Bernard, Francis, Anselm

"O gentle Jesus, turn Thee unto me; What I have broken do Thou bind in me, And what is crooked make Thou straight in me; What I have lost restore Thou unto me, And what is weak and sickly heal in me."  ~St. Bernard of Clairvaux

That beautiful prayer was posted this evening on the Renovare page on facebook. I was happy to see it, both because I needed its heartfelt words, and because I've been thinking a good bit about Bernard of Clairvaux.

We started our introduction to the Crusades yesterday, and as usual, I am finding Bernard a tough guy to figure out. I like to segue into church history whenever I can in the course of our usual history studies, and during this period of the Middle Ages, with the church in such a position of power and cultural influence (for good and for ill) it's easy to make that jump.

What to say about Bernard? One of the most influential preachers of his age, he seemed to overflow with a true love for Christ ("gentle Jesus") and an understanding of his own deep failures. Yet he preached the first Crusade. Granted, we can't hold him responsible for all that came after, in that war or subsequent ones, but it's still hard to reconcile that fact with some of his prayers. At least for me at the moment.

Interesting side note: out of curiosity I went looking in our library system to see if I could find anything age-appropriate about Bernard for children. One book title popped up, and it was some sort of anthology (and only available as reference, not for check-out). By contrast, a quick search on children's resources on Francis of Assisi returned 34 titles, some of them quite recent. There seems to be about one new children's book on Francis each year. It's just interesting to see which saints speak to (or "translate") to our time and culture -- or at least seem to translate according to whomever is deciding what's appropriate and edifying for kids to read about saints.

And one more note: really thankful as we discussed the Crusades to have St. Anselm's prayers and meditations close to hand. We read from his prayer for his enemies. So good to have that clear, clear, humble prayer washing in from the past and landing on our shores yesterday.

Reading Round-Up: End of January

The bitter cold for much of the month has had me staying in more. It's also made me want to curl up in a cave and read for the duration of the winter.

Lots of good books on tap this January...some I've finished, and some I'm still meandering through. Here's a peek at what I've been reading.

Having finished Alister McGrath's biography of C.S. Lewis, I've been enjoying the letters of Joy Davidman Gresham Lewis collected by Don King in Out of My Bone. I confess about half-way through, I skimmed forward to the end, but now am going back to read the final half of the book more fully. What a fascinating woman she was, and what a lively voice in her letters!

Ever since reading an essay on Elizabeth Enright (whom I've known for years as a writer of stories for children...we especially love her delightful books about the Melendy family) I've been wanting to read some of the short stories she wrote for adults. I finally got my hands on an old collection from the library system, whose thick teal cover and smudgy yellowing pages is reminding me of a high school textbook. What loveliness inside the covers of A Moment Before the Rain though. I love her way with description and how she sees so swiftly to the heart of ordinary things.

Alan Jacobs has graced the world with a terrific"biography" of the Book of Common Prayer, the very book I always wanted to read about the BCP. It's encapsulating what I know already in a beautifully written summation, and it's surprising me with fresh insights. What more can you ask? Plus who doesn't love the notion of a biography of a book? Because a book (especially one with this long and complex a history) does indeed take on a life of its own.

Taking fortifying sips from Richard J. Foster's Sanctuary of the Soul, a sustaining book on meditative prayer. A lot of these insights will sound familiar if you've read other books by Foster, but they bear repeated hearing, and it's nice to see them all in one place in a book focused specifically on this one topic.

Our continued journeys into better mental health has me trying to find new ways both to deal with my own stress and help the sweet girl cope with her anxieties. Michelle L. Bailey's book Parenting Your Stressed Child is helping me navigate a better understanding of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). There are some good breathing exercises I'm finding especially helpful.

Family read-aloud finds us plowing through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Yes, we've reached the darker part of the HP epic. It took the sweet girl a while to get used to angry, angsty adolescent Harry (didn't it take time for us all?) and her sensitivities to injustice, always high, have positively quivered with rage in response to the terrible Professor Umbridge, but it's been a good read for us so far. And oh my, how much fun to read these characters' voices. As villainous as Umbridge is, she is also hilarious (a tribute to JK Rowling's writing) and reading her "high, girlish" voice, so at odds with the tyrannous and oppressive things she's declaring, and making her high-pitched throat-clearings is a lot of fun. I love reading other voices too, from Hermione's even handed earnestness to Dumbledore's slow, careful cadences and everything in between. Plus...you know...it's just fun to read British words like "git" on a regular basis (thank you, Ron). 

The sweet girl and I enjoyed Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (another read-aloud this month) and she and I both read (independently of each other, but agreeing we loved it) Kevin Henkes' The Year of Billy Miller, which recently won a Newbery honor. Light, innocent fare with sweetly drawn characters you root for, especially Billy himself.  I've heard it described as Ramona for boys, but Billy, likable as he is, is not nearly as mischievous as Ramona (though he does worry a lot, just as she does). Something about the book put me more in mind of the old-fashioned Betsy books by Carolyn Heywood, though of course with a contemporary feel. Billy's little sister Sal is especially well drawn (and her name, perhaps, a tribute to Robert McCloskey? Hmm...that possibility just dawned on me) and their relationship feels so true to sibling-hood.

Oh, and I found Jane Langton! I read her first Homer Kelly mystery, written back in the 1960s, The Transcendental Murder, and found myself laughing aloud. She "gets" Concord so beautifully, and draws delightful characters. Turns out I actually knew her work from years ago (I'd read her children's book The Diamond in the Window) but didn't realize it was the same author until I looked her up.

ALA Awards Announced: Newbery, Caldecott & Lots of Other Goodies!

I was really excited to hear that Kate DiCamillo won her second Newbery Medal yesterday. She is one of my favorite authors writing for children today. I reviewed Flora and Ulysses, the winning novel, back in November. Both the sweet girl and I really enjoyed this unusual tale about a girl and a superhero squirrel!

