The Imaginary Invalid

On Thursday night, I attended the Imaginary Invalid Play in the Bush Chapel. There was a pretty big crowd, including students from high schools. I thought it was cool how they came to Southeastern just to see our play. Now, I am going to be quite honest throughout this post. I do not believe that I have learned my appreciation for the arts. However, it is great to be in the company of and watch those whose passions derive from it. It was very evident that everyone involved was very committed and full of heart for the success of the play. 

This was my second play that I have seen put on by Southeastern University. Although I probably am uneducated about what an excellent play’s credentials should be, I believe that The Imaginary Invalid was very well done and quite funny too! I found that this play was like literature in the sense that I think that if I had seen it once or even two more times more, things would have been more clear. I do not blame the actors or the play itself for my misunderstanding, but rather simply my own lack of being able to catch on to everything the first time. There was a lot of dialogue I just simply “missed”, but my friend helped keep me informed with my “Wait.....what?” moments!

The main reason why I was really excited about seeing the play was because my best friend Juliet Jones was a dancer. I was very proud :) I have gotten to hear about the “behind the scenes” experience over the past few weeks. Seeing how much time she has put into the play helped me appreciate the performance so much more. So much goes into performances that we fail to recognize and appreciate. 

I sat back in my chair during the play and thought about how cool it is that God created us all with such different talents and ways to express out creativity. 

Love and Death

Over the course of the semester, we have focused on the topics of love and death. At first glance, our first thoughts are probably to relate them as opposites. As the stories we have read interrelate them with each other, I was interested in how these “black and white” words actually shed light on one another. We often see the optimistic side of love and fail to remember that love is quite often messy as we saw in the stories. Also, we often see death as simply loss and fail to remember that death is also planned by the Lord and grief does not have to be the only emotion associated with it. 

Just like reading literature, we read the word love and death as the word in its simplicity. However, what do we see about love and death if we engage ourselves deeper into what else can love mean or what else can death mean? It is interesting how when we “tear apart” and “dig deeper” into even one simple word, we all feel, interpret it, relate to it, define it, are inspired by it, and connect with it in a different way. 

Therefore, we should not simply suggest or even more so, accept that a certain text or a certain word has ONE theme or idea to it because we may lose the opportunity to let a different message or value be revealed. 

Some things that I found that Love and Death have in common:

-involve action of the soul

-often unwilling surrender

-”the time at which something ends”

-can be a time to celebrate because true destiny is revealed

-does not have to be desired to occur

-become a motive/ a driving force

-reveals raw and real emotions

-stir up passion

-involves/requires faith

-can bring one out of misery

-an emotional subject

-can be unexpected

-people fear it

-remains a mystery

-cannot be put into words

-cannot be understood until experienced

-have a perfect timing

-may involve suffering

-a lesson can be taught

-should not be forced

-may involve a price/sacrifice

-often approached with caution

Blogging

In our intro to Literature class, blogging has pushed me to take literature and expand beyond simply reading it. It acts as an “extension of the reading.” I think that I have always believed that whatever you got out of reading something through one time was simply all there was to it. However, the blogging, the activities we have done in class, the lectures by Professor Corrigan, and the discussions in our small groups have all connected together and taught me that I had not even been seeing the mere potential of what literature has to offer. There is so much meaning behind a text that does not necessarily present itself in a clear way, but can be led to by allowing yourself to ask questions. 

I love how the blogs are not required to be formally written. I love that we are actually challenged to take risks and not be scared to fail because of it. The purpose of blogging is to take us into deeper engagement with the text, and we have the freedom in our blogging to explore that in our own creative way. For example, painting, cutting the onion, and the cemetery have helped us engage deeper into the text which we then can get deeper and express what we feel through blogging about it. 

I feel that blogging has been working for me. It helps me read more critically because I have the intention of finding something meaningful and relatable to myself to write about. I read with more of a purpose and desire to read past what is simply written. I found that having a conversation with the text while reading it has been most successful. I write down questions and comments which helps lead to new ideas that go beyond the main theme or original intention of the text. 

I went to the Lakeview Roselawn and Tiger Flowers cemetery and stayed there for at least 40 minutes.

Post 9 - Onion

In class on Friday, we read a poem entitled “The Traveling Onion” by Naomi Shihab Nye. When I first read the poem to myself, I interpreted the literal meaning or theme of the poem which was simply about an onion. The opening lines were from Better Living Cookbook that talked about the onions origin and its traveling journey. As I read on, I basically got a bit on the texture of an onion, its appearance, and how its contribution to a meal or dish is forgotten. But, that is basically it.

Reading it a second time, the experiment with the onion itself, and reading it a third time each revealed something new. This helped illustrate what Professor Corrigan taught about the importance of reading literature more than once because each time, there is an opportunity to see something you did not realize the time before that if you allow challenge yourself to dig deeper! 

The experiment of cutting the onion helped me visualize the “crackly paper peeling”, the “pearly layers”, and the “onion falling apart on the chopping block”. The potent smell reminded you of how powerful it is, which we experienced the second we walked in the door. We even saw the tears from Professor Corrigan. 

By the end of the third reading, the onion exemplified a person. Many people feel insignificant, unseen, unimportant, and forgotten just like the onion. Both are often not appreciated for their true value.  An onion is like a person because everyone has a history that can be revealed once you peel back the layers. In order to get to know someone, you have to go past the surface and let them “fall apart.” Falling apart is letting someone in to reveal their inner thoughts, feelings, and journey.

