Journeying: In memory of Kara Tippetts

For Kara, in thanks for her inspiring faithfulness, even unto death

White fog blanketed the world this morning, blurring the edges of brokenness and reminding me of beauty.  It seemed a good setting for the bittersweet taste of loss -- sorrow, such deep sorrow, for what the world has lost and the evil of death that forces such loss upon us; and yet, and yet . . . sweetness of hope to know that Kara is fully healed and filled with delight in the presence of her Savior, that her loved ones will meet her again one day, that His grace will blanket them in their now journey through the sorrow.

I never met her, never corresponded with her.  Yet she touched my life in ways I will never forget, and I taste the loss.  How much more the sorrow of her family and her friends!  And yet -- there is her witness to grace, her witness to love, her witness to selflessness for us to carry with us always, the beauty of one who put others before herself even in intense suffering, who strove to live in love in daily faithfulness to the One who suffered and died for us. 

God is real, and He is faithful.  May we all learn to live like Kara, bringing a bit more hope and grace and beauty into the world through our own faithfulness in the mundane tasks of each day -- and thus preparing ourselves to face death like Kara, knowing His grace.

From one of Kara's last posts:  

[. . .T]here is so much about this we cannot understand. [. . .] I hurt that I understand what this greater pain I’m experiencing means. I feel too young to be in this battle, but maybe I’m not in a battle at all. Maybe I’m on a journey, and the journey is more beautiful than any of us can comprehend. And if we did understand, we would hold very loosely to one another because I’m going to be with Jesus. There is grace that will seep into all the cracks and pained places when we don’t understand. In the places we don’t understand we get to seek. And how lovely is one seeking truth. Stunning.

Saving Grace

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

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

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

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

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

His Glory is Now

I’ve been missing the moon lately, between my rising too late and her setting too early.  Yesterday, K told me about seeing her set in the early morning, dazzling in the still-night sky, a snow moon illuminating the neighborhood.  Last night he called me to see her from the window, an icy brilliance between sparkling planets.  Delighted, I expected no more.

Then this morning I woke early, rose reluctantly a half-hour before the alarm’s setting.  And there she was as I turned down the ferry road – full, shining out from behind clouds that blurred her light into a hazy mist but could not obscure it.  Before I reached the highway, I turned onto a little-used road and pulled over to watch her sink behind the ridge, her light remaining a beacon of grace long after she disappeared.

I would that someday I might learn to give over the reluctant thanks for real gratitude, knowing that those moments that don’t feel wondrous hold the seeds of beauty, whether I see them then or later, whether it is beauty seen in the world or beauty grown in us through His grace.  He delights to delight us, in the midst of this broken world.  “Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and always shall be.”

Gratitude

The other night, I didn’t want to set the alarm; I knew I’d wake in plenty of time anyway, and there was an hour’s leeway before urgent tasks came into play.  But still I did ask the Lord to wake me at the “right” time for the day, whatever He saw fit for that to be.  When I opened my eyes groggily to see the cheery scarlet numbers greeting me, I admit that my thanks was a bit grudging.  Really?  I didn’t have to get up till 7:00 and You wake me a full hour earlier?  But I rose from the bed and I did give my grudging thanks – and asked for help to mean it.

And leaving the house a half-hour later, there was the nearly full moon, just a day or two on the wane, shining with a gem-like brilliance above the tree line as I reached the top of our street.  And when I arrived on campus, she shone like a beacon directly between the tops of the trees just above the chapel roof, beside the soaring cross.  Fifteen minutes later and I would have missed it. 

Why is simple, full-hearted thankfulness so hard?  The mind knows that He is sovereign, that even in the brokenness of this world, He is to be trusted.  Yet the heart sighs and complains; and how many times must I miss the beauty He offers because I refuse to look?

Yesterday and this morning, the moon again in a clear just-lightening sky, shining her reflected light for us to see if we have eyes, to hear if we have ears.

Hiatus

White fog swaddled the trees along the ferry road this morning and swirled like visible wind about the car.  The highway was clear of it, banal as always, but the hill to campus lay before me like a baby’s blanket.  In front of the student center, a clear sky held the sparkle of early morning stars, though the fog accompanied me again on the way to class among the trees.  Later, walking out of the ad building, the beauty of white and red pansies gleaming through the shroud that still enveloped and softened the buildings stopped me for a moment of praise.

Beauty, beauty, beauty . . .

