Inscapes

Happy Birthday

2011-12-24T15:18:00.003-05:00

Ninety years ago on Christmas Day my mother was born, to become the middle of three children. Six years later their mother died, and shortly after, their father was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent years in a TB sanitarium, not expected to recover. Mother and her two brothers were raised by her father’s mother (who had already raised twelve children of her own), with the help of some of their aunts. Each sibling, separately, also spent some time in the sanitarium, for treatment to prevent their also contracting the dreaded disease. They slogged their way through the depression selling eggs and taking in washing and feeding hobos who were willing to work for a meal. Their father was returned to them, well at last, but not until Mother was in high school. Her older brother, a pilot, died in World War II; her younger disappeared after the war until after her own children were gone from home.

Because to recognize a Christmas birthday was too much for a grandmother trying to carry three more children through the depression, Mother’s first birthday party was given her by us when I was in high school, a surprise I’m still proud of pulling off. And on this day when we celebrate the Saviour sent for us, I celebrate too the woman who led me to Him through her daily example of His sacrificial love. Her early life was anything but easy – yet it molded her into a woman who learned gratefulness, who learned to love her Lord and serve her neighbors all her life.

Mother and Daddy had their trials and tribulations too, of course, over 67 years, but she had chosen to live in joy from a young age and so they worked together to make a home that was a miracle of love. She loved Daddy first and best, always, and she gave to us, her two children, of all she was. She taught us to love books by reading to us, keeping full shelves in the study and in our rooms, taking us to the library weekly. She taught us to work as part of a family with our various chores, and she made sure we were part of family life in the kitchen, the sewing room, the garden, the grocery store. The church was our second home, where we joined choir and youth group and went to the dinners and activities and contributed in various ways to the missions and charities. She participated in the church circles and made items for the yearly bazaar and volunteered in the local food bank. She welcomed foreign students, from the university where Daddy worked, for the holidays; she put together food and gift baskets for the local poor; she created a “Santa’s Cookie Tree” on which we hung the gingerbread cookies we’d baked and decorated for the community to enjoy. She took me to the Plaza in Kansas City to window shop and look at fashions, then we picked out patterns and material to make my clothes, as nice or nicer than any we’d seen in the fancy stores. She cried over us, rejoiced over us, daily prayed over us.

Her brothers both are gone, her brothers- and sister-in-law too, and now Daddy. But, despite sorrow and loneliness (what could ever fill the emptiness after 67 years of marriage), she still chooses every day to live in joy. She remains active in her church, she still read voraciously, she cries and rejoices and daily prays over us her children and over her grand- and great-grandchildren. She chooses joy and so her love lifts me up every day of my life, as it has ever done.

(The rose is one from the bush Mother sent us one year.)

Sabbatical is Here

2011-12-21T13:20:00.003-05:00

I am now officially on sabbatical. The last things I did before leaving the office last Friday were to set my college phone and email messages to refer callers and correspondents to someone else. The phone I won't check (no one calls anymore anyway with email so convenient); the email I'll take note of just in case there is department or college business I actually need to attend to or want a voice in, or a personal message I want to respond to.

So far:

I have cleaned up, polished, and refurnished my desk. I can now get to the top of it for more than just charging the computer and phone. Pens and legal pads are within easy reach, and a bit of chocolate, of course, and a new box of printer paper for the new printer.

I have placed the books I brought from work neatly on top of the small bookcase that also holds the creative nonfiction books, collections of familiar essays, and drafts of my Inscapes and Essaying posts.

I have printed out the last few of those posts and placed them in their chronological order. I'll be going through them all to sort them into categories soon, but not just yet.

I have made a calendar of January-March creative nonfiction contest submission dates and placed it on my computer desktop and on a hard-copy calendar. I may not enter any of these particular ones, but they still provide incentive; if not, then perhaps some a bit later in the spring.

I have had 3:00 a.m. connections made between ideas and drafts I've not before connected, and remembered them in the morning.

I have, finally, read and enjoyed almost all of Cleanth Brooks' essays in his collection Community, Religion, and Literature -- a book I've tried to concentrate on for months now. I have only a couple left for today or tomorrow. (I highly recommend this book to my lit-teacher friends, by the way.)

I have gone to Chattanooga with K when the Young Man returned his rental car to bring him back home for a two-week leave. I've even made dinner one night. (Okay, it was a chef salad, but I still made it and we all sat down together to eat it!)

I have slept till I wanted to get up and taken naps if I felt like it -- and I am beginning to feel less exhausted and more refreshed than in a long time. It helps to know that I needn't be working on syllabi and schedules for January.

Now for the writing.

Sepia Moon

2011-12-12T23:08:00.001-05:00

This morning’s moon shone confidently above and over the clouds filling most of the deep sky; not even the ragged bits of ebony left from the night’s attempt at rain could cross her surface. Clear she shone for the full ten minutes of my drive, creating her own sepia frame that rebuffed all darkness. Surely beauty will save the world, for who that has eyes to see can see less than its Creator, do less than fall to the ground before its burning Truth . . .

One Thousand Gifts

2011-11-23T20:29:00.002-05:00

I have finally begun reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. Last spring a beloved former student first told me about it, and I must have heard the name a dozen times since. I ordered the book, with a large number of others, some time back, and it had been patiently waiting its turn at the bottom of the stack. Then a couple of weeks ago, K. showed me an interview with Voskamp in World Magazine, and the next day my oldest daughter mentioned hearing her at a conference and said I might enjoy her book. I retrieved it from beneath the books left in the stack.

So far I find it encouraging and honest fare. I am having to get used to her writing style, just a little different from the norm and something many readers would likely not notice, but it is growing on me and I think I will find it pleasing long before I reach the final chapter.

She begins by describing her family’s shutting out grace when her baby sister was killed in their driveway, toddling behind a delivery truck after a cat. It is her first memory, “my mother’s witnessing-scream,” “blood [seeping] through that blanket” in which her mother held the dead body. She describes the grave: “They lay her gravestone flat into the earth, a black granite slab engraved with no dates, only the five letters of her name. Aimee. It means ‘loved one.’ How she was. We had loved her. And with the laying of her gravestone, the closing up of her deathbed, so closed our lives. Closed to any notion of grace.”

Voskamp struggled well into her adulthood with believing in and opening herself to grace. I am only two chapters in, but I find her struggle to be written genuinely and I trust her as she describes her journey and reminds us of the lies Satan tells us about what we need – that what we have is not enough, not fair, that God owes us more, keeps back from us what would make us happy – and reminds us against that of what the Scriptures say about joy and gratitude and grace.

She explains her discovery of the meaning of that word we use for the Lord’s Supper, the eucharist, which she finds translated in Luke’s version as “he gave thanks”: in the Greek, it is eucharisteo. Its root is charis, which means grace; but it also contains a derivative of charis – chara, which means joy. “Deep chara joy is found only at the table of the euCHARisteo – the table of thanksgiving. I sit there long . . . wondering . . . is it that simple? Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?” She list the words, savoring, reflecting, wondering: “Charis. Grace. Eucharisteo. Thanksgiving. Chara. Joy. A triplet of stars, a constellation in the black. A threefold cord that might hold a life? Offer a way up into the fullest life?”

She lets us hear her wondering, her meditations, her working to understand, ending with the plight of living and the question we must all someday answer: “The way through is hard. But do I really want to be saved?”

As she is considering these things a friend sends her a sort of dare: can you list one thousand things you love, one thousand things for which you are grateful? And she begins, immediately, with “morning shadows across the old floors” and “jam piled high on the toast” and “cry of blue jay from high in the spruce.” And smiles, finding the exercise of putting the gifts she has into words on paper to be like “unwrapping love.”

She finds beauty and joy and increased gratefulness in recording these small, everyday things – at the same time admitting, sometimes “I do scoff. I yearn for the stuff of saints, the hard language, the fluency of thanksgiving in all, even the ugliest and most heartbreaking. I want the very fullest life. I wonder, even just an inkling – is this but a ridiculous experiment? Some days, ones with laundry and kids and dishes in sink, it is hard to think that the insulting ordinariness of this truly teaches the full mystery of the all most important, eucharisteo. It’s so frustratingly common – it’s offensive.” And adds, “Driving nails into a life always is.”

She reminds us of what C. S. Lewis says about life: “If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.” She begins to see her list as a training ground, practice; one must begin somewhere: “Practice,” she writes, “is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.” Finding herself beginning to be more grateful, finding that others – friends, family – sense a change in her, she writes, “Gratitude for the seemingly insignificant – a seed – this plants the giant miracle. The miracle of eucharisteo, like the Last Supper, is in the eating of crumbs, the swallowing down one mouthful. Do not disdain the small. The whole of the life – even the hard – is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole. [. . .] There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things. It is this: to give thanks in this one small thing. The moments will add up.”

I came home yesterday to begin Thanksgiving break feeling nearly euphoric. I recognize that much of that feeling stemmed from circumstances – the research essays were graded and didn’t need to come home with me, five blessed days of quiet, maybe even a few minutes within them to grab hold of for writing . . . But it was as well some part genuine simple gratefulness – for the weekend visit of the Young Man, for a loving husband and comforting home to spend these five days with and in, for colleagues who encourage me and allow me to be an encouragement to them, for children and grandchildren, and my mother still well, and friends who love me, and books to read . . . certainly one could go on forever; a thousand gifts is a pittance of all that we have been given.

But I don’t practice gratitude, not really, not regularly. Two chapters into Voskamp’s book, and it’s so lovely and encouraging, and I am almost afraid to keep reading – for what one knows one is responsible to and for. Do I really want to be saved? Do I really want to learn the way of eucharisteo, of giving thanks in all things, of living in grace? Or do I prefer to listen to Satan’s lies and whine and complain and demand more and more of what I never needed? Teresa's little way, the only way life is lived, minute by minute, blessing by blessing . . . do I have the courage to embrace it?

Wildlife on the Lawn

2011-10-30T10:00:00.003-04:00

I looked out the front window this morning to find an entire flock of robins, two bluejays, and a squirrel feeding on the dew-covered grass. As I watched, the robins began interspersing their foraging with games of tag, swooping under the trees, across the road, and back again. When a second squirrel appeared, they ate together for a while, watching the birds, then suddenly leaped into their own game of tag, all about the lawn, racing in widening and tightening circles, resting a moment, then off again. One finally shot up a tree trunk and the game ended. The flock of robins had thinned out, the jays had flown, so I walked back to my study. Glancing out the window, I saw that the robins had merely moved on to the neighbor's lawn for a second course of food and fun.

Full Moon

2011-10-14T06:53:00.002-04:00

Phoebe hung in the sky this morning like a luminescent jewel, like the promise of God's providence lighting my way into the day . . .

C. S. Lewis on Literature

2011-10-05T11:05:00.004-04:00

Several of us read and discussed quotations from C. S. Lewis in chapel this week; here's what I wrote:

We often forget that C.S. Lewis made his living as a literary critic and teacher of literature. Teachers of literature today do not only use his literary works, such as Screwtape Letters or Till We Have Faces, in our classes, but also his works of criticism, such as The Discarded Image on medieval and Renaissance literature or Spenser’s Images of Life on the Fairie Queene. And his writings on the philosophy of literature, found in books such as On Stories and numerous essays in various collections, provide a framework for an approach to writing and reading that is invaluable to the serious Christian.

In his essay “Christianity and Literature” (which can be found in the collection Christian Reflections), Lewis writes about the contrast between modern criticism, which aggrandizes the self as the source of “creativity, originality, and spontaneity,” and the Scriptural understanding that we are to be “as little as possible ourselves,” and instead become “clean mirrors filled with the image of a face that is not ours.”

He writes, “pride does not only go before a fall but is a fall – a fall of the creature’s attention from what is better, God, to what is worse, itself.” Because of this, he asserts that “the basis of all critical theory [should be] the maxim that an author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as trying to embody, in terms of his own art, some reflection of eternal Beauty and Wisdom.” He further claims that “all the greatest poems have been made by men who valued something else much more than poetry”: in other words, art created merely for its own sake can only be shallow, frivolous, and self-important; art for the sake of the other – God and neighbor – has the potential to attain sublimity.

