Phyllis Edgerly Ring's Blog, page 10
April 12, 2017
A season of renewal and hope
Wassily Kandinsky, Murnau: Top of the Johannisstrasse, 1908
Author and friend Reiner Lomb once shared a story about how surprising – and kind – the human heart can be.
Toward the end of World War 2, on Good Friday, some of his ancestors were expecting their tiny village to be overrun at any moment by U.S. soldiers. The German troops were retreating, and my friend’s family members, six adults and two children, were trying to decide whether they should stay put or hide in hills above the village.
In a previous war, their village had been wiped out in a similar situation, with every single person killed, so they were quite fearful.
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Image: https://www.etsy.com/shop/dkirkupdesigns
They also had a family member who was a prisoner of war overseas, one with whom they would later be reunited, and who would become my friend’s father.
All they wanted to do was to be able to live their simple life in terrible times, during a war they’d just as soon had never happened.
They decided to stay in their home, and within hours, several vehicles pulled into their farmyard and U.S. soldiers climbed out and ordered them upstairs while the soldiers took over the lower floor of the house.
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Photo: Nelson Ashberger
What my friend’s aunt, who was among those present, most remembers is how young these soldiers looked to her at the time. As she and her sister peeked down from upstairs, she saw that the soldiers were having trouble figuring out how to light the cook stove, and so, to her family’s horror, she bounded down to help them. (Her sister would later tease her that the only reason she’d done this was because those soldiers were so handsome.)
That weekend, they all eventually feasted together on the farm’s fresh eggs and the soldiers’ rations in a shared meal around that kitchen table. On Easter Sunday morning, the family came downstairs to find the soldiers gone, along with a basket of hard-boiled eggs that the family had colored earlier that week. In the basket’s place was a huge stash of chocolate. [image error]
“My family hadn’t seen chocolate for years,” my friend says, “and this, combined with how carefully the soldiers had left everything in its place when my family had expected them to ransack the house, gave everyone great heart, and the possibility of believing that maybe things would be all right after all.”
The miracle of his father’s return a short while later was the very best evidence of that, of course, and soon spring bulbs were blooming in the yard and, despite the ravages of the war, his family knew that they’d see green fields again.
It’s no coincidence that the essence of Easter – resurrection — is about restoration and renewal.
[image error]Whatever our faith, or lack of it, spring brings that glorious reminder that, no matter what has happened, no matter how long our personal winters may have been, the spiritual pulse of springtime always offers us a new beginning.
Adapted from Life at First Sight: Finding the Divine in the Details:
https://www.amazon.com/Life-First-Sight-Finding-Details-ebook/dp/B00B5MR9B0
April 4, 2017
The foundation of all learning
Photo: https://www.etsy.com/shop/dkirkupdesigns
GLEANINGS FOUND HERE AND THERE:
“We need mystery. Creator in her wisdom knew this.
Mystery fills us with awe and wonder. They are the foundations of humility, and humility is the foundation of all learning.
So we do not seek to unravel this. We honour it by letting it be that way forever.”
Quote of a grandmother explaining The Great Mystery of the universe to her grandson.
~ Richard Wagamese, Indian Horse [image error]
The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world.
Only then is life whole.
~ Carl Jung
When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
~ G. K. Chesterton
The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
~ William James
March 22, 2017
On a first-name basis with an angel
As part of the extremely well-organized blog tour by Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus, I’ve been sharing excerpts from The Munich Girl.
The following is from a chapter in which two lonely 16-year-olds are about to become friends when they meet on a train traveling from the Austrian border to Munich in February of 1928:
Excerpt from The Munich Girl:
[image error]As I reached for Eva’s hand, the door to the main corridor slid open and the conductor seemed to fill it with his blue uniform.
“Where did you come from?” he asked my companion accusingly.
I smelled schnapps on his breath. And saw tears gleam in Eva’s blue eyes.
