Is it really Friday? And this poor blog languishes here silent. Well, let’s see if there’s anything besides the fact that I still haven’t finished book editing, which I knew I wouldn’t.
One
Besides the hard deadline against which I am racing, the kids only have one more week of school and then finals week. Not that it will all be over at that point. Oh no, we’ll have a good long month to do all the stuff we planned to do during the year, apart from online classes, that we never got to. It’s going to be great. They are excited. (That’s a little joke, none of us are excited.)
Two
I was on a short “Podblast” with Melanie over at CRI this last week. I’m full of all kinds of reasons why you should not despair. And here is Matt in the first-ever Stand Firm podcast. Hopefully, that’ll be a regular thing.
Three
I have enjoyed being “unplugged,” which just means that I do stare at a computer screen all day without paying any attention to twitter or facebook or even email. By the end of the day, I can’t see anymore, my vision is 100% totally blurry no matter which side of the line of my bifocals I try to peer. That’s when I wander over my private chat with Matt and read all the articles he found during the day that I will never be able to blog about because they will be irrelevant in just a few minutes. I did love this one though. Apparently Rusty Reno has continued his epic meltdown. So sorry I missed it. The article is really good though. Put me in mind of Love Thy Body which I listened to a little bit ago and liked so much that I’ve ordered a physical copy. Seriously, if you haven’t read it, you should.
Four
Forgot that I also finished listening to Blue Like Jazz a couple of weeks ago, which, honestly, fits right into this conversation. The main thing that struck me about it was how dated it sounded. It is very early 2000, the sort of, ‘hey, I’m totally an orthodox Christian but I don’t really know much about historic Christianity, nor am I the least bit interested, I’d really rather cobble together all of my religious beliefs based on my feelings, you know?’ He said, ‘you know?’ at the end of almost every paragraph. Felt quite desperately mad toward the end.
There were a lot of things that set my teeth on edge, but when he got to the part about how he had to learn to “love” himself, by which he meant feeling feelings of affection for himself, which turned out to be a tortured and painful process (as it would), I tumbled into the usual grief. Because this, I think, is the very heart of the trouble we are all in, and why a “post-post-post-modern” whatever worldview is so cruel. To take the modern version of love that we have now and read it back into the scripture not only makes the bible itself incoherent, but it also makes God wicked. Of course you would reject him, if indeed that’s really what kind of love he was talking about, as if ‘self-acceptance’ can adequately cope with the torturous existential longings of the soul. As a cultural artifact, I do recommend Blue Like Jazz, and probably even Velvet Elvis. Or rather, don’t bother, everything you might come across now is built upon that thin, incoherent foundation.
Five
I was thinking I would like to post a picture of the six books I am reading right now, as some are in the habit of doing over on twitter. But that would be impossible because they are scattered all over the house. But I thought I might as well list them here, so you can feel suitably impressed.
- I’m in the Bosnia chapter of Black Lamb, Gray Falcon. I finally got to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. It is a masterful chapter, hauntingly tragic, and worth all the years it’s taken me to get almost halfway through the book!
- I’m a quarter of the way through Becoming Sage—very helpful, if depressing to me as I contemplate the second half of my life stretching before me, and the failures of the church for so many.
- Of course, I am dipping in and out of Untamed. Don’t want to spoil it, but I will have So Much to say and it’s going to be epic!
- I just read about the glories of Meatloaf in Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen. I have bought all the ingredients and am going to cajole my mother into making it because I have never made meatloaf and am afraid to try.
- I am up to “Failures” in Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden (it is so clever of writers to wander around and write about wherever they happen to be), which is a beautiful and perfect gardening book. She agrees with me about evergreen, which is astonishing. I feel so heard, seen, and affirmed.
- I’m reading Anne of Green Gables aloud to the girls. It’s time. I’m glad I waited because this is the perfect moment.
- Bonus—I am listening to the 20+ hour audible edition of all of Evelyn Waugh’s short stories. It’s pretty marvelous, as I knew it would be.
Six
The effect of “unplugging,” which really just means not scrolling through social media all the livelong day is that, though I am my usual wreck of a self—discontent, moody, frustrated, irritated by all the interruptions in life—yet I am not so…what’s the word…living on the “outrage” roller-coaster. It dawned on me that one reason why I am not a suitable person to be much online is that when people are “wrong” I feel personally offended. I am not able to be dispassionate about it. I spiral immediately into a cesspool of unnecessary emotion. There is not only the very foolish idea of the person, whose face I cannot see, incidentally, but there is also the cosmic implications of that foolishness, and the way it will spiral out over the world. It’s one thing to read those foolish ideas in a book—long form, so that the voice of that person has time to fully explain and “embody” all that foolishness, so that you really have to bite down and deal with the totality of the idea—it is absolutely another to come across it in 280 characters, and then another after, and then another, until the full weight of the insanity of the universe is dumped into my very soul.
If I were able to be dispassionate, as some are, I think it would be different, but I am not. Not that I’m getting off or anything, but I think I must always flit along the edges, not ever even dipping my toe fully into the pool.
Seven
Well, that’s plenty. I have to haul Eglantine off to hand therapy and then get back to work. They are working on, I think, the radial motion (that’s not actually the right word, can’t remember the real one) of her arm, and getting it to lie more naturally when she stands at rest. I’ll blog on Sunday, of course, and who knows about next week, we’ll see. In the meantime, go check out more takes!
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