Not Forgotten

Sometimes, I think of God as an ocean. Some people don't see the ocean at all; they turn their backs on its vast horizon and face the parking lot, denying there's anything there. Some come down to the sand and acknowledge the ocean's thundering existence, but admit they'd rather not get their feet wet. Others step into the water and let it wash over their toes and ankles: they experience the ocean in a completely different way than they ever could by just looking at it. Still others wade in-- they let the ocean nudge them with its waves and currents, soaking themselves up to their waists. Others swim out deep, diving into the ocean, getting wholly immersed. Those people understand the tides, the taste, the power of the ocean that few others can truly comprehend; they let themselves get beyond the power of their own control, they have departed from shore-- and as a result, they are carried along and directed in a way they could never have been if they'd held on to their own "sure" footing.

However, even those last people will never be able to understand the width, the depth, the height of the ocean. They will never know all the creatures, all the underwater worlds, all the secret volcanoes. They cannot see the storm on one end and the sunrise in the other. They cannot predict the ocean's movements, or winds, or direction. It's just too big.

Still, one thing is certain: the goal must always be to go deeper.



I have a story.

The story begins a week from last Thursday. For the last several months, I had been working on a plan-- a plan which I thought was great, really really great. But then Thursday night, the plan fell apart. It unexpectedly, comprehensively dissolved. I was crushed. It was such a disappointment.

But do you know? It wasn't a screeching-tires-crunching-metal sort of falling apart. The way it fell apart was so right, and so beautiful in its dissembling, it was more like a heavy gray cloud falling apart into thousands of crystalline flakes. It was a floating sort of fall.

Still, I cried on Thursday night for a long time, and Friday met me with a heavy heart.

Saturday found me in my apartment all day, grumpily tearing through stacks of finals. Finally, at 8pm, I escaped. It was after dark, but I didn't care. I needed fresh air, and gulped it in while walking to the lake.

What do I do when I need a reset button?

I climb a tree.

I had a specific one in mind-- I'd spotted the tree on a walk earlier that week with Carly. This tree stretches out over the water, its branches simultaneously reaching down, and to the side, and up towards the sky, like a great bark-covered sunburst. In the dark, I climbed up its trunk, wedged myself between the branches and began to pray.

It was a pissed-off prayer. I was really ticked at God. I was angry at Him for messing with my plan, even though I knew the plan probably wasn't the best in the first place, and I was angry at how He's been running my story.

"I am SICK of being here God!" I said. Or whispered. Or mouthed silently, while swinging my fists between branches. "I am TIRED of this. I'm sick of this season-- why does everyone else get to be in a different season God? I'm TIRED of what you're doing!!"

At one point I pictured Jesus hovering there and I demanded answers. Normally when I picture Jesus during prayers, he looks very much like a normal guy. This Jesus, though, was more of the cliched, cartoon version-- white robed and everything. How OBNOXIOUS: a floating, cartoonish, white-robed Jesus. Probably indicative of my current feelings about Him-- and perhaps my momentary suspicion that He was not as powerful or as attentive as I've believed Him to be.

"Can I even maintain this hope?" I demanded. "Can I even believe you ever gave me the promise I thought you did?! Is it ever going to happen?? I want more than what you're giving me right now!"

"It's COMING!" Floating Jesus said.

"WHEN?!!" I roared at Him.

"You have to WAIT," He said adamantly.

That sort of made me want to flip Him off.

It was an honest prayer-- an angry, tearful, raw prayer. And it was intense-- only interrupted once when a man came down to the water and began to pee into the lake.

Yes. A man peed directly beneath me while I was shouting at the Floating Jesus.

I did my best to look like a tree branch.

When the man was done peeing, and I was done praying, I slid back down. I felt a little guilty walking back home that night. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to want to flip Jesus off-- I hoped God wouldn't smite me.

