Month: December 2007

  • Bitterness Is Not Plastic Wrap

    Do you know what it is like to lie supine and cry, how the hot tears trickle into your ears and make them all itchy?  Well, I was having one of those tears-in-the-ears moments recently, mentally recounting a wrong that had been done to me.  Clearly, I had been wronged.  Wait.  Change that to: clearly, I had been very, very, very wronged.  Each time I reviewed the situation I strung another very to my necklace of grievance. 

    “Help me, babe,” I cried to my husband.  “I hate being this way.  Bitterness is clinging to my soul.” 

    “Bitterness does not cling,” the wise man quietly replied. 

    Those four words arrested me.  Bitterness Does Not Cling. 

    Bitterness is the bowl.  A bowl is incapable of clinging; it cannot attach itself to you.  I was the cling-on.  I had got a firm grip on the bowl of bitterness and I was not letting go.  Wow.

    “So how do I stop clinging to bitterness?”  I asked.

    “Just Stop It.” 

    “Just stop it – just like that?”

    “Quit clinging to your bitterness, Carol. Let It Go.” 

    Bitterness has no adhesive abilities.  It has no grip on me.  If I can remember this, it will change my life. 

    Bitterness is not plastic wrap.

    Forgive our trespasses
    as we forgive those who trespass against us.

    Hold fast that which is good.

  • Checklists


    views from my kitchen window

    What do you think of this checklist? 

    I transcribed it from a time management cassette from the library but, alas, didn’t credit the speaker. 

    Most days I really like these questions.
    But on some days, a list like this Just Makes Me Tired.
    Someone I could get feeling pretty ugly smug on the rare, spectacular day in which I could check several off.
    Puffed up.  Yay me, ain’t I grand?
    I don’t think checklists are the best thing for my spiritual health.   I get sucked into performance-based living.
    Checklists are great for groceries, though.

    How could you argue with these good things?  Perhaps it’s the aggregate that makes the list daunting. OR, perhaps I’m just a crank.  Hmmm.

    Checklist for Day

    1.  Did I tell someone I love them?

    2.  Did I compliment someone on his work?

    3.  Did I read a book?

    4. Did I increase my skill?

    5.  Did I do something for good health?

    6.  Am I closer to my goal than when I woke up this a.m.?

    7.  Did I do anything tough or challenging?

    8.  Did I do something just for joy?

    9.  Have I taken time to reflect?

    10.  Have I planned the day tomorrow?

    What question would you add, subtract, or substitute from this list? Really, what do you think?

    We are preparing to party.  Huge wedding coming up.  I cry at weddings.  The older the bride or groom, the more I cry tears of joy at the kindness of God.  It really is too wonderful.  I have a checklist, don’t ya know, of specific friends who are waiting to make the walk up the aisle.  I pray in faith that God will put a check mark next to some of those names this coming year. 

    Happy New Year, my friends.

    One ought, every day at least,
    to hear a little song,
    read a good poem,
    see a fine picture,
    and if it were possible,
    to speak a few reasonable words.

    ~ Goethe

  • In Real Life

    The incredulous looks matched the higher pitched tones in the voices.  “You’re kidding, right?”  “It’s kind of like a blind date, isn’t it?”  “That’s kind of scary.” “Wow.” 

    These responses followed my excited announcement that my online friend and her family were coming and spending a night with us.  No, we’ve never met; we’ve just read each other’s blog and emailed.  Hey, we talked on the phone last week.  Okay, I’ll grant it that we both took some risks…but there was never any doubt that we would have a jolly good time together. 

    Jolly good time….oh my.  It was like we’d been old friends forever. Our husbands had this male bonding thing going on.  There must be a new category of men now: husbands of bloggers.  The kids had a heyday throwing snowballs and taking sled rides in the dark. 

    I don’t know what the guys talked about – theology, families, work? – but talk they did.   The women talked about connections: books we’ve read, music, Latin, mutual online friends (which ones we know in real life, etc.), our church situations, our families near and extended, on and on.  

    We spoke wistfully of  how much fun it would be to have a reunion gathering of special blog friends.  We discovered that one of my husband’s college roommates attended their wedding.  Who would have guessed?

