Partying It Up

This morning I woke up and it was a sunny day off and it was Good Friday, and I felt that kind of gratitude that you can't drum up yourself--the kind that comes when you realise disaster has been averted and you could in no way have averted it any more than, um . . . an egg could descramble itself. That's a kind of silly simile, but I think it gets the point across.

So I went downstairs and thought, "I am going to make myself a Really Nice Breakfast, to celebrate Good Friday with Jesus." I was about halfway through deciding on the menu for this Really Nice Breakfast before it dawned on me that this is not normally how Christendom, or even this particular Christian, observes Good Friday. I have fasted on Good Friday before. I have been sombre and silent and spent the entire day not talking to anyone unless I went to church at some point during the day, and even then not a whole lot of talking went on. I have seen The Passion of the Christ and (to me the more moving experience of) the Life of Christ at Wintershall in England. I have cried my eyes out during the former and, with an unexpressible mix of emotions almost wiped the blood from Jesus' face in the latter.

This kind of thing is good for me, I think. I would be a pretty calloused individual if I couldn't mourn the part that I myself have played in torturing and denying and betraying and killing God.

But today? I made the Really Nice Breakfast. Because, as is the way with most things Jesus-related, Good Friday is both simple and complex, both a horror and a Good--a paradox. And today I'm celebrating. I'll celebrate the Resurrection on the day I'm "supposed" to, but the fact that God would come down here and sacrifice Himself because I couldn't relate to Him otherwise and He wanted it that much, and the fact that He has called me into the same adventure of sacrifice and forgiveness and joy is such a big deal . . .

Today my dad read me the following over the phone. It says what I mean better than I'm saying it I think:

This table is different. This table of the Lord isn't where sinners find Christ but where sinners celebrate being found …

Maybe some morning, instead of solemnly passing these trays, we should dance for joy. Maybe we should sing every born-again song we know. Maybe we should tell our "homecoming" stories and laugh like people who no longer fear death. Maybe we should ask if anyone wants seconds and hold our little cups high to toast lost sisters found and dead brothers alive.

Lee Eclov, "The Sinner's Feast," PreachingToday.

I propose a toast to that very thing. I don't have to punish myself anymore because my sins killed God--He's the Judge. And He took the punishment. Now I can celebrate that He did. So today I'm toasting Him--and you and me and Life (which would be Him again--did you notice?). You in? Cheers!

Catching Up With a Tree

Remember this tree?

I stopped taking walks sometime in October, and only started up again the day I talked to Pagan-Jerry, who lives in the opposite direction of the tree. Yesterday I remembered how I had hypothesised about what would happen to it if a really big storm hit. Well. A really big storm did hit over the winter, and trees that were a lot more sheltered got shredded and are never going to be the same. So I decided to walk down and take a look at it and see how it had fared.

I expected damage. I expected the yard still to have branches down in it, because everybody's yard still has branches in it. I expected huge blond gashes in the wood where limbs had been ripped off by the force of wind and ice.

What I saw instead was a beautiful, strong, straight-growing tree. Some of the lower branches were a little more disheveled than they had been, maybe. But I only saw three specks of blonde, at the very top of the uppermost branches, as if a few twigs had let go, nothing more.

Something about the sight made me very happy.

Plus there was a pair of cardinals today. Ever since college, for reasons that probably wouldn't make sense to anyone else, cardinals have seemed like a sign from God to me--that things might get tough, but ultimately they're going to be all right.

The sky is pouring its heart out right now, and it's cold. Spring's arrival is a struggle this year, like so much of everything, and I could do what I usually do and anticipate tragedy and disaster, but the tree survived the Ice Tornado and the cardinals have returned. Maybe I should stop expecting damage, as if to do so would prevent it, deal with it when it comes, and instead focus on the signs of life.

Freedom

I've been coming at Lent belatedly this year. I remembered Fat Tuesday with pancakes and friends, but I couldn't come up with anything meaningful to "give up" until halfway through the season, and even though I've been going to Wednesday night dinners at New Church since Lent started, I didn't really start interacting with the meaning of it all until about two weeks ago.

Then it really hit, and I've been bombarded with books and thoughts and conversations about sin and Jesus' passion and God's justice and my repentance and what place, if any, guilt has in this and dying to myself so that Jesus can live through me . . . and on and on and on. And I love it.

I think that might qualify me, in many people's estimation, as a weird chick.

I think part of it is that I love paradox. I love the idea of the impossible becoming fact and the dark becoming light and the least becoming great and things not being as they seem and the powers that be being turned out and the world itself being turned upside-down.

Even though I like fantasy novels to a point, I don't think I could get into pantheism like Pagan-Jerry because there's not enough paradox to validate it, or something. I mean, I guess it's something of a paradox to hold that we're all ignorant gods who are secretly all-powerful if we could ever figure it out but in the meantime we're trapped in these little finite bodies making a mess of things. I just don't find that one very satisfying or compelling, maybe. Plus it's the oldest lie in the book. Like seriously:

“You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil” (Genesis 3.4-5, NLT).

We've been through this before, but that whole thing makes me so mad--that we believed we weren't like God to begin with and decided to try to become like Him without Him. And then we wonder why we aren't more godlike. We believe lying spirits who tell us we are without beginning and end instead of being content to be glorious creatures, capable of bearing the One True God to the rest of creation.

I don't know. Maybe I'm lazy or don't like the responsibility, because even the biblical promises that the children of God will one day reign with Jesus kind of freak me out. But I really don't get what's so great about being god all by myself. Or about my neighbor's being god, either. I don't see that either I or he have enough of a clue to make things better, but I do happen to know the genuine relief and release that comes from confessing to sin. Not confessing to not knowing enough. Not confessing even to "making bad choices," though I suppose that's what it comes down to. But confessing, like the Prodigal Son, "Father, I have sinned against Heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your [daughter]." I don't have to maintain the facade of being a secretly perfect being who accidentally mistook something. I don't have to say I don't know why people kill each other.

It's not to say I don't do these things. In the last week I noticed for the first time how much I lie to make myself look better, and here I always thought I was so honest. I'm just saying . . . when I get to the end of myself, I'm really glad there's an end to myself, and that I can get there, and then there's Jesus, who lets me put my sin on Him and then throws it into the depths of the sea.

The Difference

Last Saturday was positively glorious, such that even though I have a distinctly lazy streak, I decided to get out for a walk. I didn’t even need a jacket. I walked down the usual route, because there is very little else to do but walk the usual route unless you want to go down it backwards, and presently I came upon the House on the Corner.

The House on the Corner has little stone fairies in the rocks along the side of the road and on Saturday an older couple was raking the leaves out of the rocks. By the time I got there, the wife had gone inside, and it was just the husband out there raking. I said hello. He said hello. We both remarked approvingly on the weather. I kept walking.

I had gone quite some way down the road when the nagging voice in my head that was telling me to go and offer to help him rake got the better of me, and so I turned around and walked back. I had a conversation in my head where the man gratefully accepted my help (even though he’s a New Englander--I should have thought that one out a little more) and then I said something trite but heartfelt and true about Jesus loving him.

At least I know enough by now to be fairly certain that the conversations I have in my head will not remotely resemble the ones that happen in real life. This one didn’t.

It started all right. I offered to help. He declined. I asked if he was sure. He was. Then he leaned on his rake and started talking. He began by talking about his grandkids, but what ended up happening was a full-on “evangelistic” promotion of paganism. He was lucky, he said, that he had had the upbringing he did. His mother was very sensitive, he said. He grew up with ghosts and learned not to be afraid of them. He had experiences, which he told me about. One of them involved going “back and back” past his Egyptian period and discovering he was holding a galaxy in his hands and singing a love-song lullaby to it.

