Now Playing: Harry Gregson-Williams, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, "Raid on the Castle".
Slept soundly from exhaustion last night and woke before Rachel this morning. I took a shower--I think, I don't remember for sure--and made oatmeal for myself. It was one of those weighted mornings, a heavy morning, facing the burden of the day. I sat down at my desk, wrote e-mails, and worked on writing a prospectus for senior project. At nine o'clock, Bob rang, and I ran down to the car park to meet him. He'd volunteered to help fix the Tank, which has been out of commission with a bad alternator. We wrenched the hood open, and he started to poke around inside. He pulled out the old alternator, we took it to the hardware shop down the street to have it tested, and then bought a new alternator, which he installed, with some trouble. Then we pushed the car out of the space, he pulled his car up, and we jumped it. After he left, I drove the Tank down Yale. The morning traffic was fairly light. Trashy strip malls, dodgy mechanics, and pawn shops gave way to malls, business parks, green spaces, and the towers of a hospital. I stopped at Wal-Mart to buy groceries, then drove the car back to campus. Seems to work alright.
I spent the rest of my morning working on senior project and praying for John, who went into surgery for his broken ankle today. (Right now there's a smell lingering in here that smells just like the Wilsons' house, and it's bewildering my subconscious....) At half twelve, Rachel came back from her exam. We ate leftovers together for lunch. At one o'clock, she went to class, and I went to Tyrrell to practice my flute. The practice rooms are all under construction right now, the ceilings being torn out, the ducts being covered with new tiles. Most of the rooms were off-limits, so I went into a coffin-sized room, most of the free space of which was occupied by a derelict piano, and practiced for forty-five minutes. Then I went to PHIL 2113 at two o'clock. Professor B was crazy as always--emphatic, rocking up and down on his feet like Humpty Dumpty so that the brown fringe bounces at the front of his balding head.
At four o'clock there was a session on building study abroad experience into your resume at the CGE office, so I went to that. Ms. B, the secretary, patted me on the shoulder and called me "Sweetie" when she called me come in, and Ms. S greeted me in her Portuguese-inflected soft voice. Alex, Don, and I were the only ones who came. Ms. M, the head of the office, the sort of woman who's so courteous that she scares me, laughed that she felt incredibly uncomfortable presenting to an audience of peer advisors. It was helpful, though, to hear about opportunities with businesses and volunteer overseas. The excitement builds, thinking about all the possibilities: places in Japan and Australia, where there are RP churches....
On my way back to the apartment, I picked up tea from the caf. I randomly decided to sit on the balcony outside our apartment to eat, and as I was taking the first bites of baked chicken, Rachel Jr. texted me to ask if I wanted to come to her apartment. So I dumped my backpack in our apartment, grabbed my basket of scrapbooking materials, and walked across the car park. Nicole and Rachel were both in the apartment, Nicole studying. Rachel heated up pasta, and she and I sat on the slouchy green sofa and chatted away.
After we finished eating, we began the real business of the evening: baking chocolate chip cookies for the Knorrs and for the RUF potluck tomorrow night. Rachel had two different recipes, one the basic recipe, and one with oatmeal. I worked on the basic recipe, for the Knorrs, while she made the oatmeal cookies, for the potluck tomorrow. After I'd put my first batch in the oven, I sat down at the coffee table to make a card for the Knorrs. Rachel made a wee mountain of her cookies in a pan as they came out of the oven. There were three dozen of my cookies, quite an impressive batch. We put them in plastic bags, and she and I drove over to the Knorrs' house.
As we were opening the back gate to go into their back yard, the dogs came wagging up to the fence to greet us. Both of us had our hands full with bags of cookies, so of course Shaq, the big, fluffy, black, dumb dog, wriggled between us, slithered out of the gate, and bounded gaily down the street. "Run!" shouted Rachel, so I dropped my cookies on the trampoline and took off after him. Charis and Di, paddling in the swimming pool in the back of Di's house behind the Knorrs' house, watched me go. Shaq loped ahead of me, tongue lolling, slaver roping out of his mouth, stopping to sniff the neighbors' bushes. A leather-skinned man stepped out of a house and shouted at him. I was suddenly afraid because it's a bad neighborhood and any one of the neighbors might decide to pull out a gun, but I kept running and eventually caught up with the stupid dog. I'd had my leg workout chasing him, and I got my upper body workout hauling him back to the Knorrs' house since he probably weighs about as much as I do.
Rachel and I met back at the Knorrs' house, went up to the back door, and stepped inside. Everyone was sitting in the front room, watching "The Office" on TV. John was in the recliner, as usual, but now with his leg in a new cast--a whopping thick thing. We gave them the cookies and the card. Rachel sat down on the loveseat between Rachel and Kali, and I sat down on the sofa between Josh and Ben. Things were fairly quiet for awhile. Long silences would begin to congeal in the room, until Josh would start to laugh. "Someone has got to break this silence, and now it's broken into pieces, like Hershey's chocolate," he said. "With nuts?" John asked groggily. "With nuts," Josh said, "and cherry flavoring." "Oh, gross!" Kali objected. "Well, it has to taste gross because it was a bad silence," Josh replied, and we all laughed. Things got more lively, though: Di and Charis came back from swimming. Ange and Alisha joined us. Denise appeared--she'd been out shopping for painkillers and Chinese take-out for John.
Rachel Jr. and I left at half eight or so. I stopped by her apartment back on campus to pick up my things and to borrow her vacuum cleaner. While we were at the Knorrs' house, Pastor Parnell had rung me, so when I got back to my apartment, I perched in one of the windowsills and rang him back. We talked and prayed together.
During our conversation, Rachel Sr. had come back. After I got off the phone, I talked with her briefly. I started to vacuum our apartment, but while I was in the process of doing so, Logan rang, so I chatted with him for a little while. I was just finishing vacuuming our bedroom when Nicole showed up, at ten o'clock, for prayer. She had a bar of organic choolate with chai and crystallized ginger mixed in--deliciously sweet and spicy. Katie and Alyson came, too. It was a good group. We spent the first half-hour or so just talking, joking around, laughing about school and going to the opera. Then we shared prayer requests, and then we prayed, and then spent more time talking and laughing. Alyson left to study stats, but Katie and Nicole stayed for a full hour more--discussing food, mainly--vegetarianism, wines, and the like. I enjoy their oddball sense of humor, especially Katie's, and their different perspective on the world. Katie told us about her crazy Irish grandmother from whom she learned curse words and kitchen gossip in Irish when she was a wee girl, and that made Rachel laugh very hard. I sat cross-legged on the floor, typing up this entry.
They left at midnight. I finished vacuuming and returned the vacuum cleaner to Nicole. Rachel is in our room now, studying. The evening is unusually cool. I hope the days become cooler after this. I'd far rather have the windows open than run the air conditioner, and I'm ready to begin wearing hoodies and sweaters, especially since our classrooms and the practice rooms are cold enough for that kind of clothing, and then when I step outside I have to strip off layers because it's so warm.
I've gone around all day with "Is. 26.3" written on the back of my hand.
29 September 2008
26 September 2008
Now Playing: Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrack. Track 11, "Shelob's Lair".
Last night the Rachels, Alyson, and I had Bible study on Acts 3-4, focusing on 3:1-21 and 4:18-27. It was one of those times when the ability of the others to come up with ideas that hadn't even crossed my mind was pretty amazing (not that it would be hard to come up with ideas that are above and beyond me, but hey...).
The beggar sitting in front of the temple looked at Peter and John without knowing who they were or knowing Christ, 3:4-5. He wasn't seeking healing. In fact, the text says he was just expecting "something", whether that was money or whether it was the mockery that beggars sometimes get, it certainly wasn't what he actually received. By 3:9, he is walking and leaping and praising God, not only healed physically but completely renewed spiritually as well. His tiny expectation became eternal life.
Peter's sermon in Acts 3 is rather peculiar because in it he accuses the Jews directly of having murdered Christ. As someone pointed out, this accusation recurs again and again in Acts. It's not quite the evangelical m.o. that we would expect to be most effective. But the people responded in huge numbers.
