Sailing through September

As they do for many if not most people lately, the hours have been long and the days short.  I have a checklist that keeps growing instead of getting shorter.  But I'm taking a midmonth pause from the to-do list to catch up the continuing saga of life 'round here, although we don't have much to report in the way of events - mostly conversations about the news. 

I think I left off last time having attended the home school meeting.  Since then, I have read a few more articles about the "Mass Exodus" movement. This group of people who discuss moving to other states is much larger than I realized.   In fact, there are many who contemplate moving from one state to another where others are contemplating moving from.  So total population may shift but not actually change.  There are maps that identify states friendly to home schooling, friendly to anti-vaxxers, friendly to people who don't want to pay high property taxes.  You can pick a state that is more liberal or more conservative - and people who are in those first 3 groups could be either liberal or conservative, although I suppose if you were more liberal you would have a hard time leaving a state because you didn't want to pay high property taxes.  

Since we are in the middle of contemplating a move ourselves, a move that we may have some choice in, I've been sifting through some of these maps  - I like the one that shows the rate that different states tax military retirement income and the map of places with access to outdoor recreation. My daughter made a map where she outlined states that she absolutely would not move to and states that she would consider and states that she would prefer.  Her basis of choice is where she perceives she would be safe. She doesn't like the DC area because of concerns about kidnapping and sex trafficking, but we live in one of the cities with the very highest rates of those crimes in the country - if not the world. This reputable site maps economic issues - highest rate of personal consumption expenditures and highest rate of economic resources from outdoor recreation were two I looked up.  Also on our list of consideration is where our children might end up and where our family currently lives.  Seeing as we have one child who swears she is never leaving California and another who will probably head east after graduation, and five others who may end up anywhere, basing our home address one proximity to our offspring will be hard.

A friend and I went for a hike this weekend and discussed our ideal home, and we both were in agreement that we'd like to have a smallish permanent address but then own a big ramshackle vacation home where everyone can gather in the summers. I'm partial to the lake home vs. the beach house, and even better if the lake house is in the mountains - a place where there isn't much to do except swim, hike, eat well, and sit on the back porch and read.  We'd go stay the summer there, and the kids could all come for their vacations with the grandkids at various times, overlapping perhaps for the Fourth of July. 

But wait - that's for old people! - we're talking about retirement, but it's not REALLY retirement! We have a whole lifetime to live still... maybe. I have trouble remembering how old we really are, especially when even though I could have a grandchild in a year or two, I'm still concerned about getting pregnant. 

Our deadline for making an actual choice about staying in the Navy or getting out keeps getting postponed - it used to be June? Now it might be October? More and more it looks like retirement is the direction we are heading, but the state of the economy and the ease of staying put here one more year to get our son who will be a senior through high school are our two biggest concerns when we consider staying in.  I have to admit, although I complain regularly about living here, it will be hard to leave the good weather, the proximity to mountains and shore, the ease of getting to the library, the grocery store, the church, our friends' back porch... 

On the other hand, I still am frustrated with our school and our church for not providing our kids with the education I should be giving them myself - other than that the teenagers really would benefit from hearing someone else say, "Mass is a wonderful thing!" "Reading will broaden your world, open doors, expand your heart and mind, fill your hours with ideas and images that will give you more satisfaction than that video game or app..."  I've been to three planning meetings about how we can safely provide catechesis during the coronavirus, and each one we have come up with good ideas, and then a couple weeks later, I hear we aren't doing anything.  It makes me contemplate exodus to a different parish.

Perhaps reading Christine Watkins' The Warning for our book club last week was not the best idea.  One of our book club members has lately been hooked on end of the world videos and ideas. This book has been getting a lot of word of mouth promotion in certain circles. I actually talked to our priest about it this weekend, and he seemed very hesitant to give any credence to personal visions and locutions. 

The book is a compilation of stories of people who have had an "illumination of conscience" followed by a radical conversion - although one person was a nun who was simply lazy and indulgent.  The illumination is a vision of their sins and the punishment they should receive for them. The part that arouses skepticism is the prediction that everyone in the world will experience this illumination at the same time in the near future. Time will stop and people will have their personal vision. Airplanes will be paused in the sky.  Some people will die of fright, others will be converted, and others will find an excuse for it, such as calling it a technological glitch.  One seer said it would happen in her lifetime, but now she is nearly 70. These seers include the visionaries from Garabandal, Spain, and Matthew Kelly, but the others I have never heard of, although they apparently sometimes become circuit preachers. 

I am a natural skeptic, but I don't doubt that these people had some sort of vision of their own need for conversion. Our book club was pretty split between readers who see these seers as prophets, and those who see that we all have to prepare for our end, as Jesus tells us, but that anything that predicts a day or time is questionable. 

It is easy to see why apocalyptic forecasts are gaining traction: Fires, earthquakes, pandemics, hurricanes, flooding.  Over Labor Day weekend, ash from the fires in the hills to the east of San Diego fell on our picnic table, although we are an hour away. This was the fire started by the gender reveal party, if you have seen the memes. What a terrible sense of guilt that couple must carry, especially since at least one firefighter died.

