The Enchanted 15: Source

A day late again, and I can't even blame photo upload issues. I had it all written and simply failed to hit "publish post". It's been a long week.

Part 3 in an ongoing series based on Jen's Enchanted 15 workshop.

Last October and November I had a practice I called Port Therapy. The germ of the idea started when I realized that I wasn't visiting Franciscan's perpetual adoration chapel at all because I didn't have time in my schedule for a full holy hour. So I told myself, "Fine, you don't have a 60-minute chunk. Do you have a 10-minute chunk?" It turns out I did, and 5 days a week I would spend 10 minutes of my morning in the chapel. (Adding up to almost a full holy hour per week.)

The beginning of the practice corresponded with a rather difficult period in my life. So I told God my terms: I was going to show up in the chapel and I was going to sit there for 10 minutes. I did not guarantee that I would pray. I just sat there and let my body and my thoughts do whatever they wanted. I usually ended up facedown and crying (my body is funny like that), but my thoughts went everywhere. Sometimes I did pray. Sometimes I felt something. Sometimes I just sat and fidgeted for 10 minutes and then walked away feeling nothing.

But I showed up, and it was those 10 minutes a day that kept me sane and kept me in the habit of putting myself in a place where God could speak to me if He wanted to.

So far I've been kind of lame at actually doing the Enchanted 15. Interestingly, the one time I did it I wrote for 20 minutes because once I started I didn't want to stop. Still, I've been justifying not setting that timer on the grounds that I don't feel like writing.

Well, nine months ago I didn't feel like praying, but I still showed up. Maybe that's what I need to tell myself--that if I have to I can spend 15 minutes a day sitting in front of a blank Word document. Maybe something will come, maybe it won't, but I need that habit of showing up and putting myself in a place where God can speak to me if He wants to.

You see, writing is prayer. For the last several years I've kept a prayer journal off and on (I'm more off than on lately) and it was some of the best prayer that I've ever had. I didn't always have something that I felt like writing. In fact, I didn't often have something that I felt like writing. When I didn't have any ideas of my own I would read a Psalm and write whatever came to me from that. My journal has a lot of paraphrased Psalms in it; it also has a lot of entries where a word or phrase or image would spark something and I would be off.

So, I've given myself an assignment for this week: Get out my prayer journal and my Bible. Read Psalm 1. Read it carefully. Spend as much time as I possibly can just soaking it in. Then spend 15 minutes writing.

Image credit: The photo is one of my own that I happened to have lying about (taken about a year ago to demonstrate that I hold my pencil funny), but inspired by the header of Jen's series.

Girlhood and Lost Innocence

Last night I was going through the archives at MommyWrites (You happy few who read this should all go read her stuff; she writes the sort of things I would write if I were cooler.) and came across this post, which led me to this article.

Now, I haven't read the Twilight books (I haven't even read Harry Potter yet; now I'm at least two pop culture phenomena behind. Oh well.) but I am a teenage girl (until November, anyway) so I feel I'm qualified to comment on teen girl psychology.

There are so many points in this article I'd like to pull out and discuss but there is one passage in particular that struck me:

As I write this, I am sitting on the guest-room bed of a close friend, and down the hall from me is the bedroom of the daughter of the house, a 12-year-old reader extraordinaire, a deep-sea diver of books. She was the fourth person through the doors of the Westwood Barnes & Noble the midnight that the series’ final volume, Breaking Dawn, went on sale, and she read it—a doorstop, a behemoth—in six hours, and then turned back to page one as though it were the natural successor to the last page.

Posted on this girl’s door—above the fading sticker of a cheery panda hopping over a pink jump rope, and one of a strawberry and a lollipop (their low placement suggesting the highest reach of a very small child), and to the right of an oval-shaped decal bearing the single, angry imperative STOP GLOBAL WARMING—is a small, black, square-shaped sticker that reads My Heart Belongs to Edward. In the middle is a photograph of a pair of shapely female hands proffering a red Valentine heart. Also taped to this girl’s closed door is a single piece of lined paper, on which she has written, in a carefully considered amalgam of block letters and swirly penmanship and eight different colors of crayon:

Edward’s Fan Club You may only enter if you know the password

[snip]

Years and years ago, when I was a young girl pressing myself into novels and baking my mother pretty birthday cakes, and writing down the 10 reasons I should be allowed to purchase and wear to the eighth-grade dance a pair of L’eggs panty hose, I knew that password. But one night a few years after that dance, I walked into a bedroom at a party and saw something I shouldn’t have, and a couple of months after that I unwisely accepted a ride to the beach from a boy I hardly knew, and then I was a college girl carrying a copy of Hartt’s History of Renaissance Art across campus and wondering whether I should take out a loan and go to graduate school, and somewhere along the way—not precisely on the day I got my first prescription for birth control, and not exactly on the afternoon I realized I had fallen out of love with one boy and had every right to take up with another—somewhere along the way, I lost the code.

