I was chatting to Marianne about how depressed I was about the state of my bedroom and came to the conclusion: “I mean, even when I get it tidy again, it won’t make me happy. It’s just not aesthetically pleasing.”

A breakthrough, I think. I was living with my hodge-podge furniture so long I stopped seeing it.

Marianne (queen of “It Must Be Aesthetically Pleasing to Me”) jumped at the chance to help me finally whip my room into shape. The main center of our “renovation” project includes getting rid of my desk, replacing it with bookshelves, and reorganizing the rest of the room accordingly. I’m bringing in an armchair from another room in the house and creating a reading corner. I purchased a cheap old trunk at the Antique Mall, which we’re going to paint, and I will store my random blankets in there. I’m working on doing something about my bedding, which doesn’t particularly “go” with any other colors in my room.

I was ready to make all these changes in one night, but alas, reality set in. I’ll post some pictures when it’s done, and maybe some “before” pictures if I can find any. (I’m not taking new pictures–I’m not sprucing up the old space just to pull it down.) I’m excited to finally have a real honest-to-goodness sanctuary, instead of just a place to sleep and store my stuff.

And yet…

I have this thing for strangers.  Whether we’ve been thrust together for a brief and necessary interaction (e.g. the man bagging my groceries or the teenager who’s checking my tire pressure), or whether we are just in the same place at the same time (the woman who is also in the baking aisle buying molasses, the old gentleman waiting in line beside me at the post office), I defy the social custom that says we should all quietly ignore one another’s existence, or make as little of it as possible.

Sometimes this is awkward.  “Are you making gingerbread, too?” I exclaim to Molasses Lady.  She looks alarmed, mumbles something, and moves away.

But sometimes–and this is why I’m incorrigible–I strike gold.

Today, I ventured out into the sometimes festive, sometimes thoroughly depressing world of Christmas shopping.  When I think of the corporate greed that is trying to take over this sacred season, I get upset and depressed.  But when I look at the worn-out people who are just trying to make a living as they shelve and re-shelve and scan and bag all these heaps of more or less meaningless stuff, my heart goes out to them.  And yep, I feel that urge to strike up a conversation.

Today it was my cashier.  She was about five feet tall, with silver hair, glasses, and a grim expression.  But her name was Henrietta.  I said it silently to myself, loving it.  What a quintessentially English name.  So, with nothing else to go on, I said abruptly, “Your name is so pretty.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Eh.”

“I just like it.  Not one I get to hear very often,” I said a tad sheepishly, feeling like this was going to be another Molasses Lady Moment. But then, gentle reader….

“My mother actually named me after my father.”

“Oh! Henry? I love that name, too!”

“Well, it was World War II, you know, and she didn’t know if she’d ever see him again, so I was Henrietta.”

I thought he had probably died in the war, and unconsciously began to look and feel deep sympathy.

“Well, let me tell you.  When he came home and it was Henry and Henrietta, it got old real fast!”

I laughed.  She kept going.

“So I started going by just Etta–”

“Do you still go by Etta?” I interrupted.

“Oh, yes, everywhere but here.  In fact, when I filled out my application there was a line for “preferred name” and I was all excited, but then when they printed my name tag, there it was!”

I laughed, “Your whole name after all!”

“Oh, no no.  I swear, my mother must have thought I was going to grow up to be twelve feet tall.  Because my whole name, my actual given name is HenriettaMarie, no spaces.”

“Oh my goodness!”

“Yep, and then my dad wanted to name me after my mother since I was named after him, so I became HenriettaMarie Margaret.”

I was grinning in amazement. “So in Kindergarten did you have to write out HenriettaMarie?”

“Oh, yes!  And add Wiecsowski to the end it was a real winner!

I laughed and laughed.

“As you can see, I never really grew into it,” she chuckled.  (She was a tiny lady.)

“So you rebelled and shortened it to just four little letters!”

“I did,” she said, her eyes sparkling.

