Thursday, July 09, 2009
Back after forever
I haven't been online much, and haven't signed on to this blog in ages. Nonetheless, I'm still here, lol!
In the interim, I've been living an interesting life (kinda like that Chinese curse, "May you have an interesting life."). I've had a decade-long friendship go up in flames, but I do not mourn it. The end of that "friendship" opened doors for me that I never knew were closed, and I am now surrounded by a lot of very good friends. C'est la vie, no?
My kids have been a handful of late, and I've shed way more tears than I ever wanted to shed. I've been tried and tested, and I'm sorry to say that I mostly just give in. I don't know if my fibromyalgia-ridden, depressed self can muster the strength anymore, and so I don't even try. They win, I lose. Again, c'est la vie...
My writing career moves on apace! This is the one bright light, sometimes. I'm in the midst of agent-hunting, and have submitted my novel to five agents so far. Three have rejected me, but...c'est la vie :)
In the interim, I've been living an interesting life (kinda like that Chinese curse, "May you have an interesting life."). I've had a decade-long friendship go up in flames, but I do not mourn it. The end of that "friendship" opened doors for me that I never knew were closed, and I am now surrounded by a lot of very good friends. C'est la vie, no?
My kids have been a handful of late, and I've shed way more tears than I ever wanted to shed. I've been tried and tested, and I'm sorry to say that I mostly just give in. I don't know if my fibromyalgia-ridden, depressed self can muster the strength anymore, and so I don't even try. They win, I lose. Again, c'est la vie...
My writing career moves on apace! This is the one bright light, sometimes. I'm in the midst of agent-hunting, and have submitted my novel to five agents so far. Three have rejected me, but...c'est la vie :)
Friday, August 22, 2008
The Culture of Death
Okay, so a new rant from me for the first time in yonks. I just received my eldest daughter's senior year yearbook from Pomona High School, Arvada CO. I am at the moment shaking as I write this post. The yearbook, cover to cover, bears a font which would be perfect on a slasher-flick poster. It's a Halloween font, with every single letter dripping black blood. Every page, every header, and to cap it off every single child's name in the baby picture section. MY child's name, right there above her angelic smiling toddler face, dripping black blood.
This is the result of a generation of children raised with time-outs. This is the result of a teenaged yearbook staff allowed to run the entire process without adult supervision. This is the result of a generation of kids being raised in what has been described as a culture of death.
Names above baby pictures, dripping blood.
The kind of thing people like Michael Schiavo, and nearly the entire nation of Denmark and the state of Oregon, might just approve of.
Traumatized, shocked, appalled. And thinking quite seriously of litigation.
My daughter's senior memories, dripping black blood.
This is the result of a generation of children raised with time-outs. This is the result of a teenaged yearbook staff allowed to run the entire process without adult supervision. This is the result of a generation of kids being raised in what has been described as a culture of death.
Names above baby pictures, dripping blood.
The kind of thing people like Michael Schiavo, and nearly the entire nation of Denmark and the state of Oregon, might just approve of.
Traumatized, shocked, appalled. And thinking quite seriously of litigation.
My daughter's senior memories, dripping black blood.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Oh you have GOT to be kidding
This from Reuters: "BEIJING (Reuters) - China urged the United States to understand the true nature of the Dalai Lama clique, which it blames for stirring up last month's violence in Tibet, and support China's "just position," state media said on Thursday." The entire article is from this link and is also pasted below in its entirety because things tend to disappear off of Yahoo after astonishingly short periods of time. All credit given to Reuters, of course. As a woman who loves Tibet, who adores the gentle and peaceful and utterly amazing Dalai Lama, this just makes me sick.
Article:
China urges U.S. to see "true nature" of Dalai Lama
Wed Apr 2, 11:21 PM ET
China urged the United States to understand the true nature of the Dalai Lama clique, which it blames for stirring up last month's violence in Tibet, and support China's "just position," state media said on Thursday.
China blames Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, whom it labels a separatist, for stirring up the Lhasa violence in which it says 19 people died. The Tibet government-in-exile says around 140 people died.
Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi "explained the truth of the Lhasa riots, and expounded the stance of the Chinese government" in talks with visiting U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the China Daily said.
"He stressed that the measures taken by the Chinese government according to law had not only gained support from the Chinese people, but also won understanding and support from majority of the countries in the world."
U.S. President George W. Bush awarded the Dalai Lama one of the highest U.S. honors, the Congressional Gold Medal, in October and called on China to open talks with him.
Paulson met President Hu Jintao, Vice Premier Wang Qishan and Yang, among other officials. He is due to meet Premier Wen Jiabao on Thursday.
Paulson declined to say whether he had raised the issue of Chinese treatment of Tibetan protesters directly with Hu.
"I talked about this in an appropriate way. I'm not talking about what message I had for any particular leader," Paulson told reporters, but added he had expressed U.S. regret at the violence.
Chinese leaders accuse the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the wave of demonstrations from his home in exile in India, where he has lived since a failed 1959 uprising against Communist rule.
China says his intent is to disrupt the Beijing Olympics, which run from August 8-24, and to ultimately win independence for the remote, mountain region.
The Dalai Lama's representatives deny the charges and the 72-year-old has repeated that he is seeking greater autonomy for Tibet, not independence.
(Reporting by Nick Macfie and Glenn Somerville; Editing by Valerie Lee)
Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Article:
China urges U.S. to see "true nature" of Dalai Lama
Wed Apr 2, 11:21 PM ET
China urged the United States to understand the true nature of the Dalai Lama clique, which it blames for stirring up last month's violence in Tibet, and support China's "just position," state media said on Thursday.
China blames Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, whom it labels a separatist, for stirring up the Lhasa violence in which it says 19 people died. The Tibet government-in-exile says around 140 people died.
Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi "explained the truth of the Lhasa riots, and expounded the stance of the Chinese government" in talks with visiting U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the China Daily said.
"He stressed that the measures taken by the Chinese government according to law had not only gained support from the Chinese people, but also won understanding and support from majority of the countries in the world."
U.S. President George W. Bush awarded the Dalai Lama one of the highest U.S. honors, the Congressional Gold Medal, in October and called on China to open talks with him.
Paulson met President Hu Jintao, Vice Premier Wang Qishan and Yang, among other officials. He is due to meet Premier Wen Jiabao on Thursday.
Paulson declined to say whether he had raised the issue of Chinese treatment of Tibetan protesters directly with Hu.
"I talked about this in an appropriate way. I'm not talking about what message I had for any particular leader," Paulson told reporters, but added he had expressed U.S. regret at the violence.
Chinese leaders accuse the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the wave of demonstrations from his home in exile in India, where he has lived since a failed 1959 uprising against Communist rule.
China says his intent is to disrupt the Beijing Olympics, which run from August 8-24, and to ultimately win independence for the remote, mountain region.
The Dalai Lama's representatives deny the charges and the 72-year-old has repeated that he is seeking greater autonomy for Tibet, not independence.
(Reporting by Nick Macfie and Glenn Somerville; Editing by Valerie Lee)
Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Traherne--Chapter Three
Traherne--Chapter Three
I began this meditative journey expecting, I think, to find myself agreeing with Traherne on almost every point. I arrive at Chapter Three finding myself disagreeing in some respects with some of his views. This is, of course, only to be expected, and is actually a positive thing. To agree 100 percent with anybody is a dangerous thing, and can lead only to your own heartbreak.
Do I think Traherne was a heretic? No, I don’t. I’m not sure if perhaps the editor occasionally goofed, or if the views are pure Traherne as Traherne meant them. I wrote my final bits for Chapter Two while feeling quite under the weather with fibromyalgia and while dealing with some internal demons of my own regarding several situations about which I am--or at least feel--powerless. Thus, I read with a mind already more than a little distracted with my own problems. This obviously colors how I saw everything, including Traherne. I saw his views as almost heretical, the idea that one human can know God’s thoughts--after all, this is precisely what the serpent offered, that our eyes would be opened and we would know…I am certain that Traherne cannot have meant it this way! It just seemed a bit off to me yesterday, that’s all.
I caught the reference to the stars and thought of astrology, or rather of what astrology was when it began, an attempt to scientifically understand the influences of the heavens upon the human body and mind. Astrology today has become so much dross. When men like John Dee were alive under Elizabeth I, it was a science to be reckoned with. This is the astrology that would have been much closer to Traherne’s stars. Just a passing thought about history on my part here, nothing really to say.
I also liked the reference to the non-importance of tennis balls. A direct reference, if I am not much mistaken, to the speech Henry V gives in Shakespeare’s play regarding the gift sent him by the king of France of tennis balls. They are meant as an insult, and Henry takes them as such. Man cannot be pleased though he possess millions, says Traherne, as those millions “are no more than so many tennis balls in comparison of the greatness and highness of his soul.”
Man strives after the wind, Traherne says. And he will reap only vanity by so doing. This put me in mind of Hosea 8:7--”When they sow the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind.” Hosea in verse 4 of the same chapter says that the men of Israel “with their silver and gold…made idols for themselves, to their own destruction.” Traherne must be referring to this biblical passage for he is speaking again of the utter vanity of striving for material goods to the exclusion of God.
I thought immediately of Blake’s grain of sand when I read “You never see the world aright until you see how a sand exhibits the wisdom and power of God…” Pretty powerful stuff, this. And Traherne is saying that until we recognize God in the very small, we cannot see God’s presence or hand in the very large. This is something today’s physicists have recognized, and they take the search for meaning (whether they use the word ‘God’ or not) to the level of the quantum, to the level of the astronomically small.
