Dear Madeleine

I've been wanting to do more of my Wrinkle in Time re-read posts, but alas, life keeps getting in the way. But I thought I would go on and post this journal entry I wrote the other day, in the form of a letter to Madeleine L'Engle. I had a very rare quiet morning to read when my family was out of town, and I found myself drawn to the final chapters of Wrinkle. Then I just needed to thank Madeleine one more time for this lovely book that has meant so much to me through the years.

*******

Dear Madeleine,

I missed you today.

Despite your passing on to greater life almost five years ago, I often still have a sense of your presence. After all, your books have graced my life for decades. And they grace my shelves…two shelves, in fact, full of almost every book you ever wrote, all crowded together, sandwiched right in between Harper Lee and C.S. Lewis (who then crowds the next two shelves…I guess you can tell who the writers of my heart are).

But I both felt your presence more deeply than usual, and missed you more, while reading today. I’m having an extremely rare day alone, all to myself, and found myself picking up the 50^th anniversary copy of A Wrinkle in Time that my sister bought for my recent birthday. Its lovely red jacket, an homage to the original cover, feels smooth in my hands. It’s a hardback, and I’m not used to holding such weight when I read Wrinkle – since for years the only copy I’ve ever read was my read-to-literal-tatters paperback, the same paperback copy I first read at the age of eleven.

I don’t know if it was reading a brand new copy (one with lovely pictures of you in the back, along with that draft chapter that shows your edits that just delight me to see) or because I was all alone with more space and time than usual to intently focus, but I fell into Wrinkle in ways I hadn’t in years. Oh, I’ve read it numerous times in the thirty-three years (wow, is that really possible?) since I first discovered it. But you know, perhaps, how it feels to read a well-loved and much-read story. It’s like visiting with an old friend, knowing the stories she delights in repeating, being able to finish her sentences for her. That’s usually how I feel when I go back to Wrinkle, and it’s a lovely, comforting thing.

Today it felt almost new. I had been re-reading my way at a leisurely pace, and suddenly I was in the final few chapters and couldn’t put them down. Again, a odd quirk of my life (an out of town funeral that my husband and daughter are attending, while I stayed here with work deadlines) enabled me to read with more attention and time than I can usually give these days. I was not rushing to get breakfast on the table or needing to dive into errands or starting my daughter’s school day. I was able to just fall head first into the story and keep reading. I took the book back to bed, curled up with my soft comforter, and kept reading…much as I would have…could have…did…read when I was eleven. By the time I finished the story, and finish it I did, I was crying.

To read with that young-girl intensity, and yet to read with this middle-aged woman’s heart – well, it was a powerful combination. I remember you saying once that we are all the ages we have ever been, and that’s so profoundly true. So I read with little girl freshness and grown-up eyes together – a little bit like wearing Mrs. Who’s glasses, I suppose, and marveling as I see the atoms re-arrange.

I found myself resonating with parts of the story I never had so fully before. Mr. Murry’s character – you did so much with him in such a little amount of space and time – especially spoke to my heart. My own almost ten year old is several states away today, experiencing her first funeral, and all her struggles and seasons lately – with anxieties and insecurities, hopes and dreams, independence and dependence – seemed to play into every scene I read between Mr. Murry and Meg. I understood Meg’s anger at her father for not being perfect and not taking care of everything in one heroic sweep. I understood Mr. Murry’s frustrations and helplessness as he realized that, as much as he would like to, he couldn’t do everything, couldn’t be the strong, perfect parent she wanted him to be. I had always thought, when I was a child, than nothing was more powerful than that final scene when Meg loves Charles Wallace out of the clutches of IT – and yet where does Meg learn to love like that? I found myself in awe of her father’s love for her. I love how you showed him as limited and flawed and yet willing to have a child-like trust in a love and power greater than his own. I love how he was willing to put his daughter in greater hands than his and let his daughter do what needed to be done. The last part of the story – it’s not just about Meg growing up and choosing the hard but right way. It’s about a father (who himself needed rescuing by a trio of young people) learning to let go of control, learning to trust. I suspect that lesson was a hard-won lesson for Mr. Murry, trapped in his dark column, his cloven pine.

And oh, Calvin. How I loved those small moments of potentially blooming romance between Calvin and Meg when I was closer to their age, and I still do. But it’s not just about a boy and a girl meeting and finding one another attractive. It’s about two young people shaped by the same call and helping each other find courage to do what needs to be done. That kiss Calvin gives Meg? The one that brightens her eyes? It’s not a prince waking up a princess kiss, or a kiss of adolescent ardor. It’s a let me kiss you before you go into battle kiss, a kiss of encouragement and strength.

