many things at once

"In truth, if we may say it with reverence, the All-wise, All-knowing God cannot speak without meaning many things at once. He sees the end from the beginning; He understands the numberless connections and relations of all things one with another. Every word of His is full of instruction, looking many ways; and though it is not often given to us to know these various senses, and we are not at liberty to attempt lightly to imagine them, yet, as far as they are told us, and as far as we may reasonably infer them, we must thankfully accept them. Look at Christ's words, and this same character of them will strike you; whatever He says is fruitful in meaning, and refers to many things. It is well to keep this in mind when we read Scripture; for it may hinder us from self-conceit, from studying it in an arrogant critical temper, and from giving over reading it, as if we had got from it all that can be learned." -Cardinal Newman

you too

This morning I am so thankful for the fellowship of believers. It's amazing to find that with near strangers or with old friends who follow Christ, we're all headed in the same direction.

perfect for today

Migration

My love will sail this ship

through great storms and ice flows.

He is not afraid as I am,

he is not afraid.

And this is why he knows the way.

And this is why he knows the way.

He knows the way.

Oh my brothers and sisters, he is so kind,

despite the losses that have made us this sad.

Five blocks of sidewalk chalk he steers us clear of,

blue ice skaters and animals.

And this is why he knows the way.

And this is why he knows the way.

He knows the way.

All the birds of this neighborhood are leaving.

Some days we feel left behind.

--The Innocence Mission

on creeds

I've written on here before about my ambivalence about creeds. Or maybe it would be more accurate to refer to it as my process of warming up to creeds. At any rate, I seem not to be the only one who has felt wary. Tonight I was reading a little of Kathleen Norris's Amazing Grace, which is her collection of essays on the sometimes scary vocabulary of Christianity. In it, she writes that at their worst, creeds can feel like "a verbal strait jacket" or "a grocery list of beliefs that one has to comprehend and assent to fully before one dare show one's face in church."

But at their best, she compares creeds to a form of speaking in tongues:

"Now, when I'm preaching and remember to include a creed in the worship service, I usually select the Nicene Creed, because then no one can pretend to know exactly what it is they're saying: 'God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God.' It gives me great pleasure to hear a church full of respectable people suddenly start to talk like William Blake. Only the true literalists are left out, refusing to play the game" (206).

That killed me. Right on, Kathleen Norris. Then she points out that in the Bible, "story carries more weight that mere doctrine," and a creed can just as easily begin with "I believe in one God" as it can like this:

My father was a wandering Aramean who went down to Egypt with a small household and lived there as an alien. But there he became a nation great, strong and numerous.

When the Egyptians maltreated and oppressed us, imposing hard labor upon us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and he heard our cry and saw our affliction, our toil and our oppression. He brought us out of Egypt with his strong hand and outstretched arm, with terrifying power, with signs and wonders; and bringing us into this country, he gave us this land flowing with milk and honey. (Deut 26:5-10)

And he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow

I've hit the point where questions regarding the merit of the endeavor slink into my mind. Yesterday I drafted my syllabus for English 101: Reading and Writing about the Blues, and in the process, I came across a Langston Hughes poem called "PhD." It ends with these lines:

Always, he kept his eyes upon his books:
And now he has grown to be a man
He is surprised that everywhere he looks
Life rolls in waves he cannot understand,
And all the human world is vast and strange–
And quite beyond his Ph.D.’s small range.

I don't even have one yet, but I already feel its small range.

So then what?

Yesterday I got an email from my friend Jonathan, who told me to be strong and courageous. He said that I should be confident that I can feel God in my work. This kind of reorientation reminds me of "The Weight of Glory." Here I will post the pieces that comfort me this morning:

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited [...]

What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more—something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. [...] That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can’t. They tell us that “beauty born of murmuring sound” will pass into a human face; but it won’t. Or not yet. For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.

Now where was I?

I just finished a big writing push, and I have emerged, as I often do, with strong and mixed emotions. On the one hand: SO grateful for a break and anxious to do things and see friends and take care of all I have neglected. On the other: tired, and sad, and feeling like I gave away something I didn't have. It's a very isolating experience. At first, no rest feels deep enough, and at the same time, no celebration feels like it can compensate for what the process has required.