Perhaps one reason for this is that Peter is preaching in this specific example in the temple, where people were coming to offer sacrifices. His preaching vividly demonstrates the fact that the sacrifice has already been offered--Christ Himself.
Also, for a devout group, this meditation on our need for forgiveness and the depth of our sin could be even more convicting. Usually we think of ourselves as "pretty good", or just repenting for daily sins of thought and word, and taking for granted the forgiveness that covers these offenses. When we stop to meditate that these offenses killed Christ, and that we are in effect the murderers of God, God's grace to us, the "times of refreshing" in 3:17-21, take on a whole new meaning.
And while realization of the depth of our sin is important, Peter doesn't let the gathering sink into the despair of that depth but instead points them directly to God who is miraculously and amazingly merciful.
The other part of this passage that we focused on was 4:18-37 and the picture of community it presents. Rachel jr. immediately asked after we'd read the passage if this is a picture of communism that we are meant to emulate. Rachel sr. answered that by saying that this "communism" is driven by love and trust in God, an understanding of His love that leads them to physical action. The pattern of prayer, the descent of the Spirit, and the communal life recurs in the text, which made us think that communism has a "Do Not Attempt This Without Divine Supervision" sign hung on it.
Even for believers, though, the notion of communism has to be tweaked if it is to be made into a fitting definition of the community described in this passage. The NIV translation has the phrase "From time to time..." to describe the selling of property, emphasizing the idea that as the church had a need, the members met the need. People realized that their goods were not their own, so they shared with one another.
Of course the question becomes whether this should translate into our church community, and how. We talked about how we need to be willing to give and not to let things have a hold on us. Particularly, though, someone brought up the idea not necessarily of financial giving but more generally of spiritual giving (and spiritual giving should probably come first anyway...). As university students, the giving of time and emotional energy may actually be more sacrificial in some ways than the giving of money (though we are called to that, too). Being willing to share spiritual encouragement, to invest in relationships with others, may be even more important than the question of actual tithing. We tossed around ideas about getting together, particularly for prayer, more frequently.
Last night the Rachels, Alyson, and I had Bible study on Acts 3-4, focusing on 3:1-21 and 4:18-27. It was one of those times when the ability of the others to come up with ideas that hadn't even crossed my mind was pretty amazing (not that it would be hard to come up with ideas that are above and beyond me, but hey...).
The beggar sitting in front of the temple looked at Peter and John without knowing who they were or knowing Christ, 3:4-5. He wasn't seeking healing. In fact, the text says he was just expecting "something", whether that was money or whether it was the mockery that beggars sometimes get, it certainly wasn't what he actually received. By 3:9, he is walking and leaping and praising God, not only healed physically but completely renewed spiritually as well. His tiny expectation became eternal life.
Peter's sermon in Acts 3 is rather peculiar because in it he accuses the Jews directly of having murdered Christ. As someone pointed out, this accusation recurs again and again in Acts. It's not quite the evangelical m.o. that we would expect to be most effective. But the people responded in huge numbers.
Perhaps one reason for this is that Peter is preaching in this specific example in the temple, where people were coming to offer sacrifices. His preaching vividly demonstrates the fact that the sacrifice has already been offered--Christ Himself.
Also, for a devout group, this meditation on our need for forgiveness and the depth of our sin could be even more convicting. Usually we think of ourselves as "pretty good", or just repenting for daily sins of thought and word, and taking for granted the forgiveness that covers these offenses. When we stop to meditate that these offenses killed Christ, and that we are in effect the murderers of God, God's grace to us, the "times of refreshing" in 3:17-21, take on a whole new meaning.
And while realization of the depth of our sin is important, Peter doesn't let the gathering sink into the despair of that depth but instead points them directly to God who is miraculously and amazingly merciful.
The other part of this passage that we focused on was 4:18-37 and the picture of community it presents. Rachel jr. immediately asked after we'd read the passage if this is a picture of communism that we are meant to emulate. Rachel sr. answered that by saying that this "communism" is driven by love and trust in God, an understanding of His love that leads them to physical action. The pattern of prayer, the descent of the Spirit, and the communal life recurs in the text, which made us think that communism has a "Do Not Attempt This Without Divine Supervision" sign hung on it.
Even for believers, though, the notion of communism has to be tweaked if it is to be made into a fitting definition of the community described in this passage. The NIV translation has the phrase "From time to time..." to describe the selling of property, emphasizing the idea that as the church had a need, the members met the need. People realized that their goods were not their own, so they shared with one another.
Of course the question becomes whether this should translate into our church community, and how. We talked about how we need to be willing to give and not to let things have a hold on us. Particularly, though, someone brought up the idea not necessarily of financial giving but more generally of spiritual giving (and spiritual giving should probably come first anyway...). As university students, the giving of time and emotional energy may actually be more sacrificial in some ways than the giving of money (though we are called to that, too). Being willing to share spiritual encouragement, to invest in relationships with others, may be even more important than the question of actual tithing. We tossed around ideas about getting together, particularly for prayer, more frequently.
24 September 2008
Now Playing: U2, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".
Right now, that is dishonest.
I feel as though I ought to write a blog post.
People are going to try to comment and figure this out. It's not a maths problem. Sorry. Even if Escher was a mathematician, his lithographs don't resolve into perfect equations.
Today I talked to people on the phone, some here, some there. It was good at the time, but makes the tension more difficult now.
Bach is running through my head, pointlessly, teasing me with the endless complex intricate beauty of the music, the patterns of fingerings on the keys of the flute.
Right now, I wonder if life will turn out to be one long dissonant chord without resolution.
I think I ought to go to sleep. Two weeks ago the nightmares were unbearably horrific. I think they will return tonight, unless someone is merciful.
Right now, that is dishonest.
I feel as though I ought to write a blog post.
People are going to try to comment and figure this out. It's not a maths problem. Sorry. Even if Escher was a mathematician, his lithographs don't resolve into perfect equations.
Today I talked to people on the phone, some here, some there. It was good at the time, but makes the tension more difficult now.
Bach is running through my head, pointlessly, teasing me with the endless complex intricate beauty of the music, the patterns of fingerings on the keys of the flute.
Right now, I wonder if life will turn out to be one long dissonant chord without resolution.
I think I ought to go to sleep. Two weeks ago the nightmares were unbearably horrific. I think they will return tonight, unless someone is merciful.
16 September 2008
Now Playing: Mark O'Connor, 30-Year Retrospective, Track 26, "Stone From Which The Arch Was Made".
Our apartment was actually cold when I got up this morning. Clear sunshine moving quickly over the walls. I sat down to do my devotions as usual after having eaten a bowl of oatmeal. The distractions through which my mind gyrates whenever I sit down to worship are appalling. Worship becomes something like an Escher drawing: consciousness crawling up out of two-dimensional clutter into living, breathing three-dimensional space for a moment, then morphing back into that clash of patterns and problematic black-and-whites. The nagging frustration became a pressing realization that this is preventing my relationship with God, and led to a renewed resolution, to "let the Word of God dwell in you richly", or as richly as possible in this fragmented human mind. When I consider focusing this intently, moment-by-moment, on the Lord, I am reminded of HON 1013 and Dr. A's drawing on the chalkboard of the medieval idea of the cosmos as the unfolding pattern of petals on a rose, drawing closer and closer toward the center, where they resolve into a unity--in this case, to God Himself. Focus becomes an intense decision, a discipline more difficult than forcing myself through forty-five minutes in the gym.
Practice of it isn't easy, though, as I found today as I stepped out of our apartment to go to practice my flute. As soon as I begin to walk down the staircase, my mind moves ahead into the day, into whatever work needs to be done--or starts to think about people, or begins to relive the past, or daydream.
After class today, I ended up eating a sandwich in ACAC with Amy S--f. Then I went to the CGE house at half two for a meeting to find out what to do with this new job. The people in the office are all nice enough. The secretary is a pert, dark woman, who chatters away. After waiting for nearly half-an-hour, I went into the office of the advisor for A&S, a new personnel member from Brazil, a beautiful, friendly, softspoken woman. She and the head of the office, who's always talkative, spent half-an-hour or so explaining the task at hand, which involves writing the CGE newsletter in the next two weeks...! Toward the end, the dean of study abroad stepped in. She's the sort of woman whose gentility and perfect poise are terrifying, whose polite blue eyes and polished smile somehow make one very afraid that she'll become suddenly extremely angry, though I'm pretty sure that's not her intent.
