Laura S. drove out to visit Tulsa. She arrived early this morning (or very late last night), and today we visited Woodward Park.

Pictures here.

Now Playing: Beethoven, Symphony No. 7, "Allegro Con Brio".

Catherine rang me today!

And I got to eat lunch with Jenny M. after spending all morning listening to student presentations.

The AAAS-SWARM conference (which sounds like some sort of disease to me) is convening at TU this week, and they needed student judges to adjudicate presentations. I had the benefit of hearing two actually interesting presentations about a certain gene that may make people more likely to get stressed out (or, on a more serious level, suffer disorders such as bipolar or depression). The amusing part of the presentation was that the students had used watching a horror film as their stress test--Jenny, who'd helped with the research, told me afterward that the film was actually rather ridiculous and not very stressful at all.

Anyway....

Before HIST class this afternoon, Emily whispered to me, "I had a dream this weekend that it snowed. When I woke up this morning, the dream was over." There's hardly any snow left on the ground, except in a couple of big piles on the north sides of buildings. Even the extreme moisture has mostly evaporated because of the nearly gale force south winds all day. Yesterday, we could've paddled Rachel Jr.'s inflatable kayak around our apartment complex, but today the ground was only a wee bit mucky.

Now Playing: Handel, Messiah, "Thus saith the Lord...."

New pictures here.

Now Playing: Mark O'Connor, "The Fiddle Concerto". Cadenza to the third movement.

In honor of our class poetry reading tonight, here are a couple of the pieces I've written for class this term.

~

Dark

“Though I walk through the valley of deep darkness”
Honeycombed brain twisting heart roped throat
labyrinth aorta ventricles feeding minotaur
in dark places of world, fill habitations with violence
valleys of deep darkness, armpits, eyelids, neck
soft folds, tendons, bones, freckled skin

“characterized by absolute or relative absence of light”

Standing under medulla medusa wrapped stingers
tentacles along spinal cord, this inside minds
writhe gloom consuming by enzymes

“A dark house was formerly considered a proper place of confinement for a madman”, obs.

Shining on floor, yellow rectangles, three-by-six,
eyes invert images automatically match medusa
walking through the valley of deep darkness
“I will fear no good, for you are not with me”
Crawl away from coffins shining on carpet,
away from holes onto empty iridescence,
skull, entrails, epidermis quivering
into

~

Sun

Photoheterotrophs sip liquid vitality—
his ascendance enriches their pedalfer,
slow multifoliate unfolding face by face
downrushed viscosity spreading veins
eternal biosynthesis of wholeness.
They reach arms forward, upflung heliochryse
in jacinth foliage of foaming flesh
fingers’ mesmerism stretch toward the source:
no heliodon needed to track his path
metamorphosed chrysalises sprout
his swath’s cyclosis, infinity’s heliotropes.

~

The first one is an inversion of Psalm 23, to some degree. Intended as an exploration of the darkness of the human being, physically and spiritually, and what we do to God's promises.

The second one is a depiction of the final resurrection through the frame of biological language.

Now Playing: Flook, "Haven", Track 2, "Gone Fishing".

Warning: I'm so tired that I can hardly see straight, so if this post is weird, that's why.

Reasons why:
a.) Haven't been sleeping well lately
b.) Have had weird dreams when I have slept (I dreamed very vividly last night that colonies of bacterium were living on my shoulders)
c.) Enormous thunderstorms have happened at night, which is truly awesome but also not conducive to sleep
d.) Woke up at a quarter to six this morning

And therein lies the tale....

Woke up, dragged on clothes, ate breakfast sitting in the dark at my desk, and crept out of the apartment so as not to wake Rachel. The east was just beginning to be grey. The morning was chilly. Sparrows were already chirping shrilly in the eaves of the apartments, though. I walked across campus to ACAC, seeing only the early-morning maintenance workers on their way to the physical plant building and the caf.

