Fall arrives tomorrow. However, it is still hot as blazes here.
But that’s all right! Autumn weather is not far off.
Eternal God,
you crown the year with your goodness
and give us the fruits of the earth in their season:
Grant that we may use them to your glory,
for the relief of those in need
and for our own well-being;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
–BCP, 2004
First four images via Pinterest; fifth, Virginia Lee Burton, The Little House
“Melancholy Promenade” by Diego Rivera, 1904
Now I yearn for one of those old, meandering, dry, uninhabited roads, which lead away from towns, which lead away from temptation, which conduct to the outside of earth, over its uppermost crust; where you may forget in what country you are travelling; where no farmer can complain that you are treading down his grass, no gentleman who has recently constructed a seat in the country that you are trespassing; on which you can go off half-cock and wave adieu to the village; along which you may travel like a pilgrim, going nowhither; where travellers are not too often to be met; where my spirit is free; where the walls and fences are not cared for, where your head is more in heaven than your feet on earth; which have long reaches where you can see the approaching traveller half a mile off and be prepared for him; not so luxuriant a soil as to attract men; some root and stump fences which do not need attention; where travellers have no occasion to stop, but pass along and leave you to your thoughts; where it makes no odds which way you face, whether you are going or coming; whether it is morning or evening, mid-noon or midnight; where earth is cheap enough by being public; where you can walk and think with least obstruction, there being nothing to measure progress by; where you can pace when your breast is full, and cherish your moodiness; where you are not in false relations with men, are not dining nor conversing with them; by which you may go to the uttermost parts of the earth.
–H.D. Thoreau, A Writer’s Journal
It is the birthday of Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), so let’s celebrate by reading the longest sentence ever (see above) and having some alone-time in the out-of-doors.
Vincent Van Gogh
Peder Mork Monsted
“The Tree” by John Milne Donald, 1861
Cheers to Henry David Thoreau! Enjoy your Tuesday.
It’s Friday and the end to a busy week at work.
This went viral this week and I guess we know why.
Daughter #2 commented on yesterday’s post in a way that made me realize she had never heard the phrase “Go for the gusto, or don’t go at all!” and probably did not know its derivation–unlike us oldsters who remember those old Schlitz Beer ads from the 1970s. Here is one of them to jog your memory:
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAZ9C5JUFJk
And here’s a little Freddy B. to start your weekend on a positive note, especially if you are feeling a little bummed.
God created us in joy and created us for joy, and in the long run not all the darkness there is in the world and in ourselves can separate us finally from that joy, because whatever else it means to say that God created us in his image, I think it means that even when we cannot believe in him, even when we feel most spiritually bankrupt and deserted by him, his mark is deep within us. We have God’s joy in our blood.
—Frederick Buechner, “The Great Dance” in Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, 240.
Meanwhile, tonight we can watch some good movies starring Olivia de Havilland (and Errol Flynn) on TCM.
Have fun this weekend and–
(The painting is ‘A Girl by the Table’ by Leon De Smet, 1921)
The other evening I attended the memorial service of a dear friend who died a few weeks ago, aged eighty. Barb was the exact opposite of me–extremely extroverted and effervescent, always on the go, always pitching in. She was like Auntie Mame–you know, “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!” She was not starving.
Barb was the person who got me to venture across the street to Ivy-Selkirk’s Auction House and started me on the road to estate sale-ing. She never understood timidity. She was a Just Do It person. We disagreed about many things, but unlike a lot of people these days, we respected each other’s opinions. We agreed, after all, on the important things.
After years of Catholic school and child-rearing and being told what she could and couldn’t do, Barb finally threw up her hands and turned her back on the RC Church. She became an Episcopalian at age 55 and she never looked back. She became a pillar of her new church and it was packed for her funeral.
The church she attended in the city is a self-styled “progressive” one and so there were liberties taken with the service–four speakers in the middle–but it was still very nice and even (surprisingly) Rite I. The readers, all adult grandchildren, were pretty terrible, but the scriptures were well chosen. The speakers–two friends and two children–were wonderful. They made everyone laugh, remembering Barb. The minister, young and wet behind the ears, was straight out of central casting–the guy to call when you need a nerdly, balding, beanpole cleric. I would not hold his looks against him, but his voice was high and thin and he raced through communion. He made me appreciate our rector and long for Arthur Shields.
It was a long service, but it was a celebration of Barb’s life, so why shouldn’t it be? Her friends and family will truly miss her. And we will remember her.
