Weeds of Contemplation

And the nominee is...

2006-01-24T13:38:00.000-08:00

Every now and again I see women's magazines having contests, such as "Canada's Best Husband," things like that. Well, in anticipation of some such event, I would like to go ahead and nominate my dear husband Daniel. There are multifarious ways in which I believe him to be the best husband ever, anywhere, but this recent happening nears the top of the list. Last night, innocently enough (I thought), I decided to unravel a center-pull ball of brown yarn that had its guts all hanging out most messily, with the intention of rewinding it. Well. It immediately became a most disconcertingly tangled mess, and my dear, sweet, longsuffering husband spend no less than one hour untangling it. No matter that said ball of yarn is being made into a scarf for him--he still gets full points for doing that.

That Eagle Scout knots badge sure comes in handy in most unexpected ways.

This one's for Linda

2006-01-12T10:35:00.000-08:00

Best 2006 greetings to all. May the year be rich with God's joy and blessings for you & yours.

You can thank my mother-in-law's persistance for this post's finally coming to the light. Were it not for her, Weeds would be weeded for good. Surely I need not mention that all the excitement & busyness of 2005 has led to a serious dirth of blogging for yours truly. I did get a freak surge of enthusiasm for posting in November, which led to some premature promises, but I rapidly returned to my original position of, What the heck's the point?

You see, this blog was born a few days after Matthew Davidson said to me at the pub, I met the perfect guy for you. And as much as I hate to prove Matthew right, he indeed was, and now the perfect guy for me, for the benefit of whom Weeds was created, lives right here with me. Since I have successfully grabbed and held Daniel's attention, and we are now married, I figure Weeds has served its purpose. I can't seem to be bothered to make the time to do it: living with Daniel takes up a good deal more of my time than blogging, emailing and talking to him on the phone ever did--not to mention how he keeps the computer tied up with sudoku puzzles. And now I've gone and added a new obsession to my life, knitting, which I prefer to nearly any occupation--in fact, I'd rather be knitting right now, I've 16 inches left to go on my second legwarmer. But here I am anyway: I got that "it's now or never" feeling this morning, and went for it.

I make no promises this time. I may not ever be back. In one of Mary Oliver's essays she instructed her loved ones to rejoice if she showed up late, or didn't show up at all, to a meeting with them, because that would mean that she's working on a poem. If you find this blog continually devoid of new posts, you can rejoice that I am deep in my rich & blissful life, that I am knitting, reading, taking long walks on Panama Hill with the hummingbirds and red-winged blackbirds, cooking, and tickling Daniel.

For now, here is the reading list for 2005. Very short on fiction, which tempts me to ask: what are the two, three best fiction works you've read, recently or ever?

FICTION

**The Brothers K, David James Duncan

Atonement, Ian McEwan

*Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers

Specimen Days, by Michael Cunningham

Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather

A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews

A River Runs Through It, by Norman McLean

a few Chekhov short stories

Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter

NON-FICTION

Another Beauty, Adam Zagajewski

On the Corner of East and Now, Frederica Mathewes-Greene

Two-Part Invention, Madeleine L'Engle

Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

A Cook's Tour, Anthony Bourdain

La Plus Que Vive, Christian Bobin

Long Life, Mary Oliver

Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, Elizabeth Krouse Rosenthal

Plan B, Anne Lamott

Quotidian Mysteries, Kathleen Norris

*Life Work, Donald Hall

Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller

Home: Tales of a Heritage Farm, by Anny Scoones

The Best Day The Worst Day, Donald Hall

*Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, by Larry McMurtry

In a Narrow Grave, by Larry McMurtry

My Life with Pablo Neruda, by Matilde Urrutia

The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean

The Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby

*A Place of My Own, by Michael Pollan

Celebration of Discipline, by Richard Foster

Anthropology of Turquoise, by Ellen Meloy

Second Nature, by Michael Pollan

Virgin Time, by Patricia Hampl

A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit

some Joan Didion essays

*Things Seen and Unseen, by Nora Gallagher

*The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe, by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp

Stitch & Bitch: the Knitter's Handbook, by Debbie Stoller

Weekend Knitting, by Melanie Fallick

POETRY

The Great Fires, by Jack Gilbert

Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida, by Roo Borson

Twenty-Seven Small Songs and Thirteen Silences, by Jan Zwicky

Robinson's Crossing, by Jan Zwicky

Miraculous Hours, by Matt Rader

Ecstatic in the Poison, by Andrew Hudgins

The Never-Ending, by Andrew Hudgins

The Painted Bed, by Donald Hall

...but, mostly, as ever, Mary Oliver, Jane Kenyon, and some Billy Collins.

2005-11-16T12:39:00.000-08:00

Not just yet...

The poetry engine

2005-05-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

... is like that of my faithful old Jetta: even if unused for two weeks in the most bitter Montreal January cold, once you've cleared it of a foot-or-so of snow and put the key in, and turn, the engine roars back to life smoothly, ready for action.

Such are the things

Among the things that wake and open
under the fingers of high spring rain, count:
the belly of the cat, as she sleeps away the Sunday
morning on her back, the soft vulnerable fur
uncovered; the pages of the poetry book which,
though their paleness concedes a small allotment to black
type, still enclose both silence and meaning;
the leaves, black and potent, in the teapot.

Also—the dream-horse and its cart, possibility:
the hours open to them like a road, like a stable,
like the place you only know you were going to once
you get there. And, beyond, this: the years, their dip
and curve, their puzzle-face like cloud shadows and light
playing on a wooded hillside. And even after that: the clean,
cool taste of rain on the lips, the salty familiarity
of your mouth, and time neatly folded like a handkerchief,
put to sleep in a wooden chest where the mice may, or may
not—who can tell ?—enter.

Such are the things—honeysuckle, oak leaves—that
rise up and bloom in the Sunday spring rain.

My Big Fat Priest Wedding

2005-04-14T11:25:00.000-07:00

I've been mulling over for a few weeks now how best to address the upcoming nuptials here on Weeds. A close second reason for the low output these last weeks (the first being, of course, utter lack of time, and the abundance of stuff that was just more important) is a reluctance to turn this site completely over to romantic musings. I'm wary of falling into that girly trap of talking about my boyfriend all the time--I'm an intellectual dammit, I don't go in for that. Or so I'd like to think. Now that it feels as though my whole life has been swallowed up by wedding talk, it seems like a good time to give up that pretense and write a few girly lines. But thoughtful girly lines.

I'm gonna go ahead and register my support for the sort of girlish behaviour which leads young women (and a not a few keen tweens and toddlers as well, I'm sure) to imagine their wedding day down to the last marzipan-or-royal-icing, white-or-ivory detail: truth is, you never know how quickly you might have to put a wedding together. If called upon to do so, one would be thankful to have all such preferences, as well as venues for receptions & the song for the first dance, already picked out. I certainly was.

So that, fairly soon after Daniel and I, sitting on the couch one night of his visit, decided to get married (it was a sort of, "So, you wanna?" "Yeah. You?" "Yeah" kinda thing--no knees were dropped or rings proffered, nor, in retrospect, do I wish there had been) I could unscroll the vision for him, and set about making it happen. So that, a mere four weeks after the decisive moment and nearly a full four months ahead of the actual date, everything is more or less set, decided upon and booked. We have a date (though nailing that down was a bit of a comedy of errors), a chapel for the ceremony, a venue for the reception, a caterer, a cake-maker, a photographer, a live band, I have a dress and shoes, we have rings, I've chosen which flowers I want, we've made reservations for the honeymoon and found the apartment we're going to live in. That's right--I'm a five-foot, rock n' rollin', wedding plannin' powerhouse. There are two governing principles I've been operating with: one, I want this wedding to look and feel like us, and two, and I want to be able to stop thinking about its various aspects as soon as possible. This means that if I see something I like, I go for it, which enables me to quit thinking about that item and cross it off my list. I'm not a keep-options-open kinda gal (Hello? I'm getting married.) Of course it goes without saying that absolutely all elements of this to-do must cohere to make the night rock. And that it will.

Something we've heard a fair bit of while making the announcement rounds is, What's the rush? Why don't you wait a little longer? And while I would generally agree that prudence and caution are good things, and that waiting is nearly always a good idea, I just--we just (sorry Matthew--had to revert to couplespeak there)--don't think it's necessary here. I'm twenty-six, and have been waiting for this my whole life. Wouldn't you say that twenty-six years is plenty of time? (To be fair, I have in the past thought that the waiting was over, but turns out I was mistaken.)

By which I mean, just as the vision for the wedding was already set to roll when we decided to get married, thus allowing us to move quickly, so I feel that I was being prepared to meet Daniel long before we actually did, so that when the moment came, I was ready and I knew it. (And I'm not quite sure, when I write moment here, which I mean: when we started emailing seriously in November? When we declared our love in December? When we met in March? I dunno. All of the above, I guess.)

And so I consider myself a fairly calm bride-to-be. And I'm even ever-so-very-slightly resentful at how much time, care & talk this wedding venture is requiring, because for me it's not at all the main event on the horizon. No matter how excited I am about the day itself (just wait til you see the shoes), that pales in comparison to how excited I am about the prospect of having Daniel around everyday, of making a home and building a life together, of cooking and reading and laughing and walking and driving and playing chess together.

Now that is gonna rock.

And the blog rose again on Easter day...

2005-03-27T13:15:00.000-08:00

Every year, the Place community gathers, at six am, on the beach at Gyro Park for an Easter sunrise service. The previous night, some enterprising and handy soul goes out, fashions three crosses out of driftwood and erects them by the water. In the dark of dawn folks rise from their beds and make their weary way to Caddy Bay. It is, as our pastor Randy likes to say, the high point of the year for this bunch of believers. It certainly is for this believer.

This was my fourth sunrise service, and the first in which the weather wasn't ideal. It was raining when I woke, which led me to think that the weather would separate the sheep from the goats, and that there'd only be a couple dozen of us hardcores huddled around a fire, guitar and upright bass getting wet. But driving in to the parking lot, seeing it so full, I realized that perhaps I am the only weather wimp in Victoria, and that no one else was fazed by a little rain. Either that or folks reason like my friend Stephanie, who said "After what Jesus did for us, we can pretty well get up early & be out in the rain."

My friend Christina and I shared my beach mat with Jo, she and I huddled under a blanket (yes hon--that blanket.) Our band that morning consists of acoustic guitar, upright bass, accordion, two female singers and a male lead. As we sang through Easter favourites--Here By The Water, You Laid Aside Your Majesty, My Jesus I Love Thee--I recalled sunrise services past. The first one, in 2002, when a bunch of friends and I had slept on the beach the night before, and the full moon had shone on us and the on the ocean. The next year, as I read a meditation (the morning includes poetic and liturgical elements as well as singing) the wisps of clouds above the rising sun--I swear this is true--formed the shape of a cross. A picture of this appeared on the cover of the newspaper the next day. I thought, How cool is this, how great to be living in Victoria and be worshipping with such fine, fine people.

Easter's theme of new life, new beginnings, holds a whole new meaning for me this year. It first struck me with great force on Friday night, when I attended, as I do each year, the Tenebrae choral service at St John the Divine, a long piece of liturgy in which a lenghty reading from Lamentations culminates in the gorgeous, heartbreaking choral rendition of Psalm 51, Miserere mei, Deus as arranged by Gregorio Allegri. The first time I heard the piece was at that service in 2002, just a few months after the demise of my ill-fated, youthful first marriage. All through Lent I'd been wrestling with Psalm 51, and that night it finally, memorably, beautifully broke my heart. Both the psalm and the choral piece have been steady companions since then, and yet, familiar as they are, again they utterly broke my heart this Friday. No matter how familiar to me the singing is, it takes on new depths when sung live by breathing, moving people, as opposed to echoing out of my stereo speakers. And, as I read along in my NKJV, I heard verse 10 with new ears: "Create in me a clean heart, O God." I heard my own cry, from Lent of 2002 and onward, for God to wipe clean the slate of my heart, sweep away the guilt and brokenness and shame of a broken marriage, and give me another chance. And clear as day I could see that God has heard, and answered, that prayer. And I cried, cried hard, for the beauty of the music, for the greatness of my God and my own smallness, for my immense and overwhelming gratitude--and for the life-giving love of my beloved. After the choir goes quiet, the order or service leaflet gives these instructions: Silence is kept. A loud noise indicates the earthquake and the tombs being broken. All people depart in silence and disorder. I've always loved that last line, silence and disorder. On Friday, stepping out onto the street, I was resolutely looking towards the lights of Sunday morning. (Oh, that, and singing Avril Lavigne with Matthew on the way to the pub.)

