Gratitude

photo courtesy of Public Domain Pictures     

This morning moonlight radiated through hazy clouds as Phoebe hung at the tip of new-growth twigs on a winter-bare tree.  The clouds dissipated, her light growing stronger as I drove the old ferry road to work, until she shone unswathed by the time I walked from car to building.

Earlier, making my stumbling way through the dark house to the garage, I had been thinking about the beauty of the plants the college sent to my brother’s memorial service.  Mother called last night, and after we chatted about nothing and everything, she suddenly said, “You should see the plants your friends sent!”  After she had liberated them from the lovely basket the florist had used to send them, they now fill the entire house with beauty and hope.

The white kalanchoe, its waxy blossoms like stars among its greenery, sits on the bureau in the living room, across from her usual chair, where she sees them each time she looks up from her book.  The ivies and ferns liven the hallway and bedroom windows.  And the plant with the glossy deep-green leaves, whose name we sadly do not know but whose beauty captured us from the moment we saw it, holds pride of place on the dining room table. 

Mother has lost three close family members in three years:  her husband of 67 years (my beloved daddy) two years ago September; his sister (the last of their generation) last year September; her only son (my only sibling) this November.  Between the deaths of her husband and her sister-in-law came the death of her great-granddaughter, my middle son’s 17-year-old severely handicapped child.  Many would droop into discouragement or worse, but she learned through a difficult childhood in the Great Depression to simply do the next thing, serve and love where she is, leaving what cannot be understood or accepted in merely human terms to her Lord, whom she loves and knows she is loved by.  Time will not take away sorrow, but it will heal the bruised spirit; and serving others aids its process and grows the soul closer to Christ's.  

Oh, there are no doubt tears in the night, and all the human regrets and frustrations alongside the sorrow of loss.  But these are not what define her.  Rather, the plants that now bring their physical beauty into her home – sent by deeply caring brothers and sisters she has never met but who have prayed for her and her family again and again over these last years – these remind her of the beauty of the hope which does define her, the Lord and His family who sustain her day by day, moment by moment.  Her gratitude is never-ending.

And this morning, as the moonlight mirrored the radiance of the kalanchoe flowers, reiterating the hope they represent, my own heart opened in a psalm of praise.

RIP: H. Michael Blitch 1948-2012

For my brother (18 March 1948 – 10 November 2012)

When our parents brought me home from the hospital, Mike – then four-and-a-half – wanted to take me for a ride in his wagon.  On being told I was too little, he retorted, “Well, what’s she any good for, anyway, if I can’t even play with her?”  Later, when colic kept me screaming for hours on end, he suggested that they send me back wherever I’d come from . . . 

Four-and-a-half years between Mars and Venus ensured we’d never be extremely close, but our parents’ sacrificial and unconditional love ensured that we grew into a tolerant and eventually a genuine affection, because we always knew that we belonged to a family, a bond that could be distressed and cracked, but never really broken.

Family put us together for camping trips, Christmas Eve candlelight services, regular visits to and from grandparents, birthdays, and Sunday night popcorn during Walt Disney.  We decorated cookies together for Santa’s Cookie Tree, an evergreen beside our driveway which we made into a community tradition.  We went to musicals every summer at the Swope Park outdoor live theatre; we learned to ice skate together on the flooded garden in the back yard and to shoot with bows behind the old barn that served as our garage.  We chased fireflies on summer evenings to put in jars for nightlights and kept a pet turtle in the front yard under the sassafras tree.  I loved curling up on his bedroom carpet to read the stories in his Boys’ Life magazines while he read or studied.

The 60s took their toll, and, perhaps inevitably, came the years of distress when the family structure seemed broken beyond repair.  But the foundation laid in those childhood years held, and, a welder by trade, Mike chose to begin repairing the cracks, restoring love and laughter.  How grateful I was to know that he was there to help – gladly and not from mere duty – when our daddy’s health began to decline and I was half the country away.  How glad to know of Daddy’s delight when his son entered the room, to know that Mother had only to call and he was on his way.  How refreshing to see his smile again when I was able to visit, to put up again with “baby sister” and “kiddo.”  How lovely to have his children and their families in our lives now.

And how good to know that, in the end, love is indeed stronger than death.  Missing him now, we are grateful to have had the years of his life framed in the unity of family.

Glory

Yesterday:  fog and clouds and I never even thought of Phoebe until I reached the stop sign and looked west to check for traffic -- and there she sailed, only slightly past the full, lighting the grey morning and lifting the heart.

