crooked

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

Maybe you’ve seen the illustration?  The man is pigeon-toed and knock-kneed, taking an impossibly high step which must have been artistically plotted especially to enhance his crookedness.  Everything, up to the spectacles on his nose and the buckle on his hat, is crooked. The bony cat’s tail bends at right angles, and her paw holds the similarly bent tail of the hapless mouse, while her golden eyes gaze at the mouse just as I have seen my cat’s eyes gaze.  The crazy house sticks out at all angles from itself, and from its crooked chimney a narrow sheet of smoke like crinkled white paper ascends off the top of the page.

On the opposite page is a serene illustration of Little Tom Tinker mending a pot while his golden dog looks on adoringly, but my eyes are always drawn past it to the crooked man.  Not because he is beautiful.  He isn’t.  But the whole picture is so alive; every angle of the crooked man’s crooked self expresses thorough gladness.

The idea of a crooked man comes heavy with implications of our fallen state in the midst of a fallen world. We, whom God made upright, twisted through seeking sinful schemes, so that all things are awry and we can’t even walk one unbent mile.  In light of that, perhaps the gladness of the crooked man seems strange?  Oughtn’t he be grieving his state?

But no. The crooked man understands — can’t avoid knowing — his crookedness, and he dances with glee because he also knows grace.  You can see it in the illustration: that impossibly high step of his, and, held aloft, the crooked sixpence a gift beyond his earning and expectation.

And I wonder: how many celebrations have I missed because I am quick to see “crooked” and slow to see “sixpence”? How many times have I neglected to dance because I am too busy worrying about the crookedness of my legs? And all along the way, the stiles strewn with grace; however crooked the miles seem, the promise that things shall be unbent when the miles are behind me. No wonder the crooked man is glad.

Teach me to see.

on changefulness

I am writing other things today, but I’m also reading things.  And in light of my longing for a fixed land, I wanted to share this:

“To the extent that mutability and change are problematic, to that extent Christian conceptions of reality have not been fully accepted or understood. After all, change is the story of creation from the first words of the creation account (darkness is broken by light, and then they alternate). At the end of the changes of each day of creation, Yahweh pronounces everything “good.” Change can be, though it is not necessarily, good. Change per se is not a problem in the least, and for Christianity the ceaseless motion of the world is something to celebrate rather than mourn. Or, we can start at the other end: what we love dies, but for the Christian there is also resurrection, restoration, and complete final joy.”
–Peter J. Leithart, Deep Comedy

“But I do not find that this position, that of unbroken peacefulness and inward song, is one which we can hope to hold unassailed. It is no soft arrangement of pillows, no easy chair. It is a fort in an enemy’s country, and the foe is wise in assault and especially in surprise. And yet there can be nothing to fear, it is not a place that we must keep, but a stronghold in which we are kept, if only, in the moment we are conscious of attack, we look ‘away unto our faith’s Princely Leader and Perfecter, Jesus, who endured’ (Rotherham’s rendering of Hebrews 12:2). He who endured can protect and maintain that of which He is Author and Finisher: ‘Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’”
-Amy Carmichael, Rose from Brier

this day

Every day ought to sing, but some days wake up singing all on their own, while others have to be persuaded to sing.  Today needs no persuasion for me, but perhaps your today is different.  Here, then, is a song to persuade your day to sing.  The words are attributed to St. Patrick, and the melody, so far as I can find out, is traditional.  If you click here, you may listen to a lovely rendition of it, performed by a lovely set of musicians.* I recommend that you do.

This day God gives me strength of high heaven,
Sun and moon shining, flame in my hearth,
Flashing of lighting, wind in its swiftness,
Deeps of the ocean, firmness of earth.

This day God sends me strength as my guardian,
Might to uphold me, wisdom as guide;
Your eyes are watchful, Your ears are listening,
Your lips are speaking, Friend at my side.