The thing he had learned, he told me, was that everything is interconnected, and every moment is to be enjoyed and that we are pre-existently eternal, and more powerful than we can even know. “There are some Entities,” he said, confidentially, “who don’t want us to know how powerful we are.” I felt him looking at me pointedly. I was fairly certain he had figured out I was a Christian, even though I had said approximately nothing in the entire half hour he was talking to me. I thought he was implying that the Entity that Christians worship as God was one such being, set on keeping us down.

I wanted to argue, but I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that it wouldn’t do any good. I wanted to say, “Yep. We are more powerful than we have any idea of. It wouldn’t surprise me if one day we were to hold galaxies in our hands [actually, that’s not true--the act itself might be surprising when it actually happens], but we don’t get that from ourselves. We get it because we are made in the image of the Lord God Almighty who doesn’t want to keep us down--He wants us to reign with Him. But there are entities who don’t want us to reach our potential, and those are the lying spirits you’re listening to, who fill your head with delusions of independence, spinning out the deception until the end, all the while keeping you away from the One who loves you and can enable you to be more than you ever thought.”

I thought if I tried to say something like that, first off he wouldn’t allow me to get that many words in edgewise, and secondly it would degenerate into a “my God is better than your god” (or whatever) argument, and, on the level of argument he would probably win. I daresay he has seen more supernatural or at least paranormal experiences than I have.

But I couldn’t stop wondering how one does engage in a real give-and-take about beliefs with someone who believes like this. There’s a man at Old Church who talks about Jesus and the difference He’s made in his life in just the same way this man, Pagan-Jerry, was talking about his special spirits. I knew from the bottom of my soul there was a difference, but I couldn’t find a way to helpfully articulate it.

The weird thing was that I had just been thinking that morning, for some unknown reason, about how CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein engaged paganism in their stories and made use of the similarities with the Christian story to show how Jesus fulfilled not only the prophecies of Judaism but the dreams of paganism. But right then, talking to Pagan-Jerry, the similarities seemed like the biggest stumbling-block of all. How could I refute anything he said when to do so would sound like I was just changing the labels around?

I kept asking Jesus to give me some words, but He didn't, that I could tell, so I just listened. And then Pagan-Jerry said, “It’s just such a shame we don’t realise all this about ourselves. We do such atrocious things to each other and to our world. Some that I’ve talked to [here he looked significantly at me, giving me to understand he meant some spirits, and not some other humans] keep asking, ‘What’s wrong with all of you? You destroy each other. You foul your nest. Why do you do it?’ And I just don’t know. That's just how it is.”

That was when I realised the difference. The pagan stories have no true place for sin. There’s no explanation of it--how it got here, why we do it, why the world is in the mess it is today. Ironically, the one story that calls sin “sin” and whose Hero definitively triumphed over it and eradicates it is the one story that also has a place for it. Only the long slow multi-millennial process of the story of Jesus can give us a reason for why we destroy each other and foul the world we live in. And only that story can give us an ultimate solution.

As if proving the point--that I sin--I took my own personal safety and composure in my hands at that point, and returned home.

Sesame Street Has Been Brought To You Today . . .

. . . by the nouns "miracle" and "intercession" and by the interjection, "huh?!"

Two weeks ago a bunch of people who don't know each other all decided to tell me across the span of a week the same (or mostly the same) thing about an aspect of my life. When that happens, I usually think it's worth listening, just in case, you know, it was actually God trying to get through to me or something. One of these people has just started an praying ministry on Facebook and I guessed I should especially listen to him, maybe?

I didn't really want it to be God, because I didn't really want to re-examine that area of my life (having already done so numerous times over the course of the year). But I didn't get the same "answer" I had been getting all those other times of hashing it over. I didn't feel like I got an answer at all. So I wasn't sure, even if it was God talking, what exactly He was telling me to do about it.

I'm still not, entirely, but I'm getting at least a little bit of a clue how to think about it. First of all, I should tell you I wrote at A Wandering Line a companion piece to the last post here. Two days after I wrote that, I visited a church with New Church's confirmation class, where they read Ephesians 1. Which, you know, is basically about God accomplishing the Impossible Reconciliation through Jesus Christ. Then yesterday I got a whole bunch of "messages" at least as insistent as the ones of two weeks ago, and this is how they went:

I went to see my counselor, who I meet with in a church. I was early so I made a pit-stop detour and on the wall on my way was a big sign saying, "Expect a miracle." Ha. I thought. That's ironic. Since, you know, I've been talking about those lately and also praying for one or two more than lately. I wanted to take it as a confirmation of . . . something, but I don't believe in fortune cookies. This was a little large for a fortune cookie, however. I have, on occasion (including last week), wished aloud that God would give me a literal sign. You know--one with writing. So . . . if I get one, should I dismiss it?

Then I went into the bathroom. I had forgotten that on the stall walls in this particular church, they have pasted Bible verses--a different one in each stall. I had evidently never been in this stall before, because I was startled when I read, "Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!" (Luke 1.45, NIV). Curiouser and curiouser . . .

At the end of my session, my counselor prayed for me, as she does, and prayed that I would see God do the impossible. I don't remember ever talking to her about that in those terms before. Or maybe she prayed something else similar . . . I don't exactly remember, but it was something along the lines I had been thinking of, about miracles and the irresistibility of God.

Then I went to work at New Church. The phone rang. It was the line the Milk Guy usually rings in on, and we had just been talking, so I thought maybe he had thought of one more thing to say, so I picked it up. It was definitely not the Milk Guy--it was a Wrong Number. This Wrong Number wanted to talk, though, apparently, because when I said the word church his ears perked up.

Evidently he is a Ghanaian intercessor praying for the City. We talked about church and about what we hoped to see God do in this City and about some of the problems we face here. I had that weird brain-prickle that sometimes occurs when I think that God might have orchestrated a mistake on purpose and so I couldn't really argue when Wrong Number said, "This is from the Lord--God wants to do things here, because look--I was trying to call my work, and I called a church instead and am talking to you. The Holy Spirit did this." I've been learning a lot about the Holy Spirit lately--maybe even more than I did when I worshiped in a charismatic church. I thought he was probably right. Then Wrong Number said, "Don't ever forget. God is a God of the impossible. He wants to bring people to Himself and He wants to do miracles. We need to pray. We need to pray for Him to do the impossible."

There's a certain vein of theology that says things like that in a way with which I am not comfortable. I don't, for example, think that the Christian life becomes trouble-free if you pray and believe hard enough. Quite the opposite, in fact. But I don't know. Do you think all that was coincidence?

Expectations

I used to have this friend who expected a lot of me but would completely freak out whenever she felt I was expecting anything of her. I don't know if I thought at the time that I could deliver, thus feeling the burden of expectations less, but anyway, it took me a few more fraught experiences and friendships to realise that superimposing expectations over personhood is pretty tough to deal with when you're the person being superimposed upon.

All of a sudden in the last week a whole lot of things have come up independently of each other regarding expectations I have of others and of myself. And of Jesus. Then today I discovered that Jeff's been blogging about worshipping expectations instead of Jesus. I feel like I do that a lot. I also feel like it's impossible not to have expectations and that I don't know what to do with them.

I think the short, and theoretically easy, answer is: just worship Jesus. Relinquish expectations. Just fuggedaboudit.

Or something like that.

I would counter, however, that a relationship is about trust, and a relationship with Jesus is especially about trust, and it's hard to actively trust if you're not expecting something. I guess what I'm supposed to trust is that Jesus loves me and will take care of me and no one will snatch me out of His hand. Which I feel He is graciously enabling me to do more and more these days. But I don't know, on a practical level, how to trust Him with specific situations.

Say there's something I'm praying about. I've been praying about it for a long time. I feel I've been obedient within the situation as best I know how. I know that on a realistic level, the thing I'm praying about can't change much. I also know that Jesus does miracles. Seriously. He does miracles, people! And I'm talking to Him. And He's pretty good with upsetting the status quo. So . . . do I expect Him to do the miracle? Or do I expect Him to get me through the situation without the miracle?

