Through A Glass Brightly

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Stained Glass Design in Fireman's Hall Museum, Philadelphia

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, "Experience" (written in 1844)
is full of great observations:

"The years teach much which the days never know."

"From the mountain you see the mountain."

"People forget that it is the eye which makes the horizon."

"Five minutes of today are worth as much to me,
as five minutes in the next millennium."

"Let us treat the men and women well:
treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are."

"The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stained Glass Windows in Wells Cathedral, England
"Experience" also contains many beautiful descriptions of color and light. For Emerson, uncertainty and brightness go hand in hand. We live our lives almost not knowing what is happening to us: "Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes . . . All things swim and glitter. Our life is not so much threatened as our perception" (141). It is not lack of light, however, that impairs our inner vision; it is not through a glass darkly that we try to see. Instead, our distorted vision causes all to "glitter." Distortion, but not gloom, not dullness. We are in the light not in the dark.

Emerson unites illusion, perception, and limitation: "Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus" (144). We hold beads of experience to the light, watching them become prisms, deciding which of the many colors we feel most moved by, which bead, which color we will choose. To choose but one hue is to choose a dream, an illusion, but such is our inability to perceive experience in more than one way at a time.

Writing in France a few years later (1857), Gustave Flaubert -- in a section sadly omitted from the final version of his novel -- would picture Madame Bovary standing before the colored windows at Vaubyessard. She looks out at the countryside through variously colored window panes in a passage strangely reminiscent of Emerson's colored beads and lenses. Moving as from dream to dream, Emma Bovary looks at the illusion offered by each pane. Through the blue pane, all seems sad; through the yellow pane everything grows smaller, lighter, and warmer; through the green pane everything she sees appears leaden and frozen. She remains longest in front of the red glass, looking at a landscape that frightens her, until she averts her eyes to the ordinary daylight of a transparent pane. [Continued below, in "Comments."]

Like Emerson's image of the many - colored beads, this picture of Madame Bovary offers both variation and restriction. In an expansive description of light and brightness, Emerson illustrates our limited ability to fully understand experience and offers Surprise as a method of perceiving life. He talks of both the uncertainty and the blessedness of Surprise. Our perception may be obscured, and we may be isolated from comprehension of a grand design, but it is, as Emerson portrays it, a panoramic isolation:

"Life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth taking or keeping, if it were not. God delights to isolate us every day, and hide from us the past and the future. We would look about us, but with grand politeness God draws down an impenetrable screen of purest sky, and another behind us of purest sky. You will not remember, God seems to say, and you will not expect." (152)

The reader cannot help but see this "pure" sky as one of the clearest, brightest blue. Despite isolation and limitation, this is not a vision of darkness or despair. It is a climactic image of color and light that dispels the gloom of our imperfect understanding. Emerson offers hope and affirmation amidst uncertainty and fragmentation. A human being, says Emerson, "is a golden impossibility" (152). Through our sleep - filled eyes we can glimpse the truth of our experience, glittering through a colored lens, on the horizon where small but distinct we see something as beautiful as our own natures.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selected Prose and Poetry, 2nd Edition, Ed. Reginald L. Cook, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969) 141 - 161.

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (Norton Critical Edition), Ed. and Trans. Paul de Man, (New York: Norton, 1965), 269 - 70.

P.S.
Next post will be on Saturday, November 28th
Between now and then, be sure to read
my shorter, almost daily blog posts on
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com
(more Bill Bryson, autumnal poetry, etc.)

Earth - Proud

EARTH LAUGHS IN DAFFODILS
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

~ Fair Daffodils ~

Such an unusual poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson
and so perfect for Earth Day & Arbor Day.
Perhaps you've always thought, as I have,
that Earth is laughing with us; but, no!
According to Emerson, Earth is laughing at us!
Read on . . .

HAMATREYA

Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,
Saying, “’Tis mine, my children’s and my name’s.
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!
I fancy these pure waters and the flags
Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize;
And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.”

Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.
Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,
And sighed for all that bounded their domain;
“This suits me for a pasture; that’s my park;
We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,
And misty lowland, where to go for peat.
The land is well, —lies fairly to the south.
’Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back,
To find the sitfast acres where you left them.”

Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds
Him to his land, a lump of mould the more.
Hear what the Earth say:—

EARTH-SONG
“Mine and yours;
Mine, not yours.
Earth endures;
Stars abide—
Shine down in the old sea;
Old are the shores;
But where are old men?
I who have seen much,
Such have I never seen.

“The lawyer’s deed
Ran sure,
In tail,
To them and to their heirs
Who shall succeed,
Without fail,
Forevermore.

“Here is the land,
Shaggy with wood,
With its old valley,
Mound and flood.
But the heritors?—
Fled like the flood's foam.
The lawyer and the laws,
And the kingdom,
Clean swept herefrom.

