I have been reading Russian filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky's book Sculpting in Time, thanks to the recommendation of this young man, a film communications major. It is one of those books that gives one chills by its insight and expression. For this morning, a sample:
In setting great store by the subjective view of the artist and his personal perception of the world, I am not making a plea for an arbitrary or anarchic approach. It is a question of worldview, of ideals and moral ends. Masterpieces are born of the artist's struggle to express his ethical ideals. Indeed, his concepts and his sensibilities are informed by those ideals. If he loves life, has an overwhelming need to know it, change it, try to make it better, -- in short, if he aims to cooperate in enhancing the value of life, then there is no danger in the fact that the picture of reality will have passed through a filter of his subjective concepts, through his state of mind. For his work will always be a spiritual endeavour which aspires to make man more perfect: an image of the world that captivates us by its harmony of feeling and thought, its nobility and restraint.
29 November 2007
15 November 2007
Hath Hell Frozen Over?
Real Christianity out of Hollywood?
Criminal Minds astounded me last night. The team is called in to investigate crimes committed by someone leaving satanic symbols as a calling card. On the way, they discuss satanism, and Hotch and Dave Rossi (the new man, played by Joe Montegna) are cautioning the rest that such people are especially dangerous because of their belief that they are possessed by the devil’s power. Morgan says, “My mother took us to church every Sunday, and this devil stuff doesn’t bother me.” Reid responds, “Maybe the devil stuff didn’t take because the god stuff didn’t either.” Morgan, enraged, tells him, “You don’t know what I believe.” It’s clearly not a casual issue with him, much as he might want it to appear so.
At the small town where the crime has taken place, Morgan asks Rossi to speak to the priest (there’s only one church in the town) and he (Morgan) will talk to the victim’s parents; Rossi instead asks to speak to the parents himself, leaving Morgan with the priest. The priest, immediately sensing Morgan’s hostility, asks him, “How long has it been since you’ve been in the Lord’s house?” Morgan, refusing to answer, is rude to him again and again, his repulsion continually evident.
Morgan gives the priest the profile they have come up with and asks him to look at the list of church members among whom the killer must be; when the priest can’t tell him who he thinks it is, Morgan says “he is imitating faith; it isn’t real; he goes to church only because everyone else does.” The priest answers in frustration that all his congregation have “imitative faith,” all of them attend church because everybody else does, and he does all he knows how to help them understand and live real faith – again Morgan becomes angry and says, “we’re not here about you, we’re here to find a killer, and you say you can’t help us.”
Finally, the priest asks him, “what happened to you that you can be so hateful to a man you don’t even know?” Morgan tells him that “something terrible” happened to him when he was a child (he was abused by a man who was supposedly being a “father figure” to him after his father died) and he went to church every day and begged God to make it stop – and “you know what God did? Nothing – that’s what God did.” The priest tells him, “God never gives us anything we can’t handle.” Morgan replies, “Then God expects way too much of 13-year-old boys.”
Later, Rossi points out that he left Morgan with the priest as “an opportunity for personal growth,” and Morgan decides at least to apologize for his rudeness. (A nice touch, I thought – when the killer admits what he has done, the priest lunges across the table and tries to throttle him. I think this impressed Morgan.)
On the plane back to D.C., Morgan asks Rossi if all the “luck” the killer had experienced over the years – the unbelievable ways he had managed, although not intelligent at all, to evade detection for years – could suggest that he really did have some kind of “help” from a supernatural power. Rossi tells him at first not to worry about it – their job is to find the evil and put a stop to it, not to be concerned with where it comes from. But then he says, “I think Reid is right, you know – if you accept one, then you have to accept the other.”
And the almost-final scene shows Morgan in a church, sitting down in a back pew and clearly steeling himself to begin a journey home.
This is Hollywood? CM has always shown respect for Christianity; some of the villains have used religion as an excuse for evil, but this has always been pointed out as a perversion and not to do with true religion. But this – this amounts to the gospel on a popular crime show: a critique of “imitation faith” by someone trying to live real faith, an acknowledgement that God doesn’t “tempt us beyond what we are able,” a main character – a hardened, angry FBI agent – beginning a journey back to Christian faith? Hath hell indeed frozen over?!
Criminal Minds astounded me last night. The team is called in to investigate crimes committed by someone leaving satanic symbols as a calling card. On the way, they discuss satanism, and Hotch and Dave Rossi (the new man, played by Joe Montegna) are cautioning the rest that such people are especially dangerous because of their belief that they are possessed by the devil’s power. Morgan says, “My mother took us to church every Sunday, and this devil stuff doesn’t bother me.” Reid responds, “Maybe the devil stuff didn’t take because the god stuff didn’t either.” Morgan, enraged, tells him, “You don’t know what I believe.” It’s clearly not a casual issue with him, much as he might want it to appear so.
At the small town where the crime has taken place, Morgan asks Rossi to speak to the priest (there’s only one church in the town) and he (Morgan) will talk to the victim’s parents; Rossi instead asks to speak to the parents himself, leaving Morgan with the priest. The priest, immediately sensing Morgan’s hostility, asks him, “How long has it been since you’ve been in the Lord’s house?” Morgan, refusing to answer, is rude to him again and again, his repulsion continually evident.