I read that, and I felt...misplaced, almost. Or perhaps divided would be a better word. There is a part of me that understands all the tired skepticism of the coed who knows that guys can be jerks sometimes and girls get their hearts broken more often than not. (In all fairness, girls can be jerks sometimes too, but that's beside the point at the moment...)

Yet at the same time...I still have the code. I can still pick up a story about a bewildered adolescent girl just starting to discover boys and feel for her, deeply, because I still don't know the answers to most of those questions she asks about boys and relationships and grown-up things like that.

Maybe someday I'm going to lose even that last fragile hold on innocence. After all, someday I'm going to get married and then men (in the form of one particular man) will become rather less mysterious, right? And then perhaps I will suddenly realize whatever it is that all these grown-up women have realized.

And yet, and yet...another small quote from the article:

In Prep, the heroine wants something so fundamental to the emotional needs of girls that I find it almost heartbreaking: she wants to know that the boy she loves, and with whom she has shared her body, loves her and will put no other girl in her place.

We all want that. Some of us want it in a sort of desperate way after we've already given the boy everything we have to give. Some of us lack the desperation but still have the need to have someone tell us that there are guys out there who are worth waiting for. We're not waiting because if we don't it will be gross and he will leave us. We're waiting because if we do it will be wonderful and he will love us forever.

Can God have given us all this desire and not meant for us to have some way to fulfill it? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred we mess it up, because we're fallen humans; or the guy messes it up because he's fallen too. But maybe once in a blue moon we who give all the passion in our girlish souls to trying to get it right actually make it. Maybe that is the fulfillment of everything the dreamy teenage girl in us ever imagined. Maybe growing up doesn't have to mean being disillusioned.

To put it another way: maybe all those dreams are a beautiful but fragile flower, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred that gets crushed and destroyed, but sometimes it's protected and left to grow so that what you get in the end is its fruit--not as pretty as the flower but still whole, and sweet.

The Enchanted 15: Space

A day late, because of photo-upload issues.

This post is inspired by Just Jen and her series on The Enchanted 15. This week's installment is on space and enchanted objects.

This is my space:

The only thing I did before taking this picture was turn the picture frame (see it? slightly right of the midpoint?) backwards. That picture frame is one of my enchanted objects. It houses a picture of the majority of my household sisters on a retreat we had last fall.

The tape measure in the upper left corner is not an enchanted object. It is just there. The whiteboard calendar is also not an enchanted object. I bought it before leaving for college and used it once. I have since begun a passionate love affair with post-it notes. I should get rid of the whiteboard. (And buy some more post-it notes. I go through them like crazy.)

(Random bit of trivia: the text on my computer screen is this article, link provided by our lovely hostess, Jen.)

Now I shall give you a glimpse of some of my enchanted objects.


Three things all in a stack here: A Reader's Digest from February of 2007, a Magnificat from April of 2008, and a crayon drawing by a particular two-year-old of whom I am rather fond. The reason I keep the drawing is fairly self-explanatory (well, I could tell you lots of stories about my little friend but that would take too long and anyway she's not blog fodder.) The Reader's Digest I keep because February 2007 is the month I met the Cobbler. The Magnificat I keep because April 2008 is the month he and I started dating.



In this picture are two enchanted objects. On the left is a decade rosary, one of two that I made (on the retreat during which the above-mentioned picture was taken, actually). The other I gave to Mari. On the right is a locket that was given to me as a high school graduation present by my two best friends. (Who at the time were my only friends--I'm one of those people who prefers quality over quantity. Or maybe I just tell myself that to cover for the fact that I was unpopular. :))

Here you see a stack of envelopes. These envelopes contain letters, hand-written by the Cobbler and mailed to me. There are twenty-three of them. (One of which is still un-replied-to. After I finish this post I must apply pen to paper.) Normally I have them flipped the other way, but if I did that in this photo you'd get a lovely view of our full names and home addresses.



