Every kid, as she is growing up, complains about what she considers to be the annoying habits of her parents, vowing to do things differently "when she's all grown up and has a house of her own". 

For me, this was frequent housecleaning. You know that old saying, "Vote early, and vote often?" My mother believed in cleaning early, and cleaning often. Before we left on trips, we cleaned. After we got home from trips, we cleaned. Before family came to visit, we cleaned. After family left, we cleaned. Before we set up the Christmas tree, we cleaned. After we took the tree down, we cleaned. (True, part of the reason we cleaned so thoroughly around the tree was because we had a real one and didn't want dead needles jabbing us in our bare heels as we walked across our own living room carpet.) But still.

At first, I was completely on board with my mom's cleaning. The first time Mom asked me to clean the bathroom, I bent low and buffed water stains off the bathroom faucet. I once spent an hour and a half cleaning the kitchen floor because I kept going back to get dry spots that I might have missed. 

And then my clean streak palled. I started to wonder why we cleaned so thoroughly before grandparents visited us. After all, they were family; we didn't need to impress them. Why buff water stains off the bathroom faucet? But, right over my protests, Mom assigned more cleaning duties, and so I buffed and scrubbed and vacuumed before every major event. 

I'm grown up now, and sure enough, my place is not sparkling clean. I do clean before my own mother comes, but this mostly consists of a quick vacuum and floor scrub. In fact, my mother actually scrubbed down my kitchen on a recent visit, just because. My mom is a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to her house. I'm not. Recently, my mother pointed this difference out to me and suggested that I was less of a perfectionist than she. Her observation took me by surprise. Outwardly, I agreed outwardly. Inwardly I was thinking, "Really? Really? I've always thought of myself as a perfectionist!

And I am, just not in terms of my house. My area of perfectionism is my accomplishments. 

Last Friday, the school year officially ended for me with a series of financial meetings. I started this week with high hopes of making big strides on some projects: I was going to plan two writing classes, write the rubrics and assignment guidelines for these classes, write a blog, work on another writing project, read a book about photography, and do some research on conversational ESL classes. So far, I've written a blog (you're reading it!) and created a rough draft for two writing classes, in large part due to a kind friend who squashed my grandiose schemes for a remedial English class. Now, I'm toying with another substantial change to the other class. That's all. I've made no progress on the other goals.

As an intellectual, as a producer of thoughts and of material things, I am caught in the Charybdis of perfection. Always thinking, "I can make that just a little bit better!" I look backwards to a previous project and do not make progress forwards. 

I hem and haw about grades before submitting them, reading most papers twice and some papers three or four times to get the grade perfect. I have spent an hour typing and retyping a question for Literature class, to get the wording just so. I spent four hours on my last blog post in order to get my reviews of the books razor-sharp accurate. Even if books are piled in neat little stacks across my living room and dining room floor, and there are five pairs of shoes scattered across my entryway, I want what I produce intellectually to be just so. 

My concern is not only intellectual accomplishments, but accomplishments in general. Several Christmases ago, I made a pan of cinnamon rolls. They were beautiful: deep veins of glistening dark cinnamon criss-crossing the top, their doughy frames golden in the oven. Then, coming out of the pan, they fell to pieces and started unrolling. My family didn't mind in the slightest; they picked the pieces up, slathered them with icing, and ate them happily. I was crushed: My beautiful accomplishment, the work of my hands, was not so beautiful any longer. 

The lesson from this? Every single one of us has an area that we want to be just so. I thought my mom was a perfectionist for wanting the house perfect. Turns out, I am subject to the same character tic. To some degree, this is healthy, a valuable character trait. That well-kept house I grew up in was wonderful! Taken too far, though, the quest for perfection, however each of us pursues this quest, is dangerous. I feel tonight (a Friday night) as though I have partially wasted a week, planning and replanning two classes that could have been pulled together in a day or two had I kept my mind on my task and not indulged myself in seeing how many different ways I could rearrange the calender or the exact wording of my plagiarism statement.  

