Lucy Snowe

Last night I went to a choral concert at a Presbyterian church here in town. Business as usual, until time to recite the Apostle's Creed. Now, I am well familiar with the Creed after seven years of parochial school, even though Disciples are fairly scornful of creeds as a concept (No Book But the Bible: No Creed But Christ is a motto from our earliest days). But one thing I had never, never seen was the 'charge' the minister gave to the congregation before the repetition of the Creed.

Minister: Christian, what do you believe and for what would you be prepared to die?

Congregation: [begins to say Apostle's Creed]

I was flabbergasted. Partly in a humorous, but also in a serious way. First I couldn't help but go over the text of the Creed in the light of whether I would die for the points discussed.

( I Believe )

When I first came down the driveway, my parents and brother were all standing out in front of the house looking toward the small tobacco field.

What's going on, I asked.

Oh, said my mother, we just chased a bobcat out of the workshop.

There's a photo of the neighbors' four year old on the refrigerator. The fact that the lovely little girl is posing next to a dead, half-gutted turkey does not strike anyone else as the least bit odd.

Andy Griffith still comes on network tv on Saturday nights, and my parents watch it while I sit on the sofa reading back issues of Southern Lady.

I sat on the front porch during a thunderstorm, until the lightning got a little too close for my mother's comfort and she told me to come inside.

Sunday after church we ate chicken and watched Nascar.

I sit in my bedroom reading and when I am called for supper I come to the table dazed and too full of story to fully engage the world around me--the same as I've been doing on summer evenings for the last fifteen years.

My great-aunt calls a lot.

The air is sweet, and the shades of green are deep and vibrant, and there are whippoorwills in the evening and stars in the night sky.

When it rains, my mother takes deep breaths and announces that nobody has been plowing today.

My dad and my brother have long conversations about guns they want to buy, and my mom and my brother debate what flowers and bushes would look best in the front yard.

Once or twice a day I'm blindsided by an important piece of news I knew nothing about, and I ask my parents why they always say nothing is going on when they call me on Tuesday nights.

And I look out over the fields and I drive the roads and I listen to the memories in this house and I think--was this really my whole world? And--how did I ever leave?

We slipped out of here quietly in ones and twos in the dark of the early morning, like we had heard rumors of something of which the rest of the world was not yet aware.

The old, old story became brand new as we spoke familiar words in the dawn of morning.

Later the largest baptism class in recent memory gathered in the fellowship hall for one last meeting as the choir rehearsed on the other side of the room.

And I walked in behind the choir to a packed house and stepped straight up to the pulpit to call out the best words in the world--

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

There is nothing larger or better than Easter. Glory to God: loving, imaginative, and unstoppable.

Well, the great livejournal experiment turned two years old yesterday, so huzzah for that.

I know my writing fell off this year, but I don't see that as any cause for alarm. Rather, I think my natural preferences for pen and paper reasserted themselves after the initial novelty wore off, and so I think it is encouraging that I have kept using this at all. There is still a niche for it in my life, and I believe the journaling will continue for at least another year.

I find it entertaining, so there.

( Progress Report )

This is the opening hymn we sang in worship today:

( Good Old Chalice Hymnal )

I'm not there yet, but it brought me a few moments of peace.

Really I'm glad I'm scheduled for Children's Worship and Wonder this week and next, because now I don't have to worry about saying something I don't mean.

[...]

There are some things I'm going to stop believing for a while, in the hope that I will eventually be able to drift back into sincerity in my own time and in my own way.

I have known some bitter things,--
Anguish, anger, solitude.
Year by year an evil brings,
Year by year denies a good;
March winds violate my springs.

I have known how sickness bends,
I have known how sorrow breaks,--
How quick hopes have sudden ends,
How the heart thinks till it aches
Of the smile of buried friends.

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning, excerpt from "Proof and Disproof"

Had my hair cut today for the first time in almost three years.

Last time was not, as a matter of fact, before starting treatment. The last time I had my hair cut was right after finishing treatment--Holy Week 2004, I think maybe it was Maundy Thursday. It was A Sight after having mostly fallen out and half grown in again but curly and then getting burned and grizzled from radiation, so I really had to do something. But after that I left it alone.

Three years will give you tolerably long hair, and I wasn't ready to lose all of that length today, so I just had the old damaged part cut out--about three inches. I was amazed at how little time it took to shed so much history.

I was nervous and edgy, but I was able to maintain a calm exterior in the chair. Only one time I thought I might cry, and that was at the very end--

Stylist: Oh, your hair is going to look so much better without that ugly stuff in it!

Don't call it ugly, even though it was. It was a symbol and a relic, a result still with me and an abstract reminder of great suffering. I clung to it in defiance when my oncologist said, 'better cut it off now and save yourself the grief.' I watched my hair clips get smaller and smaller until I could put it all up in a bun with a barrette as long and as wide as my pinky finger. I gave up scrunchies because they would just fall right out again.

