Characteristics of the Dearest Place on Earth

Home is the place where...

1. Waking up is generally accompanied by the sensation of a ferret rolling around on my tummy.
2. I can bypass knowledge of temporality (i.e. looking at a clock) until noon at least.
3. Every day brings its share of Les Miserables and Princess Bride quotes.
4. I am permitted to wash pots (and blow soap bubbles).
5. My little brother calls me Krasiva, Mama calls me Tisy, and Daddy calls me Baby. At college, I am sadly deprived of nicknames.
6. My world is not allowed to revolve around me. This is why I don't ever want to live by myself; it would be far too easy to revert to utter selfishness. College is bad enough! Being at home with a large family, however, requires an attitude of servanthood. Hallelujah!
7. Manheim Steamroller, Christmas in the Aire. Nuff said.
8. Mike, Nate, David, and I can crowd around one tiny table for a fierce game of Rummy, and all be singing folk songs (The Fox Ran Out Upon a Chilly Night), and beating time with our feet, and still have enough mind left over to tease Mike for always counting up all the points.
9. No matter what quote I make, or what allusion, however slight, everybody knows exactly what I mean, and can extend, improve upon, or at least name the source of the quote. That is about as close to telepathy as is comfortable.
10. Daddy reads aloud to us, most recently a children's book by Lemony Snicket, called A Series of Unfortunate Events. It is a good book cleverly disguised as a perfectly foul one.

Simplicity

"Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on Simplicity."

-Plato

Playhouses

Did I ever tell you about my many attempts to build playhouses? When I was a small girl of eight or nine, I lived on a big commercial cattle farm in the folding hills of Virginia. I belong to Virginia, you see, almost as much as I belong to Massachusetts and the Atlantic. My father's ancestor came to Virginia in the late 1700's, and our family had a great manor-house called Somervilla down in the south, and lived beside the Rapidan river and had many, many adventures. I know; I've been there and heard the stories.

The house that I lived in was not called Somervilla. It wasn't called anything, although it was over 100 years old and ought to have had a name. The porch on that house was weathered silvery, and you could watch the summer thunderstorms roll down our valley from it with a feeling of complete security. Like all real farmhouses, you didn't get into my house by the porch; you got in by the kitchen door. My dear, that kitchen door had real stepping stones leading up to it from a real picket fence. I used to tie my white pony up at the white fence of a summer afternoon, and wash her down with hose-water from the pump, and Johnson's baby shampoo.

All I will ever understand about idylls has its basis in that house, that life, those two years spent in the beautiful narrow valley between the Blue Ridges and the Short Hills, in northern Virginia. The farm has since been subdivided, and new houses stand in the front 20 acre fields, where I used to kick my pony for an exhilerating canter up the slope to home. Those two years in Virginia will haunt me forever. The last ten have not eradicated them - I can still see the early morning shadows on my ceiling, still feel cold wooden floors beneath my feet, still haven't mastered my fear of shoving another small log into the roaring woodstove, still feel the itch and tickle of new gray-green-yellow hay.

I remember the sharpness, the vivid immediacy that I knew then. I remember the afternoon sunlight, the dirt beneath my fingernails and the baths that I had sometimes, when the power went out and we were allowed to wash by candlelight. I remember pulling laundry from the clotheslines and I remember how it smelled. It was not like perfume. It was like God's own breath, like a shake of Aslan's mane. It was too rich and rare for use, yet exactly fitted to use all the same. I think grace must smell like sun-drenched white sheets, after a day on the line in May.

There was a certain corner of the yard, on the porch side, far away from the apple orchard and the horse paddock. A flower-bush grew there, and the picket fence met the wrought-iron fence, and beneath those blooming branches there was a sort of hollow. That was the first playhouse, my dear. We had acorn shells for cups, and leaves for plates, and bread-and-butter from Mother for our tea feasts. But that was the yard playhouse. There was another, Queen Anne's Island, so named because of the lacy flowers that grew on that little spit of land - it wasn't really an island - beside the stream.

