Beauty Meditations: Day Three

And here is what should have been today's:

Back in the early years of our marriage, we furnished our home and ourselves largely through garage sales. One day my husband came home and handed me a red blouse he’d found. I was horrified. “I can’t wear red!” I wailed. “Why don’t you try it?” he replied; “I think it would look good on you.”

I’d never worn red in my life – ordinary blues and light pastels had always been my most-worn colors. When, with great trepidation, I put on the blouse, the effect startled me: it brought out the color in my cheeks, made my eyes more green than brown – I looked good in it. If I’d refused to try something that another person had thought would be attractive, I’d have missed out on the pleasure of wearing many of the “winter” colors that I love so much – purple, red, black, teal.

We want to name ourselves; this is our fallen human nature. “I like this; I want this; this is who I am: how dare anyone else try to tell me who I am or who I should be?” Our whole culture teaches us that autonomy is the greatest good, that to trust anyone else to tell us who we are is enslavement and loss. But if we give up the right to name ourselves, how much richer our lives become. Others can see us as we cannot see ourselves – pointing out our flaws so that we can overcome them, our virtues and beauties to help us strengthen and use them in service to our neighbor.

Ultimately, of course, God is the only One who has the right – first by creation and then by redemption – to name us. Richard John Neuhaus, in Death on a Friday Afternoon, writes that “the self is an objective truth to be discovered[, not] a subjective choice determined by the self.” We have an identity: “It is no longer I, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). The “quintessence of original sin,” Neuhaus also says, “is the desire to be like God on our own terms.” We will name ourselves, we will determine in what ways we will be like Christ, we will hold onto our supposed right to choose the ways we will and will not serve Him.

And yet . . . the One whose Name we carry – the very Son of the very God – did not even presume to name Himself. Christ Jesus, “though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name [. . .]” (Phil. 2: 5-9). And we are to have this same mind, the heart desire that abandons self to obedience, allowing God to name us now and for eternity.

How will you allow your Lord to name you, to make you the woman He created you to be?

Beauty Meditations: Day Two

I should have posted this yesterday:

This morning I put on make-up. I don’t always; my skin requires a very expensive brand, and it takes time I don’t always wish to spend. But today I woke feeling tired and out-of-sorts, and watching the dark circles and age spots disappear, along with some irritating blemishes and a scratch or two, made me feel a little perkier, a little more ready to face the day. I was careful, however, to put medication on those scratches and blemishes before I covered them up. Otherwise, by day’s end, they’d be much worse, perhaps even infected. The healing process would take that much longer, and require that I eschew make-up altogether for several days – whether I wanted to or not – while openly sporting the painful sores caused by my own negligence.

Just as there’s little worse for our skin than covering up blemishes without treating them, there’s little worse for our souls than putting on a beautiful façade to cover festering sin. How often do we mask anger and irritation with a bright false smile, jealousy with a sham compliment, contempt with a condescendingly kind act – only to allow those ungodly attitudes to lie unchecked and unhealed beneath the surface?

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees!” Jesus cried. “For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matt. 23:27).

Of course, it isn’t particularly better to pretend that “just as I am” means it’s somehow all right to remain a physical and spiritual slob. Casual dress and no make-up are frequently appropriate, but consistently taking no care for our appearance suggests laziness of spirit as well as body. I’m not talking about the wild hair and sweaty results of hard work or hard play – I’m talking about the deliberate choice to appear to the world as though it is somehow beneath us to make a little effort to look nice. Just “being myself” without trying to improve is always unattractive, both physically and spiritually.

The woman who dresses and acts like a hypocrite, hiding sin under exterior beauty, eventually fools no one; that very beauty draws attention to her unlovely heart. The woman who refuses to care for her appearance also draws attention to herself, causing others to wonder if she cares as little about her heart as her appearance.

In either case, the need is clear: to learn how we can look and act so that we draw attention to the Lord who died for us. First of all we must care for heart and soul – developing the “imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” (I Pet. 3:4). Smoothing the healing balm of the Holy Spirit’s power on the blemishes and scratches of our sin, we can be free to look and act what we are: the glorious Bride of Christ, holy and spotless before Him. Then His heart desire will be fulfilled in us as we bring glory to Him, serving our neighbors in the wonder and power of His love.

A smile when we feel angry, a kind word or act when we feel jealous or contemptuous: these aren’t hypocrisy – as long as the sin that threatens us in those feelings is being treated by the Great Physician and the smile or word or act shows our heart desire to be healed of it. Only we know for sure; look in the mirror to find His beauty.

Beauty Meditations: Day One

I was honored to be asked by my college's Women's Ministry council to write some meditations on beauty for an activity they planned for the campus women for this week. I was impressed by their desire to present some challenges without being superficial or judgmental, and their thoughtfulness, their humility, their joyful loveliness. They've put the meditations together in a pamphlet, one for each day of the school week. I thought I would post them here each day as they might be of interest to others.

Beauty Meditations: Day One

Women long to know that we are beautiful. No matter how well or poorly our physical appearance may reflect contemporary social standards, we long to hear the words “You’re so beautiful” from someone who matters. Everywhere and in all ages, we have found ways to enhance and improve our natural features.

Sometimes we are told this desire is invariably a self-centered wrong: “you shouldn’t care about your appearance; be content and focus on serving” – as if beauty and service were mutually exclusive. But I cannot think that this is God’s view of it. Yes, indeed, in I Peter 3:3 we read, “Do not let your adorning be external – the braiding of hair, the wearing of gold, or the putting on of clothing [. . .] .” We would be foolish to ignore this exhortation from the pre-eminent apostle who walked and talked with our Lord – but what does the exhortation mean? Does it really mean “don’t ever dress up”?

It appears so at first: “Do not . . . .” But do not what? Wear gold jewelry, braid one’s hair . . . put on clothing? That third item means exactly what is generally translated: don’t put on clothing. There is no qualification: it doesn’t say “fancy” clothing, or “expensive” or “immodest”; it says, literally, “go naked.”

Obviously Peter is not telling us to be unclothed. And since that’s the case, perhaps he isn’t telling us, either, never to wear jewelry or braid our hair; perhaps we will find there is a place for these in our lives as godly women. Rather, he is drawing a contrast between two modes of behavior, two ways of gaining attention. He addresses wives in this passage, instructing them to win over husbands who are disobedient to God’s Word, not by nagging and not through attention-getting dress, but by “respectful and pure conduct” (v. 2) – by their righteous behavior.* They are to demonstrate godly lives which will draw others to the Lord they obey.

He addresses wives, but haven’t we all attempted to attract the attention of others, especially men, by our appearance? A new hairstyle, a sexy dress with heels, just the right make-up, some flashy jewelry – and surely they will notice me now. But this is not the way we should go about gaining attention, not in fact the purpose of attention. To dress in order to draw attention to the self is a self-centered wrong. Instead, it is “the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” (v. 4) which will attract the right kind of attention – the thought-provoking attention that changes lives by drawing them to the Source of life.

Are your words, gestures, deeds those of a woman who loves the Lord? To whom are they drawing attention? Yourself – or your Lord who lives in you?

*No, wives are not to be silent doormats or take abuse – but that is a subject for another time and place.

