She's No Lady
Arbitrary Ponderings From a Busy Betty
Saturday, November 16, 2024
The Hotel Balzaar
The Puppets of SPELHORST
- The Owl boasts of his real feathers. His longing to pontificate wisely masks his truer longing to FLY.
- The King boasts of his crown. His longing to command others masks his truer longing for MUSIC.
- The Wolf boasts of her sharp teeth. Her longing to destroy masks her deeper longing for FREEDOM.
- The Boy boasts of his arrows. His longing to do important deeds masks his truer longing for LOVE.
As their journey progresses, each gets a taste of The Thing they longed to do, but they end up abandoned and alone, missing one another and unsatisfied by their momentary experience. Their true glory and the fulfillment of their deepest longing only comes when they experience The Thing in community with one another and for a greater purpose.
Kate has done it again. She has woven a tale that captivates a child's imagination, while tapping deep into the soul of the adult reader. It is, as I've come to expect from her, both delightful and insightful.
Sunday, October 6, 2024
A Place on Earth
Wendell Berry's powers of observation and his ability to capture essence with unparalleled economy - of a person, an event, a landscape, a community, an experience, a photograph - remains unmatched. Here's a tiny sampling from the 300+ pages of A Place on Earth:
Jarrat Coulter - "It is a severe manhood that Jarrat has, that feeds on its loneliness, and will be governed by no head but its own."
Uncle Jack - "He relishes his ciphering. The figures come into his mind smelling of barns and grain bins and tobacco and livestock. His figures grunt and bleat and bray and bawl. This is the passion that has worn him out and made him old, and is still a passion. As he labor over it, the notebook becomes as substantial in his hands as a loaded shovel."
Mat Feltner - "This is the crisis of increase - what he was born to, and what he chose. When he has done all that can be done, he is at peace with himself. His labor has been his necessity and his desire."
Brother Preston - "The Word, in his speaking it, fails to be made flesh. It is a failure particularized for him in the palm of every work-stiffened hand held out to him at the church door every Sunday morning - the hard dark hand taking his pale unworn one in a gesture of politeness without understanding."
Gideon Crop - "There is evidence everywhere of the presence of a strong, frugal intelligence, the sort of mind that can make do, not meagerly but skillfully and adequately, with scraps. He had the gifts of quiet endurance, of tolerance of rough work and poor tools, of makeshift, of neatness in patched clothes, of thrift."
Aunt Fanny - "That these things have grown out of the ground into their secret places apart from anybody's intention, and that she takes them familiarly and freely without attempting to take them all, that they are the harvest of a ramble and not a search or a labor, all this bespeaks a peaceableness between her and the world."
Roger - "Roger is lying on the big four-poster bed, wearing shirt and tie and coat and hat, generously covered with quilts, his head propped up against the bare headboard - sound asleep, his bottle propped beside him, a large briar pipe lying extinguished on his chest. That he has escaped burning up is owed, according to some, only to the Lord's noted solicitude for drunkards and fools."
Saturday, October 5, 2024
A Practiced Drunk
Saturday, July 6, 2024
He Knows Our Frame
Are you ever tempted to think how much easier it would be for us to put our faith into full practice if only Christ were here with us? Not just in our hearts or by His Spirit, but visibly, audibly, tangibly present. If that were the case, how could we possibly fail to trust, love and obey Him?
But you know what the BEST part of this story is? When Peter, filled with doubt, began to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" And how did Christ respond?
"I Will Never"
Put Up Your Sword
Wednesday, May 1, 2024
The Peace of Wild Things
The Peace of Wild Things
by: Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Sunday, January 21, 2024
The Anesthetized Life of the Metaverse
The advent of analgesics in the late 19th century made it possible for most of us to quell ordinary daily physical pain...and sometimes even extraordinary physical pain. In time, a broad range of psychotropics brought us options to reduce or numb our mental and emotional pain as well. This age of pharmaceuticals is a blessing, is it not?
Yet I can't help but wonder...what have we lost in this era of accessible, easy relief? When these substance interventions fail us - which they sometimes do - when the pain remains, do we even know how to live? Do we have the Resilience, Grit, or Perseverance to endure? Do we know how to bear up under that which seems unbearable?
