Update

Thanks to all for thoughts and prayers. The lasik surgery went well. My doctor prayed with me -- in the name of Jesus, too -- beforehand, which was most comforting.

On Saturday, he said my far vision was almost 20/20. Of course, I now can't see anything close up, so it's just the reverse of before -- except now there's no astigmatism. And it seems that my near vision is improving a bit already; I may not know for several weeks just how it will settle out, but I already knew I'd almost certainly need reading glasses. Well, I've used reading glasses for years anyway, so it will be nice just to have those alone!

I am off to put in more eyedrops; that and sleeping have been my principle occupations for the past several days. I've read a few chapters in a book and watched part of a tv show -- it's amazing to see the tv from across the room without glasses. This morning I looked out the window and could see the houses across the street as clear as ever I did with glasses. And to wake up in the night and see the clock without pulling it right up to my face -- what joy! :)

Amazing, really. I can't imagine I'll have any regrets. Now, if one could come up with a 5-minute operation that made one's spiritual sight as clear, without the constant re-clouding of self and sin . . . !

Trusting God

Tomorrow morning I go in for lasik surgery on both eyes. By God's grace, afterwards I'll be able to see at a distance without glasses and the astigmatism that's been the curse of my life will be gone. I may need reading glasses, but that's nothing in comparison to what I've dealt with since third grade.

The decision has made me think a lot about trust. We are, after all, talking about the part of my body that my work absolutely depends upon. I've often felt that if I couldn't read -- read anything I like, I mean, not just what's been made available in braille or on tape (which I can't concentrate on, anyway) -- I am not sure life would be worth living. I realize, of course, intellectually at least, that this is not the case, but it suggests how important the written word is to me. And I am, tomorrow morning, going to entrust this so vital part of my life to a relative stranger, someone I've met twice in my life.

It wasn't an easy decision. There are risks, and if one of those risks makes my sight worse than it now is, it will be cold comfort to know that I'm in a very small minority of those who've had the surgery done. So I thought a great deal about risk and what kinds of risks I'm willing to take. Finally, the doctor's reputation and track record, along with the 100% satisfaction I've encountered among all the people I know who have had it done or know someone who has, decided me that it is worth it. Now I have to trust him and his staff.

But ultimately, of course, it's not the doctor and his staff that I need to trust. Men are fallible, always. It's God I must place my trust in, knowing that He is the One sovereign over all that happens, including what happens in surgery tomorrow morning.

This is a hard lesson for me, one I've struggled with all my life as a Christian. Always I'm seeing fallible people and feeling fear -- what if this person lets me down, hurts me, fails me in some way? And of course, people have done so, again and again, just as I have done to others, because it's a fallen world and we the most fallen creatures in it.

But the only way to conquer the fear is to place my trust in God. Not trust that all will happen as I want it to, that my life will be perfect and wonderful and without pain if I trust in Him, but trust that He loves me and that whatever happens to me He will use for His glory -- if I allow Him to. Please Him this will be another step in that journey.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. (I John 4:18a)

Gardening for Poetry

Amongst the books for my summer reading, I bought volume one of Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems. I turned to it for the first time today, and it opened about mid-book, to a poem entitled "Stanley Kunitz." Unfamiliar with Kunitz, I found a short biography on this poet, who died this year at age 100. Oliver's poem, of course, would be a metaphor for his creation of poetry, but also, of course, applies to any creative effort -- what it takes to be a friend, a spouse, a parent; to create a meal, a hand-carved table, a cross-stitch sampler -- a life. But I'll let Oliver say it in her so-much-better-than-I-ever-could way.

Stanley Kunitz

I used to imagine him
coming from the house, like Merlin
strolling with important gestures
through the garden
where everything grows so thickly,
where birds sing, little snakes lie
on the boughs, thinking of nothing
but their own good lives,
where petals float upward,
their colors exploding,
and trees open their moist
pages of thunder --
it has happened every summer for years.

But now I know more
about the great wheel of growth,
and decay, and rebirth,
and know my vision for a falsehood.
Now I see him coming from the house --
I see him on his knees,
cutting away the diseased, the superfluous,
coaxing the new,
knowing that the hour of fulfillment
is buried in years of patience --
yet willing to labor like that
on the mortal wheel.

Oh, what good it does the heart
to know it isn't magic!
Like the human child I am
I rush to imitate --
I watch him as he bends
among the leaves and vines
to hook some weed or other;
even when I do not see him,
I think of him there
raking and trimming, stirring up
those sheets of fire
between the smothering weights of earth,
the wild and shapeless air.

Remembering

In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

Thanks to all our veterans. May we never forget the sacrifices made; may we be worthy of those sacrifices.

The Duties of the Present Moment

The soul that does not attach itself solely to the will of God will find neither satisfaction nor sanctification in any other means, however excellent, by which it may attempt to gain them. If that which God Himself chooses for you does not content you, from whom do you expect to obtain what you desire? [. . .] No soul can be really nourished, fortified, purified, enriched, and sanctified except in fulfilling the duties of the present moment. What more would you have? As in this you can find all good, why seek it elsewhere? Do you know better than God? As He ordains it thus, why do you desire it differently? [. . .] Do you imagine you will find peace in resisting the Almighty? Is it not, on the contrary, this resistance (which we too often continue without owning it even to ourselves) which is the cause of all our troubles? It is only just, therefore, that the soul that is dissatisfied with the divine action for each present moment should be punished by being unable to find happiness in anything else.

from Abandonment to Divine Providence, by Father de Caussade
(some punctuation editing done for contemporary English readers)

Rain Dance

Reading on the porch Sunday morning in pleasant spring sunshine, I gradually became aware of distant rumblings of thunder and saw that the western sky held gradually darkening clouds. Slowly the thunder grew closer, slowly the grey darkened to charcoal and filled the sky, shutting out the sun and further cooling the air. At last the soughing of the rain moving across trees and lawns, at last the first agate-sized drops on the sidewalk, then the blanketing downpour driving me to salvage my book and watch from the doorway. Within minutes the sky lightening to grey again, rain a mere patter on the walk, thunder rumbling away, and trees dancing in the light-giving beauty.

Longing for Wisdom

I have just read a book on writing, somewhat too New-Agey, Zennish for my taste, but with nuggets of interest that do intrigue and will no doubt inform the writing over time. However, one concept that occurs throughout it disturbs me: that it is necessary for the artist to be a flouter of convention and breaker of rules to be true to art and to speak truth at all.

Now, I fully concur that convention can be wrongly constraining and rules can be unjust. But the sense here is the Romantic one: all conventions and rules, by definition, are always wrongful and probably evil constraints upon us; in fact, the way we prove ourselves to be human and worthy of the name is by flouting -- or as the Romantics and neo-Romantics would say, transcending -- conventions and rules.

This way lies madness.

Reality and Truth are not found within us. They exist outside the self. (Perhaps we discern them, at times, as we honestly explore the self, an idea I've not thought through.) I do not create Reality; I discover it, I perceive it (even if only through a glass darkly), but I do not create it. And Reality and Truth have principles -- conventions and rules, if you will, though I realize these are not always synonymous -- which we flout at our peril and cannot transcend. Some actions are simply wrong; some are simply right. Not "for me" -- for all of us.

I cannot write "anything I want." I cannot be "anything I want." I cannot do "anything I want."

Unless . . . Unless I am given over to Reality, to Truth, and allow Him to give me the desires of my heart: not fulfill my fleshly desires but implant the desires themselves so that I desire what He desires.

Just as in writing, one must understand the principles and how the conventions and rules embody the principles, in order to know when and how to flout them -- and when it is not possible -- for the sake of the writing, so it is in life.

To flout fallen human conventions and rules? Yes. But not all conventions and rules are fallen, just because human beings articulate them. So the need is to understand His principles in order to discern what may be flouted, what must be flouted -- and what must be honored.

