The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart, and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
November rain, when it goes on for days, cannot help but bring a person’s spirits down. But I like old Longfellow’s thinking on this subject. When did we stop reading him? He’s kind of great.
Henry was one of those handsome mid-century American writers we are so fond of. Read more about this poet here.
Anyway, please note that there is a slight chance of snow on Saturday! It won’t be long until the weather media is whipping us up into a stock-up-on-bread-and-milk frenzy.
So in church on Sunday the readings were all apocalyptic. I do not believe in coincidence, so it was just awesomely appropriate. We had the book of Daniel and the letter to the Hebrews and we had the gospel of Mark with the Destruction of the Temple and Signs of the End Times.
And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” 2 And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down.”
3 And as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately,4 “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign when these things are all to be accomplished?” 5 And Jesus began to say to them, “Take heed that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. 7 And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is not yet. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places, there will be famines; this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs.
I was the intercessor and we had a special prayer en français for the people of Paris. I was afraid I would have to read it along with the Prayers of the People, but the rector had asked a former French teacher to do it. I read the translation. After 12 years of French in school, I could have faked it, but I was relieved that I did not have to do so.
The rector, who spent a couple of years earlier in his ministerial career at the American Cathedral in Paris,
gave a personal and heartfelt sermon related to the terrorist attacks and to the lessons actually assigned for the day. We sang “Oh, God, our help in ages past” (#680) . Old Isaac Watts is hard to beat for keeping things in perspective.
How was your weekend? Mine was quite enjoyably low-key.
On Saturday evening the OM and I went to the members’ preview of the new exhibit “St. Louis Modern” at the SLAM.
Luckily, he found something right away to admire.
As readers of this blog know, my own home is filled with antiques and reproductions. My taste certainly leans toward 18th and 19th century American style. I am, however, a great appreciator of mid-century modern–i.e. the 20th century stuff of my youth. The aforementioned exhibit was full of the contents of some pretty great Bernoudy and Armstrong and Dunn homes and offices and included the design products of Charles Eames, Russel Wright, Eliel Saarinen, et al. It prompted me to look around my own house and find the odds ‘n ends of this period that I love.
I mean who doesn’t love mid-century modern pottery and china?
Church on Sunday was enjoyable–the only blip being when our female assisting priest referred in her sermon to Beethoven’s “Erotica” symphony instead of the “Eroica”. Talk about your Freudian slip! I refrained from correcting her after the service, because I hate people who do that. You know–the ones who look for typos to point out in newsletters etc. Like they’re being helpful. I always say, “I know everyone thinks I’m perfect, but really I’m not!”
“When Van Gogh was a young man in his early twenties, he was in London studying to be a clergyman. He had no thought of being an artist at all. he sat in his cheap little room writing a letter to his younger brother in Holland, whom he loved very much. He looked out his window at a watery twilight, a thin lampost, a star, and he said in his letter something like this: “it is so beautiful I must show you how it looks.” And then on his cheap ruled note paper, he made the most beautiful, tender, little drawing of it.
When I read this letter of Van Gogh’s it comforted me very much and seemed to throw a clear light on the whole road of Art. Before, I thought that to produce a work of painting or literature, you scowled and thought long and ponderously and weighed everything solemnly and learned everything that all artists had ever done aforetime, and what their influences and schools were, and you were extremely careful about “design” and “balance” and getting “interesting planes” into your painting, and avoided, with the most astringent severity, showing the faintest “a” tendency, and were strictly modern. And so on and so on.
But the moment I read Van Gogh’s letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it.
And Van Gogh’s little drawing on the cheap note paper was a work of art because he loved the sky and the frail lamppost against it so seriously that he made the drawing with the most exquisite conscientiousness and care. ”
―Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit
It has been awhile since I shared Brenda Ueland with you. I think she is so great. I agree that Art is about Love and sharing what you love with others.
On another subject, but related–I drove a Subaru for years. It was totally against stereotype, but I loved that car . So I thought it was pretty great when the Subaru people worked “Love” into this ad campaign.
Now they are even using a Gregory Alan Isakov song in an ad:
I hardly watch any television these days with commercials, but I saw this and was pleased. There are still some smart people out there working for the Man.
I went to see The Yeoman of the Guard by Gilbert & Sullivan on Friday night.