And then, alas, we had dragged out the cashier/customer duties as long as possible and I had to move on and let the person behind me have her turn.  I picked up my things.

“Thank you! Merry Christmas, Etta!”

She stopped and looked at me, “My, it’s…nice to hear that.”

We exchanged one more smile and I went out the door.

So maybe it’s because I spent one very lonely Christmas working retail myself (including Christmas Day itself–who goes shopping ON Christmas??), or maybe it’s because A Christmas Carol is on my mind, in which good old Fred declares that Chistmastime is “the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys,” but I don’t plan on giving up my alarming habit anytime soon.

And maybe if you read this, Molasses Lady, you’ll understand that I wasn’t trying to steal your baking ingredients or even pry into your personal life, honestly.  I just saw us as fellow-passengers to the kitchen, and as such I regard you as a comrade, a friend–a human being worthy of my notice, my regard, and yes, my love.

I know Christmas is a hard time of year for many people: some are lonely, some are grieving, some are suffering. However, as I sit here listening to Christmas music I can’t help but feel…joy.

Of course, Christmas is an incredibly ritualized time of year, and psychological studies have shown that we human beings rely on nostalgia and rituals for comfort. If you’ve had a decent childhood, chances are that Christmas carries incredibly powerful good memories: scents, sounds, sights, feelings. And because childhood is a time of imagination where anything is possible, it’s hard to completely erase all those notes of magic even when you’ve long known Santa Claus doesn’t really bring you presents.

So there’s that, and that’s what I’ve enjoyed about Christmas most of my life: those powerful and happy bits of nostalgia floating in the air. Right now, though, the joy isn’t coming from Christmas cookies or the prospect of presents or the decorations being put up.

I’ve been thinking about the symbols of Christmas. I know lots of people will interpret where we get our traditions from and what they originally symbolized and all of that, but that’s not really what I am thinking of. The scriptures say all things testify of Christ, and that has been on my mind as I contemplate this holiday season.

First of all, I know the Savior wasn’t really born in December. But if we celebrate Easter in the spring–and with it, remember the Atonement and Resurrection of the Savior and the rebirth and new life it gives us–it seems fitting to me that we remember His birth in the winter, when life is cold, dark, and bleak. His birth brought hope, light, and love into a weary, cold, lost world.

So I listen to the lyrics of the sacred Christmas carols and I cry, touched by the messages of joy. I can’t help but be lifted up inside, my heart soaring. There is hope and love for each and every one of us, whatever our situation in life, however we may be grieving or whatever we have done.

I love the Christmas lights put up all over town–in and out of businesses, houses, apartment buildings. Whether or not people realize it, they are testifying of the birth of the Light of the World. Everywhere we have monuments to the light we have to pierce the darkness.

We give gifts to each other–reminiscent, I suppose, of the gifts the wise men gave the Christ child–but they also remind us of the gifts He gives us, those gifts which we can never repay.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a wise man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give him: give my heart.

Before I got my eye put out
I liked as well to see –
As other Creatures, that have Eyes
And know no other way –

But were it told to me — Today –
That I might have the sky
For mine — I tell you that my Heart
Would split, for size of me –

The Meadows — mine –
The Mountains — mine –
All Forests — Stintless Stars –
As much of Noon as I could take
Between my finite eyes –

The Motions of the Dipping Birds –
The Morning’s Amber Road –
For mine — to look at when I liked –
The News would strike me dead –

So safer — guess — with just my soul
Upon the Window pane –
Where other Creatures put their eyes –
Incautious — of the Sun –

Emily Dickinson

For the past few years I have really struggled with contact lenses. It used to be that I could pop in my contacts every morning before school or work and then go all day without them bothering me. For several years now, I haven’t been able to keep my contacts in my eyes for more than a few hours at a time, and even those few hours are usually wrought with torture. No matter what contacts I’d try, my eyes would soon reject them.

