Thankful for the Apostle Paul (and Romans 5:1-11, and the Scriptures, and Grace)

I'm home on this Ash Wednesday evening, working on writing a lesson plan for Romans 5:1-11. This is part of the freelance curriculum writing job I've had since late fall, a job for which I continue to be so thankful, in part because it's such a joy to be able to spend time in the Scriptures, thinking and writing about them for youth and their teachers.

This is my fifth project for the publisher, and only my second New Testament lesson. It's also the first time I've had to tackle Paul for this curriculum. I use the word "tackle" on purpose, because as usual, I find Paul a challenge for my mind and heart.

In general, my story-loving self finds it ever so much easier to write lesson plans and activity guides for narrative or poetic/prophetic passages. Narratives give us characters we can hang our hats on, and poetry gives us concrete visual images. To be fair, Paul sometimes gives us both of those things -- he loves to re-tell Old Testament stories (often with a new twist) and he sometimes provides rich imagery ("clanging cymbal" and the parts of the body talking to one another come to mind right away). But sometimes he's the Paul I tend to think of when his name comes to mind: the pastoral, teaching Paul whose complex sentences can pack what feels like dozens of deeply rich theological words into a very, very small space.

These eleven verses I've been sitting with for the past couple of weeks contain a lot of the biggies: reconciliation, justification, grace, hope, peace, faith, endurance, suffering, rejoicing, wrath. They're all there, and the first few times I read through the passage, as I thought about trying to help teachers unpack it for youth, I found myself wanting to bite my nails. It was hard to pick one over-arching "big idea" because, quite frankly, every single idea in it is big.

So I just kept reading. I'd pick it up at odd moments and read it again. I read it in the ESV (my study Bible of choice these days), in the NIV along with some commentary notes, in the NRSV (which is the translation I need to use for my work). I read it in the Message (thank you, Eugene) and in the wonderfully expanded Amplified version, which interestingly enough, really helped me this time, because with its parenthetical comments expanding on some of those big theological words, it somehow captured the exuberance of Paul.

I think that's what I was missing for a while, as I read the passage with my mind (not a bad thing to do, of course, and needed) trying to understand the import of what Paul was saying well enough to begin to put it into simpler and more concrete terms for kids. I needed to read it with my heart too, to hear the excitement in Paul's voice as he builds and builds and repeats himself...and he does...about the amazing love of God. A love poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. A love shown to us through the death of Jesus on the cross, a death he died while we were yet sinners. While we were a helpless mess and could do nothing on our behalf, reminds Paul, God did it all.

And we who have been reconciled through that act have hope. Real, living, true, confident hope that will never disappoint us, no matter what kind of suffering may come our way. Hope that allows us to rejoice no matter what comes, because HE HAS DONE IT. When we turn to him in trust, when we put our hope in this great good news, he makes us new and sets us right, forever healing our relationship to God which was once so irrevocably broken.

All the big words Paul uses? He's not using them to impress or confuse, he's using them because they're the only ones he can come up with that are rich and deep and brilliant enough to capture at least a little bit of the truth he's trying to sing for us here, preaching it so it can sink deep down into our bones and enflame our hearts and remind us anew of who God is and what he has done.

I am so thankful for the apostle Paul, so thankful for these words and the gift of the Scriptures.

Meet Flavia de Luce: Diminutive Sherlock

Every once in a while, I come across a quote in a novel that grabs my attention – either because it strikes me as profound, or it stirs up tears or laughter. The stirring up laughter kind of quote is the one I usually run across in Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce mysteries. Today it was this one, said by a rather batty (but inspiring) maiden aunt to her brilliant eleven year old niece:

“If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one’s self if like the heat in an oven. It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: It changes the face of the world.” (~The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bones)

I’m reading the second novel in this delightfully quirky series, and enjoying myself for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is Bradley’s ability to disprove critics who think a child can’t be a suitable protagonist in a story mostly intended for adults. To be sure, I think Flavia’s mysteries would play well with a young adult audience too – though I wonder if young adults (more than older ones) might be put off the eleven year old heroine. But maybe not. Maybe they’d embrace her even more wholeheartedly!

Like Ender of Orson Scott Card’s science fiction novels, Flavia never quite seems her age – except on the rare occasions that she has to. The limits of an eleven year old’s world set interesting parameters for mystery solving. Flavia may compare herself to the “swarming clerics in Anthony Trollope who seemed to spend their days buzzing from cloister to vicarage and from village to the bishop’s palace like black clockwork beetles scuttling to and fro in a green maze” but our diminutive Sherlock has to make her way in pursuit of clues on her bicycle -- which she’s named Gladys.

I think that may be the genius of Flavia: she’s precocious enough to have read Trollope (okay, she confesses she “skimmed bits” of it, and that she’s not terribly into the books because there’s no one her age in them) but she’s still child enough to name her bicycle. She’s brilliant enough to perform incredible forensic chemistry experiments in her lab, but still insecure and immature enough to use her scientific brilliance in the pursuit of petty revenge on her older sisters (beware lipsticks and chocolates at the de Luce home…you never know what Flavia might have syringed inside them).

Between the genius of Flavia’s character and the lively humor of Bradley’s similes, I’m thoroughly enjoying myself with this series. I just might need to start collecting Bradley’s similes, like one collects bright beetles in a jar. He can’t seem to go more than a page or two without indulging in one. They’re often laugh-aloud funny at the same time they’re surprisingly evocative.

Did I mention the mysteries are pretty good too? There’s even a real police inspector, the amiable and smart Inspector Hewitt, who welcomes Flavia’s brilliance even if he’s not too sure what to do about her poking her nose into his cases.

Church School Snippets

One of the things I love most about teaching in our parish church school is how profoundly and wonderfully the kids get the message of God’s redeeming love. Sometimes it can be hard to remember just how much they’re listening…and thinking, learning, and growing….in the midst of the wiggles and the giggles and the bouts of silliness and the endless questions about when we’re going to have snack, but listening they are. And sometimes they do get it.

The kids we teach range in age from 5 to 11. Some of the moments with them are profound, and some are just delightful and funny. I have so many favorite moments on a given Sunday that I can’t possibly recount them all, but here are a few of my favorites today:

• My seventh grade daughter, who assists us in teaching the class, leaning over and whispering to me during opening worship upstairs. She was reminding me that one of the kids had a birthday this week, so we would want to sing to him during church school (one of our traditions). She also reminded me that during church school prayer time, we should remember to ask a girl in the class about how her recent visit with her grandparents had gone. I nodded. Then without thinking, I leaned over and whispered back, “that’s good pastoring.” And it is. I love that my daughter is attuned to the lives of these younger kids and that she’s thinking about ways we can bless them and affirm the importance of the things going on in their lives.
• Of course, the kids can also drive her a bit batty, especially when they are in highly active mode as they were today. She can get easily overwhelmed by all the noise and activity. At one point today, she hauled off and shouted “Silence!” which miraculously did produce a lull. It also made me laugh (inwardly) as I suspect that all pastors, even the grown-up official kind with collars, might not mind doing that on occasion.
• The Bishop was here today, for his yearly visitation and to confirm one of the young adults in our congregation (now in her 20s, and we’ve known her since she was about 6!). The bishop gathered the kids and gave them a little talk about the ABUNDANT life we have in Christ, helping them to understand the word abundant. After the bishop prayed for and dismissed the kids, we took them downstairs and I was about to ask, as I always did, if there was anything in worship upstairs that they had particularly noticed or wanted to talk about. Before I could, a boy waved his hand and announced, “I noticed that the bishop has ABUNDANT eyebrows.” (Which is quite true by the way…our bishop’s eyebrows are most impressive!)
• The kids were listening to a puppet show in which the characters were talking about the verse in Corinthians about how one person sowed, and another watered, but God made things grow. The little boy nestled on my lap looked at me, and said, in a highly intrigued voice, “Does God make things grow? With his POWERS?”
• We were talking about the different gifts that God gives to different people in the church: all kinds of gifts, and all important and necessary. The kids were naming people in the church who did different things and some of their gifts, and I was pointing out that each and every one of them was also gifted and also an important part of the church. At which point a newly turned 10 year old piped up with the profound words: “my dad tells me my gift is that I’m vulnerable to letting God speak through me.” Well….yes. Wow.
• We were praying for our city of the day: Windhoek, Namibia. Most of the cities we’ve prayed for this year (we’re going A-Z) have been in the 10-40 window and have a lot of unreached peoples, but Windhoek has about a 90% Christian population. The kids were astounded…and impressed. “I think missionaries have done a good job there!”
• We were singing and dancing to a very African-inspired version of Galatians 5:1 (“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free; stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”) I called out, “If we’ve been set free by Jesus, why would we want to be slaves again to sin?” and one little boy hollered back, “Yeah, who would want to be a slave again? That’s just dumb!”) Amen, child. Amen.

