murmurings

what's in a genre?

2012-02-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

Lots of writers wrote genre pieces that became literature & lots of writers did and do both (John Grisham, for instance, if you'd like to consider a contemporary). Here's one of my takes on trying to do genre writing well.

http://www.christianfictiononlinemagazine.com/brilliant_genre.html

happy endings or sad endings?

2012-01-19T06:37:00.000-08:00

I can tell you this: in Toronto they'll get you to re-write happy endings so they are sad or just plain dark. No happy endings in literary fiction, that is seen as the domain of pop fiction, so it doesn't surprise me the reverse is true for popular fiction. Zo and White Birds both have sad endings. Though I am going to make the ending of the third in the series upbeat no matter Toronto says. But that is the way of things.

For me, I have written enough sad endings in novels and in almost 50 short stories (not all sad endings, just enough) that I find having the freedom to write endings that come together more pleasantly something of a novelty. I'm not in any hurry to write another sad ending & have no sense of need, calling or urgency to do so. I've done enough. Nothing to prove. I'll stick with sunshine for a while.

I've written about this many times and spoken about it at writers' gatherings, even secular ones - another ingredient: religious people must be dysfunctional if they're Christian - unless they're old & toothless and then you can write benevolently about them.

When I was writing in my 20s and 30s I was iconoclastic & I wanted to show Christians there were sad and tragic occurrences in life, that not everything could be turned into Cheez Whiz with a few Bible verses - I also wanted to show non-Christians a believer could write hard and true - with White birds, even though a main character dies at the end, I made more of an effort, an effort that began with Zo, to show a fullness of life: dark and light, bitter and sweet, happy and sad - life has both - Christians can't rejoice in or understand everything that goes wrong - but non-Christians can't say there is no happiness or forgiveness or hope - even in what I'm doing with you I want that fullness - so Wings has an upbeat ending - but as you know good people die in the book from war and disease and that shows the inescapable dark shadow that sticks with us in this life - see Psalm 88, Job, Jonah's prayer, Ecclesiastes, etc. - but definitely as a young writer I reacted to Christians dolling everything up & my first novel (Mizzly Fitch)was as dark as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio in its way, and got me in a lot of trouble, though it's no different, really, than a text from the first part of Psalm 73 or any portion of Psalm 88. But few people know the Bible anymore except for a few favorite passages and books they continually re-read.

I think many Christians who want to write sad endings are simply trying to be honest about life experience and faithful to God in telling such tales - the difference between us is I got to do that years ago and don't feel the need to make the point anymore - but then I was not denied the opportunity as they are being denied the opportunity - but, as you say, I can't see Christian fiction becoming literary fiction so they will have to go to small publishing houses and low advances if they want to publish their tragedies - I suspect most won't do that.

how do I start writing a novel?

2012-01-18T19:32:00.000-08:00

It doesn't happen until I start the real writing. But it's like something pent up has been let loose, I can feel the opening inside of me, and there is a strong and steady flow that can cut through rock and earth that bursts forth and begins to go steady and sure. It carries me with it to places and scenes and characters I did not always anticipate or plan for and it is irresistible and unstoppable. It can be like a fire too and hurt & burn if I do not let it out and hurt & burn even if I do. I am swept away with it until we empty into the great sea of the ending. This very much happened with Wings and Heaven.

. . . .

I do bare bones plotting and envisage what needs to happen with each chapter (as well as one can knowing the plot will take twists and turns you didn't plan on) - but I most certainly don't nail everything down tight before starting - however I have a strong sense of direction and beginning and that propels me out of the blocks - then it's a matter of thinking and evaluating day by day as you write and things take on shape - I would never presume to nail everything down before writing began because the act of writing changes everything since it brings the ideas to life & anything can happen once you have life force.

writing about women

2012-01-18T19:00:00.000-08:00

I was privileged to be interviewed by California author Keli Gwyn online. Here is an excerpt from that interview which has to do with me writing in a genre that is normally reserved for female authors. Keli's first novel will be published by Barbour in July at which time I hope to return the favor and interview her on my blog.

Keli: The stereotypical romance writer is female, so I’m impressed when I find a man who has embraced the genre. What do you see as the challenges and benefits of being a male romance writer?

Murray: I have a mother, a sister, a wife, and a daughter, and I have worked alongside female colleagues since I was young. So as a male romance writer my challenge is to reflect what I have seen and learned of the wonderful women in my life in the female characters I portray, especially the heroine. The advantage is, as someone looking in on the female heart and spirit from the outside, I see and value and highlight things that women writers might overlook or take for granted and so not portray. Women, in their strength and depth and mind and soul, are fascinating and I want to express as much of that as I can in my writing.

are the amish quaint or relevant?

2012-01-17T12:49:00.000-08:00

Are the Amish quaint?

Many people think so. They travel to Amish regions in the US and Canada, cameras ready, to take pictures of people who don’t want to be photographed just because those people look quaint or old-fashioned.

Quite apart from not wanting to be photographed, I doubt the Amish want to be thought of as quaint, especially when it comes to their Christian faith and Christian lifestyle. I know I wouldn’t be. Quaint makes you sound cute, sweet and out-of-date, and I wouldn’t want my Christian faith to be described using any of those terms. I’m pretty sure the Amish wouldn’t like those words applied to their faith either.

The Amish take their faith seriously – it is the reason they live and dress as they do. It is the reason they still use horses and buggies, the reason they meet in homes and not church buildings, the reason the women have their hair up under prayer kapps. They are what people call quaint because it is their way of following Christ. But to them their faith is alive and vibrant and has a lot to say to the modern people and modern times that swirl around them. Theirs is not a dead faith or an antiquated faith or a fossilized faith, as far as they are concerned. It is brimming with Jesus in 2012 – not just 1912 or 1812.

This is one of the challenges for both the writers and readers of Amish fiction – to make the Amish real in their minds and hearts and imaginations, not quaint, not dated, not precious throwbacks to another era that have nothing much to say about real life and a real God to this one. Yes, the Amish live in many ways as if it is still the late 1800s. But why they do it and what they believe has a lot to say to anyone seeking Christ or following him in the 2100s. So the writer and reader need to work together to make sure that the charm of an 1800s way of life the world left behind in a hurry in the 1920s and 30s is not the only takeaway from Amish fiction.

The commitment to one another and to community is important. Seeking God’s will and not the world’s is also crucial. The value of humility, quietness, peace, and self-sacrifice are right up there. So are avoidance of war, rejecting conflict with your neighbors, forgiveness, and deep and abiding relationships. There is much more, as careful writers, readers, and researchers know.

The challenge is to say with Amish fiction that there is a beauty to the Amish ways but not just because they drive buggies and plow with oxen and make butter with butter churns. The beauty is they do all that and remain absolutely relevant to the people of the 21st century. Especially those who are seekers after God, followers of Christ, and men and women lost in the maelstrom of modern life who wish there was another way, even a better way, for them to raise their families and live out the threescore and ten years God has allotted them.

the wings of morning trailer

2012-01-11T12:10:00.000-08:00

THE WINGS OF MORNING OPENS IN THREE WEEKS. HERE IS A TRAILER FOR THE BOOK. (YES, JUST LIKE A MOVIE TRAILER EXCEPT IT USES MORE STILLS.) ENJOY.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDTA6NuQCLs

virginia city released

2012-01-01T12:46:00.000-08:00

Virginia City Released

January 1st marks the release date of A Bride’s Flight From Virginia City, Montana. It will be in the brick and mortar stores when they open again Monday or Tuesday and available online right now.

A friend contacted me on Facebook this morning to tell me the ecopy she had pre-ordered showed up on Kindle early this morning and she had already started reading it. A ranching couple I had given a printed copy to for Christmas contacted me to say they had dug right into it and had had a great read over the holidays. So that’s a nice beginning for which I’m grateful.

The bare bones plot (if you didn’t pick up on it from earlier posts): A young woman attempts to keep two children safe from a murderer by fleeing east to her old home in Pennsylvania’s Amish country, a region she vowed never to return to. Now she must not only do everything in her power to ward off the killer who stalks them, but deal with the people, personalities, and issues that made her leave the Amish faith to begin with. One man tries to help her, but he is a man haunted by his own past – the slaughters of the Civil War made him vow never to fight or use a gun again. The killer, known as The Angel of Death, has no such qualms.

A surprise romance between the woman and man binds them closer to each other and to the two children. It even brings them closer to the Amish of Bird in Hand and closer to God. But from the killer’s point of view, the four of them don’t have a prayer . . .

I hope you pick up a copy and enjoy the ride!

RT Reviews TOP PICK

2011-12-21T10:32:00.000-08:00

RT Reviews Top Pick - ****.5

The Wings of Morning has just received 4.5 stars from RT Reviews and has been named their Top Pick for February, 2012. Das ist gute, don’t you think? Here is part of the review from RT Times:

***Pura has created one of the finest stories of Amish fiction I have ever read. The WWI-era Amish religious practices engage the reader, as does the dramatic love story. It is a story of spiritual intimacy between an Amish man and his beloved. The reader will be applauding the exceptional writing and the cast of characters demands an encore performance.***

I’m grateful! Danke Schoen!

before the amish were amish

2011-12-18T15:02:00.000-08:00

Before the Amish were Amish

One hundred years ago, at the beginning of the 20th century, there was very little to distinguish the Amish from everyone else. Horses, carts, mules, buggies, horse-drawn plows, wood stoves – all rural Americans had them. As for telephones, the Amish used them from the start in the 1890s. It wasn’t until the telephone was perceived as a threat to community, as a means for gossiping about others, that it was removed from Amish homes. But other than that, all people looked pretty much the same in Lancaster County.

Then came the motorcar from Mr. Ford. The Amish debated it and finally rejected it – you could be a passenger in one, but you could not own one or drive one.

And then came the aeroplane. It was bad enough that the car took people very fast on the ground. Now the aeroplane could take you very fast in the air.

And on the heels of the plane and car and phone came electricity – harnessed, run through wires, and ready to hook up to your house and allow you to use electric fridges, electric ovens, electric washers – just about anything that had been done by hand for hundreds of years could now be done more quickly by a machine running on the power of the lightning storm.

No to the phone and no to the car. But what about the plane? What about electricity as a public utility?

The Amish discussed and debated.

Then came 1917. And America entered the First World War.

In a matter of months, it became clear that not having phones did not set the Amish apart – not everyone had them yet anyway. Nor did not owning a car – most Americans didn’t. Planes? Well, who had planes in their backyard? How many people had even seen one? Electricity? The war slowed down its arrival. It would not come to Lancaster County until 1919.

So there really was not so much of a difference between the Amish and their neighbors, not like the sort of differences that would be obvious in the 40s and 50s when most others did have cars, trucks, tractors, radios, electric ovens and, eventually, TV.

It was things that had nothing to do with phones and cars and technology. That was what set the Amish apart. It was what had set them apart all along. It’s just that few of the neighbors had taken much notice.

With the coming of a world war to America, they did.

The Amish did not fly the American flag. Did not celebrate the 4th of July. Did not permit their sons to enlist in the army or navy or in law enforcement. The men did not grow mustaches because that was what soldiers did. They did not support the war effort, did not buy war bonds, because war was wrong. And they spoke German. Just like the enemy.

That was what set the Amish apart in 1917. Not buggies or horse-drawn plows or cooking on wood stoves.

Beliefs set them apart. Their beliefs about how a person should live the Christian life. Which were at odds with how many other American Christians felt a person should live the Christian life.

Americans did not understand why there should be such a difference between themselves and the Amish. And some became angry.

That is where my book, The Wings of Morning, begins.

It will be published by Harvest House in February of 2012.

For those of you who pick it up, I hope it will be a profound and powerful read for you.

God be with you.

where to find my books in 2012

2011-12-15T15:15:00.000-08:00

You will be able to find my books at the following stores in 2012. please support them since they are good enough to support me! Thanks!

Barnes & Noble - www.bn.com

Family Christian Stores – www.familychristian.com

Lifeway Stores – www.lifewaystores.com

Parable Stores – www.parable.com

Amazon – www.amazon.com//www.amazon.ca//www.amazon.uk

CBD – www.christianbook.com

Books-a-Million – www.booksamillion.com

Publisher's Weekly ****review

2011-12-05T12:14:00.000-08:00

Here are some excerpts from a starred review in Publisher's Weekly of my forthcoming book, The Wings of Morning. Published by Harvest House in Oregon it's due to be released in February, 2012.

Pura (Zo) has penned a meaty story dealing with complex issues as the impact of WWI and the Spanish influenza epidemic affect a Lapp Amish community in Lancaster, Pa., during 1917–1919. At a time when the Amish are still considering their position on innovations like the automobile, photography, and electricity in homes, Amish convert Jude Whetstone has been allowed to learn to fly. While his childhood friend Lyyndaya Kurtz dreams of marrying the aviator, his forced induction into the United States Army Air Service and deployment to Europe triggers a shunning that threatens the young couple’s future. Pura, who has been a pastor and author in Canada for more than 25 years, masterfully balances depictions of simple Amish living with the harm that can be caused when religious ideology overrides compassion and understanding. Pura’s nearness to historical and Amish accuracies makes for a plausible and intriguing tale. Pura’s previous works have been shortlisted for several literary awards; this entry into historical fiction is noteworthy as well. (Feb.)
Reviewed on: 12/02/2011

no hard truths, please, we're Christians

2011-11-21T16:40:00.000-08:00

What is missing in Christian writing is the dark side of the moon, the Psalm 88 stuff. Everyone has gone through some of the same losses & disappointments and it is so beneficial for us to identify with those who admit to the struggles and sufferings. It would do the Church a world - a heaven! - of good to embrace this. But even though the Bible is that real - look at Saul's tragedy - look at some of the grotesque kings and queens in the OT and NT (Herod in the New, Jezebel and Ahab in the Old) and the hurt they inflicted on others - Christians, it seems, are not that real. At least, not when it comes to the fiction they wish to purchase (nonfiction seems to fair better with this sort of life honesty). What a shame. Can't you see how a writer could help us by telling stories where people are hurt in churches, disappointed when God doesn’t answer certain prayers in the way they expect, are lonely and afraid even when they are believers? Hard times don’t go away just because we have faith – no matter what some preachers and Christian movies try to tell us. I think we do the Church an injustice by not being as honest about life as the Bible is – and gives us the liberty and affirmation to be as well. But, alas, we stick to Psalm 23 & 150 and ignore 88 - it cripples us.

Which points out to me that the problem with Christ's Church today is not a need for more dogma and purer doctrine - the need is for more empathy, more compassion, and more reality - all of which are in short supply. If we could be as real as the Bible we could discuss our hard times in light of all the people who had hard times in the Bible, including and especially those who never experienced instant healing, or easy resolution to inner and outer conflicts, or answers to prayers that made sense to them.

My first novel, Mizzly Fitch, has as a main character a gnarly old fisherman who feels his life is a battle between himself and God. The seekers and the secular crowd loved it but much of the Christian crowd didn't know what to do with it, even though it's full of Christness. The book was taught in Canadian high schools for about 20 years (published in 88). To show how God is in this stuff if we give him a chance, a teacher at a college that wasn't a Christian school told me how many students had started to read the Bible for the first time after reading the novel. It actually crossed all kinds of boundaries and I even have a heartfelt letter from a Jewish woman who bought it from a bookstore in New Jersey. It's still in print so I imagine it may come up some day in the next few years in an interview - in which case I'll talk about its place in my writing of other gentler and more upbeat stories. I have nothing to be ashamed of. Or should we cut Psalm 88 and Job out of the Bible along with quite a few other painful and difficult sections?

It drives me crazy - I feel like we've shrink wrapped God and his gospel and that many millions who would believe don't - due simply to our narrow-mindedness about writing and speaking about the hardships in Christians’ lives – in all people’s lives! – that aren’t resolved by a quick prayer or a 30 minute sermon or a five minute quiet time from Our Daily Bread or The Upper Room.

Pretending we do not have these struggles helps no one – the lost or the found. For those who worship God must do so in spirit and in truth. If the truth is diminished by pretense, how real are we before God and how real is our worship? How can a pretend gospel redeem people from real darkness?

long strong smooth strokes

2011-11-20T17:48:00.000-08:00

SO . . . have you ever wound up with too much to do but you still had to do all of it?

I am in a position now where I need to write 3-4 books a year of varying lengths and of different genre types. One in the bunch may be nonfiction, the others will be fiction. Of the fiction titles, one may be literary fiction, the others will be popular fiction, usually historical fiction at this point.

It's one of those times where I am trying to create momentum so I'm doing all that I can the best way I know how. People have asked me, Well, how can you do all that and do it well?

I would not wish to write four books a year forever. But if contracts and opportunities come your way you're crazy not to seize them and try to make something happen. So you discipline yourself, focus, know when to take breaks, and above all else, make sure you enjoy yourself. Especially the final one. If you don't do that you won't last long as a n artist or writer - or anything else.

An image I keep in my head may help you when you have similar extraordinary demands on your time. I see myself as a long distance swimmer.

I might be doing laps. I might be swimming the English Channel or the Hoover Dam (do they let you swim that Dam?) but whatever I'm doing it's not a fast crawl - it's not a one minute race - it's the long, strong, smooth strokes of the long distance swimmer.

