A Narrowed Focus (Holy Week into Easter)

I've been describing this past week as a lost week. My birthday last Monday was just a super lovely day (annual conservatory pictures coming soon) but things started getting weird on Tuesday. The sweet girl discovered, late in the morning, that she wasn't feeling very well. She seemed to lose all energy and appetite and had started a cough. I discovered she had a temperature that afternoon, and by nighttime it had hit 103. It didn't fully break until this morning, in the sixth day of the illness.

It turned out to be a virus (with such a high temp, we took her to the doc mid-week) but what an awful one. I started battling it on Wednesday and came down with it on Thursday in earnest, and I suddenly understood why she had complained of dizziness and aches and had cried so much. At one point she had told me she needed help to walk to the bathroom; I obliged with a slight inward smile, thinking she was being a bit of a drama princess. Um...turns out that, no, she was being completely accurate. I had a hard time standing up long enough for a shower yesterday. The body aches, fierce headache, high temps, and wracking cough, when you put them all together, just make for misery.

I am finally turning the corner today, though still running a temp and coughing and having to rest a lot. I've been attempting, in five minute increments, to pick up the living room, which we basically trashed during a week of camping out on the couch and loveseat (where we both napped for much of the week). There are videos and coloring books and a few scattered schoolbooks, there are piles of laundry (which my dear husband valiantly folded last night...he has miraculously not gotten this, but is so busy with multiple jobs and trying to take care of us this week that he hasn't had much time for the house either). The tax papers are stranded on the table -- no, I haven't done them yet. They were supposed to get done last Tuesday.

It's amazing to me, as always, how much illness narrows one's focus. And not even a terribly serious illness, in this case, just one that wiped our little family out for close to a week. I have friends right now who have been sojourning for months with a child who is seriously ill and has been in and out of hospital over and over again. I can only imagine how their focus has narrowed, and how they have discovered, in the midst of it all, what's important and what's not.

When your focus has narrowed for a while, you can feel it begin to open again, almost like a wide lens opening on a camera. Today was seriously the first time in a handful of days that I had enough energy to begin to notice certain little things, like the socks that needed matching, and the fact that the geranium on the windowsill really needed water. A chunk of cheese in the refrigerator had started to get moldy (D. was hardly here for meals all week, and neither the sweet girl nor I have had any appetite, so most of last week's fresh groceries have unfortunately gone south). As deep down tired as I still feel, I'm starting to notice and to care about these things again. I'm starting to take care of these things again.

It strikes me that a narrowed focus is a powerful metaphor for our journey during Holy Week. During these days, our prayers and meditations center on Jesus' final days, the days leading up to his arrest and passion. Our focus becomes intensively narrow. We leave behind the earlier pages of the gospels, not fully (because the context of Jesus' whole and fully lived life stays with us) but for these few days, we narrow our focus to the central event, his passion and death.

How much more so this must have been true the original disciples, who walked with him up through the Last Supper, and in some cases, to the foot of the cross. They must have felt love, sorrow, fear, in intense waves. Jesus was dying. He was leaving them. He was going to his death. That was their lens, their focus, in those hard and bitter days.

It's only with the resurrection three days later that the lens opens wide again, forever widening their view and our's. No longer would they view Jesus, the world, themselves, in the same way ever again. Death and evil had been defeated! No longer were they subject to them! Their King had returned, and returned in such a way that the whole world was made new. For the rest of their lives, as his disciples, they would keep learning to see the world his way.

Favorite Literary Detectives: Adding Dalgleish to the List

So I've been discovering P.D. James. How have I missed her work before now? She's 91 years old and has been writing mysteries for fifty years, and yet somehow I just stumbled upon her last year.

I first read her non-fiction book Talking About Detective Fiction, a great little collection of essays/thoughts/reflections on the mystery writing genre. That inspired me to want to read more of her work, but somehow I didn't manage it until the recent publication of Death Comes to Pemberley. Intrigued that such a renowned mystery author would move into Austenalia, I read and enjoyed that.

But I kept hearing that what I really needed to do was read her Adam Dalgleish novels. I tried one several months back, but it was firmly in the middle of the books she wrote about him and had him acting (or so it said) "out of character." I didn't want to get to know a character when he was acting out character before I'd even made his acquaintance in character. So I finally decided to do the sensible thing and track down the first Adam Dalgleish mystery. It turned out to be James' debut novel from 1962: Cover Her Face.

The mystery was terrific. James knows how to plot, and she's an excellent writer. (My review of the book posted at the above link.) Dalgleish just intrigues me...a very quiet man with a lot of depth. We're given tiny glimpses of that depth in Cover Her Face, enough that I will definitely continue on with the books in which he features.

I suspect I will be adding Adam Dalgleish to a line of literary and dramatic sleuths I already love. My list of male detectives (I'll have to do a separate post on female detectives sometime) includes Peter Whimsey, Hercule Poirot, Christopher Foyle, Sherlock Holmes, Brother Cadfael, Adrian Monk, and Luke Thanet. Oh, and Encyclopedia Brown. Hmm. I know that list could be much longer. I will have to see if my tired, middle-aged brain comes up with the rest. If so, I'll be back to edit.

When David Gets Cranxious

I coined a word this morning while chatting on Facebook with a friend. I had been scrolling through my Facebook feed and discovered that the plethora of posts on issues big and small was making me feel overwhelmed in a very specific way. In point of fact, reading all this stuff was making me feel both cranky and anxious. Hence my new word: cranxious.

It's a good word to describe how I feel a lot of the time these days. The anxiety is my besetting sin...or my cross to bear (depending on the day, I might describe it either way). Sometimes it's vague and amorphous (that's usually when I'm giving into fear) other times it's grounded in very specific reality. That last is hard, but somehow it is easier to turn it over to God, one anxious thought at a time, when I recognize at least what I am feeling anxious about -- and let go of the things I'm clinging to with such stubborn, clutching fingers.

The crankiness is just...well, crankiness. I notice that it gets worse when I am surrounded by other people feeling cranky. And let's face it, a lot of people use FB as an outlet for their cranky feelings. Over the weather, their health, politics, the state of the world, their boredom and frustration. When you really love people, you're willing to listen to them talk about whatever they need to talk about. The problem with Facebook, of course, is that it can be very hard to turn scrolling through a newsfeed into active listening. It's a passive activity unless you're really willing to take the time to turn it into something active/proactive -- an encouraging note to someone, a prayer offered on their behalf, a willingness to read an article that they posted because they really feel passionate about something and found it struck enough of a chord that they wanted to share it. Knowing all the little details of friends and acquaintances' lives...at least all the little details they've chosen to reveal...can be food for real learning and prayer. It can also just be an overwhelming wall that you want to bang your head against some mornings. Too much information! Too much crankiness!

So today I felt cranxious.

That's when it hit me I had not had my quiet time. I woke up a little later than usual, and though I had prayed and done Bible reading with the sweet girl, I had not had any quiet, personal time with the Lord. And yet here I was, getting all cranxious over the state of the world and other people's lives. What's wrong with this picture?

I headed to the lectionary to read the daily Scripture readings. To get some good news, I said to my friend, in a laughing way. I meant that. The good news is twined in every part of the Scriptures, shot through as they are with the gospel's golden thread. Of course in some places that's dazzlingly clear and in other places, you have to grope for the thread -- it glints off in a corner or just shows up in a small knot on the backside of a story or prayer, but it's there.

And what did I hit first? Psalm 69.

This is King David at his most cranxious. In fact, the word, much as I like it, doesn't even begin to cover David's mood in this prayer. You could basically sum it up like this: "I'm sinking, God, and IT STINKS!" He snarls and complains and fumes and frets and frankly says some pretty disturbing things about the enemies that are getting him down and what he'd like done to them. Such disturbing things that the lectionary bleeps him. They actually cut seven verses right out of the middle, assuming it will be too much for our delicate ears and highly honed postmodern sensibility to deal with David's anger and desire for vengeance.

Yes, I say the last with tongue in cheek. You may have noticed, in FB feeds and other places, that frustration, anger, and even a desire for vengeance is alive and well in our day and age. We just don't tend to turn it Godward anymore, which is a pity. We excise David's hardest words in an attempt to make the whole prayer sound nicer, but what we don't realize is that David is modeling for us what we're supposed to do when we do, inevitably, feel these things. He is taking it directly to God, to the heart of love that called him and the entire world into being, the only one who can right wrongs and heal harms and restore relationships in any ultimate way. In pain, anger, and frustration, he takes it all to God -- and he leaves it there. Right at his feet. A messy, messy offering of all that is within him.

And by the end of the Psalm, he is moving into a different place. Enough that he can say "you who seek God, let your hearts revive..." The act of placing all this in God's hands, trusting God with it, seems to be working revival in his own cranxious heart. The act of seeking God, finding God, knowing God hears us -- it makes a difference in our lives.

Learning to Make Do

My parents celebrate their fifty-eighth wedding anniversary on Tuesday, and my mom turns 80 the next day. I am so very thankful for their lives, love, and witness! And I miss them so much.

