cracked and I have more than one scar from a mishandled tool that summer.

That summer I learned the value of working with your hands. I had spent three years removed from my blue-collar roots, and had become pretty soft. I toughened up a little that summer; remembered what it was like to drive a truck, tell stories, speak slowly, find the wisdom in a bee-keeper and a chicken farmer. I discovered what it was like to watch something grow out of a seed an into food that would make someone's week a little bit better. I picked squash, weeded beets, and cut lettuce.

I've started to distrust women with manicures or men whose hands are too well-groomed. There's something suspicious about someone who has never snagged a finger on a barbed fish hook or planted something and helped it to grow.

I think about my father's hands while I'm at work. The calluses from Common Ground have worn away by now and my nails are always clean. I want hands like Pa's when I grow up. The kind of hands you can tell a story from. I want hands that show that I worked for my life at something difficult and rewarding that didn't require transferring large piles of money from one account to another.

I want hands that never get entirely clean.

I got rocks in my shoes, dirt in my eyes
Working like a dog til the day I die
You got to plow, plow to the end of the row
I got rocks in my shoes when I plow to the end of the row
-Adrienne Young "Plow to the End of the Row"

In the sweet by and by

One foot, in front of the other
It's hard as hell these days.
It’s my choice, a case of any color
What makes me walk away?
-Adrienne Young "It's All the Same"


It's a little after two o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, and I'm stretching, albeit, lazily in front of my house. This is the first run I've gone on in almost two weeks because the weather has been so cold my eyelids froze to one another. I'm pretty nervous about this run, because I've been slacking on my cross training as well--not a good idea when you're in training. Meeep.

The weather is warm for a January afternoon, and it feels good to be working out again. My body is certainly making me remember that it hasn't done much over the past couple weeks. My legs feel like lead and my lungs are certainly protesting this sudden burst of exercise.

I'm always amazed by how quickly something can turn from an occasional indulgence, to a habit, to a hobby you enjoy. Five years ago it was smoking. Two months I went for my first run. Funny how life changes.

I haven't been to church since Christmas. I'm not ok with this, and realize that I need to go. Life has been a series of weird troughs lately that I can't seem to scrape myself out of--not that I've been trying very hard. I know how much the mass means to me and I know that I need to go or I need to go to morning prayer or something, but when the time comes to get dressed and walk out the door, I can't bring myself to do it. I don't know if it's spiritual laziness or what, but things are not what the used to be, and I'm not sure why. Part of me can't help but think that I don't want to have the emotional reactions I have during the mass. I'm sick of sitting there wondering if I'm living my life right and thinking that things were so much easier before I was a part of my church. I feel like I'm in the middle of a family feud every Sunday--what wants that from their church? Some days I get so tired of trying to think my way out of questions I have about my faith life that I want to scream. On a good day, I know that all of this is necessary and good, but lately it's just not working. It hasn't been working for ages. I'm not sure what to do when I know that I still believe everything intellectually, but can't fit that in with everything else.

Five years ago I was wandering around, if not an intellectual atheist, certainly more agnostic than Christian. Four years ago this Easter, I will have been confirmed as a Catholic. And now?

Good question.

One thought after another
round and round they go
got to sit still, try to recover.
Breathe in to what I know.
-Adrienne Young

I hear that old piano from down the avenue. . .

Oh my sweet, sweet sweet, old someone,
coming through that door,
it's Saturday and the band is playing,
honey, could we ask for more?

Most of my Sunday mornings begin hearing Garrison Keillor sing the Tishomingo Blues. It's a nice way to begin to wrap up the weekend. A leisurely cup of coffee, game of Scrabble, the radio, and I'm happy as a pig.

I usually plan my drives or work schedules around PHC broadcasts. I like to have something to do with my hands while I'm laughing at the broadcast or listening to songs that inevitably feel familiar, even if I can't place the words.

My parents got me the greatest Christmas present eveer this year. Two tickets to see PHC at the Fitz. Without knowing it, they got me tickets to see the perfect show--a honky-tonk band and one of my favorite writers--who I actually heard for the first time on PHC. So, last night, Krista and I got dressed up and headed on down to the Fitz.

To begin, the Fitz is a gorgeous, gaudy old theater. It's opulent, over the top, and makes you smile when you see it. The only problem? One restroom and hundreds of ladies in stockings with full bladders. I'm grateful that we're not all still wearing garter belts.

Krista and I took our seats and mentally hugged Mother Prosen. First balcony front middle section=awesome!

