Now Playing: Secondhand Lions, watching it with my grandmother F and my family.

It's been an eventful month! Two weeks of VBS, beginning July 5, were gloriously exhausting. Haven't laughed that hard or heard so much complete inappropriateness in a long time, thanks to Stephen and Megs. During the second week of VBS, in Enid, I gained a new appendage, thanks to wee blond-haired Leah H, who demanded that I go with her everywhere. We did a lot of door-to-door. Megs and I met a lovely old man who told us all about his family and his trust in Christ.

Third week of July meant Horn Creek! Anna and I couldn't stop grinning when we finally climbed out of the car after twelve hours of driving. The speaker challenged us to deal with the hard issues of our faith honestly.

This last week has been random guests week: Keith P for a couple of days, the N cousins for a couple of days, Elizabeth for a couple of days. All good fun. We went to the peach orchard, went on lots of walks, and cleaned the house twice.

So now it's on to the last things that need to be done before school starts: visiting Tulsa and Enid, cleaning up, packing up.... Have to confess the horrible wave of insecurity that always hits as this process begins. I just don't trust that God's love can get me through this, even after a good month of outreach. I don't trust that if people don't like me, Christ is still king--because I think that I'm king. Thankfully my foolishness doesn't end God's love, as the last year has proved abundantly.

Pictures from this week are here.

At the risk of being overly personal, I thought I’d post this little exercise that we did for our missions week this year. This is an edited version of the testimony I gave to the CY. It’s not an opportunity for pity or sympathy, rather it’s an example of God’s power doing “far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.”

“When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, ‘The LORD has done great things for them.’ The LORD has done great things for us; we are glad.”

I’d like to use this Psalm, Psalm 126, to talk about what God has done in my life. Like the author of this Psalm, I look back on my life and see great, good things God has done for me. He gave me Christian parents who raised me to know the Bible and who lived out its truths in love. He provided scholarships for me to attend university; He supplied good grades for grad school. He surrounded me with Christian friends and put me in a church where I heard the Gospel preached every week; He gave me opportunities to serve, such as the wonderful Bible studies with the college and highschool groups this year. These things might look like the results of hard work or part of Midwestern culture, but I wouldn’t have any of them without my Lord’s care. He has arranged every aspect of my life as lovingly as a gardener puts each plant in place.

Though I believe everything I just said, I don’t want you to have the wrong idea. If you want an image that sums up my life as a believer, think of a sidewalk. It’s hard, uneven, and painful to fall against. But it’s also full of cracks where grass is starting to push through.

Over the last two years, I’ve been seeing my sin more and more, and it feels like being body-slammed into a concrete slab. My life is a slow process of realizing how much I need Christ to satisfy me. This is good but painful. Most recently, during my senior year at university, events collided so that I was forced to confront the hardness inside me. I came back from a study abroad experience to an American culture where I was lonely for the friends I’d left behind. Soon after, I left a relationship that looked perfect to my community, and to crown it all, a close mentor left due to serious sin.

Those events forced me to confront the sins that remain in me despite Christ’s ongoing work. I saw that I’ve worshipped friends, manipulating them to satisfy my craving for relationship. I saw that I need to earn people’s approval, a need so strong that without an academic setting, where I normally satisfy that need, I felt naked. Even my relationship with my parents was only one more ploy to make me feel good about myself as I tried to earn their favor. I had perverted the good gifts God had given me to make them satisfy me in ways that only He should.

So at this point I’m not one of those “everything’s great” Christians. I’m raw from running into those sins that make my heart hard as concrete. I’m tired of relationships, and so more selfish than ever. Over this past year I worked in a restaurant, and I’d get angry at customers or coworkers for making simple requests. That’s only one example. Even though I take these sins to Christ and ask for His forgiveness, I doubt whether He actually hears me because I don’t feel it. Worship—public and private—feels empty. Though I know in my head that Christ’s love should satisfy me, I don’t live that way. I still work to be a good person in the hopes that in obedience or emotions I’ll finally find the fulfillment I need.

