reading messy handwriting...

I'm back in the archives again, this time mostly reading typewritten manuscripts & newspaper clippings. However, I do still come across the occasional handwritten item, including one with these excerpts:

... make him one for whom recognition is most difficult

OR, it could actually read,

... make him one for whom recognition is not difficult

How one letter can change everything!!!

Having a Reserve of Grace...

Vulken7 told me to do this, and I do whatever Vulken7 says.... Not really, but it was a good idea, Vulken7, so I did it. :) Here's some thoughts based on something I read earlier.

[God] desires us to have a rich deposit of grace... Being spiritually wealthy means to have a reserve of grace before God and not to rely on special grace. Poverty is banished by the surplus of grace within.

God is not treating us wrongly when He gives us more trials and difficulties; He is actually treating us very well. He has selected us and has granted us favor by providing us this big opportunity.... The amount of our spiritual wealth is based on the amount of experiences we have passed through.... our hope is not only that we would spend sufficient time before the Lord and pass through enough experiences, but also that we would become vessels unto glory after we pass through these experiences.

I was impressed that our life is about coming to know the Lord in a deeper way and having a wealth of His grace or experience within our vessel. It's not so much about our physical situation: where we live, how we feel, or whatever. As Christians, we should be persons building up a surplus of grace. It struck me that the Lord has me where I am because He loves me, and He wants me to know Him in a particular way. That's really a blessing.

Quotes from "Special & Reserve Grace" by Watchman Nee, a booklet excepted from The Collected Works of Watchman Nee, Volume 5, Chapter 5.

Every night...

It is probably high time that I update this blog. So, here it goes...

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Prompt: Every night...

Every night presents an opportunity to reflect, to reflect on who I am, what I'm doing, and where I want to be. What do you think about?

the trials of writing from a prompt book...

So, today's prompt is "rising early to begin a journey." Probably if I thought about it long enough, I could come up with a legitimate topic, but all I can think of at the moment is rising at 6:00 a.m. for the training, which seems like a topic that will quickly derail into a rant.

Yesterday's prompt is even worse: "This is the voice of my body". Um, really? You're asking me to write about this? We could start off with the fact that I really don't need a thirty-minute lecture to be convinced that my body "requires" far more sleep than is normal and that I should be worried about it. Or, how about my body's reaction to the accusation that by June I lost so much weight that you can tell from my senior picture which was taken in January? Yes, I told you I was sick. Or, what about the fact that a certain health care provider decided not to disclose lab results after four weeks but then had the audacity to send me a survey to assess my satisfaction with the quality of service rendered AND a bill for the service? All I got (so far) out of a phone call to aforementioned health care provider was that the person responsible for this information is not answering the phone; did I want to leave a phone number??? I'm thinking about canceling all future appointments with said provider... but this is turning into a real rant and since rants are censored...

... we move on to the next topic.

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Topic for yesterday's yesterday, also known as the day before yesterday: "Write about something that came out of a box."



There's a fantastic picture hidden somewhere in my graduation scrapbook of my great joy when opening a gift from one of my friends. I make it a rule not to open presents in front of people unless they ask me to. I never know what my reaction will be, and it's fun to open them without people interrupting with their own commentary. Anyhow, someone gave me a gift and asked me to open it because she wanted to make sure I liked it. Of course, that's why I typically don't open gifts in front of people, but she asked so I cooperated.

My joy was priceless, and I'm glad it was in public so she knew right away and so someone could capture it on camera. The gift came in a slender rectangular box and contained the most beautiful bracelet ever. I had just started wearing some jewelry, and I loved it! It was perfect to go with the graduation dress my mom made me, so I got to wear it right away!

write about something to hold on to...

I'm trying an experiment. I'm going to practice writing based on prompts. I need practice writing, and maybe you'll get to learn a little bit more about me and my personality.



Write about something to hold on to...

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart." It's so true. In all my college years, I've met a lot of people in my classes and other activities. So many people are there in all different moments of my life. Yet, when I look back, some people seem to fill up all my memories. And there's others that I'm left wondering what their name was.

The people who are the most special to you are the people who, for whatever reason, decide to take the time to become an integral part of your life. Sometimes, this means that you color coloring pages together or go on adventures together around the city. Other times, it simply means that they are willing to take time to sit down with you over homework or encourage you when you get frustrated for the nth time!

For me, the persons who mean the most to me are those who take the time to stop and listen to what I have to say. I know that we all go through sufferings and trials. For me, I need someone to talk to, someone who cares enough about what's going on in my life to hear me out.

In a recent publication, I wrote a brief acknowledgements page. In that page, I included a sentence that read something like this, "More than they realize, Ben and Samantha helped me through my most difficult year of college, the year in which this project happened to begin." Thinking back to the logic and feeling behind this sentence, I realized that what Ben and Samantha did the most was care about me by listening to me and sympathizing no matter how pathetic I was. Even more, they knew when to listen, when to encourage me to take a break and accept the situation for what it was, and when to push me to take the next step especially when I didn't want to.

