Now Playing: Coldplay, "Viva La Vida".

“As it is with a vessel that is full of liquor, if you strike it, it will make no great noise, but if it is empty then it makes a great noise; so it is with the heart, a heart that is full of grace and goodness within will bear a great many strokes, and never make any noise, but if an empty heart is struck it will make a noise.”

- Burroughs, of course

Vivid reminder to be careful not to complain when struck.

Now Playing: Beethoven, Violin Concerto, "Allegro Non Troppo".

Currently I have an annoyingly peppy song stuck in my head, one of the ones we used to listen to all the time in N.I. because it was always on the radio. Last term one of my classmates in HON brought it up and explained the lyrics, which completely ruined the song for me.

Today was long. Rachel left early for her eight o'clock this morning, of course, and because I was meant to meet with Emily at ten o'clock to study for HIST, my usual Wednesday routine was rather rushed.

As I left for the gym, I surprised a pair of house finches sitting on the railings outside the apartment. There's a family of them that lives in the gutters above our windows, I think.

So at ten o'clock I went to the library. When Emily arrived, we went upstairs to the study lounge, where they just installed new trendy furniture. We studied until noon for our HIST midterm on Friday, checking each other's dates and so forth.

At noon, we both dashed off to our next engagements, me to a lunch in ACAC for ENGL 4863. Poet Carla Harryman was visiting today, and Dr. J had arranged lunch with her in one of the conference rooms upstairs. It turned out to be very relaxed.

After lunch, I went to Tyrrell to practice flute. Whitney and another girl from class were giving Ms. H a tour of campus, and they walked past and waved in the window at me as I was in the midst of Bach. After practice, I went to ENGL at two o'clock. (No HIST today.) The afternoon was spectacularly warm, even moist. I walked across the Commons, as the "new U" is officially called.

Sun on arms and face, smell of damp grass underfoot.... C.S. Lewis mentions in "The Weight of Glory" how at times we receive murmurs like "news of a far country we have never visited" that are echoes of Heaven slipping into our daily experience.

When I walked into The Collective, everyone was sitting round on the sofas in the second room, which was largely deserted except for class. And everyone was having a lively discussion about something. Ms. H has very definite ideas and likes to talk, it turns out. I spent three-quarters of class daydreaming as a result of being tired, on the brink of euphoria, and not liking her ideas very much.

She left at about four o'clock, at which point we took a break. I went for a walk down the side lane into the neighborhood. A saucer magnolia was blooming in front of an empty house. Heavy crown against a very high pale sky, a sky criss-crossed with contrails and thin high clouds. My feet almost didn't touch the ground after that.

The last half of class was spent revising our collaborative in-class exercise from last week. I paid attention then because I like editing. But when Dr. J started to talk about our etudes for this week, I began to daydream again, about Heaven and God's pleasure in His creatures. I almost wonder how knowing that sheer full satisfaction could not translate into flight.

Class ended at five o'clock. We sat around for awhile afterward, of course. I finally left, walked back to the apartment, dumped my flute and some of my books, lifted my Bible, and went to ACAC to meet Nicole and Kathryn to discuss Bible studies this week.

The Hut was ridiculously busy. Tonight is a game night, so loads of people were in. We found the only quiet booth we could. When Kathryn came, we ordered our food and spent most of the time discussing Hebrews 7-8, and some of the time discussing Psalm 139. I had to leave at a quarter to seven for Ms. H's poetry reading. Danielle and Claire (ENGL classmates) also happened to be in The Hut, so I walked over to the library with them. We had a ridiculous conversation about what Danielle was going to buy with her boyfriend's new high salary--a lion tamer, silk robes, kitties, dogs, a tiara, and a trampoline all made appearances at various points.

The reading was upstairs in the faculty study, where Will Alexander read last week. I sat at the back beside Laura and talked to her about "Stylus". I left at half seven and drove to Di's house for an RUF meeting.

