Singing Again

I am an ardent Hunger Games fan. The movie surprised me when I accompanied a child who wanted to see it. Powerful emotional experiences of that kind must either be rejected, thoroughly, permanently, or they must be worn out. I decided to wear Hunger Games out, reading the books, collecting fan magazines and seeing the new movie right away. I think it was the tribute to Appalachian culture that made it stick. One time when I asked my grandmother what I should say when asked about my roots, she said that I should say, "West Virginian." She was right, even though I grew up in Maryland.

Music was the most prized art form when I was growing up. We sang all day most days, and I loved it. Whether we were opening school, class, or church, whether we were messing around on the playground, bus, or park, whether we were in rehearsal learning how all those things we did naturally, worked and were written down, whether we were performing for church, nursing homes, or competitions, we sang. I took it for granted.

The part of Katniss' story that has surprised me the most is from the last book when she is recovering from it all. She begins to sing and sing and sing her way back to a shaky sanity. What a clever, Appalachian twist. Life carried me away from Appalachia kicking and screaming. This thing then that thing then the other thing separated me from singing, until I was only skipping through the little songs I sing my children, and whatever was on the board for Sunday.

I have started to sing. I haven't experienced an apocalyptic horror, but I have feared it. I've carried broken things too long, and it's time to sing. I've joined the church choir, and I'm trying to make time to practice more at home. It isn't as spectacular as Katniss, but I think I'm getting closer to home.

Going Blue

We are moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Kurt needed a better work opportunity, and he found it in a city we've often talked about for retirement. We'll have The Big House, and the University of Michigan for entertainment and enlightenment.  There are great schools for the kids, and the possibility of graduate school for the adults. All my research says that this is going to be a great experience, so why are we so sad?

Mea doesn't want us to crowd into her big adventure. No one wants to leave friends. We've put down deep roots here in Spring Lake. This has been a place of shelter and help. It is irreplaceable, especially all the people. 

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

It's getting closer every minute. I have so much to do, and it is a joy to do it. Come if you can. We're going to have amazing Redwall-inspired desserts as well as great family activities. Thanks, Karen Morgan, for the great flyer.

30, 40, 50

This year I am the answer to life, the universe, and everything. That means that clever marketers think I am worried about aging and boy do they have the products for me. Scattered across the spectrum of lazy reading I am offered beautiful pictorials of famous people who have spent their lives cultivating their appearance for a living, some 30, some 40, some 50.  I want to see those glamorous images spliced with ordinary women who don't have two hours a day to workout or hundreds of dollars to spend on creams, because that's a great 30, 40, 50, too.  Then I want to go one step further and I want to see 30, 40, 50 year old refugees or others who have suffered the affects of grinding poverty and war.  After that, everyone should take a deep breath and change the direction of their attention. 

After all those pictures, what do we really need to do to improve the world? I don't know everything, but somethings are obvious.

Rediscovering Water

Mountain water, at least where I grew up, is just as good as the hype.  It made me a water snob, especially when I reached the flatlands here in the Midwest.  I took the water softener one step further and had them install a water purifier as well.  The resulting water was ok, and then we moved close enough to Lake Michigan that the water was acceptable without all the extra fuss.  Acceptable, but not as good as water from home.

I love tea. My grandfather made the best ice tea, and the flavor hot or cold is part of so many great memories.  On my weekly trip to Barnes and Noble, I get a Venti tea, and it always tastes so much better than tea I make at home. I bought the tea bags, and they were scrumptious, but the taste still wasn't the same.  What finally occurred to me was that they used filtered water.  When I checked with my barista she confirmed that the water was elaborately filtered and that did make a difference in the taste.  I thought about it for a week or two and then bought a Zero Water pitcher and fired up our hot pot. The tea was amazing.  Any and all tea is amazing.  

I love you, Lake Michigan, but you are better without the personality.  Thanks water treatment personnel, but chlorine is not delicious. Thank you, Zero-Water people, for increasing the healthy pleasures in my life. Thank you, Janet Tyson, for the gorgeous picture of the lake in winter.  Thank you, Barnes and Noble, for always having great teas on hand. 

