"To Come Awake...To Remain Awake" (C.S. Lewis)

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

(C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly On Prayer)

"Water from the Spiritual Well" (Theresa of Avila)

"Learning to draw water up from the spiritual well is a hard labor, indeed -- at least in the beginning.

It is difficult, in the first place, to keep all of your senses recollected and focused upon total humility before God. What a tremendous difficulty that is, because our senses are so much in the habit of flitting about from one worldly distraction to another. And so you must learn to set aside what you see and hear in order to see and hear what God would pour out upon you from His invisible kingdom...

When we begin to renew our minds in this way -- that is, building the habit of constantly, deeply meditating upon the Lord Jesus -- we draw water up out of the deep wells of salvation (Isaiah 12:3)."

(The Life of Theresa of Jesus) 

Pencil Poised...Subversive Spirituality, Here I Come

I practically got shivers when I opened up my new-to-me copy of Eugene Peterson's Subversive Spirituality. 

This is a collection of Peterson's essays that I have loved, and returned to over and over, for years. For some reason, however, I just never owned my own copy. I would trot to the seminary library whenever I wanted it. And I would photocopy the essays that I especially needed to have on hand -- I know I've got copies of several of them stuffed into various binders and journals (I've come across them in the archaeological dig we've been going through as we pack and move).

I was placing an order for another old book that means a lot to me (the out of print Prayer and Temperament) on Advanced Book Exchange the other day. ABE is an amazing place to find bargains on older, used books. I've been wanting a return to some of the essays in Subversive Spirituality again, and all of a sudden it occurred to me that I could probably find a used copy very cheaply. And would you believe I found one for $3.65 and free shipping?

Granted, the copy is dog eared -- literally. The top right hand corner is bent. There are a couple of small tears in early pages, and a place in the opening chapter where it looks like someone must have had a paper clip for years. Those opening pages are a little worn and wrinkled looking, but the pages improve as it goes on (sadly, it looks like whoever owned it previously didn't get very far into reading it). But I don't mind the imperfections, especially because it has *no marks* -- no underlines, no highlighting, no nothin' of the sort.

Which means I get to mark it up. Oh happy me! I've got my pencil poised and ready, because it feels like I bump into something almost every paragraph that makes me say "oh!" or catch my breath, or decide I need to remember or to share. In fact, you may be seeing quite a few quotes make their way here over the next weeks and months as I meander my way through.

Just to get things started, here's a wonderful quote from his essay/lecture on the gospel of Mark:

"The Bible as a whole comes to us in the form of narrative, and it is within this large, somewhat sprawling narrative that St. Mark writes his gospel...Gospel is a true and good form, by which we live well. Storytelling creates a world of presuppositions, assumptions, and relations into which we enter. Stories invite us into a world other than ourselves, and, if they are good and true stories, a world larger than ourselves. Bible stories are good and true stories, and the world that they invite us into is the world of God's creation and salvation and blessing...Within the large, capacious context of the biblical story we learn to think accurately, behave morally, preach passionately, sing joyfully, pray honestly, obey faithfully."

Vassar Miller on Poetry (Quote for the Day Book)

"Poetry, like all art, has a trinitarian function: creative, redemptive, and sanctifying. It is creative because it takes the raw materials of fact and feeling and makes them into that which is neither fact nor feeling. Redemptive because it transforms pain, ugliness of life into joy, beauty. Sanctifying because it gives the transitory a relative form of meaning."

Hat tip and thank you to Brain Pickings for quoting this today, and for reminding me of Vassar Miller's poetry. 

Sorting Papers: Quotes and Poem Scraps from the Daybook

I'm spending part of today sorting through a mountain of papers (a long overdue chore). Most of these have been stuffed into boxes over the past few years, but some of the papers go back much longer. In and among the boxes, I'm finding old student papers, scraps of poems I've written, love notes and drawings from the sweet girl from when she was little, photocopies of articles I saved for teaching or writing purposes, mission newsletters, old sermon notes, and collections of quotes and images. It's a plethora of stuff that looks like spillover from my overactive and far too busy writer-teacher brain.

