As I walk out of Mac Lobby into the frosty air, two grounds work study students stand with leafblowers at the ready. Dressed in camo coats, denim, heavy work gloves, and scuffed-up work boots, with their red noses and disheveled hair, they present a rugged vision of blue collar hardiness.
As I scurry past, I catch a phrase from their gruff conversation. "I was aghast!" one of them is exclaiming, in injured tones.
Bless you, Wielder of the Leafblower, for reminding me that the most enjoyable function of stereotypes is to prime us for such delightful surprises.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
"Pious girls have tender hearts...They are brought up to think someone ought to love them for that sort of thing..."
I'm in the midst of Marianne Robinson's excellent new novel, Home, which develops the Boughton family storyline from her former novel, Gilead. Robinson has the knack of rendering little scenes so unexpectedly poignant that tears frequently take me by surprise. An EKG of my heart would probably reveal frequent surges during my reading, as my spirit reacts to the truth of the language.
The story has me thinking, with mingled fondness and regret, of my past. Like Gilead, Hudsonville offered an insidiously tame backdrop for the forging of my character, ripe for the fostering of hypocrisy. My Christian upbringing resembled Glory's: allegorical; Right and Wrong so concrete that I barely recognized them when they encountered me on the street. As a result, I grew up divorcing my attitude from my actions, and seeing no harm in it. I used Submission as a barrier to relationships--my posture always giving ground while my inner self remained intact and inflexible. It's incredible how successfully a facade of mildness can safeguard an arrogant spirit from detection...even self-detection! They call that passive-aggression, and I still battle it daily. Hypocrisy and passive aggression. Mix in a cloud of self-deception, and my idyllic childhood unfolds. And none to blame but Human Nature.
It has me wondering what new realizations will emerge as these days fade into perspective. It has me clinging to Grace. It has me saying, with a weary Jack Boughton at his kitchen table, "I am so tired of myself."
The story has me thinking, with mingled fondness and regret, of my past. Like Gilead, Hudsonville offered an insidiously tame backdrop for the forging of my character, ripe for the fostering of hypocrisy. My Christian upbringing resembled Glory's: allegorical; Right and Wrong so concrete that I barely recognized them when they encountered me on the street. As a result, I grew up divorcing my attitude from my actions, and seeing no harm in it. I used Submission as a barrier to relationships--my posture always giving ground while my inner self remained intact and inflexible. It's incredible how successfully a facade of mildness can safeguard an arrogant spirit from detection...even self-detection! They call that passive-aggression, and I still battle it daily. Hypocrisy and passive aggression. Mix in a cloud of self-deception, and my idyllic childhood unfolds. And none to blame but Human Nature.
It has me wondering what new realizations will emerge as these days fade into perspective. It has me clinging to Grace. It has me saying, with a weary Jack Boughton at his kitchen table, "I am so tired of myself."
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
feelin' callow
Today is the sort of day that makes me realize that I should've paid more attention to high school politics. I feel naive and unsure of my footing in relational terrain that most normal people regard with world-weary yawns (having discovered years ago that those mountains really are molehills). And if the veterans continue to tell me that, it must be true. But I don't see that clearly enough yet to react to those molehills in any other manner than the alarm I feel.
That does not prevent me from feeling silly about how I've handled things. I wish I had the detachment to care less...but pity has a way of muddying my perspective and compromising my poise.
All in all, I definitely feel my immaturity more keenly than I have in awhile. It's unsettling to realize that the woman I thought I was chatting with in my brain is still in the most awkward stage of her social adolescence.
That does not prevent me from feeling silly about how I've handled things. I wish I had the detachment to care less...but pity has a way of muddying my perspective and compromising my poise.
All in all, I definitely feel my immaturity more keenly than I have in awhile. It's unsettling to realize that the woman I thought I was chatting with in my brain is still in the most awkward stage of her social adolescence.
