The Legacy of Walter Rauschenbusch

Apparently it's my day to cite the Wall Street Journal. And that's a sentence I have never uttered before in my life!

My pastor emailed a link to an opinion piece in the WSJ online, one that I understandably found fascinating because it deals with the legacy of Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel.

I wrote my master's thesis in 2001 on Rauschenbusch's theology. So much has happened since then it feels like an age ago. Still, my academic/theological/church history juices still get jumping when I read reflections about Rauschenbusch and this whole era in American history.

The piece, by Joseph Loconte, can be found here. It's brief, but sound and worth reading. I was especially glad to be reminded that it's the 100th anniversary of Rauschenbusch's book Christianity and the Social Crisis, which will probably mean a small flurry of new scholarship. Apparently there is a new centennial edition of Rauschenbusch's book with introductory essays by Tony Campolo, Stanley Hauerwas and Jim Wallis (now there's a trio!). Loconte says it's "just published" by HarperSanFrancisco but the only thing I'm seeing that looks close is still a pre-order on Amazon with a release date of August 1.

Harry Potter "Off-Shoots," 190 and counting

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal published an interesting article on Harry Potter "offshoots" or books related to Harry Potter. The article explores the phenomenon of non-fiction books that discuss HP (190 currently in print, according to R.R. Bowker) and speculates that there will continue to be a rise of such books published until the final installment of the series, and then a dip. Pretty easy to predict that, I'd say! Still, a nice article, especially since they interviewed John Granger for it and highlighted his current book and his book in progress. Way to go for John! He's quite understandably got the link to the article up on his hogwartsprofessor website.

Point of View

I've been thinking a lot lately about point of view, the viewpoint from which a story is seen and told. A lot of my reading and viewing of late keeps pointing me back to musings on how stories are shaped by who tells them.

My ongoing re-reading of Harry Potter (I'm about ten chapters into Goblet of Fire) probably first brought the issue to the forefront during this season. With John Granger's musings about narrative misdirection fresh in my mind, I've been doing a lot of thinking about that "third-person limited omniscient" view Rowling uses, and how we've seen almost all of the events of the series through Harry's eyes.

Then the other evening I watched, for the first time in many years, the 1984 Milos Forman film Amadeus. Once again, I found myself musing about the way the story was told -- in this case, Mozart's life and career is given to us completely through the filter of Salieri's memories. And because he was a rival composer, one who became jealously obsessed of Mozart's gift (at least in the film, though probably not to this extent in real life) our own understanding of Mozart is completely colored by the fact that all we learn about him comes through Salieri's view.

Not long ago I also happened upon this interesting article by Peter Leithart, entitled Jane Austen, Detective, in which he reflects on how Austen's "control of information" is one of the ways she shows her skill as a detective or mystery novelist (not words we hear used to describe Austen too often). As he put it:

"The other way that Emma reveals Austen's skill as a "detective" novelist is her control of information. She provides most of the information we need to draw conclusions about what's going on, but she doesn't make that information obvious. We don't know that we have it most of the time, because it comes largely through the stream of consciousness that flows from Miss Bates. She holds back information carefully, revealing hints enough that we can figure out something is up, particularly when we are seeing things through the eyes of Mr. Knightley."

Thinking about Austen's masterful use of point of view and the "control of information" within her stories led me to pick up a copy of a contemporary novel called Darcy's Story. It's subtitled "Pride and Prejudice Told From A Whole New Perspective" -- and that perspective is, of course, Mr. Darcy's. Interestingly, the writer has attempted to tell the story through third-person limited omniscient (in faithfulness to Austen, I think) though she keeps us pretty firmly behind Darcy's eyes, instead of Elizabeth's. I'm part-way through it, and as usual when I'm reading an Austen homage, I have mixed feelings about the whole endeavor, but this book too is challenging me to think about point of view -- as a reader, as a writer.

Then just yesterday I was looking through and organizing some books I'd not looked at in a while, and came across a little book by Orson Scott Card called Character and Viewpoint. I bought this several years ago when I was hoping to have more time to devote to writing fiction. Card's use of viewpoint is absolutely masterful, especially when you consider his two novels Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow (my two favorite Card novels). Essentially they are the same story told from different points of view -- the second novel is told by Bean, whom we readers (at least) believed to be a very minor character in the first novel. I have a lot to learn as a fiction writer still, and I plan to go back to Card's chapters on viewpoint in the coming weeks.

As usual, when I find several different things coming together -- movies, books, conversations -- I find myself wanting to follow a stream of thought. For now, I just wanted to do an initial post to mention that I'm in the middle of this stream -- thinking a lot about stories and point of view. I plan to keep thinking out loud about all this in posts to come.

Reading Poetry as a Spiritual Discipline

Here's a gift. Just as I launched my own "personal poetry month" where I'm consciously trying to spend more time writing and reading poetry, I find a recommendation of a recently published article on reading poetry as a spiritual discipline.

The article is by author T.M. Moore; it's called The World in a Ray of the Sun. Hat-tip to Hearts and Minds Book Notes Blog, which I really need to read more often because it always points me to wonderful books and articles. In fact, I just added Hearts and Minds to my sidebar list of blogs I love to visit.

I've only read the article once, but I've printed it out and will no doubt go back to it. There's much to treasure and ponder, including Moore's helpful analysis of three beautiful poems by Christian poets: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Denise Levertov, and Wendell Berry. I know all the poets, but all three poems were new to me, and they're gems.

Most of all, however, the article contains one of the most clearly written encouragements I've ever read about the importance of regular poetry reading as part of one's spiritual training and health. It makes me a bit wistful for a group of people with whom I could read poetry regularly.

A Poem A Day...

April was national poetry month, but I didn't have much time to devote to either reading or writing poetry. Turned out April was marked, for our family, by several bouts of illness (we seemed to pass germs back and forth most of the month), travel, a lot of work hours, and tax preparation! Oh yes, and those odd wintry temperatures that we, along with lots of other places, experienced well into the month.

Which is not to say that even April didn't have its lovely moments. I just wasn't able to string together much time for poetry.

I've decided to make May my personal poetry month. Not just reading it more, but writing it more. In fact, I'm going to attempt to write a poem each day.

Not necessarily a good poem, or a long one, or a complete one...just a poem or at least a stanza, a conscious attempt to play with words for a few minutes.

Day one and day two have come and gone (well, two will soon be over) and thus far I've only managed what I'd call snippets or jottings. But I have managed to spend some time with a pen in my hand, and that's a start.

I'm not trying to be wildly productive. I just want to re-cultivate a more quiet and observing mindset. I need to remember how to look and listen. I need to remember what it feels like to sit in front of white space and not be afraid of it. I want to re-join the creative conservation. The letting go into beauty -- just because.

Sweet Talk

True confession. We're turning the corner toward May and we're still eating Valentine candy conversation hearts.

The sweet girl loves those little hearts. So this year we got a big bag of them and we've been doling them out like treasure. After all these months, we're finally nearing the end of the bag, and she's still thoroughly enjoying them. She especially loves "reading" them and asking what the different phrases mean.

Today's said "sweet talk." What was sweet talk? she wanted to know.

"It's when you say something sweet to someone, like 'I love you,'" I explained.

"What are some other sweet talks?" she wondered. And then decided "I hug you," and "I kiss you" definitely qualified.

And then she sweet talked me and gave me a hug and a kiss.

It made an otherwise pretty discouraging day a whole lot brighter.

"Nature's First Green is Gold..."

Well, it's happened. Enough tender, brand new green graced the trees that, when I looked out over the landscape yesterday evening, it seemed to shimmer with pale green and gold. And I knew the day had come to recite Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay."

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

It's my yearly tradition. I think I have done this just about every year since I first memorized the poem in the 10th grade. I don't think of the poem too often at other times of the year, and I try not to say it until I look out of a window or glance around me as I'm walking and get hit with that shimmering, golden sense of settled spring. Or at least as "settled" as a season can ever be in this flaming-with-beauty-but-oh-so-fallen-world we live in.

Yesterday was the shimmering day when the poem popped into my mind and heart. We were in the car on the way home from eating dinner and picking up a little bakery cake for our anniversary celebration. "Oh!" I suddenly exclaimed. "The trees! Nature's first green is gold..." D. immediately turned down the radio and told the sweet girl, "It's time for Mommy to recite her spring poem!" And so I did.

And it's still April, which is National Poetry Month!

Third Volume of C.S. Lewis' Letters

The third volume of C.S. Lewis' Letters, edited by Walter Hooper, was released a few months ago by HarperSanFrancisco. A writer named Michael Ward has reviewed the book for Books and Culture. An interesting review, which can be found here.

