Archives

Sunday Salon: Bits and Pieces

Jan22

The Sunday Salon.com

Teresa at Teresa’s Reading Corner explains something I have been enjoying for months but never have been able to figure out how to explain: the Google Reader “Next” button. Go ahead and check it out. It’s made my blog-reading ten times more enjoyable.

Today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday: Jared Wilson has a vision for the future of Christians working together to protect the unborn and encourage the growth of a culture that values life.

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. I am a fan of all of Ms. L’Engle’s books, but this one is the one for which she has received the most acclaim, including the Newbery Medal. The story of misfit Meg, her genius little brother Charles Wallace and her wonderfully normal friend Calvin going off to fight evil out among the stars and galaxies is a classic that can introduce children and adults to the wonder and the danger of a universe in which God rules but Evil is real and perilous.

Recipients of the Newbery and Caldecott Medals and of the Prinz award for YA literature will be announced tomorrow morning at the AlA Midwinter Meeting being held in Dallas, TX. Click here for information about the awards and for link to the live webcast of the announcements beginning on Monday morning at 7:30 AM, Central time.

Certain Women by Madeleine L’Engle

Feb26

A couple of years ago I started on a Madeleine L’Engle Project. My goal was to read or re-read all of Ms. L’Engle’s books in the order in which they were published. I didn’t get all that far, but I did re-read some favorites and post about them here at Semicolon. Then, I became distracted by other projects, and I haven’t read anything by Madeleine L’Engle in a while.

So, I am pleased the my participation in the Faith and Fiction Roundtable impelled me to read Certain Women again, one of Ms. L’Engle’s later novels. It’s the story of famous stage actor David Wheaton who is dying of cancer, attended by the wife of his old age, Alice, and by his daughter, Emma, who is also an actress. Alice is actually David Wheaton’s ninth and final wife, and he has nine children, the products of eight previous failed marriages. David Wheaton has always wanted to play the role of King David from the Bible, but the opportunity never came. As Wheaton reviews his life, he and his complicated family see the analogies between the life of David Wheaton, actor, and the life of David, sweet singer and King of Israel.

In the hands of another writer, this book would probably have been about David Wheaton, a man who married many wives and whose life experiences bore a certain resemblance to those of King David, with the similarities being left to the reader to discover. L’Engle chose to highlight the analogies by having Emma’s husband, a playwright, spend most of the novel attempting to write a play, specifically a vehicle for Wheaton to star as King David. By the opening of the novel, the play is a failed attempt that never was completed, and David Wheaton is much too old and sick to play the part of David anyway. But as the novel progresses the characters review scenes that were written about David and his many wives: Michal, Ahinoam, Abigail, Maacah, Bathsheba, Abishag, and others. And Wheaton and his family discuss the similarities between the Wheaton family and King David’s family and the differences. Somehow the Biblical stories give the characters insight into their own family dynamic and help them to reconcile with God and with each other.

I thought the first time I read the book, and I remembered again as I re-read, that this novel in particular, of all Madeleine L’Engle’s novels, has a certain soap opera quality to it. (Madeleine L’Engle’s husband was an actor and a long time character on the daytime drama, All My Children.) The characters move in and out of one another’s lives like soap opera characters, and there’s a lot of adultery, divorce, re-marriage, and other family drama (nothing terribly explicit or offensive). However, L’Engle’s people are more complicated and have more depth to them than the average soap opera witch or ingenue. The story this time around reminded me of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead in its portrayal of an old man preparing to die, reminiscing about his life, and trying to understand the decisions he’s made and their ongoing effect on his family members. Gilead is probably, almost certainly, the better written book, but somehow Madeleine L’Engle’s books always speak to me.

In this reading I was impressed by the importance of forgiveness for both the sinner and the one sinned against:

“He said that it was only after David lusted after Bathsheba, caused Uriah’s death, only after he had failed utterly with Tamar and Amnon and Absalom, only after he was fleeing his enemies, fleeing his holy city of Jerusalem, that he truly became a king.”

“Parents always fail their children. If we’d had children, we’d have failed ours. That’s simply how it is, and the kids have to get along as best they can. My parents were who they were. Dave is Dave.”