“They called me theirs,
Who so controlled me;
Yet every one
Wished to stay, and is gone,
How am I theirs,
If they cannot hold me,
But I hold them?”

When I heard the Earth-song
I was no longer brave;
My avarice cooled

Like lust in the chill of the grave.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, (1803 - 1882)
American essayist, poet, transcendentalist

A few connections:

1.
Emerson: "Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough. . . . "

A. E. Houseman: Is My Team Ploughing

“Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?”

Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.

“Is football playing
Along the river shore,
Now I stand up no more?”
With lads to chase the leather,

Ay the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.

“Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?”

Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.

“Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?”

Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.

2.
Emerson: "Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds
Him to his land, a lump of mould the more."

E. L. Doctorow: from Homer and Langley

"We had a joke, Langley and I: Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours" (100 - 01).

3.
Emerson: " . . . boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,
And sighed for all that bounded their domain . . . "

Percy Bysshe Shelley: "Ozymandias"

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away. [ellipses in original]

4.
Emerson:“They called me theirs,
Who so controlled me;
Yet every one
Wished to stay, and is gone,
How am I theirs,
If they cannot hold me,
But I hold them?”

Mikhail Bulgakov: from The Master and Margarita

"I'm sorry . . . but in order to be in control, you have to have a definite plan for at least a reasonable period of time. So how, may I ask, can man be in control if he can't even draw up a plan for a ridiculously short period of time, say, a thousand years, and is, moreover, unable to ensure his own safety for even the next day? . . . Yes man is mortal, but that isn't so bad. What's bad is that sometimes he's unexpectedly mortal, that's the rub! And, in general, he can't even say in the morning what he'll be doing that very night."

*******************
So that's why Emerson allows the flowers to laugh at the boastful -- not lovingly because we Earthlings are so adorable, but in dismay because we are so willfully confused. We have trouble understanding that the planet can turn repeatedly from night to day without us. We think the world is ours when it is not. We cannot tell a baby step from a giant stride. We seem perpetually surprised by our mortality, despite ceaseless evidence to the contrary.

These words from my favorite Canadian band of the 1970's provide a timely reminder of our universal laughability:

"You took me by surprise
I didn't realize that you were laughing . . ."
~ The Guess Who ~

*******************
Previous Daffodil Posts

HAPPY EARTH DAY!
"Earth laughs in flowers" ~ Emerson

Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, May 14

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Emmanuel, God With Us

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"~ Look for a lovely thing and you will find it ~
~ it is not far ~ it never will be far ~"
~ Sara Teasdale ~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Be not forgetful to entertain strangers:
for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
Hebrews 13:2
A couple of months ago, on this blog, I listed a few of the illuminating observations that appear in Emerson's essay, "Experience, including one of my favorites:

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet. . . . I had fancied that the value of life lay in its inscrutable possibilities; in the fact that I never know, in addressing myself to a new individual, what may befall me. I carry the keys of my castle in my hand, ready to throw them at the feet of my lord, whenever and in what disguise so ever he shall appear. I know he is in my neighborhood hidden among vagabonds. . . . Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are (from "Experience" written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 1844).

Yes indeed! One of them might be King! Or the Peacemaker. Or an Angel, unawares! As poet Sara Teasdale says, "Look for a lovely thing and you will find it; it is not far -- it never will be far."

Brian Andreas (a messiah for the New Age, if ever there was one*) draws a similar conclusion in his story of the "Purple Madonna":

One time on Hollywood Boulevard I saw a young girl with a baby. It was a crisp winter morning & her hair shone dark purple in the sun. She was panhandling outside the Holiday Inn & the door clerk came out & told her to be on her way & I wondered if anyone would recognize the Christ child if they happened to meet. I remember thinking it's not like there are any published pictures & purple seemed like a good color for a Madonna so I gave her a dollar just in case. (from StoryPeople)

Madonna with us. Child with us. God with us. Angels with us.

Jeff Smith (1939 - 2004; aka The Frugal Gourmet and onetime chaplain) gives an excellent etymological breakdown of this very concept, and his enthusiasm is infectious. He provides a definition of The Messiah, The Holy One of Israel that encompasses the lord among the vagabonds and the Christ Child on the street corner:

The Holy One = "one who is so far above man and womankind, so distant and beyond our understanding, so heavenly and unapproachable, beyond the beyond, never near us."

Of Israel = "right here in town."

"That is to say, The Most Distant One is here in town with us, always. I love that!" (see The Frugal Gourmet Celebrates Christmas, 3)

In our neighborhood. Hidden among vagabonds. On the Boulevard. Here in town. With us.

Emerson, Andreas, and Smith all convey the importance of persistently acknowledging the humanity of others, at all times, just in case. "A golden impossibility" -- that's what Emerson says we are, but also an "inscrutable possibility."