Back to the beach. The sun didn't make a spectacular piercing through the clouds, like Thomas' finger, to prod at our unbelief, but it did glow from behind the clouds, as Randy led us in the glorious rousing cry, He is risen! He is risen indeed! The next song we did was Shout To The Lord. This was the song my ex and I had chosen to have at our wedding, and I have seldom since then heard or sang it without pain, be it sharp or dull. This morning, I sang it happily and confidently, hitting the high notes as I never have. That old thing, that ragged animal, is dead, done, buried. A new thing has been called forth, and has risen from the ashes. He is risen. Indeed.

Memorably, a few years ago, Matthew concluded his Easter meditation thusly: If the Lord is risen, then let's hang out. This is what we've been recalling, and doing, ever since, at the end of the sunrise service. We greet each other saying, He is risen! He is risen indeed! (I rather think we should do this everyday.) We feast on hot chocolate and cinnamon buns. We make our way to breakfast potlucks. Later in the morning, we nap.

We believe in the promise. We look forward to new life.

This blog needs more Korea

2005-03-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my friend Matthew Hooton, who has just joined the blogworld (and this gal's blogroll--he's the guy responsible for Sure Fire), Weeds goes global. (And before you ask--yes, even I have trouble keeping track of all my friends who are named Matthew.) This cat's a native Vancouver Islander, former Place member, excellent writer, stellar (though retired?) poet and all-around wonderful, funny, smart guy. His most redeeming feature is being married to the lovely Shawna, who no longer sells Tupperware (though we thank her and praise her, for if my lunches are so handily and niftily carried, it is entirely thanks to her.) They are in the business of teaching English in Korea, and we miss them greatly, but now that Matt's got a blog, we shall miss them oh-so-slightly less.

Do go pay him a visit.

One lengthy and entirely satisfactory reason why my boyfriend is the most wonderful man on earth

2005-02-19T08:40:00.000-08:00

(If you are one of my faithful Weeds readers who has known about this delightfully sneaky scheme of Daniel's for awhile, this is how it all went down. If you aren't, and this is new to you, hold on to your hat, for you are about to be dazzled.)

Valentine's Day morning is a bittersweet thing for one who is deeply in love, but very, very far from one's beloved. Fortunately for me, Daniel, sweetheart that he is, had planned ahead and sent me, along with some mix CDs, a little sealed envelope not to be opened before said morning. I don't think I can overstate my hopes for what that package might contain. It is fairly easy to grasp, then, how puzzled I was when I did open it. It contained a single strip of paper, on which was written "THERE IS NO PERFECT NAME FOR THE ONE YOU LOVE." And while I do agree with the statement, and consider it a fine one, it just simply wasn't what I had hoped for as a Valentine's offering. Plus, it made me feel kinda dumb. "I don't get it" I said out loud. This was obviously referring to something else, something bigger--it had to--but I had not the first clue as to what that might be. I tried very hard not to be disappointed--obviously, whatever this was supposed to be, Daniel had put thought into it--but I was. I proceeded to have a horrible morning from there on, one of those when you can't manage to dress yourself or do your hair, and I played some of the most depressing Pedro the Lion songs and wept for this long-distance love thing fucking sucks.

But I had plans for the day, and so tried to keep my trembling chin up to go about them. At eleven I was having coffee with my friend Matthew Wolferstan. He had insisted on inviting me out for Valentine's morning, and I didn't think a thing about it. We're good friends, and also my other friend Matthew (from here on he will be referred to as St Matthew) had already invited me for dinner that night, on the logic that he didn't have anyone to take out, and that Daniel wasn't here to take me out, and that someone should, so he would. There's been enough joking around about the whole dating-by-proxy thing, and these invites just fell in line with that, so I didn't question them. So at eleven, I went to meet Matt W. At a nearby bakery. When he greeted me at the door with a single red rose, I burst out laughing. See, the previous night at the pub, we'd had a discussion regarding which flowers are okay to give to girls. No carnations, ever, I said. Someone asked whether single red roses were okay. Sure I said, so long as there is no baby's breath or ferns attached and that you don't present the flower to her holding it in your teeth. So, when I saw the rose, I first thought it was a joke. But then I saw there was a strip of paper attached to it, with a line of poetry? song lyric? attached to it. What is this? I asked Matt W. It's part of the puzzle, was his answer. Well, again, I was puzzled.

I didn't clue in until St Matthew waltzed in, handed me a single red rose, wished me Happy Valentine's Day, and then stormed out. I saw that this was Daniel's doing, and indeed it was marvelous to my eyes. I knew that both of them had been plotting this, and gotten Matt W. on board. But the sheer magnitude of the thing hadn't hit me yet. That didn't happen until my friend Janet walked in with--you've guessed it--a single red rose. I started to cry. Please understand: I'm a pretty confident person (I am, after all an only child--that is, the center of the universe), I know I'm fairly cute and pretty smart, but still I find this whole business of being loved utterly baffling. Now, to be loved in a such a way that justifies such extravagance, forethought, logistics and just sheer excess of romanticism is not only something that has never happened to me, ever, before, but something I hadn't imagined ever would. I was--I am--deeply confounded, profoundly humbled, and absolutely ecstatic.

Tears soon gave way to laughter as I saw my friend Allison come in. This is how it went all day: in total twelve people, friends whom I love, took time out of their day & went out of their way to bring me a total of fourteen roses, each one with a line from a poem attached--a sonnet of roses. At work, at the library that afternoon, two young families came to do the deed. (Nice touch, the use of children. Gideone Kremler, three, thrusting the rose out proudly: "Appy Malemtine Zday Fanny dissis wrom Daniel!") As Matthew said to me that night, with this stunt Daniel won himself the heart of my friends, colleagues, and family. (My own heart, of course, had been won & given long, long before this.) When I told my mom the story she was, obviously, deeply touched, and very impressed, and told me to tell Daniel that he was from now on free to screw up however much he wished for he has, as far as she is concerned, bought himself a lifetime of grace.

The roses were beautiful. The poem is amazing. Love makes you do things you never thought you would do: the other day I could be found drying frikkin' rose petals in the frikkin' microwave, arguably the most craft-y thing I've done since grade school, so that I could keep them.

It was without contest the best Valentine's day ever, and if I've had a better day--any old sort of day--I don't remember. It would be very easy for me to go on gushing, but moderation remains a virtue. All I have left to say is this: my darling Daniel, I love you. Thank you. You've set the bar now, and I accept the challenge. To all you men out there, take a lesson from my beloved--this is how to do it. And to you ladies--it does happen.

Here is the poem:

THERE’S NO PERFECT NAME FOR THE ONE YOU LOVE

I can’t believe my own voice when I call
you baby. Have I told you this? Better
with babe—more laconic, suits whatever drawl
I take from Texas—but there’s not a letter

or a call I don’t hesitate to name
you anything. Words fall short or stumble
past you, like book reports eighth graders aim
at Dostoyevsky, miss. Phonemes fumble,

fail to summarize, to label. There’s no word
I’d trust you to, unless there’s one for laughter
in some obscure tongue that means absurd,
delighted, two-thousand-mile-long laughter,

or that means silence, that’s said by saying
nothing, love—it’s just my way of naming.

Poem

2005-02-08T08:15:00.000-08:00

WEEKS, STILL

Scraps of sun. Yesterday
it was sheet after torn sheet
of rain. The straightness
of the headless daffodils unnerves me:
I want them to bend, thin-necked,
with the weight of blooms.
Weeks to wait, when all the silk
and spools of thread needed to fashion
the flowers are already packed
and ready to go.

Genesis

2005-02-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

I just came in from a walk, drunk with spring. It is the first full-on morning of such light & sweetness, with the sun shining bright and hot. Out in the woods, the Indian plums are beginning to bud: they are the first shrubs to go into leaf, and soon they'll be flinging out of their pockets clusters of tiny white bells by the thousands, incensing the forest air. Down on the ground I spied the first fragile tendrils of what will be white fawn lilies in about two month's time. Over by the field I could hear water seeping down the length of the slope. The bald eagle is back: I heard his surprisingly high, gentle call while sitting under a regal maple. I also heard a hummingbird, whistling as he does his acrobatics of love. On the pond a small flock of Canada geese was grazing among the reeds.

It was after such a walk, a year ago today, that I came in, flipped on the computer (I was labouring on my ancient laptop then--what progress we've seen) and gave birth to this blog. To celebrate this first birthday, I thought I would give a full creation account. This tale will likely go down in history, and will be one you tell your grandchildren one day, so listen closely.

It all started, as such things often do, one Friday night at the pub. My friend Matthew and I were gathered around beers, bitching theological in usual form. It is more than likely that at one point I went on my usual rant about the fact that in a community of 600 like-minded Christians there is not one guy I can date. (Apologies to those who might be reading this, but c'mon, you know it could never work between us.) But instead of nodding as usual, sympathetic but bored, that night Matthew brightened up. That night Matthew was the man with the plan.

"I have found the perfect guy for you," he said.

"Really?"

This I had to hear. Matthew is my closest friend, and knows more about me than just about anyone else (save for one notable exception--you two would have to slug it out as to who gets the title.) If he thought he'd found the perfect guy for me, there was a very strong possibility he might be right. So he started describing this guy to me: he's a philosophy student, he's incredibly smart, he's a poet and a damn good one, he's Christian, he's funny, he's an awesome writer and if he were to walk in one night at the pub where all our crew congregates he wouldn't miss a beat but fall right in line with our thinking & humour. Wow, I thought, he does sound perfect.

"Who is this guy, anyway?" I asked, probably quite eagerly.

"His name is Daniel. He lives in Texas."

Uh-oh. Texas?

"Are you seriously suggesting that I consider not only an internet relationship, but one with a guy who lives in Texas? How desperate do you think I am?"

At which point Matthew was probably mercifully quiet, and understood that he needed to change gears. So he started telling me about his own blog, and this guy's blog, and how I needed to start my own. Despite my extreme wariness of anything virtual, I still had to agree that this blog thing sounded pretty cool, and that even though I seriously, seriously doubted it was a reasonable way to find a boyfriend, I figured it would be good for my writing.

So I started my own blog. I checked out Matthew's. I checked this guy Daniel's, and though I had to agree that Matthew was right on all accounts that still didn't change the fact that the guy lives in Texas, and I, at the time, was just not willing to consider such a situation.

Well, as it turns out, the joke's on me.

But this is the story of my blog, not the story of Daniel and I, so I'll stop here. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Of course now it's altogether hilarious and amazing to think back on that night at the pub, considering the way things did go down. It just serves to confirm my theory that all writers, ultimately, are exercizing their craft in order to find love.

And some of us lucky ones just happen to find it.

Can anyone please tell me...

2005-01-25T21:44:00.000-08:00

Recent excellent adventures on the computer have brought forth the following two questions:

1) I just got a new computer (thanks, dad!) It is sleek and sexy (17-inch flat screen) and black, and fast, and I love it. (It is, though, rather unfortunately called a Tsunami. Oh well.) Among the beast's many virtues is Microsoft Word 2003, which is really quite fabulous, except for this: it does not come with my favourite font, which is Book Antiqua. It does, however, come with no less than three versions of that enigmatic font called Wingdings. Now--what the dickens is the point of Wingdings? Does anyone actually use this feature? And, if they do, what on earth for? Is there some weird secret Star Trek/Dungeons & Dragons/X-Files thing I'm missing here? And why do they need to put three versions on there? And O Book Antiqua, where art thou?

