Why I Love Sunday Mornings

It’s 4 a.m. Monday. Lee and I went to bed at midnight, and I have been lying in bed, awake, for the past four hours. The alarm clock is staring me right in the face, and feeling hopeless, I get up. Maybe doing something will get me sleepy again. Monday is my “get things done day,” so it is frustrating to know that I’m going to be tired today—I won’t be as productive as I want to be.

I tap Lee several times on the face, hoping he can’t sleep either. But, no, he’s sound asleep (sometimes, he’ll say to me half-conscious, “Can’t sleep?” And part of me feels better for winning his sympathy. He is, however, incapable of uttering a word tonight). It happened once this past spring: I was having one of my usual insomniac nights, and coincidentally, so was he. At 5 a.m., both of us get up, eat breakfast, brew coffee, and talk until morning—it was beautiful. Marriage and its beautiful snapshots.

When I’m not too tired, I love Sunday mornings. Like yesterday. Lee and I got up before the alarm clock went off—surprisingly, he popped out of bed before I did—at a quarter to nine. Lying in bed, I hear the sound of cereal hitting a bowl, and then typing. A few minutes later, I join him. We accompany each other during these quiet few minutes in our living room—he’s updating the softball website; meanwhile, I have the laptop open and I’m doing my Church History homework (this week’s lecture: The Elizabethan Puritans). I turn to him, “You want coffee?” which I know I don’t have to ask, because his answer will always be “yes.”

I sit there in front of the laptop, realizing how much I love the solitude—with him in the same room as me, both of us silently working away, sipping our coffee. Forty-five minutes later, he tells me he wants to hit the gym before church service begins at 11:30. While he's gone, I complete my history assignment.

11:15 a.m.: Under the scorching sun, we hold hands, walking to church. It’s about a ten-minute walk from where we live—and I consider the walk to the church part of the beauty of it—this companionship, this peace, this sense of rest, this anticipation to be moved by whoever was to be preaching that day.

We sit down. The worship leader sings his solo. We’re sitting on the balcony, so I scan the pews below us. Sometimes, I like watching all the different people that are in the worship—those scattered throughout, with their hands raised, eyes closed. Different races. Different faces. Same God. It’s beautiful.

Reverend Charles Price’s sermon this morning is entitled, “How Jesus Viewed Rest.” Based on Matthew 11:28-30.

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

The main point was that we, humans, need rest—first, for the body, and second, for the soul. Often, we make the mistake of thinking that by resting the body, the soul will take care of itself. Not so.

Price tells the story of two woodsmen. Both of them work hard to chop wood. One of them rests continuously. In the end, however, the woodsman who rested finishes his work before the one who did not rest. This latter woodsman therefore asks him: “How did you finish your work so soon?" And the former woodsman answers: “You didn’t know—that while I was resting—I was sharpening my ax.”

How nicely put. How much we need to refresh our body and our souls so that we may proceed in our work all the more prepared, sharp, and eager?

Why is God’s yoke easy and his burden light? The “yoke,” as I learned today, was fastened on oxen so that they could carry a load. An animal could be yoked with another animal so that they could share the load. The yoke could be adjusted so as to distribute the burden of the load. You could yoke a strong oxen with a weak oxen and then adjust the yoke so that the burden could be distributed fairly—the stronger one carrying the heavier part of the load.

God’s burden is light because we are the weak oxen and He is the strong. When we synchronize our life to God, our burden becomes easy to carry. We just have to work hard—but our burden will feel light because the burden is ultimately on God’s shoulders. Look at all the figures in the Bible who have gone beyond their own capabilities. When we take his yoke upon ourselves, the impossible becomes possible. His strength is therefore made perfect in our weakness, as it is stated in the New Testament.

How tempting it is for us humans to carry our own burdens—when resting—in God—is what really matters.

Don’t think of resting as doing nothing. Think of it, as Price paints the picture, of driving down the highway at 100 km/hr, your hands are at the wheel, but you are relying on the engine running under the hood.

Why do I love Sunday’s? Because it is God’s day. I am reminded of beauty on this day because the mornings signal rest—whether I’m consciously or deliberately doing it—I am preparing my heart for worship. Holy expectancy. And today—listening to the sermon, with my husband sitting beside me—I am inspired.

Why Writers Write

How do I know I was born to write? That it’s my passion? Because I’d do it for “nothing.” Because—though I’m envisioning that one day I’d have the validation of publishing a story, I’m not imagining those unknown, imaginary readers. What I’m picturing is my sister and my husband who know when I’m about to finish a story, and I’m telling them, “It’s almost done…you almost get to read it.” And, of course, to have my sister give me her encouragement and enthusiasm, “I can’t wait.”