Smith's book, The Frugal Gourmet Celebrates Christmas is the best holiday cookbook I know of. More than a collection of recipes, it is also a fascinating narrative of cultural history and seasonal tradition, ingeniously illustrated and creatively organized. Each chapter presents a dish for a different character from the traditional manger scene: angel hair pasta for the angels, green olive soup for the shepherds (I tried this recipe one year -- odd), lamb chops for the tax collector, Persian meatballs for the Magi, right down to milk and honey for the Baby Jesus.

In addition to the tempting recipes (both my latkes and my mincemeat are taken from here), this book beautifully achieves the author's stated mission of bringing "the Manger and the Donkey, the Angels, and the Blessed Mother with Child into your Christmas," thus helping the reader to "better understand this profound and joyous holiday" (xviii, xx).

An ordained minister as well as a chef, Smith recalls an epiphany of sorts that occurred one Christmas during his graduate school years when he and a group of fellow theology students were singing "O Come All Ye Faithful":

I realized it was the first time in my life that I understood the words: 'Word of the Father, Now in Flesh Appearing.' The fact that God had to go to such extremes to explain the meaning of our place together. God declares Himself / Herself to us by becoming a baby in our midst. The greatest sign of weakness, 'living flesh' in its most vulnerable state, a tiny baby, becomes the greatest sign of the strength of the Holy One, a strength born out of love beyond our furthest imaginings, a strength that, I suppose, still looks to many of us like weakness. (xvi - xvii)

After reading Smith's unforgettable explanation, the song took on a whole new meaning for me. Every time I hear it now, I listen a bit more closely than I ever did before:

Light from Light eternal . . .

we too will thither, bend our joyful footsteps . . .

who would not love thee, loving us so dearly . . .

I love that!

*Brian Andreas: "We're already in the new age, she said. What does that mean? I said. It means we can stop waiting & start living, she said but after she left, I still waited a little while more just to be safe."


FOR MORE INSPIRING HOLIDAY COOKBOOKS READ THE LATEST POST ON MY BOOK BLOG:
"FEASTS AND SEASONS"
KITTI'S BOOK LIST
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

On this blog, look for my next Fortnightly
post on Thursday, January 28th

Between now and then, be sure to read
my shorter, almost daily blog posts on
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

JANUARY ROOFTOP

Victoria on the Void

AUTUMNAL OWL
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

My friend Victoria Amador recently suggested that
bleak November was a good time to re-read
one of our favorite poems by one of our favorite poets:

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

By Theodore Roethke (1908 – 1963)

We had been comparing visits to our local cemeteries. For me, it was the small sad Confederate Cemetery, just down the street from our house, where I love taking a walk. For Victoria, it was Lakewood Cemetery, "the most beautiful in the Twin Cities. There's a bench next to the small lake, and it's perfect for reflecting on purpose and passion, restlessness and recklessness, strength and fragility; feeling rather vapid in a disturbing vacuum. How do you fill The Void?"

How do I do it? Reading, writing, swimming, looking after the grandkids. I just have to a - void that spiral of "Now, why am I doing this?" Oh yeah, that's right, so that they too may grow up strong, thoughtful and contemplative, and one day feel -- and find a way to fill -- The Void. Sigh . . .

As ever, in a dark time, there are the inestimable insights of the great writers and thinkers. Like as we, Ralph Waldo Emerson also faced The Void:

"After thirty, we wake up sad every morning,
excepting perhaps five or six, until the day of our death.”
Isn't it somewhat ennobling, right, to think that Emerson felt the same way, so long ago? And not necessarily from depression or even aging, though perhaps coming of age -- whenever it happens -- might have something to do with it. Emerson mentions the existential sadness kicking in at age thirty, the true end of childhood.

How did Jonathan Swift do it?
"I never wake without finding life more
insignificant than it was the day before."
from his letter to Lord Bolingbroke

How did E. M. Forster do it?
“Two people pulling each other into Salvation
is the only theme I find worthwhile."
~ from his Commonplace Book

Or Robert Frost / Brad McLaughlin?
"We've looked and looked, but after all where are we?
Do we know any better where we are,
And how it stands between the night tonight
And a man with a smoky lantern chimney?
How different from the way it ever stood?"
~from his poem "The Star-splitter"

How does Alithea / Tilda Swinton do it?
"Despite all the whiz-bang, we remain bewildered."
~ from the movie ~
Three Thousand Years of Longing

How about Wendell Berry?
To My Children, Fearing for Them

Terrors are to come. The earth
is poisoned with narrow lives.
I think of you. What you will

live through, or perish by, eats
at my heart. What have I done? I
need better answers than there are

to the pain of coming to see
what was done in blindness,

loving what I cannot save. Nor,
your eyes turning toward me,
can I wish your lives unmade
though the pain of them is on me.

Petrified Wood, Statuette & Owl (above)
all from my brother Dave's back yard.

Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, December 14th
Between now and then, read

THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

O Ya - Ya of Little Faith

A LITTLE ALTAR
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

“Good Lord didn't mean for us to hate ourself.
He made us to love ourself like He do, with wide open arms.” (140)

“Don't ever worry bout bein holy, babychild.
Just keep your eyes wide open except when you sleep.
Then let the Lord's mighty vision see you through the night.” (144)

from
~ Little Altars Everywhere ~ Rebecca Wells ~
~ more on my book blog ~

"I have been missing the point. The point is not knowing
another person, or learning to love another person.
The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be?
What good manners can we show as we welcome ourselves
and others into our hearts?" (346)

from
~ Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood ~ Rebecca Wells ~

************
It has been awhile since the "Ya - Ya Sisterhood" has come up in conversation, but it's been on my mind lately in connection with my recent thoughts on religious indoctrination. Even the titles -- Divine Secrets, Little Altars -- imply a spiritual inclination. I loved the vocabulary: ya-ya, ya-ya-no, gumbo ya-ya, tres ya-ya, petites ya-yas -- and my favorite angel-gals.

The plot, on the other hand, was rather far fetched for my taste. Could you really have the same four best friends for seventy years? Well maybe if your fathers were all incredibly rich and your husbands were all incredibly rich and you never had to move across the country or be even remotely concerned about making a living and could live an entire life devoted solely to personal relationships. I was straining to suspend my disbelief, but I guess that's why they call it fiction. Still I prefer for my fictional characters to be a bit more like moi, and I'm a Yankee girl raised in a humble home of modest means. So I had a few hurdles to cross and some eyes to roll before coming to a full appreciation of the divine secrets behind the antics.

For me, the most memorable line will always be when Sidda (age thirty - something) goes to visit her mother and "tried not to feel five years old. She tried to feel at least eleven" (336). Another shining moment -- as quoted above -- occurs when Sidda gives up the idea of ever really understanding her mother: "The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be?"

In fact, early in the novel, Sidda's mother suggests the tenderness of etiquette, "Forget love. Try good manners” (25). This ya - ya advice is similar to Kurt Vonnegut's observation that what the world needs now is "A little less love please, and a little more common decency". Or Ralph Waldo Emerson's reminder to "treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are."

I like Emerson's "angels unawares" message here, but even more I like the face value of it, that being human is enough, being human is everything. If the sum of humanity is greater than the individuals, then maybe that sum is god. Instead of loving god (whatever that means) how about just being nice to other people. When it comes to faith, god, and religion, the quest to know (even as also we are known) can be good; but maybe a better goal is to be tender and mannerly.

In a memorable episode of Thirtysomething (can't remember which season), Elliot chastises his mother-in-law Eleanor for hurting his wife Ellen's feelings. Eleanor responds that she has asked god's forgiveness. But Elliot persists, "What about asking Ellen's forgiveness? She's the person you hurt." Why can't Eleanor be more tender? Why is she holding back?

Around the same time (1997) that I was watching Thirtysomething and reading Divine Secrets and Little Altars, a dear friend -- one of my angel - gals -- was reading The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie. She found it to be a very helpful way of looking at the heartache and frustration and occasional boredom of organized religion, and she wrote to explain some of Beattie's ideas:

She suggests acting "As If." Act as if you're happy and pretty soon you will be. Or act as if I have excellent self-esteem and pretty soon I will. That kind of thing. So if I act as if I believe in God, pretty soon I will? That could work! It's very important to me to start believing. I went to my counselor last night. Seems I have this core belief that "I am not enough." So I asked, "How do you get rid of those beliefs that you formed as a small child?" Of course, as adults, we can actively choose for tenderness as opposed to bitterness, but we can't always repair the damage done to us as children. I have a lot of work to do, and I really appreciate your thoughts and help on my issues.

In response, I shared with her the story of what had inspired me over the years and what had not. As a Nazarene kid (in the 1960s & 70s), I am definitely grateful for the singable hymns and the "fantastic grasp of scripture," which has served me well personally and professionally, as a teacher and writer. However, I never got the "strong sense of identity" or the "Nazzy street cred" that some adherents claim as their birthright (see, for example, Ryan Scott's blog post
"Nazarenes, Moralism, and _ru_p"). Instead, I felt constantly judged and criticized by my elders and my peers, perpetually weighed and found wanting. Always a goat, never a sheep.

As a child, my eyes were opened (and not in a good way) when I visited a Sunday school class for fourth grade girls. When one of the girls was excused for a few moments to run an errand, the teacher turned to the rest of us and said, "While she's out of the room, let's pray for her, because we know that she is not saved." What?! I hardly believed any of those cruel, heartless, irrational ideas from the time I was 8 or 9 years old. How do we know that she's not saved? My girlish heart was shocked then; and even now, half a century later, I remain highly suspicious of anyone who would pray for me behind my back. Don't do that!

