Lift Up Your Hearts

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Let our sons in their youth be as grown-up plants,

and our daughters as corner pillars fashioned as for a palace.

Let our garners be full, furnishing every kind of produce.

And our flocks bring forth thousands and ten-thousands in our fields.

Let our cattle bear, without mishap and without loss.

Let there be no outcry in our streets.

How blessed are the people who are so situated.

How blessed are the people whose God is the Lord!

Psalm 144:12-15

 

 

 

The holiday season is upon us.

And along with our many celebrations comes a higher concentration of human beings in limited spaces. Homes that usually house one family, will receive extra visitors.

Grandparents will join their children and grandchildren for meals and games. Uncles and aunts and cousins will arrive from far-away places.

Bedrooms will swell with overnight guests. Showers will require more hot water than is available.

Dishes will pile up.

Toilets will plug.

Diapers will stink.

Toddlers will make watching a good movie almost impossible.

Glasses will break.

Toys will become tug-of-war victims.

Along with all the laughter, memories, jokes, conversations, and good food, offenses will come.

Patience will run short.

Fatigue will settle in.

Someone will most likely get sick. Loud crying will echo throughout the house.

There will be spankings and rumors of spankings.

And then the end will come.

We tend to anticipate the joys of Thanksgiving and Christmas, without remembering the tensions that accompany sinners wherever we go.

Our celebrations always bring with them difficulties, because we by nature are difficult to get along with.

So, how shall we then live, given our own weaknesses and failures?

 
 

By faith.

By faith we must trust that our mixed-bag celebrations are the context God is using to grow strong sons and grandsons.

By faith we must trust that these sorts of tensions are fashioning our daughters and granddaughters into beautiful palatial pillars.

By faith we must believe God is re-making us into his own image through our flawed efforts to please him.

And that is exactly what we are endeavoring to do here this morning.

We are trusting he will change us as we seek to please him.

How blessed are the people whose God is the Lord.

Let us therefore worship the Triune God.

guest post from my husband,  Curt Bakker

Finding Friends in Unlikely Places

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One of the best stories I heard this year was from my girlfriend reunion in September.  It’s not my story to tell in specifics. The gist of it is that my girlfriend’s mom was talking to a tour guide in England, challenging the English interpretation of events between England and Scotland.  Pleased to engage with someone knowledgeable and articulate in British history, the guide allowed their conversation to develop, extending the time one would usually take with a tourist. At some point my friend’s mom realized she was speaking with a member of the royal family.

A similar frisson of recognition delights me when I come across a literary reference that connects.  I am oblivious to so many references, hopscotching right over them.  But when I am familiar with a work, or writer or quote the author mentions, the thrill of discovery goes right through me. 

Here are two recent catches:

As one who must always be acting a part, he had dressed up very carefully as a river-man; ‘the Jerome K. Jerome touch’, he had explained, ‘is what impresses the lock-keepers.’   ~ the quote is from The Footsteps at the Lock by Ronald Knox. The reference is to Jerome K. Jerome’s book Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing Of The Dog…) which is a very funny (in the dry British sense) book

Here was one of Miss Barbara Pym’s excellent women, a dying breed no doubt, even in country parishes, but once as much a part of the Church of England as sung evensong…; Sunday School superintendent, arranger of flowers, polisher of brass, scourge of choirboys and comforter of favorite curates.  ~ the quote is from P.D. James’ A Certain Justice (Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Series). The reference is to Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women, a comic novel about unmarried women that is at times too close to the truth to be funny (says a single friend of mine).  I didn’t know until this minute that it has been issued in a Penguin classics.  I collect Penguins. 

This happens in minor ways all the time. One learns a new word, a new work, a new author…and suddenly that new thing jumps out from the shadows. In January I wrote about the same thrill. 

~ happy sigh ~  People imagine that we readers are dull and boring, but really, the reading life is a thrilling life!

