"World without Event"

It was said, Gerard Manley Hopkins told his friend Robert Bridges, that Alphonsus Rodriguez, porter in a Majorcan monastery, was "bedeviled by evil spirits" throughout his life, but also "much favored by God" with visions of heavenly light.  For the saint's feast day, Hopkins wrote the following sonnet.

In Honour of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez

Glory is a flame off exploit, so we say,

And those fell strokes that once scarred flesh, scored shield,

Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,

Record, and on the fighter forge the day.

On Christ they do, they on the martyr may;

But where war is within, what sword we wield

Not seen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,

Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

Yet, he that hews out mountain, continent,

Earth, all, at last; who with fine increment

Trickling, veins violets and tall trees makes more

Could crowd career with conquest while there went

Those years and years by of world without event

That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.

We crave glory in action – to be seen as victors, awarded the laurel or the oak and hailed in the streets (or on the Internet).  If we die for a cause, we hope to be immortalized in song and story. It’s human nature, to want to do brave deeds and to be rewarded for our doing.

Hopkins recognizes this in the first five lines of the sonnet: it’s the warrior’s exploits that we say give off the fire of glory; his “scarred flesh” and “scored shield” should record his deeds and keep them in memory.  However, he seems to be not completely confident, the phrase “so we say” suggesting that perhaps the assertion is at least open to question:  we say that glory “flames off exploit,” but is this always the case?  Yes, he asserts with confidence, the scars of Christ do indeed bring Him glory, but the scars of the martyrs only “may” do so – and glory from literal war is perhaps even less sure.  

Why his hesitancy to assign glory to the exploits of literal battle? Because there is another kind of battle men engage in that no one sees but that is no less important – and perhaps more so.  “The war within” is unseen and unsung by other men, no matter how intense it may be.  This warrior of the heart carries no tangible sword, wears no steel armor, makes no resounding battle-cry, even  in the “fiercest fray.”  Certainly the world neither sees his scars nor rewards his victories.

But God sees.  The God who created the earth itself with its most magnificent features – mountains, continents; the God who created the most delicate details of nature – the growth of trees, the veins of a violet . . . this God sees the inner conflict.  And He cares: He “crowds career with conquest”; He gives victory in these battles, even when they last a lifetime, “years and years” while little else goes on in the world and the warrior merely watches a door which is never challenged.

Hope should spring from this realization.  Few of us, in the end, will do great deeds to be memorialized in song; few of us will become well-known martyrs for the faith.  But all of us will battle inner demons: sinful thoughts and desires, discouragement and despair.  While Satan himself may well torment us, even without his harassment there will be plenty to battle.  I find myself so easily leaping to anger, unjustified criticism, guilt true or false, loss of hope.  It is all too easy to give in to these enemies, to dwell on them.

But this is not who I am.  It is who I was, and the patterns reassert themselves when I lose sight of my real identity: a daughter of the King, a servant of the Lord God.  In Him, I am the one who can repent of my sin and seek reconciliation with God and man; I am the one who can offer patient love to one who irritates me; I am the one who sees beauty everywhere, who finds joy in the darkest hours.  I am the one who wakes in the middle of the night with the words “I love you, Father,” inexplicably echoing in my mind and heart, and who understands that Christ in me speaks those words – and because I am hidden in Him, cloaked in His love, they are my honest words as well.  

Certainly, until He returns or I am removed to His presence through death, I will struggle with the sinful and dispiriting patterns of the old man.  But I will struggle:  I will fight the battle and know that victory is already mine – I am made new in Christ who lives in me, and however fiercely the battle rages at times, He is my Champion, and even in this life I may at least begin to see the fruit of refusing to lay down my arms in despair.  No matter what others see or know, I can know that He sees it all, and upholds and strengthens me, and will give me whatever due reward He Himself has earned for me. 

Matt 6:6 But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

All Flame

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, "Abba, as far as I can, I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace, and, as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?" Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands toward heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, "If you will, you can become all flame."

Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Saving Grace

The only saving grace of my early hour drive to work this morning after a week of lovely break was the fiery coral above the mountain announcing the sun’s journey and the crescent moon glowing in the dark above. 

This is a day of discouragement, for many reasons from work to personal, and the ever-vigilant depression stirs in wait to rise and encloud me any moment.  These are the days I lose sight of joy, though it too stirs below the surface.  These are the days I hate even more than usual the clichés and perky songs and proverbs, no matter how actually profound they may be.  And those that are mere glibness, that ignore the brokenness of this world . . . those I hope not to encounter in any public forum. 

The worst is “count your blessings.”  I know full well I have innumerable blessings, and even on a day like this I am grateful for them all.  I also know that any and all of them can be taken from me in a split second.  On days like this, counting the blessings I have only makes me aware of their fragility, and more acutely aware of what brokenness has stolen.  But in any case, and on any day, while gratefulness is always in order, it is not the blessings I can count that count.

