Freshman Orientation 101 (Monday, August 15)

(To Ednella: Thanks for thinking about that last post. I'm still getting to your question! I'll post an answer here when next I get a chance.)

Today my parents and I drove to "my" university, an hour northeast of our house, so that I could move into my dorm and begin orientation.

My room looked like a gypsy caravan when I woke this morning: two enormous suitcases, a vast box, a lampshade, and sundry and various other parcels and packages, containing printer, computer, trashcan, etc. I woke up early and flew around getting ready to go. In the end, I had plenty of time after breakfast in which to dally. I meandered up to the buckeye tree, which had been blown over in a big wind storm on Friday, and poked around in the wreckage. My feet sank in the thick grass, covered with dew, and wet branches flecked my hair with water. The branches lay splayed on the grass, their leaves outflung. Some of the branches were buried deep in the earth with the force of their fall. The cats snuffled through the green arches of the wreckage, their fur slick with rainwater. When it was time to go, my siblings said good-bye. Daisy seemed to be suffering from a severe case of older-sister-separation-anxiety.

We left around 8:45 a.m. The clouds were very low this morning, brushing the tops of the hills with their heavy feet. Everything was wet. It rained hard as we drove over the lake so that you could barely see the far shore. The lake was just a vague, grey pattern of wind-marbled water under the causeway. In the city, the tall skyscrapers were hidden in cloud.

The university swarmed with people moving in, carrying suitcases and the ever-present blue freshman orientation knapsacks. My mother and I checked in at the student union while my father parked the car. All I had to do was pick up some papers and my own knapsack, and we were off to Lottie Jane Mabee Hall, which is my dorm. My parents and I trekked through the mud with the suitcases, across the street, and into the lobby. A brisk young woman gave me a room check form, and we proceeded up to my room via the elevator. I’m at the end of the west hall on the third floor in a spacious corner room. My window faces west, and there’s a line of maple trees below it—just like home. It was very cold and smelled a bit stale in my room when we first entered. The walls were blank and sterile. The furniture was all tilted about, one bed sprawled in the center of the room, one bed pushed neatly against the wall. I began to get settled. My father strained at the desks and wardrobes until they were satisfactorily arranged. Then he settled down and briskly began to install my laptop on the system while my mother and I unpacked the suitcases. My parents kept commenting about how little I’d brought with me, though I felt as though it were quite a lot. Most of my clothes aren’t here yet, though—they were in the wash when we left this morning. My mother and I stacked the two mattresses on top of one another and made the bed. Once we’d flung my newest comforter onto the bed, the room began to look cheerful. The comforter is made of brightly-colored patches from my grandmother's quilt scraps.

After everything was stowed away, we went out to lunch. A line of angry clouds glowered at us from the southwest. We drove to the Arbys around the corner, leaving just in time to get pelted with a heavy rainshower as we ran from the car to the restaurant. The restaurant was busy with people—workers, students, administrators, parents. I ordered a chocolate-and-peanut-butter milkshake to go with my sandwich. It even had hot fudge swirled around the inside of the cup, making a pretty pattern on the plastic.

After lunch, we drove back to the student union to buy books. Most of the time, my mother sat in the corner and read Abraham Lincoln’s Genes and other adventures, a book about DNA which she’d found on the textbook shelf and really liked. My father and I pushed through the crowded aisles, trying to make sense of the course listings. While he stood in line with a heavy basket of books for the checkout counter, my mother and I walked over to the music building, Tyrell Hall, to see if I could get audition music. However, the Hall was completely empty. No professors, no secretaries, only one dude in the upstairs computer lab, a shy Asian girl waiting for the secretary, and a friendly family in a basement practice room. The daughter of this family was trying to learn mellophone so that she could audition for marching band—she plays French horn, but they suddenly told her that she had to play mellophone. They escorted us over to the band building, located in one of the athletic halls. We snuck through the big band practice room, where the drums were practicing, into a crowded hall, and finally I poked my head into a room very full of people. A cheerful man in a uniformed shirt handed me one sheet of relatively easy music, after which my mother and I hurried back to the student union, where my father was waiting for us.

At three o’clock, my parents and I separated: my parents went to a parents’ meeting in the basketball arena, while I marched off to meet my orientation group. My group leader is a ditzy young woman—a brunette with pretty hair and a rather silly, made-up face. We played the “two truths and a lie” game in order to get acquainted with everyone, and then she went over the schedule with us. I desperately wanted to get out of the little classroom. She arranged times for us to meet for breakfast, lunch, and supper tomorrow (I was hoping to be able to eat on my own). I was really miserable and very bored.

We walked over to the basketball arena to have a big group picture taken. Almost everyone else was already there, arranged on the tall steps leading into the stadium. The leaders stood about at the foot of the stairs and shouted encouragement. I stood with my back pressed against the concrete side of the stairs and sweated. It rained a little bit. I thought about how, if I were doing what I wanted to be doing, I would be at Horn Creek in the mountains just then, and it would be raining a little bit as we carried our suitcases to the cabins. *sigh* One of the leaders cheered the crowd on to do a “wave”, and then someone had the clever idea to “crowd-surf”. This was one of the larger and heavier group leaders. They hefted him up onto the mass of students, and the students passed him up with their hands on his back.

The picture having been taken, we streamed into the stadium, but instead of going into the main arena for the matriculation ceremony, we were detoured to one of the practice courts. There, all the groups sat in circles. We waited for what seemed like half-an-hour. The roar of the crowd shook the air, echoing off the high ceiling and blank walls. It was an awful roar, like thousands of tons of water, but it had a rhythm to it, a little bit like poetry, and every so often, one voice would stand out, the way a syllable stands out from a stanza. The group behind us played duck-duck-goose. It was ridiculous to watch these plump highschool girls in tight little skirts chasing each other, squealing with laughter. A boy and a trim young woman began a game of volleyball.

At last, one of the leaders picked up a loudspeaker and began to direct the groups out of the room. I sat and watched the trickle grow steadily. Suddenly, like water in a dry land, I began to think about Heaven. Peace flowed down, instead of frustration. As I shuffled out of the room with the other kids, I sang Psalm 84 to myself. We were pushed through the catacombs of maintenance and locker rooms below the main arena, until finally we emerged on the arena floor. We passed down a row of presidents in their silk gowns, the colors bright as the stripes on a monarch butterfly’s wings. We walked along the court and turned at the place in front of the podium where a stern-faced man held a rod with a silver seal atop it. (He looked very imposing, and a bit silly.) Then we climbed the bleachers and took our seats in file. On my left side sat several “cute chicks”; on my right side sat a bunch of rapper dudes who made disrespectful comments throughout the ensuing ceremony, especially about the bagpipers and their kilts. The bagpipers, arranged on the court in a semicircle, played as we entered. There were maybe eight pipers and three or four drummers to keep time. All the bagpipers had on kilts and hats and matching shoes and socks. One of them looked like the reincarnation of Wallace himself, with a grim, determined face and shoulder-length blonde hair. They played the same martial tune over and over until the row of professors had been seated. Then they turned to the beat of the drum and marched out.

A long ceremony followed—mostly talking by various presidents, deans, and professors. The chaplain prayed at the beginning of the end (but, rather glaringly, he omitted the name of Christ). The president of the university gave a nice address about how students should manage change, diversify their experiences, make new friends, and accept their own limits. The deans of the colleges got up and told us about how wonderful each college was. The dean of Arts and Sciences said that there was a planet in another solar system named for one of his professors. (“No wonder!” I thought, “they’re so way-out in their ideology that they’re certainly not on this planet.”) He boasted that his professors had written two hundred thirty-two books over the past years. (“That’s far too many!” I thought.) Towards the end of the ceremony, two young women rose from the audience. One played the alma mater while the other sang—she had a nice, operatic voice, not too pretentious. The words to the alma mater were a bit too much like a hymn for my taste. Then the bagpipers came back in and played the professors and dignitaries out of the room. The crowd broke up. Everyone was trying to find their parents. One girl, caught in the midst of the crowd, was saying, “I can’t find you!” to her mother, who happened to be about two yards away. I stood outside for a while, hoping to see my parents, but they never appeared. Then I saw my father waving to me from below the steps, and I ran down to meet them.

We stood in a long line for supper. My father had been very surprised that we hadn’t had to stand in any long lines all day, so I joked that this was the line he’d been looking for. The meal was quite good. We ate at a little table in the “Hurricane Hut”, which is an informal snack bar/video arcade during the school year. After supper, we returned to my room, where we unloaded the books. I hugged my parents good-bye.

The room seemed very empty without them. I sat by my window and stared out. A long line of dark thunderheads stood along the northern horizon, spilling over into the west so that the sun lit them brilliantly, etching them with gold against the blue sky. I saw my parents walk to the car, and I waved them good-bye. My mother blew me kisses. I watched as they pulled out and drove away. I felt rather desolate. My room was very cold, so I opened my window. A fat fly flew in. I chased it around the room with my Bach etude book, moving as though the fly and I were in some sort of complicated modern dance, until I managed to squash it. I wrote e-mails. Before I went to bed, I had to bundle up like a hibernating bear in order to stay warm.

Sole Psalmody: An Essay

The Reformed Presbyterian Church, of which I am a member, holds as part of its doctrine of worship that Psalms are the only appropriate thing to be sung in worship. The RPC also says that these Psalms must be sung acappella, without instruments. I've had several people ask me why the RPC does this, and so I think it's high time I address the subject. I asked my father to check over this essay before I posted it, and he said it was alright, so if you have more questions, please go to him--he has a much better grasp of the subject than I do!

Warning: Long and extremely philosophical blog post follows. I do not intend to offend anyone; my purpose here is to make you consider the sanctity of worship and the blessing the church gains when it sings the Psalms.

First, to address the objection, “If all life is a worship service, then does singing Psalms without instruments mean that we can’t enjoy literature, listen to secular lyrical music, or play musical instruments? Does it really matter what we do in worship if all of life is a worship service?” But all of life is not a worship service. Certainly, all of life should be lived so that the Christian glorifies God in everything. However, a worship service is a special time in which the Christian lays aside his other concerns and focuses on God alone. Christians can glorify God by cooking meals, changing the oil in the car, sewing dresses, and evangelizing door-to-door, but a Christian would do none of these things in a worship service because none of these things allow him to focus totally on God. Thus, Christians are free to enjoy literature, listen to lyrical music, and play instruments in the rest of their life. They can do these things to glorify God, just as they would bake bread or build a house for His glory.

