The Chronicles of Narnia

This is it: the final book for 2013. I could have written this post some time ago, but the concepts, the sentiments I wanted to say were too complex for a quick post dashed off. No, I needed to contemplate my words, how they looked next to each other, whether I was expressing the joy, hope, sorrow and gratitude I’d set out to put down.

Book #24, the final book of 2013, was The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. I took the books as one, reading and pondering them as a whole. And then I put off writing about them because this time through I felt every blow, heard every star singing, wept with Susan and Lucy in the long night and felt the cavern collapsing as I struggled to find Narnia Above. As a grownup, these books purportedly intended for children, meant more than I’d expected.

I spent the entirety of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on the edge of my seat, leaning forward into the story until, suddenly, it was done. I remembered the story being so much bigger than that. Ah well, there was nothing for it but to immediately plunge into Prince Caspian.

They were in the treasure room, finding again their presents from Father Christmas when I realized how sad I was for Edmund. It seemed that every moment was intent on reminding him of his betrayal, of the title of ‘Traitor’ he’d once worn. Now he bore the title ‘Forgiven’, but it would never say ‘Pure’. In the midst of battles, of Old Narnia fighting for its freedom, of Bacchus throwing a party in the very presence of and with the full approval of the Lion, of bears sucking on their paws and werewolves and hags being speedily dispatched, I felt for Edmund. Aslan paid the cost, but he must always carry the memory. And yet, as we see in the next book, he carries it well, using his past to bring comfort to others.

Mandy will be shocked to hear me say it, but The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has long been my least favorite of the Chronicles. It is an odyssey story and those have never been my favorite. This time through, though, I watched Eustace closely, startled to realize I think I know people like that, people who read books with far too many graphs and figures and not nearly enough dragons. So it mattered all the more when he is finally washed of his dragon skin. He is not suddenly perfect- this may be fantasy, but Lewis knew what was too much to be believed- but he is softened, receptive to the wonders that are all around him. This changes him, his entire outlook and focus, making his occasional bad moods easier to bear. And then I envied Reepicheep with every fiber of my being as he sailed away into Aslan’s Land.

Of the many characters in these books, it is Puddleglum, the Marshwiggle from The Silver Chair, who I’ve always felt is the most overlooked. We remember his glumness, his mournful way of expecting the worst, his uncanny resemblance to a certain beloved donkey. Because of that I’d forgotten his bravery, his bullheaded belief in Aslan while the Witch weaves her spells around them. The others stand bewitched, the perfumed smoke clouding their thoughts. Puddleglum, ever practical, stomps the fire out, replacing an intoxicating scent with the stench of burnt Marshwiggle foot. It’s hard to weave magic with a smell like that filling the room. I’m not a very stubborn or practical person so I often miss seeing the gifts of those who are. They strike me as prosaic, blind to the poetry of the world. But it’s those people who can stomp out magical fires.

I admit- I flew through The Horse and His Boy, waiting for the line. There’s a line, I tell you, all the way at the end, but it is worth waiting the entire book. King Lune looks at his long-lost son, recently returned to him, and gives probably the finest definition of what it means to lead-

"For this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there’s hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.”

I’ve heard this condensed down to “First in. Last out. Laughing loudest.” This is what it means to be king and we Christians are all children of the King. That makes us princes and princesses, striving to be like our Father. So, this is what it means to be a Child of the King: First in. Last out. Laughing loudest.

I remember The Magician’s Nephew as sort of the step-child of the books: it was loved, but always felt like it came from somewhere else. This time, in a way I don’t think I can express, it clicked. I saw the book, saw it in its rightful place and suddenly it was the cornerstone. It’s the beginning. Every good story needs a beginning. We often think The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the beginning and, in a way, it is, but The Magician’s Nephew sets the stage for the end. I read of the creation of Narnia, heard the stars singing with the Lion and I felt utterly sad because I knew the harsh times that were coming. Already, at the birth of the world, there was an evil lurking on the sidelines. More than anything I wanted to scoop the baby world up in my arms to shield it, to keep it safe, but then where would the story be?

