Blame it on Angers...

I don't actually have a blog post, and I'm not likely to for weeks. ( :-O ) What I have are perhaps seven partial blog posts, pages of notes, fragments of poetry, etc... dawdling in my drafts folder, and wandering in between history notes.

So, you'll have to make do with what there is, and there isn't much. You can blame it on Angers, if you like. There's so much to see, and hear, and learn, and think about, and question here, that I can't seem to finish one idea before beginning on twenty new ones. My brain's bursting... If you're still reading after this disclaimer, courage! I hope you'll be able to make sense of the jumble. Each unit will be separated by spaces and quotation marks, which may or may not be entirely ineffective.

'I came this morning to the field where we would play together at cowboys.

Hero and gun-slinger, a rustler stalked by a knight in bandanna and spurs.

But nothing was left of our games there.

Only our two hats beside each other.

My white sombrero, dark with the grime of earth and years.

Your black hat bleaching mercifully grey in the winter sun.'

'Always the sense- that haunting sense which lingers

The world's a spinning toy,

And time-

And time like water, slipping through your fingers...'

"This kind of artificial emotional cushioning can't make you feel better; it only can make you forget that you don't. The world's in a haze of pain, and it's searching not for doctors, but painkillers.

Because sometimes, the only way to straighten and heal a broken limb is to wrench, and break it again. A deep infection must be lanced and drained. Our fear of pain drives us forever to pain, leaves us in pain.

The world would hate us, then, because the hard, real core of the Gospel cuts through the fog of drugged forgetting and lays bare the hurt- demands that it hurt, and hurt again to the very extremity of the agonized death of it's own self-love.

Like a child thrashing against the surgeon with his probing fingers and fearful knife, like the terrified dog which sinks its teeth into the too-knowing hand of the veterinarian, the world is cowering away from the excruciating pain of the truth. We fear the cure more than the disease.

There's space to hide in the universe- miles and miles for running. But the disease, the disease is fatal. We cannot evade death by masking its hideousness, by singing to drown out the noise of its approaching...

The cavity of rebellion will rot relentlessly until every tooth is destroyed. But the corruption of the heart is not dragged to healing as simply as a shrill, resisting child is carried to the dreaded dentist and his drill. Heaven help us if we dull the aching with distractions...'

"Ignorance itself is not a crime, but smug, indifferent, arrogant ignorance; the cheerful, cow-like resistance to questioning and seeking, the self-satisfied conviction of 'correctness', when never for a moment did they listen to a word from the opposition, or try to understand the other perspectives- or even base the forming of their formless views on more than hearsay, and pleasantries, and the opinions of others equally misinformed- this invincible, comfortable, saccharine, unbearable ignorance, how easy it is to despise it! It's so hard to be patient with those who are wrong stubbornly, but without intelligence or conviction.

And yet- I've certainly been guilty of such lazy, shoddy thinking myself...

Why do only some people in the world feel this restless, ceaseless knowledge-hunger and curiosity- this fire to know... nearly everything? At risk of falling into clichés, I feel like I've lived always like a bird in a cage, fierce and frantic to escape, silent, because all of the other birds seem so very happy to be fluttering lamely behind bars. The few people who are different, who can't be satisfied so easily, what makes the change? Is it simply a matter of creation and design? In that case, a sick disgust for the thoughtless who ignore beauty and play with learning as a sulky child plays with his spinach- it must be prideful and unfair. Can one hate the blind for their poor taste in art? Or the deaf for a lack of musical appreciation? Is the world crammed with shallow and dull minds by nature, or by choice? It seems that the history of the human race is the history of man's tremendous creativity in idiocy and atrocity. As much as I'd love to like humanity, there's no way around the conviction that our existence is generally a black stain on the universe.

Faced with this world, with such questions, the cramped little pond of thehomeschoolers- the very haven which gave me time and freedom to think and read for myself- is a nightmare kingdom of triviality. We argue heatedly about the minor, subjective questions- skirt and short length in inches, the proper tightness of jeans, the exact regulations for physical contact, the most correct method of courtship, dancing, studying, the 'acceptable' styles of music, the 'best' church (in the most minor, minor detalia) - and outside the high walls of our garden, while we dispute makeup and hairstyles, movie standards and social rules, Homer is singing, and Shakespeare is being performed, and Hemingway is writing, and Socrates is crying questions like a madman in the streets. And the world is dying, and being reborn, and the seasons are passing, and new and old music is crashing all around in astonishing melodies (but they can't know it, poor fools, they've covered their ears). I've seen such strange things blandly taken for granted; the pro-life coldly indifferent to their government's destruction of innocent life abroad, the members of an unearthly, eternal kingdom shouting brutal, simplistic anthems in lusty patriotism, cluttering their lives (as I do my own!) with ludicrous, superfluous luxury. I've seen some who claim to follow a Way of gentleness, humility, and love, carelessly, callously cruel to animals, blind to injustices committed against those who 'aren't like us'. Some, also, who claim to love a rational, intelligent God, who despise thought and knowledge. So much of the kindness, curiosity, humbleness, patience, humor, and wit I've met in my life has come from the unbelievers, the doubting, the faithless...

Strange world of upside-downs and colors blending in the mist...

And when I die, I beg that it should be with feet worn to the bone with walking beside the stumbling and helpless, and with relentless running after the tangled thread that leads through the labyrinth of my questioning. A heart fully satisfied that, however little was accomplished, it was done with passion and conviction; that seeking neither to lead or to follow, I went where I must go. And finally, because this conviction was founded on eternity and not myself, because though I am utterly unable to fulfill the rigorous demands of my conscience, I belong to a God who, in perfect holiness and fidelity, fulfilled it for me- fully in his own mysterious blood and infinite agony- my own life and death, the existence of mankind- the beauty and suffering, fury and joy of the universe, are not without final meaning.

What a horror existence is if this meaning is not present.

"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."

-Vaclav Havel