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NPM: Poetry for the Sheer Joy

Apr30

Believe it or not, people once read poetry for the sheer joy of it. With the right poets, it still may be done. For straightforward one goes to Tennyson, Poe, Wordsworth, for convoluted and lovely one strays into Eliot, Hopkins, Browning, Pound, and Arnold. And there are a great many contemporary poets well worth your attention.”

Steven Riddle, Flos Carmeli

For sheer joy in words, Poe or Emily Dickinson.

For sheer joy in ideas, Eliot or Matthew Arnold

For sheer joy in characterization, Frost or Browning.

For sheer joy in nature, Wordsworth, of course, or any of the other Romantics.

For the sheer joy of the Lord, King David (the Psalms) or George Herbert or John Donne.

ASCENSION by John Donne

Salute the last and everlasting day,
Joy at th’ uprising of this Sun, and Son,
Ye whose true tears, or tribulation
Have purely wash’d, or burnt your drossy clay.
Behold, the Highest, parting hence away,
Lightens the dark clouds, which He treads upon ;
Nor doth He by ascending show alone,
But first He, and He first enters the way.
O strong Ram, which hast batter’d heaven for me !
Mild Lamb, which with Thy Blood hast mark’d the path !
Bright Torch, which shinest, that I the way may see !
O, with Thy own Blood quench Thy own just wrath ;
And if Thy Holy Spirit my Muse did raise,
Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise.

Poet of the Day: John Donne
Poetry activity for today: Put a poem in a letter or make your own poetry greeting cards.

Tomorrow May 1st, by the way, is Ascension Thursday.

Valentine’s Day Links

Feb14

Joe Carter on How to Write a Love Letter (for guys)

A Valentine’s Day Cake

A Slice of Life by Edgar A.Guest.

“Be not ashamed to send your valentine;
She has your love, but needs its outward sign.”

Recommended movie for Valentine’s Day: Marty.

Julie’s favorite romantic movies and books.

Real Romance for Grown-up Women.

Anatomy of a Marriage: Books about Love and Marriage.

And today is the day that the 2007 Cybil Award winners are announced. Check out the winners and read them with your children on this love-ly Valentine’s Day.

Books for Lent to Lead You into Resurrection

Feb6

Lent begins very early this year, on Wednesday, February 6th. Here a few book suggestions and blog links to add to your Lenten journey.

The Rising: Living the Mysteries of Lent, Easter, and Pentecost by Wendy Wright. Wendy is a lay person who writes beautifully about the sacredness of ordinary experience.

Bread And Wine: Readings For Lent And Easter is a collection of 72 essays from a variety of writers like Dorothy Day, Madeleine L’Engle, C.S. Lewis, and Frederick Buechner.

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. If you’re just now exploring the Christian faith, or if you’re trying to come to a deeper understanding of the faith you already profess, you can’t go wrong with Lewis’s classic exposition of the basics of what Christians believe.

Living Lent: Meditations for These Forty Days by Barbara Cawthorne.

Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner. Semicolon review here.

Pilgrim Road: A Benedictine Journey Through Lent by Albert Holtz. A Benedictine monk travels through fifteen countries and contmplates the spiritual journey that we all undertake.

Our read aloud books for the Lenten season are Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair all by C.S. Lewis and The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare.

Fro my personal devotional reading, I’m reading the books of Ruth in the Bible for the month of February and the latter eight chapters of Mark in March. I’m also reading Peter Kreeft’s Christianity for Modern Pagans.

Blog Links for Lent:
Lenten Links collected by iMonk, Michael Spencer.

An Anglican Family Lent.

And an Anglican Family Lenten Carnival with lots more links.

Lenten Thoughts from 2005 at Semicolon.

Aside from reading, I’m observing Lent by taking a blog break. You might not notice too much difference at first because I’ve pre-posted and scheduled quite a bit of stuff for the next few weeks. Saturday review posts will appear on Saturday as usual. However, I took a Lent break last year and actually enjoyed it quite a bit, and so I’m taking off again this year. I hope to have a couple of guest bloggers come in take up the slack, but however that goes, I’ll see you all back on or about March 23rd, Resurrection Sunday.

May the Lord bless you and keep you, may He cause his face to shine upon you, and give you peace.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Dec31

“No one ever regards the first of January with indifference.” —Charles Lamb.

Ring in the New

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

Genesis 8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

“Christianity, generally a horizon-watching faith rather than a novel-gazing one, has over the centuries helped people to outgrow petty hopes and climb faster and higher toward God’s greater challenges. But what if evangelicals sing self-absorbed hymns and songs, classing “personal peace and affluence” —to use Francis Schaeffer’s term— as Job No. 1? The result could be spiritual heart attacks and an international laziness that allows Islam and other anti-Christian doctrines to spread without challenge.” —Marvin Olasky in WORLD magazine, December 29, 2007.