Love Makes Us Wise

Tony Esolen has another excellent post up at Mere Comments today, "I Want to be on that Man's Team." It's about baseball player Albert Pujols, who is apparently a truly great player (about which Inscapes readers will know that I can attest nothing): "I only want to be remembered as a man who loved the Lord," Pujols told a Sports Illustrated reporter. We should all desire to be remembered this way, because, as Tony writes, "the love of Christ -- Christ's love for us, and our love for Him -- is the most remarkable thing in the history of the world."

The gospel is not first of all or mainly for the philosophers and theologians, Tony asserts, though of course we need doctrine, "if only to keep certain riffraff off the streets." The gospel is too complex for even such a brilliant intellect as a Thomas Aquinas and yet at the same time simple enough for any little child to understand. And it is love, he says, that makes us truly wise:

"And all these simple people who love Christ, who may not be able to persuade a single skeptic that God even exists, know what they know by their love, and are far the wiser for it. They are my brothers and sisters, my teammates, in the oldest and most glorious communion the world has seen; a communion that has brought the world the odd idea that only in love is there freedom; because Truth has said so."

I was reminded by this post of a constant tension I find in my own thinking -- the mysteries and intellectual complexities of Scripture and tradition make my mind reel at times and I feel almost despair: how can I ever know what is true amid all the confusion of these varying interpretations and depths and layers of meaning . . . and then I am brought up short by some simple thing -- a song, or a hug from a friend, or a moonrise -- and I think, it's all so very, very simple: "Jesus loves me, this I know / for the Bible tells me so."

I tend to think of myself as an intellectual, if a rather minor one, and it is good to be reminded that my intellectual grasp of anything is beside the point. Not unimportant or worthless, but merely beside the point. For without love, all my knowledge is at best a clanging cymbal.

Tony says it much better; read his whole post .

Easter: "Home to the Waiting Father"

Christ is Risen!

He is risen indeed!

As Neuhaus puts it in the final paragraph of Death on a Friday Afternoon:

To prodigal children lost in a distant land, to disciples who forsook him and fled, to a thief who believed [. . .], to those who did not know that what they did they did to God, to the whole bedraggled company of humankind he had abandoned heaven to join, he says, "Come. Everything is ready now. In your fears and your laughter, in your friendships and farewells, in your loves and losses, in what you have been able to do and in what you know you will never get done, come, follow me. We are going home to the waiting Father."

"It is Finished."

In Chapter Six of Death on a Friday Afternoon, Neuhaus writes on the next-to-last word of Christ on the Cross: "It is finished." I can do no better than give this extended quotation to remind us of what that means:

He created out of nothing -- ex nihilo -- but His love. The Word is both His love and His beloved. "Without Him was not anything made that was made." Through Him God loved us into being. When He formed Adam from the primordial muck, He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. He breathes love. Adam inhaled love. Here at the cross point, the new Adam exhales, "It is finished." The first Adam breathes in and the second Adam breathes out, and both breathe love. What began in Genesis is now finished. What began there is that love should give birth to love. So it was that through the Word the first Adam came to be and, because he did not love, the Word became the second Adam, who bore the fault of all the Adams and all the Eves of aborted love. Here at the cross point, that work is definitively finished. Here is the one Person who did and who was what through the centuries and millennia the rest of us had failed to do and be. Quite simply and wondrously, He loved the Father as He was loved by the Father.

It is finished, yet time goes on. It is not over. Through all time, the cross point is the point of entry into His life and love, for that life and that love fill all time. [. . .] What happened at the cross point is what the first Adam was supposed to have done in the beginning. This is the Omega point, the end and the destiny of the love that was to give birth to love. It took the One who is both Alpha and Omega to restore life to love aborted.

It is finished, yet it is not over. It is finished means it is settled, decided, certain, complete and incontestable. Consummatum est. Nothing can happen now to undo it. Now there is absolutely nothing to fear. The worst has already happened. [We do not know why time goes on until all things are brought into subjection to Him, but we do know this:] The human project cannot fail because God has invested Himself in it; the Second Person of the Trinity is truly one of us. God has taken our part by taking our place.

"Witnesses"

In Chapter 5 of Death on a Friday Afternoon, Neuhaus addresses the fifth word of Jesus from the Cross: "I thirst." He emphasizes the traditional missionary nature of the words -- Christ's thirsting for lost souls, the Fountain of life who quenches their thirst for Him: "I thirst; I quench," as written above the doors of the Sisters of Charity missions of Mother Theresa.

But throughout the chapter runs a thread which especially draws me: the gospel is a story, Neuhaus reminds us, a story we both live and tell. "It is the true story about the world and everybody in the world," Neuhaus writes, "the story of the amazing grace by which [the world] is redeemed." It is also the story of "our lives in the world," of how we are to live: we are the salt and light of the world, Jesus tells us -- not our message merely, but we ourselves, the lives we live not just on faraway mission fields but in the daily round of the ordinary wherever we find ourselves.

It is the story of everyone in the world, Neuhaus says, "whether they know it or not. [. . .] The Church is the mission of Christ, who continues to seek and to save the lost who do not know their story. Their story is Christ, the way, the truth, and the life of all." Through us, "Christ, the lover, proposes" to the lost.

Christ's story is the story of "fidelity to the Father to the very end, to the death." To effect our salvation, to redeem this lost world, Christ had to "[lay[ down His life [in] perfect obedience, abandonment, loss of control, committing all to the Father." He "trusts that the Father will not finally abandon Him," Neuhaus concedes, but reminds us too that His "trust is vindicated only after the cup is emptied," after His complete abandonment to the Father's will" -- "not My will but Thine be done."

And the invitation to us is, yes, a proposal to be the Bride in all her loveliness when He comes into His kingdom -- but also, and more immediately, to "share in His suffering." Christ "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." We are offered the astonishing privilege of "participation in the suffering of Christ" as part of what it means to live Christ's life in a suffering world. As He emptied Himself for our sake, abandoned Himself entirely to the Father's will, so we too are invited to empty ourselves to His will, so we too live to His glory.

To live to His glory, Neuhaus reminds us, is not a "driven, frenetic, sweated, interminable quest for saving souls. It is doing for His glory what God has given us to do." We are not all called to deepest Africa or the darkness of the inner city. But wherever we are called, we are to live to please God: "Souls are saved," Neuhaus writes, "by saved souls who live out their salvation by thinking and living differently, with a martyr's resolve, in a world marked by falsehood, baseness, injustice, impurity, ugliness and mediocrity." We do this freely, confident in His love, "with a kind of reckless abandon that is holy insouciance," knowing that our only Judge is the loving Father of the Son He gave to redeem us.

Our story is His story -- a story of abandonment to the Creator-Father who desires our redemption, a story of participation in the suffering of His Son to redeem the suffering of a lost world, a story for all people for all time. Christ thirsts for lost souls, for our souls. He "thirsts for those who throw away their lives in the everydayness of duties discerned and duties done" -- those who will live His story, day in and day out, trusting that He will glorify Himself in our obedience and self-abandonment.

"Come, Christians, Join to Sing!"