But in the midst of this, it's a mercy to have friends who keep track of me, writing in remembrance of my deadlines, texting to wish me luck with French tests. I have friends who call me when they hear a train that they think I should hear too. And when they come across news of the birth of baby owls. Such friends, such friends.

partly cloudy patriotism

Every year on the 4th of July, I look forward to NPR's reading of the Declaration of Independence. The prose is so wonderful and the tone is so righteously indignant. It's hard not to be stirred by it. But this year, it left me cold. I wrote a Facebook status about this feeling, which read: "the Tea Party has ruined the 4th of July. The thrill is gone. You can tread on me all you want." I made myself laugh with the "tread on me" reference. I always used to run around saying that on the 4th, mostly feeling amused to think about Great Britain as the enemy of the United States. In the 21st century, that seemed pretty funny. But not any more. My dad has a "Don't Tread on Me" flag on his desk now, which the Tea Party sent to him as a thank-you for his financial contribution.

Anyway, after I thought about it for a few minutes, I deleted my status because I didn't want to stir up a political fight. I don't see the good of political fights generally, but especially not on Facebook. And my point wasn't so much to pick a fight as to note how the Tea Party's leveraging of the symbols and events of early America has further complicated my already complicated relationship to American history.

And just when I was feeling good and sorry for myself, I remembered Frederick Douglass's famous speech, "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro," in which he points out the irony of a slave-holding country founded on the premise of liberty and justice for all. "I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul," he writes, "that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July!" And then I remembered that the 4th of July has always been complicated. That American history has, ever since there was American history, been leveraged in the service of political ideologies (something underscored for me by reading parts of Timothy Parrish's From the Civil War to the Apocalypse: Postmodern History and American Fiction (2008), which is super interesting). What life amounts to is that someone is always getting trodden on.

And now, how to find a graceful way out of this post. I could do no better than Frederick Douglass: "Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain."

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

With all respect to Florence + the Machine, the Dog Days aren't over

This is awesome and it's from today's Writer's Almanac:

"Today is the beginning of the dog days of summer, 40 days of especially hot and humid weather with little rainfall, according to the Farmers' Almanac. The name came from the ancient Greeks. They believed that Sirius, the "dog star," which rose with the sun at that time, was adding to the sun's heat. They also believed that the weather made dogs go mad. The Romans tried to appease Sirius by sacrificing a brown dog at the start of the dog days. For the Egyptians, the arrival of dog days marked the beginning of the Nile's flooding season, as well as their New Year celebrations.

'Dog days' has been adopted by the stock market because the markets tend to be slow and sluggish; it's also come to mean any period of stagnation or inactivity."

Old Times There Are Not Forgotten

Last Sunday I got a tour of the Confederate Museum in Greenville, and when the curator (a Son of the Confederacy) learned that I'm not from these parts, he gave me this:

In case it's too small to read, where's what it says:

Confederate States of American
Immigration and Naturalization Service

The Bearer of this Green Card

is a citizen of the Northern United States and has been granted the privileges of living within the Confederacy. Privilege has been granted by virtue of marriage to a Southerner, adoption, or by exhibiting a willingness to forego inbred damnyankeness. Reverting back to the damnyankee way of life will automatically result in the voiding of this card and immediate deportation across the Potomac.

He gave it with the caveat that since I'm from Nebraska, I count as a Midwesterner and not a Yankee. (Other Southerners have also alluded to this distinction. When I mentioned damnyankeeness to my friend Barbara, a Tennesseean, she explained a taxonomy in which "Yankees" are people who live in the Northeastern states, "Damn Yankees" are Yankees who have moved to the South, and "God-damn Yankees" [if you'll pardon me] are Yankees who have married Southern women.) I didn't ask what exactly constitutes damnyankeeness in this man's framework or whether any renunciations are required of Midwesterners. I would make none if there were, and whoever could deport me across the Mississippi for it. But the good news is that it's a moot point since last I checked, we call this whole thing the United States.

Anyway, I'm always interested in how people who identify with and openly venerate the Confederacy choose to represent it, though I don't feel very good at engaging them. I found myself in the same situation when I attended a reenactment of the Battle of Aiken during my first year here. A Confederate reenactor (or "living historian") told me about how he had to stop performing under the name of his deceased Confederate ancestor because the man's ghost had started haunting him and had made him steal a television. Now, the politics of the Confederacy aside, it's hard to know what to say to someone who says that a ghost made him steal a television. But the Confederacy doesn't help. I feel dishonest if I'm present but don't out myself as a dissenter. But I also don't think my dissent would change any minds. Maybe what I'm saying is that I need some kind of cross-cultural code of conduct. Thoughts?

fitting a summer's worth of fun into May

In an effort to write as much of my dissertation as possible before September, my traditional summer in Omaha has been reduced to one month, of which about one week remains. But I am happy to report that I've been packing in the fun, and I'm not gonna stop until 5/31.

