Carpe Libris: The Summer of My Content Edition

The disbelief began when I mentioned I wouldn't be buying any books this summer.  The horror set in when I added I wouldn't be going to the library either.  My friends, both those who share my addiction to books and those who have enabled me in the past,were worried.  My health and my sanity were questioned.  Until I explained that this is the summer I plan on reading only books I already own.

The see for this idea started a few weeks ago when I was looking for a book I knew I owned and couldn't find.  Was in the basement with my Celtic spirituality collection?  Or upstairs on the travel shelves?  Or maybe it was in the British Isles history section.  As I pulled out books to look behind and in between stacks, I didn't find what I was looking for but I did find a lot of books I've never read.

"This looks interesting," I thought pulling out a travel narrative written by a poet I picked up in Wales last year and placing it on my bed.  (Just to clarify-- I picked up the book in Wales, not the poet.  As I re-read that I realized it sounded a bit racier an anecdote than it actually was.)  Soon the unopened green paperback was joined by a well worn copy of To the Lighthouse which I've been meaning to re-read.  And then there was the young adult novel written by a friend.  A coming of age mystery set in the Maritime provinces, it looked like good summer reading.  And how many times over the past two decades have I paged through Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses and not read the whole thing, cover to cover?  On to the bed it went.  By the time I found the book I was looking for (already in a "to read" stack of books I put by my bed from last year) I had over a dozen volumes in my summer reading pile.

The next day I reclaimed my old Kindle paper white from father, who has given up reading himself in favor of being read to.  With the arrival of warmer weather, most weekends at some point I head out to the backyard with a blanket and a book to lounge under the maple tree to read for a couple hours.  This year, however I discovered that I needed both sunglasses and reading glasses.  I love real books but two benefits to e-readers are being able to carry a library's worth of books with me at all times and adjustable print size.  I switched the registration back on the old Kindle to my Amazon account and as the archives updated I discovered I had over 400 unread books ready to be downloaded.  I was  somewhat restrained and chose only two dozen to add to my potential summer reading list.

So what all that means for you, dear readers, is that it's time for another edition of Carpe Libris.  We'll see how much space I've made on my shelves-- both read and virtual-- by the end of the summer when I update you on what I actually read but until then, here's a taste of what I plan on reading in the upcoming months.

Clementine in the Kitchen
There's something about summer that makes me want to read food writing, especially tales of food in foreign lands.  The Modern Library Food Series offers ten selections chosen by former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl.  Part memoir, part history, part cookbook, Clementine in the Kitchen follows the story of a family from pre-WWII France to Massachusetts where their cook, Clementine, tries to introduce Yankees to the delights of French cooking long before anyone outside the OSS had heard of Julia Child.  If I find myself still hungry for more food writing this summer, I may move onto a couple other books from the series-- High Bonnet if I'm in the mood for a novel or The Supper of the Lamb for a more spiritual take on the art of cooking and eating.

Summer is always a great time for a compelling page turner.  I first heard about The Luminaries last year when it was short-listed for the Man Booker prize, an

award it went on to win.  Critics loved it for its form and style.  The idea of a modern twist on a Victorian novel is right up my alley.  Set in New Zealand during the gold rush, the story begins on the proverbial dark and stormy night when a stranger arrives in town and stumbles into a mysterious gathering.  With mysteries, conspiracies, a complex cast of characters, and a promised ghost story in the mix, I'm saving this one for August to get me out of the post-holiday slump that always happens when I return home after a trip.

And speaking of vacation, In mid-July I'm heading to New England with a friend for a driving holiday around Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine.  In preparation for our travels I've already begun reading a ton of Thoreau (Walking, The Maine Woods, Wild Apples, and of course, Walden) as well as Nathaniel Philbrick's history of Nantucket Away Off Shore.  While away I may dip into Edith Wharton's Summer but more likely I'll want some light reading so I think E F Benson's Miss Mapp and Queen Lucia will provide plenty of light-hearted entertainment for evenings when we're too stuffed with Lobster rolls and blueberries to do much else but lounge around a quaint inn and read.