When it was over at ten o'clock, Amy and I drove back to campus, talking about our respective days. Laughing shakily. RCS was studying in the apartment when I returned. I opened my laptop and discovered an amazing photo of EMM and CMAM making pancakes on Facebook. So now I'm drinking pomegranate juice and going to bed.

Now Playing: Felix Mendelssohn, "Violin Concerto".

“Of his fullness do we receive grace for grace; there is strength in Christ not only to sanctify and save us, but strength to support us under all our burdens and afflictions, and Christ expects that when we are under any burden, we should act our faith upon him to draw virtue and strength from him…. You will say, Can I have the strength of Christ? Yes, it is made over to you by faith: the Scripture says that the Lord is our strength, God himself is our strength, and Christ is our strength. There are many Scriptures to that effect, that Christ’s strength is yours, made over to you, so that you may be able to bear whatever lies upon you…. You must not therefore be content with a little strength… but you should be strengthened with all might, according to the glorious power of God….”

Why is it so hard to live as though this strength is really ours? In Ephesians 1, we are promised that God has given us every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus, and this strength that Burroughs points out is one of those blessings. Yet I do not experience this blessing. The barriers of unbelief and laziness--the fact that I can hardly discipline my mind to focus on these promises for more than five minutes while walking to class--probably have a lot to do with it. Isn't God the one who overcomes our sins, who is victorious over the enemy in us? Yet aren't we also responsible for our actions, for our obedience? Every time I begin to put forth strenuous effort, I become discouraged after awhile and relapse. But I'd far rather do that than trust God's grace more--that is just too terrifying. (!) Basically I'm afraid of believing that God loves me. The promises sound nice, but like Custard the dragon, I'd rather stay in my nice safe cage.

Now Playing: Brahms, "Requiem". Track 3, "Lord, Make Me To Know".

Still working through Burroughs.

“… what he does have he has by right of Jesus Christ, by the purchase of Jesus Christ…. the right that the saints have is a right of purchase: it is paid for, and it is their own, and they may in a holy manner and holy way claim whatever they have need of.” (Ch. 2)

This first one astonishes me now every time I sit down to eat a meal. Jesus Christ bought my oatmeal and tea with His blood...! That could be just a ridiculous juxtaposition of the extremely spiritual with the extremely banal, but perhaps it should more actually be a reminder of how close Christ is to us--willingly, freely, delighting to be so.

“Every little that they have is but as an earnest penny for all the glory that is reserved for them; it is given them by God as the forerunner of those eternal mercies that the Lord intends for them.” (Ch. 3)

I'm reminded again of Psalm 73. I tend to be like an animal, focusing only on the physical, when the physical is only a shadow of the spiritual blessings (and, ultimately, "trans-physical", to steal from C.S. Lewis) stored up in Christ.

Now Playing: Sweet silence.

Cyprus is for this summer, but before I go there, before Alyson comes back to the States, some of us are developing plans to go visit her/Belfast/other places that take our fancy. It's going to be a grand time.

Cliff.... How do I explain Cliff? If I say he was a good friend, I feel as though I am overstating the case for myself. If I say he was just a guy I knew, it's a grand understatement. I met him on the streets in Belfast with Rachel, Daphne, and co. last year. He'd come to the cafe on Tuesday nights and talk with us. We shared the Gospel and prayed with him. He's an older man, but whenever I ran into him on the street he'd kiss my hand and sing me a wee song about Tulsa. He used to work for an airline, so he flew through Tulsa, oddly enough. I don't know what else to say about him. So many people were closer to him than I was, but it still feels very strange to be all the way over here in the midst of this. He was a great performer, so friendly to everyone. He always embarrassed us somehow or other when he came to church, but it was alright. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that he's not here anymore.

~

So, more quotes from Burroughs:

"A little in this world will content a Christian for his passage, but all the world, and ten thousand times more, will not content a Christian for his portion."

