“To serve should be a privilege, and it is to our shame that we tend to think of it as a burden, something to do if you’re not fit for anything better or higher.” 
-Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water

*      *      *

And so there was I, and there were several young boys at a table, and they asked, “Can we please go first next week?”  because the rule is that the girls get their food before the boys do,  and the boys consider themselves cheated out of the best food.   Sigh.   Tired of listening to whining, I sat down and commenced upon an explanation: “Well, here’s the thing.  Y’all are going to grow up to be men, and God designed men to take care of women, to put them first … so we’re letting you practice being men.”

Well, there was the typical fourth grader who said, “That is a gross reason!”  But he heard me, even so, and there were others who did not dismiss it as “gross.”  One or two seemed almost to straighten their posture and adjust their faces into more responsible, man-like forms.  I could see them thinking.   And it is rather a daunting thing to realize that any young person might heed my hastily formed words on serious subjects; that I, a very young woman, may impact ten-year-old boys’ definitions of manhood.   Lord, guard my tongue; guard their ears; and make them men who look like You.

midwinter spring

“Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown.”
-T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets

Quite honestly, I don’t know what Eliot meant by his lines.  Their sound is wonderful, properly sodden at the end, as it ought to be.   Taking the words as they present themselves, however, “Midwinter spring,”  according to my understanding, happened today.  

Today I sat beside a pond that last week lay locked under ice, and I took off my shoes, rolled up my pant-legs, pushed up my sleeves, and was not cold, though a breeze did blow.  And I walked home, barefoot, over sodden grass.  Grand.

I am rather sure that Eliot did not mean the sparkle of intersecting ripples on a brown pond’s face, nor the glories of sun and soil on long stifled toes, nor the elation of a small dog running circles in a soggy field.   Though he meant no festoons of leafless grapevine, no crows conversing in sun-lit woods, no depth of heaped brown leaves, I mean them; it is enough.

“[Art] takes the chaos in which we live and shows us structure and pattern, not the structure of conformity which imprisons but the structure which liberates, sets us free to become growing, mature human beings.”  -Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet

“The structure which liberates.”  L’Engle uses the analogy of a skeleton.  We might call our bodies “freer” if they were not constrained by this structure of bones, but, apart from the skeleton, the body becomes a useless blob — if that is liberation, I prefer imprisonment. 

There have been numerous attempts to define Art, to set rules for it so that making Art and deciding which made things are Art might be entirely objective.  The definition of Art through much of the 20th century seems to have been rebellion against any definitions of it.  Artists — including writers and musicians — must always be making something new, something that, by its very newness, has not been defined.  Usually, by the time someone comes up with a definition for a particular genre, that genre is a thing of the past. 

But however much artists rebel against the idea of rules and a structure, they cannot escape it.  At the very least, they are bound by the limitations of their medium.  A writer must work within the bounds of words and grammar in order to communicate.  Musicians are bound by the ranges of their instruments, by note durations, by the five lines of the staff, or the capability of the human ear.  Any visual artist is constrained by his medium: someone working with oil paints and a canvas may produce a work of art, but he cannot very well call it a sculpture.   If his goal is a sculpture, he will be limited to materials that can be sculpted.  Within those bounds, however, he is free to sculpt what he chooses.

Artists are not the only ones who like to talk about liberty.  Nor are they the only ones for whom structure is necessary to produce this liberty.  We talk a great deal about “Christian liberty,” justifying many things with these words.  But this, like artistic liberty, works only within specific boundaries to produce a specific result.  What is that result?  Scripture is full of analogies for it.  Thinking about structures, this analogy from 1 Peter comes to mind: “You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God though Jesus Christ” (2:5).  

A stone, lying on a mountainside, is perfectly free; there are no limitations on what it may or may not do within the realm of its stone-ness.  It is free to plunge off the mountainside and shatter in thousands of pieces, but it will still be stone and nothing else.  But imagine the stone destined to be a part of this house: it has been chosen to fill a specific place in a wall.  Perhaps it is being cut to a specific shape, polished to make the house beautiful.  This stone, perhaps, has more limitations.  If it plunges and shatters, it will be of little use in a wall.  If it revels in grit and dirt, its polish will become dull and scratched.  While it will remain a stone, even a stone intended for a house, the building process will take longer, perhaps, and fewer people will recognize the stone for what it is.   No, there is no law against such activities, the stone is free to engage in them, may even enjoy them, but they cannot be called profitable, when considering the goal.  When stones are rolling about on mountainsides, they cannot be called a house.  It is only when the stones are constrained within walls that the house can grow and be a house. 

