Early Fall Update (Part 1 of 2)

I don’t know who all has been praying for me, but thank you. The transition to the new semester has gone better than I had really dared to hope. Several months ago, I could not have imagined that I would be able to get through an eight-hour work day, much less have energy to make dinner afterward, or turn around and work on my dissertation the next morning. My energy levels have improved pretty dramatically (helped somewhat by the discovery that coffee is powerful). The loosely structured, lengthy summer was exactly what I needed (and no doubt a big part of what’s helped me feel better and more ready to tackle things), and the more regimented schedule is exactly what I need now.

It is worth saying that, unless I were truly under the gun to finish a chapter, I still don’t think I could get through a full day of working solely on my dissertation (at least not without plenty of existential angst and pitiful whimpering). The partitioning of energies seems to be the only thing that makes this work. And that is useful information to have as I think about what might come after I graduate.

I’m in awe of people who can work demanding jobs while carrying a full course load. I don’t think I could have handled that. But for whatever reason, my current 20-hour-a-week job seems—so far—to lend itself pretty well to the way I approach the dissertation stage. I like having a totally distinct set of responsibilities that I don’t have to carry with me into the other set, and vice versa. And I like getting up early in the morning (!) and being able to do several different kinds of things over the course of the day. Again, these are things I would never have learned about myself if not for the struggles of the past two years!

For the time being, the dissertation progresses somewhat slowly, since I haven’t yet managed to balance writing and work as equitably as I will probably need to. Between full days at work, then making and cleaning up from dinner, and getting some time with my husband, there really isn’t space for writing during the first half of the week. But the good thing is that it’s progressing, even though it feels like it’s inching along more days than not. I am going on 70 pages at this point, and once adrenaline kicks in, I shouldn’t have trouble hitting my goal of 100 pages by Christmas. As long as I set goals focused on tangible output rather than time spent, and don’t worry too much about comparing my process to anyone else’s, I seem to do pretty well. As soon as I start comparing myself to other students, or trying to adhere to a certain pattern for what dissertation work should look like, I start to falter.

I had hoped and expected to teach in my fifth year, but since that didn’t work out, I was offered the opportunity to work as a graduate research assistant in my library’s Special Collections department. I hope to explain this in more detail in a later post.

I have to say, I was a little bit crushed when teaching didn’t work out. Not even so much because of the teaching itself, but because it threw my career expectations into yet more of a muddle. I’m not sure what this will mean for my future career in academics.

However, it must also be said that I’m happier than I’ve been for a long time. There are plenty of struggles, certainly; but I no longer feel trapped in a routine that wasn’t serving me well at all, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself it was right. Thank you, again, for praying.

In God's Image: Notes on Made for More by Hannah Anderson

I can’t remember a time in my life when I felt totally comfortable with what was expected of me as a girl or woman in a given setting. Whether as a little girl, as an undergraduate at a women’s liberal arts college, or a thirty-something in a socially conservative denomination, I’ve always felt like a bit of a square peg. Over the past year especially, I’ve been longing for a book that would help me discern God’s calling underneath those disparate experiences.

 Made for More: An Invitation to Live in God's Image by Hannah Anderson

This is a book targeted to Christian women which actually “[calls] women to recover an understanding of ourselves that is more basic than our gender” (11) by recovering the basic doctrine of being created imago dei, in the image of God. This is important because most of us spend a lifetime searching for our identity in various roles, relationships, and attainments—all things which have a way of changing when we least expect them to. Even when these things are good, “we realize that they didn’t fulfill us the way we had expected; despite having invested so much of ourselves in what we thought would provide a lasting sense of meaning, we hardly know ourselves in the midst of it…And the things that we once looked to for stability and identity begin to feel like burdens and obligations instead of blessings” (19, emphasis mine). Oh boy can I identify!

Our true identity is found not simply in who we are as individuals (the point where our culture stops short), but in who our God is. Because we are made in His image, we exist to reflect and represent him on earth. This involves three things: living in dependent communion on God, living in relationship with other human beings, and stewarding God’s creation. Because of the fall, however, “our capacity to live in this reality has been fundamentally corrupted” (48). When we start to build our identity around things other than God, we begin to resemble caricatures, failing to reflect the depth and richness of God’s nature. And when those things are threatened, we feel like our very personhood is under attack (51). So how do we rid ourselves of these false identities and have the reflection of God’s glory restored to us? By losing ourselves in Christ and being indwelt by His Spirit.

