the ain country

I've been trying to streamline my reading lately. Usually, I'm sort-of-reading-but-not-getting-very-far in about half a dozen books. I've cut it in half. I'm right now officially only reading three books. Well, one I just started, so two?


This one just sucked me right in, which is weird, since I really couldn't get into it the first time I tried. It's one the hubs has been recommending...he even got a copy for me as a gift. I don't know what happened between that first sitting and this one, but now, I am committed. I think I despised the dreary grocery-store opening scene, couldn't really feel the rhythm.

It is a truly lyrical and fantastic read. The main characters are at once sad, and deeply charming and confused and good, in a twisty way. Like the pervasive twilight that hangs over the mystical "land" they find, the characters and the story that cradles them, are not quite dark, not quite daylight.

I read a bit on Ursula K. Le Guin's site. Man, that lady can write. Perusing her list of published books, I just drooled to see a writing life displayed on my laptop screen. I want that life...

...I think.

In Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg tells me (yes, she is talking to me!):

"Naturally [your writing voice] will evolve a direction, and a need for one, but it will come from a different place than your need to be an achiever" (40-41).

I put so much pressure on myself. I look at Le Guin's lifetime of writing, and yearn for a list of all my achievements, just like she has, ignoring the fact that she has a life of writing and I am newly born. I am at the beginning place, tumbled into the ain country. And things aren't clear yet.

details, details

I was talking to my sister yesterday about this whole "Enjoying God" thing, and what it might mean, and what it might look like. Her answer was just so great.

She said that she enjoys God through photography, because taking pictures makes her pause, be aware. If you knew my sister, you would know that someone as driven and organized as she is might need some process to help her stop achieving and just be. I can relate.

I like that she talked about "noticing details". I think that is a super important, and easily overlooked, key to joy, enjoying-perspective. Noticing. Being awed by the pale color of the sky or the velvety texture of a pine needle.

It brings to mind a way that I once heard Psalm 46:10-
"be still and know that I am God."
"be still and know that I am..."
"be still and know..."
"be still..."
"be..."

what it might mean to "enjoy"

The first Sunday of the new year, our pastor preached from Haggai. The title of the message: "consider your ways". The point: to consider habits and practices, and question them. Maybe changes are in order. We were handed a list of 10 Questions for the New Year, to take home, meditate on, consider. At first, I thought I would pull out my trusty journal and answer the questions all at once, like some sort of self-assigned homework. As I read through the questions, though, I realized that it would not be as easy, quick, or simple as I'd assumed. Each question brought up a slew of other questions for me, and I knew that I could not give a pat, "christianese" answer, or even assume I could give an answer.

So, what I decided to do was to systematically spend one week on each question. The goal is to write through the question, meditating on it, chewing it up, like a freewrite prompt I might give my students to help them think through the revision process or a reading assignment. Each time we write, it is another way to think. Thinking-as-writing-as-thinking. To that end, here is the first question to consider:

What is the one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?
Of course, start with the hardest one! First, I have to think, well, how DO I "enjoy God"? Do I enjoy God? What does that even mean?

Well, I laugh at, with, and because of God-or moments I imagine represent His humor in my life. Like, when I'm singing in the car, really belting it out and feeling like, "damn, I'm good" and then right at that moment my voice cracks and I go super, confidently, loudly FLAT. Nice. And it's only me, and God. I heard it, He heard it, and I imagine His eyebrows shooting up in sarcastic surprise. And we laugh. That could be a moment of "enjoying God".



Or, it could be when I see a gorgeous sky-fiercely blown with clouds and suffused with sunlight and I recognize the hand that made it...and maybe even think to say thank you. Or, when I'm sipping a glass of wine, making a fun, immersively creative meal, listening to great music, reading a delicious book, taking a quiet winter walk, hand-in-hand with my husband, watching the snow fall silently around, sipping a coffee, savoring a moment of tranquility...and I sigh, and somehow know it's of God, from Him, meant to be enjoyed.

Perhaps it's gratitude-instead of saying, "ah! I never have a moment to myself!" saying, "my life is so full, so blessed." Every good and perfect thing is from God...to know that, to be conscious of it, grateful for it-perhaps that is a way to enjoy God.

