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Dear reading friends,

I'm going to take my Blog off the air for now. I feel the need to simplify--so I can actually figure out how to get a little writing done, and more importantly, hopefully simplifying might also lead in some fashion to more simplicity in the fabric of my life and days. This seems like one tiny step in that direction--perhaps misguided, but since i write so rarely anyway, it seems very low risk.

With much much thanks for all of you who read, commented and encouraged me.

Jenny

Remembering Pete

Around 4 a.m. on this dark rainy morning of December 30, Peter Sobek died.

Not one of you know Pete. I am sure of this. Not many people did. For about 4 years I lived in his neighborhood, where he lived on a little cot in the living room of a tiny condo he shared his grown daughter. He was lonely, sick, isolated, often worried. As far as I could tell in the last couple of years he had no interactions with anyone in this world but his daughter and health care professionals and my family. And yet, whoever knew him loved him and even more--he loved them. He always spoke words of love, of appreciation--to hear him tell it, his daughter, as well every cleaning lady, every physical therapist, every orderly at every convaslescent home was a saint-- "good people"...

He was an ex-drinker, completely estranged from one son and almost estranged from a second. And yet he called my son "Smilely," and gave him candy and played little games with him and showed care for Luke every time we were together--no matter how sick he was feeling.

He was "not a very good Catholic," who had not been to a church in many, many years. And he told me Jesus was with him, and comforted him and answered his prayers. Once I came over and he was reading the Bible--the book of Mark-- he said, "look here Jenny. I thought this was going to be prayers--but it's all this that Jesus did and said. It's just wonderful."

Often at the end of our visits I would say, "Pete, can I pray for you," and he would agree and then start praying the Lord's Prayer. Yesterday, by God's generous goodness to me, I was able to visit him for the last time. He was too weak to do more than open his eyes for a second, but he held my hand for a little while and before I left I prayed --and I sincerely believe he prayed with me--the prayer Jesus gave us.

Once he said to me, in thanks for some extremely small thing I had done for him,
"you are just like a mother to me." It was the kind of extravagent grace he always showed--but to be compared to the mother of a man in his 80s really struck me. I keep thinking about how my own son will some day have to travel this same route--and I likely won't be there as he travels it. I trust that God will bring him friends then. And I think how unspeakably horrible it is to imagine that my son's gloriously beautiful and perfect body will someday wither and fail him and he will gasp for his last breaths and then die.

But this Christmas God has reminded me that he has sent his own Son to take on flesh as weak as ours. He allowed his own son to walk into death, to gasp for breath and not to find it. That is the gift he has given us. He has met us in our unspeakable weakness and he has redeemed it, transformed it....brought out of it resurrection and life.

I was trying, in some small way, to talk about this with Luke. He summarized it beautifully, better than I could ever have said. He said, today, when we were talking about Pete's passing-- "Jesus died before Pete. He went before him. So he can show him the way."


A few years ago, when Pete had his first heart attack, Luke and I went to visit him in the convaslescent home -- and when we returned I wrote this poem. I'll publish it here again (I know I have before as well) with profound gratitude to God for allowing our family to know his friend Peter Sobek.




Returning From Visiting The Convalescent Home


In the dark wind, husks
of seed pods rustle; grasses
leaning, knocking into one another
a soft and brittle chiming.

Tomorrow in the morning, I’ll walk
among the careless, amber weeds
full of their wet, jeweled light.

See how it was--the keening
then the kneeling--
and how they too have flung
their last bruised kernels away.

Supernatural Love

I stumbled on this poem by Gjertrud Schnackenberg (and I sincerely and deeply hope I never am called upon to pronounce this name).



The poem is so PRETTY and such a delight--the word play and meaning and sound just thrilled me and it was so happy. I wanted to pass it on.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177008

Building cathedrals, being a mother and bad (or not very good) poems

A friend's mother sent her this little essay or poem, and she forwarded it to me. Apparently it's from Nicole Johnson's novel, The Invisible Woman. I think that there's a lot of beautiful, loving intention in this, but I personally don't like it. And it's so easy to rant and I don't like it when I do that either.

Read it before you read the rant--

I'm invisible.

It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I'm on the phone and ask to be taken to the store.

Inside I'm thinking, "Can't you see I'm on the phone?"Obviously not. No one can see if I'm on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all.