Since the worship service is the time that God has ordained for man to draw closer to Him in a corporate group, God has established set perimeters for this time. The regulative principle of worship states that anything that is not commanded in worship is forbidden, and that whatever is commanded in worship is required. God told the Israelites exactly what He wanted during their time of worship. In the Old Testament, before Christ’s coming, worship included the slaughter of animals. Instruments were used during the time when the priests were killing the animals. When Christ came and fulfilled the Old Testament symbols, there was no longer any need for sacrifice, and so the trappings that went along with the sacrifice—that is, the entire system of temple worship, including instruments—were done away with. There is no longer any place for instruments in worship because Christ has fulfilled that part of the service. In essence, when you use instruments in worship, you declare that Christ’s death was not good enough and that you wish to return to the old sacrificial system.

Singing was a part of Old Testament worship, too, but it continues in the New Testament church. There are several Greek and Hebrew words used to describe the singing part of a worship service. In the Old Testament, the title “hymn” or “song” is put onto Psalms to differentiate them into categories. Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” Here, Paul is just using different words to describe the singing part of the worship service. He tells Christians to let the Word of Christ to dwell richly in them. They are to sing Spirit-filled songs. The only songs which are truly filled with the Holy Spirit are those that were fully inspired by Him: the Psalms.

Psalms were used in worship in both the Old and New Testament. Christ Himself used the Psalms. The book of Psalms is the most-often-quoted book in the New Testament. In New Testament times, heretics were the first to introduce the use of non-inspired hymns in worship. The church council of Laodicea forbade hymns.

When anything other than Psalms is used in worship, worship becomes impoverished. Here’s an illustration from one of my teachers: When you sing the Psalms in worship, it’s like drinking straight from a clear spring. The water is fresh, clean, and undiluted. It has no pollutants in it. The Psalms are exactly what God wants us to sing, exactly what He’s given us to sing. When you sing the Psalms, you know for certain that you’re singing things that are pleasing to God. However, when you sing hymns in worship, it’s like drinking water from the spring that has been allowed to run down a hill. Now the water is diluted. It has pollutants in it. It’s imperfect.

From my personal experience, I find that things have been left out of hymns that are present in the God-inspired Psalms. There are very few imprecatory hymns, as there are imprecatory Psalms, which cry to God for salvation from wicked men and call down His righteous wrath on an evil world. To me, hymns just don’t have the breadth and depth of emotion that Psalms do. It seems to me that when you sing hymns in worship, you are leaving out a big part of what God has given us to meditate on and to use in worship.

Finally, the best reason for the church to sing Psalms only in worship comes from the regulative principle of worship: whatever God has commanded us to use in worship, we use, and whatever God has either strictly forbidden or has not commanded, either explicitly or indirectly should not be used in worship. Hymn-singing has not been commanded by God in worship. Psalm-singing has been commanded by God. God provided men to write Psalms for worship. Asaph and his sons were Levites, consecrated by God to write Psalms. David, Solomon, and Moses, who all wrote Psalms, were men who were specially chosen and anointed by God for His service. God did not let just anyone write songs for worship, nor was just anyone allowed to write songs at any point in the church. Only the priests or certain prophets, inspired by God, were authorized to write Psalms, and God preserved their Spirit-inspired writings for the church’s use in worship throughout the ages.

Someone will interject here and argue that God preserved the songs of people such as Miriam, so shouldn't we sing those, too? However, the song of Miriam in Exodus was not part of a worship service. She was giving praise to God in a public, political setting, not as part of a worship service. God did not preserve her song as part of the book of Psalms. The book of Psalms is a collection of Psalms specially set aside for use in worship. Nowhere in the Bible do we find anyone using Miriam’s song, or similar pieces, for use in worship, but we do find people using selections from the book of Psalms (one teacher of mine commented that Christ and His disciples sung Psalm 118 before they went into the garden of Gethsemane). I think that God preserved her song to remind us that we, too, should glorify Him and use all our talents to praise Him—outside the worship service.

Someone else will ask, “Aren’t you saying that we can please God by our works because someone who sings Psalms will please Him more than someone who sings hymns?” Christ enables us to obey God and clears our minds so that we can understand His revelation. He takes the most imperfect worship and makes it pleasing in God’s sight. However, God will always be more pleased with someone who obeys His commands for worship in Christ than with someone who does not obey His commands. By the grace of His Spirit, Christ enables us to understand His guidelines for worship. Those who follow God’s commands in Christ will always be more blessed than those who do not. They will gain more benefit from worship, and from all of life, if they seek to obey God.

By this discussion I am not saying that God has forbidden His people to write poems or pieces of music. I believe that Christians should use their talents to God’s glory, and if they are gifted with the ability to write poems or stories, or to play instruments or compose tunes, then they should do so, but with the understanding that these pieces will not be used in worship because they have not been directly inspired by God. Although God is the fountain for all our endeavors, He granted His special revelation to some specific men so that they could write for worship, and He has not given this special revelation to anyone else. I also happen to think that Christians should feel free to write devotional poems or songs—by writing with God in mind, Christians serve to enlighten the dark world and to deepen their own sense of devotion to Him. As long as they write with the understanding that their work is not to be used in worship, Christians should feel free to talk about God in their writing, both poetry and prose.

Also, I am not trying to say by this discussion that Christians should not sing hymns at all. There are certainly some beautiful hymns (and music to go with those hymns) that have been written. I have heard people sing these songs and have enjoyed them—outside worship. Hymns do lead us to think about God and to praise Him, so they are not to be censured entirely from the Christian life. I think that Christians can gain good from singing hymns. However, they should always remember that they are drinking from that muddied stream and not from the clear spring of God’s special revelation. Christians should always return to the Psalms as their one source for worship songs.

"My" Song, posted thanks to popular demand

Well, some of you wanted this. Here goes.

My song would be either "Short Trip Home" from "Heartland" (bluegrass), or "On My Way Home" from "Paint the Sky with Stars", by Enya (New Age). Both of these songs are sort of thoughtful and seem to be looking back at old memories. Or, of course, the complete "Lord of the Rings" soundtracks, by Howard Shore. These soundtracks run through my entire spectrum of emotions and experiences. They have silly parts (FOTR, Track 5), happy parts (ROTK, Track 17), ecstatic parts (FOTR, Track 9; TTT, Track 16), very sad parts (FOTR, Track 17; TTT, Track 11; ROTK, Track 8), parts for fighting as I do battle with my sinful nature (FOTR, Tracks 6-8; TTT, Track 12; ROTK, Tracks 11-15), and parts that long for Heaven (ROTK, Track 19).

Stargazing

Note: Last week my family and I went to a Christian family camp in Iowa. One night, one of the older men, a retired professor, gave a stargazing session for us on the big open field near the cabins. Meanwhile, some clever person had started a Psalm sing on the porch of the dining hall. Here's what I got out of the experience.

Stargazing
8/8/05

When it was dark, a handful gathered round
Dr. Parnell, an old astronomer.
He mapped the skies for us. His flashlight’s pen
Traced brief meridians. He lifted quavering fingers
To Sagittarius, Hercules, whose hands

Raised bow and club against Scorpius. Cassiopeia
Wiggled over his bald head. His flashlight caught
Aquila’s silent splash as it plunged in
Stars’ seas. He cupped his hand to hear Vega—
Aeolian hum through Lyra’s strings. The rim

Of the Big Dipper shone behind his mouth.
His flashlight stitched the Milky Way, where Cygnus
Swam on the rushing river, outspread cross.
Altair, Arcturus, Antares, Vootes
Gazed down from temple stairs, enshrined gods,

Skin like pure Athens’s marble, hard Sparta’s spears.
Across the lawn, which swelled like sky, upon
The concrete porch, a constellation gathered:
A cluster of tired teens in sweaty shirts.
From the black field I stared at them and heard

Bass out-of-tune, sopranos buried by altos.
“Leave not the work of Your own hands,” they sang,
“You sit enthroned forever; Your memorial
Abides through generations,” from the Psalms.
Above them, in the universe’s cold halls

Throngs draped in pagan robes lifted holy hands.
“While I live I will praise Jehovah, praise
My God through all my days,” the tenors sang.
“On us let there be shed abroad the beauty
Of our Lord God,” sopranos’ voices rang.

I tried to count stars on the porch, but they
Had merged with the vortex of galaxies.
Drawn, planet on its orbit, I crossed grass
Withered by August. Through the hazy gloam
I stepped, beneath the giant oak. At last

I joined my voice with theirs, with stars that sang
Above. Across vast hills we climbed. We forded
A river roaring, cold against our skin.
A tide of lights, we ebbed from silent shores
Into the sea, to meet the rising sun.

Soundtracks

Lately I've asked my friends to write in my journal and tell me what song or songs they would choose to be the "soundtrack" to their own life and the "soundtrack" to my life. In other words, what song would they choose to characterize themselves and to characterize me. After I've read everyone's responses (all of which were interesting and encouraging), I decided to attempt the exercise myself. Marigold asked me to post the results. I'm afraid I don't have anything for Melissa and her sisters yet, but maybe you'll be able to enjoy the others.

Note 1: This exercise does not take into account selections from the Book of Psalms. The Psalms have words for every mood, every sorrow, every struggle, every joy that any human being can possibly encounter. There's probably a Psalm out there that would fit each one of us at some point or another. However, I think it's probably better if I don't go into spiritual matters here by assigning my friends something as deeply personal as their own Psalm. Because of this, I've stuck to purely secular pieces--not ones that are offensive, but ones that I know and love.

Note 2: If any of you (who are my friends or family) read this post and don't recognize the songs I've mentioned, ask me, and I'll play them for you sometime.

Note 3: To those who are mentioned here, please don't be taken aback by the ways I've characterized you! :) I may have given more space to some than to others, but that doesn't mean that I love those about whom I've said more than those about whom I've said little. I love all of you equally--but differently. I hope you will be encouraged by this post as I was by your notes to me. I appreciate all of you.

Here goes....

