Knowledge About Nothing

Knowing all the facts about a thing (or place or person) is not the same as KNOWING the thing.

Knowing about writing is not the same as doing it every day.

Knowing about New York (and memorizing maps of streets and avenues and neighborhoods) doesn't mean I know it.

Knowing the ocean is "big," doesn't quite do it justice the first time you see it.

Knowing all the flora and fauna of Hawaii doesn't mean I know the place. It's still just dots on a map.

Most of the Bible scholars at my college knew of Jesus, but they didn't KNOW Him.

Knowing how to lose weight is not the same as doing it (she said from experience.)

I form these little obsessions, and I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING!

But it is never, ever enough. All the facts don't fall together to create substance. They stay a lump of facts. Heavy, and a little sad.

"For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." - Ecclesiastes 2:18

The Next Thing

Mondays have turned into "other writers' articles day." But, I've been carrying this one around for years, and it's meant to be shared!

The Next Thing
Why fear the future when the future belongs only to God? Andrée Seu

I bagged rice on a co-op line elbow-to-elbow with a peaceful woman who was the mother of five children and several foster children, and was involved in the pro-life movement. I asked how she did it, and to her credit she didn't brush off the question with feigned modesty, but said, "I do the next thing that needs to be done."

I have pondered that statement for years, the distillation of a lady's life of wisdom. Laurie is a Christian, so I know what lay unspoken in her answer: God is sovereign, and God is good. Indeed, it cannot be otherwise if one would simply "do the next thing that needs to be done."

First, if God were not in perfect control, Laurie would have to control all things, even every atom in the universe, to assure a desirable outcome. But she knows she cannot in fact control all things, not even the next two minutes, and so she concedes control to Him.

Second, she believes that the God who controls all things controls them for her good (Romans 8:28). On these twin pillars does her soul find rest.

Laurie's Bible also contains commands, rules to live by. And so, what Laurie has done, evidently, is to divide life into two categories: the things she can and must do something about, and the things she cannot and must not, for they belong to God (Deuteronomy 29:29).

Mary the mother of Jesus was hep to that division of labor. She "did the next thing" during an awkward wedding moment. Being lousy at making water into wine, she turned to her Son and said, "They have no wine," then went on her merry way to do whatever it was she was able to do herself—folding tablecloths or stalling thirsty guests. Jesus, not one to turn down people who come to Him for help while acknowledging their own helplessness, performed the harder part.

Am I too busy these days? Discouraged over duties left undone? I will preach to myself that there is only one priority—the glory of God—and under that the several duties. When these come flying fast and thick, I will do triage and decide what should come "next." It's God's problem, not mine, to orchestrate the universe and make it all pan out.

Am I fearful? Fear is a focus on phantoms of the theoretical future. But the future is God's, not mine; mine is only the present moment. I am fearful because I'm thinking I have to live the rest of my life. But I don't. I only have to live the next five minutes. To me belongs obedience; to Him belongs outcomes.

We have so far discussed in general terms. But life does not throw up "general terms"; it throws up brutal concreteness: No one's been fed dinner; Aimee is having a sixth-grade crisis; the roof leaks; unread newspapers pile up like an indictment. I will review what I know of God, and do "the next thing." His job is making it all work.

Am I depressed? The concept of doing "the next thing" is just the ticket. Granted, I am far too weak to go on with life—but I can do a load of laundry. And after that I can make the kids breakfast. And after that I can pick up the phone and call a deacon for help on balancing that checkbook. One foot in front of the other: Do "the next thing."

Have I totally messed up my life? Fine, make a list. Here are the things I cannot do: I cannot turn back the clock, I cannot cork up sinful words once spoken, I cannot take back squandered opportunities in career or love. But here are things I can do: I can start from today—with today's time, today's skills, today's health, today's grace. I can do this trusting, even at this stage of the game, that God is still sovereign and still good. And faith, come to think of it, is the whole enchilada.

The lady at the co-op was a well-placed prophet. And said it more succinctly than this writer could.

World Magazine December 3, 2005

TV Is VeryVeryBusy!

My other vacation? Blog-cation! I'll catch up with ya'll Monday. It's going to be a veryverybusy couple of days for my TV. Do you think it's wrong to thank God for my DVR? I didn't think so.

Betty!

Grey's!

Office!

Debates!

Yo No Hablo Espanol.

I turned into a high school Spanish teacher last week! I am still not sure how it happened, but I rarely say no to life opportunities, so here I am. Now, I get an excuse to write about Spanish poetry! If you are feeling brave, read it in Spanish here.

