March 8: God's Love Number Nineteen, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

Welcome to the last day of spring break.  Yes, tomorrow classes resume at the university, and then it's a full gallop toward final exams and graduation.  So, I'm taking a deep breath now, because it's going to be a bumpy ride for the next eight weeks.

Of course, I'm not complaining about teaching.  It's the one job I have that I truly love.  After this semester, I'm not quite sure what's going to happen.  A new English Department head has just been hired.  There's been none of the usual e-mails about class preferences for the fall semester.  At the end of April, if I don't have a signed contract (or at least the promise of one), I will lose my laptop, which will leave me computer-less for the spring and summer.  In short, there's a lot of uncertainty in the coming months.

But, for now, I have classes to teach.  Students I like.  An office.  A computer.  That's God's love number nineteen.

March 8, 2013:  Apply Myself, Stupid Question, Wailing Wall

A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I'm going to apply myself when I go back to school next September.  It's such a stupid question, in my opinion.  I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?  The answer is, you don't.  I think I am, but how do I know?  I swear it's a stupid question.

Say what you want about Holden, but he pretty much tells the truth.  Even when he's lying in the novel, he tells you he's lying.  The doctors want him to apply himself at school, but he can't make that promise.  As he says, "[H]ow do you know what you're going to do till you do it?"


I could tell you that I'm going to a tax appointment today.  I could say that I will clean my house, and, after that, write a new poem and finish reading a book.  I could also say that I will put together a script for an Easter sunrise service.  I plan to do all those things.  Am I going to apply myself to get all those tasks accomplished?  I am.  But, I know that, at the end of the day, some of those things will remain unfinished.  I'm in the same boat as Holden at the moment.

I attended a presentation last night.  Our pastor went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and he gave a talk about his experience.  There were pictures of the Church of the Nativity and the Sea of Galilee and the Grotto of Pan.  The picture that stuck with me the most, however, was a picture of people praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

There was the wall of Solomon's temple, and there were hundreds of people along the wall, cramming their prayer slips into the stone cracks and crevices, giving their worries and cares up to God.  I found the image quite moving.  I wish I could do the same, every day.  If I could write down one concern on a piece of paper (say "My tax appointment this afternoon" or "My daughter's dance tuition") and put it in my own private Wailing Wall, my life would be a lot less stressful.  Of course, that's what prayer is for.  I know that.  However, the physical act of writing down a worry, praying over it, and then letting it go seems very liberating.

Maybe that's what Holden needs.  He needs a Wailing Wall to let go of his cares.  In fact, that's what P.O.E.T.S. day is all about.  Letting go of troubles.  I don't have to be in Jerusalem to find the Wailing Wall.  The Wailing Wall is right in front of me, waiting.

Saint Marty simply needs to find a crevice big enough for all of his worries.

Even Presidents go to the Wailing Wall

Confessions of Saint Marty