I don't update my regular blogpage much these days due to painful formatting issues with blogger. I really should just suck it up, I know. Generally, though, I update quite often on my vagrantcafe.com journal (user f*v) and LiveJournal (user=distractedblues).


During this Lent (as I've mentioned here in the past -- I'm Orthodox and therefore we're still in Lent until 1 May), I've been especially reminded and hit over the head time and time again realizing that I struggle constantly to extend grace to others, much more inwardly than outwardly. Given that I often battle with God about whether or not I myself am going to receive grace (He insists I should, whereas I haggle over the conditions and amount), this shouldn't be particularly surprising to me, I suppose -- but I'm realizing more and more lately just how much I'm often far away from the Fruit of the Spirit in my attitudes toward other people.

The biggest thing for me is that I know that no one really "deserves it," I mean, that's an intellectual piece of fact in my head. However, somehow I fabricate "my own grace" and somehow elevate myself, thinking that some people deserve my grace and some people don't, even if no one really deserves God's grace. Of course, all we really do is reflect God's grace rather than sharing our own, and in refusing to reflect God's, the shield ends up going up between myself and His grace, thus cutting myself off from the very grace I pretend I can choose not to share. To get a little "Karamazovian," I suppose...part of receiving grace for myself is to acknowledge that that grace is mine to share, and I'm responsible for that grace's reflection to others.
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The Big One is due tonight. I've still got my lunch hour for a few tweaks. The more I look at the paper, the less I feel great about it, but I learned long ago that objectivity toward one's own work rarely happens once one gets past a certain point in the process. Not that I'm incapable of critiquing and correcting and revising my own material, of course, but that once that's been done a few times, that and the content itself and the style start wearing out their welcome or seem so good it's impossible to really look at them much critically anymore. The key is to be able to accept criticism even once you're past that point yourself, and to get as far as one can before this all starts to happen. It happens to most people, I think, just at different points. I've had people submit writing for the zine or show up in peer review groups and turn in something that struggles just to attain mediocrity, but they're unable to believe that it's anything less than a masterpiece. I'm somewhat selective on where I'll solicit criticism, admittedly, but I thrive on it from the right places. In a couple weeks, we're giving conference type presentations on our papers. That and the paper for my African American Novel class get my attention now. I don't know how it goes for anyone else, but for me, there's a point at which you've done so much work with a book, so much scouring for material and reading (and writing) analysis, and worked within that little world so much that it's become somewhat interlocked with your own life. You find yourself thinking things the way that the author might, and seeing things from the book around you. That's beautiful but scary with a book like Trout Fishing in America.
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I've said this before, but it's still true. I think one of my favorite all-time songs is "California Stars," as done by Billy Bragg & Wilco. That song just plain does it (and more!) for me every time.
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