Be More Like a Child at Christmas (and beyond)

… Christmas is not only the mile-mark of another year, moving us to thoughts of self-examination: it is a season, from all its associations, whether domestic or religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. A man dissatisfied with his endeavours is a man tempted to sadness. And in the midst of the winter, when his life runs lowest and he is reminded of the empty chairs of his beloved, it is well he should be condemned to this fashion of the smiling face. Noble disappointment, noble self-denial are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring bitterness. It is one thing to enter the kingdom of heaven maim; another to maim yourself and stay without. And the kingdom of heaven is of the childlike, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give pleasure.  (from “A Christmas Sermon” by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Sometimes we think we are doing good when we are our own worst critiques.  We count ourselves “noble” to set unattainable goals then feel miserable when we fall short (and repeat the cycle, or do even worse the next time).  We see this a lot this time of year, with new year’s resolutions, promises we make to ourselves or vows we make to others that this year things are going to be different.

I have a number of regrets in my life.

– I regret I’ve not been a more loving father.

– I regret I’ve not been a more attentive husband.

– I regret I’ve not been a more effective pastor.

I have so many regrets and now, perhaps foremost among them, I regret most that I have so many regrets.

In his “A Christmas Sermon”, Stevenson shows that this human instinct to become embittered with ourselves when we fail only leads us to be even more critical of others.  This was precisely the thing Jesus accused the Pharisees (the religious leaders of his day) of doing.  Trying to live not only by the letter but by the brush strokes of each letter of the law, they wound up enforcing it on others and overlooking ways they could improve themselves.

So what do we do instead?  Does this mean we set no goals, have low standards or no standards at all.  I don’t think so.  It means we re-direct our focus away from ourselves and to… children.  Children, says Stevenson, are easy to please.  They love.  And they give pleasure.  (I would only add that children properly raised display these “natural” qualities.  When you see a child whining about getting clothes for Christmas instead of electronic toys, you have to wonder what’s going on.)

But children can be good teachers.  Not that they are innocent, but they are more at ease being in a dependent relationship, being grateful for what they are given, sharing love freely instead of trying to bargain for something at a price, being pleased and giving pleasure.  Laughing for the sheer joy of laughing.

As I celebrate this Christmas season and look forward to a new year, I’m still going to set some goals, but I’ll base them on the right models.

Goal #1:   I’m going to be more grateful for what I’ve been given.

Goal #2:  I’m going to love more freely.

Goal #3:  I’m going to be pleased – in God, in others, and in myself.

How about you?  What are your goals this Christmas season (and beyond)?

(photo “Smile” from  Literally Photography, some rights reserved)

“It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I feel fine)” by R.E.M. in Delight in Disorder (the soundtrack)

We married and moved to a three-room row house in South St. Louis.  Steam rising from asphalt. We passionately loved and more passionately fought. Out of our conjugal clash a child was conceived.

Seeking safety, we moved to the countryside and I became shepherd of a frozen flock. We welcomed our baby home to a Noah’s Ark nursery. I turned her first week into a music video – “God’s Masterpiece.” After a week, I was spent (or thought I was) and retreated to ancient texts and tired truths.

In the disorder, there were moments of delight and we conceived again.  Our graceful pilgrim. We followed a call to a church looking for an infusion of youth.

The delight became dangerously disordered.  It was the end of the world and I was bouncing off the walls. A light fixture fell and I was convinced it was a sign from God.

The next day, I found myself in the seclusion room of a psychiatric hospital.

