Now Playing: Mozart, "Requiem in D Minor", "Agnus Dei".

Rachel just got off her mobile and is glowing, having solved a problem with a jump bidding spreadsheet with her father's help.

Today I sat through an hour-and-a-half seminar about applying to graduate school with Rachel and about fifty other students. One comforting thing was that I already knew a lot of the things that were said. It's always mildly reassuring to realize that one is not quite clueless, though that sensation was just barely enough to restrain the usual panic I begin to feel when embarking on any such venture.

It was more encouraging, though, to realize while I listened to the Dean speak that I am actually looking forward to this opportunity. It would be so pleasant to be able to set aside Philosophy of Art, Honors, and even Music History to be able to focus completely on senior project right now. Dr. S lent me a lovely book about book history a couple of weeks ago, full of samples of manuscript and print from Roman times to the present. Unlike some scholarly historical books, this one actually takes an unashamed stance for the idea that form and meaning are intimately united and that the form does convey a certain specific range of meaning. Refreshing, and a beautiful read.

Considering graduate school, it's tempting to start to get bent out of shape. In fact, that's usually what happens as soon as I start contemplating the reams of paper that will have to be consumed to fill out applications and all the stiffly polite e-mails that will have to be sent to professors and advisors.

I was wondering tonight why I ought to bother with this anyway. I've wondered about it many times. I've vented on here so much about how much I've hated certain English classes I've been in. Perhaps it would be better to quit and find a nice quiet sinecure somewhere to keep me occupied. I find, though, that the job market is my refuge, a place of escape whenever I decide that graduate school is just too hard.

Tonight as I was walking back from the gym, thinking about these things, I was reminded of Psalm 23, "He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake." Whenever I contemplate the truth in the verse from Galatians 2, which God brought to my attention this past Sabbath morning as I was skimming through the book, where Paul speaks of Christ as "He who loved me and gave Himself for me", I am motivated to seek this goal as a way to reflect that glory. Truth and beauty, and the Word made flesh.

I certainly won't attain it on my own: the fear and lack of skill and opportunity that are natural to this nature would be more than enough to keep me back. But as Rachel reminded me wisely, desire, aptitude, and opportunity are gifts of God, and when those three come together, they often demonstrate His guidance.

Last night I was talking with Elizabeth on the phone and realized, with a sort of silly blinking amazement, that life has been rather dreadful lately. All sorts of pieces that I thought were fairly stable have come apart; the future is uncertain; assumptions that I had made are being proved wrong, and usually because of sin. Sin is unpleasant to have to deal with, and even more unpleasant is the realization that this disgusting sin nature actually likes sin and prefers to sit and enjoy it, no matter how painful it is. One has to be hauled kicking and screaming away from that.

Away from that, and towards something else. Learning lessons over again, perhaps. Last March in Ballyclabber I heard a sermon on Psalm 46 and was reminded of it tonight. Christ is not named Prince of Peace for nothing. Even further back, there was a moment when Psalm 84, "Blessed is the man who trusts in you," overwhelmed my mind with a sense of the Lord's love. Repentance and recognition of God's grace makes that blessing real. Since some hideous days, things in outside "life" have actually gotten worse, but things in inside "life" have somehow curled up into a childish complacency.

I certainly don't believe it enough, but God is sovereign, loves us, and gave Himself for us. It's odd to find oneself clinging to that with a sort of resignation: "Oh, look, everything is way too much for me to carry. Well, I guess you can have it, then." It's really ridiculous in a black way how much ugliness has to happen before that resignation and repentance can begin.

One thing for which I am very thankful: I am not supposed to be Christ. Pastor O'Dowd preached last night on Ephesians 2, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you...." I had always thought the "fear and trembling" bit meant fear and trembling that I would somehow not do something God had foreordained for me to do, and that it would lose me the richness of the reward. But that's again ridiculous. The fear and trembling is that people would think we're able to do this on our own, without God who works in us and Christ who "became obedient to the point of death".

The Gospel doesn't expect us to be perfect; in fact, it expects us not to be perfect--so that Christ can be perfect and forgive us. Sin keeps people from mistaking me for Him. I want to glory in my perfection; I ought to glory in my imperfection, and the fact that Christ keeps loving me anyway, despite my stark blindness and insistent refusal to believe any of this.

Well, it's tomorrow now. Bach's "Passacaille and Fugue" has just ended, and on that note (haha, pun--Asher was making dreadful musical ones in RUF last night) I shall go to sleep.