Advent 1: "To come awake...to remain awake"

Our thanksgiving trip was full of blessings, though the travel itself was exhausting. We came home and "hit the ground running"...and it feels like we haven't stopped running yet!

I've been trying to move this week into a watchful, listening attitude, as of course we have also moved into Advent. Due to lots of traffic delays, we got home so late on Sunday evening that it was tempting to just push the beginning of Advent off by one day. But we love this season so much that it felt important to go ahead. Note to self next year: get the wreath and candles set up before we leave for our trip, so it's waiting and inviting us as soon as we walk in the door.

I'm discovering this year just how hard it is to stop and rest and listen when life feels stuffed with a long to-do list. Most of these "to-do's" aren't holiday related (though of course there are some extra activities connected to advent and Christmas and the almost inevitable stresses of our travel schedule) just ordinary work, life, family, ministry. Among other things, I'm a teacher, so it's end of semester crunch!

I hadn't realized how much I've been taking on and now it seems like everything is coming to a head all at once, with deadlines looming and many things needing attention. Most all of it is good, but I'm beginning to feel like I'm living in an overrun garden that needs pruning.

It's been helpful to dig back through some old journals and read snippets of poems, reflections, and quotes from other years, including some years when I seemed to have an easier time moving into listening/reflecting mode. Of all the books I have inside me to write (I told D. the other day that I think I have 7 or 8 books inside me at the moment, to which he replied "sounds painful!") the book of advent reflections feels closest to the surface.

Looking through a nine year old journal the other evening, I stumbled on this quote by C.S. Lewis, whose feast day we just celebrated.

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labour is to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake."

I've loved that quote for a long time, but it's speaking to me on deep heart levels in this particular busy time. How comforting to know that in this "crowded world" (crowded with people, things, feelings, obligations, and so much more) that the world is "crowded with Him" -- that in fact, He walks among and through and in the midst of all that other stuff, trying to get our attention, often using it to get our attention. Our labour is to walk through the world on the lookout for signs of his presence, and to walk with attention -- not sleep-walk (as it's so easy to do when we're feeling so tired, or when we're experiencing emotional stress) but to really walk with our eyes open, paying attention.

November

On Sunday we celebrated Christ the King, which always falls on the final Sunday before Advent. When I turn to the readings in the Prayer Book these days, I am very near the back of the book as we've moved into the final "proper" before the readings beginning anew with Advent 1.

The older I get, the more I'm finding myself much more deeply attuned to the rhythms of the church year than to the actual calendar year. I'm realizing that it's this time of year when I'm getting truly excited about newness and fresh starts, much more than when we turn the calendar to January 1, although that's enjoyable too.

It's combination of things: the approach of Thanksgiving, a holiday near to my heart because it reminds me to be grateful and because it's the most time we get to spend with extended family each year, the approach of the prayerful, watchful season of Advent, which of course leads us to the dazzling light of Christmas. It's knowing that no matter how short and dark days seem right now, we're about to turn the corner and begin to bask in just a bit more light each day, a glorious reflection of the Light whose birth we're about to celebrate.

I love the month of October and have long called it my favorite. From a purely seasonal point of view, that's still true -- I love the bright blue days, the colored leaves, apples, pumpkin, corn, the still-longer amounts of daylight, the not-quite-so-cold as it's going to get. But from a heart perspective, I'm beginning to realize how much I love November. All Saints, Christ the King, Thanksgiving, the very tip of Advent.

And from a literary point of view (and those literary days are a deep part of my heart's journey) the November 22 Feast Day of C.S. "Jack" Lewis, and the commemoration of birthdays: Robert Louis Stevenson on November 13, Jack, Madeleine and Louisa (Lewis, L'Engle and Alcott) on November 29. And on the family calender, several extended family members' birthdays and also November 16, my late (paternal) grandparents' anniversary. 80 years since their wedding this year; I still keep a picture of their beautiful wedding day up on my bookshelf.

We're heading out for family visits soon, and I likely won't have much computer access for a few days. If you're reading this, know how many blessings I am wishing your way during this thanksgiving season, this beautiful November.

Dear Governor...

You've made my daughter cry. How does it feel to make a second grader cry?

Yes, that's right. Thanks to your recent $15 million budget cuts to the state historical and museum commission, our local historic site, a wonderful place that has provided us (not to mention thousands of other people) hours of learning and enjoyment, is being forced to shut its doors. It's a unique place, a place many towns across America would love to have in their midst. It's a place that provides an oasis of beauty in the midst of rusted urban decay and historic pride in a tiny town that has seen better days and doesn't always feel like it's got a lot to brag about anymore.