And while I may break out the traditional Mary Poppins at some point, after my White Queen experience a couple weeks ago, this is the summer I will finally read for myself Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.  Who knows, perhaps I'll find more spiritual wisdom from Charles Lutwidge Dodgson among the words of Lewis Carroll.  At the very least it will allow me to exorcise the Disney images I have of Alice and friends and allow me to form visions of my own.

So that's a sample of what's on my reading list for the summer.  Let me know what literary treats you're planning on consuming this season!

A Lewis Carroll Inspired Spiritual Practice for a Long Over-due Mary Oliver Monday

Evidence by Mary Oliver from Evidence (Beacon Press)

Where do I live? If I had no address, as many people
do not, I could nevertheless say that I lived in the
same town as the lilies of the field, and the still
waters.

Spring, and all through the neighborhood now there are
strong men tending flowers.

Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue. But
all beautiful things, inherently, have this function -
to excite the viewers toward sublime thought. Glory
to the world, that good teacher.

Among the swans there is none called the least, or
the greatest.

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in
singing, especially when singing is not necessarily
prescribed.

As for the body, it is solid and strong and curious
and full of detail; it wants to polish itself; it
wants to love another body; it is the only vessel in
the world that can hold, in a mix of power and
sweetness: words, song, gesture, passion, ideas,
ingenuity, devotion, merriment, vanity, and virtue.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

As of this morning, I've begun a new spiritual practice:  believing six impossible things before breakfast.  

I'm not sure how the idea actually came to me.  One minute I was writing about how blah and uninspired I feel and the next I was channeling the White Queen. 

I confess I haven't read any of Lewis Carroll's Alice books in their entirety (although stay tuned for a future Carpe Libris summer edition in which I plan on expanding my horizons and reading Alice in lieu of the usual Mary Poppins this year) so I don't know if the White Queen is a good spiritual teacher or not.  But I do know that setting aside half an hour a day for a spiritual practice-- be it meditation, journaling, yoga, or even stretching my imagination to entertain new possibilities-- is good.  

Lately I've felt constrained by perceived impossibilities-- doors appear to be locked, shut, or too small and difficult to fit through so I don't bother trying.  I have been feeling not unlike this picture of Alice yet I resigned myself to the situation rather than looking for a way out. This feeling of confinement started to impact the choices I made on a daily basis and this morning I finally realized I was feeling more than a little cramped. 

Choosing to spend some time each day believing-- or at least practicing believing-- that there are other choices, other possibilities, may not change reality but it likely will change my perception of reality.  It's kind of like prayer.  After many years of study and practice I've come to understand that the power of prayer isn't that it changes or influences God or a specific situation, the real power of prayer is that it changes me.  And that's an impossibility worth believing in.  

What it means to be AWOL

AWOL=Aprhodite with out limbs?

Here it is, the second full week of Lent and no poetry . . . and no blogging since January.  Yikes!  I realize I have been AWOL . . . active with other liabilities.  (Thank you thesaurus.com for help coming up with that new acronym) and I apologize.

I debated long and hard before deciding NOT to keep up the tradition of posting a poem a day for Lent on these pages.  I just don't have the time and energy this year.  Rather than attempting to take on the task and falling short or neglecting other areas of my work that need attention, I'm publicly owning up to my limitations . . . which is actually my Lenten practice for 2014.  This year I'm trying to, if not embrace, at least more gracefully accept my imperfections, be in and with discomfort, and just generally choose honesty and vulnerability over masks and denial.

Whew.  That work alone feels like a full time job.  On top of that I'm in the midst of promoting the upcoming pilgrimage to Wales in July.  (Click here to learn more.)  And continuing my work with the Cathedral.  And have been leading a retreat or two a month since November.  And  . . .

I launched another blog today:  Postcards from the Pilgrim's Path.  The new blog is a way of weaving another thread into the tapestry of work I'm doing through Anam Cara Retreats.  Please feel free to check it out and subscribe if you're interested in Celtic spirituality.

