God on the Strip

I don't know about you, but as a Christian fencing bear, it really bothers me that all the best advice about preparing oneself mentally and spiritually for a fencing bout would seem to come from outside the Christian tradition. You know, all the great wisdom about how to concentrate without concentrating, being always in the moment without expectation but ready to respond, the Zen and the Tao and the Yoga of detached attention, no-mind, union, what have you: none of this teaching would seem to be available from within Christianity. Sure, there are the mystics who talk about achieving self-annihilation in love of God, but that doesn't seem to be quite the same thing. Nor does praying the Office or reading the Scriptures or saying the rosary seem to be a way of preparing for the kind of attention that fencing demands. Perhaps if I could get on strip and say to myself the "Ave Maria" I would be better able to see when my opponent is planning to attack, but I doubt it. The whole point of concentrating without concentrating is not to fix on any one idea or plan, but rather simply to be ready for anything, which I wouldn't be if what I were holding in my mind was Gabriel's greeting to Mary. (Or would I?)

Nor does it seem right simply to pray for success: "O Lord, help me beat my opponent. Crush my enemies under foot, all those who mock me with their superior abilities." Ha. If only. But neither does it seem appropriate to turn the other cheek: this is a sport, it's not as if we're really fighting. She wants me to try to hit her (well, sort of) so that she can have the opportunity to try to respond. And simply letting her hit me, well, that would rather defeat the whole point of the exercise, now, wouldn't it? I've tried being humble, not giving into my pride, but I rather think there is more to being a Christian fencer than that. Christianity is about praising God for his goodness in creating us as human beings, giving us a world to live in, and redeeming us for our failure to give thanks to Him as we should. But if God loves us--all of us--that much, so much so that He will not suffer even one hair of our head to perish, what difference does it make how well one or the other of us fences? Apparently, none at all. Which doesn't really give one much incentive, does it? Not to mention much insight into how best to prepare.

But how can this be? How can centuries of monastic discipline in praying to God have nothing to say about how to prepare one’s mind for combat? Okay, so monks by definition don’t tend to go into battle against human enemies, but what about all those demons they went into the desert to challenge? Surely there are lessons to be learned there. Yes, of course, at least metaphorically: the demons of Pride and Anger and Impatience and Self-doubt are always ready for us, lurking there on the strip. But, again, being able to name them is one thing; being ready to deal with them wholly another. And, practicing yogini that I am, I’m still really not comfortable telling myself that my fencing—any more than my writing, my cooking, my traveling, my teaching, my drawing (intermittent as it is)—has nothing to do with my being a Christian or, rather, that my being a Christian makes no difference one way or another to the way in which I fence.

St. Paul would say, “Put on the armor of God” (Ephesians 6:13-17). Well, fine. But, again, what do the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the shoes of the preparation of the gospel of peace have to do with whether I can keep my mind properly relaxed so as to be ready to make an attack or to parry? Metaphorically effective though it might be to imagine myself wielding “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” while I write, I really can’t see any use for it on the strip other than to honor my opponent as a fellow creature and human being. Which, of course, is a good start, but it isn’t going to do much good when I find myself stuck making the same action over and over again. Nor is it really a question of WWJD. Okay, so Stephen Sawyer may be able to imagine Jesus as a boxer fighting and interceding on our behalf, but I don’t think it will help me much to imagine myself as God when I get on the strip this afternoon. My actual opponents are other women, not demons or sins. And, besides, Jesus probably wouldn’t even need a weapon to deal with them. He’d just use the Force and convince them to put their weapons down.

Apples and oranges, you will say. The disciplines of Yoga and Zen were specifically developed to deal with the movements of mind that distract us from realizing our true selves (or not-selves), whereas Christian doctrine is more about affirming the worthiness of the exercise in the first place. To wit: that we are made in the image and likeness of God and therefore not only worthy of salvation, but endowed by our Creator with the corollary capacity to create--if not, of course, ex nihilo, nevertheless by example—artifacts, thoughts, and lives worthy of Him. I only wish He had seen fit to give us better instructions. “Don’t lie.” Fine. “Don’t steal.” Okay. “Don’t kill.” Right. “Don’t covet your neighbor’s ox—or medal.” Gotcha. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Working on it. But what am I supposed to do when I’m struggling with trying to find that next sentence or read my opponent’s actions? How am I going to know what to say or to do? Other than in my response (anger, frustration, doubt) such actions are morally more or less neutral, at least, insofar as I am really not trying to kill or hurt anyone either with my sword or my words.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (more on my thoughts about converting to Catholicism some other time): “God created everything for man, but man in turn was created to serve and love God and to offer all creation back to Him.” So perhaps I should think of my fencing as a way to offer something to God? Yes, that sounds promising. God has given me both this body and soul to make something of. It is my responsibility to develop them both to be the best that I can. Hmmm…. I’ve heard that before. Not wasting one’s talents and the like (Matthew 25:14-30). But what if the best I can do on strip will never be very good? Do I thereby insult God’s trust in me to be the best steward that I can? See, I need more specific guidance, not just generalities about “doing one’s best.” I want to be in there with God guiding my actions, showing me how best to outwit my opponent. I want to feel the Force flowing through me, like Luke Skywalker going for the target, trusting myself to know when and where to make the attack. I want to tap into that Spirit that enabled Peter to walk on water and the apostles to speak in tongues. I want to be inspired when I fence, not just exercising my body and mind.

Is that really so much to ask?

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Up in the Air

I love traveling, don’t you? Okay, so there’s the headache of making hotel and flight reservations and deciding what to pack, plus the anxiety the night before of whether you will wake up in time to get to the airport. But once you’re out the door and on your way, it’s exhilarating.

New places to go, new things to see, new people to meet. Whereas the day before, life seemed heavy and uninteresting, now everything seems possible, lighter somehow and open to change. I especially love the feeling of being in the airport after my bags have been checked and I’m through security. Suddenly, thanks to the magic of carry-on restrictions, my possessions for the moment are reduced to their essentials: my wallet, my cell phone, my laptop, my totem bear, a few books, my iPod(s), some money. All I have to worry about is getting to my gate on time, and I’m free.

It’s an illusion, of course. In reality, I’m no more free than I was yesterday; I’m still as bound by obligations and schedules, hopes, fears and dreams as I ever was. And yet, up here in the air, sitting in seat 25F on American Airlines flight 2317, there’s only so much I can do about any of it. I can’t go into the office, I can’t do my yoga, I can’t check my email, I can’t eat, I can’t call my mother, I can’t work on my book. All I can do—blissfully—is read one or other of the books I brought with me or work on this blog post.

O blessed lack of liberty! I’ve been oppressed for days by the thoughts of all of the things that I might or could or should be doing other than what I was. There I was, the apartment clean, my son at camp, myself free to do whatever I wanted. And feeling guilty because I wasn’t (apparently) doing any of it. Not more intensive yoga practice, not learning to draw faces with different expressions, not plotting my graphic novel, not practicing the piano, not going to see the new modern wing at the Art Institute. Just sitting at home, reading comics and the catechism, trying to enjoy my time off.

I’m a bit of a workaholic, I know. I get anxious when I don’t have looming deadlines to structure my day. Yes, I complain, particularly during term when every day seems to be filled with committee meetings and papers to grade, but the truth of the matter is, I depend upon such urgencies to make my life seem, if not interesting, at the very least important. Left to my own devices, well, look what I do. I sleep in, I waste my time reading all the wrong things, I neglect to do my yoga or say my prayers. While I could be doing anything, I do nothing but dither away my day.

Okay, so that’s not entirely true. I did write some good blog posts these past couple of days, and I really did need to do that reading about comics in order to be able to revise an article I’ve had on the back burner for the past year. And I haven’t been doing my yoga at home because I’ve been going to more classes at my club. But still, what about all those things that I always say I’d like to have time to do but don’t? Why didn’t I do them this past week when I had the chance?

Maybe I should travel more. After all, many of my colleagues manage to travel a great deal more than I do, jet-setting from conference to conference, library to library, museum to museum. Wouldn’t that be the life? Every day would be an adventure with new problems to solve: how to get to the conference, what manuscripts to consult in the library, what paintings or sculptures to see at the museum. Blissfully busy, busy, busy: that would be me. And just think: then I could blog about writing the way other writers do, giving advice on how to snatch those precious moments between meetings, on the train, on the plane, sitting at a café, wherever one happened to be.

Okay, so I’m being a bit cynical. Travel is good for you, right? It broadens the mind, makes you more cosmopolitan and sophisticated, introduces you to new cultures and ideas. Perhaps. But I’m not sure this is the real reason that people do it. Oh, sure, thanks to the tradition of the Grand Tour, it’s what they say, but what if the real reason people travel so much is that they can’t bear to be at home where there are too many options for what they might do? What if it is not so much the freedom but rather the restrictions of travel that they enjoy?