Frankly, we think you've made a mistake.

What good does it do to promise to maintain the buildings if you're not going to help maintain a staff there that can keep the place open to the public and provide educational tours for the public and for schoolchildren?

We're all aware these are difficult economic times, but oh, how I would love to get a look at the state budget and see what was prioritized ahead of the historical commission. I'll bet you some very smart moms and dads and schoolteachers and yes, schoolchildren could help you figure out other things that could be trimmed from that budget.

I'm endeavoring to at least teach my daughter a lesson in civics and in the potential for positive change if people come together and work hard enough. Today I explained to her what petitions are (since I was busy signing one). I've also suggested that she write you a letter. I don't know if she'll do it or not. She was busy wiping away tears and feeling unsure that a letter from a second grader could really make a difference.

So...civics lesson another day. Today we just needed some time and space to feel sad.

Grateful Heart: Thankful Monday

I've not been posting my gratitude list every Monday, but I have really been enjoying the exercise of reflecting on my blessings each Sunday, at the beginning of each new week. Here are a few to add to my ongoing list:

16. My husband is home! He had good, refreshing time away in South Carolina (and that's a blessing too) but now he is home, and I'm so delighted. Between his work hours and travel schedule, we've not had much time together this month, so the bits we've gotten in the past few days feel precious.

17. Time for creativity and shared imagination. I started working on a story during the days D. was away. Unexpectedly, it's a fantasy/fairy-tale type story (though perhaps that's not surprising given my reading fare in recent months). I really liked the characters, places, and political intrigues that were coming to me. When I started bouncing my ideas around with D., he immediately got into it, and now we're spending some time each evening creating more details together about this fictional world. We've even drawn a map! It's great fun to be working on a creative project together. I especially love how his great questions help spark my imagination.

18. Beautiful autumn weather. After that deep cold spell we had in October, November has turned unseasonably warm. That's not only a blessing for our utility bill, but gives us extra time to enjoy the outdoors before winter settles in to stay.

19. Time with a dear friend I'd not seen in several months. My friend Sandy moved to British Columbia in June, but is back to visit her precious first grandbaby. Yesterday we got a couple of hours together to walk and talk in the beautiful autumn weather I just mentioned.

20. My folks are OK from Hurricane Ida. They weren't in the worst of it down in Virginia, but they got a ton of rain and wind as the hurricane moved on. Lots of standing water in the yard, but no flooding in the house, no downed trees (like they suffered several years ago in the wake of Hurricane Isabel -- their roof took a real beating then!) and no power outages.

21. Some time to read and note-take on some good church history reads. I don't get/make enough time for that kind of continuing ed. but I find I am always blessed when I do -- and it strengthens my teaching in both the short-and-long term.

22. Recent assurance from the Lord that he loves me no matter what, and that my "adequacy" has nothing to do with it.

23. The sweet girl and I are reading a new Ramona book together. They're some of her favorite books in the world, and I parcel them out like chocolates!

So many more I could list, but I'll stop for now...

Literary Birthdays: Robert Louis Stevenson, November 13, 1850

This morning the sweet girl and I celebrated Robert Louis Stevenson's birthday with muffins and poetry reading. In a wonderful "coincidence," we just happened to be reading a book of his poems this month (before I remembered that November was his birth month).

Next perhaps to some hymn writers and the apostle John, Robert Louis Stevenson was probably the first poetic voice to speak to my heart. I shared his poems early with my daughter, and have continued to share them as she grows. She loves his work too.

There are so many repeated images and themes in his poetry that I love: dreams; rain; birds; ships at sea. I love that he is such a liminal poet. He seems to walk boundaries -- day/night, dark/light, sun/shadow, childhood/adulthood, waking/sleeping -- with the gracefulness of a tightrope walker.

We read a brief biography of him this morning, from the Robert Louis Stevenson volume in the "Poetry for Young People" series. A few of the facts we gleaned:

He came from a long line of lighthouse builders; he built poems.

He was ill during much of his childhood and spent a lot of time in bed; his weak lungs often meant he'd spend long nights coughing and longing for the dawn. Small wonder he explored the things he did.

