Allogamy

My nightly ritual of allogamous reading keeps a number of books near my bedside at any given time. Some hapless books have been known to hang out there for a year as I read a paragraph or two like a devotional psalter. Some come and go before dawn.

This practice befuddles my husband who believes in doing one thing and doing it well. My daughters are mystified that it takes me longer to read the best books. I often wish I could take them all in faster and once even bought a do-it-yourself Evelyn Woods course. (So many books, so little time!) But chewing the cud is part of the fun for me. I've camped out on one page of Mary Karr's book for the last two nights (page 11-12) and I've been reading Osnos' book (a 2014 Christmas gift from my husband) out loud for a year with one of my ESL students. It is excellent, by the way, and as my student's allotted hours are almost over, I hope to finish the book soon!

Death by Living, on loan from Julie, will be returned to her when I visit this weekend. Wilson's book is a rollicking ride, a fast read that simultaneously slows me down to appreciate my own life while spurring me on to do more without fear. This memoir's mantra is, throw caution to the wind and dare to live with one hundred percent attention to the world surrounding you.

Anam Cara, because, like Allison, I didn't finish it the first time around.

Marilynne Robinson, because, as an exasperatingly difficult read, I need to - like cod liver oil.

Daily Rituals has been eye-opening and hilarious. It's a compilation of great artists and their work habits. Need I say more?

Robert Cording, one of my favorite contemporary poets, just released this book. Allison knew I'd love it for Christmas. I read it like Psalms. So good.

Cross-pollination: because it would be fruitless to do it any other way.

Progress Report

Soak in the writings of Moses. These last few weeks, I have been struck by the wealth of imagery and import. To be a priest in the lineage of Aaron was a fearsome thing! On the first day of consecration of the temple, that magnificent and splendid feat of architecture and artisanal skill which the entire desert encampment helped to build (not out of compulsion but with joy and generosity), two of Aaron's sons decided to do things their way. Fire erupted and burned them up in front of Aaron, Moses, and the entire camp who stood trembling and unsure of what God would do next. He said proceed - with care. And the requirements were stringent. At any moment it would be so easy to get things wrong, again. I can't fathom the heaviness of heart that Aaron must have felt, or the deep awe and respect for God's power as he continued his priestly duties.

UT Austin

Thus the service in the temple began - a service that would mark and make all future generations. Everything Aaron did, had to be performed as prayer with excellence and attention to both his inner condition and his outer comportment, year after year, generation after generation. And what were his duties? What do you imagine they were? Here is a partial list: trim the wicks of the golden lamps and fill them with oil to keep them burning; slaughter the sacrifices and dispose of the ashes; bake the bread cakes, carefully measuring the flour; meticulously cleanse the temple and the priests.... Nothing short of butcher, baker, housekeeper, maintenance man. The nitty-gritty menial daily tasks performed so a people ever so beset with more and more stubborness could be close to God. The rituals and cleansings, the sacrifices and the expectations, the light and bread and oil and incense, every day, every year. And in the end, Aaron, like Moses, was prevented from entering the promised land.  So I ask, do the priests sanctify the work, or does the work sanctify the priest?

I recently read an illuminating book by Nancy J. Nordenson entitled Finding Livelihood: A Progress of Work and Leisure. Nordenson, a medical writer, explores the meaning of work and those seasons when work ceases. It is an evocative and meditative book that unflinchingly examines who we are in relation to what we do.

Nancy writes, "I don't spill blood for my work; I don't even break a sweat. I write and take my diminished breaths. Expand, contract, expand, contract, expand, contract. I sit and think and write and my work gets done. Beat, pause, beat. here is a sentence about transfusion requirements; here is a paragraph about complications. I wonder about the physicality of the blood in the bag versus the electronic document on my computer screen, both in the service to the same disease. Inside me, 3 million red blood cells expire for each second the document grows. Have you anything to fill you back up?" (page 63)

Under the Camponile

There are layoffs happening this week here in Houston - an expected death that has kept many of my students on edge for months. Some of them will go home to other countries and continue to work. Some will uproot their High School students with only one year left to graduate. Some will be out of a job. When the work is tedious and long and doesn't make sense. When everything goes wrong and burns up in smoke. When the layoffs keep coming and you might be next. When she is old and the benefits don't match the expenses. When his strength fails and he is forced into retirement. When I do one thing wrong and watch someone else inherit my reward. Who are we then and where next?  Have we anything to fill us back up?

Continuum Mysterium

I have this day at home, a full morning to stretch out the limbs of the usual: I switch on the cracked ginger-jar lamp and with a Mudlark match, light the votive candle called Mediterranean Sea. It flickers inside the silvered glass on my dad's carved-oak coffee table. I lift my books off the floor because there is no room on the bookshelves monopolizing the room and then pick up the pen from my mother's gilt tray. I open this month's journal, a gray one, and then the bible - the one LeeAnne gave me for my birthday at UGA which, twenty years later, was stolen by Andrea, who secretly sent it away to have it re-bound. All that time thinking I'd lost it and mourning, until my birthday when I unwrapped the heavy box and there it was, now gray leather, instead of wine, pages with coffee stains and decades of notes bleeding into the margins. This book I open, and wince at the memory of the previous day's reading. Too many unanswered whys.

I take a drink of coffee - mixed with cream and sugar and cold-pressed because my aging stomach cannot take more of the anxiety induced acid it churns - and I sip it from the blue and white tea mug that Brad and I bought at the dirt market on the ChiangJiang Bund in Hankou. The light is dawning as I nibble on a piece of waffle from my favorite plate which was once my grandmother's, and when I look up I see photos of my family underneath the large gilt mirror that Marie gave me for Christmas before I left for China; in that mirror, I see reflected the portrait that Cheryl painted of Brittany after her death.

I am alone and the sun rises and the cat has squeezed herself underneath my arm. This long, stretched out daybreak in which I read and pray and write; is it because it feeds my soul or my flesh - these feelings of contentment and calm - in the wake of anxiety or dread. Where am I in this continuum mysterium? Am I more in love with the trappings of this quiet time or with the One whom my soul seeks? Am I more enamored with the words on the page than with the sayer? And what if I begin to sense the answer is yes? What if I have missed the mark? Should I remove the trappings? Change my temperament? Do more and be less? I am indeed a selfish sinner who craves the presence of God for selfish reasons. Would I withdraw my devotion if the ambiance changed? Is it wrong that a ritual sustains the quest? or that I am associative by nature?

But the omniscient, omnipresent God knows this. Knows me.

He woos me with this: deep calls to deep and word calls forth action and I want more of that presence Moses breathed, in smoke and fire, at the tent of meeting; more of that presence fogging up Solomon's thoughts; more of that presence sung from David and swallowed up with Jonah. I want the breath of God in my nostrils, the whirlwind on my face, the taste of his words like honey to set my hair on fire.

Of all Annie Dillard wrote, did you ever read these lines from her poem Tickets for a Prayer Wheel:

The presence of God: 

he picked me up

and swung me like a bell. 

I saw the trees 

on fire, I rang 

a hundred prayers of praise. 

I no longer believe

in divine playfulness.

I saw all the time of this planet

pulled like a scarf

through the sky....

....Why are we shown these things?

God teaches us to pray.