I just finished reading Kevin Henkes' The Year of Billy Miller, which won a Newbery honor. A review of that is forthcoming. Henkes, if you're not familiar with him, is both a fine author and a delightful illustrator (he's won a Caldecott in addition to Newbery honors). He also plows picture book and early reader ground in addition to writing stories for middle-grade readers. One of my favorite Henkes picture books is Old Bear, which I reviewed back in 2009.

Brian Floca won the Caldecott for Locomotive. It looks like a lovely book. While I didn't know any of the Caldecott books this year (proof positive that I'm just not spending enough time in picture book land these days) I did recently review Kadir Nelson's beautifully illustrated book Nelson Mandela, which won a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor yesterday.

For a full round-up of yesterday's awards, see the article at Publisher's Weekly. You can click through to some fun interviews of DiCamillo and Floca from that page as well.

By the way, all of my review links here go to reviews I've written at Epinions. I make a (very) modest amount of income from these reviews...so modest that the amount I've earned on most of them, even those that have been up for years, might buy a cup of tea, depending on where I buy it. Basically I write book reviews for the joy of writing book reviews, and because I love recommending good books for fellow readers. If you enjoy any of these reviews and think you know someone else who might benefit from them, please pass them on. And if there's a book (especially a children's book) that you'd enjoy seeing me review, let me know, and I'll see what I can do!

Forests and Trees

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the expression “she can’t see the forest for the trees.” It’s an old expression (wonder where it came from?) and so familiar that it’s become trite, but trite expressions usually become that way because there’s truth in them.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that when we get stuck in our problems, enmeshed in the exhausting business of just making it through the next round of whatever it is we need to make it through, we really do lose perspective. Fast.

Losing perspective is hard. When you’re busy just looking at the trees that loom all around you, or even the one giant tree (maybe fallen over, blocking your path) you sometimes can’t think of anything else. In true times of emergency or crisis, maybe it’s a blessing that our vision gets so narrowed, but I’m talking about other times, times when a given challenge in our lives (or a combination of challenges) just leaves us so bone weary that all we can think about is that one tree right in front of us.

It becomes huge. Why are its limbs so scratchy? Why is it so big? How are we ever going to get over it or past it or around it? Is there even a way? Why does forward feel so impossible?

We look at it and we lose ourselves in the details of that one thing to the point that we can’t even begin to look all around us. We lose the sense that there are other paths possible around the tree. We lose gratitude for anything good about the tree. We forget we’re in a forest that has other things in it too – not just other trees but grass and plants and bushes and birds and rabbits and sun filtering through branches and dancing shadows. We forget that the forest is in a larger world and that there’s sky above it and that all of it, all of it, is owned by the maker of everything. And that the maker of everything can help us.

Sometimes I think we need to learn to walk away from the tree. Not permanently, but just for a while. Whatever the tree is, we can trust it with God. We can walk into another part of the forest and breathe deep for a while, breathe slow, breathe peace and prayers. Maybe when we walk back to the tree, it won’t loom quite so huge or take up all our mental space and emotional energy. Maybe we can even begin to remember the beauty of the forest all around us.

History Lesson Planning (for Intuitive Teachers and Semi-Reluctant Learners)

History is one of my great enthusiasms. I could spend far more time than I already do reading and pondering history. Cultural history and personal history embedded in good cultural history are some of my favorite things to read. In fact, the older I get, the more likely I am to drift over to the new non-fiction shelves at the library to check out the latest biographies or history books – first, before I head to new fiction.

The sweet girl, now eleven, enjoys listening to history, but it has not become one of her great learning and reading passions. Yet. (I live in hope.) While she’s taken more ownership of almost every other major subject in her schooling – math, science, language arts – she still needs me to take her by the hand in history. She will read and write what I assign, usually good-naturedly and sometimes grudgingly, but what she most enjoys is listening to good history narratives read aloud. We also talk history a lot at mealtimes and other family times.

As we study medieval history this year, that means we still do a lot of read-aloud time. I read from various books – good secondary sources, and sometimes also primary sources – and she draws while she listens, stopping me occasionally to ask questions or make a comment. Or I will stop midway through and review with her, asking some prompting questions, always pleasantly surprised by how much she’s heard and retained. (That’s partly due to the narration techniques we put into place during the grammar years. Good foundation!) Sometimes I give mini-lectures if it’s an area I know well, like church history. Sometimes we listen to Diana Waring lectures on CD, something she has enjoyed very much.

Although I let her draw while she listens, I do try to keep visuals open in front of her, which I refer to, and she stops and looks at while we work – maps, encyclopedia pages, books from the library. I’ve also been encouraging the pretty much every-lesson-use of her timeline. In earlier learning years, we would take a day every so often and do lots of timeline work at once; nowadays she keeps her timeline book handy and when I’m reading or sharing information, I will suddenly say – “and that’s probably an important date for your timeline.” She’ll pick it up and add it. (My secret goal is to have her begin to figure that out and do it on her own before the end of year…we’ll see how it goes.)

Lesson planning for this kind of learning has taken me a while to figure out, because I’m an intuitive kind of history teacher…I think “let’s just read that until it sparks something else interesting and then we’ll find something to read about that…” I think I’ve finally discovered how to make this work though. Here’s a rough idea of how I currently lesson plan for history. If you’re an intuitive history teacher, or have a semi-reluctant history student, maybe this will help you too.

• When I prepare my history lessons, I think through where we want to go next geographically and chronologically. Once I’ve made that decision, I think through the important people and events I will likely want to cover within the new section.
• I survey my resources and decide what books we will likely draw from. Right now I use several main resources a lot: Story of the World 2 (Medieval Times); Romans, Reformers, Revolutionaries; and the Greenleaf Guide to Famous Men of the Middle Ages. But I am also likely, on any given day, to pull from Monks and Mystics, English Literature for Boys and Girls, Blackline Maps of World History, and any number of library resources which I try to put on hold about two weeks before I may need them.
• I think through any primary sources or supplemental resources online that might help us.
• I note chapter and/or pages numbers in my resources, so I can flip right to them and not spend inordinate amounts of time hunting for things once we’re settled in for a learning session.
• I think through anything I might want her to actively do (besides listen) during the session. Probably timeline, sometimes map work, sometimes further independent reading or writing. I’ve not been having her outline much this year, probably because that’s a skill she’s still actively working on learning in our writing curriculum (and she’s doing a fair amount of it there). This may be something I have her do more of next year.