Contentment is gained "not by adding more to [your] condition, but rather by subtracting from [your] desires, so as to make... desires and... condition even and equal."

Psalm 73, "God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever". As believers we ought to be able to travel through the world content with very little, while in the end desiring the greatest possession of all, if I may put it that way: God Himself. Accurate but hard to practice.

Easier to wake up these mornings—the routine of getting up at half seven and the fact that the sun is rising earlier. Also, an unaccountable joy has been capturing my heart and mind, an effervescence, even as recognition of my worthlessness weighs down.

Usual morning routine. The day was quite chilly, though very sunny and still. I practiced my flute and went to HON. After HON, Gavin, RCS, and I ate lunch together. We were an unusually quiet bunch, for the three of us. The two of them walked with me when I had to leave abruptly for Tyrrell at one o’clock. Flute lesson.

Professor R brought a Baroque flute to my lesson today. The delight of beautiful things…! One of the loveliest looking and sounding instruments I know turns out to be the Baroque flute. It’s shorter than the modern flute and stouter, though tapering considerably from headjoint to footjoint. It’s made out of European boxwood, Professor R explained, and because the wood must be thick enough before it can be used for the flute, the makers have to fell three-hundred-year-old trees in order to carve these instruments. The wood is a deep reddish brown with six small fingerholes and one lever on the footjoint. It has no lip plate, but only a hole in the headjoint. It’s lighter, smoother, more buoyant. No mechanism to interfere with finger movement, so trills and fast passages are much more fluid. The sound quality is entirely different as well. For one thing, it sounds a half step flat. Its sound is diffuse, mellow, open, haunting. I halted through a scale, and then Professor R played the opening of the Bach B minor sonata—lovely, silken. So we spent the rest of the lesson playing Blavet’s fifth sonata and trying to get my metal instrument to sound like his wooden one. It actually went alright. Both of us were enjoying ourselves, I think, until a quarter to two, when I had to leave abruptly yet again.

I went back to the apartment. At two o’clock, Sara W, the intern coordinator at Horn Creek, rang me for a phone interview. I sat in the oblong of sunshine on the floor and tried to answer her questions as honestly as possible. Inquiries along the lines of “How did you choose your college and your major? Do you have mentors? Describe your greatest strength. Describe your greatest weakness. Why do you want to work in a camp setting? What is your testimony and your relationship with Christ, especially over this last year? Have you ever been self-indulgent in your life? What are you reading right now?” and so forth. I had been extremely concerned about the interview. Not that it would go well, necessarily, but that I would be honest: after trying to answer questions like this, I always feel extremely fake.

After the half-hour interview, I spent the rest of the afternoon working on my ENGL 4993 “note” for Dr. E. I experience so much resistance right now to writing. It’s terrible. It took me an hour-and-a-half to write this one small one-page paper about “The Knight’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales. Ridiculous. RCS came back at three o’clock and worked quietly on her laptop. At four o’clock, I napped for half-an-hour. When I got up, I sat on the floor against the sofa and read Carla Harryman books for ENGL 4863. Listened to Beethoven’s violin concerto and Brahms’s second piano concerto. Since I wasn’t enjoying the poetry much at all, the music was even more beautiful, more rich, hearing harmonies I hadn’t encountered before. Evening came gradually outside, lingeringly.

RCS and I ate tea in the caf at six o’clock. Philip was in the caf at the same time, so we stopped to say hello to him. He was astonished that RCS is a black belt in tae kwon do, which he’s learning from a friend right now. RCS and I went back to our apartment. I was preparing to settle down to work before small group at seven o’clock when CMAM rang. Cliff’s funeral was today. She described vividly to me the scene in the common room: made me ache to be there so much.

