Tomorrow's Poetry Friday, the first one of the school year! We're finishing our first week with kids. It's gone pretty well, all things considered.
One of the exciting things that happened this week was that I received Irene Latham's National Poetry Month postcard! This means it only took four months to wend its way to Uganda. I looked up my thank you note to her for the NPM postcard from 2023 and found that it took six months last year, arriving on November 9th. It's a National Poetry Month miracle, my friends!
Today I'd like to share a poem that I got recently in the Poets.org Poem-a-Day email. It's called "When it Really is Just the Wind, and Not a Furious Vexation," by Kyle Tran Myhre. It's hard to excerpt it, but I'm going to share the last four stanzas. You can read the whole thing here, and I recommend reading the whole thing, for sure!
So here's the end:
Because in every universe in which
I am alive, it is because of other people. And I don’t always like them, but I love them. In every universe in which I am alive, it is less because I could fight, and more because I could forgive. Because I could cooperate. Because
I could apologize. Because I could dance. Because I could grow pumpkins in my backyard and leave them at my neighbor’s door, asking for nothing in return. In every universe in which I am alive, I am holding: a first aid kit, a solar panel, a sleeping
cat. Never a rusty battle ax or rocket launcher— sure, maybe sometimes a chainsaw, but only for firewood. I am holding: a cooking pot, a teddy bear, a photo album, a basketball, a bouquet of flowers. Survival is not a fortress. It is a garden.
Survival is not a siren. It is a symphony. And yeah, we fight for it sometimes, but survival is not the fight. It is the healing after: the soft hum of someone you trust applying the bandage, the feeling of falling asleep in a safe place.
(from "When it Really is Just the Wind, and Not a Furious Vexation," by Kyle Tran Myhre, here.)
So good, right? I'm glad to be holding, instead of "a rusty battle ax or rocket launcher": a white board marker, a French textbook, a dishcloth, a pair of binoculars, a feather. "Survival is not a siren. It is a symphony."
(P.S. That last stanza made me think of Emily St. John Mandel's novel Station Eleven, of which I wrote here in 2016, "'Twenty years after the end of air travel,' we meet the Traveling
Symphony, a company of actors and musicians who travel around the ruined
United States in horse-drawn caravans performing Shakespeare and
various types of music, because 'survival is insufficient.' It's about
connections, the power of the past, and healing. 'What was lost in the
collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such
beauty.'")
I haven't done a reading update since May, but I've been reading. Some of the recent books:
Book #33 was Maame, by Jessica George, a novel about the child of Ghanaian immigrants navigating her twenties in London.
Book #34 was a rererereread, The Silver Chair, by C.S. Lewis. I'll never stop reading these books again and again. "No one suggested doing anything. There was so obviously nothing to be done. For the moment, they did not feel it quite so badly as one might have expected; that was because they were so tired....'Now don't you let your spirits down, Pole,' said the Marsh-wiggle. 'There's one thing you've got to remember. We're back on the right lines. We were to go under the Ruined City, and we are under it. We're following the instructions again.'"
Book #35 was Cahokia Jazz, by Francis Spufford. This was a rollicking read, in a hard-to-categorize way. It's a murder mystery, an alternative history, an adventure story. It imagines a world where Native Americans have not been marginalized, but are instead full and equal participants in US society.
Book #36 was Written in My Own Heart's Blood, by Diana Gabaldon. This is the eighth Outlander book. I'm kind of thinking the tenth one is going to be coming out pretty soon (though no publication date has yet been announced and Gabaldon is still writing it), so I've been rereading these.
Book #37 was The Summer of Songbirds, by Kristy Woodson Harvey. This is the story of three best friends who grew up going to the same summer camp, Holly Springs. I am a sucker for these tales of long friendships, but this one was a bit forgettable.
Book #39 was Wrath Goddess Sing, by Maya Deane. As I've frequently written here, I love retellings of mythology. This one takes its inspiration from a story about Achilles that's found in ancient sources outside the Iliad. Thetis, Achilles' mother, doesn't want him to fight in the Trojan War, and she hides him in the court of Skyros, where he dresses as a princess and is discovered by Odysseus through a clever ruse of presenting a sword that Achilles can't resist. In this novel, the time in Skyros becomes a gender transition and Achilles is a powerful female warrior. As always when I'm reading retellings, I was fascinated to see how the author would include the characters and scenes from the story. The book is full of erudition and research, and while some of the content was a bit over the top for me (no spoilers so I won't say what), it was well-written and thought-provoking.
