Cloth Calf

I went to Books-A-Million today, to find the perfect way to spend my birthday B-A-M gift card. I was contemplating getting Surprised by Joy, so I could finish it without having to return it to the library. I was in the Religion section when I saw it.

It was a cloth Bible case with Obama on the front.

Now, normally I wouldn't bring up El Presidente two entries in a row. But I have to say...what the heck? To say that putting Obama's head - or anybody's head for that matter - on your Bible is thoroughly unBiblical would be the understatement of the century.  It's idolatry.

I could say I expected better from people who make Bible covers - but let's be honest here. The variety and shallowness of Christian merchandise available is good evidence that their producers are in it for the profit - as good businessmen usually are.

What worries me more is if these good businessmen are producing pieces of crap like idolaterous book covers because there is a market for them.

Granted, we all tend toward idol-worship, whether we recognize it or not. Whatever takes our time, interest, or devotion away from God is our idol(s). Sometimes, our idols are people. Friends, mentors, celebrities - or presidents, apparently. Making people our idols is dangerous and disappointing. People are people - they're human. They are fallible and make mistakes, and for all their good intentions they will never live up to the pedastel you put them on - nor will you live up to the pedastel others put you on. It's why we need grace.

I really hope - no, I pray that not one Obama Bible cover sells. Obama has been deified too much already. People think he is going to save America. He may not be a bad guy - personally, I don't know, I've never met him - but he is no savior. He is a man, and that means he is limited and fallible. To make him more than that is dangerous for all involved.




Jesus saves. Jesus brings the best change.

Let his soul run wild

Look at the leaves!

The dogwood outside our window is turning red - the first of the year, unless you count the black locust trees in front of the building that violently shed all their tiny yellow leaves the first day of September. With the rain and the sudden cold, however, it's felt more like Alabama winter the past couple days than fall. On any fall afternoon it's hard to go to work, but the cold and rainy ones make the thought of doing anything other than sipping tea and reading. My students have their off days, too. Lessons can go three ways. 1, Miracle of miracles, the student is engaged and enthusiastic. 2, They're fidgety and restless from being cooped up in school all day, and they have the attention span of a squirrel. 3, They're tired from school, football, gymnastics, karate, and baseball.

This makes me wonder what President Obama hopes to accomplish with a longer school day. I don't know about school nowadays, but when I was a kid the last hour of school was almost unbearable, and I'm sure it was worse for the teacher, having to maintain order in a room of 20-30 small children and somehow manage to teach them something! I'm not going to go into all that I think is wrong with the public school system, but I'm fairly certain that making kids spend ALL DAY in school is NOT going to help. They already spend too much time there, in my opinion. Then they have all 50 extracurricular activities they take part in after school! Kids don't have the opportunity to have a childhood anymore. No time to run around outside, making mud pies and building forts, too busy to play dress-up or help Mom make cookies. No hours left in the day to lay on the ground and name the clouds in the sky. Too tired at night to learn the big dipper. Too much homework to read Narnia!

I just wish every kid had a childhood as magical as mine, I guess. Childhood is for innocent fun, not hours and hours of structured activity.

Thanks, Mom!

On the way home...

I missed my turn on purpose and went the extra half-mile to the overlook next to the hang-glider jump off. The view was fabulous, of course. Rolling green valleys turned to blue hills rising in the distance. But the wind on that piece of red rock was strong and wild, and it threatened to knock me off my feet. If it had, I reckon I would have flown up and back – not forward off the cliff – then, perhaps, floated gently over the edge and above the valley, to better survey it from such a magnificent height. Nevertheless, I kept my feet firmly planted, until I could stand the buffeting no longer and sought the shelter of my car. Time to go home. Within minutes I was driving in that very same valley, on my way home/not home. The solitude and scenery ripe for pensiveness, I began to think about home. Home used to be the place I lived with my family and missed when I was elsewhere. Then it became nowhere, then it changed, then it became many places, which themselves changed, again. The pavement slipping below me and the blue sky slipping above, it occurred to me that home does not change; that it is, in fact, an absolute. Home is an absolute, of which fragments manifest themselves in our lives. Sometimes we find Home in places we did not expect, and sometimes Home leaves places we found it before. Home is and it isn’t; it is given and taken away. Home is in the company of my family. Home is by the side of my childhood friend. Home is up a tree or down a river. Home is in all the books that speak the things of my soul I can’t write myself. Home is the feeling of raw belonging I feel in those blue Appalachians, the belonging I felt when the wind tried to blow me off the cliff. It would seem that Home does not equal a place, but is found IN a place, or a person, or a situation, and it can be taken out of wherever it is in. And all of these little bits of Home that I find only serve to comfort me for a moment. And their comfort is in that they remind me that Home does exist, as an absolute, as a whole; that I belong somewhere, with someone.