Every once in a while, when I'm going through mountains like this, I pause to jot down a few of the things I'm finding. I thought I'd share a few quotes from what would be a daybook if I ever had time to make one!

"Don't feel like a failure if you're finding it difficult to pursue God's call or can't discern fruit." (~That's from some very scattered sermon notes from 2004! Eleven years ago...and I still need to hear it. Maybe more now than then.)

"Use what talent you possess. The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best." (~Henry Van Dyke, not sure what source)

"The little purple house
with a roof like a cap
perched on the hill
and took a little nap

It shuttered its eyes
and dozed in the sun
and when it woke up
it was almost one

It yawned a big yawn
and its door opened wide.
It invited some friends
to come inside

And into the house
with a roof like a cap
we went right inside
and we too took a nap"

(~EMP, original/undated poem scrap, next to a doodle of a little purple house with a roof like a cap)

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.

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

Thoughts to Ponder: Writers for Life

One of the habits I’ve cultivated over the years is collecting quotes. I used to jot them 

down in my journal, and while I still do that sometimes, these days I am more likely to past them (or type them, depending on where I find them) into a document on my computer. I add scripture verses, snippets of poetry, prayers, and inspiring quotes from all sorts of sources, and the ultimate collection can get pretty long (last year’s ran 13 pages). So each year I start a fresh document, labeled with the new year, and begin again.

I thought that from time to time, I’d post one of my daybook quotes here. I kicked off 2014 with these words I so resonated with from C.S. Lewis scholar Don W. King:

“Each of us should find a writer

we can read for the rest of our lives.”

sweetclipart.com

Lewis may be the writer that is truest of for me. But also L’Engle, Tolkien, Austen. Sayers is moving toward that list as well. And Eugene Peterson. I go through seasons where I read them more or less, but I go back to all of these particular writers a lot, never feeling like I’ve exhausted what they have to say. They are also writers I love to read about – biography, literary analysis, appreciation.

With Lewis, I always feel especially glad that I have so much more of his work to read…I don’t think I could ever exhaust it. Even if I eventually read it all, it always bears repeat readings. That’s also true of Tolkien.

I’ve probably come closest to reading everything of L’Engle’s. In my late teens and early-mid twenties, I went out of my way to collect as much of her work as I could, even the harder to find things (and for at least a handful of Christmases, my family did an amazing job of giving me hard-to-find L’Engle books). She was hugely formative in my developing spiritual life, and while there are a few books of hers that I feel I’ve somewhat outgrown (not, by the way, her children’s books) many of them I still revisit often, and a few of them have deep places of honor in my mind and heart.

I’ve purposely not ever read all of Austen’s letters, her juvenalia, or her incomplete novel, mostly because I don’t want to say I’ve read everything she’s written! I’ve read most if not all of Sayers’ novels, and also Mind of the Maker, but only some of her drama and essays, and not many of her letters. Peterson is so prolific that I don’t think I could possibly exhaust all of his work, but I like knowing so much of it is there, and that I can always drink deep when I turn to him.

One reason why Lewis has moved to the top of my list over the years, besides the obvious richness to be found in his work, is that he is the kind of writer one really can visit in different seasons and moods. Narnia was my foray into Lewis’ world, and I entered it around the age of ten. But I still revisit Narnia, and I still find more there to learn and ponder and enjoy and love thirty-five years after I first read the books. They are perhaps richer for my having visited them so often, and richer still because I’ve now read so many others books by (and about) Lewis, including books it took me a while to be ready for. Essentially, he is not a writer I ever outgrow – he’s always somewhere I feel I need and want to be, saying something I need and want to hear, challenging me, delighting me, at different seasons and times in my life.