Book #40 was Dear Committee Members, by Julie Schumacher, a novel made up of recommendation letters.
Book #41 was The Other Mothers, by Katherine Faulkner. It's a "twisty thriller" set among wealthy new mothers in London. I didn't find it believable or like any of the characters at all, but it kept me reading.
Book #42 was How to Walk into a Room, by Emily P. Freeman. This only came out in March and it was already my second time through. This time I read it aloud to my husband, something we like to do while on road trips. We both found it compelling and it gave us a lot to talk about.
Book #43 was The Hunting Party, by Lucy Foley, another thriller about rich unlikable English people.
Book #44 was The Husband's Secret, by Liane Moriarty. I just looked back over all my reviews of Liane Moriarty books, and a common thread seems to be that they seem light-hearted but then have heavy themes. This one was the ultimate example of this. If you think the husband's secret of the title (and actually a few husbands have secrets, as well as other people who aren't husbands) is going to be fun and amusing, you are WRONG. It is a terrible, awful secret that will make you feel bad the whole way through the book. Or at least, that's what it did to me. I HATE books where everyone has a secret and there are hundreds of pages of deception. So stressful. That said, I had to know what happened, so I read every word.
Book #45 was Running Scared: Fear, Worry, and the God of Rest, by Edward T. Welch, and book #46 was Corrie Ten Boom's Don't Wrestle, Just Nestle. Both were about dealing with anxiety and how we can trust God to take care of us. They both were full of good reminders that I needed. And if anybody has earned the right to talk about this topic, it's Corrie Ten Boom, who spent time in a Nazi concentration camp.
Book #47 was Go Tell the Bees that I Am Gone, by Diana Gabaldon. #36 was the eighth in this series, and this one was the ninth. I think it's my favorite. I really like Claire and Jamie as an older couple, surrounded by children and grandchildren. I read this in 2022 and reread lots of it while lying awake for hours in the throes of jet lag after our recent trip back from the US. Now I'm ready for the tenth book to come out. Soon, I hope?
A Facebook friend posted the following picture yesterday:
I'm sorry to say that nobody succeeded in preventing August from getting here: not the Grinch, not my Facebook friend, and not me. It's here, and that means we're going back to school in just a few days.
Our SJT host this month, Carol, is encouraging us to pause to reflect. That's a good idea, because it's going to be my last chance for a while. Ready or not, school is coming, with all the work and stress. We just got back to Uganda, and we're slammed by jet lag, but we're also enjoying a brief pause before the school year begins.
Psalm 46:10: "Be still and know that I am God." A pause to reflect reminds us that we're not in charge. God is. Even in August.
Last weekend we visited Emily Dickinson's house in Amherst, Massachusetts. It is beautiful and the staff is knowledgeable. My favorite detail was the pine cone placed on each chair where visitors may not sit. The Dickinson poem after the photos seems appropriate since the table where Hope is dining will only seat one.
Welcome to July's Spiritual Journey Thursday. Please leave your links in the comments and I will round them up. We skipped the first Thursday in July because it was a holiday, but also because I had forgotten I had even signed up to host this month. It was on my calendar, but I hadn't looked at it. I'm in the part of the summer when I don't know what day it is. Also, we are traveling (we were in seven states yesterday), and completely out of our routine. I have a reminder on my phone to take my daily medications, but it's on the Uganda time zone (EAT: East African Time), so although it is set for 5:30 AM at home, here it appears at either 9:30 or 10:30 PM, depending on whether we're in Eastern time zone or Central. Oh well. I see it in the morning, swallow my pills, and call it good.
Here's a quote from Emily P. Freeman's latest book. (Yes, I've been quoting from it a lot lately. I really recommend it. It's called How to Walk into a Room and you can read more about it here.) Emily talks about different kinds of fires in chapter 5, and asks: "What kind of fire is this anyway? Is God standing by, ever the expert, bearing witness to the refining, making space for new, good growth in this planned, controlled burn? Or is this a fire that has caught God by surprise? Is this a fire of destruction, taking the waste and the wellness alike? Sometimes our questions don't reflect facts, reason, logic, or good theology. Sometimes our questions reveal our lack of faith, our fear, or our confusion. Ask them anyway. God has what it takes to sort it out."
