I enjoy the drive from St. Louis to Chicago through the open plains. I used to take the trip regularly, but now I go that way infrequently. The vastness of the vision reminds me of those times when I catch a glimpse of the divine presence. Here's a reflection on driving north on I-55 written a litte over a year ago:
North of Springfield plains stretch out
and in their stretching swell my sight.
Fields still chew the residue of last year’s crops.
They’re chilled by winter winds,
which in turn are harvested by giants—
turbines briskly swinging sickle-blades.
Roads snip fields from one another,
barns and houses break the uniformity.
My vision, given freedom,
reaches for the fullness, the dark
tree border often edging the horizon.
Scopic sight can be a trickster:
a six-story high-rise will, a minute later,
transfigure into five tall tubes for storing grain.
Such places of expanded vision
leave deep marks. Faith is fortified
by vastness, the imprint of enormity lasting
when the vista’s drawstring is again pulled tight
and liberated sight is only sourced in memory.
I recently finished reading Charles Dickens’ marvelous novel Bleak House. I was part of an online discussion group sponsored by the Catherine Project, a forum for studying books that have “richness, depth, and lasting value.” Every Tuesday for 20 weeks, 8 or 9 of us from all around the US and Canada met to talk about three or four chapters. It was nice that such a wide variety of people, each with a unique perspective, life story, and knowledge base, reflected together on a classic text. I decided to write down a few things that struck me about the book and share them here.
Bleak House, like pretty much all of Dickens’ novels, was set in nineteenth-century England, a time of great social upheaval. Often, his novels highlighted some social ill or injustice—child labor, unhealthy environmental conditions, a rigid class system, the debilitating effects of poverty. In Bleak House, the most prominent target of Dickinsonian scrutiny is Chancery Court, which dealt with issues such as wills, mortgages, and trusts. Central to the novel is the Chancery case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, a complex case that dragged on for years and engaged a multitude of lawyers, but without resolution. In the first chapter we’re told that the case “has stretched forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt” a wide variety of people.” I like Dickens’ description of the harmful effect on those who have only incidental contact with the case:
“[E]ven those who have contemplated its history from the outermost circle of such evil have been insensibly tempted into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad course, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong it was in some off-hand manner never meant to go right.”
It’s so easy for the social ills we live amidst to make us apathetic and cynical. I appreciate the caution to be on guard against such an outcome.
The character most directly impacted by Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce is Richard Carstone, a ward of the court sent at the beginning of the novel to live with John Jardyce, a distant cousin who is also party to the suit. Richard is amiable but irresponsible. As adulthood approaches, he tries his hand at several possible careers, going through a considerable sum of John Jarndyce’s money in the process. He can’t muster much of an interest in anything except the Chancery suit and its promise of riches, though. He starts reading documents from the suit and becomes convinced that its outcome will make him wealthy. Eventually, he gives up every other pursuit to research the case, attend court, and huddle with his lawyer, who encourages this preoccupation and convinces him that it’s in his interest to spend all his money on legal fees. Though John Jarndyce does everything he can to distance himself from the suit, Richard ruminates on the possibility that John Jarndyce’s professed indifference to the outcome is a front for pusuing his own welfare at Richard’s expense. It’s a sobering account of how suspicions can destroy a relationship. At one point, Richard describes his thoughts about John Jarndyce as follows:
“Whereas, now, I do declare to you that he becomes to me the embodiment of the suit; that, in place of its being an abstraction, it is John Jarndyce; that the more I suffer, the more indignant I am with him; that every new delay, and every new disappointment, is only a new injury from John Jarndyce’s hand.”
This shows wonderful insight into one aspect of how we react to our welfare being threatened. Identifying an impersonal or abstract injustice never satisfies; there’s an urge to personalize it, to find someone responsible. Once a nefarious mastermind is identified, every slight, indignity, or disappointment gets related to that source, thus building the offense to monstrous proportions.
Richard ends up deteriorating physically, emotionally, and mentally. Esther, one of the novel’s two narrators, goes to dinner at his house and is startled by what she sees:
“I found Richard thin and languid, slovenly in his dress, abstracted in his manner, forcing his spirits now and then, and at other intervals relapsing into a dull thoughtfulness. About his large bright eyes that used to be so merry, there was a wanness and a restlessness that changed them altogether. 1 cannot use the expression that he looked old. There is a ruin of youth which is not like age; and into such a ruin, Richard’s youth and youthful beauty had all fallen away.”
Richard had pursued the suit, but it ends up pursuing him, consuming his attention and replacing all other axes of importance. Augustine suggested that habits, if repeated often enough, become vices, which then become progressively more ingrained, so that the person’s will is eroded and they are totally captured. Dickens describes the process well in his account of Richard’s progressive preoccupation with Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce. I’m struck by the idea of “a ruin of youth that is not like age.” What a tragedy it is to be consumed by such ruin!
