Remodeling

This is not the time to be working on my blog. I should be preparing for class. Precious minutes are ticking away, and I don't want to be up too late this evening, particularly since, yes, the flu seems yet again to be tickling at my throat and in my sinuses, threatening to bloom if I push myself even a little bit too hard. But I can't. Concentrate on preparing for class, that is. My head is full of kitchen cabinets and wiring and how deep the countertops should be and whether we'll be able to afford that beautiful mosaic tile work that our designer showed me today. My husband is anxious about the time of year that we'll be doing the work (winter) and where all the stuff from the kitchen, back bedroom and pantry-soon-to-be-utility room is going to go, but I don't feel anxious so much as ecstatic: I am finally going to have a kitchen to be proud of!

Who knew that this was the thing that was depressing me most about my life, something so apparently frivolous as cabinetry? But for years now, ever since we moved into this apartment and I learned what it meant to be able to change the floors (carpeted when we bought it), hang anything we wanted to on the walls, choose our own faucets and other hardware, it has seemed a kind of penance still to be stuck with some other woman's kitchen. No, stronger than that. A failing. Something to be ashamed of. Somehow a judgment on whether we had actually "made" it or not. Every time I would visit a friend or a colleague, my stomach would curl at the sight of their kitchens, invariably newly installed, invariably beautifully designed. And then I would come home to my hovel of a room and wilt.

Not that it is a bad kitchen to cook in. I have made full-scale Thanksgiving dinners in it with comfort and relative ease. It's actually--for all that it is definitely on the small side compared with all those other kitchens I've been envying--very well-shaped, no dead space to move through to get from one counter to another, workspaces nicely adjacent to things like the stove and the sink. But it's ugly. And dark. And cheap. But I've said all this before. So why do I still feel like I need to say it again? Perhaps to give myself courage. But also, I think, to reassure myself that it's really going to happen: within the next few months (give or take a room full of dust) I am going to have an elegant new kitchen. And I'm interested in why this seems so important to me.

It is an act of taking possession but also, more simply, of rearranging the furniture. I can have the washer and dryer in this other little room so that you don't see them while you're sitting in the dining room? Great! I can put a cabinet there where there isn't one now, so that I don't have to look at all the recycling all the time? Fabulous! The kitchen being what it is (fitted), it is the one room that I have not been able to arrange with things that I chose. And yet, still it goes deeper than this. The kitchen is the heart of a home. Fix the kitchen and you have transformed the entire space.

Oh, how I wish I could find the words now to express what I'm feeling. It is as if changing the kitchen is going to change my whole life, make the apartment truly my and my family's home, not just a place where we happen to live. It's funny, because at the time that our building was built--1909--the kitchen was not even considered a living area. It was back in the back with the maid's room (now the back bedroom). The Family would not go there, only the Help. Now, however, kitchens are typically the center of the home, sometimes (to judge by the photos in the sample books I've been looking at) the largest room in the house.

It is, as others have pointed out, ironic that in an age when people cook less and less at home, kitchens should have become such sanctuaries. But I do cook in our kitchen (although, just at the moment, my son is making dinner for us tonight while I'm writing this post--ironic, eh?) and we do not have and do not want a microwave. To be sure, I only tend to cook full-scale Thanksgiving dinners at Thanksgiving, but even something so simple as making rice and steamed vegetables takes a stove. And I bake altar bread every other month or so for our church. I used to bake cookies quite regularly, and I've even gone so far as to make a Martha Stewart pattern gingerbread house. I don't think of myself as a very good cook, but sometimes the things that I make are quite good. So (I suppose what I'm saying) this kitchen isn't just for show; I do cook.

Am I apologizing now for wanting to make this change? Yes, I suppose I am. Do I not yet deserve such a beautiful kitchen? Why not? Why should I not have a beautiful kitchen when all of my friends and colleagues do? See? I simply can't get away from the fact that having this kitchen-work done will make some kind of statement about my whole life.

But I think my son has finished cooking now. Dinnertime!

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First Day of Class

(click to enlarge)

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On lecturing and learning

[I found this sheet in the folder for the course that I'm teaching this quarter. I have no idea where the quotation comes from and I have no idea whether these were notes to myself or something that I shared with the class. I'd annotate this more, but I'm still not ready yet for class tomorrow!]

Dr. Johnson to Boswell in 1766: “People have nowadays, said he, got a strange opinion that everything should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shown. You may teach chemistry by lectures. --You might teach making of shoes by lectures!”

Problem in studying history
• Learning both a body of facts and a way of thinking about life/the world/human experience
• Not really like any other subject in this way: object much bigger than in most humanities courses (e.g. art, literature, language); techniques change with the material, so no clear methodology as in most social sciences—very little “theory” in history that historians can agree on, even to disagree about
• Highly empirical: grows with experience

Problem in studying history formally
• Can go about it in a number of ways: reading series of books, visiting historical sites, talking with older people
• Why lectures?: old medieval style of university education: exegesis of texts. A “lecture” was a “reading” of a text with commentary.

What is the best way to learn history? Debates about how people learn are very old
• By drill: memorize all those dates and names
• By preaching: history as exhortation to moral behavior; but also, learning as something that takes place through the ear rather than simply through the eye: memory works differently on things that we listen to
• By demonstration: close textual work, teasing out information from particulars; but history also involves the construction of narrative
• By example: reading other people’s work
• All of the above

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Class Prep

This is it, the last day of my leave. You'd think I'd be ready for it. After all, I've spent the past couple of weeks reading ahead for the classes I'm teaching, writing assignments and generally getting prepared. But I'm not. Far from it.

I've learned so much about myself and my ideals this year, much of it from writing for myself (and you, my dear readers!) on this blog. I'm not sure I can put myself back into the straight jacket of term. Oh, I'd be one of the first ones to argue in favor of structure; I'm all for it! It's one of the reasons I'm so eager to get a dog. When my son went away to camp in July and suddenly I had quite literally no reason to get dressed during the day, I fell into one of the deepest depressions I've experienced since I was growing up. Part of it was where I had gotten to in the argument for my book; part of it was exhaustion (ironically) after working so hard all year on my research. But part of it was also having nothing other than my own willpower to give structure to my day. I'd say that I would get up and get to campus, and then morning would come and one thing leading to another I'd find myself sitting on the porch mid-afternoon talking myself out of going into the office at all that day. Not that a dog would get me to the office, but at least I'd have some reason to leave the apartment less nervous-making than whether I would find anything to write about that day.

But I have enjoyed my time off from other responsibilities this past year, too. Not that I don't enjoy teaching. Again, not at all! Leading a class through a discussion is one of the greatest kicks I can get in a day; there is, quite literally, nothing that gives me that kind of charge, particularly when the discussion has gone well. But it is, too, a big responsibility. I never feel like I've prepared enough; there's always something else I could do. Having so many ways to bring media into the classroom makes it even more daunting: images, music, video. I could spend days and weeks planning every class meeting and still have things that I wanted to try. Of course, it is possible to overdo it. Some of the best classes I've ever led all I've used was the chalkboard. I usually try to have handouts for class, but most of the real preparation comes from reading the texts that I've assigned and thinking of good questions to ask. See? I am excited, but it's still hard getting my head round the fact that day after tomorrow I'm going to be standing up in front of a class.

What to say? What to say? It's more than just a matter of making an argument. I've heard lectures that do that, some of them very, very good. Okay, that sounds idiotic; of course I've heard good lectures. But I really don't like just lecturing to a class. Learning is interactive. I need to ask questions to help my students think about what I'm saying and I need their answers to help me know whether I've explained something clearly enough. I don't want to have them falling asleep while I drone on about something that I find exciting but that, thanks to me, they don't. I want them engaged and alive when we're talking about the texts, with some real stake in what it is that they are trying to understand, and not just so that they can memorize it for a test. Ha! This is not at all what I thought I was going to be writing about. Maybe I'm more ready for this than I think.