Finding our authentic selves in Christ has endless implications for our daily lives. As God reorders our affections, teaching us to love the right things in the right way, we can begin to reflect His love to those around us. [Great quote: “In [Christ], we discover that loving like God does not mean finding a balance between two extremes but in discovering the depth of what love truly is. His love is not a muted, muddied love, a milky attempt to negate holiness with kindness, but an infinitely complex, nuanced expression of what it means to love like God.” (82)] Our souls enlarge to image our God’s generosity (94). We start to view education and theology as crucial to becoming image bearers, not limiting them according to career aspirations, or gendered concerns. We view our work as sacred, not because of the tasks we perform, but because it images our Maker; indeed, even the most mundane work is dignified because Jesus “stooped from glory” to serve us (120).

Some of my favorite parts of the book are when Anderson discusses God’s providence in shaping us through the circumstances of our lives. God has formed our personalities and ordered the details of our lives to reflect Himself uniquely. And if we don’t understand “why” things are this way—well, that’s to be expected: “The truth about imago dei identity is that we really cannot measure the scope of our lives; we cannot fully understand ourselves by this present moment alone. Discovering who God has made us to be requires both this life and the life to come. This ‘timelessness’ of identity is the direct result of being made in His image…Because God is eternal, we are destined for eternal life as well.” God uses the individual moments of our lives “to bring us into union with His own eternality” (164–165). I had never thought about my identity in this way before, but it made me realize how near-sighted my perception has tended to be. How freeing to recognize our limited perspective! This knowledge, Anderson concludes, frees us to face each new cycle of life—even death, that greatest threat to our identity—with the promise that God uses each of them to display more of Himself in us, until the glorious day when we will be truly like Him.

What I loved about this book is that it is biblically sound, and rather than focusing on a handful of passages, it looks at identity in the context of the full story of redemption. Furthermore, on that solid Scriptural basis, Hannah Anderson has a gift for expressing doctrinal truths in a clear and digestible way. Concepts like idolatry, union with Christ, sanctification, and ultimately the gospel are explained with little recourse to “theological” terms—this not only impressed me, but helped me personally. For example, I have sometimes chafed at the language of “identity in Christ.” I knew it expressed a biblical truth, but it wasn’t clear to me why, if what ultimately matters about me is my identity in Christ, anything else about my personality or circumstances should matter. Though not intended this way, the phrase had begun to sound, to my ears, like a platitude dismissing anything in my life that caused me dissatisfaction or grief. After reading Made for More, I’m beginning to see that it isn’t about papering over the distinctive things about me (things God created!), but about understanding them all in light of God’s providential, glorifying work in me.

This book didn’t answer all my questions, especially those about the relationship between gender and the soul, and the ways these teachings play out with respect to things like vocation and family. But exploring those questions isn’t really the point of this book (so if you’re interested in exegetical arguments over certain passages, look elsewhere). Indeed, it’s not that those aren’t important, but that to have a hope of addressing them well, we need to start from a higher level, more foundational truth about who we are. Made for More is a gentle, wise resource to help us do exactly that.

"To be truly hospitable"

 "To be truly hospitable is, to some extent, to lose control of one’s space and time -- to be open to the disarray and interruption of embodied life. Perhaps hospitality is most nearly proleptic* when it bears the unruly wounds of the risen Christ." -- Amy Laura Hall

*As far as I can gather, "anticipatory of a future event," in this case life under the reign of Christ?

Some years ago, I gleefully (not to say pretentiously) copied this quote, from Amy Laura Hall’s book Conceiving Parenthood, into my Facebook profile, longing for such happy disarray in my soon-to-be-married life. Of course Dr. Hall’s book focuses on the “disarray and interruption” of welcoming children into one’s family, in contrast to a cultural obsession with planning and perfection. Undoubtedly, that was the way I thought about it, too, and no matter what I claimed to the contrary, the picture was terribly romantic in my mind. All the more because of its messiness (and the cleverly worded, too-pious essay about grace that would result . . . !).

The reality, quickly discovered, was that there’s nothing romantic at all about losing control in this way, whether the anticipated guests are those of an evening or of a lifetime. For me, being “truly hospitable” was all about control—more like a desperate, panicked grasping for pretended control, just long enough to fool others, if never myself, into believing that my home was a fit place for company.

As a newlywed, I heard people fret about the disheveled state of their living rooms in a way I suppose was meant to be both self-deprecating and reassuring. Meanwhile, I was thinking, “Oh, but you don’t understand. My apartment is a health hazard.” No matter how far in advance I planned to invite someone over, the day would certainly find me collapsing into a tearful huddle of shame and anxiety. My failure wasn’t just that I didn’t have the “perfect” home; I didn’t even know how to keep mine decent, even if I weren’t depressed about being underemployed and out of sorts in Berkeley. My mindset was that hospitality couldn’t happen until I could demonstrate my worthiness. So my failure to reach that point wasn’t just a matter of forgetting to check a few items off my to-do list; ultimately, and more critically, it was a moral failing, too.

