A thought about heaven

Some moments, on our earth, we can catch a glimpse of God in creation: in a waterfall rippling over stones; evening light spilling across the grass; mist descending upon distant mountains. I can't say for sure what causes those moments, when we look at nature and see it as if the divine is being poured through it like water through a funnel (to paraphrase Evelyn Underhill): when we look at a sunset and suddenly realize what is meant by the word "glory," or when we see the brown earth covered in snow and suddenly understand what is meant by "grace": when the world is baptized by the presence of God shining through it. Yet some moments are like that. All of a sudden our vision clears, and we can see God through the world, as we can see the world through a window, or an idea through words, or an experience through a poem. Most of the time our minds aren't aware enough, or the world isn't clear enough, for us to see God through it. But what if we always could?

Imagine a heaven where the world is a perfect expression of God, as the physical man Jesus was the perfect expression of Christ, God's son, the second person of the trinity. Imagine a heaven where our minds have the blinders taken off, so that we can understand clearly all the time: a heaven where the beauty of creation declares the glory of God unceasingly, so that God's presence is with us completely at all times: a heaven where language is perfect, so that every word is the ideal embodiment of the idea it represents. Imagine a world where nature is perfect, so that every stone and tree and blade of grass is a perfect bearer of God to us. That I think would be heaven indeed, when the language of the earth is purified so that it perfectly carries the character of God, so that where'er you walk God's presence is fully expressed to you.

One of my favorite verses is Zephaniah 3:9, "For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they all may call upon the Lord to serve him with one accord." It speaks only of language; but how far will that restoration extend?

Obama Says U.S. Could Be Seen as a Muslim Country, Too

Obama Says U.S. Could Be Seen as a Muslim Country, Too (New York Times Caucus blog)

Hat tip to Jihad Watch. Have a look at their post, too. In an interview anticipating his trip to the Middle East this week, Obama said that we could be considered "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world". How does he figure--by law? history? statistics?--because none of those agree with him. I'm not sure whether this is an example of liberal favoritism towards (certain) minorities, dhimmitude, or a real wish that the U.S. would become a Muslim country. Perhaps all three. Whichever it is, it bodes little good for a state when its leader supports a religion that so directly contradicts the ideals of that state.

The Wise Fool Speaks

I kept an orchard once wherein a single apple grew,
As fair as any fruit that any tree has ever borne:
Its skin was firm as willow-wand and golden as the dew,
Its scent was wine and honey on the wind-song morn.

At dawn I came to check the bough and see no leaf was sere;
At dusk I stopped to water all the earth around the root:
So every day I tended it, and stole throughout the year
A thousand careless glances at the slow-ripe fruit.

With every week that passed I waited more impatiently:
The fruit grew daily heavier and brighter in my sight—
Until one day, too early still, I plucked it from the tree
And ate, and found the apple and myself unripe.

The Taming of the Shrew

Let it be made known that henceforth at Rusticanda "Brother J" shall be referred to as Zacharias, in keeping with his personal preference and my command decision as the one who is blogging. Readers take note.

This summer, Zacharias and Giselle and I are directing a production of The Taming of the Shrew with our local CM co-op. Yes, gentle readers: we are putting on a Shakespeare play! Being inveterate Shakespeare lovers all three, I need hardly say that we are excited about the prospect.

The genesis of the project came during one of our homeschool co-op's book club meetings this spring. (I wasn't there myself, but I've heard reports.) The moms were trying to think of ways to keep the co-op active through the summer, and they started talking about drama. Zacharias was there and said something about Shakespeare, and then Giselle (who was also there) got excited about the idea, and the end of it was that Zacharias and Giselle were put in charge of putting on a Shakespeare play with the co-op during the summer. Then they told me about it and I got excited about it; so we are now working as three co-directors overseeing different parts of production (coaching, costumes, props, scheduling, etc).

Yesterday's Shrew meeting

Since then friends from co-op, church, ballet, and college have joined the production, and there is now a full cast of 21 people. We've had three meetings so far, the last one yesterday. In some ways yesterday's meeting felt like the real end of planning and the start of production. For the first time almost the whole cast was together, and we were able to read through the first half of the play. We heard some people read for the first time. We've already had some pleasant surprises with how well people read, and how excited they are to be in the play; but there's plenty of work to be done still. The current date for the performance is at the beginning of August. Until then we will be memorizing lines, getting into characters, making costumes, finding a place to hold the perfomance (*fingers crossed*), collecting props, and rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing.

So, yes. If you should hear us muttering things such as "Why sir, what am I, sir, that I should knock you here sir?" or "Let him that moved you hither remove you hence: I knew you at the first you were a moveable," you will understand that our minds are not deranged (not entirely, at any rate), but we are only remembering our Shakespeare. Now I must hence; and farewell to you all.

Imagination, Beauty, and Creativity

This is from an article by poet Luci Shaw; I'm just going to post the second paragraph.