I also am discovering that it’s nice to sketch out what I think a lesson will look like and keep it handy to refer to, but that I often move in different directions, as the need or enthusiasm arises. So I keep my original lesson plan written down, but at the end of lesson time, I write down what we actually did and how that will work as a springboard for the next lesson.

Flexibility is the key here. I might discover, as I did today, that I want us to spend a whole other session on a given topic before moving on the lesson I had originally scheduled next. As long as you keep a tentative goal in mind, in terms of what you hope to cover for a semester or year, slowing down (or speeding up) really isn’t that big of an issue. I’d rather have us pursue a learning trail that really catches her interest than rush past it in an attempt to stick to some pre-written lesson plan.

As an example, here’s what I thought we were going to do today in history. My original plan read:

Wednesday, January 8 – The Vikings invade England (SOTW) and Alfred the Great. We’ll use both SOTW and Diana Waring (beginning around p. 133) for this day. We’ll also spend a little bit of time enjoying some stanzas from G.K. Chesterton’s Ballad of the White Horse (about Alfred the Great) which can be found here at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1719/1719-h/1719-h.htm  Time permitting, have S. read the Alfred the Great chapter from Greenleaf and do some writing in her notebook.

Here’s how I amended this lesson at the end of the day:

We DID use both SOTW and Waring on Alfred and the Vikings, but I decided to read the section from English Literature for Boys and Girls instead of having Sarah read from Greenleaf. I’ve assigned her that reading…and some of the reading from the Alfred the Great Jackdaw…in preparation for a description she’s going to write of Alfred. We didn’t get to the Chesterton, but I think I will pull some of that together Monday. With our French studies beginning then, I think I will likely only have S. work on her Alfred report that day, rather than pushing ahead to Battle of Hastings.

While I’m aware that this kind of flexible planning might not work for everyone (and would, in fact, probably drive some types of teachers/learners crazy) it works for us. And one of the beauties of homeschooling is that I know I have the freedom to change this up if it’s not working well, or when it’s time to challenge her to even more independence in history learning.

Surprised by Lack of Joy: A Review of Alister McGrath's C.S. Lewis: A Life

C.S. Lewis’ writing has fundamentally shaped the way I look at the world. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way about Lewis, whose work—as scholar, fantasy writer, theologian, and apologist— has profoundly influenced and shaped many people.

When you know the general contours of someone’s life and thought, it can be pure pleasure to rehearse those lines again, and picking up a biography about him can be an exercise in familiar delight. On the other hand, a new biography is precisely that – new – and there’s always the realization that by the time you reach the end of it, you will undoubtedly have learned things you never knew before. Even when it’s a biography of someone you know well, a guide has opened up a new doorway into their world, and it can take a while to feel at home there.

So slipping into Alister McGrath’s C.S. Lewis – A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet was both a foray into an unknown country and an exploration of a landscape that looked hauntingly familiar. It turned out not to be the most exhilarating walk I’d ever taken in Lewis country. Nonetheless, there were signs and wayposts that I enjoyed there, and I can see why it’s been lauded as an important book.

Let me list a few of the elements that make it valuable:

• A solid, comprehensive book, it provides a fairly detailed chronology of Lewis’ life and writings. McGrath, himself an Oxford professor, is the first biographer to have taken full advantage of the complete letters of Lewis (edited by Walter Hooper) now available. He names the letters the backbone of his narrative.

•  The book is valuable for its notes and lengthy works consulted list alone, and the acknowledgments read like a “who’s who” of recent, important Lewis scholarship. He is indebted to conversations with some of my favorite recent writers on Lewis, such as Alan Jacobs and Michael Ward.

•  I think this is probably also the first Lewis biography I’ve ever seen that so carefully works through the books published in his lifetime, weaving them into the chronology of Lewis’ life. It’s eye-opening to see what was going on in Lewis’ life when he was working on certain books, and what experiences in his life and thinking helped shape his canon. McGrath also provides a synopsis of each work. This feels especially valuable with some of Lewis’ older and lesser-known works like The Pilgrim’s Regress.

•  It provides detailed evidence, mostly based on careful noting of dates in letters, that in Surprised by Joy, Lewis named the wrong year (1929) for his conversion to Christianity. McGrath argues convincingly that the date should be 1930, a point I found interesting but belabored. It’s not extraordinary that Lewis, who never much liked numbers, might have gotten the date mixed up, and while it’s interesting that previous scholars haven’t noticed or brought attention to the slip, there’s little to be said for the significance of the later dating beyond the fact that it makes a great deal of emotional and spiritual sense to realize that Lewis’ father’s death probably compelled him forward in his faith journey. Given Lewis’ complicated relationship with his father, and the remorse he felt later about his treatment of his father when he was ill, it would be hard not to speculate that his father’s death had that kind of influence, though since Lewis himself doesn’t seem to write about that anywhere, it’s hard to take the thought much further.

Beyond the book’s general comprehensiveness, McGrath brought out some important insights that I hadn’t pondered much before. Here are a few of the insights I found most memorable:

• Lewis’ identity as someone who was born and raised (till the age of 10) in Belfast, and then spent the majority of his life in England. McGrath, himself an Oxford transplant from Belfast, raises interesting thoughts about why Ireland has not embraced Lewis as a native son, and about Lewis’ conscious self-identity as a British rather than (nationalist) Irish writer. “His Irish identity, inspired by Ireland’s landscape rather than its political history, would find its expression in the literary mainstream, not one of its ‘side-tracks,’” writes McGrath, adding “Lewis may have chosen to rise above the provinciality of Irish literature; he nevertheless remains one of its most luminous and famous representatives.” (pp 13-14) He leaves that intriguing thought there; other writers, like Harry Blamires, have explored the question of Lewis’ intrinsic Irishness in more depth.