We finally see the phrase “waking up in heaven” in this chapter. “Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in heaven, see yourself in your father’s palace, and look upon the skies, the earth and the air as celestial joys…as if you were among the angels. The bride of a monarch in her husband’s chamber has no such causes of delight as you.”
Traherne asks so very much of us, and I am certain he realized this when writing to his friend. It is virtually impossible to maintain this level of adoration and wonder in an everyday context. The world invades, slowly and insidiously, our every waking moment. We cannot escape it. Most mornings now I awaken in pain, and do not think first of God, nor even second or third or tenth. I have children, I have three books I am writing, I have bills to pay, I have breakfast to see to, I have….No, in this modern world it’s almost impossible to awake in heaven. I wish quite frequently for a simpler world, for a simpler existence, but in my personal everyday existence that’s just not going to happen. I long to be able to escape to the mountains, to dress as I wish to dress (this may sound silly to most, but I am deeply disaffected by the jeans and tees and sneakers that I wear, and I really want to dress more as I would have had I been alive in, say, the 1920s, in tweeds and twin-sets and such…I know that it could be done, but finding the time, not to mention the clothes at a reasonable price, leads only to headache), to write my books in peace and quiet without interruption, to be able to read Traherne’s magnificent book as it deserves to be read with full and undivided attention. Not gonna happen, and I am not so naïve as to think that it will. Only if I joined a convent, I think, would such things be allowed me.
Traherne goes on to speak of the “riches of darkness.” Traherne says that we “invent ways” to make ourselves miserable “in the presence of riches,” by which he means God’s riches. He then goes on to say that we follow instead after Satan and his riches, the riches of darkness. And we do so deliberately, willingly, even gladly. We invent ways to follow Satan rather than God. The truth of this can be seen in every war mankind has ever fought, in the face of every human allowed to starve to death, in the silent screams of every human neglected and allowed to die alone and friendless. “The works of darkness are repining, envy, malice, covetousness, fraud, oppression, discontent, and violence,” writes Traherne. He again urges us to look at the glowing stars rather than at the diamonds on our fingers.
Everything Traherne says makes sense, yet he offers no real advice thus far on how, exactly, to achieve this wondrous admiration of God’s works. He says we must do so, we must focus all of our energies on this, but he doesn’t tell us how. Again, we come up against the modern world that did not exist when Traherne was writing, a world he could not have imagined. “We need nothing but open eyes,” he writes, which was an easier thing to possess in the world in which he wrote. Short of entering a cloistered religious order, the noise of today’s world will impede on your life, on your prayers, on your meditations. I found myself wishing for a how-to manual by the middle of Chapter Three, and this alone shows how we think today. We want a DIY fix, and we want it now. We don’t want to have to sit there uncomfortably and think “yeah, Mr. Traherne, great, super, but look, buddy, show me the way already!” We don’t want to be alone with our own thoughts even so far as to work out a feasible way for ourselves.
Which brings me up against something else about Traherne and the world in which he wrote. Because, of course, none of his open-eyed seeing of God’s treasures would have been available to the lower classes. A hardscrabble life does not give itself easily to meditation or to the understanding that there are riches worth far more than money. To watch child after child die, to watch harvest after harvest wither, to watch a young girl become a wizened hag in mere years rather than decades…none of this would have given itself to seeing God in a grain of sand. The sand was just sand. The only hope of “waking up in heaven” that most people had was just that, an afterlife with God rather than an everyday experience while still alive. Traherne’s ease of noticing God’s greatness was an ease that would have been available to a select few. His words were addressed only to those who could read, and thus only to those who were educated. I cannot help but wonder if his flock heard these words at sermons, and what they thought of them if they did. I am not calling Traherne an elitist by any stretch, merely pointing out an historical reality. It would have been extremely difficult for the lowest classes to realize about the world that “all things in it are so perfectly yours that you cannot desire them any other way” while they themselves starved for want of a loaf of bread. Traherne was writing to the friend of a friend, a woman whose soul he wished to help on the way to the perfection of the angels, and so his words to ordinary people may have been very different, but those are not the words we are here studying. The biographical blip on the book’s end fold reminds us that Traherne was educated at Oxford, was a parish priest for a time, and was then the personal chaplain to Charles II’s Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. Hardly a difficult life, or a poor one. The court of Charles II was not known for simplicity or religious thinking. Traherne wrote Centuries of Meditation to be read by one woman, not by a multitude, and that woman must have been wealthy and educated. To assume otherwise is naïve. Again, I am not bashing Traherne, merely saying that everyday people alive in the late 17th century would have had as difficult a time focusing on the glories of God’s riches as we do today.
I began this meditative journey expecting, I think, to find myself agreeing with Traherne on almost every point. I arrive at Chapter Three finding myself disagreeing in some respects with some of his views. This is, of course, only to be expected, and is actually a positive thing. To agree 100 percent with anybody is a dangerous thing, and can lead only to your own heartbreak.
Do I think Traherne was a heretic? No, I don’t. I’m not sure if perhaps the editor occasionally goofed, or if the views are pure Traherne as Traherne meant them. I wrote my final bits for Chapter Two while feeling quite under the weather with fibromyalgia and while dealing with some internal demons of my own regarding several situations about which I am--or at least feel--powerless. Thus, I read with a mind already more than a little distracted with my own problems. This obviously colors how I saw everything, including Traherne. I saw his views as almost heretical, the idea that one human can know God’s thoughts--after all, this is precisely what the serpent offered, that our eyes would be opened and we would know…I am certain that Traherne cannot have meant it this way! It just seemed a bit off to me yesterday, that’s all.
I caught the reference to the stars and thought of astrology, or rather of what astrology was when it began, an attempt to scientifically understand the influences of the heavens upon the human body and mind. Astrology today has become so much dross. When men like John Dee were alive under Elizabeth I, it was a science to be reckoned with. This is the astrology that would have been much closer to Traherne’s stars. Just a passing thought about history on my part here, nothing really to say.
I also liked the reference to the non-importance of tennis balls. A direct reference, if I am not much mistaken, to the speech Henry V gives in Shakespeare’s play regarding the gift sent him by the king of France of tennis balls. They are meant as an insult, and Henry takes them as such. Man cannot be pleased though he possess millions, says Traherne, as those millions “are no more than so many tennis balls in comparison of the greatness and highness of his soul.”
Man strives after the wind, Traherne says. And he will reap only vanity by so doing. This put me in mind of Hosea 8:7--”When they sow the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind.” Hosea in verse 4 of the same chapter says that the men of Israel “with their silver and gold…made idols for themselves, to their own destruction.” Traherne must be referring to this biblical passage for he is speaking again of the utter vanity of striving for material goods to the exclusion of God.
I thought immediately of Blake’s grain of sand when I read “You never see the world aright until you see how a sand exhibits the wisdom and power of God…” Pretty powerful stuff, this. And Traherne is saying that until we recognize God in the very small, we cannot see God’s presence or hand in the very large. This is something today’s physicists have recognized, and they take the search for meaning (whether they use the word ‘God’ or not) to the level of the quantum, to the level of the astronomically small.
We finally see the phrase “waking up in heaven” in this chapter. “Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in heaven, see yourself in your father’s palace, and look upon the skies, the earth and the air as celestial joys…as if you were among the angels. The bride of a monarch in her husband’s chamber has no such causes of delight as you.”
Traherne asks so very much of us, and I am certain he realized this when writing to his friend. It is virtually impossible to maintain this level of adoration and wonder in an everyday context. The world invades, slowly and insidiously, our every waking moment. We cannot escape it. Most mornings now I awaken in pain, and do not think first of God, nor even second or third or tenth. I have children, I have three books I am writing, I have bills to pay, I have breakfast to see to, I have….No, in this modern world it’s almost impossible to awake in heaven. I wish quite frequently for a simpler world, for a simpler existence, but in my personal everyday existence that’s just not going to happen. I long to be able to escape to the mountains, to dress as I wish to dress (this may sound silly to most, but I am deeply disaffected by the jeans and tees and sneakers that I wear, and I really want to dress more as I would have had I been alive in, say, the 1920s, in tweeds and twin-sets and such…I know that it could be done, but finding the time, not to mention the clothes at a reasonable price, leads only to headache), to write my books in peace and quiet without interruption, to be able to read Traherne’s magnificent book as it deserves to be read with full and undivided attention. Not gonna happen, and I am not so naïve as to think that it will. Only if I joined a convent, I think, would such things be allowed me.
Traherne goes on to speak of the “riches of darkness.” Traherne says that we “invent ways” to make ourselves miserable “in the presence of riches,” by which he means God’s riches. He then goes on to say that we follow instead after Satan and his riches, the riches of darkness. And we do so deliberately, willingly, even gladly. We invent ways to follow Satan rather than God. The truth of this can be seen in every war mankind has ever fought, in the face of every human allowed to starve to death, in the silent screams of every human neglected and allowed to die alone and friendless. “The works of darkness are repining, envy, malice, covetousness, fraud, oppression, discontent, and violence,” writes Traherne. He again urges us to look at the glowing stars rather than at the diamonds on our fingers.
Everything Traherne says makes sense, yet he offers no real advice thus far on how, exactly, to achieve this wondrous admiration of God’s works. He says we must do so, we must focus all of our energies on this, but he doesn’t tell us how. Again, we come up against the modern world that did not exist when Traherne was writing, a world he could not have imagined. “We need nothing but open eyes,” he writes, which was an easier thing to possess in the world in which he wrote. Short of entering a cloistered religious order, the noise of today’s world will impede on your life, on your prayers, on your meditations. I found myself wishing for a how-to manual by the middle of Chapter Three, and this alone shows how we think today. We want a DIY fix, and we want it now. We don’t want to have to sit there uncomfortably and think “yeah, Mr. Traherne, great, super, but look, buddy, show me the way already!” We don’t want to be alone with our own thoughts even so far as to work out a feasible way for ourselves.