Oh, for wisdom!

Travel Time

Commencement commences in half an hour, after which I go home, change clothes, and get back into the car heading for Texas to visit my mother-in-law and my folks. It has been a long year, a difficult one in important ways, but a rewarding one in others. I look forward to some time for renewal, family, getting things done that are most important to me. The books are piled up waiting, Daniel and I are going to do basic Latin, and I can sleep as late as I like every morning.

I will be absent internet access, I think, for the next couple of weeks, so won't be posting here until after that.

On Roses and Reason

In "Roses, Late Summer," Mary Oliver asks

What happens
to the leaves after
they turn red and golden and fall
away?

and

Do you think there is any
personal heaven
for any of us?
Do you think anyone,

the other side of that darkness,
will call to us, meaning us?

Then she describes the way the foxes and the roses simply go on about their lives and concludes

If I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn't mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occured to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question.

Of course one thinks of Matthew and the lilies that neither spin nor toil. I can't imagine Oliver really wants to be mindless, not having the very human questions about the soul which she is always posing, but I understand her desire to learn to simply live, not constantly questioning and wondering, but knowing one's place and filling it with joy and abandon and without doubt and rebellion.

This poem reminds me of Tony Esolen's post at Mere Comments that I linked a few days ago, about needing to understand and accept our place in the world, the place God has given us. Of course, it's a fallen world and surely some of our angst comes from seeing that sin does affect who we are and what our circumstances are, causing us to doubt. But is God really sovereign or not? Does sin (generally speaking) keep Him from placing us where He wants us, or is it sin (my personal sin of hubris and discontentment) that keeps me from seeing this fundamental truth?

I, too, would like to be like the roses, not asking foolish questions.

Finished (Sort Of)

You have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.
-- Psalm 63:7-8

I just finished with my last class of the semester, and I am so tired I can hardly think. (We have finals next week, but today's the end of classes.) I cannot say enough good about my freshmen this year. They've been a delight, both semesters, both sections, and have made it well worthwhile to put in the needed energy to teach as well as I know how. I will miss them.

But, oh, my, I am weary. Yesterday I was here at 6:45 and went non-stop all day -- individual conferences, class prep, meetings, classes, and helping prepare for/attending our departmental awards evening. I actually had to turn down a couple of students who asked for help on a project; there was literally not one extra minute to give them, much as I wanted to. I got home at 8:45 with a (now-rare, thankfully) migraine, wanting to collapse.

But you know, God truly is the one who sustains. Jehovah-Jireh, God my Provider, provides marvelously. Oh, I feel the weariness, felt it all day yesterday, and yet every question, every task, there was guidance to offer, strength to complete, without anxiety or irritation (though some frustration at having to say no), and with thankfulness for the desire of students to learn, of colleagues to honor those students. And so it is a good kind of weariness, one I can accept, looking forward to rest when it's time.

On Knowing One's Place

I am too harried to articulate much in writing this week, it seems, but this morning I read a wonderful post at Mere Comments by Dr. Anthony Esolen -- an English professor at Providence College and a writer for Touchstone. Tony reflects on the importance of knowing one's place in the world and accepting it with gratitude and delight, finding satisfaction in simply being who we were created to be and where we have been placed. A wonderful meditation for the end of the semester.

Longing for Home Again

Smudgey grey clouds dusted the sky as we left the house in the still-dark morning, obscuring any evidence of Phoebe's light. As we left the store a half-hour later, the eastern sky shone a strange mix of ivories and ecrus, no colors at all, reminding me of a Kansas sky just before it turns its tornado-warning green.

I even miss the fear of tornadoes in a Kansas summer storm.

Certainty

especially for Brittany

The other day I got my first amazon box of summer reading. The contents were varied – a couple of books recommended to help me better understand Catholicism, some books by Frederick Buechner to find if I can enjoy his work, several books by writers about writing (Stephen King, Ellen Gilchrist, among others) – and poetry: Donald Hall’s Without and Mary Oliver’s Why I Wake Early. I haven’t picked up Hall’s book yet – I am a bit shy of the pain I know I will find there when my emotions are taut with semester-ending tensions – but I gulped Oliver’s book like a starving woman and am now revisiting it more slowly and mindfully.

I am, as I had expected to be, awed. Simplicity and depth combined are rare. Imagery that my technically-minded husband sees without poetry-killing explanation is even rarer – but he has enjoyed my insistent readings instead of merely indulging me with rolled eyes and mind in some other universe. In “At Black River,” he loved her image of the alligator napping in the river: “its dark, slick bronze [soaking] / in a mossy place,” but especially the teeth: “a multitude / set / for the comedy / that never comes.” “Like a clown mask,” he said.

The poem goes on to describe the alligator’s awakening and the death it brings to fish or unwary bird. The description is objective, very nearly devoid of emotion. Then the final two stanzas:

Don’t think
I’m not afraid.
There is such an unleashing
of horror.

Then I remember:
death comes before
the rolling away
of the stone.

What an affirmation of hope this is to me. Death lies napping in “a mossy place,” wakes “to boom, and thrust forward, / paralyzing” his prey. We can see it with objectivity from a distance, but finally the very description strikes horror to the soul. And yet – and yet – in this fallen world, the way to eternity lies behind the stone-sealed door of the tomb.

A student lost her grandfather recently, the first death she’s encountered. It was confusing, she said – good to know she would see him again someday, but unthinkable that he won’t be there when she visits her grandmother this summer; good that the family had the chance to say goodbye, but heart-rending that the necessity exists. I could only think of the deaths to come of beloved parents and how I long for their immortality, not elsewhere but here and with me now, even understanding that they are immortal despite the forced separation of the fall.

How could one face the horror of death not knowing that the stone will be rolled away? Philip Larkin writes of the terror of annihilation in “Aubade”:

The mind blanks at the glare. [. . .]
[. . .]
[A]t the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

[. . .]
[T]his is what we fear – no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.


I know so little of anything, and understand so much less. Lord, thank You for the certainty of the empty tomb.

Too Overwhelmed Not to Write

So many things swarm the mind this time of year. The huge number of papers to be graded, the preparations for the final class periods to make them genuinely useful, creating final exams, facing down the infinite and infinitely varied pleas for extensions and accommodations, choosing books for next fall’s courses, preparing for the trip to see parents half the country away immediately after commencement . . . Overwhelmed is an understatement.

Reading Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing a couple of days ago (no, I wasn’t merely enjoying myself, more’s the pity; I was preparing a lecture on Bradbury for my freshmen, who are writing their final essay on Fahrenheit 451), I was reminded of a truth vital to my sanity: “if I let a day go by without writing,” Bradbury says, “I grow uneasy. Two days and I am in tremor. Three and I suspect lunacy. Four, and I might as well be a hog, suffering the flux in a wallow. An hour’s writing is tonic. I’m on my feet, running in circles, and yelling for a clean pair of spats.”

Yes, indeed. Well, I rarely have the energy to run in circles, but it gets me out of the wallow at least. I am a writer, and I must find perspective and a measure of peace through writing. Churning thoughts, determination to schedule my tasks, ranting about the hectic flow – these do not help me to center, to calm, to find the strength to move through each task effectively.

Maybe this explains why ideas for the writing flood my mind when I am, it seems, far too busy to pay them heed. I may not be able to give them all the time I would like, but I need to open heart and pen to them for whatever time I can – and return to my more urgent tasks with a better will.

Mantra

I wake heavily -- 5:09
-- and sigh
somewhere deep inside.
51 more minutes
before the alarm beep-beep-beeps
the day to life.

I wish I would just die.

The thought -- though hardly
rare -- startles in its
abrupt lack of context.
On the verge of leaden sleep,
I watch the clock --
51 minutes --
as it repeats itself:
a mantra of the fog
I later find
enshrouding the fields
on the drive to work.