That’s great, it starts with an earthquake
Birds and snakes, an aeroplane, and Lenny Bruce is not afraid

Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn
World serves its own needs, don’t misserve your own needs
Feed it up a knock, speed, grunt, no, strength
The ladder starts to clatter with a fear of height, down, height
Wire in a fire, represent the seven games
And a government for hire and a combat site
Left her, wasn’t coming in a hurry with the Furies breathing down your neck

Team by team, reporters baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped
Look at that low plane, fine, then
Uh-oh, overflow, population, common group
But it’ll do, save yourself, serve yourself
World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed
Tell me with the Rapture and the reverent in the right, right
You vitriolic, patriotic, slam fight, bright light
Feeling pretty psyched

It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

Six o’clock, TV hour, don’t get caught in foreign tower
Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn
Lock him in uniform, book burning, bloodletting
Every motive escalate, automotive incinerate
Light a candle, light a motive, step down, step down
Watch your heel crush, crush, uh-oh
This means no fear, cavalier, renegade and steering clear
A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies
Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives, and I decline

It’s the end of the world as we know it (I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine (It’s time I had some time alone)
I feel fine (I feel fine)

It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine (It’s time I had some time alone)

The other night I dreamt a nice continental drift divide
Mountains sit in a line, Leonard Bernstein
Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce, and Lester Bangs
Birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, boom
You symbiotic, patriotic, slam but neck, right? Right

It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine (It’s time I had some time alone)

It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine (It’s time I had some time alone)

It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine (It’s time I had some time alone)

It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine (It’s time I had some time alone)

(It’s time I had some time alone)

(“It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I feel fine)” is the ninth song on my autobiographical Spotify playlist Delight in Disorder)

Higher Education (from Delight in Disorder)

 

 

College was a time for experiments.

Mixing songs with sex, ideas with drugs.

The God I had come to know went up in smoke.

I replaced the living Word with words from lives

That thirsted for truths to absorb the Truth

And hungered for rights without Righteousness.

 

I wrote a book my senior year called,

Life (in obvious places)

Filled with family stories and ones I’d conceived.

At the end, a coquettish Claudia Matson asks the narrator –

“Why don’t you write any love stories?”

“I don’t know any,” he replies.

 

I took a job at a plastics factory.

And started going to a country church.

Grammar Presbyterian.

Filled with farmers and grandmothers

Who made room for me in my stained Salvation Army clothes.

Smelling of smoke, looking for a God of substance.

 

Easter Sunday, on my way to church.

I saw a grey-haired woman in a tattered coat wandering.

I pulled over and tried to help.

She didn’t know where she was and I didn’t know where to take her.

We were both lost.

 

I drove her to a downtown church.

Dressed in his Easter best, a usher gave her a donut and some coffee.

He sat with her and helped her find her way home.

I left the church in tears.

Finding strength to be weak in a community of grace.

 

I went to seminary to serve God with my mind,

Hoping my body and soul would follow.

In class we looked at the language of Scripture

And discussed how not to talk about God.

 

In my pastoral work, I found God…

… in the joy of boy who would never speak.

… in the songs of prisoners longing for freedom.

… in the tears of a man praying beside his dying wife’s bed.

 

I say I found God, but really God found me, and I didn’t run away.

 

I met Alice in the office of a friend.

She was arguing with the phone company about a deposit.

She won.

I said to myself, “I want her on my side.”

Within 6 months, we were engaged.

 

We moved to a 3-room row house in South St. Louis.

The heat was unbearable,

Steam rising from the asphalt.

We passionately loved and more passionately fought.

From this conjugal clash, a child was conceived.

 

We moved to the countryside,

And I became a pastor,

A shepherd of a frozen flock.

I preached sermons on Sunday,

And took out the trash on Tuesdays.

 

Sarah was born in early Spring.

There was a chill in the air and ice on the roads,

But we barely noticed.

We brought her home to balloons and signs

A Noah’s Ark nursery.

We made her first week a music video

with Sandy Patty singing –

You are a masterpiece
A new creation He has formed
And you’re as soft  and fresh as a snowy winter morn.
And I’m so glad that God has given you to me

After a week, I was spent (or so I thought).

I retreated to my office and didn’t come out

Even when I came home.