Why PD James is my favorite mystery writer

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I just finished another Adam Dalgliesh book, A Certain Justice.  Adam Dalgliesh is the main character of fourteen mystery novels. I like mysteries more than science fiction, westerns, horror and thrillers—but less than memoirs, travel, histories and humor.  I prefer spacing mysteries out, inserting them between heavier reading.  And my “go to” mystery writer is P.D. James. 

The mystery part of the book is always secondary for me.  I love the culture, the commentary, the specificity behind James’ writing. One of her characters doesn’t turn on classical music while he drives; he listens to Elgar’s Serenade for Strings. 

James is conversant in the Bible and The Book of Common Prayer.  If you know your Books, you will recognize phrases and allusions.  Adam Dalgliesh is the son of an Anglican rector, who embraces the trappings of his childhood but does not hold to the faith of his father.  Theological and philosophical questions are naturally raised. Death is present in every book (she is, after all, a murder mystery writer); reckoning with mortality tends to get one beyond the mundane.  

And she is British.  (happy sigh)   

Here is a sampler from A Certain Justice.

Do you want a cup of tea?  A cup of tea.  That English remedy for grief, shock and human mortality.

The affair now was beginning to have some of the longueurs of marriage, but with none of marriage’s reassuring safety and comfort.

But there was in his bearing the innate dignity of a man who is at ease with his work, does it well and knows that he is valued.

What I wrote when I first discovered P.D. James

Everyone Needs Help Sometime

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“It’s okay…I’ve been there before…Everyone needs help sometime…”

Deana was calling our store’s adopted “Christmas family” to get specific items they needed.  The person on the other line was overwhelmed.

Hearing Deana’s side of the phone conversation took me back to a time when one of my husband’s colleagues showed up on our doorstep with four or five bags of groceries.  It was 1983 or 1984.  My husband was teaching high school, I was home with a baby. We didn’t have two dimes to jingle in our pocket; it was a paycheck to paycheck life. 

Then the flu flattened us. The fridge had free space on every shelf. It was all we could do to make a fire, wrap a blanket around our shoulders, and stare at the wall. Dave Steen, a legendary high school baseball coach, called to check on our Thanksgiving plans. He listened to Curt’s explanation and heard the unspoken pathos between his words. 

And the next day there he was on our front porch.  Cheerful, matter of fact, generous.  Paper bags spilling over with groceries.

I felt embarrassed, relieved, exhausted, awkward, thankful, humbled, uneasy, shy. Reluctant to admit that we needed help and yet incapable of arguing otherwise.  
How grateful I am for that Thanksgiving. That pitiful, miserable, rotten Thanksgiving that turned a corner when our front door opened.  Admittedly, it’s easier to be thankful for hard times when they are in the rear view mirror.

Any of you been there?

Everyone needs help sometime.

Quotes from Island of the World

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I couldn’t put enough quotes in my review of Island of the World.  So here, with space to stretch and relax, are some I marked. I omitted longer sections and any spoilers.  All are from the pen of Michael O’Brien.

~  I’m giving away a copy of this book to one of my readers.  ~
Enter a comment here.

Language should be, he says, as fluid as love and as stable as marriage.

There are times when it is hard to resist the world that is so rapidly changing all around him.  It takes energy to resist, even if only within the privacy of his thoughts.

Life is strange. But God has the final word.

Life itself is the great surprise, and all that is within it is an unpacking of subsidiary wonders.

Europeans understand that flavor is not about sensory stimulation, it is about evocation. It is art and memory. It is reunion with exalted moments, and such moments are never solitary ones. In short, life without coffee is not really life.

The killers murder not only their immediate victims; they spread death into the souls of survivors.

Can you really see the future if you have not seen the past for what it was?

Can a dwelling place without books every truly be a home?

They like a bit of verse as emotional prompts on greeting cards or as page-filler in periodicals, but they do not dive deep. Perhaps they do not know the deep is there. The pace of modern life, television, subways, fast food–these all work against the sublime illuminating moment when the distance between utterance and reception is closed in an embrace.

They are enjoying the rather unusual experience of it all–the sensation of a time-tested and comfortable friendship that is only hours old.

