Anam Cara

"A Night at the Cafe"

An Event Not to Be Missed "A Night at the Café" May 10, 11, and 12, 8:00-10:00 p.m. Spend a distinctive and entertaining evening at the Frist Center starting with a docent-guided tour of Matisse, Picasso, and the School of Paris. Then adjourn to the transformed Café de Musée de Frist, where you will step back in time to 1906. Enjoy Parisian music, food, and wine, and find yourself caught in a dueling dialogue between Picasso and Matisse presented by director Jeffrey Fracé and actors from New York’s Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant. A few unexpected members of the Parisian salons may also appear to stir up the conversation! The evening is $45 for Frist Center members and $50 for nonmembers. Call (615)744-4904 or download and complete the Night at the Café registration form for required reservations. Period attire is welcome. Image: Apartment of Michael and Sarah Stein, 58 rue Madame, Paris, 1907. (left to right: Michael Stein, Sarah Stein, Henri Matisse, Allan Stein, and Hans Purrmann).The Baltimore Museum of Art: Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone Papers *Personal Note:   My boys and I visited this exhibit on opening day.  Though the collection is not as large as the Phillips collection of a couple of years ago, there are some lovely pieces.   If you have any interest in the Post-impressionists and their immediate successors, you should definitely see it.  I can’t imagine a better setting than this very promising evening.

Book Love

I confess that I am a certifiable book fanatic.  I LOVE books!  All kinds of books.  I love the way they smell.  I love the way they feel...especially old books with cloth bindings...or leather.  I love getting completely lost in a book.  I love traveling to places and time periods that I will never have the opportunity to visit.  I love getting to know people to whom I would not have access otherwise.  I love being challenged by new ideas.  I love the beauty of a well turned phrase.

I have recently read a book written by someone who loves reading at least as much as I do, if not more.  The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life by Steve Leveen tells you "how to get more books into your life and more life from your books".  It is gold for people who love to read.  It can also be very helpful for people who would like to love to read.  I can't recommend it highly enough.  Here are a few favorite quotes to tempt you:

"When we are reading a really great book, burdens feel lighter, cares seem smaller, and common places are suddenly delightful.  You become your best optimistic self...The world holds promise.  The atmosphere is cleaner and brighter; a beckoning wind blows your hair."

"Living your well-read life is a way of living higher, with your eyes open to an astonishing world and your mind daily learning more--about the world, yourself, and your untapped capabilities."

"The way a book is read--which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book--can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it...Anyone who can read can learn how to read deeply and thus live more fully."  (Norman Cousins)

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book?" (Henry David Thoreau)

...and, Malcolm X on a love for books, discovered and nourished while in prison:  "Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened.  Let me tell you something: from then on until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk.  You couldn't have got me out of books with a wedge...months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned.  In fact, up to then, I had never been so truly free in my life...the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive."

Country Music 1/2 Marathon

Well, Folks.  It's official.  I am a half-marathoner.  Is that a real phrase?  Beautiful day.  Nice and cool at the start.  People singing.  People cheering.  Great experience!  I actually think I would like to do it again.  Official chip time:  2 hours, 11 minutes, and 16 seconds.  I am pleased.

La Dolce Vita!

Six weeks from today my family will arrive in Italy for a 3 week European adventure.  We will begin in Rome where dear friends, Billy and Kelly Patterson, have just moved with their beautiful boys.  They are part of the church planting movement known as Origins Rome.  Billy found an artist's sight with some pretty amazing photographs of the Eternal City.  http://www.secretrome.com/  Check it out.

Ciao! 

Wish Me Luck!

Tomorrow morning I will do something I have NEVER done before.  I am participating in the Country Music Half-Marathon.  Yeah, yeah...I know...some of you people could run a half marathon in your sleep.  But, this is a big deal for me.  I started running 10 months ago pretty much strictly to improve my cardiovascular health.  In the beginning, 1 mile was a challenge.  A 5K was the goal.  I couldn't even get my head around the idea of running 13 miles...all on the same day.  And, to be honest, at that point, there were more days that I didn't enjoy running than days that I did.  But, as the weeks passed, it got easier and easier; I ran farther and farther; and I liked it more and more.  There are still days when I would rather stay in bed, but I suck it up and run anyway. I'm always glad I did.  I can't tell you how great I feel afterwards...and how great I feel everyday because of the way it has improved my stamina and my strength. 

I have been fortunate to receive encouragement and advice from friends and family.  It has been a real stretching and growing experience.  Here are some things I have learned:

Running outside is a thousand million times better than running inside.  I really came to understand that after the freezing cold sent me indoors for several weeks this winter.  Coming back outside was like being reborn.  It's more physically demanding than running on a treadmill, but exponentially more rewarding.  Though I will tell you that trying to look behind you at the sunset while running is a decidedly bad idea.