The problem, of course, was that as long as I was focused on the monumental cleaning job (no doubt exaggerated in my own mind) instead of looking forward to the imminent guests, my heart wasn’t in a place where I could welcome them, no matter what the condition of my kitchen. While it was true that the basic housekeeping needed to be addressed (how I wish I’d sought help with these things instead of being too embarrassed to ask!), I wound up with nothing left over to give, if and when it was completed.

Since settling in St. Louis, I've begun to know something of the joy of welcoming others into my home—at least a little. In truth, there is a very long way to go. The base anxiety still lurks. These days, the fear has moved past “I’ll never get everything cleaned in time,” to one that might be more insidiously prideful: “But I can’t have people over—my decorating scheme is ‘Books and More Books.’ Our couch is old, and we don’t even own a proper dining table!” Again, I don’t want to risk hospitality until I’ve asserted the proper amount of control over my unruly space. It is much more to do with my own self-perception than with the desire to make others feel at home.

The truth is, I’ll always find reasons to delay hospitality. I will never achieve it as if it were a set of principles to study and apply. There will always be more learning experiences, and there will always be self-doubt. I just have to risk it, and learn not to let insecurities strangle generosity.

I don’t know what Hall means by the latter part of that quote. I suspect she’s saying that real hospitality means being willing to give up an image of myself as fulfilling the right level of domesticity, as if it were ever about me to begin with. Even if what I can offer is frankly inferior, externally speaking, to what my peers might be able to do; even if it means losing face before others and not just in my own mind. I can’t be open to others when I’m jealously protecting those things. On the other hand, if my heart is open to Christ, my home will be, too—and Christ will cover all the insufficiencies of my effort. I want guests to leave having encountered the beauty of Christ here, and while that doesn't exclude the material, it goes well beyond it, too.

And this time, I won't be too embarrassed to ask. I would love to hear—what is one lesson you’ve learned about practicing hospitality, on a heart/attitude level rather than a strictly practical one?

Tidbits on married life from J. R. Miller

Some time ago, I came across a quote I liked from a work titled Home Making, published in 1882, by James Russell Miller. (I was tickled to learn that Miller, a Presbyterian pastor, was born and brought up in my ancestors' neck of the woods near Frankfort Springs, Pennsylvania, which, as you can see, is pretty rural and not an area I hear mentioned a lot.) Over the past few days I finally took the opportunity to read the full work, to see if I liked the entire book as much. Well, aside from a surprisingly practical and sweet section on household worship, it was largely what you'd expect from a book called Home Making from the 1880s . . . which is to say, lots of sentimental Victorian poetry and "edifying" stories to drive home his points. And since I have a pretty high tolerance for the old fashioned, you know it must've been slightly cloying!

Good news, though! I'm going to post the handful of share-worthy gems I collected from the book, so that you don't have to go hunting for them yourself. :-)

On marriage:

“The present duty is unselfish love. Each must forget self in devotion to the other. Each must blame self and not the other when anything goes wrong. There must be the largest and gentlest forbearance. Impatience may wreck all. A sharp word may retard for months the process of soul blending. There must be the determination on the part of both to make the marriage happy and to conquer everything that lies in the way. Then the very differences between the two lives will become their closest points of union. When they have passed through the process of blending, though it may for the time be painful and perilous, the result will be a wedded life of deep peace, quiet joy and inseparable affection."

“[Husband and wife] should read and study together, having the same line of thought, helping each other toward a higher mental culture. They should worship together, praying side by side, communing on the holiest themes of life and hope, and together carrying to God’s feet the burdens of their hearts for their children and for every precious object.” 

“Pride must have no place in wedded life. There must never be any standing upon dignity, or any nice calculation as to whose place it is to make the apology or to yield first to the other. True love knows no such casuistry; it seeks not its own; it delights in being foremost in forgiving and yielding.”

On hospitality:

“Then this large heartedness will impart its spirit to the home itself. A husband who is generous within his own doors will not be close and niggardly outside. The heart that is used always to be open at home cannot be carried shut through this suffering world. The prosperous home of a generous man sends many a blessing and comfort out to less favored homes. Every true home ought to be a help to a great many struggling lives. Every generous and large hearted man scatters many a comfort among the needy and the suffering as he passes through this world.

There is nothing lost by such scattering. No richer blessing can come upon a home than the benedictions of those who have been helped, who have been fed at its doors, or sheltered beneath its roof, or inspired by its cheer and kindly interest. There is no memorial that any man can make for himself in this world so lasting and so satisfying as that which a life of unselfish kindness and beneficence builds up.” 

And my favorite:

“... [A] wife’s ministry of mercy reaches outside her own doors. Every true home is an influence of blessing in the community where it stands [. . .] The ideal Christian home is a far reaching benediction.” 

  I pray to have a home like this someday!