Good Friday Sonnets

At Mere Comments, Tony Esolen has been posting some sonnets on the stations of the cross written by William A. Donaghy sometime in the mid-20th century. Here is what Tony says about the poems, a few of which were sent to him by a friend: "Touchstone reader Fr. David Standen put me on to a few of them, then the archivists at Holy Cross forwarded to him the entire set, which can be viewed here [look for "Stations of the Cross" posted 30 March, 2007, if they are not at the top of the page]. They were published in what I think was the college literary magazine, Spirit, though I'll have to check on that detail."

Tony's meditations on the ones he's posted are well worth looking for at Mere Comments; he is as eloquent as the poet and challenges us to make the poet's insights ours. Here are two that especially struck me; I offer them as meditative reading for Good Friday coming up.


XI. He Is Nailed to the Cross

This sound had echoed back in Nazareth,
The thudding hammer on the singing nails,
When Mary hastened off in flying veils,
With eyes like violets, and quickened breath,
Her Babe within her, to Elizabeth.
Now Mary winces, clenches hands, and pales,
Her dauntless spirit cringes, twists and quails,
And at each jolt she dies a double death.

The soldiers need not force Him for He lies
Patient beneath them; as the nails tear through,
His shining prayer is piercing inky skies,
"Forgive them; for they know not what they do."
And even now the arms which they transfix
Would guard them as a mother bird her chicks.


XIV. He Is Buried

The mourners slowly bring Him through the gloom,
The valiant women, and three faithful men;
Her shoulders shaking, stormy Magdalen
Is weeping as in Simon's dining room;
But she who felt Him moving in her womb,
Who wrapped and laid Him in a manger then
Is still His handmaid, ready once again
To wrap Him up and lay Him in His tomb.

Once Delphi was the navel of the earth,
But now this sepulchre, which blackly yawns,
Becomes the point and center of all worth,
The focus of all sunsets and all dawns;
Within this cavern, could the world but see,
Mythology yields place to mystery.

A Lesson in Contrasts

With last night's storm clouds still darkening the early morning sky, Phoebe's dim haze-covered glow behind the trees startled me on the drive down the old ferry road. At the stoplight, waiting for traffic to clear, I glanced back over my shoulder to see a single ragged black cloud precisely covering her, the halo she created about it suddenly almost brilliant with the contrast. As the cloud slid away, her glow diminished again in the grey-white fog.

Lessons to be learned; lessons to be learned.

Aeolian Carpings

Some quotes from an underground newsletter of the English graduate students at a university which will remain nameless in order to protect the guilty:

Random Aphorism: You can lead a horse to water, give him lots of handouts on thirst and dehydration, present examples of quaffing in class, e-mail him reminders to imbibe, post notes and drinking assignments on Blackboard, call him in for one-on-one conferences on the shoreline, and send him to the Drinking Center for every assignment, but you can't make him drink.

Found: one medium-sized brain, gray, filled with facts about Victorian literature. Please claim in the faculty lounge refrigerator.

TA an Expert in Margin Manipulation Detection: "It's a gift,"he says.

Frustrated Instructor Resorts to Using Taser in Class: Says "Students are responding well to technology."

Emergency "Staple Requisition Route" Maps to be Posted in Every Classroom: TA says, "It's about time!"

Title of the annual interdisciplinary conference: "([Dis]Mi/ys)teyr (Post [Dis]Course(s) (?): (Un[Dis{P(Re)}])Establishing (!) ([Anti[De])flection(s) on [sic] His/Her(story/i)cal (Post[colon{:}]ial) (Hyper)Text(ual) Margin([al]s) :-)"


The long articles are even better, but I'd best be careful not to tempt the copyright fates, as someone I know is responsible for the publication . . . :) I just wish I could write this kind of thing myself; it makes me so jealous when I read it!

Bursting into Bloom

Another lovely spring surrounds us here. Last year the forsythia blinded us with its sun-like brilliance. This year it seems subdued beside the richness of the redbuds.

Saturday when I went to check the mail, the gentle white of the thickly flowered dogwood overwhelmed our front yard with beauty. A little later, my husband came into the study and wandered over to the window.

"When did that happen?" he asked in surprise.

"When did what happen?" I replied with my usual astuteness, swimming up to consciousness from Arthur C. Clarke's Songs of Distant Earth.

"When did the dogwood bloom? I've never seen it that full. It wasn't like that when I went out this morning."

A few moments later he remembered that he had watered it while caring for the lawn in the unusual dry spell we've been enduring. "It must have needed just that little bit of moisture for the buds to burst open."

Amazing things happen when one simply goes about doing one's job.

On Being Somewhere

Thoughts after a conversation, but preaching to myself . . .

One has to be somewhere. And that somewhere, as a general rule, has to include other people. People are, of course, imperfect by definition, so this means our "somewhere" will often be uncomfortable and unsatisfactory.

This is called "life."

God calls us to live this life as well as we can, in His strength and by His grace, extending forgiveness and love and compassion and acceptance to others, as we desire these for ourselves -- and, not incidentally, as we have received them from Him. This is how we learn to be like Him.

May we learn to make our "somewheres" better places for our having been there.

Neuhaus on Suffering

Some quotes from Chapter 5 of Death on a Friday Afternoon (on "I thirst"):

"The way of the Christian life is cruciform. Jesus did not suffer and die in order that we need not suffer and die, but in order that our suffering and death might be joined to His in redemptive victory."

"The Christian way is not one of avoidance but of participation in the suffering of Christ, which encompasses not only our own suffering, but the suffering of the whole world."

He quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "When Jesus calls a man, He calls him to come and die."

And Neuhaus again: "Avoiding the cross makes very good sense, if we do not know the One whom we join, the One who joins us, on the cross that is the world's redemption. The victory of Christ is not a way of avoidance but the way of solidarity in suffering. [. . .] We will die anyway. The question is whether we will die senselessly or as companions and coworkers of the crucified and risen Lord."

Quiet Companion

I regularly read a number of posts at a Christian college blogring. A few are genuinely, deeply thoughtful and I appreciate and learn from them. They mostly depress me, however, just because so many tend to be completely superficial -- "so I got up and had breakfast and skipped class and went to lunch . . ." -- you know the type. But of course others are more serious, young people writing about what they hope and dream and seek for. Some of these disturb me because they reveal the completely worldly values of folk who should be moving out of these into Christ's values. Others disturb me because the writers simply seem so lost and confused.

This morning I finally realized the main feature that bothers me about so many of these -- the absolute focus on self. Even when writing about a desire for the spiritual, it is a desire for spiritual emotion: I want to feel this, feel that, feel the other; I want God to show me this, give me that. It's all about me.

That, of course, is human nature in a nutshell, exacerbated by the self-absorbed culture that surrounds us. I've been there, still go there far too often. But if we want to know Him, then we need to seek Him -- Him, not some experience we want Him to give us. We need to love Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength -- and I no longer believe that has anything to do with how we feel at any given moment. Rather, it is a decision to walk in the Truth of His nature, of His salvation, of His Lordship, whether we feel anything in particular or not. (Of course, it is best to do this cheerfully and willingly, not begrudgingly. But, despite the many people I admire who say the opposite, I think it better to do the right thing out of obligation rather than excuse sin because I don't feel like being righteous. At the least, it builds good habits.)

Oh, I long to feel good, too! I can't say how many times I've begged for just a taste of that abundant life He promises. But I think I am beginning to understand that, as C. S. Lewis demonstrates in Surprised by Joy, we can't find some kind of emotional experience by seeking it out and focusing on it. Rather, the knowledge of joy comes as a complete and marvelous surprise when we are absorbed in simply living our lives in His Truth -- absorbed not in ourselves but in Him, the world He created, the others He places in our path.

I used to beg, to plead, for a taste of joy. I am now often startled to find joy a quiet companion along the way, most noticeable when I seek it the least.

In Christ

In Chapter 4 of Death on a Friday Afternoon, Neuhaus explores the Lord’s words “Why hast thou forsaken me?” There’s much here; I keep re-reading it. One of the truths he emphasizes is our identity, who we are. I am not a person in my own right; I have been bought with a price. And that doesn’t mean that I am merely under obligation to the One who bought me; it means that I am in Him, that my life is not mine, but His in me.

