Newness

     The last six months have been all of newness. Firstly, I need to rescind things I have written in past posts that contradict my current beliefs. I won't point them out individually, but they must be viewed with a grain of salt. When I wrote every post on this blog antecedent to this one, I was in a place of oscillating confusion, doubt, anger, and fear. I didn't have a solid belief structure to hold my mind together. Because of this, my mind was free to wander to all sorts of ridiculous conclusions. I will not erase my past posts, and the various elements of my thoughts that I now find to be to a degree unwise and also to a degree heretical.
     Following my return home from Cheltenham, England, I knew I wanted to be a Christian. I had doubted it before, even encapsulating much of 2010, but following a full day spent in prayer and study the Sunday before my Wednesday flight home, I was decided. I entered into my last semester at Malone this past January still seeking which church would be most profitable to my significantly-less-visible-than-a-mustard-seed-faith. I nearly lost hope by March. But by late February/early March I felt inside me the desire to give something a second chance- the Orthodox Church. I had gone in February 2010 to a Divine Liturgy (Sunday morning service) but didn't like it. In fact, my going then may have contributed to the general "beef" I had against Christianity altogether and harbored for another nine months. The point is that I felt I needed to go again. To make a short story long, I went with some friends who hadn't given up on me the whole time, and at this point I am about to become a Catechumen, essentially I'm in about a week going to be formally entering the Church, as the process usually takes some time.
     What I was initially drawn to was the spirit of worship at the church I have been attending- Holy Assumption Orthodox Church. The reverence is astounding- I can, as I have never been able to do, regularly feel the presence of God in the chanting and litany. I would have scoffed at such a statement only half a year ago. Becoming Orthodox from a Protestant upbringing isn't as much denying what you used to believe as it is supplementing it. "Adding" of course bears the completely wrong connotations: the reason I avoided the word. My past understanding of God and of my responsibility as a Christian has been "fattened up," as it were; I have been delighted to discover the wealth of wisdom found in writers from the earliest days of the Church. In my period of doubt, I would have scoffed at those same writers, and I'm sure in a journal entry at some point I wrote that now that we have such a better understanding of the universe and the anthropological and psychological and sociological (at this point you can add any number of adjectives that fit) inter-workings of the human race that those past writers' work has become null and void. Essentially, I thought that in the face of Post-Modernism, nothing of worth could be grasped from the Pre-Moderns. Now, however, my perspective is leaning the other way. More of that to come.

Home, Christmas, Headaches

I've been waking up with headaches fairly often this past week. I've been attacked with continual waves of zits. Must be stress. I still have 5 papers waiting to get done for my classes in England, though I've been home for a week and a half. I'm going to go to Camp Gideon today for a day or two to write my next short story, though I have a feeling this one will be longer. It will encompass everything.
I've been building its structure in my mind for about four months, though I've only been really focusing on it for about three weeks. I think it will be my best work yet. No, I know so. I just need to get away from society to write it. I was so isolated in England for so long that being thrust back into American culture and everything that used to be familiar has changed my perspective on those very things.
This story will be a testament to change, change forced upon us.

Last few hours in England

Well its midnight, and our taxi will hopefully pick us up at around 1:45am to take us to the coach station. Then to Heathrow and then home.
Its really odd having only a little time left before I leave. At one point, going home felt like it was years away. Now its only a few hours away.
Coming home will be accompanied by changes. Lots and lots of them, and I've never really been big on change. So it should be interesting, to say the least.
Anyways, I'll gladly take all the change that's coming just so I can have home-cooked meals. Beats cereal, apples, and hummus every day.

E+87

If you haven't caught the number thing, this is my 87th day in England. A week from now, I'll be on a plane across the Atlantic, if everything works out. I did a lot of packing yesterday, about an hour and a half's worth. I figure the more packing I get done this weekend, the more I can concentrate on finishing up papers this coming week, so I don't have to do them in Ohio, as they aren't due until January.
Its very strange to be packing. But as I remember, it took me well over a week to pack for the way over, so I may as well take my time for packing for coming home.
So I haven't done much else, other than write papers and read. Read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse last week, and I'm about halfway through A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. I'm really interested to see where Lewis takes his argument, because in this book there is not the structures rationalist thought, but a broken man yelling at God, entertaining views of God as the Comic Sadist, questioning not his belief in God, but his view of God as a loving and essential good being. In both of these fantastic works, or at least in the former and what I've read in the latter, they struggle with the nature of the divine being, but are forced to recognize that there is no way to know. However, just because there is no way to know why God lets certain terrible things happen to humanity, and because God can never be understood, that does not mean that (or from what I personally believe and am drawing from the mentioned books) the only way to God is a leap of faith: I think too many Christians are too emphatic on faith, faith, faith- I know faith is important, but I don't think God would have given us these brains if we couldn't use them and explore the nature of being and of God. I think a leap of faith is part of it, but try to imagine this image: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when he has to take his leap of faith to find the Holy Grail, over a bottomless chasm. Then, when he does, a bridge appears. Now imagine that instead of taking that step, Dr. Jones had put a little more thought and effort into his decision- he had read through the Bible, talked with people much more wise than he, read the works of holy people- he would have been able to build stones across to form part of his bridge. Keep the physics out of it. He builds a bridge across. Each stone is a different thing he has learned about God, such as trusting God, believing in God, the nature of prayer, faith, salvation, unchanging divine beneficence, until he gets to the keystone, the one that holds it all together. That could be his leap of faith.
Anyways, I'm excited to go home. I miss it. Readjusting should be interesting. But at least I won't have jokers pounding their rap music at 2am like last night. I hope.

