Shades of Summer

I've yet to start the habit of making new year's resolutions. January doesn't seem like the time to get anything done since its the middle of the school year. The summer, however, become prime time quickly. Thus it is my favorite time to set ideals of accomplishments which are probably too high. Here's my first thoughts on a good list for this summer: -Read, of course, but particularly Flannery O'Connor. I'm beginning with a biography/commentary on her and plan to continue with her collected stories and her novel "Wise Blood". I also hope to tackle "Mystery and Manners", which is a collection of her writings on the creative process. -Eugene Peterson's "The Jesus Way" is what I hope to get into as far as theological reading goes. I've fallen off the path a bit too much in not making such reading a discipline and hope to find my way again. -British history, I've discovered, can be fascinating when entered rightly. Simon Schama is a scholar who introduced me to that fact this past semester. I hope to watch some history documentaries done by him this summer through netflicks. -The summer olympics are wonderful. I hope to find somewhere to watch them a bit, especially gymnastics. -I hope to obtain a bread machine for not too much money and start making my own bread. I also hope to build up a bit more experience with things like the crock pot and the casserole dish as well as learning something about grilling. I want to finish reading a book I started about enjoying cooking, which I do already. More plans are in the making. For now, those are enough of a start for it to feel like summer.

I'm going to Austin, Texas this week for this conference. Currently I'm very excited about it, and am planning to update more later. Some things are worth missing a week of school for.

The Colors of Spring
The flowers have recently told
Spring’s new (or else winter is old),
But just to be clear
The pollen’s now here:
Midas’s touched, and everything’s gold.

The Sting
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.” (Psalm 19:14)
There’s certain salvation in wit—
Not much, now, I’ll have to admit.
Sarcasm’s poor fare,
Though sweet to prepare,
And bankrupts as joy’s counterfeit.

On Not Being Right

I ate lunch on campus today with a couple of students who had just come from a constitutional law class--both being political science majors. In conversing over eating we got onto the topic of public education in America. As they were talking about various views on the matter I realized how different our viewpoints were because of our experiences. In some respects I felt at times that we were in worlds that almost didn't even overlap. I suspect that is the result of all of us needing to learn or experience a lot more of our fields in order to connect that kind of understanding. In any respect, I realized then that the concerns of someone looking at education through the lens of law and government are completely different than those of someone looking at it through the lens of classroom management and lesson plans. Of course I think my view as a teacher is more accurate, but most big ideas are probably multifaceted enough to be seen from different points of view. That could be considered as an attack on ultimate truth, but I think its more of an attack on any one persons perspective being the whole of ultimate truth. The consequence of that being that we, as humans, need each other to see true things that we wouldn't on our own. I find a very similar experience to all of this in my art theory class, where I find myself as a very small minority of non-artists. At this point I will digress quickly, as the time I've spent studying the philosophy that has probably already charted this idea is small and I won't venture further in the sort of non-adaptive, one-sided communication a post provides. To make an effort at conciseness, I'm beginning to understand more of what it means to not be right about everything, and as that offers a possible gain of communication it might not be as bad as it's made out to be. As this is my first attempt to verbally construct most of these thoughts, I'm not sure how that went, but I hope to mature them over the course of experience.

A question of community

The other night I had a dream that one of my friends at Belhaven turned a paper in for a class a week early. The rest of the class was banking on the prof forgetting that it was due, and there went all our hopes. I don't have vivid dreams very frequently, mostly I don't remember anything I dreamt. This one stuck around long enough that I began to wonder if it might have actually happened. I've now confirmed that it didn't. I feel like that's probably best.

I like living in a neighborhood. I don't interact much with my neighbors for the most part--which is fine--but there're still traces of an element of something we have in common for living on the same block. In a dorm everyone was basically the same age and we were all at the same place in life (by this I mean we were all college students at Belhaven). A neighborhood has a different sort of community because neither of these things are likely to be the same, which makes our common location seem more significant in some ways. In a parish church system, the kind that I don't think exists anymore, we would mostly all go to the same church if we went to church. We'd have the opportunity to be either gratingly annoying or immediately loving to each other, and chances are we would manage to pull of both almost concurrently. We would see both the more human side of each other in passing during day to day life, and we would need to be reminded often that these very ordinary people--ourself included--are just the kind of people that Jesus came to die for, and for some reason I think it would almost be strange, in a real context, to realize that. I'm sure I would like that model. I wonder how the good elements of something like that could be incorporated into the way things actually are more. For now I leave all my thoughts on the matter there, however, at the occasional relapse into wondering.

