Connect the Dots...

Confession to my husband: I bought a bunch of digital books today. It's your birthday tomorrow, but you won't be home. You're even out of cell phone range. I'll spoil you when you return. Today, out of loneliness, with you and half the children gone--and to avoid what I should write, but don't feel ready to--I splurged on...

1. A collection of modern religious poetry in support of a blogger I recently discovered. It was only $3. And so far these parts have that hum to them I keep looking for. Maybe they'll help me get my writing to hum again?

from "Christmas Eve" by James Goldberg

...But Mary's brain has been flooded, washed

clean out, by the work of tending

her inside:

a secret place,

where her son can rest his head--

immersed in her water,

nourished by her blood.

If she can carry him

another mile

another hour

past just one more closed inn door,

then tonight

That great and terrible moment will come 

when he bursts forth into this world

to teach us all 

how to be born.

Midwives I've been reviewing come to mind. 

Parts like this wink at me, so I underline...

"Ghazal"

... Faith was the beam I removed--and went blind
You had to wash the clearness out with mud so I could see again. 


"Nephi's Vision" 
(as sung by Johnny Cash)

... Yes, I've felt the white-hot heat that forged 
this iron rod I hold.

Oh, I've seen plates of fire God made 
to refine these plates of gold.

Went and asked God for a vision--
and an angel said, Behold:

The future's filled with a fire, son, 
to refine your plates of gold.


Plates of gold. What of mine? Still in the fire...

2. Then I turned to the monthly Mentoring in the Classics audios and study guides that have been building up in my files ready to catch up on when a nudge comes like today. Nathan started reading Louis L'Amour. This month the classic pic is L'Amour's Bendigo Shafter. So I downloaded it on my kindle app. Makes me miss my Naynay who is away, helping you. I read a review that said the main character is "one of the best male role models in literature. He's the type of man you want to raise your son to be... he's not perfect... just a man responding to his life course and making adjustments as events necessitate." I thought of you. Made me miss you more. 

Here's what I highlighted today:

Ruth Macken had a way of making a man feel large in his tracks, so what could I do but better than my best? (p.6)

To destroy is easy, to build is hard. To scoff is also easy, but to go on in the face of scoffing and to do what is right is the way of a man. (p.7)

        The westward way had a different effect on folks, and many of them grew in size and gathered in spirit. John Sampson was such a man. Back home in the States he had been the village handyman, and nobody paid much mind to what he thought about anything. He did his work and he took his pay, and that was the sum of it. Folks turned to teachers, ministers, storekeepers, and bankers for opinions. But once you got out away from home on a wagon train, a minister or a banker wasn't much help; a handyman could keep your wagon rolling...
       ...When we crossed the Mississippi and rolled out over the grass lands some folks were scared of the size of it all. Miles of grass stretched on all sides, the vast bowl of the sky was overhead, and there were a few who turned around and ran for home, their tails between their legs. There were others, like John Sampson, who began to grow and to take big steps in the land. Webb grew, too, but in another way. There had always been a streak of violence in him, but fear of public opinion and fear of the law had toned it down. Now a body could see the restraint falling away...
      ...We accepted danger but took no unnecessary risk. It is a fool who invites trouble, a child who is reckless, for life holds risks enough without reaching out for more. (p.12)

What would we do on a wagon train if we left it all and started anew, AD? Maybe it would be like it is now: 

You'd play on one of your good violins, 

I'd steal it to practice on, pretending I can play, 

Then you'd steal it back and sell it to someone,

Then bring out a better one,

Before leaving for the week to sell the good ones,

While I practice on the better one,

Thinking of you.

3. Lastly, I bought a book we already have: Bonds that make us Free. Digital this time. Don't worry. It was only $6 since I had points to redeem. I Couldn't find our hardcover. Must have lent it out. (Anyone out there have mine?) I suggested to a friend we read it together and discuss. I promised it was all about her life right now. I secretly hope it will do what it has for so many: bring freedom. And maybe a Bendigo Shafter? But first, I hope it teaches her how to be free. Free of anxiety. Free of fear. Free of walls. Free of pain. I haven't started reading it yet (since the first time years ago). So I scan quickly to find something that hums, winks, or nudges me. Ah... 