In grad school, some of my fellow students had a saying: "Better done than perfect". It's a good saying, and relevant here: At times we (I) need to let go, remember that the project is done, and move on to the next one. 

 If you'll excuse me now, I need to go work on my fourth draft of the English Comp class.

As an English teacher, I can let no opportunity pass to share a good book recommendation with you all. So, it's that time again: book reviews!

This has been the "Spring of the Non-Fiction Book". A few months ago, I decided that I didn't really want to read Orson Scott Card for a third time and picked up Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven instead. I have tackled three non-fiction books since then, each one exploring a different aspect (and danger) of religion in society. Each of these three books is reviewed for you in this post.

Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer
In this book, Krakauer blends an exploration of Mormon Fundamentalism with the early history of the Mormon church. The result is a work that depicts the dangers of the fiercely independent brand of faith that has sprung up in America - an individualized faith often divided from tradition, and sometimes, from any real system of accountability.


Banner begins with an almost clinical description of a 1984 double murder, inspired when two Mormon Fundamentalist men acted on a "word from God" to kill those who opposed their religious excesses. He then details additional crimes inspired by faith, including the polygamist colonies of northern Arizona, their sister colonies in southern Idaho, and even the recent kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart. As story piles on story, Krakauer impresses readers with the lengths to which believers can go when they follow what they believe to be the voice of God.

Having described this behaviour, Krakauer traces its origin to Joseph Smith: at first a con artist and a dabbler in black magic, later the father of the Mormon church. Although Smith's "plural marriages" to the young women of the community are described, the book stresses Smith's belief that he and other Mormons heard directly from God and that any action which promoted the welfare of the church was permissible. It was this belief that gave birth to the Mountain Meadows Massacre in the 1800s, and it was this belief that gave birth to the abuses and murders described at the beginning of the book, each done in the name of God.

Krakauer is not a believer, so his writing must be taken with a grain of salt. Even for believing readers, however, Krakauer's work has great value. Above all, the work underscores the importance of accountability. Each believer is, of course, able to "approach God's throne of grace" individually as a priest. As the Old Testament priests followed specific guidelines for worship and for daily living, so we too should follow appropriate boundaries in order to avoid abusing our faith like the believers that Krakauer describes.

It is this, perhaps, that is the most unnerving lesson we take away from Banner: As each extremist Krakauer described started off as a normal, devoted worshiper, so we too, who consider ourselves 'normal', are not protected by our religion from doing equally awful things. It is not only Mormons who have their extremist sects; Christians too profit financially from their religion, conceal sexual or physical abuse in the name of their religion, and secure political power from their religion. Reading Banner, then, is a good reminder that we who believe are not immune to committing horrors in the name of our God, and to take action to prevent such horrors.

A Word to the Wise: Krakauer includes some language. Also, he describes various criminal activities (including murder and sexual abuse) in a detached way analogous to In Cold Blood. Sensitive people should avoid this book and read the other two on my list instead.

Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, by Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith

Emerson and Smith argue in this book that evangelical practices contribute to racial tension in America, instead of ending such tension which is the original and stated goal of evangelicals. The book opens with a description of the contrast between white evangelical and black evangelical attitudes towards race. The authors attribute this difference to what they call a "cultural toolbox": a set of assumptions that govern our interpretation of a particular cultural situation. Evangelicals, the authors point out, believe strongly in individual free will and accountability; therefore, they interpret the culture around them in terms of individual free will and accountability, even when such "tools" do not depict the situation accurately. For instance, the authors point out that white evangelicals are likely to attribute the lesser accomplishments within black circles to an individual lack of motivation or black culture in general, which is not always accurate or even fair to black Christians.

To this analysis, the authors add a general description of how church operates in America. First, they point out that the church operates according to entrepreneurial patterns. In America at least, believers attend a church that they choose themselves, usually because they perceive that church to fit their needs best. In order to thrive, therefore, individual churches recreate themselves to appeal to a "niche" market; churches that do not appeal to a "niche" market will not thrive, because people can go elsewhere to have their specific needs met. Thus, racially-integrated churches which appeal both to black and to white culture are unlikely to thrive, as examples in fact prove.