Winter Re-Reads (or Book Staples on your Shelf)

What books do you re-read in the wintertime?

I'm an inveterate re-reader at all times, but I confess I re-read more than usual in the winter. This year the bouts of arctic cold and the rutted, icy ground right outside my door are sending me hurrying to my old favorites on the bookshelf more than usual. At the moment, I'm in the middle of re-reading the wonderful novel The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This lovely book by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows has a tendency to make me both laugh out loud and tear up every so often, and it's become one of my yearly staples.

I'm beginning to think some books are like staples in the pantry, the stuff you feel you can't do without for too long without worrying you're going to go hungry. Everyone's food staples are different (mine include potatoes, onions, carrots, corn meal, whole wheat flour, brown rice, kosher salt, basil, apples, and cinnamon) and our book staples are different too. You might be just fine if you run out of Austen or cozy mysteries, but beside yourself if you're low on Asimov or graphic novels. Of course, one of the nicest things about book staples is that they can keep for years on your shelves without needing much replenishing.

History, House, and Hot Green Tea

I can tell I'm a little bit tired. I almost started this post with the line, "Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and become a history teacher." Then I started chuckling, because of course I am a history teacher, although like so many other roles in my life, it's one that's sort of snuck in the back door. I've taught eight years of history to my homeschooling daughter, and I've taught church history, in one form or another, to adult learners for about a decade now.

I've always enjoyed history, but it's really been in the past fifteen years or so that I find myself reading history just for the sheer love it. History and biography have become some of my chief reading pleasures. And though I have favorite eras (the early 20th century is my absolute favorite) I can chase down rabbit trails from all sorts of time periods. It doesn't take much to get me started on a history trail these days. My current pleasure is early New England history. I'm reading Nathaniel Philbrick's book The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World. I confess I'm reading it in its "adapted for young people" version, partly because at only 338 pages plus index, it's shorter than his Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War. I'm beginning to wish I'd picked that up (it won the National Book Award) but given that I'm having to read in the cracks and crevices of a heavy work schedule, the shorter adaptation is probably better right now. It's also helping me prep for upcoming lessons with S on King Philip's War. Added to which, I'm thinking I may use this particular book on S's high school reading list. (Gulp. Yes. You saw those words correctly. High school reading list. It's coming sooner than you think....)

Although I love reading history and biography any time of year, I'm especially fond of reading them in winter. I have all sorts of coping mechanisms for getting through winter. This year, in addition to good history, those coping mechanisms include multiple episodes of the television show House (D. and I just finished the first season -- how we are enjoying Hugh Laurie's performance!) and lots of cups of hot green tea (decaff). Between history, House, and hot green tea, I think it's quite possible that I may make it through the next two months of cold weather.

New Scott Cairns Poems at Books & Culture Today

January is one of my favorite months for poetry. Despite one of the busiest work and school schedules I can almost ever remember, I'm both reading and writing it a good bit this month.

Today, as the snow pours down, I was so happy to see that there are two new Scott Cairns poems posted at Books and Culture today. You can find them here.

I've only had time for one reading so far, but I love these lines:

What recourse has the weary pilgrim save
to stand before that endless beckoning,
to draw his every scattered member into one,
to draw, and so be drawn?

"to stand before that endless beckoning...."  yes.
  

Farewell to Adam Dalgliesh: A Review (of Sorts) of P.D. James' The Private Patient

My plan to read P.D. James’ last Adam Dalgliesh novel at a leisurely pace failed. Partly it was because of me (I cannot seem to read mysteries in a leisurely fashion) and partly it was because of James. Although I can understand that her methodical, detailed scene setting is not everyone’s cup of literary tea, I find it enormously comforting. The older I get, the more I recognize the pure delight I find in a well-constructed sentence or paragraph.

James did not write page turners. She doesn’t cram her plots with non-stop action. Her prose is complex and she makes you work for everything: an understanding of the mystery, an understanding of her characters. I once compared her, in a review, to Jane Austen, not because they plowed anything like the same territory, but because the way they relentlessly plow the small bit of terrain they stake for themselves feels similar. The little bits of ivory they carve are different bits, but the carving techniques look alike.

There are times when James’ love of detail does seem to get in the way of her unfolding story, or at least provide a puzzling sense of unevenness to the book. In The Private Patient, the 2008 novel that turned out to be her last novel featuring Adam Dalgliesh, there’s a scene not far from the end that almost made me laugh because it felt so typically (and endearingly) the kind of scene she loves to write.

Dalgliesh has solved the murder, more or less, but feels unsatisfied with the confessed motive of the killer. In the interest of learning more of the truth, he seeks out information from an elderly solicitor whom he believes can provide him with that information. It turns out that the man can do just that – in fact his part in the underlying reasons behind the whole recent tragedy turn out to be deeper than maybe even Dalgliesh expected – but what’s interesting is the way James goes out of her way to paint a portrait of this  admittedly minor character. She’s perhaps twenty-five pages from the end of the novel (and there is a definite sense throughout the book that the 88 year old James knew it was probably her last Dalgliesh novel) and yet she makes the reader linger in the man’s room, giving us revealing glimpses of his character in his possessions, his view from the nursing home window, the dance of his conversation with Dalgliesh (in which he reveals some, but not everything, that Dalgliesh wishes to know). 

We don’t need to know all this about the solicitor. We’re never going to see him or his room again. And yet James delights in giving us the details, in creating a portrait of a character who essentially has a walk-on role. One wonders sometimes why she persists in doing this. I think a lot of it seems to be pure pleasure from the creation and exploration of character, but at least some of it can be chalked up to her desire to show that all human beings, not merely the ones in “starring roles,” are important and complex. Indeed, she shows us time and again that for Dalgliesh himself, a dedication to solving murders only makes sense if one believes that all murders are equally shocking because each one robs a unique and equally valuable person of a life. Sometimes one life may look more important or valuable on the surface, but in the end, either all lives are precious or none are. At least that’s what I think AD thinks. (He may be a gentle sort of agnostic, but he’s still the son of a vicar, and it shows through in the fundamentals.)

