Fencing Bear at Prayer

I do not, as a rule, like showing my arms.  Or my legs, for that matter.  Even when I have been slimmer than I am now, I haven't particularly liked wearing shorts.  My knees look too heavy.  But you'd think that at least I should be able to wear short sleeves, even when I am not feeling particularly svelt. Perhaps it's the memory of one of my teachers shaking her arms over us in fourth grade.  She wore sleeveless dresses and her upper arms were somewhat flabby so that when she pointed at us, they would wobble.  I hate looking in the mirror and seeing my arms like that. "So just keep them by your side," you say.  "Don't point accusingly at people."  Ah, but then they'd press against my rib cage and look even bigger.  I have arms like a man.  Except when it comes to doing manly things like putting the air conditioners in the windows; then I'm a wimp.  Sure, I can "make a muscle" if I flex my arm, but what muscle there is doesn...

Oh, look, it's 8:04am, and I've promised myself to blog from now until 8:30am, when I shift to writing.  Nope, can't think of anything to blog about that I haven't covered already.  Maybe I'll just sit here.... Sitting.  I am sick of sitting .  I spend my life sitting.  According to one study, that means I'm probably going to die younger than I would have otherwise.  If, for example, I had spent my life the way my sister does, running every day, doing yoga, riding horses, moving.  I sit.  Definition of "professor": someone who spends eight to ten hours a day sitting.  And not just sitting.  Reading.  I read.  Who is Professor F.B.?  A reader.  Why doesn't that make me happy?  Anything gets old once you do it for too long.  Like eating too much chocolate. Yes, I'm going to try fasting from something this year for Lent.  I've been thinking about making it sweets.  Not because I think sweets are b...

I was seven.  My family and I were on a trip, driving across some part of the Midwest.  Perhaps from Nebraska to Texas, but I seem to remember my father being in the car and he didn't take that particular trip with us, still being in Thailand at the time.  So maybe it was just myself, my siblings and my mother driving us.  I was sitting in the back seat of the car and looking out at the landscape passing by.  As far as I was concerned, I could see fine.  And then my mother said, "Do you see the ducks on the pond over there?"  And I said, "What ducks?"  Horror of horrors, I could see the pond clearly, but there weren't any ducks, not that I could see. No, I was not going blind or anything close to blind.  Just myopic.  But at seven in the 1970s, nobody my age wore glasses.  Certainly not more than two or three kids per class.  And the glasses that we had to choose from?  Oh, my goodness.  It was more or less impossib...

I wonder what it would be like not to dread having your picture taken. Not to dread looking in a mirror for fear that what you saw would fail to match up to the way that you hoped you might look. Even better, to live in a world in which there were no photographs, no mirrors, so that the only way that you would know what you looked like was from the reactions of other people around you. So that you would never know whether you were ugly or beautiful as such, but only whether people were happy to see you, which they would be, because you'd be smiling at how happy you were to see them. I have this image of myself that I carry around in my head. Well, actually two images. One is the image of myself the way that I know I would look if only I could always look my best. That is, the best that I have ever been in my life, not fat, not tired, my hair styled nicely, perhaps wearing make-up, nice clothes, definitely cool shoes. I don't know if I would need to be any other age than t...

"In the third place there is the physical, visible, palpable beauty of Christ . "This can be sub-divided: supernatural beauty , which His most holy flesh was granted in His glorification. It is to configuration with this that our body aspires; and to this it must be brought, when, in the resurrection that is to come our humble body will--according to the apostle's promise (Ph 3:21)--made like to the Body of His Glory. But first we must be conformed to the Passion of Christ and to His crucifixion. "But the natural beauty of Christ's Body, when He lived on earth, was so great, so lovely, that of it the psalmist sang: 'You are beautiful above the sons of men' (Ps 44:3). For perfect physical beauty, there are three requirements. The first is that the body should be tall and shapely; the second is that the parts of the body should be in due proportion; the third is good, healthy, clear colouring. As we read in the second chapter of Augustine's City ...