•  Lewis’ brilliance as a scholar but his sometimes uneasy fit within the world of academia. McGrath’s understanding of the British school system and particularly the world of Oxford was very helpful for this American woman with a humble master’s degree. I still don’t pretend to understand all the politics of Lewis’ Oxford days, but having a deeper glimpse into that world helped me to at least begin to understand how oddly Lewis (with his very public commitment to Christianity) was perceived by some of his colleagues and why he was passed over for scholarly chairs and honors that he seemed to deserve.

•  The differing and yet overlapping seasons of Lewis’ work as apologist and writer of imaginative fiction. McGrath neatly debunks, as have some others before him, the notion that it was Lewis’ public drubbing in a debate with Elizabeth Anscombe that caused him to make an abrupt turn from apologetics to the writing of imaginative fantasy. This odd speculation by earlier Lewis biographer A.N. Wilson doesn’t hold water, and McGrath pokes satisfying holes in the theory. To do this, he relies first on his understanding of the nature of the Socratic Club, helping readers to see that this debate was in the tried and true academic vein of one colleague offering a sharp and specific scholarly critique to another. While Lewis clearly didn’t enjoy the public setting-down, he appreciated Anscombe’s critique of his particular argument enough to use it to hone his argument in a subsequent revision of the pertinent chapter in Miracles. Secondly, McGrath makes the valid point that Lewis’ supposed turn to imaginative fiction, and its ability to capture minds and hearts and to convey theological convictions, had already begun a number of years before when he wrote the Ransom trilogy.

• What he does take up quite helpfully is Lewis’ growing weariness in the role of public apologist, not for any abrupt reason (like being bested in one debate) but for a host of interwoven and very human reasons. This included Lewis’ weariness with public life in general: publicity seemed to weigh heavily on him, not only because it affected his professional, academic life, but because he took his role as apologist so seriously. He also suggests that the post-war Lewis was beginning to feel as though it was time to make room for younger voices in the field. McGrath also speculates that Lewis felt weary because, with all his success as an apologist, he felt singularly unsuccessful in his ability to convince two of the closest people in his life of the validity and importance of the Christian faith. He writes: “Mrs. Moore remained hostile to Christianity throughout her later life, and (Arthur) Greeves moved away from his somewhat austere Ulster Protestantism to an equally austere Unitarianism.” (p. 259) This is a consideration I had never pondered, but given his long-term affection and loyalty to both of these people, it rings heart-rendingly true.

• McGrath’s biography also provides an entire section, two chapters out of fifteen, to Narnia. Within these chapters, he provides a good but by necessity somewhat cursory overview of the creation of the series and its place in Lewis’ canon and overall legacy. He covers many issues of importance to Narnia readers and scholars, including the preferred reading order of the books (and what Lewis said and didn’t say about that); the recent important interpretive lens of medieval cosmology that Michael Ward has presented as a key to unlocking further meaning and depth in the series; and a brief response to critics who charge Lewis with misogyny. While I can understand his desire to acknowledge that issue, I almost wish he hadn’t taken it up at all given the lack of space and time he was able to give it, as it basically just rehashes old issues without offering substantive analysis or defense. He makes the suggestion that Lewis was ahead of his time but behind our own (an odd assertion and one that smacks a bit of chronological snobbery).

My main struggles with the biography both centered, ironically, around joy.

The first and easiest challenge to pinpoint is McGrath’s treatment of Lewis’ relationship with his wife Joy Davidman Gresham. He paints Lewis’ relationship with Davidman (as he refers to her) in an almost completely negative light. At first, I was puzzled by the tone and thought perhaps I was either mistaking it or that he would eventually, given their happiness in their final years together, move toward a more positive assessment, but it never really happened.

While it’s true that Lewis’s relationship with Joy was unusual from the first, and remained puzzling to some of Lewis’ close friends, it seemed odd to me that McGrath was so selective about what and whom he chose to quote. For a biography that seems to be attempting some critical distance from its subject (he resists the use of Jack in referring to Lewis, he doesn’t seem to overtly rely on conversations with anyone still alive who knew Lewis) the section on Lewis’ marriage seems awash with negative connotations. Davidman comes across as aggressive and predatory, and McGrath seems to see no sense in the fact that Lewis came to love her (he goes out of his way to point out that Ruth Pitter would have made a more likely soul mate for Lewis).

Lest you think I exaggerate, consider the language that McGrath uses as he begins to describe Joy and her relationship with Lewis. Others “sought Lewis’ advice, Davidman “sought his soul.” Her “intention” was “to seduce Lewis.” Her poems of the period show her intention “to melt” the glacial figure of Lewis “through a heady mixture of intellectual sophistication and physical allure” (p. 323). Her “real intention” in visiting England was to befriend Lewis. She “initiated” correspondence and contact. Lewis “hurriedly” replaced one “chaperone” with another when lunching with her (though McGrath readily admits no one actually used the word chaperone in this situation). Davidman “made all the moves” and perhaps saw Lewis as a “possible vehicle” in helping her transplant from the U.S. to England (pp 324-325).

And so on. I would go on, but it continues in that vein for the remainder of the section. McGrath seems so determined to debunk the Hollywood image of Joy (the movie “Shadowlands” took liberties when depicting her and her marriage to Lewis) but ends up creating an unsympathetic portrait that, in its own way, also feels inaccurate. No one who has read much about her would deny that Joy Davidman Gresham Lewis was a bold, sometimes brash, always passionate woman, but those attributes can have positive as well as negative connotations. McGrath’s dislike of her feels subtle but pervasive, painting her as a manipulative interloper whose only contribution was that she turned out to be a good “midwife” for some of Lewis’ later and best respected works, an appellation I think she justly not grudgingly deserves.

I was happy to see that I was not alone in my response to this section of McGrath’s book. For a fuller and very helpful response, I would recommend that you read Gina Dalfonzo’s “C.S. Lewis’ Joy in Marriage,” at Christianity Today, which not only corrects McGrath’s portrait on certain points but also presents some of Lewis’ own words about his wife. One would certainly hope that Lewis’ views in this important matter should be consulted and trusted.