The death of Justice Ginsburg on the eve of Rosh Hoshannah is another seemingly apocalyptic moment - I dread the hostilities that are sure to erupt - although I have to admit that I am secretly cheering for Amy Coney Barrett, mother of seven, Notre Dame professor.... Time to quit social media.  I wish we could start the election season over again, with two entirely different candidates.  Why are we stuck with two choices of whom most people aren't really fans, even if they do like the policies?  Is it too late to mount a write-in campaign for a candidate who actually is honest and committed to the well being of the American people and not just to his political success?

That's all I have to say about politics. 

In domestic news -- well, the puppy is doing great.  He is basically housetrained, he doesn't shed, he doesn't destroy much except tissues, and he is entertaining to watch. He's such a strange looking little guy and he has some really amusing habits and expressions.  I wouldn't feel guilty about saying he is an emotional support animal in order to get him on a plane because the kids have really found him a source of joy and affection. Even if he is weird looking.

The kids are healthy. They just had well-checks. The 16 year old is just shy of 6'5.'' I had to buy him more new shoes, even though we don't need to do back to school shopping, because he outgrew his old ones. His toe had rubbed a hole in the end of the shoes I bought around Easter. This kid is hard on shoes.  The bad news was that we also went to the dentist, and three of the kids had multiple cavities. Time to back off the corona candy and ice cream indulgences.  I suspect since we don't go many places that they aren't brushing their teeth in the mornings. 

The kids are also back to practicing sports, but not back to school. Doesn't this seem odd to you? Why can they gather on the football field and throw balls to each other or swim in the pool or run around the neighborhood with no masks on, but we are afraid for them to sit spaced out in a classroom (we could have outdoor classrooms here!) in masks? The school district recently sent a "survey" that questioned whether parents would commit to sending kids back in a hybrid situation. The parent community lit up the Facebook pages about it because not everyone received the email with the survey, and those who did receive it were frustrated because it was hidden in a long newsletter, and it wasn't clear at all that it was actually a commitment to 100% online learning if you didn't fill it out.  I was among those who didn't receive it. A friend texted about it, but she was asking me if I knew what the deal was. I had to call the high school about something else, so I asked about it, but nobody in the front office knew about it. By the end of the day, after the local Facebook page nearly exploded with comments from angry and confused parents, the district had sent a new email with clear instructions. Personally, the online situation has been going pretty smoothly around here, and I like the easy schedule, but if they could go back for woodworking and chem lab and ceramics class, I'm ready to send them in a heartbeat with no fears of viral infection.

My college kids have thus far remained free of illness, even though football season is now in full swing. Again - why can my kids in the Midwest go to football games, but my daughter enrolled in a college in California cannot go to class?  These are the questions that people who contemplate mass exodus ask. I don't want to be one of those people, but here I am. The other irritating thing to me is that although she is attending a private school, the state is apparently preventing them from opening, but the state university here has allowed students to move to campus and for lab students to take in person classes. An outbreak of cases around the university now has led the state to consider placing our county at the "purple" level again - which means no inside business.  The county is petitioning the state to exclude those numbers from the count for the county so that it can stay in the "red" level of business operations, and even move to the "yellow" level. That decision should come out today.

I fear that is politics again. In other news, I really enjoyed reading Distant Neighbors, the collection of letters between Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry. They are delightfully thoughtful, articulate, motivated to make a change in the way they use land and encourage others to use it. Snyder's Buddhist leanings and Berry's Christian perspective aren't taboo topics, but neither are they reasons to weaken the friendship, which develops primarily through writing letters and sharing essays and poetry, between occasional visits.  Stepping into the intimacy of their writings feels a bit voyeuristic, but I loved reading this exchange, and envied them their friendship. 

I am supposed to be writing a longish paper for a conference on friendship for the Christianity and Literature virtual conference in October. My focus is on these friendships of nature writers Snyder and Berry, David James Duncan and Brian Doyle, and initially I thought I would include a nod to the two Johns - Muir and Burroughs.  My focus is more expository than analytical; I just want to bask in the beauty of the their writings and not analyze them.  But I should be working on that rather than musing on the state of the world.  

Here are some photos to finish with: 

The funny fellow

A trip to the tide pools to touch anemones, chitons, limpets, barnacles, and a few dead crabs. I learned from the friendly park volunteer that lobsters molt. 

End of summer shaved ice.

Mountain lake. I could stay in a little cottage here a long time. Maybe forever.

Fall blooming mini lupine

Reading in Review

October was a month of company - good company, all of it. Our friends who sing, my in-laws, my parents, their friends, my brother- in-law and friends from Ventura County who came for the Notre Dame- Navy game the last weekend of the month (they recently have had to evacuate because of fires, so we invited them back, but they are staying closer to home for now) all brightened the month with conversation and conviviality.

Because of all the fun, I had little time for reading and writing, but I did finish a few books surprisingly.  The best of them was Rumer Godden's Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy, which was my book club pick. It was so, so, so good. I didn't want it to end, and if I wasn't playing catch up right now, I'd pick up another Rumer Godden book and read it all the way through. Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy covers some of the same territory as the beloved In this House of Brede, but with a very different twist. Elizabeth Fanshawe, aka Lise, aka Sr. Marie Lise, enters the convent after having been an orphan, a prostitute, a brothel madame and a jailbird. The story is told backwards and forwards, so details are revealed slowly, just as they are when you get to know any close friend. And that's how you feel at the end of the book, as if Sister is your friend. You feel her pain and her love.  I admit, I found it hard to understand how she could love her antagonist Vivi as much as she did, but that is a part the reader accepts as the story goes on. Love is inexplicable in so many ways, especially parental love, which forgives everything, much the way that Sr. Marie Lise did for Vivi.

