Childish Things

When I was ten, I read fairy stories in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

-C. S. Lewis, quoted by Alan Jacobs, The Narnian, xxii.

Making the Best of Things

I shall put some red ruge on my face said Ethel because I am very pale owing to the drains in this house.

-Daisy Ashford, The Young Visiters

Super Skier

Well, they called him Super Skier
As he sat around the sundeck,
For he swore that he would never take a spill.
When they finally brought him down
They had to use three toboggans
To carry all the pieces down the hill.

CHORUS:
He was comin' down that slope
Goin' ninety miles an hour
When he caught an edge of his ski.
Well, his clothes, they were fast,
But the slopes, they were faster.
That's the last of Super Skier we shall see.

Well, he hollered, "What the hell!"
As he lined 'em parallel:
He figured there was nothing else to learn.
And as he started on his way,
He was shoutin', "Andele!",
Assuming that he'd never have to turn.

Well, he was slippin' down that slope
Goin' ninety miles an hour
When a mogul flipped him in the air.
His jumping form was fine
Until he ran into that pine,
And two one-legged skiers left from there.

(repeat CHORUS)

When he left that tree at last,
He was moving twice as fast.
Both halves were skimming moguls like a feather.
He said, "If I must be
A split personality,
How can I ever keep my knees together?"

One ski was headed north,
And the other headed west,
'Cause both of them, you see, were running freer.
And folks up on Little Nell
Looked up, scared as hell,
Said, "It's a bird." "No, it's a plane." "It's Super Skier!"

(repeat CHORUS)

Now the moral of my story
Though my story's kinda gory
For all you sundeck Charlies, there's still hope
Buy the fastest clothes you can,
Then talk skiing like a man,
But don't let people catch you on the slope!

Well he was comin' down that slope
Goin' ninety miles an hour
When he caught an edge of his ski.
Well, his clothes they were fast
But the slopes, they were faster.
That's the last of Super Skier we shall see.
That's the last of Super skier we shall see!

-Chad Mitchell Trio

Ministry

It is a crazy and foolish business to work for Christ in a world where most people most of the time don't give a hoot in hell whether you work for him or not. It is crazy and foolish to offer a service that most people most of the time think they need like a hole in the head. As long as there are bones to set and drains to unclog and children to tame and boredom to survive, we need doctors and plumbers and teachers and people who play the musical saw; but when it comes to the business of Christ and his church, how unreal and irrelevant a service that seems even, and at times especially, to the ones who are called to work at it.

-Frederick Buechner, "The Road Goes On," A Room Called Remember, 142.

Advice to Writers

Even if it keeps you up all night,
wash down the walls and scrub the floor
of your study before composing a syllable.

Clean the place as if the Pope were on his way.
Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration.

The more you clean, the more brilliant
your writing will be, so do not hesitate to take
to the open fields to scour the undersides
of rocks or swab in the dark forest
upper branches, nests full of eggs.

When you find your way back home
and stow the sponges and brushes under the sink,
you will behold in the light of dawn
the immaculate altar of your desk,
a clean surface in the middle of a clean world.

From a small vase, sparkling blue, lift
a yellow pencil, the sharpest of the bouquet,
and cover pages with tiny sentences
like long rows of devoted ants
that followed you in from the woods.

-Billy Collins, Sailing Alone Around the Room

The Clown in the Belfy

In the year 1831, it seems, this church was repaired and several new additions were made. One of them was a new steeple with a bell in it, and once it was set in place and painted, apparently, an extraordinary event took place. "When the steeple was added," Howard Mudgett writes in his history, "one agile Lyman Woodard stood on his head in the belfry with his feet toward heaven."

...Let us never forget Lyman Woodard...silhouetted up there against the blue Rupert sky. Let us join him in the belfry with our feet toward Heaven like his because Heaven is where we are heading. That is our faith and what better image of faith could there be? It is a little crazy. It is a little risky. It sets many a level head wagging. And it is also our richest treasure and the source of our deepest joy and highest hope.

-Frederick Buechner, The Clown in the Belfry, 115-117.

Verbal Snapshot

SKIING! I'd forgotten how much I enjoy whizzing along (not TOO fast), singing under my breath...

Verbal Snapshot

"My grandfather may have gone to the bathroom in your closet!!!"

(Point of clarification: I live in a renovated silk mill, and three of my closets bear a suspiciously strong resemblance to lavatory stalls. Still, this doesn't come up in conversation too often – and it's pretty exciting that one of my friends is the descendant of a guy who may have spent some quality time staring at the inside of my closet doors...)

Wachin Ksapa Yo!

Pay attention! In Lakota: wachin ksapa yo!—whose meaning is closer to "Be attentive" than to something we do sporadically. It's a continual manner of being.

-Walt Wangerin, Cancer Letter 17

Here in America

Saints and children we have gathered here to hear the sacred story
And I'm glad to bring it to you with my best rhyming and rhythm
'Cause I know the thirsty listen and down to the waters come
And the Holy King of Israel loves me here in America

And if you listen to my songs I hope you hear the water falling
I hope you feel the oceans crashing on the coast of north New England
I wish I could be there just to see them, two summers past I was
And the Holy King of Israel loves me here in America

And if I were a painter I do not know which I'd paint—
The calling of the ancient stars or assembling of the saints
And there's so much beauty around us for just two eyes to see
But everywhere I go I'm looking

And once I went to Appalachia for my father he was born there
And I saw the mountains waking with the innocence of children
And my soul is still there with them wrapped in the songs they brought
And the Holy King of Israel loves me here in America

And I've seen by the highways on a million exit ramps
Those two-legged memorials to the laws of happenstance
Waiting for four-wheeled messiahs to take them home again
But I am home anywhere if You are where I am

And if you listen to my songs I hope you hear the water falling
I hope you feel the oceans crashing on the coast of north New England
I wish I could be there just to see them, two summers past I was
And the Holy King of Israel loves me here in America

-Rich Mullins

Verbal Snapshot

Clearing off my car at 7 AM, the sky full of enormous flakes, and the trees weighed down by clumps of heavy, wet snow.