An essential element in Richard’s deterioration is the narrative he constructs about himself and the world. According to the story he tells himself, he’s incapable of giving his full attention and effort to any of the careers he dabbles in. None of them matter anyway, since he is likely to be rich one day when the suit is settled. His best course of action is to devote all is attention to the suit. Anyone else involved in the suit has interests contrary to him and is thus an enemy.
Richard isn’t the only character who lives according to a narrative that doesn’t fit well with the external realities that others see. In other cases besides his, the results are tragic or destructive (for example, Lady Dedlock and Mrs. Jellyby). Though the reader and other characters can see the discrepancy between what the person says and the truth, these narratives are highly resistant to change. Thus, too, with us. The stories we tell ourselves can be either gift or curse. Distorted stories can lead to waste, failure, unhappiness, and ruin. Yet we can’t see what we are doing to ourselves.
Those with inaccurate narratives can be doomed to miserable lives, as with with most such characters in Bleak House. But there are exceptions. I’ll end with one such exception. George is a retired soldier who scrapes by trying to run a shooting gallery. He’s a good man, kind and generous, but that’s not how he sees himself. As he tells his creditor:
“I ought to have been a good son, and I think I meant to have been one. But I wasn’t. I was a thundering bad son, that’s the long and the short of it, and never was a credit to anybody.”
We eventually learn what George feels so guilty about. He joined the military against his mother’s wishes. He didn’t write home at first, planning to do so when he was promoted to officer. However, the promotion never came. Out of shame, he never wrote, and failing to do so increased his shame. So his narrative is that he was a bad son who hurt his mother, who he’s sure was hurt but has come to terms with his loss, and the best he can do is to stay away from family so as to not open old wounds. He hides his background from others to keep information about him from getting back to his family. Eventually, he’s imprisoned on suspicion of a crime. Though innocent, he refuses to get a lawyer, planning to just tell the truth and, if convicted, accepting the punishment, since he’s a wrongdoer in other regards.
This is his story. Fortunately, his family friends the Bagnets decide to help. Mrs. Bagnet has figured out who is mother is, and sets out to tell her of her son’s plight. She returns to London with his mother. The reunion of George and his mother is to my mind the most touching scene in the novel. Here’s the start of it:
“George Rouncewell! O, my dear child, turn and look at me!”
The trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and falls down on his knees before her. Whether in a late repentance, whether in the first association that comes back upon him, he puts his hands together as a child does when it says its prayers, and raising them towards her breast, bows down his head, and cries. . . .
“Mother,” says the trooper, when they are more composed; “forgive me first of all, for I know my need of it.”
Forgive him! She does it with all her heart and soul. She always has done it. She tells him how she has had it written in her will, these many years, that he was her beloved son George. She has never believed any ill of him, never. If she had died without this happiness–and she is an old woman now, and can’t look to live very long–she would have blessed him with her last breath, if she had had her senses, as her beloved son George.
This is unconditional love, total love, unending love, and it has its effect. George is changed from that time on—not completely different, but receiving the restoration offered and living in gratitude for it. This is the story of the prodigal son. Like Richard and George, we are all prone to telling false stories about ourselves. Would that we all had our folly corrected with such tenderness and care.
Advent is a season in the church year, a time when Christians wait in anticipation both for the celebration of Christ’s birth and for his return to earth at the end of time. It’s common to read daily devotional messages during the season. I was asked to write such a devotional message, and I chose to reflect on a passage from the book of Ecclesiastes describing a posture of openness and receptivity. I’ve put the devotional below.
Better is a handful with quiet than two handfuls with toil, and a chasing after wind. (Ecclesiastes 4:6)
The Teacher of Ecclesiastes asks, “What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? (Ecc. 2:22) What payoff do we get from all our striving to acquire more money, power, recognition, or appreciation? We may, as the text states, manage to acquire “two handfuls” of whatever it is that we are working for. But is what we gain in this way truly what is best for us? The Teacher thinks not. He warns against laziness (Ecc. 4:5), but also rejects the opposite, overexertion. Rather than using both hands to grasp for all we can get, he suggests that we are better off if we quiet ourselves, turning one hand up to receive what God has for us.
