Best. Stoppard. Ever.

There are no charms that soothe the savage beast like going to see Arcadia with people who want to discuss it. (The award for Most Endearing Thing Anyone Has Said to Me in Quite Some Time goes to this comment: "Keep talking about the play....")

Physically speaking, Arcadia is not a very intense play. It is set in a single room, and most of the time people are sitting at a table.

Mentally speaking, Arcadia is dense, rich, stimulating material. Where else do considerations of time, literature, math, and sex overlap and interweave so intricately? What other play ends with a reminder of connectedness and (simultaneously) of disparity?

Thomasina mourns all the lost knowledge of the past, symbolized for her on a large scale in the burning of the library of Alexandria: "How can we sleep for grief?" Valentine says any knowledge of value is lost only to be found again. Yet we who watch the play see that the knowledge that is lost is not only mathematical, or literary. Over time we lose, not mere equations or poems, but life, all of the nuance and interactions of life.

Septimus puts it best: "We shed as we pick up, like travelers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it."

To the writing of many poems and the formulating of many equations there is no end. Most of life lies in the "unimportant" details and the undocumented moments. Time is not guaranteed, so put down the pen while you can— and waltz.

"Why can't the past just die?"

Maybe it's an American thing, but we expect the past to stay in the past. If it weren't past, it would be present; and, after all, it is the present that is the gift. (*involuntary gag response*) We like things new and shiny and futuristic. If we are going to buy vintage clothing re-worked into this year’s fashion, we're not going to notice the repetition. We also want the past to become the past quickly. We aren't good at waiting.

Large parts of the rest of the world move much slower than we do as a matter of course. Large parts of the rest of the world place a high value on their connections to their ancestors, their traditions, their heritage, and their inheritance.

More importantly, Scripture emphasizes not only the inevitability and importance of waiting patiently, but also the living nature of the past. It emphasizes remembering the past, not in remembering its mistakes or wishing we could still be there, but in remembering the faithfulness of God—remember the Exodus; remember the Exile; remember the Cross.

Remembering God's faithfulness strengthens us in the weakness of our own forgetful faith. We use the phrase "remember when" casually enough now, and we feel the power it has to connect us to each other. Let's go a step further. Let's remember as God remembers, in remembering as a necessary precursor to action. More importantly, let's remember that God remembers, that He does not forget us and that His love never falters.

Remember when we first knew that He had loved us since before we had the ability to recognize it? Remember when the joy of the Lord sang in our hearts? Remember the touch of His healing hand? Remember when our frustrations with the past fell away when we turned our faces to Him? Remember His good and precious promises?

Praise God for the past, even the past we wish would just die—it points to Him.

Remember!

"This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness."
~~Lamentations 3:21-23 (KJV)

"Seek the LORD and His strength;
Seek His face continually.
Remember His wonderful deeds which He has done,
His marvels and the judgments from His mouth,
O seed of Israel His servant,
Sons of Jacob, His chosen ones!"
~~I Chronicles 16:11-13

"Remember, O LORD,
Your compassion and Your lovingkindnesses,
For they have been from of old.
Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
According to Your lovingkindness remember me,
For Your goodness' sake, O LORD."
~~Psalm 25:6-7

And today's Favorite Person Award goes to:

“Sweating like a pig, thanks, and you?”

Some people exercise and still stay “pretty.” Anybody who has worked at or worked out at a gym probably knows what I’m talking about. You know, there are some people who have the cute tight sporty clothes (some flashing more skin than others…there’s a Jessica Simpson wannabe at my health club), and they run and lift weights and everything without breaking a sweat.

Me, I walk in with my baggy T-shirt and shorts-over-stretchy-pants and within 3 minutes after I start running I am doing just as the title of this post suggests. My face gets so red that “flushed” really isn’t the word for it anymore. The wispy hair by the side of my face gets the touch of exertion-induced humidity and pops out to each side (when it’s not plastered down by the sweat). This has always been true. My brother and I were in TaeKwon-Do classes in our high school years. In the summer especially, people would be asking us if we needed to stop and get some water. We don’t look pretty when we exercise. We look like we’re going to pass out.

Last night I went to the gym and saw two of the gym workers I usually see there. One was working behind the desk. She didn’t get that job for no reason—I walk in and her face lit up and she said “Hi!” as if she’d really missed seeing me (I don’t think she’d been on duty any of the times I was in over the past two weeks). One was “off-duty” and was in the weight room, and said “Hey, how you doing?” as he walked by. Gym etiquette aside (aren’t you NOT supposed to talk to people in the middle of a set?), it was still sort of nice to have another person around say hello.

These people smile and say “Good night” and all that even though I don’t exercise pretty. They are professionals. I like them.

Heard and Overheard

After talking about running outside

Friend: “Don’t go running on the Kent Trails, though, okay? Well, okay, you can run on the Kent Trails, but don’t run with an iPod. And borrow a big dog.”
Me: “And take a gun?”
Friend: “Yeah, take a gun. Or a knife or something…mace. Take mace.”