2) I was killing time at work tonight shopping for books online when it was brought to my attention that, both on Amazon and on Chapters.ca, you can now design & buy engagement rings online. It's bad enough they've been lumping books with videogames for eons now, but seriously--diamonds? Online? Is nothing sacred? (I'm outraged about the books here, not the diamonds, as they are definitely not this girl's best friend.) Just imagine, if you will, the guy's checkout basket: the extended DVD of LOTR & of the most recent season of Sopranos, a Michael Moore book (I'm being generous here) and... one big fat engagement ring. Seriously.

Snowdrops

2005-01-23T10:48:00.000-08:00

I have just spotted the first snowdrops of the year (though I'm a little sorry to say it was in a concrete parking lot divider out by Broadmead Mall.) The daffodil & tulip shoot in the pots on my balcony are a good inch tall.

Glory be.

In which Fanny further writes about not writing

2005-01-20T14:48:00.000-08:00

When in doubt, go for a walk.

Or, alternately, a run. No matter. So long as your feet get shod and you get out the door. If I’ve any wisdom to offer, if there is anything that I know for sure and will preach to any and all, regardless of their desire to listen, it is this: go for a walk. Some days I even know enough to follow my own advice. Today was such a lucky day.

I was sitting at my desk, annoyed by a lazy sort of despair. The not-writing despair. I call it lazy because it doesn’t cause any of the usual desperate behaviours, such as the beating of the breast or the gnashing of teeth or the howling at the moon. All it does is make you shrug, mumble "Oh, whatever," then get up and leave. After that it sets guilt on you like a cloud of gnats, straight out of the plagues. This is where you open the door and start moving. Anyway, this is when I did.

It felt better to ponder the oddities of the writer’s brain while walking. It’s mild and mucky spring out, great for gumboots, and the trails are freed from the iron grip of our freak winter, and mine again to roam.

You see, here’s the thing: you would think that being in love would be great for writing, that verses would pour out of me with the force of winter’s runoff pulsing and rushing in the ordinarily mild-mannered creeks of the woods. Not so. Being in love is most emphatically not naturally conducive to the sort of hard work that makes good, or even decent, poetry happen. Being in love is conducive to lots of mooning about and staring out of windows, and while these are some of the poet’s essential disciplines, somehow, at this juncture, they’re just not doing it. I can’t even journal, for the love of Pete’s sake, for even I cannot stand one more page of "gee, isn’t he great?!" (Oh goodness, if I’m tired of it, what must my friends think?) Perhaps I should eschew the age-old creative writing advice, that of combating writer’s block by lowering my expectations. Would it be that bad for me to churn out the sort of stuff that usually gets vetoed by my critical faculties even before the words hit the page? The point of writing is, first and foremost, to write—not to have written, and not to have written well. That comes later.

Here’s what I think: happiness is a tricky state of mind for a writer. And when I’m speaking of my own happiness here, I’m not only speaking of love: I just got a regular (read: permanent) position at the library where I’ve been working as a casual for over a year. This means no longer being a slave to the phone, knowing how much money’s coming in, having a regular schedule. It means benefits. It’s what I’ve wanted and needed for quite, quite some time. An extraordinary assortment of factors are gathering together to make this, bar none, the greatest time in history to be Fanny. So, shouldn’t this be the time when I would write with the most ease & pleasure?

It is much easier to bemoan one’s hardships than to write eloquently about the good things in life. Even the most cursory survey of the world’s great love poetry reveals that most of them folks were living in fairly miserable conditions, and were in some pretty dysfunctional relationships—that’s if they were in relationships at all and not operating entirely on unrequited love. It is also much more of a necessity to be diligent about writing when times are tough—when life sucks, writing about it is the only thing that keeps me somewhat sane. Right now, it doesn’t feel like I need writing as a buoy. Right now it is a little too easy to drift away from the desk and forget about the work that I’m supposed to do there. My mind’s as empty as a cup when it comes time to write. And if things are going so well, then who needs this writing crap anyway... Right?

Here’s what I further think: if I’m ever gonna be any sort of writer beyond the realm of journaling, if this crazy urge is going to produce some of the stuff it promises to, then this is when the rubber’ll hit the road. This is when the groundwork gets laid: time to show the lazy empty-headed despair who’s boss. If chaos and confusion are natural fodder for verse, etc, they are certainly not aids to a lifetime of steady & solid writing. And what I want is not to go out in a burst of genius & brilliance, and fade at thirty like the French poètes maudits , but a life of writing’s work—work which is, as Rilke wrote, the real bliss. For that, you need peace, quiet daily habits, discipline, buckets of blind faith. And yes—love. Lots and lots of it.

And daily walks & runs.

As if the world needs another poem about the rain...

2005-01-17T18:25:00.000-08:00

Because our freak winter is finally over--this has meant more snow in a week than I've seen in Victoria in five years, and so also messy roads, power outages,numbing maddening cold in the cottage, frozen pipes--and this morning it's pouring rain and finally cozy inside, I thought I'd celebrate by posting an old-but-recently-reworked poem about the rain. (Also because I cannot think of anything original to post at the moment and realize that I've been severely neglecting this weedy patch of the blogosphere.)

THE EARTH'S HAPPINESS

We dim humans love sun best,
but this morning there can be no doubt that the rain
is the earth's happiness. It is an apple
for the horse's mouth, a worm
in the belly of the baby robin.
Rain unspools its ribbons in celebration:
even the indoor cat feels it, and speeds
along the floor, upsetting the carpet.
What possesses us to keep our picnic
blankets folded and shelved or, if we do
venture out, to put on boots and yellow jackets?
When we were little, we understood the bounty
of puddles! We feared not for our wet heads.
Now we shrink from moisture like old dry
books, afraid that rain should cause our pages
to swell and never, ever again to shut.

Oh but I want, I want to be thick with it,
and my secrets revealed for the roses and robins!
****

Oh, and what the heck-here's one about flowers, the stuff we're looking forward to. (This one remains title-less.)

Every day I go out into the fields,
that high tide of daisies and of countless,
nameless grasses: purple-tassled ones,
those shaped like ladders, and some
whose sparse seeds answer to
an austere ideal of beauty.
Not to mention the pure yellow
folly of buttercups.

I'd like to make a bouquet-nothing fancy,
mind you-of this riotous plenty,
to bring into my room, to sit
in a vase in my room.

Bless, bless the wise spirit
that, every time, makes me forget
my scissors at home.

WTF?

2004-12-29T13:26:00.000-08:00

What a time to be home, where there is cable. (For those of you not in the know, the current post is brought to you from the Montreal suburbs, where I am visiting with my family for the holidays.)
With the TV on all day, as my father likes it, I can keep a close tab on the rising death toll in Southeast Asia. I can see the new footage as it reaches the TV stations, and watch the same wave obliterate the same chunk of shoreline, hear the same Indian woman weep and wail as the tsunami throws the biggest possible wrench in her wedding day, every hour, on the hour. I am being morbidly infotained against my will and better judgement, but have been unwilling to ponder the dark and wormy questions this raises, too preoccupied with the all-consuming joy that is the dominant feature in my life at this time. (Again, for those not in the know--there just may be two or three of you out there--I am spectacularily in love, and it ain't with Wilco this time.) Until this morning.

I should've paid heed to the title of U2's new album before approaching my Bible today--because the thing did go off like a bomb in my face. And has prompted the question of the day--though isn't it, really, the same question, everyday?--which is, What the fuck?

Here's how it went. My morning and evening prayers are governed by the Book of Alternative Services of the Anglican Church of Canada (which is the North-of-the-border equivalent of the Episcopalian Church.) It guides me through a series of psalms, Scripture readings, collects, canticles, litanies and prayers. It got troublesome right away, as I decided to use Psalm 67 for the Invitatory (which is a call to worship.)

God be merciful to us and bless us,
And cause His face to shine upon us,Selah

²That Your way may be known on earth,
Your salvation among all nations.

³Let the peoples praise You, O God;
Let all the peoples praise You.
⁴Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy!
For You shall judge the people righteously,
And govern the nations on earth. Selah

⁵Let the peoples praise You, O God;
Let all the peoples praise You.

⁶Then the earth shall yield her increase;
God, our own God, shall bless us.

⁷God shall bless us,
And all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.

The earth shall what? Yield her increase? Are you kidding? Which nations, exactly, are singing for joy? My translation has saving health for salvation in verse 2. As the death toll threatens to multiply beyond our--anyway, my--capacity to grasp the numbers due to impending disease.

It went on from there. Next up I got slammed by Psalm 18, the first part.

¹ I will love You, O LORD, my strength.

²The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer;
My God, my strength, in whom I will trust;
My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

³I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised;
So shall I be saved from my enemies.

⁴The pangs of death surrounded me,
And the floods of ungodliness made me afraid.

⁵The sorrows of Sheol surrounded me;
The snares of death confronted me.
⁶In my distress I called upon the LORD,
And cried out to my God;
He heard my voice from His temple,
And my cry came before Him, even to His ears.

⁷Then the earth shook and trembled;
The foundations of the hills also quaked and were shaken,
Because He was angry.

⁸Smoke went up from His nostrils,
And devouring fire from His mouth;
Coals were kindled by it.

⁹He bowed the heavens also, and came down
With darkness under His feet.
¹⁰And He rode upon a cherub, and flew;
He flew upon the wings of the wind.
¹¹He made darkness His secret place;
His canopy around Him was dark waters
And thick clouds of the skies.
¹²From the brightness before Him,
His thick clouds passed with hailstones and coals of fire.

¹³The LORD thundered from heaven,
And the Most High uttered His voice,
Hailstones and coals of fire.^[a]

¹⁴He sent out His arrows and scattered the foe,
Lightnings in abundance, and He vanquished them.
¹⁵Then the channels of the sea were seen,
The foundations of the world were uncovered
At Your rebuke, O LORD,
At the blast of the breath of Your nostrils.

¹⁶He sent from above, He took me;
He drew me out of many waters.
¹⁷He delivered me from my strong enemy,
From those who hated me,
For they were too strong for me.

¹⁸They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
But the LORD was my support.

¹⁹He also brought me out into a broad place;
He delivered me because He delighted in me.

²⁰The LORD rewarded me according to my righteousness;
According to the cleanness of my hands
He has recompensed me.

There was just no way to read this psalm this morning without thinking of the thousands upon thousands who cried out to the heavens, to the Lord whom, for all that they may not profess belief in Him (as though this should matter), nevertheless desires to be their stronghold, and were not plucked out of the great waters. Impossible to read without thinking of the many who didn't even have a moment, a breath to cry out with. Eighty thousand and counting. The morning after Christmas.

As water shortages and unburied bodies threaten the population that survived the devouring waves I am instructed to read, in John 7:37, how Jesus said, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink." I am no literalist--I'm a friggin' poet--but I cannot help but ask, What the fuck? What do I make of all this, here, with my beer and my blog and my Bible, with my heart chock-full of love and hope and belief, belief in a loving, caring, concerned God who, up until Sunday morning, knew of each hair on the head of each of the thousands upon thousands of departed, just as he knows each hair on my head?

I'm not even done yet. Follows the canticle, which today is Song of Creation 1 (Song of the Three 35-51--can anyone tell me what this is and where else it is found?)

....

The Cosmic Order

Glorify the Lord, you angels and all powers of the Lord,
O heavens and all waters above the heavens.
Sun and moon and stars of the sky, glorify the Lord,
praise him and highly exalt him for ever.

Glorify the Lord, every shower of rain and fall of dew,
all wind and fire and heat.
Winter and summer, glorify the Lord,
praise him and highly exalt him for ever.

Glorify the Lord, O chill and cold,
drops of dew and flakes of snow.
Frost and cold, ice and sleet, glorify the Lord,
praise him and highly exalt him for ever.

Glorify the Lord, O nights and days,
O shining light and enfolding dark.
Storm clouds and thunderbolts, glorify the Lord,
praise him and highly exalt him for ever.

....