You just keep going. One stroke at a time. Measure your pace. Know when to come up for air. OK, now and then you may need to put on a burst of speed - but if you still have a long way to go you can't do that for long or you won't have the juice to go the distance. The best plan is the long, strong, smooth strokes. It's amazing how far you get when you do that and stick to it.

For instance, ten days ago I realized I wasn't getting very far with a manuscript. I was even avoiding the writing. How was I going to rejuvenate my interest in the work again and, coupled with that, actually get somewhere in time for the deadline?

I decided to focus and instead of doing 1500 words a day - a very slow pace - chose to up that to 3000. Day by day I swam the Channel between France and England. I doubled the distance I expected of myself on a daily swim and refused to do less. Of course there were interruptions and minor crises - I'm in real life, not a movie about a professional swimmer in the English Channel that is over in 2 hours. But interruptions or not, I got back in the writing water and began to swim again. And again.

Now, with those days behind me, I am one chapter shy of ten. Which means I'm one-third of the way through the book. A week ago I was hanging back from the work. Now I'm ready to go on Monday morning the 21st. A week ago I'd almost lost interest. Now I'm looking forward to the work - I want to write the next set of chapters. Since these are short devotional chapters 1500-2000 or 2500 words = one chapter. So 7-10 days from now I expect to be at chapter 15 or 16, maybe even 17 - halfway through the book. Not by a sudden flurry of over-the-top activity. Just by a sudden focus and very deliberate discipline on my part.

I still am a father to my son and daughter and help with homework or other issues. I still am a husband to my wife, talk things over with her, and help with the chores - cooking, cleaning, dealing with the weekly garbage, doing the laundry, hauling out the vacuum. I still walk my Alaskan Malamutes twice a day. I even take showers and eat.

But since I am now writing full-time I know I have a certain amount of distance to cover each day. When I cover it I feel that I am going to succeed and pull the book off. The more I feel that, the more interested I am in the book and the more excited I am about writing it and completing it. Sometimes when you don't get far enough in a reasonable amount of time you feel like the project isn't going to succeed and maybe it isn't worth investing your time in. You lose interest and eventually drop out and toss the whole thing. When you keep on top of it though, even if it's a long haul, you stay interested and focused and keen about what you're doing. You finish it. You win. You feel great.

And you know you can accomplish something else which may also require those long, strong, steady, smooth strokes of the long distance swimmer - or writer - or mother - or pastor - or lawyer - or nurse - or teacher - or student. . .

. . . or believer.

virginia city

2011-11-13T19:49:00.000-08:00

This is a blog I've sent over from the AmishReader.com website. It's a work of popular fiction I've cooked up and I think you'll enjoy it. The book is available for pre-order and will be ready for purchase very soon. Enjoy!

Virginia City

Virginia City used to be the capital of Montana in the territory’s gold rush days. About midway through 1875 Helena became the capital in its place. From a roaring boomtown Virginia City became a ghost town in a few decades later once the gold had played out.

Put yourself in the Montana Territory of 1875. The Civil War’s been over for only ten years.The James-Younger Gang is on the rampage. So is John Wesley Hardin. General James Armstrong Custer is still alive – The Battle of the Little Bighorn won’t take place until June 25th at about three o’clock in the afternoon. Wyatt Earp is still alive too and so are all his brothers. Dodge City is bursting at the seams. The President of the United States is not a Bush or a Barack – it’s a Grant, the Union war hero. The Old West is at its peak.

Suppose you’ve taken in a boy and a girl who are the survivors of a massacre. Suppose the outlaws who perpetrated the massacre are looking for the boy and girl because they’re sure the kids saw their faces and can identify them to the law. Suppose you feel responsible for keeping the boy and girl alive but no one else feels they can help you do that, even the marshal, and you’re advised to get the pair out of Montana and all the way back east to Pennsylvania. Suppose you’re a young single woman who’s trying to pull this off and the only one who will help you is a young single rancher who likes you well enough to risk his neck. Suppose the four of you decide to make a run for it with the gang hard on your heels?

What happens next???

A lot.

To find out exactly what plan to pick up a copy of the book I call Virginia City (for short) that will be available from your favorite bookstore or online dealer very soon. Published by Barbour its full title is A Bride’s Flight From Virginia City, Montana. I think you’ll like it and have a great time saving the kids and getting away from the bad guys.

But what, you may ask, does this have to do with the Amish (since this is an Amish blog)?

Well, they are running all the way to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania – that’s one clue. And the young single woman has a past buried in Lancaster County she swore she’d never return to – that’s another clue. And the boy and girl know Pennsylvania Dutch as well as English – there’s your third clue.

It’s a wild and exciting ride. I hope you decide to get in on it. And ja, some new Amish friends will be waiting to help you when you get off the train at Bird-in-Hand in Lancaster County.

We pray you get that far.

sequel to white birds of morning

2011-11-11T09:32:00.000-08:00

I have many writing projects going on but I made sure I found time to begin the sequel to The White Birds of Morning this past week. Unnamed so far, it is the third book in the series that began with the award-winning Zo and covers the years in the story between 1943 and 1945. I have an excerpt for you here BUT, as it is carrying on from the story in White Birds, it does contain spoilers, so you may not want to look at it until you've read White Birds through. (Yes, people tell me White Birds is long, but so is the Bible, and many of them have read that. You read long books the same way you read the Bible or short books - a chapter at a time! Thanks, by the way, to those who have finished White Birds and sent their notes of appreciation.)

The Hour of Darkness
COMPLINE
1943 - 1945

† † †
I carried her through the snow. In all that time on the train she had scarcely stiffened. They tried to convince me to leave her at the station in Vinnytsia but I was determined to go on. We came to a stop two hundred kilometres east of Lviv. There was a village. We were in Galicia so I climbed off the train with her in my arms. The snow was coming down so thickly her body was white in a few minutes. I kept wiping it off her face. I wanted to see her eyes. I had not closed them. There was no loss of colour. They were clear.

I headed through the snowdrifts towards the woods. I did not know that thousands of Jews had been shot under the trees. When I found out later it did not matter. She would have been proud to be buried among them. I could see there had been digging so I realized there had been executions and burials. I found a hole that was half-filled with snow and ice but nothing and no one else. She settled into it very easily. I was worried about the wolves so I spent some time prying up rocks from under the snow and frozen dirt and placing them one by one over her body until I was satisfied she was safe.

By then my fingers were raw and bleeding. I welcomed the sensation. I was grateful I could bury her with some pain and some blood. I think there was a prayer too. A good atheist’s prayer for a saint. Yes. I did that.

† † †

I am here on behalf of the Vatican because, quite frankly, Brother Nahum, your testimony is riddled with inconsistencies – I think I may call them that.

If the Holy Father feels that is so why – why didn’t the archbishop come?

He is a cardinal now. Much too busy to fly to America in order to iron out a few wrinkles.

So he sends a woman.

A sister in Christ.
What order?

Your sister is set to be beatified next month by the Holy Father. I am only here for a day. You can look up my order on your search engine after I’m gone.

Sister Afanasii.

Yes.

Russian.

Yes.

Russian Orthodox?

Yes. Can’t you tell by my robe and my klobuk – my head covering?

A Russian Orthodox nun. And you sit there – you sit there and tell me you are sent by the Vatican?
There is no record of what happened between the end of December 1943 and the summer of 1946 when you suddenly appear in Canada.

There is nothing to talk about. The German war machine broke apart. Berlin fell. Eventually I was repatriated and I returned to North America.

Even though you had served with the SS?

I served – with the armored units. Not death squads.

There is no record of you having served with the SS tank corps, the Panzerwaffen, as you claim. But there is something about an interview on a Nazi newsreel. That ought to have been enough to keep you out of Canada. Some would consider a pro-Nazi interview an act of treason. There is also information about you serving with the 14th Waffen SS, the Galician Division, although the file is incomplete. I am surprised you were not detained or arrested on suspicion of war crimes.

I committed no crimes.

What about the monastery at Pidkamin? In March of 1944?

The Canadian Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes ruled that the 14th Waffen SS should not be indicted as a group. Charges of war crimes against the Division have never been substantiated.

You appear well versed on this, brother.

It comes to my mind that there are no monastic orders within the Orthodox Church. You must be what they call a Schema. But not a Great Schema.

What makes you think I am not a Great Schema?

You are too young. And you are not dead. It seems to me that the very old and the dead are the ones who achieve that level of spiritual honour.

Perhaps I am older than you think.

Your head covering would be different if you were a Great Schema. And I see by your face you are not above 40 – am I not right?

There are other problems with your testimony. Sometimes little things: survivors report the music playing during the village of Mir’s destruction by the Red Army was the opera Boris Godunov, not Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

Beethoven is how I remember it.

There are greater issues than this. You say your sister Zoya shot and killed enemy soldiers. Even the wounded. All other witnesses deny this, including those closest to her who survived the war. You say Zoya and the young woman, Zhanna Yeva, whom you buried east of Lviv, often quarreled – others, all others, tell us they adored one another and were almost always in agreement.

An old man’s memory is often sharper than that of the young.

They are all old now as well as you. Perhaps your sister did not want you to make something of the miracles of healing attributed to her. Perhaps she made you swear an oath to alter her story to prevent anything like beatification or canonization from taking place.

Do you think she was that humble, Sister Afanasii?

Not according to your version of events. But if she asked you to change everything, how would we know? You did slip up once. You said she thrust your hand into a candle and made you promise never to talk about the healings that took place during the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

I think that was a false memory. The archbishop – the cardinal – had me talking for long stretches. I began to imagine things, conjure up events that never transpired.

Yes?

My mind was wheeling round and around. And they were recording all that sacred music at the same time as the cardinal and I met. It was hardly possible to think clearly.

You mention Ukrainian partisans you say were Jewish. But our investigation reveals they were a mix of Arabs and Jews. All killed in 1948. Not fighting each other. As a group they supported the formation of a Palestinian state and also an Israeli state. Arabs killed the Arabs among them and Jews killed the Jews.

I did not know. I did not know what happened.

Eyewitnesses deny Zoya was ever married. Ever had a lover. Ever bore a child.

A perpetual virgin.

Yes.

I have eyes. I too witnessed. She was my sister. I have no legend or mythology to promote.

So you’re sticking to your story.

I am only telling you the truth. I was there. She had a boy. He still lives.

I want to return to your time with the 14th Waffen SS and the alleged war crimes.

No.

Did you serve with them? Were you at the Battle of Brody?

The Vatican sends a pitbull – but why? Why are you here? Rome has all the information it needs. At least half-a-dozen miracles have been documented, haven’t they? You do not believe the things I tell you. They are not convenient for the sainthood you are trying to weave into existence. So why come again? And again and again? What do you want? There is nothing else you need.

We need to know what happened in 1944 and 1945. If someone came up with evidence that compromised Zoya’s beatification it could be awkward. I would rather we knew about it first. Before the devil’s advocate got a hold of it.

There is nothing from those two years that will place the Holy Father in an awkward position.

Let me be the judge of that.

There is no point to this harassment. Let me die in peace.

But you are not at peace. Are you?

the radical amish

2011-10-30T21:46:00.000-07:00

The Radical Amish

With all the tumult the Occupy movement has caused lately it’s interesting to compare the sort of uproar they create compared with the uproar the Amish don’t create.

The Amish don’t fly the flag. They won’t join the military or the police force. In wars past they have never purchased war bonds and they have never enlisted or taken up arms.They won’t celebrate the Fourth of July.

Due to this they have been considered not only unpatriotic by some but treasonous by others.

In the First World War they faced some pretty severe persecution for their pacifist stance. So did the Mennonites, the Quakers and the Hutterites, among others.

Churches were vandalized or burned down. People harassed. Some Amish were forced to enlist, drill with rifles and go through boot camp in the hopes of getting them to convert to a warlike mind set.

Some were imprisoned and beaten. Some were killed.

Despite this, none of the Amish of 1917 and 1918 retaliated. Nor did they stop loving America or praying for their country.

The stance they took 100 years ago is a stance they maintain today. It is just as radical now as it was then and just as likely to cause offense. Yet they do not stand on soapboxes or march or occupy buildings or snarl up traffic. They do not shout slogans or lash out in anger or hurl verbal abuse at those who disagree with their pacifism. They do not shake their fists in the air and curse. They live their radical lives quietly, trying not to draw attention to themselves. They live what they live without demonstrations or speeches or marches on Washington.

Unquestionably many people do not agree with the stance the Amish take. The Amish understand that. But they are not running for Congress or trying to win a popularity contest. They are simply trying to live out their faith in Jesus Christ. Agree or disagree with their views on the flag or July 4th or enlistment in the military, it is hard not to respect them precisely because they aren’t screaming out their point of view or handing out pamphlets on street corners or driving into town with MAKE LOVE NOT WAR painted in white letters all over their buggies.

If they are introduced to a man in uniform they will not snub him. They will shake his hand. Despite their beliefs about wars and armies, the Amish do not hate those who do what the Amish do not like. That also is radical. Most people cannot befriend those with whom they strongly disagree. They might be able to do it for a friend or family member but not for a stranger. The Amish do it all the time.

It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if more groups of people who had sharp disagreements with their country on certain matters adopted the Amish approach? We all know what they believe. The nations of America and Canada (who have Amish in Ontario) are well aware not only of the Amish commitment to pacifism but their avoidance of most modern technology. Yet this awareness is not due to Amish attacks on military bases and service personnel or destruction of iPods or iTabs or farm tractors or pickup trucks. There is no violence against what they dislike.

We know what they believe because they live it out in peace

So we watch. And wonder. Then go about our business. Which may include flying an F-18 fighter jet or driving a Buick.

Sometimes, if they want to, people join the Amish who are not born into the faith.

When they join they do so quietly. And are welcomed quietly and with warmth. The Amish do not make a show of it or market it or use converts for propaganda purposes.

Something else that is radical about the radical Amish.

I wrote a book about all this, in a 1917 and 1918 setting, and made it into a story. THE WINGS OF MORNING will be published by Harvest House of Oregon this January, 2012.

I really hope you will get your hands on a copy, read it and let me know what you think. I also hope you will enjoy it and that it will mean something to you.

The Amish of 2011 and 2012 are the same as the Amish of 1911 and 1912.

And 1917 and 1918.

a movie worth watching

2011-10-19T17:42:00.000-07:00

an article reposted from The Winnipeg Free Press online

Eccentric, but maybe not a lunatic, after all
By: Katherine Monk

Wiebo Ludwig is a name that conjures all kinds of thoughts in Canada. Convicted of vandalism resulting in millions of dollars in damages in 2001, Ludwig has often been cited as one of Canada's most noted "eco-terrorists."

He's been on the radio. He's offered sound bites to TV. He's waged an all-out war of optics against the Alberta oil and gas industry -- and lost every single time.

Ludwig always looked like a crackpot, and, thanks to the deep pockets of his biggest foe, there were endless experts available to dissect his supposed psychosis.

Ludwig never stood a chance, and in this new documentary from David York, we're given a front-row seat to the drama behind his media execution.

Picking up the rather long narrative thread that begins with Ludwig deciding to buy a little piece of paradise in northern Alberta, York takes us into the Ludwig compound for the first time.

Just making it inside the farmhouse is a huge victory, because it lets us lay eyes on Ludwig and his family without an imposing agenda. This is key, because Ludwig was always painted as a religious extremist who lived in a closed community where incest almost seemed unavoidable.

He and his best friend started the farm, and all their kids married each other. Now in their third generation, the Ludwigs appear to have kick-started their own Eden. At the beginning, it's a little weird seeing the women in head scarves and gingham dresses, but once we see them address the camera without fear, and with assertively pronounced opinions, we realize they are no Stepford Sisters, nor Big Love babies. They are smart, engaged and responsible women who want to keep their families safe. This is what mothers do, and what fathers are supposed to protect.

So what do you do when all your animals start dying? How do you cope with mass abortions among the flock, and the sight of malformed fetuses all over your fields?
More urgent, what on earth do you do when your own family starts to abort? What if your daughter was pregnant and someone put up a sour-gas well within spitting distance of your house? What if you knew, for sure, that your developing grandchild was destined to be born with birth defects, or worse, dead on arrival?

This is the situation Ludwig was forced to face for years. As he watched the life on his farm slowly die, he felt he had to do something.

But no one seemed to care. And no one listened.

York, a veteran filmmaker, could have immediately taken on the perspective of the disenfranchised farmer, and painted the whole film into an issue-specific corner. But he keeps his distance.

We are observers in this drama, and this is the film's particular strength, as well as its weakness because the facts are simply laid before us, without any specific editorializing.

Eventually, once we realize the futility of Ludwig's complaints, and the individual's place in relation to the oil and gas industry, the viewer becomes undeniably invested, because we imagine what might happen if this were our farm or our children.
When York pulls out the emotional trump card -- the funeral for one of the stillborn infants, whose head was crushed like an eggshell in delivery -- the viewer has to sit there with the horror of it all and realize this actually happened, and in our country.

Nothing less than a tragedy from a human perspective, Wiebo's War is also a cohesive and logical argument against the status quo that puts people and the environment second to profit.

Postmedia News
Movie review
Wiebo's War: A documentary
Directed by David York
Cinematheque
93 minutes
PG

german pancakes?

