Untangling Tales

or at least on their way.

This press release says the books should be reviewed and returned by January of 2008.
(Here is the post where I first mentioned religious books being removed from prison chapel libraries.)

I did the count I promised in that post– of the books that are still accessible (i.e., not boxed under the house): 627

I’m actually certain this number isn’t accurate, since I counted in 8 catigories in 11 different areas (shelves and piles) in my house, so there was too much room for confusion and flubbing.

Approximate percentages:

25% ———– Children’s picture and board books
25% ———– Non-fiction/ thinking/ reference
16% ———– Novels (all ages)
10% ———– Bibles, studies and “religious” books
10% ——— Folktales (individual picture books and collections)
6% ———— Music and How-to books
5% ———- Entertainment (plays, Calvin and Hobbes, etc.)
3% ———— Poetry

Amazing, really, how many books I own. Interesting, too, that most of those I choose to keep accessible are the ones I’ve already read.

I suppose there’s two main reasons for owning books (anyone want to suggest more?):

1. To have something new to read when you want it.
2. To be able to refer to something you’ve already read.

I’ve decided all the books I buy at the used-book stores must come from the first type of owner. That type of reading/ownership is utterly foreign to me. I almost never let something leave if I think I might want to refer to it again.

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to be incensed over certain sins?

As football season was starting there was flap about the player involved in dog fights, and my husband (not the least bit sentimental over animals for various reasons) asked what the big deal was.

That is, he knew why people didn’t like dog fighting, but was asking why this particular fall from grace was drawing more vehement and widespread criticism than any of the other stupid and sinful things public figures are exposed as being involved in.

In my typical way I launched into an off-the-cuff explanation as though it were a prepared speech. It went something like this:

Dog-fighting is something it’s safe not to like. It’s been reduced to a fringe activity in recent days, so you can be outraged and unrestrained in your criticism without having to worry about offending or provoking defensiveness in any of your acquaintances.

Or, even if you did, you’d feel on high moral ground that you wouldn’t be threatened by their disagreement. Nothing they can say would make you weaken your stance.

Anyway, people will rarely pass up a chance to look superior.

Other things, like a temper, say, or adultery, lying or arrogance– all these touch much more widely and deeply in our “civilized” world.

People get a “who are you to throw the first stone?” mentality, or (to invoke another stone cliché) realize they’re probably living in a glass house, and so refrain from throwing stones.

I don’t know enough about football to know how good a player Michael Vick is, so I don’t know how seriously to take it when commentators say he’ll have a hard time getting reemployed. They make out that it’s the league “taking this offense seriously” and I think more than that it’s a “rising star”(to quote one article) who hasn’t risen fast enough to make owners/coaches/whoever think he’s good enough to be worth the bad press.

I don’t know if I’m defending him or not– I just know that all I could think of was a quote I read recently:

Stephen Covey was asked after a speech about how to forgive someone who has committed adultery. He said the question made him think of the old prayer, “Oh Lord, let me forgive those who sin differently than I do.”

We are all in need of redemption (I wrote a post earlier about wanting to understand or redeem the villain reflecting an understanding of evil in our own hearts), and we shouldn’t try to fool ourselves that one sin is less of a stench in God’s nostrils than another.

Jennifer at Et Tu? has a wonderfully thoughtful essay about why Satan’s title of “Father of Lies” really is the most potent and terrible.

Perfect for anyone who may have thought there are stronger or more (powerfully) applicable epithets of evil.

I was in an analyzing mood today, and so all of you faithful/careful/hapless readers get to be the blessed recipients of the result of this exercise.

Actually, I found it to be a very useful exercise and encourage anyone to try it.
(And, yes, I noticed that my wife-ness didn’t hit the list, but I think that is indicative of the way God works in our marriage– all of it has been quiet, natural, and nearly invisible. So it almost never makes it to a list.)

One of the blogs I read encourages finding/creating a purpose statement for your life/writing/work. I’m not ready (focused enough?) to do that, but this list is probably the next-best thing– and I really like it.

It goes like this:
I am drawn to a number of different things in my daily life. Why? Do they have a purpose? What do I hope they accomplish?

What I want to do?
Why I want to do it?

Why write?
Because I hope to somehow touch lives beyond my family without detracting from my primary responsibility and assignment.

Also because it helps me better understand myself, so that (Lord willing) I can better/more efficiently improve myself to be a useful tool and effective witness for my heavenly master.
Being less of an embarrassment to myself is an additional perk.

Why Guitar?
Because I’ve always felt competency in an instrument it is somehow a part of a “complete” life, along with the husband and children and so on.

While not wishing to diminish the the intensity of the desire for children, this is the best analogy I’ve found so far: There is a image of older women desiring children; that they feel a hole, along with a sense of urgency while they wait. That’s the best way I can describe my “need” for excellence, or maybe just existence, in this realm of music.

Being able to sing (even well) is somehow not enough, in the way that these women, while perhaps willing to adopt, desperately want to hold their own baby.

It is a very awkward need to have, truly, because I’ve found little internal motivation (e.g., to practice) beyond the bloated sense of need that it happen. The means of happening is woefully under-funded.

(more…)

Any of us who love books and recognize the power they have to work on the human soul (for good or ill) should be in prayer about this.

To summarize, beginning in an effort to minimize the potential of Islam finding a violence-incubator in the U.S prison system, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has ordered all religious books be removed from the prison library if they are not on the approved list of 150 titles (each religion gets their own 150, I understand).

150 books may seem like plenty to people who don’t read (never mind what got excluded from that list) , but as a reader (and one who gathers most new growth and ideas from reading) I will stand up and say 150 is limiting– especially when, face it, not everyone can read every book.

I include myself in this. There are books I’ve been so glad came from the library, because they just *didn’t* fit.