It’s like T.S. Eliot said: “Man cannot bear too much freedom.”* At least, I’m pretty sure that’s the way that the line goes. I don’t know, I can’t check it up here in the air far from the Internet. And that’s good because otherwise I might get distracted and start surfing and looking for the quotation and there I would be, adrift yet again in too many possibilities. Whereas here in my airplane seat all I can do is think.

*Actually, I think what he said is probably, "Man cannot bear too much reality," but in keeping with the real-time fiction of this post, I'm not going to double check even now that I'm on the Internet at the hotel. It's from Four Quartets, in any case.

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Q&A: Lord, Open My Lips

Ooo, ooo, ooo! My first question to answer, and it's a good one, too.

William asks: "Praying aloud or in silence. I feel like I'm talking to myself when I attempt to pray aloud. I suppose that would differentiate myself from those of FAITH and casual believers."

Okay, okay, I can answer this one. At least I think I can. Let's see. Puts on professor hat. Takes professor hat off. Trying to find the right voice with which to respond. Maybe I should try a prayer, perhaps the one used at the opening of the Morning Office: "Lord, open my lips. And my mouth will proclaim your praise." Says it aloud several times. Thinks a bit more. What is the difference between reading this prayer aloud and simply saying it to oneself in one's mind? Okay, so I'm sitting here on the back porch, nobody can hear me if I say it, well, nobody but God. And maybe those workmen whose voices I can hear from across the way. I'll say it really softly. Hmmm...they don't seem to have heard me. But what if my husband were home? Or my son? Wouldn't I feel silly then, sitting here talking to myself? Oh, and to God?

It's easier at church reading the prayers aloud with everybody else, although then, of course, sometimes I wonder whether it's really me saying the prayers, whether I am paying proper attention and not just saying the words. This question is actually one that has troubled Christians for centuries, perhaps ever since the beginning of the Church. On the one hand, Jesus warned his disciples not to make a big fuss by praying in public, but rather to go into their room, close the door and pray to their Father in secret. But on the other, he promised that wherever "two or three" were gathered in his name, he would be there among them, which seems to suggest that Christians should pray in community as well.

Realizes she has put professor hat back on inadvertently. Tries to take it off but it seems stuck. Wants to say something about the history of the discussion of the relative merits of vocal and mental prayer, but feels like this wouldn't be really answering the question. Asks self: "Whose words should I use?" Interesting to feel so curiously tongue-tied when trying to write about whether to pray silently or aloud. Touches lips. Tries again.

Here's what it says in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2701-2702): "Vocal prayer is an essential element of the Christian life. To his disciples, drawn by their Master's silent prayer, Jesus teaches a vocal prayer, the Our Father. He not only prayed aloud the liturgical prayers of the synagogue but, as the Gospels show, he raised his voice to express his personal prayer, from exultant blessing of the Father to the agony of Gesthemani. The need to involve the senses in interior prayer corresponds to a requirement of our human nature. We are body and spirit, and we experience the need to translate our feelings externally. We must pray with our whole being to give all power possible to our supplication." Further (2704): "Even interior prayer, however, cannot neglect vocal prayer. Prayer is internalized to the extent that we become aware of him 'to whom we speak.' Thus vocal prayer becomes an initial form of contemplative prayer." Takes professor hat off again.

You see, I'm struggling with this question myself. I know the answers that the Church gives about the importance of praying both with the body (lips) and the mind (heart), but I'm not sure in the answer that I'm trying to give here whether I'm speaking for myself, from my own experience, or for others, from what I know of the discussion that has gone on before. I know what I am supposed to say: "Praying aloud exercises the whole of the self, body, mind and soul," but I know also that it is sometimes hard to feel like one is actually praying when saying aloud words written by somebody else, as, for example, when saying the liturgy of the Hours. Is prayer something that we do alone, only for ourselves, or in community, for the whole of the world? God does not need us to speak aloud, knowing as He does the secrets of our hearts, but perhaps we need to speak aloud to and for ourselves, otherwise we will not acknowledge those secrets ourselves.

Struggles some more with which hat to put on, which voice to assume. Prayer is about paying attention to God. Whose voice is that? Do I know this about prayer myself or is it simply something that I have read? But I have experienced it myself, haven't I? Praying only in the mind, what the tradition calls "contemplative prayer," is widely acknowledged to be somewhat difficult, as most anyone who has tried to pray for any length of time without letting the attention wander will recognize. Goodness, that sounds pompous. Do I really speak that way? Vocal prayer helps us to concentrate; it gives us practice in paying attention, thus strengthening us for the rigors of contemplative prayer. I sound like a book. Wouldn't it be better just to say what I think? Why all this academic speech? Only those who have spent time in vocal prayer typically have the capacity to sustain contemplative, mental prayer. You mean like saying a mantra? But do you really have to say it out loud?

I think you do. The yogis will talk about how sounds affect not only our bodies, but also our spiritual selves. Just chanting "Om" can be incredibly powerful. Something changes when we say the words out loud. It takes energy to sustain the breath. Plus, our bodies really do quite literally resonate with the sounds that we make. I know that when I feel tired or sick, it is harder to speak. And yet, saying the prayers of the Office aloud typically leaves me feeling refreshed in a way that simply reading them silently does not. Feeling nervous here, as if I have not actually made my case properly. I would say, the only way fully to appreciate the difference is to try it. Is that a cop out? After all, you have struggled with this question yourself. Why are you finding it so difficult to describe your own experience? Perhaps because, paradoxically, your experience in praying aloud is so very intimate? Hmmm....

I remember sitting in the airport one day next to a man who was saying his prayers, very softly, so that I couldn't really hear him, but it seemed important that his lips move. And I wished for myself that I had the courage to pray publicly like that, not only in secret where no one can see--or hear. It is one thing to pray like the hypocrites, hoping that others will see one's prayer, but it is wholly another to pray in secret not out of modesty, but out of shame. I am embarrassed when my son or my husband walks in on my prayer because they've heard me and wondered whom I was talking to. Likewise, I am embarrassed to chant at the end of my yoga practice, even though I know how wonderful it makes me feel. Does this mean I am embarrassed to talk to God? Well, yes. Because what, after all, if I'm talking only to myself?

Puts on preacher's hat. Here's what I think: praying aloud, like chanting or singing, is particularly important for those of us who find it embarrassing, for it forces us to acknowledge, even if only to ourselves, that we are actually engaged in a conversation with God. Takes off preacher's hat. Feels exposed. Wants to put it back on again, but realizes she is still hiding something. Praying silently feels safer, but we should not kid ourselves that it is better because it is more difficult. Asks self: "Difficult for whom?" Begins to wonder whether prayer can ever be real prayer if it is not spoken aloud. Think about it: in prayer, we expose ourselves to God, but God already knows who we are. Real prayer exposes ourselves to ourselves, makes us conscious of thoughts and emotions of which we were not otherwise aware.

But does this hold even when we are saying prayers that others have written? Yes, I think it does, for as we read, for example, the psalms, we are forced to give voice to things that we might not otherwise have said and yet which we most definitely think and feel. But what if we are just saying the words out loud and don't really mean them? Which words? The ones about how great God is or the ones about what sinners we are? Or do you mean the ones about how we hope God will crush our enemies under foot? Oh, you know the ones. No, I don't, tell me. You're just going to trap me because you know I mean the ones about crushing our enemies under foot. So you're saying you're always comfortable with confessing yourself a sinner from your mother's womb (Psalm 51*)? Well, no, I don't like that part of the psalm very much. But I like the verse that reads: "Create in me a clean heart, O God." So you only like praying for pleasant things? See, I knew you were going to trap me. Not at all. I'm just trying to show you the things that you learn about yourself while praying the psalms.

Oh, yeah, well what about this verse: 'He makes his word known to Jacob, to Israel his laws and decrees. He has not dealt thus with other nations; he has not taught them his decrees' (Psalm 147)? You already know what I think about that verse; you know it makes me uneasy. So do you mean it when you say it aloud? I don't know. It's like a lot of the psalms: they seem alien and harsh to me, not at all what I think about God. What I do know is that saying the psalms aloud, rather than just reading them silently, forces me to think about what I do believe, whether I actually think that God will "plead my cause against a godless nation" or whether it is appropriate to pray that God rescue me "from deceitful and cunning men" (Psalm 43). But isn't this just sophistry or, worse, hypocrisy, if you are saying aloud things you don't actually believe? But I struggle just as much saying aloud the things I do actually believe: "Our soul is waiting for the Lord. The Lord is our help and our shield. In him do our hearts find joy. We trust in his holy name" (Psalm 3)--because what if I don't find joy in the Lord or trust in his name? Simply saying it out loud doesn't make it true.