In some ways, the review is as much about Walter Hooper as it is about C.S. Lewis, but that's part of what makes it interesting. Hooper has always been a somewhat mysterious figure -- he was briefly Lewis' personal secretary; he's edited and prepared for publication a lot of Lewis' posthumous work; and the late Kathryn Lindskoog, another Lewis scholar, accused him of playing around a bit too freely with Lewis' legacy. The lynchpin in that argument was that Lewis hadn't really written the story The Dark Tower, which Hooper claimed to have found among Lewis' papers (and subsequently published). Although I'm sure her arguments were more sophisticated than this, what Lindskoog's main argument seemed to be was that the story just wasn't good enough to have been written by Lewis.

That last accusation seems to have finally and thankfully been laid to rest, and Ward has only good things to say about Hooper's charitable stance towards Lindskoog in the footnotes of this particular volume, although obviously Hooper had a big chance to say "I told you so." It turns out that another scholar had seen the unfinished story among Lewis' papers. And that even C.S. Lewis (thank you very much) could write pretty awful first drafts.

The review is also worth reading for the insights into the collecting and editing process behind such an enormous project. There are approximately 2,000 letters in this final volume! And many of them had to be unpacked (literary references/allusions, explanations as to who Lewis was writing to and why...Hooper even tracked down some of the correspondents or their descendants so he could try to get a handle on the "unheard" side of various conversations). Sounds like an enormous task, but also enormously satisfying.

I've only read Lewis' Letters to Children (a slim little volume edited by Marjorie Lamp Mead) but I am thinking I really need to put Hooper's three volumes on my to-be-read list. I love reading letters, and I love Lewis.

"The Great Snape Debate"

On Saturday, I was in a Borders Express and picked up a copy of the Borders exclusive book The Great Snape Debate. (Hat Tip to swordofgryffindor.com for the heads up.) Yes, yet another "waiting for book 7" Harry Potter read. Just think how much fun it will be to have these speculative books in years to come, when the whole world knows the entire saga forwards and backwards!

This little book is a bit of publicity stunt, I guess, but such a smart one! My Borders is even hosting an actual debate Saturday after next, where people will come in and discuss Snape. The book is published by BenBella Press, the folks who do the "smart pop" series (I recently read their Flirting With Pride and Prejudice, to which I gave a mixed review over at Epinions). BenBella is known for having authors engage topics with a mixture of academic seriousness and fun.

The Great Snape Debate, as you might guess, contains essays debating Snape's loyalty and where it lies. To make it even more fun, the book is designed as a "flip book" with two covers. One side of the book is titled "The Case for Snape's Innocence" and has a cauldron with what looks like phoenix-shaped flames rising from it. When you flip the book, the other side reads "The Case for Snape's Guilt" and has the same cauldron with a big ol' green cobra-like serpent rearing his head. I have to keep the book flipped to the "Innocence" side, not only because of my own firm beliefs in Snape's ultimate loyalties, but because I'm afraid the cheesy but creepy looking snake might freak out my daughter.

With so many of these kinds of speculative books coming out in the months leading up to the release of Deathly Hallows, I honestly would not have bought this one (or perhaps even looked at it twice) except that one of the three contributing authors is Orson Scott Card. That hooked me immediately. Card is a superb writer, and also (and this is what really interests me) a superb writer about writing. I knew he was a Harry fan, and I was curious to hear his take on what he thinks Rowling has been up to with Snape's character as well as with the series in general. His main essay is found right in the middle of the book (near the flip section) and is entitled "Who is Snape?" He traces his development as a character throughout the series, and speculates a bit as to the way his role may have evolved in Rowling's own creative process. I don't think I agree with all of his ideas, but that makes it more fun.

One of the more interesting observations he makes (and unpacks) is that "1. The character is the servant of the story... (and) 2. The author is also the servant of her most deeply held beliefs -- the things that she believes without even knowing she believes them. "

As fun as it is, The Great Snape Debate is not, as far as I can tell from my selective reading of the essays thus far, anywhere near the caliber of some of the really excellent pre-book 7 work. My favorite two, and I would wager two of the very best, are Janet Batchler's What Will Harry Do? and John Granger's Unlocking Harry Potter. If you can only read (or purchase) two books concerning Harry Potter before we reach the final installment, those are the two. Janet brings a screenwriter's eye to the unfolding drama of the series, helping readers notice "set-ups" and be on the lookout for "pay-offs." Her book is comprehensive, painstaking, sticks with the canon, and is a lot of fun to read! John's book is a tour de force...especially when it comes to looking at HP in light of alchemical literature and postmodernism. I'm still working my way slowly through it and enjoying every bit.

Meanwhile, I'm continuing my re-read of Harry, and have just finished Prisoner of Azkaban. I think it's still my favorite book of the first six. What's your's?

Wanted: Something Resembling a Wedding Cake

D. and I were married fifteen years ago this Wednesday! This is the first year the sweet girl really has some sense of what it means to celebrate a wedding anniversary (she's catching on that it's kind of like an extra birthday for Mommy and Daddy!) and she has determined that we should have cake and ice cream. She has even agreed to contribute her small pack of penguin party plates to the occasion -- she and her Daddy found some the other day when they were in a party store looking for some supplies for a church event, and she wanted to save them for something special.

She wants vanilla ice cream, of course (her favorite) but has been rather adamant that her Daddy and I should have a wedding cake. I am guessing she's a bit enamored of the photo of our wedding cake; it's part of a collage of framed wedding pictures that we keep on the wall in between our dining room and the kitchen.

I don't really think at this late date we can order even a small cake decorated like a wedding cake (which is what we've been contemplating) but I find myself wishing a bit wistfully we lived somewhere near the bakery that made our actual wedding cake. Yes, that's our wedding cake in the photo. I'm sorry I couldn't color correct it a bit better, as it wasn't quite as golden looking as it appears. But it was delicious. Neither D. nor I is much of a cake eater, but even we agreed that this was by far the tastiest wedding cake we'd ever eaten. We found a little bakery in Berwyn, Pennsylvania and every cake sample we tried we loved. We ended up getting a melt-in-your-mouth spice cake with a buttercream frosting. Absolutely wonderful.

I remember we tried to save the top layer for our first anniversary, but the box wasn't sealed properly and the cake got freezer burned. We still lived near Philadelphia at the time, thus weren't too far from the bakery. We took in a picture and they gladly recreated a small version of the top layer of our cake from the year before, which we enjoyed on a bed and breakfast get-away.

Well...we probably won't go to such lengths this year, fifteen years and hundreds of miles away from the creation of the original cake. But I do think we will probably look for something at least a little wedding-cake-ish to enjoy that evening, to satisfy the budding romantic traditionalist that is our little girl.

Oh, okay. I'm a romantic traditionalist myself. She has to get it somewhere, right?!

And yes, that really is Mickey and Minnie on top of our cake.

Listening...

My beloved husband brought a gift home from the New Wineskins conference he attended last week, a CD by the wonderful Wellspring, an interdenominational worship group based in the north of England. They have led worship at Wineskins for a long time -- we heard them there when we attended the conference as seminarians seven years ago. This is only the second CD of their's that we have, and if possible, I love listening to it even more than the first.

There is so much richness on this recording, including a heart-rending version of the "Theme from Schindler's List" with Clare McFarlane on violin. And the piece my heart keeps going back to during this week in which we've been confronted head-on by the pain and brokenness of our beautiful world: Mozart's "Laudate Dominum" arranged for harps, string and viola. I have fallen head over heels for this melody, which seems to hold within it so much tenderness and gentility, as though the musicians are stepping through a fragile garden of notes and reminding us all to dance with our arms raised in praise even as we long for wholeness and restoration.

If you're interested, you can learn more about Wellspring at their website here. All of their music is beautifully rendered and played with joy and reverence, honoring God.

Classical Music and Funny Riddles

One of the joys of parenting is watching your child develop her own tastes and delights. It's fun to note the kinds of loves she shares with you and the things that she begins to make uniquely her's. The sweet girl's love of chocolate? That's a passion she shares with me, of course! Her enjoyment in measuring things with a ruler or a measuring tape? That comes from Dad. Her utter fascination with penguins? No idea. She just loves penguins, and frankly we've enjoyed heading down that particular "learning trail" with the sweet girl's passion in the lead.

Two of her developing tastes recently are classical music and funny riddles. The love of classical music she comes by very honestly, because we've always played a lot of it around the house. In the first year of her life, in particular, since I was spending more time at home, I tuned in almost everyday to WQED, our wonderful all-classical radio station. But we also listen to a lot of it on CD, and two of her favorite videos of all-time also have classical soundtracks: one is a nature video set to Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," and the other is the original Fantasia.