One happy byproduct of my wrestling with this section is that it led me to the book Out of My Bone, the collected letters of Joy Davidman, edited by Don W. King and published by Eerdmans in 2009. I’m only 75 pages in, still deep into Joy’s pre-Christian, Communist years, and I have already laughed out loud and found myself nodding in deep appreciation for her literary insights, keen mind, and outright wit. The Davidman found there in her own words practically leaps off the pages.

In the end, that may have been my biggest overall struggle with McGrath’s biography of Lewis: no one, not even Lewis himself, leaps off the page. This portrait lacks vitality and joy. While it is easy to appreciate the neat and detailed orderliness of the account, especially the account of Lewis’ writings, the book seems to serve more as historical chronicle than interpretive biography, with the exception of a few places where some strong biases show through. Beyond chronology, there is no strong, overall lens to guide us through the narrative.

McGrath makes an interesting case, in his chapters on Narnia, for the importance of subtitles (which he sees as key to noting the proper reading order of the series). Taking a nudge from that, I tried to invest McGrath’s own subtitle “Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet” with more interpretive influence as I reflected on the book as a whole, but even that doesn’t help as much as I expected. Lewis’ genius has never been in question, and while he certainly had some eccentricities, it doesn’t seem to me that he had more than most complex people (and the older I get, the more convinced I become that almost everyone I know is complex). McGrath points out Lewis’ tendency toward secrecy in various aspects of his life, but I’m not sure how odd this tendency really is given his temperament and his life situation, including his brother’s alcoholism.

Nor am I entirely sure about the “reluctant prophet” part. Lewis once famously called himself a “reluctant convert,” but once he embraced the Christian faith, he did so with a winsome wholeheartedness. That doesn’t mean his faith didn’t have weary seasons or that his wrestling with his calling didn’t have times of raggedness, but the overall portrait one gets from Lewis’ own writings, and from those who knew him best, is that this was a man with an enormous love for God and people. While it is true that his prophetic critique of modernity did not always win him accolades or professional ease, he nonetheless chose to embrace that role, and the role of public apologist, despite the personal costs.

Some of Lewis’decisions likely brought him discomfort, but his overall embrace of his faith and calling seems to have moved him ever more deeply into joy. It’s this Lewis that I felt I caught only fleeting glimpses of in McGrath’s carefully researched narrative. God surprised Lewis by winning him to faith in the first place, and it seems likely that God continued to surprise him – with the opportunity to be a public voice for faith in wartime Britain, with the sudden vision of a faun in a wood that led him to write stories for children, with a brash, bold, and funny American woman who would become his beloved soul mate and  wife. Such surprises may not have always led to the easiest and most comfortable of lives, but they led Lewis into the places where God most  wanted him to be.

Thoughts to Ponder: Writers for Life

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

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

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

“Each of us should find a writer

we can read for the rest of our lives.”

sweetclipart.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Little Year in Review

Reflecting a bit on the year just past. Would love to hear your reflections too.

More reflections on favorite books from 2013 to come. For now...Happy 2014!

Someone/something you’re especially grateful for:  God’s love, and the sustaining prayers and caring of friends.

A special moment that stands out in your mind: Relaxing at the beach in Lake Erie with my husband and daughter.

A challenge or difficulty you faced: Helping someone I love go through something challenging and hard. Financial stress.

Something you learned as you navigated the above: To lean deeper and trust God for the strength I need.

A news moment that you recall with clarity: The death of Nelson Mandela.

Something or someone you missed: I miss my extended family (far-flung over geographic distance).

Something you feel nostalgic for: Respect for leaders and more civil conversations about issues of public concern.

A book you read and enjoyed: Listening for Madeleine by Leonard S. Marcus. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle.

A movie you enjoyed watching: Les Mis. Also Star Trek: Into Darkness.

A song you enjoyed listening to:  Speak, O Lord by Keith and Kristyn Getty.

Also Wild Child by Enya. (My eleven year old went crazy for Enya this year, and this song felt like the soundtrack to a lot of our days!)

An encouraging or inspiring quote you thought about:  "After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again." (~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

And from Galatians 5:22-23 (the Message):

"But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely."

Something you did that was new or surprising: Got past chapter 3 in the novel I’m writing. Earned more income from writing than teaching.

Something you wish you had more of in your life: Patience. And writing time.

Something you wish you had less of in your life: Worry.

A word or phrase that captures something about your year:  “My work…is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished” (Mary Oliver)

Why I'm So Glad Christmas is a Season

As I pondered writing about this today, it dawned on me that I wrote some reflections two years ago that never found their way here. These reflections are part of others I've written over the years that may (or may not) make it into my Advent and Christmas poetry collection one day.

I wrote this back on St. Stephen's Day (December 26) in 2011, hence some of the dated references. I hope you'll find something here worth pondering on this blessed seventh day of Christmas in 2013.

***********

This morning I took the trash out – two big bags worth, detritus leftover from yesterday’s Christmas celebration. Although this year I did not pile the wrapping paper scraps into the trash. My environmentally conscious nine year old, bless her, made me put it all in a box to take the borough paper recycling dumpster later.

Since we live over a warehouse in a building that belongs to the lumber yard next door, our trash dumpster is also in the lumber yard. Among other things, this means I get serenaded every time I take the trash out by the PA system that blares radio music left on for the lumber yard workers to hear while they pile wood and confer with customers and drive fork lifts.

The lumber yard was open this morning, though almost deserted. Either the workers were all inside having one more Monday morning after the holiday cup of coffee, or some of them had taken the day off. Certainly no customers were in sight, and no trucks moving about. But the office and store lights were on and the gate was open, so I shouldered my plastic bags like Santa and hoisted them into the dumpster.

