We drove home last night through a small blizzard as we topped the 4000-foot pass on the Interstate. After three days at what my friend Kim calls "Dizzyland" and California Adventure with my family (parents, brother and his family, sister from Montana and her family, our family -- 16 of us in all), plus taking E to Junior Cotillion and picking up the dog from Keith's niece's place, we were tired and not ready for the snow. We crawled wearily into bed, hardly considering the white stuff outside. Fortunately, Sheri turned on our heat, so we came home to a warm home.

This morning I heard the front door opening and closing, which meant that the boys were sneaking out for snow play. We had over two inches; up on Mount Laguna was more than a foot of snow. We ended up going into the city for most of the day, and most of the snow was gone by the time we got home.

We were glad to be greeted by the snow but too tired to do much about it. Except for the boys, whose love for the white stuff is never ending.

Back to "real life" now -- no more Disneyland!

A Cool "Message"

On Friday Kitty and I (we met Judith later) had a lovely lunch after the rain storm at Con Pane in Point Loma before heading to the university for our second interview with The Writer's Symposium by the Sea. Eugene Peterson, the man who translated The Message, was interviewed by Dean Nelson. At first I thought, "How is this venerable pastor going to do in a rare televised interview?" But he actually had us laughing more than Anne Lamott did on Wednesday.

I had no idea he was so literary! He said, "Stories invite us into a world larger than ourselves." He spoke about the impact of Joyce's Ulysses on his pastoring (I have a long history with that work that I'll share some other time). He thought his congregation was boring, ordinary -- nothing like the "cool" congregations of his friends (later found out they were lying). But after reading Ulysses, a huge tome about one day in the life of the most ordinary of men, Peterson began to see through Joyce's eyes how interesting one ordinary person could be -- and this insight helped him greatly to have compassion and love for his congregation.

Peterson said that fiction writers (Christian or non-Christian) probe the depths -- they see truth and expand on it, making it real. He said that he STRONGLY believes that the first two years of seminary should be a study of the great literary classics because they can help a pastor really see human nature in a way that will greatly help them in their ministry. He talked about how pastors are the most impatient people on earth -- how hard it is for them to "wait and let the story unfold." In his books and sermons he refers to works of detective fiction, to the works of Annie Dillard, Flannery O'Connor, Dickens, James Joyce, Wendell Berry, Dostoyevsky, Anne Tyler, Frederick Beekner. He said this TWICE: "Every time a story is well-told, the Gospel is served." Pretty cool stuff!

Then Dean referred to Bono's quoting of Eugene Peterson. Peterson had no idea who Bono was at first, but after listening to U2's music, he's a great fan. Bono later invited Peterson to "hang out" with him for a few days, but Peterson was right in the middle of translating the Old Testament and had to turn him down. Dean looked incredulous and said, "But it was BONO!" Peterson immediately quipped back, "But it was Isaiah!" Definitely the funniest moment of the entire conference.

Peterson then turned to the idea of translation. He said, "The worst translations are the literal ones. Every time the Bible is translated, it becomes larger." He used a different editor for every book of the Bible. He was always thinking, "If Isaiah [or whoever] was saying this in contemporary America, how would he say it?" He said that he felt as though he was always working on the "edge of a precipice" as he translated the Bible.

He then said that "Reading itself is a kind of translation," and has written a book on how to read literature called Eat This Book. He said that he does a great deal of rereading; if a book is really meaningful, he'll start it again as soon as he's finished and read it a second and perhaps a third time. He said that we need more storytellers -- writing is a sacred calling. He even said that writers should be ordained as pastors are because writing is so integral to the life of the church. He also said that there is "too much thin soup" in most religious writing; he's rather read good secular literature than poor Christian literature, which is far too frequently the case.

William Blake, he said, capitalized the "I" in "Imagination" because he felt that imagination is the Holy Spirit at work -- it's almost the same thing as Faith. Imagination pulls us from what we see into what we can't see, just as Faith does. Peterson also spoke about the sanctifying imagination, how it concerns and expands reality. "Novelists don't make up their characters," says he, "they discover them." We need imagination, not facts.

Peterson talked some more about other topics as questions were asked of him: Revelations (loves it), Paul's letters (loved untangling and retangling his ideas), wariness of "faddish" things (like emergent church) in theology (especially as most of what he reads is over 500 years old). He doesn't like theology that makes Christianity "too easy" -- it's not. He also talked about his family -- how his mother was a storyteller, how he grew up in a blue-collar family where he was the first one to ever attend college, how he's awed by the mystery of language, epecially in children and his own grandchildren.

