In recent years, a lot of people have written about the way our reading habits have changed thanks to technology. I am so behind the times...I didn't get a e-reader until last year, following my cancer diagnosis...that I'm not sure I've done enough e-book reading to really weigh in on that conversation. I do appreciate e-books, though I still say it's no contest between digital and physical reading for me...I just love the feel and smell of actual pages!
One thing I have noticed, however, is how different my approach to discovering and finding books has changed in recent years.
I guess I am thinking about that because it's the season for "summer reading lists..." you know, the lists where well-known people, or people you've never heard of who nevertheless have great blogs, post their list of recommended reading for the upcoming season. Summer reading generally means more fun, fluffy reading, the kind of reading people want to take to the beach, or books they imagine would be good at the beach even if they can't get there. Or in the event of kids' summer reading lists (which lots of homeschool bloggers like to post) books your kids will enjoy getting lost in during vacation time following the academic rigors of the school year.
I was just looking at a summer list that a friend posted on Faceboook, and I realized that, without really being conscious of it, I have developed a way of gathering new books when I read lists like that. I look for authors I know or genres that interest me, I skim what the recommendations have to say, and then there are a couple of directions I might go.
If I'm still not sure the book sounds like something I want to read, I pursue reviews...often on sites like Amazon or Good Reads. Having written reviews for a lot of years, I'm pretty good at skimming those quickly to get to the heart of the what the review writer is saying. If the book author mentioned is the author of a series (I'm often interested in mystery series) then I look up the author's website or find them on Wikipedia and go to their full bibliography so I can find a list of their books in order and discover the first one.
That's always an eye-opening moment, when you discover the author is either the writer of three books that started appearing five years ago or a veteran with twenty-five books that started showing up twenty-five or thirty years ago. In any event, if it's a series, I usually start at the very beginning ("a very good place to start...") note the title (and keep the window open in case I forget it) then log into my account on my library's home page. I am hugely blessed to be connected to an excellent library system which has dozens of libraries with great collections.
I can usually find the book I want and put it on hold so it will get sent to my local library for pick-up. If I can't find it in the system, as will occasionally happen with older, out of print titles, or very new titles that none of the local libraries has happened to purchase, then I put a request through the library's inter library loan. The book usually takes longer to arrive on the hold shelf, but it can definitely be worth the wait. I've been able to read some very good books thanks to ILL.
I've worked this way so long now that it's almost hard for me to believe there was ever a time...before book bloggers, before library hold systems you could access easily with a few clicks of the keyboard or your phone (even in the middle of the night)! I don't get too nostalgic for the old days when you just wandered into a bookstore or a library and browsed the shelves and hoped you'd hit something wonderful...because I still do that kind of book gathering too. Though I'm still more likely to put a book on hold at the library after finding it at the bookstore, unless it's something I know for sure I want or need to own for a certain project or learning season.
However we find them, books are beautiful. They add so much richness to our lives, something I've always felt and known, but am feeling more conscious of than ever as I go through my long season of illness and healing.
With all this said...will I make a list of recommended reading for this summer? Hmm....I'm not sure, but I have a feeling I might. Stay tuned!
Showing posts with label reading life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading life. Show all posts
Thursday, June 01, 2017
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Mystery Reviews: Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger (1942)
Given my health issues, it's not surprising that I'm reading a lot more, especially since I have to spend so much time resting. Although I've read some good literary fiction and excellent non-fiction, when I am most tired, I turn to the fluff I love best: mysteries. And these days, I tend to move back and forth between tried and true classics from the golden era and contemporary cozies or police procedurals.
When I move in the direction of the golden era, I sometimes go back to my favorite writers and sometimes I go back and "discover" classic writers who are new to me. I enjoy both, but lately I've been on a bit of a Christie tear. Although I've read most of Christie's books (some more than once) it's been years since I've read a lot of them, so many years that they are either actually new to me or were read so far in the past they may as well be new because I don't remember them well. I certainly don't remember them well enough to remember "whodunit."
I find myself missing book review writing, so I thought that once in a while, I'd let myself exercise the old review writing muscles again. What better way to break back into review writing than with a review of an old-but-I-think-new-to-me Christie novel?
1942s The Moving Finger was the third Miss Marple novel ever published. I'm fairly certain this was the first time I ever encountered it, mostly because I don't remember ever reading a Miss Marple book in which Miss Marple appeared so little.
That was the book's most surprising feature by far. While Miss Jane Marple, Christie's white-haired detective, always has a kind of "background" role, she usually arrives on the scene fairly early and stays there consistently. While the main detectives hum along, attempting to solve the case, Miss Marple smiles gently, asks an inquisitive and seemingly innocent question or two (or four or eight or twelve) and before you can inquire, "Would you like another cup of tea, ma'am?" she has the thing solved. What's wonderful is that she always solves it with a twinkle and a sweet touch of poignancy, remembering someone she knew once who reminded her of the victim...and quite often the criminal. For a kind, elderly spinster, Miss Marple has no scruples about reminding everyone, character and reader alike, that people really can be quite wicked. And sad. And lonely. And unwise. And inattentive. It's in noting these kinds of characteristics in all people that she often discovers the line running right through the story that other, more professional sleuths all too often miss.
Speaking of missing, I miss her in this book. While I mostly liked the story's narrator, Jerry Burton, an airman recovering from an accident, I kept impatiently waiting for Miss Marple to show up on the scene and set him and his sister Joanna straight about what's going on in the little village in which they recently settled. They settle there in a rental home so Jerry can recover from his injuries; they think this out-of-the-way hamlet will provide Jerry with just the rest and peacefulness he needs. Little do they know that little out-of-the-way hamlets can sometimes be seething with scandals and unsolved crimes. This one certainly is.
In fact, the town of Lymstock, which "had been a place of importance at the time of the Norman Conquest" but by "the twentieth century it was a place of no importance whatsoever," seems cozy and quiet enough for a convalescing soldier. But the Burton siblings haven't been there very long when they become the recipients of a nasty, anonymous letter, the kind put together with letters cut from an old book. It turns out that they aren't the only people in town to receive such a letter. Most of the town's most prominent residents have received at least one. These letters, whose typed envelopes tell little about their author, while the postmarks indicate the author is local, accuse people in vague and general terms of awful but unprovable things.
Jerry and Joanna find themselves trying to puzzle out the identity of the letter writer, but they, like the local police, can't get too far at guessing who it might be. In fact, in spite of the annoying embarrassment of the letters, hardly anyone takes them too seriously...until the shock of receiving one seems to send a resident into such a tailspin that she commits suicide. Or does she?
It's not long before a maid who served at the home of the dead woman also turns up dead, this time unmistakably murdered, presumably for something she might have seen. Before you know it, Scotland Yard is called in. And before you can pour yet another cup of tea (lots of tea gets poured in this one) another resident gets impatient with the professionals and calls in her old friend Jane Marple to try to figure things out.
By the time Jane got called, I was feeling rather impatient. She appears in only a handful of scenes, and while she's her sweet and smart self, asking the right questions and ultimately setting up the dangerous encounter with the correct suspect, I felt a bit cheated that we hadn't had more time with her. I'd be curious to know why she appears so little in the book. Did Agatha Christie already have a book ready in the wings without any Miss Marple at all, only to have her publishers tell her that the old lady's first two tales had been such a hit the public was demanding more? But if so, why not go back and put her in more from the start? It wouldn't have been so hard to do. If she was the friend of a resident in Lymstock, why not have her show up a fortnight earlier to visit? Or be called in by the friend before the first death in the town, just on the basis of the puzzle that needs solving about the author of the anonymous letters?
Besides being disappointed by not enough time with Miss Marple, I was a bit thrown off by the narrator. While I appreciated the way he thought through things regarding the mystery, I felt off balance by his lack of development from the beginning on. It took me a while to be sure he was male; it took me even longer to figure out his name (I don't think she mentioned it until well into the story, though she might have dropped it briefly and I just missed it). My favorite part of most Christie novels is her way with characterization, and she doesn't disappoint with a fine cast of townies and potential suspects, but I think she could have done more with her narrator, especially if we were getting page time with Jerry at the expense of page time with Miss Marple.
Ah well. Even Christie at her not-quite-best is still better than many people at their heights, and this was an enjoyable mystery with good touches of Christie humour and an interesting ending I didn't see coming. If you're a enthusiast for mysteries with elements of romance, I think you'll like what she does here too -- not in one part of the story, but actually in two.
I'm thankful that The Moving Finger wasn't where the Miss Marple stories ended...most of the best ones, in fact, were still to come.
***1/2 stars
First published in the US in 1942 and in the UK in 1943
When I move in the direction of the golden era, I sometimes go back to my favorite writers and sometimes I go back and "discover" classic writers who are new to me. I enjoy both, but lately I've been on a bit of a Christie tear. Although I've read most of Christie's books (some more than once) it's been years since I've read a lot of them, so many years that they are either actually new to me or were read so far in the past they may as well be new because I don't remember them well. I certainly don't remember them well enough to remember "whodunit."
I find myself missing book review writing, so I thought that once in a while, I'd let myself exercise the old review writing muscles again. What better way to break back into review writing than with a review of an old-but-I-think-new-to-me Christie novel?
1942s The Moving Finger was the third Miss Marple novel ever published. I'm fairly certain this was the first time I ever encountered it, mostly because I don't remember ever reading a Miss Marple book in which Miss Marple appeared so little.
That was the book's most surprising feature by far. While Miss Jane Marple, Christie's white-haired detective, always has a kind of "background" role, she usually arrives on the scene fairly early and stays there consistently. While the main detectives hum along, attempting to solve the case, Miss Marple smiles gently, asks an inquisitive and seemingly innocent question or two (or four or eight or twelve) and before you can inquire, "Would you like another cup of tea, ma'am?" she has the thing solved. What's wonderful is that she always solves it with a twinkle and a sweet touch of poignancy, remembering someone she knew once who reminded her of the victim...and quite often the criminal. For a kind, elderly spinster, Miss Marple has no scruples about reminding everyone, character and reader alike, that people really can be quite wicked. And sad. And lonely. And unwise. And inattentive. It's in noting these kinds of characteristics in all people that she often discovers the line running right through the story that other, more professional sleuths all too often miss.
Speaking of missing, I miss her in this book. While I mostly liked the story's narrator, Jerry Burton, an airman recovering from an accident, I kept impatiently waiting for Miss Marple to show up on the scene and set him and his sister Joanna straight about what's going on in the little village in which they recently settled. They settle there in a rental home so Jerry can recover from his injuries; they think this out-of-the-way hamlet will provide Jerry with just the rest and peacefulness he needs. Little do they know that little out-of-the-way hamlets can sometimes be seething with scandals and unsolved crimes. This one certainly is.