Funny that I managed to decieve myself about her for so long.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The world is not designed for keepsake
My oldest memories of Thanksgiving are pseudo-memories, stolen from the dusty home videos that now litter the basement junkroom at my house and ratty packs of photos in our kitchen cabinet. In the earliest of these, Hannah and I are two bonnetted and befrippered babydolls with complacent looks being handed and jostled about by the then-strangers whose faces now hold such dearness and meaning for us: aunts, uncles, older cousins, and most of all the freshfaced woman who beams all her mother pride into the camcorder--and at the man behind it. It's strange for me to think of them then. Of course, it's strange to think of my own foreign little mind then, acquiring a new idea that would inscrutably begin to insinuate itself into the other concepts that were gradually coming into focus: sister, mom, dad, family, smells, lights, color, temperature. A specific blend of all of these: Thanksgiving.
I cherish most the memories of the Thanksgiving family reunions that my dad's side of the family began to hold yearly in Camp Dogwood or Camp Lookout in Georgia. Hannah, Daniel, and I would plan ahead for weeks, making detailed lists of items to bring, packing and repacking, fighting over the best suitcases, and regaling the littler children with stories of the years before. Events like these loomed large in my mind because they were so rare. Cramming eight children into a large van and driving for 12 hours was hardly an experience my haggard parents wished to repeat too often. And, as I recall the year that infant Willem bawled for a marathon three hours through the darkness on the way to Lookout Mountain, I have to commiserate.
Of course, once we arrived all I remember was the rampant fun to be enjoyed. Bunkbeds, fooseball, watching "While You Were Sleeping" and "Much Ado About Nothing," triumphing in multiple games of Boggle, suffering in multiple games of Ping-Pong, preparing and consuming lavish meals, decorating cookies, collecting leaves and berries for the Thanksgiving banquet garnishes, exploring the surrounding woods, bonfires to the choral accompaniment of John Denver and Christmas Carols, prank warfare between the cousins, and talent shows in the chapel. I loved to wander out by myself in the cold, especially at dusk, and tell myself stories...although I felt guilty preferring my own company to the rowdy carousing of my cousins. Half of the enjoyment in those solitary hours was in knowing that steamy fragrance and cheery clamor would greet me the moment I stepped back into the lodge.
Thanksgivings have changed as my generation has grown. We no longer reunite each November. Weddings, which occur at least once a year, have assumed that position. Since attending Covenant, I have not yet celebrated the occasion at home. Although I've never been one to get homesick or depressed, I do feel melancholy as I compare the carefree enjoyment of my childhood to my seasoned appreciation for Thanksgiving now.
It's the heedlessness that I miss most, the assumption of wellbeing. The ability to step out of the toasty lodge into an icy twilight and wander, thinking big thoughts uninterruptedly, free to return when I please to an environment that has remained reassuringly unaltered.
As a company of traveling players carry with them everywhere, while they still remember their lines, a windy heath, a misty castle, an enchanted island, so she had with her all that her soul had stored... [Nabakov, Speak, Memory]
I cherish most the memories of the Thanksgiving family reunions that my dad's side of the family began to hold yearly in Camp Dogwood or Camp Lookout in Georgia. Hannah, Daniel, and I would plan ahead for weeks, making detailed lists of items to bring, packing and repacking, fighting over the best suitcases, and regaling the littler children with stories of the years before. Events like these loomed large in my mind because they were so rare. Cramming eight children into a large van and driving for 12 hours was hardly an experience my haggard parents wished to repeat too often. And, as I recall the year that infant Willem bawled for a marathon three hours through the darkness on the way to Lookout Mountain, I have to commiserate.
Of course, once we arrived all I remember was the rampant fun to be enjoyed. Bunkbeds, fooseball, watching "While You Were Sleeping" and "Much Ado About Nothing," triumphing in multiple games of Boggle, suffering in multiple games of Ping-Pong, preparing and consuming lavish meals, decorating cookies, collecting leaves and berries for the Thanksgiving banquet garnishes, exploring the surrounding woods, bonfires to the choral accompaniment of John Denver and Christmas Carols, prank warfare between the cousins, and talent shows in the chapel. I loved to wander out by myself in the cold, especially at dusk, and tell myself stories...although I felt guilty preferring my own company to the rowdy carousing of my cousins. Half of the enjoyment in those solitary hours was in knowing that steamy fragrance and cheery clamor would greet me the moment I stepped back into the lodge.
