The Need For Excellent Men

I have spent a lot of time thinking about how I want to reply to the #YesAllWomen hash tag and the conversations that it has been spurring.

There have been many powerful posts and images that need to be heard…there have equally been idiotic arguments and statements made from every party.

I see the rage from those who have been hurt and the fear from those who don’t wish to be seen as monsters.

Personally, it has brought up memories of things that happened to me that I had forgotten. Like being twelve on a tram overseas and having my butt groped multiple times by a grown man before I understood what was happening and then stayed quite because I didn’t know what to say afterwards.

It made me realize that things I wrote off as normal shouldn’t have been. Sexual slurs, inappropriate cat calling, “friends” trying to get close to me so they could look down my shirt.

It made me cry for the incredibly travesties that other women have experienced.

What surprised me is how grateful it made me for men.

For while our culture is surely saturated by men who degrade women, in my life, I have known men who chose to encourage and empower women. Men who knew chivalry not as diminishing of women but as respect for them. Men who chose to stand up for women and protect them, not because women were weak but because we were valuable and equals.  Because nobody should ever be allowed to treat us as less than that.

I am lucky that my father taught me that a man should respect a woman. That I only ever saw love and encouragement modeled in my home by my father towards my mother and towards my sister and I.

That I had uncles and male cousins who told me (even as a young child) that if a man ever harmed me they would show up in force to stand by my side.

That one of these cousins who lived in LA (where I moved to go to school) made sure I always had his updated cell number so I could call him if I ever was in trouble.

That in high school when I told my male friends about the creep that kept looking down my shirt, instead of laughing or writing it off, took it upon themselves to always stand between me and the creep so he couldn’t get close enough to peep.

That in college, two of my closest friends were men who regularly told me I was intelligent and valuable and worthwhile.

That these same two men, when I was being stalked and the stalking culminated in a day of the stalker calling me ceaselessly and shadowing me around campus, chose to stay by my side and took my phone so I wouldn’t have to feel afraid every time my pocket vibrated (to this day I don’t know what they said to the stalker while they had my phone, but I was never bothered by him again).

That when I reported the stalking to a professor, it was taken seriously.  (the professor was a woman in this case …but a fantastic example of a school handling sexual aggression positively).

That I knew many men as friends, who had no romantic interest in me, and they valued me for who I was, not for how I looked or what I could physically offer them.

That my husband honors and respects me, knows that love means sacrifice and not just getting what you want, watches out for me without ever making me feel weak, stands beside me, views me as an equal not as an object.

I read these tweets and articles about #YesAllWomen and after the feelings of sorrow and anger, what comes to mind is that we need to lift up excellent men as examples of what real manhood means.

Saying women have been mistreated is an excellent start. It is vitally important. We must keep doing it. We cannot stay silent and I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity for so many women to speak up.

However, men are being told they are wrong from every direction. Rarely are they given a chance to see what is right.

While we continue to decry the mistreatment of women, let us also lift up examples of excellent men. People who the boys in our culture can emulate. So they not only have a list of what not to do, but they also see exactly what they should be.

(I hope this post will not be seen as de-railing to the positive work that is being done by this hash tag, my desire is that we can also begin talking about a solution as we bring the problem to light).

Stars

Someone once told me that tears make the stars shine brighter.


Have you ever looked at stars with tears in your eyes?




Photo Cred: Sideshowsito http://browse.deviantart.com/photography/?q=fireflies#/d2jmk2p

Life is Not a Tragedy

Nobody doubts that there is suffering in the world...and culture finds it cool and hip to be depressed about it. To let your internal and external pain haunt and torment you. To be tormented, and hopeless...yes, that is very often what culture portrays as good and attractive. Why do girls flood to see Twilight or Harry Potter...young and attractive men tormented by an inner demon? Because somehow, this torment is seen as beautiful...if you have been tormented and hurt, then you are deep. And depth is beauty.

Perhaps.

And yet, what kind of life does that give? It turns our world into a tragedy where the happy people are superficial liars or simply unable to cope with the pain of life. There is, I cannot nor would I ever hope to deny, that there is such abundant beauty in pain. Yet, that is not the eternal end of our lives. We were not created to hurt. We were created to glory with our Creator in a land that sees no more pain or tears.

So clearly these things must come to an end.

Yet, what should we cling to as deep and lovely? Because to only be happy is truly a superficial lie. And if pain is a passing beauty, what is the deeper one? How can we truly learn to be deep people, who can reach out to those around us?

Lasting, so then eternal, beauty?

The only thing that will never pass away, the thing that makes the very essence of God himself, and life eternal with him. Perhaps this is love? Maybe it is joy? Or some combination of the two? I am not sure if that can ever be known. But I know that whatever the deepest beauty is in heaven, it will stand compariston. We can take anything that is lovely and beautiful and say that, maybe, it is like that, and it certainly will be...and much better. Let poetry, art, effcient machines, love, and nature speak to what is beautiful, and then seek to find God's beauty beyond that. That beauty, both in nature and in actions of creation and redemption, is eternal. That beauty is what we ought to spend our lives seeking.

But there is a problem.

We so often are too easily pleased with the beauties of this world...and when we sin, it is because we are too easily satisfied. Our desires are too strong...and not strong enough. If we knew what we really desired, we would seek it with our whole beings. And yet, we fall into depravity and sin...choosing carnal and banal things instead of the really beautiful things that will last into eternity. And in doing this we hurt. We hurt ourselves, and we hurt others...and suddenly the beauty of pain is destroying everyone we love. And we are powerless, truly, to do anything to stop it.

This world is not a tragedy.

There is a way to learn to love the higher things. We must change our desires. And seek that which is higher. This, takes discipline. Lewis in his book The Weight of Glory (where most of these ideas are coming from) compares it to a school boy learning Greek. At first it is just hard work, and he could never imagine in a million years how beautiful Greek poetry and writings can be...for now it is just conguations, declentions, and awful foreign letters. But as he keeps at it, eventually it becomes natural. And then, he begins to read Cicero, Plato, and the great poets in their native tongue, and he cannot but joy and glory in them. How lovely is this hidden world of mysteries, mysteries locked away. As is the eternal beauty...it is a mystery, hidden from mortals...but God made known the mystery in Jesus Christ, in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And so in becoming like Christ, we learn these mysteries.

This world is a mystery unveiled.

Paul, in his letters, teaches us how to become more like Christ, the unveiler of mysteries...and as we become more like him, we begin to understand the mysteries of eternity more and more...until, suddenly, like the boy with his Greek, we understand how beautiful eternity is and how to love and rejoice in such depth and sincerity. Seek Christ, and learn to know him in his character and in his sufferings. Paul exhorts both...but certainly not to dwell on sufferings, but see them as a means to an end. The pain is not the beauty, the glory of God is, and pain is only beautiful in its ability to show God in his glory and his glory in us.

And like the boy...becoming like Christ, expecially at first, will likely be difficult, and at times we will want only to run to lesser joys. But in keeping the discipline, the desires begin to change. So there is no need to despair, if at first our hearts do not seem to feel as they ought for the journey they are embarking upon. For the desire to engage the journey will come, as we simply start going.