If The Magician’s Nephew made me sad The Last Battle is heartbreaking. Always before, evil comes to Narnia from outside only this time the evil grows slowly from within. Deceit and twisted words bend the Narnians’ beliefs into a whip, a burden of fear. The little creatures sit outside a poorly-lit shack, waiting for their god to come out, feeling confused. They’d thought he was good. They’d thought he was kind. It’s the confusion of the littlest that make me want to cry and scream and reach through the pages to tell them the Lion is who they’d thought. He is good and he is kind and they are being lied to. It isn’t enough for me to see the wicked ape destroyed; I want the little creatures’ innocence back. I rage in my mind while the story plays out on the page.

And then Aslan steps onto the stage and I am calm once more. He will fix everything I cannot.

In Aslan’s Land he makes it all okay again. They stand in the sunlight to hear the Lion say, “The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.” So begins Chapter One of the greatest story that will ever be and that will never end, with each chapter better than the last.

Sometimes when I am tired, when I am so stressed I have to tell my lungs to breathe, I think to myself, “This is the prologue. One day the story will begin.” And then I kindle the small flames of my heart with the whispered cry-

 Onwards and upwards. Narnia and the North!

2014 New Year's Not-Resolutions

One of the benefits of having a birthday between Christmas and the New Year is that it is a splendid time to sit with a cup of coffee and a notebook and ponder the year gone and the year coming.

I looked over my not-resolutions from last year and one by one I checked them off.

Lose weight. Check.

Get my tattoo. Check.

Read 24 books. Check.

Read my Bible every work day. Shockingly, check.

Write more. Well, that’s always the first thing to go when the stress is on, isn’t it?

I came up with a list for 2014 which is essentially more of the same. Looking it over, I thought about the point of all this list making and ponderings. I believe with every fiber of my person that there is a woman that God has intended me to be. In my current understanding, she is kind and full of grace and manages to be chill through the storms of life, always making time for her people and her art. That understanding might change, but the point of the New Year’s not-resolutions and the lists and the ponderings is to be intentional about taking another step towards being that woman.

Taking another look at my list, I’ve decided that yes, those  are areas I want to be more intentional about. I’m a little nervous about sharing the list here for some reason, but since Number 3 on the list is about writing here I go.

1.   I want to view the food that I eat with a long-term eye. It’s far too easy for me to eat the whatever and regret it, sometimes physically, later. My blood sugar fluctuates and I feel ill; my weight fluctuates and I feel discouraged. I deserve to be treated better than that. This is my health we’re talking about- I want to take that seriously. In the year 2014 I want to lose 50 more pounds.
2.      I’ve figured out a system to read my Bible on workdays, but I want to broaden that to every day. It feels dumb to need a system for this, but this list is about realism, not what should or ought be.
3.     Writing more is about so much more than just writing. I want to have thoughts, to cultivate my thoughts and I want to be diligent to take the time to take care of myself by putting those thoughts down. Writing is how I maintain my mental and emotional health yet it’s the first thing I don’t do when I start to feel stressed and overwhelmed. That’s dumb and needs to change. Yesterday Jonathan and I set up a writing nook in the basement for me. I filled the table with things that make me feel creative (mostly notebooks), a little lamp, a candle made by none other than Crystal Ben-Ezra all within easy reach of an outlet for my computer. The idea is a haven, a place dedicated to me taking care of me. Hopefully you all will get to benefit by that, too.
4.     I have had an idea for another tattoo. I think 2014 is the year for it.
5.      I plan on reading 24 new books this year. The operative word here is ‘new’. It’s very easy for me to get stuck in a rut of books I know and love which is fun, but doesn’t help with that cultivating thoughts thing. Hence, 24 new books and, of course, I will have to write about them when I’m through.

That’s five. Five seems like a good number.

Just to be clear, with you all and myself, I’m not writing this list out for anyone to feel compelled to hold me accountable. I’m writing this list and putting it out into the world so that it will feel real, so that I can look it over again and realize how much this year is going to be about self-care.

