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.