Note to Self: What Worked with 7th Graders Can Work For You

My seventh grade English students started every class period the same way: Drop Everything And Read (D.E.A.R.). Chat subsided, and everyone settled into a book. After ten minutes of quiet, feeding on someone else's work, they had to Drop Reading And Write (D.R.A.W.). The coaching I did as I wandered the classroom all applies now to me, as I have the rest of my life to read and write.

• Set aside time, place, and materials. Make start and end times consistent. Place electronic media out of reach, out of sight, out of earshot.
• Until you've written a lot, don't type. Use a pen with a notepad or composition book to write, doodle, draw, diagram. Never erase; never tear a page out; only add alternatives.
• Keep a bank of topics at the back of your notepad: things, people, and places that cause you wonder -- in the sense both of thinking them wonderful and of wondering something about them. Give each item a different area on the page; cluster items that relate; use arrows to connect the clusters.
• Write down opposites and exceptions: the most interesting part is always what happens after "but."
• Think in sets: not one poem / story / essay / vignette but a set of two or three relating to the same subject. Advice from my composition teacher Dr. James Sclater (11/2015).
• When it's time (8:30), quit, and don't come back to work on that piece again until the next day. After breakfast, walk the dog, ride your bike, and save the rest of the day for revisions, answering emails, reading. (Advice from prodigiously productive composer Philip Glass (04/2015).
• [See Photo] Set bird seed and peanuts out on the deck so that you can focus on your work; Brandy will focus on squirrels beyond the doggy door.
• If all you write is a list, that's still writing.

Treasuring "The Giver Quartet"

During my last seven years in the classroom, The Giver by Lois Lowry was the novel I saved for May, as dessert. Seventh graders didn't need my help to become fascinated by the novel's community where everything -- family life, climate, gene pool -- is regulated to ensure comfort, to minimize stressful choices, and to moderate feelings with meds and therapy. Lowry's young protagonist Jonas is satisfied with this setup until, at age 12, he enters the library of "The Receiver of Memories" where he vicariously experiences snow, sunshine, love, loss -- highs and lows of personal life and world history that his community has purposefully forgotten. Jonas resolves to remind them.

In journals this year, my students wrote how they couldn't wait to read the next chapter and how this was the first book to make them weep. But after they read The Giver's ambiguous ending, they all wanted more. Now, with Son, the story begun in The Giver comes full-circle.

Between The Giver (published 1993) and Son (2020), Lowry widened that circle considerably with Gathering Blue (2000) and Messenger (2004). These novels comprising The Giver Quartet introduce young characters with compelling challenges in communities "elsewhere," far from the one in The Giver. Different as the communities are, they complement each other in significant ways.

The GiverI reflected on What The Giver Gives Us (05/2014) after I taught the book for the first time.

Gathering Blue The mother's death on the first page of Gathering Blue leaves the daughter Kira with few options. A world away from the gray antiseptic community of Jonas with all its regulations, Kira lives in squalor among hunter-gatherers whose only rules seem to be survival of the fittest and beware the beasts in the forest who killed her father. Lame from birth and orphaned now, Kira can expect no sympathy from her community. Scavengers take over her home and threaten her life.

But rising above the quasi-medieval village is a municipal building that survives from a cataclysm ages before. There, the ruling tribunal takes interest in Kira's gift for weaving. She admits that she doesn't understand how she makes designs that her mother never taught her; her fingers seem to move on their own accord. The tribunal commissions her to repair a ceremonial robe to be worn at the community's annual "gathering." The copious robe's elaborate woven designs depict a cycle of war and renewal that includes an episode of skyscrapers toppled by flame from the sky. (I immediately checked the date: Gathering Blue precedes 9/11 by a year).

With servants, electricity, hot baths, and Thomas the wood-carver for a friend, Kira lives like a princess, but not happily ever after. Lowry raises questions that keep us reading with increasing dread. Who in the palace is singing and sobbing in the night? When the repairs are done, what do the elders expect Kira to make from a large portion of the robe that remains blank? About the old woman in the forest who teaches Kira to make every color of dye -- lacking only blue -- how can the crone say there are no beasts? At the gathering, when the community's revered Singer wears that robe and chants the long history of the people, what is the scraping metallic sound that Kira hears? Of all the questions, that's the one that drove me crazy with wonder, especially when I read at the end of chapter twenty, "Suddenly, Kira realized with horror what the sound was." But Lowry keeps us in suspense.

Kira's guide through the forest is a filthy but chipper young boy named Matty, accompanied always by his crooked-tail dog Branch, devoted to the boy who rescued him. When Matty goes to a distant village for the blue dye that Kira needs, he brings back a surprise that turns Kira's story upside-down. Then, like Jonas, she knows that she must act to bring about change in her community.