I can't even begin to describe the show. I've been waiting to go for so long that I was afraid it was going to fall short of my expectations. It didn't. It absolutely surpassed all of them. I cried a little during Tishomingo Blues. After so many years of hearing it over the radio, I was finally there, seeing it live.

Not to mention that Garrison Keillor has been a little bit of a hero of mine for many years now.

Well, the night wound up with Krista and I meeting a friend at an art show opening. The art was awesome, but the opening was a little too wanna-be avant-garde for me. I dislike pretension in almost every form, but among twentysomething struggling artists it's so pronounced it makes me want to hurl. Life is not terrible! Yes, you're broke. So am I. So is everyone I know who isn't an investment banker. In the words of a poet I love: Laugh 'cause shit's funny! Cry 'cause it fucking sucks! It was such a contrast from the genuine enjoyment of life I experienced at the Fitz earlier.

Woah. Way off topic.

Well, to wrap up, I'm closing with a rough draft of a poem I wrote this morning.

"It’s Dark in the Fitzgerald Theater"

The man sitting next to Krista does not laugh at the jokes.
Or weep during the music. He is alone
and only smiles when he asks us to let him out of the row
during the intermission.
When the honky-tonk band takes the stage
I think of the grandmother I never knew,
but whose records I own.
How much she loved honky-tonk,
country, folk, bluegrass. She hosted her own
variety show on Friday nights.
A sister with a banjo, a fiddle, accordion, someone on the piano.
Leading the way with her voice and guitar,
through songs like Red River Valley and Keep on the Sunny Side.
Sitting in the dark Fitzgerald Theater, I imagine her
Four hundred miles away and thirty years ago.
I think she would have loved this show,
If she could have only paused
from wash, nine children, frying chicken,
to listen.

Yes, Father!

There isn't anyone anywhere who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady.
Or
Why Franny and Zooey changed my spiritual outlook

I first read Salinger's Franny and Zooey on a snowy afternoon in 2004. I was in the middle of one of my larger spiritual crisis. I had a theology professor who walked into class daily and told me that the Bible was entirely made up and that I couldn't put any trust in anything that it said. A month earlier I had seen poverty that I'll never be able to forget in Peru. I was stuck in an unjust world that wasn't going to get any better, and apparently, I couldn't put any trust in my fledgling faith. Life wasn't going to get any better. I stopped praying, stopped going to Church, stopped thinking about God, really. I couldn't understand what was going on--I was a freshly confirmed Catholic (not even a year, yet), a converted Christian, a crack theology student, a campus minister--I wasn't supposed to be going through this.

But there I was, going through it all the same. I recognize it now as the natural progression of faith, but at that particular moment, I was a train wreck.

Sitting on my bookshelf was an unassuming little white book. It was a gift from an English teacher who was more of a mentor than a teacher. It was my graduation gift and had a fantastic inscription in the front cover. I had always like The Catcher in the Rye, so I opened it and tried to lose myself in the story.

Lose myself I did. I was in love with Salinger's writing style and with Franny from the very first pages. I didn't realize that I would quickly be delving into the potentially mystical world.

Franny's conversation with Lane about the ridiculousness of the university hit home. After coming back from heart-breaking poverty, I wondered what I was thinking, spending piles and piles of money on an education. I was submitting poems to magazines and thought there was something horribly egotistical in submission. I was sick of the life I was living, sick of the people I knew, sick of everything.

Franny sets up the Jesus prayer extraordinarily well in the first chapter. I felt compelled to drop my life, find a knapsack, and wander through the world, reciting the prayer. One look outside, however, convinced me that the prayer could wait a little while longer while I finished the book.

Enter Zooey Glass, one of two fictional characters I have ever loved whole-heartedly and from the start. Whatever his original intention with Franny is, he illustrated some things that became incredibly important for me in my later spiritual/academic development.

1. The differences between religions are purely illusions. Different names for the same thing. What the Jesus prayer strives for--indeed, what all religions should or do strive for at their heart--is complete emptiness and submission to God, regardless of the name you call out. I can spend the rest of my life calling out Christ's name. You could spend the rest of your life calling out another name. In the end, we'll both get to the same place (Rahnerian concepts of redemption, anyone?). This thought became the catalyst for my interest in systematic theology and my love of Karl Rahner.