Just as a point of comparison, I’m going to count the books on my shelves and see how many I have. Two points about this count:

1. I just put three or four *boxes* of books under the house last month, so those that are left are:
   a) less than the full amount I currently own, and
   b) more likely to be of the “proper fit” category, since they were left out.
2. The reason for putting all these books away for the present is that the majority of my time is being spent on maintaining a house and children.

Ya’ll can comment and complain if you want to, but no matter what their duties are, I don’t imagine prisoners to be as busy as a mother of three. Leaving out other issues that go along with (perceived) inactivity, these people have a serious need for good books.

If you click on the link above it will take you to the original talk addressing this issue, and here is a link to Justice Fellowship’s Legislative Action Center to learn what you can do to help preserve prisoners’ religious freedom.

Some will argue the whole point of prison is for freedom to be limited, with which I’d largely have to agree. However, on some level, I think all of us wish the prison somehow improved the fallen citizens it eventually disgorges back into society.

For those of us too busy in this season of life to visit those in prison, I hope we will at least remember to support those who are laboring in that field. One way is to pray their tools (among them, the variety of books available) won’t be stolen as they try to build the house.

Knowing that it is only God who can change a man (or woman)’s heart, we should be excited at how open prisoners are to the gospel, and perhaps use this struggle as a reminder to be more purposeful toward them in our prayers.

Speaking of provision (because I so often do)…

My father is an elementary school teacher, so he doesn’t get much time to hunt (teachers only have 2 days of personal leave). He goes out over Labor Day weekend, and sometimes on another weekend or two, but usually he can’t go hunt.

Even so, God has nearly every year provided meat, either through a shared kill, an antlerless hunt permit or by a call from someone we know on the edge or just outside of town, saying there’s a moose in their garden or back yard.

My father hunts with a bow, so he can hunt in places a gun hunt (i.e. residential areas) wouldn’t be allowed.

Now, this being Alaska, we really do have “neighborhood moose” wandering around various subdivisions. I remember one sleeping outside my window when I was in high school.

My old (as in, arthritic and going blind) dog once rushed one when she thought it was going to hurt my mom. Got kicked really good, too. Usually there’s less drama.

Yesterday’s seminar talked a lot about “hidden rules” that exist in different groups (the main focus there was economic levels), and how easily relationship can be damaged or destroyed by unknowingly violating these hidden rules.

I was trying to think of hidden rules that serious in my own community. Serious enough to damage relationship (there are many unspoken “understandings,” but most of them just reveal if someone is assimilated Alaskan or fresh from Outside). I’ve only thought of one so far:

You never shoot the neighborhood moose. I only remember one time when a neighborhood moose was killed, and there was so much outrage you never would have guessed we’re a hunting community.

So Dad never stepped outside and shot a moose on his own property, because we always lived in a neighborhood. He knew the “rule.”

But he lives now in my grandparents’ house. It’s still in town, but not in a neighborhood, so when he went outside last night and saw a moose he was free to grab his bow. It took some tracking (and my mom drove the Subaru to where it finally fell), but with the neighbors’ help they got it all cut up and hung in the garage by 1:30 this morning.

God is so faithful to provide.

Most people reading this will already know that writing is a very private, mostly invisible work.

I don’t know how many of you have known what I experienced for the first time this weekend: writing as a performance.

It was an unexpected and nearly giddy delight to have the progress of my work followed so closely. When I trimmed the fat, I was complemented. When I produced a new, resonating argument, I was praised.

All the work I do “in secret” so often, the simple (but usually effective) trading of sentences within a paragraph, that usually means nothing to any but me– this earned me the title of magician.

And isn’t it magic we writers make?

Sometimes clumsy magic (like this attempt at sharing my delight at a process being recognized), but magic still, frequently dazzling to the uninitiated and unjaded who watch us create meaning out of chaos.

However clumsy, it is a gift to be able to say what we mean, and watching others without it makes me more thankful than ever I can so often find the right words at the right time.

I was at a 6-hour seminar from 2 to 4 today.

There was a *lot* of material covered and not covered, and I’ll definitely be getting the book from the library to fill in the gaps. Some new new ideas were planted that I’m going to mulch for a while.

~ ~ ~

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
W.B. Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

From The Lady of the Linden Tree by Barbara Leonie Picard. (This is one I mentioned earlier)

Sir Merewine of the Hill was accounted among the best of all knights, no matter how one chose to reckon it– whether by skill, or courtesy, good looks or good deeds. He was a truly noble man and was adored by many women, but he politely declined all their attentions.

He had sworn to take as his lady only the most beautiful woman in the world, though he did not yet know who she was.

Nevertheless, he served equally any who had need of him. He was not unkind in his determination to choose the loveliest, only set in his mind.

One day, as he was on his way to a midsummer tourney in the Joyous Valley, he passed by the edge of a wood and heard weeping. Being unable to hear the sound of distress without offering his help, the good knight looked about until he saw a young woman under a linden tree, weeping into her hands.

He approached, asking if there were any way to assist her. When she looked up it took all his skill to carefully conceal his disgust, for she, truly, was the ugliest of women.

The lady explained she had three requests to make of some brave knight, but because of her awful appearance she had been unable to find any willing to help her.

“More shame to them,” said Sir Merewine.

He offered to take on her tasks, and asked what they were, but she would only tell one at a time.  The first was a knight Sir Merewine must challenge in her name, in order to bring back his helmet.

Upon meeting the knight, Sir Merewine saw the battle would be hard, but he stood by his word and fought the dark knight until the the larger man fell unconscious under a blow from Sir Merewine.

Having won, Sir Merewine took the fallen knight’s helmet and returned to the lady for the second task.

(more…)

Can you see the caterpillar?

Love to watch it! Just don’t make me touch it!