The Blur in the Brushstrokes

Particulars matter. Of course, so do Universals and Forms. I hold to a healthy mix of Aristotle and Plato, tempered by Jesus and His word. I find it interesting that the particulars make up the whole, even if the universal was set into place first. For example, God said, Let there be light, and there was; then He went on to make the sun, moon, and stars. The universal preceded the particulars.

However, we live inside the universe—that is, within the universals. We live inside one planet in our solar system, which is in our galaxy, inside the whole universe.  We live within time—second by second, the future becoming now, becoming the past—in such a rapid succession that it is a good thing we don't constantly focus on how fleeting the present is as it arrives. We would miss it if we did. We live inside the seconds, minutes, and hours that make up our days. We live inside the days and months that form the years. We live inside this framework of time, within our rolling universe.

All this I realised in a few moments when writing the date on the upper right corner of my journal, the place and time of day in the upper left. Upon studying abroad, I learned that most of the world writes the date in ascending order: day, month, year. This seemed logical and more practical to my understanding, and I quickly adopted the practise. In fact, North America (and parts of Canada) seems to be the only place(s) where dates are written in a mid-form of month, day, year.

When did this odd practise begin? Though I gave this question a bit more than a cursory search, I could not find a definitive answer. However, I was stunned as I realised that writing the date month-first deconstructs our very selves, as well as the universal framework in which we live. You see, if we begin, not with the overarching framework of the year of our Lord, nor the particular minutes or days that make up our part in that story, what do we have left? An arbitrary median that shows us neither the details nor the whole picture. It is like looking at an impressionist painting at a middling distance—it is merely blurry, causing one to miss the intricate strokes and colours of the up-close detail, as well as the clearer picture from a farther vantage point.

Our minutes and hours are how we spend our days, and as Annie Dillard says: "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing."1 If we live only in the minutes, in the what we are doing, without the framework of the universal 'year of our Lord' or the metanarrative of all of history, then what we are doing becomes those unintelligible brushstrokes of a Monet, seen an inch from the canvas. Our moments in the story are unintelligible without a larger framework.

However, there is a big picture laid out from the beginning of time, from the conception of the universe. When we find ourselves placed inside of that framework, then our moments and days—how we spend our lives—flow in the picture. Our days are the light and shadow of a section of the painting. The stroke of our lives may seem incredibly small compared to the giant canvas, but our placement matters in the whole.

Is there room for something between the particulars and the universal? Like months slipped between days and years? Yes, of course. There is something between individual atoms and the galaxy: planets and stars; water and plants; animals, man, and more. So, too, there are individual humans as particulars, society as a whole. What comes between? I posit two middle-forms: the family and the Church.

Families are made up of individuals, helping one another both to survive and to thrive; society is made up of families composed of individuals. The Church (throughout time and space) is made up of individuals and families being knit together into the Body of Christ Jesus. It is these blurry middle-forms where we sometimes have a hard time seeing either the whole story or the individual words.

It's like a schoolhouse

of little words,

thousands of words.

First you figure out what each one means by itself,

the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop

      full of moonlight.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.2

You know the individual words, you begin to see the whole story by the stringing and weaving of those words together into sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. The middle-form of a story is a chapter—often the length of the story that we read in one sitting—if we are savouring the book. A chapter is a good length of the story to read, to mull over, to build upon. But a chapter alone does a poor job of conveying the story as a whole with its plot and chronology; nor does a chapter catch the depth of the characters, their memories, histories, or significance to the whole. A chapter is a necessary middle-form or larger building block—much like a month—obviously somewhere between the details and the whole.

So, we return to families, the building blocks of society. There is really no such thing as an individual family—there are always extended relatives, family members marrying and branching out again and again. It is easy to see why we use the image of a tree to explain families, because there is that continual growth and branching, like a tree, that make up a whole. A family is a bit elastic, expanding in marriages and births, constricting in deaths. It is fluid, and thus a bit blurry; like a swift stream, like the Monet seen somewhere between brushstrokes and long-distance clarity. The present is the same, the blur between the future and history. The middle-form is always the blur, the brushstroke, the action point, the beam swinging from the crane in the building process. It is like present circumstances, rather hard to understand as you are going through them, but easier to see the edges, the whys and wherefores, after you have made it beyond, gaining perspective from the passage of time.