Discipline will begin to change the desires.

And the desires will grow stronger and stronger as we pray and seek God as we live our lives seeking his mysteries.

I had always hoped that life would be a big mystery that we could one day know the answer to...and yet, even in eternity we will not be equal to God...so in many ways, even eternity may be filled with mystery...and that is beautiful indeed. To get to spend eternity knowing and seeking the mysteries of God, the glory of God, the beauty of God.

Goals...

For this summer I want to keep myself thinking well and pushing myself creatively. SO...the goal is to post one analytical/thoughtful post and one creative post a week.

To start off the week...is a poem (prose-poem? I am not really sure what this one is).

A Disturbed Reflection

Silence spans the marshland
Water, clear-grey, reflects the foggy sky
Perfectly still.
No wind.
The water reflects back the bushes and shrubs.
The difference between the real thing and its reflection?
Maybe that its upside down.
Then, maybe its easier to see it that way?

A stork, sun-white, lands in the water
ripples distort the reflection.
Now we know.
The perfect silence returns
All is as it was before
Better for having been disturbed.

I am thinking

...a dangerous pasttime, I know.

But seriously, I have been thinking a lot about how much my generation values authenticity. What exactly is it anyways? And how does it help us and also how is it hindering us?

More thoughts to follow...

Dispelling Delustion (Torrey Paper for this semester)

Introduction

    Very few people avoid the subtle allure of self-deception.  In fact, you may be lying to yourself right now without even knowing it. Usually, we deceive ourselves when we seek to hold onto an emotionally founded belief that does not line up with reality, so we choose to deceive ourselves about reality instead of change the belief. To break away from self-deception requires a means of speaking truth into our deepest emotions and breaking through complex mental defenses.  While there are certainly many ways to do this, one method particularly suited to identifying and eradicating self-deception is to take a journey in the strange realm of faerie by reading fairy tales.  Fairy tales have the special ability of creating a sense of unfamiliarity about things usually taken for granted, an occurrence called defamiliarization, that can help to disarm some common tactics of self-deception.  Additionally, fairy tales tend to address questions of human existence in new and unfamiliar ways. This can help a person break out of habitual thought patterns that may enslave him to self-deception and see life in a new light. 

        Self Deception

To begin this journey let us ask what, exactly, is self-deception? Self-deception is when “truth ceases to be the primary goal of inquiry”  and we choose to “manage our beliefs with no regard for the truth” . Here, the type of inquiry is the seeking of self-knowledge, specifically as regards internal beliefs affected by internal and external factors or experiences, and truth is the correct internal belief that properly corresponds with those given experiences.  So, self-deception occurs as the truth about the self or about a situation becomes too difficult to accept and the mind quietly and discretely begins to believe something different.  For example, victims of traumatic car collisions sometimes create false memories to help cope with the accident.  These internal beliefs, being the false memories, do not correspond with the true experience, the actual events of the accident.
While most self-deception happens more subtly than the example, the root cause still springs from incongruence between a person’s beliefs and truth.  Ten Elshof, a scholar on the philosophy of self-deception, explains that self-deception springs from a deeply emotional need for personal well-being.  A person’s felt well-being depends on their beliefs about important life questions: Am I acceptable and loved?  Am I succeeding? Am I safe?   Often when the answers to these questions are not pleasant the mind will make changes to its way of thinking, manipulating its own perceptions.    The mind chooses to deceive itself into thinking difficult situations are not as difficult as they seem.  Or, it may choose to think the situations are worse and create reasons to sink into a wallowing depression.  Either way, the mind trades a more acceptable explanation for a painful truth.
Take for example a girl who is looking to find the answer to her “am I acceptable” question.  She lives in a family where her younger brother is chronically ill and she sees that the family’s attention goes towards caring for the ill person.  Mistakenly, she appropriates value to illness.  Even while her parents tell her that she is loved and valued for other reasons, she consistently tries to make herself sick or conjure reasons to go to the hospital.  Self-deception has created an incongruency between the truth that her parent’s value her and her belief that she must be sick to be valued.
In this illustration, two primary characteristics of self-deception can be seen.  First, the girl has formed an emotionally-based belief.  She feels that illness is better than health because it receives more attention and therefore has more value.  Second, she has taken this belief and created a personal habit that ties into her identity.  In self-deception, when the mind begins changing its manner of thinking, these redirections become ingrained into a habit that becomes so comfortable the person may mistakenly believe this habit to be a part of her identity.    The girl has created such a habit, where she associates her identity with consistently seeking a way to be ill.  This creates a secondary problem, where the self-deceptive way of thinking becomes so familiar and tied to identity that all other input must be tweaked to conform to it.  This tweaking, or filtering, becomes a mental habit where everything familiar immediately goes through this mental filter. This is the reason why, despite her parent’s best efforts to tell her, she cannot receive the information that she is valued regardless of illness.
    When generally looking for a way to eradicate self-deception in the mind, these two characteristics must be considered.  The means of speaking to self-deception has to simultaneously address the questions of well-being and have a way to slip past the mental filters of the person.  It is precisely these two considerations that make fairy tales a prime candidate for eradicating self-deception.

