I am a Monad

I began this blog on Monday, May 17th, 2010, right around the end of my freshman year of college. Here's an excerpt from my first post:

"Female. 19. Follower of Christ. College student. Ridiculously interested in learning. Everything. Reading. Everything. Writing. Artistic ventures. Music: vocal and instrumental. I journal, I essay, I expound my personal life's philosophy for the world. "

Some of these things are still true. I am female. I am a Christ follower. I am still in school, although graduate seminary has replaced college, which would presuppose a love of learning, reading, and writing. I research, I journal, I write and write and rewrite. I think and begin the process over again.

In other ways, I am drastically removed from my 19 year old self. When I was 19, as you will see from some of the older posts on this blog, I was confused, lost, insecure, and mourning the lost safety of my sheltered childhood. At 19, I had a much firmer grasp on God and theology than I do now and than I ever expect to have again. At 19, I was still months away from my first real faith crisis, my first boyfriend, my first drink, my first solo vacation.

In many ways I still feel like a monad:

"Why monads? Our dear friend Gottfried Leibniz proposed monads as simple creatures which contain within them the course of the world and all the possible choices each individual could make. I am small and insignificant: no one knows me or cares about my writing. But maybe someday they will. Maybe someday I will take my potentials and turn them into actuals. After all, I'd hate for my monads to get bored and leave me, wouldn't you?

I am a monad, and I choose to participate in my own reality."

These things are still true: I want to say something that matters. I want to be an active participant in my life.

Except now I'd like you to participate with me.



As a disclaimer: I thought long and hard about either beginning a new blog entirely, or deleting all previous entries. I wanted my blog name--I feel very attached to these monads after all these years. Ultimately, I chose to leave most of them up, because I think it's interesting and important to remember where I started and to see the progress I've made. I would not currently defend many of the positions I wrote about. Of the positions I DO still hold, I would probably choose to express them much differently than I did. During the process of "tidying up" this blog, I made small changes to several entries to make them read more smoothly, but I did not change any ideas.

I suppose this disclaimer is asking you to give 19 (and 20 and 21) year old Elizabeth a bit of grace due her age and inexperience. I'm working on the same goal.

Mercy

Is this your idea of mercy, Lord?
Is this the best you can do for us,
For your people, who struggle and
Toil and cry and yell?
We work and we work and we search after you
And all we receive in return are
Broken hearts
Closed doors
Hopes destroyed.
Is this your idea of mercy?

Is this your idea of mercy, Lord?
Is this what you had planned for us
In your sovereignty?
We, who have left houses and fields,
Family and friends to follow you?
You take and you take and still you want more,
Unsatisfied in your quest for all of us,
Every part of us
Everything we've built, everything we've done
(we did it for you).
Is this your idea of mercy?

Is this your idea of mercy, Lord?
That all we have be shattered?
Endings, with no beginnings in sight?
For losses, failures, insufficiencies?
Is this your idea of mercy?

Beautiful

When I was working at City of Refuge, one of my daily tasks was to accompany another staff member on his route to pick up children from the community. Our fifteen passenger van careened around tight curves and narrow roads as our driver yelled, “Roller coaster!” which was his passengers’ cue to put their hands in the air and scream. In his van, I came to terms with my inevitable death many times. The children loved him. I, not so much.

That summer was one of paradox. I remember the shock I felt on our first morning (a shock that never really went away) when we turned a corner and there it was, filling our horizon. The Georgia Dome. As we traveled our bus route, I remember thinking, “What must it be like to grow up beneath the shadow (literally) of such wealth?” The children in the English Avenue community, Vine City and Joseph E. Boone are poor—food stamps, drugs, low education levels, out-of-wedlock children; every negative stereotype you associate with inner city Atlanta is true about this area. And they live within walking distance of a land of excess, where paying $180 for a ticket to a football game is a thing people do. Midtown—yuppie downtown Atlanta—is a short bus ride away. And these children and their families are struggling to live hand to mouth in the shadow of the Georgia Dome.

I’ve left Atlanta. I moved away and it broke my heart to leave the children and the city. I live under the shadow of the mountains now and it’s beautiful, just as beautiful as Simpson Street.