Life, Love, Beauty, Poetry and Mortality

Summer hols, day two.

PD James, Death in Holy Orders (Seal Books, 2001)—getting close to whodunit being revealed and, in the meantime, this, when among the effects of an elderly spinster who has just died, Emma finds evidence of a youthful engagement and a fiance killed in the war:

And wasn't this the stuff of nearly all the world's poetry, the transitoriness of life and love and beauty, the knowledge that time's winged chariot had knives in its wheels? (p612)

Knives in its wheels. Strong image. Intimations of mortality.

Isn't that what the Biblical poetry in the Psalms, Proverbs and the Song of Songs are also about? There is joy, confidence, hope and the promise of immortality, but in the meantime those knives are spinning.

They were spinning for Moses, Aaron and Miriam in my St James Devotional Guide lectionary reading in Numbers this morning on the deck. A lovely, heartfelt prayer from Moses for Miriam:

O God, please heal her—please. (Num 12:13)

A good prayer for all the victims of those knives.

Easter Monday Reading: a Buechner Memoir—"Telling Secrets"

Reading Buechner for the first time. Telling Secrets: a Memoir (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991)—a delicious writer—just as they say. Almost uncomfortably honest when he writes of his own life. Hard things. But these gems, too:

on Preaching

to proclaim a Mystery before which, before whom, even our most exalted ideas turn to straw. It is also to proclaim this Mystery with a passion that ideas alone have little to do with. It is to try to put the Gospel into words not the way you would compose an essay but the way you would write a poem or a love letter—putting your heart into it, your own excitement, most of all your own life. It is to speak words you hope may, by grace, be bearers not simply of new understanding but of new life both for the ones you are speaking to and also for you. 61

Reminiscent of Wesley's "come and watch me burn."

on Pluralism

On the atmosphere he found while teaching a course on preaching at Harvard Divinity School:

The danger of pluralism is that it becomes factionalism, and that if factions grind their separate axes too vociferously, something mutual, precious, and human is in danger of being drowned out and lost. 64

… not to mention a sense of humour.

Buechner's Harvard experiences remind of my seminary days. I remember the feminists even protesting the Senior Stick's (ie, student president) ceremonial object of office, a walking stick, as being too phallic. The pluralism which presently reigns in the Anglican church has resulted in the kind of factionalism Buechner describes.

an Anglican Quest

Interesting that while teaching at Wheaton College Buechner found his ideal church in an Anglican one: St Barnabas—which he called an "evangelical high Episcopal church." When his teaching was done and he left Wheaton, he spent the years, at least up to 1991 when he wrote Telling Secrets, in a vain search for one like it.

That's the thing about Anglican. Even with it's present challenges, when you experience it at its best, it spoils you for any other kind of worship.

Keith Richards, "Life," Heaven, Hell, Rock and Roll

I read a lot of "holy" books. This isn't one of them. It is matter-of-fact account of a world of sex, drugs and rock and roll told by one of its iconic practitioners. Vulgar, is a word that comes to mind, but "honest" is another one. Richards makes no attempt to paint himself in rosey tones.

I admire Richards' guitar playing. There's a spareness and punch to it which few can match. I was fascinated to read about his now trademark custom five string guitars tuned to an open G chord.

Richards is married to Patti, who he tells us, comes from a devout Lutheran family. He describes some discussions with his Christian brothers in law and shares this fascinating take on heaven and hell:

I've never found heaven, for example, a particularly interesting place to go. In fact, I take the view that God, in his infinite wisdom, didn't bother to spring for two joints—heaven and hell. They're the same place, but heaven is when you get everything you want and you meet Mummy and Daddy and your best friends and you all have a hug and kiss and play your harps. Hell is the same place—no fire and brimstone—but they just all pass by and don't see you. There's nothing, no recognition. You're waving, "It's me, your father," but you're invisible. You're on a cloud, you've got your harp, but you can't play with nobody because they don't see you. That's hell. 