I don’t think I’d ever realized how beautifully steeped in Pauline theology those final chapters were either. Yes, I recognized all the scriptural quotes, but they are so carefully chosen, so integrated into the story you’re telling. I love the way that all those gospel steeped elements are spoken by various characters – not just the three Mrs. Ws (who clearly stand in as angelic messengers) but by Aunt Beast. The God who shapes us for his purposes, who makes all things work together for good, who makes the foolish things of the world shame the wise – is the God of the universe. And so it’s so utterly right that the translation of the song of the winged creatures on Uriel comes through as a Psalm of praise.

And the disembodied brain – not just an homage to Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, not just a “heart defeats brain” moment.  It’s disembodied. As in non-incarnate. And only incarnated love – love willing to do what needs to be done to rescue the one in thrall to the darkness – only incarnated love can triumph. Meg’s act here is a Christ-like act, from the moment she pushes through the cold and darkness to the moment she catches Charles up in a tear-soaked embrace.

Oh Madeleine, I missed you today. And yet I also found myself feeling as though you’d come to visit. I’m so glad you did.

Blessings.

Girl With a Watering Can (Diamante Poem)

As an end of the year treat, since she finished her grammar text early this year, the sweet girl is getting extra language arts time to work on poems and stories. We've been working with some terrific poem starters from Joyce Sidman -- ideas and forms that are really inspiring us.

Today we worked with the diamante form. You're supposed to start and end with a noun, but I gave us some leeway -- sometimes we went with an adjective. The line format is built on number of words. The form is 1,2,3,5,3,2,1 ~ sounds like a waltz, doesn't it? So the lines get successively longer at first, it's all balanced by a long beam of a line (like a rafter) in the middle, and then the lines decrease in the back half.

Sidman suggested using a picture to inspire the diamante. The sweet girl has been enjoying the gorgeous Child's Book of Art by Lucy Micklethwait again. She looked through and chose several pictures to work with. I was really tickled with all the results, but I especially liked this one she wrote based on Renoir's Girl With a Watering Can.

Girl:
watering plants,
picking white daisies.
She's just watered the garden.
Buttons on dress,
red bow,
peaceful.

(SBP, 5/28/12)

She really liked this way of poeming and I must say I do too. Setting word limits helped her to really focus on what she was seeing and what she wanted to say. That's an exercise that's good for all writers ~ no matter what our ages!

Between Alrighty and Almighty

I had one of those funny skim reading slips the other day. A friend had posted a prayer on facebook (where I often tend to be in skim read mode) and it began with the words "Almighty God." But my hurrying glance took the phrase in too quickly and I read it as "Alrighty God..." which sounded like the beginning of a much more casual conversation.

The slip made me chuckle, but it's also caused me to reflect on the fact that many of my prayers, depending on their time and place, could probably be characterized either as "almighty" or "alrighty" prayers.

The prayers I read from others, particularly in the prayer book, help me to center in on the powerful reality of who God is. Those prayers carefully name the Triune God, reminding me of who he is -- awesome in power and majesty, full of strength and loving kindness. He is indeed Almighty God, and I need to remember that and to address him, head and heart bowed, as such....and often. Whether I am reading a prayer, joining my voice to other faithful pray-ers now and across the years, or letting my personal prayers and petitions be shaped by that kind of language, I need a lot of time steeped in "almighty" kinds of prayers.

But there is perhaps a time and a place for "alrighty" prayers too...the kinds of prayer I often find myself uttering in the midst of a busy and stressed day, or in the midst of a daily repeated chore that feels like sheer drudgery -- the kind of prayer that begins in a more casual way, as befits one friend just speaking from her heart to a friend who knows and loves her and wants to listen, even if all she has to say is something akin to "Alrighty God, I know I need to get through this next few minutes...please help me!"

Of course the beauty of it all is that it's because the Friend we address is the Almighty King of the universe (able to do all that needed to be done to bridge the chasm and bring us from the far off kingdom of darkness to the near to his heart kingdom of light) we can enter into real and intimately loving conversation with him -- conversation sometimes as casual and simple as any ordinary conversation can be. It is because he is mighty to save that we are rescued, and because we rescued that we are given access -- real and amazing access -- to his presence. Where often we bow, face down to the ground, in humble worship, but where we also sometimes find ourselves drawn to sit right next to the king on his throne, snuggled under his arm, just because we love to have him hold us -- and because he delights to do so.

Raising a Reader

“She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.” That quote from Louisa May Alcott has always made me chuckle. The wonderful thing about books, of course, is that they do literally “turn our brains” – in new directions.

In addition to all the books I want to read, or in some cases feel I need to read, my ever growing TBR pile is expanding in a new way. The sweet girl (fast heading for her tenth birthday) has begun to recommend books to me.

