merton and i

to start, ever since i was in the fourth grade, i have been introspective (as of yet i'm still unaware as to why the advent of my fourth grade year brought on this introspection, but i can speculate that being home schooled beginning the following year and on through graduation -- which meant time spent in public or social settings translated into time spent alone at a desk in my bedroom -- didn't help my situation at all.) regardless, the introspective life can get carried away with itself, i have learned. ...last weekend my introspection drove me into depression for several days, much with good reason because i was dealing with some items of great weight which needed all the serious treatment i could give them. yet in order to use this time of serious introspection most beneficially, i had to know when to come out of it, so i returned to a more balanced rhythm of the [serious&lighthearted] when the time was right. i still struggle to let myself go, to relax, to get outside myself and into the world and relationships around me. merton, a contemplative, has some words that have helped me keep things in perspective as i struggle to learn what it is to be human -- to receive the great 'weight of glory' (c.s. lewise) of my own experience and yet to remain so aware of worlds beyond my own that i can put off the extreme seriousness in order to laugh and play and delight in things external to myself.

thomas merton: the person who cannot despair
despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. it is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost.... Despair is the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of god and thereby acknowledge that He is above us and that we are not capable of fulfilling our destiny ourselves. but a person who is truly humble cannot despair, because in a humble person there is no longer any such thing as self-pity.

A&E biographies

an additional note: i'm terrified of greatness, i've decided. i just got through watching 'malcom x' and 'ghandi' (both on the same day, which sums to just under 7 hours of tv-viewage on one day, gross). i have a stack of A&E biographies to tackle next. i've been reading st. teresa of avila and quoting thomas merton and making art with the same gandhi and neil armstrong and katherine stinson (stunt pilot in the early days of aviation) juxtaposed.

and i'm terrified of greatness. i guess it's because i know i couldn't handle it right now. i'd take myself too seriously and end up damaging myself and those around me more than the gifts of greatness would be worth. the greatest heroes must be the humblest. the greatest heroes must laugh the most, play the most and have the greatest abilities to relax. i have only just begun my 'downward journey' which is the shedding of self and the taking on of the Christ beyond me, but i'm still in one of st. teresa's first or second dwelling places and have yet a long journey ahead of me. and this is why i am not yet at seminary, because i still find myself to be my own worst enemy more often than i'd like to admit. so i guess it's not really greatness i'm afraid of, but rather it is myself. fortunately, Christianity is a religion (the only as far as i've yet encountered) that offers a relief from self. good news.

PLUS, if i were really to think about it, i'd realize that i've lost my nalgene bottle at least 5 times today and my navel piercing is slightly infected and i think i'm narcoleptic because i spontaneously fell asleep in my chair for an hour earlier this evening. and upon realizing all these most ridiculous qualities in myself, i'd have no option but to laugh and wonder why i'm even worrying about greatness in the first place.

sometimes we fall for no good reason at all

i drafted this blog several weeks ago and left myself only the title 'sometimes we fall for no good reason at all' as a clue to what i was thinking. ...and so i will expound on the topic though i'm not sure what my original intent was.

"i'm human, are you?" ***

do you ever trip on a crack in the sidewalk

and look over your shoulder to check that no one saw?

i've noticed that no one recovers seamlessly;

i bet you readjusted your shirt or brushed the tip of your nose

as a cover-up

which is lame, but we all do silly things

in reaction to the shame we feel

for making a mistake, for not being perfect. ***

but whoever said we had to be perfect?

the virgin in love sleeps with another man

and in so doing realizes she really is in love

but they're broken now

sometimes we fall and we fall hard. ***

and sometimes our past has handicapped us

and circumstance demands more than we have to offer

we've done all we can but fail

and push from self-deprecation to despair

sometimes we fall but the real injury we do to ourselves. ***

and do you ever trip

and realize there was no crack to begin with?

it was a simple misfiring of your neurons

and as deterministic as it sounds, it was beyond your control

sometimes we fall for no good reason at all.

hesitant...will you be my colorman?

this post comes to you absolutely colorless, as my pinks and purples have been critiqued as abrasive to your eyes, as if a simple glance at them might induce yellowed and puss-ly sores upon your eyeballs. gross. plus, i don't really have the emotional energy to post colorfully; black requires much less effort and i'm not sure i'm capable of more than it for tonight.