In other words, Christians are meant to be only reflected light – just as the moon has no light of its own but can only reflect the light of the sun, we have no light of our own but can only reflect the light of the Son of God. We cannot create ex nihilo: all that we make is drawn from what has already been given; it is discovery of that which already exists.

As both a writer and a teacher of literature, these claims guide my philosophy.

As a writer, this leads me to seek first to serve my readers rather than to focus on my uniqueness as a writer; the work I produce must not be intended to draw attention primarily to me and my ability to be “different,” but rather it must be intended to serve those who read it by reflecting the beauty and wisdom that God has revealed. I must be in the business of seeking truth before all else, desiring to make that truth accessible to others for their benefit. If I do this, I can be confident that the unique personality God has given me will be carried in the works – but only to the extent that it is helpful in serving to point others to its Source. “He must increase; I must decrease” must be the Christian writer’s motto as it is that of all believers.

As a teacher of literature, I desire for students to find the wonder and beauty of the works they read, and to glorify God for such gifts – that fallen men can show us the beauty of God’s creation and the hope of redemption in a broken world. We can and should love such writers, but we honor them most when we recognize that they point us to a greater One, to the One who is the Source of all beauty and wisdom. Even secular literature often does this, of course, because every writer is made in the image of God and able to reflect some truth about the world he observes and records and reflects upon; whether he knows it or not, his compass is set to true North whenever he writes with honesty. And even what he may miss reminds us of the world’s brokenness and the need for God’s message of redemption to inform it.

In these ways, Lewis’s professional and Scriptural understanding of the place of literature in the life of the Christian informs all that I do and – even more importantly – challenges me to always remember my own purpose in the world: to “become a clean mirror filled with the image” of the Lord who lives in and through me.

Living Reality in Light of Eternity

2011-09-25T21:33:00.003-04:00

“The people of our time are helpless, distracted, and rebellious, unable to interpret that which is happening, and full of apprehension about that which is to come, largely because they have lost this sure hold on the eternal which gives to each life meaning and direction, and with meaning and direction gives steadiness. I do not mean by this a mere escape from our problems and dangers, a slinking away from the actual to enjoy the eternal. I mean an acceptance and living out of the actual, in its homeliest details and its utmost demands, in the light of the eternal, and with that peculiar sense of ultimate security which only a hold on the eternal brings. When the vivid reality which is meant by these rather abstract words is truly possessed by us, when that which is unchanging in ourselves is given its chance, and emerges from the stream of succession to recognize its true home and goal, which is God – then though much suffering may, indeed will remain, apprehension, confusion, instability, despair will cease.”

When I read this passage from Evelyn Underhill’s Radiance, I was struck by the way it echoes what I have been saying about literature (good literature, true literature) for a very long time. We are not healed or helped or eased by escape from reality, whether into the worlds of literature or into a world of esoteric contemplation. The saint cannot very well be a saint if he does not live in reality, after all. We are not saints for God’s sake; we are saints for the sake of our neighbor. God pours Himself into us to make us saints, of course – we can hardly be saints on our own power – but He doesn’t do this because He has some personal need for our patience, our endurance, our joy, our love. He surely desires these things of us, and offers them to us for our growth and strength, but He is all this and all else that is Good, so when we offer Him these we offer Him nothing He doesn’t already have.

Rather, it is our neighbors who need us to be saints. We need to be saints in the midst of the reality of this broken world in order to serve our neighbors. We need to offer them the fruit of the joy, the faithfulness, the compassion, the diligence that He has poured out and wrought in us, to draw them to the only real Hope offered to any of us. We need to find the eternal, to turn to the eternal, to rejoice in the eternal and find our strength there in order to live well here, in, as Underhill calls it, the “actual.”

And while the road of the mystic, the road of contemplation, is one way into the eternal which informs our life in the actual, another road is that of literature, the words of the wise from all of time gathered in the soul to remind us of, of course, the eternal in the actual. I have said that literature shows us the ideal, the way the world ought to be. Not, if it is true, ideal in the sense of unfallen – we have no idea what an unfallen world would be – but ideal in demonstrating to us the way to live well in the midst of that fallenness, to demonstrate courage and compassion and forgiveness and gratitude, and to bear witness to their Source.

9/11 Ten Years After

2011-09-10T21:04:00.001-04:00

A few links to help us remember what should never be forgotten:

Bill Luse at What’s Wrong with the World: "A Sunday Thought for the Victims of 9/11"

Rich Lowry at National Review Online: "A Decade of Heroes"

And a sobering view from Mark Steyn, also at NRO, of how we may have failed to meet the challenge of that day horrific day: "Let’s Roll Over"

An excellent memorial video: "In Memoriam: Remembering September 11, 2001"

First Day of Classes

2011-08-24T18:37:00.003-04:00

An alabaster crescent moon in the unclouded just-dawning blue, a blessed reminder of our purpose here and always: to reflect -- however imperfectly or partially -- the glory of the Lord in our service to our neighbor.

Truth, Lies, and Exaggerations

2011-08-17T13:39:00.004-04:00

Caveat (because you can't write anything without them anymore, it seems): I think that bearing false witness is a wretched sin for which we should never employ the gift of language. That said:

When we would catch my dad out in a somewhat different story from its original, he would grin and say, "It's just exaggeration for emphasis."

The other evening, I heard another take on it on some television show I was watching; one character had left out a significant element of a story about another, and when called on it replied: "Let's call it 'truth reimagined for the greater good.'"

I thought it was kinda cute, in the context.

Forever 21? No, Thanks!

2011-08-05T13:37:00.004-04:00

Yesterday we went to Chattanooga to celebrate K's birthday. He bought himself a gift, we ate at O'Charley's, then we went to Hamilton Place mall to browse a bit.

It was the first time I'd seen -- or heard of -- this store.

Who in the world wants to be 21 forever? Twenty-one-year-olds think they know everything but know nothing; they judge everyone around them for every perceived flaw they think they see; their footloose and fancy free lifestyle is self-absorbed and shallow; they believe that anything (or anyone) older than they is totally without value; they think they will live forever and thus endanger those around them . . .

What makes 21 attractive? Legal consumption of alcohol -- it's not called 20 Forever. The lack of responsibility -- few 21-year-olds these days are even married, much less parents; older than 21 would risk having to care for others. Being still bound up in video games and 10 movies a week and going out every night and expensive cups of coffee every day. Pleasing oneself, in other words, instead of growing up.

But it is a sad thing not to grow up. We were not born to stay foolish and self-absorbed; we were born to grow up and live in real community. The service given us by parents and others when we are children is meant to lead us to serve others, not give us the idea that others were created to serve us all our lives. The responsibilities of a full-time job, marriage, children, serving in a church and community: these are wholesome and satisfying in a way that living for self cannot ever be.

Annie Dillard says in The Writing Life that the life of the senses is never enough, we are never sated, always grasping for more and more; but the life of spirit satisfies, allows us to slow down and find life sweet. And the life of the spirit is the life of putting others -- God and neighbor -- above the self.

I'm always so moved and delighted to see many of our students here understanding this by the time they graduate -- knowing they do not want to be forever 21. May they be salt and light in an ever-darkening world, demonstrating the sweetness of service and satisfaction of growing up -- not to the dullness that the self-absorbed fear but to the adventure of genuine love and the bonds that only perseverance and commitment and shared purpose can ever create.

Summer Storm

2011-07-30T22:05:00.004-04:00

Distant thunder draws our attention to incoming rainclouds long before the sky darkens above us. The first drops stir me from a doze over the slow-moving novel I've been trying to read and bring me to the front porch.

By the time I step outside, silver sheets glitter from sky to earth, turning the sidewalk into a shallow rushing creek. Drops bouncing upward off the neighbor's roof look like steam rising, then falling back down to slide to the thirsty lawn. Tightly closed crepe myrtle buds cling to silver droplets even as the wind thrashes them in every direction.

Two balls of golden fire whip through the slowing drops, finches swooping from the dogwood to the crepe myrtle. To the east, the mountains rise in their customary smoky haze; to the west, the mid-day sun lightens the edges of storm clouds into grey-white sky; overhead the thunder rolls farther and farther away as the heat begins to rise again and birds call back and forth in the newly-cleansed air. The finches swoop out of the crepe myrtle and over the roof, and tree branches still as wind and rain slow to silence, attempting feebly to rise again and yet again until only the glimmer of grass and leaves bears witness to their passing.

A choir of praise swells from someone's stereo to fill the neighborhood.

I'll Take Mild Sauce, Thanks

2011-07-25T10:06:00.006-04:00

The other day, I made a pot roast. K bought potatoes, carrots, and onions to go with it, but I used only a small portion of them. So I decided to cook the rest in the leftover broth, mash them up, and freeze them in one-meal portions.

The carrots were bubbling away in the broth, I'd cut up the onions and was getting ready to start on the potatoes -- both to go in later since they take less time to cook -- when K pointed to the two small, brilliant orange-red peppers the neighbors had given us, and said, "Hey, you could put those in."

I'm not much of a pepper person as a rule; bell peppers on pizza are about as daring as I get. If you bring stronger than mild salsa into my house for chips, you're welcome to it. So I demurred: "I thought you said they're hot; I want to be able to eat this, too."

"I don't know that they're hot; I'll find out." He cut off the tiny tip of one, chewed on it for awhile, and pronounced it no more hot than bell peppers. Well, okay, then. As long as they were small and bland, I could handle some pepper in the potatoes and carrots.

Holding the peppers in my left hand, I sliced and de-seeded and diced them, then scooped them up, also with my left hand, and dumped them in with the carrots. They were small; it didn't take long. Then I licked the juice off my fingers (and must have licked my lips immediately after).

Two seconds later, I said, "These are too hot." Five seconds later I was running cold water over my hands and very nearly screaming for ice. K came in, baffled, remarked again that the bit he'd eaten earlier hadn't been hot. Had I bitten into a seed, maybe? No, I had not; I had licked the juice from my fingers.

He took a bit from the pot, put it in his mouth, and almost instantly spit it out, horrified. He poured soap over my hands, got me ice, got me ice cream, got himself a popsicle. He took the pan outside and dumped out all those lovely carrots in that savory broth, then cleaned the pan, the knife I'd used, the chopping board, assiduously. Meanwhile I continued running ice cubes over my tongue and lips, moaning. I washed my hands, again and again, afraid to touch anything for fear of contaminating it with that flaming juice. I wiped my hands on my apron only, then threw it into the wash.

Two hours later, the fire in my tongue and lips had mostly abated. I accidentally touched the corners of my eyes with my fingertips and ran for the eyedrops; thankfully, I'd barely touched them before I thought and they only burned mildly for a few seconds. I wondered, seriously, if I'd have been blinded if I'd touched them earlier.

The worst pain gone, I began to realize that the fingers of my left hand were burning. Examining them closely, I found they had actually blistered from the pepper juice. If I touched them to my tongue, my tongue burned again. All night they burned; they still burned when I got up this morning. Only now, 16+ hours later, are they beginning to feel almost normal, the blisters receding, the burning relieved.

Who said beauty isn't dangerous?

Bemused

2011-07-05T14:05:00.003-04:00

Because we are lazy, we shorten words:

telephone --> phone

refrigerator --> frig

weblog --> blog

Because we are lazy, we write long redundant phrases:

"all throughout" --> through

"due to the fact that" --> since

"the reason why is because" --> because

I don't understand human nature.

Alisa Kailey Impson: Requiescat In Pace

2011-06-20T08:12:00.004-04:00

Alisa Kailey Impson

2 February 1994 - 20 June 2011

Our beloved granddaughter Alisa, who loved nothing better than to hold onto and be held by those who loved her, has been gathered into the arms of her loving Savior. Her influence in the lives of her family, both immediate and extended, cannot be calculated.

We will miss her.

Sunday Update: Best Mother's Day Ever

2011-05-08T16:34:00.002-04:00

Today Davina walked without the cane. Friday a walker; Saturday a cane; Sunday all on her own: amazing recovery in such little time!

She called this afternoon when Daniel was there so I spoke to two of the kids at once -- what fun!

She sounded like herself, laughing and joking with the little brother, making fun of herself a bit about dragging her foot as she walks, pretending indignation at the littlest one's sudden ability to stay happily overnight away from Mommy . . .

So happy today!

