Jan Karon | dual personalities

October 6, 2014

“You may have found your sweet spot. But there’s what Bonhoeffer said: ‘We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.'”*

by chuckofish

Ah, it’s pumpkin weather. Seriously my favorite time of the year. The OM of course is complaining that it is cold, while I am throwing open the windows to let in the fresh air. C’est la vie.

Several people have sheepishly asked me about my own little pumpkin patch, which they notice I haven’t mentioned in quite awhile. Well, my pumpkin patch, which at first seemed to thrive, shriveled up in August and is no more. Heavy sigh. The OM said it didn’t get enough sun. Daughter #1 surmised that it was because I planted the pumpkins in the Indian Burial Ground corner of our yard where nothing has ever grown. Whatever. I refuse to get all upset and weepy about it. The pumpkin patch at the Methodist Church has a ton of pumpkins and so I bought one there on Saturday.

It’s a beauty!

Meanwhile I finished The Big Sleep and have moved on to Jan Karon’s newest Mitford book—Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good–which I am enjoying immensely. Reading it is like taking a vacation. I know some people find Father Tim and his wife a little cloying, but to them I say, “Bah humbug!” This is science fiction, after all. Furthermore, Karon and I are on the same page. And she includes enough Thomas a Kempis and Wordsworth and references to the BCP to deepen the storytelling. Her focus is always on God.

In any decision making, he’d learned to wait for peace; it was heedless to make a move without it. There was no time for waiting, and yet waiting was imperative.

He remained on his knees, prayed aloud. ‘Heavenly Father, in whom we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray thee so to guide and govern us by the Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget thee, but may remember that we are ever walking in thy sight…’

He moved directly then to the abridged version. ‘Help me, Jesus.’

And she’s funny! So if you are in need of a little literary vacation from the vicissitudes of modern life, I highly recommend Jan Karon.

‘Tis also the season when Evensong starts back up at church. I dragged the boy along with me yesterday and it’s a good thing we went, because we made up 2/3 of the congregation. Afterwards I cooked dinner for him. His wife was at a meeting at the flyover college where she is the recruitment advisor of her sorority chapter, so I think he appreciated the meal.

Hope you are enjoying some glorious fall weather. Try to get out and breathe some fresh air. Have a good week!

*Jan Karon, Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good

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December 12, 2013

A sermon and a half

by chuckofish

“Well done!” he said. “And remember: Worry about nothing, pray about everything.” He’d gotten this message from a wayside pulpit somewhere–a sermon and a half in a half dozen words, and a splendid exegesis of the Philippians passage.

Shepherds Abiding, Jan Karon

I highly recommend reading some Jan Karon during this holiday season. It has a calming effect. And it reminds us that we shouldn’t take everything quite so seriously.

I have been slowly but surely getting things done around my house.

After a few false starts my little tree is up. The old man and I could not, between the two of us, wrestle it into its stand. We gave up, amid a shower of pine needles and exclamations of “goddamit!”, convinced that we needed a new stand. So after work on Tuesday I stopped at our neighborhood hardware store and had a meaningful conversation with the man there. He advised me to wrap the trunk of my tree with electrical tape and try again. Which I did when I got home. I am proud to say that I got the tree in the stand (without the aid of Mr. Goddammit). Later in the evening I put the lights on and decorated it.

Pretty nice, don’t you think?

I wrote my Christmas letter and mailed it to my out-of-town friends and family this week. I also mailed my Christmas package to my dual personality. Check and check.

We are cooking with gas.

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August 30, 2012

Comfort food for the soul

by chuckofish

It’s been a stressful summer. One way I have dealt with it is by re-reading some of my old favorites. Right now I am reading Out to Canaan, 4th in Jan Karon’s Mitford series, having just read These High Green Hills (#3).

These books are not for everyone (although they have been perennial bestsellers), but for me, these simple stories of the adventures of an Episcopal priest in a small town in North Carolina peopled by wonderful and endearing characters, are the only kind of fantasy I enjoy.

They had a good life in Mitford, no doubt about it. Visitors were often amazed at its seeming charm and simplicity, wanting it for themselves, seeing in it, perhaps the life they’d once had, or had missed entirely.

Yet there were Mitfords everywhere. He’d lived in them, preached in them, they were still out there, away from the fray, still containing something of innocence and dreaming, something of the past that other towns had freely let go, or allowed to be taken from them.

The books are also very funny, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. And they are filled with the Holy Spirit. Yes, and Karon quotes the likes of Bonhoeffer and Pascal and Wordsworth (freely)–all right up my alley.

I also enjoy the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith about a wonderful lady detective in Botswana. These books, like the Mitford books, seemingly simple and straightforward, are full of truth.

The world, Mma Ramotswe believed, was composed of big things and small things. The big things were written large, and one could not but be aware of them–wars, oppression, the familiar theft by the rich and the strong of those simple things that the poor needed, those scraps which could make even the reading of a newspaper an exercise in sorrow. There were all those unkindnesses, palpable, daily, so easily avoidable; but one could not think of those, thought Mma Ramotswe, or one would spend one’s time in tears–and the unkindnesses would continue. So the small things came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one’s own little life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. Clever people might laugh at such simplicity, but, she asked herself, what was their solution?

And, as you know, when in doubt, it’s always a good time to re-read Raymond Chandler. But, look, someone seems to have “borrowed” my Chandler volume 1. (Ahem.)