In this Advent season of waiting and reflection, I sometimes consider my stance regarding striving versus receiving. I have to admit that I’m often inclined to be grasping for what I think will satisfy me rather than waiting in peace and stillness for the blessings God has for me. I’m prone to restlessness; perhaps I think that I can get more of what I want through my toil than I can by waiting for God’s good gifts. But what I want is not necessarily what I most need, and it is God, not me, who does best at supplying what I truly need. In the New Testament, Martha epitomizes the life of constant striving. In his mercy, Jesus pointed out that her way of doing things led to worry and distraction. What she really needed was what her sister Mary had already gained by sitting and listening to Jesus: one handful received in quiet rather than the two handfuls that Martha was seeking “by her many tasks.” (Luke 10:40,42)
What Mary received is what I need and you need this Advent season. Peace. Calm. Rest. Awe. Wonder. And most of all, Christ, for he is the ultimate gift that God provides to those who humbly stretch out a hand to receive.
Prayer: Forgive us, Lord, for our tendency to turn from you in order to strive for that which doesn’t satisfy. Help us to wait in stillness for the good gifts you have for us, especially the gift of your Son.
I visited the garden deep in fall,
after many trees had been robbed
of their summer dress.
The sun was slow to rise
and even in midmorning slouched low
as it strolled the southern sky.
The garden centers on a pond,
a mirror to the stones and trees
edging its circumference.
While I stood beside it,
no leaves fell, or even rustled;
nature was at rest,
serene.
My life, in contrast, has it’s share of waves.
The churn of change disquiets me,
Foundations roll and sway with the uncertainty.
Would that everything was like
this still and sheltered place.
I watch a while, and notice that the water
wavers more than what had seemed at first.
Rays of sun bounce off the ripples,
then scan a rock that’s cornering a nearby island,
so that lines of light rise softly up
its shadowed side.
Maybe this is what I need.to see
Until death, there will always be a breath
or more to break tranquility,
but the resulting waves are just a way
that light is lifted, lines moving in the dark.
After my mother died in June, I went through lost of family pictures, including some from over a hundred years ago. It made me reflect on the people portrayed in them, thinking of who they were at the time they were photographed.
It’s a full-length portrait, head to foot.
He wears a dark suit, white shirt, and white bow-tie.
He bends his arms behind his back, hands out of sight,
the pose that’s favored by the awkward.
She stands beside him, dressed in white from neck
to just above her ankles. She seems to lean
towards him the slightest bit.
I’m quite sure who they are, though they
don’t look like the people I remember.
In the days to come, he would grow his waist
and lose his hair; her face would hibernate
behind thick glasses.
I see them through a grandchild’s eyes
but that is not the people whom they always were.
Unmoored once,
they got to freely walk around the city,
imagining the places they might live,
the people they might meet and marry,
and the man or woman each would come to be.
I would have liked to travel back across
the vast sea
of time to meet them then:
I wonder what our conversation might have been.
This is a poem I wrote last month. Sometimes I write something that I particularly like. This is one of those things. I don’t know quite why. It’s about the unpredictability of life, not a particularly pleasant theme. Maybe it captures my present situation-mom dying, having to move, lots of uncertainties ahead-fairly well. I’d be interested in reactions that others have when they read it.
Our lives are often linear,
not wavering from course,
so that we come to think we’re on
a road that’s without forks.
As things remain the same, we will
increasingly take hold
of calculations that provide
illusions of control.
But change is like a highwayman
that’s lying just ahead
to rob us of our certainties
and leave our plans for dead.
A bone will break, a car will crash,
pneumonia grows from coughs;
God uses ordinary things
to throw the balance off.
He baffles and befuddles us
disturbing our neat rows;
the Holy Spirit hasn’t come
to coronate the known.
I wasn’t exactly surprised when my mom’s health deteriorated significantly over the last few months, ending with her death. She had a stroke 15 years ago, couldn’t eat by mouth, and had been in the hospital multiple times. Still, even a few weeks ago I wasn’t ready for her life to end. From comments others made when we had visitation last week, my experience was common. The refrain I heard again and again from those who had lost one or both parents was “I knew it was coming, but I wasn’t prepared when it happened.”
Other than having an aide to help her with her shower, mom was toileting, washing, dressing, and feeding herself without assistance less than four months ago. I had been living with her because she couldn’t manage the household by herself, but she was mostly self-sufficient. I seldom spent even a half-hour a day providing direct help. Then she had a fall on March 21, injuring her shoulder and breaking her scapula. Suddenly, she needed assistance with everything. She couldn’t put any weight on her right hand, and that kept her from using her walker, getting up without assistance, and handling many self-care tasks. She went to a rehab facility for the better part of a month to learn how to live with her restrictions. When she came home, the family had arranged for an aide to be in the house twenty-five hours a week, and I was there the rest of the time. We hoped things would be easier for her when the scapula healed. The second week of May, she was given clearance to put full weight on her right arm. Surely she would work hard and return to something close to independence. She was so determined and had come back so many times before. It would be the same this time.
But it wasn’t. Less than a month later, she was back in the hospital with difficulty breathing and fluid in her lungs. Her heart was failing. She came home on oxygen, but went downhill rapidly. Roughly two weeks after being discharged she died.