Getting around to the housework

A pile of proverbial dishes are stacked up in a sink. Some laundry and halfway sorted mail is nearby. It is the never ending realization of how much information, knowledge, and wisdom I have yet to process, seek out, and give attention to. My list of books to read and movies to watch is always growing, and I want to, if I can, keep a balance of sorts between the old and the new, which involves knowing what is new. I am only really pretending to know much of value about politics, world affairs, and current social issues. I've been meaning to do something about that for a couple years now. It would be easier--at least less intimidating--if life was more simple, and maybe it is, but I haven't yet learned how to categorize many ideas quickly enough to keep any kind of simplicity. There are also the people, affairs, and issues of my immediate context to understand better. People have stories and perspectives that go beyond mine, and that takes a kind of knowing. Interactions and structures sometimes call for judgment or response--again, more to understand. I believe all this is enough to keep me busy for long enough. There are plenty more piles of knowing to get around to as well. When I was in high school I began to wonder what it would be like to live in a time before global communication. Most peasants in the middle ages never ( I don't think) left the community they lived in. If great artists were painting pictures, what was that to them? Their world was the people they saw day to day, the lord who owned their land, their work to cultivate the land, and the weather that effected their farming. What a vastly different life that would be. I would not, because of that, make any condemnation of the current culture. I try very much to avoid blanket statements about culture, as they usually have nothing to do with understanding it or communicating within it. I think we are all called to work within the culture we find ourselves. I find it comforting, all the same, to know that my mastery of knowing the worlds of information there is to know remains independent of my identity as a person. The peasants were not of more or less value to God than I for the different cultures we live, or lived, in. That raises the question of what is worth knowing, and what can be set aside unlearned. Alas, I'm afraid that, too, is another pile of things to know. I'll try to get around to dealing with that sometime soon. For now, however, I will go back to the pile of class assigned reading which has some weigh of immediate necessity above other things for the time being.

All Shall Be Well

I've pulled up this window multiple times to write something the past few weeks and have consistently failed to actually do so. To be honest, my life has not been terribly exciting as far as events go. The semester trucks along with tests and cute little elementary education projects. I finished a 48 hour internship in the Jackson Public School system at a middle school. All the sort of thing that are fine and good to happen, but not much for words. I haven't taken the time in a while to try to pull words out of that sort of mundane. I do think that is a worthy attempt, and for that reason I have pulled this window up yet again to write something, though a meager something at that. I'll present bullet points, because they at least will keep this from being a lengthy meager something. -The weather may be interesting to talk about. Right now its cold outside and I'm inside by a fire. If you were here too, we could remark on how delightful such a thing is. In any case, however, too long on that subject signifies we either can't or won't talk about anything nontrivial. That being said, we'll leave the weather at that for now. -Venturing into the world beyond weather, the generalities of my life are going well. I like my house. I like cooking. I'm keeping busy. I'd like to decorate for Christmas. I registered for classes and am taking some interesting ones, including 17th century literature, which happens to completely catch my imagination and thus the class could hardly not be interesting. -I feel a little disconnected from life sometimes. I would rather not admit that such a thing is the case, however. Its a little easier to pretend everything is normal. Melancholy is hard to explain to the average concerned friend wanting to know how you're doing. It seems inconsolable, incurable, unsympathizable, awkward, and unimportant. Where do you go from there? I am not sad or in need of cheer. Disconnected, but not sad. Somehow I think its probably a fairly universal aspect of being human, yet communication fails me. -All shall be well. All shall be well. All manner of things will be made well. Maybe that's something of what I'd like to say. I post it up on my site, and if I don't like it I'll realize it after a couple days and post something new so it can start moving to the backdrop. I don't suppose this is a very good thanksgiving post. I really do believe the last bullet point, though, and I'm thankful for the promise, and the journey towards the land where such promises shed the need for hope and become beautiful and more real.