I wanted to honor them with handmade cards (something I enjoy doing, and they enjoy receiving) but this past week was, to put it mildly, overwhelmingly stressful. Despite the beautiful and sudden springlike weather (I am still reeling that western PA can begin to bud and flower in mid-March) I was having a week where circumstances seemed determined to squash me. I spent a lot of the week just trying to scramble up on top of the mountain, determined to not let that happen -- and trying to remember to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving, keeping being thankful, keep praying.

It was the kind of week that found me scribbling notes to myself like this one: "Love God. Value truth. Keep a thankful heart." Or murmuring the missionary credo of Amy Carmichael, one that has held me in good stead for years, "Guard against depression. Bear evenly with all that is uneven. Never be shocked out of loving."

Be all that as it may, it didn't leave much room for creative energies. The drawing I'd been working on for my mother's birthday was clearly not going to get finished. I was determined to at least get the anniversary card in the mail today though, so I ended up revising and revamping my ideas.

The mid-point of the drawing -- a vase of flowers in a larger still-life sketch -- was essentially done. So I made a copy of it on the copier and then cut it out, following the natural shape of the flowers in the vase.

Then I planned to choose a colorful or patterned background and glue it all to a cardstock greeting card. Couldn't find those, so had to go with smaller cardstock pieces. They weren't large enough to make the background I wanted, so I glued two together. I decided on two different colors to give the background a two-toned look.

Then I glued the vase of flowers onto the cardstock and decided to trim the cardstock background in the same similar contours, so it would be a shaped card.

Then I had to pilfer a box of bought notecards (I wrote "boughten" first, but apparently that's too old-fashioned for my spell-checker) for an envelope. It appeared to be large enough until I slid the card in, and then I realized the top part of the card ran over the allotted space by about a quarter inch. I debated trimming it, then ended up making the tiniest of folds. My parents will notice and no doubt smile. They know me well.

Then I glued an anniversary message, printed in a colored script font, on the back of the card, and had the whole family sign it.

It ended up looking not at all like I'd originally imagined or planned, and it was far from perfect -- but somehow, that felt just like life. And maybe appropriate in celebration of a marriage that has weathered 58 years with grace.

Sometimes this happens in our creative lives, and in our lives period. We envision something. We try it and it doesn't work, so we envision something else. A lot of life is learning to improvise, to trim to fit, to change the direction of a fold, to compromise with our original thoughts and plans, to...well...make do. And in making do, we sometimes discover grace for ourselves and for those we love.

St. Patrick certainly learned that lesson. When his life took a turn he could not possibly expect, he discovered a new way of living. It changed his heart, his own life, and ultimately the life of Ireland and the world. May we all live with that kind of hope and creative daring in the face of whatever we discover ourselves facing. Most of all, may we keep listening to God's voice in the midst of all our "making do."

A Book to Fall In Love With

I need a book I can fall in love with.

You know the kind I mean. The kind of book you smile shyly at the first time you meet it. The kind of book you take from the shelf with hope shining in your eyes. The kind of book whose pages you smooth with careful hands as you begin.

And then when you begin to read, you fall...and fall hard. Head over heels. You drink deep, lost in delight as you turn the pages, and you barely want to come up for air. When you finally finish, you feel bereft, but it's the kind of bereft you feel after saying good-bye to a dear friend whose company is a total treasure.

That's the kind of book I need right now.

See, I'm tired. All week I've either been sick or taking care of someone sick (a kind of nasty stomach bug with fevers, aches, and general yukiness hit first me, then the sweet girl). I've been grading a mountain of papers. We're under the worst financial stress we've ever been under (and that's saying a lot). I've not really been out of the post-industrial town that time forgot for...oh, let's see...seven months. D. is working three jobs, bless him, and hardly ever here. And I am beginning to feel like if I fold one more piece of laundry, I might scream.

So you see, I need a really good book. An LOTR, Emma, Harry Potter, Guernsey, Til We Have Faces, Severed Wasp sort of book, or a really awesome biography/riveting non-fiction kind of book. The kind of book I can fall head over heels for and not come up for air for a while.

I've had high hopes about a handful of things I've gotten from the library recently, and while they've been just fine, have in fact been good books I've enjoyed (Lauren Winner's Still, P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley) they've not been books that make me want to burn the dinner while I keep reading.

I know one person's love is not necessarily another person's love, but I'd still love to hear what books you've fallen for!

Flowers and Ribbons (The Practice of Spiritual Reading)

I was up very late last night working. I won't tell you what hour I finally got to bed, but it was only three hours later that I was awakened out of a restless sleep by a rather violent stomach virus/bug. I've still only had a couple of dry crackers and a small amount of fluids. Suffice it to say, I am dragging -- and this isn't quite how I expected to kick off Monday.

So in the place of the post I might have normally written on a Monday (more of the Wrinkle re-read, a gratitude post, a week in review...) you're getting this impromptu one instead.

Fortunately, the sweet girl has been a trooper. She's cheerfully taken care of all she needs to do plus a few extras, doing her school work and checking in on mom when I need to rest (she even read to me for a while and didn't mind when I dozed off in the middle of things). Even more fortunately, I had some work related things I could read and re-visit while resting on the couch. One of them was a brief essay on Reading Medieval Texts, penned by the seminary prof I'm assisting this term. I'm about to go into a huge round of paper grading, and wanted to refresh my mind on some of the initial course documents before I did.

And I stumbled head-first, in my tired haze, into this delightful quote from Francis deSales, on the joys of meditative/prayerful reading:

"Those who have been walking in a beautiful garden do not leave it willingly without taking away with them in their hands four or five flowers, in order to inhale their fragrance and carry them about during the day. Even so, when we have considered some mystery in meditation, we should choose one or two or three points which we have found particularly to our taste, and which are particularly appropriate to our advancement, so that we may remember them during the day, and inhale their fragrance spiritually."

It's lovely, wise counsel. And it makes my heart sing because I came up with a similar metaphor many years ago (during my own seminary years, to be exact) when I was taking a spiritual formation course. I called it "carrying a ribbon." I reflected on the beauty of the image of a ribbon -- how simple it is, and yet how festive. A ribbon can tie up a package or gift, it can adorn someone's hair, it can be woven into a bird's nest, it can be woven in and out among dancers on a pole or flung into the air while one person holds it or another catches it. The idea I came up with lo so many years ago was that, when we spiritually read (or read for formation) we often find a beautiful ribbon or two we can carry with us. We revisit those ribbons later and use them for all sorts of things (including sharing and celebration).

I think I like deSales' organic image as much or even better, but we seem to be getting at the same idea. We don't just walk into a text and leave without taking something with us. (Of course the beauty is, unlike taking a flower from a garden or a ribbon from a gift, we don't actually strip anything from the text in question -- it's all still there for the next visitor/recipient to find.) We take it with us, and we continue to carry it throughout the day. And sometimes throughout a week, month, year, or even a lifetime.

You may have noticed that I have a little sidebar on the left-hand side of my blog. Long ago, I labeled it "A Ribbon to Carry With You" and it was with that idea in mind -- that I would share colorful ribbons, small snippets of things I was reading, in the Scriptures or elsewhere, that other people might also want to carry onward with them. I haven't changed the ribbon in a long, long while. It just may be a practice I want to reinvigorate.

The Annual Crocus Poem

I woke this morning to a long, beautiful, spring-like rain and some lovely silver light. And to the happy knowledge that we had crocuses in a tiny green vase on the kitchen table.

Yes, we spotted our first crocuses yesterday (and the sweet girl found a patch that looked as though they were growing wild/belonging to no one, so I let her pick a few). The first crocus spotting is always cause for deep rejoicing in my soul. It's also cause for a crocus-sized poem. Here's this year's.

Happy leaping today!

*****

Thirty-two crocuses dressed up for spring
are clumped in a chorus and ready to sing.
Their melodies burst from deep inside.
Their golden throats are open wide.

~EMP, 2/28/12

*****

5 More Minutes With Jesus

I have never been a morning person. At least up through college, life let me (mostly) get away with that, though sleeping through (while simultaneously attending) some of my early morning classes was probably not the wisest investment of learning energy!

Once I began working full-time, and then later as a graduate student, and finally as a mother, I made compromises with my natural rhythms in order to do what I needed to do and serve whom I needed to serve. In other words, I became more physically, mentally, and emotionally capable of handling mornings and even learned to enjoy some early morning stillness.

But mornings have never been a natural fit, and I still often battle my alarm clock.

It's quite silly how I battle that alarm. It doesn't seem to matter when I set it for or what the "snooze" setting is, I just really struggle to get up the first time the alarm rings (and sometimes, especially lately, the fourth or fifth time). I seriously feel as though I'm pushing through an element like water, trying to swim to consciousness. I am often vaguely aware that I am half-way between sleeping and waking, but the sleeping part pulls me down like a mischievous elf trying to keep me from starting the day.

With the light suddenly changing as we make the turn from winter towards spring (oh yes!) mornings are getting a bit easier. Because I'm working a lot of late nights, I'm still struggling to get up the first time the alarm rings, but I'm managing to push through to at least a state of semi-wakefulness a little earlier, mostly because the light beckons.