“Restore our fortunes, o LORD, like streams in the Negev! Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”

In this last half of this Psalm, the author begs God to make his heart blossom like the desert, the Negev. Having looked back at God’s great works in the past, the author of the Psalm trusts that God can demonstrate His love again, even more powerfully in the future. He’s asking God for joy. Like the writer of this Psalm, I’m waiting for God to make the desert of my heart into a garden—to “restore to me the joy of Your salvation”, Psalm 51:12. It feels like a long wait. But I have hope—God has done great things for me. I’ve mentioned my family, friends, and school. Most importantly, though, His Son Jesus Christ died in my place, took my hard heart with Him, and replaced it with the fruit of His perfect life. Because of that, it’s only a matter of time until His love will make me completely like Him, satisfying me fully. Then I will be fully glad in Him.

Photos from Horn Creek here.

Now Playing: Jars of Clay, “The Long Fall Back to Earth.”

This past week, we’ve been immersed in RPM team activities. Our team consists of Stephen, Megs, Grace, Megan, Keith, and Jonah, a lively but mismatched bunch. We all get on alright. Laura and I are sleeping in the study, and the upstairs is “mission team land”.

So far this has been far and away the most chaotic VBS ever. Highlights:

- Rain on the Fourth of July, so no fireworks and a very mucky ultimate frisbee game

- Fourth of July, so no VBS on Monday

- More rain on Tuesday, so the YMCA kids couldn’t join us at the park because of state regulations that prevent them from playing in the rain—though the shower only lasted five minutes!

- Total confusion as to who is going where when and how they’re going to get there

- And, best of all, a woolly bear attacking Megs! “Evil wee monster” and “the devil incarnate” were two very appropriate names that were bestowed upon the nasty fuzzy caterpillar that crawled up Megs’s leg and kindly embedded its toxic fur in her knee. We spent an hour yesterday afternoon pulling the fur, which is full of irritants, out of her skin.

- Rain today so that we had to reschedule door-to-door.

And all in good fun, of course! It’s been a delight having the team living at our house. I feel as though it’s an incredible privilege to have them all and Peter here for the week. Their energy, commitment, dedication, and willingness to work together are impressive.

After tomorrow, it’s on to Enid for another week of the same!

Now Playing: Dr Who in the other room.

Our psychotic cat is wandering around the living room, whining and carrying a stuffed otter in her mouth. She thinks it's her baby, but then she also bites and kicks it, so maybe not.

Outside bats are zooming arabesques across the evening sky. It's been a long time since I've seen them out like this, hunting mosquitoes and fireflies. They can change direction so abruptly, in the middle of a turn. It's awesome to watch.

Now Playing: Iva Davies et al, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, title track.

At the Fs’ house tonight, I should have had a clue from the moment I walked into Christa’s room that I was entering a danger zone. Emily had just given Christa a brand-new package of dolls—what I dubbed “stinky dolls”, scented to smell like strawberries (supposedly).

Christa was bouncing on the bed with excitement, and Elizabeth tried to calm them down by putting on Ratatouille—though first we had to watch the short about the history of rats, which was really hilarious. Elizabeth, Sarah, and I laughed more than the two wee girls sitting on the floor.

As soon as the short was over, I should have beaten a hasty retreat with Sarah and Elizabeth. I should’ve known better. I should’ve scrambled for the door with all the speed I could muster. But no… before I could react, two little fiends, giggling madly, had set upon me. Christa held me pinned to the bed while Emily’s fingers went to my throat. “Are you ticklish?” were the last words I heard before my head went down and I met my fate.

At nine o'clock this morning you would have found the majority of us gathered around Ross's computer. A small event, the World Cup U.S. vs Algeria match, managed to keep everyone (except the mothers and wee Mary) entertained for an hour-and-a-half. There we were, riveted to the laptop, while the Deep Horizon well spits oil into the Gulf, Uzbeks and Kyrgyz kill each other, and our economy continues to waffle, watching a handful of men scramble around on a green field.

I must say that I've always enjoyed soccer--not the way the rest of the world enjoys it, true, but with a mild, wide-eyed appreciation for athleticism that's always far beyond my reach. The finesse involved in a good match is as impressive as the skill required for Olympic gymnasts or skaters, all of it played out against the buzzing-bee whine of the vuvuzelas.

