Remember when you changed

Remember when you changed
And I didn’t change with you?

When we met again
It was as two strangers
passing on old streets

And
feeling a twinge of familiarity
As if two souls once magnetized
Recognized

that once they were one.

Low hums shivered between us
Too low to hear
Too loud to ignore

But we smiled politely
You tipped your hat
And I inclined a smile
Thinking…
what a nice person you might be to know

And we walked on,
forgetting we had ever known everything there was to know
of one another

Remember when you went to New York and changed without me?
I stayed
and you went
and then came back

But not all of you came back

I met you at the train station and
Saw the way your face had grown older and how
New laugh lines had grown in places I didn’t remember
Laugh lines from another,
Love lines from another,

I offered you a language only known between us,
and the words you gave back dripped in condescension
you poured them as a curse

and the silly, shared so as to become sacred,
became the ludicrous, tolerated as out of respect for the dead

and so I changed without you too
I grew laugh lines from another,
Love lines from another

Sometimes we pass on the street

And I think what a nice person you might be to know

The Introduction

I have read the introduction to Dallas Willard’s Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge. It is exciting. I feel hopeful. More than hopeful, I feel alive with hope. It is as if hope is coursing through my veins and my heart is pumping hope; milliliter after milliliter of hope. It is as if though it has been suddenly revealed to me that life can be exciting, fun, a quest, a discovery, a passion.

He speaks of adherence to Christianity as not demanding any type of educational prerequisite, because Christianity is an education in itself. The thought is exhilirating.

Oh for so long I have either knowingly, or subconsciously, stuffed doubt towards the recesses of my mind. I have explained away doubt with ‘faith’ when really I have weakened my faith by masquerading my blindness, my ignorance, my unfounded allegiances as ‘faith.’ What kind of faith is it that cannot support the blows of reason? What kind of a faith, which is by definition meant to be a shield, is it when you must protect it?

I have been protecting my faith, reasoning that to expose it to pure and undiluted facts would cause it to melt away, like cotton candy on the tongue. But it wasn’t faith at all I was protecting. Not true faith. Not a true faith in Christ, for that type of faith is strong and impenetrable; it is resilient and can stand adversity. It can support itself as well as support me.

But I have been foolish. I played the fool as I attempted to compartmentalize and let the ‘spiritual’ address the state of my soul, and the ‘practical’ or the ‘empirical’ dictate my actions and behavior.

Cloud and Townsend said that all growth, regardless of whether it takes place in a Bible study group, or whether it concerns learning life skills or developing new patterns of behavior, is spiritual growth, for the spiritual involves all of us, the whole of a being, not merely the ‘soul.’

I am excited to read more of this book. It’s as if I have been shown that Christianity can be an adventure that opens doors, that feeds the mind and body, not only the spirit.

What a life to expect, what a life to anticipate and hope for---one in which I am not torn apart internally by attempting to integrate what science tells me and what the ‘spiritual’ tells me---something that cannot be done any more than mixing oil and water…at least not the type of science and spiritual I have been familiar with. It seems that a true faith is able enough to support both, it is the umbrella under which both are protected.

Maybe I don’t have to hide from knowledge, or rather from knowing God as fully as I can for fear he’ll turn out to be a phony or a charlatan…maybe hiding was how I hid from being exposed as one myself, how I hid my petty, frail faith from the light of true, sincere, tested, and proved Faith.

Lucy Maud

It is 8:30 in the morning on a Saturday and I am awake.

The real shame of it is that I have been up since 7 in the morning this Saturday, and it seems like an awful waste to be up since 7 in the morning on a Saturday. Saturdays are very rare and I only get one after 6 other days of waking up too early, it's a shame to spend it this way.

Anyway, I tried to talk myself back into falling asleep, but it didn't work. I have this dreadful fear that I'm becoming an adult, the kind that always says, 'When I'm up, I'm up". I don't want to be up when I'm up. I stayed up 'til midnight last night (or is it this morning?) doing homework, then up 'til one or so reading, and I had great hopes of sleeping 'til noon and then meandering around the apartment sipping coffee and wearing pajamas.

Instead I am up since 7 in the morning, drinking water, cleaning my room, writing a blog, and I just sat down a bit ago to read 'The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery'.