If you take a case of Gatorade and remove 98% of the water so that the sugar and the fruitiness and the electrolights become really concentrated and the consistency becomes something closely akin to toothpaste, you will have a product called power gel.  It's pretty helpful to have partway through a longer run, but I am telling you--make sure you have plenty of water to wash that bad boy down.

You can conserve a good deal of energy if you can learn to keep your hands down by your shorts instead of up by your waist while you run  It feels really awkward at first, and I have to think it looks really strange--ok, honestly, I try not to think about that too much--anyway, I have it on good authority that it helps a lot.

The Galloway method is the only reason I am still running.  He has this ingenius plan where you run for 6 minutes (that number can vary) then walk for 1.  It is supposed to be easier on your body and prevent injury.  So far so good.  And, statistically, most runners run the same speed with this method as when they run straight through.  Mostly, I love that I have that 1 minute to look forward to every 6 minutes.  There is really no way to explain what that means to me.  It really has larger applications.  The most difficult things in life should be approached 6 minutes at a time.  Sometimes, it's the ONLY way.

I've learned that the right shoes are Essential!  And that they don't have to cost as much as a car.  I have a great pair of Asics that I bought for $75.00.  I LOVE them.  Cool...roomy...like running on little pillows.  (OK I actually stole that last little part from a Runner's World article--the part about the pillows--but they ARE that good.)

I've learned that if you sweat continuously for 2 hours, and the wind is constantly evaporating the moisture, that when you are all done you will find observable little salt deposits on your skin.  Weird.

I've learned that good conversation makes a run fly by...that solitude while running can also be sweet...and that listening to Family Force Five while running makes me run TOO fast.

So...tomorrow I will run outside in my wonderful shoes with my hands beside my shorts enjoying good music and good conversation.  I will be running for 6 and walking for 1, and during one of those walk breaks I will hold my breath and inhale a power gel followed by about a quart of water...or so.  Based on the predicted temperature, I think sweating is inevitable, but it looks like there may be rain to wash off the salt.  I'll let you know...

Hmmmm.....

"The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests: just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts."

Oliver Wendell Holmes

"What counts in the long run is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading."

Eleanor Roosevelt

Exchange...

For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.

For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.

Emily Dickinson

For your consideration...

"Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter.
Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man’s
reasonable perception into feeling."
Leo Tolstoy

Still Point - Evening 2003, mineral pigments, gold and tarnished silver on Kumohada paper, 6 x 18 feet by Makoto Fujimura

Just for Kicks...

My son Jake and I went shopping today.  He loves t-shirts with funny captions on the front.  Today he found a great one with obscure trivia.  We got a kick out of reading it.  Thought you might like it too.

Things They Don't Teach You In School

*Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

*The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched".

*There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

*Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

*There are more chickens than people in the world.

*An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

*No words in the English language rhyme with month, orange, silver or purple.

*Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

*In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

*It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

*A polar bear actually has black skin and clear fur.

*More people are killed by donkeys than in plane crashes each year.

*Shakespeare invented over 1,700 words used in the English language.

*No President of the United States was an only child.

*The average chocolate bar has 8 insect legs in it.

*Eskimos use refrigerators to keep food from freezing.

*A duck's quack does not make an echo.

*Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

*A cockroach can live 9 days without its head before it starves to death.

*A snail can sleep for 3 years.

Big thanks to deepfriedapparel.

Contemplation...

"For moderns--for us-- there is something illicit, it seems, about wasted time, the empty hours of contemplation when a thought unfurls, figures of speech budding and blossoming, articulation drifting like spent petals onto the dark table we all once gathered around to talk and talk, letting time get the better of us.  Just taking our time, as we say.  That is, letting time take us."

Patricia Hampl from Blue Arabesque

Painting by Henri Matisse

On My Ipod...On Repeat...

Replace Me

My Batteries died sometime ago
Gotta heart shaped box where they must go
Corrosion's building everyday
My flesh is leading me astray that's why I started to decay and I will slowly rot away but I can't feel
that anyway

This heart it wants to beat
These Lungs they want to breathe
These eyes they want to see
Gotta Mouth that wants to sing

Desperation
Needing you
Every last breath
I scream for you
Shatter me into a million pieces...Make me new

Crush me, tear me, break me, mold me
Make me what you want me to be
I am your's for you to use
Oh, Take and Replace me with you

Needing more than just a jump start to get me through
My disconnection is now the issue.....

I miss my 1st love bad and its driving me mad
Just Like a mixed up crazy person out of his head
Its been a long long time I've been on the decline
I do an a-bout face so I can be replaced. 180!!!

This heart it wants to beat
These Lungs they want to breathe
These eyes they want to see
Gotta Mouth that wants to sing

Desperation
Needing you
Every last breath
I scream for you
Shatter me into a million pieces...Make me new

Crush me, tear me, break me, mold me
Make me what you want me to be
I am your's for you to use
Oh, Take and Replace me with you

One for the body
Two for the soul
Three to get ready now Go, Go, Go!!

