The Fullness of our Manger

He is the fullness of our manger because 'the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.' So that man might eat the Bread of angels, the Creator of the angels became man...

...But, what eye has not seen, what ear has not heard, and what has not entered into the heart of man He promised to show to those who love Him. Until this favor is granted to us, until He shows us what will completely satisfy us, until we drink to satiety of that fountain of life, while we wander about, apart from Him but strong in faith, while we hunger and thirst for justice, longing with an unspeakable desire for the beautiful vision of God, let us celebrate with fervent devotion His birthday in the form of a servant. Since we cannot, as yet, understand that He was begotten by the Father before the day-star, let us celebrate His birth of the Virgin in the nocturnal hours. Since we do not comprehend how His name existed before the light of the sun, let us recognize His tabernacle placed in the sun. Since we do not, as yet, gaze upon the Son inseparably united with His Father, let us remember Him as the 'bridegroom coming out of his bride-chamber.' Since we are not yet ready for the banquet of our Father, let us grow familiar with the manger of our Lord Jesus Christ.

-Augustine, "Sermon on the Nativity"

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Ah, how had I missed the symbolism of the manger - filled, not with the bread of beasts, but with the Bread of angels, the Bread of life! Merry Christmas, and may your manger be full!

Thou Hast Enlarged Me...

Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer.

-Psalm 4:1, KJV

Philadelphia Highs

1. Arriving (despite my navigational shortcomings)!
2. Slot car racing fanatics at the local hobby store
3. Introducing Mikr to major chain restaurants (P. F. Chang's, Chipotle)
4. Watching Say Yes to the Dress
5. Creepily monolithic architecture in Harrisburg
6. Used book shopping at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore and Harvest Book Company
7. Banjo-playing accompaniment to used book shopping
8. Beautiful stone architecture in Philadelphia environs
9. Church with Mikr's landlord / college roommate and family
10. Bill Mallonee concert...
10a. BYOB
10b. Presbyterian bonding
10c. Meeting Bill!!!
11. Making it home (despite my check engine light and alarming car misbehavior)!

Other People's Heads

Other people's heads are too wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat.

- Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

The Wrong Things

If we cannot stop envying, it seems especially poignant that we should be constrained to spend so much of our lives envying the wrong things.

- Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

Howling and Stubborn Characters

Babies cannot, by definition, repay their caretakers with worldly rewards. In so far as they are loved and looked after, it is therefore for who they are, identity understood in its barest, most stripped-down state. They are loved for, or in spite of, their uncontrolled, howling and stubborn characters.

- Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

Hedera

Behold the hedera: ❧

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, "[the hedera] appears in 8th-century manuscripts, separating text from commentary, and after a period out of fashion it made an unexpected return in early printed books. Then it faded from view."

Just the punctuation mark I've been searching for—bring back the hedera!

Regrets

-Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

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Click on this comic for a sharper, easier-to-read image.

Two Love Stories

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first--the story of our quest for sexual love--is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially acceptable and celebrated. The second--the story of our quest for love from the world--is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too.

-Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

How to Read

The critic said that once a year he read Kim; and he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love—he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn't help himself. To him it wasn't a means to a lecture of article, it was an end; he read it not for anything he could get out of it, but for itself. And isn't this what the work of art demands of us?...So I say to you, for a closing sentence, Read at whim! read at whim!

-Randall Jarrell, quoted by Alan Jacobs in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

Packing for the Cape!

Kidlit The Middle Moffat, Eleanor Estes The Defense of Thaddeus A. Ledbetter, John Gosselink Reckless, Cornelia Funke Penny From Heaven, Jennifer L. Holm Unexpected Magic, Diana Wynne Jones Hattie Big Sky, Kirby Larson The Savage, David Almond, illus. Dave McKean A Single Shard, Linda Sue Park The Sherwood Ring, Elizabeth Marie Pope Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, Gardy D. Schmidt Adultlit Cover Her Face, P. D. James Gilead, Marilynne Robinson Joy in the Morning, Betty Smith

The Cataract of the Cliff of Heaven...