In fact, the town of Lymstock, which "had been a place of importance at the time of the Norman Conquest" but by "the twentieth century it was a place of no importance whatsoever," seems cozy and quiet enough for a convalescing soldier. But the Burton siblings haven't been there very long when they become the recipients of a nasty, anonymous letter, the kind put together with letters cut from an old book. It turns out that they aren't the only people in town to receive such a letter. Most of the town's most prominent residents have received at least one. These letters, whose typed envelopes tell little about their author, while the postmarks indicate the author is local, accuse people in vague and general terms of awful but unprovable things.
Jerry and Joanna find themselves trying to puzzle out the identity of the letter writer, but they, like the local police, can't get too far at guessing who it might be. In fact, in spite of the annoying embarrassment of the letters, hardly anyone takes them too seriously...until the shock of receiving one seems to send a resident into such a tailspin that she commits suicide. Or does she?
It's not long before a maid who served at the home of the dead woman also turns up dead, this time unmistakably murdered, presumably for something she might have seen. Before you know it, Scotland Yard is called in. And before you can pour yet another cup of tea (lots of tea gets poured in this one) another resident gets impatient with the professionals and calls in her old friend Jane Marple to try to figure things out.
By the time Jane got called, I was feeling rather impatient. She appears in only a handful of scenes, and while she's her sweet and smart self, asking the right questions and ultimately setting up the dangerous encounter with the correct suspect, I felt a bit cheated that we hadn't had more time with her. I'd be curious to know why she appears so little in the book. Did Agatha Christie already have a book ready in the wings without any Miss Marple at all, only to have her publishers tell her that the old lady's first two tales had been such a hit the public was demanding more? But if so, why not go back and put her in more from the start? It wouldn't have been so hard to do. If she was the friend of a resident in Lymstock, why not have her show up a fortnight earlier to visit? Or be called in by the friend before the first death in the town, just on the basis of the puzzle that needs solving about the author of the anonymous letters?
Besides being disappointed by not enough time with Miss Marple, I was a bit thrown off by the narrator. While I appreciated the way he thought through things regarding the mystery, I felt off balance by his lack of development from the beginning on. It took me a while to be sure he was male; it took me even longer to figure out his name (I don't think she mentioned it until well into the story, though she might have dropped it briefly and I just missed it). My favorite part of most Christie novels is her way with characterization, and she doesn't disappoint with a fine cast of townies and potential suspects, but I think she could have done more with her narrator, especially if we were getting page time with Jerry at the expense of page time with Miss Marple.
Ah well. Even Christie at her not-quite-best is still better than many people at their heights, and this was an enjoyable mystery with good touches of Christie humour and an interesting ending I didn't see coming. If you're a enthusiast for mysteries with elements of romance, I think you'll like what she does here too -- not in one part of the story, but actually in two.
I'm thankful that The Moving Finger wasn't where the Miss Marple stories ended...most of the best ones, in fact, were still to come.
***1/2 stars
First published in the US in 1942 and in the UK in 1943
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Christ is Risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
*******
I have been doing a good bit of reading this Lenten season, and thought I would come here and quote something appropriate for Easter day. But all that is playing through my tired mind (and I am struggling with a great deal of tiredness right now) is the traditional, joyful Easter greeting. May you know and feel its truth today, and may your Easter be filled with blessings!
Another day and I will post some quotes from my devotional reading. This year I've mostly been reading from Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter by Orbis Books, and The Undoing of Death: Sermons for Holy Week and Easter by Fleming Rutledge. Less we forget, we've got a 50 day Easter season starting, so still plenty of time to contemplate God's marvelous gifts through the cross and resurrection!
*******
I have been doing a good bit of reading this Lenten season, and thought I would come here and quote something appropriate for Easter day. But all that is playing through my tired mind (and I am struggling with a great deal of tiredness right now) is the traditional, joyful Easter greeting. May you know and feel its truth today, and may your Easter be filled with blessings!
Another day and I will post some quotes from my devotional reading. This year I've mostly been reading from Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter by Orbis Books, and The Undoing of Death: Sermons for Holy Week and Easter by Fleming Rutledge. Less we forget, we've got a 50 day Easter season starting, so still plenty of time to contemplate God's marvelous gifts through the cross and resurrection!
Thursday, December 08, 2016
Hidden Christmas: Timothy Keller Shares the Gospel With Clarity and Beauty
In recent years, Timothy Keller has become one of my favorite spiritual writers currently writing today. I have read a handful of his books in whole or in part. The "in part" comes because he writes so thoughtfully and deeply that I often find myself taking notes as I read, which means I don't always have time to finish his books before they go back to the library. Though I am thankful I can always check them out again!
Not long ago, I discovered he had written a new book entitled Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ. I got the news from Byron Borger on his terrific blog at Hearts and Minds Books. I trust Borger a lot as a reviewer, so when he placed this book in first place on his "must reads" for Advent, and wrote that he was "very grateful for its clear headed teaching" I went straight to my library catalog and put it on hold. Since it was already December, I thought I might have a long wait, but to my surprise and delight, it hit the hold shelf quickly...giving me some unexpected Advent reading.
When it comes to spiritual books, I am usually a sipper, not a gulper, but here's the thing -- I couldn't put this book down. It's true it's relatively short: just eight chapters and 144 pages, but not being able to put it down is not something I am used to saying about a book that is essentially devotional in nature. Keller draws on years worth of Christmas sermons he's given as a Presbyterian pastor in a handful of churches, and all I can say is I imagine he is a terrifically compelling speaker. These chapters are so clear, so cogent, and so soaked in the grace and goodness of the gospel that any heart hungry to grow closer to Jesus is going to love reading them.
Essentially what he does in each chapter is focus on a biblical text that relates some part of the Christmas story, and then dives deep for real and powerful truth about what that text means and how it can affect us when we embrace the truth of the text. The Scriptural passages he chooses are excellent ones: some of them are the ones you expect (the annunciation, the angels imparting the good news to the shepherds, the "people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light," the wise men making their visit, etc.) and some of them are ones you might not expect quite as much, such as the genealogy passages about Jesus' lineage, the word Mary receives from Simeon that Jesus is destined to cause the rise and and fall of many and that a sword will pierce her soul, and the words of the apostle John in 1 John chapter 1 about how he had truly seen and looked at and touched the Word of Life. In each of these, and other cases, he expounds so clearly and beautifully on the passage, bringing certain things about it to light -- some I had pondered before, and some I honestly never had thought of in just quite the way he was pondering it.
This is a book that both comforts and challenges us with the truth of the incarnation: that Jesus truly was God who took on human flesh and descended from heaven to share our lives and to rescue us from sin and death, a rescue we could never ever perform for ourselves. Over and over, he points to this truth, and doesn't just point to it, but invites us to embrace it in all its radical wonder and beauty. He reminds us of what our lives can look like and be like -- truly free and wonderfully saved -- when we trust in the truth of these accounts, look to Jesus, and really place our trust in him as Savior of the world and King of our hearts.
His point in the introduction of the book is that "Christmas is the only Christian holy day that is also a major secular holiday..." although there are still glimmers of the reality it stands for in the ways that some secular people celebrate (putting up lights, listening to carols that still speak the gospel, giving gifts). His hope is that this little book can help people who celebrate Christmas without a full awareness of why they are celebrating to learn more about its real roots, because "to understand Christmas is to understand basic Christianity, the Gospel." So this is definitely a book you can recommend to friends who are not Christians, but who are open to reading and learning more about it.
On the other hand, it is also a book I think the church itself needs to read, so I also recommend it to brothers and sisters in the faith. For many of us, we have perhaps unconsciously fallen into celebrating Christmas in ways that dip far more into secular understandings that we realize. I don't necessarily mean that we buy totally into the season's commercialism (I know plenty of Christians who have simplified that element of the celebration, and who spend a good deal of time preparing their hearts and the hearts of their families through Advent preparation) but I think it's easy for all of us to fall into a simplistic sentimentalization of the story of Jesus' birth, perhaps partly because we've heard it so often and have so many nostalgic associations with it. Like our non-believing friends, we need to keep hearing the Gospel, even if we have already responded to it and given our lives to Jesus. We need to keep preaching (or letting other people preach) to our own hearts about how much we need God, how deeply he shows his love for us through the incarnation and ultimately through his suffering and death, how we need to rely on the resurrected Lord daily for his strength, mercy, and goodness.
This book was definitely the kind of preaching I needed this Advent. I might add that this is the first Advent which I have ever celebrated that has felt overshadowed by suffering and death: I lost my dear mother a few days before Christmas last year and am missing her so much; I have struggled in almost eleven months of treatment for late-stage cancer; and (in a much smaller part of everything, but still part of it) I am having to move from the home where I've lived for nearly twenty years to a brand new place. Put it all together, and you can see that I am a woman in need of contemplating the Christmas story anew -- but then isn't this really a need each one of us has? Because we all live in a world that is full of suffering, pain, homesickness, brokenness, worry, fear, and yes, death. THAT is the world Jesus came to, and he came to it because it was filled with such things. He came to bring life and to be the light. He came to save us because we could not save ourselves. And he came to bring comfort and rest to the weary, because he loves us so.
I'm deeply grateful that Timothy Keller reminded me of the power and truth of the Gospel in such compelling and clearly ordered reflections. I needed those reminders this year. If you do too, I highly recommend you find and read a copy of Hidden Christmas. I loved gulping it down like a parched woman who needed a long drink of living water, but I plan to go back to it and sip again and again.
Not long ago, I discovered he had written a new book entitled Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ. I got the news from Byron Borger on his terrific blog at Hearts and Minds Books. I trust Borger a lot as a reviewer, so when he placed this book in first place on his "must reads" for Advent, and wrote that he was "very grateful for its clear headed teaching" I went straight to my library catalog and put it on hold. Since it was already December, I thought I might have a long wait, but to my surprise and delight, it hit the hold shelf quickly...giving me some unexpected Advent reading.
When it comes to spiritual books, I am usually a sipper, not a gulper, but here's the thing -- I couldn't put this book down. It's true it's relatively short: just eight chapters and 144 pages, but not being able to put it down is not something I am used to saying about a book that is essentially devotional in nature. Keller draws on years worth of Christmas sermons he's given as a Presbyterian pastor in a handful of churches, and all I can say is I imagine he is a terrifically compelling speaker. These chapters are so clear, so cogent, and so soaked in the grace and goodness of the gospel that any heart hungry to grow closer to Jesus is going to love reading them.
