Jennifer Freitag's Blog, page 38

Literacy Is Power

My nephew recently starred in one of Abigail's posts as the charming space-cadet that he is; now it's time for my niece to come into the spotlight as an example of an old truth renewed.  My niece is now six years old - six and a half - and is due to wrap up her first year in school.  She is extremely precocious and started schooling a year early: it's hard to believe that the cute twig of a girl capering around as a horse is going into second grade soon.  But the other day I had the satisfaction of seeing her step out of the car at the grocery store toting a copy of one of the Boxcar Children books, intent on reading it in the lulls between shopping just as I do (though, naturally, I've long since graduated from Boxcar Children status).  She has read nearly every Boxcar Children book out there (sometimes reading as many as four a day), she chews through Marguerite Henry's famous horse novels, and devours this and that odd book that she can get her hands on.  On occasion I catch her peering at condiments labels, bravely pronouncing "Heinz," which is more than I can do.  The girl can read.  Her handwriting is a little wobbly, and sometimes the letters get out of place; her math is yet elementary; but she can read.  Gone are the days when we can discuss her birthday presents by spelling at each other over her head.  The girl holds a skill whose power she does not yet comprehend.  She has grasped a key to the world, but I look into those big soulful brown eyes and see that she does not yet know what lies at her fingertips.

I know I am preaching to the choir on this.  I think everyone who reads this blog is an avid reader with a varied, edifying list of books to read and that have been read.  But I look back on history and the dark eras in which learning, writing, reading, and communication were at their lowest ebb or even prohibited, how coarse and backward life was then, and how men's minds were so easily overrun and oppressed.  Juxtaposed to that, I see the resurgences of education, thought, writing, and an accurate understanding and fear of God, and men's shackles break.  It has been a long, long time since we were told by authorities what to read and what to think, a long time since we broke free of such oppression.  But the truth of the matter is that such oppression is not gone out of the world, nor even our own country.  I hope to be the last to advocate an ornery or offensive attitude as regards learning, but don't take the freedom that you have lightly: you have a mind that you are able to use with reference to your own conscience and the power to glean wisdom from the written accounts of our ancestors and our contemporaries.  Don't take this lightly.  Many years and much blood was shed to put this power into the hands of people such as ourselves.  Appreciate this power and use it wisely.

When you come bring the cloak which I left at Troas with Carpus, and the books, especially the parchments.2 Timothy 4:13

"I Call All Times Soon"

Listen!  This is the beginning; And when we get to the end We shall know more than we do now.  
At least, I hope those words of Hans Christian Andersen will be true of this post today.  I meant, after my post "The Knowledge of the Holy," to move into the subjects of Damnation and Salvation, but we are taking a brief detour and dealing, not with Heaven and Hell, but with Time and Eternity.  Once again I hope Bethany does not mind me using her comments as a spring-board into this discussion: I feel her comments are not particular to herself, but characteristic of myself and probably many other Christians.  I also hope that I come to this topic humbly, because, while I have "mused a little space" on it, I do not imagine to have exhausted it.  So bear with me, and stay with me, and hopefully we will make a little sense of these two realities.

Bethany:  I can only speak from my own experience - at the moment, I don't look forward to eternal life, because I can't look forward to what I don't understand. I am currently too obedient to the material world, too reluctant to make myself totally vulnerable, to know the eternity of worship that is (I hope) in store for me...I can't comprehend what will actually occur. "Eternity"? I'm not an empiricist, but nevertheless I can't comprehend being outside of time.  The reason that I cannot logically understand such attributes of God, like eternity, is because I have never come into contact with it. In an incorporate sense, I am eternal, but like I said, I'm too familiar with the material world - even the ocean began, and it'll come to its cessation. I've never witnessed eternity, but of course that is exactly what faith is, believing that it is there even though I haven't seen it. But this isn't a question of belief, just understanding. I believe that Jesus turned water into wine, but logically I don't know how that transition happened.
The first point made is a very good point.  It is very hard, almost impossible, to think critically and accurately about something we have never experienced.  As a writer, I find this difficulty looming over me nearly every way I turn.  To get around it, I read extensively about people who have experienced the topics I might be dealing with, hoping that their own writing is vivid enough to make me feel almost as though I, too, were experiencing it.  But you might be surprised to learn that the topic of eternity is not so difficult, nor so far off, as you might think at first.  The trick is to ask this question: do you understand your own experience?  Are you really getting out of it all it has to offer?  You can only speak from what you know, but what if you only think you know what you know?  What if the truth were happening to you so closely that you completely mistook it because you overlooked it? 

Bear that question in mind.  Because the overwhelming mass of thought handles eternity and time separately, I, too, will define them separately here.  We will first define eternity.  We are told that God inhabits it; we are told that from everlasting to everlasting he is.  We understand that eternity is not mere endless time, but, to put it better though still inadequately, it is timelessness.  When we say "timelessness," of course, we think of a moment that drags on through all other moments forever, so at this juncture even "timelessness" is a concept that we cannot grasp.  I feel "timelessness" is itself a word which brings the wrong image to a mind thinking about eternity.  It is not moments going on forever, it is not a moment superseding and surpassing all other moments.  It is itself a Moment.  It is Now.  It is the Everlasting Now.  Grasp that if you can: I have grasped it only slightly, but grasp it I do nonetheless.  But this concept of the Divine Moment, the Everlasting Now, opens the door for the concept of Jesus being slain before the foundation of the world, of our sins being forgiven before ever they were committed - before ever we were born; it even opens the door on predestination and election.