I went to the optometrist in August and got myself another pair of contacts. After trying on three pairs, the optometrist handed me what felt like a miracle pair. I couldn’t feel them in my eyes at all. (Oh yes, that’s how it’s supposed to be!) For a couple months, I was in heaven. I actually put them on when I got up in the morning and wore them all the way until bedtime with absolutely no discomfort. I felt like a human being.

Then, a few weeks ago, I started experiencing discomfort in my right eye. The same old problems: I could feel the lens moving around, and I was always opening my eye up wide, trying to roll my eyeball around and smooth out the contact. I counted back to the last time I’d changed my lenses and thought it maybe was just getting old, so I threw out the old lens and put in a new one. It didn’t help. I experienced the same problems. Stopped wearing my contacts again.

Finally, this morning, I had had enough. I kept taking the contact out and putting it back in trying to get it to work. As I approached the fourth or fifth attempt at getting it to sit comfortably on my eye, I mumbled a pathetic little prayer, hardly formal, more of a conversation opener. “Heavenly Father, please, I just want to be able to wear my contacts again. Why isn’t this working?” and I stuck it in my eye.

Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, my contact went in without any problem and hasn’t bothered me since.

I am grateful for so many things in my life, large and small. This Thanksgiving week, however, I would like to express in particular how grateful I am to know I have a Father in Heaven who loves me and is interested in the details of my life. I know, too, that He loves all His children, and is just as eager to help them with anything in their lives that they struggle with, big or small. If He can help me put a contact lens in my eye, He can help you too with whatever you might struggle. If it’s important to you, it’s important to our Father.

I’ll quote E.M Forster’s “The Beauty of Life” again:

The beauty of the fine day amid dingy weather; the beauty of the unselfish action amid selfishness; the beauty of friendship amidst indifference: we cannot go through life without experiencing these things, they are as certain as the air in the lungs. Some people have luck, and get more happiness than others, but every one gets some­thing. And therefore, however pessimistic we are in our con­victions, however sure we are that civilization is going to the dogs on account of those abominable—(here insert the name of the political party that you most dislike)—; we yet remain optimists by instinct; we personally have had glorious times, and may have them again.

Forster’s remarks are not really religious in nature, and I can appreciate them fully without making them so. However, because I feel they speak to absolute truth I have no qualms in applying them to other absolute truths in my life. In this case, I apply them to my religious experiences.

Just as Forster argues we all have beautiful moments in life, I argue that we can all have experiences with God. We can ignore them, deny them, belittle them, but they are there. They are there in the stars and in the flowers and in the trees. His creations surround us, and so does His love. He loves us. His love doesn’t mean that every moment of our lives will be perfect and joyous, but it means He is always there. We can have comfort and joy in the knowledge that He has provided a way for us to return home to Him, whatever our struggles may be. All we have to do is look for Him, and we will find Him there.

We must insist on going to look round the corner now and then, even if other people think us a little queer, for as likely as not something beautiful lies round the corner. And if we insist, we may have a reward that is even greater than we expected, and see for a moment with the eyes of a poet —may see the universe, not merely beautiful in scraps, but beautiful everywhere and for ever.

Life is beautiful, everywhere and forever.

But after a good cry and reflecting on the stories of my heroes in the scriptures, I took a firm hold on my ideals and hoisted myself up for another round, chanting in my head these beautiful words:

To right the unrightable wrong,
To love pure and chaste from afar,
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star!

And these words:

To fight for the right
Without question or pause;
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause!

And, of course, these words:

And the world will be better for this:
That one girl, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove with her last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star.

I am NOT giving up.  Because I believe the world needs, more than ever, art that can exalt, not degrade.  Because I believe that, in the words of G.K. Chesterton, “Art, like morality, means drawing a line somewhere.”  Because I believe that the light of the Gospel is needed to shine in dark places.  Because I believe that I have something to say that is worth saying.  Because I believe. Period.