I'll still post here periodically-- poems and musings that aren't related to the Celtic stuff.  Just not as often as I have done in the past, but hopefully more often than I have done recently.

I hope you'll stick with me as I ease into a new rhythm of blogging.   And as a thank you for your patience, I'll leave you with this poem, one I've posted in the past but has been hanging around with me this Lent in particular, as you'll no doubt understand after you've read it.

PERFECTION

by Killian McDonnell, O.S.B. from Swift Lord, You Are Not (St. John's University Press)                   

I have had it with perfection.
I have packed my bags,
I am out of here.
Gone.

As certain as rain
will make you wet,
perfection will do you
in.

It droppeth not as dew
upon the summer grass
to give liberty and green
joy.

Perfection straineth out
the quality of mercy,
withers rapture at its
birth.

Before the battle is half begun,
cold probity thinks
it can't be won, concedes the
war.

I've handed in my notice,
give back my keys,
signed my severance check, I
quit.

Hints I could have taken:
Even the perfect chiseled form of
Michelangelo's radiant David
squints,

the Venus de Milo
has no arms,
the Liberty Bell is
cracked.

 

Tudor drama, false eyelashes, and a Christmas poetry haul

Tyndale faces his dissertation committee

Back when I was deep in the muck and mire of working on my dissertation I came to rely on two great escapes to keep me sane:  watching The Tudors on DVD and reading beauty blogs.  The Tudors was oddly comforting as the worst fate waiting me if I failed in my attempts to get people to reclaim their authentic voice in prayer was that my thesis wouldn't be proved.  Poor William Tyndale, he met a fiery end simply for encouraging people to claim the right to read the Bible in their own language.  With no funeral pyre in my future, I plugged along with my work.  As advisers and wives came and their heads went, as Henry grew fatter (or at least as fat as they could make the lithesome Jonathan Rhys Meyers appear) and more paranoid, I continued to research and write and when Tudor England and twenty-first century theopoetics got to be too much for me, I'd sneak a peek at posts on five ways to wear one lipstick or watch video tutorials on the easiest way to put on false eyelashes.  (I tried it once for a party.  While it was indeed easy to attach the lashes, I showed up at the door of my best gay friend who took one look at the feathery extensions and said, "I don't like them."  Oh well-- the tutorial promised it would be easy not necessarily look good.)

When the Tudors and my dissertation work came to an end, so did my foray into the world of beauty blogs. And while I can only remember one or two ways to wear my favorite lipstick, I do recall one of the things I picked up from all those nondescript beauty blogs I plowed through:  what the word "haul" means in blog/vlog terms.  a large assortment of stuff acquired at one time. Usually said bloggers/vloggers would show their haul and their first impressions of products.  

This morning as I was preparing to wedge my new poetry books I received for Christmas on my stuffed shelves, I thought, "If it's done with make up, why not with books?"  So here you have it:  samples from my first ever poetry haul.  

River Flow:  New & Selected Poems by David Whyte

I've just dipped into this a bit, rereading a few old favorites and nibbling at some new-to-me poems including this one:

THE WELL OF GRIEF

Those who will not slip beneath

     the still surface on the well of grief,

turning down through its black water

     to the place we cannot breathe,

will never know the source from which we drink,

     the secret water, cold and clear,

and find in the darkness glimmering,

     the small round coins,

           thrown by those who wished for something else.

Selected Poems by Kerry Hardie

Although I've only discovered the poetry of Kerry Hardie in the past year or so, she's been well known and much lauded in Ireland for several years.  I've posted one of her poems before on this blog  and have often thought about posting the much longer "Sheep Fair Day' which I love.  You can listen to the audio of her reading that poem, found in this book, here.  

    

feminine gospels by Carol Ann Duffy

This book is somewhat of a departure from the type of poetry I normally read.  While I admire the work of the UK's current poet laureate, the types of poems I usually read tend to be like looking at a snap shot in time through a magnifying glass and focusing on a particular moment.  This collection of poems is more narrative in structure, each telling the story of a particular woman-- Elizabeth I looking back on her long but lonely reign as queen, that prolific author Anonymous, and one of my favorites, the thin woman trapped inside the fat woman trying to get out.  