Rumer Godden's writing is so clear and free from showiness and sentimentality. Her writing for children might be a little too sweet, but her novels always surprise me with how much I enjoy them.I handed this one to my dad, and he loved it, too - proof that it is not too feminine. And it was an overwhelming success at book club. 

We almost picked another Rumer Godden book for November, but instead we read The Great Divorce, another C. S. Lewis book.  I misled one of my book club friends by suggesting Evelyn Waugh's Helena which has been on my shelf for ages, but I started it and kept envisioning British people in togas. Called her back, and said let's stick with Lewis, even though this is our fourth Lewis for book club in three years.  He doesn't disappoint, either; even though his allegories aren't books that I push into other people's hands and say, "here, read this," I always enjoy them and feel the prick of conscience when he reveals the sins of the ghosts at the anteroom of Heaven.  I wish I had finished it before I talked about purgatory in CRE on All Souls Day (using my usual explanation of it being a place where we get washed and dressed up for the big party in Heaven. Our priest described it as a long plane ride to paradise.) And here Lewis has it as a grey, dreary place where souls get on a bus to be offered the opportunity to reject their sins and join the souls in Heaven where reality is more real. This grey place becomes Hell when sinners reject the offer of grace. I meant to write up a schema before book club about what the sins the ghosts represented- the ones I remember are intellectual sin, the sin of making an idol out of  a child, the sin of pride, of desiring fame, of vanity, of materialism. Only the sinner with the lizard (lust?) is able to reject his sin and leave purgatory/hell behind. Lewis suggests that purgatory becomes hell when sinners fail to let go of their sins even when confronted with the beauty of Heaven and welcomed by a guide who tries to help them see the errors in their attitudes. The narrator, a Dante figure, watches these sinners reject offers of salvation over and over before he wakes up and is compelled to share his vision. The memorable line about "Those who say to God "Thy will be done' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done'" reminds us of the danger of loving ourselves and our pleasures and pursuits more than God and neighbor. Humbling.

I also read Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood for the first time. The professor who taught the nature writing class before me assigned this to her students. I have never really been a science fiction fan or an Atwood reader, and am glad I didn't follow the syllabus of this fellow professor and assign in. This dystopian future novel follows the movements and meanderings of the last human being left living, as far as he knows, after a disaster caused by an infection in a future in which bioengineering is creating new species and eliminating aging. Oryx and Crake are the two people who mean the most to the main character, who is sort of a simpering, unlikable person. An unlikable narrator is always a big hurdle for me in a book. Atwood's future where scientists live in compounds and invent crossed species and anti-aging pills and other ways to manipulate pleasure and the avoidance of pain is another sort of warning different from Lewis's and somewhat compelling - particularly the addictions to drugs and pornography that the people in this society resort to. Overall the story seemed underdeveloped - I'd probably have to read the rest of the books in the MaddAdam series to really understand, but I just don't care about the narrator, whose name I can't even remember right now, and  it didn't really seem related to "Nature Writing" enough - even though it is a future divorced from nature and reality - to spend time with.

I also picked up Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when I grabbed the Atwood book because I've never read it. It was more entertaining science fiction than Oryx and Crake, but I set it down and forgot to read it again until I got the email from the library about it being due. I can understand why it is a cult favorite, but skimming it was good enough for me to say, ok, I don't need to spend any more time with this.

Meanwhile, I'm still diving back into Walden as I read over papers. I'm working my way through Lawrence Buell's critical work The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture, but I'm afraid I didn't succeed in helping many students understand Thoreau's project. They write that he goes to woods to find himself over and over. I'm not sure they see the value of trying to discover principles of living and living in accordance with them -- Thoreau isn't asking "Who am I" but "How do I live." I went back over that, but the idea of "finding myself" is strongly rooted. My two favorite student essays so far have been one response paper about the costs of a college education vs. the free education Thoreau receives in the woods and another about the way a student from a rural area feels stressed at her urban school, but finds peace in the woods - a well-written reflection.  I find myself most convicted by his defense of living simply, free to have time for reading, observing, and visiting, probably because like most parents, I find myself stretched in so many directions. The New Republic and the New Yorker published a couple of entertaining essays from 2015 defending and defaming Thoreau: found here and here.

Now I need to find something new to read. 

Escapes

My sister visited this past weekend. My husband took the kids beach camping with his brother, so we both had sibling time.  My sister and I went out for coffee and sat in the sun, went out to lunch and sat in the sun, went to the beach and sat in the sun.  We also woke up one morning and went on a hike because it was such a nice sunny day. Our conversations were sometimes on the heavy side, but usually those kinds of conversations are enlightening!  We also met up with friends for wine one night, so we felt sunny after that fun. By the end of the weekend, I had had so much sun - plus a lot of good conversation - my insides felt light, too. So on Sunday, when my husband was talking to his parents and mentioned to them that I had had a rough week and would tell them about it, I couldn't remember everything that had happened last week, except that I was being much better about wearing sunscreen.  So it was a wonderful visit, a brief retreat from reality. 