As a believer himself, Emerson serves up a healthy dish of "food for thought" for his fellow believers. Although politically conservative believers may not agree with his solutions, Emerson at least challenges them to rethink their attitude towards race and their participation in church. As someone who grew up in a socially-conservative household, I feel that his reminder that a racialized society does exist, that it is not a thing of the past, a good reminder and challenge for modern evangelicals. I know my students were challenged this semester, as I studied diversity with them, to avoid labeling the poor black community as "unmotivated" and to appreciate the social challenges that faced them.

More personally, I found it "convicting" (to use evangelical parlance) to read, and see exemplified in my experience and that of my friends, how often believers do go to church to have their needs met, rather than as a way to reach out to those around us. In fact, this is part of the reason that I even teach diversity to my students: I want them, as believers, not only to adhere to certain doctrinal principles but also to take action on their faith and care for the needy, as Christ himself taught.

Cautions: Nothing offensive. Emerson is a professor at Rice University, so sometimes the book is a tad academic. But he manages to avoid the deep charts and complex language of the ivory tower and appeal to the popular reader as well.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, by Mark Noll
I haven't finished this book yet, so this review will be briefest (Shhh! No cheering!). Noll argues that, in spite of the doctrinal strengths of the evangelical church, they retreat from culture instead of contributing to it. As one example (out of many he gives), he offers their overwhelming interest in End Times theology as opposed to understanding the situation of the Middle East and figuring out, from a Christian perspective, how to live now in this world. Noll spends the first third of his book, which is the part I've finished, tracing the origin of the atrophied evangelical mind. Beginning with the Revolution, he points out that believers argued that their doctrine was simply "common sense". Although this argument worked okay when most people were Christian by default, the secular attack after the Civil War caused the church to retreat from public culture, still assuming that belief was "common sense" but unable to defend it in the face of articulate and rational non-believers. He then turns his attention to the rise of fundamentalism in the early 1900s. Noll applauds the fundamentalist groups (like other scholars, he includes the Keswick movement, Pentacostal practices, and dispensationalism in this category) for their attention to doctrine and personal holiness. At the same time, he faults them for contributing to the anti-intellectual preferences. In part, he attributes this to the fundamentalist tendency to stress the eternal at the expense of the now; in part, to the literal fundamentalist hermeneutic. He then proceeds to explore the effects of anti-intellectualism in politics and science.

I have read reviews of Noll's work online, and so I know that as I go on, I will not agree with everything that he says about the evangelical church (still being an evangelical myself). That doesn't mean Noll is worthless, however. In fact, what I have learned from reading Noll has been similar to what I have learned from reading Krakauer. Under the Banner of Heaven is a warning against unchecked spiritual independence; Scandal of the Evangelical Mind; a check against that spiritual independence. Noll's detailed history of the evangelical mind reminds us that the ideas and doctrines we hold today do not come to us directly inspired from God, as we sometimes imagine from our limited perspective of seventy years. Instead, our ideas, however valuable and accurate as they are, are in fact our ideas: human interpretations of Scripture and tradition passed down over the last two hundred, and the last two thousand, years. This does not mean out entire faith is incorrect. Noll, like Emerson, is an evangelical himself and does not try to undermine the faith. All this means is that our understanding of our faith is sometimes faulty and should be held flexibly. And, most of all, we should seek to learn and grow in our faith and in our understanding of this world as much as possible.

Cautions: No cautions. Noll is an academic and his history gets a little long at times, but there's nothing offensive here either.

Why I Like Rodney McKay

Rest assured, I am not seeing anyone. Here is a photo of Rodney McKay:

As you can tell, he's a character, on a sci-fi TV show, that hasn't been showing for several years now. Yes, I'm geeky! I confess! The truth is out!!