Which brings me up against something else about Traherne and the world in which he wrote. Because, of course, none of his open-eyed seeing of God’s treasures would have been available to the lower classes. A hardscrabble life does not give itself easily to meditation or to the understanding that there are riches worth far more than money. To watch child after child die, to watch harvest after harvest wither, to watch a young girl become a wizened hag in mere years rather than decades…none of this would have given itself to seeing God in a grain of sand. The sand was just sand. The only hope of “waking up in heaven” that most people had was just that, an afterlife with God rather than an everyday experience while still alive. Traherne’s ease of noticing God’s greatness was an ease that would have been available to a select few. His words were addressed only to those who could read, and thus only to those who were educated. I cannot help but wonder if his flock heard these words at sermons, and what they thought of them if they did. I am not calling Traherne an elitist by any stretch, merely pointing out an historical reality. It would have been extremely difficult for the lowest classes to realize about the world that “all things in it are so perfectly yours that you cannot desire them any other way” while they themselves starved for want of a loaf of bread. Traherne was writing to the friend of a friend, a woman whose soul he wished to help on the way to the perfection of the angels, and so his words to ordinary people may have been very different, but those are not the words we are here studying. The biographical blip on the book’s end fold reminds us that Traherne was educated at Oxford, was a parish priest for a time, and was then the personal chaplain to Charles II’s Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. Hardly a difficult life, or a poor one. The court of Charles II was not known for simplicity or religious thinking. Traherne wrote Centuries of Meditation to be read by one woman, not by a multitude, and that woman must have been wealthy and educated. To assume otherwise is naïve. Again, I am not bashing Traherne, merely saying that everyday people alive in the late 17th century would have had as difficult a time focusing on the glories of God’s riches as we do today.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Traherne--rest of Chapter Two
Traherne--Chapter Two Continued
God’s Thoughts
I had a bit of trouble with this part, mainly because it seems to me that even to strive to know God’s thoughts is dangerously close to heresy. Overreaction, yes, I know. Traherne says that in God’s revealed Word, we have his thoughts, but I wonder whether is so. We have a glimpse of God’s thoughts, yes, but a glimpse only, enough to tantalize and make us ache for more. I believe it’s John who says that there was so much more that Jesus did and said that it would take volumes upon volumes to get across. We do not have all of God’s thoughts. Period. To desire to know all things as God knows them, to see all things as God sees them, is natural, and good. But I cannot agree with Traherne that such knowledge, such sight, is possible while we yet draw breath. Saint Paul clearly states in Corinthians that we don’t know, we don’t see, only when we are in heaven will any of that be revealed to us in its full glory. “How shall we be led by his divine spirit till we have his mind?” Traherne asks, and I agree with the question. But I think we cannot know God’s mind just yet. This bit smacked slightly of the serpent in the garden, and perhaps that’s just my fibromyalgia and exhaustion (2 hours sleep from which I awakened in incredible pain) talking, but there it is…
Prizing Things
Also, slight trouble here, and it may be with the translation. I don’t possess a copy of the original text. God made only one to enjoy the world, Adam, and “not a multitude,” says Traherne, and therefore the world is meant for only one. I get the meaning here, and in the next section, that the individual must be the one who truly enjoys the world, who sees God in the skies and the rivers and the fruits and the animals. I get it. But I also know that God made more than one originally by making Eve to be Adam’s companion, and therefore God must have meant us to enjoy his creation together, as couples, as groups, as parents teaching children, as children caring for parents. I don’t believe God meant for us to become hermits (nor do I think that this is what Traherne is saying). Solitary meditation is a delight and a necessity, but I think that congregating is also essential. I do not, like Traherne, think that each individual in their enjoyment of creation “are made to enjoy it for my further advancement,” though as I said, I do get the point that Traherne is trying to make.
Everything Points in the Same Direction
I loved this paragraph. Very rich and affirming and glorious! A contrast to the slightly off-putting verbiage of the previous two sections, this section is very clear and concise. Enjoy what God gave you, realize that you are his “heir, child, and bride.”
God Delights in Giving
“To know God is life eternal,” says Traherne, and this is a sublime way to recap the entire Bible into one small sentence. We must ever strive to know God, with the caveat that we understand that we cannot know everything just yet. The striving to know God pleases him, and we can begin to know some of God’s thoughts by loving the universe he gave us. As Traherne points out in the next section, this planet of ours is just a speck compared to the rest of creation, and we need to realize that, to take this vastness into account when we think about God. God didn’t just give us the earth--he gave us all of creation. He gave us “infinite and eternal treasures that are to abide forever after the Day of Judgment.” This is no small thing, but a thing to be marveled at, to be wondered at, of which to be in absolute and profound awe.
God’s Presence and Eternity are our Companions
“The omnipresence and eternity of God are your fellows and companions. And all that is in them ought to be made your familiar treasures,” says Traherne. Our guides on the road are the only guides we should ever want or need. To be bounded by eternity is to see oneself surrounded by all of creation, to see oneself almost as floating amongst the stars, with God himself beside us. What an incredible vision this is! Look beyond, Traherne is shouting at us, look beyond and up and around and look within too, and find the infinite treasure that is God’s eternity. Quite a powerful thought, that. And one that is all to easy to forget in the hurly-burly of everyday life, when we are bogged down in the decision whether to buy the new strawberry Chex or the Mini-Wheats.
Loving God with all the Powers of Your Soul
If you love God, you will necessarily love his laws, his ways, because you will understand that his laws are “commentaries” on his works. God’s laws are not made to break us, but to bear us up, to show us the way. God’s laws “command you to love all that is good, and when you see well, you enjoy what you love.” God is far from unreasonable. “You will feed with pleasure upon everything that is his. So that the world shall be a grand jewel of delight unto you: a very paradise and the gate of heaven. It is indeed the beautiful frontispiece of eternity; the temple of God and the palace of his children.” When you unreservedly give love, you will receive love in return, and thereby see the very gates of heaven.
God’s Thoughts
I had a bit of trouble with this part, mainly because it seems to me that even to strive to know God’s thoughts is dangerously close to heresy. Overreaction, yes, I know. Traherne says that in God’s revealed Word, we have his thoughts, but I wonder whether is so. We have a glimpse of God’s thoughts, yes, but a glimpse only, enough to tantalize and make us ache for more. I believe it’s John who says that there was so much more that Jesus did and said that it would take volumes upon volumes to get across. We do not have all of God’s thoughts. Period. To desire to know all things as God knows them, to see all things as God sees them, is natural, and good. But I cannot agree with Traherne that such knowledge, such sight, is possible while we yet draw breath. Saint Paul clearly states in Corinthians that we don’t know, we don’t see, only when we are in heaven will any of that be revealed to us in its full glory. “How shall we be led by his divine spirit till we have his mind?” Traherne asks, and I agree with the question. But I think we cannot know God’s mind just yet. This bit smacked slightly of the serpent in the garden, and perhaps that’s just my fibromyalgia and exhaustion (2 hours sleep from which I awakened in incredible pain) talking, but there it is…
Prizing Things
Also, slight trouble here, and it may be with the translation. I don’t possess a copy of the original text. God made only one to enjoy the world, Adam, and “not a multitude,” says Traherne, and therefore the world is meant for only one. I get the meaning here, and in the next section, that the individual must be the one who truly enjoys the world, who sees God in the skies and the rivers and the fruits and the animals. I get it. But I also know that God made more than one originally by making Eve to be Adam’s companion, and therefore God must have meant us to enjoy his creation together, as couples, as groups, as parents teaching children, as children caring for parents. I don’t believe God meant for us to become hermits (nor do I think that this is what Traherne is saying). Solitary meditation is a delight and a necessity, but I think that congregating is also essential. I do not, like Traherne, think that each individual in their enjoyment of creation “are made to enjoy it for my further advancement,” though as I said, I do get the point that Traherne is trying to make.
Everything Points in the Same Direction
I loved this paragraph. Very rich and affirming and glorious! A contrast to the slightly off-putting verbiage of the previous two sections, this section is very clear and concise. Enjoy what God gave you, realize that you are his “heir, child, and bride.”
God Delights in Giving
“To know God is life eternal,” says Traherne, and this is a sublime way to recap the entire Bible into one small sentence. We must ever strive to know God, with the caveat that we understand that we cannot know everything just yet. The striving to know God pleases him, and we can begin to know some of God’s thoughts by loving the universe he gave us. As Traherne points out in the next section, this planet of ours is just a speck compared to the rest of creation, and we need to realize that, to take this vastness into account when we think about God. God didn’t just give us the earth--he gave us all of creation. He gave us “infinite and eternal treasures that are to abide forever after the Day of Judgment.” This is no small thing, but a thing to be marveled at, to be wondered at, of which to be in absolute and profound awe.
God’s Presence and Eternity are our Companions
“The omnipresence and eternity of God are your fellows and companions. And all that is in them ought to be made your familiar treasures,” says Traherne. Our guides on the road are the only guides we should ever want or need. To be bounded by eternity is to see oneself surrounded by all of creation, to see oneself almost as floating amongst the stars, with God himself beside us. What an incredible vision this is! Look beyond, Traherne is shouting at us, look beyond and up and around and look within too, and find the infinite treasure that is God’s eternity. Quite a powerful thought, that. And one that is all to easy to forget in the hurly-burly of everyday life, when we are bogged down in the decision whether to buy the new strawberry Chex or the Mini-Wheats.