Contrast her delving into the conversation with the solicitor in his highly detailed lodgings with the three pages or so she devotes in the final chapter to the wedding of our hero, Dalgliesh, to his beloved Emma – Emma whom we still feel like we barely know, Dalgliesh who wore his widower-sorrow deep for book after book. She tells us very little about the ceremony itself, though she chooses a few deft details. She provides our entire glance at the wedding through the perspective of two more minor characters, friends of Emma with whom we’ve spent relatively little time. She gives no lines at all to either Dalgliesh or Emma. The lines she gives to Emma’s friends are partly borrowed from Jane Austen (another wedding with another Emma). We see the bride and groom almost from afar, like we’re looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Sweetly, I think, our last view of Dalgliesh is when he turns from the altar and holds his hand out to Emma with a smile. It’s a lovely last gesture for her stalwart, reticent detective, leaving the reader with the satisfied realization that the private, emotionally buttoned-up Dalgliesh has finally opened himself back up to life and life. Given that the reader is given precious few insights into Dalgliesh’s emotional life throughout the series (think Darcy or Captain Wentworth) as tiny as the motion is, it feels almost huge for James.

James’ own love of Austen was such that I think the comparison of Dalgliesh to some of Austen’s heroes is appropriate. What’s fascinating, however, is that unlike Austen, who never gave us much insight into her heroes’ inner lives because her books are primarily about heroines, James does. But almost all of it comes through watching Dalgliesh at work. We know him as a professional, as a detective mostly (and a poet secondarily) and the ground she plows with such precision and detail is the world in which Dalgliesh works. If we know anything about how AD feels about life, death, love, marriage, loneliness, death, or the human condition, we know it from the way he conducts investigations, treats suspects, looks at the body of a victim, asks questions, and treats colleagues. It hardly ever comes through what he says directly, though sometimes, especially in the later books, we’re privileged to be given some of his thoughts.

In the end, I think James fought hard against turning Dalgliesh into any sort of typical “hero,” romantic or otherwise, which may not have endeared her to a wider readership (not that she needed one!) but I think ultimately kept the books more interesting. This may be why she resisted giving much detail to the romance she finally let him be involved in for the last few books, though one gets the sense that she was too fond of him as a character to let him stay the reticent and lonely widower of the early books. She resists letting him fall for Kate, the woman he works so closely with for years, though she finally let us see in this last book what a deep place he will always hold in Kate’s heart – and vice versa. Yes, AD writes poetry, and he occasionally has to do heroic type things like rescue people from dangerous situations, but really he’s a very ordinary man, albeit a highly intelligent one, who is doing the best he can at a job he loves but sometimes finds difficult and painful. Does that make him a hero? Maybe, in a very real and human sense. All I know is that, despite sometimes feeling like I never got to know him as well as I kept hoping I would, I’m going to miss him.

Thankful Day

After the exhausting week and the icky Saturday (which probably came through loud and clear in my curmudgeonly post yesterday) I just have to say how thankful I am for this Sunday. The temperatures moderated into the low 30s, which did wonders for my morale.

Morning worship was lovely, infused with a lot of music that paid tribute to the late Andrae Crouch (an amazing gospel singer and musician who passed away last week). D and I both dearly love Andrae's music, and our family has been praying for him for quite some time in his recent months of illness. I loved the fact that our congregation is Anglo-Baptist (grin) enough that today we got to celebrate Andre's legacy, especially with the final rollicking strains of his "Soon and Very Soon, We are Goin' to See the King."

Sunday School and missions committee meeting were both full of challenges, but today challenges felt good, as did loving and serving as wholeheartedly as I could. Despite my inadequacies everywhere, God's love sure does make up for all I'm not.

A walk home in those more moderate temperatures, fifteen minutes of pure quiet to enjoy before the rest of the fam got home from grocery shopping, and a lunch made of fresh strawberries, Robert Frost poetry, and time with my 12 year old -- thankfully in much better space herself today! -- were also blessings. D. had to go back to work (it is, after all, still January) but S. and I proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon baking bread after she built a quick snowman on our sidewalk, courtesy of the slight melt that had come to the snow mountains.I snuck in a little bit more reading on Charles Marsh's new biography of Bonhoeffer, and even managed the first chapter of my new P.D. James.

I know I may rue the fact that I didn't work on deadlines today, but sometimes rest, in all sorts of forms, is even more important. Very thankful for this day!

The Last Dalgliesh

Normally a trip to the library is one of my favorite things, especially in the depths of winter (I know, it's not even mid-January, but it's starting to feel like the depths)! Today was one of those cold, raw, January days that not even a library trip could seem to brighten.

It may have been because I spent half an hour or more hunting for a missing library book that's overdue -- and I still haven't found it. This is a book D. checked out several weeks ago, which has been renewed all the times it can be. We've searched all the usual and unusual places for it and still can't find it, which is driving me that batty. (It wasn't even that good a book.)

It may have been the argument that S. and I got into on the way to the library. The sweet girl (still sweet, but very almost-adolescent) loves to argue and provoke arguments with me right now. Today she decided to get frustrated at me for having read too many books to her over the years. (Apparently, I have always read "the long ones" out loud rather than leaving her to read them on her own, and she's suddenly decided that bugs her. But basically all I have to do right now is breathe too loudly and it bugs her, so I'm trying not to take it too personally.) It also bugs her that that I tend to tear up over sad scenes or endings of stories. I got so frustrated today that I basically threw up my hands, apologized for having spent so many years reading good literature to her, and told her that if she wants to opt out of family reading time at night, she can feel free. I don't think she will, but the whole argument tasted so sour in my mouth that I didn't have much heart to go perusing the shelves at the library, the place where we've found so many wonderful books over the years for our family read-aloud times.

Then there was the fact that I felt like I wanted a mystery (I've been working a ton, and mysteries are some of my favorite bits of fluff-reading) and headed to the shelves to pick up a P.D. James, my stand-by in recent years. Only to recall that I have only one P.D. James mystery left to read. I have reached the last Dalgliesh. Somehow the melancholy feeling that accompanied picking up that final book just seemed to fit this whole day.

Gregory of Nyssa on the Mystery of the Human Person

I've begun doing daily readings from Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary. This is a daily reading book that my husband used and enjoyed last year and has now passed on to me. (He loves books that provide daily readings, and I'm in the throes of ordering a couple of such books for him...late this year...thanks to an Amazon gift certificate we received for Christmas.)

One of the things I always enjoy about reading the church fathers is the recognition that I'm listening to a faithful voice from a very long time ago. We are connected across the span of time because of our shared faith in Christ, and that connection runs deep. At the same time, a remarkable amount of distance exists because of the very fact of so much time between the writer's life and my own -- though sometimes I'm amazed that it feels smaller than I think, because so much about being human stays the same. Still, I love that the "clean sea breezes of the centuries" blow between us, as C.S. Lewis puts it so beautifully in his encouragement to read old books (which you can find in his introduction to Athanasius' On the Incarnation). I need those breezes. I need perspectives significantly older than my own.

I love that the ancient writers often have a healthy and wonderful sense of mystery about the human person, something that I think we've lost a little bit in our efforts to understand, explain, and control so much in a time when science holds sway. This isn't, by the way, an anti-science polemic. I love the fact that we've been given minds to ask questions and that, in our curiosity and our yearnings to know more, we've learned so much about the world over the years. It's also fascinating to me that the more we learn, the more we still have to learn. The complexities of life are so rich and full, we can never get to the end of knowledge.

Still, there's a humility and a wonder in some of the church fathers that's just so refreshing. This week the breviary has been focusing on excerpts from Gregory of Nyssa's The Creation of Man. I got a chuckle when I read this line:

"The Apostle Paul says 'Who has known he mind of the Lord?' (Rom. 11:34)...To this I would add, 'Who knows his own mind?'