His lungs never did get better. He ended up living in Samoa in his later years, searching for warm climates where he could breathe more easily. He died there of tuberculosis at the incredibly young age of 44. On his gravestone are etched these words, which he himself penned:

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me;
Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.


The Scottish Stevenson as painted by Sargent

Dragon PR

Earlier this week I finished Michelle Knudsen's The Dragon of Trelian (my full review at the link). For any of you scratching your heads and trying to come up with why the author's name sounds familiar, yes, she's the author of Library Lion, one of my seven year old's favorite picture books of all time (and it's pretty high on her dad's and my lists too). I picked the book up because it was penned by Knudsen -- I love her story-telling, and I'm always curious to know how someone known for good crafting in one genre tackles another. The answer here is: well, and quite creatively. It's a solid mid-grade fantasy.

Of course, it got me to thinking about dragons again. They do keep popping up. Remember this post from a few months back, when I found myself musing about the different ways in which dragons were presented in Tolkien and Rowling? Since then I've read three more dragon tales: this one, Rosemary Sutcliff's The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup, and a re-read of Margaret Hodges' picture book version of St. George and the Dragon.

It does seem as though dragons are getting a major make-over in fantasy literature today. While the more traditional tales (either older stories, or ones based on older stories, like Hodges') keep dragons in traditional roles, the newer tales, while maintaining many of the things we love about dragons -- their fierceness, scaliness, and fire-breathing capabilities -- have softened their image considerably. I keep thinking of those "soft lenses" that get used on Hollywood starlets, the ones that made their features look slightly blurred and dreamy and a bit more beautiful than they might look in harsher light.

The title dragon in Knudsen's story gets this softer treatment. His name is Jakl and he's an orphan. A young princess named Meglynne finds him, adopts him and cares for him, and ends up sharing a strange, mystical connection with him (think Vulcan mind link, only cross-species).

That seems to be part of the new package: it seems like lots of people have secretly wanted dragons for pets/companions, and these days those kinds of stories abound. I know this isn't a precisely new element to dragon stories (Kenneth Grahame and Ruth Stiles come to mind, as earlier representatives) but it does seem to be making a comeback. I suspect that may be due almost entirely to Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper who gave Norbert his own teddy bear...

The other recurring elements I'm seeing in this trend: viewing dragons as somehow misunderstood or mistreated, and seeing them ultimately fight on the "right" side. Part of the fun in Trelian is seeing the dragon fight with and for the princess. Indeed, there's a heart-stopping moment where you realize, once the major battle against the baddies has been won, that the dragon might be brought down by unobservant good guys who just aren't used to seeing a dragon fighting to protect the castle and its inhabitants. My favorite line in the whole book, uttered by the magician Serek: "The dragon is, ah, on our side."

Almost makes you wish you could steal an imaginative page from a dragon PR agent. I suspect it would read something like this. "Baby, the days of type-casting are so over! I know you're tired of breathing fire and looking like a bad guy, but you don't have to limit yourself to those kinds of scenes. Remember Norbert! Remember Jakl! Be subversive! Hold out for the ground-breaking roles!"

Everybody's a Critic: The "New" Winnie the Pooh

I finally picked up my library hold shelf copy of Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, the authorized "sequel" to A.A. Milne's original Pooh classics. I've only read the introduction and the first story, but so far am cautiously optimistic. David Benedictus mostly seems to "get" Milne's voice and rhythm, and the illustrations by Mark Burgess gently mimic E.H. Shepard's original illustrations. They're also colored with lovely, light washes of color.

I know my friend Erin, Pooh devotee extraordinaire, enjoyed it, but I hear it's not getting very good reviews overall. When my husband picked the book up at the library, the librarian basically told him to tell me not to get my hopes up because the early reviews have been dreadful.

The sweet girl was curious about the book, so I explained to her that this author and artist have been given permission by the people who own the rights to the original Pooh stories, to write and draw more stories like them. I tried to explain the notion of similar styles, and I explained how long ago the original Pooh books were written because I wasn't sure she realized just how old they were (we do love them!).

When she was getting ready for her bath this evening she paused to look at the cover of the book, then said, in a rather disapproving voice, "Why is Piglet's sweater green?"

"What?" I asked, having (I must confess) not noticed this detail of the cover art.

"Why is Piglet's sweater green? It should be pink." And then she added, in a resigned tone, "Maybe the man who drew the new pictures for this new book just didn't know what color Piglet's sweater should be."

I guess everyone's a critic, even my seven year old. That Pooh bar is set pretty high!