It was an amazing talk, one I felt blessed by. His sense of the importance of literature and the writer to the Christian life was freeing and encouraging. I wish that artists were given more of a place in the evangelical church. It seems we're only good for writing moralistic skits and weekly bulletin announcements. The place of the artist is a sacred calling, which is something God has been revealing to me over the last six months. May He use us for His glory as we create excellent work through His Holy Spirit!

Next year at the Writer's Symposium: Philip Yancey! Woo-hoo!

An Afternoon with Anne Lamott

Ah, my 100th post! This is an excellent way to celebrate it -- my notes from the interview with Anne Lamott from yesterday. I attended with dear poets Kitty and Judith, and we thoroughly enjoyed Anne's humor and truthtelling. Here are my notes:

Yesterday, I attended the Writer's Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University, in which Anne Lamott was the keynote speaker. My former creative writing prof and later office mate, Dean Nelson, interviewed Anne. Dean is a dry-wit kind of guy, and their rapport was beautiful. I thought him a little stilted with Kathleen Norris a few years ago, but he was in his element with Donald Miller last year and with Anne yesterday.

Anne walked onto the stage, her dreadlocks bound by a scarf behind her ears and wearing an aqua cardigan, a white t-shirt, and faded jeans, with black tennis shoes and purse. She talked much more about writing than about faith, a fact she made fun of. "Everyone wants me to talk about fffaaaiiiittthhh, but talking about writing is refreshing!" Dean challenged her with a comment he had overheard at a recent venue in which Anne was featured: "Anne Lamott is the only Christian writer who has ever told me the truth." She spoke about writing the truth about her own heart, her own sin, her own ungraciousness, her own family, and getting that "me, too" response from her audience. She said that she was such a bad Christian, and other "bad" Christians find the truth about losing your temper with your kid, wishing your teenager to the outer limits, getting mad about politics, very refreshing because they feel the same. She tells the truth about being a "flawed, conflicted" person, whether in her novels or in her nonfiction. Her characters are "fearfully human," and she talked about the "false starts and messes" that are part of the writing process. She says that we have too precious and short a time on earth to deal with annoying people.

It takes her two years to write a non-fiction book, and three years to write fiction. Her book coming out next month is her 11th, and it wasn't until her 6th book that she could support herself on her writing alone. She only really loves the second and third drafts of writing. She spoke about the three levels of writing, from her book Bird by Bird:
1) down draft: awful, terrible first draft writing when you get it all on the table -- like beating a dead horse for every detail. Painful to do.
2) updraft: edit a third out of first draft, play with it, shape it.
3) dental draft: crafting each "tooth" to make sure it's strong, necessary, will hold weight.

She's starting a novel in May. First of all, you must, she says, start a book on a Monday. Just like it's stupid to start a diet on a Thursday, it's ridiculous to start a book on any other day but a Monday. Each book is a complete starting over. She loves books about good and evil, like The Stand. She talked about being part of the goodness, one day at a time. She goes through the same creative process everyone does to write a book -- she hates the first draft, dealing with the blank page, and she hates the fourth draft, when she's getting sick of it. She spoke about how the accolades of speaking at PLNU, with all her fans, will last her until she's barely home tonight, and then her self-pity will kick in. Pressure of success.

She was hilarious in talking about flying. She said that ALL flights are bad, and she's exhausted every time by the sheer willpower she has to exert to keep the plane in the air. And the guilt she feels in taveling first class......

Why did she keep writing when she wasn't making enough to live on? She felt she had something to say and a voice to say it. One book was about her dad's death -- it was irreverent and real and spoke truth. From Plan B : "Laughter is carbonated holiness." The funny and the sad pass each other often within the same paragraph in her writing. It's all about truth -- telling the truth. "Stories feed us in a way that nothing else can." She wrote non-fiction to help people get their sense of humor back. Faith is being "given a little light to see by each day, someone we can walk along with." Jesus helps us to find true nourishment. In her pastor's last sermon, she was talking about how the slaves would eat what no one else would, especially the neck bones and the ham bones. They would suck and suck on those bones until they had every possible morsel of nourishment from them. That's what faith was to them -- not just an opiate but a "recipe for liberation."