The last few days:  clouds and dark fog, clouds and mist, clouds and rain -- mirrors to my sad-weary heart.  But this morning:  a crescent moon shining joy into the early-morning, still-night sky, lifting the weight from my soul and making another day seem possible.  Thankfulness for beauty and eyes to see.

Dr. Richard Cornelius, RIP

When Dr. Richard Cornelius announced his retirement, I was the one privileged to find myself with a position in the English Department at Bryan College.  I did not take his place:  no one possibly could have.  He had been the Department chair for 30 years; he was a treasure, an icon.  

My seniors that first semester did not want me as their teacher.  A fierce love of and loyalty to Dr. Cornelius kept them from allowing themselves, for awhile, to warm to a stranger; they had wanted him to teach their final classes in the major.  Over the last 15 years, I've heard from so many graduates before my time who loved him, as a teacher, a mentor, a friend.

I know him as a gracious and witty Southern gentleman who gave me all his course handouts and syllabi, and who, with good will, wished us success even when we changed some age-old academic traditions of the department.  I too have watched things that I established and directed change under new leadership, and it can be hard to let go.  If it was for Dr. Cornelius, he never let on to us.

I will let others tell the stories of his teaching and his attention to detail and his unique ways of challenging his students.  I've heard so many of them, but I never experienced them.  I can only say that he was a brilliant, humble, and kind man who made me feel that I had found a home and was welcome in it, even as he was moving toward its edges.  While I did not have a great deal of interaction with him, I always felt his friendship and lovingkindness; I always knew I had only to ask and he would offer advice and wisdom.

His legacy permeates our department even now.  His name comes up regularly within the department and from our alumni.  We may do some things differently on the surface (no more MEG test!), but we do all things with the heart and vision of Richard Cornelius:  love for our students, love for our Lord, and the instilling of a desire for excellence at every level.  

I am grateful for his influence, much greater than it seems on the surface.  I am sad for his loss and glad that I will see him again someday and know him better than I had the opportunity to in this world.  May the Lord comfort his family and friends with many lovely memories and with eternal hope, and may we never forget to live his vision.

A Time for Everything

The echinacea are far gone now; none lifts a head toward the sun, and the drooping petals are fading rapidly from their elegant purple to a dull bleached white. 

But the sun seems to burst from their decay in small fireballs as the local flock of goldfinches feeds and plays among the washed out blossoms.  As I watch, one lands on the cone-shaped head of the tallest plant, swaying back and forth as he surveys the patch.  I see at least five now, playing tag or leapfrog as they swoop toward and over each other in a few minutes’ play before settling to the serious business of harvesting.  When K walks outside, at least eight take flight like brilliants in the late evening sun, breathtaking against the darkening blue of the sky.

Their bright gold, trimmed in glossy black, emphasizes the pallor of the echinacea and the dying of summer.  Yet, just as I begin to feel the sorrow of the coming autumn, their sudden and startling color delights the eye and reminds me that even this decay holds its purpose – the birds feed and store up for winter flight; the flowers drop and fertilize the earth for spring.  Indeed there is a season for everything, and the inevitable autumn need not be feared.

Photo Credit: Goldfinch on echinacea at Penn State Arboretum's pollinator garden. Photo by Anita Colyer Graham

"That's what a lady does."

I have discovered Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries on PBS and, despite the lead character's amorality, I love the show.  It takes place in Australia in, I believe, the 1920s.  The lead character is Phryne (pronounced Fry-nee) Fisher, an elegant, wealthy young woman who, among other good deeds, tries to help young street girls to better lives; she has taken Dot on as a lady's maid and has adopted Jane.  And, of course, she is an amateur detective who helps Inspector Jack Robinson to solve murders.  In last night's episode, she is teaching several such girls social graces.  One of them doesn't show to dinner, and they find her on the beach, drowned.  The mystery is rather complex and brilliantly solved by the combined efforts of Phryne and Jack, but another aspect is how the murder changes Phryne's teaching of the girls.

Here is the scene from which the title quote comes:  a day or two after the murder, the girls have gathered to practice dancing.  They are dressed nicely and, scattered about the room as they wait for Phryne, they are trying out graceful dance movements.  Phryne sweeps in wearing an elegant skirt set, looks about, and says, "Gather 'round, girls.  We're doing something different today."  She then demonstrates and sets to teaching them judo moves -- because self-defense will be far more practical for them than the fox-trot.

They are well into it when Inspector Robinson enters.  He seats himself near the door and observes with interest.  When his Detective Constable murmurs, "Miss Fisher knows judo, sir?" with some amazement, Jack merely replies, "Of course she does" -- he is beyond being surprised by her.