So what you're saying is that we should say the words aloud whether we believe them or not, simply because others have said them, too. Yes, no; now you've trapped me! You know that's not what I meant. Prayer puts us into conversation both with God and ourselves, but it is sometimes only in speaking the words aloud that we are able to become conscious of this conversation as something other than just the flow of our thoughts. So where does God come in? Through the Scriptures; through the tensions that we feel in acknowledging our sins and our unwillingness to offer Him the praise that is His due; through the embarrassment that we feel in speaking to Him so that others may hear. So praying aloud is a test of our faith? Yes, I suppose it is, in the sense that it forces us, by engaging ourselves physically as well as mentally, to acknowledge God fully as something outside of ourselves, not just something we can keep to ourselves, hidden safely inside. But how do we know it isn't just showing off so that others can see? That's a red herring; you'll know it when you do it. The important thing, as Benedict put it, is to pray always so that the mind is in harmony with the voice, giving glory to God. Oh, right, that's what prayer is about, isn't it? How silly of me to forget.

*Psalm numbers given according to Shorter Christian Prayer rather than the Vulgate.

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Enlighten Up

Let's face it. The reason that I've been having so much trouble getting myself back to work on my book is that I'm terrified at the thought of the tournament to come. Just writing that last sentence has made my heart start to race and my stomach turn. It's going to be awful, I just know it. You remember last year, right? Well, based on my experience this winter against more or less the same group of fencers, I have very little hope that things are going to be any different this time round. A whole 'nother year's practice and most likely I'm going to end up exactly where I did this time last year: at the bottom.

So what? So f**king what? It's not like anything other than my ego is hanging on the outcome. Not my job, not my academic reputation, not the love of my husband and son, not my life. It's just a stupid sport, after all. A fantasy world within a fantasy world of winning and losing great contests of cunning and skill, nothing real at all. And yet, when I lose, as I almost certainly will--everybody does except the one who takes first--it will hurt and I will cry and I will feel like I'm feeling right now simply at the thought of the frustration to come: enraged, impotent, ridiculous, wanting to throw something across the room just to feel it break. I'm not ready for this meaningless psychological pain--again. I'm not ready to have my self image shredded and all my fantasies of being a great swordswoman shattered--again.

Wiser fencers than I would say that it shouldn't really matter what the outcome is--not, at least, in terms of where I place. I should concentrate rather on fencing my best, learning something from each bout, using the competition to improve my game. But that's hogwash. As if they (my wise friends) don't hate losing just as much as I do. If they didn't, they wouldn't be up there, too, trying to win. But of course they're right. The point is not winning; the point is the practice and winning is simply a by-product of the practice. I know this is true because I heard it just last week when I was listening to James Kinney's The Enlightened Fencer. At least, I think he said something like that and I really wanted to believe him. So when is it going to work, eh?

It sounds great, doesn't it? Practice with full attention, solely for the sake of the practice, and the results will take care of themselves. It's what the yogis say, after all. Being focused on the outcome only poisons the practice, and the practice is all, in the end, that there actually is. And what do you get after a lifetime of practice? A lifetime of practice. Woohoo! I'm really not trying to be as sarcastic as this sounds, but it's hard not to be. I do know the yogis are right. There is no point whatsoever in worrying about whether I am able to do a full twist with bind or touch my feet to my head in Pigeon. The point is simply to practice on my edge and if that means doing nothing more than bending my back leg a bit so as to feel the stretch in my hip, that's fine. I'm getting just as full a practice as those who are able to catch their foot with both hands and come into the full pose.*

Except that even yoga is supposed to have a point other than practice. I know, I know; it's doubtful that you'll ever hear about it from any reputable yoga teacher, nor do most yogis, much as they would like to be able to touch their feet to their head in Pigeon, really want to end up like the Ross Sisters. Or maybe they do. But it's unlikely that they will. And yet, even if they could, they would still insist that the point is not to be able to bend in this way, despite the fact that that's what they've spent their life practicing to be able to do. So what is the point? Here are some of the things that Patanjali says one will be able to do if one practices yoga enough: know the past and the future, make oneself invisible and inaudible, understand the language of all creatures, enter the body of another, levitate, walk on water, radiate light, travel at the speed of thought, know and do everything. Oh, really? Sign me up!

Except, of course, such superpowers are themselves temptations, obstacles to be overcome on one's way to enlightenment, but wouldn't they be handy to have along the way? I can just see myself now, controlling my opponent's every action with the power of my concentration, knowing what she is going to do before even she knows she has formed the intention to do it, my blade always where hers isn't, ready to finish my attack. "These are not the droids you're looking for." Winning? Piece of cake! It's just a by-product of the practice. Ha. It's as likely that I'm ever going to be able to touch my feet to my head.

So what is the point? Enlightenment. The experience of God. Union. What have you. Which, as everyone knows, you don't actually have to practice to attain. You can, of course, practice, but the practice itself won't necessarily do you any good; it's rather just a way of distracting your mind with an apparent purpose long enough for your mind to let go of purpose and so attain realization of one's true nature and, thereby, absolute freedom. Practice as you will, enlightenment will come--or not--when it does and there's nothing you can do about it. It is, after all, you (that is, your ego) who is getting in the way of your own enlightenment, wanting it so much. It is only when you let go of desire that all your desires will come true.

Pardon me, but "snort!" Sure, I can do that: keep my expectations low so that anything that happens is better than I had expected. Except I can't. I want the superpowers. I want to be able to make my attack land when and where I plan. I want to be able to outwit my opponent so that she thinks I'm going to do one thing while I catch her by doing another. I want to step on the strip with the confidence that I can, if I fence well, beat my opponent by controlling the tempo and distance. I want the knowledge--and, yes, the power--that the fencers who have beaten me year after year clearly have. That's what all of the practice is about: knowing what to do when. And I still don't. And so I'm scared.

I hate this sport so much.

*As, by the by, I used to be able to do, back in the day when I had just started practicing yoga seriously, i.e. by going to class, not just from a book. Go figure.

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Fencing Bear's Mailbox

Please leave any questions about fencing and prayer that you would like Fencing Bear to try to answer in the comments to this post. Answers will appear as blog posts under the label "QandA."

Much as I hate to admit it, I have now been studying both fencing and prayer for a fair number of years, over six in the case of fencing, more than two decades in the case of the history of Christian devotion and prayer. I am by no means an expert in the practice of either, but one of the hopes that I had in starting this blog was that others might find it valuable to hear about learning to fence and to pray from the perspective of a still struggling beginner. As a teacher, I am also aware of how much I depend on my students to help me in my own learning process. While I cannot promise to answer every question that you might have about fencing or prayer, I am eager to learn what questions you do have and to do my best to offer what advice I can.

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The Yin and Yang of Fencing

(click to enlarge)

Drawn July 2005 while sitting in the airport at Sacramento waiting to come home from Summer Nationals with Fencing Bear newly adopted in my carry-on and eyes red from crying for several hours straight the night before. My son remembers.

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The Work Itself

How do you tell the difference between procrastination as such and the dithering that would seem to be necessary to any work of the imagination?

The mess (or, at the very least, my perception thereof) has subsided; my son has arrived safely at camp where he will be for the next four weeks (gasp! my little boy isn't so little any more); the floor in my office on campus has been swept (mostly) and the rug cleaned (sort of); I have my new glasses so can see clearly again (even if this pair is supposed to be my spare; my proper frames are now being fitted with, yes, progressives); I am rested, well-fed, not too battered by Sunday's tournament; I've read that book about Mary that I've been carrying around in my book bag for months. As the baboon said to the lions, "It is time."

But I'm scared. It's hard being both melancholic and the one who has to do the jump-starting. Much better to spend the morning reading this amazing webcomic about The Lord of the Rings (really, follow this link if you click on no others!) and wishing the next volumes of Finder would arrive than to come into campus. Except that I finally made it here [that is, yesterday; I'm at home now], only to spend the next several hours cleaning up my email inbox, taking some books back to the library, answering requests for manuscript reviews ("No"; I'm still on leave, after all) and talks about Mary (that one I had to accept! plus, it's not until December), and wondering when and how hard it is going to rain. Tomorrow, really, I'll write the first few sentences of chapter 3. I promise.