We live in the moments and the days—the particulars. Particulars build those middle-forms of family and Church, of months and years, of planets and stars; all within the frame of the whole picture, God’s universal story. The moments matter—become material—like paint on the canvas or inky words on a page. The middle-forms matter, too—setting lonely people into their right place; ordering words and paragraphs; building brick upon brick—so that we can see the family, or story, or home. We see the whole by the blurs in concert, the fragmented pieces coming together.

Little drops of water,

Little grains of sand,

Make the mighty ocean

And the pleasant land.

So the little moments,

Humble though they be,

Make the mighty ages

Of Eternity.3

_________

1. Dillard, Annie The Writing Life (New York, New York, Harper Collins, 2009), emphasis mine

2. Oliver, Mary, "Breakage" in Why I Wake Early (Boston, Massachusetts, Beacon Press, 2004), 32
3. Carney, Julia Abigail Fletcher, "Little Things" Public Domain

Secondhand Stories...

Honey-coloured sunlight pours warm across my shoulders, across the flyleaf of the little book in my hands, where a name is neatly inscribed. The name on the opening page is not my own—no, this little book was purchased used, from a cottage crammed rafters to floorboards with many of the book's kindreds. In such cases, I often wonder what would happen if the owner ever sold out of a stack—or even a single tome in the stack—in a crucial placement. Would the roof cave in, leaving a hole of sky-light rushing through?

Ah, but it was the name on the page that captured my attention, not said book's fascinating location when I came across it. The name was common enough, written in neat penmanship in the right-hand corner: Hunter Swanson. He must have been anxious to prove ownership or have his book returned to him, because he had also crimped the page with a 'From the library of Hunter Swanson' stamp. 

Why, then, is his book amongst my collection? By reason that I had inquired after that particular title in the curious, brimming bookshop. From those copious stacks, the proprietor went straight to a single column, fished out the book from sheer memory, and placed it in my hands. I was so impressed with his knowledge of the book towers that I bought the book on the spot. Granted, as I had entered the shop partly in search of that particular title, it was nearly inevitable that I would purchase it if found. 

Yet again I have strayed from Hunter Swanson and his book lying upon my glass-top table. Who would get rid of a book in which they had both stamped and inked their name? Or perhaps I should ask why? Why would a person give or sell their book to a fellow whose shop is held up by mounds of tomes? Did they despise the writing-style of the memoir? Was the book given to them by a Love, no longer part of their life? Maybe those names we see printed on cover pages have been printed in newspaper ink followed by date of birth and date of death. I do not envy the souls who have to sort, share, and sell a beloved's books upon their death. Or perhaps one has a small cabin which cannot store all of their books, so they give away the ones they have never read or do not plan to read.

There are simply handfuls of reasons why one might give away or sell their library. Still, it seems to me that if you wrote and stamped your name inside the cover of a volume, it must be one you like or would like to have returned to you. Perhaps Hunter Swanson will read this and ask for his book back, which would be a bit sad, because I would like to finish it. But I almost wish Mr Swanson would read this and request his book, because then I could ask him if it really was important and what he liked about it. I could know why this slim book ended up in the tottering piles in the first place. 

Sometimes people are like books in a secondhand store—you wonder how they are in such-and-such a state. Are they like they are because they have loved and lost? What has shaped the story of the person walking by in the airport, on the street, at your church? Where are they going? How will our stories overlap? If Jesus has written His love into our stories, does that love spill into the lives of those we meet? If Jesus has written His name across the cover page of our lives, that means He has claimed us, that He wants us back if ever we are lost. He sees something inside of us that makes us precious to Him—He sees His own signature written on the very first page. We are His, and that makes us valuable.

All these ideas germinated from a name scrawled in a small paperback edition of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. For now, the book lives in a good home, producing much thought—and I have only read the flyleaf.

_____________

* Cross-posted at humanepursuits.com

Speaking Scary

"Don’t let the sun set till you’ve done one thing that sort of scares you."

—Ann Voskamp

Clear Colorado skies are a rich cyan blue, beckoning me to jump into an adventure. Sometimes I receive the call of all that glorious wild and go for a long drive in the mountains, looking for a pull-off where I can tromp. I like adventures, after all. Some days, though, I stay home and watch the cotton-clouds sail over my roof on the breeze, content to look out the window as I write. Whether it is pen to page or keys clicking their rhythm, I can soar to those azure heavens or plumb the depths of pain with words. Some words are hard to wrestle onto the page, but others are plain scary to pen down. What will people think if I write that? Words don't seem to care what others think, they demand entrance into the worlds—of story, of prose, of conversation. They teem with life-giving substance, building worlds, building others up, furnishing frameworks for ideas and dreams. In order to craft a believable story one needs the right words—the sort that steal us away from the concrete planet our feet rest upon and fly us into a place so rich and vibrant that it becomes more real to us than the trees swaying o'erhead.