“From Simbach, where she waited for this tardy train. It’s not as though she was invisible.”
His head snapped back.
“With no one there to help, she barely made it on board,” I accused.
“But I saw no one at Simbach!”
“It’s hard to see, when you’re not on the platform yourself.” Then I asked Eva, “Do you have your ticket?”
[image error]Nodding quickly, her expression like a chastened child’s, she started digging in her leather shoulder bag.
The conductor was weaving in the doorway, tapping his boot impatiently. Just like most of these useless bloody uniforms, throwing their authority around. God help you if you actually need their help. They’ll be too busy having a nip and a smoke out of sight, as this joker obviously had. Probably been drinking since we’d left Linz—he’d even neglected to announce some of the stops.
When Eva found her ticket and handed it over, he snatched it without a word, fumbling for the hole punch dangling from a chain on his waistcoat. Then he thrust it back without looking at her, muttering to me, “Your parents should have taught you better manners.”
“My parents taught me people should do their jobs, especially when jobs are scarce. And that men who want to be taken for gentlemen should behave like one.”
I took great satisfaction in saying this, though I did so in English. [image error]
Across from me, recognition sparkled in Eva’s eyes.
As he stared at me, I asked in German, “How long will it be to Munich?”
“A little over an hour,” he mumbled. When he lurched back, the door his bulky frame had propped open slid closed with a thump.
Eva burst into a shower of radiant giggles. “Now I know you are an angel.”
“As I was starting to say before we were so rudely interrupted, I’m happy to meet you, Fräulein Braun. I’m Peggy Adler.”
“Nein, nein—Eva,” she insisted. “If you don’t mind.” She used German’s familiar “du” pronoun. “I think I should be on a first-name basis with an angel, don’t you?” [image error]
“Yes, let’s dispense with formality,” I agreed, relieved. I reached into my rucksack for my Lucky Strikes. “How about a smoke? Help us relax after that ordeal?”
Eva’s eyes were like stars as she reached for one tentatively, then settled back in her seat after I lit it. Her lids fluttered shut as she took an extended drag, then exhaled with luxurious pleasure. “How wonderful. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a cigarette. And I’ve wanted one so often.”
As I inhaled deeply on my own, she said, “You speak English, and your name is English, too, yes?”
I nodded. “My real name’s Margarete, but I never use it. My father is English, and I lived there until—I came away to school in Austria.”
I’d been very close to saying, “Until my parents separated.”
“I love what you told the conductor!”
“Oh, in English, you mean? You understood?”
“Absolutely!” she replied in heavily accented English, then lapsed back into her Bavarian German. “I thought I’d choke, trying not to laugh!”
“Are you studying English at school?”
[image error]“Oh, not so very much. From films, mostly.”
Now that she’d touched on one of my favorite subjects, the time and kilometers flew past as we talked about actors and music, jazz, dancing—and clothes. When I pulled out a movie magazine for us to look at, her chubby face came alive as she offered succinct assessments of the actresses’ clothes.
“I had to hide my magazines at school. Under the mattress,” she said. “My family thinks I’m going back next fall, but it’s not the life for me. I haven’t told them yet. The Sisters or my family.”
“Sounds like we’ve made the same decision. I’m not going back, either.” The thought of the scene that likely followed my unexpected departure last night launched a plummeting sensation in my stomach.
“Don’t you want to be out there in life—really live?” Eva said. “These are modern times, nicht? Not our grandmother’s days. There’s more to life than finding some lord and master and being under his thumb. I swear I’ll never live in such a prison!”
[image error]“You know,” I decided to confide as I leaned forward to light us fresh cigarettes. “My mother’s more independent now.”
I stopped, suddenly. What was I doing? I never talked about the divorce.
Eva was looking at me kindly. “Oh, my parents had a time, too. When I was small.”
“My parents divorced,” I relinquished, finally. “After the war.”
Might as well get it over with. I’d probably never see her again anyway.