Anyway, I was happy to be out of the office, and trying not to be overwhelmed with the impending work. As I was walking back to the apartment, I stepped into Sharp Chapel to see if the sanctuary was empty. Every time I've gone into the chapel to pray, someone has been using the sanctuary, and today it was the Cappela choir. I slipped into the much smaller prayer chapel beside the main sanctuary and sat there for a long time, thinking. I don't understand why God has put me here. Perhaps I don't need to understand. I know that He has only put me here because He loves me, but I struggle to believe that.
The afternoon was lovely, though. On my way back to the apartment, I ran into Rachel. We stopped and chatted for a few moments. Turns out that the package slip we received in the post yesterday is for a package for me--who from, I have only a slim idea. Probably the people at "The Oklahoma Review", flyers for me to distribute on campus.
I left our apartment when I'd dumped my things and took the Tank to try to find somewhere to buy cheap silverware. I ended up at Big Lots, had success, and then made a stop at a dodgy wee convenience shop to buy a half gallon of milk (which turned out to smell as dodgy as the shop where I got it, but anyway...).
Back in our apartment, I had one little crisis after another: stains on new trousers, no detergent for laundry, a cockroach crawling over the sofa, piles of things to put away. To keep from being frustrated, I put on Nickel Creek and set to work to right things. Then I curled up on the red sofa and wrote a letter to Catherine. Just as I was finishing, Rachel came back for tea, at about half six. We ate some of the bread Laura had baked for us over the weekend. Laura's bread is the essence of what good bread ought to be, soft, warm, a little bit sweet and spicy at the same time.
At half eight, we went to RUF in the SAC. I stood in the entry area and chatted with Tara, Katie, Nicole, and Mary for awhile. John preached tonight on Ruth 2:1-13 and about how God sends salvation from unexpected places, about how God uses suffering to bring us into fellowship with Christ. This stung me after last week's resolution not to admit or think about suffering any more. I'm tired of being the gloomy person who's never doing well, but life is not right. Is this how Christ felt all the time? Uneasy, displaced?
After RUF, I spent the whole time talking with Jenny H., sprawled on one of the big chairs. She told me funny stories about her work, and we laughed over the fact that Spencer cares more about interior decorating than she does. After she left, I ended up standing outside and talking to Philip. While we were talking, Jenny M. and Andrew walked up. I chatted with Jenny, who was wrapped up in excitement about the TU choir singing Mozart's Requiem, while Andrew kept Philip entertained with something else. Jenny showed me her score, humming through it, translating in broken Latin. It was beautiful to watch her.
And now I'm so tired that my vision is fuzzy, and I desperately want to sleep, but there's so much to do, and Rachel staying up late makes me feel obligated to do the same. The night outside is clear and cool. The moon riding high in the sky, though full, is just as bright as one of the streetlights, and so adds no light to the night.
Our apartment was actually cold when I got up this morning. Clear sunshine moving quickly over the walls. I sat down to do my devotions as usual after having eaten a bowl of oatmeal. The distractions through which my mind gyrates whenever I sit down to worship are appalling. Worship becomes something like an Escher drawing: consciousness crawling up out of two-dimensional clutter into living, breathing three-dimensional space for a moment, then morphing back into that clash of patterns and problematic black-and-whites. The nagging frustration became a pressing realization that this is preventing my relationship with God, and led to a renewed resolution, to "let the Word of God dwell in you richly", or as richly as possible in this fragmented human mind. When I consider focusing this intently, moment-by-moment, on the Lord, I am reminded of HON 1013 and Dr. A's drawing on the chalkboard of the medieval idea of the cosmos as the unfolding pattern of petals on a rose, drawing closer and closer toward the center, where they resolve into a unity--in this case, to God Himself. Focus becomes an intense decision, a discipline more difficult than forcing myself through forty-five minutes in the gym.
Practice of it isn't easy, though, as I found today as I stepped out of our apartment to go to practice my flute. As soon as I begin to walk down the staircase, my mind moves ahead into the day, into whatever work needs to be done--or starts to think about people, or begins to relive the past, or daydream.
After class today, I ended up eating a sandwich in ACAC with Amy S--f. Then I went to the CGE house at half two for a meeting to find out what to do with this new job. The people in the office are all nice enough. The secretary is a pert, dark woman, who chatters away. After waiting for nearly half-an-hour, I went into the office of the advisor for A&S, a new personnel member from Brazil, a beautiful, friendly, softspoken woman. She and the head of the office, who's always talkative, spent half-an-hour or so explaining the task at hand, which involves writing the CGE newsletter in the next two weeks...! Toward the end, the dean of study abroad stepped in. She's the sort of woman whose gentility and perfect poise are terrifying, whose polite blue eyes and polished smile somehow make one very afraid that she'll become suddenly extremely angry, though I'm pretty sure that's not her intent.
Anyway, I was happy to be out of the office, and trying not to be overwhelmed with the impending work. As I was walking back to the apartment, I stepped into Sharp Chapel to see if the sanctuary was empty. Every time I've gone into the chapel to pray, someone has been using the sanctuary, and today it was the Cappela choir. I slipped into the much smaller prayer chapel beside the main sanctuary and sat there for a long time, thinking. I don't understand why God has put me here. Perhaps I don't need to understand. I know that He has only put me here because He loves me, but I struggle to believe that.
The afternoon was lovely, though. On my way back to the apartment, I ran into Rachel. We stopped and chatted for a few moments. Turns out that the package slip we received in the post yesterday is for a package for me--who from, I have only a slim idea. Probably the people at "The Oklahoma Review", flyers for me to distribute on campus.
I left our apartment when I'd dumped my things and took the Tank to try to find somewhere to buy cheap silverware. I ended up at Big Lots, had success, and then made a stop at a dodgy wee convenience shop to buy a half gallon of milk (which turned out to smell as dodgy as the shop where I got it, but anyway...).
Back in our apartment, I had one little crisis after another: stains on new trousers, no detergent for laundry, a cockroach crawling over the sofa, piles of things to put away. To keep from being frustrated, I put on Nickel Creek and set to work to right things. Then I curled up on the red sofa and wrote a letter to Catherine. Just as I was finishing, Rachel came back for tea, at about half six. We ate some of the bread Laura had baked for us over the weekend. Laura's bread is the essence of what good bread ought to be, soft, warm, a little bit sweet and spicy at the same time.
At half eight, we went to RUF in the SAC. I stood in the entry area and chatted with Tara, Katie, Nicole, and Mary for awhile. John preached tonight on Ruth 2:1-13 and about how God sends salvation from unexpected places, about how God uses suffering to bring us into fellowship with Christ. This stung me after last week's resolution not to admit or think about suffering any more. I'm tired of being the gloomy person who's never doing well, but life is not right. Is this how Christ felt all the time? Uneasy, displaced?
After RUF, I spent the whole time talking with Jenny H., sprawled on one of the big chairs. She told me funny stories about her work, and we laughed over the fact that Spencer cares more about interior decorating than she does. After she left, I ended up standing outside and talking to Philip. While we were talking, Jenny M. and Andrew walked up. I chatted with Jenny, who was wrapped up in excitement about the TU choir singing Mozart's Requiem, while Andrew kept Philip entertained with something else. Jenny showed me her score, humming through it, translating in broken Latin. It was beautiful to watch her.
And now I'm so tired that my vision is fuzzy, and I desperately want to sleep, but there's so much to do, and Rachel staying up late makes me feel obligated to do the same. The night outside is clear and cool. The moon riding high in the sky, though full, is just as bright as one of the streetlights, and so adds no light to the night.
13 September 2008
Now Playing: Laura and Stephen on the piano, "Prometheus" overture by Beethoven. (And me sitting on the sofa, miming furiously. Sandy is sitting on a chair with her chin on her paws, pretending not to be terrified. The piece changed key, randomly--just for fun, of course.)
Rachel was up before me this morning, as usual. Now I know how Emmaline must have felt, except that Rachel doesn't usually throw a pillow at me and then slam the door. Rachel was just leaving to help out at a debate tournament on campus as I was coming staggering out of our room.