Praise the Lord you tremors of the earth, you murderous waves, you ravenous and careless waves. Praise the Lord, and highly exalt him for ever, you mudslides, you open graves, you upturned railroads. Glorify the Lord you outbreaks of disease, you poisoned wells, you ravaged villages, you torn people, you weeping, ravaged people. Praise him, and highly exalt him for ever. Dead and orphaned children by the thousands, praise him.

My faith, today, these days, is not shaken. This doesn't have a real enough grip on me to shake me. When I pray, today, I believe, Lord--help my unbelief, I pray for my unbelief in numbers and images, pray for my utter inability to grasp the reality of the situation, to grieve for it. What I pray for is the strenght not only to ask What the fuck? when liturgy forces me to see that creation, all day everyday, is in the business of praise, and that this does not exclude the earthquake or the following tsunami, but also to follow up, to inquire, in the light of these events--What, then, is praise?

My questions are as old as the hills. This is the most worrisome part--much better minds, and hearts, than mine have looked and looked for answers. I don't know that any have been found. But there is nothing else to do, not one other thing, when your world has been wiped and ripped and you find yourself alive, bewildered--saved--than to reach for the smallest, closest thing, and to start picking up the pieces.

Let us start, then.

Surely the Psalms are one of the better places to start, even though they tend to behave like bombs.

By Bread Alone

2004-12-15T21:11:00.000-08:00

I have been in love since the moment
I was born, little heart full
of devotion, and greedy to give
it away. Dull-haired boys with rocks
in their pockets on the playground—
later, the lanky moods of tall beauties
in high-school corridors—but also books,
cats, pop lyrics worn smooth like stones
from overuse, dreams of distant lands
and the lives to be lived there—all
have been gifted with this love of mine,
all to return it. But as by some magical blessing
(or curse?) it comes back to me not diminished
for having been spent, but multiplied,
like those astonishing baskets of bread.
There is always more to go around than needed.
And so I go, with my heart in my pocket
and the heavy basket on my back, looking
for feet to lay them down at.
Oh yes, I know, no need to tell me—
why not lay it before the Lord, he will
accept it gladly. I agree—that is
the worthiest possible answer. But I’ve not only
a greedy heart, but also greedy hands.
A greedy mouth that will not be satisfied
by bread alone. For whom,
this burden of tenderness?
For whom, the weight of my kisses?
The Lord is always with me:
but he is lighter than a feather on the breeze,
and too preoccupied with dancing. I want
warmth of muscle, grip of skin
and bones. And so I go—looking,
hungry, with a basketful of bread
on my back. And so
I go, searching for you, with the Lord
dancing behind me.

A Warm Welcome

2004-12-11T13:47:00.000-08:00

Please join me in welcoming to the blogworld my dear, excellent friend Michael. He is a man of cunning wit & wisdom, and keen intelligence. I am most excited about his new blog, A Journal of Wills, and I bet you will be, too. (Michael--in order to increase your readership among the particular demographic of people who frequent Weeds, I will out you as a former resident of the Lone Star State.)

I am also making amends for a terrible show of blog bad matters by adding Sean's Ruminations to my blogroll, which I should've done as soon as he added me to his. My apologies, Sean.

In which Fanny waxes poetic on her MP3 player

2004-12-09T13:30:00.000-08:00

You have to understand this: when it comes to things computerized & digital, etc, not only am I a neophyte, but as recently as about a month ago I was a thorough naysayer. (Though I will not relent on the subject of cellphones—they are evil, and I pray daily for the soul of those among my friends who own one.) There are several factors at play in my newly embracing technology—one of which is my recent acquisition of an MP3 player.

(Before you think to ask, you geeks, it is a Creative MuVo TX FM, whatever that means, 256MB, is small and sleek and white and damn sexy.)

Given my until-recently-held position on matters of tiny, gadgety electronics, it is of great surprise to myself (and to you as well, I’m sure) that I soon after the purchase found myself not only totally enthralled with this potent little thing, but also totally overcome with iPod envy. Lusting after gigs! Me! Who would’ve thunk it?

I am not deluding myself here that I am adding anything new to all the e-ink already spilled about the wonders of these bits of plastic and wires and whatever else go into the making of MP3s (if I am wrong and there are no wires in the thing, don’t write to tell me, I utterly don’t care) but please allow me to share my small personal epiphany* on this matter.
I was up till all hours last night downloading tunes—I went on an both an 80s and a Motown binge. (Shoot! As I wrote this I just thought of about a half-dozen songs I didn’t think to include. Relax Fanny, breathe, for at this rate twelve-step programs and sponsors are not far around the corner.) This morning I was all pumped to go running to listen to my new mix. Never mind the fact that the thing is so light as to be unnoticeable, that the sound is clear, does not skip. I have only seven words of praise for my MP3 player: Thank You Fallettinme Be Mice Elf Agin.

Among music snobs, I am the chief of sinners. I wholeheartedly agree with John Cusack’s utterance in High Fidelity (my favourite movie) that what really matters is not what you are like, but what you like. Music, books, films, these things matter. (As my friend Matthew said in a conversation recently, when there is a lot of crossover between two people’s record collection—and only the truly cool persist in calling them records—now that’s love. But I’m getting sidetracked.) And I am glad to have reached a point of maturity in my life, of self-knowledge and self-possession that allows me, without having to choose camps as in the days of teenage wasteland, to proclaim my equal & unapologetic love for Pearl Jam, George Michael, Marvin Gaye and Modest Mouse, —and to have a gadget to facilitate the expression of such love.

I know this is nothing new—I too have been making tapes absolutely forever—but this is so much less messy, so much more malleable. And just so cool.

I give you my morning run—each song causing me to exclaim yeessss to the bushes & robins, each one pushing me to run harder: I Just Can’t Get Enough, by Depeche Mode; Hungry Like the Wolf, by Duran Duran; Faith, by George Michael; When I Come Around, by Green Day; Lust for Life, by Iggy Pop; I Love Rock n’ Roll, by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts; Ocean Breeze is Sally, by Modest Mouse; Let’s Get It On, by Marvin Gaye; Daughter, by Pearl Jam; Rapture and Indian Summer, by Pedro the Lion.

Now, that’s love.

*A side note—did you know that my name (this is a loose translation) in Greek means Light? As in epiphany, theophany—it means the showing forth, the coming forth of the Light of God. As in, "Oh Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall Fanny your praise." Sure is better than the meanings the British and Aussies give to my name. (Thanks to Father John & Matthew for this re-naming.)

The all-true, all-dressed, technicolor reading list of 2004

2004-12-06T21:10:00.000-08:00

Here she is, in all her glory. It’s as complete as I can make it, yet I’m sure I’m forgetting stuff. I take so many books home from the library that I basically just use as decoration, or to feed wishful thinking. Somehow this list doesn’t make me out to be as brainy as I’d like it to—there’ll be more theology next year, Aquinas and Soul of Politics, here I come. The list would also be longer if I hadn’t taken six weeks to plough through Anna Karenina this summer... it was worth it, though, and there are more fat Russian novels in my near future.

The starred titles are, well, starred—the best of the bunch. The ones marked ‘R’ were re-reads—I dream of a year made up entirely of re-reads, and next year I hope to revisit the delights of Life of Pi and of Zadie Smith’s genius work White Teeth. The ones marked ‘%’ I only read bits of, either because I got distracted, because they are still in the ‘in progress pile,’ or have because they have beentried and found wanting.

Next up are the new book of short stories by Annie Proulx, Bad Dirt; Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour; a book of Chesterton essays titled On Lying in Bed; and Saramago’s The History of the Siege of Lisbon.

FICTION

The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
*A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
*The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Mark Haddon
R The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
R Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
Unless, Carol Shields
*R Close Range, Annie Proulx
R Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver
*The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
Kilter, John Gould
*A Complicated Kindness, Myriam Toews
A Death in the Family, James Agee
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Alexander McCall-Smith
Tears of the Giraffe, Alexander McCall-Smith
*Swallows of Kabul, Yasmina Khadra
The Cave, José Saramago
*Runaway, Alice Munro
Ghost Writer, Philip Roth
%Holidays on Ice, David Sedaris
...and, the mysterious fabulous novel that breaks my heart and makes me snort with laughter and weep with gratitude everytime I open it, but that I’m still keeping a secret.

NON-FICTION

*Cash, Johnny Cash
Virgin of Bennington, Kathleen Norris
*Long Life, Mary Oliver
Ressuciter, Christian Bobin
*Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Lynn Truss
Solace of Open Spaces, Gretel Ehrlich
%Geometry of Love, Margaret Visser
Autoportrait au Radiateur, Christian Bobin
A Time to Keep Silence, Patrick Leigh Fermor
%Memoirs, Pablo Neruda
*Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
%Quarrel & Quandary, Cynthia Ozick
%One Man’s Meat, EB White
%War of Art, Steven Pressfield

SHPIRITUAL SCHTUFF

Centering Prayer, M. Basil Pennington
%Genesis Trilogy, Madeleine L’Engle
Walking on Water, Madeleine L’Engle
Walking a Literary Labyrinth: A Spirituality of Reading, Nancy, M Malone
%A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L’Engle
*R Way of a Pilgrim, Anonymous
Girl Meets God, Lauren F. Winner
%Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
R Way of the Heart, Henri Nouwen
*Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton
Genesee Diary, Henri Nouwen
*R Living with Contradiction, Esther de Waal
as well as countless re-readings of Merton and Kathleen Norris, of de Waal’s Seeking God, of Dillard; daily readings on The Rule of St Benedict, with commentary by Joan Chittister; and, of course, the Bible by the Lord, ed.

POETRY

The usual suspects: Mary Oliver (esp. her latest, Why I Wake Early,) Jane Kenyon, Pablo Neruda, Adam Zagajewski, Czeslaw Milosz, Wendell Berry, Wallace Stevens, Roo Borson, Jan Zwicky, Don McKay, Emily Dickinson, Denise Levertov, Robert Frost, ee cummings; and the latest additions, Robert Bly, Andrew Hudgins and Hannah Main-van der Kamp.

Two poems (and not even one title between them)

2004-11-29T09:35:00.000-08:00

The heart is rich of its own imagination—
that of the gardener who, looking
through seed catalogues in January, can already
taste the summer’s fresh peas. Up on the top
floor, the skull’s brand of imagination
is concerned with schedules and supplies,
matters temporal and spatial, whatever it is
in dreams that is quantifiable. Not so
the heart, that red muscle, that fluttering sparrow—
it sends out whispers and shivers that ripple
beneath the skin, it labours at feeding the senses,
as though it were the only living thing
to have heeded the commandment:
o taste and see

***

As sure as weeds, come summer’s end,
come the blackberries, and then—
the blackberry jam, then the poems
about blackberries.

Things we wish for: that summer wouldn’t
curl and shrink, then blow away.
That we could pick every last blasted
berry on the bush, and damn the barbs
and scars.

That things would last as long
as we think we need them for.

Hence, the boiling black, the sweetness
spread on good bread on a dreary November
morning. Hence, one more poem

about ripeness, about plenty,
about the wide, golden curve
before darkness.

Thanksgiving

2004-11-26T13:29:00.000-08:00

Thanks be to God for this day off. For staying in bed until nine with my warm soft cat while cones dropped from the trees onto the roof, loudly, thumped and rolled, making a sort of Morse code I didn’t get. The ground was thick with frost first thing today, though I didn’t need to look out the window to know, for even before I opened my eyes I felt the wintry cold on my face, as only the thinnest and half-assedly insulated defence stands between me and the cold—but such wonders lie outside of these windows, cold stars and cold moonlight, that it would never occur to me to unroll the bamboo shades that have been rolled up tight the whole time I’ve lived here, even though this would make the place a darn sight warmer. I don’t care. I’ve warm blankets and a warm and cuddly cat.

Thanks be to God for Thomas Merton, who I was reading again this morning—I am forever reading Merton—may his soul rest, dead nearly forty years now, maybe he’s calmed down a bit. Occurs to me I could be entirely satisfied with a writing career consisting solely of copying down favourite passages of his—just this morning: "For my part, my name is that sky, those fenceposts, and those cedar trees"; "The silly, hopeless passion to give myself away to any beauty eats out my heart"; "This is the secret of the psalms. Our identity is hidden in them."* But, to paraphrase the rabbinical story, on the last day when God calls me forth to tally up my accounts, He won’t ask, "Why weren’t you Merton?" He’ll ask, "Why weren’t you Fanny?" I shall labour here below to make certain he need not ask that question. Or, at least, to be sure I have a damn good answer.