(music break)

Desperation
Needing you
Every last breath
I scream for you
Shatter me into a million pieces...Make me new

Crush me, tear me, break me, mold me
Make me what you want me to be
I am your's for you to use
Oh, Take and Replace me with you

Family Force Five

A Favorite Quote...

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?'  Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.  Your playing small does not serve the world.  There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.  We were all meant to shine, as children do.  We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.  It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Marianne Williamson

Painting by Michael and Inessa Garmash

Sepia and Shadows

I grew up in a world of distinct boundaries.  They were not boundaries of polity or geography, but of thought, experience and discovery.  Though unseen, they were as formidable as the range of mountains that en-wrapped my sleepy little town.  Mine was not a world wholly without beauty or joy, but it was a world painted with a restricted palette.

I think I must have suspected, at times, that the life I was living was only a hint of a life that was possible.  I was not unlike Plato's characters in The Cave.  Mine was the only world I knew, but it was all reflections and shadows of a world outside.  When offered the invitation to see the world above, some of us left, but most stayed.  Many of them continue to live the same recycled lives and think the same recycled thoughts, completely unaware that they are dancing with shadows.

When I stepped out of the boundaries into the open air of the world above, I was not unlike Dorothy leaving my Sepia toned Kansas behind for a Technicolor Oz.  I still remember the way that scene in the movie would make my heart leap...would make something in me expand a little...breathe a bit more freely.  Like Oz, this is a world of infinitely greater range.  The dangers can be profoundly more intense, but so are the joys and the triumphs.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I never left.  What if I had never tasted gelato on the streets of Paris or a real Chicago deep dish pizza?  What if I had never experienced the breathtaking beauty of the Grand Canyon or the intense rush of people and barrage of lights in Times Square on a summer evening?  What if I had never known the ecstasy of truly abandoning myself in worship?  What would life have been like without the stories of Homer, Austen and Lewis?  ...without the music of Mozart, Armstrong and Gershwin?  ...without the artistic genius of da Vinci, Renoir and van Gogh?  I imagine having never met the sweet children of Kosovo, who in their young lives had experienced atrocities, the like of which I will never comprehend; never seeing the cardboard houses of the "squatters" in Manila who drink from the same river into which they dump their waste.  Mine would have been a safer world, perhaps, but small...like a cocoon...or a cage.

Such is not the fate of every small town dweller.  Some have seen the world and have chosen the familiarity and the slower pace offered by a close-knit community.  I fear that I would have shriveled in that tight, claustrophobic world; governed by convention, rather than conviction...motivated by suspicion rather than suspense..acting out of habit rather than intent.  I would probably have become bitter and cynical like many of the people I know whose lives today look precisely like they did 20 years ago.  They remind me of the ancient Chinese custom of foot binding.  They have been bound so tightly and securely that there is no room to grow.  Eventually they will be broken and deformed as a result.  They will never grow into the beautiful creations God intended them to be.

Coming Soon to the Frist...

rushed with Light
BRUSHED WITH LIGHT

Masters of American Watercolor from the Brooklyn Museum
May 4 - July 22, 2007

This chronological survey of American watercolor landscapes begins with precisely painted scenes from late 18th-century New England and concludes with urban images from the mid-20th century. The majority of the works, however, were created by many of America’s foremost artists of the late 19th century, including William Trost Richards, Thomas Moran, John LaFarge, Winslow Homer, and John Singer Sargent. Also included in the exhibition are early 20th-century paintings by John Marin, who is acknowledged as the bridge that connected the naturalist landscape visions of earlier artists with modernist trends in American art, represented in this exhibition by Marguerite Zorach, Milton Avery, Arthur Dove, Edward Hopper, and regionalist Thomas Hart Benton.

Brushed with Light: Masters of American Watercolor from the Brooklyn Museum has been organized by the Brooklyn Museum.

Image (top): Frederick Childe Hassam, American, 1859-1935. Sunday Morning, Appledore, 1912. Watercolor over graphite on cream, thick, moderately textured wove paper.
13 15/16 x 19 15/16 in. (35.4 x 50.6 cm). Museum Collection Fund

Image (right): Winslow Homer, American, 1836-1910. Fresh Air, 1878. Watercolor with opaque white highlights over charcoal on cream, moderately thick, rough-textured wove paper. 20 1/16 x 14 in. (51 x 35.6 cm). Dick S. Ramsay Fund 

Out of Solitude...

Today I am returning to the "real world" after three days at St. Mary's Sewanee.  St. Mary's is a beautiful retreat center operated by the Episcopal church.  My accommodation was in the Hermitage, a stone cottage that was once the sacristy for the chapel when St. Mary's was a school for girls.  The setting is lovely.  Perched on Monteagle Mountain, the views are stunning--bucolic countryside as far as the eye can see.  There is a trail down through the forrest--great stone cliffs with water seeping down the sides, boulders tumbled indiscriminately down the hillside, several small streams that intersect the path, and a profusion of wildflowers all along the forrest floor..mostly purple...sweetly scented.   

