All Hallow's Eve

Now Playing: "Symphony No. 9", by Antonin Dvorak. Movement 4, Allegro con fuoco. (My mother always says that this is an "alternate" soundtrack to the "Lord of the Rings".)

I guess I should post on here, but I'm not sure exactly what to say. The days blend together monotonously, like listening to variations on the same song over and over again.

When people ask me how my week went, I'm never sure what to tell them. For me, moments of ecstasy or moments of sorrow tend to be so intense that they don't happen very often, and everything in between them is very bland, very drab (though, by virtue of the human life, the moments of despair are usually more frequent than the moments of grandeur). There might be one week out of the month, and one day out of that week, that was truly glorious: I can think of one earlier this October when my mother and one of my friends surprised me. There might be a couple days out of the month that were truly terrible: last Monday, when one of my professors ridiculed every principle I believe in, was such a day. Occasionally, during a week or during a day, there will be moments of "epiphany": times when I'm walking between classes and the wind has a certain smell, or the sky is just the right shade of blue, or a monarch butterfly floats by. Those times are so ephemeral that they're hard to pin down. They're like shooting stars: there's so much blackness around them and they pass so quickly that it's hard to grasp them. People would think I was crazy if I told them, "Oh, on Tuesday, while I was walking back to my dorm after RUF, the wind blew in the oak trees, with the stars glittering above them, and it sounded just like the sea. It almost made me cry, it was so lovely." There are plenty of "nice" times or "uncomfortable" times, but not usually things that grab my attention: the big things are infrequent, and the small things are very personal so that it's harder to enumerate them to someone who asks, "How was your week?"

Anyhow, I'll try to give some account of today, at least. This morning, it was raining when I woke up. I love rainy days, so that was actually pleasant. After practicing my flute, I spent the morning working on homework: finishing linguistics homework, reading the book for Pocahontas class, and writing an Honors lecture review. For the Honors class, there are four lectures that the students are required to attend outside class. Three of these lectures are taught by the Honors professors themselves. This particular lecture was given by Dr. G, my teacher, so I'm a bit nervous about reviewing his lecture. He spoke on Greek drama, described it, and tried to reason through some of its functions in Greek society. It was a really interesting talk. At one point, he played a recording of a fragment of a chorus set to music from a Greek play. The recording was based on interpretation of a snippet of papyrus found wrapped around a mummy, which had been inscribed with musical notations and instructions for singing to accompany one of Euripides's plays. The music was rather discordant, but in an orderly manner, and not harsh. It was a lament for the demise of a kingdom, and the singers' voices wailed plaintively, spiraling upward through the clashing chords.

In Pocahontas class today, we discussed Ramona, a book about an Indian-Mexican girl living in the 1800's and all the trials she went through. The book was written in the 1800's. It's incredibly racist, with a peculiar reverse racism: the Indians are wise saints, the Mexicans are thieves, and the Americans are stupid and cruel.

Since today is Halloween, a lot of students are dressed up. At breakfast this morning, I saw a girl dressed as a fat black cat. One of the cooks this morning had covered her regulation hair net with a witch's cone-shaped hat. Two girls came to class in costume today: one dressed in a bright yellow captain's uniform with an enormous plastic sabre slung at her side, and the other dressed in 1980's clothes, jarring and rumpled. Her beads and bangles jangled as she walked. As I walked to lunch after class, I saw a girl dressed as Legolas (yes, I know--Legolas is a male character, after all!), complete with dove-colored leather boots and a shiny green cape. In the cafeteria, there were lots of costumes: a girl in a devil uniform, a boy in a pumpkin suit, another boy in a tiger suit, a man dressed as a ghost. One guy was costumed as Jesus, with flowing white gown and red sash. Someone said that this chap had been chatting with two of his friends. "Have a good day," he said as they left. "No, wait," he called. With a superior tone, he said, "I'll talk to my dad. I know you'll have a good day." (!!!!) Another chap dressed as a monk, while yet another wore the heavy, brown robes of a jedi straight out of "Star Wars". A pair of boys wore felt hats--one wore a king's crown, and his friend had on a jester's cap-and-bells. At lunch, one of my friends told me that she'd dressed up as Catharine von Bora last Saturday at an RUF event, in honor of Reformation Day.

During linguistics class, the professor discussed the idea that the philosophy of patterns in language can also be used to look for patterns in culture. He tried to make the case that the "Wizard of Oz" and the "first" "Star Wars" movie are really the same movie, just paraphrases of the same story--something about how both Dorothy and Luke have to deal with hating their parents, which seems to me to be a pretty minor theme of both movies (though I've never seen the "Wizard of Oz", and it's been a very, very long time since "Star Wars").

Pale evening sunlight filters through my west window and glows in the mirror across from the window. The clouds have begun to break. They float like grey ice over a washed-out, aquamarine sky. The maple tree outside my window burns crimson. I've been working on writing poetry and e-mails--since I didn't give myself much time for that last week, I thought I'd do some today. The dorm smells weird: either burning rice, coffee, or cigarette smoke. I should go and run. Should. It will get dark fast tonight, so if I run, I'll have to go now. After supper tonight, I'm going to cloister myself in my room. I do not like Halloween.

not my writing!

Now playing: "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring", soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 15, "The Great River". (This is one of my very favorite tracks. I love the choir elegy at the beginning--so sad and stately, and then later on I love how the music curves and swirls, like the cliffs and the river, and the Ring itself.)

In a hurry... here's John Donne's famous meditation, "For Whom the Bell Tolls". Obviously, I didn't write this (it's much too good!). But it's a wonderful little piece of work. When I sat in on a class at a different college last year, the professor was talking about this meditation, and ever since then I've been trying to find a copy of it. John Donne makes some excellent points, and he does so in a way that you won't be able to forget. Maybe later I'll write something about why I like this thing, but I think that after you'll read it, you'll understand.

"For Whom the Bell Tolls", by John Donne.

From "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" (1623), XVII: Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris - "Now, this bell tolling softly for another, says to me: Thou must die." PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.
The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all.
When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member.
And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.
As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.
There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest.
If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is.
The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that this occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God.
Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours.
Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.
No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.
If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels.
Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it.
Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

tags and nothing worthwhile

Now Playing: "Gollum's Song", from "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" soundtrack, by Howard Shore.

I should be studying oceanography, but obviously, I'm not. Violin and SwanElf seem to think people need to be tagged. So.... here are the ten songs that I'm listening to, in rough order of importance:

1. Psalm 84
2. Beethoven's 7th symphony, especially the 2nd movement (I listened to the symphony twice with the volume turned up REALLY loud last night.)
3. "Into the West" from " The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" soundtrack by Howard Shore
4. Mark O'Connor's string quartet
5."Dance the Baby/Slip Jig Set" by Cathie Ryan
6. "Learn to be Lonely" from the "Phantom of the Opera" soundtrack by Andrew Lloyd Weber
7. "I Cannot See His Color" from "The Village" soundtrack by James Newton Howard
8. "Overture" from the "Peter Pan" soundtrack by James Newton Howard
9. "Ode to a Butterfly" by Nickel Creek
10. "Out of the Woods" by Nickel Creek

Tag to Daisy and Brother2!

Today I met with my advisor to discuss spring enrollment. I'm having something of a crisis right now: On Monday, I auditioned for the university band. After meeting the conductor and hearing some of the things he said, my instincts tell me not to join the band. (Apparently, the band has only one concert, and it's going to be supplemented by a highschool band for that concert--!!) Also, I'm not sure that I can take the time committment. However, I really want to play in an ensemble. I keep telling myself that I should just wait and try again next year, but I'm all confused.... The first rehearsal is tomorrow. If I want to play in the band, I'll have to skip lunch on Wednesdays (and probably Mondays and Fridays later in the semester). Being a hobbit, that idea does not greatly appeal to me!

Oh, now I'm listening to the ROTK soundtrack--track 3. Gandalf and Pippin riding into Minas Tirith! Music to stir the heart. :)

Answer these questions:
What is water's latent heat of melting? Of vaporization?
What salts are in the ocean, and how do they get there, and where do they go?
What is the degree of the angle between hydrogen molecules?
What controls seawater density?
What are the three layers of the ocean?
What is the Coriolis Effect? What is Ekman Transport?
What are the greenhouse gases?
What are the gases that are disolved in the ocean?
Where do icebergs come from?

Yep, those are a few of the things (the "tip of the iceberg", pun intended) that I have to know for the exam. Most of the questions are easy, common-knowledge questions, though when it comes to naming specific salts/gases, and where they go, and where they come from, it's a little bit harder to keep from getting confused.