But bear with me anyway. I am not going to use this post to talk about some random TV show, nor about my preference for sci-fi over chick flicks. Actually, McKay is just one example of a larger trend: I don't care as much for the main character as I do for minor characters in a show.

I prefer Eowyn, and Peregrin Took, to Frodo Baggins. I prefer Han Solo to Luke Skywalker. I am more interested in Hermione than in Harry Potter, and I like Luna and Neville better than both of them. My favourite characters are almost always the minor characters.

Why?

I don't think jealousy plays a role in my preference for minor characters. In other words, I don't think I invest in the minor characters because I am too jealous of the adventures and advantages of the main character to be truly interested in them. Main characters don't actually have much in the way of advantages. If a reader is going to be envious of anyone, one of the minor characters would actually be a better target for envy - for example, Eowyn, who gets to fight in a battle and meet Prince Charming. Best of both worlds, yes? Certainly better than poor Frodo's fate. Frodo spends two whole books trudging through flat gloomy fields and meeting gigantic spiders.

So, why? I have two reasons, I think, but first, a note: I realize I am addressing a narrow window of literature, all within the sci-fi and fantasy tradition. My musings here do not apply outside the window, but that doesn't meant that the musings themselves are worthless. Here goes:

Minor characters are more relatable.
In college, a professor of mine pointed out that Dante's Purgatory, of his three books, best represents life on this earth. Years later, some of my favourite passages and scenes are in Purgatory, and certainly that book, more than the other two, is peopled with likeable and relevant characters.

In fiction, minor characters work the same way. Major characters, like Dante's Inferno or Paradise, are far enough above us (or, in rare cases, beneath us) that we don't find much to connect to with them. Harry spends the bulk of the later books in angst over his own fate and that of the world; Hermione reads books. Guess which one I at least relate to more? For an even better example, Harry worries about failing the world, while Neville worries about failing his classes, and Luna looks for friends. The world might be more important on a larger scale, but we connect with smaller battles, such as succeeding in classes or with a social life more easily.

Minor characters make more mistakes.
Although the wording is similar, this is a new point. As main characters tend to be involved in grand, world-changing schemes, they also tend to make fewer mistakes, or at least be called out on fewer mistakes. Sure, Frodo makes mistakes (such as suspecting Sam); Pippin is the one who gets yelled at and chastised for his mistake with the Seeing Stone.

My Sci-Fi character is my best example here. McKay is an arrogant, unobservant and slightly whiny character; my father calls him flat-out "annoying" and is deeply frustrated with his character. I, on the other hand, find something of myself in McKay. Like him, I completely miss it sometimes when I hurt people, or when people around me are hurting. It's easy to be whiny when I'm facing something I don't want to do, or when I'm in pain.

But McKay changes. This is perhaps the best thing about his character. He is, for most of the show, a stuck-up scientist and computer genius, but when the pressure is on, he admits his mistakes and tries to forge relationships with the people around him. Though he'd never 'fess up to it, McKay is, deep inside, a considerate and courageous person.

And so, McKay and characters like him - the feckless Han Solo, the carefree Pippin, the despairing Eowyn - give me hope that I too can change.

So What?
In the end, this hope for change is why this post matters. Literature is supposed to be about change, about reshaping the way we see this world and the way in which we live in it.

The main characters are there for us to thrill to their adventures and cheer at their ultimate victory: the downfall of Voldemort, of Lord Sauron, of the Sith Emperor.

The minor characters, however, are there for a yet more important purpose: to remind us ordinary people are too are part of, as Tolkien put it, the "Great Story", although we may not have the starring role. Like Neville, and Eowyn, and McKay, we too have our own battles to fight, and we too have the chance for redemption as we fight those battles.

So, Dante.

At last. My last blog post was followed by a week and a half of busy life (including teaching about Dante, among other things), and I did not have the time to write about Dante. 