We did do some reading while we sat in the sun.  I didn't get very far with my current book, Washington's God, by Michael Novak, which I'm reading for book club.  It's not one I would have picked, but it does have some interesting parts and some points that might make for good book club discussion. For instance, Washington sometimes wrote or spoke of Providence protecting him and his troops during the Revolution, and of Providence favoring the founding of our nation. Does this mean that God favors democracy, and the project of the United States in particular? Does it mean He is on the side of those who take up the cause of justice and liberty?  Do we think He is still favoring our nation, which has even more liberties now that the abolition of slavery, women's rights, and the gay agenda have made advancements?  We don't usually get very political at book club - this is a Catholic women's group - so I doubt we'll talk too much about what God thinks about political movements, but it is an interesting question, and in my own heart, I might tend to be more Deist sometimes to the extent that I question whether God does favor one nation over another.  It is an interesting thought experiment, however, to try to unravel the workings of nations and the workings of God. And part of the adventure of a book club is picking up books you wouldn't normally choose. 

Other books I've read this Lent I've found easier to read.  My morning readings are coming from Between Midnight and Dawn, by Sarah Arthur, a book of meditations which are primarily poems and short stories about faith and God's work in the world.  Scriptures are suggested to accompany the readings, but I have been very lax about looking them up, despite a weak intent to read more Scripture.  Maybe that can be an Easter resolution. 

I did read along with the readings in the sample issue of Give Us This Day that I picked up. It seems to be a Magnificat alternative, complete with a similar font and paper size, color, and weight.   It doesn't have all the extra readings that Magnificat provides, but is only a few dollars cheaper to subscribe.

I brought home an armload from the new books shelf at the library a month ago and consumed them all with delight.  Some of Annie Dillard's essays have been collected in The Abundance.  My interest in Annie Dillard began in 1991 when I had to write an essay in response to Pilgrim at Tinker Creek for a college admissions essay. I checked out the book, read it, and felt kinship for her descriptions of the Virginia Valley where she lived because it mirrored my own love for the woods of Michigan, where we spent a week every summer.  I wrote about lombardy poplar trees, got into college, and met and married my husband, and the rest is history, as they say.  And in college, one of my professors was Michael Waldstein, whose name came up in a conversation recently, because he taught Humanae Vitae and Familiaris Consortio and directly influenced the openness of our marriage to children.  So many webs.

Dillard's essays in this book continue to look closely at nature and our relationship to it, but often as a metaphor for seeing and observing and creating. Several selections in this collection have a broader scope.  "A Writer in the World" was my favorite. In this essay, she writes that the writer "studies literature, not the world," which is interesting from an author sometimes considered a nature writer, or a world watcher. (See this article for interesting description of how Dillard came to write Pilgrim.)

I liked this paragraph:  "Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened, and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages his intellect and heart - and our own? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaning, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?  . . .  We still and always want waking."

And this: "The artist is willing to give all his or her strength and life to probing with blunt instruments those same secrets no one can describe in any way but with those instruments' faint tracks.

190 A British journalist,[Malcolm Muggeridge?] observing the Sisters of Charity in Calcutta, reasoned: 'Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.'

Another interesting essay was "For the Time Being," which examined the life of Teilhard de Chardin and his spiritual friendship with Lucile Swan.  Though he wrote "Through woman and woman alone, man can escape from isolation," he apparently never broke any of his vows despite the love he felt for Lucile and the joy he experienced with her. But obedience was a more difficult vow than chastity, though that might not be everyone's struggle. The restraints placed by the Church on his writing about his archaeological research caused perhaps more pain.

Mary Oliver's new book Upstream was also on the shelf, so I snagged it and grabbed a book of her poetry, A Thousand Mornings, to accompany my reading. Oliver and Dillard both are immersed in appreciation for the beauty and transcendence of the physicality of the natural world.   They share some traits as writers: they see the sacred in the ordinary, they understand writing to be a way of seeing, they live private lives but bare their souls publicly.

Oliver's book is also a collection of essays about life lived in proximity to nature in Maine. She writes, "Attention is the beginning of devotion," and then reveals the world she is devoted to.  As a child, she used to run away to the woods with a backpack full of books. I used to do something similar, only the woods was the vacant lot next door to our house.  Literature and nature provided her and escape when she was a child as she summarizes, "And this is what I learned: the world's otherness is an antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness - the beauty and mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books -- can re-dignify the worst-stung heart."

Oliver also writes of the creative life: Creative work as "a hunger for eternity. Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always -- these are forces that fall within its grasp, forces that must travel beyond the realm of the hour and the restraint of the habit. ... The extraordinary is what art is about."  Discipline, a schedule, ready at all hours. anywhere, concern with the edge. , loyalty to the work. absentminded... "MY responsibility is not to the ordinary or the timely. ... My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and however it may arrive.  If I have a meeting with you at three o'clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.

"There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time."

That last line is one to wrestle with.  Is there any voracious reader who didn't at some point want to be a writer? But does everyone who wishes to write have a gift that deserves the time and attention of the sort that causes Oliver to be late or to miss meetings with other people? What will be remembered - the poem or the missed engagement?

Oliver claims to have sought knowledge as certainties and then it entertained, shaped, and failed... "now I think there is only one subject worth my attention and that is the precognition of the spiritual side of the world and, within this recognition, the condition of my own spiritual state. I am not talking about having faith necessarily, although one hopes to. What I mean by spirituality is not theology, but attitude. Such interest nourishes me beyond the finest compendium of facts. In my mind now, in any comparison of demonstrated truths and unproven but vivid intuitions, the truths lose.  . . .