We had a very interesting discussion after church this morning in Adult Formation about Christian leadership. Most of us in the room, despite all being involved in various ministries at our church, insisted that we did not see ourselves as leaders at all but as servants. Okay, so we didn't put it exactly that way. "Christian servants" makes us sound like the pope, "servant of the servants of God." We're not clergy, "just" lay people helping in the ways that we feel like we can. And yet, it's still hard not to feel anxious. The inevitable question: "Am I doing enough?" Our preacher's sermon this morning mentioned various leaders, activists who changed people's lives by their energy and example. None of the things that I do for the church (e.g. baking altar bread, writing Prayers of the People, most recently editing the parish profile) ever feel that momentous. They're just the things that I feel able to do. Perhaps I should volunteer for some of the things that make me feel somewhat more anxious, like cooking for hospitality or the soup kitchen but why when there are others who are actually good at it? The real problem is constantly second-guessing what it is I am meant to do.

I'm too nervous about Tuesday, I can't think straight right now. I need to work on a chronology to hand out on the first day of class and I need to find some place in Chicago that sells paper crowns.* And I haven't thought through properly what I am going to say to my graduates, despite having spent the better part of the month reading the texts for their class. What I wanted to tell you about, before I got distracted with thoughts about how I really should be preparing for class right now, is something that my friend Vinita said in the course of our conversation about Christian leadership. It really struck me as incredibly wise and I wanted to share it with you. So here (roughly) it is, as well as I can remember it: "Most of us are afraid to realize how much power we actually have. We may not think of ourselves as leaders, but in truth, every moment of every day is an opportunity for leadership. We have no idea the effect that we have on other people with sometimes even the smallest gesture or word. Indeed, every encounter we have with another human being is a moment in which we exercise power, which is an incredible responsibility, if you think about it."

How in the world is it possible to prepare for something like that? I look forward to seeing you all in class on Tuesday. ; )

*And aren't you curious what I am going to do with those?

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Home Improvements

It's funny how people respond when you announce that you are going to be doing some remodeling, specifically your kitchen. There are some, like my mother (thanks, Mom!), who are frankly encouraging, even though they themselves have gone through remodeling projects and know how frustrating, inconvenient, and, yes, expensive it can be. But there are others, some but not necessarily all of whom who have suffered through the same, who seem determined to throw cold water on the whole prospect by pointing out (as if one didn't know) a) how frustrating, b) how inconvenient, and c) how expensive everything is going to be. Moreover, who insist on it even after one has explained that one of the reasons for doing the remodeling is to bring the electrical wiring in the kitchen up to code so as, for example, to be able to run both the kettle and the toaster at the same time without having to take a break to go down to the basement and punch the circuit breaker back in. No fire risk or anything in having substandard wiring, oh no.

As one of my friends on Facebook put it when looking at the picture I posted (right): "So this is 'before?' If you are truly prepared to eat Poptarts cooked on a card table in the living room and get to know the delivery boys on a first name basis for a matter of many months, and have taken your budget, multiplied by 1.5, and decided that you can still afford it, then I look forward to seeing the 'after'." I don't get it, is he jealous? But of what? Our current floor? The deadening browns? Our inability to run the washer and the dryer (also on the same circuit) at the same time? The fact that we have such a comparatively enormous kitchen? Compared, say, to what?*

Oh, I know well the envy of walking into other people's kitchens that have recently been redone. Why on earth do you think my husband and I are willing to go through this process? Because graduate students whom I know have more up-to-date kitchens than we do? Because junior colleagues have nicer cabinets and flooring? (Really, I'm not kidding.) What exactly is so wrong with the dream of having an elegant and functional home? Oh, right, I'm an academic, I'm not supposed to care about such things. I'm supposed to be content to live in a shoe box and eat tuna fish and get paid beans simply for the love of my research. But I don't actually think that this is what this is about. What is it then? A love of giving people bad news? Of showing them up as naive? How would the friend that posted that comment feel if, when he and his wife announced several years ago that they were about to have a baby, I had posted something along the lines of, "So if you're willing not to sleep properly for six months, spend all of your money on childcare and have no more private life, then I look forward to seeing pictures of your kid"? No, I'm sure he and his wife, no more than my husband and I knew what they were getting into when she got pregnant (and then, for good measure, did it again), but is that any reason to tell them it's a bad idea to take such a step? No, my husband and I have not had a kitchen redone before; I'm sure we're in for a lot of surprises. But isn't that simply the definition of life?

I'm really puzzled by the desire that so many people seem to have to insure that nobody else makes any changes in their life. "Oh," they say, sucking their teeth and shaking their head, "you don't want to do that." Why not? Why fricking not? Right, it's much better to sit tight, change nothing, risk nothing, experience no inconveniences (ironically, in this instance, specifically so as to live more conveniently). As if there are not people in the world who live like we are about to have to for a few months--no running water in the kitchen, no facilities for cooking, no way of washing our clothes at home--all the time. We're still going to have a refrigerator plugged in and there will be water in the bathroom. And we're simply going to move the dining-room table into the front room (we don't--as I think my friend is assuming, although why I don't know, he's seen the picture--have a table in the kitchen) so as to make room in the dining room for the appliances and all the boxes of stuff that are going to come out of the cabinets. Shoot, it could be fun, like being back in graduate school, you know, for the decade or so before we had a washer-dryer in our own apartment and had to go to the laundromat. But, no, I'm being naive. It's going to be hell.

Get a grip, people! Sheesh. Try having your campus office flooded--from the ceiling, no less--just as you are trying to finish a major fellowship application and having to spend the next couple of days drying out all of your books and then moving everything out off the floor so that it could be ripped up and replaced. Or having the city inspectors condemn the back porches in your building not once, but twice, and having to go through the frustration not just of redoing the construction, but also wondering how big the fine would be if the second time round the structure did not pass. But guess what? My office now has a beautiful wood floor rather than depressing, institutional gray carpet, not to mention new book shelves and thus space for a beautiful new couch. And our new porches not only passed inspection but look good, no more peeling brown paint. Yes, it was hard not having access to my books for over a month just when I needed them most. Yes, it was hard not being able to go out the back for better than three (or maybe it was only two. Who remembers? The work is finished now.) But it was hardly as grueling as some would seem to want to make out. Unless, of course, one is swapping stories, as now, so as to make one's life seem more exciting than, truth to tell, it actually is.

I'm starting to think that going through a remodeling is somehow a rite of passage, more serious than simply moving apartments or buying your first home (which, by the by, this apartment still is; the first that we've owned, that is). We had some work done before we moved in, but ran out of time (that is, the time we felt we could spare before putting our lives back together) to finish the kitchen. Nor was what we had done then at all that extensive: painting the walls, polishing the floors, getting new appliances, that sort of thing. Just surface stuff, really. This project is going to show us the bones of our building, right down to the brickwork. Is that what this is about? The contingency of the built. The impermanence of space. We are about to disrupt the structure of the material world, changing more than just the color of the surfaces, digging deep into the very supports of our life. Actually, no, we're not. We like the walls where they are. But we are going to change the shape of the window so as to be able to extend the countertop around the corner of the room. And, of course, we're going to have new flooring and cabinets installed. But these are the very things that, until one goes through this process, have always seemed most fixed. It's easy moving furniture around; it's even relatively easy to paint (albeit not well). But until one embarks on a kitchen (and, once that is done, bathroom) remodeling, the kitchen and the bathroom are the two rooms in one's life over which one has had least control.

Think what we do in those rooms: Cook food. Wash up after cooking. Wash our bodies. Shit. Kitchens and bathrooms are the rooms in which we are most messy, most biological, most flesh. Embarrassing things happen in kitchens and bathrooms. Heated conversations. Encounters with one's most urgent needs, with hunger and waste. No way of pretending here that one is not mortal, bound by the fleshly. Which, of course, is why it is comparatively so difficult to live without access to such rooms. Painting your living room? No worries, you can sit somewhere else for a while. Having your bedroom rewired? Not a problem, you can sleep on the couch. But you can only shit in the toilet and cook on the stove. Actually, no, that's not entirely true; you can, as my husband and I were talking about, get a gas ring. Or a toaster oven. We already have the kettle. What you can't live without is clean water. And a way to store food. Which, thanks to the fact that we live when and where we do, we will have. Not everybody in the world does.

