Nancy's Musings

So, I got called to accompany congregational hymns. It's the scariest job ever, and I'm not very good at it. Today, for instance, I had to play an extra verse or two while the Priests finished preparing for the Sacrament, and I totally flubbed them. It was heinous. It wasn't a finger slip, or a small mistake, but a huge "Can I just die now?" moment. In front of 250 single men who will now never date me. I mean, they didn't date me before, so no biggie, but it's still frustrating to give them an excuse. But they all liked my tie! Which turns out, was Georgio Armani. Which I was explaining when I tripped over the step that shouldn't be there, and they laughed at me. God put me, the bundle of nerves and anxiety, in front of a congregation of peers to perform a skill at which I am, well, unskilled. I believe there's a plan. I believe that God puts tasks in my life for larger purposes. I hope, and sometimes believe, that I must do this so that I can be ...

I blogged a while back about why I want to be a lady, and what that means. If you think about it, all good traits are essentially gender-neutral. Confidence, kindness, imagination - they're all things that everybody should want to have. That counts with other good traits assigned to genders as well. What is feminine? Grace? Good - everybody should want to be graceful, well-dressed, hygienic. What about "nurturing?" - if you recall, I left that one off of my "I want to be" list. We're told it's the thing women are naturally that men are not, naturally. We nurture. We care for children. It's possible, I suppose, that I'm naturally more nurturing than the average male. So what? It's a good thing to be, right? Should men NOT try to be nurturing too? The philosophy derived from essentialism, I think, is that we should embrace who we are naturally, and stop trying to be what we're not. A woman will never lead as well as a man would in her place...

I've mentioned before that I suffer from pretty severe anxiety. What I don't suffer from is Avoidance Syndrome. At all. Okay, except for the phone thing, but between texting and the internet I think I've got it under control. Just a couple of hours ago I finished up my List Meeting: all five of the professors on a committee get together and hash out 120 texts separated into three lists: Theory, Historical Period, and a Special Topic (usually related to a research question or prospective Dissertation). They kept asking to assign less, and kept cutting things I'd never read but wanted to for things I had already. They reminded me that it's not good to overload myself, but it's their job to be reasonable and assign what they think I can, with some help, accomplish. I don't back down because something looks hard. I have stood on a red, plastic coke box in a foreign country and in a loud voice, in a language I barely knew, taught passing strangers about the Law o...

I believe a lot of things that your average atheist would scoff themselves to death on. For instance, I believe that an omnicient and omnipotent and immortal God fathered a mortal son with the ability to and for the purpose of living blamelessly and suffering on behalf of everybody else who ever lived, so that justice would be satisfied and imperfect people could learn from their mistakes, rather than be damned by them. I believe it quite literally, and am willing to stand witness before the law of all that I have experienced to that effect. I believe that both God and His son, early in the 19th Century, appeared in rural New York to a teenage boy, and most of the theological kerfuffle that ensued. I believe in the immortality of the soul, life after death, life before birth, and a myriad of other cosmic doctrines. So when popular television portrays a believer, I'm always on the edge of my seat waiting for them to make this nearly universal mistake: Some wealthy producer somewhere...

In John Myers Myers's narrativized compendium of literature, titled  Silverlock , just at the beginning of the sixth chapter a vaguely Shakespearean character named Rosalette (probably after  As You Like It 's Rosalind, at least partially) sings a song to Shandon, the main character, that puts him to sleep. The song is called "Seven Roads" and goes like this: Seven roads could lead thee here, Seven have betrayed me, dear. Seven could and none have done; Rank imposters, every one: Liars caught in lies, my sweet, There's no road without your feet. Where you're not, there is no land. There's no touch without your hand. Here, I know, is not a place For it does not hold your face. But there's one that I must find Where you wander, though I'm blind Without your eyes. As poetry, it's relatively unsophisticated. It's a simple little tune that a sweet girl sings as she's lost, looking for her lover in the forest. The phrase "seven roads...

When I was a young adult, we went ice-skating as a large group. My mother was an ice-skater, so she taught me a few things about falling down: which parts of you get damaged more easily, make a fist, etc. I did actually fall once, but I could feel my balance going, so I braced for it. The gentleman I skated with said it looked like I fell on purpose. Well, the falling wasn't on purpose, but the method was. It was an awkward moment as I shrugged, and wondered what kind of person he thought would fall on the ice on purpose. It's not like I had expected him to catch me. I'm not Dickensian, and Ice HURTS. Hence, the bracing. Failing is a little different from falling. I don't fail well. I fail often, but doing it well is a rather counter-intuitive skill depending on what you are attempting. Brene Brown connects failing well with vulnerability. To her, it means daring the attempt multiple times until success is achieved. Success is really only adaptive failure. When you fail...

I sometimes know, with all my faith in statistics, that I will never marry. The remainder of my life stretches ahead of me in shades of orange, blue, green, and everything but the (embarrassed blush) red-velvet of a dozen crimson rosebuds on St. Valentine's Day. But sometimes I remember things. My subconscious throws images into dreams without providing context, and they strike me. I compile these memories like the collage of a man I've not yet met. Pieces of April, but it's a morning in February. It doesn't have the same mellow metre, but it's what I mean. Kind of. I mean. Maybe it's November of the following year, and I've had a horribly debilitating accident that caused amnesia. I've got pieces of April, and it's a morning in an alternate reality? It began, I think, with the feeling of being protected: a persistent and certain knowledge that as difficult as my life becomes, I am safe. I remember being so full of trust that I would stake my life on...