The cataract of the cliff of heaven fell blinding off the brink
As if it would wash the stars away as suds go down a sink,
The seven heavens came roaring down for the throats of hell to drink,
And Noah he cocked his eye and said, “It looks like rain, I think,
The water has drowned the Matterhorn as deep as a Mendip mine,
But I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.”

-G. K. Chesterton, "Water and Wine" (full poem posted here)

Hurrican Preparedness

1) Apartment thoroughly cleaned from top to bottom, including window washing and a (surprise) complimentary carpet shampoo. Not sure about the logic of this cleaning frenzy, but I think it has something to do with battening the hatches.
2) Laundry laundered.
3) Bathtub / fridge / freezer filled with water.
4) Electronic gizmos fully charged and unplugged, in case of power surges.
5) Flashlights loaded and operational.
6) Stack of books and DVDs acquired from the library.
7) Chex mix made.
8) Slowly recovering from injuries incurred while washing windows. (See #1, and bear in mind that my windows are pretty tall, and washing them involves standing on a chair...that I may have fallen off of. Ouch.)

Bananas

In the whole story of the world, bananas have never once been a special treat.

-Gary Schmidt, Okay for Now

Broken Things

There aren't too many things around that are whole, you know. You look hard at most anything, and it's probably beat up somewhere or other. Beat up, or dinged up, or missing a piece, or tattoed. Or maybe something starts out whole and then it turns into junk, like Joe Pepitone's cap getting rained on in a gutter somewhere. Probably you can't even tell it's a cap anymore. Probably you wouldn't even want to pick it up if you saw it. But it didn't start that way. It started as Joe Pepitone's cap, and when he was out in the field, the sun was beating down on it from above the stands of Yankee Stadium and he could smell the grass and the dirt and the infield beneath its brim.

When you find something that's whole, you do what you can to keep it that way.

And when you find something that isn't, then maybe it's not a bad idea to try to make it whole again. Maybe.

-Gary Schmidt, Okay for Now

90 Second Newberry Presents: A Wrinkle in Time

- "A Wrinkle In Time" In 90 Seconds from James Kennedy

Heartless

All children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless at all.

-Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, 4.

Unruly Things

Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. That is why we much close them up in thick, solid books so they cannot get out and cause trouble.

-Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, 36.

Faithfulness

I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful, one hundred percent.

-Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg

The Virtues of Pyjamas

It was Oswald who asked Father to let us have pyjamas instead of nightgowns; they are so convenient for dressing up when you wish to act clowns, or West Indian planters, or any loose-clothed characters.

-E. Nesbit, Oswald Bastable and Others, 46

Except Me

We all think a great deal too much of ourselves. We all believe--every man, woman, and child of us--in our very insidest inside heart, that no one else in the world is at all like us, and that things happen to us that happen to no one else. Now, this is a great mistake, because however different we may be in the colour of our hair and eyes, the inside part, the part that we feel and suffer with, is pretty much alike in all of us. But no one seems to know this except me.

-E. Nesbit, Oswald Bastable and Others, 123.

The Real Business of Life

Adventures are the real business of life. The rest is only in-betweenness--what Albert's uncle calls padding. He is an author.

-E. Nesbit, Oswald Bastable and Others, 35.

***

Hmmm...not sure I agree with you, Oswald. I think the padding is kind of under-rated.

The Quality of Mercy

I handed the test in five minutes before the end of the day. Mrs. Baker took it calmly, then reached into her bottom drawer for an enormous red pen with a wide felt tip. "Stand here and we'll see you've done," she said, which is sort of like a dentist handing you a mirror and saying, "Sit here and watch while I drill a hole in your tooth." The first four were wrong, and she slashed through my answers with a broad swathe of bright red ink. It looked like the test was bleeding to death.

"Not such a good beginning," she said.

"The quality of mercy is not strained," I said.

-Gary D. Schmidt, The Wednesday Wars, 60.