Today for Honors I read "Lysistrata" by Aristophanes. If anyone ever tells you it's a good play, run for your life, because it's not. It's full of crude jokes and nasty humor. It's very discouraging whenever I encounter crudity in academic circles. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Greek dramatists--it's considered to be "highbrow" and "elite" if you can use and understand foulness. I hate it with a passion. People mock innocence. They see naivete as something foolish. But whenever I think of my friends and siblings being exposed to such filth, my heart cringes. I wish I could be like Aragorn and guard my little land from such horror, or really be like Frodo and die to protect it. Once you lose your innocence, no joke is ever completely "clean" again. Once you lose your purity, you can never get it back. It's agonizing to have to sit through this stuff, and to hear it staunchly defended and lauded and enjoyed by your peers and professors. I want to shout, "You're talking like orcs! You don't understand!", but they wouldn't be able to hear....

a picture

Oh, look! I can post pictures. This is from home, Sabbath afternoon--one of the last blazes of zinnias before frost. You can't see her, but Mandy was prowling around in the garden. While I was taking pictures, she stalked through the bell pepper jungle, then flopped over in the dust behind the zinnias and started to roll around. We took a family picture that afternoon, too. My mother held Mandy, who protested loudly by yowling the whole time. In the picture, Mandy has a scared and insulted look on her furry face. The zinnias that afternoon were full of butterflies. My brother photographed a beautiful monarch butterfly, but there were lots of the little, velvety brown variety. I cut some zinnias, and the little brown butterflies were so thick that they landed on the flowers that I'd cut as I held them in my hand and sipped the nectar, oblivious to me.

flu shot, music, movies, and (more) Calvinism--in other words, nothing of particular interest

Now Playing: "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", Paul Dukas. (This is one of those crowd-pleasers. It's fun to listen to, very melodramatic, but doesn't have much deep meaning. While I listen, I like to make up the story that goes with it in my head. I have two whole CD's of "story" music--a hodgepodge of music scrambled together from a variety of composers; music that I like, not for its greatness or technical difficulty (though there are a couple of Vaughan-Williams pieces that are technically difficult and incredibly lovely), but for the stories that I make up when I listen to the pieces.)

Today after linguistics I walked to the "health center" (which is neither in the center of campus nor very healthy, being a place where sick people go) for a flu shot. Both the secretaries were complete ditzes who were discussing what costumes they should wear to their boyfriend's costume party. One of them was planning to go as a bumblebee. *hem* The nurse who actually gave the shot was nice enough, though the wound bled rather more than usual.

Afterwards I biked around campus for awhile. I also explored a bit into the neighborhoods around campus. There are lots of peculiar little old houses, similar to the ones on the street where I used to live when I was much younger: the houses are all jumbled together, with long, lanky bungalows, Mexican-style adobe houses, English cottages, and Victorian mansions stacked together on postage-stamp-sized lots. The houses were all comfortably scruffy--old trees, tall grass, thick gardens wild with autumn weeds. Elm leaves scurried down the street as I jounced over the uneven sidewalk, my chain rattling.

Here are some "crime reports" from the weekly campus paper (I've slightly paraphrased them):

"Security was dispatched to the parking lot to investigate a vehicle burglary. Entry into the vehicle was by prying open the rear wing window. After entering the car, the person unknown stole a CD player, a Bible, 150 various CDs and a check book." (Why on earth would anyone steal a Bible? And why would someone keep 150 CDs in their car?)

"A security officer was dispatched to the Student Center to investigate a theft. A picture that had been hanging inside the building had been stolen. The poster, depicting how to dress and not to dress for an interview, had been hanging near the south doors of the building." (So the thief wanted to make sure he dressed properly for his next interview--though I suspect he'll need a poster saying something about how to dress for the courtroom instead!)

"Security officers were dispatched to an apartment in response to complaints of a domestic disturbance. Officers ascertained that a female and a male had been in an altercation. The female (why isn't she a woman?) told the officers that her boyfriend (why was he her boyfriend in the first place?) had kicked in the door of her vehicle (what a kick!) making it inoperable, and had thrown her cellphone at her." *cough*

Oh, here's something much more important that you all are probably wondering about. As most of you know, last week the professor of my "Pocahontas" class gave a rather scathing critique of Calvinism. On Wednesday, I talked to her about it, and she invited me to give a more positive side of the issue in class this morning. My father sent me some information to help me, and I put it together into a short paragraph. In class this morning, we were supposed to watch a movie ("Pocahonts 2"), and the professor asked me to talk while everyone was getting ready to watch the movie. As a result, people were somewhat distracted, but it went as well as could be expected--no objections, no arguments. One girl actually passed me a note as the movie started, saying, "You did a great job--thanks for speaking up!", which lightened my heart a great deal.

In case you were wondering, the movie wasn't very good. Disney--blech. The professor brought her small daughter to class with her. The little girl hid under the professor's desk at first, but soon came out and began to order the students around. It was quite comical. During the movie, she perched on her mother's lap and whispered confidential comments to the students sitting nearest her. She insisted that she wasn't scared and announced that she "likes to fool people". She reminded me a lot of Lydia M., and made me miss her a great deal.

That's probably enough for now. The leader of the RUF Bible study I'm in has invited the girls in the study to her house to watch a movie tonight. I have no idea what the movie will be (hopefully not "Pocahontas 2"!), but it will be good to get off campus for awhile.

A Day in the Life, Part 2

Now Playing: "The Book of Secrets", Loreena McKennitt. Track 2: "The Mummer's Dance". (One of my all-time favorite songs!)

After lunch, I raced up to my room, scrubbed my teeth madly, then dashed to the practice rooms in Tyrrell Hall, where I whipped frantically through chromatic scales and struggled through my etude in preparation for my lesson in thirty minutes (just as warm-up: I practice extensively during the week, of course). My lesson went well, despite the fact that I didn't play my etude at all. Instead, the professor accompanied me on the piano while I played the new solo I'm learning, which is Camille Saint-Saens's "Airs de Ballet d'Ascanio". A light, vacuous piece. Fun to play, but completely devoid of meaning. It reminds me of the games that Daisy and Fric play together: ridiculous and melodramatic, full of sudden changes and disconnected leaps in logic and emotion. The first part of the piece is hopelessly romantic, dreamy, sighing. The second part is all double-tonguing, staccato, scurrying up and down, like Mandy, my cat, chasing a mouse. The last part is full of leaps and double-tonguing like ballerinas on pointe, with a psychotic chromatic scale thrown in for good measure.

After my flute lesson, I practiced, then met with Dr. S about revising my paper. Thankfully, she told me that I didn't need to revise it, that it had been a joy to read, that I should consider revisiting it someday as a senior project or something, etc.

So then I went back to my room and studied: First, Oceanography homework, an exercise on tracking Hurricane Wilma. Then British Writers homework, finishing the last act of "Twelfth Night", in which all the characters have "lightbulb moments", realize who they really love, and tie off all the loose ends neatly. Then reading Book 7 of Thucydides--or rather, slogging through Book 7. It isn't half as interesting as Book 6. The Athenians win one battle, then the Syracusans win another, etc. You already know that the Athenians are going to lose because they were stupid to go on the expedition in the first place.

I gave up three-quarters of the way through reading and decided to go running before I picked it up again. It was cold and cloudy this afternoon, with a harsh North wind that whirled the scarlet-veined maple leaves and boat-shaped oak leaves around my ankles as I jogged down the sidewalk. The wind curled between the buildings like a caged cat chasing its tail. By the end, despite the cap I'd yanked down over my head, my ears were chilled and throbbing--a most unpleasant sensation, because it always leads to a dull headache.

Back in my room, I e-mailed--and procrastinated. I ate supper in the cafeteria: cranberry juice, a bun, salad, applesauce, and a very sticky chocolate-and-butterscotch cookie. While I ate, I buried my nose in The Fellowship of the Ring. I happened to be in the chapter, "Flight to the Ford". If you haven't read the book, you probably won't understand, but it's one of the most exciting parts in FOTR. The cafeteria peeled away, and I entered into the story: I could hear the wind roaring down the mountains, making the sound of galloping hooves. I could see the Black Rider "swaying" as it rode out of the trees, and the look of terror on the other hobbits' faces. I hear Glorfindel crying in his Elf-voice to the horse, and feel the horse lift beneath me, the beat of its hooves quicken even as my own heartbeat quickened, as the Black Riders drew level with me--then the heave and splash as the horse plunged through the river, and the terrible, chilling cries of the Riders behind me.

After supper, I sat in my room and worked on a paragraph to present to my Pocahontas class tomorrow. The professor has invited me to give a more positive view of Calvinism for the class, and so I'm trying to do so concisely and without running on about doctrines that either weren't directly attacked or aren't directly related to Hope Leslie, the book we're reading. On Thursday evenings, a C.S. Lewis reading group meets at the Wesley Center. I've been going off-and-on, and I decided to go tonight. So after a while, I zipped on my boots, dragged on my hoodie, pulled my hat down over my rough curls, and forged out into the bitter wind. Particles of water stung my face as I trudged across the broad sweep of common area. Dry grass crunched under my feet. Sycamore leaves like mummified hands scraped on the sidewalk. I was chilled and feeling rather desperate by the time I reached the Center, which is in a diagonal line across campus from my dorm. However, when I got there, most of the lights were off, and I could see no one either indoors or outdoors. My heart sank. I dallied for a bit, and then turned around and trudged back to my room, clutching my journal. The wind thundered like the Sea in the trees.

And I've been in my room since, writing in my journal, and listening to Loreena McKennitt. On Tuesday night, the dorm reeked of garlic sauce and Italian food. On Wednesday night, it smelled like baked potatoes or meatloaf. Tonight, it smelled like chocolate chip cookies. The scent of the mint hand lotion my grandmother gave me for Christmas a while ago lingers around the wrists of my shirt. For a while, someone downstairs was listening to loud, obnoxious music with a definite bass line. But everything is quiet now. Noise in the dorms seems to go in bursts: at around eight o'clock, people will stir about and leave their rooms, and then be quiet. Again, around ten or eleven o'clock, people will move about, and then things will calm down for a while. Last night, the girl next door to me was watching a movie with her pals. I could hear the soundtrack blaring through the thin wall, a clunky drum line as though for an action gangster movie. I could hear the characters conversing, too--a deep, serious voice, and a high, squeaky, silly voice. Occasionally, someone would thump against the wall--it was a bit strange to think of someone sitting against the wall that I was lying by, with only perhaps four or five inches of insulation separating us.

Well, these posts are far, far longer than they need to be. I hope no one got too bored with them.

A Day in the Life, Part 1

Now Playing: "The Mask and Mirror", Loreena McKennitt. Track 1, "The Mystic's Dream".