Before splitting up from the main assembly to go off to our classes last night at church

Pastor: [asks question]
Girl from 3rd/4th grade class: [raises her hand, answers]
Pastor: [asks question]
Another girl from 3rd/4th grade class: [raises her hand, answers]
Pastor: [asks question]
ANOTHER girl from 3rd/4th grade class: [raises her hand, answers]
Pastor: “Wow, we have a lot of young ladies up here tonight.”
Me [turning proudly to the woman behind us]: “Yeah, this is my class.”

My kids rock.


After taking the butterfly clip out of my hair at the end of the class time last night, several 9-year-old girls swarmed around to look at it

Alicia: “Look how curly it is!” [it was wound in one tight rope at this point]
Other girls: “It’s so pretty!”
[A few seconds of running hands through my hair and exclaiming over it followed.]


Somehow awkward-feeling explanation to a guy about why I wasn’t going to hang out last night

“I have this headache….”


Today’s memorable conversation snippet about the weather

Coworker: “I can’t believe it—Wyoming got two feet of snow and in Louisiana it’s 96 degrees!”
Me: “They are pretty far apart.”
Coworker: “No, not really, they aren’t….”
Me: “…”

A song I heard part of when I had to go out and move my car for the landscaping guy, then had to find the lyrics for online

“run away girl”
by Sean Watkins

from his solo CD Blinders On

(he's also part of the band Nickel Creek)
~~~
please show me there's something wrong

that i don't see in you

some terrible secret flaw that no one could excuse

i've tried to hide you from my mind

and make myself forget

please don't try to stay

we'll only make what's clean a mess

~~

run away girl

run away now

run away girl

~~

the way that you smile at me

isn't helping much at all

please try not to laugh it only makes me want you more

we both know this could never be

but i can't let you go

~~

run away girl

run away now......

~~

what if you thought you saw a ghost

a hundred times a day

what if the thing you wanted most

was impossible to say

~~

run away girl

run away now.......

Run, Forrest, Run!!

My parents' computer doesn't like Yahoo. It will randomly decide that it won't let me send messages. Weird.

Today Dad and I went running (and walking). We were out for two full hours, and we went a little over 7 miles total. Mom gave me a heart monitor of hers that she wasn't using anymore, so I could look down at my wrist and there was the stopwatch/heart rate at the same time. Very cool. Dad postulates that the reason I have only been able to go about a minute at a time outside is because I "take off like a gazelle" and don't set a sustainable pace. This was borne out by the fact that at the pace Dad set, I was able to get up to about 5 minutes at a time, a length of time I had previously only achieved on the treadmill.

I wish somebody who lived close by was a runner, so we could go running outside. I want to make friends with an imposing-looking male who can go running with me, so that nobody will honk. Even better, I want to make friends with an imposing-looking male and his intellectual wife (both beginner runners), so that we could have the male deterrent factor without really having the male/female factor, and so we could also have good conversations as we ran.

I also want a pony. (Okay, just kidding on that.)

Maybe I just need to move back in with my parents. That would solve the "nobody to run with" dilemma. Hm...tempting....

Haitian Proverbs

A few weekends ago my church held its annual missions conference. The pastor who spoke about Haiti shared the following proverbs with us.

• "Behind mountains, more mountains." (Sort of like "Don't be anxious about tomorrow; each day has enough trouble of its own.")
• "An empty sack cannot stand up." (A man with an empty stomach cannot work.)
• "See it or not, your funeral is at 4:00." (From the days when all Haitian funerals were held at 4 p.m., this basically says that everyone will die.)
• "Whatever happens to the turkey could also happen to the chicken."(Just because you're smart doesn't mean you can't do something stupid.)
• "The rock in the river doesn't know the pain of the rock in the sun."
• "A little dog is really brave in front of his master's house."
• "A leaky house can fool the sun, but it can't fool the rain."
• "Women are like mahogany: the older, the better."

And my favorite:

• "If it is God who sends you, He'll pay your expenses."

Sentient, but not sensible

Scenario: You're driving along, and you see someone out walking/running. You do not know this person. What is it that makes you honk your horn? What makes you think that is a good plan?

My dad says that he doesn't think male runners have this problem; at least, has never had anybody honk at him. As a female runner, I certainly don't find the honking flattering. On the contrary, it's creepy. It almost makes me want to stick with running on a treadmill in the gym, where people don't whistle at you because they would have to deal with your reaction and the fallout from their actions.

To anybody who might be reading this who is in the habit of honking at strange women as they pass by, allow me to enlighten you: pretty much any woman you've ever honked at just thinks you're an idiot.

From the Calvin alumni magazine

"The Calvin community includes several gifted writers, be them professors, institute directors, students, staffers or graduates."