Love.

I've been trying to concentrate on my dry homework reading for a few hours now and I can't. I must have something on my mind.

Of course I do. I always do. I was thinking that today was my last day in my "writing every day for a month" thing, but actually yesterday was. I counted wrong, but whatever. It seems I have more to say anyway even if I've already fulfilled my last obligation to myself.

I'm glad it's over, because time is growing more and more scarce while school is in session. I'll be laying low until mid-December. I've learned, I think, what I was meant to. And I've noticed a few things:

--Writing every day means poorer quality in general, with a few exceptions every once in a while;
--It's a lot harder to edit when you're just trying to crank thoughts out;
--Because of these two things, it's more vulnerable to put something out every day because it's not your best.

Valuable lessons/observations, I think. I'm glad I did this, it was right.

So, there's that on my mind and then there's one more thing....

I had a FaceTime visit with a friend in Alaska. I can hardly call her just a "friend" she's essentially my sister as we've been through a lot more together that I care to elaborate, but all that to say she knows me well.

I was apologizing to her for being so unresponsive and hard to get a hold of lately. I told her I felt like I've "dropped off the face of the planet" since law school started. Most of the time it's just easier to keep in touch with people on the surface, resorting to little texts or pictures or Facebook and such rather than really keeping in touch with those who know you deeply. Those conversations are longer, and more profound, naturally.

She laughed and told me not to worry.

"You've done a good job loving us, Traci, no one doubts that they're important to you. It's okay if you can't respond, we get it."

I actually could not have known until I heard this that I kind of needed to hear that. For two reasons, in fact. First, I have been feeling guilty. I feel as if I am a world and a half from where my head and heart were when I left Alaska and I've been having trouble reconciling that. Second, I needed to hear someone tell me I'd loved well.

This is why:

Frankly, for all the crazy places I go and stuff I do--academic or not--I want to be known for one thing above all: that I loved well. Sure, I'm getting my law degree and who knows where God's taking me and where I'll end up living eventually, but someday when I'm gone I want to be remembered by how well I loved, not by my accomplishments. Really, even now I want that to be the first thing that comes to mind when someone thinks of me. Because that's "to live is Christ, to die is gain."* Who cares what school I go to and for what.

Make no mistake, the kind of love I'm talking about is not the kind that always gives "warm fuzzies." I'm talking about the just kind of love that points love's object in the right direction. The kind of love that will do what it takes to see people come to the life they are meant to have. The kind of love that desperately and sacrificially wants to see His Kingdom come and His Will be done.** The kind of love that will do whatever it takes to see that happen.

The kind of love that leaves a taste for Eternity in your mouth...so that you'll never be satisfied until you taste that whole, beautiful banquet of the Ever After that awaits every one that dares to open, read, and accept the invitation. The kind of love that's not really about me. The kind of love that's real.

I think it's safe to say that Emily had not contemplated all of this when she so generously validated me this afternoon. And it's safe to say I've not entirely lived up to my aspirations by any means. But the encouragement made me think again about that which I want my life to be most deeply marked. My soul echoes:

"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing...."***

If I study the laws of men and of nations, if I read the words of minds great and greater, if I have knowledge, if I have resource, if I have possessions...but know not how to love well with, it's all for naught.

Wow...yeah I guess I had some stuff on my mind. With that, I'm signing off for a while, probably. My personal journal needs some attention now. And so do my studies.

*Philippians 1:21
**Matthew 6:10
*** I Corinthians 13:1-3

Great Minds

Tomorrow this commitment to write every day for a month will be done. I'll be glad.

I've learned from this. I've learned I don't always have something to say. And when I don't have much to say, I start talking about the events of my every day life instead of ideas.

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

This is attributed to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. I think there's a great level of truth to this.

But I don't know if I'll ever be great. One cannot force themselves to not talk about events or people simply because they want to be great. This defeats the meaning of the statement above.

What it means is that idea is level on which a great mind resides and functions, and so forth.

Like I said, I don't know that I'll ever be great. And I'm okay with that. But anyway, I've learned from this experience. :)

(Day 31)*

*It seems I miscounted...I'm not surprised due to my frazzled state.

Some Moments

I suppose that we are changing every moment we live. Our experiences blend the the science of our very construction and we change from moment to moment.

But then there are those times when that change is made more swift by a more peculiar moment: a situation, a word, a gesture.

It's in those moments, sometimes, when you know you're changing. Sometimes you don't, but sometimes you do.

Something happens and all of the sudden words, or actions, or a scene begins to meet your consciousness and begins to register. And sometimes in those moments you know you'll never be the same. That something just changed.

Like, when you're hanging upside down in a vehicle, wondering if you're alive. Like, when you just found out what your LSAT score is. Like, when you find out Grandpa passed away--and you hear your dad sobbing, asking if you can come home.

Yes, of course.

Or, someone writes you a letter.

These moments mark you and change you and shape you--and the common denominator between these moments is that they are most often entirely out of your control. They just happen to you, and you can do nothing to stop them.

