Just for Jim...

...a regrettably brief review from when I read That Hideous Strength last summer.


That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of my favorite books of all time. I was amazed upon this reading at how much of the story I had forgotten. The contents of the objective room and Arthur and Camille's attitude towards weather were actually my firmest memories. I also realized how much of Lewis's non-fiction writing was inter-woven throughout as I encountered themes that he wrote about throughout his career. That should come as no surprise considering how integrated was both his philosophy and his theology.

Also, I love this book because at moments the story is very strange. I'll have to locate my own copy of the book and read it again sometime in the next several years.

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A Review of *Out of the Silent Planet*...

...which I read in a matter of two days, and it only took me that long because of inevitable interruption. I hardly believe in moderation in the course of reading. I flirted with the idea of telling you the entire story earlier today (why I picked the book up, why I had to stop reading at 2:00 in the afternoon, etc.), but you will have to content yourself with only a brief review. This review is adapted from one that was published on GoodReads only moments before:

Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First I realized that I never could have read this book when I was any  younger. I lacked the patience, and could never have converted Lewis's descriptions into visualizations of thought. I was a great lover of dialogue in those days, and could not tolerate long expanses of description. It is a wonder I ever got through *Parelandra,* and no wonder I gained little from the experience.

This is a work of science fiction--and all that description implies. It is also a bit of a theological fancy. Makes for a great story of course.

Lewis envisions a society totally unlike ours, but similar to what ours might have been like, and then introduces elements of our own society as distorted by the fall of mankind, introduces them as a stranger would, in fact. You must, of course, read the book to find out what happens in consequence.

This book was of course wonderful, and I certainly suggest you read it.. I don't love it like I love *That Hideous Strength,* the third and final volume in the series, but still I say that it was very good. I like the way Lewis reveals himself as... at the end. I shall not say, for it might just spoil the book.

No really, the Lewis bit is only incidental to the rest of the narrative, but I like it. And it ties the book in more clearly with the first chapter of *Perelandra,* which has long been my favorite chapter of that particular book. Oh, yes, I love, love, love that first chapter. I have even quoted it from time to time.

I look forward to reading the whole book [*Perelandra*]in full again now that I am old enough to appreciate it as I never could have in my youth. I'm reminded of the inscription at the beginning of *The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,* which I first read when I was very young...and needs must quote here at some much later date.

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Madeleine L'Engle!

I just finished reading The Irrational Season by Madeleine L'Engle, and I'm still caught up in it. This book is just washing over me like what? Like rain?--Like--I can't even tell you what the book is about because I'm so caught up in gushing over it. All the same, I reprint the content of my review here, if only for your amusement. She's an interesting woman, that's for sure, and probably the most thoroughly feminine writer that I've ever tolerated, much less loved:

The Irrational Season by Madeleine L'Engle
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oh, I loved it and I love her. She's a challenge, and no mistake. I'm a big fan of complete and utter honesty, and yet L'Engle is sometimes a little too honest even for me. Some of her theology is a mite odd, but she is so incredibly real, and speaks to me in terms I can understand that might seem a bit too intuitive to some folks, but L'Engle must have been okay with that.

L'Engle embraces mystery. That's what I like best about her. She confesses her lifelong bouts with atheism, and yet her theism is more real than some people's sincerest belief, and that is one of the things that appeals to me about her. And her understanding--she understands so much.

Still sometimes she says things I had rather she didn't say.

This is a completely unhelpful review. If you've read much of her non-fiction you already know what her writing is like. Her mind flits from idea to idea, and she captures this beautifully on paper. Her writing is less rigorously structured than most, and yet she circles around certain ideas, repeating phrases, repeating her idea's patterns to form a meditation on what it means to be God's creature.

Mostly she writes about the sadness and pain of living in a world corrupted. She has reproduced her own poetry liberally throughout. So much of this book is autobiographical, in fact that is probably its official category, but L'Engle said that all of her writing was autobiographical, because in order to write something she had to know it, know it intimately, personally and well.

Like I said, not a useful review, but I think Madeleine L'Engle was a marvelous person, who wrote a marvelous book, and this one has me wanting to read or reread everything the woman ever wrote. And that is that.

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Morning has Come

I was going to save this until tomorrow, but have decided to go ahead and publish it anyhow.