Messenger

Orphaned at the end of Gathering Blue, Matty is adopted by a blind man in that distant village, a community that welcomes newcomers who have been rejected elsewhere for their differences or disabilities. But there's discontent among a growing number of villagers, customers of an outsider they call Trademaster. Some of them have put forth a proposal for a referendum on closing the community. Matty's formerly kind-hearted neighbors rise to say

We need all the fish for ourselves.
Our school is not big enough to teach their children, too; only our own.
They can't even speak right. We can't understand them. (72)

Before long, they're building a wall. Matty now has an urgent mission to bring Kira from the village of his birth to his adoptive village before they close it off. But the forest is no longer the welcoming place he has traversed many times before: the forest has "thickened," becoming a manifestation of the malevolence that has taken over the village.

Like Jonas and Kira, Matty also has a gift, but I can't say more without spoiling surprises that sometimes hurt, sometimes delight. Of the latter kind, there's a new dog named "Frolic" and a frog whose re-appearance gives hope during an intensely grim scene.

Son Son tells of Claire, a mother who will stop at nothing to reunite with a son taken from her at birth. At the start, she's only fourteen, living among the cloistered teenaged "birth mothers" in the community of Jonas where the series began. Like mares on a stud farm, they're surgically inseminated and kept happy and healthy while they carry babies to term. When Claire's baby has to be cut out of her womb, she's judged defective and unceremoniously expelled. Assigned to a menial position in a factory where she doesn't fit in, she develops an obsession about the little "product" removed from her that she never held or even saw, having been restrained and blindfolded.

For its first part, Son is a kind of detective story as Claire follows leads to find out the sex of the baby, then his location, then his name. By stealth, she bonds with her son during a time when the family of Jonas is fostering the toddler. When Jonas takes the boy away, as described in the final chapters of The Giver, Claire sets off in pursuit.

In the second part, we're in a different kind of novel, a sort of medieval romance for damaged people. Her quest takes her by boat to a remote sea-side village at the foot of an immense cliff. She settles awhile, helper to an elder woman. Amnesia is involved. When Claire recovers, she resolves to climb the rock face of that looming cliff, her best way to find Gabe. With no "gift" of the kinds that help Jonas, Kira, and Matty to their goals, Claire succeeds by grit and muscle, trained by Einar, a young man deeply scarred by his father's abuse and maimed by his own climb up the mountain face -- or, rather, by what happened after he successfully reached his goal.

Einar has trouble giving love or receiving it, but he's the heart of an anti-romance at the core of this book. One cold night, frustrated by how he has trained her "relentlessly," Claire realizes "his gaze was also that of someone who loved her" (176). Thinking of a young couple in the village, Claire "thought sadly of Einar, alone in his hillside hut, and knew that a part of life was passing both of them by." Einar puts years of effort into preparing Claire for the ordeal of her climb and for leaving him. Claire, like Einar, pays a terrible price for success, ensuring that she will see Gabe, but only from afar.

Gabe, all this while, has longed for the mother he dimly remembers. In the final portion of the novel, he confronts a malevolent entity for the life of Claire. Again, there are meaningful surprises that I must not spoil.

The Quartet I've written about the characters I love in the series because I want to remember them. Jonas, Kira, Matty, Claire, Einar, and Gabe all reach a point when they realize that their view of their world is incomplete. They also find strength within themselves to bring their communities to wholeness.

So the communities of these novels are characters too, each one in denial of a part of themselves. We can imagine that each separate community has made its own defensive response to the all-but-forgotten cataclysm that fractured the world. So Jonas's community elevated reason, forgot the stories of the past with all their passions and violence, but suppressed the feelings that make life worth living. Kira's community elevates strength and relegates artists to a golden cage. Matty's village, where empathy and respect are on full display, is blind-sided when jealousy, lust, greed, and resentment, long suppressed, rise to the surface. Gabe faces the embodiment of those feelings in the final chapters of Son.

I feel resonance between these stories and my experience. Like Jonas and Claire in their village, I miss depth between internet and errands and diversions. Like Matty, I was blind-sided by January 6, though we've seen that side of us growing at least since the Oklahoma City Bombing. The recent flap over what we teach in history class has exposed just how little history we've learned in schools for generations.

In the years since the first book in 1993, Lowry has leaned more and more into a kind of mystical vision. The Giver transfers memory to Jonas through touch. Kira's fingers weave scenes from far away, as if she's clairvoyant. Matty's hands bring healing. Gabe has a gift he calls "veering," suddenly inhabiting another's consciousness. While these all appear magical, they can also be seen as speeded-up versions of literacy, imagination, care, and empathy, traits all within the grasp of the reader.

