Kristin Lavransdatter

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This photo was taken from the campground where we just spent two days with my husband’s folks.   We spent one day mushrooming (boy-howdy, did we get the morels) and one day bass fishing.

Curt and I have an understanding:  I bring a book and read until the fishing is hot.  Then, and only then, will I fish.  Otherwise, he gets to run the boat, cast away, reel in to his heart’s content.  Better yet, he doesn’t have to untangle lines.  We’re both content and get to be together doing what we love.  We soak up the quiet, punctuated by the plop of a  fish jumping, the quiet hum of the trolling motor or the gossipy chuck-chucking of a chukar on the bank.

My book fascinated and occupied me.  I first heard of Kristin Lavransdatter reading a book list; I took note when Elisabeth Elliot named it her favorite novel.  Set in medieval Norway, it tells the tale of a young woman who grows up her father’s favorite child, but refuses his choice of husband preferring a morally unsuitable man.  [I read the first book of the trilogy, The Bridal Wreath.]  Well.  This is a tale of universal application – girl loves the wrong boy. 

What I appreciated about this book is the same thing I liked in Anna Karenina. It is an honest portrayal of love, lust, sex and everyday life after the roll(s) in the hay.  The wages of sin is death, but we’re dishonest if we pretend that the advance draw isn’t delicious.   Sigrid Unset does an excellent job revealing the deceit, the subtle changes in thinking, the isolation and the separation that follow Kristin on the path she takes.

And sometimes in church, and elsewhere too, she would feel a great yearning to take part in all that this meant, the communion of mankind with God.  It had ever been a part of her life; now she stood outside with her unconfessed sin. (p.166)

When I was a girl at home ’twas past my understanding how aught could win such power over the souls of men that they could forget the fear of sin; but so much I have learnt now: if the wrongs men do through lust and anger cannot be atoned for, then must heaven be an empty place. (p.174)

It is painful to see the tight knit love between Kristin and her father Lavrans snag, tear and unravel.

You have wrought sorrow and pain to many by this waywardness of yours, my daughter — but this you know, that your good lies next to my heart. (p.211)

“Father,” said Kristin, “have you been so free from sin all your life, that you can judge Erlend so hardly–?” “God knows,” said Lavrans sternly, “I judge no man to be a greater sinner before Him than I am myself.  But ’tis not just reckoning that I should give away my daughter to any man that pleases to ask for her, only because we all need God’s forgiveness.” (p.226)

People in the midst of self-gratification seldom think of the effect their actions will have on other people, or how many people they will affect. 

“Much have I done already that I deemed once I dared not do because ’twas sin.  But I saw not till now what sin brings with it — that we must tread others underfoot.” (p.259)

In the end, Kristin gets what she wants – minus the joy.  What she thought would fulfill her doesn’t satisfy.

Fifty Reasons to Give Thanks

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1.                  
We know Whom to
thank.