Our modern experience of death is somewhat similar in that we remove the reality from ourselves as quickly as possible. We scurry the body off to a morgue where we don't have to see it. We hide it. We distance ourselves from it. We sterilize it. We clean the dead body, apply makeup, dress it up, to make it as pretty and realistic as possible before putting it on display. I recognize that, for some, these rituals carry symbolism of respect and dignity, or may represent an important step for others on the road to "closure" (if such a thing even exists), and for some, it even instills a sense of hope. I get it. But I wonder about the long term effects of beautifying the grotesque. Death is hideous. Generations who came before us knew this. They didn't have the option to escape the raw realities of death. The sight and smells of decay permeated their world, making it somewhat absurd to spin it as the gateway to a "better place." It isn't. It is creation coming undone. It's the wrenching apart of personhood - body and soul - which was created to be whole. It's not something to beautify, make clean, or soften with platitudes...like a ring in a pig's snout, none of this changes the filth, the coldness, the darkness, the stench.
But pharmaceuticals and embalming aren't the only ways we anesthetize and soften the reality of life. We have grown accustomed to cleanliness, to whitewashing, to ease, in many facets of life. We hop in our cars for an effortless journey to the grocery store where very little exertion lands us a cart full of fresh and already-prepared food. We cook that food over a fire we summon with the push of a button, then tidy up with clean water that streams into the very room where the mess is. Our most foul excretions are immediately spirited away to the underground depths as if they never existed. Our facial blemishes are magically masked with any number of cosmetics. Clothes show up ready-to-wear in boxes dropped conveniently near our front door. When we soil them, machines clean them with little effort on our part.
Don't misunderstand...I am not glorifying the past or the way things used to be. No rose-colored-glasses here. Hardship and difficulty can forge character, reveal courage, instill strength...but they also produce fatigue, pain, sickness, and discouragement. Progress - and I believe modern plumbing and cars and gas stoves and washing machines are examples of creative progress - has brought us many good gifts. But when we move forward without consideration of the impact on the body, soul, and psyche, we may do ourselves and our posterity a disservice by over-distancing ourselves from reality.
Since the Industrial Revolution, we have moved further and further from SOURCES of things. We are distanced from the land that produces our food. We are distanced from the bodies of water that keep us clean and hydrated. We are distanced from the mechanics of our machines. Indeed, as technology advances, more and more specialization is needed to understand the physical world we interact with. But as we abandon the source, we lose understanding of how our world works (see Matthew Crawford's wonderful philosophical musings on this in Shop Craft as Soul Craft and The World Beyond Your Head.). This distancing breeds unfamiliarity. We're losing connection with the created world. We are out of touch with the materiality, the physicality of our lives.
I suppose these shifts may allow us to embrace Meta as a natural next step. Zuckerberg, its creator, describes the Metaverse as the "embodied internet" where you're "in the experience." Ironically, the very nature of this universe is a DISEMBODIED one...or perhaps it's a world of "embodied" ISOLATION. Here you can experience one another in an anesthetized environment where you won't have to smell another's sweat or stale breath, where you won't be confronted with real flaws of others or have yours exposed. You will never truly know or be known in Metaverse because you will always inhabit a fictionalized version of yourself alongside the fictionalized versions of another being, all staged in a fictionalized world. You can leave an interaction without explanation and blame a bad internet connection. You can project a feigned presence while remaining wholly distracted by a device or the real presence of another (sure we can do that now, but when we are physically present with another, they can at least SEE our distraction b/c we inhabit the same real space). The Meta experience claims that your avatar presence - which is an entirely fabricated idealized version of "you" - will allow a more "natural and vivid" experience with "the feeling of presence" made possible through "living 3D representations of you."