2. Apparently, somewhere during my theological training, I became constitutionally unable to understand a God who would dare trust his revelation to incompetent humans. Therein lied my struggle with the mighty theology professor who kept telling me that the Bible was a lie. (Which, by the bye, he doesn't actually believe. He just likes to force undergrads to think for themselves.) If God's message was so important, why the heck would he give it to a bunch of ignorant, early AD men? Why not wait a few thousand years and decide to redeem humanity then? While F&Z doesn't answer these questions, it made me pause to consider why I was struggling so much with my Bible. After I realized why, I could start thinking about how to address that problem and come to terms with it. I've started to resolve those questions for myself, but this is neither the time nor the place to address them. In short, I was pulling a Franny. I was reaching for something I wasn't ready to understand because I wasn't ready to understand God.

3. This might be the most important, but it builds on 1 & 2, particularly 1. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddamn secret yet? This is so elementary I can't even being to describe how embarrassed I am that I never stopped during my ordinary day to think about it. If we're all Christ, we're all carrying the kingdom around inside of us. Think about it for a moment. Deep inside all of this other ridiculousness part of me is a direct little bit of God. Part of you is a little bit of God. So what are we doing every day? Are we helping one another let that little part of God back out? Are we helping it to grow and flourish until we're really becoming more and more a part of God? Can I look past the fact that you're an atheist, and this person is a Methodist, and this person is Muslim, and see that they're all the same? They're all Seymour's Fat Lady and they all need one another's help to get to where they're going.

After I read the last lines of the book, I closed it and watched the snow fall outside for awhile longer. Then I crawled into my bunk, pulled the covers over my head and fell asleep.

Dumbass

Dumbassification

Or

Why Reality TV is Turning America into a Society of Nitwits

(an abstract)

Unbelievable amounts of distraction are a part of the American social order, you’ve heard me harp on this before. Then again, you may think I’m just rambling around a ball of confusion this month. Dumbassification is the mental meltdown of America through the non-stop selling and buying of culture by corporations turning everyone into consumers [. . .]
-Chuck D. October 18, 2003

Nearly five years after Chuck D. began railing against the increasing consumerism of the United States, fellow Public Enemy member has filmed is about to premier a third season of the hit reality show The Flava of Love. Ostensibly, the program is a "reality" dating show, in which Flava Flav looks for his true love from among twenty young women. Unfortunately for Flav, two seasons have not yet yielded true love. Perhaps the third time really is a charm.

The first season of The Flava of Love was so successful that it spawned a variety of similar programming by VH1, including a show for the two-season runner up, New York (I Love New York 1 & 2) and The Rock of Love with Bret Michaels 1 & 2 and A Shot at Love with Tila Tequlia 1 & 2. Each show has the same premise. A B-list celebrity looks for love from among twenty or so beautiful men or women (in the case of Tila, both) who share the same house with one another and the star of the show.

Give the formula for each of the show, one might expect ratings to drop after the first season. Instead, ratings continue to go up, and demographics continue to grow. Why? In this paper, I posit that there are three reasons for the continued success of these programs. The first is that they reinforce an explicitly consumerist lifestyle. The second and third are deeply intertwined, and it is that they reinforce racist and sexist stereotypes of men and women.

Notes

transposed from journal entry 11.17.2008

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
-C.S. Lewis

Oddly appropriate that the Lewis quote opens the new page. Appropriate and unintentional. Fought with J. yesterday. The usual hullabaloo about the existence of God. Part of my thinks that this is the most pointless and idiotic thing I've ever done and the other thinks that it's the most urgent and important. I can't decide which is right. Struggling a lot with my own faith recently. I'm disgusted with my Church and work isn't helping much--one of those troughs were I wonder why I'm a Christian.

I know what I want this Church to be, but it feels like all we're doing is walking backwards. I know that we're all imperfect, so this Church is going to be imperfect, but fighting with your family hurts so much. I have to admit that J. asks some very pointed questions which, while they don't really rattle my belief in God and the Incarnation, make me wonder why I'm choosing to stick with the Catholics

Points for later discussion:
1. The role of Revelation in "total subjectivism"
2. Why was Franny and Zooey so important to my spiritual development?
3. The tricky position you hold. Do you really agree with Rev. Honey's view that God doesn't touch the world? (this seems right intellectually) or with Lewis that we were told to pray for our daily bread and the healing of our sick?

Jesus Loves You

Got so lost that I went to church.
Sorry, God, but you made it worse.
-Mason Jennings "If You Need a Reason"

Maggie and I went to the big fucking mall today (BFM) so that I could get fitted for some new bras, buy jeans, etc.

Most of the day actually passed pleasantly. There was a lot of surprisingly real interactions with people there--something I didn't expect to discover at the BFM.