Far from it. I look back on this moment now after the week I've had, and realize God's response was something more along the lines of: "Fine. You want to get real with me? I'm about to get real with you. Listen up daughter." From this point on, God cranked up the volume.

I was exhausted by the time I got back-- once in bed, it didn't take long for me to feel my body slipping out of consciousness. But just before I did, a thought suddenly lit into my mind:

"Am I enough for you Greta?"

I paused. I had no idea how to answer that question. The thought hovered there, like a flickering neon sign. Finally, I pushed it out of my head and let oblivion take over.

The next morning however, I wrote the question down in my journal while church worship was starting:

"He asks, 'Am I enough for you Greta?' ... And I don't know how to answer." I paused and thought about my prayer from the night before. Beneath what I'd just written, I wrote:

"I want more. :("

Richard's sermon addressed God's burning bush moment with Moses. In that moment, Moses doesn't like God's plan any more than I did in my tree the night before. At one point, Moses asks God, "What name do I give to the Israelites when they ask who sent me?"

God thunders back, "I AM." Richard elaborated-- "'I AM your sufficiency. I AM the power of your freedom. I AM everything you need to fulfill your calling.'"

I wrote that last line down in my journal, and then drew an arrow from what I'd written before-- "Am I enough for you Greta?"-- to the words Richard had just spoken: "I AM everything you need to fulfill your calling."

"Well then," I thought to myself.

Then Richard got to the end of his sermon. He began discussing Moses' disillusionment. Even though Moses finally stepped into God's story, and went and talked to Pharaoh, things got pretty crappy for Moses. Pharaoh basically laughed at Moses' request to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, doubled the Israelites' work load, and had his overseers beat the Israelites if they couldn't meet their daily quota. The Israelites were furious with Moses, and basically wanted to pulp-ify him. Moses then cries out to God and basically asks Him, "What are you DOING, God?!"

I imagined Moses shaking his fist at the sky. "Like me," I thought.

"The lament is one of the purest forms of worship there is," Richard said. "God wants our honesty. He wants a relationship with us. If we assume that the Christian life is only ever praise, we're missing the point. Just look at the Psalms; look at David's crying out and his despair. We should feel comfortable coming to God with laments. The dancing comes after the tears."

This was a great comfort-- and yet, I returned to heart-ache. As the worship started up again, I wrote in my journal: "Why ME, God?"

The answer arrived like a lightning bolt in the ocean storm of my mind:

Let me take you deeper, Greta.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Starting Monday, my school commenced our annual "Spiritual Life" week, where the kids have chapel every day. Monday's speaker was a guy named Zach. He talked about plans falling apart. He talked about seeking purpose. He talked about Daniel being taken away from his home and forced to work in the court of the Babylonian king. He discussed his suspicion that Daniel must have doubted God on the long journey to Babylon; must have asked, "What are you doing Lord?" He talked about the necessity of prayer within our hungry, angry questions.

After chapel, I told my seniors about my experience with prayer over the last year. I really try hard to be open and transparent with my students, so that they then feel comfortable being vulnerable with one another in our class discussions. "Last year was one of the hardest years of my life," I told them laughingly. "It was my first year of teaching, so I was crazy stressed out, trying to get everything together and planned, and trying to 'prove' myself, and I felt insecure and scared half the time... My parents were getting divorced, my personal life was a ROLLER-COASTER, it-- was-- terrible!" I laughed again. "BUT! In the midst of that... I had to pray. There was just absolutely no other way I was going to make it through the day. There were literally some mornings when I cried under the covers and told God that I could not do it, I could NOT do it, and I would TELL him I couldn't do it, and then He would somehow tell me that He would carry me through. Only then... would I be able to get out of bed and face it all. As a result, one of the hardest years of my life... taught me to love prayer."

I told them about my angry prayer in the tree the other night, and encouraged them to be real with God. Then I told them about the man that peed right beneath me, and mimed looking like a tree branch. That was probably their favorite part.