It was a time of solitude, surrender, reflection, rest, brokenness, beauty, gratitude, grief, confusion, confession, whispers, glimpses, HOPE.

Though I spent much of the time simply being silent and listening, I also read a couple of carefully selected books.  Here are some of the thoughts that really ministered to me.

"If an act is not one of work or courage, then it is not an act of love.  There are no exceptions."    "Move out or grow in any dimension and pain as well as joy will be your reward.  A full life will be full of pain.  But the only alternative is not to live fully or not to live at all."      M. Scott Peck

"I beg you to come into my heart, for by inspiring it to long for you, you make it ready to receive you."     St. Augustine

"'For a brief moment I abandoned you but with deep compassion I will bring you back.  In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,' says the Lord, your Redeemer.  'Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,' says the Lord who has compassion on you."     Isaiah 54: 7-8, 10

"At times, memories of past events and fantasies about the future pierce your heart...You know that something totally new, truly unique is happening to you.  It is clear that something in you is dying, and something is being born."   "A love that comes to you through human beings is true, God-given love and needs to be celebrated as such...The task is not to die to life giving relationships but to realize that the love you received in them is part of a greater love...Be grateful for it and see it as what enabled you to open yourself fully to God's first love."  "People will be sent to you to mediate God's healing, and they will be able to offer you the deep sense of belonging that you desire and that gives meaning to all you do."  "You wonder what to do when you feel attacked on all sides by seemingly irresistible forces, waves that cover you and want to sweep you off your feet.  Sometimes these waves consist of feeling rejected, feeling forgotten, feeling misunderstood...move the attention of your anxious heart away from those waves and direct it to the One who walks on them and says 'It's me.  Don't be afraid.'"    Henri Nouwen

Batter My Heart, Three Person'd God

Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.

I, like an usurpt town, to another due,

Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,

Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy:

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

by John Donne

Blessed Longing

What I tell you, better censor. Bruit it only to the wiser. I celebrate what lives intenser: Life that yearns for death-by-fire. Nights of loving, nights of cooling, Where you’re begot, where you’re begetting, Seize you with what eerie feeling When hushed candle-rays are jetting. Shadows of the dark no longer Bind you down to be night’s plaything. Now you’re launched by newer longing Up to ever higher mating. Now no distance is too distant. Wafted spirit, spellbound flesh. Moth compelled by flame’s insistent Magnet, you must burn to ash. And till you confront this test, This dying-and-becoming, You’ll only be a dismal guest at the earth’s dim gloaming.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Recollections of Kosova...

Today I was talking with my history students about Kosova (Kosovo) and it brought back memories of a trip that I took there several years ago...memories of a culture that is a world apart from anything I have ever known...a culture that is strong and beautiful and uniquely it's own. 

I remember:

Narrow houses 3 stories high, made of brick and roofed with red clay tiles.  Some were pocked with bullet holes and some were missing whole sides.  Many were blackened by the fires that had consumed all their contents...objects of wanton destruction.  Those that were inhabited would have the inevitable pile of shoes outside the front door.  It is unacceptable to wear your shoes indoors.

Visiting Besa's home.  I remember the host of uncles, aunts, sisters and cousins that spilled out of unseen rooms to greet us.  Twenty-five people lived in this house.  I remember the sofa that wrapped around three of the four walls of the living room...the very same situation you would have found in any other house on that street.  I remember warm hospitality and a willingness to linger in the luxury of relaxed, unhurried conversation.  And, I remember Besa's father, the head of this household, speaking a blessing over us before we left...an admirable tradition.

The call of the muezzin to prayer...haunting, troubling.  The ethnic Albanians that form the majority in Kosova are culturally Muslim (thanks to 400 years of Turkish occupation) though many do not practice. 

The market with it's stalls of fresh produce, Italian shoes, recordings of the guttural, somewhat atonal music native to the Albanian peoples, hand crocheted vests and scarves, and---most memorable of all---the street with the farm fresh dairy goods.  You could smell this one before you saw it...crocks of strong, white cheese to go with your cucumbers and tomatoes, or with the trademark peppers of which Kosovars are so fond.  The Italian soldiers with their plumed hats and their semi-automatic weapons, out to keep order on market day.

These incredible sandwich wrap things with warm, spicy sausages wrapped in flat bread..yum!  Schweppes Bitter Lemon, nice and cold.  Cold, clear Peja water straight from the tap...never filtered because it was so unbelievably clean...piped directly from the mountains.  Masterfully prepared trout, eaten out under the trees at a lovely restaurant where you could see the relatives of your main course still swimming about in the little pond beside your table.