In Christian tradition, there is a well-established theme of self-sacrifice. Christ's warning to his disciples perhaps best captures this theme. "If anyone desires to come after Me," He says, "let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it" (Luke 9:23-24). A disciple's life, according to this passage, is defined by consistent self-sacrifice. All that the believer loves in this world and all the believer thinks themselves to be must be exchanged in a sort of commercial transaction in order to know Christ better. In modern parlance, no pain, no gain. 

At the same time, however, there is a fairly well-established, if unspoken, concern about the potential danger of self-sacrifice. In a postmodern, post 1984 world, people fear giving themselves up to an organization - even a beneficial one such as the church; these people see the sacrifice of the self as a dangerous and life-denying act. An extreme example is that of the FLDS women. Like Christianity, Mormonism stresses the virtue of surrendering to a higher good; the women in the Fundamentalist branches of the church do surrender, and then spend the rest of their lives popping out baby after baby after baby. Gone are the talents and vibrant personalities that God endowed them with. Of course, the Christian surrender of human desires (the desire for food, for good drink, for sex and for companionship) and personal talents is nowhere near as extreme as the surrender required of fundamentalist Mormon women, but the fear is still there: Will my surrender to Christ and to His church cause me to lose the personality and identity that God has given to me? Will I become someone else?

It's a legitimate question, one that deserves a fair answer. It deserves an answer more complex than, "You will find joy in the path of discipleship". At the doctor's, children are told that having a shot will make them feel better again, but the nebulous concept of "feeling better" doesn't make them any readier to sit still and stop squirming. Likewise, the vague idea of "joy" is often not enough to overcome a concern about the loss of our very precious self, should we step onto the road of self-sacrifice.

In Dante's Inferno of all places lies a surprisingly affirmative and biblical answer to this question.

Background: Like most medieval writers and even classical philosophers, Dante believes that everything  exists for a specific purpose, referred to as telos. An object that fulfills its telos is successful; an object that does not, unsuccessful. For example, a book is meant to be read and understood. A book which looks beautiful but is never read does not fulfill its purpose. It is a bad book, because it has failed in its reason for existing.

Another background note: The medieval theologians believed that sometimes sin was only an excessive love of an originally good thing. Sometimes sin was love of a bad thing too, but that's beside my point. For instance, love of food taken to excess is gluttony. Food is not a bad thing, but the good thing that food is has become fascinating to an inordinate degree and replaced God at the center of the affections.

Okay, back to Dante's Inferno. In the Divine Comedy, Dante operates from the assumption that human beings have a specific purpose: to know and enjoy God and to be like him insofar as humans can. His assumption is, of course, grounded in the final creative act of God: "Let Us make man in Our image," God said, "according to our likeness" (Genesis 1:26). Biblically, humans are made to be in the image of God.. In Dante, this purpose - this telos - takes the form of exercising power, wisdom and love in a way that clearly depicts God's own power, wisdom and love. Incidentally, each of these three virtues is associated with one member of the Trinity. This, then, is the human telos: to depict, in day-to-day actions, the image of the Trinitarian God.

In the Inferno, sinners do have the option of denying telos; this action is always associated with a sin. Perhaps the best example is the most famous pair of sinners in Hell: Francesca and Paolo, damned to the level of the Lustful for their affair. Francesca's story moves Dante to tears, but he is clear that Francesca no longer has any interest in God. Even if she could, she assures Dante she would not pray from Hell and instead elects to cling to her lover throughout eternity. Like other sinners, she has loved a good thing - in this case, Paolo - to excess. It is her love which prevents her from meeting telos, from depicting the image of God.

And Francesca suffers for her decision. As she chose to live in pursuit not only of sexual desire but also of tender romantic relationships, so those desires come to dominate her life completely. Francesca will never be separated from Paolo, a situation which smacks as much of pain and frustration as it does of pleasure. Nor is she in control of her situation any longer. Like the other Lustful, Francesca is swept hither and thither by hot winds across the plains of Hell; the winds represent her own hot desires and thus suggest that her entire existence - indeed, her entire identity - is reduced to the demands of a lustful spirit. Francesca, in choosing to indulge her natural desire beyond the bounds of virtue, has lost herself utterly in this desire. In other words, Francesca's decision not to meet telos undid her.

