Writing Books, Writing in Books.

I write in my books. Yes, I write in pen without any guilt at all. But, don't tell anyone.  People can't believe that a reader would write in ink all over a new novel or non-fiction book. 

Yep, I'm scribbling statements,
shooting arcing arrows to the page margins of my book to target some idea, and generally defacing a perfectly good book.

I do it to my bible, too. You should see the first chapter of John with notes in red, underlining in black and even tiny drawings in whatever color pen I had in may hands at the time. Whole sentences are highlighted in yellow.  My bible looks like a friendly edit.

My books are my friends, so I talk to them.  Why shouldn't I, they are talking to me? I take the text seriously as a conversation between the author and me. When I converse, I often learn something, if I am listening. And, when I listen for a while, I want to respond.

At restaurants when I am alone at a table with my book, I catch people staring at the guy who is writing in a perfectly good book. What a waste!

Although I throw most books away after reading them, I  keep a few of the books by authors with whom I've had discussions.  Every so often,  I'll pick up an old friend whose pages are worn and whose binding is loosening and begin asking new questions of something I hear for the first time in the text.

As his editor said to Gibbon when he presented a mass of pages entitled "The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire":  "Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, heh, Mr. Gibbon?"

Yeah, I'm always scribbling, though I would not have been worthy to carry Mr. Gibbon's snuff box, much less emulate his writing.

If I have been reading a book and there are no handwritten exclamation points or question marks along the edges of the text in the margins, I'm not liking the book much. I'll probably not finish it.

I'm not going to loan a book to you either. Too much of myself is revealed in glosses all through my books. I would be embarrassed to offer one to you. Too much of my soul would be hanging out in the pages.

St. Augustine reminded us that God has written his existence into our universe. He is there, always,  scribbling away, amending and mending his creation. We should read His  book again and again. We should make comments and ask Him questions.  I know He will be pleased that someone cares enough to join in the eternal conversation.

The Woods are Dark and Deep.

I found a wooded area today, not quite a forest, more like a savanna. The breeze was balmy and it made me feel good to walk through the bushes and trees that were extending new greenery which I could still see through.

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The trees and shrubs of the arboretum have been awake for two weeks. During the next month the trees will extend their canopy to block the sun which right now flashes splashes of light on the ground where Spring flowers and grasses grow. Soon, the lush bushes will hide the scenes I can see now.

The delicate pink flowers, called Yellowroot,  grow in patches in oases of light.  These Spring plants have to move fast to force their buds to bloom and bear seeds before the oaks and hickorys soak up all the light.

Like the old country boy I once heard about, I sat on a bench looking at the scene. When asked what he was doing, old man said he was just sitting: "Sometimes, I sits and thinks, and sometimes, I just sits."  This time I was thinking.

I sat there and with nobody listening, I spoke Frost's poem out loud. Forget that his poem is written about a winter scene. I think Robert Frost would have done equally well had it been Spring.
The gist of the poem goes like this:

"Whose woods these are, I think I know.
His house is in the village, though.
He will not see me stopping by to
see his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,
to stop without a farmhouse near,
the darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
to ask if there's been some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep of easy wind and
downy flake.

The woods are lovely dark and deep,
but I have promises to keep,
and miles to go before I sleep,
and miles to go before I sleep.

That wasn't odd enough, I suppose, so in the next moment, still sitting on the bench, I
recited out loud one of John Keats' last poems, a poem not
about Spring at all.  Here are some of the lines as I remember them:

"When I have fears that I may cease to be before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
before high pil-ed books in charactery hold like rich garners the full ripened grain,

And when I behold upon the night's starred face huge cloudy symbols of a high romance
 and think that I may never live to trace them with the magic hand of chance,

Then, on the shores of the wide world, I sit and think  'til love and fame to nothingness do sink."

I hope you don't mind that I've forgotten lines of both poems and even missed getting a word right here and there.  Today, these fragments of beauty and reflections on time's passing were God's gift to me, my first prayers of consolation in a long time.








 

Techy talk is Inappropriate.

Have you noticed how techy our casual conversations have become? Ask a millenial a simple question like "Are you going out tonight?" and the response is "I am not," instead of a simple "no."

"Are you wearing that outfit tomorrow?"  The answer is a declarative "I am." To my ear, It sounds like I'm having a conversation with a computer.  Whatever happened to "yes" and "no?"

Ask kids, "Whaddya know?" They can't recognize the question as colloquial English. 

