Far Away and Dreamy

 

Two weeks ago, my friend Jamie told me that life is sometimes so strange to me because I am so distinctly logical and emotional inside.  At the same time.  When she said this, I blinked a few times, said ‘Yes’ to it, and some of the dissonance in my life immediately went away. 

After that, I also realized that I live simultaneously between two drastically differently views of time and place.  (Big week, people, lots of thoughts…)  It has a lot to do with what I say about the world and the stories in them.  And how this all gets refined and sorted and lived.  This is, in the end, really, what all of these posts are about. 

I thought about all of this over the break away from school.  Mainly because I was no longer grading tests over and over (and over and over and over) again. But also because I needed to in order to make sense of the things that were causing so much dissonance in my careworn little heart before the break. (There was a lot of dissonance.) 

I am home again, and I looked at everything with fresh eyes today when I returned.  But last week, I went to other places and saw new people.  Actually, the word ‘escape’ kept coming to mind, which I found a little alarming.  Over the break, I drove and thought and talked and struggled and marveled and observed from a different angle.  My life was spent with people who have known me longest.  This was so good. 

So now, this is what I know.

All day long as a teacher I talk to people about time and place.  I am always thinking of new ways to make this interesting and approachable and sensical.  To set the scenes of the old-timey things.  This is the part of the job I don’t get sick of.  It is always, always fascinating.  And time?  I could go on and on here, but I won’t.  Let me just say, a well constructed timeline of anything makes me really happy deep down inside. 

If they do not agree with me on the timelines, many will at least join me in saying the ‘Back to the Future’ movies do too.

Time and place make sense like this.  It’s order and structure, and furthermore, what you look at when your own story is being etched out in this world.

But I love God, who is inside of and outside of time.  And who is not held by anything. It is no small thing to me that those thousands of years ago, God stated to the world that He is I AM.  Past, present, future - all at once!  (I really love that.)

But.

I don’t always want to write or think or line up so quickly with time and place outside of school.  This sets me apart from the scholar or historian.  They do.  Which is why they read those giant books in the library about even MORE times and places.  Whenever I pass the section of the library with these giant historical books, I think things like ‘How LONG did it take someone to write that book?’  I have no energy for it. I begin to panic.  Then I walk away.  People do not expect that from the history teacher who loves books.  But it's true.  I just can't do it.

For me, the brilliance of this world plays on themes of time and place quite often.  C.S Lewis says that we are so astonished by time because there is something in us that isn’t temporal.   A book I just read talked about how artists see the world in between blinks.  That’s why they explain old things in new ways.  Fascinating, no?

I love love love to talk about how things fit into time. I also love (love love) to marvel at how so many things just don’t.  And this is where I’m compelled to write.  Writing words on a page get you to the timeless things of being human…the things that everyone feels in the experiences of their own story.  On the page, they wait for you.  Even when that means I live through something on Tuesday and you do instead on Thursday. 

When I write or type and the words emerge, I feel deep down happy…at least once I get over myself and forget to be such a stick in the mud about my own insecurities.  Writing reminds me of redemption.  It reminds me of God, and it is the best thing I can think to do when the Spirit of God feels close.  It makes the world feel big.  It casts a rosy glow over things, which I will say I believe to be very unlike rose-colored glasses.  In this world you still have to be shrewd about things as well.

This year, I discovered that I know and love people who do not understand why I spend hours and hours writing.  They have asked me if I think it’s a waste of time. (I am sitting there thinking, ‘Um, no…? I’m thinking you’re telling me you…do??) 

They said, ‘Won’t you feel awful if you picture your stacks of journals someday, all spread apart in an antique store that no one cares about?’  (Ok, ouch.  I only felt that sharp pang once.  Then I decided that there is much more to life than just that.  Who cares about that anyway?)  Life is to be lived.   

Most days, in the morning, usually as soon as I wake up, I hear a fine tuned message.  It is always saying to me, ‘Write.’  It lines up with my heartbeat.  I like it.  Even if I never publish anything.  Even if people say things that make me sad on the inside but I only show them ‘logical’ on the outside.

All of this to say that it reminds me of Van Gogh, who said about the inner critic,  ‘If you hear a voice inside you that says ‘you cannot paint’ then by all means paint, and the voice will be silenced.’

So I decided to listen to the prompting I always feel.  Life expands when I do.  The rosy glow of loving life comes back.  I am doing the ‘square peg-round hole’ approach to life if I try to soldier on and be THAT stoic.  THAT much of an intellectual.  THAT organized in life outside of teaching.  THAT person reading big books in the shelves at the library. (Ho hum.)  THAT much of a….well, fill in the blank. 

I’m way more dreamy than I even first think.  I can stare at clouds way longer than other people, and not feel weird about it at all.  I get lost all of the time in Minneapolis, for no good reason, really.  I like Anne of Green Gables (….though I still don’t like her teaching style).  I like to blow bubbles, and keep the birthday decorations up past the birthday, and go grocery shopping early in the morning to feel provincial.  Sometimes people laugh at ‘dreamy’ though.  It’s hurtful.  So sometimes I am just dreadfully logical instead. 

But sometimes, you know, I laugh at this side of myself too.  I hope we all know this by now.  You do have to pay your bills on time.  You do have to have your head on straight in this world and not be an idiot.  You have to have common sense and take a second look at things.  Articulate.  Scale back.  Discern.     

It feels that I have gone through a time of change and weariness and (sometimes) bitterness and definitely confusion.  Fro a while now.  You can see it on the page too.  I have been in the dust.  But that this is changing again.   If we have recently talked, you know.  It’s still a jumbled sea of thoughts.  But I need ‘far away and dreamy’.  That’s when life gets so interesting.  I remembered that.

 

And today, I thought you should know.

;)