The music on the PA system brought me up sharply. During most of the year, what plays on the radio doesn’t register with me when I take the trash out, especially if it’s advertising. I’m forty-three; I’ve gotten very good at tuning out commercials, one of the biggest wastes of brain energy ever encountered. Usually I am working out a story or musing on a poem or looking at the sky – or on more prosaic days (and they happen) – planning what to cook for dinner or thinking through my next language arts lesson with my daughter. I only pay attention to the sounds of the radio station if they’re playing music, and then often only if they’re playing a song I know and particularly like.

The couple of weeks or so before Christmas are different. The lumber yard tunes to one of the “oldies” stations that plays Christmas music all the time up until and through Christmas day. During cold, dark December days, I get used to trudging to the dumpster to tunes like “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” or (if I’m really blessed) “The First Noel.” (Yes, our oldies station will occasionally still throw an actual Christmas carol onto the playlist.)

So today I went trudging into the lumber yard, December 26, the second day of Christmas – and what do I hear? An old rock song from the 80’s. Not a Christmas carol. Not even a so-called secular Christmas anthem. Nothing Christmassy at all. And it slams home to me once more how the culture really doesn’t get Christmas.

It happens every year, but every year I forget it. Decorations come down swiftly, the stores sweep a few Christmas items onto sales shelves prelude to decking for Valentine’s Day, the radios stop playing Christmas music, even the bland songs that hardly feel like Christmas but at least pay minor lip-service to the time of year. People get back to work, most of them tired from staying up too late, some of them secretly glad the whole crazy holiday time is just “over” for another year. And I want to say “People? Seriously? We’re just getting started!”

There’s a reason there’s a whole Christmas season. The church, in its wisdom, has given us twelve whole wondrous days to celebrate the birth of Jesus – and we pack that calendar full of other celebrations and commemorations while we’re at it. On the 26^th (today) we get the feast day of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, on the 27^th we celebrate St. John, the apostle and evangelist, on the 28^th we remember the Holy Innocents who died at the hand of Herod. On January 1 we celebrate Holy Name day, remembering the day Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple to be circumcised and named (and were met by prophet Simeon and prophetess Anna, who sang and spoke over the holy child). And of course on the 6^th, traditionally known as 12^th night, it all culminates in Epiphany, when we remember the Wise Men who came from the East, following the star, and how they worshipped the young child who they knew to be the King of the Jews.

It makes such perfect sense that we continue to celebrate the unfolding story – not just of Jesus’ birth and the events that took place in the days and months after it – but the unfolding story of those who would follow after him in years to come. If this birth is what we say it is – the birth that changed everything, the birth of the only one who could come to save and rescue us, the coming of Almighty God into the world of space and time and skin – then everything changes. It’s not something we can sing about and shout about for one day, and then just sweep it all away and go back to business as usual. This birth changes everything.

I wonder sometimes if even people who really don’t have an understanding of the season – who aren’t sure why they celebrate Christmas except that it seems to be a culturally acceptable time to give and receive gifts and go to parties and take time off work (and listen to Christmas themed songs on the radio) – don’t feel the acute disappointment and strangeness of the swiftness of the workaday, everyday world’s return following the celebration. Even in dim culturally bound echoes, the Christmas season can burn so brightly. The festive foods, the time spent with family that you might not see any other time of year, the chance to give help to people who are truly in need, the brightly wrapped gifts, the lights on the trees (or the streetlamps or town gazebos). The scent of evergreen and ginger, plastic nativity scenes on lawns, bright flags flapping on porches, scarlet poinsettia plants gracing front halls.  Even in dim echoes, the celebration can sometimes stun us with beauty and moments of heart-rending heartache, like we’re seeing something out of the corner of our eye that takes our breath and calls us home.

I wonder too if we can’t take a clue from our ordinary, lived experience – the kind of ordinary, everyday, lived experience that God entered and forever hallowed in Jesus – and look at how we celebrate “ordinary” human birth and feel its aftermath. If you’ve ever given birth to a child, or welcomed a child into your family by adoption, you know how it feels in the weeks and months leading up to the grand event. You know the exhaustion and exhilaration of hard labor to bring that child into the world, or the anxious waiting to welcome that little one into your arms. You know that the day that baby is born, or brought home, is one of the most memorable, mountain-top experiences of your life. You could never, ever forget the way it feels. But you also come to know, through days, weeks, months, and years of parenting and learning to be a family, that the day was just the beginning. It stands out like a shining crystal, never to be forgotten, but it was just the beginning, the start of something beautiful and deep, a whole journey of learning to love that little person and make them part of your life.

Would it make sense to give birth to a baby, celebrate the fact giddily and gratefully for twenty-four hours, then say “Wow, that was great! Let’s do it again next year?” and go on living just the way you did before the baby was born, as though the event never happened? To not care for, cherish, and nourish the new life we’ve been given, to enfold that life and its rhythms and the way it shapes us into our ordinary everyday?

Of course not. Nor does it make any sense to prepare for weeks leading up to Christmas, celebrate it in giddy joy for twenty-four hours, then cart all the leftover detritus to the dumpster to workaday music and try to get back to being just who you were before the grand event.

Not if the event means what we say it means. Because every year we celebrate Christ’s birth, his coming into the world, we remind ourselves that because he has come, our lives are forever changed. Because he has come, he still comes – every day, in new ways, in the hearts and lives of those who know him as Savior and Lord. And he is coming again, one day, in great glory and power and majesty, to judge the living and the dead and to make all things brand new. So brand new that even the brightest, most sincerely beautiful and reverent of Christmas celebrations, or even that mountain-top moment you held your precious baby in your arms for the first time – are going to pale in comparison to the amazing glory that will be revealed.

O Come, Let Us Adore Him is not just a call for one day of the year.  Really each Christmas prepares us just a little bit more for the celebration of forever living in his presence. And we’re being prepared not just for a season of love, but an eternity of it. A time when the glorious music that sings his praise will never fade, and the candles that echo his vast and glorious light will never be put out.

St. John the Evangelist

I always love that the feast day of St. John the Evangelist falls on December 27. It seems so wholly (and holy!) fitting that the beloved apostle who wrote most profoundly of the incarnation should be celebrated during the Christmas season.