She responded to a question about how her family feels about her writing so honestly about them. She thinks before she writes, "would Sam [her son] be glad I published this?" Now that he's older, she passes it by him. There was one story in the new book about her slapping him one day, and she ended up revising it several times until it passed his muster. His friends love the "Sam stories." She wrote very nicely about her mother for a long time, but had to write the truth about their relationship (rather rocky) sometime before her mother died (the story about going to the beach in Traveling Mercies, I believe). And the story hurt her mother terribly, and it took the rest of the extended family almost two years before they forgave Anne. She quipped at the end, "If people don't want you to write about them, they should behave better." She softened and said that if you can't tell the truth in non-fiction, then use fiction, changing just enough so the person isn't readily recognizable to everyone else. "Everything that has happened to you is YOURS; you own it."

At the end she talked some politics -- her parents has been "virulent liberals" but without faith, so they were just angry all the time. She struggles with anger about the war, but as she wrote in Plan B and discussed today, she wonders if Bush knows what we don't, and therefore we have been protected in ways we'll never know. She tries to see fairly, but it's hard, says she.

It was a delightful 90 minutes, and it flew all too quickly. I had a lovely time, visiting with former colleagues from the literature department and enjoying my own dear friends, both quite amazing poets, who accompanied me. I'm looking forward to Friday's lecture with Eugene Peterson, who translated The Message. Aaah, to feel like a "real" writer again!

Ash Wednesday

Today I sat in the hall at Point Loma, listening to Anne Lamott talk about, among a myriad other topics, how she loves Ash Wednesday. She read a chapter about spreading her mother's ashes with her family that was (like most of her writing) hilarious and heartwrenching within the same paragraph, but reminds her of Ash Wednesday and forgiveness and sin.

Ash Wednesday is one of my favorite Holy Days. For me, I appreciate it because it's REAL. Our sin is a real thing that we (and especially I) like to sweep under the carpet and pretend it doesn't really happen. But on Ash Wednesday, I wear the proof of my sin right on my forehead, right where I am marked with that cross of ashes that claims me as Christ's. I can't hide from my sin when it's represented smack dab on my forehead. It's almost freeing -- knowing that I am faced head-on by my sin this day especially, and I NEED Lent.

Yep, I NEED Lent. I need 40 days to pray more, meditate more, read and study the Scriptures more, and to confess my sin more. I love Lent, and especially Ash Wednesday. My sin is real, but forgiven through that same cross of Christ represented on my forehead. So tonight I headed to Victoria House to meet up with eleven other people of Alpine Anglican to be anointed with ashes and to celebrate Communion. To read Psalm 51 together, on our knees, from our hearts, was cleansing and beautiful. To be marked with the ashes, hearing "Remember O Man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return" as the ashes are marked in the form of the cross on my forehead is humbling yet freeing.

Last year I wrote up a blurb for a flyer on Ash Wednesday and Lent for our evangelical church that doesn't officially keep Lent. Pastor Steve added more to it, and took other stuff out, and I thought that overall, it was helpful for those who hadn't heard of Ash Wednesday and Lent (most of our church). Here it is:

Irenaeus (175AD - 195AD), mentions the idea of spending some time fasting in
preparation of Easter. This developed into the observance of Lent (Council
of Nicea, 325AD). Lent is the forty days (not including Sundays as they are
always days of celebrating the Resurrection) preceding Easter. The forty
days of Lent are used to parallel the forty days that Jesus spent in the
wilderness, fasting and praying, before starting His earthly ministry. "Ash
Wednesday" has been historically recognized as the day to initiate the
period of fasting and repentance known as Lent. It's called "Ash Wednesday"
because ashes were traditionally used to mark the foreheads or hands of
those who attended church on that day.

In the Old Testament, ashes are a sign of humility and repentance of sin.
(See 2 Sam. 13:19 and 15:2; Esther 4:1-3; Job 42:6, Jer. 6:26 ). Jesus
mentions repenting in sackcloth and ashes in Matthew 11:21. A mark is a sign
of ownership; in Ezekiel 9:4-6, a mark on the foreheads of the people
provided protection to those who served God. Therefore, a mark of ashes was
used to show repentance of our sins and complete ownership by God.