Loving God with all the Powers of Your Soul
If you love God, you will necessarily love his laws, his ways, because you will understand that his laws are “commentaries” on his works. God’s laws are not made to break us, but to bear us up, to show us the way. God’s laws “command you to love all that is good, and when you see well, you enjoy what you love.” God is far from unreasonable. “You will feed with pleasure upon everything that is his. So that the world shall be a grand jewel of delight unto you: a very paradise and the gate of heaven. It is indeed the beautiful frontispiece of eternity; the temple of God and the palace of his children.” When you unreservedly give love, you will receive love in return, and thereby see the very gates of heaven.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
26 March 2008--Traherne
26 March 2008--Traherne
I have recently, in just the past few days, found my path shifting and changing, becoming both something intensely new and frighteningly familiar. It’s a path I have been on before, and I found the experience then to be both uplifting and almost completely destructive. I have no idea what the outcome will be this go-round.
In the light of this, my study of Thomas Traherne has suffered. I have not picked up the book nor indeed given it a thought for days now. I don’t actually feel badly about this, as there are many ways to meditate. My experiences on this particular path can be viewed as meditative, for they have taken me quite deeply within myself. Nine years ago, these experiences took me to the brink of suicide. You cannot go deeper within yourself than to be on the edge of actually killing yourself, and then pulling back at the last possible moment.
I won’t bore with details--those are being spelled out as clearly as possible in another format than an online journal--but I will say that I never wish to experience that kind of pain again. I was betrayed, and I was stolen from. Not stolen from physically, in the sense of losing material things, but stolen from intellectually. My mind was raped, savaged on an international scale, and no, I am not being overly dramatic, believe it or not. I sank into despair. My dark night of the soul had begun, and only now do I realize that it didn’t begin to show hints of dawn until perhaps four months ago.
I felt there was no need, no purpose for my continued existence. I wanted to die. I sank into depression that was left untreated--I have always been far too proud to seek help. The path that had, in late 1998, seemed so glorious and full of promise had become, by mid-1999, a slough of despair.
I have only this minute realized something truly astonishing. The path, the expedition if you will, upon which I’d launched myself mirrored another expedition perfectly. Beginning in hope and clarity and bright ambition and ending in the chill grip of an icy death. I feel no need to explain further here, but there are those out there who will know exactly what I mean.
And now I am on that same path again, but I am following a quite different route to the summit, if you will. I am beginning that same journey anew, with fresh eyes, with a new heart, with a friend I didn’t have when I began this journey ten years ago, and with a love who though impossibly distant from me is still within reach of my loving thoughts. I write this on his birthday. At the outset here, I say thank you to my friend, whom I love deeply. Without her, I wouldn’t be writing this entry tonight. Her compassion and forgiveness and love have shown me the way to courage. Have shown me that against all odds, goodness can and does win.
And so, Traherne, in the midst of this. Traherne as another companion on this journey:
Enjoying the World--Chapter Two
This section began with words that I found particularly apropos to my situation. Ten years ago, I failed to enjoy the world. I failed to see the glories that were all around me. I failed to see that I had been a victim, yes, but also a trailblazer. I failed to see, simply failed to see. “To think well is to serve God in the interior court,” says Traherne, and I have a great need right now to think well. A great need to both find that interior court and serve as I am meant to serve. To stop being so focused on the wrongs done me--and they were legion--and to focus instead on healing the hurt inside, focus on finding the Grace to go on. On finding “the goodness and wisdom of God so manifest” in the created world around me. When we are at our lowest point, that’s precisely when we begin to do two things--1. Hate and blame God; 2. Fail to see God’s hand in everything around us, even in our pain.
The Reason we were Created--Chapter Two
“Love is deeper than at first it can be thought.” I was slightly disappointed that Traherne didn’t really expand on this, but instead re-iterated the importance of seeing the wonder of God’s creation. For love is far deeper than can ever be known, and is one of the most mysterious--most bizarre, sometimes--forces in the universe. Without love we cannot be expected to acknowledge the hand of God in anything at all. Without love, we cannot know fully and eternally that someone thousands of miles away loves us in return. Without love’s deepness, we could never rise to love’s heights. We would never forgive, never seek the benefit of others, never apologize. We would be selfish children, spoilt and screaming. And of course, Traherne’s point must be that if we can hardly enjoy God’s world if we’re busy throwing temper tantrums of loathing. We must love, or we cannot see.
Prizing all Things--Chapter Two
“Can you be holy without accomplishing the end for which you are created? Can you be divine unless you be holy?” There are steps, in other words, to reaching the goal of unity with God. This may be very difficult for some, as Westerners are basically a culture of instant gratification. We want unity with God, but we want it now if not sooner, and we do not under any circumstances want to work for it. We do not want to be told that we were created to accomplish something--we want the rewards without the effort. As Billy Connolly said in a Hothouse Flowers song, “Everybody’s born to do a certain thing, and if you’re dead jamming you find it. We’re here to make babies and look after the place, you know?” Dead jamming means lucky, I think. We all have a purpose, we all have something only we can do, and we have to find that something or, again, we will fail to see. And, says Traherne, we cannot hope to be holy, let alone divine, if we refuse to accomplish our work.
And with that in mind, I will close for the night, because my fibromyalgia kept me up all night last night and I’m simply tired. I will say that I have found the work I am meant to do, and though I failed signally at finishing it a decade ago, my life is far different now. I will not fail twice. I will accomplish what I am meant to accomplish. I will reach the summit.
I have recently, in just the past few days, found my path shifting and changing, becoming both something intensely new and frighteningly familiar. It’s a path I have been on before, and I found the experience then to be both uplifting and almost completely destructive. I have no idea what the outcome will be this go-round.
In the light of this, my study of Thomas Traherne has suffered. I have not picked up the book nor indeed given it a thought for days now. I don’t actually feel badly about this, as there are many ways to meditate. My experiences on this particular path can be viewed as meditative, for they have taken me quite deeply within myself. Nine years ago, these experiences took me to the brink of suicide. You cannot go deeper within yourself than to be on the edge of actually killing yourself, and then pulling back at the last possible moment.
I won’t bore with details--those are being spelled out as clearly as possible in another format than an online journal--but I will say that I never wish to experience that kind of pain again. I was betrayed, and I was stolen from. Not stolen from physically, in the sense of losing material things, but stolen from intellectually. My mind was raped, savaged on an international scale, and no, I am not being overly dramatic, believe it or not. I sank into despair. My dark night of the soul had begun, and only now do I realize that it didn’t begin to show hints of dawn until perhaps four months ago.
I felt there was no need, no purpose for my continued existence. I wanted to die. I sank into depression that was left untreated--I have always been far too proud to seek help. The path that had, in late 1998, seemed so glorious and full of promise had become, by mid-1999, a slough of despair.
I have only this minute realized something truly astonishing. The path, the expedition if you will, upon which I’d launched myself mirrored another expedition perfectly. Beginning in hope and clarity and bright ambition and ending in the chill grip of an icy death. I feel no need to explain further here, but there are those out there who will know exactly what I mean.
And now I am on that same path again, but I am following a quite different route to the summit, if you will. I am beginning that same journey anew, with fresh eyes, with a new heart, with a friend I didn’t have when I began this journey ten years ago, and with a love who though impossibly distant from me is still within reach of my loving thoughts. I write this on his birthday. At the outset here, I say thank you to my friend, whom I love deeply. Without her, I wouldn’t be writing this entry tonight. Her compassion and forgiveness and love have shown me the way to courage. Have shown me that against all odds, goodness can and does win.
And so, Traherne, in the midst of this. Traherne as another companion on this journey:
Enjoying the World--Chapter Two
This section began with words that I found particularly apropos to my situation. Ten years ago, I failed to enjoy the world. I failed to see the glories that were all around me. I failed to see that I had been a victim, yes, but also a trailblazer. I failed to see, simply failed to see. “To think well is to serve God in the interior court,” says Traherne, and I have a great need right now to think well. A great need to both find that interior court and serve as I am meant to serve. To stop being so focused on the wrongs done me--and they were legion--and to focus instead on healing the hurt inside, focus on finding the Grace to go on. On finding “the goodness and wisdom of God so manifest” in the created world around me. When we are at our lowest point, that’s precisely when we begin to do two things--1. Hate and blame God; 2. Fail to see God’s hand in everything around us, even in our pain.
The Reason we were Created--Chapter Two
“Love is deeper than at first it can be thought.” I was slightly disappointed that Traherne didn’t really expand on this, but instead re-iterated the importance of seeing the wonder of God’s creation. For love is far deeper than can ever be known, and is one of the most mysterious--most bizarre, sometimes--forces in the universe. Without love we cannot be expected to acknowledge the hand of God in anything at all. Without love, we cannot know fully and eternally that someone thousands of miles away loves us in return. Without love’s deepness, we could never rise to love’s heights. We would never forgive, never seek the benefit of others, never apologize. We would be selfish children, spoilt and screaming. And of course, Traherne’s point must be that if we can hardly enjoy God’s world if we’re busy throwing temper tantrums of loathing. We must love, or we cannot see.