Lost Shakespeare Found

The only problem with great writer's of yore is that when you've read everything they've written, you've read everything they've written.  You can reread them, but it's just not the same.  I read my first novel by Flannery O'Connor in my early twenties, and I have doled out her meager catalog bit by bit.  A decade later ;), I have one collection of short stories left.

The Bible was the first adult book I read for myself.  I started at five with the story of Moses in the Bulrushes.  I went on to read all the usual Bible stories.  Preaching had me reading the New Testament, and boredom with preaching introduced me to all the weird and wacky bits no one ever reads.  The practice of a daily quiet time moved me to get my reading organized.  Starting my freshman year of college, I used three different incarnations of the One Year Bible over the course of more than a decade.  Rereading and rereading and rereading, even the wacky bits became overly familiar.

One of the best benefits of converting to Catholicism is that there are all these new books of the Bible to read.  It feels like it would if someone discovered a lost Shakespearean play, and we could all experience his wisdom and genius in a fresh way. These new-to-me books of the Bible promise to be the Holy Spirit's fine work and work in me.  Getting  around to reading them has taken longer than expected, but, at last, the time has come.  I have an amazing Catholic Bible I was given during my RCIA classes, but it's paperbound, four inches thick, and the other dimensions are pretty generous too.  It wouldn't survive the kind of hauling around my loved books receive, so I have invested in a New Catholic Answer Bible.  A rosary is embossed on the leather-like cover.  The Table of Contents refers to the helpful inserts, not the books of the Bible, and a picture of Pope Francis was included free of charge.  I'm starting with Tobit.  Let the renewal begin!

Dinner Reservations

Some ideas are stickier than others.  Sitting in church listening to the details of a new project to build a wall around St. Martin DePorres Orphanage got me thinking about Redwall Abbey and Martin the Warrior.  We could put on a Redwall Feast to raise funds.  The idea was so so obvious to me that I assumed it would put itself forward.  I waited for it to be announced so I could volunteer. 

The wall was finished and a new laundry was nearly complete, but the idea still had not been put forward.  In my mind the event was taking shape in ever greater detail.  It kept growing from "A Taste of Redwall" food-centered event to an immersive dinner theater experience.  I kept finding experts and scouting actors, all the while waiting for someone else to speak up for this idea.

Then I began to see that this is my baby, so I put it forward to the St. Martin's Kids committee at church.  They are a very practical group.  They loved the idea and had very helpful questions and 

suggestions.  We all decided to let going forward rest on getting the necessary permissions from the publishers of Redwall.  It was such an intimidating process, but in the end we were green-lighted by Jim Jacques, Brian's brother.   

Pregnant by the Holy Spirit, it's not just for Mary anymore.  

Where I Come From

I have to admit as a homeschool mom I'm always hoping for a snow day so my older kids can stay home.  I miss them even though I know I've done the right thing sending them to school.  Tricky thing about snow days in Michigan, is living in Michigan.  We see a lot of snow.  It's always cold (try swimming in the lake in July).  We are tough and used to this, so school never seems to close.  Except for the last two days.  Wow, that's weather to make Alaskans shrug their shoulders enigmatically.  I don't care.  It meant two more days of having my big girls home.

Unlike wimpy Indiana where driving in such weather is illegal, Kurt went to work, and it really felt like the old days.  We slept in, but the big girls jumped in upping my homeschooling manpower so that we could finish the essential work in a couple hours.  It was fun, and I mean that non-homeschoolers.  It was really fun.  No such delight expected tomorrow.  We're back to the usual, well, as usual at it gets in a world where throwing boiling water out your back door is a science experiment.  If I didn't have such wonderful friends I'd be moving to Florida--then again, they didn't get a single day off.  

Intersection

I went to my first reconciliation service Sunday.  I've been to confession at the regularly offered time before, but this was my first group confession.  Not that we confessed as a group, there was half a mass and then we all lined up to get down to business.  Five priests who had joined with Father Dan were sprinkled around the church.  It was interesting that some priests had more fans than others.  I picked mine because I used to live in that priest's parish.  