2011-10-09T16:40:00.000-07:00

German Pancakes – Where’s the Recipe?

My mom was a Dressel (or Dressler). She used to make these pancakes that were a foot across that we all loved. How did she do it without tearing them? I’ve made pancakes, sure, but small ones, at the most five or six inches across. Was there a special recipe? Maybe. But it never showed up in her cookbooks or recipe cards after her death.

I’ve gone to German restaurants, Dutch restaurants (not yet Amish restaurants) but I’ve had no luck. Sure, they have lots of nice pancakes but not those foot diameter ones mom made. Most of the time when I say I used to add jam and peanut butter or honey and peanut butter, and then roll them up and cut them, waiters bring me crepes sort of pancakes. No, no, no. Nein, nein, nein. Mom’s were thick – crepes are paper thin. Solid, an eighth of an inch thick or a bit more, they could handle heavy fillings before being rolled. Crepes cannot handle peanut butter and bananas – mom’s could.

In my mind’s eye, there she is, standing over a hot stove, cast iron frying pan on the element, flipper in one hand, batter in a bowl nearby, frying these wonders up. Sometimes, to our delight, she’d add big chunks of chopped apple – of course, these babies could handle whole orchards of apples and laugh. Pancake ready, she’d scoop it out of the pan and place it on a plate and put it in the oven to keep warm.Pour more batter liberally into the pan and cook another. They never stuck and she had no PAM in those days. How was this accomplished? I don’t know.

But maybe someone out there in the big wide world knows. Maybe the Amish of Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania know. Or the Amish of Ontario. Maybe you know. I’d love to find a restaurant that cooked these or a recipe that told me how to mix the batter and get the thickness and flip them without ruining them. This site often has recipes, doesn’t it? Well, then, this blog is my contribution – except I don’t have the recipe. You have to find it and post it.

I only know it must exist somewhere because I’m sure mom learned it from her mom and her mom was born in “the old Country” – she carried a Swiss passport, there’s a town in Switzerland named Pura, yet Madegeburg in Germany figures into her story too, as do Alsace and Lorraine. So who knows where the recipe originated? With Charlemagne? Martin Luther? Bach? The Swiss Brethren? Jacob Amman?

Who knows? Wer weib?

this is what's happening today

2011-10-04T17:44:00.000-07:00

want to write some new blogs soon but:

Last night I signed a contract with Baker Publishing in Michigan for a book about Christian spirituality and the wilderness. I need to write it this winter. It's due in March, 2012 and set for release in 2013.

Meanwhile I've been putting the very last touches to my PhD thesis so that I can submit it for examination by All Saints Day. The viva voce - the oral defense of the thesis - follows 1-3 months later. My school is the venerable University of Liverpool in the UK. (All you need is love.)

On the horizon is the release of two books in January - The Wings of Morning (set in 1917) and Virginia City (set in 1875). They are from publishers in Ohio and Oregon.

This summer I finished my ACW novel (American Civil War). It is due for publication in 2013 just like the wilderness book.

I have at least one other book out there looking for a home and one other proposal for a book out there looking for a taker.

I spent Sunday reading the galleys (next to last version) of Virginia City. I spent yesterday (Monday) and today (Tuesday) going over the galleys for The Wings of Morning. Then I phoned my editor for Wings and went over the errors I had found with him. This took 2 hours and 5 minutes. But he's a nice guy so that made it go better.

I was at a local authors event last week and met a few people and sold copies of The White Birds of Morning. I wonder if I will hear from the Kobzar Award committee that White Birds is short-listed for the 2012 contest? Maybe. Maybe not.

Lots going on in your life and mine.

But I am looking for space to think more deeply and pray more deeply and hope more deeply . . .

another response to israel

2011-09-21T06:24:00.000-07:00

Another person I know who makes Jerusalem their home has responded to the Newsweek article just below. This also is worth reading.

********************

Hey Murray,

Thanks for the article and my comments shall proceed.

Regarding the Issue of poverty, housing, etc. Yes, it is a problem, but simply, I would disagree with some of his "large assumptions" that make it sound like all of Israel is breaking down and "everyone" is unhappy. Sure, people are feeling pressure, a lot of pressure, and some more then others. But there is still a majority that believe defense and security to hold back the hateful tide at its borders to preserve their very lives is better then having cheaper housing, and cheaper food. The situation isn't completely unbearable, people do struggle, but Israel is stretched thin, budget wise, because of all the problems surrounding its borders. That is my general feeling of the whole situation, seeing the protests, reading articles, and researching surveys.
My second thing are all his comments on the whole "occupied land of West Bank and Gaza" which is a crock because once again the whole story is not told and "word usage" is twisted giving into the same lie and trap people everywhere fall into when dealing with this area. So, a few of my points are, after 1948 war, Gaza was occupied by Egypt and Jordan captured the west side of the Jordan, and most of Jerusalem. Jordan then expelled Jews and oppressed them as well as Egypt. Then, in a defensive war in which these Arab countries sought to annihilate Israel, Israel conquered this territory as well as the Golan Heights. Now to be factual, while Gaza, Westbank and Golan Heights were occupied by Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, these lands were never recognized in the 19 years of occupation by the UN to be part of these countries. Plus, these lands were in the original plan by the UN and Pan Salma to be a part of the Jewish Homeland!!!! So, by every right, Israel is the legitimate holder of these lands, not an "occupier". This term was coined because of two things, Israel chose not to fully annex these lands because of defensive reasons, and the whole Palestinian plight which is mumbo jumbo because during the British Mandate, TransJordan or modern day Jordan was created for the Palestinians as a homeland. Plus, Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005 and so there already is a Palestinian State and it is besieged not by Israel, but by Hamas, who is the real enemy. Israel just secures it because of the lawlessness, weapons smuggling, and terror threat. So, I really did not care for Morris' bad generalizations, skewed comments, etc. It also goes to show you even if someone lives in Israel and calls themselves a historian they can skew the facts. I know many professors, Members of Knesset, rabbis, journalists, and other people who would firmly disagree with Morris' statements.
Having said this he does paint a good picture of some of the struggles in Israel, the threat and complication of the surrounding nations, and Islams threat in countries like Egypt that really were never "liberated" through these riots (which mainly are staged and paid for by rich Arabs....last riot at Israeli Embassy in Cairo was set up by an Arab multimillionaire who paid people to riot. Plus, if you look carefully there really isn't any women or children at these riots and the soldiers are in control. Strange?) Anyway, those are a number of my thoughts, Murray, maybe very opinionated but gathered through years of study.

Anyway, thank you once again for sending the article. I trust you and Linda are doing fine and blessings.

Peter

is israel over?

2011-09-19T08:12:00.001-07:00

A Newsweek article asking if Israel was finished as a nation was published recently. I decided to ask a friend who has lived in Jerusalem for many years to comment on the piece. You will find his thoughts interjected at the appropriate points in the article below. An important and provocative read! (the comments are highlighted by asterisks)

*************************

Hey – Moshe!!

A few comments interspersed in the article. Not much to say; the problems are huge, but I’ve little doubt that there’s progress here in the face of virtually
incomprehensible hostility and isolation – not all of Israel’s making as suggested by the tone of the articles.

Also, I’m a little perturbed by the generalizations throughout both articles.

Anyway, this is from my for-what-it’s worth mind-evolving understanding of this incredibly perplexing place.!

I’ll be paying a little bit more attention to some of these issues and see whether I can become a little more decisive, specific – whatever.

Toda Raba,
Laila Tov – it’s way past bed-time.
P
____________________________________

In Newsweek Magazine

Is Israel Over?

*It’s a question doing the rounds here as well. Question: is what sense over?
Over the barrel?! The Zionist dream of an independent state where Jews can be free of anti-semitism? Or the idealism of Kibbutz socialism? Or does this question reflect a pessimism that once again the Jews will be dispersed as has happened many times in their 3000+ years of existence, and the land destroyed?*

No longer the liberal, democratic, egalitarian society it once was, Israel is fighting the Arabs—and itself.

*POINT is: Israel is fighting more than the Arabs! They’re fighting the lies about their legitimacy, their aspirations, to say nothing about the antisemitism/antiZionism in the West. Fighting the Arabs? Of course. Not to do so, in a sense, is to be annihilated.*

*What’s to be said about Israel fighting itself? It has certainly been it’s own worst enemy down through the ages – and there’s no let up! The in-fighting is incomprehensible to me. Here they are badgered on every side, almost Universally, and yet they can’t agree on anything. It’s the old notion of two Jews, three or more opinions, or synagogues.*

Israel is under assault. On Sept. 20 the Palestinian Authority plans to unilaterally declare statehood and go to the United Nations for recognition. This is a rejection of all efforts for a peaceful compromise. In its wake will come waves of Palestinian violence. And yet this is just the latest manifestation of an embattled Israel that is being threatened from the outside—by Muslim Arab states and societies, Egyptians storming the Israeli Embassy, a nuclear-arming Iran (with its local sidekicks, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hizbullah in Lebanon), and a besieged President Bashar al-Assad in Syria—and from the inside by domestic upheaval that led to the largest mass protests in the country’s history.

*QUESTION: how seriously is this assault been taken by the West? Where is the legal and historical perspective on both the people and the land? Where are the security-related concerns? Why the blind political correctness? Arafat’s plan of taking over the entire area piece by piece is what it’s all about. As long as there’s no Arab guarantee of an Israeli State, there can be no peace. Thing is, we all know that the ultimate issue is not land; it’s religious colonialism tied to the Islamist belief that they are to dominate the world. Anyone not of Islam is an infidel and must either convert or be executed. (Of course even the Christians pursued such policies in the Middle Ages.)*

More than 50 years ago, Israel’s leaders, headed by David Ben-Gurion, believed and hoped that they were creating a social democracy, with all the requisite egalitarian accoutrements (socialized national health care, progressive income tax, child benefits, subsidized cheap housing). Ben-Gurion, who owned almost nothing and retired to a primitive hut in the Negev Desert, typified the austere lifestyle, and greatness, of the state’s founders.

*No doubt much of the original vision is blurred by rampant materialism and high-tech wealth in the land which Ben-Gurion, of course, knew nothing about. As is so often the case with capitalist freedom, a few hold the reigns of power and wealth – and exercise great control. Nevertheless, the original goal of providing an equality of service to all citizens – remains, as far as I can tell. Also, many surveys have confirmed that the Arabs in Israel are far better off economically than their cousins in the disputed territories – under the PLO – to say nothing of Gaza – even although apparently there are many improvements in those areas. An interesting poll among the Arabs in Judea and Samaria showed that while many support the PA statehood bid, far less of them wanted to live in such a state!*

This is no longer Israel. A profound, internal, existential crisis has arrived. It stems in part from the changing nature of the country, more right wing, more restrictive, far less liberal, and far less egalitarian. Many moderate Israelis fear the country is heading for ruin. Indeed, the country’s ruling class, including Benjamin Netanyahu and his predecessors Ehud Olmert (now on trial for corruption) and Ehud Barak (a former head of the Labor Party and current defense minister), live in opulence, and the feeling is that they are out of touch with reality. In Tel Aviv, where some 350,000 gathered in protest, a widespread chant, set to a popular children’s ditty, was “Bibi has three apartments, which is why we have none.”

*Define “Israel.” A homeland for the Jews; a refuge for those in the diaspora? A hope for the disenfranchised Jews in Arab states – where persecution has been and is virtually beyond the telling of it? Thousands are still streaming into the country and they are all helped financially, with housing, language studies, schooling, employment, medical services free of charge.*

*Yes – the present coalition is more right wing – especially in terms of defence and social issues....*

*Opulence of the leaders? I don’t know anything about that – and have never read such criticism in either of the English language dailies – J Post or Ha’aretz. Of course Bibi lives in the PM’s residence. Opulent? No idea, but somehow I can’t imagine that it is.*

*Egalitarian? The social services here seem exemplary in many respects. The medical services are open and free to all – Jews and Arab Israelis. Gita has often talked about the treatment of Arabs she has observed in the hospitals and has always been impressed by its quality. This goes for any from the so-called West Bank who need meds not available there. Just last week I went to an Eye Clinic in East J for a check up because it’s apparently the best one in Israel – and was attended to by an Arab opthalmologist. I don’t know whether there were any Jews there – and the place was packed – but the reception was wonderful and the treatment faultless. Gita’s dentist is Arab. All this to say that in the professions there certainly seems to be an unhesitating respect and a working together.*

*It’s generally acknowledged that Israel invests tremendously in education across the board – and has the highest per capita rate of university degrees as it does in books and academic papers published.*

Tent cities popped up as the demonstrators—20- to 45-year-olds, with a healthy contingent of older people—rallied against nonprogressive taxation, low wages, and the high cost of housing and consumer goods, which have made it nigh impossible for families to make ends meet. A full 20 percent of Israelis (and 15 percent of Israeli Jews) live under the poverty line, and the top decile of Israel’s population earns 31 percent of the country’s total net income. The lowest decile earns a mere 1.6 percent. Last year Israel was elected to membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of the world’s 32 most-developed countries. Among them, Israel ranks as one of the worst (alongside Mexico and the United States) in terms of wealth polarization.

*Again – yes, a distinct polarization in wealth. As in South Africa, there is a great deal of wealth in this little splinter of land, and it is controlled by some sort of capitalist elite. Housing costs are prohibitive in TA and Jerusalem (although cheaper here). Food stuffs are also quite expensive – although at the Shuk, one can find reasonable alternatives to the chain grocery shops.*

*However, the protests were a great example of civil liberties, the freedom of expression, assembly, dissent. You name it, Israel is a remarkably free society, a fantastically multicultural society and equality before the law. Even the so-called Palestinians are free to petition Israel’s High Courts.*

Israel suffers from a steady brain drain, with tens of thousands of university graduates and wannabe academics moving abroad for lack of adequate positions or pay. Berlin has a community of more than 10,000 young Israelis, many of them working in the arts, who found creativity in Israel impossible. In a recent interview, one film director said that in Israel her energies were spent on making commercials and fashion trivia in order to subsist; Berlin enabled her to pursue her passion. In Tel Aviv, kindergartens charge $700 to $1,000 per child per month; in Berlin, the cost is $120; a kilo of cucumbers costs $1 in Tel Aviv, half that in Berlin.

*Brain drain? Maybe – although again, I don’t see anyone crying about it in the press (as they do in South Africa). I have chatted with several academic types about a variety of concerns, but this has never come up. University research facilities seem to be top of the range – and I’ve met several Ph D students who have no intention of moving elsewhere. But specifics – stats and so on, I don’t know.*

*Again, no stats, but this place seems totally energetic in terms of the arts. Just below us in the Gehennon Valley are concerts, film festivals, art shows, book fairs, crafts fairs – and so on. Theatres and symphonies are to be enjoyed – so I don’t know where this artistic repression is.*

*I also have no data on kindergarten charges – except that there are many “private” ones which are expensive. Certainly in the Haredi areas, all such services are free. But, like everything else, if you want really good education, you have to pay for it by going private. As far as I know the public school system is pretty good and open to all residents of Israel.*

*All I’ll say here is that there is definitely a political tsunami coming. Exciting stuff!*

*Of course, I’m trying to sort it all out in terms of prophecy and so on – which is dicey at best – but interesting.*

In the 1950s, Israel was an under-developed country filled with ideologically motivated Zionists willing to sacrifice for the collective good. Today’s Israel has a burgeoning economy, driven by sophisticated and internationally competitive high-tech industries, and a population driven mainly by individuals who want the good life. They see that too much of the national pie goes both to the West Bank settlers (who tend to be religious and ultranationalist) and to the ultra-Orthodox (who contribute almost nothing to the economy and avoid mandatory military service).

Worse, this hard-core contingent is making babies at a rapid clip; they tend to have five to eight children per family, versus two to three children in secular homes. This gives them disproportionate clout in Parliament. And that translates into political power—and economic benefits. (Paradoxically, the ultra-Orthodox remain the poorest sector in Israeli Jewish society, mainly because most of them don’t work.)

The other side of the coin: Israel’s own Arab minority is emerging as a potential major problem, too. The Israeli Arab landscape is increasingly dominated by minarets and veiled women; and its leaders, identifying with their Palestinian cousins outside, vociferously call for Israel to shed its character as a “Jewish state” and give its Arab citizens collective minority rights and perhaps some form of autonomy.

Since the West Bank and Gaza were conquered in 1967, successive Israeli governments have failed to fully withdraw from them, either unilaterally or with a peace deal. The Arabs may have been largely at fault—in 2000 Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat turned down an Israeli offer to withdraw from 95 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip—but Israel retains its stranglehold over these people and continues to expand its settlement enterprise.