I spent the afternoon yesterday in the Merchandise Mart looking at floor coverings and cabinetry and being overwhelmed at the choices in store. Wow. All this for making rooms in which we cook, eat, wash and poop. I know I want something mosaic-like for the floor in the bathroom (we're talking about 6'x6' here, not counting the bathtub), and wood for the floor in the kitchen seems right. White cabinets for the kitchen with probably a dark countertop. And hopefully some nice tiling for the splashboard between the counter and the cabinets. Nothing as fancy as some of the finishings that I saw. But what palaces some people have! No wonder such projects can get so expensive: there's a whole world of craftspeople out there imagining beautiful ways to create a home. I really, really, really don't see anything wrong with that.**

So there.

*Just for the record, it's 10'x12'. Not exactly mansion-sized like our neighbors the Obamas'.
**And no, I don't think it's socially just that some people live in mansions while others have only hovels. It's only that I refuse to believe that making beautiful things is in itself a bad thing.

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Seven Quick Takes No. 10

Be sure to visit Jennifer at Conversion Diary for more stimulating "quick takes."

1. I got my dog! Okay, so she's a little hard to take on walks seeing as she can't move by herself, but isn't she cute? We're going to an actual dog show tomorrow out west of the city, just to meet some real Corgis, but I've had to agree that we are not actively looking to adopt at this time. Life lesson for the week on how couples make decisions: nobody wins in a dog fight.

2. We're going ahead with our kitchen remodeling though. Can you say, middle-aged? It's a little disconcerting standing in what you thought was a fairly stable arrangement of windows and walls hearing a contractor talk about lifting window sills and moving heaters so as to open up the space for countertops as much as possible. It's going to be wonderful after the remodeling to be able to make toast and tea at the same time, but I have to confess a bit of anxiety about (gasp!) watching someone take out all the plaster on the walls down to the original brickwork so as to put the new wiring in. Deep breath!

3. Speaking of middle-age, it's funny how bad people generally are at estimating one another's age. I've mentioned this before, as I'm sure you remember. One of my graduate students has been complaining on Facebook about how he is all-too-often taken for an undergraduate, and one of my fellow fencers who also teaches here was chagrined to be asked yesterday whether she was picking up a class roster in her name "or the professor's." On the other hand, one of the younger fencers at practice last night was surprised (I think) to learn that although I had been at Columbia in graduate school, no, I would not know somebody who had been there as an undergraduate in the 1970s (when I was, say, eight). Clearly, everybody over 30 looks the same to those under 30--and vice versa, I suppose.

4. Perhaps we're so bad at it because we are constantly asked to believe that people in their late 20s look like high schoolers, while somebody in their late 30s could have a child of 28. Okay, so it's biologically possible, barely, but why is it so hard for casting directors to pay attention to how old the people they are casting as parents and children actually are? That being said, I am happy to report that we've finally started watching Friday Night Lights, only three years after my sister started working on it as a script supervisor. Much as I find it difficult to watch programs about a) Texas and b) football--having suffered through my fair share of Texan high school pep rallies and, to my mind, mind-numbingly dull football games--I'm actually really enjoying it. Go, sis! And, okay, although some of the "kids" are definitely too old for high school (mid-to-late 20s), most of the parents are at least plausibly aged.

5. On the remodeling front, somehow, miraculously, the work on campus seems to have gotten finished more or less on time. It was quite a shocker a week or so ago coming back to campus after the weekend to find that, yes, the new pedestrian walkways through the middle of the main quad were now in place when all that had been visible for the better part of three months was a hole in the ground. How is it that work can appear to be going on for months and months and months with no visible change and then, practically overnight, in reality in about three days, things can go from "never going to be finished on time" to "done"? Good news: there's going to be a cafe downstairs from my office for the first time in over ten years. Even better, this one will actually have decent seating. I hope they do chai!

6. And speaking of digging in the ground, wouldn't it be cool to find this? All my medievalist friends on Facebook are over the moon about the find: "The largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found."

This is the piece that really knocks me out:

It has been suggested that the hoard, found in the Midlands, therefore, in the region of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, which may still have been pagan at the time that the objects were buried, is a collection of trophies taken in battle. Which makes the inscription on this gold band all the more poignant: "surge d[omi]ne [et] dispentur inimici tui et fugent qui oderunt te a facie tua," that is, "rise up, o Lord, and may thy enemies be scattered and those who hate thee be driven from thy face." This is a passage taken from either Psalm 67:2 or 10:35. The latter reads, in full: "When he had lifted up the ark, Moses said, 'Rise up, Lord, and may your enemies be dispersed and those who hate you be driven from your face.'"

7. Which brings us to some bedtime reading. Hearken to Granny Weatherwax, on faith:

'She turned to face him, suddenly alive. "It'd be as well for you if I didn't believe," she said, prodding him with a sharp finger. "This Om...anyone seen him?"

"It is said three thousand people witnessed his manifestation at the Great Temple when he make [sic] the Covenant with the prophet Brutha and saved him from death by torture on the iron turtle--"

"But I bet that now they're arguing about what they actually saw, eh?"

"Well, indeed, yes, there are many opinions--"

"Right, Right. That's people for you. Now if I'd seen him, really there, really alive, it'd be in me like a fever. If I thought there was some god who really did care two hoots about people, who watched 'em like a father and cared for 'em like a mother...well, you wouldn't catch me sayin' things like 'there are two sides to every question' and 'we must respect other people's beliefs.' You wouldn't find me just being gen'rally nice in the hope that it'd all turn out right in the end, not if that flame was burning in me like an unforgivin' sword. And I did say burnin', Mister Oats, 'cos that's what it'd be. You say that you people don't burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that's what true faith would mean, y'see? Sacrificin' your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin' the truth of it, workin' for it, breathin' the soul of it. That's religion. Anything else is just...is just bein' nice. And a way of keepin' in touch with the neighbors."

She relaxed slightly, and went on in a quieter voice: "Anyway, that's what I'd be, if I really believed. And I don't think that's fashionable right now, 'cos it seems that if you sees evil now you have to wring your hands and say 'oh deary me, we must debate this.' That my two penn'orth, Mister Oats. You be happy to let things lie. Don't chase faith, 'cos you'll never catch it." She added, almost as an aside, "But, perhaps, you can live faithfully."'

--Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum (New York: HarperPrism, 1998), pp. 242-43.

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Saying the Unsayable

I am afraid to write what I'm thinking right now. It's such a jumble. Probably in part an effect of the flu, but it's not really anything new, just what's been oppressing me for the better part of the summer. No, I can't say it, really I can't. I've spent years making myself who I am, it is simply craziness thinking I should be somebody else. But I want to be. The problem is, who?

I can't find my hare. I have a feeling that I've been chasing somebody else's, but how to define it? I am a scholar. At least, I think I am. Sometimes I doubt it when I talk to some of my colleagues. They seem so sure about what they're interested in, so clear about how to go about solving the problems that they are researching. Writing doesn't seem to phase [eek! I mean "faze"] them, it's just something they do, easier than being a lawyer (at least two of them have told me this), not really anything they get stressed out about. Me, I have to go through these elaborate rituals--Morning Pages, blogging, meditation, having my desk and office just right--just to get over the terror of sitting down to the page. They don't; at least, they say they don't. Once, when I was describing how much of myself it takes me to write what I do, the chair of the department just shook her head: "I don't find that what I write has much to do with myself," she said. "I don't really go through all that."

Is it them or me? Am I making all of this harder than I have to? Or am I crippled intellectually in some way that makes it harder for me to do what they find easy? I know for a fact that I am not as smart as some of my colleagues. Well, maybe not as a fact, and how does one define smarts anyway? But it is hard not to be intimidated by some of the folks around here, not folks at all, but internationally famous scholars and scientists who never take time off from their work except to pose for photographs when they win Nobel Prizes. Except that they do take time off, much, much more than it seems than I do. They all have second homes and vacations in Europe and trips to conferences in Hawaii. And yet, still they manage to publish more or less continuously, certainly more than I do.

I've proven to myself this year with my blog that it's not that I can't write that much. Yes, I've been counting, well, sort of. My blog posts tend to run about 2-3 pages, when they're essays like this. And I've written how many of them this year? (Checks archive.) Something a little over 200, if you don't count the quotations and comic strips. So that's around 500 pages, give or take a hundred. Easily a book. Shoot, easily two books. And yet I tell myself that I have difficulty writing. Clearly I don't, at least not in this format. You know very well it's why I've been commenting so jealously about Elizabeth Gilbert's book. I want to write a memoir like hers: spiritually grounded, vivid, true-to-life, open. Having stuck with her over the course of the summer, I really do understand now why her book is a best-seller. It's great! I still don't agree with her theology, but I really can't fault her writing style. If only I could let myself have the kind of adventures she did, going to Italy and India and Bali. Then maybe I, too, would have something to write about.

