Care
I had a dream last night – make that several dreams – in one of which someone (my boss, of all people) quoted Gerard Manley Hopkins as we trekked through a wintry night: “Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!/Oh, look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!” Then he said something about the buzzing of many bees assuring us of the existence of one. I’m not sure what that was about, and it’s not anywhere in Hopkins’s sonnet. But I have to admit to being delighted to have a dream in which Hopkins is quoted.
It’s Candlemas today, aka the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. This is the time of year in which the candles are traditionally blessed, which I found out last year when I went to St. Stephen’s Church in Monett to watch my friend Cathy in her first service as a deacon. Also, naturally, to worship and take Eucharist. And just as it was snowing last year, it is snowing today: the world is cold and bleak and crusted with white. Monett went on to suffer badly in the May tornadoes; I wonder what this year will bring? It’s times like these that I can’t help but feel sanguine – because, after all, it is my blood that is keeping me warm (that, and a space heater and a pair of fluffy socks).
Richard Adams, in Watership Down, one of my first loves in adult fiction, says that humans don’t really love winter: what they love is feeling proof against it. And though I think he’s right, I also think that there’s a real stark beauty and serenity in winter: safe from its dangerous cold, we can look out our windows and appreciate the brownness, the retreat, the death and waiting that are the earth’s unconscious ritual. That is, if we are safe. Too many people are not.
Yesterday I visited Renaissance Books with my roommate and a friend of hers from temple, and I’m definitely going back: it’s the sort of New Age bookstore that is clean and cheerful, with suncatchers in the windows and bells and jewelry and candles and naturally-made clothing. Also some very nice books, including a few on Hildegard of Bingen that I eyed for a while before turning away. I bought a string of light little bells tied onto a bright-blue silk cord, and two tumbled gemstones: a citrine and an aquamarine, in honor of Elisabeth – it is a funny thing how characters take on a life of their own, which I’ll get to in a bit – and Jessica bought some frankincense candles. Frankincense, it transpires, is a purifying essence; and perhaps it is for that reason that it makes up a large part of church incense. In any case it smells nice. Jessica gave me one of the candles to burn in my room, and I spent my day off today quietly reading: candle burning, snow falling, jasmine tea, gentle light of an overcast day touching things with cold illumination, like a Vermeer painting. It’s things like these that bring out the child in me: I hang my string of bells, and gaze at my Pretty Rocks, and sigh with contentment.
My sister sent me a book, my belated Christmas present: Jesus the Jewish Theologian, by Brad H. Young. I think I will enjoy it very much, and look forward to reading it. I lent my copy of Your God is Too Safe by Mark Buchanan to Virginia, and she liked it and passed it on to Cathy, so there will probably soon be much to discuss.
Today I also opened up the file to “Shadow” Chapter 25, but I’m in one of those downswings with the story; at bottom I’m still pleased with its existence, but today the whole thing seems rather insipid. Writing-wise, I mean; what Erica says about the reality of characters to their author and the internal dialogue that goes on between them is still vividly there. I remember one day when I was still in high school, having this sudden galvanizing conviction about the – I won’t say realness, that makes it seem schizophrenic – living wholeness of one of my original characters, as immediate as if he might suddenly walk into the room. As Sayers says through Harriet Vane, it makes you feel like God on the seventh day – you see it and it is good: not good like a polite smatter of applause, but good in the sense of being a positive thing, itself indeed, primed for completion if not already perfect, like the Letter to the Hebrews says of Jesus.
Of course, with Elisabeth it is slightly different; being a deliberate self-insertion and wish-fulfillment, she is born of a different water. But in the end it seems to wind up the same genesis story – I now no more think of her as me than I do my other characters who may be more me than I realize. Which makes me think that if we were created to create, then probably we should not worry about self-insertion in this sense. Does God worry that his creatures are too much Him? That they are some embarrassing embodiment of His own wish-fulfillment? Bah. As long as I am being true to my craft, I rather think I need not worry either. This is what writers understand about theology; they understand enough to wrestle and worry, and love their work enough to pet the worry to sleep.
I think perhaps it has stopped snowing.