Well, I'll tell you what I'm temperamentally more likely to expect. (I mean, I won't tell you, but I'm pretty sure you can guess.) Is it more trusting, more Jesus-glorifying, more obedient, more worshipful to expect and hope for the totally unlikely miracle? Or is it more all-those-things to be more of a realist, to expect no miracle and to watch and see what happens without it?

Hoping and expecting a miracle seems braver and scarier and a lot more like putting myself out there to get hurt and shamed and at the very least disappointed. But it seems like that's what all the people who get a mention in the Bible did anyway--expected a miracle. At least eventually. (And they did often get hurt and shamed and disappointed, but they still got their miracles, too.) Not expecting a miracle seems safer but also more responsible and less of an imposition of my will on God's.

I don't want to burden God with selfish expectations the way my friend and I burdened each other all those years ago. If there's a free Being anywhere, it's God, and He doesn't deserve (nor do I believe will He tolerate) to be boxed in to my own little personal will. But without faith it's impossible to please God, and all those people in Hebrews 11 trusted in God, but also in specific things that God had promised for them. I don't know how to tell the difference between my wishes and God's promises, and I just don't know what to expect . . .

Wandering Over

Last night I posted something about--what else?--trust over on A Wandering Line. Check it out.

Writing Into the Maze

Let us all keep in mind and remember here that I am not a very disciplined writer. The story whose first draft I finished last Lent hasn't changed much since then, and the one I'm occasionally glancing at these days I hadn't looked at in years before last week. I'm only saying this because I'm about to tell you about one of my characters and I don't want Certain Readers to get their hopes up too much.

But I just wanted to point out that phenomena that I have mentioned and also heard other authors mention on occasion--the one where the characters end up changing the story on you.

I have this character Jake. He's 23 or so and he gets completely infatuated with this young woman named Sophie and follows her to London. They get in kind of a fight on his first full day there, and he decides to go find a pub and think. Or at least drink. He has some conflict-resolution issues. Anyway, so he marches out of the Tate Modern and goes to look for a pub.

I really thought he was going to find one. I mean, they're all over London. I thought, too, that he'd be too jetlagged and maybe intimidated by this new huge city to want to go very far. He was a little nervous about flying to begin with. I figured he'd get on the Tube and head back to the area he was staying and go to a pub there, just to be safe. But he didn't. Instead he got all distracted by the thoughts in his head and kept walking through Bankside and got lost somewhere beyond Tower Bridge and now it's getting dark.

I didn't know that was going to happen.

I don't think this is necessarily going to be a pivotal part of the story, but I just point it out because this kind of thing happens a lot when I write: somebody goes down a road I hadn't planned for them to go on and I have to follow them down it. If I don't, they might never get out. I have an idea of where I want the story to head, and sometimes I have to write a character out of quite a bit of mischief. But I also have to give them the dignity to make their own choices and see how the story unfolds on that basis.

I'm not trying to draw out any deep symbolism here. I've already talked about how I feel about making this experience a metaphor for God's interaction with us (I think it works in part . . . but not well enough). But it does fascinate me when it happens, and I thought I'd let you in on it.

Remember . . . ?

I have another blog. I know it's a pain to set up yet another account so you can comment on yet another blog, so I understand if you don't want to do it. On the other hand, that one might be where it matters if people can tell I have a readership--I don't know. So . . . I've been talking about pot and the Transfiguration and giving people spring over there in the last three weeks. Not all at the same time. If you missed any of that, you might want to go check it out.

Telemarketers Are People, Too

Here, as closely as I can remember, is an honest-to-goodness conversation I had on the phone last night.

The caller ID came up as Charter Communications, and I have been ignoring their calls for a while, but they are my internet and phone and tv providers, so I decided I had better finally answer, just in case there was actually something they needed to communicate with me.

Me: Hello?

Charter Chick: Hello--is Mr. or Mrs. Grosser there?

Me [I get this a lot, and it's really fun to tell people they've left the country]: Um, I'm sorry--they don't live here anymore.

Charter Chick: Oh. [Pause.] Should I take their names off the account?

Me [I'm about to say yes, but I happen to know their names were never on the account, because I switched to it after they left the country]: Well--are their names on the account?

Charter Chick: Is one of them Jennifer Grosser?

Me: I'm Jennifer Grosser.

Charter Chick: What? Wait. I'm so confused!

Me: [Laughing] Me, too! I'm Jennifer Grosser--you kind of threw me off with the whole "Mr and Mrs" thing. [I could have a whole rant about this here if we wanted, but that's for a different post and I don't think it was her fault.]

Charter Chick: [Laughing, too] Oh--sorry! Okay. [Pause, though still laughing.] Well [deep breath] my name is Kristy and I'm calling on behalf of Charter to let you know about a very exciting offer.

[I don't remember if her name was really Kristy, but that's probably just as well.]

Me: [Pretty sure I'm not going to accept the offer, but we just had a laugh together and so I feel it would be rude to hang up now.] Okay.

Kristy: First I need to tell you that this call may be monitored or recorded for quality control purposes. [She's still laughing.]

Me: That should be entertaining for them.

Kristy: Okay, you ready?

Me: Go for it.

[Kristy launches into a schpiel about their offering me HBO and a whole bunch of other stuff for only $5 for a month for an entire year. This would be a good deal if I ever watched TV, other than Lost and sometimes The Office, both of which I can also watch on-line. As for movies--I rarely have time to sit down and watch a full-length movie. I decline. She tries again. I still decline. She offers me a free trial month. I still decline although she has been very pleasant about the whole thing.]

Kristy: You know what? This is the most fun conversation I've had all day!

Me: Well that's good! I'm glad. I hope your other conversations are a little more profitable for you, but . . .

Kristy: You know what? It doesn't matter if you buy anything or not--this was the best conversation!

We both heartily wished each other a good evening and I went on my way, but I couldn't stop smiling. I think it was because I realised I had just inadvertently treated her the way I wished people at Starbucks would treat me. And some of them do. But that day I had worked an eight-hour shift during which Mouse got chewed out essentially for not wasting paper product, and I got chewed out because Starbucks charges extra for packets of jam for bagels. ("I'm pretty sure they give jelly out free at Dunkin' Donuts," said one of the accusers. "Well, you can go to Dunkin Donuts," I offered.)

I don't know that I will make a practice of engaging in friendly banter with telemarketers, but you know what? It didn't kill me. It kind of made my night.

Daffodils

After church on Sunday, I bought myself some daffodils and brought a second bunch to the Milk Guy for St. David's Day. It was snowing, and getting ready to snow a whole lot more, and neither of us was happy about it. We don't like winter. I used to like it as a child when there were such things as snow days and I wasn't the one shoveling the snowdrifts, instead burrowing snow-forts into them and making snow-centaurs with my brother. But now it's shoveling at 4.30 in the morning for me, and getting achy and being cold all the time, and frankly, I hate it. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure the Milk Guy has never liked winter in his life. So I decided to snub my nose at winter and bring us each some spring.

While the Milk Guy was putting the daffodils into a vase, I mentioned that daffodils are my favourite flower. (I'm pretty sure that this is because, though my offering him daffodils was truly pure-hearted, I'm not, exactly, and I probably wanted him to take note of this for future reference.)

"Why?" he asked.

I wanted to say, "Because they're yellow," but that doesn't actually make sense, since yellow is not my favourite colour and I feel that it requires certain specific contexts (like daffodils) to be acceptable. In this case, daffodils are what make me like yellow, rather than the other way round.

So I had to stop and think about it. "Probably because of the Welsh connexion," I said. "But also because they're so . . . joyful-looking. Because they bloom in defiance of winter."

He chuckled. "That sounds like something I would say."