Is there a writer, or writers, that you feel you could read for the rest of your life?

Feeling and Thinking

“ Mozart fulfills me. But I cannot think about his music; I have to listen to it.” ~Pope Francis

Not long ago, I came across this beautiful quote from Pope Francis. I so resonated with it, and it keeps coming back to me as I contemplate my experience of both music and stories.

It seems to me that our deepest experience of either music or story comes when we fall headfirst, or perhaps heartfirst, inside the world that's been created. We find ourselves in the world of sound and harmony or the world of narrative and poetry, and while there, all we can do is listen, not think outside of the experience. 

When we're inside that subcreated world, listening is what matters. I think many of us have had the literal sense of being so lost (and paradoxically so found) inside a created song or story that it feels like a "coming back" to the outside world when the last note sounds or the final word is read and we close the book. 

Many of the best things we read or listen to do indeed cause us to think, but the thinking comes later, and that kind of more analytical thinking is a distinctly different kind of pleasure than what we experienced in our initial encounter with the work. We might think about the creation of the work itself: how did the composer, the writer, do what he did, and why? What thoughts or experiences inspired a certain bend or turn in the work that we didn't expect?  Frankly, I love doing that kind of thinking, but not everyone does, and I don't think we need to assume that a person who doesn't love it has had any less of a deep experience, though they may respond in a completely different way.

Just a few rambling thoughts this afternoon...more to come another day. 

Let Jesus Fill You With Joy

“Give Jesus not only your hands to serve, but your heart to love. Pray with absolute trust in God’s loving care for you. Let Him use you without consulting you. Let Jesus fill you with joy that you may preach without preaching.”

—Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

From the Day Book: Hannah More

My collection of quotes and small readings keeps growing, and I often find myself wanting to ruminate on them. Today, it's this quote from Hannah More that has me thinking.

More, by the way, was a member of the Clapham Sect, a group of British Christians responsible, in part, for the healthy reforming of English society and the abolition of slavery in Great Britain. She was also a devotional writer.

********

"Remember that life is not entirely made up of great evils or heavy trials. The perpetual recurrence of petty evils and small trials is the ordinary and appointed way to mature our Christian graces. To bear with the moodiness of those about us, with their infirmities, their bad judgments, their perverse tempers; to endure neglect where we feel we have deserved attention, and ingratitude where we expected thanks — to bear with the whole company of disagreeable people whom Divine Providence has placed in our way, and whom God has perhaps provided on purpose for the trial of our virtues — these are the best exercises for our graces; and the better because not chosen by ourselves. To meekly bear with . . .

continual vexations in our homes,
disappointments in our expectations,
interruptions in our times of rest,
the follies, intrusions, and disturbances of others;
in short, to meekly bear with whatever opposes our will and contradicts our desires is the very essence of self-denial. These constant, inevitable, and lesser evils, properly improved, furnish the best moral discipline for the Christian."

~Hannah More

*********

 "The perpetual recurrence of petty evils and small trials" -- that covers a lot of our every-day lives, doesn't it? If we're honest, most of us don't deal with the big stuff on a regular basis: the major evils, the ordeals and trials that feel too heavy to bear. While we can be thankful that is not the stuff of every-day, sometimes the "small stuff" can be the most wearing...but also the most useful in terms of training us in holiness, "the best exercises for our graces."

I love the thought that graces, virtues, holy habits, need exercise. And we get the best exercise through learning to bear with those little things that almost drive us crazy. The tweak I would add to More's words above is that we don't just have to deal with *other* people's moodiness, infirmities, bad judgements, irritable tempers -- but with our own. Chances are, we've all been the "disagreeable person" that someone else has learned their graces through, and sometimes bearing with someone else's shortcomings can feel easier than bearing with our own. This is why we need times when we're just full-out honest before God, confessing to him all the petty stuff in our own hearts and letting him wash us clean. 

