Glory

"Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!

Christ our King is risen, Alleluia."

It is hard to believe "Glory fills you!" when you have coffee breath, a dirty ponytail, and are wearing green cutoff sweats and linty wool socks, as I was the morning I read this from my dog-eared copy of Celtic daily prayers.  But no matter what you are wearing, it is hard hard hard to believe the weighty beauty of Christ's resurrected glory dwells within us.  Harder, I would contest, than accepting the apparent truth that we are as dirty and linty as our clothes indicate, and sorrowful and mean and weary to boot.  

How difficult is it to recount stories of our failure?  For that matter, how difficult is it to tell the story of humanity's failure?  I think it is even trendy nowadays to talk about how shitty we all are. Excuse the language, but I did use the word purposely, because it reflects a blase, comfortable colloquialism toward our depravity.  We are used to depravity, because it presents itself to our senses every minute and every day, such that many agree with the famous summation of human existence written by Thomas Hobbes: it is, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."  (Ever the optimist, that Thomas Hobbes.)

What I am saying is this: it is more complex to understand oneself as an object of grace, a child of resurrection, a creature of glory.  It contradicts our experience.  It requires powerful imagination because it concerns an often-unseen reality.  Accounts of people committing acts of great mercy or justice or loveliness seem rare.  And if it is hard to see beauty in humanity collectively, I think it might be most difficult of all to see it in myself.  I know better than anyone how selfish and small and blind and hardened I can be.  Back to the linty wool socks. "Christ's glory fills me?  You must be joking.  Can you see my socks?"  I am faced with the crucial choice of living in the one-dimensional truth of my dirtiness, or living in multi-faceted tension as one who is filled with squalor and splendor, shame and glory, death and life.  

But mostly life.  After all, it is the Life of God Himself that fills you and I, and if that isn't a trump card I don't know what is.  

Tree Hugger

Is there any thing more patient than a tree?

I have been taking coffee, book, journal and myself to the park across the street as often as possible, sitting at the roots of an old maple hoping that I might absorb its steadfast elegance by some miraculous osmosis.  (The osmosis hasn't worked.  I have, however, gotten a crick in my neck from craning upward to watch the wind play in the leaves, and grass stuck to my sandals and shorts.) 

The glory of a tree is its long memory.  By that I mean the way it bends and deepens over the years, persevering in its slow growth through all kinds of weather, drought, and trauma.  Joy, too, I suppose.  I imagine the tree holding within itself memories of the last storm or the last branch lopped off, so that it doesn't lose heart when the wind starts howling but instead keeps pushing inch by inch into the earth.  

In my current transience and impatience, I resemble something more like a dandelion than a tree: sprouting up when the sun shines and keeling over when the temperature drops, hasty, green and trigger-happy.  Dandelions rarely survive a good frost, much less an entire winter.  Compare this with the old maple who has the wisdom of two hundred weathered storms!  What can shake her?  She is drinking from deep, ancient veins of water far below the frenzied surface.  Do not blame me, then, for asking to borrow from this weathered soul.  In her is the long-suffering Hope of her Maker.  

Blessed is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked [...]

but whose delight is in the law of the Lord

He is like a tree planted by streams of water, 

which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither

Psalm 1 

Receiving, or An Argument for Commuting by Bike

 I agree with the maxim, "Tis more blessed to give than to receive," but for what are assuredly selfish reasons, namely that I would rather be in the empowered position of giving.  Receiving is humble.  

So when I found myself with a dead car and dead battery this morning on the side of the road, I first shuffled through my wallet in order to find my AAA member card, because I figured if I was going to need help I may as well get it from professional helpers, people from whom I would not mind receiving aid.   But I was parked on the side of a residential road, surrounded by doors on which I might knock...around the corner from shops to which I could go... therefore I sat like a bump on a log in my car.  I met the eyes of people driving by, my hood popped open, and dared them to decide to stop.  They didn't.  Small wonder. 

A red Taurus idled past (lost? looking for parking?) and I decided to follow another maxim, "the Lord helps those who help themselves."  I flagged down The Red Taurus.   Krista --aka Good Samaritan-- had the kindness to step out of her car and lend her time and jumper cables, and I was soon able to be on my way.  