Of course, in the moment, one is rarely thinking that. We were all on the edges of our seats, literally, shouting when the referees annulled Dempsey's goal as an offsides--again! And when we brought the ball up to the Algerians, and they brought it to us, again and again, but without a score.... I was so disappointed when I had to leave for work at half ten.

When I walked into the restaurant, all three of the cooks were discussing the match. One of them ran over to McDonald's on his break to catch the match on their flatscreen. And, a couple of hours later, the cook from Burkina Faso met me at the counter with a huge grin: "Congratulations, E--! You won!"

I could say all the warm fuzzy things about how soccer brings us together, etc. It was good fun while it lasted. When I came home, the house had gone to sleep, except for the girls, squealing outside in the wading pool.

Now Playing: Cousins!

When I came home from Enid Sunday evening, I found that the house had been descended upon. The girls were already giggling upstairs; the adults hadn't got beyond the entryway, already busy talking.

Conversation is the best part of having the F cousins here. My mother, grandmother, aunt, and Ross sit around the dining room table, talking. We talk about Obama and healthcare; my aunt, a doctor's wife, fills me in on all the problems in store--and this morning it bled into us dissecting modern European politics through the lens of Soviet Russia and the Gulag Archipelago. Ross and I talk about morphological change in Greek and English, which silences my mother and Andrew, who were getting carried away with a discussion of carbon transfer. Of course, since both mothers homeschooled their families, there are the inevitable discourses on curriculum, teaching techniques, activities, coops, and state laws.

Since Aunt Lisa can't sit still without having something to do, she knits, all day long, and Laura, my mother, and grandmother join her. I feel vaguely shut out because I've made several ineffectual attempts to learn to knit but have been defeated every time. So I drink mint iced tea and listen. Occasionally (every five minutes if she's not watching Shaun the Sheep with Annalee and Lillian in the study), wee Mary wanders in to announce to her mother that she's bored and hungry.

And then there are the inevitable laptop parties. Stephen and Peter might both be playing computer games while I write this. Ross has just put away his Greek books--or rather, piled them on the living room floor in preparation for tea. We're waiting for Philip to roar in for a visit. The high living room windows give green-and-yellow snapshots of broad catalpa leaves rocking slightly in a south breeze--long pods dangling from the branches like exclamation points across the calm curving patterns of leaves and slanting light.

My mother seems to be cooking constantly while the cousins are here. We ate up one batch of blueberry muffins at breakfast this morning, so she just made another batch with the fresh blueberries they brought. "Pineapple cut up, yay!" she says, sweating a little from the crock pot of chili sitting on the kitchen counter.

Work today was as usual, although I worked with two of the new wait staff, so I was the "senior member" for a change. And we nearly ran out of change, so I had to give customers handfuls of dimes and nickels in return for fifty- or hundred-dollar bills. After I came home from work today, I found the girls in the kitchen, making smoothies with an old smoothie machine. Bridget came over for a visit, and all the girls went upstairs to play Signs and squeal and sing at each other. They kept the knitting circle downstairs entertained with their sound effects for a couple of hours.

I've been reading Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner. Despite her liberal theology, I love the repeated note of the Incarnation, of God's love. Like Winner, I never cease to be amazed that I am a "beloved child of light"--when I remember it, that is. Wading through her descriptions of life in the northeast, I stumble on gems that remind me that God pursued us out of His love for us, that He chooses to glorify Himself by revealing His power in weakness. That He is a Personality, holy and relational. He walked, ate, sweated in a body in a definite place at a documented time. This, I think, quietly sanctifies the mundane particulars of life.

Now Playing: Laura on the piano.

This week I finished Art and Physics by Leonard Shlain. The book examines the connection between scientific progress, specifically progress in physics, and art, specifically visual art. Although Shlain's primary focus is the tie between modern physics and modern art, he also gives a comprehensive look at art/science since Classical times. His premise is that art foretells developments in physics: visionary artists unconsciously foreshadow new insights about the physical world, which leads him to speculate about the "collective unconscious", the left and right hemispheres of the brain, etc.

