to end

It would seem appropriate to send the year out with something brilliant: a good resolution made, a wise lesson learned.  I’ve been two pages from the end of my journal for a week now, not writing because I like to end journals well, though no one may ever read them.  Like Beckett’s Hamm, “I hesitate to … end.”  But the year goes out, whether I have the words for it or not, and wisdom does not arrive in neat yearly doses which one may measure and display at the year’s end.  Today has not been a day of knowing. Today, with Eliot,
“The only wisdom [I] can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”

Endless, and endlessly reiterating, to the girl who carefully follows rules in order to do all things perfectly, that she does not, that she cannot, that this is, somehow, as it ought to be:

“In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.”

So that I’ve held the words so many dozen times and known them to be true and said that I will arrive there, at what I am not yet. But the way is a hard way, and the going is slow going, and there is self always creeping back to possess the relinquished things, insisting that it is my right to know and to enjoy and to be in whatever way I like best.  So that the year does not end neatly: these lessons learned and set aside; new books purchased with new lessons for the new year.  No.  The year goes out with the old battle still whirling, and the girl weary and not sufficient for these things, clinging to the One who is.

And, after all, she could be in no better place.

between

Thou who wast rich beyond all splendor
All for love’s sake becamest poor;
Thrones for a manger didst surrender,
Sapphire-paved courts for stable floor.
Thou who wast rich beyond all splendor
All for love’s sake becamest poor.

Thou who art God beyond all praising
All for love’s sake becamest man;
Stooping so low, but sinners raising
Heavenwards by Thy eternal plan.
Thou who are God beyond all praising
All for love’s sake becamest man.

Thou who art love beyond all telling,
Savior and King, we worship Thee.
Emmanuel, within us dwelling,
Make us what Thou wouldst have us be.
Thou who art love beyond all telling,
Savior and King, we worship Thee.
–Frank Houghton

And had I time, I might write more.  Of how holidays are spent in Florida, amongst family members, me with my traditional holiday sinus troubles leaving a trail of tissues behind my raw red nose.  Of how I could not persuade myself, packing in the cold, that sweaters would be superfluous.  Of how here there are dogs and citrus fruit and fires and people I’ve known all my life, and all of us waxing nostalgic about the times we see in faded home videos.  Of how Christmas seems always to be this odd state of betweenness for me: home far away and home here, and always the coming and the going again, loving both places, eager to be home and eager to be home. And maybe that’s the way it ought to be, the vague displacement: two things at once and both of them me.

But I haven’t the time to explain it properly now, so I’ll just wish you a Merry Christmas, and go to see my family.

“I am half-sick of shadows,” said the Lady of Shalott.  And therefore she was given:

Hugs from choir-children.

A candle-lit church sanctuary, full of red flowers.

Conversations.

A sun-lit ramble with a company of companions.

A little boy carrying a box of cookies.

Laughter.

Red bows on Harry the asparagus fern and golden bells on Firdinand the Christmas tree.

Photos of far-away friends.

Cinnamon-scented pinecones.

Crazy paper hats.

The reminder that one must be before one may do, and that sometimes being is much more important than doing.

And so she felt much better, and determined to go to bed.

 

 

after shadows

These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
-Colossians 2:17

And if, as you aver, you are after the substance, why such wistful-after-shadows eyes? You’ve led your shadow over grass-green lawns, watched it grow shorter with the shifting sun, danced with it tall and narrow on an evening road. But though it follows you when you ignore it, leads you along so many of your ways, when you gather it into your hands you gather nothing.

Seek the substance, small one.

You have the promise of the substance, an unshakeable promise, sealed in blood. Why such angry fists at sky which will not satisfy you with shadows? Would you satisfy yourself amongst shadows, when the substance is at hand? Would you play with plastic foods in a plastic kitchen when a real banquet is spread for you?

Seek the substance, small one.

Cease striving.

Be still.

 

what child?

Reposting from two years ago today, as my new-post-generator seems to be in temporary hibernation:

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?]

Wisdom is not one word and then another,
Till words are like dry leaves under a tree;
Wisdom is like a dawn that comes up slowly
Out of an unknown ocean.

-Edwin Arlington Robinson, Tristram

I decided yesterday at noon that I would lay aside the project which must be completed on Tuesday, and let it rest until Monday morning.  The words were mounding like leaves and my mind felt like a tree stripped bare — no more leaves to drop.  Today I sit in the quiet, feeling a slow dawn.  I call it good.

arguing

“The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”
–Robert Louis Stevenson

The skeptical literary scholar who has been trained to sit inside my head and question things raises an eyebrow and questions, with perfect diction: “What sort of things?  And, really, are kings particularly happy?”  I am accustomed to arguing with the scholar.  He — yes, in spite of our training to question traditional gender identities, the scholar is persistently male — questions, as he ought to do in the interest of thorough scholarship, and I protest his questions, as I ought to do in the interest of thorough living.

I find it exhilarating to argue with the scholar.  He — poor soul! — lives in the interminably dim realm of Researched Critical Essay, while I merely visit there sometimes; I do not call it home. And so, while I know that the skepticism is all very well in its place — that dim realm — it cannot contend with the things beyond that realm.  Rather like the Lady of the Green Kirtle in Lewis’s The Silver Chair.  Repeating “There never was a sun,” may be all very well in a world underground, but we who have seen the sun must not drowse off and allow lamplight to be substituted for the real thing. I, my dear scholar, am not a prisoner in the Deep Realm.

Kings may be unhappy, but the best images of kings, the kings who would be referenced in a child’s rhyme, are glorious and regal and smiling, because their thrones are established and upheld with justice and with righteousness.  Ah, and I brought the rhyme in the beginning because of the number of things:

People who know my name, voices made visible on chilled air, cats vacillating between complaint and contentment, Clementine oranges, Christmas cards, the perfect reflection of trees in the pond, wood fires, smiling strangers, songs along the sidewalk, conversation, ticking clocks, grace.

I could not come near the full number, if I listed forever; but I have left the scholar behind in his dim realm, and I have moved far beyond lamplight.

It is enough.  I smile.