I love those journals so much, but they also make me feel a bit ashamed. I think L.M. wrote them when she was 15 years old and at 15, even considering how silly and stupid most 15 year olds are, she was already about the funniest and cleverest little thing. I have 7 years on her and am not even half as funny or clever.

I felt the same way the other day. I bought the C.S. Lewis journals on ebay (ebay will be my financial ruin...) and reading them made me feel like an absolute dunce. The worst part is I am pretty sure that C.S. was smarter than I am and a better writer when he was 7 than I'll ever be. I do not think it's fair. I am bitter that no one taught me Latin when I was in elementary school like they taught C.S. Maybe I would have some hope of being as smart if someone had taught me Latin. At least that's what I tell myself.

Anyway, I am in the middle of L.M.'s journal and Nate has just written her a love letter, and for a 15 year old boy, he is quite the accomplished love letter writer. I wish people still wrote love letters like his. Nowadays love letters are nonsense, and so are love songs I think. A bunch of silly words that rhyme---I have seen more sense in a box of Sweethearts Conversation Hearts than in some love songs.

Here is Nate's letter:

'Well, Polly, it must be done. I at first intended to write quite a lengthy epistle, setting forth my poor opinion of myself, my very inferior personal endowments, my happiness, or rather ecstasy if your note proved favorable to my wishes etc. etc etc. But I have altered my plan of arrangement and resolved to give you hard, dry, plain facts, for they may possibly appear as such to you, but they are nevertheless as true as gospel. Here goes: --Of all my feminine friends the one whom I most admire---no, I'm growing reckless--the one whom I love (if authorities allow that word to come under the school boy's vocabulary) is L.M. Montgomery, the girl I shook hands with, the girl after my own heart.

Yes, Polly it is true. I always liked you better than any other girl and it has kept on increasing till it has obtained "prodigious" proportions. Oh, wouldn't I like to see you reading this. But i must conclude or you will say it is very lengthy after all.... from, Nate'

Not one rhyme and still it was quite the little letter. Someday I will write a love letter and use the words 'prodigious', and 'epistle'. I think I would feel quite accomplished.

Well last night Amanda came over to bring me a prize for finishing my homework. Then I forced her to listen to me while I read her quotes I had typed out (I have a bad habit of writing down the funny parts of conversations, I have a very entertaining one on the topic of lint rollers if anyone is interested). She tolerated my nonsense and then I got to work finishing the last batch of homework. I am afraid I have been conditioned to expect prizes though, because now I've finished again and have a very funny feeling, like I deserve a toy or candy for my efforts...or a biscuit.

Well, I have rambled long enough. It is now 9 in the morning and I have yet to have coffee or oatmeal, which is very out of character for me. And since I have always aspired to be a person of consistent character, I am going to go make coffee and oatmeal and hopefully continue to develop myself into a person with character (because, you know, oatmeal and coffee are foundational to having consistent character).

C.

The Christening

So I am not exactly in the Blogging Mood. I am somewhere in the vicinity of the Blogging Mood, but not quite exactly 'in it'. (What if Blogging Mood were a place you went to and from, like a neighborhood or a bakery? silly).

and yet...I feel as if I must christen this new blog and break the wine bottle over the bow. Well little blog, this is your baptism.

anyway, I'm very excited to start having a blog. I've tried journaling, but with journaling you absolutely KNOW no one will ever read what you write (and where's the fun in that?). That is, no one will read your journalings unless you meet one of 3 conditions:

1) you become absurdly famous (and suddenly you are SO much more interesting)
2) you become a serial killer (and the police confiscate your journals to search for clues as to where the bodies are burried)
3) or you have nosy roommates

I however, will probably never be famous, have no intention of killing anyone in the near future, and my roommates respect my privacy. Alas. And so, it seems reasonable to turn to a blog because with blogs someone MIGHT read them, and that (vain as it may be) is incentive enough to keep me writing.

Anyway, here is the firstie.

C.

p.s. I want to preface all other blogs by confessing that I don't know the first thing about punctuation just in case a Punctuation-Judger ever stumbles across this blog. But really, do the periods go inside or outside the parentheses? (I never remember!).).).).