Waking to Beauty

Our neighbor's horses walked this morning in shreds of mist escaped from the pasture hollow where fog swayed softly in the breeze.

Yesterday I glanced from the car window to see the unexpected wake of a duck swimming without care in the still river lake we cross below the campus grounds.

Beauty always surprises me, wakes me to the Beauty I take so for granted every day.

For eyes to see, Lord. For eyes to see.

Christ is Risen!

He is risen indeed!

It is a glorious morning here in the South, fit for celebrating the Lord's Resurrection.

I have been dipping into several newly arrived books -- Richard Neuhaus's Catholic Matters, Frederick Buechner's Now and Then and Longing for Home, among others. I have been particularly struck by the reminder I keep finding of the objectivity of our salvation. It was not in the first place dependent on how I felt or what I experienced, but on His work on the Cross and in the Resurrection. It does not depend today on whether I feel like it is true, but still on His work on the Cross and in the Resurrection.

What a glorious truth, one which has saved my mind and my physical life more than once. What a glorious gift of this day to remember it in.

Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!

On Being Complete

A Hopkins sonnet:

In the Valley of the Elwy

I remember a house where all were good
To me, God knows, deserving no such thing;
Comforting smell breathed at very entering,
Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood.

That cordial air made these kind people a hood
All over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wing
Will, or mild nights the new morsels of Spring:
Why, it seemed of course; seemed of right it should.

Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,
All the air things wear that build this world of Wales;
Only the inmate does not correspond:

God, lover of souls, swaying considerate scales,
Complete thy creature dear O where it fails,
Being mighty a master, being father and fond.

**********
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. -- Phil. 1:6

Mocktails, Anyone?

I have been invited to a mocktail party this evening.

Alcohol being forbidden on our campus, the three young ladies who form the FHBC (Future Homemakers of B--- College) are fixing hors' dourves and non-alcoholic mixed drinks -- mocktails -- for two of us on the faculty. We even got printed invitations.

I am honored. I am especially honored because the three young ladies are biology majors and the other attendee is our female biology professor. Me, I'm in English. Biology is a foreign language, and biologists are always talking about body parts I've never heard of. But the young ladies take my classes even when they don't have to, and now they have asked me to join them for mocktails.

We have cool students here.

Madness and Vision

Megan asked in a comment on my last post:
"What does Gardner mean by 'divine madness,' and in what way do we live or die by the artist's vision? "

Here are some excerpts that suggest his answers:

On madness:
“The writer and the psychotic make use of the same faculty and similar energy, the same ability to escape external time and space. If it is true that the motive force of this energy is some tension in the life of the artist or madman [. . .] then a proper use of artistic energy is one which treats the tension, makes decisions about it rather than evading it. The artist is free, the psychotic – helplessly driven by his fear – is not. The theoretical border between art and madness seems to be, then, that the artist can wake up and the psychotic cannot. In fact, though, the difference must be one of degree. Psychotics, we know, can snap out of it, and sometimes do, and an occasional artist relinquishes his hold. Shakespeare understood this. When Hamlet plays mad, he takes a step toward real madness. Sanity is remembering the purpose of the game.”

On the purpose of art:
“In a world where nearly everything that passes for art is tinny and commercial and often, in addition, hollow and academic, I argue – by reason and by banging the table – for an old-fashioned view of what art is and does [. . .]. The traditional view is that true art is moral: it seeks to hold off, at least for a while, the twilight of the gods and us. [. . .] That art which tends toward destruction, the art of nihilists, cynics, and merdistes, is not properly art at all. Art is essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy. [. . .] Art asserts and reasserts those values which hold off dissolution, struggling to keep the mind intact [. . .]. Art rediscovers, generation by generation, what is necessary to humanness.”

Gardner is not saying that all art must be deathly serious, but he does say that serious art makes the world "safe" for "trivial" art that is merely showy, merely entertaining. When he says we live or die by the artist's vision, he is saying, I think, that art does not merely reflect culture but also influences and even perhaps creates it.

If we embrace the vision of the true artist, we receive from it hope that we can live by. The true artist is the one with the vision of love, the one who rejects falsehood in all its forms and calls us back to truth -- and if we don't listen to his vision, we will listen to the false vision of the false artist.

I think we can see this today in the films we embrace (art doesn't have to be novels or poetry of course, and today's most popular art is film, or perhaps contemporary music). We may say we want "truth" in the films we view, but what do we usually settle for? The world's version of truth, which is cynicism and nihilism and dark, dark, dark pictures of what life is all about.

Not that we shouldn't know that vision -- it is the only vision the man without God can ultimately have -- but to immerse ourselves in it and accept it as "true"? That is another thing altogether, yet it is what many today do, and without the grounding of true art of any sort with which to compare it. My students, for example, know the truth intellectually, but they live in a world of falsehood in the images they constantly view (and the music they constantly play) and don't even see the disconnect between mind and heart that this requires.

Ed Veith talks about this in a book my son read last semester, the title of which I cannot now recall. He points out that art surrounds us -- in the ways we decide to decorate our homes as well as in the art museum or at Barnes and Noble. And if what surrounds us is "tinny and commercial" and there is no antidote in exposure to true art . . . then our hearts will be formed by the subtleties of the art we embrace, not the philosophical or theological propositions we give voice to.

I fear I am not explaining myself very well here, but I wanted to address Megan's excellent questions; take this as a kind of thinking out loud as I try to (too) quickly articulate my ideas. I'll try to get back to them when I have time to do a clearer job!

Woundedness and Love

Gardner again, from the book's final chapter:

"Art begins in a wound, an imperfection -- a wound inherent in the nature of life itself -- and is an attempt either to learn to live with the wound or to heal it. It is the pain of the wound which impels the artist to do his work, and it is the universality of woundedness in the human condition which makes the work of art significant [. . .]."

"True art's divine madness is shot through with love: love of the good, a love proved not by some airy and abstract high-mindedness but by active celebration of whatever good or trace of good can be found by a quick and compassionate eye in this always corrupt and corruptible but god-freighted world. [. . .] The business of civilization is to pay attention, remembering what is central, remembering that we live or die by the artist's vision, sane or cracked."

Myths to Live By

Gardner sums up this chapter (the first chapter of part 2 of On Moral Fiction) this way:

"Real art creates myths a society can live instead of die by, and clearly our society is in need of such myths. What I claim is that such myths are not mere hopeful fairy tales but the products of careful and disciplined thought; that a properly built myth is worthy of belief, at least tentatively; that working at art is a moral act; that a work of art is a moral example; and that false art can be known for what it is if one remembers the rules. The black abyss stirs a certain fascination, admittedly, or we would not pay so many artists so much money to keep staring at it. But the black abyss is merely life as it is or as it soon may become, and staring at it does nothing, merely confirms that it is there. It seems to me time that artists start taking that fact as pretty thoroughly established."

I keep looking back at the original publication date of the book, because I find it hard to believe that it was written in the late 1970s. Nothing much seems to have changed . . . Of course what he says about good art, about moral art, if true at all will be always true. But what he says about the bad art of the '70s strikes me as not essentially different from what we still see today. So many of my students still think that a "happy ending" of any sort is inevitably "cheesy" and "unrealistic" because all that is "real" is evil and despair. And my students are Christians, young folk who profess to believe in the ultimate happy ending . . .

Of course, what Gardner writes about here is why The Lord of the Rings resonates so truly. But one needn't write literally mythic fiction to write "myths to live by"; realistic fiction, any genre of fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry . . . any form of art can create a myth to live by. A student of mine once wrote a short story about a boy (a painter) and a girl (a writer) who are spirited away to another world where their stories and paintings come true: what they envision becomes the reality of that world. Ever since, I have considered all that I write as containing a vision which I pray may come to fruit in someone's life.