Meri: "Wolfcreek Pass" from "Not All who Wander Are Lost", by Chris Thile (bluegrass). This song is playful and wild and adventurous, but it also has a slow, jazzy, patient section in the middle--these things characterize Meri. She's one of the most patient people I know--patience, to me, often consists of being patient when one is feeling most impatient inside. This jazzy section feels thoughtful, but it also has a hidden energy that wants to race ahead.

Princess: "Between the Shadows" from "The Visit", by Loreena McKennitt (Celtic/world). This song keeps revealing new aspects of itself. It's clear and sweet, just like Princess. Another song for her would be "Bonny Swans" from "The Mask and Mirror", also by Loreena McKennitt, because it's dramatic (Princess loves dramatics). It has quirks that make you laugh (Princess always wears a funny little frown--it's her default expression, but it makes me smile, not mockingly, but just because it's her).

Violin: The Barber and Elgar violin concertos, or Mark O'Connor's string quartet. These pieces are full of different attitudes. They change suddenly. They're dramatic, silly, squirrely, and sad, by turns. They move quickly and intensely in some movements, just like Violin, but they also take time to meditate, the way she does, and then to eloquently articulate the results of those meditations.

SwanElf: "Song for a Young Queen" from "Not All who Wander Are Lost", by Chris Thile (bluegrass) because it reminds me of clear blue eyes and laughter and innocence. It's boyantly happy, the way she is. Another song that might fit her is "Fancy Stops and Goes" from "Heartland" (bluegrass), because it has crazy, squirrely parts interspersed with slower, intense, thoughtful parts. SwanElf and Violin both think--and speak what they think--with intensiy.

Marigold: "Flying" from the "Peter Pan" soundtrack, by James Newton Howard, because she often seems carefree. Or "Death by Triple Fiddle" from "Heartland" (bluegrass). This piece is cheerful and hard-working, like Marigold. It also reminds me a little bit of when I get out-of-line and Marigold has to strictly put me back in my place.

Estella: "Wild Child" from "A Day without Rain", by Enya (New Age). It's happy, with a nice swing and flow to it. It's also quiet and understated. It's dreamy, sweet, a little shy--like Estella herself.

Daisy: "La Serenissima" from "The Book of Secrets", by Loreena McKennitt (Celtic/world). This song is innocent, like Daisy. It seems to be eager for something, always wanting to make its listener happy, but it also refuses to change, except little-by-little, just the way Daisy does.

A Funny Thing

Recently I've been looking through some of my old journals, and I've found all sorts of things--some of them depressing, some of them encouraging, and some of them just plain funny, like this entry, dated August 29, 2002.

On this particular night, my parents were celebrating their wedding anniversary. My father had gone to Arby's earlier in the evening and picked up supper for us children to eat while he and my mother went out to a fancy restaurant by themselves. They left me in charge. In order to keep everyone silent during supper, I apparently instituted a round of the "quiet game", in which no one is allowed to speak for a certain length of time. This supposedly keeps people from arguing. Here's a part of our conversation:

Brother1: “Mmmm!”
Me: “Time out! He has ants in his pants! Time in!”
(We all turn to see what Brother1 was pointing at: a hummingbird at our feeder outside the window.)
(Further dialogue ensues, despite the restrictions of the "quiet game", with giggles from Daisy, Brother2, and I.)
Brother1 glowers. “There ain’t no ants on me! There may be ants in some of your pants, but there ain’t no ants on me!”
(We all repeat the rhyme several times, with variations.)
Me: “Time out! Be quiet! Time in!"
Brother1: “You’re being rude!”
Daisy: “Time out! No, she’s not! Time in!”
Brother1: “She’s not my friend!”
Daisy: “Time out! She can’t have any enemies: she’s too nice! Time in!”
Brother1: “Now you’re my enemy!”
Me: “Ok, we’re starting another quiet game for five minutes.”
Brother1: “Time out. No time-outs; food noises don’t count. Time in.”
(Brother1 slurps his milkshake noisily—we all giggle.)
Daisy: “Time out. You can tell why he wants food noises not to count. Time in.”
Me: “Time out. Time outs are legal. Time in.”

The whole thing filled with laughter. Children, children....

Despite the "conflict", we were all quite amicable after the meal. My brothers rode skateboards after helping to clean the table. Daisy and I painted—I made bookmarks for my friends while Daisy made pictures for my grandmother. We listened to “Dead Air”, and then my parents came home--no cut throats, no burned-down house, but peace and good order. :)

How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place

Here is a rather awful poem I wrote, sort-of based on Psalm 84. The assignment was to describe an "encounter with the supernatural".This is about as close as I can get to such an encounter, aside from describing Sabbath worship and the Communion table.

How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place

I stand beneath mountains’ pillars. Sky rests on stone
supported by flying buttresses of bowing branches.
Trees’ translucent clerestories filter light
on polished rocks and moss-upholstered roots. Green sun
falls on my face, the smell of earth and water like
incense evaporating from cold creeks. Water sings
its psalms among the rustling aspen wings.

I see Him here: His fingers in pure-skinned trees,
His face in sky, His voice in wind. The heavens are
a flimsy veil to hide Him, yet He has stretched them,
a weaver pulling tight loom’s cords, to shield me from
His holiness. I watch a sword-drawn, slender hawk
dip, candle flame, upon the wind, borne up by Him
even as I am myself. Beyond the rim

of this world stars are climbing through the dark: they step,
ascending from strength to strength, pursuing the sun
that marked their path before it set into the west.
A galaxy, a company of little lights,
they march on night’s unyielding clay, in search of dawn.
They know the sun shall rise to call them with its rays,
and they shall see His face at break of day.

"The Village", and other matters

Congratulations to everyone who survived that last post. Even more congratulations to those who survive this one. :)

Daisy and Brother2 have just gone swimming with our neighbor. I get to stay home. To keep from falling asleep, and from having to do my chores, I shall now write a post about "The Village". One of my friends, Sarah, came over to my house this morning and we watched it together. She liked it a lot, especially the soundtrack. I do, too, for more reasons than just the soundtrack (and the good acting, and the lovely scenery, and the great cinematography, etc.)....

Note: Take the parallels I draw with a grain of salt. The symbolism in "The Village" is strong in some places and dim in others. I'm just pointing out some parallels between the movie and a true Story I love, but the symbolism isn't completely correct in all cases.

The main reason I like "The Village" is the symbolism, which revolves around the idea human depravity. The elders of the village have fled from mankind so that they can raise their children in innocence and safety. They tell stories about evil creatures living in the woods to prevent their children from traveling through the woods back to mankind.

However, these elders do not realize that they have brought their own monsters with them. They have forgotten one of the key points of the Gospel, which is that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". They carry their depravity into this safe haven. Even their children carry the seeds of sin: one of their grown children, Noah, murders another man for love of the heroine. Noah thus becomes the symbol of the monsters that the villagers fear. In one scene, where he tries to break out of the "quiet room", the villagers' equivalent to prison, the rattling of the locked door and his howls of rage mimic the sounds that the monsters make when they come to the village and try to break into the villagers' houses. Noah symbolizes the depravity of the human race: behind the door of every man's mind, no matter how innocent he may be, there is a raging, howling monster, rattling the handle.

There is more imagery that revolves around Noah and the heroine, Ivy Walker. As Ivy travels through the woods to bring back medicine for her stabbed fiancee, she slides part way into a deep pit, but she manages to pull herself out. Now, my metaphor isn't perfect here, but Ivy reminds me of Christ: He descended into the pit of this world and was tempted, but He didn't sin--He didn't fall to the bottom.

The imagery continues as Noah, dressed like a monster, chases Ivy through the woods. Ivy remembers the hole and returns to it. She spreads her arms out, standing on the verge of the pit, and, just as Noah overtakes her, she steps out of the way. He falls into the pit and is killed. Just as Ivy, the symbol of innocence in the story, manages to destroy Noah, the symbol of human depravity, so Christ destroyed mankind's sin.

Another thing to point out: In one scene, Ivy's father talks about how the world turns for love, how it kneels before it "in awe". When I first saw the movie, I thought this was just postmodern nonsense, but one of my friends pointed out that Christ is true Love. So in this sense, what Mr. Walker says is true. Christ turns the world, and someday, the whole world will kneel before Him, the true Love, in awe.

The truest form of love, giving up one's life for another, is seen throughout "The Village". Not only do the parents give up their lives in order to form a colony to protect their children (now, the things they do have some big flaws--lying in order to protect innocence is a bad idea), but Lucius, Ivy's fiancee, offers to give up his life in order to bring back medicine for the villagers. Ivy herself actualizes this idea, bravely venturing into the woods ("There were rumors of creatures in these woods....") in order to bring back medicine for Lucius.

Ivy follows her love for Lucius (the way some people follow true Love, Christ), and she finds healing outside the woods.

Once Ivy gets out of the forest, the story takes a twist. Ivy, climbing over a wall, finds herself standing beside a road. She hears a sound similar to those whistling noises the monsters make, but it turns out to be a park ranger car. The young park ranger is astounded to find her standing by the road: he's out patrolling the perimeter of an animal sanctuary ("No one's allowed in there"), and he finds a girl who actually lives inside those forbidden woods. For him, the symbolism is a mirror image of what it is for Ivy. To Ivy, the people of the city and the monsters living in the forest are the things her parents have tried to keep out with their guarded boundary. To the park ranger, Ivy is one of the animals of the forest--something to fear. Just like the villagers, the men of the city have put up guard shacks along the perimeter of the animal sanctuary to keep themselves from going into the forest and to keep creatures from the forest from coming into their city.

Both the park ranger and Ivy are surprised at the friendliness and kindness they find in each other. Sometimes, the things we fear aren't what they seem.

The park ranger tells Ivy that they keep medicine at the guard shacks for "animal bites". In a sense, that's what he brings Ivy the medicine for. Noah, an animal, a monster, has hurt Lucius. Ivy has to deal with that "animal bite".

Of course, color plays a big part in the story. Red, the "bad" color, is also the color of blood. Yellow, the "safe" color, is the color of light. Ivy is usually seen wearing either white, the color of purity and innocence, or blue, which, interestingly enough, is the color associated with the Virgin Mary in Roman Catholic iconography.