It happened just the other day, and not for the first time. She and her dad were out of town last week for her step-grandad’s funeral. She took along her big pink backpack filled with books and art supplies for the car. On Sunday, unpacking the bag, she kept bringing out books and telling me what she’d read while they were gone. One of them was a book called Funny Frank by the delightful Dick King-Smith. I had pointed her in the direction of the King-Smith shelf at the library (we do love his books) but this isn’t one I’ve read before. “It’s hilarious,” she told me. “You need to read it.”

Yes, I have a new recommending reading friend – my daughter. I find this both delicious and a little strange. How did this happen so fast? Wasn’t she just chewing on her copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar last week?

Yes, we’ve raised a reader – in both conscious and unconscious ways.  We’ve read books to this child from day one – okay, actually from well before day one, if you count all the reading aloud we did when she was in utero.

There have been so many good reading memories since. I recall D. reading to her from the book of Genesis when she was about a week old. I remember the beauty of watching her lie on her little gymani playmat, when she was perhaps four or five months old, and seeing her eyes trail over to the tiny little “Baby Einstein” board books she loved so much her first year – their chunky square size a perfect fit for her hands, their cardboard so good to chew, and all those great photographs to stare at! Then there were the accompanying sound effects stage…oh, how we all loved Moo, Baa, La La La.  

I remember countless repeated readings of beloved bedtime stories (Everywhere Babies, Goodnight Me, Goodnight You, Guess How Much I Love You) and later on, reading myself hoarse on repeat requests of longer favorites – Flopsy Bunnies, Make Way for Ducklings, The Seven Silly Eaters, the chapter in Winnie the Pooh where Piglet gets a bath. (Oh, and anything by Jane Hissey. The above picture, taken almost five years ago, was a path the sweet girl made in our kitchen...a path of Jane Hissey books. I called it the Jane Hissey path to success!) And poetry, poetry, poetry. Later on came read-aloud upon read-aloud of longer books…snuggled on the couch or on the bed, shoulder to shoulder on park benches in town, read by flashlight on the car on long trips as we wended our way through Heidi, A Little Princess, the Ramona and Henry books, the Narnia books, the Hobbit, and so many other wonderful books. (We still do this and always will…we were a read-aloud family before we became parents! Check my sidebar for our family’s current read-aloud books.)

In recent years, since the sweet girl became an independent reader, there has also been the joy of seeing her curled up with a good book. From the first halting attempts to get through Hop on Pop to seeing her sprawled on the bed or curled up in a windowsill reading Sarah Plain and Tall or Jenny and the Cat Club or Betsy, Tacy and Tib, I have loved every second of watching my girl become a reader.

But it still throws me when she reads something that I haven’t. I know the novelty of this will soon pass – as she grows and reads even on her own, it will happen more often. I will not always be the navigator and trail-guide, though I will hold onto that role for as long as I possibly can, and then trust to the fact that she has been so steeped in good, rich literature her whole life that she will make good choices about what to read (and be able to discern why she doesn’t like something as well as why she does).

Mostly when she shares a book, it’s because she loves it – and that’s a great joy to me, that she is learning by osmosis that good stories are gifts. Only once so far has she asked me to read a book because she wasn’t entirely sure how much she liked it – and she wanted my opinion. I read it and had a mixed opinion too. I saw places in the story that I wasn’t sure she’d been ready for, that I figured went over her head or simply didn’t “register.” And that’s okay. That will happen sometimes too. Once again, I have to trust that what she’s learned through reading and listening to the good, deep, rich stories will hold her firmly in place as she encounters new reading territory.

But for now, I think I’ve got to make a new and special place in my reading stack for the books she recommends. I may not always feel like I have time to add one more thing to that stack, but I treasure that she wants to gift me with the stories she’s enjoying, and I treasure even more that she still wants us to share that reading experience so we can talk  about it. So onto the reading stack goes Funny Frank this week. Thank you, sweet reader girl, for taking the time to recommend another book to your reader mom.

Writing to Elgar

The family is on the way home (yay!) and I've spent this ultra quiet Saturday gardening and cleaning. In this last bit of time to myself, I'm trying to dive into some writing...specifically working on my mid-grade fairytale again. No, I didn't finish all the work I needed to do during these past couple of days, but enough to give myself a little writing break.

Reading over the manuscript yesterday -- the back story that's not quite complete and the first three chapters I wrote in January/February -- I have to say this. I like it! (Whew!) Taking two months away from the project has been really hard, and I'm still not sure how the summer is shaping up and if I'll have any significant time to devote to writing it again, but oh, I've missed these characters and this story. Now that I've dipped my toes back into the project, I guess I can call it a WIP again (work in progress)...

