Longing

I close my eyes, and my head begins to nod.  I sigh deeply.  My belly expands; my chest and shoulders rise.  Then I exhale, and my frame collapses once more, slouching a little further forward.  I posses a dim awareness of the things about me – the rather uncomfortable, hard chair with no arm rests; the collar of the jacket I have removed and hung on the back of that chair; the shoes I have kicked off, on top of which my bare feet now rest.  My hands are folded in my lap.  My back was straight only moments ago.  My feet are shoulder width apart, my knees bent at perfect ninety degree angles.  Only my head betrays me, and though my shoulders and entire torso are soon to follow it, for now my entire body except my head is held in an attitude of respectful attention.  I meant to maintain that attitude when I walked into class.  But alas, I am mortal, and this battle has proven too great for me.

            Sleep is an entirely inconvenient necessity for the person who can never seem to get enough of it.  I sometimes wonder in my more imaginative moments if it would not be preferable to stay awake for two weeks straight, suffer permanent brain damage, and thereby find a way to excuse myself from the demands of education and productive citizenship than to catch an hour here, three hours there, and the occasional blessed six hours of uninterrupted sleep.  I realize these contemplations are not the noblest ones ever to settle in my mind.  But no matter.  Even if my brain in its laziness concluded that insanity would be preferable to the awareness of perpetual exhaustion (which it could not since I am terribly afraid of losing control of my own thoughts), still my body would not allow me to get no sleep rather than too little.  If I were capable of staying awake for more than forty-eight hours, I would certainly never allow myself to suffer the indignity of falling asleep in class.  I still recall the terror of waking up in my eight a.m. to find my professor looking directly at me.  It took me a moment to figure out where I was, and I never did determine exactly how long I had been out.

            In a life where sleep is so rare and precious and always leaves me longing for more, it seems a cruel trick of my mind that it should ever be troubled with nightmares.  Yet it is sometimes.  Within the past few nights, for instance, I have dreamt that I and everyone I love most in the world were being chased by some sort of government agents in business suits.  These men had faces, but while the rest of the dream was sharp and crisp, those faces were vague and indistinct.  I became separated from all the people I was trying to protect and finally had to face the terrible, inhuman men alone, knowing that I could not fight them and that if I ran they would catch not only me but my dear ones who had scattered throughout the maze-like building, which seemed incongruously to be an opera house.  So I did the only brave thing I could do and stood there talking to them, stalling, waiting for a savior who did not come.  All the while, they said little and smiled the terrible smiles of evil people who know they have won.  I woke unsure of where I was and began hunting in my pillowcase for my cell phone, which I use as an alarm.  I finally found it open on the bed beside me.  I had evidently turned off the alarm in my sleep and slept an hour longer than I had meant to, so deep was I in the dreadful drama that was unfolding in my mind.  I lay there a few moments longer, wanting...what did I want?  My heart was still pounding in desperation, and I was covered in cold sweat.  Yet the sensation at the forefront of my mind was not that of fear but that of longing.

            The next night I dreamt that familiar dream in which the dreamer finds herself naked in public, all the more terrible because no one else seems to care that a human body has been completely uncovered.  It is frightening and perhaps shameful to bare oneself, but to find oneself bare and to be ignored, insignificant – that is the shared nightmare of human experience.  We long and dread to reveal what we are, whether by the substance of the body or of the soul.  We long for someone who could understand it – the essence, more than mere personality – and we attempt to reveal ourselves before no one else.  But how many times have men and women bared themselves, body and soul, before an alleged soul mate only to be met with an evident lack of comprehension?  How many times have men and women sat confounded by the complexities of a character they thought they had comprehended? 