I was startled by how rapidly she declined. It might have been simply the result of a medical process that had progressed much farther than I or her doctors realized, but I tend to think there was more going on. In particular, I think she had worked so hard in the past because she was hopeful about recovery. This time, she had lost any sense that life could be anything except suffering. After previous hospital or rehab stays, she was always happy to get home, but she didn’t say that this time. Home seemed to her a foreign place. She said that everything looked different. She also couldn’t remember her routines and had to be guided through them. She was really bothered by trailing the oxygen tubing behind her all the time. Faced with all this, I think she gave up. After visits from OT and PT didn’t make any difference, my siblings and I decided it was time to call hospice to help her be comfortable during whatever time she had left.
A few days earlier, when I still thought she might rally, I was impatient on a few occasions when trying to help her. She was getting confused about simple things, so tasks took longer I may have been a little frustrated with the amount of time that things were taking, but I realized after a couple episodes that a bigger reason for my impatience was that I was having trouble accepting how rapidly she was declining. Even more centrally, I wanted her to still act like a mom—to notice all I was trying to do, to think about my well-being, and to have the same pride in me that she had always had. But that motherly attentiveness, though not completely gone, was mostly beyond her capacity. Once I realized that, I was more patient. I didn’t want to burden her that way. I had enjoyed that gift of being mothered for so long; I could let it go in order to be what she needed. I’m starting to think that letting go in that way freed me from the intense longing that I could have felt after her death. Perhaps I wound up better prepared than I thought. Thanks, mom, for having mothered so well.
My mom died a week ago today. So this is a time of mourning, which encompasses a great deal besides sadness. One thing that has struck me is how her death has resulted in a sudden change in my focus: from micro-attention to her daily ups and downs to expanded awareness of her life as a whole. I wrote the following poem about the vista that’s been opened to me as a result.
The last few years were mostly narrow,
so that she walked through places
where the walls were tight,
leaving only little alcoves where she could dress
and feed and sleep. Her step had slowed
and sometimes going on at all took exhaustive effort.
Long ago, most with whom she traveled trickled off
to other paths, so few still walked with her.
At last the road choked down to nothing;
Her walking ended and instead she flew away.
At that the vista opened and I could see
more than the cramped confines of final days
but a totality of life.
Yesterday, I looked at photos taken 80 years ago
and there she is, Loie then, not mom
or grandmother, a teen reclining on the beach,
smiling impishly, dressed in a swimsuit
that her mother wouldn’t have approved of.
Then she’s on a teeter-totter, floral dress flowing
off the edges of the plank, delighted to be lifted
high, among the trees.
Here she stands in snow,
black-shrouded, squinting from the cold
and cradling the family dog as if it were
a plump and happy child.
A few pages on,
her boyfriend sits back-to-back with her,
playing his accordion. He will go to war,
then they will wed and twine together
more than sixty years. She’s leaning into him
and holding up a cup as if it were at toast
to what had been and what was then
and what was yet to come: friends and faith
and family, a broad and blessed life.
Goodbye, mom,
may your spirit soar.
My mom has been deteriorating for the past couple months. She’s currently on hospice. I’ve been her main caregiver. that’s been not only challenging, but instructive. I am learning how far I am from being unselfish and totally dedicated. Here’s a poem that describes one humbling moment:
Sometimes night conceals.
Sometime it reveals.
Caregiving for a parent is going fine by day,
the spinning top of dressing
walking
sitting
feeding
medicating
comforting
proceed without a wobble,
but night is different.
“I need to get up.”
“You did a little while ago.”
“I need to again.”
I compute my hours of lost sleep,
and, the books unbalanced,
add a sum of distance and discourtesy.
Back in bed, I feel the hard stone
of ego, wanting its ascendency.
I serve,
but I’m yet to be a servant.
Photo by u0410u043bu0435u043au0441u0430u043du0434u0440 u0422u0440u0443u0431u0438u0446u044bu043d on Pexels.com
This was my first poem of the year, written in early January while reflecting on the year past and the year to come. It’s main image comes from Isaiah 40:8–“Grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of God endures forever.” It seems appropriate both in regard to the start of Lent and the present turmoil in the world.
Grass withers and the flower fades
winter comes to take away
whatever lacks abiding root
whatever lacks tenacious truth.
For metal rusts, the moth consumes;
the wealth that promised to accrue
gives little help when health erodes
thus proving a deceptive hope.
But we are blessed, not cursed by rust
for it discourages false loves
and losing is a discipline
that lights the way when dreams have dimmed.
Grass dies and human strength erodes
the word of God continues whole--
his grace and goodness are the hinge:
he opens and we enter in.
Life Assays 