Not exactly scriptural, but I've heard scriptural people describe hell in ways that are not all that different.

Richards and Jagger are not far off with their portrait of Satan, either:

   Please allow me to introduce myself
   I'm a man of wealth and taste
   I've been around for a long, long year
   Stole many a man's soul and faith
   And I was round when Jesus Christ
   Had his moment of doubt and pain
   Made damn sure that Pilate
   Washed his hands and sealed his fate


   Pleased to meet you
   Hope you guess my name
   But what's puzzling you
   Is the nature of my game

Pretty close to the truth.

My dear family enabled me to see and hear The Stones live in Regina a few years ago. I blogged my thoughts on the experience here.

Stephen Fry in America, Witchcraft and in Defence of Christianity

Reading Stephen Fry's, Stephen Fry in America (Harper Collins). Witty, urbane, funny and this in defence of the "Official Witch of Massachesetts" who lives and runs an occult shop in Salem.  In response to her telling him that Christians have gone from persecuting witches to scorning them and calling them superstitious, Fry writes:

To me, all religions are equally nonsensical and the idea that Christians, with their particular invisible friends, virgin births, immaculate conceptions and bread turning into flesh, could have the cheek to mock people like Laurie for being "superstitious" is appalling humbug. p34

I agree that burning, mocking, or reviling, anyone is appalling humbug and not the way of Jesus. If that's true, however, I find it interesting that Stephen seems to think it's okay for atheists to mock Christians because of our "particular invisible friends," etc. Hmmm.

Atheism doesn't make sense to me. I cannot believe that creation with all its wonder, interconnected complexity and mystery (including the wonderful humour and imagination of people like Stephen Fry) is the result of nothing but random something-or-others.

Stephen Fry also writes a blog, to which I subscribe in Google Reader, on technoid gadgetry among many other things. Always a good read: here.

The Last Battle and the Last of the Chronicles of Narnia

Finished The Last Battle and The Chronicles of Narnia. Wonderful, as everybody else in the whole world seems to know already.

The Calormene and Ape effort to erode the uniqueness of Aslan is intriguing:

Tash is only another name for Aslan. All that old idea of us being right and the Calormenes wrong is silly. We know better now. The Calormenes use different words but we all mean the same thing. Tash and Aslan are only different names for you know Who." p 38

I am reminded of today's universalist efforts to make all religions equally true saying that we all believe in the same God. Later the Cat wants to "clarify" things with Calormene Rishda Tarkaan about this. He says:

"I just wanted to know exactly what we both meant today about Aslan meaning no more than Tash." "Doubtless, most sagacious of cats,' says the other [Rishda], "you have perceived my meaning." "You mean," says Ginger, "that there's no such person as either." "All who are enlightened know that," said the Tarkaan. p89-90

Which is exactly where such universalist relativism ends up, in my opinion. There are even some Anglican bishops and clergy who teach something perilously close to that. Lewis is very perceptive.

I was also fascinated by the door that you can walk all the way around and which goes nowhere, unless you open it and walk through (p160). Isn't that the thing about Jesus? We can walk all around him, describe him, analyze him, admire him, but unless we actually open the door he represents and unlocked for us, we go nowhere.

And then the final paragraph:

the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before." p210-211

Things that make the harps come.

Reading the Chronicles makes me glad that Jesus is good, but not tame. It makes me look forward even more to meeting Jesus himself face to face one day.

The Silver Chair

Finished The Silver Chair. Delightful. I like the bit where the Witch, Lady of the Green Kirtle, Queen of the Underland, tries with her magic to convince Jill, Eustace, Prince Rilian and Puddleglum that there are no such things as an Overland, Narnia, the sky, the sun or Aslan. To which Puddleglum responds:

Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies making a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. 

Me, too. The Mountain of Aslan sounds pretty good to me.