There's even a real-world framework for examples of the magic we see in the Quartet in the theories of 20th century psychologist Karl Jung. He posits a "collective unconscious" of memories, accounting for the recurrence of stories and symbols in mythologies and even in personal dreams across the globe, across history. One of those universal stories is a journey that requires a hero's pain and sacrifice to attain what's missing. In this collective unconscious, there is a drive towards a reconciliation of our selves -- communities as well as individuals -- with the shadow sides that we suppress.

Lowry's characters could be seen as tapping into that collective unconscious on their own heroes' journeys to bring wholeness to their communities. The final confrontation in Son comes close to being an allegorical struggle with the community's collective shadow side. While Lowry may not have had Jung in mind, his vision is compatible with hers.

Always on the lookout for religion, I was struck by how little it matters in these books. In Gathering Blue, villagers bow to an ancient cross without any knowledge of what it might have once meant. In Son, an ancient book fascinates Gabe with many images of a mother and infant son, i.e. Mary and Jesus. "The Trademaster" trades what the villagers desire for what they most prize about themselves, i.e., surrendering their souls. In Christian tradition, Jesus trades his own life to redeem humanity from captivity to "the master of this world," i.e., Satan. Something like that happens in these books, but the link to Christian tradition is not explicit, and, as Jung would point out, the pattern is found in the myths of other cultures.

I lay The Giver Quartet aside, knowing that, now retired, I won't be revisiting Jonas and his world again anytime soon, if ever. Few novels have ever taken me to such "unspeakably sad" moments as these, nor rewarded me with more hopeful visions of what's possible with courage and imagination.

History Hysteria: Nothing New

Bless Sam Sanders, host of the NPR program It's Been a Minute for bringing on a guest who could give us a long view on the uproar over Critical Race Theory. Sam often gives voice to feelings that many of his listeners share (myself included), and this time it's a sickness in the pit of the stomach as he hears of disruptions to school board meetings, threats to members, and legislators resolving, in effect, to ban the teaching of historical facts that might make students feel bad.

Sam's guest Adam Laats, a professor of educational leadership at New York's Binghamton University, focuses his reasearch on cultural reactions to school reform. He taught history in middle school and high school for ten years.

[Photo: Sam Sanders (left), Adam Laats]

Sam wanted to know, has this happened before? If so, has it ever been this bad? And is it unprecedented that it's erupted so quickly in school districts and state legislatures all across the nation?

Dr. Laats gave examples from 1930s, 50s, and 70s to show that, yes, parents have called for the banning of books for drawing attention to inequities in American history; yes, they've burned books and even bombed school buildings (1974, West Virginia); and, no, there's lots of precedent for national media and Washington politicians whipping up coast-to-coast hysteria over local school affairs. Laats's own article on the current CRT "panic," written with Gillian Frank for Slate, concludes that each of these eruptions has succeeded in the short term by removing the curriculum in question, and in the long-term by discouraging teachers from asking questions that might stir up another hornets' nest.

Adam Laats's own website includes a page called My Two Cents where he curates links to his articles and media appearances. Judging his books by their covers -- risky, I know -- I'd say that Laats is finding ways to bridge gaps between fundamentalists and teachers who encourage critical thinking about science and history.

So my blood pressure is down again. Thanks Dr. Laats and Dr. Sanders.

Of Related Interest

• To open up critical inquiry for 8th grade history students, I designed a year around four questions derived from the Pledge of Allegiance: How true is it to say that America is, or ever was, one nation? under God? indivisible? with liberty and justice for all? We studied primary sources and reached no simple answers. See details at Teach History with the Pledge of Allegiance (07/2017).
• "We've been here before" is the somewhat comforting message of Jon Meacham's The Soul of America, a survey of US history composed in 2017 to answer the popular perception that America had never been so divided. See my reflection 07/2018.
• I've thanked Sam Sanders another time for his friendly inquiry into a fraught subject. See Trans Eye for a Bible Guy

Episcopal Wisdom on Death, Trinity, and Church Architecture

In the past few weeks, we've had some memorable insights presented during sermons by our two clergymen at St. James Episcopal Church, Marietta.

[Photo: Jesus Asleep in the Boat, painted by Jules Joseph Meynier, 1826-1903]

Father Roger Allen drew our close attention to the theme of death in the readings for today's service. After pointing out myriad ways that our culture both distances us from death and shows morbid fascination with death in entertainments and news media, Fr. Roger drew highlights from the texts.