Please go to Mere Comments to enjoy Tony Esolen's wonderful new post, "Come, Christians, Join to Sing!"

The Day of the Jackal

Murder mysteries are my usual "light reading" choice. Spy thrillers are not my cup of tea; too much political intrigue as a rule to keep my interest. But when we went to McKay's at the beginning of spring break a couple of weeks ago, I picked up Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal, thinking I ought to give it a try since it is such a well-regarded classic of the genre. I began reading just a chapter a day when I could get to it, enjoying it much more than I'd thought I would . . . then yesterday, with about the last half to go, I couldn't put it down till I finished. It's a truly excellent work.

Perhaps "spy" is a bit of a misnomer; it's about an assassin who is hired by resistance forces to kill Charles deGaulle, and the hunt for him when the plot is discovered. But Forsyth skillfully weaves in the political background of the story and the rationale of the rebels, remaining true to history as he creates his own characters and plot to place within its bounds. No one knows who the Jackal is, except that he is a tall, blonde Englishman who has never been connected with any name or any crime. Forsyth first introduces us to the rebels and their decision to hire a foreign assassin after their sixth attempt to kill deGaulle goes astray and one of their leaders is executed; then he follows the Jackal's meticulous planning, including the various disguises he prepares (along with passports and papers for each), leaving us no doubt of his cool and merciless character. Finally, the government forces discover the plot and the hunt is on -- Commissaire Ledel versus the Jackal in a battle of wits, the stakes literally life or death.

Forsyth kept my attention with every* word. He writes with much detail, but every* detail essential. His style is not mannered in any way; it is an excellent example of realist writing which keeps the writer out of the text through any obvious mannerisms or commentary. The structure is perfect as he moves back and forth between simultaneous events without losing the thread of the narrative, neither giving away too much too soon nor holding back needed information to follow the complex plot. We never learn who the Jackal is, and he is portrayed as a mysterious and unknowable man with no conscience but a taste for the good life, which he plans to live after completing this last job for enough money to "retire" on. Many of the other characters are well-rounded, not overly stereotyped (some of the more minor ones are, of course; one can't have such a huge cast as he does without some shorthand characterization); he is particularly good at creating the tensions of conversation in which there are competing personal and professional interests.

Ironies of all sorts abound, and the hypocrisies and ambitions of the politicians (and the hubris of deGaulle) are interestingly contrasted with Ledel's single-minded pursuit of criminals who would destroy the peace. When the government men following the investigation complain of his contacting heads of police in other states, Ledel says mildly, "all countries, whatever their political outlook, are opposed to crime. So we are not involved in the same rivalries as the more political branches of international relations." They needn't worry about the discretion of police in other countries, he assures them: "The political assassin is the world's outlaw." After receiving the assignment, the narrator tells us that Ledel might have been thinking of the immense power given him or the honors that might come if he succeeded or the repercussions of failure -- but "[b]ecause he was what he was, he thought of none of these things. He was puzzling as to how he would explain over the phone to Amelie [his wife] that he was not coming home until further notice."

The contrast of the small, henpecked detective with the confident, handsome, physically strong Jackal works excellently. The Jackal knows his job and pursues it single-mindedly, certain of his success because certain of his own abilities, and driven by his selfish desires. But the detective, whose appearance works against him in the government briefing room, is no less single-minded and at least as brilliant. He, however, places his confidence in his method and his colleagues, not in his personal brilliance, and is driven by his ideal of justice. And Forsyth develops their battle in a novel I highly recommend.

*My one caveat: I did feel that the few scenes of sexual intimacy were overdone and gratuitous; one doesn't need the detail there either to follow the plot or to understand the characters. These are not frequent, but I found them disturbing.

The Hermeneutics of Suspicion

Reading Chapter 4 of Death on a Friday Afternoon, I was struck by the following passage, possibly because my friend Pamela and I have discussed the topic a few times as she's been studying for her MA comps this semester.

Neuhaus speaks of "the toxic cultural air of a disenchanted world in which the mark of sophistication is to reduce wonder to banality. Even more, the acids of intellectual urbanity turn sacrifice into delusion, generosity into greed, and love into self-aggrandizement. In academic circles, this is called 'the hermeneutics of suspicion,' meaning that things are interpreted to reveal that they are not in fact what they appear to be. At least things that seem to suggest the true, the beautiful and the good are not what they appear to be. They must be exposed and debunked if we are to get to 'the truth of the matter.' The false, the self-serving, the ugly and the evil, on the other hand, are permitted to stand as revealing 'the real world.'"

All I can say to this is yes, indeed. We call happy endings and lovely poetry "cheesy," and only accept as real that which is cynical and ugly and despairing. How sad. Because the only real story there is to tell, despite its having to take place in a broken world, is filled with loveliness and ends more happily than we can even imagine.

Spring Hope

I went out just as night descended this evening to find Phoebe in a lovely amber dress floating among clouds dark against the newly night sky. Just now I went out again to enjoy the spring air and found her changed to her brightest pure white, holding the floating clouds at bay with her brilliant beams. I can barely breathe, my eyes are on fire, but I cannot resist spring, the new life, the abundance, the color bursting into view . . . the hope of beauty everlasting.

"A Strange Glory"

Chapter 3 of Death on a Friday Afternoon is a meditation on the third word from the Cross, first to Mary and then to John: "Woman, behold your son. [. . .] Behold, your mother!" Here Neuhaus explores the position of Mary as simultaneously mother of Jesus and first disciple of Jesus. He emphasizes two of her statements in particular.

"Let it be to me according to your word." Mary accepts, in full trust, the commission of God to bear His Son and have her own heart broken. She risks all human security -- how could she know if Joseph would choose to protect her? -- for absolute obedience to the Absolute. She is our model for how to respond to the Father, no matter what He asks of us.

"Do whatever He tells you." These, Neuhaus notes, are the last words of Mary recorded in the Scriptures, and he stresses their importance: "Everything about Mary is from Christ and to Christ," he writes; "Mary is the icon of the disciple-Church."

Mary's obedience and trust show us our own way. "To say that Mary's way is not our way is to say that Christ's way is not our way," Neuhaus says, "for Mary was in every respect the disciple of her Son." And "What she said she also did, and in her loss of her Son and her loss of herself she knew 'Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.'"

Mary gave herself in "total availabilty to the will of God. She had no business of her own. She was always on call." But it is this availability, this trust that leads one through the inevitable hardship and brokenness of obedience -- for we are all called to die to self and abandon all that we see for only a hope -- to the light of the Cross. "At the heart of darkness the hope of the world is dying on a cross, and the longest stride of soul is to see in this a strange glory": the glory of hope and redemption, of love and life.

"In wonder is wisdom born." I desire to lose myself this Lent in wonder at the strange glory of the Cross, the redemption that would come, not from armed battle and kingly grasp of power, but from the utter sacrifice that to the world was a fool's mad suicide. May we have the courage, the trust, the will, to "do whatever He tells us," to know that the Fool is truly King of kings and Lord of lords and worthy of all glory and honor and praise.

