stop and think

Now Playing: Tchaikovsky, Pathetique Symphony, first movement, Adagio-Allegro Non Troppo.

It seems like a long time since I've updated on here, but from reading other people's blogs, there have been far more interesting and important posts to read about, so you all haven't been suffering.

I feel as though my mind has been left behind somewhere. Maybe I set it down on the counter in the post office this morning before I went running and forgot to pick it up. It cost me exactly five pounds twenty-eight pence to post all those letters and cards, but well worth it, hopefully. Now I just wish someone would mail me my mind back again, and then I'd be in better shape.

This morning I walked out with Emmaline to her ten o'clock class. We usually meet Charlotte and Sarah W. on the sidewalk outside Renwick, and they walk with Emmaline over to Queen's, while I split off to go running. It was cold this morning, our breath hanging on the air, Charlotte's fingers numb even in their fuzzy gloves, she said.

The gardens have been laid away for winter now. A sort of stillness and hush over them. The rose beds pruned back, their flowers picked or pulled away by frost. The oaks and chestnuts bare, their few lingering leaves lying on the green lawn. Winter comes like the lifting of a mask, as though the fiesta face of summer were slowly peeled back to reveal this sombre barrenness. The sun is always at a slant, and seagulls veer on the chilly wind against the variable sky. Rain comes down over Cave Hill and then blows away again, leaving the light still lingering--morning is laced with shadows like afternoon, and afternoon is as blue-grey as dusk.

I went running and then came back to Renwick for lunch. No bread, so I had to walk down to the Centra to buy some. A soft white loaf, half-baked, and carried back to Renwick through a sudden cold downpour, the uneven sidewalks slick underfoot. The trek rewarded with a rather soggy peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. The afternoon whiled away with a paper, a paper that proceeded by fits and starts, with many interruptions, nosing at the argument and then scurrying away again, never quite taking the bait. I shall have to tease it some more this evening and see if I can coax the rough draft into something logical.

Catherine came in at one point to ellicit advice about going to the library. I drew her a map. Emmaline came in at two-thirty and sagged down on my bed, watching me with her big blue-green eyes. So dull all day that I couldn't stop smiling like a fool when I saw her come in, and could sit and laugh at her lazy complaining about lunch and groaning about how untidy her half of the room is. She knows I'm laughing at her, and laughs at herself.

When I had finished the paper, at about four o'clock, I finished and wrapped up the box that I'm sending back to the States. It seems pitifully small. How can one pack up deep gratitude to one's parents and concerned love for one's friends into a twelve-by-fourteen-by-four cardboard box, patched together many times with brown tape?

Listening to Tchaikovsky now makes me remember Tulsa and going to the Signature Symphony concerts, as it always does. Memories are such odd things. Once when I took out my new ESV Bible, I had such a vivid flashback to Summer Conference that I could taste and smell and hear it all again, right down to the clatter of ladles in the cafeteria and the face of the mandolinist in the worship band and the feel of scorching white sand underfoot. And last night when I talked to Syneva, I could almost smell again the warm air in her car, seeing out the windows the autumn neighborhoods around Woodward Park.

Linsey just came in to ask for blue-tack. The walls around my desk are jammed with pictures, letters, and cards. Flat Matildas, photographs on the bulletin board, Psalm 91 in Jenny S.'s scrawly handwriting, bits of verses in colored pen that I've done myself, a verse from Catherine, a finger painting from Mary, colorful birthday cards, Kathryn's wooden cross, the funny little colored cards that Syneva tucked in among the bags of tea she sent me when I first got here.

Such is life. Looking at the little clock on my computer wondering when supper is, agonizing helplessly as to why all the rough drafts I've written so far have been so difficult and whether these imposing professors will be merciful when they grade them, wishing I weren't so tired. It's my goal tonight to go to bed by eleven-thirty. Renwick Bible study usually lasts until eleven o'clock. I'd forgotten how addictive socializing with people is--I enjoy just sitting in a room of people, listening, and it's hard to get up and be disciplined and go to bed, when you know that they're all still sitting down there, and can hear the voices coming up through the floor, and can wonder how many more times like this you'll have before you'll have to leave.

Friends keep getting left behind like that mind of mine, little constellations of them sprinkled over the face of the earth. I need to keep looking forward to Heaven, but right now everything seems far too large. Being twenty-one sounds so grown-up. Did someone forget to debrief me about being an adult? These papers are all too big; the time goes by too quickly; I can't make friends the way I want to because I don't have the energy or courage to love enough; I am confused about decisions and afraid to commit to anything.

Don't get me wrong; it's not that I'm miserable here. In fact over the past month or so I've started to settle in much more and focus on life here instead of being quite so homesick. I'm thankful now that I chose to do a full year instead of just a semester; otherwise, I would just have been getting adjusted to life in another country before I had to leave again. The work I do is enjoyable. I've loved being able to study the heroic themes and poetry of Anglo-Saxon literature this semester, and reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight over the past couple of weeks was a joy. The language is so rich, each word with connotations and shades of meaning that echo across the years. I wish I could bring those down and give them to each of you, make you understand what a wealth we have, a language of interconnected thoughts, where one word reflects off of and onto another, as disorienting as a house of mirrors and as dazzlingly wonderful as a French chandelier.

So now the symphony is almost over. Suitably dark. And this entry should be over as well.

Remember Zephaniah 3:17. All this has a purpose. It is not "vanity of vanities". It is a privelege and a joy, one more soul on the way to giving Christ pleasure and glory.