Prizing all Things--Chapter Two
“Can you be holy without accomplishing the end for which you are created? Can you be divine unless you be holy?” There are steps, in other words, to reaching the goal of unity with God. This may be very difficult for some, as Westerners are basically a culture of instant gratification. We want unity with God, but we want it now if not sooner, and we do not under any circumstances want to work for it. We do not want to be told that we were created to accomplish something--we want the rewards without the effort. As Billy Connolly said in a Hothouse Flowers song, “Everybody’s born to do a certain thing, and if you’re dead jamming you find it. We’re here to make babies and look after the place, you know?” Dead jamming means lucky, I think. We all have a purpose, we all have something only we can do, and we have to find that something or, again, we will fail to see. And, says Traherne, we cannot hope to be holy, let alone divine, if we refuse to accomplish our work.
And with that in mind, I will close for the night, because my fibromyalgia kept me up all night last night and I’m simply tired. I will say that I have found the work I am meant to do, and though I failed signally at finishing it a decade ago, my life is far different now. I will not fail twice. I will accomplish what I am meant to accomplish. I will reach the summit.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Traherne--Chapter Two--Think Well
Traherne--Think Well
The next many meditations will be choppy in the sense that they will be broken into several pieces over many days. I was over-ambitious to think that I could “do” a chapter every 3 to 4 days. We silly humans…
“Think Well.” That struck me rather powerfully all by itself, for we so very rarely think at all, let alone well. When Traherne asks, in the second paragraph, “What is more easy and sweet than meditation?” he is coming from a background where meditation could be accomplished without distraction by many people. This is simply not the case in the modern world, however, and we have to deliberately school ourselves into a meditative state. The world today is crammed full of distractions, and finding the time to meditate is exquisitely difficult, as it has been for me the past several days. We are constantly on the go, constantly focusing our energies on the hustle and bustle of the world around us.
In Traherne’s first paragraph, “Two Worlds,” he makes a brilliant observation. We are meant to love and enjoy the physical world, made by God to do just that, yet we get swept up so easily in the frills and the pomp and the money and the car-pool, and the 8-minute lunch break at Mickey D’s, and the price of gas and the downward-spiraling world/domestic economy. This is precisely the world we must condemn, and we must learn to focus our thoughts and our energies on the natural beauty surrounding us, on family, on humanitarian causes, on keeping this planet livable for the next seven generations (if I may borrow an analogy from my own Native American heritage).
Centuries ago, a group of people known as the Cathars became followers of what was known as the Albigensian heresy. They believed that all matter was inherently evil and that the God of the Old Testament was, in fact, the bad guy. The serpent, they argued, was the one telling the truth. This heresy was an extreme one, and resulted in a great deal of bloodshed, wherein the Cathars were exterminated (an Archbishop famously said to his crusaders of the Cathars: “Kill them all. Let God sort them out.”) but the heresy itself still exists in the modern neo-gnostic movement and among followers of the fiction of Dan Brown.
I use the Cathars here as a lesson, one I think Traherne would very much agree with. The world around us isn’t the problem; the world around us was given to us by God as a place of beauty and love and hope and peace. It is we who make it otherwise. It is we, not God, who make the planet unbearable. And it is we who then fall on our knees and worship the unbearableness we ourselves have created.
I disagree with Traherne that it is easier to think good thoughts than evil ones, because the history of Earth has proven beyond doubt that it is very, very easy indeed to be evil. It’s far simpler to toss the Mickey D’s wrapper on the ground than to walk the extra (and backbreaking, I would assume) ten steps to the trash receptacle. It’s easier to slaughter twelve million people in concentration camps (yes, twelve million. People do not remember any longer that Hitler killed twelve million, not six. Six million were Jewish, the other six million were a mixed bag of gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gays, lesbians, and anyone else who disagreed with the Third Reich.) than it is to save them. It’s easier to slap a child who is misbehaving than it is to sit the child down and listen to them, to discipline them with a time-out or take away a privilege. It’s easier to begin a war than to end one (isn’t it, Mr. Bush?) Far easier to trash the planet than to clean it up (just ask China, which has five months to clean their air before the Olympics. Not gonna happen, is my guess, and we’re going to see athletes in gas masks).
I like very much the way Traherne says that we should try to retain the beauty of the planet in our minds, to reflect on the glory around us. Again, I think back to Terry Pratchett and his character Death, who is utterly gob smacked by the human ability to be bored when the entire universe is there for us to gaze upon with astonishment.
The next many meditations will be choppy in the sense that they will be broken into several pieces over many days. I was over-ambitious to think that I could “do” a chapter every 3 to 4 days. We silly humans…
“Think Well.” That struck me rather powerfully all by itself, for we so very rarely think at all, let alone well. When Traherne asks, in the second paragraph, “What is more easy and sweet than meditation?” he is coming from a background where meditation could be accomplished without distraction by many people. This is simply not the case in the modern world, however, and we have to deliberately school ourselves into a meditative state. The world today is crammed full of distractions, and finding the time to meditate is exquisitely difficult, as it has been for me the past several days. We are constantly on the go, constantly focusing our energies on the hustle and bustle of the world around us.
In Traherne’s first paragraph, “Two Worlds,” he makes a brilliant observation. We are meant to love and enjoy the physical world, made by God to do just that, yet we get swept up so easily in the frills and the pomp and the money and the car-pool, and the 8-minute lunch break at Mickey D’s, and the price of gas and the downward-spiraling world/domestic economy. This is precisely the world we must condemn, and we must learn to focus our thoughts and our energies on the natural beauty surrounding us, on family, on humanitarian causes, on keeping this planet livable for the next seven generations (if I may borrow an analogy from my own Native American heritage).
Centuries ago, a group of people known as the Cathars became followers of what was known as the Albigensian heresy. They believed that all matter was inherently evil and that the God of the Old Testament was, in fact, the bad guy. The serpent, they argued, was the one telling the truth. This heresy was an extreme one, and resulted in a great deal of bloodshed, wherein the Cathars were exterminated (an Archbishop famously said to his crusaders of the Cathars: “Kill them all. Let God sort them out.”) but the heresy itself still exists in the modern neo-gnostic movement and among followers of the fiction of Dan Brown.
I use the Cathars here as a lesson, one I think Traherne would very much agree with. The world around us isn’t the problem; the world around us was given to us by God as a place of beauty and love and hope and peace. It is we who make it otherwise. It is we, not God, who make the planet unbearable. And it is we who then fall on our knees and worship the unbearableness we ourselves have created.
I disagree with Traherne that it is easier to think good thoughts than evil ones, because the history of Earth has proven beyond doubt that it is very, very easy indeed to be evil. It’s far simpler to toss the Mickey D’s wrapper on the ground than to walk the extra (and backbreaking, I would assume) ten steps to the trash receptacle. It’s easier to slaughter twelve million people in concentration camps (yes, twelve million. People do not remember any longer that Hitler killed twelve million, not six. Six million were Jewish, the other six million were a mixed bag of gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gays, lesbians, and anyone else who disagreed with the Third Reich.) than it is to save them. It’s easier to slap a child who is misbehaving than it is to sit the child down and listen to them, to discipline them with a time-out or take away a privilege. It’s easier to begin a war than to end one (isn’t it, Mr. Bush?) Far easier to trash the planet than to clean it up (just ask China, which has five months to clean their air before the Olympics. Not gonna happen, is my guess, and we’re going to see athletes in gas masks).
I like very much the way Traherne says that we should try to retain the beauty of the planet in our minds, to reflect on the glory around us. Again, I think back to Terry Pratchett and his character Death, who is utterly gob smacked by the human ability to be bored when the entire universe is there for us to gaze upon with astonishment.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Trials and Tribulations
This has been a trying week for yours truly, and I feel fortunate to even be writing this entry. The week really began when I took my youngest daughter to the emergency room with abdominal pain on Sunday night. Thankfully, it was not appendicitis. On the other hand, they have no idea what caused (and continues to cause) the pain, even after an ultrasound. And so we are relying rather heavily on the healing powers of Motrin, and waiting to see if the problem persists.
And then my bank account went into the red through (partially only) my own negligence and bad record keeping (hey, I’ve been rather on edge of late, so a lapse in accounting may perhaps be excused) and I will therefore likely end up with my website suspended, and therefore I am posting everything on Blogger as well.
In the middle of all of this, I have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and last night the pain was so severe it brought me to tears.
And so, I have not been keeping up with the Traherne. But then again, don’t my (albeit self-inflicted in some aspects) trials and tribulations prove that I should be meditating? It’s when we are attempting to become spiritually whole that the devil flits about our lives like a biting fly, isn’t it? And yes, I do believe in Satan’s existence.
All of which is a rather long intro to today’s post, but I wanted to get stuff off my chest. The Chapter Two post will be a many-parter, because I found myself pausing frequently to ponder and then ponder yet more (all while crying and basically freaking out in a small, quiet way). I will post my own thoughts over the next few days.
And then my bank account went into the red through (partially only) my own negligence and bad record keeping (hey, I’ve been rather on edge of late, so a lapse in accounting may perhaps be excused) and I will therefore likely end up with my website suspended, and therefore I am posting everything on Blogger as well.
In the middle of all of this, I have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and last night the pain was so severe it brought me to tears.
And so, I have not been keeping up with the Traherne. But then again, don’t my (albeit self-inflicted in some aspects) trials and tribulations prove that I should be meditating? It’s when we are attempting to become spiritually whole that the devil flits about our lives like a biting fly, isn’t it? And yes, I do believe in Satan’s existence.
All of which is a rather long intro to today’s post, but I wanted to get stuff off my chest. The Chapter Two post will be a many-parter, because I found myself pausing frequently to ponder and then ponder yet more (all while crying and basically freaking out in a small, quiet way). I will post my own thoughts over the next few days.