That's the problem, of course. I have plenty to write about. I just keep editing myself into silence. "No," I tell myself, "you can't say that. You haven't read enough/experienced enough/thought enough about that." I look at some of the things my colleagues publish and know that they did not spend as much time thinking about or researching them as I have with my work. No, that's not quite it. My colleagues work very hard. But they really don't seem to spend as much time second-guessing themselves as I do. It's as if I have to write everything twice, first to convince myself that I have anything to say, then to say it in a way such that I am no longer apologizing for having dared to think what I do.

What would I say if I could write anything at all? That (as my one of my former students has recently commented on Facebook) I'm sick of historiography, always looking over my shoulder at what others have said before me when, truth to tell, I think much of what we've been writing about for the past, oh, five hundred years is nonsense? (There is a reason, after all, that I'm a medievalist.) That the only reason I'm an academic is that I want to find the Truth and that I'm not into all this relativism about what we can know or not? (Which is not to say that I think we will ever find the Truth, just that it should be the object of our quest.) That I see no purpose in studying difference simply for difference's sake? (Except insofar as it helps us meditate on the immensity of God, whose creation encompasses all of us and thus all our differences.) That I really do believe in God but that I find it as difficult talking with people who have no doubts about their faith as I do with people who are certain about their lack thereof? That I am on a quest to find God and that all the details about who wrote what when or who did what why are just incidentals (except with respect to the Incarnation) and that I really couldn't give two figs about when modernity began? That I find much of what my colleagues (broadly speaking) write unreadable because it all seems made up? Um....

Maybe I should be a theologian. Except that I'm really no good at thinking in systems. I like them, but I don't seem very good at sticking to them myself. Again, I suppose, because they ultimately seem so artificial. I'm not very good at sticking to anybody's party line, although (like the dog chasing after somebody else's hare) I can get caught up in them from time to time. But then I get bored or learn too much about them and "theory" dissolves simply into one way of looking at things that is really no more accurate than another. No, that's not it. It's just that whenever I try to write theory (which is not the same as theology, I know, I've drifted here), it comes out sounding artificial (in a bad way), overly contrived. I suspect the same thing would happen if I tried to write theology. God is (or not is) more an experience than an idea, which, I suppose, is one of the many reasons it makes sense that the Gospels are narratives. God is a mystery to be approached, not a problem to be solved. God is my life. Now there's a stunner. I wasn't really expecting to write that.

I want to be engaged with what my colleagues are talking about, I really do. It hurts to be sitting here on the sidelines, watching all of their animated quarrels. But it's like watching a football game: I can see how others find it interesting--the strategy, the discipline, the sheer energy and effort to keep going during training, working as a team towards a common goal--but I'm not interested myself and I can't fake it, at least not for long. At least not without serious effects on my soul. That's the problem, of course: I have been trying to fake it, for decades now. It never works, at least not when I write. If I write anything in that mode, it's garbage and I have to start over. Which is probably why it takes me so long: I have to write through the academic-speak first, then rewrite to find my own voice, then rewrite again to say what I really want to say. You'd think after all these years I'd have the courage to say what I want to say first, without having to go through all the other stuff. But then who is my audience if not other scholars? And if I don't write in a way that they find compelling, who will read me?

This is helping me, writing this out now. But I'm not quite sure now where it's going. Perhaps it's best for now that I did simply try to say what needed to be said. I suspect there's more. But it's going to take all the courage that I have to say it. Thank you, at least, my dear blog readers, for listening!

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Bear's Serenity Prayer

(click to enlarge)

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The Best Laid Plans

I'm awake before I intended to be with the flu circling in my system again, threatening to take over. My husband is laid low with it now, much as I was last week. Nothing this month is going quite as planned. I had planned to get in three weeks of writing before having to start teaching again, but first there was the parish profile that needed editing, then there were letters of reference to write, then I got a couple of days writing in, then I got sick. It is definitely a good thing that I was able to get so much reading for my classes done last week, even if it isn't what I had planned, but now this week looks like it's going to be rather different from what I had meant it to be, too.

Should I feel guilty? It's not like I intended for this to be the way things went, but on the other hand I am definitely taking advantage of them. Yesterday, when it became clear that I still wasn't going to be able to concentrate on my book, I went to the library and got a few articles that one of my readers here has recommended. And I took care of some admin and other stuff, including registering for the NAC in December (even though we haven't fenced the NAC in October yet; what is with the deadlines this year?). But I also spent way too much time fantasizing about something that may or may not be a big mistake: getting a dog.

I've wanted a dog for years, not in a big way, just in that quiet, nagging way that says, "Something is missing from my life." I've always needed a pet; in college and graduate school, it was guinea pigs, but the last guinea pig died a week before my son was born. We got a cat when my son was three and a second one when that cat was five. The first cat died last All Saints' Day, but the second one is still with us. She's nearly the perfect cat, certainly for us: doesn't sit on our books when we try to read, but will come and sit next to us when we're working on our laptops or watching DVDs. But cats aren't dogs. You can't take them for walks, for one.

It seems like a good time for us to get a dog. My son is old enough now to come home from school on his own, which frees up my comings and goings from campus immeasurably. I've been on leave, so I'm not going to be trying to write at anything like the same pace for some years now. I'm worried about what would happen with the cat, but she was around dogs as a kitten and I'm sure we could work on this. The problem is, my husband very much does not want a dog. Not now. Not ever. So what to do? At first I had said that we should wait until our present cat dies, so as to minimize conflict among the animals. But now that just feels like a sentence of doom. I could wait to get a dog until my husband dies, a treat for my old age. But, um, well, that doesn't seem a satisfactory solution to my longing either. Besides, who knows who is going to die first?

I don't know what to do here. My longing is real; I spent way too much time yesterday thinking about all of the ways having a dog would change our lives. About how, along with getting a dog, I want to travel in Europe more and what that would mean. About how having a dog would change our routines. About what it would be like having to schedule around the dog's needs for food and walks and company. I think I'm aware of the bigger issues, not just puppy mad. But maybe, as my husband says, I'm just crazy. It's never going to happen anyway. Precisely because it would disrupt our lives so much. In his words (approximately): "Everything is fine now, why do we need to change?"

Yesterday, my mother reminded me that if we want to get a dog, we should have the remodeling that we want done on our kitchen taken care of first (can you tell we're middle aged? oh yes!). Spurred by visions of having my very own furry daemon and the responsibilities that would entail, I finally called the decorator [correction: interior designer--there is, as I learned today, a big difference] whom I had met back in May. She came over yesterday afternoon, and now we have visions of chaos and new flooring dancing in our heads. None of this is going to go as planned, I'm sure, but in the end we should have a kitchen that we actually like, rather than the one with which we were saddled when we moved in here and didn't have the time (or the will) to refinish before I had to start teaching again and my husband started the job he has had for the past seven years now.

It's symbolic, I know. I can't have the house that I want--more accurately, wanted; the house urge seems to have died this past summer when I realized what it would be like in the apartment (empty) when our son goes off to college in five years--but I can have a more pleasantly decorated kitchen, with cabinets that I (and my husband!) chose and a floor that doesn't make you want to throw up on it (really, the one that we have now, thanks to the previous owners, is that ugly). So what, for me, would getting a dog symbolize? That our lives were not stuck in exactly the same pattern from now until death. That real change is possible. That we are open to the possibility that things might be different in a good way, not just waiting for each other to die. A bit melodramatic, I suppose, but I did warn you that I seem to be getting the flu again.

It's funny, I say I want stability (marriage, tenure, a permanent home), but I am also at the same time deathly afraid of nothing changing from now until I die. As if. There is going to be plenty that changes, not all of which I'm going to like. But what about the things that we can change simply because we want to? Like buying new clothes. Or learning a new skill. Or getting a dog.

I so wish I weren't getting sick again.

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Whether Sacred Doctrine is a Matter of Argument?

'Objection 1: It seems this doctrine is not a matter of argument. For Ambrose says (De Fide 1): "Put arguments aside where faith is sought." But in this doctrine, faith especially is sought: "But these things are written that you may believe" (Jn. 20:31). Therefore sacred doctrine is not a matter of argument.