This is my chair. It is an incredibly ugly mustard-yellow-and-tan metal monstrosity that I got at Goodwill for a couple of dollars last summer. I love it. It is a good chair.

This is the Blue Bunny. He is not an enchanted object; he is just a stuffed rabbit. But you can see his feet in the picture of the chair so I thought, "Hey, who wouldn't want to see a picture of a giant blue stuffed bunny?"











This is one of our cats. She is also not an enchanted object; she is just a cat. But she likes to "help" me write, and who doesn't want to see a picture of a cute kitty?

The Enchanted 15: Time

Friend Jen has spent the last several weeks doing a series on the Enchanted 15 minutes. Being a slow sort of person, I've only just now resolved that come what may I am going to start being enchanted. So, today I present to you my timer.

I was going to follow Jen's advice and buy a special writing timer, but it's that sort of thinking that got me 4 weeks behind on this whole Enchanted 15 thing. Right now I am working on things being Good Enough because if I wait until they are perfect nothing will ever get done. (Also, I'm kind of short on discretionary funds at the moment.)

This phone has been my companion for a very long time. It has gotten dropped on concrete, repeatedly. It has gotten run through the washing machine at least once. It's gotten taken on water rides at theme parks without even a plastic baggie to keep it safe. It's only needed its battery replaced once and that was due to a defect in the battery, apparently, not to the abuse mentioned above. It's a good little phone, and it is in some ways itself an enchanted object (more on those sorts of things next week).

I've got the alarm tone programmed for something other than the tone the phone makes when it rings, and when I'm ready to write it will be ready to be set for 15 minutes and then sing merrily at me when they are over.

Responding to Alterity

Recently my blog-friend Kyle posted a fragment on alterity and my thoughts in response to his post ended up being too long for a combox. So, I post them here.

Kyle speaks of looking into a familiar face and suddenly realizing that he could never exhaust the full meaning of that person. Our ideas about a person can be basically true, but not exhaustive, not the final word on who that person is.

I've had a somewhat similar experience on a number of occasions; mostly when talking to or about people much older than myself. If you ever want to experience alterity, go up to one of your parents or a beloved teacher or some other person of that sort and ask them to tell you about their childhood. Better yet, ask them what they wanted to do with their lives when they were your age. (This works best if you are about 17 or 18 years old.) To cite an example: I've known my mother now for 19 1/2 years. (20 1/4, if you count the time I spent inside her). I'd say I know her pretty well after all that. Yet...she is not just my mom. And I will probably never comprehend fully how she became who she is today, even though I've been around for almost half her life.

I wonder if my children will ever have that same experience with me. They could ask a question as innocent as "What was it like when you were dating Daddy?" and I'd have to tell them a story that I can't possibly express for you, dear readers, right now as I type this. Perhaps I will never be able to express it. These past few years have been a journey in alterity if there ever was one.

Which brings me to another thought that came to me as I was reading Kyle's post: The Cobbler is an Other. You'd think I'd have known that already. I've known him for only 2 1/2 of his almost 20 years, and called him my friend for only about 18 months. (And my boyfriend for 14--we progressed beyond friendship pretty quickly.) Yet for all that I think I could say (and he might even agree with me) that I probably know him better than anybody else, even better than his parents or older brothers who have known him for the entire time he's existed on this earth.

Still, he remains Other. I remember on one occasion, within a month of when we started dating, the two of us were making a holy hour together and as we sat and prayed I was suddenly struck with the realization that in that moment he was alone with God, even though I was no more than a foot to his right.

It's something I need to be reminded of sometimes, that the Cobbler is not merely an accesory to God's plan for me, nor am I an accessory to God's plan for him. God has an individual plan for each of us; we lived those plans separately for about 18 years and will live them together for as long as God grants us to do so, but ultimately there will be no chance to do what Adam and Eve did; stand pointing fingers under the force of God's judgement. In the end, he is going to be even more alone with God than he is in Adoration, and he will be saved or damned based on who he is within himself (though certainly I could bear responsibility for either helping or hindering his growth in virtue).

And ultimately I will be alone too, with the one who is altogether Other.

