Trudging through slush

Haha! I love this Zits comic (grin). Only one more week of classes to go! I want the time to zoom by, but then I realize just how much I'm supposed to do before then, and I try to coax it to go more slowly. Lately I've been feeling kind of tired--and I don't mean just physically (that's a permanent characteristic). I feel like spiritually I'm trudging through slush. I've started to realize just how much pressure living "in the world" puts on a Christian. It's not outright attacks: those would almost be easier to deal with. It's the pressure that builds up slowly: dealing with the divorce of science and religion in class, trying to argue for Biblical inerrancy on the Tolkien listserve, attempting to answer skeptical friends about how Christianity makes sense. It's all so. . .constant.

Not that I'm giving up or anything; I'm just starting to realize what a special haven the Christian community really is. I've also been thinking a lot about two different things I've read in the last semester that talk about this. One is a column by Joel Belz (published in World last fall),
Uphill all the way
I like the column especially because it reminded me of the other thing, a poem by Christina Rossetti (also called “Uphill”).

Does the road wind uphill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?

A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?

You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?

Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?

They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?

Of labor you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

Yea, beds for all who come.


This poem is most meaningful, though, when you have it’s opposite as well. I wasn’t planning on posting it too, but it’s so good; from the title to the last sentence, it makes me shiver. This one is called “Amor Mundi”

'Oh where are you going with your lovelocks flowing,
on the west wind blowing along this valley track?'
'The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye,
We shall escape the uphill by never turning back.'

So they two went together in glowing August weather,
The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;
And dear she was to dote on, her swift feet seemed to float on
The air like soft twin pigeons, too sportive to alight.

'Oh what is that in heaven where grey cloud-flakes are seven,
Where blackest clouds hang even just at the rainy skirt?'
'Oh that's a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,
An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt.'

'Oh what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,
Their scent comes rich and sickly?' 'A scaled and hooded worm.'
'Oh what's that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow?'
'Oh that's a thin dead body which waits the eternal term.'

'Turn again, O my sweetest, - turn again, false and fleetest;
This beaten way thou beatest, I fear, is hell's own track.'
'Nay, too steep for hill mounting; nay, too late for cost counting;
This downhill path is easy, but there's no turning back.'