Which might have been why I said it like that, but I think it's true. I love crocuses for the same reason, but not as much as daffodils. Crocuses are the brave little scouts that sneak up through the snow and surprise us with dots of colour. But daffodils are the heralds of the new order. They trumpet the news that spring is coming, that winter is dying, that summer will follow and fulfillment of the year's promises. At this time of year, buried under the snow, it's inspiring enough that they shine sunshine into winter's cold face.

Knowing the Rules in Order to Break Them Effectively

The Milk Guy and I have recently admitted to each other that we kind of (no longer secretly) enjoy it when the other one is sick, because it gives us respectively the upper hand in our verbal sparring. Not that we don't sympathise with the other's discomfort and wish him or her health. Just that . . . it's nice to have a moment when our albeit friendly opponent is not likely to contest our advantage too much.

Last night, while talking to him on the phone, my head was too congested to have much room for coherent thought and the Milk Guy had taken it into his head to analyse how we each typically end our stories. He said he most frequently ends his with an "oh well." I said I did, too, but he denied it, asserting that my favourite way to end a telling is tailing off with a "so yeah. Anyway." Then he said it surprised him, since I'm such a grammar and spelling snob, that I also include the phrase in my writing. He said I do not, as I posited, always write the way I speak.

I didn't have the energy then to take up this next point, but somewhere in college I picked up the maxim that the reason to learn grammar rules was so that you could break them effectively in your own writing. I really believe this, too. You have to know how something works at a basic level before you can see its true potential and have the freedom not to be bound by those basics. There is good writing and bad writing, and in my opinion and experience, either remaining rigorously tied to grammar rules, or being totally ignorant of or flouting them, generally leads to bad writing. One is result is wooden and the other is often incomprehensible. Both are often self-conscious. I feel free to write in vernacular sometimes because, if I think about it, I suspect I know how the language works well enough to be able to write it so that it reads like actual speech. My relationship here is more with the living language than with the rules themselves. My best writing flows unselfconsciously out of a love of words and of communicating.

I didn't have the energy to bring up this point because I was pretty sure the Milk Guy would seize the opportunity to universalise the maxim and ask if I apply the same thinking to my faith, or something like that. And I didn't want to talk about it right then because I wanted to think about it. I don't know. Do I? And is that wrong, or is it appropriate?

I believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God. And there are a lot of rules in it. Jesus said He came to fulfill the Law and He also told us that if our righteousness didn't exceed that of the religious leaders of His day, we were in sad shape. I think we need to know what's in there. I think it needs to guard our hearts and inform our thinking and give us a framework for our lives. But it isn't enough to get us into God's good graces--He gets us there Himself through relationship. If I don't know the Law at all or go out of my way to disobey it, or if I am completely tied to it by legalistic fear or self-righteousness, either way it's "bad writing." I'm not following Jesus in those cases. I'm following (or intentionally breaking) Rules--and I'm very self-conscious about it. But my relationship is supposed to be with the Living Word, and with everything I think and say and do flowing more and more out of unselfconscious love for Him.

How Are You Feeling?

Pretty much everyone--everyone--asks me, when they see me, "How are you feeling?" I actually appreciate the concern. A lot.

It kind of feels like a let-down to tell them, as I have been because it's true, "Just fine, actually, thanks." No--really it isn't true. I spend most winters sneezing and coughing and hacking around a sore throat, with my hands chapped and raw from the sanitising solution at Starbucks. I don't really know how I've escaped all that this winter, but if I were going to be really honest, I should have been going around saying, "I feel great, thanks."

(Nobody gets that enthusiastic about anything in New England, though.)

Anyway, it might come as something of a relief to all involved that, having gone through most of the cancer treatments with shamelessly few effects, I can now say in answer to the "How are you?" question, "Kind of horrible, actually."

It would appear that the cold/flu thing I've been dodging all winter has finally caught up with me. Meanwhile, tamoxifen seems to be going pretty well, except that it is refusing to allow me to sleep. I don't think I've had a full night of sleep since I started taking it. Which might explain why the cold/flu thing caught up with me, I guess. Also hot flashes. Those are weird, people. I really hope I don't have them (and sleeplessness) for the ensuing five years I'm on this stuff . . .

But otherwise? I'm feeling great, thanks.

Books

I think this post is a result of combined laziness and self-congratulation. There's this meme-like fad going on over at facebook where people are writing down 25 random things about themselves and then tagging 25 people to do the same thing, and I'm pretty sure I've been tagged more than 25 times, but seriously, folks--I think you could come up with 25 random things about me just from this blog, and I'm not doing it.

However, this week a long-lost friend from elementary school tagged me in the following note and this one I thought was pretty cool. Mostly because the only thinking I have to do involves putting the correct symbol after each selection. But also because I'm pleased to report that I've read more than 6 of the books in this list. And also because it's intriguing to see what they list. I'm not going to tag anybody, but if any of you want to pick this up and do it yourselves, by all means go for it.

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally up the ones you've read and put the number at the bottom


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x +
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x +
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x +
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x +
6 The Bible x +
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy x +
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (no--but many of the works of Shakespeare!)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x +
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot x +
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x +
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh x
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky x
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens x
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x +
34 Emma - Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen x
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x +
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini x +
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x +
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving x
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x +
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy x
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (couldn't get into it)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (couldn't get into it)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons x
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x +
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon x
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (couldn't get into it)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville x
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x +
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath x
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchel
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad x
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x +
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I think I counted 45 x's, me. How about you?

Of Blood Clots and Financial Haemorhage

I saw the doctor last week. She said I'm so young, my chances of either blood clots or uterine cancer are practically nil. I didn't even have to look like a hypochondriac by asking about them . . . she offered this information of her own volition. That was nice . . .

So . . . I've been on Tamoxifen for six days. Six days out of five years? Okay--I'd better not start thinking like that.

I found out in the same week that my insurance has decided against covering my Oncotype-DX test. Which is disappointing. I'm glad that the test (and some prodding from the Milk Guy, my mother, and Pastor Val) enabled me to decide not to have chemo. I'm less glad that the people conducting it seemed to have told me my insurance would pay for it when it was evidently not a foregone conclusion.

Still, it was all put in perspective when the insurance statement came in for my radiation treatments. Having met and exceeded my out-of-pocket expenses, my insurance is covering these. The December treatments alone (not even a full month) exceeded $18,000. Good grief! If I had to pay that, I'd be taking out a mortgage on my life right now . . . !

Crossover

I'm having a little trouble deciding which posts to write over here and which ones to write at A Wandering Line, but I just posted something about fighting with Dinosaurs and something else about antidepressants over there, and I'm gearing up to start musing about happiness, if you're curious and want to start peppering me with difficult questions.

Whoa. That Was Weird

After writing that last post, I tried one more search on my computer and found what appears to be my songs, lurking in the shadows. I dragged and dropped them into itunes, and they seem to have gone there, and, randomly, one of the songs started playing.

It was Jason Harrod's "Messed Up Everywhere Blues." Ironically. And also which I love. And which I had been singing earlier. As the melody tugs on my heart, the album covers reappear in the itunes screen . . . one . . . by . . . one . . . like little stars . . .

So melodramatic. So silly. But somehow the music seemed to imbue even that with meaning.

All that to say: basically better. I still need to check a couple of things, but I think we're good. And . . . I'd better back up my ipod.

Plus, We Are Again Having Technical Difficulties

Although my gratitude remains heartfelt to Matthew-the-Macintosh-Evangelist, I confess it only took a couple of months to realise that I wasn't as convinced by the product as he is. I like my Macbook a lot. I just tend to think . . . it's a computer. I know my tastes aren't honed to appreciate the subtleties in computers the way they are able to tell coffee from coffee. Heck, I can't even do half the things on my computer that my computer could allow me to do if I knew how. (Does that make any sense?)

Mostly I think I mean . . . Macs are touted as being these perfect machines. And they aren't. Or at least . . . mine isn't. I don't know why I would expect any computer owned by me to be perfect, but I confess I sort of had that in the back of my mind.