"I am not getting along with my siblings," a teenager might say."I have four siblings."  It sounds like they are talking about tiny goldfish. "Sisters" and "brothers" are too gender specific. So we have to ask "What kind of siblings do you have, brothers? Sisters? Some of each?"

As a priest, I'm often confronted with generic statements  like "I had inappropriate conversations." Or,  I have an inappropriate relationship with my boyfriend."  What does that mean? A blue tie with yellow polka dots may be inappropriate with a green shirt, or any shirt.  What happened to words like "wrong," or  "sinful?" Which brings us to another contemporary edict.

"Do not judge!" That judgement is supposed to prohibit any further discussion of a behavior.
 I hear that all the time.  In our society any kind of behavior which expresses person hood is permitted as long as it doesn't interfere with anyone's behavior. By the way, whose standards do we use to decide that someone's behavior is inappropriate?  Of course, we judge.

Our Lord Jesus did not judge, right? What about when He gets sight of Jerusalem on His way there and declares that His beloved city, proud and unrepentant, will be destroyed. He weeps.

Of course we have to judge both our own behavior and the behavior of others. Our Lord simply reminds us to be sure we have judged our own souls first. Our consciences lead us to right judgement.
A sin, is a sin.  It's not simply inappropriate behavior.

If we lose the sense of sin, we also lose the perception of grace. Now, that would be an inappropriate thing to do.








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Reconciliation in Good Company

I went to three movies this week. I needed to let my heart and mind loose in someone else's
corral, to let go and  shake my head a few times. So, I saw "42," "A Place Beyond the Pines,"
and  "The Company You Keep." 

It worked. For a few hours, my mind and heart were involved with something else and not just me.
Over three days, I spent $21.50, $23.50 and $6.50 (no desire for popcorn and a coke so early in the am).

I enjoyed these films.  Although I'm a baseball fan, the least involving of the three films was the Jackie Robinson redux, "42."  The most violent was "A Place" and the most interesting was "The Company," a great story.

Good books are like friends who stop by for a few hours to share life with you.  Movies can do the
same thing, when the stories are good enough. Robert Redford's "The Company You Keep" included me somehow in the story line and it felt good.

I'm not a Redford fan so this film had to entice my heart and mind at another level.  That level was, for me, conscience and memory. What happens when the sins of the past do not remain  hidden? How do you reconcile the sins of the past with the self of the present?

After passing some time with an old friend, life seems more coherent and less threatening.  Somehow "Company" did that for me.  I think I'd go see Redford's movie again, if only for the fact that it encourages me to get on with my own story. I've got some reconciling to do, maybe you do, too.




 

A different Kind of Resurrection.

Last week I received notice that I had died. It was news to me. I hadn't noticed any changes.  I was still standing, thinking, functioning, doing my laundry....

Here's how my death notice took shape: It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and I had just returned to my room after celebrating the Eucharist. I noticed that the little red message light was on so I picked up the phone.  It was a friend of mine who lives in a small town. I hadn't talked with him in months.  He left a message: "Call me as soon as you get this."  So, I did.

His voice was shaking: "I'm so glad to hear your voice. I was told that you'd died. The guy next door was supposed to take you off some church directory because you had passed away."

I told him that I felt like Mark Twain who said as he got off the boat after an extended visit to Europe: "The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

After that we had a good chat which included the promise to  get together soon. The threat of being among the dearly departed becomes more real after you reach a certain age, so we make promises to one another.

I can tell you that to hear your own death notice is unsettling, although I thought of staying dead for a while so that I could hear what people would say about me at the wake.

Rumors are grounded in gossip. Gossip is born of a part of the human heart which grows weeds.
I dislike weeds and gossip.  Like weeds, gossip doesn't need encouragement to spring up anywhere.

Each of us should get very skillful at pulling up the weeds that come up now and then in those untended places of our hearts. Otherwise, we'll begin to share our weeds with other people. Then, new weeds grow and new species of weeds grow in their hearts.

Here --as I've pieced it together-- is how gossip begat my demise: Recently, a wonderful retired priest who used to minister at the parish I served at a few years ago passed away. Someone simply got the name wrong and I became the deceased. By not checking the facts (phoning the parish office?), the gossiper compounded his error by causing a group of people to mourn my death.

Gossip can result in funny situations (like the premature announcement of my death) but gossip can also ruin a person's reputation, or damage relationships. We have to be reminded of this by remembering that there is a commandment against it: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."

So, though I am very much alive and thriving, I'm not going to be adding anymore fertilizer to the ground that begets weeds. I've got my own gardens that I have to seed. First, though, I better pull up the weeds.