Gregory goes on to reflect on the fact that not only is God's nature beyond our comprehension, but that we, made in his image, are also pretty incomprehensible. In other words, I think he's saying that we shouldn't be too easily frustrated by our own complexity and how hard it can be to understand our own selves (and others). Our very complexity is part of our reflection of God's nature, which is even more unfathomable (again, in a deep, good, mysterious sense) than our own. Our intellect "remains a mystery" he says, and he doesn't seem all that worried about it. Our mind "has many parts and many components...How does it comprehend knowledge? How are its different elements brought together? The mind is a single entity, not a compound. How it is divided among the various senses? How does this diversity in unity arise? How unity in diversity?" (Hint: he sees in this mysteriousness our resemblance to the Trinitarian God.)

I love that Gregory asks questions that are still, for all our advances in science and medicine, still being asked. I love that he seems genuinely serene as he asks them. And not just serene, filled with wonder and amazement before the mystery of human beings who are made in the image of God who is also mystery, beyond our comprehension, and yet willing to reveal himself, to draw near and make himself known.

(Funny p.s.: my spellchecker suggests the word "humanitarian" in place of "Trinitarian" ~ apparently the latter is not in its dictionary. And it suggests "patriotic" for "Patristic.")

President #1: George Washington

My foray into the life and times of Harry Truman has made me pick up a book that my dad loaned to me a few years ago (and recently told me I should just go on and keep!): David Rubel's Mr. President: The Human Side of America's Chief Executives.

This is a coffee table kind of book published by Time-Life back in 1998. But sometimes a coffee table book is just the kind you want to pick up and dip into. I value this one all the more because my dad has annotated the table of contents, which simply listed each president by name next to the page numbers on which they're profiled. In his clear, firm hand-writing, Dad added the number of their administration and the years they were in office. He even added chief executive #43 and made a space for #44, though I don't think he got back to the book after Obama took office. I'll add him and make a space for #45 in a couple of years.

Every profile includes a portrait (painting or photo), a synopsis of the president's administration, snippets about the president's background, hobbies, family life, and occupation, a profile of the first lady, major political events that occurred on his watch, a timeline of different cultural events that took place during his administration, and a sort of "bubble-gum card" sidebar with the president's major stats such as birthplace, date of death, and political party. It's a nice reference book to have on hand for the mid-grade years.

I've been reading "at" this book for some time, but today I decided to just pick up and start at the beginning...a very good place to start, as they say. That meant I spent about ten minutes reading up on George Washington, the man who would rather have stayed a farmer than become president. He had a vision of America as a "great agricultural empire stretching west to the Mississippi River and beyond."

He's a fascinating figure really: strong and persuasive enough to help mold the beginnings of our government, detached enough to walk away and head home to Mount Vernon after eight years in office. I liked hearing about his humility -- he thought Adams and Jefferson were both a lot smarter than he was, which the author said was true, but then added this great quote from Jefferson about Washington: "His mind...was slow in operation, but sure in conclusion." Maybe not a bad thing.

Fun fact: one of the major political events during his tenure was the founding of the first national bank. Up until then, there was no standard American currency. Pounds, kopeks, and pesos were all in circulation. (Pounds and pesos I get, but kopeks?)

Also interesting: when western Pennsylvanians complained about the whiskey tax and started a rebellion, Washington led a 15,000 man army into Pennsylvania himself. This was in 1794, again during his administration. A little hard to imagine in my lifetime...a president riding at the head of the troops, I mean, not western Pennsylvanians kicking up a ruckus.

Happy 2015!

A very happy new year! 2015 -- can you believe it?

I've been starting the new year on this blog for so many years now, I've just about lost count, but I'm pretty sure it's been almost nine years since I first started writing here. Despite the fact that last year was my most lean year ever on the blog, I still appreciate having this space to come to, a place where I can share my thoughts and the thoughts of so many writers who inspire me.

I don't want to go out on a limb and promise that I will be writing here more often this year, but I certainly would love to make posting here a more regular habit again. I especially would love to get back to my roots in starting this blog, specifically as a place to reflect on reading. 

This morning's quiet time found me meditating on the words of Emil Brunner, who reminded me that God is creating new life in me, a word I very much needed to hear as we turn the corner into this new season. And from Irenaeus, the reminder that "Likeness to God comes only from the Spirit."

I seem to be moving into this new year more aware of my shortcomings, failures, and limitations than ever before. I am trying to be just as aware -- if not moreso -- of the God's tremendous grace, strength, faithfulness, and mercy.

"Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."~ 1 John 3:2

Blessings in the new year!

Who Was President When You Were Twelve?

As 2014 draws to a close, I'm enjoying David McCullough's masterful biography of Truman, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1993.

Since Truman was president well before I was born, most of what I've learned about him over the years, prior to now, came in conversations with my dad. My father loves to talk history and politics, especially presidential politics, which is likely where I get some of my fascination with the subject.

One of the things I remember my dad telling me most clearly was how strange it felt for him at first to think of Harry S. Truman as president. When Truman became president in April 1945, on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, my father had no memory of any other president ever. FDR had been elected to an unprecedented and never to be repeated four terms (though he would serve only three months of the fourth term). He was first elected in 1932, the year both of my parents were born. Mom was a newly turned 13 and Dad 12 almost 13 when FDR died and Truman became president. No wonder he had a hard time fathoming that anybody else could have the job! That little anecdote has been  lodged in my memory for years. Interestingly, McCullough spends a lot of time explaining how Truman himself (in his first dazed reaction) had a hard time thinking of himself as president too.

Maybe because my own daughter is now 12, I've found myself thinking through other "12s" in our family history. It's interesting and revealing to think about U.S. presidential history in terms of the youth of different generations. My daughter, of course, is 12 during the second term of Barack Obama, the first African American president. When I was 12, Ronald Regan had just been elected for the first time (he would be president my entire adolescence), though Jimmy Carter was actually in office through the end of the year I turned 12. When my husband was 12, Richard Nixon had just been inaugurated for his second term, a year prior to his resignation of the presidency (a political environment to which my husband still attributes much of his own attitudes toward and ideas about politics). My middle sister turned 12 the year Nixon resigned. My oldest sister turned 12 less than half a year before Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not run for re-election, and my brother turned 12 the next year, just two months before Nixon was first elected.

My mother-in-law, five years younger than my parents, would have been 12 the year that Harry S. Truman was inaugurated for his first full term (but essentially his second) following his improbable election victory over Thomas Dewey in 1948. My husband's aunt, ten years his junior, was 12 the year that John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

My maternal grandmother turned 12 in 1921, the year that Warren G. Harding was inaugurated (in March, as they did back then). My maternal grandfather turned 12 in 1924, the year that Calvin Coolidge delivered the first radio broadcast from the White House. My paternal grandmother would have turned 12 in 1917, the year Woodrow Wilson was elected for his second term and the U.S. went to war (for the first time) with Germany (a war in which Harry Truman would serve as an artillery captain.) My paternal grandfather turned 12 in 1913, the year Wilson was inaugurated for the first time, succeeding William Howard Taft.

I find this so interesting that I may go back even further and figure out who was president when my great-grandparents were 12!

Advent Conjugation

A very merry Christmas! I thought I would share my annual advent poem here as one more way of celebrating today. Blessings to all!

Advent Conjugation

He came.

It was a journey

long and far.

  The One

who made the light

and every star

stepped into darkness

that we might see

his shining glory here.

He wrapped himself

  in flesh

that we might behold

the face of God

and hold his gentle

love within our hands.

He made himself

  so small

we could embrace

eternity in swaddling bands.