Krista seemed honestly pleased to stop and help. Really, I mean, she smiled the whole time and it wasn't because I was smiling at her: I was too busy swearing silently at my car.  It made me think that the neat thing about being in a position of receiving is its reflexive quality; that is, the Giver may also be the Receiver.  In this scenario, though she was technically extending me the gift of time, cables, and a willing attitude, Krista was given the gift of being invaluable to another human being at a particular moment in time.  The outcome of my day depended on her presence in my life.  Krista was made very important. 

A reluctance to receive, then, may in fact be an insult to those around me, sending the message that I am not willing to let them play an important role in my life.  It becomes a matter of control, a question whether or not I have the humility to surrender the reins when it becomes clear I am not enough in and of myself?  Mostly no, I do not.  

C'est la vie.  Back to where I started.  Still, I am grateful to the small kindness of another human and the also small opportunity to practice the posture of receiving.  

Fair Game?

There is a forty-something year old man who comes into my store and acts like junior high boy. That is, he makes dirty jokes, comments on my appearance, tells co-workers he "has a thing for me", tells ME he comes to the store to see me, and then stands by the espresso bar during mid-morning rush and either watches me or tries to make conversation. 

That's sexual harassment, homes.  

I simultaneously feel angry, belittled, and nervous.  Angry because I am a captive audience; he's in my work place where I am stuck behind register or coffee bar.  Belittled because his attention is so unwanted and insensitive that I feel shrunken-- I want to take up less space for him to notice.  And nervous because I am not sure what he will say or do next. 

I am a free, adult woman, and this creep has rendered me fair game for whatever fantasies about nice, blond baristas keep him company at night.  I didn't sign up for the job, but I am nonetheless a participant, even if unwilling.  

On the flip side, I have yet to tell him off.  He has caught me off guard with his innuendo and his pointed interest.  And I am perpetually nice.  It's a bad habit: I am used to seeing sheep and have trouble recognizing a wolf in disguise.  Maybe in someway I have let myself be victimized by not taking a firm stand?  I can either let my co-workers and manager take care of my business while I cower in the corner, or I can muster up my best F-off speech and angry eyes and stand up for myself, refusing to be a part of his perversion.  

I don't want to play into a role that has been played many times before: helpless, harassed female.  That still leaves him in the position of power.  I want to turn the tables and decide whether or not I am an object of a middle-aged man's sexual desire.  I choose NOT.  And when I tell him to start behaving or get lost, I will top it off with a customer-appropriate smile and a damn good cup of coffee thankyouverymuch.  

  

The Bachelorette Pad

Its true-- Janelle and I have a new Bachelorette Pad.  

Here's the low down on the apartment in numbers: 

Ikea couches: 1

Completed bottles of wine: 4

New scratches in the hardwood floor: 1

Bags of tortilla chips consumed: 2

Loud house parties next door that keep us awake: 2

Times Janelle has glued her fingers together with wood stain: 1

That is not a comprehensive list. 

Though The Move for me has been within the same city, I nonetheless find myself in the throes of transitional angst (big surprise, right??)  It takes 30 minutes longer to get to work than before, and the number of new expenses are staggering.   It is hot hot hot when bed time comes because our third and top floor apartment soaks up sun all day for a cumulative effect similar to an oven.  The smells and sounds and patterns are unfamiliar. I yearn for the day when I stagger into the kitchen for morning coffee and grind/brew/pour like on automatic, without fumbling for beans, outlets or counter space. 

Still, this place has hints of Home forming in it.  Already I like the way evening light filters in the northwest windows.  Our gerbera daisies seem comfortable on the windowsill.  The floors creak gently to welcome me back from work.  We are fortunate for this little apartment, and for the chance to begin a new life chapter. (And will keep the Trader Joe's wine flowing until we feel sane again.) 

Old Stuff

I cracked open my journal from January 2008, the month I traveled to South Africa.  I have not thought about the trip in over a year; I think I was anxious to move on from it.  Today, though, I felt a desire to remember what I was thinking during those bewildering few weeks. The eclectic nature of the following 'snapshots' is a very truthful reflection of my experience of contrast throughout the entire country.  Here goes. 