In ACAC I met the other faithful few from Mortar Board, our resident senior honors society. When my grandmother was at uni at SMU in Dallas, being in Mortar Board actually was "one of the highest honors an undergraduate could receive" (quoted from the script I heard repeated all morning). She always gets teary-eyed when she reminisces about how she knew she was selected for Mortar Board when she saw her sister stepping off the tram. However, at TU, Mortar Board is, for better or worse, rather a joke, known only for its extremely peculiar initiation ceremony.

This ceremony involves waking up ridiculously early (as previously noted), donning flapping black graduation robes, marching around campus in a big group, singing the Mortar Board song, banging on apartment doors or barging into classrooms, and "tapping" the selected student on the head with a graduation cap. ("Tapping" being reading aloud the schpiel quoted above, informing the student that he or she was excused from class for the rest of the morning, and then hitting them lightly on the head with the cap.)

Hence, at about seven o'clock, after a long delay, we all marched over to sorority row, where we managed to get into two sorority houses to "tap" new members. Then we went to the apartments, where we unceremoniously woke people to inform them that they had been selected. And so it went.... We even went into the volleyball gym, where the team was practicing. One of the coaches thought we were a choir, though I don't know how he made that mistake, since our singing left a lot to be desired.

We had about an hour-long break at eight o'clock. Then we were mostly going into classrooms, singing in the hallways of the buildings. People in Kep stared at us as we walked past; the secretaries in the business building smiled at us. We happened to go into one of Philip's classes in Kep, so he and I wrinkled our noses at each other while the selected student was "tapped". It was amusing to watch the students' and professors' faces in the classrooms: the professors generally watched us with bland good humor, having been warned ahead of time via e-mail, while the students gaped or raised eyebrows. Apparently there were usually people who had applied but not been accepted in the classrooms, and whoever had done the actual tapping always complained afterward about feeling awkward.

One of the students had skipped class. Accordingly, we all marched over to the frat house where he lived, went upstairs, banged on his door, and "tapped" him, joking the whole time that he was going to have his new membership revoked immediately for skipping class.

So my entire morning was spent parading around campus, listening to the other members chatter away, mumbling the Mortar Board song, and trying not to look too awkward while we crowded into narrow spaces in classrooms and apartment balconies. At least the morning was pleasant: cool, sunny, a high sky criss-crossed with contrails.

At eleven o'clock, I ducked out to go to "senior salute". Another peculiar tradition: the Great Hall upstairs in ACAC turned into a maze of tables at which graduating seniors can purchase photos or class rings, sign up for career services postings, check to make sure that the reader pronounced their name correctly, etc. I picked up my cap, gown, and tassel, and then went to Tyrrell to practice flute. After I practiced, I went to the SAC in Mayo for the Mortar Board lunch. Stephen was tapped today, so I sat with him and a couple of his friends.

After HIST this afternoon, I went straight to the CGE to work for a couple of hours. The CGE was fairly busy this afternoon. I worked on formatting the international students' study abroad handbook. At half five I walked over to ACAC. Philip had promised to teach me how to use the espresso machine at Carrello's. When I got there, I was treated to Amy, Jenny M., Andrew, and Philip hanging out together.

At seven o'clock, Hannah came to our apartment for prayer. We chatted until Rachel Sr. entered. When she came in, she was holding an absolutely stunning spicebush swallowtail butterfly in her hand. She set it carefully on the sofa, then on the carpet. Hannah immediately got down on the floor to look at it, and I pulled out my camera. It was one of the most perfect butterflies I've seen in a long time. Rachel said she'd found it on the ground, but it was completely undamaged. Beautiful: glossy black wings, sleek veins, iridescent blue, stunning red-and-gold eyespots, elegantly curled antennae. Hannah and I sat on the floor and stared at it while Rachel made jasmine green tea for the three of us. We all watched the butterfly for a long time. It crawled over the floor and then rested on the wooden moulding at the base of the wall. Finally, Rachel gingerly scooped it into a plastic dish, and we took it outside and put it in the grass on the new U.