E+82

Finished my two large papers of the end of the semester last night. Only have a handful of really small papers left. Doing some reading. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Planning some Henry James after that. Short works. Haven't done much creative writing of my own for the past week or two, other than a really dumb story wrote last monday. I feel like I've exhausted all my ideas, but I know that's never possible.
Anyways, less than two weeks left in England. Coming home the 18th. Wow, that's only 12 days. At one point it felt like home was a year away. I am ready to come home. I think when I get home I'll stay in my room for a week and sleep all day in my bed that doesn't have awful springs poking into my back like the one here. I've gotten used to the springs. Listening to Bon Iver.
It's an exceptionally foggy day in Cheltenham. Maybe I'll just sleep all day.

E+74

Only 20 days until I come home to Canton Ohio. Now that my England trip is finishing up, I'm motivated to look back over the past ten weeks. The past few days I've been doing lots of that, actually. Haven't been getting too much school work done, and goodness knows I have enough to do.
Although this semester has been somewhat lonely in my little room, if I could do it over again I would definitely come to England again. The curiosity of what I would have encountered and learned would have been too great to stay home. Now I know. I know what it is to be in a new situation with new people and a new milieu. I know what it's like to be disconnected from my life in Canton. I've had so much time to delve into my own mind and my own thoughts, and transform those discoveries into creative ore.
I've encountered so many new things in the worlds of art, philosophy, theology, literature, music, and history, to name a few. I've been getting into Russian classical composers more this semester than ever before. I've also learned how important peace and quiet can be for relaxed study and contemplation. In that respect, I dearly miss the quiet of my own space at home.

68th day in England

This weekend was wonderful. Went to Bath on Saturday with the BCA group, all the other Americans studying and living in England with me. We saw the Roman Baths and the famous Pump Room from Austen's Northanger Abbey. So cool to see all the Roman structures and artifacts from the area. Although most of the structure of the Roman Baths there was built within the last several hundred years, over a millennia after the Romans packed up and left, much of the original ruins remain, including tombs, skeletons, jewelry, etc. Saw the Bath Abbey, which was pretty incredible. There was also a fantastic band called "The Zen Hussies"playing in the street. Check them out.
Yesterday went to London with my friend Alex. Although most of the most important lines on the London Underground were shut down, we made our way from Victoria to Paddington to retrieve his lost iPod, which failed, so we went over to the East side, up by Old Street, and checked out some pretty awesome art studios in the bohemian-kind-of-colony in that area. We spent a little time in the British Museum, but I'm sure I could spend a week there and not see all there is to see. Saw the Rosetta Stone- I think that was the most notable thing I saw there, other than the Assyrian reliefs of the siege of Lachish in Israel. It was really cool to see those, because I was at Lachish this summer, and I saw the earthen siege ramp the Assyrians built to capture the city, which was one of Israel's strongest fortresses at the time. The relief showed the Assyrians marching up the siege ramp and defeating the Israelites, then enslaving them. Afterwards, we stopped at Trafalgar Square just to check it out. While there, I realized that London really does seem like the capital of the world; don't get me wrong, Washington D.C. is gorgeous, its just not the magnificent city London is. I suppose several thousand more years of development in London accounts for that.
We went to a Shisha place later on called Sara Cafe by Baker Street. Unfortunately we didn't go to the Sherlock Holmes museum. Next time. Sara's was great. Had a mint tea and it reminded me of Israel- only half a year ago I was just getting used to being abroad. That was only a six-week trip, and I've already been in England nearly ten weeks.
Today I went with some friends to Tintern Abbey and Chepstow Castle. Tintern Abbey was obviously wonderful, in its inspiration to Wordsworth to write a poem comparing his current situation in life to five years before he first saw it. The title of the poem suggests he was at a good vantage point to see the River Wye wind through Tintern and past the Abbey, so he was either on the other end of the vale, but more likely, I think, he was at the site of St. Mary's on the hill behind the Abbey. We walked up there, and saw that wonderful view which is described in the title to Wordsworth's poem. The church was built in the 1860's, though a St. Mary's has been there for hundreds of years. This one burnt in the 1970s, so now, like Tintern Abbey, all that remains are the walls, and its really quite Romantic- all overgrown and forgotten, next to a wonderfully creepy graveyard.
Chepstow Castle wasn't very far away- it was one of the first stone fortifications built in Britain and one of the few stone fortifications William the Conqueror commissioned upon his claim to the English throne in 1066- the main section of this castle is still visible, which was built then. However, there have been many additions through the hundreds of years since, mainly in the 13th-15th centuries. During the English Civil War in the mid 17th century, Crowmwell's forces battered the heck out of it with cannons, so it's pretty beat up, but nonetheless fascinating.
Got home tonight to add a few things up- found out that I have two papers due in two weeks, and then I have five papers due in late January-early February. Pretty bummed about that, as I will be in my next classes by then. I'll see what I can get done during Christmas break, though I'll probably be applying to grad schools then, if I don't give up first.
So this week will be researching for my papers. Probably won't get much creative writing or editing done any time soon.