God calls us to do spiritual housecleaning every day. Our spiritual life is
a day by day (in fact, moment by moment) walk with our Heavenly Father.
However, this day can serve as a good reminder of the need for us to take a
spiritual inventory. Take this occasion to come quietly and reverently
before the Lord, offering your life to Him to examine. Ask Him where He
wants to work. Ask Him what He wants to change. Maybe there are some
patterns of thinking and habits that you have fallen into that need
reevaluated; maybe God is calling you to some new habits and a new manner of
investing your precious time so it can reap eternal benefits.

Set aside some time and let the Lord work in your heart. Then, as the Lord
leads, pray about not only what to do, but also, how the Lord would have you
implement the ideas into your life. An added value is for each of us to
share with one another what God is doing in our hearts. In this way, we can
develop accountability and have partners in the journey who can hold us up
in prayer.

May we all humble ourselves before our Lord and Savior during these forty days before Easter, preparing ourselves for the coming of His kingdom.

A Lenten Rule of Life

We received this in our bulletins at Alpine Anglican this week. A "Rule of Life" does not reduce our relationship with God to a set of rules; rather, these guidelines help us in our commitment to draw closer to our Lord and Saviour during this Holy time of Lent.

This checklist is for private use, Father stressed. For us to pray over and ask God for guidance regarding what He would have us to do to increase our love for and knowledge of Him. Then we are to keep them in our Bibles as reminders of our commitments.

MY LENTEN RULE OF LIFE FOR 2007

Self-examination and repentance:
Review each day using:
___ 10 Commandments (BCP p. 68-69)
___ Private Confession (BCP p. 589)
___ Sacramental confession once during Lent

Prayer
Corporate
___ I will attend every Sunday Mass in Lent
___ I will attend ___ Weekday Mass in Lent
___ I will join in the family Daily Prayers (BCP p. 587 or 589)
___ I will attend Stations of the Cross on Fridays in Lent
Private
___ I will pray the Daily Office daily (___Morning; ___Evening; ___ Both)
___ I will spend ___ minutes daily in prayer and meditation

Fasting and Self-Denial
___ I will fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday
I will abstain:
___ Eating no meat on Wednesdays and Fridays
___ Eating meat only once a day in Lent
___ No eating between meals
___ I will give up _____________ (something specific) in Lent
___ I will take on ______________ (something specific) in Lent

Almsgiving
___ I will use the Lenten Mite Box
___ I will give $____ to _________
___ I will make a special offering to ____________

Reading and Studying God's Word
___ I will read the book _________________
___ I will attend the Wednesday Lenten study
___ I will read the Bible ____ minutes per day

All this I will do, God being my helper.

Lent Is A-Comin'

Yesterday, when B was well, the two of us attended the Alpine Anglican Church of the Blessed Trinity before we went on to Lake Murray as usual. It's rare that I can attend a Sunday service with the Alpine congregation. But with Father Acker too ill to hold one Friday, I was feeling liturgy-deprived already. He was definitely feeling better, and together we bade goodbye to the "alleluias" for Lent. Father spoke a great deal about Lent, and the bulletin had a lovely checklist of ideas for a Lenten Rule of Life. As he told us, a Rule is not saying that we are downgrading our relationship to God to a bunch of rules, but that we are willing to do something extra to build our relationship to God during these forty days. There is no punishment for breaking the Rule except for our losing the opportunity to draw closer to God. Listed on the Rule sheet were ideas on self-examination/repentance, prayer, fasting/self-denial, almsgiving, and reading/studying God's Word. I am going to pray over this Rule today and tomorrow and see what God will have me do to grow closer to Him during this time of Lent.

This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. I'm hoping to be able to attend the 6:30 PM service at Victoria Chapel with Father Acker of Alpine Anglican. I love the symbolism of the ashes: death to old self, mortal death to come but eternal life in Jesus to enjoy forever! The ashes also symbolize repentance; in the Old Testament, those who were mourning and repenting of their actions (think Job, David, etc.) covered themselves with ashes as a sign of their change of heart. With the ashes in the form of the cross, we are reminded that we are marked as Christ's own forever, in this life and in the next.

I had forgotten to ask Pastor Stephen to reprint the excellent Ash Wednesday/Lenten guide we had put in the bulletin as a flyer last year. Perhaps Veneta can dig it out and we can send it out to Lake Murray via e-mail today or tomorrow.