Eternity may very well go under the heading of "a hard saying," but they say Providence has a sense of humour and I had to laugh when I found an answer to this Now was not far off.  We will now dissect time.  Time is marked by successive change.  It is marked by movement, whether physically or mentally: the moment something has beginning it has moved from Naught to Being, and so you can say in time-terms "It was not and now it is."  When we learn a language we unwittingly set ourselves to the task of studying time: we study past tense and present tense and future tense.  We cannot speak without time pervading everything we say and do.  We can't think without it.  This is why we all wrestle with the idea of eternity: we can't cope with the idea of no past or future.  We can't cope with this Always Now.  We are creatures of beginning and movement and progressive thought, we are made to move deeper and higher and further into the mind of God.  We are made to be infinitely changing, conforming to the Unchangeable.

What is not always seen is that these two things are perfectly compatible.  They were made to be.  Now, no matter how extensively we may think about the past, nor how sceptically we may dream about the future, what we cannot avoid is that whenever we are, we are always in the now.  We ourselves are locked into an ever-progressing Now which, by virtue of its being created, has a beginning and so cannot compare to God's uncreated Now, and therefore must change, but nevertheless bears a marked similarity to the Everlasting Now.  I ask you to think about it: is it not sensible that the creature made in the image of God should also live in a medium made in the image of that which God himself inhabits?  His is a Now Unchanging - we must leave Nows behind and move on to new ones, never escaping them, always exchanging them for the next moment to come.

Frankly, of course you can't comprehend being outside of time.  We can't be.  We are all created, we all have beginning: we are immortal, not eternal.  We cannot trade our temporal existence with an eternal one.  It is simply impossible.  Please unburden your mind of that: we cannot become God, and even if we could become God we could not be eternal, because there would have been a time when we had not been he.  When we have been revealed in reconciled perfection with God we will not somehow be absorbed into his eternal being as though he were Nirvana.  We will always remain beings with a beginning, beings moving forward, beings changing and, so, beings marking out past Nows and present Nows and Nows still yet to come.  But as we are the image of God so we live the image of Eternity.  The struggle with the attachment to this present world is real, and terrible, and, Bethany, you are not alone in that fight; but in the matter of time and eternity I don't feel that it should offer a hindrance to our understanding.  Eternity is not something I think we can experience, but I do believe it is something we can appreciate.  Time and eternity are not so far apart as you might initially think: they are Shadow and Figure, Type and Archetype.  Time was not made to oppose eternity, it was made to imitate it; in light of our own task of discovering God, I hope it will be clear that change (and so time) is a good and necessary reality for man.

I know I have thought about this for a while and I hope that by now I have managed to make my thoughts coherent.  I hope, too, that this helps settle or at least organize questions that others may have - quite a number of things hinge upon the concepts of time and eternity.


For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.  Moreover whom he predestined, these he also called; whom he called, these he also justified; and whom he justified, these he also glorified.Romans 8:29, 30

Introverted But Not Unfriendly

It's kind of a funny story.  I don't have many of those, but this one so quirkily describes my nature so that even I was surprised by its honesty that I felt compelled to share it between my more intellectual posts on God, Man, Heaven, and Hell. 

I had to go to the doctor.  I almost never have to go to the doctor, but this particular practitioner has been my physician since I was born, so I know the ropes of the office tolerably.  The whole building is set up in such a way that you make a sort of horseshore circuit of it as you pass through.  In order to get back into the lobby, and therefore to the exit, you must pass through a small separate room barred from the rest of the world by two solid wooden doors, one on either end of its little, odd-shaped space.  It is a cosy, dark wood-paneled enclosure, very familiar to me - I finally stand tall enough to see well over the receptionist's desk, but I remember the days of having to stretch on the tippiest of my toes to see the top of the lady's head.  Now, on this occasion, while my mother and I were on our way out, the receptionist remarked that she only had one more copy of The Shadow Things left.  Since the doctor knows us so well, the office has graciously been displaying copies of both The Soldier's Cross (Abigail Hartman) and The Shadow Things.  We told her that we had more copies in the Jeep and that I would be back with fresh reserves.

There is nothing like a doctor's office, however familiar, to make one feel insecure and small.  For twenty-one years I have been going to this single practice but I had to ask my mother all the same if it was acceptable for me to go in through the exit.  To this day I bore a foreboding feeling that there was some invisible Do Not Enter, One Way Only sign on that blank, solid wood door.  She told me that it was perfectly acceptable, so back I traipsed with my books in hand.  I was the only soul in the lobby, but habitual tip-toeing and reverential hush lay over me as I went in and opened the Exit. 

There was a woman there before me (behind me?), leaning on the counter, waiting to get her credit card back from the receptionist.  I think it must be rather bizarre for people to come popping back in by way of the Exit, so naturally the woman looked round as I came in.  Like Justin of The Silver Branch, I am naturally friendly to strangers, but always appreciate a show of friendliness in return.  In this instance - the space of a split second - I doubted I would get such a smiling reception, so I took the bull by the horns.  And the first words out of my mouth were

"Peek-a-boo!" 
Thus I made my grand debut into that complete stranger's life.  I did get a smile out of her, a sincere one; as I arranged my books on the counter with Abigail's and chatted benedictorily with the receptionist, I can only imagine what that woman must have been thinking about the weird little brunette who uses Exits as Entrances.  Whatever it was, it was probably accurate.

The Knowledge of the Holy

Dear Bethany,

I choose to address your comment in two parts because, in making your comment, you raised another point which I thought we ought to attend to first before moving on to the topic of Hell.  I also choose to address it in an open letter format because addresses on blogs, I feel, tend to be too vague.  I want to address you, but I don't mind if others listen in.