One of the girls finally sees the two men and alerts Phryne.  She turns, arches her eyebrows, and waits for Jack to speak.

Jack, deadpan:  "I hope you're not concealing a dangerous weapon under that skirt."

Phryne, archly:  "I'm concealing a lot of things.  That's what a lady does."

Ladies, let's be ladies!

"Let joy size"

I have been either too early or too late for sunrises lately, or they have been obscured by stormy clouds and rain.  This morning, as I approached the turn onto the old ferry road from home, I was greeted by a riot of purples and pinks between the peaks of the hills, announcing the sun's coming, and my heart, inclined at times to despair for no given reason, lifted in the joy of God's beauty.  A Hopkins phrase came to mind -- "between pie mountains" -- and I looked it up when I arrived at the office.  The poem, one of the Sonnets of  Desolation, is more than apropos:

My own heart let me have more pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather--as skies
Between pie mountains--lights a lovely mile.

Oh, I haven't been in that utter of despair for quite some time, but I feel it coming on here and there, and more here than not lately.  These past few days have threatened more than rain, and I've been in a constant coping mode, hoping to hold it off, trying to quiet the brain from its churning, mindless repetitions and noise.  There's no cause; it just is.  But this beauty of the skies this morning, heralding the light of dawn, being the smile of God, "let joy size" in an "unforeseen time" -- "as skies / Between pie mountains -- [lit] a lovely mile." 

Glories of the Cross

Another Valley of Vision prayer excerpt:

All these sins I mourn, lament, and for them cry pardon.
Work in me more profound and abiding repentance;
Give me the fullness of a godly grief
   that trembles and fears,
   yet ever trusts and loves,
   which is ever powerful, and ever confident;
Grant that through tears of repentance
   I may see more clearly the brightness
   and glories of the saving cross.

And from Neuhaus:

The beginning of wisdom is to come to our senses and know the fearful truth about ourselves, that we have wandered and wasted our days in a distant country far from home.  We know ourselves most truly in knowing Christ, for in him is our true self.  

It is by this world, this world at the cross, that reality is measured and judged.  That other world, the world we call real, is a distant country until we with Christ bring it home to the waiting Father.  

We are bringing it home, dragging it all behind us:  the deadlines and the duties, the fears of failure and hopes for advancement, the loves unreturned, the plans disappointed, the children we lose, the marriage we cannot mend.  And so we come loping along with reality's baggage, returning to the real -- the real that we left behind when we left for what we mistook as the real world.  "I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'" [. . .]  And Christ our elder brother takes the baggage and hoists it upon his shoulders, adding this to all that on the cross he is bearing and bringing home.  "Father, forgive them, for they knew not what they were doing."

Ash Wednesday

From The Valley of Vision, excerpts from a prayer that seems appropriate for the beginning of Lent.  I am talking with some of my students about life issues this semester, and I always find myself fearful of my lack of wisdom and knowledge, praying that they won't remember all the wrong, unwise, unhelpful words that undoubtedly escape my lips.  As we enter this season, it seems the perfect time to reflect on that in me which led to the need for Christ's sacrifice on the cross.  So may I be open to uncomfortable glimpses of myself to the end of repentance and praise for mercy and grace.

Searcher of hearts,

It is a good day to me when thou givest me a glimpse of myself;

Sin is my greatest evil,

   but thou art my greatest good;

[. . .]

My country, family, church

   fare worse because of my sins,

   for sinners bring judgment in thinking sins are small,

   or that God is not angry with them.

[. . .]

Show me how to know when a thing is evil

   which I think is right and good,

   how to know when what is lawful

   comes from an evil principle,

   such as desire for reputation or wealth by usury.

Give me grace to recall my needs,

   my lack of knowing thy will in Scripture,

      of wisdom to guide others,

      of daily repentance, want of which keeps thee at bay,

      of the spirit of prayer, having words without love,

      of zeal for thy glory, seeking my own ends,

      of joy in thee and thy will,

      of love to others.

And let me not lay my pipe

   too short of the fountain,

   never touching the eternal spring,

   never drawing down water from above.

And because this is the season that leads to the Cross, some salient quotations from Richard John Neuhaus's Preface to his Death on a Friday Afternoon, reminding me of the wonder of God's great sacrifice in His love for us.

"Good Friday is the drama of the love by which our every day is sustained."

Good Friday is about "the meaning of suffering, of justice, of loss, of death and of whatever hope there may be on the far side of death."