Today... hmmm... this will probably be incredibly boring. Sorry if it is.

In oceanography, we made group presentations. For the past several weeks, we've (supposedly) been working on putting together the data that we gathered on a field trip to an area lake and turning it into a polished poster and oral presentation. Today was the culmination of that. My team was biology. Our poster looked pretty good--for one reason: one of the girls has a friend who's a biology major. She agreed to help us with our poster if this girl would buy her a six pack of beer. (No, I had nothing to do with this scheme.) The result was a professional poster. However, since we hadn't even discussed the oral presentation, another girl and I had to get up and give a cold summary of our data and process. Since we were the first team to go (and the least-organized one, I suspect), our presentation wasn't as complete as it should've been. I'm just glad it's over, though!

In Major British Writers, Dr. S broke the class into four teams. We're studying "Twelfth Night" by Shakespeare right now. She gave each team one of the main characters: Malvolio, Olivia, Viola (sorry, SwanElf, not the instrument), and Orsino. My team got Orsino. Each team sat and discussed its character and then came up with a scene that was typical of that character. My team talked about how absolutely ridiculous Orsino is. He's basically a hopeless romantic who's in love with being in love, and who doesn't care twopence about the specific object of his love. I get to play Orsino when we perform our scene. It'll be fun, actually, because I'll get to ham up all his flowery language, with lots of melodramatic sighs and all that nonsense. It's easy to play a character that's so stereotypical.

Honors class today was completely different from any other class so far. Rachel and I were discussion leaders instead of Dr. G, who teaches the class (which is really a discussion class, not a lecture--pairs of students are supposed to take turns leading discussion for the rest of the semester). Now, Dr. G warned us strictly about being late at the start of the semester. However, he himself is always at least five minutes late to class. Today, he was even later than usual.

In Honors class, instead of sitting in desks in a classroom, we sit at one long table, with everyone in comfortable chairs down the sides. Every class, it's a competition to see who can get the "throne" at the foot of the table, opposite the head of the table where Dr. G sits. Since Dr. G was so late today, though, Zoe took his seat. (Understand: Dr. G is a short, rather stout man (a Jew by ethnicity and religion) with thinning, dark, curly hair. Zoe is a slender, graceful, Black girl with long dreadlocks and spidery hands.) We sat and laughed at the situation for a while, and then got bored. So we started to talk about the reading we'd done in Thucydides's The Peloponnesian War. By the time Dr. G came in, we'd gotten tired of that and had moved on to other things--the conversation had become quite lively, in fact.

Dr. G opened the door, sized up the situation, grinned, and took an empty chair along the wall, behind one of the loudest students. Everyone burst out laughing, except the student Dr. G was sitting behind, who had to turn around to see what the joke was. "Oh, hi, professor," he said. "We've already taken our quiz today. We've already discussed Thucydides, too. Can we go now?" Dr. G grinned again. "Well, since you've already taken the quiz," (we hadn't, of course, but Dr. G is notorious for giving us "pop" reading quizzes, which everyone hates), "why don't you just carry on with the discussion. Rachel, --, go ahead," he said.

So we led the discussion. I found it fun, actually, though occasionally the class went on unprofitable rabbit trails--such as the question of exactly how large the Athenian expedition against Syracuse was (5,100 men? or 6,000 men?). Also, with our questions we tried to point the class to a more favorable estimation of Alcibiades, but the other students just kept talking about what a nasty person he was (he's full of pride and always boasting), until Dr. G gracefully stepped in. "Rachel and -- are, I think, trying to make the point that Thucydides sees Alcibiades in a more favorable light, and I agree with them. Think about what he says..." So, with his occasional assistance, we were able to keep the discussion flowing in a lively manner. This class is full of people who love to discuss and dissect ideas, so it's always fun to listen to the conversation. You get to know people on a deeper, more philosophical level through such discussions--it's funny how people's true characters come out when they're trying to convince you of their particular view of the topic at hand.

After Honors, Rachel and I walked to lunch together. We ate with a couple of guys who go to RUF. One of the guys was at the arts camp I went to this June. "Did I mistake you, or were you at Q-- M-- this year?" he asked. He told me that he remembered that I'd read a poem about a guy and a girl (yes, I admit--it was about Psyche and Cupid, but also about Christ and the believer). He played violin in the orchestra. Strangely enough, there are several people from QM here. In my Pocahontas class, one of the girls played the cello in the orchestra. The first day of class, she recognized me and mentioned my poem "about a tree" (it was about a tree, too). On Tuesday, as I left Honors class, I recognized a girl from QM, who'd been in the creative writing seminars with me. We hugged each other stiffly, surprised and uncertain of how to treat each other, for it was rather like meeting a ghost resurrected from the grave. In my mind, she "didn't belong" at Tulsa, for I associated her only with QM, and I'm fairly sure that's how she thought, too.

Anyhow, at lunch, the violinist and I reminisced about QM. I told him about one orchestra concert I was at there last year. The whole auditorium was packed, except for the front row, which had been roped off. Two other girls and I couldn't find anywhere to sit, nor could the director (the "commanding officer" of the arts camp), so the director invited us to sit with her in the front row. I could've reached out and touched the cellists. That night, the orchestra played selections from Holst's "The Planets". The polished floor under my feet shook from the powerful noise, the invincible thunder of Mars and the joyous march of Jupiter. As they played, the music completely engulfed me: it was so loud, and I was so close to the people who were actually making the music. It was like being enchanted, like being asleep--I felt suspended, detached from myself, drowned under a crashing wave of sound, my consciousness beaten out and extinguished with the force of its power. It was terrifying, but exhilarating.

To be continued....

Calvinism, Harry Potter, Orlando Bloom, Bach, and Wallace-and-Gromit

Now Playing: radio news station on the internet

Here's a quick trip through last week.

Monday was one of my dreadful days. The teacher of my Pocahontas class took it upon herself to explain to us the horrors of Calvinist Puritanism. As far as she was concerned, Calvinists are dreary (because they can never know for sure if they're one of the elect) and elitist (because they are part of the elect, they think that they're the only ones who can be saved and so don't do any works of charity or missions). Christians in general are bad for doing mission work and trying to convert others, especially Indians. Calvinists in particular are intolerant because they force people to subscribe to their own doctrine. (Talk about an inconsistent argument--are Calvinists missionaries, or are they not?!) She went on and on about the gloominess, nastiness, and cruelty of Calvinism until I was ready to burst into tears. The problem was that she would come just close enough to the truth to make it sound good, but still a lie. The rest of the class sat smugly and agreed with it all. At the end, after a brief explanation of predestination and election, one girl asked, "Does Calvinism exist anymore?" The professor replied, "Well, no, I don't think so--at least, not like this." Wow. I could've shouted, "Look! LOOK! I'm sitting beside you! I exist! I believe in this stuff. It's not nonsense. It's truth, it gives hope, it gives peace!" But they couldn't have really heard me, even if I had shouted loud enough to shake the building.

On Tuesday, a lecturer came for the Major British Writers class and lectured about Harry Potter. I was required to go, but didn't understand it because (shocks and horrors!) I have never read Harry Potter. It was like listening to a foreign language.

Wednesday evening, the RUF girls' and boys' Bible studies combined. Syneva, one of the leaders, started off the study with an "icebreaker": She had us go around the room and say what actor of the opposite gender we thought the most handsome/most beautiful. Rachel and I were both uncomfortable with such a topic, but the rest of the group entered in enthusiastically. The boys mostly named long-dead actresses (Ingrid Bergman), though Natalie Portman and Liv Tyler also figured on the list. The girls were fairly predictable: Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom, Jude Law, etc. *groan*

Thursday night, three of the music faculty and a guest harpsichordist gave a concert. The violin professor looked so much like Violin that it was mesmerizing: I expected her to be Violin, but she wasn't, and the difference was just enough that it bothered me. She had all of Violin's mannerisms when she played--the same spidery wrist, the same way of lifting her eyebrows, the same way of twisting outward and rocking up on her feet. The cello professor had one of those faces that I would put on a medieval mystic--a thin, ascetic face, but also very passionate. My flute teacher played, too. Since it was a concert to showcase the harpsichord, it was all Baroque music, as intricate as the red-and-gold brocade on the concert hall seats, and as ornate as the dimly-painted, arching rafters overhead.

On Friday, Danielle and I walked back to the HoHo (Honors House, where she and Rachel live--they're actually roommates) after linguistics class. Keep in mind, the HoHo is on "fraternity row". We complained about all the construction on campus. Crews of Mexicans have ripped out the road that runs in front of the music building and the dorm where I live and filled it in with dirt. They've dug up the concrete sidewalks that run on either side of the quadrangle and begun to replace them with brick sidewalks. All this bustle makes it difficult to get to and from classes. Students have to weave around orange webbing and creaking backhoes, past men squatting in sand and jabbering away in melodic Spanish. "Well, I guess we shouldn't complain too much," Danielle said finally, "after all, at least campus is safe." Suddenly, a young man pushed up beside us. "Yeah. We should be grateful that we're not living out there, where there are shootings every day," he said, gesturing toward the neighborhoods outside campus, which isn't exactly in the nicest part of town, though it's not in a ghetto either. I fell back as the young man fell in step beside Danielle. He introduced himself as Chuck and proceeded to enumerate to Danielle all his charitable ventures, vaunting himself for his work teaching chess to children "for no cost!". I listened skeptically and glowered covertly at him. He stumped along confidently beside Danielle, the wind ruffling his long, curly hair. His flip-flops thocked against the sidewalk. As far as I was concerned, he was a bonified "dude", and thus unworthy of serious conversation. He and Danielle talked about a party that one of the fraternity houses is giving. The party is themed for dating: If you're "free", you wear a green shirt; if you're "tied up" (presumably, you have a girlfriend/boyfriend), you wear a red shirt, and if you're in-between, you wear yellow. "So, what would you be? Red?" the boy asked suavely. "Oh, I'd be more of a yellow," Danielle brushed him off. "Well, you girls should come over sometime. Come over and visit," he urged. "I'll consider it," Danielle said. As soon as he was gone to his fraternity, she turned and pulled a face at me. Then we both laughed.