XX
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to a pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

- Pablo Neruda

FALL!

Now that it is ACTUALLY fall, and not Bethany's middleofsummer PRETEND fall, I feel I can safely, and without ridicule, list my favorite fall things!

Bonfire. Chai. Apple Barn. Crunchy leaves. Blue skies. Jeans. Writing (It sounds crazy, but my best and most prolific writing is always in the fall!) Football. Sweaters. Hikes. Fall Break. Cider. This Festival. And This Festival. Pumpkins. Reading outside.

What's your favorites of fall list?

Book Review - Next on My List!

Who Cares?

"You say you have "issues" - galloping restlessness and an inability to concentrate; habitual, crashing boredom; a sour take on life; a certainty that nothing matters and you couldn't care less. But Kathleen Norris, author of The Cloister Walk as well as other reflections on spirituality, is tempted to say you're plagued by a demon (think of it as an activator of destructive thoughts) specifically the "noonday demon" that medieval - and modern - monks call acedia.

This unnerving state has much in common with depression, but there's a difference, as Norris is keen to point out: Depression, she believes is a medical condition, treatable with therapy and drugs; acedia, quaint as this may sound, is a vice, a ruthless spiritual sloth that grips any number of contemporary souls, and that must be named - like the wily Rumpelstiltskin - in order to be defeated.

"Acedia's genius is to seize us precisely where our hope lies, to tear away at the heart of who we are and mock that which sustains us," Norris writes. It's the mockery that rankles most, whether we shrug at the thought of washing our hair or making our beds - basic expressions of self-respect - or in Norris's case, writing a book. But write she does, clearing a path to clarity for the rest of us.

A deeply personal narrative, Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life (Riverhead), shows how the numbing repetitions of everyday life, whether in a monastery or a house in rural South Dakota, can lead to a sense of hopelessness, leaving us "immunized from feeling itself." She tells how she came to understand and finally embrace her own difficult marriage - to a self-sabotaging poet with increasingly debilitating illnesses - "as a form of asceticism."

Sifting insights from early Christian desert fathers, from Kafka and Kierkegaard, Huxley, Baudelaire, Ionesco, Styron, and others, she considers the artistry of despair, "the fashionably negative pose of ironic detachment, of experiencing life as 'less than zero.'" And gently, with no fanfare, she preaches the practicality of love - healing, empowering, sustaining. What demon, however insidious, can compete with that?

by Cathleen Medwick - O Magazine October 2008

Let's Talk Fall Break Vacation!

The ideal vacation (this changes often, but the one I want today) involves a stack of books, ice cream, and a beach house! By myself! And no alarm clocks!

Last week, the ideal vacation was a cabin vacation in the mountains of... well, any mountains.

Then of course, is the staycation. Which is what I can afford.

Convention-cation! That only convention that's actually kind of fun! Well, fun for all but one of you. Our family argument this year is whether to buy grass seed for the non-existent lawn or go to said convention. I'm actually so embarrassed about the lawn, I'm the one voting for grass.

Disney World - This is a big deal for fall breakers. Rates are cheaper, temps are lower, and crowds are fewer.

Daycation - another family favorite. This is a short staycation. And I totally think I made up this word, so don't tell me if I'm wrong!

And finally, camping. Which is not AT ALL like a vacation, but still necessary once a year for this Tennessee Mountain Girl's sanity!

UPDATE (10:00 AM) AND THEN THERE'S KERI WHO GETS AN IRISHCATION!

What's your favorite vacation?

Musical Child Neglect

Though some people only PRETEND TO LIKE CLASSICAL MUSIC, I should explain that I ACTUALLY do.

I had a music performance minor and the husband had a music education major. It's not a little deal around here. Or, at least, it used to be a big deal...

The big kid today, as his parents were watching the New York Philharmonic Opening Gala, says this: "Where are all the costumes and dancers?"

Also, yesterday in the car he said this: "Mom, can we listen to some COOL music?"

It gets worse: "Mom, can we listen to the Mountain?" (the WORST Ryan Seacrest radio station in the whole wide world that he only hears in my car!)

What have I done??

Just so you don't think I am a complete pretentious geek, Here is Britain's Got Talent!

A Very Important Date - Wait, What's Today?

I just started yet another part-time job, and while quite excited, am completely FREAKING OUT about how I am going to keep track of everything.

I've use a pocket calendar, which goes everywhere with me. We use Google calendars so I can see when he has after-school band rehearsals and he can see when I have writer's group.