This morning:  a denser fog and deeper darkness, as the days grow shorter, gave little hope, but there she was, haloed in gleaming pearl within a sepia frame, obediently shining beauty into the mists of early morning long before dawn.

Last night:  a decent sleep for the first time in weeks (and I know who prayed and am thankful); so much easier to face the draining needs of the week's final days.

There is always good if we remember to look for it, always beauty, always the Son's light reflected into the brokenness.

Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

"The Teaching of Fiction"

Notes on Flannery O’Connor – “The Teaching of Fiction” in Mystery and Manners:  Occasional Prose.

As I don’t have time for serious reading of and thinking about new ideas at the start of a semester with 55 writing students in four classes (how do high school teachers survive?!), I took O’Connor’s book with me while one group was working on an in-class exercise, and re-read this marvelous chapter in which O’Connor explores some of the issues teachers of literature face.  She was not a teacher herself, but she was of course a student of literature and one of the best writers of literature of the Southern Renaissance. 

“I find,” O’Connor writes, “that everyone approaches the novel according to his particular interest – the doctor looks for a disease, the minister looks for a sermon, the poor look for money, and the rich look for justification; and if they find what they want, or at least what they can recognize, then they judge the piece of fiction to be superior.

“In the standing dispute between the novelist and the public, the teacher of English is a sort of middle-man, and I have occasionally come to think about what really happens when a piece of fiction is set before students.  I suppose this is a terrifying experience for the teacher.”

No kidding!  And for so many reasons.  Some don’t know how to read literature themselves, never having been taught; some know the lack of ability of students and don’t wish to face it; sometimes we fear what inexperienced readers will make of our favorite and beloved works.  It is a tremendous responsibility to try to draw others into the world of mystery.

She writes about some of the ways teachers avoid teaching fiction – substituting literary history for the study of actual literary works, or the study of the author’s psychology, or sociology . . .  And she tells us why these are useless approaches:  “[A] work of art exists without its author from the moment the words are on paper, and the more complete the work, the less important it is who wrote it or why.  If you’re studying literature, the intentions of the writer have to be found in the work itself, and not in his life.” 

The teacher’s “first obligation,” O’Connor writes, “is to the truth of the subject he is teaching,” and he must remember that “for the reading of literature ever to become a habit and a pleasure, it must first be a discipline.  The student has to have tools to understand a story or a novel, and these are tools proper to the structure of the work, tools proper to the craft.  They are tools that operate inside the work and not outside it; they are concerned with how this story is made and with what makes it work as story.” 

There’s much more in this short chapter (the book’s title comes from it), but these were good affirmations for today – it’s right to insist on discipline from our students, because only through it will they come to know the pleasure of learning, whether literature or writing or anything else.  And so, marching forward through the homework and the essays – for the hope of opening minds and hearts to love.

Into Great Silence

I have wanted to watch this film since I first heard about it a year or two ago.  Recently I bought the DVD and have awaited an appropriate time for its viewing.  That time came when I was alone in the house this morning, a time when the neighborhood is quiet.

Into Great Silence is a film of the daily life of the Carthusian monks in the Grande Chartreuse monastery.  The filmmaker, Philip Gröning of Zeitgeist Films, requested permission to do the filming and was told to wait; fifteen years later they contacted him to tell him now was the time.  Their conditions were ones he had already laid on himself:  only he would do the filming, there would be no extra lighting, the rules and routine would continue uninterrupted.  He lived in the monastery for six months, and the result is 162 minutes of some of the most powerful film I’ve ever seen.

Warnings:  You cannot watch this film in bits and pieces if you wish to understand and benefit from it.  You cannot watch it while conversing with a companion or surfing the web or reading or chatting on Google or talking/texting on the phone.  It’s not a popcorn-and-coke sort of film.  You should not watch it if you are inclined to be cynical and judgmental about others’ chosen ways of life, or if you are inclined to mock austerity and ritual.  (It would help, if you are unaware, to learn a little about the purposes of monastic life before watching it.)  And if you cannot bear silence – it might behoove you to try, and to work up to watching it in its entirety, so that you can come to understand the beauty and the value of silence and contemplation. 

The Grande Chartreuse is considered the most austere of all monasteries today.  The monks live by a rule of silence, broken only by prayers, chants, bells, readings at meals, certain rituals such as the welcoming of novices to the order, and on their weekly day for walking outdoors in informal companionship, where they talk however they wish with one another.  The days are strictly regimented, following the traditional hours of worship, with work and study delineated between the times of private and public prayer.  When two or more are together during the day, fixing a meal or giving and receiving haircuts or chopping wood, they do not speak, but give and accept service with a silent and companionable grace. 