Then we went back to the apartment. Lotus tea tastes exactly like honeysuckle, Hannah and I decided. Childhood memories for both of us. The three of us shared prayer requests, largely for provision for housing and work and guidance. Then we prayed through Psalm 84. Hannah read out of the Northern Irish split-leaf Psalter since she didn't have a Bible. The image of the butterfly was fresh in all our minds. So intricate, lavishly beautiful--and yet God says in Isaiah 43, "you are precious in my eyes...". If the butterfly is so incredibly beautiful, but God does not call it precious but reserves that term for His people....

After we prayed, we chatted for awhile. Hannah left at about a quarter past eight, and Rachel and I settled down to work.

I worked pretty intensely on poetry for two-and-a-half hours. I also rang Crystal and chatted with her for twenty minutes or so. Finally, when my eyes felt as though they were about to fall out, my muscles and joints were stiff, and my stomach was an acid knot from tension, I stopped and got on Facebook.

Pictures!

Psalm 89:14,

"Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne;
steadfast love and faithfulness go before you."

Today I was walking around San Born Lake. The woods are beginning to bud and flower so that the late afternoon sunshine made silver halos around all the trees. Cardinals were singing everywhere, it seemed, crimson trilling against the pale green and white of the woods.

I was meditating on this verse from Psalm 89, just the "steadfast love" part. When I was younger, I used to pray over and over again, thanking God for this place because I was afraid that if I didn't thank him enough for it, he would take it away.

Despite the grave misunderstanding of his character implicit in that prayer (which, of course, continues on many levels), he graciously answers it. The peace and prosperity, the stability of this place resemble his steadfast love.

Continuous, no matter where I have been, no matter what I have done or said, no matter where I come from or where I am going, no matter what I am thinking. I cannot do anything to shake it or change it, nothing to break it.

This is not just God's kindness and goodness: those are key ingredients of love, of course, the will to do what is best for someone and the actual performance of that best thing. But also His delight in and enjoyment of His people in Christ, a truth I don't think about much. Whenever I do encounter it, my mind glances off of it--so wonderful that I don't want it. A dangerously potent joy, too heady for this mind.

They are blessed "who walk, O Lord, in the light of your face." (vs. 15)

Now Playing: Coldplay, "Viva La Vida", "Lost!"

“… you cry out as if you were undone and yet are a King’s son, you who stand in such relation to God, as to a father, you dishonor your father in this; as if either he had not wisdom, or power, or mercy enough to provide for you.” (Ch. 8)

Quite a response to a) discontentment and b) worry!

“Consider your relation to Jesus Christ, as a spouse and married to him: his person is yours, and so all the riches of Jesus Christ are yours, as the riches of a husband are his wife’s.” (Ch. 8)

(Burroughs)

Now Playing: Cherish the Ladies, "Woman of the House", "Betsy Bell and Mary Gray".

Can't escape Burroughs.

“As contentment argues much grace, and strong grace, and beautiful grace, so murmuring argues much corruption, and strong corruption, and very vile corruptions in your heart. If a man’s body is of such a temper that every scratch of a pin makes his flesh to rankle and be a sore, you will surely say, this man’s body is very corrupt, his blood and his flesh is corrupt, that every scratch of a pin shall make it rankle. So it is in your spirit, if every little trouble and affliction makes you discontented….” (Ch. 8)

“Men are deceived in this, if they think their conversion is finished merely at first; you must be in a way of conversion to God all the days of your life….” (Ch. 8)

(Receiving and resting on Christ alone for salvation has to be a moment-by-moment practice.)

Now Playing: Annie scurrying around the house.

Spring breaks are wonderful things, even if you don't get to spend them in New Zealand or the Grand Canyon, like some people.

Woke up to the sound of birds outside. I dressed, did my devotions, and went downstairs for breakfast. My mother was sitting at the dining table, reading The Four Loves. We chatted while I ate breakfast. We sat and talked until ten o'clock at least, and then I had to go to The Greenery downtown for a haircut at half ten.

It seems as though nothing changes at The Greenery: the same decor, the same ancient permanent machine in the corner, the same dusty green knick-knacks on the shelves. Mrs. H chattered away happily about Ireland (St. Patrick's day is her favorite holiday) and politics in Stillwater and visiting Tulsa yesterday, wearing a bright green suit to church while she scrubbed and snipped my hair. I basically grinned the whole time.