Well, anyway, I was feeling pretty good about humanity and slightly less materialistic than I expected. Mags and I strolled the mall holding hands because she walks too fast otherwise and I really just like to hold hands. No biggie. We were walking past a gentleman with a woman on his arm and he said to us: "I really want you two to know that Jesus loves you."

What the fuck?

The gentleman didn't even bother to break his stride. Maggie didn't catch his comment, but I was snapping. I was so angry I could barely see straight. Are you kidding? You're jumping to a lot of conclusions, one being that I give a damn what Jesus thinks about me, the second that the woman whose hand I'm holding is my lover, and that you, being Christian, are automatically allowed to pass judgement on the way I change my life. Really? Are you serious?

When I told Mags, she laughed and brushed it off, saying that she had heard far worse. I'm not having as easy of a time writing this thing off. When we came home, she tried to explain her view on the situation to me.

"Kel, the thing is, yeah, we weren't doing anything that should have offended him. But what he said wasn't necessarily about him being offensive. I've found that when people say things like that, they actually have some sort of a desire for you to receive salvation. In a weird way, they're worried about your soul and what they're doing, they're doing out of love."

I (intellectually at least) understand what she's trying to say. I don't agree with it, but I think I get it. Part of the reason I was (am) so upset is because that gentleman and his offhand comment about Christ's love is so typical of the stereotype I've been fighting against since the day I became a Christian. Hey! Guess what? Not all Christians hate people who are different! And not all of us take our Bibles literally only when it suit our purposes. Additionally, some of us realize that it's not our place to pass judgement on our fellow humans.

I wonder if the gentleman would have felt the need to tell an abusive husband, a compulsive gambler, a suicidal teenager, a drug addict, someone who was on a rough road faith-wise, that Jesus still loves them. What was so inherently sinful about two women holding hands that he felt compelled to tell us that we could still be saved?

It's one of those nights when I question why I'm a Christian. Who the hell am I trying to kid? This religion is so full of hypocrites and freakshows and people who don't even think it through that it doesn't seem like it's worth it anymore. I'm sick of treading lightly around people whose opinions I don't want to offend, of not being able to speak my mind all the time, of being "out of communion" with my Church because I don't pass judgement on every person who walks in front of me. I'm asking myself again: When is enough enough? When is it time to cut your losses and run?

There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddamn secret yet? And don't you know--listen to me, now--don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?. . .Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.
-Franny & Zooey

10:59 PM

For the first time in well over a week, I'm still voluntarily awake at 10:59. Normally I'm reading myself to sleep, or conked out, or worrying about a million things that won't matter in six months.

Tonight, instead of worrying, reading, or sleeping, I'm burning lavender oil, washing my sheets, and giving my room a pretty in depth (for me) cleaning. There's a strong potential for an overnight guest tomorrow, and in situations like this, I rarely like to let true, messy self show through. Clothes are folded and put in the dresser, the empty water glasses and tea mugs are banished, the bed is sprayed with linen spray and then made. Anything potentially damning is stuffed away in a closet.

As always, I try to see my room through a new-comers eyes. Scratched, older furniture, covered with a green patchwork quilt and a bright red Naxi shawl. An old, small, jammed book case that looks like it's about the topple. Not a single photo in sight. On the walls--a piece of posterboard with Manifesto; The Mad Farmer Liberation Front copied onto it. A line from Franny and Zooey. A Date to Save poster. A Vagina Monologues poster. Above the door, a small blue sign that read Shalom in biblical Hebrew. A few functional, nice potter pieces. A scary librarian sweater. A laptop. A small stereo and stack of CDs. A wool grouser hat. Boxes of tea. The underlying smell of lavender and chamomile.

I wonder what I want this to say about me. I clean because I want to look like I'm capable of keeping my life organized and together. I burn oil because it helps me sleep. I have a too-small, toppling bookshelf because I'm cheap and plan on moving, so a large expensive one doesn't seem like a good use of money and space. I have Wendell Berry & J.D. Salinger on my walls because I want to write like them. I don't have photos on my walls because words mean more to me than pictures do.

I wonder what it actually says about me.

I don't do interpersonal relationships. I spend too much time alone with my books. I'm overly idealistic. I'm conflicted. I want too much. I don't want enough. I'm disorganized. I'm creative. I'm not creative. I'm snooty. I'm high maintenance.

Unfortunately, overnight callers generally aren't into pyscho-analyzing you based on your room decor (0r lack thereof).

Damn. So much for a moment of self-actualization. I would have been better off sleeping.