Or will I? [Probably not.] Part of the problem, I know, is that somehow I got ahead of my own schedule and my melancholic self doesn't work very well without a deadline. I need to be convinced that there is only a certain amount of time in which I will be able to write in order to get myself over the hump of beginning. Given that the deadline was only ever my own, I can't really fool myself into thinking that I've missed it. I was supposed to finish chapter 2 sometime around the second week in June, just when my son would be getting out of school. Then I would spend the next couple of weeks with him, getting him ready for camp and taking care of things around the apartment. At this point, I was supposed to be reading the sources for chapter 3--but I've read them already, way back at the beginning of June. So here I am, with a week or so before Summer Nationals, trying to get myself back to work and not being able to scare myself enough into doing so.

Which makes me worry: why, after all, do I write? Is it, as my friend Vinita says, something I simply have to allow myself to do because I want to? But that is what I am doing here, on my blog. My academic writing seems to inhabit a rather different psychic and creative space. [Now it's tomorrow, that is Wednesday. Just so you can follow the composition of this post in real time.] Perhaps it is simply as my husband always says, "Anything you do for a living, i.e. money, gets old." But this is, in fact, one of the things that is, paradoxically enough, distressing me about my academic writing: the last thing that I do the writing for per se is money. Academic books are hardly ever best-sellers, even when they become relatively popular amongst fellow academics. I am paid to teach, not, strictly speaking, to write. Nor is it likely that, writing about the things that I do, I could ever actually support myself with my writing. So what, after all, is it for?

Reputation, for one. I may not be paid to write as such but I am paid to be who I am: a published scholar. You've all heard the phrase, I'm sure: "Publish or perish." Publish or you won't get tenure. Publish or you won't get promotion. Publish or you will have no place in the conversation of scholarship. Publish...or else. Publishing just to make a buck may be corrupting, but what about publishing just to have published? Not that I or any of my colleagues would, for example, publish slightly reworked versions of the same book or article over and over simply to pad out a curriculum vitae, not at all. But what about the work itself? I've tangled myself up here. Yes, I am angry that certain colleagues in my profession seem to publish the same thing over and over again without anybody appearing to notice anything other than the number of entries on their c.v., but that's not what I'm actually worried about. It's rather what the pressure to publish simply to have published does to the integrity of our work; more particularly, to the way in which I think about mine.

We've all asked ourselves this question from time to time, I suspect: "would I write this if I didn't have to?" Probably, yes, but sometimes I'm really not so sure. Define "have to". Does the world need works of scholarship that only a few hundred specialists will read? Yes, of this I am absolutely convinced. No worries there. Does the world need more books on the medieval devotion to the Virgin Mary? Yes, again, of this I am sure. There is still so much that we do not understand about the way in which the devotion to Mary developed; even more important, for hundreds of years, thanks to our ignorance, Christianity has been locked in a caustic and misguided battle over the place of the Virgin in Christian devotion, to the detriment not only of ecumenicism but also (as I see it) of our understanding of God. This must end. Does the world need the book that I am writing now? Um. Possibly, but it seems somewhat presumptuous to say so.

Would I write this book if I didn't have to? If it had no hope of getting published, if it made no difference to my professional status, if nobody other than myself ever actually would read it? Ideally, the answer should be yes, shouldn't it? But why? It's good advice: "write because you want to," but whence comes the wanting? I want to convince other people that what I understand about medieval devotion to the Virgin Mary is right. It makes no sense to write about such a topic without hoping that somebody else will want to read it. Still, is this what I would write if I didn't have an academic reputation to uphold? Here's the real question that I'm struggling with. Clearly, I want to write; I am, whether I like it or not, a writer. Not, perhaps, a very good one; certainly, not as good as I would like to be. But certainly a compulsive one; witness this blog. I think best as I write; I feel better after I write; I must need to write. But am I actually writing what I want to?

Bear with me; there is a point I'm trying to get to in all this, it's just taking me a bit longer than I thought it would. My friend Vinita says, "Say yes to your gift." Okay, yes, I'm a writer. But why am I stuck writing things even I'm not sure I would read if I myself hadn't written them? You all know the jokes about academic writing: how dry-as-dust it is; how obscure; how alienating of its audience; how in-bred. Why, if I want to make an argument about devotion to the Virgin, can't I make it in some other form, a novel, say, or a screenplay? "Real" writers write stuff that other people want to read, not just stuff they themselves want to write, right? There is a craft to this "writing business," after all. Surely, if I am a "real" writer, I should have some say in what kinds of things I write; I should get to choose whether I am an academic or a novelist if the only thing I need to do in order to write is "write what I want."

The problem is that "what I want" would seem to be at odds with "what I can" as well as with "what it occurs to me to write in the first place." I don't actually remember ever consciously choosing to "write about the Virgin Mary." Rather, the topic chose me. Moreover, every time I try to write about something else, there I am, back with academic arguments about the history of devotion and prayer. I'd love to write a novel (okay, yes, I've said before I wouldn't, but I would); I'd love to be an essayist like Marilynne Robinson or David Foster Wallace; I'd love to be writing almost anything--well, maybe not anything, but you get my point--other than what I am trying to write now. And yet I can't. This may not be what I "want" to write, but it is, inexorably, what it occurs to me to write. I don't really seem to have much choice in the matter.

Here's the point I've been trying to get to: the work itself seems to want to be written--one might even say, born--and it's using me as its conduit. I can try fighting it, but it won't do any good. If I don't say yes to this book, this argument, this writing, then I won't be able (or allowed?) to write anything at all. I'll be blocked not because I have no ideas about things that I would like to try to write, but because I am blocking the idea--or Idea--that wants to be written by me. Okay, that's way more profound than I thought it was going to be. Let me catch my breath. Do you see what I'm saying? It's as if I were in the very position that the Virgin Mary was in, when the angel came to her and said that she had been chosen by God to be his mother. Mary could have said no--God was not going to force Himself upon her, whatever Mary Daly might say; all the medieval exegetes are very clear on this--but if she had, then she would have blocked the expression of the very Word to whom she had been chosen to give birth.

I'm not entirely on my own with this argument, even if it has just now startled me with its force. It came to me, albeit not, as just now, in its full, Marian form, while I was rereading Dorothy Sayers' The Mind of the Maker (1941) last week. Creatures--Sayers would argue (pp. 140-41)--like books, human beings or worlds, both resist and demand their creation, as everyone knows who has had the misfortune to live with a writer "during the period when his [Creative] Energy [the analog of the Son in Sayers' description of the Trinity] is engaged on a job of work. The human maker is, indeed, almost excessively vocal about the perplexities and agonies of creation [e.g as here, in this blog] and the intractibility of his material. Almost equally evident, however, though perhaps less readily explained or described, is the creature's violent urge to be created. To the outsider, the spectacle of a writer 'taken ill with an idea' usually presents itself as a subject for unseemly mirth.... But that a work of creation struggles and insistently demands to be brought into being is a fact that no genuine artist would think of denying. Often, the demand may impose itself in defiance of the author's considered interests and at the most inconvenient moments. Publisher, bank-balance and even the conscious intellect may argue that the writer should pursue some fruitful and established undertaking; but they will argue in vain against the passionate vitality of a work that insists on manifestation" (my emphasis).

Upon reading which, I wrote myself the following notes: "Write it [the academic book that I am working on now] because it wants to be written by you--that's why the Idea came to you. It's not about forcing it into being, although birth is difficult--but about its wanting to be born." I could try quitting, I suppose, but it's unlikely that it would work. One way or another, the book would make its demand on me, most likely by making me miserable until I gave in. No, that's not quite it. I would be miserable because I would be using all of my energy negatively, to resist the Idea's desire for expression, its desire to become incarnate, as it were, with all of the sweat and passion that such engagement with matter requires. To write the book, in other words, all I have to do is say yes ("Fiat mihi," as it were), and it will tell me what it wants to say. No need to worry about whether it is publishable, no need to worry about whether anybody else will want to read it. The book wants to be written--and that is enough reason to write.

So why, then, am I fighting it now? Because I'm tired of being in its grip; because I've been working on the book, in one way or another, more or less non-stop since September and nine months is a long time to be pregnant with an Idea. Because there are things that I need to do to replenish myself in order to have the strength to continue the struggle. Because I want my life back, even if only for a few weeks. Of course, my book is my life; it is the thing that gives me purpose and energy. But every mother needs a break, once in a while, from caring for her child. Perhaps it is, therefore, appropriate that this block--or, rather, need for rest--comes to me just as my physical child has gone off on his own for the first time in his life. For the moment, I should relax and be confident that both of my children, book and son, will eventually come home. It's not like I really want to stop them, quite the reverse. I just need some time to catch my breath.

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Learning Curve

Mainly, but not exclusively for foil

Being able to assume en garde correctly.

Being able to advance and retreat correctly.

Being able to hold one's weapon correctly.