A Different World

The primary strength in fairy tales for addressing self-deception is their ability to defamiliarize the commonplace.  When reading fairy tales, the things that seem so familiar in the ordinary world, become suddenly strange.  After reading only a few fairy tales, one quickly learns that a tree is anything but just a tree in the world of Faerie.  Who knows but in just a moment a beautiful dryad may emerge from its bark? Or it could rise up on its roots like legs and terrorize the surrounding cottages, eating the children who cannot escape quickly enough? A fairy story can take us to places of magic, where we can never be quite sure what is happening or what will happen next.  These stories create their own rules for existence, so strange and yet so perfectly acceptable - if they resonate with an internal congruency - that we are willing to suspend disbelief, abandon our preconceptions and jump to another world. The defamilarizing effect here is so pervasive, that not only do individual objects appear strange and “other”, but the whole world becomes Other…it becomes Faerie. 
Given the array of stories that dabble in the unusual, before progressing it is helpful to consider what exactly makes a “fairy tale”. Tolkien limits the definition of fairy tale to stories about strange wonders that take place outside our own world and that are presented as entirely true.   While this is a good definition, for the purposes of this paper, I wish to expand it to include works that create different types of “other” experiences in a different world.  This means dream stories, certain traveller’s tales, tales that explore the inner “otherness” of the mind (for example the film Mirrormask written by Niel Gaimen), and even sorts of magic realism could be included.  This is due to their defamiliarizing effect on the mind, and the elements of Other these stories contain, even if not being full fledged fairy tales according to Tolkien’s definition.
Looking to the content of these stories, they seem to derive their external subject matter from nature and its fantastic variations, such as mixing trees and girls to get dryads. But the meaning of these stories emerges from the tellers themselves,  people intimately acquainted with human experience both external and internal. Given this human element, these stories, like most good literature, grapple with the deep and intrinsic questions of human existence.  Included in these questions are the deeply emotional questions that are at the core of self-deception. 
For its ability to resonate with human experience, fairy tales serve as a beautiful mirror for our world. In fairy tales, the mind cannot grasp all that occurs since strange events and wonders keep baffling reason and preconceptions of how things work.  So, it is often the subliminal, emotional aspect of humanity that drives the story and is most deeply affected by hearing the tale. When we make the enchanted jump into the Otherworld, we have to leave behind our preconceptions of how things work in “reality” and approach the experiences with a childlike wonder and awe. This process of suspending disbelief, where readers must lay aside their preconceptions and habitual ways of processing information, is what makes the fairy tale work.    During this laying down of habitual mental patterns, those filters created by self-deceptive thinking can be laid aside as well, providing a unique opportunity to present ideas and answers about the questions of human experience in a fresh light.  It is in this moment that the fairy story can slip past the person’s mental defenses so impenetrable in the ordinary world, and deliver a fresh perspective to the root of the self-deception or cause the person to start thinking about the question at all and serve as a catalyst towards identifying points of self-deception and successfully eradicating it.
These principles will be exemplified throughout the paper by the story of “Donkeyskin” written by Charles Perrault, a classic French fairy tale author from the 17th century.  Perrault, along with the Grimm brothers, has provided most of the classic fairy tale stories such as Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Snow White, etc. In “Donkeyskin”, after the death of the queen, the king begins to have incestuous desires for his daughter.  Counseled by her fairy godmother, the girl tells him she will concede only if he gives her “ a dress the color of the seasons” thinking “he will never be able to fulfill [her] request.”   When he presents her with the dress, the request is repeated for two more such dresses.  Both times the king provides the garments. Finally, the girl asks for the skin of the donkey that provides the kingdom’s wealth by excreting gold coins. The king kills the beast and, full of fright, the girl flees wearing the donkey’s skin and taking the beautiful dresses with her.  She becomes a scullery maid at a farmhouse near the castle of another king.  She works and toils, always wearing the donkeyskin and hiding her beauty except in her spare moments alone in her room, when she will chance a moment in one of the dresses.   One day, the prince sees her through the keyhole and immediately falls in love with her beauty and “most of all…a wise and modest reserve that bore witness to the beauty of her soul”.   In the throes of lovesickness, he asks for a cake made by her hand, into which she bakes her ring.  The prince decrees that the woman whose finger fits the ring will be his bride.  Women go to many lengths to try to fit the ring, even shaving off parts of their fingers to make them smaller, but none fit.  After every other woman in the kingdom is tried, Donkeyskin is called, the ring fits and they are married.  

Five Tactics of Self-Deception

    To understand more specifically how fairy tales can eradicate self-deception, it is necessary to understand more specifically how self-deception works.  Ten Elshof identifies five primary ways that people deceive themselves: Attention Management, Procrastination, Perspective Switching, Rationalization, and Ressentiment.  The mind usually combines these tactics to create complex, subtle multi-layered deceptions.
    In attention management, “we manage to deceive ourselves by systematically avoiding attention to evidence against those beliefs upon which our felt well-being depends.”  Here, the mind knows that there is evidence to contradict its belief, but instead chooses to look the other direction. It distracts itself and feels so comfortable with the distractions and new habits that the contrary evidence seems to vanish.  For our girl, she hears her parents telling her she is valuable but if she accepts this information, her belief about value being linked to illness must change.  Her mind begins to redirect her attention to all the instances when her brother got nice things because he was sick, or when people fawned over him when he was lying in the hospital and soon her parent’s voices fade into the background.  The opposing evidence has been cunningly, and often by the person unknowingly, ignored.
    Procrastination occurs when the mind obscures the conviction of knowledge by putting off action until a later point, eventually dulling the conviction so that it can act in agreement with the already established beliefs.  When a person feels struck by a conviction he usually feels compelled to act.  However, if he puts off that action for a day or two it seems less important – eventually it can be forgotten or the mind could even convince itself that it is better not to act. The overall goal of procrastination is to use time to dull any conviction that does not fall in accordance with the established beliefs.
    Perspective switching and rationalization are closely tied.  Perspective switching consists of a person disregarding his own view for another’s when he likes it better or to disregard another’s views when he prefers his own.  Rationalization is similar but has a broader application.  It occurs when someone takes any perspective and talks himself into holding it by reasoning and habit.  This perspective does not actually have to be held by any particular person, but only needs to come from a logical rationale for why a belief could be held or actions taken. Logical statements mask established beliefs so the person can continue to function in the belief, sometimes without admitting that he actually holds it.
    Ressentiment is a “reordering of…our affections, sentiments, and value judgments in order to avoid severe disappointment” .  In this deception, we trick ourselves about whether we believe something at all.  When placed in a painful situation we are powerless to change, we tell ourselves that we never wanted what we thought we wanted, or that it would not have been good after all.  Ressentinment can also show up as an over-valuing of another sentiment creating an unbalanced mindset or creating a sense that the original belief was actually wrong.  For the girl, she has chosen to believe that illness is more valuable than health, so anytime she is ill she enjoys her life more than when she is well and playing soccer, traveling to the mountains or doing other things only healthy people can do.  This creates an unbalanced mindset where her mind causes her to experience less enjoyment in things that should be enjoyable and more enjoyment at things that should not be.
Each of these tactics can serve to perpetuate self-deception about beliefs that we hold and avoid a necessary confrontation with them.  Usually, these mindsets occur without the person’s even being aware of them since the mind’s goal is to hide them from itself.  At times, each of these tactics can actually be helpful and necessary to cope with a traumatic situation or to gain distance from a particularly painful situation, but when they become ways that mask and hide harmful beliefs then they move from being coping mechanisms to means to perpetuate self-deception.

Fairy Tales and Self Deception: Discovering Delusion

Looking at the five ways that people deceive themselves, a general pattern for self-deception seems to arise.  All five tactics function on the general principle of shielding or masking the truth by using reason to hide an emotionally based belief.  If a person discover the truth of what he believes he must be able to honestly ask and answer the questions of how do I really feel? Think? Act? Relate?  If he cannot truthfully answer these questions then he will not escape self-deception. Yet, given the complex barriers the mind puts in place to avoid exactly such honest questions and answers, it seems almost impossible to ask these questions truthfully.  For this reason, the fairy tale serves an important role of being able to raise these questions for a person to slip by the mind’s mental barriers though defamiliarization and help a person to begin an honest conversation about what is inside their minds and emotions.
Tolkien identifies two elements of fairy tales that I believe are crucial to addressing self-deception: Recovery and Consolation.   Recovery is “regaining a clear view”  by seeing truth with a new perspective.  The familiar is the hardest thing to see, but given the fantastic and unbelievable nature of fairy stories, they open our minds to the conversation of what we do, in fact, believe.  This occurs due to defamiliarization but it also because of the necessary question in any fairy tale: do I believe this?  Which eventually leads to the question: what do I even believe and why?  Beginning in the fairy world, the questions can bleed out into the ordinary world and open our minds to the conversation of what we believe about our world and ourselves, forcing us to face the beliefs and decide what we actually believe, not just what we say we believe. These conversations leads to points of identification that help us to grasp where we are deceiving ourselves and begin the long, arduous process of gaining a true perspective.
At the end of “Donkeyskin”, Perrault gives the moral of his tale: bread and water is enough nourishment for a woman who knows she is beautiful, both in appearances and in her soul (for the prince fell in love with both).  When reading this story, a young woman would wonder if he is right. Is it true that a woman can endure any trial with this knowledge?  Surely, Donkeyskin endured great trials: she suffered her mother’s death, she had to decide between honoring her father and keeping her purity, she hid her true identity, and she was subjected to constant ridicule and manual labor. Yet she endured it all because she believed she was beautiful.  This brings the woman to question what she thinks about herself.  She begins to ask if she thinks she is beautiful, in her appearance? In her soul?  This is a difficult question where many of us likely have adopted self-deceptive tactics to avoid addressing how we think about ourselves.  Through this story, these questions begin to arise and a person can start to address places where self-deception may dwell.

