sooooo...

Hey guys. Um... I got a job. I am happy and nervous. But mostly happy.

I am teaching an art history course at a private university in Lincoln. It's Ancient to Medieval, which isn't my main specialty or favorite period (I DO LOVE GOTHIC ART AND ARCHITECTURE, BUT THAT IS AT THE VEEEEEERY END!!), but I am still excited. And nervous. Did I mention that I'm nervous?

Remember when I was planning on moving to Maui? That was hilarious. Everything is in the timing of heaven, and more than anything I am grateful that I get answers to my prayers, even if they are trying in the meantime, and that they often come in super unexpected and nick-of-time ways. More on this thought later- It's a pattern in my life that I am more fully trying to wrap my mind around. Suffice it to say for now: I feel extremely blessed.

I got a delicious blessing from my bishop this week, and I feel confident that I will be okay... In the meantime, I am nervous. And happy.

rancid butter

the best class I ever took in college was called "The Cultural History of Medicinal Plants." I learned more in that over-filled auditorium than in any other classroom I have ever been in. Perhaps it was because it was almost entirely NEW information, and in so learning, I was stretched beyond my normal capacities. I remember several times noting to myself that I could actually feel myself learning. Or perhaps it was because I love the earth and things that grow from it (so many garden anecdotes could fit in here, but won't because writing is unnatural to me lately).
Occasionally information which I learned in that class reappears and makes an important streak across the sky, reminding me of what it means to know things and be educated in practical and practicable things. It's like cooking. Do you know how to cook? The question always baffles me, and a person responding "no" to that question is unfathomable to me sometimes. But I know that there are things which I don't yet (or maybe ever will) know. Anyways.
Today, I was brought back to the Widtsoe Building on BYU campus when I stepped onto a group of fruits lying in the grass. If there is one crucial element to this story, it is this: Nebraska is infiltrated by Squirrels. The concept of piles of fruits or nuts just lying around without a horde of squirrels rummaging through them is unheard of in these parts.  I was weirded out, and, retrospectively, I understand why.

These fruits, and now my boots, smelled acutely and precisely of pungent rancid butter. 

As the smell punched me in the nose, the image of my professor telling me about the scent of rancid butter couldn't be ignored. what was it? I remembered the image of a tree on the screen behind him, and I seemed to remember scribbling something down in my notebook about it. A tree... I prided myself on knowing the trees. My parents were "Master Tree Stewards", and the title was one that I decided I wanted to inherit. I had to know!
And then, I looked closer and remembered the bipedal leaves of the ancient Ginko. Ah yes, the oldest deciduous tree in the world. This old friend of mine. The fruit looks like this:

Sincerely, and with all of the pleading in my nostrils, PLEASE, avoid stepping on these babies. Rancid butter boots are not something that I would wish upon anyone, and as soon as I finish this, I will run to my car and take mine off so that they don't contaminate my car, and I will not wear them for a few weeks. So foul. So. So. So. Foul.

I am thankful for memory and the capacities for remembrance of knowledge. Knowing things is a miracle and a blessing.

Along those lines, I presented this today. It's a for chapter of my thesis.

In semi-related news, if you are looking for something to listen to, and you want to think more about memory and the implications of memory and its erasure from popular culture, you should listen to this. It might make you feel bad, as a warning, but I think it's maybe time for us to start being grown-ups about feeling bad.

LOL!! EYEZ!!

literally laughing so hard in my room alone right now.

 there are tears.

this is certainly my screen capture career high.

you're welcome.

roots.

I just finished another book last week. It makes for seven so far this year (secret wish: 2011 will be the the year of the book. So far, so good.).
It was good. I don't want to hyperbolize in saying that it was amazing or incredible or ground-breaking, earth-shattering, mind-blowing, but life-changing might be apt.


I have a longstanding love affair going with a man.


His name is Wendell.
This latest book, Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community is tempting to eclipse my first love, The Unsettling of America. In some ways, it's the same story re-told 20 years later. In other ways, it's refined stewardship, refined love. Refinements are nice.

I think a big factor in why I love W. Berry so much is that he makes me feel like I am at home. He helps me remember that earth is a sacred place, and that there is love in abundance. Lately, I have been feeling rather home-less. I have a roof over my head, but a roof that I can't afford any longer, and a home that feels like it has been invaded and changed. It's a strange feeling, one with which I am not well acquainted, and which I am having a hard time coping. Berry is a steward of the earth, and his words beg common sense, not political partying and raucous silliness.  He talks about sex as a communion, and as a integral part of communities. His words are clearsighted and beautiful.
I should stop raving about him and just encourage you to read his books.

And then I will tell you how it has changed me.

I read that the Bible is a a hypaethral book, one that is to be read open to the skies. Like so many ancient temples. I will let Berry do the rest of the explaining:  It (the Bible) is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. That is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine--which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.
What the Bible might mean, or how it could mean anything, in a closed, air-conditioned building, I do not know. I know that holiness cannot be confined. When you think you have captured it, it has already escaped; only its poor, pale ashes are left. It is after this foolish capture and the inevitable escape that you get translations of the Bible that read like a newspaper. Holiness is everywhere in Creation, it is as common as raindrops and leaves and blades of grass, but it does not sound like a newspaper. 
(As a side note, my baby brother wrote me from Germany, encouraging me to consider the lilies of the field, saying, "You don't have to run around frantically trying to find yourself and what you should do when all you've got to do is calm down and look to your father in heaven for guidance." What a great human being, B. Harris.) 

 

zinnia babies sprouted this week!

It makes me yearn for spring so much. It makes me wish for our garden and to community we built there. In some ways I hate that community, and the ways that it became so all-encompassing and so engaging of my life.  I maybe need a new community. Maybe I need to go home to help my dad build a house. And then again, that community is one of the major reasons I am still in Provo. Basically this all brings me to feeling rootless and ill at ease, unsure of my convictions and my decision to stay.
So I plant zinnias and rosemary and put them on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. I bake whole wheat bread and I pray for direction as to where I can put some roots into the soil so that again, I can open up that book and open my heart to the sky.

ps. If anyone wants to give me another reason to stay (or better yet, BE my reason to stay), I am open to suggestions. The only thing keeping me here now is my signature on a contract and the vague promises of summer.