God’s way is my way, God’s shield is round me,
God’s host defends me, saving from ill;
Angels of heaven drive from me always
All that would harm, stand by me still.

Rising I thank you, mighty and strong One,
King of creation, Giver of rest,
Firmly confessing God in three persons,
Oneness of Godhead, Trinity blessed.

*The band L’Angelus

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.

spoken

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.

What has the mouth of the Lord spoken but the Word?  For yes,

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

His glory revealed, made flesh, that all flesh might see it.  Made flesh, and yet

All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word [Word] of our God stands forever.

Word made flesh like grass; grass withers, unwithering Word stands forever.  Glory, revealed.

Say unto the cities of Judah,
“Behold, your God!”

Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

Therefore,

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem
and cry to her that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.

And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

 Amen.

(Quotations from Isaiah 40 and John 1.)

I have a new post brewing, but my mind is too much in a fog tonight to serve it out with proper proportions, to make it strong but not bitter, sweet but not syrupy, to avoid that extra drip of cream which would make it pale and insipid, to choose the proper cup with a handle which will not squeeze your fingers but which will also not fill your hand,  the cup with the proper colors or drawing or inscription on its side,  the cup which will neither chill the beverage nor burn your fingers.  So here’s something until I can serve that one properly.  Not spectacular as poetry, perhaps, but a perspective I’ve found timely.

“I see the stubborn heights,
The bruising rocks, the straining soul.”
“I see the goal!”

“I see the tearing plow,
The crushing drag, the beating rain.”
“I see the grain!”

“I see compressing walls,
And seeing flux, and heats untold.”
“I see the gold!”

“I see the cruel blows,
The chisel sharp, the hammer’s mace.”
“I see My face!”
–Philip Wendell Crannell, “Our view and His”

nondum

Some evenings, however admirably you try to make them into evenings for charting the perspectives of eight different writers on race in Huckleberry Finn, inevitably become evenings instead for listening to classical guitar, drinking green tea, and reading poetry by pink lamplight.  Perhaps you ought to be severe and insistent about the chart, but severity falls to the wayside and you soothe yourself with having at least read the eight writers.

One hand full of rest is better than two fists full of labor and striving after wind.*

And how, without wings, can any striving come near the wind? And what would one do with wind, supposing one could catch it?  It takes more than two hands to hold it, and I have only two.

Cease striving and know — **

The children’s choir sang a setting of Psalm 46; I taught them.  But I am not still.  I know, but I am not still.

Oh! till Thou givest that sense beyond,
To show Thee that Thou art, and near,
Let patience with her chastening wand
Dispel the doubt and dry the tear;
And lead me child-like by the hand
If still in darkness not in fear.

Speak! whisper to my watching heart
One word — as when a mother speaks
Soft, when she sees her infant start,
Till dimpled joy steals o’er its cheeks.
Then, to behold Thee as Thou art,
I’ll wait till morn eternal breaks.***

 

*Ecclesiastes 4:6
**Psalm 46:10
***Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Nondum”

home

Kate Shrewsday writes of the home-longing we all seem to have, sharing how even snails, which we’ve always said carry their houses on their backs, go home to a physical location. Meanwhile, Kelly Foster declares, “These people I love, all of them, scattered so far and wide, they are my native land.”

I’ve been traveling, and I know: both of them speak truth.

I’m happy as a snail to be back in my home-spot, but those hundreds of miles away, in that town which was quite new to me, I found a bit of my native land assembled from scattered pieces.

I thought about it on the drive back: how home is place and people both, so that I come home without being entirely home, and I go away and find myself home still.  So that even people who live in only one house from birth to death may feel a home-longing, and even people who live as complete nomads know what it means to be home.  So that we never seem to have it all perfectly.  The snail carries its shell-house, but travels on it its home land.   Neither the shell nor the land alone would be enough for the snail.

There are more pieces to my home than to the snail’s; I cannot gather them all together.  But when I find them, place and people all coinciding, then I’ll have reached my real homeland.