Second Saturday Update

2011-05-07T16:37:00.003-04:00

I just talked with Davina again, and she sounds wonderful. She has already graduated from a walker to a cane, though she feels very awkward, and they are sure she will regain the strength in her left leg with time and physical therapy; they've scheduled her to do therapy very near where she lives. She will be try tomorrow to see if she can get off the major pain medication, as she has to be off it in order to go home. If so, and if all else continues to go as well as it has, she could go home as early as Monday. Today's medical science is amazing!

The children got to come see her today so they are more reassured now that Mommy is really all right. Her church has scheduled meals for all next week, and her friend who is a nurse came today to wash the grunge out of her hair; she said it doesn't even look like they shaved it at all. A nice surprise!

I told her about all of you who came up to me today before and after commencement to ask about her, and she is so grateful. We appreciate you all more than we can say.

Saturday Update

2011-05-07T08:05:00.003-04:00

Davina reports that yesterday was very difficult with pain, and they did an emergency CT scan to be sure everything was all right. The doctor said the scan was "fantastic." So it was just a matter of not having enough or the right kind of medication, and now that they've adjusted that she's feeling much better. She's frustrated of course with not being able to walk very well, but this will come with time.

Friday Update

2011-05-06T08:19:00.004-04:00

I TALKED TO MY GIRL THIS MORNING!

She talked a little, laughed a little, sounded very much herself except extra tired.

Unsurprisingly she has a very bad headache. This of course will subside as the brain heals.

She says her left leg feels very strange; she can't move it much. But she can already feel improvement in it.

Again: thanks to all for your prayers. Now for, we hope, an uneventful recovery!

Update

2011-05-05T18:19:00.003-04:00

Davina's surgery, according to the neurosurgeon, went very well. She has been moved to the ICU and has been waking up a bit now and then. They know that she does have some weakness in her left leg, but believe that will correct within a few weeks. I suppose they will be able to better see any other side effects after she is awake and aware.

Thanks to everyone for your prayers, and I will continue to let you know if there is more news.

Thursday: Thank you for your prayers!

2011-05-04T18:54:00.008-04:00

Our lovely Davina

with Daniel & kids

with Devin, Abby, Emma, and Alex

Pre-op: 5:30 a.m. (MRI, brain-mapping, etc.)

Predicted Completion: late afternoon

Hospital Stay: 3-7 days

Recovery: 2 weeks - several months

Prayers: wisdom and skill for the surgeon

peace for the children

smooth recovery

Praise: for a wonderful church family and good friends

for the prayers of so many across the country

UPDATE: Surgery Date Set

2011-04-27T17:06:00.002-04:00

Davina's surgery is scheduled for 5 May. Thank you for the many, many responses and we appreciate your prayers so much.

Prayer Request

2011-04-26T20:58:00.002-04:00

I have posted before about our older daughter's difficulties with an angioma: a cluster of blood vessels in the brain that bleed occasionally and, in her case, cause seizures. She has had some grand mal seizures in the past year, and today she saw a neurosurgeon who strongly recommended that she have surgery to remove the angioma. It has enlarged and has been bleeding inside itself, causing the greater pressure on the brain tissue that brings on the seizures. The more times this happens, the higher the chance that the angioma will hemorrhage.

Brain surgery is a serious and frightening thing. Davina's angioma is located in the motor skills part of her brain which affects the left side of her body. Surgery could cause a loss of strength on that side of the body, and of course there are many possible side effects. We would so appreciate prayers as she finalizes this decision.

If you are interested in knowing more about angiomas, the Angioma Alliance site is very helpful.

http://www.angiomaalliance.org/

Christ is Risen Indeed!

2011-04-24T15:13:00.002-04:00

St. John of Chrysostom’s Paschal sermon (4^th century):

"If any man be devout and love God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast. If any man be a wise servant, let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord. If any have labored long in fasting, let him now receive his recompense. If any have wrought from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward. If any have come at the third hour, let him with thankfulness keep the feast. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings; because he shall in nowise be deprived therefore. If any have delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near, fearing nothing. If any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness; for the Lord, who is jealous of his honor, will accept the last even as the first; he gives rest unto him who comes at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who has wrought from the first hour.

"And he shows mercy upon the last, and cares for the first; and to the one he gives, and upon the other he bestows gifts. And he both accepts the deeds, and welcomes the intention, and honors the acts and praises the offering. Wherefore, enter you all into the joy of your Lord; and receive your reward, both the first, and likewise the second. You rich and poor together, hold high festival. You sober and you heedless, honor the day. Rejoice today, both you who have fasted and you who have disregarded the fast. The table is full-laden; feast you all of it, sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.

"Enjoy, all of you, the feast of faith: Receive the riches of loving-kindness, and let no one bewail his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one weep for his iniquities, for pardon has shown forth from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Savior's death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it. By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered, when it encountered Thee in the lower regions.

"It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains. It took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

"O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory?

"Christ is risen, and you are overthrown. Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen. Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen, and life reigns. Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave. For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages. Amen."

Found at Scott Cairns’ lovely description of Holy Week as celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox church.

Christendom Review: Volume 3 Issue 1

2011-04-17T10:40:00.002-04:00

The newest issue of The Christendom Review is up; read and enjoy! Poetry, essays, fiction, visual art . . . something for everyone.

Reminders

2011-04-13T07:08:00.003-04:00

Last night I slept badly. As I pulled out of the driveway in a foul mood, having told K that he needed to pray for me to find a reason to care about anything, I was greeted by the morning star shining above a pastel-tinged horizon.

Of course. That's why I care.

(photo changed to one K actually took this morning)

Sabbatical

2011-04-09T13:39:00.000-04:00

I have been approved for a sabbatical for Spring 2012, an opportunity to spend concentrated time writing. Here’s what I wrote for the application to describe my goal for the time:

My intention [for the sabbatical] is to complete a book-length collection of familiar essays. For many years I have explored this genre: reading, studying, and teaching it; creating bits and pieces, starts and half-finished attempts. I have published a few reviews that fall to some degree within this genre, but would like to revisit some of these to make them less “reviews” and more “essays.” Since 2005, I have written nearly 400 posts at my personal weblog, well over half of which are actually beginnings and drafts of full-length familiar essays which need only development for breadth and depth to be complete. My recent discovery of G. Douglas Atkins’ work in the familiar essay genre reminded me yet again of its value and potential and of how I long to become adept in its achievement. Atkins in particular notes how the familiar essay can transcend the merely personal and earthly, how it can become incarnational in nature, ultimately suggesting to its readers the reality of the Incarnation itself. Whether I have the ability to do this, I don’t yet know . . . but I believe the trying – the essaying – is in itself work of value, both as it changes and challenges the writer and as it offers thoughtful considerations for the reader.

The topics on which I write are widely varied, but all circle back to themes of seeking what it means to live well, day by day, moment by moment, in this fallen world. Because I am a writer and a teacher of writing and literature, my essays often arise from and address works of literature and reflections on the writing life, as well as concerns about education and the lives of young men and women struggling in an increasingly chaotic and relativistic world. Because I am a woman and therefore a daughter and sister, a wife, mother, and grandmother, my essays also often derive from these roles and relationships, as well as from the sharpening iron of friendships forged over the years. Inevitably, my sufferings and trials underlie my writing choices and perspectives as I seek joy and hope in their midst. Since the familiar essay uses the particulars of the writer’s life to connect with, comment on, and illuminate the universality of human experience, this personal approach places my work solidly within that genre. I wish to bring these varied subjects and perspectives together under the concept of reflected light: as the moon has no light of its own but only reflects the light of the sun as their separate positions dictate, we should strive not to create our own light but to reflect the light of Christ in all we do and are.

I plan to spend this summer and fall gleaning from the work I’ve started those idea drafts that look best suited for this project, beginning to organize them, and starting the reading that I’d like to do alongside the writing. It’s an exciting and scary prospect, certainly, and I’m anticipating learning as much (or more) about myself as about anything else.

Congratulations to our Newly Graduated Sailor

2011-03-25T21:29:00.004-04:00

From playing in the water way

back when to the Navy today . . .

SO PROUD OF OUR SAILOR!

Simplicity

2011-03-21T22:36:00.002-04:00

I've probably posted this quotation before, from Richard John Neuhaus's meditation Death on a Friday Afternoon:

"The only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity."

I'm re-reading the book, as I try to do each Lent (though I don't always manage to complete it, in part because it is so rich), and this quote has captured me every time. I tend, as an academic, to see complexity everywhere; my world, by definition, is complex.

Of course, this bleeds over into the rest of life as well, including the spiritual. When I first was found by the Saviour, life seemed suddenly remarkably simple; love washed over me, I knew Truth, everything seemed clear as a summer noon. It was a time I needed, a time that somehow gave me the grounding, the reality that I required after years of terror in the face of my lostness and the brokenness of the world I was lost inside.

But time passes and life happens, and nothing remains as simple as it first seems. And now I feel awash in complexities -- not doubts of any foundational thing, but questions and mysteries, wonderments and ambiguities, uncertainties and, every day it seems, a new paradox to contemplate.

And yet, at the same time, I keep returning to this:

My father, when he had trouble remembering the years in which he had raised me, remembered without fail two things -- the prayer he always recited at meals, and the song he taught me when I was a child: "Jesus loves me, this I know / for the Bible tells me so." For a time when those dark months began, he felt fear, he forgot that he could trust the God he had walked with. And then, on the far side of fear, on the far side of doubt -- the simplicity of childhood, the simplicity of faith.

The complexity of my thinking is a good thing, it is even necessary; but I hope its greatest gift is the simplicity on its other side. I would be content if the last thing I remember would be that song of simple faith my father taught me, the song of faith in the Son of the Father we share, which we sang to our children again and again, which they sing to theirs.

SuperMoon

2011-03-19T21:31:00.006-04:00

This is the closest the moon has been to the earth in 18 years, and the closest it ever gets -- called a supermoon. We stood on the porch and watched it rising behind the clouds, astounding beauty in the night sky. The world seems to be going up in flames, but we can't destroy God's creation, no matter how hard we seem to try . . . I am reminded again of Gerard Manley Hopkins:

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Eye-to-Eye

2011-03-16T18:30:00.002-04:00

I left a few minutes early to go to my first class this morning, the sky grey from clouds and Daylight Savings. Starting down from third floor, I felt the world spin around me as I almost lost my footing . . . not the way I wanted to confirm that indeed I cannot walk down a flight of stairs with my bifocals on. Thankfully, I caught my balance on the brass railing, then removed my glasses and continued carefully. At the landing between third and second, still moving slowly in the half-fog of unglassed sight, I found myself eye-to-eye with a mockingbird.

I wasn’t sure for a moment that’s what he was. He sat perched on the outside ledge of the picture window, looking straight at me. I’ve seen so many doves and pigeons lately, I thought at first that’s what he was — but then I realized his grey was a little smoother and deeper, his inquisitive look a little more sophisticated, and I saw his wings and that hint of white at their tips. We stared at each other for at least ten seconds as I slowly put my glasses back on.

I wonder what he saw, how he processed it — colors, size, movement? Did he see my eyes and look into them, as he seemed to? He gazed attentively, moving his head just slightly to get different angles. I moved closer, to see how long he would stay, and I nearly reached the window before he decided a threat loomed on the other side of the glass. The white on his wings and tail as he spread them in flight blazed out like the sun in the grey world.

He didn’t go far, lighting on a floodlight jutting up from the rooftop, to illuminate the building’s crenellated entrance at night, and he turned back to check out the catalyst for his flight. Would the threat follow, did he need to fly a little further? I stayed still and we assessed each other again for a time.

Just as I was thinking that I needed to go on, another flash of white and grey swooped in toward him and a tangle of feathers struck the air as they fought over the coveted vantage point. My mockingbird won, and the other fled, to be attacked by still a third; those two drew a truce and landed together a few feet away on a skylight above the cafeteria.

My mockingbird turned his head from me to his rivals and back again, alert for danger from all sides; the other two went about their business, preening themselves, hunting for insect tidbits. I turned away to go about my own business, assessing the threats facing my day, pushing my hair out of my eyes, grateful for the tidbits of joy that keep framing my days.

cross-posted

"Lit Instructor"

2011-03-12T11:45:00.003-05:00

I ran across this lovely poem by William Stafford in Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach:

"Lit Instructor"

Day after day up there beating my wings

with all the softness truth requires

I feel them shrug whenever I pause:

they class my voice among tentative things,

And they credit fact, force, battering.