If people like the Queen of the Underland and Richard Dawkins are right, when we die—nothing, oblivion—and I could have lived to please myself, instead I "wasted" some me time worshipping God and blessing a few other people. If they are wrong? Heaven or hell. We're all betting our lives on which belief system is true.

A Movie, A Book and Summer Holidays

The Movie

We just watched Lost in Austen, a delightfully whimsical remix of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. More good British drama. No language. Marriage is promoted (although not always for the right reasons). No gratuitous sex (although Amanda Price, the twenty-first century character, confesses to D'arcy that she lived with her boy friend for a year—which got her precisely nowhere).


The Book

I'm on to The Silver Chair, number seven in The Chronicles of Narnia. I love the way Lewis has Aslan confront and even allow the characters to suffer for their selfish failures while loving them.


The Summer Holidays

…are coming to an end for another year. A week early. Not to worry.

Anne Rice: In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian

I was sad to hear about novelist, Anne Rice's, repudiation of organized Christianity on her FaceBook page: "In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian," she wrote there. She doesn't like the way much of the Christian church is "against" things like homosexuality and abortion. I'm sad because I've read, enjoyed and been moved by what she's written about Jesus and his church since she re-embraced Roman Catholicism (see my previous posts here, here, here and here).

I think she and others who believe one can be Christian without Christ's church are wrong. That's where Jesus is to be found; in the midst of his wonderful, awkward, hot, cold, willful, often unkind, community of followers; the church. The difficulty of that is the key to true Christian spiritual formation. It is not easy. It never was and never will be in this life. To say we follow Jesus without living it out within his worshipping, maddening community, is like marrying someone and then having nothing further to do with him or her. Like marriage, church life is a marvellous mixture of joys, sorrows, conflicts, disappointments and challenges.

It seems that instead of Scripture and the teaching of the Church, Rice's own intellect and sense of propriety are now (again?) her highest authority.

Mark Driscoll has done a guest piece on it all over at The Washington Post.

Anne Rice is in a season that many, if not all, Christians experience: the great joy of coming to personally embrace the love, forgiveness, and new life that Jesus offers is then followed by the troubles and trials of learning the teachings of the Bible and living with fellow Christians. Truthfully, both are difficult.

All here.

That Golden Goodness: Reading The Chronicles of Narnia

Imagine not getting around to reading The Chronicles of Narnia until you're sixty three! That would be me. A summer holiday project which has turned out to be a delight. I find Lewis very English, whimsical and funny. The language and the humour resonates with the BBC radio comedy shows with which I grew up. For example, on Digory's Uncle Andrew and Aunt Letty's house in The Magician's Nephew:

It was one of those houses that get very quiet and dull in the afternoon and always seem to smell of mutton. (Scholastic, 1955), p91

Mutton.

That Golden Goodness: thoughts about Aslan and Jesus

I find the sense of Jesus in Aslan very moving. Also in The Magician's Nephew:

Both the children were looking up into the Lion's face as he spoke these words. And all at once (they never knew exactly how it happened) the face seemed to be a sea of tossing gold in which they were floating, and such a sweetness and power rolled about them and over them and entered them that they felt they had never really been happy or wise or good, or even alive and awake." p194

"That golden goodness" (p194) must be what the presence of Jesus is like. There is another wonderful sense of that in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump on its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some beautiful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realise that it is the beginning of summer. (Scholastic, 1950), p68 

I, too, felt something jump inside as I read of him (and as Aslan roared in the movie). I can understand exactly why Peter wanted to build something to preserve the "golden goodness" of the Transfiguration. We all want to preserve such experiences; to keep Jesus handy in case we need him; but, as Lewis so perceptively writes, also in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

He'll be coming and going,…one day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down—and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a TAME lion. p182

Jesus: Good but not Safe

We domesticate the wildness out of Jesus at our peril, methinks. The Anglican politically correct movement wants him meek and mild; tame. Lewis is right about King Jesus when he writes of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

