intellectualism + christianity

God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all.

-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“naked and shivery and without any bones”

A collection of Willa Cather’s letters is soon to be published. Here’s a beautiful excerpt:

In other matters — things about the office — I can usually do what I set out to do and I can learn by experience, but when it comes to writing I’m a new-born baby every time — always come into it naked and shivery and without any bones. I never learn anything about it at all. I sometimes wonder whether one can possibly be meant to do the thing at which they are more blind and inept and blundering than at anything else in the world.

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cookie tartlets

I had this scrumptious dessert at a wedding. But I had no recipe, and neither did the internet. Not even pinterest. This was surprising. So, what the heck, right? I’ll just wing it.

And who knew? It was surprisingly simple and delicious and probably the most adorable thing I’ve ever made. You should make it too.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Tarts

30 oz Pillsbury chocolate chip cookie dough (by all means, make your own! I was just feeling lazy-ish, and it was super tasty anyway)
8 oz cream cheese
4 T butter (softened)
1 c powdered sugar
1/2 t vanilla
berries to your heart’s content

1. Spoon rounded tablespoonfuls of cookie dough into a muffin tin–enough so that you can press out a thin layer on the bottom of each muffin….basin?….and shape some up around the sides.
2. Bake for ~10 minutes in a 350° oven.
3. Meanwhile, make the cream cheese filling. Cream together the butter and cream cheese, then add the powdered sugar and vanilla, and beat until creamy.
4. When the cookie tartlets come out of the oven, let them sit for a few minutes. Then, place the tin upside down on a cooling rack, and tap the bottom of each ….. muffin space thing. Remove the tin and place the cookie tarts right side up and let them cool.
5. Once the cookie tarts are cool, fill with cream cheese filling (I used a ziploc bag with the corner cut off) and add berries.
6. And then eat the darn things. They’re so tasty.

no one can foretell the lessons they’ll learn
not even the teacher with her lesson plans -
not when the blizzard comes
or the baby has colicked for days

so I won’t prescribe myself a destination, this year
a resolution I’ll never resolve
I’ll steer my mind hard to starboard, though

see, I can pinpoint the lessons now,
those that have crossed my way
so I’ll sail toward learning until morning
refrain from forcing my hand
and let myself be taught

how to exist when a giant is sitting on your chest

1. wake up weary and coughing
2. fan biscuit flames away from the smoke detector
3. inexplicably cause Keurig to explode all over the kitchen
4. drink mediocre coffee remnants
5. chain-smoke How I Met Your Mother
6. don hoodie and purchase supplies for nachos
7. eat said nachos
8. try to comprehend scholarly journal articles
9. give up
10. eat more nachos

[untitled]

They say my cells are born again
that I am recreated
that some years I give myself a birthday present
of a new me.
Well this year I’ve outdone myself
outshone my fleshly competition
These synapses?
Refurbished.
These shiny neurons?
Completely revamped.
“Newly remodeled!”
(I’m advertising)
but I’m not sure, still
of this me for the 21st century.
My new skin still crawls
it doesn’t fit
I haven’t broken myself in
And so I jump back into what’s familiar
Yes. This skin knows how to house me.
But you know what they say
of new wine in old skins
and I know I can’t stay.
What do I do with two of me
both unwanted
both uncomfortable
How to reinvent
the reinvention

PIE

nope. just kidding.

Even though that pie is strawberry rhubarb, which has to be one of my favorites, PIE stands for Proto-Indo-European, the theoretical language root of Indo-European languages (a vast linguistic grouping), and is probably the most fascinating thing in the world. Then again, it might be the most fascinating thing in the entire universe, thanks to its starring role in Prometheus.

I remembered PIE this morning while researching the etymology of seminary, and from thence semen, which has roots in three non-Romance languages. Ridiculously entrancing. Meaning that the next step was for me to research Oxford’s DPhil program in Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics.

And from there, sadly, to be overwhelmed by the abundance of things in this world that I want to learn and know everything about. Or, as Cosmo Brown says in the first 10 seconds of this video:

And then I got excited because I thought of heaven, and of the possibility of learning for all of eternity, of becoming a physicist, a philologist, a philosopher, and other pursuits that don’t even start with the letter P. But mostly I thought about being a Professor of Philology at the . . .  uh . . . Pearly Gates Institute for Universal Language . . . I’m getting carried away now, but the question that gave me pause was this.

Will our language evolve in heaven?

We’ll all be speaking one language, obviously. (Although the presence of babel fish or a TARDIS isn’t necessarily out of the question, for the purpose of this argument I expect one language.) We might even be speaking PIE.

But PIE, as we know, over the years, became Old Church Slavonic and Phoenician and Latin, and Italian and Spanish and Romanian . . . And somewhere along the line came this bastard child of all languages, English, which has taken its own road from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Proust, and not to esteem myself so highly, but I bear this mantle too.

Any quick search of a good etymological dictionary will show that over time words change in meaning, and new words are birthed, and dialects are formed and branches split off, and suddenly we’ve cursed our own heaven-reaching towers and spread far and wide, each to his own tongue.

But does this natural turn of events continue in a perfect world? Will meanings continue to metamorphose as they whim, or will we have finally reached the Perfect Understanding, where evolution is an exercise in blasphemy?

This prods at the sleeping question–does change imply imperfection? By naturally morphing, does language define previous meanings as inherently bad?

In case you were wondering, I don’t have any answers. I just ask the questions.

[musings from a solitary roadtrip]

Have there been conservative artists? Artists who weren’t contrary and still produced good work? Isn’t it in the very nature of the artist to question what’s assumed? Isn’t the best art produced by breaking the rules?

What does this say about us as humans? Isn’t it art that makes us feel the most alive? Whether musical notes, visual stimuli, spoken or written word–these are the things that open our souls. The very things that make us uncomfortable are also the things that can snag bits of our identity, by which we later define ourselves.

Whether we realize it or not, we require questions to survive. Scientists know this, and artists know this, and they help keep our bodies and souls intact. Come to think of it, every life orientation has its own field of necessary questions. But casting doubts outside that comfortable frame of reference is a step we’re often wary to take.

This is an encouragement, then, I guess, to dare to refuse to take the world at its word. Not all that’s advertised as truth is what it seems. And if it is, it can withstand your questions.