Secular Bio

I’ve been approaching a few libraries in our region letting them know that The Exact Place is available for their collection, meaning, would you please purchase one and shelve it for the millions of readers clamoring to read it. Anita (our assistant at Ransom Fellowship) has been an invaluable help in contacting and following up. Usually they ask me to donate a copy and I usually do.  Perhaps some readers will be inspired to purchase a copy – maybe as a gift for someone.  Perhaps library exposure could open the door for an author’s reading which would lead to response and discussion.
One thing on my to-to list this week has been writing a bio that would be appropriate for libraries, small shops and venues that include a few chosen books.  Places like that.  Some aspects of this that are difficult for me.  The challenge first of all is to get past me.  Blah, blah, blah me.  How do I write a bio without sounding neurotically self-focused?  Next is how to write it in such a way to hint that I’m a person of faith, but not a dangerous, crazy Christian.  It should sound professional, but also be personal.  IT must be interesting, but not too much detail.  It’s best to be brief.  Like around 100 words or less.

I remember an editor chiding writers: why would you take all the time and effort to write a book and then think you can whip off a summary and a bio in ten seconds.  So after much deleting and drafting, I’ve come up with this.  Comments and kind criticisms are welcome.

Margie Haack lives in Rochester, MN with husband Denis, on a small urban lot where she tries to attract bumble bees and hummingbirds with marginal success.  Nature and place connect her to the spiritual geography that has shaped her life.  Margie’s writing includes a quarterly publication of personal essays – Notes from Toad Hall, and her work has appeared in ArtHouseAmerica, The High Calling Blog, Washington Institute for Faith and Comment Magazine.  She recently shattered a platter, sucker her socks into the vacuum cleaner and backed into a parked car proving that safety lies in writing more and leaving the desk less.  You can find her blogging at Toads Drink Coffee.

Sometimes I have no idea what I’m doing.  I trip ahead hoping God will continue to extend mercy as I go.

Special Needs Rabbit - Honeysuckle recovers

Honeysuckle's Headtilt

 A while back Anita found Honeysuckle huddled in a corner and for a day and a half she did not move. She didn’t eat, drink, chew or poop her little brown beads. Then she began to strangely lie on her side as if she couldn’t hold herself in an upright rabbitty position. She dirtied herself in a most sad, uncommon way. When we picked her up she rolled onto her back and couldn’t seem to right herself. When she fell down her ramp, we were alarmed and knew something was very wrong. The vet diagnosed her with Pasteurellamultocida , a bacterial infection that had settled in her inner ear and was giving her vertigo. By then she was so dizzy she couldn’t even sit up. Rabbits often die from such infections. The outcome was uncertain as she languished for about two weeks, getting antibiotics and being fed timothy hay puree and canned pumpkin from a big syringe because she couldn’t eat on her own.

It’s been two months now and she seems to have stabilized, but has neurological damage that gives her a permanent head-tilt. She has one good eye that is always pointing up as if she has a question to ask. The other one uselessly gazes at the floor. Her energy is back and she is almost normal except that she cannot sit up quite right and one ear is always flopped. When called for a treat – we call her “Honeysuckle! Sweetheart, come get your carrots.” (She loves grapes, too.) She hurtles toward us but usually overshoots the mark as if her brakes are also missing.

Strange isn’t it? How we have tender feelings toward God’s creatures? I know, especially the cuddly, cute ones. But we care for her more especially now – needing to clean her more frequently, be more careful with her diet. And in turn, she seems even more affectionate. Demanding to be petted and loved. She continues to have a good life on Toad Hall’s back porch.

Since many of you, in the past, have followed her little life. I thought you’d like to see our angora rabbit who now has “special needs.” Please excuse the blue-tint. We are amateurs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ptlCMVwk9o&feature=youtu.be

After that most things are a "come down"

Lately, I've been reading through C.S. Lewis' letters to his lifetime friend, Arthur Greeves.
In 1930 he confessed Christianity - obliquely at first, then gradually with more and more clarity and intensity.
I have enjoyed reading these letters and listening to his journey through life. His letters connect him to the ordinary things, like digging up the hens' run and walking the dog, these make him a whole person and more accessible to my heart and brain. At the same time, his brilliance and amazing ability to parse True Faith help keep me on my own modest path. If, or when, I have doubts about the Christian faith or God, I say to myself: Oh, that's right. There is C.S. Lewis.   


 Even though I grow a little bored of hearing quotes about Aslan, I can't help but share this quote about an altogether "other" legendary person.


