The Group

Today was the day the Lord has made, and I did rejoice and was glad in it.

I was also wearing the color purple, which I've discovered makes me feel more creative than usual. Not that I created much. But I thought about it. And that counts for something. You have to have so much thought in proportion to what is actually produced, kind of like needing forty gallons of sap to make a gallon of good maple syrup.

Today I began learning to act "groupy," as my math teacher so aptly put it. Group project? In math? Ok, I thought, I'm ready for anything. I shoved my bulky desk around and glanced back and forth at the rest of my group-- two girls whose names I still didn't know. I wasn't sure what we were doing, but I assumed they would.

I scanned my group mates' faces for vital signs. They looked like they hadn't had their coffee yet. They looked unhappy. They acted like they didn't know if we were a group or not. I thought it would be a nice group. We would sit there and do our worksheets and maybe I would ask them questions if there were problems. But after yesterday's massive homework initiative, I was pretty confident about the graphing thing.

We mumbled a few words to each other and one of the girls pulled out her homework to work on instead. I asked their names and forgot them immediately. I worked at my graphs, trying not to panic at my tendency to freeze when called on to work math problems in public. Ms. V's lovely asymptotes on the marker board looked like a multicolored snowflake, delicately resting on the surface of my brain. But now, the board behind me, the privacy of my brain was being invaded.

And that was only the beginning. Ms. Verheyden showed up on my left. "Are we being groupy?" She wanted to know. "Not really..." I said, laughing a little nervously. "Well, are you on the same problem?" "No..." I had just finished it, but it was more of an accident than anything. "Well, show them how to do it."

She moved on to another group, and we began to explore the complications of groupyness. We tried to talk to each other. I mean, we're girls, girls are supposed to be able to talk, right? I tried to explain the problem, but I really botched it. The only advantage I had was more motivation than the others, and while motivation is helpful, it doesn't explain algebra concepts in a matter of minutes.

But we tried, and I got an adrenaline rush, which I always seem to get in math class because I'm usually teetering on the narrow fence rail between the vale of understanding and the Stygian abyss of confusion. But I'm discovering the balancing itself to be a skill worth developing...and enjoying.

Later in the day, I again found myself in a "group," a group of all the people whose names begin with C in Ms. Rushing's sociology class. There were four of us. We were playing a weird little game to demonstrate the five types of social interaction- (Nonverbal, exchange, cooperation, conflict, and competition.) I love sociology. It's basically learning what everyone else & I are doing all day, every day.

We talked about Groupthink- "the idea that agreement with the group is more important than doing what you want or what is right."

Peer pressure. Our whole culture has an agenda and I can feel the waves of it surging over me when I walk around campus, every time I walk through a store. I can detect it and stand up to it to a certain extent, once again, in the privacy of my brain. There is a capital "They" out there that wants to eat my life.

But what I want to know is, when will be the time when I'll stand up and say what's really in my heart? When will I get to scream from a rooftop the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? When will I get to speak straight from the heart, straight out about the worth of every person I meet? When will I get to hear the others speak out what they really think as well? What they really want, down in the dregs of themselves, where they don't even know they want anything?

I find myself becoming a lover of souls. And I want to round all the souls up and grab their shoulders and shake them and tell them how much Jesus loves them and how rich life can be. But I haven't thought of a socially appropriate way to do that. So we'll see what happens. It wasn't socially appropriate for David to go dancing in the streets in his linen ephod, either.

That Sunny Field

Ah, school. Well, if Anonju wants to hear about it...

I haven't blogged about my classes at Kilgore, not because I don't like them or they aren't noteworthy, but rather because I like them very much and they have a way of gobbling up my minutes, hours, and days. Before I know it the week has darted by and I've forgotten to wave.

But I love it. And here is something I wrote last week. It didn't show up on my blog because I had other plans for it which I also got too busy for.

It is now my first full-time semester at Kilgore College, and I’m getting along famously. The classes are generally engaging, the teachers generally helpful, and the homework generally manageable. Three days per week I pit my wits and will against the likes of algebraic functions. I maneuver the maze of Reconstruction in the 1860’s. I hear second hand and see first hand the social differences of the East Texas area. And more.

After several years of subjugation to high school algebra and the lingering sense of defeat, I decided this is the semester to revolt. So I am waging my personal revolution of sweat and blood on this dreaded subject, and maybe I’m winning.

However, my greatest downfall is distraction. Even on the foreign field of algebraic notation, my English-loving eye catches glimpses of the Roman alphabet and falls head over heels. Letters begin to form imaginary words, and my mind is floating up, up, and away, far beyond the battleground.