I was afraid that even I, who desire and value silence, solitude, and contemplation, would not be able to watch it through quietly – but before the end of the first half-hour my mind had come almost to complete rest within the beauty before me.  The smallest sounds became a symphony of life – chopping celery, a spoon lifting soup from a bowl, rain dropping into a pool, footsteps echoing in a cloistered walk, a chair scraping across the floor, a page turning, a pen scratching across paper.  Important sounds, the sounds of life being lived, sounds we never hear for our incessant music and television and talk, talk, talk.  And when they do converse freely, as on their weekly walks, the conversation is seasoned with salt – serious doctrinal debates salted with grace and jokes and enjoyment of fellowship, a sledding competition which leads to admiration of skill and fun-filled laughter for its lack – and surely all of it all the more a joy because not constantly indulged, and all the more gracious because who wants to waste precious limited time together on foolish talk or unworthy conflict. 

And time and space to see, as well.  Instead of barely noticing our environment, silence opens us to the time and inclination to see the shape of a leaf, a drop of water falling from an icicle, the pattern of sun on wood flooring, the peace in a brother’s eyes.  Inscape, Hopkins would tell us, Christ poured out into His creation and especially “lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not His / To the Father through the features of men’s faces.”

Just the faces of the monks moved me to tears more than once.  Gröning occasionally focuses on just one face for an intense few seconds; peace is what we see in each one, and while most are solemn at this scrutiny, most also begin to offer a hint of a smile that suggests a great joy sparkling beneath the quiet exterior.  The elderly blind brother who gave the only interview recorded in the film spoke with such deep love of the Savior, such trust and confidence, such acceptance of all that comes as intended to bless our lives; what joy silence and contemplation and thoughtful relationship with God and others has brought to him. 

On the case for the DVD is written “This transcendent, closely observed film seeks to embody a monastery, rather than simply depict one – it has no score, no voiceover [. . .].  What remains is stunningly elemental:  time, space and light. [. . .]  More meditation than documentary, it’s a rare, transformative experience [. . .].”  I can only say “amen,” with the hope and prayer that some of that experience will stay with me as I keep trying to learn how to love my Lord more truly.

On Teachers and Students

It is quite popular to blame teachers for their students' intellectual choices.  Of course, teachers may do a great job or a poor job.  But students, it seems we sometimes forget, have free will.


Once upon a time there was a perfect Teacher.  He taught many, but twelve were part of His inner circle for three years, not just in a classroom a few hours a week but walking and talking and absorbing his teachings every minute of every day.


Eleven of them abandoned Him in His worst moment.


But one had already betrayed Him utterly.


That one must have appeared to the rest to understand and go along with His teachings at least as well as they did; not one pointed his finger instantly at the one rebel they all knew so well when He said that one of them would betray Him.  They all asked "Is it I?"  Only the betrayer knew the answer.


If He hadn't been the perfect Teacher, the only One who could really read people's hearts despite their apparently compliant actions, He might have been deceived, too.  He might have thought this one was learning and accepting His lessons, and been utterly surprised by his defection, his hatred.


It happens to teachers every day, breaking their hearts, making them wonder where they went wrong.  Ordinary teachers surely did go wrong somewhere, but their wrongs may not have had anything to do with a student's defection from their teaching.  


This whole teaching/learning enterprise is a two-way street.  Even the perfect Teacher couldn't make His students all wholeheartedly accept His teachings.  Why then do we expect imperfect human teachers to do better than He did?  Why do we automatically blame them, especially when we don't or only barely know them, instead of considering that the student bears at least as much responsibility for his choices in response to the teaching, that he might have played along to get good grades in the classroom, or changed his ideas after graduation, or a bit of both?


When our students fail in life, we should indeed check ourselves -- did I do the best I could, as a teacher and a mentor?  But when we know we did -- our best not precluding error, but not being error the student couldn't overcome with intelligence and good will -- then we needn't take responsibility, only grieve for the lost sheep.

A Theology of Reading

I've been working at reading Alan Jacobs' A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love for several months now.  He's an excellent writer, but I don't have the background in philosophy that would make for easier reading, so I can only take it a bit at a time while working at absorbing it.  I'm sure I'm missing more than I'd like, but I do think I'm getting the main ideas.  I'll reread when I finish and would like then to give a review of the book.  Overall, he's making the case for reading with charity toward the text and the author, seeing books as gifts that should be offered and received in a spirit of love.  It's a wonderful book, one I hope to draw from as I read, write, and teach.