I have come to believe that beauty is something inherent in creation (and by creation I mean the environment, the created universe in which we live). A sense of the beautiful is so integral, so deeply a part of who we are and what we enjoy as human beings, that we may easily take it for granted. Often flawed, or marred, or distorted as a result of human depravity and failure, beauty is still visible in the fingerprints of the Creator on the natural world, in the wilderness, and in human beings who reflect the Creator's beauty.

Only the individual twisted by wrong choices and destructive relationships into perversity and emptiness will create and worship ugliness. Beauty is perhaps one of the few things that constantly calls us back to God, that reminds us of a standard of goodness, vitality, and reality that embodies the beautiful. The Benedictines hold that beauty is "truth shining into being," a principle adopted by John Keats in his famous line "beauty is truth, truth beauty." In this sense beauty is redemptive and powerful. It can motivate us to turn a corner, to pursue a new objective. It awakens a new awareness in us because it is often surprising enough to startle, showing up in unexpected forms and places.

Tim and I are reading The Christian Imagination by Leland Ryken because it was assigned for our upcoming CM conference for a book discussion. The book is a collection of essays; we're just reading Part 2, "Imagination, Beauty, and Creativity," because the theme of this year's conference is beauty, and the essays in this section seemed to go along with that theme.

I suspect that Luci Shaw is getting at the exact point that will be emphasized at the conference, although she comes at it from a poet's perspective, so I felt like I had to wade through a bit of unsettling sentimental fluff to get to what she was saying. Luckily, what she was saying made the wading worth the effort. The gist of it was that beauty seems like an ornamental extra, but it's important enough for God to include in creation and even in decorative elements in the tabernacle, and it seems to be a vital need of humans created in His image.

We also read an essay entitled "The Christian Imagination" by Janine Langan, but that will take a second reading before I grasp enough to have anything to say about it.

Dylan Thomas on poetry

I've been studying Dylan Thomas and his poetry for a paper I'm writing, about his play "Under Milk Wood." In my reading today I stumbled upon this quote which I love:

You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it technically tick, and say to yourself, when the works are laid out before you, the vowels, the consonants, the rhymes or rhythms, 'Yes, this is it. This is why the poem moves me so. It is because of the craftsmanship.' But you're back again where you began.

You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps in the works of the poem so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in.

- Dylan Thomas, "Notes on the Art of Poetry"

A thought

The real value of poetry lies
not in expressing a moment
but
in expressing the thing of which
the moment itself
is but an expression.

The Christian Imagination edited by Leland Ryken

For the upcoming CM Conference, I'm going to be reading The Christian Imagination edited by Leland Ryken; they've also listed an article by Alfie Khon about education (Tim and I read that last night) and a short story by Tolkein. The Christian Imagination is a collection of articles by various authors like Tolkein, George MacDonald, Francis Schaeffer about "the relationship between imagination, belief and words." I'll post a very brief synopsis after each chapter. You can see the list of readings they'll be doing on their blog.

The conference is in a couple months. I'm also reading The Lord of the Rings with our local CM mom's group. I've finished the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring, and I'm re-reading it - partly because I want a second look, and partly because we have a six-week schedule for each book and I don't want to get ahead.

My project of proofreading Parents' Review articles has been neglected the last few weeks.

Food Safety Modernization Act

The Common Room calls it CPSIA for farms. As far as I can understand it, for the sake of food safety, only certified-safe food will be allowed to be sold. It makes me wonder if the food co-op raid in Ohio a couple of months ago is only a foretaste of what we can expect to see all over the US.

A birthday

Almost spring today! That is, the calendar says three days to go, but I think it's here already. I'm sitting on a hill on campus, overlooking the baseball field, where there is a game going on--spring training, I think. The sounds from it come up the hill a little delayed: I'm hearing the clap of the ball in gloves and the dull clink of the bat (they use aluminum bats) a moment after I see things happen. I was going to post a picture of my view, but my phone won't cooperate. It's working now!

We are studying Elizabeth's reign in humanities right now (which always makes me think of summer for some reason). Shakespeare is putting on plays at the Globe and Sir Francis Drake's navy just held off the Armada in the Channel. England is happy with their victory, happy with their new Anglican religion, and happy with their Queen. "Now is the winter of their discontent turned to summer by this bright sun--" --of York, Shakespeare said, but I think it can be said of Good Queen Bess as readily as Edward IV. (Or was it V? bother.)

Well, I don't want to write a long post, because if I do it will be all rambling and wambling, but I couldn't let the day pass without mentioning a birthday. Rusticanda has been around four years today! Quite a bit has changed since then--I'm in college now, and brother J is in highschool, and brother L is almost a teenager, and Miss M--well, she's become Miss M :D. We've taken trips, read books, discussed much, and seen seasons change--and now this blog is chock-full of good memories. So--a happy birthday to it! and I hope it sees many more full, changing, blessed years.