The Fiction Writer's Study

I disovered last night that I had not read the second half of John Gardner's On Moral Fiction when I started it a couple of years ago. Needless to say, that was the end of my grading binge.

(Reminder: Gardner, by "moral fiction," means art that is honest and that intends the good of the reader. This is not "moralistic," telling sappy sentimental stories like we so often, sadly, get in "Christian" fiction, but honest writing that acknowledges that art has a purpose: it "celebrates life's potential, offering a vision unmistakeably and unsentimentally rooted in love"; "[i]n art, morality and love are inextricably bound: we affirm what is good -- for the characters in particular and for humanity in general -- because we care.")

I am still in the first chapter of the section, where he is outlining a theory of the thought process of writers of moral fiction. The writer, he says, is testing out some theory of how people think and live by experimenting with characters -- he creates characters, places them in a setting and situation, and watches carefully to see how they act. This "watching" is, Gardner says, a matter of imitation -- the writer is imitating with his characters the way he believes that real people would act. Thus, he says, "[t]he writing of fiction is a mode of thought because by imitating we come to understand the thing we imitate," and "the kind of knowledge that comes from imitation depends for its quality on the sanity and stability of the imitator." (He suggests that this simply means that the writer is making a genuine effort, with real empathy, to understand all the characters of his work -- Tony Esolen recently remarked at Mere Comments on the reason he loves Dickens: Dickens loves his characters and wishes that even the worst of them would choose to be redeemed.)

This imitation, of course, requires that the writer study people. Not psychology or theory, but people. "We study people carefully for two main reasons," Gardner writes, "in order to understand them and fully experience our exchange with them, or in order to feel ourselves superior." Clearly, the writer of moral fiction must not fall to the latter reason, but embrace the former, seeking truth, seeking reality, not confirmation of some already-held prejudice or theory.

Making art, then, is a process of discovery -- sometimes, perhaps, discovery that one is, indeed, right, but often discovery that at least one's idea is oversimple if not simply wrong. The honest writer will always be open to such discoveries.

I am wanting to write fiction again . . .

On Silence

I have been wanting to post some musings on art as I have just re-read Chaim Potok's novel My Name is Asher Lev, but I am tired and finding it hard to articulate any clear ideas. So I began to browse some of my favored sites, and found this meditation on silence by James Kushiner at the Touchstone weblog, Mere Comments.

There is no describing it. You really must read it.

It made an especially fascinating contrast to an article a former student, now a high school teacher, sent me just this afternoon about "plugged-in kids." But if you only have time to read one thing just now, please read Dr. Kushiner's meditation. It is edifying and challenging.

Daffodils and Forsythia

Last week, my husband came into the house with an armful of downy yellow daffodils which brightened our kitchen for days. Every time I walked into the dining room, they greeted me with sunny cheerfulness and lifted my spirits.

Leaving for a wedding Saturday afternoon, as we came around the curve at the top of our street we were almost blinded by a row of sun-bright forsythia. I hadn't realized they were there, hadn't really noticed them in all the years we've lived here. But there's no avoiding them this year, the brilliant blossoms waving in celebration of spring.

Other colors are bright and rich this year, too, but the sunshine has come to earth for us, warming hearts even in the chilly air of a rain-washed morning.

Moments of Delight

Over half my students in each class today; unusual for the day before a break. We are all ready.

My younger daughter invited the YM to stay with her a few days during the break, and she decided to come get him today. She arrived around noon with two of the grandbabies and when she was ready to leave, my husband told her I'd be in my office so she could stop by and say hello/good-bye. This was based on the respectable authority of the schedule I had given him of my classes.

What he had no way of knowing was that we are on "accelerated schedule" today -- a phenomenon we faculty hate because it drops chapel and moves all the classes that usually follow chapel up an hour, and so there is mass confusion from 10:00 a.m. on. So I was heading for class, in a different building from my office, as my daughter left the house to come see me.

Something made me call home from a colleague's office to see if she had arrived and might possibly be detained till my class was over.

"She's on her way up to campus right now," came the answer.

I flung down the receiver, yelled thanks to my colleague as I ran down the hall, scrawled "wait for me" and my initials on the white board in my classroom, then tore down the stairs, across the quad, down more stairs, rolling my eyes at the laughter of students I passed, to arrive, panting ridiculously, at the front of the building just one minute before they did.

So good to see them, even for just a minute. My daughter is simply beautiful, more so every time I see her. Her daughter was in school, but the two boys were with her; the older one said "Hi, Grandma" and "I love you, Grandma" like he really meant it, while the little one eyed me suspiciously and finally declined to let me hold him (though I got in a kiss and a hug anyway).

I miss them. I miss them so much.

"Christ have mercy"

Today was Ash Wednesday. I don't participate in a church that takes much notice of any but the major church holy days, and I'd had it in my head that Lent started next week.

A year or two ago, I bought a 1928 Book of Common Prayer to use for private devotionals. So tonight, on seeing a news story about Ash Wednesday services, I got it out and found this prayer, meant to be said each day until Palm Sunday:

"Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou has made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

As Lent is a season of confession and purification, preparation for the celebration of the Passion and Easter, I pray that this prayer will be made true in me and not mere words devoid of meaning. May we come to a place of ever greater devotion to and love for Him, seeing in that supreme sacrifice of Good Friday that His love for us is infinitely great.

Seven Songs and Five Simple Things

Lisa, over at Messy Musings, invited me to join a tag team for seven songs that are meaningful to one. Here's my list. (As you'll see, I'm not into contemporary music . . . Some folk say it's a refusal to grow up, but then, I don't really hear a lot of contemporary that compares technically with some of these, and none that have touched my heart the way these have.)

1. Be Thou My Vision
my favorite hymn
2. Bridge over Troubled Water (Simon and Garfunkel)
3. The Boxer (ditto)
my favorite songwriter is Paul Simon, and these melancholy yet hopeful songs have long been favorites
4. The Circle Game (Joni Mitchell)
the circle of life -- can't stop it and can't get off! at least it's a carousel in this song . . .
5. Fire and Rain (James Taylor)
6. You've Got a Friend (Carole King and James Taylor)
another couple of melancholy songs that speak to certain times and moods
7. Guns that Gained the Fame (Luke Axtell)
a friend of mine and a song about how pride destroys life (the gunslinger may gain fame, but at what cost to his soul?)

I also enjoy instrumental Celtic and Andean music, and bluegrass!

LuCindy, at Quotidian Light, asked folks what five simple things bring one satisfaction and pleasure. Here's my list:

1. sit on the porch and watch the clouds and the mountains
2. listen to classical music
3. work a crossword, cryptogram, or jigsaw puzzle
4. revisit a favorite book
5. Yoga stretches, which I need to get back into the habit of doing

I'd invite these folks to join either or both lists if they are so inclined:

Megan at In Middangeard
Amy at Over the Rainbow
Teri at Bo of the Bales
and anyone else reading who'd like to think on these things!

Art and Discovery

Writing keeps me sane. When I do not write for an extended period (which might mean hours, not days or weeks), I begin to fall into a frustrated, restless irritability which is far more difficult to control than ordinary moodiness. When I begin writing again, a kind of peace spreads in some corner of my soul which allows me to see my world more clearly – including my own failings that need remedy. I have known this for many years, but the following assertion from On Moral Fiction (John Gardner) gave me new insight about it yesterday:

“Art is the means by which an artist comes to see; it is his peculiar, highly sophisticated and extremely demanding technique of discovery.”

Yes. Writing is indeed my way of understanding; and if I am not actively seeking to understand, to discover truth, self, God, neighbor, how can I be sane? This great task is natural to the human mind and soul, and we must be about it in whatever way He has equipped us for it.

