He [Lamiel] pointed across the road to a series of WAYSIDE PULPIT placards, and his pace slackened, as if he wished me to ponder them. I read the first one aloud--


"The Divine Challenge comes to every man," said Lamiel, "but one is not happy to see the Omnipotent and All-Glorious imagined as a postman."

-Harry Blamires, see post below

Having finished A Severe Mercy (thoughts on that forthcoming), I am now somewhat frantically trying to simultaneously enjoy and finish a trilogy of books by Harry Blamires before school starts on Monday. I have just finished the first book: The Devil's Hunting Grounds (followed by Cold War in Hell and Highway to Heaven). The setting is a sort of purgatory, and the story is written from the author's perspective.

The purpose of the book as far as I can tell is not to advocate a certain conviction regarding the nature of the afterlife (in this way it is similar to Lewis's Great Divorce), but mostly takes wrongheaded worldviews to their logical ends through conversations with various people the narrator encounters and (best of all) the narrator himself.

The gist of the book is this: Lamiel (his guardian angel, much better than his stereotyped title sounds) takes the author to the celestial Selection Tribunal, which places people in an appropriate occupation for the purpose of turning them out of themselves (see quote below). They decide to let him choose his own placement, a choice between the Backward Believers' Department at the University or the College of Gnostics. He is allowed to take a tour of each place before returning to make the choice.

I shall take up my usual habit of quoting the parts that struck me especially. I shall do my best not to quote the entire work, but ... well, a lot of it struck me.

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[Lamiel:] "You've said far too much to yourself. I might remark that you have swamped yourself with useful information and gratuitous good advice. The self, the true self--the will, if you like, has been immobilized by the burden."

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[again, Lamiel:] "I have told you before, I think, that you are a child of your time. You have got a bee in your bonnet about progress. You imagine that our business is to push you in a certain direction. It isn't. Our business is simply to turn you inside out. Creatures who have grown accustomed to turn all their experience in upon themselves, perverting objects worthy of love, worship, and enjoyment to the service of their own egos, have got to learn to turn their wills outward in devotion to what is other... But do not deceive yourself that you have a journey to go. If you do, you will be tempted to bolster yourself and brace yourself and equip yourself for the enterprise. Here there is no journey. For the self that aspires to a goal, the self that would set out, in determination and in ambitious perseverance--that self has got to be destroyed. If you must image the demand upon you, remember that you are to be turned inside out. ... And you--if you ever seriously study here--we hope that you will learn to delight in what you study. You will find that a pleasant change from delighting in yourself studying it..."

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I might add here that Lamiel's rebukes of the author are mercilessly (or mercifully) spot on. This keeps the book from being a mere "ha ha, look what that bad worldview says!" - that is, that the author occasionally tries to point the finger at people with wrong thinking and (through Lamiel's company) continually finds it aimed at himself, and thus the reader finds the same.

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[when the author tries to use alleged feelings of charity to cover his vanity:]

"Though I trust," said Lamiel, "that you will learn to be on your guard against feelings, especially when they masquerade as impulses of charity. The exercise of charity is the work of the will. I am afraid that there are circumstances in which the exercise of charity will have an uncompromising, unsociable, even disagreeable appearance. I believe that neither Dr. Primrose nor yourself has found me at all times a congenial companion. There may be something for you to learn from that."

My policy henceforth shall be to say this to a certain person whenever he/she lets out a cough in my general direction that sounds intentionally like "overachiever." It's a matter of measuring height, so there! (and all snarky references to my general lack thereof shall be duly ignored)

I've decided that New Year's Resolutions are perhaps something worse than silly. They're usually something ridiculous, like "I shall not eat any more Jolly Ranchers" or "I shall not buy any more paper clips from Wal-Mart." ...well, those are the resolutions I consider not really worth making. The resolutions that are worth making - "study my Bible" - "pray more earnestly" - "fast regularly" - should not be made on the basis of a "New Year." First, I should hope that I should be resolving to keep these throughout all eternity, not just in the coming year, and I think if I'm going to decide to eternally worship God and trust in him, I should be making that resolution on something eternal (say, Christ?) rather than a silly date. (And I'm not necessarily talking about vows here; that's a whole different ballpark. I'm talking about the moment of lifting the chin and saying "Listen here, O Sinful Old Nature, this is the way it's going to be...").

I should add that this should not be taken terribly seriously, as it is my way to rant against the cultural broo-ha of the day. This is why I can't wait for February 14th...

-Quote by T.S. Eliot.

When I was younger, I would beg my parents to not get a dishwasher, because I loved washing dishes (or potatoes, even) by hands. The water was either pleasantly cool and dirty, or appropriately warm and soapy, and my hands could sort of move of their own accord in that pleasant environment of the kitchen sink. But the real appeal was not in the sink or the soap or the vegetable scrubber: the attraction was in a window above the sink. One could look out the window and focus on the grass or the birds or the trees or nothing at all and go on in this way for hours - or at least I could - and then, in this glorious state, I would plan stories.