"Judge Not"

Chapter 2 of Death on a Friday Afternoon is “Judge Not,” on the words “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” I love a couple of the remarks Neuhaus makes in the second paragraph: the thief on the cross “stole at the end a reward he did not deserve,” and then, considering the judgment image of the sheep and goats, “The good thief is a found sheep. More accurately, he is a goat who was made an honorary sheep just before his time ran out.” Neuhaus often makes me laugh with such witty gems.

Neuhaus discusses the thief’s mustard seed faith, hardly able to crack the earth as he first knows and expressed it even as he is dying beside his Lord, and says, “Christ’s response to our faith is ever so much greater than our faith. Give Him an opening, almost any opening, and He opens life to wonder beyond measure.” How true this proves every day. No matter how I feel, how harried I am, whether depression has emerged from the depths to take over mind and heart yet again, the least overture to Him, made in the weakest possible faith (“I believe, help Thou my unbelief!” or, perhaps, “to whom else should I turn? You alone have the words of life . . .”) – He answers, answers with abundant blessing if I will open my eyes to see. So often I think to be blessed means for things to go well – my mother-in-law’s cancer would have been cured, my daddy will know me again, the computer will work as I want it to and not keep wasting my time . . . But so often He showers me with a very different kind of blessing – showing me how to die well, demonstrating loving service before me, teaching me to be patient . . . perhaps accompanied by a lovely moonrise or an encouraging poem or a word of hope from a dear friend . . . Oh, He blesses every day the feeblest movement of faith.

I’m sure I posted this thought last time I read the book, but I love its wonderful truth: “The farther [Christian thinkers and mystics] travel on the roads of thought and contemplation, the more they know that they do not know. The most rigorous thought and the most exalted spiritual experience brings us, again and again, to exclaim with St. Paul, ‘O the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!’ Therefore it is rightly said that all theology is finally doxology. That is to say, all analysis and explanation finally dissolves into wonder and praise.” I want to be one who praises Him because I do not know but the smallest thing about Him.

Neuhaus says, “The entire discussion of judgment and grace in the Letter to the Romans is to drive home how total is our dependence upon God’s grace in Christ.” This is a truth that, thank Him, is almost forced on me every day: between depression, fibromyalgia, arthritis, exhaustion, my need for His grace is held before me. This is not to say that I don’t often forget it, still; I am not that mature. I would rather find some solution to my difficulties, complain about them to receive the attention of others, use them as excuses to fail. Rather, it is only to say that I have reminders before me if I choose to see them, and He uses them to teach this slow-to-learn heart, gradually, to think of Him first, instead of only after exhausting all other futile attempts to find relief. And He does not give relief from the difficulties themselves, not often, but meets me in them with the strength – His strength – to do His work.

A last thought for this post: “We are saved [. . .] on behalf of all, to be reconcilers, intercessors, and mediators for all.” We are not saved to be separated from the world, to be against the world, Neuhaus says. We are saved to be about Christ’s business of reconciliation, loving and praying for all to know Him. It is so easy to get caught up in the busy-ness of our days, to be disgusted by the ever-increasing depths of sin surrounding us, to insulate ourselves safely within our holy country clubs . . . but we must see the world as He sees it: God “desires all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” And how shall they see unless we go where they are, hear unless we speak what we know?

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us – and let us be willing conveyors of that mercy to the world around us.

Where is my heart?

I found this quotation at The Catholic Thing tonight and thought it especially appropriate for Lent (and especially appropriate for me for every day . . .):

"Where is my heart?" What is the prevailing disposition that determines its attitude, the real mainspring that keeps the rest of its movement going? It may, perhaps, be some long-existing tendency: some attachment or bitterness or aversion. It may be just a momentary impression: but so deep and strong that it has affected the heart long afterwards. In the "habitual" examination of conscience, we ask ourselves, "Where is my heart?" And thus, often during the day, we uncover the disposition and inclination of our heart at the moment and so penetrate to its central core, from which our various works and deeds and activities issue. We discover the chief wellsprings of good and evil within ourselves. ---Benedict Baur

Lenten Thoughts

My lifetime in mainline and evangelical Protestant churches has not given me much understanding of Lent. I have always been intrigued by the concept of “giving something up for Lent,” but I never understood why one would do so and thus never thought about actually doing so myself.

In the past few years I’ve begun to pay more attention, and reading Death on a Friday Afternoon, a meditation meant for any time but especially appropriate for Lent, has given me a glimmer of what Lent might be about. Recently on a weblog of Christian debate where I read regularly, Dr. Frank Beckwith announced his intention of giving up blogs and blogging for Lent , which led to some discussion in the comments section about the purpose of the season. I ventured tentatively to offer my thoughts and was relieved and gratified to have them affirmed by some of the contributors I trust and learn from, and so I have reworked them for Inscapes.

Someone asked that if one gave up something harmful for Lent, something one indulged in too much perhaps, then wasn’t that bad if one merely intended to return to it afterwards. This would be an excellent objection were that the object of the Lenten fast, but it’s a misunderstanding, one I shared until pretty recently. A Lenten fast is not for giving up that which one should give up anyway, something that is bad for one at any time. That shouldn't take Lent for us to do; that we should do as soon as we realize the need. Rather, in giving up something, sacrificing it, for Lent, something which may well be a good in itself, an innocent pleasure or whatnot, one is creating opportunities to reflect instead -- when desiring that thing -- on the far greater, ultimate sacrifice of the Lord that occurred on Good Friday, and on one's own nature which led to the need of that sacrifice, and thus to gratefulness for His doing what we could not.

I think, from what I hear, that it is not uncommon for people to find they can do with less of whatever they give up for Lent, and to form a habit of doing without which may be good for them. But this, if I understand aright, is a side benefit of the fast, a secondary result of the time for reflection it provides, not the point and not a necessary result. The real benefit of the fast is a renewed understanding of what has been done for us on the Cross, which we hope will stay with us in our busied lives, but which gets so easily crowded out that it is always healthy to find time to reflect upon. This is, I believe, the reason for the weekly fasts some traditions hold to, including the fast from meat on Fridays that used to be a Catholic tradition. Instead of indulging in a normal pleasure, one abstains from it, and uses the abstention as opportunity for prayer and reflection: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

The forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness fasting provides the paradigm, of course. Someone was concerned about missing Dr. Beckwith’s contributions in a number of places on the web; his is a valuable ministry to many. But I think of how Jesus went to pray on the mountaintop alone, not every minute being available to the disciples. Even He needed rest and renewal and reflection and solitary prayer. As I have been thinking on these things, I begin to see the encouragement that some kind of fast can offer to reflect on the sacrifice and redemption we are going to celebrate at Good Friday and Easter. Jay Watts, another Protestant who had not been much exposed until some years ago to the reasons for a Lenten fast, commented in the same thread: “I found that it truly adds to my spiritual preparation for Easter Sunday. It enhances my Easter experience as the day is always out there in my reflection. Not because I am counting the moments until I can end the fast, but because the reason for my sacrifice is inescapably linked to ‘the event’ as the early Christians called it.”


And so this year I am going to try a Lenten fast. I do not propose to publicize what I am fasting from except to a few close friends, but as I am not very disciplined in certain ways, I expect it shall not be an easy start, at least, and any who wish to pray for me I will be grateful to. I wish to know my Lord more fully, to understand His sacrifice more clearly, to learn more humility before His love which surpasses all comprehension, which He lavishes so abundantly where it is not deserved. I pray that He will show me the way and keep before me His purpose.

