Peace ineffable

It is surprising how practical duty enriches the fancy and the heart, and action clears and deepens the affections.

Indeed, no one can have a true idea of right, until he does it;

any genuine reverence for it, till he has done it often and with cost;

any peace ineffable in it, till he does it always and with alacrity.

Does any one complain that the best affections are transient visitors with him, and the heavenly spirit a stranger to his heart?

Oh, let him not go forth, on any strained wing of thought, in distant quest of them;

but rather stay at home,

and set his house in the true order of conscience;



and of their own accord the divinest guests will enter.

–James Martineau (1805 –1900), English Christian philosopher

He lives!

(From the archives of "The Contemplative Cottage," The Deeper Magic (link) in honor of C.S. Lewis’ birth [Nov 29] in 1898, based on Deborah Smith Douglas’ mention of finding paw prints on Duke University’s campus and following them to the joyful words! She writes: “I simply, with all my heart, recognized the transforming truth of the affirmation: Aslan is alive. Resurrection happens. Christ is risen. In a single leap, Aslan had bounded past the watchful dragons of my mind and all the intervening years to return.…Because my whole childhood rose up to greet the Lion, my tenuously sophisticated young-adult self had no defenses against the saving “Allelujah!” truth of that moment.” –Weavings, (link) Jan/Feb 1997, 21)

Hungry and tired, she waited for the campus bus, the visible world reduced to the lamp light’s reach. The chill made her burrow deeper into her jacket, the library’s warmth only a memory in the foggy twilight.

Decisions yet to be made pressed in upon her. A familiar sting pricked her eyes. Clenching her teeth, she shoved her hands back into her pockets, roughly setting her thoughts against the ache, and her eyes to look for distant headlights.

And there, on the sidewalk, she saw them, just at the edge between sight and obscurity:

Large paw prints, like some gigantic creature only meant for the wilds had stepped through paint and then sprinted into the darkening fog.

She half-turned away. It was cold. Late. I’ll take a closer look tomorrow, she decided.

Pinpricks of bus lights cut through the fog. Supper and bed beckoned. Warmth and sleep wooed. Yet her eyes kept finding their way back to the prints. Even in the fog, she could just make out more marking a path into the distance.

A little spark of adventure flickered to life in her heart. A little less weariness weighed down her limbs. She hardly noticed stepping out from the certainty of the stop. She followed, up and around, down and back, street lamps lighting her way, one moment certain she had lost the trail only to find it again further up and further in, until the paw prints finally stopped. And she stopped; breathing deep from the chase, hope of a deeper magic rising in her heart.

At the end of the trail, scrawled joyfully on the pavement, were two shimmering words from her childhood, catching her up in the Story, breaking past all her doubts, filling the ache, until her heart spilled over in laughter and tears and laughter again:

ASLAN LIVES!!


-----
You guys, I love everything C. S. Lewis! His immortal "Chronicles" with Aslan the Lion are

fan·tas·tic (Adjective: Of extraordinary size or degree)

in the truest sense, and may live to the end of the world which (as it happens) Lewis describes in the "Last Battle," the final "Chronicles of Narnia" work. Well, the end of the Narnian world! A stunning description, never to be forgotten.

I happened on this article the other day and think I'd like to re-read it other times, re-feel the magic, so I've posted it. I did instantly loved the "poetry," this modern-day Story here (Aslan is story, Life - Resurrection - personified) rising from something someone mentioned. Fairly unusual. For ones with an open, lyrical mind and spiritual bent, thrilling!

Mixed blessings

We went to town yesterday. The snow's lovely 'cept what's been scraped to the curb.



The neighborhood



and main road in town.



The Costco parking lot.



I wore my Birkenstocks. Oh brother, forgot to change into shoes... the sun, the snow - the beauty - getting out of the house; and cold, wet feet, these are mixed blessings!

Just to be loved

From "Corduroy Mansions," the book I'm reading with the, erm, funniest people in it nearabout London, is this part that yesterday had me stop turning pages and think and sigh. Winnie-the-Pooh-like.



Middle-aged Terrence has hooked his car battery by the most innocent devious means to the hefty extension cord normally used for their garden lawn mower and plugs this into the electrical socket in his garage. Flips a switch and the results are, right-o. You know. Shocking. His likewise middle-aged sister comes running to find him slumped and not breathing on the garage floor in front of the car and for a few pages off we go in the ambulance with her and Terrence; the while, EMT's resuscitating him (or trying) with heart paddles, his sister holding his hand.

"Poor Terence. Poor, dear, gentle, Terence."

