Any Similar Revival

Yes, that’s me, riding my bike!  I risked life, limb and camera to take this shot, but it all worked out in the end.  Man, I’m out of shape!  I only did 12 miles, and I felt so slow and heavy the whole time.  It was soooo great!

"In Mind" by Denise Levertov

*

There’s in my mind a woman

of innocence, unadorned but

*

fair-featured and smelling of

apples or grass.  She wears

*

a utopian smock or shift, her hair

is light brown and smooth, and she

*

is kind and very clean without

ostentation–

*

but she has

no imagination

*

And there’s a

turbulent moon-ridden girl

*

or old woman, or both,

dressed in opals and rags, feathers

*

and torn taffeta,

who knows strange songs.

*

but she is not kind.

*

It’s so dreary today, grey and heavy, cold without being crisp, windy without being breezy.  I saw these roses at Sam’s and had to buy them, just to remind myself that such things exist.  I’m normally a big fan of winter, but today is just too dark even for me.  I have the flowers in a pewter pitcher on the dining room table.  I walk by them and just stop, bury my face in them, inhale, think of spring. .  .  And last night, I dreamed about cycling.  This is really bad–way too early for cycling dreams!

So glad to be home!  I really feel out of it, though, like I’m still stuck in October.  Since we weren’t home, I feel like we missed Christmas and New Years, just skipped them.  It was all festive when we left, and now, it’s just. . .old and ready to be put away.  I keep telling myself that it’s January now, 2006.  Trying to tap into that New Year-New beginning mojo.  And all I get for my efforts is a headache!  Well, here are some photos from the Tex trip:

We watched the best movie tonight, Millions.  If you haven’t seen it, you need to.  It’s about a little boy with sainthood on the brain, who misses his dead mother, who wants to be good.  He gets something that I’ve been wanting for almost eight years, something I’d give almost anything for.  Five more minutes with his mum.  It’s been a rough couple of days–on Monday, an old college friend, Hillary, lost her mother.  Today, my dear friend Luke lost his after a long battle with MS.  I don’t like a world where the mommies die, but it’s the one we live in.  If you still have your mum, love her, love her, love her.  Tell her.  Write her a love note.  Hug her.  Take her out for lunch or invite her over for tea.  Because I would do anything, anything, to have just five more minutes.

Many of you who know me know of one of my more charming travel traditions:  spending an evening on my knees in the bathroom, checking out the insides of out-of-state toilets.  I did this again last night, much to my own amusement.  Though this time, the food that caused the problem wasn’t red.  It was dried cherries in Canada, Marinara sauce with corn in Tucson, salsa at home that one time, tomato soup in Texas (with a side of egg-salad sandwiches), and something unidentifiable in California.  No last night, it was Dark Chocolate Peppermint ice cream.  Not the most pleasant thing when it comes back up.  I may be cured from ice cream forever!  Seriously though, in the past six years, I’ve thrown up at least seven times, and only one of those was at home!  Weird.

If I spelled any of that wrong, I don’t want to know about it.  🙂

Merry Christmas from warm, sunny Texas! 

Hallelujah!  And He shall reign for ever and ever!

Immensitie cloysterd in thy deare wombe,

Now leaves his welbelov’d imprisonment,

There he hath made himselfe to his intent

Weake enough, now into our world to come;

But Oh, for thee, for him, hath th’Inne no roome?

Yet lay him in this stall, and from the Orient,

Starres, and wisemen will travell to prevent

Th’effect of Herods jealous generall doome;

Seest thou, my Soule, with thy faiths eyes, how he

Which fils all place, yet none holds him, doth lye?

Was not his pity towards thee wondrous high,

That would have need to be pittied by thee?

Kisse him, and with him into Egypt goe,

With his kinde mother, who partakes thy woe.

Faith made up a new name for us the other night when we were at John & Jill’s for a Christmas party:

Of course, Luke and Billy are looking a little too normal.  (Although Luke looks suspiciously angelic and like he’s just done something bad and doesn’t want you to know.  Hannah, what do you think?)