I'll kick it out to you, reading this: what is a way to enjoy God more?

A Way to Love God

by Robert Penn Warren

Here is the shadow of truth, for only the shadow is true.
And the line where the incoming swell from the sunset Pacific
First leans and staggers to break will tell all you need to know
About submarine geography, and your father's death rattle
Provides all biographical data required for the Who's Who of the dead.

I cannot recall what I started to tell you, but at least
I can say how night-long I have lain under the stars and
Heard mountains moan in their sleep. By daylight,
They remember nothing, and go about their lawful occasions
Of not going anywhere except in slow disintegration. At night
They remember, however, that there is something they cannot remember.
So moan. Theirs is the perfected pain of conscience that
Of forgetting the crime, and I hope you have not suffered it. I have.

I do not recall what had burdened my tongue, but urge you
To think on the slug's white belly, how sick-slick and soft,
On the hairiness of stars, silver, silver, while the silence
Blows like wind by, and on the sea's virgin bosom unveiled
To give suck to the wavering serpent of the moon; and,
In the distance, in plaza, piazza, place, platz, and square,
Boot heels, like history being born, on cobbles bang.

Everything seems an echo of something else.

And when, by the hair, the headsman held up the head
Of Mary of Scots, the lips kept on moving,
But without sound. The lips,
They were trying to say something very important.

But I had forgotten to mention an upland
Of wind-tortured stone white in darkness, and tall, but when
No wind, mist gathers, and once on the Sarré at midnight,
I watched the sheep huddling. Their eyes
Stared into nothingness. In that mist-diffused light their eyes
Were stupid and round like the eyes of fat fish in muddy water,
Or of a scholar who has lost faith in his calling.

Their jaws did not move. Shreds
Of dry grass, gray in the gray mist-light, hung
From the side of a jaw, unmoving.

You would think that nothing would ever again happen.

That may be a way to love God.

the end of the tunnel...

We are in the home-stretch of the fall semester, and I couldn't be happier to see the light up ahead. This semester has been a challenge, with teaching more classes than I ever had before. My students, however, were gems. In the midst of grading their last essays--before final portfolios, that is--I am charmed and entertained and I get it. It is so very satisfying to identify the various ways in which my students grow as writers. With the tough middle-months of the semester behind me, I can stretch into these last essays like a cat in a sun-patch. I get to settle in and see the "after" work of students who have gritted it out for 14 seemingly-long weeks.

It's good that we are at the end, too, because my shoulder has been so sore lately! Intently reading and commenting on hundreds of essays does not do a body good, however pleasantly my students express themselves. At least, with the end of the tunnel close at hand, I can be encouraged. There is hope, rest, right around the corner.

Bring it on!

thoughts about process and product

I'm beginning to get really interested in the dichotomy of "process vs. product". In our post-modernity, it seems an increasingly-investigated paradigm. As a writing instructor, as a writer, I'm consistently weighing the importance of process against the eventual--the expected--product. What use is a sterling piece of writing to my students if they don't understand how it came to be, and thus, can't reproduce it? What use is a savvy, strategic writing process if it is not applied to create a sparkling, written product?

Gin Ferra asks herself this question in relation to her knitting. Is the set of orange loops a sweater in process, or just a bunch of tangled yarn? Is there functionality and beauty in the process, or are we just after the endgame, the product?

I think it is important to investigate these questions. Considering process in our lives, from writing to knitting to relationships, may prevent our society's ultimate spiral into utter-egocentrism, into perpetual consumerism. But, while I perhaps can't take on the culture of the entire western world, I can teach writing that privileges a sound awareness, and deft use of, process. Acknowledgment and application of strategic writing processes do produce good writing, I've seen it. I continue to see it in my classroom. What comes next, I think, is examining what I see and articulating it so that others can understand it, can see it, too.

the word articulate

I've been thinking a lot lately about the word articulate.

One of it's definitions is joint, as in the spine

or foot.

It made me think of dancing, and how some dancers articulate movement as they dance, that is, they move each bone independent of the others, thus lengthening and sustaining movement.