There are so many things that I wish I could do better than I do. Every night at dinner time, I wish that I knew better how to cook. Every Sunday in church, I wish that I could actually sing. On the rare occasions that I find myself at a party or wedding, I wish that I could dance. On outings like our visit to the Renaissance Faire this past weekend, I wish that I could take better photographs. Whenever we have people over to our apartment, I wish that I had a better eye for interior decorating. And on, and on, and on. If only I could make my life as beautiful as I can imagine it being: excellent food, beautiful music, exquisite furnishings and photographs, elegant dancing. And then, of course, there's myself. If only my clothes were more fashionable, my hair more manageable, my features more photogenic, my voice more pleasing, my carriage and gestures more graceful. No, I'm not going to show you a photograph; I hate seeing photographs of myself. Very rarely one com...

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 t...

I don't like the way I write. At least, not as much as I like the way some of my favorite authors--Barbara Newman, Elaine Scarry, Dorothy Sayers, J.R.R. Tolkien--do. Somehow the words just never come out the way I want them to; and yet, every time I try to write in some other way, it just seems fake, not my voice at all. I could try writing like my sister , more observationally, less argumentatively, which is not to say that she doesn't make arguments, just that she is not bound as I am to make apologies (like this one) for every claim that she makes. I wish that I could write more like my friend Barbara ; if you know her work, you will know why. She is so subtle and yet so profound in the problems that she sets; you think you are reading something simply about a particular text, and before you know it, the whole structure of medieval religious thinking has been turned inside out and laid bare. Scarry is another matter altogether: she is dense and difficult right from the...

By now every woman in America will have seen Valerie Bertinelli's photo on the cover of this month's People magazine; I've seen it and I'm always the last one to pick up on such media events. What was your reaction to seeing a 48-year-old woman looking--let's face it--pretty amazing, even if she is wearing nothing but a bright green string bikini? Okay, so that was the point: here's an almost 49-year-old woman (her birthday is April 23) who, doubtless with the usual help of a bit of airbrushing (and hair dye), looks as good as a 20-year-old without her clothes on. But Bertinelli is not just your usual aging starlet: two years ago, she would never have been photographed in such a revealing costume because at that point she weighed some fifty pounds more than she did when the bikini photos were taken. In a little under two years, Bertinelli went from 172 lbs. to her original goal of 132 lbs. and then, with the help of a trainer and a 1,200 calorie a day diet,...

I have a beautiful sister. I know this because men whom I have just met have been telling me so for pretty much my whole life, typically taking me aside to whisper it confidentially, as if somehow I hadn't noticed before. What they want (I guess) is for me to say something to her--"He thinks you're gorgeous"--but, of course, a) she already knows this and b) they don't really need me to tell her that they think this. I'm not really sure how I am supposed to respond. My husband (God bless him) thinks I'm crazy, not to mention just as beautiful as my sister (if not more so). But, then, he is in love with me. Does he love me because I am beautiful or does he see me as beautiful because he loves me? I wonder if a man (other than my husband) has ever taken my sister aside to gush over how beautiful he thinks I am. Here's the thing: why should I care? My husband loves me and I am utterly uninterested in any other man. Don't get me wrong. It'...

One of the more exciting things that happened when I first started fencing was miraculously, without consciously dieting, losing almost 30 pounds. Having tended for most of my life towards the plumper end of the average weight range for my height and build, this was an occasion for a considerable degree of rejoicing. Now I could go to the store and try on all of the clothes that I had always envied my sister for being able to wear. Curiously, however, although everything now looked "good" on me, I did not want to wear it all. I still had particular colors that I preferred and I didn't seem to want to change my fundamental style very much. Even more interesting, however, were the reactions that I got from family and friends. Most said nothing about my new size; only one of my relatives in fact remarked at how good I looked. But of those who did comment, it was more often than not with concern: "You don't look like yourself anymore." "You don't...