Traherne--Chapter One
Thomas Traherne–Chapter One–Consider Secret Influences on Your Soul
Traherne begins his Centuries by thanking someone for the gift of a blank journal. This sounds so very familiar to modern readers, for we tend to think that we invented “journaling.” There is a huge demand for blank journals–go inside any Barnes and Noble and there is generally an entire section of blank books, with prices and quality ranging from the relatively inexpensive Moleskins so beloved of Ernest Hemingway to tooled leather-bound volumes from Italy. Blank journals, awaiting an author’s pen or pastel chalks or glued-in travel tickets and mementoes. I found myself wondering precisely what sort of journal Traherne was given, bearing in mind that books in the 17th century were very valuable things indeed, and not the $6 Harlequin romances we buy to read on the airplane and then bin the moment we reach our destination. Books were treasured things, and did not come cheaply, though they were far more readily available to Traherne’s generation than they were to Marlowe’s and Sidney’s.
And so this anonymous friend gave Thomas Traherne a blank journal, and he wrote a dedication to the friend (Mrs. Hopgood, his dear friend?) promising to fill it with things that the friend already loved without knowing it yet. And this caught my full attention, because we are today so obsessed with physical proofs, with having to hold things in our hands before we will accept their existence, and here is Traherne promising to fill the journal “with those truths you love without knowing them.” We are served notice immediately that we are reading the words of a true mystic. We are in the presence of a man who is confidently asserting his ability to reveal inner truths that we ourselves cannot yet see.
And along with this goes the statement that the friend (and by extension, ourselves as readers of these intimate words) already loves the truths that are hidden within. This is a beautiful way of putting into words the inner human drive for truth. The inner need for truth. We don’t know quite what the truth may be, but be most assuredly know that it’s there and that we already love it, we already yearn for it. Most importantly, though, we already possess it. In today’s world, this goes hand in hand with trying to find the still, small voice of God. We clutter our lives and our thoughts with so much noise, noise that just doesn’t matter when all is said and done, and somewhere along the way we lost the voice, we lost the knowledge that we already hold beloved truths within ourselves. But a part of us longs for those truths, a part of us is aware that they are there somewhere, if only we could access them. And so we turn to fortune tellers and horoscopes and we arrange our furniture the feng shui way and we work out at the gym until we drop, all in the hope of making our lives richer and better, when we might be better served by going into a church (or the woods, or our own back garden) and simply being quiet for a few minutes a day. Simply stopping to listen for the quiet voice of God, and for the quiet voice of truths we love without knowing quite what they are.
Traherne states this beautifully: “…I have found that things unknown have a secret influence on the soul, and like the center of the earth unseen violently attract it. We love we know not what, and therefore everything allures us.” We are drawn away by every whim, every fancy, in search of these secret influences. It’s why we bought Dan Brown’s wildly inaccurate novel and made him a millionaire a dozen times over. It’s why Sylvia Brown is so successful. It’s why Dr. Phil is so successful. It’s why internet chat rooms and “social networking” pages draw in our children by the thousands. The violent urge to find what we love, to find answers. We are all looking for “the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.” According to the late and much-missed Douglas Adams, that question is so vast, so all-encompassing, that it can have only one possible answer–42. The ultimate answer to the ultimate question, Adams tells us, is quite simply 42. No, it doesn’t make sense, and isn’t meant to. It’s an enigmatic answer for a question that has no logical answer. “The X-Files” paid quiet tribute to this by making Fox Mulder’s apartment number 42–there has rarely been a fictional character so bent on finding answers as Fox Mulder, whose stated motto was “I want to believe.”
We are all looking for 42, Traherne is saying. It pulls us, it exerts a gravitational force that is “violent” and that cannot be ignored. “Do you not feel yourself drawn by the expectation and desire of some great thing?” he asks. Once we see the truths we love but are unaware of, we will each become, Traherne says, “possessor of the whole world.” We will become aware of those truths we have always loved, we will see the sublime in the ordinary, we will see “things strange, yet common; incredible, yet known; most high, yet plain; infinitely profitable, but not esteemed.” We will see the diamond in the rough, as it were–the intensely beautiful, sparkling light hidden beneath the dusty and ordinary grey exterior.
Jesus once said that he came not to bring peace, but the sword. By this, I do not think somehow (insert “duh” here) that he meant that violence and warfare was the answer. I think he meant that his mission, his words, would divide and sunder people, both from one another as they clashed over ideals and beliefs, and from ourselves, internally, the division wrought by this inner battle to find the truths we love. Divisions that can either make us grow, or destroy us. Traherne says that he himself, in his Centuries, “will not by the noise of bloody wars and the dethroning of kings” show his reader the way, but rather “by the gentle ways of peace and love.” Love must be a healing balm, he says, a tender thing that seeks only to help the object of affection. Saint Paul’s letters to the Corinthians express this beautifully, of course, but Paul’s words regarding the kindness and patience of Love have become so known to us that they are almost a cliché, something trite and very Sunday School-ish, Those words of Paul, and here of Traherne, are nonetheless so desperately important to the entire gospel (which let us not forget means merely “good news”) of Christ, that we forget them or wave them aside at our own peril. Again, we become lost in the noise, and forget that “love is patient, love is kind” is in fact not a cliché but rather an eternal and immutable Truth. A healing Truth. The sort of Truth that heals the divisions brought about by the sword of Christ, the sword wielded solely in order that we might see where and how we have wounded ourselves, see where and how we are ourselves divided, and thereby to make all things right.
Traherne’s goal is to show his reader the clear pathway to the throne of God. In a sentence very reminiscent of Henry V’s speech at the battle of Agincourt wherein he says that men abed in England would count their lives meaningless for not having been on that battlefield in France, Traherne says that the end of this journey will “be so glorious that angels dare not hope for so great a one till they had seen it.” Angels, in other words, can only hope to see God and creation in such a glorious light as the one Traherne is giving to his reader. We are in the presence, with the Centuries of Meditation, of a great man, of a man who aches only to show others the glories he himself has seen.
Traherne begins his Centuries by thanking someone for the gift of a blank journal. This sounds so very familiar to modern readers, for we tend to think that we invented “journaling.” There is a huge demand for blank journals–go inside any Barnes and Noble and there is generally an entire section of blank books, with prices and quality ranging from the relatively inexpensive Moleskins so beloved of Ernest Hemingway to tooled leather-bound volumes from Italy. Blank journals, awaiting an author’s pen or pastel chalks or glued-in travel tickets and mementoes. I found myself wondering precisely what sort of journal Traherne was given, bearing in mind that books in the 17th century were very valuable things indeed, and not the $6 Harlequin romances we buy to read on the airplane and then bin the moment we reach our destination. Books were treasured things, and did not come cheaply, though they were far more readily available to Traherne’s generation than they were to Marlowe’s and Sidney’s.
And so this anonymous friend gave Thomas Traherne a blank journal, and he wrote a dedication to the friend (Mrs. Hopgood, his dear friend?) promising to fill it with things that the friend already loved without knowing it yet. And this caught my full attention, because we are today so obsessed with physical proofs, with having to hold things in our hands before we will accept their existence, and here is Traherne promising to fill the journal “with those truths you love without knowing them.” We are served notice immediately that we are reading the words of a true mystic. We are in the presence of a man who is confidently asserting his ability to reveal inner truths that we ourselves cannot yet see.
And along with this goes the statement that the friend (and by extension, ourselves as readers of these intimate words) already loves the truths that are hidden within. This is a beautiful way of putting into words the inner human drive for truth. The inner need for truth. We don’t know quite what the truth may be, but be most assuredly know that it’s there and that we already love it, we already yearn for it. Most importantly, though, we already possess it. In today’s world, this goes hand in hand with trying to find the still, small voice of God. We clutter our lives and our thoughts with so much noise, noise that just doesn’t matter when all is said and done, and somewhere along the way we lost the voice, we lost the knowledge that we already hold beloved truths within ourselves. But a part of us longs for those truths, a part of us is aware that they are there somewhere, if only we could access them. And so we turn to fortune tellers and horoscopes and we arrange our furniture the feng shui way and we work out at the gym until we drop, all in the hope of making our lives richer and better, when we might be better served by going into a church (or the woods, or our own back garden) and simply being quiet for a few minutes a day. Simply stopping to listen for the quiet voice of God, and for the quiet voice of truths we love without knowing quite what they are.
Traherne states this beautifully: “…I have found that things unknown have a secret influence on the soul, and like the center of the earth unseen violently attract it. We love we know not what, and therefore everything allures us.” We are drawn away by every whim, every fancy, in search of these secret influences. It’s why we bought Dan Brown’s wildly inaccurate novel and made him a millionaire a dozen times over. It’s why Sylvia Brown is so successful. It’s why Dr. Phil is so successful. It’s why internet chat rooms and “social networking” pages draw in our children by the thousands. The violent urge to find what we love, to find answers. We are all looking for “the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.” According to the late and much-missed Douglas Adams, that question is so vast, so all-encompassing, that it can have only one possible answer–42. The ultimate answer to the ultimate question, Adams tells us, is quite simply 42. No, it doesn’t make sense, and isn’t meant to. It’s an enigmatic answer for a question that has no logical answer. “The X-Files” paid quiet tribute to this by making Fox Mulder’s apartment number 42–there has rarely been a fictional character so bent on finding answers as Fox Mulder, whose stated motto was “I want to believe.”