In the chapter I was reading yesterday, Jacobs offers this from Petrarch, who is explaining his frequent use of quotations from classical authors:

Nothing moves me so much as the quoted axioms of great men.  I like to rise above myself, to test my mind to see if it contains anything solid or lofty, or stout or firm against ill-fortune, or to find if my mind has been lying to me about itself.  And there is no better way of doing this -- except by experience, the surest mistress -- than by comparing one's mind with those it would most like to resemble.  Thus, as I am grateful to my authors who give me the chance of testing my mind against maxims frequently quoted, so I hope my readers will thank me.

Another reason to be well-read and pass on what we learn.

Tension

In his 1974 essay “The Specialization of Poetry” (anthologized in the collection Standing by Words), Wendell Berry describes how poetry has become “a seeking of self in words, the making of a word-world in which the word-self may be at home”; this is in lieu of poems being “a point of clarification and connection between [poets] and the world on the one hand and between themselves and their readers on the other” or “an adventure into any reality or mystery outside themselves.” 

In the course of developing this theme, he quotes a line from Yeats that asserts a choice between “[p]erfection of the life, or of the work,” a dichotomy Berry sees as defining the modern state of affairs, which is the choice to make poetry itself life instead of life being the ground from which poetry grows.  There should be no such dichotomy, no such choice, Berry insists:  instead, “the tensions between life and work [. . .] would ideally be resolved in balance: enough of each.  In practice, however, they probably can be resolved [. . .] only in tension, in a principled unwillingness to let go of either, or to sacrifice either to the other.  But it is a necessary tension, the grief in it both inescapable and necessary.  One would like, one longs in fact, to be perfect family man and a perfect workman.  And one suffers from the inevitable conflicts.  But whatever one does, one is not going to be perfect at either, and it is better to suffer the imperfection of both than to gamble the total failure of one against an illusory hope of perfection in the other.  The real values of art and life are perhaps best defined and felt in the tension between them.  The effort to perfect work rises out of, and communes with and in turn informs, the effort to perfect life, as Yeats himself knew and other poems of his testify.”

Words to learn to live by.

More from Mother Teresa

The remarkable trust of Mother Teresa can only awe. How many of us "trust Him blindly" ever, much less continually? Certainly I don't. How many of us can accept suffering as making us like Jesus, as being a sharing in His suffering for us? Yet how else can we live honestly?

On requesting permission for her work in Calcutta: "I trust the good God blindly and I know He will not let me down, even though I may make a mistake."

In a letter thanking one of her superiors for his help: "Please pray. I have very little courage -- but I trust Him blindly, in spite of all feelings."

And another request: "Please pray for me that I may keep looking up at him cheerfully."

One of her prayers: "O Jesus, only love of my heart, I wish to suffer what I suffer and all Thou wilt have me suffer, for Thy pure love not because of the merits I may acquire, nor for the rewards Thou hast promised me but only to please Thee, to praise Thee, to bless Thee as well in sorrow as in joy."

To a friend: "In my meditations and prayers, which are so full of distractions nowadays -- there stands one thing very clear -- my weakness and His Greatness. I fear all things from my weakness -- but I trust blindly His Greatness."

A comment by the editor: "The aim of the new institute was being realized not in spite of the difficulties and sufferings but precisely through them. Mother Teresa did not want to avoid sacrifice or eliminate it from her life or the lives of her followers. 'Grab the chance to offer something to Jesus,' she would insistently counsel her sisters. She knew their sufferings would bear fruit."

Many people who were so physically disabled or ill that they could not be part of the work in India joined the Society as "second selves" to the Sisters, committing themselves to prayer and encouragement. Writing to one such suffering friend, Mother Teresa tells her, "How the good God loves you [. . .]. You suffer much and your soul is crucified in pain -- but is it not that He is living His life in His Jacqueline? [. . .] You have learned much. You have tasted the chalice of His agony -- and what will be your reward my dear sister? More suffering and a deeper likeness to Him on the Cross. I feel unworthy to be your sister. [. . .] Be brave and keep smiling. You know He loves you with a tender, eternal love."

Lenten Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Birthday

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

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

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

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

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

Sabbatical is Here

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

So far:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now for the writing.

Sepia Moon

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

One Thousand Gifts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wildlife on the Lawn

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

Full Moon

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

C. S. Lewis on Literature

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Living Reality in Light of Eternity

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

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

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

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

9/11 Ten Years After

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

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

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

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

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

First Day of Classes

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