It's this kind of friendship that I want to hold on to no matter which way the wind blows. While the outward situation may change, our companionships can keep us sane and happy.

Who do you believe?

One female student's observation:

MIss Valeria Gunn... was a brilliant student, almost a genius, and took her position equal with them and maintained it throughout the year. Her record was so nearly perfect that at the final reward of honors at Commencement, the judge had to divide the greatly coveted First Honor among the three contestants -- a very unusual thing. Poor Valeria had paid too dearly though, for at the time of Commencement she was ill from having studied too hard. It was that although there was a rule of lights out at ten o'clock, she used candles and continued her study far into the night. She never recovered from this illness; she gradually grew worse, later lost her mind and was sent to an asylum.

The command is to be temperate in all things. Ambition when carried too far is often destruction.

A male student's observation:

The plodding, dollar-worshipping, unscrupulous man who possesses energy and economy generally amasses wealth. I can now recall many instances of boys who were the dunces of the school and who became wealthy before they had attained half a century of years, while the bright boys of the school with all his classical attainments, apt quotations and witty repartee, has drifted off into the seedy pedagogue of a little village school, living in a realm of fancy... It is a difficult matter to decide which life is most of a failure, one had only capacity to accumulate and he succeeded, the other had capacity and dreamed his life away. Many men seem never to have a new thought after shutting up their text books when they leave school. Many others seem never to have exercised their minds until they passed from under the perils of the schoolmaster.

Perhaps we should follow this student's example:

The fact is I have done less this term than any since I have been in college. Neither of my texts are agreeable. I don't like mental philosophy and astronomy tangles my brain... I wonder if there ever was anybody who had patience enough to spend their time on that mind-confusing book unless they intended to sport among the stars. As for me, this planet, on which we figure, has enough to employ my thoughts if I were to live as old as Methuselah.

Or, perhaps "studying hard" was never consistent with your constitution anyway.

Contemporary: Past or Present?

In the multiple revisions of my thesis draft, I'm coming across some fairly common words in the English dictionary which have contradictory or odd alternate meanings.

For example, the word contemporary:
(1) living or occurring at the same time; dating from the same time
(2) belonging to or occurring in the present
So, if I say "contemporary historian", do I mean someone contemporary with my subjects or with me? That's a 150 year difference.

The word retire:
(1) leave one's job and cease to work, typically upon reaching the normal age for leaving employment
(2) withdraw to or from a particular place; to go to bed
So, if I say "Everyone retired early", do I mean that people left their jobs when they were only 50 years old or that everyone went to bed early? Strikingly different!

Context normally tells you everything, but not always. I guess that's what synonyms are for.

~ the well-spoken

looking forward to a new semester...

where a typical day might be described as

day passed as usual -- dull times & hard studying &c &c
~ Oglethorpe student, May 14, 1857

have you met a person like this?

In skimming through my primary source notes, I came across a very interesting personality. This young man, a student at Oglethorpe University from 1860-61, had rather specific views on studying.

Anticipating low grades at the end of his first semester, he feels that he must justify himself to his parents, writing:

The inference you have drawn, from my letter, of me having an easy time, is entirely a mistaken idea. I arrived here, in an unpropitious time for study, that is one reason why my [grades are] so low. (If, indeed it is so, for I have not seen [them.]) The Class were pretty far advanced in all the books, and consequently I had to stand an examination on a study that I did not get with the Class the first time going over.

Only three months later he writes to his younger brother:

...as I am not a fit one to give advice, I will not admonish you concerning your studies: for "studying hard" never was consistent with my constitution.

One week later he advises his mother regarding his sister, writing:

Above all things never urge upon her too strenuously the "necessity of study", for nothing is so distasteful to me, and I think she is similarly constituted."

Two months later in May of 1861, he attempts to use the outbreak of civil war as an excuse to disregard his studies:

I think, (you may not agree with me tho') that it is absolutely detrimental to the mind to try to study now. For the attention can not be fixed on a text book for any length of time. I greatly hoped to finish my education at this place, but now I see no probability of it. College may close in [less] than three or four weeks, and when that happens it will hardly open again, that is, until the war closes.

This young man was right in predicting that the school would close shortly. However, his views on education and disinclination to put an effort into studying seem to leave much wanting.

Are you constituted for studying? Or, do you find it absolutely detrimental to study?

the kind of thing that only happens once...

Thomas Molloy Meriwether was educated at Emory College at Oxford, Georgia. There he met Robert Watkins Lovett, Jr., of Screven County and they became friends and married sisters three times and twin sisters the last time.

All I will say is that this leads to a very complex family tree.