Being able to make an extension correctly.

Being able to land a touch correctly with one's opponent standing still.

Being able to make a parry correctly.

Being able to retreat while making a parry correctly.

Being able to see an attack coming after it has started.

Being able to see an attack as it starts.

Being able to parry an attack.

Being able to make a riposte.

Being able to initiate an attack.

Being able to feel the difference between an attack and a counterattack.

Being able to feel the correct distance for making an attack.

Being able to see an opening for making an attack.

Being able to understand priority.

Being able to tell the difference between a stronger and a weaker fencer.

Being able to finish one's attacks without trying to take a parry.

Being able to be patient, not rushing one's attacks.

Being able to relax in the midst of a bout.

Being able to see which parries one's opponent tends to make.

Being able to feel the distance as it changes from one moment to the next.

Being able to keep one's point on target throughout a bout.

Being able to make enough touches to win a pool (5-touch) bout.

Being able to understand why weaker fencers can sometimes beat stronger fencers.

Being able to assess the relative strength of one's opponent correctly.

Being able to change one's tempo during a bout.

Being able to sense one's opponent's tempo.

Being able to change one's attacks during a bout.

Being able to set up an action correctly.

Being able to sense how much time has passed in a bout.

Being able to understand why one's opponent was able to take the parry before one's attack could land.

Being able to make the counterparry in time to land the riposte.

Being able to tell the difference between rushing and being in control of the distance.

Being able to make an attack with disengage.

Being able to maintain concentration through the whole of a D-E (15-touch) bout. This is about where I am at the moment.

Being able to stay relaxed in the midst of a bout even when one is losing.

Being able to fake out one's opponent, drawing her attack with the expectation of taking a parry.

Being able to change the direction of one's attack purposefully so as to fake out one's opponent.

Being able to see the patterns in the way in which one's opponent prepares to make an attack.

Being able to sense the patterns in the way in which oneself prepares to make an attack.

Being able to prepare for an attack without letting one's opponent know that it is coming.

Being able to see one's opponent preparing for an attack before she even starts.

Being able to change one's attack so as to take advantage of one's opponent's weaknesses.

Being able to control the tempo of the bout.

Being able to control the distance such that one's opponent's attacks fall short.

Being able to make every action count.

After this, I'm not quite sure what happens; it's still a mystery to me. Do any of you know?

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O God, My God*

Having finished Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (2004) a few days ago, this morning on my way to yoga and fencing I started listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love (2006). The contrast could not be more telling.

In Robinson's book, the aged narrator John Ames is recounting for his young son memories of his life as a congregationalist pastor. Both Ames' father and his grandfather had been pastors before him, if of a very different type, the younger a pacifist, the older a fiery abolitionist who had served as a chaplain in the American Civil War. I've known about Robinson's work for years and have greatly enjoyed reading her essays, but still I had been nervous about taking on Gilead. What if it was too Calvinist? What if it conjured up for me all of the memories that I have of my childhood, growing up Presbyterian without the aesthetic richness of the liturgy I have come to enjoy? I recoiled at the thought of immersing myself in this restricted image of God, all Word and no Sacrament, all preaching and no ecstasy. What about the saints? What about Mary? What about the sense of God's working in creation through His body and blood? No, I told myself, I didn't want to hear about a God like that.

But, of course, as I now know, Ames' God is nothing like that. Gilead is a difficult book to summarize because there really isn't any plot, not, at least in the sense of a specific series of events described chronologically. Ames moves back and forth from the present (1956) to the past, reminiscing about his life and trying to give his son--who, by the time he reads his father's diary, will have grown up without him--a sense of who he, John Ames, had been. Overlaying the remembrances that Ames gives of his father and grandfather is the story of John Ames Boughton, the ne'er-do-well son of John Ames' best friend, the Presbyterian minister of the same town. Much of the latter part of the book is taken up with Ames' fears about the effect that young Boughton will have on his family after he has died, only to be dispelled by the discovery that Boughton himself has an African-American wife and child from whom he has been separated because her family cannot accept their daughter's marriage to a white man. The only real event in the book, in fact, is Ames' blessing of Boughton just before he (young Boughton) leaves on the bus, without waiting for his father (old Boughton) to die.

And yet, it is a gripping narrative nevertheless. I was encouraged to read the book by my friend Barbara. "It's a difficult book," she said, "because Robinson has attempted to do something that nobody else really has: give a first-person account of the life of a saint." John Ames would be the first to insist that he was no saint--witness the jealousy he felt on seeing young Boughton sitting next to Mrs. Ames and her son in church--but I think I understand what Barbara meant. Ames has no conversion; there is never any point in the story in which he doubted the existence of God, despite the best attempts of his brother Edward, a German-educated philosopher much taken by the atheist arguments of Ludwig Feuerbach, to convince him otherwise. Even reading Feuerbach, however, John Ames finds nothing to counteract his faith; indeed, he insists, reading Feuerbach only strengthened his understanding of God, the God of the Scriptures, the God of Calvin's Institutes, the God of his father and grandfather.

I remember thinking on Thursday, as I listened to the end of the story, how I wished that I had such a sense of God in my life. Ames' life is suffused with God. Not that he ever had visions of God like his grandfather, blinded in the right eye and given to talking personally with Jesus. Ames' experience of God was much less dramatic, there for him in the sermons that he wrote, week after week; there for him in the sunlight playing on the trees and in the bubbles he taught his son how to blow; there for him in the food that his congregation would leave for him in the kitchen; there for him in the grace that allowed him to live long enough to meet his wife and for them to have a son. But Ames' God is also theologically rigorous, known not only through the blessings and hardships that Ames lived through, but also through the tradition supporting Ames' understanding of God.

I wish that I had a copy of the book now so that I could quote one excellent passage on the inadequacy, indeed the wrongness, of trying (like Feuerbach) to prove or disprove the existence of God. How can one prove the existence of something that is outside existence, neither existing nor not existing? It is a category error: God neither exists nor does not exist, for God is the author of existence, the Creator (as it says in the Creed) of all things, visible and invisible. His Creation exists but He is not His own creature, except, of course, insofar as He entered into His Creation as the Son. Furthermore, everything that we might use to prove His existence is itself a creature, thus the pointlessness of arguing either from evolution or cosmology about whether God exists. We experience the workings of God through His Creation, but the Creature is not the proof of the Creator, although humanity is, of course, made in His likeness and image. I remember driving past Soldier Field with the sun streaming through the car windows (or was it raining?) as I listened to this argument and rejoicing: there is no need to prove that there is a God, only to worship! Calvin would have been proud.

Contrast this understanding of God with Elizabeth Gilbert's. Again, I approached Gilbert's work with some trepidation, if for slightly different reasons. I greatly enjoyed her TED talk about genius, but I was worried about what I had read in the iTunes reviews of her book as I was deciding whether to download it. Some of the reviewers loved the book, talking about her great honesty and how much they had identified with her spiritual quest; others complained that they found Gilbert too whiney and self-absorbed to be at all inspiring. So I was nervous. I am certain that some may find parts of this blog a bit whiney for their tastes, but I--like Gilbert--hope that others will value my honesty; how else, I--like Gilbert--reason will my readers appreciate what it is like to experience such spiritual growth? Okay, I'm still hoping for this experience and Gilbert (to judge from the first few chapters of her book) has already had it, but one of the reasons that I have forced (or allowed) myself to write about even the more painful thoughts and feelings that I have about fencing and prayer is so as not to give the sense that a spiritual life is all about sweetness and light; there is also suffering. Which is only to say that I don't mind if Gilbert describes her frustrations; I accept that that is part of her point.

But I'm already irritated. Not by her description of crying on the bathroom floor about wanting to leave her marriage...well, okay, not primarily. I do find it a bit whiney the way in which she describes coming to the realization that she did not want to have a child, but simply because at age 31 I had the completely opposite desire does not mean that her experience of frustration at the expectation that she should want a child was not real or deeply felt. No, what irritated me this morning was her description of God. How can I say this without sounding completely bitchy? I'm not sure I can. There she was on the bathroom floor in a puddle of tears and snot (a veritable Lake Inferior, as she put it--nice image!), when suddenly she began to pray: "Hi, God, it's me, Liz. I'm sorry I haven't been in touch before; I really like your work. And now, I find, I really need your help. Please, tell me what to do." Again, good prayer. But to whom?

