Jonah

Now this is the best weather. Neither too bright nor too gloomy; neither too dry nor too wet. Lower 70s °F. Lightly breezy. Mostly (i.e., not completely) cloudy. Sporadically rainy, with t-storms at night. Much birdsong. Much comfort.

Remain this way!

Be like Quito!

Rats.

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The last few weekends, I’ve been invited by my pastor’s family to watch their daughters play soccer. They’re little; the style of play is clusterball. Even so, I can’t keep myself from analyzing the game, out loud.

“Will your children play in the youth leagues?” smiles my pastor’s wife, heroically optimistic. She’s my second-favorite person in the church.

“No, they won’t,” I say. “I wouldn’t want them growing up desiring to play for the U.S.”

She’s amused, because I mean it: I’m a man of principle.

The next weekend, I get a sunburn.

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In church, the sermon is about Jonah. I love that book. Jonah’s such a sulker.

Why doesn’t Jonah want to go to Nineveh? says my pastor. Is it because he’s afraid? No. Jonah’s not afraid.

I think: Jonah’s like, throw me overboard. He’s kind of a badass, in a grumpy (i.e., totally depressive) way.

Jonah doesn’t want God to show mercy, says my pastor. The book is about mercy. Redemption.

I know, I know.

Later, his wife speaks with me again. I tell her how much I love that book. “Remember, John-Paul, mercy,” she says. “Mercy.”

On cultivating one’s own garden

Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.
[Luke 12:27]

They know me? They like me?
[Dr. Seuss’s Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You?]

The best compliment I ever got was from the Romaniacs’ mother, the Dragon. Or rather it was from the Dragon’s husband, the Romaniacs’ father/chauffeur; but it was about the Dragon. What you need to understand is, I pretty much worship the Dragon. She’s beautiful and good and fierce, and she has no time for me.

One day I was at Popeyes with the chauffeur, and he said, “___ [the Dragon] really likes you.”

That was the compliment.

It wasn’t surprising, because I’d been noticing a softening in the Dragon’s (distant) face. Still, it was good to hear. The Dragon is not effusive. And she has no time for me.

After a few moments, I pulled myself together and said, “How long did it take for her to like me?” “Oh,” my friend said, “about four years.”

Four years.

Two things, I knew at once. First, what an achievement it’d been, getting liked (for who I was!) by the Dragon; all my demonstrations of intense, guileless integrity had finally started paying off. The second thing I knew was that for the rest of my life, with person after person, I’d have a tough row to hoe.

It’s so crucial to be liked, to have some appreciation given you; otherwise, like a shaded flower, you’ll wither and die. But for it to be meaningful, the appreciation can’t be grounded in falsehood. Your integrity must be complete. And that’s what makes the hoeing so very tough.

I write in order to be liked. Like Pontoffel Pock, I seek appreciation — affection — all over the world. These days I’ve been getting page views from Russia, from the Philippines, from Luxembourg. … They can’t all possibly be from real readers; I don’t know what robots they’re from. I don’t understand how the Internet works.

But sometimes I’ll get page views from Montana, from British Columbia, Romania, Ecuador. I can guess who those readers are. Those page views make me happy. And I get hundreds of views from Indiana, which warms my heart, even though I don’t track the different readers.

All this effort to be liked. And yet there’s One who sees perfectly through my guilelessness, who likes what He sees: despite my efforts, not because of them.

A plea for candor

Lovely weather; more time out of doors. I’m getting a farmer’s tan. So is Kenny.

K: “Lara says that a farmer’s tan is the most disgusting feature of the human body.”

JP (rolling eyes, rolling up sleeves): “Then I’m going to accentuate my farmer’s tan.”

We devise a scheme for improving our farmer’s tans: using a tanning bed to darken just our forearms and faces.

Then Lara comes into the apartment and tells Kenny how to dress. (Today they’ll be posing for “engagement” photos.) Goodbye, Kenny.

Not that I’d mind if a pretty young woman, say, Jennifer Lawrence from Silver Linings Playbook, came into my life and told me what to do. And I’d probably do most of it … though first I’d have fun arguing about it.

What I think people enjoy about the movie (what I enjoy about it) is that neither of the leads has a filter. They both specialize in saying uncomfortable truths. Oh, their honesty isn’t perfect: they strategically withhold stuff, and they tell lies. But their candor is exceptional. They don’t shy away from difficult subjects: they chase after them. They ask and say things that most viewers wish they themselves were brave enough to ask and to say. And they accept this about each other. And that is so, so rare. That’s what makes the movie a fairly tale.

People, this doesn’t have to be a fairy tale.

Be candid. Be accepting of candor.

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Lately I’ve been so worn out, I haven’t been able to take advice. … Criticism, I can bear. Advice, if it isn’t faultless (and usually it’s awful) leaves me anxious and annoyed. It keeps me awake at night. It drains me.

So don’t be all that candid. Or don’t be candid in a way that presupposes that you’ve figured everything out. Because you haven’t.

Thinskinnedness

Apologies! Nearly a week has passed and I just realized that I forgot to link to LM’s interview in Boston Review. The link has been inserted! And for good measure, here it is again!

So transfixed I was, I tracked down LM’s article “The Kindest Cut,” about kidney donors. (Here’s the online version … this reprint may be cheaper.) No, I’m not about to give up a kidney; right now I couldn’t. Just reading the article was harrowing enough for me.

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My semester has ended, and as usual I’m sentimental about it. (The last student I tutored was writing her final college paper.) I’ll have a short break, and then it’ll be back to the office for Summer Sessions I and II.

South Bend rejoices for springtime. It never seems trite to marvel at the green shoots, at the flowers, the birds, the increase of rain, the river’s rising. How easy to forget the winter! And yet this is the time for planning ahead, for calculating how to cope. God, this year remind me to make allowances for the coming leanness. Remind me that to harvest, I must now plant (though the sower and the reaper are not always the same). Forgive me how foolishly I’ve been living.

Some years ago a friend was beaming at another’s child, and I said to her [Quote:] You need to get your own damn baby. Well, now she has one, and it’s my turn to do the beaming. How can a creature resembling, alternately, a roasted chicken and Jabba the Hutt still be piercingly adorable? Such is the power of this child. And my adoration is reciprocated. :)

But yesterday I mimicked, a little too harshly, the child’s cooing, and made her cry. It shouldn’t still bother me. But it does.