I'm always surprised at how different Catholics approach these moments differently.  Some of us stood there making some small talk.  Some were nervous, constantly making little motions.  Some were bored.  I was trying to remember all my sins and making sure they were represented on my Mea Culpa App.  Some sins are easier to remember than others.

I liked the group experience.  The honesty of all that steaming shit I didn't know the details of, and the embarrassed relief as each person finished their penance, made me feel more completely part of things.  We were all in it together.  It was a good thing to know.

St. Teresa of Avila

 

I read The Book of My Life for Lent, and found it anything but lenten. She is funny and smart and always focused on the point. It was a wonderful beginning for a study of the mystics. Here's some of the bounty I found along the way.

for me. "That's why it can be such an intense relief to see yourself described in a book. It's affirming to discover that you are on the right path after all."

for J. "All I needed to know was that God was in charge of everything.

for T. "It is clear that all the Beloved wants of us is humility and holy bewilderment. He wants us to accept what we are given and praise the one who gives it."

for H. "This kind of self-loathing is one of the spirit of evil's most insidious, painful and deceptive tricks. I'm warning you about this so that if he tries to tempt you in this way, you will have the foresight to recognize it. Don't think it's a matter of of academic learning or theological knowledge. Even though I am impoverished in these areas, the minute I escape from his clutches, it is obvious to me that my negative feelings were goundless."

for S. "I began to talk to The Lord in that silly way of mine. I don't know what I'm saying when this happens. It's love that's talking. My soul becomes so transported that I can no longer tell any difference between her and God."

for N. "Pay no attention to the scarecrows the spirit of evil sets up to frighten us. Remember, every time we ignore them, they grow weaker and we gain more mastery."

for K. "Once when I was especially worried about this, The Lord spoke to me. "What are you afraid of?" he asked. "Only one of two things could come of it. People will either criticize you or praise me." He explained that the people who believed in the experience would praise him and those who didn't would condemn me. It wasn't my problem. Either way, the outcome would benefit me, so I shouldn't be anxious."

for R. "The fact is I have so little time to give to this writing certainly does not help my ability to be able to explain this very well. Therefore, his Majesty must come to my rescue. Living in a house that was so recently founded, I am inundated with community duties and other related business. I can only write in fits and spurts, and I can never really settle down into it. I wish I had more space to write, because when The Lord gives me inspiration, the words flow with great ease and clarity. Then writing is just like sketching a model that is sitting right in front of me.
But when inspiration is lacking, it doesn't matter how many years a person might have spent in prayer, my words make no more sense that if I were speaking Arabic, as the saying goes. And so it seems to me that my only hope is to enter a state of prayer while I am writing. That's when I can clearly see that I am not the one doing the writing. I'm not the one planning out in my mind what I'm going to say nor do I understand afterward how I managed to say it at all. This happens to me often."

for us all. "I wish that the five [8] of us friends who love each other in Christ could make a pact. We would gather together on a regular basis for the purpose of freeing each other from illusion. We would suggest ways in which each of us could improve our relationship with God. No one knows himself as well as someone close to him who observes him with love and concern for his spiritual growth.

Cross Raising

GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD," John writes, "that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." That is to say that God so loved the world that he gave his only son even to this obscene horror; so loved the world that in some ultimately indescribable way and at some ultimately immeasurable cost he gave the world himself. Out of this terrible death, John says, came eternal life not just in the sense of resurrection to life after death but in the sense of life so precious even this side of death that to live it is to stand with one foot already in eternity. To participate in the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ is to live already in his kingdom. This is the essence of the Christian message, the heart of the Good News, and it is why the cross has become the chief Christian symbol. A cross of all things—a guillotine, a gallows—but the cross at the same time as the crossroads of eternity and time, as the place where such a mighty heart was broken that the healing power of God himself could flow through it into a sick and broken world. It was for this reason that of all the possible words they could have used to describe the day of his death, the word they settled on was "good." Good Friday.

Frederick Buechner

Comforting or Creepy?