I spent some time this morning meditating on the prologue to the gospel of John. If you've never read it in The Message (Eugene Peterson's Scripture paraphrase) you might enjoy pondering it afresh that way today. I especially love the lines "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood" and "We all live off his generous bounty, gift after gift after gift."

^1-2 The Word was first,
the Word present to God,
    God present to the Word.
The Word was God,
    in readiness for God from day one.

^3-5 Everything was created through him;
    nothing—not one thing!—
    came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life,
    and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
    the darkness couldn’t put it out.

^6-8 There once was a man, his name John, sent by God to point out the way to the Life-Light. He came to show everyone where to look, who to believe in. John was not himself the Light; he was there to show the way to the Light.

^9-13 The Life-Light was the real thing:
    Every person entering Life
    he brings into Light.
He was in the world,
    the world was there through him,
    and yet the world didn’t even notice.
He came to his own people,
    but they didn’t want him.
But whoever did want him,
    who believed he was who he claimed
    and would do what he said,
He made to be their true selves,
    their child-of-God selves.
These are the God-begotten,
    not blood-begotten,
    not flesh-begotten,
    not sex-begotten.

¹⁴ The Word became flesh and blood,
    and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
    the one-of-a-kind glory,
    like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
    true from start to finish.

¹⁵ John pointed him out and called, “This is the One! The One I told you was coming after me but in fact was ahead of me. He has always been ahead of me, has always had the first word.”

^16-18 We all live off his generous bounty,
        gift after gift after gift.
    We got the basics from Moses,
        and then this exuberant giving and receiving,
    This endless knowing and understanding—
        all this came through Jesus, the Messiah.
    No one has ever seen God,
        not so much as a glimpse.
    This one-of-a-kind God-Expression,
        who exists at the very heart of the Father,
        has made him plain as day.

Amen!

How Quietly the Morning Dawns (A Christmas Hymn)

For my annual advent poem this year, I decided to write a Christmas hymn. A blessed, happy, holy Christmas to you and all you love!

How quietly the morning dawns! Gold streams across the sky,

And in the stable Mary sleeps, her baby sleeps nearby.

And Joseph drowses by the door to guard his family dear,

While echoes of angelic song remind them Love’s drawn near.

How quickly did the Light arrive in the middle of the night,

How bright and beautiful the Babe who’s come to give us sight.

We wandered in the cold and dark, all alone and so afraid,

But now we marvel at this child; he’s just as God had said.

The promise spoke by prophets bold in days so long ago,

Kept alive for all these years is now fulfilled in Mary’s son.

We’ve wept and waited, watched and prayed, to see his strength and might;

Now in the still and wakening day, we’re given brand new sight.

Our understanding dawns like gold, like sun across a cloud,

To the weak and poor he humbly came and not unto the proud.

This tiny baby wrapped in rags and slumbering in the morn

Has changed us all and all the world. Rejoice that He is born!

~EMP, Advent 2013

Christina Rossetti: Love Came Down at Christmas

Christina Rossetti is clearly one of my favorite Christmas poets. I was just about to post her poem Christmas Eve, when I realized I did that on this day last year!

So instead I thought I would post this beautiful gem, also by Rossetti.

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.
Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?
Love shall be our token,
Love shall be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and to all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

Many blessings to you and your loved ones this Christmas! 

Christmas Pageant Day

Christmas Pageant day has become one of the holiest and most hectic days I know each year. By the time we get through the final rehearsal, I’m usually tired and a tiny bit worried (at least in a small part of me) that something huge and Herdmanesque is going to happen this year. Then God reminds me that he shines everywhere, and gently nudges me about how important it is to laugh a lot while we sojourn on this earth. He also reminds me that…oh yes, he came as a baby and that this story, big and beautiful and profound and life-changing as it is, is a story that little ones can and should enter into wholeheartedly, and that when they enter it, they bring the hearts of the older generation with them into it. And God does amazing things in that mix.

This year was full of its usual crazy beauties, the kinds of moments that make me so thankful that it is our real, human, messy lives that God enters. There was the little girl who sweetly decided she wanted to be Mary, only to realize she was too shy to do it, and another little girl, not quite five and a half, who bravely stepped into the role. There was the little boy who wanted to be a sheep until he saw the older boy dressed as a soldier (we had a scene with the Wise Men and Herod this year). In fact, all the boys pretty much wanted swords and shields so they could be soldiers too. (We let the little one be a smaller soldier, but then he decided what he really wanted to be was a king!) There was the little boy who was so very little that I had to pull his wooly sheep’s costume over his head while he insisted on holding his sippy cup…we normally don’t have kids quite that young in the performance.

There was our almost 9 year old Joseph, who’s very verbal and articulate, coming up to me to say plaintively, “I don’t understand why my part is so important when I don’t even have any lines.” (A sentiment I wonder if the real Joseph might not have understood; his has always seemed like such an important and yet quietly supportive role.) I tried to explain to him how strong Joseph was, and how special since God chose him to care for Mary and the baby. His eyes widened and he said, “well, sometimes I’m strong!”

There was the second announcing angel, who stepped in to take on another speaking role as the king’s scribe (at the last minute, when we realized we didn’t have anyone else to play it). There was my own sweet eleven year old playing the lead announcing angel, skipping with joy and singing “Joy to the World” as she left the shepherd’s field…the only angel who remembered to sing. The sweet girl also did a tremendous job of being my right-hand girl in helping the little ones get ready. She often struggles with the chaos that reigns pre-pageant, as everyone is getting dressed and we’re running last minute lines, but she showed so much grace and maturity this year that it made my heart want to sing too.

There were the shepherds who forgot where to go and kept milling around the manger when it was time for them to leave proclaiming the good news, and who finally wandered on down the aisle forgetting to say anything at all but beaming at the audience as they carried their wrapping paper roll crooks. There was the little girl who played both a rejoicing angel and the innkeeper who was supposed to take pity on tired Mary and lead her to the stable, only she forgot she was supposed to lead her to the stable and just scrabbled over to the manger, reached under it for the baby (not yet born) and plunked him into the hay. Joseph hurriedly rectified that situation, proving once again what an important role he has in this story!