Thanksgivings have changed as my generation has grown. We no longer reunite each November. Weddings, which occur at least once a year, have assumed that position. Since attending Covenant, I have not yet celebrated the occasion at home. Although I've never been one to get homesick or depressed, I do feel melancholy as I compare the carefree enjoyment of my childhood to my seasoned appreciation for Thanksgiving now.
It's the heedlessness that I miss most, the assumption of wellbeing. The ability to step out of the toasty lodge into an icy twilight and wander, thinking big thoughts uninterruptedly, free to return when I please to an environment that has remained reassuringly unaltered.
As a company of traveling players carry with them everywhere, while they still remember their lines, a windy heath, a misty castle, an enchanted island, so she had with her all that her soul had stored... [Nabakov, Speak, Memory]
Monday, November 10, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
the heart-shackles are not, as you think,
death, illness, pain,
unrequited hope, not loneliness, but
lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety,
selfishness
---
When I first found you I was
filled with light, now the darkness grows
and it is filled with crooked things, bitter
and weak, each one bearing my name.
---
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
---
Lord, I will learn also to kneel down
into the world of the invisible,
the inscrutable and the everlasting.
---
I had such a longing for virtue, for company.
I wanted Christ to be as close as the cross I wear. ...
...I prayed, oh Lord, let me be something
useful and unpretentious...
Lord, let me be the flower, even a tare; or a sparrow.
Or the smallest bright stone in a ring worn by someone
brave and kind, whose name I will never know.
---
Help me to hear and to hold
in all dearness those exacting and wonderful
words of our Lord Christ Jesus, saying:
Follow me.
---
God, once he is in your heart,
is everywhere--
---
Everywhere I go I am
treated like royalty, which I am not. I thirst and
am given water. My eyes thirst and I am given
the white lilies on the black water. My heart
sings but the apparatus of singing doesn't convey
half what it feels and means.
I always find my own soul looking up at me when I read Mary Oliver. I always leave with deep breathing and squared shoulders and eager eyes.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
regret
(Oh, heart, I would not dangle you down into
the sorry places,
but there are things there as well,
to see, to imagine.)
[Mary Oliver]
...and to learn from...
the sorry places,
but there are things there as well,
to see, to imagine.)
[Mary Oliver]
...and to learn from...
Thursday, October 02, 2008
mustard
On the Parable of the Mustard Seed
Who ever saw the mustard-plant,
wayside weed or tended crop,
grow tall as a shrub, let alone a tree, a treeful
of shade and nests and songs?
Acres of yellow,
not a bird of the air in sight.
No, He who knew
the west wind brings
the rain, the south wind
thunder, who walked the field-paths
running His hand along wheatstems to glean
those intimate milky kernels, good
to break on the tongue,
was talking of miracle, the seed
within us, so small
we take it for worthless, a mustard-seed, dust,
nothing.
Glib generations mistake
the metaphor, not looking at fields and trees,
not noticing paradox. Mountains
remain unmoved.
Faith is rare, He must have been saying,
prodigious, unique—
one infinitesimal grain divided
like loaves and fishes,
as if from a mustard-seed
a great shade-tree grew. That rare,
that strange: the kingdom
a tree. The soul
a bird. A great concourse of birds
at home there, wings among yellow flowers.
The waiting
kingdom of faith, the seed
waiting to be sown.
[Denise Levertov]
Who ever saw the mustard-plant,
wayside weed or tended crop,
grow tall as a shrub, let alone a tree, a treeful
of shade and nests and songs?
Acres of yellow,
not a bird of the air in sight.
No, He who knew
the west wind brings
the rain, the south wind
thunder, who walked the field-paths
running His hand along wheatstems to glean
those intimate milky kernels, good
to break on the tongue,
was talking of miracle, the seed
within us, so small
we take it for worthless, a mustard-seed, dust,
nothing.