'Objection 2: Further, if it is a matter of argument, the argument is either from authority or from reason. If it is from authority, it seems unbefitting its dignity, for the proof from authority is the weakest form of proof. But if it is from reason, this is unbefitting its end, because, according to Gregory (Hom. 26), "faith has no merit in those things of which human reason brings its own experience." Therefore sacred doctrine is not a matter of argument.

'On the contrary, The Scripture says that a bishop should "embrace that faithful word which is according to doctrine, that he may be able to exhort in sound doctrine and to convince the gainsayers" (Titus 1:9).

'I answer that, As other sciences do not argue in proof of their principles, but argue from their principles to demonstrate other truths in these sciences: so this doctrine does not argue in proof of its principles, which are the articles of faith, but from them it goes on to prove something else; as the Apostle from the resurrection of Christ argues in proof of the general resurrection (1 Cor. 15). However, it is to be borne in mind, in regard to the philosophical sciences, that the inferior sciences neither prove their principles nor dispute with those who deny them, but leave this to a higher science; whereas the highest of them, viz. metaphysics, can dispute with one who denies its principles, if only the opponent will make some concession; but if he concede nothing, it can have no dispute with him, though it can answer his objections. Hence Sacred Scripture, since it has no science above itself, can dispute with one who denies its principles only if the opponent admits some at least of the truths obtained through divine revelation; thus we can argue with heretics from texts in Holy Writ, and against those who deny one article of faith, we can argue from another. If our opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there is no longer any means of proving the articles of faith by reasoning, but only of answering his objections--if he has any--against faith. Since faith rests upon infallible truth, and since the contrary of a truth can never be demonstrated, it is clear that the arguments brought against faith cannot be demonstrations, but are difficulties that can be answered.

'Reply to Objection 1: Although arguments from human reason cannot avail to prove what must be received on faith, nevertheless, this doctrine argues from articles of faith to other truths.

'Reply to Objection 2: This doctrine is especially based upon arguments from authority, inasmuch as its principles are obtained by revelation: thus we ought to believe on the authority of those to whom the revelation has been made. Nor does this take away from the dignity of this doctrine, for although the argument from authority based on human reason is the weakest, yet the argument from authority based on divine revelation is the strongest. But sacred doctrine makes use even of human reason, not, indeed, to prove faith (for thereby the merit of faith would come to an end), but to make clear other things that are put forward in this doctrine. Since therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity. Hence the Apostle says: "Bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ" (2 Cor. 10:5). Hence sacred doctrine makes use also of the authority of philosophers in those questions in which they were able to know the truth by natural reason, as Paul quotes a saying of Aratus: "As some also of your own poets said: For we are also His offspring" (Acts 17:28). Nevertheless, sacred doctrine makes use of these authorities as extrinsic and probable arguments; but properly uses the authority of the canonical Scriptures as an incontrovertible proof, and the authority of the doctors of the Church as one that may properly be used, yet merely as probable. For our faith rests upon the revelation made to the apostles and prophets who wrote the canonical books, and not on the revelations (if any such there are) made to other doctors. Hence Augustine says (Epis. ad Hieron. xix, 1): "Only those books of Scripture which are called canonical have I learned to hold in such honor as to believe their authors have not erred in any way in writing them. But other authors I so read as not to deem everything in their works to be true, merely on account of their having so thought and written, whatever may have been their holiness and learning."'

--St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), Summa theologica, First part, Quaestio 1, Article 8, trans. by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947-1948), my emphasis.

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And now for something completely different...

Snooch contemplates the koi fishies.

Obi Wan Obama goes en garde.

Cheese mites debate the origins of the cheese.

Ants search for intelligent life.

"Just because someone believes in the Force doesn't mean they're gonna go blow up a space station."

Hat tip to my son for the last two links.

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Thy Will Be Done

As if in answer to my question this morning: what I heard when I got in the car to go to practice this afternoon, by the by getting caught in some of the worst traffic we've had on Lake Shore Drive in the past few months, thanks to the fact that all but one lane was closed off for roadworks today.

St. Teresa of Avila (d. 1582), on why she wrote what was to become one of the great classics of spiritual instruction:

"Few tasks which I have been commanded to undertake by obedience have been so difficult as this present one of writing about matters relating to prayer: for one reason, because I do not feel that the Lord has given me either the spirituality or the desire for it; for another, because for the last three months I have been suffering from such noises and weakness in the head that I find it troublesome to write even about necessary business. But, as I know that strength arising from obedience has a way of simplifying things which seem impossible, my will very gladly resolves to attempt this task although the prospect seems to cause my physical nature great distress; for the Lord has not given me strength enough to enable me to wrestle continually both with sickness and with occupations of many kinds without feeling a great physical strain. May He Who has helped me by doing other and more difficult things for me help also in this: in His mercy I put my trust.

"I really think I have little to say that I have not already said in other books which I have been commanded to write; indeed, I am afraid that I shall do little but repeat myself, for I write as mechanically as birds taught to speak, which, knowing nothing but what is taught them and what they hear, repeat the same things again and again. If the Lord wishes me to say anything new, His Majesty will teach it me or be pleased to recall to my memory what I have said on former occasions; and I should be quite satisfied with this, for my memory is so bad that I should be delighted if I could manage to write down a few of the things which people have considered well said, so that they should not be lost. If the Lord should not grant me as much as this, I shall still be the better for having tried, even if this writing under obedience tires me and makes my head worse, and if no one finds what I say of any profit."

It's a paradox, is it not? Those things which we do because we have somehow convinced ourselves that we should or that we do for money are invariably more difficult than those things which we do because they are our gift, the hare that we have caught sight of and chase, not because we have been told to or because we see others chasing it, but rather because it is ours to chase. And yet, how much easier it is to do something when someone else has told us to, for example, in yoga class or on a syllabus. Under such circumstances, we gladly give our obedience (well, most of the time) whether because we trust our teachers to guide us or because being told to do the work somehow makes possible that which we could never have done otherwise.

So is what God wants us to do what we find easiest or what we find hard? We usually think of God as asking things of us that are difficult and therefore of obedience as something that is burdensome, albeit "good for us." But maybe the reason we find the things that we think we should do hard is because they are not what God wants for us, otherwise He would give us the strength to do them, in which case they would be easy. Which is why He says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:30). So the trick, it would seem, is listening closely enough such that we can hear what it is that God is asking us to do with the catch that if we don't listen and end up trying to do something else, we will have only ourselves to blame if we find the going difficult.

Hmmm.... I need to think about this!

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Required Reading

My husband has a saying: "Anything you do for money gets old."

It's almost term time, which means I'm going to have reading to do. Not reading that I want to do, but reading that I have to do in order to be ready for class. At least, now it's reading that I have to do. When I set up the courses that I will be teaching, I specifically designed at least one of them (the graduate course) to give me the chance to do reading that I simply wanted to do (perhaps more accurately, to have done) for the sake of my research, but now that I've spent the last week sick and therefore unable to write and therefore trying to make the best of things by getting started on the reading for term, I know that, yet again, it simply doesn't work. As soon as reading becomes something assigned, whether for class or out of the conviction that it is something that I "need" to have read, it dies. It could be the most interesting book in the world, and yet as soon as I decide for some reason that it is something I should read, it takes every ounce of self-discipline I have to get through it, page after mind-numbing page.

I'm exaggerating. But not very much. It's ironic, of course. I have one of the best (if not the best) jobs in the whole world: nobody but myself ever tells me what to do (okay, again, slight exaggeration; I really don't want to do all that committee work, especially reading applications); it's entirely up to me (okay, again, mostly) what I teach or write about. Practically speaking, there is no reason in the world for me ever to read anything (except applications) I don't want to. I chose the field that I study; I chose the things about the field that I want to concentrate on. Shoot, I defined the field of things that I study, that being, after all, the whole point of research. And yet, more often than not I spend my days oppressed by the feeling that I haven't read enough (when it is only myself who is defining "enough"), with the corollary that I really "must" read this or that book, even if I'm not really feeling very interested in it today. Worse, I feel like a hypocrite, because, of course, I'm also the one assigning things to other people to read, making it their "required reading." No wonder I can barely stay awake much of the time when I'm doing my reading for "work."