After endorsing prayer so fervently though, a funny thing happened. Tuesday and Wednesday, I didn't particularly feel like having my morning prayer. Normally, after doing my hair and makeup, I crawl back into bed in my pajamas with a cup of coffee and just talk to God for a while. Wednesday morning I thought, "Eh, I don't feel like I have much to talk to God about today. And I'm running late. Phooey."

Still, I climbed back into bed with my coffee, anticipating a mind-wandering prayer, a going-through-the-motions prayer. Sometimes that's what morning-coffee-prayer-time looks like.

Not this morning

As SOON as I "got into position," I suddenly had two Bible verses filling my whole head. I can't remember the last time I've read these passages, but there they were. The first was from Isaiah 40:29-31:

He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;
But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
They will run and not grow weary,
They will walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40:29-31

The second was from Hebrews 12:1-3
... Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus... Consider Him... so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Furthermore, when reading my Bible the night before, I had found these two verses stacked right on top of each other in my One Year Bible-- two verses that appear miles away from one another in the actual Bible but happened to be within the same centimeter when organized in the One-Year format:

Psalm 27:13-14
I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. WAIT for the Lord; be strong and take heart and WAIT for the Lord.

And:

Proverbs 20:22b
WAIT for the Lord, and He will deliver you.

Once again, it all went into the journal. Beneath the four passages, I wrote: "I suppose the message is clear then: Look to the Lord and be strong, take heart. Do not grow weary, but hope in the Lord. Persevere and WAIT on the Lord. He is faithful in keeping His promises."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Shall I get louder, Greta?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The speaker at chapel on Wednesday was a guy named Jeff. Jeff is probably 6'5" and is all arms, legs, and giant facial expressions. He moved those arms and legs into all kinds of ridiculous shapes as he acted out various stories in his talk, pantomiming trying to push his truck out of his garage that morning which subsequently led to his kicking a hole in the garage wall; singing a song about his deep ardor for his comfort food, cheese; interviewing one of our seniors about the school's losing football team; then acting out meeting a girl, falling for her, and ultimately getting rejected. Throughout the talk, Jeff was hilarious, animated, and ridiculously silly.

And then all of a sudden he got profound.

In addressing different failures-- different failed "plans"-- Jeff brought us back to this:

(I'm quoting from his notes, which I demanded he give me after I heard this talk):

"Our grounding promise should be this: Romans 8:28-- We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Purpose is the magic word. There is purpose in the trial you are undergoing, your hardship, the direction of your path. ... James 1:2-4 tells us, Consider it pure joy my brothers whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. This dissonance gives way to a more satisfying consonance; this dense rain to a bolder rainbow; this wretched sin to a more glorious redemption. ...No matter where we are in life, we will have our plans frustrated; we will not have our way. Instead of reaching for the cheese of comfort, take comfort in the fact that God has a purpose in our trial for maturity and completeness."

In the midst of my grief over frustrated plans, in the midst of my fatigue, in the midst of my desire for something ELSE-- these words were medicine.

Jeff ended his talk by reading a blurb from an email he had once received from his best friend Kirk, as Kirk was preparing to go off to Africa. Jeff gave me a copy of this too-- look at the end of it:

"I must learn to listen, to wait, and to be. So in the holy silence that comes when I abandon my own pursuit to 'be enough' I hope to hear the voice of God saying, "Kirk, I love you. Let that be enough.' So I will place my hope in the God of hope, whose promises do not go unfulfilled and whose Word and love for his people will always endure, that I will let him love me and let that be enough."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

He asks, Am I enough for you Greta?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

That night, I led my Bible study of five freshmen girls who go to UW. The chapter we happened to be on was John, Ch. 6. It's all about how Jesus is the bread of life-- that everything else will leave us hungry but that He is ENOUGH. I had asked each of the girls to consider what their next "step" in their faith walks might be. The last girl to share said that she wanted to get to a place where she understood that Jesus was truly ENOUGH.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

He asks, Am I enough for you Greta?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

On Thursday, driving to school, I heard a song lyric that said something about getting so far into the ocean that you lose sight of shore; only then, is it time to turn back.