I'm invisible.

Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more: Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this? Some days I'm not a pair of hands; I'm not even a human being. I'm a clock to ask, "What time is it?" I'm a satellite guide to answer, "What number is the Disney Channel?" I'm a car to order, "Right around 5:30, please."

I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history and the mind that graduated summa cum laude -but now they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again.

She's going ... she's going ... she's gone!

One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. Janice had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself as I looked down at my out-of-style dress; it was the only thing I could find that was clean. My unwashed hair was pulled up in a banana clip and I was afraid I could actually smell peanut butter in it.

I was feeling pretty pathetic, when Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, "I brought you this." It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe.I wasn't exactly sure why she'd given it to me until I read her inscription:"To Charlotte, with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees."

In the days ahead I would read - no, devour - the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work:
* No one can say who built the great cathedrals - we have no record of their names.
* These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished.
* They made great sacrifices and expected no credit.
* The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.

A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, "Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it."
And the workman replied, "Because God sees."

I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, "I see you, Charlotte. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does. No act of kindness you've done, no sequin you've sewn on, no cupcake you've baked, is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can't see right now what it will become."

At times, my invisibility feels like an affliction. But it is not a disease that is erasing my life. It is the cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness. It is the antidote to my strong, stubborn pride. I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on.

The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree. When I really think about it, I don't want my son to tell the friend he's bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, "My mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table." That would mean I'd built a shrine or a monument to myself. I just want himto want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to his friend, to add,"You're gonna love it there."

As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we're doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.

I do know we are called to die to ourselves, to find our lives by losing it. I do know that this is not just some heroic intention, some dramatic call to martyrdom so that we forever find a pathetic way to get sympathy and admiration. This is a real call to love, and it's hard and feels like death and it does sometimes play itself out in making peanut butter sandwhiches, in sleepless nights with children, in giving up pursuits of fashionable clothing or other, in creating a home that is welcoming, loving, nurturing. But this essay feels like it falls a lot further on the side of martyrdom in a way that is not healthy for anyone in the family. As if it is important for mothers to become invisible. I don't believe that creates healthy children. And I don't believe that is "cathedral building."

On the other hand, I am very drawn to the idea of building cathedrals--and of that metaphor as a way to understand being a Christian artist. That is what I want to learn. How can we, as Christian artists, go against a long culture of artists that says the ultimate for the artist is self-expression and instead grow a conception of ourselves as in a community that is building something beautiful and grand and far far beyond ourselves and yet coming from our very selves. I am so grateful to be part of a family and a church--to be in a community where I am not the center of the universe but where I give what is me to what is bigger than me. And still, I am still longing to find myself and other artists creating more within that community.

Bright Star

Jane Campion's Bright Star --about the Romantic poet John Keats and his romance with his young neighbor, Fanny Brawne-- surprised me. I expected gorgeous and provocative cineamatography, moody passion and brilliant dialog. I expected the frilly, sensual, temptestuos spirit of the romantic poets to be made palpable, visual, alive. But I didn't expect
to leave the theater truly grieving John Keats, who died so young of tuberculosis. I didn't expect that I would be able to imagine what might have been--the warm homey love he and Fanny could have shared in a small house in the English countryside. I could picture him delighting and doting on their children in between writing sessions. I could picture her entertaining guests and protecting his privacy. I wanted all that for them.

Of course, they never married. He was too poor at first, and then also too sick. Their romance is quite legendary--but for me it had always been something static, like a pretty little figurine, and something emblematic, one more accessory for a Romantic poet to have--the passionate love, the debilitating illness, the unacknowledged brilliance. Through Campion's great work, though, he became a real person to me. As did she.

It was a great, fun movie. It made me think about art and relationships in new ways. Fanny was an incredibly gifted and precocious seamstress--who designed and sewed all her clothes. This was a beautiful visual aspect of the movie and it also set up an interesting opposition between the male, intellectual, serious art of poetry and her own more craftsman, more female, less intellectually respected art. If only she could have used her craft to provide the income for the couple!

I found myself more sympathetic to what it would be like to be in that time period, with the restrictions on women and on relationships that the culture imposed.

There was also an interesting tension between Fanny Brawne and John Keats' best poet friend, Mr Brown. At first I thought their intense hatred of each other was simply funny, something flirty and rather inconsequential. But there was something deeper, more elemental to it-- a truer belief in the lover's part on actual love, versus the older poet's more cynical nature.