This is my brother's gravestone.  My parent's bought it after the terrible trial of losing an infant.  The money hadn't been easy to spare, but it made it easier to leave him in Michigan when a job came up in West Virginia.  I was careful to pay attention to the details so that I could find him if I ever came back.  The other day I was googling the names of people I know, and there it was, little lost lamb and all.  I felt two things immediately, relief--"there you are" and anger--"how dare they!"
The relief stemmed from the moment of connection with this little person gone, a sense that, in a world of shifting electrons something had stayed put.  I can visit and scrub the headstone and plant things that never survive.  I will admit that since I found this picture I have returned periodically to view it and remember.
The anger comes in that, anyone with Google can go there too.  This is our private grief and no one else's business.  Shouldn't there be some protection for this sacred place?  How dare some camera enthusiast  fill an empty Saturday snapping up pictures of loss and grief?  I cannot move into the graveyard with my brother's body, his body cannot stay with me.  Please do not abuse the middle ground between us.
Then I remembered visiting Starnberg, Germany and my fascination with the graveyards.  The beauty of the expressions of love inspired and comforted me.  The comparative sterility of American graves seemed rather sad.  I took tons of pictures and they are still my favorite tokens of Starnberg.  I suppose the balance is this-- he is my brother, my only brother and he's gone, that's personal--my grief is universal and I share it with everyone.  If the photo was taken in such a spirit, it took nothing it didn't own.

A Package of Crayons

I love connecting people with each other or with useful stuff.  I have an internal list of things I'm looking for and it makes my life feel like a scavenger hunt.  Carol Bennett made my list when she described dashing out of the shower to write down an idea.  She'd been out of the market for children's tub toys for a while, so she was surprised to hear that such things as tub crayons and markers existed.  Ever since I've been looking for the crayons at the right time and price and tonight I found them, there's only one problem , Carol is gone.  

Cancer took her away.  The last time I saw her she seemed to be beating it handily, but then along came an email from Pat, the West Michigan Writer's Workshop Goodwill Ambassador, with the news that cancer had suddenly won.  I don't do death very well, so I've been struggling with this loss of a friend who wasn't close but still mattered.  

Tonight though as I think about the crayons, I'm realizing that I need to go back and get those crayons and park them in my shower.  It's the thing she taught me--to value inspiration, to get it down, before she's gone.

Fan

The University of Michigan's Fan Day has a way of restoring my faith in humanity.  To see so many people taking such great pleasure in things like meeting football players and talking to cheerleaders; throwing your own touchdown or kicking field goals; or in my case taking off my sandals so I could feel the soft, bouncy astro-turf between my toes.  Michigan's stadium is the third largest in the world and you see that on TV, but you don't really feel it until you're there.  Likewise Michigan is one of the world's great universities, but you don't see it until you are there.  The campus is beautiful, even the North Campus where my engineering husband's, favorite memories are.  He looks at a parking lot, remembering picking up a car and relocating it with his friends.  I look at the quaint houses and think, someday, when the kids are gone...

Mostly Muslim Movies

My parents were teachers in a small Christian school when I was growing up.  They signed a contract foregoing movies and they stuck to it. The same church that sponsored the school was struggling to work all this out.  I remember being properly shocked when my Sunday School teacher used ET for an illustration.  VHS put an end to all pretense.  Movies were back in swing just in time for my adolescence and I've found it a delicious naughty pleasure ever since.
But now I've gone a step further--ahh, the slippery slope.
I've gone Muslim--mostly.
I'm finding the films of our counterpoint interesting.  They make new all those old problems of life by dressing it up in what is for me a costume.  It is a pleasure to learn and grow.

Sabah is about a woman trying to work out a life between her family's traditionalism and her own need to explore.  There's a sweet love story.  It's sort of  Jane Austen in a hijab.

Arranged follows the lives of two young women, one Orthodox Jew and one traditional Muslim as they go through their respective processes of finding a husband.  I love the way they support each other, and the best moment in the movie when the Muslim is mistaken for a Sephardic Jew.

Salmon Fishing in Yemen  delighted me with a Muslim Jesus.  It was unexpected in this oddball love story.  The movie is truly beautiful both in how it was filmed and the literary frame it works in.