Essentially what he does in each chapter is focus on a biblical text that relates some part of the Christmas story, and then dives deep for real and powerful truth about what that text means and how it can affect us when we embrace the truth of the text. The Scriptural passages he chooses are excellent ones: some of them are the ones you expect (the annunciation, the angels imparting the good news to the shepherds, the "people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light," the wise men making their visit, etc.) and some of them are ones you might not expect quite as much, such as the genealogy passages about Jesus' lineage, the word Mary receives from Simeon that Jesus is destined to cause the rise and and fall of many and that a sword will pierce her soul, and the words of the apostle John in 1 John chapter 1 about how he had truly seen and looked at and touched the Word of Life. In each of these, and other cases, he expounds so clearly and beautifully on the passage, bringing certain things about it to light -- some I had pondered before, and some I honestly never had thought of in just quite the way he was pondering it.
This is a book that both comforts and challenges us with the truth of the incarnation: that Jesus truly was God who took on human flesh and descended from heaven to share our lives and to rescue us from sin and death, a rescue we could never ever perform for ourselves. Over and over, he points to this truth, and doesn't just point to it, but invites us to embrace it in all its radical wonder and beauty. He reminds us of what our lives can look like and be like -- truly free and wonderfully saved -- when we trust in the truth of these accounts, look to Jesus, and really place our trust in him as Savior of the world and King of our hearts.
His point in the introduction of the book is that "Christmas is the only Christian holy day that is also a major secular holiday..." although there are still glimmers of the reality it stands for in the ways that some secular people celebrate (putting up lights, listening to carols that still speak the gospel, giving gifts). His hope is that this little book can help people who celebrate Christmas without a full awareness of why they are celebrating to learn more about its real roots, because "to understand Christmas is to understand basic Christianity, the Gospel." So this is definitely a book you can recommend to friends who are not Christians, but who are open to reading and learning more about it.
On the other hand, it is also a book I think the church itself needs to read, so I also recommend it to brothers and sisters in the faith. For many of us, we have perhaps unconsciously fallen into celebrating Christmas in ways that dip far more into secular understandings that we realize. I don't necessarily mean that we buy totally into the season's commercialism (I know plenty of Christians who have simplified that element of the celebration, and who spend a good deal of time preparing their hearts and the hearts of their families through Advent preparation) but I think it's easy for all of us to fall into a simplistic sentimentalization of the story of Jesus' birth, perhaps partly because we've heard it so often and have so many nostalgic associations with it. Like our non-believing friends, we need to keep hearing the Gospel, even if we have already responded to it and given our lives to Jesus. We need to keep preaching (or letting other people preach) to our own hearts about how much we need God, how deeply he shows his love for us through the incarnation and ultimately through his suffering and death, how we need to rely on the resurrected Lord daily for his strength, mercy, and goodness.
This book was definitely the kind of preaching I needed this Advent. I might add that this is the first Advent which I have ever celebrated that has felt overshadowed by suffering and death: I lost my dear mother a few days before Christmas last year and am missing her so much; I have struggled in almost eleven months of treatment for late-stage cancer; and (in a much smaller part of everything, but still part of it) I am having to move from the home where I've lived for nearly twenty years to a brand new place. Put it all together, and you can see that I am a woman in need of contemplating the Christmas story anew -- but then isn't this really a need each one of us has? Because we all live in a world that is full of suffering, pain, homesickness, brokenness, worry, fear, and yes, death. THAT is the world Jesus came to, and he came to it because it was filled with such things. He came to bring life and to be the light. He came to save us because we could not save ourselves. And he came to bring comfort and rest to the weary, because he loves us so.
I'm deeply grateful that Timothy Keller reminded me of the power and truth of the Gospel in such compelling and clearly ordered reflections. I needed those reminders this year. If you do too, I highly recommend you find and read a copy of Hidden Christmas. I loved gulping it down like a parched woman who needed a long drink of living water, but I plan to go back to it and sip again and again.
Sunday, December 04, 2016
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:
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."
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
25 Ways You Can Celebrate C.S. Lewis
It's the Literary Day of Days! That's what I call November 29, the day we celebrate the birthdays of Louisa May Alcott (1832), C.S. Lewis (1898), and Madeleine L'Engle (1918).
In keeping with a list of ways to celebrate Alcott, which I first posted four years ago, I thought I would have fun posting a similar list in honor of Lewis. With Alcott, all ideas were inspired by Little Women and Little Men. With Lewis, I decided to keep my inspiration to the Chronicles of Narnia, though I certainly could have widened the field through many of his other writings. Narnia felt like the best place to be today though.
So without further ado, here are 25 ways you can celebrate C.S. Lewis:
In keeping with a list of ways to celebrate Alcott, which I first posted four years ago, I thought I would have fun posting a similar list in honor of Lewis. With Alcott, all ideas were inspired by Little Women and Little Men. With Lewis, I decided to keep my inspiration to the Chronicles of Narnia, though I certainly could have widened the field through many of his other writings. Narnia felt like the best place to be today though.
So without further ado, here are 25 ways you can celebrate C.S. Lewis:
Explore an old house.
Quibble with your siblings (but make sure you make up).
Open a wardrobe door and peek inside. You never know…
Take a walk in the woods, preferably a snowy woods if you
can find one. (Don a warm fur coat if you have one; let it remind you that you’re
royalty.)
Lean up against a lamppost.
Carry someone’s packages.
Have a splendid tea. Or enjoy a fish and potatoes supper.
Learn how beavers build their dams.
Remember you’re a daughter of Eve or a son of Adam.
Stay on the lookout for Father Christmas.
Don’t forget to clean your sword.
Don’t be afraid to anoint someone with a bit of healing
cordial.
Let your mind and heart linger on Aslan.
Let out a ROAR!
Romp with a cat.
Recall the beauties of a blossoming spring.
Hang out at a railway station. (Listen for the sound of a
beautiful horn.)
Set up an archery contest with friends.
Enjoy time with a pet mouse. You might want to name him
Reepicheep.
Imagine climbing inside a favorite painting.
Take a long boat trip.
Recite some of Aslan’s instructions from memory.
Gallop across a desert on a horse.
Plant an apple tree.
Climb a mountain – go further up and further in!
Monday, November 28, 2016
Reading Round-Up: Beginning of Advent
I haven't done a normal "reading round-up" post in so long. The beginning of Advent (my favorite season of the year in many ways) feels like a good time to do so, especially since my headaches, while still present, are getting better enough for me to be able to focus more on reading again. I'm still struggling with staying awake when reading (mostly because higher doses of pain meds make me sleepy) but I am finding I am able to read more again, and that's always a blessing.
Here's a peek at what I've been working on in recent days and weeks....
Andy Crouch's Strong and Weak is a beautiful little book that's all about what it means to flourish. Crouch (whom I've had the blessing of hearing speak) talks about embracing both our authority and vulnerability as image-bearers of God. Following in the footsteps of Jesus, who embraced both of those better than any human being before or since, we can find our way into true flourishing instead of falling into the traps and sins of exploiting others or withdrawing from suffering into safety. It's a really good book, one that I think has plenty of insights for anyone, but maybe especially for those who are leaders or serving in ministry.
I'm about half-way through Majestic is Your Name: A 40-Day Journey in the Company of Teresa of Avila. These "40 Day" journey books came out in the early 1990s, I think, and I don't know if they're all still in print, but I like the concept -- you get excerpts from the saint's writing, accompanied by daily Scripture readings and prayers. I am enjoying what I am learning from Teresa and feeling especially comforted by her picture of the soul as a castle. How good it is to remember that our hearts are throne rooms for Jesus!
I've been reading essays in C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity with the sweet girl for school. It's been a while since I've revisited the book (such a classic) and I am loving doing so with her, especially as we talk our way through Lewis' ideas. I have her reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for literature right now (she's heard it read more than once, but this is the first time she's really studied it as literature) and the essays are helping us think through some of Lewis' "big ideas" that come through in all his writing, children's stories as well as essays. We've talked about forgiveness, pride, and charity -- important virtues and vices.
November is a Lewisian month, so I am also enjoying Live Like a Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles (bits of which I am assigning to the sweet girl as well). Some lovely essays here by Joe Rigney, who really loves and understands the Chronicles well.
I've discovered a new-to-me poet: Philip Terman. He's a Jewish writer that I stumbled across a few weeks ago on the Writer's Almanac. I put his collection Our Portion on hold, and it's been wonderful to have it on nights when I am too tired to keep my eyes open with longer work.
I actually finished a novel -- yes, I managed a bit of fluff! -- from the new book shelves at the library. I picked up Nina Stibbe's Paradise Lodge on a total whim, and I'm glad I did. It was funny and acerbic and incredibly British. It's set in the 1970s and stars Lizzie Vogel, a teenager whose first person narration was so funny and strong that it carried me through even though reading novels has not been easy for me for a while. I think I probably picked it up because I saw that Lizzie was learning about life working in a nursing home, something that sounded interesting to me (having grown up with my grandmother living with us for several years, and having spent a lot of volunteer hours in a nursing home as a young adult). Those scenes in the nursing home, as she works with the elderly, are some of the best -- the most homespun, poignant, and funniest.
Natalie Babbitt's recent passing (she was the author of the well-known middle grade novel Tuck Everlasting) sent me to the library shelves to read her first picture book: Nellie, A Cat on Her Own. A sweet fantasy with especially sweet pictures...and Babbitt herself was the illustrator. It was neat to find out that she was an accomplished artist as well as writer.
Other books I'm starting or hoping to start soon: Ann Voskamp's The Broken Way, a couple of older prayer resources -- Praying in Color and Prayer and Temperament, and Joanne Fluke's Christmas Caramel Murder (more fluff...you know how much I love to think about how I would re-write or edit Fluke's books!). I've got some Advent resources on hold, but I don't think they're in yet...though I need to re-check my library bag. I was so tired when we went to the library on Saturday that I might have missed some of what we picked up on hold.
It's good to be reading again.
Here's a peek at what I've been working on in recent days and weeks....
Andy Crouch's Strong and Weak is a beautiful little book that's all about what it means to flourish. Crouch (whom I've had the blessing of hearing speak) talks about embracing both our authority and vulnerability as image-bearers of God. Following in the footsteps of Jesus, who embraced both of those better than any human being before or since, we can find our way into true flourishing instead of falling into the traps and sins of exploiting others or withdrawing from suffering into safety. It's a really good book, one that I think has plenty of insights for anyone, but maybe especially for those who are leaders or serving in ministry.