Neuhaus says that in his book we will find "stories about people today who in their troubles find themselves, as they say, at the foot of the cross.  Sometimes they find themselves there in anger, sometimes in joy, but always in a deeper awareness of the mystery of their lives within the mystery of life itself."  This, at the foot of the cross, is where I need to find, to place, myself daily, not thinking I can possibly do the simplest thing without Him.  

"'It is finished,' Jesus said from the cross.  It is finished but it is not over.  To accompany him to his end is to discover our beginning."

May this Lenten season draw us all closer to Him as we remember why He came, so that our rejoicing on Easter may be that much greater.

Lightening the Heart

The nearly-full moon accompanies me down the old ferry road this morning, her brilliance shining out from the thicketed limbs of winter-denuded trees, the contours of her mountains and valleys clear to the naked eye in the indigo of early morning.  Opposite her the horizon is tinted deep orange shading into pastel coral, the sky lightening as the sun announces his coming.  I enter the building with joy, images of beauty lightening the heart to begin the day.

A Blessed New Year to All

A simple prayer as 2014 rapidly arrives:

Whatever suffering -- small or great -- may come our way in this broken world, may we always be alert to the beauty that God places in our way to remind us of His continual love and grace.  

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 Earliest Foundations

It is the wont of youth to live in the present and to value over highly all that is modern, new, to their inexperienced thinking different.  But nothing is good merely because it is new, and often what is old has stayed with us not because it is mere tradition but because it has been tried and found consistent with inalterable truth.  But the past also is of great value because, for better and for worse, it has formed us, it is why we are who we are today, and on it is built all that we call new.  Without the past we would be utterly adrift, living in a vacuum without purpose, value, or coherency.

In Patricia McKillip's The Bards of Bone Plain, Jonah Cle lives as an archeologist in the ancient city of Caerau, seeking and uncovering its centuries of history.  Princess Beatrice is drawn to this work, and when she explains why, they are words we would all be wise to take to heart:

I like recognizing -- I mean finding -- what's lost.  Or rather what's forgotten.  Piecing people's lives together with the little mysteries they leave for us.  I like seeing out of earlier eyes, looking at the world when it was younger, different.  Even then, that long ago, it was building the earliest foundations of my world.  It's like searching for the beginning of a story.  You keep going back and back, and the beginning keeps shifting, running ahead of you, always older than the puzzle piece you hold in your hand, always pointing beyond what you know.

The bard to whom she's speaking, himself more ancient than she knows, agrees:

That's what I feel when I come across a new ballad [. . .].  I keep listening for the older forms of it, the place where language changes, hints at something past, the point where the story points even further back.

We are historical beings, bound in our place and time, yet with the potential to transcend (at least some of) its worst faults because we can know our past and draw on its lessons and its wisdom to see our present more clearly and what we might do to try to shape a more beneficent future.  

But only if we stop and listen, reflect and understand, act with wisdom and not mere wit.

Unreality TV

I rarely watch even milliseconds of Nikita, but I caught the first scenes of the latest episode this evening.  And I found that she talks like too many of my students write:  in vague generalities that tell the listener nothing of value.

Man whose people have multiple machine guns trained on Nikita and crew:  "You have 10 seconds to give me a reason not to kill you."

Nikita:  "We're not here to interrupt your opium smuggling.  We're here to make a deal, but we need to be here temporarily." The end.

If I am the man governing the machine guns, they are now dead.

Not here to interrupt my operations?  Words are cheap.  How do I know this is true?  Why should I believe you?  How did you even know I'm a smuggler?  Who else knows this now that you know it?  Who -- the law or other smugglers -- might have followed you to this location and right now be moving in on my territory?  What is any reason whatsoever that I should trust you on this?  Here to make a deal?  What kind of deal?  With whom?  For what purpose?  What's in it for me that you need this location and no other?  Need to be here temporarily?  Why here, specifically?  Why not any of the other airports you could have chosen?  What's so important about this location for you?  In what way does it serve your purposes -- oh, and what, again, were those purposes?  Why in the world should I believe anything you just said, as it tells me exactly NOTHING OF ANY SUBSTANCE?

Yeah, dead.  Time's up and I didn't hear a single actual reason not to kill you.  Sorry.

Monday, Monday . . .

Unusual traffic -- four vehicles on the steep curves of the ferry road (three more than usual) -- kept my eyes busy as I left for work this morning.  Still, I couldn't help but catch the cirrus clouds painted pink across a postcard blue sky, burning into white on the eastern horizon where the sun announced its rising, wisps of fog swirling across the pasture valley, even the rust-brown seed pods on the golden rain tree lovely in the early morning light; and on my door when I arrived a heart-encouraging letter from a beloved former student.  I'll take this Monday with its love and light.



