Nielsen’s Nook

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter. [1]

These lines of Eliot give me pause to ponder. Many changes have come in life and many that I have longed for have eluded me. A hardened unbelieving retirement age man told me one time that he did not have any regrets towards the end of his life. What sort of devil can so numb our souls that we become indifferent to the sense of loss and regret that grows up around us, great weeds in our aging garden?

I watch my little girl play in the sprinklers, make mud volcanoes, and sprinkle music power on me. Flashes of the once-before short like a fused bulb across my weathered memory. Ah, when time was free and naivety had thrown its blissful cloak across the mud puddle.

There was something tranquil about the moment. It wasn’t important that we were in our back yard. It wasn’t important that we were together on a Saturday or otherwise. The warming peace that comes, even now while writing, is that of simple communion, just being together. Contentment, I think, is the obscene key to unlocking love.

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning. [2]

I’m 34 and I’ve got regrets. Places I should have gone. Things I should have studied. Holes that I can’t seem to circumscribe. And yet, if I understand Eliot here, the exploration is not sailing away from our regrets, but moving through them.

For me, I am sure that I will never mature past the Cross, where in Jesus’ perfect sacrifice, God passes over and forgives all for which I have regret. The Eucharist is a cross-shaped celebration of life in Jesus, where all the holes are circumscribed. It is a time when I confess my sins, taste the goodness of God, and hear the Gospel of grace proclaimed over me in thought, word, and deed. In the stillness there is a reposed reminder that I am aboard a Great Ship that continues moving Christward as it has for millennia. In dying I am raised, indeed my end is my beginning.

[1] Eliot, T.S. East Coker, V.190-201.

[2] Eliot, T.S. East Coker, V.202-209.

I saw a tremendous movie last night that I wanted to put on your radar if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s a story about two boys, friendship, family, courage, forgiveness, and living in the bentness of life.

I have seen the New York Times Bestselling book around but given my general pessimism to literature and film today, I never bothered to find out more. 

Kite Runner’s historical setting was interesting to me on two fronts. First, it incorporated a look into the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, where most of the story takes place. Aside from having an affinity for things Russian, I found the reality presented how war of any kind radically changes people. Second, the Afghan and Islamic culture in which the story is told is rich and fascinating to one who knows very little about either.

The story is extremely well told. That is unequivocally rare these days. The use of symbols like the kite and the pomegranate are powerful. The use of parallelism and perhaps even some sort of chiasm were masterful. Kite Runner shares the same media as movies but has elevated itself to that of film. In terms of awards and recognition, it was nominated for nothing compared to what it should have been. But that’s the world we live in. This movie will move you. It is not intended for mere entertainment.

In reading Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad makes a comment on life that I found quite insightful if not profound in light of the Christian belief of Jesus, the bread of life, who became flesh to dwell among us.

Life is a thing of form. It has its plastic shape and a definite intellectual aspect. The most idealistic conceptions of love and forbearance must be clothed in flesh as it were before they can be made understandable.[1]

[1] Joseph Conrad. Under Western Eyes. Everyman’s Library. (London: Random Century Group, 1991), 132.

“There must be a wonderful soothing power in mere words since so many men have used them for self-communion.” [1]

[1] Joseph Conrad. Under Western Eyes. Everyman’s Library. (London: Random Century Group, 1991), 3.

Whether I kneel or stand or sit in prayer
I am not caught in time nor held in space,
But, thrust beyond this posture, I am where
Time and eternity are face to face;
Infinity and space meet in this place
Where crossbar and upright hold the One
In agony and in all Love’s embrace.
The power in helplessness which was begun
When all the brilliance of the flaming sun
Contained itself in the small confines of a child
Now comes to me in this strange action done
In mystery. Break time, break space, O wild
And lovely power. Break me: thus am I dead,
Am resurrected now in wine and bread.
Madeleine L’Engle
as found in the book A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation

HT: Mike & Rachel Vendsel

The Chicago Sun Times reported that J. K. Rowling might consider extending the Harry Potter series beyond Deathly Hallows.

While traveling back to Thulcandra, Ransom reflects:

He could not feel that they were an island of life journeying through an abyss of death. He felt almost the opposite — that life was waiting outside the little iron egg-shell in which they rode, ready at any moment to break in, and that, if it killed them, it would kill them by excess of its vitality.¹

It is said that the theologians of the Anglican church are often their poets and literary personae. Lewis certainly hands us weighty allusion to Christology here.

¹ Lewis, C. S. Out of the Silent Planet. (New York: Scribner, 1938), 145.

Suddenly the lights of the Universe seemed to be turned down. As if some demon had rubbed the heaven’s face with a dirty sponge, the splendour in which they had loved for so long blenched to a pallid, cheerless and pitiable grey. … Things do not always happen as man would expect. The moment of his arrival in an unknown world found Ransom wholly absorbed in a philosophical speculation.

In Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet there are many passages of gusto that evoke such lucid imagery. As Ransom (the protagonist) finds himself imprisoned, approaching the planet of Malacandra, Lewis tells us of Ransom’s perception that I wanted to pass on here.

^[1] C. S. Lewis. Out of the Silent Planet. (NewYork: Scribner 2003), 41.

“How does one get 25 hours out of a day?” Kuril, a Dallas native, asked himself.

“With gas prices soaring,” he thought further, “and the convenience of living by a Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) rail station, it would be wise to become a public transport patron.”

Something about the word patron made Kuril smirk. And in the midst of the mundane a most pleasant thought swam swiftly thought his mind. “It is a sort of luxury to read so much more than I would otherwise. In fact, I read the entire 30 minute commute each way. My 24 hour day just became 24+1.”

Awe fell upon him: there were no mornings here, no evenings, and no night — nothing but the changeless noon which had filled for centuries beyond history so many millions of cubic miles. ¹

“DART is a far cry from a spherical spaceship racing towards Malacandra,” Kuril whispered outloud. “Nevertheless, I hop on the train and find myself there and many other places.”

^[1] C. S. Lewis. Out of the Silent Planet. (NewYork: Scribner 2003), 31.