The point you raised was that you had "come to realise that [you] can't understand God logically."  This was in the context of Hell and Damnation, but I feel the notion has wider ramifications that I can't move on from without addressing.  You talked in your comment about logicality and illogicality.  A student of the rational mind of course is acquainted with sensibility and credibility, and insensibility and incredibility.  We live in a very ordered, lawful world; because of this, we are able to study the world around us, and ourselves, and draw conclusions of theory and fact based on these laws built into the system.  The point I wish to make is that there is a tertium quid - there is a "third thing."  You have irrationality and rationality; I submit that there is also the supra-rational .  This is a thing beyond normal reason, but this does not make it a thing unreasonable.  I do not think it is too much to say that God, being eternal, incomprehensible, "the only wise God," is supra-rational. 

I want to point out, to your credit, that you don't appear to make the mistake of hubris that I think a lot of people make, and that is that you don't demand that God always make sense to you in your own terms.  The mistake I don't want you to make is to think that, merely because, at first glance - or second, or third, or a lifetime of glances - God's actions do not appear to fit with your paradigm, that means he cannot be, and does not allow himself to be, understood.  If he cannot be understood, there is no point in Creation.  If he cannot be understood, there is no point in our own rationality.  If he cannot be understood, there is no point in the revelation of himself through centuries of human history.  There is no point, if he cannot be understood, in the Cross.

Let me give you first a broad sketch and then a more specific testimony, both in the positive.  In the beginning, we are told, God walked with Man in the Garden.  There was unhindered communication between them, an open, Academic inquiry of the Created with the Creator.  Man was free to ask of his God all he wished to know, and God was free to communicate the communicable to Man.  It pleased God to make Man in his image, a lesser being by virtue of being created, but capable of being drawn up from the rational into the supra-rational.  Through the severance of that fellowship God was able to communicate something new to Man, something which, apart from the existence of sin, Man would not have known.  This was the concepts of justice and justification, which I only mention now: we will address those at another time.  But all down history we see God setting apart a people for himself, a people who will know him, a people to whom he spoke, until at last we come to the last prophet and the Son of God, the Word of God, himself.  Francis Thompson wrote of the Hound of Heaven: I see God hunting, not merely me, but mankind with a vengeance.  He will have his people, he will have men that know him.  He will turn the hearts of men from stone into flesh.  He will write his law upon their hearts and fill them with the fullness of himself.  In reading the revelation of himself, I see a God with his face set like flint to make himself known to Man.

O world invisible, we view thee,O world intangible, we touch thee,O world unknowable, we know thee,Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
Does the fish soar to find the ocean,The eagle plunge to find the air -Do we ask of the stars in motionIf they have rumor of thee there?
Not where the wheeling systems darken,And our benumbed conceiving soars! -The drift of pinions, would we hearken,Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places; -Turn but a stone, and start a wing!'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,That miss the many-splendoured thing.
But when so sad thou canst not sadderCry - and upon they so sore lossShall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladderPitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross
Yes, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,Cry - clinging Heaven by the hems;And lo, Christ walking on the waterNot of Gennesaret, but Thames!
The above poem, written also by Francis Thompson, I feel adequately captures the union of rational and supra-rational.  That which we cannot know is made known to us.  That which we cannot touch we grasp with both hands.  I cannot believe, and the overwhelming weight of redemptive history denies, that the God who gave us logic is incapable of being understood in his self-disclosure through that very same rational capacity.  The trick, the difficulty, is that he is above logic, and we must be taught and moved to a higher comprehension.  It sounds impossible.  In a sense, it is.  But "with God all things are possible," and based on the soul of Thompson and his poem, and the souls of countless others like him, I think it is not so very hard as sceptics would have us believe, for "he is not far from any of us."  I am told that Nietzsche went looking for God and did not find him.  I sometimes wonder if he was not looking soft enough.

I want to move now from the fact of God's supra-rationality to the perfection of it, and from there, I hope, to the desirability of it.  By definition deity is qualitatively and quantitatively greater than creation.  Deity is eternal, deity is boundless, deity is the quintessential existence of all that is splendid and worthy of praise.  God, by the very nature of his being, cannot be composed of any thought or action which is unworthy of holiness.  Two of the revelations of his nature are his mercy and grace: two attributes about God which we would never have understood apart from sin.  Another attribute, which we will have occasion to go into much later, is his justice.  But whatever the attribute, communicable or incommunicable, I think it must follow logically by the very nature of Deity that it must be perfect.  Anything less is less than holiness.

It does not necessarily follow that a soul confronted with the glory of holiness will immediately want to emulate it.  Some souls, though they may not know that God is what they grope for all their lives, are not able, and are not allowed, to see the desirability of God.  Uncle Andrew of The Magician's Nephew is a fictional example of this real-life phenomena.  The fact is that some people find God while others only grope after they know not what - so what draws some to God and not others? what opens the rational mind to the language and higher planes of thought of the supra-rational? what makes the impossible possible? what causes us to catch the many-splendoured thing?  The answers given could be "Jesus," "the Holy Spirit," "the Love of God," and all those answers would be right: taken together, they give a more perfect picture of the means by which God works.  I have not the time now to talk about what the saints for two thousand years before me have discussed about these splendid means.  Suffice it for this letter to say that an individual, having been justified in Christ, having been saved and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, is no longer operating under his former mode of consciousness.  There is now, as Paul said, a new law at work in him.  He is convicted of sin, has believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, and is moved by a renewal of the spirit to emulate his God.  This, in the context of faith, is perfectly rational, and hopefully we will have occasion to touch upon the rationality of justice and justification later.  Who would not consider it ingratitude that a soul, redeemed of God, preserved in faith by the Holy Spirit, should desire to live still according to the flesh?  Herein is the supra-rational: that a human soul, having believed on Jesus, has his mind attuned to the highest reason of all, the reason from which all reason comes.  He is not taught to think illogically, but to understand above his own natural reason.

I submit to you that, if God is incomprehensible through the use of logic (though not merely the use of logic), he would not have made a logical creature in his image.  If God is illogical, then it is a kind of idolatry to rationalize as we cannot help doing.  We must be brought up into the rationality of a personal God, not surrender without understanding to a God who is insensible. Perhaps the logic of God is only supra-rational to man as a result of human sin, and the logic of the redeemed will once again commune without hindrance or confusion when we finally are 'clothed with immortality.'