Freedom:

    

...an older, very concerned woman raised an issue about forgiveness... "If you forgive somebody, you more or less say, 'There's something that person needs to be blamed for, something he's done wrong to me, but I'm a big enough person to overlook it.' You have to keep in mind what they've done wrong or else you don't have anything to overlook. So you can't forgive and forget, can you? You have to remember the wrong they've done. That doesn't seem to be very charitable. So I don't understand forgiveness. I've always been suspicious when people say they forgive... 

This woman was right to say that we do not, we cannot, accuse someone in our heart and at the same time forget about the wrong we're accusing them of doing. The best we can do, as long as we continue to accuse, is to counterfeit a pardon for them and try our best not to think about what they have done. But overlooking or "letting pass" a grievance or an offense does not qualify as forgiveness. Forgiveness is something else entirely.  

First, forgiveness responds to the real issue, the real reason... [it] is not any wrong that others have done to us, but the wrong we are doing to them. Forgiveness concerns our wrongdoing, not theirs. And our wrongdoing includes our failure to treat them as we ought, or finding them at fault for this failure, and our refusal to forgive them for this supposed fault.  

Second, our act of forgiving consists of repenting of this wrongdoing of ours, or in other words, ceasing to accuse those we have been accusing. 

Third, when we cease to accuse them, we cease to feel there's anything on their part that needs to be forgiven! We no longer find them offensive. We see that from their point of view they are struggling against perceived offenses and threats just as we have been.  

Thus forgiveness involves opening ourselves to the truth, letting our former offenders become real to us, and no longer believing there is anything for us to forgive. As they undergo a transformation in our forgiving eyes, we undergo a transformation ourselves. 

This must be so. As long as we see others as needing our forgiveness, we will continue regarding ourselves as their victim and will remain accusing still. We live free of the bondage of accusing, afflicted feelings only by ceasing to find and take offense...  

Of all the initiatives people can take who feel a devastating wrong has made them miserable, one stands above all others in effectiveness. It is actually seeking forgiveness for having refused to forgive.

I begin to think, dearest, that the rabbit trails of the day had some order to them. 

I like to see the bigger picture. Not just dots. 

So I begin to connect the dots. I put them down on "paper" and look for the invisible lines in-between. 

And I see some connections. I feel the bigger picture coming. I needed this. I had been trying to draw the picture without the dots. That's fine when you know what the bigger picture is suppose to become. But I don't yet. 

So I get dots. 
I need more dots. 
And I need to write them down. 

How does anyone see those greater things--the macro things--without recording the dots? I'll never know. Maybe they won't either. 

Dick and Jane on the Radio

I know many people who have a desire to learn a language that I've become fluent in.  It's not their native tongue.  In fact, it's a language that is so foreign to some people that they don't even realize it's a language.  And yet it's so familiar that they are exposed to it on a daily basis.

The Heart of a Child

Part two of my last post is in progress, but something else is itching to come out first. So while Adam has gently and repeatedly begged me to catch up on the business filing (bookkeeping has never been my forte) and I've got filing boxes and piles of paper surrounding me, I first have to clear my head. (I promise I'll be able to move faster this way, honey! :)

There is a part of Arm the Children by Arthur Henry King that I think of and reread often.

A Good Cry

There are good times to cry. More importantly, good times to cry with your children.  I re-learned that this last weekend while spending a Saturday lying low and doing my little routine that keeps encroaching viruses away.

A little background color first. For the second year in a row, we've done Christmas a little differently.  One Christmas a few years back, my side of the family decided to forgo gifts for adults and instead only get gifts for the children. This had the unexpected result of many more gifts for the kids than usual. Watching my children rip through present after present and not know what to do with it all (and later see many things get forgotten or lost) left a lasting impression. I tried something different the next year.

The change in our tradition has come to be called The Seven Days of Christmas. Basically, we have 7 family nights that we do on random nights in December. They each have a theme (like "Popcorn and Puzzles",  "Books and Blankets", "Fleece and a Film" or "Toys and a Treasure hunt") and begin with carols at the piano and/or a Christmas story or message before opening one present per person or for the whole family that has an activity to go with it. The month starts with the more selfish gifts/activities (like opening their toy gift after a treasure hunt) and as Christmas gets closer becomes smaller family gifts or service projects until there is only stockings on Christmas morning. For instance, one of the later activities was when after singing, I brought out fleece that we tied for Primary Children's Hospital while watching It's a Wonderful Life. This is a Kate version of things, mind you, so besides the one day to decide the themes and buy the gifts, I kind of made it up as I went.