To the Moon:  An Anthology of Lunar Poems 

I have to confess that even though I'm including this book as part of my Christmas haul, I don't actually have it in my hands yet as it had to be ordered from the UK.  I was hoping it would arrive in time to read tonight by the light of the first full moon of the new year and while there's still time for our mailman to come through for me, I won't hold my breath. Instead, I'm looking forward to February's full moon when I can read lunar poetry from the likes of Ted Hughes, Denise Levertov, Philip Larkin, May Swenson, R.S. Thomas, Carol Ann Duffy (the editor) and others.  

Finding stars everywhere

In Too Much Light by Jessica Powers from The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers (ICS Publications)
The Magi had only one star to follow, 
a single sanctuary lamp hung low,
gold ornament in the astonished air.
I am confounded in this latter day;
I find stars everywhere.

Rumor locates the presence of a night
out past the loss of a perishable sun
where, round midnight, I shall come to see
that all the stars are one.

I long for this night of the onement of stars

when days of scattered shining are my lot

and my confusion.  Yet faith even here

burns her throat dry, cries:  on this very spot
of mornings, see, there is not any place
when the sought Word is not.
Under and over, in and out, this morn
flawlessly, purely, wakes the newly born.
Behold, all places which have light in them
truly are Bethlehem

When I was in college I took an astronomy class that included an evening lab time.  On a few occasions, we ventured outside to the football field and look at the stars, identifying constellations and planets in the midnight blue sky.  Rather my classmates would identify the heavenly bodies in the solar system.  I would just marvel at the stars, awed and overwhelmed.  My teacher gently tried to guide me through the assignments, encouraging me to find the north star and begin from there.  The problem was I was directionally challenged at the time and his instructions that it was "the brightest star in the sky" didn't work for me.  My eye would move from one bright object to the next, never able to decide which was shining brightest.  He finally gave up and just let me enjoy light where I found it.

This somehow seems like an important memory with which to begin the new year.  The end of 2013 slipped through my hands like a skittish kitten and I have the scrapes and scratches to prove it. Rather than focusing on resolutions this year-- the shoulds, and oughts-- I think maybe I'll just resolve for 2014 to be open to the light where ever I find it.

Softest of Mornings and The Lifeline of Awareness and Gratitude

Softest of Mornings by Mary Oliver from Long Life:  Essays and Other Writings (DaCapo Press)
Softest of mornings, hello.
And what will you do today, I wonder,
   to my heart?
And how much honey can the heart stand, I wonder,
   before it must break?

This is trivial, or nothing:  a snail
   climbing a trellis of leaves
     and the blue trumpets of flowers.

No doubt clocks are ticking loudly
   all over the world.
I don't hear them.  The snail's pale horns
   extend and wave this way and that
as her fingers-body shuffles forward, leaving behind
   the silvery path of her slime.

Oh, softest of mornings, how shall I break this?
How shall I move away from the snail, and the flowers?
How shall I go on, with my introspective and ambitious life?


As I was paging through books looking for a poem for this Mary Oliver Monday  I was struck by this one. And not because it speaks to my experience, as is usually the case with what I usually write about; rather because this morning I hear the clock ticking so I haven't been looking at the leaves.

Instead of my normal oozing into the soft morning, today I jumped out of bed, barely glancing out the window and that only to see if it was raining yet, before making coffee and making my bed (in that order) so I could be at my desk and get an early start on work.  Maybe it's the charged air brought about by the approaching storm that has me humming and vibrating and active this morning. Maybe it's the energy behind some work projects that I want to hold onto and perpetuate this week.  Or maybe it's just the knowledge that the pages of my "to do" notebook are filling up faster than things are being crossed out.  Whatever it is, my focus this morning has been on my desk, not on the world outside my window.

And that got me to thinking about awareness and gratitude.