"I read in two evenings a little book ... called 'The Practice of the Presence of God' which I picked up & put in the study because it seemed to me a promising title. It is by a Seventeenth century monk. It is full of truth but somehow I didn't like it: it seemed to me a little unctious. That sort of stuff, when it is not splendid beyond words, is terribly repulsive, or can be, can't it? No doubt it depends v. largely on ones mood. I had just finished the fourth Gospel in Greek ... and after that most other things are a come down."
                            -  June 1, 1930.
 

Time to change

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It is snowing this morning. The first day of “Daylight Savings.” Daylight Time used to change when Spring was firmly established in flowers and light. Today, ironically, it is still winter. Snow falls straight down in heavy-cotton chunks. Theirs is a quiet, passing beauty. The kind of snow-fall that doesn’t last. Quickly it fades to small flakes and then disappears altogether.

I am thoughtful this morning. Considering changes. Time, weather, place. What to make of unwelcome changes?

Yesterday, driving from Lincoln to Rochester meant passing through most of Iowa on interstate highways. First miles and miles east to Des Moines on I-80 and then up, up, north and north through the “fruited plains” on I-35 until at last the bluffs of southeastern Minnesota gently rise.

About thirty miles west of Des Moines traffic suddenly slowed, came to a stop. We could see the road ahead was clogged with cars and trucks idling in the rain. An accident.  Someone’s tragedy unfolding far ahead; who we would never know. As we approached the standing point, some vehicles were making a k-turn, passing us on the shoulder and exiting the wrong way up the on-ramp. One questioning glance from Anita, and we were doing the same. It was a satisfying crime. A justifiable change of direction. We quickly followed a line of traffic heading cross-country. Along the back roads, we had time to call up Google Maps and decided to follow the perfectly paved Iowa county roads, straight and smooth, skipping Des Moines and Ames altogether.

A map of Iowa hints at its history – a perfect grid of right-angle roads. Rich, black soil precisely divided into sections worth millions. One mile on a side, 640 acres within the square. Farmland that made the lives of men and women who raised crops and animals to feed hundreds of others. Often there is still a stand of old trees on one corner of a section, remnants of a homestead, a house that might still be lived in, if it’s lucky, but the out-buildings –  the out-buildings. All dying, sinking back into the ground. Barns three stories high with an elevator still sitting beneath the haymow door as if one day the farmer was raptured, or died or moved to Arizona. Round barns, barns with graceful cupolas, hipped roofs, angled roofs, stone, oaken, bricked, square, reflecting styles of German, Norwegian, Dutch immigrants.

Iowa barn in winter

Not as many of these places are seen from the heavily traveled interstate, but on back roads they never leave your sight. County after county the quiet is eerie. In the stillness of winter the machines are gone, the land is dark, the buildings are broken, blackened, faded red. Granaries, barns, coops without an animal or human in sight.

Perhaps one reason American factory farming troubles me is because I feel alienated by it. I want to be wholly restored to land and creation. I want us to be careful caretakers of, not just the earth, but of people. I mourn empty places that were once alive with chickens, cows, horses and pigs. I want to repopulate them with children and dogs and tire swings. Restore a garden. Perhaps it is true Home I wait for – that impossible place of meaningful work and unbroken restoration God will bring about one day.

Tomorrow, I will be more settled. More distant from dying places I can’t fix. I will focus on my desk and maybe I’ll think about the small patch of urban earth outside our back door. Flower and seed catalogs are here and we need a few more climbing roses and stone walls for them to thrive upon.

He forgot SUNSETS!

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Two days ago I clicked okay on a facebook "friend" request. He was someone I didn't know, but I thought, perhaps he knows me - parts of our lives are a bit public. Is that the polite thing to do? Some of my "friends" are very careful. I am less so. They do not "friend" anyone they don't actually know, some have blocked "friends" and even left facebook because of "friends." Yesterday, "Dave .J. Mills!" aka old-lady-predator? sent me a message. I've since blocked him, deleted him, reported him, and shot him to outer space. 

I suppose this has happened plenty to you? This is my first. I'm a little naive. However, it struck me as so ridiculous it was funny.  There is only one thing I admire about him as an English-is-not-my-first-language person - he must have used spell-check. Not a single spelling error! "LOLL."

On this blog I have said my purpose is finding in life the sacred, the ordinary and the funny. This, to me, is a funny. So here: for you.  