I've told you that I feel tremendous relief with this being a new year and all. I told Michael how I did not understand why I would feel miserable in November and December, then suddenly hopeful with the turning of the year, but the Madeleine L'Engle selection I've already shared with you this week sort of answers that question for me. The chapter of The Irrational Season that I quoted from takes it's title from Romans 13:12, "The night is far spent," where L'Engle speaks of advent, the beginning of a new year according to the liturgical church calendar:

In the Christian Church these weeks leading up to Christmas, this dark beginning of our new near, is also traditionally the time of thinking of last things, of the 'eschaton,' the end.

The night is far spent. The day is at hand (2).

People are so often sad at Christmas. They miss their loved ones who are gone. They miss the sunlight, slogging through days that are so often dark and gray. Most of us miss out on fresh air entirely as we spend our few and precious daylight hours locked away inside an office building, behind a desk. The Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons are hard, hard, hard. There's all the pressure of decorating your house if you have a family, buying presents using money you may not have, accumulating debts: debts of money, of sleep, of routine.

What I never knew before is that with the turning of the year the days are getting longer. I start feeling like I can work again. I start remembering how to keep track of all those little details I must keep track of: the contents of the pantry, the history of our lives documented in receipts. Organization at home becomes just a little easier.

It amazes me that for nine months out of the year I have little difficulty tracking all the details associated with spending. No problem paying the bills. No problem filling out the spending log. No problem doing desk work in the middle of the day. There are three months in the year when the task become virtually impossible. Why? Because of darkness. Because of all the extra tasks associated with the season, when I have a hard enough time coping with the regular day-to-day.

We had a Christmas tree, assembled in our living room, decorated by my children, the first purposed Christmas tree I have had in five years of my first-born's life. I couldn't manage anything else, the boxes remained scattered around for the entirety of the season. The kitchen never got quite clean. Presents were wrapped a few short hours before they were opened. But we had Christmas lights inside our house and we had a Christmas tree. This was a huge deal for me.

But look at Romans 13:11-12 with me for a moment:

And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light (NIV).

I'll let you find the context for yourself. The point I'm making here is that somehow, and quite miraculously, the dark night of the holiday season is now over. I think we Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus at this time because his was the light which came to illuminate our darkness. Now the new year has begun, and not just symbolically, but also in actuality, we move into the light. Often I think that all of life, God's ordering of the seasons, is a metaphor for our relationship with Him. I think that people who work the land know this better than we do, those whose every activity is governed by sun and rain and wind.

Moving from the sacred from the profane (though if all of life is a metaphor as I've proposed, then all of life becomes more obviously sacred), I'm still behind from 2011. I still have this mountain of work on top of me, and the mountain is growing. Even when I have the unfortunately rare, disciplined day in which I work with a will toward accomplishing my goals, a confluence of events prevents the progress that I crave. The timing of certain things has not yet begun to work out well for me this year. Last night I went to bed feeling buried.

This morning I still feel buried. I'm praying, "God, I can't do this job, but You can. You can get me through this day, help me organize my time to make tomorrow a little better. Because today there is too much and I won't be able to do it all."

You take one step. And then you recalculate quickly, or slowly, then take another. At least that is the plan. If necessary, you break every task down into fifteen minutes increments, and take a break ever forty-five, if you're following the flylady plan. I don't, typically, but when I've had to, it's worked a treat.

When this is published finally tomorrow, maybe I'll be feeling a little better. Maybe things will be just a little less a mess. It is January now, which means it is just that little bit easier for me to hope.

Spiritualizing Bill Bryson on the Brits

I read something else I thought delightful earlier this week, on a sunny afternoon before the cold came. Another day, another quoted passage, this one from Bill Bryson's book, Notes from a Small Island:

One of the charms of the British is that they have so little idea of their own virtues, and nowhere is this more true than with their happiness. You will laugh to hear me say it, but they are the happiest people on earth. Honestly. Watch any two Britons in conversation and see how long it is before they smile or laugh over some joke or pleasantry. It won't be more than a few seconds....

And the British are so easy to please. It is the most extraordinary thing. They actually like their pleasures small. That is why so many of their treats--tea cakes, scones, crumpets, rock cakes, rich tea biscuits, fruit Shrewsburys--are so cautiously flavorful. They are the only people in the world who think of jam and currants as thrilling constituents of a pudding or cake. Offer them something genuinely tempting--a slice of gateau or a choice of chocolates from a box--and they will nearly always hesitate and begin to worry that it's unwarranted and excessive, as if any pleasure beyond a very modest threshold is vaguely unseemly.

"Oh, I shouldn't really," they say.

"Oh, go on," you prod encouragingly.

