Wisdom theology

Last Sunday, I finished reading Perelandra by C.S. Lewis for the first time. I loved it, and it's been interesting how bits of it have come floating up into my mind, intersecting with my days. One sentence in particular keeps occurring to me:

"You make me grow older more quickly than I can bear."

In the book, being made older is a phrase for being made wiser. Incidentally, I'm also taking a Biblical wisdom literature class this semester. I can only suppose reading Proverbs, the textbook on being wise, is supposed to make you older.

I've been reading other things, too. In addition to Perelandra, this week I might give you a review for Brandon Sanderson's Steelheart. I've also read some more Redwall, which has been lovely. I'm trying to memorize Rudyard Kipling's If. (Interestingly enough, the day after I started working on that, my wisdom lit professor brought it up as an example.)

I'm in a modern Middle East class which is making me look at the ramifications of religious beliefs and political systems. I largely try to ignore politics, but I'm starting to be convinced that it is important. How people live their lives every day, pulled together into nations -- it's a fascinating process of theology, that is if you define it how my wisdom lit professor does.

Real theology, our beliefs about God, shapes our every way of living. (When you take a look at what most people believe, is that scary or what?)

Everything I've been learning lately, even when reading fantasy, has been growing my mind in ways I don't really know what to do with. But it's significant. I feel it. I'm growing older every hour, but in the end, it seems to be filling me with thoughts I don't know how to express in my life.

How do I help the person I know is struggling?
When do I follow my emotions when dealing with problems, and where do I use my head?
How should I spend my time? Should I concentrate on every moment being more effective?
What, in my leisure, is worth pursuing?

I wish theology was something that would be more easily ingrained in my habits and in my heart. Until then, it stays in my head, until I can figure where to put it.

In any case, I've got more reading to do.

Books and a heart like a child

I have a plan for not getting too stressed out this year. It involves letting Sunday be a sabbath (even if that means lots of homework on Saturdays), taking walks, eating healthy (the part of the plan that is dropped the quickest), and, most importantly, reading books.

I did a lot of reading this summer, but I didn't really need it like I've found I do right now. This summer I had lots of introvert time. When I'm constantly surrounded by people, though, there's no retreat so convenient as escaping into a book. This is something I've been keenly aware of since about first grade.

I'm hardly the only person who, as a child, discovered books as a means of traveling to other worlds. There are books about children who love books -- even movies about children who love books. Sometimes, to emphasize the point, children literally travel to other worlds through books. Something else I've found, though, is how books can change the world I live in. I suppose they do that by changing me.

Whenever I read a book, I see its ideas finding echo in my daily life. I start hearing words that I might otherwise have forgotten. I start to interact with physical objects with the knowledge that they are really part of the universe. The smells and tastes of life start rooting me ever more firmly in reality even as they open my imagination. And because of this, all the books I've ever read have changed my life.

I spent most of today rereading The Legend of Luke, one of the books in the Redwall series by Brian Jacques I adored when I was younger. Today I realized that in literally every chapter the band of adventurers encounters an enemy, makes new friends, or both. Looking back, I'm pretty sure all of the ones I read were exactly like that. (I think there are three I haven't read.) There are many other things that are consistent between the books: silly dialects, an excess of songs and poetry, enormous amounts of attention given to food, and the knowledge that you will meet the counterparts of all the groups of creatures in the past books. This makes every story pretty much the same. However, my nostalgia meter is floating high, and I couldn't have loved it more.

Sometimes you need to be re-inspired. Sometimes you need to be reminded that good people go on adventures and fight evil. Sometimes you need to rejoice in a story filled with childlike innocence, and by that become a little more childlike yourself.

Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten. -- G.K. Chesterton

Man cannot live on bread alone. He needs stories to feed his heart as much as he needs the Word to feed his soul.

Microposting

I'm trying to catch up on the episodes of Writing Excuses I haven't been listening to for the past year. If you want to write genre fiction, or any fiction, you should listen to this podcast. Anyway, every once in a while they do an episode of "microcasting," where instead of 15 minutes on one subject, they answer a variety of questions in one 'cast. Since I didn't have one really solid idea for a post this week, I decided I would micropost.
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"You should really be wearing shoes back here," my boyfriend told me.
"I'll be fine," I said. I have a hobbitish tendency to refuse shoes during the summer, and my feet are pretty tough as a result. Consequently, I wasn't afraid of walking through the timber to help find firewood for the bonfire on Friday. However, timbers on old farms have often been dumping grounds for junk, as I should have known.

After stepping on what was probably a shard of a broken toilet, I hobbled back to my boyfriend's house, leaving nice splashes of blood on the leafy ground. Even after bleeding though one layer of bandages, I didn't think it was all that serious, so we gave it another layer and I sat around the fire for a couple hours, and only sitting, as my boyfriend insisted. When I got home, my parents gave it a look and decided I should go to the emergency room. I now have four stitches, a pair of crutches I only needed for two days, and some Finding Nemo and Iron Man stickers the nice people at the ER gave me. Today I've mostly regained mobility, though I'm still walking a little on the side of my foot, but the stitches aren't supposed to come out for another week. Oh bother.
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When I need a respite from people, I tend to archive-binge on my favorite webcomics. I've added a new one. Order of the Stick is now on my list of comics to follow, and next time I need to be anti-social for a couple of days, I know where to look.
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Sometimes you need to tear down something old so you can rebuild. On the other hand, sometimes you can just slap some paint on it and it will be fine. Both of these philosophies have been key as my family's been fixing up our old house. Today we tore out half the front porch, and the roof above it is sitting precariously on temporary posts as we tear out the rotting supports beneath. My mom has a vision of a new, pretty porch railing and flowers planted in front of it.

Looking at our house, it's easy to get discouraged about the amount of work we have to do. Weekend after weekend is spent tackling some project that usually leaves the house a mess, and we know that soon there'll be yet another project that will make it look like we're actually tearing the house down, not fixing a pocket door or putting sand paint on the ceiling or wiring upstairs. But we've come pretty far. I found some pictures a while ago of when Dad and I took down the old cabinets in the kitchen prior to knocking out the crumbling, icky plaster. Now we have a blue and white kitchen with a Bible verse painted on the wall. Eventually we will refinish the old wood floors and put in carpet and finish painting and rebuild the front steps and fix all the screen windows and get air conditioning and tile and fix the hole in the attic and reroof and put stairs up to the attic and clean up the basement and string the stairs to the basement and plant more flowers and get new siding and....

Sigh. I love this house. This old, stupid house.
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Before I get out of my car to work in the mornings, I pray that I'll be a good worker and a good witness. I don't really know how to do the latter. Labor comes naturally to me. Reaching out to people doesn't. I'm used to school and church, where most everyone is nice and we all have something in common -- Jesus. At work, most everyone is nice, too, but most of the other people I know don't wrestle with custody issues for their kids or have cheating boyfriends or no teeth from former meth addictions. I listen to them talk about these things - I think that's a good first step -- and when they ask about my life, I tell them. And when I mention having a good family and supportive parents, I'm told I'm lucky. I know I am, now.
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I've been telling myself I'll do this for two weeks, but now I'm telling the Internet so that it'll actually happen. On Wednesdays I intend to review the books I've been reading here for the blog. They will be pretty random, things that caught my eye in the library, but I hope they'll be enjoyable and interesting. Maybe I can point you at some good books.

That's it for microposting today. The only problem is it's hard to come up with a relevant concluding sentence with just the right kick, humor, or both. Oh well.