            As I become an adult, I reluctantly begin to acknowledge that true intimacy may not be possible among beings like ourselves.  It would take a great deal more growth and many more years to achieve true intimacy with even one other person.  Yet still we seek it.  Still we need it.  Still many of us would die for it if we really thought we had found it.  But how can we find it?  So many of us, failing even to find ourselves seek to find others while pleading with them to find us.  Vanity.  It is impossible.  We cannot know, and so we trust.  In the best cases involving the most selfless people, trust is the next best thing to intimacy, but it only replaces one longing with another – the longing to know and be known with the longing to find that on the relatively small amount of intelligence we have gathered about another human being we have been able to build a correct assessment of his character.

***

            We go to bed at night beset by longings – to have someone by us, to undo some mistake, to forget the day we have just come from, to leap into the next day in which we know we will have too much to do again, to break the endless monotony of similar days, to sleep, perchance to dream.  All these longings and more play in our minds as we fall asleep, but we generally wake with only one.  More.  Even if we wake from nightmares, as adults, many of us would rather go back to sleep and finish the dream than to escape at the cost of starting a real day.  We would rather be eaten by imaginary monsters than slowly consumed by our fellow man.  But we wake anyway, and we rub the longing out of our eyes and try to ignore it for the rest of the day.  Get to work.  That should cure it.

            By evening we are once more haunted by at least half-a-dozen longings.  By morning we have once more distilled them into one.  More sleep.  But that isn’t all.  Sleep isn’t enough in itself, whether we get three hours or nine.  We want even more than sleep.  We want rest that is more than rest.  We want peace that is more than peace.  We want shalom.  We want to be enveloped in a complete wellness and befriended by Someone much greater than ourselves – One who comprehends us enough to be intimate.  We want to be whole.  We long to be the selves we thought we were when we were children.  We long to be mythic heroes, epic warriors or breathtaking beauties or both.  We long for a land and a people big enough to contain all we thought we could be.

            Few of us ever allow such thoughts to surface.  We were taught long ago that they were dangerous.  We fear becoming mad little Don Quixotes, tilting at windmills while the world laughs, spending our lives with nothing to show for it.  If we are heroes, we feel that our Author has accidently dropped us into the dullest novel of manners the world has ever read instead of the ancient epic which should have been our destiny. 

            So we square our shoulders and get to work.  When we hurt, we keep busy.  When we are confused, we keep busy.  When someone dies, we keep busy.  When we think ourselves in love, we keep too busy to question the validity of the relationship.  If we ignore all our problems, perhaps they’ll go away.  We cannot fight them.  The world we inhabit won’t allow for that.  Hang up the sword and the shield.  Hang up the horn.  For that matter, hang up the brush and palette.  Hang up the easel.  Hang up the violin.  Reach for the calculator.  Its answers are more definite.  But hang up any encroaching thoughts about the beautiful universal order that allows for such a thing as mathematics.  Hang it all and lighten up and convince yourself to be happy.

***

            Happiness is a chocolate-covered strawberry.  I sought to prove this to my creative writing classmates last year by bringing them two plates full of the small, juicy, red gems covered in silky chocolate much darker than the brown in my eyes.  The dark chocolate glaze was my own recipe, and it turned out perfect, splendid, scrumptious, and all those other words the culinary set have been known to use, if I do say so myself (which I unapologetically do).  I marched into the room triumphantly, carrying a green plastic dinner plate – the best my dorm room could offer – in each hand.  On each plate was a square of wax paper.  And on each square of paper were four rows of five glistening confections each.  I set one on the front table and one on the back and seated myself on the front row with a half smile as my classmates began to exclaim excitedly.

            When the plate was passed to me, I picked up one of my delicious creations with three fingers and raised it slowly to my lips.  I inhaled the smooth, strong, slightly bitter scent of chocolate and the sweet tang of strawberry at the same time, taking note of one sensation after the other.  I opened my mouth, fit it gently around a third of the berry, and closed my teeth.  The first thing I tasted was the juice, tart and invigorating.  At the same moment, I felt the soft, fragile surface of the chocolate shell give way, cracking at first and then beginning to melt against my tongue.  Before the flavor of the juice could turn to the mild, sweet aftertaste of strawberry, the rich, earthy, bittersweet chocolate interposed itself.  Neither flavor erased the other, and the full effect could only be achieved through their harmony.