Neuhaus explains that the essence – he calls it telos, and I think it is what Hopkins calls inscape – of our being is not something that we choose for ourselves, but something already existent that we discover. In Christ, we already are what we are meant, created, to be. This essence is not “determined by what [we] want to do” but given to us by our identity in Christ. Of course, because we have not yet been perfected, because we live still in a fallen world and in fleshly bodies, “[w]hat [we] want and what [we] choose,” he says, “may be in conflict with who [we are], who [we] really [are].” But if we have been baptized with Christ into His death, then the objective self to be discovered is the self who is in Christ, who is Christ: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me,” Paul reminds us.

This is the one truth I would pray to remember at all times. My life is not mine to choose; I was bought with a price and I am in Him; He is my identity. This doesn’t mean I am not a unique individual; He has created only unique individuals. But it is only when I discover my identity in His that He can give me the unique self He intended me to be. All the rest is a striving for the spurious right to name, to create, my self – and thus fall farther and farther away from His glorious desire for me.

Polycarp, in his extreme old age, was told to deny Christ or die. He said that it was not possible to deny the One whom he had served for 80-some years. He would no longer be Polycarp if he were to deny Christ: because he is in Christ, because his identity is Christ’s identity, for Polycarp to deny Christ would be for Christ to deny Christ, an impossibility. “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

I will not likely be asked to deny Christ or die anytime soon. But there are so many little opportunities every day to deny Him: to be irritable or angry; to snip at (or about) people who annoy me; to watch a show or a movie I know is not healthy for me; to put off work I’ve promised to do . . . . Who will I be each day? The woman God created me to be, that woman who is in Christ, or a false woman I name and create for myself in opposition to Him?

I pray that I might learn to make every choice freely bathed in humility and gratefulness before the One who bought me with a price and placed me in Himself, to be the woman He created me to be.

"He Has Befriended Us"

Neuhaus writes about our restlessness and dissatisfaction with life:

"Now we need faith, for the truth is not transparent; now we need hope, for we know we are not what we were meant to be."

Then he writes, continuing with the theme I wrote about yesterday:

We are His friends, not because we have befriended Him, but because He has befriended us. [. . .] Look at Him who is ever looking at you. With whatever faith you have, however feeble and flickering and mixed with doubt, look at Him. Look at Him with whatever faith you have and know that your worry about your lack of faith is itself a sign of faith. Do not look at your faith. Look at Him. Keep looking, and faith will take care of itself.

When I look at Him, I have no time left to look at myself and my pathetic worries and failures. When I look at Him, He can make me what He created me to be. Lord, help me look at You and leave off the maunderings of my foolish self-centeredness.

Only His Merit

The second chapter of Death on a Friday Afternoon is on the words of Jesus to the thief: "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise." It has much food for thought, much to help me understand and appreciate certain Catholic ways of thinking I'd only known as caricatures before.

What all of us can agree on is worth quoting at some length; Neuhaus says it far better than I ever could. (I've added caps for pronouns referring to God because I find them helpful.)

When our faith is weak, when we are assailed by contradictions and doubts, we are tempted to look at our faith, to worry about our faith, to try to work up more faith. At such times, however, we must not look to our faith but look to Him. Look to Him, listen to Him, and faith will take care of itself. Keep looking. Keep listening. (my emphasis)

And later:

When I come before the judgment throne, I will plead the promise of God in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. I will not plead any work that I have done, although I will thank God that He has enabled me to do some good. I will plead no merits other than the merits of Christ, [. . .]. I will not plead that I had faith, for sometimes I was unsure of my faith, and in any event that would be to turn faith into a meritorious work of my own. I will not plead that I held the correct understanding of "justification by faith alone," although I will thank God that He led me to know ever more fully the great truth [which] much misunderstood formulation was intended to protect. Whatever little growth in holiness I have experienced [. . .], whatever understanding I have attained of God and His ways -- these and all other gifts received I will bring gratefully to the throne. But in seeking entry to that heavenly kingdom, I will, with [the thief on the cross], look to Christ and Him alone. (my emphasis again)

I have left out what applies particularly to a Catholic understanding of the saints, which all do not agree about. What I have quoted from the passage is certainly the common belief of all Christians, though I often do not live as though it is. I think that if I really grasped this, with more than the mind, I would live in so much more freedom than I often allow myself. Because if I'm looking to Him, I don't need to worry and fret over whether I'm "good enough" for Him -- how arrogant to think I ever could be! I am only "good enough" because He has placed me in Himself, the only Good who exists.

Cheap Grace: Worth What It Costs?

Death on a Friday Afternoon is Neuhaus's meditations on the final seven "words" of Christ on the cross. The first -- on the statement "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" -- begins by urging us, in Neuhaus's gently eloquent way, not to leap forward to Easter but to "stay awhile" at Good Friday, reflecting on the fallen Lord and our complicity in His death.

He writes, "after such a separation [ours willfully from God] there can be no easy reunion. [. . .] Spare me a gospel of easy love that makes of my life a thing without consequence."

I had not, I think, considered reconciliation in quite this way. I have intellectually understood that there needs to be payment for "that which has gone wrong" and that Christ could make that payment because He was the only one who had not gone wrong Himself.

And I have intellectually understood that my going wrong -- my sin -- was the problem that I could not fix myself, requiring that I make the ultimate payment, death, or that another, who was able, pay for me.

But I hadn't thought about how "cheap grace" makes my life of no value. Sin cannot be merely overlooked as if it had not occurred; a penalty commensurate to the sin must be paid; it must cost someone something to fix the problem.

"If bad things don't matter," Neuhaus writes, "then good things don't matter, and then nothing matters and the meaning of everything lies shattered like the cookie jar on the kitchen floor." And earlier, "Spare me the sentimental love that tells me what I do and what I am does not matter."

And so with all of life. When I shrug and ignore the violation of rules I have created for the good of my children or of my students, I am telling them, "What you do is not really that important." And when they accept my cheap grace, they have accepted a lie about themselves -- that they are not worthy -- and a truth about me -- that I do not care enough about them to show them their worth.

Food for thought. As God has cared for me, may I discipline myself to care enough for those He has placed under my stewardship to show them His love in His ways.

Simplicity

The only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity.


(Richard John Neuhaus, in Death on a Friday Afternoon, tells us that Alfred North Whitehead said this. I'll have more on this remarkable book in days to come, but this thought struck me forcefully today.)

Empathy

My favorite television show (Criminal Minds) has succeeded in fascinating me again with last night’s episode, which explored the concept of empathy. The more I think about the show, the more amazed I am at the depths of what they did in this episode; it is not the norm, at least in today’s visual media, to explore any abstraction so significantly.

Last week, in a two-part episode, Reid was kidnapped and tortured before being rescued by the team. The genius of the group, he is a logic machine who relies almost entirely on his mind and struggles with emotion and relationship. During his ordeal, Hotch remarks to Gideon that he has failed in helping Reid learn to deal with the job emotionally, and he is concerned this may now be a problem. Reid’s kidnapper injects him with a psychotic drug several times, and at the end, Reid steals two vials of the drug before rejoining the team, leaving us to wonder if he will turn to drugs to stop the pain that has now been stirred up, both from his past and from the effects of the torture.

As the episode last night began, Morgan greets the new woman on the team, Emily Prentiss, and asks how her weekend was. She is reluctant to answer and Morgan casually gives her the freedom not to – at which she spills out the story of a bad date and they find a connection in their mutual enjoyment of Kurt Vonnegut’s literature. It is Morgan’s ability to allow her to speak or not, and his attentiveness and empathy when she does, that allow her to finally begin revealing herself so that she can become more than just professionally a part of the team.

The team is called in to help find a serial killer targeting black high school girls who like to sing. Their profile says that the killer is a black man, and the town mayor goes ballistic, fearful of rousing further racial hatred in a town that already thinks the killings are racially motivated. The black detective running the local investigation decides to make the profile public over the mayor’s objections, and he and Morgan (who is mixed race) go out on patrol together.

