Miller's Modesty

He remembered that a cynical compatriot had once told him that American women - the pretty ones, and this gave a largeness to the axiom - were at once the most exacting in the world and the least endowed with a sense of indebtedness.

From Henry James' Daisy Miller this caption takes the American beauty/brat and gives her a slap across the face. Except for the one that fills such a characteristic (or label) is usually unaware that she deserves such a characteristic (or label). Funny how that works. There are some women who are unconscious of their beauty, a fragile sort of innocence. For example, my fiance is beautiful. In my eyes she is the most beautiful person in the world. In her eyes, she is not very beautiful at all. She spends too much time in comparisons of what others look like and who she might be if she looked different. Nothing I can do will really change that. It is part of her insecurity. I say many things, compliments and praises of her beauty are on my mind all the time and fall from my lips just as frequently. Still she won't believe me. Again, it's her insecurity. Nevertheless, she is - in her eyes - unconscious. Then there are others. There are those who are unconscious of their brattiness. They might be aware (or conscious) of their beauty, hence the brattiness. But they will be unaware of what kind of person they are. They will be aware of their beautiful "endowment" but not of their "exacting" behaviour or their lack of "indebtedness" (that is, ungratefulness).

Probably the best medium between a bratty beauty and an insecure beauty is the beauty that is indeed conscious but modest in their consciousness. A modest awareness and a modest appearance of that beauty.

My Soul's Courage

Faith is the soul's courage in its pursuit of the invisible.

That was a friend's Facebook status this morning. It was also exactly what I needed. Last night my fiance an I went shopping for Mother's Day presents. My card was rejected 3 times at Bath and Body Works. When I went to a nearby ATM it said I had some 250 dollars in my account but then when I tried to draw 20 it said I was overdrawing. Apparently my balance was a negative 250 dollars. Not cool.

My last paycheck (which I hadn't cashed) was for approximately 250 dollars. It was a smaller paycheck than usual because of a few days I had to miss due to school or missions activities. That paycheck was going to be my means of survival for the upcoming couple of weeks. The upcoming weeks are filled with craziness. Utter insanity. After my graduation on Friday I am completely destitute. I have a week of unconfirmed May school and then a summer full of insecurities. Not only do I not have a secure place to live, I don't have a job either. That paycheck was going to be my lifeline. Now it has to go to paying off a huge bank mistake.

After fuming (and terrifying my fiance) we went for a walk in the park. She let me vent. She also shut me up. I was acting like a jerk. I was full of fear and anger. I felt like kicking myself. I felt like crying. She was such an encouragement. She let me vent. She rebuked me. She prayed for me. She encouraged me. She held me. She loved me.

With someone like her in my life I know God will care for me. I know that He will care for us. My soul has faith in Him, and faith is my soul's courage as I pursue the invisible - both now in the summer and after, once we are married.

Books

Billy Collins is a personal favourite of mine. He was Poet Laureate for the US during, I believe, the early 2000's. One of the poems I love of his is the one titled Books. In this poem he tells of a library "humming" late at night and each book "together forming a low, gigantic chord of language."

Collins develops different scenarios - childhood reading, college reading, etc. But towards the end, the final stanza, he writes:

I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves
straining in circles of light to find more light
until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs
that we follow across a page of fresh snow;

He does keep going, but these are the lines that interest me most. Do we read ourselves away from ourselves in search of more light? Is this a form of escapism? Is escapism a bad thing? I do think we read ourselves (the universal man) in literature and yet are able to lose ourselves in the piece, immersing ourselves in it until we lose ourselves. I also think we read in light because it is nigh impossible to read in darkness, but I also think we read to find light. That light can be an analogy for hope or some other virtue, but it is nevertheless true. We are searching for some sense of light. Thus being able to see truth. The truth that is found in our escapism of happily ended fables or the truth of violent tragedies of fiction or fact. Either way we find truth, by escaping into a book. And that is what keeps us going, that is the trail of crumbs we follow across and on to the next page.

In a Minute

"Some people live a lifetime in a minute."

These are the words Al Pacino uses as a rebuttal (or pick-up-line) to the extremely pretty girl he tries to sit with at a fancy restaurant. He says those words to her after she tries to get rid of him on the excuse that her partner should be arriving in "a minute."

This is a key scene that opens up to one of the most beautiful scenes of the film Scent of a Woman. In an incredible film, which garnered Pacino his Academy Award. Without elaborating too much on the plot (although it's not a movie you can "give it away" on) I'll just say that he, Pacino, plays a blind man and does so really, really well. Because of his blindness other senses are, of course, enhanced - including his sense of smell. Hence the title, Scent of a Woman.

But let's address the opening statement. Is that true? Sometimes time is just ticking away. We can get so easily distracted. Bored. Life is sometimes so slow. Sometimes, on the other hand, it is so fast that we feel a little overwhelmed. But life isn't measured by speed. I can't quite claim to know what it is measured by, but it is not whether the minute was fast or slow. What matters is if that minute became alive or not.

Bebo's Blog

This was taken (ripped off of) Bebo Norman's blogsite. He titled it "The Hunted Was God," and the rest of this blog is entirely his.