Morgan gives the priest the profile they have come up with and asks him to look at the list of church members among whom the killer must be; when the priest can’t tell him who he thinks it is, Morgan says “he is imitating faith; it isn’t real; he goes to church only because everyone else does.” The priest answers in frustration that all his congregation have “imitative faith,” all of them attend church because everybody else does, and he does all he knows how to help them understand and live real faith – again Morgan becomes angry and says, “we’re not here about you, we’re here to find a killer, and you say you can’t help us.”
Finally, the priest asks him, “what happened to you that you can be so hateful to a man you don’t even know?” Morgan tells him that “something terrible” happened to him when he was a child (he was abused by a man who was supposedly being a “father figure” to him after his father died) and he went to church every day and begged God to make it stop – and “you know what God did? Nothing – that’s what God did.” The priest tells him, “God never gives us anything we can’t handle.” Morgan replies, “Then God expects way too much of 13-year-old boys.”
Later, Rossi points out that he left Morgan with the priest as “an opportunity for personal growth,” and Morgan decides at least to apologize for his rudeness. (A nice touch, I thought – when the killer admits what he has done, the priest lunges across the table and tries to throttle him. I think this impressed Morgan.)
On the plane back to D.C., Morgan asks Rossi if all the “luck” the killer had experienced over the years – the unbelievable ways he had managed, although not intelligent at all, to evade detection for years – could suggest that he really did have some kind of “help” from a supernatural power. Rossi tells him at first not to worry about it – their job is to find the evil and put a stop to it, not to be concerned with where it comes from. But then he says, “I think Reid is right, you know – if you accept one, then you have to accept the other.”
And the almost-final scene shows Morgan in a church, sitting down in a back pew and clearly steeling himself to begin a journey home.
This is Hollywood? CM has always shown respect for Christianity; some of the villains have used religion as an excuse for evil, but this has always been pointed out as a perversion and not to do with true religion. But this – this amounts to the gospel on a popular crime show: a critique of “imitation faith” by someone trying to live real faith, an acknowledgement that God doesn’t “tempt us beyond what we are able,” a main character – a hardened, angry FBI agent – beginning a journey back to Christian faith? Hath hell indeed frozen over?!
13 November 2007
The Generosity of Centered Love
for June, who has loved me
Some 34 years ago, I happened to work in the curriculum library at The University of Kansas, reshelving and rearranging and doing whatever projects the director needed me to do. A strikingly beautiful woman with a soft Southern accent happened to be a doctoral student under the director, with a desk in the library’s office area. Her inevitable kindness, her ready smile and laugh won me instantly – and one day she invited her younger son to take us out to lunch at Pizza Hut, thereby (not quite unknowingly) selecting her daughter-in-law.
From the first, June considered me a daughter, loving me neither less nor differently than she loved her own children. And I have always called her “mom,” because she immediately became a second mother to me, as precious as my own.
Sometimes I envied her energy and her talents. She could make anything on a sewing machine from a simple skirt to complex valanced drapes. She could cook anything from scratch and taught me to love simple beans and cornbread as well as exotic tabuli. She canned and froze and dried the produce of the family farm and in her children’s youth had driven the tractor, planted trees, and helped put out the fire that younger son inadvertently started in the outhouse. Her eye for beauty ensures that nothing in her various homes has been accidental or happenstance, and each one has inevitably been both elegant and comfortable, truly home to all who step across the threshold. She taught economics and home economics at Texas Women’s University and she is an artist and a landscaper and a homemaker par excellence.
But I understood immediately that she didn’t expect me to be like her, that she realized that my upbringing, my talents, my preferences and abilities, even my lesser store of energy are uniquely mine and to be valued as such. Never have I felt a moment’s slightest disappointment from her, but only encouragement to follow my own paths, to excel in being the woman I was created to be. And while I’ve not, sad to say, learned to sew or cook or decorate my home in the complex ways she does, I have learned from her anew the most important lesson my own mother has always impressed on me, not by speech but by example.
For Mom generously, fiercely loves people, with a deep loyalty and a vulnerability that draw and enfold. All that she does arises from this love. When she bakes bread and prepares a lovely pot roast and a sumptuous dessert, it is an offering of time and love to those who will share it, as is the time given to teach her grandchildren to sew and draw and paint, showering love along the way. Her home opens vistas of quiet beauty where guests feel free to relax, from the cushioned window seat and afghans in the den and deep leather couches in the living room to scented soaps on the bathroom sinks and lush down pillows on the beds. Her paintings – like the two I see each time I glance up from this writing – greet the viewer with a profusion of soft colors that draw the eye into a centered depth of beauty that is like the depth of her own centered love, the theme of all her interior decoration, even to simple trinkets hanging in a window.
One year, we arrived at Mom’s the Monday morning before Christmas, racing ahead of sleet and snow, the day sagging about us, grey and drizzly. Bringing dishes to the sink after lunch, I noted the several multi-colored, multi-shaped, flat pieces 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. Around mid-morning, I started from the den toward 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 approached the window to find their origin, and, for the first time ever, I saw among the colored baubles two small, clear glass pieces: a ball and a teardrop, each with dozens of facets cut into the surface, joyfully refracting the sunlight into radiant beauty.