But I still don't always want to get up right away. And lately, I'm letting that be okay. Instead of dragging myself up out of bed with a heavy sigh and a little groan (I've done that many mornings, believe me) I am letting myself settle back under the covers for a few minutes. Even when I know it's time to get up. Even if I still haven't turned the alarm off.

I used to think the words "5 more minutes" when I did this. (I used to say those words to my mother a lot when she tried to get me up when I was younger too.) These days I find myself adding two little words to that, and it's changing the way I'm thinking of those final precious minutes of rest. The words that play through my head on the mornings I allow myself to say put a little longer have become "5 More Minutes With Jesus."

I've often found that my prayers somehow feel deeper when my mind is still in that fuzzy, liminal place between total sleep and total wakefulness. That may seem strange, but it's just the way I seem to be wired. Maybe my rational mind hasn't had a chance to take hold quite yet. Maybe my heart is somehow closer to the surface. I know I often have people come to mind in the early morning, people I'm called to pray for. And I often have a deeper sense of nearness to God and his heart in those moments too, an awareness of his presence that has sustained me and upheld me during the night.

So these days I am spending five more minutes with Jesus. I am partly conscious of asking him, somewhere down deep, if I can come extra close to him and let him hold me for those few moments. He always says yes. Some days I spend that time moving into more wakeful prayers. Some days I fall back asleep until the alarm goes off, but it's a precious last few minutes of sleep, a kind of basking in his presence. And I always feel more ready to finally turn that alarm off, not in heavy-handed or startled way, but in a deliberate okay-I-think-I-am-finally-ready-to-face-this-brand-new-day-as-gift way.

Maybe he is making me into a morning person at last.

Re-Reading Wrinkle (Chapter 3, Mrs. Which)

Talk about an entrance! Mrs. Which doesn't arrive until the final page of the chapter that bears her name, but when she does, there can no longer be any doubt in the reader's mind that something unusual is going on. Even if you had been thinking these three ladies were just gentle eccentrics up until now, the fact that Mrs. Which has to materialize gives you a very big clue that we're dealing with non human beings. Not to mention that Madeleine slyly slips in a bit of information during Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Who's bickering -- to the effect that Mrs. Who is a few "paltry" billion years older than the "young" Mrs. Whatsit.

I'm pretty sure that scene is where I learned the word paltry.

Most of the chapter, however, belongs to Meg and Calvin and the sweet beginning of their blooming friendship. It moves quickly in the direction of romance, but somehow that element manages to feel utterly innocent. There's a delightful old-fashioned quality in Calvin that nourishes that sense in all their interactions. You get the feeling that these are two very bright, very lonely teenagers who almost immediately feel like best friends and possible soul-mates.

The beginning friendship also provides L'Engle with a natural way to provide some very necessary exposition. We've known from the earlier chapters that Meg's scientist father is away from home for some mysterious reason, but now the whole story comes spilling out in response to Calvin's gentle questions. Her father has been doing "Top Secret" (love the caps!) work for the government and has somehow disappeared whilst on a dangerous mission. We no sooner learn that then Charles Wallace interrupts the conversation in great excitement to let the older kids know he thinks it's time to go. When Meg asks him where, he says he's not sure, but he thinks it's to find their father. A good place for a dramatic music cue!

A lot of moments in this chapter move me. Charles asking Calvin to read to him, and then choosing Genesis for his bedtime reading. Meg's mother helping Calvin to realize just how bright Meg is in math -- but then letting it slip that Meg still likes to play with her doll's house. (Mother! Meg shrieked in agony...a line that always makes me grin.) Calvin encouraging Meg to cry and then telling her she has "dream-boat eyes." When I was twelve, that always made me swoon.

More lines I love: when Meg is worrying about Charles Wallace saying she's not really "one thing or the other" (see, I'm not the only person that worries about that one) and Calvin, in a totally pragmatic and affectionate way says "Oh, for crying out loud...you're Meg, aren't you? Come on and let's go for a walk." Another lovely bit comes when Calvin shares about his own rather messed-up family and then says, quite simply, "You don't know how lucky you are to be loved." Loving and being loved, as it turns out, are the underlying themes of this whole story.

The Writing Bag, or A Bag of One's Own

Mama's got a brand new bag.

It's a spiffy blue tote bag with a whimsical painted illustration: a charmingly eccentric man in glasses chasing down flying books with a butterfly net. I found it for about three dollars at a local library sale not long ago. (If I had a working camera, which alas, at the moment I do not, I would put a picture here. Instead you get a word picture. Think of it as a mini workout for your imagination!)

I love tote bags. Tote bags that look pretty or whimsical and have lined pockets inside them, deep enough to really hold things...even better.

We have zillions of canvas totes all over our house. We use them for carrying books, art supplies, groceries, whatever the need. But the whimsical blue bookish tote has a life of its own. It's my writing bag.

I don't know why I never thought to have a writing bag before. You would think that after all the times I have misplaced my current writing notebook/journal (amidst the piles of work and homeschool stuff) I would have figured out before now that having a special one-of-a-kind bag just for my current writing work would be a brilliant idea.

I love that I can always find it and know what's inside -- pens, current notebook(s), sketch book, whatever books I'm reading to help provide writing inspiration. (At the moment, that would include Annie Dillard and Orson Scott Card.) The bag is light and portable -- I can swing it onto my arm and schlep it to the kitchen when I'm cooking dinner, squirrel away with it in the bathroom or when I'm curled up in bed, or take it with me when the sweet girl and I go for a walk. I love being able to just grab a pen and notebook and jot furiously/joyfully for ten minutes ~ when I can find ten minutes. I'm doing a lot of that lately (finding and treasuring ten writing minutes...)

A room of one's own? Sorry, Virginia, I can't manage it. Maybe never will. But a corner, yes, or a small piece of cluttered kitchen table. And this delightful blue bag full of writing stuff.

Trying to Count Birds and Blessings

Today was just a hard day. Plain and simple, just hard.

There's no deep reason for me to say that. Nothing terrible happened. I was overtired, overstressed, trying to get too many things done but somehow still enjoy time just to be with the family. But we all had the grumbles and seemed out of focus and out of step with each other most of the day.

Late in the day we headed to a park for a few minutes of counting birds for the Great Backyard Bird Count. I had been looking forward to this, but we'd had a misunderstanding over the family schedule (did I mention we were just all off today?) and weren't going to get much time at the park. There were recriminations and scoldings and frustrations and tears (the sweet girl did the tears, though I was close) and it was really cold at the park. I fed the birds and pretty much did the counting by myself.

Later there were apologies and hugs. D. and the sweet girl headed to a friends' house -- our monthly cluster group. I was feeling tired and achey and just on the edge of congestion but mostly in dire need of alone time and quiet, so I stayed home. I didn't feel like cooking anything so munched leftovers and lay on the couch and read P.D. James.

Then I got up and did a bit of writing and a bit of work pulling together stuff for World Mission Sunday. Tomorrow I get to share with the congregation a beautiful testimony to God's faithfulness written by missionary friends in Uganda. I was so thankful to read that again today as I prepare to share it tomorrow.

You know, it's funny, but when I was younger -- lots younger -- I used to dream about how I was going to grow up and do radical out of the ordinary things for God. Things perhaps not unlike what our friends in Uganda are doing. And now that I am middle-aged, I am realizing that perhaps the most radical thing I can do most days is to slow down, to admit my failures and mistakes, to love more, to deepen my trust in God, to find places and spaces of gratitude in this tiny, very ordinary, sometimes very gray little town where God called our family to serve him. Maybe discipleship doesn't really look all that different here than there.

And maybe, even on days when I just feel tired and like I've failed too many times, I can learn to rest more in his deep, deep love. If the blessings in my life were counted, they'd far outnumber the birds.

Highway Song for Valentine's Day (Luci Shaw)

This is one of my favorite Valentine's poems. Sharing in honor of the day!

Highway Song for Valentine's Day

(“Kim, I love you – Danny” roadside graffito)

On overhead and underpass,
beside the road, beyond the grass,

in aerosol or paint or chalk
the stones cry out, the billboards talk.

On rock and wall and bridge and tree,
boldly engraved for all to see,

hearts and initials intertwine
their passionate, short-lived valentine.

I’m listening for a longer Lover
whose declaration lasts forever:

from field and flower, through wind and breath,
in straw and star, by birth and death,

his urgent language of desire
flickers in dew and frost and fire.

This earliest spring that I have seen
shows me that tender love in green,

and on my windshield, clear and plain,
my Dearest signs his name in rain.


~Luci Shaw

The Week in Review (8): Jane Yolen Recommends Joy and Woody Gets Whimsical

I've been remiss about posting links to my book and film reviews. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, though blogger's on-going link weirdness isn't helping.

I'm trying to review more these days so probably will only post the highlights in any given week, rather than trying to share everything! The past week's fun includes:

My review of Jane Yolen's Take Joy: A Writer's Guide to Loving the Craft -- a perfectly delightful (and often funny) book about loving writing and writing well.

I also reviewed Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris -- a very surprising film for me. If one can break up with an artist, I broke up with Woody years ago. (His "lover's quarrel with the world" was very different from mine, and his anger at women during a certain era of his film-making just left me feeling ragged.) I am so glad I decided to catch this one though. With it, Woody returns to whimsy in a way I wasn't sure he ever would again. A lovely movie. And a perfect fit for my ongoing enjoyment of all things 1920s.