Last week Brooke and I went to Missouri to bike part of the Katy Trail, which was formerly the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad (known as the MKT or the Katy), but it is now one of the longest of the country's Rails-to-Trails corridors. And we did it up right. There was camping. And there was rain. And there was beef jerky. And there was road rash. And trappings of trains. Here are a few pictures.














The Missouri River at Boonville (formerly known as Boone's Lick and named for the sons of Daniel Boone, who ran a salt business there).
























Geese, who hissed at us, and the goslings that motivated them to do so. Oh, geese. We came in peace.



















Brooke and I found the Mouth of Gehenna.






























































We got sore. We got real wet. But we really enjoyed ourselves. Hope to do it again next year.

keep 'im in the hole

Fans of The Wire might appreciate this. So I've been preparing a little for a class I'll teach this fall called "Reading and Writing about The Blues," (see previous post), and part of my preparation includes listening to a lot of blues recordings. And in light of financial constraints, I've been checking out said recordings from the Richland County Public Library. Right now I've got a Lead Belly CD called "Gwine Dig A Hole To Put the Devil In." And the title track got me thinking about the theme song for The Wire, which was five different versions of "Down in the Hole," by Tom Waits, with each season's version performed by a different artist or group. Here's Waits' version. I can't find an online version of Lead Belly's "Gwine Dig a Hole," but it's worth checking out. Perhaps your library has the same CD! Haha. It's less holy than its repudiation of the devil might suggest. Anyway, I wonder if Tom Waits was riffing on Lead Belly when he wrote "Down in the Hole." You gotta know Tom Waits listens to some Lead Belly. But from what I know of Lead Belly (which is that he was doing time in Louisiana's Angola Prison Farm when the Lomaxes, father and son, were recording prison songs because they thought a genuine style of American music was dying and that prisons would have preserved it by virtue of their isolation), he may have been more retooling a song he heard elsewhere rather than writing it himself. But that's the nature of the blues anyway, from what I can tell.

And while I'm on the subject, if you like raw blues, Seasick Steve is well-worth a listen.

Okay. I've got to go. Need to dig a hole to put the devil in.

desolations and consolations

Recently I have had a few academic rejections come my way. I had an article turned down for publication for the second time. And I applied for a handful of fellowships and grants, and I just got two nos in as many days. And it's been revealing, showing me how much I was counting on them without realizing it. It's hard to not take it personally and let it become an occasion for doubting myself (Am I in the right place?) or for doubting God (Will he really provide for me?).

But he has given me good consolation in the midst of this. Reminders from the word that he will never leave or forsake me. That he has given me everything I need for life and godliness. That he knows how to give good gifts. That he knows what I need before I ask. That he will bring to completion the good work he has begun in me.

And I came across this YouTube video of a church in Cincinnati singing "Hallelujah, Praise Jehovah," and it is wonderful in its zeal and drone. When I listen to it on my computer, I feel like I'm sitting in the antechamber of Heaven, and I feel mindful of the strength of our hope.

And there are earthly consolations too. I have wonderful friends who, over the last few days, have prayed for me and fed me and cheered me.

And there has been an academic consolation. My proposal to teach a section of English 101 called "Reading and Writing about The Blues" was accepted.

And there has been another good consolation, which is the testimonials of famous people I respect. The first comes from Marilynne Robinson in her Paris Review interview:

"The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege."

The second comes from Eudora Welty. Or rather, from the current issues of the Oxford American, which has a piece about the forthcoming publication of Eudora Welty's correspondence with William Maxwell. It includes this awesome letter she sent to the New Yorker in 1933, asking for a job there. You can read that letter here, but for my purposes, suffice it to say that she didn't get the job. Also four works of Welty's got rejected by The New Yorker before she met Maxwell, who was an editor there. She and Maxwell met in 1942. The New Yorker didn't publish anything of her's, despite his advocacy, until 1951.