I'm about half-way through Majestic is Your Name: A 40-Day Journey in the Company of Teresa of Avila. These "40 Day" journey books came out in the early 1990s, I think, and I don't know if they're all still in print, but I like the concept -- you get excerpts from the saint's writing, accompanied by daily Scripture readings and prayers. I am enjoying what I am learning from Teresa and feeling especially comforted by her picture of the soul as a castle. How good it is to remember that our hearts are throne rooms for Jesus!
I've been reading essays in C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity with the sweet girl for school. It's been a while since I've revisited the book (such a classic) and I am loving doing so with her, especially as we talk our way through Lewis' ideas. I have her reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for literature right now (she's heard it read more than once, but this is the first time she's really studied it as literature) and the essays are helping us think through some of Lewis' "big ideas" that come through in all his writing, children's stories as well as essays. We've talked about forgiveness, pride, and charity -- important virtues and vices.
November is a Lewisian month, so I am also enjoying Live Like a Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles (bits of which I am assigning to the sweet girl as well). Some lovely essays here by Joe Rigney, who really loves and understands the Chronicles well.
I've discovered a new-to-me poet: Philip Terman. He's a Jewish writer that I stumbled across a few weeks ago on the Writer's Almanac. I put his collection Our Portion on hold, and it's been wonderful to have it on nights when I am too tired to keep my eyes open with longer work.
I actually finished a novel -- yes, I managed a bit of fluff! -- from the new book shelves at the library. I picked up Nina Stibbe's Paradise Lodge on a total whim, and I'm glad I did. It was funny and acerbic and incredibly British. It's set in the 1970s and stars Lizzie Vogel, a teenager whose first person narration was so funny and strong that it carried me through even though reading novels has not been easy for me for a while. I think I probably picked it up because I saw that Lizzie was learning about life working in a nursing home, something that sounded interesting to me (having grown up with my grandmother living with us for several years, and having spent a lot of volunteer hours in a nursing home as a young adult). Those scenes in the nursing home, as she works with the elderly, are some of the best -- the most homespun, poignant, and funniest.
Natalie Babbitt's recent passing (she was the author of the well-known middle grade novel Tuck Everlasting) sent me to the library shelves to read her first picture book: Nellie, A Cat on Her Own. A sweet fantasy with especially sweet pictures...and Babbitt herself was the illustrator. It was neat to find out that she was an accomplished artist as well as writer.
Other books I'm starting or hoping to start soon: Ann Voskamp's The Broken Way, a couple of older prayer resources -- Praying in Color and Prayer and Temperament, and Joanne Fluke's Christmas Caramel Murder (more fluff...you know how much I love to think about how I would re-write or edit Fluke's books!). I've got some Advent resources on hold, but I don't think they're in yet...though I need to re-check my library bag. I was so tired when we went to the library on Saturday that I might have missed some of what we picked up on hold.
It's good to be reading again.
Saturday, September 03, 2016
Reading With Cancer
I hardly ever used to read articles or blog posts dealing with cancer. It wasn't that I set out to actively avoid the topic, though I admit to a vague feeling of uneasiness sometimes when reading about it. Although I felt compassion for those who suffered from cancer, having had some friends and family members go through it over the years, I just didn't feel a deep, personal connection with the word or the subject. Of course, that completely changed when I got diagnosed in February.
I think most big life events change us as readers. I don't just mean how we read, though that's a big part of it, but what we read. We tend to gravitate toward reflections that connect in some way with who we are at the core. I read differently because I know Jesus, because I'm married, because I'm a mom, because I've lost a parent.
(Note: I put the first one first there, because knowing Jesus affects everything I do and see and think about most deeply. I am thinking here of C.S. Lewis' quote: "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.")
But my realization about my different reading choices and preferences dawns slowly sometimes. In the case of cancer, it's dawned extra slowly, because I had months where I was either too exhausted, or just too mentally preoccupied, to read much of anything, much less anything that had to do with the illness that had invaded.
It's really just been within the last few weeks that I find my glance straying to posts or articles with the word "cancer" in them. I sometimes feel like there's a laser beam connecting me to the word, so that I'm inexorably drawn to whatever has been written about it, whether that's news about funding for or breakthroughs in cancer research, a prayer request for someone who is suffering from cancer, or a reflection by someone who has lost or is losing someone to cancer. I go to whatever is there, and I begin to read, no longer from the vantage point of compassionate outsider, but from the view of someone who has lived through enough that the words in the article reverberate with special meaning and power.
Or perhaps I actually straddle those perspectives.
In the case of the last type of writing I mentioned, "a reflection by someone who has lost or is losing someone to cancer," I read with such a different orientation now that it feels like the world's axis has a new tilt. When I used to read such reflections, I always primarily connected with the writer/narrator of the story, the person actively living through the loss or potential loss. While that connection still lurks in the background, my bigger connection now is sometimes with the subject of the story, the person who is either still struggling with cancer or who has died. And again, that changes everything.
I thought of all this yesterday when I came across the following post from Ruminate magazine, entitled "The Caring Bridge: Cancer and the Meaning of Battles."
In it, poet and essayist Angela Doll Carlson meditates on losing her friend Debbi to cancer. She reflects on how daily life is filled with interruptions, and on how these interruptions distract us -- distract us from thinking about the news of a friend's struggle (especially in those long periods where there is no news, either good or bad), distract us from being able to find the words we need to describe the heaviness we feel when we think of our loss. I resonated with her words, as a writer, a mom, who has been there in the daily grind, lived through the countless interruptions, tried to think my way through to making sense of love and life and loss.
But I resonated just as much if not more with the words of her friend Debbi, now passed on. She quoted Debbi from their last visit together.
“The battle is the Lord’s.” Debbi told me this when I finally saw her in person. I had no idea as we sat and talked that day that it would only be a week or so before she died. She scoffed, something I was not used to seeing from her, “I hate that people say it’s a battle. I’m not fighting a battle with cancer. I’m dying.” I nodded my head, and she looked at me pointedly, “because if it’s a battle, what does that mean when I die? Is dying really losing?” I did not know what to say in that moment.
Oh, Debbi, I think, with the tears threatening to well up, I get this. Although I am in a different place in my healing journey right now (and healing journey is what I still call it, instead of cancer journey, and I believe that the writer's friend Debbi was on a healing journey too) I too wrestle with the right words to talk about what is going on with me. As you can probably tell by the parenthetical comment I just felt a need to insert.
Our culture loves to talk about cancer as a battle, and I know dear friends and fellow patients who have embraced the word wholeheartedly. It seems to work for them, and I'm glad it does, but I have never felt much like a warrior when it comes to this disease, and I think that's okay too.
I realized from the very beginning that I had few weapons that could actually combat this disease, and that everything I could think of that felt like a powerful sword would be wielded best by others: the doctors who have an arsenal of compassion, competency, training, and wisdom; the cutting edge medicines that might or might not work and that would likely cause many side effects but that were my only line of physical defense; the pastors and deacons who would come to my home and to my hospital bedside to lay hands on me and to anoint me with healing oil; the family members and friends who would lift me up in prayer every day, especially on those days when I was far too tired to lift up myself, asking God to heal me, help me, and sustain me.
I learned early on that it was my job to "stay on the mat," while others brought me to Jesus, and while that takes patience, courage, and strength, it doesn't feel like warrior kinds of strength. I think this is what Debbi meant when she said "the battle is the Lord's." Of course it is. Ultimately it is always his, not ours, because he is the one with the true strength and power to win it. That is true in my ongoing fight against sin. Why should it be any different in my fight against disease?
But just as the fight against sin requires my ongoing willingness to fight and my participation with what God is doing, so too my fight against cancer. As I've stayed on the mat, as I've walked the road one shaky step at a time, and as I've faced hard and toxic treatments, I have begun to question whether or not my ultimate problem is with the word "battle" or whether it's with our culture's notion of what constitutes true strength.
Maybe I am -- and maybe Debbi was (may she rest in peace) -- a warrior of a sort that we don't think about too often, the kind of strong and faithful person of love, peace, and prayer that some of the saints we love most have modeled being most truly, and that most of us just keep aspiring to be.
Because it does take courage to keep "fighting" (there's one of those hard words again) when you really have no clue how to fight, when you can't see what you're fighting, when you don't know how the fight will end. But your longing to continue living, loving, and serving others compels you forward, even on days when you feel like giving up. And you trust that however the battle may end, when you are holding onto Jesus, it ultimately ends in healing (hence my term "healing journey") and it ultimately means winning, not losing.
To quote from Carlson's article again:
"If there is indeed a battle that is ours, it is a race to find meaning and purpose. The battle is an attempt to leave a legacy of love and care, a caring bridge and it spans the life we led, the life we leave and the people who will need to continue the long walk ahead. The battle rages as the clock ticks, the days fly by too fast, people leave us too soon, leaving empty spaces where their laughter ought to be."
I find that I do indeed resonate with these words too, that I'm still thinking through what it means (and how) "to leave a legacy of love and care" for those who walk the path around us and behind us. I don't know right now how long I'll have to figure that out and to try to do it faithfully and well. It may be a long time or a short time. But isn't that true for all of us? My cancer diagnosis changes some things, but it doesn't change everything. I'm part of the human race where we're all living on the gift of an unknown amount of time, and where we want to squeeze every last drop of holiness and laughter and love out of that time, be it short or long.
So not everything about my reading has changed. The reading material I gravitate toward has widened to include cancer and all the issues, ideas, and themes that orbit around it. And when I choose to read about cancer now, I read with double lenses. There is the me that continues to "battle" cancer, and the me that continues to think through the daily minutiae that have always mattered to me, like language and loss, and how to live faithfully in the midst of them.
I think most big life events change us as readers. I don't just mean how we read, though that's a big part of it, but what we read. We tend to gravitate toward reflections that connect in some way with who we are at the core. I read differently because I know Jesus, because I'm married, because I'm a mom, because I've lost a parent.
(Note: I put the first one first there, because knowing Jesus affects everything I do and see and think about most deeply. I am thinking here of C.S. Lewis' quote: "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.")
But my realization about my different reading choices and preferences dawns slowly sometimes. In the case of cancer, it's dawned extra slowly, because I had months where I was either too exhausted, or just too mentally preoccupied, to read much of anything, much less anything that had to do with the illness that had invaded.
It's really just been within the last few weeks that I find my glance straying to posts or articles with the word "cancer" in them. I sometimes feel like there's a laser beam connecting me to the word, so that I'm inexorably drawn to whatever has been written about it, whether that's news about funding for or breakthroughs in cancer research, a prayer request for someone who is suffering from cancer, or a reflection by someone who has lost or is losing someone to cancer. I go to whatever is there, and I begin to read, no longer from the vantage point of compassionate outsider, but from the view of someone who has lived through enough that the words in the article reverberate with special meaning and power.