2.                  
The sun rose again this
morning.

3.                  
The opportunity to pray for people
facing crises this day.

4.                  
Clean clothes to
wear.

5.                  
Food in the cupboard – Kashi Go Lean
is my choice today.

6.                  
The milk is cold.  It would be sooo
hard to be thankful for warm milk.

7.                  
Job security – I love being a mom
and a teacher and a very part-time accountant.

8.                  
Almost instant communication with
those I love through email.

9.                  
Asparagus, fresh from the
farm.

10.              
Morel mushrooms, fresh from the
forest.

11.              
Indoor
plumbing.

12.              
Plants that refuse to die –
impatiens and petunias.

13.              
A gentle
breeze.

14.              
The Lord is
near.

15.              
The Portable
Dante – arrived from Amazon
yesterday.

16.              
A clean silverware
drawer.

17.              
The reappearance of old friends in
our lives – lately, at the rate of about one a
week!

18.              
Upcoming graduations and the
celebration of work completed.

19.              
Upcoming weddings and the
celebration of God’s goodness and provision.

20.              
The haunting beauty of Eva Cassidy’s
music.

21.              
Compost.

22.              
Chainsaws and those who operate
them.

23.              
Red bell peppers, Walla Walla sweet onions
and sugar snap peas.

24.              
A friend who forgave me when I
blanked out her birthday.

25.              
A good paring
knife.

26.              
Fresh water, fresh lemon and good
tea.

27.              
Singing the psalms – my current
favorite is 116.

28.              
Dirt under the fingernails and weeds
in the trash – I’ve never been a glovey person.

29.              
A table to rest your elbows on; a
table to gather around; a table to set and clear.

30.              
Friends who ask penetrating
questions and expect to be answered.

31.              
Electric light — by which to read
at night.

32.              
A stack of Wendell Berry and Anthony
Trollope books waiting to be read.

33.              
Sons who make me smile; sons who
make me laugh; sons who make me cry.

34.              
Shaking the dustmop outside and
saying goodbye to dustbunnies.

35.              
A piano in the house – available to
play anytime.

36.              
The Decalogue (fancy way of saying
Ten Commandments).

37.              
A friend with a persevering spirit
in strife-torn Zimbabwe.

38.              
The joy of sharing a lovely loaf of
bread with friends.

39.              
A brisk walk in the brisk
air.

40.              
“Strength for today and bright hope
for tomorrow” – from my mom’s favorite hymn.

41.              
Continuing forgiveness for repeated
sins.

42.              
Becoming friends with my curly/wavy
hair with streaks of gray.

43.              
Cabernet
Sauvignon.

44.              
Another book filled with quotes and
notes and pictures.

45.              
A husband who enjoys hugging
me.

46.              
Fidelity expressed in both married
and single people.

47.              
A laughing, coy, happy, expressive,
running, talking grandson.

48.              
Daughters-in-law who bless me in
multiple ways.

49.              
The blessed Lord who gives all these
things and will take what He sees fit to take.

50.              
Bach’s organ music, Bach’s cello
music, Bach’s violin music, Bach’s vocal music.

The Discarded Image

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The Discarded Image by C.S. Lewis has been on my shelf for several years. 

Last summer while I was talking to my beloved Latin teacher, I mentioned reading Stuart Isacoff’s Temperament.  I had found it fascinating how both the ancient and medieval thinker linked all of life together.  Thus the numbers and distances of the planets were thought to be the link between the distances and ratios of musical intervals.  Even though their facts weren’t always correct they were certainly significant.  They looked at the details of life as symbols for some other reality. 

“Carol,” my teacher said. “Have you read The Discarded Image?  That’s precisely what that book is about!”  The Image in the title refers to the Model of the Universe, “the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organisation of their theology, science, and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental Model of the Universe.” (p.11) We cannot read medieval works with modern or post-modern minds and really know what they meant without understanding how they thought.

The first chapter was glorious and exciting. But, I’ll be honest: it was a hard book to read.  The difficulty lay in my own ignorance.  There were so many unfamiliar references and background chapters to wade through.  So I went to the last chapter, The Influence of the Model, and read that.  Next, I dipped into sections which looked interesting and then began again.  What helped me persevere were the lovely little pearls that were scattered across the pages.

The [evil] influences do not work upon us directly, but by first modifying the air…Hence when a medieval doctor could give no more particular cause for the patient’s condition he attributed it to ‘this influence which is at present i the air.’  If he were an Italian doctor he would doubtless say questa influenza.  The profession has retained the useful word ever since. (p.110)

To medieval folk looking into a night sky was not looking at darkness but through darkness.  They believed that space was not dark, nor silent. 

The ‘silence’ which frightened Pascal was, according to the Model, wholly illusory; and the sky looks black only because we are seeing it through the dark glass of our own shadow.  You must conceive yourself looking up at a world lighted, warmed, and resonant with music.  (p.112)

This just made me smile:

One gets the impression that medieval people, like Professor Tolkien’s Hobbits, enjoyed books which told them what they already knew.  (p.200)

This book is worth the effort required in reading it.  After reading this book I guarantee that you will read Lewis’s children’s literature differently. 

Here is a diamond of a quote which you need to copy into your journal or commonplace book. 

Literature exists to teach what is useful,
to honour what deserves honour,
to appreciate what is delightful.
The useful, honorable, and
delightful things are superior to it:
it exists for their sake;
its own use, honour, or delightfulness
is derivative from theirs.
(p. 214)

The Reading Life/The Cleaning Life

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On Mother’s Day we told the kids stories from our first year of marriage. We lived in a self-contained apartment on the bottom floor of a brand new house in the country.  Our landlord (the guy upstairs) Doug was a jovial, gregarious, nice guy who loved to talk.  My husband Curt is genial, but he’s a man who puts his head down and works with a will.  Thus, while Doug was drinking coffee and talking about his plans for the day, Curt got the grass mowed.  Doug loved to analyze the differences between himself and Curt:

“In this world there are dreamers and there are doers.  I’m a dreamer and Curt is a doer.”
“In this world there are thinkers and there are workers.  I’m a thinker and Curt is a worker.”