I've love it because we get time to cherish each gift that we give to our children; to play, read and sing with them; to slow down the Christmas season and create lasting memories where the focus stays on relationships with each other and with the Savior. 

(I just realized you may be saying to yourself, what happened to Santa!?  Well, that started with my grandma and is too tricky a subject for me to tackle here. Suffice it to say that Santa is like Cupid, St. Patrick or ghosts at Halloween - background images that flash my children at the grocery store or in the media, but have little part in our family traditions. Honestly, my children probably believe in ghosts more from the stories of their father's youth than Santa Clause :).

There were some glitches to my plans of course. I had to be away for the first night so the treasure hunt didn't happen and on the "Books and Blankets" night the kids were so excited about making a tent (hence the "blankets") to read their new books in together that they begged and pleaded until I finally let them make a tent ahead of time. By the time the last book arrived from Amazon so we could do the activity, the tent had been slept in three nights and put away to make room for family events. I told you - I made it up as I went.

That's where last Saturday comes in.  As I lay in bed that morning, circled by my books that I had just begun to study, my only son surprised me by coming in and asking if I'd read The Island of the Blue Dolphins to him.  It was one of the books I'd purchased for the Christmas night that didn't happen. I'd been reading it to the girls in their room and he'd heard a little and wanted more.  I told him sure, if he let the girls know so they could listen, too. 

 As I began to read with my two oldest Daysies gathered on the bed and the younger ones in and out, weaving the story into their pretend play, I thought back on the days I still remember gathered with my siblings around my mother in this very same house - even at times this very room.  Like we did then, my children wouldn't let me stop after a chapter, but begged me on and on. We ended up reading the rest of the book right there.  Also like when I was little, it proved to be an activity that bound us more deeply together.  

Nathan loves being read to, but has yet to learn to love reading himself.  I was grateful, then, for the timing of this experience. Through much of the last 50 pages of the book I was a wreck. At first, Nathan regarded my tears with curiosity - it wasn't a new thing to see mom crying while reading a book, but this time he was involved in the story, too.  We were experiencing it together. Little House on the Prairie and C.S. Lewis Chronicles hadn't explored emotions this deep. Nathan began to snuggle up a little closer. Then to turn toward the window. I was pretty sure the movement coming from his body was a sob or two. When 3/4 of the book was read I had to stop as my voice was too choked with emotion to go on without stopping for a good cry.  I realized that I was right, Nathan had already joined me and I stroked his back as he shyly tried to muffle his cries in the pillow next to me. Elise comforted us and brought us tissue.  "Books can be powerful things, can't they Naynay?" I said. He replied with a reverent "yes" between quiet sobs. 

I think the power of a book is increased when reading it aloud with people you love.  It would be impossible to describe what happened to us in my room that day or what we shared, but it was nothing like crying over a movie together. 

I felt like my life experiences were woven into the story - not that I am like the young woman the story described, but that my relationships and my experiences all informed the experience of reading that book. It wasn't what I got out of the book, but what it pulled from me. Like a mirror showing me what I contain inside and turning it out for display.  And instead of examining what I found on my own, I got to go on the journey with my children. They got to examine with me and we learned things about each other there are very few ways to learn otherwise.  It was a good book.  It was a good cry.

Great New Family Reading List!

I rarely post things of this nature, but I was just made aware of a new resource that I'm so excited about I had to share.  There is a new online list of classic books (what I mean by that word is not necessarily that they're old, but that they're worth reading more than once).  The best part is, the list is divided into stages of life the books are best suited for, are pictured and linked to Amazon so you can quickly compare prices and read reviews.

I guess I don't have any more excuses for wondering what the best book for my age of children would be to read next in our family group study.  Now it's just narrowing it down to one!

 Click here to check it out!

A big thank you to Diann Jeppson!!