Or perhaps I actually straddle those perspectives.
In the case of the last type of writing I mentioned, "a reflection by someone who has lost or is losing someone to cancer," I read with such a different orientation now that it feels like the world's axis has a new tilt. When I used to read such reflections, I always primarily connected with the writer/narrator of the story, the person actively living through the loss or potential loss. While that connection still lurks in the background, my bigger connection now is sometimes with the subject of the story, the person who is either still struggling with cancer or who has died. And again, that changes everything.
I thought of all this yesterday when I came across the following post from Ruminate magazine, entitled "The Caring Bridge: Cancer and the Meaning of Battles."
In it, poet and essayist Angela Doll Carlson meditates on losing her friend Debbi to cancer. She reflects on how daily life is filled with interruptions, and on how these interruptions distract us -- distract us from thinking about the news of a friend's struggle (especially in those long periods where there is no news, either good or bad), distract us from being able to find the words we need to describe the heaviness we feel when we think of our loss. I resonated with her words, as a writer, a mom, who has been there in the daily grind, lived through the countless interruptions, tried to think my way through to making sense of love and life and loss.
But I resonated just as much if not more with the words of her friend Debbi, now passed on. She quoted Debbi from their last visit together.
“The battle is the Lord’s.” Debbi told me this when I finally saw her in person. I had no idea as we sat and talked that day that it would only be a week or so before she died. She scoffed, something I was not used to seeing from her, “I hate that people say it’s a battle. I’m not fighting a battle with cancer. I’m dying.” I nodded my head, and she looked at me pointedly, “because if it’s a battle, what does that mean when I die? Is dying really losing?” I did not know what to say in that moment.
Oh, Debbi, I think, with the tears threatening to well up, I get this. Although I am in a different place in my healing journey right now (and healing journey is what I still call it, instead of cancer journey, and I believe that the writer's friend Debbi was on a healing journey too) I too wrestle with the right words to talk about what is going on with me. As you can probably tell by the parenthetical comment I just felt a need to insert.
Our culture loves to talk about cancer as a battle, and I know dear friends and fellow patients who have embraced the word wholeheartedly. It seems to work for them, and I'm glad it does, but I have never felt much like a warrior when it comes to this disease, and I think that's okay too.
I realized from the very beginning that I had few weapons that could actually combat this disease, and that everything I could think of that felt like a powerful sword would be wielded best by others: the doctors who have an arsenal of compassion, competency, training, and wisdom; the cutting edge medicines that might or might not work and that would likely cause many side effects but that were my only line of physical defense; the pastors and deacons who would come to my home and to my hospital bedside to lay hands on me and to anoint me with healing oil; the family members and friends who would lift me up in prayer every day, especially on those days when I was far too tired to lift up myself, asking God to heal me, help me, and sustain me.
I learned early on that it was my job to "stay on the mat," while others brought me to Jesus, and while that takes patience, courage, and strength, it doesn't feel like warrior kinds of strength. I think this is what Debbi meant when she said "the battle is the Lord's." Of course it is. Ultimately it is always his, not ours, because he is the one with the true strength and power to win it. That is true in my ongoing fight against sin. Why should it be any different in my fight against disease?
But just as the fight against sin requires my ongoing willingness to fight and my participation with what God is doing, so too my fight against cancer. As I've stayed on the mat, as I've walked the road one shaky step at a time, and as I've faced hard and toxic treatments, I have begun to question whether or not my ultimate problem is with the word "battle" or whether it's with our culture's notion of what constitutes true strength.
Maybe I am -- and maybe Debbi was (may she rest in peace) -- a warrior of a sort that we don't think about too often, the kind of strong and faithful person of love, peace, and prayer that some of the saints we love most have modeled being most truly, and that most of us just keep aspiring to be.
Because it does take courage to keep "fighting" (there's one of those hard words again) when you really have no clue how to fight, when you can't see what you're fighting, when you don't know how the fight will end. But your longing to continue living, loving, and serving others compels you forward, even on days when you feel like giving up. And you trust that however the battle may end, when you are holding onto Jesus, it ultimately ends in healing (hence my term "healing journey") and it ultimately means winning, not losing.
To quote from Carlson's article again:
"If there is indeed a battle that is ours, it is a race to find meaning and purpose. The battle is an attempt to leave a legacy of love and care, a caring bridge and it spans the life we led, the life we leave and the people who will need to continue the long walk ahead. The battle rages as the clock ticks, the days fly by too fast, people leave us too soon, leaving empty spaces where their laughter ought to be."
I find that I do indeed resonate with these words too, that I'm still thinking through what it means (and how) "to leave a legacy of love and care" for those who walk the path around us and behind us. I don't know right now how long I'll have to figure that out and to try to do it faithfully and well. It may be a long time or a short time. But isn't that true for all of us? My cancer diagnosis changes some things, but it doesn't change everything. I'm part of the human race where we're all living on the gift of an unknown amount of time, and where we want to squeeze every last drop of holiness and laughter and love out of that time, be it short or long.
So not everything about my reading has changed. The reading material I gravitate toward has widened to include cancer and all the issues, ideas, and themes that orbit around it. And when I choose to read about cancer now, I read with double lenses. There is the me that continues to "battle" cancer, and the me that continues to think through the daily minutiae that have always mattered to me, like language and loss, and how to live faithfully in the midst of them.
Saturday, August 06, 2016
Rediscoveries
Speaking of Chesterton's "monotonous memory," I was at the library with my husband and daughter on Thursday when I came rushing up to them in great excitement, holding onto a book.
"Look!" I gushed. "It's Mary Oliver's new poetry book!" (Felicity, published in 2015).
The sweet girl looked at me a little strangely. "Mom," she said, "you've read that."
"I have?"
"Yes," she said patiently. "You had it months ago. I remember seeing it in the house. And I think you read it."
I looked at the book in some consternation. And then light began to dawn....
She was right. I checked Felicity out months ago. It was in January, and I did read some of it. (I figured this out because I'd added it as "currently reading" to my Good Reads shelf at the time.)
But late January was when I ended up in the ER, which started the whole spiral of events that led to my surgery in early February and my diagnosis and beginning of treatment later that month. I think the book went back to the library without me ever finishing it. And in the ensuing craziness of the last several months, it somehow escaped my mind that I'd ever picked it up.
It's been a long road! And Mary Oliver gets long roads (and short ones, and all the beautiful things you see on roads, even hard ones.)
So I am getting the wonder of re-discovery. A few of the poems are coming back to me as I read them again, but mostly it's just a brand new experience.
And speaking of rediscoveries, I'm finally beginning to sort through some of the piles I've not touched in months either, and at long last, I found my 2016 desk calendar. Most years I can't make it without my little calendar/planner, and I knew I'd bought and started one last year, but I couldn't find it and I couldn't even remember what it looked like. (Yes, it's been a weird year.)
Turns out it's a lovely Monet one -- right! I remember! So strange to flip through and see the busyness of the days in January, and the sprinkling of work deadlines I'd penned in for February, March, and April. And then the blankness of everything else. It feels good to have it again. Just in time to pen in next week's vacation days, and my next treatment days too.
"Look!" I gushed. "It's Mary Oliver's new poetry book!" (Felicity, published in 2015).
The sweet girl looked at me a little strangely. "Mom," she said, "you've read that."
"I have?"
"Yes," she said patiently. "You had it months ago. I remember seeing it in the house. And I think you read it."
I looked at the book in some consternation. And then light began to dawn....
She was right. I checked Felicity out months ago. It was in January, and I did read some of it. (I figured this out because I'd added it as "currently reading" to my Good Reads shelf at the time.)
But late January was when I ended up in the ER, which started the whole spiral of events that led to my surgery in early February and my diagnosis and beginning of treatment later that month. I think the book went back to the library without me ever finishing it. And in the ensuing craziness of the last several months, it somehow escaped my mind that I'd ever picked it up.
It's been a long road! And Mary Oliver gets long roads (and short ones, and all the beautiful things you see on roads, even hard ones.)
So I am getting the wonder of re-discovery. A few of the poems are coming back to me as I read them again, but mostly it's just a brand new experience.
And speaking of rediscoveries, I'm finally beginning to sort through some of the piles I've not touched in months either, and at long last, I found my 2016 desk calendar. Most years I can't make it without my little calendar/planner, and I knew I'd bought and started one last year, but I couldn't find it and I couldn't even remember what it looked like. (Yes, it's been a weird year.)
Turns out it's a lovely Monet one -- right! I remember! So strange to flip through and see the busyness of the days in January, and the sprinkling of work deadlines I'd penned in for February, March, and April. And then the blankness of everything else. It feels good to have it again. Just in time to pen in next week's vacation days, and my next treatment days too.
Thursday, August 04, 2016
"If the world is good, we are revolutionaries..."
I recently signed up for an e-book service where they send me daily notification of good e-book deals. Most of them I ignore (except to jot down titles that look interesting enough for me to try to get from the library) but the free deals are often interesting, because it turns out they are mostly for older books.
That's how I've begun to read G.K. Chesterton's book of essays entitled The Defendant. I haven't gotten very far yet. In fact, all I've read is the preface to the "new" edition, which was apparently a new edition back in Chesterton's day, since he wrote the preface. Chesterton may be one of the few writers who could catch my attention ~ and be quote worthy! ~ in a preface.
He did this not once but twice. The first time was a rather profound line he penned while making the humorous observation that the reissue of the book might be necessary because people had "completely forgotten" the essays from their original publication and thus could read them again with some profit because it would be like they were reading them for the first time. He joked that great writers like Balzac and Shakespeare might not mind being forgotten if it meant that people would ultimately re-discover and re-read their works. Then he adds: "It is a monotonous memory which keeps us in the main from seeing things as splendid as they are." By which I think he means we sometimes simply forget how splendid something is and thus cease to see its grandeur or beauty, perhaps because we grow too used to ordinary splendors. Which I guess does give us the joy of re-discovering them!
The second part of the preface that I found thought-provoking was toward the end, when he was mentioning how a critic had taken him to task for an overly optimistic view in the essays. Then he wrote the following:
And he goes on to add that his essays "seek to remind men that things must be loved first and improved afterwards."
