Editing

I just want to by typing tonight.

I have nothing new to say, no words of insight or wisdom that must be written down on this blog tonight. I just need to write, and I need to write something to someone, something that will be read.

I've spent most of today alternating between editing portfolio pieces and wandering the room trying to find something else to do. I wanted to go somewhere, but here in Vermont the sun sets just after 3 and I don't like the idea of walking or riding a bus alone after dark. So I just stayed in my room. Tried unsuccessfully to dye my hair blonde, worked out, read, scrolled through Pinterest Christmas nail ideas.

The truth is, it's exhausting to edit my work. I've been picking at these pieces a little bit throughout the semester, hoping to save myself some work here at the end, but that's not how writing works. I did a ton of edits on this one poem right after I got feedback from the teacher and classmates. I was completely happy with it and would say it was ready to be turned in. But now I read it and feel like there must be more I can fix, words I could change.

The fact is writing is never finished. Or at least mine isn't.

I like to laugh that I am the writer other writers hate. Writers in my classes can spend hours talking about how hard writing is, how much they want to write but can't, how sad they are that they do anything but write. I'm the opposite. I love writing. I write every second I get the chance. I'm intoxicated by the sound of words escaping my mind and finding life of their own.

Of course, the editing is hard. I love it, in one sense. I love looking at a poem that's gone through what feels like a million drafts and seeing how much better it is now. I had this one poem that I loved when I first turned it in. I had spent a lot of time working on it and was so happy with how it sounded.

The teacher sort of tore it apart, as she has done to almost all of my writing, and one of my really good writer friends told me that I really needed to take out the parenthesis in my poem. I loved my parenthesis and I fought him so much, but I took their comments in the back of my mind and started hacking at the poem. My thought: "I'll show them how bad it sounds their way." But as it turned out I found some sort of in between land which was so much better than what I started with. (Without parenthesis. I had to admit that he was right and the parenthesis were definitely holding the poem back.) Sometimes editing hurts, but it's worth it.

I guess there's a life lesson in this too. I think sometimes I need to let God edit me back into what He wants me to be. It hurts sometimes, especially in the times when it feels like everything needs editing at once.

That's where I am with classes. Everything needs fixed. Everything needs work. I start on one project and can't focus because I also should work on this other project and I can't do it all at once and I don't know where to start. Everything needs to be edited.

And honestly, that's where I am with life too. I think there are a lot of areas of my life that need editing, that need work, that need help. I've been holding on to my own kind of parenthesis and fighting so hard without even realizing it. It's not that anything is bad now. My writing isn't bad without another round of edits, but it can be so much better. My life certainly isn't bad. But it can be so much better.

Sometimes I need to allow the red pen and let things change.

The Magdalen, A Garden and This by Kathleen O'Toole

Last night I stayed up an hour later than intended working on the first draft of my non-fiction piece for my Creative Writing class. I think it's going to be a braided essay, though at this point the paragraphs splashed together don't sound like much of anything. It needs a lot of work still.

But my piece is all about names, about how much of an impact a name can have. How much of an impact my name has had, or names, as I explain in the piece. I know I have owned a lot of names throughout my life, and they all mean something to me, something I'm trying to learn how to explain as I write this essay.

This month I have also read the story of Mary Magdalen meeting Jesus in the garden three times. This story is from chapter 20 of the book of John. I read it with my Christian Club on campus and then at a poem share with members of my Church someone brought a poem about the story. Last night I came to it in my Bible readings on my own.

Every time I hear this story I can just imagine Jesus standing there saying her name, and I can imagine Him standing beside me telling me my name, and it's just so powerful. There are times when someone says my name in just such a way that it becomes so much more than just a name. My boyfriend can say my name in a way that makes me feel like I finally took a breathe of air after almost drowning. My mom can say my name and turn me into a child sitting against her lap or into an adult who she loves and is proud of and know will be okay. My sister can say my name and show me that she knows, she understands, she's always here for me.

All of this in the way they say my name. The carefulness of a combination of sounds and letters spoken so carefully with so much meaning and so much history and so much future. (When the people I love say my name I can always hear that they are pronouncing the C. I can hear the difference between C and K.)

I can just imagine Jesus telling me my name. I think I would be like Martha. That would be the instant when I recognize Him.

I think of other mentions of names in the Bible. (There are a lot. I could probably write hundreds of posts about names and never end.) God is always so precise about naming, about changing names, about the meaning of names. I love it.

However, to avoid trying to write hundred of posts in one, I'm going to end here, quite abruptly because my writing classes have tired out my writing brain today, and leave you with the poem I mentioned. Because it's beautiful. And powerful. Almost makes me want to cry.

The Magdalen, A Garden, and This
(by Kathleen O'Toole)

Strip all else away and we'd know only
that she was grateful, that she found her way
to the cross, and that she returned

to the tomb. A disciple for sure, not
Mary sister of Lazarus, or the woman caught
in adultery or she who angered the men

by anointing Jesus with expensive oils.
This Mary of Magdala only named as one
from whom he cast out seven devils, followed

until that first day of the week, in the garden,
where, weeping at her loss, she was recognized,
became known in the tender invocation

of her name. Mary: breathed by one
whom she mistook for the gardener, he
who in an instant restored her--

gave her in two syllables a life beloved,
and gave me the only sure thing I'll believe
of heaven, that if it be, it will consist

in this: the one unmistakable
rendering of my name.

What Does it Mean?

What does it mean to be a Christian?

I skipped church today, for the first time this year, and slept in an extra two hours and watched a sermon on my own. And the truth is, I went through a massive debate in my mind the night before, trying to figure out if skipping church was an okay thing to do. I guess you could say that wanting to get more sleep and avoid the ten degree weather outside are bad reasons to sleep through church.

But the truth is-- it's not about what I do. See, I'm broken and sinful and weak. I mess up, constantly, and sometimes getting out of bed in the morning really does feel like the most difficult thing in the world. I cried through worship last Sunday because all I could see were the families sitting together in church and the very, very empty chairs on either side of me. And this morning, I just couldn't do it.

There's that part of me that wants to be able to say I go to church every Sunday and do all the good "Christian" things. That part of me is right sometimes, and knows that the only way I can build a solid church community is by going to church. But that part of me is also selfish, and wants to do things on my own. That part of me forgets that I am saved not because of me, but because of God.

And trust me, God doesn't need me to be at church in order to speak to me.

Over the last week I've been reading through the book of Exodus, and I'm now at that part when God is telling Moses how to set up the temple. I just read chapter 28, the entire thing about how Aaron's clothes should look. I find myself wondering how important attaching pomegranates and bells at the bottom of the vest really is. Does God really care what Aaron wears? Does God really care whether I sit through a church service or listen to a sermon and songs online?

I don't have the answers, you know, in case you were hoping I might. I just know that I'm broken and sinful and weak. I know that God is perfect and sinless and strong. I know that somehow, He uses all things together for His good, for His plan.

And I know that He wants my complete and total devotion. He wants every ounce of my love. He wants me to be able to pull myself out of bed and brave the freezing half hour walk to church. But He also knows my heart, and He understands when life just gets too hard and what I need most of all is to spend time alone in His presence. He knows. He knows everything, and He loves me so much more than I can understand.

That's what it means to me to be a Christian. To live in God's love, always and forever, no matter what.