Here's the thing. So much of what we can do with new technology is SUPER cool. I'm blown away by what is being discovered, learned, built, and added to the world of our experiences. There are some amazing, redemptive, and FUN applications for these innovations! But I can't shake my discomfort with the language of "embodiment." As humans made in the image of a Trinitarian God (communal by nature) who took on flesh (embodied presence), we are designed to live and experience life in and through our flesh and bone bodies, not through a curated ethereal disembodied experience. In REAL life, being physically present with someone experiencing deep physical pain is gut-wrenching. It doesn't need "vivifying." It can't be escaped. The person in pain doesn't need the "feeling of presence" but ACTUAL presence. In a 3D universe, I can be "present" with you while you suffer and not FEEL your suffering. I can pretend to share in it without any consequence to my own person. And without the benefit of helping you bear that burden.
I'm reminded of this quote from Buechner's The Hungering Dark:
'No man is an island,' wrote Dr. Donne...'for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee.' ...any man's death reminds us of our common destiny...our lives are linked together. But there is another truth...that every man IS an island. ...we speak not to reveal who we are but to CONCEAL who we are. Instead of showing ourselves as we truly are, we show ourselves as we believe others want us to be. We wear masks, and with practice we do it better and better, and they serve us well--except that it gets very lonely inside the mask, because inside the mask there is a person who both longs to be known and fears to be known.
The Metaverse has the potential to enlarge our islands and allow us to hide even more easily behind well-designed masks, entrenching us in our fear of being truly known.
There is no stopping the momentum of this innovation train. I simply hope we pause often to consider how we might be unintentionally swept away by transformative technologies without understanding their soul-impact. I hope we find courage, when necessary, to brace ourselves against the swelling tide of pressure to live as a counterfeit self in a counterfeit world, and to embrace the raw, gritty, dirty world of created matter and humans as the flawed flesh and bone humans we are.
Tuesday, November 7, 2023
Fragments
Every time I retreat to the beach, that very first stroll stirs up a whirlwind in my brain. I feel compelled to wrangle that elusive swirling into cohesive thoughts but it's made up of impressions, emotions, and loosely formed connections that are difficult for a rationalist like me to articulate. The urge to write is driven, at least in part, by my need to "take dominion" over the chaos...to bring order to the overgrown wildflower garden in my head. I need order. Less, I think, from a need to control and more from an inherent desire to understand. Or, if truth be told, it may be mostly from a desire to FEEL a bit less. Ideas can be tamed, arranged, ordered, classified, and brought to a conclusion in a way that emotions can't. At least not for me.
When I try to articulate the swirl, the words seem shallow in comparison to profound feelings that accompany the thoughts. But that doesn't stop me from trying.
My first impression is of the vibrant playfulness of the wildlife that inhabits the beaches of Florida and Southern Alabama. The egrets, the seagulls, the pelicans, the crabs, and the sandpipers exhibit a joyful determination in their quest for nourishment, which seems their primary focus. The soaring and diving of the pelicans exude joy. The sandpipers flit about frantically, pecking through the freshly wet sand for insects, worms, or vulnerable crustaceans. The herons don't seem exactly playful - they appear serious and stark and intense in their hunt, but their explosively graceful takeoffs inspire awe. Heron Chasing Sunset
My second impression is of the vastness and power of the ocean. Duh, right? But every single time, it overwhelms me. The mind of God conceived and created this. Ex nihilo. What?! And he holds this massive ecosystem together by the power of his word. What is man that you take thought of and care for him?! Why gift this superfluity of grandeur, this overflow of abundance to creatures whose senses are too often dulled to its magnificence?
My third impression mingles the realities of beauty and rest and resurrection. The generosity of God is manifest in his sharing this expression of created beauty with his creatures. The goodness of God shines through the predictability of the setting sun and the onset of a time of rest. The faithfulness of God is reinforced in our knowing that the setting sun will rise again tomorrow morning...without fail...without end...without qualification...without regard to how well I lived, enjoyed, appreciated, used, or gave thanks for the day that just passed. No. Matter. What. The sun will rise and I receive the blessed promise of a brand new day. A daily resurrection.
The words remain inadequate, but the experience draws out a sense of wonder and forces me into a posture of thanksgiving for the manifold gifts of the Creator.