More Neuhaus

Some quotations from Chapter 1 of Death on a Friday Afternoon, which will have to stand on their own. They are making me think, but not necessarily coherently enough to articulate anything worth adding to them.

On our tending to ignore Good Friday (and indeed all suffering) and "hurry on" to Easter (and any good news that sets aside pain): "But we will not know what to do with Easter's light if we shun the friendship of the darkness that is wisdom's way to light."

On our sin: "This is the awful truth: that we made necessary the baby crying in the cradle to become the derelict crying from the cross" (emphasis added).

On forgiveness: "Love does not say to the beloved that it [the beloved's sin] does not matter, for the beloved matters."

On sin and our identity: "Our lives are measured by who we are created and called to be, and the measuring is done by the One who creates and calls. [. . .] The judgment that matters is the judgment of God, who alone judges justly. In the cross we see the rendering of the verdict on the gravity of our sin. [. . .] None of our sins are small or of little account. To belittle our sins is to belittle ourselves, to belittle who it is that God creates and calls us to be." This called to mind Pauline in Descent into Hell: her terrible fear of her doppleganger, whom she believes to be some harbinger of evil, yet is in reality that astoundingly glorious being that God had intended her to be -- and only in learning to see and acknowledge her sins, and then to lean, to trust, and to sacrificially love others, is she at last able to see that glory and embrace it as her own created identity.

A bit further, Neuhaus writes of being our brother's keeper: "[W]e know we are [our brother's keeper]. We don't know what to do about it, but we know that if we lose our hold on that impossible truth, we have lost everything." As, indeed, Wentworth does in his demand to be enough in and for himself: to hell with the rest of the world, he says -- and yet he is the one descending into that terrible place of judgment.

And finally for today, on the cross: "The perfect self-surrender of the cross is, from eternity and to eternity, at the heart of what it means to say that God is love." All praise to Him.

Death on a Friday Afternoon

The death of Richard John Neuhaus has robbed us of a great intellect but, far more important, a great man of God. His work has challenged me and changed my life. Two years ago, I first read his meditation on the last words of Christ, Death on a Friday Afternoon. I have decided to try to read it again this year, starting now and reading a chapter each week till Easter. Toward that end, this evening I read the preface and was caught by the following:

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

Good Friday forms the spiritual architecture of Christian existence.

In [the] last words of the Word in descent into death, we come upon the perfect sound of silence, a silence of the completion toward which all good words tend. "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.*

Undoubtedly I will repeat myself as I explore this meditation again, but Truth does not erode from constant use, and I find I need much repetition to keep its merest and most basic elements before me . . . It is my heart desire to draw closer to Him during this Lenten season, to once more visit this most basic of Truths that we embrace and find its reality within me.

* I will usually capitalize pronouns referring to God, though Neuhaus does not, for avoidance of any ambiguity or confusion.

Light in the Darkness

It's been rainy here the past few days, again. The other morning, as we pulled out of the driveway, I could see the shimmering of the full moon behind storm clouds, hinting of an oasis of light in the darkness. Yesterday, we lost a tree on campus to storm winds, warm with impending spring but frightening in intensity. This morning, a gibbous moon sailed among black clouds trying to threaten with rag-tag apparitions, turning to grey, then white, and finally dissipating with the sunrise. Lovely reminders that light is never quenched by darkness; it always rides above, behind, within the storm biding its time and welcoming our faith.

Connections, Connections

The past couple of weeks have been filled with connections in literature and discussion. It’s driving me a bit crazy because there’s no time to sort them out, write them down, make more than vaguely intuitive sense of them.

So I’m recording impressions today, just for fun (or, more likely and more seriously, for sanity).

Elocution: I’m teaching Charles Williams’ Descent into Hell in freshman comp this semester. The action (if it can be called that) takes place within the scope of a play production, a pastoral comedy written by the eminent poet-dramatist Peter Stanhope. The leader of the chorus, Pauline, is working on her lines one day and enters a discussion with her grandmother, Margaret, who notes in passing that the play’s producer, Mrs. Parry, has always thought a little too much of elocution and not enough of the poetry itself. She goes on, with infinite kindness, to also note that Pauline has been rather like this in her relation to Margaret: more concerned with the outward care of duty, of appearance, than the give-and-take of Love. Pauline, duly rebuked, finds this a help along her way to understanding and living in Love.

Then we read the “Night” section in Goethe's Faust for World Lit 2. And lo and behold, here is Wagner, Faust’s student, prating on about the importance of elocution to public speaking – if one speaks with the right tones and gestures, one will be effective. Faust decries this: what is needed for effective persuasion, he says, is to speak from the heart, not to study form. I am not sure, however, that his understanding and advice is really the same as Margaret’s – I want to bring them together and explore the similarity and what may be some key difference in the ideas.

Negation: This has been cropping up everywhere, it seems. We read Katherine Anne Porter’s short story “Flowering Judas” in Intro to Lit recently; the main character, Laura, lives by negation – saying “no” to every possibility for life and love. This negation leads her, she seems to know, to be as cruel as the socialist/Marxist revolutionaries she works alongside, yet she cannot bring herself to say “yes” to any hopeful possibility.

We also read Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” in that class, another tale of negation. The man wants only to have his footloose, fancy-free life without responsibility; the girl, it appears, finally gives in to him, choosing the death of her unborn child, still intangible to her, to keep the tangible security of his presence – yet knowing, even as she chooses, that this too will be another death.

And Descent is a story of negation. Wentworth is given the opportunity to choose love, again and again, and each time he refuses, despising everyone and everything that keeps him from being the one in the limelight. I would, again, like to look at these and other pieces I’ve been reading to find the connecting threads.

The serpent in Eden: This one’s been cropping up all of a sudden, too – the Cupid and Psyche myth, Lily Sammile in Descent, somewhere else recently that refuses to come to my exhausted mind on this Friday evening at the end of another lovely but tiring week.

Connections. I’ve always looked for them; they are everywhere in literature. But somehow these are haunting me just now, and I hope to find out why soon.

Groundhogs and Simplicity

The Groundhog
by Luci Shaw

The groundhog is, at best, a simple soul
without pretension, happy in his hole,
twinkle-eyed, shy, earthy, coarse-coated grey,
no use at all (except on Groundhog Day).
At Christmas time, a rather doubtful fable
gives the beast standing room inside the stable
with other simple things, shepherds, and sheep,
cows, and small winter birds, and on the heap
of warm, sun-sweetened hay, the simplest thing
of all -- a Baby. Can a groundhog sing,
or only grunt his wonder? Could he know
this new-born Child had planned him, long ago,
for groundhog-hood? Whether true or fable,
I like to think that he was in the stable,
part of the Plan, and that He who designed
all simple wonderers, may have had me in mind.

For simple wonder, Lord, make my heart sing.

"Day by Day"

I never cry in church. But my Father's mercies have been so lovely these past few days that this hymn brought me to tears yesterday:

Day by Day

Day by day, and with each passing moment,

Strength I find, to meet my trials here;

Trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment,

I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.