Hannah showed up at seven o’clock for small group, so I prayed for CMAM on the phone, then said good-bye. Hannah, Rachel, RCS, and I made up the contingent tonight. We studied Psalm 8. Thanks to combined lack of sleep and dose of coffee, Hannah was slap-happy, which turned out to be contagious. We had some pretty whacky moments tonight. RCS talked about how human beings are “vanishingly small epsilons”, and Rachel said something about how “We are the crumbs of the universe.” It was a really good discussion, though, and then we prayed through the Psalm afterward. Bible study ended at half eight or so.

When the girls had left, Crystal came over. She’d been at the etiquette dinner tonight. She had a new issue of “Six thirty one” with her, which we perused with gusto, especially Alex’s article about surviving an earthquake while studying abroad. Crystal eventually succumbed to the red sofa, where she is currently stretched out, tapping her bare feet together and reading Guyland. RCS sits on the floor with her laptop in her pajamas, staring intently at the screen. I’ve been drinking lemon tea and eating animal crackers. Also replying to Facebook messages. I want to be reading a piece by Adorno for ENGL 4983, but my eyes and brain are tired. Was just talking to Nicole on the phone, too, laughing about how St. Augustine uses the phrase “brazenly stupid” in the middle of a philosophical teaching piece. Hooray for political incorrectness in ancient writers.

Now Playing: Blavet, Sonata for flute No. 5 in D Major. "Allegro".

Today's quote from Burroughs:

“I would unfold this further to you with this simile: To be content as a result of some external thing is like warming a man’s clothes by the fire. But to be content through an inward disposition of the soul is like the warmth that a man’s clothes have from the natural heat of his body.”

Now Playing: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 10, "Treebeard".

I've been reading The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs lately. His illustrations are pretty incredible. I think I shall post some favorite quotes I've found so far.

"So a well-tempered spirit may enquire after things outside in the world, and suffer some ordinary cares and fears to break into the suburbs of the soul, so as to touch lightly upon the thoughts. Yet it will not on any account allow an intrusion into the private room, which should be wholly reserved for Jesus Christ as his inward temple."

What a blessing it would be to be able to live by this rule, to have a "holy of holies" in one's mind and emotions reserved for Christ, a quiet place into which nothing could intrude.

Now Playing: Chris Thile, "Jessamyn's Reel". (Thank you, Anna.)

Today has been a microcosm of the truth that C.S. Lewis depicts in Out of the Silent Planet: experiences don't end when their physical presence ends but grow as they are remembered.

It actually started out darkly. Outside the day was overcast, moist, billows of mist blowing between the blocks of flats over the new U. After the routine, I went straight to practice my flute.

When I climbed out of the basement of Tyrrell, the morning had become sunny and warm. I sat on the wall outside the library with my face to the sunshine before HON and watched the cloud shadows drift over the green grass. One of those translucent foil-sheen days. Downtown skyline, grey building blocks against grey sky, illuminated in the foreground with sunshine, mist flowing lightly over them. Grey-blue sky, green grass.

In HON today we watched an awful DVD about commercial wrestling. I sat in the corner and stared out the window, trying hard not to look at the screen. It disgusts me that this exists in American culture, of course--the sheer depravity of it. "Total depravity" takes on a whole new meaning. Every part of life degraded, it would appear.

I was first out of the classroom and sat on a bench in the study lounge in Chapman. Sunshine full and warm on my face and body, drawing my anger to relax into sadness. Danielle sat beside me and chatted--after telling her what we'd seen in HON, I missed an excellent opportunity to share the Gospel. The desire to please people is ridiculously controlling, considering the eternal consequences.

Eventually I walked over to ACAC. Philip was just leaving work at Carrello's. Today in ACAC there was a poster sale, so he and I spent a good twenty minutes browsing together. They had set up tables in the atrium, and the tables were covered with enormous "books" of posters, each one with massive reinforced plastic pages holding the posters. They were so heavy that I could barely turn them, so I either struggled through them laboriously or looked over Philip's shoulder. We laughed at some of them and were disgusted by others, of course. I told him to get a Pirates of the Carribbean poster, and he told me to get a 300 poster.