Chemotherapy curled it, and radiation grizzled it, but it was hardly the only part of me taking damage. A lot of me is ugly now, and my hair is the only thing I can fix by cutting off. Vanity was able to overcome deeply rooted emotional issues in the end, but I tried to be respectful in the doing of it.

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.
--Ecclesiastes 1:9 NRSV

To laugh at myself without humor, and sneer at misfortune without malice, to find independence in despair and strength in resignation, to shrug and grimace and linguistically pace around for a bit, because I'm just in that kind of a mood.

I'd like to think my writing is not as hysterical as it used to be, but maybe I just haven't been sufficiently motivated in a while.

( Do you dare? )

I'm not a great fan of Jane Austen--that is, I have read all the novels and enjoyed them, but I prefer the works of Charlotte Bronte, Anthony Trollope, and Thomas Hardy. But I think I do prefer Jane Austen to Elizabeth Gaskell, if only because the Austen novels are so funny.

And one claim Jane Austen will always have on my affections is that in Northanger Abbey she created that paragon of all that is good in a man, Henry Tilney.

( Give Me a Man Who Reads )

2007 is starting with a bit of a stumble, as I am a few days late with all my transition writing. Anyway, here we go with a condensed version of 2006.

Deaths
March 3
September 6
December 22

Weddings
June 3
November 21

Engagements
August 31 (!)

Stories Accumulated
Beginning work at the Rape Crisis Center
AMERC
Disaster
Bought a Headstone for a 1948 Baby
That Wonder Boy
Stopped a Crime
Left My Church

( This Will Be the Song )

Dr. Feng: Where did you learn all this medical terminology? Do you work in the field?
Amanda: Kind of...

Dr. Feng: Are you allergic to any medicines?
Amanda: No, but Z-Packs don't work on me.
Dr. Feng: I should think not, since for all intents and purposes you don't have a spleen.
Amanda: [splutters faintly] I had two extra months of chemo so that I could keep my spleen!
Dr. Feng: Yeah, but then they radiated it, so...[shrugs]

A funny moment from Homiletics class:

I should preface this by saving that this professor is a co-professor for the class. Tonight was the first time she ever lectured and as I was not placed in her small group we have not spoken more than a handful of times. She does not necessarily know my name.

In the course of her lecture, this professor used the word 'Cruciformity.' I had no idea what this meant, and even wondered if it was a pun. So when she asked for questions, I asked that.

Professor said it meant the times in life where the individual or the congregation feels as though they are being crucified. That was good enough for me, but she kept going.

Cruciformity is divorce, poverty, homelessness, social upheaval, all of that. And it is a preacher's job to still testify to the presence of God through such times.

She looked me right in the eye and went for the big guns.

'What if it's CANCER?' she said, 'What's a preacher to do when life itself is hanging in the balance?'

I kept my gaze steady, though I think there were others who flinched and gasped for me, and I imagine she will hear about this from someone, and probably this night will become a story for her too.

I was startled, but not exactly upset. When she smiled and strolled away to another part of the room I unclenched my fists and smirked a little, and silently answered her question.

What's a preacher to do? Preacher gets her CT scans and hopes for the best.

This does put me back on my soapbox of cancer being such a stereotype of the Absolute Worst someone can think of. Which means there are times when I see myself as something monstrous, a living representation of rock bottom.

Advent began today in the seminary chapel.

( There was singing. )

( There was reading. )

And there was a sermon about why the eschatology of Advent should mean so much to a bunch of Disciples of Christ who are much more likely to have bumper stickers that say 'In the Event of the Rapture, Can I Have Your Car?'

Advent begins tomorrow in the Eminence Christian Church, and will begin everywhere else it hasn't already on Sunday. It's not Easter, but it sure is good to be out of Ordinary II.

Sophie's Choice was the first Styron novel I ever read. I was fifteen years old and I was impressed by it, but at the same time I was very young and I probably didn't get very much out of it. Then I read Lie Down in Darkness when I was seventeen--the same time in which I had my first successful reading of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. And it was magic. The Confessions of Nat Turner held me spellbound, and I haven't gotten around to Set This House on Fire, but I think Lie Down in Darkness will always be the sentimental favorite.

( When I was 17, I wanted to write like this. )

Am I fine, or am I numb?

Have I become stronger, more grounded?

Or is this one more thing about which I have become incapable of feeling anything?

'I've grown up defiant. I am she who walks alone, with no allegiances to anyone. I look at people and I see the stupidities, the rivalries, the betrayals, the pain and the superficialities. Why should I let myself get tangled up in all of that?'

Steady blue eyes met mine with a frank challenge.

'Because you're sad, and you miss it.'

Do I? How could I? It can't possibly be true, and yet there must be some truth in it somewhere, because why else would I be feeling so stunned?