We apologize for the delay

From Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

"Writers don't make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don't work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read then paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck's book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man's stupid wors. And for this, as I said before, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more."

You should know that over the past few weeks I have visited 5 countries in Europe. It was cold, fascinating, and I'm glad to be back in America.

I am written out. Sorry.

Of Mice and Other Stuff

I've been reminded it's time to update my blog. In 2 days I'll be catching a red-eye to Denmark. A week ago, we drove back South. We stopped at the local publix at 7:30, and the parking lot was all but deserted. Here's my conclusion: I love the city, but the rural South is home. The city is loud, fast, crowded, exciting, full of opportunities, easy to get around, rubbing elbows with everybody. Here, is slow, familiar, friendly, warmer, sleepier, plenty of fun backroads, and the entertainment comes from the people you're with rather than the places you go. I have four coffee dates in 2 days. Why? Because there's little else to do besides going for coffee. That's ok. I like coffee. I like the fact that it is a social drink, and an excuse to just sit around and talk. I will, however, probably be drinking tea some of the time, as there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

It's nice to be "home," in my bed, with my wall full of books, and my piano (even though I left most of my piano books at school). The cat is just as thrilled, and has already caught us 3 mice in the basement and dropped them in select places around the upstairs. It was my unpleasant job to dispose of one of them (luckily, an already dead one). I remember seeing what I thought was a dead mouse on our driveway one time. It was dark, matted, and hideous with large yellow teeth. I guess it was a rat, because the mouse the cat killed was small and cute. Rodents, cute? Perish the thought! I almost felt sorry for it. After all, they stay in the basement...Poor cat, though - so happy now, she has no idea that in a month's time she'll be in a stranger's apartment.

I think I'm ready for Europe. I packed my backpack on Monday, then realized I wasn't leaving for a week. But for now, adieu from the Sleepy South.

New Thoughts and Thoughts on Newness

I feel like this Christmas break deserves some exposition, as it's the most unusual/different Christmas I've had so far (the prize for most depressing goes to Xmas '06, most magical goes to whatever year it was mom and dad put coconut and flour "snow" boot-and-butt-prints on the hearth and it didn't occur to me that snow would melt).

First, let's get a little context. Three-room, twelfth floor apartment. Starbucks on the ground floor. Four-foot fake tree on the mantle of the holographic fireplace. There's no chimney, so I think Santa might have a little trouble. At the very least, he doesn't have to worry about getting his rear burnt.

This is my first city-living experience. I have to use a white noise machine at night to drown out the trains and cars, but I can walk to Starbucks, Pier 1, Target, Hollywood Video, a Greek restaurant (and innumerable other eateries), BARNES AND NOBLE, and the Metro station which will take you to the most fabulous museums in the world. In fact, I can walk UNDERGROUND to the Metro station if I want, and window-shop along the way. There are two massive office buildings that hinder our view of the river. I realized yesterday that they're the EPA. There's a faint taste of irony lingering in my mouth.

This is also the closest I've come to base living. When you live on base, or very near one, things are different from normal life. For example, if you need food, you go to the commissary. If you need socks, you go to the PX (short for post-exchange). And if you're in need of a special pick-me-up, you won't find it at the commissary or the PX; for that, you'll need to go the Class-Six.

So far I've seen one-millionth of the Museum of Natural History, the national Christmas tree, Richard Avendon's Portraits of Power, and the official stables of the official horses of the official caisson for official military funerals, and stuff. The latter was a happy accident. We'd just been to the commissary, and for lunch in the basement of the officer's club (if you want to eat upstairs, you have to dress nice), and we decided to wander over to the caisson stables to see if we could see the horses.