Simple elegance – 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. This is her way – not extravagance but quiet gestures that never waver, never halt, but need only the light of our gratefulness to break into beauty enough to delight the universe.
Some 34 years ago, I happened to work in the curriculum library at The University of Kansas, reshelving and rearranging and doing whatever projects the director needed me to do. A strikingly beautiful woman with a soft Southern accent happened to be a doctoral student under the director, with a desk in the library’s office area. Her inevitable kindness, her ready smile and laugh won me instantly – and one day she invited her younger son to take us out to lunch at Pizza Hut, thereby (not quite unknowingly) selecting her daughter-in-law.
From the first, June considered me a daughter, loving me neither less nor differently than she loved her own children. And I have always called her “mom,” because she immediately became a second mother to me, as precious as my own.
Sometimes I envied her energy and her talents. She could make anything on a sewing machine from a simple skirt to complex valanced drapes. She could cook anything from scratch and taught me to love simple beans and cornbread as well as exotic tabuli. She canned and froze and dried the produce of the family farm and in her children’s youth had driven the tractor, planted trees, and helped put out the fire that younger son inadvertently started in the outhouse. Her eye for beauty ensures that nothing in her various homes has been accidental or happenstance, and each one has inevitably been both elegant and comfortable, truly home to all who step across the threshold. She taught economics and home economics at Texas Women’s University and she is an artist and a landscaper and a homemaker par excellence.
But I understood immediately that she didn’t expect me to be like her, that she realized that my upbringing, my talents, my preferences and abilities, even my lesser store of energy are uniquely mine and to be valued as such. Never have I felt a moment’s slightest disappointment from her, but only encouragement to follow my own paths, to excel in being the woman I was created to be. And while I’ve not, sad to say, learned to sew or cook or decorate my home in the complex ways she does, I have learned from her anew the most important lesson my own mother has always impressed on me, not by speech but by example.
For Mom generously, fiercely loves people, with a deep loyalty and a vulnerability that draw and enfold. All that she does arises from this love. When she bakes bread and prepares a lovely pot roast and a sumptuous dessert, it is an offering of time and love to those who will share it, as is the time given to teach her grandchildren to sew and draw and paint, showering love along the way. Her home opens vistas of quiet beauty where guests feel free to relax, from the cushioned window seat and afghans in the den and deep leather couches in the living room to scented soaps on the bathroom sinks and lush down pillows on the beds. Her paintings – like the two I see each time I glance up from this writing – greet the viewer with a profusion of soft colors that draw the eye into a centered depth of beauty that is like the depth of her own centered love, the theme of all her interior decoration, even to simple trinkets hanging in a window.
One year, we arrived at Mom’s the Monday morning before Christmas, racing ahead of sleet and snow, the day sagging about us, grey and drizzly. Bringing dishes to the sink after lunch, I noted the several multi-colored, multi-shaped, flat pieces 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. Around mid-morning, I started from the den toward 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 approached the window to find their origin, and, for the first time ever, I saw among the colored baubles two small, clear glass pieces: a ball and a teardrop, each with dozens of facets cut into the surface, joyfully refracting the sunlight into radiant beauty.
Simple elegance – 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. This is her way – not extravagance but quiet gestures that never waver, never halt, but need only the light of our gratefulness to break into beauty enough to delight the universe.
07 November 2007
Words, Only Words
This morning, noting the waning moon as I stand by my car in the college parking lot, I can see it only as darkness moving to complete eclipse, the one brilliant arc remaining along its lower edge soon to be swallowed in sorrow as a woman I love -- a woman who has been like a mother to me since I married her son almost 33 years ago -- faces implacable Death.
How, I often wonder, do those without hope live life well and, especially, face Death? For even with the hope that I cling to, darkness marks me today.
Death, where is thy victory? Christ has risen; the victory is His.
Words, words, words. I who know the power of words see them today as mere puffs of wind on the air, marks on a page whose blankness holds the only meaning.
Because today death remains victorious, and I rage against the waning of the moon, the coming loss of so much love, so much reflected light, to the world.
How, I often wonder, do those without hope live life well and, especially, face Death? For even with the hope that I cling to, darkness marks me today.
Death, where is thy victory? Christ has risen; the victory is His.
Words, words, words. I who know the power of words see them today as mere puffs of wind on the air, marks on a page whose blankness holds the only meaning.
Because today death remains victorious, and I rage against the waning of the moon, the coming loss of so much love, so much reflected light, to the world.
30 October 2007
Happy Endings
Last week on Criminal Minds, the team searched for a missing child, finding out in the course of the search that she had been abused by her uncle. The quotation at the end was from G.K. Chesterton: "Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed."
