Ashes to...Top 3 Student?

So yesterday I got this delightful email declaring one of the conference papers I'm giving at the International Communication Association (ICA) conference in May has been awarded the status of one of the Top 3 Student Papers for the Mass Communication division. (One that I'd revised and sent off during that NaWriMo experiment last November.)

It was a surreal moment--here I was, sitting in a classroom a few minutes before the beginning of a grad class in which we were to discuss a cognitive view of how metaphors work. I was tired from the cold or allergies I've been fighting and mildly aware of the cross-shaped smudge of ashes on my forehead from the noon service I'd been to. I was feeling a bit ashes-like, particularly since I was trying to resist the delicious-looking chocolate cookies a lovely friend (who hadn't been aware I'd decided to give up chocolate for Lent) had just handed me.

And then I checked my email on my laptop, and there was this email telling me that I'd won this award, and I won't lie to you: I felt a bit less ashes-like for the moment. After all, beyond the fact that this would be seen to be a bit of a big deal in my discipline, it was encouraging that I was on the right track with my dissertation, since this was the first paper I'd sent anywhere outlining some preliminary thoughts in that direction.

So I was happy. And don't get me wrong--I still am. But on reflection I realize (the cold/allergies have been helping with this) that I am no less ashes than I was before. Sure, it's a cool thing and all, and I'm pleased that people like the paper, but I'm considering the award in the nature of a really cool gift rather than as something I somehow earned. (As Eliot says in Four Quartets, "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.")

Which in turn creates the delightfully convoluted metaphor of me being a bundle of really excited ashes sitting under the Christmas tree (in February, no less) unwrapping this gift of this certificate I'll be handed in a few months.

It may be convoluted, but it feels just right.

Ora et Labora: Lessons from the Benedictines (part 1)

Benedictine monks have as their motto three simple words, "Ora et Labora," (Work and Pray). What I love about this motto is in part that it's so balanced--that the monks feel they are equally called to something so practical as work and something that seems so useless in the eyes of the world as prayer.

But I also love this motto because it joins these two seemingly opposed concepts together. When the monks undertake these tasks as part of their day, prayer becomes a kind of regular discipline that brings it closer to work. And as Kathleen Norris pointed out in her talk on acedia at this spring's Festival of Faith and Writing, a monk is able to combat encroaching unbelief by seeing every act of work--whether big or small--as a form of prayer.

I mention this not only because I seek this kind of balance in my own life between work and prayer (though I do), but also because I see a need for similar kinds of focused balance in my writing life--for one, a balance between having time to work on the projects I already have going and the need to keep the channels to new writings open.

I'll take a cue from the Benedictines by making time for both things: scheduling some times specifically meant to generate new ideas that feed my writing life and other times, even if they're limited at times, specifically meant to work out ideas into final forms. When I'm healthy and stick to this, I'll hopefully be able to see pretty much everything in my life as potentially useful for my writing--i.e., as work--but that pretty much everything can also contribute to the creation of new ideas as well.

There may be seasons when I focus more on one of these tasks than the other, but seeing them as connected and overlapping processes will hopefully help me to be able to sprinkle a bit of both throughout, no matter what the season may be.