There were two very graceful little trees, and fine grass, and hundreds of the white, soft blooms. The Island was in a front field, about ten minutes walk from our yard. I began my first story with it, about a little girl who lived during the Civil War. I was sure that she had existed, and that she had known and loved my Island just as I did. It was always like that with me. Growing up in a house 100 years old, how could I not imagine those who had come before?

My dear, there were no ghosts in that house. I believe that every room in it had always been happy... except for the living room. The living room was away off on the other side of the stairs, across from the library, and we never went in there if we could help it. I am sure that something horrible happened in that room. It faced the apple orchard, and should have been a pleasant place, but one could never feel all right about sitting there. None of us ever did.

I will never regain those playhouses, or that idyll. They passed, and were succeeded by a plain brick house on a plain half-acre of quite neighborhood street in Maryland. Don't pity me too much; I pitied myself. But you see, there was a lilac bush in the back yard of the plain brick house. That was enough, you know, even without the old boards and tents and things that Mother let us have. I built three or four forts there, and made lilac perfume by sealing the blossoms in little jars, and got pokeberries and mushed them up and wrote with the ink, or dyed old sheets lavender with the juice.

I had never cared for dolls, my dear. By the time we left the brick house, I was fourteen, and getting too old for playhouses. The last one I ever made was rather silly; we hoisted our big dog-house up into a tree and had a treehouse for a day or two, until Mother found out. It was quite unsafe, gloriously so!

Then we moved again, and then it was time to grow up. How I hate growing up! I don't mind the added responsibilities so much, or the increasingly serious and courteous demeanor expected of me. I mind not feeling the sharp delicacy of spring grass against my toes. I miss those dawn-shadows on my ceiling. I miss the dirty, verdant, vibrant, LIVING air of the farm. But I am absolutely certain, my dear, that all I felt then, and all I loved and experienced, is not worth comparing to what we gained by moving away. We gained the church where I learned to love God. I gained... I gained a new idyll, one not yet experienced. I am sure that there must be something like a white picket fence in Heaven, and I am sure that the fence of my childhood will look black by comparison. And perhaps... perhaps I will have a new playhouse... and acorn cups?

Mama, I'm Comin' Home

Don't worry, Mama. The fighting ain't too bad here. Maybe fifty miles up the line, they got it hard. But we're all fine here, just a little sick is all. A little tired. Feelin' kinda weary. Don't worry, don't worry... I'll be home before you can count five, Danya. I'm comin' home, Malenkaya. I'll be there to help polish the silver, and Mama, I can almost see the candles burnin'. Mama, I'm comin' home....

Cultureless Counter-Culture?

A long time ago by college standards, perhaps as much as a month and a half, one of my friends recommended to me a book called Angels in the Architecture. I respect his judgment, so I got the book and began to read it. It is about modern culture, or rather, it is a call to turn sharply away from modern culture and toward a sort of "Medieval Protestantism." For a good summary of the book I direct you to his blog post, under the title of "A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth."

I am about to go home for Thanksgiving Break, and chances are excellent that you will be hearing more of Angels as I read and think about it during the weekend. This morning, however, the book was freshly brought to my mind. Dr. Stacey spoke to us in Chapel on the subject of our Christian culture. Quoting a professor who visited PHC a few weeks ago, he pointed out that Evangelicalism might be called a "counter-culture without a culture."

The idea is, of course, that Evangelicals wish to present to modern America an alternative to their secular culture. The problem is that this "counter-culture" has no positive definition, no characteristics unique to itself. It is, they say, a bad rip-off of modern culture, one whose attempt at purity leaves a cloying aftertaste... it is a counter-culture with no distinctive culture of its own.

"Does Angels," I asked myself, "have the answer to this problem? Would a return to Medieval Protestantism be radical enough to give Evangelicals a real culture?" My answer was a tentative "yes," but then Dr. Stacey asked another question.

"Last I checked," he began, "our mission statement around here is to 'lead the nation and shape the culture.' What I want to know is, where are we going to lead the nation, and what are we going to shape the culture into?"