I don't know yet if my heart fully understands that God is enough; I think part of my heart still longs for more... still longs for shore. But I understand now that I am meant for deeper waters, and that I will only be capable of successfully living on land once I have lost sight of it altogether in the vast depth of the ocean.

On Friday, the chapel at school was simply a day of worship. I tried at first to worship up front among my students, but found myself feeling self-conscious. I wondered: am I closing my eyes for them, or for the Lord? Finally, we started singing a song that begins, "He is jealous for me." At that point, I left my spot among the students and walked to the back of the auditorium where I could worship without being seen.

I closed my eyes and sang. I pictured being deep in the ocean, far, far away from shore, in the crow's nest of a ship. The sun was rising over the water. Something lifted me out of the crow's nest and I danced in the sky.

Disappointment lingers. My story is still not the story I would wish for today. But in spite of that, I am overwhelmed with understanding God's LOVE for me. I have not been forgotten. I am part of an incredible adventure, and I am in the midst of something powerful. There is PURPOSE in this moment.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Let me take you deeper, Greta.

Yes, Lord-- I will go.

Old Slippers, Spiky Heels, and a mischievious Cowboy Boot

1.) Quote from Sandy, a teacher I work with, from a conversation we had yesterday after school:
"Oh Greta, I think a little excitement in the beginning is important. Some day, it's fine to be an old slipper. My husband and I... we're old slippers. And we still kiss each other, and we love each other, but after 30 years... you just get to be old slippers. And that's fine. That's beautiful, in its own way. But in the beginning--? Oh honey. You're looking for something more like a spiky heel."

- - - - -

2.) Yesterday, when weaving around the desks to check off the sophomores' vocab, I caught my cowboy boot on a desk-leg and fell-- with great flailing-- all the way to the ground. The kids were shocked and worried. I died laughing.

Apparently I am not QUITE ready for spiky heels. :)

The Fairy Tale

I grew up with them.


My grandma used to take my siblings and me on walks through the woods and tell us stories of the gnomes hiding under the toadstools; of the fairies that had caught their hair on the trees, leaving it behind as lichen; of the trolls that lived under the massive stumps and flossed their fangs, waiting for prey.

And I loved stories of princes and princesses.

And I loved stories of happily ever after.

And I believed in them-- with my whole, young heart.

This week, I told my AP class that I didn't like stories with easy endings anymore. "I love the stories that show brokenness," I told them. "I like the stories that show flawed people, struggling to make their best life in this world. Stories that end too happily, that end too easily... I just can't believe those. They don't ring true to me anymore."

It's amazing how growing up changes things, isn't it?

My favorite movie is When Harry met Sally, a hilarious romantic comedy that nevertheless shows two very real people struggling towards love. They're flawed, they're hopeful, they fight, they overcome... they're real.

I believe them. I believe that happy ending.

One of my LEAST favorite movies, however, is Love Actually. I don't believe a single stitch of it. The people seem too pretty; too perfect. The stories fall into place with little conflict, with almost no consequences. I can't stand it-- I see no truth there.

I told my roommate recently, "I don't need the fairy tale anymore. I just want something I can believe in. I want something I can trust."

Where I used to cherish the idea of perfection, of instant love, of happily ever after, of a prince on a white horse-- now I cherish the idea of a partner, of a best friend, of a man who will wade with me through conflict and pull me close to him as we emerge on the other side. I cherish the idea of trust growing incrementally, of laughter bubbling up after tears, of prayer occurring in the midst of stress, of a relationship that is not instant, but rather grows and strengthens and deepens over time. I love the idea of working to make something beautiful. I want deep conversations over a kitchen table, I want communication about the victories and the defeats. I want dogged solidarity and resolute team-work.

I don't want a frog that shows princely potential. I don't want a king that promises me the world.