To spend days writing a single scene—and then to have your instructor or your family member tell you that a certain scene made them feel so much—at last, the work is worth it. The amount of time and energy spent on selecting every word, every image, and then rewriting it, and rewriting it, until you’re happy with the words on the page (“Art is selective,” O’Connor says)—as is the process of writing the story. As Dubus puts it:

An older writer knows what a younger one has not yet learned. What is demanding and fulfilling is writing a single word, trying to write le mot juste, as Flaubert said; writing several of them, which become a sentence. When a writer does that, day after day, working alone with little encouragement, often with discouragement flowing in the writer’s own blood, and with an occasional rush of excitement that empties oneself, so that the self is for minutes longer in harmony with eternal astonishments and visions of truth, right there on the page on the desk, and when a writer does this work steadily enough to complete a manuscript long enough to be a book, the treasure is on the desk.

If the manuscript itself, mailed out to the world, where other truths prevails, is never published, the writer will suffer bitterness, sorrow, anger, and, more dangerously, despair, convinced that the work is not worthy, so not worth those days at the desk.

But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious, for at the desk a writer must try to be free of prejudice, meanness of spirit, pettiness, and hatred; strive to be a better human being than the writer normally is, and to do this through concentration on a single word, and then another, and another. This is splendid work. As worthy and demanding as any, and the will and resilience to do it are good for the writer’s soul. If the work is not published, or is published for little money and less public attention, it remains a spiritual, mental, and physical achievement; and if in public, it is the widow’s mite, it is also, like the widow, more blessed.

Andre Dubus, Meditations from a Movable Chair

While writing—there is always the fear that your work will amount to nothing—and as Dubus writes, you tell yourself that even if you do not succeed, you would have written regardless. Sometimes, even that thread of hope is what keeps you going.

My husband jokes about how I should be writing the next Da Vinci Code so he can quit his job and be a bum for the rest of his life (then again, maybe he’s not joking). A book that’s plot-driven, so millions of people will read it. I tell him that it’s against my principles as an aspiring artist to write only for the purpose of entertaining (I read somewhere about the distinction between “Popular Fiction” and “Literary Fiction”; in the former, the writer is writing to please the reader; in the latter, the writer is writing for himself). I tell Lee, however, that if he wants, why doesn’t he write the next bestseller? “You write it, I’ll be happy to edit it for you. Take the next ten years to do it—little by little.” He pauses, as if genuinely considering the idea. “All I need is a good plot—like The Matrix or something.” (He’s so cute when he talks like that.) Then I smile. “You don’t have the discipline and patience to be a writer. Can you even sit at the desk to write a paragraph?” He doesn’t say anything, so I’m guessing he concurs.

Granted, at my Technical Writer job last year, we had a softball forum in which Lee shared about his infamous “crap story” (it’s too awful to include in this blog). It was so disgusting that I showed it to my co-worker, another Tech Writer, so he’d get a laugh out of it (guys like that stuff, right?). I was surprised by my co-worker's reaction. He walked into my office and said, “Lee is a pretty good writer. Did he ever consider writing? He was so detailed, descriptive [in telling the crap story]—he even had suspense…”

I’m going off on a tangent now.

It’s Friday morning. Let the revising begin…

The Coincidences of Miracles

Finished my third short story today—at least the official first draft. The story is entitled, After the Rain, and as I was finishing up the final scenes of the story, I was amazed by the fact that it has been raining since early this morning. I’m at the computer, looking out the window; the tree is swaying back and forth; the raindrops are hitting the terrace; the whole room is dim, so I have to turn on the floor lamp when normally daylight will do; Holly, my husband’s fourteen-year-old cat, is sleeping on the cotton throw on the bench—meanwhile, I’m writing a scene in which rain is the backdrop to the story. God, you’re incredible.

The hardest part is churning out the story—proceeding to the next scene when you’re not entirely satisfied with the quality of the writing of the previous scenes. Move on. Don’t stop. Move on. Don’t stop. Finish the story first before you become the critic of your own work—as writers have advised.

The less agonizing part is the editing. At least, with a foggy formation of a being, you can now begin to mold. The story has presented itself. Now which parts of it have meaning? Which parts of it do you want to have resonated? Why did you have this idea for the story in the first place? Questions that you didn’t know you were asking while writing the story now have to be answered.

I’ve been sitting at this desk since nine this morning: maybe the rain kept me disciplined. There's no desire to be outside when the sun is hiding.

Yesterday, on a Sunday afternoon, my husband and I are slumped on the couch, and he turns to me and says, “I’m tired, you wanna’ take a nap with me?” I shake my head and smile at him. “You know I don’t take naps.” And he says, “What is it like to be you? To always feel like you have to be productive?” And while he sleeps, I begin editing the first part of the story.

God plants the vision. And the child does the work. And as the child is working away—God decides to send the rain.

The Weight of our Past and Present

Encountered a compelling passage in my reading today:

Every one of us here present is now exactly what his past life has made him. Our present thoughts, feelings, mental habits, good and bad, are the effects of what we have done or left undone, of cherished impressions, of passions indulged or repressed, of pursuits vigorously embraced or willingly abandoned. And so our past mental and spritual history has made us what we are, so we are at this very moment making ourselves what we shall be.

Henry Parry Liddon (1829-1890) quoted from his sermon, "The First Five Minutes After Death," from Great Sermons of the World