Then there was the eighth grade girl, playing one of the Wise Men, who burst into tears during the opening worship set (we had the kids already dressed and upstairs during the singing that begins the service, as the pageant takes the place of the sermon after the Scripture lessons). I gently led her to the back of the room to ask what was wrong, thinking someone had made her upset or she had a case of nerves, and all she could do was keep crying and tell me, in a precious not fully articulate way, “that the songs just sometimes make me feel sad and funny.” So I just patted her gently on the shoulder and told her that sometimes God uses the songs to move our hearts. I just love the fact that while I was busy thinking about entrances, exits, and line prompts, God was moving hearts in worship.

Another pageant day. Another lesson in holy flexibility, laughter, and grace.

Advent Reading: Love Came Down

I usually try to post something about my Advent reading each year. I love it when people recommend good books for this season! And here we are in the third week already. I'm later than usual, but I thought I'd share what I'm reading this year and post some links to some of my older recommendations.

This year I'm enjoying the meditations in Love Came Down,  a collection of readings compiled by Christopher L. Webber. An Anglican clergy friend recommended this book, which is subtitled "Anglican Readings for Advent and Christmas." It's a good collection, running the gamut of a lot of years (from Hugh Latimer on up to roughly present day) though I keep stumbling over the fact that Lewis isn't in the collection. And while I appreciate that Madeleine L'Engle is, I'm not sure why some other more contemporary Anglicans didn't make the cut.

The compiler has a love for the early and middle years of Anglicanism. So you get Andrewes, Donne, Keble, Pusey, Law, and Taylor, among others. He has a bit of a high church bent (likes Caroline Divines and Oxford Movement)  but does include some "broad church" folks like Maurice and Brooks (and no, he doesn't include Brooks' "O little town of Bethlehem," rather some excerpts from his sermons, surprisingly chew-worthy). He's clearly not fond of evangelicals. So you'll find no Wesleys, either John or Charles -- and how one can include Anglican advent poems and hymnody and not include Charles Wesley, who penned some of the very best, just baffles me. But every collection bears the particular stamp of its collector.

One of the elements that makes this book both rich and challenging is that it really focuses on traditional Advent themes -- namely heaven, hell, the second coming, the "last things." Many Advent books focus almost solely on the first coming of Jesus and forgot some of those other traditional themes. This one delves deep into "last things" for a good bit of the text, then moves into deeper reflection upon the incarnation and nativity especially in the final week of Advent and the Christmas season to follow  (readings begin with November 28 and move up through January 6, Epiphany). 

I'm adding this to my list of previously recommended books for Advent, which include (in no particular order): The Irrational Season, WinterSong, The Vigil, God With Us, and God is in the Manger. I posted here about most of these a few years ago.

"Marmee Through the Window"

I have an essay published at Literary Mama this week. I hope you'll check it out and enjoy my reflections on one of the ways that motherhood has changed my perspective as a reader!

This piece was a real labor of love for me. If you have thoughts to share, I'd love to hear them here. Or you could even post a response to the writing prompt they've put up to accompany the piece.

Rudolph Revisited

Last night, we brought out one of our family favorites and watched Rudolph the Red- Nosed Reindeer during dinner. This Rankin and Bass claymation classic premiered on television 49 years ago (yes, folks, gear up – the 50^th anniversary of Rudolph draweth nigh) which means it’s been on the planet longer than I have. It still holds up as a delicious bunch of corny, sentimental fun, even when you’ve seen it over and over as every one of us (even our 11 year old) has.

I don’t know what was in our tacos, but all three of us were in a silly, snarky mood as we watched. The end result was that we found ourselves pondering some of these age-old questions. Here they are, in no particular order.

1)      How did they make Rudolph’s nose glow the way they did?

2)      What’s wrong with the doll on the Island of Misfit Toys?

3)      Does Rudolph actually know what a dentist is?

4)      Why does Hermy the elf have hair when all the rest of the boy elves don’t?

5)      Did they pattern the tall elf with glasses after Richard Deacon (on the Dick Van Dyke show)?

6)      How did Rudolph know Santa’s name before they’d been formally introduced? Is this an instinctual thing, something that flying reindeer are just born knowing?

7)      Does it occur to NO ONE that Rudolph’s nose might come in handy someday?

8)      When Santa says “too bad, he had a nice take-off too” – does he truly believe that a glowing nose will adversely affect Rudolph’s flying ability?

9)      Is there anyone who doesn’t laugh when Burl Ives quotes Donner as saying “No, this is man’s work!”?

10)  How did a poodle get the job of pulling Yukon Cornelius’ sleigh?

11)  Does Yukon really think he can taste silver and gold? Does he not worry that he will cut his tongue every time he licks his pick-ax?

12)  When Yukon and the Bumble go over the cliff, why can’t Rudolph and his friends see him when they look over? They act like they’ve completely disappeared. If the Bumble bounces, wouldn’t they hit and just bounce back up? (Unless it’s a really, really high drop.)

13)  What is IN the all-purple food that Mrs. Claus feeds Santa, enabling him to gain about a hundred pounds in just a few minutes?

14)  How does Rudolph suddenly learn how to magically control his nose (at the end, when he pulls Santa’s sleigh) when before it seemed to turn on and off without him being able to control it?

15)  Why does Rudolph leave the door open when he sneaks out of the house late at night to go off on his own? Wouldn’t Yukon and Hermy have frozen in that weather?

16)  If King Moonracer flies all over the place looking for toys to bring to his island, why can’t he just zoom over to Christmas Town and ask Santa to help them himself?

17)  Did they create Clarice’s tears out of glue?

18)  And last but not least, at the end when they throw the misfit toys out of Santa’s sleigh, how did the poor bird learn to fly? He was a misfit because he could only swim, not fly. But they don’t give him an umbrella, and one can only imagine the poor creature plummeting to his death.