tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-347135242009-12-23T22:22:02.457-05:00"Casting off everything that so easily entangles, let us run with endurance the race set out for us..." Hebrews 12:1<br><br>A continuing pilgrimageMelissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.comBlogger407125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-83865801853620741192009-12-23T22:05:00.003-05:002009-12-23T22:22:02.465-05:00

Lone leaf in the wildernessBob Dylan released his first Christmas album this year. The Weekly Standard says, in typically erudite prose: “It’s so bad I can’t believe it.”Do I believe it’s bad? No. It’s one of the best Christmas albums I’ve ever heard. But of course I would say that. Right? I’m one of those battered Dylan wives Andrew Ferguson talks about. I have to admit--I love even

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-71071617325674321592009-12-20T15:17:00.002-05:002009-12-20T15:28:39.336-05:00

Blooming Christmas cactusGod says certain words to me at moments in my life, moments when he wants to emphasize a point. To bring me to a crux of humility. And I love him for it. I do. I love him like Saint Teresa of Avila did, on her bed in the monastery.Tonight it was when the Amens from the Messiah flooded my speakers, on the iTunes random shuffle that I insist on using at all times. That

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-26142268271631898682009-12-12T18:52:00.002-05:002009-12-12T19:09:11.739-05:00

Sunset on Lake MichiganI spent two weeks in early October at the beach with my family, at Door County, a peninsula completely surrounded by water. Unfortunately, it was also as far north as the Maine section of the Appalachian trail, so it was like sudden winter onset. It was fun spending the week with my family, but the weather was horrible, and we were all trapped inside, at the beach,

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-44974993375957009172009-09-25T12:41:00.002-04:002009-09-25T16:52:31.504-04:00

Cucumber flowerMy childhood had its fair share of trauma, although I usually feel guilty talking about it because so many people had it so much worse. My early years were idyllic. I still can’t conceive of anything better than drinking mango lassis under palm trees for breakfast; treading beneath a sun so hot it makes my breath quiver; spending all day swimming and walking and snorkeling in

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-21727074471305354102009-07-10T12:05:00.015-04:002009-07-11T17:36:17.972-04:00

Flowers are not a clicheOn the boat, I kept a little notebook of blog ideas. I've abandoned the practice here, partly because my life ashore seems so gosh-darned boring, but mainly because it's hard work to be constantly alert to those twinges of conscience that say: ah. Here's a story. Follow it.I'm looking through that little notebook now, remembering how and where my twinges happened,

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-48079071499800636422009-07-05T19:36:00.002-04:002009-07-05T20:26:21.562-04:00

BacklightI’ve been thinking a lot about belief lately, maybe because of the response I received to my Lenten blog, which has led to a lot of additional reading. My father also sent me a link to the Evangelical Manifesto, a document produced by a group of evangelicals trying to sort their way out of the political mess they’ve managed to get themselves into during the last eight years. I’m

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-27008730387949690672009-06-30T22:57:00.003-04:002009-06-30T23:06:39.223-04:00

Learning to help things grow(A lot more pictures of my garden are here.)I’m sitting on a blanket on the grass at my local park. I’ve never been here before, and I don’t know why. There are children playing in the creek with buckets and pails. Why do we bring children to parks to play and never take ourselves? I don’t know if I’ve laid out a blanket on the grass, listened to music, read, and

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-61900608841856843212009-05-10T15:58:00.000-04:002009-05-18T15:02:32.488-04:00

The New Yorker recently featured a retrospective on the life and work of David Foster Wallace--a brave article, filled with fire and verve and quotes about what it means to be a fiction writer, and what it means, really, to be a human being. David Foster Wallace, if you don’t know, is the brilliant contemporary novelist who hanged himself on his front porch last September, at the age of 47.He

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-67160043395758795632009-05-01T13:30:00.003-04:002009-05-18T00:00:27.848-04:00

Flowers are pretty.Another poem today, this one by Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish national treasure. (I should add that I'm also not the author of the previous poem, as some seem to have assumed. That was John Updike, who died last year.)The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes. Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,Would

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-55225774804636419162009-03-27T12:19:00.003-04:002009-03-27T12:43:17.896-04:00

1932-2009Fine PointDecember 22, 2008Why go to Sunday school, though surlily,and not believe a bit of what was taught?The desert shepherds in their scratchy robesundoubtedly existed, and Israel's defeats--the Temple in its sacredness destroyedby Babylon and Rome. Yet Jews kept faithand passed the prayers, the crabbed rites,from table to table as Christians mocked.We mocked, but took. The timbrel

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-39433623053532691732009-03-26T15:56:00.003-04:002009-03-26T16:03:59.672-04:00

Sophia looks to heavenMy current source of stress is an article I’m writing about American perceptions of poverty. I’m having a really hard time with it. I don’t know how much I have to say about poverty. I do believe that after growing up in the vast, dirty necropolises of Bangkok and Manila that I have a better conception of what global poverty really means than the average American. I

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-14871628225578045402009-03-25T14:13:00.005-04:002009-07-11T17:20:22.117-04:00

I watched this clip today, sent to me by a friend. I completely believe this, 100 percent. So why do I feel embarrassed saying so? Maybe it’s because so many other artists and writers are skeptical of this kind of romantic, spiritual creative process. Primitive cultures aren’t, for sure. They believe that art taps into divinity. Generally, the artists and the shamans are the exact same

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-15193871809922999812009-03-22T19:46:00.004-04:002009-03-22T19:53:03.609-04:00

One of my life's great lovesSo I decided to take myself seriously, and listen to my own advice. If I’m going to have faith, then I have to have faith that Secret will find herself a new owner, with as much love for her as I have, and that she’ll go on to have many wonderful adventures. I enumerated things I was procrastinating yesterday, and seriously listing Secret for sale is at the top of

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-35212706086891361532009-03-21T15:33:00.004-04:002009-07-11T17:23:04.061-04:00

This is what I believe today. Maybe not yesterday, and maybe tomorrow. Today, at least, I can believe.