Glib generations mistake
the metaphor, not looking at fields and trees,
not noticing paradox. Mountains
remain unmoved.
Faith is rare, He must have been saying,
prodigious, unique—
one infinitesimal grain divided
like loaves and fishes,
as if from a mustard-seed
a great shade-tree grew. That rare,
that strange: the kingdom
a tree. The soul
a bird. A great concourse of birds
at home there, wings among yellow flowers.
The waiting
kingdom of faith, the seed
waiting to be sown.
[Denise Levertov]
Mustard Seeds and Miracles
What human being can refuse to invest thoughtful consideration in a poem as carefully crafted as Denise Levertov’s On the Parable of the Mustard Seed? Fashioned around a borrowed simile, Levertov’s poem contains allusions to biblical narrative and teachings, demonstrating its author’s exposure to ancient literature, as well as her boldness in tackling a subject so controversial and cherished. Its musicality invites the reader to linger, relishing the artistry that produced alliterative phrases like “wayside weed,” “west wind,” “mistake the metaphor,” “wind brings,” and “wheatstems to glean.” The intellect delights in catching the clever verb structure in a story that includes a figure “who walked the field paths, / running His hand along wheatstems.” Levertov’s beautiful use of synecdoche freshens the paint on images that the reader might otherwise pass over. Branches and birds become “a treeful of shade and nest and song,” while a field of prosaic mustard instead manifests itself in “acres of yellow.” Birds coyly invite notice as the subtle stirring of “wings among yellow flowers.” All of these elements join around one central metaphor: the image of a magical tree in which roosts a “great concourse of birds.” Any message, so gloriously housed, invites sensitive contemplation.
Levertov’s theme, which ultimately expresses, through the person of Christ, an affirmation of a miraculous Truth surpassing the legality of the natural world, does not disappoint.
She opens her poem with a question. “Who ever saw the mustard-plant…grow tall as a shrub, let alone a tree?” Assuming a Christian readership versed in the parables of Christ and their traditional interpretations, this question smacks the turf before them like a gauntlet. What then of Christ, who declares, “[The Kingdom of God] is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” (ESV, Mark 4:31-32) Assuming a skeptical readership, it fans the fires of convicted suspicion in their hearts, and evokes a hearty assent. After all, any observer would verify her description of a mustard-seeded field: “Acres of yellow, / not a bird in sight.” But what observer can substantiate Christ’s description of a mustard tree, which more echoes the image Levertov debunks in her opening question: a “treeful of shade and nests and songs”?
Levertov answers the rhetorical opening question with the expected “no.” Yet in taking this stance she sides neither with the skeptic nor the “glib” believer that she will later berate. Rather, she asserts that this Christ, who “knew / the west wind brings / the rain, the south wind / thunder” was no simpleton. He, too, experienced the physical reality of a nature bound by laws, and personally “walked the field-paths / running His hand along wheatstems.” Aware of these laws, aware even that the wheatstems contained “intimate milky kernels, good / to break on the tongue” for gleaning, Christ could not have been deceived about the properties of lowly mustard. No, she says, her tone faintly condescending in the manner of one who gently states the obvious: No. This forward-looking Christ “was talking of miracle, the seed within us.”
The timbre of the discussion alters: Nature, emphatically affirmed, is then surpassed by Super-nature, by Christ Who is the Great Progressive, the Super-man. That “seed / within us, so small / we take it for worthless, a mustard-seed, dust, / nothing” is not, as “glib generations” traditionally have asserted, an ordinary mustard seed with earthbound limits. It is miracle. Those who deny this phenomenon “mistake the metaphor” because they focus so intently on blindly believing Christ’s literal word that they deny the paradox it presents to a mind open to the real world. And so “mountains / remain unmoved.” The faith that Christ describes in Matthew 17:20 as being as little as “a grain of a mustard seed” moves mountains, not because of its size, but because it is itself a miracle. To deny its supernatural property is to deny its existence, and to deny the possibility of impossibility.
