To do:

My list of books that I have recently read (or re-read) and of which I have many thoughts and comments that I want to post, but maybe not today.  =(

Tolstoy, Leo.  Resurrection. London:  Penguin Books, 1966.  This book made me friends with a very very interesting family on our tour in Egypt.  They live in the Hamptons.  I’ve vaguely heard of the Hamptons.  Have you?  =)

Saint Augustine.  Confessions. Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1991.  This book made me feel the need to research church history.  Plus, I guess he has a few good thoughts.  =)

Cunningham, Michael.  The Hours. New York:  Picador USA, 1998.  So, I do try to read the award winners, because I figure, if it’s won an award, there must be something wonderful about the book.  (Confession:  it BURNS me that Oprah usually chooses really good books and then STAMPS her name on all the covers of her book club books, because maybe I don’t want to buy a book that has Oprah’s name on the cover.  Also, it bothers me when books have movie images on the cover.  I’m buying a book, not a movie.  Idiots.)  Anyways, sometimes I love the award books, sometimes I don’t.  This book is okay.  I think I don’t fully get it, because I never read Virgina Woolf.  However, it didn’t really engender a desire to pick up Virginia Woolf either.  So, eh.

Horton, Michael.  God of Promise. Grand Rapids, MI:  Baker Books, 2006.  Sigh.  This is evidence of my capitulation.  I have some thoughts.  =)

Keller, Timothy J.  Ministries of Mercy. Phillipsburg, NJ:  P&R Publishing, 1997.  Also known (for now) as, The Only Tim Keller Book I Concede to Read.  =)

Oh, also, I read:

Brown, Dan.  The Lost Symbol. Doubleday, 2009.  I think Dan Brown stopped trying.  Also, this book is way more heretical to Reformed Christian theology than the thought of Jesus getting married and having a baby, in my opinion.  I’m wondering if Brown was intentionally trying to irk the Christians, to get more sales, the way he did for Da Vinci Code? But there doesn’t seem to be a backlash.  In any case, this book made me roll my eyes a lot.  Also, I totally guessed the ending.  Seriously.  Also, I’m sending loving thoughts your way, over the computer.  Scientifically.  =)  Seriously.  =)

Happy2

This is how I feel right now.  =)

http://www.vimeo.com/7151435

More Non-Books

It’s not that I haven’t been reading.  I totally have.  Book club, I apologize for flaking!!!  =)  Although to be fair, this is probably around the time that real book clubs semi-fall apart as well, no?  =)

Happy links.

This just made me so happy.  =)  I know it’s sentimental and cheery and fluffy, but I really liked the idea of it.  Going back to the land.  Having kids cook and fold tableclothes and eat around a table WITH CONVERSATION, not just iphones or the TV.  =)  It just reminded me of Papua New Guinea.  I hiked up a mountain and I had to dig up my own potatoes, and part of what they taught me was how to pat the potato roots back so it would grow more potatoes for next year or season or whatever.  Then I peeled the damn potatoes and cooked it for everyone over a fire.  And ate it with the family.  And there was no TV or cell phone, so we all talked.  In broken Tok Pisin.  With flashlights.  But it was good.  =)

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/back-to-the-land/?em

Another happy link.  =)

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/26/nfl.skid.row.teen/index.html

Gives me hope.  =)  EVERYONE SIGN UP FOR SCHOOL ON WHEELS.  We need more stories like this.  =)

Also, this website is seriously like crack, because I just keep clicking and I don’t know how to stop.  But I do like this one.  =)

http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html

Maybe I’ll post unhappy links tomorrow.  =)

Non-books

I’m loving Winter’s Tale. But I haven’t the energy to sit and write about it.  But it’s beautiful.

Other stuff.

