A short passage from Housekeeping, which is easily one of the best books of the last half century. Penned by the incomparable Marilynne Robinson, who is, in my opinion, the best author still writing:

Cain murdered Abel, and blood cried out from the earth; the house fell on Job's children, and a voice was induced or provoked into speaking from a whirlwind; and Rachel mourned for her children; and King David for Absalom. The force behind the movement of time is mourning that will not be comforted. That is why the first event is known to have been an expulsion, and the last is hoped to be a reconciliation and return. So memory pulls us forward, so prophecy is only brilliant memory - there will be a garden where all of us as one child will sleep in our mother Eve, hooped in her ribs and staved by her spine.

Cain killed Abel, and the blood cried out from the ground - a story so sad that even God took notice of it. Maybe it was not the sadness of the story, since worse things have happened every minute since that day, but its novelty that He found striking... Cain, the image of God, gave the simple earth of the field a voice and a sorrow, and God Himself heard the voice, and grieved for the sorrow, so Cain was a creator in the image of his Creator. God troubled the waters where He saw His face, and Cain became his children and their children and theirs, through a thousand generations, and all of them transients, and wherever they went everyone remembered that there had been a second creation, and the earth ran with blood and sang with sorrow. And let God purge this wicked sadness away with a flood, and let the waters recede to pools and ponds and ditches, and let every one of them mirror heaven. Still, they taste a bit of blood and hair. One cannot cup one's hand and drink from the rim of any lake without remembering that mothers have drowned in it, lifting their children toward the air, though they must have known as they did soon enough the deluge would take all the children, too, even if their arms could have held them up. Presumably only incapacity made infants and the very old seem relatively harmless. Well, all that was purged away, and nothing is left of it after so many years but a certain pungency and savor in the water, and in the breath of creeks and lakes, which, however sad and wild, are clearly human.

...

There is remembrance, and communion, altogether human and unhallowed. For families will not be broken. Curse and expel them, send their children wandering, drown them in floods and fires, and old women will make songs out of all these sorrows and sit in the porches and sing them on mild evenings. Every sorrow suggests a thousand songs, and every song recalls a thousand sorrows, and so they are infinite in number, and all the same.

Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it. God Himself was pulled after us into the vortex we made when we fell, or so the story goes. And while He was on earth He mended families. He gave Lazarus back to his mother, and to the centurion he gave his daughter again. He even restored the severed ear of the soldier who came to arrest Him - a fact that allows us to hope the resurrection will reflect a considerable attention to detail. Yet this was no more than tinkering. Being man He felt the pull of death, and being God He must have wondered more than we do what it would be like. He is known to have walked upon water, but He was not born to drown. And when He did die it was sad - such a young man, so full of promise, and His mother wept and His friends could not believe the loss, and the story spread everywhere and the mourning would not be comforted, until He was so sharply lacked and powerfully remembered that His friends felt Him beside them as they walked along the road, and saw someone cooking fish on the shore and knew it to be Him, and sat down to supper with Him, all wounded as He was. There is so little to remember of anyone - an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke out hair with dreaming, habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting long.

I really love this song and this performance. If you don't watch the whole thing, at least do yourself a favor and tune to the 1:30 mark. This is worship, plain and simple.

- It's been a couple of weeks since my last post. That's due to the fact that I'm actually kind of busy these days, and also to having no real motivation to post anything.

- This post is on nothing in particular. Consider it a random gathering of thoughts that don't deserve individual posts.

- There has been so much death lately. Maybe I'm just more aware of it, but these last few months, it seems that every week, somebody I'm connected to in some way has died. Nobody close has passed, and I haven't attended a single funeral. Still, I keep experiencing these dull little pangs. Earlier this week, I got the news that a friend from High School was killed in a car crash. He was on drugs, and hit a steel pole at 130 miles per hour. The car just about split in half. I wasn't close to this guy, but Senior year, I had two classes with him, and I considered him a friend. He was one of two people I talked to in my creative writing class. He was very funny, generally cheery, and just a really nice guy. I hadn't seen him since the day we graduated, but he was the subject of several stories I liked to tell.

I'm not troubled by his death any more than would be expected, but it's just weird. People aren't supposed to die at twenty.

- Last week - I think it was last week - I finished Robert Penn Warren's All The King's Men. I feel comfortable saying it was one of the best books I've ever read. It's a political novel that isn't really about politics, and one of the few real American epics. Captivating story, superb prose, and an incredibly deep protagonist. It's worthy of every mushy word I could muster. Go read it.

- At the moment, politics is one of the least interesting pursuits I know.

- I've been meaning to clear up my blogroll. There are sites I need to add, and plenty I should remove. I think about it every time I get on here (which, even when I'm not posting, ends up being several times a day), but just haven't gotten around to it. Sorry.

- Today (April 22) is Dia del oso - the "Day of the Bear." Once a year, Baylor picks a Thursday in the late spring and cancels classes. It's a very eventful day. I have work, but I'm sure it will be fun for every one else.

- April 22 also marks the 95th anniversary of the first successful large-scale employment of chemical warfare. It happened at the Second Battle of Ypres on the field of Gravenstafel.

- If I had my way, I'd begin work on my thesis right now and finish it by Christmas, but there's a lot more to be done. Three semesters isn't a long time, but it doesn't feel like a short time either.

- Some days I look forward to grad school, and others I dread it. I worry that I've already peaked. I think maybe I was just a precocious, somewhat odd teenager who learned what anybody else could have if they had made the time and maxed out early. It's a strange fear, but a real one. Every semester I've convinced myself that I don't really have the talent I need to rise above mediocrity, and every semester I've had a regeneration. I still end up back here, though. It sounds vain, but school is only bearable to me if I believe I am gifted in certain areas. I can't take being average in these areas. I love writing, but am I actually a good writer? I love books more than almost anything, but do I read as well as I need to in order to succeed? Am I thorough enough?

I need to learn to relax about all that, I suppose.

- Another somewhat irrational, but real fear I have is the fear that I'll miss out on love because of school. With three semesters left in Waco, I wonder if I'll get out of here without going on a single date. That's not what scares me, really. I mean, finding someone would be nice, but I could live without if it's not in the cards right now.

What really scares me is the idea that I could meet someone and even fall in love with them and then lose them because life carries us different ways after graduation. It's stupid to worry about things that haven't happened yet and might never happen, but it keeps me up at night sometimes. I don't know why.

- This semester is coming to a merciful end. I have a few papers left and, of course, finals, but I'm basically done.

- I'm ready to go to Oxford.

- Even though money hasn't really been a problem for me the last few years, I worry constantly about being unemployed. I hate searching for jobs, and I hate interviews. I don't like being dependent on my parents for trivial expenses (gas, food, miscellaneous fun-spending, etc.), and I haven't been for almost 3 years now, but I get so uptight thinking about not being able to take responsibility for myself.

- I worry too much.

- Here's something happy:



- Goodnight.

Micheal Spencer (the iMonk) died today - the day after Resurrection Sunday. Pray for his family.