I want a muddied up knight, who knows what it means to be in battle; who has dents in his armor, and determination on his mind. I want a man who expects a long journey, and knows there will be beauty, and knows there will be trials, and knows there will be deep, passionate, truthful love.

And I want freedom in my spirit.


And I want vulnerability to be safe.


Maybe I want the fairy tale after all...

I just want one I can believe in.

Q and A

Email from one of last year's seniors:

Hey this is B-----! I just started a new class; it's called An Introduction to Ethics and each week our teacher asks us a question. This week it's about religion: Is religion necessary for morality? I think that it is because without religion or God plus the Bible we wouldn't know about it, but also people who don't know about Christianity but know about Bhudda know about a different kind of morality. What do you think?

My response:

Remember the Moral Law? :) According to C.S. Lewis, the very fact that people have consciences and a (mostly) common appreciation of what actions are “right” and what are “wrong,” indicates that something beyond ourselves put that “moral law” in us. Especially since our understanding of what is RIGHT so often goes against our desires or instincts (remember the drowning man analogy?)... we know that something ABOVE the coarser human nature instilled this higher sense of morality within us.

Lewis uses this point to argue in favor of God-- the higher being. Different religions, of course, provide various interpretations of this higher being. We believe that Christianity is the religion that most resoundingly speaks truth. That’s the rest of Mere Christianity. :)

In considering the logic and sense that other religions bring to the table, my faith in Christianity has been confirmed above those others because of the incredible story of Jesus. In no other religion does that religion’s god come down, live among his people, and die for them so that they can be saved. Most gods in other religions remain removed-- they remain high up on their seats of power and demand sacrifices or stringent living standards from their followers. Buddhism believes in reincarnation, and I think Buddha was supposed to be a real man—- but the story of the cross is completely unique. It’s unheard of. That’s one reason why the Bible is, to me, so profoundly compelling-- it provides a narrative NO ONE would have made up. To think that the God of all things, the creator and formidable wielder of power would enter into such SQUALOR... and then allow Himself to be humiliated, beaten, and spit upon, tortured to DEATH… so that he could enable us to live...?

Unbelievable.

No other religion illustrates such extravagant, preposterous love from a god, for his people. Furthermore, Jesus is practically the last word on what it means to live morally. Even atheists who disregard his claim as God agree that the moral teachings of Jesus are profound-- I’ve spoken to several atheists who don’t believe in him, but believe in the veracity of his moral teachings. (Lewis would say this claim is impossible; how could Jesus be a good moral teacher if he was a human that was claiming to be God?? That would make him a mad-man, or a liar. Unless-- of course-- he WAS God.)

So do I believe religion is necessary for morality? No. Religion, no. I understand religion to be the practicing of rituals which are meant to honor a god. Religion can be a beautiful thing, but I don’t think it’s the religious rituals that lead to morality, per se.

But God? Absolutely. Jesus? No question. Faith in this incredible God, which shows itself through consistent moral living? Yes. We need all those things for morality.

Writing this email made me fall in love with God a little bit more. Thanks for giving me the excuse to write it. :)

Love to you,
Greta

Bits

I have discovered an ardent love for footy pajamas.

* * *

I am now on Christmas break. Started it off on a raucous note last night by collapsing into bed at 9pm. Hoping to ward off future narcoleptic attacks. At least until after New Year's Eve.

* * *

God must be trying to teach me something along the lines of "put your foot in your mouth and keep it there." I keep offending people.

* * *

Yesterday, the last day before break, I took my 7th period sophomores around the hallways caroling. Got some delighted looks from students; some ornery looks from teachers. (Well-- just Mr. Wa, but that's to be expected.) My rationale: no one's concentrating during the last 15 minutes anyway, so we may as well spread holiday cheer. Right?

* * *

Except I assigned homework over break. I know. I may as well have bombed Bethlehem.

* * *

Like I said, I keep offending people.