The other thing that's making me smile is how much I associate listening to Elgar with writing on this manuscript. I wonder if other writers do this -- have a particular composer or piece of work that seems to just "go" with the writing on a particular project? My whole winter was steeped in Elgar, especially the Enigma Variations (though I am starting to love some of his other work dearly too) and that's when I was doing most of the writing on this story. I associate Elgar so much with this story that I have named the fictional river near my castle the River Elgar.

Alas, I had to return a couple of the Enigma versions I've been enjoying to the library, but I now own a couple as well (okay, three to be precise). Today I dug out the Bernstein, which I tend to listen to less than the others. It had been a while since I'd played it, so I found myself puzzling anew (ah, the great mysteries of life) why Bernstein slowed the tempo down in the Nimrod movement so drastically. Seven minutes! As my husband pointed out when he first heard it, it sounds like a slow sunrise. He's right, it does. And while I don't find it totally absurd as some music critics do -- there's something so majestic and beautiful in the music that it manages to find its way through even this drastic sort of re-interpretation -- I confess I am completely puzzled as to why he did it. Grandstanding? Playing? Experimenting? Or did he really think there was something inherent in the music itself that called for this kind of slow, languorous, cat-like stretching? The question has me really curious. I suspect it always will.

Writing to Elgar again...no matter what conductor, it just feels good. Among other things, it's helping provide me with continuity of mood when I dive into this story, and that's no small thing considering how long it's been since I've worked on it.

Poetry Friday: The Swing in Everything

I came across this poem I wrote back in January when our whole family was in love with a Duke Ellington recording from the library. It made me smile. And it made me realize anew how important music is in my life.

We dance around

the kitchen

to the Duke’s

jazzy swing.

I love just

how he heard

the swing

in everything.

I love the

way he made

new tunes

but still let

old tunes sing.

I love just

how Duke heard

the swing

in everything.

EMP 1/12

Music is a huge part of my life and my home. I hardly realized how much until the past couple of days when my husband and daughter have been traveling and I’ve been structuring my days completely around my own schedule – an occurrence so rare and bizarre that I almost had forgotten how to do it.

Two days on my own – I’ve been balancing work, play, rest (or trying to) and also balancing sound and silence. I’ve been basking in morning quiet time, just me by the window with my cup of tea and my Bible and prayer book and a couple of other books I’m reading. In the stillness, so rare, I notice all sorts of things speaking to my heart.

In the afternoons I’ve been working – grading, writing, housecleaning – and that’s when I crank the music. It’s mostly been classical and jazz, and oh, how grateful I am for these gems. Benny Goodman playing anything, Yo-Yo Ma playing Vivaldi and Franck and Morricone and Gershwin preludes, Elgar’s Enigma Variations (of course) and Michael Tilson Thomas playing Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody – okay, it’s been a very Gershwin kind of week.

Music tends to chase us all over the house even in our busy, crowded days – I’m forever putting something in the player. And if I don’t, the sweet girl will. And my husband when he’s home, especially when he’s cooking on Saturday mornings. But it’s been listening to it on my own these past couple of days that I realize how much it upholds and encourages me, lends essence and structure and sweetness to my days, helps inspire energy when I’m tired or calming space when I’m wired.

So grateful for music, for the swing in everything. 

The Poetry Friday round-up is at Write.Sketch.Repeat. 

Patchwork Post (Mother's Day edition)

One in the morning and heading into Monday...why I'm still up is still a mystery, though it may have something to do with the amazing nap I got earlier today (my mother's day tradition!) or the caffeine I drank earlier this evening. I'm also grading papers. It's May!

The past few days have gone by in a whirlwind. My husband's stepfather passed away on Friday, may he rest in peace. His passing was not entirely unexpected -- his health has been deteriorating for some time -- but the end still came sooner than we thought it might. He died one day before their eleventh anniversary, which I'm sure has made this weekend especially hard for my dear mother-in-law. The two of them were neighbors and friends for years before tying the knot over a decade ago. It was Robert's first marriage, and he was past 70 when he walked down that aisle. I think his last years, prior to the onset of alzheimer's, were happy ones.  Today I am just feeling grateful that he is no longer suffering. As I told the sweet girl, who is struggling a bit with all the mixed emotions floating about (really the first death in the family she has experienced) it's okay to feel both happy and sad over a death like this. We can be happy that Mr. Robert is home for good -- no longer confused, no longer in pain. But we can also feel sad because we miss him and because we know grandma will.

I often find that having to put things into admittedly simplified words for my precious nine year old, who is wonderfully bright and inquisitive and sometimes even more emotionally young than her years might attest, is balm to my own heart. It helps me think through the "big things" in life more cleanly and clearly than I ever did before I was a mom, before I learned how to act as a navigator and trail-guide (two things I think moms definitely are).