Fairy Tales and Self-Deception: Healing

    Once a person begins to process through the levels of self-deception in his life, there can be a great deal of hopelessness that nothing will change and discouragement about how complex these deceptions are.  Here, too, fairy tales can come in and offer us consolation, the second element that Tolkien identified.  The greatest consolation that fairy tales give us is hope.  There is hope that even in the midst of great trial and hardship, if we keep pressing on there will be good, that there will be some sort of redemption.   For Donkeyskin, it was the dresses, the very symbol of her previous hardship that created a way for her to rise again.  This shows that it is very often our worst moments that create in us the opportunity and ability to raise up and see the redemption of the hardship.  There is no promise in this story that she does not encounter more hardship, she very likely does.  However, it does promise a restoration of the pain and a hope that we can eventually rise above our trials.
    Fairy tales also offer consolation though showing us new ways of looking at how to think and how to live.  For the girl who finds value in illness, the story of Donkeyskin tells her that value does not lay in either her health or illness, but actually comes from a deeper beauty of soul.  The story speaks to the truth of her situation, effectively side-stepping her attention management and ressentiment by directly addressing her belief through showing her that she had value statements in the wrong place.  Then, the promise of consolation comes to her and promises that by believing she is actually valuable because of her soul she can survive through difficulties. If Donkeyskin could survive, perhaps we can too, and if Donkeyskin gained happiness from her pain, then maybe our pain will be redeemed someday too.  Fairy tales can teach us the proper emotional beliefs to have - beliefs that allow for pain and hardship, yet still have hope for a good life in the midst of it.  And that hope is the path out of self-deception.

The Dangers of Fairy Tales

    This idea of fairy tales being used to solve the problem of self-deception may certainly cause some stir.  After all, aren’t fairy tales generally held responsible for creating in children unrealistic hopes of happily-ever-after endings and false assurances of charming princes riding in for the rescue?  In short, aren’t fairy tales actually responsible for encouraging self-deception?    At the very least, they seem to encourage people not to engage with reality, another self-deceptive tactic.  Unfortunately, this can occur however it is due rather to poor readings of fairy tales rather than a fault of the tale itself.
We are often prone to read fairy tales purely for entertainment value, due in part to their enjoyable and fantastic nature, but tend to ignore full capacity and critical reading that they can endure.  As already said, these stories are full of questions and statements about how to deal with deep human emotions such as pain and joy, and if one takes the time to read them well, they can reflect reality to us in such a strange and unfamiliar way that we learn to see familiar things in a new light. Very little literature can be read without the danger of learning the wrong lessons, and fairy tales are no exception.  When one sits down to read a fairy tale, there is a responsibility to read this story well and work to take the right lessons away from it. 
Additionally, there is the question of whether fairy tales cause a person to disengage with reality. This is a valid question and to answer it, we must first ask ourselves, “what is real?” There seems to be two types of things we can call “real”: those things that are present and physical, and then the realm of ideas that engage intrinsic but invisible things such as love, virtue, evil, etc.  Fairy tales, while not perhaps real in the first sense, certainly function as real in the second sense.  So perhaps a better question to ask is, “what is important?” For while mopeds and silicone bakeware are certainly real, they have very little lasting importance compared to eternal, intrinsic things such as joy or pain or the state of a person’s soul. In fact, would it not do a person good to escape for a time from a world that sees perhaps too much of the “real” things like sex and money at the expense of seeing the more important realities of love and self-sacrifice.  Better to be in a place where the questions are asked about what makes a person a person and what makes them virtuous or evil?  Faerie has the ability to do this very thing, to engage a person’s mind and emotions with questions of great and lasting importance - a level of engagment that rarely happens in a present “reality” where people are numbed by a bombardment of entertainment. One should certainly not run to faerie and never return, that would be terribly unhealthy.  Yet it can be healthy to leave what is physically real for a time to regain a proper perspective on what is intrinsically real.  This allows for better vision to see this ordinary world for what it is, and then, not being deceived about what is important, we can truly love it and the people living here. 

Conclusion

As we approach our lives and begin to look for places of self-deception, let us be careful not to fall into three common mistakes. The first is the danger of side-stepping the questions that the fairy tales raise by looking at them merely as points of academic consideration.  This is nothing more than subject avoidance manifesting itself to keep the self from personally engaging its beliefs. However also be aware of the second mistake, which is the pendulum swing response, where one expects to find self-deception in every single held belief. Thirdly and finally, be aware that the process of eradicating self-deception is exactly that, a process.  We do not have to find healing and a proper perspective right away.  Places of self-deception have usually formed from years of habits and those habits will also take years to undo.  When working through the process, there can be a strong temptation to fall into either procrastination or hopelessness. We may sometimes decide to put off making changes until a better time, but that time rarely comes and a person can quickly find themselves two years down the road having made very little progress.  The time to change is now.  Yet that change will take time and it can be hard and discouraging.  In these times is exactly where the consolation of hope found in fairy tales is of most help.  Let us remember that there will be a good end to our trials, and strive to act on our convictions, hoping to look back years from now and see visible progress towards living in the constant realization of the truth, no matter how strange and fantastic may see/


Works Cited

Perrault, Charles.  Donkeyskin.  Translated by Maria Tatar. New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc., 1999.

Ten Elshof, Gregg A. I Told Me So. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing
Company, 2009.

Tolkien, J. R. R. On Fairy S ories. http://direcafe.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=
709453%3ATopic%3A18794 (accessed March 25, 2010).

Willard, Dallas.  Preface to I Told Me So, by Gregg Ten Elshof. Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2009.




End Notes:

  Gregg A. Ten Elshoff, I Told Me So (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2009), iii.

  Ten Elshof, 25.

  Ten Elshof, 3.

  Dallas Williard, preface to I Told Me So, by Gregg Ten Elshof, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2009): x.

  Williard, x.
  J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories (http://direcafe.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id= 709453%3ATopic%3A18794, accessed March 25, 2010) 14.

