Old Books

 

"Old Books"

It's a sign drawing me from afar. Calling me from miles and miles away. It's an invitation to browse shelves upon shelves, and who knows what is to be found? I proclaim, a delightful discovery of various treasures inside a building that has this sign in front of it. 

Places like this are very few and far between around here. Only in a bigger city does it exist, so a jaunt out of town adventure is required.

On a beautiful Spring day, starting off with a sweet 56 degrees and a pale blue sky, the adventure to an old bookshop begins. Coffee is picked up on the way. Traffic is heavy, but moving. I sense that everyone is heading to the beach on such a day as this. The feeling of people taking their Spring Break rises with every car that piles onto the highway. I take a different direction (per usual) - into the curious depths, meandering rooms, and cramped spaces of this old bookshop. 

Happy as a little child I am whilst browsing bookshops. I love the feeling of the unknown - that I could stumble upon a great treasure with any momentary glance. And I did. Four lovely old treasures in fact. Old books indeed. I "barter" with the owner at his invitation, who is clearly enjoying every minute of his retired life running that bookshop and talking with people all day, and I come out with a Chesterton, Coleridge, Kipling, and Oxford University Press Collection of English Verse. The newest book in my little stack is from 1932.

The wind picks up after the morning wears on, bringing a warming air highlighted by the heat of the sun. Browsing books really conjures up an appetite, so a good place to eat is the next stop. And I head out with a smile on my face and lovely books in my arms.

On Seeing Wisdom in Quiet

  

The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.

- Ecclesiastes 9.17-18

Often the most beautiful things are the quietest. They don't shout for attention. It sits there quietly, patiently, being exactly what it was meant to be. And it can often be overlooked whilst the loudest thing grabs for attention. Why is it that the wisdom of the quiet is most ignored?

I try to make a study and observation of the world, and in my quiet nature, reflect on things that others probably never notice. I value the small details, the small gestures, the meaningful moments. I regularly see in my tiny sliver of the world I can see from, that most people get caught up in the whirlwind of the most popular and or most controversial news/hype/media etc. And it easily consumes them. It pulls them toward a side and extreme feelings (because everything these days requires that you take a side immediately, and voice that loudly on social media or you are not a proper human being) all while ignoring the wisdom of the quiet. 

Am I wrong to feel a strong resistance to this? I want to go the other way and think for myself. I want to hear both side of an idea, but not blast it over social media. I want to think about the deep and meaningful things. I want to read and study to understand. I want to let the beauty of small moments hold me in a stillness of reflection without distraction.

In my striving to resist the extremes and in my nature of observing, it is a bit unnerving to see the ever-increasing reliance on technology/social media. They are fine as tools (a means) to achieve many good ends, but they have become an idol to our culture and society in so many ways. It sets the tone for looking toward these things as an end. Rather than solving something ourselves through creative thinking. Get the app, the device, expensive item, or pill that will solve your problem, and then you have even more problems you never predicted. It's a cycle that never ends and it is consuming, as it is meant to be. When can we stop being such consumers and instead be creators of beauty and goodness? When we allow anything other than God to be the source and center of hope beauty, truth, and goodness, we enter into a dangerous territory. 

So many of our own issues can be worked out through quiet and contemplation. Prayer, mediation, reflection, reading. When we pause to notice, we are able to see our issues more clearly, and have a better frame of mind to perhaps make a small (or significant) change to help solve that problem. If we dare to listen to God, we turn off our own worldly desires (if but for a brief moment). Sometimes we overlook the most simple thing, while we reach for the most costly and complex thing that loudly promises to solve our problem.

Poems for Lent

 

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Each Lent, I venture through a book of poems to help me pause each day to reflect and let the season shape itself in my soul. Usually it is Malcolm Guite's The Word in the Wilderness, which I highly recommend and use year after year. This year a new book emerged out in the world, Hearing God in Poetry, compiled and with reflections by the former bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries. I am a sucker for collections of poetry, especially the old poems from before the twentieth century. There is so much depth to explore in older poems that may seem simple, or may be quite complex in nature, but visiting with them offers an insight from the past into something we might feel today.

The form of poetry is that much more is said in a significantly smaller space. Lines often don't even reach the right margin of the page! So you often need to sit with it for a while. Let the rhyme and the meter set the pace and musicality of the reading and then read it again. Words are carefully selected in poetry, so ask yourself why the poet chose that word or phrase. What might he or she be eluding to, or wishing to evoke?

We do fairly well at remembering Easter, but the whole season of Lent is often so overlooked as time to be reflective. Poetry helps me do that. Sometimes people give things up for Lent, in an effort to remember when they miss that thing, I believe the good news of Easter cannot be fully comprehended if there is nothing preceding it. How did we get to Easter? What leads up to it? Why was it necessary? There are all kinds of questions and ponderings that we should take time to explore. 

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove.

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Bedtime or Reading Time?

 ...when, I say, these things leave us, we either sink exhausted into longings for the future, or turn back and recall visions of the far departed past.

- The Duke of Zamorna, Charlotte Brontë

I stay up late to finish the last story in this collection of early writings by Charlotte Brontë. What is it that causes me to ignore my necessary bedtime to read a good book? Why wouldn't I just close the book at the precise time I need to go to bed? Ah, it's too difficult to stop reading a good book.