Had Francesca chosen otherwise, her fate might have been much different. According to Dante, natural passions such as Love, Francesca's downfall, are not absent from Heaven. In fact, the higher he ascends into Paradise, the hotter Heaven's flames grow, not only with love for God but also with love for other believers. In Heaven, everything is already pure; therefore, these desires such as love are also pure and are part of telos. As human beings let God make them into His image, so they will also be made into someone who can enjoy love and give love in return.

And so, Francesca's error is tragically ironic: In placing romantic love over telos, Francesca lost the ability to feel and to give the true, pure love for which she longed.

Yet in her tragedy lies in the answer to the Christian problem of self-sacrifice. As difficult as sacrifice is on this earth, such sacrifice does not ultimately destroy the self; sacrifice upholds and nourishes the self. That which the self desires stands ready for us who seek to be made "in the image and likeness of God", if we are willing to endure necessary but short-lived privation. Francesca desired love, and had she been willing to briefly check her lust for Paolo, she could have had love unending had she been made "in the image and likeness of God".

Yes, Christ calls us to self-sacrifice. But as Dante reminds us, this call is not ultimately a self-denying one, but a self-affirming one: Everything that we are and wish to be, we can find in the purpose for which He has made us.

I leave you with Augustine, to make my point for me:

All these things [the good things of this world] and their like can be occasions of sin because, good though they are, they are of the lowest order of good, and if we are too much tempted by them we abandon those higher and better things, your truth, your law, and you yourself, O Lord our God.

My next post will be about Dante.

I'm not ready to write that, though (9:45 PM on Sunday night is not the best time to work out tangled thoughts), so tonight, something less literary. Yes, you can draw a sigh of relief, wipe the sweat off your forehead. 

Last week, I flew out of Chicago for Spring Break in Dallas. Travel by flying is always a tad stressful for me, given how many hoops the dear ol' system makes me jump through: present my boarding pass at security, smile at the guard, figure out how to respond when he flirts, strip off belt and coat and shoes, stand with my hands above my head in the full-body scanner, find my gate, and present the exact same boarding pass again. Perhaps more stressful, though, this trip marked one of the rare times I actually flew out of Chicago's O'Hare Airport. Usually I just fly through it, but this time, there would be an entirely new system, in a very big airport, for me to navigate. I ended up doing a lot of guessing. 

In Texas, half the flowers are on cacti. 

At 7:15 AM, I bundled myself into my car, bought a hot cup of coffee and popped Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air into the audio cassette player in my car and set off for Chicago. By mid-morning, I paid my last toll and drove into the small city that is the Chicago O'Hare Airport. Its streets were a maze of arrival and departure lanes, rental car centers, a curiously named Kiss-And-Fly lot, and the economy lots for which I was searching: all a maze that I had to navigate with the clock for my departure ticking.

I recall doing a fair amount of guessing: I guessed which parking lot to turn into, I guessed that I was in the correct lot, and I guessed that the bus which pulled up was indeed the bus I was supposed to take to arrive at the airport. I almost lugged my bags right back off the bus when it pulled up to the Chicago Metro stop; the driver checked me, fortunately, and we kept going to the elevated trains that run from the economy parking into the airport. 

At the train stop, I guessed some more: The train that pulled up seemed to be the only one available, so it must be my train; to be sure, I asked a janitor resting with her cart right next to me and tried not to get mop in my mouth when I spoke. I guessed that I was in fact heading to the correct terminal. Once there, I actually did lug my bags up an escalator and watched the other passengers: A few people headed towards bag check; others punched in at unmarked kiosks; I checked the unmarked kiosk as well. Turned out, I could reprint (for the third time) my boarding pass. I guessed that empty bottles go through security okay (they do in Europe, though they don't make passengers strip there), and sure enough, I toted an empty orange juice bottle with me through security. 