Sunday, July 30, 2023
The Outrage of Grace
I said grace cannot prevail until law is dead, until moralizing is out of the game. The precise phrase should be, until our fatal love affair with the law is over — until, finally and for good, our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed. As long as we leave, in our dramatizations of grace, one single hope of a moral reckoning, one possible recourse to salvation by bookkeeping, our freedom-dreading hearts will clutch it to themselves. And even if we leave none at all, we will grub for ethics that are not there rather than face the liberty to which grace calls us. Give us the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, and we will promptly lose its point by preaching ourselves sermons on Worthy and Unworthy Confession, or on The Sin of the Elder Brother. Give us the Workers in the Vineyard, and we will concoct spurious lessons on The Duty of Contentment or The Moral Aspects of Labor Relations.
Restore to us, Preacher, the comfort of merit and demerit. Prove for us that there is at least something we can do, that we are still, at whatever dim recess of our nature, the masters of our relationships. Tell us, Prophet, that in spite of all our nights of losing, there will yet be one redeeming card of our very own to fill the inside straight we have so long and so earnestly tried to draw to. But do not preach us grace. It will not do to split the pot evenly at 4am and break out the Chivas Regal. We insist on being reckoned with. Give us something, anything: but spare us the indignity of this indiscriminate acceptance. --Robert Farrar Capon
Monday, February 21, 2022
Beannacht: A Poem
Beannacht
by: John O'Donahue
Saturday, November 13, 2021
Wedding Dessert Table
September 12, 2021: Gabby Boeve & Kale Houghton at Knotting Hills in Pevely, MO
- 6-tier Acrylic Donut Stand
- Crates with slats - IKEA Knagglig
- Crates without slats - salvaged from a local wine shop
- Platters and cake stands - items I already had, but most came from HomeGoods over the years
- Greenery - Eucalyptus garland 1
- Greenery - Eucalyptus garland 2
- Flowers and other floral - an assortment from Hobby Lobby
- Glass Orbs - hung with fishing wire
- Tea Light Candles
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
On Another's Sorrow
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
A Litany at Atlanta
O Silent God, Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears an-hungered in these fearful days--
Hear us, good Lord!
Listen
to us, Thy children: our faces dark with doubt are made a mockery of in Thy
Sanctuary. With uplifted hands we front Thy Heaven, O God, crying:
We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!
We
are not better than our fellows, Lord; we are but weak and human men.
When our devils do deviltry, curse Thou the doer and the deed, --curse them as
we curse them, do to them all and more than ever they have done to innocence
and weakness, to womanhood and home.
Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!
And
yet, whose is the deeper guilt? Who made these devils? Who nursed them in
crime and fed them on injustice? Who ravished and debauched their mothers and
their grandmothers? Who bought and sold
their crime and waxed fat and rich on public iniquity?
Thou knowest, good God!
Is
this Thy Justice, O Father, that guile be easier than innocence and the
innocent be crucified for the guilt of the untouched guilty?
Justice, O Judge of men!
Wherefore
do we pray? Is not the God of the
Fathers dead? Have not seers seen in
Heaven’s halls Thine hearsed and lifeless form stark amidst the black and
rolling smoke of sin, where all along bow bitter forms of the endless dead?
Awake, Thou that sleepest!
Thou
art not dead, but flown afar, up hills of endless light, through blazing
corridors of suns, where worlds do swing of good and gentle men, of women strong
and free—far from cozenage, black hypocrisy, and chaste prostitution of this
shameful speck of dust!
Turn again, O Lord; leave us not to perish in our sin!
A
city lay in travail, God our Lord, and from her loins sprang twin Murder and
Black hate. Red was the midnight; clang,
crack, and cry of death and fury filled the air and trembled underneath the
starts where church spires pointed silently to Thee. And all this was to sate the greed of greedy
men who hide behind the veil of vengeance.
Bend us Thine ear, O Lord!
In
the pale, still morning we looked upon the deed. We stopped our ears and held our leaping
hands, but they – did they not wag their heads and leer and cry with bloody
jaws: Cease from Crime! The word was mockery, for thus they train a hundred
crimes while we do cure one.