One more interesting thing. As I've listened to the soundtrack, I've noticed that the violin, a fairly sophisticated instrument, is played for the innocent heroine and her civilization. On the other hand, whenever the forest is mentioned or the monsters show up, more primitive instruments are used: pipes and percussion, both the earliest musical instruments known to mankind, along with synthesized animal rattlings and gruntings. Even in the music, we hear the clash between civilized mankind (violin/orchestra) and bloodthirsty animals (woodwinds/percussion).

So, to summarize: All men have their own monsters. No one can flee from the consequences of sin with their own works, no matter how hard they try. But when men follow Christ, Love, they can escape those monsters and be free from fear. They can move from the primitive, bloodthirsty chaos of sin to the peace, safety, and good order of Christ.

And that's what I think of whenever I watch "The Village". That's why I like it so much, because it reminds me of my favorite thing to think about, my Lord, Christ Jesus.

VBS, Day 3

This morning, Daisy and I left home early to pick up peaches from the Farmers’ Market. I chose seven furry fruits from a couple of cardboard boxes, reaching politely over the wrinkled arms of an elderly lady who was painstakingly making her selection. The peaches, swirled with color like a smoothie, were bundled into the ice chest in the back of our car. When we reached the Salvation Army building, where our church has been doing VBS for the past week, we found that we were the first to arrive. We busied ourselves laying out nametags, and soon others came: the W's, Pastor's family, F's, and S's. Mr. Grin and Brother2 appeared somewhat late because Mr. Grin had taken Brother2 out for donuts (Mr. Grin is our church's intern, and he's staying at our house for the rest of the summer). Fric pulled me into a corner to read a “Berenstein Bears” book to her. Mary, Frac, Sis, and Pearl leaned over my shoulders to look at the cartoon pictures. When I finished, they played with waffle blocks and watched a children’s video.

Opening exercises began at ten o'clock. Pastor dressed up as "Bob the Builder" and led the kids in an enthusiastic chant. Mrs. F led the children in memorizing Psalm 127. She made them yawn and stretch before they began to sing. We passed around a cardboard box shaped like a house to take up a collection for Habitat for Humanity, and Daisy and SwanElf performed a short skit about going to the house of the Lord. Then the children broke up into their three groups. The littlest children were shepherded to the Bible story time by Katie, Beth, and Pearl; the boys were marched off to the memory verse station by Brother2 and Boromir, and SwanElf, Marigold, and I led our group of girls and led them downstairs into the basement for the first activity: crafts.

For crafts today, Christi helped the kids paint frosting onto house-shaped sugar cookies. The girls were all carefully creative, decorating their houses in good taste, but Christi told me that the boys just slathered on the icing any-which-way and stacked on as many M&M’s as they could fit. Next came memory verse time. Violin and Princess led this, teaching the children sign language to go along with John 14:2-6. After that, we escorted the led the Bible story time today. The girls were eager to interact with him and were quite attentive. Because of the rain last night, Sam kept all the children inside for games. They played mostly word games while I supervised the passing out of house cookies and cups of water. The basement reverberated with shouts and giggles from the older children's game of "vegetable soup" and from the squeals of laughter from the little ones' "duck-duck-goose". Princess gave the presentation about Amy Carmichael in the sanctuary after snacks. Violin and I remained upstairs in the sanctuary when everyone else had gone back to the basement afterwards. A draft of sweet wind blew through the two holes that someone had shattered in the stained-glass windows on the north side of the sanctuary. We talked about our siblings when they were little. We joked that we would form a spinsters club together when we were older and keep house. We could sit and look imposing: Violin could knit, and I could sew. Only I would have to get glasses in order to match Violin. I joked that we could each have a music studio and squawk at each other from across the hall on flute or violin. We had a great deal of fun imagining what our poor boarders would do when they first faced our stern, dignified gaze.

We returned downstairs cautiously after the noise had subsided. Katie told jokes during lunch. I ate a juicy peach, and the juice trickled down my fingers. Then we played our traditional game of Scattergories. Pastor, Marigold, and I were on a team. After we played, we went to the church office. Violin, Princess, and Marigold rode in my car and talked in silly accents. I think Princess’s accent jumps on her out of the trunk as soon as she touches my car.

At the church office, we hauled open the heavy door, creaked up the two flights of stairs, and entered the office. The office smells of must and mold, mainly because the roof leaks. Water spots have made brown, ripply patterns at the corners of the ceiling, like thumbprints on a page of parchment. Each afternoon after lunch, we meet at the church office to discuss the doings of the day, including VBS and the planned door-to-door evangelism session. Yesterday we shared our testimonies. Today we recited verses that Pastor had assigned us to memorize: Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, John 3:3, John 14:6, Romans 10:9-10, and Revelation 3:20. I sat and stared off into space so that Christi was quite worried about me. I was the last to recite. I twisted my hands behind my back and stared Pastor straight in the eye, except on the couple of places where my memory wasn’t too strong.

When the meeting was over, we split up into teams and for door-to-door work. SwanElf and I were together today. Pastor took Marigold, and Beth took Daisy. Pastor's team, my team, and Beth's team went together to one neighborhood, while Mr. Grin took the others to a different area. Our teams squeezed into my hot Taurus. The heat was grueling; even the wind blowing through the open windows didn’t help much. We worked in a neighborhood near Country Club. SwanElf was brimming with energy—so much that it made me think of the sign for “many” in sign language, which Violin tells the kids is like “popcorn”, or “creatures that just keep coming out of the ground”. She thoroughly enjoyed herself, while I dragged along, trying to catch some of her enthusiasm, and failing miserably.

We spoke to an unusual number of people today. My hunch is that people in this wealthier neighborhood had more time to sit around at home than people in the poorer neighborhoods where we’ve been, where the inhabitants would most likely be at work. The first man we talked to was an elderly man, perhaps in his sixties or seventies, who gave us a strong Christian testimony. It was so encouraging. He told us that Christ had helped him survive a heart attack. Pastor told us to pray for each house where we spoke to someone. So SwanElf prayed God’s blessings and gave thanks for this man. Then we had a brisk woman who was too busy for us. SwanElf attempted to talk to an old man who refused to open the door more than half-an-inch. He was quite deaf. He muttered at us in bewilderment whenever we asked him a question. The conversation went something like this (even with me helping and trying to “project”):

SwanElf/me: “Do you have any kind of spiritual belief?”

Him: “What?"

SwanElf/me: “Do you believe in God?”

Him: “Wha—? Do I have a dog?”

SwanElf/me: *helpless groans* “To you, who is Jesus?”

Him: “Who was Caesar? Well, he was… he lived a long time…”

SwanElf/me: *in desperation* “No!” *sigh* “Here’s a brochure for our church. Good-day!”

We left feeling rottenly disrespectful. Then we got a creep who seemed to have very confused beliefs about things. He told us that hell doesn’t exist, that this is what the Bible says, and that if he were to die now, he’d go to the “common grave”. We met a Catholic couple who were stereotypical, cheerfully ribbing one another the whole time. In all, we spoke to about thirteen people, two of which were two busy to carry on a long conversation. However, just about everyone else we met had some sort of works-based salvation idea. No one really had a very strong testimony. It was a little discouraging: we kept having to make variations on the same prayer: "Lord, we don't know if this person is saved. If they are, strengthen their faith. If they aren't awaken them to their own sinfulness, to Your judgment, and to salvation by faith in Christ alone."

We drove back to Pastor’s house. Marigold and SwanElf sat in the far back. Poor Beth was terribly flushed and hot. None of us were doing too well, except SwanElf, who reveled in the extreme heat the way she revels in extreme cold. At Pastor's house, most of us (except SwanElf) collapsed onto sofas and gulped gallons of cold water which Mrs. Pastor graciously provided us. Katie whispered to me that she and her sisters had a special treat in mind, as a thank-you to us for having them over to spend the night at our house tonight.

After the F's and S's left, I followed Katie to Shakey’s, where the girls treated us to ice cream. We even bought some to take home for my parents. The heat was ridiculous. I led the way home. My ice cream melted into a syrupy soup with a creamy, cold, ice-cream dumpling floating in the middle. Whenever we came to a red light, I sat and hurriedly slurped down the melted cream. Bits of Reese’s pieces snagged on my teeth, and bursts of peanut butter and chocolate filled my mouth as I crunched down on them. If I had to make a tight right turn, I’d quickly pass the little plastic cup off to Brother2, sitting beside me, until the turn was over. I led the way across campus, through the twisty, potholed little back streets, until we reached Washington and were able to zoom home. At home, I finished my ice cream, scraping off the goopy, melted outer coating to find a cold heart still waiting for me.

I escorted the girls up to their rooms. Beth and I sat in the cool schoolroom and discussed evangelism for a while until she went downstairs to see about helping with supper. I tried to put some of my things away, but Mr. Grin overtook me in my room. He had just been out running and was extremely sweaty. Beads of sweat stood out all over his tanned face, but he was grinning and eager to talk. He came into my room and looked at the books on my shelves and told me about the ones he’d read until he heard his cellphone ring. Then I escaped downstairs. My mother was playing the CD of the recital for Katie in the kitchen. I fled to the living room, and Christi began to practice the piano. I sat in a pleasant daze, dreaming away on the flowing notes. Beth sat on the sofa and hummed along with “Pie Jesu”. Then she stood by the piano, and, while Christi accompanied her, she sang “If God be for us, who can be against us?” from Handel’s “Messiah”. Her clear voice soared above the piano on vibrating wings, through the rafters, through the ceiling, out to the kites shimmering on the heat waves and the silver clouds outside….

But then Daisy interrupted them for supper. During supper, everyone discussed their favorite ethnic foods. Mr. Grin told us all about his favorite fish dishes, and my mother warned us to be careful of scallops in Chinese restaurants because sometimes they aren’t scallops at all but only round daubs of shark meat. You can tell the difference by the way the grain runs in the meat. After supper, I sat in the living room and listened to Christi, Katie, and Beth argue with Mr. Grin about whether Psalm singing in church should have “style” (dynamics, etc.) to it or not. Mr. Grin, ever the purist, held that none of that was necessary, but the girls, musicians to the core, argued in favor of it. I laughed quietly at their mannerisms, especially Christi’s—she has a very expressive face.