She really loves all kinds of music (we have pretty eclectic tastes ourselves) so it's been interesting to see lately the kinds of music she's beginning to ask for by name. Not long ago she asked me what kind of music she had especially liked as a baby, and I dug out the "Baby Mozart" and "Baby Bach" CDs, remembering how often we'd played them in the first couple years of her life. These are classical CDs produced by the Baby Einstein folks, and include various short pieces by each composer, usually rendered with gentle instrumentation -- a lot of piano and various bell-like instruments. It had been a while since we'd played one; somehow they'd gotten relegated to the back of the stack. But we listened to them both the other day and it was wonderful, watching her listen (and dance) to these pieces as though she'd never heard them before, although I remember how she heard them dozens of time as an infant/toddler. She started asking questions immediately: what was *that* music called? Why does this one go fast and that one sound slow? And telling me which ones she liked to dance to. We started talking about who wrote this music, and she was fascinated with their names: Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (that one made her giggle!). We also talked about when these composers lived, which helped stretch her burgeoning understanding of time/history.

She began looking at the back of the CD cases and noticed there were a couple of other CDs advertised on the back that we didn't have. She wanted to know what they were called, and I told her one was "Baby Vivaldi" and one was "Baby Beethoven." Vivaldi she recognized from her video, but Beethoven's name fascinated her. "Can we get that?" she asked, and I told her we could check the library. They had it, so now we're in a continual round of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven. She loves them all but has informed us quite positively (and many times over) that Mozart is her favorite.

At the same time that she's been realizing her love for this music, she's also been enjoying riddles. She likes popsicles, especially the ones with riddles on the stick. Granted most of the time she doesn't get the riddle until we explain it, and sometimes not even then, but a few of them have really tickled her funny bone: the flying turtle called a "shellicopter" and the bunnies who use "hoppy discs" on their computer are her favorites. Once in a while, we will all come up with riddles together, and it's great to see her trying to come up with humorous double-meanings for words even as she's still learning what a lot of words mean.

Today the classical music love and the funny riddle love came together in a wonderfully delightful way. She and I were talking about what music she'd like to listen to while she rested during nap time, and she asked for Bach. Only in typical sweet-girl fashion, she decided to play with the word and giggled as she said "Beak" instead of "Bach." "Is that the kind of music a bird listens to?" I asked her. "Johann Sebastian Beak?" She giggled, realizing we'd made another riddle. And then as I was tucking her into bed for her quiet time with her bears and a book, she giggled some more and informed me: "Mommy, you know what a sheep likes to listen to? BAA-thoven!"

Remembering

The stories of the students and teachers shot at Virginia Tech. yesterday rend the heart. What words make sense in light of something like this?

I have been a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a wife, a student, a teacher; all of us know what it means to be those things (or others like them) and to love the others bound to our hearts who make those roles real. So we all mourn together.

********
Though the green fields are my delight,
elegy is my fate. I have come to be
survivor of many and of much
that I love, that I won't live to see
come again into this world.

Things that mattered to me once
won't matter any more,
for I have left the safe shore
where magnificence of art
could suffice my heart.

(From "Requiem" by Wendell Berry)

Neville Longbottom and the Importance of Memory

I've been re-reading the Harry Potter series prior to the release of book 7 this coming July. I've also been reading John Granger's excellent new book: Unlocking Harry Potter: Five Keys for the Serious Reader, which is fascinating as always, especially the chapters on Harry as alchemical literature.

So I've got HP on the brain, and while I've been jotting some notes over at Re-Reading Harry, the "joint online journal" Erin and I have been contributing to off and on for the past couple of months, I thought I would put some of my musings here as well.

As usual when I read Harry, I find myself loving the character of Neville Longbottom. One of the things that has always fascinated me about Neville is his deep connection to the theme of memory, which for my money is one of the most interesting, and in some ways unexplored, themes of the entire series.

I had hoped that I might manage to write a lengthy, coherent essay about the memory theme, at least sometime prior to July, but that's looking less likely. But I thought I would at least begin journaling some of my musings here. Who knows? They might begin to take shape and grow into an essay. So in no particular "ordered" fashion, here goes my first go-round.

Our introduction to Neville comes at the same time as our introduction to Hermione Granger; the fact that the two of them come upon Harry and Ron in the train compartment on the way to their first year at Hogwarts, and then the four of them journey together in one boat when the first years follow Hagrid on the lake, is a bit of a tip-off, I think. These four are the important four, even though Neville will stay on the periphery of the trio through most of the first six books at least. Other students have important and recurring roles to play: the Weasley twins, Ginny Weasley, Draco Malfoy, Luna Lovegood...but only Neville, from the very beginning, seems like a shadow member of the trio, almost making it seem like a quartet. Given Rowling's fascination with the numbers 2, 4 and 7 (tip of the hat to John Granger's chapter on arithmancy!) I think the fact that Neville makes the trio a foursome is somehow significant.

When Hermione and Neville meet Harry and Ron on the train, they're looking for Neville's toad, Trevor. Trevor, bless his little toady heart, seems to serve at least a dual purpose besides the obvious one of being the plot device that brings the kids together. First of all, he's a toad, not a rat or a cat or an owl, which apparently makes him the low animal on the totem pole of animals that Hogwarts students are allowed to have with them at school.

The fact that Neville has a lowly toad underlines Neville's lower, outsider status. In many ways, he's even more of an outsider figure than the other three. Yes, Harry is Harry -- the most unusual student in his year (at the very least) and marked since birth as different. He's also an orphan who was raised by Muggles. Ron comes from good wizarding stock and has popular brothers, but is quite poor (old hand-me-down robe, wand?, and even the rat) and is also a "younger brother." Hermione, besides the fact that she's a girl, comes from total Muggle parentage. Neville, as it turns out, comes from good wizarding stock himself, but at least at the beginning of the series we're led to believe (and certainly he believes himself) that he's not much better than a squib. He even says as much in Chamber of Secrets when his friends try to point out to him that he doesn't need the amulets and other "protections" that he's wearing, in fear of the unknown monster unleashed by Slytherin's heir. They remind him he's a pureblood wizard, so not likely on the heir of Slytherin's hit-list, but Neville reminds them stubbornly that the heir went after Filch first, and that "everybody knows" that just like Mr. Filch, he (Neville) is "practically a squib." It's interesting that Neville feels a connection to the non-magical caretaker.

Besides underlining Neville's lowly, outsider, almost-non-magical status, Trevor's presence -- or rather absence -- underlines Neville's lack of ability to keep track of things. From the first, Neville is characterized as someone who is forgetful and who loses things, even things that matter to him. This is a theme that will continue to expand all through the series, especially the first three books. Neville's memory problems plague him and also lead to some serious problems for his friends.

Neville's poor performance in Potions -- from the very first class (that oh so important first class that we've come to realize contained huge amounts of important foreshadowing for the rest of the series) comes in part because of his poor memory. Granted, it's hard to remember anything when you have Snape breathing down your neck and making you feel like an idiot -- later in the series we realize that Neville's performance even in Potions improves dramatically when he's able to brew things in front of another teacher or examiner. But that in itself is interesting and something I want to come back to: how anxiety and stress affects Neville's ability to remember things and keep them in the proper order.

So Neville's forgetfulness and inability to brew correct potions gets Harry in trouble from the start, mostly because Snape is looking for any old excuse he can find to land Harry in hot water. "You -- Potter -- why didn't you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he'd make you look good if he got it wrong, did you? That's another point you've lost for Gryffindor." (SS, "The Potions Master," p. 139).

More explicitly, Neville's "remembrall" (a magical ball his grandmother sends him...the white smoke inside the glass turns red if you're holding it and you've forgotten something) really affects Harry's destiny. After Neville breaks his arm in their first flying lesson, Madam Hooch hurries him off the infirmary and Draco Malfoy finds the remembrall in the grass. Never one to miss an opportunity to show off and torment other kids, Draco taunts Harry when he tries to recover the ball for Neville, then flies off with it, claiming he's going to hide it in a tree. Instead he throws it, and Harry, flying for the first time, has to make a spectacular dive in order to grab it. The whole scene is a very destiny-shaping scene for Harry: he learns he's a natural born flyer; it's one of the first times (but certainly not the last!) we see him trying to help out an underdog (that "saving people thing" in embryo); and because McGonagall sees Harry's amazing dive, she makes Harry the new Gryffindor seeker, the youngest house player at Hogwarts in a century. All of those things happen because of the presence of the remembrall.

"Remembrall" -- a "remember ball" that helps you "remember all" -- JKR's wonderful ability to play with words comes to the fore here. I love this one in particular because so much of the Harry Potter stories have to do with Harry's gradual uncovering/recovering of the memories that shaped who he is at the deepest core. If Hogwarts has a "foundation story" (tip of the hat once more to John Granger, this time to his reflections on postmodernism) well, so does Harry, albeit perhaps in a slightly different sense of the word "foundation." Harry's "foundation story" -- the story that provides the scaffolding for who he is, how he sees the world, and what he will become -- is the story of the first year of his life, particularly the final night of his parents' lives at Godric's Hollow when they die at Voldemort's hand when Harry is just a year old. Because they die protecting him (especially his mother) Harry is doubly-marked that night, not only marked by the killing curse that goes awry, but more deeply by his mother's sacrificial love. The foundation or core of Harry is forged that night: he is a beloved son worth dying for, a truth that will shape him for the rest of his days.