“Faith is rare, He must have been saying,” Levertov explains. Even more: it is “prodigious,” a word that connotes not only vastness of size but also wonderfulness, unnaturalness. It is “unique— / one infinitesimal grain divided / like loaves and fishes.” In this simile, Levertov alludes to one of Christ’s miracles of augmentation, wherein he fed a multitude from a paltry meal of loaves and fishes. That miraculous augmentation is faith: “as if from a mustard-seed / a great shade-tree grew. That rare, / that strange: the kingdom / a tree.” And Christ, in carrying it out, transcends ironclad nature.
But to what end? Assuming that Christ has indeed planted a minutely prodigious miracle in our hearts, assuming that the kingdom tree does, in fact, sprout from the lowly mustard seed, the audience must still question Christ’s purpose in upsetting nature so. Levertov concludes her poem with a breathtaking image of the result of Christ’s miraculous action: “The kingdom / a tree. The soul / a bird. A great concourse of birds / at home there, wings among yellow flowers.” The kingdom, sown in this earth, exceeds its possibilities and blossoms into a tree of yellow flowers, the habitation of souls. Thus Christ fashions a wonderful tree of life from the meager earthly plant. This is the kingdom: glorious beauty wrought of the unextraordinary.
Even as this vision delights our minds, Levertov alters her tone yet again, crafting within it the plaintive unresolved note of expectancy as she concludes with the words, “The waiting / kingdom of faith, the seed /waiting to be sown.” Sealing the poem, these phrases remind her readers that the kingdom has not yet arrived. It is waiting to be sown.
This poem, like the parable to which it alludes, speaks the Gospel. It affirms the natural world in all its order and legality, and the limitations that such laws entail. But into this order walks the character of Christ, bringing revolution, establishing a new order. For those who recognize that the seed within them is miracle, He has planted a dwelling of prodigious life: the kingdom tree awaits their coming. However, before they may roost, another call rests upon these seeded souls. As earthly birds are agents of seeding, so Levertov’s bird-souls are Christ’s agents, used to spread the seed that is waiting to be sown.
In crafting this poem, Levertov responds to this call and seeds the world with miraculous mustard. In barren meadows she sows Christ’s kernels, affirming the mystery of the Gospel. And as she sows, she no doubt anticipates the yellow embrace of “shade and nest and birdsong” that awaits her.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
But what is it then that sits in my heart,
that breathes so quietly, and without lungs--
that is here, here in this world, and yet not here?
------------------------------------
If you are in the garden, I will dress myself in leaves.
If you are in the sea I will slide into that
smooth blue nest, I will talk fish, I will adore salt.
But if you are sad, I will not dress myself in desolation.
I will present myself with all the laughters I can muster.
And if you are angry I will come, calm and steady, with
some small and easy story.
Promises, promises, promises! The tongue jabbers, the heart
strives, fails, strives again. The world is perfect.
Love, however, is an opera, a history, a long walk, that
includes falling and rising, falling and rising, while
the heart stays as sweet as a peach, as radiant and
grateful as the deep-leaved hills.
[Mary Oliver: "Rhapsody": The Leaf and the Cloud]
that breathes so quietly, and without lungs--
that is here, here in this world, and yet not here?
------------------------------------
If you are in the garden, I will dress myself in leaves.
If you are in the sea I will slide into that
smooth blue nest, I will talk fish, I will adore salt.
But if you are sad, I will not dress myself in desolation.
I will present myself with all the laughters I can muster.
And if you are angry I will come, calm and steady, with
some small and easy story.
Promises, promises, promises! The tongue jabbers, the heart
strives, fails, strives again. The world is perfect.
Love, however, is an opera, a history, a long walk, that
includes falling and rising, falling and rising, while
the heart stays as sweet as a peach, as radiant and
grateful as the deep-leaved hills.