In the meantime, one may assume that a man indwelt by the Holy Spirit is a man who has already seen the desirability of God.  But not all knowledge comes at once, and some understandings are easier than others.  I desire God's mercy, I desire his grace, I desire his preserving Spirit to keep me in the path of holiness.  I desire him to teach me to turn from evil and to will and to do what is good.  Because holiness is excellent (is it not?), and if God is holy then it follows logically that he is the uttermost of excellence.  What man, what soul, stirred by the Holy Spirit, would not desire to emulate all aspects possible of such a God?  But at the beginning of the road those are but words clutched piteously by the heart. Man, bearer of the Imago Dei, has the logical rational capacity to grow in his understanding of the supre-rational God. The Holy Spirit undertakes the task of teaching the soul the language of Heaven: the study of the magnitude of evil and the uttermost excellence of God is a hard one, but it is not one, thank God, which we have been banned from learning.

O Go You Onward

O go you onward; where you areShall honour and laughter be,Past purple forest and pearled foam,God's winged pavilion free to roam,Your face, that is a wandering home,A flying home for me.The Ballad of the White Horse, G.K. Chesterton
Travel has been on my mind.  In a series of events connected only by John Carterian leaps I've been thinking about travel, about places I've been and places I'm slotted to be at some point in the future.  I'm not a great traveller; I'm very easily cowed by the hugeness of the world, the noise of it, the emptiness of it.  The taste of our time's air is the taste of frantic despair.  I don't like it.  I would rather not go out in it.

Turning together, they looked up beyond the wharf to the rising buildings and cold winter sky, their eyes narrowed against the driving rain.  Everything was foreign.  They did not even have Rhodri there to make them feel safe."I wish I could kill it all,"  rasped Eikin.Adamant clung to his arm.  "I - I know what you mean."Adamantine
But I have always been a sort of traveller.   When people read my writing, they frequently tell me, "It's as if I was there!"  If you are a writer yourself you can imagine the magnitude of this compliment.  People often want to know how I manage to do that, and I suppose a simple answer (it isn't as if I actually know what I am doing) is that I've travelled extensively myself.  I have the ninth century and Wessex sitting next to me at this very moment.  I've seen Rome during years of her eternal reign.  I've rambled expansively through northwest India.  I've swished my feet in the Nile (which is not exactly advisable due to Lord Crocodile).  I've yanked an oar through the North Sea.  I've seen France under English rule.  I've wiggled bare toes among the primroses of a Kentish meadow.  I've been to Wales.  I've been to the Baltic.  Somewhere along the way I got lost in the Scandinavia of The Snow Queen.  I've been to Mercury.  I've been to Venus.  I've been to Mars.  I've taken up residence on the Moon.  I've even seen Saturn from a distance.  "You've been to England, haven't you?" someone asked me after reading a piece of my work.  Not strictly speaking.  I just read a lot. 

And there's the rub.  I'm a poor little pygmy that doesn't like to stray from her fire.  I'll gladly sail the frigate of a book, which costs far less and doesn't make me sea-sick; the worlds are all but just as vivid in their pages, the possibilities of adventure far greater.  I can pop into the kitchen any time I want for a cup of tea or a snack, which one can't do some thousand feet in the air on a jet that probably has never heard of "Twinings" and would confiscate all my tea thinking it was a type of drug.  I'm the policeman on the beat on the Path of Least Resistance.  I have shelves of doors into other times and places.  I have the key to each of them.  I don't have to pay fare to pass through any of them.  The white feather in me asks in very eloquent prose why I should be made to pay, to fly, to endure jet-lag and culture-shock to go to foreign places.  Apparently some people don't mind it.  I'm reading a book by the world-renowned Ravi Zacharias: anyone remotely acquainted with him knows that he has travelled extensively for years and, I think, enjoys it.  I can only sit in a blank sort of awe and wonder, respectfully, why.  Beyond the monologue-ing white feather is an even whiter feather adding background vocals that sound a lot like agonized screaming.

This is the place to which I have come in my ponderings on travel.  Despot-like, I don't feel particularly inclined to stir from my couch if all other places and peoples can come to me.   I am perfectly aware that this is smooth, gilt, self-possessed cowardice.  I am perfectly aware that I'll have to get over it and enjoy myself.  I have a friend on Mercury who somehow managed to combine both...

And you?  Where have you been, and do you like travel?  Have we been to the same places, you and I?  We may have passed like two ships in the night.

Of Cabbages and Kings

"The time has come," the Walrus said,"To talk of many things:Of shoes - and ships - and sealing-wax -Of cabbages and kings..." The Walrus and the Carpenter, Lewis Carroll
Once again it's time for Katiebug's monthly scribble fest.  I had a slow end half of March.  Let's see what peeks I have to offer you.