But there is so much of that night that Harry doesn't remember. He longs to remember; he tries hard to remember -- even in the early pages of SS, we see him straining his memory during long nights in his cramped cupboard, trying to recall his parents. The unfolding of the full memory has not yet occurred, but we've been watching it unfold gradually as the series progresses, and we've been realizing how crucial the full recovery of that memory is. First Harry recalls the green light, later the high, cruel laughter of Voldemort, and by Prisoner of Azkaban he can remember his mother's screams and her voice. He's also given more information about that night from various sources, including Voldemort himself as well as Dumbledore. We are watching Harry "remember all" -- flying high and sometimes at great risk in his seeking of the elusive and important truth that shaped him, and by extension (because of the story in which he finds himself, and the destiny to which he's called) the entire world/community in which he lives.

Whew! I've wandered far afield from Neville, and I want to get back there. I plan to. I'd like to think more about Neville's memory problems and how they help shape the story, and how they throw light on other aspects of memory in these stories. More reflections soon.

A Red Letter Day (Literally)

The sweet girl's progress in learning to read has been rolling merrily along. Once in a while I grasp how well she's doing; I suddenly realize she is not only getting more adept at sounding out words, but she's beginning to "sight read" certain words that have appeared over and over again in our lessons (having first learned them phonetically) and she's gaining confidence. She's also becoming more acclimated to all the things we take for granted about reading (because we've been doing it so long, our brains just process these things naturally without us having to stop and think) like reading left to right, pausing at spaces between words, and moving to the beginning of the next line down when she gets to the end of a line. I really appreciate the way the Distar method reinforces all those things visually.

Yesterday we walked to the post office in the late afternoon, so I could mail the last of our taxes (yes, they're all done...hallelujah!). I like to see the tax envelopes postmarked before my eyes at the counter, but I had some other things to mail too, so we stopped at the drop boxes on the way in. S. has always loved these, from the time she was too tiny to reach the slots and I had to pick her up and help her stretch so she could drop the envelopes clutched in her little chubby baby fingers. Now she doesn't even have to stand on tiptoe (when did THAT happen!) and drops the envelopes in oh so casually.

There's a sign in between the slots informing people not to mail certain envelopes or packages that weigh more than 16 oz., etc. Most of the sign is in fairly small lettering, but right in the middle, in fairly good sized bright red capital letters, is the word STOP! I was scrambling through my pockets for the last of my envelopes when suddenly my little girl pipes up with the question, "Mommy, why does that say STOP?"

It took me a few seconds to realize that she'd asked me WHY the sign said what it said, not WHAT did the sign say. In other words, she had read the word, all on her own, without any prompting or encouragement, and silently.

Wow. Maybe this seems small, but to me it really did feel like a red letter event. Never mind that the answer to her actual question was kind of boring (she didn't really care much about how much people's mail weighed) it still gave me the opportunity to practice some casual confidence building. After I answered her question, I said, "you know, you read the word stop. That was good reading!" She looked almost as surprised as I felt, and then came that lovely sweet girl smile.

The Bible and Children

An interesting post over at titusonenine on "Teaching Children the Bible".

I especially found this bit thought-provoking:

"...when we commit something to memory, it sinks deep and often resurfaces in surprising ways to meet new situations. Biblical fragments (”knit together in my mother’s womb,” “her price is far above rubies,” “plans for your welfare and not for harm”) happily can grow with us, providing both a touchstone to the past and points of connection to new people and new meanings. We stuff our memories with so many things (lyrics to Sesame Street songs, Santa’s reindeer), why worry about adding the names of the apostles and the words of Psalm 23 to the mix?

Those biblical words are, in fact, the common language we speak as Christians, part of the tool kit with which we build ourselves and our communities of faith. If nothing else, the Bible’s existence means that we do not have to start from scratch in building a community of faith. And its infinitely multivocal and multiform self also means that there is plenty of material to work with as we and our communities change. Thinking again about how scripture works, I have become convinced that having a canon matters, not just because the words are uniquely inspired or holy or true, but because this is the core set of stories that we’ve all agreed to share and that have shaped us and our forebears in manifold ways. There are always other stories and always many interpretations, but those who have called themselves Christian for all these years have these characters and plots in common.

Spending time building up that core, then, is essential..." (Nancy Ammerman)

I think some of this could be said even more strongly, but the core of what's here is good and worth reflecting on.

Lewis and Aesop

Because it ended up being a sick day (I'm not feeling too well myself; hope I'm not coming down with this!) the sweet girl and I ended up doing a lot of cuddling and reading today. At dinner we read a few of Aesop's Fables and I found myself struck by major, and I mean major, Lewisian echoes in two of the earlier stories.

The first one was "The Donkey in the Lion's Skin" (with the moral "Clothes may disguise a fool until he opens his mouth.") I immediately thought of poor Puzzle, who dresses up and pretends to be Aslan at the instigation of Shift in The Last Battle, the seventh and final of the Chronicles of Narnia.

An even deeper echo for me was in the very next fable, "The Hunter and the Woodsman" (moral: "A hero must be brave in deed as well as in word.")

"'Pray tell me,' the Hunter said to the Woodsman, 'have you seen the marks of the Lion's footsteps? Or perhaps you can tell me where his den is?'

'I will do better than tell you,' the Woodsman replied courteously. 'I will take you right to him.'

The Hunter turned pale. His teeth began to chatter. 'N-o thank you,' he said. 'I did not ask for that! It is only his tracks that I am in search of, not the Lion himself.'"

I thought of these words from Lewis in his book Miracles:

"An 'impersonal God' -- well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads -- better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap -- best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband -- that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion ('Man's search for God!') suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?"

And of course I thought of Aslan, whose heavy, majestic tread can inspire fear and awe in hearts, and also quiet those fears...those strong yet velveted paws, coming ever nearer. It's a dreadful thing to come face to face with the Lion. And yet it's also the best, safest, most beautiful place for us to be.

On the Prowl...for Good Nature Documentaries

Easter Monday finds us at home. D. had to leave at 5 am for his week-long conference. I had taken the day off from the office, which turned out to be a very good thing both because I'm exhausted and because the sweet girl has been sick with a bad cold or some sort of virus. She's been feeling miserable off and on since Saturday, and yesterday morning, had it not been Easter, I don't think I would have had the heart to drag her out anywhere. As it was, we only made it to church, and she felt so miserable that she basically curled up in my lap or her Daddy's (or sometimes stretched across both) and dozed through almost the entire church service. She perked up after a nap and enjoyed coloring easter eggs...she even made a green one with a face which she has dubbed "Mr. Eggman." (That Beatle-esque named cracked my husband up, who said "goo-goo-ja-joob" when he saw it, of course.) My favorite line of the evening was when S. admonished me, almost sternly, NOT to eat Mr. Eggman. I have a feeling he may be around for a while...

Anyway, she seemed to feel better for a while this morning, but is now lounging lethargically on the couch, her eyes looking bleary again. She has sore throat and a cough. She's been feverish, and I thought that had broken this morning, but she's warm again. I'm giving her the special treat of eating lunch (otherwise known as "picking at my food because I don't have any apetite") on a t.v. tray while she watches, for the fourth time in 24 hours, "Fuzzy Wuzzy Bears."

"Fuzzy Wuzzy Bears" is an old documentary video done for kids (I think it was distributed by the BBC and Time-Life). I picked it up for a dollar in a library sale sometime a few months ago, and once in a while, S. drags it out and watches it over and over. She's always had a real passion for bears, so it's not surprising she'd enjoy it so much. It's fairly well done. The music is hokey, and the overly enthusiastic narrator voice can grate a bit on adult ears (he sounds like the long-lost twin of sports commentator Bob Costas) but the footage is good, and a wide variety of bears presented, along with some good, age-appropriate information about each. They even throw in a bit about raccoons, whom they call the "cousins" of bears (is this true? not sure). D. insists it was just because the production had some raccoon footage they wanted to throw into the mix!

It's well-done enough that I'd pick up more in this series if I could find them, but alas, it was done so long ago that unless I find a bunch more at a garage or library sale, I doubt they'll be available anywhere.

Does anyone have any good recommendations for nature videos/documentaries for children ages 4-7? I can find wonderful books and websites for this age-group, and we were blessed with a gift subscription to "Our Big Backyard" but I have had a really hard time finding good videos for children. Maybe there's an assumption that every kid has cable, thus access to Discovery Channel and Animal Planet (but they must produce videos and dvd's, right?). I tried looking up the title to the old series S. is watching this morning "Growing Up Wild," but it turns out that name has been used in another, more recent series by Animal Planet which didn't seem to be getting very good reviews on Netflix. Before I put it in the queue to check it out myself, I thought I'd ask around.