A reading from the apocryphal book The Wisdom of Solomon tells us "God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living" for "he created all things that they might exist, and the generative forces of the world are wholesome" (Wisdom 1.13-14). The creator made us "in the image of his own eternity" and only those who belong to "the party" of "the devil" experience it (Wisdom 2:23-24).

Bringing out the details of the story of Jesus raising Jairus's daughter (Mark 5, especially v.41-43), Fr. Roger paused to acknowledge the continuing pain of parents in our congregation whose children have died.

He remarked how rare it is now for congregants to walk through the parish cemetery to enter the church, and how that used to be a meaningful arrangement.

He also shared the epitaph of a feisty woman who in 1847 pushed for the founding of the worship center where he went on retreat this past week. Her headstone tells us her name, her dates, and the words, "Demure at last." When we laughed, Fr. Roger told us that it's good for us to laugh at death.

He also pushed us to our own catechism for an answer to the question "Why do Episcopalians pray for the dead?" The elegantly phrased answer is both psychologically sensitive and scripturally sound:

We pray for them, because we still hold them in our love, and because we trust that in God's presence those who have chosen to serve him will grow in his love, until they see him as he is. (Book of Common Prayer 862)

Though I've not read that before, it strikes me as coming close to the essence of what makes the Episcopal Church so appealing to me from all the other approaches to faith that I've encountered.

Remarkably, COVID never came up.

Plus Some Memorable Bits from Sermons in June Our associate rector Fr. Daron Vroon had a little fun with us on Trinity Sunday by turning upside down the Christians' assumption that the Trinity is something we came to understand only after Pentecost. He gave a quick run-down of numerous places in the Hebrew Scriptures such "the spirit over the waters" in Creation, the burning bush, the human presence who met with Moses in the tabernacle "like a friend." The trinitarian understanding of God was already bubbling up in the Hebrew faith long before Jesus.

Then last week, Fr. Daron looked at the story of the apostles' during a storm at sea waking Jesus up in the hold of the boat. Without seeing the story as "just" metaphor, he helped us to see metaphor in the story. The boat, he said, is a common symbol of salvation (as the sea was a symbol of chaos and death). Then he gestured to the walls of our church: That's why the room where we take in teachings and the sacraments, called "the nave," related to navy, is laid out long and narrow like a ship.

Starry Power: Van Gogh Immersion in Atlanta

Rock star Vincent Van Gogh has come to Atlanta. Fans packed Pullman Yards studio on Thursday afternoon last week for Van Gogh: the Immersive Experience, all of us feeling like we know the artist well. We can name his greatest hits Sunflowers, Starry Night, Café, the self-portrait with bandaged ear. Even aside from his iconic works, Vincent's an icon, subject of film and music, star of art auctions. But my friend Susan and I came away with a much deeper appreciation for his art and for him.

The show starts as any museum exhibition might, with framed images and written explanations to give us an overview. We compare vivid reproductions of a dozen or more of Van Gogh's self-portraits, more than I knew existed. Some that surprised me showed the famously tortured artist in moods I interpreted as quiet confidence and dispassionate interest.

Nearby, a chronology filled in between the sketchy incidents we all know -- the rejections (church, art dealers, women), the brother, the asylum, the ear, the suicide. He was mostly happy, a hard-working guy, producing a painting every 36 hours: who knew? He wrote beautiful letters quoted throughout the exhibit, including this: "I think that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people." In another passage he writes, "in my great discouragement... I will go on with my drawing." One highlight in that opening hall was the physical reproduction of his private room at the asylum in Arles, alongside prints of Van Gogh's four versions of that room.

Another highlight was a short video commentary that offered answers to the question "what makes Van Gogh unique?" One answer is his odd juxtapositions of colors, a clue that Van Gogh favored high-contrast because he had trouble distinguishing shades. More exciting for me was the analysis of Starry Night that drew attention to the silhouetted cypress tree that "pierces" both the darkness of the sleepy town and the wildness of the glorious (or delirious?) heavens, unifying the two worlds.

Entering the next room was like wading into the deep end of an Olympic-sized swimming pool where an animated slide show washed over us in waves. Each "wave" had its own theme, look, and soundscape.

Clusters of families and friends, standing or sitting on the floor or in scattered seats, watched in awe. For a few moments, we seemed to be in a Gothic cathedral at night; for a while we were in a train station, the engine two storeys tall crashing at us as steam billowed up from around our feet; contemplative music played when the influence of Japanese prints was the theme and blossoms fell like snow around us. I was surprised to be overcome with emotion when that view dissolved into an animation of a painted landscape that I recognized, wheat swaying around us, birds chasing each other, horse cart rolling past homes in the distance. Each theme included vocal commentary (too loud to be intelligible to my tender boomer ears) and projections of texts from Van Gogh's letters, each pertaining to an element of Van Gogh's approach to his work.