If nothing else, Shlain's work presents an interesting examination of both art and physics across the ages in accessible terms. Also, his analyses of specific pieces of modern art provide good insights into an opaque field.

I was disappointed that Shlain adopted the modern idea that the Middle Ages are the Dark Ages; that is, that art and science after Rome and before the Renaissance disappeared for a few hundred years thanks to the church. Of course I'm biased, but I do get rather tired of hearing people pontificate about how the "Dark Ages" are a barren plain for the arts and sciences because everyone was enslaved to faith!


Despite that weak point, Shlain's work is a creative synthesis of two apparently disparate fields.

One more highlight: Bridget and I got to go horseback riding this morning at long last! Unfortunately I haven’t outgrown that obsession with horses…

Now Playing: Mark O’Connor, “30-Year Retrospective”, “Jerusalem’s Ridge.”

Recently it seems I’ve been complaining rather too much about my job. As this is quite unfair, I seek to make amends. What do I like about it?

- Hearing the Okie accent every day

- Feeding fried food to hefty people

- Bussing tables

Woo hoo. Maybe not. Seriously, though, there are good things about it, aside from the obvious financial provision.

- For one thing, I can use the time while I’m cleaning to memorize Scripture.

- I’ve gotten to know unbelieving coworkers while working for Christian employers, both of which have been good in many ways.

-  All those virtues we so often pray for but don’t really want to practice? Try waiting tables! Patience when it’s really busy but the customer decides to deliberate; humility when one makes mistakes or is cleaning a particularly filthy mess; faithfulness when one has the opportunity to be dishonest.

I don’t think I’m going to miss this particular job, but looking back I can see the grace of God in providing for me on so many levels—ironically, through a vocation I swore I’d never return to.

Now Playing: Chris Thile, “Stealing Second”, “Clear the Tracks”.

In the interim since I last posted, I’ve been reading a couple of books. One I finished a couple of weeks ago is Claudius the God by Robert Graves. The sequel to I, Claudius, Claudius the God depicts Claudius during his stint as emperor. Graves again demonstrates methodic attention to detail. I was again amazed by how faithfully he replicates the rambling prose style of some Latin authors, not to mention the intrigues of Roman Imperial politics.

This week I blundered my way through Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard. This happens to be one of the very few “real” philosophy books I’ve ever read, along with Aristotle and Plato. Some parts I enjoyed: he describes how a person can practice the actions of swimming by being suspended from the ceiling on a belt, but they can’t actually swim until they’re thrown into the water—this being comparable to faith. Also his critique of the modern era’s rejection of faith as being “too primitive”. However, I took issue with his portrayal of Abraham’s predicament when God called him to sacrifice Isaac. It seems to me that K. depersonalizes God, focusing on Abraham’s predicament far more than on the character of God and the relationship between God and Abraham. I fully grant that Abraham’s predicament was horrific; however, his faith was in a relational Being who had revealed Himself to be loving and faithful, and perhaps K. downplays that pivotal aspect of faith.

Next on the reading list: Art and Physics by Leonard Shlain, at Rachel’s suggestion. We’ll see how far I get.

Photos from the Memorial Day picnic at the Ss' house here.

Now Playing: Jars of Clay, “Who We Are Instead,” Track 1.

A slightly surreal experience for me this evening: I’m typing this post on my brand new Dell 13” using this Windows Live Writer program, which is completely foreign to me, while my old Inspiron sits on the desk beside me, running iTunes.

Today my family went to Woolaroc in eastern Oklahoma for a field trip. It was a surreal experience to say the least. Ever since I was in elementary school, I have had vivid memories, a whole photo gallery of them, from field trips to Woolaroc. The place is almost completely unchanged, so today was a wander back into childhood.

We started off driving down the turnpike, then turned off onto a two-lane highway with spiderwort and sweet yellow clover blooming in enormous masses on either side. Lovely hills, too—thick with trees, green-and-gold like lush moss. We drove through a string of tiny towns, all of them just barely clinging to existence, some in better shape than others. Hominy, for example, boasts a series of murals by a local artist, but another wee place was notable mainly for its burned-out buildings.