The beautiful drive out into the countryside every morning to the school where we were conducting a music camp for elementary school children.  Bucolic landscapes of tall, hand stacked hay mounds; wooden fences constructed of small limbs still bearing their bark; fields full of bright blue wildflowers in profusion; rich, well-tended gardens; an old cow being driven down the road to her grazing place for the day; bright blue UN tents where families were living next to the homes that they were attempting to rebuild.

Faces.  Radiant, jubilant, eager faces.  Angelic, curious, mischievous faces.  Faces punctuated by bright eyes...eyes that almost without exception carried a trace of sadness...a hint of fear...eyes that had seen too much.  These were children who had seen friends and neighbors gunned down in front of them...children who had been carried on the backs of their mothers and fathers as they fled for their very lives...children who had lost so much of their innocence. 

Bananas.  Yes, bananas.  Stay with me.  Every day we provided the children with a snack; bread with this chocolate spread that was all the rage (pretty decent stuff) and fruit.  The first day we brought bananas which we were told were a great luxury for the children.  All of a sudden we noticed a great exodus of children.  We pursued some of them to explain that the day was not over yet.  What we learned was that the children were taking the bananas home to their families so that they could share their good fortune.  Yes, I remember bananas...and children with very large hearts.

Rugova Gorge.  I had awoken to this stark, rocky mountain out my window every morning.  But, driving up into it was awe inspiring.  Sharp, steep cliffs were punctuated by large caves and the occasional spout of water that would spring forth forcefully seeming to come from nowhere.  We drove through a tunnel that had been hand hewn centuries before, and crossed a beautiful stone bridge that had been built around the same time.  Once we had made our way deep into the gorge, we stopped and crossed the icy cold stream (barefoot--brisk and refreshing) to enjoy a picnic in a beautiful clearing.  Lovely.

Today I remember Kosova.  I remember its beauty...beautiful people in a beautiful place.  Shu meer--So beautiful!

Guernica

   by Pablo Picasso

During the Spanish civil war that preceded World War II, the fascists invited Hitler to try out some of the new military strategies he had been perfecting on their own people.  The result was astonishing devastation.  One of the cities targeted was Guernica.  Nazi planes attacked the defenseless town on market day, April 26, 1937.  Of the town's 7000 inhabitants, 1,654 were killed and 889 were injured.

Pablo Picasso reacted the way any artist would.  He poured his agony...his anguish...into a painting.  The painting was executed at great speed because he was determined that it should be seen by the world at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1937.  He was determined that they should see and feel and understand the horror that was befalling the ordinary people of his homeland.

I have always found this piece deeply moving.  The restricted palate and the harsh lines paint a compelling picture of grief...a picture that we can all identify with at some level.  The causes may differ, but haven't we all known what it is to mourn from a very deep place?  to feel that desperation?  that utter despair?  Expressions of the soul are not always lovely.  Sometimes they have to be dark and desperate to be honest...to be real. 

The cry of my heart...

Jesus draw me ever nearer
As I labour through the storm.
You have called me to this passage,
and I'll follow, though I'm worn.

May this journey bring a blessing,
May I rise on wings of faith;
And at the end of my heart's testing,
With Your likeness let me wake.

Jesus guide me through the tempest;
Keep my spirit staid and sure.
When the midnight meets the morning,
Let me love You even more.

Let the treasures of the trial                                 
Form within me as I go -
And at the end of this long passage,
Let me leave them at Your throne.

May this journey bring a blessing,
May I rise on wings of faith;
And at the end of my heart's testing,
With Your likeness let me wake.

"Jesus Draw Me Nearer"

Lyrics by Margaret Becker, Music by Keith Getty

Words...

The pressure disappeared with the first word he put on paper.  He thought--while his hand moved rapidly--what a power there was in words; later, for those who heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier.  He thought, perhaps the basic secret the scientists have never discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought takes shape in words.

Ayn Rand from The Fountainhead

Grace

It may be that we have lost our ability to hold a blazing coal, to move unfettered through time, to walk on water, because we have been taught that such things have to be earned; we should deserve them; we must be qualified.  We are suspicious of grace.  We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift.

Madeleine L'Engle from Walking on Water

Resurrection

All rank on rank the tall white lillies stood, The graceful palms against the rose-flushed sky Showed gemmed with dew-drops, and red poppies glowed Through the rank grass near by. All hushed the air was - rapt and clear and still The earth, late racked with pain Felt it's insensate form with rapture thrill And hope was born again But in that garden there was silence deep, All nature waited - till a ringing cry 'Rabboni! Master!' cleft the dewey air, And swift the listening sky Flashed into splendor, and the sun leaped up And all creation thrilled with joy new-born Hailing Our risen Lord with ecstasy On that first Easter morn. Alice Guerin Crist

Easter reminiscing...