Our library has a handful of videos, but they're either not very well-done, or they're a little bit too old for the sweet girl. I'm looking for something between *Baby Einstein* and *Eyewitness Video* (the ones narrated by Martin Sheen, which seem geared for slightly older kids and sometimes have a bit of an odd tone). Because we live in a city and don't have a yard, I am always on the lookout for good photos and videos of real animals and plants so I can try to widen the sweet girl's view of the creation. Any ideas appreciated!

Happy Easter!

There in the ground His body lay
Light of the world by darkness slain
Then bursting forth in glorious Day
Up from the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory
Sin's curse has lost it's grip on me
For I am His and He is mine
Brought with the precious blood of Christ

No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me
From life's first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny
No power of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand
'Till He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand

("In Christ Alone" by the Newsboys)

Lift High the Cross

Listening to one of my favorite renditions of the melody of one of my favorite hymns, Lift High the Cross. The version I'm listening to is beautifully done by the Moody Bible Institute's Women's Concert Choir Bell Ensemble (yes, thereby done by "Moody Women"!) on the CD compilation called "Images of Christ." I don't know if this lovely CD is available anymore anymore; it was originally distributed with a special issue of the unfortunately-now-defunct magazine "Christianity and the Arts." I love listening to it, especially during Holy Week.

Refrain:
Lift high the cross,
the love of Christ proclaim
till all the world adore
his sacred Name.

Come, brethren, follow where our Captain trod,
our King victorious, Christ the Son of God. Refrain

Led on their way by this triumphant sign,
the hosts of God in conquering ranks combine. Refrain

Each newborn soldier of the Crucified
bears on the brow the seal of him who died. Refrain

This is the sign which Satan's legions fear
and angels veil their faces to rever. Refrain

Saved by this Cross whereon their Lord was slain,
the sons of Adam their lost home regain. Refrain

From north and south, from east and west they raise
in growing unison their songs of praise. Refrain

O Lord, once lifted on the glorious tree,
as thou hast promised, draw the world to thee. Refrain

Let every race and every language tell
of him who saves our souls from death and hell. Refrain

From farthest regions let their homage bring,
and on his Cross adore their Savior King. Refrain

Set up thy throne, that earth's despair may cease
beneath the shadow of its healing peace. Refrain

For thy blest Cross which doth for all atone
creation's praises rise before thy throne. Refrain

---

Words: George William Kitchen and Michael Robert Newbolt, 1916

Music: Crucifer

Meter: 10 10 with Refrain

My other favorite piece on the CD is the Moody Oratorio Chorus & Orchestra performing Handel's Worthy of the Lamb/Amen which I mentioned yesterday. The opening organ note alone almost makes me tremble, and when the chorus of voices comes in with the majestic and solemn "Worthy is the Lamb" I feel like trembling more. I love how Handel can move from that deep, solemn cadence, so heavy with worship that the notes almost seem to drag with gravity and weight, to quick, lilting bright brass tones and the joyful playfulness of voices, men's and women's voices, chasing one another around in breathless adoration and praise.

A blessed holy Saturday. I can't remember a colder, snowier one -- we've had snow showers off and on all day, the flakes looking lovely and petal-like as they drift down past the trees that have only begun to blossom in the past few days. Almost Easter!

Come, Follow Me

To prodigal children lost in a distant land, to disciples who forsook him and fled, to a thief who believed or maybe took pity and pretended to believe, to those who did not know that what they did they did to God, to the whole bedraggled company of humankind he had abandoned heaven to join, he says: ‘Come. Everything is ready now. In your fears and your laughter, in your friendships and farewells, in your loves and losses, in what you have been able to do and in what you know you will never get done, come, follow me. We are going home to the waiting Father.”

--Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

Worthy is the Lamb That Was Slain

It's Good Friday, and I woke up with those words from Revelation ringing in my ears. That's probably because I played the beautiful rendition by Handel several times yesterday while making dinner. It's become the anthem of this Holy Week.

It's been an odd week, without nearly enough time to focus, center on Jesus, and pray. This is the first year I've done parish administrative work during Holy Week, and there is a lot to be done around a church office in preparing for Easter. I know the work itself is good, especially in the ways it paves the way for others to come into God's presence during this holy time, but I've missed having more inner, contemplative time.

It turns out that I've done most of my best praying with my four year old, as her Daddy and I have been trying to share, in various ways all week, the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. My good friend Sandy, whose husband is a current seminarian at Trinity, let us know earlier this week that some of the seminary students had set up a very moving stations of the cross in the seminary chapel basement, and so S. and I went over there the other afternoon and went through the stations together.

It was a moving experience on several levels, one of the most basic being that I hadn't been in the chapel building in over two years. The first few years we lived here, I worshiped in that space daily (as a student) and then at least weekly (via seminary mid-week eucharist, and/or Sunday morning worship when our parish was housed there). The sweet girl was baptized in that chapel. And the basement area where the first station was set up was the space in which I used to tutor students in an after-school program, as well as where I used to attend some classes. In other words, that little building is a space which I loved and lived and worshiped in for a number of years, and it felt sacred and set apart for that reason alone.

Then the stations themselves were very powerful. A combination of symbols, signs and artwork, much of the art done by children or young people. S. was most taken with the room with the giant wooden cross on the floor, and the temple curtain ripped in two right next to it. The room was lit by reddish light, and there was a pile of nails near the cross as well as some tiny, shiny medallions that looked red in the light and recalled drops of blood. We sat for a while in front of that ripped curtain talking about how Jesus' death, in our place and on our behalf, made a way through the "wall" or the curtain that had blocked our way to God the Father. I could sense these truths seeping into my little girl's heart. I could sense them seeping deeper into mine.

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Rev. 5:12)

Don't Just Take Notes...Eat This Book!

In case anyone's been intrigued by the title of the Peterson book I've been reading, Eat This Book, I thought I would unpack the image a bit. The subtitle of this excellent book of reflections is The Holy Community at Table with Holy Scripture.

Peterson is exploring the image of "eating the book" found in Revelation 10, when the angel gives the scroll to the apostle John (who is having his visions on the island of Patmos) and instructs him to eat it. As Peterson writes:

"John started to write down what he was hearing -- he'd never heard a sermon like this one-- but then was told not to. A voice told John to take the book from the huge angel, this God-Messenger preaching from his world-straddling pulpit. And so he did. He walked up to the angel and said, 'Give me the book.' The angel gave it to him, but then said, 'Here it is; eat it...Eat this book.' Don't just take notes on the sermon. Eat the book. And John did it. He put away his notebook and pencil. He ate the book (Rev. 10: 9-10a)...

St. John wasn't the first biblical prophet to eat a book as if it were a peanut butter sandwich. Ezekiel had also been given a book and commanded to eat it (Ezek. 2:8-3:3). Jeremiah also 'ate' God's revelation, his version of the Holy Bible (Jer. 15:16). Ezekiel and Jeremiah, like John, lived in a time in which there was widespread pressure to live by a very different text than the one revealed by God in these Holy Scriptures. The diet of Holy Scripture for all three of them issued in sentences of tensile strength, metaphors of blazing clarity, and a prophetic life of courageous suffering. If we are in danger (which we certainly are) of succumbing to the widespread setting aside of the Holy Scriptures and replacing them with the authoritative text of our own experience -- our needs and wants and feelings -- for authoritative direction in our actual day-by-day living, these three rough-and-tumble prophets -- John, Ezekiel, Jeremiah -- responsible for the spiritual formation of God's people in the worst of times (Babylonian exile and Roman persecution) ought to be able to convince us of their gut-level necessity.

Every word in this book is intended to do something in us, give health and wholeness, vitality and holiness, to our souls and body. That's why the Christian community has expended an enormous amount of energy and intelligence in learning how to 'eat this book...' (pgs. 13, 15-16)

I really found the parallels of our time with the prophets' time (exile) and John's time (persecution) resonant, especially in that danger that Peterson highlights about our tendency to replace the Scriptures with our own selves. I think that is a big part of sinful human nature down through the ages, in all times...to attempt to live outside of the ways God calls us to live. That's part of our bentness. You would think that in times of trouble, we would automatically turn to resources beyond ourselves, especially God-inspired and God-breathed words that have proven to be strong and true and to lead the community of the faithful down the right paths toward Jesus. But we get inverted, we turn inward and try to come up with our own ways and our own paths, which is especially dangerous when we often forget that our "selves" have been deeply formed by something...and if not this book, then by the "book" of the world, the culture all around us.

It was really helpful for me to read his unpacking of the "eating the book" metaphor, here and in other places. There's a tendency (in me, at least) to think that if I assimilate things with my mind and at least on some level with my heart, then I've done the best I can do. What Peterson is talking about here is us assimilating what God has revealed, so fully that it's as though we've ingested it. Note that he doesn't say "every word in this book is intended to do something for us" or even "to" us, but IN US.

