Second Saturday Update

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

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

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

Saturday Update

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

Friday Update

I TALKED TO MY GIRL THIS MORNING!

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

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

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

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

Update

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

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

Thursday: Thank you for your prayers!

Our lovely Davina

with Daniel & kids

with Devin, Abby, Emma, and Alex

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

Predicted Completion: late afternoon

Hospital Stay: 3-7 days

Recovery: 2 weeks - several months

Prayers: wisdom and skill for the surgeon

peace for the children

smooth recovery

Praise: for a wonderful church family and good friends

for the prayers of so many across the country

UPDATE: Surgery Date Set

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

Prayer Request

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

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

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

http://www.angiomaalliance.org/

Christ is Risen Indeed!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christendom Review: Volume 3 Issue 1

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

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)

Sabbatical

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

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

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

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

Congratulations to our Newly Graduated Sailor

From playing in the water way

back when to the Navy today . . .

SO PROUD OF OUR SAILOR!

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.

SuperMoon

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

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Eye-to-Eye

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

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

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

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

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

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

cross-posted

"Lit Instructor"

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

"Lit Instructor"

Day after day up there beating my wings

with all the softness truth requires

I feel them shrug whenever I pause:

they class my voice among tentative things,

And they credit fact, force, battering.

I dance my way toward the family of knowing,

embracing stray error as a long-lost boy

and bringing him home with my fluttering.

Every quick feather asserts a just claim;

it bites like a saw into white pine.

I communicate right; but explain to the dean--

well, Right has a long and intricate name.

And the saying of it is a lonely thing.

--from American Poems

Crescent Moon

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

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

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

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

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

Light Beyond the Clouds

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

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

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

Light above and beyond the clouds, always.

Startin' 'em Young

Conversation this evening on the phone:

I answer: "Hello?"

Pause; I hear child sounds in the background.

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

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

Same voice gives full child name of suspected male grandchild.

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

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

Me: "I'm fine, too."

Slight pause.

Nate: "Can I speak to Grandpa?"

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

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

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

Morning Star

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.