They Say this Guy's Pretty Smart...

...and I agree. A bit of wisdom from this fella' who seemed to understand that intelligence is nothing without creativity...that life is a balance of faith and fact...that any endeavor, great or small, requires imagination.

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. "

"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."

~~Albert Einstein

One of Those Paradoxes...

I found this little gem in the middle of Troubling a Star...I'm still soaking it in and I'll leave it for you to consider:

"...until we accept our mortality we cannot even glimpse the wonder of our immortality."
-M. L'Engle

A big thought, isn't it?

Prose from Picasso

"Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth."
~Picasso

Which makes me think of a big point that M. L'Engle makes in her book that I'm reading right now (The Rock that is Higher: Story as Truth)...facts do not always make the truth. Facts can be solid and seem logical, but they do not always take into account the heart or the eternal picture or the knowledge that nothing is impossible to those who believe...which leads to faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen....which leads to hold on. The truth is, in spite of the facts, that the best is yet to come. Events and people and love can unfold like you've never seen, like you've never imagined...God can do above and exceedingly beyond what we can even think to ask...He is art and truth and His creativity is limitless.

A Thought On Dreams

"I think a life of wishes, once we are adults, is no life at all. It is one thing, as children, when we are powerless, to turn to stars and wishbones and candles on a cake to make our dreams come true. But as adults, we need none of that. We can take charge of our dreams -- if we dare."
-Barbara Lazear Ascher
----"On Passion," in The Habit of Loving

Mid-Week Musing

Our pastor used a quote last Sunday by a fellow named Stephen Grellet. I liked the quote and so looked up Mr. Grellet, who turned out to have had quite an interesting life. Anyone who starts out as a body-guard for King Louis XVI, escapes an order to be executed during the French Revolution, and ends up as a Quaker missionary in America definitely would have a few life-lessons up his (ruffled, in this case) sleeve.

These were his words that caught my attention and make me want to get out there and do something:

"I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good things, therefore, that I can do, any kindness that I can show a fellow being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."

My Kind of Optimism

"Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better."

~Samuel Beckett

Gotta' Love This

I'm reading Joe Jones by Anne Lamott...and just came across this quote that made me laugh in recognition: "She thinks: Being me is just so time consuming."

In Memory

Buzzdroid's challenge.

If you have a blog, please accept buzzdroid's challenge to remember Virginia Tech's victims and families today, April twentieth.

Here's a quote from Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey that I came across during research for my novel this morning. It seems to apply:

"A witness to the deaths, wanting to make sense of them and explain the ways of God to his fellow human beings, examined the lives of the people who died, and these words were said by someone who knew the victims, and who had been through the many emotions, and the many stages, of bereavement and loss.
"But soon we will die, and all memories of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love. The only survival, the only meaning."

From The Brains of Others

It's a breezy, bluesy day here in small-town America. We've done the errand running thing today, and I'm hoping the afternoon will be filled with peaceful house straightening, new flower planting (yay!), and at least a solid hour of novel writing.

I'm a bit tired, which I can blame directly on Neil...he brought home the first season of Lost last night and we both stayed up too late watching the first few episodes. I've never seen any of the show and wasn't sure that I'd like it...but it's just so intriguing. Three and a half (I fell asleep) episodes in, I want to know what happens to these people. And why there's a polar bear in the jungle. And what in the world that mysterious monstrous creature is...

Anyway, since my own brain seems to be full of randomness, I figure I'll share with you a few interesting quotes that have challenged me lately...

"And know this: whenever you find yourself writing a single word or phrase or page dutifully and with boredom, then leave it out. Something is wrong. It is dragged in. It isn't your true self talking." ~Brenda Ueland

Also from Brenda Ueland - "For in fiction, Chekhov said, you can pose a question (about poverty, morality, or whatever it is) but you must not answer it. As soon as you answer it, the readers know you are lying, ie forcing your characters to prove something."

And this interesting view of story in our lives...
"You're given a mythology in this life, the way you're given a body, a family, a country. You can reject it if you like - starve it, laugh in its face, run away into exile - but it's still your mythology. There's always the chance of redemption." ~Ariel Gore, from The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show

To elaborate just a bit on the quote on mythology...here's part of the expanded definition provided by Wikipedia: Myths are narratives about divine or heroic beings, arranged in a coherent system, passed down traditionally, and linked to the spiritual or religious life of a community, endorsed by rulers or priests. Once this link to the spiritual leadership of society is broken, they lose their mythological qualities and become folktales or fairy tales. In folkloristics, which is concerned with the study of both secular and sacred narratives, a myth also derives some of its power from being more than a simple "tale", by comprising an archetypical quality of "truth".

Looking at life in 'story' terms is appealing to me...maybe because my entire life, one way or another has been inundated in language, in the arcs of messages. Reading, obviously, brought me into this way of thinking...but I also attribute it to the years listening to my grandfathers and my dad preaching...the Bible, in itself, is a hugely taken for granted literary resource. And when ministers use it to convey some message - it's a powerful thing. Jesus Himself used parables to get ideas across to people - something in us, innately, responds to stories.
So do we each have our own mythology, our own story? I think so. Here are a few more quotes, taken from the pages of The Sacred Romance, that say exactly what I wish to say about all of this.

"We live in narrative, we live in story. Existence has a story shape to it. We have a beginning and an end, we have a plot, we have characters." ~Eugene Peterson

"Our loss of confidence in a larger story is the reason we demand instant gratification. We need a sense of being alive now, for now is all we have. Without a past that was planned for us and a future that waits for us, we are trapped in the present. There's not enough room for our souls in the present." ~John Eldridge, Brent Curtis

On scripture, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen "...or do you see scripture as being a cosmic drama - creation, fall, redemption, future hope - dramatic narratives that you can apply to all areas of life?"

Frederick Buechner ~ "It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things, too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusions and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name...That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still."

And a final note by Brent Curtis and John Eldridge that explains the importance of sharing both our personal experiences and those stories simmering in the crock-pot of our brains...

"It becomes crucial that we become a generation of storytellers who are both recapturing the glory and joy of the Sacred Romance even as we tell each other our particular stories, so that we can help each other, through God's spirit, see His plan of redemption at work in us."

Spring! Spring! Spring!

Spring is officially in gear!!! This time of the year is bursting with fresh scents, bright colors, and an overall feeling of hopeful happiness. I thought I'd celebrate by throwing a little e.e. cummings celebration, complete with decorations. e.e. is one of my favorite poets and God is my favorite visual artist...so it's a perfect way for me to start the season. From me to you - a blogged bouquet.

O sweet spontaneous

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the doting
fingers of
prurient philosophies pinched
and poked
thee
has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy
knees squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring



in time of daffodils
in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how
in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)
in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes
in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)
and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

i am a little church
i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april
my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness
around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains
i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing
winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)



i thank you God for most this amazing
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
wich is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Thoughts To Chew On - oops, that should be Thoughts On Which To Chew, right?

I've been non-stop editing this short story for two days. Hard to get the revising to stop. The deadline is today and I still have a few hundred words to cut. Yikes. To make myself feel a little better about this, I've copied down a few quotes from some of the great writers - if something is making you crazy and obsessive, it is good to know that there are people out there who commiserate.

"A work of art is first of all work." Paul Engle
"I spent all morning putting in a comma and all afternoon taking it out." Oscar Wilde
"Real seriousness in regard to writing is one of the two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent." Ernest Hemingway
"My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy." Anne Tyler

Keep Walking

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way.

~J.R.R. Tolkien

appropriate quote

"Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue."
~Eugene O'Neill