I was excited to see this
review of Mariette in Ecstasy, one of my favorite books by Ron Hansen, in
The Paris Review. The link was shared from the Image update. Not only is the book good, but the review by Nick Ripatrazone captures one of the reasons why so well: the strangeness of Catholicism. As the culture becomes more and more secular, it becomes harder and harder to live in it without standing out and harder and harder to explain what it means to be Catholic. Reason seems to be a lost art. One of the few ways to evangelize is through beauty - and the strangeness of Catholicism is often beautiful in its union of mystery and doctrine and liturgy.
Also in the Image update: a review of
my sister's CD, which is now out!
I just finished
Blackout and
All Clear by Connie Willis - over 1000 pages of reading in two weeks. Read about
them via Melissa Wiley's blog. Too many late nights I stayed up reading until my eyelids couldn't stay open. That's the kind of books these are: you have to race through and stay in the story until you reach the last page, the end of the journey. The books are about time travelling historians stuck in World War II London. At times the pace is slow - an editor might cut a couple hundred pages - but I enjoy long reads every now and again because the length allows time to attach to the characters more. On the other hand, long books take over my life, and I shouldn't be spending time right now on novels with the to-do list growing. Reading is a form of time travel itself - the reader becomes someone else in another place at another time during which time wrinkles and passes much more quickly.
I didn't mark too many quotes, but my favorite highlights from
All Clear were the characters of Sir Godfrey and the vicar of Backbury and the references to Agatha Christie - makes me want to reread some of her mysteries. It's not a scientific science fiction book - the explanation of time travel is a little sketchy, with "the Net" acting as a kind of surrogate for Providence. Definite religious overtones, especially with the central role of the picture of Jesus as "Light of the World" in St. Paul's and the repetition of the "All will be well" reassurance, but no overt discussion of God or faith, other than this one part, when the small town vicar gives a homily on hope at a bodyless funeral: "But the vital thing is that we act. We do not rely on hope alone, though hope is our bulwark, our light through dark days and darker nights. We also work, and fight, and endure, and it does not matter whether the part we play is large or small. The reason that God marks the fall of the sparrow is that he knows that it is as important to the world as the bulldog or the wolf. . . For it is through deeds that the war will be won, through our kindness and devotion and courage that we make the better world for which we long. So is is with heaven... By our deeds here on earth, in this world so far from the one we long for, we make heaven possible. We not only live in the hope of heaven, but, by each doing our bit, we bring in to pass."
My spiritual book this month was
A Right to Be Merry by Mother Mary Francis, which I read again for book club. (2010 was the last time:
http://backbayview.blogspot.com/2010/07/postcard-from-road.html)I love this little joyful description of cloistered life and the remarks on simplicity, which reminded me yet again of the importance of making do with less and the freedom of having fewer choices and a regular routine/habit/rule and the discipline of loving the irritable. I wonder how many young girls now form such a deep love of Christ that they would consider cloistered life as a way of unifying faith and life? Or am I projecting my own active charism, which in fact many young contemplatives still are discerning such a call?
The book is a great read for Advent, which we are marking with our same Advent traditions of lighting the wreath, opening the calendar, and pinning up a few Jesse tree items, but most of our Christmas stuff is still in boxes because of unexpected company this past weekend. Last night was the community's Christmas parade with the tree lighting on our main street after Santa's sleigh went by. Some of the kids were in the parade, but it was too dark to get good photos.
From
A Right to Be Merry:
"Laudate,
pueri Praise the Lord, ye children!"
"Virginity is not only a giving, but a receiving" : a fruitful, obedient, noble surrender.
An interesting part on education: "Education worthy of
the name is built on integration and correlation of knowledge. It has nothing
at all to do with the ability to spout facts like a geyser. Real educations
brings to flower the seeds of intelligence in the human mind. Intelligence is
quite independent of education, it is true,,, but education is a cultivation of
the intelligence; and the blossoms it produces are just as fragrant in the cloister as anywhere else, and just as necessary. ...
"A cloistered nun who has been trained to relate
one science to another will ordinarily be quicker to relate the unfolding
mysterious of the spiritual life one to another, and also to recognize the
superb paradox on which the interior life is built and in which all mysteries
discover their integrity: Humility is exaltation, effacement is enrichment,
death is life, and all the other facets of the one splendrous truth which is
Love. - cultivated mind cuts through the clutter"
"The greatest grace that a man can have
under heaven is to know how to live well with those among whom he dwells. - Br.
Giles
A Trappist wrote to Mother: "When you are convinced there is no fault
or sin, no matter how terrible, of which you are not capable, you will just
have begun to understand humility." .. St Clare: "For anger and worry
hinder charity in themselves as well as in others."
Mother writes about the mortification of common life - paying attention to details
of job - not selfish feelings, "for one may be more enfeebled by a passing
indisposition than another by a grave and prolonged illness" ... "Gertrude von le Fort wisely observed that we love one
another across an abyss." -Everyone has secret pains- there is value in the effort to subdue those pains
"To anyone who thinks that the Gospel cannot be
taken quite literally today, I can only borrow St. Andrew's words: 'Come and
see!' Wild and sweet our Gospel rule of life may be, wild as the world
considers voluntary penance, and sweet as the love of the Man in the Gospel" from Margery Kempe.
"All his life long, a man is walking
steadily toward the gate of eternity, so he can never truly make an exit ...
The joy of the enclosed contemplative life is stout-fibred and enduring
precisely because its roots reach down deep into the rich soil of willing
suffering. The choir doors are the binding on the diary of each nun's
soul"
And finally: "See what a small, poor, hidden Lord He is Who lay unknown in Bethlehem, but held the whole
world in His beating human heart. This is our season."
Last month's book club read was Love and Salt: A Spiritual Friendship in Letters, by Jessica Messman Griffith and Amy Andrews, another good one I think I mentioned already, although our conversation at book club wasn't too in depth about the book. I enjoyed the exploration of Amy's conversion, her struggle with faith and complacency, and Jessica's experience with grief and presence. We were a small group last month, and not everyone had finished the book, and I had read it in the summer, so it wasn't fresh in my mind. I do remember their letters seeming a bit overwrought at the beginning, but after the both have babies, they seem more grounded, less concerned with self and more concerned with the world and others. What a gift to have a friend with whom to share this thoughts and to be so matched in interests and spiritual inquiry and study!
Some good quotes: Jessica quotes C. S. Lewis: - "How can one be a
Christian and remain properly depressed? There is always the threat of
resurrection"
and St. Teresa of Avila: "the important thing is not to think much but to love much; and
do that which best stirs you to love" Interior Castle.
and The Lord of
the Rings : love what you are fitted to love - "you must start somewhere and
have some roots"
and Middlemarch about the fear of living "quiet lives, in unvisited tombs"
Meanwhile, Amy quotes Wendell Berry: "Religious faith begins with the discovery that there is no
evidence"
and Steve Martin: "The young are
always beautiful"
and Marilyn Robinson: "Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any
number of preceding civilizations"
and finally Teilhard de Chardin "I am afraid of the
future, too heavy with mystery and too wholly new, toward which time is driving
me."
So many words, ideas, and reflections go unnoted. Were we able to time travel and relive the small details that color our daily lives, would we do better about appreciating them?