Turn again our captivity, O Lord.
Behold
this maimed and broken thing, dear God; it was an humble black man, who toiled
and sweat to save a bit from the pittance paid him. They told him: Work and Rise! He worked.
Did this man sin? Nay, but
someone told how someone said another did –one whom he had never seen nor
known. Yet for that man’s crime this man
lieth maimed and murdered, his wife naked to shame, his children to poverty and
evil.
Hear us, O heavenly Father!
Doth
not this justice of hell stink in Thy nostrils, O God? How long shall the mounting flood of innocent
blood roar in Thine ears and pound in our hearts for vengeance? Pile the pale frenzy of blood-crazed brutes,
who do such deeds, high on Thine Altar, Jehovah Jireh, and burn it in hell forever
and forever!
Forgive us, good Lord; we know not what we say!
Bewildered
we are and passion-tossed, mad with the madness of a mobbed and mocked and
murdered people; straining at the armposts of Thy throne, we raise our shackled
hands and charge Thee, God, by the bones of our stolen fathers, by the tears of
our dead mothers, by the very blood of Thy crucified Christ: What meaneth this?
Tell us the plan; give us the sign!
Keep not Thou silent, O God!
Sit
not longer blind, Lord God, deaf to our prayer and dumb to our dumb suffering. Surely Thou, too, art not white, O Lord, a
pale, bloodless, heartless thing!
Ah! Christ of all the Pities!
Forgive
the thought! Forgive these wild,
blasphemous words! Thou art still the
God of our black fathers and in Thy Soul’s Soul sit some soft darkenings of the
evening, some shadowings of the velvet night.
But
whisper –speak –call, great God, show us the way and point us the path! Whither?
North is greed and South is blood; within, the coward, and without, the
liar. Whither? To death?
Amen! Welcome dark sleep!
Whither?
To life? But not this life, dear God, not this.
Let the cup pass from us, tempt us not beyond our strength, for there is
that clamoring and clawing within, to whose voice we would not listen, yet
shudder lest we must –and it is red. Ah!
God! It is a red and awful shape.
Selah!
In
yonder East trembles a star
Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord!
Thy
Will, O Lord, be done!
Kyrie Eleison!
Lord,
we have done these pleading, wavering words.
We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!
We
bow our heads and hearken soft to the sobbing of women and little children.
We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!
Our
voices sink in silence and in night.
Hear us, good Lord!
In
night, O God of a godless land!
Amen!
In
silence, O Silent God.
Selah!
Sunday, October 4, 2020
The Hungering Dark
"'No man is an island,' wrote Dr. Donne...'for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee.' ...any man's death reminds us of our common destiny...our lives are linked together. But there is another truth...that every man IS an island. We sit in silence with one another, each of us reluctant to speak, for fear that he may sound like a fool. And beneath that there is of course the deeper fear...that maybe the truth of it is that indeed he is a fool. So either we do not speak, or we speak not to reveal who we are, but to CONCEAL who we are. Instead of showing ourselves as we truly are, we show ourselves as we believe others want us to be. We wear masks, and with practice we do it better and better, and they serve us well--except that it gets very lonely inside the mask, because inside the mask there is a person who both longs to be known and fears to be known. In this sense every man IS an island separated from every other man by fathoms of distrust and duplicity.
"We need each other greatly, you and I, more than much of the time we dare to imagine, more than most of the time we dare to admit. Island calls to island across the silence and once, in trust , the real words come, a bridge is built and love is done - not sentimental, emotional love, but love that is pontifex: bridge-builder. The islands become an archipelago, a continent, a kingdom whose name is the Kingdom of God."
The Wounded Healer
First, because these are inward generations, we have to be willing to explore the depths of our own inner life and articulate that experience as a means of establishing genuine connection...we must learn to "name the space where joy and sorrow touch each other." Second, compassion must become the essence and core of our leadership as they are seeking to exchange dominating authority for true fatherhood. And thirdly, in response to their inclination to revolt, we should act as contemplative critics who can stand outside of the narrative and speak critically while also infusing hope.