How do we do this? How do we read the Word faithfully and truly, and not just read it, but eat it, as though we've sat down to a feast? I need help with this, as we all do (that's one reason we often read it in community) and I need to continually ask God to give me a hunger for this book he wants me to eat.

Reading Round-Up, Beginning of April

I finished Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book last week, and plan to post some thoughts here soon.

My re-reading marathon of the Harry Potter books has finally gathered steam; I should be finished with Sorcerer's Stone soon. The revealing of the intriguing US and UK cover art for book 7 has inspired me, and my desire to re-read all six HP books before July 21 (the release date for Deathly Hallows) has been reinvigorated. What marvelous stories! I've just finished the chapter where Harry first finds the Mirror of Erised. I wonder if we will ever see that mirror again?

I almost reached my fun goal of finishing the Hannah Swensen mystery series by the end of the winter. I read Sugar Cookie, Peach Cobbler and Cherry Cheesecake Murders (books 6-8) and was only stymied in my quest by the fact that book 9, Key Lime Pie Murder, was only published a few weeks ago. So the few new copies have about a million holds in the inter-county library system. I added my name to the hold list and will enjoy it whenever it arrives -- these are not books I will spend actual money to acquire, but I have found them enjoyable entertainment.

I'm only a few chapters into Perils and Peace: Vol. 1: Chronicles of the Ancient Church by Mindy and Brandon Withrow. This is the first volume in "History Lives" -- a church history series written for 9-14 year olds. Thus far I am pretty impressed, both with its accuracy and with the way it engages young readers. I think I will be adding this whole series to our home library, as it will only be a few years down the road that the sweet girl will be ready to tackle them. They're relatively unexpensive paperbacks too, but nicely produced by Christian Focus Publishers in Scotland.

I finished Tony Tanner's essays in Jane Austen on "Pride and Prejudice" and "Emma," and am now full-swing into his essay on "Persuasion." These essays do a great job of engaging Austen's novels and characters, and almost always make me think. I would dearly love to argue a bit with Mr. Tanner on some of his points regarding "Emma" -- mostly because I think he tends to sell Mr. Knightley's character a bit short. But then, I've always been a bit in love with Mr. Knightley. Perhaps it takes a woman to really understand his character fully!

We've finished up the second Carolyn Heywood Betsy book, Betsy and Billy, during family reading. I need to come up with a new, longer "chapter" book to read with S. soon. Favorites on her read-aloud list right now include Cynthia Rylant's Mr. Putter and Tabby Make a Wish, and a delightfully funny book called Earthquack! (a creative re-telling of "Chicken Little"). Thankfully, with the advent of spring we appear to be out of our Snowbaby phase. Yes, it's a lovely little picture book, but I'm afraid S. took some of its content a little too much to heart. She loves to act out the stories she loves most, and since "Snowbaby could not, would not sleep" as she frequently reminded us for what was probably only two weeks but felt like two months, she was actually staying up late at night trying not to close her eyes because she wanted to be just like Snowbaby in the story. Did we renew this gem last week at the library? No, we did not!

Once again, I'm sure I'm reading more than this...but my tired brain is not coming up with anything else at the moment, so I'll sign off for now.

All Glory, Laud and Honor

Refrain:
All glory, laud, and honor
to thee, Redeemer, King!
to whom the lips of children
made sweet hosannas ring.

Thou art the King of Israel,
thou David's royal Son,
who in the Lord's Name comest,
the King and Blessed One. Refrain

The company of angels
are praising thee on high;
and mortal men and all things
created make reply. Refrain

The people of the Hebrews
with palms before thee went;
our praise and prayer and anthems
before thee we present. Refrain

To thee before thy passion
they sang their hymns of praise;
to thee, now high exalted,
our melody we raise. Refrain

Thou didst accept their praises;
accept the prayers we bring,
who in all good delightest,
thou good and gracious King. Refrain

---

Words: Theodulph of Orleans (ca. 750-821), ca. 820
Trans. John Mason Neale (1818-1866), 1854,
as altered in Hymns Ancient and Modern


I love Palm Sunday. When I was growing up, the various churches we attended did not always celebrate with actual palms. In fact, I have no concrete memory of ever being in a Palm Sunday processional until I was a married adult and had begun going to the Episcopal Church. Every year since, I've been so thankful to be in churches (all Episcopal/Anglican) that invite us into Holy Week with a narrative reading of the passion reading and a processional with palms.

This year I felt especially moved by the processional. It was pouring rain, so we couldn't start outside like usual. We ended up processing upstairs to our unfinished/unrenovated third floor, and walking around that large space, then going back down the stairs on the other side of the church building and processing back into our basement "sanctuary." I loved watching the Sweet Girl toil up the stairs, waving her palm, and then skip beside me, her eyes wide as she noticed the palm branches waving in the hands of our fellow congregants.

Maybe because I'm the parish administrator, thus the person who maintains the parish prayer lists, I felt much more "in tune" this year with the lives and needs of the people processing around the room. I felt acutely aware of the fact that each person walking around waving the sign of Jesus' victory was a loved and precious son or daughter of God. Each of them is living an ordinary life, and trying to live it to God's glory. The four month old babe in arms will be baptized next week; that grandmother who came in early with her five year old granddaughter so they could set the communion table together has been rejoicing in new found health after recently losing thirty pounds; the tall, very pale man with the somber eyes was recently diagnosed with cancer and just started chemo last week.

Times change, the details of life circumstances change, but people really don't -- not their needs, their bodies, minds and spirits, their hearts. Just as the first people to laud and honor Jesus with palm branches desperately and achingly needed his loving kingship, so too those of us who walked in their footsteps today. The biggest difference is that we're on the other side of his cross and resurrection, so we know more of the story of which we're a part. I wonder how many of the people who lined the road to Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday became a part of the first community of the Way, and remembered the triumphal entry as Jesus' first step toward Golgotha.

Snippets of Sense, Bits of Beauty

I came across this quote by Teddy Roosevelt earlier today:

"But life is a great adventure, and the worst of all fears is the fear of living. There are many forms of success, many forms of triumph. But there is no other success that in any shape or way approaches that which is open to most of the many, many men and women who have the right ideals. These are the men and the women who see that it is the intimate and homely things that count most."

The beginning of the quote reminded me of the film Tuck Everlasting which we just watched a few nights ago, and which I reviewed on Epinions yesterday. But the part of the quote that especially grabbed me today was the last part: "it is the intimate and homely things that count most."

I'm not sure what Teddy had in mind when he wrote that, but I was realizing how much I appreciate "intimate and homely things" in my own life, and hearing about those kinds of simple, beautiful moments in the lives of others. I think it's one reason I enjoy reading blogs!

With that in mind, I thought I'd post a link to a marvelous looking little tea company, called Wellspring Tea. I discovered it the other day while blog-hopping. You have to check out their products here, which show a wonderful combination of tea-loving and literature-loving sensibilities. How I would love to try some of these teas, which sound delicious...and have such great names! My favorite tea-names in their catalog (hands-down) are "Anne Shirely's Almond Black," "Caramel for Hobbits," "Mr. Darcy's Ceylon," and "Chocolate for Jo."

I can't think of anything more intimate and homely than drinking a warm cup of tea while curled up with a good book!

To keep the storehouse brimming, from time to time I think I will post small resources here: ideas for simpler living, creative exercises, pieces of art, and yes, "intimate and homely" things like literary teas. I plan to tag them "snippets of sense, bits of beauty."

New Words in the Family Lexicon

We love word play! In the past few days, we've come up with two new words for our family's playful lexicon...

Pajameter: device used to measure how many steps you take when you're sleep-walking.

Crockapottamus: hippo who likes to eat food cooked in a slow-cooker.

Happy Birthday, Robert Lee Frost

Robert Frost was born 133 years ago today: March 26, 1874. I've always loved that I get to share a birthday with Frost. Plus it keeps me feeling young!

I couldn't decide what poem to put up in honor of the occasion. It's still a bit too early for "Nothing Gold Can Stay" which I always quote every year when the tree buds have just unfurled and covered the landscape in tender, new green. We're not there, and we're not yet to the buterflied April skies of "Blue-Butterfly Day." I guess I will go with standard Frost spring fare -- and such a lovely standard it is. I can remember trying to imitate this poem with one of my own when I was in 10th grade. Frost's work has always been an inspiration.

A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
To which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends he will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

-- Robert Frost

On the Eve of 39...

Yes, I turn 39 tomorrow. And what movie did we rent and watch tonight? Tuck Everlasting. Essentially a poetic fairy-tale that, at least in some senses, lauds growing old and reflects on how the knowledge that we'll one day die helps us value and live each moment fully. Hmmm! Interesting movie choice!

I was realizing tonight that we've lived in our little "post-industrial town that time forgot" for almost a decade now. The first birthday I ever celebrated here was my 30th. Feels like a very long time ago!