Thanks be to God for books, in general. "Admire the world for never ending on you." (Who said that? My mind is a vast lost & found of quotes, unattached to any owner, like drawers full of sunglasses and kids’ plastic coin purses with nothing but bingo chips in them. Who will claim them?) Whenever someone inhales sharply in horror upon hearing that I’ve never read such-and-such an author (take your pick: Faulkner, Dickens, Proust, PD James) I shrug calmly and say that if I’d already read everything out there worth reading, then they might as well shoot me now. I take great comfort in the fact that the world of good books will never end on me (this is indeed a miracle of God, considering the amount of crap that pullulates out there—and I’m an authority on crap. Remember, I work in a public library.) In the last few days I have fallen deeply and hopelessly in love with two authors I didn’t even know existed as recently as two weeks ago. The first wrote a novel so exquisite, so smart and funny (and I mean the laugh-out-loud-and–snort kind of funny,) so utterly delicious that I want both to forgo eating and sleeping and do nothing but read it, and to read not another word of it because if I do one thing will surely lead to another and then I will be finished reading it and never will I get to read it for the first time again, ever. Remember those packets of candy you got as a kid, that popped and rocked and fizzed and exploded in your mouth? That’s what this writing is like. But I will not provide the title of the book nor the author here (have I learned nothing in retail?) because some of you faithful should receive the book for Christmas and I don’t want to wreck the surprise, and I don’t want you to go and buy it yourself. You may ask me personally, and I may or may not tell, accordingly (maybe you’re getting socks or an orange from me this holiday season.)

The other love of my life at the moment is Andrew Hudgins who, for me—along with Jane Kenyon for the chick side of things—defines what Christian poetry should be like in these last days. And so you’ll forgive me for previously gushing about a book and withholding any information that may lead you to identify it (okay, I’ll say one thing: it talks about baseball) here is a link to a poem that if you read it now will make your whole day—never mind, your whole week worthwhile, no matter how badly you’ve screwed it up, no matter how much you planned to get done and haven’t and now have not a hope and hell of doing, it being Friday afternoon and all.
(And thanks be to the donor of literary lifeblood who suggested these books. May I be so worthy as to one day repay you.)

*Excerpted from "Day Unto Day," an chunk of The Sign of Jonas found in A Thomas Merton Reader.

From the "In Progress" file

2004-11-19T13:59:00.000-08:00

TWO FIELDS AWAY

Bad weather can’t keep a good woman down.
Sometimes the rowdiest elements give rise
to the most insistent need for a walk.
So I went. Decked out in rubber, with
that sweet smugness of being the only
one out in it.

Greedy wind and fat rain, then nagging
drizzle. Wind so raw it ripped
and tore away at the clouds
revealing ragged strips of sunlight, yet
no part of the landscape was less beautiful
for being so abused. Au contraire.

I walked the way I always walk—across the road,
past the pond, through the forest and out and up
and through again, then across the top edge
of the field, down the lenght of it, then home.
From that last downward stretch the trees looked
menacing in their torment, as though they were
a dark, advancing army—yet I knew how peaceful
it had just been, just beneath.

Then the rainbow touched down
and stood across the field from me, where I had
just emerged from the forest—a bright lovechild
of discordant weather.
I knew it would be gone
before I got there. I didn’t care.
I knew I was a fool operating on
illusion. I didn’t care. Sweet mercy fell down
in bright ribbons and I was going.
I crossed the weedy, wet and crotchety field,
where none browse but deer. Halfway across
and the rainbow had fled two fields further.
I didn’t care.
I went and stood there.
Nothing had changed.

But I now knew one small, new thing. The wind
cracked the clouds open like a knife
and the sun spilled. Trees still teetered
and shook. I could see the rainbow,
two fields away—
as bright as it had been up close.

You know who you are

2004-11-08T23:39:00.000-08:00

I often put on short little shows at home, nights, solely for the benefit of my cats. (And, maybe, the spiders?) Well, tonight, I played a little known Hip tune, "Get Back Again," and I dedicated it to you. Not for what the song says, but for what the song is.

I have loved you badly, but I have loved you. That's what's left when all's said and done. I put it in my pocket, and I keep walking along.

I suck at this

2004-11-08T23:19:00.000-08:00

This should be no surprise to the two, maybe three of you who check this site periodically, wondering if I've come up with anything new. Well, I have, I just haven't bothered to type it up and post it. I at times get real excited about this online venture, the possibilities for conversations, etc, but when it comes down to it, I just hate sitting at the computer, and so it doesn't get done. Plus there is guilt. Let me tell you a story, a short one: two years ago, I was unemployed and had a ton of time on my hands. Someone I know who works in a retirement home mentioned that there was a nice old French lady there, Mme Thiebaut, who seldom got visitors and who would love to have someone come visit her and speak French with her. So I went, every week. I read to her, I wheeled her around in her chair, took her outside--it was September, beautiful out, and I found out she hadn't been out of doors for over a month. I enjoyed my visits with her, and so did she. Then Christmas came, I went home for a month. I meant to go back, I really did. But then I missed the first week, then another, then... I never did go back. Chiefly, because I felt guilty that I hadn't gone back right away and couldn't face the explanation, even when I was pretty sure an explanation wouldn't really be necessary. That's kinda how I feel about this blog.

To the two or three of you out there, let me say this: I wish I were a better person. Or, that I liked computers more, so that I wouldn't mind being on here, typing away like this. But if I were a better person, I wouldn't care whether or not I liked computers, I would just be dedicated and faithful--so.

What I've come to realize is that typing on a keyboard, looking at a screen and posting online is diametrically opposite to the way I work, to what I want to work on, to what I think about, to what I am, so that there is a great reconciliation work that needs to be done before I can embrace this truly.

I clued in a while ago that, if I didn't write about not writing, I would only write half as much as I do. Which is a circuitous way of thinking and a little dizzying but it's fun, you should try it. Anyway, I've now carried this particular neurosis into the blog world: the self-examining, self-loathing, inadequate blogger syndrome. Somenone (Augustine?) said that the unexamined life isn't worth living. I say, the over-examined life isn't much of a life.

Well that's enough of that. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Lord, have mercy.

To attempt to make amends I will write another post right now.

I am in love...

2004-09-30T20:12:00.000-07:00

...and this time, it's for real. My newly beloved is... Wilco. (Oh darling, you were right there in front of me for so long, how come I never knew before you were The One?)

A few random bits to keep you abreast of latest developments:

I have learned recently that is is not good for poets to work full-time. Cuts down all that precious and necessary time staring out of windows. But there are some upsides: for one, I am drinking a glass of white wine from a $15 bottle, as opposed to a $7 one. And, this week, I bought a guitar: a lean, mean 3/4 size Jr Jay (don't laugh, it's black and it kicks friggin' arse.) And I also have--get a load of this--a gig bag. Really. Like I'm gonna have gigs...

In ten days I am running the 8k road race put on by the Royal Vic Marathon. To prepare for this, I have ran twice this week for one hour--I still can't quite believe I can do this, I who have only started running in February (I can still being remember being thrilled to bits when I could run for eight consecutive minutes.) It's quite amazing what the body will do, once set in motion. And this is another thing I've learned: it isn't harder to run for an hour than it is to run for half an hour (my usual running time)--it just takes longer.

There is a new cat in my life: her name is Zola (after the 19th century French novelist, for those who need to be told.) She has been living on the property now for several weeks, I give her food and love and for this she follows me to my car and runs after me when I get home. But she won't come inside--she doesn't dig my cat Mr. Darcy, hisses and growls, even though he's being a sweetie to her and puts up with her crap. Well, maybe she's been hurt in the past, and is afraid to let her guard down, to be vulnerable. Maybe she'll open up.

There is an abnormally large amount of colons in this post.

I am the speaker at a youth retreat at the end of the month. I will be speaking to them about prayer--basically telling them all I didn't get to say in my sermon (see 2nd to last post) last month. Plus I have some wacky ideas: (there goes another colon!) I want to talk to them about Brother Lawrence and the Incarnation, and then make them peel potaotes and wash windows prayerfully. Ya. But the fact that I am a speaker at a youth retreat is fundamentally scary, for it means I am old enought to be a speaker at a youth retreat.

Well, I will have a gig: October 23, Thetis Island, Place retreat. I've been threatening for three years to play at the open mic (enough poetry already!)--there is no more escaping it. Now that I know for sure we are a community of grace...

Goodnight now: the nights are getting longer, they better be good.

Our Father, that art in Breslan

2004-09-06T16:21:00.000-07:00

Precious Lord Jesus--

In the face of tragedy, our words become tragically weak. The words we have learned to rely on--hope, praise, love, mercy--seem to lose their power in the face of some other words. Today, those are: Breslan, Russia; school bloodbath; murdered children. It's at times like these that we are grateful that You have taught us words to pray.

So that, as we consider heartache beyond imagination tearing families apart, we are grateful that You taught us to pray, Our Father.

As we think of at least 350 souls that have left this world too early, and horribly, as we try no to think about what their last moments on this earth were like, we are grateful that You have taught us to pray, That art in Heaven.

You have asked us to praise You at all times, and right now we might not know how to do so, had You not taught us to say, Hallowed be Thy name.

As our hearts fill with grief, anger, incomprehension, desire for retribution, helplessness, as we who have only seen and read reports of this tragedy begin to despair of this world, and begin to long for a new one, we are grateful that You have taught us to pray, Thy Kingdom come.

Lord, we feel helpless. What can we do to alleviate such pain, to counter such evil? One thing you have taught us to do--that is, to pray, Thy will be done.

Jesus, we pray this with confidence. We pray this boldly. For there is no tragedy so big that You are not the Lord of it. No grief so deep that you cannot comfort it. No sin so awful that you cannot redeem it. No day so dark that you cannot lighten it. It is for these things that we ask when we pray, Give us this day our daily bread.

Lord, You have some to us with teachings both beautiful and terrible--You came to teach us forgiveness. The very concept of it is unthinkable right now, to those who have lost so much. But the time will come for it, and in this You have shown us the way, and taught us to pray, Forgive our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Preserve us, O Lord, from such bloodshed and horror. Preserve us from the darkness that lurks in our very hearts. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

For You are Lord, and King, and loving, and just, and You heart breaks as ours do over Breslan, Russia, and yet, even now, You are preparing Your good works, on this, this earth that You made, and called good.

For Thine art the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, forever and ever.

Amen

Gosh golly, has it really been a month?

2004-08-23T11:38:00.000-07:00

Well, here's why: my parents were visiting for a little over two weeks, and then last night I preached my first sermon at church.

Here it is.

What would you think if I said to you, "I will always love you." "You are always on my mind." You’d think I was making a declaration of love, right? What if I added, "I’m always on the run" or "You can’t always get what you want," now you probably know what I’m getting to. (Powerpoint: picture of a Jeopardy board.) "I’ll take POP SONGS CONTAINING THE WORD ALWAYS for $200, Alex." For emphasis, I could even add, "Always look on the bright side of life." What I’m wanting to do is to get you thinking about the word "always" because it’s a key word in the passage we’re looking at tonight. And I think that the meaning we commonly hold for "always," which is that same as in those song titles, isn’t the same as the meaning Paul gives it in this passage, and it’s important to get the meaning right. As pop culture would have it, always means all the time. If I tell you that I’ll always love you, you’ll probably think I mean I’ll love you forever. The word always has come to be a measure of time, and I think this weakens the word, because it becomes a standard that’s impossible to reach, and as such, really isn’t encouraging when Paul uses it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love pop and rock music as much as anyone—in fact a significant portion of my brain cells are still full of Milli Vanilli and Debbie Gibson lyrics—but I think that sometimes it does us a disservice, when it warps the meanings of certain words. And if I haven’t fully convinced you that the word always has lost much of its meaning in today’s society... (PP: picture of package of Always sanitary pads.) Exactly.