The cathedral images brought to mind faith, an element missing from the exhibit. When Van Gogh started his career, he was a missionary assigned to coal miners. Living among them, he shared in their poverty. After six months, the church fired him for being "too zealous" and ineffective as a preacher. His own father and uncle, both preachers, rejected him. Van Gogh never returned to the church that rejected him, but he has always seemed to me to express faith through his art. While he avoided overtly religious subjects, he dignified the lives of the poor, gloried in the beauty of creation, and, with roiling skies and glowing stars he suggested life beyond our earth-bound existence. (Teresa Watanabe, LA Times religion writer, concurs. See A Divine View of Vincent Van Gogh., Jan. 23, 1999)

We skipped over the arts-and-crafts room for the Virtual Reality tour of Arles. I was skeptical, but this was the greatest delight of the tour. Seated in a revolving chair, my head ensconced in a VR helmet, I floated from Van Gogh's famous room down the stairs and out into the streets of Arles. These were computer-generated images, but three-dimensional, lifelike, and animated. Look down and you see the cobblestones; look right or left and see fields or trees; look up for clouds; look behind you to see the rise of the hill you're descending. Presumably following a street plan from Arles during the time of Van Gogh's residence, we appreciate the cozy proximity of different sites familiar from his paintings -- the fields, the boarding house, the cypress tree, the pier, the café.

But the magic happened whenever empty frames appeared ahead of us. For a moment, we see a scene as Van Gogh would have done: two field hands napping in the straw, or patrons seated in a sidewalk cafe. Then within the frame Van Gogh's painted version of the image superimposes on the living scene, and we suddenly appreciate the value that his vision and techniques add to the natural view. Composing a slice of the landscape within a two-dimensional frame with shapes and colors starkly defined, Van Gogh intensifies a pleasant but unremarkable view into something we can love.

Pretty isn't beautiful...
Pretty is what changes.
What the eye arranges
is what is beautiful.

- Stephen Sondheim, "Beautiful"
from Sunday in the Park with George

My friend Susan and I got the "VIP" treatment at the exhibit, thanks to a retirement gift from my longtime colleague and friend Mary Ann. The gift was especially appropriate because I've displayed Van Gogh's café prominently in my classroom for decades, using it to teach students how to look beyond what we see or read in an artist's work to ask how the artist chose to present it and why they chose to do it that way. I'm grateful for the gift, for friends, and for Van Gogh.

[The subject of Van Gogh's spirituality came up in another exhibit that I visited with Susan, where we saw Van Gogh's depiction of laborers repairing a village street alongside trees that seem to be on fire. See Art Takes Us Out (06/2019)]

[My Stephen Sondheim page curates many blogposts about his work. My most recent reflection on Sunday in the Park with George is about what it says to me now that I've retired from teaching. See Children and Art: Sunday in Retirement with George (05/2021)]

Can't Sleep? Pray This

When I lie awake trying not to think how many hours of sleep I may be missing, I often wish that our Episcopal Book of Common Prayer had a few pages set aside for the hours before sunrise.  Now I've composed such a liturgy for myself.  I hope that the texts are calming in their reassurance and soporific in their familiarity, and I hope that I don't have to try it out anytime soon.

[Photo: BCP, a copy of this liturgy, and Brandy.]

Prayer During a Restless Night

 “Yours is the day, yours also the night.” Psalm 74.15

or this:  "I commune with my heart in the night; I ponder and search my mind." Psalm 77

or this: “My eyes are open in the night watches, that I may meditate on your promise.” Psalm 119.148

 

Confession of Sin   Book of Common Prayer p. 79

Most merciful God, We confess that we have sinned against you
In thought, word, and deed,
By what we have done,
And by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
Have mercy on us and forgive us,
That we may delight in your will,
And walk in your ways,
To the glory of your Name. Amen.

Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us all our sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen us in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep us in eternal life. Amen.

Invitatory and Psalter

In returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength. Isaiah 30.15

 

Psalm 16.7-11

7 I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel;* my heart teaches me, night after night.
8 I have set the Lord always before me;* because he set my right hand I shall not fall.
9 My heart, therefore, is glad, and my spirit rejoices;* my body also shall rest in hope.
10 For you will not abandon me to the grave,* nor let your holy one see the Pit.
11 You will show me that path of life;* in your presence there is fullness and joy, and in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.   

