My resolution this year is to read a book every week. So far, I am doing pretty good. Why, though, I decided to kick off my fifty-two books for this year with a string of dystopias, I am still not sure. Anyways, I started with a classic and read George Orwell's 1984 (I do realize I mentioned this not many posts ago). As I said before, I did not like it.
None-the-less, I learned something from 1984. What is more is that I learned something about myself: and that is the fact that I need a moral center. A wall to run against so I can know what is wrong and what is right. I want there is be truth, reality. Facts that I cannot reason away even if I do not like them. 1984 is a book about a world constructed without truth. There are no real facts, no absolutes. The mind is trained to believe what Big Brother claims to be reality. If one moment the authorities say 2+2=5, then 2+2=5. It always has been and it will be as long as Big Brother needs it to be. Winston Smith questions the realities he has been lead to believe and as a result is re-educated.
To believe lies takes work though. And Winston works desperately to believe in the lies that he knows are lies. "The arithmetical problems raised, for instance, by such a statement as "two and two make five" were beyond his intellectual grasp. It needed also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors. Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain."
The fence of morality, of truth, of reality itself, can be uncomfortable at times, but no one can deny its necessity. To deny that gravity pulls things down is more than plain stupid, it is dangerous. Truth is rarely convenient, and yet, I cannot live without it. With all of the unpleasantness of 1984, it at least reminded me of that.
There is one thing everyone in this world can agree on, everyone wants to be loved. Even the most metallic of hearts can be melted. Love is one the most wonderful gifts a body can receive, and one of the greatest gifts a body can give.
Love is tricky though. To love means, at times, to be hard. Last week, I read through the book of I John. Usually when I read through the book, I tend to pay attention of I John 3:16, which says, "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." Verses about dying tend to be eye-catching. But as I continued reading chapter four, the verses following stuck out. "Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in His presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything." (I John 3:18-20).
Christians talk a lot about love because it is universal. Sometimes we talk about love at the cost of the truth. Everyone loves love, while the truth is often unpopular. John that we belong to the truth. It is the truth that allows to show love. To show love may be to tell someone they are wrong; to tell them that the thing that makes them happy is killing them; to tell them they are literally going to hell. It is far from pleasant to do those things. It is certainly not nice. God does not ask to be nice though. Kind, yes. Loving, yes. And to be loving and kind does not mean side-stepping sticky issues because they are uncomfortable. It means gently and relentlessly presenting our fellow men with the truth when it hurts them and us.
That clichéd title was born from a lack of other ways to say what it was that I did do this week. For that I truly apologize.
Sunday morning, I woke up a pushed some orange cinnamon rolls into the oven. I liked them, but my brothers did not, so whether I make them again or not is yet to be seen.
Then, on Sunday afternoon, I started George Orwell's 1984. I really did not like it, and I am thinking about recording a vlog so I can ramble about it in a way that is impossible to do while writing.
Tuesday, my best friend and I got together, and she gave me the most wonderful birthday present:
a storm-trooper helmet bank.
Wednesday morning, I helped start a fire.
Friday, I made a beautiful bone-in roast. You know the kind: perfectly medium, falling off the bone, so tender you can cut it with a fork, and seasoned so you taste the meat in all its glory. Okay, maybe is was a little underdone. All the same, there was nothing left but the bone.
Today, after receiving numerous emails from Dominos advertising the cookie-marble brownie, I attempted to make one. It was not the best, but I am definitely going to try and make it again.
Last year, on my birthday, I did a very blogger-like thing and wrote about twenty things I had learned in the past twenty years. When I published that post, I assumed that writing what I had learned in the past years would become an annual birthday tradition. This year, my birthday rolled around sooner than I expected though. And I could have posted twenty-one clichéd things I had learned in the past year, but something about that seemed really fake this year. It is not that last year's post was fake. It is just that I am in no way a lifestyle blogger, and that kind of post did not seem like something I would do anymore. I am a nerd who likes to share her opinions about everything under the sun with the internet.
I did learn a lot last year. As I oh-so-eloquently stated in one post, I learned that to be hopeful you must be intentional. I also re-learned that nothing lasts forever. I mean, God is eternal, and so is the human soul, but there were things in my life that I took for granted would always be there. Friends, marriages, life itself. I did know that all of those things had the potential to go away, but I never expected them to. It is not that bad things have never happened before, it is just that more of them seem to have come from my fellow human beings this past year.
Change is inevitable. Its leaves behind memories both good and bad. Last year I learned to remember to hope. I also learned to let the good past go because though it may be good, it is the past. God has me living today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. As I live between yesterday and tomorrow, I am learning to trust that no matter what the past had, and no matter what the future holds, God will help me in the step I take in this moment. And learning that is so much more worthwhile than learning coffee is the elixir of life.
Somehow, 2015 crept away and 2016 came to take its place. I've celebrated the coming of the New Year and traced my resolutions onto the pages of my journal. Because of the time I spent with my cousins, I did not take a picture everyday, but I did take a picture nearly every day. So here goes.
Monday I finished reading Farmer Giles of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien was nothing short of a genius. Farmer Giles of Ham shows just how rich and varied his talent was. In it, Tolkien tells a satirical fairy-tale in the same vein of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper. Farmer Giles' is not the only reluctant hero to whose story Tolkien told, but it is perhaps the funniest. He uses even the difficult vocabulary as a device for humor. In addition to being a humorous work by Tolkien, it is also a relatively quick read. All in all, it is a wonderfully enjoyable book.
Tuesday, I got to hang out with my cousins before they set out for home. In addition to our scavenger hunt in the mall, we ate pizza, played heads-up, and attempted to the 7-second challenge.
Wednesday, I started brining a turkey for New Year's Eve.
Thursday, I forced our party guests to be prop-assistants as I attempted to take a very pinterest-esque picture. They were all great sports, even if the picture is fodder for a "nailed-it" picture series.
Okay, maybe it's not so bad.
Friday, I made more stretchy pants.
And today, some of my little brothers and I made cards. Because how else are you going to kill time with an eight-year-old, a six-year-old, and a four-year-old.
And so went my week!
Here I now leave you with a song I have been rocking out to since last year and waited until the beginning of this year to post on my blog.