  Tolkien, 5. Even Tolkien’s definition is broad for the specific term “fairy tale” which much of scholasticism takes to mean tales told of other worlds, with magic happenings, that serve the purpose of teaching moral lessons to children.  However, for the sake of the paper the term “fairy tale” will hold a broader meaning.

  Tolkien, 8.

  Tolkien, 12-13.
  Charles Perrault, Donkeyskin, trans. Maria Tatar (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1999), 110.

  Perrault, 113.
  Ten Elshof, 39.

  Ten Elshof, 41-45.
  Ten Elshof, 52.

  Ten Elshof, 54-55.

  Ten Elshof, 64.
  Tolkien, 15.

  Tolkein, 19

  Tolkien, 22-23.
  This discussion can be found in greater detail in J. R. R. Tolkien’s article On Fairy Stories.

Falling Into the Sack

(Short Essay I wrote for Russian Lit on Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich...it is a good story about not living a life devoid of meaning...the prompt for the essay was "Was Ivan converted, if so to what extent and from what to what?)
   

      “The expression on the face said that what was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly.”  So it seems to Peter Ivanovich as he gazes at the corpse of Ivan Ilyich in the parlor on the day of his funeral.  It also seems that Ivan’s face speaks a reproach and a warning back to the living, a warning that disturbs Peter so deeply that he flees the room.  But what was this warning?  What message is Tolstoy sending to Peter Ivanovich, and though him also to us? 

    When Tolstoy introduces Ivan’s life he begins with a strange statement: “Ivan Ilyich’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”  As he takes us through this ordinary man’s life, he proves this statement to be true and even more tragic for its ordinary accepetance. Ivan’s pleasures in life were few “the pleasures connected with his work were pleasures of ambition; his social pleasures were those of vanity”  and even these were meaningless and empty, for nothing much stood out about him.  His ambition? He was passed over for promotion like any man would be; and as for his social life “just as his drawing-room resembled all other drawing rooms so did his enjoyable little parties resemble all other such parties.”  Ivan loves neither his wife nor his children, and like all men of society “with clean hands, in clean linen, with French phrases…and consequently with the approval of people of high rank” he visits dark allies and houses of questionable reputation. Ivan has reached the height of happiness in his life – and it is a sad happiness.

    However, Tolstoy offers a very different perspective.  When Ivan’s illness settles into his body, what torments him most is the deception with which everyone seems to approach him. It is poison to him. Yet Tolstoy shows that this falsity is not only external, but is also internal to Ivan’s state of mind and that “this falsity around him and within him did more than anything else to poison his days [italics added].”   For weeks, Ivan suffers – unwilling to address the source of his internal mental anguish and his impending death. He asks only why he suffers so much, “and whenever the thought occurred to him as it often did, that it all resulted from his not having lived as he ought to have done, he at once recalled the correctness of his whole life and dismissed so strange an idea.”  

     Physical pain builds and finally drives him to call on God who answers him by asking him what he wants and what he lives for.  God takes Ivan on a journey through his life showing him the good he had done and the happiness he enjoyed. Tragically, “the further he went the less there was.”   Finally, Ivan is driven to ask questions…to ask the question: “What if my whole life has been wrong?”  and suddenly “it occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly laced people….which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false.”   His eyes are finally opened to the falsity of his life.  But now he only has hours left to live and must answer the next question, “What is the right thing?”   It is through this question that Tolstoy saves Ivan.  For even while he only has hours left to change his life, he still labors.  Ivan sees his wife and son and “felt sorry” for them, sincerely pitying them he tries to speak to them “forgive me”.    He sees that his death will best relieve them of pain and so chooses to act, in a way, for them.  He bravely faces his death, defiantly confronting the pain, “stretched out, and died.”  

Now his face is sealed with the expression of his final thoughts.  So what is the message he sends to Peter Ivanovich?  As Ivan died, he became aware of the fate of his family, “in them he saw himself – all that for which he had lived – and saw clearly that it was not real at all, but a terrible and a huge deception which had hidden both life and death.”   This, I believe, is the message that Tolstoy places in Ivan’s face as “a reproach and a warning to the living”.   Men cannot live for ambition and vanity alone – the only way a man can live with purpose is to think of others, and if necessary to even die if it be for their good.  Ivan realized this; and like the last laborer to come to the field he received his full wages.

Wind

A whisper blows through the cold-empty home
The child’s laughing has now all slipped past
The boy wants to know why he’s sent off alone
But his answers are just biting cold-empty wind.

The same whisper drifts through library’s crypt
Sampling and saving cold-empty ideas
It’s silently tracked and now seeks a new home
And finds the lost boy-man’s searching still-empty ears.

The boy’s now become an inquisitor grand
He sits in the tavern and waits
For his brother, though the other seeks his comp’ny that night
And all ‘round the tavern blows the cold-empty wind.

The wind’s now inside, swirls and freezes his soul
The whispers are ravings and speak now void-true
With talon-vice grip swings around on his hip
Are you there?
I am here.  You will never be dear to anyone least of all me.
Frantic throwing and falls
Whispers blow through it all
Wind takes shadow-form
Tears at him, breaks glass-shatters his mind
It’s only fitting your cold-empty soul.

(This poem was written for a pull question that asked us to write creatively on the state of the soul of Ivan Feyodorovich Karamozov from Brothers Karamozov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

(hmm...Russian names are much nicer to say and look at than ours)

{songs from LA}

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make my skin peel when out all day.

Old Poem...Newly Revised

The Wife of Ponce de Leon

She calls him deeper, the boy with dark black curls-to play in the woods, to be lost in her branches. He hears the call. Tender feet crunch leaves and twigs, young fingers touch coarse bark and he peers deeply.

The mountain calls him higher, the man with dark curls masked by grey. His weary eyes peer down at old parchment, the waters call to him. They said he’d never find it -  now he must, else she dies.

Leaves shake from hands peeling bark from her branch. Reluctantly it flakes away. Her pure, smooth bark shines; his breath quickens, heart pounds, twigs crack at slow, retreating footsteps

The map cannot be read for the shaking of weathered hands, as hers so often do. Needles lay unused on the table. Her face weathered, body weary, her wrinkled, gentle face protects what is within, but he cannot see it.

Her brilliance lures the boy. Tender fingers both tear and caress. She pleads with him, the layers protect what is precious within, but he cannot hear it.

The crest of the mountain disappears, mist flows down the crevices and valleys, down to the lake. It’s surface smooth with reflections of barkless trees. The man steps into the water, lowers his hand cautiously and rejoices.

She had pleaded with him not to go but he could not hear her
So fixed he was upon her face. 

He rips the bark away, strips her. Poping and cracking, insects that once took refuge must flee, the wood is too hard to provide a home. She pleads with him to stop, but he cannot hear.

The man stumbles through the door and offers her the water.  Poping and cracking echoes through the house, wrinkles taking refuge within her flee; her face pulled taut, the skin flat across her face.

The bark is completely stripped away, he steps back and sees the smooth wood beneath.