Words can draw us in to something bigger than ourselves, be it uncharted lands or the love of God through His very own Book. Yet words can be scary, too. They can paint nightmare images, twist into hideous lies, or wound our hearts. However, it is God who gives us the scariest words. They are the sort that breathe life: I was wrong. I forgive you. Can we try again? Help me! God, I trust You. Yes. I love you. These words are hard to say because the monster of pride or the fear of the unknown chokes us. What if we trust God and horrific things still happen to us? What if we speak out our love and it is taken advantage of or rejected? What will people think of us if we admit that we were wrong? What if we tell someone our hurts or struggles, will they run away? If we tell someone we forgive them, doesn't that mean we have to live like we have forgiven them? These words are hard, the implications are far-reaching, and they can scare us.

Yet maybe our world would be richer, the earth beneath our feet more dear, the sky above fully alive, if we spoke these words more often. Maybe our love would grow if only we dared to share it, in word and in action. Perhaps we would free others from the tyranny of stagnation if we forgave them and were able to see that they could be much more than we ever thought. If we speak and act on these frightening words, our view of God would likely deepen, allowing Him to be God and reminding us that we are frail. We might find ourselves in deep waters, in broken places, being honest about our hurts. Still more, though, we might find that the Word Himself speaks to us in these places, breathing His very life into dead places, healing hurts and hearts.

What is one scary word or phrase you need to say before the sun sets? Is it I was wrong or I trust you, or I love you or I believe, please help my unbelief? Sometimes the scariest thing I do in a day is tell God that I trust Him and that I'm saying yes to what He asks of me. He asks hard things sometimes. Often. And they usually include other people—not always the kind I like to be around or who are easy to love. Sometimes He asks me to be still—both to be silent and not to be restless. I strive a lot with God and with others—for God to ask me to stop striving is difficult. To say yes to Him is hard—it is scary. But it is always good. Will you join me in saying scary things to God and to others?

"Words, Words, Words." (To Quote Shakespeare)

[Advent: Week 3]

"When Hugh and I went on a trip to Russia I almost didn't get a visa because our travel agent put down my occupation as writer. Writers think. Writers ask questions. Writers are dangerous. She finally persuaded 'them' that I write only for small children and was not a threat. In any dictatorship writers are among the first to be imprisoned, and vocabulary is quickly diminished and language deteriorates.  Writers, if their vocabulary is not leashed, are quick to see injustice, and rouse the people to do something about it. We need words with which to think; kill words and we won't be able to think and we'll be easier to manipulate."

~ Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season (pg 164)

As I read this section of The Irrational Season today, a chill went through me. Madeleine L'Engle lived through WWII, Viet Nam, and the Cold War. She saw the devastating effects of tyranny, and what methods dictators used to cause them. We see that still, in China, North Korea, parts of the Middle East, and many other places where there is little or no free speech. In such places the oppressed do not know what is going on in the outside world, they are kept in the dark through force and propaganda.

Yet there is a different sort of tyranny running rampant in the 'free' West - the tyranny of disappearing words. We have heard the adage that talk is cheap, yet are still hurt and offended by various sleights, snubs, and insults. Sticks and stones might break our bones, but we all know that words spoken to us in vulnerable moments (childhood especially) may leave lasting scars. Our sneaking enemy bombards us with so many words each day that their meaning and weight is weakened. Advertisements and billboards, e-mails and printed leaflets and newspapers, words flashed on television screens, iPads, iPods, and other electronic devices. We can now communicate quickly with anyone in any part of the world, but our whole world aches with the loss of community. Our Western society is losing the ability to articulate as words like"selfie" are added to the dictionary, but even bright persons no longer know what 'widdershins' means; or they say words like 'impactful' in place of a real word like 'impacting' or 'meaningful.' 