Meri came over Friday evening. We watched "Three Stooges" episodes and tickled Daisy unmercifully because she refused to leave my room and go to bed.

On Saturday, my family and I went with a bunch of others to see the latest Wallace-and-Gromit movie. Perhaps because I was exhausted, and perhaps because my standard of sensibility is very high, the movie felt like a confused nightmare to me. I felt betrayed: to me, it lacked the feeling of carefree innocence that the previous "shorts" have had, not to mention the occasional crude jokes and the rude portrayals of hunters and clergymen. Wallace became a stupid monster, and Gromit took on epic stature--in one scene the music and cinematography were reminiscent of "Lord of the Rings" heroism. (Come on! He's a dog, after all!) After the movie, while my father grilled hamburgers, I planted pansies in the garden. The afternoon was cool, but the moist earth was warm and crumbly. Daisy pulled earthworms out of the soil and deposited them safely under the bell pepper plants, while I uprooted basil seedlings from the pansy plot. Feathery-winged butterflies fluttered over magenta zinnias, like scraps of polleny brocade dropped accidentally onto a satin pink ballgown.

a technicality....

I've been getting comment spam on my blog. From now on, in order to comment, you'll be asked to type the "word verification" thingy--just repeat the letters you see in the box, and you'll be able to comment. For the most part, I know everyone who's commenting on here. If I see a comment by someone I don't know, I'll delete it because it's usually an advertisement. If I don't know you, feel free to comment (I welcome your input), but please make it plain to me somehow (through syntax, actually mentioning something I said in the post, etc.) that you're not spam!

Thanks.

some Bible verses

Now Playing: Cathie Ryan, "The Farthest Wave". Track 10, "Peata Beag Do Mhathar". I love the dancy feel of this track--it's much more serious than the "Dance the Baby" set, but just as happy. It's as though the two-year-old girl in "Dance the Baby" has grown up into a twelve-year-old and, instead of being danced on her grandmother's knee, is now dancing for herself.

Here are some verses I've taken to heart recently:

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." Joshua 1:9. (thanks to Melissa's oldest sister)
God has commanded us to go out and to live in the world. He has commanded us to tell others about Himself, and He has commanded us to use our abilities for His glory as He gives us the chance. As a result, we have nothing to fear. Though we may be mocked or foiled in our attempts, even those failures are being used by God for some good purpose.

"Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from Your Father's will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows." Matthew 10:27-31
I used to be afraid of verse 27 because I thought it meant that we were supposed to proclaim our deepest secrets in public, and I didn't like that idea at all, to say the least. But as I consider these verses, I begin to realize that Christ is not telling us to reveal our secrets. Perhaps He is instead telling us to reveal God's secrets--in other words, to preach aloud before the world the doctrines and truths that we have learned in the "secret places" of the church. To inspire us to have courage for this daunting task, He reminds us not to be afraid of those who cannot harm our souls. When I speak before other people about Christianity (and about Calvinism in particular, which is completely derided here on campus), I tremble from cowardice--I am afraid of the professors who can dock my grade because of my "bigotry" and so lose me my scholarship, and I am afraid of the students who can blacklist me and make me an outcast. I should not be afraid at all. The professors may be able to take away my financial support, but God provides for everything--He even provides the seeds the sparrows eat; how much more will He provide for my college tuition? The students may be able to take away my friends and ruin my reputation, but God is always with me. He will not die or fall sick the way human friends may. And He knows my true motivations and passions--both terror and hope! For He knows my sins and my struggles, but He also knows that, by the power of His Spirit, I am truly trying to do good and defend the truth. To Him, the words that I proclaim are not foolishness but the most fundamental truth. To Him, I am not a stupid, bigoted liar, but wiser in the Spirit than any professor, and more lovely in Christ than any homecoming queen. People mock the doctrine of predestination, but I think it's one of the most comforting things that ever arose from Scripture. "But the very hairs of your head are all numbered". God knows everything, plans everything. I can't lose anything according to His plan. Yes, I am still responsible for my actions, and I certainly can still sin. But He plans and uses even the bad things for His own glory. If you don't believe in predestination, then Christ's sacrifice becomes a "Plan B", a failure, an admittance that the Devil conquered God--and if the Devil can conquer God, or if men can force God to take a different plan of action, then I would rather die tonight than go on living in such a world. God's election and predestination are the basis of my hope and my life on this earth, no matter how comical others may find it.

"We have thought, O God, on Your lovingkindness, in the midst of Your temple. According to Your name, O God, so is Your praise to the ends of the earth; Your right hand is full of righteousness. Let Mount Zion rejoice, let the daughters of Judah be glad, because of Your judgments." Psalm 48:9-11 (though I love the whole Psalm)
God's truth endures forever. The scorn of men can't shake it at all. Though people call truth a lie and make wisdom into foolishness with their sophistry, the truth will outlive them. Men have attacked the truth before, and they will attack it in the future, but they cannot mar it or cause it to pass away. We cling to an unshakeable rock. And so we should be glad! We should praise God for the truth of His Word, even if we don't always fully understand it. As the beginning of verse 9 says, one of the best places to "think on God's lovingkindness" is in the church. Fellowship, the Word, the sacraments, and prayer are integral parts of the Christian life, and most of them cannot be had without the church. So Christians should seek to engage themselves in the church. No one can be completely isolated; it is necessary that we be gathered together with a body of other believers. In the famous passage in Isaiah 6 where Isaiah's tongue is purged with a coal from the altar, the seraphim are mentioned earlier (verse 3) as crying God's praise to one another. They don't proclaim it to God Himself or to those outside the holy place; instead, they uplift God's great works to each other. God has designed the church so that His name will be praised by His people to one another. "How good and beautiful a thing it is when brothers dwell together in unity!"--because when they are unified, Christian brothers can praise God more fully. Though we shouldn't idolize the members of our family of faith, we are called by God to live in that family, to love that family, and to praise Him as a community--all the daughters of Zion, all the sons of the covenant, together.

Friday...at last!

Now Playing: "The Village", soundtrack by James Newton Howard. Track 6, "I Cannot See His Color". (This scene always wants to make me cry. I vividly remember how, when my father watched it, he made that hurt little gasp and buried his head in his hand.)

Here's the rest of my week (which is finally about to be over!):

On Tuesday, someone left a note on my door telling me in no uncertain terms to stop practicing my flute in my room, which I have done every day since school started. I got permission from the RA, who said she thought it would be fine. The note began something like this, "Although your flute scales are impressive, they are also very annoying..." Yes, I know how annoying they are--after all, I'm the one who is playing them day after day, year after year. A chromatic scale doesn't get anymore interesting after you've played it a million times! But it ruined my day for me.... So now I've been trying to practice in the practice rooms in Tyrrell Hall, the music building. There are only about half-a-dozen practice rooms, and yesterday afternoon (Thursday) they were all full, so I didn't get a chance to warm up before my lesson. This morning, though, there was only one other person, a pianist, in the practice rooms, so I got to have a good long time without any interruptions.

On Wednesday, I had a midterm exam in the notorious Pocahontas/composition class. I wasn't too pleased with it, but what can I say? The question was biased, and I sat and struggled for twenty minutes trying to find an answer that would be both pleasing to God and the professor. The difficulty was that the book the question was based on had good points and bad points, so my answer (if it was to be truthful) wouldn't argue for anything so much as show how the book portrayed Christians incorrectly. However, that wasn't the purpose of the essay, so I was forced to write something milky that probably wasn't pleasing to anyone, least of all myself. As a result, I left the exam feeling both frustrated and traitorous.

On Thursday, in my British literature class, instead of the usual classroom meeting, we went up to special collections on the fifth floor of the library. After pressing the magic buzzer to open the locked door, the class collected in the little entry area. When the professor arrived, a primly-dressed woman emerged from a back office and escorted us into a display area where she'd spread out a lavish variety of books on a couple of tables. She moved down the chronological line for us: a medieval portion of the New Testament from the 1100's, an illuminated Book of Hours, a facsimile of the Guetenberg Bible, a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle with the most interesting woodcuts, some texts from Chaucer, a very old printed Bible (probably a Geneva Bible), a first edition of "Hamlet", and Pope's "Essay on Criticism", among others. After she'd explained to us the history of each item, she led us into the reading room, where ornate candelabra worthy of the "Phantom of the Opera" held lamps. The light glowed warmly on floor-to-ceiling glass cases that held dimly-bound books, their spines dulled by time. In an awed voice, she told us about the library's world-class collection of James Joyce books and also that this particularly university is one of a few that allows anyone to examine its special collections. Most universities, apparently, make it difficult even for graduate students to look at the old books.

After our guide was done with her speech, she let us look around freely. I put my face as close as I could to the old, old New Testament. It smelled faintly of dust and, strangely, sweetly, of vanilla. The penstrokes were pale brown, fine as the individual veins of a bird's feather. I could sense the presence of the scribe, his hand trembling just a little as he dripped the fine blue or scarlet paint around the initial letters. Gold leaf had bled and stained the pages. Each cover was slightly warped, like an old, dried-out leaf. Nearby, a couple of other members of the class exclaimed over several huge, folio-sized sheets from a medieval music book: Gregorian chant, with the diamond-shaped notes marching cryptically over thin red staff lines. Someone had sewed the parchment back together where it had been torn.

The copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle was donated to the library by a collector, but its old binding fell apart. As I examined it, bending over greyed, aged pages with their smeared wood cuts, I fingered the leather binding. A book binder in another large city near here bound the book in leather from Europe. After researching tooling, he carefully tooled the glossy leather with accurate geometric patterns embellished with gold foil. The leather was glued to two wooden boards (the book is one of those grand, old, noble ones) that came from tree trunks dredged up from the bottom of Lake Erie. (As the curator told the story, there was a ship that sank in Lake Erie in the 1800's, carrying a load of logs. When the ship was raised several years ago, the wood inside the logs were found to be intact, and so they were cut up and used--partly for binding this book.) The book binder used his Boy Scout manual about braiding rope to make the rope to which to sew the pages. He carried the bronze embellishments around in his pocket to make them look worn. The result: a lovely new binding for a very old book.

As you can imagine, the whole collection was magic to me. I love the little straight letters that march so elegantly down the stained pages, as even as they were when the monk first set his quill to the parchment, or the typesetter rolled the ink over his type.

Today has been long, slow, and dull. The Pocahontas class was cancelled, so I only had linguistics, which didn't go over anything new. I feel as though I haven't been doing enough work, and I chafe to do more--to complete all the papers for every class, to read through all the books, to take all the exams. But I can't, because so much of exams and essays depends on what the professor specifically assigns you right before the actual thing is due. And as far as books are concerned, if I were to whip through them all, I wouldn't learn them half as well as I do when I just follow the careful syllabus and have discussions in class.

So instead I sit in my room and post on my blog!

In two hours I'm supposed to go kite-flying with a couple of other kids here. One of them is from my hometown. We discovered this after linguistics--it was so funny, like a lightbulb going on. His name is Spencer, and he actually knows my father! He lived on the street that I biked along when I rode to class at the university in my hometown. The other acquaintance is a girl, Jessica, who's one of Spencer's friends. They're both in the Reformed college group I go to. Supposedly we're going down to the dollar store to buy a couple of cheap kites since I don't have mine here (I have a lovely, huge nylon kite that my uncle gave me--it's almost like a living creature).

The day is too lovely to waste indoors--cool, crisp, and blue. I'm going to go run now, hopefully.

To wax philosophical or not to wax philosophical... that is the question

Now playing (I know, I know--more Natalie MacMaster! But I was listening to Camille Saint-Saens last night, does that count?): Natalie MacMaster, "In My Hands". Track 6, "Flamenco Fling".

Monday evening, I was in the midst of my personal devotions when A.C., my next-door neighbor knocked on my door. She was eager to show off her new collection of music that she'd downloaded from the internet that day. Uneasily, I followed her into her room. It was cluttered with boxes. A treadmill took up the center of the floor (she's a golfer and very concerned with her physical image). A few books and various bits of clothing were scattered about. She played snips of songs for me: cold, hard, artificial Scandinavian pop; passionate Colombian rock; carefree salsa music; gritty Country with the fiddle sawing away behind a warbling voice; cynical American rock; hip-hop; grandiose Pavarotti from an opera; Beethoven's high-keyed ninth symphony. It was rather like having a strange, fragmented portrait of A.C. herself.

(Hmmm... I smell a rabbit!)

That's really what listening to other people's music gives you, and that's why it's necessary to be so careful about what we listen to: our music ultimately becomes a part of the way we think. It can put us in a good mood or push us deeper into depression. Music is so influential, and we absorb it so that it becomes something we carry around all the time, as anyone will know who has gotten a song "stuck in their head". I know that, when I'm left to myself (running errands or hunting down groceries for my mother), I can start to play whole CD's through in my head from start to finish. It's important that each of those songs in some way contain something worthwhile, or, to state the rule negatively, that they don't contain things that would be dishonoring to God. Mr. W (not Melissa's father or Mrs. Y's father, but an Irish chap who's one of the best teachers I've ever had as far as religion is concerned) said, "If you would be ashamed to have Jesus listen to the music with you, then you probably shouldn't be listening to it at all." Meri's older sister suggested a technique that I use myself: burn yourself a copy of the CD, but leave off that objectionable song that makes you flinch. Granted, there are some genres of music that are far more susceptible to this sort of thing than others. Usually, you won't run into this as far as Classical or Christian music is concerned (though that point is quite arguable!). However, in genres such as rock or rap, or Celtic or Folk(perhaps surprisingly to someone who's never thought about it), you have to be careful about what you hear. In Celtic music, if the song is in English, does it glorify adultery? In rock, does the song encourage anarchy? In rap, does the song use foul language? I'm not trying to give you a value judgment of these genres of music. I enjoy Celtic music myself a great deal. But I think you still have to be careful.... It's so easy to be tempted, and even if the song isn't too explicit, consider the sorts of thoughts that it puts in your head. Sometimes, evil can be most powerful when it's most subtle. You don't need to hang on to those songs that make you uneasy, even if they have a great beat or good instrumentals. They're just weighing you down on your way to Heaven.

Now, if we could all only practice what we preach...!

Moving on....

So, after I listened to her music, she was eager to come and hear mine. I was a bit surprised by her eagerness, but immediately a little bell rang in my head. (Understand, A.C. is not a Christian. The hardest thing about her is that in some ways she is close to Christianity by appearance, as C.S. Lewis would say--that is, a few of her beliefs mirror Christianity (she believes in God, and she has a warped view of man's depravity), but she is not at all Christian by true proximity, true coming near to Christ.) So we sat down at my laptop, and I flipped through my CD collection: Loreena McKennitt, Altan, Kate Rusby, Chris Thile ("Wow, this is really good!", which was about as positive as she got), Mark O'Connor, Enya, the "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" soundtrack, and (this was why the bell was ringing) a New Song Psalm CD. Of course, this last one got her to ask some questions. As a result, we stayed up till midnight talking.

It was like trying to communicate with someone who speaks a foreign language, though. To her, "belief in God" means a belief in some vague power that's in all of us. I tried to convince her that when she denies God's power, His justice (she mocks the idea of Hell no end), and His mercy (she can't grasp that the doctrine of election is the most merciful thing she'll ever run across), she's really denying God Himself and dishonoring Him. It's heart-wrenching. Like the rest of us, she clings tightly to her own egoism, her own ability to do things herself. She's proud of it. She sees it as being necessary to her survival as an athlete, and the idea of giving it up is as laughable to her as the idea that the moon is made out of green cheese. Yet she envies the Christian's peace in God at the same time. "You and Syneva are always so peaceful--as though you're on opium or something," she giggled. (Syneva is one of our mutual friends, and one of the sweetest Christian girls I've ever met.)

Wow, it is so cold in my room right now. I'm shivering uncontrollably as I write this, and I'm quite bundled up, too, in thick sweater and jeans. Yesterday it was eighty-four degrees Farenheit, and today it's around fifty. In class today some guys were complaining about how they'd expected it to be warm this morning, and so dashed to class in T-shirt and shorts (which sounds like something Violin and SwanElf would do--only they wouldn't run, they'd revel in it!).

I meant to cover my whole week with this post, but that's obviously not going to happen, so more later, perhaps.

Life Chain Sabbath

Now Playing: "In My Hands", by Natalie MacMaster. Track 7: "Olympic Reel". (This track has Mark O'Connor on it! Yess!!)

Yesterday was Life Chain Sabbath. I stood with other members of my church along a busy highway that runs through our town for an hour in the afternoon. We held signs reading, "Adoption: The Loving Option" and "Abortion Hurts Women" and "Abortion Kills Children". I stood between Violin and Meri on the sidewalk. For the first half-hour, we prayed silently. Brother1 had brought a Psalter along, and for the second half-hour, the youth group sang (we were all standing together along one strip of the road, with adults on either end of our section), mostly Psalms that we'd memorized, though SwanElf borrowed the Psalter in order to sing the alto line. We sang Ps. 127A, Ps. 116A, Ps. 148, Ps. 8A, Ps. 23B, Ps. 2, Ps. 84, and Ps. 72C. Thanks to the fact that we were all slightly dazzled by sun and the strong, hot south wind, our singing was high. In fact, one end of the line kept inching sharper, by half-steps, until they were in a completely different key from the other end of the line. Our voices were thin as the migrating monarch butterflies fluttering down the wind overhead. The roar of passing pickup trucks drowned us out, and sometimes diesel fumes caught at our throats. My legs ached, and the wind battered the cardstock sign in my hands. Sometimes, people honked. Some looked away uncomfortably. Other people gave us encouraging "thumbs-up". Still others shook their heads or grinned mockingly.

After, everyone who had participated went over to our pastor's house for refreshments (in good hobbit style :). Meri's younger siblings played with legos on the living room floor, while the pastor's littlest daughter dumped all her beanie babies in the walkway. A bunch of the youth went down into the "mad scientist's dungeon" (the basement) to see Boromir's LOTR miniatures. He turns each little metal figure into a work of art by painting loving detail on banners, chainmail, and horses' harness. The pastor's wife let us have Narnia movie posters for the upcoming film of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe". I sat and argued with Meri, Princess, SwanElf, Marigold, and Estella about the various merits of present and past (BBC) Narnia productions. Violin lay sprawled on the leather-covered sofa with her hand draped melodramatically across her glasses. My family was among the last to leave.

By the way, here's the experience of one of my friends who also participated in a Life Chain today. He's in a town across the country from me. Encouraging to know that people across this nation participate--every segment of Life Chain links up in God's eyes, I know. He is in control.

