From the archives: Author birthday extravaganza

Today is the birthday of three favorite authors:  Madeleine L'Engle, C.S. Lewis and Louisa May Alcott.  In honor of their birthday, I have listed some favorite quotes and books and one movie.

The Insistence of Chronology

During our mortal lives, however, chronos is not merely illusion. My body aging is aging according to human chronology, not nucleon or galactic chronology. My knees creak. My vision is variable. My energy span is shorter than I think it ought to be. There is nothing I can do to stop the passage of this kind of time in which we human beings are set. I can work with it rather than against it, but I cannot stop it. I do not like what it is doing to my body. If I live as long as many of my forebears, these outward diminishments will get worse, not better. But these are the outward signs of chronology, and there is an other Madeleine who is untouched by them, the part of me that lives forever in kairos and bears God's image.

From Glimpses of Grace: Daily Thoughts and Reflections of Madeleine L'Engle

But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not.  It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him. 

From Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a vortex, as she expressed it, writing way at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace.

From Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Favorite books by these authors:

 

(worthy of note:  we love the movie of The Inheritance, but the book didn't do it for us.  The father in the movie is a great character, and he is fabulously quotable.)

Last year's meme post in honor of Lewis, L'Engle and Alcott.

Remember Me

 "Remember me," he said, "is what Jesus asked of us. 'Do this to remember me.' We think about remembering as looking back on times past, a nostalgic recollection of something has gone now. But remember is also the opposite of dismember. When something has been broken apart, dismembered, we look at the broken pieces and remember how it used to be, and put it back together, make it whole again...."

Remember Me, the next in the Hawk and the Dove series, by Penelope Wilcock

Death Comes for the Archbishop

The Bishop sat drinking his coffee slowly out of the tin cup, keeping the pot near the embers. The sun had set now, the yellow rocks were turning grey, down in the pueblo the light of the cook fires made red patches of the glassless windows, and the smell of pinon smoke came softly through the still air. The whole western sky was the colour of golden ashes, with here and there a flush of red on the lip of a little cloud. High above the horizon the evening-star flickered like a lamp just lit, and close beside it was another star of constant light, much smaller. 

Jacinto threw away the end of his cornhust cigarette and again spoke without being addressed.  

"The ev-en-ing-star," he said in English, slowly and somewhat sententiously, then relapsed into Spanish. "You see the little star beside, Padre? Indians call him the guide."  

The two companions sat, each thinking his own thoughts as night closed in about them: a blue night set with stars, the bulk of the solitary mesas cutting into the firmament. The Bishop seldom questioned Jacinto about his thoughts or beliefs. He didn't think it polite, and he believed it to be useless. There was no way in which he could transfer his own memories of European civilization into the Indian mind, and he was quite willing to believe that behind Jacinto there was a long tradition, a story of experience, which no language could translate to him. A chill came with the darkness. Father Latour put on his old fur-lined cloak, and Jacinto, lossening the blanket tied about his loins, drew it up over his head and shoulders.

Death Comes for the Archbishop  has been on my shelf for a really long time.  I found it at the library book sale and put it out on the hallway stacks and forgot about it.  One of the benefits of having no money in the book budget is that I have started noticing all the stories on my shelves that are waiting to be read.  And this is a real gem.

From the book flap:  "There is something epic - and almost mythic - about this sparsely beautiful novel by Willa Cather, although the story it tells is that of a single human life, lived simply in the silence of the desert." 

I've never been enamoured by the desert's beauty, but Cather's writing has changed that.  Her elegant sentences are saturated with details of the southwestern landscape.    She has you feeling the rain pelting down, smelling the warmth of a desert sunset, and seeing the vibrant reds and penetrating blues of the rocks and skies.  The quiet of the surroundings are matched by the quiet life of this faithful Padre.

And the daily steps of that man, his relationships and work and musings, are set to a gentle cadence with nothing hurried.

Death does come for the Archbishop, but not before you have a chance to love him and the desert vistas where he ministers, and to admire his steadfast work and his consistent faith. 

Highly recommended.

The Hardest Thing To Do

Eager for Father Theodore's morning lesson, Conradus took his place in the circle with the others, and peace settled upon him. Conradus did not know that when Theodore had passed through the novitiate the novices had sat in rows facing their master at the front. He did not consider Theodore's reasoning in arranging the stools in a circle; even so, he was not insensible to the atmosphere of community in this room. Here was a place where people learned together, and everyone felt included.