I dance my way toward the family of knowing,

embracing stray error as a long-lost boy

and bringing him home with my fluttering.

Every quick feather asserts a just claim;

it bites like a saw into white pine.

I communicate right; but explain to the dean--

well, Right has a long and intricate name.

And the saying of it is a lonely thing.

--from American Poems

Crescent Moon

2011-03-01T21:45:00.004-05:00

I've been feeling sad and out of sorts, irritable, with circumstances and physical pain weighing me down. I'm tired of it all; I just want to curl up under the covers and sleep the rest of my life away. But one can't, and so I got up early, as I usually must on Tuesdays, feeling sorry for myself, and prepared for my day.

Then I turned from the driveway into the street to be greeted by a crescent moon brilliant before me in the blue-black dawn, the morning star saluting her from above and to her right, the mountains below them barely tinged with delicate pink.

The vision repeated itself as I drove up the hill to work and then I found it again, framed in the bare branches of the tree rising above the student center.

How you feel is not important. Be like the moon: be where you are meant to be and let the sun pour out its light for you to catch his rays and reflect them where and how he directs.

Joy entered my day and I hope shone at least a crescent's worth of light into the world despite how I felt.

Light Beyond the Clouds

2011-02-22T08:37:00.001-05:00

The morning after the full moon, which I had missed in the evening, I was driving along without thought of anything but the classes coming up, when I rounded the curve on the ferry road -- and there she was, Phoebe in all her harvest-moon glory, brilliant gold-orange, shining hugely behind the tree line. For a moment I literally couldn't breathe.

That was it. I couldn't see her any longer behind the trees, she was nowhere to be found when I reached the highway or the school. I wondered if I'd really seen her or she had sprung only to my imagination.
Later, K told me he'd seen her that morning, too, and she had disappeared almost instantly behind the horizon. I felt a little better about the state of my mind.

Yesterday, I glanced for her as I drove, hoping for a glimpse of her in her still near-full phase -- but the sky was cloudy and there was no sign. Nothing -- until I got out of the car in the parking lot and looked again, able now to concentrate on the sky, and there was her tell-tale glow beneath a raft of clouds. They passed and she came into full view, soft white lighting the clouds. I watched her as I walked to the building and then stood on the patio for several minutes, marveling at the way she seemed to sail through the sky and the clouds to be still. At last, black clouds obscured her again and I forced myself through the doors to work.

Light above and beyond the clouds, always.

Startin' 'em Young

2011-02-16T21:15:00.005-05:00

Conversation this evening on the phone:

I answer: "Hello?"

Pause; I hear child sounds in the background.

9-year-old voice: "Who is this?"

Me: "I'm pretty sure I'm your grandma, but who exactly are you?"

Same voice gives full child name of suspected male grandchild.

Me: "Well, how are you, Nate?"

Nate: "I'm fine. How are you?"

Me: "I'm fine, too."

Slight pause.

Nate: "Can I speak to Grandpa?"

I call Grandpa to the phone and hang up my extension to try to avoid the static problems we had earlier. Grandpa's side of the ensuing conversation:

"How are you, Nate? . . . You did? . . . Did you get to shoot it? . . . Who went with you? . . . Did he get to shoot, too? . . . Did you like it? . . . How much did you get to shoot? . . ."

This is the male conversation in my family: guns and politics. God love 'em!

Morning Star

2011-02-11T07:37:00.004-05:00

The empty sky turned from black to indigo as I drove to work this morning, a bare tinge of pastel orange rising on the eastern horizon. As I started from the car to my office building, I finally saw the morning star above the crenellations on the entrance tower, and thought of Keats' "bright star" "stedfast" in the heavens. And I thought of Alisa, our own bright star with her steadfast love, and her parents waiting to know what will happen, partial healing here for a time and our continued joy in her loving presence, or complete healing in heaven which is yet a loss for us that seems too hard to bear. And I thought of the star above Mordor that Sam saw, above the shadows of fear and hatred and violence and death, the star that reminded him that truth and beauty and love and goodness are always there and will always, in the end, overpower the brokenness.

Alisa, our lovely star, be well. We love you, and we pray for you to stay with us if your all-loving, all-knowing, and all-seeing Creator allows, but if you must go, if it is time for you to leave the valley and soar with Him, we will see you every morning in the stars and rejoice through our tears at your healing.

For my youngest

2011-01-23T12:11:00.006-05:00

You have chosen a Navy career, at least for the short term, and tomorrow you begin in earnest. I’ve watched you embrace this choice over the last few months as you have waited to begin Basic Training, and I’m proud of the way you’ve prepared yourself mentally and physically.

For us, it’s the empty nest at last; you leave just a few days before your oldest sibling’s 35^th birthday. I tease about wanting your room and being ready for this new stage of your dad’s and my lives – but I will miss you, my tag-along who has brought so much joy, lifting my heart with laughter, offering words of encouragement on difficult days, offering me hugs and sharing photos and songs and films . . . making me grateful every day for the gift of your life.

Yes, I will miss you, however I may pretend otherwise.

I pray for you, my son, as you go into an environment containing – as all the world contains – so much of good and so many temptations. I pray that you will embrace every opportunity offered you to grow in honor and courage and selflessness and service, to become every day more and more the man God created you to be. And I pray that you will pursue wisdom above all else – wisdom that will protect you from the temptations to follow mere self-serving, momentary pleasures that will turn to ash; that you will be courageous to stand for that which is honorable in every area of life, unafraid to turn away – joyfully, and with a smile and laugh perhaps, never self-righteously – from that which would drag you down into behavior that will harm you and those around you, now or in the future. I pray for your mistakes – because we all make them – to be ones from which you can recover, having learned to be that much greater a man.

You will be different when next I see you. I look forward with joy to finding how you will have grown, to begin knowing you not merely as my youngest child, but as a man in your own right, becoming more a man after God’s own heart every day.

God be with you, son. I love you.

(And maybe I’ll let you crash in my new study when you come home. :))

photo credits: Keiller Impson; Steven Franklin

Reflections

2011-01-21T08:03:00.003-05:00

Having spent most of the break ill with one thing or another, I’ve begun the spring semester inordinately weary, even for me. And it started with snow and ice and gray skies for two weeks, and so I’ve been in a low-level funk, not even overcome by finding that my classes are going to be some of the best I’ve ever had.

Yesterday, I pulled out of the driveway in the early morning darkness to see a single star shining brightly above me, and my heart lifted a moment in the hope of clear skies for the day. I thought of Sam and the star above Mordor and was glad. Then I came around the circle of our neighborhood to be stunned by the sight of the full moon filling the sky with her glorious misty light. She lit my way to work, glowing behind the branches of the trees on the old ferry road. By the time I arrived in the parking lot, she was muted by dark clouds, but glowed faithfully behind them in a reminder of the light always above darkness.

This morning I watched for her as I came around the circle, and there she was, an alabaster glow this time in a clear sky, triumphantly brilliant. Again she lit my way to work, and in the parking lot I was able to sit for a few minutes and simply watch and be filled with her light. A small tree stood beside my car, and as I leaned against the head rest, its branches, bare except for a few clusters of dead leaves waiting to be dropped by new growth, created a dancing frame for the moon’s glow. White clouds sailed below her, lit by her light, and even the dead leaves took on some of her life.

As I finally gathered my things and walked across the parking lot to the building, the moon bright behind me, I realized again her call to faith. She has no light of her own to offer; she does not choose where to be or what to do: she only faithfully keeps the orbit she has been assigned and the sun does all the rest as he sees fit.

(photo by my husband, yesterday morning)

Introducing Dylan

2011-01-06T20:50:00.003-05:00

I encourage visiting Dylan at Dark Speech upon the Harp and The Reluctant Draggard. His own work at Dark Speech is excellent and encouraging, and lately he's posted a couple of poems by Vernon Watkins at The Reluctant Draggard that amaze me. Enjoy!

Hopes for the New Year

2010-12-31T19:48:00.007-05:00

Seeking something thoughtful for the beginning of a new year, I turned to Mary Oliver and found these excerpts to be excellent reminders of who and what I wish to become. (Apologies for the lack of indentions from the original; I can't seem to get them to work in this venue.)

from "Six Recognitions of the Lord"

(section 5)

Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with

the fragrance of the fields and the

freshness of the oceans which you have

made, and help me to hear and to hold

in all dearness those exacting and wonderful

words of our Lord Christ Jesus, saying:

Follow me.

from "On Thy Wondrous Works I will Meditate"

(section 6)

I would be good -- oh, I would be upright and good.

To what purpose? To be shining not

sinful, not wringing out of the hours

petulance, heaviness, ashes. To what purpose?

Hope of heaven? Not that. But to enter

the other kingdom: grace, and imagination,

and the multiple sympathies: to be as a leaf, a rose

a dolphin, a wave rising

slowly then briskly out of the darkness to touch

the limpid air, to be God's mind's

servant, loving with the body's sweet mouth -- its kisses, its

words --

everything.

from "Messenger"

My work is loving the world.

[. . .]

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.

[. . .]

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is

that we live forever.

Christmas Eve Musings

2010-12-24T11:36:00.007-05:00

Last night we drove around town looking at lights. There aren't as many as usual this year, but still we saw some beautiful displays, and the toyland folks aren't stinting: on the roof a blinking-red-and-green train filled with toys, Santa waving alongside it, the yard filled with gingerbread men, a creche, a tree and a star, candy canes and lollipops blazing in a garden, reindeer pulling a sleigh, the house and fence outlined in bursts of color, and 10-foot toy soldiers guarding the scene -- a display that makes me sigh with delight every Christmas at its extravagance of joy. Yet just as moving were the white-lighted trees framed between golden curtains in bay windows and the simple wreaths on front doors, quieter celebrations of the same joy.

I missed my parents -- I would like to be with my mother looking at the lights in her town, and it's hard to think that I'll never look at the lights with Daddy or with my beloved mother-in-law again. But the beauty doesn't change for the sorrow; it only takes on a greater poignance in its promise of eternity to come because of the One we celebrate this season. And I rejoice to know that I will see them again and that day not so far distant as it may seem.

We missed the lunar eclipse the other night because of cloud cover; Phoebe hasn't been spectacular for me for a while now, but rather teasing with the occasional glimpse of a sliver or so. This morning, however, as I was leaving around 9:00 to do some shopping, she showed herself uniquely: still near the full, she floated among the softly mottled, gentle cirrus clouds in a light blue sky and matched them precisely in color, only her perfect shape distinguishing her. I'm still here, she seemed to remind me; just keep your eyes open. And I rejoiced in her quiet, demure beauty in the daytime sky.

In the parking lot, loading the bags into the back of the car, I heard the cries of geese and looked up to see them forming into v-shaped flocks, celebrating flight in the clear sky, and I rejoiced in their patterns of beauty and fellowship and teamwork and freedom.

On the way home, a squirrel with some huge prize in his mouth ran across the old ferry road in front of me, making it safely only because the traffic was light and I could I lift my foot from the gas and let the car slow just enough to offset his miscalculation. A few yards on, another started to enter the road directly in front of me and then jerked back just in time; I like to think that his neighbor dropped his precious burden long enough to squeal out a warning. And I laughed aloud at the thought and rejoiced in not taking even a squirrel's life on this lovely, anticipatory day.

photo credit: Daniel Impson

Maintenance

2010-12-16T12:36:00.004-05:00

We are considering a new house and have been driving around seeing what's available. The other day we saw a lovely one which happens to have a swimming pool. I had noticed in the ads that the pool has been maintained by a professional company, and as I was thinking about the house as a possible new home, I thought, "Well, that's good, but we can just call Daddy . . ."

When they lived in South Texas, my parents had a lovely swimming pool in back of the house, above the bay. We all loved it, but the kids almost lived in it. Our oldest took apart the pool vacuum once, and when his granddad caught him at it explained, "I was going to put it back together." The second son got his one spanking from his granddad when he refused to leave the pool one afternoon, though his lips were turning blue and his teeth were chattering. Being sufficiently mechanically minded, Daddy did the pool maintenance himself, at least for the most part as I recall, learning what chemicals were needed in what proportion and when, how to clean it, and so on. The kids helped whenever they could and loved to glean leaves and trash from the water with the vacuum (when not taking it apart to see how it worked).