I dressed and ate breakfast and worked on my ENGL 4973 preliminary bibliography. The difficulty is that the project is still so nebulous that I can't really judge what to add to the bibliography and what not to add. So I sifted through a stack of tomes of Beowulf. The morning was grey and tired. After I washed my dishes, I hauled my backpack, wee suitcase, and dirty clothes hamper down to the Tank, loaded up, and drove to Stillwater.
The drive was interesting. It poured rain on the interstate. Samuel Morrison, Matthew Curry, and Simon Curry could have thrown water-containing objects at my car to their heart's desire, and I wouldn't have noticed at all. I listened to one of my father's Sabbath school lessons on Leviticus, the first of a two-part series on the Sabbath day, the seven-year Sabbath, and the year of Jubilee.
In Stillwater, the rain had become a modest downpour. At my house, everything was green and dripping. My father was the only one home, with the cats to keep him company. Laura and Stephen were out helping their robotics team sell concessions at the OSU football game, and my mother was grocery shopping.
So I sat and chatted with my father for a little while. He asked if Logan was coming with me to Edmond to visit Phil Alcorn, who's over from Northern Ireland visiting a friend at Oklahoma Christian University. I accordingly got on Skype and invited Logan to come along. I went over to his house and picked him up at a quarter past eleven or so, and we set off on the drive to Edmond, on the north side of Oklahoma City.
Edmond is the "fancy shmancy" part of OKC, huge gated communities scattered among thick woods and big broad boulevards through newly-built shopping areas. We met Phil at Starbucks near OCU. It was brilliant to see him again.
None of us had eaten lunch, so we drove round for ages looking for somewhere to eat. We ended up at a Quizno's (funnily enough, as Phil pointed out, because there's a Quizno's in Botanic--and he had thought the same thing about that Quizno's as I had originally thought about the one in Stillwater, that it was just a wee local shop--both of us have since been disillusioned). For most of the afternoon, a straight steady rain fell, so we ended up sitting in the restaurant for three or four hours, talking about everything--Renwick, small group weekend, films, music, jobs, tornadoes and hurricanes, the States, politics....
After awhile, we drove back to the OCU campus. It was raining again, steadily, and I was chilled to the bone. The campus is fairly new. Sturdy brick buildings, plantings of marigolds and ornamental pear trees and crepe myrtle bushes. We ended up sitting under a huge awning, a giant pavillion covering a concrete platform with picnic tables on it. We just chatted there for awhile, laughing.
At about five o'clock we left Phil off at Starbucks again so that he could buy a chai vanilla latte. Said good-bye in the rain. "It was good to hear a Northern Irish accent again! Keep well! Cheerio!" he said.
Logan and I drove back to Stillwater. We were back in Stillwater in time for tea, and though my family had already sat down to eat, we joined them for the meal and the usual "Three Stooges" episode afterward. Outside, the sun was setting through a rift in the clouds and made a rainbow, the first one I've seen here, very faintly, across the eastern sky.
I drove Logan back to his house at eight o'clock or so. We said good-night. I drove back to the house, listening to the end of my father's sermon, watching the livid light fade in the west. My father was reading Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis to my mother and Stephen in the living room. Laura bounced downstairs and brought out the guinea pig and fed it carrots. We had family worship. Philip rang, and Laura, my parents, and I took turns talking to him. Now my mother and I are sitting in the living room, having a drawn-out and difficult discussion about the future.
Crickets chirp outside, and the ceiling fan whirls overhead.
Next question: Do I go to sleep now, or stay up revising for another hour?
(N.B., just for you, Rosemary, since you said you wanted a glossary for all my big words:
"Preliminary" means "the first one, usually a bad copy".
A "bibliography" is something you put at the end of a whopping long paper to tell all the people who have nothing better to do what books you read.
"Fancy shmancy" means posh.
"Lunch" is the meal before tea in the middle of the day, skipped if you have a) been driving for a long time or b) haven't had time between lectures.
And, one last definition for you. "Rain" is the cold, wet stuff that falls out of the sky, usually only in Northern Ireland, and that tends to flood motorways and things, and has come over here just to make Phil feel at home.)
Rachel was up before me this morning, as usual. Now I know how Emmaline must have felt, except that Rachel doesn't usually throw a pillow at me and then slam the door. Rachel was just leaving to help out at a debate tournament on campus as I was coming staggering out of our room.
I dressed and ate breakfast and worked on my ENGL 4973 preliminary bibliography. The difficulty is that the project is still so nebulous that I can't really judge what to add to the bibliography and what not to add. So I sifted through a stack of tomes of Beowulf. The morning was grey and tired. After I washed my dishes, I hauled my backpack, wee suitcase, and dirty clothes hamper down to the Tank, loaded up, and drove to Stillwater.
The drive was interesting. It poured rain on the interstate. Samuel Morrison, Matthew Curry, and Simon Curry could have thrown water-containing objects at my car to their heart's desire, and I wouldn't have noticed at all. I listened to one of my father's Sabbath school lessons on Leviticus, the first of a two-part series on the Sabbath day, the seven-year Sabbath, and the year of Jubilee.
In Stillwater, the rain had become a modest downpour. At my house, everything was green and dripping. My father was the only one home, with the cats to keep him company. Laura and Stephen were out helping their robotics team sell concessions at the OSU football game, and my mother was grocery shopping.
So I sat and chatted with my father for a little while. He asked if Logan was coming with me to Edmond to visit Phil Alcorn, who's over from Northern Ireland visiting a friend at Oklahoma Christian University. I accordingly got on Skype and invited Logan to come along. I went over to his house and picked him up at a quarter past eleven or so, and we set off on the drive to Edmond, on the north side of Oklahoma City.
Edmond is the "fancy shmancy" part of OKC, huge gated communities scattered among thick woods and big broad boulevards through newly-built shopping areas. We met Phil at Starbucks near OCU. It was brilliant to see him again.
None of us had eaten lunch, so we drove round for ages looking for somewhere to eat. We ended up at a Quizno's (funnily enough, as Phil pointed out, because there's a Quizno's in Botanic--and he had thought the same thing about that Quizno's as I had originally thought about the one in Stillwater, that it was just a wee local shop--both of us have since been disillusioned). For most of the afternoon, a straight steady rain fell, so we ended up sitting in the restaurant for three or four hours, talking about everything--Renwick, small group weekend, films, music, jobs, tornadoes and hurricanes, the States, politics....
After awhile, we drove back to the OCU campus. It was raining again, steadily, and I was chilled to the bone. The campus is fairly new. Sturdy brick buildings, plantings of marigolds and ornamental pear trees and crepe myrtle bushes. We ended up sitting under a huge awning, a giant pavillion covering a concrete platform with picnic tables on it. We just chatted there for awhile, laughing.
At about five o'clock we left Phil off at Starbucks again so that he could buy a chai vanilla latte. Said good-bye in the rain. "It was good to hear a Northern Irish accent again! Keep well! Cheerio!" he said.
Logan and I drove back to Stillwater. We were back in Stillwater in time for tea, and though my family had already sat down to eat, we joined them for the meal and the usual "Three Stooges" episode afterward. Outside, the sun was setting through a rift in the clouds and made a rainbow, the first one I've seen here, very faintly, across the eastern sky.
I drove Logan back to his house at eight o'clock or so. We said good-night. I drove back to the house, listening to the end of my father's sermon, watching the livid light fade in the west. My father was reading Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis to my mother and Stephen in the living room. Laura bounced downstairs and brought out the guinea pig and fed it carrots. We had family worship. Philip rang, and Laura, my parents, and I took turns talking to him. Now my mother and I are sitting in the living room, having a drawn-out and difficult discussion about the future.
Crickets chirp outside, and the ceiling fan whirls overhead.
Next question: Do I go to sleep now, or stay up revising for another hour?
(N.B., just for you, Rosemary, since you said you wanted a glossary for all my big words:
"Preliminary" means "the first one, usually a bad copy".
A "bibliography" is something you put at the end of a whopping long paper to tell all the people who have nothing better to do what books you read.
"Fancy shmancy" means posh.