[Mary Oliver: "Rhapsody": The Leaf and the Cloud]
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
penitence
5:42 am-
The coffee is chuckling to fragrant life on my countertop, and I have just removed my seething bowl of oatmeal from the microwave. A few lights are on, but the living room is dim and chilly.
I am thinking about how frighteningly easy it is to be false. How I speak the language of faith constantly, and yet my inner woman paints her face and wears scarlet. How even my purest thoughts and gestures bear the stain of hypocrisy and guilt.
I am thinking about the blood of Jesus, and how I manipulate and abuse it.
I'm thinking about how I need to be cleansed at every moment, and how exhausting it is to be holy from the inside out, and how impossible.
But my feet are planted on a Rock, and my heart is filled with the renewing Spirit. I know that I cannot slip back into the crevice of complacency while I walk this straight and narrow path: my eyes must watch my feet and ponder their Word-lit way. Courage and fortitude and patience are not only called for but also supplied when I request them. His yoke is easy; His burden is light.
"He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as He hears it He will answer you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide Himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. ...You shall have a song as in the night when a holy feast is kept, and gladness of heart, as when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the Lord, the Rock of Israel." Isaiah 30:19-20, 29
The coffee is chuckling to fragrant life on my countertop, and I have just removed my seething bowl of oatmeal from the microwave. A few lights are on, but the living room is dim and chilly.
I am thinking about how frighteningly easy it is to be false. How I speak the language of faith constantly, and yet my inner woman paints her face and wears scarlet. How even my purest thoughts and gestures bear the stain of hypocrisy and guilt.
I am thinking about the blood of Jesus, and how I manipulate and abuse it.
I'm thinking about how I need to be cleansed at every moment, and how exhausting it is to be holy from the inside out, and how impossible.
But my feet are planted on a Rock, and my heart is filled with the renewing Spirit. I know that I cannot slip back into the crevice of complacency while I walk this straight and narrow path: my eyes must watch my feet and ponder their Word-lit way. Courage and fortitude and patience are not only called for but also supplied when I request them. His yoke is easy; His burden is light.
"He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as He hears it He will answer you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide Himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. ...You shall have a song as in the night when a holy feast is kept, and gladness of heart, as when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the Lord, the Rock of Israel." Isaiah 30:19-20, 29
good thoughts
"The invisible manifests itself in the visible. I think of the alphabet, of letters literally--A, B, C, D, E, F, G, all twenty-six of them. I think of how poetry, history, the wisdom of the sages and the holiness of the saints, all of this invisible comes down to us dressed out in their visible, alphabetic drab. H and I and J, and K, L, M, N are the mold that our innermost thoughts must be pressed into finally if we are to share them; O, P, Q, R, S, T, U is the wooden tongue that we must speak if we are ever to make ourselves known, that must be spoken to us if we are ever to know. V, W, X, Y, Z. ... I am thinking of incarnation, breath becoming speech through teeth and tongue, spirit becoming word, silence becoming prayer, the holy dream becoming the holy face. I am speaking of the humdrum events of our lives as an alphabet. I am thinking of grace. I am thinking of the power beyond all power, the power that holds all things in manifestation, and I am thinking of this power as ultimately a Christ-making power, which is to say a power that makes Christs, which is to say a power that works through the drab and hubbub of our lives to make Christs of us before we're done or else, for our sakes, graciously to destroy us. In neither case, needless to say, is the process to be thought of as painless. I am thinking of salvation."
-The Alphabet of Grace: "Gutturals"--Frederich Buechner
-The Alphabet of Grace: "Gutturals"--Frederich Buechner
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
I am grieving. My friends are grieving. A dear man has exchanged the corruptible for the incorruptible, and left us reeling.
Positive though we may be that he now dwells in that "species beyond", nevertheless our finite minds stubbornly refuse to adapt. We constantly slip into believing that he is here...and constantly feel that sick jolt of re-knowing his absence.
There's no describing the weight of feelings, except to note that they are mostly poignant gladnesses for his sake. And burdened fears for the sakes of those who relied on him.