After supper, my mother got on the internet to check the weather because there were giant thunderheads looking into our valley, growing as the sun set. It turned out that the storm was off to the southwest of us and moving away, though. We pulled on our swimsuits and drove to the community pool. We met the B's there, and Pastor's family came, too. After I did my usual lap of the pool without touching the floor once, Christi and I went diving off the board with Mr. Grin, Will, and co. It was fun, except that water got stuck in my ears, and I nearly broke my back once when I bent over in a strange way on a dive. Violin and SwanELf came with Katie and Daisy, who had driven out to pick them up. Violin, SwanElf, Mr. Grin, Will, Christi, and I went down the waterslide. Mr. Grin and SwanElf shouted and encouraged everyone to make as big a splash as possible. “Come on! Shove yourself down all the way!” Mr. Grin yelled to me. I went down three or four times until things got a bit too rowdy for me, and then I went back to the main pool.

The S's arrived. We eventually started a game of water freezetag, which we played for the rest of the evening. We squirted and spiraled, dove and dashed, splashed and swam through the water. Violin demonstrated the butterfly stroke for me. She’s a fast swimmer. The light rippling on the floor of the pool wove iridescent patterns like the back of a retina. Once, when I came up for air out of the splash and foam of the game, I stopped, awestruck by the sunset. The thunderheads had piled into glorious tiers of grey, but their lowered, cupped hands held the sunlight like water. One long comber of orange cloud, combed purple, hung down into the diminishing pool of aquamarine sky. Purple clouds, edged magenta, floated across that comber like swirls of sand or seaweed caught in the backlash of a wave, or like islands floating on a saffron sea. The colors glowed vividly, alive, stunning, then gradually grew more and more lurid, until they disappeared, like a burst bubble. The light trickled away between the clouds, into darkness.

At nine o’clock, thirty minutes before the pool closed, my mother declared that it was time to leave. The chlorine dried on my chapped lips and stiffened my hair. Daisy and I rode with Katie to take Violin and SwanElf home. In the car, we talked about cars and roads. I sat quietly between SwanElf and Violin and listened, and shifted uncomfortably on the squidgy pad of my wet towel. We dropped them off. I settled into my damp towel for the drive back into town, my bare shoulders pocked with goosebumps. We had joked earlier in the day that we were going to watch “The Village”, but Katie told me that she was serious about it, so I gave her directions to Blockbuster. She was in a jovial mood, like SwanElf. She drove fast, as though her exuberance had gotten into the car.

When we got to the store, I had no shirt with me, but Daisy and Katie had shirts and shorts, so they went into Blockbuster while I waited in the car. I watched them walk across the dark parking lot towards the glass box of the lit store. Daisy’s hair swished behind her like a tangled veil. Katie hastily ran a stiff brush through her short, blond hair. I followed them until they disappeared among the shelves of DVD’s. I sat and made poetry in my head. Neon signs glowed like remnants of the sunset in the darkness. Cars whizzed past. The road glistened under the headlights like the rainbowed underside of a CD. The city seemed to be in as buoyant a mood as SwanElf. A young couple left Blockbuster, laughing together; another couple, with a toddler strapped into a set of yellow pajamas, entered the store. A couple of girls, chatting on cellphones, climbed into jaunty little sports cars and zoomed away. And I sat silent in the back seat, not shivering, but feeling very outside myself, seeing the world differently, lining out the iambic rhythm in my head, letting its gentle stresses massage my tired mind. The girls returned with the DVD. We drove home.

The house looked abandoned from the outside, but when we stepped onto the back porch, a cordial light surrounded us from the lamps in the living room where all the adults were sitting up, talking. Katie, Daisy, and I showered quickly. My father went to bed, but the rest of us went upstairs to watch “The Village” on the computer. Beth and Daisy moved the sofa so that it faced the computer. Christi ensconced herself with pillows on the floor. Beth, Daisy, Katie, and I crowded onto the sofa. My mother watched with us for a while, and Mr. Grin joined us after she left. The movie was every bit as lovely as I remembered it. Daisy buried her head under Katie’s pillow at every scary part. During the scene on the porch between Ivy and Lucius, the DVD stalled and the computer refused to respond to my frantic promptings. I eventually persuaded it to work by taking the DVD out and putting it back in again. Occasionally, I would make snide remarks aside to Katie, and we’d giggle together. “Look, as Mrs. F said, they’re throwing dead meat at those-we-don’t-speak-of, so those-we-don’t-speak-of throw dead meat right back at them,” I whispered in her ear, and she chortled with laughter. The only trouble was that in the stabbing scene, Mr. Grin said, “Oh, yeah! That was great! Look at that! Wow!” and made similar comments at the scary parts, though sometimes he tempered it with, “That wasn’t so bad! Come on!” I felt like hurling my pillow at him, but I refrained.

After, Christi went straight to bed. The rest of us stayed up for a little bit talking about the themes of depravity, sacrifice, and fear. It was twelve-thirty a.m. by the time we were all in bed. I had a horrible time getting to sleep: not only have I not been sleeping well lately, but, as always, the movie had “wired” me. I was also a bit jumpier than usual. My mind scurried, as busy as a hamster in an exercise ball, through the day, and the movie, over and over. I lay there and tried to smile and fall asleep, but it didn’t work too well…

"The Story" (also known as the latter half of July 8)

Yes, I know, I'm an awful pushover. I do whatever my friends tell me to do. :)

Alright, so, after the carwash, Violin came over to our house to help Daisy work on a project for VBS. They worked on the back porch of our house. The project was to create two, two-dimensional houses out of cardboard boxes. Violin had brought along several large cardboard boxes and five cans of paint (white, red, and green spraypaint; pale blue and gold liquid paint). They had quite a time trying to figure out how to build houses from their boxes. I sat on a lawn chair most of the time and gave them "helpful hints".

Occasionally, my mother would shout for me, and I would have to dash inside and help her find something—sleeping bags or sleeping bag sheets. My father was taking Brother2 (Brother1 is in Pittsburgh right now for a church camp) on a Boys' Brigade field trip to camp out in some mountains and go rappelling. The sleeping bags had apparently all decided to play hide-and-seek with us, and the same holds true for the sleeping bag liners, which were buried at the bottom of the boys' not-so-organized linen cubpoard. Digging through the green attic for the sleeping bags was like burrowing through an elderly relative's mind, trying to find some important piece of information--frustrating for everyone, and sometimes (when the highchair collapsed or the cardboard boxes decided to go for a slide) painful. Thankfully, the sleeping bag sheet eventually surfaced, and my father (who could be a rocket scientist) coaxed the sleeping bags out of their hiding places when he got home. So that turned out alright.

Back outside with Violin and Daisy, I helped by taping flaps shut, suggesting where to cut things, and (last but not least) tipping gold paint all over the sidewalk. Somehow, the stuff got on Violin and me, too. She was picking bits of glitter out of her hair on the way home afterwards. While she used the spraypaint, puffs of toxic chemicals oozed along the ground and made us all woozy. We started to make silly jokes a lot—especially Violin, who had been doing all the painting. While she painted one piece, the other pieces lay out in the sun to dry. Daisy and Violin made a white house, a red house, two doors, a couple of windows with shutters, and a windowbox, all ingeniously painted.

When Violin and Daisy were done, we piled everything into the Taurus and drove out to my grandmother's house. We dropped Daisy off so that she could start making supper (my mother, Daisy, and I were to eat supper with my grandmother since there were no boys at our house to cook for). Then we took Violin home. We tried to talk above the roar of the wind over the open windows, but it was rather hard. Violin told me that they’re taking vacation the week after VBS, and she described a time when a chipmunk, frightened by a storm, had climbed into the cabin bedroom that she shared with her grandmother. Her grandmother was awakened suddenly by the little furry thing scurrying across her face. *eeps* They managed to convince the chipmunk to go back outside (“It was a smart chipmunk,” she explained).

Back at my grandmother’s house, I sprawled on the cool carpet for a while, unable to move from the weight of weariness and heatstroke. My grandmother and mother tried to order some “clear turquoise” T-shirts from Land’s End, but they were out-of-stock. Then, while my grandmother made chocolate-and-peanut-butter brownies, Daisy cooked potato soup, and my mother helped, I ensconced myself on the computer and wrote a very long blog post about today, which is the one that you all have already read. Supper was quite good. The salad was especially delicious. I discovered a new sort of salad dressing, which my mother told me was my grandfather’s favorite. Since I don’t like salad dressing, I was pleased to find something that I do like: Catalina. It’s a little like sweet-and-sour sauce, but not so sweet or so sour. My grandmother’s salad had lots of radishes, onions, celery, and lettuce in it--a little bit like a pieced quilt, with all the different flavors and textures. After dessert, I sat at the table and scrapbooked while my mother, Daisy, and my grandmother played skip-bo, which is a complicated card game rather like Solitaire that I do not understand at all. We listened to the CD of the first concert from the arts camp I went to in June. It was nine o’clock by the time they were done playing.

I was packing my things up and happened to glance out the window when I saw a deer standing on my grandmother’s back lawn. For an instant, I thought it was fake—but then I realized that my grandmother doesn’t have any fake deer. The deer stared back at me, then moved her graceful neck down and began to lick the salt block that my grandmother had set out on the edge of her strip of yard. The others leaned over my shoulders and gazed at the deer. The deer would lick the block, then raise her head and look at us, swiveling her delicate ears, then go back to the block again. Her slender tail swished incessantly against flies. She was a soft brown color, with hints of gold and rose. She was so lovely. Eventually, she paraded quietly off into the gloom, her slender legs trotting over the short grass.

We left. Outside, the moon was as slender as the curve of white around one of the deer’s ears. A jet traced a column of purple smoke, like a scar across the sky’s pink western edge. Directly overhead, the sky was deep blue. Fireflies flickered in the tall stands of Johnson grass as we drove home. Smells of juniper, cool and blue, and of smoke from a barbecue, and of cattle blew through the open windows. Coreopsis, like pollen dusted from the sun, lay sprinkled thickly over broad, green fields. The sky hung lightly over the green earth. We took baths and went to bed when we got home, as always.

woo hoo!

My hard-working, patient, persevering, extremely smart father has gotten the wireless router working!