Children of Heaven has been mentioned before, but if you have children this film is an excellent introduction to Muslim Culture.  A boy loses his sister's shoes.  His family is too poor to pay for new, so the two share his shoes.  Charming heartbreak all around.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is mostly set in India rather than being Indian--Muslim or Hindu, but it's interesting.  All that thinking about death, which is also thinking about life.  The choices and opportunities near the end of life.  Death seems to walk in a veil until we are wearing it.  Sometimes it's good to give it a think.

Congratulations, Jo!

Your terrifying courage is well repaid.


"If you ask how such things can occur, seek the answer in God’s grace, not in doctrine; in the longing of the will, not in the understanding; in the sighs of prayer, not in research; seek the bridegroom not the teacher; God and not man; darkness not daylight; and look not to the light but rather to the raging fire that carries the soul to God with intense fervor and glowing love. The fire is God, and the furnace is in Jerusalem, fired by Christ in the ardor of his loving passion. Only he understood this who said: My soul chose hanging and my bones death. Anyone who cherishes this kind of death can see God, for it is certainly true that: No man can look upon me and live."
St. Bonaventure

guidance unity discipline

One of the stray things I came across when I was thinking about converting was the eager testimonial that Catholics were always celebrating something, and they do celebrate quite a bit. There really is generally speaking, a party on the horizon most of the time. I like that. I don't participate as much as I should, but it's nice to know it's there. Catholics also celebrate some things that don't seem like holidays, at least not at first, but I'm discovering they grow on you.
My favorite example is Lent. As a Christian who studied her Bible I always knew that fasting was to be part of my spiritual practice, but guided practice was nearly non-existent. I worried that I might go too far or do it the wrong way, and the books I picked up worried about that with me. So fasting became an emergency procedure instead of being as reasonable and comfortable as devotional reading and prayer. Then I converted. Lent has clear guidelines, a clear time line and in general all the help you need to get the season right. It is also the kind of thing you grow into. My first year I gave up hot chocolate. This doesn't sound like much unless you know me. The next year I went overboard and gave up more than I was ready to. This year I think I've got it right.
As we all streamed out of church this morning with ashes on our foreheads, I got to thinking about the blessing of going through Lent together. The few fasts I did as a Protestant I did alone and in secret. If you're Catholic it's hard to disguise Lent. It's encouraging to hear other people's ideas for what to give up and to know that you are not alone in your struggles. There is the real beauty of knowing that all around the world today my fellow Catholics are accepting the ashes and watching their meals. Unity is one of the things Christ put prominently on the agenda for Christians. It is one of my favorite things about Catholic life.
This year was the first time I got into the spirit of Fat Tuesday. I'm beginning to see it as a way of celebrating the things that are good before we give them up for something better. Before I'd always thought of those goods as less-thans but there is good in chocolate. It's not as good as Jesus, but the world he created for us still retains some of its charms. I've been gaining weight for a lot of reasons, and I have been too tired to do anything other than note the new number on the scale. It had started to feel impossible until Lent came over the horizon. "Ah, my friend, here is help known and proved." Like a big brother Lent put its arm around me and offered to shoulder some of my burden. A Catholic life is a disciplined life that slowly weaves the strength of Jesus into and around us one small choice at a time.

Thanks, Einstein!