            The flavors left images in my mind.  With the first crisp tartness of strawberry, I imagined myself playing in a golden, late-summer field with a group of laughing children.  A cabin waited at the corner of the field.  As the chocolate began to play with my senses, I curled up on a couch inside that cabin.  The children were all sleeping in other rooms.  A fire crackled on the hearth.  A strong arm passed around my shoulders, and as I leaned against the warm chest of the man to whom it was attached, I could almost hear his heartbeat.  I smiled.

            Within seconds, the whole vision began to sink once more into the recesses of my memory.  The man got up to stoke the embers, and I woke up before he could sit back down.  The aftertaste of strawberry and chocolate danced away with my senses until only a little lingering glow remained to remind my tongue what it had just experienced.  And all of it took seconds.

            I wanted to hold on to the fleeting, pleasure-inspired daydreams.  I wanted to go back and forget about class and just dream.  I reached for another strawberry.  And another.

            I don’t remember laughing or weeping in the days that followed this experience.  But I do know that a few hours later, perhaps even a few minutes later, I would not have been able to describe myself as distinctly happy.  Content, perhaps, but not really happy.  The moment had passed.  I had smiled at my flavor-induced dreams.  Then they left.  That was all there was to those moments, but I couldn’t accept that it was that simple.

            There were a handful of strawberries left after class, and I took them back to my room.  Over the next few days, I kept nibbling them, savoring them, recapturing that moment of transcendent bliss.  But each time it grew weaker.  I could not keep approaching happiness in the same way day after day; my senses became dull to the complexities of the many layers.  I began to ask myself, “Why does happiness treat us so indifferently when we seek her so earnestly?”

            But what if all I wanted wasn’t in the strawberries at all?  After all, it was the dreams I longed to recapture.  But I wanted something beyond even them.  I wanted to be Home.  My moment of happiness had given me a window, and that was what I had really been trying to find again.

***

            I have often wished for all the trouble it causes that I could abolish longing.  But I have never wished so in earnest.  I can recall a handful of moments when I reached my hands up and found something above them.  I have let my fingers brush the floor of heaven from time to time.  I still remember joy that reached beyond pleasure.  I still remember real sleep, the sleep of my childhood.  I slept soundly back before I knew so much.  I thought back then that my parents were perfect, that if I was a good girl life would work out fine, that I would one day have a forest of my own and a field full of horses and seven children and that they would all love me, that everyone I knew would love me because I was a good child and I was determined to get better. 

            Since then, I have changed my mind about a lot of things.  But I still reach for sleep and joy and love; I still long for shalom.  One day, I still believe, I will find it.  All the longing will be worth it if I find where it leads. 

            Perhaps one day my life will be made all beautiful like the half-remembered dream where I danced on a silver beach with crystal waves in the moonlight.  I saw a troop of children coming down the beach toward me, and before I knew it they were all around me, and I laughed for joy to find myself part of their dance rather than merely my own.  And I was one of them; I was a child.  We left no footprints.  A beautiful music floated on the wind, and there were words in it which I remembered for a moment when I woke.  I wept hard that evening when I tried in vain to write them down.  As we all danced together for that moment, though, the sun began to rise over the ocean, but it was not Sol.  It had a face, and that face was the face of a golden lion.  I wondered, but I was not afraid.  Suddenly, he was on the beach, and I could feel his breath.  That was shalom.  There in that place for those few moments, I remember feeling more awake than I have ever felt while my mortal eyes were open.

***

            Longing does not lead us to chocolate-covered strawberries.  It does not lead to sleep.  It doesn’t even lead to human intimacy.  We carry on at a mad pace trying to fill the hole with something, anything.  We scramble to grab success, or we accept defeat and turn to drugs, alcohol, and a multitude of other addictions.  We never let ourselves be haunted long enough to find out Who is haunting us.  In time, most of us give up and conclude that longing leads to nothing.  We kill it, and in doing so we kill our true selves.  We curse the things for which we think we long.  And then we curse the longing.