I listened to this today.

http://www.latimes.com/la-hm-parenting-ss,0,7401777.htmlstory

I’m a bit miffed.  It just rubbed me the wrong way.  I feel like it’s just this new trend that focuses too much attention on lambasting mothers for being too doting and loving and goodness-forbid, mothering.  Okay, I do kinda think the I Love You Forever book is creepy, but Giving Tree? And is it just me?  I never thought of the tree as his mother.  I thought of the tree as a tree.  A selfless, caring, loyal, tree.  I mean, mothers aren’t generally alive when a kid is all old and decrepit.  (And if there’s ANY reason I’m mad at the book, it’s because it can very subtly be construed to condone deforestation.)  And why is there such a huge push for mothers to be all independent and self-fulfilled outside of their children and strong independent hear-me-roar women?  (I mean, this is me talking, I’m ambitious as all-hell and could probably classify myself as a workaholic, but good grief.  It feels like they’re reading these books with the sole purpose of trying to find something ‘wrong’ with it.)  What’s next, Velveteen Rabbit should be ‘rethought’ (I hate this word, by the way) because the stupid toy rabbit doesn’t mind being chewed up and abused and that implies he’s a wet doormat?

I also read this from my lover.  (I routinely refer to certain people as my boyfriend/lover.)  Annie gets annoyed.  =)  I refuse to apologize.  =)  Just kidding.  =)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/opinion/15kristof.html

There is SO MUCH I want to say.  I love Kristof, don’t agree with everything, and it’s so deeply intricately complicated, but bottom line, FIX THE DAMN SCHOOLS.  THANK YOU.  I CAN HELP.

Actually, no, I probably can’t.  I want to cry because there’s so many weird things going on.  Like, WHAT THE F*CK ARE YOU THINKING weird things.  =/  Also, people are weird and confusing and I don’t think I’ll ever really EVER understand another human being EVER.  It’s a mystery to me how Jesus understands us.  Like, DEEPLY understands us.

Also, is it just me, or the fact that I’m teaching a rougher group of kids and so hear about this a lot more, but is anyone else really afraid of what seems like an explosion of tagging and graffiti?  Like, the freeways are going nuts.  I just feel like everything’s tenser this year.  Economy and all.  I think my high school, we have a record high of unemployed parents.

I wanted to end with something happy, but I’m tired.  I’m biking to work tomorrow, so I guess that’s happy.  =)

Winter’s Tale

I’ve been wanting to write about this, mainly because I guess this is my first semi ‘real-time’ book club book.  In the sense that, I’m writing about it as I’m reading it for the first time.  Except I read a part of it before, but I just didn’t get a chance to finish the book.  So I’m pretty excited to find out what happens at the end.  =)  You know how there’s books that you wish you could read for the first time again?  I think this is going to be one of those books.  It’s really really good.  =)

So, I’ve read maybe only like a fourth of the book.  But I like it because so far, the author seems to be obsessed with justice.  Justice of the universe.  And there’s this section where he tries to construct ‘the perfect city,’ which to him, equates with ‘the perfectly just city.’  I don’t know the author’s religion, although actually I think he’s Israeli Jewish.  Side note of interest, I’m always thinking about how my theology tints my readings.  I generally like fiction and poetry, and the books I like aren’t always ‘Christian.’  But it always somehow makes me think about religion.  Anyways.

Passages.

The main character is this dude named Peter Lake.  He’s got this magical background and right now he’s a thief.  He broke into this super rich house (Isaac Penn’s house) and fell in love with the daughter (Beverly Penn, she was home alone), but Beverly’s dying of consumption.  End synopsis.

‘But something had changed, or was changing.  Everything always did, no matter how much he loved what he had.  The only redemption would be if all the tumbling and rearrangement were to mean something.  But he was aware of no pattern.  If there were one great equality, one fine universal balance that he could understand, then he would know that there were others, and that someday the curtain of the world would lift onto a sunny springlike stillness and reveal that nothing – nothing – had been for nought, neither the suffering of all the children that he had seen suffering, nor the agony of the child in the hallway, nor love that ends in death:  nothing.  He doubted that he would have a hint of any greater purpose, and did not ever expect to see the one instant of unambiguous justice that legend said would make the cloud wall gold.’

Helprin, Mark.  Winter’s Tale. Orlando:  Harcourt, Inc., 1983.  pg. 133-134.

