The Son of Man must be lifted up
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so that everyone who believes
may have eternal life in Him.
John 3: 14-15
Frenchglen…population 12
This is the west, people!
Goodbye, modernity…
If you sat on this chair…
…this would be the big picture…
…above this.
For all its decay, there was still evidence of a good life.
In the distance a man leans against a fencepost.
Friendly and welcoming, he was content living in Frenchglen.
Frenchglen still has a heartbeat;
however, it seems a gasp away from being a ghost town.
Our first full day birding was a bit disappointing. We woke up to snow and a biting, snarling, snarky wind. There was little getting out of the car. As we hunkered down, eating our gourmet picnic in our Subaru, my sister-in-law perfectly captured my sentiments.
“It’s still fun, because we are with you!” That’s it!!
And…looking over our photos, it wasn’t such a bad day after all!
A father figure in my life left a fundamental/evangelical belief to join the Orthodox church. In fact, several people I know have either converted to Orthodoxy or have considered it. So I decided to read Facing East
Frederica Mathewes-Green is an excellent tour guide to Orthodoxy. She writes in a warm, personal tone, with an exceptional ability as a wordsmith. (I enjoyed her movie reviews and columns in World Magazine, back in the day.) Facing East takes the reader through one year in the church calendar as a pilgrim’s journey. By the end of the church you feel you know the folks of the mission church her husband leads.
What I appreciated the most in this book were the ancient prayers and hymns.
When I asked a friend about the attraction to Orthodoxy she explained that she was tired of worshiping with her head only, like her faith was just something that went on in her brain. She loved the physicality of Orthodox worship.
Mathewes-Green is a compelling writer. She throws in commentary on art by Christians, popular and not; you laugh and sigh at her distress when her daughter gets a nose ring. Catch some of her phrases:
From my perspective, there’s nothing sacrosanct about “dignified” hymns a couple of hundred years old. All of those four-lines-and-a-chorus hymns now have a man-made quality to me; they’re all us talking about various aspects of God or ourselves. In comparison, the ancient liturgies have been washed through multiple centuries and cultures and have stood mostly unchanged; what endures has the scent of eternity. It’s stone-washed worship.
[About a widow] Adversities hone her like flint.
For me, a writer, it’s more literally the hands and the head, because that’s all I’ve got. I sit at my computer most the day, tapping…watching, absorbing, percolating, trying to transmit it all back on a little square screen. No tools to do this with but fickle, ephemeral words, stacked on one another like figments in the air. Sometimes I think I’d feel more satisfied at the end of the day if I could display some visible, concrete object my hands and head had made, no matter how humble–even if it was only a well-crafted chili dog.
The Eastern and Western church are often divided on the dates of the church calendar. I’m glad that this year we will be celebrating Pascha on the same day. To my Orthodox friends: Many years!
Sherry at Semicolon is making a list of Top 100 Classic Poems.
The rules and instructions are at Semicolon. The deadline is midnight, March 26, 2010.
You don’t have to submit ten. If you can only think of five, or three, that is fine. April is poetry month and I’m going to wait until then to post my nominations. I can say this: each poem moves me…either to tears or to some pretty ferocious laughter. Poetry has a way of doing that.
When we homeschooled, we started each day with a poem. I can’t say it was the favorite part of the day for anyone, but the drip, drip, drip of a daily poem worked its way through the other intellectual clutter. I really miss that routine. I could reinstate it for myself, but that would require getting up earlier and planning on bypassing the domestic rush hour.
You don’t need to be a blogger to participate.
All it takes is the love of one good poem. Or three. Or ten.
If you like the idea of exposure to poetry, but don’t know where to start, you can pick up poetry anthologies just about anywhere. I’m fond of The Top 500 Poems
I found this print in the book Hidden Treasures Revealed
roams through the history of Scotland in four sections: Columba coming to Iona; Kenneth mac Alpin uniting the Picts and Scots; Queen Margaret and her work of reformation; and William Wallace at Stirling Bridge / Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn.
Donna Fletcher Crow weaves the historical stories around a modern tale of three college students and their friend, storyteller Hamish MacBain. While I dinna find Mary, Gareth and Brad’s story compelling, I enjoyed the way fiction can bring ancient history to life. The inner thoughts of the main Scottish characters seemed anachronistic at times, but not so much that I had to stop reading.
There are several ancient prayers incorporated into the story. For example,
What really excites me is the author’s website, particularly the section My Life As a Reader.
My reading life has always gone by passions, finding a writer I loved, reading everything he or she (usually she) wrote, then feeling absolutely bereft when I came to the end. Much the same feeling as having a child leave for college, I later learned. My passions have included Norah Lofts, D. E. Stevenson, Mary Stewart, Rumer Godden, Elizabeth Goudge and Elswyth Thane with whom I carried on a delightful correspondence just before she died and I began writing professionally.
If gardening is your passion, visit Donna’s garden in Boise, Idaho. A delightful meandering through links brought this great discovery: The Plot Thickens, a blog devoted to novelists and their garden spots.
We’re planning on spending a few days at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
Over 320 species of birds. The Pacific Flyway.
Three members of our party are experts in birds.
Ornithological gluttons.
Me. I’m a word bird.
Did you know that avid comes from the Latin avere, to desire, crave?
And avian comes from the Latin avis, bird?
LBJ.
That’s my favorite bird identification.
Little Brown Job.
I’m getting a crash course in optics.
Call it Binocular 101.
In theory, I can distinguish
between a raven and a crow.
It’s gonna be a hoot.
We’re going to spot birds we’ve never before seen.
I’m going to tap into the enthusiasm around me.
It’s good, I remind myself, to feel inadequate.
I’m looking for a Sora Rail.
And a Yellowthroat.
I’ll bring some books along.
We’ll take some hikes.
We are bringing the old Pentax K1000 out of retirement.
My brother Dan, who, if he didn’t sing opera, could make
a lovely living as a professional photographer, (Exhibit A below)
will have a big lens.
Already I can’t wait to see his pictures.
Oh, yeah!
I’m thankful, for my sake, that I read a borrowed copy of James Sire’s book How to Read Slowly
Sire writes for readers on every level. If you like the idea of reading, but haven’t finished a book in a year, this book is for you. If you enjoy reading, but sense there are better books, Sire will guide you. And if you, like me, can’t not read, you will get a great refresher course on how to better do what we can’t escape doing.
How to Read Slowly
I was immediately captured by the dedication: To my father who in his eighties still reads voraciously.
Sire doesn’t just tell you…he shows you. His chapter on poetry would make the most reluctant reader of poetry want to dip his big toe in the pool of poems. Here’s a sample:
So much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Simple enough, right? Yet Sire asks questions and makes observations which make me want to jump up and click my heels! Visually, what do you see in this poem? Sire concludes, “Williams’s poem is like a still-life painting. Quality presents itself quietly and yet persistently. And, though we cannot say why we see, we see.”
Excellent questions, superb commentary, quotes that express what I’ve always felt, more book titles to read: that’s what you will find in this wonderful read.
A Living Pencil 