Yeah!

Now I have internet in my room!

Woo hoo!

Which is why I have been poking around on everyone's blogs and leaving comments everywhere at 9:57 p.m. when I should be decently in bed.

So I shall now go to bed.

Farewell to all, and to all a good-night.

sunburns, hoses, and clay

Today the youth group of my church had a car wash to raise money for church camp. This is the first one we've ever done, and we had lots of fun at it. A detailed account follows.

Perhaps I should back up a moment, though, to recount what happened this morning.

I was standing in my room, innocently working on my scrapbook and listening to "Adventures in Odyssey". I was cutting out yellow butterflies to go with the pages from the campout. Rather groggy from my sleep last night (I had a hard night of it), I wasn't thinking too clearly. My bedroom door was shut. Above the sound of the CD, I heard footsteps coming down the hall towards my room, but I didn't think much of them until they stopped in front of my room. Someone asked, "May we come in?" and knocked on the door. To me, it sounded a little bit like Daisy, but funny, somehow, as though she was making her voice higher than usual. The door swung open. I turned around with a grim pout on my face, prepared to deal with one of Daisy's requests. Instead of looking at Daisy's face, which is at my eye level, I found myself staring at the polka-dotted chest of a T-shirt. My eyes flew up, and there was Violin, grinning at me. I shouted her name in delight, and hugged her. It turned out that SwanElf had come along, too, and Daisy trooped in last of all. "You had such a funny look on your face!" Violin giggled. They all ensconced themselves on my bed, where Violin proceeded to flip through my unfinished scrapbook pages. We talked about math, and how no one ever reads the instructions on algebra lessons, and about the remodeling on their house. The electrician is supposed to come today.

I realized with a jump that it was nearly nine-thirty. I marched everyone off to the car, with two hoses coiled like yarn in the back, a couple of stacks of plastic buckets, lots of old rags, and various miscellaneous containers for water and lunch. We arrived at Albertson's rather early, having been misinformed that we were supposed to be present at nine-thirty. In fact, the pastor, Mr. P, and his boys, Sam and Boromir, didn't come until fifteen minutes later. We sat and stewed in the car until they arrived. Then Meri, Estella, and Betty arrived, and Princess and Marigold, and Boromir's friend, Daniel. We managed to hook a hose up to a spigot and get things organized: three buckets full of soapy water. My car, a Ford Taurus, was the first customer. Then Princess's mother came with her big suburban, and Mr. P let us wash his green minivan. We also washed my family's other car, a silver Toyota Sienna.

Five people were usually standing by the kerb, holding up signs that Boromir had made. As a result of this advertisement, we had plenty of customers to keep us busy. Sometimes, there were three cars waiting to be washed at once. We washed a "crab" car (it's really called an Aztek, but we call it that it looks crabby), a Toyota Land Rover, several minivans, and lots of smaller cars. We washed a slick, brand-new sports car, too. We washed Princess's grandparents' car, a navy blue Dodge Grand Caravan. We washed a white Suburban belonging to another family in our church. The three children sat inside and ogled us through the window. We washed Princess's father's pickup truck. It was fairly dirty, but the worst part was the bed: it was full of bits of sticks and gravel. I hosed it down, but the water just ran into one corner of the liner and refused to flow out. So everyone stood on the tailgate, and with Boromir and Daisy pushing the water with sponges, we managed to convince a lot of it to flow out of the truck. Our most difficult customer was a big diesel pickup truck, with out-of-state plates. Its owner was in the construction business, and his truck looked like it: its wheel wells were caked an inch deep in red clay. We scrubbed and scrubbed and put the hose on its most powerful nozzle setting and squirted water as hard as we could, but we never got it completely clean. By the time we were done, SwanElf had mud splattered all over her shirt and neck and face.

It was blazing hot in the sun. Occasionally, we would (accidentally or on purpose) squirt each other with the hose. Our faces were freckled with suds, and our clothes hung limp, dark, and wet against our slick, sweaty skin. Princess's feet were scorched scarlet where her flip-flops hadn't covered them. Our faces were red with sun. Violin's hair flew around her face in wild wisps, and my bangs stood up from my forehead in wiry curls.

There was only one hose, which presented a problem for three reasons. First, it couldn't always reach the further cars very well. Second, when there were lots of cars, we could only wash one at a time. Third, there were fifteen of us, and when the car had been thoroughly washed, fourteen of us stood and shouted and pointed to spots that had been missed so that the person with the hose had to keep rushing around and around the car in order to rinse all the soapy places.

Standing on the kerb holding a sign was the worst job of all. There was nothing to do but blink through my sunglasses and watch the cars whiz past. My legs ached and the wind tugged the sign, and the only thing I could think about was all the tunes running through my head: Enya, Mozart flute concertos, Barber, Brother2's latest piano piece.... The grass was spongy under my sandals, and my feet left deep marks in the earth. So many people flew past: "dudes" in their sports cars, blaring out music; truckfuls of Mexican construction workers; frazzled mothers; sleek little college girls with their makeup carefully painted onto their neatly tanned faces; brusque businessmen; boys wearing filthy baseball caps; elderly people squinting at the shimmering road; and little, round-cheeked children peering out back windows. A scissortail flycatcher perched on the thrumming telephone wires over my head. He fluttered his rosy wings and wiped his beak on the lines.

At noon, between cars, I perched on the front bumper of my car and munched my soggy peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. The strawberry jelly was the consitency of sloppy glue, and the crunchy peanut butter was so gooey that it hardly had any crunch. Princess sat next to me and complained about how gross her sandwich was. We made quite a pair. Then a car came along, and in my haste I dropped my sandwich on the concrete. Conveniently, for then I didn't have to finish it. :) Instead, I munched on salty sunflower seeds and raisins. They weren't soggy.

We worked hard. And when we weren't working hard, we squirted each other with the hose, or rinsed the buckets out, or battered our dirty rags with water, or threw soapsuds at each other. The grime from the cars collected in the gutter of the parking lot--clay, asphalt dust, gravel, bits of trash. We shouted and laughed with each other. Boromir was covered in foamy suds. They clung to him like cotton wool. SwanElf was completely drenched and slopped around in her wet jeans, grinning good-naturedly at the world out of her dudette sunglasses.

I sucked a peppermint and tried hard not to think about swimming and lying down.

Diesel fumes from the road blew into our faces. The spray from the hose drifted across the hot asphalt, pecking my skin like bits of flying sand. The dry asphalt was harshly hot; the wet asphalt was slick as fish scales.

Our last customer was Violin's mother, who arrived just as we were putting things away, at ten after two o'clock. (Two o'clock was our end time.) We hosed down her Crown Victoria. Violin had to turn away another customer who pulled in.

Princess's mother arrived with her three younger siblings. Susie, the youngest, had a pair of cute little braids, one on each side of her head, that waggled like long ears as she bounced across the parking lot behind her mother. Princess's mother bought a big back of flourescent-colored popsicles for us, and we each had one--cherry, blueberry, lemon, or orange. We stood in the parking lot and sucked the icy tendrils thirstily. They soon dissolved into sticky syrup. Princess's mouth was coated with red streaks. We all stood in a semicircle while Daniel doused our church's intern with the hose. No one minded much. We were all too tired and apathetic to be excited or annoyed.

We packed our belongings together, and one by one, we pulled out and drove home. Violin went home with us to work on a VBS project with Daisy...

...but that is another story for another time.

"Ta-pocketa pocketa pocketa"

Greetings and salutations to my reading audience. This is your host, Frodo Baggins, speaking, and with me is my special guest, Samwise Gamgee. We will be departing from the usual tradition of this blog and doing something, well, rather less than philosophical.

Bwahahahaha....

Our evil plan is working! You are sitting here and reading this mindless post.

Bwahahahaha....

We have even more evil plans up our sleeves. We are not going to tell you what they are. They might involve playing practical jokes, which might involve putting snakes in people's dressers, and which might involve putting Kool-aid in the showerhead so that you come out of your shower smelling like strawberries, but hey, none of this is for certain yet. Have we mentioned that our church's summer intern is staying at my (Frodo's) house?

Last night, we watched "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", which explains the title of this post. My cat Mandy was scared of the badguy. He was positively slimy, maybe even more slimy than Gollum.

Right now we are touring the world by looking through Brother2's Geography textbook. We do school in the summer, you see. Or rather, Samwise and my siblings do. I am going to college next fall, so I can't do school very well. *smirk*

Yesterday we went to a beef cooking class. We cooked beef. Novel, no? At a beef cooking class, we cooked beef. It tasted fairly good. Most of the time. Until the sewers in the kitchen decided to revolt. *hem hem* Things were a bit hot for a bit, and rather stinky, too. More than just "rather" stinky. What made it worse was the fact that the kitchen was on the county fairgrounds, in a building that's right next door to the livestock barns. Think cows, horses, pigs, sheep.... Yes, we had quite an odiferous time of it. Thankfully, the dish Frodo was making had strong-smelling pineapple in it, so she couldn't smell the stench very well.

As for Sam, her dish was the fragrant aroma of sloppy joes.

A funny thing about those sloppy joes, we made a never-ending batch. It was supposed to serve four, but it served fourteen buns. We don't know how...

Boromir was there, too. (How Boromir managed to get into a cooking class we cannot fathom, but anyway....) He got do do the grilling. Once again, Denethor should've been there, to take warning.

Barbque!

Right now we are sitting groggily at the computer, blinking like owls in the daylight. For some odd reason, we didn't go to bed until midnight last night. Funny about that....

So far we have: rolled out of bed (more like crawled), gotten dressed, brushed our hair, eaten breakfast, taken a walk, and got on the internet. Eventful day, no?

We shall see what other exciting things happen today. We expect to breathe, and eat two more meals, and take baths in the evening. Other than that.... Maybe we shall fight a couple of dragons, or some orcs, or Dr. Hugo Hollingshead (shivers!), or go treasure hunting, or see those-we-don't-speak-of, or play air violin, or scrapbook, or cook, or quarrel with our younger siblings.

You never know...

... and we certainly shan't tell you!

So, Goodbye!

tree climbing, beads, watermelon, and fireworks

I decided not to post on the birthday-party-campout, since just about everyone who reads this blog was there and can remember it quite well for themselves.