He Whose heart is kind beyond all measure

Gives unto each day what He deems best—

Lovingly, its part of pain and pleasure,

Mingling toil with peace and rest.

Every day, the Lord Himself is near me

With a special mercy for each hour;
All my cares He fain would bear, and cheer me,

He Whose Name is Counselor and Pow’r.

The protection of His child and treasure

Is a charge that on Himself He laid;

“As thy days, thy strength shall be in measure,”

This the pledge to me He made.

Help me then in every tribulation

So to trust Thy promises, O Lord,

That I lose not faith’s sweet consolation

Offered me within Thy holy Word.

Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting,

E’er to take, as from a father’s hand,

One by one, the days, the moments fleeting,

Till I reach the promised land.

Under the Mercy

Classes started last week on Wednesday; we had Monday this week off. But I feel like I've already run a marathon. I should be grading homework, but instead I'm watching television and avoiding thinking about the conference presentation I'm giving tomorrow (only vaguely planned, of course), or the prep I should be doing for my four Monday classes . . . or the article I had hoped to ready for submission by now, which languishes in its ragged folder under stacks of the urgent.

Yet, while I feel tired, and a bit harried, and can't help wondering if I'll get anything but grading done for the next fourteen weeks -- I seem to be less distressed than usual for two weeks in. I wish I had the energy to do more, but the most needed things seem to be getting accomplished helpfully and hopefully. And I love my classes -- all of them; I am delighted to expend the energy to teach them well.

I don't understand it; I'm just living along trying to keep my head above water, no more "spiritual" than usual in habit or mind . . . yet here's a gift of grace -- an unusual sense of well-being -- from my loving Father.

Stanhope says to Pauline as she sets off to London for the beginning of her new life, "You'll find your job and do it and keep it -- in the City of our God, even in the City of our Great King, and . . . and how do I, any more than you, know what the details of Salem will be like?"*

Under the Mercy, indeed. Under the Mercy.


* Charles Williams, Descent into Hell

Exiles

I got books this last week, and immediately devoured Exiles by Ron Hansen. It is a fictionalized account of Gerard Manley Hopkins' life paralleled with the lives of the five nuns who died in the shipwreck of the Deutschland, about which Hopkins wrote one of his most compelling poems.

The book's title reflects the fact that both Hopkins and the five nuns were in some sense exiles. The nuns were sailing from Germany to England and then to the U.S. at least in part because their religion and work was being suppressed by the Falk Laws against Roman Catholicism in Germany. Hopkins made himself an exile in one sense by converting to Roman Catholicism in an England which still despised and to some degree discriminated against Catholics (university degrees were not available to Catholics, for example, except from Catholic institutions); his conversion also cost him at least some fellowship with his family, although they did not disown him. His constant moving about by command of the Jesuit order which he entered was another form of exile, especially when his final move took him away from his beloved England to Ireland, where he died. In addition, Hansen suggests that he was in some sense exiled from his natural gift for poetry because of his vocational choice.

Hopkins was tremendously moved by the accounts he read of the wreck of the Deutschland, and especially by the deaths of the five nuns, one of whom was said to have cried out "O Christ, come quickly!" as passenger after passenger succumbed in various ways to the cold weather and the icy water. His poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland, imagines both the terror of the wreck, with many details gleaned from his reading, and the faith and hope of the nuns lost in it, as well as containing the story of his own faith. It is a magnificent poem, and it is especially important because it is the first complete effort in his experimental sprung rhythm -- which is quite likely the reason it was refused publication.

The book works very well at some levels. Hansen uses many of Hopkins' own words, from his poetry, his journals, and his letters; he does this explicitly but often simply merges them into the text, creating a stab of unexpected delight when the reader recognizes some loved phrase. He tells the two stories alternately within each chapter. The first couple of times he switched I found startling, but grew used to it quickly. The part of Hopkins' story that he tells, he tells well. There is a good deal of information about Hopkins available, and he stays true to this, making the scenes he creates ring true to what we know of the man already.

Next to nothing is actually known about the five nuns besides their names, so Hansen has pretty much free play here, and he creates five intriguing characters with very different lifestories, personalities, and motivations. He doesn't sugarcoat them -- they have their flaws -- but at the same time he shows a realistic commitment to their vocation.

However, when I finished the book I was left with a sense of incompleteness. It is true that Hopkins was a melancholic man who suffered from severe depression much of his adult life. The "terrible sonnets" reveal this to us as well as his journal, his letters, and second-party sources. Yet this was not the whole of the man, and Hansen only alludes to the hope and joy that his work also shows us. Yes, he gives some scenes and descriptions of Hopkins the genial colleague and friend, and Hopkins' dying words -- "I am so happy!" But the emphasis in the second half of the book is so much on the darkness that one could easily believe that Hopkins was simply a miserable person who had missed his true calling -- a suggestion at least hinted at in a long paragraph interlude speculating on how his life might have been so much better (and longer) had he not become a priest.

I do not believe that the body of Hopkins' work supports this idea, nor do I think it is our place to suggest that he should have led an easier life and given us more poetry. Perhaps, in fact, he could not have given us the remarkable work that he did had he lived an easier life. In any case, it seems to have been Hopkins' own very clear sense that he was living as he had been called to live, that God -- though at times He seemed far away and even uncaring -- was at all times his Friend and Father and Lord, and that disappointments and adversities were simply part of the refining process required of all of us. I wish that Hansen had shown this; I wish that he had emphasized the Hopkins that we see in the "sonnets of consolation" which Hansen barely mentions as having been written after the "terrible sonnets."

This same sense of darkness seems to permeate the story of the five nuns. Although he presents them as women of faith, true to their vocation, with prayer and meditation as an integral part of their lives, still they come across somehow as not particularly hopeful, meeting death stoically perhaps, but not especially with Christ in mind or a joy to meet Him. I don't know if Hansen was afraid to create plaster saints -- always a danger in writing about faith -- but in avoiding that danger it seems to me he has struck the opposite, offering us a stoicism that could be seen in many who do not have the hope of Christ at all.

Still and all, I will seriously consider assigning this book the next time I teach a course in Hopkins. It's reasonably well-written, and offers a perspective to be considered alongside Hopkins' own work and factual biographies of him. It might also be an interesting book to use in a creative writing course, given the two different sets of information and how Hansen uses and transforms each of them into fictional biography.

Richard John Neuhaus, R.I.P.

Father Neuhaus has died. Here is the First Things notification:

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the weakness that sent him to the hospital the day after Christmas, caused by a series of side effects from the cancer he was suffering. He lost consciousness Tuesday evening after a collapse in his heart rate, and the next day, in the company of friends, he died.

My tears are not for him—for he knew, all his life, that his Redeemer lives, and he has now been gathered by the Lord in whom he trusted.

I weep, rather for all the rest of us. As a priest, as a writer, as a public leader in so many struggles, and as a friend, no one can take his place. The fabric of life has been torn by his death, and it will not be repaired, for those of us who knew him, until that time when everything is mended and all our tears are wiped away.

Funeral arrangements are still being planned; information about the funeral will be made public shortly. Please accept our thanks for all your prayers and good wishes.