The wood creaks from slow, withdrawing footsteps. Weariness has gone, youth returned. She lowers her eyes, ashamed, exposed as her wisdom turns brown and flutters down. Her eyes harden, as years flee, gentle touch and knowing caress leave her now supple hands. The tremble of her voice vanquished and her youth shines forth.

The tree shakes as wind blows against it the boy is gone and she is
Dead.

[Photo Credit: mandragolaa at http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs12/f/2006/327/5/1/tree_by_mandragolaa.jpg]

For She Loved Much

The bed creaked and in a few moments she was finally alone.  He had taken it out of her this time…she knew soon she would die.  She pushed her hair sweat stuck from her forehead, and she shivered occasionally - though not from cold.  Eventually, she stood up and walked to the window overlooking the city.  It was just beginning to wake up…he had taken longer than she had thought.  She wrapped her shawl a bit tighter around her bony elbows.  As much as she ate, she kept losing weight…she knew she was sick with something, soon she would die.  Maybe that wouldn’t be all bad…

    Was this the life she was escaping from?  The woman who came to Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, anointing his feet and washing them with her tears and hair?  She never said a word to him…only entered the room and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with ointment.
   She dared not even speak to Jesus, but her love took her to wash his feet, for she knew that he alone could save her.  And if he could save her…
    Do you see this woman? He said.  I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.  You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.  Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven– for she loved much.  But he who is forgiven little, loves little.  Your sins are forgiven.  Your faith has saved you; go in peace.     In that moment, peace…and perhaps even more than just her sins had been healed. She had found her savior, at last she felt safe. And for this she loved him all the more: her love had meant something to him.  No, he had not forgiven her because of her love…but see how he had spoken to the Pharisee? He had almost praised her for her love.  Never had she known it could be valued so much. 

Our Savior’s healing is the rock of our salvation – tell me, whom shall I fear?  The Lord is my strength and my life.

(Scripture from Luke 7)
(photo credit: y0j1m80 at  http://y0j1m80.deviantart.com/art/Broken-Window-81440105)

Further Observations.

I flew with a Phoenix today...my pants got singed.

Something...

Somtehing does not seem right.
Something seems certainly wrong.
Something is nerely complete
Something is far from done.
Something is looking for laughter
Something is looking for tears.
Something finds burning desire
Something is burdened by fears.

It's so easy...

...to feel overwhelmed.
...to forget to call home.
...to feel worthless.
...to feel unbeautiful.
...to believe lies.
...to work so hard and not know why.
...to look forward so much you never see your now.
...to know God is watching you but sin anyways.
...to look to your Father and feel ashamed.

It's so hard...

...to trust God has it all under control.
...to remember to let the people you love know it.
...to feel valuable.
...to feel beautiful.
...to know why the truth is true, and say it.
...to see the end of everything.
...to live in the moment and not be irresponsible of the future.
...to say no, even if nobody is watching.
...to look to your Father and know you are somehow loved anyways.

The world has been turned upon its head and what is rightside up is completely screwy now and for all the ease of our perceptions we see nothing at all. Having eyes we cannot see and having ears we cannot understand, for those who worship them become like them. The Pharisees had chosen something good, the law of God was to be observed, meditated on...it was good. But it was not Good, and when something good becomes priority over Good, suddenly that thing worth pursuing becomes our idol and our perceptions turn upside down and we have become like the image of our God and not like our God Himself and just as an image cannot properly see, neither can we. It is so easy to build and altar to something good and forget God while we try to seek Him. It is so hard to see God when we are worshipping an image. It is so hard to clear our eyes, but then we see God, and in seeing it is so easy...

...to trust God has it all under control.

Interterm

So I am back at school now and working over the break...I have some wonderful jobs, but the best two have been filming Biola's IRIS class (an interdisciplinary GE course co-taught by 7 professors) and calling prospective students for Torrey.

Calling highschool students who are finalizing college plans made me start thinking about what it was like when I was trying to decide what I was going to do. I only applied to Biola...I knew this was where I wanted to go, and it is certainly where God wanted me. As I am now starting to approach the time of thinking pretty seriously about grad school and life after Biola, I have been a bit overwhelmed by it all, but remembering that God has all of this orchestrated. I know that he is teaching me to keep trusting him, even as things are changing. I am living in a wonderful house now with a great family...I never could have set that up and God did. Thinking about that helps me see that God is working things out even better than I can plan. The same goes for after graduating, he is working out something amazing and it will be better than I can plan.

I think I'm feeling a push towards an MFA in New York....so we'll see how that goes :)

Stress

We all live with too much stress...if you are in college you are probably living with a lot of stress in your life. I know I am certainly guilty of over-stressing myself (every stress test i've taken has placed me in the high percentile of stress and risk of illness because of it). So I have decided to try to come up with ways to reduce stress and hopefully save my body from any terrible damage and try to share them here (and ask for any suggestions you've found helpful!). So far this is my list...still to be built longer...but a good start.

1. Pray. God is in control of all of this...I am learning. It's so easy to start stressing and then trying to fix and finish everything in your own power and while this succeeds for a little while, eventually it saps your spiritual walk with God [i found this out this semester] and leads to self-reliance with robs us of experiencing God's provision. So number one thing...always keep God in his proper place and keep talking to him and listening to him. I think that would solve a lot of problems.

2. Eat well. Sleep often. Schedule life with time for eating and sleeping...it keeps you from getting sick and worndown...which gives you more time in the long run. So hard to keep the long term perspective, but I think it can really help. 15 mins to do homework or try to read over lunch? Choose lunch...it keeps you awake and healty and you can so much more done when alert and healthy than when worn out and hacking your lungs to pieces.

3. Along those lines...schedule your time and stick to it. This also includes. NO PROCRASTINATION. Leaving everything to the last minute makes life a wreck...and schedule in time for things to go wrong...so then if one things takes a dive, the rest of your life does not crumble as a result.

4. Take 30 mins a day to relax. Read a book for fun, take a walk, listen to music, do something cathardaic. But give your mind and body a break...it will keep you going.

5. Invest in friends. Relationships make or break life and are (after God) probably one of the most rewarding things to invest in. God said the golden rule was to love God and then your neighbor. Isolating oneself only serves to make you more miserable, and alone, which cannot lift your spirits. Fellowship with others brings joy in a way solitude simply cannot...and by bearing one anothers burdens we can find and give the support we all need to make it through life.

6. Take time to be alone. This does not mean isolation, but take time to process life and let it sink in...sit under a tree and think about life for a bit. This can be worked into prayer time and relaxing time...but make sure there is time for solitary reflection. If all your time is spend working or with other people...life will just get stuck inside you, I think.

7. Don't get lured into overachieving. Recognize your boundaries and when you have enough to do, say no to anything else that comes you way. I suck a this...just in case anyone was wondering.

I realize, this all seems obvious, but I have realized that the obvious things are sometimes the easiest to ignore. I write this partially as a reminder to myself...hopefully I'll do it. I hope this may help anyone else too...if you have any further ideas to contribute, your thoughts are most welcome!