I was thinking about this yesterday morning while reflecting on why I write. Generally speaking, children's literature does have happy endings, because we know that children need to believe in hope. And I am always seeking a vision, an ideal, hope, when I write. And so I wrote:
"I am, then, seeking happy endings when I write. Not sappy, unrealistic, 'perfect' endings, but ones that are possible in a broken world which has been entered by redemptive power, ones that are possible because brokenness is not all there is. The flawed beauty we see all around us, the flawed goodness of people we meet on our way, tells us this -- so much of beauty and goodness within the brokenness, if we look for it, tells us this, tells us that the world is indeed still 'charged with the grandeur of God,' that 'there lives the dearest freshness deep down things' even in a world 'seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil.'
"I write to find and articulate gems of joy, glimpses of the ideal, prisms of hope. I only know that my world is flawed because I know there is an ideal by which to judge it. And without this ideal, if we reject the vision of an ideal, there is only despair. We must offer hope by offering the ideal we glimpse, the vision shimmering always on the edge of sight."
I have never been ashamed of happy endings, of beauty, of hope. I am grieved that so many in the past century have found it more likely that life doesn't offer these, that so many have turned from the search and offered the lies of despair in the name of realism. Because, as I also wrote:
"I read for the same reason: I read to find the ideal. Not to avoid reality, but to see that reality is not the mere observable broken world that drowns me every morning when I wake, that drowns me when I wake from a literary world that has drawn me into its beauty, when I wake from a rare immersion in the reality of God's love. Reality is not brokenness and despair; reality is redemption with all its hope in the midst of the brokenness and despair."
Our happy endings here will always be tinged with some edge of sadness. And yet -- there is an ultimate happy ending where all tears, all sorrow will be washed away forever. How, otherwise, can one find courage to live?
I was thinking about this yesterday morning while reflecting on why I write. Generally speaking, children's literature does have happy endings, because we know that children need to believe in hope. And I am always seeking a vision, an ideal, hope, when I write. And so I wrote:
"I am, then, seeking happy endings when I write. Not sappy, unrealistic, 'perfect' endings, but ones that are possible in a broken world which has been entered by redemptive power, ones that are possible because brokenness is not all there is. The flawed beauty we see all around us, the flawed goodness of people we meet on our way, tells us this -- so much of beauty and goodness within the brokenness, if we look for it, tells us this, tells us that the world is indeed still 'charged with the grandeur of God,' that 'there lives the dearest freshness deep down things' even in a world 'seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil.'
"I write to find and articulate gems of joy, glimpses of the ideal, prisms of hope. I only know that my world is flawed because I know there is an ideal by which to judge it. And without this ideal, if we reject the vision of an ideal, there is only despair. We must offer hope by offering the ideal we glimpse, the vision shimmering always on the edge of sight."
I have never been ashamed of happy endings, of beauty, of hope. I am grieved that so many in the past century have found it more likely that life doesn't offer these, that so many have turned from the search and offered the lies of despair in the name of realism. Because, as I also wrote:
"I read for the same reason: I read to find the ideal. Not to avoid reality, but to see that reality is not the mere observable broken world that drowns me every morning when I wake, that drowns me when I wake from a literary world that has drawn me into its beauty, when I wake from a rare immersion in the reality of God's love. Reality is not brokenness and despair; reality is redemption with all its hope in the midst of the brokenness and despair."
Our happy endings here will always be tinged with some edge of sadness. And yet -- there is an ultimate happy ending where all tears, all sorrow will be washed away forever. How, otherwise, can one find courage to live?
23 October 2007
Daylight Moon
"He must increase; I must decrease." And so of course it had to be and was.
But this never meant John the Baptist was forgotten or useless, even after the increase of Jesus. His story, while only ever reflected light, and now subdued in the full light of day, still teaches who Jesus is, and much more besides. It is one of the altar stones this side of Jordan. And those still in darkness, unaware of the Light, may be moved by it to seek Him.
The moon on a cloudless autumn afternoon reminds me of the darkness where she lit my way -- and will do again, as long as we remain east of Eden. She reminds me that my reflected light is loved by the Son, whether lighting a dark path in the shadowlands or simply basking in the full light of His presence.
"Come be My light," Mother Teresa heard Jesus call to her. Answer, and then leave all to Him. "Take what He gives and give what He takes with a big smile," she also wrote. All is up to Him; we need only receive His light and leave the times of increase and decrease up to Him.
But this never meant John the Baptist was forgotten or useless, even after the increase of Jesus. His story, while only ever reflected light, and now subdued in the full light of day, still teaches who Jesus is, and much more besides. It is one of the altar stones this side of Jordan. And those still in darkness, unaware of the Light, may be moved by it to seek Him.
The moon on a cloudless autumn afternoon reminds me of the darkness where she lit my way -- and will do again, as long as we remain east of Eden. She reminds me that my reflected light is loved by the Son, whether lighting a dark path in the shadowlands or simply basking in the full light of His presence.
"Come be My light," Mother Teresa heard Jesus call to her. Answer, and then leave all to Him. "Take what He gives and give what He takes with a big smile," she also wrote. All is up to Him; we need only receive His light and leave the times of increase and decrease up to Him.