To a personal God, not to the Force or the Light or the Universe: so far, so good. To a God on whom Creation depends, if not the Creator (I'm not quite sure why she rejected this name, since she does seem to believe that God is worth thanking for His work, but never mind): again, good. To a God whom all human language is inadequate to describe, so one might as well talk about Him as He: yet, again, good. But not--here's the clincher--to "the Christian God" because "I can't believe that Christ is the only way" (or words to that effect, I'm doing this from memory). Um. On what basis? I need to listen to more of the book--if, that is, I can get past this irritation--to know whether Gilbert develops this critique any further, but somehow, I doubt that she will. After all, as she explains in the introduction ("The 109th Bead"), she did not learn to pray in a Christian convent, but rather at an ashram in India; further, the whole structure of her book depends (quite nicely) on the 108 beads of the Hindu japa mala not, as it might otherwise, on the 150 beads of the Christian rosary.*

So what? What difference does it make if Gilbert finds another, more palatable--predictably, transcendental and mystical, not liturgical or scriptural--way to understanding God? Haven't enough people died arguing over the name of God? Surely it is much better to acknowledge that all names for God (as Gilbert herself points out in her discussion of the problematically-gendered pronoun) are inadequate and simply allow everyone to pray as he or she feels inspired. Perhaps. But what irritates me is the (again) all too predictable reason that Gilbert gives for going on her particular quest: she, on the basis of no theological education whatsoever, at least, none that she acknowledges, has seen fit to dismiss an entire tradition simply because she feels uncomfortable with it. How liberal.

I wonder what John Ames would have said to her. Or, for that matter, what Marilynne Robinson might say, if she and Gilbert were to meet. That Gilbert's understanding of Christianity is laughably, if tragically impoverished if all she can hear in its teachings is a message of exclusion? That to claim the truth of the self-revelation of God through Jesus of Nazareth is not to claim that He has not revealed Himself otherwise? That Christ's way is no more--or no less--exclusive than Buddha's but that both attempt, albeit from rather different perspectives, to express a truth about the human condition, to wit, the need for salvation and release from suffering? Perhaps not--although I might say as much. The one thing that I am sure Robinson would not argue is that it makes no difference whether one worships from within a tradition or not, as Gilbert would seem to want to believe.

No, that's not quite what Robinson would say. It would be much more eloquent. How can I express this properly? What Gilbert describes as her own personal, deeply felt conviction about God, derived--or so she would have it--from within her own experience of thinking about prayer is no more or less than what nearly every American of her education and upbringing says as soon as he or she decides "Christ isn't for me." In other words: it's cliché. Okay, so I was a little surprised that she defended the use of the masculine pronoun on the grounds that it was a) personal and b) didn't really matter because it wasn't about God's gender (I agree), and I was reassured that she insisted on praying to a personal God, not just a Great Spirit of Everything, but how could she then go on to insist that there was nothing for her in a two-thousand-year old tradition of worship and effort at understanding God's self-revelation in love?

Does she not want to know why Christians understand God as manifesting Himself through Christ? Does she not wonder, even for a moment, whether there might be some mystery worth exploring in the doctrine of the Trinity? Can she not see how it might be valuable to draw on centuries and centuries worth of argument and meditation about what, exactly, it means for God to have loved His Creation so much that He was willing not only to enter into to it, but to die for its salvation? "No," she says, "I like thinking about God as transcendent, none of this messiness about incarnation and death. God is love and is going to tell me what to do." I like that. She prays to be told what to do when most people seem to hate the idea that God might ever tell them what to do--e.g. through certain commandments. But, oh right, she doesn't believe in those because they are "too limiting."

I knew I couldn't do this without being bitchy. But I am so very tired of this kind of wishy-washy nonsense about how Christianity is too culturally-bound to be meaningful, as if the other traditions to which such Gilbertine seekers flock are any less culturally-bound. They only feel that way from the outside, when they are not one's own tradition. The question is whether it is actually possible, all by oneself, to come up with a conception of God that is not at the same time trite and, yes, limiting--limiting God to whatever easy understanding one's current cultural perspective allows. Give me the difficulties of wrestling with the doctrine of the Trinity any day. No, I don't like the fact that Jesus had to die for our sins; no, I'm not entirely comfortable with the place that accepting the new covenant seems to put Jews in (as the children of the old). But who says understanding the mysteries of divinity is supposed to be comfortable anyway? I'd much rather a God who makes me wrestle with His angel than one who satisfies all of my most comfortable fantasies about what it is like to believe in Him.

As Dorothy Sayers once put it, "The proper question to be asked about any creed is not, 'Is it pleasant?' but, 'is it true?'"** Call me suspicious, but I'm not sure I'm ready to believe in Gilbert's way as opposed to Christ's without some far more rigorous proof that her comfortable God is actually up to answering the kinds of questions with which John Ames--not to mention the thousands of actual Christian saints--wrestled over the course of his life.

*Actually, 59 on the typical five-decade rosary strand: five sets of 10 beads each for the Hail Mary, with an additional bead before each decade for an Our Father, plus beads for the opening Our Father, Hail Marys and Apostles' Creed (said on the crucifix).
**The Mind of the Maker (1941), p. 16.

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The Frump Factor

I can't explain it, but there it is. Call it the force of anti-glamor. Do you remember the Peanuts character Pig-pen? Every so often, this unrecognizable boy would show up, his hair combed, his clothes pressed and clean, and the other kids would wonder, "Who is he?" Within seconds (that is, one or two panels), however, all would be revealed. His hair would suddenly stick straight up, his clothes would come untucked and a cloud of dust would rise up around him. "You know what I am?," he once asked Charlie Brown. "I'm a dust magnet."

That's me, minus the dust. A few weeks ago, I went to Macy's (a.k.a the old Marshall Field's) and bought a number of stylish, fashionable blouses. At least, they're in style now, unlike the majority of the clothes that I wear, some of which I have had since graduate school (mainly sweaters), and they are moderately fashionable, lots of paisley and bright colors. Definitely a big change from the single-color t-shirts I had been wearing all winter, almost daring--or so I thought at the time as I modeled them for myself in the mirror in the changing room. I even went back after the first week of wearing my exciting new things to get some more (50% off--so, okay, I'm not actually on the shoppers' cutting edge), I was so excited at the thought of looking, well, something other than my usual frumpy self.

It didn't last. I'm sitting here now in one of the blouses, a frothy confection of (let me check the tag) nylon and elasticized stitching (lots of gathers and ruffles) in a striking black-green-and-yellow paisley design. To be sure, it's better (well, at least more visually interesting) than the grey t-shirt I might have put on, but looking in the mirror, I no longer see the daring younger woman of a few weeks ago when the blouse was new, just a middle-aged me in a baggy shirt. Just call me Magrat, plus a decade or so. You know, the junior witch (a.k.a. The Maiden) from Lancre.

No matter what Magrat does with her hair, it always ends up in a tangle, "like a garden hosepipe left in a shed." And clothes that look "exciting and attractive" on the shop dummies, on Magrat look like furled umbrellas (Lords and Ladies, p. 25). Worse, even magic cannot seem to do anything about her essential Magratness. No matter how strong a spell she puts on her hair, by mid-day it has regained its natural shape, "a dandelion clock at about 2 pm" (Wyrd Sisters, p. 130). Within the logic of the Discworld, this makes perfect sense. Bodies and minds have a proper shape to which they tend, a "morphological resonance" stronger than even the strongest magic. Particularly in the case of witches. Which, translated into our world-terms, means...what?

I am sure that my sister could put on these same clothes--well, if she would ever wear something as frumpy as my black-green-and-yellow paisley blouse--and look fabulous. I know, because on the few occasions I've been able to wear her clothes, the same thing happens in reverse. Something that looks like it belongs on a fashion-show runway model on her, on me looks instantly years out of date. Is it the way we hold ourselves, the tilt of the head, the straightness of the back, the rounding (or not) of the shoulders? Or is it something in our eyes that says, "Pay attention to me" as opposed to, in my case, "Nothing to see here"? Beauty, as they say, is skin-deep, but how much of being beautiful is actually an effect of what we think? If the latter, why, Magrat-like, is it so difficult for some of us to sustain it?

I love when I see women whom one might otherwise dismiss as ordinary or unattractive carry themselves with confidence and aplomb, particularly the ones who are (by current standards) slightly overweight. They so clearly enjoy being in their bodies and enjoy being themselves, they are infinitely more beautiful than the stick-figure mannequins whose photographs fill the fashion magazines. Even standing next to slimmer, canonically more good-looking women, they radiate life and joy. Maybe I'm just catching them in a good mood, but I don't think so. There is something essential, not-Magrat about them that has nothing to do with the way they look. It's about the way that they move, the sway of the hips, the lift of the chin, maybe something in their voice. I'm thinking of one of them now whom I saw in the grocery store the other day. She was definitely heavy--I would never wear a sleeveless dress with her arms--but walking behind her all I could think was how elegant and energized she looked, like a ballerina without a ballerina's physique.