“Emma closed her eyes. There was a terrible empty space where Etienne and Adair should have been. ‘What is forgiveness?’
Chantal’s long fingers gripped the steering wheel. ‘It’s not forgetting. That’s repression, not forgiveness.’
Emma looked over at her sister.
‘Remembering,’ Chantal said, ‘but not hurting anymore.'”

What is your definition of forgiveness? And how do you forgive someone who is either absent or unrepentant?

Jesus said of the prostitute who washed his feet, “Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven–for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.” Perhaps only those who know that they have sinned greatly can understand and experience the depth of God’s grace, mercy, and love.

Other participants in today’s discussion of Certain Women:
My Friend Amy: Certain Women, The Women in David’s Life
Heather at Book Addiction.
Book Hooked Blog.
Sheila at Book Journey
Jennifer at Crazy for Books
Carrie at Books and Movies
Ronnica at The Ignorant Historian
Thomas at My Random Thoughts
The 3r’s Blog: Reading, ‘Riting, and Randomness
Word Lily
Tina’s Book Reviews

Projects, New and Old: January 2011

Jan29

My Bible Reading Project is going pretty well. I’ve read through Genesis, on track to finish Mark this weekend, and several of the Psalms. I also read Galatians, mostly aloud to the urchins, but I can’t say I was very successful in explaining the distinction between keeping the Law for the law’s sake and keeping it out of gratitude for what Christ has done. The urchins stared at me blankly for the most part as I engaged in this lesson in theology for their benefit. Ah, well, push on.

I want to take my old Bible and do this project with it: Blank Bible Project. I can see how this would be really useful—and a way of passing down a legacy to at least one of my children. More detailed instructions on making a blank Bible.

I read Certain Women by Madeleine L’Engle for the Faith N Fiction Roundtable, and I found Ms. L’Engle’s work as satisfying and thoughtful as ever. Come here, or to one of the other participants’ blogs, in February for more discussion of the book and its implications.

Poetry Project: The poems are posting on Fridays for Poetry Friday, and I’m enjoying them, even though we are in the Romantic period right now. I think I’m becoming an anti-Romantic poetry reader.

Newbery Project: I read and reviewed the Newbery Award winner, Moon Over Manifest, this month. I liked it a lot.

Operation Clean House is going nowhere. I haven’t even attempted to put together an Exercise and Diet Project. If anyone know of a way to exercise without actual physical labor being involved, please let me know.

In February, I really want to do more posts for Texas Tuesday and Read Aloud Thursday (to link to Amy’s blog, Hope Is the Word). I also would like to continue my Africa Reading Project, which has gotten off to a good start this year with several posts in January.

The Love Letters by Madeleine L’Engle

Feb24

The Love Letters may be my favorite of Ms. L’Engle’s books. I just re-read it for my Semicolon Book Club, and it did not disappoint. I did notice a few new things this time. (I hadn’t read the book in several years.)

The story takes place in two time periods: a 1960’s present and 17th century Portugal. In the present, Charlotte is in Portugal on an unannounced visit to her mother-in-law, the great cellist, Violet Napier. Charlotte has run away from New York and from her marriage to Patrick, Violet’s son, for reasons that are not clear in the beginning of the novel but that unfold as Charlotte comes to identify with Mariana Alcoforado, a Portuguese nun (b.1640, d.1743) who is the purported author of a book called Letters of a Portuguese Nun.

I realized that in the book, in Charlotte’s story at least, not much happens. The story is mostly about Charlotte’s internal struggles as she comes to terms with the death of her marriage. Mariana’s story has more of a plot, but part of the interest of the novel is in finding out what happened to Mariana. So stop here if you want no spoilers.

The Love Letters is a book about vows and about keeping vows, and about that all-consuming philosophical question of the sixties that has continued to preoccupy people into the twenty-first century: “You think, then, that values change? That there are no absolutes?” And if there are moral absolutes, how do we as imperfect people relate to those laws of conduct and morality?

