A message from my dog

In December, I received the following card that turned out to be my favorite surprise of the season: “A Holiday Message from the Dog you Killed…”

 Inside was a silly poem. In typical doggy generosity and faithfulness – Bing forgave me and wished me a Merry Christmas. HOW did Hallmark Cards know? All I can think is that I must not be alone for this to be a salable topic.

A friend who read the first chapter of The Exact Place found this card SOMEwhere. In my defense, I would LIKE to remind everyone that it was an ACCIDENT. Although it is true that this was strictly against the rules I didn’t want him to get hurt when I set him on the horses.  “With a flying kick, Duke sent Bing somersaulting through the air until he rested quietly on the floor of the woods among decaying leaves and tiny blue violets. From a distance he looked like a still life, a bouquet of small white flowers pushing through the chilled earth….a tiny marsh of blood forming beside his head.”

 

I still think of Bing occasionally and wonder if dogs will be in heaven. Sometimes I imagine being joyfully greeted and bowled to the ground (gently) by all the pets we ever knew. All these creatures God has made and that we have cared for and loved or not loved as well as we should have…. I give thanks for them.

Less than a feast on the e-table

     The following recent conversation was instructive. I've been pondering my lack of education in many areas anyway. And my Olympic ability to humiliate myself. Still, I am resolved to go ahead with life and laugh at myself as I keep on learning.

     On Friday, Jan 4, 2013, at 6:56 AM,  I received an email from Steve F.:

Just read this piece on Caravaggio - painting and the mystery of faith. Thought you would appreciate it, too.

Steve F.

Here's a link to Caravaggio's painting:

The Denial of St. Peter by Caravaggio

     At 11:35 AM Margie wrote:

     Thank you, Steve.

As I read the piece and hadn't as yet looked at the painting itself, I thought perhaps the servant girl would be looking toward the source of light, but I see, as Meis describes, she is not. Possibly this reveals my own desire for spiritual recognition to be that simple and straightforward for people. Turn to Jesus. It isn't. I agree she has gone interior and something is happening. Perhaps she recognizes a crossroad. A dawning light. And her choice is to turn from it, but we don't know in the next second what her choice will be.

I enjoyed the essay and wish I could see the painting in real space and time.

The mysteries of faith continue.

mlh

     At 2:52 P.M Drew T. wrote:

Sorry, I don't buy any of it. Bad painting with an unintentionally cross-eyed girl in it. Peter looks like Plato reasoning with a student. This painting is deservedly one of his least interesting.

Drew

     At 3:23 PM, Denis Haack wrote:

I hesitated to say anything, but since Drew has spoken, I'll add my one and

half cents. That Caravaggio was technically superb is not debatable, as is the

fact that he had a huge influence on artists that followed him. My main

problem with this painting, though, has been that it seems to kowtow to

Rome, a propagandistic use for Caravaggio's art and skills. In Scripture

Peter denies aggressively, eventually with swearing, yet Caravaggio pictures

him as taciturn and meek, even mild and shy. Caravaggio was a violent drunk,

on the run for murder and headed to Rome near the end of his life where he

hoped to be pardoned by the pope so as to avert the punishment for his

crime. (Actually more than one violent crime: he also assaulted another man

but had escaped from prison.) This painting was done in the last year of his

life just at this juncture. I've always thought it the work of man trying to

make Rome like him by depicting St Peter the way he does--Caravaggio's

trying to weasel out of the trouble he's brought on himself by a lifetime of

decadent living. One of his weaker works, because of the use to which he

uses his skills.

Denis

     At 4:02 p.m. Andy C. wrote:

I have to admit, I need more than that article gave me to convince me that

1) this is a great painting

2) it is about what the writer thinks it's about

3) it converted the entire Western tradition of painting (ahem.)

But it's an interesting reading and there's no doubt there are some

interesting things going on in the work.

Andy

     At 4:41 PM Margie wrote:

Denis, Drew, Andy, Steve,

I think someone made a comment in my name….

Really, I don't know who since I don't know that much about

Caravaggio. But I'm quite sure I don't like him.

mlh

(By this time I felt very sorry I’d said anything at all.)