I was exposed to numerous other severe dictates that totally backfired. Though I realized early on (by age 10) that it would never work for me, I stayed in the church, trying to remain in favor with my family, until age 26. With huge relief, I finally chose another path. I was committed to the insistence that religion has to make some kind of sense, and to finding a church where human intelligence is valued, rather than the hypocritical "please leave your brain at the door" attitude that I resented throughout my formative years. I knew that I would never want my children subjected to the criticism and judging and unnecessary shame of Protestant fundamentalism.

I also have to confess that I've never been much of prayer person, mostly because I don't know what that means. If I'm asking, who am I asking? If I'm praising, who am I praising? Yet I like doing things like reciting or singing or listening to certain prayers, poems, psalms, hymns because I like those words and I like the act of singing or choral reading or just hearing certain words or phrases. So it's not that if I act happy or uplifted I will become those things; it's just that for the duration (5 minutes) of hearing someone sing "Ave Maria" or for the duration (2 minutes) of reciting the Apostles' Creed, I feel convinced of meaning, grace, history, connection. I can easily believe that the world's most beautiful words, songs, and buildings have all been created to the "glory of God," even though I'm not entirely sure what that means. I'm not opposed to the idea that honoring god means honoring humanity, in manner of Rebecca Wells, Vonnegut, and Emerson.

My ya-ya sis replied:

I totally appreciate you sharing your thoughts on God. That really helped! What I understood you to be saying is that you have faith and you believe in God even though you're not sure what exactly God is or if God even exists? So it's kind of like a blind faith? And that if you pray to God that's your God? That just by doing the act (believing) it creates belief? Am I getting this? If I'm at all close, I think I know what you're saying, and I think that might work for me. I have trouble believing in anything supernatural (not concrete), but I guess if I just believe that something could exist, that is enough. Maybe?

One observation that I would add to our thoughts on God is that I'm not really trying to accomplish or grow into any kind of greater belief by the small ways in which I practice my "blind faith" (if that's the right term). It's not so much that "act creates belief" for me as it is that "act gives satisfaction" (however slight). So what I'm willing to do (and maybe this is my "faith") is go with that slight sense of satisfaction or fulfillment or participation as a worthwhile act in itself. For a specific example, let's say I take communion -- I have no belief in the body and blood and transubstantiation. In fact, I never even think about those things. But I do like participating in the ritual of having a tiny piece of bread and a tiny sip of wine with some other people that I know. I have no expectation that such an act will lead to or create any further belief; and as for the supernatural, I don't need body and blood; bread and wine is enough for me.

A little divinity, a lot of humanity. A little love, a lot of common decency. A little knowing, a lot of tenderness. A few divine secrets, a lot of little altars.

ANOTHER LITTLE ALTAR

"Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?"
Matthew 8:26, KJV
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS
FOR A CONTINUATION OF THIS DISCUSSION ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, August 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Friends in Art

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

The Tea Party
by Edward Cucuel (1875 - 1954)

“Friendship is certainly the finest balm
for the pangs of disappointed love.”

~ Jane Austen ~
Northanger Abbey
[Volume I, Chapter IV]

An essay in pictures . . .

Two Ladies on a Bench
by Edward Cucuel (1875 - 1954)

Borbee Plays the Flute, ca 1908
by Florence Kate Upton (1873 – 1922)

Two Girls In The Garden At Montmartre, 1895
by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919)

The Bathers, 1925
Jose de Almada-Negreiros (1893 - 1970)

Two Women Throwing Flowers, 1872
by Mary Cassatt (1844 - 1926)

Two Women in a Boat
by Frederick Arthur Bridgman (1847 - 1928)

Two Women in Renaissance Dress, One Playing a Lute
by Frank Stone (1800 – 1859)

Two Young Women Seated, ca 1900
by William Henry Margetson (1861 - 1940)

“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Earlier Emerson Posts: QK ~ FN ~ KL
Enough excellent transcendental advice
to get you through the entire year!

Coming in two weeks: "Sisters, Friends"
& in May: Friends Have Made the Story
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, January 28th
Between now and then, read

THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Emerald Eye

THE EMERALD: MYSTERIOUS AND MENACING,
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Emerald, 1900 ~ Alphonse Mucha (1860 – 1939)
[Part of a Series ~ See Below]

I learned the following poem from my husband Gerry, who can still recite large segments from over fifty years ago, when he memorized it in junior high. He was inspired by looking through an old notebook belonging to his Grandfather Harry and discovering that Harry had written out the entire poem, longhand. Gerry cannot recall his grandfather ever reciting or reading the poem aloud; and, sadly, Harry (1891 - 1967) had already died a few years before Gerry found the notebook, so Gerry was never able to learn more about whatever special connection it was that Harry felt to "The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God." Perhaps it was just a personal favorite, and he enjoyed the discipline of writing it out word for word.

The Green Eye Of The Little Yellow God
There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town;
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.

