I was taken by the short story by Flannery O’Conner, “the Enduring Chill.”  I felt in many ways I was reading about my own life.

The professor of my class, to whom I owe the credit of seeing this writing clearly, dotes over a scene where Asbury is in the car going home with his mom.  He is a 25 year old would-be-writer who doesn’t make it in NYC, and has to return to his single mom’s home in the country.  This is extremely irritating to Asbury and he is just hopelessly annoyed.

His mom stops the car on the farm to look at this cow.  Asbury turns the other way to avoid his mom’s request, as if to say “I don’t want to see the stupid cow.”   As karma has it his rolling eyes fall onto the eyes of another cow on the other side of the vehicle and he glimpses what is reported as a ‘bond’ in the cow’s eyes.

O’Conner has cleverly put this scene as if to tell the aspiring academic that basically he and the cow are in it together.  That even though he aspires to the art of writing, both he and this ordinary cow share the same fate on earth.

What to do with life is often times a mystery for me.  I confess that it is my own fantasy to avoid the grit of this world I’ve been born into.  I have such high visions of somehow “making it,” but the facts that stare me in the face point more and more towards the realization that I’m going to have to come to terms with the reality.  Sometimes there’ll be situations that I just want to avoid and annoy the heck out of me or really make me sweat.

The key however, as I believe the story goes (I won’t ruin it for you, hopefully!) is casting aside the mask of self pity, arrogance, whatever it might be and accepting the grit.  O’Conner actually goes much further with this in revealing grace in the most unlikely of circumstance, a grace that actually comes with coming to terms with reality.

I think about this as I consider my college decision.  As I work to get my reading assignments done on time.  As I hope to grow in friendships and relationships.  And probably most obviously as I come to terms with living in Culpeper for another few months.  So far God has been good.