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-43317258754000814662009-03-19T14:47:00.003-04:002009-03-20T11:47:28.245-04:00

How you parents avoid posting endless cute pictures of your children I'll never understand.What will make you believe me? I love unspoken and unexpected synchronicities in life. They are things, maybe the only things, that give me real faith. I believe completely in the power of divine coincidence. My father says, when things like that happen, that they are “of the Lord.” My vocabulary is

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-33044411934342702852009-03-15T21:46:00.000-04:002009-03-15T21:47:45.900-04:00

He hasn’t, actually. But he may if he ever reads my blog. I’m afraid to check my comments today, afraid to even check the blog, so I’m writing off-line, in a safe text document. Does everyone hate me now? I feel a little like I’ve come out of the closet. I seem to be an equal-opportunity offender--capable of offending the nonbelievers in the crowd with the primacy of my faith, and offending

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-1682064333744203432009-03-13T12:35:00.002-04:002009-03-13T12:53:04.089-04:00

After I wrote yesterday’s post, I found myself thinking a lot about humility. Humility may have been the reason I decided to return to my faith. I decided I didn’t need certainty, that I didn’t need systematic theology--that what I needed to have was humility, and that its lack was exactly what was so wrong with most evangelicals. Micah 6:8, one of my favorite verses, reads: “What does the

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-31247747337607854232009-03-12T14:40:00.001-04:002009-03-12T14:43:29.967-04:00

I read this poem today and it recalled to me, somehow, the problems I used to have with faith, problems that still haunt me now although not with such immediacy. My fundamental problem with faith of any kind used to be the nature of evil. I know, easy, right? Only the biggest problem anyone’s ever dealt with in the entire history of humanity.It struck me for the first time my senior year of

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-54609291840154770352009-03-11T22:23:00.002-04:002009-03-12T14:40:25.486-04:00

The young philosopherWow, this has been harder than I expected. Seriously. Any Lenten discipline is hard, I know, but it’s a tall order to be completely honest about my faith every day. So hard that I’m not even doing it, even though I’ve had a remarkable quantity of positive feedback. Why is it so hard? Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to push two magnets together at their opposite poles,

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-70522330719483143902009-03-04T14:35:00.004-05:002009-03-06T17:36:47.901-05:00

IrisMy sister, her children, and I spent twelve hours in the car yesterday on a fantastic road trip that included two Starbucks stops (tea for me, Americanos for her, chocolate milk for Sophia) and one hourlong McDonald’s playland stop in southern Indiana. Items of note: all female children under the age of ten in southern Indiana wear pink head to toe and the playing of Christian radio in

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-40696050878503642772009-03-02T00:01:00.002-05:002009-03-02T00:30:58.825-05:00

Mom's hands, as seen by SophiaSo early in Lent do I stumble. Oh well. Mistakes are not the point. The point is to keep going, and to not use the mistakes as excuses. Maybe I’m stumbling because I’m not sure I have much to say, or maybe it’s because I’m trying to purge the negativity from my life. Trying to not let it affect me.Maybe I should just blog about that. One of my big problems with

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-78186040219715996542009-02-27T14:38:00.004-05:002009-02-27T23:53:31.525-05:00

Papou and SophiaYesterday, Papou moved back to his assisted-living facility. He’s doing better, much better, as he promised my mom, but it still feels scary and rushed. They’re continuing hospice care for him, and at any moment he could disappear. My sister and I talked about it, how it reinforces our feeling of immortality. All of our four grandparents still live. All eight of Sophia’s

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-33929767221037887662009-02-26T14:36:00.000-05:002009-02-27T14:37:33.573-05:00

It’s the first day of Lent, and I’ve decided this year, instead of giving up something, I’m going to take on something. I’m going to spend these forty days thinking and writing about my faith. It’s a gauntlet my sister threw down, and I have some ambivalence about taking it up, but what can it hurt? I want to become a person of stronger faith, to allow my faith to take control of my life.As

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-39220620970114082912009-02-26T00:08:00.003-05:002009-02-26T00:16:31.177-05:00

Last NovemberMy grandfather, my Papou, is dying. I suppose, in retrospect, we all knew it was inevitable. Maybe it’s why I’ve been blogging about him so frequently, maybe it’s why his history has been so much on my mind, why I keep trying to take and post feeble pictures of him. He’s in hospice right now, his 86-year-old kidneys failing.I’m not sure he’s ready to go yet. My mother broke down

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-16791378162893757142009-02-20T15:59:00.003-05:002009-02-20T16:30:17.495-05:00

Walking through the doorAfter a three-week visit in the north country, I’m heading back south. I’m at Boston Logan right now, the late-afternoon sun slanting across my shoulders, with a three-hour wait for my flight. I definitely overestimated the time I needed to get through Boston on my bus. Still, one of the things I’ve always loved about travel is the waiting time in airports and train

Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0