He was known as "Mad Carew" by the subs at Khatmandu,
He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell;
But for all his foolish pranks, he was worshipped in the ranks,
And the Colonel's daughter smiled on him as well.

He had loved her all along, with a passion of the strong,
The fact that she loved him was plain to all.
She was nearly twenty-one and arrangements had begun
To celebrate her birthday with a ball.

He wrote to ask what present she would like from Mad Carew;
They met next day as he dismissed a squad;
And jestingly she told him then that nothing else would do
But the green eye of the little Yellow God.

On the night before the dance, Mad Carew seemed in a trance,
And they chaffed him as they puffed at their cigars:
But for once he failed to smile, and he sat alone awhile,
Then went out into the night beneath the stars.

He returned before the dawn, with his shirt and tunic torn,
And a gash across his temple dripping red;
He was patched up right away, and he slept through all the day,
And the Colonel's daughter watched beside his bed.

He woke at last and asked if they could send his tunic through;
She brought it, and he thanked her with a nod;
He bade her search the pocket saying "That's from Mad Carew,"
And she found the little green eye of the god.

She upbraided poor Carew in the way that women do,
Though both her eyes were strangely hot and wet;
But she wouldn't take the stone and Mad Carew was left alone
With the jewel that he'd chanced his life to get.

When the ball was at its height, on that still and tropic night,
She thought of him and hurried to his room;
As she crossed the barrack square she could hear the dreamy air
Of a waltz tune softly stealing thro' the gloom.

His door was open wide, with silver moonlight shining through;
The place was wet and slipp'ry where she trod;
An ugly knife lay buried in the heart of Mad Carew,
'Twas the "Vengeance of the Little Yellow God."

There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town;
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.

by J. Milton Hayes (1884 – 1940)

Speaking of green eyes, this poem reminds me of the ancient accounts of Nero looking at the world through a green gemstone.

"According to the records of Pliny the Elder, Roman Emperor Nero during gladiatorial fights looked at the arena through a concave emerald. In this way, he eliminated the glare of the sun and his nearsightedness . . . [perhaps] the first sunglasses in history. Ancient Romans valued emeralds (smaragdus) . . . [and] generally called all green beautiful stones emeralds. . . . Although ancient sources do mention Nero’s emerald, today the opinion is that Nero actually used another transparent stone with a beautiful green colour, such as olivine. . . . Thus, the word 'emerald' used by Pliny to refer to Nero’s 'eyepiece' cannot be read strictly according to our present-day criteria, but rather broadly – simply as a transparent green stone."

If you've ever watched the 1951 epic film Quo Vadis, you might have seen Nero ogling women through his emerald eyepiece. As described in the full text of the screenplay, "Nero grabs his emerald monocle, puts it up to his eye," and leers at Lygia from across the room, making crude sexist remarks to Petronius and Tigellinus. In the novel, after a split second of eye contact with Nero, Lygia is "straitened with terror" and suddenly re-possessed by a childhood fear of dragons:
" . . . it seemed to her now that all at once
the greenish eye of such a monster was gazing at her." (47 / 79)
Even as his wife, Poppea, makes a grand entrance, Nero, continues to stare at Lygia, turning his "emerald monocle around in front of his eye like a prism." Poppea is so angered that she snatches the monocle out of his hand, demanding that he look at her instead.

In retaliation, Nero tears a ruby from Poppea's neck, twirling the stone in front of his eye until its facets, kaleidoscope - style, reveal a vision of Poppea with five heads. Nero threatens to "get rid of at least four of them," and angry Poppea warns him to "watch for your own head, Nero."

In the novel, Poppea's misgivings are revealed: "Wounded vanity quivered in Poppea, alarm seized her, and various fears shot through her head":

"Perhaps Nero has not seen the girl, or, seeing her through the emerald, has not appreciated her. But what would happen should he meet such a marvel in the daytime, in sunlight?" (65 / 101)

Petronius also has his doubts. When he views the dissolute assemblage of party guests through Nero's emerald monocle. Rather than softening the view, the eerie green light heightens the harshness of their intemperance. Petronius returns the jewel to Nero, along with these poetic words of warning:
"Close your ears, Nero,
lest the words of fools hurt them.
Your world is like an emerald.
Rare and fragile."
Nero's emerald eyepiece appears throughout the story (both film & book) as a symbol of his evil vision. He peers into it to enhance his view of carnage and public torture. It enables him to focus his attention on lions and gladiators, otherwise too far for his view across the amphitheater. He takes a gleeful delight in the magnification of every sinister detail.

Quo Vadis, the movie, is based on the novel (1895 - 96) by Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846 – 1916), a saga of early Roman Christian times, standing alongside such historical fiction as Ben Hur and The Robe. The strongest connection for me, however, was the imagery of Nero's gemstone, so similar to the colored beads described by Ralph Waldo Emerson; and the windowpanes described by Gustave Flaubert, and Philippa Pearce.