A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies day, Being the shortest day

                                                         by John Donne

(first stanza only)

Tis the yeares midnight, and it is the dayes

Lucies, who scarce seaven houres herself unmaskes,

  The Sunne is spent, and now his flasks

   Send forth light squibs, no constant rayes;

      The worlds whole sap is sunke:

The generall balme th’hydroptique earth hath drunk,,

Whither, as to the beds-feet life is shrunke,

Dead and enterr’d, yet all these seeme to laugh,

Compar’d with mee, who am their Epitaph. . .

Christmas always makes me super-contemplative.  I start reading poetry, making connections, having "visions."  Ifound something I wrote in my journal last year at this time–it was a hard Christmas for me, but it really revealed something to me:

I’ve been trying to think something out.  I’ve been all in a dither this December because doing Christmas just seems so hard this year!  My heart isn’t in it–at least–not in all the preparations and "spirit" of the season.  But I feel the pull of Mystery this year. Something is calling to me so strongly that it burns my soul and I cannot stop thinking about it.  I turned to The Scent of Water, mostly out of desperation, and it caused even more disquiet.  There are so many themes there that hurt too much to look at, yet I must.  Home–Faithfulness–Obedience–Saying yes–Community.  And then I went to Tree and Leaf, because that just drew me irresistably, and I wanted to re-read about the Eucatastrophe–and now I am puzzled but expectant–because this can’t all be for nothing.

I await my revelation.  "Though it linger, wait for it."

"At least there is hope for a tree:  if it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail. Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant.  Job 14:7–8

So here I am, sniffing about for the scent of water.  The trail led me to JRR, who says,

"But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of  Creation.  The Birth of Christ is the Eucatastrophe of man’s history.  The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation.  This story begins and ends in joy.  It is pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality.’  There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits.. .But this story is supreme, and it is true. Art has been verified.  God is the Lord, of angels, and of men–and of Elves.  Legend and History have met and fused. . .The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose that can be redeemed.  So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation.  All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know."

If Christmas celebrates that joyful turn, that eucatastrophe of our history–it ought to feel more profound than it does.  If just reading JRR’s words moves me to tears, why not this season?  Why does sorrow overwhelm me?  That baby— was not he born to all women?  He bought for us the redemption of our souls.

I was believing that I grieve because of what I have lost– Mother, Father, family, home, innocence, motherhood–but I remembered that I have always grieved.  I have a longing, I have always longed, I have always been a longer, and though my circumstances have sharpened and made my grief more poignant,  yet that melancholy has been mine since my beginning.  "I desire dragons, with a profound desire."  And then, when "reality" falls so short of my longing, which I can only expect, I am sorely disappointed and am pierced again.  Christmas as I know it does not live up to my longing.  The best way to express how I feel today is that I’d like to shrink small enough to fit into that manger with the baby born there and cling to Him with all I have in me.  I want to be alone with Him in awe and adoration and profound sorrow and more profound joy.  But this holiday imposes upon one so much that being small and alone are not options. If it only lived up to the beauty and mystery promised in its songs and carols I could be content.  But I am always left reaching out for more.  I am still straining to find the scent of water.

All this angst must be going somewhere.  Maybe this is the year I get my epiphany.  I am always hopeful.  Perhaps it is like my revelation or is my revelation.  "Though it linger, wait for it." "

So here today, as I re-read what I wrote a year ago, I recognize myself now.  All this still applies, except that now there is rather more Joy than sorrow.  I am still trying to work all this out.  TS Eliot has been helping me this year:

    At the still point of the turning world.  Neither flesh nor

  fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance

   is,

But neither arrest nor movement.  And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered.  Neither movement

   from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline.  Except for the point, the still

     point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.    (Burnt Norton)

You know that part in Perelandra, at the end, where Ransom is treated to the vision of the Great Dance?  Or is that in That Hideous Strength?  Anyways, the part where all of everything is seen as an impossibly complex dance and it is the most beautiful and perfect thing, moving towards its resolution in perfect time and meter?  And at the center, there is the fixed point, the eucatastrophe, the incarnation, "Immensitie cloystered in thy womb." 

I told you Christmas makes me contemplative.