“Remember the wonderful works that he has done,” goes David’s song–remember what he has done in the lives of each of us; and beyond that remember what he has done in the life of the world; remember above all what he has done in Christ-remember those moments in our own lives when with only the dullest understanding but with the sharpest longing we have glimpsed that Christ’s kind of life is the only life that matters and that all other kinds of life are riddled with death; remember those moments in our lives when Christ came to us in countless disguises through people who one way or another strengthened us, comforted us, healed us, judged us, by the power of Christ alive within them. All that is the past. All that is what there is to remember. And because that is the past, because we remember, we have this high and holy hope: that what he has done, he will continue to do, that what he has begun in us and our world, he will in unimaginable ways bring to fullness and fruition.
Into paradise may the angels lead thee, Barb, and at thy coming may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy city Jerusalem.
(The quote, of course, is Frederick Buechner.)
We have had a rainy, stormy week, but the forecast for the weekend is good. I plan to take it easy and prepare for next weekend when I am going to my niece’s wedding in Pennsylvania.
“I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door.”
–J.D. Salinger, A Boy in France: Saturday Evening Post CCXVII, March 31, 1945
Sounds like a plan to me.
(The painting is by Thomas Hart Benton)
Is anyone else as tired as I am of headlines like this?
I mean c’mon. It’s the “You Need” and the “Right Now,” you know?
Isn’t there enough stress and pressure on us without getting hit right and left on the internet with orders about stuff like that?
Well, I say you need to sit down right now
George Willison, “Nancy Parsons in Turkish Dress”
and stare out the window.
Winslow Homer, “Looking Out the Window”
Eat some candy if you feel like it
James Peale, “Still Life With Fruit”
and have a glass of wine.
Johannes Vermeer, “The Glass of Wine”
Then watch some great old tv show without commercials.
But under no circumstances plan
And P.S. I don’t care if they are secretly filthy. I am not going to hand wash my leather gloves.
But I might re-read this old poem by W. Wordsworth that daughter #2 emailed me yesterday.
SHE was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment’s ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.
I’m just saying.
Yesterday I was back at work full swing and it was one of those days that really tests the soul. Not that anything bad happened or that people were mean or anything like that. It was just non-stop dealing with stuff.
I thought of this quote by C.S. Lewis:
“I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It does not change God. It changes me.”
“Toward Taos” by Eric Sloane
Know what I mean?
But as far as I’m concerned, Mary is always going to look a lot like Imogene Herdman – sort of nervous and bewildered, but ready to clobber anyone who laid a hand on her baby. And the Wise Men are always going to be Leroy and his brothers, bearing ham. When we came out of the church that night it was cold and clear, with crunchy snow underfoot and bright, bright stars overhead. And I thought about the Angel of the Lord – Gladys, with her skinny legs and her dirty sneakers sticking out from under her robe, yelling at all of us everywhere: ‘Hey! Unto you a child is born!’
Happy Christmas Eve. We are going to the early service this afternoon which includes the Pageant. It always reminds me of the book by Barbara Robinson and takes me back to my own Christmas Pageant experiences at school. How well I remember going to the Inn to ask for a room and my friend Trudy Glick turning me away. We had a moment where we nearly burst into nervous laughter, but we didn’t. I sang a tremulous solo to my wife Mary. The Angel of the Lord fainted…or was that a Wise Man?
Keep the faith!
*Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever; the painting is by N.C. Wyeth.
Let us pause mid-week and take a deep breath.
“Lady at the tea table” by Mary Cassatt
Yes, it is less than ten days until Christmas, but all will be well.
All will be wonderful.
Maybe not perfect…but perfection, I think, is highly overrated.
Juriaen van Streeck, Northampton Museums & Art Gallery
Make yourself a cup of tea (or coffee) and take a few minutes to sit by the window and think.
“Woman Sitting by the Window” by Pablo Picasso
Think about those Christmases of long ago.
“Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: “It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.”**
Feel better now? This is how my brain works.
Have a great Wednesday. Daughter #2 is flying in from the east coast today. Tra la, tra la.
*From How to Be Topp by Geoffrey Willans
**From A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
“I have just four words to leave with you. Four words that have spoken volumes of truth into my life.’
He wanted the words to stay in the room, to remain long after he had gone. Though no one wished to hear Paul’s radical injunction, it had to be told.
‘In everything, give thanks.’
This was the lifeboat in any crisis. Over and over again, he had learned this, and over and over again, he had to be reminded.”
–Jan Karon, In This Mountain
Here’s something to read if you’ve forgotten the difference between Pilgrims and Puritans.
And here’s a prayer for the day in case, like me, your plans don’t include church today.
Almighty and gracious Father, we give you thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them. Make us, we pray, faithful stewards of your great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
–Thanksgiving Day collect, BCP
[The first painting is by Anna S. Fisher, c. 1922; the second by David Reidel, b. 1956]
dual personalities 