…he isn't safe, but he's good. p80

Finding the Wardrobe Again: Getting Back to Narnia

Not only that, there's a temptation in ministry to try and find "secret," the "key," the "method" which will cause everything to click into place for things to take off. So we read how others seem to have done it and we are tempted to try and reproduce whatever it is. It's like we're all trying to find that wardrobe portal so we can get back to Narnia. But, again in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

don't go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don't TRY to get there at all. It'll happen when you're not looking for it. p188

Rather like my golf game. When I've hit a good shot, I don't know what I did and I can't repeat it at will. I just have to relax and keep swinging and every now and then it happens.

Kathleen Norris on Repetition and Perfunctory Behaviour in Marriage and Church-going

More from her Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer’s Life (Riverhead Books, 2008):

And what of the “dead times” in a marriage, when the romance has faded, and “happily ever after” seems a cruel sham? The rock musician Lou Reed once said that repetition was “fantastic,” because it was “anti-glop.” His is an aesthetic concern for shunning the mushy and mawkish by employing repetitive sound, yet the insight might apply to marriage as well. For repetition resists the glop of sentiment, and also tests the spirit. It is easy to fall in love over a meal in a restaurant, where someone else does the cooking and the cleaning up; it is hard to tolerate, much less love, the person who shares our kitchen, bath and bed. How does repetition turn relationships stale and lifeless, so that a once beloved face becomes an object of scorn? What is it about repetitive acts that makes us feel that we are wasting our time? Although it is easy to dismiss our daily routines as trivial, these are not trivial questions, any more than sloth is mere laziness without spiritual consequence. p186

…a recent study that monitored the daily habits of couples in order to determine what produced good and stable marriages revealed that only one activity made a consistent difference, and that was the embracing of one’s spouse at the beginning and end of each day. Most surprising to Paul Bosch, who wrote an article about the study, was that “it didn't seem to matter whether or not in that moment the partners were fully engaged or even sincere! Just a perfunctory peck on the cheek was enough to make a difference in the quality of the relationship.” Bosch comments wisely, that this “should not surprise churchgoers. Whatever you do repeatedly has the power to shape you, has the power to make you over into a different person—even if you’re not totally ‘engaged’ in every minute.”

So there. So much for control, or even consciousness. Let’s hear it for insincere, hurried kisses, and prayers made with a yawn. I may be dwelling on the fact that my feet hurt, or nursing some petty slight. As for the words that I am dutifully saying — “Love you” or “Dear God”—I might as well be speaking in tongues, and maybe I am. And maybe that does not matter, for it is all working toward the good, despite myself and my most cherished intentions. Every day and every night, whether I “get it” or not, these “meaningless” words and actions signify more than I know. pp187-188

Kathleen Norris on the Power of Scripture

Have just finished Kathleen Norris' Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer’s Life (Riverhead Books, 2008). It is up to her usual impressive standard. Here's something that caught my eye about the power of Scripture:

Perhaps the most radical aspect of the psychology of the desert monastics is the extent to which they believed that Scripture itself had the power to heal. In The Word in the Desert, his study of how thoroughly the early monks integrated Scripture into their lives, Douglas Burton-Christie notes that they regarded these “sacred texts [as] inherently powerful, a source of holiness, with a capacity to transform their lives.” 141

Anne Rice, "Called Out of Darkness: a Spiritual Confession"

Enjoyed very much reading Anne Rice, Called Out of Darkness: a Spiritual Confession (2008). It’s a fascinating account of how she got from vampires to Jesus. This from a woman who was until 1998 and for some thirty eight years, an atheist secular humanist.

On Doctrine

In sum, I am a conservative when it comes to doctrine because this is what I see! This is what I have found in the texts. This is what makes sense to my mind. The novelist in me has found this complex web of truth and meaning in these books when, frankly, I did not expect to find anything so powerful at all. 222

On the canon of Scripture

To accept the canon means to accept all of the canon. And that means there will be no easy resolution ever, and that learning to live with this tension, in love, is what we must do.