Photo credit:  http://www.pbase.com/hjsteed/image/49077673

Beauty, Beauty, Beauty . . .

Driving to work this morning, I watched ghost ponies graze in the soft white fog nestled in the hollows of a neighbor's pasture.  My swollen eyes even haloed beauty into the traffic lights and street lamps.  Last Sunday I threw open the curtains from the bedroom window and brilliant gold rained upward as the finches startled from the echinacea and flew into the surrounding trees.  That afternoon, my mother, her voice hushed with the glory of it, told of standing in her driveway in the early morning awed by a crescent moon sailing in the star-studded sky.  The crimson crepe myrtle blooms at my study window, determined despite the assault of pruning shears to pour joy into the world.  

Beauty, beauty, beauty . . . gems of joy everywhere to the seeing eye.

Poems by Christina Rossetti

I love Christina Rossetti's work, and I have revisited it a bit lately.  Here are some of my favorites; some of the line formatting I have trouble reproducing (she typically indents middle lines of sonnet quatrains, for example).

Remember

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you planned:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for awhile

And afterwards remember, do not grieve;

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

If Only

If I might only love my God and die!

But now He bids me love Him and live on,

Now when the bloom of all my life is gone,

The pleasant half of life has quite gone by.

My tree of hope is lopped that spread so high;

And I forget how Summer glowed and shone,

While Autumn grips me with its fingers wan,

And frets me with its fitful windy sigh.

When Autumn passes then must Winter numb,

And Winter may not pass a weary while,

But when it passes Spring shall flower again:

And in that Spring who weepeth now shall smile,

Yea, they shall wax who now are on the wane,

Yea, they shall sing for love when Christ shall come.

Weary in Well-Doing

I would have gone; God bade me stay:

I would have worked; God bade me rest.

He broke my will from day to day,

He read my yearnings unexpressed

And said them nay.

Now I would stay; God bids me go:

Now I would rest; God bids me work.

He breaks my heart tossed to and fro,

My soul is wrung with doubts that lurk

And vex it so.

I go, Lord, where Thou sendest me;

Day after day I plod and moil:

But, Christ my God, when will it be

That I may let alone my toil

And rest with Thee?

Does Thou Not Care?

I love and love not: Lord, it breaks my heart

To love and not to love.

Thou veiled within Thy glory, gone apart

Into Thy shrine, which is above,

Dost Thou not love me, Lord, or care

For this mine ill? –

I will love thee here or there,

I will accept thy broken heart, lie still.

Lord, it was well with me in time gone by

That cometh not again,

When I was fresh and cheerful, who but I?

I fresh, I cheerful: worn with pain

Now, out of sight and out of heart;

O, Lord, how long? –

I watch thee as thou art,

I will accept thy fainting heart, be strong.

“Lie still,” “be strong,” today; but, Lord, tomorrow,

What of tomorrow, Lord?

Shall there be rest from toil, be truce from sorrow,

Be living green upon the sward

Now but a barren grave to me,

Be joy for sorrow? –

Did I not die for thee?

Do I not live for thee?  leave Me tomorrow.

Who Shall Deliver Me?

God strengthen me to bear myself;

That heaviest weight of all to bear,

Inalienable weight of care.

All others are outside myself;

I lock my door and bar them out,

The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.

I lock my door upon myself,

And bar them out; but who shall wall

Self from myself, most loathed of all?

If I could once lay down myself,

And start self-purged upon the race

That all must run!  Death runs apace.

If I could set aside myself,

And start with lightened heart upon

The road by all men overgone!

God harden me against myself,

This coward with pathetic voice

Who craves for ease and rest and joys.

Myself, arch-traitor to myself;

My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,

My clog whatever road I go.

Yet One there is can curb myself,

Can roll the strangling load from me,

Break off the yoke and set me free.

Some of my favorites are too long to reproduce here, but Monna Innominata is a sonnet of sonnets compelling in its beauty and truth; An Old-World Thicket I merely have "wow" written beside in my collection, and Books in the Running Brooks is a beautiful piece that addresses the (limited) value of nature.