It's not always like this when I read. Sometimes, gloriously, there is simply something that I want to know. It grips me, possesses me, energizes me, and I find myself going to the library eagerly, scooping up all the books that, yes, just interest me. When this happens, I can read for hours and hours and barely come up for air, no problem. It was like that with the comics this summer. I'm sure I read three or four (academic) books in a week (no, maybe two weeks--who was counting?) just because I wanted to. Okay, so there was the guilty pleasure of working (although it didn't feel like work) on something other than what I was supposed (but only according to a plan that I myself had made) to be doing, but doing research does seem to be what I most enjoy. Until it's what I'm supposed to be doing (read, "for money"), at which point it collapses back into work. Again, this summer, I spent a week or two reading about centering prayer, eager to learn everything I could about how it could help me find God. Theoretically, the reading I've been doing this week (Langland's Piers Plowman, Walter Hilton's Scala perfectionis, Humber of Romans's On Preaching, Bonaventure's Itinerarium mentis in Deum, John of Caulibus's Meditationes vitae Christi) should excite me just as much: it's almost all about contemplation, after all. Instead, I just find myself doing what I always do when I have a book that I "have" to read: counting the pages that I've read in an hour, calculating how much time it's going to take me to finish.

I have no idea how to get around this. I have fantasies about telling my students, "Just read as much as you feel like," but practically speaking, that would be a disaster. At least, it seems like it would. The only thing that makes our discussions in class remotely possible--perhaps more accurately, remotely productive--is (quite literally) being on the same page: we need to have something in common to talk about if I am going to teach my students anything about how to think about texts. Plus, there is the inescapable fact that learning about history means lots and lots and lots of reading. Just like long hours in a lab or on the practice field, you have to put in the time reading stuff otherwise you simply don't know enough (that word again). There is, practically speaking, no other way to learn about history unless you go on field trips to historic sites (as if; even I can't afford to get myself to all the places that I read about), and even then, you're going to have to spend most of your time reading in the sources and scholarship to know what "we" (who is this "we"?) know about what happened there. And then there's the fact that most of what I study happened not so much in particular places, as in people's heads, the only access to which is, yes, through books and (in larger part than I think many of my colleagues are willing to admit) our own imagination. More reading.

Is this, as my husband says, simply inevitable with anything that we do for money? Or is it a flaw in the way we think about education and, yes, research? On the one hand, being able to do something, anything, like thinking or writing about the past requires certain skills and experience, none of which is possible to acquire without practice. We in our current educational system tend to talk about literacy as if it were default, something everybody should be able to acquire, like talking, but for most of human history it was recognized that literacy (reading or writing) was a skill, like composing or playing music, to which some people were more drawn than others and which, nevertheless, took years of training to acquire. On the other hand, think about the people who become expert at music: they practice pretty much all the time, and yet, for those whom the music bugs bites, they don't really experience it as work. (I'm guessing here from the fact that great musicians always talk about how much they love what they do, but I'm also extrapolating from my experience here, of writing for my blog.) Think about it: things which we do because we're simply curious are sources of great joy. And yet, the same things become instantly burdensome as soon as they become something we are doing because we're supposed to.

I wish I could make this a rule for myself: follow your passion. Trust that what you want to know about is what really matters, not what other people tell you that you should know about. But (I can hear the objections rising) what would become of our academic disciplines if we studied in that way? Aren't audodidacts (which is what you're describing) famous for the chaos of subjects in which they indulge? Except that the majority of our modern academic fields are simply the product of the obsessions of those who defined them. "Interdisciplinarity" is just a fancy word for saying, "I read around in the stuff that interests me." Or, at least, it should be. Heaven forbid we make it another requirement. What to do? Our institutions require us to be trained to do something specific ("Teach history"), but the reality of human experience suggests that the best work arises not from obligation, but from interest. And yet, it takes great discipline to realize our best interests. Nobody can get on the fencing strip and "just fence" and expect to do anything but make an incredible mess of things without years of doing footwork and drills. And yet, again, the drills don't really feel like drills when one is gripped by the passion.

So is it the money (the obligation to do something so as to be able to live) or the demands of the practice itself that gets old? Or is it something else altogether that I can't see right now because I have so much reading to do?

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Seven Quick Takes No. 9

Check out Conversion Diary for more "quick takes." Watch for nutz!

1. I've been sick all week with what I am convinced is the same flu I've had already three times thisyear. That's four weeks in total of sore throat followed by dizziness, sinus congestion, aches and pains plus that weird throbbing clarity you get with flu. I've still got the itchy-throat-with-mild-cough thing going now, but at least I can bend over without feeling like my head is going to explode. What I want to know is, why? I thought the whole point of getting sick with something was that you would be immune to it afterwards. This flu seems to have taken up permanent residence, just waiting for that moment when I'm slightly overtired to reassert itself. I know, I know, school hasn't started for me yet, but it did last week for my son, which meant waking up at 5:45am so as to be able to do my centering prayer and yoga before we set off for campus. It was just enough, apparently, to trigger the flu.

2. Possibly but not necessarily as a consequence of having been so whacked out by the flu, I had a terrible time yesterday not chasing after other people's hares. Read: websurfing through colleagues' publications lists, wondering why I have comparatively so few (compared, that is, to the colleagues to whom I was comparing myself), comparing our sales on Amazon.com and our number of libraries listed on WorldCat. It's like the flu, in fact: just when I think I have finally centered myself sufficiently not to be caught up in the whole academic rat race thing, there I am, once again, tormenting myself about why I don't publish more, why I take on the kinds of questions that I do rather than ones that might make it easier for me to publish more, why I seem to have so much difficulty letting myself write what I really want to say, why I am so convinced that I have yet to say something really important. Part of me knows that it is, in part, simply a consequence of being a writer: the work that is not yet done always oppresses more than the work that is done comforts. But I do so wish I could take more comfort sometimes in the work that I have done and, gosh darn it, let myself off the hook!

3. About that novel that I keep saying I don't want to write. Novels by definition are fiction, right? The problem is, I don't seem to be very interested in fiction anymore. I can't explain it; I used to love reading novels, especially historical fiction. But now, well, it seems like there are only two choices (well, mostly only two) for stories that one sets in the Middle Ages: a) make the people out to be just as rational and sober-minded about things as people today (presumably) are, particularly with respect to religion; or b) make the people out to be wildly superstitious about everything, especially religion. And, of course, throw in a good conspiracy theory, preferably with a churchman as the ultimate villain. I'm exaggerating, I know, but I've not been able to pick up a novel set in the Middle Ages for some years now because I just know how they're all going to end: with some bad (usually secularizing) theology masquerading as profound insight and more than likely a witch in there somewhere. About the only thing I find that I can stomach is Terry Pratchett, who, of course, sends up the whole genre wonderfully. I'm rereading (for about the tenth time) Maskerade right now.

4. Still on no. 3. Part of the problem, I know, is that I am simply too familiar with the actual medieval stories. And they are always at once more sober and more wonderful than anything most modern writers (other than, of course, the likes of Lewis and Tolkien) are able to invent. So modern efforts to set a story in the Middle Ages just come off as, well, forgeries: perhaps convincing for the first decade or so after they're published, but fairly soon after that clearly identifiable as stories written at a particular time with all of the obsessions and convictions of their own day layered onto the past. This can be fun if what one is primarily interested in is "medievalisms" (gotta love Walter Scott!), but it is deeply dissatisfying as a way of getting out of one's own time into another (purportedly the goal of fiction, at least so I've been told). But I know that my frustration goes deeper than this. Most fiction offers the wrong kind of escape, particularly all those novels so many authors seem drawn to write today that pretend to deal with the supernatural. It's why Tolkien and Lewis still resonate: they knew what the real escape was.