The caisson and the honor guard pull the coffins in funerals at Arlington National Cemetery, as well as other official funerals and memorial services. They do 8 funerals a day. The horses are the most beautiful, majestic, lovely, velvety-nosed creatures I've ever seen. Some were even a massive 2,000 lbs. Their necks and heads were bigger than all of me! We fed carrots to Sgt York, the tiny (in comparison) horse that was saddled with Ronald Reagan's cowboy boots backward in the stirrups for Reagan's funeral.

We were shown around by Private S, who I took to be no older than me, judging by the fact that he was trying unsuccessfully to grow a mustache (I've never tried, but I imagine if I did I'd fail too). Pvt. S told us this was his first assignment after enlistment and basic training. He's been there 6 months. This means Pvt. S is most likely younger than me. This struck me, and I've been thinking about it for a while. All my life, the men and women on the bases where my dad's been have been older than me. They were adults, and I was a child. I don't feel much like an adult now - I subsist mostly on daddy and mommy's money, with the few exceptions of my spending money, grocery money, and a small amount of student loans. But - I'm the same age as (or even older than!) some of the soldiers now.

I dunno. It's hard for me to wrap my head around the juxtaposition of the parent-supported college life and the self-supported life of a soldier the same age. What makes us so different? And why do I still feel like a child?

The Insanely Long Christmas Break, Part I

I have 6 weeks off for Christmas.

There is a yellow jacket in the lamp next to me. Maybe if I ignore him he will ignore me and burn up on the bulb and die.

Part I is Georgia. I spent all of 30 minutes at my house today. It was cold and all the furniture was covered in sheets. Not exactly what people mean when they sing idealistically about coming home for Christmas. I promised my books and my piano I'd be back in a couple of weeks.

Grandparents are nicer about naps than parents. They just say, "Aw, poor baby needs her sleep" when I conk out on guest bed for an hour (or two). The first few days of a school break will ALWAYS be primarily sleep-oriented. The moon is full, so at night it looks like it's snowed. The wind chimes on the porch haven't been quiet since yesterday morning. Most of the time they sound like fairy music, but sometimes (mainly when I'm falling asleep) they sound eerie - maybe more like aliens-coming-to-abduct-you music?

Yellow jacket has ventured out of lamp and is now crawling on lampshade. Wait, no, he's back inside. There's a smart one.

Tomorrow Part II, DC, will begin. Perhaps I will have more things to write about than naps and bugs.

Green eggs and ham

Forgive me for not freaking out about exams. I finished my papers for the semester, and exams seem like a molehill. I finished a paper on Friday that was 15 pages. At least it made the 5 page paper I turned in today look like a drop in the bucket. I think the thing most sorely lacking during exam time is (drumroll) perspective. So here's a small dose:

What's one test? In light of your entire life, pretty small. In light of eternity, pretty much nothing.
God loves you, whether or not you make an A (and guess what, whether or not you pass, too!)
Failing or doing poorly on one test is not going to divert the plans of the almighty God.
You probably know most of it anyway. Stop fretting, study what you can, do your best, and have a little perspective.

I would also like to take this moment to thank the chain smokers outside my window for the cancer and the asthma.

I can't believe the semester really is over. It feels odd to be here and not have class. Furthermore (there's the paper talk), I've been so stressed for the past month that I am practically buoyant with this freedom and burdenlessness! Strap me to the chair, I'm going to fly away!

Speaking of flying away...

I can't help but wonder if God is preparing me to never be "home," to never be comfortable. It's understandable in a couple different ways. This isn't home, this broken earth isn't our eternal resting place. That I can accept. The worse part, though, is the fear that I'm never (or hardly ever) going to get to rightly call a place on this earth "home." I am such a homebody! I love to be around the familiar, the traditional, the well-worn and memory-filled. I am going to be with my family this Christmas, but I can't call their apartment home. Home seems like a thing of the past, something of childhood. You may say, oh but Corinne! You'll grow older and settle down and have a new home! Maybe I will (but I sincerely hope settling down is quite a ways off). I've always been petrified of living and dying in the same place - funny for a homebody, right? The things I want to do with my life involve not staying in one place for very long. And furthermore, doesn't God call us out of our comfort zones? And doesn't he use us through our weaknesses?

Just some thoughts I've been mulling over. I think I found my dream job, getting paid to live overseas and write about it. Now I just have to get my dream job. Ha. We'll see.

Eternity!