a gray sky, a bitter sting, a rain cloud, a crane on the wing - and I will hang my head, hang my head low

I like this thing where I don't blog over the weekend. It feels like a real break to me. And sometimes I then have fresh thoughts to bring to you. (Sometimes.)

It's fall. At least that's what my nose is telling me. Rain persisted almost all weekend, and today is drizzle-gray again. Normally I find rain quite restful and peaceful, but I admit, right now it just makes me feel dreary. And also pretty sleepy. I am having trouble thinking in general today; do you know that kind of operational fog that makes you feel fragile and detached from your body? So if this post does not quite make sense, I apologize. I am trying my best to make sense.

Walking to Eisenhower on my way to acquire caffeine or sweet, hot-chocolate-y goodness to alleviate this afternoon's dragging, I saw two funny sights. The first was a campus events worker watering the hanging baskets. These baskets are meant to beautify campus with their blooms (and they do a pretty good job). The way they watered them? With a giant hose-thing that sprayed with such force it spun the basket all the way around and knocked off a ton of flowers. Go figure. Beautify the campus, but in the process of upkeep, knock off half the blossoms. The second funny thing? A veritable army of campus events personnel marching past Boyer Hall with grim faces. Maaaaaaybe I'm just crazy, but I kind of started laughing.

Alternate title for this post: and when we sing i hear another devil dies

(You can't see me, but this thought is so important that I turned off my music, so that I can think clear-headedly about this idea and the words I'm using. That's how serious I am right now. Unfortunately, this post is going to sound religious. It's something I try to avoid, by and large, because I always end up sounding trite, but here goes anyway.)

I kind of always laughed when anyone started talking about "freedom in Christ," because I didn't have anything to be free from. (I think kids in general tend to think that they are already free.) I think now, though, that "freedom in Christ" might just be the freedom to change yourself, the freedom to change your mind, the freedom to be honestly who you want to be.

And by "freedom" I think I mean "reason." Christ provides the reason to change oneself, change one's mind, be honestly the person one wants to be. When you have motivation to change, you could say that you have freedom to change. Christ also, at least according to conventional wisdom, provides an aid to change oneself. (I don't know if that's the kind of aid that's all in your head, or if actual spiritual aid is somehow involved. The jury is still out, in my opinion, over how closely God involves himself with us.)

And I suppose that implicit in the idea of freedom, particularly freedom to change, is the overwhelming possibility of screwing up.

Anyway, I'll cut to the meat of the question: if the honest pursuit of freedom (and I guess I'm talking particularly about "freedom in Christ" here, freedom in the religious/moral/spiritual sense) necessarily implies mistakes, then as long as we don't get sidetracked from that pursuit, should mistakes be a big deal? Should we demand our redemption have angst and blood involved? Or can it be as soft and sudden as fall air coming through August?

This leads me to an odd question (it wasn't the point of this post, but I'm thinking now, so I'll keep going). Generally the church agrees that Christ forgives us moral mistakes. He forgives things like murder, even. But does God do professional forgiveness? Let me put it like this. If, as I think, art should be a place of freedom too, does that imply that Christ forgives us our artistic mistakes? For instance, I make a lousy stone sculpture. I have a hard time forgiving myself for creating something so hella ugly (it was a serious mistake). But can't that be forgiven just as easily as harboring a grudge against my neighbor, or lust, or something like that?

Um. . . I think I just trivialized freedom. But then again. . . if freedom doesn't apply to the little, trivial things. . . I'm not sure I'm really interested, seeing as my life is made up of little, trivial things.

Am I crazy? Is this whole idea stupid? Someone please let me know.