During this scene we see Morgan again practicing empathy – with the detective’s position of having to make a decision against his employer’s wishes, with the detective’s frustration that it should matter to anyone what race a profile gives, with the detective’s desire to do his job well but have dignity. Morgan shows his understanding of these frustrations and talks about accepting reality as it is and doing the job one is given the best way possible, without worrying oneself over the politics of others. It’s a clear and realistic picture of one person reaching out to another from his own experiences to help the other come to grips with his circumstances.

Reid, meanwhile, is having flashbacks when he looks at the pictures of the murdered girls lying in the leaves. (He was digging his own grave in a small cemetery in the woods when the team rescued him.) At one point, he locks himself into a men’s room and takes out the – as yet still unopened – vials of the drug, but Gideon yells for him and he returns to the investigation. He does his job, helps the team solve the case and save a girl’s life, but his fear and confusion are frequently evident.

On the plane ride home, Morgan asks Reid if he’s all right; he’s clearly concerned about him and becomes more so as Reid uncharacteristically lashes back at him. He doesn’t walk away as he started to with Prentiss earlier; he has an established relationship with Reid and knows him well enough to know that he needs to talk. Instead, he reminds Reid that anything he says will stay confidential, and presses him to speak his mind.

Reid finally tells him about the effect of the photos and says, “It’s that now I know – I mean, I really know – what they were going through, what they were thinking and feeling, right before . . .”

“It’s called empathy,” Morgan tells him gently.

“So what do I do about it?” Reid answers. “It makes me not focus; it makes me not do my job as well.”

Morgan says, “You use it. You use it to be a better profiler, and to be a better person.”

The episode ends with Reid staring at Morgan and saying, “A better person?”

I am not sure where this will go, of course, but from what I’ve seen of the characters, I think Reid is asking how he can possibly be a better person if he now has emotional responses to his work. And I hope we are in for a “course” in how to control and use emotion in conjunction with reason to be fully human. There’s great potential here – and I salute the writers of this show for their insight and talent in bringing such depth to it. And, by the way, Shemar Moore is a really good actor, as is Matthew Gray Gubler. Wow. Anyone would have to love having the talent on this show collected in one place.

Escape

Yesterday, as my husband drove me to work, three deer leaped across the drive between us and the chapel and away into the grassy bowl. The first, already in the darkness of the bowl, I barely glimpsed. The second bounded almost leisurely a fair way ahead of us. The third, several paces behind, extended herself low to the ground, seeming to know she had but little time to escape the chortling beast with monstrously bright eyes hurtling towards her.

Revealing, Concealing

I am to introduce myself to a stranger. One wishes to be honest; that stranger will be my teacher and mentor for the next two years. Yet one wishes to be cautious as well. What does he need to know? What is unimportant? How does one reveal enough without revealing too much, conceal appropriately without concealing that which helps him to instruct me?

I don't mind revealing my writing skills. Unlike a fair number of our students, who try to conceal their ignorance and thus cannot learn from us, I am quite ready to reveal my weaknesses in the craft. (Yes, I will cry in humiliation when they are confirmed, but that is the beauty of correspondence courses. One may react in private, get over it, and respond like a mature adult the next day. One hopes.)

But writing is not merely a skill, of course. What makes it weak or strong is often that which underlies the process. And that is where I find myself hesitant, unsure. How much of the self that creates my writing do I, can I, reveal without crossing a line I'll later regret?

The last piece of writing I did nearly killed me. I spent weeks writing, throwing out, writing again, over and over. And it finally came down to this: I either told my own story or I told a lie. Not a lie in the sense of factual untruth, but a dancing about the subject that could not possibly convey its depths and would not have moved a single heart.

I'm glad I bowed to truth. But it was the hardest thing I've yet done in my life, I think. And, surprisingly to me, it hasn't made it any easier to consider doing it again.

Revealing, concealing. We must do both while avoiding both narcissism and dishonesty. A challenge once again. I like this kind of challenge. It reminds me that I'm alive -- and that life matters.

Books, Books, Books

Hooray for amazon and Eighth Day Books and school funding and a wonderful husband who rolls his eyes and makes remarks on having to add structural support to the house to hold all the shelves but lets me buy books anyway! I now get to anticipate for the next several weeks the arrival of the following, probably in several different and exciting shipments:

1. George MacDonald, The Complete Fairy Tales, including his essay on fairy tales and both "The Wise Woman" and "The Light Princess."

2. George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind, which I've read somewhere but never owned and must, must have on my shelf!

3. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited. I've been feeling obligated to find out about Waugh, and everyone says this is his best.

4. Eragon. We got Eldest at the used bookstore, and the YM loved it; read it in a matter of hours, I think. So now he gets to find out what happened first, and I get to read them both as a reward for letting him have the books for his own.

5. Dante: I'm finally getting Tony Esolen's translations of all three volumes -- Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. I know the translation will be eloquent and accurate, and I'm looking forward to the introductions, too, which will be eloquent and brilliant.

6. Mary Oliver's Blue Iris, because LuCindy mentioned it, and because Oliver is surely one of the best of contemporary poets.

7. Donald Hall's Claims for Poetry because I want to see what another great poet says about poetry.

8. Literary Essays of Thomas Merton, because it's Merton.

9. Wendell Berry's Standing by Words, because Berry either makes me very happy or very angry, both in good ways.

10. The Didascalicon of Hugh of Victor, on reading well, and, to help with it,

11. Ivan Illich's In the Vineyard of the Text, a commentary on Didascalicon.

12. Neil Postman's Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology; we read Amusing Ourselves to Death last semester, and this one sounds good.

13. The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. I haven't read anything else by Sven Birkerts, but this is a topic constantly before me as I try to teach attention to the word in a technological age.

14. The Myth of Certainty: The Reflective Christian and the Risk of Commitment, by Daniel Taylor. Another unfamiliar author to me, but highly recommended by a colleague when we were discussing the dangers of dogmatism but the need for absolutes.

15. The Disciplined Heart: Love, Destiny, and Imagination, by Caroline J. Simon. Any reader of literature should think about the place of imagination in faith. This looked like a good help toward reflection.

16. Gregory Wolfe (editor of Image, a journal of Christian art), The New Religious Humanists. I read his collection of editorials from Image recently, and the one on religious humanism fascinated me. I'm really looking forward to seeing how he fleshes out the idea.

17. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross. Neuhaus is an eloquent writer who loves the Lord. I hope this one arrives well before Easter for Lenten reading.

18. Icons and Saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church. I'm always encountering saints and references to church icons in the works I read, so this color-illustrated book looks like it will be a pleasant education and resource.

and, finally,

19. the texts and workbooks associated with the LongRidge Writers Group Advanced Writing Program: Shape, Write and Sell Your Novel. I did their correspondence course in short fiction some years ago, and my instructor recommended I try this one. (I was always trying to write novels instead of short stories, anyway!) This is a 2-year (or so) course which takes you through the elements of fiction-writing (characterization, plotting, setting, dialogue, etc.), the first three chapters of a novel (including revision), how to query agents and publishers, and the business end of novel writing, all with a published novelist as your teacher and mentor.

So, time to brush the dust off some old files, decide which one to follow (or a new idea, maybe!) and have some fun seeing if I can craft something decent. If I finally decide this isn't my niche, it will still teach me a great deal which will help in teaching literature and maybe leading writing workshops if we ever get to create our creative writing minor.

"Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation'

I picked up Stanley Kunitz's The Collected Poems last night and found a number that struck me in various ways. But this one left me hardly able to breathe. (A hornworm is a light green caterpillar with white stripes, a "bulbous head" and "a sharp little horn for a tail," as Kunitz describes it in a companion poem, "Hornworm: Summer Reverie.")

Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation

Since that first morning when I crawled
into the world, a naked grubby thing,
and found the world unkind,
my dearest faith has been that this
is but a trial: I shall be changed.
In my imaginings I have already spent
my brooding winter underground,
unfolded silky powdered wings, and climbed
into the air, free as a puff of cloud
to sail over the steaming fields,
alighting anywhere I pleased,
thrusting into deep tubular flowers.

It is not so: there may be nectar
in those cups, but not for me.
All day, all night, I carry on my back
embedded in my flesh, two rows
of little white cocoons,
so neatly stacked
they look like eggs in a crate.
And I am eaten half away.