And another (I quoted this before in my xanga):

(Isaac Penn speaking with Peter Lake, conversation about injustice and suffering in the world, specifically about the poor)

‘They are [the poor], in their seemingly random actions, part of a plan.  Don’t you know that?’
‘I see no justice in that plan.’
‘Who said,’ lashed out Isaac Penn, ‘that you, a man, can always perceive justice?  Who said that justice is what you imagine?  Can you be sure that you know it when you see it, that you will live long enough to recognize the decisive thunder of its occurrence, that it can be manifest within a generation, within ten generations, within the entire span of human existence?  What you are talking about is common sense, not justice. Justice is higher and not as easy to understand – until it presents itself in unmistakable splendor.  The design of which I speak is far about our understanding.  But we can sometimes feel its presence.
No choreographer, no architect, engineer, or painter could plan more thoroughly and subtly.  Every action and every scene has its purpose.  And the less power one has, the closer he is to the great waves that sweep through all things, patiently preparing them for the approach of a future signified not by simple human equity (a child could think of that), but by luminous and surprising connections that we have no imagined, by illustrations terrifying and benevolent -  a golden age that will show not what we wish, but some bare awkward truth upon which rests everything that ever was and everything that ever will be.  There is justice in the world, Peter Lake, but it cannot be had without mystery.  We try to bring it about without knowing exactly what it is, and only touch upon it.  No matter, for all the flames and sparks of justice throughout all time reach to invigorate unseen epochs – like engines whose power glides on hidden lines to upwell against the dark in distant cities unaware.’

Helprin, Mark.  Winter’s Tale. Orlando:  Harcourt, Inc., 1983.  pg. 165-166.

I guess this kinda reminds me a bit of Brothers, where we’re just asking those questions of, ‘What’s the purpose?’  Or ‘Seriously, why is this world so f*cked up?’  And, ‘For reals, God, do you absolutely promise that all of this will make sense at some point?’

I think there’s two types of Justice that I think about:  worldly justice, and eternal justice.

Worldly justice to me, means no child goes hungry, no child is sold into sex slavery, no child is kidnapped and forced into an army of child soldiers, every child will go home and complain about homework.  This is this stuff that I wanted changed in THIS GENERATION, in my lifetime.  I guess it’s what Isaac Penn calls ‘common sense, not justice.’  Common sense tells us that this is how the world should be.

Eternal justice, to me, means that in the end, it’ll all even out.  Like, the guys who sell children into slavery, will face judgment.  The people who start wars and murder children, will face judgment, and be punished. That the children who were tortured on this earth, will somehow be compensated for the childhood and life they lost.

And then here’s where it all kinda falls apart.  Because I think the Christian concept of justice, tears away at that image of compensation and retribution and even-ness.  Because when I stand in front of God my Judge, ‘justice’ would demand that I go straight to hell.

I dunno, this is all still kinda muddled in my mind.  But justice.  I want it, but it’s true, I can’t fathom it.  I don’t know what it looks like.  I think I’m supposed to just trust that God does know what it looks like, and not only that, He embodies it.  Hmm.

What do you do on days like this?

I LOVE Czeslaw Milosz.  I can’t say his name, because I’ve never heard it.  I wish I had taken more time to stalk him at Berkeley.

I picked up a slim green book of his poems, Second Space. I think I liked his older stuff better, obviously.  But there’s all these poems in there that he wrote later in life.  They make me think.  And then there’s this beautiful section of poems where he writes about faith.  Here’s a few.

From “Jackdaws on the Tower”

A promise was given us, though it was two thousand years ago.
And you did not return, O Savior and Teacher.
They marked me with your sign and sent me out to serve.
…
Could I dare to confess to them that I am a priest without faith,
That I pray every day for the grace of understanding,
Though there is in me only a hope of a hope?
There are days when people seem to me a festival
Of marionettes dancing at the edge of nothingness.
And the torture inflicted on the Son of Man on the cross
Occurred so that the world could show its indifference.

Milosz, Czeslaw.  “Jackdaws on the Tower” from Second Space. New York:  HarperCollins, 2004.  pg. 37.

Seriously, what do you do?  On those days when faith just feels like a job?  When you feel you’re just going through the motions of believing, sometimes solely because you know you HAVE to believe?  It seems the truth of Jesus and the Cross (that Cross) should be enough to shake my world.  And it does.  I think the Cross has shaken up so much of this world.  But truthfully, at the exact same time, it seems like it’s changed nothing.