Hello Pretty,

How you doing, nice profile you've got there and a beautiful person, one thing I know for sure about the beauty is that ; beauty is skin deep not all about the physical appearance and what I've read on your profile you're a very beautiful woman in all ways, well I think I better introduce myself before getting talks out, LOLL. I'm Dave .J. Mills! ,in my profession i am a sale personnel, i am new to dating online I just thought I'd give it a try and I hope it works out for, I've seen a lot of testimony that really encouraged me but I think starting up friendship is a good idea. I'm seeking for a trust and honest woman, I want a woman that I can trust without question and who can trust me the same. I am a confident, articulate, educated, successful professional that is seeking the exceptional partner. Athletic, Adventurous, and Romantic individual that enjoys walking out, music, movies, laughter, dining out. I have not found that yet, but I am eternally hopeful. i am a very easy going person, a very emotional man, who likes swimming, music, camping, shopping, and lot of funs, i want to be loved and treated right, its really hard to find true love and serious relationship, just want to give it a try, and see where this end but i believe it gonna end in a good ..way. am.. some one who is very concern and open minded man love to kiss my woman deeply and make her happy i bet with the good scene of humor with me.

Rembrandt's Dog

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Our book group recently read Stealing Rembrandts – an entire book tracing lost and stolen works by Rembrandt. One of the etchings that was missing for years and then turned up was The Good Samaritan. (1633)

We own the Time/Life Library of Art Series. One of the volumes is The World of Rembrandt 1606 – 1609 where I found a copy of this etching.

What drew me first was the topic: Prodigal Son. How could he portray this subject that has so exhaustively, and sometimes dead boringly, explored by generations of artists and Christians? I was curious to see whether it could speak to me.

I first noticed that the figures were ordinary in stature –  thick-fleshed and lumpish. They were working-class folks. Rather like the people I come from – hard-working Norwegians and Swedes – our bodies made to plow and milk cows. During Rembrandt’s time it was customary, in fact, considered proper, perhaps mandatory, to depict the human body as idealized – the classical Greek-look. Muscular, lean, tall, perfect, god-like. (Today, advertisements daily remind us of the 21^st century impossible classic: long, thin, lean, corded thighs and six-packs.)

So his viewers must have been a little uncomfortable looking at themselves, ordinary as they were, as we all are.

What captured my imagination (if you allow me) was the mangy dog in the foreground of the etching. A defecating dog. It is impolite to look at such things, much less write about them, and yet he forces us to look because it is a right up-close, in-your-face focal point. What could he mean by including what seems disgusting to us?

Then I read the following explanation:

Rembrandt’s point – which seems not to have been recognized until Goethe took note of it in an essay almost two centuries later – is that true Christianity is active, not passive. It is all very well for the Samaritan to help the wayfarer; in fact, it is his duty. But if the Creator chose to put into the world people whose bodies fall short of the Greek ideal, man is not to quarrel with this or be revolted by it. Further, if the Creator also saw fit to give life to ugly dogs who are under the same necessity of relieving themselves as a Prince of Orange, man cannot quarrel with that, either. A Christian must have reverence for all life, even if aspects of it occasionally disgust him. This seems to be Rembrandt’s understanding of Scripture.  (p. 66)

I cannot argue with this. In fact, I like etching the more because of it and would like the Truth of this to be “active, not passive” in my life.

The Pessimist's Daily Calendar

This  past Christmas I gave Denis The Pessimist Daily Calendar an almanac of gloom and woe, thinking it might cheer him up each day. Today he shared this nod toward improving my vocabulary.

Wednesday, February 13

Banausic (adj.)

Uninspired, ordinary, or utilitarian, rather than being imaginative.

After rereading the poems, I had to admit that she was right – they were embarrassingly banausic and trite. I still think it was kind of a harsh thing for my first-grade teacher to tell me, though.

My Puppy Pete

My puppy Pete is my very best friend

And he’ll stay that way ‘til the bitter end-

Which Mommy said is coming soon,

“His train to Heaven leaves Friday at noon.”

Thursday, February 14

“I lied about Pete, son. We put him to sleep because he peed on my fur. So don’t write any more awful poems about him. Yes, I lied about Dog Heaven, too.”

            - My Mom, That Saturday

Jamaica, my long-gone (in Dog Heaven, I hope) all-time, puppy fave.

Happy Valentine’s Day, friends. Hope someone who loves you brings you a new puppy or if not, then chocolates and a warm hug. Hey, I’d take chocolate from someone who doesn’t love me.