[Excerpt from an old Journal entry]

I'm reading Annie Dillard this morning and, as always, she is leaving me breathless. Her words say everything. Her willingness to find her own reality in the reality of the wilderness is compelling. She tells a story in Teaching a Stone to Talk (pg. 12) of a man who shot an eagle out of the sky. When he examined the eagle he found "the dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to [the eagle's] throat." This is really a story of the weasel. She goes on to describe just how this sort of thing might happen. I did not realize this, but apparently weasels are relentless creatures - absolutely devoted to instinct, to the point of death. She talks of how weasels live "in necessity [while] we live in choice." A weasel attacks its prey by the throat and does not let go - stubborn instinct even unto death. And then she turns and wields the eye on herself:

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death cannot part you. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.

She takes this gruesome thought of decomposition and decay at the hands of instinct and shows me the beauty of it, the beauty of commitment. What if I confessed my one necessity? What if I lived with only one choice, which is really no choice at all? What if I stalked it, attacked it on instinct, and took it by the throat to empty and drain all the good and life out of it and into myself. Would I kill it? Not if it was an eternal thing. Not if it was an eternal source. Not if the thing that I was after had no beginning and no end. Not if the prey was truth. Not if the hunted was God. What if I confessed my one necessity? What if I lived instinctively for that alone? What if I attacked after God like a weasel its prey, "to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse?" The dilemma in my life as a believer is not to figure out what my calling is. My calling is my prey. My calling is my one necessity. My calling is God. So the dilemma is to actually live that calling - to live in necessity, not choice. My calling is to attack the throat of God not to drain the life out of it, but to draw the life from it. And only then does the battle begin - to hang on, jaws clinched, to this thing to which I am now a part, all the while being dragged, dangling up into the air. Up into far reaches and distant places, "over fields,over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless" where I will truly live and where I will also die "from as high as eagles."

Validation

"She's a hard 10."

At least that's what the actors in She's Out of my League said about the (very) beautiful Molly (as played by Alice Eve).

Incredibly enough this ridiculous (and obscene) film gave me a lot to think about. Too much, in fact. On the way back from the movies my fiance and I talked a lot about the film. Well, at least I talked a lot about it. It wasn't, as I said, good. It wasn't any good at all, actually. But it did make me think.
The entire film revolved around one aspect - acceptance. That's what it seemed like to me anyway. Another way of saying "acceptance" is to say "validation." That word seems to carry a heavier psychological connotation and since that's my fiance's major that was the word we used. Plus it does seem to be a little stronger for vocabulary usage as well.

Validation. This movie was about the search for validation. This is a universal search and it is a unisex search. The incredibly beautiful girl wants it, and the utterly plain dork wants it just as bad. Everybody wants it, and not just in this movie either.

Some people discover their validation in good clothes, the kind that puts your credit card in deeper debt just because it has a popular little logo on it. For some people their validation is in their education or their career or their success at whatever they do. Some people even find their validation in their religion. No matter which of these scenarios a person pursues for validation they are all wrong. They are all unsatisfying.

If someone seeks for their validation in a source outside of God they will always end disappointed.

Talking with my fiance I confessed that I found a lot of my validation as a man in her. Naturally to find some sense of validation in her is not wrong, but to have her have the final say in the matter is wrong. She makes me feel like I'm attractive. She makes me feel like I'm strong. But whenever she is disappointed in me I feel bummed. That's a good thing, it teaches me I shouldn't disappoint her. It's not healthy for the relationship. But, again, she shouldn't be the one to have a final say in how I feel, or, how I am validated.

Does God make me feel attractive? Does He make me feel strong? Do I feel disappointed in myself when I disappoint Him? Am I validated through Him? I should be, He thinks I'm a "hard 10." Actually, He thinks I'm to die for.

The Truth in Lying

But 'tis strange: And oftentimes to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tells us truths; win us with honest trifles, to betray's in deepest consequence.
(Wm. Shakespeare, Macbeth, Banquo Act 1, Scene III)

Okay. Here we have Banquo, the hero, warning Macbeth to beware of the Witches (Weird Sisters) auguries. Although some of their augury has come true, after all Macbeth did legitimately become Thane of Cawdor, there was still a lot left to that same augury that didn't seem to be too accurate, and if accurate it wouldn't be too good. Basically, the second half of their augury was that Macbeth would also soon become King. They were genuinely prophetic. Macbeth, as we know, did become king. But at what cost? There was, of course, no legitimacy to his kingship. He achieved it via murder.

As I read this last night I couldn't help but think of how the Devil uses "angel of light" methods to deceive us. He is, after all, disguised in beauty as an "angel of light" but we know that it's just camouflage. In reality, he is just coming to steal, kill, and destroy. He is a liar, and the father of all lies. Even the ones that have grains of truth. Those lies that we somehow reconcile with our own consciousness because of that half-truth. And there is no need, of course, for me to pull out the trite little soap box of "A half-truth is a whole lie." We all know that. We just overlook it, sometimes purposefully.

It was also Shakespeare (I think) who said that the Devil cites Scriptures for his own purposes. He undoubtedly knows the Word well. He quoted it to Jesus when tempting Him out in the desert. The devil lies to us with our emotions. After all, if it feels good we can do it, right? Or with our intellects. We reason so many things out. This can't be so, it's too absurd. Or we say, This has to be this way, any other way would be absurd. He even tackles our faith. Perhaps this is the area we most frequently overlook his lies. But he is an artful deceiver in these areas. He tells us that we can add to our faith via good works. He tells us that God condemns us for our sins. He tells us that we can't quit our sins. He tells us that unless we quit (which is impossible) God won't hear our prayers. He tells us that we are guilty. That we need to measure up to God's love. He tells us all these lies and more. But he does so artfully because he often involves kernels of truth to his lies. Nevertheless they are still lies.