5. And while we're on the subject of historical fiction, a taste of the real thing, courtesy of the fourteenth-century Italian Franciscan Meditations on the Life of Christ by John of Caulibus. The scene is Egypt, as Mary, Joseph and Jesus are preparing to leave: "Now let us get on with the Lord's return. Pay careful attention to it, because this meditation is exceedingly long. On your return to Egypt to visit the boy Jesus, and when perchance you have found him outside with the children, he will catch sight of you and run up to you immediately; for he is so friendly and easy to talk with and caring. Kneel and kiss his feet; and sweeping him into your arms with a hug, find a bit of sweet respite with him. Then he will say to you, 'We've been given permission to return to our own land, and tomorrow we must leave. You've come at a good time, because you will be going back with us.' Answer him at once that you are overjoyed at this; and that you hope to follow him wherever he goes (Rv 4:4). In conversations like these you can take delight with him" (trans. Francis X. Taney, Anne Miller and C. Mary Stallings-Taney [Asheville: Pegasus Press, 2000], pp. 49-50).

6. And speaking of taste, we now have our very own drinks bar at home. Who needs a fancy European cafe when you can have Italian-style vanilla soda on your very own porch? Note the Soda Stream carbonator for making your own fizzy water, too.


7. I'm still caught up on this problem of fiction. It afflicts what we write as historians, as well. What happens when we wake up one day and realize that everything we've been writing about the past is actually only about us? We constantly accuse people in the (by definition) Middle Ages of doing this, as, for example, in the above meditation: ignoring anachronisms, making the figures of history into people of their own time. But don't we do this, too? And in pretty much in every novel or movie we make. Not that I'm saying this is necessarily a bad thing; I love the way A Knight's Tale tries to show tournaments and dances as the obsession of the young they most definitely were. And how Jocelyn's dresses are never anywhere near historically accurate. I just miss any real sense of (out with it!) sacramentality in modern efforts (other than Lewis' and Tolkien's) to portray the Middle Ages. I'm tired of magic as metaphor; I want the real thing. I need to think about this more.

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41. That a person should know the measure of his gift, and always desire more, taking a better one when God wishes to give it

"Our holy fathers in former times taught us to know the measure of our gift and work by that, not making use of pretense to take more upon ourselves than we have felt. We can always desire the best, but we cannot always perform the best, for we have not yet received that grace.

"A hound that runs after the hare only because he sees other hounds running will rest when he is tired, and turn back; but if he runs because he sees the hare, he will not flag for weariness until he has it. It is just the same spiritually. If anyone has a grace, however small, and decides to stop working with it and to make himself labor at another that he does not yet have, only because he sees or hears that others are doing so, he may indeed run for a while until he is weary; and then he will turn home again: and if he is not careful he can hurt his feet with some fantasies before he gets there. But when anyone works with such grace as he has while humbly and persistently desiring more, and later feels his heart stirred to follow the grace which he has desired: he can safely run, provided he keeps humility.

"And therefore desire from God as much as you can--without moderation or discretion--of all that belongs to his love and the bliss of heaven, for whoever knows how best to desire from God shall have the most feeling of him; but work as you can, and call for his mercy on what you cannot. So it seems St. Paul said: 'Unusquisque habet donum suum a Deo, alius autem sic, alius vero sic [1 Cor. 7:7]. Item unicuique nostrum data est gratia secundum mensuram donationis Christi [Eph. 4:7]. Item divisiones gratiarum sunt; alii datur sermo sapientiae; alii sermo scientiae [1 Cor. 12:4, 8]. Item ut sciamus quae a Deo donata sunt nobis [1 Cor. 2:12].' St. Paul says that every man has his gift from God: one this way, and another that, for to every man who is to be saved grace is given according to the measure of Christ's gift; and therefore it is an advantage to know the gifts given us by God, so that we can work by them; for by those we shall be saved. For example, some shall be saved and come to blessedness by bodily actions and by works of mercy; some by great penance; some by sorrow and weeping for their sins all their lifetime; some by preaching and teaching; and some by various graces and gifts of devotion."

--Walter Hilton (d. March 24, 1396), Scala perfectionis 1, trans. John P.H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward, as The Scale of Perfection (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), pp. 111-12.

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The Gospel Truth

Or, some things that I've been thinking about that would seem to suggest that the Christian scriptures (a.k.a. the Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Revelation) may in fact be something other than simply documents of their time but which I do not know enough of the scholarship in New Testament studies to prove and so would like reading suggestions if anyone has any:

1. SteveG makes the interesting point in his Catholic Ramblings that, unlike the New Testament (or, indeed, the Hebrew Scriptures), the scriptures on which the "other" great monotheistic religions, namely Islam and the Church of the Latter Day Saints are founded depend upon a revelation given to a single individual. As he observes:

"This puts everything to be believed in the trust that this one individual in question had a true revelation from God and not a self-delusional episode, or worse yet, committed a willing deception. Did Joseph Smith really find golden tablets that only he could read? Did these angels really appear to him? Did Mohamed (sic) really go into divinely inspired trances and converse with God and the angels? At bottom, it’s all about that one individual, and whether we can have any thought as to whether their particular revelation was legitimate. This puts far too much trust for my taste into the purely mystical experience of a single person."

I am not making any claims here about whether I think SteveG is right (although I suspect you can guess where my sympathies lie), but I was struck by his observation because it had never really occurred to me to make precisely this comparison. It is as if Christianity were to depend wholly on the Gospel of John and Revelation (assuming these texts were both written by the same person) or wholly on Luke-Acts, rather than, as it does, on multiple witnesses to a particular historical event--which witnesses, it should be noted, do not always strictly speaking seem to agree.

2. Which is my next point: there really are things in the Gospels that don't seem to agree with either the doctrine of the Incarnation as it has been developed over the centuries or with each other. I'm thinking here, for example, of the passages in which Christ, although the Second Person of the Trinity and therefore presumably God, seems not to know certain things that it seems that He should, like when the Judgment is coming (Mark 13:32), or to be afraid of His impending death (Matthew 26:38-39; Mark 14:33; John 12:27) when, as God, surely He knew that there was nothing to worry about.

Harvard historian of Christianity Kevin Madigan points to other such troubling passages, which, by the by, the Arians of antiquity used to try to prove that Christ, while divine, was not equal in divinity to the Father: where Jesus is said to have "increased in wisdom" (Luke 2:52) when according to orthodox doctrine He is Eternal Wisdom, therefore not susceptible to increase; where Jesus is said to have cried out at His death, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46: Mark 15:34) when according to John (1:1-2) He is the Word of God with the Father from the beginning; where Jesus is said to have prayed (Matthew 26:39; Luke 23:46) as if His and the Father's will were not already one. If, in fact, Christianity was all a great put-up job, it seems curious that the Gospels themselves should be so, well, complicated, hardly admitting of easy answers even today when scholars are relatively confident that they have placed them in their intellectual and cultural milieu. One would not want one's faith to hinge on such "proof by inconsistency," but surely if the Gospels were purely human compositions about simply a human being whom his followers were deluded into thinking was God, their authors (and the Church that recognized them as scripture) would have done a better job at hiding the messy counterevidence (if, of course, it is counterevidence).

3. Neither Jesus nor the New Testament texts really make sense in the context of first-century antiquity. This is one of the things that has struck me most in the last few weeks. We are so used to the Gospels, it is easy to take them for granted, but as texts produced at the time that they were (late first century), they really are, let's face it, strange.

Sure, there are other texts like them, sayings collections and lives of the philosophers, for example, but (and here's where my ignorance of the ancient texts is going to show) is there really anybody in antiquity who was ever shown to be as concerned with women, the poor, the outcasts and sinners as Jesus? The philosophers cared about wisdom and leading the good life, but their sayings were more along the lines of the sorts of advice that modern Americans get from their yoga teachers: advice about how to live comfortably despite the vicissitudes of fortune grounded in the assumption that it was possible to do so simply by training one's attention. Nothing messy about the Kingdom or crucifixion. And unlike the mystery religions, Christianity was always about spreading the good news of the Resurrection to everyone, not (as the Gnostics would have it) preserving such wisdom for a select, inner group.

I wish I had more concrete examples to support this hunch, but it does seem to me worth thinking in a comparative context about how very strange the Gospels really are as narratives, particularly given the weight of exegesis that they have proven capable of supporting over the centuries. Not just any text can do this. In human history, there are relatively few, which, again, does tend to suggest that there is something to them other than simply human authorship, although I'm not sure I would put all my eggs in this basket alone. But think of it this way: if somebody in the first century had set about to "make up" Christ, is the Christ that we see in the Gospels the Christ we would expect?