This collection of stories, Tales of Angria, is from Charlotte's late teens and early twenties, when she and her siblings created an imaged world of dukes and duchesses, mystery and intrigue, drama and wars. The storytelling draws me in. It's just wonderful, not necessarily what is happening in the story, but the storytelling and characters she develops is superb. She draws on politics from her day, and characters that are modelled after those figures. This is where Charlotte is developing her skills as a writer. You, the reader, somehow find yourself liking the Duke of Zamorna, but you know he is kind of a scoundrel, modelled after the scandalous Lord Byron (who was alive in Charlotte's time). He tangles himself into webs of family drama stemming from his father-in-law, Northangerland, modelled after the Duke of Wellington, which leads to ill regard and anger, and yet the Duke shows he is brave, charming, witty, and stands up for those he loves.

The intrigue and sweeping storytelling is something I love. I am removed from the world and dropped firmly into this imagined world where Charlotte often describes the action without saying it (developing these scenes as atmospheric glimpses as if viewing a silhouette from afar), and then goes inside the feelings and thoughts of the character. A sort of glittery spotlight on a moment that freezes in time for deeper inspection.

Something in Charlotte's writing sparkles for me, lifting me outside the boundaries of this world and into a realistic fantasy (what an oxymoron!). The creative imagination is flowing freely and such delights show up through the fantastic dialogue, full of quips, quirks, wit, and plays on words. The way charm and jealous suspicion battle each other through the conversations is so fun to read. It is so outside the way you the reader would live, and you stand to the side watching the drama unfold, deciding for yourself the quality of the characters, and why they might be like that.

'I've got a head-ache, Mary." This was a lie, told to awaken sympathy and elude further cross-examination.
"Have you, Adrian? Where?"
"I think I said I had a head-ache. Of course it would not be in my great toe."
"And was that the reason you came away so soon?"
"Not exactly. I remembered I had a love-letter to write."
This was pretty near the truth. The Duchess, however, believed the lie, and disregarded the truth. The matter was so artfully managed that jest was given for earnest and earnest for jest.

Why am I drawn to good atmospheric scenes and witty dialogue? I confess I am not a fan of idle chatter and shallow talk in any aspect, and Charlotte pokes fun at such things frequently in the tales. It's a delight to me to read that. Thus, I end up staying up late to finish reading a tale and eventually the book.

As we, in our everyday reality, view the scenes of real life war and suffering destroying lives of so many, it is all too easy to get caught up in it, letting it consume us and thinking of little else. But that is like letting the battle be won before the war has even hit your land. If something is worth doing and enjoying during regular times, it's just as important to partake in times of darkness and uncertainty in the world. Indeed, it is almost in defiance of the darkness that clouds, as the pursuit of good things is never done in any "normal" circumstances. Days are never "normal".

Vita Nuova

 

As I rode out one day not long ago
by narrow roads, and heavy with the thought
of what compelled my going, I met Love
in pilgrim's rags coming the other way.

Vita Nuova (new life). Dante writes this short book of prose and poetry to share what experiences led him to a new life. This is Dante's first major work, and it is beautifully written. The parallel of Beatrice and his love for her follows the path that leads to God, and therefore the truest, deepest love that is at the centre of all things. The three characters of this book are Dante, Beatrice, and the Love that sees all outside of time and as one whole thing. Yet it is a Love that still shares tears with Dante and seeks him in the joys and sorrows. Ah, the more I read of Dante the more I am drawn to his writings and want to read more and study more.

Dante opens this book of his memory to share the story through prose and verse, telling of the catalyst that began his new life. The vita nuova. What preceded this story doesn't matter. He looks at this as the important episodes to share, leaving out anything else he sees as not significant.  

We become more familiar with his love for Beatrice, which at every level points to God. All the allusions and trinity-inspired language clearly points to this deeper source of how Dante became something new. If we feel low or in a point of darkness of grief along with Dante, Dante's recollection from his book of memory tells of the dreams/visions he has when visited by Love himself, who shares his tears and has compassion on him.

When Dante asks the Lord why he weeps, the answer he receives is - 

"I am like the centre of a circle, 
equidistant from all points on the
circumference, but you are not."

Dante is not sure what this means, so he asks why he speaks so obscurely.
The Lord replies - 

"Do not ask more than is useful to you."

More mystery in the reply and Dante is left confused in these moments. But what we learn later is the truth of God's place outside time. So, He is at the centre and can see all of everything at once, equidistant from everything at his central position. There is no time for Him - He sits above it all. So, He knows the sorrow that is to come for Dante when Beatrice dies. Yet, He reminds Dante that sometimes we aren't meant to know more than is useful to us at that moment. We are made to live inside time, yet move toward the centre all the while, closer to God, who knows all and draws us to Him.

Love, who perceived her in my memory,
had come awake within the ravaged heart
and to my signs he said, 'Go forth from here,'
whereat each one went on his grieving way.

It's beautiful writing, nourishing to a soul divided with questions and battles with reason. It lays down the pathway to discovery of the deeper recollections of the trinity and God's place in our longings. As the reader, you can follow down that path and ponder more about his use of numbers, 3 and 9, and how those are perfectly fitted to the trinity and also the medieval astrological views of the 9 spheres that move, and have relation to one another. This segues so smoothly into the main theme of The Divine Comedy where he explores this in much more detail as Love is One who moves the stars and planets, and the lyrical perfection of the heavenly spheres is the pathway leading closer to Him.

This short book sets us up for his later masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, which he even alludes to at the end of the poem saying if he is one day capable of writing about her (Beatrice) in a more worthy fashion, he hopes to write more.