Happy reading and viewing!

Lindbergh, Paper Airplanes, and the "Nakamura Lock"

Yesterday's homeschool group found us learning about Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic. I loved preparing a timeline of the flight and talking about it with the kids, because Lindy (who lived in "my era" as my husband calls it) has long been a subject of interest. I followed some rather extensive reading trails into the Lindberghs' lives a number of years ago. It would be a lot of fun to come up with a whole unit study surrounding aviation during that time period.

A few fun facts about Lindy's flight that the children seemed to enjoy:
~Lindbergh took only five sandwiches and one canteen of water (4 quarts) for the whole flight.
~The flight took 30 hours and 30 minutes.
~ Because of the placement of the fuel tanks, he had no front windshield and could only look out the side windows.
~He kept the windows open, even when it got quite cold, to try to keep himself awake. He struggled particularly in the first half (or more) of the flight with sleeplessness, partly because he'd slept so poorly the day/night before he took off.
~He only cleared the telephone wires by 20 feet when he took off at Roosevelt Field in New York.
~At one point he attempted to yell to passing boats for directions, but no one was on deck.
~Despite navigating with only a compass (no radio) he was only a few miles off course when he finally came in over land again after his long journey over the Atlantic.

Looking for craft ideas, I hit upon the not so novel notion of having the kids make paper airplanes. It struck us moms as somewhat hilarious that we get to encourage our kids to throw paper airplanes in class. The joys of homeschooling!

I've never been a very good paper airplane maker, so I was very happy to find this page on the Exploratorium magazine website, where I learned to fold a paper airplane using the Nakamura Lock. That special little fold is named after the origami artist who created it. In addition to helping the planes fly better than most of the paper airplanes I've tried in my life, it made me feel like I was in a Star Trek episode. Doesn't the Nakamura Lock sound like some sort of test they'd put you through in Starfleet? Like the Kobayashi Maru.

If you've got budding aviation experts at your house, you might also enjoy this pdf file of connect the dot pictures of famous aircraft in history. The Spirit of St. Louis is, of course, included.

Re-Reading Wrinkle (Chapter 2, Mrs. Who)

I love how Madeleine does so much with so little. The entire chapter is entitled "Mrs. Who" but we really only spend time with her for two or three pages near the end. But what delightful pages! And what a character!

I've always loved Mrs. Who. She's so memorable in so many ways. Her glasses, her quaint voice, her facility with languages, the way she speaks in epigrams and quotations. As a young reader, I was fascinated that she spoke in quotes, and felt a little bit in awe of all those different languages spilling over the pages. It took me a number of years, and a number of re-reads, before it dawned on me how brilliant that bit of characterization was. It showed both an encyclopedic range of knowledge/memory and a struggle to verbalize in the "local dialect." These three ladies are struggling to fit in/adapt to their new environment, a recurring theme for L'Engle (here and elsewhere). It mirrors the kids' struggle to do the same thing. That theme of "not fitting in" is one reason why I loved her work as a teenager.

And speaking of "not fitting in" we get more intimations of otherness when Charles lets Calvin know Mother's "not one of us" and Meg's "not really one thing or the other." Those lines still make my skin prickle, and even after multiple re-reads I'm not always sure precisely what Charles Wallace means. Just how different is he, and how does he know how different he is?

I also enjoy how Madeleine uses "stock props" and stands them on their heads. In the first chapter, it was that war horse opening line "It was a dark and stormy night." In this chapter, it's the haunted house...which isn't really scary at all because the three Mrs. Ws are just making it look haunted for their own amusement.

The moment that moves me most here is probably when we meet Calvin, that brilliant, awkward, courteous boy. He and Charles are enough "alike" in their differences to hit it off immediately, but he kindly tries to direct his conversation toward Meg as much as Charles, a tiny bit of characterization that made me love him almost immediately.

As for lines I love ~ "He wasn't my idea, Charlsie, but I think he's a good one." That's Mrs. Who speaking about Calvin. What a wonderful sense of call behind the line. This is just one way that L'Engle lets us know the children have been chosen for the adventure/rescue mission on which they're about to embark.

Happy 200th, Mr. Dickens!

It's rare to see so much publicity around a literary anniversary, so I'm fully enjoying the attention Charles Dickens is getting today. From the fun tribute on Google to informative articles like this one from NPR, he seems to be everywhere.

I've not read enough Dickens. Besides A Christmas Carol (which I so love) I'm only perfectly sure that I've read two novels in full -- Hard Times, and A Tale of Two Cities. I've read memorable parts of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. I've always been intrigued by The Pickwick Papers because of my love for Alcott's Little Women. And not long ago I picked up David Copperfield at a library sale. Knowing now that Dickens considered that one of his favorites, I think it might be my next Dickens book.

I first read A Tale of Two Cities about six years ago, and I found it truly inspiring. It had been a long time since I'd read Dickens when I picked that book up, and it took me a while to find my way into his prose again. But I'm glad I persevered. As I wrote in my review of the book at the time:

If like me, you haven't read Dickens for a while, you may have to discipline yourself to push through the first two or three chapters of the novel. His long, complex sentences are like an old-fashioned kind of music that our contemporary ears aren't used to hearing. After struggling a bit through the first few chapters, I got attuned again --I found my feet and felt as though I was waltzing or skating along to a wonderful tune.

This is not a "plot driven" book, which is what we postmoderns are used to. Dickens doesn't mind taking detours to describe, in huge amounts of detail, landscapes or scenes that are important to the story in symbolic or metaphorical ways, although they don't advance the storyline in a linear cause and effect way. One thing you can almost be sure of is that when he lingers, it's not just for the pure enjoyment of writing such masterful prose (though no doubt he felt that way too) but because the scene is important to the heart of his story.

I ended up loving A Tale of Two Cities. I don't know why I haven't made more room/space in my life for Dickens in recent years.

So tell me, what's your favorite Dickens? I'd love to hear what it is and why you love it.

Re-Reading Wrinkle (Chapter 1, Mrs. Whatsit)

I've been enjoying the ongoing celebration of the 50th anniversary of A Wrinkle in Time, so much so that the other day I picked up the book and began to read it again.

This would be my original copy, the one I first read when I was eleven. The binding broke years ago. It's in three pieces, but it's still my favorite copy to re-read!

Re-reading a favorite book is such a pleasure; I thought it would be fun to share that pleasure here. So for the next several weeks, I'll be blogging my reflections as I re-read the book, trying to capture just a handful of the things that make me love this story and enjoy it anew every time I return to it.

If you love Wrinkle too, I hope you'll enjoy the reflections and share some of your own. I'll be moving through chapter by chapter, using three "lenses" to help focus my reflections as I think through my response to the story both as a reader and a writer: Elements That Engage; Moments That Move Me; Lines I Love. Elements will focus especially on storycraft, plot and theme, moments on emotional resonances, and lines on language -- though of course those three strands will interweave. My goal is to post twice a week for six weeks.

Let's start at the very beginning. I hear it's a very good place to start!

Chapter 1: Mrs. Whatsit

Elements That Engage:
I love all the homey details of the Murrys' existence, especially when set against the wild storm raging outside, the mysterious absence of their father (which we quickly come to hear about), and the odd visitor who comes in the night to see them. Those homey details are everywhere in Meg's attic bedroom and especially the kitchen. The quilt, the hot chocolate steaming on the stove, Charles Wallace's footie pajamas, the geometric pattern on the curtains, the yellow chrysanthemums on the kitchen table, the sound of the furnace, late night snacks, cutting up pickles and tomatoes, the dog thumping his tail on the floor...even Meg's unruly adolescent hair.

Secondarily, I also find myself drawn to this opening presentation of Charles Wallace's character -- those little boy legs that dangle and don't yet reach the floor are in such juxtaposition with his quiet confidence that feels eerily grown-up. Remember, he's five, and yet he speaks calmly and clearly, he puts milk on the stove and knows how to make sandwiches by himself, he has that remarkable prescience and understanding of his mother and sister and even Mrs. W. It's Charles Wallace's presence that first marks this story as moving in a fantastical direction, pages before we see the crazy get-up of Mrs. W. or hear the word tesseract.

Moments That Move Me:
Mrs. Murry's tenderness with Meg as she talks with her about her trouble at school. And I laugh every time Mrs. Whatsit sprawls on the floor in her wet socks, tuna sandwich in hand, and sprains her dignity.

Lines I Love:
"Wild nights are my glory. I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course." (Mrs. Whatsit)

2011: The Year of Books About Books

When I sat down to look over 2011 reading, I realized I had been better about reading books than cataloging them. My list-making was punctuated by “oh, I forgot to write that one down!”

It was, in fact, a really good reading year. Like most years, I dove in and read as my learning trails led me. And while that can provide an odd shape to some reading years, in 2011 a sort of theme emerged without my realizing it was doing so. 2011 turned out to be my year to read books about books.