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Beauty Out of Sorrow: Reflections of a Young Sylvia Plath

I’ve been reading through The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath and thoroughly enjoying it.  I am enjoying it so much, I keep going back to re-read portions of it that really speak to me and may never finish it.  Oh well.

The journals begin the summer of Plath’s 18th year, as she is working on the family farm and awaiting entrance to Smith College in the fall.  She writes the first entry after a day in the strawberry fields.  It is a wonderful celebration of life from the perspective of youth (yet with wisdom beyond her years).

I may never be happy, but tonight I am content… When one is tired at the end of the day one must sleep, and at the next dawn there are more strawberry runners to set, and so one goes on living, near the earth.  At times like this I’d call myself a fool to ask for more…

Yet, the simplicity of life on the farm (and particularly the demands of domestic chores) fail to capture Plath’s vibrant imagination.  She is torn between the tediousness of daily living and the roller-coaster ride of her moods (and cries out to a God in whom she doesn’t believe).

God, if this is all it is, the ricocheting down the corridor of laughter and tears?  Of self-worship and self-loathing?  Of glory and disgust?

She finds bittersweet joy in the exuberance of youth.  After a group of children place flowers in her hair, she later reflects –

And all my hurts were smoothed away.  Something about the frank, guileless  blue eyes, the beautiful young bodies, the brief scent of the dying flowers smote me like the clean quick cut of a knife.  And the blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.

Plath’s musings reveal much deeper thought and feeling than typical teenage angst (though it may be she is simply better at expressing it).  Yet, she wonders if just this depth of thought and emotion (as well as a curse of estrogen) robs her of happiness.

If I didn’t think, I’d be much happier.  If I didn’t have any sex organs, I wouldn’t waver on the brink of nervous emotions and tears all the time.

It is through artistic expression, particularly writing, that Plath finds relief.  It does not guarantee her happiness (though sometimes it thrills her), but it gives her meaning.

I am justifying my life, my keen emotion, my feeling, by turning it into print.

There is a redemptive quality in her writing.  In it, her pain finds purpose.

Perhaps some day I’ll crawl back home, beaten, defeated.  But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.

Quotes from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. 

For more reflections from Plath’s journals, see –

Being a Writer or Becoming a Wife

Ricocheting Madly In-Between

The Grimness of Atheism

Luxuriating in the Feel of Words

(photo of Sylvia Plath from Yves Deligne in Portraits B)

April is the Cruelest Month: Walking Through the Waste Land

April is the cruelest month,

breeding lilacs out of the dead land,

mixing memory and desire,

stirring dull roots with spring rain.   ―     T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Yesterday, I felt like I was wandering in the waste land.  Though the sun was shining and there was a cool breeze blowing, I couldn’t see it or feel it huddled beneath my sheets, praying for sense out of suicide, light in the darkness, life after death.

I thought of the Warren family.  I don’t know Rick or Kay Warren personally.  But, like many people, I know of their ministry and the positive impact their words and work has had on so many lives.  I can’t say I embrace their theology wholesale, but I greatly respect the depth of their faith and would not question their profound relationship with Christ.

And now, this.  The death of a child must be the greatest grief any parent must face.  Compounded with this grief is the threat to meaning and purpose, to hope and, yes, even faith, that strikes when a loved one chooses death over life.  Rick Warren expressed gratitude yesterday for the overwhelming support of people around the world expressed after Matthew’s death, but no amount of community support can alleviate the lonely journey Rick and Kay and their other children must now walk.

As I laid in the darkness, I thought of my own children and my wife.  Memories came flooding back – that night 5 years ago when I swallowed handfuls of psychotropic meds as a desperate measure to end my misery.  My family was little more than an afterthought in that moment.  I didn’t even compose a proper suicide note – just scribbled off a few perfunctory lines as if writing out a prescription.