If I can gather strength enough
I'll try to burrow under a stone
and spin myself a purse
in which to sleep away the cold;
though when the sun kisses the earth
again, I know I won't be there.
Instead, out of my chrysalis
will break, like robbers from a tomb,
a swarm of parasitic flies,
leaving my wasted husk behind.

Sir, you with the red snippers
in your hand, hovering over me,
casting your shadow, I greet you,
whether you come as an angel of death
or of mercy. But tell me,
before you choose to slice me in two:
Who can understand the ways
of the Great Worm in the Sky?

Light and Mystery

written Saturday, 3 February

This morning, leaving with reluctance for a rare Saturday at work, I found myself caught between the sparkling iridescence of Pheobe, nearly at the full, on my left, and the faint first blush of Aurora, heralding Apollos's rising, on my right. Unique beauties; both seductively enticing. Aurora is lovely, but, much as I enjoy sunlit days, often the full light of Apollos unnerves me with its intensity. Although light reveals, it seems to me it can conceal as well as does complete darkness -- it leaves no place for nuance, for interpretation. Heresy, this, I suppose. They say that the moon makes for madness, but I think she's the only sanity I know. For her light reveals, too, but leaves space for the mystery, the ambiguity, that are necessary in a world we are meant to love, despite its fallenness, as its Creator loves.

On Trees

I really can't do better today than refer you to a lovely post at Mere Comments by Steve Hutchens on the beauty of trees. It reminded me of the sorrow I felt when one of the oldest oaks in the state was cut down to make way for the science library at KU many years ago.

Enjoy.

Writing Again

I am at such a loss. There is too much information; too many bits and pieces are slamming against each other in the agitated stew that is my mind just now, competing for attention, for the place of most importance.

So much can be said, needs to be said, on my subject. I am desperate for a focus, but so far it eludes me utterly. I could write a book quite easily in comparison to this attempt to condense my ideas into a meaningful eight or ten pages.

To be glib and superficial, to confuse the issue or discourage with incompleteness, would be disastrous. Yet there is not space for nuance or apology or exposition of every possible misunderstanding. If I could grasp with any certainty the most important need of my audience, then maybe I could see my way. But every time I try to pin down that one need, it instantly grows: this -- and this-- and this -- oh, and this . . .

What is meat and potatoes; what is mere flavoring? For wisdom, oh, for wisdom!

Caged Bird

I have rediscovered Polishing the Petoskey Stone, a collection of poetry by Luci Shaw. Strangely, even though I love her work, I hadn't read but a few poems in it after picking it up at the used bookstore last summer. It had even been placed on top of my roll-top desk with other oft-read favorites, where still it waited unnoticed until a couple of evenings ago.

This is why I needed it right now, as I am contemplating the nature of suffering and our response to it:

Caged bird

whose eye,
bead-bright,
no longer
scans the sky --
whose sleek
shape, carved
for flight,
is shrouded
by a pall
of wire --
whose beak
sorts millet,
never finds
the sun-filled
film and fire
of insect wings,
nor worm's wry
juice: his
trinities
of claws grip
steel,
ache for real
bark, and the
fling of winds
and trees.

Birdness
blunted
by thin chrome,
he learns
all summer long
to sing
newly, to poem
his stunted
narrowness
in one long,
strong,
ascending,
airborne, sun-
colored wing
of song.

"Now My Eyes See You"

I have been reading in Thomas Merton's No Man is an Island lately, especially chapter 5, "The Word of the Cross," on suffering. Last night I was particularly struck by this:

What, after all, is more personal than suffering? The awful futility of our attempts to convey the reality of our sufferings to other people, and the tragic inadequacy of human sympathy, both prove how incommunicable a thing suffering really is.

This reminded me forcefully of Auden's poem "Musee des Beaux Arts." He describes paintings by the great masters, who understand the inevitable isolation of the sufferer -- most people don't even notice the suffering of others, much less have any great concern for it:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along . . .

When a man suffers, Merton continues, he is most alone. Therefore, it is in suffering that we are most tested as persons. How can we face the awful interior questioning? What shall we answer when we come to be examined by pain?

This is the hardest place in the world to be. Alone, and in pain, with the inevitable "why" of our human inadequacies. Even Job, the most righteous man of his time (according to God Himself), could not avoid the questioning.

Merton's answer: If [. . .] we desire to be what we are meant to be, and if we become what we are supposed to become, the interrogation of suffering will call forth from us both our own name and the name of Jesus. And we will find that we have begun to work out our destiny which is to be at once ourselves and Christ.

Job received no answer to his questions. God didn't assure him of how much He loved him; He didn't offer emotional comfort to him; He didn't explain how the wicked will be punished later; He didn't explain the purpose of suffering. In essence, He said to Job simply, I am. He showed Job that he couldn't possibly understand Him, and so his questions were irrelevant. All Job needed was sight: I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, he declares, but now my eyes see You.

Suffering is not a good thing -- it is a result of the Fall -- but it can be a blessing: if we allow it to give us eyes to see the One who created and loves us.

Quarter Moon

A new semester is beginning, and a certain darkness of soul which always occurs after a break. This morning I left for work in the pre-dawn after several days of rain and grey skies, only to be startled by a perfect quarter-moon glowing in the deep indigo of a starless sky. Yet again, a reminder from the muse to reflect the light given no matter the surroundings.

"Without"

A poem from Donald Hall's collection Without (poems written about his wife, Jane Kenyon, concerning her illness and death), which for some reason especially struck me today:

He hovered beside Jane's bed,
solicitous: "What can I do?"
It must have been unbearable
while she suffered her private hurts
to see his worried face
looming above her, always anxious to do
something when there was
exactly nothing to do. Inside him,
some four-year-old
understood that if he was good -- thoughtful,
considerate, beyond
reproach, perfect -- she would not leave him.


(Alternate lines beginning with the first are indented, but I don't seem to be able to make them do this for me . . .)

Suffering and Serenity

I found a copy of William F. Buckley's Happy Days Were Here Again -- a collection of some of his older essays -- for $.75 at our used bookstore. How could I not succumb?! So I read it through during finals and while we were at my mother-in-law's, so I could leave it with my folks, who are great Buckley fans.

One essay is a eulogy for Malcolm Muggeridge, and Buckley quotes a letter he once received from Muggeridge:

As an old man, Bill, looking back on one's life, it's one of the things that strikes you most forcibly -- that the only thing that's taught one anything is suffering. Not success, not happiness, not anything like that. The only thing that really teaches one what life's about -- the joy of understanding, the joy of coming in contact with what life really signifies -- is suffering, affliction.

Buckley then continues:

He suffered, even at the end. But throughout his lifetime he diminished the suffering of others, at first simply by his wit and intelligence, finally by his own serenity, which brought serene moments to those graced by his presence.

Oh, that when I die, someone will say that my presence diminished the suffering of even one other person! I cannot imagine a more lovely, a more meaningful eulogy. Lord, help me to find and give serenity by knowing You.

We're Home!

Thanks for well-wishes below. We got back last night and were SO glad to sink into our very own beds.

Of course we all got sick. Of course this was while with older, not-overly-well parents. Pray for them!

My mother-in-law got good news about the cancer activity being reduced by half. They hope to have just one more week of every-day treatments and be able to cut back to maintenence treatment.

My dad is finally seeing a gerontology specialist this week. The drive is a bit longer than before, but on safer roads. I hope to hear something this weekend.

The YM is 16 today. I am not sure how he achieved this feat, but I guess we will have to let him continue to grow up now. :)

And I'm back at my office for the day, filling out forgotten forms that were due before I left . . . oops.

I don't know about 24, Sarah -- I've watched portions and it's so frenetic . . . maybe I'll give the season premiere another try next week, on your recommendation. I do know folks around here either love it or hate it!

Not my usual kind of post, but don't have time for several separate emails. Perhaps next week I'll find energy to post something worth thinking on.

Happy New Year to all!

Christmas Cometh . . . At Last!

I have turned in grades and am now simply trying to clear the mind, find the things I need to take with me to work on during the break, clean up the office a bit so it looks better when I come back.

We will be gone for a couple of weeks, probably without internet access.