I had a dream last night – make that several dreams – in one of which someone (my boss, of all people) quoted Gerard Manley Hopkins as we trekked through a wintry night: “Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!/Oh, look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!” Then he said something about the buzzing of many bees assuring us of the existence of one. I’m not sure what that was about, and it’s not anywhere in Hopkins’s sonnet. But I have to admit to being delighted to have a dream in which Hopkins is quoted.
It’s Candlemas today, aka the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. This is the time of year in which the candles are traditionally blessed, which I found out last year when I went to St. Stephen’s Church in Monett to watch my friend Cathy in her first service as a deacon. Also, naturally, to worship and take Eucharist. And just as it was snowing last year, it is snowing today: the world is cold and bleak and crusted with white. Monett went on to suffer badly in the May tornadoes; I wonder what this year will bring? It’s times like these that I can’t help but feel sanguine – because, after all, it is my blood that is keeping me warm (that, and a space heater and a pair of fluffy socks).
Richard Adams, in Watership Down, one of my first loves in adult fiction, says that humans don’t really love winter: what they love is feeling proof against it. And though I think he’s right, I also think that there’s a real stark beauty and serenity in winter: safe from its dangerous cold, we can look out our windows and appreciate the brownness, the retreat, the death and waiting that are the earth’s unconscious ritual. That is, if we are safe. Too many people are not.
Yesterday I visited Renaissance Books with my roommate and a friend of hers from temple, and I’m definitely going back: it’s the sort of New Age bookstore that is clean and cheerful, with suncatchers in the windows and bells and jewelry and candles and naturally-made clothing. Also some very nice books, including a few on Hildegard of Bingen that I eyed for a while before turning away. I bought a string of light little bells tied onto a bright-blue silk cord, and two tumbled gemstones: a citrine and an aquamarine, in honor of Elisabeth – it is a funny thing how characters take on a life of their own, which I’ll get to in a bit – and Jessica bought some frankincense candles. Frankincense, it transpires, is a purifying essence; and perhaps it is for that reason that it makes up a large part of church incense. In any case it smells nice. Jessica gave me one of the candles to burn in my room, and I spent my day off today quietly reading: candle burning, snow falling, jasmine tea, gentle light of an overcast day touching things with cold illumination, like a Vermeer painting. It’s things like these that bring out the child in me: I hang my string of bells, and gaze at my Pretty Rocks, and sigh with contentment.
My sister sent me a book, my belated Christmas present: Jesus the Jewish Theologian, by Brad H. Young. I think I will enjoy it very much, and look forward to reading it. I lent my copy of Your God is Too Safe by Mark Buchanan to Virginia, and she liked it and passed it on to Cathy, so there will probably soon be much to discuss.
Today I also opened up the file to “Shadow” Chapter 25, but I’m in one of those downswings with the story; at bottom I’m still pleased with its existence, but today the whole thing seems rather insipid. Writing-wise, I mean; what Erica says about the reality of characters to their author and the internal dialogue that goes on between them is still vividly there. I remember one day when I was still in high school, having this sudden galvanizing conviction about the – I won’t say realness, that makes it seem schizophrenic – living wholeness of one of my original characters, as immediate as if he might suddenly walk into the room. As Sayers says through Harriet Vane, it makes you feel like God on the seventh day – you see it and it is good: not good like a polite smatter of applause, but good in the sense of being a positive thing, itself indeed, primed for completion if not already perfect, like the Letter to the Hebrews says of Jesus.
Of course, with Elisabeth it is slightly different; being a deliberate self-insertion and wish-fulfillment, she is born of a different water. But in the end it seems to wind up the same genesis story – I now no more think of her as me than I do my other characters who may be more me than I realize. Which makes me think that if we were created to create, then probably we should not worry about self-insertion in this sense. Does God worry that his creatures are too much Him? That they are some embarrassing embodiment of His own wish-fulfillment? Bah. As long as I am being true to my craft, I rather think I need not worry either. This is what writers understand about theology; they understand enough to wrestle and worry, and love their work enough to pet the worry to sleep.
I think perhaps it has stopped snowing.
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