            Happiness is not cruel in withdrawing and leaving longing behind it.  Earthly blessings are still good things.  They let us look out on a place where life is as close as we can conceive of to the way it should be – perhaps closer than we could imagine left to ourselves.  Happiness is only a messenger from worlds where a still, small voice whispers, “Seek, and you shall find.”  It withdraws once that message has been delivered, yet so often we seek the wrong thing.  We seek the messenger.  We pursue every conceivable expression of happiness, convinced that each is different and may hold a new key.  They do not.

            What would we find if, instead of pursuing happiness in circles, we sought the worlds from which the messenger called Happiness hails?  Eye has not seen.  Ear has not heard.  But we hear whispers.  Perhaps one day I will learn to follow those whispers to their origin instead of giving up halfway.  The world is filled, after all, with chocolate-covered strawberries and pretty dreams – little reminders of glory – but they are not enough.  We can stuff ourselves to the brim with good flavors, we can sleep all day, but it will never be enough.  It is not meant to be.

***

            The rain caught me yesterday and I was drenched within minutes.  I turned my face up to the sky and laughed and danced for joy, and it was good.  Silver light flooded the world through the clouds, and it was good.  Golden leaves blew around on the sidewalk and in the air, and it was good.  It’s all good.  And we ourselves are part of it.  But we too are not enough as we are.  We must grow big enough to fill ourselves with bigger things.

            I have not found where longing leads yet.  But next time I eat a chocolate-covered strawberry, I will not eat another one.  Next time my alarm goes off, I will get up.  I will let the longing fill my heart and burn in me.  I will follow it until I reach the One who sent it.

Time

Speaking of time, I believe it's time I started writing again.  I'm going to try to start posting one of my creative nonfiction pieces each month.  I hope you enjoy them.  But more than that, I hope they inspire you to think more deeply on their respective topics.  As always, feedback is greatly appreciated.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On Time

In Tennessee, there are a few weeks out of every year in which the seasons do battle. Lately, I have been enjoying the spectacle these wars present from the third floor of the student center at a small, private college. Wherever the eye turns, the campus is surrounded by hills that are almost mountains. These tree-clad little mountains have been gently, almost imperceptibly touched with gold and orange over the past few weeks. They grow a little brighter and more autumn-like each day, yet summer refuses to relent. She continually strikes back with the ferocity of her heat. Autumn is a stealthy warrior, though. She sneaks quickly and quietly past summer’s defenses, noticed only by a few, and I feel privileged to be in her secret.

I love the subtleties of this exchange. I love the details, the little signs. Most of them go unnoticed, even by me, until the changes are complete. I do not see the first soft, Midas kisses of autumn on every leaf. If I watch very closely, I might observe it on a few. Soon, I know, I shall be living in a shining, golden world of the perfect climate, and I shall not remember clearly how I got there. An invigorating chill shall touch me in the morning, turning by midday into that temperature on which we do not comment because it is too right, too much in harmony with our impressions of how the world should be, to catch our attention. But the battle is over so quickly, and autumn always triumphs, though I do not know how. Every time I blink, I miss something.

These days are always my idea of paradise. I need no waving palms. Give me golden and crimson leaves dancing now riotously, now tenderly with the wind. Give me an unscathed, crystal clear blue sky. Give me mists in the morning. Give me stars.

And oh, what stars! They are seldom seen so brilliantly in Tennessee as at this time of year. All summer, humidity, that great oppressor, casts its shroud over them, and we look down, not up, at the ends of the sluggish, never-ending days. We Southerners can usually see the constellations only dimly, as through a hazed glass. But when cooler temperatures come and the air can hold less moisture, they come out. They shine thus all winter, but the night grows cold. We cease to watch them once the activity demands that we stand shivering. We give up our time with them – those silent, haunting, freezing nights – for the comfort of lesser fires.