This car thing is one in a bevy of antics the book's characters get themselves into and out of! Mingled with Alexander McCall Smith's quixotic prose and recurring, constant, philosophizing...

Which I like. I like!
(O we who live in our heads too much...)

... these antics and their resolutions land the reader often in fellow feeling. "That simple thing that all of us look for; that we yearn for throughout our lives. Just to be loved. That is all."

"When have we last held [someone's] hand?" cites this good author.

"That simple gesture of fellow feeling, which expresses ordinary human solidarity, which says:

You are not alone.

I am with you.

I am here."

Great moments

You've seen this. You've read this. It's just a great reminder that great moments catch us unaware.

A NYC Taxi driver wrote:



I arrived at the address and honked the horn. After waiting a few minutes I honked again. Since this was going to be my last ride of my night shift I thought about just driving away, but instead I put the car in park and walked up to the door and knocked. ‘Just a minute’, answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.

After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90′s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940′s movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase.

The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

‘Would you carry my bag out to the car?’ she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman.

She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.

She kept thanking me for my kindness. ‘It’s nothing’, I told her. ‘I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother to be treated.’

‘Oh, you’re such a good boy,’ she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address and then asked, ‘Could you drive through downtown?’

‘It’s not the shortest way,’ I answered quickly.

‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice.’

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. ‘I don’t have any family left,’ she continued in a soft voice. “‘The doctor says I don’t have very long.’ I quietly reached over and shut off the meter.

‘What route would you like me to take?’ I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.

We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, ‘I’m tired. Let’s go now’.

We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

‘How much do I owe you?’ She asked, reaching into her purse.

‘Nothing,’ I said

‘You have to make a living,’ she answered.

‘There are other passengers,’ I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.

‘You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.

I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life.

Like my own

You saw this on FB already. Just had to post it here, for me. Mary (the baby) tells her big sis Shana on FB today:  Ohhh! That is so cute! I look just like E.T.!

Darling!  Love you two nieces (now grown up) so much. Like my own!

Focus and aim

  An arrow can only be shot by pulling       it backward.

When life is dragging you back with difficulties, it means that it’s going to launch you into something great. So just focus, and keep aiming!

Here's what I think some days: I'm in transition. Moving ahead but also kind of in circles in my life, and often back. Where do I want to be? Where I say pray I want to be? Or comfortably in my past...?"

(Does this describe you?)

Transition is trying, so I like this quote on "focus" and "aim." And... "we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are."

What I need

 You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.  Eric Hoffer



 The more we keep our mind on ourselves and our wants, the more unhappy we become. God wants us to love others and meet their needs.   Joyce Meyer
-----

“All I ever wanted, all I ever dreamed of,
Everything I hoped, and all the things I prayed for
Couldn't hold a candle to what I've been given,
I've been given what I need.”

'Very rare' freezing rain created plenty of chaos

Here's how the valley's looked for days... blanketed in fog. Well, smog.



The inversion layer yesterday brought catastrophic conditions for commuters on Salt Lake City highways coming and going...

 SALT LAKE CITY — Utahns have seen this inversion for the past 10 days and when it started to rain in the upper, warmer air Thursday, that came through and hit the cold valley air, creating freezing rain. 

It started as rain, came into the cold air and froze. It was rain on people's windshield but froze on contact with the surface, actually glazing ice on the bridges and the overpasses.

It caused more than 100 accidents,

shut down the Salt Lake City International Airport for hours



and generally baffled many who had never seen the stuff before.



Three Utah Highway Patrol troopers were hit within three hours while responding to accidents on I-15 and all sustained minor injuries.

Salt Lake County had more crashes than troopers could keep up with.

----
So went the news yesterday. It was Kent's and my 11th wedding anniversary and just we stayed in all day. I admit I was at the rec center way early in the morning as the rain was just descending (17 degrees) so I did rough it a bit, but our good car held the road there and back and thankfully we didn't get out the rest of the day. So much for eating out, eh. I even cancelled three visiting teaching appointments just after breakfast in fact, and a good thing: Our neighbors were slippery-sliding down their hills from their houses, their cars virtual skateboards. And nobody's driveway was navigable, including ours! We've owned our new 4-wheel drive too few weeks to be skating in it.

Ellie Belle

Browsing

Mom thoroughly enjoyed



browsing her recipe book.



I thoroughly enjoyed watching her.

Suffering

Kent and I read Alma 14 together yesterday and I trembled and cried. Not a good start to this blog post I guess you can tell... tears came right out of my eyes as I read aloud the abuse Alma and Amulek took from the chief judge, a man "after the order and faith of Nehor, who slew Gideon," and men in power with him. I trembled at the part where righteous women and children in the city, families of believers who'd been cast out of the city, were burned alive and their records (the scriptures) burned.