Israel is a deeply troubled democracy. A democracy it still is, for its citizens—both Jewish and Arab. But Israel is no democracy when it comes to the semi-occupied 2.5 million Arabs of the West Bank and the 1.5 million semi-besieged Arabs of the Gaza Strip. And all this is now congealing

Now there looms the even greater threat of resurgent Islam, not just within Israel’s borders or the Palestinian territories, but across the region, where it is spreading like a brushfire. Many in the West have taken heart from the so-called Arab Spring, viewing the upheavals as heralds of democratic transformation. Israelis are less optimistic. The Islamist message that is coming out of Ankara, and moving to center stage in Cairo, includes a hard core of anti-Zionism usually accompanied by anti-Semitic overtones. (Egypt’s deposed president Hosni Mubarak is now denounced as a “stooge of the Zionists.” A photo of Netanyahu, dressed in an SS uniform, with a Hitler mustache, making the Nazi salute, appeared on the cover of the popular Egyptian weekly Octoberon Aug. 28. Inside, the journal carried an article called “The New Nazis”—and it isn’t even an Islamist publication.)

Netanyahu is creating a series of bureaucratic salves for the country’s economic ills. But they will be swamped, and rendered irrelevant, in the tide of Palestinian activism and anti-Zionism that will be set off by the Palestinian statehood bid. It will then trigger shock waves around the Arab and Islamic worlds. Months ago, Ehud Barak predicted that Israel will face a “political tsunami.” Here it comes.

Morris is an Israeli historian

so why are the amish growing?

2011-09-18T20:44:00.000-07:00

Why are the Amish Growing?

Not so many years ago I remember doing some research on the Amish and it was quite evident that a number of writers felt the Amish were on their way out due to declining numbers. Well, if it ever was the case it is not so any longer. A friend just returned from Michigan and told me there were Amish where there had never been Amish before and he had enjoyed making the acquaintance of several through his father. In Montana, not far from where I live, there are now Amish. If I did a bit of digging I wonder where else I might find they had popped up – Germany, Brazil, Ireland, France – and whether there were Amish who were of Hispanic background, or African-American, or Asian?

I’ve read that 85% of those born and raised Amish (though you’re not really Amish until you’ve taken your vows and been baptized) choose to remain Amish. Even with large families that still doesn’t account for the sudden spread of the Amish faith (which was not that strong in other generations). Clearly there is growth from converts. But what are the reasons someone would convert to the Amish faith in this day and age? As I mentioned in my last blog, I know some good reasons why I could be Amish but I also know a number of good reasons why I couldn’t. What are the reasons people might be joining the Amish faith in the 21st century, reasons that overwhelm their hesitancies and objections?

Well, the only way to really know all the reasons would be to interview the hundreds of new converts. Since I don’t have time to do that this Sunday night I thought I might speculate and that maybe you could respond and speculate with me. Then maybe another day I could find some research on the topic and find out if the actual reasons dovetailed with the ones we thought up together.

I think one reason for the growth of the Amish faith is the loss of community in the world around them. Many people no longer have strong connections with their neighbors or social groups or even their families. (Or even their churches.) Lonely and feeling increasingly cut off from meaningful relationship these people gravitate towards the close-knit Amish community.

Another reason is the fast and stressful pace of our society. People are sick of the running and having to live as if they’re machines with computer brains, sick of the financial strain, sick of fighting to make ends meet. Wouldn’t it be nice to live at a slower pace and have time to lean on a fence or a hoe handle and talk with a neighbor as if were 1875 again? Go at a horse’s pace when you travel rather than in a hurtling steel gas guzzler that fights for space with thousands of other hurtling steel gas guzzlers? Not be hassled by the need for money, money and more money?

Then there is the living out of the Christian faith. Some feel their churches are too big, too busy, too full of programs, too impersonal. They look at the Amish and find a faith in Christ where people know your name and care about your life and struggles, they value your family and children – not as numbers to fill the pews and chairs, but as members of an honest-to-goodness up-close-and-personal spiritual church that honors Jesus Christ as Redeemer and Lord.

Others agree with the pacifist stance of the Amish church, a stance they have taken for hundreds of years. In a world afflicted by a constant stream of wars, terrorist acts and violence for many – for most – it is refreshing to be among a people who eschew the way of the sword for the way of the plow. It is a community of Christian faith truly committed to peace.

As I mentioned a couple of blogs back there is the fact the Amish don’t swallow technology whole like the culture around them, they discuss and debate it. While it’s true humans seem to be a creation easily addicted to technological innovation down through the ages it’s also true there are those who question it and avoid it down through the ages. The big question for the Amish is whether a new technology enhances community or erodes it. If the latter it is not adopted. (In case you think nothing new has been added since the era of Wyatt Earp or Little House on the Prairie some Amish use cell phones at certain times and for very specific reasons.)

Then there is a reason I actually came up with after reading an Amish farmer talking about it (so it’s not a reason I thought up at all). He simply said that some people are called to be Amish, called by God, in the same way people are called to be pastors or missionaries or to join a specific church or denomination. Which makes sense to me. Some people feel they belong with the Baptists or the Methodists or the Pentecostals or Vineyard or the Greek Orthodox Church. And some feel they need to be Amish because God has put it in their heart. Warum nicht? Why not?

Or maybe you would like to live your life with God out among horses and barns and livestock and fields and wooden carts and carriages, and people with a like heart for such things, without the screech of TVs and car brakes and amplified music.

I don’t know for sure, but I wonder if some of the reasons I’ve laid out here might be the reasons some people have converted to the Amish faith and the Amish way in recent years.

What reasons do you think people have who discard suits and jeans and skirts and the driving of Camaros to dress plain and ride in one-horse buggies and grow beards or wear prayer kapps and sit down to platefuls of Shoofly pie?

What would your reasons be?

Why not leave a comment and let me know?

could you be amish?

2011-09-15T09:47:00.001-07:00

Could You Be Amish?

Now and then I have wondered how I would make out as an Amish convert. After all, the movement is growing and not just by means of childbirth.

While my wife loves using power tools I have a number of tools that came down to me from my father and his father. It’s amazing how these saws and drills and hammers of wood and steel have retained not only their functionality but their rugged beauty. The wood takes on that special aged hue. I love using them. So that’s one point for being comfortable with being Amish.

I like horses too and have owned and cared for quarter horses. It’s true I haven’t worked with Percherons or the other large work horses but I’d be willing to learn. Just as I’d be willing to learn how to handle a buggy properly. And pick up some of the farrier’s trade. So that’s another point.

Chopping wood? Do that already for my wood stove. Candles and oil lamps? Love ‘em. Lived up north for two years where that’s all some people had for light at night. (Electricity hadn’t reached a number of remote locations.) Quilts? Well, who doesn’t like snuggling up under a well-made quilt on a cold winter’s night?

And then I also share the Christian faith with them. And I have a smattering of German picked up from my mother’s side of the family I can start out with.

Ah, but then there are the challenges. I like photography and I like art. The Amish consider those the forbidden making of graven images. I like lively worship music but the Amish hymns are hundreds of years old and often focus on themes of suffering in Christ set to slow tunes. I don’t always want to dress plain but dressing plain is what I’d have to do. I’d rather not be a farmer 24/7 but farming is the preferred profession unless I can excel as a blacksmith, farrier or furniture maker.

But wait! Suppose I want to be a pastor. Well, that is chosen by lot and no remuneration is offered to those chosen – you still must work at something else. So can I make a living as a writer? What if I wrote adventures and romances about the Amish people? Hmmm . . .

What if I want to fly the flag? The Amish don’t do that. Suppose, in 1942, I thought it was right to resist the Nazis in Europe? No, the Amish do not enlist and they do not fight. Can I have a picnic and let off fireworks on July 4th? Nay, the Amish do not celebrate Independence Day.

So converting to the Amish Way is perhaps not so easily done even though I admire and respect the Amish culture and faith. If I was serious about it much prayer would be required on my part as well as a willingness to lay down a number of my desires and preferences.

Also, I don’t like wearing a beard. What would I do about that? And would my wife like to put on a prayer kapp and kiss a man with a beard for the rest of her life? I know she wouldn’t mind all the 19th century Little House on the Prairie ways but she’d have to give up her power tools. What about that? And probably stop being an RN.

You see, it’s not so easy for me to be Amish. How about you?

arguing in amish

2011-09-02T19:29:00.000-07:00

At the request of one of my publishers I've been asked to blog on things Amish at AmishReader.com. If you're interested in The Amish Way you might want to Google it. Here's one of the things I have written recently to give you an idea about the site.

Arguing in Amish

One of the most fascinating things about writing Amish fiction is listening to their ongoing debate with technology. This has been going on particularly since the arrival of the telephone. You might think Alexander Graham Bell’s invention was rejected outright but no, it was actually used by the Amish for a number of years, until the Amish realized it was being used as a means for spreading gossip. Thus the problem was not that it was a new technology to be rejected out-of-hand, the problem was it could be used to destroy Christian community.

The motorcar was rejected because it adversely affected the sacred community as well – some could afford to own one, some couldn’t, it could become a source of pride and prestige and, in so doing, ruin equality among the members of the Amish church and community. You can ride in one for short distances but not drive one or own one. Not because the Amish don’t like cars – they don’t like what ownership of cars can do to their people. The same is true of airplanes. And motorboats. And a lot of other things.

The Amish are not striving to live in the 1800s although to some it looks that way. Why, some Amish communities have telephone booths that can be used in emergencies. No, the Amish are fighting to keep their communities intact despite the onslaught of technology that, in their eyes, divides communities and breaks up families and relationships. While, for the most part, the world outside their farms is eager to snap up whatever new technology floods the market, be it iphones or ipods or six foot long HD TV sets, without debating the human consequences of any of it, the Amish do debate and they debate the consequences of all of it.

What a difference it would make if society as a whole learned from the Amish that some precious things about humanity are threatened by the promiscuous use of technology and that there should be more debate going on about what technology is appropriate and what is not. A few discussions might be going on in churches and religious organizations and among other groups but not much. It seems that only the Amish are arguing and praying about this issue with any kind of seriousness and consistency. Which might be one explanation for their growth over the past decade – not only that some people are fleeing the turmoil of a fast-paced, hi tech society where there is no longer time to sit and think – but that some want to debate what technology is good for us and what isn’t. Few others are engaged in such an argument or discussion and some 21st century citizens apparently wish to be part of those who do argue, do discuss, do pose the important questions and objections. Even if it means learning to argue and debate – and listen! – in Amish.

what facebook is and isn't

2011-08-29T09:38:00.000-07:00

I can survive on Facebook if I bear in mind it is a place for touching base, sharing plans and events, talking about recent experiences and showing pictures - all as quickly as possible. That's what it's good at.

I have problems when I want it to be more than that: conversations that last more than a few sentences, weighty subject matter that requires people to pull out of the fast lane and slow down and think, bringing up topics that take time to respond to. Yes, I've already been frustrated this summer by expecting all those things from Facebook but, the truth is, when people log on, that's not what they're there for. They don't want heavy - Facebook is lightweight. They don't want something that's time-consuming - they want instant, they want fast. They aren't looking to discuss the issues of the eternal ages - they want to laugh and skim and, if necessary, succinctly express sympathy (no less heartfelt for that).

So you touch base on Facebook, stay aware of what's happening in people's lives, connect with people you haven't seen in years and whom you wouldn't be able to stay connected to without Facebook. That's what Facebook is good at. The long talks, the weighty talks, are best done by phone (usually a land line as opposed to a cell, since a cell is also about FAST and INSTANT, unless a cell is the only phone you've got) or face-to-face.

Of course, the worry is that people will freeze into the Facebook Way forever and that long talks, listening, thinking and wondering will cease to be part of their lives. The worry is that the whole human race will go that way and that the human part of human being will be greatly diminished.

But I find that people who talk on Facebook still talk a lot in person. There may be those who are withdrawing into their virtual worlds but most people, I think, want hi touch along with hi tech - they want to be with real people in real time, face-to-face, as well as chat with them online. Maybe by 2050 it will be different but I don't think so. Regardless of the technology that's come our way over the past century, from cars to airplanes to computers, people still want to mingle with people, touch people, kiss people.

So let Facebook be Facebook. And when you want Face-to-Face move away from Facebook and get it.

If I just use Facebook three days a week to touch base, I'm okay. Then I don't expect it to give me what it won't give me - deep relationship.

For that we all need to go elsewhere.

the final cut

2011-08-17T17:08:00.000-07:00

Publishers live in the future. Books I am writing at the present time are scheduled for release in 2013. Books I wrote last year or early this year are coming out in 2012. If I pen anything this fall it will come out in 2013 or 2014 if I get a contract. Anything written in 2012 and picked up by a publishing house won't be released until 2013, 2014 or even 2015, depending.

So this month I am doing the final editing on two books for US publishers. I worked with a freelance editor for the Barbour book and that final cut is done and delivered. Now Barbour is fine-tuning the covers and asking what I think. Also asking if I can suggest endorsers. I start the Harvest House edit, with a senior editor from the firm, in about a week, next Tuesday.

The funny thing about the Barbour edit is I wrote the book as a kind of lark more than two years ago in the winter of 2009. By the time it comes out on January 1st, 2012, it will be one month shy of three years since I sat down to accept the challenge of writing a good genre piece: one that engaged the reader, entertained the reader and enlightened the reader. Bear in mind this is in the footsteps not of Harlequin romances or Grave Livingstone Hill but of writers like Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells, Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker. Mary and Bram wrote in the Gothic horror genre, Jane in the pastoral romance genre that ended happily with women being wedded to wealthy men, Conan Doyle wrote in the detective/mystery genre of Sherlock Holmes, Dickens the comic or tragic stories written in serial format in magazines that were published week after week after week, and Wells published in the sci-fi genre. My genre? Historical fiction romance. The trick is to play the genre game well so that it truly is an interesting tale, and perhaps a bit of a page-turner, but also has many layers of plot and story and character development so that it begins to actually transcend the genre. I have no idea if I have pulled that off but it is what I wanted to do. Readers will let me know to what degree I may have succeeded.

Of course I'm a different person in some ways than I was when I sat down to the keyboard in February, 2009 to produce the book that Barbour decided to publish on January 1st of 2012. And I've moved on to other different stories (I've written four other novels since then). So it was almost archaeological to go back to that first book and edit it two weeks ago. I still like the story and its characters but now my head is full of many other people who have come to life in my imagination whereas back then I had only a couple of novels out and comparatively few heroes and heroines bumping into one another in my head. When you help the editor make the final cut you are not doing it as the person who wrote it two or three years before. You are older now, you have written more things, so you approach the edit as a writer older and with more experience. So parts of the original story get changed because of that.

On the other hand, not much got changed in the Barbour book, not really. The story is substantially the same as what I produced in 2009. I did add a whole new chapter and that is the biggest alteration. An addition, not a deletion. I find that interesting - just because we're older doesn't mean something we created when we were younger needs to be treated as something less or inferior or substandard or in great need of extensive revision.

At any stage in our life things we do can have lasting significance, not just the stuff we do when we are older and perhaps wiser (or perhaps not). Youth has its own wisdom and courage as do projects we complete sooner in our earthly journey rather than later.

Despise nothing good you have done. Examine all. Weigh it against the balance of truth and depth and integrity. You will soon see how much of the core ought to be retained. You may be surprised at how much you knew once that you have since forgotten. But the words, spoken or written, are still weighted with the force they once had and are not lost. You may come to something you wrote once and say: "Oh, is that what I put in the young hero's mouth? How did I come up with that? Not a bad line of dialog. Hmm. I wonder if I would have had the same ability to write that today as I did then?"

At every stage of our life, we are somebody. And we have things to say that matter.

so you think you can multitask???

2011-08-09T12:30:00.001-07:00

When Deresiewicz looks at the research around multitasking, things become interesting,

“A team of researchers at Stanford wanted to figure out how today’s college students were able to multitask so much more effectively than adults. How do they manage to do it? The answer — they don’t. The enhanced cognitive abilities the investigators expected to find .. were simply not there. In other words, people do not multitask effectively. And here’s the really surprising finding: The more people multitask, the worse they are not just at other mental abilities, but at multitasking itself.

The researchers found that multitaskers are worse at every kind of cognitive function. “They were worse at distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant information.. they were more easily distracted. They were more unorganized, unable to keep information in the right conceptual boxes and retrieve it quickly. And they were even worse at the very thing that defines multitasking: switching between tasks.”

Deresiewicz continues, “Multitasking, in short, impairs your ability to think. Thinking.. requires concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea of your own… My first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s..

From here Deresiewicz goes on to talk about concentration, attention and the importance of solitude...

what the internet is doing to our brains

2011-08-09T08:38:00.000-07:00

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

In this short but informative, thought-provoking book, Nicholas Carr presents an argument I've long felt to be true on a humanist level, but supports it with considerable scientific research. In fact, he speaks as a longtime computer enthusiast, one who's come to question what he once wholeheartedly embraced ... and even now, he takes care to distinguish between the beneficial & detrimental aspects of the Internet.

The argument in question?

- Greater access to knowledge is not the same as greater knowledge.

- An ever-increasing plethora of facts & data is not the same as wisdom.

- Breadth of knowledge is not the same as depth of knowledge.

- Multitasking is not the same as complexity.

The studies that Carr presents are troubling, to say the least. From what has been gleaned to date, it's clear that the brain retains a certain amount of plasticity throughout life -- that is, it can be reshaped, and the way that we think can be reshaped, for good or for ill. Thus, if the brain is trained to respond to & take pleasure in the faster pace of the digital world, it is reshaped to favor that approach to experiencing the world as a whole. More, it comes to crave that experience, as the body increasingly craves more of anything it's trained to respond to pleasurably & positively. The more you use a drug, the more you need to sustain even the basic rush.