A Lesson from Mrs. Bloomfield

Mrs. Bloomfield was the schoolmaster's wife and she is just the sort of lady I hope to one day become. MacDonald describes her this way:

There was something about Mrs. Bloomfield that was very pleasing. The chief ingredient in it was a certain quiant repose. She looked as if her heart were at rest; as if for her everything, was right; as if she had a little room of her own, just to her mind, and there her soul sat, looking out through the muslin curtains of modest charity, upon the world that went hurrying and seething past her windows.

I have always wondered how women become like this...is it just how they were born? A lack of any great calamity in their lives that allows them to be at peace? Perhaps, but as I kept reading (she is a character in Adela Cathcart, sorry i didn't mention that earlier) she tells this story about herself that...well, I'll explain after the story. [and I realize it's long...but if you have time, it's worth reading, at least I found it to be so]
~~
A good many years ago, now, on a warm summer evening, a friend, whom I was visiting, asked me to take a drive with her through one of the London parks. I agreed to go, though I did not care much about it. I had not breathed the fresh air for some weeks; yet I felt it a great trouble to go. I had been ill, and my husband was il, and we had nothing to do, and we did not know what would become of us. So I was anything but cheerful. I knew that all was for the best, as my good husband was always telling me, but my eyes were dim and my heart was troubled, and I could not feel sure that God cared quite so much for us as he did for the lilies.

My friend was very cheerful, and seemed to enjoy everything; but a kind of dreariness came over me, and I began comparing the loveliness of hte summer evening with the cold misty blank that seemed to make up my future. My wretchedness grew greater and greater. The very colours of the flowers, the blue of the sky, the sleep of the water, seemed to push us out of the happy world that God had made. And yet the children seemed as happy as if God were busy making, the things before their eyes, and holding out each thing, as he made it, for them to look at.

(brief interruption to explain that one of her children is now in India and the other had passed on a few years ago)

Well, I was glad when my friend stopped the carriage, and got out with the children, to take them close to the water's edge, and let them feed the swans. I liked better to sit in the carriage alone -- an ungrateful creature, in the midst of cause for thankfulness. I did not care for the beautiful things about me; and I was not pleased that other people should enjoy them. I listlessly watched the well dressed ladies that passed (she talks for a while about the people that pass by...a good part of the story, but in trying to cut this down I shall leave it out)

At last I caught sight of a poor lad, who was walking along very slowly, looking at a gay-coulored handkerchief wich he had spread out before him. His clothes were rather ragged, but not so ragged as old. On his head was what we now call a wide-awake. It was very limp and shapeless; but some one that loved him had trimmed it with a bit of blue ribbon, the ends of which hung down on his shoulder. This gave him an odd appearance even at a distance. When he came upand I coudl see his face, it explained everything. There was a constant smile about his mouth which in itself was very sweet; but as it had nothing to do with the rest of the countenance, the chief impression it conveyed was of idiotcy. He came near the carriage, and stood there, watching some men who were repairing a fence which divided the road from the footpath. His hair was almost golden, and went waving about in the wind. His eye was very large and clear, and of a bright blue. But it had no meaning in it. He would ahve been very handsome, had there been mind in his face; but as it was, the regularity of his unlighted feature made the sight a sadder one. His figure was young; but his face might have belonged to a man of sixty.

He opened his mouth, stuck out his under jaw, and stood starring and grinning at the men. At last one of them stopped to take a breath, and , catching sight of lad, called out:
"Why Davy! is that you?"
"Ya-as, it be," replied Davy, modding his head.
"Why Davy, it's ever so long since I clapped eyes on ye!" said the man. "Where ha' ye been?"
"I ain't been nowheres, as I knows on."
"Well, if ye 'aint been nowheres, what have ye been doing? Flying your kite?"
"I 'aint got no kite; so I can't fly it."
"But you likes flyin' kites, don't ye?" said his friend, kindly.
"Ya-as," answered Davy, nodding his head, and rubbing his hands, and laughing out. "Kites is such fun! I wish I'd got un."
Then he looked thoughtfully, amost moodily, at the man, and said:
"Where's your kite? I likes kites. Kites is friends to me."

But by this time the man had turned again to his work, and was busy driving a post into the ground; so he paid no attention to the lad's question. Soon, another man had come up. he had a course, hard-featured face; and he tried, to pretended to try, to wheel his barrow, which was full of gravel, over Davy's toes. The said toes were sticking quite bare through through great holes in an old pair of woman's boots. Then he began to tease him rather roughly. But Davy took all his banter with jsut the same complacency and mirth with which he had received the other man's kindness.
"How's yer sweetheart, Davy?" he said.
"Quite well, thank ye," answered Davy.
"What's her name?"
"Ha! ha! ha! I won't tell you her name."
"Come now, Davy, tell us her name."
"Noa."
"Don't be a fool."
"I ain't a fool. But I won't tell you her name."
"I don't believe ye've got e'er a sweetheart. Come now."
"I have though."
"I don't believe ye."
"I have though. I was at church with her last Sunday."

Suddenly the man, looking hard at Davy, changed his tone to one of surprise, and exclaimed:

"Why, boy, ye've got whiskers! Ye hadn't them the last time I see'd ye Why, ye are set up now! When are ye going to begin to shave? Where's your razors?"
"'Ain't begun yet," replied Davy. "Shall shave some day, but I 'aint got too much yet."

As he said this, he fondeled away at his whiskers. They were few in number, but evidently of great value in his eyes. Then he began to stroke his chin, on which there was a little down visible -- more like mold in its association with his curious face than anything of more healthy significance. After a few moments' pause, his tormentor began again.

"Well, I can't think where ye got them whiskers as ye're so fond of. Do ye know where ye got them?"
Davy took out his pocket-handkerchief, spreak it out before him, and stopped grinning.
"Yaas; to be sure I do," he said at last.
"Ye do?" growled the man, half humorously, half scornfully.
"Yaas," said Davy, nodding his head again and again.
"Did ye buy 'em?"
"Noa," answered Davy, and the sweetness of the smile which he now smiled was not confined to his mouth, but broke like light, the light of intelligence, over his whole face.
"Where they gave to ye?" pursued the man, now really curious to hear what he would say.
"Yaas," said the poor fellow; and he clapped his hands in a kind of suppressed glee.
"Why, who gave 'em to ye?"
Davy lookep up in the way I shall never forget, and, pointing up with his finger too, said nothing.
"What do ye mean?" said the man. "Who gave ye yer whiskers?"
Davy pointed up to the sky again; and then, looking up with an earnest expression, which, before you saw it, you would not have throught possible to his face, said,
"Blessed Father."
"Who?" shouted the man.
"Blessed Father," Davy repeated, once more pointing upwards.
"Blessed Father!" returned the man, in a contemptuous tone; "Blessed Father! -- I don't know who that is. Where does he live? I never heerd of him."
Davy looked at him as if he were sorry for hi. Then going closer up to him, he said:
"Didn't you though? He lives up there' -- again pointing to the sky. "And he's so kind! He gives me lots o' things."
"Well," said the man. "I wish he'd give me thing's. But you don't look so very rich nayther."
"Oh! but he gave me some bread this mornin', and a tart last night -- he did."
And the boy nodded his head, as was his custom, to make his assertion still stronger.
"But you was sayin' just now, you hadn't got a kite. Why don't he give you one?"
"He'll give me one fast 'nuff," said Davy, grinning again, and rubbing his hands.