I hope your 2013 was good to you. May your 2014 be amazing.

Gift Musings

I’m not amazing at giving presents. I feel like I understand the basic conceit of giving gifts, but those come across as a litany of rules- give what the person would want, not what you want to give;  don’t give a homemaker a cookbook, household appliance, vacuum or any other household tool that would feel like your concept of that person is wholly wrapped up in their role in the home;  be thoughtful; a gift is a chance to tell a person that you understand them and appreciate who they are. It’s a nice litany, one I repeat often, full of pithy concepts and yet Christmas and birthdays keep rolling around and I am at a loss.

Jonathan’s family does lists and very practical lists at that. There is something about the practical nature of a gift that they grab onto and understand. It would be very easy for me to ask for a kitchen gadget or something for the home and get exactly what I asked for yet the litany spins and tells me I oughtn’t do that. If I don’t ask for anything, trying to be kind and let them give what they want to give, they spin in a pool of question marks and the stress ratchets up.

So I make a list and I fill it with practical items and I feel like I’ve betrayed the litany my parents passed along.

Then I open up kitchen knives on Christmas Day and I am ecstatic because I’ve been wanting new kitchen knives.

Jonathan bought me a food processor because mine broke and I have been really sad without it. He got me a better one than I’d had because he knows I won’t get myself anything nice even if I use it all the time. He tried to get me a red one because he loves how bright I am. He was glad to get me a kitchen gadget because cooking is becoming a hobby of mine, a way of creative expression. And when I opened it, or rather the one Target accidentally sent that we’re going to exchange for what he actually ordered, the litany went silent and I was delighted.

If marriage is a blending of two souls and lives, then married holidays are a blending of two families’ expectations and assumptions. And I’m starting to see why God set it up like this because there were pieces of the gift giving process that my family was missing, elements that had mutated in my mind and become rules. And there are elements in going off-list that Jonathan’s side was not experienced with. So we mix and we blend and I like to think we’re all the better for it.

Life Goals From Middle-Earth

I’ve been spending some time in the world of Middle-Earth recently what with the second Hobbit movie coming out and all. Each time I dive into the world I see more beautiful things that Tolkien made and that Peter Jackson is doing as good a job representing as could be hoped for. This time, though, I saw more about me than about the world.

For starters, I realized I married a dwarf. Reading the book that features so many dwarves and seeing them depicted on the big screen really brings that fact to bear. Jonathan is a dwarf, through and through. He’s solid, a bit rough around the edges, has an awesome beard, likes his beer, is stupid fast over short distances and spends his days crafting lovely things with intensity, focus and precision. A dwarf.

There was a time that I wanted to be an elf. I would be intellectual, would devote my life to the study of history and the great deeds of old. I would shut myself up with my books and with people like me and we would sing the old songs.

Some time passed and I wanted to be a human, but not just any human. I wanted to be one of the great humans doing great deeds like Eowyn or Beren. They did mighty things and took part in some of the earth shattering events in history. In my own small way, that would be me.

I take it as a sign of maturity that lately I have wanted to be a hobbit. And not one of those hobbits setting out on adventures. Adventures are fine and good, but I would be Rosie, warm and comfortable, someone you would be happy to come home to.

Being a hobbit seems like a perfectly lovely life goal and, what’s more, it feels achievable. Perhaps you’ll have to stop by sometime, eat a meal and let me know how I’m doing. 

Snow

We drove the road cut through snow-covered woods. Lovely tufts of white coated every branch, every limb, cloaking the bare trees to guard against the cold. The inmost branches reached across the road to their brothers and sisters on the far side of the road, roofing our road, turning it into a tunnels of friends and neighbors all dress up for the holidays.

I feel the magnificence of the snow. I feel it in the small of my back where all my muscles protest against the shoveling I did yesterday, striking a bargain with the snow that we would celebrate it if only it kept in its place. I feel it in the bite of cold on my nose, the thousands of soft kisses on my face as I stand in the out in the night. I feel it in the gentle hand of my man reaching over to take mine as we drive through the woods and snow.

