See that little speck? That is the deer I saw on my walk this evening.
There was a milk jug on a fence post and a beautiful sky.
As I walked I listened to an audio book. In it, an old soldier talked about how he always thought he would like to marry a princess who owned a small country. It made me laugh.
I paused to watch some young boys play baseball.
The world is full of happy things.
12:30 am. I’ve had verying levels of insomnia recently, though tomorrow I will finally be able to sleep in. I reached over, picked up my bottle of prosaic, and removed the second to last pill.
Second to last. And after the bottle is empty it will not get refilled.
At least, we will try this.
Depression is a funny thing. Except it’s not funny at all, so perhaps interesting would be a better term to use. People who have never gone through will put it on a list of sins which hamper our spiritual life, up there with greed and pride, while the ones who have gone through it often don’t volunteer the information very readily.
Depression is, of course, an illness.
As embarrassed as I initially was about my abnormally depressed moods, I eventually came to the place where, in order to survive, I had to call up people I didn’t know, or barely knew, and say, “i need help.”
Eventually I also learned that if you tell someone that you are on depression medication, there is a surprisingly high chance that they will say, “me too.”
A side effect of prosaic, it turns out, is sleepiness. I am trying to end my dependence on depression meds and become less sleepy at the same time.
I’m ready for some sunshine in my life.
Oops. I tried to put in a picture of sunshine and got my dad instead. Well please cut me some slack, this is my first time posting from my droid.
ta da!
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
~Tolkien
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Tagged fatigue, faux-pod, J.R.R. Tolkien, road, seventeen, summer, sunshine, WordAds
I found a post in my diary this morning that I thought was humorous.
I have a passionate anger of nothing.
I want to:
No worries, my irrational anger has subsided! Ha ha.
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Tagged anger, diary, eyelashes, green slime, Paris, slug, wedding dress, yogurt
Recently I made a startling discovery: Books with the word “castle” in the title are extremely likely to be VERY good books, the kind that I will want to re-read multiple times, keep on my bookshelf, and recommend to my grandchildren.
Example #1: I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith
This is a story about a family living in an ancient castle in England in the 1930′s. They are very poor as the family has virtually no income. They don’t even pay rent anymore, because their landlord died and his sons never showed up to collect rent.
Only, of course eventually the boys do show up and Rose, the older sister of the narrator, tries to make one of them fall in love with her so she’ll have money. Unfortunately, all she knows about flirtation and such is info she gleaned from old novels.
The book is mostly character driven, and I must say it is full of bizarre and fascinating characters who fall in love with the wrong people and don’t do what they’re supposed to do and make life interesting.
However, I have decided that it isn’t as useful for me to try and describe a good book as it is for you to go read an excerpt yourself. Which is why I now give you a link to a place where you can read the first few pages of this fascinating novel.
Example #2: The Blue Castle, by L. M. Montgomery
Valancy doesn’t literally own a blue castle in this book. She actually has a fairly dingy life. But she also has a lively imagination, and “the blue castle” refers to the life she imagines for herself, in which she lives in a castle, and has a handsome man. The story is a humerus and touching account of the dramatic turn of events which helps her find that kind of happiness in real life. I cannot even BEGIN to praise this book enough. I don’t even know what else to say without giving anything away. So instead I googled “The Blue Castle free ebook” and found this. Yep, the whole book is online. I would recommend just reading long enough to get hooked, and then buying the book for yourself.
I will paste the first few paragraphs here, for your convenience.
If it had not rained on a certain May morning Valancy Stirling’s whole life would have been entirely different. She would have gone, with the rest of her clan, to Aunt Wellington’s engagement picnic and Dr. Trent would have gone to Montreal. But it did rain and you shall hear what happened to her because of it.
Valancy wakened early, in the lifeless, hopeless hour just preceding dawn. She had not slept very well. One does not sleep well, sometimes, when one is twenty-nine on the morrow, and unmarried, in a community and connection where the unmarried are simply those who have failed to get a man.
Deerwood and the Stirlings had long since relegated Valancy to hopeless old maidenhood. But Valancy herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that Romance would come her way yet–never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine and unsought by any man.
Ay, there lay the sting. Valancy did not mind so much being an old maid. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn’t possibly be as dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellington or an Uncle Benjamin, or even an Uncle Herbert. What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid. No man had ever desired her.
