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| Allegory of the B Team
In my 7th grade year, I was a starter on my public school basketball team. Basketball was my life. I was good, and I knew it, and this talent defined me. At the tremulous age of 12, I had the swagger of a jock. Halfway through the year, however, my parents moved me to a private school. I made the change, but I lost all confidence. And tragically, I had to leave behind my jersey and its starting glory at the public school. When I entered private school, I realized that the only tool I possessed to make my way in that much more refined atmosphere was my athletic prowess, and I quickly observed that athletics were everything at private school, whereas at public school, athletics was one of the many things. There was no appreciated subculture at private school. You were in or you were out. And athletics got you in. I had athletics--but did they know?
I finished out the year only practicing with the private school basketball team because teams were already set for that year. Every day, I trembled before Coach because he had the power to judge me based upon his observations of my practicing. But--I thought--he did not know that I had been a starter at public school! If he could have seen me there! If he could have seen me run the courts and dribble there...make shots there...before I became so clumsy and shy in this new place in which I neither had the money, nor the proper jargon, nor the proper hair to stand up straight. And now, was basketball being take from me, too, as my errors increased and my despair showed in every movement I made on the court?
Summer followed, and so did the fall of my 8th grade year. Tryouts. This was my chance. This was my chance to make the junior high team and glow in my element. I ran so hard during those pre-tryout practices. I wore myself out in my driveway with my home basketball goal. I shook the heavens with my needy prayers.
I tried out for the team.
As soon as the results were posted, I, wide-eyed, found the sheet of paper that proclaimed my fate. My name was on the sheet, along with the names of the other girls listed under the heading "B Team."
Fifteen years later, I do not have the vocabulary to capture in words the bitter emotion that moved in me upon that day and in the days to follow. Coach would never know, from that day forth, the ball player I could have been for him. I did play with the B Team, skill weakening by the day, for a season, as basketball became the hated instead of the loved. (I still do not like basketball very much.)
But here is where this story gets good. The thing is--the thing is--I am an athlete (and I found other ways to play and use my muscles), but there is something deeper in me than basketball, something more true to my heart than athletics. It is song. It is art.
So, what did I do as I slowly became less and less successful on the court? I sang my heart out in Chorus. I tried out for all of the groups and the regional choirs. I auditioned for plays. I practiced for hours with my tapes. I wrote songs, and I arranged choral pieces. I memorized scenes from Shakespearean plays. I sang solos, and I made friends with the musical and dramatic private school folk. Mistake me not--we were no cool subculture. We were out--I think. But the thing was, I became so alive. I discovered my truer talents, my truer passions. In 9th grade, I found myself sounding the lines of the lead role in Our Town in private school auditorium. In high school, I was twice given the honor of making the Arkansas All-State Choir. I watched through the years as my choral director's eyes grew misty with pride. I sang in my university's Chorus, as well. Can I begin to describe here with my limited vocabulary the beauty that these years of music, art, and community brought to my soul...or how these quirky and intense years molded my personality? I loved singing with a passion with which basketball could have never competed.
What matters here is not that I found music or that I found drama. I haven't been in a play in years. And I'm so out of practice musically that when I hear myself singing in church now, I wonder how my voice could have ever been strong. What matters is that the Lord knew me. In my desire to make the junior high basketball team, I could not understand that song moved so much deeper within me or that I would find song only by way of rejection from the thing I wanted most--the thing for which I had begged the Lord.
I have recently encountered a B Team experience of sorts. I checked the list, and I did not make the cut, though I did make the B Team. And had I begged the Lord? And had I even bargained with him? I had, and he heard me, but still I did not make the team. And Coach will never know how good I was--or could yet still be. My fantasies of myself on the court must dissolve now into the unknown, where some more beauteous song waits to escape from my heart and prove the whole disappointment perfectly beautiful.
Praise the Lord.
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| Difficult Abundance
In my quest for the abundant life, I lost sight of how to possess it.
Recently, my sister reminded me that God gives us His grace for today. He gives us strength for today. He helps us make it through today. He does not give us what we need for tomorrow until it becomes today. It is like manna (manna! those darling wafers), which was sweet for one day only; if held and horded for tomorrow, it stank.