So Daddy knew pool maintenance, and when I thought about possibly having a swimming pool, I automatically thought that we could just call him to learn how to take care of it. But he hadn't remembered the swimming pool for a long time, and now I can never call him for anything again.

I didn't know how sharp and physical grief can be.

2010-12-06T18:13:00.004-05:00

As I drove home tonight, the clouds flamed rose-gold linings "between-pie mountains." By the time I approached the driveway, the clouds above reflected the deep rose of the setting sun. Loveliness to stir the heart to praise and lift the burdens of the day.

(The picture, one K took, is actually a sunrise and much more spectacular than what I saw tonight -- but it's got the same color that so moved me on my way home.)

Finishing Well

2010-11-20T15:46:00.004-05:00

The semester is winding to its inevitable end. Thanksgiving break next week, two more weeks of classes, then finals. It doesn't seem possible, and there's certainly not time to get all done that needs to be done -- or so it seems.

Of course, it always does get done. That's the glory of academia. Kill yourself for 16 weeks, then you get to take a break and start it over: but it's not just the same old, same old; it's new classes, different mixes of students, another chance to do it better.

One does always wish to finish well. But it's harder to keep that focus when the new start is just around the corner. When exhaustion sets in, when one begins to wonder if teaching were a bad career choice, when committee and administrative work wears down time and patience and energy . . . I could start planning my Shakespeare class, or read the books for my new 411, or rework the 211 schedule . . . so much more satisfying than walking through the messiness of the end of a semester, the discouraged mind insists. The new to come draws the interest, sparks new energy.

But that's not the call. Looking ahead sufficiently to make plans for the future is right and good, but trying to live there, to make it come faster, is foolishness. Responsibility lies here, doing the best one can in the present to love God and neighbor -- to give all one has to the task at hand for His glory. Making that commitment and trusting Him to make one's work count (it's never we who accomplish anything eternal anyway; why do we get so caught up in how we feel?): that is the call, and that is the key to finishing well.

Lord, remind me to trust You where I am, to live for You where I am, now, today, not looking to some future day while letting this one limp to an inglorious close -- a future day which in any case will only be the same as this one when it arrives, one which itself will require trusting and serving You in the moment. Let me live it now so I will know the better how to live it then.

Christendom Review

2010-11-13T16:58:00.003-05:00

The latest issue of The Christendom Review is online.

Millie Jones has her first publication: two of the lovely poems she submitted as part of her senior thesis, which won our first thesis award, last spring.

My review of John Gardner's On Moral Fiction is also in this issue.

Many other poems, some fiction, beautiful visual arts: please check it out!

Eulogy

2010-10-22T21:59:00.002-04:00

What I read at Daddy's memorial service: some of you have asked for this, and I've finally had time to get the changes completed. Thanks for caring!

Harold Eugene Blitch

3 August 1919 – 19 September 2010

“Dad has always been the strongest man I’ve ever known,” my brother remarked one day, and it was so hard to see him physically decline, after a lifetime of never slowing down.

Yet even now, Daddy’s strength is not really gone, not the important strength that has shaped, and will continue to shape, our lives. This strength cannot ever change, because it is the strength of love: love that derives from the love of God and has sustained his family and flowed out to friends and to innumerable people known and unknown.

Love of country led Daddy into the Air Force during World War II, and around the world flying transport. I grew up on stories of his flying “the Hump,” buying sapphires in India for Mother, dropping a monkey he’d adopted over the ocean because it insisted on trying to fly the plane, and the forced landing in a Brazilian jungle, where he spent his wedding day being paddled down the Amazon to a rescue ship . . . “It’s just what one does,” he said – serve your country in time of need.

That same sense of responsibility in his love of humanity led him to search for survivors in a massively destructive tornado in Waco and also to Mexico to help a sister church in their building and farming, as well as to his support of various charities over the years.

I’ve heard it said of many people that they never met a stranger. It was true for my daddy. There was never a person he couldn’t talk to, couldn’t develop a conversation with, couldn't make laugh. And so he had many friends over the years, friends he played bridge with, hunted and fished with, worked with, helped when they were in need.

But his love for us, his family, is of course the love that I know the best and that has been most important for all of us. Nearly 58 years of memories, plus the stories from his years before my birth, create a flood that is hard to choose from.

One of the few times I saw him cry was at his mother’s funeral, after helping his sister take care of her in her last years. He made the time and effort for fishing and camping trips with his younger brother, and was teasing and joking with his “baby sister,” as he always called her, into his final days.

Of course, I know him best as a daddy. The time he gave to Mike and me – hunting and fishing and Scouts and all those manly things he and Mike did together (most of which I couldn’t make myself love), but for both of us – setting up hay bales for archery and teaching us to shoot, flooding the garden for winter ice-skating, taking us to campus for sledding and skating when the pond froze hard enough, canoeing and camping trips, reading to us, playing croquet on summer evenings, chasing fireflies . . . simply being with us. As the consummate “daddy’s girl,” I shall always hold the memory of sitting curled up in his lap when he came home from work, and the knowledge of complete safety which has made it easier for me to trust my heavenly Father in my later years.

Oh, so many memories! But the most important gift Daddy gave Mike and me was his love for our mother. For 67 years, he made his wife the center point of his earthly loves and in so doing showed us what love is. I am sure I received my fair share of childhood spankings, but the only one I remember is the one that resulted from sassing my mother at the dinner table; the only time he ever spanked any of my children was for the same reason. He could tolerate a great deal from us – but absolutely not disrespect for the woman he loved. That was never tolerable.

He adored his grandchildren and great-grandchildren; even when he began having trouble remembering all those names, he knew them as family to be loved – just their pictures drew great joy into his eyes.

I am sure my daddy must have had his faults – he was human like us all – but this I have before me as clear as a cloudless noon: my daddy loved my mother, and therefore all is well in the world, no matter the suffering and brokenness that plagues us. Because nothing else, however pressing or difficult, is as important as this; only if Daddy could stop loving would the world end, and he cannot stop loving – even now . . . no, especially now, now that his love has been perfected in his Savior’s. What a privilege we have had.

Singing with the Angels

2010-10-03T16:50:00.003-04:00

My daddy's name is Harold Eugene (he went by Gene). Every Christmas he would remind us, "My name's from the Bible, you know."

Eye rolls all around.

"Really. It's right there: 'Hark, the herald angels sing.'"

Groans and laughter and out the door to the Christmas Eve candlelight service.

We sang "What Wondrous Love is This" in church this morning as the closing hymn. When we got to the last verse, about singing through eternity, I started laughing so hard I almost choked. I leaned over to K and whispered, "I bet Daddy's singing with the herald angels right now!"

I keep trying to think of a spiffy line to end that thought with, but all I keep doing is laughing some more.

Morning Beauty

2010-09-29T06:55:00.003-04:00

When I was driving to work, the loveliness of white clouds damasked against the still-black sky brought a smile and a thought -- I'd like to see the moon this morning. Getting out of the car in the parking lot, I felt more than saw bright light above me and looked straight up to see a quarter moon brilliant in a cloudless space. Gems of joy wherever we look, if we only look.

"High Flight"

2010-09-27T07:26:00.003-04:00

Daddy was a WWII pilot, and he especially requested that this poem, a favorite of pilots everywhere, be read at his funeral. It was written by John Gillespie Magee of the Royal Canadian Air Force, who was killed in action on 11 December 1941.

High Flight

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Quick Update

2010-09-26T21:35:00.004-04:00

Daddy's memorial service was lovely, and Mother is surrounded by friends who love her and will walk this journey with her (many have already made it, as men tend to die before their wives).

Thanks so much for the sustaining prayers of all of you. We appreciate your loving concern so much.

I will try to post a bit about the service and the week when I get caught up at work.

Death be not Proud

2010-09-19T22:58:00.003-04:00

My beloved daddy passed away this afternoon while we were on our way to Texas. We are stopped for the night before continuing in the morning.

It's not real yet, of course, and I know the grief is going to be crushing at some point. But I know this too: death indeed has no reason to be proud, because he is nothing in the face of Christ's victory on the Cross.

I will see my daddy again, and meanwhile he is breathing freely once more, no longer bound by arthritic and stroke-riddled limbs, able to speak clearly his praises to his Saviour. What joy!

No Wonder . . .

2010-09-06T19:44:00.003-04:00

. . . my eyes feel like they're being stabbed. They are.

I hate ragweed.

Harvest Moon

2010-08-25T07:00:00.006-04:00

Driving home from opening convocation last night, dusk not quite yet falling into dark, I rounded a curve on the old ferry road to be greeted by a harvest moon, just above the horse pasture, huge in the sky and a pale coral I've never seen before. Back home, I ran onto the porch to see it again, although, higher in the sky now, it appeared only its normal size and darker in color. Still, so much beauty to begin the semester, such a lovely reminder of our place in the world as reflected light. This morning, Phoebe still sailed in the sky, lighting the scudding clouds with her faithful glow, blessedly marking the day at just-dawn.

"A love that is above 'flesh and blood'"

2010-08-23T21:51:00.006-04:00

What with teaching half the summer and prepping for this semester the other half, I find myself tired and out of sorts, not ready for the new semester that begins on Wednesday. What I really want is to become Emily Dickinson, talking to people through the door, if at all, and dropping little notes out my window to encourage the neighbors.

Looking back over the opening chapters of Thomas Merton's The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation reminded me tonight of some excellent truths to carry into the new school year, in light of this mood and tiredness. In Chapter 3, "Society and the Inner Self," Merton writes about the relation between contemplation and love; contemplation is the work of love, and love needs an object -- not only God but the neighbor as well. This love is "above flesh and blood": "not something pale and without passion, but a love in which passion has been elevated and purified by selflessness, so that it no longer follows the inspiration of mere natural instinct. This love is guided by the Spirit of Christ and seeks the good of the other rather than our own momentary interest or pleasure. More, [. . .] it rests in love for love's own sake, and attains, in Christ, to the truth not insofar as it is desirable but above all insofar as it is true and good in itself. This is at the same time our own highest good and the good of the others, and in such love, 'all are One.'"

Merton continues, discussing the solitude necessary for contemplation: "Solitude is necessary for spiritual freedom. But once that freedom is acquired, it demands to be put to work in the service of a love in which there is no longer subjection or slavery. Mere withdrawal [from the world for contemplation], without the return to freedom in [. . .] action, would lead to a static and deathlike inertia of the spirit in which the inner self would not waken at all." Solitude should lead to "the freedom and spontaneity of an inner self that is entirely unpreoccupied with itself and goes forth to meet the other lightly and trustfully, without afterthought of self-concern [. . .] ." Writing a little later of the Desert Fathers, he says they went into the desert "not to study speculative truth but to wrestle with practical evil; not to perfect their analytical intelligence but to purify their hearts. They went into solitude not to get something but in order to give themselves, for 'He that would save his life must lose it, and he that will lose his life for the sake of Christ, shall save it.'"

This is a reminder I need. In my sometimes desperate need for quiet, for solitude, for space to reflect, I find myself desiring these for their own sake, not for the sake of service. I must remember both to set aside time to be quiet -- for contemplation is a necessary part of the life well-lived -- but to be mindful that such time leads to renewed desire to serve others, to put myself aside, to die in Christ so that I can live for Him.

And there is a related idea Merton reminds me of as well: the need in my work of service for "detached activity -- work done without concern for results but with the pure intention of fulfilling the will of God." It is not I who will "save" my students, in or out of the classroom, for the Lord or for effective writing. I can only give myself to Him, do as He directs, and be unconcerned about myself and about that which is beyond my control.

My prayer for all my colleagues, here and across the country: May we remember and learn to live in these truths more faithfully every day.

The Pursuit of the Absolute

2010-08-19T19:47:00.003-04:00

Here's a piece I wrote to help my freshmen understand the final chapter of Annie Dillard's The Writing Life a few years ago. I ran across it today and thought some of my readers might enjoy it.

We can live comfortably, coming to very little harm, Annie Dillard tells us in Chapter 7 of The Writing Life, or we can risk our lives for the freedom and exhilaration of seeking God in His creation.