He comes

  each day.

He understands

our longest journeys.

The baby refugee

whose parents fled,

the man who had

no place to lay his head,

he knows the way

  we wander,

the borders we cross,

and all the places

where we hide

when we’re afraid

  and lost.

The courage he sends

through the strength

of his name gives light .

when we’re down

to the barest of flame.

He will come

  once more.

The long journey

will be made again

and all our stories

brought to their

  rightful end

in the love story

begun before

the world began.

Both joy and fears

enfolded in his grace

and every step

of every weary race

redeemed.

We will be whole.

He promises

to make it so.

And this is the

advent conjugation

that’s true for every

tongue and tribe

 and nation –

that we can trust

  the One

  who came,

  who comes,

  who will come

  once again,

to lead us into

joyous life

that never ends.

            ~EMP, Advent 2014

Teach Us to Number Our Days: A Few Thoughts on Aging

“Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12

This advent season I’m thinking about aging. It’s not just because my middle-aged body and mind are both tired these days (I find myself getting really excited about sleep, in ways I never used to!) but because we recently visited our parents.

My husband’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s this year, a diagnosis we’re still not entirely sure about, though one thing is clear: her memory and physical strength have both plummeted alarmingly in the past year and a half. Although she is a little stronger now than she was in late summer, before the family had her current care situation in place, it is still very difficult to see her so frail and easily confused.

My own mother, five years older than my mother-in-law but always constitutionally more vigorous, fell two days before Thanksgiving and broke her hip. We spent our time there mostly in hospital, as she was recovering from surgery. She’s spent the weeks since in a rehab facility, learning to walk and carefully handle stairs with her new hip, and Lord willing, she’ll be home in just a couple more days. She’s worked hard, determined to get back on her feet, but she’s battled anxiety, depression, and loneliness too. This has been the longest time my folks, married for 60 years, have been separated from each other for many years. Probably the last time they spent this much time apart was over 50 years ago, when they made a move from Tennessee to Virginia with two little ones in tow, and my father had to move ahead of the rest of the family to find a place for them to live and to start his job. He’s visiting her every day, of course, but they still miss each other a lot.

Observing all three of these people (so dear to me) handle huge challenges has been encouraging, worrying, thought-provoking – and more besides. I am amazed by their courage. I don’t use that word lightly. Just getting into your 70s and 80s with the will to get up each morning, to keep moving in spite of pain and discomfort, to keep a sense of humor in the midst of growing daily frustrations, takes a tremendous amount of courage.

I love these people. They have so much wisdom and experience, and they’ve poured so much of their lives into ours. And right now, they all face so many daily challenges. Physical faculties have begun to fail them. Mom doesn’t hear as well as she used to, Dad’s eyesight is challenging him (night driving has become a real anxiety, reading more of a chore) and my mother-in-law’s vocal strength is failing her, so it’s almost impossible for her to be heard. Both moms struggle with balance issues. My dad has to monitor his pace or his blood-pressure drops significantly (he has congestive heart failure, from which he has recovered wonderfully, but still). They have more aches and pains and their bodies need more rest.

The friends and loved ones of their youth have begun to die, and there are fewer people left who share their memories and can connect with them on deep levels of heart and soul. I’m not sure I’ll ever forget my mom flourishing a newspaper open to the obituary section (while she lay in her hospital bed) and saying with total snark: “Every once in a while we like to check in to make sure we haven’t died yet.” Then my dad, a few minutes later, in a much more sober frame of mind, telling me that “some days when I read the obituaries, everyone listed there is younger than I am.”

I’m sure there are times when they feel overlooked or dismissed because they can’t “keep up the pace.” They’re slower on their feet. New technology passes them by. Popular cultural trends seem more inane and faddish and lightweight to them (I already get that, and I’m only 46). Yet they’re still susceptible to the fear and anxiety pumped regularly through the media, just like everyone else.

I appreciate seeing the ways they handle their growing infirmities and frustrations: sometimes with panache, sometimes with humor, sometimes with anger and defiance. I’ve begun to realize that no two people handle the arduous hills of aging quite the same way. And I’ve begun to see that there are certain things I not only hope and pray I have in place if I ever attain to eight or nine decades of living, but certain things I want to actively work to have in place if and when I get there. Not that I’m banking on these attitudes or attributes necessarily and always making things easier – unexpected challenges will arise, and the likelihood of D & I ever having the level of care our parents are experiencing is slim.

Still, here are a few things I want to begin to put into place for myself now as I think about those years to come. They are good life skills and attitudes to have in the here and now, not just investments for old age.

·        I want to cultivate an attitude of gratitude, the kind of gratitude I see in my dad when he tells me that every day he still enjoys is a gift.

·        I want to keep my mind as active as possible for as long as possible: with reading (including slow, thoughtful reading of material that challenges me), with prayer, music, creativity, and even occasionally tackling new skills. I want to try to be open to the new as well as the old for as long as I can.

·        I want to remember that “activity” does not equal value. A ministry of presence – even if it means, in the end, simply being kind and loving to caregivers (who may or may not always be kind themselves) is still of value. A ministry of prayer matters. There may even be times when I feel I have nothing left to give at all, but I pray that I will still somehow know, deep down inside, that I am always a beloved daughter of God. That starts with me remembering it now, and treating others with the respect and dignity and care with which I hope to be treated one day.

·        I don’t want to be afraid to ask for help or to show I don’t have it all together. I want to stay open to receive. To me, this is huge. My parents have been givers, do-ers, caregivers, their whole lives. It has sometimes been very hard for them to be on the receiving end of care. I think this is a tough one for all of us actually. We all like to be the strong ones who give. But it’s been dawning on me lately that as Christians, our whole (healed, whole, saved!) lives are due to having received grace upon grace we couldn’t have ever earned or scraped up or managed on our own, and that needs to mark our inner disposition in other ways. We need to be open to receive what we can’t possibly do for ourselves, and to see it not as a sign of weakness, but a blessed part of God’s economy and the communion of the saints.

·        I want to view even the really, really hard stuff in life as part of the adventure God has me on, remembering that I am in his hands and in his care.

·        I want to savor simple gifts. And laugh more.  

·        I want to get to and maintain a healthy weight, as well as maintain better exercise routines and healthier eating habits. I’d like to stay as flexible and limber as possible for as long I can!

“Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” Isaiah 46:4

The Blessings of the Yearly Advent Poem

My mysterious disappearance from the blog has not been all that mysterious really. Between an incredible amount of work and our recent Thanksgiving travels, I've not had any time to post here. And I miss it.

I've been thankful to have managed some scribbles in my journal during this time, which have helped to keep me sane. Most of all, I'm thankful for the blessings of Advent.

In years past, I've done a number of posts about Advent. I love to share poems, prayers, snippets of what I'm reading, thoughts about the season. This year I am living at such a flat-out work pace, and our extended families are going through so much stress, Advent had taken on a much more raw and urgent feeling...less about making our way toward the Christmas celebration (though that's still a layer) and more about clinging to the very real hope we have in Jesus. (Which is, of course, a big part of making our way toward the Christmas celebration...but I'm meandering here, and I only have a couple of minutes to write!)

One of the biggest blessings this Advent has been my yearly discipline of writing a poem. This is the twenty-third year I have done so, which means I have been writing an annual Advent poem for half my life. There are years the poem comes easily and years it's a struggle, but this is one of the first years I seriously thought I might just not be able to do it at all. It's not just the work pace right now, but the exhausted inner space. I am spending a lot of my writing working days plowing through work-a-day prose -- poetry has not been a regular part of my diet (reading or writing) for a little while, yet another thing I miss. And yet there's the mysterious blessing of having stored up so much over the years that it's there to draw on when I need it, even in lean seasons.