Our insidious enemy, the State, is not removing words from dictionaries as much as they are removing them from circulation and common vernacular. Thus, the minds of the public are weakened. But words are strong. They can augment or crush. Words are the death of us in the throes of an argument. Or words can be life and hope breathed into us in a genuine compliment or observation. If we understand the power of words we can share ideas and ideals, vision and Truth. We can paint the canvas of the mind with vivid sunrises and sublime mountain ranges. Yet we can only do this well if we have the subtle colours provided us via a large vocabulary. Vocabulary is to the writer what the toolbox is the carpenter, or the palette is to the artist. Without the fine chisels or minute brushes, the artisan is unable to inlay the wood or paint delicate subtleties in his work. Without a vast wealth of words, the writer loses clarity and sharpness in his writing. Without a vast array of words, communication is fuzzy at best, muddled and hollow at worst. 

Even when the writer has the word bank needed to clearly communicate, his audience also needs a grasp of language. The reader must possess a desire to look up unfamiliar words in order to receive clarity and insight. He must, even before that, be willing to read. We live in a culture where we are too lazy to even read a blog post if it does not have photos with it; or where a magazine article, sermon, soundbite, or news clip has been made as brief as possible to retain the viewer's or listener's attention. We are sliding into the ground where we begin to lose context and perspective because we have shortened everything. The media overloading our eyes and ears and brains has shortened our attention spans. We can no longer listen to a speech three hours long, or spend the whole 4th of July listening to speeches, recitations, and singing. 

We want more action, more multi-tasking, and the rush of information, because we do not know what to do with silence. But the more information transmitted to us, the less meaningful it is. Sometimes an idea or a word is underlined best by minutes or hours of silence. Sometimes we have to stop reading so fast to look up an unfamiliar word in order to gain greater insight. The goal is not simply to finish a book, it is the be led out of ignorance and into Truth. 

We need words to be alive -- because at one tangible point in History, the Word Himself was made man and dwelt among us. He shrouded Himself in this fleshly body of death to bring us new Life. Words matter vastly in reality. It is by words that God spoke all that we see, smell, hear, sense, and know into existence. It is through the Word enfleshed that we are given the hope of stepping through the portal of death into the really real world of the High Countries. It is that Word that is making us less and less shadow-men, and more and more into solid creatures. Words are life - The Word is Life. The Word is the substance of Hope. That final Word of God is the Prince of Peace. Let us not rush past that Truth into vague and insipid thoughts and 'communication' (i.e. electronic exchanges in place of face-to-face meetings) this Advent. Let us listen to the Word when He says, "This is the way, walk in it." Let us ask questions. Let us live dangerously. Let us live.

~ Johanna

Made for Some Reason

 

Surely a man of genius composing a poem or symphony must be less unlike God than  a ruler? But the man of genius has no mere by-products in his work. Every note or word will be more than a means, more than a consequence. Nothing will be present solely for the sake of other things. 

If each note or word were conscious it would say, "The Maker had me myself in view and chose for me, with the whole force of His genius, exactly the context I required." And it would be right – provided it remembered that every other note or word could say no less.

~ C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer (pp. 54-55)

Words, words, words: God made the world and its contents with them. By the word of His mouth the heavens stand firm. The Son of God is called the Word (logos). Moreover, God reveals Himself most expressly in the words of a story contained in a book. That story is the great Story, complete with a plot, interwoven themes, protagonist, antagonist, and damsel in distress. The Story has a beginning, a plight, a climax, a liberator, an ultimate sacrifice, and is still in the throes of climax resolution. God tells His Story in a variety of lives and through numerous means: poetry, philosophy, narrative, historical accounts, and letters.

Did you know that you are a part of God's grand Story? Not only that, but in "the whole force of His genius" you are in the exact context that you require. You should not have been born two hundred years ago, nor two thousand years hence. You should not have been born into a different culture, on a different continent, or to a different family (even though your family life may have extreme brokenness, God can redeems and use even that). You should not try to be someone or something you are not. You do not have to fit into the box the world offers you. You were made to be the exact person you are to carry the Story further. Your line is not just your own, but it fits into the context of the Story right now.

This idea from Lewis surfaced in another book I read recently:  

"Did you ever notice that all machines are made for some reason?" [Hugo] asked Isabelle. "They are built to make you laugh, like the mouse here, or to tell the time, like clocks, or to fill you with wonder, like the automaton. Maybe that's why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn't able to do what it was meant to do... Maybe it's the same with people," Hugo continued. "If you lose your purpose... It's like you're broken."