Self-denial isn't a very easy thing for most of us (and we like to relegate it to seasons, like Lent) but when we stop to consider, we really practice some form of it every day. Whenever we put aside our preferences and comfort for the sake of someone else's, that's a form of self-denial. It doesn't have to be a big deal, and if we've "done our exercises," hopefully we'll discover after a time that we do the small forms without thinking about it. Such actions become second nature -- literally a "second nature," because it's really only possible for us to live in such loving, freeing ways because we've been freely loved and forgiven. Life being what it is, generally once we learn one lesson we need to learn, in bearing with our own or someone else's frailties, we discover that's just a step toward learning something else we need to learn. We grow, we learn, and God stretches us to keep learning and growing. It's a lifelong process, and Jesus is unfailingly patient and kind as we fall down, get back up, and try again.  He sees who we are and who we are becoming, and he gives us the strength we need.

What He Said

I had planned to post a reflection for the second week of Advent, but a bout of flu interrupted. While I'm exhausted and recovering (this has been a doozy of an illness) I thought I'd post this tried and true thought from C.S. Lewis, whose thoughts on the importance of re-reading are just one of the many reasons I love him.

By the way, this is one of the memes making the round on Facebook right now, originally posted by Ignatius Press. They have a new and rather lovely looking blog up -- all about Lewis and Tolkien. You can find it here at the link. 

Dear Vincent (an original poem)

I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken 
in my great discouragement, and I will go on 
with my drawing.
 --Van Gogh

Dear Vincent,

I received your postcard.

I don’t know how much postage

Costs in the past that was your present,

But I do sense that the words cost you deeply.

I thank you for flinging them forward

In the wild, thick-stroked way you love

So that they would stick to the wall of the world

And land in the mailbox of my heart today.

I would just like to say

Take heart, take up, and go on

And know that no matter how hard it feels

To sketch each line

There is someone in the future who believes

That it matters

And who hears the scratching of your pencil

And thinks it is the most encouraging music

She has heard

In a long, long time.

(~EMP 11/16/12)

Wisdom from Jack

A little Monday morning wisdom from C.S. Lewis, courtesy of a friend's Facebook status:

"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. " ~C.S. Lewis

Irrigating deserts, yes! And remember, deserts can bloom!

Chesterton: "....a lingering fragrance...from the exultant explosion"

Amazing words from G.K. Chesterton that I needed to hear this Advent season.

The power of God. The love of God. The descent into enemy territory on our behalf.

Wow. Just wow.

H/T to love2learnblog


"All this indescribable thing that we call the Christmas atmosphere only hangs in the air as something like a lingering fragrance or fading vapour from the exultant explosion of that one hour in the Judean hills nearly two thousand years ago. But the savour is still unmistakable, and it is something too subtle or too solitary to be covered by our use of the word peace. By the very nature of the story the rejoicings in the cavern were rejoicings in a fortress or an outlaw's den; properly understood it is not unduly flippant to say they were rejoicings in a dug-out. It is not only true that such a subterranean chamber was a hiding-place from enemies; and that the enemies were already scouring the stony plain that lay above it like a sky. It is not only that the very horse-hoofs of Herod might in that sense have passed like thunder over the sunken head of Christ. It is also that there is in that image a true idea of an outpost, of a piercing through the rock and an entrance into an enemy territory. There is in this buried divinity an idea of undermining the world; of shaking the towers and palaces from below; even as Herod the great king felt that earthquake under him and swayed with his swaying palace."

- G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Poetry Postcard 3

So many of my favorite poetry moments this month have come through reading the excellent interviews in The Poetry Makers series at the Miss Rumphius Effect. I especially love the quotes on poetry and writing I'm getting to add to my collection. Some of these come in the section where the poet is asked to share their own favorite quotes, but many others just jump off the page in the midst of the conversation. Here are a few I've especially enjoyed chewing on:

“Poems are not meant to be solved; they are meant to be savored.” --Allan Wolf

"I write so that I might become a better reader." --Allan Wolf (isn't that a delicious reversal from how we usually hear it?)