"[we]... went to downtown B-- and participated in a Life Chain.

"Easily over 200 people stood about every 5-10 feet apart and held signs protesting against abortion and praying quietly to ourselves for an hour. It was really a pretty powerful experience to see all these people just standing there, praying that God would have mercy upon our country and stop the horrible sin of abortion.

"One of the saddest moments of the time was when this car of three teenage boys drove by and they yelled our the window to us 'Jesus isn't real you freaks!' Now, that didn't bother us at all, but the sad part about it is, that one day they will stand before God, with Christ sitting at His right hand and Jesus will look at them, and they will realize He does indeed exist and He did indeed rise from the dead, and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it at that point. Now, before I go to far, we can continue to pray and hope that God will bring them to Himself and that situation will be avoided, but it is a scary thing to think about the millions of people who will die believing Jesus is nothing more then a myth or a good moral leader."

Also, if you want to read even more about Life Chain, visit Princess's blog. She's got a post, too.

Sundry and Various Ramblings

Currently Playing: "The Farthest Wave", by Cathie Ryan, Track 7, "Dance the Baby (Slip Jigs)". This track sounds like a rattle to me, somehow--like the little clay creatures that we made at Mrs. Shan's house once. They were rounded, to comfortably fit the palm of your hand. They were hollow inside, and in them we'd put a couple of little clay balls. When they had been fired, they turned into the prettiest little rattles. They made a warm, clicking sound.

Are everyone except Marigold, Violin, and SwanElf afraid of poetry? Hmmm.... Do me a favor: if you haven't read the past couple of posts (excluding the one about Babinski), scroll down and read them. Then tell me what you think!

I've noticed how interesting conversations are on campus. It's quite fun because you can discuss so many things. One night, one of my acquaintances (A.C., for those of you who know who she is) and I were talking about famine in Africa and corruption in Columbia, which opened the door for me to mention total depravity. Another night, Amanda and I were talking about what we wanted to do after college, and the subject of predestination arose. Yet another night, Rachel and I happened to be conversing about dreams, and we got onto the question of the subconscious and whether Elves ever really existed.

Today in my English composition class (which is really about Pocahontas and how awful Christians were to women and Native Americans), we turned in our second paper. The professor had said that we'd also watch a movie. Now, I'm not partial to the sorts of movies that the other people in the class enjoy, but I do prefer movie days because it means I can keep my mouth shut instead of feeling compelled to say something to put down the erroneous ideas that keep popping up in class discussions. However, the professor surprised us all (unpleasantly) by announcing that we were going to have an in-class essay exercise today. *sigh* Since the midterm is next Wednesday, it was good practice, but still....

In linguistics, we've been learning about the IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet. It's like learning a code--lots of fun. (Especially since I got a good grade on the quiz over IPA *haha*).

In oceanography, it's been diatoms and sediments and things. The bits about sediments are rather boring, but the professor has shown us some pictures of zooplankton and phytoplankton. There are several kinds: radiolarians, foarminifera, coccoliths, and diatoms. If you do an image search on Google for one of these names, you'll get some really, really cool pictures that look even weirder than something from Star Trek.

On Thursday, in Major British Writers I, we started a survey of the Reformation. It was fairly positive, for the most part--a discussion of the benefits of the Reformation (increased literacy, literary freedom, economic freedom, etc.). My question: Why does the word "Calvinist" always have to be preceded by the word "radical"? This makes no sense to me. It seems as though everywhere I turn, the doctrines of predestination and election are treated as incredibly stupid or incredibly zealous. Perhaps it's because people don't like a doctrine which makes them feel helpless because they can't do anything about their salvation besides faith (and even that has to be given to them by Christ). Or maybe because they don't like something which stirs up such passion. Maybe they're afraid of a doctrine which takes such a strong grip on people.

Anyhow, in Honors class, we finally finished Herodotus. *hooray!* I liked Herodotus, but I liked him much more just to read, and not to be quizzed over the endless labyrinth of names, the way our professor did. Now we're launching into Aeschylus's "Persians" and Thucydides's "History". The "Persians" is rather dull, just a long lament about how all the Persians were killed by the Greeks. The Persians come across as self-pitying cowards, I'm afraid. And Thucydides is terribly dry, not nearly as flowery and interesting as Herodotus.

Flute lessons are going fairly well. The professor seems pleased with my work, so that's a comfort. He told me that he's surprised at how well I prepare for lessons, considering I'm not a music major. In lessons, if he asks me to do something other than what I've practiced (such as an alternate fingering, or a new ornament), I don't play it very well. Besides, I only spend the time required in the syllabus practicing, so I'm not sure what's so amazing about it.

There's your whirlwind tour through my classes this week. And now I have to go eat supper so that I'm ready when Mrs. B comes to take me home. (I only have thirty minutes--yikes!) See most of you soon.

oh no, not again! (THIS POST IS A JOKE)

(Note: If you want to understand this post, go read Violin's, SwanElf's, and Marigold's blogs.)

What is a babinski? After reading several posts on the subject by unnamed people (hint: look at the blogs mentioned above), this hobbit decided to find out. The results are cobbled together from various websites—if you do a Google search, you’ll find them.

Answer #1:
Babinski's reflex or extensor plantar reflex is a test for dysfunction of the corticospinal tract. The test consists of stroking the outside sole from heel to toe with a pointed object. The normal response is a bunching downward (flexor) movement of all the toes. In infants under 2 years of age and people with dysfunction in the corticospinal tract, this causes an upward (extensor) movement of the big toe.
Babinski's reflex can occur unilaterally (in just one foot) or bilaterally (in both feet).
A positive Babinski's reflex is consistent with several neurological conditions, including multiple sclerosis.

Answer #2:
Babinski's reflex occurs when the great toe flexes toward the top of the foot and the other toes fan out after the sole of the foot has been firmly stroked. This is normal in younger children, but abnormal after the age of 2.
Reflexes are specific, predictable, involuntary responses to a particular type of stimulation. Babinski's reflex is one of the infantile reflexes. It is normal in children under 2 years old, but it disappears as the child ages and the nervous system becomes more developed. In people more than 2 years old, the presence of a Babinski's reflex indicates damage to the nerve paths connecting the spinal cord and the brain (the corticospinal tract). Because this tract is right-sided and left-sided, a Babinski's reflex can occur on one side or on both sides. An abnormal Babinski's reflex can be temporary or permanent.

Answer #3:
Joseph Jules François Félix Babinski was one of a handful of French neurologists and other medical scientists who made Hôpital de Salpêtrière in Paris a world famous medical centre in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Both his name, and those of many of his colleagues, are still of eponymic fame.

Completely useless, but I thought I should clarify so that you will not be tormented by things you do not know at the hands of unnamed people. *hahaha*

Purgatorio

On Saturday, my oceanography class went on a field trip to a lake an hour east of the campus. The class was divided into twelve teams, and from each team, four people went on the field trip to collect data for the entire team to process back on campus. I was one of the four people who went for my team (the marine biology team). Instead of taking a university bus, we had to arrange our own transportation. One of the boys on my team owns a Jeep, and since he was the only one of our foursome who had a car, we were forced to use his car. Now, the other three members of the team were quite eager to ride in a Jeep. I, however, was not. I had never ridden in a Jeep before, and there's something about the constant wind and the fear of flying out of the car that I didn't relish at all. But I had no choice. So that's how I found myself, at eight o'clock Saturday morning, zipping down the highway in a Jeep, trying frantically to keep my knapsack wedged in my lap, my hair attached to my head, and my body from leaving the car. Since I had two hours of this nonstop "experience", and there was no way I could read in such a contraption, I resorted to making poetry in my mind. This is the result. Now, it wasn't quite as bad as the poem makes out. But everything in the poem is fairly real, and it describes perfectly what I felt at the time.

For the record: I am a Protestant, and I do not believe in Purgatory. But it seemed like the perfect title....

Purgatorio

Wind rips across Jeep’s frame. It buffets ears
as car roars down the highway, plowing through
grey dawn. Hair lashes face, auburn strands tempered
in fire. Face freezes. Through mask, glazed eyes stare where

warm sunlight streaks fields. Dew sparkles, stars sprinkled on
sky’s blue lawn, shimmering like a moon-struck sea.
In wind’s wake, goldenrod ripples giddily.
Cascade of elm leaves whirls down, blond autumn.

Every devil has been freed from Hell
and caged inside the radio’s howling box.
Guitar howls, twisted by torment. Singer screams.
Bass chuckles. Drums shatter my shivering shell

until the driver turns the dial. A song,
my orison, floats through the wind, each note
glowing, a firefly. Full-orbed flute kisses lips.
It dances through concerto. Then by thongs

it is bound, wrapped in writhing guitar’s coils.
With each wheel’s turn, a piece of purity
is lost. Six minutes bleed away. Lungs burst. Mouth gapes.
Gasoline claws throat. Teeth gnash burning oil.

Bruised by wind, sage breathes from a ditch. Wet grass
bows in the back-rush of a hawk’s wings. Heron,
still as a Japanese screen, watches water.
Sunflowers sigh. Their pollened breath dusts glass,

glosses bugs splashed on the windshield. Engine roars.
The driver flings his head back, laughs in glee.
Knuckles tighten. Knees shake uncontrollably.
I shut eyes, pray that life will not be poured,

a sheen of livid oil, on asphalt. Stiff
as swan’s flight-pinion I sit, fearing, hoping
for dawn’s wind to blow me away. I squint,
see sky ahead, a silver veil, begin to lift.

couldn't find anything better

Here's a poem. Don't have time for more. This might be about one of the storms that charged through here last week, and it might be about something else....