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.* As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, amen.

The Lessons.

 

A reading from 1 Samuel  3.8-10.

 And the Lord called Samuel again the third time.  And he arose and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.”  Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy.  Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant hears.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.  And the Lord came and stood forth, calling as at other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” and Samuel said, “Speak, for thy servant hears.”

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

 

Hymn 24, to be sung or said

The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended, the darkness falls at thy behest;
to thee our morning hymns ascended, thy praise shall sanctify our rest.

We thank thee that thy Church unsleeping while earth rolls onward into light,
through all the world her watch is keeping and rests not now by day or night.

As o’er each continent and island the dawn leads on another day,
the voice of prayer is never silent, nor dies the strain of praise away.

So be it, Lord; thy throne shall never, like earth’s proud empires, pass away;
thy kingdom stands, and grows for ever, till all thy creatures own thy sway. 

 (words: John Ellerton)

A reading from Matthew 6.26-27, 33-34

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?  And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to your span of life? 

But seek ye first the kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be yours as well.  Therefore be not anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for that day.

The Apostles’ Creed. Book of Common Prayer, p.96

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.  Amen.

The Prayers. Include one or more of the following prayers.

 from Compline, Book of Common Prayer p. 134.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep.  Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your love’s sake.  Amen.

For the Aged, Book of Common Prayer p. 830.

Look with mercy, O God our Father, on all whose increasing years bring them weakness, distress, or isolation.  Provide for them homes of dignity and peace; give them understanding helpers, and the willingness to accept help; and, as their strength diminishes, increase their faith and their assurance of your love.  This we ask in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

For restfulness.

Eternal Father, at sunrise you blessed Jacob who had wrestled through the night:  calm our restless minds when the Enemy turns up old regrets and disappointments, or lures us into dark speculations about our futures, that we may return our minds to you and rest with quiet confidence in your love.  Amen.

Silence my be kept, and free intercessions and thanksgivings may be offered.

The Lord’s Prayer. Book of Common Prayer, p. 97.

General Thanksgiving Book of Common Prayer, p. 836.

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love. We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for the loving care which surrounds us on every side. We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy and delight us. We thank you also for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone. Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ, for the truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying, through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom. Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know Christ and make him known; and through him, at all times and in all places, may give thanks to you in all things. Amen.

Antiphon from Compline, Book of Common Prayer p. 134.

Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.

The Song of Simeon.  Book of Common Prayer, p. 93.          

Lord, you now have set your servant free* to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,* whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations,* and the glory of your people Israel.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.* As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Repeat the Antiphon

Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.

Let us bless the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

The almighty and merciful Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless us and keep us. Amen.

 

Memories of Mamaw

Since my virtual bike tour of the USA took me to L.A. this week, I've been thinking of the last time I visited that city, opening up a literal box of memories of my paternal grandmother Harriet Radcliffe Smoot, affectionately called "Mamaw" (pronounced May - mah).

In 1988, her 90th year, she was living with her daughter in L.A. Dad invited friends and family to honor her birthday, rented a hall at Howard Johnson's, hired a caterer, and commissioned a song from me for the occasion.

[Photo: I made this collage of the LA reunion. In the lower-left hand corner, I'm at the piano singing the song with my sister Kim turning pages. I had a fever and raging sore throat at the time. My mom and dad are down there, too.]

I hadn't spent much time with Mamaw, yet -- California was so far away. But I'd read the memoir she typed at my request in 1985, and we would soon become much closer when she moved with Harriet Ann to North Carolina. In Y2K, she got some press attention in NC for having lived in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. She spent her final years in a nursing home in Atlanta, where I visited her every week.

The song I performed at the family reunion was an adaptation of one I'd written for a middle school show in the style of Jerry Herman's Broadway anthem, "Mame." There's a grand slow section and a rapid-fire, highly-rhymed patter section. I'm proud to reproduce it here, especially proud of rhymes for "the continent" and the inner rhymes for "Kansas" and "Ohio."

MAMAW
music and lyrics by W. Scott Smoot

(chorus)
Mamaw, the mother of us all,
Mamaw, nine decades to recall:
We look at all you've risen above.
Only one thing you can be sure of: We love you!

Mamaw, cheerful in times of stress,
Mamaw, Depressions don't depress:
Years fly on by and worlds come and go;
You don't grow old, but continue to grow.
So happy birthday with our love, Mamaw!

(patter)
Mamaw, your clan spans a continent
from the east to out west of the coast,
from the tropics clear up to Vermont, an ent-
ire family joins in a toast.

Folks from northern New York said they would not miss;
from Kansas your fans issue too.
From Ohio they fly over just for this,
and Delta is grateful for you!