This may come across as simplistic. It is not simplistic. It is life changing and endlessly difficult, and the steadfast determination to love is threatened at every moment. We walk a tightrope over a pit of grasping demons when we insist upon love. And sometimes we walk alone. 226-227

On the Point

She had discovered that the point of the faith is to love. Jesus first and then everyone, without exception.

Rich.

Christ the Lord: the Road to Cana and Swordplay

Christ the Lord: the Road to Cana

Still enjoying the afterglow of Anne Rice’, Christ the Lord: the Road to Cana. I feel like, through her, the Lord gave me some idea of what might have been going on in his head in those early days as he struggled to comprehend and accept the reality of who he really was. I loved him as I read it. I was brought to tears as John baptized him in the Jordan. Rice’s imaginative take on the wedding at Cana and how Jesus came to be there is brilliant. Wonderful.

Kingdom Swordplay

Camping in Psalm 18 this week with A Guide to Prayer. It’s the “by my God I can leap over a wall” psalm. “He trains my hands for war (v32),” writes David. “I pursued my enemies and overtook them (v37)…I thrust them through, so that they were not able to rise; they fell under my feet (v38).” I can’t imagine thrusting someone through with a sword. David’s world was also one in which what he was called to do exposed him to the risk of being thrust through himself. It’s foreign to me except in some sort of allegorical, “spiritual warfare” kind of way, not to mention being seriously incorrect politically.

Still, it is God’s upright and true Word of Life.

Jesus has something to say about swords:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. (Mt 10.34)

and

But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. (Lk 22.36)

But on the other hand,

Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. (Mt 26.52)

What Are My Hands Trained For?

How does one apply that to life and ministry in twenty-first century Medicine Hat? What have You—do You—train my hands for? Who, or what, must I (figuratively, I presume, I hope!) pursue, overtake and thrust through so they are unable to rise and will fall beneath my feet?

Wow! Anne Rice, CHRIST THE LORD: the Road to Cana!!!!

She describes the process in her Note from the Author:

I have reached into my heart and prayed for my love of the Lord and my faith in Him to infuse and inform the portrait offered here. I cannot write a word for Him to think or speak that is not rooted in my deepest devotion and belief.

The Lord appears to have answered her prayer.

I wanted to draw as close as I could to Jesus and His family and His followers, yet maintain complete orthodoxy at the same time. This is what I feel strongly called to do.

And do, she did.

These novels, whatever their faults, have been written for Him.

They have been written for Him and for any and all who seek Him, and seek to meditate on the mystery of the Incarnation. And if these books do not bring you closer to Him, then you are urged, please, to put them aside.

Anne Rice has helped me to love Jesus more, especially in this book. As she drew close to Jesus and His family she drew me with her. I was brought closer to Him by her inspired imagination and prose. Amazing.

Anne Rice, "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt": an Act of Literary Worship

I've just finished reading Anne Rice's, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. A lovely read in which she tells the story of some of Jesus' childhood, from the return to Nazareth from Egypt to his remaining in the temple when his family made their Passover visit when he was twelve years old. She tells the story in the first person, as Jesus. Fascinating.

In the Author's Note at the end she describes her return to Christian faith after many years away. She also describes her research for the novel during which I was delighted to find she is an NT Wright fan:

one of the most brilliant writers I've ever read, and his generosity in embracing the skeptics and commenting on their arguments is an inspiration. His faith is immense, and his knowledge vast. p318

Rice's research involved much reading of those skeptical about Jesus until:

I became disillusioned with the skeptics and with the flimsy evidence for their conclusions, I realized something about my book.

It was this. The challenge was to write about the Jesus of the Gospels, of course!