Perhaps occasionally I look like that, when I am in an exceptionally good mood, but it's curiously difficult for me to sustain. I want, like Magrat, to transform myself with mystic jewelry and bewitching clothing, but somehow even the most edgy things (e.g. getting yet another piercing just this past month) cannot resist being subsumed into my essential Rachelness. What for a day or week feels really out-there and daring (interesting that I keep using that word) soon becomes simply a part of who I am, which is likely why eventually I start hankering after yet another change. My sister (who called while I was in the midst of writing this post) recommends wearing wigs, but I can just see it. For the first few days, my friends would be doing double-takes and I'd be enjoying the feeling of being a mystery woman, wild, unpredictable, don't-think-you-know-me-'cause-you-don't, but pretty soon, I'd just be me-in-a-wig, my clothes rumpling about me (I've never really learned to use an iron because what would be the point?) and the dust rising around my feet.

Rebecca (that's my sister) and I agreed that there's something important going on here, as evidenced by the way in which we go about making decisions, e.g. to get our hair cut or colored, and how those decisions reflect something that has already changed inside ourselves. Nor is it strictly accurate to say that such changes do not have a more permanent effect. Frumpy as I feel at the moment in this summer's new clothes, it is nothing on the degree of frumpiness that I felt trying on the old clothes from my closet in this week's great clean-out. I even remember enjoying wearing some of those clothes, say, 10 or even 20 years ago, but put them on now, and I cringe! Ha! That's ironic. The clothes from my 20s and 30s (okay, yes, I'm a bit of a packrat) make me feel older (and fatter) than the clothes I am wearing now. Maybe I've actually been moving the frumpiness edge ever so gradually all of these years. Certainly the metallic silver sandals that I'm saving for my trip to Summer Nationals don't look a bit frumpy...yet.

On the other hand, maybe what's happening is that I am still in the process of discovering my essential self and the sensation of frumpiness is simply a warning not to let myself get too complacent, lest I stop seeking out that edge. It's certainly a more comforting thought than the one I began with. But if this is the case, I wonder what I'll be wearing in my 50s?!

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Fencing Dos and Don'ts

Do have confidence and finish your attacks.
Don't start an attack convinced that it's going to land; be ready to counter-parry. But be sure to finish your attack first.

Do set up your attacks, for example, by doing preparatory beats.
Don't search for your opponent's blade, for example, by trying to do preparatory beats.

Do take control of the action by closing the distance so as to make your attack.
Don't push; your opponent will just retreat.

Do keep your distance so that you have space to (counter-)parry and make your riposte.
Don't start an attack until you are actually in distance.

Do keep your point on target by holding your blade steady.
Don't just leave your blade out for your opponent to beat.

Do keep moving on the strip, in and out of distance.
Don't signal when you are about to make an attack, e.g. by moving into distance.

Do remise if your opponent's riposte does not land. The important thing is to get the touch.
Don't remise; counterparry first. The important thing is to do the action correctly.

Do watch your opponent's blade to see which way she tends to move it.
Don't follow your opponent's blade; keep your eye on the target.

Do drill so that your actions become habitual.
Don't be predictable in your actions.

Do fence every bout with the intention of doing your very best to win.
Don't fence to win.

One day, if I'm lucky, this will all make sense.

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The Republic of Blogs

I can tell it's finally summer: my legs get hot as I'm sitting here with my laptop, chewing over what it is that I want to say. The problem is, what I want to say is something about somebody else's blogpost, and I'm not used to interacting with other bloggers in quite this way. It's like, they have their conversation going and I have mine, and although I often like what they say, it always feels a bit awkward bringing them on stage here because, well, wouldn't it be better just to let you follow the links under "Bear's Favorites" if you want to know what I'm reading?

Mind you, I don't tell you why the links are there. Some are my family's blogs, some are my friends'. Others are bloggers I've "met" through following links from my friends' and followers' blogs. And some I've just stumbled upon in the course of searching the web. But today one of those blogs has a link to yet another blog where the same writer appears as a guest talking about "How to Build Traffic on Your Blog," and the first thing that she suggests is to build links to other blogs. Which I'd be happy to do having found this post on the host site of the guest blogger, except for the fact that trying to say, "I just read this great post about how to get over feeling discouraged about my writing" without simply quoting the post is proving really difficult.

Melancholics have a hard time giving and receiving compliments, or so I'm told. Perhaps it would be easier for me to acknowledge my fellow bloggers if I were more sanguine, used to trying to get everybody together in one big party. But, ironically enough, if there is one thing that I find particularly troubling about blogging, it is the relative absence of footnotes: as an academic, I am used to footnoting nearly everything I say; almost nothing that I write is strictly speaking "mine," particulary when I am talking about my sources. That's the whole point. So why, I'm wondering, should I find it so difficult to incorporate other blogs into my own?

Books are different; books are easy. I'm used to talking about books. Although, come to think of it, I do often struggle here on the blog with how, exactly, to introduce them. Again, it always feels a bit artificial to start a post with, "I've been reading this great book, which has given me such-and-such an idea" (if I weren't writing this post now, I'd be telling you about Dorothy Sayers' brilliant discussion of the way in which the doctrine of the Trinity is founded on an analogy with the way in which human artists make) because it tends to assume that you've read the book, too. Or, if you haven't, that you will need to in order to follow the argument that I want to make. Not that that's stopped me from trying, but it does worry me. How much common ground can I assume?

Which is always the problem, I suppose. As a reader, I am relatively familiar with what books others are more or less likely to have read and can introduce them accordingly. But with blogs, I'm never quite sure. Everybody has heard of LOL cats and PostSecret by now, and I'm pretty sure most of you have come across Fail Blog and The Sartorialist, but much of the original point of blogging, after all, was to put together links of things that you (the blogger) had come across that you thought others might not yet have seen. Being a relative late-comer to the blogging scene, I am more or less certain that everybody out there knows more great blog sites than I do. It seems presumptuous to assume that my blog might be a first stop on anyone's journey through the web. Moreover, the last thing I want to do is to pretend to be an authority on something I am most definitely not. Devotion to the Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages? Absolutely! I'd be happy to supply references. On everything else (including fencing!), I'm just a beginner.

As always, it's a question of audience as much as anything: for whom am I writing? Myself? Fellow fencers? Fellow Christians? Fellow medievalists? Fellow middle-aged women? Fellow writers? As per the great blogpost that inspired this meditation, I do seem compelled to write. Quitting (Mr. Case's answer to the frustration of writing--most writers find that they can't) doesn't seem to be an option, so what to do? Obviously, keep writing! As my dissertation advisor once put it, it seems a shame to miss out on the fun! But it does help to have some idea of who might be listening. Or, again, maybe not. Maybe the important thing to do is write without worrying overmuch about whom we might reach (while, of course, at the same time being sensitive to our readers' needs as readers).

Oh ho! how's that for irony? Because, of course, the thing that has been really oppressing me these past couple of weeks is--you guessed it--envy that Jennifer over at Conversion Diary has managed to attract so many readers. Her words of wisdom on this temptation are embarrassingly apt: "If you only remember one thing from this post, make it this: It is a spirit of generosity that brings traffic to a website. As I know from personal experience, having a blog can tempt you to become a black hole of attention. However, the more inwardly-focused you become, the fewer readers you will have. Ironically, it is when you stop asking questions like 'How can I get people to link to me?' or 'Why don't more people comment on my posts?' and start asking questions like 'Who are some other great bloggers I can link to?' and 'How can I better serve readers through my blog?' that your traffic will begin to grow."

There, I did it. Enough navel-gazing. Now, what shall I write about next?

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Mommy vs Messdor

A Meditation on Mess

I've spent the past couple of days going through closets and cabinets sorting out things to give or throw away. It's possible, of course, that this is simply procrastination. According to my original plan for this week, I was supposed to be getting started on the next chapter of my book, but when I woke up on Tuesday, I simply couldn't face going into the office knowing that I had not done the clean-out that I had put on the to-do list for last week. Or maybe I just couldn't face going into the office and decided to clean closets in order to give myself something more urgent to do. Either way, my melancholic-ness* gets to express itself: balking at beginnings plus needing things tidy.

But why should I--or anyone--find mess so intolerable, particularly at the beginnings of things? My family likes to joke that they can always tell when I am worried about getting started on a new chapter or article. Suddenly, all the clutter that was, if not invisible to me the week before, then at least tolerable becomes impossible to ignore and I start raging around the apartment demanding that everyone pick his things up and take them to his room. (It's always, of course, somebody else's fault that there's a mess, not, ahem, mine, no, not at all....um.)

