Wonder Land

I'm beginning to realize that I'm working through the weird world of childhood in fiction.  I'm starting to let myself read my work as if it was someone else's. For example, I realized an Alice in Wonderland playhouse symbolizes my struggle to get help with or at least permission to interpret the Bible from the adults in my life.  The only book that was as weird as the Bible that I was allowed to read was Alice in Wonderland.  I worked rather hard trying to get the two to illuminate each other without much success.  The playhouse has always been there in my novel, but it was only recently that I saw the connection.

What a fascinating way to squint at your mind sideways, but I'd better not look too hard.  I'll never have the courage to publish anything.

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!

In Bed.

Adding the phrase "in bed" to the fortune in a fortune cookie is one of my husband's favorite games.  I like to work in bed.  I like nice squishy surfaces, and our king mattress offers lots of room to spread out.  It also insures nightly cleanup as sleeping under books and papers is only appealing in college.  I have a desk that I love and work at occasionally, but a big project or a new project will almost always find me in bed.

Thanks to the snow day, my bed was covered in books, papers, pens, highlighters, my writer's desk, my iPad, and some Smurfs.  I was working out the literature class I hope to teach next year.  Selecting appropriate and interesting works turned out to be way more challenging than expected.  I thought I'd split the day with "A Taste of Redwall."  Thankfully we have another snow day tomorrow, because the following short list took me all day.

Crowhook Literature List for the Middle Ages

(I know the dates aren't accurate.)

525 Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy

529 St. Benedict The Rule of St. Benedict

660 Caedmon Caedmon's Hymn

731 Venerable Bede An Ecclesiastical History of the English People

975 unknown Beowulf

1140 unknown Song of Roland

1150 St. Hildegaard Physica

1175 Ibn Jubayr The Travels of Ibn Jubayr

1274 St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica

1317 Dante The Divine Comedy

1320 Marco Polo The Travels of Marco Polo

1370 William Langland Piers Plowman

1385 unknown Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

1405 Christine de Pizan The Book of the City of Ladies

The Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry

1500 Machiavelli The Prince

1516 Thomas More Utopia

1563 Montaigne Essays

1588 St. Teresa of Avila The Interior Castle

1605 Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote

Good things come to those who think

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.  

Baby Girl Seems to be a Boy

This is our turtle.  When it was tiny we did our best to research the gender and decided it was a girl.  Then she went through puberty and grew long claws and a dent on her chest.  I still talk to him in a high pitched girly voice, but as long as I toss in some pellets and chase him around the tank with my fingers, we're good.

Don't you mean Di?

"Your name means Christ-like and we expect you to live up to it."