4. The reason that there is such a thing as Christianity at all is that so many people at the time were witnesses to its truth. Okay, so this one still feels like something of an article of faith, rather than an historical proof, but it occurs to me that we do wrong to place so much emphasis (as we have tended to do, particularly since the "search for the historical Jesus" began in the 19th century) on the Gospels. All of the texts of the New Testament are witness to the power of Jesus' presence in the lives of his followers, including the oh-so-problematic letters of Paul.*

I must confess that I haven't spent as much time reading Acts and the Epistles as I should (not since a great course that I took with Werner Kelber on Paul's letters in college), but I'm starting to become really curious about these texts: is there anything remotely like them in antiquity either? For example, 1 John 4:7-12:

"Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us."

Again, ancient Mediterranean non-Christian peoples are not particularly famous for their emphasis on God as love. G.K. Chesterton has done a better job of making this point than I ever could, against those who would insist that Christianity was just one of many movements in antiquity such that at its heart it is still really "Pagan." In Chesterton's words (Heretics [1905], p. 83):

"There is only one thing in the modern world that has been face to face with Paganism; there is only one thing in the modern world which in that sense knows anything about Paganism: and that is Christianity. That fact is really the weak point in the whole of that hedonistic neo-Paganism of which I have spoken. All that genuinely remains of the ancient hymns of the ancient dances of Europe, all that has honestly come to us from the festivals of Phoebus or Pan, is to be found in the festivals of the Christian Church. If any one wants to hold the end of a chain which really goes back to the heathen mysteries, he had better take hold of a festoon of flowers at Easter or a string of sausages at Christmas. Everything else in the modern world is of Christian origin, even everything that seems most anti-Christian. The French Revolution is of Christian origin. The newspaper is of Christian origin. The anarchists are of Christian origin. Physical science is of Christian origin. The attack on Christianity is of Christian origin. There is one thing, and one thing only, in existence at the present day which can in any sense accurately be said to be of pagan origin, and that is Christianity.

"The real difference between Paganism and Christianity is perfectly summed up in the difference between the pagan, or natural, virtues, and those three virtues of Christianity which the Church of Rome calls virtues of grace. The pagan, or rational, virtues are such things as justice and temperance, and Christianity has adopted them. The three mystical virtues which Christianity has not adopted, but invented, are faith, hope, and charity [or love]."

This is one of the reasons that I cringe when people start comparing the Virgin Mary to the "other," pagan goddesses; yes, of course, there were precursors to the revelation of God as man. But as C.S. Lewis argues (at least, I think I'm getting this from Lewis), the reason these stories exist at all is because they are intimations of the Truth that was to come and now has. No, I don't think I want to go there (comparative mythologies) just now. What I want is a sense of the way in which how the image of God developed in the New Testament actually compares with ideas about divinity that would have been available to its authors if they had never encountered Jesus.

5. Finally, something that has come to me thanks to the reading that I've been doing about centering prayer (plus, of course, the prayer itself): it doesn't really make any difference to the Christian revelation "God is love" what other religious traditions say about the divine. God loves us, full stop. And that's the Gospel truth.

*You know, the ones where he condemns "unnatural intercourse" (Romans 1:26-27) and insists that women keep their mouths shut in church (1 Corinthians 14:34-35).

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Making Peace With Traffic

In Chicago, traffic is pretty much a fact of life. There is simply no way to avoid it, particularly if you live on the South Side and want to get anywhere north. I remember reading some ten or fifteen years ago, about the time my husband and I had just moved here, a piece in one of the local magazines that promised to give alternate routes (i.e. non-freeway routes) from anywhere in Chicago to O'Hare. On the North Side, there were a number of options, but for the South Side, well, we were pretty much stuck: there wasn't any faster route than the I-90/94. So there. If the freeway snarls up, that's still the only way to get to the airport.*

When my son and I started fencing together six years ago, we joined a fencing club that practiced downtown in the Loop. This was heaven: we could get on the Metra, ride the train 20 minutes to downtown, and walk to our club, no worries. My husband would come pick us up in the evenings after practice well after the rush hour traffic had died down. And so for four years, I was blissfully unaware (except hypothetically) that there was even such a thing as rush hour. The trains might be a little crowded depending on who was having their meetings at McCormick Place, but otherwise, rain, snow or shine, it made no difference to how quickly we got to our club. Plus, I've always loved riding on trains. It was bliss.

Alas, no longer. When the athletic club where our fencing club practiced closed down two years ago, the fencers moved to a new club, considerably further north. I could still take the train if I were willing to switch from the Metra to the CTA in the Loop or if I caught the CTA to the west of where I live, but then I would be spending as much as twice as long to get there and back as I do in the car even with traffic, plus coming home I'd be riding the CTA well after hours, with which, sadly, I am not entirely comfortable. So I drive.

It's eleven miles from my home to our club. On good days, that is, on days when the Cubs aren't playing such that the traffic backs up from Soldier Field all the way to Wrigley, I can make it in about 35-45 minutes during "rush" hour. Just for the sake of comparison, it takes me about 25 minutes to get home some three to four hours later. On bad days, when there's a Cubs game or a festival in Grant Park or a Bears game at Soldier Field, it can take upwards of a hour sitting in traffic for me to make it to practice. And, no, there isn't any other way to get from here to there than Lake Shore Drive or, if I went on the freeway, the Dan Ryan/Kennedy expressways. Once you hit midtown, it's traffic lights all the way down. Short of a miracle--or Hans Monderman's intervention--there's simply no way to avoid being stuck in traffic if, that is, I want to get to practice (and now, yoga class) anywhere near on time. So what to do?

I could rage at all the other drivers. What business do they have getting in my way, anyway? What could be possibly so important in their lives that they have to be driving north on Lake Shore Drive at exactly the time when I want to get to fencing practice? All they're trying to do is get home from work or to some dumb ball game.*** Um. It's funny, isn't it, how we think about traffic, as if it is somehow a personal affront that there are others who want to be out on the road at the same time that we do, as if, indeed, we are the only ones with places to go and schedules to keep. One of the things that I have to contend with, I know, is how nervous I am when I'm driving: accidents just seem so much more likely to happen when there are so many cars out on the road, and I've told you before how I don't like changing lanes. But I recognize, too, that I am part of the problem: I could get to practice some other way, but I choose to drive.

Well, okay, no, I don't choose to drive, but I do choose to drive to get to practice, so it would seem that it's up to me to come to terms with what that entails. Raging at it won't help and it's not like I can outwit it by going some other way. The only thing to do, it would seem, is make peace with it. "Wait a minute," I can hear you saying. "Make peace with traffic? You've got to be kidding, right? Traffic is the enemy; traffic is to be avoided at all costs! Worst of all, traffic wastes time. Think of all of the things you could be doing if you weren't sitting there, stuck in traffic." Well, yes. Except that if I weren't there sitting in traffic, I'd never get to fencing practice, which is something that I want to do, very much. So traffic is the price I pay for wanting to get to practice. No, that's not it: traffic is a gift that is meant to teach me something about how important it is for me to get to practice.

You think I'm kidding, right? Perhaps. But as I've said, there really isn't anything else I can do. Getting angry won't help. Nor is it likely that the traffic patterns are ever going to change. So all, it seems, that I can do is, yes, plan for traffic. Which means I can't really plan, because the traffic changes from day to day. Some days, it's simply not there. Others, like yesterday (which is strange for a Saturday), it is. All I can do is leave early enough--and hope that it is, in fact, early enough--and plan to be in the car for something like an hour listening to book tapes.**** If, for some reason, the traffic is worse than I've planned for, well, so it was better the other day; that's just the way it is. Hopefully, my yoga teacher won't mind if I come in a few minutes late.

*This was before Midway's renovation when O'Hare was often the only way to get where we wanted to go. It's still the only way to get to Europe, of course. Or for direct flights to Texas.** Go figure. Maybe Texas really is another country.
**Although there is a rumor that Southwest does some flights that might work. I'll have to double-check.
***Sorry, I'm really not a sports fan, not, that is, of sports I don't myself play, even after reading Michael Mandelbaum's excellent The Meaning of Sports: Why Americans Watch Baseball, Football and Basketball and What They See When They Do (2005).
****Which, truth to tell, I would never listen to except when I'm driving, so, you see, the traffic really is something of a blessing. It gives me time to do something I enjoy that I would not give myself the time to do otherwise, including listening to music.

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