The young monks and their novice master, all now gathered, sat without speakng in the circle - another innovation of Theodore's. Invariably late to almost everyting as a novice himself, his memories were of lessons begun and half missed: he used to miss the start because he was late, miss the next bit because he was overcome with bitter humiliation and self-rebuke, and miss most of the rest because he couldn't quite make sense of it, trying to imagine what the bits he had missed might have been.

So he initiated the practice of starting the time together in silence.

"In silence we enter the room, brothers. In silence we take a place in the circle - any place, not my place or your place, not the same place always, for place is nothing to be possessive about. We sit quietly then and take in where we are. Sit with your eyes open or shut, it matters not; but be aware. Know that being a monk is not about withdrawal but about community, and feel the community here. We listen to our brothers...see them...smell them...(that usually brought a laugh) and we stay open to what else we can notice. Restlessness? Weariness? Friendship? Peace? Every day is different in community, and we are made more sensitive to the differences because every day is the same."

It's Lent

This morning John, Claire and I stumbled out the door and arrived at church for the 6:30 Ash Wednesday service.  I love the prayers of repentance, the ashes on my forehead.  I loved having the eucharist on a Wednesday morning. 

Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth:  Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Savior.  Amen.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall remain.

My Lenten reading:



Simplifying The Soul, a lovely blend of practical ideas and meditations, found thanks to my dear friend Laura.
The Hardest Thing To Do, the next in the Hawk and the Dove series by Penelope Wilcock.  I was THRILLED to learn of this from Semicolon, but what I did not expect was that each chapter is a new day of Lent.  Perfectly timed.
The First Fruits of Prayer, by Frederica Mathewes-Green. From amazon.com: 

First Fruits of Prayer will bring readers of all denominational backgrounds into the prayer experience of first millennium Christianity through immersion in this fascinating text, a poetic hymn written in the eighth century. This extraordinarily beautiful work, still chanted by Eastern Christians every Lent, weaves together Old and New Testament scriptures with prayers of hope and repentance. It offers ancient ways of seeing Christ that will nevertheless feel new to most readers today.

The Second Sunday of Advent: The Tailgate Edition

Two advent candles  :  Candlestick Park

"Don't try to explain the Incarnation to me!  It is further from being explainable than the furthest star in the furthest galaxy.  It is love, God's limitless love enfleshing that love into the form of a human being, Jesus, the Christ, fully human and fully divine.

Was there a moment, known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again, and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, and the angels clapped their hands for joy?

Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, Christ, the Maker of the universe...willingly and lovingly leaving all that power and coming to this poor, sin-filled plant to live with us for a few years to show us what we ought to be and could be.  Christ came to us as Jesus of Nazareth, wholly human and wholly divine, to show us what it means to be made in God's image."    Madeleine L'Engle

Author birthday extravaganza

Today is the birthday of three favorite authors:  Madeleine L'Engle, C.S. Lewis and Louisa May Alcott.  In honor of their birthday, I have listed some favorite quotes and books and one movie.

The Insistence of Chronology

During our mortal lives, however, chronos is not merely illusion. My body aging is aging according to human chronology, not nucleon or galactic chronology. My knees creak. My vision is variable. My energy span is shorter than I think it ought to be. There is nothing I can do to stop the passage of this kind of time in which we human beings are set. I can work with it rather than against it, but I cannot stop it. I do not like what it is doing to my body. If I live as long as many of my forebears, these outward diminishments will get worse, not better. But these are the outward signs of chronology, and there is an other Madeleine who is untouched by them, the part of me that lives forever in kairos and bears God's image.

from Glimpses of Grace: Daily Thoughts and Reflections of Madeleine L'Engle

But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not.  It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him. 

From Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a vortex, as she expressed it, writing way at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace.

From Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Favorite books by these authors:

 

(worthy of note:  we love the movie of The Inheritance, but the book didn't do it for us.  The father in the movie is a great character, and he is fabulously quotable.)

Last year's meme post in honor of Lewis, L'Engle and Alcott.

"and things slowly come back into perspective"

 Cannon Beach, one of my special places

"Cooking is the only part of housekeeping I manage with any grace; it's something like writing a book: you look in the refrigerator and see what's there, choose all the ingredients you need, and a few your husband thinks you don't need, and put them all together to concoct a dish.  Vacuum cleaners are simply something more for me to trip over; and a kitchen floor, no matter how grubby, looks better before I wax it...Every so often I need OUT; something will throw me into total disproportion, and I have to get away from everybody - away from all these people I love most in the world - in order to regain a sense of proportion. 