In his 1844 essay "Experience," Emerson compares life to "a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus." We hold beads of experience to the light, watching them become prisms, deciding which of the many colors we feel most moved by, which bead, which color we will choose. To choose but one hue is to choose a dream, an illusion, but such is our inability to perceive experience in more than one way at a time.

Writing in France a few years later (1857), in a section sadly omitted from the final version of Madame Bovary, Flaubert pictures Emma looking out at the countryside through the variously colored window panes of a guest cottage: yellow, blue, green, red, each color altering her impression of the experience. Like Nero's emerald, through the green pane, everything appears leaden and frozen; like his ruby, through the red pane, the landscape is so frightening that Emma averts her gaze back to a clear pane of glass.

Writing a century later, British author Philippa Pearce described an incredibly similar scene, from a child's perspective, in her mystical young adult novel Tom's Midnight Garden (1958):

Tom and Hatty looked through "the coloured panes that bordered the glass panelling of the upper half [of the doorway of the greenhouse]. Through each colour of pane, you could see a different garden outside. Through the green pane, Tom saw a garden with green flowers under a green sky; even the geraniums were green-black. Through the red pane lay a garden as he might have seen it through the redness of shut eyelids. The purple glass filled the garden with thunderous shadow and with oncoming night. The yellow glass seemed to drench it in lemonade."

Which vision will it be: yellow, red, purple, green?

The Four Jewels ~ 1900
~ Topaz, Ruby, Amethyst, Emerald ~
Also of interest: The Four Seasons
[In three series: 1896, 1897, 1900]
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, February 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST ~ Summer Books: I Did It
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

As the samaras dried out:
Still Life with Book

Memento Mori

REMEMBER, OH THOU MAN
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

An important reminder for both Lent and the Ides of March,
"Memento mori" translates as "Remember you must die."

For this Fortnightly, I am recycling the following timely concepts because we are halfway through Lent and I need to remind myself. As I've said before, I remain perpetually perplexed by the inadequacy with which I have seen many elders approach their end - of - life, even though they've had a lifetime of eight decades or more leading up to it. I'm never quite sure how a bad diagnosis or a health calamity can come to anyone -- aside from the very young amongst us -- "as a total shock" or "a complete surprise" (those cliched phrases of denial). "It came out of nowhere" or "I didn't see it coming." Really? I mean, haven't we always seen it coming? -- especially once we surpass that biblical estimate of threescore years and ten.

One of the best ways to prepare, it seems to me, is read a book or two, watch some movies. The concept does not require excessive sophistication: you could start with Little Women, Old Yeller, Jesus Christ Superstar. So many characters dying all the time, right? Reading -- and contemplating what you have read -- will greatly enchance your comprehension of mortality, both your own and that of others. The following passages, each taken from a previous blogpost, serve as reminders that our days are numbered.


1. From Dust Thou Art

A a deep thought by Jack Handey
from The Lost Deep Thoughts
"Life is a constant battle
between the heart and the brain.
But guess who wins.
The skeleton."


2. Writerly

Death in the Afternoon
by Ernest Hemingway
". . . all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and . . . no true-story teller . . . would keep that from you" (from Chapter 9).

Foreword to the Second Edition of
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
"And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle -- the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: 'How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of our Final End?' "


3. One Hundred Years From Now

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
from The American Scholar [See more.]:
An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge,
August 31, 1837
"So is there no fact, no event, in our private history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean. Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and berries, and many another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend and relative, profession and party, town and country, nation and world, must also soar and sing."

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)
CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios
from A Commencement Address delivered at Stanford University,
June 12, 2005
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."


4. Life or Death Matter

"Something is going to get all of us. We will all die. Healing involves our response to this certainty -- our understanding of our place in the universe and our purpose in this life." ~ Dick Wall


5. Altering Events " . . . years of
Sleepless nights and months of uneasy
Days will be rolled into
An altering event called the
'Good old days.' And you will not
Be able to visit them even with an invitation
Since that is so you must face your presence""
~ Maya Angelou ~

6. Michael Lipsey

"There is no ego too large to fit into a standard grave."

Repeated thanks to dear Michael
for so generously allowing me to share his
artistry, witticisms, and wisdom on my blogs:
Quotidian, Fortnightly, Kitti's List

7. Duo Dickinson

from "Ash Wednesday and the Baby Boomer"
February 12, 2024
"As the death toll of our generation keeps climbing, the debate, conversation, and all other distractions from our mortality are coming to an end, our end."

[In keeping with my continued theme of Connection & Coincidence, you should also check out what my friend Duo has to say about Incidence & Coincidence]


8. Nadia Bolz - Weber

from "You're going to die: A sermon for All Saints in a time of war.
November 6, 2023 [intended for All Saints, but fits right in with Lent]
"But while the false promises of immortality through self-improvement might sell product, they do nothing for us in any real way other than to make us feel like we can avoid the most inevitable thing in the world: That you will die."