And where does that leave the mind shaped by deep reading? The mind that immerses itself in the universe of a book, rather than simply looking for a few key phrases & paragraphs? The mind that develops through slow, quiet contemplation, mulling over ideas in their entirety, and growing as a result? The mature mind that ponders possibilities & consequences, rather than simply going with the bright, dazzling, digital flow?

Nowhere, it seems.

Carr makes it clear that the digital world, like any other technology that undeniably makes parts of life so much easier, is here to stay. All the more reason, then, to approach it warily, suspiciously, and limit its use whenever possible, since it is so ubiquitous. "Yes, but," many will say, "everything is moving so fast that we've got to adapt to it, keep up with it!" Not unlike the Red Queen commenting that it takes all of one's energy & speed to simply remain in one place while running. But what sort of life is that? How much depth does it really have?

Because some aspects of life -- often the most meaningful & rewarding aspects -- require time & depth. Yet the digital world constantly makes us break it into discrete, interchangeable bits that hurtle us forward so rapidly & inexorably that we simply don't have time to stop & think. And before we know it, we're unwilling & even unable to think. Not in any way that allows true self-awareness in any real context.

Emerson once said (as aptly quoted by Carr), "Things are in the saddle / And ride mankind." The danger is that we'll not only willingly, even eagerly, wear those saddles, but that we'll come to desire them & buckle them on ever more tightly, until we feel naked without them. And we'll gladly pay anything to keep them there, even as we lose the capacity to wonder why we ever put them on in the first place.

REVIEW:

I agree with the premise regarding what the internet is doing with our brains, but the author is not addressing the right question. The important questions are why are people falling for hype that the computer age is benevolent and why do people spend so much time with the internet. To discuss what neuropsychological changes in the brain occur by changing our symbol system the media ratios in our environment is easy.

What's hard is figuring out why people will do something that isn't good for them. I could describe the chemical and biological effects of various ways to commit homicide, but that isn't going to answer why anyone decides to do so, or I could describe the delivery systems of various weapons, but that won't explain why countries go to war.

Technological determinism is really just a small part of the equation, and note that the subtitle of the book is 'What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.' A better inquiry would be 'Why are we actively doing bad things to our brains by using the internet,' unless, of course, you believe there is no human volition that enters the dynamics of culture and communication.

Unfortunately, the volition that appears to exist is that of the people that exploit the medium for profit by creating such things as Facebook, twittering, and other overrated communication modalities. Sure, twittering is good if you're reporting on a revolution against an oppressive censor-ridden country, and facebook might be nice for scattered families, but most 'messaging' on these platforms is simply 'phatic communication.'

Why people spend their time with ways of interacting and thinking that are comfortable and lack any challenge is what should be looked into. And such ventures are profitable mainly due to trivial usage. The strength of the book is that the author tackles the subject. And being a fairly new argument, hopefully better books will come along in the future. I'd recommend any of S. Turkle or N. Postman's books for good, succinct evaluations of the important questions this book doesn't address.

i'm on facebook

2011-08-08T21:39:00.000-07:00

I'm on Facebook now. If you'd like to connect with me there please send me a friendship request. In addition, if I don't know you, please send a message along with the request saying you visit my website and read my blogs or books so I know where you're coming from.

I have a writer's page as well as a regular page with a profile. I encourage you to drop by.

Thanks. God's vividness to you and in you.

to the wild country

2011-07-26T06:51:00.000-07:00

to the wild country - experiences and thoughts in God's wilderness

It was meant to be a deer hunt.

There were a few rules: between the power lines and the highway, no deer stands, no does, shotgun only, 00 buck.

I knew the area well from running my dogs. Lots of brush and trees, saskatoons and huckleberries growing in patches, old logging roads, rocks and boulders, not much open country.

The shotgun I picked out was nothing special but it was sturdy – a single shot 12 gauge built like a tank with a 28 inch barrel. The full choke would keep the pattern of the 9 pellets tight. I put it in the back of my jeep with a box of shotgun shells, threw on my olive drab fly fishing vest with all its pockets and headed for the hills.
The weather was a tossup – some cloud, some sun, a hint of rain, no wind. I parked to the side of a logging road well below the power lines and their towers. Put some 2 and 3/4 shells in one of my vest pockets and a bag of trail mix. Loaded the shotgun. And set out.

I moved slowly and silently along overgrown roadways and paths. I never saw anyone else. Crept a half-mile one way and crept a half-mile back another way and never saw any deer either. Then I decided to hide myself behind a boulder at a spot in the bush where several deer trails converged. There were fresh tracks so I was hopeful.
Hunting whitetail with a shotgun is a very different challenge from hunting them with a rifle and a scope or crouching all morning in a stand – you have to get in very close. Even a traditional blackpowder rifle will give you more range than a shotgun with 00 buck. The chances of getting within 30 to 50 yards of a stag without him picking up your scent or movement are slim but it can be done. Sometimes you are just plain lucky to surprise one. Or blessed.

After an hour and a half cramped up behind the boulder I decided to try for higher ground. I was basically in a kind of foothills environment, with white-capped mountains to the west, and I knew there were several rocky outcrops in the hunting zone that might offer some success with a buck. I began to move along the trails again, stepping slowly and quietly, until I reached the first knoll. I scanned it carefully and began to climb, stopping every few moments to look and listen. But I saw nothing in the way of deer. So I ate some trail mix, climbed down, walked a couple of hundred yards, and tried another knoll. Nothing.

On the third a whitetail lifted its large tail and bounded from a thicket. I aimed my shotgun. The distance was less than 50 yards. But it was a doe. I lowered my weapon and watched the whitetail disappear in the thick brush of the slope. I decided to finish my climb to the top anyway.

One of the beauties of hunting is the fact I don’t have to bag game to feel the time spent was worthwhile. The forest, the hills, the weather, glimpses of various birds or other wildlife all combine to give me a sense of God’s craftsmanship and diversity and his own very real presence. It’s like an ultimate worship experience, where I’m praising God for what I see and hear, while all around me animals and insects and reptiles are making music to heaven: I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is them, singing. (Revelation 5:13, NIV)
I ascended a final ridge. I didn’t think it was going to be my day to harvest a buck but I stepped carefully up a trail of gravel and scree just in case. At the top was a thick bush and I came around it softly. I expected to see more bare rock. A grizzly bear, startled, gave a snort and lifted its head from where it was feeding on a patch of clover. There was no more than 20 feet between us.

My mouth went dry. Instantly. The hairs on the back of my neck rose just as quickly and I could feel them poking against the collar of my fishing vest. Everything suddenly became walled in and the grizzly was at one end of a short corridor and I was at another.

Saliva evaporating from your mouth. Hair standing up at the back of your neck. Tunnel vision. These were all things I’d read and heard about but considered exaggerations. Now I was experiencing the truth of those sensations first-hand on a remote hill where I faced an 800 pound bear.

I didn’t move. Neither did the grizzly. In one second, with one or two bounds, it could be on top of me. The law did not permit me to hunt a grizzly without a special tag however it did permit me to shoot in self-defense. But I was not holding a Holland and Holland .700 Nitro Express in my hands and had no illusions about a charge of 00 buck stopping a grizzly. It would have the same effect, Kit Carson once wrote, as grains of sand.

The bear did not take its small eyes off me. I knew that grizzlies were believed to be notoriously nearsighted. That only if I ran would I be in trouble because it would see the movement, consider me prey and attack. But I’d been told as a child they couldn’t climb trees either and one had recently gone 60 feet up a tree in Alberta, hauled a woman down who had scaled it to save herself, and killed her.

I remained motionless. I felt that if I moved backwards it would lunge. That if I dropped and rolled into a ball it would still lunge. There was no sign of cubs in the vicinity but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. They could be in the brush and frozen into immobility just like their mother.

I had never felt so trapped or confused in my life. I couldn’t think of a single solution to my dilemma. It’s one thing to scope a grizzly from half a mile away or watch it from your pickup. It’s another to be so close you can smell the reek of its fur.
A charge could come at any second. I wouldn’t survive it. Even I turned to run, it would be on me, clamping its powerful jaws on my head or neck. If I dropped down to feign death it would swat me with its paw before I was halfway to the ground. The six inch claws, let alone the force of the blow, would open me up.

I felt like a man who has only a fraction of time left to live unless he can come up with something fast. But every plan that sprang to mind I rejected as useless or too risky. This was not a TV show with a prearranged script. I really could die.
I prayed but my prayer was very basic Sunday School stuff: Lord, help me. I don’t know what to do. There’s nothing I can do. God!

Maybe a minute went by. It could have been two. Our eyes remained locked on each other. I was not about to so much as twitch a finger, blink an eye or move a foot in any direction. The grizzly did not shift its weight or shake its head or attempt to take a step either but that didn’t mean it couldn’t change its mind in a flash, roar like a mountain wind, rush forward and tear me apart.

Suddenly it put its head down. Turned away. And moved slowly and heavily into the thicket behind it. I listened to the snapping of branches for a few moments. Then all was quiet.

I had read about bears pretending to do one thing, with an eye on their quarry, and then, when an opportunity presented itself, move against their target with blinding speed. So I waited and watched and listened. Just because I couldn’t see the bear didn’t mean it couldn’t see me. My turning and half-running down the slope might be just the sort of activity it was hoping for.

I’m certain I remained there at least another five minutes. Then I took one step backwards. The brush did not explode and a brown bear did not come hurtling out at me, jaws wide and spewing saliva. I took another step, not daring to avert my eyes from where the grizzly had gone into the thicket, trying to feel with my boot for a safe place to bring my foot down. One more step. Then I was behind the large bush that I had rounded when I first made my way to the top.

I hesitated for several seconds, straining to hear the sounds of a big body moving fast over rock and clover. Finally I made my way down the trail of loose stones as swiftly and safely as I could, trying not to turn my ankle or fall and crack my head against a boulder or the trunk of a tree. Once I reached the bottom I got away from the ridge as quickly as I could and out of sight into a tangle of aspen and bushes. I headed in the direction of my jeep.

I never felt it was over. I never relaxed and the saliva never returned to my mouth for the longest time. Every now and then I stopped to listen – was I being pursued? When I reached the jeep the after effects of adrenaline made my hands tremble and I dropped my keys in the dirt twice. Finally I got inside and locked the doors, staring through the windshield to see if a bear was thundering through the trees and down the logging road at 35 or 40 miles per hour. After a few moments I leaned my head back and closed my eyes and whispered, Thanks.

When Jesus was born there were animals present and when he was tempted by Satan in the wilderness the animals were there for him too. Except at his birth they were domestic animals and in the desert they were wild. What sort of relationship did he have with the wild ones?

At that time in Israel and the Middle East there were still lions and bears as well as deer, gazelle, ibex, wild boar and leopards. Considering that he was the Son of God does that mean they might have been tame with him? Would they have lain at his feet? Let him touch them?

Or could it have been more like my experience? They went about their business all around him and let him be. He watched them, they watched him, but no harm was done. He could see their beauty and strength and be part of their world without fear, just as they had no reason to fear him. It seems like a glimpse of the world to come, of heaven on earth, of Eden before man’s fall into sin, where animals and humans roamed about freely without threat.

Of course I did fear the bear though I have no idea if the bear feared me. Still, in the wilderness, it watched me, saw that I meant it no harm and permitted me to live. At the time I could not savor the experience. Now, because I was not hurt, I do. I saw a magnificent creature up close, close enough to touch, and it let me be. It was an extraordinary moment of God’s grace.

There are, I suppose, all kinds of reasons the grizzly left me alone. I will never know them all and neither will anyone else. Nor will I ever understand how much of a part God played in it, not on this side of life. Perhaps there was an angel. It sounds far-fetched but who knows? When Jesus was among the wild ones the angels were there too. He was with the wild animals and angels attended him. (Mark 1:13, NIV)

It could not have been a coincidence that the Son of God had the wilderness animals with him. Jesus’ life was not a life of coincidences. And I doubt my experience with the grizzly was a coincidence either. Do the children of God live out lives that are strings of coincidences any more than their Lord and Master did? The Bible says God knew me before I was born and that he was well aware of all the days of my life before one of them came to be. So my day of the grizzly is there too.

But what does it mean? I have thought about it many times and I really can’t say. Except there is one thing – the encounter did not make me value God’s creation less, I came to value it more. I did not love it less, I loved it more. I did not return to it in fear and anxiety but in anticipation of something greater because I had been so near to one of the most powerful creatures in North America and allowed to walk away unscathed.

The experience did not take from me. It gave to me and, in those minutes of my greatest fear and vulnerability, made me much more a son of God.

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
(Psalm 139:16, NIV)

heaven on earth

2011-07-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

It is 150 years since 1861 when the American Civil War began. For the next several years, right through to 2015, Americans will be commemorating various battles and events that occurred between 1861-1865.

I have been contracted by a publisher in the USA to write a book on that war. I presented my plot outline and they accepted it without my having shown them a single chapter - the first time in my life. Of course they have seen other things I have written so they are basing their contract commitment on that.

I was eager to write the book. With family on both sides of the CAN-US border, and being trained as a historian by my second Masters degree, I felt I could do a creditable job (see, I am talking 19th century talk). Moreover, I have been reading about that war and how it affected America since I was about ten years old. I have a lot of research in me and I have seen some of the battle sites. I intend to see more before I am done.

I want it to be one of the best books I have written. This is chapter one. I won't be posting any other chapters. But please let me know what you think of the first 3000 words and whether or not the story interests you.

God bless. I pray he will help me find not only the words I need but the depth I need for this important book.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Chapter 1

Whenever she thought back to that morning years later, or told her children and grandchildren how it was before the whole world changed, it was the warm spring sunshine Lyndel spoke of the most and the brightness of the sky. That and the green scent of the grass over which a morning rain had just come and gone, the opening of red snapdragons, and the talk of the men on the porch being lost to her ears as robins and larks opened their throats for the second of April, 1861, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

“Was it beautiful, Mama?” her children asked when she would tell the story around a fire on a sharp winter night cut open with stars.

“Tell us how beautiful it was, Nana,” her grandchildren pleaded when she was older and they sat together on the summer grass while the sun fell slowly from the sky.

“It was very beautiful,” she always responded, laying a hand on each of their heads, “and I was very young.”

“And beautiful also,” Sarah would say, “just like the month of April.”

“Yes,” she smiled, “I think so. That is certainly what Nathaniel King always told me.”

Lyndel remembered that the cows had already been milked and that her three younger sisters were hard at work with the butter churn in a room just off the kitchen. She was heading to the barn to open the doors and lead the dairy herd out to their spring pasture. A sudden pause in bird song allowed the men’s voices to reach her as she crossed the yard.

“Jacob, they have seized the federal forts in South Carolina and Mississippi and Georgia. Their intent is clear. I see no hesitation on the part of the states that have left the Union. They mean to have their own country.”

“Wait. It is only a ploy to force President Lincoln to take their demands seriously. All will be right as rain by summer.”

“I am not so sure, Jacob. They mean to keep their slaves and Lincoln made many speeches against slavery.”

“So you say it was wrong for the President to make speeches against slavery, Samuel?”

“I did not say it was wrong. Only I do not think they are spinning tops and playing games. They will have their slaves and they will have their own country.”

Lyndel was surprised to find the cows pushing against the barn doors. Once she opened them the herd rushed out, almost knocking her to the ground. Without Lyndel having to say a thing Old Missus rapidly led the way to the pasture gate so that the young woman had to run ahead and swing it wide. The cows shouldered through side-by-side, a few of them bawling, and traveled at least a hundred yards before deciding to stop and crop grass. Latching the gate Lyndel went back to the barn to see if she could find out what had disturbed them. Perhaps a snake had found its way in among the straw.

Picking up a pitchfork to chase away any pest she encountered she began to walk through the barn, glancing often at her feet as she stepped through the dirty straw. Looking into the first stalls she found they were empty of anything like porcupines or skunks or badgers. She stopped and listened a moment but heard nothing. Slowly she made her way to the back of the barn holding the pitchfork at chest height. Sunlight trickled between cracks in the walls and through a dusty skylight so that she could make out what was in the corners and by the time she reached the end of the barn there was still nothing. She didn’t bother taking a look at the last two stalls and turned to head back. Whatever had spooked the milk cows was long gone. But suddenly she heard a groan of pain.

She whirled, fear pricking her chest. Brandishing the pitchfork she stepped towards the last stall on the left, expecting to see a wild dog or a coyote or fox. In the dim light she saw two sets of human eyes and a lot of blood. Then teeth as a face grimaced, struggling to breathe.

“Don’t hurt us!” a voice cried and a hand shot up to ward off a blow.

Lyndel immediately lowered the pitchfork and stepped closer. “You’re slaves!” she said in astonishment.

“We’re men.”

“How long have you been here? What has happened to you?”

One man was holding the other in his arms. He was the one who spoke to Lyndel while his friend could only fight for air and wince. “We’ve been on the run from the plantation in Virginia for three weeks,” he said, holding the wounded man close to his chest. “We made good time riding the boxcars. But we had to jump while the train was moving last night and Charlie got hurt pretty bad.”