Suppose we think little about number one;
Suppose we all help some else to have fun;
Suppose we ne’er speak of the faults of a friend;
Suppose we are ready our own to amend;
Suppose we laugh with, and not at, other folk,
And never hurt anyone “just for a joke”;
Suppose we hide trouble and show only cheer—
“TIs likely we’ll have quite a Happy New Year!

b-girl

Riddles for the New Year:
1. Why is a New Year’s resolution like a mirror?

2. Which travels faster in January: heat or cold?

3. What is the next letter in the series?: J F M A M J

4. What comes once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years?

5. What goes up and never comes down?

*

*

“My father made us,” she began, “keep a diary in two columns: on one side we were to put down in the morning what we thought would be the course and events of the coming day, and at night we were to put down on the other side what really had happened. It would be to some people a rather sad way of telling their lives . . . I don’t mean that mine has been sad, only so very different to what I expected.”
—Miss Matty in Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.

MikeHuckabee.com - I Like Mike!

“Destiny waits in the hand of God, shaping the still unshapen:
I have seen these things in a shaft of sunlight.
Destiny waits in the hand of God, not in the hand of statesmen
Who do, some well, some ill, planning and guessing,
Having their aims which turn in their hands in the pattern of time.”
—T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral.

Happy New Year to All! May 2008 be filled with books, poetry, life, and love. And may all who enter here go away with a sense of the Joy of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is and was, and is to come. Maranatha!

Impossible Christmas

Dec24

Re-posted from Christmas Eve, 2005:

I was thinking this afternoon about nursing, as in breastfeeding, as in feeding a baby. And I had the startling (to me) thought that Mary actually put Baby Jesus, not a doll, to her breast and fed him, fed him milk. Then I remembered that before she did that, she delivered him in the normal, messy, bloody way in a stable without a doctor or an epidural or even a nurse holding her hand and reminding her to push. She wrapped the God-baby in clothes and laid him in a feedbox and sat down or lay down in the hay on the floor beside him to rest. Joseph probably cleaned up, swept, maybe tried to find some water to wash things up a little.

It’s all a little too . . . physical, isn’t it? The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The “Word” part gives me a little distance, a little spirituality, but the rest of the verse gets all fleshy again. Dwelt among us implies He lived a typically human life, ate and drank, bled when he cut himself, relieved himself, itched, scratched, slept, maybe snored. What an impossible thing to believe in. I actually believe that the God of the Universe, the God who created the Universe, who rules it, confined himself first to a human womb, then to a human body, then to death and a tomb. At least I believe it when I don’t think about it too much. When I do ponder the physicality of it all, it seems impossible.

I saw the Narnia movie this afternoon, and I noticed that twice the characters used the word “impossible.” As the children enter Narnia together, Susan experiences the coldness of the snow and the branches scratching her and breathes, “Impossible!” It’s so real, so physical, so undeniable, but “impossible.” Then later the White Witch looks up to see the True King of Narnia confronting her, the king she thought she had murdered, and she exclaims, “Impossible!’ He is so real, so physical, so undeniable, yet impossible.

Impossible that He should entrust Himself to the womb of a young country girl from the hick-town of Nazareth.
Impossible that He should travel through the birth canal and place himself in a body, helpless to walk or communicate or even care for his own physical needs.
Impossible that He should suck at his mother’s breast to sustain the life of that very needy body.
Impossible that He should grow in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.
Impossible that He should laugh and cry and feel love and joy and anger and despair.
Impossible that He should share food and conversation and hugs and kisses with a group of human friends, one of whom turned out to be an enemy.
Impossible that He should die.
Even more impossible that He should die and then live–forever.

So real, so physical, so undeniable, so impossible. Only the God of the Impossible could inhabit such a story and make it a physical reality, and only by doing so could He intersect my very physical life and make me believe, know in my bones, the Reality of His love and joy and forgiveness and healing.

I pray for you this Christmas that the Impossible becomes Truth in your physical life where you are sitting and reading these words now.

May you have an Impossible Christmas.

Waiting Time

Dec24

The Annunciation to the Shepherds



While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
All seated on the ground,
The angel of the Lord came down,
And glory shone around,
And glory shone around.

“Fear not!” said he, for mighty dread
Had seized their troubled mind.
“Glad tidings of great joy I bring
To you and all mankind
To you and all mankind.

