MTC Post

A small part of my work with the Mississippi Teacher Corps takes the form of blogging, but not here. Recently I had a “free-write” assignment, and took the time to bemoan one of the great failures of public school education in Mississippi—a little beast called “homeroom.”

New Blog

I have started a blog—marmor infidum—for my work through the Mississippi Teacher Corps (MTC), which will govern large portions of my time for the next two years (that is to say, the work will be time-consuming, not the blog). Occasionally I will direct any readers here to public posts there, and vice versa. I anticipate keeping all my posts there public, but some of them may explore “sensitive content” and be hidden from anyone who has not joined the Vox network and asked to be a part of my “neighborhood.” Needless to say, I won’t refer anyone to those posts.  I will still be posting here with my “non-professional” content, of course, and hopefully more regularly than of late.

Future Content

I’ll be spending most of this month writing a large paper on Augustine’s Confessions.  As part of my discipline for completing the project I have decided to write some of the content of my paper in shorter, blog-friendly segments.  More to come.

Some More Articles

I have decided to import some of my articles from another, long-disused blog.  They are mostly meditations on Bible passages, from single-verse explications to small sermons.  I hope they’re a blessing now.  I remember that some people appreciated them when they were first published.  The following is a prayer I wrote on 6 July 2008, somewhere in Mississippi, and serves as an excellent reminder:

I’m not sure, Lord, how to sort through these thoughts and theories. Notion upon notion makes such commotion that I cannot tell if I’ve turned to the right or the left. I’m so tangled in this world that it’s getting more difficult to see that ancient path. But I know, I have been taught, that the Way is alive, and that he will seek me and call me from amidst the rubble of a used and abused life. You are the Way. I ask you, and in asking I receive, to set me free from the confusion and take away the pain of my own negligence. Forgive me for my sins, my self-will, my ill-crafted illusion. Keep me away from the temptations that I have entertained. Keep my soul out of the enemy’s reach. Good Shepherd, hear my cry for help and do what must be done to save me.

The Likely Project

I am beginning this blog without a clear view of its designs and purposes.  I will be in Mississippi this summer (God willing), learning to teach, teaching to learn, learning to learn, and teaching to teach.  I will have plenty to write about, and my boss knows it.  So along with that job I will be required to keep a frequently updated blog about my work, my frustrations and successes, my students, etc.  I expect that I’ll enjoy discovering the habit of public writing again; I used to be quite an avid blogger, and (believe it or not) I never did lose the desire to have others pay attention to what I’ve written.  My work-blog, however, will only ask that I write on some matters and not others.  These others, which include some of the most important themes, will be deemed superfluous. And this is, I guess, the clearest view I can get of this blogs purpose:—the place of my supposedly superfluous speculations and stories.  These articles will be the overflow, likely the products of a peculiar mood that demands something shown for one’s thoughts.

Apropos of this blog’s overall motif—its title, being an allusion to 1 Chronicles 29.15, the Pascal quotes, the French text here and there—I shall not claim much now.  I enjoy French, and so there is French.  I have spent some time reading, translating, and plainly admiring Pascal, and so there is Pascal.  King David, whose words are cited in the Bible reference, is among those whom I most admire in all literary history and historical literature, and so goes the title.  I have plenty to say about all three of these, but none of these opinions will give a better understanding of this blog’s design or purpose, because they are at this point not very well woven into it.  These elements are only here in this combination because I am thus.  The elements of my blog would all fit together more neatly if my soul were a bit more tidy.  I am, however, such a monster of thoughts, memories, interests, habits, sins, graces.  At best a monster can only make monsters.  Should anything come from my contrarieties that has on it the mark of orderliness, peace, purity, perfection, etc., then this can only be due to the intervention of my God.  So I leave the sundry elements of this blog to themselves, hoping that they will all make sense in the end, just as I trust my Lord to take the shattered things in me and make them into something thoroughly whole.