that said, i'm not even sure what i want to write about here. i titled my entry 'hesitant' for some reason yet unbeknownst to me. and so i will start with a description of the past few hours of my life: alone in my room, i ate my roommates lunch for tomorrow (dammit) and had to cook her more, but i burned the rice and my kitchen filled with smoke. where is my head? i spilled water on the floor. i've been researching grad programs and seminaries and the like. basically, my internship is over and it didn't turn into the job we all hoped it would. and so my existence is amorphous right now, lending itself to plenty of contemplation. too much contemplation, in fact. i'm hard on myself, especially when left to my own devices. i resonate with what my friend kris said earlier, 'i am my own worst enemy.' and Christianity is the only religion that offers relief from self, i say. which leads me to my 'currently reading,' which has been my sustainance of late: st. teresa of avila's 'the interior castle.' a summary of thoughts thus far, in various fonts for aesthetic enhancement since color is absent from this evening's menu.

st. teresa's definition of 'the interior castle':
'it is that we consider our soul to be like a castle made entirely out of a diamond or of very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in heaven there are many dwelling places. for in reflecting upon it carefully, sisters, we realize that the soul of the just person is nothing else but a paradise where the lord says he finds his delight.' (from the chapter on 'the first dwelling place')

the basic premise of the book:
...on moving inward toward the center of our souls, where the fullness of god resides. there are seven 'dwelling places' which we move through non-linearly, cyclically, holistically. and this journey inward is the process of sanctification. in the first chapter, teresa makes an argument against the 'anthropomorphic concept of sanctity,' against sanctity as 'primarily a moral concept' and instead argues for sanctity as 'an ontological reality' which becomes those of us who are in Christ. the ontological reality leads to moral purity, but moral purity is secondary. primary is a discharging the static of self until our consciousness is largely neutralized toward self and instead is charged with the presence and goodness of Christ (credit to my physics degree for all scientific analogies). see below for more on 'self':

the first dwelling place in the castle of the soul is self-awareness. , notes on the pitfalls of becoming self-aware, namely that in our introspection we become anthropomorphic and then turn to self-deprecation, in the midst of which we lose our sense of the blessed ontological reality that our souls are god's paradise :
'if we are always fixed on our earthly misery, the stream will never flow free from the mud of fears, faintheartedness, and cowardice. ...oh, god help me, daughters, how many souls must have been made to suffer great loss in this way by the devil! ...the fears of not understanding ourselves completely distort self-knowledge; and i'm not surprised if we never get free from ourselves, for this lack of freedom from ourselves, and even more, is what can be feared. so i say, daughters, that we should set our eyes on Christ, our Good, and on his saints. there we shall learn true humility, the intellect will be enhanced, as i have said, and self-knowledge will not make one base and cowardly. even though [self-knowledge] is the first dwelling place, it is very rich and so precious that if the soul slips away from the vermin within [that dwelling place], nothing will be left to do but advance.'

and to end, i return to my hesitance. i'm twenty-two and daunted by the great bit world i'm encountering post-college. i wonder what the play-by-play a colorman might be telling would sound like. when i'm my own colorman, i'm just plain hard on myself. and so i learn to worry less about myself, to find ways to distract myself from me, to savor the words of those who know me who are my colormen and give a play-by-play that is a far more objective and/or gracious toward me than is my own analysis of the situation. and then i remember, my soul is a paradise.... yours too, friends. yours too.

icebreaker

i'm feeling the need for an icebreaker or two, it having been [ahem] quite a while since i've last posted a blog entry. my apologies to those of you who haven't the patience for my sporadic posting...

anyway, i remember the days of my youth in which my social norms largely revolved around 'icebreaker' games i was subjected to in church youth groups and the like. i hated them and will probably never get over it.... the base question is this: which was the worst:

1. Two Truths and a Lie, defined: Go around group and everyone has to say two true statements about themselves and one false. The rest of the group has to guess which one is false. You may be surprised. you can learn some crazy things about each other!
2. Duck Duck Goose, defined: All participants sit in a circle. The person "ducking" says a person characteristic about themselves as they go around the cirlce. The rest of activity works the same as Duck, Duck, Goose.
3. Name Game, defined: Sit in a circle. one person starts by using an adjective starting with the same letter as their first name, followed by their first name (i.e. Clever Claire, Kind Karen) The next person and following has to repeat the first person's adjective and name and then add their own. it goes arounf the circle and the last person has to repeat all other names in order and end with their own.

you vote 1, 2 or 3. Tell me which is the worst. or add your own worst icebreaker experience and vote for that.