Christ in the Universe

I enjoyed this intriguing poem, written a century ago, contemplating the prospects of extraterrestrial life and the significance of God’s revelation through Christ.

Christ In The Universe
Alice Meynell (lived 1847-1922)

With this ambiguous earth
His dealings have been told us. These abide:
The signal to a maid, the human birth,
The lesson, and the young Man crucified.

But not a star of all
The innumerable host of stars has heard
How He administered this terrestrial ball.
Our race have kept their Lord’s entrusted Word.

Of His earth-visiting feet
None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,
The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet,
Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.

No planet knows that this
Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,
Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,
Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.

Nor, in our little day,
May His devices with the heavens be guessed,
His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way
Or His bestowals there be manifest.

But in the eternities,
Doubtless we shall compare together, hear
A million alien Gospels, in what guise
He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.

O, be prepared, my soul!
To read the inconceivable, to scan
The myriad forms of God those stars unroll
When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.

Peace, Be Still!

Excerpt from my journal, August 14, nearing the end of my travels. Sitting alone in the woods, waiting, thinking:

Thunderstorm rolling in, sunset framed by storm clouds and lightning. The breeze hurries. Birds sing their evening prayers. An uneasy silence, a restless peace. What does “Peace, be still” really mean? Perhaps we only find it in the thunder. It feels like death and life among these browngreen leaves.

Life Changes

My life has turned completely and bewilderingly upside down over the last year. In January, I didn’t have the slightest intention of quitting my job, driving across the US twice, finding a new job, moving, starting fulltime grad school, and tripling the number of social activities I engage in.  Most of the changes (inside and out) have been very positive, but this many major events can put me at high risk for stress-related illness.  This knowledge has been good for me, as I’m learning to be aware of my limits, attentive to my moods, conscious of my health, and careful of my priorities.

In the midst of chaos, I’ve never been happier.

This Textbook Not for Sale in the United States

I’ve always ordered textbooks from various online sellers, which saves me anywhere from $100 to $400 each semester. The only downside to this method is that you’re buying a book sight-unseen, and occasionally get something a little different than you expected.

I just bought a textbook, Systems of Psychotherapy: A Transtheoretical Analysis. It’s the right edition (7th), right author (Prochaska & Norcross), and brand new just as advertised, but the seller from China left out one little part of the description. The front and back of the textbook are labeled in big red letters:

“International Edition: Not for Sale in the United States. This edition is intended for use outside of the U.S. only, with content that may be different from the U.S. edition.”

Now, I’m sure I could get my money back. But I have very little desire to ship this book back to China, spend $40 more on the U.S. edition, and wait another week or two for it to arrive.

So I had to wonder…what in the world would be different in the international edition? Is it censored? Uncensored? Do perspectives on psychotherapy vary from country to country? Turning to my buddy Google, I found that these sort of “international” textbooks rarely have any content changes. The difference is that they’re frequently printed on cheaper paper, softcover instead of hardcover, and may use grayscale illustrations instead of full color.

I think I’ll keep the international edition, thank you very much.  I’m happy to do my part to put the evil overpriced textbook racket out of business.

The One Where Laura Admits She’s Only Human

I’m not a fan of debt. I don’t carry a balance on my credit cards. I spent the last several years paying off large portions of my student loans. I bought my car with cash. So, starting school as a full-time grad student, I barely felt justified in taking out the minimum of loans to cover my tuition, and had no plans on accepting more loans for “living expenses”. I would just get a second job and pay for myself, because that’s what responsible adults do, right? They don’t spend money that they don’t have.

Much to my dismay, over the last couple weeks of class, I’ve been realizing that I don’t have time for another job. I’m not over-committed, not quite…yet…maybe…

When I’m stressed, I make lists. So I made a list. I knew I had 5 potential courses of action:

1) get a second job and drop one of my four classes, extending graduation by another semester
2) get a second job and drop most or all of my personal life
3) get a second job and settle for significantly lower grades than I’m capable of achieving
4) stop eating, sell my car, and hitchhike to class each day
5) take out several thousand dollars more in loans for each semester

And suddenly, I realized my priorities were out of order. For the last several years, my goal has (very reasonably) been to get out of debt as fast as possible. But for the next year, that’s not my goal. My goal is to convince UK to give me three little letters to put after my name. Whether my pride and finances like it or not, everything else is secondary to that.

I briefly toyed with the idea of dropping off the face of the earth and ignoring people for the next year. But my personal life matters too much to me. Classes don’t define me, and money certainly doesn’t…my relationships do. My time spent with friends, church, dancing, even sleeping (yay!), everything that makes me *alive* – that’s what keeps me going each day. And I’m unwilling to compromise that, even if it costs me an extra semester or several thousand dollars.

In the end, I realized my expectations for myself were about far more than just an ideological opposition to debt. I like self-sufficiency too much sometimes. My pride flinched a little (or a lot) when I admitted that I couldn’t do it, that no matter how invincible I might pretend to be, it was far beyond my abilities to be a full-time grad student, get straight As, work two part-time jobs, and keep perspective on the things that matter most to me.