This week, barring becoming ill with what all four kids have right now, I also will attend the Writers' Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University. Judith, Kitty, and I have signed up for Wednesday's interview with Anne Lamott, author of Traveling Mercies and Plan B among other works, and Friday's with Eugene Peterson, who translated The Message. On Wednesday, we're hoping to go to the college early so we can catch Lamott speaking in chapel. Then we want to go to lunch at a lovely cafe on Rosecrans before coming back for Lamott's interview (probably with Dean Nelson, my creative writing prof) at 2:00 PM. I'm looking forward to these talks as an excellent way to begin this Lenten time of especial concentration on God.

Roses Are Red...

Keith gave me two rose bushes for Valentine's Day -- one very red climber, "Blaze," and a pinkish-red simgle-blossom, "Watermelon Ice."

He helped me plant them today. He dug the holes; I planted the bare root bushes. Then after I had filled the little circles I had made around the bushes, they sunk too low and Keith had to replant them a little higher up when I ran out of steam.

I also planted some violet-pink tulips, some pale pink stocks, and three Madrid lavenders. I am DONE for -- that was much more work than I usually do in the garden at one time.

He also bought a peach tree which we'll try to plant tomorrow. I'll try to get some pictures soon -- even if I have to use Keith's ponderous Nikon -- and less than two weeks until my birthday when I will hopefully get my own digital camera.

Gardening....

Today when stopping by the local Rite Aid, where in the past I have sworn NEVER to purchase plants for the garden, I spied my favorite plant: lavender. After placing three plants into a nearby cart, I then saw some blue pansies -- ah, must have those. Then tulips in four-inch pots? And my favorite annuals -- stocks in a pale pink?

I got half of them planted today, plus several rose bushes trimmed back. I'm hoping to finish cutting back the roses tomorrow as well as planting the lavender and tulips along with my new Valentine rose bushes from my sweet husband. Keith needs to pull out several rogue oak trees that have taken residence in my back bed, and then we can plant. My flower garden has been a source of sadness for me since they were destroyed last fall, so slowly recreating them is hard but joyful work. I just have to be careful not to do too much at once or I'll be laid up afterwards. I will try to post some pics soon of my lovely new plants; our Santa Ana this weekend after the heavy rains earlier this week make tomorrow (Saturday) a perfect gardening day.

The Discipline of Darkness

This selection, from February 14 of My Utmost for His Highest, has spoken to me more than once. I have read portions of it in several books before actually reding it in the context of this daily devotional; it seems to me to be perhaps the most profound statement Oswald Chambers makes in this collection.

At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God's hand until we learn to hear Him. ... watch where God puts you into darkness, and when you are there, keep your mouth shut.

Later he states:

...darkness is the time to listen. When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else when you get into the light.

The whole idea of listening in the darkness reminds me strongly of St. John of the Cross (died in 1591; co-founder of the Discalced Carmelites with St. Teresa of Avila)and his idea of the "Dark Night of the Soul" - a time of testing and refining when God robs us of pleasure in our relationship with Him, testing us to make certain that we are worshiping Him not for ourselves. but totally and completely for His sake. We are to go through this "Dark Night" on faith, learning to trust God for the joy of worship, the peace of prayer, to return when we are transformed more into His image. St. John of the Cross reminds us that not everyone goes through this "Dark Night," but it is reserved for those who are especially devoted to God. (A great excerpt of St. John of the Cross can be found in Richard Foster's Devotional Classics.)

Oswald tells us to use this time of darkness to learn to listen. St. John of the Cross tells us to use darkness as a time for faithbuilding and trusting in God when we get NOTHING out of our private devotions for ourselves. Darkness is a time for us to be more conformed into the image of Christ; it is not easy, but it IS a blessing. One definitely "in disguise."

St. Valentine's Day

My dear husband gave me what I love most for St. Valentine's Day: ROSES.

But these are not the kind that will fade away in less than a week. These are teh real deal -- Jacson and Perkin's roses for our garden. "Blaze," a gorgeous red climber, and "Watermelon Ice," a blush single bush. I look forward to the roses I will enjoy this summer. How lovely!

The whole beginning of this celebration of love was a martyrdom. Back in the year 269 A.D., a young Roman priest refused to worship the emperor. On February 14, this priest, Valentine, was martyred for the faith. This much is acknowledged as historical fact.

The legendary portion of the story states that Valentine had befriended the jailer's daughter. On the day he died, he left a letter for her, signed "From your Valentine." There started the idea of giving love notes and "Valentines."

I find inspiration in St. Valentine's story -- in his love for God and concern for others. May God's love envelop us all, as He is our first Love and eternal "Valentine."