Woolaroc rather takes one by surprise around a bend in the road. On the grounds we followed a narrow road that wound through parkland sprinkled with trees. Ungulates grazed in the shade: Frank Philips, who established the ranch, imported Scottish highland cattle, fallow deer from England, sika deer from Japan, emus, ostriches, mountain goats, water buffalo, elk, and bison, specimens of which gazed at us sleepily as we drove past.

At the ranch we visited the animals in the petting enclosures. As I said, everything was nearly unchanged, from the statues in the front grounds to the chapel with the stained-glass window to one side (I have vivid memories of fuming as a child in one of the “pews” while they played “America the Beautiful”, which was sacrilege to me).

We walked down to the old Frank Philips house, and in the living room we were confronted by his fine collection of stuffed animals. Fantastic, weird, eerie would all be good adjectives to describe the sight that met us. Hawks, an eagle, and an owl hung suspended from the rafters; deer, sheep, boars, elk, bears, and big cats gazed or growled down from the walls. There were even an elephant and a giraffe!

Then we went over to the Woolaroc Museum, where the Frank Philips collections are housed. I remember it particularly for its hideous entrance facade—some aspiring artist in the 1970s must have thought that mosaics of Native Americans embedded in a weird shade of bright blue were just the height of fashion….

The museum inside hasn’t changed probably in forty years at least. I felt queasy from the smell of formaldehyde. Every display case had an animal perched on top, and there was even another, larger elephant head. There were collections of Native American artifacts, 101 Ranch memorabilia, a Colt revolver collection, a doll collection, and on and on….

The museum also has paintings, hung on the walls with very little regard to the actual quality of the work or the time period in which it was executed. A lovely small Bierstadt, for example, hung below some dubious portraits of famous explorers. The whole collection is hardly organized at all, which is rather sad, really—a smart curator could make some user-friendly displays out of the raw material, but at this point, housed in glass cases decades old, against fading paint, the collections are less than impressive. My father and I speculated that money is probably the problem.

Out of the whole collection, my favorite piece was possibly a birch bark canoe. Hanging from the ceiling, the canoe had a sleekness and purity of line that was really quite special—the last of its kind, apparently.

Anyway, I was thankful when we left the museum to eat lunch outside. We climbed onto the rocks behind the Frank Philips house and sat under an oak tree to eat. The house perches on a cliff above Clyde Lake, and the cliff face is a maze of big sandstone boulders and paths, with water rushing merrily over the rocks, and irises blooming in crevices. A nice garden gone wild. We ate and explored.

After lunch we started back. On the way, we drove the loop around the parkland to see the rest of the animals and made a stop at the living history mountain man camp. “Mountain man” might seem like an oxymoron here, but it’s a generic term for trappers who appear to have lived in tipis like the natives. The dressed-up docent taught my mother how to throw a tomahawk and showed another guest how to fire a flintlock rifle. Meanwhile, a pair of glossy gorgeous horses grazed on thick grass in the open pasture, blue wood smoke curled out of the opening of the big white tipi, and the sunshine hung hazily on the small creek behind the camp.

On our drive back to Stillwater, we went through a large thunderstorm. At home I ate a bagel, changed clothes, and went to work at half four. Work tonight wasn’t unusually busy or unusually slow. I was home by about half nine. Ate tea, read Claudius the God (a biography of the emperor Claudius), said good-night to my parents, and came upstairs.

I was glad to be able to go with my family today to Woolaroc, even if parts of the trip felt rather weird. It’s a quirky slice of Oklahoma history. Photos from today here.

Photos from last weekend here.

Now Playing: Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "At the Sign of the Prancing Pony."

Google's online "library" is its Google Books cache, a collection of books scanned into the database and available for free to the public. Current controversy has centred mostly on copyright violation, but in the article I posted, other issues are also at stake. It could be an amazing resource--my personal opinion is that it's going to take time before all the issues are resolved sufficiently.

Two pieces of art I've encountered recently have raised questions about the value of life against the backdrop of its brevity, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and a DVD dramatization of Wit, a play by Margaret Edson.