A Coming Judgment
9/14/05

Across blue beach, grey high-tide line swirls. Sea
Breaks northward, luminous wave glowing red
As granite cliffs reflecting sun from shore.
Below the ocean's churning panoply

A girl jogs down the walk, her dog loping
Beside her. Muscle rolls under golden skin.
On intramural field, boys play flag football.
Voices yell. Jerseys flutter. Cleats score green slope.

Above, sun sets behind sky’s blue sand-dunes.
Like frightened gulls circling above water,
Grey clouds swirl upward on the western edge.
Lightning, sun trapped in wave, sketches silver runes,

Like kelp-fronds' blazing veins, through thunderhead.
A man strolls, pipe wedged in his mouth. Three huskies
Tug at their leashes in his hands, nose the grass,
And peer at passing cars with blue eyes. Sped

On his way, dude on rollerblades mimics
Thunder with graceful rumble of rhythmic feet.
A runner sprints by, head upflung, hair blowing.
Above them, oak trees murmur. Long leaves flick,

White as uplifted hands, pale as coming rain.
Limbs rise in welcome, wearing storm’s livery.
Clouds rumble, response to trees’ awed praise. Enthroned,
Wave climbs higher, with lightning greets its thanes.

plate tectonics, Chaucer, "grey area", and boys

Well, I was either going to post a poem or a journal entry. I opted for the journal entry. So here it is: September 13, 2005.

Usual classes today. In oceanography, we discussed more about rocks, plate tectonics, etc. I don’t know how I’m going to keep all the measurements (widths, depths, heights, units, distances) sorted out for the test. On top of all the memory work, Dr. M gave us a sheet of mathematical exercises to work for next class, having to do with age of sediments and spreading of rock from undersea faults. The calculations would be fairly simple for someone who’s had recent practice, but my math skills are already rusty. I screwed up courage to ask him if he’d go over my work with me during his office hour tomorrow. I’m a bit afraid since he seems to be somewhat of a brusque man, unwilling to dally with students who need to have their hands held, so to speak. In Major British Writers, we talked about scanning lines, and we read Chaucer’s “General Prologue”. In Honors, we argued about the lecture on Sabbath: the nature of the middle ground, the “grey” area, and if it's good to stay in the "grey" area between Black and White. Black and White were never clearly defined: They could either have been two extremes ("Orange juice is good for you" and "Orange juice is poison"), with the grey area being a place in which to stand and deliberate before you make a decision based on the information (and in this decision you choose Black, White, or a combination thereof), or Right and Wrong, with the grey area being the worldveiw that says that there's no set morality, and that everyone's standard is different and should be based on their personal experiences and desires. I agree with the first view: I think it's right to step back from two extremes and think critically about them before you decide what your own position is. However, I do not agree with the second view at all because you always have to have a moral standard, a Right and a Wrong, if you're going to think critically in the first place. It's hard to be critical about something that is neither good nor bad. The students’ preconceptions began to come out over the course of the discussion—I suspect that over half the class is composed of postmodern moderate liberals who like the thought of the “grey” area as the median between Right and Wrong (though I suspect that they like the “grey” simply because it appears to be “different”, “more intellectual”, and “elite” compared to all the mobs who are going toward Right and Wrong—thereby making Right and Wrong into a new “Wrong” and “grey” into Right…).

Danielle and Rachel, two of my friends who share the Honors class with me, tried to hash this out some more as we walked to lunch together. We were joined at lunch by two of Danielle’s friend: Elizabeth, a girl who has a face like a pre-Raphaelite heroine, and James, a young man from Danielle's French class who has eaten with Danielle and me before. We started to talk about the problem of pain and evil in the world. James and I reasoned from The Silmarillion that evil came into the world to display God’s glory—we would never know how good God is without evil, nor would many of the beautiful things in this world have happened (such as the Incarnation) without evil. Then the discussion moved on to the issue of evil in the human heart, depravity, etc. Of course, they were all Arminian. I was actually quite surprised that one of them deigned to mention Calvinism (even though she couldn't remember Calvin's name—!!), but the judgment of the group seemed to be that Calvinism is a pretty harsh standard. They couldn't seem to break away from the notion that each of us has both good and evil in our hearts, and that we must choose which one to follow ourselves, and that God "picks us for His team" based on our own choice and works. I sat and stewed quietly for three reasons: I was unwilling to argue with Danielle and Rachel, who are two of my good friends, I was uncertain of my own ability to defend my position (the girl who was Danielle’s friend seemed quite set on her own point-of-view), and I was unable to get a word in edgewise.

I spent the afternoon studying—trying to puzzle out oceanography, scanning lines from Chaucer, and reading Herodotus. Herodotus is such fun. One of the reviewers on the back of my edition calls his work a “fresco”, and it really is. It’s like the frescoes of Pompeii—the colors have not faded; the people stare out, undimmed, at the modern world in all their pettiness, nobleness, seriousness, or ridiculousness. Practiced flute and went running. I ate supper at a table where Danielle, Alex (the only boy in my Pocahontas class, a lanky, red-headed chap), a harsh young man (who was puzzling over his music theory homework and cursing noisily while he did so), and two quiet girls were sitting. Danielle left to study, as did Alex and the two girls. However, as they moved out, a group of boys moved in. I soon found myself, to my dismay, the sole girl at a table full of boys. The young man sitting beside me was quite polite and engaging, and we managed to have something of a conversation. But he mostly paid attention to his friends, and so I sat and listened to their fragmented talk, laughing to myself at their mannerisms.

After supper, I sat in my room for a while and cleared out my inbox. I had lots of e-mails to answer. Instead of going to Reformed University Fellowship at 7:30 p.m., on time, I’ve decided to go late and arrive around 8:00 p.m., when the singing is over (they use hymns), because I feel very uncomfortable standing there with my mouth shut while everyone else sings. When the work of writing e-mails was about done, I glanced out the window. To my delight and awe, the thin thread of thunderclouds to the north had grown to a luminous wave looming over the city. I hastily collected my journal and Bible and dashed downstairs. Outside, I stood on the sidewalk in front of my dorm like an idiot, grinning in amazement at the clouds. Directly overhead, reaching from west to east, a huge swathe of cloud extended, like a grey road through a blue wilderness. Its edges were bubbly like a pot beginning to simmer. From its western shoulder, a line of hilly, grey-blue clouds was silhouetted against the auburn sunset, like giants leaning on the green horizon’s hill. These clouds rose and rose until they were swept up in that giant, thunderous mass. Its white brow leaned across the sky, facing westward, like a cliff overlooking a blue sea, the rocks glowing orange and saffron with the sunset. In its eastern shadow, lightning flickered. I gazed at it, gasping, almost laughing with the sheer strength—like Christine, open-mouthed at the Phantom’s power. Across the street, people were playing intramural flag football on the level playing field below the soccer stadium. They shouted, dashed, pounced, leaped, oblivious to the panoply above them. A girl jogged by with a Labrador retriever running beside her, muscle rippling beneath its golden coat. Only the trees, buoyed by the knowledge of the storm, murmured uneasily among themselves—uneasily, with anticipation, their leaves silvered in the wind, reflecting the promise of rain.

On my walk to RUF, two young men fell into step with me. One of them was a curly-haired, touseled-headed fellow who’s in my linguistics class and also in RUF. His name is Spencer. His friend was named David—a thin, ruddy-faced chap with very blond hair. “I’ve been wanting to get to know you for weeks,” Spencer said. “I see you every day across the room in class, but you’re always out of there like—like a fox.” I laughed at this. He asked me why I was late to RUF. I told him that I had a philosophical excuse. He said that he actually used to do that at his church, too—he would come late to the service in order to skip the music, which he didn’t like. As it turned out, I didn’t time my arrival quite right—I still had to sit through two songs. But one of the songs was a hymn-ized version of Psalm 73. (Though I’ve been wondering: if I don’t sing along when the songs are not Psalms, should I also not sing along when the songs are not sung accapella? Where do I draw the line? Hmmmm...) Mr. K, the leader of RUF, preached a very good sermon, very thought-provoking and convicting. While I walked back to my room, lightning danced along the clouds’ back—like waves licking along a whale’s sides. The night was hushed, the trees still murmuring, but more softly, and the air was warm and damp.

I showered, and then spent a very long time standing at my window, watching the clouds. They swirled toward me, licked with lightning the way a wave is full of reflections of the sun. Below, quite oblivious, a many with a pipe in his mouth walked three Huskie dogs down the street. A dude skated around the parking lot across from my dorm, a boy ran past with his head flung back, and two teams shouted and charged at each other on the intramural football field. And still the lightning leaped overhead.... It was mesmerizing. Nighthawks flew over the parking lot lights, swirling like leaves tossed up by the wind, and whistling their keening cries. When they all disappeared around eleven o'clock, I knew that it was really late, and time for bed.

September 11, 2005: not a day of terror

This account has been abridged from what’s in my journal, but I’m not sure you would want to read the longer version. As you read, praise God that He protects this country so that such simple, peace-loving people as ourselves can enjoy a Sabbath day without fear or persecution. Also as you read, be warned: Most of you who read this will see not unfamiliar college kids but yourselves, for herein I describe a “typical” Sabbath (if there is such a thing for me now). So read on at your own risk!

As usual, my family arrived early at church this morning. The church meets at the local community center because we don’t have our own building. My family always helps to set up—putting up tables, arranging chairs, taking boxes of paper goods out of the storage closet for fellowship lunch, bringing out the microwave, etc. After I helped to lug enormous plastic tubs full of coffee mix, cleaning rags, and baby toys out of the storage closet, I stood on the porch of the building and talked to Will, the pastor’s youngest son. He’s learning multiplication tables in school. He told me that at his friend’s birthday party this week, he caught a preying mantis. It ate a whole butterfly, except the wings.