"I would therefore write a kind of elemental poetry that doesn't just avoid indoors but doesn't even see the doors that lead inward - to laboratories, to textbooks, to knowledge. I would not talk about the wind, and the oak tree, and the leaf on the oak tree, but on their behalf. ....

"I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. ...

"I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple."

From her poetry:

"On Traveling to Beautiful Places" "Every day I'm still looking for God / and I'm still finding him everywhere, in the dust, in the flowerbeds."

"And Bob Dylan ToOo"  '"Anything worth thinking about is worth singing about.' / Which is why we have / songs of praise, songs of love, songs of sorrow.'"

"The Gardener" - Then I step out into the garden where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man, / is tending his children, the roses."

Next time I find time to write: Reviews of Neil Gaiman's View from the Cheap Seats and Ben Hatke's Mighty Jack. And eventually perhaps I'll come back to the Joy of Love. So much to chew on.  Since all of that meaty reading, I have done very little the last couple of weeks, in between work and other responsibilities.  I did finish Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts after hearing so much about it. She says Eucharisteo so often, I am surprised she is not Catholic. She does a beautiful job of tying together the connection between gratitude and trust and joy.  I can see why her writing is the source of parodies, but also of many fans and I found it thought-provoking that her trip to Paris, away from her family and her world that were the source of all her thanksgiving, was the source of her apprehension of joy.  Perhaps she thought of her trip as more of a pilgrimage. 

Should travel through these stories count as a pilgrimage? What about the long meditative walks in the sun with my sister? I am always ready for that journey, wherever the destination.

A few book reviews

I was excited to see this review of Mariette in Ecstasy, one of my favorite books by Ron Hansen, in The Paris Review. The link was shared from the Image update. Not only is the book good, but the review by Nick Ripatrazone captures one of the reasons why so well: the strangeness of Catholicism. As the culture becomes more and more secular, it becomes harder and harder to live in it without standing out and harder and harder to explain what it means to be Catholic. Reason seems to be a lost art. One of the few ways to evangelize is through beauty - and the strangeness of Catholicism is often beautiful in its union of mystery and doctrine and liturgy.

Also in the Image update: a review of my sister's CD, which is now out!

I just finished Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis - over 1000 pages of reading in two weeks. Read about them via Melissa Wiley's blog.  Too many late nights I stayed up reading until my eyelids couldn't stay open. That's the kind of books these are: you have to race through and stay in the story until you reach the last page, the end of the journey. The books are about time travelling historians stuck in World War II London. At times the pace is slow - an editor might cut a couple hundred pages - but I enjoy long reads every now and again because the length allows time to attach to the characters more.  On the other hand, long books take over my life, and I shouldn't be spending time right now on novels with the to-do list growing.  Reading is a form of time travel itself - the reader becomes someone else in another place at another time during which time wrinkles and passes much more quickly.

I didn't mark too many quotes, but my favorite highlights from All Clear were the characters of Sir Godfrey and the vicar of Backbury and the references to Agatha Christie - makes me want to reread some of her mysteries. It's not a scientific science fiction book - the explanation of time travel is a little sketchy, with "the Net" acting as a kind of surrogate for Providence.   Definite religious overtones, especially with the central role of the picture of Jesus as "Light of the World" in St. Paul's and the repetition of the "All will be well" reassurance, but no overt discussion of God or faith, other than this one part, when the small town vicar gives a homily on hope at a bodyless funeral: "But the vital thing is that we act. We do not rely on hope alone, though hope is our bulwark, our light through dark days and darker nights. We also work, and fight, and endure, and it does not matter whether the part we play is large or small. The reason that God marks the fall of the sparrow is that he knows that it is as important to the world as the bulldog or the wolf. . . For it is through deeds that the war will be won, through our kindness and devotion and courage that we make the better world for which we long. So is is with heaven... By our deeds here on earth, in this world so far from the one we long for, we make heaven possible. We not only live in the hope of heaven, but, by each doing our bit, we bring in to pass."

My spiritual book this month was A Right to Be Merry by Mother Mary Francis, which I read again for book club. (2010 was the last time: http://backbayview.blogspot.com/2010/07/postcard-from-road.html)I love this little joyful description of cloistered life and the remarks on simplicity, which reminded me yet again of the importance of making do with less and the freedom of having fewer choices and a regular routine/habit/rule and the discipline of loving the irritable.  I wonder how many young girls now form such a deep love of Christ that they would consider cloistered life as a way of unifying faith and life?  Or am I projecting my own active charism, which in fact many young contemplatives still are discerning such a call?

The book is a great read for Advent, which we are marking with our same Advent traditions of lighting the wreath, opening the calendar, and pinning up a few Jesse tree items, but most of our Christmas stuff is still in boxes because of unexpected company this past weekend. Last night was the community's Christmas parade with the tree lighting on our main street after Santa's sleigh went by. Some of the kids were in the parade, but it was too dark to get good photos.

From A Right to Be Merry:

 "Laudate, pueri Praise the Lord, ye children!"

"Virginity is not only a giving, but a receiving" : a fruitful, obedient, noble surrender.

An interesting part on education: "Education worthy of the name is built on integration and correlation of knowledge. It has nothing at all to do with the ability to spout facts like a geyser. Real educations brings to flower the seeds of intelligence in the human mind. Intelligence is quite independent of education, it is true,,, but education is a cultivation of the intelligence; and the blossoms it produces are just as fragrant in the cloister as anywhere else, and just as necessary.  ...