Later.

When I asked permission to publish our conversation and they all said yes, Steve F. confessed the following: (Which I admired and made me feel much better about myself. But not totally because I missed the Trent/Reformation thing.)

“I share your e-red-faced horror after I discovered in my colossal ignorance I had put something on the e-table that was less than a feast…. But I learned a lot... and was very glad to learn.

What I found intriguing is that no one commented on what I think was the theological idea at the center of the article – the contrasting Trent/Reformation perspectives on art.  If the author is to be trusted (and that is now in question after the barrage of anti-Caravaggio criticism elicited by my email), I find myself landing more on the side of Trent (gasp!)”

Breaking Up

“I have had a delightful windfall: £5 worth of books as a prize from College for getting a First. Oh ye gods, if this had come four or five years ago, what raptures and debatings, what making and re-making of lists had been! As it is was I had great difficulty in making them out at all, being perpetually haunted by the fear that I should afterwards find out that I had got all the things I really did NOT want. It is a dismal sign of breaking up and old age that I look forward to their arrival with very luke warm pleasure."     -  The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves.

Lewis was 22 years old when he wrote this!

Hmmm. I don’t know what this is a “sign of” since I am probably “breaking up” with old age according to this, but yesterday when three books arrived in the mail and I was delighted. I felt excitement as Denis pulled the strap of the envelope and handed me a book carefully wrapped in white paper. All of them are available at  Hearts &Minds Books .

These are the books:

1.     The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley & the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah” by Alan Light. Denis has dibs on this one.

2.     QU4RTETS a collection of art and essays from an Exhibition on T.S. Elliot’s poems “Four Quartets.” Anita gets this one first because of her constant art-making.

3.     The Pastor: A Memoir by Eugene Peterson. I’ve been eagerly waiting for this memoir of his journey through life. He was born in 1939 – now I want to hear Peterson’s wisdom. I want to know what he says about life, death, resurrection and how to keep on following Jesus through it all.

Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense by Francis Spufford.

 Sometimes, too often, I think, on Sunday mornings I do not feel worship-filled. I feel sorry about this and a little ashamed about feeling scolded as I am urged to confess my sin and rebellion. Perhaps it is the word-choice that has become too familiar? “You rebel against God. You know how sinful you are and you know that you run from God at every opportunity.” Of course, I need confession in my life, I don’t deny that. But I seem to need more of, of, I don’t know what to call it … a more robust practice of the joy of worship and reconciliation? What seems like an over-emphasis leads my soul not to confession or deep awesome gratefulness for the love of Christ, but a head-hanging, dispirited state of being.

Perhaps this is my problem alone. I don’t know. You are welcome to correct me.

My good friend, Wes Hill, now an assistant professor of New Testament at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania recently noted:

“This is the book (Unapologetic:Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising EmotionalSense) that probably stands out most when I think back over the reading I did in 2012. There are plenty of things that I didn’t like about this book (its theology is considerably more liberal than mine), but when I finished the “Yeshua” chapter, I felt like someone who’s just heard the story of the Gospels, having never heard it before. I was reconverted.”

“Yeshua and the Crowd” [Excerpt]

Daylight finds him in a procession again, but this time no one could mistake him for a king. He’s stumbling along under the weight of his own instrument of execution, a great big wooden thing he can hardly lift, with an escort of the empire’s soldiers, and the bystanders who’ve come blinking out of the lodgings where they spent the festival night and don’t see their hopes, or even the possibility of their hopes, parading by. They see their disappointment, they see their frustration. They see everything in themselves that is too weak or too afraid to confront the strapping paratroopers; and much though they hate the soldiers, they hate him more, for his pathetic slide into victimhood. Word of his loose living, his impiety, his pleasure in bad company goes round in whispers. And just look at him. There’s something disgusting about him, don’t you think? Something that makes you squirm inside. Something … furtive. He’s so pale and sickly-looking, with that dried blood round his mouth. He looks like a paedophile being led away by the police. He looks like something from under a rock; as if he doesn’t deserve the daylight. He’s a blot on the new day. Someone kicks his arse as he goes by, and whoops, down he goes, flat on his nose with the cross pinning him like a struggling insect, and let’s face it, it’s funny. Yeshua is a joke. He’s less a messiah, more a patch of something nasty on the pavement. And as he struggles on he recognizes every roaring, jeering face. He knows our names. He knows our histories.