"And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." Isaiah 35:10
Positive though we may be that he now dwells in that "species beyond", nevertheless our finite minds stubbornly refuse to adapt. We constantly slip into believing that he is here...and constantly feel that sick jolt of re-knowing his absence.
There's no describing the weight of feelings, except to note that they are mostly poignant gladnesses for his sake. And burdened fears for the sakes of those who relied on him.
"And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." Isaiah 35:10
Friday, September 12, 2008
21
A Traveler
If it's chariots or sandals,
I'll take sandals.
I like the high prow of the chariot,
the daredevil speed, the wind
a quick tune you can't
quite catch
but I want to go
a long way
and I want to follow
paths where wheels deadlock.
And I don't want always
to be among gear and horses,
blood, foam, dust. I'd like
to wean myself from their strange allure.
I'll chance
the pilgrim sandals.
-Denise Levertov-
If it's chariots or sandals,
I'll take sandals.
I like the high prow of the chariot,
the daredevil speed, the wind
a quick tune you can't
quite catch
but I want to go
a long way
and I want to follow
paths where wheels deadlock.
And I don't want always
to be among gear and horses,
blood, foam, dust. I'd like
to wean myself from their strange allure.
I'll chance
the pilgrim sandals.
-Denise Levertov-
Saturday, September 06, 2008
spoiled
Last year at this time, I would never have predicted the blessings that would come my way and culminate in a snug, sprawly house buried in a woodsy area of Lookout Mountain. After a summer in which my soul gained a precious sense of firm footing, and my mind burned through book after inspiring book, and my heart revelled in the embrace of home and family...after that foundation was restablized, I landed here: on this couch in a spotless living room, listening to Roxette and the bustle of my beautiful housemates, sipping coffee, my mind still returning every now and then to the words of life that thrilled my spirit this morning.
I feel so sure, so blazingly certain, that all my roads are leading to God these days--my physical, intellectual, emotional, relational roads all, each day, draw me nearer and deeper into the Truth. The Spirit dwells within me, despite my weakness, despite my many failures, and He is purifying me. The promises of the Bible dizzy me. I love my Savior more than I ever have.
"If He is the truth and the life, we will find it out soon enough for ourselves, you can be sure of that. If we want to find it out, if we are willing to draw near in whatever idiotic way we can, all our reservations and doubts notwithstanding, because little by little we find out then that to be where HE is, to go where HE goes, to see through eyes and work with hands like HIS is to feel ourselves at last, is to become fully ourselves at last and fully each other's at last, and to become finally more even than that: to become fully HIS at last." (!) -Buechner, "The Sign by the Highway"
I feel so sure, so blazingly certain, that all my roads are leading to God these days--my physical, intellectual, emotional, relational roads all, each day, draw me nearer and deeper into the Truth. The Spirit dwells within me, despite my weakness, despite my many failures, and He is purifying me. The promises of the Bible dizzy me. I love my Savior more than I ever have.
"If He is the truth and the life, we will find it out soon enough for ourselves, you can be sure of that. If we want to find it out, if we are willing to draw near in whatever idiotic way we can, all our reservations and doubts notwithstanding, because little by little we find out then that to be where HE is, to go where HE goes, to see through eyes and work with hands like HIS is to feel ourselves at last, is to become fully ourselves at last and fully each other's at last, and to become finally more even than that: to become fully HIS at last." (!) -Buechner, "The Sign by the Highway"
Thursday, August 14, 2008
I've just returned from an evening jog, and imprinted forever on my memory is the sight of several dozen Canadian geese sillhouettes darkening the border of moonlit Elmwood lake like so many silent sentries, motionless, absurdly majestic.
Fourteen days remaining, and Hannah and I have mapped out an event for each of them, to be photographed and compiled into a pre-wedding album.
I anticipate mountain vistas and renewed purpose, although the prospect of leaving these vast skies and indolent hours sometimes pulls a stitch out of the seam around my heart.
Fourteen days remaining, and Hannah and I have mapped out an event for each of them, to be photographed and compiled into a pre-wedding album.