I thought first of the political truth of those statements today, when we are seeing the demise of a major party that has succumbed to a dark and pessimistic vision. And then I thought of the theological ramifications of what Chesterton says. Because it struck me at first that God is better at improvement (and revolutionary visions and actions that lead to improvement) than we human beings are. It struck me at first that while Chesterton says that no man can make a bad thing good or an ugly thing beautiful, God can, and that in some ways that is the very picture of what he does for us in providing salvation.
But on second or third thought, Chesterton's reasoning strikes me as a beautifully catholic sentiment. While I appreciate and even subscribe to (in some measure) the reformed notion of depraved humanity, I believe that the image of God in us is bent and broken but not totally obliterated, and that God loves us, remembering that we are made very good, and it is his love that makes us beautiful. He doesn't demand that we clean ourselves up first before we come to him, somehow trying to improve ourselves or make ourselves worthy before he will love and save and shape us into what we're meant to be. We come to him damaged and broken, unable to fix ourselves, yes. However, surely there is "some germ of good" or "some fragment of beauty" left in us. God remembers that we are but dust, but he also remembers that he created us very good, and made us to know, love, and serve him, to live in ways that bring him glory. In other words, he sees beyond what we are, not just to what we once were, but to what we will one day be. And it's that's kind of radical vision we need if we're to begin to find ways to love in tandem with his love and to love our world back (and forward) into wholeness.
Because let's face it, part of the reason we often despair over the brokenness of our world is not because it's so broken and ugly we can't stand it, but because we've seen enough glimpses of its goodness and beauty that we long to see more and more of them. That vision of goodness and beauty drives us forward in ways getting stuck in despair never can.
That's how I've begun to read G.K. Chesterton's book of essays entitled The Defendant. I haven't gotten very far yet. In fact, all I've read is the preface to the "new" edition, which was apparently a new edition back in Chesterton's day, since he wrote the preface. Chesterton may be one of the few writers who could catch my attention ~ and be quote worthy! ~ in a preface.
He did this not once but twice. The first time was a rather profound line he penned while making the humorous observation that the reissue of the book might be necessary because people had "completely forgotten" the essays from their original publication and thus could read them again with some profit because it would be like they were reading them for the first time. He joked that great writers like Balzac and Shakespeare might not mind being forgotten if it meant that people would ultimately re-discover and re-read their works. Then he adds: "It is a monotonous memory which keeps us in the main from seeing things as splendid as they are." By which I think he means we sometimes simply forget how splendid something is and thus cease to see its grandeur or beauty, perhaps because we grow too used to ordinary splendors. Which I guess does give us the joy of re-discovering them!
The second part of the preface that I found thought-provoking was toward the end, when he was mentioning how a critic had taken him to task for an overly optimistic view in the essays. Then he wrote the following:
"At first sight it would seem that the pessimist encourages improvement. But in reality it is a singular truth that the era in which pessimism has been cried from the housetops is also that in which almost all reform has stagnated and fallen into decay. The reason of this is not difficult to discover. No man ever did, and no man ever can, create or desire to make a bad thing good or an ugly thing beautiful. There must be some germ of good to be loved, some fragment of beauty to be admired...The cause which is blocking all progress today is the subtle skepticism which whispers in a million ears that things are not good enough to be worth improving. If the world is good we are revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be conservatives."
And he goes on to add that his essays "seek to remind men that things must be loved first and improved afterwards."
I thought first of the political truth of those statements today, when we are seeing the demise of a major party that has succumbed to a dark and pessimistic vision. And then I thought of the theological ramifications of what Chesterton says. Because it struck me at first that God is better at improvement (and revolutionary visions and actions that lead to improvement) than we human beings are. It struck me at first that while Chesterton says that no man can make a bad thing good or an ugly thing beautiful, God can, and that in some ways that is the very picture of what he does for us in providing salvation.
But on second or third thought, Chesterton's reasoning strikes me as a beautifully catholic sentiment. While I appreciate and even subscribe to (in some measure) the reformed notion of depraved humanity, I believe that the image of God in us is bent and broken but not totally obliterated, and that God loves us, remembering that we are made very good, and it is his love that makes us beautiful. He doesn't demand that we clean ourselves up first before we come to him, somehow trying to improve ourselves or make ourselves worthy before he will love and save and shape us into what we're meant to be. We come to him damaged and broken, unable to fix ourselves, yes. However, surely there is "some germ of good" or "some fragment of beauty" left in us. God remembers that we are but dust, but he also remembers that he created us very good, and made us to know, love, and serve him, to live in ways that bring him glory. In other words, he sees beyond what we are, not just to what we once were, but to what we will one day be. And it's that's kind of radical vision we need if we're to begin to find ways to love in tandem with his love and to love our world back (and forward) into wholeness.
Because let's face it, part of the reason we often despair over the brokenness of our world is not because it's so broken and ugly we can't stand it, but because we've seen enough glimpses of its goodness and beauty that we long to see more and more of them. That vision of goodness and beauty drives us forward in ways getting stuck in despair never can.
Friday, July 22, 2016
Returning to Keller's Book on Prayer...and Revisiting Augustine
I began reading Timothy Keller's book Prayer last summer and had to return it to the library during the fall. I intended to get back to it sooner than this, but life (and my cancer diagnosis) put a lot of things on hold.
I'm back to it now. My tired brain couldn't remember quite where I left off, so I dived in somewhere in the second section. I soon realized that I'd gone too far back because I was re-reading bits I'd remembered. Today I moved into the "learning" section (section 3) but I can tell I've still not caught up to where I was before (partly because it finally dawned on me I might have blogged about it last year....which I did....in this post here on Letting the Holy Spirit Preach to Our Hearts).
Fortunately, Keller's work bears up to re-reading and to repeated reflection. So even though I'm backpedaling a little, I thought I would spend some time today summarizing his summary (grin) of Augustine's advice on prayer.
I think this small section hit my heart with renewed vigor today because I have also recently begun to dip my toes into James K.A. Smith's You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. It's a lovely follow-up to his book Desiring the Kingdom, which I read and loved in 2014. Smith reaches deep into Augustine to talk about how what we love shapes us. And Keller is drawing on that same well when he teaches about Augustine's guidance on prayer and how our relationship with God helps us to rightly order our "disordered loves."
He summarizes Augustine's advice about prayer, advice given to a widow named Anicia Faltonia Proba who wrote to Augustine "because she was afraid she wasn't praying as she should" (84). (Side note: this sounds a lot like a conversation my daughter was having with me last night. Augustine and Anicia corresponded in the 400s. I love how the really important questions in life don't change, even over 1600 years!)
Here are the four principles on prayer Augustine laid out, as presented by Keller and then further simplified by me -- because I need to rewrite things and break them down in order to fully reflect on them and carry them with me.
1) Before we can begin to pray, to really know how to pray or even what we should be praying for, we need to take stock of our own lives. We need to recognize and acknowledge that "our heart's loves are 'disordered...'" (84). In other words, things that we should love on a lesser scale have a place of too much importance while "God, whom we should love supremely, is someone we may acknowledge but whose favor and presence is not existentially as important to us as prosperity, success, status, love, and pleasure" (84-85). If we don't understand how disordered our hearts are, then when we pray, we're just going to be praying out of that disorderedness without realizing how much it messes us up. He uses as an example someone whose loves are disordered in the direction of giving financial security first place. Financial disaster threatens or hits, and that person prays "help!" but their prayer is "little more than 'worrying in God's direction.' Even when the prayer is done, they are still worried and anxious because they have not yet realized that their only real security is to rest in God.
So we have to "settle" this. Grasp the character of our hearts. Admit our desolation (opposite of consolation) apart from Christ. THEN we can start praying. And when we pray, we can pray "for a happy life" (85) says Augustine, recognizing that our true happiness comes ultimately from God and not from good but fleeting things.
2) That does not mean, he hastens to add, that we pray to know and love God and stop there. The Lord's Prayer itself shows us that we should pray for other things, including our daily bread. But God is our "greatest love" (86). And when we remember that, "it transforms both what and how we pray for a happy life" (86). We learn to not "rest" our happiness in our circumstances, and to recognize what we have in Jesus. We're not always good at this and we need God's help. "Christians lack the spiritual capacity to realize all we have in Jesus" (86). We lack joy. It's why Paul prays for the Christians in Ephesus that they will grasp "the height, depth, breadth, and length of Christ's salvation" (86). The order of what we pray for, as given to us in the Lord's Prayer, also helps us here. First we remember God's greatness and we reignite our love for him. Then we can turn to praying for ourselves and our daily needs and our happiness.
3) To recap numbers one and two: we become aware of our disordered hearts and where we can find true and lasting joy. Then we learn the specifics of how to pray from the prayer that Jesus taught us. Jesus gave us this prayer and we can model our own prayers on it. It contains "adoration, petition, thanksgiving, confession" (87). We want our own prayers to line up with it. If we pray that God will make us wealthy, powerful, famous, but only because we want these things for themselves, and not to benefit others or seek God's will, then we will find that our requests aren't lining up with the Lord's Prayer. (I'm a little muddy on the diction of the Augustine passage he quotes here, so I hope I'm grasping the essential point clearly.) I think the point is that, if we model our prayer on Jesus', we will begin to see where our prayers fall short and where they need to be reshaped.
4) Even after we put all these things in place, however, there is still the trouble of knowing how and what to pray in dark times. "Even the most godly Christians can't be sure what to ask for when we are enmeshed in difficulties and suffering," writes Keller (87). We know that sometimes sufferings can actually benefit us (because God is in the business of redeeming them, I would add) but they are still hard. So do we pray that God takes the hard thing away? Or that he gives us strength to get through it? The answer seems to be both/and. Augustine points to Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane, when he asks his Father to take away the cup of suffering, but then says "nevertheless, not my will but thine be done." Augustine also points to Romans 8, reminding his prayer correspondent that the Spirit guides our groaning prayers when we can't find the words, and that God still hears our prayers, even though they are imperfect. We are told to pour out our hearts to him, remembering that he is good and wise. Sufferings can even become a "shield" to us, according to Augustine, because they defend us from the illusion that we can be self-sufficient. Instead, we can have a rich prayer life marked by passion, one that helps us to find peace no matter what is going on around us.
I find myself chewing on these four basic principles in the context of my own life and my daughter's questions about prayer. I think the first point, that we need to recognize and acknowledge our own disorderedness, sounds like bad news when we first consider it but actually is wonderful news. We don't have to hide who we are from God. And the fact that our loves are disordered (and they will be, because it's part of being human and broken and living in a world broken by sin) does not disqualify us in any way from praying!