The scene of this opera is laid within the precincts of the Tower of London, in the period of the 16th Century.
Admittedly, it was not the D’Oly Carte Opera Company, but I thought our local Winter Opera company was really quite wonderful.
My mother was a fan of Yeoman and we had the record.
I think she liked it because it is the only W&S opera with kind of a sad ending. She could always relate to the fool/jester character in anything and there is a stellar one in Yeoman.
Anyway, I dragged the OM and the boy along (daughter #3 was otherwise engaged) and they enjoyed it also. We were all proud of ourselves for getting out and participating in a cultural activity.
It reminded me of the time back in 1964 when my mother bought tickets to see the actual D’Oyly Carte Company perform The Mikado. She took my brother and me. I was in the second grade, but she thought I was old enough to enjoy/appreciate this opportunity. (She may have over-estimated me.) Anyway, my father took my little sister (who was not old enough to enjoy/appreciate light opera) to see It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Ironically this film was on TCM last week and I DVR’d it and then watched it this weekend. It features literally every American comedian (plus Terry-Thomas) alive in 1963. It is overly long and drags some, but it does have its moments. Jonathan Winters is great and the scene in the gas station with Arnold Stang and Marvin Kaplan is priceless. There is a lot of yelling in this movie.
Speaking of movies, I also watched From Hell (2001) on Halloween and, despite the presence of Johnny Depp, I thought it was dreadful. Apologies for recommending it on Friday!
Sunday, as you know, was All Saints Day and we had an interminably long service complete with a children’s sermon dissecting the hymn The Saints of God. Oh, did I mention it was also pledge Sunday? Well, it was. On top of this, the woman sitting behind me was a beat behind or a beat ahead during every prayer and every hymn to the point where I was ready to slap her and slap her hard. I hate feeling that way in church.
And now it is November and the long slide to Christmas begins. Deo gratias.
I didn’t do a whole lot this weekend. I went to a few estate sales and I puttered around the house. I walked around my neighborhood. It is the perfect weather for that.
I watched Furious 7 (2015) with Vin Diesel et al.
It was ridiculous but highly entertaining. Indeed, the movie deserves an Oscar for special effects, because I certainly could not tell you where the real Paul Walker began and ended. Those Weta Digital people are pretty amazing.
I didn’t go to church but stayed home and re-read Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner, the third in his trilogy of memoir. It was the first book I ever read by Buechner and I was sold for life. But I guess he is not for everyone. When I first discovered him over twenty years ago, I recommended him to everyone I knew. One friend read The Sacred Journey (the first book of memoir) and thought he was a whiner. That is the last way I would describe him, but to each his own.
“The passage from Genesis points to a mystery greater still. It says that we came from farther away than space and longer ago than time. It says that evolution and genetics and environment explain a lot about us but they don’t explain all about us or even the most important thing about us. It says that though we live in the world, we can never really be at home in the world. It says in short not only that we were created by God but also that we were created in God’s image and likeness. We have something of God within us the way we have something of the stars.”
“God knows we have our own demons to be cast out, our own uncleanness to be cleansed. Neurotic anxiety happens to be my own particular demon, a floating sense of doom that has ruined many of what could have been, should have been, the happiest days of my life, and more than a few times in my life I have been raised from such ruins, which is another way of saying that more than a few times in my life I have been raised from death – death of the spirit anyway, death of the heart – by the healing power that Jesus calls us both to heal with and to be healed by.”
― Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons
I can surely relate to what Frederick Buechner is saying here, although I wouldn’t classify it as neurotic anxiety exactly. I just have always had a morbid imagination, always thinking about what might happen, especially concerning loved ones.
At the evensong service on Sunday the choir sang an anthem based on a poem by Robert Herrick (1591–1674):
In the hour of my distress,
When temptations me oppress,
And when I my sins confess,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When I lie within my bed,
Sick in heart and sick in head,
And with doubts discomforted,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When the house doth sigh and weep,
And the world is drown’d in sleep,
Yet mine eyes the watch do keep,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
I was reminded that people back in the seventeenth century lay in bed at night and obsessed over problems too. I must say that I do find comfort in that.
And as I always say to the boy after one of our overwrought discussions of current events, God is in control. It is good to remember that.
The evensong service ends with the wonderful prayer for mission:
Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give thine angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for thy love’s sake. Amen.