I know January will come and I will tire of the cold and the white and gray. I know the snow plows will turn the white splendor to so much dirty sludge. I know the end of quiet drives through the woods is coming so I cling to these moments of wonder all the more. It is ephemeral and thus more precious and more to be enjoyed if I will stop and notice. 

A Year of Magical Thinking

She said it was a good book. She put her hand over her heart and said “Oh” in that way that means something too beautiful for words. So I bought the Kindle book and I read it and I felt sad the entire way through. And it was beautiful. In a sort of “Oh, too beautiful for words” sort of way.

My coworker, Kaitlin, is an English Major. So when she recommended a book by Joan Didion I *uncomfortable cough* didn’t give the recommendation much credence. But I was out of ideas for new books and since the recommendation Kaitlin had proved here and there that she did indeed have good taste.
 

A Year of Magical Thinking (Book #23, by the by) chronicles the year following Joan’s husband’s death. He died suddenly December 30, 2003, by the fireplace in their living room shortly after returning from visiting their grown daughter, Quintana, who was unconscious in a hospital. What followed was a harrowing year of grief, mourning, her daughter’s terrible illness that required emergency brain surgery and the sort of magical thinking that kept insisting John would come back to her.

They had been married for about 40 years, spending most of those years working together, sharing their book ideas and thoughts, writing movies together, eating dinner, taking vacations, raising a daughter and weaving their lives together.

And then he was gone.

Joan talked about the tiny details of grief, like when she absent-mindedly flipped the page of the dictionary he kept on his desk. She realized suddenly that she had no idea what word he’d been looking up, that she’d flipped too many pages to remember which page he’d left it open to. In that moment she felt him slip further away and was sure it was her fault. The stack of books by his chair stayed there because that’s where he’d put them. She couldn’t give away his shoes because when he came back he would need them.

 It all made perfect sense to me. That fragile mind full of deep certainty even while you recognize you are making no sense. But you don’t have to make sense because this is your year, your year of magical thinking before you have to get back down to the brass tacks of life alone.

I finished the book and told Kaitlin I blamed her for my mental anguish. And then I put my hand over my heart and let my words trail off because sometimes a book is so vulnerable, so honest, so true and so sad that it is simply too beautiful for words.

'Tis the Season of Crazy

My blog is down. Again. I can’t really complain since I don’t pay anything for the care and feeding of BlogPeoria, but my thoughts are piling up. I’ve reached the point of either I start writing or my brain explodes. That just sounds messy so welcome to the placeholder blog.

This season has me running crazy. There’s nothing specific I can point to; I’m just tired and frantic all the time. Because of this and that Jonathan and I weren’t able to decorate our Christmas tree on the day we got it. I looked down the week , trying to find an evening we could string the lights and make it beautiful. I got to sometime next week and just gave up. Then, lest I make anything too simple, I swing between guilt about how non-intentional we’re being this year, just letting events happen without making a point to be celebratory or contemplative, and weepy fatigue at how busy we are with Christmas and Christmasy events.

But then Jonathan steps in.

He is excited about this Christmas and he hasn’t been actively excited about a Christmas since before I knew him. He looks at our unlit, undecorated tree and feels childishly happy because it was the biggest one on the farm. The trunk is so curvy we had to tie it to the windows to keep it from taking out the cat in the middle of the night and it’s a nightmare to water, but it’s ours. Our first tree in our first house. While I stress about the lights and ornaments he’s just happy we went to this much effort. Anything else is pure gravy.

So I’m trying to slow down.  I’m trying to be happy with what we have, with being as festive as we are. All the guilt-ridden voices in my head can take the season off, thank you very much. Because my man is happy- big, goofy, delighted happy- and that makes me happy. 

This Is a Placeholder

My Jonathan promises me a new blog hosted on our very own worent.com. Until that time, this little corner of the Internet will have to do.