Kidlit for Grown-Ups, Part 2

Men of Iron, Howard Pyle Historic Fantasy / Jr High & Highschool /Pub 1919 Recommended by Janice Linnea in Monet's Garden, Cristina Bjork & Lena Anderson (illus) Picture Book / Elementary / Pub 1987 Recommended by Janice A Ring of Endless Light, Madeleine L'Engle Realistic Fantasy / Jr High & Highschool / Pub 1980 Recommended by Leta When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead Realistic SciFi / Jr High & Highschool / Pub 2009 Recommended by Lissy Emily of New Moon, L. M. Montgomery Historic Fiction / Jr High & Highschool / Pub 1923 Recommended by Liz Stories Jesus Told, Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen (illus) Picture Book / Preschool & Elementary / Pub 2005 Recommended by Sherry Max's New Suit, Rosemary Wells Picture Book / Preschool & Elementary / Pub 1979 Recommended by Sherry Waiting for Normal, Leslie Connor Realistic Fiction / Jr High & Highschool / Pub 2008 Recommended by Beth

Proof

Proving the existence of God is fairly easy. Any idiot can take a stab at that. As one might say in Chicagoese: What, you think all of this made itself up? Yeah. Sure.

-Carlos Eire, Learning to Die in Miami, 302.

Irenaeus, the World to Come, and Bowling

Irenaeus of Lyons, a second-century Christian bishop, once said that in the world to come, the fruits and vegetables will all beg to be picked and eaten, and actually try to outshout one another, all crying in unison, "Pick me, eat me, eat me." The first time I ever read that passage in Irenaeus, years later, I thought of the sound made by bowling pins when they're struck by a fast-rolling ball.

"Knock us down, hit us as hard as possible. Kill us, reduce us to splinters."

And could there be any sight sweeter than those pins scattering in all directions?

-Carlos Eire, Learning to Die in Miami, 86.

Fictional People

If you see someone unable to boil a kettle, open a sash window or understand he has an appalling haircut, it probably means he's fictional. -Jasper Fforde, One of Our Thursdays is Missing

Vocation

As an Odd-Fish, it is not my job to be right, said Sir Oort. "It is my job to be wrong in new and exciting ways."

-James Kennedy, The Order of Odd-Fish, 175.

Kidlit for Grown-Ups

This summer I'm hosting a children's lit club for grown-ups. Here's the list of book recommendations from our first meeting: My Father's Dragon, Ruth Stiles Gannett Elementary / Fantasy / Published 1948 Recommended by Emily Reckless, Cornelia Funke Jr High & Highschool / Fantasy / Published 2010 Recommended by Emily Pictures of Hollis Woods, Patricia Reilly Giff Late Elementary & Jr High / Realistic Fiction / Published 2003 Recommended by Elissa Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt Late Elementary & Jr High / Realistic Fantasy / Published 1975 Recommended by Leta Otto of the Silver Hand, Howard Pyle Jr High & Highschool / Historic Fantasy / Published 1888 Recommended by Kathryn Operation Bonnet, Kimberly Stuart Highschool & Young Adult / Comedy of Errors / Published 2011 Recommended by Kathryn The Jesus Storybook Bible, Sally Lloyd-Jones and Jago Preschool & Elementary / Picture Book / Published 2007 Recommended by Sherry Phoenix Rising, Karen Hesse Jr High & Highschool / Realistic Fiction / Published 1994 Recommended by Liz Ice, Arthur Geisert Preschool & Elementary / Picture Book (no text) / Published 2011 Recommended by Beth Cosmic, Frank Cottrell Boyce Jr High & Highschool / Realistic Fantasy / Published 2008 Recommended by Beth The Perilous Gard, Elizabeth Marie Pope Jr High & Highschool / Historic Fantasy / Published 1971 Recommended by Lydia (email entry!)

Evening

Here dies another day,
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?