You can’t go wrong with this prayer at bedtime. Keep it on your bedside table. Envision those angels watching over you and your loved ones. It helps to dissipate that floating sense of doom.
[FYI supernal means a) being or coming from on high b) heavenly, ethereal.]
I went to church twice on Sunday so I am feeling the supernal vibe. I read at Evensong, but I had to go to a meeting after the 10 a.m. service, so that is why I also attended that service. I am “mentoring” one of our confirmands, so I was getting the lowdown on expectations for the coming year. My assignment is a girl I have known since she was a tiny tot and not someone who is too cool for me. No piercings or dyed black hair either. All should will be well.
The boy came over after church and knocked down an old fence for us.
The OM and I would have wrestled with this for who knows how long, so once again, how grateful we are to have his manly help.
It took him all of 10 minutes, so we went out to lunch at Steak ‘N Shake.
On Friday night the OM and I went to a work-sponsored party at the zoo. I got to see the new polar bear in his swanky new environment.
He growled at me through the glass. He was up-close and personal, right? I wanted to see him swimming, but he did not oblige.
We also saw some penguins
and we rode on the empty train.
We ate a hotdog and went home. It was an evening well spent.
I am reading the new mystery by Robert Galbraith (a.k.a. J.K. Rowling)–The Silkworm, which I am enjoying very much. I am not a big mystery fan, but the characters in her series are real (not cardboard) and I like her P.D., Cormoran Strike.
I watched Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), which I did not particularly like, and Send Me No Flowers (1964) with Rock Hudson (“Is it a sharp pain, is it a dull pain, or does it grip like a vice?”), which I liked very much.
I finally made it back to church this weekend and was a lay reader. I read a good long piece from Numbers about Moses having a “Kill me now, Lord” moment when his whiney brethren were remembering the good times back in Egypt. “We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic…but now there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.” People never change, do they? It is good to go to church and be reminded of this. We also received a finger-shaking piece of the assisting priest’s mind during the announcements. She scolded us for not singing loudly enough. This annoyed me somewhat, but I also know from whence she comes. Some people just never sing; they never even open their hymnals and pretend. C’mon now. Sing out.
The OM and I planted twelve iris bulbs that someone had given me in the hopes that they will be blooming when my birthday swings around in April. Wasn’t that thoughtful? The least we could do was plant them! We indulged ourselves afterwards with a trip to Shake ‘N Shake.
I watched Seven Seas to Calais (see Friday’s post)–having paid $1.99 on Amazon to do so. It was not as terrible as I feared, but it was pretty bad. I tried to watch some of those old James Dean television shows (see Thursday’s post) and they were basically unwatchable. Mostly I continued with The Wire season one, which I started watching when daughter #2 was home last weekend, despite the boy’s admonition not to. I am really enjoying it.
I think Bal’more and my flyover hometown are very similar, so it is kind of fascinating to me. It is very well done, and once you get over the fact that every other word is the f-word or the mf-word, it’s okay. (It is important to cleanse the palate so to speak by listening to something like the above youtube video after each episode.)
The Cardinals continue to get closer to winning the division, but yesterday’s game was a debacle! Don’t get cocky, redbirds! Onward and upward. Have a good week!
First I read One Fine Day by Mollie Painter-Downes, which I highly recommend. You will recall that between 1939 and 1945 Mollie Panter-Downes covered the war from England for the New Yorker. The action of this novel takes place all on one day in the summer of 1946 in a small village in England. It is a quiet meditation on how things change and how we adapt and how we still have so much to be grateful for.
“The country was tumbled out before her like the contents of a lady’s workbox, spools of green and silver and pale yellow, ribbed squares of brown stuff, a thread of crimson, a stab of silver, a round, polished gleam of mother of pearl. It was all bathed in magic light, the wonderful transforming light in which known things look suddenly new.”
Now I am re-reading the wonderful Gilead by the great Marilynne Robinson. Basically it is a meditation by a dying minister, writing to his young son about his life and what it has meant to him.
“I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.”
It is all about the beauty of the world and our lives here on earth. Wow.
“There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s mortal insufficiency to us.”
The new Jan Karon book, Come Rain or Come Shine, is out and I have ordered it. In this installment Dooley has graduated from vet school and opened his own animal clinic and is getting married. Sounds good to me.
