dual personalities

I was having a glum-ish week until I received a package from my oldest, dearest friend containing several small tidbits and two books, a murder mystery by Marion Chesney, aka M.C. Beaton of Hamish Macbeth fame, and a short biography of Lawrence of Arabia by Alistair MacLean, no less!

Where does she find these treasures? Why would Alistair MacLean write a (children’s?) book about T.E. Lawrence? So many questions — the mind reels. I started reading the mystery this morning and it promises to be thoroughly enjoyable. I’m saving the bio for when I need a special treat. Seriously.

Among the other items in my unexpected gift-box were two that particularly struck me. The first was a page from the First Presbyterian Church bulletin describing the life and works of Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, the very Christian activist about whom my DP posted earlier. Synchronicity! Or great minds think alike… In any case, I think it’s cool that Rev. Lovejoy is finally getting some attention.

The second item in the box was a poem from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore:

Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger.

I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter; I forget that there abides the old in the new, and that there also thou abidist.

Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my endless life whoever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar.

When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I many never lose the bliss of the touch of the one in the play of the many.

My mother first introduced me to Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, but I hadn’t read any of his work for a ages. How perfect that my dear friend should remind me of this connection. I went online and found Gitanjali here. I particularly like this passage:

My desires are many and my cry is pitiful, but ever didst thou save me by hard refusals; and this strong mercy has been wrought into my life through and through.

I think we all need to remember that hard refusals can save us, and what seems unfair may be exactly the strong mercy we need. I also loved this passage:

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!

He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the path-maker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put off thy holy mantle and even like him come down in the dusty soil!

Having steeped myself in Tagore’s poetry, I took a break at Youtube, where I found some rousing Christian music, including this great one by Crowder:

Run, Devil, run!

Have a wonderful weekend, and find joy in everything!

*Crowder “Run, Devil, run”

The end of September is upon us! This busy week has flown by and the rest of the year, I have no doubt, will fly by as well. This weekend I will do my best to slow down.

I’m going to finish my Mitford book. I’m going to organize some stuff at home. Maybe I’ll get the OM to drive down to Jefferson Barracks with me. They have a Civil War Museum there which I have never visited. I was reminded of it when I read that on September 30 in 1843 Ulysses Grant arrived at Jefferson Barracks, south of St. Louis, for assignment to the 4th Infantry.

While stationed there, a West Point classmate, Frederick Dent, Jr., invited Grant to his parent’s home, White Haven, on the Gravois Road. After Dent went west with his regiment, Ulysses continued to visit the Dents–and in particular his sister, Julia Dent. When he was assigned to duty in the Southwest, Ulysses had to make a mad ride from Jefferson Barracks, perilously crossing the Des Peres River at flood stage to say goodbye to Julia.

He arrived at White Haven wet and disheveled. Then, in Grant’s words, “I mustered up courage to make known, in the most awkward manner imaginable, the discovery I had made on learning that the 4th infantry had been ordered away from Jefferson Barracks.”

Julia’s recollection was more romantic: “He declared his love and told me that without me life would be insupportable.” He gave her his ring and she gave him a lock of her hair.

It was quite a while before they saw each other again. Four years later on August 22, 1848, they were married at Julia’s home in St. Louis. They were a devoted couple through thick and thin, through war and separation, and all the way to the White House.

BTW, there is a new biography of Grant. Here’s the review in the New Yorker. I don’t think I’ll be reading this book, even though it is actually pretty positive. No one today really gets U.S. Grant except maybe John Keegan:

“In 1861, on the eve of the Civil War, Grant, aged thirty-nine, with four children at home and scarcely a penny in the bank, had made no mark on the world and looked unlikely to do so, for all the boom conditions of mid-century America. His Plymouth Rock ancestry, his specialist education, his military rank, which together must have ensured him a sheltered corner in the life of the Old World, counted for nothing in the New. He lacked the essential quality to be what Jacques Barzun has called a “booster,” one of those bustling, bonhomous, penny-counting, chance-grabbing optimists who, whether in the frenetic commercial activity of the Atlantic coast, in the emergent industries of New England and Pennsylvania or on the westward-moving frontier, were to make America’s fortune. Grant, in his introspective and undemonstrative style, was a gentleman, and was crippled by the quality.” (The Mask of Command)

In other news I went to see the Steve McQueen movie last night. I enjoyed it a lot because it was two hours of Steve McQueen. There were some hokey elements to it–Pastor Greg driving his green Shelby Mustang around–but it was well done. The movie suggests that although he had made it to the top of his profession and was a “superstar,” Steve was longing for meaning in his life, and finally at the end of his life, he found it in his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It wasn’t a deathbed conversion. He found religion when he took flying lessons and became friends with his flight instructor, a Christian family man who talked to him and took him to church. He was planning to move to Ketchum, Utah with his 3rd wife and run the general store (sounds like a good plan to me) but he was diagnosed with cancer and never got the chance. Wonderful Billy Graham came and met him on the private jet that was going to take him to Mexico for some alternative treatment.

Anyway, I have felt a bond with Steve ever since I had a dream when I was in the 5th grade where I gave him a tour of Middlebury College.

Guess I know what I’ll be watching this weekend. Have a good one!