Redemption

To redeem: to rescue, to save, to deliver.

More to come . . .

Bethel

"Out of my stony griefs Bethel I'll raise."
-Sarah Adams, "Nearer My God to Thee"

More to come . . .

Secrets of Myself

"What do you do?" someone innocently asks at some social function, not knowing that such a simple quetion causes my shoulders to tense and my mind to whirl. The answer won't be what they are expecting and I don't want to be categorized before they have a chance to get to know me. So, as some sort of odd defensive maneouver I become perversely literal. "What do you do?" they ask. "Teach," I answer. I also grade, consult, attend meetings, write, research, edit, advise, and numerous other activities, but teaching is at the heart of what I do and it is a safe answer. "Oh, what do you teach?" That's easy, "history." This is also safe as it seems like a perfectly respectable answer and conforms to the assumption that they have made and that I have done nothing to dispel that I teach in the public school system. So far we are on safe ground. When I am particularly skilled I can now turn the conversation to ask about what they do and we can avoid any follow-up questions until after they get to know me a bit. This mental gymnastics is ridiculous, but I can't seem to stop. And it makes me wonder why.

Foundations

I can see him clearly in my mind's eye. He has just settled down in his bedroom, a basement room with singularly unattractive green carpet and the coolness of eastern shadows - a place that was supposed to be a refuge - a place supposedly safely ensconced in his parents' dream home. And instead he finds himself staring at the ominous cracks in the wall. Cracks that don't need any metaphorical weight beyond their physical presence. They snake gracefully and menacingly up the southern wall, twining around the electrical socket like vines rising up to strangle out low-growing flowers. They are signs that the dream house is settling and subsiding like the weak and traitorous mud beneath it - slipping and canting to the side - taking with it the house and the dreams and leaving nothing but cracks.

The cracks in the wall would be painful enough if they were not accompanied by far worse - by emotional and mental turmoil that sent cracks and fissures through his mind and warned him that the dream house was not the only dream about to slide irretrievably into the sodden earth below.