It may be that he cannot always distinguish between his losses and blessings, and the release of tears reduces the pressure.

Truth is always embedded in beauty.

On Christmas morning, they awake to the sound of bells ringing throughout the city. This, doubtless, is illegal, but the government probably does not have the stamina to destroy Christmas utterly.

Is he alone? Yes, he is alone, and yet, not alone. Beyond all sorrows, he has the fire of Holy Communion with Christ, as well as friends and fishing and the central grace in his life–his mission to forgive.

We are born, we eat, and learn, and die.  We leave a tracery of messages in the lives of others, a little shifting of the soil, a stone moved from here to there, a word uttered, a song, a poem left behind. I was here, each of these declare. I was here.

The Best Book of 2010

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In July I began reading Michael O’Brien’s Island of the World. Thirty pages in I knew this book was extraordinary. At one point in the middle of the night I got up and Googled Josip Lasta, the protagonist’s name, convinced he was a real person.

When I finished reading it, I couldn’t stop discussing it.  I gave copies to friends. But I shrank from writing about Island.  It is a big book in every sense of the word. How can I express its power in a short review? A friend read it and said, “It changed my life.”  Island of the World has 18 reviews on Amazon; all are 5 stars.  Laura, whose review began with these words “Best book ever.”, bought every book written by O’Brien after reading this.

So what is it about?  Light and darkness, loss and blessing, deep interior wounds, survival, sanity after trauma, crucifixion, resurrection.  Grief mingled with inexplicable joy.  All condensed in the life of a single Croatian man named Josip Lasta. 

Yet there is a difference between insightful commentary
about culture and the actual creation of culture.

I am intrigued by the cultures portrayed in O’Brien’s book: the rustic mountain village northwest of Sarajevo with an interdependent community and a faithful priest; the heady high culture of academia discussing philosophy and experiencing art; the tight grip on the edge of sanity, clinging to a vestige of humanity in a labor camp; the incremental rebuilding of a life in an Italian hospital; the life of a solitary janitor in New York City. 

If he had been given a choice, would he have chosen to be
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief? Never.
It was given. It is gift and cost–and in time the cost may
become entirely gift. It is hard to know if that will be the
end of all this striving, impossible to guess when the next
blessing or blow will fall.

I had read a third of the book when I saw a young man, a friend and former student who shares my love of reading thick, chunky, excellent books.  I stopped him as he walked by my office and told him about Island. Scott listened with interest and thanked me.  I made him wait while I printed out the synopsis from Amazon.  Two days later he was killed in a car accident.  The printout was on his nightstand.  Reading this book in the throes of grief impressed its words on my soul. This book is unforgettable.

I can’t be sure, but I suspect that Michael O’Brien is my new Wendell Berry.  That is the highest compliment I can offer. 

Get this book.  Burrow into it.  It will change you.

Friends’ reviews:  Laura, Janie  Another review: Rabbit Room

I added a post of quotes from this book here.

I love this book so much, I want one of you to win a free copy. 
Enter a comment and I will have a drawing.  Let’s say December 4th. 
Post a link, tweet about it, email a friend (and let me know you did)
and I’ll enter your name twice!
You can have choose between paperback or Kindle version.
International entries are welcome.

Love Continuing in Gratitude

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We measure time by its deaths, yes, and by its births. 


For time is told also by life. 
As some depart, others come. 
The hand opened in farewell remains open in welcome.


[…] And time that is told by death and birth
 is held and redeemed by love, which is always present.
 Time, then, is told by love’s losses,
and by the coming of love,
and by love continuing in gratitude for what is lost. 

It is folded
and enfolded
and unfolded
forever and ever,
the love by which the dead are alive
and the unborn welcomed into the womb. 


The great question for the old and the dying,
I think, is not if they have loved and been loved enough,
but if they have been grateful enough
for love received and given, however much. 
No one who has gratitude is the onliest one. 
Let us pray to be grateful to the last.

~ Wendell Berry in Andy Catlett