There is no counting the love and grace and mercy of my God.  There is no counting the mystery of the Incarnation, nor the Cross, nor the Resurrection.  There is no counting the knowledge that the God of the universe deigns to know us at all, much less love us so much that He gave His only Son to die for us, that the Son willed to be separated from the Father by our sin taken on Him.  There is no counting the gift of the Holy Spirit to indwell us, giving us light and life.  There is no counting the fact that He uses us – me! – to accomplish His will, even on days like this.

Because it’s all about Him, not about me.  The announcement of the rising sun reminds me of the fierce beauty of the Father’s love; the moon reminds me I am His reflected light.  And even just a crescent, even barely visible – as she was when I arrived at the college under the sun-lightened sky – it is His work, not mine; His light, not mine; His joy, not my happiness, that counts.  Perhaps this day my light will reflect His less clearly and brilliantly.  Still it is His light only, never mine; I have none.  May it shine as He gives grace.

Blessed Christmas

Brokenness sometimes overwhelms me at Christmas, the fog rolling in tonight a stealthy reminder despite its soft beauty.  When I was a freshman in college, we opened our gifts on Christmas Eve to accommodate my brother’s stepson and his other grandparents.  On Christmas morning, my mother’s birthday, her father died at 3:00 a.m.  We’ve opened gifts on Christmas Eve ever since.

Two years ago was the first Christmas without my daddy.  One year ago was the first Christmas without his sister.  This is the first Christmas without my brother, the last of the immediate family.  And here I am in Tennessee, while my mother celebrates Christmas without family. 

Yet we celebrate, because the Babe came to bring hope, to bring light, to offer the star that ever shines above our Mordor, no matter how impenetrable the clouds of sin and sorrow may seem.  On this foggy Christmas Eve, I have our own unique Christmas tree to remind me.

The jade is an offshoot of the one my daddy grew at the University of Kansas; his was quite a large tree when it finally died long after his retirement.  But he had given me a shoot from it when I got married – “it’s the only thing I know you won’t kill,” he teased me, knowing I never remember to water plants.  We lost the original, I fear, to the abuse of some move or other, but this is its descendent.  We never got a “real” Christmas tree, because we always traveled to my parents’ home, where a tree and wreaths and lights and cookies waited, when the kids were growing up – but I love the little blue lights in the glossy green of the jade leaves, and the simple crèche at its foot. 

As this jade with its tiny lights comes from my father’s better-cared-for and massive plant, I am reminded that hope comes from my heavenly Father’s gift – and however much I and the rest of the world may try to darken and twist and destroy that gift, we cannot.  His light will always be shining, always be waiting, anticipating our upturned eyes to see.  And even the tiniest light will penetrate the darkness if we only look.

A blessed Christmas to all, especially to those who suffer loneliness, loss, sorrow this season.  May His light brighten even the darkest moments with His hope.

Lenten Reading

I'm going back through the collection of Mother Teresa's writings and commentary on them in Come Be My Light this year. The following quotations have caught my eye, for conviction and for encouragement.

Another nun, in the convent where Mother Teresa first served (as a teacher, among other duties) shortly after taking her final vows, wrote of her: "I notice that every day she tries to please Jesus in everything. She is very busy but she does not spare herself. [. . .] Admittedly, her deeds are entirely simple, but the perfection with which she does them, is just what Jesus asks of us."

Mother Teresa tells the sisters under her care: "Don't look for big things, just do small things with great love. . . . The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love."

On her willingness to wait for the Calcutta mission to come into being despite her longing to start the work right away: "[B]ecause she had consecrated her life to God through a vow of obedience, she could proceed only with the approval of her superiors. To her their blessing was not a mere formality but a protection and assurance that God's hand was in her undertaking. Only their permission would give her the certainty that this call was indeed God's will and not some delusion."

On her own abilities for the work she was called to: "I feel sometimes afraid, for I have nothing, no brains, no learning, no qualities required for such a work, and yet I tell Him that my heart is free from everything, and so it belongs to Him, and Him alone. He can use me just as it will please Him best. To please Him only is the joy I seek."

____________________________________

Sabbatical update: I am a much slower writer than I realized! Two essays ready to be set aside for awhile, and an interest in one for publication (have not received a deadline yet). Thanks to all for your encouragement and prayers.

Happy Birthday

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.)

Reminders

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)

Simplicity

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.

Morning Star

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.

Reflections

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)

Hopes for the New Year

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.

Finishing Well

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.

Eulogy

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.

"High Flight"

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.

Choosing His Light

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.

God Is Still God

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.