And since, as well as being a weak and frightened man, he’s also the love that makes the world, to whom all times and places are equally present, he isn’t just feeling the anger and spite and unbearable self-disgust of this one crowd on this one Friday morning in Palestine; he’s turning his bruised face toward the whole human crowd, past and present and to come, and accepting everything we have to throw at him, everything we fear we deserve ourselves. The doors of his heart are wedged open wide, and in rushes the whole pestilential flood, the vile and roiling tide of cruelties and failures and secrets. Let me take that from you, he is saying. Give that to me instead. Let me carry it. Let me be to blame instead. I am big enough. I am wide enough. I am not what you were told. I am not your king or your judge. I am the father who longs for every last one of his children. I am the friend who will never leave you. I am the light behind the darkness. I am the shining your shame cannot extinguish. I am the ghost of love in the torture chamber. I am change and hope. I am the refining fire. I am the door where you thought there was only wall. I am what comes after deserving. I am the earth that drinks up the bloodstain. I am gift without cost. I am. I am. I am. Before the foundations of the world, I am.

This leads me to confession. Strangely, it also lifts my heart. It reminds me of when I was a little girl and first fell in love with Jesus and foolishly thought that had I been there, I would have saved him from crucifixion. I now know otherwise. But, against what I’ve often heard, it just isn’t true that we run from God at every opportunity. There are many, many times and many, many people who run toward him dragging all their troubles, begging for exactly what he offers: grace, forgiveness, joy, freedom.

Men go away. Women, stay.

I think men should go away for a minute while I post this. Women. Stay.

It doesn’t seem right that I celebrated turning 65 the day after so many young lives were over. So violently done. I should have been the one to leave and not come back. I want to apologize for my life.

But here it is Monday morning and the most incomprehensible thing about life is that it goes on right up until the moment when God says, Come Home. I’d like to say the deaths of those children will make me live more carefully, more intentionally. I know. Sometimes we’re full of crap and we quickly forget, but I’m going to try not to.

Here is reality: we celebrated my birthday. Denis made supper. He doesn’t cook often so that was cause for rejoicing and a bit of mirth. He opened a bottle of red wine, made marinated pork chops, steamed cauliflower and baked sweet potatoes without help. Anita made chocolate cupcakes with coffee ganache icing. You should never buy a woman a handbag, the chances of it being something she likes are almost zero, but Denis did and I love it. 

Gluten-free Chocolate Cupcakes with Ganache Icing

   The first leg of my celebrating actually began a few days earlier – let this be a lesson to all you out there with aging intestines and more diet restrictions than you care to make public. We were on our way back from visiting family in Chattanooga and me doing a reading and signing for The Exact Place at Camp House Coffee. No sooner had we left the Smoky Mountains and I was tricked out with Lattes and Poppy Cock. How can I be 65 and so stupid? By the northern Kentucky border I was screaming for an exit and scanning the roadside for shelter. There was nothing for miles. Denis yelled, “Download the RoadAhead app for your iPhone. It will tell us the location of the next Rest Stop!!” So I did. And when it politely requested if it could locate me on the map and I said YES! AND HURRY UP, it ran and ran and ran and finally said it could not FIND me, and we were ON AN INTERSTATE FOR PITY SAKE!  There was a happy ending when we finally found a MacDonald’s 30 miles down the highway, but it was close. A small thing, really, isn’t it?

Bad Margie

 Maybe this could be a small gift of being honest? I plan to keep telling you over the next few years. I don’t think I was ever at the “top of my game,” anyway. My face, my body, unfortunately my good sense and brains will fail me more and more over the next years. I don’t plan to hide my little face cancers and droopy eye-lids from you. Perhaps, in turn, this will give you hope and perspective – something I surely need –  to have the composure, the grace and the inner beauty to grow old in front of you and in spite of our culture’s quest for eternal youth and beauty.