April Snip-Whippets
Through the lattice shone diamonds of light, which turned the stairway into a freckled grouse's win, and up from the bottom of the stairway came the murmur of many voices.Plenilune
After that she wandered oddly, composed of two or more parts and feeling of colours: a part of her, an ashen-coloured part, was still weary as if it had been beaten.  And it had, had it not?  Dreamy, sometimes nightmarish images of the evening's festivities sprang through her mind as she wandered down the empty passageways of Lookinglass.  Each one struck at her like Rupert's hand.  But another part of her was cool and golden, sleepy-fierce and defiant - was it only the lamplight, or was it something greater?  Yet another part of her, a far, back part which seemed to tag after her like a shadow, and seemed at other times to spring on ahead and look back at her from beyond the rim of lamplight, was the colour of a fox's coat.Plenilune
There was a pregnant silence for a few minutes - neither woman moved - and in that time Margaret was able to place her as the fur-enshrouded woman who had rode up with Lord Bloodburn from Hol.  How different the two were!  Brother and sister or man and wife, whichever they were, she could not have imagined them more different.  The fierceness in the woman's eyes was very small, and was there only because of the small bundle of a thing which she held in her arms.  All else had been quenched.There sit I should Rupert ever conquer me. Plenilune
"What, Lady Spitcat?  She is my shoulder-to-shoulder man."Plenilune
"Ding dong dell, kitty's in the well!"Plenilune
Eikin looked up from his side of the fire where he squatted, burnishing his weapons.  Andor lay beside him, lost in sleep and oblivious.  Glancing from Adamant to Rhodri, the Catti dropped his eyes again and rumbled, "How deep did I go?"Rhodri, too, looked up, faintly surprised, and seemed to hang a moment on the silence.  "Not deep enough to kill me, I'm afraid."Adamantine
Rhodri half coughed, half vomited the water out and sat leaning shakily over his knees, running his fingers through his hair.  [Adamant] thought she heard him groan, "Oh, my legs..." before he looked up at her and blinked away the brine in his eyelashes.  "This will be the death of me," he said, surprisingly good-naturedly.Adamantine
"Yes."  There was a squeak on the floor as [he] turned.  A brief sparkle of light-off-silver flickered on the pane.  "A bad servant never likes being whipped."Adamantine
To his ears the sound was like swallowing glass.Requiem

With Whom We Have To Do

I was tagged the other day by the blogger over at Fullness of Joy.  It is not a very in-depth tag: really more of a getting-to-know-you-better sort of tag.  I know I don't tend to want to know a lot about authors because I am aware of the disconnect between the person you see and the book you read; but I do like to know the little quirks that make people who they are.  Operating under the assumption that you, too, might like to know quirks about this particular author, I am going to join in this questionnaire.  The following will be two groups of eleven questions each: the first group will be points about myself which I feel might interest or amuse people; the second group are questions which Joy (who tagged me) wrote and wanted me to answer.  But the question I really want an answer to is: why eleven?

I thought you might like to know...
1.  I was supposed to be ginger.  Ginger runs in my mother's side of the family, and she and I do have natural red highlights in our brown hair, but all the ginger traits got inside me and shaped, not my hair colour, but my personality.  I dare say that explains a lot.

2.  If you gave me the choice between a hard-cover book and a soft one, I would choose the hard one.

3.  As a child, my imaginary friend was Oliver Cromwell.  As a child, I was very free with history, so I'm afraid my imaginary friend did not accurately represent the original; but we got on well enough all the same, he and I.

4.  I have a cup of tea every morning.  It is so much a part of my regular routine that, if my husband and I have to leave the house unusually early (for me), we plan ahead to determine at what time I have to rise in order to brew and drink my cup of tea before bolting out the door.  I don't think the caffeine does anything for me: I think it is almost wholly psychological.  Or psychotic.

5.  I was in my early to mid-teens when I wrote my debut novel The Shadow Things.

6. I keep a journal styled in letters.  It should make for interesting reading if it is published after my death.

7.  When my husband's professor asked me what I study, I informed him that I have graduated highschool and am now free to study whatever I like without paying tuition to anyone.  He was evidently quite tickled by this defiance.

8.  Two things, which go hand in hand: I discovered that I sit and gesture just like my father while having a debate, and also that, in the midst of a serious discussion, I don't get jokes.  I will recognize jokes, I will recognize that they are funny, but the hilarity will almost always bounce right off me.  Serious-serious.

9.  Perhaps I have said this before, but I am not usually consciously logical.  I am typically a subconscious thinker, and intuitive.  Which means that I may be a genius sometimes, but I never know it.

10.  I said that I see emotion as colour, but here I feel I can explain further: I don't see colour the way some people see colour triggered by a sound, or a number.  To me defiance is a feeling the colour of a hawk's eye; high freedom, the kind that breaks something in your chest, is a feeling the colour of a pale sky.   Companionable silence is the colour and softness of a panther's coat.  That's what I mean by feeling colour.

11.  I communicate by letter with my friends.

What someone else thought you might like to know...
1.  Who are your top three favourite classic fiction authors and which are your top three favourite modern fiction authors?

I had to go and look up the definition of "classic."  I'm afraid it has been somewhat misunderstood, judging from the dictionary.  If you were to assume the definition that anything "classic" is the exemplary item of its kind, then it would follow, logically, that all modern literature is rot.  For the sake of this question I'm going to go with the definition "an artist or artistic production considered a standard."  I think we can work with that.

For my three "classic" authors I must say Jane Austen, because of her wit and insight into the everyday life, who helps me see beyond my intuition to the frank faces of people; G.K. Chesterton, who takes you

up through an empty house of starsbeing what heart you areup the inhuman steeps of spaceas on a staircase go in gracecarrying the firelight on your facebeyond the loneliest star
and understands that my heart is hammered of phoenix feathers, ready to burst into flame.  And for my third I think I have to say E.R. Eddison who, though I have only read one work of his, blew me away by the grandeur of his people who, bigger than life, with blood like fire, whirled through the massive plot and the little me like a maelstrom of aching memories.  Even the white feather of his book was a man I liked greatly.

I have few favourite modern authors who are still alive.  I know, I'm like the Janette Oke novel of readers...  Since she was still alive in my early years, I feel no qualms in naming Rosemary Sutcliff as foremost among my modern favourite authors.  Runners up are Diana Wynne Jones (who just recently died, and I had nothing to do with it) and Harry Blamires, though he and I differ greatly on some points.  He, at least, is yet living.

