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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(The Life of Theresa of Jesus) 

The Loving Spoon (An Original Poem)

The Loving Spoon

This morning I poured honey into my favorite spoon,

the thick, heavy silver one with words engraved in the bowl.

The honey filled up the space, covering the words like a tiny

ocean or a miniature great lake washing up on shore

and covering words someone has written in the sand.

“You are loved.”

That’s what the spoon says, and my imaginary shore.

I don’t even remember who gave us the spoon, though

I have tried to narrow it down so I can send a note

of thanks. I know that it came with a meal, which came

in the middle of my ongoing cancer battle. That must

have been a hard part of the fight, though I don’t recall

because they all feel hard. But any time people start sending

food, I know I must be in an extra exhausted season.

Someone sent us a meal from a company that makes

meals for people who can’t easily make them

for themselves, and whoever ordered it also ordered

the spoon. And whoever they are, I am deeply thankful

because every time I pull the spoon from the drawer

I am confronted with an inconvertible truth, that nothing,

not even months of debilitating illness that makes me

so road-weary I could sit down and weep, can change.

“You are loved.”

I have heard of loving cups, those two-handled cups

of old that got passed around banqueting halls for

people to share the drink inside, a sort of echo

of what happens weekly at the communion rail.

But I have never owned a loving spoon,

a shining silver spoon that helps preach the gospel

daily to my heart, as does the honey I drip down

into the spoon’s curved bowl, reminding me in every

golden drop how sweet are the words of the Lord,

sweeter than the drippings of the honeycomb.

So in case you need to hear them too, I lift my spoon

that drips with honey in your direction, before I

direct the spoon towards my cup of hot tea (which,

like an enchanted ocean, sends waves over the words

but reveals them again, still intact) and then

direct the words of this poem in the hopes

that whoever reads it will throw open the windows

of their heart and hear the sweet, sweet words:

“You are loved.”

(EMP, 5/7/17)

What and Who Binds Us Together

I was reading along in one of the appointed Psalms this morning, Psalm 28. And I got to these words, which always delight my heart whenever I stumble upon them in the lectionary:



7 Blessed is the Lord! *
for he has heard the voice of my prayer.

8 The Lord is my strength and my shield; *
my heart trusts in him, and I have been helped;

9 Therefore my heart dances for joy, *
and in my song will I praise him.

10 The Lord is the strength of his people, *
a safe refuge for his anointed.

11 Save your people and bless your inheritance; *
shepherd them and carry them for ever.

Something struck me about those words this morning, and about my love for those words. It struck me that one reason I love the Psalms is because the writers of them, the people who prayed these words originally and wrote them down, often speak words that seem to transcend the centuries and differences of culture and just pour out of human longings that we still have in common with them today.

But just when I was feeling awed by that connection, what awed me even further was the realization that yes, we share the same longings, the same needs, the same joys, but we also share the same God. The one who heard the voice of that Psalmist's prayer? He is the one who hears the voice of my prayer today!

No wonder the communion of saints feels so tightly connected! We are connected by so many things! I sometimes imagine a golden cord that we all hold onto through the years, a cord that binds us all together and keeps us dancing in the same circle.  But the cord that binds us is not just one strand, is it? It's a thick cord of strands that includes the thickest, most golden truth of all: that we worship the same Lord, the one who made us, loves us, redeems us, and sustains us through his Spirit.

Spring (Christina Rossetti)

I know I just posted a Rossetti poem a few days ago, but firstly, it's the day she is commemorated on the Episcopal calendar (though her actual feast day is in December), and secondly, this is another beautiful poem. I love the way she plays with words and sounds. Don't you enjoy the music in the lines "Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,/What shall make their sap ascend/That they may put forth shoots?" and "There is no time like Spring,/When life's alive in everything/Before new nestlings sing..."

This woman instinctively understood seasons and what they could represent to human hearts and souls. I was going to say she instinctively understood spring, but given that this is the same poet who gave us "In the Bleak Midwinter" I think her understanding goes deeper than that. I also find it interesting that though she died in December, she is remembered in April. And it hit me with great force this year, as I glanced at a brief biography, that she died of cancer at the age of 64.