So, what am I trying to say?  It is easy to become so fixated on structures and rules that we miss the goal for which they exist.  That house is not the goal; the goal is “to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”   The structure is there to help us pursue that goal, but success comes “through Jesus Christ.”   Let us take our eyes, then, off both law and liberty, and look to Him, for “whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame” (1 Peter 2:6b).

“Variability is one of the virtues of a woman.  It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy.  So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.”
-G. K. Chesterton, “The Glory of Grey”

Despite my plentiful supply of this feminine virtue, I have been steadfastly in favor of Gilbert Keith for upwards of a year now, and I see no reason for there ever being a cessation of our amiability.  The above quoted essay, which I found accidentally last night, is delightful, though it deals with little besides the weather.  I doubt I would have imagined any grey glory, but Chesterton thoroughly convinces me:

“Grey is a colour that always seems on the eve of changing to some other colour; of brightening into blue or blanching into white or bursting into green and gold.  So we may be perpetually reminded of the indefinite hope that is in doubt itself; and when there is grey weather on our hills or grey hairs on our heads, perhaps they may still remind us of the morning.”

Indeed, yes.

*My tiny clay pot has a Christmas tree growing in it.  Who knew that a stately Christmas tree begins slender and smooth as a blade of a grass?  That that slender blade bursts into a cluster of needles at its top, new-green and wild?   But how should I, quite skeptical of any produce from the planting, avoid being surprised at what grows?  Surprised and glad.

*There is a degree of coldness which makes me feel as though I have ice instead of bones in my hands.  This, though certainly a quickening sensation, is not my favorite thing, especially when I am driving and have forgotten my gloves.

*”Where are my ribs?”  This, from a brown-eyed first-grader, who had proudly announced, a few minutes before, that she knew how to tell time.  I suppose, even in the beginning, there was time before there were ribs, but I never thought it until today.

*I yesterday saw a frozen fountain.  In some parts of the world this is, no doubt, routine, but I am not in the habit of seeing sheets of ice hanging where water generally falls: it was exciting.

*George Eliot, via her novel Romola, has been a pleasant companion lately.  I like her way of saying things.  This, for instance:  For the human soul is hospitable, and will entertain contradictory opinions with much impartiality. Just now I exemplify the statement, entertaining at once the contradictory desires of sleeping and writing.  My impartiality results in compromise: I have written; now I will sleep.

Cold, cold day, as days go in Mississippi.   Snow drifted down the grey sky all the morning, making the otherwise sharp air seem a kinder thing.  Though no snow stuck on the hardening mud, it was still somehow consolation for toes and noses over-chilled.   And down along the driveway, in brown curls of leaves, tiny mounds of snow collected and remained – as though some prodigal with a sugar-bowl had passed there – to be discovered on my afternoon pilgrimage to the mailbox.  

Ah, behold, it was very good. 

“A family of [thirteen] children will always be called a fine family, where there are heads and arms and legs enough for the number.”  -Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Miss Austen said “ten children,” but it suits my purposes to say thirteen, as I will soon be amongst such a family, wherein I am thirteenth of the forty-six grandchildren born to the thirteen children.   We must certainly be called a fine family, for we are duly possessed of all proper appendages, however well or poorly we may employ them.   We are all, however, well endowed with an awareness of the distinction of belonging to such a family. 

Traditions cannot be very numerous when there are such large numbers to keep them; nonetheless, in two days we will gather for the traditional pot of potato soup and the traditional roasts and rolls, the traditional sittings for the annual snap-shot of each family, the traditional ripping of wrapping paper, the traditional noise of many children, and the traditional passing of babies from hand to hand.  There will be those who know everyone’s name, and those who only remember their own names, those who will not stop talking, and those who will not be made to talk.  Some will enjoy it immensely, and some will not.  But none will leave without being a bit astonished, I suspect, at our numbers; all must certainly realize that there is a certain importance in belonging to such a family.  I hope they will be glad; I intend to be.

Playing a piano arrangement of “What Child Is This?”  For me the flow of the melody always joins with images of shining things among evergreen branches, scents of wood smoke, peppermint and cinnamon, the glow of stained-glass in a red-carpeted sanctuary.  In my mind, its words also play, mingling and overlapping with the words of “Greensleeves”:

What Child is this?  You do me wrong!
…
Greensleeves was my heart of gold,
The Babe, the son of Mary.