Strange but true. A lot of my non-fiction reads were about the pleasures of reading. I even read one thoughtful book with that very title ~ Alan Jacobs’ The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. Other non-fiction engaged the topic of reading through engaging one beloved author. My fiction list was clogged with books where other books featured heavily, from a mid-grade fiction series about a girls’ book club, to books in more than one mystery series where the fictional “detective” was based on an historical author. I even read one novel, David C. Downing’s Looking for the King, whose minor characters included my favorite group of English authors, the Inklings. I also read a collection of short stories, The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, based on another book I’ve loved for the past twenty-plus years.

I liked almost everything I read this year, some of it enormously, some of it mildly. A few books made my “love” list and are ones I’ll go back to again and again (and in some cases, already have).

Without further ado, here’s my 2011 list of favorites. Unless otherwise noted, links are to my reviews on Epinions.

Favorite Biography: Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas. Despite the controversy surrounding this book (see my post here ) I still found this an inspiring read. Metaxas has a gift for writing readable biographies that pull you into the person’s life. The book also inspired a lot of other learning and reading trails the rest of the year. I’m still returning to Bonhoeffer – both to read other’s work about him and to read work by him. And I mostly have this book to thank for it.

Favorite Picture Book: Ted Kooser’s Bag in the Wind. Who would have thought that a book about a plastic grocery bag could be so beautiful and inspiring? I love Ted Kooser’s poetry, and this book proves how well it works in a picture book setting. Lovely illustrations by Barry Root also make this book a delight.

Best Devotional Book: God is in the Manger, a collection of advent and Christmas readings by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Best Novel I Read This Year: Okay For Now by Gary D. Schmidt. I laughed, cried, and read it again almost as soon as I’d closed its pages. Yes, it’s a mid-grade novel (and I usually set up a separate mid-grade category, see below). It’s still the best novel I read this year. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that it wins the Newbery Medal tomorrow.

Best Novel I Re-Read This Year: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This may become an annual re-read. And it may also go down as one of the best novels ever written about the power of reading books.

Favorite Book of Literary Analysis/Criticism: A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz. I posted about it here and did a longer review which can be found at the link above.

Best “pop culture” book: The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure. This is really a hybrid because it engages Laura Ingalls Wilder from a literary perspective, but it does so much more by engaging “the Wilder life” as a wider cultural phenomenon. I posted about it in the same post as the Deresiewicz book.

Favorite “new to me” children’s book, mid-grade reader (8-12 year olds): Besides Okay for Now, probably The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall. What a delightful third book in the series. This was a major Penderwicks year for us as the sweet girl got hooked on the audio books in the summer and we listened to all three (some chapters more than once). We’re all eagerly awaiting the fourth installment.

Favorite “new to me” young adult book (12-15 year olds): When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park. This book might be classified as mid-grade, but it had more of a YA feel to me. Brilliant and insightful historical fiction.

Best Children’s Book I Re-Read This Year: How to choose? Every year that goes by, we read more of my favorites as a family. This year I especially loved reading aloud Anne of Green Gables and The Hobbit. Doing Gollum’s voice is fun, and so is reading Anne’s breathless, almost non-stop narrative when she first arrives at Green Gables.

Classic Book I Can’t Believe I’d Never Read Before Now: “Can’t Believe I’ve Never Read” is probably too strong a designation this year, but I was really surprised that I somehow missed Jean Webster’s Daddy Long-Legs during my childhood. I would likely have read it many times over if I’d found it at around the age of eleven.

Book I Should Have Finished (and still plan to): I’d still especially like to finish One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp and Ted Kooser’s Poetry Home Repair Manual.

The Book That Surprised Me The Most: Okay for Now. Runner-Up: The Chronicles of Harris Burdick.

The Book That Made Me Laugh the Most: Okay For Now. Runner-Up: The Wilder Life.

Book That Challenged Me the Most: Bonhoeffer

Favorite “new to me” mystery writer: Susan Wittig Albert

Favorite “new to me” fantasy writer: Hardly read any fantasy this year (though Albert’s mysteries have elements of gentle fantasy)

Favorite “new to me” Spiritual Resource or Bible for Children: Was Bob Hartman’s Angels, Angels All Around new to us this past year? I’m not sure. But oh, we love it.

Favorite Book of Theological Reflections: King's Cross by Tim Keller. Beautiful and insightful reflections on the Gospel of Mark.

"50 Years, 50 Days, 50 Blogs" Celebrating A Wrinkle in Time

50 years! Does it seem possible that Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time could really be 50 years old?

I was delighted when I heard about the 50 Years, 50 Days, 50 Blogs celebration in honor of Wrinkle's publication. I only wish I had heard about it sooner, because I would have loved to contribute to the blog tour. (Alas, you had to be asked by the publisher, Macmillan, who initiated the tour to celebrate their new anniversary edition of Wrinkle. Which is chock full of goodies and looks way cool, a phrase I don't often use.)

As it is, I'll enjoy taking the tour and reading what others have to say about a classic book I've loved since I first devoured it at the age of eleven.

You can go to this Facebook page for the full list of the blogs participating in the 50 day celebration tour. At first I thought it was set up as a separate page on FB, but it's actually a part of the the general Wrinkle in Time page. So you can "like" the Wrinkle page and get to it that way, or just bookmark it. The tour starts today: you can find the great kick-off post here, along with a photo of the way cool (yes, twice in one post!) commemorative edition.

Little Bits of the Writing Life

It's feeling like a writing life again.

My life has always been a writing life, but there have been days -- seasons, weeks, months, years -- when I've had to fight so hard to get the writing in there, somehow shoe-horned into the cracks and crevices of everything else that's more urgent, more practical, more necessary, that I tend to forget just how deep the writing heart goes.

All those other practical things still exist, but in the last few weeks I inexplicably feel I've made peace with two facts:

1) I may never have a season where I don't write in the cracks and crevices, so it's time to embrace that rather than complain about it and

2) I will always write.

And with the hugging to my chest of those two little truths: Bam! Suddenly I am writing and loving it, loving every drop of it, even on days when there are only drops.

Here are some things I've loved about the writing life lately:

* New notebooks.

I got four of them for Christmas. The three composition books from my friend Erin have turned into what I call my "everyday" books. Not journals exactly, but the notebooks I go to for first-moments-in-the-morning writing. I'm writing something every morning. Snippets, lists, lines. Bits of scenes. Poetry. Lots of poetry right now.

* Yes, poetry! Lots of it coming in ways big and small. Some of the best poems are the small ones. Suddenly everything seems to be food for poetry. The Duke Ellington music we're dancing to in the kitchen. The onions I'm cutting up for dinner. (Okay, lots of kitchen inspiration right now.)

* A writing friend who not only gives me composition books, but cheers me on in my writing endeavors...even in the wee small hours when I should be sleeping. So thankful for Erin, who is also committing to writing more this year (and also getting off to a wonderfully creative start). I love the ways we encourage each other in the endeavor.

* Finding a note my emerging writer-daughter had left herself on the dining room table. A scrap of paper which read something like "A good title for a Christmas story -- The Baby is the Star of the Show."

* Teaching poetry and loving how it gives me new eyes on old poems. The sweet girl is memorizing "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats. She seems surprised by how easily she's learning it, but considering it's been on our living room wall her whole life and I used to sing it to her when she was a baby, somehow I'm not. What is surprising me...the little things that have jumped out at me as I thoughtfully peruse the lines on the lookout for things to point out to a nine year old. I've always loved the music of this poem (the reason I set it to a tune) but though I've loved it for more than twenty years, it had never dawned on me until this past week how wonderful its assonance is and just how many double-lettered words are contained in the poem, which also makes it a visual delight. Take a look: "Innisfree" itself has two n's and two e's, but there's also small, wattles, will, bee, dropping, glimmer, noon, linnet's, lapping, deep. There may be more ~ that's just off the top of my head. It's really an amazing feat, how he chooses those words and how they make music.

* Writing prompt sites. I am especially enjoying oneword and the One-Minute Writer, both perfect places to land when you're just looking for a quick burst of playful inspiration.

But best of all, I'm writing again, every day. Not just work-related things or reviews, though still doing those too. I'm working on fiction again (dare I call it a novel)? I'm writing poetry. And last week I started fleshing out what I think and hope could be a very promising non-fiction project.

Do I have any more time to write than before? Nope. But I've decided the burning in my bones and the stories calling out to me both deserve a response. Nothing in my life has really changed but me. Time, work, circumstances, stresses, joys, schedules, ministry, family life, ups and downs, laughter, tears, not enough sleep...yep, they're all still there. The only thing that's changed is that I've decided this is my year to stop wistfully wishing I could spend more time writing and instead actually do it. Even in the cracks and crevices.

And so far, I'm loving this decision.

The Unique Walk of Grief

For the past few years, I've contemplated writing a January post about grief. I don't know what's made me feel more unsure -- knowing I'd need to find the courage to be vulnerable in what I say, or not wanting to unintentionally intrude on someone else's experience of grief. But...deep breath...this is the year I've decided to write the post.

Today is the 10th of January. It's an ordinary day and date and it may not have special significance to everyone, but to me, it marks a day that always has a special place in my heart. It was the due date of our first baby, a baby we lost a number of years ago when I miscarried at around week eleven of my first pregnancy.