Thanks to God’s amazing grace, the drugs that should have killed me didn’t.  Instead, they put me in an all-night stupor.  I kept stumbling to the bathroom, crashing into walls, unable to straighten up, leaving a mess my wife had to clean up.

Yesterday, I wandered through the waste land with mostly dead memories and only a hint of desire for something better.

Today, the sun came up (as it typically does).  It took me until noon to rise.  I ate lunch instead of breakfast.  I read some encouraging messages.  I reflected on God’s Word to “choose life, that you and your offspring might live.”  I felt grateful – not glad, exactly – but grateful to be alive.

They say rain is on its way.  Spring rain to enliven the dull roots dormant underground, hiding from the harsh winter.  Breeding lilacs will appear.

In May, I’ll travel home – to my children, and my wife (if only for the day).

It will be “a day that the Lord hath made”.  And we will “rejoice and be glad in it.”

(image above “Wyndham Lewis ~ T.S. Eliot, 1938” from Jude W. in art :: paintings I love)

A Life or Death Decision

“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live…”  (Deuteronomy 30:19, English Standard Version)

When I read the news of Matthew Warren’s suicide yesterday, I felt sick to my stomach.  I thought back to my own history with mental illness (including my suicide attempt).  I tried to reflect on my experience (“Purposeless-Driven Suicide”: Matthew Warren and Me“).  Then, I felt emotionally and physically exhausted.

I laid across the bed for hours and prayed.  Mostly in images and feelings.  I was beyond words.  I wanted to express gratitude to God for rescuing me from death, for giving me another chance.  Though I am separated from my wife and family and without a job, I am thankful that I am alive.  It is truly wonderful to wake up in the morning, to eat a bowl of cheerios and drink a cup of warm coffee, to sit in my recliner and read and write and listen to music, to look out the window at a bright Spring day dawning.

When I finally got up last night (around 7), I grabbed something to eat, then joined the on-line conversation about Matthew’s death.  It is both encouraging to see Christians (and others) showing compassion toward the Warren family.  I guess there was some truly ugly speculation about Matthew’s death, but I didn’t see much of that.  Mainly, I found a Christ-like spirit of “mourning with those who mourn”.

Now it is a new day.  I didn’t get up until noon (perhaps an emotional hang-over).  These words of Joshua (above) keep ringing through my mind.  They were first spoken just before the people Israel were to enter the Promised Land.  After years of hardship in their wilderness wanderings, they had the prospect of more ease, luxuries, comfort.  Yet, they also faced the danger of exploiting these resources, putting things about God – which is following a deadly path.

Joshua’s words are timeless.  They speak to us just as clearly on bright mountaintops and in dark valleys.  Whether you are riding on top of the world or languishing in the pit, hear this challenging hopeful message – “Life is worth living.”  Choose life with God in Christ and you will experience abundant joy and peace that endures forever.  More than this, you will influence the destiny of your children (and others) around you who see what you have and want it for themselves.

Understand, I’m writing this as much to myself as to anyone.  Each day I must make choices that contribute to abundant life or lead to an agonizing death.  I pray together we can be encouraged to “Choose life,” today and in the days to come.

image above “Van Gogh” from Dan Bunea – living abstract paintings via Renate Perdøhl in  Artwork I find inspiring

Prayer, Parenting, Pits, and Pills: My Life with (and without) God – Part III

 

In a fit of creative energy, I composed a book on prayer.

I was so busy with prayer  that I didn’t have time to pray.

I started a book on faithful fathering and

Alice took Sarah to a friend’s for companionship.

They were gone three days.

When they returned, I fell into a deep despair.

Sleeping days, staying up all night.

 

A friend recommended his psychiatrist,

Who prescribed pills –

A new generation of anti-depressants.

Not your mother’s valium, I was assured.

 

With prayer and pills, God and therapy,

I found some relief.

Released, we conceived again –

Our graceful pilgrim –

Grace Alehah.

 

 

the story begins….