I think in some ways The Love Letters gives an inadequate answer to those very important questions. Both Charlotte and Mariana come to the somewhat reluctant conclusion that their marriage vows are irrevocable and inextricably bound to their personhood. However, Charlotte’s story, especially, is incomplete. How does one keep one’s vows to, keep loving, a person who is not keeping covenant with you? Mariana at least has God, from whom she has run away, but who has never, even in her darkest hours, deserted her. Charlotte is not even sure she believes in God, but in the end she turns back to Patrick, to her marriage, hoping that God will help her to restore what has died.

“Supposing,” she said, slowly, “you are sitting in a train standing still in a great railroad station. And supposing the train on the track next to yours began to move. It would seem to you that it was your train that was moving, and in the opposite direction. The only way you could tell about yourself, which way you were going, or even if you were going anywhere at all, would be to find a point of reference, something standing still, perhaps a person on the next platform; and in relation to this person you could judge your own direction and motion. The person standing still on the platform wouldn’t be telling you where you were going or what was happening, but without him you wouldn’t know. You don’t need to yell out the train window and ask directions. All you need to do is see your point of reference.”

Charlotte keeps saying throughout the book that she is looking for a “point of reference”. Of course, the only fixed point of reference for human beings is God Himself. Charlotte goes back to Patrick with God as her witness and strength, or else she can’t really go back at all. Am I saying that non-Christians can’t have strong marriages, can’t keep their promises, can’t love? In a way, yes. None of us can bear the pain of loving truly and deeply and vulnerably and sacrificially because our own brokenness and sin get in the way. Only God can enable that kind of love; only He is stable enough to be a point of reference. Maybe He does the enabling in some non-Christian marriages and relationships as a sort of common grace, but I am convinced that it is only He that holds this world together.

The monthly tea for the Semicolon Book Club will be held this Saturday at 3:00 P.M. at my home. We will further discuss The Love Letters by Madeleine L’Engle. Email me at sherryDOTearlyATgmailDOTcom for more information. The book selection for the Semicolon Book Club for March is John Adams by David McCullough.

Other books that may be of interest to readers of The Love Letters:

Mariana by Katherine Vaz. In this novel, a Portuguese-American author gives her version of the story of Mariana Alcoforado.

Certain Women by Madeleine L’Engle. Another book about marriage and keeping vows and in which another historical person, this time King David of the Bible, becomes a point of reference and identification for a modern-day man.

Letters of a Portuguese Nun: Uncovering the Mystery Behind a 17th Century Forbidden Love by Miriam Cyr.

Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Not because of the Portuguese connection, although that may be what made me think of them, but Ms. Browning’s poems of love are much more controlled and formed than Sister Mariana’s passionate outpourings and because of that, in my opinion, more profoundly passionate.

Twelve Projects for 2009

Dec27

Last year instead of resolutions, I thought in terms of projects, lots of projects that I wanted to complete in 2008. I wouldn’t say I was any more or less successful with my projects than most people are with resolutions, but I like the tradition anyway and plan to to continue it this year. So here are my twelve projects for 2009, with evaluations of how I did on some of the same projects in 2008.

1. BIble Reading Project. Last year’s BIble reading project was a qualified success. I didn’t read every day, and I didn’t study the books and passages I chose as intensely as I wanted, but I did read and study some. This year’s BIble reading plan is the same as last year’s: choose a book or part of a book of the BIble for each month of the year, read it daily, and study it using some good study tools. Take notes in my Bible and maybe this year in a journal, too. The selections for this year:

January: II Samuel 1-8 Last year I read and studied I Samuel, so II Samuel seems to be next.
February: I Thessalonians
March: II Samuel 9-16
April: II Thessalonians
May: II Samuel 17-24
June: I Timothy
July: Joel
August: II TImothy
September: Amos
October: Titus
November: Psalms 1-5
December: Psalms 6-10

2. Pulitzer Project. This one will have to be a repeat from last year since I read only one of the books on my list, The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty. I didn’t review it because I didn’t really care for it much.

3. My Newbery Project for last year was also something of a bust. I think I got stuck because the winners for 1925 and 1926 were both story collections, and I don’t like story collections. I may skip the storybooks and get back on track this year.

4. My Madeleine L’Engle Project also failed to get off the ground last year. I think I just have so many good books to read, and not enough time. Anyway, this is another one I want to try again this year.