"Well, just a small one then ," they say and dartingly take a small one, and then get a look as if they have just done something terribly devilish. All this is completely alien to the American mind. To an American the whole purpose of living, the one constant confirmation of continued existence, is to cram as much sensual pleasure as possible into one's mouth more or less continuously. Gratification, instant and lavish, is a birthright. You might as well say "Oh, I shouldn't really" if someone tells you to take a deep breath.

I used to be puzzled by the curious attitude of the British to pleasure, and that tireless, dogged optimism of theirs that allowed them to attach an upbeat turn of phrase to the direst inadequacies--"Mustn't grumble," "It makes a change," "You could do worse," " It's not much, but it's cheap and cheerful," "Well, it was quite nice"--but gradually I came around to their way of thinking and my life has never been happier. I remember finding myself sitting in damp clothes in a cold cafe on a dreary seaside promenade and being presented with a cup of tea and a tea cake and going, "Ooh, lovely!" and I knew then that the process had started. Before long I came to regard all kinds of activities--asking for more toast in a hotel, buying wool-rich socks at Marks & Spencer, getting two pairs of pants when I really needed only one--as something daring, very nearly illicit. My life become immensely richer (79-80).

I have no idea at all whether any of this is true of Britons. Bryson could even mock this idea of small pleasures and I might never notice (by which I do not mean to imply that he is). All the same I find this passage inspiring and have read it several times already, even before typing it up this evening. Somehow it reminds me of Bonhoeffer, who says our only good as Christians is Christ, implying that every other joy we experience is extra and mediated through Him. It reminds me of Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith. It is almost as though Bryson were describing a quality of life developed through praise.

I see connections in my reading I could never have planned. I've been reading 31 Days of Praise by Ruth Meyer lately, and have even given copies to certain members of my husband's family. It' is a lovely little book and full of truth. Living a life of praise makes one available to simpler pleasures. Though it isn't intrinsic to my nature as an introvert, as a melancholy being given to overindulgence in self-examination, I begin to value praise, and I see something valuable in the attitude Bryson describes, not guilt but exuberance. I wait to see God's glory revealed at every turn.

Why I'm So Excited about the New Year

A. I hate it when people post extensive quotations on their blogs. I hardly ever read them. I hate it even more when they post very short quotations on their blogs with little or no comment.

B. I am going to post an extensive quotation on my blog. I was reading Madeline L'Engle this afternoon, a woman who astounds me with her insight right down into the middle of my soul, and the peculiar way that God made me. 

It's funny how so much of my reading these days seems to have come down to me right from the mouth of God, right into my questions and my longings. Even if no one in the entire world ever understood me, God does. And I am so very tired of being misunderstood.

You know if you've been reading my blog, or my facebook profile, that I struggle with depression during the winter months. The short days seem to suck the life right out of me, and there are many times in the dark and cold when I am sad, or anxious, or afraid. According to what I just read, it isn't only Seasonal Affective Disorder or a chemical imbalance that is to blame. It is something so much deeper than that.

Madeleine L'Engle, from The Irrational Season:

A new year can begin only because the old year ends. In northern climates this is especially apparent. As rain turns to snow, puddles to ice, the sun rises later and sets earlier; and each day it climbs less high in the sky. One time when I went with my children to the planetarium I was fascinated to hear the lecturer say that the primitive people used to watch the sun drop lower on the horizon in great terror, because they were afraid that one day it was going to go so low that it would never rise again; they would be left in unremitting night. There would be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and a terror of great darkness would fall upon them. And then, just as it seemed that there would never be another dawn, the sun would start to  come back; each day it would rise higher, set later.

Somewhere in the depths of our unconsciousness we share that primordial fear, and when there is the first indication that the days are going to lengthen, our hearts, too, lift with relief. The end has not come: joy! and so a new year makes its birth known (2, my emphasis).

L'Engle is rather mystical, but then again, so am I. I have always been a big believer in new beginnings, in meaning that is transmitted to us through everything we see, everything we experience, everything we taste. God speaks of Himself to us in this. I am thrilled by the turning of the year, even if the rhythm of the days hasn't changed, or our circumstances, or our surroundings. It's a new year. All has been made new.

If you tell me that the turning of the year is merely symbolic, I ask you what a symbol is if not a representation of truth? I make no claim that every symbol is authentic, that it definitionally means what it claims to. On the other hand, the fact that we call something a symbol does not mean that it is not real, that it is imaginary by default. For a moment L'Engle helps me to understand why this is so.

She goes on to say something in the next paragraph that resonates with me this afternoon, something I have thought over and over again, but I'll save it for another day. This may be a week of quotations.