Bring on the windmills, the muleteers, the degradation and the cynicism and whatever else the Enchanter has to throw at me.  I am bruised and tired and I may even be down to my very last ounce of courage, but I’m holding my ground, and believe you me I’m on the winning side of this battle.

For we wrestle not againstflesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.  Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.  Ephesians 6:12-13

I live on the upper story of a little old house.  The admittedly unkempt front yard is overrun with ivy.  In order to reach the door to my flat, I take a little path.  It winds through the ivy.

It rained today. I came home tonight and sighed a weary sigh.

I looked up at the sky.

I saw stars.

I glanced down at the path.

I saw stars.

I blinked in utter confusion.  For a moment I thought the stars were so bright they had printed themselves on my sight.  I looked around me again.

It appeared as though several thousand stars had fallen right out of the sky and were lying like lost diamonds scattered among the ivy.

I peered hard through the dark.  In each delicately curved ivy leaf, a pearl of water–larger than a dewdrop–lay.  In every single tiny pool, the full moon was perfectly, dazzlingly reflected.

I stopped in my tracks.  I stopped breathing.  I looked and looked and looked and looked.  I murmured an inadequate prayer.

I walked inside along a path through the stars.

On my birthday I went for a drive through the Virginia countryside.  It was, as though it were a gift just for me, an indescribably beautiful day.  I won’t try to enter into descriptions of the scenery, but just close your eyes and think of the Shenandoah Valley at its most glorious, and when you catch your breath again, think of driving through it and listening to the symphonic poetry of Ralph Vaughan Williams.  It was hard to stay on the road–I kept gasping at stabs of unbearable beauty.  I drove past stubble fields and saw flocks of starlings and couldn’t help but wonder if Heaven could ever compare.  And here’s my struggle/epiphany/philosophy, I guess…Change is a condition of mortality, but it is exactly what makes mortality so poignant and beautiful.  I find myself wondering if the angels look down on us sometimes and long for one more autumn of beautiful, sad, and foolish mortal things like carving pumpkins and smelling woodsmoke and feeling hungry for a bowl of soup.  I have no doubt that we will be happy in the eternities, but I don’t think it ever can be quite this kind of happiness.  I think this is our one chance, where beauty is bound up with pain, where life is bound up with death.  And while it makes me never want to blink and miss a moment of it (and never put children to bed), I also glory in it–knowing that each moment is all the sweeter because it can’t last.

There’s nothing original about my thoughts–poets have been saying them for always–but the way it came over me when I needed it most, it was a kind of revelation.  I don’t resent growing older they way I used to, and instead of dreading change I find myself savoring it, lest I get to Heaven (I hope) and in the “no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music” I begin to wish I’d appreciated more the sharp contrasts of my imperfect, uncertain, but heartbreakingly beautiful moments of mortality.

Going to New England had always been a “someday” plan for Marianne–”someday” she’d take a trip to New England in the autumn, maybe on her honeymoon. One day she started wondering why on earth she was waiting, and asked me to come along and make it happen. After all, what’s the point of being single if you can’t live? When she presented the idea to me, I really dragged my feet. I guess I’ve spent my whole life trying to be rational and frugal. I was worried that treating myself to a week-long vacation–just me and one friend–was crazy.

Of course, I finally came around. I realized that not going was crazy. I’m starting to learn that lesson. I found out today that autumn this year up there is patchy and unpredictable, much like last year. How grateful I am that we went that first time!

Marianne taught me that lesson again in August. I’d just gotten back from a week-long trip for a wedding. She picked me up from the airport, and I planned to spend the weekend with her before going back home Sunday night. A month prior, we had tossed around the idea of going to DC one weekend to see Cate Blanchett and the Sydney Theater Company in Uncle Vanya. My dad teaches Uncle Vanya and was interested in going, but decided he couldn’t spare the time or the expense to make the trip. Marianne brought up the play again, and I mentally dismissed it, thinking it was too extravagant to decide to go to a play in DC at the last minute. Luckily for me, she kept pressing the point, and we retired to a frozen yogurt shop to discuss our options.

