Accedie

Alan likes to teach us fun words, the title is one of those words. Gotta love Alan and all of his Quaker wisdom.

Another good one from Alan, 'Virtue has to be an action.'

I have math class in 20 minutes..15 now.. and my prof forgot to post our assignment that kinda sorta means I can't do it, as she would say. So here I am.

I have calmed down so so much since I last posted. I still get weepy at times, I cried during the Ash Wednesday service at the Chapel last week. I cry reading Gandalf sutff- and mind you, I love to cry, I really do, but I don't love beeing so upset I literally cannot contian it. I didn't cry at Chapel so much about Scope, but that's another story for another time and this might not be the place to articulate it anyway.

I've been doing meditation for my new discipline- it's going well, I attribute calming down to setting 30minutes a day to do this.

I finally went to the UU that meets in Kulas yesterday. Josh and Chris went with me. I loved it, and I will be going back. It's everything I wanted it to be, AND there is a significant ritual aspect which I didn't expect but love. The sermon was opened up to discussion DURING the sermon! How cool is that? Anyway the people were, of course, welcoming and friendly. I had a conversation with one of the members after the service and was telling her about myself, and I said "I used to be a Christian, and I've been wandering around for a long time...but this seems like a perfect community" and she replied "I used to be a Christian too, and then it stopped working." And I was like "HELLO NEW CHURCH!"

But, seriously- I think it might be the first time I've ever had a conversation like that with an older person. I don't mean "older person" in a negative way either, but...seriously. It was so refreshing! I can't wait to go back. I have not missed getting up on Sunday mornings though, let me tell you.

My math class is starting in 2 minutes.. I should probably go to it.

I think I will finish this first. Math can wait.

After a series of crumby days and weeks, I realized it's really the little things. I say that all the time- and I really do love the little things. But, it's something like meeting someone who loves one of your favorite authors... or knowing someone that smiles every time they see you, I mean every time- not every time we talk, but if they're in class and see you walk by the door- for that split second they see you every Monday Wednesday and Friday afternoon around 1:55, they smile- it's these things that are not only wonderful on the surface but they show me that other people do care, and that we do live a relational existence. It's these silly little things that lift up bad days. It's a friend who sees an article in the paper about Hobbits and brings it in for you because they know you're a Lord of the Rings geek... It's people saying "Well I heard her laugh in the hallway, so she must be here.." The things that often get lost in the murk and mire of life that can show us what it really means to be alive.

I'm five minutes late. I guess math can't be avoided forever.

I leave you with this, which I have quoted a from a lot recently... everyone things I'm talking about the stupid book, but I'm not!


"TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

William Butler Yeats