Roger Kimball and Culture

I am reading Roger Kimball’s 2012 book of essays, The Fortunes of Permanence.  I’ve barely begun – just the preface (“Mostly About Relativism”) and the first essay, which is the title essay, so far – and I am as strongly impressed as I thought I would be.  (I have always enjoyed and appreciated Kimball’s work.)  I would like to write a thoughtful essay about his essay, but shall have to be content with lots of quotations for now.  So, from “The Fortunes of Permanence,” several quotations that probably won’t add up to his main point, but that particularly caught my attention as worth repeating.

Kimball writes about the sense in which culture is that which must be cultivated, but warns, in a paraphrase of Cicero:  “[E]ven the best care [. . .] does not inevitably bring good results [. . .].  The results of cultivation depend not only on the quality of the care but the inherent nature of the thing being cultivated.”

“Culture in the evaluative sense does not merely admit, it requires judgment as a kind of coefficient or auxiliary: comparison, discrimination, evaluation are its lifeblood.”  Here he quotes

Henry James:  “We never really get near a book [. . .] save on the question of its being good or bad, of its really treating, that is, or not treating, its subject.”  And Matthew Arnold:  criticism is “the disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.”

“The point is that culture has roots," Kimball writes.  "It limns the future through its implications with the past.  Moving the reader or spectator over the centuries, in [Hannah] Arendt’s phrase, the monuments of culture transcend the local imperatives of the present.  They escape the obsolescence that fashion demands, the predictability that planning requires.  They speak of love and hatred, honor and shame, beauty and courage and cowardice – permanent realities of the human situation insofar as it remains human.”

Writing about Huxley’s Brave New World, Kimball quotes a section in which the Controller tells the Savage that reading old works, such as those of Shakespeare, is prohibited merely because they are old.  And if they are beautiful, it is even more important that they not be read:  “Beauty’s attractive, and we don’t want people to be attracted by old things.  We want them to like the new ones.”

Why?  “Huxley’s brave new world is above all a superficial world." Kimball explains.  "People are encouraged to like what is new, to live in the moment, because that makes them less complicated and more pliable.”  Sensation is important, not substance (Dillard addresses this in The Writing Life:  “the life of sensation demands more and more”), and “experience is increasingly vivid but decreasingly real.  The question of meaning is deliberately short-circuited.”  As the Controller explains, “They [experiences] mean themselves; they mean a lot of agreeable sensations to the audience.”

“In part,” Kimball writes, “the attack on permanence is an attack on the idea that anything possesses inherent value.”

On the increasingly profane and crude displays in much of what passes for art these days, Kimball notes, “Hardly anyone is shocked anymore, but that is a testament not to public enlightenment but to widespread moral anesthesia.”  (He also quotes Chesterton as one of his chapter epigraphs:  “Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which you are accustomed to seeing or hearing without being shocked. . . . It may be that your grandmother was an extremely lively and vital animal, and that you are a paralytic.”)

On technology:  “Welcome to the information age.  Data, data, everywhere, but no one knows a thing.”  Information is not knowledge.  We might be able to find information at the click of a mouse, but this comes with “a great temptation”:  “to confuse an excellent means of communication with communication that is excellent.  We confuse, that is to say, process with product.  As the critic David Guaspari memorably put it, ‘comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter’s rule.’  Oops.”

“The problem with computers is not the worlds they give us instant access to but the world they encourage us to neglect.”  The issue is not so much the developments of the “digital revolution” as “the effect of such developments on our moral and imaginative life, and even our cognitive and political life.”  (Note, please, he does not say technology is evil!)

On close and careful reading:  why memorize when quotations are instantly available?  “One reason, of course, is that a passage memorized is a passage internalized:  it becomes part of the mental sustenance of the soul.” 

He quotes Henry Kissinger at length:  “Reading books requires you to form concepts, to train your mind to relationships.  You have to come to grips with who you are.  A leader needs these qualities.  But now we learn from fragments of facts.  A book is a large intellectual construction.  You have to struggle mentally to internalize it.  Now there is no need to internalize because each fact can instantly be called up on the computer. There is no context, no motive.  Information is not knowledge.  People are not readers but researchers, they float on the surface.  This new thinking erases context.”

Artists, your work is important, now, today, despite the chaos that threatens.  Kimball quotes from C. S. Lewis on the idea that we must wait for “normal” life to engage in cultural pursuits:  “Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right.  But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons.  They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes. [. . .]  They propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss the latest new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopoylae.  This is not panache; this is our nature.”

“Lewis’s meditation,” Kimball writes, “reminds us that culture, and the humanity that defines it, is constantly under threat.  No achievement may be taken for granted; yesterday’s gain may be tomorrow’s loss; permanent values require permanent vigilance and permanent renewal.”