Thank you for stopping by here and know that I wish I could bring you into the real place where I live and share a moment of joy and kindness. I’d like to bless you as you return to whatever it is you are called to do this week, this month. The office, your business, your families, relationships, the babies and the elderly you care for, your students – whatever it is you do to love and serve others, may you also find moments to celebrate and care for yourself. Merry Christmas. Love, Margie.

On what side of sentimental

Recently I came across this opinion piece in the NYT and thought, it would be worthy of so much more thought and discussion. The title intrigued me because in my ordinary, everyday life I can get blind-sided by cynicism. It can happen when I watch News that triggers ranting but the next minute, I’m cooing over the cuteness of an angora rabbit named Honeysuckle. It happens so often, I think I suffer from a schizophrenic mix of cynical sentimentality.

In How to Live without Irony, Christy Wampole writes:

“What would it take to overcome the cultural pull of irony? Moving away from the ironic involves saying what you mean, meaning what you say and considering seriousness and forthrightness as expressive possibilities, despite the inherent risks. It means undertaking the cultivation of sincerity, humility and self-effacement, and demoting the frivolous and the kitschy on our collective scale of values. It might also consist of an honest self-inventory.

Here is a start: Look around your living space. Do you surround yourself with things you really like or things you like only because they are absurd? Listen to your own speech. Ask yourself: Do I communicate primarily through inside jokes and pop culture references? What percentage of my speech is meaningful? How much hyperbolic language do I use? Do I feign indifference? Look at your clothes. What parts of your wardrobe could be described as costume-like, derivative or reminiscent of some specific style archetype (the secretary, the hobo, the flapper, yourself as a child)? In other words, do your clothes refer to something else or only to themselves? Do you attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or ugly? In other words, is your style an anti-style? The most important question: How would it feel to change yourself quietly, offline, without public display, from within?”  How to Live Without Irony by Christy Wampole, NYT Opinionator.

I would like to honestly embrace some of Wampole’s ideas. I felt tender about her suggestion that we consider what our lives might be like if we lived away from the harsh light of irony and public display and were just ourselves – not only in how we dress, but in other ways. We need sincerity and humility. We need to quench anxiety and envy. We should resist the pressure to keep standards that have nothing to do with godliness and more to do with public image or materialism. 

 That leaves me wondering what to think about the interactive, on-line Advent Calendar that I have secretly loved and am now publicly disclosing. Yes, I’ve opened it each day this month. I’ve decorated a tree and made a snowman. Some would call it The Pike’s Peak of Sentimentality.

Granddaughter and Grandma

Okay, I agree it’s sentimental. Life is hard, I’ve never denied it, but can’t I please have some teeny bits of child-like sweetness? My grandchildren and other kids like this calendar, too. (Last year’s Advent calendar included a few parts of Real Christmas, which partially justified it. I don’t know if this year will be the same.) I would like to like it without apology or fear of being labeled unsophisticated, intellectually inferior, or lacking in cultural blah-blah-blah discernment.

 So if I can encourage you to join me just for a little while?: Let’s enjoy the skating rink at Rockefeller Center, the bubble lights on the tree, gingerbread cookies with red buttons and Aaron Neville’s “Blue Christmas.” We will not worry too much about kitsch because we will still get plenty of Advent readings, King’s Carols, and Hallelujah choruses.

And one more thing, Christy Wampole. What about humor? We need to laugh. My wild “Happy Chair” does make me happy. And it is nothing if not kitschy. Seeing a serious theologian wearing wild socks makes me laugh. And if my casserole dishes and hot pad trivets make me smile because they remind me of my grandmother – isn’t that not just allowable, but good?

"Happy Chair"

 It’s true. I am picking on only one part of Wampole’s thoughtful essay. I wonder if she or I confuse the meaning of irony with cynicism? It would be more fair to her if we discussed the entire piece in context, but I’ve got to get downstairs right now and check on Honeysuckle who is suffering from pasteurella multocida. It is making her dizzy and sick. She can’t even hop around. We are feeling worried and a little sentimental about Anita’s poor bunny.