-G.K. Chesterton, quoted by Douglas Wilson in "Thanks for the Thanks", May/June 2011 issue of Books and Culture

Easter Day

Beauty now for ashes wear,
Perfumes for the garb of woe.
Chaplets for disheveled hair,
Dances for sad footsteps slow;
Open wide your hearts that they
Let in joy this Easter Day.

-Gerard Manly Hopkins, excerpt from "Easter"

Cheese

Some cultures are defined by their relationship to cheese.

-Benny & Joon

A Sick Day for Amos McGee

-Such a beautiful book, by Philip & Erin Stead. Hat tip: Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Snow

You wake up on a winter morning and pull up the shade, and what lay there the evening before is no longer there--the sodden gray yard, the dog droppings, the tire tracks in the frozen mud, the broken lawn chair you forgot to take in last fall. All this has disappeared overnight, and what you look out on is not the snow of Narnia but the snow of home, which is no less shimmering and white as it falls. The earth is covered with it, and it is falling still in silence so deep that you can hear its silence. It is snow to be shoveled, to make driving even worse than usual, snow to be joked about and cursed at, but unless the child in you is entirely dead, it is snow, too, that can make the heart beat faster when it catches you by surprise that way, before your defenses are up. It is snow that can awaken memories of things more wonderful than anything you ever knew or dreamed.

-Frederick Buechner, The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairytale, 83.

Brotherly Love

"Wheeler, do you know why we've been friends?"

"I've thought so," Wheeler says. He has thought so because of that company of friends to which they both belong, which has been so largely the pleasure and meaning of both their lives. "But why?"

"Because we ain't been brothers."

"What are you talking about?" Wheeler says.

But he is afraid he knows, and his discomfort is apparent to them all...

"If we'd been brothers, you wouldn't have put up with me. Or anyhow you partly wouldn't have, because a lot of my doings haven't been your kind of doings. As it was, they could be tolerable or even funny to you because they wasn't done close enough to you to matter. You could laugh...

"Wheeler, if we're going to get this will made out, not to mention all else we've got to do while there's breath in us, I think you've got to forgive me as if I was a brother to you." He laughs, asserting for the last time the seniority now indisputably his, and casting it aside. "And I reckon I've got to forgive you for taking so long to do it."

-Wendell Berry, That Distant Land, 362-363.

The Line of Succession

"I mean you're a man indebted to a dead man. So am I. So was he. That's the story of it. Back of you is Jack Beechum. Back of him was Ben Feltner. Back of him was, I think, his own daddy. And back of him was somebody else, and on back that way, who knows how far? And I'm back of you because Jack Beechum is, and because he's back of me, along with some others. It's no use to want to make it on your own, because you can't..."

Elton laughs. "The line of succession I'm in says you've got to make it on your own. I'm in the line of succession of root, hog, or die."

"That may have been the line of succession you were in, but it's not the one you're in now. The one you're in now is different."

"Well, how did I get in it?" Elton says almost in a sigh, as if longing to be out of it.

"The way you got in it, I guess, was by being chosen. The way you stay in it is by choice."

-Wendell Berry, That Distant Land, 284.

The Lord is Thy Keeper

The Christian life is not a quiet escape to a garden where we can walk and talk uninterruptedly with our Lord; not a fantasy trip to a heavenly city where we can compare our blue ribbons and gold medals with others who have made it to the winner's circle. The Christian life is going to God. In going to God Christians travel the same ground that everyone else walks on, breathe the same air, drink the same water, shop the same stores, read the same newspapers, are citizens under the same governments, pay the same prices for groceries and gasoline, fear the same dangers, are subject to the same pressures, get the same distresses, are buried in the same ground.

The difference is that each step we walk, each breath we breathe, we know we are preserved by God, we know we are accompanied by God, we know we are ruled by God; and therefore no matter what doubts we endure or what accidents we experience, the Lord will preserve us from evil, he will keep our life.

-Eugene Peterson on Psalm 121, quoted by James Calvin Schaap, "The Professor's Death Song," Books and Culture, Jan/Feb 2011, 37.