The other day a glass landed on our tile floors and exploded, like always. For me this is generally a time of mourning and wishing I was more coordinated or something. I feel bad no matter how small the loss. Part of it is growing up with a feeling of scarcity and part of it is reading how Gandhi made his grandson crawl over the ground to find the stub of a pencil so as to honor the work of the man who made the pencil.
The particular glasses we are breaking at the moment are thick and when they break there is a sparkly pile of generally non-threatening shards, and as I started to sweep them up, I heard a voice inside saying "e=mc2." I immediately relaxed. I know it's not an exact application, but in general principle it's true. Somehow the entropy that my clumsy choice unleashed is not final. In a mysterious, grand theme of the universe kind of way, my glass isn't lost--it's just transformed. I'd never thought of it that way, and it backed up and illumined the ways I'd considered loss before.
The last year has been a shower of death and loss and it looks like there are at least two more coming. All of them were/are men that I expected to live much longer. I lost Uncle Ed who always provided a sort of quiet bass to my father's tenor. He was the sort of person who was comfortable with a kid watching him fix a stone wall for hours. I lost Uncle Tom who introduced me to the joys of rare meat. My favorite memory of him is the pride he took in getting a grant for RIF. I lost my biological Uncle Bob. He was funny and he took my side against Mother. He helped me to have faith that brainy genes really were in there somewhere. On our wedding day, he prayed over Kurt and I just as he had prayed over Mother and Dad.
"All things work together for good..." is sometimes as hard to see as the usefulness of a pile of broken glass, but that doesn't make it any less true.

On the Cheap

Things are looking up for the Great Books Group. I've found a few like-minded travelers, and I can't wait to begin. I promised a guide to purchasing the Great Books on the nook but first I need to clarify that we won't all be buying the Great Books set from Brittanica, even secondhand that's worth it but pricey. I recommend writing a list of authors and works and start checking the used tags on the internet (The Brittanica set goes from 995 down to 475) and second hand book stores and library sale rooms. Even new the Great Books can still be bought for around five dollars a book because they are public domain and the only cost to the publisher is ink and paper. I've scored Herodutus and Plutarch for a quarter each.

I've gone shopping on my nook for the first 27 books in the set. Sometimes they had multiple authors in one book, or I couldn't find the titles I needed in one download. The one thing I found every time is that everything I needed for this half was available for free. So far that's my favorite excuse for purchasing a nook--"Honey, I saved us 800 dollars by purchasing the nook." Of course it didn't work for me, since we had already inherited a set--might work for you. Following is my guide to getting the Great Books on the nook. You can just buy what's free, but I found that splurging for the perks offered by publishers like Mobile Reference are sometimes worth it. The total cost for buying what I'm calling "the plus package" is 64.39 cents for 26 authors and an amazing collection of texts.

Homer 4.79 Mobile Reference
Aeschylus 2.99 MR
Sophocles 5.59 Bantam
Euripedes 6.99 Penguin
Aristophanes .99 MR
Herodutus 1.99 Barnes and Noble
Thucydides .99 B&R Samizdat Express
Plato 4.79 MR (Dialogues)
.95 MR (Republic)
Aristotle 4.79 MR (Works of...)
.95 MR (Physics)
Lucretius .00 Take your pick he doesn't come in a plus version.
Epictetus .99 B&N
Marcus Aurelius .95 MR
Virgil .95 MR (Aeniad)
.95 MR (Georgics)
Plutarch 4.79 MR
Tacitus 3.99 MR
Plotinus 3.19 Neeland Media
Augustine 2.99 MR
Aquinas .95 MR
Dante .95 MR
Chaucer 3.99 MR
Machiavelli .95 MR
Hobbes .95 MR
Rabelais 1.99 B&N
Montaigne .95 MR
Shakespeare .99 Baxter Street

See, a great self-education on the cheap. I'll do the other half later. This turned out to be a much bigger project than I expected.

Seeking Fellow Travelers

Do you like to do the difficult? Is intellectual adventure your middle name? Are you a thief looking to steal enlightenment and brave ancient darkness? Do you like to drink coffee and eat baked goods while discussing the important stuff in life? Then here's the deal, I'm looking to set up a Great Books reading group that meets once a month around 3 o'clock, on the first Sunday afternoon at the Barnes and Noble in Muskegon. We'll set up our own reading plan or borrow the original version or a friendly neighborhood list off the internet(see two versions below). Once that's decided we'll do our reading and discuss it over the aforementioned coffee.
A side note, Gandalf would have carried a nook with him I'm pretty sure. Think of all the obscure lore he could fill it with and in many cases for free. I'm working on laying out a guide to collecting the Great Books on a nook. I'll post it later. If you're interested I'm on facebook and you can send me a message there. If geography makes your participation impossible, perhaps we could set up some kind of internet meeting.


ten year reading plan
four year reading plan