Of course, I learn much by reading and listening and studying, without which I could not have the knowledge necessary for discovery. But these only provide the materials. I must process those materials to discover their meaning, the vision they offer me. And if I am not actively doing this, the materials themselves begin to overwhelm me with confusion and their own strident need to be heard and handled, creating that frustrated restlessness that cannot be quieted or appeased except by seeking sight through writing.

"On Moral Fiction"

Reading John Gardner's On Moral Fiction, I found some ponderings on the purpose of art that strike me as profoundly true:

"Moral art in its highest form holds up models of virtue."

"Great art celebrates life's potential, offering a vision unmistakably and unsentimentally rooted in love."

"In art, morality and love are inextricably bound: we affirm what is good -- for the characters in particular and humanity in general -- because we care."

"True art [. . .] clarifies life, establishes models of human action, casts nets toward the future, carefully judges our right and wrong directions, celebrates and mourns. [. . .] It designs visions worth trying to make fact. [. . .] It strikes like lightning, or is lightning; whichever."

Therefore:

"We need to stop excusing mediocre and downright pernicious art."

Reflection

A marmoreal luminosity in a cloudless indigo sky lights my way this morning. When I emerge from Wal-Mart after shopping for gifts for dear friends, she is still distinct in the lightening sky, but no longer a giver of light herself. By the time I reach the college, I can barely make her out in the white-blue of early morning. In competition with Apollos, Phoebe dims and dwindles, her borrowed light entirely ineffective. Only in the dark does her brilliance bring beauty where otherwise would be only nightmare.

Apollos the giver, Phoebe the reflector only. May I remember this every time I put pen to paper.

"The Heart's Embrace"

Seeing in the dark has been something of a theme lately and so on my mind. I picked up Scott Cairns' Philokalia again this weekend, and found this poem that picks up that theme in a way.

Having Descended to the Heart
by Scott Cairns

Once you have grown used to the incessant
prayer the pulse insists upon, and once
that throbbing din grows less diverting

if undiminished, you'll surely want
to look around -- which is when you'll likely
apprehend that you can't see a thing.

Terror sometimes sports an up side, this time
serves as tender, hauling you to port.
What's most apparent in the dark is how

the heart's embrace, if manifestly
intermittent, is really quite
reliable, and very nearly bides
as if another sought to join you there.

"Be still and know that I am God" -- I am not very good at being still. But this encourages me to seek that stillness and listen for His desire to join me in it. (Yes, yes, I know that "He is always there" -- but I shut Him out quite effectively by my overactive and anxious mind.)

I like this poem especially, I think, because of the way Cairns uses the heart metaphor. I remember listening to my daddy's heartbeat as he held me close in his lap, that steady, sure, mysterious sound that somehow comforted me. I would like to learn to listen to my own heartbeat, to calm down, be still, just listen until I myself am silenced and able to know that He is God and not fear so much the darkness.

On Penguins and Purpose

If you have seen The March of the Penguins in the theatre, get the DVD anyway and enjoy the story of how it was made, with much more footage of the penguins and of the landscape. One of the men working on the project is especially eloquent, and his verbal descriptions are in themselves delightful; he refers to the "aerial avalanche" of the storm winds, for example.

If you haven't seen this documentary, it's well worth the time. The amazing marches of these flightless birds, up to 70 miles across the Arctic ice to mate and care for their young, inspires admiration of God's creative work. (And the baby penguins are really cute, too.)

I found the affection of the mating penguins fascinating and their clear mourning for a lost egg or chick saddened me. But the film's main focus -- the marches and the risk of starvation for the safety of the young -- cannot but move the heart.

The penguins leave the sea to walk a full week without stopping to the only safe place to raise their chicks. After mating and finally laying their eggs, they have been without food for two months. The females-- the most at risk because of the toll of motherhood on their bodies -- carefully entrust the eggs (only one per couple) to their mates in an elaborate and careful dance designed to keep the eggs from touching the ice for more than a few seconds and thus freezing. They then begin the march back to the sea for food, leaving the father penguins in charge of the incubating eggs.

In remarkable timing only explicable by a loving Creator's design, the mothers return to the hatching grounds within a day or two of the chicks' appearance. A brief reunion with their mates -- whom they recognize by voice -- and they exchange the chicks as they had earlier exchanged the eggs. The fathers, now having been three months without food, return to the sea. For the next five months, the parents alternate this journey to feed and to provide food and protection to the chicks.

Amazing perseverance and commitment despite the harshest conditions on earth. And they do this year after year. They begin returning to the hatching ground annually after four years of living in the sea, and their average life-span is twenty years. Fifteen years of arduous work for one sole purpose: to give their young the best opportunity to survive.

How often do we complain about the obstacles in our way, the seemingly insurmountable difficulties of our daily lives? Perhaps the problem is not so much an ungrateful spirit as a lack of purpose. If one's purpose were clear and non-negotiable, of a nature so overwhelmingly important that it was worth dying for -- would one be concerned with inconveniences and discomforts? Would petty aggravations be so consuming? Or would one simply do one's work without regard to the inevitable difficulties?

The Christian's purpose is to become like Christ, to serve Him. Within that overarching purpose to love God and neighbor, what is the one specific thing God has created you to do to be a part of His work in the world? As Mary Oliver asks in "The Summer Day,"

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

Decisions, Decisions

Conflicting values and desires and needs make decisions excruciatingly painful. Choice A means that x is ripped to tatters, but Choice B, which salvages x, means that y is smashed to bits. And both x and y are good in themselves and of great value and one desperately wishes to hold on to both.

But such choices do have a clarifying value, if one can finally move beyond the agony. Perhaps x and y are of equal value and one desires both equally fervently -- but being forced to choose between them also forces a recognition of which is ultimately -- in the long view -- more important.

There will inevitably be those who look at the choices one makes and think, that's foolish, or irrational, or unhealthy. They may be right, of course. Or they may be seeing from their own values and understandings and even wisdom . . . where these do not apply.

Job's friends didn't speak lies. They spoke truths. One can take statements made by these men and live wisely by them. But they were not true of Job, did not apply to his person and his situation. Perhaps, since God required of Job a sacrifice for his friends, they sinned in not knowing or trusting him as they should have. Perhaps the sacrifice was intended to ensure Job's forgiveness of unintentional hurt by men of good will. Perhaps both.

Mostly, it seems to me, in those excruciatingly difficult times, others will fault one's decisions not out of lack of knowledge or love but simply because those decisions cannot be seen as rational without the voice of the Holy Spirit, Who very well may speak only to the one faced with the choices.

I don't know exactly how the decisions made in the last 24 hours will look in practice just yet, and I have no idea where they will ultimately lead. But I am confident in the priorities I have chosen, and I do not think I will lose a certain blinding clarity that has come in the process (only in the darkness do we see clearly?).

Thanks to all who have been praying. You are precious beyond words, and God will reward your love and faithfulness.

Seeing in the Dark

"The intensest light of reason and revelation combined can not shed such blazonings upon the deeper truths in man, as will sometimes proceed from his own profoundest gloom. Utter darkness is then his light, and cat-like he distinctly sees all objects through a medium which is mere blindness to common vision." Herman Melville, quoted by Joshua Schenk in Lincoln's Melancholy.

The people of his day, Schenk tells us, recognized Lincoln as "an able man, a dependable man, a man capable of great work. [They saw his melancholy] and hardly any thought it strange, or inconsistent, or contradictory. They saw him as he was, a full man whose griefs and solaces and talents ran together. [They recognized] someone full, someone real, someone who has lived and suffered as we have and who has come out stronger for it -- willing and able to wield his strength in service."

"Whatever greatness Lincoln achieved," he further states, "cannot be explained as a triumph over personal suffering. Rather, it must be accounted for as an outgrowth of the same system that produced that suffering."

I have come away from this book with more hope than I have felt in a long time, and that hope tied to specific ideas which can be articulated.