I had a chance to talk with my own mom on this phone this afternoon, and to tell her anew how much I love her and miss her. And oh, I really do, on both counts. So grateful for her presence in my life.

Remembering Maurice Sendak

One of the first books I remember really loving as a child was Maurice Sendak's Pierre. I know he was most famous for Where the Wild Things Are (what a rumpus!) and In the Night Kitchen, but I loved his stubbornly apathetic Pierre. "The lion took him home to rest and stayed on as a weekend guest," was one of my favorite lines in all of literature when I was a little girl. I also think it may have been the beginning of my understanding of how a story could have a "moral." CARE. And such a simple, profound moral it was, for all of us who had ever back-talked our moms in bored tones, sat backwards in our chairs, poured syrup in our hair -- or wanted to.

I also enjoyed Chicken Soup With Rice, another book in Sendak's little "nutshell" library. Perhaps my first understanding of personification? "In March the wind blows down the door and spills my soup upon the floor. It laps it up and roars for more!"

I was thinking a lot about these little books yesterday after I heard the news that Mr. Sendak had passed away at the age of 83. Truly the end of a chapter in children's literature.

In honor of his memory, I thought I would post links to two reviews I wrote some time ago. One is to a review of Sendak's book of essays Caldecott & Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures.  The other is to a review of the Leonard Marcus edited Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom (the great children's literature editor at Harper's who discovered Sendak when he was designing windows at FAO Schwarz).

Sendak was an amazing example of someone who took anxiety and fear and channeled them through an artistic process that gave life, hope, enjoyment and catharsis to so many. R.I.P. Mr. Sendak. You will be missed.

Of Stories and Supermoons...

One of the other lovely moments of this past weekend was when our little three-person family hunkered down in the windows of the sweet girl's room after dark on Saturday night so we could watch the supermoon rising over the nearby hills. It was an awesome sight -- big, bright, tinging the very dark clouds in front of it silver, highlighting the outlines of trees.

The sweet girl was hugely excited. A supermoon, after all, is a somewhat novel occurrence (it's what you call a full moon that coincides with the closest approach the moon makes to earth in its elliptical orbit) and we hadn't caught the last one, fourteen months before. She came up with a story idea about Luna, the moon who once in a while becomes a superhero, and we've been working on it together during language arts time -- a treat for us both, since we officially finished the year's grammar text last week.

Which reminds me...any teacher/writer folks out there, do you have any story writing websites or curricula you especially love or recommend? Especially for late elementary/middle grade years? So far I have trusted to our love of reading good stories and just the actual act of writing stories -- S. writes them often, and sometimes we write them together -- to incorporate lots of natural learning. But as she rounds the corner on her tenth birthday and we contemplate (gulp!) fifth grade in the fall, I've found myself wanting to look into some resources.

But back to the supermoon. I wrote this little poem, full of sibilant sounds, in honor of the event:

The supermoon

ascends silently,

slides past cloudbank,

seams a silver lining,

then stands sentinel over

sighing sycamores…

and shines.

Birthday Celebration, Gardening and Gershwin

My dear husband celebrated his birthday on Friday. He took the day off, which gave us the morning together as a family before the sweet girl and I trundled off to homeschool group for the afternoon. Then dear friends took her home for the evening, and he and I actually went out to dinner. I'm still reeling from D. having a whole day off (can't remember the last time that's happened!) and the two of us going on a date (can't remember the last time we were able to do that either). It was a lovely day.

The rest of the weekend was lovely too in many ways, though I've been battling tiredness and a sinus headache.

We got our plot assignment in the community gardens. A cause for great excitement! We loved our gardening project last year and couldn't wait to get started again. We planted a few seedlings and also some seeds. Waiting to see what comes up...one of my favorite parts of gardening.

It was also a very Gershwin weekend. He's been one of my favorite composers since I was sixteen, and the sweet girl has grown up knowing and loving his music, but we've been learning more about him because he's our composer of the month in this final month of school.  We showed her the ballet from American in Paris (which she loved) and spent a good bit of this afternoon (when we weren't out gardening) listening to the New York Rhapsody.  No, not the Rhapsody in Blue, but a much less known Rhapsody Gershwin did later. It's sometimes called Rhapsody in Rivets. It sounds deliciously familiar -- so Gershwiny -- and yet new too. A great combination.

So many more blessings I could recount from the past few days...including some amazing God moments in our community. Oddly, following such a moving and gratitude filled few days, I am feeling a bit flat and not ready to face the new week...though I suspect that's got more to do with not feeling well than anything else.

At any rate, the new week is here, so onward I go!