Below I've posted a video of an a cappella group singing the song "I Know Whom I Have Believed." Each verse is a list of all the things the songwriter doesn't know, but then each ends with a Bible verse, 2 Timothy 1:12: "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I've committed unto Him against that day." My list of things I don't know would be a bit different, but I can hold on to that thing that I do know: God is still with me and can hold all my questions and help me navigate each day. Even if I never figure out any of the answers.
Back in 2010 I used the metaphor of a GPS when I wrote about dealing with family life after the earthquake in Haiti displaced us. I still think it's a good metaphor. In the borrowed car we're driving on our summer odyssey, the GPS is built in, and the car helpfully tells us where we should go next. But if we turn off the path, on purpose or by mistake, it's immediately recalculating, trying to give us a new suggestion. "Make a legal U-turn," the voice calmly counsels. And I love the little excited lilt when it says, "Turn left at the end of the road." As though the end of the road is going to bring some exciting surprises. And maybe it will. I don't know.
From Henri Nouwen's book Lifesigns: "'Do not be afraid, have no fear,' is the voice we most need to hear. This voice was heard by Zechariah when Gabriel, the angel of the Lord, appeared to him in the temple and told him that his wife, Elizabeth, would bear a son; this voice was heard by Mary when the same angel entered her house in Nazareth and announced that she would conceive, bear a child, and name him Jesus; this voice was also heard by the women who came to the tomb and saw that the stone was rolled away. 'Do not be afraid, do not be afraid, do not be afraid.' The voice uttering these words sounds all through history as the voice of God's messengers, be they angels or saints. It is the voice that announces a whole new way of being, a being in the house of love, the house of the Lord....The house of love is not simply a place in the afterlife, a place in heaven beyond this world. Jesus offers us this house right in the midst of our anxious world."
Here are links to other SJT contributors' posts:
Patricia's beautiful post shares some things she doesn't know, and the way her IDKs inform her prayers.
Denise also shares what she does about the I don't knows in a post filled with goodness.
Margaret didn't know, but then she acted anyway. Way to go, Margaret!
Leigh Annhas written aboutwisdom, as she's been studying the Biblical book of Proverbs."Chapter 8 taught me that everywhere I look, wisdom is calling out," she writes. "But what keeps me from not seeing it or keeps me in the I don't know? Am I taking the time to search for wisdom or to notice it. Sometimes, it's easier to just say, 'I don't know.'"
Ramona wrote about the ultimate I don't know, death. Beautiful, Ramona!
Bobreminds us that it's OK not to know. Because God knows.
Carol tells us about the uncertainties she's been facing lately. So many difficulties, and yet Carol has found wisdom in them!
Karen has a wonderful description of her VBS experience this week!
This week my husband and I watched a funeral on Facebook Live, a funeral for a married couple, missionaries both in their very early twenties, killed in gang violence last month in Haiti. The young man used to be in a playgroup I went to with my child years ago -- but not that many years -- in Port-au-Prince; while we moms, including his, met together, our children would play and learn Bible stories. At the funeral, one of the pastors read a poem he'd written where he grieved these two, and don't we so often turn to poems, from the Bible or elsewhere, when there's an unbearable loss? So I wrote one too, not so much because it helps as because I'm not sure what else to do, except to pray for those dads, who both spoke with tears in their voices, and those moms, whose grief is so deep, and all the others who have lost these two particular young people. And to pray, too, for all the thousands and thousands and thousands of Haitians who have lost more than I can imagine, their homes and their livelihoods and their country and worst of all, the people they loved, in the last few years.
Funeral
I know the flamboyan trees were covered with red blossoms when it happened because it was May in Haiti and I know the sound of gunshots and the sounds of grief in Haiti
The sounds of grief in Missouri are not quite as loud and unrestrained as they lay to rest two young people who loved Haiti but the grief is just as real We don’t grieve as those who have no hope, they say Death didn’t win, they say And of course those things are true but you can’t help crying as you look at their wedding photos from just two years ago and as you think of the two thousand five hundred people already killed in the first three months of this year in Haiti
I know it was a beautiful day when it happened because it’s always a beautiful day in Haiti
I've been privileged to live in three of the world's great cities (Nairobi, Port-au-Prince and Asunción, Paraguay) as well as spending time in many others (including nine weeks in Paris as a college student). I just moved to a new city: Kampala, Uganda. I've also lived in smaller towns in three countries. In all of those places there have been difficult days, but I've never found a city or town yet where God is not, and I don't anticipate finding one in the future, either. The name of my blog comes from the song "Love is Always There," by Carolyn Arends.