Schenk writes, "Lincoln's story confounds those who see depression as a collection of symptoms to be eliminated. But it resonates with those who see suffering as a potential catalyst of emotional growth." The latter is a basic Scriptural principle, but which, in our modern culture, we often forget and flee from.

Yet without this perspective, the one who suffers melancholia will always feel deformed, handicapped, sick, in need of a "cure." But maybe there is not always a cure. And maybe melancholia is not a sickness, but simply a part of some people's lives which can either destroy them or push them toward the great work they were created to do (and by "great work" I don't mean something necessarily like Lincoln's; "great work" can be raising your children to love God and their neighbor).

And making it even better, Schenk is a really good writer. So wonderful to read wisdom expressed articulately and even eloquently.

On Being Dust Jackets

Thanks to LuCindy, I just got Thomas Merton's No Man is an Island, and am having trouble getting past the introduction -- he makes one think long and hard at least every paragraph, often every sentence.

The focus of the Introduction is on finding meaning in life. A person needs, Merton says, the "fulfillment of his own God-given powers, in the love of others and of God." And a little later, he defines proper self-love as "desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others. [. . .] It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but others."

One knows this: "Love God; love your neighbor." But I like the particular reminder Merton's words give. This loving of God and loving of neighbor is not a kind of self-erasure. Rather, it is where God can make us into exactly the unique individuals He created us to be, offering the one thing, whatever it is, that no one else can -- at least in quite the same way, quite as "perfectly," in this place, and in this time. It is self-effacement, in the sense that one does not think of oneself or desire recognition, but too often we seem to think that means that the self is somehow not valuable, to be despised. But despising the self is not the opposite of wrongly loving the self. Humility does not mean, as C. S. Lewis has said in The Screwtape Letters, regarding oneself as worthless but rather not thinking of oneself at all because one's focus is on God and others.

Ray Bradbury, in Fahrenheit 451, creates a group of people who have been memorizing books in order to preserve knowledge in a society where books are burned because of their power to make people think. My students noticed the seemingly contradictory statements of the group's leader -- he kept saying that they were not important, but that they needed to take great care of themselves. But of course it isn't contradictory at all. They were not personally important as the people of their society considered individuals important -- "oh, look at me, love me, give to me, see how wonderful I am" -- but rather they were important because of the unique gifts they held in readiness to serve others. "We're just dust jackets for books," he reminds the others.

Towards the end of the Introduction to No Man is an Island, Merton writes, "Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my own achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time. It is seen, above all, in my integration in the mystery of Christ."

This is where I long to live, in the freedom of not thinking of myself but living the self that I was created to be. And every day I fail so completely . . . and yet He does not stop lifting me up, teaching me, guiding me, reminding me.

"I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!" (Ps. 27:13-14)

Prisms of Love

My mother-in-law is an artist. We are privileged to have two of her paintings in our home, and we always look forward to seeing her new projects and techniques when we visit.

Her home is of course tastefully furnished and decorated, nothing elaborately "arty" but now and then a touch of beauty so rich it takes one's breath.

When we arrived the Monday morning before Christmas, racing ahead of sleet and snow, the day sagged about us, grey and drizzly. Bringing dishes to the sink after lunch, I noted the several multi-colored, multi-shaped peices of glass hanging in the kitchen window that had been there since I could remember. Pretty, I thought, and didn't notice them again.

Wednesday dawned bright, the ordinary sun dazzling after nearly a week's hiding behind the wintry grey. At some point, I started from the den towards the laundry room -- and was arrested by vivid rainbows reflected on the white walls, a brilliance that abruptly stilled my teeming mind. After catching my breath, I turned my eyes to find their origin -- the glass baubles in the window, of course.

A few minutes later, my high school science catching up with me, I realized the flat colored glass pieces couldn't have created those rainbows. Approaching the window again, for the first time ever I saw the two small, clear glass pieces among them: a ball and a teardrop, each with dozens of facets cut into the surface, joyfully refracting the sunlight into radiant beauty.

Simple -- yet with depth, richness, brilliance, like the love of the woman who, with her instinct for beauty, hung the glass in that perfect place to provide moments of sudden delight. And yet the source of that delight is constant, always available, its heart never changing, never less rich, always deeply beautiful.

Thank you for loving us, Mom, and teaching us so much of what love is. We thank God for you.

Okay, I Give In :-)

I've been tagged twice now, so just for fun:

Four movies you could watch over and over:
Annie
Fiddler on the Roof
Dead Poets Society
Princess Bride

Four places you have lived:
Lawrence, KS
Manhattan, KS
Springfield, MO
Jackson, MS

Four TV shows you love to watch:
Numbers
CSI Miami
Smallville
reruns of Diagnosis Murder

Four places you have been on vacation:
Creede, CO
Wyoming
Ozarks
various places our kids and parents live

Four websites you daily visit (besides blogs):
National Review Online
Townhall
Touchstone Mere Comments
The Corner
(the latter two are technically blogs, but they aren't personal ones, which I take the proscription to mean)

Four of your favorite foods:
Chocolate
Chocolate
umm . . . chocolate . . . .
oh, and . . . chocolate

Four places you would rather be right now:
home with my husband and son
with my parents
with any of my older kids and grandkids

Four bloggers you are tagging:
I believe all the ones I'd tag have been tagged already,
except maybe Amy at Over the Rainbow.

Driving to Work

The full moon hangs like a pendant of cold brilliance above floating rain clouds . . . distant, isolate, its light offering no comfort, its beauty no serenity . . . a difficult muse . . .

Dwelling on God

Anima Christi

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.
Body of Christ, save me.
Blood of Christ, inebriate me.
Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O good Jesus, hear me.
Within your wounds hide me.
Do not permit me to part from you.
From spiteful enemies protect me.
In the hour of my death call me.
And bid me come to you.
That with your saints I may praise you
In the lifetime of lifetimes. Amen.

Hansen writes a lovely meditation on this prayer which serves as an introduction to Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises (the prayer, apparently, not written by Ignatius). The meditation dwells on each line, as I've often done with the "Our Father," and I suspect I will find myself revisiting it often, learning to make this prayer mine. Today, this particular line is making its way to my heart.

O good Jesus, hear me.

Hansen concedes that of course Jesus always hears us. Then he adds, But "hear me" needs saying if only to remind us that a great prayer does not require an 'answer me,' for that implies a reply in our own terms, in our own way. We handicap ourselves with human plans, but improve ourselves by being receptive to God.

I struggle so much with the "answer me" aspect of prayer; we hear all the time about all the wonderful things God has done in answer to prayer, but there seem to be few courageous souls who look at tragedy and say "God be praised." I like what Hansen says here; it is the hearing of the prayer -- the fact that the God of the universe hears me! -- that is of any importance.

And receptiveness to God. I am encountering this everywhere, Chambers of course majors on it, now Hansen, and this afternoon over and over in the works included in Radiance: A Spiritual Memoir of Evelyn Underhill (excerpts of her works showing her growth in the Lord, edited by Bernard Bangley).


This excerpt will give the idea of what she says again and again:

That's the voice of wisdom -- quietly ignoring the importance we attach to our little selves. Once for all, tonight, let us turn our backs on our niggling self-scrutiny. Let us look at God, at Christ. That will bring us to a state of mind more humbling, more really contrite, than any penitence based only on introspection. It will condemn every failure in love. 'My soul opened' said Lucie-Christine, not 'my soul turned inwards and began to look at itself through a microscope'!

(Underhill doesn't say never practice self-examination, but never focus on self, even to identify sin, instead of focusing on God, where healing and health reside.)

Peace, she says a little further on, means such a profound giving of ourselves to God, such an utter neglect of our own opinions, preferences, and rights, as keeps the deeps of our soul within His atmosphere in all the surface rush, the ups and downs, demands and disappointments, joy and suffering of daily life. We cease to matter. Only God and His work matters.