We both pounced on a beautiful print of a Japanese painting of mountains and mist. He also bought a really cool cityscape of New York and a "trippy" poster (slightly Escher-esque) of a cathedral pouring into some sort of galactic whirl. I just bought the Japanese print. I was delighted to find exactly the same posters as Emmaline and I had had on our wall last year, as well as a map of Middle Earth (which was exorbitantly expensive). We pushed through the crowd of people milling among the tables, going through all the books of posters, handling the ones we chose gingerly.

After he left for class, I ate lunch with Rachel. The day had become so glorious that she suggested we sit outside. It was actually amazing to sit in the sun, feeling muscles melting in the warmth. Sparrows twittered in their nest in the lettering on the building. While we were eating, Gavin joined us. He had just been discussing the merits of science fiction as literature with some of the other guys from HON class. His recap of that discussion merged into a lively debate between he and Rachel about currency, time, money, and global economics, while I sat and listened, trying fitfully to pay attention and understand, mostly just enjoying their enthusiasm.

We walked back together, Gavin and Rachel still in deep debate. At about half two, I met Crystal, and she and I drove to the Gilcrease Museum. They have a new exhibit of American Impressionism. The exhibit itself was a little disappointing. Perhaps because the last time we had been in that gallery, it had been full of staggering Ansel Adams photographs, or perhaps because American Impressionism just isn't as good as European, we were rather under-whelmed. We went through the gallery in just an hour or so (it had taken us fully three hours to get through Ansel Adams, and in the end we left because we just couldn't absorb it any more, with two or three rooms left virtually untouched).

There were some lovely little landscapes, though, with the green-and-brown translucence of Corot, that captured both of us. Also a cityscape that I liked with Crayola box colors--if I had the big box I used to use when I was a kid, I could pull out the crayons with the names of each colors, even the mauves and greys, not to mention the primary blues, greens, reds, and yellows.

After we looked at the Impressionists, I took her briefly into the permanent collection to see that huge painting of the Shoshone Falls. There happened to be two tour groups of old people, both of which glowered fearsomely at us as we hurried through the galleries. We browsed through the museum store and then went outside. The afternoon was changing: the whole western sky was full of great wet grey clouds, hurrying east, and very, very high overhead, the lacy sharp edge of the front white against the blue sky.

We walked down into the park on the hill below the museum. The oak trees were tipped with hard bronze buds. In the soil on the hillside daffodils and tulips were beginning to break the leaf mould. We scrambled down the uneven sandstone paths to the ponds at the bottom of the hill. In the pond, an enormous turtle sat on the end of a log, watching us soberly. He didn't move when Crystal snapped his photo with her Nikon, and he still didn't move when she used the big noisy Polaroid. Shoals of fish and half-a-dozen smaller turtles paddled in the water underneath his log, but he just sat there, staring at us. Crystal nicknamed him the "turtle-osopher".

We drove back to campus. The west was becoming rapidly darker and darker. I was very, very sleepy. When I got back to the apartment, I boiled the kettle and made tea. Rachel came in. Worked for a couple of hours as dusk fell outside. I wrote a rough draft of my HON midterm. Rachel and I ate tea together in the caf. As we were walking to the caf, a sudden burst of lightning illuminated huge red towers of cloud in the west.

After tea, I worked more on HON. It began to rain suddenly, enormous fat drops splattering the window and the footpath outside. RUF was at eight o'clock. Just in time for us to leave, the storm became really bad. Thunder and lightning split the sky, purple and livid white; the black asphalt in the car park shone inches deep in water. It didn't look as though it was going to let up anytime soon, though, so I opened my umbrella, and Rachel pulled up her hood, and away we went.