"A cloistered nun who has been trained to relate one science to another will ordinarily be quicker to relate the unfolding mysterious of the spiritual life one to another, and also to recognize the superb paradox on which the interior life is built and in which all mysteries discover their integrity: Humility is exaltation, effacement is enrichment, death is life, and all the other facets of the one splendrous truth which is Love. - cultivated mind cuts through the clutter"

"The greatest grace that a man can have under heaven is to know how to live well with those among whom he dwells. - Br. Giles 

A Trappist wrote to Mother:  "When you are convinced there is no fault or sin, no matter how terrible, of which you are not capable, you will just have begun to understand humility." .. St Clare: "For anger and worry hinder charity in themselves as well as in others." 

Mother writes about the mortification of common life - paying attention to details of job - not selfish feelings, "for one may be more enfeebled by a passing indisposition than another by a grave and prolonged illness"  ... "Gertrude von le Fort wisely observed that we love one another across an abyss." -Everyone has secret pains- there is value in the effort to subdue those pains

"To anyone who thinks that the Gospel cannot be taken quite literally today, I can only borrow St. Andrew's words: 'Come and see!' Wild and sweet our Gospel rule of life may be, wild as the world considers voluntary penance, and sweet as the love of the Man in the Gospel" from Margery Kempe.

"All his life long, a man is walking steadily toward the gate of eternity, so he can never truly make an exit ... The joy of the enclosed contemplative life is stout-fibred and enduring precisely because its roots reach down deep into the rich soil of willing suffering. The choir doors are the binding on the diary of each nun's soul" 

And finally: "See what a small, poor, hidden Lord He is Who lay  unknown in Bethlehem, but held the whole world in His beating human heart. This is our season."  

Last month's book club read was Love and Salt: A Spiritual Friendship in Letters, by Jessica Messman Griffith and Amy Andrews, another good one I think I mentioned already, although our conversation at book club wasn't too in depth about the book. I enjoyed the exploration of Amy's conversion, her struggle with faith and complacency, and Jessica's experience with grief and presence. We were a small group last month, and not everyone had finished the book, and I had read it in the summer, so it wasn't fresh in my mind.  I do remember their letters seeming a bit overwrought at the beginning, but after the both have babies, they seem more grounded, less concerned with self and more concerned with the world and others. What a gift to have a friend with whom to share this thoughts and to be so matched in interests and spiritual inquiry and study!

Some good quotes: Jessica quotes C. S. Lewis: - "How can one be a Christian and remain properly depressed? There is always the threat of resurrection"
and St. Teresa of Avila: "the important thing is not to think much but to love much; and do that which best stirs you to love" Interior Castle.
and The Lord of the Rings : love what you are fitted to love - "you must start somewhere and have some roots"
and Middlemarch  about the fear of living "quiet lives, in unvisited tombs"

Meanwhile, Amy quotes Wendell Berry: "Religious faith begins with the discovery that there is no evidence"
and Steve Martin: "The  young are always beautiful"
and Marilyn Robinson: "Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations"
and finally Teilhard de Chardin "I am afraid of the future, too heavy with mystery and too wholly new, toward which time is driving me."

So many words, ideas, and reflections go unnoted.  Were we able to time travel and relive the small details that color our daily lives, would we do better about appreciating them?

Proof of the Power of Positive Thinking?

There’s a facebook post going around that shows two photos: one of soldiers from WWII, and the other of Occupy Wall Street protestors.  The caption is something about how 20 yr olds in 1944 gave everything while 20 yr olds in 2011 want everything. It stood out to me because I just read a book about a WWII soldier and the nature of survival. I don’t care much about the Occupy Wall Street movement, because I don't understand what they want, and I don't think they do either, but I wonder if the perseverance of the protesters isn’t due so much to their dedication to the cause, as to the euphoria of hanging out together.  There’s a lot you can withstand when someone else is going through it with you.

Hence, I attend book clubs.  I like hanging out.  Usually the talk at the officer spouses’ club book group centers around upcoming events, the pros and cons of different duty stations, comparing lists of who knows whom, etc.  We might talk briefly about the book, especially if there’s a movie version.  But book talk usually expires quickly. Either people don’t read the book, or they share the same opinions of it or are afraid to voice a contrarian position.

Surprisingly, the talk at the first meeting of the book club here really stayed on topic – even despite the fact that there was delicious food to yum over.  Nearly everyone read the book, which also helped.

The book indirectly talks about the importance of camaderie for survival. It was Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, the story of World War II survivor Louis Zamperini. The Wall Street Journal had run a big review when it was came out, but the review focused on the contrast between the author’s Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and her subject’s indefatiguable spirit.  Louis Zamperini is now an active 94, which is pretty incredible, considering what he withstood as a 20something.

I don’t usually pick up historical biographies, so I don’t know how this book compares to others, but it provides great fodder for conversation.  Is that because of Hillenbrand’s writing or Zamperini’s life? He did lead an incredible life, and he survived horrendous suffering during WWII.  But I’m sure there are other lives just as miraculous – in fact Hillenbrand notes several unpublished memoirs sent to her by other soldiers which she consulted for details about the Japanese prisoner of war camps and about the Army Air Force of which Zamperini was a member, as well as other information about experiences of war. Their stories are probably just as interesting.