Babes

 Today I sat with a woman dying of AIDS. Her name was Babes, and her smile was like a crescent moon in an otherwise diminished face. Babes asked me questions even though the process of forming words seemed laborious.  She talked more than I did, because finding language in my brain was like dipping a bucket in a dry well.  

 I perched like a nervous bird on her bed, awkward because of my backpack and because of the dirty sheets, and I am embarrassed to say that the first thing I thought as she reached for my hand was, "What if I have an open cut where the virus could creep in?"  (the answer was yes and no: yes, a small cut on my pointer finger, and no, her hands were eerily clean and elegant.)  

It felt like acting on television.  Was everyone in the room watching the white woman crouch over the dying coloured one?  My colleagues receded into the background. Visitors and nurses watched silent as gravestones.

Her fragility was luminous. Maybe people close to death get a little extra beauty, or maybe beauty ordinarily hidden by the trappings of daily life shines more clearly because it is all that is left?  Either way, Babes is (though now she is probably a "was") beautiful in the truest sense. 

How does beauty accompany death?

Cranky

I don't want to go back to the home stay where I feel awkward and cramped. I don't want to make conversation with our hosts. I want my bed and my blanket and to make my own food and not be around any people. I don't want to eat whatever the hell it is Touma is making.  I am tired of meat I don't recognize.   

I want an apple. 

Today I am sick of South Africa. 

African Hope

 The world is a cold gray ember (I read yesterday in Gilead) that God blows into a flame which flares and burns for a moment, or a day, or a lifetime, and then dies leaving no sign that it was ever related to fire.  But the flame does come, and it takes courage both to witness the transfiguration and to hope for another. 

Perhaps in Africa I need more hope, not less.  

I have been reading in Isaiah and the passages of restoration and redemption are almost painful for all that they seem so unfulfilled.  How does the person selling ostrich feathers and beads for a living interpret the rich promises of safety and blessing?  Was Isaiah a false prophet?  Or, for the more sophisticated, a prophet writing from specific context and history?  Or, did he dream of a future reality still undisclosed?  

Or maybe their lives have a richness that I in my relative wealth and busyness cannot fathom.  

Maybe hope has nothing to do with apparent reality.  

Naughty Monkeys

Andi left her window open and the monkeys got in.  They got the marshmallows and the instant coffee and left sticky, caffeinated fingerprints on her wall.  "Naughty monkeys," said Zama. "Damn rodents," said Andi.  

Two Poems

In comparison to the exploits of many literary giants, Emily Dickinson's life seems small. In her entire lifetime, historians say, she did not stray far from her bedroom window in Amherst, Massachusetts.  I am glad Ms. Dickinson stayed put.  We are indebted to the "soul upon a windowpane" that observed its world --however tiny-- with such microscopic precision. 

I really like these two poems.  

Success Is Counted Sweetest 

Success is counted sweetest 

by those who ne'er succeed. 

To comprehend a nectar

requires sorest need. 

Not one of all the purple Host 

Who took the Flag today

Can tell the definition 

so clear of Victory

As he defeated- dying- 

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph 

Burst agonized and clear!

I Had Been Hungry,

 All the Years

I had been hungry, all the Years- 

My Noon had Come - to dine- 

I trembling drew the Table near-

and touched the Curious Wine-

'Twas this on Tables I had seen- 

When turning, hungry, Home

I looked in Windows, for the Wealth

I could not hope - for Mine- 

I did not know the ample Bread- 

'Twas so unlike the Crumb

The Birds and I, had often shared

In Nature's - Dining Room- 

The Plenty hurt me- 'twas so new- 

Myself felt ill - and odd- 

As Berry- of a Mountain Bush- 

Transplanted - to the Road- 

Nor was I hungry- so I found

That Hunger- was a way

Of Persons outside Windows- 

The Entering - takes away- 

 

Top 5 Reasons Why a Self-Respecting Woman Might Opt to Work At Starbucks Rather than Attend Princeton

1.  People who come to Starbucks do not want anything from the barista except coffee.  They are satisfied with espresso mixed with milk, sometimes topped with caramel.  Some people even go so far as to want extra hot milk, and there are the very few who even want to make small talk.  Those people are rewarded with a smile and a chat about weather.  That is all. 