In a library book of folk songs from the British Isles I years ago read that legend attributes “Greensleeves” to Henry VIII; it was written for one of his mistresses, perhaps for Anne Boleyn.  Though stating that there was slim proof for that story, the book indicated that the original lyrics were not, perhaps, the cleanest.  The Lady Greensleeves, whoever she might have been, likely wasn’t the most lady-like of ladies.

And what was Mary?  A virgin?  With child?  There were some who knew and believed that to be true, but the rest, no doubt, esteemed her to be a fallen woman, looked down upon her more, than the English court would have looked down upon Lady Greensleeves.  “Why lies He in such mean estate?” certainly!  The King of kings comes bringing salvation, and He comes already bearing this smut of supposed immorality?  Really?  Would we not have imagined the salvation-bringer coming in purity and splendor?  What Child is this, born into scandal and poverty?  We would have given Him untainted followers, new songs all His own, but here He is, with a train of made-over prostitutes and tax-gatherers and demoniacs, to be hailed by a made-over song of amorous intent.

Ah, yes, but they have been made new!  All of them ran after other objects, none were pure or righteous or good, but now — now, they are His!  And, in so far as their pasts are remembered, it serves only to highlight what He has done: they who were dirty, full of unclean passions and vices, now point only to Him who has made them otherwise.  Nails, spear have pierced Him through, the cross been borne for their transgressions.  The love of the Word-made-flesh has covered their sins.

This, this is Christ the King!
[For whom but my lady Greensleeves?]

gladness

*A lovely meal and lovely friends in a warm apartment.

*Firewood loaded on a truck and stacked beside the house this morning:  satisfaction of good work having been done.

*Tiny Christmas-wreaths crocheted.

*A college literature class attended: a now-rare delight.

*Tea with my mom beside a crackling fire.

*Cars washed — in 40 degree weather: fun as a novelty.

*Friends in the Student Center at Belhaven University.

*Student Missions Fellowship: singing, hearing of missions in Japan, seeing old friends.

*A drive over dim roads.

Usually, I don’t get to do all of these things in the space of a single day — many of them are very rare indeed — but today was made quite full by the list above, and other things.  There is something excessively wonderful about going back to a place once called home and finding it still to be home.  Oh, welcoming smiles, and grins at jokes shared across a room, and people who still make me laugh delightedly, though I don’t see them every day any longer!  And then the steady comfort of the home where I live, and of family! 

All this, in the time that is passing away, all this, and only seeing in a mirror dimly … when the perfect comes, and this partial is done away, oh! how shall it be then?  Gladness is a word too small.

cultivating Christmas trees

A friend recently gave me a grow-your-own-Christmas-tree kit.  I added water to the condensed pellet of dirt and watched it grow to fill the tiny clay pot.  If the tree had grown at such a rate, it would be nearly large enough for lights and ornaments by now.   Well, but it didn’t.  I carefully followed the directions: interring  five tiny seeds in the moist earth and setting the pot in a sunny place.  Currently I have a lovely little pot full of earth, and the hope of a tree sprout sometime in the future, perhaps.  So many things are like that: instructions followed perfectly, all conditions and stipulations met, but the ultimate result utterly beyond our direction.  And so we sit and stare at the clay pots and wonder if we’ll ever see the bit of green for which we look …

It being December now, I feel I may safely type another Eliot Christmas poem.  (I did it last December, for those of you who read this then.)   Last year, this poem didn’t make sense to me, but it’s been growing on me since then.   Inspired by my recent tree-planting, I read it again recently, and have been waiting for December to share it here:

The Cultivation of Christmas Trees

The are several attitudes towards Christmas,
Some of which we may disregard:
The social, the torpid, the patently commercial,
The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight),
And the childish — which is not that of the child
For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel
Spreading its wings at the summit of the tree
Is not only a decoration, but an angel.
The child wonders at the Christmas Tree:
Let him continue in the spirit of wonder
At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext;
So that the glittering rapture, the amazement
Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree,
So that the surprises, delight in new possessions
(Each one with its peculiar and exciting smell),
The expectation of the goose or turkey
And the expected awe on its appearance,
So that the reverence and the gaiety
May not be forgotten in later experience,
In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium,
The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure,
Or in the piety of the convert
Which may be tainted with self-conceit
Displeasing to God and disrespectful to the children
(And here I remember also with gratitude
St. Lucy, her carol, and her crown of fire):
So that before the end, the eightieth Christmas
(By “eightieth” meaning whichever is the last)
The accumulated memories of annual emotion
May be concentrated into a great joy
Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion
When fear came upon every soul:
Because the beginning shall remind us of the end
And the first coming of the second coming.
-T.S. Eliot, 1954