But I've been such a mess lately! I am always forgetting something at home... a lunch, the right color t-shirt for green week at pre-school, my CHILDREN! Just kidding. Almost.

So, I am in the market for ideas!

What do you do/use to keep everything together?

Happy Words for Monday!

I found verses I never knew existed! Despite reading over and over and over them, I never really noticed.

And, these certainly did my cold, stone, Puritan heart some good!

He has made everything beautiful in its time.

He has also set eternity

in the hearts of men;

yet they cannot fathom what

God has done from beginning to end.

I know that there is nothing better

for men to eat and drink, and find

satisfaction in all his toil -

this is the gift of God.

-Ecclesiastes 3:11-13

Keeping the "Free" In "Freelance"

So. Got an email from an editor. Yay!
Said she liked my article. Yay!
Said she wants to hold it indefinitely in case she might ever want to print it. Huh?

I know this happens. A bunch. But now she won't pay for it, and I can't send it anywhere else? Do I let her keep it for a year, and then ask for it back? Do I just say no? Do I count it as a loss and hope for the best?

Julianne? Rachel? Anybody? Thoughts?

And, from another magazine, I got my first three copies of my name in print! Yay!
It was "pay on acceptance." Yay!
I still haven't gotten a check? Huh?

Do I send yet another invoice? Do I send a friendly email? Do I send an angry letter?

I am not loving the business of writing! This is why I was a liberal arts major! I wanted to avoid this completely!

Write on! Just remember it's not all lattes and laptops.

Fun With Truthiness

My new favorite hobby (excuse for not writing) is finding new words!



Interview with Stephen Colbert

"Q: You popularized the word "truthiness." Merriam-Webster dubbed it Word of the Year and defined it as "the quality by which you know something purely by feeling, without regard to logic, evidence, or intellectual examination." How did you feel about that?

A: Fantastic, because getting Word of the Year when you're married to an English major -- it's better than having six-pack abs. And it's the closest I'll ever come. "
From Reader's Digest - September 2008



In no particular order, here are a few more I've found this week.

Squickometer - The mechanical device we use to judge creeplihood. As in, "EWW, my squickometer is about to break!"

John McGetoffmylawn - Grumpy presidential candidate.

Oprah-garchy - "Queen of television and ruler supreme of time and space has decided that no Republican shall come within 100 meters of her stage before election day. The leader of the Oprah-garchy has spoken."

Interwebs - "The interwebs was down again, and I had nothing to do but watch TV."

Irish-ishy - "I'm Irish. Well, I'm not Irish-ishy... my great-grandfather was from there."

Crestfallenish - "I told him I didn't date guys from work and he looked crestfallenish."

Celebuwhatever - "It's just another celebuwhatever who thinks she's a singer."

Neglectitude - "I should send these documentaries back to Netflix. I'll never watch them and they are bugging me with their sad neglectitude."

Lackabookaphobia - "I can't go on the subway empty handed. I suffer from lackabookaphobia."

Write on!

Half Time IS Game Time!

This was my high school lunch. Every day.


When you are in fifth grade, the teacher asks for a show of hands of those who want to be in band. It's one of those split second, life-changing decisions that no ten-year-old should be responsible for making.

If you've been lucky, you had a music teacher (who also happened to be the band director) who spent the last two years talking up the greatness of band and trying to recruit members. "Tubas are totally awesome. Girls really dig tuba players."

And so, you spend a few years trying to learn music, and perhaps more importantly, trying to decide if band is the scene you want to fit into. By the time you are in advanced band, the teacher is asking, show of hands, who wants to try out for football, cheer leading, water boy... The band begins to dwindle.

But you stick it out. And every summer, when it's ninety-five degrees you are at school with a 300-pound clarinet and your friends are still on summer vacation you start to wonder why you are still here.

You are waiting for one thing. My friend calls it a "musical moment." It's the place in time when everything comes together. The music is perfect, the crowd is with you. It's the same reason people go to concerts, or dream of angels singing.

The "musical moment" when the whole universe is in sync and you are a part of it, making it happen. It is chance to be a part of something bigger than yourself and bigger than the moment and a little bigger than the whole world.

Atonement

I am reading Ian McEwan's Atonement. Don't wreck it for me! No spoilers! I haven't finished!

My dad always says starting an essay with a definition is the mark of a weak writer. So, this definition is not my FIRST sentence.

Atonement - 1. something done to make amends for wrong doing. 2. Reconciliation to God through Jesus's life, death, and resurrection.

