outWORD by Matte Downey

The chair I broke Yesterday I was sitting on a chair and it broke. This has never happened to me before. Without warning, there was a loud crack as the wood splintered and my body dropped an inch or two on the left. No warning. I leapt to my feet to avoid any further damage, either to the chair or to myself. It was in the middle of our Sunday church meeting and Dean was speaking. When he heard the sound and saw me suddenly stand up, he stopped short. In fact, everyone turned and looked in my direction. I said, somewhat stunned, "The chair broke." I could feel a slight tingling on my upper thigh where the jagged wood had scraped my skin, but that was the extent of my damage. The chair, however, would need to have a joint repaired. I assured everyone that I was fine and sat down on another chair. Dean continued his talk on how we read the Bible. After the meeting, I went back to the chair to investigate, because chairs never break when I sit on them. I checked the overall...

Lemons in my life today... Just two weeks ago I got the incredible news that I received a major doctoral funding award.  I am still kind of in shock.  Over the course of my graduate studies I have made 6 applications to various funding agencies, asking them to recognize that I do good and important work. All of them have been unsuccessful.  My supervisor warned me that certain aspects of theology don't have a good track record for securing government funding.  I seemed to be a case in point.  Blame my weak application (one can always have more publications and accomplishments).  Blame those secular, atheist adjudicating committees who have no use for theology (that's me being bitter about bitter atheists).  Blame all those other clever students who pushed me out of the running (like one of my colleagues).  Each spring, I found myself bracing for the inevitable rejection letter(s) and when I received another one this April, I was depleted. ...