So when the poem started to do its push and pull inside my heart last week, I wasn't as surprised as I might've been. I found myself smiling at its approach like I would smile at the coming of an old friend -- "really? you decided to come this year too?" The poem never seems to mind how cluttered my house is, how worn out my body, how tired my spirit. So I got up early this morning, tired as I was, to work at a draft.

I am so thankful for the gift of creativity, even or especially when I'm convinced there's none left in the storehouse. Proof once again that it pours into us from the Creator whose well never runs dry.

Emily Dickinson: Autumn

I always think of Emily's autumn poem this time of year. You know the one, which ends:


The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

Can't you just picture her in her long white dress, primping before the mirror with a mischievous smile? Not to be outdone by the dazzling colors of the New England autumn landscape, she reaches into her jewelry box for a favorite pin. I always imagine it as ruby red or golden amber. 

We Get To Love One Another

I've been on a long marching road of work, more work, and a little more work recently. I've given up trying to disentangle the thread of the kinds of "work" I do, some of it paid, a lot of it not, some of it fulfilling and satisfying, the kind of work that can almost feel like play, and some of it just one foot in front of the other duty. I've been trying instead to remember some of the many blessings involved in work, such as: I've been given it to do, and as long as I have health and life I get the chance to do it faithfully and lovingly, even the parts of it that can feel like sheer drudgery.

One of the things that blesses my heart no end is that we've been put on this earth not just to breathe and exist, not just to eat and live and love and laugh and worship (though I'm so thankful we get to do all of those things) but so we can love each other. Isn't that amazing? We get to love one another. Some days it's easy, some days it's hard, but it's part of God's call to us, God's gift to us. We get to love one another. Wow.

Daybook: J.I. Packer ("Mercy from first to last")

Just came across this quote I jotted in my journal a couple of months ago, and thought I would take a page out of the daybook to share it here:

"Even when (the Christian) cannot see the why and wherefore of God's dealings, he knows that there is love in and behind them and so he can rejoice always; even when, humanly speaking, things are going wrong, he knows that the true story of his life, when known, will prove to be 'mercy from first to last' -- and he is content."  ~J.I.Packer

Elephants and Pluto and November....oh my!

It's been a crazy-busy few weeks of regular work and school with some new things coming down the pike in our schedules.

Last week the sweet girl finished up her fall Irish dance class and thoroughly enjoyed trick or treating, dressed up as our town (complete with clock tower hat). This week she's finishing up a paper on Pluto (to her great surprise, after doing all her reading and research, she discovered she agrees with its "demotion" to dwarf planet status).

I've been working on an article proposal for a children's magazine which has had me reading about the fascinating world of elephants, most specifically elephant intelligence. The books have intrigued S. to the point that she thinks elephants may be her next learning craze, the Apollo space mission craze having momentarily died down. Hooray for learning trails!

In writing life news: I'm continuing to do a lot of web content writing, and I'm grateful it's there, but I'm really excited because I've just been offered a contract as a youth curriculum writer with a Sunday School publishing company. I'll be contracted to write lesson plans for teaching various Bible passages to 7-12th graders. It's a neat looking approach to teaching the Scriptures (incorporating interactive and kinesthetic approaches) and I'm happy that the company has brought me on board to do some projects. Right now I am praying for the time and creativity to do the lesson planning justice -- my first two deadlines are in December.

And in teaching life news: I just started working with my Old Testament class (online, for an adult ed. institute I sometimes teach for) and have contracted to teach the Anglican Ethos course I used to teach online at the sem this spring. That last was a happy and unexpected surprise, as the course hasn't been offered in quite a while -- I've only taught it as an independent study for the past several years.

Throw in homeschooling, afterschool arts, church school, missions committee work, and several other things I'm not immediately remembering, and this has turned out to be one of the busiest autumns I can remember in years. It's all good, but sometimes tiring.

We're struggling mightily with an income shortfall this month (we've had months it's been tight, and things have finally caught up with us, most especially my lack of steady work this fall) so while I am praising God for new work opportunities in winter and spring, I know it's going to be a while (January - March) before most of my work outside of web content writing generates anything. We are trying to find ways to continue to pay down our debt without defaulting while still doing things like eating, keeping the lights on and gas in the car, and finding ways to pay for D's meds. All of this would be tremendously anxiety producing if I let myself stop and focus on it, but it's so much easier to keep opening my hands and looking up and saying thank you. Plus there's only so much you can do....when you really can't pay bills, you just can't pay them, and you move on and keep working as best you can. You keep your eyes on Jesus and trust him for what you lack. You also trust that you will meet patience and understanding and kindness even in places where you don't expect it, and that somehow there will be enough for the day. And not just "enough" materially, but "enough" in all the ways that matter.

Time for a Lovely Stop

The sweet girl and I were taking a walk the other day when she came to a sudden halt on the sidewalk. "Mom, stop! Look at that!" she exclaimed.

I looked, and realized that a beautiful autumn tree, a brightly colored maple, is what had brought her to a standstill.  I stopped too, and stood there for a moment just gazing at its beauty.

She sighed. "Sometimes," she said, "you just need to make a lovely stop."

Amen to that! 

Failure is Not an Option. But It's Also a Necessity...

I didn't meant to disappear off the blog for so long, but it's been a busy few weeks. School and ministry schedules have resumed their full autumn pace, and I've been working much longer hours than usual doing web content writing. What that means is that I'm usually so tired when bedtime comes (and it seems to come later and later!) that all I want to do is fall over. More time at the computer is usually not something I relish!

I see my last post was about Apollo 13, which makes me smile. The space geekiness has continued at our house since then. I ended up reading Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger's book Apollo 13 (formerly called Lost Moon, the book on which the film was based) and passed it on to my eager 12 year old. She is about two-thirds of the way through it now. It's turned out to be a good, challenging read for her -- it's worked as supplemental science reading but also provided some good examples of various types of writing she's been analyzing and working on in her Writing With Skill curriculum in the past 1 plus years. Biographical sketches, descriptions of scientific processes, different types of history writing -- it's all there.

Since we've all been in NASA mode, I've found myself drifting back to the space shelves at the library, and I'm currently reading Gene Kranz' Failure is Not an Option. Kranz was the flight director during Apollo 13, but this book contains his memoirs from the Mercury missions onward. It's an interesting read, intelligent and fascinating, though a little less finely crafted than the Lovell/Kluger collaboration. Kluger was able to bring a journalistic sensibility to the Apollo 13 narrative that gives it a more edge-of-your-seat readability. Kranz, while a good writer, doesn't always have the ability to shape a narrative quite as smoothly, and he sometimes falls into a lot of techno-speak (though there's a helpful glossary) and flights of fond memory over fellow co-workers. Still, it's an interesting behind the scenes look at NASA's early days.

One of the things that has interested me the most in the first few chapters is what could feel like a discrepancy (but I don't think is) between his title and the reality of those early missions. "Failure is not an option..." is a line associated with Kranz; his character says it in the film. In fact, he never said those words exactly that we know of, but adopted it as the title of his book after the film because he thought it summed up NASA's approach to space flight so well. And it does, in a sense. Ultimate failure certainly never felt like an option. The hundreds and thousands of people who dedicated their time and talents to the American space program of the 1960s were good at keeping their ultimate goal in view; they were courageous and persevered, sometimes under great odds, to accomplish that goal.