Thus I arrive again at Marilynne Robinson's conclusion (as one so often does): I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this.

And I add: Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.

Cheering this morning

Original Trinity Hymnal, #53
Psalm 146

Hallelujah, praise Jehovah,
O my soul, Jehovah praise;
I will sing the glorious praises
Of my God through all my days.
Put no confidence in princes,
Nor for help on man depend;
He shall die, to dust returning,
And his purposes shall end.

Happy is the man that chooses
Israel's God to be his aid;
He is blessed whose hope of blessing
On the Lord his God is stayed.
Heaven and earth the Lord created,
Seas and all that they contain;
He delivers from oppression,
Righteousness he will maintain.

Food he daily gives the hungry,
Sets the mourning prisoner free,
Raises those bowed down with anguish,
Makes the sightless eyes to see.
Well Jehovah loves the righteous,
And the stranger he befriends,
Helps the fatherless and widow,
Judgment on the wicked sends.

Hallelujah, praise Jehovah,
O my soul, Jehovah praise;
I will sing the glorious praises
Of my God through all my days.
Over all God reigns for ever,
Through all ages he is king;
Unto him, thy God, O Zion,
Joyful hallelujahs sing.

hubris and its bitter fruit

So back in November on a foggy morning in Columbia, I was driving to school, and I was stopped at a light. And I looked in my rear view mirror and saw a car coming up behind me very quickly. I said out loud, "Please don't hit my car." But the other driver must not have heard because she went ahead and hit my car. It wasn't too bad. I was fine, but the bumper was fairly scraped up, and seeing as the car is just paid off, and a person hates to help these things along in their depreciating, I made arrangements to get it fixed. And this is the week when they're doing the fixing.

So I'm driving a rental car today. And I was running late in getting to school, so like a hubristic fool, I parked in the faculty lot because I thought that if I got a parking ticket, I wouldn't have to pay it because the car is a rental car. So I got to school, went about my business, taught my class, went to the library, printed some stuff, then walked back to my car only to find that I didn't have a ticket! Hah! Scot-free! Hoo hoo! I was very pleased with myself. But then I realized that back at the library, even though I sent my stuff to the printer, I never swiped my card and picked up the copies. But by then I was back at the car. And it was dark. And a little cold. So I drove to the library where there were no parking spots. So, again working on my rental-car-parking-ticket thesis, I parked the car illegally so that I could run in real quick and pick up my copies. I was probably gone for 3 minutes. Maybe 4. And when I got back to the car, what did I find? A parking ticket for $15. (Was this parking attendant waiting in the wings?!). But I still felt scot-free because of my theory.

But on my drive home, two things happened: 1.) My conscience started to bother me for this desire to walk away from a debt I had incurred, and 2.) the logical fallacies of my thesis started to occur to me (clearly the rental company knows who had the car, etc) So when I got home, I started doing some internet searches and I came across this and other, scarier articles suggesting that not only did I have to pay the ticket, but also an administrative fee to the rental car company. I made out my check to pay the ticket, and I called the rental car company and talked to the guy in citations who said he wasn't sure whether I would have to pay an extra fee. First he said I would, then he said I wouldn't. It's all a little uncertain. But I will pay the ticket. And if I get charged an extra fee, it would sort of serve me right.

I'm a little troubled by how much glee I was getting from this idea of not having to pay a ticket I got. Thus I am confronted by my own bad appetites. And then I am reminded of grace that is greater than all my sin. Next I think up a new rule of thumb: "the more parties (companies) involved, the more important it is to be careful." But then I realize that's just a shabbier, more qualified version of the actual command I have been given: to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. So much bigger. So much harder. So familiar that I hardly think about it.

snow boon

Columbia got several inches of snow this past Sunday night. And while that might not seem like anything to blog about to my friends in the midwest, it was enough to close the University of South Carolina for 2 and half days. This allowed me extra time to rest, enjoy the company of a friend, and make arrangements to pay this semester's school bill (insurance and technologies fees). And so I'm thankful to the Lord for the goodness of bad weather and the rest it brought me.

Some people at my apartment spent part of their snow day building this snow man:

At first I was struck by his cigar nose and wondered if this was fitting for a snow man. But then I remembered Frosty, the Ur snow man, and how his was a corn cob pipe. Surely a cigar can't be that different? I approve.