22 October 2007
Obedience
Yesterday afternoon, I heard the Yorkie sisters from next door barking furiously, so I moseyed out to the front porch to see if I could cajole some playful cuddling from one or both. It was no go – they were focused on the neighborhood cat in regal procession down the middle of the street, her cool Queen of Sheba stroll declaring disdain for her enraged antagonists, the elder Sophie on the porch, intrepid Sadie in the drive. The disdain was well-placed, as we all knew that if Sadie dared to follow, the royalty need only turn, sit, and casually lick her fur to send the little grey-white creature into an even greater frenzy, backing away in consternation at the perceived challenge. When I called, both dogs merely glanced my way, impatient at the interruption, Sophie safely ensconced in her normal reserve, Sadie giving a good imitation of obedience to the convenient sharp calls of her owner, usually hopeless and unheeded, to “stay here!”
Laughing, I sat down on the steps to watch the show and enjoy the warm sun and cool breeze of the almost-autumn day. At mid-afternoon, the sun made luminous green of the trees at the top of the valley sides, melding into cool contrasting shadows in the depths. Looking up into the cloudless blue, I was greeted by the half-moon winking at me with a sardonic grin. Although it contributed no new light to the world, still it shone merrily, unconcerned with anything but its work of reflection, leaving the results to its master the sun.
And so back to work with a better will.
Laughing, I sat down on the steps to watch the show and enjoy the warm sun and cool breeze of the almost-autumn day. At mid-afternoon, the sun made luminous green of the trees at the top of the valley sides, melding into cool contrasting shadows in the depths. Looking up into the cloudless blue, I was greeted by the half-moon winking at me with a sardonic grin. Although it contributed no new light to the world, still it shone merrily, unconcerned with anything but its work of reflection, leaving the results to its master the sun.
And so back to work with a better will.
19 October 2007
Joy!
Just had to say that my oldest son is back from his overseas deployment! He was gone "only" three months this time, and he will be in the States for his son's fourth birthday, after missing his third one last year. It's not like I'd have been seeing him these past weeks, and yet I missed him so much more than when he was in Virginia, just knowing that he was so far away. It feels as though he's right here with us, even though it would still take a day's drive to reach him. Maybe it's to do with knowing that I could make that day's drive, instead of knowing that reaching him would be essentially impossible.
What a lovely end to my break, a special gift to carry into next week and lift me up when the daily round begins to grate again.
What a lovely end to my break, a special gift to carry into next week and lift me up when the daily round begins to grate again.
11 October 2007
Fall Break
Fall break is coming up. For me, it mainly means sleeping in (oh, the luxury!) and grading all day instead of all night. Or reading all day and still grading all night. I could have gotten more grading done this week, maybe -- but I'm not convinced. I've reached that stage of exhaustion where I merely stare, stupefied, at lists and more lists, unable to determine which of the thousand items is most urgent, much less most important.
But eagle's wings do uphold me, and I look forward to gathering my strength in the sheltered quiet of the aerie nest prepared by my Father.
But eagle's wings do uphold me, and I look forward to gathering my strength in the sheltered quiet of the aerie nest prepared by my Father.
10 October 2007
Crystal Sky
The sky burnished black crystal with glittering ice diamonds strewn across its surface . . . heart-wrenching beauty to spark joy in a new moon of the soul.
Not an original image, by any means, but it became mine for the first time this morning --
Not an original image, by any means, but it became mine for the first time this morning --
08 October 2007
Come Be My Light
The title of Mother Teresa's book Come Be My Light, is not a prayer of hers to Jesus; it is His call to her in a vision -- a call to be His light to the poorest and most undesirable in India. From her writings:
"If God who owes nothing to us is ready to impart to us no less than Himself, shall we answer with just a fraction of ourselves? To give ourselves fully to God is a means of receiving God Himself."
"To the good God nothing is little because He is so great and we so small -- that is why He stoops down and takes the trouble to make those little things for us -- to give us a chance to prove our love for Him. Because He makes them, they are very great. He cannot make anything small; they are infinite. Yes my dear children [her sister nuns], be faithful in little practices of love, of little sacrifices -- of the little interior mortification -- of little fidelities to Rule, which will build in you the life of holiness -- make you Christ-like. [. . .] Don't look for big things, just do small things with great love . . . The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love."
"If God who owes nothing to us is ready to impart to us no less than Himself, shall we answer with just a fraction of ourselves? To give ourselves fully to God is a means of receiving God Himself."
"To the good God nothing is little because He is so great and we so small -- that is why He stoops down and takes the trouble to make those little things for us -- to give us a chance to prove our love for Him. Because He makes them, they are very great. He cannot make anything small; they are infinite. Yes my dear children [her sister nuns], be faithful in little practices of love, of little sacrifices -- of the little interior mortification -- of little fidelities to Rule, which will build in you the life of holiness -- make you Christ-like. [. . .] Don't look for big things, just do small things with great love . . . The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love."
She could say this and live this way because, as the editor says, "she trusted that His will for her would always be an expression of [His] unfailing love, however difficult or even impossible it might be at times to fathom His designs"; and elsewhere, "She entrusted herself to His providential intervention and her trust was rewarded."
04 October 2007
The Little Way
Michael Novak writes about Mother Teresa in the 24 September National Review, in an article called "Way of Darkness." Therese of Lisieux, often called "Therese of the Little Way," was Mother Teresa's patron saint; Therese's autobiography is The Story of a Soul, out recently in a new translation which I am enjoying very much.