Flexible Penguins

Well, this Saturday is almost over...and I'm pretty tuckered out, so I'm glad of that. D. had to do some work for the church this morning (a very early meeting, followed by some neighborhood visits) and so we didn't have our usual "whole family all together" Saturday that we usually have. Given the kinds of work we do, especially D's ministry work, those Saturdays aren't always possible, but we try to have them whenever we can.

The sweet girl struggled mightily with her daddy not being home all morning. She's been having a rough time again lately with changes in routine...any changes. Needing to have things a certain way, and doing certain things at certain times -- this has always been a big part of her temperament. It has its gifts as well as its drawbacks; she's always responded well to traditions and liturgy and structure. The challenge comes when she can get obsessive about routine, and overwrought over even small changes. We've been working on it for a long time, and she's much more relaxed and flexible than she used to be, but she has certain seasons where this particular challenge rears its head again. We're in one now.

Which is why I'm exhausted, because for most of the day she was fretting over the fact that we weren't doing "what we usually do" and "when we usually do it." She asked for a reading lesson today, which we don't usually do on Saturdays -- I was surprised by that, but I think she was feeling thrown off by today not feeling like a typical Saturday. So of course I told her we could do the reading lesson, but that we would need to do it in the morning when we had time. She threw an absolute fit because we "USUALLY do it in the AFTERNOON!" and wept copiously over the fact that I said we'd have to do it another time today if she wanted to do it at all.

We had a long talk then...once I could get her to calm down enough to listen to me. We talked again about "flexibility." We've discussed this many times before, but I think she's still getting the hang of the concept. One reason I introduced her to the word a while ago (besides the fact that she needs to learn how to live it sometime) is because I know how fascinated she is with language. Sometimes you can get her to think through important things by first letting her play with the words. Today I got out one of her hard plastic bunnies and a soft rubber band, and we talked about how one was flexible and the other wasn't. We stretched the rubber band and talked about learning to be peaceful and OK with things in our schedule when we sometimes had to do them out of order, or in ways that weren't our favorite ways. Stretching the rubber band made her giggle a little bit through her tears. I asked her if she thought she could try to be flexible, and at first she tearfully told me she couldn't. We didn't seem to be getting anywhere, until she suddenly asked "are penguins flexible?"

She's been pretending to be a penguin off and on for months now; her fascination with these birds seems to know no end (as the continued pile of library books about penguins attests!). I thought about it and said yes, I thought penguins must be flexible because they must bend their legs when they waddle. So she started waddling around the room exclaiming "I'm a flexible penguin!" which made me laugh.

And a few minutes later she came into the kitchen where I was doing dishes and said, in a quiet little voice, "I'd like to do a reading lesson now." I looked at her. "You mean right now? In the morning?" "Yes." And I knew she was trying to be a flexible penguin, bless her little heart.

"The radiancy of joyful sacrifice"

A lot of ink has been spilled in recent days, since the Episcopal House of Bishops (here in the U.S.) issued a "mind of the house" statement in response to the recent recommendations/request of the primates in the worldwide Anglican Communion. This isn't the place to get into church politics, but suffice it to say that the statement from the U.S. bishops was...I sigh to say...stereotypically "American" in attitude. Essentially they said: "sure, we'd like to be part of your global church...but only on our own terms." Since those terms consist of continuing departure from historic and classical Christian orthodoxy, we've got a big problem.

The statement also seems to say (and here's an interesting oxymoron) "we'd like to be part of your communion, but only if we can be completely independent and autonomous." They even harkened back to revolutionary days and talked about the life of the Episcopal Church being free and independent from the Church of England! And they essentially called the worldwide primates "a distant and unaccountable group of prelates." !! This, about our worldwide, global church leaders who are doing exactly what they should be doing in trying to call our leaders to accountability in the light of the gospel!

I really don't understand how one can claim independence and autonomy as the chief tenets of the life of a church. Of course we're "independent" in the sense that we're a unique province in the worldwide communion, and each province has its own location, governance structures, cultural influences, etc. One of the wonderful things about the Christian gospel, in fact, is its translatability into all kinds of languages and contexts and cultures. That doesn't mean the gospel changes, but it does mean it can and should be communicated in different contexts. That's the diversity within unity, but the unity part (when you're part of a global family of churches) matters. And the unity can only come when people hold, at the heart, the same center, the same foundation.

But how can we claim to be both a part of a global family, and "autonomous"? Look up autonomous in the dictionary sometime, and you'll find definitions like "freedom from all external constraints." How can that be? Look at the context of your own family...the daily, everyday family you're part of...and think how long you could function -- and LOVE EACH OTHER! -- if every member in the family insisted on autonomy! Even if you insisted on it, it's impossible! Because for one person to have complete freedom to do what he or she wanted to do or thought was best, will of necessity conflict with what another member needs at any given time. If I was perfectly autonomous, I would often choose to do things a lot differently than I do. I don't do a lot of things I'd like to do, and I stop doing some things I'd rather do...out of love, out of deference for the needs and wants of another, out of respect, out of the deeper desire to build a strong family. I am compelled, and yes, "externally constrained" by the facts of my relationship with others. Those are limits I chose to live within when I made the decision to help create and be a part of a family.

How do you keep loving members of your family who are determined to do their own thing, regardless of the consequences for others? It's hard. We need to find ways to prayerfully do this in the days and weeks and months ahead, as the Anglican Communion finds ways to "realign" (and it's going to get messy).

One of the best things I've read about all this in recent days came from a reflection written by Ephraim Radner, a priest in Colorado. He was counseling that faithful Anglicans in the U.S. stay out of litigation as much as possible (in the matter of property disputes, some of which have already started). And he wrote this: "But there is no point struggling for the truth if the struggle leaves one bitter and hostile, aimed against adversaries instead of praying for them in love. If one is not called to the radiancy of joyful sacrifice, it is better to leave. And hope is radiant and ready."

The "radiancy of joyful sacrifice." That's what a family, any family, especially a church family, should be marked by. If all of us in the communion asked the Lord's help to live such graceful, humble and radiant sacrificial lives before the watching world, perhaps we'd really be the church God calls us to be.

Bauer's New Book

In a neat bit of synchronicity, Susan Wise Bauer's new book The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome has its official publication date next Monday, my birthday. Sounds like a great book, and her usual wonderful work. It's actually already available from booksellers, which I don't quite understand since the official publication date isn't until Monday, but that's okay. I can still claim it as a cool thing that happens to be happening on my birthday! (which also happens to be the birthdate of Robert Frost...more synchronicity.)

Susan Wise Bauer is the author of The Well-Trained Mind, the book probably more than any other that cemented my desire to homeschool. I read it years ago, before the sweet girl was born. And while I don't think I am going the completely classical route in our homeschool venture, I've learned much by contemplating the classical pattern of the "trivium" (grammar, logic, rhetoric...for more, see here) as a way of approaching educational foundations.

I'm debating whether I want to read Bauer's new book first, or backtrack and read her History of the World series (written for 9-12 year olds) which came out several years ago. Hmm...time to go poking around on inter-county loan at the library and see what's available.

Card Art

I used to create a lot of cards...I love making collages from beautiful paper scraps. It's been a while since I've had a chance to make any, so I was happy to spend an hour or so tonight working on some cards. I think my mother's birthday card turned out pretty nicely...I thought I'd share it here. (Mom doesn't have a computer, so this won't be giving her a sneak peek!)

My paper scraps come from all kinds of places...I've collected a lot over the past few years. Card stock, clipped words and images from catalogs, textured papers. Half the fun is just going through the scraps themselves and seeing where my fancy leads me. Shapes, lines, colors...cutting them, sketching them, putting them together in unique ways reminds me a little bit of choosing the right words to create a poem.

Spring Detectives

It turned beautifully warm here today -- in the 70s! We're supposed to take another dive into cold (and possibly snow) over the weekend, but how wonderful to walk outdoors in shorter sleeves and light jackets.

The sweet girl and I decided to take a walk and be "spring detectives." I explained to her how that meant we'd be on the lookout for clues and signs of spring.

Here's what we sighted:

--purple crocuses (purple, six petals each, beautiful yellow pollen centers)
--bees (two of them, alighting on the patch of crocuses)
--bird's nests
--old brown oak leaves on the ground
--warm weather!
--buds on the forsythia bushes (still bare)
--buds on the sycamore trees (tiny, pointed and dark red buds)
--a man washing his car
--another man vaccuming the inside of his car
--silver wind chimes on a porch, with a little metal butterfly
--yellow crocuses in the front yard of Miss Shoshana's house (a dear friend who moved away to Australia last year -- their house isn't sold yet)
--a bench that needs repainting
--two girls and their little brother (friends of the sweet girl) coloring with sidewalk chalk

What signs of spring do you see in your neighborhood?

Getting Organized

Last week's illness has finally given way...to this week's illness. I managed to recover from the awful intestinal bug only to get whammed by sinus congestion and a nasty cough. So I've been dragging around now for the better part of seven days! I guess winter is going out with a bang!