Poems and Secret Places

The sweet girl and I have been enjoying The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury this week. Its over 200 poems represent over 130 poets, and all of them were chosen by the wonderful Jack Prelutsky. It turns out that Mr. Prelutsky, whose poems have long been a favorite at our house, is as terrific a selector as he is a poet. And Meilo So's gentle watercolor illustrations make the book extra lovely.

It's hard to know what's more enjoyable when reading a collection like this, coming across poems you already love (the ones that feel like old friends) or discovering new gems. Both are highly pleasurable experiences for poetry readers! I loved seeing the sweet girl's face light up when we came across Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Afternoon on a Hill." That's long been a favorite of mine too, and she memorized it this year -- one of my favorite fourth grade language arts moments. I felt my own face light up when I stumbled onto Langston Hughes' "April Rain Song."

But there were some new ones in here I loved too...new to me and new to the sweet girl. One that really stirred both our hearts this morning was Dennis Lee's "The Secret Place." It begins:

There's a place I go, inside myself,
     Where nobody else can be.
And none of my friends can tell it's there --
      Nobody knows but me.

(You can read the rest of it here, at Canadian Poetry online.) 

I love how this poem captures the inner, dreaming place we all have inside us -- that intimate place that nobody knows but God and us.  I love how he describes the place as "tiny" and "shiny" but then adds, in practically the same breath, that "it's big as the sky at night." Yes. Tiny and intimate, like a swirled shell, but expansive as the ocean. Readers of all ages can resonate with a poem like this. For my nine year old who is beginning to ask more and more for "privacy" (especially when she's reading, creating art, writing stories) it rang clear as a bell. But it rang that way for me too.

Maybe especially so because it happens to be situated on a page with another poem called "Tree Climbing." Kathleen Fraser's poem begins "This is my tree,/my place to be alone in,/my branches for climbing,/my green leaves for hiding in."  Some of my best childhood memories involve spending time in my inner secret place while spending time in a leafy outer secret place -- a favorite seat in the butterfly bush in the back yard, or in the front yard maple. Not having many green, leafy hiding places one of the challenges of raising a child in an urban environment. It makes me doubly glad for the power of imagination and for poems like these.

End of Month Musings

I didn't mean to disappear from the blogosphere this month. It's just been an exceptionally busy season in our lives, and a tiring one. I often have things I want to share -- especially about what I'm reading -- flit through my mind. Sometimes part of the thoughts even make it to draft status! Hopefully in the coming weeks, I will get back to a regular posting rhythm. I do miss writing here.

I miss writing period. In April, I was hoping to return to work on my mid-grade fairy-tale. Didn't happen. I also had an essay in the works (I was looking at a submission deadline mid-month) and a short story (submission deadline today) and I wasn't able to do either one, though both projects got started via research and a bit of writing. Instead I've been teaching, grading, editing, ghost-writing articles, penning an occasional review. So yes...I guess I am still writing...just not getting to the writing I hoped to get to.

I had also hoped to spend more time with poetry during Poetry Month. The sweet girl and I enjoyed our regular visits to 30 Poets/30 Days over at Gotta Book (finishing today) and read some other poetry as well. I wrote a handful of poems early in the month. At least I think I did...it's all starting to blur! Another thing I'd hoped to do: get back to blogging my way through A Wrinkle in Time. So loving the lovely 50th anniversary edition I received for my birthday.

A few brief family reading notes as we turn the corner on May.

We finished The Book of Three during evening family reading this month. So much fun to begin the Prydain series out loud. We loved introducing the characters -- I love doing the voices! I think we will likely move onto The Black Cauldron sometime in May.

At the moment, we've side-tracked into Betsy-Tacy. The sweet girl begged so hard to go on to the high school books, I caved. She loves the first four so much. I've had my doubts about going onto the older Betsy books this early, and now that we're 2/3 of the way through, I'm realizing I probably should have trusted my instincts. I love the h.s. Betsy books, and have since I was about 11, but Betsy certainly is dealing with older girl issues. In Heaven to Betsy, her insecurities often cause her to doubt herself and to present a "mask" to the world (hiding her true feelings). It's part of why I love Betsy (so real, so authentic) but my youngish nine year old isn't quite "getting" why Betsy has changed so much from the last book.

During our morning reading time this month, we read Pollyanna -- a delightful surprise. Despite its classic status, I'd never read the book, and I found it sweet and thoughtful -- holding its own within the "girl's book" genre of its era. Reading it also gave me an idea for yet another writing project I don't have time for!

What We Look At (& How It Shapes Us)

There's an interesting article making the social network rounds, at least within my little community of connections. It's entitled "Your Children Want You!" and is written by blogger April Perry.