Novak summarizes Therese's "Little Way" in his article:
The kernal of Therese's teaching is often called "the little way," meaning that no Christian is too humble or too insignificant to follow it. No matter what spiritual darkness you find yourself in, choose as your North Star a tender love for the persons that life's contingencies have put next to you. Do not go looking for more fascinating neighbors to love. Love those who are nearest. You cannot see God, even if you try. But you can see your neighbor, the tedious one, the one who grinds on you: Love him, love her. As Jesus loves them. Give them the tender smile of Jesus, even though your own feelings be like the bottom of a bird cage. Do not ask to see Jesus, or to feel him: That is for children. Love him in the dark. Love for the invisible divine, not for the warm and comforting human consolation. Love for the sake of love, not in order to feel loved in return.
I just got Mother Teresa's Come Be My Light yesterday. She lived her patron saint's "little way," by all accounts; I am awed already by the first few pages. Her humility and her absolute, profound love for Jesus and desire for His glory shines forth in her letters and what others say about her. If we gave one-hundredth the love that such people do, what might the world look like?
Novak summarizes Therese's "Little Way" in his article:
The kernal of Therese's teaching is often called "the little way," meaning that no Christian is too humble or too insignificant to follow it. No matter what spiritual darkness you find yourself in, choose as your North Star a tender love for the persons that life's contingencies have put next to you. Do not go looking for more fascinating neighbors to love. Love those who are nearest. You cannot see God, even if you try. But you can see your neighbor, the tedious one, the one who grinds on you: Love him, love her. As Jesus loves them. Give them the tender smile of Jesus, even though your own feelings be like the bottom of a bird cage. Do not ask to see Jesus, or to feel him: That is for children. Love him in the dark. Love for the invisible divine, not for the warm and comforting human consolation. Love for the sake of love, not in order to feel loved in return.
I just got Mother Teresa's Come Be My Light yesterday. She lived her patron saint's "little way," by all accounts; I am awed already by the first few pages. Her humility and her absolute, profound love for Jesus and desire for His glory shines forth in her letters and what others say about her. If we gave one-hundredth the love that such people do, what might the world look like?
30 September 2007
The Gist of Things
We are reading Annie Dillard's The Writing Life in freshman composition this semester. A student the other day challenged my insistence that one needs to understand the meanings of key words and concepts to understand a writer's work. He had gotten the gist of the assigned chapter without knowing the meanings of the words I'd brought to the class's attention, he said, and wasn't that all that mattered, after all?
Of course, we all read books and articles with words unfamiliar to us, and we don't necessarily sit with dictionaries at our elbows. We learn much by context, and "sort of" know many words we might be unable to define articulately at a moment's notice.
But the comment struck me, still, as somehow wrong; it's not about learning from context but about getting the gist of something without attention to detail. My first reaction thus was simple: "But this isn't casual reading to get the gist of things -- this is reading for the purpose of study." The job of the student is not to be casual; it is to be intense, focused, detailed, desirous of learning all one can. Casual reading lends itself to casual learning -- or, more likely, no real learning at all. That may be fine in its place, but is its place the readings assigned in a college classroom?
But the more I've considered it, the more I'm convinced that the real issue lies still deeper.
I am not in the least opposed to casual reading. (After all, I read detective novels all summer.) But how much of our reading should be merely casual; how often is the "gist of things" enough? And, in fact, if one does not know the meanings of key words, images, concepts, how is it possible to know if one has actually gotten the "gist of it" and not misunderstood altogether, reading oneself instead of the writer, as we so often tend to do?
And if the reading is for some purpose beyond relaxation, why would the mere gist of things satisfy? It isn't the gist of something that challenges and changes us -- the depth and profundity, the compelling force, of the idea lies in the careful building of detail to drive it home. Otherwise, why not just say "writing helps me discover what I think" and skip the first several paragraphs of The Writing Life altogether, condense the whole chapter into one paragraph, the book into a short monograph?
The gist of things often makes me shrug, or yawn. I very likely already knew it, or, if not, I find it mildly interesting, or a little odd, or, perhaps, "stupid" or "worthless." However, when I attend to the details of a well-crafted work, I find that the idea may be truly powerful, compelling, even life-changing -- or, perhaps, truly horrific, to be rejected and actively battled. But never "mere," never casual, never mundane . . . not when I attend. And how can I attend if I have no idea what some of the key images, words, concepts mean?
When I think of the time and energy Dillard must have poured into this book, searching for the exact metaphors, the most precise words placed in syntax painstakingly created to carry her meaning, I wish to honor her by attending to the work as she did herself. Literary critic F. R. Leavis likens the good reader to "the ideal executant musician, the one who, knowing it rests with him to re-create in obedience to what lies in black print on the white sheet in front of him, devotes all his trained intelligence, sensitiveness, intuition, and skill to re-creating, reproducing faithfully what he divines his composer essentially conceived."