Dillard attended the Bellingham air show “with a newcomer’s willingness to try anything once” – not because she likes air shows, but merely to try out the local culture. Several pilots did some interesting stunts – then Dave Rahm flew. Dillard first noticed him, as she might a book on a subject in which she had little inherent interest, “idly, paying scant attention,” then found herself interested “reluctantly” – until at last she was drawn completely into Rahm’s “inexhaustibly glorious line” and “[began] to learn about beauty.”

What so impressed her was not merely the quality of the individual stunts Rahm performed – the other pilots had done these too, and well. It was, rather, the way he did them one after another without pausing to straighten out the plane between them: “he never quit,” she writes; “the music had no periods, no rests or endings; the poetry’s beautiful sentence never ended; the line had no finish; the sculptured forms piled overhead, one into another without surcease.” Rahm was using the plane as a miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe, to explore the limits of beauty that can be created in his form of art, even as master composers, poets, writers, sculptors use their tools. He was not content to do the same things that others do in the same safe way; rather, he combined the stunts he had learned from others in original ways in order to “move back the boundaries of the humanly possible.”

When Rahm took Dillard up in the plane, she discovered the depth of physical pain and disorientation a pilot experiences, the fact that this work, this art is not one that “feels good.” Yet Rahm chose it and pursued it with a passion that made him the best there was; he became the master that could inspire the very swallows to imitation.

As the writer uses the line of words to discover meaning and articulate for others something of the vision he finds, Rahm thought of the air as a line which he followed from end to end, paying attention to the light so that his audience wouldn’t have to stare into the sun, considering the effect of the plane’s line on the audience’s senses. Dillard describes him as reticent, a “figure,” a stereotypical “strong, silent type” who appeared perfectly ordinary, maybe even boring – but, she adds, “the machine gave him tongue.” His art allowed him to express beauty as he could not with words, and that expression was worth the risk of the fiery death that ended it.

This, Dillard implies, is the task of the writer. Anyone can keep out of harm’s way by refusing risk, by staying on the surface of life and thought. But there is gain – for both the artist and his audience – in taking the risk.

Why are we here? Dillard asks, and answers: “for the sake of the choir” – to offer praise. We cannot praise what we know only superficially; we must “penetrate the universe,” “ride the point of the line to the possible,” seeking truth, seeking beauty, following the vision where it leads us. And that vision we follow, that truth we seek, is, ultimately, the “Absolute” who “fills the world” – the knowledge of the Creator whose life and love are evident in His creation. The pursuit of the Absolute is the only life worth the sacrifices, worth the risk of danger and death – because these are a small price to pay for the exhilaration of that freedom available only in the glimpse of Truth offered us along the way.

Falling in Love Again . . .

2010-08-15T14:24:00.008-04:00

. . . this time with Hilaire Belloc. An essayist I should have known long ago, and so I see the utter inadequacy of my education once again.

Atkins refers to Belloc's "The Mowing of a Field" often, and I enjoy it, but in the collection On Nothing and Kindred Subjects, arrived from amazon recently, I discovered the perfect essay. The problem with essays, of course, is that they are like poems -- in that you can't just summarize them, because the craftsmanship is part and parcel of the meaning -- but they are longer than poems and do not lend themselves to being copied full text. You can, however, find this one in the book I linked to above (just search the contents): "On the Pleasure of Taking up One's Pen."

Belloc notes the controversy over whether there is a "tangible pleasure in the mere act of writing: in choosing and arranging words." But this, he goes on, is not his subject: he is writing on "the pleasure of taking up one's pen, which is quite another matter."

"You are alone," he writes, no matter where you are, the moment you lift your pen, "and that is the beginning." He then writes that you are going to "create" -- which leads to a delightful digression on how we cannot create, followed by "anyhow [. . .] you are going to do something devilish pleasing: there is a prospect before you. You are going to develop a germ: I don't know what it is, and I promise you I won't call it creation -- but possibly a god creating through you, and at least you are making believe at creation. Anyhow, it is a sense of mastery and of origin, and you know that when you have done, something will be added to the world, and little destroyed [only a bit of paper, ink, and quill]."

Then another digression as he imagines his audience exclaiming: "Affectation! Affectation! How do I know that the fellow writes with a quill? A most unlikely habit!" And the admission that he actually writes with a "Waterman's Ideal Fountain Pen," whose gold nib leads to a lovely sally into describing Charlemagne's throne and his journeys with it, ending with wondering if the reader has read these stories: "No? You must read about these things."

Next a blessing on the pen, which he promises that he will write a poem with someday, or at least copy out someone else's with it, because the pen is deserving and will someday "live in a glass case with a crowd of tourists round [it] every day from 10 to 4." He ends, logically, with the lovely thought that you may lay down your pen any time you choose. You cannot stop whenever you please at bridge or public speaking or conversation or life itself -- but to lay down your pen? "At any moment: without remorse, without anxiety, without dishonour, you are free to do this dignified and final thing (I am just going to do it) . . . You lay it down."

Well, go read it, and you will see. Why is it perfect? Because it carries the essay form -- its loose structure, its sense of exploring a topic and inviting us to come along, and yet everything really to the point -- perfectly. Because it has what Phillip Gerard calls the apparent and real subjects intertwined perfectly: in writing about the simple act of picking up a pen, Belloc is really writing about the power of the written word. Because every "digression" is not really digressing, but is integral to both the apparent and real subjects, if we attend carefully. Because he obviously took delight in it, delight in which we share with every word.

Where were you, Mr. Belloc, in my misspent youth?

Angioma Alliance

2010-08-07T18:25:00.002-04:00

For those who are interested, here's an excellent site for information on cavernous angiomas:

Angioma Alliance

This page in particular explains symptoms:

CCM and Hemorrhage

Doctor's Appointment

2010-08-06T13:50:00.003-04:00

DeeDee is waiting right now to see the neurosurgeon. Prayers are always appreciated, and I will update this post after I talk to her.

UPDATE: So she saw two neurologists who looked at the MRI/CT scans she had sent (from a year ago, when she had severe seizures, and a month ago), and decided they wanted an updated one to see if the angioma is bleeding now -- they put her at the head of the line to get it done so that she could do it today and not have to take yet another day off work; also because they have deemed that it is urgent to decide what to do. They did tell her something we hadn't known before, which is that a major blood vessel is feeding the cluster, which makes surgery more of a risk. They confirmed that it must be the occasional bleeding of the angioma that causes her seizures, and that it could be causing her headaches, though they are not as certain about that.

She will go back on Monday to consult with another neurologist, when he has had a chance to read the new CT scan and compare it to the one from a month ago, about how to monitor the angioma and whether/when/how they should treat it. She did find there is a slightly less invasive surgical procedure, where the skull doesn't need to be laid open, but it would still mean a lot of trauma to the brain, of course.

Thanks to all for continued prayers!

Energy Boost

2010-07-29T11:15:00.005-04:00

The other day I started down the stairs from my third-floor office, on my way to lunch in the cafeteria, moving slowly from fatigue and aching muscles, feeling a little sorry for myself to be working in the office in July. As I reached the the second floor, little N, the son of good friends, happened to be racing in my direction, laughing and squealing, his goal the next flight down; mom grabbed him up a few feet from his destination. He struggled happily in her arms, still laughing, happy as I've ever seen a kid just being a kid.

I walked up to them, grinning at N, and said to him, "Why don't you just give me one-tenth of that energy? You'd still have plenty left; come on, just a tenth?"

He laughed out loud and responded to my obviously facetious request for something or other with his favorite nearly-two word: "Noooo!!!" His face crinkled with the joy of being able to say that word without rebuke, with the sheer joys of being alive and a little boy with the affectionate and laughing attention of all the adults surrounding him and rejoicing with him.

I'd never be a kid again (because kids grow up and who would want to go through that more than once), but I wish I could recapture that sheer joy of living now and then.

Some Good News

2010-07-18T19:50:00.002-04:00

Our daughter was able to get into the Chicago clinic this morning and get a referral. Now she is waiting to hear about an appointment time. Grateful to you all for your concern and prayers!

Update on My Daughter

2010-07-06T19:52:00.004-04:00

See comments in the post below for an update. Thanks for prayer -- and continued prayer!

Saturday 17 July: Update to the update: DD plans to try to get into the clinic in Chicago Sunday morning to get a referral to a neurologist through them. She has not been feeling quite up to par. We would appreciate prayers that she would get in to see the specialist in a timely fashion -- thank you all so much.

Tracing the Essay

2010-07-04T17:47:00.005-04:00

I have just finished reading G. Douglas Atkins’ history and description of the “fourth genre” – Tracing the Essay – and I hardly know where to begin. Certainly I won’t do it justice in this brief review, but I can at least offer you some of the ideas that most excited me. I selected it for a class in creative nonfiction after a quick skim; I knew it would be excellent because of the author.

Doug was the graduate coordinator in the English Department much of the time I was pursuing my M.A. and Ph.D. I never had the privilege of taking classes with him – at the time he mostly taught courses in areas I was not pursuing, such as literary theory. But he was a good advisor and I enjoyed the occasional conversation with him. On one of my return visits to KU, I stopped by his office for a few minutes to catch up, and he mentioned that he was no longer “doing theory” (he had written what I believe was the first “layman’s guide” to deconstruction in English), but had turned his attention to the essay. I knew that attention would be detailed and accurate and worthy.

I did not, however, come across any of his books when I first began teaching creative nonfiction – the essay. I found helpful texts and anthologies, and I loved the form and the class. Then I received the yearly department update last spring, and there was mention of a new book he'd written. I hit the web and found four on the essay, all of which I immediately ordered, two of which I then put on my course list for fall. I am joyfully making my way through them this summer. (Titles: Tracing the Essay: Through Experience to Truth; Reading Essays: An Invitation; On the Familiar Essay: Challenging Academic Orthodoxies; and Literary Paths to Religious Understanding: Essays on Dryden, Pope, Keats, George Eliot, Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and E. B. White.)

I can’t begin to summarize Tracing the Essay, a book which you must read if you love this form. You will learn to value the essay all the more highly as you delve into its origins and its tensions and its potential, all explored and explained with a deep love and respect for the form that does not preclude criticism of its excesses and shortfalls. I fear that my underlining and marginalia are not as helpful as they might be: there is more marked than unmarked. Here is a taste of what Atkins explores about the essay (in a list of its qualities near the book’s end): it is “exploratory, experiential, ‘lay’ [amateur] in texture, un- (and even anti-) dogmatic, modest in approach, conversational in tone (and address), personal and brilliantly artful, deeply reflective and intensely moral, and celebratory of the via media [. . .].”

Atkins makes much of the need for contemplation, reflection – time. Time to observe, time to read, time to reflect, time to write. We live in a culture which prides itself on its efficiency, and we take in that world through sound-bytes and google searches and think we know it – and ourselves. Yet we cannot know without reflection. Against this frenetic pace of “efficiency” the essay works, both in the writing and the reading, because it demands that we slow down, attend, explore, listen. “In providing reflection,” Atkins writes, “essays remind us of the urgency to slow down and savor life, certainly, but also to measure and weigh it, to try it and test it. Understood this way, reflection comprises an essential aspect of our ordinary living, part of the whole rather than addendum or supplement, and an aspect without which our lives are sorely diminished.”

Tension is a byword of the book, and much of it is an exploration of how the tensions Atkins describes are resolved (or not) in many different essays. Neither merely personal nor academic, neither fiction nor philosophy, the essay “hangs between” such “sturdy poles.” Because the essay begins with experience, one danger of it is self-absorption; because it teaches, another is the complete loss of self and experience in abstract theory. The self, Atkins explains, becomes the mediator of experience, not the subject of experience. He most highly values the familiar essay, because it moves farther “away from the perceiving self and toward the perceived world” than today’s more celebrated personal essay. “The familiar form of the essay,” he writes, “edges more than the personal toward the meaning the writer extracts from experience. Because the focus rests ‘on’ books or morality or friendship, self-consciousness is tempered and the temptation toward self-centeredness is challenged.” Elsewhere he says that the essayist “becomes the crucible in which experience is tried and tested and meaning extracted. The essay’s subject is not, then, the self, contrary to popular opinion, although the essay’s soil, or laboratory, is nothing but the self.”