Anybody could write about a liberal Jesus, a married Jesus, a gay Jesus, a Jesus who was a rebel. The "Quest for the Historical Jesus" had become a joke because of all the many definitions it had ascribed to Jesus.

The true challenge was to take the Jesus of the Gospels, the Gospels which were becoming ever more coherent to me, the Gospels which appealed to me as elegant first-person witness, dictated to scribes no doubt, but definitely early, the Gospels produced before Jerusalem fell—to take the Jesus of the Gospels, and try to get inside him and imagine what he felt. p319-320

Which is exactly what she's done. An act of literary worship, in fact. It'll be going in the StB library.

McGrath, "Christianity's Dangerous Idea" and the Future of Protestant Denominations (like Anglican)

More Alister McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: the Protestant Revolution—a history from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first (HarperOne, 2007)…from page 404 on the future of the Protestant denomination (which includes us Anglicans):

This often strong sense of belonging and commitment to the local congregation is rarely extended to the denomination as a whole, which is likely to be viewed as an inefficient and redundant bureaucracy that makes serious financial demands of local congregations while giving little in return.

A fourth factor that has been identified as of significance by sociologists with a particular interest in Protestant denominations is the rise of “lay liberalism,” which erases the clear boundaries separating believers from unbelievers. Where evangelicalism emphasizes the distinctiveness of Christianity, this pragmatic, laid-back lay liberalism feels able to renegotiate Christian moral and theological principles in the light of prevailing social norms. This has led to an erosion of the boundary between “church” and “world”—but also between Protestant denominations. Without clear “faith boundaries,” identification with any particular form of Protestantism—indeed, even with Christianity itself—becomes socially meaningless.

What Do Driveling Little Doodles Have To Do With Christianity's Dangerous Idea?

Reading Alister McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: the Protestant Revolution—a history from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first (HarperOne, 2007)…from the public library, yet! Very good. Some bits that caught my eye:

Other nations might have been tempted to experiment with atheism or agnosticism in response to the religious intolerance and bigotry of the Puritan era. The English, however, decided to reinstate the Church of England instead, presumably believing that, for all intents and purposes, this amounted to more or less the same thing.

The same thing as atheism or agnosticism, that is. Hmmm. Does history repeat itself? He goes on:

Under Charles II, who reigned from 1660 to 1685, a decidedly docile form of Anglicanism emerged as the religion of the English establishment. The Church of England would be expected to be submissive to the expectations of the people and to keep its religious beliefs to itself rather than impose them on others. 142

Is there still the tendency to docile submissiveness to the spirit of the age and to keeping its beliefs to itself? I think so, alas. I do it myself.

On early protestantism in America

Whereas Massachusetts became a hotbed of Protestant religious experimentation, with generally secondary interests in commerce, southern colonies from Delaware to Georgia were primarily concerned with trade and saw religion as peripheral to this enterprise. It was an ideal context for Anglicanism to take root and flourish, primarily as the religion of the planting class. Long used to issues of social class and distinction, Anglicanism proved an ideal provider of a veneer of religious dignity to the social structures of the plantations that continued to the dawn of the nineteenth century. 154

Allowing our religion to be peripheral to our lives is still a hazard for Christians. So it devising a form of Anglicanism which merely provides a veneer of religious dignity to living and consuming like everyone else.

The problem with nineteenth century pastors

Who were seen by some as little more than “thin, vapid, affected, driveling little doodles.” 369

Ahem. I AM not thin.

The Great Karoo by Fred Stenson

It feels good to be able write that I've just finished a novel written by a friend of mine. It's not the finishing that feels good, mind, it's that it's written by a friend.

Fred and I toiled for a time at ACCESS in Calgary while it was still more educational than network or broadcast; a sort of poor-man's National Film Board. That was back in the early 80's. He wrote them, I produced and directed them, we suffered and rationalized our way out of the resulting post-mortems and critiques together.