What I love about her seasonal poems is that she often connects them, sometimes subtly and sometimes clearly, to the deep realities of incarnation, birth, death, resurrection. I am grateful to her for that. She read the book of nature fluently, and sang it beautifully for the rest of us.

*******

Spring

Frost-locked all the winter,
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
What shall make their sap ascend
That they may put forth shoots?
Tips of tender green,
Leaf, or blade, or sheath;
Telling of the hidden life
That breaks forth underneath,
Life nursed in its grave by Death.

Blows the thaw-wind pleasantly,
Drips the soaking rain,
By fits looks down the waking sun:
Young grass springs on the plain;
Young leaves clothe early hedgerow trees;
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
Swollen with sap put forth their shoots;
Curled-headed ferns sprout in the lane;
Birds sing and pair again.

There is no time like Spring,
When life's alive in everything,
Before new nestlings sing,
Before cleft swallows speed their journey back
Along the trackless track -
God guides their wing,
He spreads their table that they nothing lack, -
Before the daisy grows a common flower
Before the sun has power
To scorch the world up in his noontide hour.

There is no time like Spring,
Like Spring that passes by;
There is no life like Spring-life born to die, -
Piercing the sod,
Clothing the uncouth clod,
Hatched in the nest,
Fledged on the windy bough,
Strong on the wing:
There is no time like Spring that passes by,
Now newly born, and now
Hastening to die.

~Christina Georgina Rossetti

Mystery Reviews: Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger (1942)

Given my health issues, it's not surprising that I'm reading a lot more, especially since I have to spend so much time resting. Although I've read some good literary fiction and excellent non-fiction, when I am most tired, I turn to the fluff I love best: mysteries. And these days, I tend to move back and forth between tried and true classics from the golden era and contemporary cozies or police procedurals.

When I move in the direction of the golden era, I sometimes go back to my favorite writers and sometimes I go back and "discover" classic writers who are new to me. I enjoy both, but lately I've been on a bit of a Christie tear. Although I've read most of Christie's books (some more than once) it's been years since I've read a lot of them, so many years that they are either actually new to me or were read so far in the past they may as well be new because I don't remember them well. I certainly don't remember them well enough to remember "whodunit."

I find myself missing book review writing, so I thought that once in a while, I'd let myself exercise the old review writing muscles again. What better way to break back into review writing than with a review of an old-but-I-think-new-to-me Christie novel?

1942s The Moving Finger was the third Miss Marple novel ever published. I'm fairly certain this was the first time I ever encountered it, mostly because I don't remember ever reading a Miss Marple book in which Miss Marple appeared so little.

That was the book's most surprising feature by far. While Miss Jane Marple, Christie's white-haired detective, always has a kind of "background" role, she usually arrives on the scene fairly early and stays there consistently. While the main detectives hum along, attempting to solve the case, Miss Marple smiles gently, asks an inquisitive and seemingly innocent question or two (or four or eight or twelve) and before you can inquire, "Would you like another cup of tea, ma'am?" she has the thing solved. What's wonderful is that she always solves it with a twinkle and a sweet touch of poignancy, remembering someone she knew once who reminded her of the victim...and quite often the criminal. For a kind, elderly spinster, Miss Marple has no scruples about reminding everyone, character and reader alike, that people really can be quite wicked. And sad. And lonely. And unwise. And inattentive. It's in noting these kinds of characteristics in all people that she often discovers the line running right through the story that other, more professional sleuths all too often miss.

Speaking of missing, I miss her in this book. While I mostly liked the story's narrator, Jerry Burton, an airman recovering from an accident, I kept impatiently waiting for Miss Marple to show up on the scene and set him and his sister Joanna straight about what's going on in the little village in which they recently settled. They settle there in a rental home so Jerry can recover from his injuries; they think this out-of-the-way hamlet will provide Jerry with just the rest and peacefulness he needs. Little do they know that little out-of-the-way hamlets can sometimes be seething with scandals and unsolved crimes. This one certainly is.