Miscarriages are strange things. They are incredibly difficult to talk about in our culture. When they first happen, people don't know what to say to comfort you in your loss. Perhaps because the life that has been lost was so small and hidden still. After a miscarriage has happened, especially if any significant amount of time has passed, people expect you not to talk about the experience, as though it's been over so long ago that it should be well shelved in your memory and not need airing. I still sometimes feel embarrassment -- though I know I shouldn't -- when I feel a deep need to bring it up, and when tears form in my eyes when I talk about it.

Even the name is strange: to "miscarry" always sounds to me as though you just accidentally slipped or somehow made a mistake. Nothing, of course, could be farther from the truth. When my miscarriage occurred, I remember feeling more powerless than I had ever felt in my life. Everything in me longed to change what was happening in my body, what was happening to the new little life that was developing inside me. I desperately wanted to find a way to stop it from happening, and after it was over, I went through a period of time when I kept wanting to turn back time.

I think there is also a sense, on the part of many people, that the pain of a miscarriage, once it's over and done, ceases to hurt very much. Especially if you've gone on to have another baby. There's an expectation that the gift of the new child somehow completely heals over the sore places in your heart and empty hands. And there is, of course, a deep element of truth to that. Time plus grace does help heal wounds (of all sorts, not just this particular grief) and holding a whole, healthy baby assuages the maternal ache. Assuages and comforts, but never erases it. Because the life you carried was a different life, a different person. And though you never held that little one in your arms, you did carry him or her in your body...for days, weeks, sometimes months.

And you felt that person's presence. It's different for different women, of course, depending on when the miscarriage occurs. For some, a heartbeat has already been heard, and the worst moment may come when that rhythm ceases to beat its steady pulse. For others (like me) we didn't even get to hear that wonderful music. But still, the changes that occurred in my body, as it made room for that little one to grow, were palpably real. I prayed prayers for that little one. And the physical and emotional journey of the miscarriage, essentially a small labor ending in huge loss, are etched in my memory forever. Truly one of the hardest days and nights of my life, with the prayer of Psalm 121 (sent by a friend) and the prayerful songs of St. Brendan my lifeline in the wee small hours.

The grief never goes away entirely. And that too is unique for each person. The grief tends to wash over me every year in January, right around this time. I feel it coming, sometimes like a tidal wave (in hard, darker years) other years a more manageable wave but still strong and sure. I've realized that there's nothing I can do to stop its coming...that it's a natural part of who I am now, like my hair and eye color. This grief is a piece of me and preparing for the wave is a part of what I have to do every year as the calendar turns. Some years I weather it with grace. Some years not so much. (This is, thankfully, a grace year...hence the strength to write this post.) Some years the grief is more palpable than others. I find myself thinking about the fact that I could be planning a birthday party right now, wondering how our little one would be enjoying the after-Christmas season leading up to the birthday. I find myself wondering if he (or she, but we've always had a strong feeling the baby was a he) would be like his sister.

We conceived the sweet girl just months after the loss. In the present, physical world, these two children could not have both existed -- they were too close in time. There is an absurd feeling to that for my heart sometimes, a strangeness, because I am the physical link that connects them both, and I hold them in my heart in unique ways. I cannot imagine our lives without the sweet girl, now a precious and amazingly creative 9 and 1/2. But I cannot imagine my life without the weeks I carried our other little one, who would now be turning 10. (One day, when she's ready -- she's not yet -- I'll share about all this with her. And I hope that will be a blessing to us both.)

My husband's grief still comes too. It hits him at a different time, around the time of the actual miscarriage itself, which came in June, right around Father's Day. Just a little more than a year or so after we lost our first little one on Father's Day, he held his daughter in his arms, and then three months later lost his own father. It all combines in a tangled web of love and loss, joy and sorrow.

There were people, even at the time of the miscarriage, who treated the loss as an ephemeral one -- as though the only real loss was the loss of our dreams about this tiny precious one (as if that wasn't crushing enough). That hurt, undeniably. I found myself not knowing how to answer their well-meaning statements. (Word to the wise: "these things happen" almost never comforts.) There were people who perhaps didn't understand my need to cry, journal, bawl my questions at God. But there were also people who awed me with their love and understanding, and who -- like the experience of the love and loss itself -- changed me forever, helped me grow in my own tenderness toward others walking this road or other kinds of grief roads. There was the dear friend who sent me the large, thick creamy white candle I still light in the baby's honor every year. There were the people who hugged me without saying anything at all. There was the friend who let me know, tentatively but truly, that he had dreamed I was expecting again (not long before I really was, a sign of hope). There was the woman at church I barely knew who almost brought me to my knees when she let me know, months down the road, that she had prayed for me every single day of the original pregnancy, even after we lost the baby.

The love of those people is one of the main reasons I've wanted to write this post for the past decade. They are the ones who showed me, through God's grace and through very simple acts of kindness, that we really can respect one another's unique roads of grief and walk each other through them. They were the ones who helped me to accept that my own grief is just a part of who I am, and will stay with me in some form for the rest of my life. But that the grief doesn't have to be an enemy, or something I need feel ashamed of. It's helped shape who I am. And it's not the only thing that shapes me. There were the very real eleven weeks of joy I experienced in carrying that tiny, hidden little one inside me, the privilege of carrying my baby for the very short season of that little one's earthly life.

Joy and grief both shape us. And they never fully leave us.

Poetry Friday: The Wise Men by G.K. Chesterton

It's been a while since I've been able to participate in Poetry Friday, but Epiphany has me inspired today. I wrote an Epiphany poem this morning (still very much in rough draft) that I felt pretty good about until I read this stunning masterpiece by G.K. Chesterton.

Actually I'm kidding about how the Chesterton poem made me feel. Great art, while it may make our own art look a little pale and wobbly in contrast, does not diminish us. It expands and enriches and nourishes us -- all words I would definitely apply to how this poem affected me this morning. And in the end, a great poem that inspires me so deeply when I read it can only have a good influence on my own poetry-making. I know when I go back to that rough draft, I will have a whole other layer of imaginative humus to grow the poem in.

I do love this poem.

The Wise Men
~by G.K. Chesterton

Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all the labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but truth.


...The rest of the poem can be found here. And the Poetry Friday roundup today is at Teaching Authors .

"Temper My Intemperance" (Madeleine L'Engle)

The new year finds me reading old poetry, especially poetry that's been part of my heart for a long while. I recently picked up a library copy of The Ordering of Love, the 2005 collection of Madeleine L'Engle's poetry that included some of her best poems from volumes ranging from the 1960s through the 1980s, with new poems from both the 1960s and the 1990s. While I have some of the original L'Engle poetry books on my shelves, it's been lovely to read at this compact, beautiful volume, to discover the new poems, and to realize anew what a deep part of my life most of the old ones already are.

Today I needed this one, an old favorite from her book The Weather of the Heart, originally published in 1978:

Temper my intemperance, O Lord,
O hallowed, O adored,
My heart's creator, mighty, wild,
Temper Thy bewildered child.
Blaze my eye and blast my ear,
Let me never fear to fear
Nor forget what I have heard,
Even your voice, my Lord,
Even your Word.

*************

New Year Blessings!

Drawing and Writing

I've been wondering a lot this past year about the creative connections (brain-wise) between drawing and writing. I tend to write every day in some capacity, but I don't often take the time to draw. But during the last school year, the sweet girl and I took time every week to draw together, first utilizing Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes (a book I would highly recommend for people of all ages) and then just "free-drawing," often copying pictures from book illustrations.

The result was astonishing for me. The sweet girl had a boldness and freedom in drawing right away, a boldness I lacked (inhibited as I was by decades worth of no-practice, of cautious drawing and insecurities) but I gained confidence as the months went on. Although we've not been able to work drawing into our curriculum nearly as much this school year, we still make drawing time whenever we can, and we both (oh joy!) got beautiful new art supplies for Christmas.

What I've discovered, besides a real love of drawing for its own sake, is that drawing often seems to fire up the creative synapses in my brain. If there's time, I almost always follow up a drawing session with a bit of writing, not because I think I have to, but because one activity seems to flow naturally from the other. I write better -- I make more interesting connections with words, I play more -- if I'm warmed up first with drawing.

It's been a fascinating discovery, one that I wish I could spend more time thinking about, or even better, actually engaging in. For now, I'm discovering that drawing can also help me as I work on longer bits of fiction. In the waning days of 2011, I've found a sudden bit of fiction writing fire in my bones I haven't felt in a long time. In the past few weeks, in spite of tiredness, holiday busyness, and end of semester grading, I've dived back into a WIP (work in progress) that is essentially a fairy-tale/fantasy.

What's been helping me when I start to feel stuck? Drawing the characters, and most specifically styling their hair and creating costumes for them. For the latter inspiration, I'm hugely indebted to The Chronicles of Western Fashion, a library book D. brought home a few months ago when the art camp kids were working on costume design. We've checked it out abundant times since, and just this past week, it inspired me to create an important character in my story -- a queen I was having a hard time picturing. Picturing her with words is going to be much easier now that I've taken colored pencils in hand and drawn her likeness. It's so much easier to imagine how she she carries her head, the color of her eyes, the sound of the swish of her dress as she walks, now that I've drawn her.