Archetypes

The first book I ever read by G. K. Chesterton was The Ballad of the White Horse. (If you have not read it, go read it now. I mean it.) If someone was getting into Chesterton for the first time and asked for something to read, I would tell them to read the Ballad. (Do not try to read Orthodoxy first, or even second or third. You will lose your will to live.)

This recommendation comes first from the fact that it is fairly short (my edition is 170 pages of verse, so there is lots of white space on those 170 pages) and easy to read--poetry just goes faster than prose, at least for me. There are no dense passages and super-long sentences to get bogged down in.

Also because it gives you a very clear idea of how Chesterton goes about writing his fiction. As he says in the Prefatory Note:

I have summarised this first crusade in a triple symbol, and given to a fictious Roman, Celt, and Saxon, a part in the glory of Ethandune. I fancy that in fact Alfred's Wessex was of very mixed bloods.

Chesterton goes on to give his reason, but this post is not concerned with that so much as with his method. He is not overly concerned with making his characters "realistic." Rather, each character is a representative of something bigger--in this case, the contributions which the various races made to Christian Britain at the time of King Alfred. Yet at the same time he allows them room to have faces and names and personalities.

Since reading the Ballad, I've read (among a few other things) The Napoleon of Notting Hill, Manalive, and The Ball and the Cross. I think having read the Ballad first was good for me because I expected the characters in his other fiction works to be like the characters in the Ballad, and I was not disappointed. Michael Moon is like a 20th-century version of Colan, and so greatly delighted me.

But I think Michael Moon and his compatriots puzzle some people for the precise reason that Michael is a 20th-century version of Colan. He is not meant to be the kind of person you would necessarily meet on the street in England. He is meant to be an archetype of something else. Since it would be a bit of guesswork to assign archetypes to the characters in Manalive, I'll switch gears a bit: Evan McIan is also like a 20th-century version of Colan, and he very clearly represents Faith, battling with Reason (Turnbull). The eventual outcome of the struggle between Faith and Reason I will not reveal; read the book. (I read it over the course of 2 days; it's not hard to get through.)

If it seems at times that the characters are mouthpieces for Chesterton's philosophy, it's because they are. Chesterton is completely and utterly unconcerned with the fact that he has characters who have been established as uneducated giving long philosophical speeches. So, why write fiction at all if you're more concerned about your philosophy than your characters?

Well, because you have people like me, who despite my undying love for Chesterton, cannot get through books like Orthodoxy. I read, I laugh, I walk away in utter incomprehension. When it comes to Chesterton's fiction, though, I read, I laugh, I walk away with symbols and concepts slowly working their way into meaningful positions in my brain.

And, quite honestly, they're just plain fun stories. Maybe they are a little bit like fairy-tales with their clear-cut characters, but who doesn't secretly (or openly, if you're like me) enjoy a good fairy-tale now and again?

Updated (pre-publication) to add: Recently I started rereading Heretics and am happy to report that I actually get it; much better than I did when I was 16 and reading it for the first time. I've absorbed enough of Chesterton's thought, I think, that I can get my mind into the shape of his ideas now. I still haven't retried Orthodoxy, though.

Mini-blogging

So, dear readers. I haven't been trying to be scarce lately. Our internet had been slowly dying since Saturday. It gasped its last yesterday afternoon. Dad brought home a new modem and installed it on his lunch break today. Yay for geek daddies. :)

Anyway. I am popping up to announce something I've been toying with for--oh, seven months? Since the Cobbler went on his two-month Facebook strike and I went through a brief phase of exploring other media. One of the new things was a Twitter account. After he got back on Facebook I took a five-month hiatus, but lately I have been slowly climbing on the Twitter bandwagon.

So, once I finish this post (provided the torrential downpour occuring outside my window doesn't knock out our shiny new internet connection) I will put a Twitter widget on my sidebar and you can keep up with me that way. I'm trying to make it semi-profound; no "I am going to eat lunch now!" kind of things. But it saves the blog itself from getting cluttered with two-sentence posts. Hopefully I'll have profound thoughts during the summer, when I'm not taking 2 theology classes and a Great Books seminar. Some of my tweets (that's what they're called, apparently) are post ideas; as I get more writing time I hope to go back and flesh out a bunch of them. Between Twitter and said posts, I hopefully will not disappear off the face of the blogosphere for weeks at a time again.