I assure you I could have kissed he boy. And I hope I fel some gratitute to God for giving the poor lad such trust in Him, which, it seemed to me, was better than trusting in the three-per-cents; for you can draw upon him to no end o' good things. So Davy thought anyhow; and he had got hte very thing for ht ewant of which my life was cold and sad and discontented. Those words Blessed Father, and that look that turned his vacant face, like Stephen's, into the face of an angel, because he was looking up to the same glory, were in my ears and eyes for days. And they taught me, and comforted me. He was the minister of God's best gifts to me. And to home many more, who can tell? For Davy believed that God did care for his own children.

Davy sauntered away, and before my friend came back with the children, I had lost sight of him; but at my request we moved on slowly till we should find him again. Nor had we gone far, before I saw him sitting in the middle of a group of little children. He was showing them the pictures on his pocket handkerchief. I had one sixpence in my purse -- it was the last I had. But I wasn't so poor but I could borrow, and it was a small price to give for what I had got; and so, as I was not able to leave the carriage, I asked my friend to take it to him, and tell him that Blessed Father had sent him that to buy a kite. The expression of childish glee upon his face, and the devout God bless you, Lady, upon his tongue were strangely but on incongrously mixed.

Well, it was my last sixpence then, but here I and my husband are, owing no man anything, and spending a happy Christmas Day, with many thanks to the Colonel and Miss Cathcart.
~~

So I realized that she was not born with her wisdom, or simply free from care and worry (she certainly dealt with her fair share of trouble [depression, being broke and sick in this story...and losing her child as we also found out]. But she took the right lessons from her difficulties and let God shape her into a person who trusted him in all things. I pray that as I am young, I may also learn the right lessons in times of darkness so that one day I might be like Mrs. Bloomfield.
And for anyone reading this, I extend that prayer to you too (unless you are a man...then be like Mr. Bloomfield [also an excellent man...same lessons learned ;)].

A Winter's Goal

So I have recently discovered that a good friend of mine is going to try to read all of the Torrey novels for this semester over break. (see this post) Will she do it? I sure hope so. I am going to try this as well :D We will see if it works. But yeah...at least half? I can do that!

so books on the list (1st half)
~Pride and Prejudice
~Jane Eyre
~Wuthering Hights

Hopefully I'll post some thoughts on these too...

I also want to read Adela Cathcart, cause its Christmastime and I still have not read it yet and Christmas time is the perfect time to read Adela Cathcart.

That is all.

Goodbye.

The Seduction

Her face appeared every time he closed his eyes. A beautiful face, though he could not make out any of her features. He knew he had studied them carefully, and yet the memory was vague. If only he could remember the shape of her face, perhaps he could drive her from his mind. He decided to take a shower.

The hot water relaxed his body and he breathed in the steam like warm breath. He suddsed up a washcloth and tried to wash, tried to get clean. He knew he had to go see Carrie tonight, he told himself he was cleaning up for her. He tried to think about her face, but it was so clear. He turned off the water and dried up. He put on a suit.

Calmly, he closed the door of his car but he failed to accelerate as slowly. He suddenly was speeding down the highway, out of the city and towards the forests just beyond the last few straggling houses. The red and golden leaves shuddered as he entered, and suddenly he began to feel her again. This was her home, she ruled here he felt deep in his being. The chills returned, across his entire body he felt as if the circulation had been cut off and was just now coming back all at once. He could hardly focus on the road.

Her face was still vague. Carrie would have been waiting about an hour now.

He pulled the car off the main road and onto a hidden but well-worn trail. The wind caressed his face and wrapped around his neck, drawing him along the path. Yet, it almost was an unnecessary caution, for his feet while unfamiliar on the path quite easily found their way. The sun had set nearly three hours before, but he easily avoided the fallen branches blocking his progress. He walked until Carrie had certainly given up waiting for him, he walked until she had most certainly cried herself to sleep. He began to wonder how far this path would take him before he got there.

Just a little farther.
I should turn back. She was waiting.
You’re almost here, it’s too late now.

He walked for much more than a few steps and saw dark walls at the top of a hill. He felt excited. He had been searching for this. His heart began to pound in his chest and he breath trembled as it came from his mouth. He slowly, carefully, gently, approached the walls without a ceiling to hold them together. They seemed so delicate, though so strong…as if a wind could knock them over, and yet they would stand strong through the torments of a hurricane.
Her face tempted clarity.

Come come. Enter my home, cherished one.
He hesitated outside the door, fearful of entering. A strange smell inside.
What do you fear? The smell was worse when you first met me.
Her hand brushed against his neck and gently moved down his shoulder to his arm, she stroked it as she had the day he first felt her. He had longed for months to discover her.
You must only open the door to know me. You were made to seek out mysteries, come and know mine.
He put his hand to the door and turned the knob, but did not open it. The smells of fragrant perfume came and overpowered his mind, all reason removed by the deep and lovely aromas. He stood, breathing them in, filling his lungs with them.
There is so much more for you, open the door, I am waiting.
Still, he did not open the door.
I will not wait forever.
She was angry with him, his hesitations had angered her, she knew his hesitation. He could not live with her angry. He quickly stepped in.

Bright lights blinded him and all around him moaning and screaming deafened his ears. Yet for being blind he saw first the girls, scarcely dressed in gold with ornaments to adorn their flaming hair. They moved with men, chained to the walls – moaning and screaming to be let out. The old men had given up screaming a long time ago and had learned to enjoy being here. The young men also moved strongly, almost unaware of the chains, seemed enraptured. The other men did all they could to avoid the girls, to try to escape. They screamed to be let alone, cried out for mercy, and yet the onslaught continued, the girls driven by a maddening fear. The men bound to never escape.

And then she entered, and roused them all and they stood before her. He tried to look at her face, he knew she had come for him but how much grander she was here than in life. Her light was radiating, and covered all the place with a blinding light so all he could see was her. He still could not fully see her face.

Stay here with me, beloved? How I have longed and desired for you to be here with me.
Who are you?
The one who loves you. Stay with me? Caress me?
He meant to think about the men in chains, he meant to turn away and run away, but the men seemed like a dream. He extended his hand slowly and touched her pale, white hand. Suddenly he felt pain in his side and looked in time to see an arrow pierce him and disappear. She grabbed his arm and shackled him and placed one of her priestesses before him.
Worship our goddess with me. Look in my eyes and love me, and our love with each other will glorify our mother. This is the first mystery.
He looked at her and loved her and the girl consumed him.
The lighted-she left the room as suddenly as she had arrived, a bit stronger now for his worship, while all around they cried.
Hail, Aphrodite.