The Great Karoo is a remarkable achievement. I really don't see my friend, Fred, in it. It's like it comes out of a life and experiences I didn't know Fred has had. Mind you, it's been more than twenty years since we worked together so I've missed a lot.

The horses in Karoo constitute characters in the book. I cared about Dunny and Blue almost as much as the people. I am impressed by Fred's knowledge of horses. I've never seen him on or even near one, yet he seems to know how they work. Mind you, I'm so ignorant of them (they're way too high, in my opinion) that he could write anything and I'd accept it, I suppose.

Fred has a lovely turn of phrase which I very much enjoy and to which I look forward when I embark on a Stenson read. An example, from Fred's The Trade, he writes of a landscape which had been baked to a "thirsty tan." I can see that and feel it. I experience it every summer in Medicine Hat. Lovely.

Here are my favourites from Karoo:

When the sun dunked in the crags, the blackened cliffs split into rough knuckled fists whose beating had strewn a boulder field below. (p65)

Prose with a granite chin.

In one scene he described how disturbing the African night wild life sounds were:

It was all just the animal world moving and calling to itself, but it was hard not to feel it was meant for you. (p70)

And this:

Thousands of wagon wheels climbed out of the cups they'd pressed into the ground overnight. (p437)

How did that wonderful image come? Has Fred actually watched that happen, or is it the fevered imagination of the novelist?

Finally:

Jeff believed he could make the war do tricks but finally couldn't even get it to kill him. (p480)

Rich. My friend Fred, the novelist. Good job.

The Great Karoo is published by Doubleday Canada.

Christie Blatchford's "Fifteen Days: Tales of Strength and Honour"

I've just finished Christie Blatchford's Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army. I was much moved; occasionally to tears. She tells the stories behind the terse announcements and ramp ceremonies we see on the news. I was particularly impressed by a couple of things:

Women in Combat

I have to confess I've never really understood why women want to be combat soldiers. I guess I'm old fashioned (hopelessly patriarchal some might say). In my murky masculine way I've attributed it to some mis-directed feminist point-making. Blatchford's chapter on Nichola Goddard gave me some insight into that.

Nichola adopted a motto for herself which says much about what she thought she was doing: Strength and Honour. It was a Roman legion's motto in ages past and comes most recently from the movie, Gladiator. Interestingly, the only intact reference Blatchford could find is Proverbs 31.25 which is part of an ode to a capable wife: "Strength and honour are her clothing." (KJV)

So Nichola (and the other women in uniform I read about in the book) are not so much about making political gender statements as they are good, healthy, well thought out, sacrificial patriotic values.

I admire them.

Compassion, Heroism and Serving Others

I guess I've missed that on the news. I was much moved by the sheer heroism of the folk Blatchford describes. I am impressed by their commitment to helping the people of Afghanistan. I was touched to read of how, when they got home, the soldiers went out of their way to bless the families of those who had been killed.

Two stories stick with me in particular. Both have to do with Lieutenant-Colonels; Omar Lavoie, who because of the quality of his relationship with the people he commanded, was invited to walk the daughter of his recently killed RSM down the aisle at her wedding. The other, Ian Hope, who went out of his way to be the one to remove the torn body of one of his young soldiers from the G-Wagon in which he had been killed.

Strength and honour, indeed.

Language

One wee issue: for some reason Blatchford seems to have a need to out-cuss the soldiers (she says so herself ). I find myself wondering whether her use of the sixth letter word is a tad gratuitous. Puzzling that such a good writer should find it necessary to convey what is obviously deep emotion in such a vulgar way. Shock and awe, perhaps?

A Lovely Description of the Bible

I'm reading Adam Nicolson, God's Secretaries: the making of the King James Bible. I love this sentence on the Bible:

It was the word of God, an enormous, direct, vastly complicated, infinitely interpretable account of what God meant by and for his creation. 122

Sums it up pretty well.

And to think those secretaries were essentially Anglican. Hadn't thought of that before.