"Lunch" is the meal before tea in the middle of the day, skipped if you have a) been driving for a long time or b) haven't had time between lectures.
And, one last definition for you. "Rain" is the cold, wet stuff that falls out of the sky, usually only in Northern Ireland, and that tends to flood motorways and things, and has come over here just to make Phil feel at home.)
11 September 2008
Now Playing: "Kyrie" from the medieval Mass (Gregorian chant or plainchant).
A year ago this week I was fumbling my way round Belfast with the assistance of Rachel and Daphne's "no-go" map, attempting to cram a pile of rather useless information about abstract Northern Irish culture into my head thanks to IFSA orientation, and hiking the Mournes with the Lisburn CY. That first night in Renwick, awake until past two in the morning because I wasn't used yet to the noise of the people going up and down the street to The Parlor, shifting the furniture and prowling into every room of the empty house.
And, of course, the fun of meeting Claire and the church family at Trinity for the first time.
I find it somehow ironic that the weather here today is almost exactly the same as it was there: chilly and wet.
A year ago this week I was fumbling my way round Belfast with the assistance of Rachel and Daphne's "no-go" map, attempting to cram a pile of rather useless information about abstract Northern Irish culture into my head thanks to IFSA orientation, and hiking the Mournes with the Lisburn CY. That first night in Renwick, awake until past two in the morning because I wasn't used yet to the noise of the people going up and down the street to The Parlor, shifting the furniture and prowling into every room of the empty house.
And, of course, the fun of meeting Claire and the church family at Trinity for the first time.
I find it somehow ironic that the weather here today is almost exactly the same as it was there: chilly and wet.
08 September 2008
apartment
Our room.
Our room again. (Yes, Rachel sleeps on an air mattress....)
The living area and my wee desk with pictures, quotes, letters, verse from Catherine, and tag from Belfast marathon on the wall.
Looking from the living room toward the kitchen.
Looking into our apartment from the front door.
06 September 2008
hodgepodge
Now Playing: "Heaven When We're Home" by The Wailin' Jennys. (Yes, Emmaline, this is a good song.)
First, a quote from John Calvin (always a safe place to start).
"… He is merciful towards the merciful, and pure towards the pure. God never disappoints His servants, but always at length deals graciously with them, provided they wait for His aid with meekness and patience…. The scope of this discourse is, that the people of God should entertain good hope, and encourage themselves to practice uprightness and integrity, since every man shall reap the fruit of his own righteousness.
As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless. The phrase, the way of God, is not here taken for His revealed will, but for His method of dealing towards His people. The meaning, therefore, is, that God never disappoints or deceives His servants, nor forsakes them in the time of need… but faithfully defends and maintains those whom He has once taken under His protection. But we will never have any nearness to God, unless He first come near to us by His word…. Let us, therefore, rest assured that God will actually show Himself upright towards us, seeing He has promised to be the guardian and protector of our welfare, and His promise is certain and infallible truth." (John Calvin, Heart Aflame, Psalm 18:25-39)
This was Labor Day week here, which means that we had Monday off from uni. Which meant that I spent most of Monday splashing in Skiatook Lake with about twenty RUFfians. It didn't feel like a big group, probably because I knew all of them. So, yeah, already talked about that.
Tuesday was the back-to-work-for-real day. No more break now until Thanksgiving. On Tuesday, the hurricane, which had been inflicting mayhem on the Gulf Coast, decided to swing north and cause some mayhem up here instead. As a consequence, on my way to an interview for a job in the afternoon, I was completely doused by a sudden rain shower, which turned out to be just the precursor. During RUF, I had a breakdown moment and had to go outside, and was "rewarded" (or comforted or something) with the sight of a violently beautiful sunset: flaming yellow-green on the horizon, turning slightly aquamarine, running up to a thick bank of flat grey clouds, which were all ominous pale greens and pinks and blues underneath where the light caught them.
Wednesday was another insane day. Lunch with Rachel, Crystal, and Emily, during which Crystal and Emily discussed Greek declensions; flute practice; PHIL 2113, in which I invariably want to shoot myself because the professor goes on so many uninteresting rabbit trails despite the fact that the stated material of the course should be so interesting; then helping Alisha and Hannah color a banner to advertise RUF's game night tonight; then racing back to our apartment to help Rachel and Bob move the two sofas that Rachel and I have adopted. The day was cool and cloudy, and a thin soaking mizzle was falling. Philip had declared that he wasn't moving furniture in the rain, so Bob, Rachel, and I had to get the first, coincidentally the heaviest, couch down from Jennifer's third-floor apartment and onto Bob's truck by ourselves. Then Bob rang James, who came over to help move that couch into our apartment and then to pick up the smaller loveseat from Nicole's apartment. So that happened, and then after tea there was the RUF game night in the fishbowl, the big glass-windowed meeting room just beside the cafeteria. We had a good group of people and drew in plenty of new people, mostly freshmen attracted by the noise and lights from the Wii, Nintendo, DDR, and so on.
Thursday was the day of the study abroad returnee dinner. Because the day was cool, I wore my rugby jersey, which was a little bit weird, but whatever. Turns out that I was accepted for the post of staff writer at the study abroad office. Also turns out that wherever they got their curry from for the dinner makes a curry almost identical to that place on the Lisburn Road that Rachel, Emmaline, and I went to all the time during the first week of exams. Turns out furthermore that there's a student at the University of Tulsa in the BEI program from the University of Ulster. Ciaran, one of the most energetic people I've met in my life, incredibly outgoing, showed up after the meeting was over with two or three American students in tow, whom he is already busy persuading to study abroad in Belfast.
Walking back from the study abroad dinner at about eight o'clock in the evening, I was again met by an incredible sunset. The sky has a pellucid shine, translucent, almost violent in its brilliance these evenings. Tonight it was orange and gold at the horizon, as though the illumination from a medieval psalter had become somehow alive, and aquamarine above, and deep, deep blue above that. I saw fireflies and a bat, both unusual at this late point in the summer. I sauntered, strolled, watching the light striking through the library windows, rippling in the panes of one of the downstairs wings, watching the horizon deepen rapidly from saffron to scarlet to rust red to umber.
Back in the apartment, I settled down to study. Rachel came whistling up the stairs.
Yesterday I met with my advisor after lunch. She encouraged me strongly to take a year out before going to postgraduate school--liberating. She also gave me permission to do the outlandish senior project I've proposed: a study of translation of Beowulf, how different translations over time change the text, how translations reflect their own particular part of history--incorporating my own creative writing, probably about transience. I went to senior seminar later in the afternoon, in which we examined the Genesis account of the creation of Eve, and our culture's responses and dialogues with that incident.
I spent late afternoon and evening at Jenny and Andrew's apartment. Jenny and I put Classical records on Andrew's LP player and cooked Thai curry. Coconut milk, fish oil, soy sauce and sweet soy sauce, fresh ginger root, Indonesian satay paste, Thai curry paste, beef, potatoes.... For the first time in months I was almost completely at home. Jenny took a shower while the curry bubbled on the stove, and I was able to write poetry, scribbled in the margins of HON 3003 reading. At about eight o'clock, we sat down to eat--Andrew had come back from his afternoon of meetings; Philip, Rachel S., and the Tyree brothers all came. Andrew said that the curry reminded him "of a Thai curry/Irish stew fusion" because the potatoes had practically dissolved into the curry.
Today was quiet. Nicole came over at lunch so that she and I could discuss the logistics of leading Bible studies. In the late afternoon, after having a ridiculous e-mail tag conversation, I rang Emmaline, and we spent a good hour-and-a-half talking (and it still wasn't long enough, as I realized after, for us to tell and ask), with interruptions courtesy Nathanael, Reuben, and Eleanor, who told me that I sound American. (!) Rachel and I ate our tea on the library lawn, the sunset modulated by a ragged cloud bank coming out of the west. We've spent a good quiet evening in our apartment, revising with all the windows open to the cool evening air. I'm listening to the playlist of music I sent to Emmaline on a couple of CDs. Rachel is sitting curled up in the corner of what used to be the pink couch. Now it's swathed in a blue cover. The lamplight is glossy on her dark hair. Outside, cars zip through the car park, blasting out hip hop or techno, and emergency sirens wail away beyond the edge of campus.