As soon as he asked the question, I knew what my answer would be, but I was rather shocked at myself for thinking it. I know what I want "the culture" to look like. I want it to look like my home. And that shocked me. I thought, "no, no... surely that is too arrogant, surely too self-centered, surely we can't have it so right in my particular family that everybody else ought to take us for a model!"

I am hardly about to assert that every family should look just like mine. But I do know that I am satisfied with my family, and that intrigues me. Satisfaction, you know, is such a rare thing nowadays. Can it be that people who know each other best also are able love each other best? I told someone the other day that my two dearest friends are in Japan this week, and that I miss them. That's true, my parents are in Japan. My parents... are my best friends? Culture shock!

Do you believe that they are my best friends? Would you believe me if I took you home to see them, if you saw Mama leaning on the counter, laughing with my little brother? If you could hear Daddy read aloud to us while we do the dishes, would you believe me? Do you need to see us playing with one another, teaching one another, correcting one another? Must I show you my teenage sister quietly and cheerfully accepting a loving rebuke from Mama or Daddy, and going away to profit from it? Does your credulity require the sight of my elder brother visiting his parents' house regularly, voluntarily, and taking his sisters out for special treats or trips, just because he wants to spend time with them? It is indeed a very different culture.

But that's just the point, isn't it? Culture shock. Nor is my family so very different; I could name you a score, twoscore. A happy family... is that an oxymoron? It's certainly a distinctive characteristic! I pondered, "what is it that gives foundation to all these happy families? What is the basis of this culture that I would like to bring about?"

I'll tell you... in a day or two. I want you to wonder about it a little first.

A Delightful Evening

It began at dinner, where there were so few of us that we collected a table full of oddities. I found myself sitting across from my roommate (the Empress), and across from another friend, the Orator. To my right I had Saint Sarah, and on my left, one of Shakespeare's own favorites, the Watchman.

I suppose that it started innocently enough. The Watchman showed us his knife, and began to discourse, with many literary digressions, on the virtues of it as a status symbol. His arguments and general manner of address were worthy of Dogberry. The Orator and I exchanged many mirthful glances throughout, and Saint Sarah managed alone, of us all, not to smile.

We tripped our way through Lord of the Flies, made a few inevitable quotations from Much Ado About Nothing, and wound up somewhere in the middle century, for the Watchman began on Dickens. The Empress had not read such works of Dickens as were under discussion, but the Orator and I had. We came within an inch of our lives, too, for we were like to perish from laughing. If I tell you that he and I both put our heads down on the table and howled with merriment, you will understand, for it was at that point that the Watchman said, with absolute fervor in his every tone, "David Copperfield is a great book, I tell you. A great book! I have been shaped by that book. Think of it: that man--that vision--Uriah Heep!"

The Orator and I caught each other's eyes, and it was all up with us. Down went our heads; our shoulders shook; the Empress wanted to know what was so funny; we could not adequately explain, but only gasped out broken syllables about red eyes and how we thought that the Watchman was going to praise Copperfield... and to have Uriah Heep held up to us instead! It was too much; it was too delightful!

Well, that was dinner. I had begun my Sabbath already, and entreated the Orator to step down with me to my lobby, on account of the Empress having to write a paper, and Saint Sarah having one also. He did, to look at a few pages of Dickens which I happened to have. I brought lemon tea, and then began a conversation of the sort which is my delight, though I can only imperfectly summarize it here. It began with an analysis of thought patterns, mine and his. I brought out a poem and asked him what he thought of it. He called its images "good," but insisted that it was I who had a turn for poetics, and that he would prefer his ideas more simply expressed.

"You do not care for the meanings of words," I said. "You hear them well enough; you understand cadences. But you do not think of their meanings."

"A word," he countered, "is but a thing that all have agreed upon as expressing a particular idea."

"What!" I shot back, "and if I changed the words in the Bible, would not the meanings change as well? Are not certain words inextricably linked to certain meanings?"

"Not necessarily," he replied. "The idea, the concept behind a word, is immutable. But we could decide on a different word to express that idea. Words will perish, you know."