2.  Besides needing a pretty good memory and common sense, being a barista requires little intellectual stimulation.  This is nice for someone, say, who is tired from 16 straight years of school. 

3.  When one removes The Green Apron, the job is done.  No Green Apron, no more work.  Redundant?  Yes, but it is nice to emphasize the truth of the statement.  Even if the employee happens to be in the store but doesn't have the Green Apron, he or she is totally off limits.  Do customers ask her for advice?  No.  Does the barista need to make follow up calls and coffee dates to make sure the customer is alright? No.  Is there outside required reading? No!  Additional meetings or prep?  No no no.  You get the point.  

4.  Starbucks--in all its corporate glory-- runs like a machine.  No lulls, no lack of things to do.  Hours at work are efficient, busy, and productive (and the productivity is quantifiable: number of drinks poured, pots of coffee brewed, condiments stocked, floors mopped...).   

5.  Finally, it is pretty cushy to get a free pound of beans a week, 'specially if one happens to burn through about that much anyway.  It is a cost-efficient way to be addicted to coffee.  Thank you, Starbucks, for supporting the habit.  

Here's My Heart, O Take and Seal It!

This morning Richard Dahlstrom spoke about the prophet Joel, and the Lord's exhortation in chapter two that His wayward Israel, "Return to Me with all your heart", not with sackcloth and ashes and outer trappings of repentance but with an open heart given in trust to its Lord and King.  At this, Dahlstrom clasped his hands together, fingers intertwined, a picture of intimacy between God and His open-hearted people.  The gesture made my stomach twist with yearning. 

Don't I long to be intimately woven with Christ, living fully in the depth of His love?  Why choose otherwise?  Yet how often I nonetheless seem to withhold my heart from its only safe Keeper.  

What hubris keeps the heart's floodgates closed? What foolish, besetting pride whispers that God is not interested in the honest offering of a broken heart?  

I have railed at God for failing to be present in darkness, for seeming absent in pain and far away in the late watches of the night.  Is it possible, though, that I myself have kept Him at bay by clinging to control of the welfare of my soul?  

Do I/we have that much power anyway?  

Some days I think Ivan Karamazov is correct: free will is nice, Lord, "only I most respectfully return the ticket".  I wish God would bash through our frail volition and just give us what we really need.  What terrifying freedom we instead have to isolate ourselves from the reality of Christ's love, to suffer apart from the comfort of the Spirit, to lead autonomous, fearful lives flaunting the lordship of the Father!  

It is a superhuman work then, to bring the heart to the Lord in truth.  I rely on the prayer of whomever wrote the hymn Come Thou Fount:

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, 

prone to leave the God I love. 

Here's my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above

An Observation About Spring That Has Been Made Before

There is a tree outside my window that started to blossom the very beginning of February.  I thought the blooms were doomed to early death, but they have persevered through more snow, rain and wind than paper-thin petals ought to be able.  What a brave, tenacious tree.  I am glad for its bulldog determination to announce the new season, even in contrary weather. 

Everyone waxes poetic about spring and resurrection and baby chicks hatching and new life, especially pastors, who seem to be irrationally proud that the natural world coincides so nicely with the Church calendar and their sermons, as if Christ's resurrection actually caused chickens to burst forth from eggshells and plants to shoot out of the ground. (I sort of wish that IS what happened on that Third Day.  What a sight!  Baby animals, plants, trees, green things, popping into existence like fireworks!)  I am not claiming, therefore, to say anything very new about how springtime provides tangible reminders of that great New Life that is the crux of our human history.  It does do those things, but I am neither the first nor the last to notice.  

Nonetheless, it is nice to sit on one's front porch in the evening with some chamomile tea in order to watch the sun sweetly stain the Western sky.  It is also nice to see blooming cherry branches curled delicately in the day's last light.  No matter how many people have thought the same, spring is still hopeful.  

Hope : hope

Just have that secret hope 

sometimes all we do is cope.

Somewhere on the steepest slope 

there'll be an endless rope 

and nobody crying -- Patty Griffin

I have been hoping for a job.  That seems like a nice thing to hope for, not terribly far-fetched.  I have a proven ability to work.  I can make coffee, I can also help people.  I can think. Does anyone want to pay me to think?  I interview well, know how to dress, speak articulately under pressure.  

