Andree Seu has a beautiful essay on her desire to be a little independent of the Lord who sustains her.
Pretending it’s spring
Sorry I’m late. I interviewed a prospective renter this evening (yes, I finally got a call). I’m not going to describe him, because he might be whacko, or he might be a saint. Or neither. But if he’s a saint I don’t want to be talking behind his back.
We ended the meeting on an ambivalent note. One of us may call the other, or not.
The weather has been beautiful, in terms of air-to-skin compatibility and sun-to-earth face time. It was my weekend on set-up team at church, which is always a drag, but when I came back from church on Sunday, my obligation fulfilled, I noticed the bank thermometer said 50°. I went to the local Chinese buffet I just discovered (not the one I told you about before, where the hostess is cute but the food marginal; the hostess at this one is less cute but the food is much better). Then, to make the day perfect, I noticed that the local Dairy Queen has reopened for the spring, so I was able to buy my traditional after-Sunday-lunch Dilly Bar (you’ve got to get the kind made in the store; the factory-made ones in cellophane wrappers aren’t worth the trouble). So the day was perfect. I love Sunday afternoons. I made a commitment years ago that, since I considered myself a professional writer, I wouldn’t write for money on Sundays. That makes the Lord’s Day a weekly break from (some) guilt for me, and I bless the Lord of Sinai for it.
When I got home from work today, most of the snow had already melted from my front lawn. And my basement hasn’t flooded.
It’s not spring yet, but I’ll take what I can get.
Pretending it's spring
Sorry I’m late. I interviewed a prospective renter this evening (yes, I finally got a call). I’m not going to describe him, because he might be whacko, or he might be a saint. Or neither. But if he’s a saint I don’t want to be talking behind his back.
We ended the meeting on an ambivalent note. One of us may call the other, or not.
The weather has been beautiful, in terms of air-to-skin compatibility and sun-to-earth face time. It was my weekend on set-up team at church, which is always a drag, but when I came back from church on Sunday, my obligation fulfilled, I noticed the bank thermometer said 50°. I went to the local Chinese buffet I just discovered (not the one I told you about before, where the hostess is cute but the food marginal; the hostess at this one is less cute but the food is much better). Then, to make the day perfect, I noticed that the local Dairy Queen has reopened for the spring, so I was able to buy my traditional after-Sunday-lunch Dilly Bar (you’ve got to get the kind made in the store; the factory-made ones in cellophane wrappers aren’t worth the trouble). So the day was perfect. I love Sunday afternoons. I made a commitment years ago that, since I considered myself a professional writer, I wouldn’t write for money on Sundays. That makes the Lord’s Day a weekly break from (some) guilt for me, and I bless the Lord of Sinai for it.
When I got home from work today, most of the snow had already melted from my front lawn. And my basement hasn’t flooded.
It’s not spring yet, but I’ll take what I can get.
C.S. Lewis Lectures in Chattanooga
I missed the first conference of the C.S. Lewis Society of Chattanooga, but I plan to make the Twenty-fifth Annual C.S. Lewis Lecture on March 26. Political philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain will broadly address the topic of Lewis’ abolition of man. It’s free at 7:30 p.m. in Benwood Auditorium at UT-Chattanooga.
Many Unread Books
A new survey out of Britain says the average person may buy several books in a year, but read only half of them. I’m sure I would fill out the low end of the average, though I’m also low on the number of books I buy too. Don’t hate me. I do intend to read them all somehow.
Coincidentally, Sandra of Book World quotes from Virginia Woolf today: “The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. … After all, what laws can be laid down about books?”
What laws can be laid down? Do you have to read a book completely to consider it read? It applies more to non-fiction, but should a reader not feel free to dip into a book to pull out a tasty apple, leaving the rest of it unread at least for the moment?
Posturing in Front of Experience
The National Book Critics Circle gave out awards last weekend. See their list here and their posts on each category here. John Leonard, book critic and former editor-in chief of the New York Times Book Review, received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. In his acceptance speech, he made this interesting observation:
The books we love, love us back. In gratitude, we should promise not to cheat on them — not to pretend we’re better than they are; not to use them as target practice, agit-prop, trampolines, photo ops or stalking horses; not to sell out scruple to that scratch-and-sniff info-tainment racket in which we posture in front of experience instead of engaging it, and fidget in our cynical opportunism for an angle, a spin, or a take, instead of consulting compass points of principle, and strike attitudes like matches, to admire our wiseguy profiles in the mirrors of the slicks.
Yes, but isn’t the point of our critique to get to the praise from our peers on the otherside? We want to hear how clever we are, how sharp-eyed we are, that nothing can stand before our scrutiny. Our peers may not bother to read and actually judge our critique, and why should they? We are right, are we not? Oh, the books we could write if only we had the time.
“Outside Our Expressive Range”
“Bach no more composed for us than he lived for us. His music comes from far away; it speaks a language that we understand yet in which we hear echoes of another language, outside our expressive range.”
Martin Geck, Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work (trans. John Hargraves)
Taken from Terry Teachout’s Almanac
"Outside Our Expressive Range"
“Bach no more composed for us than he lived for us. His music comes from far away; it speaks a language that we understand yet in which we hear echoes of another language, outside our expressive range.”
Martin Geck, Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work (trans. John Hargraves)
Taken from Terry Teachout’s Almanac
River Rising by Athol Dickson
I put River Rising in my Amazon cart while buying some other books—homeschool material I think—saying to myself I should buy a good book like this one, fun to spend money on myself, buy something good to read as though I didn’t have other good books on the shelf to read—books I bought for friends or family and never wrapped up or all those Graham Greene books I bought for $0.99 each and failed to read the rest of that summer as I had planned. So I bought River Rising, and when it came, I put it neatly on the shelf. It’s wonderful to have a new potential read smiling down on me from a line of other potential reads.
I tell myself I should read more and blog less. I say it with a weak voice from behind my gullet, which regularly questions my motives and actions. When I read, it asks if I shouldn’t be writing; when I write, it asks if I shouldn’t be reading or gardening or cleaning, parenting, diapering, fixing, or working on something more profitable than writing what-is-it-again. Moments of clarity or passion prevail at times, of course, or you wouldn’t know me in these words.
I didn’t have a newborn at the time I bought the book. She’s four months old, and the book was acquired a several months ago. I didn’t have her then, so I didn’t have to hold her gassy tummy and wiggly arms. She’s such a precious thing, spit-up and all, and there’s a patch of spit-up cheese on the carpet there, sweet wife, if you would grab a towel while you’re up. I didn’t have the princess tiny when I bought River Rising, so I didn’t have that delay on reading it. Continue reading River Rising by Athol Dickson
It is all about us, isn’t it?
Our postmodern world is pulling each individual into a vacuum of self-centeredness, whispering, ‘It’s all about you.’ It’s all about your own pleasure, peace, prosperity, and comfort. It’s all about what you think. It’s all about your own self-actualization, your individual pursuit. It reminds me of the first lie that mankind heard in the garden: ‘You will be like God!’ It is all about us, isn’t it? –Del Tacket, TruthProject.com
Quoted on Your Writers Group.com
I remember a writer, whom I didn’t know then and now can’t remember, saying his biggest hurtle in telling a good story was taking himself out of focus. He wasn’t meant to be the main character of every story.