The YM sent me an email yesterday:

Dear Santa Claus,

When I was little, I accepted that when you pass judgment on little children, you really knew what was right and wrong. But now, a lifetime of experience has left me bitter. What is good? What is bad?

Can I say to my neighbor "I am good and you are bad?" Who are you to say if we are good or bad? And where's that iPod Nano? Huh??

This will be the last year I send a letter to you, so you'd better get everything on my list right this time. (Last year you mixed up my list with someone who wanted t-shirts and underwear.)

iPod Nano, xBox360, Sam's Town by The Killers, a Pearls treasury, some sunglasses that Gwen Stefani wore in Wind It Up, and $200 cash.

Thank you.

p.s. Can you give me Fred Claus's email address? You know, your brother who give gifts to all the bad children.
**************

I'm still laughing.

May you have a blessed Christmas season and know the love of the One who came so we could be reconciled to the Father.

Review part 3: "Criminal Minds"

All art invites the viewer to consider values and ideas. However, Criminal Minds does this more explicitly than most television shows or films through a voice-over at the show's beginning and/or end of a quotation from a philosopher or writer that suggests the episode's theme and perhaps how we are to think about it. Sadly, I haven't been able to locate a website that gives these quotations, so I rarely manage to keep them accurately. At least the gist often stays with me, though, as they frame my response.

One example: A woman who was horribly abused becomes a serial killer, taking out her bitterness by hurting others as she was hurt. The team identifies her as the killer -- instead of a male suspect -- when they learn about her past. But the quotations at beginning and end are about how suffering can make one great, thus reminding the viewers that the victim of suffering has choices -- there is nothing inevitable about bitterness, about repaying evil for evil.

In this week's episode, the voice-over was about the dark oppression of secrets -- and in the course of the show, Morgan is forced to reveal the secret of the sexual abuse he endured as a boy and had told no one. But when he finally speaks out, it is to save another boy and end the abuser's exploitation. "[Not telling] was my mistake," he tells the boy. "You don't have to make the same one, and I've got your back -- forever." The episode also deepens Morgan's character by showing him interacting with his widowed mother and sisters, revealing some of his past, and showing us why he is especially enraged by crimes against children. "You are responsible for who I am," he tells the abuser; "I became an FBI agent to put b**s like you away."

The characters also often reflect on and discuss the nature of their job, inviting us to consider with them the values we hold, our assumptions about good and evil, right and wrong, the sanctity of life. At the end of one case, for example, Hotch muses to Gideon, "What makes people do such evil things? Is it the parents' fault? Society's? Neither?" Rather than merely driving us to a single conclusion, we are invited to think about it ourselves, and the show's actions leave it open for interpretation even while critiquing various policies and positions having to do with crime and punishment.

In an episode where the team finds a vigilante who has been killing people guilty of criminal acts but who have not been convicted because their actions were blamed on parents or society, we find that Hotch still second-guesses himself about the first case he and Gideon worked together. They had identified a man who had abused and killed two young boys. They had confronted him, armed and desperate, and Hotch had "talked him down," preventing him from killing himself or forcing them to do so. Then he was found not guilty on the basis of his wife's perjury -- and was only sent to prison after he killed again.

"You did the right thing," Gideon tells Hotch, and Hotch agrees -- but we are invited to think long and hard about our justice system and whether it might ever be right to at least not prevent the death of a known killer.

Yet the show does always come down on the side of life: one never, under any circumstances, kills except to save the life of a victim or fellow law enforcer. It is not the law enforcement officer's job to execute justice in any but a desperate situation, no matter how flawed the courts may be. And thus the horror of the team members to realize that Elle has taken justice into her own hands, has killed with pre-meditation an unarmed man. The sick rapes he has committed are no excuse for her own lawless act.

In another episode, a brilliant high school boy approaches Reid, implying that he might be the serial killer that is terrorizing D.C. prostitutes. They find he is not the killer, but he is obsessed with death and crying out for help. Gideon does a psych evaluation and tells Reid afterwards, "It's not a matter of if he kills; it's a matter of when he kills." Later, the boy tells Reid that he has realized that the only way to keep from killing someone else is to kill himself.

Yet his mother puts off hospitalizing him. Finally, he comes by to tell Reid he is going into the hospital the next day. "You know I'll never get out," he says, and Reid -- who "knows what it means to be afraid of your own mind" -- tries to encourage him to be hopeful. A few hours later he receives a phone call: the boy has solicited a prostitute, fantasizing murder, but he doesn't try to kill her. Instead, he lays Reid's business card on the table and slits his own wrists. Reid and Garcia race to the apartment to try to help him. Later, as the ambulance drives away, Gideon tells Reid, clearly as a compliment and encouragement, "You saved his life." Reid answers, "And what about the lives he takes someday?" Gideon: "Profiles can be wrong. But if this one's not, then . . . you'll bring him in."

The unspoken message: you must always presume on the side of life and hope, never except in the direst circumstances taking into your own hands the decision that someone else must die.

Before and after this episode, Gray Gubler voices over quotations from T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men":

"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow.

[. . .]

"Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow."

And we are invited to consider what the Shadow is, if it can be fought, if idea and conception can be brought to birth without destructive distortion.

Review part 2: “Criminal Minds”

The Characters

Jason Gideon (played by the incomparable Mandy Patinkin, with whom I can claim that I went to college [don’t ask if I ever met him] and I can say definitively that he was a phenom even at 18 or 19): Senior Supervisory Special Agent Gideon is the “elder statesman” of the team, whose special talent seems to be drawing out people’s deepest secrets. Remarkably perceptive, he is saved from breakdown by a rigid code of honor and a place to get away. He battles guilt when things go wrong, but reminds the others that crime is the criminal’s fault, not theirs for not catching him.

Aaron Hotchner (Thomas Gibson): Unit Chief Hotchner is the team’s leader with Gideon and often the show’s moral compass. He is the only married agent, with a young son – Hayley is supportive and the marriage appears stable, but the job creates inevitable (though always sideline) tension at times. Hotch’s integrity is unimpeachable and he tolerates nothing less in his agents – for whom he would gladly give his own life. He is a serious man whose rare smiles deepen a character who might otherwise be seen as overly melancholy.

Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore): Supervisory Special Agent Morgan is a younger team member who seeks Gideon’s approval, rebukes Reid’s tendency toward self-imposed, undeserved guilt, and flirts shamelessly, for sheer fun, with Garcia. His cheerfulness with the team serves to accentuate his intense hatred of evil and revulsion towards evildoers. He would never hesitate to put his life on the line.

Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler): Supervisory Special Agent Reid is the genius, and the youngest team member. At 24, with a photographic memory, he holds 3 PhDs; besides being a walking information bank, he seems especially adept at discerning patterns, visual, verbal, or behavioral. He is prone to blurting out information, but not, it seems, from arrogance – more like an eager kid who happens to know the answer. Compassion, perhaps surprisingly, is his identifying personal trait, and he fears the schizophrenia from which his mother suffers.

Elle Greenaway (Lola Glaudini): Special Agent Greenaway was shot during a case and became increasingly disturbed, cynical, and fearful. She resigned from the unit early this season after shooting a suspect in cold blood and covering it up to make it look like self-defense. Cleared by the FBI, she avoids Hotch, but he follows her to her father’s grave. When she asks why he believes she is guilty, he tells her, “Because you’re here, confessing your sins.” He can’t prove it, but he can’t let her stay in the unit because he can’t trust her.

Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster): Special Agent Prentiss is the newest member, replacing Elle. Assigned to the unit without the request or approval of either Gideon or Hotch, she is driven to prove herself. Hotch is still uncertain whether he can trust her or not, especially after discovering a family-friend relationship between Prentiss and a congresswoman – who mysteriously discovers their work on a case that affects a bill she is sponsoring and threatens Hotch’s career if he doesn’t handle it to her satisfaction. Prentiss knows Arabic and plays chess.

Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness): Analyst Garcia is the computer genius who finds any information that can be found, tracks cell phones, does any needed technological feat. A flashy character who loves to laugh, she adds comic moments, but also poignancy as she reacts to crime with revulsion and victims with compassion. She loves to harmlessly flirt and occasionally takes Reid under a maternal wing.