Another byword of the book is incarnation. The essay, Atkins explains, is incarnational in form. It embodies – incarnates – experience in order to offer meaning, and he notes often the connection between incarnation as a universal principle and the Incarnation which is its ultimate example. In the final chapter, he addresses the tension inherent in exploring and celebrating the Ordinary at the risk of idolatry, of beginning to worship the creation, the Ordinary, instead of its Creator. The Christian understands that “the Extraordinary [. . .] appears in the person of Jesus Christ, God become man.” This does not, however, make the Ordinary and the Extraordinary equivalent, he warns us, “[any] more than meaning is identical to (mere) experience. There is an extra dimension to which experience, including experience of the Ordinary, gives us access. The trouble is, essays often do not [. . .] reach for that dimension [. . .]. Essays derive meaning, all right, but it is that meaning that remains on the level of the Ordinary and so does not attain that transcendent level, meaning that, in other words, does not transcend the Ordinary. Meaning is, in such an instance, etiolated and falls short of its potential – it is reduced.” Later, he adds, “Through this world we are – or should be – led upward to God.”

If you love the essay, read this book. If you wonder why the rest of us love it, read this book. If you write the essay, let yourself be challenged by this book in matters of form and subject and purpose.

For Julie: Rest in Peace

2010-07-01T23:17:00.002-04:00

I stood in the shabby third-floor corner office, the ill-fitting door creaking slowly shut, surrounded with boxes of books and file folders and office supplies, pretending to decide which books needed to be behind the desk for easy access, which could be nearer the door – and where any particular thing might be in the chaos. In reality, I was trying to calm a rapidly rising panic: new to the college, I had been hired as interim chair of the department, and had just found that the only continuing member had just bailed for another job, leaving me with four extra classes to fill, no network for adjuncts, and the only other department member, also new, not moving to town for another month.

But into that chaos stepped several junior and senior students to help us out, including a young woman with long fair hair and a welcoming smile. At every turn, Julie appeared: helping to move files from one office to another, explaining department policies and registrar’s rules, giving us inside scoops on colleagues and administrators, becoming a friendly and familiar face. She set a tone not always easy for older students with a new professor; they often feel they’ve been robbed of someone they’ve come to know and love, and, no matter what the reason for the change, that the new professor is a usurper, an interloper. And these young folk had lost not one but all the professors they had known; they had to become used to an entirely new department – and one run ragged with overloads and unfamiliar classes picked up at the last minute to fill the abandoned slots.

Julie did much to make that year bearable for us. I never knew her well, but I learned to depend on her wisdom and knowledge and smile, so freely offered to a stranger whom she had chosen to trust. I am sure she was in several of my classes that year, but the one I remember is creative writing – because she was an extraordinary poet for one so young. Her work was not pedestrian, not mere exercises; it was poetry born of a wisdom and maturity rarely seen in college students. I wish I had kept copies.

We didn’t stay in touch; I knew she had gone to another local college for graduate work, but nothing more. Yet when I heard that she was gone, I felt a void in my world, in the world at large. She has left behind an emptiness that cannot be filled – but she has also left behind a witness that cannot be erased. Rest in peace, Julie; you will rest in the hearts of your friends for all their lives.

Writer's Meme

2010-06-29T16:36:00.004-04:00

Stolen from LuCindy

1. What's the last thing you wrote? A course syllabus, sad to say.

2. Is it any good? It has to be; it’s a contract.

3. What's the first thing you ever wrote that you still have? I still have a couple of pieces from grade school, for what it’s worth (which isn’t much). I have been a bit startled to see how many of the same themes have arisen in my work in later years that were there in my K-12 years.

4. Favorite genre of writing? Creative nonfiction.

5. How often do you get writer's block? It would be easier to tell you how often I don’t.

6. How do you fix it? Depends. Sometimes I just pretend that I don’t want to write anyway, which has the advantage of not having to fix the block. However, when I begin to go so insane that no one can stand to be around me, I will usually try to write a post for Inscapes that has at least some merit; sometimes just quoting someone else helps get the gears grinding. Of course, the main problem is time . . . or, rather, the lack thereof. One needs time to reflect to write anything truly meaningful, and that time is exceedingly hard to come by. There is also the most annoying phenomenon of being exceedingly busy and sitting in a meeting somewhere and the ideas suddenly flowing like lava . . .

7. Do you save everything you write? Unfortunately, yes. I fear dying before I’ve gone through it and gotten rid of at least the worst. LuCindy, I hereby appoint you my literary executor, with strict orders to get rid of at least 99% of it, and perfect freedom to get rid of 100%!

8. How do you feel about revision? “Writing is rewriting.” Getting words on the page is a great feeling and a good start, but if those words are not revised and edited with great care as many times and for however long it takes, then they are nothing more than that – words on a page, useless for any worthy purpose. Any writer who wants to make a mark takes the time to serve his readers by revising and revising and revising again, until he gets it as nearly right as is humanly possible.

9. What's your favorite thing that you've written? Probably my tenure essay, on the value of literature to life.

10. What's everyone else's favorite thing that you've written? I haven't a clue; not enough people read my work to get a take on it!

11. What writing projects are you working on right now? Course syllabi and comments on student essays and exams – ooh, lovely! A review of John Gardner’s On Moral Fiction for The Christendom Review (on spec). A book(let) for possible use in our composition classes on the writing process. Ongoing notes for a takeoff from the tenure essay.

12. What's one genre you have never written, and probably never will? The romance novel or its sanitized Christian version called “inspirational fiction.” It seems to me fundamentally untrue in its premises and conclusions and thus a disservice to readers. I love mystery novels, but haven't the mind to plot one out myself, as I lack the imagination to create a sci-fi world of the sort I also love.

Prayer, Please?

2010-06-25T18:20:00.002-04:00

I don't often use this space for prayer requests and merely personal information. However, this is a gravely important situation, and I know that those few of you who read here regularly would want to know and to pray. Our older daughter has just discovered that the cavernous angioma in her brain has enlarged. She is seeking a neurologist to discuss whether surgery is necessary, which is obviously a sobering and frightening prospect. A cavernous angioma is a tangle of blood vessels, in her case almost certainly congenital, that causes seizures when it bleeds. It was first diagnosed 6-7 years ago; the last time it caused seizures was last summer and this MRI was a follow-up. There is no treatment for the angioma that I am aware of except surgery; the fear is that it will begin to hemorrhage at some point, but of course there are also tremendous risks to the surgery and the angioma is deep in the brain. Please pray for wisdom on the part of all, and grace and peace for our daughter and her three young children.

Choosing His Light

2010-06-20T17:00:00.006-04:00

I’ve been dragging myself about all the summer thus far, weary and wearier, longing for sleep (except even good sleep doesn’t help), just wanting to feel half-way normal and genuinely rested. I spend a lot of time tired even at my best; I have never had much energy, even when I was young. But this has been extraordinarily severe.

So I took stock the other day and decided I should be grateful that I’m on my feet at all. (My partial stock-taking list is below if you’re really interested. I’m selfish enough to post it, but you needn’t be so masochistic as to pay it any heed.)

I know that everyone is busy, and to many I’m sure my list would look small enough and I seem quite sluggish to find it too much. But combine it all with chronic pain and difficulty sleeping (and exhausted, burning eyes), and for me and the level of energy I am endowed with . . . . well, it is too much and I begin to feel hopelessly overwhelmed.

I’ve just finished Paul Mariani’s biography of Gerard Manley Hopkins. The poor man was responsible for grading thousands of exams every year in classical languages for university entrance, on top of his teaching. He was always exhausted; of course, he may have been ill with Crohn’s disease, unknown in his day – that, combined with typhoid, probably caused his death at 44. But what struck me in the biography (so much of which makes remarkable use of Hopkins’ own words) was this sense of never-ending exhaustion. A holiday – a genuine holiday of no work at his schoolmaster’s tasks – would revive him remarkably, but within a week or two of return to exams and classes he would be worn down again.

And this weariness and overwhelming work kept him from the writing he loved; he seems to have had far more unfinished projects and ideas for projects in his 44 years than the hundreds that languish in my own drawers and the corners of my mind with over a decade more to concoct them. Of course, he was a genius, and his genius seemed to be slowly wasted away in grading schoolboys’ Latin translations.

He complained of this at times to dear friends. But they and all others who knew him spoke of him invariably as a man who loved life, who laughed, who gave generously and kindly of his time and his mind, who lifted the spirits of those around him. His poetry, of course, explains why: even in the very darkest of the Terrible Sonnets, he cannot waver in his knowledge of God’s love for him; he cannot waver from his obedience no matter how onerous and purposeless it might seem. And he keeps coming back, in his yearly meditations and in his sermons and in his poetry, to this: it is not I who name myself and choose my work, it is God.

Some say of Hopkins – certainly his friend Bridges did, and I’ve read contemporary critics who agree – that he was indeed wasted by the Jesuits, his genius destroyed in make-work, his life itself cut short by their not understanding who and what he was. How much more he could have given us, they say, had he lived in honored ease and into old age. Perhaps. But the poems that mean the most to us were wrought of great weariness of body and soul, out of despair that arose directly from his circumstances. Would some larger body of work created in an easier life carry as much value for us today, would he speak to us as he does if he had never known despair and weariness and yet clung to his Lord in faith and hope?

Well, he is my hero, all the more so now that I know yet more of his life. I pray to struggle on with the burning eyes and the weariness and the chronic pain and, yes, the all-too-often despair, to struggle on, as Mother Teresa prayed, with “a hearty Yes to God and a big smile for all.” If life seems hard to me, how much harder for such as these and for so many, many others – and surely I can find the strength in His strength for the simple yes and the heartfelt smile in the midst of my own such lesser trials. I fall so short: I am part of a broken humanity in a broken world and I demand to name myself. Yet His name for me, the story He has written for me, is enough, if I find the faith to live that truth and not merely know it. "Come be My light," Mother Teresa heard Jesus call to her; I long to desire that call, to desire to be His reflected light in the darkness of this world, no matter what of light or dark may be mine.

_____________________

(for those who might care: what taking stock reminded me of)

* I haven’t had a break from work since last August: Fall Break and Christmas break I spent developing the online course of the second semester of freshman composition; Spring Break I spent developing the online course of Intro to Lit.

* I taught the online comp course in the spring, as an overload above my four regular courses – the first time I’d ever taught online. The learning curve and the time investment in discussions and feedback was far more time- and energy-intensive than just a normal overload, even though the class number was small. And I was involved in intense committee work and department changes which took both time and emotional energy. (Same committee work in the fall; I don’t remember much else from that semester except that it was harried, very harried.)

* Spring semester I became very ill from an infected tooth; lost two weeks of teaching that had to be made up for and didn’t feel physically recovered for a month or more.

* My daddy went into hospice care in March. I reworked all my classes to complete them before finals week so we could leave as early as possible to visit with him.

* We drove to Texas and back, gone for only a little over a week – exhausting physically and emotionally. I worked every day during that time on finishing up the development of the Intro to Lit, and got home the day before the course actually began. I’ve been working on it hours a day every day since, with two more weeks to go.

* I’m also reading new texts for preparation of one completely new course, one nearly completely new course, and one old course with almost completely new books, all of which spin in the mind constantly. I’ve created the tentative schedule for one of these (the two sections of our new freshman comp I’ll be teaching in my 5-course load). I’ve exchanged innumerable emails over departmental business because of the changes made last spring.

* I ought to be hemming our curtains and doing some legal research and editing a colleague’s dissertation. Because I’m not, these weigh on the mind and create the weariness of guilt. And I’m obligated to revise the online comp course for the fall semester and I wonder if I will get so much as one full week of not working before the new round – 5 classes! – begins again in August. After all, July is almost here.

On Moral Fiction

2010-06-10T20:47:00.002-04:00

I'm revisiting John Gardner's On Moral Fiction this summer, thanks to the quotation from it which Bill Luse posted at Apologia, and -- since I seem incapable this week of formulating any thoughts other than those required for the class I'm teaching -- I thought I'd post some quotations that have intrigued me this time through, ones that caught my attention the first few times I read the book and have done so again because of their remarkable applicability today, over three decades after its publication.