“Out of Nineveh:  My Life with (and without) God – Part I”

“Sent to Serve: My Life with (and without) God – Part II”

 

the story continues…

“A Clarion Call: My Life with (and without) God – Part IV”

“Alone in a Fog: My Life with (and without) God – Part V”

“On a Teeter-Totter: My Life with (and without) God – Part VI”

“In the Heart of the Finger Lakes: My Life with (and without) God – Part VII”

“Chosen to Adopt: My Life with (and without) God – Part VIII“

“Lost on Long Island: My Life with (and without) God – Part IX“

 

(image “Despair”  Katherine Smith from Crows ~ Ravens ~ Black Birds ~ Birds that are Black)

Sent to Serve: My Life with (and without) God – Part II

College was a time for experiments.

Mixing songs with sex, ideas with drugs.

The God I had come to know went up in smoke.

I replaced the living Word with words from lives

That thirsted for truths to absorb the Truth

And hungered for rights without Righteousness.

 

I wrote a book my senior year called,

Life (in obvious places)

Filled with family stories and ones I’d conceived.

At the end, a coquettish Claudia Matson asks the narrator –

“Why don’t you write any love stories?”

“I don’t know any,” he replies.

 

I took a job at a plastics factory.

And started going to a country church.

Grammar Presbyterian.

Filled with farmers and grandmothers

Who made room for me in my stained Salvation Army clothes.

Smelling of smoke, looking for a God of substance.

 

Easter Sunday, on my way to church.

I saw a grey-haired woman in a tattered coat wandering.

I pulled over and tried to help.

She didn’t know where she was and I didn’t know where to take her.

We were both lost.

 

I drove her to a downtown church.

Dressed in his Easter best, a usher gave her a donut and some coffee.

He sat with her and helped her find her way home.

I left the church in tears.

Finding strength to be weak in a community of grace.

 

I went to seminary to serve God with my mind,

Hoping my body and soul would follow.

In class we looked at the language of Scripture

And discussed how not to talk about God.

 

In my pastoral work, I found God…

… in the joy of boy who would never speak.

… in the songs of prisoners longing for freedom.

… in the tears of a man praying beside his dying wife’s bed.

 

I say I found God, but really God found me, and I didn’t run away.

 

I met Alice in the office of a friend.

She was arguing with the phone company about a deposit.

She won.

I said to myself, “I want her on my side.”

Within 6 months, we were engaged.

 

We moved to a 3-room row house in South St. Louis.

The heat was unbearable,

Steam rising from the asphalt.

We passionately loved and more passionately fought.

From this conjugal clash, a child was conceived.

 

We moved to the countryside,

And I became a pastor,

A shepherd of a frozen flock.

I preached sermons on Sunday,

And took out the trash on Tuesdays.

 

Sarah was born in early Spring.

There was a chill in the air and ice on the roads,

But we barely noticed.

We brought her home to balloons and signs

A Noah’s Ark nursery.

 

We made her first week a music video

with Sandy Patty singing –

You are a masterpiece
A new creation He has formed
And you’re as soft  and fresh as a snowy winter morn.
And I’m so glad that God has given you to me

 

After a week, I was spent (or so I thought).

I retreated to my office and didn’t come out

Even when I came home.

 

the story begins…

“Out of Nineveh: My Life with (and without) God – Part I”

the story continues….

“Prayer, Parenting, Pits, and Pills: My Life with (and without) God – Part III“

“A Clarion Call: My Life with (and without) God – Part IV“

“Alone in a Fog: My Life with (and without) God – Part V“

“On a Teeter-Totter: My Life with (and without) God – Part VI“

“In the Heart of the Finger Lakes: My Life with (and without) God – Part VII“

“Chosen to Adopt: My Life with (and without) God – Part VIII“

“Lost on Long Island: My Life with (and without) God – Part IX“

Pondering the Mystery of Death in “Entering the Blue Stone”

Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger,

And old rivers grow wilder ev’ry day.

