There's been a lot on my mind lately. Good thing it's a lazy morning and I have time to (somewhat) sift through a bunch of it. Thoughts running through my head this morning...
- I'm moving. In a week. And I haven't done a single thing to start packing.
- Purging. I'm going to have to purge some stuff. I've acquired quite the little one-person household's worth of stuff in the past year or so and I'm moving into the equivalent of a bedroom and a bathroom... if that.
- Some friends of mine wanted to see if they could help me move my bed, dresser, and personals this weekend... logistically, I am so not ready. Oops...
- Thankful for the cooler weather. This morning when I woke up, it was like 60 degrees and rainy. So, so, so thankful.
- I have student requests coming out my ears. In the past week alone, I've been approached by three different families with eight kids combined who want lessons. That's in addition to the twelve I already have. Holy cow.
- Regardless of work and urges to pack in the back of my mind, all I want to do is practice. I started working on new rep this fall and I'm in love with it. I basically have the equivalent of a school-girl crush on my Bach Partita... [insert robot voice]: "Take me to your piano..."
- I'm realizing that I am such an introvert. Much more than I ever realized. Wondering how I'm going to fit in with a couple of extroverted empty-nesters in my temporary new home...
- In light of my brother being gone now, I'm also realizing that my mom is such an extrovert. It has really been hard on her to not have anyone in the house. And she's realizing the same about me... that we're not who we thought the other was. It's been another phase of adjustment.
Also, oddly enough, not that this has anything to do with any of the actual stuff going on in my life right now, but I've been thinking a lot lately about the book I'm close to finishing. I'm roughly two chapters from the end in Virginia Woolf's "The Voyage Out" and it has been the hardest book I've ever read in my life. It's taken me twice as long to finish it as it should have. Simultaneously boring and stressful, it's the story of Rachel Vinrace, the daughter of a ship's captain who sails to South America on her father's boat, along with her aunt, uncle, and several other people. Once she gets to S. America, she stays there with her aunt and uncle and falls in love with another Englishman, Terence, who's there on holiday as well. They eventually become engaged and [SPOILER] shortly thereafter, she gets sick and dies. All along the way, the characters miss each other in communication and continually contemplate the meaning of it all... why do we get married anyway? What does it really mean to fall in love? What does society expect from women? How do we know that we're actually communicating with anyone or that other people understand us at all? How do we deal with the fact that we often feel like singular creatures in a vast universe, unable to really communicate with anyone else? When I started the book, the premise of it seemed quite entrancing, and so I kept reading, hoping I would eventually get to the good part. But it never came. Yesterday I voiced much of my frustration on facebook, which was actually a very therapeutic process because it forced me to get it all out and go back to square one. As in, what is Virginia getting at in this ridiculous story of which nothing truly good or interesting happens and nobody understands each other??
And what I came to was this: This book is a parody of life. It's a mirror of us and society and Virginia doesn't have any answers for us. She just wants us to ask the same questions that the characters ask and wrestle with them ourselves. This is particularly evident in her treatment of Rachel's death and the way the other characters react to it in the days following. Virginia doesn't end the book with Rachel's death... she ends it with an outcry of frustrated questions from the other characters as to what it all means, as well as the continuation of the mundane at both the hotel and the villa where the story is set. The entire book is one big, fat, rhetorical question contemplating the dark loneliness of the human experience and the search for meaning within it. Virginia asks us to wrestle with those hard questions and then tells us, "Well, the thing is... we don't actually know what it all means or what the purpose is, but somehow, life goes on..." Cool. Thanks for that, girl...
... and yet, I am so glad that I'm going to finish it. Not only do I feel a personal sense of triumph and growth in struggling through such a hard book, but I also feel like what she has to say is both relevant and valid. How many people do you know that are asking the same questions today with the same lack of hope? I don't know about you, but so many people that I come into contact with are right there with her... and if not, they're on the edge. Everyone is just trying to keep their head above water, to not get bogged down in the deep undercurrent of despair that our culture is facing in the midst of this economic struggle.
And yet, we have hope. For those who believe in him, we can rest in the assurance of being unified to Christ. No matter what happens or what struggles we face, he came for us and looks on us as sons and daughters. And he will come for us again one day at the end, when all questions will be answered and we'll rest in glory. But our greatest gift in the face of questions and hardship isn't the process of living or the oasis to come. It's the presence of Christ, given to us both now and in eternity. We may not understand everything, but we do have hope. And it's found in the person of Jesus.
"For he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all -- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?"
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