"It's gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day...."
First, a quote from John Calvin (always a safe place to start).
"… He is merciful towards the merciful, and pure towards the pure. God never disappoints His servants, but always at length deals graciously with them, provided they wait for His aid with meekness and patience…. The scope of this discourse is, that the people of God should entertain good hope, and encourage themselves to practice uprightness and integrity, since every man shall reap the fruit of his own righteousness.
As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless. The phrase, the way of God, is not here taken for His revealed will, but for His method of dealing towards His people. The meaning, therefore, is, that God never disappoints or deceives His servants, nor forsakes them in the time of need… but faithfully defends and maintains those whom He has once taken under His protection. But we will never have any nearness to God, unless He first come near to us by His word…. Let us, therefore, rest assured that God will actually show Himself upright towards us, seeing He has promised to be the guardian and protector of our welfare, and His promise is certain and infallible truth." (John Calvin, Heart Aflame, Psalm 18:25-39)
This was Labor Day week here, which means that we had Monday off from uni. Which meant that I spent most of Monday splashing in Skiatook Lake with about twenty RUFfians. It didn't feel like a big group, probably because I knew all of them. So, yeah, already talked about that.
Tuesday was the back-to-work-for-real day. No more break now until Thanksgiving. On Tuesday, the hurricane, which had been inflicting mayhem on the Gulf Coast, decided to swing north and cause some mayhem up here instead. As a consequence, on my way to an interview for a job in the afternoon, I was completely doused by a sudden rain shower, which turned out to be just the precursor. During RUF, I had a breakdown moment and had to go outside, and was "rewarded" (or comforted or something) with the sight of a violently beautiful sunset: flaming yellow-green on the horizon, turning slightly aquamarine, running up to a thick bank of flat grey clouds, which were all ominous pale greens and pinks and blues underneath where the light caught them.
Wednesday was another insane day. Lunch with Rachel, Crystal, and Emily, during which Crystal and Emily discussed Greek declensions; flute practice; PHIL 2113, in which I invariably want to shoot myself because the professor goes on so many uninteresting rabbit trails despite the fact that the stated material of the course should be so interesting; then helping Alisha and Hannah color a banner to advertise RUF's game night tonight; then racing back to our apartment to help Rachel and Bob move the two sofas that Rachel and I have adopted. The day was cool and cloudy, and a thin soaking mizzle was falling. Philip had declared that he wasn't moving furniture in the rain, so Bob, Rachel, and I had to get the first, coincidentally the heaviest, couch down from Jennifer's third-floor apartment and onto Bob's truck by ourselves. Then Bob rang James, who came over to help move that couch into our apartment and then to pick up the smaller loveseat from Nicole's apartment. So that happened, and then after tea there was the RUF game night in the fishbowl, the big glass-windowed meeting room just beside the cafeteria. We had a good group of people and drew in plenty of new people, mostly freshmen attracted by the noise and lights from the Wii, Nintendo, DDR, and so on.
Thursday was the day of the study abroad returnee dinner. Because the day was cool, I wore my rugby jersey, which was a little bit weird, but whatever. Turns out that I was accepted for the post of staff writer at the study abroad office. Also turns out that wherever they got their curry from for the dinner makes a curry almost identical to that place on the Lisburn Road that Rachel, Emmaline, and I went to all the time during the first week of exams. Turns out furthermore that there's a student at the University of Tulsa in the BEI program from the University of Ulster. Ciaran, one of the most energetic people I've met in my life, incredibly outgoing, showed up after the meeting was over with two or three American students in tow, whom he is already busy persuading to study abroad in Belfast.
Walking back from the study abroad dinner at about eight o'clock in the evening, I was again met by an incredible sunset. The sky has a pellucid shine, translucent, almost violent in its brilliance these evenings. Tonight it was orange and gold at the horizon, as though the illumination from a medieval psalter had become somehow alive, and aquamarine above, and deep, deep blue above that. I saw fireflies and a bat, both unusual at this late point in the summer. I sauntered, strolled, watching the light striking through the library windows, rippling in the panes of one of the downstairs wings, watching the horizon deepen rapidly from saffron to scarlet to rust red to umber.
Back in the apartment, I settled down to study. Rachel came whistling up the stairs.
Yesterday I met with my advisor after lunch. She encouraged me strongly to take a year out before going to postgraduate school--liberating. She also gave me permission to do the outlandish senior project I've proposed: a study of translation of Beowulf, how different translations over time change the text, how translations reflect their own particular part of history--incorporating my own creative writing, probably about transience. I went to senior seminar later in the afternoon, in which we examined the Genesis account of the creation of Eve, and our culture's responses and dialogues with that incident.
I spent late afternoon and evening at Jenny and Andrew's apartment. Jenny and I put Classical records on Andrew's LP player and cooked Thai curry. Coconut milk, fish oil, soy sauce and sweet soy sauce, fresh ginger root, Indonesian satay paste, Thai curry paste, beef, potatoes.... For the first time in months I was almost completely at home. Jenny took a shower while the curry bubbled on the stove, and I was able to write poetry, scribbled in the margins of HON 3003 reading. At about eight o'clock, we sat down to eat--Andrew had come back from his afternoon of meetings; Philip, Rachel S., and the Tyree brothers all came. Andrew said that the curry reminded him "of a Thai curry/Irish stew fusion" because the potatoes had practically dissolved into the curry.
Today was quiet. Nicole came over at lunch so that she and I could discuss the logistics of leading Bible studies. In the late afternoon, after having a ridiculous e-mail tag conversation, I rang Emmaline, and we spent a good hour-and-a-half talking (and it still wasn't long enough, as I realized after, for us to tell and ask), with interruptions courtesy Nathanael, Reuben, and Eleanor, who told me that I sound American. (!) Rachel and I ate our tea on the library lawn, the sunset modulated by a ragged cloud bank coming out of the west. We've spent a good quiet evening in our apartment, revising with all the windows open to the cool evening air. I'm listening to the playlist of music I sent to Emmaline on a couple of CDs. Rachel is sitting curled up in the corner of what used to be the pink couch. Now it's swathed in a blue cover. The lamplight is glossy on her dark hair. Outside, cars zip through the car park, blasting out hip hop or techno, and emergency sirens wail away beyond the edge of campus.
"It's gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day...."
01 September 2008
no white rabbits for me
Now Playing: Johannes Brahms, Violin Concerto in D, Op. 77 - Track 1, Allegro non troppo.
Last night, RUF had a campout at Lake Skiatook, about an hour north of Tulsa. At six o'clock, after I'd eaten some tea, I packed up the venerable Tank, which goes ten miles an hour faster than listed on its speedometer, and set out to join them. The early evening was beautiful, rich colors on the hills, sleepy greens and blues fading away into hazy distances as the sun began to set.
Off the interstate, driving down more tiny winding roads between high shoulders of grass eventually took me over a bridge over the lake, then down another gravel road, then to the campground, a thickly wooded peninsula (black oak) lined with campsites. Puttering slowly through the campground was an experience not to be forgotten. I scanned each campsite to see if I recognized the people, and at nearly every campsite I was greeted with the stares of tribes of quintessential rednecks: cut-offs, beer, cigarettes, fresh sunburns over old tans, faded baseball caps. I was exceedingly thankful finally to recognize the group standing round the campfire on the east side of the peninsula. Here dusk had already fallen. Ange and Alisha were eating hoboes by the picnic table. John was finishing cooking on the grill. Everyone else was gathered round the campfire on camp chairs: Joseph Tyree, Allison, Hannah, Jenny H., Philip, Matt, Josh Clutter, Rachel and Amy Scholz, DMac, Charlie, Spencer, the Knorr kids, and others. Eventually Asher and Leslie joined us.
Dusk fell quickly. The fire in the center of its ring burned hot and bright. Josh took the kayak out onto the water and paddled out to the big island east of the shore, a fair distance. From along the shore on either side came the noises of other people's camps--the generator of the RV next to us; the talk from the group on the other side. DMac, Spencer, Josh, and Charlie brought out instruments. A mandolin, a harmonica, a couple of guitars. They strummed for awhile, and the group round the campfire talked, faces becoming flushed in the firelight.