I believe that when Paul uses the word ‘always’ here, he isn’t talking so much about time as he is talking about manner, about an attitude of the heart. If you break the word up, all and ways , the concept becomes clearer. It means in all manner, in all you do, through all you do—rejoice, pray, give thanks. The words ‘always’ ‘without ceasing and ‘in everything’ are interchangeable.
When James Prette and I talked about me being up here to speak to you guys, and he said he’d slot me in during 1 Thessalonians, immediately my thoughts went to this passage, and I asked if I could preach on it. We all have favourite scripture passages that hold special meaning for us, and this is such a passage for me, for it gives me an answer to the question that preoccupies me most: How am I to live? Which is another way of asking, What is God’s will for me? I think this is the most crucial question that a Christian has to grapple with. How do we come to know God’s will for us? A friend of mine, a real wise girl, gave me this answer once: God’s will is that we be in relationship with Him. It’s the best answer I’ve heard so far. And in the heart of this passage, Paul fleshes out this concept for us—he tells us how to be in relationship with God. These are the essential ingredients: "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus."

So, how do we do this? How do we pray without ceasing? Why should we? What good would it do? It’s a hard thing that Paul asks of us—and I do believe that he is asking this of every one of us. This is a subject of deep, deep interest for me. I really feel called to this practice. Which doesn’t mean, in any way, that I’m some expert, that I have this down. I really don’t. I have done lots of reading on the subject, which really isn’t the same as praying, though sometimes I like to fool myself to think so. I really appreciate Henri Nouwen’s honesty who wrote that he much preferred reading and writing about prayer to actually praying. I can relate. What I want to do tonight is present to you some of the answers I’ve come across. And I hope that you will be challenged by this, and that some of us, together, will decide to embark on this journey. Because, as we’ll see later on, this unceasing prayer, this intimate relationship with God, really is all about community, is all about our neighbour.

The first person I want to introduce to you, for whom this question of unceasing prayer was a matter of great importance, is St Benedict. Benedict lived in 6th century Italy. He is called the father of monasticism, because he wrote the rule that governs life in monasteries, even to this day. Now even though the life of a monk is vastly different from ours, still the Rule is of great relevance to us today, and to our interests tonight, because Benedict set down the rules for a way of life that is balanced, and which is held together by prayer—in fact, the whole purpose of life, for Benedict, is prayer, which he also calls the ‘work of God.’ All activities of the day—whether reading, singing in choir with the other monks, manual labour, eating, sleeping, and recreation: not one of these holds more importance than another, for all are a means to seek out God’s presence, to attend to it, to respond to it. I really think this is something to strive for in our stressed-out, over-stimulated and fragmented lives. See, Benedict believed that it doesn’t matter what you’re occupied with , whether it’s something seemingly holy like reading Scripture or something seemingly earthy like shoeing horses: God is present in both occasions, indeed is present at all times, and for believers that fact—and it is a fact—carries with it a responsibility, and that responsibility is to pray to and praise our God, at all times, in all ways. No matter what we do, where we are. "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks. " What Paul and Benedict are saying is that, by attending to God’s presence in all circumstances and occasions of our lives, we can make our lives into continual, unceasing prayer. And this, also, is the answer to ‘Why should I seek to pray without ceasing?’ Because God is there. If we know that God is here with us, why shouldn’t we stop to praise him?

So, ultimately, for Benedict, praying is living, working, loving, accepting, it’s the refusal to take anything or anyone for granted but rather to try to find Christ in and through them all. You can see how this ties in to what Paul says to us: to rejoice always, and to give thanks in everything—these are both the root and the fruit of ‘total attentiveness to God.’ I really wish I had more time to flesh this out tonight—the idea of rejoicing always, and of giving thanks in everything. This often seems impossible, yet learning to do so can be absolutely redemptive. All of us have been in situations where there was no possibility of rejoicing. C’mon Paul, you want me to give thanks for this? Remember who’s asking these things of us, and what he’s been through. I know a great lady, who told me this story: she was home, after a bout of chemo, throwing up into the toilet, when she heard God’s voice inside her say, Praise me now. Now, God? Really? But she did. She praised him, because they’d just moved into a new house, where there were two bathrooms, and she could be alone, and not worry about taking a long time. It helps to notice that Paul says to give thanks in everything, not for everything. No matter how crappy the situation, you can always rejoice and give thanks that God is there with you, you can rejoice in His character and give thanks for the relationship you have with Him. Being joyful and thankful should never mean pretending our life is great when it’s not. The psalms are a good example of this: we can pretty well sum up the half of them like this: it’s just someone saying, This sucks. It’s true. But most of them move from the place of suckiness into a place of praise, because each are a conversation with God, each is an encounter with His presence. In this way, the psalms are a great model of prayer: because they’re so gritty, so real, so honest.

So, according to Benedict’s way, words are not essential to prayer, since what matters most is the attitude of our hearts. But this doesn’t mean that words can’t be used. In fact, for the next two people I want to introduce to you, words take on a great deal of importance. Next up, let us meet brother Lawrence. Brother Lawrence, or frère Laurent, was a Benedictine monk living in France in the 17th century. He developed, through his years, a sort of loose method he called The Practice of the Presence of God. His letters and papers were collected after his death in a book that bears that name. Brother Lawrence is an example of the Rule lived out. He followed the Rule of Benedict, but had a particular, personal take on it. This is what he has to say: "The holiest, most common, most necessary practice in the spiritual life is the presence of God, that is to take delight in and become accustomed to His divine company, speaking humbly and talking lovingly with Him at all times, at every moment, without rule or system."

Brother Lawrence was assigned to kitchen duties upon first entering the monastery, then was transferred to the shoe repair shop, and that was his occupation for the rest of his life. And he claims that, after the first decade of his religious life, which was arid and difficult, he then spent the rest of it dwelling in the sweet presence of God, and his writings exude this sense of joy, of gratitude, and the utter simplicity of his way of prayer. It’s really quite simple, he tells us, you just keep up this continual conversation with God, in your thoughts, in your heart, about matters great and small, about things that seem to have no importance at all. I like to imagine this guy, who described himself as a "clumsy lummox," and who by all accounts was no great looker, in his shoe repair shop with a beatific smile on his face, carrying on this chat with God. I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch for us, barristas and cashiers, nurses and accountants, to do the same.

Lastly, I want to introduce you to a nameless Russian peasant who, in the 19th century, wrote a book titled The Way of a Pilgrim, which is now a classic work of Eastern Christian spirituality.
The author was just like you, going to church one night, and he heard the same passage you’re hearing tonight. He heard the words "Pray without ceasing," and it’s like a light went off in his head, and he thought—this teaching is of the utmost importance, and yet I don’t get it. I don’t know what it means to pray without ceasing, but I know in my bones that this I must do. I’m going to try to find someone who can explain it to me. So he leaves his life, he takes off with only his Bible, and a bit of dried bread and salt, and goes in search of a teacher, someone who can explain to him what unceasing prayer is, and how he can go about practising it. This is by no means an easy process. He wanders all over Russia on foot to try to find that answer to the question that is burning in his heart: What is unceasing prayer?

Eventually, he finds a starets, that is, a spiritual father, who gives him the answer he’s been looking for. The starets teaches the pilgrim the Jesus Prayer, which goes, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me" and instructs him to go about repeating it, all day long, and he does, and finds great joy and peace doing so. He repeats the prayer on his lips so consistently and for so long, that at one point he feels himself no longer saying the prayer, but listening to it, for it’s his heart that prays it, a word to each beat. As he journeys on, the Jesus Prayer becomes his companion, his comfort.

But, this is only the beginning of the journey, the beginning of the book. He starts off with this question—and in the word ‘question’ is the word ‘quest’—and through perseverance, honest searching, and humility, he finds his answer, and puts the teaching into practice. But that’s only the start of his adventures. You see, on his journey, he meets people, good and bad. Lots of stuff happens to him: he is mobbed and robbed, taken in, thrown out, he lives in a cave for awhile, a monastery, a beat-up shack in the woods. He tells all this through the lens of the Jesus Prayer—how he kept on saying it no matter what, how each event deepened his practice, how he kept learning from spiritual people he met and how he in turn teached others to pray without ceasing. See, prayer is really all about community. This is a bit of a counter-intuitive thought, for we are used to thinking about prayer as something personal. But the story of this guy turns that concept on its head: we usually think of a pilgrim as someone who walks the world in solitude, in search of more solitude, and while it’s true that the pilgrim desires solitude, so he can be alone with his prayer, his travels accounts are full of people. See, we don’t just pray for ourselves—we have a responsibility to others when we pray, as well. Because if the fruit of our prayer doesn’t feed others, then we’re like a dead tree, only good to be thrown into the fire. Somewhere in the narrative, the pilgrim quotes St Gregory, saying "Not only should we ourselves in accordance to God’s will pray unceasingly in the name of Jesus Christ, but we are bound to reveal it and teach it to others." We don’t pray in a vacuum, you see. Others are with us when we pray, and it is our responsibility to make our prayer life rich and sweet and deep, not only for the sake of our own relationship with God, but because others need to be fed from our prayer, too, to deepen their relationship with God. Remember, the prayer that Jesus taught us isn’t the "My Father," it’s the "Our Father."

A definition of prayer could be to seek and enter into God’s presence. Keeping that in mind, and what I just said about prayer and community, I want us to think about a wheel. Now, imagine the center, the hub, as God’s presence, and the spokes as us, His people. What happens when we get closer to Him? We get closer to each other. And this is the point. This is why the call to unceasing prayer is such an important one—because it is one we are meant to share. Looking at the way Paul structured this passage helps us to see this.

"Pray without ceasing" is the heart of the passage—the hub, on which the meaning of everything else hangs. It’s the one ingredient that allows us to fulfil the other commands Paul gives us. Verses 12 to 15 tell us to comfort the fainthearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all, esteem one another in love, and be at peace among ourselves. Now, I will make the suggestion that the only way that we’ll have the strenght to do this well, thoroughly and consistently is to have unceasing prayer as our foundation. Similarily, in verses 21 and 22, Paul admonishes us to test all things, hold fast to what is good, and to abstain from every form of evil. Now we’ll only be able to discern good and evil if we are deeply rooted in God’s presence, because in so doing we will be given the mind of Christ.

About a month ago, preaching on an earlier passage of Thessalonians, James Prette asked us: what would be the crowning achievement of our lives? Remember that? He said he wished the answer would be, that we truly loved people. I wish this, too, for myself, for everyone. And I think this is the place to start, with prayer. With unceasing prayer. Because prayer should not be isolating—it is meant to prepare our hearts, so we can love people and serve them. But that’s prayer’s second movement. The first movement is hearing the call, feeling that stir in our hearts—yes, I must do this—and setting out on the journey. You see, it doesn’t matter really what I tell you about unceasing prayer tonight, what teachings I present to you, for you have to find your own way. Ask yourself this: In your own relationship with God, what does a conversation look like, what does it sound like? It’s up to each one of you to answer that question for yourselves, and it may take a while to find that answer. My hope for tonight is that you would hear the call, like our Russian pilgrim friend, and step out of your comfort zones in search of God’s presence. And if our friend’s tale is any indication, it’ll be a tough road—we might get hungry, sick, we may be robbed, we may get lonely, we may despair. But we can also reach out to each other along the way. We have to do this each one for ourselves, but we don’t have to do it alone. See, prayer is a two-way street: as we are desiring to enter into deeper prayer, God is desiring to give us prayer. John Climacus said, "God gives prayer to the person who prays." It’s something we’ll figure out along the way. The only way to learn how to pray is to pray. It’s that simple—though simple doesn’t mean easy. So let’s get to it, let’s pray together, and then share a meal together to fortify ourselves for the journey.

Scraps

2004-07-24T10:35:00.000-07:00

And again, always, the day manages to save me. And the field, with its green and yellow song.

*****

I swear that this is true! I saw a daisy shaped like a smile--a yellow caterpillar on a frilly pillow. It was a strange sight but, come to think of it, not entirely unexpected.