She reached across the gap between our seats for my hand.
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Find more about The Munich Girl at: https://www.amazon.com/Munich-Girl-Novel-Legacies-Outlast/dp/0996546987
“My brother was killed, just before his nineteenth birthday. Right near the end of the war.” My voice was suddenly growing tight.
“I am so very sorry.” Eva moved to the seat beside mine and was offering a soft handkerchief.
“I tried.” I could barely get words out now. “To tell them. I knew, you see.”
I had seen it before it happened, that final end that was so horrible not only for Peter, but so many others lying there around him in that muddy, hellish mess. That place I didn’t want to see. Didn’t want to look. But it had kept coming back.
When I had tried to tell them—beg them—not to let him go, Father had called it morbid. Wicked. Been enraged that I would even suggest the danger that loomed.
Then, afterward, he’d looked at me as though I’d made that terrible thing happen to Peter, simply because I’d seen it ahead of time. And tried to warn them.
March 19, 2017
Balance sheets of light and dark
Photo: Saffron Moser
Spring flowers remind us to be happy.
It’s as though God treasured this invitation in each one,
then spread them abundantly about the landscape
to ensure we wouldn’t miss it.
Spring and flowers and happiness all dwell together in a snapshot scene from a long-ago Equinox.
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Photo: https://www.etsy.com/shop/dkirkupdesigns
As I packed up our Toyota for the Naw-Rúz (New Year, for Baha’is) party that night, I opened the car door to find our small son sitting in the backseat so surrounded by a mass of daffodils that I could barely see him. To ensure that the flowers traveled safely, my husband gave him the task of holding them and it was the first time he’d seen these harbingers of spring.
It’s hard to remember which was bigger, or brighter — that explosion of golden blooms, or his huge grin as he clutched his precious cargo. That smile was about the only part of him I could see.
This scene had prophecy in it. Today, our son grows hundreds of thousands of plants and sends them out into the wide world.
As I remember that day on this spring morning nearly 30 years later, with the sounds of wild geese flying over the house, I feel a soft sadness brush against me, rather the way a dog or cat might.
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Image: Cary Enoch
Such feelings seem the inevitable outcome of simply living through the decades, a necessary component of the blessing of life, the contrast between happy memories and wistful ones, wintry days and brilliant spring sunshine, dark and light.
When we pause to reflect, it’s so often the contrast we come to see and recall. As one character in my novel, The Munich Girl, observes when confronted with the passage — and wages — of time:
“Didn’t it all turn out differently than we expected?
Didn’t it once seem there would be the whole sky to fly in?”
It did, no doubt for all of us.
It’s not what we thought, or perhaps planned or expected.
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Photo: Saffron Moser
And yet, like the flowers and other plants that bloom and reappear so faithfully around us each year, there is fresh beauty and possibility in each new day.
No, it’s never what we thought, because it’s so very much bigger. When we look. And see. It really is the whole sky, and it will come to meet us when we stop hurling ourselves against it.
In their essence, daffodils, like so many spring flowers, remind us to be happy. It’s as though God treasured this special invitation in each one and then spread them abundantly about the landscape to make sure we wouldn’t miss it.
May each new springtime remind us we are truly unlimited beings, however earthly our journey often seems.
March 10, 2017
Love, friendship, and the Munich girl Hitler chose
[image error]Heartfelt thanks to book blogger and author Lisa Binion for hosting me and The Munich Girl so kindly — plus offering a great interview experience.
When you first learned about Hitler and Eva Braun, did you think of either of them as having friends?
I don’t think that Hitler really had the capacity for friendship. It requires a sort of mutuality of which he just wasn’t capable.
[image error]But Eva Braun, characterized by many who knew her as warm, thoughtful, and full of love for life, most surely was. Regardless of how people make assumptions about her based on her link with Hitler, history shows that she was a genuinely caring friend to those who, in addition to being morally respectable people, were very appreciative for her friendship. As with the situation in the novel’s story, some of them did not know of her connection with Hitler until after her death.