Happy St. John's Day!

I love that the church, in all her wisdom, decreed so many feast days during the 12 days of Christmas. I also love that Christmas has 12 days and is a season. So much of the world seems ready to put Christmas away with the wrapping paper scraps and head back to work as usual. While the "work as usual" part can't be helped for some of us, knowing that Christmas is a whole, hallowed season somehow helps to infuse these still dark-outside days (it just keeps raining here!) with light and hope. Our commemoration of the Savior's birth is just the beginning -- now comes the 'real work of Christmas' -- to nourish that new life in ourselves, in others, and in the world.

And who better to sing to us in these dark, waning days of the year than John the Apostle, whose feast day we observe today?

"The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish." John 1:14

"This is how we've come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves." 1 John 3:16

"What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it - we're called children of God! That's who we really are." 1 John 3:1a

"The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn't put it out." John 1:5

"I saw Heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first Heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea. I saw Holy Jerusalem, new-created, descending resplendent out of Heaven, as ready for God as a bride for her husband. I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: "Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They're his people, he's their God. He'll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good - tears gone, crying gone, pain gone - all the first order of things gone"...The City doesn't need sun or moon for light. God's Glory is its light, the Lamb its lamp!" Revelation 21:1-4, 23

(All Scripture quotations taken from The Message)

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

A blessed Christmas to all!

Here's the wonderful hymn from Charles Wesley, one of my favorite bards of Christmas...

Hark! The herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With th’angelic host proclaim,
“Christ is born in Bethlehem!”

Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Christ, by highest Heav’n adored;
Christ the everlasting Lord;
Late in time, behold Him come,
Offspring of a virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th’incarnate Deity,
Pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.

Hail the heav’nly Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings,
Ris’n with healing in His wings.
Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.

Come, Desire of nations, come,
Fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring Seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Now display Thy saving power,
Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to Thine.

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp Thine image in its place:
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in Thy love.
Let us Thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the Life, the inner man:
O, to all Thyself impart,
Formed in each believing heart.

Happy Birthday, Jane Austen!

It's the anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen, born this day in 1775. That makes her just a teensy bit older than the United States. She's looking good for 236!

In honor of the day, I thought I would post this link to a funny piece I wrote back in 2008. I had just heard the news that they were making Pride and Prejudice into a musical, and my brain went into overdrive. I came up with potential musical numbers for the first half of P&P. It was a very fun exercise, though somehow I never ventured to do the second half. The title of Mr. Bennet's solo "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Nerves" might give you some idea of the tenor of the piece. Enjoy!

I'd also love hearing from any Austen fans out there today - what's your favorite of her six novels (and why, if you're so inclined to share)? And what's your favorite film adaptation?

My favorite of the novels changes every so often, but Persuasion is the reigning favorite. I think I love it for how different it is from anything else she wrote -- it's about a second chance at love rather than first love. And its gentle, autumnal tone seems to suit that theme of love renewed and Anne Elliot's personality so well.

I am still an unabashed fan of the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle mini-series version of Pride and Prejudice (1995). My favorite feature length adaptation is still the Ang Lee/Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility (also 1995...a really good year for Austen films in my opinion)!

Favorite Christmas Books: 24 Days Before Christmas

Today the sweet girl asked me if we could start The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas. Reading this classic book by Madeleine L'Engle has been a family tradition with me before I ever had my own family (I started reading it yearly before I got married, and that's been almost twenty years now!). I don't think the sweet girl can remember a year without it. Some years, like this one, we read it in a few installments over the space of a few days; other years we've read it in the car during Christmas travels.

I love this book for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is Vicky's narration. Vicky is quite possibly my favorite character in all of L'Engle's canon...she's certainly the one I relate to the most. Here we see her at the youngest age she ever appears in Madeleine's body of work. As I wrote when I reviewed the book seven years ago:

"Vicky makes a precocious seven year old narrator. L'Engle occasionally seems to give her a too "adult" kind of tone/reasoning...but readers familiar with the older Vicky can forgive this a bit, and I think even other readers will find her endearing. A lot of us have known very smart seven year olds (and even younger children) who surprise us with the intensity of their questions and the profundity of their thoughts. What feels perfectly natural about her narration is the undertone of anxiety shot through the joyful anticipation. What if she goofs up her part as an angel in the Christmas pageant? (She overhears the director say she's awkward, and spends much of the rest of the story walking around the house with an encyclopedia on her head, trying to improve her grace and poise.) Worse yet, what if the baby decides to come early and her mother ends up in the hospital for Christmas?"

This is also a lovely book to share with families who may not yet be all that familiar with Advent traditions. The Austin family, in their usual amazing way, manages to find something special to do every single day of December, something that gives them an opportunity to be together and to celebrate the joy of Christ's coming.

And fans of the Austin series of books (Meet the Austins, The Moon by Night, The Young Unicorns, A Ring of Endless Light, Troubling a Star, with two shorter books along with this one, A Full House and The Anti-Muffins) will love 24 Days because it gives us a glimpse of Rob's entrance into the world.

The edition pictured above is the one we have and love, with pictures by Joe DeVelasco. The latest edition, still in print, has a bright red cover with a Christmas tree on it and pictures by Jill Weber.

Pageant Ponderings

Every year about this time, I start to ponder the wonder of the Christmas story anew -- and through the lens of our church pageant.

This year we're fully in charge of the pageant, and so spent our Sunday School time yesterday getting the kids into their costumes, setting up the scenes they'll be acting out while I and two of our teenage assistants narrate the story. My husband (good director that he is) helped the kids work out simple blocking, and he and I both tried to help the kids think through some of their responses ("When the angel appears, try to look really scared! Terrific! Great! Oh, you look really scared! Then when you hear the words 'great joy' start looking happy! Remember, this is GOOD NEWS!").

It occurred to me yesterday that people not familiar with the tradition of Christmas pageants could have some perplexed reactions if they stumbled upon our little troupe of robed elementary and preschool actors giggling through their roles. One response might be surprise that such young children are acting out a story with such serious (and in many ways adult) elements.

After all, this is a story about an unwed pregnant teenager mother traveling wearily, along with her fiancee, to a town where they're going to be counted so they can be taxed by an oppressive government. And they can't find a place to sleep, so they have to go -- "to a barn!" as one of the kids kept saying. And it's there that the young woman gives birth to her baby. Then a bunch of crazy, scraggly shepherds show up, hopeful and amazed, because they've seen a sky full of angels announcing that this poor baby wrapped up in rags is actually the Savior of the world.

I could see how some people might say the story is too grown-up for children. Or perhaps (in another similar reaction) too serious to be play-acted. I could see how people not familiar with the heart of the story (or the heart of the author of the story) might wonder if we were not taking it seriously enough, or think we were attempting to tame its wildness and wonder. They might look a little askance at four and five year old shepherds quaking in fear as my gangly nine year old, dressed in white (with a sparkly sash) waves her arms and beams, towering over them, or at the little eight year old girl dressed in blue, pretending to wash dishes and dropping one in surprise when the angel shows up to tell her she's conceived a baby. (Does it help to remember that Mary was probably only a few years older than this?) They might wonder what we're doing, asking children to enter into this very holy story about very real and sometimes gritty things.

But that is the wildness and wonder of the whole thing -- that we're all asked to enter into it, and that we're all children in the face of this incredible reality, this amazing love, this tremendous story. None of our celebrations, none of our actings out of the story, will ever come close to capturing its wonder and essence -- but we still enter it, year after year, doing our fumbling best. Because we need to and long to. Because we want to find our place in it and learn to live the story out. Because it is at the fountain of this story that we drink life.

And I sometimes think it is the simplest, youngest, most innocent, homemade renditions of that story that come closest to the edges of the real event -- earthy and poor and homemade as it was. This is, after all, the story of the birth of a baby, a tiny precious baby. That the baby is God wrapped in rags and cradled by a young, tired mother in a barn is so gloriously preposterous that it needs the wholehearted trusting faith of a child to even be approached. Christmas pageants give us this opportunity -- to enter in as children, to enter in with children, to enter in before the Child himself. We know the Child grows up; we know the holy life he will live and the pain he will endure on our behalf and the death he will die for us. But we cannot get to that part of the story without this part, this plain and simple earthly beginning embroidered around all its rough-hewn edges with angel song. We need to hear it, again and again, and walk into it over and over.

Gregory the Great was right. The Gospel is shallow enough for a lamb to wade in and deep enough for an elephant to swim. So I'm thankful for the Christmas pageant every year. Every year it's a new chance to usher children into the story, to walk with them as they leave the shore and head into the wild waters of the gospel, to give them waterwings and hold their hands as they learn to float, to teach them how to wade. And every year it's a chance for me to sink deeper, to swim farther, to stay longer in and farther out, knowing I will never ever exhaust the depth of this story no matter how long I live or how many times I move into its beautiful, rushing, life-giving current.

Two Christmas Picture Books

I'm tired. It's December and it's cold. It's near the end of the semester. And it's Advent (oh blessed season, I am so thankful it comes every year without fail, even when I'm not ready for it) and I am finding myself craving more time to read, write, think and pray.