* * *

Description of recommended apparel for tonight's Christmas party: "Dress in holiday attire, but no tacky sweaters please. We're keeping it classy." How on earth does one dress "holidayish" if one can't wear a tacky sweater??

* * *

Today, when reading a book to my 4-year-old niece, I received an impromptu lecture on safe reading habits. "But you have to be careful when turning the pages Auntie Greta, because if you go like THIS, the pages will cut you, it will cut on your nail. This is a very sharp book."

One Fine Day

When I was in sixth grade, I developed a giant crush on the boy across the street. He was two years older than me-- my older brother's best friend. Therefore: irresistibly forbidden. The crush continued through middle school, through high school-- even into college. In between boyfriends, I would return to my crush on the boy across the street, and in all those days of pining, I would think of this song:


One fine day
You'll look at me
And you will know our love was
Meant to be
One fine day
You're gonna want me for your girl...


ONE day, I thought, that boy is going to decide that I'm the one he wants. Maybe after he goes off to college, I concluded. He'll come home, and WOWZA, I'll be all grown up, and then he'll like me!

And funny enough, that's what happened.

So this boy and I swung from the star-hung pendulum, reaching to one end of the galaxy in passion and sureness, and then swinging to the other where we said firm goodbyes... On one end, exchanging rhapsodic utterances, on the other, watching the star trails burn out with the darkened knowledge that the ride could only ever be temporary. Eventually, we were graced with Disappointment's dreary presence, and we stopped speaking, grew apart, fell out of favor, began forgetting.

And I fell in love with new boys.

And I learned about real heart-break.

Today, on my drive home, I heard on the radio--


One fine day
You'll look at me
And you will know our love was
Meant to be
One fine day
You're gonna want me for your girl...


... And I thought of the boy across the street: now a grown-up man with a fiance, in a city far far away. All I could do was shake my head in amazement at the way time has changed things. The memory of my fervent teenage affection now seems as fuzzy and old as the recording of that song. Yet forgetting, it turns out, brings a "finer day" than the two of us ever had with one another. The consummation of the "one fine day" was not his choosing me, but his forgetting me, and choosing someone else; the deliverance of the "one fine day" was not me receiving him, but forgetting him, and throwing open the doors of my heart to the great wide spaces of promise. Perhaps it isn't forgetting even, but rather remembering in a different way: this fine day's remembrance is colored-- not with longing and regret-- but with innocent nostalgia.

* * * * *

I say all this, because I'm forgetting again.

"I fell in love with new boys. And I learned about real heart-break."

Or rather, remembering in a different way than I have been remembering.

It is such a mercy to forget. Such a mercy to remember in a different way. Such a mercy to hear an old song, and realize that one fine day, I hear it with a different heart.

I tried posting this as a status update but it was too long.

By me.
(Forgive the breaches in iambic pentameter.)

To leave or not to leave? That is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the long run to suffer
The long oppression of my classroom,
Or to take off from school,
And sink into the comfort of my couch?
To leave, to part-- no more.
And in parting, to say I end the thousands of messy papers
Stacked on my desk and simply forget them.
'Tis oblivion devoutly to be wished. To leave, to vacate...
To vacate, perchance to VACATION... Ay, there's the rub,
For in Christmas vacation what dreams will come!
Yet before I shuffle off this grading coil,
I first must pause... There's the respect
That makes for such long hours at school.
For who would bear the messy desk, the flourescent lights,
The piles of papers, the students' slacking,
The incessant planning, the papers still to come--
When I might simply leave and go home
To my hot tub? Who would all this bear,
To grunt and sweat for this difficult profession,
But that the dread of grading over Christmas vacation
Makes me rather sweat it out now, and try to get 'er done...
So that come Friday I'm just a little bit more free than I am right now.
Thus, conscience does make drudges of us all...
And thus the native tendency to procrastinate
Weakens and cowers when such Christmasy freedom beckons on the horizon.
Soft you now, the AP timed writes...! Back to work and grading...

p.s. Have I mentioned recently that I really DO like my job...? Most of the time...?