Ya gotta love the guy. As easy as it is for me to laugh at Doug, I do the exact same thing myself.  For years I’ve held a dichotomy between readers and cleaners.  I noticed that my girlfriends who loved to read and swapped books were (like me) on the slobbish side.  And the women I admired who cleaned the lintels on a weekly basis, women who wouldn’t dream of leaving the house with a dirty spoon in the sink, didn’t tend to gush over the latest book they’ve read because Good Housekeeping was the extent of their reading repertoire.  

The person who sports bona fide credentials in both camps neatly exposes this false dichotomy.  My dear friend Lisa’s middle name is organization and she has more bookshelves and books than some public libraries.  Lerrina is organized, energetic, and cleans like a whirlwind so she could sit down and read for two hours.  Elisabeth Elliot writes of order, cleanliness and discipline in the home, but her quotes and literary references are evidence of an active reading life.  Even Laura Bush loves to Clorox shelves in her free time and yet she is a librarian who cannot not read.  

Reading that paragraph made me think: well, the key must be to have an L in your name.  Yeah right, CaroL!

As always, my husband is my saving grace.  He loves order and he lives order. There’s no sense gnashing my teeth that I don’t have a native love of dust-mopping, doing crunches and drinking nonfat milk.  I wish I did.  How many days have I been lost in a
book, hear my husband’s footsteps on the threshold, look up and see the
house with his eyes?  My young son saw me scrubbing some porcelain one day and he innocently asked, “Who’s coming over?”  I have oodles of books on this subject and have tried various methods.  All have been successful to some extent; the question is always how permanent is that success? 

I’m convinced that if I don’t love a clean house
I won’t be consistent in keeping it clean.

It’s as simple as that.  But it’s not easy.

So we’re back to the prayer that keeps getting prayed:  Change my heart, O God. 

Last night Collin was out collecting for the paper route, Curt was vacuuming the garage and otherwise taking dominion over his space, and I started (again) a project I conceived in August 2004.  It occurred to me in August 2004 that if I just pretended that I was moving and took everything out of my kitchen and cleaned, organized and put it back together in perfect harmony it would be a happy thing.  I know better than to take everything out in one day.  Over the years I’ve completed sections but never all of them at one time.  The kitchen is the command center of our home.  It is the room where I chop onions, crunch my Kashi Go Lean, blog and read blogs, teach my son, and talk on the phone.  As self-indulgent as it may be, I’m blogging about it to make sure it gets done.  Maybe I’ll even post pictures.  After, not before. There. 

  

Unspoken Words

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The sermon yesterday was a reminder to take the opportunities presented to us each day to nurture our relationships; it was a call for open communication and regular maintenance checks.  It was a bit off-topic, but my mind flew to a time when I was ten and God shut my lips.  The shutting of my mouth was a profound and incredible gift. Here’s what happened:

One afternoon in March of 1968, Missy (let’s call her that) and I had climbed a crabapple tree in her backyard and were exercising our imaginations and indulging in the sweet secret-telling that bonds silly, young girls.  Far sooner than we expected, Missy’s mom called to us to come; it was time for me to go home.  We were both disappointed, but Missy was verbally obstinate: “No!  We’re not finished!”  In a quiet, passive tone, Missy’s mom repeated her request.  Missy became more belligerent, more mouthy.  The tug-of-war was a jarring new experience for me.  Walking to the car, I was shocked to my core when Missy screamed  “I hate you!”  to her mom.  To this day I can see her pigtails, her wrinkled eyebrows, her curled lips, her passion in profile as she yelled.  Subconsciously, I must have noted that there was no immediate consequence for her talk.

For whatever reason, I kept this incident a secret and didn’t discuss it with any member of my family.  But I relived it; I pondered; I simmered; I wondered; most of all I tried to make sense of it.  Eventually I began to flirt with the idea of talking back to my mom.  I was no Elsie Dinsmore, but there were clear  ideas in our family, properly  taught and administered, on what were fitting words and fitting tones in which to speak to one’s parent. My mom brooked no disrespect from any of her children. 