On the other hand, they did sometimes fail. A lot. Especially in the early years. Sometimes they didn't know precisely what they were doing. Sometimes they knew a little of what they needed to know, but had to figure out the rest the hard way.  By failing, at least in the short term, they were able to learn what they needed to learn to go forward, little by little. Sometimes small failures lead to creativity, problem-solving, and renewed determination.

Storyteller's Workshop: Apollo 13

Last night I decided to watch the Ron Howard directed film Apollo 13. I think it was the first time I’d seen it since it opened in theaters back in 1995. I’ve wanted to see it again, partly to preview for our twelve year old. She has a great love of all things connected to outer space and a fascination with the Apollo missions especially, but I wanted to check out the film’s intensity level.

I’m not sure why I chose to watch it late last night. I think I just needed to tumble into a good story, and I remembered this was a good one. And indeed it was.

The Story

If you’re not familiar with the film, Apollo 13 is based on the real life story of the Apollo 13 mission to the moon in 1970. Two missions had already landed men on the moon, and by 1970, strangely enough, the space program’s success was becoming “old hat” for the American people. So much so that when Commander Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks in the film) and his crewmates Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) transmitted their first broadcast back to earth, on day three in space, none of the networks even bothered to show it.

However, newscasters were soon showing everything about the mission they possibly could. That’s because when they were 173,000 miles from earth (let that number sink in) one of their oxygen tanks exploded, crippling the command module and forcing the men to move to the lunar landing module. They used it as a “lifeboat” until they could find a way, in conjunction with a lot of help from mission control back on earth, to get home. This proved highly problematic in all sorts of ways, as the film dramatically presents.

Story-telling takeaways:

A true story of near catastrophe and ultimate triumph would seem to present you with a dramatic story-shape that you don’t need to tinker with very much. Still, I think the writers and director did a great job of bringing out the dramatic tension in some very creative ways.

We all know the tried and true shape of a dramatic narrative, where someone starts in one direction toward a goal and then gets thwarted. There’s an obstacle in their way, and they have to find out a way around it (or under it or over it!) to accomplish their goal. One thing I love about Apollo 13 is that the highly worthy goal that our heroes start toward is never accomplished, and yet the goal they do end up accomplishing, which seems so much more ordinary, turns out to pull on their strength and heroism in even deeper ways.

The change of their trajectory – from moonward to homeward – marks a major shift in the goal of the story and in the inner orientation of the main characters. Up until now, we’ve been with them as they’ve excitedly trained to fly this spacecraft and land on the moon. When it becomes clear that “we’ve lost the moon,” as Lovell says rather bleakly, when they realize that they can no longer pursue the lunar landing because they will need every ounce of their power to turn around and get home, we are momentarily deflated. The film pays tribute to that by giving Lovell a moment as he looks down at the lunar surface and imagines what it would be like to step out and fulfill his dream. Then we can practically see the dawning realization on all of their faces as it occurs to them that surviving and returning to earth is the new goal, and it’s going to be much harder than anything they ever anticipated about the flight.

Sometimes your character’s original goal does not turn out to be what really needs accomplishing. The heart of your story, and your character’s deepest desires, may not be revealed until deep into the plot.

As storytellers, we don’t have to jump up and down and point when this happens. We can find small but profound ways to indicate the “turn” that is taking place in the outward and inner narratives. Again, I love how Apollo 13 does this. Early in the film, it showed us Lovell looking up at the night sky. He sees the moon, a place he has already orbited (on an earlier flight) so a place he’s begun to know, but one that still fascinates him. He longs to go there again and this time to step out on it surface. He holds his thumb up and moves it back and forth so that it blots out the moon. So tiny really, so far away, yet real, and a place he longs to be.

The visual sticks with us because we see him do the same thing again, but this time in reverse. When they are in the spacecraft near the moon, he looks out the window and sees the earth. He holds up his thumb and blots it out and then moves his thumb and reveals it again. So tiny really, so far away, yet real, and a place he longs to be. In fact, the longing to get back to earth suddenly feels far deeper and more urgent than the push for the moon (it helps that we’ve seen him in the context of his loving family). And the fact that he can so easily block out the earth with his thumb heightens the tension, because we realize just how faraway it is.

A tiny picture, a small repeated gesture – that’s all it takes. We know without words (though the script writers give him some words about it later) that we’re now focusing on the homeward goal. Plan A is gone. Plan B is what matters. And it turns out that Plan B is the heart of our story.

Besides the change in story trajectory, Apollo 13 also does a great job of providing us with glimpses of secondary characters and their motivations and longings. One of my favorite ways it does this is through the character of Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise), the command module pilot who trained for the mission and then was scratched from the first string just a few days prior to lift-off because he’d been exposed to the measles and they couldn’t risk him getting sick while in space. The irony of and perhaps the providence behind that decision unfolds as the film progresses. This is, interestingly, one of the places where the filmmakers used creative license by creating an even larger role for Mattingly than he had in real-life. While he was an important member of the ground crew that figured out how to get the astronauts home, the film played up his contribution (conflating several real life people’s contributions into one) to emphasize how deeply a part of this mission he still felt, and how invested in the outcome. The choice to strengthen and use his character in that way was a terrific choice.

Creative prompts and exercises:

• Think of a story idea where the initial goal or quest seems very straightforward. Create an obstacle that blocks your character from that goal. Then instead of the character getting around the obstacle and proceeding toward the original goal, thwart them entirely and provide them with a new goal.

Note: your mission, as a writer, is to change the story trajectory entirely, not in a way that feels like it’s cheating (as though you’re not delivering on what the story initially appeared to be about) but in a way that deepens our understanding of the main character and what he really wants. It may be that the character himself does not realize what he really wants until that moment, or realizes that his first goal, no matter how worthy, is still of secondary importance to this new goal. Lovell really wanted to get to the moon. I’m sure it broke his heart, in some ways, that he never achieved that dream. But in a moment of crisis, he realized he wanted other things more: to continue to live, to get back to the life and family he loved and to the earth that was his home.

You can try this exercise with a dramatic or heroic quest or you can try it on a smaller, more domestic canvas. Lots of characters in literature, even the ones who aren’t heading out on big outward adventures, come to a deeper realization of what they really desire. Lizzy Bennett thinks she wants to make a “good” marriage, but her understanding of what a good marriage constitutes changes and deepens as Pride and Prejudice unfolds. So much so that we see her turn down two marriage proposals, seemingly thwarted in her desire to wed, before she finally gets to a place where she is ready to accept one!

Your story may cover vast outer distances or small inner ones, but in either case, changing the character’s direction and goal can add layers of richness to the story.  

Offering (An Original Poem)

This morning
I awoke
wanting to give you roses --
wanting to lay beauty
at your feet
in thanksgiving
and awe
for all you've given me.

Sometimes
it strikes me as strange
that I long to give
flowers
to the One
who made the fields
but then I realize --
you also made me
and made my heart
long to give
and made my eyes
for drinking beauty.

May my life
be filled
with giving moments
and with roses --
may each small act
of patience, kindness,
be a stem,
each loving,
forgiving moment
a smooth petal,
each bend in the road
I meet with joy
and hope and peace
a chance to bend
and fling
another tiny,
lovely offering
to the King of everything.

~EMP (2012/2014) 

Sometimes Specificity Matters

“Name the Tudors we’ve been discussing,” I asked S., my hand hovering over the white board to record the names she gave me.

Quickly she responded with, “Henry VIII, Mary, Elizabeth, Edward.”

“Great!” I said. “Now put them in order.”

“I did.”

I started to correct her, then realized that she had named Henry’s three children in order…by age.

“Ah,” I said. “Put them in order of their reigns.”