Thanksgiving Song

When I taught 1st grade Sunday school several years ago, I wrote a Thanksgiving song to teach the little bitties. It went:

I'm thankful for
The things that I eat
The shoes on my feet
I'm thankful Lord!
I'm thankful for
A house and a home
And that I'm not alone
I'm thankful Lord.

And I will sing
A prayer of Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving!
I'm thankful Lord!
I'm thankful Lord,
I'm thankful Lord.

And you know-- even though there are many thoughts clamoring in my head and many mixed feelings about the holidays... I am so thankful, for all those things. I have good food to eat; I have shoes and warm clothes and a cozy home. I am not alone-- not only because I have wonderful friends in my life and a family that loves me, but because I am a daughter of the King and He is with me every moment.

I'm thankful Lord!

Lions and Teacups

Oh, Pobrecita
Tragic little tea-cup
Did he go and shatter you again?
But the way that you're cryin'
Is more like a lion
Licks her wounds before she seeks revenge.
- Bishop Allen

Listened to this song this morning. I think most women are a mixture of fragile tea-cups, and lionesses. Perhaps that's why we confuse men so much sometimes. They expect lion, and we're tea-cup. They expect tea-cup and we're suddenly lion.

I think that's alright.

Pandora's Last Hope

One thing that I love about teaching literature is that the stories are constantly teaching me-- even ones that I've already become familiar with. Poems shift in their significance as I get older and stories likewise take on greater depth.

Tonight, Annie and I were talking about hope-- and how, difficult as it may be to maintain at times, we are absolutely called to preserve it. We MUST do whatever we can to blow our fragile breath on hope's dying embers... to coax its wilting bloom back to life.

Our conversation made me think of Pandora. Pandora, as I'm sure you know, was the one that opened the box-- THE box, the one from which all the world's evils escaped. This first woman, created as a punishment for mankind (yes. according to the ancient Greeks, woman was created as a punishment for man), Pandora was sent to her absent-minded husband Epimetheus with a giant, elaborately carved box as a dowry. Inside the box, writhed all the pregnant evils of the world: hate and bitterness and anger and fear and greed and pride and lust and lies and selfishness-- everything devoid of goodness or love. At one point, when left to her own devices, Pandora's curiosity got the best of her, and she opened the box--- thereby releasing all the contagion of the world. Pandora is Greek mythology's version of Eve; her action led to a darkened world. Punishment for mankind, indeed.

At this point, the stories begin to vary. Some versions say that Pandora managed to clap the lid of the box shut before the last inhabitant flew out-- and ended up shutting the lid on "hopelessness." Because Hope was preserved, we are able to withstand the evils that were released. Other versions say that Pandora initially shut the lid on Hope, but that the sweet bird clamored to get out. In that version, Pandora eventually opens the lid once more and Hope is released, ready to offer a balm to the world's wounded souls. Another version says that Hope remained forever imprisoned in the box; but in those versions, it is still somehow understood that Hope is what enables us to survive the rest. Hope is the only thing that keeps us from giving over to utter darkness and despair.

Those variations came to mind as Annie and I talked tonight. It's fitting, I think, that we don't exactly know whether Hope was imprisoned or released; whether it was Hopelessness or Hope that was left. Hope is such a slippery entity at times, isn't it? Sometimes it seems like the meanest thing to hold on to. We cultivate it and feed it bits of our heart, only to sometimes be ultimately disappointed. In other moments, Hope truly is the only life preserver. When all is lost, Hope is our ONLY sustenance. In those moments, the myth of Pandora's box seems especially relevant. In the face of overwhelming evil, we are kept alive by one thing alone: Hope.

Annie posted as her facebook status yesterday: "Hope takes practice, and practice doesn't always make perfect. But it's still worth practicing."

This is why Annie is my best friend. I couldn't agree more.