Jennifer “J.J.” Jareau (A. J. Cook): Supervisory Special Agent and Media Liason Cook sorts through the various cases brought to the team’s attention, reports initial information about requests for help to the team, and is the team’s competent and winsome media voice. Intelligent and sharp, when Hotch asks if she wants to become a profiler, she says no; she is content with the background role she plays doing groundwork for the team.

That’s the cast of characters. The actors are all excellent, and they avoid dropping into stock characterization, instead creating interesting people who react in realistic ways to the job they do.

If grading doesn't kill me, next time I'll look at the philosophical side of the show.

Review part 1: Criminal Minds

~to inject some enjoyment into finals week~

I'm not especially enamored of visual entertainment. My parents, thankfully, limited television time in our house, and any time the tv was on we all had books or magazines (Newsweek, Boys' Life) to read during the commercials (and often during the show as well). I haven't been to a movie theatre in years and rarely can make myself sit through a movie on television. People always tell me, you must see such-and-such, and I always think, why? There's not enough time in life to waste it.

But now and then I watch a movie, and I do watch a few tv shows for relaxation if I like the characters and plot lines. Crime and mystery shows especially appeal; after all, Ngaio March and Dorothy Sayers are two of my favorite writers. Most of these shows, however, I can take or leave; there's no significant disappointment if I miss an episode and no one tapes it.

CBS's Criminal Minds, however, has utterly captivated me, and I may even have to lobby for the first season on DVD, since I missed most of it. Acting, character development, plot lines, and the philosophical challenges all intrigue me every Wednesday night.

An overview:
CM follows the professional lives of an FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), a unit highly trained in psychoanalysis of the criminal mind to profile unknown perpetrators and help identify them, predict their behavior, find them, and convict them -- often through psychologically acquired confession. It's based on real-life cases, though of course fictionalized (with the adventurous aspects no doubt hyped up a bit).

Some things I especially like:
It really is about the characters' professional lives. Their personal lives are somewhat known but peripheral: Hotchner's wife and child occasionally appear; any romantic interests are downplayed (as in barely hinted at) and there's never that I know of been even the implication of a sex scene; when personal impinges on professional the effects are made clear and not over-played.

It's clean. There's an occasional curse word, only with great provocation. There's no sex. The women agents dress professionally and don't look sleazy. And there's very little blood and gore, a nice relief from CSI, half of which I visually miss to avoid the explicit effects of violence. Sometimes the crimes, the perpertrators, and/or the victims are sleazy, but there's no dwelling on, for example, strip-bar scenes or excessively violent scenes of crime commission.

The team works well together. There are occasional tensions, of course, but no one-up-manship or jealousy or silly grudges. They have a goal, they have been chosen because they're both smart and trustworthy, and they focus on getting the job done as well as they can. Authority is respected without those under it being sycophants or mindless.

Each character is complex. You think you've got one pegged and then you see another side. No one's a complete stereotype even though they play on these.

The job they do is largely intellectual. It's a kind of Sherlock Holmes approach -- what's the evidence? Okay, now think about it and see where it leads. They get out in the field, yes, but much of their work is reflection on the constantly evolving information they have in order to to out-think the evil-doers.

More to come when another round of paper-grading is over!

Tarnished Brass, White Gold

Yesterday the tarnished brass of a full moon barely peeked through the branches, disappearing behind the far ridge as I reached the bottom of the old ferry road. Still, her light brightened the sky enough to keep the dark at bay.

This morning, she shone like white gold, riding the tips of the pines and blazing out above the mountains as I left the trees behind, her light suffusing the western sky as brightly as the hinting sun did the eastern horizon.

However full or bright, He uses His reflection, even at times whether we will or no.

Nancy L. Walker, RIP

(written Saturday, 2 December 2006)

Nancy died day before yesterday. I sat numbed in front of the computer screen for a quarter of an hour, thinking again and again, "I never made the cross-stitch I'd planned for her."

How arrogant and foolish to put off kindnesses, thinking there will be time. We have no idea how much time there will be, and I never told her how much a part of me she is.

Nancy Walker was my colleague, director of the writing program and writing teacher, at Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State). It was my first full-time position out of graduate school, half-time teaching and half-time directing the new writing center. She was kind to this nervous 30-something who'd never intended to work outside the home; she made me feel not only welcome but competent, belonging in this alien place.

A short, petite woman, she dressed "professionally feminine" -- well-tailored dresses and heels that raised her above the lectern (if she ever used one). I sat in on one of her graduate-level writing classes; a dynamo with cropped greying hair and reading glasses perched on her nose, her heels tapping constantly about the room, she challenged, delighted, and encouraged, drawing from us our best. She didn't have to look at my work, as I wasn't a student, but she did -- many written comments and then the concentrated attention to help me make a piece publishable, my first.

It was during those four years at SMSU that I finally accepted the identity of "writer" that had been a reality since I learned to scratch my name on kindergarten lined paper. And it was Nancy who helped me see that the reflective essay is my genre. That in itself might have been a career-killer, we both knew, but she never discouraged me from following the gift given.

I left SMS for many reasons, one among them being my absolute inability to justify sacrificing my time, energy, and identity for academic writing. One of the greatest gains from those years was the courage to embrace a gift -- and in that courage Nancy will remain with me, leaving the world not quite as empty as it felt when I first read the message of her death.

May it please God that she rest in peace.

Poetry Meme

LuCindy tagged me for this meme, so here goes:

1. The first poem I remember reading/hearing/reacting to was....I actually have no idea whatsoever. I know my mom played music a lot, and I suppose she read poetry to me, though I don’t recall her doing so. All I know is that poetry has always been as natural a part of my life as breathing. I never went through a “I don’t understand poetry” or “poetry is too boring/hard/obscure” phase as so many of my students – even English majors – seem to do.

The first poem I can remember really reacting to was Tennyson’s “Two Voices.” I liked it when I read it for a college assignment, then my atheist professor scoffed at it in class, saying it was far too simplistic to believe that the doubts of the speaker – so strong that he considered suicide because life appeared without hope – could be resolved by hearing church bells and seeing a family on their way to church. But I knew that the resolution was absolutely perfect, because I’d experienced it myself – the simplest image of Truth has remarkable power over despair, far more power even than the mere rational arguments of Truth. “Two Voices” ever since has been my idea of a poem that images Truth – and a reminder of the impossibility of the unregenerate mind to grasp that Truth.

2. I was forced to memorize Robert Frost’s “Birches” in school and........ ah, my favorite teacher ever, ever. Wonderful Miss Angell. Sadly, we only had her first semester, as she had a nervous breakdown over Christmas – perhaps that’s why I’ve always feared teaching at the high school level? She made us memorize a poem so that we could write it out letter-perfect. I’ve loved “Birches” ever since. She also introduced me to Winnie-the-Pooh – she read a chapter aloud once a week, I believe. What a wonderful teacher, who loved language for its sound and made me realize that I loved its sounds, too.

3. I read/don't read poetry because.... I read poetry because it speaks to me in a way no other kind of writing can. The beauty of the language; the way an image becomes real and deep, far beyond its literal existence; the way it takes me out of myself; the beauty, the sheer beauty . . . *

4. A poem I'm likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem is ....... Gerard Manley Hopkins – any of the Terrible Sonnets but perhaps “Carrion Comfort” most; T. S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi”; Robert Browning’s “An Epistle”; anything by Mary Oliver, perhaps “Roses, Late Summer” and “The Ponds” foremost; Christina Rossetti – impossible to choose. Which one depends on my mood at the time I’m asked.

5. I write/don't write poetry, but.............. I don’t write poetry, but it is vital to my existence. It reminds me of the depth of beauty available, often in the most unexpected places, in a broken world, and that eloquence is worth pursuing.

6. My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature..... LuCindy wrote “it is less entertaining, for the most part, and more demanding,” which I agree with wholeheartedly; it appeals to both my intellect and my heart.

7. I find poetry...... in books recommended by friends and through the anthologies I teach from. I sometimes see poetry in physical activity – a basketball team working together flawlessly, an ice-skating routine. I envy my poet friends who see poetry in everything, but one can only pursue so many avenues in life . . .