Blog posts march through my mind often. Sometimes I begin mentally composing. Sometimes I begin actually composing as the abandoned drafts in my folder could attest. I've got a lot of things I'd love to reflect on here, including Advent thoughts and gratitude reflections. But for now they will have to keep percolating.

I did want to share briefly about two beautiful "new to us" picture books we've read this week. Yes, I know, the sweet girl is nine...no longer prime picture book age. But I think she will always love picture books, and certainly I've never stopped!

The two books we've especially loved this week are Patricia Palacco's Christmas Tapestry and Susan Wojciechowski and P.J. Lynch's The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey. Both books are beautifully told tales of miracles and hope at Christmas time. Palacco matches her masterful story-telling with her usual colorful, expressive pictures -- and took the story in a direction I wasn't expecting at all. I never seem to be able to get through one of her books without good, cleansing tears. Jonathan Toomey has a lovely storytelling cadence and absolutely luminous pictures by P.J. Lynch -- I do love his work.

Longer reviews of both books coming, I hope, but for now I just had to share how much we loved them both. Perhaps another post will begin percolating...about some of our "old favorite" Christmas picture books!

Imogene Herdman

When it comes to Christmas books, it doesn't get much better than The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Tonight we finished reading it...the sweet girl's first time through, and my hundred and umpteenth. (I still have my Weekly Reader copy from the 1970s...I've loved this book a long time!)

I was going to post all about why I love the book, and why I can't read the final scenes with Imogene Herdman without crying, but then I remembered that I'd written about this book here a few years ago. I went searching and found the 5+ year old post, and I thought I'd excerpt a bit of it here. Because some things never change, including the rush of wonder this book gives me every time I read it. What a delight to share it with my daughter.

Here's the old post, in part.

*****

I think it's one of my favorite moments in any Christmas story -- and I love a lot of Christmas stories.

Imogene Herdman was crying.

In the candlelight her face was all shiny with tears and she didn't even bother to wipe them away. She just sat there -- awful old Imogene -- in her crookedy veil, crying and crying and crying.

Well. It was the best Christmas pageant we ever had.



What's so wonderful about this scene, aside from its good storytelling sense, is that I think most of us have some Imogene Herdman in us. If we're honest, some of us have Imogene Herdman moments -- or days -- or perhaps even years. We know what it's like to be clumsy and broken, to not fit in anywhere, to have to take care of other people when sometimes we'd love if it people would take care of us for a change. We hide our insecurities behind bravado, sometimes irreverence, maybe even a touch of bullying.

And then comes that moment -- sometimes in the footlights, sometimes in the covers of a story, sometimes just in the quiet of our own heart -- when the wonder of God's love for us alights on our head like a beautiful bird. It comes home to us how much God loves us, awful old us, dressed up in our crookedy costumes, pretending to be someone we know we're not. That love washes over us like a flood, and in that moment we know who we are because we finally know whose we are.

And that's grace.

********

For Louisa, Jack, and Madeleine... (Literary Day of Days)

It's my favorite literary day of the year: the anniversary of the birth of three of the deepest writers of my heart. Louisa May Alcott was born on this day in 1832, Clive Staples (Jack) Lewis in 1898, and Madeleine L'Engle in 1918. What an amazing gift it is to be able to celebrate all three of them on the same day!

I fell in love with all three of these writers when I was very young and my love for them has continued over the years, though it's taken different shape in different seasons. As I pondered today all the profound ways they have influenced me through the years -- far too many ways to count -- it occurred to me that even if each had only graced the world with a fraction of what they wrote, I still would feel grateful. Playing on that idea, I wrote this poem in tribute to them, and in tribute to three of their characters who have been my special friends.

For Louisa, Jack and Madeleine

It would have been enough to give us Jo –

Tree climber, boot stomper, apple muncher,
Snow thrower, writer of tales.
In the mirror of pages across the ages,
We still see the ink stain on her finger,
The scorch on her dress, the wild, rumpled hair.
We hear her tears in the garret,
Mingled with rain, and know
the soft, satin feel of the ribbon
tied round her stories.


It would have been enough to give us Lucy –

Door opener, truth teller, faun friend,
merry queen, lion-hearted girl.
In the mirror of pages across the ages,
We still see the flask of healing cordial,
The white-winged albatross, snowflakes
Glittering in the lamppost light.
We hear her muffled tears the night
The world seemed to end, and know
the soft, tangled tresses of the wild lion’s mane
wrapped round her fingers.


It would have been enough to give us Meg –

Problem solver, hand holder, cocoa maker,
namer, friend of cherubim.
In the mirror of pages across the ages,
We still see glasses slip in the moonlight,
Dragon scales in a dripping garden,
A bright quilt in a wind-rocked attic room.
We hear her tears of relief as she clutches
Her rescued brother, and know
the soft, small boy feel of his hair
pressed close to her cheek.

~EMP, 11-29-11

A Gracious Slip of the Tongue

Sometimes slips of the tongue -- especially when done by kids -- can be downright funny. Other times they feel a little profound.

The sweet girl has been working on memorizing Psalm 103 this fall, doing a little more each week. She has an excellent memory and for the most part it's been smooth sailing. But for the past couple of weeks, whenever we get to these lines she's stumbled a bit:

The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.

The stumble has been linguistic ~ and it's also been lovely. What she keeps wanting to say is "The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and a fountain of lovingkindness."

I love the way "abounding" and "fountain" play so musically together. And how I keep picturing the Lord's lovingkindness now, surging up in an abounding fountain of goodness and grace and mercy that just keeps flowing and flowing and flowing. No wonder our little cups can't possibly contain it!

First Sunday of Advent (and More Advent Reading)

"...our whole life is an Advent season, that is, a season of waiting for the last Advent, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth."

This is just one of many beautiful and ponder-worthy quotes from God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas, a lovely collection of Advent meditations culled from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's letters and sermons. Highly recommended reading this Advent season and on into Christmas (the final daily reflection is for Epiphany).

Happy Birthday, Robert Louis Stevenson

It's the birthday of the wonderful Scottish poet Robert Louis Stevenson (November 13, 1850-December 3, 1894). He is one of the poets I have loved the longest.

Stevenson came from a long line of lighthouse engineers but decided that life was not for him. He became a novelist and poet instead, and the world is a richer place for that decision.

A few years ago I wrote this poem that enters, via imagination, his vocational choice. I thought I'd post it today in honor of his birthday. He's certainly kept lights burning for so many!


Keep the light burning, Louis –
let it shine 'cross the sea.
Let it guide travelers tossed,
said my family to me.

They imagined me keeping
traditions long kept,
they imagined me living
on rocks wild, wind-swept.

Sea runs in my veins
and I love the wind’s song
but to that kind of life
I don’t quite belong.

I need paper and pens,
poems and stories to be
a strong man who shines
a bright light on the sea.

See my words? They are beacons
and paths and a port,
they are helps in great storms
and lights of a sort.

Though faith and deep joy
aren’t easy to measure,
They’re my way of keeping
traditions long treasured.

~EMP (2008)

Jessica Powers: Creature of God

One of the poets of my heart is Jessica Powers (1905-1988) a Carmelite nun whose beautiful, prayerful poems are rich in evocative imagery. They remind me a good bit of George Herbert's poems though they are also wildly and wonderfully unique.

If you'll forgive the pun, Powers often speaks powerfully to my heart. I go back often to my dog-eared copy of her collected poems. Even when I haven't visited the book in a while, something will trigger a memory of a line or an image and I find myself back there again.

Last night such a trigger came when I found myself musing, in a tired way, about my own finiteness. Not in the ultimate sense, but in the ordinary, daily grind kind of way. I think the way I expressed it to a friend was that lately I keep feeling like I'm going THUMP against the walls of my finiteness, my limitations, wherever I turn.

And then I remembered Jessica Power's poem "Creature of God." And I remembered that even on those days when I seem to be running into walls left and right, I can go to God...just as I am, finite, limited, broken and all...and stand bathed in the vastness of his love and grace. He meets me there. It's there that he gathers me into his arms.

Creature of God

That God stands tall, incomprehensible,
infinite and immutable and free,
I know. Yet more I marvel that His call
trickles and thunders down through space to me;

that from His far eternities He shouts
to me, one small inconsequence of day.
I kneel down in the vastness of His love,
cover myself with creaturehood and pray.

God likes me covered with my creaturehood
and with my limits spread across His face.
He likes to see me lifting to His eyes
even the wretchedness that dropped His grace.

I make no guess what greatness took me in,
I only know, and relish it as good,
that I am gathered more to God's embrace
the more I greet Him through my creaturehood.

~Jessica Powers

True Confessions

The other day I noticed that the sweet girl was re-reading Sarah, Plain and Tall. (Yes, I'm proudly raising a re-reader!) I smiled and said something like "Oh sweetie, it's fun to see you reading that book again. You've loved it for a long time."

She grinned and agreed. And then she gave a mirthful little chuckle. "You know something, Mommy?" she asked. "The first time you read this book to me, when I was about five, I thought it was about three people named Sarah, Plain, and Tall."