What I hear Augustine and Keller saying here is that we don't have to clean ourselves up before we can get to the business of praying, or before God will let us respond to him in prayer....always remembering that God speaks first and invites us into relationship with him. We can't clean ourselves up. That's part of the point. When we realize we're struggling because we love other stuff more than God, we can acknowledge that clearly (it's what we do in confessional prayer) and then move on. We can ask God to help us reorder our loves, and we can confidently expect that when we pray, he will start to do that work in us. The prayer itself will help begin to transform us and what and who we love.
My daughter, last night, told me very honestly she has not been feeling very close to God lately, and that it was hard to pray during the months when I was so ill and going through chemo. She does not always feel she loves God enough. "But I want to," she said, and I wanted to cry "yes!" with a fist-pump (I said something gentler, but I was fist-pumping inside). Wanting to love God is a great first step. We take that step and we ask him to change our hearts and order our loves rightly. And we can trust that he will, and that our prayers will become more transformed as we are transformed, so that we begin to love God more and love what he loves and desires what he desires...for ourselves, for others, for the world. I learn so much from my daughter's honesty. I am not always as good at admitting or acknowledging where my own love is lacking and disordered.
I also am feeling extremely thankful for the wisdom in point four. The past several months have been suffused with suffering on levels I could never have anticipated. I have suffered physically and emotionally and I am worn out. I am still walking through a season of suffering. And yes, there have been times when I was too worn out to pray, and times when my prayers were all mixed up. I have not always known how to pray in the midst of this mess. I still don't. I sometimes pray for strength, just enough to get me through the next step. I sometimes pray that God will heal me completely...and heal me NOW! (Sometimes uttered with boldness and desperation.) I think both prayers are appropriate. I think God hears both. I don't know yet how he will choose to answer me ultimately in terms of the cancer that my body still battles. But I do know that I can still pray with confidence and peace in his goodness and his wisdom. And I can even pray with gratitude for what this suffering has already taught me about how much and how deeply I need Jesus, and how it has helped me to pray for and respond to others' suffering.
I'm back to it now. My tired brain couldn't remember quite where I left off, so I dived in somewhere in the second section. I soon realized that I'd gone too far back because I was re-reading bits I'd remembered. Today I moved into the "learning" section (section 3) but I can tell I've still not caught up to where I was before (partly because it finally dawned on me I might have blogged about it last year....which I did....in this post here on Letting the Holy Spirit Preach to Our Hearts).
Fortunately, Keller's work bears up to re-reading and to repeated reflection. So even though I'm backpedaling a little, I thought I would spend some time today summarizing his summary (grin) of Augustine's advice on prayer.
I think this small section hit my heart with renewed vigor today because I have also recently begun to dip my toes into James K.A. Smith's You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. It's a lovely follow-up to his book Desiring the Kingdom, which I read and loved in 2014. Smith reaches deep into Augustine to talk about how what we love shapes us. And Keller is drawing on that same well when he teaches about Augustine's guidance on prayer and how our relationship with God helps us to rightly order our "disordered loves."
He summarizes Augustine's advice about prayer, advice given to a widow named Anicia Faltonia Proba who wrote to Augustine "because she was afraid she wasn't praying as she should" (84). (Side note: this sounds a lot like a conversation my daughter was having with me last night. Augustine and Anicia corresponded in the 400s. I love how the really important questions in life don't change, even over 1600 years!)
Here are the four principles on prayer Augustine laid out, as presented by Keller and then further simplified by me -- because I need to rewrite things and break them down in order to fully reflect on them and carry them with me.
1) Before we can begin to pray, to really know how to pray or even what we should be praying for, we need to take stock of our own lives. We need to recognize and acknowledge that "our heart's loves are 'disordered...'" (84). In other words, things that we should love on a lesser scale have a place of too much importance while "God, whom we should love supremely, is someone we may acknowledge but whose favor and presence is not existentially as important to us as prosperity, success, status, love, and pleasure" (84-85). If we don't understand how disordered our hearts are, then when we pray, we're just going to be praying out of that disorderedness without realizing how much it messes us up. He uses as an example someone whose loves are disordered in the direction of giving financial security first place. Financial disaster threatens or hits, and that person prays "help!" but their prayer is "little more than 'worrying in God's direction.' Even when the prayer is done, they are still worried and anxious because they have not yet realized that their only real security is to rest in God.
So we have to "settle" this. Grasp the character of our hearts. Admit our desolation (opposite of consolation) apart from Christ. THEN we can start praying. And when we pray, we can pray "for a happy life" (85) says Augustine, recognizing that our true happiness comes ultimately from God and not from good but fleeting things.
2) That does not mean, he hastens to add, that we pray to know and love God and stop there. The Lord's Prayer itself shows us that we should pray for other things, including our daily bread. But God is our "greatest love" (86). And when we remember that, "it transforms both what and how we pray for a happy life" (86). We learn to not "rest" our happiness in our circumstances, and to recognize what we have in Jesus. We're not always good at this and we need God's help. "Christians lack the spiritual capacity to realize all we have in Jesus" (86). We lack joy. It's why Paul prays for the Christians in Ephesus that they will grasp "the height, depth, breadth, and length of Christ's salvation" (86). The order of what we pray for, as given to us in the Lord's Prayer, also helps us here. First we remember God's greatness and we reignite our love for him. Then we can turn to praying for ourselves and our daily needs and our happiness.
3) To recap numbers one and two: we become aware of our disordered hearts and where we can find true and lasting joy. Then we learn the specifics of how to pray from the prayer that Jesus taught us. Jesus gave us this prayer and we can model our own prayers on it. It contains "adoration, petition, thanksgiving, confession" (87). We want our own prayers to line up with it. If we pray that God will make us wealthy, powerful, famous, but only because we want these things for themselves, and not to benefit others or seek God's will, then we will find that our requests aren't lining up with the Lord's Prayer. (I'm a little muddy on the diction of the Augustine passage he quotes here, so I hope I'm grasping the essential point clearly.) I think the point is that, if we model our prayer on Jesus', we will begin to see where our prayers fall short and where they need to be reshaped.
4) Even after we put all these things in place, however, there is still the trouble of knowing how and what to pray in dark times. "Even the most godly Christians can't be sure what to ask for when we are enmeshed in difficulties and suffering," writes Keller (87). We know that sometimes sufferings can actually benefit us (because God is in the business of redeeming them, I would add) but they are still hard. So do we pray that God takes the hard thing away? Or that he gives us strength to get through it? The answer seems to be both/and. Augustine points to Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane, when he asks his Father to take away the cup of suffering, but then says "nevertheless, not my will but thine be done." Augustine also points to Romans 8, reminding his prayer correspondent that the Spirit guides our groaning prayers when we can't find the words, and that God still hears our prayers, even though they are imperfect. We are told to pour out our hearts to him, remembering that he is good and wise. Sufferings can even become a "shield" to us, according to Augustine, because they defend us from the illusion that we can be self-sufficient. Instead, we can have a rich prayer life marked by passion, one that helps us to find peace no matter what is going on around us.
I find myself chewing on these four basic principles in the context of my own life and my daughter's questions about prayer. I think the first point, that we need to recognize and acknowledge our own disorderedness, sounds like bad news when we first consider it but actually is wonderful news. We don't have to hide who we are from God. And the fact that our loves are disordered (and they will be, because it's part of being human and broken and living in a world broken by sin) does not disqualify us in any way from praying!
What I hear Augustine and Keller saying here is that we don't have to clean ourselves up before we can get to the business of praying, or before God will let us respond to him in prayer....always remembering that God speaks first and invites us into relationship with him. We can't clean ourselves up. That's part of the point. When we realize we're struggling because we love other stuff more than God, we can acknowledge that clearly (it's what we do in confessional prayer) and then move on. We can ask God to help us reorder our loves, and we can confidently expect that when we pray, he will start to do that work in us. The prayer itself will help begin to transform us and what and who we love.
My daughter, last night, told me very honestly she has not been feeling very close to God lately, and that it was hard to pray during the months when I was so ill and going through chemo. She does not always feel she loves God enough. "But I want to," she said, and I wanted to cry "yes!" with a fist-pump (I said something gentler, but I was fist-pumping inside). Wanting to love God is a great first step. We take that step and we ask him to change our hearts and order our loves rightly. And we can trust that he will, and that our prayers will become more transformed as we are transformed, so that we begin to love God more and love what he loves and desires what he desires...for ourselves, for others, for the world. I learn so much from my daughter's honesty. I am not always as good at admitting or acknowledging where my own love is lacking and disordered.
I also am feeling extremely thankful for the wisdom in point four. The past several months have been suffused with suffering on levels I could never have anticipated. I have suffered physically and emotionally and I am worn out. I am still walking through a season of suffering. And yes, there have been times when I was too worn out to pray, and times when my prayers were all mixed up. I have not always known how to pray in the midst of this mess. I still don't. I sometimes pray for strength, just enough to get me through the next step. I sometimes pray that God will heal me completely...and heal me NOW! (Sometimes uttered with boldness and desperation.) I think both prayers are appropriate. I think God hears both. I don't know yet how he will choose to answer me ultimately in terms of the cancer that my body still battles. But I do know that I can still pray with confidence and peace in his goodness and his wisdom. And I can even pray with gratitude for what this suffering has already taught me about how much and how deeply I need Jesus, and how it has helped me to pray for and respond to others' suffering.
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
When My Name Was Keoko (A Literary Guide)
One of my summer writing projects has turned out to be more fun than I expected. I decided to write my own literary guide for Linda Sue Park's novel When My Name was Keoko.
This beautiful and moving book about the years of Japanese rule in Korea was published in 2002, the same year Park won the Newbery for A Single Shard. Since S. is doing a modern history semester in the fall, I decided to pull on novels from the 20th and 21st century for her to read and analyze as part of her 9th grade English studies. (She's reading Orwell's Animal Farm first; I pulled a study guide together for that too, but I mostly just leaned on the huge amount of resources already out there and rearranged and tweaked them to make it work for us.)
When My Name Was Keoko gets recommended a lot, and it seems to get a good bit of use in middle school and high school classes. But perhaps because of its relative youth, when I went looking, none of the literary guides out there (and there aren't many) pleased me. The free ones didn't have deep enough content, and the few things I could find that weren't free didn't look helpful enough for me to invest money. So I decided to invest some time instead and write up a guide for us to use.
It's been a real joy to read through Park's novel again and to pull together questions (both comprehension questions and more reflective, analytical ones) about the story. I'm finding good resources online that deal with the historic context, but we're mostly looking at this book as literature -- so I'm writing questions for thought and discussion about the structure of the story and the elements that go into making it so well written. We'll discuss point of view, literary symbolism, metaphor, how writers create tension and suspense, and more.