It is raining today, and I expect it will continue for several days. Afterward, we will have that golden time. The skies will unveil the sun, but the air will be cooler. We will have two weeks or maybe three to drink it in. Groups of students from the college will invade Pocket – a nearby wilderness area with a river and a valley and a bluff – and hike as much as they can. Many will not think of how little time they have to do so. They will go because these days are perfect, but they will not go as much as they would if they only remembered that these days are numbered.

But I will remember. I will take my friends by the hands and bid them come with me. We will go together to enjoy these precious, living days. I will not just walk in the golden wilderness. I will climb the waterfalls and swim in the river and touch the warm bark of the trees and soak up the warmth of the rocks and the ground through bare feet while warmth can still be found. It will not be long.

I was there yesterday. We climbed all the way to the bluff called Buzzard’s Peak and looked out over the world, three friends and I. The namesake of those cliffs circled above us in great numbers. There were so many of them – dull-winged scavengers, the harbingers of death – and one red-tailed hawk. It was strange to watch that beautiful hawk sailing along among so many of its hideous kin. While the buzzards croaked, “Memento mori!” the hawk seemed to shriek, “Memento vivere!”

I looked out and threw my hands wide and felt the wind touch every invisible hair on my arms. I felt the warmth of the sun even through the clouds. The beauty of the place and the season was untarnished. The buzzards were an afterthought and easy enough to ignore. It was the rest of the place I had come for, and the rest remained. I knew it would pass. It would all pass at the last day. The mountains would be cast into the sea. But they lived now, and they sang, and the song would echo on forever. Would mine?

***

When I was eleven, Aunt Lisa, my daddy's sister, contracted leukemia. When I was twelve, she died.

Whenever we went to visit her in Kentucky, she always scooped me up in the warmest, plumpest hug imaginable. Sometimes it used to irritate me because I couldn’t catch my breath. But not after she got sick.

We went to visit her more often in that year than in the rest of my years combined, and when she hugged me, I hugged back with all the strength my little arms could muster. At first she seemed alright. Her hair was a little thinner. That was all. The next time she wore a scarf around her head. Her face was thinner. She had lost a lot of weight all over, and she was a bit jaundiced. Midas had kissed her like the leaves. But she was so beautiful. She got tired easily, but she still smiled. She still laughed, musically and often.

The next time we visited, she was gone. She was there, the doctors told us. But Lisa was not there. Her spirit was struggling toward heaven, and only one little corner of her mind remained. Yet they had told me she was still alive – that this was probably the last time I would get to see her alive. I was twelve, so I imagined miracles. I prayed hard. And I believed. I imagined the hug. It never came.

My mum and I stood at the threshold of the hospital room. She had already been in. She placed a hand on my shoulder as she turned the knob and whispered, “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” I didn’t understand. I was appalled. How could I not want to? I was there either to say goodbye to my aunt or to watch God miraculously heal her. She was only forty. There was still time.

We stepped into the room. Aunt Sue was faithfully watching by Lisa’s bedside. She thought Lisa was there with her, and maybe she was in a way. But she was not in her body. Not fully. I walked up to the bed and stood frozen. I was too late, and I knew it. I would never hear her laugh again. She would never hug me as only she could do again. It was too late. There was no time.

Why had I wasted the summer of her life not loving her enough? Why did I only hug back once I read rumors of autumn in her face? Why do we forget to live until it is time for someone to die?

I didn’t cry in the room because part of me and all of Aunt Sue was still fighting to believe she could come back. I knew she could. Christ had raised Lazarus. He could raise my aunt. But I knew just as surely that He wouldn’t. Not this time.

As soon as we stepped outside, I broke down. Mum just held my hand for a few moments before saying, “Are you alright?” I nodded and wiped my eyes. I was fine. But my aunt was leaving, and I knew nothing of the place where she was going. The reality passed unspoken between us. We had just seen death living in my aunt’s body.