*****

The orange butterfly, thanks to the lightness of its cares, can rest comfortably on the thistle.

*****

The nuthatch blesses by its closeness, by allowing me to pretend that, maybe, she thinks I'm part of the tree.

*****

Poem

2004-07-17T08:54:00.000-07:00

Mourning the Temple

Did we not feel, with these empty hands, once,

the warm stone, the cool stone?

Did we not see the walls take on the moods

of the sky, whether cloud, rain, whether sun,

whether joy? Oh did we not run to its shelter

when the rains did come!

Of fired clay, industry and insight

it was made, and glory was in its gates.

Now the walls have come down, rubble bears

our fingerprints, still, rumour of blood

from our hands.

The Lord's doing is marvelous in our eyes.

Clay is clay. Glory is unquenchable fire.

The sun that rose over the walls

will set over the revealed ground.

In our hands, still, the cool stone,

the warm stone.

Amen. Hallowed be Your name.

"Self-portrait with Radiator"

2004-07-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

I received a package in the mail this week--my mother sent me two books, a linen napkin and a silk scarf. The books are what I want to talk about--they arrived like lifelines. Both by the same French author, Christian Bobin, whose other book (one among very many) To Rise Again is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read, and which also contains, for me, this imperative: this is how you must write. Mom had told me that Self-Portrait with Radiator was just as good as To Rise Again, which was almost hard to believe but you want to believe it could be true, and she sent it, along with The Simple Enchantment (all translations mine--oh yeah, I forgot to mention the books are in French. And that I'm a francophone. Well, now you know.) They got here right in time.

It dawned on me recently that most of my recent posts are a little, well, melancholy, and that this doesn't paint an accurate portrait of my days. There is sadness, yes--but this sadness isn't lacking in beauty, isn't unpleasant company, and comes with a crowd of joyful playmates.

As an illustration, I decided to share with you my translations of favourite passages from Self-Portrait with Radiator, which is a luminous book that skips and splashes like a trout in a brook.

Monday, April 8th

     Upon waking I immediately look for what is necessary for the day to be a day: a bit of merriment. I search without searching. It can come from anywhere. It is given in a second for the entire day.

     Merriment, what I name thus, is minuscule and unpredictable. A little hammer of light hitting the bronze of what is real. The note which comes out of it, spreads in the air, over the neighbourhood and far away.

     When we are merry, God wakes up.

Tuesday, April 9th

     To the embarrassing question: what are you writing these days, I answer that I write about flowers, and that some other day I will choose, if possible, another subject that will be even slighter and more humble. A cup of black coffee. The adventures of a cherry tree leaf. But for now, there is much to see: nine tulips stifling their laughter in a clear vase. I watch them trembling beneath the wings of passing time. They have a shining way of being defenseless, and I write this sentence, which they dictate: "What is an event is what is alive, and what is alive is what doesn't shield itself from loss."

Friday, April 19th

The smell of freshly-cut grass, below the buildings, brings the day to the height of its glory. All else that will come will be superfluous. One could say that this is making a big deal out of very little, but consider--money, success, work, reading and loving, none of these give such intense rapture as this handful of cut grasses, putting their small fragrant souls into the hands of the air.

(more to come...)

How was your week?

2004-07-11T11:24:00.000-07:00

We've had remarkable rains this week. Raw, muscled, they ruled over a morning, an afternoon, then tentative sun, then rain again. Many times I was stilled and awed by the rain's straightness--how it draws a hard, fast line between what lives up there and us down here and how much, at times, it seemed to want to be a curtain.

Rain is good--this isn't news--it gives life and feeds. Yet I have to wonder at its violence: it snaps off branches of the Douglas firs that shelter my cabin, it ruins roses, it drums madly on my roof and gutters. Bestows its blessings like a thief and a vandal. Rain, rain, go away, the little ones sing, yet the gardeners and lovers of lawns sing hallelujah, and as it beats down on the roof and slicks the roads with murder every old man and woman I check out books to at the library where I work tells me how much we need the rain. And I believe them, for hard rain is beautiful, and I, too, have a garden.

We live our days operating on certain assumptions: what I will do, whom I will love. The rest is gravy, or else small tributaries of these two main veins. This week, for me, both have taken a beating. I have been forced to face the facts--though it isn't for the first time--that what I think is a castle built on sand, and that what I want is irrelevant, could even kill me. I remember one time, walking into church being absolutely convinced of my heart and its inclinations, being told in a sermon that my heart was the most deceitful thing on earth, and my certainty shattered like the cheap plastic that it was. Since then I've often had the feeling that I'm walking around with a time bomb ticking away in my chest, that will go off and reduce me to blood and pulp whenever its little engine of desire gets in a mood. This is most worrisome. If I can't trust my own heart, which keeps me alive, then what?!

I have also been in the habit of blaming my brain. Too much thinking up there, entirely too much! How often have I expressed the wish to remove my head as though it were a hat, set in on a shelf for awhile and walk away to get some rest. How I sometimes (though wrongly, I know) envy the simpler people who aren't so preoccupied with matters ontological. How I desire to bury my talent deep in the dirt and forget about it.

A friend of mine--though it seems too weak a word to call him friend, for I have lots of friends and only one of him--pointed out to me, bless his cotton socks, that perhaps the problem lay not with my brain or my heart, but with my will. I decide on something--yes! positively, it must be thus!!--and my brain is sent off like a legal clerk to gather evidence and build a case. Once convinced of this case, the heart sets about the task of blowing up the dream bubble which, the bigger it gets, the thinner the membrane that holds it. Ah, the will, old rascal--some gift. I am glad that my organs are no longer under such suspicion, and that the will, that wild horse, is what needs harnessing, to put it to the plow of good and not evil.

Yet this raises an interesting question--how to will the will to change?

So--matters of work, matters of love, both have taken a fall this week. Two bubbles burst. And I see now that the only reason they took a fall is that I set them up in a place from which they could fall. Since I have no one but myself to blame, then I cannot but laugh. Pick myself up, dust myself off, and be on my merry way. The bubbles gone, I realize that I was exhausted from the effort of carrying them aloft, and that I am still myself, and life still good, and blessed, and shining.

Never would I have wished for a week like this--did I mention I also worked six days straight?--and I couldn't be happier that it's over. But we all know how good it feels after a hard rain, how fresh the air smells, how everything glistens, what peace prevails, and how, for a long time, the rain's goodness trickles down, how gently and deeply it keeps on feeding the ground it so pounded on.

Dispatches from the writing desk: bless this mess, or self-doubt.

2004-06-30T11:46:00.000-07:00

The writer is a miserly creature--a reverse Narcissus, always gazing at his own reflection, but bemoaning its imperfections, which the intense self-scrutiny of a writer's life keeps constantly before his eyes. And this isn't a by-product of the job description, it is the core of the task itself. Only by knowing himself to be flawed, and still speaking a message of hope, can the writer reach and uplift the reader, and maintain credibility. A writer's work is always a projection of his or her better self--as in, this is who I would like to be if I weren't this wretch of a human. In a similar (but more modest) way as the Gospel does, the writer points to an ideal that is almost too high to reach, but towards which one keeps on striving. The one thing that keeps the writer from falling into the muddy puddle of his own reflection and sinking in the mire is hope. But hope is a mechanism that constantly needs cranking and winding. This, as it were, is the work.
I take a great deal of comfort in the writings of Henri Nouwen. Here is someone who lets the messiness show through--his Genesee Diary is a good example of this. Here, I recognize myself: the self-doubt, the self-righteous anger, the need for social contact and validation. Yet, in some of his other work (like, for instance, The Way of the Heart) he paints a picture of that well put-together ideal I aspire to. What a relief, then, to read him write that he is much better at reading & writing about prayer than he is at actually praying! I realize that both images--that of disheveled and of slick Nouwen--are two aspects of the same man. And so, then, it must go for all the writers I admire.
Naturally one wants to put forth a better self, yet all, I am beginning to understand, are potentially--are most probably--as messed-up as I am. Annie Dillard may very well, like me, spent too much time fussing over relationships, how so-and-so feels about her, and what he really meant when he said such-and-such. Mary Oliver may wish, as I do, that she could afford a new pair of shoes, and a trip to Italy. Surely we are, the lot of us, petty and silly most of the day. The best ones of us can ignore this long enough to write something decent in the voice of that better self that may emerge, may exist, once in a while. We're all half-blind, reaching for our glasses.
Time to cut the idols down to size, and take courage: these deeply flawed human beings have put out great works, which I love and admire. Surely it is vanity to think of myself as worse than they are, and as such, less capable.
Mary Oliver proposes this most salient question as a manner of interview for the would-be writer: "How patient are you, what is the steel of your will and how well do you look at the things of this world?" And here is her shining reply--if your first answers are shabby, you can do better. It is about skill, not inherent suitability, and skill can always be improved on. So, one has been given a messy self--one needs not rest there. This gives me hope--which is great, for hope is what I need.
These thoughts may not be deep or new, but they're all I got right now. I spend the night at the pub with friends and talk a bunch of crap, and feel bad, and the next morning I need to write. Some days it is harder to do the latter in the light of the former. This is one such day. This is why, along with the previous quote from Oliver, I keep this one pasted above my desk: "Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude." This is a good place to begin. I need not fret about not being the moon--indeed I need not be the moon--all I need be is the finger, pointing, however dirty and wobbly.

Open hand

2004-06-25T11:00:00.000-07:00

I went for a walk.

On the path, I stopped when I noticed a real close-by chickadee, checking me out. I held out my empty palm--maybe, despite my lack of offering, I could entice him to visit? Soon I was swarmed with inquisitive chickadees, a good dozen at least, all debating noisily the merits of my invitation. "Does she have anything in that hand?" they asked. Much flying back in forth was required to determine whether or not I did. Level of said discussion increased as more and more birds arrived on the scene and had to be filled in on what was going on. "There's this girl there, and..." Their cries were small and sharp in my ears, I was dizzied and awed by their frenzied numbers and extreme cuteness. I waited to see what would come next.

Well. I was tried, and found wanting.

"She's got nothing!" one of them finally chirped out authoritatively. "What does she think this is, a petting zoo for fasting birds?" was the indignated response.

I didn't realize I had offended them until one flew above me and pooped in my hand.

I had been reading Buechner that morning, how unless you understand the Gospel as comedy, you don't understand it at all.

I had to laugh. I went on walking.

Triumph over the dark forces of HTML

2004-06-16T07:06:00.000-07:00

Please join me in rejoicing over the return of a properly functioning comments link.

Many thanks to Daniel, soldier of light, for the technical support.

This poet needs technical help.

2004-06-14T21:24:00.000-07:00

Some of you are leaving me comments and I can't get at them! I can't even leave comments on my own blog! Very frustrating to the post-modern soul. If someone out there has a modicum of a clue, would you be so kind as to email me and enlighten me?

Duct Tape

2004-06-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

There is something holier and more beautiful in one old Bible held together by duct tape in the hands of an old man in a gray suit on Sunday morning than in all the illustrated manuscipts in all the monastery vaults in this world.

Late night, white wine and trying to learn a Greg Brown song on the guitar...