The Judgments of the Lord

Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God will that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

-Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address

Father Time

Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly on those who have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigour. With such people the grey head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.

-Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (hat tip Terry Teachout)

A Sustaining Book

Bear began to sigh, and then found he couldn't because he was so tightly stuck; and a tear rolled down his eye, as he said:

"Then would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would help and comfort a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?"

-A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Portrait by Weez

Some Have Brains and Some Haven't

Pooh is the favourite, of course, there's no denying it, but Piglet comes in for a good many things which Pooh misses; because you can't take Pooh to school without everybody knowing it, but Piglet is so small that he slips into a pocket, where it is very comfortable to feel him when you are not quite sure whether twice seven is twelve or twenty-two. Sometimes he slips out and has a good look in the ink-pot, and in this way he has got more education than Pooh, but Pooh doesn't mind. Some have brains, and some haven't, he says, and there it is.

-A. A. Milne, Winnie-The-Pooh

Verbal Snapshot

July.
Julie?
July.
Julie?
...

Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters

Cast your bread upon the waters,
for you will find it after many days.
Give a portion to seven, or even to eight,
for you know not what disaster may happen on earth.
If the clouds are full of rain,
they empty themselves on the earth,
and if a tree falls to the south or to the north,
in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.
He who observes the wind will not sow,
and he who regards the clouds will not reap.

As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.

In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.

-Ecclesiastes 11:1-6 (ESV)

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go

O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O Light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

-George Matheson

Verbal Snapshot

The first Winter Bible Study of 2008: playing Keep Away, reflecting on God's good plans for Joseph and for me, praying with friends in the stairwell.

Auld Lang Syne

I know a man, his name is Lang
He has a neon sign
And Mr Lang is very old
So they call it Old Lang’s Sign.

-Alan Sherman (Quoted by Mark Steyn)

Wisdom

In the literature of Scripture, wisdom is, broadly speaking, the knowledge of God’s world and the knack of fitting oneself into it...

-Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It's Supposed To Be, 115.

Prehistoric Pillow Fights

I have sometimes been haunted with a vague story about a wild and fantastic uncle, the enemy of parents and the cause of revolution in nurseries, who went about preaching a certain theory...that all the objects which children use at Christmas for what we call riotous or illegitimate purposes, were originally created for those purposes; and not for the humdrum household purposes which they now serve. For instance, we will suppose that the story begins with a pillow-fight in a night nursery; and boys buffeting and bashing each other with those white and shapeless clubs. The uncle, who would be a professor of immense learning and even greater imagination and inventiveness, would proceed to make himself unpopular with parents and popular with children, by proving that the pillow in prehistoric art is obviously designed to be a club...and that it was only afterwards, when weariness fell upon the world and the young gods had grown tired of their godlike sports, that they slept with their heads upon their weapons; and so, by a gradual dislocation of the whole original purpose of the pillow, it came to be recognized as having its proper place on a bed. -G. K. Chesterton, "Christmas and the First Games"

Oo-de-lally

Robin Hood and Little John
Walkin' through the forest
Laughin' back and forth
At what the other'ne has to say
Reminiscin', This-'n'-thattin'
Havin' such a good time
Oo-de-lally, Oo-de-lally
Golly, what a day

Never ever thinkin' there was danger in the water
They were drinkin', they just guzzled it down
Never dreamin' that a schemin' sherrif and his posse
Was a-watchin' them an' gatherin' around

Robin Hood and Little John
Runnin' through the forest
Jumpin' fences, dodgin' trees
An' tryin' to get away
Contemplatin' nothin'
But escape an' fin'lly makin' it
Oo-de-lally, Oo-de-lally
Golly, what a day
Oo-de-lally, Oo-de-lally
Golly, what a day

-Roger Miller

Verbal Snapshot

Four men on a couch.

Middle English

I have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon/Middle English by a friend who had to take it for her Ph.D. They told her to write an essay in Early Anglo-Saxon on any-subject-of-her-choosing. "Which is all very well," she said bitterly, "but the only essay subject you can find enough Early Anglo-Saxon words for is 'How to Slaughter a Thousand Men in a Mead Hall.'"

-Helene Hanff, 84 Charing Cross Road, 73.

Housecleaning Books

I houseclean my books every spring and throw out those I'm never going to read again like I throw out clothes I'm never going to wear again. It shocks everybody. My friends are peculiar about books. They read all the best sellers, they get through them as fast as possible, I think they skip a lot. And they NEVER read anything a second time so they don't remember a word of it a year later. But they are profoundly shocked to see me drop a book in the wastebasket or give it away. The way they look at it, you buy a book, you read it, you put it on a shelf, you never open it again for the rest of your life but YOU DON'T THROW IT OUT! NOT IF IT HAS A HARD COVER ON IT! Why not? I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.

-Helene Hanff, 84 Charing Cross Road, 54.