The tears came into her eyes as she lay there alone in the faintly greying darkness. She dared not let herself cry as hard as she wanted to, for two reasons. She was afraid that crying might bring on another attack of that pain around the heart. She had had a spell of it after she had got into bed–rather worse than any she had had yet. And she was afraid her mother would notice her red eyes at breakfast and keep at her with minute, persistent, mosquito-like questions regarding the cause thereof.
“Suppose,” thought Valancy with a ghastly grin, “I answered with the plain truth, ‘I am crying because I cannot get married.’ How horrified Mother would be–though she is ashamed every day of her life of her old maid daughter.”
Example #3: Howl’s Moving Castle.
I began reading Howl’s Moving Castle in 2010, while going to Bridgewater College in Virginia. It was in my school’s library. I never checked it out, but if I had downtime at school I would head to the library and continue reading where I had left off.
It was a magical book about a girl named Sophie, the eldest of three sisters, who knew that nothing exciting could ever happen to her because she was the eldest. This alone had me laughing, because any reader of fairy tales has seen the trend of “oldest kid fails, middle kid also fails, youngest kid succeeds” prevalent in them.
Sophie’s life really gets exciting when a terrible witch casts a spell on her, turning her into…an old lady.
I love folklore and fairy tales. I also love cleverness in books, and Howl’s Moving Castle is filled to the brim with cleverness. After I left Bridgewater I wanted to finish the book so bad that I looked for it at second hand stores, used book stores, and every library I could think of. Recently I found a girl on YouTube who is recording her own e-book of it. I listened for a while, and got so hooked again that I couldn’t wait for her to finish. I went and bought the book at Barnes and Nobel. Seven bucks and totally worth it.
There is this guy in my sociology class. Just by looking at him I could tell what kind of person he is. Conservative Christian. Republican. Probably a good chance he was home schooled. Kind of geeky. And every time he opens his mouth, he confirms my opinions of him.
He opens his mouth a lot.
It’s not like he doesn’t have good things to say. His contributions are always intelligent, if not a tiny bit biased. It’s just that he talks so much.
My teacher is also slightly biased, though I don’t think he realizes it. As much as he promotes the scientific method and decreasing bias in scientific research, he has a slight overconfidence in his own ability to reason and think. This has made me less likely to contribute to class discussion, because it is annoying how he puts his own spin on everything I say.
For instance, in one class we were talking about how social media has changed the world. I brought up the area of fashion, saying that globalization of information has fostered creativity in dress, because people can pick up fashion inspiration for a multitude of different blogs and pinterest pictures.
“Oh yes,” said the teacher. “Now days fashions change so quickly because of the media. Do you have a teenage daughter?”
“No,” I said. Do I really look old enough to have a teenage daughter??
“My daughter is thirteen. She says, ‘Dad, I need to buy new clothes.’ I say, ‘but we just bought you some!’ She says, ‘but they are no longer in style!”
As much as I wanted to say that I was speaking of real fashion, not 13-year-olds fashion trends, I held my tongue. That teacher has a habit of doing this sort of misrepresentation of what people contribute, twisting it to fit his own opinions. Now I just take notes and let the others do the frustrating talking. Like the Republican/Christian/possibly home schooled kid.
So, now that you have a clear picture of the two key players in the story of believing vs. doing, I will get on with it.
The teacher was lecturing on the roles that families and schools play in raising a child. Sometimes these roles come into conflict. For instance, a parent might not want her child learning about evolution in schools. What is she to do? Send the kid to a private school? Home school the kid?
“They could talk to the teacher,” said the boy who talks. “Ask him to teach evolution as a theory.”
The teacher kind of brushed this idea off as a bad one, and tried to change the subject, but the boy persisted. “I did that to my teacher,” he said. “I went up to him and was like, ‘listen. I am a Christian. I believe that God created the world, and that the earth is only a few thousand years old.”
The teacher’s eyebrows were up and there was a little smile on his face. “You still believe that?”
“Yes,” said the boy. Giggles went up from various parts of the classroom.
The teacher argued with the boy a bit, but the argument was somewhat inane and the teacher steered the topic elsewhere. I never stood up and said I agreed with the boy or anything, partially because I like to avoid controversial discussions in class.
Now the class talked about media, and the effect it had on children. People in the class had had varying amounts of TV exposure. I, for instance, never watched TV growing up. But when the teacher asked if anyone had watched seven or more hours of TV a day as a kid, who should raise his hand but THE TALKATIVE BOY.