"Not so, my Lord," I answered, "where is it written that they will perish? Did not God speak the world into existence? Is Christ not called 'the Word'? Has the Trinity not been in communication with itself long before we were, and will it not continue long after we have ceased? Perhaps human language may cease; I could grant that."

He conceded it so, but pursued his point, that a word has no intrinsic meaning apart from the idea that all agree it signifies; that it is but a sign pointing to a thing signified after all. He spoke well, and I began to see his point. Yet I was reluctant still; the idea was not sufficiently disproven. Therefore I said, "what about the fact that, as one of my textbooks has it, each language now on earth uses for the concept of 'spirit' a word that also signifies 'breath,' specifically the breath of life?"

"Well?" He replied. "The idea of breath as connected with the idea of spirit does not change."

"So then, although both mean God, 'Eloi' and 'God' are two different signs, is that it? Two different words, both expressing the same idea, both agreed-upon signs in different times?" I asked.

He assented. I had begun by this point to see much in what he said, and acknowledged it. I pointed out that the trouble, I supposed, was in holding that two different ideas could be equally expressed by the same sign at the same time, as, for example, so often happens under the banner of Relative Truth. The Orator agreed that it was so. I mused a moment or two more, and then conceded the field.

"Does this mean that you acknowledge yourself to have been wrong?" He asked. "No," I replied, "for I was never firmly tied to that idea, but only held it up as a target to be shot at. It is abstract from me, and I have concluded that I agree with your darts better than with the paper target." I paused a moment, considered a little more, and finally said, "yes, I suppose that I was wrong."

Why did I say that? First of all, because I feared that it was only pride keeping me from admitting myself to be in the wrong. Secondly, and more tangentially, because I recognize that it is not good for anybody to adhere to nothing, to treat every idea as outside of themselves, to be loyal to no principle, to live by no absolute truth.

A delightful evening, all in all, and an instructive one.

The Caged Skylark

Gerard Manley Hopkins, brilliant as ever: weeping may last for a night, but joy most assuredly does come in the morning.

The Caged Skylark

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage,
Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells --
That bird beyond the remembering hís free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage
Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest --
Why, hear him, hear him babble & drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.
Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,
But úncúmberèd: meadow-dówn is nót distréssed
For a ráinbow fóoting it nor hé for his bónes rísen.

I Do Suffer

It is a strange joke to me, how aptly the directors named our online blogging journal of the play, calling it: I Do Suffer. The title refers to a line of Benedick's, where, being desired by Beatrice to expound her "good parts," for which he suffers love, he replies, "A good epitaph! I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will!"

This has been the most painful semester of my two and a half years at PHC. I have learned what it means to suffer, and to love against my will. For, you know, Benedick's line was playful, born of happy love, but we are not always so inclined. What happens when the will is against loving? Shakespeare declared in his sonnet 116 that "love alters not where it alteration finds." It is one thing to say those words; it is another to live them. Faithful love is not nearly so much fun as first love, and yet, to be real, first loves must be faithful.

Let us not deny the pain, nor belittle it, neither. A triumph is only half itself when accomplished with too much ease. The heart is sore... sick unto death. In a moment of anguish, I wrote this:

I cannot bid my heart be still
That were to die, but ah,
Heart beating still, what pain
To, living, ache, to - living! - die -
Continual...

You wonder, perhaps, why I write these things. Why especially on the internet? Why expose wounds to have them laughed at, or perchance pitied, which is almost worse? Our culture shuns nothing in the world more than vulnerability, excepting God.

It is because of God that I do so. The full strength of the enemy army must be given, its numbers detailed, its mighty men, its bronze and leather and scarlet and pride, or the triumph will be unnoticed. Since the triumph is God's, I must omit nothing that may magnify His glory.

I do this also to show you that Christians are flesh and blood, and that the hope we proclaim is effectual, not unable to solace us in our moments of temptation to despair, but more than able, oh, more than able! I told you that I have known pain this semester. I tell you now that I have also known peace. I have cried out to God, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. Does this not strike you? I have cried out to God, the Other, the Holy, the One-in-Three, whose radiance fills, not just the earth, not just Heaven, but all the corners of the universe, whose power is unimaginable, who made man for Himself, whose praise is infinitely sung - for He is infinitely worthy of praise - and who is the Beauty of all things.... and whom I have traitorously offended in word, thought, and act, from my conception.