"I have a little notebook in my back pocket and a pen in my front pocket at all times. I actually get a little panicky when I’m without them." -- Allan Wolf (I resonate with this one!)

"...poems are for noticing, for wondering, for describing something so interesting you want to capture it in words, save it forever, share it with the world, make people see what you see, feel what you feel." -- Heidi Mordhorst

"...it’s fun for me to go through three or five or eight drafts of a poem. I like to watch it change and muscle me into where it wants to go instead of where I think I want to take it. Some people like to drive poetry around. I like to be poetry’s passenger." -- Ron Koertge

"My basic approach when I write is to waste no words." -- Charles R. Smith Jr.

"Fingers hover over the keyboard, brain chases down words, lassoing them like stray calves. Thesaurus, rhyming dictionary close at hand. If I get stuck, I push away from the desk – take a nap, eat some chocolate, take a walk. Shake the words loose. Return to the desk. And, to steal Ms. Yolen’s line, keep B.I.C. (Butt In Chair) until I’ve got something." -- Stephen Swinburne, on describing his writing process.

Notable and Quotable

"The most important reason we need the church may be to remind us of our need to find communion with Someone with whom we have nothing in common, Someone who loves us and receives us despite our difference and inadequacy. The old idea of parish churches, where everyone attended the church closet to home, meant a variety of people were blended together into a community of unlikes. In The Screwtape Letters the tempter Screwtape advises Wormwood to attack the use of local parishes as a structure because 'being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the Enemy (God) desires.'"

~Peter J. Schakel, "Is Your Lord Large Enough? How C.S. Lewis Expands Our View of God"

Speaking of Writing

"Work of the eyes is done now/go and do heartwork..." (Rainer Maria Rilke)

I love this quote. You can find it in various forms online; depending on the translation, people seem to break the line in different places. Sometimes you'll find it as "done now...go" and sometimes as "done...Now go" and though those nuances make a subtle bit of difference, both seem to work.

What I love about it is the way it clearly shows the need for both "eyework" and "heartwork" when you're writing. "Work of the eyes" is necessary -- we need to look and look and look some more, and store up all we see. But there comes a time when the looking stage reaches some sort of end, and we find ourselves needing to do "heartwork" on the images we've seen. The last part of the quote is actually something like "go and do the heartwork on the images imprisoned within you." Although that speaks to me too (especially the idea that the work of writing has to do with freeing) I don't think that all the images we begin with are necessarily imprisoned. A better description for me might be embyronic. The images are like seeds, the "heartwork" involves digging, plowing, planting, nourishing, watering, and all the other many things one does to encourage growth and blooms.

Sometimes the images we begin with in the eyework stage are actual ones, things and people we've seen as we've explored the world. Sometimes the images are born in our imagination, including the images and characters that we're given as gifts. But once we have the image firmly fixed in our mind, it can't just sit there. We need to get it to the page, then begin to wrestle with it and create something that is born not only of close observation or creative imagining, but of the deepest parts of our hearts and what we believe about the story...the one we're telling, the one we're living in, and how those intersect.

Work of the eyes, work of the heart. Eyework, heartwork. Both utterly necessary, and both arduous tasks. I'm rediscovering that right now as I try to step back into the creative work of writing fiction. So far I've mostly dangled my toes, cautious about the water below. Pretty soon I need to dive.

Deep Breath

"If we are feeling the ill effects of being spread half an inch thick and going a million miles an hour, the solution is not to go ever faster and be spread ever thinner. The solution is to take a deep breath, identify what really matters, and do more of that and less of other things." ~Margaret Kim Peterson, Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life

Worth Noting, Worth Quoting

"A bad day of parenting is better than a good day of not parenting."

Tip of the hat to Antique Mommy. Was I ever grateful for this reminder today!