What I have discovered instead, however, is that Mack, my generally cooperative Macbook, likes to snack on CD-ROMs. Sometimes they get stuck. When that happens, I have to shut him down unceremoniously and turn him back on and hope he will release the disk without any more fighting. Usually he does.

Today I bought the 2008 version of TaxCut, which I always use. I inserted the disk. It got stuck. I shut down the computer. I turned on the computer. I ejected the disk. But I still wanted to do my taxes, so I re-inserted the disk. I installed the software. I ejected the disk. Then the software wouldn't run properly. The whole system got stuck. I shut the computer down again. I turned it back on again. This process (minus the disk, now that the software was supposedly installe) repeated about three times. Finally I decided to return the software and give up for the night. It's not April yet.

I turned the computer back on. I inserted a music disk so I could copy some files. ITunes opened with a horrifying error message to the effect that it couldn't locate my music library because my music library had been damaged. I think I had three days worth of songs on there. I had not backed up my ipod in some time. My itunes library is nowhere to be found.

I called the Milk Guy, more for moral support than because I thought he could fix it; he hasn't had a Mac in years. He said, "It sounds like the computer tried to upload the programme into itunes and it messed up the whole system." Yep. I think he's right. I just . . . couldn't be more frustrated right now.

Whatever Could Be Next?

Tamoxifen. That's what.

I've been kind of nervous the last few months about Tamoxifen. Way more nervous than I was about radiation--which I wasn't that nervous about, though. Mostly I'm nervous about going into early menopause. I'm not sure why. I don't plan to have children and I am not a terrific fan of The Cycle, so you would think I might kind of be looking forward to this prospective side effect or something.

But I guess I feel like I will be aging my body before its time. While I don't consider 50 to be old, exactly, I do consider myself to be not-50, and I don't want my body to be all acting like it's 50 when it isn't. Also, one time I was on the Pill to treat my acne, and it didn't help that at all, but it did make me very sick. I'm now kind of afraid that anything that messes with my hormones will mess with my entire body.

So I voicemailed the Nurse Practitioner. I haven't seen her in a long time and I like her, and I thought maybe I could chat to her about some of my concerns. I said, "I'm a little nervous about Tamoxifen, and I am planning on taking it, but I wondered if I could maybe ask you a few questions about it."

She emailed me back: "Attached are a couple of handouts I use in my high risk clinic that I developed on Tamoxifen..see if they answer your questions...if not let me know and we'll see what else we can come up with..."

I was okay with this until I read them and learned that I could also develop blood clots and deep vein thrombosis. Who knew? After that I thought, "This was probably not the best approach for dealing with someone who has just admitted they're nervous about the prospect to begin with."

Then, a few weeks later I was in the bank changing tip change into bills for Starbucks and the Bank Ladies asked me how I was doing. "I'm doing okay," I said. "I'm almost done with radiation. But I have to start Tamoxifen soon. I'm actually a little more nervous about that."

"Yeah," said a Bank Lady seriously. "My mother had to take that. And she did get uterine cancer from it, but the great thing is that they monitor you all the time, so they can catch stuff like that right away."

?!

If we didn't have the right to free speech, I would not be able to write this blog, but sometimes I think that people should be prevented from talking without a license.

The Last Day

I feel that I should follow up this post with one that tells how it actually turned out:

I did not get a convenient parking space. BUT . . . I did get my favourite dressing room and some not-too-faded gowns and a warm blanket without asking. I also got a little computer-printed "diploma" to certify that I had completed my prescribed radiation treatment, with the names of all the technicians on it, and tied with a little blue bow. That was better than a bouquet of hazardous toiletries, by a long shot. Also--takes up less space.

Just Like Magic

So, you know when people talk about "kids these days" texting all the time. It is really true.

Ever since I started my job at New Church, I've been trying to figure out the best way to let the youth (and leaders) know about upcoming events, or to get feedback about things or whatever. I tried the "group" thing on facebook (there was already a group set up, so I didn't even have to get it going). And I tried the email thing. But not every kid, evidently, checks their email. What? This does not compute . . .

Then one Sunday I was discussing with some parents how I would communicate something with their daughter and her mother said, "Just get her cell phone number and text her. She'll get right back to you."

She wasn't kidding.

I now have most of the cell numbers of the kids who at least usually come to youth group. This afternoon I found out that the church would like us to help out with some "Lenten suppers" they offer on Wednesday nights during Lent, apparently. I sent everybody an email about it. Then I decided to text them and see what happened. So far (and school isn't even out yet as far as I know), I have received 14 text messages in response to mine. There aren't even 14 kids in the group. I think over the course of the last six months, I've only received a total of 3 emails in response to about 10 of those I've sent.

I'm just happy to have been clued into this phenomenon. But I might have to up my texting capabilities on my cell phone plan . . .

One Day More

Today was supposed to be my last day of radiation, but last Friday the Other Machine (which, for the last seven sessions, has become "my" machine) was broken, so I effectively had to make up a day the way all the school kids in the Northeast are going to have to make up the rest of their lives because of all the school they've missed this winter.

So anyway, tomorrow is my last day of radiation. Did you hear that?! It's my last day of radiation!

Radiation wasn't even that bad. I got tired, but that was because last Saturday we had a lock-in with the teens at New Church, not because of radiation. Still, in spite of its being Not That Bad, I feel that some sort of celebration is in order. I think they should make "Congratulations on your weird sunburn and not having to get it anymore" cards, and maybe bouquets of hazardous aluminum-filled deodorant and bubble baths and ladies' razors and stuff. I think, though, that getting appetizers and beverages on Thursday with 409-Caitlin and various other friends is going to be just the thing in lieu of that nonsense.

However, I also think that for my last day, I should get a parking space right next to the exit door of the parking garage, and I should get to change in my favourite dressing room, and I should get "gowns" that are not faded, and I should get a warm blanket without having to ask for it.

Why do I want to be spoiled when this wasn't even hard?

Ewwww!

So today? The most disGUSTing thing that's ever happened to me at Starbucks . . . happened to me at Starbucks.

The previously most disgusting thing was five whole years ago when the sweaty dude came into the store and handed me some crumpled up bills (no wallet) from his front pocket . . . and they were wet. Bleagh.

But today?

Today a guy came in and ordered an Earl Grey, to be made in one of our ceramic cups instead of a paper "to-go" one. No problem there. Before he left the store, he put the cup back on the counter. I picked it up and took it over to the sink, talking to Mouse as I pointed the faucet over it and turned the water on to soak it.

The water hit the inner curve of the cup at such an angle that it shot straight up the other side, splattering with water and half-drunk tea my face, my neck . . . and the inside of my mouth.

When the sweaty guy handed me his moist moolah, I could (and did) wash my hands very thoroughly after that. But what do you do when someone else's saliva flies unbidden into your mouth? Pray that they don't have a communicable disease, I guess, and hang on tight . . .

The Other Blog

The Other Blog at The Other Journal is up at long last. Look! There are already four posts there!

The blog's real name is "A Wandering Line," suggested by the same KS-Christie who suggested I write for these guys. She came up with it on the basis of a poem I wrote aeons ago in our college Creative Writing class. (That one was called "The Wrong Line," and apparently she still has a copy, though I seem to have lost mine.) I like the name and find it very apt, although in one sense it does make me think of blue flashing lights in the rearview mirror and getting out and walking, as it were. Not, I hasten to add, that that has ever happened to me. (It hasn't. It just sounds like it might have.) Anyway--I don't know that any of the posts are sufficiently inspired, but you can, er, wander on over and have a look.

More Tree Mourning

The neighbourhood around New Church is starting to look sunny, which could be a good thing, except that the reason (besides the fact that there have been surprisingly few clouds for a week in January) is that there are a whole lot fewer trees to block the sun out.