Sheer adrenaline rush of splashing through puddles, practically wading, it seemed, in the gutters along the street, and ducking every time the lightning flashed.... Gasping and laughing, soaked to the skin, my jeans wet a good twelve inches above the hem. When the lightning flashed, we hurried, splashing even more, Rachel ploughing right through the puddles, me trying to skip around them and laughing at my inability to stay dry. We rushed and ran helter-skelter, pell-mell, as the lightning came closer and the thunder louder, and finally burst into Sharp Chapel soaked through.

Inside, Marc, Spencer, Charlie, and DMo were playing (guitars, mandolin, drum). In a corner, people were standing and chatting.

After RUF, I chatted with Jenny briefly. I was glancing around to find Nicole, and she was walking past me on her way to the door. She didn't have an umbrella, so I walked her back to her apartment. It was still raining, and the lightning and thunder were still rioting around the sky. The evening was much colder, though--soaked from the rain, shivering, we were both laughing, too, at the sheer outrageousness of the storm. Said good-night at her apartment.

I sprinted back to my apartment through the rain.

Now Playing: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 2, "Concerning Hobbits".

Late afternoon surprise:

Reaching into the bag of Cadbury’s chocolates that Emmaline sent for my birthday and pulling out a brightly-colored purple-and-orange one labeled “fudge”. Opening it, biting in, expecting the typical dark chocolate gooeyness—instead, met by the flaky, crystallized, faintly butterscotch flavor of NORTHERN IRISH fudge.

That, a mug of Tetley, enormous dark clouds promising a thunderstorm, an Honors paper, and a roommate discoursing enthusiastically about economics make up my afternoon.

“If you understand the grace of God, it makes the worst times bearable and the best times leavable.” – John Newton

Now Playing: New Song, "Enter His Presence". Psalm 73A-C.

Thankfully, God has given us Psalms for times like this. Also thankfully, Rachel has an eight o'clock class, so she wasn't in the apartment to listen to me mousing out Psalms in my early morning voice.

I "discovered" Psalm 73 last week, and this week it was Psalm 77. On Thursday Psalm 77 said exactly what I wanted. It was incredible. For me the "mighty deeds" of God included that Saturday in September a year ago hiking the Mournes: a taste of glory right there.

Tonight I went to an amazing guitar concert. Trace Bundy is a believer and an incredible artist. He uses acoustic guitar and electronic re-recorder in his performances to create some spectacular effects. Afterward, I went out to Braum's with the Klingamans, Crystal, and Matlock. Tulsa's version of McFlurries after ice skating. Crystal was wearing a highlighter orange wig and drinking frozen yogurt through a hot pink straw, and the Klingamans were making up intentionally awful book titles. Matlock made Crystal laugh until she cried, which was quite a sight to see.

Here are pictures from random times, by the way.

Now Playing: Arcangelo Corelli, "Concerto Grosso in F, Op. 6, No. 12, Giga, Allegro."

Good, happy music.

Rachel patiently put up with my frustration today over HON: our lecture today (discussion, actually) was all about "reproductive rights", i.e., abortion. Quite a lot of talk with nothing achieved as far as I was concerned. Quite a lot of raised voices, too. What irks me most is that there's no room for a "religion"-based argument. Even the pro-life arguments were all purely secular, written by Liberals. It felt like sinking into a quagmire of circular arguments and undefinable statements.

Reading our assigned popular textbook after class about contemporary masculine culture was even more depressing. The author makes it sound as though all young men are frat pledges, and the antidote to our ills is feminism, which will teach young men to respect women and be honorable and upright. And to learn from their kind, nurturing mothers. Ha! As though that will ever happen. Maybe I'm just being a pessimist, but feminism doesn't appear to provide much of an "unshakable ethical core", especially since the feminist book we read blathers endlessly about how women "inhabit the site of ambivalence" throughout their individual lives and throughout history.

Defining modern "personhood" is quite a chore, one for which no one seems particularly capable of finding a solution.

Now, if we just tried to understand ourselves as being broken images of God.... At least that would provide a definition to work with.

Ha!

Yay for

WHITE RABBITS.