Yep. I was a wee bit shocked.
The boy watched discovery channel and cartoons growing up. But I was more disturbed to hear what his family’s attitude toward video games was. He and his two brothers were playing M rated video games constantly by the age of ten, games where they would violently kill other human figures.
“My parents would approve of every game before we played it,” he said. “They would explain that killing people is okay in a video game, just not in real life.” And then he described one such game, so gruesome it made my stomach turn.
Just like I didn’t stand up and argue for Creationism, I did not stand up and argue against violent video games. Likewise, I am not going to argue either of those things in this blog post. Instead I am going to ask a question which digs a little deeper.
Which is more important: BELIEVING the right things or DOING the right things?
On the surface, of course, believing trumps doing. After all we are saved by grace through FAITH, not by WORKS least any man should boast.
However, I’m not talking about believing in Jesus. I am talking about believing the right theology. Is it more important for people to believe the right theology as a Christian, or to do the right actions as a Christian?
It seems to me that the two should be inseparably linked, but they are not.
Discussion and opinions would be appreciated. 
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I felt like Alice in Wonderland as I stood in the hallway of the big Victorian house, beside my friend Lucia, who looked like a boy but wore a dress. There was a cake on the table. It was covered in blue icing, and there was a sign on it that said “Eat Me.”
Lucia had tapped me on the shoulder as I sat in the library, killing time until my brother Ben got out of class. “Do you have a car?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Is there any way you could take me to downtown Albany? I need to check into a homeless shelter.”
“Yes,” I said, “Of course.” I logged out of the computer and grabbed my backpack. “Just tell me where to go.” We walked across campus to my car.
(I will pause here to clarify that Lucia is transgender, identifying as female though she is biologically male. I do believe that a person should stick with their God-given gender, but I will be referring to Lucia as “she” in this post out of respect for her.)
Lucia stuck her red purse in the back seat, and we drove off towards downtown. Somewhere along the line she mentioned that she had been arrested the day before.
“Really?” I asked, “what for?”
“Mental health issues. I tried to kill myself in plain sight of a policeman.”
“What?” I freaked.
She gave a sort of sad laugh. “Sorry,” she said. “I forget that normal people don’t just nonchalantly say things like that.”
I told her about my cousin’s suicide, and how hard it was on my family. “Was it hard for your family when your mom killed herself?” I asked.
Lucia shrugged. “My dad and sister pretended to be upset for a little while. I was the only one who really missed her.”
If we were in a movie, these lines would have been delivered in a sad and introspective voice, and I would have said the perfect thing in response. Something like “Jesus is the answer,” only in a totally meaningful and non-cliche way. As it was, Lucia laughed at the tragedy. She looks at her terrible life with a cold irony, that what is normal to her is horribly unspeakable to others.
What could I say to her? I have found the answer in Jesus, it is true. But there she is, in a world where she has been hated by hypocritical Christians because she chose not to follow Biblical teachings on gender distinction. And here I was, here I am, trying to show my classmates the hope of Jesus, trying to show instead of tell.
I prayed. “God! What do I do? What do I say? Am I a terrible person for saying nothing about You? For not even turning on a Christian radio station? For doing nothing?”
It was then, as I turned left on a one-way street, that I got an overwhelming sense of peace. I don’t have to be a perfect missionary all at once. I am in training. I am learning. The first step is the learn to love.
The homeless shelter was in a big Victorian house downtown. People lounged on the porch, smoking and chatting, looking very homeless and making me feel kind of preppy and snotty in my nice clothes. I mean yes, I got them all for free, but I also have regular access to a washing machine and a huge closet. Just saying.
I sat down on the porch railing beside a man with a camo baseball cap, waiting for Lucia to register. Me and the man started talking about all kinds of things. Healthcare, hypocrites, all the places we’d lived, the beauty and freedom of road trips, etc.
The sun was shining and things seemed so beautiful. I wanted to come back, and I wanted to bring tea.
It was beautiful. Lucia, the homeless man, the sunshine, the listening. And, of course, the “Eat Me” cake, which I didn’t actually eat. The Alice-In-Wonderland sort of fascination with this little world of homelessness that I was completely unfamiliar with.
When I think of being a missionary, I imagine moments like this.
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Tagged Alice in Wonderland, homeless, missionary, shelter, sunshine, tea, transgender