    Di and I stayed up talking into what is normally called the wee hours. Our own circle of quiet included whispered talk in the kitchen trying not to disturb the guys sacked out on the living room floor. We took up the thread again this morning.

    And before we were ready to say good-bye, they had to leave.  A happy ache has settled into my heart.  

     

  • My Ántonia

    My Ántonia

    One never experiences a book in a vacuum.  Every reader brings a context which informs her reading.  Life experiences, current conflicts, distant memories, hormonal fluctuations, previous reading: all these color the impressions and shape the contours of your interactions.  That’s why re-reading a book from your past can be a novel experience. 

    My Ántonia is Jim Burden’s account of  his childhood friend, Ántonia Shimerda. They arrived on the plains of Nebraska on the same night, lived as neighbors on farmsteads and were each other’s only friends while they lived in the country; eventually, societal boundaries separated them.  

    When I read Willa Cather’s classic this time, I saw shades of Wendell Berry in Ántonia’s exuberant work ethic and  love for the land, and shadows of The Kiterunner in the contrast between Jim Burden’s position of privilege and the ethnic bias against the immigrant families.  My Ántonia is poignant without pathos, nostalgic without melancholy; homesickness  infused with the passionate joy of Ántonia. 

    Willa Cather is known as an author of place, a master of location.  It is true.  When Cather writes about the land, you can see the place, feel the wind, hear the sounds.  This is where her writing is luminous. 

    My memory from previous readings was of a sad ending; oh how wrong I was.  The last section of the book, where Jim, now a New York City lawyer, visits Ántonia with her husband and ten children, a farm full of harmony, laughter and work, was my favorite. 

    [Jim's grandfather is asked to pray at an impromptu service for a man who committed suicide]
    “Oh, great and just God, no man among us knows what the sleeper knows, nor is it for us to judge what lies between him and Thee.”  He prayed that if any man there had been remiss toward the stranger come to a far country, God would forgive him and soften his heart.  He recalled the promises to the widow and the fatherless, and asked God to smooth the way before this widow and her children, and to “incline the hearts of men to deal justly with her.”  In closing, he said we were leaving Mr. Shimerda at “Thy judgment seat, which is also Thy mercy seat.” p. 134

    I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered–about her teeth, for instance.  I know so many women who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow had faded.  Whatever else was gone, Ántonia had not lost the fire of life. p.379

    …in farmhouses, somehow, life comes and goes by the back door. p.382

    [Ántonia's perceptive comment on depression (sadness) and hard work]
    No, I never get down-hearted.  Anton’s a good man, and I love my children and always believed they would turn out well.  I belong on a farm.  I’m never lonesome here like I used to be in town.  You remember what sad spells I used to have, when I didn’t know what was the matter with me? I’ve never had them out here.  And I don’t mind work a bit, if I don’t have to put up with sadness.   p.387

    [on Anton Cusak, Ántonia's husband]
    He looked like a humorous philosopher who had hitched up one shoulder under the burdens of life, and gone on his way having a good time when he could.  p.402

    [Jim's observation of Ántonia and Cuzak.  This is my marriage summed up in one sentence.]
    Clearly, she was the impulse, and he the corrective.  p.403

  • Fishing on Boxing Day

    Feather-weight snowflake-nuggets are slowing floating down from the sky.
    Snow whitens.
    Snow beautifies.
    Snow covers.
    Snow insulates.

    Snow outside = cozy inside.

    It would be a perfect day to snuggle up with a good book.
    But I’m working on my fishing skills.
    Specifically my casting.
    As in, “Cast all your cares on Him for He careth for you.”

    Because snow is a hazard maker.
    There is much traveling for loved ones today and in the week to come.
    The tally today: two flat tires, one flight caught at the last minute,
    one son stranded in the snow *unstuck, hooray*, waiting for safe arrivals,
    and planning for safe departures.

    This adapted from the Sailor’s Prayer, LBP:

    When dangerous storms arise,
    hold Thy guarding hand
    over our ship and its entire crew,
    and dispel all fear and terror by the knowledge
    that Thou art mightier than the mightiest snowstorm [waves],
    and that Thou canst protect Thy children
    in the raging wind and frozen ice [billows].

    May Thy peace keep my whole spirit,
    that my soul and body be preserved blameless
    unto the great day of Thy coming,
    my Redeemer and Lord.
    Amen.