It’s not that I don’t believe.  It’s more that, I’m astounded by the reaction to the Cross.  That reaction of indifference and apathy.  THAT’S what amazes me more than anything else.  The depth of Love, versus the depth of listless torpor.  And I know it says that Love is even deeper than the apathy of the world.

I think a hope of a hope is enough.

Anyways.  Here’s another poem.

“Dread”

To tell the truth, they believe and disbelieve.
They go to church lest someone think they are godless.
During the sermon they think of Julia’s tits, of an elephant,
Of the price of butter, and of New Guinea.

He dared to think they might be like that
That night when He knelt in the Garden of Olives
And felt on His back the cold sweat of dread.

Milosz, Czeslaw.  “Dread” from Second Space. New York:  HarperCollins, 2004.  pg. 42.

And yet He went anyways.  Knowing that even in our times of worship, our thoughts are flighty and our devotion is flawed.  Knowing that we would fall asleep, even while He asked for company.  That is pretty amazing.

How is it I still continue to live indifferently?

Servant

The first Ishiguro book I read was Never Let Me Go, the one with the freaky doll face on the cover.  It was disquietingly disturbing.  But I liked his style.  I picked up Remains of the Day, mostly because I’d never read it, and I remember a 10 second clip from the movie, but it was sooooooooooo slow that I stopped watching.  But I think I’m mature enough to handle slow books now.

I like the book.  It’s about this aging butler who’s looking back on the changing nature of England and the world.  And half of the book is his ruminations on what makes a ‘great’ butler.  Here’s one section.

‘Indeed, I would be among the last to advocate bestowing one’s loyalty carelessly on any lady or gentleman who happens to employ one for a time.  However, if a butler is to be of any worth to anything or anybody in life, there must surely come a time when he ceases his searching; a time when he must say to himself:  “This employer embodies all that I find noble and admirable.  I will hereafter devote myself to serving him.”  This is loyalty intelligently bestowed.  What is there “undignified” in this?  One is simply accepting an inescapable truth:  that the likes of you and I will never be in a position to comprehend the great affairs of today’s world, and our best course will always be to put our trust in an employer we judge to be wise and honourable, and to devote our energies to the task of serving him to the best of our ability.’

Ishiguro, Kazuo.  The Remains of the Day. London:  Faber and Faber, 1989.  pg.  210-211.

Anyways, it turns out his employer is not the perfect gentleman he believed him to be.  But he has no regrets.  And really, I think everything in this world we choose to serve will do the same; somehow disappoint and let us down.

It got me thinking about this idea of ‘choosing’ whom to serve.  I went through that phase of doubting religion, specifically Christianity.  And still do.  Sometimes I wake up and I think, ‘Wow, the atheists MUST be right, this doesn’t make sense at all.’  And other times, I stop and think, ‘No, the world doesn’t make sense WITHOUT God and Jesus.’

I don’t agree with the butler, I think butlers can and should have ideas about the affairs of the world.  But it just reminds me of how little ANY human can really say about the affairs of the world.  I seriously always think I know what’s better; better for entire continents, for countries, communities, schools, cities, people.  And what to do.  And I truly think about running for public office so I can fix it.  But at the end of the day, what do I really know about the universe?  The best I can do is make the decision to serve the One who created it. Right?

It’s just so freaking hard.  And at the same time, the easiest thing in the world to do.  And maybe that’s why I balk at it?

Anyways, few more quotes at the end of the book I like.  I actually have a lot I like about this book, I think it’s a quiet rebuke to the speaker and his personality.  But I’ll just end with a quote.  Unless you’ve read the book, in which case, let’s talk.  =)

‘Evidently, they had all paused a moment for the lights coming on, and then proceeded to fall into conversation with one another.  As I watch them now, they are laughing merrily.  It is curious how people can build such warmth among themselves so swiftly.’ pg. 257.

An oldy favorite

I need to post just to post, otherwise this will die.  I wrote about this poem before, and I wanted to just cut and paste it here, from one of my gazillion other blogs, but I can’t find it.  So sad.  It must’ve disappeared into cyberdeath.  I wonder sometimes about things that we delete on our computers or on the internet (I don’t think I know the difference, sadly.).  Anyways.  This is one of my favoritest poems ever.

