Captivatingly special

Having finished the book for a second, more well-dicussed time, we decided that it's a pretty good joke that women are the crown of creation (we would like to second that thought). Then there's the man~ woman relationship thing that's all signed and sealed in marriage, yet a bit tricky out of that fence and basically ruined by sin, and somehow redeemable by his grace. Finally, there's a big hang up we have about letting our beauty speak for itself because we are too concerned with other people's perception of us; we fear what others will think more than resting in what God thinks of us. If we only knew what C. S. Lewis said in the first place: men are no mere mortals, but God's little god-sons, who think either too highly or too lowly of themselves by sin's nature, when we ought to think God's thoughts about ourselves and be thus free from thinking about self at all, being filled with Him.

Brother Lawrence

The Practice of the Presence of God is my newest reading into the mysteries of prayer and worship. After reading a chapter in Captivating on worship to God, as given by an individual like oneself, I realise one must make time for these things. How would I ever make more time in an already full day of work and more work and writing and teaching and work like sweeping. Dinner alone takes a long time to make, even if it's easy leftovers, because one must heat them up and add special effects to them so as not to appear as Yesterday's Reheated Mush.

One morning, pen in hand, I found myself writing way in my "spiritual journal" entitled God among the gods a long list of all the things I needed to be doing than worshipping God. I had captured my own fancy into sitting down at the desk in the first place by saying "I will proclaim myself an hour of premeditated Wasted Time, so that whether I get anything out of this Worship thing or not, maybe God can do something with wasted time." Therefore I prayed.

but it doesn't mean anything!

If what Mr Capon says is true: that the world was created not to mean something, but to be, then all we have every day is a funny sort of problem. I ought to ask myself upon waking (or some while later after a few pots of tea) not, 'what meaningful thing shall I do today?' but rather 'what's for breakfast?' and then set out to accomplish that work which was planned for me before the foundations of the world were established upon the face of the waters. Man lays plans of which God directs the outcome and afterwards we are to survey the work, that it was good, as done by him in us. But what of all the daily failures? One might well ask. And perhaps the answer lies in the fact that we live as if set upon Plan B from the beginning.

on practice of Reading

Q. offers good advice for those already literate in the mother tongue of which you are reading poetry at the moment, but this is nigh unto impossible with second-language students. To read a poem through with no stops in one's classroom, then wait for questions is to wait for wrinkles and grey hair. A new-to-english student is both shy and lacks the vocabulary to ask questions about content. Thus, in violation of Q's dictum, I find it most helpful to question my students, explaining words and pictures and ideas as we go along, one stanza at a time, re-reading over again all at once. We are all like hard sponges, needing much sprinkling of words to soften the ear to hearing and the heart to absorbing the life giving picture.

on Reading

Arthur Quiller-Couch says one should read poetry to children (speaking on Childrens' Literature) in a good strong voice with no stops to explain all the allusions and metaphors, allowing the children to ask questions at the end of the reading. One may call upon one child at a time to read outloud (as in a class) but never to interrupt for corrections until the end. At a greater level of understanding, one must read rather extensively to know a) the culture of the time in which the poem was written, and b) the life of the author, which is I suppose why I study of history is essential to a study of literature. With poetry, the spirit of the word comes to the child's heart by hearing, reading, singing, acting it and building upon it.
If there is a 'bottom line' for the purpose of poetry, it is, in Q's words, 'less [in] its subject than its song. Though life condemn [a child] to live it through in the Valley of Humiliation, I want to hear the Shepherd Boy singing.'

upon second view

The ways of human perfection are that the price of pain produces beauty and a treasure gained by the beautiful for her pleasure. Geisha capture a man and give him in return a sense of happiness in her presence. In the creation of a cult, geisha become someone with an invaluable identity, drawing others into their sphere by the power of artistic perfection.

geishas

The mystery, the beauty, the serenity through striving to be a moving work of art. These visual messages imprint themselves upon my soul and I am undone. A passing flame of glory in the cherry blossom is the Japanese art written into the person of a woman called to be geisha. What truth in a glimpse of beauty personified yet personhood betrayed I cannot find the answer, not yet.

royal abandonment

The muses vacated the house, leaving no note of either "Back Soon" or ""Forever, Amen." Mother Kirk is perhaps to blame, causing chaos with her need for my understanding. Knocking at my door for days turned into years with a truth for all men about themselves--it's all in a book.

The species created by God in two genders to keep His garden can't decide who's going to be in charge of the ploughing. If not strictly a matter of authority, we reason, perhaps it's about individual tasks. Who is built to hold the plough, and who is qualified, by very nature, to care for the oxen back at the barn? One camp of men envision an orderly society arranged as masters and servants, from the delicate bonds of marriage to the top plank of the clergy. The other camp decide they need perfected fairness between man and woman...Christ and church?

the necessity of divorce

Going from Judaism to Christianity, going from aetheism to Christianity, going from Christianity to Christ. It takes a while, these life changes. Who's doing the changing? Can it be man, oneself? Is it God? Where the choice ends and the control begins is the souly tug of war.