What inspired you to write about the friendship of two lonely women in Nazi Germany? Do you know of someone who made a discovery similar to what Anna discovered? [image error]
I chose this focus, in part, because friendships were what helped many everyday Germans survive the war. Such friendships were also what helped protect and save those who were most vulnerable to persecution by the Nazis. Also, I was taken by the paradox that two people could know and care about – value – each other yet never know about complexities in each of their lives that could seem to put them on different “sides.”
As for what Anna discovers about Peggy (her mother), my own war bride mother had many surprising secrets in her background, revealed only after she died. Some of them, much like Peggy’s friendship with Eva Braun, were things she might not, in her own history, have felt safe to share.
[image error]What is your favorite thing about writing historical fiction?
I love revisiting a time period and immersing myself deeply within it. An added plus is looking at it with the hindsight we have now.
The tricky balance in writing the story, of course, is to be able to stay in the perspective of those times, even when you do have that hindsight. Realizing that many events were something people of that time didn’t know about or couldn’t see coming shows how much trying to judge them from the perspective we have today is unrealistic and even unjust. One very important reason for us to study history—and reflect on what patterns we can find there—is that without that reflective understanding, we will imitatively repeat it.
Obviously Eva Braun and Hitler really existed, but how many of the other characters were taken from history?
The two individuals to whom the book is dedicated, and who are each referenced in the story, were under-recognized heroes in their time. Poet/artist Erich Mühsam and Jesuit priest Father Alfred Delp each resisted what the Nazis were doing. They took enormous risks to help others who were being persecuted, and ultimately paid with their lives—Mühsam in a concentration camp in 1934 and Delp by execution by the Nazis close to the end of the war. [image error]
The stories of both men came to me quite serendipitously as the novel was unfolding. I felt it was as though those stores wanted to surface, to be known.
You can find Lisa’s full interview, along with a review of The Munich Girl here:
http://lisaswritopia.com/phyllis-edgerly-ring-interview-the-holocaust-eva-braun-and-friendship/
March 6, 2017
Living in an eternal kind of way
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How does coming to understand who it is we are created to be change the way we see ourselves, each other, and our world?
Perhaps this understanding welcomes in a new way of thinking and perceiving that flows out of love and attraction toward the latent spiritual gifts in myself and others that are waiting to be revealed.
Do I remember that I can always choose this love and attraction over the kind of near-instinctual reactions that arise from a fear that’s rooted in the mind’s preoccupation with mortality and physical survival? That crippling fear has kept humanity, human thinking, and our greatest possibilities entrapped for eons.
I’m not going to survive physically forever, nor is anyone else. I wonder why that aspect of life receives so very much attention? Might it be that some believe that’s all there is? All that we are here for?
[image error]Very possibly, however, we may have the chance to begin living in an eternal kind of way as we invite and employ what lasts forever – those gifts and qualities within us that await discovery, like gems in a mine. The ones that we uncover during presence, and awareness.
“Only our spiritual nature can look beyond outward appearances, first impressions and personality flaws to see `all the virtues of the world of humanity latent within’ ourselves and each other,” I’m reminded. It’s this core part of my self that has the capacity to “perceive honor and nobility in every human being”, including this one who looks back from the mirror each day.
For the first time, the realization of human oneness, in reality, is within our grasp. And each of us is invited to discover our unique, true identity as a soul, as well as our unique purpose, and our unique way of solving problems as a part of what is one reality, whatever kinds of separations we may dream up or imagine.
“Happy are those who spend their days in gaining knowledge, in discovering the secrets of nature, and in penetrating the subtleties of pure truth,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has reminded in a book called Some Answered Questions. [image error]
Happy indeed.
Excerpted from With Thine Own Eyes: Why Imitate the Past When We Can Investigate Reality?