And thus, option #5 won. I don’t like to admit it. But I’m maybe not completely invincible. I’m maybe just a little bit overwhelmed. And if I’m a couple thousand dollars poorer, or if I graduate a few months later, it’ll still be ok. I’ll still be ok. After I finish my MSW in 2010 (just a year away!), I can go back to psycho-loan-payoff mode, I can go back to pretending I’ve got life all figured out. In the meantime, I need to take a deep breath and just let life happen. And even more than that, I need to stop blogging, stop procrastinating, and go study for a quiz.

Personal Evangelism

From J. I. Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God:

Personal evangelism needs normally to be founded on friendship. You are not usually justified in choosing a subject of conversation with another till you have already begun to give yourself to him in friendship and established a relationship with him in which he feels that you respect him, and are interested in him, and are treating him as a human being, and not just as some kind of ‘case.’ With some people, you may establish such a relationship in five minutes, whereas with others it may take months. But the principle remains the same. The right to talk intimately to another person about the Lord Jesus Christ has to be earned, and you earn it by convincing him that you are his friend, and really care about him. And therefore the indiscriminate buttonholing, the intrusive barging in to the privacy of other people’s souls, the thick-skinned insistence on expounding the things of God to reluctant strangers who are longing to get away – these modes of behaviour, in which strong and loquacious personalities have sometimes indulged in the name of personal evangelism, should be written off as a travesty of personal evangelism. Impersonal evangelism would be a better name for them!…  The truth is that real personal evangelism is very costly, just because it demands of us a really personal relationship with the other man.  We have to give ourselves in honest friendship to people, if ever our relationship with them is to reach the point at which we are justified in choosing to talk to them about Christ, and can speak to them about their own spiritual needs without being either discourteous or offensive.

“Why Don’t You Smile?”

Walking to class with my head down, I was rushed, self-absorbed, lost in thought. I took no notice of the young man smoking a cigarette on the corner.

And then he called after me. “Why don’t you smile? It’s a beautiful day!”

Caught off guard, I spontaneously smiled, his words having their desired effect. I turned around to laughingly acknowledge him, “You’re right. It is, thanks.”

He smiled back. “See, there you go!”

I continued walking, but a little slower now with a small smile lingering.  After a few steps, I glanced behind me.

The corner was empty.

Laura Is Moving!!

I have two pieces of good news: I have a job and I’m moving to Lexington! YAAAAAY!

For those of you I haven’t talked to face-to-face recently, I’ll begin with a bit of background info: I’ve been wanting to move to Lexington for a while, as the half-hour drive gets frustrating after 2 years. But moving there would double my dirt-cheap rent. Since I just started full-time grad school at UK, it means I can’t work a full-time job too, and thus my income would decrease to next-to-nothing. This is a problem, since I now have even more reason to want to live in Lexington (commuting to class and work!), but not enough money to afford it.

Enter the job-search, trying to find something that a) fits around my class schedule, b) doesn’t involve an hour commute during rush hour, c) pays vaguely more than minimum wage, and d) leaves me enough time to write a bazillion papers.

Well, by a marvelous series of unexpected events, I not only have a job, but I’M MOVING TO LEXINGTON!

I was offered a job nannying for a precious 10-month-old boy Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:30-5:30. In exchange, the family is offering free room and board in their beautiful house plus a small living allowance. Yes, you got that right – I would only work 2 days a week, but get to live there 24/7!

The living allowance is definitely not a lot of money, leaving me a few thousand short for the year, but I could either get a second job working 8 hours or so a week to cover the shortfall, or accept the “living expenses” federal loan I wasn’t originally planning on taking. Either way, as long as I don’t mind living very-very-very cheaply for the next year, this would get me through grad school and eliminate the hour-long-rush-hour-commute-to-work that I was dreading ohsomuch (which gives me up to 10 extra hours in my week, hurrah).

However, there was one big catch with this marvelous setup – my roommate Diana, who I love lots and bunches, would be left alone and sad in our current apartment, either having to find a new roomie or double the rent she’s paying. Since she’s also a grad student and is getting married in April (yay!), money is obviously a little tight. And I wasn’t gonna leave her with double rent.

So I expressed my concerns to my potential-nanny-family, and they came up with a marvelous solution. They have a currently-unoccupied fourth bedroom in their house that they routinely rent out, and they offered to knock a lot off the price and rent it to her for around the same amount we’re paying here.  What they’re offering is a steal, and Diana is so wonderful that she’s willing to move with me.  Have I mentioned how very much I love her?

So, all of that to say… we’re moving! It’s been really cool to see God working in the last couple weeks to work all of this out. I’d completely resigned myself to living here indefinitely, and it’s a pleasant surprise to suddenly find myself with both a steady income and a great place to live exactly where I wanted to be.

Thanks to all of you that have been keeping me in your thoughts and prayers. I appreciate you.