2.  Which character in John Bunyan's immortal classic Pilgrim's Progress do you identify with most?

Abigail mentioned this question when she read it and asked self-deprecatingly, "What if I identify more with the villains?"  Honestly, it has been too long since I read the work to recall the numerous cast of characters found in it.  I think I identify with many of them in parts and portions, and in various places in life.

3.  In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, we see that Sam's and Frodo's responses to Gollum-Smeagol are different.  If you were in either character's position when they had a chance of killing him, would you have done so and rid yourself of his wickedness and treachery , or would you pity him, having carried the burden of the Ring yourself, known its temptation, and shown mercy?

I have to say Tolkien was a genius here.  If I were Sam, and Sam were me, I confess I probably would have tried to do away with Gollum.  I am strongly vindictive of nature and my mental reactions are usually violent.  But all the same, when I can empathize, I can understand, and perhaps I, too, would have shown mercy to Gollum if I had been in Frodo's place.

4.  Which do you enjoy more: reading a book or watching a movie?

I think I probably enjoy reading a book more, but I don't think the comparison is entirely fair since literature and films are two different mediums of art.  The point of both (assuming it is fiction) is to tell a story, but neither approaches story-telling the same way.  I enjoy both venues.

5.  What is your favourite kind of music to sing, hear, and play, and who do you think was the greatest music composer of all time?

I enjoy singing whatever my narrow vocal range can manage and my tiny memory can retain, mostly hymns and a few snatches of Disney songs I remember from my youth; due to their eclectic nature and little space I can't reproduce the songs I like to listen to, and I can't play anything.  As for the greatest musician of all time, I would greatly love to have listened to Jesus singing the Hallel on the Passover of his death.

6.  Which two books of the Bible do you tend to read the most?

Perhaps it is by some strange subconscious quirk of my own name, which starts with a J: I read the First Epistle of John and the Book of Job most.


7.  Is there a figure in history (outside of the Bible) that you love the most?  Why?

Athanasius.  Because his stalwart figure, obscured by little learning and long ages, appears as a hero to my eyes.

8.  Is there a book or a movie that you have recently been exposed to that you felt should have been done differently?

Oh dear.  This is a dangerous question for an author.  One must give allowance for differences of situation and temper...  But I did recently read the book Fairest by contemporary author Gail Carson Levine and felt that there were several points which could have had more justice done to them.  As for films, there are a lot of scenes in which I would have had the main character look up.  No one ever looks up.

9.  What are your two favourite scenes in C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia?

My father is currently reading through these books with my six-year-old niece, and on occasion I will be on hand to listen.  I confess, I can't sit through a session without crying.  Too much beauty and too many memories are tied up in those words for me to sit it out dry-eyed.  I have to give you three scenes: The Magician's Nephew, in which Digory, without hope for his mother, looks up into Aslan's eyes and finds great, horrible, shining tears there; in The Silver Chair, Aslan's discourse with Jill at the outset:

"Do you eat girls?" she said."I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the Lion."I daren't come and drink," said Jill."Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion."Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer.  "I suppose I must go and look for another stream.""There is no other stream."
And in magnificent conclusion, Aslan's benediction at the end of The Last Battle, which we all know, which is like the last trumpet-note of the most beautiful song you have ever heard, hanging on the air, leaving everything behind in shaken splendour.

10.  What are some of the books (fiction and non-fiction) or movies that have inspired and changed your life?

"I could no sooner choose a favourite star in the heavens."  Foremostly I name the word of God, and I publicly thank his grace and the Holy Spirit (but I repeat myself) for bringing me alive to that word.  As for the rest, I could not possibly name fifteen years' worth of books.  They all had a part in my shaping.  I imbibed them, I fought them, I debated them, I embraced them: each book, each conversation, each story,  each place, each soul, has impacted my life in a way only the Last Overview of Time could show.


11.  What do you love most about the place where you live?

My people.  All places are much the same, some better, some worse, some lighter, some darker: it is one's people that make it home.

And now you know.

"Are You Slain?"

Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the living Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
Gunga Din, Rudyard Kipling

I don't exactly belt and flay them, though I did toss Kipling across the room on his face, poor fellow, and the Brothers Grimm were dumped unceremoniously on a chair (it turns out, I needed Hans Christian Anderson instead). I love my books and I take care of them, but the ones I love most do tend to take a beating. It puts me greatly in mind of a conversation one Old Skin Horse had with one Velveteen Rabbit about being loved and becoming Real... The book always makes me cry. But the principle remains: the books I love most, use the most, reference the most, paw through and reread the most, show the signs of my thumbing. Needless to say, The Silver Branch is very worn indeed, The Last Battle likewise, and thank goodness Chesterton is hard-back otherwise he would diminish quickly. Which is funny, if you think about it...

You probably know, from my brief introduction of myself or from personal experience, that I like stabbing people in the heart with words. I love making people soar, or cry, or rage - I love making them feel the worlds in my head as truly as I feel them with all their swirling pomp of colour and emotion and vivacity. When people can look up from my writing and blink in surprise at the image of the kitchen counter with its coffee maker percolating, when they had expected to see a torrent of alaunts on the flanks of a boar, with the hue and cry of the huntsmen in their ears, then I know I've won the day. When I can turn a person's heart in my hand with words, as you might turn a chess-piece, I know I've penslain them.

But what about me? Who slays the Penslayer? I try not to read often below my level. I don't mean this snobbishly, not at all. There are numerous beautiful, charming, inspiring, well-written stories out there that I missed in my childhood and now have to go back and catch up on. But when they say the mind is a terrible thing to waste they don't know how seriously they need to mean it. So I always try to read someone a little harder, a little deeper, a little further up or further in, someone who tests my mettle, someone who challenges me. So how about it? I know a few people who have managed to really deliver a blow with the beauty of words and with the glory of truth. There aren't many yet because I want my Penslayers to really and truly slay me. Here are a few of the works of literature which have managed to pen-slay the Penslayer.