***

Aunt Lisa had set aside some things to give me. There was an amethyst ring, a turquoise necklace with two hearts on the pendant, and a rust-colored leaf brooch made of some kind of resin. The rest of her was somewhere else – somewhere I could not reach.

Again and again, every year, the leaves turn to rust like that brooch. The leaves are all the fading years leave us. A few rusty leaves floated down from the trees on the hike to Buzzard’s Peak, though many were still green.

We rushed on our way up, and we stopped and sunned ourselves when we got there. I remember the bare peak more clearly than the journey there. We didn’t pay as much attention getting there. But the journey begged to be our destination, and my heart felt the tug of the river’s song and the smell of the hemlock stands we passed through as much as it felt the sun on the rocks at the bluff.

We speak of heaven as the place where God reigns. But does He not reign here too? Does He not bring our years round and round and make everything speak to remind us? Does He remind us only that we are dying? Is all this life only a journey to heaven? And if it is, is it less important for that? Should we not still remember that our every brief motion is burdened with the weight of eternity? This is the battle-field. It is where things are determined. It is where we live, and there are beauties and glories and fragments of heaven here too.

The buzzards still circle the peak. I can see it, bare and golden in the sun, through the windows of the student center’s café on any clear day. I can hear their taunting cries: “Memento mori! Memento mori! You’re dying, you’re dying, you’re dying! You are nothing more than food for us. Your time is passing. It will soon be gone. To dust you will return.” But the hawk is somewhere up there too, singing his harsh, brave, joyous song. “Memento vivere! You’re living! You’re living! You’re living! You are young. Number your days. Count each one and ask if it was full enough of life. Be breathless. Be passionate. Love much. Live well. Redeem the time.”

Potential

What potential is inherent in the state of being human? One voice urges us to live as if there were nothing in our way, while another cautions us to consider our limits. Throwing ourselves outside those limits is dangerous. It risks us - our comfort, our sanity, the futures we plan for ourselves, and sometimes our very lives. But what if we had no limits? Of course, experience will quickly teach us that we do, so the question is merely theoretical. Here's a better one: What if we acknowledged our limits, took a deep breath, and stepped right over them?

Why would we do that, though? Surely there is no reason to risk everything unless we are fully convinced that whatever we might discover in that place beyond ourselves would be worth the everything we were risking. For that kind of conviction we cannot look to our own hearts. We cannot even look to others. We must look higher. Only in reaching for the heavens can we find the place where our abilities end and Something beyond them must intervene, or we are lost. In that place we are forced to cry for help. Unless we are confident that we will be answered and not only answered but aided, we are not ready to go there. But we're never ready. That's the point. We cannot have full confidence that everything will go in any way we could hope or imagine because the act of stepping beyond our abilities, beyond the facts of our acknowledged failures and incompetencies, requires us to experience what we cannot experience until we surrender our confidence to Something more trustworthy than ourselves.

I'd like to try something with you. Think of something you know you can't do. It doesn't have to be what you consider grand or heroic. Just anything: running more than a mile, singing in front of others, looking over the edge of a cliff, water skiing. You have to be firmly convinced that you can't do it. No cheating, especially at this point.

Once you've chosen an impossible feat, decide why it's impossible. Are you out of shape? Are you tone deaf? Afraid of heights? Afraid you'll drown? Whatever it is that makes the feat impossible, acknowledge it.

Now do it. You know you can't. But pretend that you and someone you love are both going to die if it isn't done. I'm serious. This isn't just for fun. You HAVE to do this! It's all up to you, but...you'll fail. So where do you turn?

Try this: right before you begin the impossible-feat-that-must-be-done, pray. Then don't try to do it yourself. Remind yourself again and again that there is Something beyond you. You can't do this. He can. Believe it.


If you don't really believe, there's no way this is going to work. You have to step past the point where you have any consolation or confidence. Just try it.

Whether or not the feat is successful, please share your thoughts or any lessons you learned. Thank you.