L.A. and Reno, Nevada 'n'
San Francisco sent friends, you will find.
Look away to the la-nd of cotton,
and you'll see Georgia has you on its mind.

Folks from Florida and Mississippi,
folks from most of the west hemisphere,
all convene here tonight and undoubtedly
Howard Johnson's is glad that you're here!
(repeat chorus)

In July of 2003, I spoke at a memorial service held at my church, St. James Episcopal Church in Marietta north of Atlanta.

Mamaw never felt old until midway through her ninth decade. It's remarkable how old she lived to be. But her youth was remarkable, too -- all 95 years of it.

Born in a more courteous society than today's, she was gracious, willing to be sociable even with those who didn't return the favor. If there was nothing nice to say about someone, she kept silent. For her, the two great sins were to be anything less than civil, and not to do more than was expected of her.

She was the first child in a new generation of her family. That made her a little star at birth. [Photo: Harriet, b. 2 Feb 1898, ca. 1908]

Besides her father and grandfather, she was nurtured by a loving mother and grandmother, and four adoring aunts. Among these women were musicians, a preacher, and a tough old lady who broke an arm and kept working. So young Harriet learned that women could, and should, do anything. Her earliest memory from the age of three, was how she astonished her elders at the church singing solo, "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam." [Dad was surprised and delighted that the organist played that hymn for a prelude, thanks to a tip from our rector Karen Evans, who had visited with Mamaw.]

As the family grew, she tended her siblings and cousins. She won academic honors, and played on her community's first basketball team for girls. Being the team's smallest player, she was also the most fierce. She was elected class president for all four years of high school. She paid for her own educational expenses by playing piano for the silent films at her town's first movie theatre. The manager provided sheet music that wasn't dramatic enough for her, so, on the spot, she composed new music for every scene. In those days, it was proper only for men to be professional musicians, but she received serious offers to start a musical career [playing in Hollywood]. Instead, to help the family, she went through business school, and graduated in half the normal time. She still managed to go dancing. When she could find a competent partner, the other couples cleared the floor to watch.

From the first year that it was legal for women to vote, until 2002, she did her civic duty in every election. She followed current events with interest. This spring, seeing the build-up to another war, she observed that we fight every ten to thirty years. She added, "and that will probably continue until the countries are run by women."

In her memoir written at age eighty-five, these achievements were not what she cited when she summed up her story. Instead, she was most proud of how she and her husband Dewey persevered through serious illnesses, the great Depression, and personal setbacks, to raise three children who succeeded far beyond what strangers would have expected.

She never did retire from motherhood, always saving up interesting thoughts, voicing encouragement, trying to help her children, and their progeny.

I remember when my sister lay in a deep coma, and there was little hope of recovery. It was Mamaw's voice calling out over the telephone that woke her. As mother, grand-mother, great and great-great, Mamaw gave life to many of us here in this room -- and it was her deepest pleasure to keep giving new life and sustenance to family, neighbors, eleven generations of dogs, and anyone else fortunate enough to come into contact with her.

She will be missed.

Cycling America Virtually: Los Angeles

←← | ← || →

388 miles to LA From San Francisco April 9, I arrived at virtual LA on June 5. I'm in the Hollywood Hills taking my selfie.

Among my very earliest memories is being at the LA home of my Aunt Harriet and Uncle Bert around 1962. She liked to recall how I awoke her in the middle of the night to help me locate the bathroom. I prefer to remember our visit to Disneyland when it was new. I recall the Mad Tea Party and the Matterhorn. I may or may not have seen mermaids there. I took it all very seriously. [My reminiscence about Aunt Harriet forty-plus years later is one of my favorite blogposts (07/2018)]

Most vividly of all, I remember the city at evening. Aunt Harriet's patio seems to have looked out on an open field; the city glittered in the distance, from where the beams of searchlights shot into the dark clouds far behind me and swept above the farthest horizon.

←← | ← || → Use the arrows to follow this tour from the beginning.

Montaigne's Mountain

At the end of my first week in retirement, I've heard lots of advice. Kay said, "You won't believe how busy you'll be!" The checker at Publix said, "I guess you'll be traveling a lot?" Laura said, "You've got enough time for a whole other career! You need some projects!"

I recognize that last one to be the message behind numerous dreams I've had, all variations on one idea: I'm moving into a home that I've owned without ever having seen it before. It's somewhat like a residence I owned when I lived in Jackson, MS, a ranch house in a gully. Unprepossessing and long-neglected, it opens up for me to reveal a wonderfully wide atrium, several floors I couldn't see from the front, and a view from a rear window of a town far below: it's on a mountain cliff. While part of me is wondering how I'll pay for the repairs needed and furnishings for all these empty rooms, I'm excited by the possibilities.