Life feels difficult, and I crave tomorrow's manna. I recently heard my own voice cry out, "but I'm alive right now!" and who listened? Apparently, I had difficulty hearing my own cry because because I wanted the now to transform into something more shining and tomorrow-like. Or I wanted the grace that God promises for today to pull me into tomorrow, where things are more comfortable. And there's nothing wrong with hoping, but while today is called today, what beauties are discoverable? Perhaps it is the Lord's grace that allows us to endure and in the moment rejoice in the belief that He is, in every moment, with us and within us. For in this world we will have trials.
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| A Gray Matter
I have been thinking a lot about life lately, which seems obvious, since I am
alive and living is all I do all day long and all I have to think about all day
long. Oh, but the irony of humanity allows for life not to occur to many of us
for days (or more) on end. Such has been the case with me for some time.
Oh, I feel plenty. I feel bad. I feel weird. I feel guilty.
I feel depressed. I feel, in moments, happy. I feel, I feel, I feel. And though
I also live, live, live, I have been stuck, stuck, stuck.
But lately, I have been thinking about life. And with the contrast of the
feelings of now to the experience of before (a golden memory), I understand
that there is a better quality of life to be had than this current state of
gray. It is gray. It is like the grayness of the winter sky that closes in,
confines, confuses, oppresses, tires, and mutes me. I look up to such a sky
with bleary eyes and wish that it would purge itself of all of its burden,
though it be nasty, so that it might—and so that I might—find relief. Then, oh
and then, the sky could be its best self, so bright with sun’s light that every
cell in my body might feel the stimulation from its radiance—and my eyes might
open fully to drink in and reflect the beams. I have been given hope in the
form of a symbol every day that the sun has shown in all its strength in the
morning sky.
But the gray is in me. And though I try that seemingly
needed purgation of crying tears out of my head like rain, the gray does not
part for the sun, only for more gray.
Men and women of science, do you refer to the brain as gray matter? When I
think of the brain in all its carbon-based reality, as a thing, an object, I
am, I confess, repelled by its grossness. Give me a bleeding red heart and,
though I shudder at the sight of it, I will not be as restless as I would be if
you presented to me a fat, gray brain. It is that gray matter in my skull that
is suspended like a permanent cloud, and I cannot rid it of its muddled content.
So, I turn to my red heart to feel, and what I feel is a result of the energyless
gray above.
I can imagine a brain at work—not as the corded mass handed to me, but a brain
plugged into all of its proper places, also connected properly to the heart. In
this imagining, the brain is lit with a sort of magic light, and the chords
themselves glow and are active and strong. The brain is no longer the limp gray
cloud, but a container and transmitter of light. This is how I picture a fully
functioning and alive brain. I understand that the percentage of the human
brain that is actually used by its owner is quite small. There exists in that
complicated mass wondrous potential so unrealized.
I have been living an oppressed life for a long time. My brain has been dulled
and unplugged, and my heart has been suffering the repercussions.
But I mentioned that I had been thinking about life. I have been remembering
that the brain is a very different thing when plugged in, at work, and
radiating energy. I have been remembering that there is no beauty like that of
the golden sun when the miserable clouds have broken. These memories have awakened a zeal.
I prayed tonight that God would help me truly live.
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| Well, here goes. Never have I ever had a public diary before, and what is the draw in submitting my thoughts to the great mystery beyond, obscure to most but available to all?
There is a drive to put the amorphous to shape. There is an urge to tame thought into language. There is a desire for a voice. And there is a hope, however small, that the voice will be heard--and when heard, meaningful to someone. These generalizations I will possess as specific to myself, for can I really speculate for anyone else? I probably should not, but that won't stop me in the future, I assure you.
Is this what blogs are for? Truly, I feel like an infant in this domain.
Let me dedicate this first entry to Erin Ness, whose blog inspires me; and it was by way of her blog that I now find myself blogging--speaking to the public with the realization that not everyone is listening.
This venue does not allow for the sloppy handwriting of an urgent entry, and never will I pour myself out here as I do before God in my desperate journalings, grammar and manners out the window. Truly, this is a tricky place, but I am intrigued in spite of myself, and as a lover of words, I am interested to find whether or not this discipline will act upon my flabby voice like exercise.
Hello, all of you out there. Welcome to my humble corner of the electronic world. | | |
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