How many times have I read the account? Many. But never had such feelings. I turned to Kent with a tear dripping practically off my nose and feeling embarrassed and said I'm sorry, it's the first time this's struck me so hard.

Why, he wanted to know.

I don't know, I said. I'm changing. Spiritually.

It's an okay thing to say to one you love and trust with your feelings that you're changing. That you're not the same as you used to be 'cause something's stirring you. Spiritually? Yes, I do think so.

It's been about suffering. Simultaneous with mom and dad coming here and the holidays and Kent getting sick then me getting sick, I've been going through something - some thing - about suffering. A bit of it has been my own challenges; the biggest part has been feeling suffering of others. The gut-wrenching murders at Sandy Hook Elementary; a dear friend passing away before Christmas of cancer, hurting to her last breath, her husband faithfully attending church each week since; Scott with a hard row to hoe through the holidays and since; Erin with every chick and child ill at the same time she was so, so sick this past month. I couldn't help her; Regina my friend in Georgia suffering a detached retina, then eye surgery, this repair fragile and risky, which, when I found out about it, I mourned. (Regina's been positive. It's her way.) Mom sick - I feel her chest pain as she continues to cough; Laura telling me a few days ago of a woman she knows of who is suffering kidney failure who fell recently down steep stairs, a brutal accident for this already weak person. Later that day thinking of her I cried as though I know her personally, begging God for help for her.

It's just that. Begging God. This is constant for my children, very regular for friends and family (prayers for you Regina!), and lately has been often for even strangers, even all the children of God. I'm stirred by the knowledge for instance that at a point ten days ago the deep congestion in my lungs would dissipate as I took my first antibiotic pill. For someone else in the world, maybe even many others, who at the same hour had the same symptoms but not the medical intervention, breathing would continue labored and become agony; it isn't too extreme to wonder that they may have died within days if unattended... these same days I've been recovering. I've felt this keenly and, well, begged God for any with pneumonia.

Begging God has helped me for a few weeks exist in extreme empathy, an experience I'm grateful for and that must surely wane. I'd be glad if it didn't though... here has been an aspect of charity visited on me in a burst of rapid-fire experiences and associations. I'm learning to focus on Christ. To give thanks even as I beg. To meditate - go both outside myself, curiously, and in, introspectively. There's a lesson inside each, wonder, and such pain.

I'm learning too to relinquish...

... staggered at this weight of feeling after others intensely. I cannot suffer with so many and and keep steady myself. Especially I haven't been able to bear much sick, and it's paradoxical that at the lowest point of energy I've had the hugest longing. So there's also breathing out and letting things go - as a necessity, simply for the reason that they are heavy. And always back to the beginning - begging God for all.

I'm learning that to bear one another's burdens is not the same as to make it alright for them now or ever. It's not in me to cure. It's to groan with them when they must groan and pray to God through Christ for their sake, for "surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." (Isaiah 53:4) I cannot comprehend how Christ suffered on earth, but I know because He did He knows how we suffer, the full brunt of it. He alone relieves the suffering poor; He reaches as we stagger and descend under the weight of life and steadies us. He carries with us, and carries still when we must set it down.

“God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons we could not learn in any other way."  C S Lewis 

A series of things

This is the book I finished this week. Book 8 in the Isabel Dalhousie series.



She's a Scottish philosopher, Isabel. She over thinks actually, and I quite love it.



"Forget these... these musings," she declares in a moment. "I'll say something else soon. Think of that."

Most days I wish I could be the one walking arm in arm with whomever, wherever, getting myself off the hook - it's called a disclaimer - for how I'm thinking. With words like that!

Below are the last two novels so far in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. Completely, wonderfully, satisfying! Botswana! Africa, Africa, Africa! Alexander McCall Smith demonstrates the depth of his affection for his memories of Botswana describing Mma Ramotswe’s thoughts as she looks toward the Kalahari desert, the darkening sky and the branches of the trees tracing a pattern...

“a pattern of such intricacy and delicacy that those standing below might look up and wonder why the world can be so beautiful and yet break the heart.”

Great writing... and doubtless other books to follow. I love to go to the library and bring home two at a time.



And today I start this one, yet a separate series; "Corduroy Mansions" the first book. We'll see if I like it.  A reviewer wrote that it's, well, "twee." What does that mean? Something that is sweet, almost to the point of being sickeningly so. As a derogatory descriptive, something that is affectedly dainty or quaint, or is way too sentimental. Well I won't over think it. Maybe it is... I'll let you know.