Part of what we found interesting in discussion about Zamperini was his change from a rebellious teen to Olympic runner to airplane bombardier to prisoner of war, then alcoholic and, finally, convert.  He went from hopelessness to glory, back to hopelessness and to, hopefully, final glory.  Growing up in depression era Southern California, he stole and fought and ran around like a hooligan. Wait, he was a hooligan. His brother finally talked him into running track, which he did first to attract girls and then because he was good.  His training for the Olympics was amazingly brief, proof of his natural talent. He qualified for the 1936 Olympics in his third 5000m race, even though he was a miler at heart.  A favorite scene for me was when the Notre Dame coach came to Zamperini to wish him good luck. Six(ty) degrees of separation?  

When Pearl Harbor was bombed he joined the air corps, and survived several missions, before the plane he was on went down while on a rescue mission.  Miraculously, he and two other men survived the crash and then lived for 47 days in the life raft, without any stores of food or water. Think Life of Pi, which I thought incredible, until reading this.  One of the men dies, the one who was new to the plane crew, but Zamp and his best friend Phil keep each other alive, even battling sharks and fire from a Japanese plane.

They finally are rescued by the Japanese and taken to a war camp. Although they initially are nursed to semi-health, their POW experience goes from bad to worse.  The pictures in the book add to the drama.  Here are all these handsome young men who died.  The few POWs who survive the torture and deprivation narrowly escape annihilation when the war ends.

So the question debated was how did they survive?  Did Louis Zamperini have special physical and mental gifts that enabled him to overcome the suffering and setbacks he experienced, or did he channel an inherent ability to survive and remain positive that everyone possesses, although many people don’t use it?

One of the wives, who has overcome a snake phobia and taken up triathlons after being a lifelong coach potato was convinced that will power was the answer. And she believes that everyone could do more for themselves just by making up their minds to do it.

It’s an interesting question.  I wanted to agree with her. And I do, sort of.  People DON’t exercise their wills – or their bodies – nearly as much as they should or can.  I definitely agree that most people give up much too easily, not on life per se, but on exercise programs, reading, name your self-improvement program. I know I’m guilty of making resolution after resolution that I don’t follow through on just because I’m lazy and selfish. (Heck, I felt like I was going to expire from endless waiting at the DMV the other day. Torture!)

But I’ve also seen that it’s possible to decide to do something and do it, even though you think you may not be able to. Running a marathon for instance, or even just running a 5K.  Running a mile for some people. A person of average health should be able to will themselves to run a mile.

There are a lot of things that sound overwhelming, but can be accomplished simply by doing and not overthinking.  Learning a language. Moving is another one. Traveling with kids.  Cooking dinner.  Fixing a toilet flusher.  Waiting in line.

The lady who had the irrational phobia of snakes wasn't even able to go outside in snake season, from the time she was little. When she found out she was coming to Guam, she had to make herself look at snakes so that she wouldn’t be afraid to go outside. She went to see a therapist, but he wanted to talk about dreams, so she made up her own program to gradually get used to looking at snakes, including watching a snake show on tv, which she wasn’t able to do before, and buying a toy snake.

I tend to be skeptic about therapists.  Could people who are depressed cure themselves by getting outside and doing some hard labor, so they stop thinking about how bad life is?  Someone mentioned that the new thing is to tell returning soldiers that they shouldn’t accept a diagnosis of PTSD as a label because then they will allow themselves to use it as a crutch or an excuse to avoid change and responsibility. Could the same be said of some people who are diagnosed with depression, or, as Laura Hillenbrand was, with chronic fatigue symptom, or other disorders that are difficult to pinpoint physically?

Even though I agree to an extent with the lady who thought people hold the power of change in their mind, I tend to think that that there are people who are just wired differently.  The guy who dies in the boat when Zamp and Phil survive may have been one of them. Maybe he let himself die because he felt guilty about eating the one chocolate bar they possessed, or because he didn’t share the connection that the other two had. Maybe his will was weak, but maybe he just didn’t have a temperament that allowed him to stay focused on living.

Of course, men of all types of personalities survived the POW camps, despite sickness, beatings and deprivation.  Did Louis have an even stronger constitution to withstand the extra beatings he receives because he was an Olympic runner, or did he simply will himself to stay alive?

Can someone train themselves to be more positive? Can someone change their temperament through will and practice? 

The example that came up was the Navy wife who never is happy where she is stationed, versus those who make the best of it, who make friends and explore. In a way this is a question of survival.  If you don’t have a choice to pick up and move across the country or across the world, you do have a choice whether to enjoy it, or to be miserable thinking that everything is better somewhere else.

I like to pride myself on my endurance and tolerance for pain.  I can run and run and run. I can drag children across the world.  I can push six kids through a tiny hole into the world without pain killers and drag them in and out of ER’s and temper tantrums.  But could I survive the privations that Louis undergoes? Could I beat back sharks and catch and kill an albatross and eat it raw?  Could I stand up under repeating beatings and punishments while suffering from dysentery and starvation?  Then overcome alcoholism and flashbacks in a single conversion moment? Is that a miracle? Was Louis Zamperini given extra gifts from God, or was he just good at using the gifts God gave him?