Look, more flowers on cacti!

If traveling makes me a tad nervous, it also makes me philosophical, so here's the lesson that I took away from all my guessing. 

In O'Hare, almost every guess I made was right (with the exception of almost boarding the Chicago Metro). This was not due to lucky chance: O'Hare has their airport system laid out clearly and well-marked with signs, and I had done my research in advance. I knew which parking lot I wanted, I knew that I'd use a combination bus and train to reach the airport, and I had toted empty bottles through airport security before this. 

At the same time, I didn't actually know what was coming next in airport maze or even exactly what it would look like when I arrived. In fact, the near-fail of the Chicago Metro indicates the uncertainty: I knew that I would take a train to reach the airport itself, but I did not know what the train would look like. So, the Metro station kicked my brain into "Train!!" mode and almost sent me off the bus and into the heart of Chicago via the Metro. In more successful situations, I thought, "Oh, so that's what this step of the maze looks like!", breathed a sigh of relief, and moved on to the unknowable future. 

Texas has more to offer besides cacti, thankfully.

So, application: As travelers move forward, hesitantly and step-by-step, through their journey, so we too move forward, hesitantly and step-by-step, through life. I wonder sometimes whether we approach life with an overconfident attitude, telling people to choose what job to take or what person to marry or where to live as if they can know from that perspective whether the rest of their lives will be happy. As an example, I used to fear that, if I chose the wrong college, I would put myself out of the will of God forever; I approached decision-making and in fact all of life as though I could know what the rest of my life would look like if I could only find the golden key. 

Life isn't like that at all. C.S. Lewis tells us that, from within time, "all answers deceive"; nothing about the future (and even about the past) can be known for certain. Life is instead much like a trip through a new airport. Yes, we can do our research and look for signs and use good, sound wisdom and common sense. Still, we can't know for certain what comes next. We can make a perfectly good and rational decision, and find that life hits an unexpected rough patch; on the other hand, we can make a horrible decision and find goodness blooming like a spring flower even in that rocky soil. 

It is a frustrating exercise to attempt to know or secure a certain future. It was terribly frustrating and stressful for me to believe that the success or failure of my life hung on whether I chose the correct college; it is equally frustrating to try to 'guess' what will happen to us next even without making a decision. Will gas prices keep rising? What about food prices? Will I ever find someone to marry, or will I find a job? What would happen if I went on for more education? 

Had I tried to know my airport route for certain, I would have been stuck at the side of the road, slightly off the interstate. The only way to conquer the maze was to move forward, with uncertainty. That is the only way to go about life: to move forward, with uncertainty, with God.

Last Sunday I headed off to church with two books in my bag: my Bible (of course) and (of all things) Dante's Purgatory. I held my Bible on my lap during church service, leaving Purgatory in my bag, spine-upwards, its title blindingly obvious in bold navy letters against a teal background.

I wondered what my fellow church attenders, all very Protestant, would think if they glimpsed the title in my bag. I got to find out.

Immediately after the service, the woman behind me introduced herself and told me that she and her husband had been wondering about Purgatory in my bag. A few days back, she continued, she and her husband had been taken aback by a radio broadcast on Purgatory, in which a Catholic priest described the purifying of sins after death. This message, of course, did not jive with their Protestant belief that Christ wipes away all sins at the moment of conversion.

How could a Protestant, then, read a book titled Purgatory ?

Turns out, my Christian Classics students (all two of them) had the same question on their mind. So far we have read C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot. In both texts the authors send their characters on a trip through Purgatory, a trip crucial to their spiritual purification and renewal.

"Why," my student asked, "are Christian authors so obsessed with Purgatory? Why does it keep showing up?"