After she was finished with me, I walked down to the bank, then back to the house. I did my wash, rummaged through my albums for TFYP photos, scanning them into the computer, and so forth. My father came home for lunch, and we all ate together. Laura and Stephen were quite silly. After lunch, my mother, Laura, Stephen, and I went to SLS to volunteer, while my father went to visit his parents. My mother has been working on editing and collating addresses of donors to SLS. She's already logged several hours, and her goal today was to finish with our help. We split into pairs. Stephen and I worked together, giggling irrepressibly at some of the names we found. We finished the work in about an hour.

Then we drove out to Grammy's house. At Grammy's house, Laura and I refilled the bird feeder. We sat inside with Grammy for awhile. She and my mother talked. We went outside after awhile. My mother and I trimmed back the rose bush, which has grown quite large. It's a very thorny variety, with some extremely big thorns. The afternoon was warm and sunny with a slight southeast breeze. Driving back to the house, the countryside was so brown. Incredibly dreary. The blooming pear trees seem out-of-place.

Back at home, I made a toy, a rubberband and string, for Annie and played with her in the back yard. I dragged it through the brittle leaves and grass, and Annie pounced and frolicked along after it. Then I went indoors to finish my wash and to hunt for my mother's needlework, which has gone missing. She had asked me to look through the boxes and drawers in her room. It was a bit surreal to go through the highboy, the chests, the dressers, the boxes, to find bits and pieces of my parents' lives--familiar sweaters, blankets, handkerchiefs, tablecloths, papers, antiques going brown at the edges. Baseballs in my father's dresser; a book of half-sketched watercolors in my mother's drawers.

I helped my mother make curry for tea, and when she had to leave for an SLS board meeting, I kept an eye on things until the vegetables were done cooking. My father, Laura, Stephen, and I ate tea together and watched "The Three Stooges" afterward. Then I practiced my flute for an hour in my room, all Blavet. The sun went down quickly behind the budding trees. Laura has been learning "Dawn" from the new Pride and Prejudice soundtrack, and occasionally fragments of the beautiful running melody floated upstairs.

My father is reading to us now, "The Dancing Men" from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. My mother is back and has been eating a belated tea, while Stephen sits and listens, and Laura teases Annie with the rubberband. Annie is absolutely wild. Sandy lies curled at my father's feet. Cool evening air seeps through the open back door.

Now Playing: Brahms, Requiem, Track 1, "Blessed Are They That Mourn."

"Has your blog become one of those "lonely few", an artifact of the time before Facebook?" - Petr

That says exactly what I've been feeling for the past month or so. Methinks it looks a wee bit abandoned around here. *ahem*

I wish I could have taken a photograph of today.

Beautifully quiet this morning, chilly, incredibly still.

Since Nicole, Hannah, and I were planning to go to Redeemer today, I had time to do my devotions before church. On our way out, we picked up Dipti and Divya, who were in town this weekend for Sarah G.'s wedding.

We arrived at Redeemer in time for church. I sat next to Rachel because she wanted me to: vaguely pleasant little-kid associations with, "Mommy, can I sit next to -- in church today? Please, please, please?"

We took communion today. The first time in awhile for me, since January at least. I was meditating on the (philosophical) image of God as a page on which time is inscribed as a line (an explanation for His omniscience, sovereignty, etc.). Something made the association between that and us being "inscribed on the palms of His hands" as I looked at the bread and wine laid out on the communion table. He can not not know what is written on Himself--and He would not have it any other way. A sense of His continuous burning consciousness of me, intense perhaps to what would be pain to us, but willing on His part, joyful.

The method of taking communion today, though, was a wee bit unpleasant. They set up four "stations" with elders, and we just walked up in lines, took the bread and cup, ate and drank on our own, and passed on by. I was talking about that with Hannah afterward, and she used the word "bureaucratic". Part of the point of communion seems to me to be the very experience of standing around the table with other believers, seeing the body of Christ spiritual in that small section for that small moment.