As we ate our treats, I wrote on the back of one of her orientation papers. We discussed every option possible–go that weekend, go the next weekend, not go at all. Go tonight, go to a matinee tomorrow, go tomorrow night–repeat that for next weekend. In the end we decided to go that weekend, because I was already there and home was an hour in the wrong direction. How close I was to idiotically choosing to not go at all!

We went home, bought our tickets online, and packed. And, oh reader, it was one of the best weekends of the entire year. We stayed with her aunt and were entertained endlessly by adorable children (Marianne’s niece and nephews). The play itself was revelatory–a once-in-a-lifetime experience and truly, wonderfully special: the highlight of my theater-going experience. I also saw an old friend unexpectedly. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t been convinced to be spontaneous, to seize the day, and just…go.

These are the lessons I learn as I age–perhaps they are lessons painfully obvious to the rest of you. You probably didn’t need to get old to learn them like I did.

Live life now. Whatever it is you are wanting to do (within reason), go out and do. Don’t wait. Take that trip, go for that drive, make memories. You never know what wonderful surprises will await you, what lovely experiences you will have, or what regrets you will have if you don’t.

 ”You are mistaken, Elinor,” said she warmly, “in supposing I know very little of Willoughby. I have not known him long indeed, but I am much better acquainted with him, than I am with any other creature in the world, except yourself and mama. It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy: — it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others….”

                                                                                                                       –Marianne Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility

We watch a lot of mysteries in my house. One thing we always laugh about is how much crime (often murder) gets committed before the detective figures out whodunnit. “Why do they keep hiring Poirot if 75% of the possible suspects die before the murderer is found?”

With complicated mysteries in novels and movies, it is nearly impossible to correctly solve the crime after one murder. The reason fictional detectives take, say, three or four murders to solve the case is that the murderer has to reveal enough about himself and his motives for the detective to figure it out.

Today I am thinking about how this applies to the people we meet every day. It’s not such a far-off concept. Putting together a mental file on someone’s personality is rather like being a detective, whether or not we do it consciously. Every time you interact with someone, good or bad, you have another clue.

My mother always says that people reveal themselves over time. People are constantly giving us clues to who they are. The problem is, most of the time we ignore those clues and see what we choose to see, good or bad. What we should do is take into consideration every clue we get and use it to put together a personality sketch. With conscious observation, we’d start to see which things are isolated events and which things are recurring patterns. Then we could decide (especially if this a potential serious relationship) if the person’s faults are things we could live with, and if their strengths are compatible with ours, or if the person has shown one too many “red flags” and it’s time to distance ourselves before damage is done.

We rush into very serious relationships and close friendships all the time with people we don’t really know. Hey, people even get married without knowing who it is they’re really marrying. Sometimes, this turns out okay. There are some rough patches as they finally get to know each other, but they work it out. Sometimes this turns out disastrously.

The point of Sense and Sensibility is that Elinor* is right and Marianne* is wrong: Marianne didn’t know enough about Willoughby. She let her feelings rush in based on an incomplete character profile. She chose to see only the things about him that were compatible to her, and not the very serious red flags like, oh, his tendency to seduce women without committing to them. If Marianne had guarded her feelings and allowed sense (get it?) to temper her attraction to Willoughby until she could form a conscious personality profile of him, she might have spared herself a very serious illness. (And deprived us of a novel.)

*I feel the need to state, for Marianne’s sake, that in every respect she is like the “real” Marianne Dashwood–her love of dead leaves, her ideals, her romantic nature–except when it comes to romance. Perhaps if she met a Willoughby she might throw herself in with as much reckless abandon as her namesake, but I doubt it. In matters of the heart, she is more like Marianne Dashwood after she has learned her lessons. In short, I refer not to us when I say Elinor and Marianne in this post, but to the originators of the name.