For Dante himself, the answer is simple: He was a good Catholic and really believed everything he wrote about Purgatory. For Eliot and Lewis, the answer is more complex. Anglicans instead of Catholics, they use Purgatory in their works in basically the same way that Lewis uses Narnia: an imaginary, deeply symbolic place where people can connect with God more visibly and directly than in this present world. Still, both of them go out of their way to emphasize that their symbolic Purgatory is in fact more real than this present physical world.

Its theological existence aside, the realm of Purgatory is a deeply meaningful one. Authors recognize in Dante's description of Purgatory not only a spiritual fact but also a metaphor for the Christian experience - a metaphor that even Protestants should appreciate.

Esolen, one of the most recent translators of Dante, writes that "[s]urely it is one of the sillier features of modern piety to believe that we can betake our indifferently righteous selves off to eternal bliss as effortlessly as one might enter the pantry" (432).

This is the reason that believing authors discuss and describe and set their stories and poems in Purgatory: its realm reminds us that we humans are but "indifferently righteous" and that this indifference must be purified.

"Indifferently righteous". I can name scads of examples of indifference in the church, and in my life.

This morning, I planned a nap instead of listening to the last fifteen minutes of the sermon.

This week, a few of my students brutally condemned a woman in a story for feeling unhappy about her unhappy marriage, instead of feeling compassion for her.

Years ago, I forced my roommates to conform to college rules, instead of spending time loving them and listening to their stories.

This is indifference: a dominating concern for our comforts, our assumptions, our rules, than for God and for the people that He loves. This is the value of Purgatory: to remind us that we are "indifferent" to God and to purify our "indifferent" selves until, above all, we love God and His people.

Eliot writes of this redemption:

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one dischage from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
    Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre-
    To be redeemed from fire by fire. 

Christ describes the end result - believers who follow the Greatest Commandment.

'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind'. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself'.

In literature or in theology, Purgatory reminds us of the importance of love.

In which I pretend I am Pioneer Woman

Truth: Box-mix brownies are always better, right?

Right?

Right?

Wrong.

I thought box mixes were best. I even had my favourite kind: the Ghiradelli kind. Then I was converted.

A week ago, I met my sister for tea. As I left, she offered me a brownie that she'd made from a recipe; she assured me the recipe was as good as - better than! - Ghiradelli. My policy is never to refuse free chocolate, so I took it. Even while I was clinging to the plastic baggie, though, I voiced doubts that a brownie from a recipe could measure up to a box mix brownie.

I ate it. A few days later, I looked up the recipe and shared it with someone else. Then I brought brownies to work today for the Writing Center tutors.

And now, I share the recipe with you. The original title is "Classic Fudge-Walnut Brownies," but that's boring, so I have renamed them: "Better than Ghiradelli Brownies":

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup flour
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• dash salt
• 1 cup bittersweet chocolate chunks, divided
• 1/3 cup fat-free milk
• 6 TBSP butter, melted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, divided (optional)

You can, of course, leave out the walnuts if you so choose. Looking back over the recipe, I think I may have even left out the (gasp!) baking powder. Baking is a remarkably flexible task.

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit.
2. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour and next 5 ingredients (through salt) in a large bowl. Combine 1/2 cup chocolate and milk in a microwave-safe bowl; microwave at HIGH 1 minute, stirring after 30 seconds. Stir in butter, vanilla, and eggs. Add milk mixture, 1/2 cup chocolate and 1/4 cup nuts to flour mixture; stir to combine.
3. Pour the batter into a 9-inch square metal baking pan coated with cooking spray; sprinkle with remaining nuts. Bake at 350 for 22 minutes (mine were in the oven for 17 minutes) or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out with moist crumbs clinging. Cool in pan on a wire rack. 

Tips:

• Don't leave out the baking powder. Or do. Leaving out the baking powder worked okay for me.
• Cut the brownies into small pieces; they're very rich, so a little bit will give you a quick chocolate fix.
• Don't overbake. I overbaked the last batch of brownies I made; instead of fudgy brownies, I got crumbly, sandy brownies. It's much better to under rather than overbake. 

Happy baking!