Lyndel was wearing a traditional Amish dress of navy blue over which she had tied a large black apron. Leaning the pitchfork against the wall, she knelt and took the apron off. Charlie had a deep cut at the side of his chest and she folded the apron twice and pressed it against the wound to slow the flow of blood. She used the apron strings to tie it tightly.

“Have you had anything to eat or drink?” she asked the man who was doing the talking.

“There’s plenty of water in the streams and rain barrels. But we haven’t had anything to eat. Not for two days.”

“Let me fetch you something.”

A hand grabbed her by the wrist. “Don’t tell anyone. I know they’re hunting us. This is the third time Charlie’s tried to escape. They said they’d hang him if they caught him running again. They’ll cross the state line and comb this county.”

Lyndel, still kneeling, fixed her eyes on the frightened man. “I will only tell people I can trust. I won’t tell anyone who would go to the sheriff in Elizabethtown. He would feel bound by law to tell the slave hunters if they showed up here.”

“They’ll show up here.” For the first time a smile came over the man’s face. “We may not look like it right now but we’re worth a lot of money.”

Lyndel paused. Smiling back, she patted the man on the arm. “Then we must take good care of you.”

He released his grip on her wrist and she stood up. “I will be a few minutes,” she said. “Please don’t worry. I will not betray you.”

He was still smiling. “I believe you.” He extended a hand while with the other he held the folded apron to his friend’s chest. “My name is Moses Gunnison.”

She reached down and clasped his hand in hers. “I am pleased to meet you, Moses. I am Lyndel Keim.”

“Pardon me for saying so but you have large hands for a woman, ma’am. And some strength in them.”

“So I have been a farmer’s daughter all my life, Mr. Gunnison.”

“Do you have a husband, ma’am?”

“Oh, no. There’s been no time for that. But I do have a brother. He is the one I will go to. He will help you. We will both help you.”

“Thank you, ma’am. God bless you.”

Lyndel straightened and brushed the straw off her dress. “Why, God bless you too, Mr. Gunnison.” She adjusted the black prayer kapp on her head and looked down at Charlie. “You are going to be all right.” He stared up at her, his eyes exhausted from fear and pain. “I will be right back with my brother Levi as well as food and drink.”

She thought quickly as she walked through the barn and out into the morning sunlight. The men were still seated on the porch and still talking politics. Her father, the bishop of their Amish community, sat in the middle of them, tall and slender, his beard night black, listening carefully to the different opinions, now and then leaning forward and interjecting. She loved her father, indeed, she cared for all the men seated with him, several of whom were the church’s ministers. But she also knew how law-abiding they were. If she told them about Moses and Charlie they would offer as much assistance as they possibly could. Yet they would also feel bound to hitch up a wagon and drive into Elizabethtown and inform the law there were two runaways hiding out in the Keim barn.

Instantly she decided against confiding in any of them, including Papa. She smiled as she walked past them for the stable where she knew her brother was doing the work of a farrier and trimming their horses’ hooves now that it was spring.

Levi was wiping his face with a red handkerchief, sweat running down into the collar of his white work shirt. He was speaking to someone who was bent over and holding a horse’s hoof between his legs and fighting to get the nipper in position to cut. Lyndel hesitated. Even though the man with the hoof nippers had his back to her she recognized his build and when he answered her brother she knew for certain. Levi’s best friend, Nathaniel King, was the one wrestling to trim Dancer’s left front hoof. One of her hands went to her mouth. She had not expected to see him today but Levi must have asked him to come over and lend a hand with the horses.

Her brother glanced over and grinned as she came into the stable. “Hello, Ginger. You’re just in time to help. Nathaniel can’t get Dancer to agree to a manicure and she’s your mare, isn’t she? Can’t you reason with her?”

“I can try.”

She walked over and stood in front of Dancer who whinnied and allowed Lyndel to hold her head and scratch her between the ears.

“That’s better,” grunted Nathaniel. He moved quickly with the nippers and the mare was done. He released the leg and stood up, stretching his back and smiling at Lyndel. “Danke.”

“Bitte.”

“May I call you Ginger too?”

“No, you may not. I don’t like it. Only Levi gets away with it.”

“So just plain old Lyndel?”

“Yes, just plain old Lyndel. You make me sound like one of Levi’s horses.”

“My apologies. You certainly deserve better than that. Hair like fire. Eyes like sky.”

Lyndel felt the heat in her cheeks.

Levi laughed. “Are you going to court my sister? I thought you came over to help me.”

“I did,” smiled Nathaniel. “But now we’re finished.”

“Ja, well, how about sitting down for a coffee before you ask her to go for a ride in your buggy?”

“Sure, a coffee would be good right about now.”

Lyndel walked Dancer out of the stable and into a bright green paddock with two other horses. “You don’t need to talk as if I’m not here, you two,” she said over her shoulder. “And the older men are still sitting on the porch.”

“Still here?” groaned Levi. “What do they find to go on about for so long?”

“The South.”

“Oh, the South. These things work themselves out.” Levi glanced at Nathaniel. “If we want coffee we will have to run the gauntlet. They’ll probably make us sit with them and offer up our opinions.”

Nathaniel shrugged. “I don’t have an opinion on the South. They live what they live and we live what we live.”

Lyndel turned from closing the stable gate. “And what if others can’t live, Nathaniel King? What is your opinion on that?”

The strong tone in her voice made Levi and Nathaniel stare at her.

“What do you mean?” Nathaniel finally responded, wiping his hands on a large blue rag.

“Would you favor slavery for yourself or your family?”

Nathaniel met her gaze. “No. I would not. I have read about these things and thought about these things. That is why I am still Amish and still a Northerner.”

“How is it you have been coming to our house for years to visit my brother but I have never heard you express these thoughts?”

“Why, the occasion for it has never occurred in your presence.”

She kept her eyes on him, turning what he said over. Ever since she had seen Nathaniel in the stable she had been debating with herself about what to do – should she tell him about the men in the barn or not? Now she made up her mind to find out what sort of person he really was behind his soft brown hair and shining green eyes. “I need your help, both of you. Two men are in the barn. They have run away from a plantation in Virginia. One of them is wounded. I am afraid to tell the elders. I do not want them to go to the law.”

“Slaves?” asked Levi in shock.

“They do not like to be called that.”

“What are they then?”

“What you are. What Nathaniel is. Men who are hungry and thirsty.”

Nathaniel kept his eyes on her. She wondered if he was looking at her red hair and blue eyes or waiting to hear what she had to say. For a brief moment she realized she hoped it was both. Then her thoughts returned to the crisis at hand.

“Levi, can you get a sausage from the smoke house? I don’t dare go into the house for bread, Mama will ask what I’m doing.”

“Why can’t we tell her?” Levi demanded.

“Because then everyone will find out and someone will speak with the sheriff. And if slave hunters come the sheriff will tell them two men are in the Keim barn.”

“Are they headed for Canada?” Nathaniel spoke up.

“I did not ask,” Lyndel replied, “but that would only make sense.”

“All right.” Nathaniel reached for a bottle on a shelf. “You said they had wounds? This alcohol will help with that. Can I draw some water from the well for you while Levi gets the sausage?”

She gave him a small smile, wanting to make up for some of her harshness. “That would help.” Then she glanced around her. “My problem is bandages. I can’t go into the house. And I already gave the man who is wounded my apron to staunch the blood.”

Nathaniel nodded. “I have a clean shirt in my wagon. To change into after helping your brother. It is just under the driver’s seat.”

She did not mean to give him her full smile but it opened upon her face before she could stop it. “Thank you so much, Nathaniel.”

“My pleasure. And an honor.” He gave her a long look. “You know, you really are something, Lyndel Keim.” Then he walked out of the stable in the direction of the well.

A feeling went right through her like light.

Lord, what is all this about?

She went out to the King wagon that was parked near the house and was surprised to see that the porch was empty and all the visitors’ buggies gone. She patted Nathaniel’s bay named Good Boy who stood patiently in the shade of a crab apple tree and reached under the seat for the shirt. It was wrapped in a thin blanket to keep it clean. She ran her hand over it a moment and thought of Nathaniel wearing it, a young man so tall, so strong, so pure. Then she tucked white shirt and blanket under her arm and walked towards the barn doors where he and Levi were already waiting for her. They entered the barn together.

As soon as he saw them Moses said to Lyndel, “There are three of you.”

“Yes, Moses. This is my brother Levi. He’s brought you meat from our smokehouse. And this is his best friend Nathaniel who has brought you a pail of water.”

Moses stared at Nathaniel. “Can we trust him?”

Lyndel knelt and began to rip Nathaniel’s good cotton shirt. “Well, he gave me this for Charlie’s bandages. Let us give him an opportunity to prove himself, ja?”

Nathaniel set down his bucket. “I have some well water. And a tin cup. Can I give your friend a drink?”

“Give me the cup,” growled Moses. “I’ll give Charlie the drink.”

Lyndel dipped a square of Nathaniel’s shirt in the water and mopped Charlie’s forehead and face. “How is he?”

“Now and then he starts to shake. The blood seems to have stopped coming out of his wound though.” Moses put the tin cup to Charlie’s lips. “Come on now. You got to take some of it in.”

Lyndel pried the folded apron from Charlie’s side. It was thick with blood. She reached her hand towards Nathaniel. “May I have that bottle of alcohol now?” He tugged out the cork stopper and gave it to her. She poured some alcohol onto another cloth and pulled Charlie’s shirt back from his wound. She began to clean the gash and the sting made him cry out once and then clench his teeth together. Sweat covered his forehead again.

“Levi?” Lyndel asked her brother. “Could you take another piece of Nathaniel’s shirt and wipe Charlie’s face?”

Levi had been standing there taking it all in. He squatted down and, not knowing where to put the two large rings of sausage, placed them on Charlie’s lap. “Are you hungry? It is very good sausage. My mother’s recipe and her mother’s also.” Then he splashed water over a cloth and patted Charlie’s face and neck. “How is that? Is that all right for you?”

“Perhaps I should go back to my house,” said Nathaniel, “and get some blankets and pillows. We need to make them comfortable here. They will need a few nights of rest before they move on.”

Lyndel glanced up at him. “That sounds like a good idea.”

Moses shook his head. “No. They’re on our trail. Reason we jumped from the train was we could see a whole gang of them waiting on the station platform a quarter mile ahead of us– bloodhounds, rifles and rope.”

“But we have to get Charlie’s wound closed up first,” protested Lyndel. “He’ll bleed to death if you run too soon.”

“They’ll hang him from the tallest tree on your farm if we run too late.” Moses looked around at their faces. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do. I’d heard there were good people hereabouts, good Christian people.” He gripped Lyndel’s hand. “But they’re going to hunt until they find us. One more night here and then we have to get up to New York and Ontario. I tell you, we’ve got to move on no matter how bad Charlie is.”

Nathaniel nodded. “In that case we have to make sure you have a very restful night. I will fetch bed linen for you and Charlie from my home. And a poultice recipe of my mother’s she swears can close any wound.”

“No need to go all the way back to your home when there is a spare bedroom here.”

Lyndel jumped to her feet. Her father was standing behind them. His eyes cut dark and sharp right into her.

“You should have told me daughter,” he said. “You should have trusted me.”

burn out

2011-07-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

One of the more interesting stories in the Bible is the story of Elijah's flight into the desert to die.

I say it is interesting because it is a story many of us can relate to even though it is not a story many of us know.

Most people, at one time or another, have felt like giving up. Not just on their job. On their marriage, their family, their church, their faith, their entire life.

Sometimes they actually do. Others agonize for months or years, feeling depressed and depleted.

There is not always an easy answer. They have already been praying and been prayed over. They believe in Jesus. Yet they are exhausted in their inner spirit and in their body and in their mind and don't have the energy to see things through that have been important to them.

So we look at Elijah and we ask - "How did God deal with his burn out?"

After all, he was a major prophet, a key spiritual leader in Israel. He had just called down fire from heaven and defeated the priests of Baal in public. Obviously he had expended a lot of prayer and energy to get to that point but it was a victory and it was meant to prove to the wavering Israelis that YHWH was the one true God.

Perhaps he felt the fight was over.

But when Jezebel said she'd kill him, and no one stood up to say, "No, Queen Jezebel, you dare not harm this man of God who has done so much for our country," that was it. He snapped. He'd had it. He didn't want to live.

No one had any intention of protecting him even though they knew the Queen was wicked and Elijah righteous.

So he fled into the desert without food or water. With the purpose of going to the mount where Moses had received the Ten Commandments. Not by camel but by foot. A journey that would take more than a month.

He would not live more than three days without water. But Elijah was not interested in living. He was so burned out he wanted to die.

And in the desert wilderness between Egypt and Israel he would have.

But God watched. And he did not yell at Elijah and tell him to grow up, to have some faith, to trust and pray. He made sure he had lots of sleep. He made sure he had water to drink. He made sure he had food to eat. A kind word. A gentle touch. And yet more sleep.

Read the story in First Kings. God makes sure Elijah gets a bit of shade. Rest. An angel makes sure there is food and water and tells Elijah to get even more rest: "The journey is too much for you."

Think of how some people treat others with burn out. Think of how some church people treat other church people. Scolding. Impatience. "Where's your faith???" "Get up and get moving!!!" "God will help you when you help yourself!!!"

Isn't God astonishing? We make him in our own crabby image sometimes and think that is the way he should act with a moaner-groaner like Elijah (who, being a prophet, should know better than to act the way he's acting, right???). Instead, the Lord is kindness himself. Even when Elijah reaches the holy mountain God does not come to him in the fire or earthquake or wind but in . . . a whisper . . .

And tells him he is not alone, he has never been alone in the battles of life. Seven thousand others have never caved in to Baal or lost faith in the true God. The right is prevailing over the wrong even though Elijah is not aware of it.

God gives him more holy work to do. And, when that is done, makes sure he bypasses death altogether and brings him to heaven in a whirlwind.

Quite a reward and a blessing for a burned out believer.

It is time we treated ourselves with God's kindness when we are burned out with life and church and faith. It is time we treated others that way.

Are you worn out? Exhausted mentally, spiritually and physically? Emotionally drained?

Make sure you get plenty of God's good rest for you. Burn out is not the time to push through even harder. It's time to sleep deeply and restore yourself.

It's not the time to fast. It's the time to eat properly. Get fresh food and fresh water into your body. Another way of restoring yourself.

Do we still pray and seek God? Absolutely - Elijah did, even in his suicidal state. But don't be surprised if you are touched by an angel. And make sure you look for God in the small things and listen for him in the whispers.

And rest assured he is sympathetic to your plight and struggles. (Not disappointed in your weakness and exhaustion.)

And rest assured there are others going through the battles of life too, battles similar to yours (or identical!) and God is close to them and cares for them and is seeing to it they not only survive but overcome.

When you are strong enough - and not before - let God (not everyone else) tell you what to put your hands to. Let him give you purpose and focus and a sense of destiny once again. Only let him do it in his way and his time, not yours.

And if he chooses to reward you with a chariot of fire and heaven and more life instead of death - let him do it.

in Christ's name

In God's Wildness

2011-06-27T07:38:00.000-07:00

In God's wildness lies the hope of the world - the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.
(John Muir)

After it was all over, and I had lived to tell the tale, a friend at church who was a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer took me aside and said, “You know they kill more people than bears and wolves combined, don’t you?”

I told him I didn’t know that.

“Crews in the bush,” he went on, listing the sorts of people who had already fallen victim to the half-ton beast, “park wardens, tree planters, loggers, surveyors, backcountry hikers. The animal is absolutely determined and will keep on coming at you until you are pounded into blood and dust. No amount of playing dead will work.” His eyes narrowed as he locked eyes with me. “I’d sooner take on a mother grizzly robbed of her cubs than the thing that charged you.”

The day had been a glorious one, blue skies and sunshine and summer trees thick with green. Our young family hopped in the jeep and drove through miles of forests and foothills country, the Rocky Mountains at our backs, spotting deer and coyote and sometimes, way up a hillside, a black bear or young grizzly. Finally we stopped at a picnic site and sat down at an outdoor table to eat lunch. The kids were only six or seven at the time and were soon laughing on the swings, bouncing on the teeter-totter and zipping down the slides.

I played with them a while then asked if anyone wanted to walk the dogs with me. My son and daughter liked to go on hikes but the playground in the woods was a novelty so they wanted to stay behind which meant, of course, my young wife was staying behind as well to keep an eye on them. She gave me a kiss and bent down to pet Yukon and Nahanni.

“Take care of each other,” she said to them. Then she stood up and smiled. “Enjoy yourself. I wish I could come with you. It’s a perfect day.”

I put the dogs on their six foot leashes. We soon found a narrow path that led away from the picnic area and began to follow it. Yukon and Nahanni were a Golden Labrador and coyote cross – coyotes had come down out of the hills and mated with a domestic dog in Vancouver, British Columbia. The result had been their mother, Sheba, who had looked far more coyote than Golden Lab. But she had mated with another Lab so her offspring were an incredible mix of coyote and Lab features – Yukon’s coat was white with the exact patchwork you found on a Golden Lab and Nahanni’s fur was tawny or fawn-colored. They had big Lab eyes and Lab loyalty and intelligence but their muzzles were coyote long, their ears were up and coyote sharp and their tails were coyote long and bushy with white tips. Often they moved so silently in the yard or when we invited them into the house that I didn’t even know they were standing behind me.

