Blogger’s Note: The whole idea behind these “Second Third” posts can be found here.
In my Second Third, I will not procrastinate my Christmas shopping, the Thorp Christmas Letter, none of it. I’ll begin the day after Thanksgiving, and be wrapped by the Immaculate Conception. I’ll have time to blog, and help with the baking, and brew a good holiday beer.
Starting next year. Letter’s coming.
Just finished reading Madeleine L’Engle’s book Walking on Water, on being a Christian and an artist. (She doesn’t talk so much about “Christian artists,” because the phrase suggests something about both the art and the artist that may not be true; some overtly Christian works are poor art, and some great “Christian” works have been produced by nominal Christians or non-Christians.)
This book was recommended by a former colleague and friend of mine, Cerdo — he of Squad 19 and Harley-Davidson fame, and true to his word, it’s solid. L’Engle’s not afraid to believe and proclaim the hard parts of more “orthodox” or traditional Christianity — the Annunciation, the Incarnation, Transfiguration, Resurrection … sin and the devil … angels and redemption. She sees the artists role (whether writer, composer, sculptor, painter, or actor) as “incarnational” — much like Mary. Whatever the medium, we are called to be co-creators with God; the artist who is true to his or her vocation says yes to work — the gift — God has given to make Him present in the world. Sometimes the work is hard, and it’s easy to be led astray; to choose not to serve, and use the gift to destructive ends. (The book is 30 years old now, but she speaks frequently and well about the problem of pornography, as though she saw this online epidemic coming.)
L’Engle’s use of the “title story,” of Peter stepping off the boat to walk toward Christ on top of the waves, beautifully to illustrate how a deep and almost childlike faith lies at the root of creative work, of following inspiration where it leads. She describes Peter’s (and our) situation more like we’ve forgotten how. It’s not that Peter was doing the impossible and sank when he lost faith, but instead, that he was doing what we are all meant (and able) to do — walking with God — and sank when he “remembered” that he didn’t know how to walk with God.
Deep down, we all know. I’m realizing that these cement shoes are my own handiwork.
I used to post links to the right of this blog, under the header “Friends and Good People.” Some of the links were to other blogs; some, to business Web sites or organizations run by family and friends, past and present. I took most of them down after a couple of them turned up broken, and a blog or two hadn’t been updated in long months, and one site featured objectionable (to me) content a single click from my page.
Recently, however, I’ve begun to follow a few new blogs fairly regularly, and I find I am often delighted by the writing and/or the subject matter. So I’m adding them under A Few Favorites, at the right, and featuring them here today:
I’m struck by the diversity of people and perspectives we can come to love in this life. The people behind my favorite blogs would never cross paths unless I invited them all to a chili feed some crisp autumn evening and didn’t explain who else was coming. I’ve disagreed with each of them myself at different times, sometimes vehemently. But I love ’em just the same. Hope you might, too.
It’s trivial, but I can’t help it. It bugs me when people who want to draw out a word for emphasis arbitrarily type a string of consonants at the end instead of a string of vowels in the middle. For example, one might reasonably shout, “Yessss!” but certainly not, “That dude was fasttttt.” Way cool = “cooool,” not “coollllll.”
I realize this poses a problem with short vowel sounds in a word like hot: “hooooot” may look like something an owl says, but I would argue that “hottttttt” is certainly not better, based on the amount of spitting required to render it audible. And how can you expect people to believe that “me n my girls r gonna have funnnnnnnnn tonite” when string of nnnnns reads like a soft snore?
I propose no rules other than to make what you type accurately reflect the sounds you would expect someone to make when they say it. Perhaps, “It is ho-o-ot outside!” Or better still, “It’s scorching!”
I like Zen poetry. I don’t really know what that phrase means for sure—Zen poetry—but I totally dig haiku, and have thoroughly enjoyed Korean Zen poet Ko Un‘s Flowers of a Moment in fits and starts since I found it on the Bargain Books rack at the U bookstore.
My rhythmic rhyming friend Jinglebob would not call this poetry. It’s form is formlessness, I suppose. Spacing, punctuation, subject matter—unpredictable. The poet finds unexpected hints of universal truths and shared emotion in mundane occurrences and natural surroundings. Beauty in simplicity—a sentence or turn of phrase set apart from its surroundings to make you see in a new way.
Gibberish you say? My “review” or this “poetry”?
I wonder what makes Ko Un a poet. Is anything lost in the translation from Korean to English? Or is it like a photographer acquaintance of mine, who, when I asked why he was considered a pro when both of us shoot dozens of photos to get one perfect shot, said something like, “The difference is, I know when I’ve got it.”
Whereas I generally had to wait until the prints came back to know if the film contained anything worthwhile…
Perhaps that’s the difference: perhaps the poet knows before he shares his poetry which words, which images will resonate, and throws the rest away. Whereas I’m just guessing.
Archangel Stomp 