In Deepest Sorrow,

Joseph Bottum
Editor
First Things

UPDATE: here's a link to the first tribute I've seen today, at The Corner at National Review. I am sure there will be many to follow, and First Things will be the place to check in the coming days.

UPDATE2: here's a link to an archive of Father Neuhuas's online works.

Richard John Neuhaus

Richard John Neuhaus, whom I have mentioned in a number of posts, has apparently had a relapse (or perhaps a new form) of cancer; I understand he was hospitalized late last week. Katherine Jean Lopez updates us, saying that the last rites were administered to Father Neuhaus last night at midnight.

I am sure prayers would be treasured in heaven. Father Neuhaus has had a tremendous influence on the world over many years. He is currently editor of First Things.

UPDATE: Here is some background information I found at beliefnet. Apparently the cancer was diagnosed last year and this hospitalization was for a severe infection:

"Fr. Neuhaus is in the hospital here in New York. Over Thanksgiving, he was diagnosed with a serious cancer. The long-term prognosis for this particular cancer is not good, but it is not hopeless, either, and there is a possibility that it will respond to the recommended out-patient chemotherapy.

"Unfortunately, over Christmas, he was taken dangerously ill with what seems to be a systemic infection that has left him very weak. Entering the hospital the day after Christmas, he was sedated to lower an elevated heart rate and treatment was begun for the infection. Over the last few days, he has shown some signs of improvement, and there is a reasonable expectation that he will recover from this present illness--sufficiently, we hope, that he will be able to begin the chemotherapy for the cancer."

It is odd, but I feel very much as though a family member is at death's door. His work has changed my life and I am grieved to think there may be no more of it to come.

Thirty-Four Years

January 4 is our 34th wedding anniversary. Sometimes it feels like a whispered breeze, barely noticed before gone. Often it feels more like a very long time, until I remind myself it’s just over half the years my parents will have been married next month. It hasn’t been easy; it hasn’t looked much like what either of us envisioned the day we walked down the aisle.

But we’ve grown, sometimes quickly, often slowly. The apostles told Jesus that if a man couldn’t divorce his wife then it would be better not to be married. But it’s that very commitment that can force two people to decide that learning to get along is better than a lifetime of misery. I thank God for the commitment demanded by Him that has taken us through hard times to this place of contentment with each other, commitment that didn’t allow us to consider anything but faithfulness "till death do us part."

Mainly we’ve learned a little about the nature of love. Sure, romance and fireworks are nice. But love is so much deeper. Love is the placing of the beloved above the self, desiring his or her good above one’s own, and the willingness to sacrifice for that truth. No one does it all the time; I do it less well than most, perhaps. But we have both learned something of this over time; I am privileged to be loved well by the man who committed himself to me.

It is this sacrificial love within iron-clad commitment that allows true affection to grow. Every time one puts the other first, it creates a deeper respect and concern than already existed; it reminds one that the other is a bearer of the image of God as well as a needy fallen man or woman – and both those identities require respect and concern, require the love of God Himself placed within us through the sacrifice of the Son and the seal of the Holy Spirit. And this is the genesis of affection that shows itself in constant little ways each day -- a blanket in the middle of the night, a note of encouragement, a glass of water on a hot summer day, a simple smile at a shared memory . . .

I am grateful for these thirty-four years.

New Year's Resolutions

This morning as I’ve browsed the web I’ve of course run across numerous references to the ending of one year and the beginning of the next. “Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet?” (of course not; the moment after I make one I’ll break it, so why bother?). “Highlights of 2008” (more depressing than encouraging to me, as a rule – what many people seem to think of as a “highlight” often strikes me as a new low). “How to make your dreams come true in 2009” (sure; it’s all so simple and will certainly happen this time).

Then I came to one of my favorite sites – Touchstone’s Mere Comments – and found what I wanted: a post by my favorite contemporary writer, Tony Esolen, which offers true wisdom and food for thought – “Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot?” he asks, and answers, of course, “by no means, and here’s why.”

The comments are worth reading, as well, and led me to some thinking about time and how it is described in one of my favorite plays, A Raisin in the Sun. Walter has lost his father’s life insurance money on a scam, and Beneatha, having counted on part of it to help her through medical school, is in the depths of despair. Her suitor Asagai, a Nigerian who plans to return to his country to help free it from Britain’s rule, challenges her. I don’t have the text with me, so what follows is from memory.

Beneatha tells Asagai that man never changes, and simply walks the pointless circle of time, repeating evil again and again. Asagai says no, time is a line whose end you cannot see and thus cannot despair of. Man marches forward, doing what he can in his own day to reach the unrealized dream of a better future, which does exist.

I was trying to explain the difference to my class last semester, and found that I couldn’t show Asagai’s concept as a simple straight line, as he initially states it: he goes on to say that if his country is liberated there will of course be upheaval again, and he may even become a martyr because of new persecutions by different people, but that liberty and peace will still come in some unseeable future if people like him continue to work for that dream. And so I found that my picture on the board became a series of Beneatha’s circles moving across the board in a kind of helix toward the future.

Beneatha’s circle by itself holds a certain appeal as a description of truth – doesn’t it often seem that “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” that “nothing new under the sun” means mainly that life is made up of evil and despair? Asagai’s line seems so much more optimistic, more hopeful: it is going somewhere, not merely repeating itself, even if it contains repetition within it.

And yet . . . there is nothing – nothing – in Asagai’s philosophy which justifies optimism. He envisions a future of freedom and prosperity for his people, and he is pursuing the means (education, medical care, political action) that he believes will bring about such a future – yet with no actual foundation for that belief. Education, for example, may bring about better health conditions and greater political involvement, yes, but it may also bring seeds of greater discontentment and ideas which will be just as destructive as those which he sees as now holding his people down. What kind of education is the key to a better future . . . and nowhere does Asagai seem to see the need to consider this key question. It is mere “education” in itself, mere “political action” in itself, which will somehow bring about the bright future he envisions.

So I was encouraged in reading Tony’s post and the comments on it to consider time in both its repetitive cycles (for Beneatha is not entirely wrong) and its movement to somewhere – but not an abstract movement to a merely hoped-for earthly end (as Asagai would have it). Rather, this journey through the cycles of time is a journey to a very specific destination: an eternal life either in the presence of God or separated from His love, either in the presence of those who have gone before or separated forever from human love as well. (C. S. Lewis reminds us somewhere that we have never met a mere mortal.) That destination should determine what means we use to move closer to it -- not just any kind of education, for example, but education which gives us a true image of who and what we are so that we will choose our course wisely.

Several of the images various commenters brought up following Tony’s post bring out time's dual nature as both cycle and line: “a continually widening upward spiral toward God,” one called it, or another suggested that “from another angle, the spiral could be seen as ever-narrowing”; another gave the picture of Abba Dositheus: “a movement inward along the spokes of a wheel: we all begin on the rim, and as we move in towards Christ, who is the hub, we move closer to Him and to each other.” I like these; they help me to see the concept and understand all the better this journey we are on.

And that perspective of time, a journey with its cycles and its known end, reminds me of the only resolution that’s important each new year, each new day: to live well within time’s possibilities, loving God and my neighbor, for God’s glory and my neighbor’s welfare.