At first I just played with the words in my mind.  In the same way that women can lust after imaginary men, I toyed  with a theoretical situation where I said those words.  I wasn’t angry; I was just curious. But, there were certainly times when I wanted my own way and the thought of getting it was appealing.

I rolled and swished those words around my mouth like an experienced wine-taster. But the process itself was unpleasant and stomach-achey.  It was just too weird.  I had sense enough to realize that those words were completely dissonant with my relationship with my mom.   After a week or so I made a conscious decision not to go there, breathed a sigh of relief, and carried on with my childhood.

Within a month, my mom died unexpectedly.  Shortly afterwards it hit me clean in the face what I had been spared.  This drama still resided strictly inside my head, but I knew – oh! I knew! – how gracious God was to shut my mouth.  For days on end I prayed before I slept, repeatedly thanking God that I had never spoken those words to the one person I loved more than any other. 

Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord;
keep watch over the door of my lips.
Psalm 141:3
 

 

I Love My Job

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I had a spurt of growth last night.  While I was reading on my side of the bed, everything came together in a tangible and tingling synthesis.  I almost woke my husband so he could share the tingles; but he’s heard Hildegard this and Dante that, Lewis said this and Sayers said that enough while his eyes are open; I didn’t want to disturb his dreams of finding the great tamarack. 

I had just gulped in a Teaching Company Course on the High Middle Ages in which I learned about Frederick II Hohenstaufen [what a great name!] and here old Hohenstaufen “stupor mundi” (wonder of the world) makes an appearance in Dorothy Sayers’ introduction to The Inferno.  It was like bumping into a guy in the Safeway produce section the day after a party where you first met.

Back in December, I determined to read a Charles Williams book this year but hadn’t a clue where to start.  Charles Williams was a close friend and mentor to C.S. Lewis; my previous attempts to read Williams were DOA.  In Sayer’s last paragraph of her introduction she acknowledges her debt to Charles Williams’ The Figure of Beatrice.  Score!  It’s in my Amazon shopping cart.

But the real tingles came reading the first 70 pages of Peter Leithart’s book Ascent to Love.  In the first chapter Leithart takes a stroll through medieval literature and examines the treatment different writers give to the differences between pagan and Christian outlooks.  It recapped our year of study in five gorgeous pages, referencing The Fairie Queene, Beowulf, The Song of Roland, Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight and the Canterbury Tales.  I don’t knit, but it was like gathering up a flat piece of knitting into a recognizable sweater.  Or perhaps it was more like putting the last piece into a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. [I have been known to hold on to a piece so I get that pleasure, she says with a reddening face.]  It fits!  It connects!  It jives!

I. Get. It.  !!!!!  It is a glorious life.

Until this morning.  My husband woke up very early and was bouncier than Tigger.  He started a load of wash, walked around the house at a fast clip, opened and shut closet doors carelessly, and actually chuckled the second time I hit the snooze button.  As I left on my walk, I tossed Ascent to Love in my 16 yr. old son’s direction.  Read the first chapter, I instructed.  It will pull the whole year together – it’s Just … Incredible.  When I returned my son said, Mom, what was so great about this?  It was Boring.

Sigh.  We still have work to do.

  

Those Who Dare To Teach

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“Those who dare to teach
must never cease to learn.”

I ran across this stunning quote this morning.  Wanting to verify the author, I Googled the sentence with quotes around it.  You wouldn’t believe all the people to whom this quote is attributed.  I stopped counting at ten.  I immediately thought of Janie whose blog entries of continued learning and stories of substitute teaching inspire me.


Distant Places

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Our dear friends took a trip to Montana, taking in Yellowstone.  Btolly has a most unique travelogue entry full of wonder, enthusiasm, beautiful vistas, love of geology and connection to place.  Waaaaaay back in the mid-90’s our families did “Friday School” together.  I taught grammar and Bonnie taught science.  I’ll never forget my son’s excitement the first day, “Finally — a good science teacher!”

If you are looking for a gorgeous vacation destination, consider Elk Lake Resort.  The Lady of the Lake (her blog name) writes about her life among the wildlife in remote western Montana.  Think Confessions of a Pioneer Woman blended with Earth Is Crammed With Heaven.