The Worm Ouroboros - E.R. Eddison
The Ballad of the White Horse - G.K. Chesterton
The Last Battle - C.S. Lewis
The Inferno - Dante Alighieri
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
Horatius - Thomas Babington MacCaulay
Simon - Rosemary Sutcliff
Knight's Fee - Rosemary Sutcliff
The Land - Rudyard Kipling
If - Rudyard Kipling

I don't want you to think I'm a hard reader to please. I have enjoyed over twice this many books in the past six months, but these are books I've read which really gripped me with their powerful prose or turns of lyric, with their ability to throw you off the edge of the world into heights unknown. I love these poems and stories. But one more author needs to be mentioned and I save him for last for several reasons. One, I feel he deserves the close of the post as an honour; two, because I'm not sure I actually have the words to describe his penslaying. He so totally penslays me that all words vanish. The more I read him, the more I am convinced: no one could say it better. I deny all accusations of the cliche or the hollowly sentimental. That author, frankly, is Jesus. I say author, perhaps orator is a better term. But what a wordsmith! If I could penetrate the movements of man's mind and heart a fraction so well as he I might do better at my own smithing. If I had half the compassion, half the justice, and an abundance of the Holy Spirit, I could make the words of my characters sing across the ages with truth. As an unrequited lover of just the right word at just the right moment, I can only sit back in a breathless thrill of wonderment as I listen to Jesus' speech. I strive to bring my words to life: his are living already. On a level where life and godliness and history and heroes and the love of words all collide into one thing, I find him there. I find him and I'm penslain.


"O Juss," cried Brandoch Daha, "thine own breath lighteneth at it, and thy words come more sprightly forth. Are not all lands, all airs, one country unto us, so there be great doing afoot to keep bright our swords?"
The Worm Ouroboros, E.R. Eddison

Beautiful People - Skander & Woodbird

What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
Harp Song of the Dane Women, Rudyard Kipling

In honour of the first anniversary of Beautiful People, Sky posted a new series of questions which deals with the relationship of two characters - any two characters, so long as they happen to interact in some critical way. This was challenging and a lot of fun, especially since I needed to take a good look at the relationship of two of my Plenilune characters. I won't keep you long. These two, whose names you have heard before, are

Skander Rime and Woodbird Swan-neck

1. Do they believe in anything that most people think is impossible?

"To the end of the way of the wandering star, To the things that cannot be and that are…" It depends on who one means by "most people." They believe in God, they believe in angels, they believe in original sin, the depravity of man, redemption, resurrection, a judgment to come… Those seem to be the great stumbling blocks of humanity. As for ordinary impossible things, Skander is typically one to take things carefully in stride, testing the ground beneath his feet as he goes. Woodbird has a strain of the fantastic in her and rather relishes a good impossibility.

2. Are they strong, or the "damsel/knight in distress" sorts?

Once again, it depends on one's definition of "strong." Both Skander and Woodbird are capable people, physically. Skander has a naturally big build and good height, which he puts to good use. Woodbird, tall (which gives the appearance of being slender) and sturdy, counts herself one of the best sword-maidens in Thrasymene, with good reason. In disposition they are similar: steadfast, slow to temper but quick of wit, and will long hold both grudge and loyalty.

3. Do they have a special place?

Since she was a girl Woodbird's favourite place has been Ringsbarrow, a high lump of land atop one of the many fellspurs in Thrasymene. From there she is afforded a good prospect of her Honour and a view of the awful things in time. Skander, whose life has been happier and who is less disposed to brooding, has always preferred the south apsis sunroom and study of Lookinglass or (even better) the back of a horse on a hunt par force.

4. What occupation do they have, or plan on having?

Both Skander Rime and Woodbird Swan-neck are born into positions of power, and fill those positions. Woodbird is the third and youngest of a female triumvirate, Skander is the sole head of the Honour of Capys. Neither of them have ever considered having any other occupation, though in her younger years it never occurred to Woodbird that such a responsibility would fall on her. But there is enough variety in each of their occupations to keep them from growing bored or stir-crazy. Life is never dull.

5. Describe their current places of residence.

After all its curtain walls Margaret had almost expected the House itself to look somewhat small and ridiculous—a small thing couched defensively behind a mind-numbing tonnage of stone. So she caught her breath in spite of herself when they passed up through the last gate of all—guarded by watchtowers and garlanded in hoarwithy—and came under the light-spangled shadow of the House.

Ah, this means I get to describe one of my favourite locations thus far. Skander Rime, Lord of the Honour of Capys, makes his home (as his ancestors have made their home since long ages past) in the House of Lookinglass, only a day's dusty ride up Glassdale from where Margaret is forced to reside. It's a big place for a single man to rattle about in, but Skander, somewhat reclusive by nature, is also by nature honest and friendly: his people look up to him and, in turn, he depends heavily on them. They make an odd but comfortable sort of family.

The late light, caught up here like yellow wine in a glass, struck off the House's numerous windows and scattered it brokenly all over the courtyard. Here the gold air was embroidered with silver. The House itself was loftier-built than Marenové, which was squat and somewhat sullen of appearance: it had the delicacy and liveability of a working cathedral with its soaring gables and pinnacles, its ramparts decorated in verdigris copper.

Woodbird Swan-neck lives in the long house of Thwitandrake in Thrasymene, and whether the old name means "Duck" or "Dragon," no one really knows. Despite its long years and numerous additions attached to it, the building remains roughly axial, rich in hand-worked design, and a growing museum to the Thrasymene heritage. It does not grow very quickly, of course. Thrasymene is not a great Honour on the map.

