fidelity

I am reading Pilgrim's Progress for the first time this summer.
I read this picture book version many times as a child, but this is my first time encountering the original text as I prepare to teach my students about the text this fall.

In the first few pages, I have already been struck by the intensity of the allegory.
"Now he had not run far from his own door, but his Wife and Children perceiving it, began to cry after him to return; but the man put his fingers in his ears and ran on crying, Life! Life! Eternal Life! So he looked not behind him . . ." (Bunyan 15). 

I am currently dating a wonderful gentleman, and we are both looking excitedly towards spending the rest of our lives together.

I want to be a wife and a mother.
These are not bad desires. At least one of them has the very real possibility of coming true in the somewhat near future.

But, these desires have consumed me before and I fear they are beginning to do so again.

Christian ran from his spouse and children.
He ran with his fingers in his ears from the relationships for which I deeply long.
He let nothing, not even beautiful human relationships, stand between him and his relentless pursuit of his Savior.

Oh, how often I let people stand between me and the LORD.
Oh, how often I let my ideas about the future stand between me and the LORD.

That's the possibly greater problem.
I don't even have these relationships yet.
This husband, these children - they don't exist, yet; and already I am already more faithful to them than I should be.

My fidelity to the ideas in my head is far too great.

The more faithful I am to my own head, the less able I am to be present in the reality the LORD has put before me in this exact moment.

"Jesus sums up common-sense carefulness in a disciple as infidelity" (Chambers, commenting on Matthew 6:25). 

I am so guilty of common-sense preparation for the future.

Oh, LORD, may my fidelity be always anchored in You and never in my own head.
Oh, LORD, may I run hard toward the Celestial City always.

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Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2005. Print.

Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost For His Highest. Ohio: Barbour Publishing, 1963. Print. 

a letter without postmark

Dear Writers of Vehicle Commercials,

Are actors fake people? 

I understand what you are trying to communicate, but please choose words that more accurately describe what you are trying to say.

Sincerely,

 a performing artist who would like to be considered fully human

focus changes everything

"You made all time; You are before all time; and the 'time,' if such we may call it, when there was no time was not time at all. It is therefore true to say that when You had not made anything, there was no time, because time itself was of Your making. And no time is co-eternal with You, because You never change; whereas, if time never changed it would not be time" (Augustine 263). 

Augustine, Aurelius. Confessions. Trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin. London: Penguin Books, 1961. Print. 

listening to literature is good for everyone

Well, these two articles basically sum up how I taught last year.

Three Words Can Save the Drowning First Year Lit Teacher

Stop Assigning Reading Homework 

It's really quite relieving to know that someone recommends all of this. And, therefore, maybe, as I prepare for this second year, I don't need to get as far away from doing things this way as I thought. Thank you Lord for timely advice as I sit in the middle of a large stack of books that I know I will not finish reading before September.

When you're spending your Christmas break sitting in a library planning the next unit of Medieval history for your students while listening to Medieval instrumental music and you're actually enjoying doing all of this, you have to realize that you were probably always meant to be a teacher . ..

"The lines [of Beowulf] do not go according to a tune. They are founded on a balance; an opposition between two halves of roughly equivalent phonetic weight, and significant content, which are more often rhythmically contrasted than similar. They are more like masonry than music" (30). 

Tolkien, J. R. R. "The Monsters and the Critics." The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. London: Harper Collins, 2006. Print.