Woolf's book presents a challenge to readers unfamiliar with the stream-of-consciousness writing style in vogue at the turn of the last century, but her dense narrative yields descriptive gems that are worth the time they take to discover. A description of evening falling over London is particularly beautiful. Woolf's story follows a handful of characters over the course of a normal day, hours marked by the tolling of Big Ben and a recurring phrase, "The leaden circles dissolved...."

Each character experiences the rhythm of time differently, though. One character, mad from PTSD, fills his hours with "messages" about the freedom of love. Other characters primarily spend their time remembering the past, memories triggered by events in the present. Through these vignettes, Woolf seems to argue for an open-handed attitude toward life, an attitude embodied by her heroine, whose pure enjoyment of life's pleasures draws the admiration of other characters.

In contrast to the novella, Wit, which stars Emma Thompson, emphasizes the futility of human life when stripped of its pleasures. The play's main character, Vivian, is dying rapidly from cancer, and the film follows her, ruthlessly portraying her decline. She begins the play stoically facing pain, but by the end her resolve has broken, and the viewer is given excruciating scenes of her terror as death approaches.

Vivian's slow death provides other characters in the play the opportunity to enact their attitudes toward human life. The two doctors quickly demonstrate that they view life in purely utilitarian terms, while the primary nurse shows a deep, practical compassion for her patient's suffering. The nurse's compassion dignifies Vivian's death, and in the end her respect for human life provides hope for the audience.

A link to an interesting article about Google's online "library" here.

This particular quote in the article stood out. A howler, if I ever saw one:

'As Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, puts it: "We just feel this is part of our core mission. There is fantastic information in books. Often when I do a search, what is in a book is miles ahead of what I find on a Web site."'

No, really?! Books have been the repository of our civilization for centuries, and you're surprised that they are more impressive than the internet? As the author of the article accurately points out, books aren't just tools for conveying information!

Now Playing: Patrick Doyle, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, "The Maze."

It's taken me awhile to write up another book because the one I've been working on recently is rather a sprawling creation, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. Published in 1881, the novel follows its heroine, Isabel Archer, from idealistic youth to the verge of disappointed middle age.

I enjoyed the beginning of the novel much more than its end, partly because I identified strongly with Isabel Archer's younger self--her idealism, her concern with authenticity while at the same time desiring to please others, her vague ideas about the real implications of wealth and responsibility, her desire to travel. She judges quickly, using her ideal standards as the litmus for her valuations of people's characters, exemplifying her naivete.

James pursues a bright, detailed style throughout the first half of the novel, until Isabel decides to marry the man with whom she spends the rest of the book. At that point James's descriptions fail, as though Isabel's courtship, wedding, and first years of marriage are too uncharacteristic for the novelist to pursue. As a reader, I was left with a bewildering sense of emptiness and foreboding by the lack of description regarding these important events.

Of course, James as a master novelist doesn't leave out these key moments for no reason. Their absence foreshadows the absence of happiness in Isabel's later life. The latter half of the book becomes an exploration of regret and a revelation of Isabel's blindness. When she thought she had been judging so accurately, she was actually completely fooled by those around her. When she thought she was behaving freely, she was locking herself in a cage. The superficiality to which she resigns herself is painful to read.

The final chapters, however, provide some glimmer of hope. Isabel becomes the foil against which the reader sees the integrity of the characters around her (or their lack thereof). The faithfulness of particular individuals results in the final hope for Isabel (and the reader) that the future will not be completely fruitless.

Now Playing: Handel, Messiah, "He Shall Feed."

Aside from visiting Tulsa this weekend, Sarah and I were also in Tulsa for a girls' day out on Thursday. We spent plenty of money on new summer clothes and met up with Philip and Alyson at Doubleshot for a bit.

Friday evening, the high school girls' Bible study had its final party. I really love these girls; they're such a dynamic, warm, faithful group. It's always a delight to be around them, and this was no exception. We played progressive charades and four-on-a-couch, and, as you can tell from the photos, had some exuberant fun.

So photos from this past week are here.