She chuckled and said “Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth.” Right again, and a great reminder to me that specificity can be important when asking questions.

The Roar on the Other Side

The seventh day of school found me wanting to shake things up a bit by adding some poetry into the mix. I’m pretty much always wanting to add in poetry (reading it, writing it) but these days S’ schedule is so packed, it can be hard to do. I hit upon the idea of tying a writing exercise into eating, and we did it over lunch.

I’ve long been excited about Suzanne U. Clark’s book The Roar on the Other Side: A Guide for Student Poets. I didn’t buy it, originally, as a homeschool book. I bought it because I consider myself a student poet. I’ve read it and enjoyed its prompts, meditations on the poetic arts, and great collection of poems for several years. When it dawned on me that it might be a good year to incorporate some of it into our home learning, I got quite excited.

One of the first “stepping stone” exercises that Clark includes in her first chapter, which has to do with the importance of noticing/seeing, is to write a journal entry describing an ordinary piece of fruit. I love these kinds of exercises that compel you to look at something “common” that you’ve seen a thousand times, but to look at it thoughtfully, slowly, and carefully, using all your senses. That’s what S. and I did at the lunch table with a peach today. We called it “mindful eating,” and by the time we were done, we not only each had a journal entry and a poem draft (S. really wanted to go on and play with writing a poem based on her descriptive notes) but we’d thoroughly and completely enjoyed all the juicy slices of that peach.

I’d almost forgotten that we had a small peach tree in my backyard for a number of years when I was growing up. Smelling and holding the peach, I let my mind wander to associations, and suddenly I recalled the golden color of the knobby bark and the smell of ripened peaches in the grass (we never seemed to harvest many, since the squirrels beat us to them).

I love how such a thoughtful exercise can be so many things at once: a break for hearts and minds in the middle of a busy day, a lesson in observing and writing, nourishing time spent together, food for the soul.

Patchwork Post (Homesick for Charis, Loving LOTR)

I'm tired. D. is traveling yet again regarding care issues for his mom, something that continues to weigh on our hearts and minds. S. is struggling some in ways she hasn't in a long time. School is taking up more time than I remembered it did, and while that's not a bad thing, I'm having a hard time remembering how to fit everything else I do into the cracks and crevices of our schooling life. I also seem to be coming down with something that is making me feel miserable and draggy.

In the midst of all this, I am missing Charis, the central country of my fictional work-in-progress. D. and I spent a lot of time this summer, sometimes even during our most tired times, working on history and geography. He's marvelous at helping me world-build, and if I wasn't feeling so tired, I think I would be writing a lot right now. Charis and its neighboring kingdoms and their complex history certainly are a big part of my thoughts at the moment. It's finding time and creativity and just plain energy to try to convert those thoughts to paper that's feeling difficult.

Most of my writing time at the moment is taken up with web content, and while I am thankful that writing educational/job profiles and product descriptions (as I can get them) are helping to bring in some necessary income, I am beginning to feel like if I write one more detailed description of a pair of hiking boots or explain one more time how one moves from an RN to BSN degree, I am going to either burst into laughter or tears. My push to accomplish more web content work came in a week when I discovered I wasn't going to be doing teaching assistant work for the seminary this fall (due to low enrollment) and when I had an essay I worked on in the summer turned down by a journal that I had real hopes might want to publish it. So I know some of the frustration level I'm feeling about the "floor mopping" kinds of writing I'm doing (and trying to do with love, since it's part of the way God provides) is part of a larger piece of frustration over a lack of opportunity to do more of the kinds of work that I feel more passionate about.

Mostly I am feeling grumpy and inept. There. That's honest! 

Lots of good things to be thankful for right now, including a good Sunday School kickoff yesterday, plus the ordinary blessings which are never all that ordinary really. Not to mention the fact that we're less than a hundred pages from the end of The Lord of the Rings, our first read-through as a family, and a powerful re-read for me this time through. Thank you, J.R.R. Tolkien, for the fortifying nourishment of your narrative.

Arrow Prayers

This has been my day for finding things I wrote quite awhile ago. Besides the poem snippet from seven years ago (see below) this afternoon I also found a collection of arrow prayers I put together sometime last year.

I wrote these thinking they might encourage S., who often struggles with thinking she's not "really" praying because she's so easily distracted during prayer (no matter how often I tell her that distraction is sometimes just part of prayer, and the Lord graciously understands that!).I don't remember if I ever introduced these to her or not, though it may be time to try that again, as she is struggling a lot again with the notion of what prayer really is and if God is really there and really hears us.

At any rate, in the midst of some of my own tired discouragement (the last couple of weeks have been very up and down for me, and the last couple of days particularly hard) I was very glad to find these and read through them again.

Tonight my heart was especially drawn to these two arrow prayers:

"Help me to want you more than I want anything else, God."

and

"Thank you, Jesus, that in you, everything holds together." 

Amen.

Old Poem, Old Photo

S. was cleaning her room this afternoon and needed a magazine holder for her many copies of Nature Friends and Pockets. I didn’t have a new one, but obligingly moved some homeschooling magazines and old Vegetarian Times to give her one of my old holders. In the process, I discovered a tiny notebook where I’d jotted some rough drafts of poems in 2007.

It’s fun to come across snippets of verse you jotted seven plus years ago. I remembered none of these poems and pieces of poems clearly, though the genesis of the ideas or a turn of phrase occasionally came back to me as I glanced through the pages. Most of them are in nowhere near sharing stage, but one of them made me smile (for a reason I think you’ll see in a moment) and I thought I’d share it here. It’s untitled.

I found my grandfather

at twenty-three.

Twenty-three, both him and me.

I that young in bone and skin,

he that young inside, within

a small glass frame, a photo gray.

He still is twenty-three today,

smiling, so serene and fine,

while I’ve moved on to thirty-nine.

                                    EMP (1/9/07)

What makes me smile about this little poem are all the layers. I really did find a small photograph of my grandfather, aged 23, when I was 23 myself. I was at my aunt’s house, looking through boxes of old pictures, and I remember how wonderful that felt, to have that kind of “connection” with a man who was so important in our family, but whom I never had the chance to meet. He died six years before I was born.

I keep that photo of my 23 year old grandfather on my bureau. And I do recall the day I picked it up and realized that the smiling face in the photo was still as young as the day I’d put it in the frame, while I’d aged sixteen years in the meantime. Now another seven years have gone by, and the layers continue. I’ve passed on to the age of 46, and my young and smiling grandfather is still peering out at me from the frame. He was born in 1901, so it’s been 90 years since that photograph was taken.

First Day of Seventh Grade!

Year Eight in the homeschool journey begins! Yes, I know it's Labor Day, but we're starting late this year due to travel, and D. planned to be working today anyway. The sweet girl and I agreed we'd rather get a jump on things and get in a whole week, so here we are on a Monday morning.

I love the first day of school traditions we've put in place over the years: first day muffins, pictures, hand print (such a laugh now to see those little hand prints from earlier years!), new Scripture verse CD. For the first time ever this year, we listened to a Scripture CD that wasn't from the Harrow family, as we finished all the volumes in Sing the Word. Our first listen to the first verse in "Songs of Courage" earned a thumbs up from us: we liked the music a lot. And of course Jeremiah 33:3 is a wonderful verse: "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know." Seems like a very appropriate verse for the beginning of a new season of our lives!

Let's not forget the new Ticonderoga pencils, one of which is being used even as I write. The sweet girl is tackling language arts this morning with great gusto.

The years seem to pass more swiftly the older I grow, and one way I know that's true is how quickly this day seems to roll around each year. Thank you, Lord, for another new beginning.