I was driving down one of the side-streets the other day, after I had finished writing the article I was assigned about the Asian Longhorned Beetles (I'll link when it's published) and suddenly remembered one of the facts I had gleaned for the article: the ALB feels at home in at least 11 species of Northeastern tree, but its favourite is the maple.

A couple of times last fall I walked from New Church to the Milk Guy's house for a visit, and on the way I would pick up maple leaves that caught my eye to give to him. It suddenly struck me, that day this week, that if I manage to find myself walking from New Church to the Milk Guy's house this autumn? There will be no maple leaves. Not one. It kind of gives me a lump in my throat.

And then I thought: this is New England. The maples are what we're famous for. And if we don't take these trees down now, the whole New England forest could change for years to come. But in the meantime, isn't it sad that even one New England city has to be deprived of its glory? (In the case of this City, some people might argue its only glory . . . )

On the other hand, it reminds me of a City whose glory doesn't fade, and it reminds me to pray for that glory to come and fill my city, too . . .

Attachments

It's kind of weird what you can get attached to.

Today I got a phone call that the machine that radiates me every day was down, so could I come in earlier so they could radiate me on the Other One?

I agreed without thinking too much of it, but I've been radiated on the same machine for 24 days, and this "Other One" was not mine. The dimness in the room in which I am usually microwaved is kind of bluish; the dimness in this other room was more yellow, and everything in there looked older and the buzzing radiating noise was louder and the movable pins within the machine grated somewhat. I felt like I was in a Dharma station on the island in Lost. (This might have something to do with having just watched the season premier on Wednesday, though. You think?)

Then I found out that, because today was my last day of general-area radiation (my last seven days entailing a concentrated "boost" of radiation just to the immediate former location of the tumour), I was going to have been moved to the Other One next time anyway. So yesterday was my last day on "my" machine, and I didn't even know it. I didn't even get to say goodbye . . .

Stupid, isn't it?

The up-side is that I only have seven days left of radiation, and with the more specified focus of treatment, I can now shave again. Over the next month, I will stop looking like a victim of a strange tanning mishap. I can, if I want to, start using normal deodorant again (although if no one finally tells me that I stink more than usual, I might stick with the aluminum-free, breast-cancer-safe stuff I've been introduced to in this process). And . . . well, let's just say I never expected to look forward to certain heretofore taken-for-granted self-care habits.

Divided Loyalties

Nope. This isn't about yesterday's post.

This is about how somehow-and-thanks-to-KS-Christie (the KS stands both for Kansas, where she originates, and "Kindred Spirit," 'cause she is) I am now an official blogger at The Other Journal, an on-line journal for Mars Hill Graduate School on the West Coast. (Only you can't tell, because I haven't posted anything yet.)

This is slightly bizarre for many reasons, including the following:

1. I don't know where on the West Coast Mars Hill Graduate School is. (I should probably not admit this on-line.)

2. I started graduate school once . . . and quit.

3. They already have a ton of really smart, well-writing people blogging for them, about actual Topics. I blog about the morass of mixed-up thoughts in my brain.

Because I don't think that my version of a TOJ blog and my version of a Blogger blog are ultimately going to be all that different, and because I'm currently trying to hold down two jobs and freelance, I'm seriously toying (can you seriously toy?) with the idea of no longer posting here and just posting there. But I feel all sorts of nostalgic, as if you couldn't find me somewhere else on the web and because this is where I blogged and you read and commented for something like a couple of years. And those other people who might stumble across my TOJ blog? Well, I don't know them. They don't have the history you and I do. They don't know that I'm ridiculous about trees and in a complicated relationship with a Milk Guy (they don't even know why he's called the Milk Guy--sheesh) and once lived in London and have a thing for weird conversations with total strangers. You know these things. How am I supposed to catch them up on all that, for goodness' sake?

I don't know what I'm going to do about this just yet. But come visit me at my new digs in either case, okay? Only . . . wait 'til I've actually got something posted over there . . .

Polarity

Everyone must think the economy's going to get instantaneously better as of today, because Starbucks was as busy as a Saturday in December . . . which we barely even saw in December. It's good. We need the business. (This might be a topic for another post, but not yet.)

And let's face it. Today is pretty historic. I think it's cool that this Inauguration Day in particular was the day after Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. (And the day before the season premier of Lost, which is also--but differently--exciting.) I confess, I did vote for Obama. I'm happy for the change.

But on the other hand, this adulation kind of creeps me out. I admit it: any time I hear of anyone--I mean anyone--who generates so much enthusiasm, my anti-christ radar starts going off. I don't always believe the radar, and so far none of the people who have set it off have actually gone out and become The Anti-Christ. But it does go off.

I suspect it has something to do with my being both a natural contrarian and someone who belongs to the evangelical Christian subculture, so the tendencies of both elements merge and . . . I start predicting the end of the world. A lot of us do it, I fear. On the other hand, I don't think I'm wrong to be cautious. Or necessarily contrarian. I will also admit never to having been a big supporter of George W. Bush and some of his decisions, but booing him? Not okay.

Here's the deal guys. They're just dudes. Barack Obama is not Jesus, and George W. Bush is not the devil--nor is it the other way around. Only one Man in the history of the planet gets to be scapegoat or Messiah, and it was the real Jesus, and He was both at once. And He was the only Scapegoat-Messiah we needed. I just don't think it's right or safe or fair to put so much pressure on any other one man.

It's not right to blame everything that's wrong with this country right now on George Bush, although I think he (as did we all to some extent, I would posit) contributed to it. That's way too much pressure. Nor is it right to pin all our hopes for the future on Barack Obama, although I think he (as will we all, I hope) contribute to some improvements. That's way too much pressure, too. Whether these guys asked for the pressure is another issue, I suppose, but it doesn't negate the fact that it's too much.

I think this is the time for grace. Expectations should be high--I mean, the nation overall did elect Obama to this important, powerful, pivotal position, and yes, he had better do his job. Let's just remember that whether we as individuals voted for or against him, he's not going to be perfect. He's still just a dude.

If a Tree Falls . . .

I first decided that growing up might have some compensations when my mother told me that even grown-up books sometimes have talking trees in them. (She was reading Lord of the Rings at the time. I guess that might go without saying.)

I think I'm still waiting for the other compensations, but I actually wasn't really planning to discuss the relative benefits of maturity. I wanted to talk about trees. And Lord of the Rings, I guess. I think it's interesting that in the worlds of both Tolkien and Lewis, you can tell things are really dire when the trees either shut down or are cut down. The worlds of The Two Towers, Prince Caspian and The Last Battle, for example, are highly informed by the state of the trees.

So I've got to say that the ominous feeling surrounding the devastated economy, the renewed violence in Israel and the more personal concerns of cancer and such, is kind of getting highlighted for me over here because of what is happening to our trees.

Last month trees all across our county were ripped to shreds by the wind and ice which ravaged the area. One entire dread-filled night I spent listening to trees shuddering, groaning, cracking like gunshot, falling with loud, earthshaking thuds . . . and I felt as if I could, in all that, hear them screaming. Much as I feared a tree might any minute fall through my roof, I also found myself grieving, grieving the trees.

If that were all, it would be a sadness. Trees which had been perfectly healthy, if they haven't fallen down completely, will have to be taken down because they've suffered too much damage to survive. In addition, however, there is an even more serious menace. The Asian Longhorned Beetle, which the USDA has fought to eradicate in Chicago, New York, and New Jersey, was discovered in our City last summer.

The beetles have been present in this area for over ten years it turns out, and the passionate and hardworking folks at APHIS are a little freaked out, because this is the first occurrence of this tree-destroying pest in an area with such close access to full-fledged forest. In an attempt to keep the beetle from destroying an entire ecosystem up here, they have begun a massive programme to cut down and chip to nothing . . . pretty much all the trees in the City, and many beyond. If the beetle only infested one kind of tree, that would be one thing, but "this one goes to eleven"--there are at least eleven tree species they seem happy to call home. The oaks, apparently, are safe, and I suppose the pines, but the maples' and the chestnuts' and the birches' days are numbered. Trucks have been on New Church's street yesterday and today, and for about half an hour this morning a herd of "tree-care" workers hung out and laughed and talked at Starbucks.