Courage

What is courage? It cannot be merely the opposite of fear. I have experienced a lack of fear for most of my life, and it has come to me lately that I have felt like a fearless person only because I had every opportunity to be unafraid. I had a comfortable, relatively stable home with two parents who never once threatened divorce in my presence. I had their love and fairly consistent discipline. I had a mother who seldom demonstrated fear, or at least anything I could recognize as fear. In other words, I was the daughter of a strong woman, and it came naturally to be strong. I had brothers with whom to share adventures. My talents and strengths were developed, and I rarely stepped outside them beyond an occasional foray into mathematics, which was only a challenge because it wasn't my favorite subject. I attempted things I thought were difficult, but truth be told, life was so easy. I think I often pretended to be stretching toward the limits of my abilities, but it was false humility, which is the most cowardly form of pride. My home and family were solid; my whole life seemed a constant. I felt brave. I felt strong because I had never been broken.

Now, as I look ahead to the years of my adulthood, I am drawn almost irresistibly toward adventures and challenges, the like of which I have not yet encountered. In contemplating the course of my life, I have finally been forced to ask the question, "Am I able?" So is it courage to choose a course in which I may answer, "Yes," and then to excel in that course? Or is it courage to choose what is beyond me and answer instead, "No, but I trust I will be made able when the time comes"?

I have not struggled with my own smallness or even recognized it so much at any other point in my life. Will I choose a life my size? Anyone who knows me knows the answer: Of course not! But what will become of me when I choose the life I know I must choose sooner or later? Will I be supported, or will the ground fall out from under me? Will I find courage, or will I find myself huddled in a corner weeping and completely overcome in the face of battle?

I don't know the answer to any of these questions. I think courage comes when we decide we don't have to know. I'm not talking of recklessness - of pursuing a path for which we are ill-equipped when we are meant to pursue a different one. Rather, I think courage demands that we lay aside our need to know what comes next and to know that we can handle it. Perhaps courage is less in our strength and more in admitting our weakness and agreeing to do what cannot be done. Perhaps courage is not finding the power within ourselves, as so much of our culture would have us believe, and more in trusting the Power that is beyond us and above everything.

I welcome your thoughts.

Rest

Monday:  You worked on a PowerPoint presentation for your journalism class until one o'clock, a.m. Get up at seven o'clock, a.m. Make yourself presentable by seven forty-five. Rush to the cafeteria to grab breakfast and take it with you to journalism by eight o'clock. Take good notes between bites of bagel and sips of coffee. Class at nine. Class at ten. Class at eleven. Lunch at twelve. Print out Spanish homework at half past twelve and get to class at one. Homework until two fifty. Writing Center at three. Homework until half past six. Dinner until seven. Homework until ten or eleven. Bedtime.

Tuesday:  Up at eight, a.m. Writing Center staff meeting at nine. No breakfast. Class at half past nine. Early lunch/meeting with professor at eleven. Homework. WC at two. Homework. Dinner at 5:30. Class at 6:30. Homework until 9:30. Stay up with friend until 11:00 because you've both had too much caffeine just in order to stay awake. Bed.

Wednesday:  7:00 a.m. - up! (You decline the day's invitation by hitting snooze.) 7:15- UP! (OK, OK!) ready by 7:50. run! snatch b'fast. run! 8:00 - class. 9:00 - class. 10:00 - class. 11:00 - class. 12:00 - yb interview over lunch. 1:00 - class. 2:00 - gather books and computer for hw...change earrings (You grabbed the first ones you saw this morning with no thought to whether they actually added anything to your appearance.) ...pass mirror... (You are wearing two different earrings, by the way.) sigh deeply...head to student center for hw...open computer...sigh...(In the student center, two of your fellow students have fallen asleep, with half-a-dozen more quickly following. Only one appears lucid and productive, and he isn't you.) sigh...pray...

This has been my week so far, and it's fairly typical. Many of those which follow will be much busier. And I have it terribly easy compared to a good number of my acquaintances. I'm letting you know all this, dear reader, not to ask pity for either myself or my friends. I simply wish to question the status quo.