Missing someone to turn out the light

I’ve been suffering lately from a lack of sleep, not brought on by fear or illness or even anxiety, but by an addiction: reading junk. I was up past 3am the other night to finish off the 1000 pages of Ken Follett’s World Without End, which was the pick of my book club. And when I finally closed the back cover, I breathed no sigh of contentment, but was appalled at myself for wasting hours of sleep and a chance at having a good temper for this medieval bodice ripper with descriptions of the plague and building techniques of the 1300’s thrown in so it can pass as historical fiction. The dialogue was silly, the characters predictable, but the plot tricked you into staying involved. I can understand why it is a popular book, but I knew I was wasting time, that I needed to be asleep, that I am supposed to be sacrificing staying up late for Lent, and I should be sacrificing reading these kinds of books, but I just.  couldn’t.  put.  it.  down.

So I sat cramped in a position half sitting and standing on the edge of the bed, telling myself I was just going to skim a few pages…for 5 hours.

Instead of being so mad at myself, I should probably be thankful this is such a minor failing. I’ve had other compulsions that threatened my health. In my teens and early 20s, I wouldn’t eat a teaspoon of fat, but would binge on something like jelly beans and then go out for a two hour run. Eventually stress fractures and mono and other issues began to indicate the wear and tear on my body, but for a time I experimented with how little I could eat and still run long distance. Probably meeting my husband saved me from more than loneliness.  He gave me a reason to eat cake.


And were he home, he would’ve saved me from sleeplessness by telling me to go to bed and turn out the light. I’d grumble about his bossiness, but would comply, and would have an easier time waking up in the morning and withstanding the discombobulation of our household. Sometimes you miss the things that bother you about someone when he is gone. But sometimes those things bother you only because they reveal a tumor of selfishness in yourself that needs to be scraped away.

Three recent reads

Last week I read or skimmed three books. Their juxtaposition made clear their quality. First was The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, by Michael Lewis, which I read for the Navy spouses’ book club, (which is really a get together, drink coffee, and talk club – but always interesting). This is one of those books that may be a better movie. I picked it up at Barnes and Noble and skimmed over it in about half an hour while the three year old played with the Thomas Trains. I can see why many like it: it’s inspiring and about football and you can read it quickly. But it reads like a Sunday newspaper feature, and a fairly artless one.



Then I read Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down. I keep seeing recommendations for Hornby’s books, and this is the first I’ve read. It was engaging, clever, and has a resolution you feel satisfied with. And you can read it quickly. The characters are recognizable – and since the point of view gets passed to each of them, you can identify somewhat with them all, although I’m probably most like the dowdy Maureen, unfortunately. It’s the story of 4 down in the mouth strangers who meet on the roof of an apartment building to commit suicide on New Year’s Eve. None of them can do something so private with an audience, so they head downstairs and go to a party. Unintentionally, over a period of three months, they end up helping each other find a purpose to live, or at least to work through their current dark spots. There were some good lines and memorable scenes, but not a book you’d go back and read again, unless you were bored or were having a conversation with someone about it. It actually would make a better book club book.

Then one night I started in on Lolita. This is not a book that should be read quickly, but I didn’t actually mean to reread it. I had picked up the Library of America collection of Nabokov’s novels from the 1955-1962 because I wanted to read Pnin, another regularly recommended book, but Lolita was the first novel included in the collection. I remember reading it originally while sitting between the stacks in college, supposedly reading something for a paper, but sneaking this in. But I couldn’t remember the ending. Embarrassing, but a talent that allows me to reread with greater pleasure. I had meant to reread it after reading Reading Lolita in Tehran some time ago, but never got around to it, and really wasn’t sure I wanted to because the book makes you feel so uncomfortable, like you need to hide it behind the covers of another book or hide yourself while you read. Which I did. I just meant to read the last couple of chapters to refresh my memory. But it is an artfully told tale, and I couldn’t stop flipping forward a few more pages and then a few more. I finally returned to the beginning after getting about halfway backwards. Fascinating, revolting, enchanting – like Nabokov really did incant some spell while writing it. That it was his first book in English is astounding – the lyrical language confounds the horror of the content.


The afterward, in which Nabokov describes the development of the book, raises the issue of whether the book was “lewd” or not. He says the techniques he used in the beginning “misled” some readers into thinking it was going to follow a pattern of successive erotic scenes, and he assumes that many of his initial readers for publication didn’t finish the book and thought the theme one of three untouchable taboos, the other two being interracial marriage and the good atheist. That comment dates the book.


Also interesting: “For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm” . . . “It is childish to study a work of fiction in order to gain information about a country or about a social class or about the author.”



So to read and write for “aesthetic bliss” – an elevated sort of pleasure, a state of enlightenment – is his goal. Sounds zen-like. But that quote dovetails into the idea of reading as sacramental – a vehicle for encountering beauty that makes you aware of the possibility of transcendence – of God. The first two books I read won’t get you there, although to its credit A Long Way Down addresses the idea of God and of connecting with others to make life worth living. But Lolita does leave you in a state of altered consciousness.

He closes with this:

“My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody’s concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses – the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions – which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way.”

Imagine if he had written in Russian. But maybe the alien language of creation creates a more intriguing, alienated character.

It is obvious that the “best” book of the three is Lolita. At some point as a preteen, I remember thinking what made one book better than another? I loved everything I read. Which is, I suppose, why I ended up majoring in a great books program. But the question is, do you ignore content because of the artistry of the creation? It is another one of those books that have become cultural icons, but are monuments to a sort of nihilism, or a religion in which art is God.