 ~ Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret (pp 374-375)

 

If we lose our purpose, if we seek a different context than the one chosen for us, it is like we are broken. We are like a line read out of time, dropping the rhythm and rhyme. Have you ever felt out of time? As if your line had no context at all, let alone the 'exact right' sort? Perhaps you don't know what to do after school, or what job to look for, or whom you should marry, or whether you ought to remain single, or where you should live.  Maybe you feel trapped where you are. Are you really trapped, or do you no longer fit inside a constantly shrinking space?  Like a piece in a complicated machine, you will not simply 'do' in one of a number of places. You must fit exactly where the Maker has intended for you to go from the beginning.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

 ~ Walt Whitman, O Me! O Life! (from Leaves of Grass)

And as Mr Keating (from my favourite film, Dead Poets' Society) asks his class, I ask you: what will your verse be?

~ Johanna

The Good Ol' Summertime

Have you ever taken the time to listen to a chorus of tree frogs while watching the moon rise? Perhaps you don't live in a place that affords this luxury. In that case, you are probably missing another key element of the quintessential Summer evening: lightening bugs. Next you'll be clamoring that you don't have local outdoor ice cream stands, drive-in movies, cornfields, and you've never smelled the sweet scent of freshly mowed hay. You will tell me that the indispensable sights, sounds, and scents of summer are sunscreen, salt water, and grilling. I'll agree with the grilling one at least.

It's funny how our growing up experiences solidify in our minds what a season is or is not like. Thunder, lightening, and the fresh smell of rain are fundamental to late Spring and early Summer in the Midwest. But what if you grew up in the desert or by the sea? You would miss the wind blowing through the wheat fields illuminated by scores of fireflies. Yet what do I not know as familiar? The waves upon the shore, the moon trailing over the water, the sharp cry of gulls winging their way home at night. These are foreign to my understanding of "normal".

Isn't it wonderful that God created various landscapes? Isn't it marvelous that we have different perspectives based on how and where we were raised? Isn't it splendid that we are not all cast from the same mold? God is creative; ingenious, really. That, of course, is an understatement. God's ingenuity and imagination surpass the most vivid colours of the ocean and its inhabitants, or the wildflowers in a meadow, or persons on the streets of New York. Can you picture the grand adventure of Heaven? Perhaps there will be new sounds, tastes, colours, dimensions, and other things I cannot yet conceive.

Where are these thoughts going? Good question... I really just wanted to write about tree frogs and fireflies. I wanted to capture at least a snapshot of the Beauty I experienced on my walk this evening. Words can paint neat pictures in our minds at times, but they cannot beat being there. To be in that place in that lighting with that smell...

No, words cannot come close to touching reality. But Oh! Words can make our imaginations soar, cause our hearts to swell, and lead us to Beauty. They have a different power, another role and purpose. We need both the experience and the words to describe it. We need to communicate (even if only to ourselves) all of the things our senses perceive. One cannot replace the other, it is a necessary union.



~ Johanna

One Clear Call for Me

"Sunset and Evening Star,

And one clear call for me..."

...To write. To cherish things past. To long for dusty pages of well bound tomes. To appreciate paper, ink, and the dripping wax of the candle on my desk.

Who am I? I am a keeper of things past. A guardian who will not allow ancient words to be forgotten. Tennyson and Wordsworth, Locke and Burke: their words and ideas have long shaped us. Saint Paul, the Creeds and Confessions: longer still have they chiseled our hearts and minds. Luther and Erasmus, too, gave the common man tools to analyze texts, and set the Scriptures in his own tongue.

Tongue. Language, words, expression, speech, thoughts... These are a beacon to arouse and alarm, to humble and bless, to bewilder and charm. Words express ideas, they must be carefully chosen, wrought into concise thought. Ideas must be worthy of being spoken, penned, or taught.

Eloquence and rhetoric have been pushed aside for the caustic inarticulation of postmodernism. Words have been uprooted, their meanings changed or stolen.

"Twilight and evening bell
And after that the dark!"

A twilight on words and Beauty? Does "Beauty" even make sense if meaning is given by the hearer? My head lifts in hope: yes. Words have objective meaning. Poetry and prose intend what the author seeks to convey.

Long after darkness falls, grey meets the East. Light streaks along the horizon, licking the clouds like a tongue of flame with vibrant oranges, reds, and dazzling golds. Yes! The sun rises after the dark.

I am a keeper of words, a teacher of language. They will LIVE. Another will rise up to take my place, to excel me when I have crossed the bar.


~ Johanna