And you realize this, sometimes, when you're in the middle of them. You're in the situation, stunned or not, for better or for worse, and trying to dig down deep and know how to respond--

That's when your true character shows. That's when true integrity is put to the test.

And then the test endures: how do you face this change every day, for the long term?

Well, usually the event, the word, the conversation, the scene gets played over and over in your imagination. Or you read the letter over and over. Wondering if it's real, and remember at the same time that it's truer than true. For better or for worse.

And you can't change it. So you keep thinking about it, remembering, reading.

And it comes back, I think, after longer intervals. But by the time one thing begins to heal another wound is inflicted.

And maybe someone's walking around with a wound you inflicted and you have no idea. And therefore can't fix it.

Time does heal. They say this and it's true. But they forget to mention that time is not always kind.

(Day 30)

Authors.

I found out today that Harper Lee is a descendant of Robert E. Lee. I'm related to him as well.

This means that I'm related to: Mary Barrett Browning, Charles Dickens (by marriage), Ralph Waldo Emerson (if I did my research correctly) and now Harper Lee.

I apparently it's in my blood to write.

I should do that instead of law school...

Just kidding.

It's hard to write anything on the days when I'm at school from 8 in the morning till 9 and night.

That's all.

(Day 29)

The Library and Chile

I love my job at the library. I love being around books, I love the research, I love watching everyone come in and out of the library. I love the vantage point and the work.

But today I was talking to one of the international LLM students who is a regular at the library. He had an accent so I asked where he was from. Chile. I said I'd always wanted to go there. He said I should come. He and his wife would show me around. I asked him what the best part about Chile was...he answered with this and my jaw dropped:

Torres del Paine National Park. I want to go there someday.

Just wow.

(Day 28)

I've been thinking today about the word "ignorance." I guess maybe because I just finished To Kill a Mockingbird.

ignorance

noun ig·no·rance \ˈig-n(ə-)rən(t)s\

: a lack of knowledge, understanding, or education : the state of being ignorant

Embedded in the word is the smaller locution "ignore." In fact, the construction of the word "ignorance" taken at face value would suggest, rather than the above definition, an actual species of refusal to pay attention to something.

When you ignore someone, you intentionally to do not attend to them. There is intention involved:

ignore

verb ig·nore \ig-ˈnȯr\

: to refuse to show that you hear or see (something or someone)
: to do nothing about or in response to (something or someone)

Obviously, the word "ignorance" has taken on the meaning that it has now. The Online Etymology Dictionary has little to add about how this happened.

ignorance (n.) 

c. 1200, from Old French ignorance (12c.), from Latin ignorantia "want of knowledge" (see ignorant).

But I guess my point is less about the origins of the word and rather what it has to teach us now. In an age when technology gives us knowledge and information at our fingertips to the vast (and admittedly overwhelming) extent that it does, we have a responsibility to not ignore knowledge and ignore others. I'm no saint in this aspect. There's so much I've chosen not to know--whether it is an active or passive choice. And of course I'm not saying that we cannot be responsible to know all there is to know.

What I am saying is that I think that the technologically progressive nature of the society in which we lives places on us, as partakers in and citizens of it, a greater responsibility than past generations to be informed and to not be "ignor-ant" of what is going on in the lives, communities, countries and globe around us.

Today, I think ignorance is a choice. Perhaps it has always been to some degree, but I think it's even more of a choice now that it has ever been.

Let us not ignore. Let us be reasonable about the knowledge and the extent to which we pursue it, but let us not ignore.

(Day 27)

To Kill a Mockingbird

I don't know how this novel ended up being omitted entirely from my education till now, but this was assigned reading for a class in law school and I'm so glad. The story is amazing and I found that I resonated with this story and the way it was told on so many levels (including but not limited to):

-As an American that still witnesses grievous vestiges of racism today;
-As a woman who lives in the blessed (thought still imperfect) aftermath of a feminist revolution;
-As a person who still remembers what it was like to be a child, and learn both beautiful and ugly things about the world around her;
-As a student of the law;
-As a sister;
-As a daughter;
-As a human.

Atticus' love for his children, household (Calpurnia included), community and his respect for human dignity is consistent throughout all areas of his life in this story, whether or not this love and respect was consistent with societal--even legal--norms. I think it was this consistency that I found the most admirable. There are some people that just seem to "get it." Atticus' character is of that breed. But he's not perfect, we see some of his weaknesses too.

But apart from the beautiful treatment of the main social issue that the book aims to address, the other thing I think I resonated with the most was the way Atticus interacts with his daughter: he lets her be her. And she begins to grow up able to think for herself as a result.

That said, I love the voice of his daughter telling the story, it deepens the narrative in so many ways, though one of the most poignant may be that we never know the change we are affecting and who is watching us and being molded by what they see in us. Our actions shape future generations more than we know--even if change comes far slower than we hoped.

I could say so much more, but I'll save it for class on Wednesday. Suffice it to say this is a must read and I'm sorry I hadn't experienced this amazing piece till now.

(Day 26)