Easter is one of those evocative holidays that creates this whole confusion of memories and impressions from my childhood...sweet memories...sometimes odd..but undeniably my own.  So, indulge me as I throw a few of these up on you.  Perhaps...if you are old enough...and grew up way back in the rural south...some of these will sound familiar.

Easter baskets wrapped in colorful cellophane with a big bow.  I get this little flutter in my stomach just typing the words  Honestly, it could have contained socks and underwear for all I cared, it was just SO pretty.  But it didn't.  There were all these "only Easter" candies: chocolate bunnies; chocolate marshmallow bunnies; malted milk robin's eggs (my personal favorites); those extremely sweet eggs that were hollow inside and looked like they had been spray painted on the outside (I usually tried to trade these for robin's eggs.  They were bigger after all.); jelly beans (traded, again); and last, but certainly not least, that really cool plastic grass stuff. Boy, there were a thousand different things you could do with with that stuff.  I think my brothers, cousins, and I found most of them. 

Sunrise services.  I remember being confused because I was being woken up when it was pitch black outside...excitement... anticipation...mild nausea because I was SO sleepy...the intrigue of driving through a world that was still asleep, except for the few sanctified die-hards like our family who WOULD be in a pew when dawn began to break the eastern sky...the smell (The air smells different that early in the morning...maybe it's air's real smell unaffected by all the people that will be cluttering it up in a few hours.)...being convinced that Easter must be pretty incredible to make people do stuff like this... singing that one song that we only ever sang at Easter..."Low in the grave He lay..." really sad and mournful on the verses, then wailing with all our hearts on the chorus, "Up from the grave He arose!..."  O.K., for a little country girl, that was powerful!

A new Easter "frock"...my mom's word.  When you think about it, it's pretty practical how Easter falls at the beginning of Spring.  If you grew like my brothers and I seemed to, you NEEDED new clothes...the ones from last summer would have been too short...and Heaven forbid that you greet the Risen Lord in those tired old clothes you'd been wearing all winter.  Honestly, this was one of my favorite traditions.  I am a girl after all.  I remember planning the outfit.  My mom usually sewed it herself.  It was cheaper that way...and we could count on it being long enough...never a guarantee otherwise.  The best part about this process was that it was delightfully complex.  Instead of walking into some store and simply selecting a dress, you got to choose a pattern, then fabric, then special buttons or lace or trim...the options were endless!  And when you were all through, you knew you had a one of a kind creation that was like nobody else's.  My very favorite Easter outfit was built around a soft lavender dress my mom made and my very first pair of real pantyhose (also lavender).  I remember thinking I was pretty much an adult...what with the pantyhose and all (I think I was 8 or 9.). There were also shoes and a purse.  Pretty sweet.  I don't know exactly how to explain it, but I think I breathed differently in those new dresses.

Easter egg hunts.  Usually right after church.  The kids would be corralled against our will inside the church while the grown-ups hid the eggs.  There would always be a golden egg with some kind of prize attached.  I never, ever found it.  But, the anticipation was still intoxicating.  Then my brothers, cousins and I would hide and hunt them all afternoon at my grandmother's house.  Understand that these were not those little plastic eggs that everyone hides now.  They were hardboiled eggs we had dyed with that stinky vinegar stuff a few days before...and would end up eating a few of before the day was out (I know, it scares me too.)  Disaster for us would be rain on Easter.  That would mean hiding and hunting inside...never as fun.  But, it did lead to one of our favorite memories.  My grandmother had a couch in the basement that had a torn place in the back.  All of us knew about it.  Frankly, it was a great hiding place.  But, you know how sometimes when you hide the eggs, not all of them are found?  And, you know how sometimes you just can't remember where you hid those other two?  Yeah, well about a month later, our grandmother helped us remember.

Now, I'm the mommy, and as I was coloring eggs today with my youngest, I was wondering what it is that he will remember about our Easters together. 

To my parents, grandparents, brothers, and cousins I would like to say, "Thanks for some sweet memories".

Extravagance

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came in with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard.  She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, "Why this waste of perfume?  It could have been sold for more than a year's wages and the money given to the poor."  And they rebuked her harshly.

"Leave her alone," said Jesus.  "Why are you bothering her?  She has done a beautiful thing to me.  The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want.  But you will not always have me.  She did what she could.  She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.  I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her."  Mark 14:3-9 NIV

Father, teach me to love extravagantly.  Give me the courage to offer to You that which is most valuable...most precious...most extraordinary...to me. 

Anyway

Funny how songs sometimes seem to find you at just the right time.

Martina McBride closed her Christmas show this year with a new song that she was in the process of recording.  She sang it simply with just a guitar, and the two guys who had written it with her.  It was, for me, the most moving performance of the night.