9. StoryPeople

PERFECT ENDING
I'm not sure how it's going to turn out,
except I'll die in the end, she said.
So, really, what could go wrong?


10. And a closing thought from Henri Nouwen

Did I offer peace today?
Did I bring a smile to someone's face?
Did I say words of healing?
Did I let go of my anger and resentment?
Did I forgive? Did I love?
These are the real questions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One more directive that I would add to Nouwen's list:

Did I contemplate my mortality today?

"Cold, indeed: and labor lost . . . "

Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, March 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Christmas for Cowgirls

CHRISTMASY COWBOY BOOT EARRINGS
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

"Cowgirl is an attitude, really; a pioneer spirit, a special brand of courage.
The cowgirl faces life head on, lives by her own lights, and makes no excuses.
Cowgirls take stands. They speak up. They defend the things they hold dear.
A cowgirl might be a rancher, or a barrel racer, or a bull rider, or an actress.
But she's just as likely to be a checker at the local Winn Dixie,
a full-time mother, a banker, an attorney, or an astronaut."

Dale Evans ~ 1912 - 2001

Back in the day (1965 or so), on our shelf of Christmas classics, right next to the Big Golden Christmas Book, stood the Big Golden Dale Evans Prayer Book For Children:

Many of the writers in this anthology are anonymous, but others are classic: William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alexander Pope, and Christine Rosetti -- authors a girl needs to know if she's going to get a Ph. D. in English one day. As the editor, Evans shares a few of her own small poems, not so much as a legendary poet but rather as a legendary cowgirl! Her work in the anthology also serves the worthy purpose of raising the number of female authors from a scant three to four (Elsa Ruth Nast, Sara E. Wiltse; plus charming illustrations by Eleanor Dart).

You can find a bit of pantheism in the pages there, alongside more standard verses of faith:
Where is God?
In the sun, the moon, the sky,
On the mountains, wild and high,
In the thunder, in the rain,
In the vale, he wood, the plain,
In the little birds that sing . . .

A little sparrow cannot fall
Unnoticed Lord, by Thee;
And though I am so young and small
Thou dost take care of me.
A little sparrow? Could that be true? Oh well, time enough in January to resume the skepticism that has been with me -- just like this book -- since girlhood. Hey, even young cowgirls who love the holidays get the existential blues sometimes and question the universe around them.

Cowgirl Keychain from my friend Eve.
I gave the little boot to my dad decades ago --
and now it has found its way back to Christmas tree.
In addition to stuffing your tree with mementoes and souvenirs, here are a few ways to cheer yourself up should the post - Christmas blues [or reds] come knocking:

1. Poach a previous blogpost from yourself as a shortcut. Presto! You've just made some quick progress on your holiday "to - do" list!

2. Read the novel by Tom Robbins

3. Eat some hard candy and sing along with Dolly Parton

4. Sing along with Emmylou Harris
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

She's a rounder I can tell you that
She can sing 'em all night, too
She'll raise hell about the sleep she lost
But even cowgirls get the blues

Especially cowgirls, they're the gypsy kind
And need their reins laid on 'em loose
She's lived to see the world turned upside down
Hitchin' rides out of the blues

But even cowgirls get the blues sometimes
Bound to don't know what to do sometimes
Get this feelin' like she's too far gone
The only way she's ever been

Lonely nights are out there on the road
Motel ceiling stares you down
There must be safer ways to pay your dues
But even cowgirls get the blues

Even cowgirls get the blues sometime
Bound to don't know what to do sometime
Get this feelin' like she's too far gone
The only way she's ever been

Even cowgirls get the blues sometime
Bound to don't know what to do sometime
Get this feelin' like the restless wind
The only way she's ever been

Written by & music by Rodney Crowell

5. And with John Denver
Christmas for Cowboys

Tall in the saddle, we spend Christmas Day
Driving the cattle over snow covered plains
All of the good gifts given today
Ours is the sky and the wide open range

Back in the cities, they have different ways
Football and eggnog and Christmas parades
I'll take my blanket, I'll take the reins
It's Christmas for cowboys and wide open plains

A campfire for warmth as we stop for the night
The stars overhead are Christmas tree lights
The wind sings a hymn as we bow down to pray
It's Christmas for cowboys, wide open plains

It's tall in the saddle, we spend Christmas Day
Driving the cattle over snow covered plains
So many gifts have been opened today
Ours is the sky and the wide open range
It's Christmas for cowboys and wide open plains

Written by Steve Weisberg

These songs always lift my spirits, as do the inspiring lives of Dale Evans and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. So, saddle up, and enjoy all the good gifts from seas, plains, and wide open skies! Channel your inner cowboy or cowgirl, live by your own light, stand for what you hold dear, and have a Happy New Year, despite the odds!

Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, January 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com