In fact, the town of Lymstock, which "had been a place of importance at the time of the Norman Conquest"  but by "the twentieth century it was a place of no importance whatsoever," seems cozy and quiet enough for a convalescing soldier. But the Burton siblings haven't been there very long when they become the recipients of a nasty, anonymous letter, the kind put together with letters cut from an old book. It turns out that they aren't the only people in town to receive such a letter. Most of the town's most prominent residents have received at least one. These letters, whose typed envelopes tell little about their author, while the postmarks indicate the author is local, accuse people in vague and general terms of awful but unprovable things.

Jerry and Joanna find themselves trying to puzzle out the identity of the letter writer, but they, like the local police, can't get too far at guessing who it might be. In fact, in spite of the annoying embarrassment of the letters, hardly anyone takes them too seriously...until the shock of receiving one seems to send a resident into such a tailspin that she commits suicide. Or does she?

It's not long before a maid who served at the home of the dead woman also turns up dead, this time unmistakably murdered, presumably for something she might have seen. Before you know it, Scotland Yard is called in. And before you can pour yet another cup of tea (lots of tea gets poured in this one) another resident gets impatient with the professionals and calls in her old friend Jane Marple to try to figure things out.

By the time Jane got called, I was feeling rather impatient. She appears in only a handful of scenes, and while she's her sweet and smart self, asking the right questions and ultimately setting up the dangerous encounter with the correct suspect, I felt a bit cheated that we hadn't had more time with her. I'd be curious to know why she appears so little in the book. Did Agatha Christie already have a book ready in the wings without any Miss Marple at all, only to have her publishers tell her that the old lady's first two tales had been such a hit the public was demanding more? But if so, why not go back and put her in more from the start? It wouldn't have been so hard to do. If she was the friend of a resident in Lymstock, why not have her show up a fortnight earlier to visit? Or be called in by the friend before the first death in the town, just on the basis of the puzzle that needs solving about the author of the anonymous letters?

Besides being disappointed by not enough time with Miss Marple, I was a bit thrown off by the narrator. While I appreciated the way he thought through things regarding the mystery, I felt off balance by his lack of development from the beginning on. It took me a while to be sure he was male; it took me even longer to figure out his name (I don't think she mentioned it until well into the story, though she might have dropped it briefly and I just missed it). My favorite part of most Christie novels is her way with characterization, and she doesn't disappoint with a fine cast of townies and potential suspects, but I think she could have done more with her narrator, especially if we were getting page time with Jerry at the expense of page time with Miss Marple.

Ah well. Even Christie at her not-quite-best is still better than many people at their heights, and this was an enjoyable mystery with good touches of Christie humour and an interesting ending I didn't see coming. If you're a enthusiast for mysteries with elements of romance, I think you'll like what she does here too -- not in one part of the story, but actually in two.

I'm thankful that The Moving Finger wasn't where the Miss Marple stories ended...most of the best ones, in fact, were still to come.

***1/2 stars
First published in the US in 1942 and in the UK in 1943 

Poetry Friday: A Better Resurrection (Christina Rossetti)

April has brought both poetry month and Easter this year. I've been grateful for this coinciding, as poetry month tends to push me to reading and writing more poetry.  When my heart is moving out of the Lenten season and into the celebration of Easter, especially when the world is waking up into spring, there is a lot to ponder.

This year, there is more than ever to ponder as I am in the midst of my continued battle against cancer. I was there this time last year too, but far too exhausted and in shock (I had just finished my initial intensive chemo treatments) to do much thinking or writing. Exhaustion has become just part of the new normal landscape, but thankfully shock does wear off, and you find ways to move forward as boldly and creatively as you can. You find life in the midst of illness, beauty in the midst of brokenness, hope in the midst of worry, prayer in the midst of pain.

I could go on, but Christina Rossetti shares it all so much more profoundly in her poem "A Better Resurrection" which I've pasted below.

Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is at Tabatha Yeatts' blog The Opposite of Indifference.

A Better Resurrection

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall--the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

~Christina Rossetti