6. Explain their last crisis. How had they changed when they came out of it?

Their last crisis together would not reflect very well on either of them. Observing the family feud of his neighbouring Honour, Skander's father took the side of the family member Woodbird least liked. Her sisters have not forgotten this (nor has she), but while Woodbird was willing to exempt young Skander from his father's alliances, her sisters were not. Their childhood romance was cut short when Woodbird was persuaded by her sisters to refuse Skander's proposal. Since then both of them have been confused, awkward, angry, and not at all sure if they are willing to break years of bitterness and hurt to restore their relationship.

7. If they could ride any kind of horse they wanted, what would it be?

Well, Skander has the pick of any horse he wants. The horse of his choice and gem of his heart is Blue-bottle Glass, a blue roan courser with a blood-line tracing back to the Carmarthen steppes horses. He has had his courser since it was born and, though their natures are rather divergent (Blue-bottle Glass can have a temper), the two are a perfect pair.

Woodbird, on the other hand, does not care quite so particularly about her mounts. She prefers them skittish and chancy with excellent stamina and a heart for a fight, but colour and breed do not matter much to her. Two horses she cares about: her grandfather's ancient war-horse, long past its prime and retired to the Thwitandrake paddocks, and her customary flea-bitten mare who, after the nature of most ginger girls, has a quick temper and a fierce bite.

8. How do they deal with change?

Contrary to his attitude on remarkable happenstances, Skander doesn't like change. He resents it sullenly, and I confess he almost—almost—pouts. He takes change in stride, of course, he's man enough for that, but he doesn't like it. (The near-pout only makes an appearance in sullen instances. He looks rather terrible when he is actually angry.) Juxtaposed to his attitude, Woodbird sweeps head-long into change, backed by a giddy wind.

9. If they had to amputate one body part, which one would they choose?

They would both choose the left hand. If at all possible they would keep their legs for walking and riding, their right hands for swords, and, in a pinch, the stump that remained of their left forearms could be trained to hold reins and would be wrapped to carry a hawk. They would get on, Skander and Woodbird.

10. What would their favourite be at the local coffee shop?

Skander and Woodbird enjoy the popular coffee liqueur; Woodbird will have coffee with cream and sugar, or tea, if coffee liqueur is not available, but Skander, cheated of his favourite beverage, will take his coffee black.

11. How did they meet?

They met as children at an influential and singular Moot which I will not go in to, since the children cared little for politics at that time and the whole thing largely passed over them. They were of the same age, they were both stubborn, they both agreed passionately on the subject of kennel construction, and the childhood romance bloomed instantly, putting out a single defiant blossom. Over the years the plant has grown somewhat thorny, but the roots have driven deep.

12. How do these two deal with conflict?

In the throes of conflict Skander has two normative reactions. He will either grow very quiet and contemplative, or, passing beyond that, become sarcastic and even rather witty. Only on rare occasions and with extreme provocation does his usually amiable nature come to a desire for blows. Woodbird plays with conflict the way a cat plays with a mouse, if she feels confident of gaining the upper hand; if not, she shuts up into an awful icy quiet—with her distinct owlish eyes, she makes for an unnerving companion when you have angered her.

13. Do they have a special song, phrase, item, or place?

They do not—or none that they have told me of. I gave them "Only the Good Die Young" for a laugh—a laugh without much laughter in it.

14. What kind of things do they like to do together?

Outside observation would determine their favourite pastime to be quarrelling. At the New Ivy gala, for the first time in nearly ten years, Woodbird actually wanted Skander's company, but perhaps that was only because she was getting out of Rupert's. It's hard to say.

15. Describe their relationship as a whole in three words or less.

Prejudiced. Proud. Persevering.


"Why," said Margaret, turning from the servant who took her wrap, "I had no idea you lived in church."
Skander's smile, quick and pleasant, was oddly mirthless. "You think so? Perhaps you're right.
I had always thought it the other way around…"
Plenilune

The Great Ones

Their footsteps yet remaining do testify that they were indeed holy men who, fighting so valiantly, trod the world under their feet.
Of the Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis

I lay the blame for this once more on Rachel, (who is indisposed at present, mourning the fate of Les Miserables). Due to being out of town for some days and having come to one of those awkward social situations which I am not quite sure how to get Margaret sensibly through, I have been kicking my heels to not much avail. ("It'll come to you. Remember how you got out of that jail!") I'm a great dodger of responsibility, I'm ashamed to say, and rather than plough through the social mess I've slithered out and worked on other parts of Plenilune. One advantage slithering out gives me is that I get to see where characters stand down the road, what their opinions become, and generally what direction they have gone, so that in the present I may help to guide them there. But if I slither hard enough, I'll come right out behind myself in the end. I would like to introduce you now to the cast of Plenilune - or, the cast thus far. I give them no rank besides "Lord" or "Lady;" they wish to remain masked for now.

Margaret Coventry // Rupert de la Mare // Skander Rime // Rhea // Aikaterine // the blue-jay man // old Hobden // Livy // Malbrey // Witching Hour // Thairm // Talbot // Curoi // Dammerung War-wolf // Widowmaker // Gram // Lord Gro FitzDraco // Herluin // Lord Bloodburn // Blue-bottle Glass // Twiti // Latimer // Snati // Mark Roy // Romage // Aikin Ironside // Brand the Hammer // Centurion // Grane // Black Malkin // Woodbird Swan-neck // Altai-tek // Lady Kinloss // Melchior // the Fox // the Great Blind Dragon // Plenilune

These are the people I am working with, or will be working with, or manipulating, or however you choose to look at it. Now that I put them on paper (or blog), they don't seem to be that much. In person they are much more life-like and difficult. Here they are only so many names no one knows.

"Your lord and mine are busy," he said, not offering to introduce himself with anything more than a musing sort of smile; "and there will not be time enough for it later, but if my lady will come up with me on the guardhouse parapet I will name to her the names of the great ones as they pass by."
plenilune, the blue-jay man