Juxtapose the aforementioned facts with the rat race that is the economy.  For example, I saw at least 60 people waiting to get a job at the restaurant to which I applied yesterday.  In the space of two hours.  Multiply that by the 4 open days of hiring, not to mention the people I did not see.  This makes my chances of getting said job 1/240, or maybe higher (or lower) given advantages (or disadvantages) I may have. 

If hope is an equation, then, I deduce that I ought to hope about 1% for this job.  Use 1% of my brain cells thinking about it,  1% of my time preparing for it, 1% of my disappointment, etc. 

What a weenie notion of hope. It deserves a lower-case "h".  

What is the undeterred hope that Paul writes about in his letters?   The patient hope of Israel through long centuries of exile?  What about Hope?  

And--

what does Hope have to do with hope?  

What does the resurrected Christ have to do with unemployment or aimlessness or singleness or weariness or disappointment?  When faced with lower-case "h" hopelessness, do we take refuge in a transcendent Hope that somehow glosses over earthly shadow?  Do we have to live divided between spirit and matter, hopeful on the one hand, hopeless on the other, or is there a harmony of the two?

I may not get a job.  Sure I am pretty capable and qualified, but so are 7,000,000 other Seattleites who check Craigslist and Starbucks.com voraciously.  I have been so used to getting what I need when I need it, whether that be job, education, grades, money, appreciation or friendship, but I am no longer a sure ground for my hope.  My small hope must be encompassed in the larger One, that the fullness of it may break into the mundane, musty corners of self-sufficiency and contend with disappointment and fear.     

Patty G has a nice thing going for her in Nobody Cryin', its a great song, but it speaks of coping now so that at the very end "there'll be and endless rope and nobody cryin'".   I want hope now, pressed down, shaken together and running over. Not meager crumbs but water turned to wine, and fish busting out of nets  that should be empty.   I want a single, great, resurrection hope as I approach the job market that is crumbling and bank account that is shrinking and future that is wandering.  The same hope now that is also to come.  

There is one body and one Spirit-- just as you were called to One Hope-- one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father over all... Ephesians 4:4-6

The Venerable Thomas Merton

Thank the Lord for smart people who think well about matters of life and faith.  Merton is a treasure trove of good thoughts.  

"To Know the Cross"

Thomas Merton 

The Christian must not only accept suffering: he must make it holy.  Nothing so easily becomes unholy as suffering.  

Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them. Endurance alone is no consecration.  True asceticism is not a mere cult of fortitude.  We can deny ourselves rigorously for the wrong reason and end up by pleasing ourselves mightily with our self-denial. 

Suffering is consecrated to God by faith -- not by faith in suffering, but by faith in God.  Some of us believe in the power and the value of suffering.  But such a belief is an illusion.  Suffering has no power and no value of its own [...]

Only the sufferings of Christ are valuable in the sight of God, who hates evil, and to him they are valuable chiefly as a sign.  The death of Jesus on the cross has an infinite meaning and value not because it is a death, but because it is the death of the Son of God.  The cross of Christ says nothing of the power of suffering or of death. It speaks only of the power of him who overcame both suffering and death by rising from the grave [...]

Suffering therefore, can only be consecrated to God by one who believes that Jesus is not dead. And it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of meaning.  

Luna

The first sentence I strung together as a kid was, "Pitty moo-un",  pointing a chubby finger out of my stroller to the night sky.   Pretty moon.  Whether my toddler self recognized a pre-existent love, or whether that began the affair I do not know, but it seems I have loved the moon ever since. 

 "Faithful witness in the sky," the psalmist writes in Ps. 89.  How often the sight of even a slivered moon has served as a reminder of goodness!   As a freshman walking across campus alone on a Thursday night in late September, shuffling feet through leaves and grass and watching the sidewalk, it was the moon that drew my eyes upward, piercing through loneliness and speaking, "You.  You there.  I know exactly where you are." 

A full moon, rising in unobstructed silver glory in the western sky above Davis Lake is something to behold.  On the rocks there I liked to watch the moon, sometimes two hours at a time, letting it soothe my spirit in its coolness.  The purity of light orders clamoring thoughts, separates important from not, divides marrow from bone.  