I long to find this place, to know that only God and his work matter, and not myself.

"A Stay Against Confusion"

I haven't a great deal of time to write coherently these days (as is perhaps evident in my last couple of pieces!), but I've been reading Ron Hansen's collection of essays on faith and fiction entitled A Stay Against Confusion. It's often arresting, always interesting. I'd like to share a series of quotations from the first three essays on fiction as food for thought.

We look to fiction for self-understanding, for analogies of encounter, discovery, and decision that will help us contemplate and change our lives.

A faith-inspired fiction has a fondness for humanity and finds cause for celebration in the beauties of the natural world. A faith-inspired fiction is ever aware that we are on holy ground.

A faith-inspired fiction is, as Anthony DeMello has said of story, the shortest distance between human understanding and truth.

Writing with faith is a form of praying.

We figure out our own lives through fiction.

Paraphrasing Willa Cather: the greatness [of truly great writers] was not in the formal features of their writing but in the salutary effect their stories have on our hearts and minds.

He notes that John Gardner has said that writers see more connections than other people tend to do, and adds I finally think our need for stories is our need to find those connections, and to have confirmed for us the theology we hold secret in our heart, that even the least of us are necessary to the great universal plot in ways we hadn't imagined.

Paradoxes Again

My last post got me thinking about paradoxes, and circumstances have brought to the fore another couple that have caused me much struggle through the past many years. I know what the Scriptures say about these issues, I think, and I take certain intellectual stands -- by faith -- that get me through the day, and I am not going to question God’s love for us or His acting in our lives over my confusion. I think I know how to live with paradox, generally speaking, but some paradoxes are more frustrating than others, the ones, of course, that directly challenge my own comfort.

I know that God is sovereign. Scripture is quite clear on this point. Our Sunday School teacher quoted someone yesterday: “history unfolds according to His plan.” Okay, I accept that. I think. Intellectually, at least, by faith in the Word, I know it to be true.

My problem with it is simple: it appears to mean that sin, through which He often accomplishes certain things, is therefore part of His plan, which of course begs the question: why then is it sin, and why do we need to struggle so against it?

One definition of sin is not living in accordance with God’s law, acting against the standards by which He clearly says we should act. This is a bad thing. I should strive not to sin, because I wish to please and obey Him, who gave His Son that I might live.

But if “history unfolds according to His plan,” and sinful acts are used to accomplish that plan (and He doesn’t have a “plan B,” as the Sunday School teacher remarked, because He isn’t surprised at anything that happens), then . . . well . . . then . . . isn’t sin part of His plan?

But it can’t be, because He is sinless and He commands us to strive for sinlessness also.

To be less abstract: Say I yell at my son in anger. That is sin. One can point to the potential for my son to grow in character through my sin as he learns to respond in a godly manner to people who are unkind, etc. So my sin has given God a chance to grow my son in character, which is a good thing. (And I experience grace, through my repentance, which is also good, except Paul has dealt quite clearly with that in Romans, chapter 6 or thereabouts, I believe.)

But my sin is a bad thing. It has to be. It hurts both me and my son, me because I become less Christ-like every time I disobey Him, and my son because it violates his mind, heart, and soul, and also opens the option to him of bitterness instead of maturity in his response. And of course all sin is an affront to a righteous God whose Son died to save me from it.

So: how does man’s chosen sinful disobedience work into God’s sovereignty?

I presume it’s bound up in the concept of free will (which I don’t understand, either, when I think of the paradox of free will and election), and that He "uses," as we often say, bad to accomplish good. (That’s in Romans, too, of course.) But then I think of Pharaoh and his God-hardened heart, and those verses that say God creates the wicked for their time and His purpose, and . . . well, it all gets very mixed up.

And of course, the real mix-up for self-centered me is simply this: when someone else’s sin affects my life negatively, how do I say, “oh, it’s all right, it’s God’s will that I should suffer this”? It seems to me that it is very much the other person’s will that I suffer it, not God’s. And that God having to use the consequences of sin is very inefficient. Necessary, I do understand, because it’s a fallen world and He chooses to leave us the will to choose. But still . . . if somebody hadn’t eaten a certain fruit, would God will that I suffer? No, His purposes would be accomplished in perfection. (And please don’t get me started on the Fortunate Fall idea, though I may address it another day.)

And all of this leads me to that other perennial paradox: if “history unfolds according to His plan,” whether I sin or not, no matter what I do, then why bother to pray, either?

Yes, yes, I know we are commanded to pray, and I do. But if my yelling at my son accomplishes good, helps to bring about His plan, why pray to stop doing it? Well, because it’s sin . . . and I’m back at the beginning.

Prayer is the hardest of the disciplines for me. Not because I actually think we shouldn’t pray against sin (in ourselves or in others), but because I really don’t know how to approach God about anything really important, sinful behavior or ill health or whatever it be. What does one pray for when one sees loved ones hurting? If it will accomplish God’s plan for this person to die, or this person to go through a divorce, or that person to be handicapped, or . . . well, you get the idea.

Some days I am merely a bundle of confusions. But thank God, He doesn’t stop loving me because of it. I probably need to read Job again, because the “answer” God gave Job is the one I think He keeps offering me. Some days I am able to cling to it. Other days, like this one, I can’t see it. But He’ll bring me where He wants me, eventually. I just wish I could find it in me to make it easier for both of us.

Living in Tension

for Pamela

On LuCindy's recommendation, I ordered Mary Oliver's collection of poems called House of Light. I read the whole thing twice yesterday after it came. A number of the poems play about my mind today, and I will be thinking many of her lines for many days. "I think I will always be lonely / in this world," she writes in "Lilies," meditating on what it means to live unselfconsciously in the world as the lilies do; can we live in such a way, let the self go as the lilies and the hummingbirds do, just live?

But the lines that especially struck me yesterday open "The Kookaburras": "In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator. / In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting / to come out of its cloud and lift its wings."

A dear friend (and former student) dropped by yesterday to chat for awhile before returning to her ministry of teaching in a foreign country. She shared with me a lovely piece she had written, and I was struck by the tension in it between knowing that at some level what we have here is enough, and yet longing for a "something more" that we only glimpse and never really grasp.

I thought at the time of C. S. Lewis's autobiography Surprised by Joy. In it he describes the stab of joy that he would, on rare occasions, experience, and how his whole life was spent in trying to find that experience again -- until he came to know Jesus Christ and to understand that those glimpses are meant to draw us towards the "something more" that we can't have now but awaits us when we enter into eternity and leave all this time-bound necessity behind.

My friend's piece mentioned her "coward heart," but I saw in it also "a god of flowers just waiting / . . . to lift its wings." Acceptance of the "enough" that we have -- not demanding and expecting to have eternity now and finding ourselves content in the world we've been given -- is part of what it means to walk uprightly with Him. But we sell ourselves -- and our God -- short when we say this is the all and the end of it. We must always be content? we are in sin if we are restless, if we seek for more or other than what we have? No, I reject that, because we don't have enough; we don't have everything that properly belongs to beings created to live with God in eternity.

I am thinking this through as I write, and I hope I am not suggesting some odd heresy, but I am seeing more and more the longer I live the paradoxes of faith. Here is one: "be content" but "seek Me." How, if we are seeking, can we be content? We must live in that tension in this fallen world, not resolve it. That, it seems to me, is what our greatest artists keep trying to tell us. That is a predominant theme in Oliver's poems in this particular collection.

In "The Ponds" she describes the beauty of lilies in the light and from a distance, but then on close inspection the imperfections of each one. The poem ends: "I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing -- / that the light is everything -- that it is more than the sum / of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do."

So do not fear your "coward heart," my dear. We all have one. Rather, do not deny or try to escape the tensions you know, but accept them as part of the lives we have all been given and give voice to them, lifting your wings above the clouds through the gifts given you, and reminding the rest of us of the beauty we desire and can find in one place only.