Her main point is that our children want us, not some facsimile of supermom we've dreamed up through our mesmerized meditations on what we see other moms "out there" doing -- other moms we don't know, but whose beautiful, crisp-photo-essay lives are spilled out for everyone to see on Pinterest, Facebook, magazines, and other "virtual" gathering places.

I agree it's a thoughtful and encouraging article, well-written and timely. What surprises me is that this hasn't been said before now, loud and clear. Perhaps it has been, and I've just missed it. Beyond the good, encouraging word of the article itself lurk some hard questions I think we could be asking ourselves, questions that really get at the heart of our spiritual lives.

Why do we compare ourselves to others?
Why do we constantly feel we fall short?
Why do we dream so hard about what we don't have?

(And if you're answering, "the power of sin and a broken world" for every question, I won't disagree with you...though how that plays out for each of us is unique as well as similar. I also think there can be such a thing as a "holy discontent" that can compel us to create, be, and do things to help change our the circumstances around us...but that's probably a topic for another post.)

Beyond the prognosis and recognition of our own brokenness come the pro-active questions. What can we do about this? How can we stop comparing ourselves to unknown, glossy standards of "good, best, better"? How do we root ourselves in our worth in God? How can we cultivate contentment and gratitude on a daily basis?

And the questions get harder...how does spending all the "virtual" time we spend, especially time looking at other people's lives (or the snippets they choose to share from their lives) affect us? Beyond spending more time in actual, face-to-face relationships, what pictures and words could we be looking at to counterbalance all of the "perfection" we often drool over?

And other interesting questions could be raised too. Why are we driven to look at the beautiful things other people create? Because one thing that online communities have certainly opened up to us is an increased awareness of the amazing creativity of other people, and the ways they are shaping their lives and the lives of their children and families. Those things do not have to lead us to despair over our own inadequacies. They can, in fact, be causes for celebration and thankfulness. How do we learn to appreciate and learn from those things we see while remaining our own unique creative shape? In a world that contains so much brokenness, suffering, poverty, and need, what place should beauty, and the creation of beauty in our lives, have?

He Didn't Have to Make Asparagus

The exhausting spring continues. I won't bore you with the details of the exhaustion and stress, but they are very real, and I am very tired. But I am also hanging on and finding new ways to count blessings and gifts every day...

Today's little blessing that made me realize anew the goodness of God? Fresh asparagus.

I'm not joking. This was just a flat-out crazy-busy day with so much stress (it's also going to be a late working night) and though I ate a little bit throughout the day, I hadn't really eaten much. When it was time to make dinner, I was poking half-heartedly through the fridge and then remembered I'd bought a bunch of fresh asparagus on a big sale at the market. That perked me up. I trimmed, steamed, and sauteed it in a little butter and garlic. And it was sooooo good.

And it dawned on me, with great seriousness, that God did not have to make asparagus. Or butter. Or garlic. The variety and richness of his gifts, even seemingly small and ordinary ones, is astonishing.

It's funny but not surprising that it was something green that turned my heart Godward. It often is.

Slow-Cooked Days: Easter Dinner

I heart my slow cooker. I've been using it more and more, enjoying the delicious (and easy, hearty and economical) meals I can cook up in it without much fuss. I especially enjoy the way a little bit of planning and chopping can free up big chunks of my day to do other things.

I ended up using the slow cooker for Easter dinner, and it came out quite nicely. We'd picked up a whole chicken on a major sale at the local grocery store a few weeks back. On Friday afternoon, I moved the chicken from freezer to fridge, and on Sunday morning, it only took me about five minutes of preparation to get it ready for slow cooking all day. I washed and dried the chicken, applied a bit of olive oil and a generous rub of freeze-dried poultry spices, then threw it in the crockpot with some water (so it would make extra broth) and a couple of tablespoons of butter. I put the whole thing on low and cooked it for 8-9 hours. By dinnertime it was moist and juicy. And I've got plenty of leftovers for at least two more meals, including enough broth and small chicken pieces to do a nice chicken soup this week.

Since the sweet girl is not a chicken fan ("Oh look! Chicken bones! Cool! Except...oooh, oh. That means that's a real chicken that got killed so we could eat it. Yuk..." -- yes, she comes by her vegetarianism honestly) I made one of her favorite dishes to go along with it. If the chicken was mostly for D., the rumbledethump was mostly for S. I just love saying the world rumbledethump. It's a delicious potato-based dish based on colcannon recipes. I learned it from Recipes from the Root Cellar . We probably eat it at least once a month. It's a hearty dish made from potatoes, onions, cabbage, a little butter and cheese, some salt and pepper. Last night I made roasted carrots (olive oil and Spike seasoning) to go with it, and also dished up some jarred unsweetened applesauce sprinkled with some cinnamon/sugar. The sweet girl managed two small bites of chicken (more than I expected; I don't mind when she goes full-blown vegetarian) but the rumbledethump, carrots, and applesauce provided plenty of hearty food even without the chicken.