Instead, I shall inflict my account of the fourth-of-July party on you all. Since some of you missed parts of it, I think this is a more legitimate use of space.

Yesterday, my family drove an hour and twenty minutes from our house to our friends' house. They live in a larger town northwest of us, and they had invited everyone in our church to join them for a fourth of July celebration, complete with potluck supper, volleyball, and fireworks. The country was lovely on the way there, full of light and open sky, like a Dutch painting. About forty-five minutes away from our town, my mother suddenly remembered that she’d forgotten to pack our hamburgers. So when we reached a crossroads, my father pulled into a little IGA by the highway, and my mother ran inside and bought meat. While she was in the store, we watched another woman leave the store. She climbed into her car, and the “ding-ding-ding” of the engine greeted her. “She left her keys in the ignition!” my father said. “I guess that’s what you do in this place." When my mother came back, she said that the cashier kept calling her “hon”.

We were the first to arrive at our friends' house, after the pastor's family. The men were busy barbecuing on three grills. I played catch with the dog for a while. Her sides were heaving with exertion, but she didn’t seem to care whether she hyperventilated or not. I would nudge the soggy ball onto a tennis racket with my foot and then heave it into the air. The dog would bound after it, jumping into the air and catching it before it hit the ground. After a while, I stopped in order to let her rest, since she obviously refused to take a rest herself. I slipped my sandals off and climbed into the mulberry tree by the patio. The bark was rough, providing good footholds. I reached a perch perhaps eight or ten feet off the ground and stood up there and looked down at everyone. Abi climbed up to join me. When other people arrived, we sat quietly in the tree, giggling, waiting for them to notice us. Dani saw us first, and she and Ben climbed up. Then Violin noticed. But Princess and SwanElf were seemingly oblivious to the fact that we were standing up there, laughing softly at them. They had on matching “cool dude” sunglasses, and were too busy greeting everyone else to notice us.

After our host prayed to bless the meal, the girls pulled lawn chairs into a circle or sat on the grass. The dog wandered around begging. She managed to sneak a drink from Beth's lemonade. I went over to check on SmallTerror1 and SmallTerror2, who were playing alone on the swingset. SmallTerror1 explained to me that she was Spidermangirl climbing on her webs. She pulled a ferocious face at me.

Eventually, Melissa escorted us girls indoors. We went down to the family room, where she showed us how to make beaded necklaces and bracelets. We sat on the floor, and Melissa put the beads in their little boxes on a couple of boards. She tied clasps onto the ends of strong thread, and gave us each a slender needle. After much deliberation, we all proceeded to make our own pieces of jewelry, each with its particular pattern. The beads were tiny, smaller than the head of a pin. It took some skill to thread them onto the string. In the process, we scattered beads all over the floor, like shiny grains of sand. Marigold and I both made blue necklaces. When mine was done, I went outside to watch the exuberant volleyball game, which was in full swing in a corner of the back yard. Even some of the more staid-and-solemn women had joined in. One of the men hit the ball into a juniper tree, and Boromir climbed up the tree and batted the ball out.

Then Meri and her family arrived. Meri sat cross-legged on the grass and fed her young niece with a bottle. I stood and watched the volleyball game with them until it was time for everyone to leave. The F's and S's were going back home, but the rest of us were going to the fireworks. I said good-bye to Princess before my parents called me to get in the car.The roads were thick with traffic. Once the cars were parked, we all walked over to the park where the fireworks were to be held. We had come an hour early because the Symphony Orchestra was to play for that hour before the fireworks.

The park contained a lake, a large creek flowing over the dam, a playground, and a small train which chugged cheerily over its rails, its one lamp glowing in the gloam. The evening was still and cool. Voices carried across the water. The sound of conversation and laughter was like the murmur of wind in a forest. There were people everywhere—fishing from the dam, splashing through the creek (two of the boys in our group went wading), picnicking, playing with sparklers, riding the merry-go-round, throwing footballs back and forth....

We stationed ourselves at the top of a little hill. Meri, Melissa, and I sat together. Our hosts had brought a bowl full of watermelon, and they shared it around. The watermelon was so juicy and sweet, the best I've had in a long time. It bathed my hands with sticky syrup. We chatted or sat silent, watching the sun set through shades of peach and gold over the deep green pond. Gnats bobbed in the air like the bubbles in a lava lamp. Someone gave all the younger children sparklers, and they waved them in the gloom. Saffron sparks fell onto the damp grass like dying fireflies. Boromir sprawled on a reclining lawn chair, and he and Brother2 read a book together. The stars came out, shyly, a few at a time. Whenever the train passed us, the younger girls would wave at it. The symphony played across the creek from us. They were far enough away that we could hear all the louder pieces, but we could only catch severed strains from the softer ones. They played pieces by Sousa, Gershwin, and Copland. People on the fringes of the park kept setting off small fireworks—all through the evening we caught glimpses of stray Roman candles, or heard the loud pop of firecrackers.

When it was almost fully dark, the real fireworks began. A flock of frightened ducks flew, quaking, away from the explosions. While the orchestra played the national anthem, the fireworks burst in red, white, and blue chrysanthemums. When the orchestra played our state song, the fireworks were scarlet—a red fan of flame near the horizon, and bursts of crimson, like quartz rose rocks, right above us. Melissa and I sang along. The orchestra played various military songs. One of the men, who was in the navy, got up and sang the navy song, and Melissa and her sisters sang the airforce anthem (their father was a pilot). The fireworks burst in lacy patterns, like golden snowflakes, or shed glowing leaves of flame from smoking trees, or stretched splayed white fingers across the sky.

When the fireworks were over, clapping filled every corner of the park. We packed up our chairs and blankets and walked over the wet grass to our cars. On the way home, in the car, we listened to the “Phantom of the Opera” soundtrack. Rousing music, to keep my father awake. My siblings and I discussed the story as the music played, trying to piece the events together, while the stripes on the road slid away to the rhythm of "The Point of No Return". Stars shone in huge curves, like the snouts of breaching whales splashing through the dark sky. Occasionally, fireworks shot up on the rim of the horizon. The earth was blacker than the heavens, and it seemed as though we were whizzing upside-down, a planet, along the top of the sky, with the bowl of the earth curving below us, sparkling with starry city lights.

It was eleven o'clock by the time we got home, but I wasn't in bed until after eleven-thirty, because I had to take a shower to wash off the watermelon juice and the tropical-scented mosquito repellant.

arts camp, violas, violins, (do I like to talk about music, or what?), parties, and fireworks

In this post I will attempt to cover the past three weeks of my life. Beware: Incoherent Post Approaching!

From June 11 to June 26 I was at an arts camp in my state. Probably everyone who reads this blog will already know that. I've been there for three years, and this was the best year. I had two viola players for room mates. They were great. Enough said.

Oh, yes, except for this one little story which one of them told me. She's the section leader for the violas at her high school, and there are about half as many violas as violins (as usual). Anyhow, violins are apparently notorious for arguing and bickering and generally being nasty to one another (I have yet to meet a nasty violinist, but, hey, these girls have had more experience than me). So when the viola section started to have its own arguments, the section leader said, "There are so few violas that we need to stick together and be one big, happy family. If you want to argue, go join the violin section."

Anyhow....

When I got back, I found that my family had made several leaps in technology. I shall briefly outline these for you.

First of all, I suddenly have my own printer (just before I left, I got my own laptop, which is quiet a move from the Dark Age in itself).

Second, we have our own cable internet connection (we've been using dial-up for all these years), and today our wireless router came so that I CAN HAVE INTERNET ACCESS IN MY ROOM! Woo hoo! Fun stuff. (Of course, we would get it only after there aren't any more "Lord of the Rings" trailers or pictures to download. I used to spend hours on the dial-up connection, waiting patiently for stills from the movies to download so that I could print them and plaster my journal with them.)

That may not sound like much, but think of it this way: In my family, we didn't even own a VCR until about three years ago; and we didn't even own a DVD player until about two years ago.

Back to the "main topic" of this post....

This week I have officially spent doing nothing. My apologies to all my friends: my mother told me I could invite any and all of you over, but I've been on another planet this whole week (as you should know from reading this post and from what interaction you've had with me).

Perhaps I should say I've been literally on another planet. I've been doing a lot of writing.... No, don't worry, it's not science fiction; and no, don't worry, probably none of you are ever going to read any of it.

Yesterday, however, was completely different. Daisy and Marigold had their birthday party. Their birthdays are within a couple of days of one another, and so they usually share a party. This year, the party was held at Marigold's house, out in the country. We camped out in Marigold's family's front yard, in a little hollow away from the house. It was a lot of fun, until a rather large rainstorm decided to join the party. *hem hem* Thanks to Meri's alert father and Marigold's longsuffering mother, we were able to avoid the presence of this storm and evacuate to the house before it struck.

Perhaps I shall publish a full post on the subject of this notorious party later.

My grandmother lives at a retirement complex called Golden Oaks. There are apartments and then there are these little duplexes where the elderly people living in them can be more independent. She lives in one of the duplexes. Tonight is Golden Oaks's fourth of July celebration. She invited us out to share it with her. We ate supper in the cafeteria here, and then we've spent the evening in her duplex. We started off by watching two "Three Stooges" short movies, and after that everyone's been playing a card game called Skip Bo. Don't ask me about it; I've spent the time sprawled on the floor, trying to catch up with my journal.

Right now, they're all out in the living room, watching TV. It was "Star Trek" for a while; I have no idea what it is currently.

When it gets dark enough, there is to be a fireworks display on the lawn. Thankfully, that big storm cooled things off enough to make it fairly comfortable to sit outside. If it were still as hot and humid as it was last night, we would all melt.

This will have to do for now, until my brain is in working order. Getting four hours of sleep out of the twenty-four makes me rather groggy. I will straighten out my journal entries from the party, and post them, but later...!

Psalm 23: a meditation

From verse1-3: Mr. F, Violin and Swan-Elfs' father, gave a talk on this one in Sabbath worship last week. As he pointed out, the first verses do not promise moral prosperity, although God does provide for our spiritual needs. Rather, it promises spiritual prosperity, which is far better. During the time of the kings, one of the greatest horrors to come upon the nations of Israel and Judah was their spiritual poverty. They cried out for word from God, but none came, because their hearts were hard.