But thou wilt sinne and grief destroy;
That so the broken bones may joy,
And tune together in a well-set song,
Full of his praises,
Who dead men raises.
Fractures well cur'd make us more strong.
~George Herbert

Fractures well cured make us more strong. To measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around, is the path to self-knowledge, says O'Connor. How is it that suffering is something we consider bad, yet is good for us, to make us strong?

Suffering cannot be of benefit only in driving out the evil from our body and soul, for Christ suffered who did no wrong and was made thereby worthy of glory. We want sin and grief destroyed so that we may have joy and the broken instrument may sing again. Written on our frame is the fact that the seed must die before it can be raised. The seed of every thought, the seedling feelings, the strength gone to seed must all die, every day, every other day, in strings of moments threaded throughout a year, to be raised a tougher body, a deeper feeling, a truer thought, and then we will know that what we knew before was only a shard of self.

Bernard of Clairvaux

He writes, "'Why should God be loved?'...the reason for loving God is God himself."
Furthermore, "God is entitled to our love. Why?...'Because he first loved us.'"
Consider three things held in this answer:
1) who he is that loves us
2) who we are that he loves
3) how much he loves us.

"True love is precisely this: that it does not seek its own interests."

Bernard gives us four levels or degrees of love, quite similar to degrees of burning, from the lightest blister to the depth of searing the bone:
First Degree--"Love of self for self's sake"
Second Degree--"Love of God for self's sake"
Third Degree--"Love of God for God's sake"
Fourth Degree--"Love of self for God's sake."

To explain, our affections, as men of the flesh, begin with loving only those things directly benefiting or liked by ourself. When we find ourself love insufficient for survival of the spirit, we turn to God--loving him to benefit self. As we grow to know God in our experience, in worship, we begin to love him for his own goodness, his own sake. Here Bernard questions whether we can go to the fourth degree of love in this present life. To love myself for God's sake means to be of one mind and spirit with him, forgetful of self and seeing God even in me.

John tells us in his 1st letter that we will be as God is when love is perfected among us. By this we may know we are perfect in love, when we do not fear on the day of judgement, "love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment.... We love because he first loved us" (4:16-19). Lest we think we have obeyed every commandment and loved our neighbour as ourself, thus fulfilling the law, let us be reminded that God is love and no man is perfected except as our love becomes his, living in us, burning up self love, that his love may take root and grow.

feeling only side-ways hugs

"My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life."
Ps. 42

Off to a Wedding

Weddings are a reenactment of sorts of the marriage of the Lamb. With high-church solemnity, we see the promised hope come to pass, a mystery too great for words brought to our sight on the terrestial stage, and welcomed to life by God Himself at heaven's gate. Here at the threshold of the altar, an awful loving is provoked in our wisened souls such that we may catch a glimpse, for only one banked moment, the beauty of a redemption.

dilated eyes

We see by light shining into our eyes and onto objects, but given too much light we go blind. The once-created safety valve, once breached, cannot prevent the eye's damage. If our natural eyes cannot look at the sun and survive, how much less can our souls look upon the Glory of God and live? I need a medium to protect me from the holiness of his face turned upon my soul. When tomorrow my old body returns to dust, I will need a new face to behold His. Am I ready to receive Christ's face for my own, as if he were my head and I his body?

a little Presbyterian boarding school

One walks into the sagging halls of a school that houses students as it has since the early 20th century. These chosen few hundred are Spanish speaking, yet not all from Mexico City alone. Grown children of many an adventurous parent, the eyes of these students give back silent pictures of glimmering hope, of glassy un-revealing, of dim but steady willingness to try--so many brown pools of livliness asking common ancient questions with a vision to know a brilliant future.
I tutor these boys and girls, though we have yet to understand one another.

why are you writing?

Anne Lamott tells the tale of her reasons for writing: ideas grow out of a need, as if necessity really were the mother of Invention. We mainly need a sense of belonging, she says, and to know that everything is going to be okay. She writes to give a fellow human being the sense of wholeness, connected to the other characters who feel the same things as that reader and the peace that comes from knowing you're not alone. Not peace only, but a levity of pleasure in the laughter she invokes in a reader is a sort of sacred gift to be exercised to the soul satisfaction of both reader and author.

Notes on Bird by Bird

One writes to tell the truth. The truth is best told by starting with short assignments and writing bad first drafts. Stories are the most common way in which we tell the truth, which one might carry to the extreme of saying the message of truth is held in the medium of story. Stories are about characters, people who live and breathe with eccentric habits and chronic self centredness.
To tell stories, one must be observant and read and practice writing as diligently and as hopefully as a music student aspiring to mimic Mozart.