If things go well, replanting will begin in a few years. But no one in the City will see a mature maple tree on their property again. If these trees don't come down, many more will, eventually. But it already feels suspiciously like a losing battle, and we've only just started to fight it. It feels like a harbinger of something, and makes me wonder again, "What is this world coming to?"

On My Own Terms

I want to be a cancer survivor on my own terms, I'm realising. I suspect this is both reasonable and unreasonable (or at least ungrateful), but right now I'm not value-judging it. I'm just telling you what is.

I have friends who I have ongoing conversations with. We talked about stuff before, and we talk about stuff now, and sometimes the stuff is related to cancer, but that isn't all we talk about. I like that.

Here's what I don't like:

I don't like when people I don't really know, with whom I rarely converse, decide that now they know something about me, and they come up to me and get a pained look on their faces and say, "How are you feeling? Are you okay? Really? That's good, 'cause you look great."

Um . . . thanks?

I think a lot of these people are really well-meaning and genuinely concerned, and I feel for them in the awkward scenario of only knowing one thing about me to talk to me about. I mean, I've been in similar situations. (And I probably haven't been any more graceful in them.) But being on the receiving end of this tends to grate after a while. I want to say, at a slightly-louder-than-conversational decibel level, "Hey! Everybody! I am not my cancer! I have other aspects of my life and personality we could explore here! I don't even have cancer anymore, guys! They took it out!"

This, of course, ignores the facts that:

1. There is an upcoming treatment that is making me very, very nervous.

2. If these same people I don't really know started trying to probe into other aspects of my life, I'd probably resent that even more.

3. I am quite happy to talk about having had cancer if it excuses me from doing something I don't want to do.

I can't come up with a conclusion to this post which doesn't imply some sort of value judgment from either myself or you, so instead I will end with an all-purpose quote from the Milk Guy and say,

"There it is, then."

A Bet?

The current acceptable term in many evangelical and charismatic Christian communities is "spiritual warfare."

Most of the people I know, however--including myself--have always said, "Oh! That's such a Jenn story!"

I never really considered that those two things might be the same thing, and maybe they're not, but yesterday I was whalloped again by what still more people might term my chronic bad luck. I was supposed to get to Starbucks by 5.00 a.m. to open the store for the day. I have a very long and steep driveway, so most of the winter, every winter, I park at the top of the driveway by the road, so I can get out and on my way with as little fuss as possible.

Yesterday quite a lot of fuss was possible. It took me over half an hour to get my car to move two feet. I threw a fairly extended temper tantrum in my car while moving was not happening. When I finally got to work and we opened the store (late), I tripped over a step-stool which I couldn't see because I was carrying a four-liter container of iced coffee, and went flying, landing on the stool and the cement-block floor such that I now have a bruise on each elbow and one knee. (I didn't spill the iced coffee, though.)

I was trying to imagine how to explain yet more ridiculous occurrences to the Milk Guy--you know, since I'm supposedly in touch with the Lord of the everything--and I imagined saying, "The elemental spirits of the universe don't like me because I love Jesus too much."

But that didn't sound quite right, because it makes it sound like my love for Jesus is all impressive and everything, and I'm pretty sure it's not--particularly as I had just spent a half hour that morning screaming at Him. (Sometimes I wonder how this relationship was worth it to Him.)

Then I started imagining that maybe Satan and God were having all these bets like they did with Job about how I would respond to certain difficulties. But I thought if that were true, it can't be all that gratifying to God in this case, since I go kind of ballistic every time the littlest thing happens to remind me that I'm not in control. I don't need to have big huge dramatic things happen (except cancer, evidently--but I mostly seem to be dealing with that just fine, I guess)--because I make them into huge dramatic things myself. And if these things are supposed to teach me to be more stoical or something, that doesn't seem to be working, either, and then maybe somebody in this dynamic is insane, because isn't the definition of insanity to do the same thing over and over and expect different results?

Anyway, I don't know what it is, but the upshot of this latest spate of excess of annoyance was that it made me start wondering about spiritual warfare, whether that's what has been going on lately or not. We talk about spiritual warfare as if it's personal, and I wonder if it really is? And if it is, then it's kind of incredible--it's almost an amazing praise of God and even a compliment to us, if you think about it. Because if it didn't matter how much Jesus loves us--and I mean us individually as well as corporately--and if it didn't matter how much we love Him . . . if that back-and-forth love wasn't going to make some difference in the world and the universe . . . well, then--I would think life would be a whole lot easier, and no one in any dimension would have to expend a whole lot of effort.

Humanity

Yesterday one of our less-than-favourite Starbucks customers was in the newspaper.

In the obituaries.

I feel kind of guilty about it.

"Why?" asked the Milk Guy. "Do you really think whatever spiritual forces you tap into, killed him just because you didn't like him?"

Not at all.

"Maybe he's in a better place," he suggested. "In that case, you should be happy for him."

Sure. Maybe he is. I don't feel that I am in a position to discuss the likelihood or non-likelihood of this. But that's not really what was bothering me at the moment, either.

It's that . . . sometimes people are really jerks. Or unmitigatedly annoying. Or something else that triggers primarily negative reactions in people surrounding them. This man was, to me and my colleagues, unfortunately one of those people. But the last thing I said about him while he was alive, I said in the backroom of the store and it involved a lot of tisking and eyerolling and "I know"-ing. If, after you do that, you find out you're never going to see that person again because they died, it just does kind of weird things to your head.

I don't suppose, had I known he was going to die this week, I would have found him any less annoying in the interim. I don't know that I feel he was, by his usual actions in our store, necessarily deserving of any excess of respect. But knowing that he's dead now reminds me that we're all going to. Because we're all human. It reminds me that here was a human being for whom Jesus died, and none of us are deserving of any excess of respect in ourselves--but Jesus is, and this whole time I was taking for granted some dude that He loved and suffered for.

It's possible this man wouldn't have noticed had I treated him any differently than I did--particularly because I think most of the time I was at least polite if not cordial to his face. It's possible he wouldn't have cared. But I feel like my integrity's at stake, because I know what my inner attitude toward him was, and I also know what I say I believe about humanity and Jesus and what that means for personal interactions.

And I'm really scared that, even having come to this realisation, it's not going to make much of a difference.

Correction

Yesterday was Epiphany. Not the yesterday that I said it was . . . yesterday.

Apparently I have no idea what day of the week it is . . .

Living Up to the Feast

Do you ever do that thing where you're talking, and you say something you didn't even know you knew, or you learn something as you're saying it?

Last night I was hanging out with CourtneyinAfrica (who is not presently in Africa, though she will be again soon and briefly), having Christmas leftovers and an improvised salad.

We were having deep and meaningful conversation, mostly around trusting God and its implications for real life, and I suddenly thought of the story of Peter asking Jesus to let him walk on water. CourtneyinAfrica and I had been divulging certain Impossible Dreams we have each been dreaming, and hashing through whether or not these were things we were supposed to hope for, and therefore trust God to perform (because we both know He can fulfill them, of course), or if we were "wanting the wrong things" for reasons known only to God, and therefore supposed to do something decisive to sever ourselves from the wantings.

When I thought of Peter, I thought, "What a crazy thing to ask for," and then I thought, "He didn't ask Jesus if it was His will--he just went for it." So I started to point this out, but what I actually ended up saying was, "Peter didn't say, "Lord, if it's Your will tell me to walk to You on the water. He said, 'Lord, if it's You . . . '"

I stopped.

CourtneyinAfrica stopped.