We are all looking for 42, Traherne is saying. It pulls us, it exerts a gravitational force that is “violent” and that cannot be ignored. “Do you not feel yourself drawn by the expectation and desire of some great thing?” he asks. Once we see the truths we love but are unaware of, we will each become, Traherne says, “possessor of the whole world.” We will become aware of those truths we have always loved, we will see the sublime in the ordinary, we will see “things strange, yet common; incredible, yet known; most high, yet plain; infinitely profitable, but not esteemed.” We will see the diamond in the rough, as it were–the intensely beautiful, sparkling light hidden beneath the dusty and ordinary grey exterior.
Jesus once said that he came not to bring peace, but the sword. By this, I do not think somehow (insert “duh” here) that he meant that violence and warfare was the answer. I think he meant that his mission, his words, would divide and sunder people, both from one another as they clashed over ideals and beliefs, and from ourselves, internally, the division wrought by this inner battle to find the truths we love. Divisions that can either make us grow, or destroy us. Traherne says that he himself, in his Centuries, “will not by the noise of bloody wars and the dethroning of kings” show his reader the way, but rather “by the gentle ways of peace and love.” Love must be a healing balm, he says, a tender thing that seeks only to help the object of affection. Saint Paul’s letters to the Corinthians express this beautifully, of course, but Paul’s words regarding the kindness and patience of Love have become so known to us that they are almost a cliché, something trite and very Sunday School-ish, Those words of Paul, and here of Traherne, are nonetheless so desperately important to the entire gospel (which let us not forget means merely “good news”) of Christ, that we forget them or wave them aside at our own peril. Again, we become lost in the noise, and forget that “love is patient, love is kind” is in fact not a cliché but rather an eternal and immutable Truth. A healing Truth. The sort of Truth that heals the divisions brought about by the sword of Christ, the sword wielded solely in order that we might see where and how we have wounded ourselves, see where and how we are ourselves divided, and thereby to make all things right.
Traherne’s goal is to show his reader the clear pathway to the throne of God. In a sentence very reminiscent of Henry V’s speech at the battle of Agincourt wherein he says that men abed in England would count their lives meaningless for not having been on that battlefield in France, Traherne says that the end of this journey will “be so glorious that angels dare not hope for so great a one till they had seen it.” Angels, in other words, can only hope to see God and creation in such a glorious light as the one Traherne is giving to his reader. We are in the presence, with the Centuries of Meditation, of a great man, of a man who aches only to show others the glories he himself has seen.
Traherne--Embarkation
Thomas Traherne–Embarkation–Preface and Introduction
I began reading Waking Up in Heaven and was immediately struck by the editor’s voice. I felt like I had picked up the journal of an old friend, filled with chatty news and insights. I was very glad to find that the editor’s voice was so distinct, and very far from the decidedly preachy tone used by many religious/spiritual writers.
As I said, I came to Thomas Traherne via Phil Rickman’s atmospheric mystery Wine of Angels. The novel does not dwell on Traherne, and in fact only mentions him briefly and in passing. But it is a spiritual (not religious–there is a difference) novel nonetheless, and one guaranteed to leave goosebumps. I couldn’t help but wonder about the background of the story, which is set partially in modern-day Herefordshire and partly in the Herefordshire of Traherne’s time, the 17th century. I am myself a writer, and I love doing research. I find it’s one of the purest pleasures of my life. And I tend to almost immediately become swept up in new interests, which always leads, inevitably, to months of glorious research. Traherne caught my interest enough to send me off to Amazon with my debit card.
And so I began reading Waking Up in Heaven with delicious expectations and joy. I felt a new world was about to open up to me, and I have not been disappointed yet. The editor, David Buresh, in his Preface, lays out a series of questions he says Traherne posed, and I think those questions would be a wonderful reminder throughout this Traherne journey:
–How do we change our thinking and understand our desires?
–How can we talk with Jesus?
–How can we enjoy the world and every person in it?
–How can we love people the way Jesus does?
–How can we see all the treasures God has given us in creation?
–How can we overcome our sins and be restored?
–How can we fill our lives with joy and beauty?
That list sounds like a really decent guidepost. We are all very earthbound, very focused on the here-and-now, on the getting-and-spending, on being sure the contract goes through, the Starbucks is consumed, or the P.T.A. thinks we’re the best parent on the planet or a host of other things that keep us all so terribly busy. We are not in charge of our own thinking. Not even remotely. We allow ourselves to be bombarded by car ads, by supermodels and their too-perfect bodies, by the promise Suze Orman gives that we can all be rich just like she is if only we fork over $35 to hear every one of her valuable secrets. (I suspect the secret is simple–write a self-help book and charge $35 for it, and then you too can be as wealthy as she is, and everyone else like her who preys on the gullible and the lonely and the desperate. Dr. Phil didn’t get his mansion without hundreds of desperate people paying his mortgage for him, did he?)
There is too much noise, and we not only let it consume us, we actively encourage it, plugging our ears with iPods and Bluetooths (Blueteeth?) and rushing rushing rushing, always rushing. Heaven forfend that we should hear nothing for five minutes, that we should allow silence to fill even a nanosecond of our lives. I suspect that the truth here is both simple and painful–if we allow the silence, then we allow time for contemplation, time for those thoughts we keep at bay to gather round us like biting insects. Without the constant noise, we would be able to hear our own thoughts, our own fears, and our own darkest secrets. God, however, is in that silence. God is in “the still, small voice” experienced by the prophets. God is not in the noise. Therefore, we surround ourselves with this Not-God, we surround ourselves with our own abdication from all responsibility. Because if we let in the silence, we will hear God’s “still, small voice” and it will tell us something we don’t want to hear.
And so at the beginning of this journey, Buresh makes a point from Traherne, that we must change our thinking. It won’t be easy to do, and it won’t be painless. In fact, I think it will be a trial by fire, so to speak, a process that brings pain and tears but will also lead ultimately to great joy. From the refusal to allow the still, small voice, we cannot see the world as God sees it, we cannot love people the way Jesus does, and we most certainly cannot fill our lives with joy and beauty. There is (seemingly) precious little beauty in the world as it is, and I cannot help but wonder what the world could be like if people would just stop and hear the voice of God. Thomas Traherne did just that, and I am eager to walk awhile in his company.
Buresh uses C.S. Lewis as a bit of a game, he says, ever searching for references to Traherne in Lewis’s works. I think he missed one rather important reference in his own Preface when he says that, in Traherne, “seemingly common peasants turn out to be kings and queens.” I was reminded immediately of Narnia, of the four Pevensie children from Finchley receiving their own immortal crowns of glory. Lucy Pevensie stopped and listened quite carefully to the still, small voice, and it led her (and, eventually, her siblings) straight to the throne room of Heaven. The Pevensie children awoke one day in Narnia and were rewarded for their courage and their strength and their honor. They were rewarded for listening to the voice of God, for cutting through the noise of wartime England and hearing the quiet voice of Aslan. They awoke in Heaven.
I was transfixed at Buresh’s idea that a reader of Traherne’s Centuries of Meditation was in reality being gently guided down a path. The way Buresh describes it, this pathway is overgrown and we have in Traherne a guide through the brambles. The end will be to emerge into the world we already know, with the sublime difference that we will now see that world as Traherne saw it, in a completely new and spiritually enlightened way. And once we arrive at this new understanding, at this new view, Buresh tells us that “there is no return.” Once our eyes have been opened, they will stay that way, and we will forever see creation as Traherne did. This is both a comforting thing to contemplate, and a slightly unsettling one. We like to think we always have a way “out,” an escape route should things become uncomfortable; Buresh tells us that, with Traherne, there is no such thing. Once we arrive, we arrive, period. No going back. Today’s gospel (I am writing this on Sunday 2 March) dealt with the tale of the blind man, of his cure by Jesus Christ, and I found this oddly apropos to my reading of Buresh/Traherne. I wonder, did the blind man ever wish that Jesus had just left him alone? Did he ever wish that he couldn’t suddenly see? Did he ever long for the comfort of the darkness to which he was, after all, accustomed? And how did he put into context any of what he saw, giving the fact that he had never seen anything at all before? I think I may face this myself as I journey down Traherne’s overgrown path.
The review my dear friend sent me contains a wealth of information on Thomas Traherne, and serves as a really good springboard for Waking Up in Heaven. Today, we tend to either discount book reviews entirely, or place far too much store in them. The art of a good book review is, I fear, becoming a lost one. This particular review is impressive in its scope, and I found it to be quite informative. It gives a context for the figure of Dobell, mentioned in a quote from C.S. Lewis in Buresh’s introduction, for instance, wherein Lewis says that his Dobell edition has “lovely paper.”
As I write this, and look back on 3 solid pages of word processor text, I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that 3 to 4 days is simply not enough time to devote to a chapter, and so I am probably going to go with a week between chapters.
I began reading Waking Up in Heaven and was immediately struck by the editor’s voice. I felt like I had picked up the journal of an old friend, filled with chatty news and insights. I was very glad to find that the editor’s voice was so distinct, and very far from the decidedly preachy tone used by many religious/spiritual writers.
As I said, I came to Thomas Traherne via Phil Rickman’s atmospheric mystery Wine of Angels. The novel does not dwell on Traherne, and in fact only mentions him briefly and in passing. But it is a spiritual (not religious–there is a difference) novel nonetheless, and one guaranteed to leave goosebumps. I couldn’t help but wonder about the background of the story, which is set partially in modern-day Herefordshire and partly in the Herefordshire of Traherne’s time, the 17th century. I am myself a writer, and I love doing research. I find it’s one of the purest pleasures of my life. And I tend to almost immediately become swept up in new interests, which always leads, inevitably, to months of glorious research. Traherne caught my interest enough to send me off to Amazon with my debit card.