Today I was having lunch with two of my favorite people in the world, and they told me the album, Waking up Laughing, is in stores and fabulous!  They were right.  There are several great tunes on the album, but my favorite is still "Anyway".  Here are the lyrics.  Check them out, then go to itunes and give it a listen.  (Thanks Kim and Laura :)

You can spend your whole life building
Something from nothin'
One storm can come and blow it all away
Build it anyway

You can chase a dream
That seems so out of reach
And you know it might not ever come your way
Dream it anyway

God is great
But sometimes life ain't good
And when I pray
It doesn't always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway
I do it anyway

This world's gone crazy
It's hard to believe
That tomorrow will be better than today
Believe it anyway

You can love someone with all your heart
For all the right reasons
In a moment they can choose to walk away
Love 'em anyway

God is great
But sometimes life ain't good
And when I pray
It doesn't always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway
I do it anyway

You can pour your soul out singing
A song you believe in
That tomorrow they'll forget you ever sang
Sing it anyway
Yea - sing it anyway

I sing
I dream
I love
Anyway

Amazed !

I stand amazed in the presence
Of Jesus the Nazarene
And I wonder how He could love me,
A sinner condemned, unclean.

For me it was in the garden He prayed,
"Not my will, but thine"
He had no tears for His own griefs,
But sweat drops of blood for mine.

He took my sins and my sorrows,
He made them His very own;
He bore the burden to Calv'ry,
And suffered and died alone.

When with the ransomed in glory
His face I at last shall see,
'Twill be my joy thro' the ages,
To sing of His love for me.

How marvelous, how wonderful
And my song shall ever be.
How marvelous, how wonderful
Is my Savior's love for me.

Words and Music: Charles H. Gabriel

Painting "Christ on the Cross" by El Greco

Father, it's time...

Vulnerability.  The very last thing I expect from Jesus.  Wisdom.  Power.  Authority.  Kindness.  Strength.  These I expect.  But, vulnerability?

The night before He is crucified, Jesus cries out to His Father with startling intimacy and honesty.  And, remarkably, He allows us to hear it.  I have a prayer like that.  I wrote it on a very dark day. I wrote about my fears...my frustrations...my worries about the people I love.  It's very raw...very honest.  The thought of publishing it would horrify me.  But Jesus invites us into this most intimate place.

On this Maundy Thursday, as we anticipate the death of our Savior, I offer you this gift:

The 17th Chapter of John.  (The Message)

   Jesus said these things. Then, raising his eyes in prayer, he said:
   Father, it's time.
   Display the bright splendor of your Son
   So the Son in turn may show your bright splendor.
   You put him in charge of everything human
   So he might give real and eternal life to all in his charge.
   And this is the real and eternal life:
   That they know you,
   The one and only true God,
   And Jesus Christ, whom you sent.
   I glorified you on earth
   By completing down to the last detail
   What you assigned me to do.
   And now, Father, glorify me with your very own splendor,
   The very splendor I had in your presence
   Before there was a world.

   I spelled out your character in detail
   To the men and women you gave me.
   They were yours in the first place;
   Then you gave them to me,
   And they have now done what you said.
   They know now, beyond the shadow of a doubt,
   That everything you gave me is firsthand from you,
   For the message you gave me, I gave them;
   And they took it, and were convinced
   That I came from you.
   They believed that you sent me.
   I pray for them.
   I'm not praying for the God-rejecting world
   But for those you gave me,
   For they are yours by right.
   Everything mine is yours, and yours mine,
   And my life is on display in them.
   For I'm no longer going to be visible in the world;
   They'll continue in the world
   While I return to you.
   Holy Father, guard them as they pursue this life
   That you conferred as a gift through me,
   So they can be one heart and mind
   As we are one heart and mind.
   As long as I was with them, I guarded them
   In the pursuit of the life you gave through me;
   I even posted a night watch.
   And not one of them got away,
   Except for the rebel bent on destruction
   (the exception that proved the rule of Scripture).

   Now I'm returning to you.
   I'm saying these things in the world's hearing
   So my people can experience
   My joy completed in them.
   I gave them your word;
   The godless world hated them because of it,
   Because they didn't join the world's ways,
   Just as I didn't join the world's ways.
   I'm not asking that you take them out of the world
   But that you guard them from the Evil One.
   They are no more defined by the world
   Than I am defined by the world.
   Make them holy; consecrated with the truth;
   Your word is consecrating truth.
   In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world,
   I give them a mission in the world.
   I'm consecrating myself for their sakes
   So they'll be truth-consecrated in their mission.

   I'm praying not only for them
   But also for those who will believe in me
   Because of them and their witness about me.
   The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind,
   Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
   So they might be one heart and mind with us.
   Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.
   The same glory you gave me, I gave them,
   So they'll be as unified and together as we are,
   I in them and you in me.
   Then they'll be mature in this oneness,
   And give the godless world evidence
   That you've sent me and loved them
   In the same way you've loved me.