8. The last time I heard poetry.... was reading it in class the other day. I read poetry all the time in lit classes. I rarely ask students to read because so many really can’t do it well at all, and I haven’t time to teach them. However, my Victorian Lit students did a poetry reading this semester and I’ve seldom heard Hopkins and Rossetti so well-read. I was impressed. The last time I heard a poet read her own work was when LuCindy was here at the college, what, 2, 3 years ago? I wish I could hear her every day.

9. I think poetry is like.... an offering of pure beauty clothed in words, Truth in imagery, love come alive.


* To clarify – I keep saying I love poetry for its beauty, and I don’t mean by that any kind of “prettiness.” Some of the most beautiful and moving poems I know are not “pretty”; they are harsh, maybe even dissonant, and treat ugly subjects, for example, “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owens, or Lawrence’s “Do Not Go Gentle.” Beauty has to do with the way the sounds and images are entwined to create an eloquence appropriate to the subject and not to be found in any other kind of writing – though an occasional fiction writer or essayist comes close, such as Zora Neale Hurston and Annie Dillard.

Megan, want to try it? Maybe you, Captain?

Blessing the Grey Skies

The garage door opened on grey skies and wet streets this morning, the fourth day in a row without sunshine. Yesterday the fog finally settled itself deep in my spirit.

In some ways it’s old hat by now; there are occasionally warning signs and this time it was the incessant pounding of a couple of bars of musical notes (calling it a tune would be far too generous) that beat against my mind every time it fell unoccupied with explicit thought or writing or conversation. This isn’t the “I’ve got a song in my head” that happens to people all the time. It’s just noise that robs me of longed-for silence and drives me to weird thoughts just to keep it at bay. Inevitably it’s followed by a round of deep melancholy.

But of course it’s never really old hat. Every time it has to be faced and walked through, a process that never becomes easier, even knowing with reasonable certainty that it won’t – in the end – entirely overwhelm me.

It’s been a great week, too. I’ve had no urgent classroom prep or grading, no essays sitting on the desk begging for attention. That made it possible to accomplish some important tasks for the department, well instead of quickly. Interactions with colleagues, friends, family have been good – easy-going, no pressures, no conflicts. I was enjoying life.

But yesterday the fog infiltrated my spirit. I begged off a regular lunch meeting in which some good friends discuss Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a book I love and which has come more alive than ever to me this year. But today I couldn’t bear to talk about someone else’s winter, nor to subject myself to the noise and chaos of the cafeteria.

My afternoon meeting, however, I would have begged for if I’d had to. My lovely friends, who are writers, too, joined me in the lounge and we talked writing and life for an hour. At some point, the concept of suffering as blessing came up and I found myself repeating what another dear friend has said to me often – if you fight depression it only gets worse.

Of course, one can’t give in to it, either. Not fighting it doesn’t mean letting it take control and spending my hours mindlessly surfing the web or taking long restless naps. Rather, it means an acceptance, an acknowledgement that it exists and causes pain, but finding the way to live despite it – do the next thing and don’t fret over how wretched you feel. Try not to make others feel wretched along with you. Do the next thing.

We talked about how American evangelical Christianity seems to be largely about getting out of suffering. Praises in church are reserved for healing and deliverance. But Job blessed God when He took everything away, not just when He returned it. Because he saw God, I know that Job didn’t need to get everything back; he’d have blessed and praised God in his poverty and sickness had they lasted the rest of his days.

And often our poverty and sickness does last all our days. I don’t see Joni Erikson walking yet, but she claims that she would never have served God as she has if she hadn’t broken her neck that awful, blessed day.

And so I’m brought back, of course, to Hopkins. “Why? [. . .] That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.”

Job repented, not of sins he had committed against his fellow man, but because he – this most righteous man, by God’s own witness – had yet to see the God he served. I long to see Him – and therefore I must accept the suffering as blessing indeed, as He draws me lovingly towards Himself by its means. Without that blessing, would I even know Him, much less understand even the little I do of His grace?

Fact-Checking

Reading Hillary Waugh's history of detective fiction this past week, I found of interest his description of how fanatical a fact-checker he is, even with his fictional works. It reminded me of two most irritating errors I'd encountered earlier in the week, one in a piece of fiction, one in a non-fiction book on writing.

I should have known not to buy a detective novel with a Kansas setting written by a California writer. But in some things I am a slow learner, and I miss Kansas, so I picked it up at the used bookstore. It wasn't that great, but I read it all because it was about Kansas and I have a terrible habit of finishing bad books just because I've started them. (I'm getting a little better, but as I slog on, hope springs eternal; surely the next chapter will take off . . . or the next . . . surely?)

The novel has the typical stereotypes -- "small Midwestern towns are full of rednecks and dysfunctional, immoral people" (everyone who rodeos is a redneck, you know, and in small towns no one can be happily and chastely married but all must be lusting after and chasing each other's spouses, children, and mistresses), but even that was not (quite) fatal. The fatal moment occurred when the writer described a baby quilt at a quilt fair: it had baseball motifs all over it, and the explanation by the stitcher was something like "the only Kansas City Chiefs game he's missed is the day he was delivered."

Now, I am not into professional sports at all; I especially dislike football and only tolerate the idea of baseball. But even I know that the Chiefs are the football team, and the Royals are the baseball team. And any writer who doesn't bother to get right something that easy to check on . . . well, what can I say? No more books by that author for me.

The other error was even more irritating, though I am willing to be corrected on it if I've missed something.

In a book by a professional editor/agent on writing, the author was describing writer's block. To give it some emotional heft, she used a line from a poem, which she attributed to Milton -- "give my roots rain."

Now, I could have missed the line where Milton uses this phrase, but I'm fairly familiar with his poetry and I've never seen it. It's Gerard Manley Hopkins, for cryin' out loud, in one of the Terrible Sonnets, and writer's block was, I'm pretty sure, the least of his concerns at the time. Bad enough to get the wrong poet, but when the context of a poem is entirely ignored in using a line from it, I find it somehow cheapens the poet's work. It's like my students using quote sites to find a "famous" quote that happens to have a word in it that relates to an assigned essay topic. They have no idea who the author is or when the quote was made or in what context; it just sounds like it might impress the teacher.

Fact-checking. It should just be obvious that you do it before you publish, or even before you just converse about a subject. There is so much deception and distortion everywhere we turn (the increased access to all kinds of media makes this that much worse); how can we carry on a debate over truth when we refuse to even check the facts on which truth is based?

(And where on earth were the copy-editors of these books, by the way?)

Thanksgiving Break

Classes done, emails taken care of, only one set of essays to take home and grade over the break. Not bad. The YM is gone to visit his sister and sister-in-law, so we'll get a little taste of the empty nest for a few days. Neighbors invited us for Thanksgiving dinner. I am hoping I will perhaps actually be rested for the final two weeks of classes and final exams.

I am at that point that arrives all too often of having too much to do and too many ideas for other things I'd like to do and too little time and energy for, it seems, any of it. I have a hard time trusting in any case, but I think this may be the worst kind of time in some ways. There's no definite thing I want that I don't have, no definite source of frustration, just a kind of low grade "I wish . . . something; I just don't know what."

So it's time to practice gratitude, as the holiday reminds me, and say what I know is true: I am loved, my life has purpose, and if all I can do is just the next thing, then that's fine.

In "Messenger," Mary Oliver starts the poem with the simple and profound line, "My work is loving the world." The second stanza reads "Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? / Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me / keep my mind on what matters, / which is my work."

And part of that work is "gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart / and these body-clothes, / a mouth with which to give shouts of joy / to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, / telling them all, over and over, how it is / that we live forever."

Yes. Thank You, Lord. Thank You, indeed.

"To a discerning Eye -- "

What constantly startles me about literature, no matter how many times I see it in play, is just how revealing it really is, how there are always connections upon connections, how it helps us see and understand.

I taught the following Emily Dickinson poem in Intro to Lit recently, and the students were quick to come up with all kinds of good examples of the concept in action in our world:

“Much Madness is divinest Sense –
To a discerning Eye –
Much Sense – the starkest Madness –
‘Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail –
Assent – and you are sane –
Demur – you’re straightway dangerous –
And handled with a Chain – “

I taught the poem because I like it, and it’s true, and I like to end our unit on poetry with poems that speak to students at this Christian college of matters of faith. They loved it, and I was happy with a good class day.