I sat back in the shadows at the picnic table with Jenny H., Alisha, and Charis. Alisha dozed off in one of the chairs, but Charis sat on Jenny's lap and wiggled for about two hours, pretending to dance, eating chips and cookies, singing pop songs and hymns along with Jenny. I sat beside them on a box and laughed. Slowly the sky turned from blue to black, and stars flowered, one by one, then in clusters, then in hundreds and thousands: the Milky Way was arching right over us, and the sky, just before the trees blocked it, teemed with stars, nameless millions. It was astonishingly beautiful.
So the evening passed. The guitars and mandolins strummed away; people drifted away to take the kayak out on the dark water or sat round the campfire and sang. For awhile, I sat with them and listened to the hymns they were singing, "For All the Saints", "The Sands of Time", "Be Thou My Vision", "There Is a Fountain". Alisha suggested a couple of Psalms from the RUF collection, but because they hadn't been sung in so long, Spencer had difficulty remembering the chords, and because I don't usually sing these versions, I had difficulty remembering the words.
I sat for a long time, and then I walked a little bit, though not far, for I wanted to stay in the darkness between the firelight from our camp circle and the lamplight from the people next to us. In that dark space I could see the stars. As a miracle, I slowly began to notice that the stars were actually reflected in the water. Jupiter's reflection danced on the tiny waves, and around it the other star reflections gathered. I had seen such things in a painting from The Silmarillion, but thought of them as only being something from a book--now, I was astounded by the sheer loveliness of the long starlight on the water. Superfluous beauty, in the face of God's eternal attributes of truth, goodness, beauty, purity, holiness--yet He chooses to sustain and support it. I, too, am infinitely superfluous, and so deserve nothing that He gives me. Looking back over my shoulder at the campfire, I could hear John telling everyone good-night; looking ahead out over the dark water, I could see the little red gleam of someone's headlamp where Alisha and Ange were out paddling the canoe.
Satisfied, I quietly walked back to the campsite, skirted the campfire, and lay down in one of the big tents in my clothes. I'd unrolled my sleeping bag earlier in a corner, and as it turned out, I was right next to Charis. Charis, also, had just crawled into her sleeping bag. We lay and pulled faces at each other for awhile. Then, just as we were both drifting off, someone passing by put one of the guitars down on my head. I bounced up, rubbing my head, and Charis and I both laughed.
It took awhile to get to sleep, of course. Voices, the flicker of the campfire, shadows going past outside the tent. Alisha and the Knorr girls, whose friend Arianna is with us, crept into the tent awhile later. I drifted off eventually.
This morning, it must've been about half six or seven o'clock when I woke up. At first, I could just see the pale silver of morning beginning to seep through the tent walls. Then I began to hear people moving around, Ange starting to try to find food to cook for breakfast. Someone started a jet ski down the beach. I wriggled out of the tent. I found Jenny H. We took Charis out in the canoe. The water was still quiet, the sunshine warm, beginning to be hot. Our campsite was quiet, too, Ange and John just starting to fix breakfast. Josh had already taken the kayak out. Jenny paddled for awhile, but then Charis insisted that she be allowed to paddle, so we let her stand in the middle of the boat and paddle away. We didn't go very far very fast this way, but it was still fun. Out near the island, we ran into Josh (literally), who splashed Charis (and Jenny and me in the process) because she had splashed him. We mucked about out on the water. Charis nearly paddled us in circles. After awhile, she turned us around, and we made our way very slowly back to the camp.
Josh finished with the kayak, so Jenny took Charis out in it: it was very amusing to see Jenny sitting in the stern of the little yellow kayak while Charis stood in front of her and poled as though she were a backwards gondolier. They inched slowly out onto the water, leaving a silver wake trembling behind. I went up to the campsite. Nearly everyone was up, though as Josh remarked to me, Philip is always the last one. Ange and John had cooked eggs and bacon for breakfast in three enormous metal skillets on the fire. I ate my share as well as a little bit of instant oatmeal, and finished in time to take the kayak from Jenny and Charis when they came back.
I'd been wanting to try the kayak since I'd arrived. It was lovely to be out on the water, surrounded by the quietness of the morning. I paddled out and all the way around the island and back again. The sun was rising white hot and bright in a heat-bleached sky. Boats were beginning to come out on the water, speed boats, jet skis, and little flat-bottomed fishing boats. As I paddled myself round the edge of the island, I spotted an osprey flying slowly low above the trees. I watched the beautiful endless patterns the water made around the kayak blades.
For awhile back at camp I sat under the trees with Matt and Alisha and listened to them talk about their work. Then I walked with Philip and Charlie over to "the rocks", a spot on the other side of the peninsula. Most of the rest of our group was already over there. We had to scramble down a sandy trail through straggling oak woods to get to "the rocks", and then we ran out onto a huge boulder and jumped into the green water below. The shock of hitting the water took my breath away, and my loving little brother helped so much by dunking me twice after. I swam, gasping, to a long narrow shelf of sandstone jutting just under the water's surface and perched there with everyone else: the Knorr girls, Rachel Scholz, DMac, and others. Charis was bobbing through the water like a little fish. Allison and Hannah came swimming up, having swam all the way out to the far shore (a low green stretch of land above which the far cliff rose, crowned with trees) and back. Alisha, Ange, and John joined us after awhile, coming slowly down through the trees. Alisha and Ange perched up on the big rock.
The Knorr girls, Rachel, and Arianna took the kayak out a couple of times, but they always managed to tip it over (five is way too many for a kayak), to the great amusement of the guys, who invariably had to swim out and help them tow it back to shore and empty it out.
I swam out into the lake and lay on my back. Tipped my head back: two hundred seventy degrees of hot blue sky above and around me, then the edge of green shore, then the flat expanse of water, blue where the sun hit it, green close by. I could watch everyone from here. Sky, then the thick oak woods, then the slouch of fallen sandstone tumbling down to the water, where everyone was perched at the water's edge. On either side of this fall of stone were two big sandstone boulders, and John was diving off the one on the right--beautiful compact dives and tight muscular flips. Josh and Charis were following him. Alisha and Matt were both trying to learn how to dive, and failing humorously. DMac and Joseph T. were skipping stones off the flat water. Most of the boys practiced skipping stones. DMac managed to skip a great big flat rock, about four inches thick, three times. We clapped for John's dives and laughed at Matt's belly-flops.
We spent all morning there. It was beautiful. I saw an osprey dive onto the water and then flap slowly back towards the sky again. Speed boats and boats with water skiers went past, casting up great green waves that crashed on the smoothed sandstone. The water out in the sunshine began to be hot, but in the shade it was still cool.
Around noon, people began to be tired and hungry. Back at the campsite, we ate lunch: bread, meat, mayonnaise, oreos. John sat in a chair in the sun and declaimed a long monologue about the wonders of oreos, while we all sat sleepily in the sunshine around the campfire circle and laughed. Far out on the water between the shore and the island, Jenny and Spencer were swimming toward shore. We spent a very relaxed hour lounging in the bright sunshine, eating oreos, talking quietly.
At about one o'clock, we started to pack up. Then I said good-bye to everyone and drove Hannah, Rachel, and Allison back to Tulsa. It was less than an hour's drive. Suddenly the big pale silhouettes of the skyscrapers loomed out of the bleached sky.
Last night, RUF had a campout at Lake Skiatook, about an hour north of Tulsa. At six o'clock, after I'd eaten some tea, I packed up the venerable Tank, which goes ten miles an hour faster than listed on its speedometer, and set out to join them. The early evening was beautiful, rich colors on the hills, sleepy greens and blues fading away into hazy distances as the sun began to set.
Off the interstate, driving down more tiny winding roads between high shoulders of grass eventually took me over a bridge over the lake, then down another gravel road, then to the campground, a thickly wooded peninsula (black oak) lined with campsites. Puttering slowly through the campground was an experience not to be forgotten. I scanned each campsite to see if I recognized the people, and at nearly every campsite I was greeted with the stares of tribes of quintessential rednecks: cut-offs, beer, cigarettes, fresh sunburns over old tans, faded baseball caps. I was exceedingly thankful finally to recognize the group standing round the campfire on the east side of the peninsula. Here dusk had already fallen. Ange and Alisha were eating hoboes by the picnic table. John was finishing cooking on the grill. Everyone else was gathered round the campfire on camp chairs: Joseph Tyree, Allison, Hannah, Jenny H., Philip, Matt, Josh Clutter, Rachel and Amy Scholz, DMac, Charlie, Spencer, the Knorr kids, and others. Eventually Asher and Leslie joined us.