That's retirement. This morning, the particulars of the dream reminded me of the Hotel Frontenac in Quebec where I once spent the night in the summer of 1986. [See photo collage]

A few months ago, looking forward to this time, I returned to a writer whose work I studied very early in my career, Michel de Montaigne. Born to successful social climbers, he retired from a life of business and civic involvement to a tower on his estate where he wrote about miscellaneous topics. While he drew on experience and writers in his library, he admitted that he himself was the true subject of his musings.

I recognize suddenly that this is what I've been doing in my blog for years. To continue this, with Montaigne as my patron, will be a good thing. Somewhere, I got the impression that Montaigne intended to "get his soul in order" before his death -- though I didn't see that line anywhere in the wonderful biography of him that I read this year.

I'll be writing more about Montaigne as I seek guidance and guidelines for the months and years to come.

Remembering Father Kirk Lee

Father Kirk Lee passed away today. Full-time financier, he was a part-time priest at St. James Episcopal Church, Marietta until 2012, when the photo was made.

An avuncular man, a bit portly but small, he had an outsize influence on me. I looked forward to his sermons. He would poke at cultural and political elephants in the room with wry humor that united us in laughter. I've blogged about two of his sermons in detail.

Ten Commandments as Ten Beatitudes (10/2008) I didn't think there was much new to say about the Ten Commandments, but Rev. Kirk Lee tried. He questioned the advisability or even possibility to "put aside" the "overlap between public and private spheres of moral and religious life." He capped his sermon with a new spin on the old "Shalt nots." Here are excerpts:

We live in a day where the very concept of some type of objective, independent morality is being questioned. ...Where are we going to find such a standard? We could depend on human feelings, as illustrated in [the] song, "how can it be wrong when it feels so right?" Or ... we could rely on majority vote. How can it be wrong if 55% of the people voted for it? Right?

The problem with these choices, Fr. Kirk said, is that feelings change, and the majority often shifts its position. "We need something or someone who stands outside of the world, outside of just being human, outside of the community, who can look in and give us direction. That someone can only be God."

To people who complain that the Ten Commandments are just too inflexible, too narrow and negative, Fr. Kirk turned the laws around to make "the ten most positive statements about life ever written":

Blessed are they who put God first.
Blessed are they who need no substitutes for God.
Blessed are they who honor God's name.
Blessed are they who honor God's day.
Blessed are they who honor their parents.
Blessed are they who value life.
Blessed are they who keep their marriage vows.
Blessed are they who respect the property of others.
Blessed are they who love the truth.
Blessed are they who learn the art of contentment.

Little Jesus at Large (12/2018) Fr. Kirk's sermon in 2006 made such an impression on me that I wrote about it years later from notes. Kirk began, "I have a hard time believing that God raises up oppressive and evil people simply as a means for showing his ultimate power." He could have been referring to Herod in the birth narrative, or to the apocalyptic readings we've had in Advent about earthquakes, persecutions, and wars to come. Kirk continues,

I do believe that ordinary people like you and me allow oppressive and evil people to rise up. We do so because we are not by nature proactive in denouncing wrongdoing. We give the oppressors and the evil ones the benefit of time to prove themselves, before we act. Usually, this is at the expense of many kind and innocent people.

Kirk wonders at how we wait until the problem gets so much worse: "Do any of us allow an infection to spread through the body by not treating it as early as possible?" His pointed message is that God shows his power through us, moving us "to right the wrong perpetrated on kind and innocent people." 

Postscript, July 18, 2021:

Friends and family gathered in the beautiful cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta to celebrate Kirk. 

Fr. Wallace Marsh IV, formerly associate rector at St. James, remembered Kirk from those days when Fr. Lee was assistant priest.  Wallace emphasized the sense of humor.  He told about a breakfast following the Rite I service where an elderly parishioner spoke to Kirk at a round table crowded with nine other parishioners: "Kirk, you are the best preacher in this church, you're handsome, you're so knowledgeable. You lack only one thing:  A good woman in your life."  Wallace said everyone at the table nearly choked, knowing the open secret that Kirk was a gay man in a longtime loving relationship with David, organist at the Cathedral.   "But Kirk gave a reply that was honest, theologically sound, and diplomatic: 'My life is absolutely wonderful.  I wouldn't change a thing.'"

The cathedral choir sand Howell's heartbreaking "Like as the Hart" and Sumsion's "Song of Simeon," along with a psalm tone by Peter Walford Davies.