I like hanging sheets on lines strung under the apple trees - the birds like it, too.  I enjoy going out the incinerator after dark and watching the flames; my bad feelings burn away with the trash.  But the house is still visible, and I can hear the sounds for a few minutes.  My special place is a brook in a green glade, a circle of quiet from which there is no visible sign of human beings.  There's a natural stone bridge over the brook, and I sit there, dangling my legs and looking through the foliage at the sky reflected in the water, and things slowly come back into perspective...If I sit for a while, then my impatience, crossness, frustration, are indeed annihilated, and my sense of humor returns."

A Circle of Quiet, by Madeleine L'Engle

First read aloud for the year, and a book trailer

Claire and I have really enjoyed N.D. Wilson's 100 Cupboards series (100 Cupboards, Dandelion Fire, The Chestnut King), so we got pretty excited when we heard about Wilson's new series:  Ashtown Burials.  Book one is now available:  The Dragon's Tooth.  We're looking forward to reading it aloud together.

When Zack was in Idaho this summer, he was able to help with the sound for the book trailer of The Dragon's Tooth.  I think it's pretty fun:

The reading life

From the book flap (which is as far as I have gotten):

Cultural commentators are up in arms about the decline of reading in America.  Americans are not reading enough, they say, or not reading the right books in the right way.


Alan Jacobs argues that reading is alive and well in America.

Susan Wise Bauer on the state of reading in the 21st century:

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

Henri Nouwen (1932-1996)

From Henry Nouwen via the wisdom that resides in the beloved Quiet Life Comment Section (often referred to as the QLCS):

I keep projecting my present condition onto the future. If I feel dark, the future looks dark; if I feel bright, the future looks bright. But who am I to know what life will be like for me tomorrow, next week, next year, or ten years from now? Even more, who and I to know who You will be for me in the year ahead? O Lord, I will not bind You with my own limited and limiting ideas and feelings. You can do so many things with me, things that might seem totally impossible to me. I want at least to remain open to the free movement of your Spirit in my life...O Lord, let me remain free to let you come whenever and however you desire.          Amen.

From her reading stacks to mine

The bookshelves at Mom's are packed with history books, biographies, cookbooks, mysteries and more mysteries, the best kind of books on the Christian life, and much more.

These are the first five choices for my bedside pile.

Thanks for continuing to inspire me, Mama.

*click on the images to see books at amazon.com

Norms and Nobility...again

From the very first page of David Hicks's book:

Norms and Nobility by David Hicks

"I know that we live in an age where the homely or psychological detail is considered all-important.  We like heroes in shirtsleeves, or, in other words, we don't like heroes.  But things were not always that way, and today is not forever."

                                                                                  ~ Louis Auchincloss

A college president I know keeps three books on his night table: the Bible, the Iliad, and Louis Auchincloss' 1964 novel The Rector of Justin.  When I once asked him, "Why the novel?," he responded, "Because it raises questions I cannot answer or ignore, the sort of questions that possess a wisdom apart from answers."




This short quote was enough to get my mind spinning, in a good way. 

The Rector of Justin by Louis Auchincloss is now in my amazon.com cart, and I am re-reading Norms and Nobility for some educational inspiration.

Glimpses of beauty

Sometimes my random thoughts take me right where I need to be. 
 
Donna posted this today, a quote from a favorite book:
 
“The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure.”


—A Wrinkle in Time


which reminded me of this quote from Return of the King:

"The land seemed full of creaking and cracking and sly noises, but there was no sound of voice or of foot. Far above the Ephel Duath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."


which I found on my own blog here.  And there I read my own words, coming back to minister to my heart this morning:

My friends, may you know that these days of shadow are only fleeting. May you have a glimpse of the beauty that is far beyond the reach of any shadow, and may you know the Bright Morning Star, and His never-ending love for you, amidst the dreary and the devastating.

Yes.

Looking for glimpses of beauty today.  I am sure they are there.

Unlikely places

"But where shall I find courage?" asked Frodo.  "That is what I chiefly need."

"Courage is found in unlikely places," said Gildor.  "Be of good hope!"

Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 3

Courage found me this week over a cup of coffee with a good friend, 

in long hours of sleep in a cozy bed...

and in the surprise of sunlight illuminating the paperwhites.

 

 Just when I thought courage was out of reach, it was here.