It's even possible to gauge the degree of the hurdle that I'm facing in my work by how much tidying I find it necessary to do. An article typically demands that the living room be put back in order. Chapter one of the current book required the purchase of a new bookcase, plus a thorough sort and realphabetizing of all of our books (all seven cases worth, not counting my husband's work books and the books in the hallway). This week's activities have included sorting through the hall closet where I keep all of my old clothes, going through my son's toys and books (he actually volunteered on that one), clearing out the bathroom cabinets, and washing all of the drapes and curtains. My son and I took eight bags of clothing, stuffed animals, picture books, purses, and decorative pillows to the Salvation Army yesterday; this morning I threw out a whole garbage bag full of old make-up and other toiletries from the bathroom. And on Friday, I've arranged for someone to come clean the sofa and love-seat.

"Cleanliness," it has been said, "is next to Godliness." I wonder. Is mess actually evil? Part of me says it's so. A few years ago, I was teaching a course on "Spiritual Exercises," and one of the assignments that I gave the class was to make a prayer without using words. I can't remember exactly what we were reading that week, but I think it was Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. In any case, the practice itself was riveting. How--I asked myself as I rode my bike into campus that morning--would I make a prayer without words? Perhaps, I found myself thinking, I should make an offering of something, maybe some flowers, maybe some food, maybe my cat, maybe--oh, horror of horrors!--my son (whom I glimpsed at just that moment in my bike's rear-view mirror**). At once, I had a whole new appreciation of what Abraham must have gone through. But if I was not going to sacrifice my son, however right it might seem to offer God such a prayer, what should I do? Ah, it came to me as I put my kettle on to make tea, I need to clean!

I was not the only one. Several of the students in the class reported the next day that their "prayers" had taken the form of cleaning: sweeping the stairs, washing windows, sorting books. Somehow handling these material things, caring for them, removing the dust and the grime, and putting them back in order felt like a prayer. Why? My husband, who is in a somewhat atheistic mood at this stage in his life, cleans things for a living, but he knew the answer almost immediately when I asked him this evening about why cleaning and sorting should have such a powerful spiritual effect. "It's claiming the things in your life as your own, caring for them, and choosing which ones are actually valuable to you," he said. "It's the way God must feel at judgment, you know, sorting the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the tares."

He was joking, but I do know what he means. Cleaning shows that we care for our things--the things that exist with us in this material world, the world that God has created for us to live in. Dust is a sign that we have not been paying attention, not caring for our things. Dust accumulates on things that we do not touch enough. And the sorting? It's hard for me because I always worry (melancholic second-guesser that I am!) that I might find some use for these neglected things, might wear the old clothes again, might want the mirrors off my old powder compacts for some project, might want my grandchildren to be able to read these books. But there is also a great feeling of relief in letting go of things that I no longer really want, not to mention the comforting thought that someone else might actually need or want them.

Things deserve our attention, it seems. Indeed, ironically enough, it is worse not to attend to them but simply to leave them to accumulate, unwanted, in closets. Not that we should worship things, that's not at all what I'm saying, nor that we should strive to accumulate as many of them as we can, for how could we care for them all? It's what my husband deals with day after day: he works as an objects conservator in a museum and, yes, it is a full-time job keeping a collection well-cared for. Tomorrow, appropriately enough, he and his colleagues will be doing their annual top-to-bottom "deep clean" of the collections storage, from the light fixtures and the tops of the shelves to the floors underneath the storage units (think about the dust that accumulates behind your fridge; right). It's the kind of cleaning most of us do only when we are moving house, and they have to do it every year simply so as to keep the objects in their care properly, yes, cared for.

So now, on reflection, I'm not actually sure that what I've been doing these past couple of days is procrastinating. It's as much a part of the process of being able to write as making notes or getting up the courage to write the first page. While I'm writing, I tend not to notice the dust or the clutter, but when I stop, as now, the things in my life call out for attention--and so they should. I have chosen them and it is my responsibility to care for them and to make them presentable to God.

*"Melancholy" would seem to be the correct word to use here, but the point is not that I'm sad or depressed, just temperamentally "melancholic."
**You don't have one? A mirror, I mean. You should. And by the way, don't ride against traffic. It's actually the best way to get hit. No, the cars can't see you any better: they're not expecting anyone to be coming the wrong way, now are they? Think about it: do you look both ways when you're driving before crossing a one-way street?

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The Battle for the Apartment

(click to enlarge)

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Eeyore 101

The Care and Feeding of Melancholics*

1. "Melancholic" is a temperament, not an illness. Simply because your melancholic seems introverted and inclined to see the down-side of things does not mean that she or he is sick or clinically depressed. Nor--extroverted sanguines take note!--does it necessarily mean that she needs "cheering up." She may be grumpy because she needs some time alone. Above all, it is important not to take a melancholic's moods personally (but see below #6).

2. Melancholics need time to adjust to change and may be reluctant to initiate change themselves. They tend to see problems where others (e.g. cholerics) tend to see challenges or opportunities. Melancholics tend to set themselves high goals but can get stuck second-guessing themselves as they consider potential difficulties. Setting clear goals is, therefore, critical for them. Melancholics typically find it difficult to take the first step in a new project, but once they get started will persevere to the end. They work well with "baby-steps" at the outset, but are also motivated by deadlines and solving problems more so than other temperaments. They are good at planning, but sometimes need help getting over the hump. As one spiritual director likes to put it: "Throw the melancholic into the water, and he will learn to swim."

3. Melancholics tend to take longer than other temperaments to make friends, but they take the friendships that they do form very seriously, sometimes to a fault, particularly if they feel their trust has been violated. Even with their close friends, however, melancholics tend not to be the first to get in touch. (This is something I know I need to work on.) Regardless, however, they need time to adjust to new social situations; they will feel more comfortable if they have been introduced properly and given some clue about whom they are meeting.

4. Melancholics are good with details, organization, consistency, precision and in-depth analysis, but this also means that they tend to need their space tidy in order to work effectively. Their high standards mean they worry about making sure everything is perfect and can risk missing the forest for the trees. If your melancholic gets caught up too much in worrying about one aspect of a problem, try suggesting that she look at the question from a different, perhaps larger perspective. Watch out, though: melancholics are also very good at globalizing difficulties. For melancholics, there is no such thing as the "small stuff." Everything is important! (You've heard this one, I'm sure.) Rather than attempting to minimize the obstacles for a melancholic, acknowledge them--and then reassure her that she is able to deal with them.

5. Melancholics tend to complain more about physical illness, aches and pains than other temperaments. However, telling a melancholic to "snap out of it" will not help, nor is it realistically possible that he or she can. Recognize that melancholics tend to have a lower level of energy and to need more rest than other temperaments and suggest that he or she take a nap.

6. Melancholics spend a great deal of time analyzing themselves which can lead them to consider those of other temperaments somewhat shallow. More than anything else, melancholics hate to feel that they have been misunderstood. It will not help a melancholic to be told that his or her concerns do not matter or are insignificant; this will typically only force the melancholic to be even more self-critical because, "once again," he or she has misread the situation. Nor is it easy for melancholics to accept compliments, despite the fact that they most definitely need them. Ironically, being so introspective, melancholics are extremely wary of succumbing to the sin of pride.

7. Melancholics do not like being teased and their feelings are easily hurt, unlike sanguines who enjoy a good joke. Being slow to react, melancholics may suffer more from the attention of bullies when they are children.

8. While melancholics tend to complain more than other temperaments, this does not necessarily mean that they want to be advised to give up. More often than not, they simply want to be heard. If they are asking for help, usually a kick-start will be enough: they need courage to get over the initial hump, not hand-holding for the duration of the project.

9. Melancholics long for the perfection of heaven and its ideals. They tend to be contemplative, pious and prayerful; compassionate, intelligent and introspective. But, as a corollary, they may also suffer more from timidity, scrupulosity, judgmentalism and despair. In comparison, cholerics tend more to zeal for souls, fortitude, self-will, anger and haughtiness; sanguines tend more to joy, mercy, magnanimity, gratitude, self-love, seeking esteem and envy; and phlegmatics tend more to peace, understanding, counsel, meekness, sensuality, sloth and complacency.

10. When confronted with a melancholic in a downward spiral, the most important thing to do first is listen and acknowledge the difficulties that she perceives in the current situation. Then reassure her that you know she is able to deal with them, better, in fact, than anyone else (she is, after all, the one who has identified them!). Be positive and show her the things that she has done well. She will then be better able to listen to any corrections you might think to suggest.

*Textbook: Art & Laraine Bennett, The Temperament God Gave You: The Classic Key to Knowing Yourself, Getting Along with Others, and Growing Closer to the Lord (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2005).

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