This work can only be done through embodied presence marked by genuine personal concern and shared suffering, in a context of hospitality where "sufferings can be understood as wounds integral to our human condition" and as openings for healing and hope as we and they begin to understand that just as Christ's wounds were for the healing of the nations, so too our wounds are an occasion for the healing of others.
Remembering
A very brief novel of Port William in which Andy Catlett wrestles with the loss of his hand.
"His right hand had been the one with which he reached out to the world and attached himself to it. When he lost his hand, he lost his hold. It was as though his hand still clutched all that was dear to him --and was gone."
Andy is literally and figuratively alone with his inner turmoil. One particular moment of that struggle comes while, away from his family and the farm, he roams the streets of San Francisco in the early morning hours:
"Andy is filled with a yearning toward this place. He imagines himself living here. He would have a small apartment up here on the hillside looking out over the bay. He would live alone and slowly he would come to know a peacefulness and gentleness in his own character, having nobody to quarrel with. He would have a job he could walk to in the morning and walk home from in the evening. It would be a job that would pay him well and give him nothing to worry about before he went to it or after he left it. In his spare time he would visit the museums. His apartment would be a place of refuge, quiet and orderly, full of beautiful things. But he reminds himself of himself. For the flaw in all that dream is himself, the little hell of himself alone."
With his characteristic poetical poignance, Berry reveals the inner life of this very human character as no one else can do so well as he, I think. We become Andy as he gets lost in his loss and struggles to find his way back home.
Friday, October 2, 2020
On Being Mortal
Scientific advances, says Dr. Gawande, have turned the process of aging and dying into a medical experience to be managed by healthcare professionals.
The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver's chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions...where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life.
Gawande deftly lays out the path by which we arrived at our current "continuum of care" model - the route from independent living to assisted living to nursing home care to dementia care. In theory, it's a nice enough idea but, in reality, it has created a medical environment focused on safety and survival that strips individuals of the dignity of autonomy, removing them from the known and familiar, which are so crucial for maintaining meaning and equilibrium as faculties begin to dull. They are left floundering in a world of strange confusion in which they have little if any control over the simplest daily routines such as when and what they eat, whether they get dressed and what they wear, whether they take a walk outdoors or stay in bed for half a day, whether they accept or reject a specific treatment.
Dr. Gawande provides a helpful service in tracing the history of and highlighting various efforts to shift our approach - and therefore our model - of eldercare, but his greatest service is in addressing the fundamental reasons why we are getting it wrong.
The problem with medicine and the institutions it has spawned for the care of the sick and the old is not that they have had an incorrect view of what makes life significant. The problem is that they have had almost no view at all. Medicine's focus is narrow...concentrating on repair of health, not sustenance of the soul. Yet...they are the ones who largely define how we live in our waning days. ...we have treated the trial of sickness, aging, and mortality as medical concerns. It's been an experiment in social engineering putting our fates in the hands of people valued for their technical prowess...and that experiment has failed. If safety and protection were all we sought in life, we might conclude differently. But because we seek a life of worth and purpose, and yet are routinely denied the conditions that might make it possible, there is no other way to see what modern society has done."
We unwittingly set our loved ones on a trajectory of unstoppable momentum of medical treatment that, ultimately, controls their narrative. We remove their agency, making decisions on their behalf and imposing treatments and solutions "for their own good" whether or not they want it. In so doing, we wrest from them the ability to author their own stories, the freedom to shape their lives in ways consistent with their character and loyalties.
The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one's life - to avoid becoming so diminished or dissipated or subjugated that who you are becomes disconnected from who you were or who you want to be.
Our mortality is certain and for most of us, that end will be reached through a prolonged process of aging and dying. We don't get to control the circumstances of that process, but we ought to be able to choose what we do with those circumstances.
I commend to you Being Mortal - Medicine and What Matters in the End as a worthwhile read. Dr. Gawande not only tracks where we've come from and where we are today, but he also proposes options for where we go from here, and how - with some thought and intention - we can transform the process of aging and dying into a more wholistic and human one. Because after all, he affirms, every life is a story and in stories, ENDINGS MATTER.