2004-06-01T00:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I don't want to go to sleep. This almost never happens--I mean really, getting to bed with a book and my cat is my favorite moment of the whole day, and usually happens around eleven, except for pub night on Sunday. (I know, I'm twenty-five and already old.) But tonight, I don't know, I'm almost afraid of pulling down the ladder to my sleeping loft (btw it is as cool as it sounds,) so instead I've poured myself some wine and am doing unspeakable things to my guitar--though I am quite pleased with how quickly I grasped the essence of Asus4 and D7sus2. Now all I've left to do is make them sound like a song. Ask me at three am after the next glass of wine how that's going.
I figure this sort of moment is exactly what a blog is for. I can ramble on and pretend there is an audience for this, but can always edit in the morning if I get that what-did-I-say-last-night feeling. And just so you know I am that sort of I-love-you-guys drunk. But I'm not drunk... yet. (Sip.)
The song I am trying to learn is Ella Mae by Greg Brown. I came across a tribute CD called Going Driftless, checking in CD's at the library where I work. It boasts such rockin' chicks as Lucinda and Ani and Gillian so I took it home and pretty much haven't stopped listening and, to be quite frank, haven't stopped crying. Ella Mae was Greg's grandma, and the song is sang by his three daughters, and it's full of references to redwing blackbirds, and it's just devastatingly beautiful. And it's been making me blubber helplessly (along with Sleeper, which I'm also learning, though it's G-Em-C-D so the road isn't as steep.)
So, what I should be getting at is: why all the crying, right? I wish I could tell you. Could it be as silly as not being able to say 'I love you' to those people I want to say it to--my grandpa who died, for example--and that the discreptancy between the beauty of the song and my utter inability to play it lights up the distance between my love and my inability to utter it? Why does it feel like playing this one song, not even well, but just decently, would somehow cover over a multitude of sins? Maybe (sip) I feel that loving, like playing, is a skill I can admire in others, but for myself can only hope to produce pathetic twang.

This is the sort of thing that happens when a girl who thinks too much stays up past her bedtime, drinking. I know what you're thinking--Less Talk More Rock. Just play the damn guitar, girl. Maybe Less Wine More Sleep would be a better formula. Anyway, if it's morning and you're reading this, it means I've woken up okay and was given enough grace to laugh at myself. And don't let my present incapacity to cope with HTML and provide you with a link prevent you from seeking out the song. You know how to use Google--it's Ella Mae, by Greg Brown.
Good night.

Poem

2004-05-16T13:31:00.000-07:00

All the mornings, I've learned
early on, are good--but it's especially so
when I see the hummingbird
in his blue house, on his leafy
furniture (for, like me,
he favours one chair, and can
usually be found there.)

This day I found him
hung in the air as a single
ornament, then climb up
on the whirr and might
of his wings, to go sit
in an unusual, high cedar.

From further away I saw the red
flashing lure of his breast,
and had a wonderful thought:
that he'd chosen this perch
for its bounty of light,
out of vanity or necessity
(likely a little of both--and also whimsy!)
so as to spark up that ruby fire;

and I wonder where she is,
the little lady
deserving of such a display,
for it certainly cannot be me.

Requiescat In Pace

2004-05-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

Died this day, my maternal grandfather, Joseph Lapointe, for whom the woods had no secrets.

Excuses, excuses...

2004-05-09T12:45:00.000-07:00

My excuse for not posting in so incredibly long is that I've been having work-related wrist issues, and that typing at home on my laptop could only serve to aggravate matters. I have now changed computers, the better to blog with, and so, hello, I'm back.

As a proof of my goodwill here's a Merton quote that is sort of a mission statement for myself and this kinda silly but really rather grand online pursuit:

"My own personal task is not simply that of poet and writer; it is basically to praise God out of an inner circle of silence, gratitude, and 'awareness.' This can be done in a life that apparently accomplishes nothing. Without centering on accomplishment or nonaccomplishment, my task is simply the breathing of this gratitude from day to day, in simplicity, and for the rest turning my head to whatever comes, work being part of praise, whether splitting wood or writing poems, or best of all simple notes."

And here's a new Mary Oliver poem for your delight and thrill:

Song of the Builders

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God--

a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.
How great was its energy
how humble its effort.
Let us hope

it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

List of books in various stages of readership scattered about my house

2004-03-05T14:21:00.000-08:00

Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver (novel)

Genesis Trilogy, Madeleine L'Engle (spiritual meditations)

The Intimate Merton, Thomas Merton (journals)

Lodging in Italy's Monasteries, by Eileen Barish (guidebook)

Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments, by Shmuley Boteach (hilarious)

Paris in Mind, edited by Jennifer Lee (anthology of Americans writing about Paris)

The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (theology)

Runner's World Complete Book of Women's Running, by Dagny Scott

Bread and Wine, Reading for Lent and Easter, The Plough Publishing House

The Lord is My Shepherd, by Harold S. Kushner (re 23rd psalm)

Otherwise, New & Selected Poems, by Jane Kenyon

Collected Poems 1957-1982, by Wendell Berry

Intent, or the Weight of the World, by Roo Borson (poetry)

Ash Wednesday, part 1

2004-02-25T12:20:00.000-08:00

I have just come from joining an Ash Wednesday celebration at St John the Divine, an Anglican church in downtown Victoria that I quite enjoy.
I couldn't help but notice as I walked in that I was severely tipping the age balance: except for an eight year-old, the person closest to me in age (I'm twenty-five) was about fifty.
I was so thrilled to be in the midst of liturgy on an otherwise dreary weekday. Our non-denom, laid-back, pastor-wears-sandals-with-socks-and-some-kids-have-blue-hair church is in the process of introducing liturgy to our services, and we had a meeting this week during which we discussed the reasons to do so. How to explain liturgy to the kid with blue hair? I felt I came across the only necessary reason this morning: to hear more Scripture. We heard from everything--OT, Psalms, Gospels and Epistles. I drank it all up like the parched peace lily I watered yesterday. At our church, at most, we'll hear the passage that's being preached on, and maybe another companion reading. Not enough. Not enough. Cannot express to you the delight I felt when I saw a tall woman in her seventies walk up to the lectern with the help of another lady, same age but a full head shorter, and began reading in a loud clear voice from the book of Joel. "Return to me with all your heart."

(I have more thoughts--on the ashes themselves--but my library internet session is about to run out. Stay tuned for part two.)

About shovels

2004-02-23T13:54:00.000-08:00

Last night, at our weekly post-church gathering at the pub--sometimes I wonder if we don't go to church just in order to find out if everyone is going to the pub after--and our services start at six-forty-five and end about eight-thirty at night, in case you're thinking we're a bunch of Sunday-afternoon lushes which, quite frankly, I can't claim we aren't--my friend Darren, the prophet recently flown in from England to smack us around (bless his cotton socks) was telling us about his morning's visit to his old, messed-up church (come on, you all know the type.) Apparently they do have some clue, because someone there spoke up before the congregation, saying there was a mocking spirit there that day--yep, that would've been Darren. And there were plenty more mocking spirits at the pub, when Darren shared with us the call to worship he'd heard that morning. "Let's take up our shovels of worship, so we can dig our wells to Jesus," which presumably trailed off into something about streams of living water, though I personally wonder if the shovels wouldn't be more useful to dig themselves out of all that bullshit. Anyhow--we had a good laugh, I thought I'd share.

And here is an excerpt of a poem by Roo Borson, probably my favorite Canadian poet (she'd have to slug it out for the definitive title with Don McKay, but they're good friends and I expect they won't want to go there), which illustrates the proper way to use shovels in poetic imagery.

The heart is a shovel leaning against a house somewhere
among the other forgotten tools.
The heart, it's always wanting to dig up old ground,
always wanting to give things a proper burial.

Well, it's two o'clock and I'm still in pyjamas. Time to go out and walk/run on the paths, the woods' path, the fields' path.

All hail the arrival of the site meter

2004-02-19T20:24:00.000-08:00

Do me proud, guys. Click away.

Never thought this HTML stuff would be so fun.

No title for this post, or for the poem, either

2004-02-18T23:20:00.000-08:00

It's been a challenge to make room in my life for this new venture, this blogging. (My friend Stephanie strongly objects to the term "blog," which she finds inelegant. A little too phonetically close to "blah," I suppose. She suggests "wlog.") But I'm happy to say that a new, faster internet connection is on the way, that I have a new lamp for better late-night typing light--this should make for improved ease and frequency--and that this morning there were eight swans on the pond. There is a mean-looking spider stuck in my sink--I keep forgetting Annie Dillard's advice to leave a towel hanging over the side so they can climb out--and the mice are rustling under the sink again. In the bush--well, this is hardly the bush really but it ain't town either--the question "Who is my neighbour?" takes on a whole new meaning.

I thought I would post a poem, just for kicks. Suggestions for a title are welcome.

I woke heavy, ashes
in my mouth, smoke
from the previous night
still hugging my head.
I take my worries to the chair,
bid them to sit down:
snare of debt tightening,
and I despair that I can ever
love wisely.
My salvation: countless mornings
have perfected the habit
and I open the Bible,
words of Christ in red:
"Worry not." He calls me
"child." And though
He says nothing about the robin,
I know I am to turn
my attention to it, taking
the rain as an invitation
to wait patiently, precisely,
on the green, sopping lawn.

Excerpts from Fanny's commonplace book

2004-02-09T11:23:00.000-08:00

"If you could understand a single grain of wheat you would die of wonder."
-Martin Luther

"What I know of the divine sciences and the Holy Scriptures, I learnt in the woods and fields. I have no other masters than the beeches and the oaks."
-St Bernard of Clairvaux

"The natural object is always the adequate symbol."
-Ezra Pound

To be or.... (what are the options, really?)

2004-02-06T10:30:00.000-08:00

Two passages quoted in M. Basil Pennington's Centering Prayer:

"Let us applaud and give thanks that we have become not only Christians but Christ himself. Do you understand, my brothers and sisters, the grace that God our head has given us? Be filled with wonder and joy--we have become veritable Christs."

-St Augustine (italics mine)

"There is another story told of a rabbi--Rabbi Zuscha. On his deathbed he was asked what he thought the kingdom of God would be like. The old rabbi thought for a long time; then he replied: 'I don't really know. But one thing I do know: When I get there, I am not going to be asked, "Why weren't you Moses?" or "Why weren't you David?" I am going to be asked, "Why weren't you Zuscha?" ' "

Some geographical considerations

2004-02-04T11:54:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my home.

I live in Victoria, on the southmost tip of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. And before you jump to weather-related conclusions, let me say that it is snowdrop and cherry blossom time here in Victoria, and that on the pond across the road from my little cottage the geese have picked up their activities again. There were six swans this morning on the far end of the pond--a good day for swan-watching--and an assortment of mallards, buffleheads and canvasbacks. I think I saw the bald eagle causing trouble, but it might've been one of the neighborhood turkey vultures. Yesterday there were about five dozen robins in the sopping wet horse paddock at the end of the property, pecking at the ground like chickens. There are, sadly, no chickens on the property. (I like chickens--they make good financial sense, you give them used teabags and they give you eggs, plus my friend Matthew--of theoloblog fame--has once deemed me the Queen of Chickens based on the way the chickens in his backyard behaved towards me, which i thought at first were attempts to eat my toes but apparently this is the highest form of chicken worship.)

Very soon I will put on my boots and put rubber sole to drenched ground and go walk the fields round about the pond and beyond, for there is some sunshine out there today and friends, we get cruelly little sunshine here this time of year. But as someone once said to me, hey, rain may be depressing but at least you don't have to shovel it, and out of respect for my parents who are labouring under the yoke of Montreal winter and will not see a cherry blossom for many a month, I will not complain.

I will finish my toast with strawberry jam.

This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and get on with it.

2004-02-02T11:47:00.000-08:00

Well, here I am, after four days of struggling to find just the right name for this blog. Finally I realized I should just get online and get on with it. Just as a child grows into the name it's given, so will this blog. But I thought I should list here some of the rejected contenders, as this might give a broader view of what exactly I mean to do here, which in turn creates the illusion that I know exactly what I mean to do here. (One thing I definitely mean to not do is forget I started this blog and be untrue to my audience--yes, I mean you there with your coffee cup and rumpled hair, I will not let you down.)

So here they are, in order of typing:

Consider the Lilies

Musings of a Pond-Gazer

Swan Count (note that I have used these in the description so all's not lost)

Among the Amazements (anyone who can find the Mary Oliver poem this is taken from wins a prize.)

Sayings and Prayers of the Mad Farmer

...and my favorite rejected is Three Chords and the Truth, which was someone's description of country music, and is also a great formula for the essentials of faith: three chords, G C and D, God Christ and the Holy Dove. But as I am only beginning to seriously scratch at my guitar (and seriously annoying my cat, which isn't too promising a sign) I figured it would be a little premature to hold a country music banner over this site. So.

And thus I take a slightly hesitant but hopeful step onto the web.