A friend and I were talking about this subject last week.  We'd both been in dark places recently and were sharing how we could to stop ourselves from sliding back down that slippery slope of self-pity and woe that often ends with a canonball into the pit of despair. He said that he has come to realize that lack of gratitude leads to those dark places.  If he holds in one hand something as simple as the blessing of sight and all that comes along with that, it far outweighs any misery he might be tempted to hold onto with the other.  Opening his eyes for a moment of awareness and gratitude each day have become essential for him.

So this morning I may not have spent time looking out my window yet but I can take a moment to be thankful for what I can see here at my desk.  A  soy candle that smells like cedar wood and pine needles reminds me of the trees when I don't have time to get out and walk among them.  The flame of that candle that I light as I sit down to work is an acknowledgment of the presence of the Holy and the Spirit that animates my work and connects it to something bigger.  Icons of Julian of Norwich, Brigid and Melangell  honor the legacy of wise women who have gone before me and the small stack of books on the corner is a nod to the creativity of contemporary women who inspire me.  The containers of Sharpies behind my computer remind me of a young contemporary woman who inspires me, Malala Yousafzai, and makes me ever the more grateful for the freedom and resources I have so often taken for granted in my own pursuit of knowledge.  And the pink and red apples in my grandmother's old milk glass bowl  . . . well the blessings that come along with that sight are far too numerous even to begin to count.

What the birds and Ned Stark know . . .

October by Emily Dickinson
These are the days when Birds come back—
A very few—a Bird or two—
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies resume
The old—old sophistries of June—
A blue and gold mistake.

Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee—
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief.

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear—
And softly thro' the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf.

Oh sacrament of summer days,
Oh Last Communion in the Haze—
Permit a child to join.

Thy sacred emblems to partake—
Thy consecrated bread to take
And thine immortal wine!


I came across this piece yesterday while searching for a poem about bird migration.  I decided to wait and post it this morning, not realizing then that the forecast for the rest of this week would be more June than October-like and thus making it all the more perfect poem for this first day of October.  (And October was its original title although now it's more commonly titled according to its first line as so many of Emily's poems are.)

So why was I looking for a poem about bird migration you may be asking?  Well I'll tell you.  I spent the better part of Sunday morning spying on the various species of birds who were stopping by the dogwood tree in our front yard.  Evidently our neighborhood is an avian rest stop on the migration interstate and Sunday morning that tree must have looked like the equivalent of a Starbucks to our fine feathered friends.  

At first it was the robins who came through.  They caught my attention when one plump bird swooped in to land on the edge of a branch loaded with red berries, only to discover as he put his feet down that it wasn't strong enough to hold him so he toppled to the grass. (If you've never seen a grown bird fall out of a tree in which he's trying to land, it's a pretty amusing sight and makes you reassess the notion that they're graceful creatures.)  He then proceeded to do a repeated hop, bounce and flutter up from the grass to try to get to the branch before giving up and finding a sturdier limb to stand on.  Other robins soon descended, some lighter than the first chubby visitor and thus able to balance on the slender branches.  

After a few minutes, the robins took flight as a cloud of European starlings descended on the neighborhood, noisily making their way from yard to yard and tree to tree. (It's amazing to think that this now highly invasive species of bird started from fewer than 60 released in Central Park in the late 1800's and now number about 150 million.  It seems like at least a million of them  were in Wheaton/Silver Spring/North Kensington on Sunday.) They left and a few stragglers came . . . a yellow bellied sap sucker, a cardinal couple, a smattering of wrens, and one lone brilliant but skittish blue jay.  

Then the process started all over again, minus the robin falling out of the tree.  I guess he learned his lesson. By noon the cranberry leaved dogwood that had been loaded with fire engine red berries when I woke up was stripped clean.

I'm sure there's a lesson about preparation and faith in here somewhere.  Because despite it being a balmy 80 plus degrees this first week in October, as the birds know . . .

(With thanks to George R. R. Martin and the current Game of Thrones mania for
providing a large selection of "Winter is coming" graphics from which to choose.)