I love geography. I love foreign places, the names that roll off the tongue. I love imagining the exotic scenery. So when Ms. Verheyden, my algebra instructor, asks us to picture the Cartesian Plain, I am in my element.

What visions come to mind! I see no staid and stoic graph carefully squared. Instead, my living inward theater launches the scene of a grand desert, stretching to the azure horizon and painted in ocher and orange. Cactus and scrub are everywhere, and in the middle stands Ms. Verheyden, lassoing algebraic functions and reeling them home to their proper plots. And, of course, there is yet another gap in my memory of graphing functions.

This sense of imagination will go far in English class, I’m sure of it. However, one cannot graduate on English credits alone. The distractions do not stay behind when I move on to U.S. history. I’m truly interested in the details of Post Civil War Reconstruction. But when Mr. Seals mentions the reconstruction of Afghanistan today, I’m lost again. My page of thorough history notes is bordered by scribbled blue questions about Afghanistan, and my mind is roaming the Hindu Kush mountains.

Before government, I light for a moment on the bench outside the classroom to devour half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This is standard operation for me at 11:00 am, as my new friend, Paige, knows. She is always there when I sit down, and last time she said she was going to bring a sandwich, too. “Good,” I tell her, “We can sit here and eat our sandwiches together.”

In government, we watch a documentary about Texas. The Lone Rangers are in it. Immediately, my mind drifts to The Lord of the Rings, and I picture Aragorn, Son of Arathorn, standing rugged and ragged on a lonely hill in Middle Earth. Eowyn or Arwen, Eowyn or Arwen? I ponder.

After class I visit the restroom just to check on my hair, which I swear is occupying more space in cubic feet than it was earlier this morning. I washed it and left home, and I know I could feel it growing during class as it dried. My hair is an unstoppable force. If only we could harness this energy, we wouldn’t have to freak out about saving the rainforests. I am sure I could get all my homework done, plus some.

No amount of energy, however, could reign in the wandering thoughts that liven up my day. Down in my heart, in a sunny field where my imagination runs wild, I am quite sure of this.

Take it Personally

I noticed with some alarm that I haven't blogged in a very long time, but I can't bring myself to be unhappy about it. In fact, there is little I can bring myself to be unhappy about right now.

The snow is almost gone now. The spontaneous holiday has ended. The snowmen in every yard in the neighborhood have expired, and the Great Blizzard of 2010 has retreated into history. But what a time! Truly, I don't think we've ever had six inches of snow here in my lifetime.

That somewhat short lifetime reached 21 years the day the flakes started falling. I thought it was my own personal birthday snowstorm, but so did everyone else in East Texas.

It was Ethan's snow because he got a snow boat in January and has been praying for snow for the past five months. It's Iryna's snow because she was missing Ukraine so much. The snow belonged to the 9:00 MWF college algebra class of Kilgore College because an exam was scheduled and I know that even the most staunchly irreligious must have uttered a few petitions. With just a few exceptions, we all must have felt personally privileged, like the children of a loving parent who each think they are the particular favorite.


Funny how snow made the whole world stop. My whole family stayed home for the day. Mom made eggplant parmesan for my birthday. Gracie and Lauren came over. Connor drove us to prayer and we prayed happily, then returned home and went outside to sled and snowball in the fresh white inches of snow after dark.

We built a snowman named Herb. He had a really nice smile and I really liked him, but we decided to hook him up with Gracie because he was taller than her. But there were some misgivings. He was a cool guy, but I was sure he'd have a meltdown before the wedding. Sure enough, by the next morning, although the snow hadn't melted, he had completely fallen apart. Cold feet, you know.

The next day, certain relatives of mine hooked a row boat to my grandfather's tractor and gave a new meaning to the term "snow boat." I wasn't there, but apparently Connor drove the tractor around the field yelling maniacally.

I may not have been there for the tractor experiment, but I was involved in using the boat as a bobsled to slide down the hill into the pond. Unfortunately I don't have the pictures of that right now. Only the people in the front got uncomfortably wet. The people in back got pond algae slung on them from the front paddlers. In a few years, this sport could make it into the Olympics.


The power was out for 31 hours, but I suffered only minimal internet withdrawals. The whole thing turned into an unexpected three day holiday in the midst of a hectic semester. I know it's nothing for the folks who get a foot of snow on a regular basis, but when you only see it once in two decades, it's valid grounds for a regional holiday!