Last night I slept better than I have in a few weeks in a pool of moonlight that poured in from the bedroom window, opening my eyes every once in a while to see clouds billow in and out, sometimes pewter in color, sometimes alight, and sometimes so dark one would never guess the light hid behind them.   And occasionally the brightness would muscle out the clouds letting that unabashed, lovely gaze fall to earth, "You. You there.  I know exactly where you are."

Science and folk lore have disagreed over whether the moon is made of rock or of cheese but I say its an unblinking Eye, casting its sight over this shrouded planet, faithfully witnessing to its own glory.  

Good Dog

Sometimes my dog takes me for walks.  I follow her insatiable nose where it leads and clean up the fun stuff she leaves behind.  We go on these walks because she dances and snorts whenever I get close to my sneakers and generally looks so stifled and sad that I cannot leave her inside any longer.  

Then some nights, I take her for walks.  Nights where she is already curled up tighter than cinnamon bun (and about the same color), with snout indiscernible from tail.   No matter how sleepily she may look at me, though, she obliges my desire to stroll through the dark neighborhood.  Good dog.  

Last night happened to be such a night. The moon called, you see.  When it is clear enough in Seattle to see the moon, one must not waste time.  Leash on, shoes on, puffy jacket on, and soon, the attendant peace of boots going crunch crunch over frosted grass, and the dear dog nose going whiff whiff through every bush.  

The rhythm of walking tends to take the edge off of unruly thoughts, giving a cadence to their disorder.  Step.  Step.  Step.  stop and sniff.  Step. Step. Step.  Moon above, cold air, keep moving.  I didn't expect midnight revelations, only the mild refreshment of the winter evening, so I was surprised at 195th and 3rd to sense things had gotten real quiet inside me.  

I am so tired, I said.  

I know, You said.  

I hated Greek, I said, wincing.  

But something else whispered alongside the wince. 

I could go, I said, though I'm not sure why.  

All the while we walked, little dog on the left leading the way through the dark.  Stopped to shit.  Kept going.  

Well then, I said to the still night and to my still self, Princeton in the fall is beautiful.  

Back at home while the steam from a cup of steeping tea drifted into my face, and the little red dog had tucked her head into her side, I opened my hands and released  greek verbs and exegetical papers and research conferences to the Spirit's keeping.  It will be the work of the Spirit, after all, if I make it back to school again, so I will go on walks during the in-between time.  Step. Step. Step.  

And though the last lights off the black West went

     Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.  

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Weird World

I learned today about Sea Kittens-- the revamped name for what we traditionally call "fish". 

PETA (People for the Ethical Treament of Animals) is launching a campaign to incite the compassion of people who ordinarily are concerned with animals, but don't give sea critters the time of day. Hence, the new term: Sea Kittens.  It's real.  Go to the website.   And I guess we should be concerned.  Says Ashley Beard, spokesperson, 

"I mean, people don't take their kids out for a weekend of hooking kittens in the mouth and dragging them behind their cars, why would you want to poke a fish in the mouth and drag it by a pole?"

Good point, Ashley.  

The Survey

I just answered a phone call from an unknown Spokane number-- looked like Whitworth, since the first three digits were "777".  Turns out I was right, it was a nice young lady named Isabel calling from Academic Affairs, conducting a survey of recent graduates.  Did I have time to answer a few questions? she wanted to know.  Yup.  Sure do.  Made of time nowadays.  So she proceeded with her survey, first asking, 

"Are you currently enrolled in graduate school?"

To which I answered, "No."

Next question. 

"Are you currently employed full time?"

To which I also answered, "NO."

Apparently that concluded the survey because she then told me to have a nice night and said goodbye. 

Well.  Good grief, I thought, what a dumb phone call. Was I Punk'd?  Is Ashton Kutcher going to show up at my door and tell me there were hidden cameras in my kitchen?  What is one supposed to believe about herself after such a survey?  Isabel could not have prodded closer to the heart of my insecurity about post-graduate inadequacy unless she had also asked, "Do you know what you are doing with your life?"

Thankfully she didn't.  Unfortunately for her, however, I will forever remember Isabel and her survey as The Time Whitworth Called and Caused an Existential Crisis in Seattle.