Park is such a solid writer that her work lends itself to discussing important themes. I especially enjoy the way she looks at tensions between the importance of family honor and traditional culture and being true and authentic to yourself and your passions. What it means to maintain cultural values in the face of opposition and oppression, and how one can be quietly and creatively subversive in the face of that kind of oppression are other elements I'm enjoying thinking about and looking forward to discussing with S. in the fall. She's read almost everything Linda Sue Park has ever written, but she's not read this one yet and I'm looking forward to seeing what she makes of it, especially now that she's old enough to be thinking and asking some good questions about her own culture and its values.
This beautiful and moving book about the years of Japanese rule in Korea was published in 2002, the same year Park won the Newbery for A Single Shard. Since S. is doing a modern history semester in the fall, I decided to pull on novels from the 20th and 21st century for her to read and analyze as part of her 9th grade English studies. (She's reading Orwell's Animal Farm first; I pulled a study guide together for that too, but I mostly just leaned on the huge amount of resources already out there and rearranged and tweaked them to make it work for us.)
When My Name Was Keoko gets recommended a lot, and it seems to get a good bit of use in middle school and high school classes. But perhaps because of its relative youth, when I went looking, none of the literary guides out there (and there aren't many) pleased me. The free ones didn't have deep enough content, and the few things I could find that weren't free didn't look helpful enough for me to invest money. So I decided to invest some time instead and write up a guide for us to use.
It's been a real joy to read through Park's novel again and to pull together questions (both comprehension questions and more reflective, analytical ones) about the story. I'm finding good resources online that deal with the historic context, but we're mostly looking at this book as literature -- so I'm writing questions for thought and discussion about the structure of the story and the elements that go into making it so well written. We'll discuss point of view, literary symbolism, metaphor, how writers create tension and suspense, and more.
Park is such a solid writer that her work lends itself to discussing important themes. I especially enjoy the way she looks at tensions between the importance of family honor and traditional culture and being true and authentic to yourself and your passions. What it means to maintain cultural values in the face of opposition and oppression, and how one can be quietly and creatively subversive in the face of that kind of oppression are other elements I'm enjoying thinking about and looking forward to discussing with S. in the fall. She's read almost everything Linda Sue Park has ever written, but she's not read this one yet and I'm looking forward to seeing what she makes of it, especially now that she's old enough to be thinking and asking some good questions about her own culture and its values.
Monday, July 11, 2016
Reading Notes: James Herriot and Musings About Our Family Reading Life
I mentioned yesterday that I've been reading James Herriot again. His books make me want to share a cuppa with someone while we muse about the beauty of the Yorkshire dales.
I first found Herriot when I was in high school. I read through his semi-autobiographical memoirs (All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Things Wise and Wonderful, The Lord God Made Them All) named for lines from the hymn by Cecil Alexander, and they've been on my list of books to recommend for the sweet girl's high school years as a result. He is a keen observer of human and animal nature. His stories manage to be warm and charming without falling into sentimentality, maybe because he's so good at providing detailed accounts of some rather gritty veterinary work with farm animals.
I never forgot Herriot in the intervening years. I fell in love with his books for children (slightly adapted tales of the same kind you'd find in the larger books) when I was in college, and the sweet girl and I spent many wonderful hours reading and re-reading his Treasury for Children when she was little. I'm pretty sure I reviewed that for Epinions. If I can dig it up in my archives, I'll give it a quick revising and post it here.
A few years ago I dipped into the book Jim Herriot's Yorkshire, but it was just recently that I really got back to reading his wonderful stories of people and animals. His Dog Stories made me laugh and made me realize how much I'd missed his way with canines...and with words. I'm trying to revive our family read-aloud tradition by reading some of the stories with D and S whenever we can manage to sit down to a meal together during this busy summer.
It feels strange to say I'm trying to revive our family read-alouds. For thirteen and a half years, that was a daily habit. We always read aloud together. If you've followed along with my sidebar list of our family read-alouds, you've seen the long list of books we've read over the years. I seriously don't think I had missed a day of reading aloud since S was a baby.
When I got my cancer diagnosis back in February, we were in the midst of re-reading The Chronicles of Prydain. In fact, we were near the end of the series, in the final book. Although sometimes D and S do the reading aloud, I have typically been the main reading person. I had so little energy at night by the time we reached the final third of The High King that the sweet girl took over the reading and brought us home to the beautiful conclusion.
And then our read-alouds stopped. And so did nightly family gatherings and prayers, and my morning Bible reading and prayer time with the sweet girl, and any semblance of bedtime routine for the family, and most of our family meals (though those continued in some form without me, especially when my sisters were here helping during my chemo treatments). So many things we've cherished over the years fell by the wayside during the tsunami of survival season.
During that season, S had six months or so where she continued to grow and change. She had her fourteenth birthday a few weeks ago (so amazing!). She's gotten more into retro video games in the interim -- she is Mario crazy -- and in general has been spending a lot more time with a screen via her iPod as well as gaming. I know those things helped her through the difficult time of my chemo treatments, a period she described to me the other day by telling me she feels like I've come back from the dead or at least a really long trip. "It's like you were there but you weren't," she explains earnestly. And often adds, sometimes with a spontaneous hug that melts my heart, "I missed you! I'm so glad you're back!"
And she's suddenly telling me she is "too old for read-alouds" -- something I never thought I'd hear her say. We never treated read-alouds like a little kid phenomenon that you outgrow. It was just a natural part of what our family loved to do together, and I had assumed we would continue to do it as long as S lived here...and beyond (D and I were read-alouders long before we had a child).
There are hills one dies on in parenting, and hills you decide it's not worth the effort to storm. This one feels worth the effort. I have been trying to decide how to tackle it well. I know that things will never go back to what they were before we hit this difficult terrain in our family journey -- they couldn't really, even if we wanted them to. We've all changed and grown in so many ways. But I am trying to revive our long-established tradition of reading aloud, albeit in new ways and forms. Our morning Bible reading and prayer time has been re-established, although it's changed a bit (in good ways, I think). In terms of our family reading, nighttime doesn't seem to be the right time for us to gather anymore, but we're beginning to have more meals together again, and we're slowly getting back into the reading habit. We started with an article in a magazine, and now we've moved to short stories.
I'm kind of glad the stories are by Herriot. They remind me of S's childhood, even though they're different than the ones we read then. They remind me of my own youth (and yes, I've begun re-reading All Creatures Great and Small on my own time). They remind me of my mother, who loved animals, especially dogs, and whom I miss with huge aching missing. They feel comfortable and familiar, and I need some comfort and familiarity in this time of so much change in myself and in my family.
I first found Herriot when I was in high school. I read through his semi-autobiographical memoirs (All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Things Wise and Wonderful, The Lord God Made Them All) named for lines from the hymn by Cecil Alexander, and they've been on my list of books to recommend for the sweet girl's high school years as a result. He is a keen observer of human and animal nature. His stories manage to be warm and charming without falling into sentimentality, maybe because he's so good at providing detailed accounts of some rather gritty veterinary work with farm animals.
I never forgot Herriot in the intervening years. I fell in love with his books for children (slightly adapted tales of the same kind you'd find in the larger books) when I was in college, and the sweet girl and I spent many wonderful hours reading and re-reading his Treasury for Children when she was little. I'm pretty sure I reviewed that for Epinions. If I can dig it up in my archives, I'll give it a quick revising and post it here.
A few years ago I dipped into the book Jim Herriot's Yorkshire, but it was just recently that I really got back to reading his wonderful stories of people and animals. His Dog Stories made me laugh and made me realize how much I'd missed his way with canines...and with words. I'm trying to revive our family read-aloud tradition by reading some of the stories with D and S whenever we can manage to sit down to a meal together during this busy summer.
It feels strange to say I'm trying to revive our family read-alouds. For thirteen and a half years, that was a daily habit. We always read aloud together. If you've followed along with my sidebar list of our family read-alouds, you've seen the long list of books we've read over the years. I seriously don't think I had missed a day of reading aloud since S was a baby.
When I got my cancer diagnosis back in February, we were in the midst of re-reading The Chronicles of Prydain. In fact, we were near the end of the series, in the final book. Although sometimes D and S do the reading aloud, I have typically been the main reading person. I had so little energy at night by the time we reached the final third of The High King that the sweet girl took over the reading and brought us home to the beautiful conclusion.
And then our read-alouds stopped. And so did nightly family gatherings and prayers, and my morning Bible reading and prayer time with the sweet girl, and any semblance of bedtime routine for the family, and most of our family meals (though those continued in some form without me, especially when my sisters were here helping during my chemo treatments). So many things we've cherished over the years fell by the wayside during the tsunami of survival season.
During that season, S had six months or so where she continued to grow and change. She had her fourteenth birthday a few weeks ago (so amazing!). She's gotten more into retro video games in the interim -- she is Mario crazy -- and in general has been spending a lot more time with a screen via her iPod as well as gaming. I know those things helped her through the difficult time of my chemo treatments, a period she described to me the other day by telling me she feels like I've come back from the dead or at least a really long trip. "It's like you were there but you weren't," she explains earnestly. And often adds, sometimes with a spontaneous hug that melts my heart, "I missed you! I'm so glad you're back!"
And she's suddenly telling me she is "too old for read-alouds" -- something I never thought I'd hear her say. We never treated read-alouds like a little kid phenomenon that you outgrow. It was just a natural part of what our family loved to do together, and I had assumed we would continue to do it as long as S lived here...and beyond (D and I were read-alouders long before we had a child).
There are hills one dies on in parenting, and hills you decide it's not worth the effort to storm. This one feels worth the effort. I have been trying to decide how to tackle it well. I know that things will never go back to what they were before we hit this difficult terrain in our family journey -- they couldn't really, even if we wanted them to. We've all changed and grown in so many ways. But I am trying to revive our long-established tradition of reading aloud, albeit in new ways and forms. Our morning Bible reading and prayer time has been re-established, although it's changed a bit (in good ways, I think). In terms of our family reading, nighttime doesn't seem to be the right time for us to gather anymore, but we're beginning to have more meals together again, and we're slowly getting back into the reading habit. We started with an article in a magazine, and now we've moved to short stories.
I'm kind of glad the stories are by Herriot. They remind me of S's childhood, even though they're different than the ones we read then. They remind me of my own youth (and yes, I've begun re-reading All Creatures Great and Small on my own time). They remind me of my mother, who loved animals, especially dogs, and whom I miss with huge aching missing. They feel comfortable and familiar, and I need some comfort and familiarity in this time of so much change in myself and in my family.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)