More information: http://www.amazon.com/With-Thine-Own-Eyes-Investigate-ebook/dp/B00I1JPC7I/ref=pd_sim_kstore_11?ie=UTF8&refRID=0TQC490J7FVBRTJWM70H
Print version at: http://www.bahairesources.com/with-thine-own-eyes.html
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February 28, 2017
Rising to that for which we’re created
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Artwork: Judy Wright
GLEANINGS FOUND HERE AND THERE:
O Friends!
Abandon not the everlasting beauty for a beauty that must die, and set not your affections on this mortal world of dust.
~ Baha’u’llah
Shed the light of a boundless love on every human being whom you meet, whether of your country, your race, your political party, or of any other nation, or shade of political opinion.
Heaven will support you while you work in this in-gathering of the scattered peoples of the world beneath the shadow of the almighty tent of unity.
~ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
[image error]
Artwork: Judy Wright
Be thou not unhappy; the tempest of sorrow shall pass; regret will not last; disappointment will vanish; the fire of the love of God will become enkindled, and the thorns and briars of sadness and despondency will be consumed!
Be thou happy; rest thou assured upon the favors of Bahá so that uncertainty and hesitation may become non-existent and the invisible outpourings descend upon the arena of being!”
~ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
February 17, 2017
Between the Beats hosts The Munich Girl
My deep gratitude to author and book reviewer Elizabeth Horton-Newton, who wrote a wonderfully insightful review for The Munich Girl.
Her kind hospitality as blog-tour host included an interview with me. Among her good questions:
What kind of response have you received for your depiction of Eva Braun?
A broad range that includes those who connect, even empathize with the character of Eva, those who connect with the story but struggle with connecting with her, and those who absolutely don’t want to connect with her, who object to her being there at all. I’ve been astonished when readers who I might not expect to easily relate to her – those whose families experienced huge losses during the Holocaust, for example – actually have a lot of empathy for what she reveals as a character. One editor asked early in the book’s process, “How are you going to get people past the fact it’s her?” I knew I wasn’t. Readers are either willing to go that distance or they’re not. It’s never been my intent to redeem her in any way, but rather for her to act as a motif for the self-suppression and repression that are still rampant in many lives. For me, she also represents that we are a mixture of strengths and character deficiencies, and we make a meaningful life through the choices we make in relation to those. [image error]
I understand you met and interviewed some people who knew the “subject” of your search? How did you find them and how did they feel about discussing their relationships with you?
They “found” me — as with so much in the process of this book, it led me to them, and they were most willing to share their thoughts. One of the most helpful was from a family that had been treated very badly by the Nazis. She had every reason to hate them, and Eva Braun by association. But she had met and interacted with her and described her as a person of true character. She’d been as baffled as so many have about why Eva would care for Hitler. But this source emphasized how thoughtful and kind Eva Braun often was.
What was your ultimate goal in writing this book? Did that goal change over time?
[image error]Initially, it was to give a glimpse into the experience of Germans during the war, and show how varied it was. Though they lived in a very dangerous place they could not necessarily escape, many Germans took risks to help and protect others, but many of these stories got lost once they were seen as part of the “losing enemy” country. Within the first year of writing, I also began to accept that the goal, to the best of my ability, was to convey themes that the story was suggesting. These include that any good we seek to do will always have enduring effect, sometimes for successive generations. Another is that it is our willingness to build what is good, together, that is the legacy of love that always outlasts war, destruction, and violence.
Find Elizabeth’s full post here:
https://elizabethnnewton.com/2017/02/17/the-munich-girl-by-phyllis-edgerly-ring/
February 9, 2017
The Munich Girl and characters we love to hate
[image error]KINDLE 0.99 special
for WWII fiction THE MUNICH GIRL
through Feb. 14
My gratitude to book blogger Teddy Rose for hosting a blog tour for The Munich Girl this winter. Teddy kicked it off by hosting an interview with me: [image error]
Which character do you love to hate?