I feel this is a good time to insert a clarification which my initial post may not have made. Ancora Imparo is a blog of questions, not of answers. The very title means "I am still learning." (I confess I lifted it from Michelangelo.) I often struggle with pride, and this is part of my effort to humble myself. I may occasionally offer an opinion, but I don't want you to take anything I say as though I meant to be telling you definitive truth. I want to hear your opinions and derive from them whatever wisdom you have to offer. The idea is to exchange ideas and consider them one-by-one. So decide for yourself which of my musings can help you seek answers, which provide an opportunity for you to help others find answers, and which speak to your soul and situation.

That said, let us continue. My topic is rest because I am learning its value with every passing day.  My question is this: How do we find peace while bettering ourselves and contributing to the world?

Here at college, I feel I am accomplishing only one of these goals: bettering myself. It is the most self-focused of the three. I don't say "selfish" because I think my education will prepare me to better serve the world. However, there is no point in focusing on personal growth unless we intend to one day use it for other persons.

We so seldom reach outside ourselves. These days, it seems that all my conversations are either all business or mere polite exchanges. We pass friends in the halls and say, "Hey! How are you?" to which they almost inevitably reply, "Doing good, thanks," whether they are or not because neither conversational participant has time for the truth. This should not be.

There is certainly something to be said for the concept of the Sabbath - one day of the week dedicated to resting and reorganizing our thoughts, plans, and priorities. I find that weeks in which I dedicate one day as a Sabbath tend to go much more smoothly. The more my life fills up, the more I become dependent on this day for my own sanity. But the goal of the Sabbath is to repair our individual relationships with God and rethink our own lives. So where does that leave community and fellowship?  How do we find time to cultivate meaningful relationships with one another?

I have no answer, nor even an approach to one for the questions I have posed, so I leave you with the challenge of helping me find one. Please give me and your fellow readers any thoughts you have on this post, and perhaps we can arrive at some sort of conclusion together.

Thank you for reading. :)

Apology

To those who are wondering if I am planning to post again or answer the comment on my last post, please forgive my temporary negligence.  I greatly appreciate those who have followed or commented so far, and I don't intend to leave you hanging much longer.  I've been busy preparing for the school year.  Please check back in about a week.  Thank you!

Valkyrie

I recently watched the movie Valkyrie and ended it in silent tears.  For those of you who haven't seen the film, it deals with World War II Germany and some of the heroes who tried to put an end to Hitler's horrific government.  The men and women who orchestrated this assassination attempt were German.  They loved their country and died defending it.  But they died, and Hitler lived on after them.

A question lingered in my mind as the credits rolled.  Was it worth it?  Most would say these heroes were unsuccessful.  Yes, they gave their lives for a cause they believed in, but they failed to remove Hitler from power.  The enemy of Germany and the world triumphed over them.  It wasn't right.  It wasn't fair.  Was it worth their lives?  I believe it was.



One of my favorite quotes from the movie was spoken by Major-General Henning von Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh) as he tried to persuade Colonel Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) to join what might have become a revolution.  He said, "We have to show the world that not all of us are like him.  Otherwise, this will always be Hitler's Germany."  I don't know how true to history the film is or if Tresckow ever spoke those words.  However, his cinematic representation certainly made a point.

Did these German revolutionaries succeed, then?  They did.  They did because today I am inspired by their courage.  They succeeded because true heroes never die, even if they are not as well-remembered as they deserve, and they succeeded because the country they loved is doubtless stronger and freer today than it would have been without them.  And the truth I take away from their tale is that if we live well enough that we inspire others to live similarly, it matters not whether we succeed or fail in our own plans; we have won victory for good.  Hitler's triumph, like any triumph of evil, was not permanent.

I'd appreciate your thoughts and opinions on this.  Do you see things the way I do, or do you disagree?  Were the heroes of Operation Valkyrie successful?  Was it worth their lives?  Help me think about this topic from fresh angles.  Thank you!