Old people just grow lonesome

Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello.  (from “Hello in There” by John Prine)

          Aging is a mystery to be prayerfully pondered and carefully approached, not a puzzle to be solved.  In Entering the Blue Stone, Molly Best Tinsley describes in sometimes agonizing detail what happens as her parents age and become increasingly dependent on others for the basics of living.

          Molly’s father, Bill Best, was a retired Brigadier General from the Air Force.  He was the former mayor of Lebanon, Illinois.  He was a man used to caring for himself and being in charge of others.  Molly illustrates this well early in the book as she describes his driving philosophy –

Dad pulled into traffic with something to prove…  The world would have to rearrange itself if he wanted to change lanes.

          Molly’s mother, Evelyn, once an aspiring author full of captivating dreams, had succumbed to debilitating depression from which no treatment seemed to relieve.  Molly’s Dad reveals to her the extent of the problem –

“You know, Mommy sleeps a lot.”

I said maybe she needed to.

“She slept thirty-seven hours last week.”

I pointed out that was less than six hours a night.

“In a row.”

          More than just getting older, diagnostically, Bill struggles with Parkinson’s disease. Evelyn display Alzheimer’s-like symptoms.  It soon becomes clear that they need more on-going care and must move out of their home.  Molly and her siblings find a modern assisted living facility that seems to offer the latest and best approach.

          Tinsley depicts the heart-wrenching process of sorting through the household items, deciding what to keep and what to do away with, attempting to fashion her parents’ new confined living space in a functional, yet meaningful way.  Her father, an avid amateur photographer, had documented the family well.  Tinsley writes –

We had to throw most of the pictures away, the loose ones stuffed into boxes, the albums whose pages crumbled to the touch. What else could we do? Time was running out.

          What else could they do?  This theme of limited options and having to make quick decisions based on the best information available at the time carries over to Molly’s parents care as they lose more functioning and need greater assistance. At first, they move to an mostly independent apartment with available services.  For a while, they Bill particularly took advantage of various therapies and activites.

          But before long, Evelyn’s condition grows worse and they must move to assisted living, then to the nursing home section.  Tinsley describes with poignant detail how decisions framed as for optimum care were often influenced by bureaucratic concerns.  Often, the administration reminds them they could go elsewhere, but where else could they go?

         While both Molly’s parents decline, Bill is the first to slide.  Clearly, the rapid rate he loses his independence causes his condition to worsen.  Tinsley is critical of quick decisions to prescribe potent psychotropics (like Haldol) to “manage” what could well have been simple frustration over his loss of freedom.  In spite of family protests, the prescribing doctor insisted he be in charge of medical decisions and only informed them after a shot was administered.

          Soon, according to staff, Bill was having “episodes” that required further restrictions in a newly opening wing, isolated and locked down.  Aggressive medication and treatment measures were attempted, which only made matters worse.  Bill resisted, but his body could no longer control his destiny.  Tinsley describes it in hauntingly beautiful detail –

Think of it as assisted suicide, we told each other, squinting against that whirling wind.  Our father had stumbled into the sort of no-win situation he’d always warned us to avoid.  The nutritionist who kept sending down the trays of inedible foods.  The nurse with the Haldol, the staff doctor and his Fellow from Duke with the bright idea – all became the witless accomplices in his decision to end a life whose quality had sunk below zero.  We waited for the moment that would set him free.

          As the moment of death approaches, the family shares some intimate moments that bring some measure of peace.  By this time, Evelyn is not with it enough to be fully cognizant of the situation, though she does appear and offers support.

          In contrast to Bill’s resistance to losing his independence, Evelyn at first embracing the limits imposed on her and even tries to quiet the children’s complaints about her treatment.  Tinsley conveys her mother’s chaotically poetic expressions wonderfully –

“Yesterday we glued little pictures on and sprayed them.  Later we’re going to eat them.”