Princess’s family arrived. She, Marigold, and I stood talked about Marigold’s hair, which is usually as wiry, buoyant, and untamed as autumn grass. Today, though, it was quite docile. When I asked why, she said, “Because there’s less of it to be wild! I trimmed it last night.”

My father taught the adult Sabbath school class today. Since I’m a college student, I’ve been banished from the youth group Sabbath school class. *sigh* After, I chatted with Meri’s mother, who knew all about the concert that my mother, Violin and I went to Friday night, even though I hadn’t told anyone about it. Somehow, everyone in our church knows what everyone else is doing. It’s not like being in a big family—in a family, you are never told what is going on (at least that’s my experience—haha).

During the service, just us four hobbits sat together. Before the service, Princess and I joked quietly about the autograph I’d gotten from the lead artist at the concert; I ribbed Meri about her “liquid mud” (coffee), and grinned at Violin across Princess’s back.

After the service, during lunch, a bunch of us girls sat together: all the Ws, Yoshimi (one of the Japanese girls my mother has befriended on the campus where my father teaches), Miss Hannah, Violin, SwanElf, and I. Fric, Violin’s youngest sister, sat with us, too. Katie and I constantly joked with and about Fric, who was sitting next to Katie and across from me. Sometimes, her face would become so smeared with beans-and-rice that Katie would say, “I can’t see your face!” Then Fric would diligently wipe herself with a napkin and then ask, “Now can you see my face?”

During second service, Pastor talked about suffering, either justly for something bad that we’ve done or unjustly for the sake of the Gospel. Mrs. K told a story about a time when she’d just gotten a new car when she was young. One of her friends urged her to see just how fast the car could go, and he begged her to try it out on the highway. She demurred, saying that she didn’t know how to drive it that fast—and her parents had forbidden her to go that fast. But her friend urged her, promising to copilot, so they took the car on the road together. Then, she said, her dad passed them. He didn’t recognize them, but she was so frightened that she drove straight home and confessed to her mother because she knew that confession was the only way to hope for mercy. Her mother promised not to tell her father as long as she never did that again.

While we prayed during the service, I heard thundering outside that sounded like someone thudding down the metal ramp from an animal trailer or sliding open and shut the metal doors on the side of a semi. On my way to the car after second service, Fric and Sis, Princess’s littlest sister, latched onto me. We stepped outside, and tiny raindrops patted our faces. Fric declared that she wasn’t scared of rain, but Sis stayed on the porch. Boromir had some sketches to show me. Aragorn, Boromir’s older brother and Pastor’s oldest son, pulled open the rear door of their family’s minivan (as on most cars, the “back hatch” opens upward and is supported by two metal struts when open), and we stood under the rear door as protection from the rain. Boromir showed us (Aragorn, Brother1, SwanElf, Marigold, Princess, etc.) some magnificent sketches of “Lord of the Rings” characters. You could almost see them breathing under their armor.

It began to rain more and more heavily. The thunder got closer. Lightning cracked the sky. Violin and I hightailed it into her family’s van, where we found a collection of her younger siblings already taking shelter. The rain whispered gently on the van’s metal roof. We sat in the van and talked while the storm grew harder. Outside, the other kids stood under a pavilion that had been erected in the parking lot last Friday for the Blues festival. In the van, Frac, Violin’s littlest brother, fluttered his long eyelashes at me and told me all about his stuffed, black-and-white spotted pony. Fric reiterated that she wasn’t afraid of thunder, but told us that her baby doll was. Violin suggested that she give it its bottle to keep it from being scared. Outside, Logan, one of a new batch of college students coming to church, produced a rapier and proceeded to show Brother1 how to fence in the rain.

We left church. At home, I packed my things up in preparation for returning to college. My mother prepared food for us to eat on the way. My father, Daisy, Brother2, and I drove to Tulsa in the middle of the afternoon. We listened to the last Williamson lecture about sole Psalmody on the way. It rained very hard. The rain hit our windshield like elephant feet, drumming against the glass. Silvery caterpillars raced across the windows. Lightning slithered across the sky, but the rain was so loud that we couldn’t hear the thunder. It lightened up as we crossed Keystone Lake, though. My father dropped me off at the kerb outside my dorm, and I walked up to my room alone.

I unpacked my things, then hurried to a lecture required for Honors students. The lecture was held in the faculty study in the library, across from the student study. The faculty study is just as elegant as the student study (dark wood paneling, old-fashioned windows with stained-glass panes depicting virtues), but there were almost no books in the bookcases, unlike the student study. The lecture was confusing. The speaker, Dr. D, looked very young to hold such impressive credentials as he did. He claimed to be defending Western ideology against all its opponents. He talked to us about taking a middle road between completely embracing the pursuit of science and the betterment of humanity, and completely embracing the terrorist hatred of progress. He talked about being moderately religious (neither completely liberal nor completely traditional). He talked about neither idealizing mankind in a scientific Utopia nor being cynical about mankind. But it was very confusing. He never defined “Western ideology”—if this had been a rhetoric class, he would’ve failed for not defining his terms. He seemed neither to completely hate nor completely love religion. I tried to analyze the lecture in terms of Christianity, but could not. Later, as Rachel and I left the lecture, one of the girls from our Honors class joined us. She pointed out that in taking a middle road (being “grey”) and declaring that both “black” and “white” are bad, you thereby turn both “black” and “white” into Black and your own middle position into White. Those who say that there is no Right or Wrong tell those who say that there is a Right and a Wrong that they are Wrong, which completely defeats their worldview.

After, Rachel and I walked around campus. Our path took us past the First United Methodist Church. Drawn by my usual love of old Gothic/Norman buildings, especially old church buildings, I led us across the street to it. It is built with two long wings, both of old stonework, that stretch towards the street. One wing is the sanctuary, I think; the other is classrooms, perhaps. Between the two wings is a grassy courtyard. Behind these two wings is a new addition which houses the church’s school. We tried the doors, but they were all locked—I could see the sturdy bolts holding the polished wooden wings of the doors together. We stood in the courtyard for a while and admired the building: the sturdy stonework; the smooth, grassy sward; the dim stained-glass windows; the lanterns glowing above the doors like stationary fireflies, their light shining through delicate ironwork; the belltower looming above the whole dim, quiet place. We talked about bells and church art as we returned to our path. On our way back to the Honors House, we saw more fireflies. They enchanted Rachel, who had never seen them before, and I tried to describe to her our backyard in the summer—the green gloom under the tower trees and the thousands of brilliant flashes, the “incandescent insects” making merry in the warm summer evening.

I walked back to my dorm alone, humming Psalms to myself. I sat at my desk, munching an apple and snacking on raisins and sunflower seeds while I wrote in my journal and listened to a New Song Psalm CD.

one of those quizzes

Since Princess and SwanElf have both done this, and I’m bored, I thought I’d try it, too. If you want to read theirs, check their blogs.

Here goes:

1. What is your full name? Frodo Baggins

2. What color pants are you wearing? Slinky black ones

3. What are you listening to right now? "Down Once More/Track Down This Murderer" from "The Phantom of the Opera"

4. What was the last thing you ate? A chocolate chip cookie

5. Do you wish on any stars? I'll keep that one to myself.

6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Hard to say... probably somewhere between blue and grey

7. How is the weather right now? Mostly sunny (with that scum of cloud across the sky that comes in late summer), south breeze, fairly warm

8. Last person you spoke to on the phone? My mother

9. How old are you today? Older than I was yesterday, and younger than I will be.

10. What's the last thing you did? Brushed my teeth

11. Favorite drink? Fruit smoothies

12. Favorite painters? John Constable, Rembrandt, Monet, Degas

13. Favorite time in history? Ancient Greece and Rome, Celtic/Anglo-Saxon England

14. Favorite sport? Basketball and soccer

15. Hair color? Red

16. Do you wear contacts? Not yet

17. Siblings? Two little brothers and a younger sister

18. Favorite months? October and March

19. Favorite food? Apples and peaches

20. What was the last movie you saw? "The Phantom of the Opera", of course

21. Favorite holiday of the year? Thanksgiving

22. What do you do to vent anger? Say something sarcastic, or write in my journal

23. Summer or winter? Autumn

24. Hugs or kisses? Hugs

25. Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate

26. When was the last time you cried? Last Saturday afternoon, listening to "Learn to be Lonely"

27. What is under your bed? Evil dust bunnies

28. Who is the friend you have had the longest? As in "friend friends" or "acquaintances? Because there are several people who I've known for years who I sort of keep in touch with (Emily and Marlene), but the people who I actually interact with a lot sort of come and go. Of that last group, probably Princess and Brioni would be the"friend friends" I've had the longest.

29. What did you do last night? Went to a Narnia discussion group meeting

30. What are you afraid of? Final exams, saying good-bye, and dishonoring Christ

31. Plain, buttered or salted popcorn? Buttered

32. Favorite car? Haha. A horse, of course. What a silly question!

33. Favorite flower? Tulips or coreopsis

34. Favorite tree? Silver maple

35. Favorite genre of book? Fantasy/historical fiction

36. Favorite genre of movie? (see above) I like mysteries, too.

37. Bitter, sweet, tangy, or salty? Tangy

38. Number of keys on your key ring? Three--one for my car, one for my house, and one for my laptop

39. How many years at your recent job? Two weeks (of being a college student)

40. Are you having a nice day? Yeah. It's ok. I'm tired of being here....