Speaking of seasons "going out" or "coming in," the sweet girl's preschool class has been talking about the expression "March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb." S. thinks this is a very fun expression and she's been trying out various variations. The other day she informed me that "we've had three warm, sunny lamb days in a row." But then yesterday she announced "I like lion weather better!"

Missing a couple of days of work recently has made me feel a little overwhelmed -- both at the office, where I'm behind, and here at home, where I've had more time to notice the general clutter and mess. I'm trying to get myself somewhat organized here at home. The spring light and at least some spots of spring weather have given me the urge to spring clean, despite the fact that I've not had much energy to tackle the piles of clutter. I'm trying to set myself a small organizing task each day, with a couple of larger projects each week. That makes for slow progress, but slow progress is better than no progress.

I'm also trying to organize my thoughts for this Friday's upcoming meeting at S's school -- our annual evaluation meeting with the added twist of being the 'transition to kindergarten' meeting. Pray for us. We're going to be explaining our desire to homeschool, and since my daughter has an IEP and we'll be in a room full of education professionals (including a rep. from the school district) I'm trying hard not to expect the worst. I keep reminding myself that her teachers have always been helpful, supportive and encouraging, and that there's no reason why they shouldn't continue to be, but given the odd looks we've been given by supervisors/evaluators in the past when we've brought up homeschooling, we're prepared to have to defend the decision. I want to do it graciously and confidently and not at all defensively. We are grateful beyond words for the help S. has been given at the preschool, especially with speech therapy and in learning new socialization skills, but we also feel like the time has come for us to transition to this new season. I'm not sure if our case will be helped or hindered by the excellent scores on her recent evaluation. I am still feeling so amazed and thankful for that report.

As I think about organizing for more formal homeschooling, I've begun poking around for some ideas about record-keeping during the kindergarten year -- ways to keep track of the things that S. is learning and doing, her projects and activities. I found a wonderful website called Small Meadow Press. The woman who runs the site makes gorgeous papers and journals, and I downloaded a set of what she calls "Home Learning Notes." These are simple and lovely -- well-designed sheets for organizing weekly pages, monthly pages, thoughts & plans, projects, books read, community/contact list, outings and field trips, activities & classes, and general memorandum. A homeschooler's dream (at least my dream!) and I think probably quite useful even for folks who aren't homeschooling but who still want to have some beautiful pages on which to organize their thoughts. I printed a set on regular white paper but will likely make copies on slightly heavier paper (she suggests recycled, an earth-friendly idea) and put them in a binder. Just finding them made me feel more organized. Imagine how I'll feel when I actually begin using them!

You Know It's Been Winter A Long Time When...

Last summer when the sweet girl was totally enamored of every pine tree in sight, we explained the word "evergreen" to her. "We call them evergreens," we explained, "because they stay green forever. They're always green, even in winter." She has repeated it numerous times.

Her Daddy informed me of her new, creative twist on the concept this morning. They were getting into the car -- our dirty, salt encrusted car that has seen plenty of snowy, icy, dirty roads this winter. S. looked at the car and announced, "It's everdirt, because the dirt stays there forever!"

I Can Get Stranded on a Desert Island Now...

We felt a little deflated when my sister left Sunday. Because of the time her plane left, we happened to be at the airport around the time S. usually takes her nap, and we knew that by the time we got home, we would have missed the best napping opportunity. Since we happened to be pretty near our favorite used bookstore...

We shopped for a while, and I found some amazing bargains on the children's clearance shelves. Then Dana came over, grinning, carrying a huge burgundy-jacketed tome. It was -- I kid you not -- Jane Austen's complete works, all six of her completed novels in one huge volume with gold-edged pages, an edition printed a few years ago in England. And the asking price was under 10 dollars! The dust jacket was a bit beat up, but the book itself was in excellent shape and the sweet girl immediately noticed and marvelled over the gilt edges.

"Happy Early Birthday!" my husband said to me. And who could resist it? Not I. Granted I can barely lift the book, so it's hard to imagine ever finding a way to comfortably read it (stretched out on my belly, perhaps, with the book laid flat in front of me on the floor?) but it's really kind of amazing to have so much richness between the covers of one book. And I suppose if I'm ever packing for a desert island or a spaceship flight, it will come in mighty handy.

My sister also delivered a lovely late Christmas present to me when she was here. She'd actually bought it for me in time for Christmas and then forgot to mail it. I loved the timing though. It's the 2007 Jane Austen desk calendar put out by the Jane Austen Society of North America. Chock full of beautifully patterned papers and quotes from Austen's novels. I'm sensing a theme here!

So, let's see...I could actually schedule a trip to a desert island (in my Jane Austen calendar) and then pack my complete novels of Jane Austen to take with me. A "happy thought indeed!"

"That rat is sad."

It's been a slow week for blogging...or for anything else. At the end of last week I was busy finishing my essay and attempting to clean my house (note I said attempting) before my sister came in to visit. It was a lovely visit, though too short! She left Sunday, I worked Monday, then got sick (some kind of intestinal bug) and have had two hazy days at home. I think I turned the corner this afternoon, which means back to work tomorrow -- and I'm now way behind on office tasks and extra tired.

I've had to take it easy the past couple of days, but one thing I have done is get back into the routine with the Sweet Girl's reading lessons. We had a couple of weeks where we were only doing the lessons sporadically. I've tried not to be a slave to doing it "every day" especially since she tends to balk if the lessons get too long or too challenging right now. I don't want to force the issue if she's not ready. But I also don't want her to have so much time between lessons that she forgets what we've already gone over. As a result, I've kept the lessons as relaxed as I can, given her breaks on the days it seems like she needs breaks (or when I do!), and sometimes spent time reviewing parts of old lessons before going into new ones. It's worked pretty well.

Today we went over lesson 17 and she read an entire sentence/story: "That rat is sad." This was momentous because it was the first time the words she was reading had spilled over onto a second line (two words on one line, two words on the next) so we were practicing reading left to right on one line, then getting to the end of that line and knowing to go back around to the left for the next line. I think that concept went over fairly well. She likes that these little "stories" (so far only two-four words) have pictures next to them too. We do the sounding out of the words first, and then we look at the pictures and talk about them.

She was able to read the entire sentence on her own except for "that." I just introduced the "th" sound in yesterday's lesson, and she's struggling mightily to say it. I know she often has trouble with consonant blends at the beginning of words ("sp" has always been a huge challenge) but I hadn't realized that she was essentially saying an "f" sound instead of a "th" sound. I've been trying to get her to watch how I hold my tongue, but she's mostly in her "I can't do it!" phase.

In general, she's been so enthusiastic about learning to read, and today was no exception. We celebrated that we finished lesson 17 and she was in a happy mood. Until she realized (looking at the book cover and the size of the book) that there are 100 lessons. Hmmm...the blessings and drawbacks of having an observant child! She got a bit despairing then and told me that she didn't think she really wanted to learn to read after all. I took this with the gigantic shaker of salt that I knew I should -- she's just feeling a bit daunted -- and simply said "But you ARE learning to read...and you did such a good job today! That rat sure looked sad in the rain, didn't he?" And suddenly she was all smiles again.

I'm learning to navigate my daughter's learning weathers. It's an exciting and challenging aspect of my learning too...my learning to be a better, more patient teacher.

Reading Round-Up As We Turn the Corner Toward Spring

Devotional reading: Recently finished Mudhouse Sabbath (Lauren Winner) which I guess ended up being my Epiphany reading!

For Lenten reading, I'm working on two books by Eugene Peterson, one old and one new (well, to me, at least). The "old" one is A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (a series of meditations on the Psalms of Ascent) which I first read about twenty years ago. The second is Eat This Book (reflections on ways we read the Scriptures).

Literary Reading: I'm currently enjoying Tony Tanner's book Jane Austen, especially his chapter on Pride and Prejudice.

Books recently finished: The Children's Blizzard (David Laskin); The Blizzard Voices (poems by Ted Kooser); The Irresistible Revolution (Shane Claiborne)

Children/Young Adult Books recently finished: Hattie Big Sky (Newbery Honor book by Kirby Larsen) and also Mercy Watson Goes For A Ride (Kate DiCamillo).

Some Current Favorites on the Sweet Girl's Shelf: Robins, Songbirds of Spring; Amazing Ants; Honey Rabbit

Fluffy reads: I recently finished books 3 and 4 in the Joanne Fluke "Hannah Swensen" murder mystery series: Strawberry Shortcake Murder and Lemon Meringue Pie Murder. Either Fluke is getting worse at plotting or I'm figuring out her formula, but I guessed the murderer's identity both times -- well before the end of the book. Still fun reads though -- the characters are especially amusing!

Educational/Homeschooling Resources: Currently perusing, from the Core Knowledge series, What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know.

I must be forgetting titles....I've read more than this since my last reading round-up! If I think of others, I'll update.