“Prayers of Steel”

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars.

~Carl Sandburg, from Cornhuskers, ‘Leather Leggings’ (I think, I have the Complete Poems book and I’m not sure how they’re arranging it, but it’s page 109 of Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg.)

(I’m trying to remember my thoughts about what I love about this poem.)

Basically, I found this poem when that one song, ‘Refiner’s Fire’ was super-popular.  I just remember the church playing that song all the time, about wanting to be like gold or silver.  And the song kept singing about being pure and holy, and how we should be praying for God to continually purify us, so that we become like gold or silver.  And the image in my mind, was of myself, somehow, turning into this really pretty, delicate, thin, gold or silver necklace.  Pretty picture, but it kinda didn’t jive with me.  I am neither pretty nor delicate, and part of me, doesn’t really want to be.  =)

I LOVE this poem.  I love how it’s brutal.  I love how the words used are all about sweat and force and brute strength.  And it just captures how I feel about ‘refinement.’  I feel like ‘refinement’ in Christianese is used more often in the context of that ‘finishing touch,’ like that final polish on that piece of jewelry.  But something I’ve always felt, is that I’m not ready for ‘refinement.’  It’s more like, I have these huge, basic design flaws, and I don’t need ‘refinement,’ I need to be taken back to the drawing board and I need to be smashed up and just started over.  My sins won’t go away with just a mere ‘polishing refinement.’  I love these words of just laying it down on a dirty steel anvil, and being beaten and hammered into something else.  And in the poem, I love how what’s being created, is used to build.  How he wants to be used for something useful, something strong, something lasting.  Not necklaces.

Don’t get me wrong, I like ‘Refiner’s Fire,’ and I understand the sentiment.  It’s just that in the song, it seems to gloss over the fact that refining fire, is WHITE hot.  Because nothing impure can last, it just burns up.  The only reason gold and silver remain is because it endured and lasted through this torturous, blazing inferno of flame and heat.  But I think Sandburg says it better.  =)  If I pray to be refined, I do want to be turned into something useful.  Something that can withstand beatings and earthquakes and all the other stresses of daily life in this world, instead of falling apart and crumbling.  And one day, it’ll be forever.  =)  Maybe even as a necklace.  =)

Anyways.  There’s a ton of other good Sandburg poems.  He’s so sexy, seriously.  So also, I finished East of Eden, but there’s so many quotes that I’m stymied.  But they shall come.

Steinbeck, pg. 412-413

“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved.  Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.  It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”

Steinbeck

Because this quote will lead into the best parts of East of Eden:

“Adam dropped his eyes.  ‘It’s not curiosity.  But I would like to know what kind of blood is in my boys.  When they grow up – won’t I be looking for something in them?’

‘Yes, you will.  And I will warn you now that not their blood but your suspicion might build evil in them.  They will be what you expect of them.’

‘But their blood-’

‘I don’t much believe in blood,’ said Samuel.  ‘I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.’

‘You can’t make a race horse of a pig.’

‘No,’ said Samuel, ‘but you can make a very fast pig.’”

pg. 260.

****************************

And…..after reading the story of Cain and Abel:

“Adam sighed deeply.  ‘It’s not a comforting story, is it?’

Lee…’No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.  What a great burden of guilt men have!’

Samuel said to Adam, ‘And you have tried to take it all.’

Lee said, ‘So do I, so does everyone.  We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff.  It must be that we want it that way.’

Adam broke in, ‘It makes me feel better, not worse.’

‘How do you mean?’ Samuel asked.

‘Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin.  Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it.  But sin is our own designing.’

‘Yes, I see.  But how does this story make it better?’

‘Because,’ Adam said excitedly, ‘we are descended from this.  This is our father.  Some of our guilt is absorbed in our ancestry.  What chance did we have?  We are the children of our father.  It means we aren’t the first.  It’s an excuse, and there aren’t enough excuses in the world.’

‘Not convincing ones anyway,’ said Lee.  ‘Else we would long ago have wiped out guilt, and the world would not be filled with sad, punished people.’”

pg. 267