Hitler’s not actually a character in the novel, though he’s a part of the story, of course, and is the most-likely-to-be-hated. A rather detestable character is the protagonist’s (Anna’s) husband, Lowell. I was told at one point that perhaps I needed to give him more “human” aspects. For me, however, he represents that kind of blindly insistent narcissism that actually is more inclined to reject such redeeming qualities in itself. Yup, Lowell is reprehensible, one reader’s word for his maddening arrogance.
[image error]Please tell us something about the book that is not in the summary.
Beyond being a story in which Hitler’s mistress (later wife) is a character, this story revolves around the inner bargains women make with themselves in order to help others achieve happiness or satisfaction — often by denying themselves those very things. Another theme is the secrets we keep, and what we hope to gain by doing so, and the degree of control we believe we have in life, and what sort of price we’re willing to pay for it. A paradox that the story underscores is that often, while others (in this case, men) appear to have overt control, people – the women in this story — often make use of what looks like compliance in order to employ more secretive kinds of control, behind the scenes.
What is your favorite scene in the book? Why?
[image error]I must admit that it’s hard for me to choose one. In this story based on a woman’s secret friendship with Hitler’s mistress, I suppose it’s the scene in which the character, Peggy, finds out that the mystery woman who died alongside Hitler was her friend, Eva Braun. And she never knew that Hitler was the man Eva loved. (In part because Braun had to keep this role in his life an invisible secret.) This scene of Peggy’s discoveries about Eva after her death called for a potent yet unusual mixture of heartbreak and outrage. The scene is set in a church, and I was pulled irresistibly into a big, empty one in Germany the day before I wrote it. I’ve sometimes felt that the scene was sown for me, right there in that cold, echoing space, because it was like a memory as I drafted it down early the next morning.
[image error]Find my full interview with Teddy, and links to more stops on the Blog Tour for The Munich Girl here:
February 5, 2017
Happy February, Munich Girl
KINDLE 0.99 special
for WWII fiction THE MUNICH GIRL
through Feb. 10
February is the month when the two friends in my novel, The Munich Girl, each have a birthday.
To celebrate, the novel’s Kindle version is currently offered at its biggest discount ever for a short time across most worldwide Amazon markets.
And, on February 10, I’ll draw a winner for a signed print copy of the book and a silver butterfly bracelet designed by artist Diane Kirkup.
[image error]
Image: https://www.etsy.com/shop/DKirkupDesigns
Those who’ve read the book know that a variety of objects help unfold the trail of the story. One of these is the image of a butterfly.
To enter the drawing, send an email to: info[at]phyllisring[dot]com
with “Butterfly” in the subject line.
All three women in The Munich Girl have strong connections with Germany, where two of them meet just before World War II.
Peggy, is a Leap-year baby with “29 February” on her birth certificate. That kind of thing can make you feel like a fictional character right out of the starting gate.
[image error]Eva Braun, always wanted to live the life of a character in a movie or novel. However, as many women have, and still do, she gives her life away to someone who hasn’t the capacity to value it, or, it would seem, to care for humanity at all.
“Did she really love him? How could she ever love him?” are questions I hear frequently about the woman who became “Mrs. Hitler” for the last day and a half of her life.
Anna, the story’s narrator grew up eating dinner under her father’s war-trophy portrait of Eva Braun.
Fifty years after the war, she discovers what he never did—that her mother, Peggy, and Hitler’s mistress were friends.
The secret surfaces with a mysterious monogrammed handkerchief and a man named Hannes Ritter, whose Third-Reich family history is entwined with her own. [image error]
The pathway of this novel’s story dropped many clues in front of me, two of the biggest, a handkerchief just like the one Anna finds — and the portrait of Eva Braun, which, somehow, found me, too.
Find more about The Munich Girl: A Novel of the Legacies that Outlast War here:
http://www.amazon.com/Munich-Girl-Novel-Legacies-Outlast/dp/B01AC4FHI8