“Pictures of what?” I asked.

“A chemist, a baby, and a rubber hose.  This is a hopping town,” she added, by way of summary.  “One of those places with peanut shells.”

           But Evelyn’s pleasant confusion was not enough to shield her from the changes happening within (medically) or around (administratively) her.  As with Bill, aggressive measures are taken without family consent.  Her decline was not as drastic as Bill’s, and was abbreviated by pleasant moments along the way, yet the trajectory had been set.  It was just a matter of time.

          Death lingered for Evelyn as the family gathered around her for encouragement and to bless her on her way.  They are forced to face difficult end-0f-life decisions (should she have a feeding tube?) with little clear guidance.  Patients and staff attend to her physical, emotional, and spiritual needs as she approaches death.  After almost of week of dying, she breathes her last.

          In my interview with Tinsley about Entering the Blue Stone, she writes –

A lot of crazy things happened to my siblings and me as we tried to shepherd our parents through a three-stage continuing care facility in their final years.  Some were the product of a seriously flawed system in the facility itself; some stemmed from our ignorance of the end-of-life process; and some were actually natural parts of that process—things it would be futile to try to resist or change.  I’m hoping that readers facing this process (as we all are) will take my story seriously and thus become better able to differentiate the craziness!

          I believe she meets her objectives well.  Entering the Blue Stone is a book that will help people who have faced, are facing, or will face aging and end-of-life issues by giving them a realistic and hopeful perspective.

          More than this, as a piece of literature, Entering the Blue Stone is about as good as a memoir can get.  I would rate it 4 out of 5, only because I like to keep 5s reserved for books as good as Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind (which is, in my mind, unmatched).  One thing I particularly appreciate about Tinsley’s work is that her language is clear, concrete, and clean.  She knows how to tell an evocative story without compromising it with crude cliches.  While she admitted this book was personally cathartic, she doesn’t inflict on the reader the role of her therapist.  She describes her dilemma and lets the reader wrestle the mystery of the suffering in the story.

          Entering the Blue Stone doesn’t try to solve the puzzle of aging with formulas that won’t work, and will likely make things worse.  Instead, it is a faithful steward of the mystery of death and dying that leads us to appreciate the precious lives we are given.

          Book cover copied from fuzepublishing, used by permission. Entering the Blue Stone and other works (print and ebooks) by Molly Best Tinsley and her co-horts may be purchased at fuzepublishing.   They are also available at Amazon,  pubit (nook) and itunes.

Sexy Syntax in WordPress

First, a disclaimer… this is not a list of lurid erotic posts found in WordPress.  It is a follow-up to an earlier post I did (reflecting on a section of Mark Tredinnick’s Writing Well) that describes the process of forming sentences for good writing as something like foreplay.

As I mentioned, I am Puritan enough to believe this intimacy is best reserved for the marriage covenant, but the analogy between the interplay of words in good writing and the dance of intimacy in a loving, holy relationship is sound.

To illustrate Tredinnick’s point, I’ve looked for WordPress posts that stitch together words in an alluring, suspenseful, even seductive way.  They have nothing to do with sex.  They are about relationships – between a man and his food, between an artist and her model, between a loving father and his daughter, as well as between the Creator and His created,

For some truly sexy syntax, check these out…

“Bread Whine” (Logos con carne) bemoans a love lost, then describes his search to satisfy his hunger as best he can.

“The Pygmalion Effect” (charlottesville winter) depicts a wonderfully suggestive, seductive relationship between an artist and a model.

“The Big Leagues” (The Best Place By the Fire) tells the intricate, discreet details of a poker hand.

“Blue” (Another Resolution) shares a lovingly intimate moment of a father bathing his child in a sink.

“The Master Shucker” (Increase & Abound) draws an extended analogy from a childhood memory of a father shucking crabs.

 

(image “Words (IMG_5971a) by Alaskan Dude” from shallowend, some rights reserved)