Birthday Time

The Young Man turned 15 yesterday. Hard to believe he's been around that long, except when it seems he's been around forever. He's been practically an only child for half his life; sometimes I find it hard to remember he's really an uncle to all the itsy bitsies rather than, say, a cousin. They adore him. He loves the attention, even when it's a bit harassing at times. (He will probably deny this when he reads it.)

His nearest sibling is nine and a half years his elder (and has three children). I call him my tag-along, and I've never once rued his arrival. I recall the awe on the faces of the other four as they gathered in the hospital room the evening of his birth and vied for the opportunity to hold him. Once home they would gather around him and urge him to talk; he seemed to be trying his absolute best to shape his mouth in imitation to answer. (He talked early and had the language skills of above an eight-year-old before he was two. I have always assumed that was because of six people talking to him all day long every day.)

I think of the nights of colic, when we'd take turns walking him about the living room, the second son seeming the most patient as he sang "Jesus Loves Me" over and over and over while trying every possible baby hold to help him feel more comfortable. I think of his sisters' automatic mothering skills as they loved him and cared for him while I was gone during the day at work. I think of him in his too-small tux (thanks to the rental company ignoring our size requests) beside his oldest brother at his wedding, so little and cute but standing tall and proud. So many memories . . .

And now I have to look up a bit to look in his eyes, and I think I can see him growing yet taller as he stands at the sink washing the dishes each night. At times he drives me crazy, then he says, "Need a hug?" and I remember all the ways he enriches my life, all the ways he serves me and tries to please me, all the ways he is growing up . . . and how grateful I am, always, for this precious gift.

Happy birthday, son. You're a wondrous gift from God, and I have never doubted that for a moment. I love you.

Blessed Christmas to All

My mother was born on Christmas Day. Her father, when I was a freshman in college, died on Christmas Day. We had always opened gifts on Christmas morning, but for some reason I can't recall we opened them on Christmas Eve that year. Granddad died at 3:00 a.m. We have opened gifts on Christmas Eve, after the candlelight service, ever since. Since that time, Christmas has always held a kind of dissonance for me: celebrating my mother's birth, remembering my granddad's death.

But isn't this part of the season's glory? Not just that the Baby was born, but that He died? Had He been born and not died, we would still be dead in our sins. And His death and resurrection remind me that the death that claims ever more people I love has been long conquered. Death's victory is hollow and temporal; the Son's is filled with glory and eternal.

John Donne said it long ago:

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

It is a wonder indeed that He came -- yet an even greater wonder that His mission in coming was to die.

As I travel to visit my parents and other family (taking perhaps a hiatus from the web), I pray for you who read a blessed Christmas, that as you celebrate with family and friends you will remember why the Baby was born and allow the wonder of His death -- for you -- to wash over all that you do.

Grace for the Moment

I led a discussion group of a few gals this semester as part of one of the Bible classes here at the college, and we spent the last few weeks looking at what the Bible says about womanhood. In our last meeting, we looked through Proverbs 31 -- at the woman who always so intimidates me.

Usually I just feel remarkably lazy after reading the chapter. This time, however, something different struck me. Verse 25 says "she laughs at the time to come" -- the future holds no fear for her.

I am always finding ways to fear the future. One of my "projects" last summer was trying to live day by day. Oh, of course I did things for the future, but I tried not to live in the future. It's not the planning that's the problem; it's the trying to find strength for it when it isn't here yet.

Somewhere recently a woman posted this remark in a discussion on Down's syndrome and abortion: "I would certainly abort if I found out I had a Down's baby; I know what I can and can't handle, and I couldn't possibly handle that."

Leaving aside its sheer self-centeredness, the comment says volumes about her faith in God. And someone responded wisely, "You don't have any idea what you can or can't handle. God gives grace for every situation."

My own faith is generally as weak as that woman's. "I can't possibly do that," I so often say. And yet when "that" comes around, I do it. When we discovered that we would have to take overloads next semester, I kept thinking I can't possibly teach five classes, I'm exhausted already with only four. So I've spent a lot of this semester reminding myself of that wise response: "You have no idea what you can and can't handle." And I am claiming God's confidence that I will be able to do what He has given me to do.

God doesn't give grace for trials we aren't experiencing. Christ admonishes us, "Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble" (Mt. 6:34 ESV).

And Paul prays for us "that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith . . ." (Eph. 3:16-17 ESV).

May I let Him continuously dwell in my heart so that I can always "laugh at the time to come," confident in His grace and mercy. I have had a taste of it; may I desire the peaceful fruit of faith every moment of every day.

Risks and Raising Children

Thinking on our own disobediences and observing the world around us can indeed cause some hesitation or fearfulness when we consider bringing children into the world.

Even if parents are as perfect as human parents can be, and a child is generally obedient and never strays very far, there will be tough times and hurt enough. For parents will make mistakes, will sin, will fail in all kinds of ways, no matter how hard they try to do the right thing, and children must be trained and discipled and redeemed and finally choose for themselves to walk in the path of righteousness, for they are born bent away from God. And in the process, they too will err and sin and fail. This is simple reality.

Yet, God – who knows it is a fallen world and each of us is born into it bent towards evil instead of good – says “children are a gift from the Lord.”

And in the face of His gifts, ought we to say “I am afraid” because the riches are accompanied by risks? What in this world is not? God took the greatest risk when He created man with a free will, to love Him or reject Him. Every day He sees the horrors of a fallen creation, and chooses every moment to keep loving us and yearning for us.

When we look at what God has endured for His creation, the death of and separation from the Son, the constant sin of His creatures against Him and each other, then surely we are driven to think “the reward must be worth the risk.”

And it is. The babe in arms, the toddler learning to weave his way across a room, the wide eyes of delight in the newness and beauty and richness of this created world, the tiny hand on a cheek and the sweet words, “I love you,” the laughter around the dinner table and the serious conversations about life and love and eternity, someday perhaps the grandchildren’s hugs and precious love . . . It is all worth the risk; it is all worth the inevitable pain.

Obedience and trust always carry reward. Will risks be realized? Often, of course. And yet, and yet . . . greater risks attend fearfulness and refusal, do they not? We can only grow as we trust the One who calls us to live for Him, and we can only trust if we place ourselves at His mercy and set our feet into the water of the river, to see it parted for us in His good timing.

The Gift of Children

Our older daughter is expecting her third child, our twelfth grandchild. The mystery of new life never ceases to awe; each child is unique and blessed; the reaction is always the same -- how wonderful!

Yesterday a dear young woman I haven't seen or heard from in several months stopped by. I hugged her and as she stepped back I saw the tell-tale bulge and hugged her again.

Every child is unique and blessed -- but some are longer awaited and add a special blessing of faith and hope. A and her husband, after finding that she has medical problems that might have kept her from ever having children, waited and hoped for years, coming before the Lord both with the strong desire for a child and the trust to accept His decision. When I first met A, her quiet faith in the face of a possibility that tore at her heart encouraged me many times.

Because a child seemed not be in the plan, they decided to move to New Orleans so he could go to seminary. Easy, for just the two of them -- she could keep teaching, they could live on peanuts for a few years. Then, just before moving, they discovered a child was, after all, part of the plan. And then Katrina destroyed the seminary plans. And now they are back here, living with relatives while waiting for a house, he working contentedly at his old job, she savoring the months of preparation she thought would never be hers to savor.

She knows something of what Elizabeth must have felt when she found she would bear a son at long last, after hope had died. What wonder and amazement. What deep joy. What awe as a baby kicks and somersaults in a womb believed to be unable to carry him. What a special blessing in the lives of his family, a blessing of gratefulness and wonder given to those who wait with faithful hearts.

Children are a gift from the Lord, indeed.