And this is my God! My own beloved, who stooped to be Paraclete, my Comforter. He stooped - can it be possible that this does not strike you? - to gather up my broken head and heart and soul into His arms, my head that has so many times denied Him to fashion vainglory for itself, my heart that has lusted after many idols, my soul that had not sought Him, never sought Him until He called me.

My God! Is it possible? Look you for any higher wonder, any more passionate love, any greater metanarrative than this - I defy you to find one -: that God created man, and suffered man to sin against His majesty, and suffered man to live, sinning, and suffered His only Son, His best beloved, to be humbled, to come to earth, to serve where He should have been served, to love where He should have been loved, to be sinned against where He should have been adored, to die where men should have laid down their lives by the million for Him, and all this to redeem a stubborn, stiff-necked world full of men, among them, I.

All this was for His glory, and what a shout there must have been when He rose again! I have always stood in awe of that moment when the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Triumph! It is finished! The war to end all wars has been waged and won, for the glory of God, and to restore, oh, to restore us to fellowship with the Most High. Have you ever woken from a long sickness to find the ache of your body suddenly gone, to feel light and fresh and young and free again? It is that, only in the soul, the soul that is so sick, sick unto death.

Can you not see why I have peace? I say to my Lord, with the Psalmist, "Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Now hear this, my dear... hear the sum of this moment's worship. "But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works."

If you have not understood this, then you have understood nothing. We do it - I do it - to tell of all His works. I do not write all of this to expound my pain and how I suffer. I write this that you may taste and see that the Lord is good, that His steadfast love endures forever, and that He is the only worthy object of praise.

My Lord, do with me as you will, for I am yours entirely.

Much Ado About Shakespeare

My life has been consumed by a play. Here's a link to the PHC production journal for Much Ado About Nothing.... and here is a list of things that I've learned from the experience.

1. Some guys aren't born with the ability to dance well.
2. Some are.
3. No matter how much you want it to, a pair of pants will not lengthen automagically. It has to be painstakingly ripped apart and resewn.
4. It is theoretically possible to make boots out of fake leather cloth.
5. Black cloaks are just cool.
6. You WILL get to be friends with people whom you wouldn't even have met under normal circumstances.
7. Hmeschool guys lack the ability to put on their own makeup (based on previous play experience).
8. Hair spray is a beautiful thing.
9. So is hair dye.
10. It's not worth it to try to get any schoolwork done during play performances.

The Intoxication of Voting

The family decided to vote in force at 7 am this morning, so that those of us who have jobs to see to (Dad, Mike, and Nate) could get to them on time. I rolled out of bed at 6:30 am, silently wishing that I didn't belong to quite such an enthusiastic surname.

The apathy didn't last. Mom, Dad, Mike, Nate, Sarah, and I all went to stand in the brisk November air at the Historic Agricultural Farm Park, surely the most beautiful place on earth to stand in a line. We compared ballots and cheat sheets, got last-minute tips about lesser candidates (the issue of President and Member of Senate having long since been decided), and generally enjoyed one another.

"What's your name, please?" The elderly gentleman asked me, and I answered up confidently, adding, "you may want to just pull out the whole sheaf. There are a bunch of us here." Who could help feeling confident, even at their first time voting, with five family members for moral support?

I got to the little suitcase-booth, and the gentleman took my card. "You've done this before, of course..." he began. I shook my head. "No?" He peered at me for a moment. "No, of course. This is your first time." I don't know what he saw in my face, but his manner became even more kindly.

We strayed back out into the sunshine, divided into three seperate cars, and went respectively to home or job. I tiptoed back into the bedroom at 7:45 am, and Marjorie, my darling 13-year-old sister, asked sleepily as I kissed her good morning, "did you vote for Bush?"

"Yes, sweetheart," I said.