When I am most quiet and most myself, God's grace is clear, and then I see nothing else under the sun. What else is there for us but to be tranquil and at peace in the all-enchanting wonder of God's mercy to us? It falls upon this paper more quietly than the morning sun, and then I know that all things, without His love, are useless, and in His love, having nothing, I can possess all things. ~ Thomas Merton
I have nothing to add. Just some thoughts to ponder today.
My thoughts are languid tonight, slowly trickling down the uninteresting face of the day. This is the kind of day the Stage Manager from Our Town would encourage me to visit when I've left this world and wanted to return. An ordinary day of no significance. Why can I not see with eternity's eyes so I realize how amazing this most boring day actually is? Would it be too much for me to take in? Perhaps.
Honestly, I have nothing to share, nothing to talk about. The mundaneness of today is overwhelming. Rough waking up. Caffeine fix at Speedway. Uneventful silence on the way to work. Students took tests while I graded. I dropped off my tax stuff into the mail. Grabbed a late lunch. Caught up on the interwebs. Started laundry. Dozed off. More laundry. More web. Late dinner at Lemongrass. More laundry. Watched Anchorman. Laughed with Angie at In the Loop. And now I'm here, typing about the nothing I've done all day. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun?"
Obviously, we're not going to get much out of this half an hour.
They (whoever they are) say that sometimes the writing is enough - it doesn't matter what you write as long as you write. Fine and dandy if you're scribbling notes into a private journal, but I don't think it translates to this medium well. Because, let's be honest, you hope someone reads what you wrote. And you can't say it doesn't matter what you read as long as you read. Or can you? Why are you reading this? Is this making you a better reader somehow? The argument could be made that this isn't making me a better writer either. So there's that.
As I mentioned last night, the word I'm pondering for Lent is compassion. So of course it came up several times today - in discussions, in readings. I know, it's like when you're looking to buy a new car and suddenly you see the car everywhere you go. This isn't a bad thing, to become more aware of compassion in the world. Better, of course, to actually show compassion. But is there a line? Can compassion reach a point of diminishing returns? On one of my mailing lists they were discussing the whole Joe Stack incident, one side arguing they felt bad for the guy, the other said they did until he burned his house and flew his plane into a building. No one was saying what he did was acceptable or to be lauded. The question then, is, can we be compassionate toward someone, even when they do something we despise?
Maybe I'll spend some time later unpacking the etymology of compassion. Literally means "to suffer together." And how does it fit with the idea of passion? Lots of writing. Too bad I didn't think of this earlier. Much more interesting than what I typed earlier.
Hope: I, like many others, read the Esquire piece about Roger Ebert and they talked about how losing his voice has allowed him to experience a resurgence in his writing. It pointed out that when he first started blogging, there really wasn't much there. But now it's his primary mode of communication. Something for me to aspire to.
Night. Æ
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