I anticipate mountain vistas and renewed purpose, although the prospect of leaving these vast skies and indolent hours sometimes pulls a stitch out of the seam around my heart.
Friday, August 08, 2008
Daughter of Laughter
I've just completed Frederich Buechner's latest novel, The Son of Laughter, which retells the story of Jacob. I percieve anew the reality of the Old Testament as a state of pregnancy: the sickness of doubt, kickings of promise, fear, joy, longing. I see Christ as the fulfillment of those groaning years. I inherit the legacy, I belong to that seed; I, too, yearn and groan for a future, sustained by Faith in the promises and the heritage of those who have preceeded me. The Blessing runs off with me. "It is beautiful and it is appalling. It races through the barren hills to an end of its own." I am the daughter of the Son of Laughter, and my name has its own humble niche in the glorious geneology of the Promise.
How wonderful are the ways of God.
How wonderful are the ways of God.
Monday, August 04, 2008
on my mind
"Christianity has the ring, the feel, of unique truth. Of essential truth. By it, life is made full instead of meaningless. Cosmos becomes beuaitful at the Centre, instead of chillingly ugly beneath the lovely pathos of spring. But the emptiness, the meaninglessness, and the ugliness can only be seen, I think, when one has glimpsed the fullness, the meaning, and the beauty. It is when heaven and hell have both been glimpsed that going back is impossible."
"Our only hope: to leap into the Word
That opens up the shuttered universe."
"It is not possible to be 'incidentally a Christian.' The fact of Christinaity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing. This suggests a reason for the dislike of Christians by nominal or non-Christians: their lives contain no overwhelming firsts but many balances."
"If God is to be, in truth, sought first, He must be seen as heart's desire."
"Secretly we are all perhaps the Questing Knight. And yet, whatever the object of our quest, we learn when we find it that it does not ever contain the joy that broke our heart with longing. Thus, Lewis says, 'if a man diligently followed this desire [for joy], pursuing the false objects until their falsity appeared and then resolutely abandoning them, he must come out at last into the clear knowledge that the human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given--nay, cannot even be imagined as given--in our present mode of subjective and spatio-temporal experience.' "
"We have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. ...We were created for eternity."
"[Christ] must often seem to us to be playing fast and loose with us. The adult must seem to mislead the child, and the Master the dog. They misread the signs. Their ignorance and their wishes twist everything."
"Love is the final reality, and anyone who does not understand this, be he writer or sage, is a man flawed in wisdom."
"Love not only begets love, it transmits strength."
"Every disability conceals a vocation, if onyl we can find it, which will 'turn the necessity to glorious gain.'"
--Sheldon VanAuken: A Severe Mercy
"Our only hope: to leap into the Word
That opens up the shuttered universe."
"It is not possible to be 'incidentally a Christian.' The fact of Christinaity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing. This suggests a reason for the dislike of Christians by nominal or non-Christians: their lives contain no overwhelming firsts but many balances."
"If God is to be, in truth, sought first, He must be seen as heart's desire."
"Secretly we are all perhaps the Questing Knight. And yet, whatever the object of our quest, we learn when we find it that it does not ever contain the joy that broke our heart with longing. Thus, Lewis says, 'if a man diligently followed this desire [for joy], pursuing the false objects until their falsity appeared and then resolutely abandoning them, he must come out at last into the clear knowledge that the human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given--nay, cannot even be imagined as given--in our present mode of subjective and spatio-temporal experience.' "
"We have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. ...We were created for eternity."
"[Christ] must often seem to us to be playing fast and loose with us. The adult must seem to mislead the child, and the Master the dog. They misread the signs. Their ignorance and their wishes twist everything."
"Love is the final reality, and anyone who does not understand this, be he writer or sage, is a man flawed in wisdom."
"Love not only begets love, it transmits strength."
"Every disability conceals a vocation, if onyl we can find it, which will 'turn the necessity to glorious gain.'"
--Sheldon VanAuken: A Severe Mercy
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
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