    While casting is a good fishing skill, patience is a prerequisite.
    Patience, perspective and proportion.
    Snows, like fish, come and go.
    The Word of the Lord remains sure and steady.

  • A Little Boy’s Calendar

    A delightful Christmas project for my soon-to-be-three grandson.
    Cowboys and horses get Gavin’s heart thumping.
    This calendar came in the mail from one of my financial planners.

    I decided to personalize it for Gavin.
    It has his birthday, his folks’, his grandparents’, his ‘greats’,
    and all ten aunts’ and uncle’s birthdays marked
    with colorful stickers.

    I put questions from a child’s catechism on the top of the page
    and the answers on the bottom.
    After a year, he’ll know the first 12 Q & As.

    I thought a way to mark the completion of each day would be fun.
    Immediately I discarded the thought of a Sharpie marker.
    I don’t want his Mommy to hate me!
    What about a water-color kid’s marker?
    Still, the risk of a mess was huge.
    Stickers!
    They had to be big enough for his little fingers,
    but not too big for the calendar box.
    I found these primary colored dots.
    They are attached to the back of the calendar
    with a huge plastic paper clip (not shown).

    (Daddy-Dad is Gavin’s best attempt at saying Granddad. It’s
    now what his maternal grandfather is called.)

    Small Children’s Catechism
    Chris Schlect

    1.  Who made you?
           God
    2.  What else did God make?
           God made all things
    3.  Why did God make all things?
           for His own glory
    4.  Why do things work as they do?
           God has so decreed it.
    5.  How do we learn about God?
           God reveals Himself.
    6.  Where does God reveal himself?
           in His word and in nature
    7.  What does God reveal in nature?
           His character, law, and wrath
    8.  What more is revealed in His Word?
           God’s mercy towards His people
    9.  Where is God’s Word today?
           The Bible is God’s Word.
    10. How many Gods are there?
           There is one true God.
    11.  How many persons are in the Godhead?
             three
    12.   Who are these persons?
              Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

  • A Carol and a Poem

    Adeste Fideles (O
    Come All Ye Faithful) is a favorite carol.  It was the first carol we
    learned in Latin.  A few years later I discovered Athanasius, who
    fought valiantly for the deity of Christ.  Every time we sing
    “Ver—–ry God, Begotten, not created” I get choked up and say a
    prayer of thanks for Athanasius, God’s gift to the early church. 

     

    In addition to Athanasius, I will think of translations when we sing that verse. 

    This, from Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill:

    This early exaltation of Mother and Child already demonstrates the innovative Christian sense of grace, no longer something reserved for the fortunate few — the emperors and their retinues — but broadcast everywhere, bestowed on everyone, “heaped up, pressed down, and overflowing,” even on one as lowly and negligible as a nursing mother. In the words of a famous Latin hymn,

    “God…is born from the guts of a girl.”

    The hymn is “Adeste Fideles,” composed in the eighteenth centry (in a very medieval spirit) by John F. Wade. The full text of the cited quotation is

    “Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine
    Gestant puellae viscera”

    The second line was unfortunately translated in the nineteenth century by Frederick Oakley as “Lo! he abhors not the Virgin’s womb.”

    ~     ~     ~    ~     ~

    A Christmas poem by C.S. Lewis from A Widening Light

    Among the oxen (like an ox I’m slow)
    I see a glory in the stable grow
    Which, with the ox’s dullness might at length
       Give me an ox’s strength.

    Among the assess (stubborn I as they)
    I see my Saviour where I looked for hay;
    So may my beastlike folly learn at least
       The patience of a beast.

    Among the sheep (I like a sheep have strayed)
    I watch the manger where my Lord is laid;
    Oh that my baa-ing nature would win thence
       Some wooly innocence!

  • Simple Pleasures in December

    ~ Good Words

    The First Church’s Christmas Barrel  
    by Caroline Abbott Stanley
    People!!  Trust me on this one!
    It. Is. Excellent.
    Free. Download.
    Do. It.

    A favorite quote from this short story:
    [missionary couple talking, husband to wife]

    “There isn’t one woman in a hundred that could have managed so well.”