After church, we drove back to campus. Nicole, Hannah, and I ate lunch in the caf, the caf's "famous" waffles. We ogled a pair of international students who slathered their waffles with enormous amounts of ice cream and hot fudge. And we remembered together the "good ol' days" (I teased Hannah for sounding like an old person) of freshman and sophomore years when we'd spend hours sitting in the caf, cramming as many people as possible around the small round tables and watching the guys concoct ridiculous combinations of food (usually Asher and DMac, though Kevin's specialty was drinks).

At about one o'clock, we went our separate ways. I wrote e-mails for about an hour to Elizabeth, Alyson, and Missy. Then I noticed that I'd missed a call from Syneva, so I took my phone and went outside to the new U. The afternoon was just cool enough that at first I wore my hoodie, sprawled on the grass in the sunshine, my jeans rolled up to my ankles. I love the feel of firm earth under my back, warm sunshine, the rich, rich smell of the grass. There were a few other people scattered over the U, sunbathing or playing frisbee. Syneva and I talked for an hour or so. I watched a honeybee burrow in the short green grass.

Just after we finished talking, Jenny H. rang me to ask if I was free to hang out with her. Only a few people had showed up to play soccer, so she was free early. I walked over to the pitch to meet her, and then we drove to Riverside in her car with the sunroof open. Oh, it was a lovely day, lovely, lovely. Riverside was crowded with people. She parked the car, and we crossed the street on the raised footbridge, then crossed the river on the long bridge and walked alongside it.

The whole town seemed to be out. Two families with loads of wee children, equipped with fishing poles and buckets. "Saunterers", "shufflers", bikers wearing brightly-colored spandex, loads of people walking dogs of every shape and size (Jenny cooed whenever she saw them), fathers shepherding children on training wheels, teens on rollerskates, women pushing strollers, ridiculously fit runners/bikers of every age and variety, sleek muscles bulging, weaving effortlessly between all of us paeans sauntering down the footpath. People sitting on blankets on the brown grass by the river. The Bradford pears are blooming right now, shimmering haloes of white blossom, dazzling like the haloes of Byzantine saints. The river flowed fast and loud over a low dam, and below the dam, people in waders were standing out in the middle of the water, fishing.

She drove me back to campus. She left me off on campus. We were both tired, well-stretched from the walk. Satisfied from the sunshine. Rachel was studying in the apartment. It was past five o'clock. I napped for an hour or so.

When Rachel and I got tea from the caf, we took our sandwiches out on the old U, sitting up closer to the library. The U was fairly crowded. Someone had strung a hammock from two of the young trees. "Good to see they're being put to some use," Rachel chuckled. People were sitting on blankets, too, and kicking soccer balls/throwing footballs. Mourning doves cooed in the trees. The grass where we sat was scattered with fuzzy bud shells, like rabbit's ears, soft as silk. The evening was beautiful. Cool, cool grass underfoot, cool sky overhead. Long thin clouds, like grass plumes pulled silver against the blue. In the west, where the sun was setting, they were vivid gold leaf, and higher, iridescent mother-of-pearl, unusual and beautiful. We didn't talk much. People rode skateboards down the sidewalk. We saw Kathryn and DMo having their engagement photos taken. I lay on my back in the grass and watched the sky. Airplane contrails interlinking.

We walked back to the apartment. I worked on Bible study, Psalm 22 this week. Then I started this journal entry and made tea for Rachel and me. We still had some windows open, though the night was becoming much cooler. Tara texted me, so at about nine o'clock, Rachel and I drove over to her house. The three of us settled down and watched Howl's Moving Castle. Lovely light fairytale, full of gorgeous scenery. Reeshe sprawled on the sofa next to Rachel and snored contentedly.

After the film, we chatted for awhile, and then Rachel and I went back to campus.

Now Playing: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 2, "The Taming of Smeagol".

Last night, a group of us from RUF went to Karl's recital in Tyrrell Hall. Philip insisted that Tyrrell should be converted into a mead hall, complete with enormous fireplace, several large boars roasting on spits, long tables, rushes on the floor, dogs, shields, and tapestries.