I really didn't know what it meant! Since I had to look it up, I thought I would be helpful and share the definition with you. I also read the whole essay on what the doctrine of atonement meant, but I'll let this guy say it for me.

When I really, really mess up, I ache and strive at FIXING it. I'M SORRY. LET ME MAKE IT RIGHT! But, as is always the case, God reminds me that all my fixing is for naught. "All your righteousness is as filthy rags."

There is nothing I can do to show I am sorry. There is nothing I can do to make it right. There is nothing I can do to undo it.

HE forgave me already, and wants me to believe Him. Why don't I believe Him?

Stupid Shallow Things That Mean A Lot

I was talking to my slightly homesick friend in Spain (on the phone! for free! thank you modern technology!) today, and she said she misses "stupid shallow things that mean a lot." Have you ever had things like this?

I once lived in a borrowed house. The furniture wasn't mine, the dishes weren't mine, the closets were full of someone else's clothes. While the first two days felt like a fun vacation, I soon became obsessed with my junk.

"Where's my purple journal from 1997?" I once screamed frantically.

I began pulling boxes out of storage, dragging them into the borrowed house, and creating complete chaos since the house had no empty drawers to begin with. Instead of being content that I HAD chairs and silverware and blankets, I was always angry that they weren't MY chairs and silverware and blankets.

What's with all the stuff?

I'd like to think of myself as treading lightly upon the earth, but this may not be as true as I think it is. If I had to come up with a list of things I "needed," I am afraid it is much longer than I would like.

If I was stranded on a desert, um, resort, I would NEED my: mascara, coffee mug from the NYC Starbucks, bookshelf, laptop, running socks, 12-inch frying pan, recipe book from my mom, magazine folders, HGTV for island decorating ideas, index card holder, hair dryer, G-2 gel fine point black ink pens, suitcase full of old journals, current spiral bound notebooks, cell phone charger, and my super shiny pink Sally Henson nail polish that the store never ever has whenever I run out and need moremoremore.

I know this stuff isn't really important. It's just stuff! But, oh, how I miss it when it's gone! Sometimes, when it all goes away, I am convinced God takes away the little stuff to remind us of our dependence on Him and how much we are too content with the treasures and trinkets of this world.

"Wouldn't It Be Nice"

I've got to quit with the poetry, but I couldn't resist one more!

This is just a dude, man. He wants to be LEFT ALONE and not "talked at" so much. But he said he wants to be rescued, which makes us want to take him up on it!

Tell me what you think. It's by Thomas A. Thomas from his collection Getting Here.

Wouldn't it be nice

Wouldn't it be nice to write about a real woman a woman

whose real whose eyes are not metaphysical eyes and

would not terrify not cause ecstatic visions of pain or

violent visions of ecstasy but the woman who would be

warm whose skin would give my fingers actual sensation

the woman who would breathe real air toward me across

the table in the restaurant which would be just a

restaurant and not a dining place of the soul on which my

immortal secret depended its fireplace would not be a

stage wherein our demonic earth wizards play out

choreographic games explanatory of any of the depths of

uncertain life and death irrelevancies now wouldn't it be

nice to eat dinner at the restaurant to have dinner on a

table which refused to become an operating table on which

I am to dissect my own body which is cooperating

which is falling apart neatly into piles of the

gastrointestinal vascular nervous skeletal precisely scienti-

fically accurate divisions of flesh and spirit it would be

so nice if I could really take you to Chicago with me and the

highway would not become uroboric earth-encircling

serpent known to the ancient Norse as "Midthgardth"

serpent of uncertain spelling for which the letters do not

exist on this computer anyway wouldn't a real woman who

was not a deer woman or a leopard with the second look

wouldn't she be a lot more fun wouldn't she heal me and

pull me away from this keyboard before I ran before I lay

down on the wood floor crying tears which are always

forever always only almost real tears

Laboring on Labor Day

This isn't really my lawn, but it is pretty close!

I must have the worst lawn in America.

Between the weeds and the rocks and the red clay, there is not much going on. Since I only work in the yard in the fall (spring is too sneezy, summer is too hot), it's almost time for my annual sweat equity!

Here are my current excuses:

I should aerate it, but I was attacked by fire ants.

I should water, but there's not ACTUAL GRASS. IT'S JUST WEEDS.

I should use weed killer, but I hate herbicides. Plus, there would be nothing left.

I should plant some trees, but I would have to remove the rocks first.

I should remove the rocks, but we are back to the fire ants.

So, guess what I am doing this LABOR day? That's right. I am tackling the yard. Wish me luck!

Now, I just have to find a way to write about it...