As much or more than any other breed they loved to be in the forests and the wilderness places. The scent of wild animals was intoxicating to them. Unless I had tracks to go by, or a particular scent or musk was especially strong, I never knew what they were getting excited about. I often wished there was some chip in their brain that connected wirelessly to a small laptop in my hand that would instantly read out: they are picking up wolf, mule deer, cougar, fox, lynx, raccoon, jackrabbit. But they sniffed, I took in the fresh beauty of the summerwoods and the scent of sun-cooked pine and spruce resin that I loved and we plunged ahead into a part of the world we had never been in before.

After about ten minutes among the trees we came out into the open and made our way through a large patch of grassland. Glimpses of the mountains in the distance, with that shimmering sea of blue over my head, made me literally thank God I was alive – his creation, as always, filled me with wonder, exhilaration and peace. The companionship of Yukon and Nahanni made the experience that much sweeter. Our trail took us farther and farther from the woods behind us and bent towards a new stretch of forest a hundred yards ahead. We carried on. Everything was perfect.

A sudden crashing of branches from the forest in front snapped me out of my reverie and brought the dogs’ heads up sharply. A huge brown creature hurtled out of the woods at us, its large ears flat, its eyes rolled back white and its teeth flaring in a fierce grin that meant no good. At first I thought it was a wild horse. But my brain quickly checked through the facts and kicked out the word moose. I had seen moose in the wild before but never before had one been racing at me on its long legs looking as if it wanted to bite my head off.
I did not react instantly. For the
longest time – three or four seconds – I watched the moose come barreling down the trail and could not believe it was happening. I half-expected a Fisheries and Wildlife officer to suddenly pop out of the bush, blow a whistle and wave his hands and bring the creature to a halt. One corner of my brain assured me that, just as there was in a zoo or wildlife park, a deep ditch or unseen fence was in place to keep the moose from charging much farther and I was safe. But another corner of my brain shoved everything else aside and said: Release the dogs so they can run for their lives.

I unsnapped the leashes and the dogs took off the way we had come at top speed. No Greyhound or timber wolf ran faster than they did that day. My brain hurled another command at me: Get into the woods. Go. Go. I dropped the leashes and left the trail, racing through the tall grass for a strip of forest on my left. Glancing behind, I saw that the moose had quickly decided it could not catch the dogs but that it had a very good chance of catching me. It roared across the grass in hot pursuit.

In high school I had run the 100 meters, 200 meters and 800 meters. Though I still jogged for exercise now and then the days of hard training and fleetness of foot were in the past. Yet God has invented adrenaline. And it surged through me like a blaze. I didn’t have a plan but somewhere inside me I knew I had to get off the open ground and past bushes and brambles into the thickness of the trees. It would have been nice if the coach had been there with his stopwatch. I made it across the field faster than I would or could have done at 17. I did not even think of gnashing teeth and smashing hooves. But some part of me did.

I was into the trees only seconds before the moose – they can reach speeds of up to 35 miles per hour. I would no sooner get behind one tree trunk than it would crane its neck and chop with its teeth, trying to get a hold of me, and I would dart behind another. Then it would come at me again, its eyes wild, its breath practically steaming from its nostrils, its snorts loud and menacing, always trying to snag my head or arm in its mouth as it bent its neck around the tree. I would run behind another, my hands bracing against the trunk, staring right into the moose’s white and black eyes. This deadly game of tag went on for several minutes. Farther and farther I went into the forest and farther and farther it chased after me, lunging with its head and teeth, striking out with its front hooves and ripping off the bark and wood of the trees I constantly kept between the moose and myself.

Suddenly I saw it glance back over its shoulder. I could see the wheels turning in its head. It was worried about something – what? Then I thought: There must be a baby. There must be a calf. This is the mother and she is afraid the dogs are going to attack her baby while she is crashing through the woods after me.

The moose made its decision. It blasted hot breath into my face in a rage but broke off the assault. Then half-ran out of the trees and back to the open grassland and began to head towards the brush where it had first broke out onto the trail. I watched it go, not daring to move from behind my poplars which, while not the thickest trunks on the planet, had been thick enough to save my life. As I waited and tracked the moose’s movements a white shape came carefully through the trees towards me – Yukon! My male dog had not deserted me but, despite great danger to itself, had lingered nearby and was coming now to make sure I was all right. As for Nahanni, well, as I found out later, she ran all the way back to the picnic area and dropped there at the children’s feet, panting, leaving my wife to wonder, in some annoyance, how I could be so irresponsible and careless as to leave my dogs off leash and unattended in a wilderness area.

Eventually Yukon and I began to make our way out of the strip of trees I had plunged into. The cow moose stood a little ways down the trail, its head bent back and its eyes glaring death at us as we emerged from the woods. I felt it was ready to attack again at any moment and was in no hurry to get too far from the shelter of the forest. I moved slowly. The moose watched for any hint that we were altering direction towards her calf. I walked and stopped, walked and stopped, Yukon staying close. Each step away from her was a step won and she granted us our steady retreat. Finally we reached a point where she didn’t care about us anymore and walked into the trees where her calf was hidden. Yukon and I took to the main trail and were soon back in the forest we had emerged from into the open 15 or 20 minutes before.

Now I took a moment to thoroughly examine the damp mud on the path, something I had not done when the dogs and I had first begun our walk – after all, it had not been a hunting trip. There were my size 13 EE boot marks. There were the paw prints of my Lab-coyote dogs. There were the large sharp points of a mature moose’s tracks – and there were the small sharp points of a very tiny moose’s hoof prints, a moose that was the miniature of a mother that outweighed it by as much as 700 pounds. Later I would walk back and show my wife these tracks and also the spot where the cow moose had left the trail and thrashed through the tall grasses after me. With one wary eye on the bush ahead, I even pointed out the long lunging spread of the moose’s hoof marks when she had been running along the path bent on the destruction of myself and the dogs.
Before Yukon and I carried on to the picnic site I paused to look back at the stretch of grassland where it had been necessary for me to turn into an Olympian for 10 or 15 seconds. I thought for a moment about what my chances would have been had the moose surprised me in an area where there were no trees to hide behind. The answer was pretty obvious – slim to none. At best, I would have been maimed for life. At worst, the front hooves would have become pile drivers that reduced me to splintered bone and brain tissue. Days later I would read about the frequency and lethality of cow moose attacks in North America and around the world I would appreciate that I could never have outrun the assault let alone survive it. The small strip of trees to my left were all that stood between me and a pretty brutal death.

Which has often caused me not only to thank God but to reflect on several things: the way we are put together, the two sides of creation – and how God works to rescue his people.

As I mentioned, I had no thought-out plan of heading for the trees. I might just as easily have followed the dogs in their wild flight down the trail. Why didn’t I do that? What made me instinctively choose the small patch of woods to my left and risk the cross country run I had to undertake to reach them? The moose could have cut me off, especially if I’d tripped over a gopher hole or rock or hidden log. Yet something built into me had known a run down the trail would not have succeeded while a race into the trees might. It was instinctive to flee but flee where? No thought process or logic was involved. Something within had sized up the situation, with very little input from my gray matter, and sent my body hurtling over the field. A couple of verses come to mind from Psalm 139 (13 and 14) when I wonder about this: For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. (NIV)

Then there’s God’s creation itself. One moment I’m basking in the sunshine and admiring mountains and woods and sky and the next running for my life from a creature that is part of that godly creation. Why? Because while creation can be incredibly beautiful, the flip side is it can be incredibly dangerous. We live in a fallen world. Eden is long gone and sin has marred the perfection that once existed. There is only the new heaven and new earth to look forward to where God has promised to erase the hazards and allow the wolf to lie down with the lamb and a child to play happily with a poisonous snake. Paul talked about this in Romans 8:20 and 21: Against its will all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. (NLT) Paul adds in verse 22, For we are conscious that all living things are weeping and sorrowing in pain together till now. (BBE)

Finally, there’s no doubt that it was not a day God had any plans on bringing me home so while he did not stop the moose attack from occurring – after all, he built it into the cow moose that she should protect her young – he provided a way of escape so that I could survive it. The charge came at a place where there were trees – it could have occurred at a place where there were none. “Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.”(Psalm 91:14, NIV)
So although it was a frightening experience I have never forgotten it was also an experience that brought me a deeper understanding of how I am made and how creation is made and how, despite the dangers and the brokenness, God still works in that creation and through that creation to bring about his perfect will. Regardless of all the risks involved, God’s world remains an excellent place to be and offers a stunning and rugged wilderness for men to discover and explore.

Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
(Psalm 90:1 & 2, NIV)

poem by amy

2011-06-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

Love through me love of God,

make me like Thy CLEAR AIR through which,

unhindered,

colors pass as though it were not there

amy carmichael (1867-1951) Irish missionary to India

wandering

2011-06-10T07:53:00.000-07:00

Recently I was writing back and forth with a friend. They asked about the different kinds of writing I do and what all that was about and this is essentially what I told them:

[Right now it's 1862 in Virginia - I got another contract for yet another book, this one about Mennonites, Amish, pacificism, the American Civil War & why some Amish and Mennonites chose to bear arms to fight against slavery. You know how it works? I go to NYC or TO and I say, "Hey, I have an idea for a novel where an Amish boy dreams about flying, even has a natural gift for it, but his Amish community aren't sure such a gifting can be from God" - and NYC and TO say, "No, thanks." So I go to Ohio and Michigan and Oregon and Florida and publishers there say, "Yes, we love it." But then I go to those same publishers in Ohio and Michigan and Oregon and Florida and I say, "Listen, I have another idea for a novel - two sisters, one Catholic, one Communist - they love each other but they hate each other - Stalin is in the mix and Hitler and Berlin and Moscow and Kyiv - There's romance, there's war, there's God" - "No, thanks," they tell me. So I go to NYC and TO with the same idea and to this idea they say, "Yes!" So now I've figured out I want to tell all kinds of stories and I just have to wander from publisher to publisher to find who will publish which stories and that's all I care about. Every thing's a genre in its own way. So I write in all the genres in order to say what I'd like to say.]

It occurs to me the same thing happens with all of us when we share our stories, testimonies, messages or meditations with the people in the different worlds we move about in. If we talk to teens, we gear our words to a teenage way of looking at the world so they'll understand what we're saying better. If we talk to seniors, we make sure our words are understood within their frame of reference. The same goes if you are talking to a college crowd, a church group, people at work, or ladies in your neighborhood. We say what we want to say or feel we need to say but we put it in words we think each group will best understand. It's no different with my writing. I'm just going from place to place and telling my stories in ways different groups will best understand them. And one publisher will publish one approach, another will publish an alternative approach.

God talks to us this way too. Sometimes a breeze, sometimes a thunderclap. Sometimes challenging us to think deeply, other times challenging us scarcely to think things through at all. Sometimes Psalm 23, sometimes Psalm 88. Sometimes the gospel of John hits home, sometimes Mark finds us where we live. Sometimes he meets us in church, sometimes in the desert, sometimes in a shopping mall. God comes at us in a thousand different ways with his words of comfort, encouragement and discipline. We have to learn to realize when it's him because, really, he doesn't talk to us exactly the same way each and every time.

Nor are we restricted to only praying to God in a certain way, or worshiping in a certain way, or reading a certain translation of the Bible or reading it in a certain way at a certain time of day. We do not have to come to God only when we're upbeat (churches on Sunday mornings have to take this seriously and stop acting as if everyone is on a spiritual high). Nor do we only have to have real talks with him when we're most sad, discouraged, depressed or frightened. We can come to him with childlike words or deeply penetrating thoughts or in hilarity or in struggle. Some people still think it's irreverent to come to God when you feel frustrated or angry or upset. Not so. As God comes to us in many ways and we approach others in many ways so we have freedom to speak with God in many ways. We see this in the Bible again and again from different people and different writers - they come in all kinds of moods, all the moods under the rainbow. The Psalms alone are a whole display of the entire gamut human emotions can run and all are felt and expressed in his presence.

Tolkien said not all who wander are lost. As far as going from place to place, person to person, and God moment to God moment to speak the truth that is in your heart, this is very true. We are always looking for the right words, the right prayers, the right ways and often feeling that we are failing. Yet to do this honest wandering is enough. Become a holy wanderer and meet God in a million ways and a million places. Become a holy wanderer and tell your stories in a million places too. Be open to where God wishes to take you. Do not presume to restrict the Holy Spirit. With the words of God in your soul let him show you new paths in Christ, new vistas, new faces. You will be amazed at how your life changes and what you can hear clearly and speak clearly.

Live the diversity that is plain to see not only in God's Creation but in God's Book and, by so doing, live again.

the migration of souls

2011-06-07T09:59:00.001-07:00

In the process of planning and researching the trilogy that began with the novel ZO (2008) I wrote many different pieces over the years as I fought to find the right voice, angle, perspective - call it what you will. Below I have included other works that I used as sketches to help me find ZO (The Alignment of the Planets; The White Birds).

This one was published in CRUX a couple of years ago under the same title it bears here. Like the material in the other "literary drawings" of "the painting" that would become ZO, this story is a prototype of what would eventually emerge. Some of the material was lent to ZO, some was not. So this retains its own voice and body.

It, like the other prototype material below, is its own story, though it initially contains much in common with Alignment.

The Migration of Souls

Savella would not look through the small grey window of the train. The night before she had scarcely slept, finding comfort only in moving her body from one position to another, in turning her pillow over and over so that she could rest her cheek against coolness. She had climbed out of the bed and crossed to the eastern corner of the room where the icons and crucifix hung and knelt there. She lit a small candle, placing her narrow shoulders between the splinter of flame and her sleeping family. Pavlo watched her. She seemed to flicker and dissolve, to lose shape and substance. She disappeared into the light of the candle.
In the morning the villagers had come to stand near the home. The lane was dark. Pavlo emerged from the house carrying a black case filled with the tools with which he made shoes and boots. He removed the fur hat from his head.
“Glory to Jesus Christ.”
The villagers returned his greeting. Pavlo placed his hat back on his head. Walked to a horse-drawn cart. Set his case in it. His wife’s brother Vasyl sat on the driver’s seat. He remained motionless as Pavlo filled the cart with bags and bundles.
The cherry trees moved like smoke along each side of the cart track. For a while Pavlo drew in the strong nip of burning wood from the village. After that it was the smell of the forest. Bark. Green needles. In a few hours, the sun hot, the odour of resin
overwhelmed everything else, the pine and spruce trees baking like a sweet bread in an oven. The cart lurched and swayed and Pavlo sometimes used a hand to raise himself momentarily off the seat. Savella kept her head down. Cheeks glinting in small pins of light that fastened onto her skin. Her brother held the reins in one black hand and stared straight ahead. There were three crows and they flew in front of the cart for several miles before they exploded into a squawking and vanished.

“Where is God in all this?” he asked her.