Honeysuckle is sick

 For so many reasons: O, come Immanuel, come.

Talk about turkey

     Just finished talking to my great layout editor, Anne Melnyk who lives in Pittsburgh, as we finished up on all the little niggley changes, like comma here, comma there?

Anne & Margie at Bonnie Leifer's in Pittsburgh

      All done and the Winter Issue of Notes From Toad Hall is ready to go to the printer. We started chatting about Thanksgiving and I learned she’s having sixteen people for dinner including three of her son’s college roommates. I exclaimed that she’d need a really big turkey if she wanted leftovers, like at least 18 pounds. Better at 20. Those are big beasts to roast and I’ve had too many close calls and glitches despite years of experience. It seems I unintentionally attract disaster and feel this is very unfair of life.

     So despite my own lack of perfection, I’m sharing some of my fail-safe tips. In the manner of Hints from Heloise who often leaves me snickering and thinking, these people need to get a life.

These are my best suggestions for roasting a turkey:

Get a digital meat thermometer. Seriously. Maybe everyone else knows this. It’s taken me YEARS to figure out you NEED one. (I should be slapped for sniggering at Heloise.) There’ve been countless times when I thought I understood how long to roast a 21 pound turkey only to learn I’d done the math wrong and had to keep taking the thing out of the oven cutting into it, finding bloody flux, putting it back in, waiting, waiting, and then finally risking salmonella because everyone was either getting crabby and hungry or filling up on antipasto and egg nog and coming to the weighted table full. So get a digital meat thermometer with a probe and a wire that can string to the outside so you don’t even have to open the oven door if you don’t want to.

Get it done early. Err on the side of having it done an hour or even hour and a half before dinner time. (A thermometer will help you know when to take it out, and you can always keep it warm.) You will be so much more relaxed. Done early also gives the turkey time to relax which makes it easier to carve. This rarely happens at my house because I push the timing way too close and there we are carving a steaming hot turkey that shreds and splits rather than slicing up nice and clean. I am confident you can read cookbook tables with minutes per pound far better than me.

No special turkey roaster. Put it in a large pan, or whatever it fits in – it’s okay if the legs hang over a bit. Stuff it, if you’re into that. Jab the thermometer into the fleshiest part of the thigh. Be sure to oil the outside with butter or olive oil – this helps keep the aluminum foil from sticking to the skin. Cover it loosely with foil tucking it in around the edges. About an hour before it’s done remove the foil and baste if you like to have the skin all browned and crisp. Prick a fork into the leg joints and a lot of juice should run out.

Turkey baster. I’m really not one for gadgets. I don’t like gadgets like little dealies that help you separate egg whites from yolks. No. No. No. But a turkey baster has some uses that are deal breakers. Sucking up the juices in the bottom of the pan and squirting them over the beast really helps it stay moist and browns it up beautifully. The baster comes in handy for other things, like drawing the fat off a broth before you make gravy, and other things I mostly forget now.

Frozen Turkeys. If you have a frozen turkey, you have to remember to thaw it way in advance. If you need to put it in the oven early on Thanksgiving morning, you can’t just take it out the night before and let it thaw overnight. It will still be cement in the center. I know this from sad experience and hours spent running hot water into its cavity trying to pry out the plastic bag with the neck and giblets. You should take it out at least the morning before.

Living in the north. Has its advantages this time of year. If you make your stuffing earlier in the day before Thanksgiving: chill it. That way you can stuff your prepared turkey that night. Stick it on your porch or patio safe from predators (I set up steel traps and grenades) and where the temperature is close to freezing, because you know very well it will never fit back into your full refrigerator. Even a balcony will do. This way you get to sleep about an hour longer or until you hear guests muttering about breakfast.

There. Those are my best tips. Good luck. I will not be available for triage on Thanksgiving Day. But I will be glad to post any of your questions or disasters the day following.

Happy Thanksgiving way in advance. And I’m sorry I haven’t been posting more lately. Thank you for stopping by. I really appreciate it.