I guess I also loved the movie because it showed an incredibly sensual, passionate romance without any sex--gratuitous or otherwise. That took creativity and art to pull off.

I had thought of Keats as being another romantic like Shelley, who left a horrible mess in his wake as they pursued his own agenda in the name of his passions. But in this portrayal Keats seemed driven by ideals and virtues bigger than himself.

The tragedy, especially for Brawne, was that the ideal of romantic love was still not big enough. As she went to wander the heath, dressed all in black after his death, I had another wish--not only that they could have lived out their lives together--but that she could have had a deeper vision to sustain her, a truer hope for her to lodge her amazing spirit.

The broken artist

Novelist Jeanette Winterson recently had an essay in the Wall Street Journal titled "In Praise of the Crack-up" where she wrote about the link between mental illness and despair and creative artistic people.

I haven't had the burden of struggling with true mental illness the way so many artists have, (including some friends and members of my own family). Not that I can't do a mood pretty darn well---but I can only blame my moods on my own brattiness--

That said, I know mental illness is a true issue for many people and many artists--and even without the highs and lows of the bipolar brain, many of us artists still seem to find ourselves broken in just the places where we also find our greatest moments of transcendence. In this light, the last few paragraphs were just so resonate for me--they seemed hauntingly true. I wanted to record them here.

"Art isn't a surface activity. It comes from a deep place and it meets the wound we each carry.

Even when our lives are going well, there is something that prowls the borders, unseen, unfelt. The existential depression that is becoming a condition of humankind, experienced as loss of meaning, a kind of empty bafflement....

Longing is painful. Every work of art is an attempt to bring into being the object of loss. The pictures, the music, the peoems and the performances are an intense engagement with loss. While one is in the act of making, one is not in loss, and one has meaning. The fierce crashes that happen to many creative people when a piece of work is done...come out of the sense that however good the work, it has not answered the loss.

The strange thing about creative work is that it can have enormous value for others while its maker is left ravaged. The ancient Greeks understood this as the price of an encounter with a god--the divine forces enter the human and use him or her as an instrument, only to be ultimately destroyed. But I do not believe that creativity is destructive or divine. I believe it is the part of us that gives shape and voice to our innermost reality.

This is frightening. Encounters with the real, in particular, what we really feel, are something we generally try to avoid. Art mediates the encounter, allowing us to get nearer to our longing and our loss, to risk more, to dare more. Yet for the maker, the exposure is not mediated; it is total and terrifying. That is why so many creative people cut themselves off from their own experience, using drugs or drink or sex or shipwreck to avoid absolute exposure to the pain of creativity...."

Earlier in the article, Winterson compares this artistic struggle with the wounding blessing that Jacob received as he wrestled with God.

I believe she is on to something--when we make art we are in the midst of the real-- the real longing and loneliness and loss of every heart, the terrifying wonder of our existence-- and it's pretty terrible at times, isn't it-

and yet, the artist is the person who can't stay away from the real--even if they drug themselves so as to avoid dealing with it--still, all that brokeness must not be the only option for the artist--

I hope we can learn--I hope I can learn --God's redemption in this--and in the meantime, I hope I learn to want to be broken by truth more than live comfortably with falseness. The final story of blessing I hope is not only wounding but a larger story of encounter. Encounter that is not only worth the violence it incurs but also redeems it.

writing a poem is hard

for me, at least.

It's gotten much harder, not easier, in the last three and a half years that I've been at this. I'm sure my expectations of the results are higher now. And at the same time, though I've learned what makes a better poem, to some small degree, the basic raw material (my knowledge of the language, my life experience and observations) are not really improved. So no wonder it's not any easier.

It may be that I write some better poems now, but I'm not even sure of that.

I've just been noticing, and had this confirmed by the experience and testimony of my poet friends, that most good poems take more than six months to complete. And often more than a year, with many many rewrites and also months of shelving them and then taking them out and working and reworking.

The art form doesn't seem, in my experience, to do well with hurrying.

I guess it surprises me to know that a small one page poem might take me most of a year to write. Thankfully, I can work on a few at a time. And thankfully, as well, it's fun for me and it's good to learn to let go of productivity as way of judging value. And it's also a mercy I don't have to make a living doing this.