This was Karl's senior composition recital, so all the music on the hour-and-a-half long program was music he had composed himself. The opening and closing pieces were from a musical he's writing entitled Paul's Waltz, a piece dealing with homosexuality, Christianity, and male friendship. The pieces in between explored lying, sex, murder, deceit, anger, pain, and so on, with a dash of very strange parodic humor.

Kent and Karl played piano, and Karl sang with Kirsten and one of their friends. A string quartet played some of the pieces, including a movement from the incidental music Karl wrote for TU’s Hamlet. Poignant, the movement for Ophelia. Dark themes, conveyed at times with nearly grotesque humor; the audience laughed quite a lot (the performance opened with the typical “please turn off your mobile phone” announcements expanded, with ironic commentary, into a full-blown musical number).

As Mrs. P said afterward, “I just went through so many emotions.” She said that she was proud of him for being so personal and honest. She said that displaying one’s sin so openly takes a lot of courage and a huge understanding of God’s grace, how much one has been forgiven.

He was speaking for so many people so powerfully. It became harder and harder to listen: to see this open display of sin, so honest, so forthright, with parody, irony, humor, anguish, pathos, outrage displayed onstage. At times I hated the audience for laughing.

Why does humanity find its sin so enthralling? Because we are thralls, I suppose. Carnival? We can mock our master, mock ourselves and thus construct the façade of freedom for a few moments. Lampoon our sins and set ourselves farcically free. Make the beggar king for a day, social critic for a day.

Also, in the face of what was at times pure genius, I felt my own worth as an “artist” dwindling away into nonexistence. Music and words perfectly fitting, yes, but even separately, either words or music, exactly conveying harsh intense emotion. Conveying the gaps between sin and forgiveness, the tensions between ought and is, between desires and realities. In light of something so much more skillful: entertainment, commentary, conviction, indictment, all at once—why bother writing what has already been said?

Also, the words ripping out my own fears. Listening to others’ sins, my sins become more potent. And guilt: a good little church girl shouldn’t do or imagine such things.

Of course we all applauded thunderously when it ended, and then everyone stood round chatting for ages in the warm, humid hall while the performers deconstructed the cluttered stage.

Now Playing: Elgar, "Violin Concerto in B Minor", Movement 3, "Allegro Molto".

“So the creature in the apprehension of its own baseness, and the infinite excellence that is in God above it, when it comes to worship God, comes and crouches to this God, and lies down at the feet of God…. ‘I am a dog I confess, but let me have only a crumb.’ …. in active obedience we worship God by doing what pleases God, but by passive obedience we do as well worship God by being pleased with what God does.” (Ch. 7)

“So if we would be vessels to receive God’s mercy, and would have the Lord pour his mercy into us, we must have quiet, still hearts. We must not have hearts hurrying up and down in trouble, discontent and vexing, but still and quiet hearts, if we receive mercy from the Lord…. When the heart lies down quietly under God’s hand, then is it in a fit frame to receive mercy. ‘Your strength shall be to sit still,’ says God, ‘you shall not be delivered from Babylon but by your sitting still’.”

And yes, it is now 78.5 Fahrenheit (25 Celsius) in Tulsa! And sunny!

Not much time to post--I need to go practice flute this morning before my lesson. But I've been giving Burroughs a break, so I thought I'd post several of his aphorisms at one go.

“… the saints of God have an interest in all the promises that ever were made to our forefathers…. To Joshua God says, He will not leave him nor forsake him; but in this place in Hebrews in the Greek there are five negatives, I will not, not, not, not, not again….” (Ch. 4)

I love the above quote because it demonstrates how the Old Testament is fulfilled in Christ's work in the New Testament on the "small" level of the promises: even the Old Testament promises become more expansive in Christ.

“A man who is little in his own eyes will account every affliction as little, and every mercy as great.” (Ch. 5)

“… God has set me in this world, not as in my home but as a mere stranger and a pilgrim who is traveling to another home, and that I am here a soldier in my warfare….” (Ch. 5)

“God is most honored when I can turn from one condition to another, according as he calls me to it.” (Ch. 5)

Something I am very bad at!