5. Operation Clean House. I figure if I take a room or area of the house and concentrate on that section each month, I might get somewhere with the de-cluttering and cleaning. Maybe.
January: My closet and dressing area.
February: The rest of my bedroom.
March: Front hallway and entryway.
April: Living Room.
May: Kitchen.
June: Laundry room.
July: Half of the gameroom.
August: The other half of the gameroom.
September: Front bathroom.
October: Z-baby’s bedrooom.
November: Karate Kid’s bedroom.
December: Sit back and enjoy my reorganized home?
I might even, if I’m brave enough, post before and after pictures to keep myself motivated.

6. LOST Reading Project. I really want to get back to this project this year.

7. The U.S. Presidents Reading Project has a list of all of the U.S. presidents and suggested reading selections (non-fiction) for each one. The challenge is to read one biography of each one. I would really like to start this project this year.

8. American History Project. In conjunction with the U.S. Presidents Reading Project, I’ll be teaching American history at home and at co-op next school year. So I’m working on planning a high school level literature/history class for co-op and condensing the Sonlight third and fourth grade curriculum suggestions for American history into one year for my little girls.

9. Poetry Project: I would like to get my urchins memorizing and reading poetry. I would like to read and memorize poetry. I would like to have more Poetry Parties.

10. Prayer Project. I need to spend some daily concentrated time in prayer and meditation. My plan is to pray and read my Bible before I get on the computer each day so that I can bathe all these projects and all my children and my husband in prayer.

11. Book Club Project. I’m really, really, truly starting my book club this year. We’re having our first meeting to discuss the books for the year this afternoon. If any of you are interested in participating (virtually), email me at sherryDOTearlyATgmailDOTcom, and I’ll send you the details. I’ll also be posting the book club selections for each month of 2009 here at Semicolon soon.

12. VIdeo Project. Engineer Husband and I are s-l-o-w-l-y watching the series Band of Brothers at night after the urchins are asleep. After we finish those videos, we’re planning to watch the HBO adaptation of David McCullough’s biography of John Adams, recommended here.

Bonus Project: I’ll keep blogging, the Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, and I’ll keep you all updated on all my projects for 2009.

Camilla by Madeleine L’Engle

Jan23

This book is the second book I’ve read in my plan to read or re-read all of Ms. L’Engle’s books this year. The first one I read was A Winter’s Love, published in 1957. Camilla, published several years earlier in 1951, deals with the same themes of the later book: marital compatibility and infidelity and the effect of marital problems on young adult children forced to confront their parents’ imperfections. I think A Winter’s Love shows some growth and maturity in the author’s ability to confront these issues, but Camilla is a very “young adult” sort of book, full of teen angst and idealism and some progress toward maturity on the part of the young protagonist.

Camilla is fifteen years old, but as a child of the 1940’s and a child of wealthy parents, she’s led a sheltered life. She acts more like a twelve or thirteen year old in our day and time, which I think is a sad commentary on the way we encourage our children to grow up faster and sooner nowadays. That aside, Camilla begins with the line: “I knew as soon as I got home Wednesday that Jacques was there with my mother.

And so Camilla must grow up and deal with the fact that her mother is having an affair and her father is unable to express his love for Camilla’s mother in a way that will keep her from pursuing another man. Throughout the novel, Camilla tries to hide from the truth of her parent’s failings, longs to crawl back into some safe place where her mother and father take care of her instead of betraying her trust, but it’s not possible. She finds safety and comfort for a while in her budding romantic friendship with her best friend’s older brother, but that relationsip, too, is imperfect and impermanent.

Finally, facts and science and her ambition to become an astronomer give at least a place of retreat and stability in a world that has become dreadfully unpredictable. Camilla’s plight mirrors the plight of the world at large in the late forties/early fifties, just recovering from a world war and fairly sure that another war is inevitable. David, one of the characters in the novel, says as much, “Always another war . . Always has been, always will be. Frank will go off to it and he’ll come back looking like me, or he’ll come back blind, or without hands, or arms. Or not at all. Or perhaps I am being optmistic. Maybe there won’t be anything to come back to.”