On art as instructive:

"Moral action is action which affirms truth. [. . .] It was once a quite common assumption that good books incline the reader to [. . .] morality. It seems no longer a common or even defensible assumption, at least in literate circles, no doubt partly because the moral effect of art can so easily be gotten wrong, as Plato got it wrong in the Republic. To Plato it seemed that if a poet showed a good man performing a bad act, the poet's effect was corruption of the audience's morals. Aristotle agreed with Plato's notion that some things are moral and others not; agreed, too, that art should be moral; and went on to correct Plato's error. It's the total effect of an action that's moral or immoral, Aristotle pointed out. In other words, it's the energeia -- the actualization of the potential which exists in character and situation -- that gives us the poet's fix on good and evil; that is, dramatically demonstrates the moral laws, and the possibility of tragic waste, in the universe. It's a resoundingly clear answer, but it seems to have lost currency."

Later, there's this:

"In a democratic society, where every individual opinion counts and where nothing, finally, is left to some king or group of party elitists, art's incomparable ability to instruct, to make alternatives intellectually and emotionally clear, to spotlight falsehood, insincerity, foolishness -- art's incomparable ability, that is, to make us understand -- ought to be a force bringing people together, breaking down barriers of prejudice and ignorance, and holding up ideals worth pursuing." He indicts American literature of his day (the book was published in 1977) for largely not doing this well, of instead posting "cynical attacks on traditional values such as honesty, love of country, marital fidelity, work, and moral courage. This is not to imply that such values are absolutes, too holy to attack. But it is dangerous to raise a generation that smiles at such values, or has never heard of them, or dismisses them with indignation, as if they were not relative goods but absolute evils. The Jeffersonian assumption that truth will emerge where people are free to attack the false becomes empty theory if falsehood is suffered and obliged like an unwelcome -- or, worse, an invited -- guest. Yet to attack a work of fiction on moral grounds seems now almost unthinkable."

Learn it you will . . .

2010-05-30T15:44:00.007-04:00

I knew K. was watching a John Wayne war movie involving fighter pilots. Not particularly interested, I went to the study to read, dozed off for a bit, and woke to this, ringing out in that familiar gruff voice:

Believe me, gentlemen, I take no pleasure in re-teaching you what you should have already learned -- but learn it you will!

Laughed so hard it was a good thing I was already sitting down.

Another New Love

2010-05-17T15:25:00.003-04:00

I love finding new poets whose works I think I shall love.

My Paul Mariani biography of Gerard Manley Hopkins arrived today. I have read the acknowledgments, the first paragraph of the first chapter, and a poem of Mariani's dedicated to Hopkins . . . and I've fallen in love with Mariani, who will, I have no doubt, make me fall in love with Hopkins all over again.

Kendall sent me a picture of a kingfisher ("As kingfishers catch fire") from the November 2009 National Geographic. Here a couple of links to the article and its photos. This is, of course, the "fisher" to which Mariani's poem below refers.

Here's the dedication poem by Mariani that opens the book (those who are familiar with Hopkins will especially appreciate it):

Hopkins in Ireland
for the Jesuit community at Boston College

Above the bluebleak priest the brightblue fisher hovers.
The priest notes the book upon the table, the lamp beside the book.
A towering Babel of papers still to grade, and that faraway look
as once more the mind begins to wander. Ah, to creep beneath the covers

of the belled bed beckoning across the room. He stops, recovers,
takes another sip of bitter tea, then winces as he takes another look
at the questions he has posed his students and the twists they took
to cover up their benighted sense of Latin. The fisher hovers

like a lit match closer to him. The windows have all been shut against
the damp black Dublin night. After all these years, his collar chokes
him still, in spite of which he wears it like some outmoded mark
of honor, remembering how his dear Ignatius must have sensed
the same landlocked frustrations. Again he lifts his pen. His strokes
lash out against the dragon din of error. The fisher incandesces in the dark.

God Is Still God

2010-05-15T22:37:00.004-04:00

This is a piece I wrote in March for the women's ministry on our campus:

I’m a daddy’s girl. Even now I remember with longing the evenings when Daddy would come home from work, fix a daquiri for Mother and himself, and finally settle into an easy chair so that I could fling myself into the loving security of his lap as we all talked over the day. I knew that I was safe, that I could trust him, that I would always be loved and cared for.

Today, as he enters hospice care and we face the ending in this world of his long love for us, I struggle to trust the Father he emulated so well. The evil of death thrusts me back into questioning the goodness, the trustworthiness, the love of God. The irony that death itself was brought into the world by our refusal to trust Him seems lost on me.

My aunt called this afternoon. She’s facing the death of the last member of her extended family, a lonely reality. But she called to talk about my mother: “She’s a walking tower of strength,” she said; “I hope you appreciate her.”

And so I think about Mother’s life and all that she has endured: her own mother’s death when she was only six; raised by her widowed grandmother and various aunts while her father lived in a TB sanatorium for several years; getting by in the Great Depression; wondering on her intended wedding day if her fiancé – a WWII pilot – were even alive; her father’s death on her birthday one cold Christmas morning . . . and so much more, and now her husband of 67 years declining every day.

And she is indeed a tower of strength. Rather than dwell on suffering, she has set herself to serve and love others; service is the air she breathes. I have always known her to be a strong Christian, but it was only recently that she told me about having to move in high school when her father came out of the sanatorium, her resentment at being uprooted – and then two gifts: the three friends whom only death could separate, and the church where she found the love of God.

And so she learned what she has taught me every day of my life: look for the gifts and give of yourself. God never abandons us; He waits to meet us when we turn away from self to Him and to our neighbor. Suffering is merely the inevitable consequence of living; joy is what He makes of it all if we let Him. And so, as I have so many times over the years, I remind myself that – whatever of sadness and sorrow and evil may enter my life – my Father holds me in an even stronger love than that first fatherly love I knew, which, as strong as it has been, is only a shadow of its Giver’s.

Telling Tales

2010-05-07T22:30:00.003-04:00

This morning Daddy and I got to talking about all the things he'd done over the years, and I commented that the more things you did the more stories you had to tell, and reminded him of what I've always said -- "You're the best story-teller in the world, Daddy." He thought that one over and said something like, "And the older you get, the better the stories are, because you can say anything!" We both started laughing and he laughed out loud and for so long that the whole lobby was laughing with us. It was a good morning.

Being with My Daddy

2010-05-06T20:51:00.003-04:00

It’s been both hard and very gratifying to be here with my parents. Daddy has known me since I’ve arrived; there’s been no hesitation at all about that. Sometimes he has been so asleep that we can’t wake him enough to talk at all. When he is awake, he has trouble speaking clearly (we assume he is continuing to have small undiagnosed strokes), and it can be extremely frustrating for all of us to try to communicate. However, some of our times together he has been remarkably lucid and articulate (considering, of course, his overall condition with dementia and stroke). This afternoon was one of those times.

“I love you” are words he always says with crystal clarity; today he said them many times. When I told him that I think of him all the time, he said “I think of you all the time, too”; then, “I think of you in more ways than you can imagine.” As we continued to talk about our love for each other, he said, “I know you love me, and I love you, and Jesus loves us all, too.” And we talked about family – the love within a family – and he said, “good families are good people and raise good kids.”

I told him that he and Mother had certainly always loved us (my brother, Mike, and me) well, then teased a bit, saying I couldn’t say the same about Mike; big brothers and baby sisters don’t always get along. He said, “You’ll always be that.” “Mike’s baby sister?” I asked; “You’ll always be,” he said; “you can’t catch up with him.” (His “baby sister” is 81 and that’s what he still calls her, too.)

When I leaned down and hugged him, he said, “I appreciate that.” A little later, I leaned down again to put my head against his chest, and he lifted his hand and put it on my head, patting my hair with his fingertips; he didn’t want me to sit up and held my hand tightly for a long time after I did. Today (and a couple of days ago as well), he stared at me for a long time, silently, Mother saying he seemed to be memorizing my face; then he told me, “You’re pretty” – words no girl is ever too old to hear from her daddy.

A conversation about pictures came about because K had our camera with him and Daddy noticed it. Daddy talked about taking pictures (he and Mother took a lot over the years) and said something in question form about “where and why”; when I said, “why did you take so many pictures? So we can remember it all,” he grinned that same old grin that’s always characterized his happy, a bit mischievous mood.

When we left, he told us, “I’ll be here when you get back.”

Happiness

2010-04-27T22:17:00.004-04:00

"Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose." -- Helen Keller

This reminds me of Joshua Wolf Shenk's writing about Lincoln, and how one stage of learning to live with melancholy is finding a purpose for which to live, a purpose that takes one out of oneself to care about something much bigger and more important, that allows one to be part of something worthy enough to give one's life to and for. One can be in the midst of deep depression and yet know true happiness if this is the case.

Personal note for those who have been praying: we plan to leave for Texas Saturday, so may or may not be in touch for a while. Thanks so much for caring.

Set Down in a Miracle

2010-03-28T22:01:00.003-04:00

My beloved daddy has gone into hospice care, which may mean anything or nothing. His health is declining rapidly since a recent bout of pneumonia, however, and I am praying that he will still know me in early May. This is a meditation set off by a comment my brother made the other day when we were talking about the wonder of our parents' 67 years of marriage and profound love.

Set Down in a Miracle

The essential trait of Daddy’s life is his ever-consistent love, all of it founded in his love for his Lord. Love of country led him to sacrifice his hearing in the cockpits of transport planes in World War II and spend his intended wedding day in a Brazilian jungle where he’d had to make an emergency landing. Love of community drew him into the devastation of Waco, Texas, after a tornado strike to search for survivors and to remove bodies from the rubble. Love of his church placed him on boards and committees and sent him to a sister church in Mexico to teach horticultural techniques and help with construction work.

But the heart of his love has always been family. He met the love of his life in college, and his love for her has only grown stronger and deeper in the 68 years since. Mike and I both recall very vividly learning at quite young ages that the one thing Daddy would never tolerate was sassing our mother. The only spankings my own children ever received from him sprang from the same source: “I’ll put up with a lot,” was the message, “but don’t sass my wife.”

Theirs was a match made in heaven, and I don’t say that as a cliché. No doubt there were occasional tensions we knew nothing of, and growth in those first years that all couples must experience, but mostly we saw two people who desired above all else to serve each other, not to be served. Daddy was perhaps rare among men in his generation in his willing help with child care, including diapers and drool. Each has said of the other so many times, meaning it fully, “What would I do without him, without her?”

Mike and I grew up bathed in this love. For years, of course, we were mainly aware of its benefits to us, of how we ourselves were loved. Daddy teased us, taught us, disciplined us, encouraged us, made us laugh. He and Mike hunted and fished and canoed and fixed cars and built a house. For me, his introverted and bookish child, Daddy listened with seriousness, gave me a horse and riding lessons, a correspondence course in writing, a college education with a trip to Spain thrown in, and simply showed me every day that I had a protector and advocate. I felt safe, always, no matter where I was. My gravest fear was to disappoint him.

But when we grew up, Mike and I began to realize that the reason Daddy loved us as he did, showed his love so richly, was because he loved our mother first. She truly has been the heart of our home, because she is the heart of Daddy’s love. He loves her so much that his love for her could do nothing but flow over to the children given them as a result of their love.

Because he has always put Mother first, we learned to respect as well as love her, our love enriched by being not merely sentimental. Because he has loved Mother first, we have seen sacrificial, unconditional love every day. And Mother’s return of that same sacrificial love, putting Daddy first, serving and loving him and therefore serving and loving us, the children of their love, strengthened the lesson into a compelling picture of how we should then live.

Mike and I were talking about all this on his recent birthday. Sixty-seven years of love lived out so beautifully, without regrets or acrimony of any sort, giving and giving to each other and all around them – a miracle, surely. So I said, “We’ve had the privilege of seeing that” – but Mike corrected me. “No,” he said, “We were set down right in the heart of it” – set down in a miracle that has sustained us all our lives, even in those moments – or years – when we’ve rejected or disbelieved its lessons for ourselves, always drawing us back and reminding us: love is real.

Daddy will be leaving this earth in the next months, but his love will never leave. It will live on in his family, from his beloved wife to his twenty great-grandchildren, who will know his love through their parents, the children of his children, whom he has also loved. Love is never lost, and I am eternally grateful to have been set down in the miracle of its reality for all of my life.