I want my students not to be satisfied with the gist of things. I want them to be challenged, to challenge themselves. I want them to find ideas compelling and never casual, to become so well-read, so familiar with words and ideas, that even casual reading will no longer be truly casual, even when it seems to be, because the heart takes in depths of which the mind may not be consciously aware. (Those detective novels make me think about justice, love, betrayal . . .)
And here I find myself back in sympathy with Dillard, as I often am, when she says of her writing students after one of her passionate rants about what it takes to be committed to writing as a career: "They thought I was raving again. It's just as well."
Of course, we all read books and articles with words unfamiliar to us, and we don't necessarily sit with dictionaries at our elbows. We learn much by context, and "sort of" know many words we might be unable to define articulately at a moment's notice.
But the comment struck me, still, as somehow wrong; it's not about learning from context but about getting the gist of something without attention to detail. My first reaction thus was simple: "But this isn't casual reading to get the gist of things -- this is reading for the purpose of study." The job of the student is not to be casual; it is to be intense, focused, detailed, desirous of learning all one can. Casual reading lends itself to casual learning -- or, more likely, no real learning at all. That may be fine in its place, but is its place the readings assigned in a college classroom?
But the more I've considered it, the more I'm convinced that the real issue lies still deeper.
I am not in the least opposed to casual reading. (After all, I read detective novels all summer.) But how much of our reading should be merely casual; how often is the "gist of things" enough? And, in fact, if one does not know the meanings of key words, images, concepts, how is it possible to know if one has actually gotten the "gist of it" and not misunderstood altogether, reading oneself instead of the writer, as we so often tend to do?
And if the reading is for some purpose beyond relaxation, why would the mere gist of things satisfy? It isn't the gist of something that challenges and changes us -- the depth and profundity, the compelling force, of the idea lies in the careful building of detail to drive it home. Otherwise, why not just say "writing helps me discover what I think" and skip the first several paragraphs of The Writing Life altogether, condense the whole chapter into one paragraph, the book into a short monograph?
The gist of things often makes me shrug, or yawn. I very likely already knew it, or, if not, I find it mildly interesting, or a little odd, or, perhaps, "stupid" or "worthless." However, when I attend to the details of a well-crafted work, I find that the idea may be truly powerful, compelling, even life-changing -- or, perhaps, truly horrific, to be rejected and actively battled. But never "mere," never casual, never mundane . . . not when I attend. And how can I attend if I have no idea what some of the key images, words, concepts mean?
When I think of the time and energy Dillard must have poured into this book, searching for the exact metaphors, the most precise words placed in syntax painstakingly created to carry her meaning, I wish to honor her by attending to the work as she did herself. Literary critic F. R. Leavis likens the good reader to "the ideal executant musician, the one who, knowing it rests with him to re-create in obedience to what lies in black print on the white sheet in front of him, devotes all his trained intelligence, sensitiveness, intuition, and skill to re-creating, reproducing faithfully what he divines his composer essentially conceived."
I want my students not to be satisfied with the gist of things. I want them to be challenged, to challenge themselves. I want them to find ideas compelling and never casual, to become so well-read, so familiar with words and ideas, that even casual reading will no longer be truly casual, even when it seems to be, because the heart takes in depths of which the mind may not be consciously aware. (Those detective novels make me think about justice, love, betrayal . . .)
And here I find myself back in sympathy with Dillard, as I often am, when she says of her writing students after one of her passionate rants about what it takes to be committed to writing as a career: "They thought I was raving again. It's just as well."
21 September 2007
Criminal Minds Reprise
Last night was the repeat of last season's Criminal Minds finale, in preparation for the new one to begin. I discovered that I was too kind to Hotch's supervisor, who I said was firing Hotch and putting Prentiss in his place. Instead, she tells Prentiss that Hotch needs to lose his job -- and she expects Prentiss, out of gratefulness for having been placed on the team over the objections of others, to now ensure that this happens. In other words, she is asking Prentiss to be not just a mole, but an active agent of dissension and destruction to her team.
Most interesting. It will be interesting to see how she negotiates this.
In other news, I am absolutely heart-broken because Mandy Patinkin is leaving the show. It just isn't right. Who else could ever play father and confessor to the others as well as he? Criminal Minds without Jason Gideon . . . ? Unimaginable. He set a remarkably high bar for the actor who will take his place.
Most interesting. It will be interesting to see how she negotiates this.
In other news, I am absolutely heart-broken because Mandy Patinkin is leaving the show. It just isn't right. Who else could ever play father and confessor to the others as well as he? Criminal Minds without Jason Gideon . . . ? Unimaginable. He set a remarkably high bar for the actor who will take his place.
Early Morning
Ebony clouds sweep across an indigo sky and a blush of pink on the eastern horizon. Hope rises, new every morning; moon and stars hold despair at bay in the long night.
20 September 2007
Musing on the Muse
The last couple of mornings, I've missed the moon on my drive to work. A few late stars show in the darkened sky, but too far and too faint to compete with the glare of the streetlamps and blinking bus lights and blinding advertisements that conceal more than they reveal. I'm too lazy (or busy, by your leave) to find out if Phoebe's rising too late or too early these days for my early morning delight, but the sky seems lonely without her, though never without beauty.