We both stared at each other. Probably we both got the chills. It felt like we had just uncovered something momentous, without actually being able fully to grasp or explain its significance. CourtneyinAfrica said, "It has something to do with relationship." I'm still not sure what I think this means, but it's as if, in the relationship Peter and Jesus had, Peter could ask something ridiculous, but it wasn't actually going to be wrong. And Jesus loved Peter so much, he didn't say, "See, Peter, you don't always get everything you want. This is your day to learn that. It will make you a stronger person." Nor did he stand there with his arms crossed, tapping His foot on the waves, waiting for Peter to say, "Oh--I mean, if it's Your will. If you want to. Yeah . . . that." Peter didn't doubt that Jesus could do it, and he doesn't seem to have doubted that Jesus would want to (at least, not initially). He had simply said, "Lord, if it's You," and it was Him, so He did it.

And then, even though it was an isolated event and only involved two people and a dozen or so eye-witnesses, He even used it to glorify Himself, because it ended up in the Bible. I hardly think it's a fluff human-interest piece. It's got to be there for some reason.

I have been praying for some version of my Impossible Dream for more years than I can count, probably, and for a more specific version of it for a little over a year. And I don't know what the outcome of all this praying is going to be. I don't ever expect anything I pray for to look the way I imagine it when I'm praying for it (because to date, nothing ever has). And I'm a pessimist; I tend to expect the worst, in hopes that I will be wrong but bracing myself in case. So although it's not hard for me to trust that God can do miracles, I have a bear of a time trusting that He wants to do them, for me--that I might actually want something He wants.

Now I'm wondering. Maybe most of this praying-year, I've largely been asking the wrong questions. So the waves loom and I start to lose my balance and I start to sink and I think, "See? I knew I didn't want the right thing." But every time--every time--I've finally stopped trying to stay afloat myself, and said the equivalent of "If it's You," the waves have subsided and I've seen Jesus' face (figuratively, but clearly, and that's still something . . . ) and I've been able to take another step. I still don't know what this means, exactly, but I guess I'm probably not supposed to. Yet, anyway.

After CourtneyinAfrica left, I (wasted a little time on Facebook and) got ready for bed. I sat down and opened up a new devotional book that some person had anonymously left me at Starbucks. I opened it to the reading I was up to. It was about Peter, asking Jesus to invite him to walk on the water.

Today it occurred to me that yesterday was the Feast of Epiphany . . .

The Flip Side

I think I have more than my fair share of amazing, supportive people in my life. Super-Roger and Wonder-Dawna are two of them. It would be tough to delineate all the ways these two have supported me, even before the cancer diagnosis. Mostly this fall, actually, they've loaned me one of their cars at key moments while my car has taken the time to have a series of irritating problems.

On Saturday, I pulled out of my driveway with some difficulty and realised that I was also driving down the road with more than the usual difficulty, so I turned around and went back home and discovered that my back left tyre was flat.

It did not escape me, as I wrestled with the jack, that I had been so proud of myself last year at learning to change a tyre. But, I thought a little bitterly, it's one thing to be able to change a tyre and something else to have to--apparently once a year, and always in the dead of winter. Brrr! Fortunately an out-for-a-walk neighbour stopped and helped me finish the job. (This is a bit remarkable in itself, as I don't live in a particularly friendly neighbourhood--nor, I regret to say, do I do anything to change this.)

I noted, as I drove to work on the doughnut, that I was having a lot more trouble driving with it than usual, and that things were still feeling very bumpy. My suspicions grew and grew until I got to Starbucks, got out of my car, walked around to the other side and discovered that yes! That back tyre was flat, too!

I was not in a very good mood as I began my shift. Nor through most of the rest of it.

On a break, I quickly called Super-Roger to see if I could borrow his car again for the weekend if I could get a ride back to my town. Then I called the Milk Guy to see if he would give me the ride.

In the end, what happened, though, was that both these men decided to try to come bail me out themselves. They arrived within minutes of each other (and about half an hour before I left work), such that the Milk Guy was already removing the back wheels from my car when Super-Roger got there. Together they took the wheels to a local tyre shop, convinced the employees to stay open long enough for them to get me two new tyres, returned to my car and reassembled it, reinflated my front tyres, and I was able to return home safely--and a lot quicker than I had made it to the city that morning . . .

I daresay all three of us could have done without my tyre problems. But . . . I like my friends to meet my friends, and sometimes you can't very well orchestrate these things. I don't know that Super-Roger and the Milk Guy would have met under other, more ordinary circumstances. But I'm glad that they did.

Christmas Recap

It has come to my attention (as I was shoveling snow this evening, if you must know, and not through any other human agent) that I have failed to follow up my irritable Christmas Day post with any report on how the rest of the Christmas week was. Or even the rest of that day, for that matter.

This might be because I seem to have subliminally assigned to this blog the role of Whinge-Keeper. And, see, the rest of that day and the week were pretty much great. So . . . what was there to write about?

I regret to rediscover that . . . I'm not a very grateful person.

Anyway, I'm here to tell you that yes: Christmas Day and Christmas week were just great. There were a few Niece-Hannah sleeping hiccups (read: Niece-Hannah not sleeping), but she's too cute to get mad at.

Here is a photo to prove it. Also one of the World's Cutest Niece with her Designer Auntie.

What's a Miracle, Vincent?

Last night I watched Pulp Fiction for the first time ever.

There are reasons that I would not recommend this to . . . maybe anyone, although that might be hypocritical, since I seem to be glad I watched it. Maybe because the (admittedly obscenity-, profanity-, and potentially violence-laden--like the rest of the movie) scene at the very end is surprisingly redemptive. There's even a Christ-allusion, though the character through which it comes has been anything but Christlike for the better part of the film.

The lead-in to the scene is this rather intriguing dialogue (stolen from Wikiquote and slightly censored by me):

Jules: Man, I just been sitting here thinking.

Vincent: About what?

Jules: About the miracle we just witnessed.

Vincent: The miracle you witnessed. I witnessed a freak occurrence.

Jules: What is a miracle, Vincent?

Vincent: An act of God.

Jules: And what's an act of God?

Vincent: When, um … God makes the impossible possible … but this morning I don't think qualifies.

Jules: Hey, Vincent, don't you see? That s*** don't matter. You're judging this s*** the wrong way. I mean, it could be that God stopped the bullets, or He changed Coke to Pepsi, He found my f****** car keys. You don't judge s*** like this based on merit. Now, whether or not what we experienced was an "according to Hoyle" miracle is insignificant. What is significant is that I felt the touch of God. God got involved.

Vincent: But why?

Jules: Well, that's what's f****** with me. I don't know why, but I can't go back to sleep.

I'm intrigued by the philosophical dimensions of this dialogue. (The fact that it is, believe it or not, one of the less obscene ones in the film is not unsignificant either.) For one thing, the idea that you "don't judge [a purported miracle] based on merit" seems to me to be similar to what we talked about that time we were talking about taking God shopping.

But I'm also curious about defining a miracle by the receptivity of the person experiencing it. In the case of Jules and Vincent, both experienced the exact same event--in which neither of them died though they should have ("should," both according to laws of morality and probability). But Vincent thought they got lucky, and Jules thought God was reaching into his life to redirect him.

So who was right? I know this is just, well, Fiction, and everything, but it could happen in real life, and if it did, is the miracle the event that kept both men from being riddled with bullets, even though Vincent was "spiritually blind" enough not to see it? Or was the real miracle that Jules was able to see God's hand in the situation? It's kind of a postmodernist "the reader is always right" sort of approach to things, but I'm not sure that's entirely faulty here.

It's also kind of like the "If a tree falls in the woods" conundrum. Are there inherently miraculous events which only have merit if someone manages to acknowledge it? Or are there only events, whether specifically God-ordained or ones that happen that He simply works through, such that the real miracle is always when a person responds? We love because He first loved us, and are any of us capable of responding without His nudge?