“To you, in David’s town, this day
Is born of David’s line
A Savior, who is Christ the Lord,
And this shall be the sign,
And this shall be the sign.

“The heavenly Babe you there shall find
To human view displayed,
All meanly wrapped in swathing bands,
And in a manger laid,
And in a manger laid.”

Thus spake the seraph and forthwith
Appeared a shining throng
Of angels praising God on high,
Who thus addressed their song,
Who thus addressed their song:

“All glory be to God on high,
And to the Earth be peace;
Good will henceforth from Heaven to men
Begin and never cease,
Begin and never cease!”

We sang this carol in church this morning, and I started thinking about the shepherds. Seeing the angels and the baby and hearing the promise of a saviour was probably the pivotal event of their lives. I doubt if anything so exciting and awe-inspiring had ever happened to them before, nor probably would it again. The Bible says that after seeing the baby the shepherds “returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.”

And then? The shepherds went home or back to the fields to check on the sheep. They told some people, family and friends, what they had seen and experienced. Some people believed them; others thought they were drunk or participants in a mass hallucination of insane proportions. And then? Nothing. Nothing else happened. The angels promised that a Saviour had been born, The Annointed One (Christ), Adonai (the Lord). They sang about God’s favor resting on men. But after all the hoopla was over with, what really happened? Nothing happened . . . for thirty years. (Other than a massacre of young boys —Matthew 2:16-18— hardly a sign of God’s favor!) The baby and his parents left Bethlehem, and the shepherds went back to their sheep.

We can read what happened next in the next few chapters of Luke or Matthew and get the impression that the angels said it and God immediately did it. But there were approximately thirty years between the birth of Jesus and the beginning of his ministry. The shepherds were all grown men with beards by the time they heard anything about that baby, now a grown man too, and some of them probably died while waiting for the fulfillment of the angels’ promise. The Romans still ruled; the tax collectors still collected the taxes; the Law was still an impossible burden to fulfill.

Isn’t that the way it is for us, too? We experience an epiphany, a connection with God himself. We get a message or a promise. We glorify and praise God for the great things He has done. And then . . . . nothing. It’s back to the sheep, back to the laundry, back to the quotidian tasks of an average life. We thought everything would be different now, after such an experience, but it all looks and feels about the same. Maybe our responses to situations are different, but hardly anyone notices. And as time goes on, we can feel ourselves settling back into the familiar patterns of daily life, wondering if anything that spectacular really did happen. Maybe we did just imagine it all.

But the angels were real. The baby was a real baby who grew into a real Saviour, Christ the Lord. Yes, things didn’t look much different after the birth of the Christ Child, but underneath the surface everything had changed. We live in the waiting time, between the promise and the fulfillment. And the time between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of the story feels like a long wait. We’re tempted to doubt the Word, even to despair in the face of continued evil and suffering and waiting. But the Bible says, “Don’t give up!” “Unto us a Child is born, and unto us a Son is given.”

Advent has been a time of waiting for the coming of the Christ Child, and each year we reenact that time of preparation. Then Christmas comes, and what’s really changed? The world revolves, and we go on waiting. It’s tempting to give up, to think that God’s promises will be held in abeyance forever. But even if death overtakes each one of us before the Time is fulfilled and Evil is defeated forever, it’s only the time between the ending of one chapter and the beginning of the next. Such a short time really.

1 Peter 1:3-8: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Merry Christmas to all pass through here as you wait on the revelation of the promise of God. May your New Year be filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy even as you wait and hope for the final goal of peace on earth, good will to men on whom God’s favor rests!

Reposted from Christmas, 2006.

A Pickwickian Christmas

Dec22

I wish you a Pickwickian Christmas full of “bluff and hearty honesty” and “hospitality” and “merriment and open-heartedness” and “feasting and revelry” and “mutual goodwill” and “unalloyed delight”. Sentimental Victorian maybe, but no one does Christmas quite like Dickens!

As brisk as bees, if not altogether as light as fairies, did the four Pickwickians assemble on the morning of the twenty-second day of December, in the year of grace in which these, their faithfully-recorded adventures, were undertaken and accomplished. Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away. Gay and merry was the time; and right gay and merry were at least four of the numerous hearts that were gladdened by its coming.

And numerous indeed are the hearts to which Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment. How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilised nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy! How many old recollections, and how many dormant sympathies, does Christmas time awaken!