The moonlight at night has attracted me from the time I can remember, but when we got a second vehicle and I began driving to work a couple of years ago, I began to notice her more often in the early mornings, as I was focusing on the road and my surroundings instead of talking with others in the car. About the same time, I also found myself wanting to improve my ability to see and describe the physical world.
(Most of you know that this physical world generally only comes to my attention when it impinges upon me in some abrupt and usually painful way. This is a distinct liability for a writer, even one who writes about the life of the mind.)
And so I began to observe Phoebe more closely, and her moods and phases fascinated me: how she could be so warm one morning, so cold another, how her light could fill the sky or barely light herself, and how this did not seem dependent on whether she were a mere sliver or at the full. As I thought about these vagaries, I thought too about the one constant -- she is reflected light only, useful only in the darkness.
Thus Phoebe became my muse, because I see myself as reflected light, subject to phases I can't always control, offering more or less light on any given day, but startled by the way the True Light can use even the tiniest sliver to illuminate someone else's way. It's never me; it's always and only the Son in me. There's humility in that, a good humility that gives hope and joy because I don't have to constantly strive to be approved, and when the clouds come, the clouds that He has created and allowed, I can be at peace, too, knowing that His light has not failed and never will.
And what joy to know that ultimately I will know Him for who He is, as I stand in His actual presence, subsumed by His brilliance, and yet, too, become fully myself, knowing at last my created nature revealed in His Light, the darkness forever gone.
The moonlight at night has attracted me from the time I can remember, but when we got a second vehicle and I began driving to work a couple of years ago, I began to notice her more often in the early mornings, as I was focusing on the road and my surroundings instead of talking with others in the car. About the same time, I also found myself wanting to improve my ability to see and describe the physical world.
(Most of you know that this physical world generally only comes to my attention when it impinges upon me in some abrupt and usually painful way. This is a distinct liability for a writer, even one who writes about the life of the mind.)
And so I began to observe Phoebe more closely, and her moods and phases fascinated me: how she could be so warm one morning, so cold another, how her light could fill the sky or barely light herself, and how this did not seem dependent on whether she were a mere sliver or at the full. As I thought about these vagaries, I thought too about the one constant -- she is reflected light only, useful only in the darkness.
Thus Phoebe became my muse, because I see myself as reflected light, subject to phases I can't always control, offering more or less light on any given day, but startled by the way the True Light can use even the tiniest sliver to illuminate someone else's way. It's never me; it's always and only the Son in me. There's humility in that, a good humility that gives hope and joy because I don't have to constantly strive to be approved, and when the clouds come, the clouds that He has created and allowed, I can be at peace, too, knowing that His light has not failed and never will.
And what joy to know that ultimately I will know Him for who He is, as I stand in His actual presence, subsumed by His brilliance, and yet, too, become fully myself, knowing at last my created nature revealed in His Light, the darkness forever gone.
07 September 2007
Loveliness
A brilliant sliver of moon lit the cirrus clouds into a light blue against the indigo sky this morning, loveliness to make one's heart ache. I wish I could paint.
03 September 2007
Home Again
In the summer, I mostly stay indoors because of severe allergies, and I sleep till long past dawn so that I can sleep at all. And so I miss seeing the moon except for the occasional night my son calls me in to see its beauty through his bedroom window.
Since the term has begun, it's been hazy skies when I've left in the early morning dark, and I've missed Phoebe lighting my way down the old ferry road. Instead, there is only the harsh, blinding glare of the neon lights by the side of the road, more distracting than helpful to barely woken eyes.
This morning, I thought it must be cloudy again as I drove to work and saw no sign of her. Then I got out of the car in the parking lot behind the library and looked straight up into a crystal clear sky -- to see a perfect quarter moon glowing in alabaster beauty. As I walked across campus toward my office, her brilliance heightened the garish look of the man-made lamps surrounding me and I kept looking up, risking a stumble on the concrete, feeling that I was being welcomed home.
Since the term has begun, it's been hazy skies when I've left in the early morning dark, and I've missed Phoebe lighting my way down the old ferry road. Instead, there is only the harsh, blinding glare of the neon lights by the side of the road, more distracting than helpful to barely woken eyes.
This morning, I thought it must be cloudy again as I drove to work and saw no sign of her. Then I got out of the car in the parking lot behind the library and looked straight up into a crystal clear sky -- to see a perfect quarter moon glowing in alabaster beauty. As I walked across campus toward my office, her brilliance heightened the garish look of the man-made lamps surrounding me and I kept looking up, risking a stumble on the concrete, feeling that I was being welcomed home.
29 August 2007
Come Be My LIght: Doubt and the Christian Life
Tony Esolen has written a lovely post on doubt and the Christian life at Mere Comments, in response to an article in Time Magazine (which he links) about the new book of Mother Teresa's letters, Come Be My Light. She was even more amazing than any of us knew, and knowing why opens new vistas of hope and new strength for enduring.
I can only say, read them both and thank God for His grace. The book, of course, is on my amazon list, and I'll have to order it as soon as I dare.
I can only say, read them both and thank God for His grace. The book, of course, is on my amazon list, and I'll have to order it as soon as I dare.
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