Vivian: That certainly was a maudlin display. Popsicles? "Sweetheart"? I can't believe my life has become so...corny.
But it can't be helped. I don't see any other way. We are discussing life and death, and not in the abstract, either; we are discussing my life and my death, and my brain is dulling, and poor Susie's was never very sharp to begin with, and I can't conceive of any other...tone.
Now is not the time for verbal swordplay, for unlikely flights of imagination and wildly shifting perspectives, for metaphysical conceit, for wit.
And nothing would be worse than a detailed scholarly analysis. Erudition. Interpretation. Complication.
Now is a time for simplicity. Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness.
I thought being extremely smart would take care of it. But I see that I have been found out.
--Margaret Edson, W;t

Happy Birthday. Good Luck. Bon Voyage. See You Soon. Everything's Going to be Fine. Oh Yes, Don't Worry About Me.

God have mercy, I'm all alone and I'm so scared.

This had its dress rehearsal last night in a conversation with asiancherries.

A few days ago I started reading back in the journals I began keeping at age 13, but I didn't go all the way back to age 13. I went only as far as age 17--took a refresher course, as it were, on what is still to date the darkest period of my life.

And it cheered me up.

What I was begging for, what I was beginning to give up hope of, what I needed so desperately--I got it. And I got better. And nothing has ever been quite that bad ever again.

Time has only strengthened my sense of what a miracle that really was.

From the grand height of wisdom and perspective that is not-quite-23, I have begun to see patterns, and harmonies, and Big Ideas. When I tell my story now, this is what I say--

That I have died three times. Once, by inches, of a slow starvation of the soul. Once, spectacularly, of a broken heart. Once, ingloriously and stereotypically, of cancer. And every time I have turned toward the darkness, cried out in despair, and surrendered the better part of whoever I was at the time, something (someone) has called me back from the brink of utter annihilation. Once, the very thing that later destroyed me. Once, a stranger on my doorstep. Once, poison. And if I were being even more analytical, I would add that the first rescue saved my mind and my faculties, and the third saved my body, but it was the second rescue that saved my soul.

Don't let the texts fool you into thinking this is a sad story. Look deeper than that. Remember how it was on the other side of the journal. Remember that it did turn out to be a journey back toward the light. It was a heavy price to pay--and it always is--but what we received--!

I'm standing up and shouting, because joy gradually recognized is just as powerful as any other kind:
THIS IS NOT A SAD STORY ANY MORE.

And--
Momigi
Emily Starr
Oryx
Psylocke
Nancy
Dearest

This one's for you.

( I Escaped to Tell You )

I can read!

Sort of.

I don't remember learning to read the first time, so the last two days have been a fascinating way of having that experience all over again.

It took several hours for me to be able to read and write the alphabet, to know which letters are which and know them both in order and out of order. Then it took a few more hours to learn what sounds went with what letters.

Then I started trying to make words. First I tried spelling English words with the Greek alphabet, then I tried reading Greek words aloud. I've decided a lot of this is approximation.

Last night at almost midnight I looked down at my book and--wonder of wonders--a string of Greek letters I could spell out with some hesitation suddenly became a Greek word I could say aloud.

Apostolos. It seemed like magic.

Even sitting here alone it is a little embarrassing to be sounding out words letter by letter and syllable by syllable. But there's just no other way at present and I am supposed to be able to read, write, and pronounce the Greek alphabet by 3:30 tomorrow.

What is making everything so surreal at present is that I cannot read Greek silently, but I can read it aloud. If I see words on a page they mean nothing to me because I have not learned any vocabulary. But if I read the words aloud I hear the cognates and the roots and once in a while I stumble onto something I actually understand.

For tonight's lesson I was supposed to copy this passage to practice my writing and also practice reading it aloud.
"Kai eipen o theos Genethetu phos. Kai egeneto phos. Kai eiden o theos to phos oti kalon."

And I said, "....wait--was that--?"

It has taken me nearly four years, but today I finished the last of Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire Chronicles.

I know it is verging on the ridiculous that it took me so long to read six books but, after all, a few things have come up between early 2003 and today.

I read the second book--Barchester Towers--for Development of the British Novel at Meredith College during spring semester of Sophomore year. I will never forget how we all shrieked over it.

And then I went back and read book number one--The Warden--because I wanted to get a firm handle on how it had all started.

Dr. Thorne and Framley Parsonage were both read during the summer of 2004--mostly in the courtyard outside Tompkins Hall at NC State, while I was in summer school.

The Small House at Allington was read back in July, and The Last Chronicle of Barset has been the work of the past week.

What a good time it has been. I have read so much Victorian Literature that it is usually quite easy for me to see how a story will go, but Anthony Trollope is an author who has gotten the better of me again and again.

This is one damper on the day--there will always be rereadings, but there is only one first time for any story. Of course I will read these books again, and I know they will make me laugh and cry just the same, but it is only during the first time that you cry out in surprise or get up and pace with anxiety or are reduced to beating the sofa cushion next to you in disgust and admiration and utter glee.

One hundred and sixteen years before I was even a thought, ( this is how it ended. )