Dusk fell quickly. The fire in the center of its ring burned hot and bright. Josh took the kayak out onto the water and paddled out to the big island east of the shore, a fair distance. From along the shore on either side came the noises of other people's camps--the generator of the RV next to us; the talk from the group on the other side. DMac, Spencer, Josh, and Charlie brought out instruments. A mandolin, a harmonica, a couple of guitars. They strummed for awhile, and the group round the campfire talked, faces becoming flushed in the firelight.
I sat back in the shadows at the picnic table with Jenny H., Alisha, and Charis. Alisha dozed off in one of the chairs, but Charis sat on Jenny's lap and wiggled for about two hours, pretending to dance, eating chips and cookies, singing pop songs and hymns along with Jenny. I sat beside them on a box and laughed. Slowly the sky turned from blue to black, and stars flowered, one by one, then in clusters, then in hundreds and thousands: the Milky Way was arching right over us, and the sky, just before the trees blocked it, teemed with stars, nameless millions. It was astonishingly beautiful.
So the evening passed. The guitars and mandolins strummed away; people drifted away to take the kayak out on the dark water or sat round the campfire and sang. For awhile, I sat with them and listened to the hymns they were singing, "For All the Saints", "The Sands of Time", "Be Thou My Vision", "There Is a Fountain". Alisha suggested a couple of Psalms from the RUF collection, but because they hadn't been sung in so long, Spencer had difficulty remembering the chords, and because I don't usually sing these versions, I had difficulty remembering the words.
I sat for a long time, and then I walked a little bit, though not far, for I wanted to stay in the darkness between the firelight from our camp circle and the lamplight from the people next to us. In that dark space I could see the stars. As a miracle, I slowly began to notice that the stars were actually reflected in the water. Jupiter's reflection danced on the tiny waves, and around it the other star reflections gathered. I had seen such things in a painting from The Silmarillion, but thought of them as only being something from a book--now, I was astounded by the sheer loveliness of the long starlight on the water. Superfluous beauty, in the face of God's eternal attributes of truth, goodness, beauty, purity, holiness--yet He chooses to sustain and support it. I, too, am infinitely superfluous, and so deserve nothing that He gives me. Looking back over my shoulder at the campfire, I could hear John telling everyone good-night; looking ahead out over the dark water, I could see the little red gleam of someone's headlamp where Alisha and Ange were out paddling the canoe.
Satisfied, I quietly walked back to the campsite, skirted the campfire, and lay down in one of the big tents in my clothes. I'd unrolled my sleeping bag earlier in a corner, and as it turned out, I was right next to Charis. Charis, also, had just crawled into her sleeping bag. We lay and pulled faces at each other for awhile. Then, just as we were both drifting off, someone passing by put one of the guitars down on my head. I bounced up, rubbing my head, and Charis and I both laughed.
It took awhile to get to sleep, of course. Voices, the flicker of the campfire, shadows going past outside the tent. Alisha and the Knorr girls, whose friend Arianna is with us, crept into the tent awhile later. I drifted off eventually.
This morning, it must've been about half six or seven o'clock when I woke up. At first, I could just see the pale silver of morning beginning to seep through the tent walls. Then I began to hear people moving around, Ange starting to try to find food to cook for breakfast. Someone started a jet ski down the beach. I wriggled out of the tent. I found Jenny H. We took Charis out in the canoe. The water was still quiet, the sunshine warm, beginning to be hot. Our campsite was quiet, too, Ange and John just starting to fix breakfast. Josh had already taken the kayak out. Jenny paddled for awhile, but then Charis insisted that she be allowed to paddle, so we let her stand in the middle of the boat and paddle away. We didn't go very far very fast this way, but it was still fun. Out near the island, we ran into Josh (literally), who splashed Charis (and Jenny and me in the process) because she had splashed him. We mucked about out on the water. Charis nearly paddled us in circles. After awhile, she turned us around, and we made our way very slowly back to the camp.
Josh finished with the kayak, so Jenny took Charis out in it: it was very amusing to see Jenny sitting in the stern of the little yellow kayak while Charis stood in front of her and poled as though she were a backwards gondolier. They inched slowly out onto the water, leaving a silver wake trembling behind. I went up to the campsite. Nearly everyone was up, though as Josh remarked to me, Philip is always the last one. Ange and John had cooked eggs and bacon for breakfast in three enormous metal skillets on the fire. I ate my share as well as a little bit of instant oatmeal, and finished in time to take the kayak from Jenny and Charis when they came back.
I'd been wanting to try the kayak since I'd arrived. It was lovely to be out on the water, surrounded by the quietness of the morning. I paddled out and all the way around the island and back again. The sun was rising white hot and bright in a heat-bleached sky. Boats were beginning to come out on the water, speed boats, jet skis, and little flat-bottomed fishing boats. As I paddled myself round the edge of the island, I spotted an osprey flying slowly low above the trees. I watched the beautiful endless patterns the water made around the kayak blades.
For awhile back at camp I sat under the trees with Matt and Alisha and listened to them talk about their work. Then I walked with Philip and Charlie over to "the rocks", a spot on the other side of the peninsula. Most of the rest of our group was already over there. We had to scramble down a sandy trail through straggling oak woods to get to "the rocks", and then we ran out onto a huge boulder and jumped into the green water below. The shock of hitting the water took my breath away, and my loving little brother helped so much by dunking me twice after. I swam, gasping, to a long narrow shelf of sandstone jutting just under the water's surface and perched there with everyone else: the Knorr girls, Rachel Scholz, DMac, and others. Charis was bobbing through the water like a little fish. Allison and Hannah came swimming up, having swam all the way out to the far shore (a low green stretch of land above which the far cliff rose, crowned with trees) and back. Alisha, Ange, and John joined us after awhile, coming slowly down through the trees. Alisha and Ange perched up on the big rock.
The Knorr girls, Rachel, and Arianna took the kayak out a couple of times, but they always managed to tip it over (five is way too many for a kayak), to the great amusement of the guys, who invariably had to swim out and help them tow it back to shore and empty it out.
I swam out into the lake and lay on my back. Tipped my head back: two hundred seventy degrees of hot blue sky above and around me, then the edge of green shore, then the flat expanse of water, blue where the sun hit it, green close by. I could watch everyone from here. Sky, then the thick oak woods, then the slouch of fallen sandstone tumbling down to the water, where everyone was perched at the water's edge. On either side of this fall of stone were two big sandstone boulders, and John was diving off the one on the right--beautiful compact dives and tight muscular flips. Josh and Charis were following him. Alisha and Matt were both trying to learn how to dive, and failing humorously. DMac and Joseph T. were skipping stones off the flat water. Most of the boys practiced skipping stones. DMac managed to skip a great big flat rock, about four inches thick, three times. We clapped for John's dives and laughed at Matt's belly-flops.
We spent all morning there. It was beautiful. I saw an osprey dive onto the water and then flap slowly back towards the sky again. Speed boats and boats with water skiers went past, casting up great green waves that crashed on the smoothed sandstone. The water out in the sunshine began to be hot, but in the shade it was still cool.
Around noon, people began to be tired and hungry. Back at the campsite, we ate lunch: bread, meat, mayonnaise, oreos. John sat in a chair in the sun and declaimed a long monologue about the wonders of oreos, while we all sat sleepily in the sunshine around the campfire circle and laughed. Far out on the water between the shore and the island, Jenny and Spencer were swimming toward shore. We spent a very relaxed hour lounging in the bright sunshine, eating oreos, talking quietly.
At about one o'clock, we started to pack up. Then I said good-bye to everyone and drove Hannah, Rachel, and Allison back to Tulsa. It was less than an hour's drive. Suddenly the big pale silhouettes of the skyscrapers loomed out of the bleached sky.
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