Reason Breeds Insanity

By the time Jesus was 33 years old, he saved the world. When he was thirty-three, he died. But he couldn’t just leave it at that, he had to come back from the dead, too. I mean I could die, but it wouldn’t save the world or create a new religion. And I certainly couldn’t come back from Death!

What have I done in my thirty-three years? I have attended approximately twenty-seven years of school, written over three hundred papers, taken around 70 finals, and produced some really bad poetry and some fairly decent creative nonfiction. I mean if I think about it, I have achieved quite a bit, but it seems a little pale in comparison. So I have Jesus envy. What of it?

I must say that I enjoy school, and I enjoy learning, but I am ready to be finished. I am ready to teach, and I am ready to research the things I enjoy.

Right now, I’m pretty excited because three of my friends and I got accepted to do a panel at a conference (PCA) in San Francisco. We are talking about fat. Yes, interestingly, there is a whole group of scholars, fat studies scholars, who study the way fat people are portrayed in literary texts, popular culture, and art. My part of the panel is about the TLC show “Inside Brookhaven Obesity Clinic,” and I am discussing the rhetoric of disease and how fat people are fetishized via the television camera.

This school year has been busy for me because I have already presented twice. Jim and I presented our presentation about gay and lesbian students in college classrooms to the BSU English Faculty, and I read a piece of creative nonfiction at our graduate creative writing conference, Penscape. Finally, next semester, we are going to PCA, and Jim I are taking our presentation on the road. We have been asked by his alma mater to present to their English faculty. I submitted to PCM (our local graduate conference), but I don’t know if I got in or not.

This school year is busy for me, but I think I am finally able to say that I am doing what I love, and writing about the subjects I love. I only wish I could find a way to include more of a Christian aspect in my papers for class. I think my faith is so close me in ways that other subjects are not, that I have a difficult time writing about it. I want that aspect of theology to be present in my writing, but it is difficult to get it to come through. I think I may see about taking a class long-distance from another university about theology and literature. I know they are out there, but they are so challenging to find. I need that aspect of me to be whole and intact, and I think that is frequently why I feel so detached from my faith—I separate myself from it while I am writing. I can always recognize Biblical language, Biblical concepts, and Christian theology in texts, but I think I may shy away from reading texts that way because I will have to defend my faith. Surely, I will learn a way to talk about Christianity in a way that distances it from my personal faith, and is simply intellectual. I don’t know. Today’s my day off. Dammit…

Sick, I know, I rejoiced yesterday because I finished seven pages of one paper. I can write all day here, and I can write forever if it is for some sort of creative outlet, but put me in front of a blank screen to write an academic paper, and I freeze. I don’t understand it. Today, I am at church waiting for it to begin. I am again at a restless place in my faith. I swear sometimes I wish it was easy. I wish that I could just follow along like a good little sheep and not question, not doubt. I feel like as I age I cycle faster than I ever did before. When I was younger my cycle would be years, and now it seems like they are days. I have often thought I should maybe go see a shrink, but I don’t have money. I go from being almost manic to sleeping twelve or thirteen hours. For example, last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nighs, I slept for about three hours each night. I was fine, I wasn’t tired or anything. Then for a few days I slept normally, then last night by 9PM I was exhausted and then slept until 730AM. I’m a mess, I think. I would go to BSU Psych Services, but you only get six free sessions. After that, you either pay or you get no more service. I don’t know about you, but if I am going to pay for psych treatments, I’m not going to someone who has less of an education than I do. Our psych services are staffed by people working on master’s and doctoral degrees in psych. That would be like going to Andy or Tim for psychological help. Weird. I mean the PhD students are okay, but if I were going to a master’s students I might as well just call Andy or Tim! Oh, well, with a few beers, it doesn’t matter how screwy I feel, then I feel fine!
After church today we are going to see David’s play: Waiting for Godot. I hope it is good. I am pretty excited to see the little shit, since he hasn’t been home forever! When we get home from that, I go to the library until my paper is finished. Yippee! Looking forward to it. Let’s see what happens at church today…

I am so glad that this semester is almost over. I think I could almost pee my pants. I have two twenty-page papers to write and then I will be finished until January 9th, when I take Renaissance, African American, and Modernism. I will also be teaching two classes of ENG 104, which should be good. I am trying to get my website all setup and ready to go, and to finalize my syllabus before then, so I can have smooth sailing. I think I can do it, but I may be sorry for taking too many classes. I am going to try to read some of the stuff over the break so that I can be a bit ahead, and so that I can focus more on teaching. I have three things I want to accomplish over break: fat studies paper, PCM paper, book review for Bob’s class. I also want to read at least one if not two books for each class. I think I can do it! I just want to get finished so I can teach literature. Really I want to finish because I am getting too old to do this staying up all night writing thing. I hope that when I am working, I will budget my time a little better. We’ll see. I really have no point for writing this except procrastinating, so I should go read. I am hoping to Lauren’s paper done tomorrow, and Huff’s paper done Sunday. Then I will actually have time to proofread both of them- Lauren’s Monday, Huff’s Tuesday. I also have to narrow down to conference papers for both of them as well. I may explode before Tuesday.

Church on Sunday was really interesting. Andrea spoke and her message was about how we perceive each other and the community we share. She used post-it notes to describe the type of sin she carries with her, struggles with, and wants to share with our community Agape. Interestingly, I find that Agape is so much better at this type of community than most churches I’ve been to, that I struggle to understand why someone wouldn’t want to share their hurts and pain with the people that attend there: no the people who are the church there. From my perspective as a former outsider, I have to say that I don’t really see many people going there who remain as Casting Crowns sings: “shiny plastic people.” I see people genuinely attempting to struggle with their Christian faith, or their faith in general. Linguistically, I guess I should write “faiths” because more than one person goes to church at Agape, but communally we all profess one faith (as diverse as our understandings of that faith may be). All this said, I thought Andrea’s message was an excellent one because even the best biblical communities could stand to be more open with each other.

I only wanted Andrea to go further with her analogy. When we practice grace, we not only label ourselves instead of each other with our little sin-laden post-it notes, we also recognize who we are before our post-its. By this I mean, that in a community, if we are truly practicing grace, we not only label ourselves with our own sin (recognizing that once we confess the sin the post-it is irrelevant anyway) but we see our friends wearing all those post-its, and one by one we pull the post-its from them and begin to wear them ourselves. I can’t get past this concept of grace. It isn’t enough to recognize someone and forgive them, but we are to recognize, forgive, and help them carry that sin. If we all went around pulling post-its from each other, then eventually we wouldn’t know whose sin was whose to start with and we’d all be carrying each other’s sin. There can be no shame, when we all carry the consequences. And whether we want to admit it or not, we all carry the consequences either way.

For example, a teenage couple in our church gets pregnant. We can either shame them and permanently scar them for their sin, as if they won’t be anyway, or we can help them shoulder the burden of their decision and give them a living example of grace. The consequence here is that as a church we were Christ to this young couple (whatever the outcome of their relationship), and we absorbed their public shame by supporting them through their private consequences. I am pretty sure this is what Christ did for the woman accused of adultery. I think he might have written in the sand: “I took all of her post-it notes and I am wearing them, so go ahead and throw the rocks at me.” Yeah, I wouldn’t either.

For my thoughts about winter, click here.