Reason Breeds Insanity

Well, I would assume anyway, that by the time you get to graduate school your professors would not play favorites. Or if they did, they would at least try to make it less than obvious. I love sitting in class hearing about what an amazing teacher my professor is. Especially since from what I can see she is by far the most substandard teacher I have been exposed to since my undergraduate years. Well, I guess the rest of my classes make up for her lack of educational professionalism. I just have never disliked a professor within the first two class periods before.

My friend Sarah thinks I need to love Yeats, so she sent me a Yeats poem yesterday. I am sure it the first in a long line of Yeats-spamming, which I am sure could be a new online trend. Maybe a new virus even. Anyway. I thought I would take this opportunity to post one of my favorite poems. And, yes, Sarah, I know you love Adrienne Rich almost as much as I love her.

Diving into the Wreck
by Adrienne Rich
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

In all fairness, as I read through my last post, it seemed as if I was making disparaging comments about my specific church. I was not. My church, Agape, which does live up to its name as well as any church I have attended, is the least showy, least predictable, most humble, and Jesus seeking church I have been to. I just am nonplussed by the whole Sunday morning “Sabbath.” I doesn’t seem so restful to me. It mostly seems like just another day with church instead of work or class.

Part of my church skepticism comes from the fact that I greatly dislike worship music, and I am iffy about hymns. Although I think that for the most part, hymns do tell a much more significant and thorough theological story than current worship music, I guess I just am too concerned about the loss or neglect of other forms of worship: prayer, dancing, writing, silence, drawing, painting, living, loving. I am not against theological music, and I love some worship songs, and several hymns, I just think that sometimes the “performance” gets in the way of the rejoicing and worship that that same “performance” is supposed to facilitate.

So much focus is on the sound equipment, the correct worship set, the musical talent of the worship team, and so little focus on any given Sunday morning is on the people who are in the pews waiting for Jesus to show up. If the music isn’t right, will he still come?I am pretty sure that Jesus doesn’t give a shit if everyone is singing in tune, and that God appreciates even the most tone deaf jovial utterance. The grunts and undulations of the most severely handicapped person are just as pleasing as the trained and amplified vocal stylings of the lead worship singer.

This post to say that while my church doesn’t have it all right, they have a fair bit of God-seeking and people-loving that many churches are too scared to embrace. My church, Agape, does MANY THINGS RIGHT. This church reaches out to the downtrodden, to the outcasts, and to sinners saved by grace like me. Our praise set is one of the least showy I know of, and the congregation actually functions as a community. I just can’t bring myself to love the Sunday morning assembly. I can’t stop thinking, am I singing well enough to help Jesus find our church: “Pass me not, Oh, Gentle Savior. Hear my humble cry. While on others though art calling, do not pass me by.”

I start school tomorrow and it is kind of like a clean slate for me because I quit at the BUX on Friday night. I decided I needed to concentrate on school, and that I needed no distractions. I will miss it for sure, but I will not miss the headaches of inept management, lackadaisical employees, or rudely condescending customers. I hope in the process of this I will get a piece of myself back. I know I used to be laid back. I know I used to be fun. I know I used to be nice. Maybe with time, I will be me again.

I went to Target today and was pleasantly surprised at their selection of fat girl clothes. I bought several outfits, but I did put back the “I HEART HOT MOMS” shirt. I was shopping for professional outfits. I thought I needed the t-shirt because it is pretty funny, but the professional side of me won out. I may not be able to hold out forever though!

I am excited and nervous about school. I am still trying to decide if this is the right choice for me, and I think maybe I should have tried to get into a distance education program at a seminary for a PhD in something theologically related. I am just not sure anymore. I have this deep distrust of anything religious but a great love for the theological and for the biblical. Jesus and I are still on the fritz, but I think it is more that his church and I are on the fritz than anything else. Yesterday Bec asked me if I was going to church. I said, “let me see….go to church or don’t go to church…let me think…” I love my pastor, so I feel so weird in not wanting to go to church, but I just am not in for the show. I am not in for the hype of the Sunday thing. I am not in for sitting for one more hour learning about what I should be doing. I KNOW what I SHOULD be doing. I just can’t consistently do it. I am excited to be solely entrenched in the academic again.

I had to add this and didn’t want to reopen the last post. As frustrating as it is for both of us for Bec to not have a job, it has proven to be a blessing in disguise. One morning she came home and told me that she was going back to feed Jesus. I knew immediately that she was taking food to a homeless person. His name was Joe. Since then she has collected Sam, as well. Every morning when she walks the dogs, she looks to see if Joe and Sam are out and about. If they are she finds out if they need food, and then takes it to them. Sam prefers black coffee, delivered in one of my travel mugs, which he returns to Bec on her way back to the house so she can refill it, and Joe prefers whatever he can get along with the Ricker’s slushies that other people bring to him. There is another guy who lives down by the graffiti wall whose name she doesn’t know. He seems to be mentally ill as he talks to himself and to others who no one else can see. What interests me is the fact that by accident she is doing what my friend Molly and I set out to do. We ended up cleaning the offices at the Mission, which while okay and necessary, is not very fulfilling. I think the next time I see Molly, I am going to tell her about Becky’s adventures, and see if we can’t work out someway to have a weekly pizza night at McCullough park or the little sitting area on Madison, or the depot, or something. I am pretty sure that it will work well.