Our First Relationship

I don't see coincidences as much as loving guidance and tender mercies these days. I woke up a few mornings ago, determined to give more time to my relationship with God as I had let the busyness of life once again turn those efforts into quick and perfunctory actions. The tender mercy came when a scripture I read in the place I happened to be, led me to ask a random question, "why is it always stated 'the law and the prophets'?" which led me to type in that phrase in the search engine of gospelink.com (my favorite site these days).  The first search result that I clicked on happened to have not much to do with my question, but touched me so profoundly that I actually copied by hand, four pages of the selection in my dragonfly journal.  That would be a record.  It just didn't feel right to stop until then, it was all so relevant and I wanted to have it handy to soak into my skin for days and weeks and months to come. As the days go by, it continues to apply in varying ways to my life, but also to the culture and world I find myself living in. I keep feeling like posting it here as the next in my series of "Words That Move Me," but decided there is nothing I can or should say about it as that would muddy application for others.  So, I'll just share it. You're welcome to find this a nice quote but not be sure why I would be so moved by it.  You're also welcome to heartily disagree. Timing is everything.  At this time in my life, I find it profound and a perfect capstone to the theme of most of my previous posts.

    The first commandment does not read,

Words That Move Me...(Part 3)

Snapshots . . . 

 A four-year-old cherub gives you three juicy kisses on your cheek while you tell her a "real story" at bedtime. When you go to leave, she tells you her version of a "real story" while stroking your hair, placing a strand now and then behind your ear.

A sweet, green, little parrotlet chooses to fly across the room to your shoulder. You feel her nestle in your loose, long hair as you sit at the piano, giving comfort and support during your wrestle to memorize a new sonata.

A son who usually is too shy to show love to his mama, volunteers to break away from the family group to go with you while you exchange an item. He surprises you by taking your hand in his, holding it the entire time you walk through the mall.

Victor Hugo

All these and other recent tastes of "divine love," have brought a growing feeling I thought was indescribable until I read Victor Hugo's words for it in Les Miserables recently:

The heart, that dark celestial flower, bursts into a mysterious bloom . . . You are caressed through the soul. You see nothing, but you feel yourself adored.

(Book Five, Chapter IV, P.167)

Once again, I felt gratitude for an author's ability to express what I did not know how to.  That "mysterious bloom" is such a perfect phrase for it.  Like you're tapping into a stream of divinity. Like pure Light is flooding inside that "dark celestial flower" of your heart.

I expected a good story when I committed to read Les Miserables with a dear friend who I often enjoy sharing good books with, but I didn't expect I'd be underlining, rereading and pondering so many passages.  (Not all the pondering has been in agreement with the author, but I had better stick to my topic.)

The past week, I have found myself reading over and over the two pages where the above quote is found. As I pondered the paragraphs, a memory put away long ago resurfaced and brought a familiar regret. 

Words That Move Me...(Part 2)

A favorite companion in the group study my children and I do each day is what we call our "Little Red Poem Book."  It has been called that since I was little when my mother read from it to her five children.  I'll be devastated if I can't find a red, hardback version for my children when they leave the nest (it's actually called, One Hundred And One Famous Poems and published by Contemporary Books, copyright 1958 if anyone wants to know).  There is a unique pleasure in opening the book, flipping through to see which old friend I want to read again, looking at the notes scrawled in the margins, reading the inscription from my mother when she gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday: 

"Thought my precious 16-year-old patch rabbit would enjoy her very own copy of our "little red poem book" . . . We've created lots of family memories with this little book, haven't we? Continue discovering new treasures in it and keep all our memories close to your heart." 

We did create many memories, Marmee. I do keep them close. I do discover new treasures, even in the old friends - like this week. 

I hadn't read "The Building of the Ship" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow since before I was married.  As I started reading to my children, I found that life's experiences since last reading had given me memories that illuminated the meaning of the poem on a deeper level than before.  It's like AHK says:

Exactly what?

Exactly what did Sir Francis Bacon mean when he said,

"Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, writing an exact man."

As I ask myself that, it brings to mind the quote,

"Language most shows a man; speak, that I may see thee."
~ Ben Jonson

or as Arthur Henry King restates it,

"Write that I may see thee."

With so many writing blogs these days, that's a lot of people exposing themselves to the world. So dare I venture forth into that throng of people? The answer always added up to a "no" until now.

Two years ago I listened to an audiobook version of, If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland. I thought the book would give me a creative boost to help me delve into any form of creativity, not just writing. Actually, music composition was what I had in mind. Although I have recently dabbled in arranging some pieces, the book mostly impelled me to want to . . . well, write!  I listened to the book and remembered how as a child I used to punch holes in a stack of paper and tie them together with yarn to make little books of my own under the pen name of Elizabeth Montgomery - it sounded regal to my 7 year old mind. Ironically enough,