After I my third interpretation of story, I related it back to the book of Redeeming Love.  I  will try my best to compare Redeeming Love and The Traveling Onion without giving away major details for those who have not read it yet. Sara was a prostitute against her own will from the time she was eight years old. The oppression of abandonment, her sense of worthlessness, the words spoken over her, the abuse, the lies, and her lack of no one to show her what real love was, were all factors of why she was the way she was. However, people automatically judged her for who she was without taking the time “peel back” the layers and take the time to see what was past that “crackly, peeling” surface. Did anyone every stop to wonder about her journey or her history? Or had they simply forgot or overlooked what could be behind the surface. 

"Commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma but never on the translucence of onion,now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career: For the sake of others,
disappear” spoke something special to me. As a culinary student last year, I remember that an onion’s role is so important to a dish because it contributes so much flavor and aroma. Without the onion, the meat would not be so highly praised for its taste. Being translucent can be interpreted as being able to see past it. The meat receives all the glory in honor of the onion’s “honor” and selflessness, even receiving the credit for the onion’s aroma. The onion become translucent, overlooked, “broken”, and divided all for the sake of the something else. 

I think that I could blog about this poem in ten different ways. This was a perfect example of how poems do not have a specific "code to crack." As How To Read a Poem by Joseph Coulsona nd Peter Temes says, "playing or listening to a song for the hundredth time- if its  a great song- will yield new interpretation and discovery. So it is with great poetry." 

Post 8 - Joel

I really enjoyed class on Monday. We were given the opportunity to read Scripture as literature. Many people might have different opinions as to whether or not we can consider Scripture “literature”, but I find no reason why it is would not be considered as so. I am eager to take that opportunity, being at a Christian school, to be able to read, analyze, and discuss Scripture as part of class. The book of Joel was full of imagery. When I read it for homework, it already brought vivid images to my mind. However, when we were able to go outside and read the book over again in the presence of nature, it created a stronger sense of imagery. In class, we called these things such as fields, bountiful harvests, apple trees, barns, the sky, water brooks, and etc as part of ecology. The beautiful day outside probably deserves credit as to why I felt this way of reading and the setting to be so successful. 

We also discussed in class the idea of reading scripture as literature as the apocalypse, or revelation. When we read the Scripture, there is also something that God is desiring to reveal to us whether it is found in the ways of meaning, ways of reading it, or using your imagination. We can always find a way to go “deeper” into Scripture because we never truly receive all the revelation God has in store. 

One of my favorite verses was the Promise of the Spirit. “It will come about after this. That I will pour out my Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on the male and female servants, I will pour out my SPirit in those days.” This is just an encouraging revelation of what God desires for our future. 

Our last reading assignment was about how to find out what a text means. When we read something, we want it to mean something or help us gain something. We tend to look for a certain theme or moral that we define as the “message” of the text. When we are looking for just one idea or moral, we may be missing out on a lot more that it has to offer. One quote that i liked was “If we translate a poem into a statement, we risk losing the very qualities that made it a poem.” The other details that we kind of threw to the side may have had importance and great meaning as well. 

I believe that our tendency to do this is probably just because of simple laziness. We like it when they “cut to the chase” and “break it down” into one idea. We like to get the main point and move on without taking the time to really emerge ourself into a text and explore what all it has to say. Critical thinking is not the easiest way out, but I am sure that we would appreciate the details of the text if we allowed ourselves to take the time to “give them our ears.” 

Another quote that I liked was “One goal of conversation should be to open up ideas and possible interpretations of the story. Finding a moral is satisfying, but it often requires us to overgeneralize about the text in question.” So, when we try and find one moral to a story, there are no questions left to be asked. If we critically read it and try and find the moral, it leaves room for us to be unsure and ask questions. This leads to a chance for us to explore different ideas which is the ultimate goal of having our own “conversation” with the text.

Post 6

In class, we talked about the quote, “Not my idea of God, but God.” We all probably have our own unique idea about who God is. One time I was in a meeting and we all went around the room and defined in one word who God was to us personally. Out of about thirty people, the same word was probably only repeated once or twice. We all have experienced our own unique walk with the Lord, therefore each of us individually have experienced God in our own way. We have walked through different storms with Him, have celebrated different things with Him, and had different intimate times with Him. 

Ultimately, the same Jesus that I serve is the same Jesus that people all across the world serve and love. With everyone having their own "idea" of God can be problematic because we may not seek to find who God is for ourselves because so many people have already "defined" God for us or we have lose sight of who God truly is because of people's "false" ideas influencing our own. I do not want God to be an idea, but absolute truth. It can almost be comparable to gossip about a person, even if it is someone talking good about someone. Your friends may tell you all about how "Sally" is and you build up these certain idea and image about who she is,. Wouldn't you want to get to know her for yourself so that you can know that your beliefs about her are based on a relationship and true facts? 

If we honestly asked ourselves where we attained our own idea of what God really is, would it be merely an idea or who God truly is? Do we imagine God as what we hope for Him to be? Or want Him to be? We cannot allow ourselves to serve and love our own mental image of God because then we will be like C.S. Lewis in a Grief Observed, simply loving our own thought of who someone is. Our feelings for God could become mere deceiving illusions. If we were to truly let God reveal to us who He is rather than letting others or ourselves define His being, it would radically strengthen our love for God and our faith in Him. 

I really liked Professor Corrigan’s quote, “The integrity of your faith is not measured by how certain your answers are but more by how authentic your questions are.” We tend to believe that the people who can speak eloquently and seem to have the most wisdom about God have the strongest faith. However, i find that people who are continually questioning are those who are desperate for more of God and those who have learned that knowledge about God is never-ending. In my opinion, a person who is not scared to ask a lot of questions is always most successful in all areas. Pride is not faith.