    She snuggled up to him. “That pays me–if I needed pay, which I don’t.
    It was a work of love and–well, maybe a little necessity.
    You told me once that I had a genius for poverty.“

    “And God knows it has had no chance to lie dormant,”
    he said bitterly.

    ~ Good Smells

    3 sticks cinnamon – broken, a handful of cloves, a few bay leaves,
    sliced orange and sliced lemon
    add water and simmer, replenishing water as needed
    reheat the next day
    and the next…

    I have some lemons which are past their prime.
    This puts them to perfect use.

    ~ Good Tastes

    A simple, fast, delicious recipe:
    Costco meatballs
    one jar grape jelly
    one bottle Chili sauce

    Combine jelly and sauce, heat.
    Pour over meatballs and warm them
    in oven or crockpot.

    I am aging prime rib roast in the fridge, per Cook’s Illustrated and brother Dan.
    It dehydrates and forms a crust which I’ll shave off before I cook the meat.
    Simple. Scrumptious.
    Christmas is the only day of the year that I fix prime rib.
    If you are interested, message me and I’ll send you the instructions.

    When our hunters get an elk, we make hamburger jerky. Yum!

    Have you ever used whole nutmeg?
    Here are three whole and one partly-used nutmeg.

    You run it across a Microplane Grater / Zester for fresh nutmeg.

    Perfect on hot oatmeal, on hot chocolate, hot butternut squash soup,
    beef stroganoff, or hot buttered rum!

  • A Spot Where Spirits Blend

     

    There is a spot where spirits blend,

    And friend holds fellowship with friend;

    Though sundered far, by faith we meet

    Around one common mercy-seat.

    ~ Hugh Stowell

  • Piled High and Running Over

    (Adapted from the archives) Photo credit: Danny, my brother (DPH)
    [Wait! I've never realized how close those initials are to PhD! - weird.]

    Thankful

    I’m thankful for the gloaming,

    old hymns in minor keys,

    Reuben sandwiches and Subaru
    engines.

     

    For continued forgiveness for
    besetting sins;

    wood heat, Bach’s Passacaglia

    and lavender. 

     

    For long-distance phone calls,

    library cards,

    Netflix,

    and another leaf in our expanding
    table. 

     

    I’m grateful for a grandson and a
    stack of books,

    for garlic sizzling in olive oil,

    for book-lined walls and long car
    drives.

     

    French Onion soup,

    Sunday feasts,

    John Donne’s poetry,

    Two Buck Chuck Cabernet Sauvignon,

    toddler laughter and uninterrupted
    sleep.

     

    Truth, beauty and goodness,

    goodness and mercy,

    mercy and grace. 
     

     

    I’m grateful for Google,

    down comforters and

    freedom from
    debt.

     

    I praise God for King’s College Choir,

    Vaughn Williams

    and psalms from the
    Vulgate;

     

    For manly hugs and kisses,

    hand-knit socks,

    alliteration and Carl
    Larsson.

     

    Declared
    righteousness,

    promises kept and

    the book of Ecclesiastes.

     

    Extended family,

    the piano,
    lingering meals.


    The scent of simmering spiced citrus,

    speech, and
    memories.


    Billy Collin’s poems,

    Wendell Berry’s short stories,

    extra sharp cheddar cheese,

    and
    Amazon.com boxes.

     

    Pesto, bubble wrap, smiles that
    light up the whole face,

    Naan, chai, and good drinking
    water.

     

    I wonder at the connections,

    on the web and face to face,

    for quotes, for thoughts, for book reviews,

    for the shallows and the deeps,

    PaperBackSwap, Anthony Trollope

    Jacques Barzun, and Susan Allen Toth.

     

    I’m thankful for the death of death,

    for mingled tears,

    For temporary sighs and sorrow

    and
    the hope of the future.

     

    Cobb salad, Athanasius, rustic bread.

    Independent sons, reading evenings,
    growing families.

     

    I give thanks for 100% cotton,
    loving rebukes,

    Laughter in the morning and southern
    windows.

     

    For nostrils, fingernails and belly
    buttons,

    for DSL, clematis, and airplane
    travel,

    different cultures and customs,

    enduring
    friendships.

    and for the Lord God who made them all.


    “Oh give thanks
    unto the Lord, for He is good.  His mercy endures
    forever.”