Then I went to my freshman comp class the next day, for which they had read a piece defining the two words “deft” and “daft,” which happen to have the same root. The writer ends the piece with “These days it is usually considered much better to be deft than daft. But don’t be too sure. It is good to remind ourselves that one person’s deftness might very well appear as daftness to another.”

Now the writer might, I suppose, just be a relativist (a la ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”). But I liked the paragraph, and when my students had trouble with it, I put the first three lines of Dickinson’s poem on the board to discuss. And then they got it.

Then I watched Criminal Minds that night. (I like it partly because of the characters and story lines but partly, I confess, because every time I see Mandy Patinkin, I can say, “I went to college with him!” It makes watching Princess Bride even more satisfying. [No, I didn't know him. But I saw him play a stellar Guildenstern in R & G are Dead and Hamlet on alternating nights on the KU stage. That's gotta count for something.])

In the course of the particular episode, a woman finds herself in a car with a bomb beneath her seat set to go off if she gets up. So one of the younger team members, Derek Morgan, stands by the car door and holds her hand, encouraging her, and refuses to move when one of the team leaders tells him to because he isn’t about to let this woman go through the terror of the bomb’s defusing alone.

Gideon (Patinkin), the team’s older leader, isn’t there, but tells someone he is interviewing that “a young man I care very much about is putting his life on the line right now.” Reid of course passes this on, Morgan asks Gideon about it in the plane on the way back to Maryland, Gideon admits to it -- then tells Morgan, “What you did with the bomb? That was stupid.”

Morgan is crushed. When Gideon looks up and sees his face, he adds, “I didn’t say it was wrong.”

“Much Madness is divinest sense.”

A belated thanks to all our vets who often must look mad to the oh-so-sane world, and to all others as well who madly put themselves in harm's way (physically and in other ways) for our protection.

Full Moon

Starting for work, a wintery sky mirroring my own flu-achey discouragement, I saw, for the first time in weeks, Phoebe, her full orb overwhelming rag-tag clouds to light me down the old ferry road to the highway. The hope of beauty once again, a lovely reminder on a grey November morning.

Autumn

It rained last night. This morning a grey mist settled over the tops of the evergreens, softening them into a new autumn beauty and deepening their contrast with the flaming reds and burnished golds of their neighbors. On campus I walk through the mist as in another world, a faerie world where hope lies hidden, waiting, just beyond the edge of sight.

Thought for the Day

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." (Plato)

Wrestling with God, Again

I have been thinking a great deal about the nature of suffering the past couple of years. Lately, a number of young women have come through my door to ask me about depression, many of them having been told that they must "snap out of it," or "get right with the Lord," so that they can be happy.

Depression is my own most intimate knowledge of suffering. I am not a counselor, only a listening empathetic ear, but I do know this: the suffering of depression is not sin. One may, of course, choose to sin in response to that suffering (as I have so terribly, far too many times), but the suffering is not sin.

We tend, I think, to see it as such because, as Christians, we are told that we must rejoice. But joy and happiness are not the same thing. One can be most unhappy and still have joy. The key for the one who suffers from depression is learning where that joy lies and how to cling to it in the midst of depression's sadness and even despair, knowing the difference between the suffering of depression and the truth of God's love for us.

I love the scene in Lord of the Rings when Pippin and Gandalf are standing together on the walls of Minas Tirith looking out over the rising darkness from Mordor that threatens to engulf all of Middle Earth; they do not yet know whether Frodo is still alive or Sauron has recovered the Ring. Pippin looks at Gandalf: "In the wizard's face he saw at first only lines of care and sorrow; though as he looked more intently he perceived that underneath there was a great joy: a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to burst forth."

And Hopkins, of course, in even the most terrible of the Terrible Sonnets, always seeing the spark of hope that is his salvation, knowing that the One who seems to be his enemy is in truth his Friend, and crying out to Him, even his cries of anguish a form of worship, however deep his despair.

And the star in the darkness above Mordor that gives Sam the hope that carries him through the last terrible days of their ordeal, reminding him that above the darkness is something greater and eternal, that the darkness, however long it may last and whatever evil it may accomplish, is still only for a moment in comparison to beauty.

Depression may come once, twice, or last a lifetime. But all of us suffer in this world, one way or another. What will we do with it, and will we let it overwhelm the beauty that objectively still surrounds us? In "When Roses Speak, I Pay Attention," Mary Oliver writes that the roses tell us, "Listen, / the heart-shackles are not, as you think, / death, illness, pain, / unrequited hope, not loneliness, but / lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety, / selfishness."

The first things she names come to all of us, whether we will or no. We can choose -- though the choice can be extremely difficult at times -- not to wallow in the latter ones. May the Lord bring to us the friends and counselors we need to help us learn how to make that choice, not be too hard on ourselves when we inevitably fail (repent and go on living without wallowing in guilt, either; He knows our frame and has already forgiven), and daily draw closer to Him in whatever suffering He allows for our refinement.

"Why?" Hopkins asks in "Carrion Comfort" of the suffering given him. "That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear."

I pray, with fear and trembling, for clear grain, Lord, to serve You with.

"The Uses of Sorrow"

from Mary Oliver's new collection of poetry, Thirst.

The Uses of Sorrow
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.


I feel so close to understanding and so far at the same time. The Heavenly Hound, thank Him, is relentless. I want to stop and rest in His wild faithfulness, but I am so often afraid. Yet every taste has always been sweeter than honey.

Oliver writes in the title poem, the book's epilogue: "I was never a quick scholar but sulked / and hunched over my books past the / hour and the bell; grant me, in your / mercy, a little more time."

Oh, for a little more time, to learn Him in humility and love . . .

Brooding

(I wanted to post this last Friday, but computer glitches did not allow.)

From Mark Jarman's Unholy Sonnets, #34

Although I know God's immanence can speak
In sunlight's parallels and intersections;
Although I know the spiritual techniques
For finding God in all things, when I pray
It is to nothing manifest at all.
And though I know it's only technical,
I do not pray to nothing. Yesterday,
One of those off-hand, razor-edged rejections
The world flips like a Frisbee grazed my cheek.
It drew blood. No consoling recollections
Of having shaken off that sort of play
Helped me to forget it. I could not recall
My strength, and brooded, lost and tragical,
Till, marking this blank page, I found a way.


Failure seems to be the predominant mode of my life lately. I love this poem because it reminds me, first, that I'm not the only one who can't seem to live by spiritual cliches, and second, that I need to write. So it's off to finish the grading and give myself time to write, seriously, for at least a few hours this so-called break.

Needing to stop brooding, lost and tragical. What a pathetic way to live this "one wild and precious life" (Mary Oliver).

Fall Break

Dragged home scads of paper today -- homework I'm behind on grading, exams and essays that need to be taken care of before classes begin again a week from Monday. Discouraging to look at, but I'm trying to keep remembering that what is done this week doesn't have to be done after classes are back in swing and more of it coming in.

I'm utterly exhausted. But so many good meetings with students this week that make it worthwhile.

A tiny taste during the week of letting go and not trying to keep control of my time, my work. Getting things done that had to be but without worry and frustration at interruptions and needed conversations. I hope to hold on to that and practice it again this week at home, with much to do here as well as for the job and the constant temptations there will be to laziness rather than good rest.

Oh, to learn to live in Him, to let Him live in me.

Dillard Thoughts

Glancing through the last chapter of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek this morning, I was struck with the following passage:

I think that the dying pray at the last not "please," but "thank you," as a guest thanks his host at the door. Falling from airplanes the people are crying thank you, thank you, all down the air; and the cold carriages draw up for them on the rocks. Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. And then you walk fearlessly, eating what you must, growing wherever you can, like the monk on the road who knows precisely how vulnerable he is, who takes no comfort among death-forgetting men, and who carries his vision of vastness and might around in his tunic like a live coal which neither burns nor warms him, but with which he will not part.

I long to be fearless, seeing. I long to be, instead of always striving. I will not part with the live coal I carry, and I will not take comfort where no comfort may be truly found. Be Thou my vision . . . nought be all else to me save that Thou art . . .

On Theory

All I have to say today is this: Never agree to write on a topic which you mostly know through theory.

God will not let you write from theory.