Camilla’s facing life and choosing life even though her parents can no longer be her protectors is likened to the intelligentsia facing the facts about life in the modern world where war destroys and maims and kills. The idea is that people are powerless to stop the madness of war and evil, but individuals are able to choose to respond to life with perseverance and spirit. It’s a kind of a “do not go gentle into that good night” attitude that serves the main characters in the novel as a philosophy of life.

Camilla and her boyfriend, Frank, discuss God quite a bit, but they talk more about the kind of God they don’t believe in than the one they do. Both profess a belief in God, but they’re obviously confused about His place in the universe and the about the whole question of how and why God allows evil to continue. They say they don’t believe it’s God’s will for “bad things to happen to good people,” but they haven’t figured out how God does work in the world. (Neither have I totally figured that one out, for that matter.) Frank has a theory that resembles reincarnation, but involves people being reborn on other planets “until at last we’d finally know and understand everything—absolutely everything—and then maybe we’d be ready for heaven.”

I don’t think that Ms. L’Engle really became committed to any sort of orthodox Christian worldview until after this novel was written, so it’s not surprising that the characters in the novel are torn between a belief in some kind of God and a desire for a doctrine that enables human to somehow perfect themselves. In later novels, this religious dead end drops away, and L’Engle’s characters are much more drawn to a specifically Christian outlook on the world. However, her novels never do become preachy nor her characters even completely orthodox in their theology. People are still people in L’Engle’s novels, and that’s a good thing in view of the discussion about “contrived fiction” that we had a few posts ago.

Camilla was L’Engle’s fourth novel, and it reads like an early effort. It was republished in 1965. How much changed, I don’t know. Nevertheless, the novel is well worth the reading for fans of Ms. L’Engle’s fiction. Camilla Dickinson, the character, reappears as an elderly astronomer in the 1996 novel A Live Coal in the Sea.

Certain Women by Madeleine L’Engle

Dec26

I’ve read this book before; Madeleine L’Engle is one of my favorite authors. She writes especially good fiction concerning two subjects: death and marriage. Certain Women is about both. It’s the story of Emma Wheaton, a successful stage actress, and her father David, not only successful but legendary star of the American stage. David is dying of cancer, and Emma has come to be with him on his boat in the Pacific Northwest. She’s not only coming to care for and say good-bye to her father, however; she’s also running away from her marriage in which the tension and melancholy of her writer husband have become too much to bear. Emma finds that she can’t escape the past since her father is reliving it in order to come to terms with his own imminent death.

The book has some profound things to say about marriage–David Wheaton has engaged in serial monogamy over the course of his actor life. He has been married nine times. He compares himself to King David in the Bible, and many of the events of his life seem to parallel the events of David’s life. The characters in the novel spend a great deal of time analyzing the life and loves of the Biblical David, drawing analogies, pointing out where those analogies fail. The novel is not a retelling of the Bible story of David, but it does draw heavily on Biblical sources and interpretations. Because he feels he has been a failure in the marriage department, David Wheaton is especially concerned that his daughter, Emma, be reconciled in her marriage before he leaves her.

I remember thinking the first time I read this book that parts of it read like a soap opera. Knowing that L’Engle’s husband, Hugh Franklin, was a long time actor on All My Children and, not coincidentally, that he died of cancer a few years before Certain Women was published, I thought maybe she was influenced, either consciously or unconsciously, by the soap opera atmosphere. Re-reading the book, I’m not so sure. Nine wives is a little excessive, but then King David’s life which forms the background for the novel was something of a soap opera, too, with all his wives and wars and sons and murder and adultery. And perhaps there are actors who have had nine or more wives–or husbands. (How many times has Elizabeth Taylor been married?) L’Engle only occasionally tips over into melodrama, and she does much better than most authors could with the raw material of David’s life, a drama if there ever was one.

I asked for a copy of Certain Women for Christmas because I remembered it fondly and wanted to re-read it. It was definitely worth the time. Mrs. L’Engle and I probably don’t agree on principles of Biblical interpretation, but we would agree wholeheartedly about many other things, the importance of marital commitment, the trustworthiness of God, the necessity of forgiveness. And Madeleine L’Engle is one of the finest storytellers living in the United States. Not hyperbole, just a fact.