   Father, I want those you gave me
   To be with me, right where I am,
   So they can see my glory, the splendor you gave me,
   Having loved me
   Long before there ever was a world.
   Righteous Father, the world has never known you,
   But I have known you, and these disciples know
   That you sent me on this mission.
   I have made your very being known to them,
   Who you are and what you do,
   And continue to make it known,
   So that your love for me
   Might be in them
   Exactly as I am in them.

A Poem...

                          Fabric

I try to live each day

In such a way

That when tomorrow makes today a yesterday,

I will have woven into the fabric of my life

Some gay design,

Some patch of color,

Bright, to please the eye,

So that, in the graying years to come,

When all the quick responses dull,

I may look back across the patterns of my past

And, in my memory,

Live the joys and pains

Of all my yesterdays.

Don Blanding from Songs of the Seven Senses

O Altitudo!

"I wish you had known my mother.  I remember, as clearly as if it were yesterday, toiling up the hill at the end of the school day, towards the group of mothers who stood at the crest of the rise, waiting to collect their children from the county primary school where my little sisters went.

"The mothers chatted together, plump and comfortable, wearing modest, flowery dresses, pretty low-heeled sandals, their hair curled and tinted, and just that little bit of make-up to face the world in.  Some had pushchairs with wriggling toddlers.  Together, they smiled and nodded and gossiped and giggled, young and friendly and kind... But there at the top of the hill, at a little distance from all the rest, stood my mother, as tall and straight and composed as a prophet, her great blue skirt flapping in the breeze, her thick brown hair tumbling down her back.  By her side stood my littlest sister, her hand nestling confidingly in my mother's hand, her world still sheltered in the folds of that blue skirt from the raw and bewildering society of the playground.

"My mother.  She was not a pretty woman, and never thought to try and make herself so.  She had an uncompromising chin, firm lips, a nose like a hawk's beak and unnerving grey eyes.  Eyes that went straight past the outside of you and into the middle, which meant that you could relax about the torn jersey, the undone shoe laces, the tangled hair and the unwashed hands at the dinner table, but you had to feel very uncomfortable indeed about the stolen sweets, the broken promise, and the unkind way you ran away from a little sister striving to follow you on her short legs.  My mother.  Often, after tea, she would stand, having cleared away the tea things, at the sink, just looking out of the windows at the seagulls riding the air-currents on the evening sky; her hands still, her work forgotten, a faraway expression in her eyes."

These are the opening lines of Penelope Wilcox's The Hawk and the Dove.  I find her characterization of this woman so intriguing.  It makes me anxious to read on.  I usually give a book at least a chapter to sell itself to me, but sometimes you just know...on the first page...that you have found a friend. 

The same thing happened to me with Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian.  She takes readers on a journey across Europe and Northern Africa.  Her settings are remarkably evocative.  I feel I am completely immersed in the sights, smells, and sounds of Constantinople, Oxford, or even a train platform in rural France.  Of course, the early encounter with a vampire ups the suspense quotient by a good bit.  I would read it late into the night, until my eyes would not stay open any longer.

Ayn Rand works her magic by drawing characters that are complex and nuanced.  She reveals them a bit at a time...almost as you might encounter them if you were becoming acquainted with them yourself.  She involves these characters in stories full of challenging choices and thought provoking questions.  Makes for stimulating discussion.

John O'Donohue manipulates words as though they were paint, or musical notes.  His writing is lyrical and poetic, even when he writes in prose.  Every concept or thought seems somehow more profound because it is delivered so artfully.

In the writings of C. S. Lewis I find a voice for thoughts, ideas, and imaginings that have lived in my heart or mind, but have not found a voice.  So often I find myself reading him and thinking (or saying) to myself, "Yes.  That's just how it is...just how I have always thought of it."  But, in the same writings I will find new, challenging ideas that cause me to reflect deeply and perhaps see something in a whole new light.

The writings of Donald Miller and Anne Lamott are raw and refreshingly honest.  They write the things we are sometimes afraid to speak.  There is something so real and so right about the vulnerability and transparency in their books.

Word-smiths all...and just a sampling at that.  I have a profound respect and admiration for those who use words well.  Communication is such an essential need for all of us.  To be heard, and to be able to hear others is immensely satisfying. 

C. S Lewis gives this line to one of his characters in Til We Have Faces, "Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words."

In the book Lewis Agonistes, Louis Markos talks about how Paul would wax poetic when writing about the most essential issues of the soul.  Some concepts were simply too profound for prose.  Erasmus and his fellow scholars of the late Middle Ages would search out these places in Scripture.  They referred to them as O Altitudo passages.  O Altitudo means "Oh the depths".

The books I have listed under O Altitudo have met me in a deep place.  Some of them are challenging, some are inspiring, and some are immensely beautiful.  All of them have used words to communicate to an important and significant place inside me.  I commend them to you.

"A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver"  Proverbs 25:11