A lot is going on lately. Not that my postings reflect that, but so it is. I'm very possibly starting a book club with my church through their life group program. It will only last a few months, but I can't shake the notion we should do something life-shattering, like read Till We Have Faces and The Greater Trumps. I've no idea how people outside a course in Modern Mythology will take such literature. And I've never been in a book club, though I've talked about having one for ages. I'm an arrogant reader, though, and my shelves of unread books are legion, so I can't stomach the notion of joining a book club in which I am not a principle selector of the literature. I've tried to get over this arrogance for a while now, and I just can't manage it. It seems too impractical to overcome it.

Meanwhile, I've had something 'social' going on every day for the last week, and more to come for the next several days. I don't think I have a real day off until next Thursday, though I suddenly don't regret this. I look back on all the days I haven't gone into work in the last two years, and I see a trail of waste. It's not that curling up on the couch with a good book is a waste. It's everything else I do and do not do that has curdled inside me.

And as many people can attest to, I have become a very selfish person in the last two years. Perhaps I was selfish before, but I was usually aware of it and sorry for it, and I put myself out of my own way to be present and available for others. Now, I avoid people whenever possible and consider it a drudge when I'm made to associate with them for any length of time. There are the few exceptions to this rule (I will not name them, though I hope they know who they are), but my willingness to set aside my own time for theirs is still more selfishness. Because I enjoy them. It requires no effort to be with them.

All this to say, I am willing to put forth the effort. I am tired of being my own only company, I am regretful of all that has come from my solitude, and I recall to mind Loving people with a renewed hope. I also remember reading something... was it in the Screwtape Letters?... that said real prayer for others involves specifics. Okay, so it didn't say that exactly, but that was the essence of it. That you're less likely to be honestly concerned for someone if you're praying for their eternal significance than if you are praying for their rheumatism to be healed. Well, I have a little trouble with that, because I generally think in enormous, vague, cosmical terms. But I was reminded that God does care about these things - dry skin, a wheezy car, not getting enough hours at work - and he wants to work in us through them.

I could go on, but I will soon start to ramble, and Mom already has her shoes on. To PV we go, to ready the classroom and be Useful Productive Members of Society.

love and peace.....