Happy Birthday

The YM turns 18 tomorrow. Our youngest, growing up so fast.

He's always been talented in artistic kinds of ways, and now it's amazing to see how quickly he has grown with instruction. Film is his favorite, but he's an excellent still photographer, and you can see his some of his work at Vesta Photography. (I don't have access to any of his film work, but he's done some short films for his class and has worked with his friends on some significant projects. He does a great job of it.)

And as he grows in his knowledge and his skill, he's the same funny, loving person he's always been, though with greater depth and thoughtfulness. He enriches my life every day by his smile and considerate actions and good conversation. I am grateful that he is my son.

For you, my son, a birthday prayer:

"Watch over thy child, O Lord, as his days increase; bless and guide him wherever he may be, keeping him unspotted from the world. Strengthen him when he stands; comfort him when discouraged or sorrowful; raise him up if he fall; and in his heart may thy peace which passeth understanding abide all the days of his life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

(from the Book of Common Prayer)

Not Quite Christmas

I’ve been trying all day to think of a happy Christmas message to write, but I don’t seem to have one this year. It’s been an odd break, not Christmas-like – I’m used to being with my parents this time of year, and I haven’t had the energy or inclination (hooray for end-of-semester exhaustion, plus toothaches, plus medication that adds headaches as a final insult) to be the least bit festive. Not that I’m especially able at creating that mood even at my best.

So it’s been a quiet day at home, nothing very special except for the phone calls to and from family members elsewhere. I’ve mainly spent the break, including today, sleeping and working on prep for next semester’s classes; we ordered books for the YM’s spring classes today and a few for me. And part of me has struggled with feeling sad and lonely and generally in a the-world’s-not-fair mood.

But one of my tasks has been re-reading Charles Williams’ Descent Into Hell, prepping to teach it next semester. And so I am reminded that I am not here to feel good. I am here to love God and my neighbor, to take joy not in circumstances but in Him and in His people, to bear the burdens of others as others have so often borne mine, to recognize His love in all the wild and quiet, wonderful and quotidian ways that it is manifest in this world He created, marred though it has become. Under the Mercy, as Peter Stanhope would say.

So . . . my youngest turns 18 in two days – that’s something to celebrate. We drove around town and enjoyed Christmas lights tonight – what beauty God allows us to create.* My oldest son and his family sacrificed his leave time to make the long drive to visit my parents – how God manifests His love in His children. I have a husband who loves me and does so many lovely sweet things to show it – not every wife is so blessed. I sit here surrounded by books – and how less rich my life would be without those many voices that challenge and comfort and bless me. Tomorrow, then, I shall try to remember His blessings, and not allow the inevitable sorrows of a broken world to negate His beauty that still shines forth in it. Under the Mercy . . .

* (You can see the YM’s excellent photographs from the drive, along with many others, at Vesta Photography. He’s good – really good. And I don’t think I’m overly biased . . .)

Charlie Peacock, part 3

So I survived the last projects, essays, and final exams. I’ve been trying to write about the things Charlie said concerning being a Christian and an artist in today’s culture, but constant interruptions and distractions tend to give me severe writer’s block. So, finally, here are some of the ideas he brought up that I especially appreciated.

Charlie made it clear that not only artists are creative – artistic creativity is only one kind. Everyone is creative: the scientist, the engineer, the businessman, the teacher, the homemaker, all of us. I loved this definition of the church that he gave us: “We are God’s gifted ones gathering as communities to do God’s work.” Any meaningful labor is worthy of any Christian’s time; no vocation is more worthy than another.

The Christian who is an artist in today’s culture has a special tension, however, because of the increasing separation between “secular” and “religious” publishers and markets. I appreciated Charlie’s insistence that the individual Christian must have the freedom to choose to serve the church directly and primarily – too many of us have become sinfully cynical about the quality of Christian-labeled work, and we forget that one job of the Christian is to build up other believers. If this is one’s call, pursue it, wholeheartedly and with excellence.

However, the only reason the artistic works of a Christian should be in the Christian bookstore, Charlie said, is if they have been created for that primary purpose of teaching and building up believers. The Christian who is an artist must not be limited to this purpose, and should not be pressured into using his creativity in solely or primarily this way; he must be equally free to pursue his art simply because it is meaningful art. He should be able to do his work “anywhere, everywhere, and without apology,” whether he names it as “Christian” or not, and with the support and blessing of his brothers and sisters in the Lord.

Why? Because we are called to serve not only other believers, but “all the nations.” We are “image-bearing ambassadors” who are to “contribute to and transform culture,” being salt and light within it. Our work should be good for the community, for our neighbor. The artist’s work no more has to be named Christian than the mechanic’s or the carpenter’s or the engineer’s: if we excel in our work, we glorify God and serve our neighbor, and a fish sign on it won’t make it any better quality.

Charlie told us that he is not hesitant to declare “I’m a Christian,” but he has chosen not to call himself “a Christian musician” because he wishes to disconnect himself from the cultural baggage of that name; then he can go wherever he is called by his work, not be assigned in people's minds permanently to only “church music.” He mentioned doing some work with jazz, and then being invited to join a “Christian jazz” forum on the web. He refused because his goal was to be a part of the “ongoing jazz story” in its totality and not to suggest that his particular work is somehow different because of his faith rather than simply because he is a musician.

He talked too about answering the question “Are you a Christian?” and how he prefers to answer with a question rather than just say yes: “Why do you ask?” he might respond, or “It depends; what do you mean by the term Christian?” This opens the door to discussion, and allows him to be a witness to his faith in the way the person asking most needs to hear it, rather than letting that person think that Charlie represents whatever misconceptions he might hold. He has no desire other than to boldly be a Christian, but he has learned to be wise in the way he names himself, to try to have the most winsome and effective influence that he can.

For me, perhaps the most important point he made is summed up in this: some of us are called mainly to talk to the family – to teach and build up believers – and we must do this with excellence (which is going to mean speaking, lovingly, to the lack of excellence in too much Christian art today), and others of us are called to serve the broader community – and we need the support and encouragement of the church to do that work with excellence and to remain faithful to God as we work in a world that can hold out many strong temptations. “We should be God’s [artistic] people everywhere and in everything,” Charlie said; “we must not have too narrow a scope but be about His business throughout the world.”

Baby News

My friends' baby was born last Thursday. I got to see pictures on Friday while endangering my soul with envy of those who went to see him that night. Yesterday, Mom and Dad brought him up to the college to be introduced. Right now he is a sleepy, contemplative little fellow, with the perfect beauty of a C-section birth.

As I held him, he squirmed and yawned now and then, squinted up at me, and sighed himself back to sleep. So lovely, this precious new life with all hope and potential lying before him. Such complete trust in and reliance on those around him to love and protect him and care for his every need. So like we should be, babes in our Father's arms . . .

New Literary Magazine

A friend who is an assistant editor has drawn attention to a new online literary magazine, The Christendom Review. What I've read in the first issue so far is excellent, and I highly recommend a look. For some of you who are writers, this may be a good place to submit.

Yes, yes, I know, I haven't posted the new post about Charlie. Chalk it up to too tired to think coherently. It's in progress, though.