And so I began reading Waking Up in Heaven with delicious expectations and joy. I felt a new world was about to open up to me, and I have not been disappointed yet. The editor, David Buresh, in his Preface, lays out a series of questions he says Traherne posed, and I think those questions would be a wonderful reminder throughout this Traherne journey:
–How do we change our thinking and understand our desires?
–How can we talk with Jesus?
–How can we enjoy the world and every person in it?
–How can we love people the way Jesus does?
–How can we see all the treasures God has given us in creation?
–How can we overcome our sins and be restored?
–How can we fill our lives with joy and beauty?
That list sounds like a really decent guidepost. We are all very earthbound, very focused on the here-and-now, on the getting-and-spending, on being sure the contract goes through, the Starbucks is consumed, or the P.T.A. thinks we’re the best parent on the planet or a host of other things that keep us all so terribly busy. We are not in charge of our own thinking. Not even remotely. We allow ourselves to be bombarded by car ads, by supermodels and their too-perfect bodies, by the promise Suze Orman gives that we can all be rich just like she is if only we fork over $35 to hear every one of her valuable secrets. (I suspect the secret is simple–write a self-help book and charge $35 for it, and then you too can be as wealthy as she is, and everyone else like her who preys on the gullible and the lonely and the desperate. Dr. Phil didn’t get his mansion without hundreds of desperate people paying his mortgage for him, did he?)
There is too much noise, and we not only let it consume us, we actively encourage it, plugging our ears with iPods and Bluetooths (Blueteeth?) and rushing rushing rushing, always rushing. Heaven forfend that we should hear nothing for five minutes, that we should allow silence to fill even a nanosecond of our lives. I suspect that the truth here is both simple and painful–if we allow the silence, then we allow time for contemplation, time for those thoughts we keep at bay to gather round us like biting insects. Without the constant noise, we would be able to hear our own thoughts, our own fears, and our own darkest secrets. God, however, is in that silence. God is in “the still, small voice” experienced by the prophets. God is not in the noise. Therefore, we surround ourselves with this Not-God, we surround ourselves with our own abdication from all responsibility. Because if we let in the silence, we will hear God’s “still, small voice” and it will tell us something we don’t want to hear.
And so at the beginning of this journey, Buresh makes a point from Traherne, that we must change our thinking. It won’t be easy to do, and it won’t be painless. In fact, I think it will be a trial by fire, so to speak, a process that brings pain and tears but will also lead ultimately to great joy. From the refusal to allow the still, small voice, we cannot see the world as God sees it, we cannot love people the way Jesus does, and we most certainly cannot fill our lives with joy and beauty. There is (seemingly) precious little beauty in the world as it is, and I cannot help but wonder what the world could be like if people would just stop and hear the voice of God. Thomas Traherne did just that, and I am eager to walk awhile in his company.
Buresh uses C.S. Lewis as a bit of a game, he says, ever searching for references to Traherne in Lewis’s works. I think he missed one rather important reference in his own Preface when he says that, in Traherne, “seemingly common peasants turn out to be kings and queens.” I was reminded immediately of Narnia, of the four Pevensie children from Finchley receiving their own immortal crowns of glory. Lucy Pevensie stopped and listened quite carefully to the still, small voice, and it led her (and, eventually, her siblings) straight to the throne room of Heaven. The Pevensie children awoke one day in Narnia and were rewarded for their courage and their strength and their honor. They were rewarded for listening to the voice of God, for cutting through the noise of wartime England and hearing the quiet voice of Aslan. They awoke in Heaven.
I was transfixed at Buresh’s idea that a reader of Traherne’s Centuries of Meditation was in reality being gently guided down a path. The way Buresh describes it, this pathway is overgrown and we have in Traherne a guide through the brambles. The end will be to emerge into the world we already know, with the sublime difference that we will now see that world as Traherne saw it, in a completely new and spiritually enlightened way. And once we arrive at this new understanding, at this new view, Buresh tells us that “there is no return.” Once our eyes have been opened, they will stay that way, and we will forever see creation as Traherne did. This is both a comforting thing to contemplate, and a slightly unsettling one. We like to think we always have a way “out,” an escape route should things become uncomfortable; Buresh tells us that, with Traherne, there is no such thing. Once we arrive, we arrive, period. No going back. Today’s gospel (I am writing this on Sunday 2 March) dealt with the tale of the blind man, of his cure by Jesus Christ, and I found this oddly apropos to my reading of Buresh/Traherne. I wonder, did the blind man ever wish that Jesus had just left him alone? Did he ever wish that he couldn’t suddenly see? Did he ever long for the comfort of the darkness to which he was, after all, accustomed? And how did he put into context any of what he saw, giving the fact that he had never seen anything at all before? I think I may face this myself as I journey down Traherne’s overgrown path.
The review my dear friend sent me contains a wealth of information on Thomas Traherne, and serves as a really good springboard for Waking Up in Heaven. Today, we tend to either discount book reviews entirely, or place far too much store in them. The art of a good book review is, I fear, becoming a lost one. This particular review is impressive in its scope, and I found it to be quite informative. It gives a context for the figure of Dobell, mentioned in a quote from C.S. Lewis in Buresh’s introduction, for instance, wherein Lewis says that his Dobell edition has “lovely paper.”
As I write this, and look back on 3 solid pages of word processor text, I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that 3 to 4 days is simply not enough time to devote to a chapter, and so I am probably going to go with a week between chapters.
Ratty Ponderings
Wow, LONG time since I posted! And a really long time since I moderated pending comments. I’ve got to wonder if I LOOK like a blogger who needs super-hot Asian chicks or and extra-long thingy…And then I have to ask myself–do these idiots actually think they’ll get approved for posting?
Anyway, welcome one and all to the Year of the Rat, which is already forecasted to be a depressing, dismal, and possibly catastrophic year. Yay. Yippee.
And with a New Year come thoughts of a new path for yours truly. I’ve been wandering down many different spiritual paths, and have been having a truly wonderful learning experience whilst so doing. I’ve found the writings of Thomas Traherne, a 17th-century Englishman, and have been giving myself over to the cadence of his voice, to the peace and power of his words. A truly great man, sadly virtually unknown in America.
And so my blog, like me, will be taking a different tack. Heretofore, I’ve been outright political, and I will still focus on political issues, but I also think I need some “me” time, some time to sort out my own noggin and my own inner searcher.
I wonder–do we humans ever reach a limit on learning, on searching? I hope not. In the movie “Hogfather”, the character of Death is stunned that humanity can ever, EVER be bored. After all, we live in a pretty amazing universe…
Anyway, welcome one and all to the Year of the Rat, which is already forecasted to be a depressing, dismal, and possibly catastrophic year. Yay. Yippee.
And with a New Year come thoughts of a new path for yours truly. I’ve been wandering down many different spiritual paths, and have been having a truly wonderful learning experience whilst so doing. I’ve found the writings of Thomas Traherne, a 17th-century Englishman, and have been giving myself over to the cadence of his voice, to the peace and power of his words. A truly great man, sadly virtually unknown in America.
And so my blog, like me, will be taking a different tack. Heretofore, I’ve been outright political, and I will still focus on political issues, but I also think I need some “me” time, some time to sort out my own noggin and my own inner searcher.
I wonder–do we humans ever reach a limit on learning, on searching? I hope not. In the movie “Hogfather”, the character of Death is stunned that humanity can ever, EVER be bored. After all, we live in a pretty amazing universe…
Companions on the Journey
I am sitting here today with an amazing book in my hands. It’s a modern “translation” of a work by the great 17th-century religious mystic Thomas Traherne, entitled Waking Up in Heaven. This posting is an invitation for folks to join me as I read this book, to read it along with me and leave comments, etc. The ISBN of the book is 0-9721602-1-3 and it can be purchased from Amazon by following this link .
I discovered Traherne in a rather unusual manner, via a horror novel. The novel, the first in a series chronicling the adventures of a female vicar-exorcist named Merrily Watkins, is by Phil Rickman, and is entitled The Wine of Angels. (The ISBN for this book is 0-330-34268-1, Amazon information at this link ) In the novel, Ms. Watkins and her daughter move into the vicarage of a little Herefordshire U.K. town called Ledwardine, and as Merrily is the local exorcist (her bosses prefer the term “deliverance” expert) as well as the vicar, strange and disturbing things begin happening literally in her backyard. She delves into the life of a 17th-century vicar of Ledwardine, Will Williams, who had been a good friend of Traherne. The town and the character of Williams are fictional, but Rickman does a splendid job intriguing his readers about Thomas Traherne.
And so, my invitation to come along on my little journey. Comments are welcome, and I would love to hear if others have already found Traherne, etc.
I discovered Traherne in a rather unusual manner, via a horror novel. The novel, the first in a series chronicling the adventures of a female vicar-exorcist named Merrily Watkins, is by Phil Rickman, and is entitled The Wine of Angels. (The ISBN for this book is 0-330-34268-1, Amazon information at this link ) In the novel, Ms. Watkins and her daughter move into the vicarage of a little Herefordshire U.K. town called Ledwardine, and as Merrily is the local exorcist (her bosses prefer the term “deliverance” expert) as well as the vicar, strange and disturbing things begin happening literally in her backyard. She delves into the life of a 17th-century vicar of Ledwardine, Will Williams, who had been a good friend of Traherne. The town and the character of Williams are fictional, but Rickman does a splendid job intriguing his readers about Thomas Traherne.
And so, my invitation to come along on my little journey. Comments are welcome, and I would love to hear if others have already found Traherne, etc.
