such a lot of world
It is a fine evening in Nashville which, after a hard day and good rest, finds me sitting down to a bowl of potato-cucumber-squash-onion-kohlrabi (I don’t know what to call it, but those are the main vegetables…) soup and a Paternoster monograph on Hebrew poetry. It occurs to me that one reason I make soup so often is that it seems easier to use as many ingredients as possible in one dish than to prepare everything separately. Well, that is fine.
I read a few pages of Nicholas Lunn’s work, then skimmed section headings and the bibliography. I’ll have to look at Robert Alter’s book and Adele Berlin’s to get more of what I want, I think. I want to learn to distinguish between poetry and prose in biblical Hebrew, without depending on translators to do it for me. This is important because it may affect my interpretation of some passages.
Inter-library loans have to be one of the best things in the world.
Earlier this week Melanie drove all the way from Murfreesboro just to bring me supper. She’d made eggplant parmesan with eggplant from her garden; she also brought homemade zucchini bread, made from homegrown zucchinis! We didn’t eat the zucchini bread with the eggplant, but I had some homemade wheat bread (twas the Clark Kent bread!) that we had with a tapenade spread. We also ate peaches my dad grew, and I made a cherry cobbler with homegrown cherries. Homemade homegrown everything!! And excellent, uplifting, refreshing friend-time.
Melanie was named after the character in Gone With the Wind, and she lives up to her name.
I tried making fudge tonight. I failed. I had raspberries in chocolate fondue, though, and a thick rich chocolate sauce on my cherry cobbler.
I spend some time editing…wrestling…then lay in the hammock and sang “Moon River” to the stars. The three stars I can see.
A friend sent me a Facebook message asking 1) What do you want from life? and 2) What are you living for? He’s collecting answers, apparently. I love when people ask me significant questions! This is what I said:
1) Can I quote Thoreau here? “…to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life, to put to rout all that [is] not life, and not, when I…come to die, discover that I [have] not lived.” I want night skies crammed with stars, but also the sounds of voices and even motors drifting up from busy city streets. I want friendship and love and to know that I’m making a difference, and that it’s a good difference. I want to know and love God more deeply. I want a lot of adventures that turn into great stories…the funnier, the better. I want a lot of fresh blackberries. I want exhilaration and joy and also the grounding wisdom that comes (or can come) out of times of depression. I want to be learning and challenged my entire life.
2) For love. I don’t mean this romantically at all, though it might sound that way. I mean God and Christ - and blood and tears, when that’s what love entails. Lately I’ve realized that love is quite possibly the most difficult thing in the world. Beyond my own experience, I have the story of God’s love (including Jesus’ sacrifice) to back that up. But love is the way. I am certain that love is the way. And for truth. I want to always be living truth out (maybe that is what love is) and always learning and growing in my understanding and articulation of truth. Knowledge isn’t everything, and action is more important than the ability to articulate something, but well-articulated truth goes a long way with me (as you might guess), and with most people, I think. Also, it’s beautiful, and understanding grounds action. The Word creates the world.