All in all, a delicious, simple meal that was amazingly economical. I am determined to continue to find ways to feed good, real food to my family in the midst of hard times, so this meal felt like a winner.

Edited to add: when thinking about what to do with the leftover chicken for tonight, I suddenly remembered I had leftover ratatouille in the fridge from late last week. Score! Cut up chicken pieces sauteed with the ratatouille = yummy chicken cacciatore-ness.

Resurrection Fruit

Ransomed forever
Everlastingly free
Supremely joyful
Under death no more
Real life in abundance
Ruled by the King
Endlessly in love
Creation renewed
Tomorrows secure
Indescribably empowered
Only His
Night gives way to day

~EMP, 4/8/12

The Poet Laureate of Spring

A new poem for you today, born of my musings on the beauties of spring and how my heart always turns to Robert Frost this time of year. Happy Poetry Month!


Come join me in the land of Spring,
where tulips play a fanfare on the trumpet,
a field of blue flags is unfurled,
and the dogwoods are yipping and barking.

Looking as though his heart might melt,
Mr. Frost was given the key to the city,
a key as emerald as the grass where he stood:
poet laureate of all that’s green and fair and good.

~EMP 4/4/12

"You Know, Kind of Like Serenity..."

In the midst of this long, ongoing season of deep stress and exhaustion, I keep being amazed by the wonderfulness of God. What I love is when he provides those lovely, unexpected moments that make me laugh outright, or tear up with sudden beauty and gratitude, or just plain feel like hugging the world.

So often he sends those moments through my family.

One of the hardest pieces of the past very hard month has been lack of almost any time to write. This after the first couple months of the year when I felt like I'd dived back into some creative work with more zest and vitality than I'd felt in years. The novel I was writing -- yes, I just used the word novel -- was almost compelling me to the computer every late night and early morning, begging to be written even in tiny snatches. I loved every scrap of the time I got, even as I began to realize the writing time tunnel was narrowing to an almost close again. For the past few weeks, any writing time I can squeeze has been of the writing anything quickly for pay variety since I'm busy trying to fight wolfish creditors (where are Taran and the sword Dyrnwyn when you need them?) and to help keep food on the table.

Frankly, I miss my characters. I miss them so much it almost aches. But there's nothing I can do about it at the moment beyond keep missing them, and keep mulling their story in the late night snatches when I can't sleep.

This morning, the sweet girl was talking to me about one of her own stories. Yes, she's a story-teller and writer too, which I love. She was explaining something to me about one of her characters, who is eighteen, but not quite an adult, she explained earnestly, because in this world, you didn't really come of age until you were twenty. My tired brain thought that sounded familiar. And then she said, wonderfully casually, "You know, kind of like Serenity..."

Serenity is one of my characters. She is a princess, set to inherit a throne she is not quite ready for. Her wise mother is the acting regent; her beloved father has been missing for years. She's 19, on the cusp of 20, the age at which she will be considered old enough to become queen. She's trying to become ready for her royal responsibilities in the face of an imminent war. Circumstances have forced her to have to choose a suitor from the very people they most fear.

And she's real. Not just real to me. Real enough for my lovely nine year old, who has heard more of the actual written story than anyone else in the world, to mention her name so casually that it took me a few seconds to realize what she'd done. Real enough for my daughter to use her story as a frame of reference for her own creative story. Real enough that my daughter keeps encouraging me to write again because she wants to find out what happens to Serenity and to Winifred and Garron and to all of the peoples of Radmost and Charis.

I'm not sure there's a better gift someone can give a writer than to care about the story they're trying to tell, and to love their characters. What a great gift that was to me today.

A Narrowed Focus (Holy Week into Easter)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Favorite Literary Detectives: Adding Dalgleish to the List

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

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

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

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

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

When David Gets Cranxious

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

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

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

So today I felt cranxious.

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

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

And what did I hit first? Psalm 69.

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

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

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

Learning to Make Do

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Book to Fall In Love With

I need a book I can fall in love with.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flowers and Ribbons (The Practice of Spiritual Reading)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Annual Crocus Poem

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

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

Happy leaping today!

*****

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

~EMP, 2/28/12

*****

5 More Minutes With Jesus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mama's got a brand new bag.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trying to Count Birds and Blessings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Highway Song for Valentine's Day (Luci Shaw)

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

Highway Song for Valentine's Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


~Luci Shaw

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

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

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

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

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

Happy reading and viewing!

Lindbergh, Paper Airplanes, and the "Nakamura Lock"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy 200th, Mr. Dickens!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 1: Mrs. Whatsit

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

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

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

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