My Grown-up Christmas List

Dec12

I hate that song “Grown-up Christmas List.” (If you feel compelled to read a list of my least favorite Christmas songs, written last year, go here. Just don’t blame me if one of the songs gets stuck in your head on infinite repeat.) Anyway, I don’t like the grown-up Christmas list in the song because it sounds like some Miss America contestant trying to impress Bert Parks or the judges or someone in the audience: “No more lives torn apart,/That wars would never start,/And time would heal all hearts./And everyone would have a friend,/And right would always win,/And love would never end.” Wow! why not just wish for “world peace” and be done with it? This is a description of heaven, not Christmas. Nevertheless, I do have my own equally unrealistic grown-up Christmas list, and because this is therapy for me, I’m going to share it with all of you out there in blogland.

WARNING: This list may sound whiny and self-indulgent. I don’t mean to sound that way, but it’s a bad day for me, and I may. So, if you want to skip my grown-up Christmas list, you have my permission to do so. My children DO NOT have permission to skip this post. In fact, I’ll probably send them a link, not that I think they are capable of working miracles. . . Still, I think they should read what I really want for Christmas.

1. One week in which I do not have to take anyone anywhere nor pick anyone up from anywhere. A month would be even better, but I know fantasy when I write it.

2. A clean, organized house. This wish is beyond impossible, and I know it, but we’re talking wishes here. It is not possible for eleven people to live in one house together and keep it both clean and organized in the United States of America in AD 2007. Why? Too much stuff. Even poor people in the U.S. tend to have too much stuff, and we’re not poor. (Yes, I’ve tried Fly Lady. It may work for some people, but she hasn’t seen my house nor met my family.) But I don’t want to get rid of the stuff. I like my stuff, especially my books, all 10,000 or so of them, which leads me to my next item:

3. Enough bookshelves for all our books. In this desire, you might think I’m coming closer to reality, but you, too, have not seen my house. We have bookshelves on almost every available wall. We have a bookcase headboard. We have tall bookshelves, and we have short bookshelves. We have bookshelves in the closets. Yet the books keep multiplying. I think they mate in the night when we’re not looking and produce offspring. (Book Crush by Nancy Pearl meets Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson, and suddenly we have all the books I’m planning to buy for Christmas. That’s right, blame the authors. Why don’t they go on strike like the television writers and ease the strain on my poor groaning bookshelves?)

4. A working combination CD/cassette player. No, not reality either. It must keep working. We have five or six of these ugly things in various rooms in our house, and I am always told that when I want to play a cassette that I can’t because none of the cassette players work. And when I want I play a CD I have to use either my computer or the DVD player connected to the TV because none of the CD players work either. And right now the DVD player is unplugged so that we have an ourlet to plug in the Christmas lights. But I can’t throw any of the non-functional uglies away because someone uses them to listen to the radio.

5. A maximum of five working computers, one for every two people in the house. We have six or seven working computers. The reason I’m not sure about the number is that it changes from day to day. A monitor went bad the other day; we found another one and hooked it back up. Nobody has a working printer except me. I know this because everyone wants to email me their schoolwork and have me print it out for them. Some of our computers are connected to the internet; some are not. Some are supposed to be devoted to educational games for the younger children, but they always want to play the games on my computer. One of them is taking up space on a counter that I want to use to serve food. I think five computers should be enough for one family. Are you beginning to see why, books aside, my house is so cluttered?

6. A garage sale. I would like for my children to sell everything that is not nailed down, split the money with me, and not bother me with the details. Just don’t sell any of my books or my bookshelves. Don’t sell your younger siblings either, no matter how tempting it may be.

7. A menu plan for the entire year that will please all eleven people in the family, including the vegetarian, the non-beef eater, the gourmand who’s been to France, the child who lives on pizza and sugar only, the one who would live on chips if we allowed it, and the gentleman who always comes to the table late and wonders why there’s no food left for him. And all the meals would be cheap, easy to prepare, and delightfully delicious.

8. The kitchen cleaned up thoroughly after every meal without my having to remind anyone —ever. We actually have a schedule for kitchen cleaning. But all my readers have a curious disability: they can’t read their own names on the kitchen clean-up schedule posted on the refrigerator. I wouild like for them to learn to do so, and then I’d like it if they actually cleaned the kitchen every time it’s their turn.

9. Light. I want the lights in every room in my house to have a full complement of working light bulbs. And I want to turn them on whenever I want light and have them glow warmly and brightly. I like lights. Lights make me happy.

10. Since all of the things on this list are either cheap or impossible or both, I’d like a month long tour of Europe for my final Christmas gift. If you can’t get the other things, I’ll take the trip. Maybe when I get back the house will be clean, the books will be shelved, the food will be made, and the lights will be glowing to welcome me back home.

I can dream, can’t I?