If Christie was right, I should have several bestsellers right now - but perhaps it is unfair to discredit her immediately on those grounds. After all, I was hardly planning a book - more inventing tales that were best left to tumble 'round my mind before they were lost in the vortex of memory. I certainly was not doing the dishes, either - a very bad pretense of doing the dishes is the most that can be said for my dreamy splashing in the water. So perhaps Ms. Christie may prove correct after all.

We had the S girls over last night, two fours of us all together, and we ate potato wedges (Evelyn might like to call them chips) and watched Newsies. Then I dashed through a hasty shower and ran off to work as the other settled down to curl hair for today's halftime show and make mysterious facial products out of ordinary inhabitants of the kitchen food cabinets. I won't say much about these, but the results held a sort of dubious allure.

By the way, I did most of the internet research leading up to this glorious facial-production, and I learned several very interesting things.

Honey - plain, by itself - makes the best facial mask. Wipe your face with a warm cloth before smearing it on; leave for 15-30 minutes and then rinse with warm water. Finally rinse with cold to shut your pores.

Green tea (and I mean brewed and cooled) works as toner.

Grapes - by themselves as well - are one of the best cleansers. As far as I can tell, you're supposed to mangle them and then rub the peels onto your face (astringency and all that).

Avocado - facial softener and all that rot. You know about this one.

Miracle Whip functions as a brilliant exfoliator. Allegedly if you follow the directions (google them), removing it takes off so much dead skin that you can feel it, leaving one to wonder (as one internet writer put so well) exactly what it does to one's stomach...)

There were millions of things to be done with pear, apple, mayonnaise, brown sugar, egg white, turmeric... and stuff we didn't have on hand, like jasmine oil, sandalwood, etc... I'm not big into beauty products or being all-natural and healthy (much less the adage "don't put anything on your skin you wouldn't eat" - because I might try the miracle whip thing, just to see, but I am definitely not eating that stuff...) but hey! The way I see it, if you have things on hand, you might as well use them rather than spending hundreds of dollars on products containing goodness knows what. Plus, the research makes for a good laugh.

Today - long, mostly smooth drive down to Norman for the OU game. We only missed one exit and took a brief tour of scenic Bricktown. (Perhaps I have not made this clear enough: scenic is used sarcastically. As in, the parts we saw merely featured too many one-way streets and a plethora of streetbums with their lives in pillowcases.) The game was rather boring. Sooners were whomping the Eagles (Coppin State, I think) 45-23 when we left after halftime. And I now know what a sinking feeling of despair is: the "I'm not going to make it" feeling when you have four counts to get halfway across a court, and then the "I'm not going to make it any farther" feeling you get after accomplishing the previous task. The drive home was uneventful. When I drove I tormented everyone by singing along to Christian rap/pop songs, half of which I didn't know. You shake your head at me, but 'tis fun. (And a word to the wise - Valero gas pumps have weird hoops you have to jump through to pay. Or at least the ones in Scenic Guthrie. I have never had one ask for my zip code before - but maybe I've been unnecessarily sheltered. Homeschooling and living in Hickville - twice - can do that to you.)

My mother figured out I like canned soup (an odd taste, I guess - I also have a thing for Kraft macaroni and Ramen noodles. Gross, maybe, but true. Probably because they were a rarity when I was small and thus a treat.). She bought some for me when I came down with the cold a week and a half ago, and I guess she got the strong impression that I liked it (delusional ravings? I don't know). She has been making random donations of canned soup ever since. Every few days I raise my eyes and lo! the two cans of chicken noodle soup have miraculously multiplied! At first I thought it might be occuring mitotically, but my mother assured me the causes were much more pragmatically explicable. Shoot. There goes my senior thesis.

Anyway, all this comes to mind as I lift my tired, heavy eyes in the general direction of my shamefully-organized (read: piled) desk and catch glimpse of my soup supply. (I don't know why she puts them on top of my desk. Maybe it looks like a place for charitable donations of canned food. If so, this is a bad sign.)

My siblings are teasing Lib for playing computers game. Dani pretends to be one of her future children: "Mommy! Have you gotten to the seventh level yet? Mommy! It's my turn!" Ben protests, "No one cares about your Mummy's Tomb score!" (I am making up a random name...I know it involves "mummy," nothing more.)

I think I'll go watch Nancy Drew with them - I mean, did I say "watch Nancy Drew"? I meant to say, I think I'll blow this joint and go find a cool party. Because this is a Saturday night and I am in college and therefore immeasurably cool. And immeasurably cool people do not watch Nancy Drew. And my siblings aren't immeasurably cool. Yeah. You believe me.

And for those of you who might get this, Matt Smith? That's all I'm saying. MATT SMITH?!

Dance, dance, nothing but dance... Dance practice last Tuesday... Dance recital this morning, dance practice this afternoon... Dance performance tomorrow (OU b-ball)... Dance performance (two! OSU b-ball) next Tuesday... Dance class Friday...

And so I am very tired and so I am going to put my head down on that pillow just over there and so I shall sleep.

(But first, here's a picture.)