From verse 5: God prepares a table for us. Now, I'll follow a rabbit trail here. The table is an important sign of hospitality throughout ancient literature. God and His angels ate with Abraham in the Old Testament (which isn't just ancient literature, of course). In The Aeneid, Dido invites Aeneas and his men to feast with her people to show them her good will. Inviting someone into your home, taking in strangers, was the highest honor. A peculiar custom among the Celts was that, on Hallowe'en night, every house had to open itself to whoever came seeking shelter. It was counted a blessing on that house if they had a guest, a stranger who came in peace, sleeping under their roof that night. Hosts were held to a high code, and guests were also required to honor that code: if either side broke the law by doing some violence, it was cause for great dishonor, and perhaps even for capital punishment for whoever had trespassed.

In the sense of physical acts, eating is one of the most down-to-earth things humans do. Spiritual beings do not eat in the sense that we do; only physical beings can eat. Yet at the same time, by a complicated process known fully only to the God who made it, we are taking nourishment through the things that we consume. It is a great wonder that God, the Son of Man, should condescend to use even the most commonplace, most physical action through which to reveal Himself to His disciples. He showed them His greatest sacrifice when He ate with them at His last Passover, when He instituted Communion. He was made known to two of His disciples after walking with them on the road to Emmaus only when He broke bread with them. He proved His reality to the rest of the twelve disciples by breaking bread and eating with them. Indeed, one of the greatest events in human history will be the Marriage Feast of the Lamb on the last great day.

When I think of the table mentioned in Psalm 23, though, I think primarily of Communion. It is in Communion that God and man are made one, that God comes down and meets with His people in the supreme act of hospitality, in the remembrance of past meals and the promise of future feasts. It is at Communion that we can realize how great and how precious was the sacrifice made on our behalf, and it is at Communion that we can thank and praise the One who made that sacrifice. Not only does God bring us to His abundant table, but He does it "in the presence of our enemies". When we are suffering the greatest temptation, when we are burdened with sin, when we are in the depths of despair, when we are lonely and tired- it is then that God invites us to come to the table to be refreshed, encouraged, and cleansed. Is it not amazing that blood, which usually stains something so much that it cannot be washed clean, can, through Christ's sacrifice, wash us cleaner than any water? Thus the table is like the rainbow. It is God's enduring promise of protection, strength, and forgiveness.

From verse 6: Mr. C once quoted this verse to remind me that goodness and mercy are always following me. I cannot escape them. They chase God’s people. If He chooses to open our eyes, the way He opened the eyes of Elisha’s servant so that he could see the chariots of fire and the angels on the hills around Samaria, then we shall be able to see all the mercies that He has done for us. We shall be able to see that everything we do glorifies God. Despite our depravity, thanks to His great plan, we cannot not glorify Him. And we will dwell in His house forever. Forever. Not just Sabbaths. Not just five-day church camps. Not just eight-hour sleepovers or one-hour Bible studies. Always. No longer will we sing, as we do in Psalm 84, “Blessed are they who are in Thy house, for they will still be praising Thee”- for we shall be in His house with the blessed, and we shall be blessed ourselves. Like an ambassador who bears his master’s banner before him and wears his master’s livery upon him, we carry Christ’s goodness before us and His righteousness upon us so that we are acceptable in God’s eyes. Not on our goodness, but on Christ’s goodness; not because of our hospitality, but because of His hospitality. Thanks to the mercy that follows us, that dogs our footsteps like a pursuing Ranger, we will be in God’s house forever, forever fellowshipping with Him and with His people around His table.

Rosemary Sutcliff, who is, after all, one of my favorite authors

I promised Marigold that I'd post this. This isn't a complete list of the books Sutcliff has written, and it's not even a complete list of her books that I've read. It leaves out her re-tellings of legends (such as the Arthurian tale, the story of Finn MacCool, the story of Beowulf, etc.) and a couple of other books that weren't that wonderful- including one where she treats the Covenanters as though they were ridiculous radicals, and since some of my ancestors were Covenanters, I didn't particularly appreciate this.

Here they are, in chronological order:

Warrior Scarlet
Outcast
The Eagle of the Ninth (A.D. 20)*
The Mark of the Horse Lord
Frontier Wolf (A.D. 343)*
The Silver Branch*
The Lantern Bearers*
Sword at Sunset*
The Shining Company (A.D. 600)
Blood Feud
Sword Song
Dawn Wind*
The Shield Ring*
Knight's Fee
Lady in Waiting (Queen Elizabeth's time- approx. A.D. 1580)

The books that have asterisks next to them are members of a series that Sutcliff wrote. The series follows a family whose crest is a dolphin. It takes the family from Roman times through the time of the Norman invasion- an excellent series if you're trying to learn early British history and don't want to have to get it all from textbooks.

Sword at Sunset is, in fact, a sort-of retelling of the Arthurian legend, but it's told as though it were a real story, and not as though it were a legend (the way it is in her other retellings of it). I really like it, as long as you skip certain paragraphs where her romance is a bit too graphic for my taste.

The Mark of the Horse Lord and The Shining Company are also two of my all-time favorites. In my opinion, you could read The Shining Company over and over again, and it would never get old. Sutcliff based it on an epic poem written by Aneirin, who was a real man, about the Company. I found it once in a thick book of ancient Welsh ballads- it's a touching, glorious memorial to the men who gave their lives fighting for their country. (Now why can't we make anything as splendid for our war memorials?! :) As a warning: these two books are probably the saddest ones on the list, excepting Sword at Sunset. I'm afraid I'm the sort of person who would rather read a "tragic" book than a "comic" book (using those terms in the old Greek way). Also, I've found that "tragic" books in general are often written better than happy books. I have yet to figure out why that is....

Anyhow, a smattering of these books are probably in just about any public library, and if they're not in your public library, your university library likely has some of them, and if you can't find them in either place, use interlibrary loan. Oh, yes, and they sell them very cheaply on the used listings on websites such as Amazon.com.

Enjoy!

Psalm 87: a meditation

Psalm 87 was not one of my most favorites until I started to think some more about it....

From verse 1-2: It's amazing to see how much God loves His people, and how carefully He chooses those who will be His people. Someone who doesn't believe in predestination is, I think, taking away from God's glory, in that this particular aspect of God's character adds so much to His glory. He always goes against the wisdom of the world and chooses the little things instead because He has a wisdom that is greater than that of the world. He could have chosen Assyria or Rome to be His "chosen people"; instead, He picked Israel. He could have chosen to have Queen Elizabeth or Herod's wife to be Christ's mother; instead, He chose Mary. Indeed: He could've chosen to save Virgil or Homer, but instead, He chose me. The thought is very humbling, because it certain wasn't as a result of my own writing talents!

He loves His people so much that He plans everything: right down to the color of the dress Violin will wear to church tomorrow, or what Mari and her family will eat for supper tonight, or whether Princess's family's cows will break out of the fence. But think of it this way: often, Christ Jesus is spoken of as being the foundation of the church. He is the church's cornerstone. We are in Christ, part of the great building that He has begun. So, by loving the church, God is loving Himself.

From verse 3: God's city is to have a glorious reputation. As members of that city, we must seek to give it a good reputation. We just had a meeting to plan VBS for our church, and as a part of that planning time, we prayed that we might be good witnesses. We are His ambassadors, so we need to be careful in who we are- how we dress, how we talk, what our attitudes are.

From verses 4-6: All the nations will bow to Christ. It'll be either repentance or ruin for them. There will be members of every nation in God's Kingdom. But God will also keep people in His church. He doesn't just bring them in- He makes sure that they stay there. Covenant children are born in Zion, and they will be established in Zion. So there will be both the newcomers and those who have been members of the Kingdom for generations.

From verse 7: Not only does God bring people into His church, but He brings their talents into His church. He sanctifies people, and He also sanctifies their work. As people enter the church, they are to bring their talents into submission to Him- just the way the craftsmen did in building the Tabernacle.

From God comes all inspiration. Though there are many artists and scientists who are alive right now who don't acknowledge God's greatness, they could never paint a stroke or work out an equation without His Spirit. By subjecting our talents to God, we are released to share our talents with others as a witness to His greatness. By acknowledging God as the supreme Author and Scientist (He was the one who made this world, after all), we add to His glory. And that is Man's highest calling.

Rabbit trail here: Think of yourself as being like the wind. God determines how far the wind blows. He tells it to blow over a certain field in Kansas, and it does. It doesn't step over its bounds and blow down the Empire State Building because that would be for it to disobey its Maker, and the wind can't do that. On the other hand, the wind doesn't say to God, "No, I don't feel like blowing today," and disobey Him by not blowing over that specific field. It goes as far as God has told it to go. Now, we are similar to the wind, in this way: God has given each of us a calling, and He outfits us with the tools we need to fulfill our calling. If He tells us to use our talents in a certain field, and we say, "No, I'm too lazy," or, "No, I'm not good enough," then that's disobeying Him. Or if we say, "No, I'm going to lie and cheat and overwork myself to become as famous as possible," then that's also disobeying Him. We need to be like the wind, and blow just as far as God has given us: whether it be only as far as our own particular little patch, or whether it be across the whole world. If we are restless with narrow bounds, He gives us contentment. If we are ambitious for more room, He gives us humility. If we are afraid to use our talents, He gives us courage.

An example of this (and this is going to sound familiar) is Eric Liddell. He was one of the fastest men in the world. He ran races and won an Olympic gold medal. When he recognized God's calling on his life to become a missionary, he followed that calling. He left behind the glory and acclaim of the world to work in China. However, he did not leave behind his talents. He took his running ability with him to China. Even in his last days, when he and many other missionaries were imprisoned on the grounds of a school, he kept up everyone's morale by running races and organizing athletic events to keep people occupied and cheerful. He didn't waste his ability to run, but he used it to glorify the God who had given it to him.

So, we are truly called to be "nobodies" (recognize this? :). This doesn't mean that we don't use our talents in the field where God has called us, whether it be parenting a family of fourteen or performing as a world-class cellist. It means, instead, that we give the glory to Him and use the talents He has given us, always remembering Psalm 87:7: "The singers and players on instruments say, 'All our fountains are in You.'"