Swaying with the train, one shoulder against the side of the car, Pavlo held Mykhailo as the boy slept. The window was a square of black.
“Won’t you sleep?” Savella asked him. “I can make a bed for Mykhailo on his seat just as I’ve done for Lesia and Iakiv.”
“Yes, I see. But I think I will hold him for awhile yet.”
We are all returning to earlier days, he thought. The man behind me with the cigarette. Who knows how old he is right now? Where his eyes and feet are? Who is holding him? I am in the village. I am ten or eleven. I am on the road that leads out of the village. I have left my bed and gone to walk in the warm night. The air smells like blood and like flowers. I see myself walking in the dark and just ahead of my body I see a few willows, a few poplars, a bend in the road, a creek. No one else is on the road. Over my head the stars are fat and yellow. An insect bites. The night is purple. Draped in the branches of the trees. Hanging. In huge soft folds. I am in a meadow. I am above the meadow.
Pavlo sensed that Savella was asleep and he turned his head to look at her. He touched the hands and the arms. They were like poplar saplings growing up out of the black.
The fingers are not small. The arms are pale and smooth but they are not soft. I have felt them grip me like white roots.
The Austrian border officials came on board with a lantern, asked to see passports and money, demanded Pavlo show them his family’s steamship tickets. Savella sat quietly. One hand on Lesia who continued to sleep. Savella’s face shifted from white to black as the lantern swung in one of the men’s grip.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“You do not look a day over sixteen. What year were you born?”
“It is there on my passport, sir.”
“Where are you from?”
“Galicia.”
“Why are you leaving? Is life not good enough for you here?”
“There is a country called Canada.”
“Are you sure there is such a place?”
“Yes. My husband showed me on a map.”
“God knows what sort of ships they will cram you into. People die on such ships.”
“We will try, sir. Our Lord Jesus Christ will watch over us.”
“You are too young. We ought to make you turn back. Whose children are these?”
“They are mine. My children.”
The next night Savella slept without interruption, a blanket pulled to her shoulders. Pavlo now and then saw pricks of light in the black glass. At dawn, long green fields unravelled from a smudged sky and sprawled alongside the train’s iron wheels. Mykhailo pressed his face into the glass, enjoying the sensation of cold and the shiver of the pane.
They changed trains several times. White steam burst up over their ankles and legs. They stepped through banks of it. A soldier appeared in front of them once, his rifle slung tightly onto his back. He gave them a fierce glance. Pavlo had emerged too suddenly from a tumbling of steam, his face white and sharply cut, his feet unseen. The moment the soldier felt Pavlo’s own fear he relaxed, though a cool sabre still lay along his spine. Fresh steam sprang over Pavlo and the soldier like a blast of snow, dissolving just as it hid their bodies and faces. Pavlo had the sense of peering at a person he should have known but could not recognize, someone standing in a winter mist on the far bank of the village river.
“Pavlo.”
“He is a German soldier. Not an Austrian. We are away from all that. Pick Lesia up or we will not find our train.”
The night was impenetrable. The train clicked and shuddered. As if it made its way through dense forest. Cars slapped by long branches. Wheels tangled in stiff, thrusting roots. Savella thought of how far away her village was and she had to close her hands into fists as a numbing cold slipped from head to neck to her fingers and legs. They were among strangers. A bitter scent of pipe tobacco made her throat tighten. She was trapped in the car. On the ship she would be trapped. Surrounded by cold water. Shoreless water. In Canada her isolation would be complete. Impossible to reach her village. Impossible to speak Ukrainian. Her children growing up among a people who had no use for their language or their customs or their God.
She did not remember falling asleep. The roots of trees seized ahold of her body, pulled her into the earth to feed upon her breath. She panicked and fought and forced herself awake, her head and shoulders stabbing forward. She jerked a hand to touch the chill of the window. There is Pavlo. There are Lesia and Iakiv and Mykhailo. She felt an explosion of anger towards Pavlo, wanted to spit, bent her head and placed thumb and finger across her eyes.
“Mother of God. Take us back. Change my husband’s mind. Why are you forcing us to cross over?”
She touched the silver crucifix at her throat. You understand, she said. You understand. You understand.
She remembered the smell of wet earth steaming in the heat. The sting of dill. A fistful of long grass. Crushed to release the tall skies and the deep penetration of the rain. Poppies. Red with a red that thundered like a forest fire. Wild mustard a yellow that cut open the eye. Slits across her bare legs. Grass slits across her calves and thighs and knees. Air in her face, air gleaming with light, sagging with it, the sun slouching against her head and neck. Her hair hot as stones, her fingers reaching up to touch, smelling of
oil and salt as they came down, and sweet. Trees whirling with leaves, rolling one after another downhill, dropping like green stones into the sky. The river beneath her toes, cool as the black earth a spade overturns, moving swiftly between the banks, a fast rain running down a hard-packed road, the long clatter of small pebbles.

“Where is God in all this?” he asked her.

Savella lay in the hold of the ship and listened. Sometimes the water against the hull was the brown river of the village. Other times it was the scraping of human nails. She would cross herself and turn her head so that she could hear Pavlo’s deep solid breathing.
They were hardly ever allowed on deck. It seemed to Savella that all of them had become another form of life, creatures God had not intended—groping, grunting, stumbling, in a world that constantly rocked and pitched, sometimes gently, sometimes
violently. There was the perpetual smell of sheepskin soiled with human sweat, a reek of wet and salt and wool. Urine and feces. Sweet. Rotten. Cattle that had bawled with fright and jarred against one another in this same hold, their flesh, their breath, hot and honeyed with chewed hay and saliva. Savella imagined the long fields of dark green clover, the purple and pink and white blossoms, the cows stepping slowly, their mouths working, calves yanking at teats, emptying themselves in loud, watery streams of brown. She could not hold the image. For behind the warm smell of the cattle was the pierce of antiseptic with which they had washed down the hold in Hamburg. The ship had been a cattle transport. Now it moved people who also knew fear and panic and a sense of being trapped.
The darkness rolled. Someone cursed God. There was a burst of retching. The stink of stomach acid. A heap of rotting tomatoes. Smashed. Open. Savella’s own stomach reacted. Tried to heave up its food in response. She put a clove of garlic to her nose.
Another roll. Sounds of choking and the splatter of liquid. Savella leaned over Pavlo to see if the children had been awakened. But the three of them continued to sleep. Legs and arms twisted in the woolen blankets.
The distance she had travelled from her home, her sense of being detached, of being nowhere at all, of living in a world of long water, nights of deep darkness and unusual rhythms, all this rose up to obliterate or stupefy certain habits and instincts, so that another element submerged in her soul was freed and thrust upward into her mind and will like a tall, needle-like column of iron. Hard, painful, but satisfying. The sharper and harder this column became the more Savella drew her strength and purpose from it. The women chattered around her, dark and white, moving their fingers and hands, but she sat amongst them quietly, eyes on Pavlo smoking his pipe, occasionally illuminated by fire, and she nurtured the iron needle that drove up through her being. Her hands were motionless in her lap, but not limp.
Pavlo felt the strength in her. The hard dark ore that had been pushed painfully to the surface. His head and stomach became a slowly turning coldness. He left the men and spent several days near the ladder that went up from the hold to the locked entry of the lower deck. He could see slits of light, the outline of the door.

“Where is God in all this?” he asked her.

The rain streamed over their bodies when the ship docked and the hatch was finally opened. Every sight was extraordinary and precise, well-lit and sharp-edged even in the storm. The shout of gulls, the thud of hammer blows on shore, the hum of a fog horn, Savella seized all of it, laughing to herself and holding Lesia’s white hand, jiggling it, wind glancing off her cheek, her blouse drenched and moulded to her shoulders and chest. Salt and water and cool air sliced like keen knives into her nostrils.
They boarded another train and rain fell away behind them and colour dissolved the towers of cloud. Green hills peeled back to stone and plain, trembling in the heat as if a great engine that fueled the earth forced its exhaust up through a thousand small ducts in the grass. It was as long as Savella’s hair, undulating as if it were being combed from one horizon to another. It was as slender as strands of water streaking over the rocks of a
creekbed. Twisting and churning and cracking open with sunlight.
“There is no end to it,” she said to Pavlo.
After many days the train blew out its air and steam and stopped. Savella placed her feet awkwardly on the iron rungs and stepped down to the boards. Persons spilled out around her, tugging at suitcases and bundles of clothing and cookware. Lesia fussed in her arms as sun stung the child’s face. Savella stared at the stationhouse, at the windows and shingles, at the men in dark uniforms with silver buttons and watch chains that spat heat. She slowly made her way clear of the black clumps of people and the station so she could see the rest of the city. There were trees, houses painted white and made with wood, the sun yellow over the rooftops and chimneys and over the grass and the bushes.
Away from the train’s shadow, light flamed like a match on her back so that it felt as if her skin were blistering. Lesia wailed.
“There is water here. A river. I can smell it,” Savella said. “The trees are full of leaf and growing. There are no hills at my back or in front of me. The sky is unending.”
She found a bench and sat on it, shading Lesia by the curve of her body. She gazed up at the blue light. Lesia became silent and slept. A pain nicked and scratched everything within Savella. The village was too far away. Pavlo was battling with the luggage, keeping the boys by his legs, his face wet, talking to himself or to Iakiv and Mykhailo, jerking at the cases.
She strode in front of Pavlo. The heat made the buildings in the city quiver, as if there were no foundation to them, as if they were mirages that might at any moment disappear, leaving Savella and her family abandoned to a perpetual horizon that neither began nor came to any completion. She started to think about cold water. A chilled cup pressed to her cheek.
They spent the night in a large house where they were given food and water and part of the floor to sleep on. Many others from the train were also there. The children collapsed in tangled positions against Savella’s legs. Next to them a heavy man with a beard like a shovel raised his right arm higher and higher as he argued with his wife. Another man bent his back like a sapling and prayed out loud, an icon positioned on top of a small heap of suitcases. Babies were crying on the floors above them. Several windows were open so that a slender draft stirred about the rooms, which were bogged down with the day’s heat and odours of sausage and sour milk and sweat. Two or three flies persisted in jostling one another off Savella’s chin and eventually she grew too tired to flap her hand at them.
Soon the sun took on a rich hue, like a syrup, and the rooms glowed, the hair of the people in them shimmered as if it had all been oiled, skin glinted like metal. Savella suddenly experienced a surge of peacefulness in all parts of her body. She knew this colour. It meant that soon the sun would set. How many times had she gazed at this colour on the wheat, on the thatched roofs, on the women hunched on benches next to the white walls, on the men leading the glossy horses up from a drink at the river? Dust would hang like a second sky. She watched the blaze in the room. It was as if she saw angels. She closed her eyes as they brimmed with the burning whorl of light. Then she opened them again.

Now she was fifty-four.

She often said to Pavlo, “I am the young woman who came to Canada. I have not changed. Neither have you.”

After they had been working in the garden, he smelled like black soil and growing plants and roots and water. This overpowered the scent of sweat and soap and leather from his shoemaking shop. He had smelled like earth and crops and thunderstorms and sunlight when they were young and lived in Ukraine. Even after he became a cobbler. When the farm in Canada had not worked out, when he had brought them to the city because they needed money and he could make shoes and boots, the lines of dirt under his fingernails had become streaks of black polish and his skin tasted like waxes and animal hides and tobacco and dust. Then they had dug and planted their own garden. When he bent over his cabbages and ripped weeds from among his radishes and lettuces and cucumbers, the strength of their growth was on his hands and neck as he lay down next to her in the warm summer dark.
It was on Saturdays or Sundays and sometimes in the evenings when they fussed over the garden together. Pavlo would encourage their young son Joseph to pull up carrots with Nicholas, their daughter Lesia’s boy. Pavlo picked the cucumbers himself, getting them before they grew too large, and pickled them in huge jars swirling with stalks of dill. Savella would point out something, what worms had done, or slugs, or cabbage moths, and he would nod, perhaps laying down a barrier of salt against the slugs or spraying soap and water over the cabbage leaves to discourage the moths. Often she would picture the two of them as if she were someone else watching them from the house. She kneeling by the peas or beans in her maroon skirt and white headscarf. Her hands black. He with his suspenders crossed over his slim back, standing in the middle of the spinach and beet leaves, his trousers dark columns rising out of the green, staring down, thinking, wondering, a watering can in his fist, dripping, the spout rusted. It came to her in the winter too, when she looked from the kitchen into a white yard. If he had brought potatoes up out of the cellar and cleaned them, even though it was January, his arms and chest could remind her of the garden and the drenching yellow heat.
In the mornings she was alone in the backyard. It faced south and the sun was on her hands and neck by ten o’clock. She prayed as she moved about the yard. In the spring she worked on the apple tree, pruning branches with a small saw and a ladder. She loved the hot smell of the apple tree shavings and would rub them between her palms, press her palms to her nose and face. At the end of May she took a shovel and a fork and turned the packed earth of the garden. She thumped the large clumps of soil with the back of the shovel to break them up. The surface of the garden would be dry but underneath it was still damp and mud would creep up the sides of her boots to her skirt. Dark slashes jumped across her cheeks. They dried to grey.
The seeding she did with Pavlo. She sprinkled the lettuce seeds out of a salt shaker. Pavlo purchased the tomato plants from a nursery and, bent over, scooping with a trowel, he placed them in the ground. As summer flooded the yard, she chopped at weeds with the hoe, stepping back and forth on the narrow boards between the rows. She enjoyed the shock that leaped up her arms with each blow, the yielding of the soil, the stinging green scent of the cut weed, the cool dirt on her fingers as she dug out the roots, the tiny stones that slipped under her nails and bit. Her muscles welcomed the work, she exulted in this stretching and binding and swelling. Two hours in the garden and she could look up at the blue sky silky with heat and feel she was in another country.
For Pavlo the garden was a piece of the farm that had not worked for him and finally had not worked for Savella’s brother either. Vasyl rarely entered the large garden plot. Sometimes he came out and talked to them while they worked, hands in his pockets. He brought up politics. How many shoes they had made at the shop that week. He never mentioned the heads of lettuce Pavlo held in his hand. Or the blood red tomatoes. Or the slim pods Savella shelled in a chair under the branches of the apple tree.
Pavlo himself never mentioned the farm. He had left it behind. The dream had lost its colour when there was nothing to eat. He had found a job and a house in the city. He had never wanted to return to the flatness and the wind. Work in the city was better than land that broke the bones in your arms and legs. He washed his hands in the spray from the watering can. The liquid mud dripped into the grass. The garden was better than the farm had been. It could be controlled. Its distances were limited. It grew most of their vegetables but it did not destroy them while it did so. He could grip it in his hand like a boot that was being stitched.
His back hurt when he leaned over the plants and this annoyed him. He could see in the mirror that his shirt and pants did not fit as well. He did not notice anything if he just looked at his arms and legs. But mirrors and photographs showed him that his shoulders and muscles seemed to be shrinking. “I am crawling back into my bones,” he muttered. Even his head seemed smaller. The wrinkles cut deeper into the flesh around his eyes.
“At least something is left.”
“What are you talking about?”
Savella was sitting up in bed as he came into the room and closed the door. He shrugged and pulled his suspenders over his shoulders. He lay next to her. She touched his arm. He twisted.
“Your hands are like torches. In the winter it is like sleeping in a snowdrift. In the summer you are a pot of steam. It is impossible to sleep. The room is already like an oven.”
“How is the shop?”
“Not as many shoes. A few more boots.”
“All the sun will make the tomatoes rich.”
“Glory to Jesus Christ. Are you still having those nightmares?”
“Sometimes I am in heaven when I close my eyes. All the clouds are white and all the faces are kind. I see the village and they are lighting candles for us at Mass. Other times it is a hell. I wish my whole world, awake or dreaming, was peace, forever, just peace.”
“God has not made the earth that way.”
“I wish he would change his mind and make new plans for everything.”
“Some days we believe. Some days we do not.”
“I always believe, Pavlo. But life goes on and on and the pattern is difficult to make out. I get tired of looking and looking and trying to see how all the threads match.”
She dreamed again that she stood in the middle of the prairie. It had become a desert. The grass was gone and all the crops. Some stubble poked like fork prongs up through the dirty yellow sand. A wind was beginning over the flatness. Now and then it surged and yanked a fence post out of the ground and hurled it several hundred feet. It snapped three strands of barbed wire. They began to lash at the ground. A small house was in the distance. Shingles burst from the roof like a flock of crows. The open windows kept staring at her with darkness. Boards were pried loose and tossed into the air. Through the dust the sun suddenly struck her like an axe across the face. Her hand came away from her face without any blood on it. But her cheeks were burning. Flames sprang up her legs and her skirt exploded. Her hair crackled and when she opened her mouth black and greasy smoke poured out from between her teeth.
Pavlo touched her shoulder and she turned over.
“Fire,” she mumbled.
“You are safe enough,” he said to her in the dark. “Dream about God now. White clouds. Angels. Long stretches of blue water.”
“I am on fire.”
He got her a glass of water and she drank it, still asleep.
“The colour green,” he said. “You like that. Plants. Prayer. Candles.”
She breathed in and out slowly. She was riding a white horse between rows of tall corn. Crows flew ahead of her but they sang like larks. Sun coated her bare arms like paint.
Pavlo got up and sat on the porch. There were no lights on in the house. The street was completely dark. His sleeves were rolled up and his shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his chest. He was smoking cigarettes down close to his fingers. The elm leaves would move as if something were leaping from branch to branch. He could hear the sound of tires rolling over the pavement on Main Street. A leaf clattered as it fell down through branches and twigs. He remembered swaying from side to side in the dark as a cart rattled between cherry trees. The stars had been fastened to the trees just as they were tonight. Warm and sticky and motionless. Father had cleaned a fish once under stars as heavy as crushed rock. The blood had no colour.
It would have been better to have stayed in Ukraine. No, the German soldiers came and burnt it to the ground. Boots and guns. They put bullets in the air we breathe. It was good that we came here even if it has not been perfect. And whose life is perfect? God’s maybe. No one else’s. I should have kept the farm they gave me here. How could I? Nothing was working out. I am happier soling shoes. The children are healthy. Communists do not roam the streets and back lanes with rifles. No better than the Nazis. Stalin and Hitler came down the same birth canal. The children are well. Savella and I can die in our sleep. Plenty of Christmases left. And Easters. Plenty of prayers left in me. Enough for a second lifetime. But. What if I had gone further south instead of coming here? What if I had decided to take Savella all the way to the ocean before I built a house? I think I could have grown more roses.
Everything is long and black and comfortable. I shouldn’t have to get up. I ought to be able to stay here. There’s no people. No shouting. No talking. No shoes scraping over the gravel. No cars. No light. I’m warm. I’m not thinking. I’m watching the blackness move over the city. I’m smelling the grass and the bark on the elms. The cool dampness growing over the lawns and bushes. Why should I have to get up?
More leaves crashed down through the branches and onto the road. They were as loud as stones. An insect snarled near Pavlo’s arm and disappeared. For an instant he was conscious of a rose and then there was a breath of dust. He fell asleep. The leaves continued to drop, landing on the ground with a crack, as if something small was being broken in two.

“Where is God in all this?” he asked her.

She smiled and the wrinkles on her face smiled with her lips. “You know better than I do. You are just throwing out words. You turn it over and over in your head all the time. A priest. That would have suited you. He is in all of it, Pavlo. From beginning to end. There is nothing that he is left out of.”
“Even the mistakes. Even the bad ideas. Even the sins.”
“He is an incarnation, Pavlo. He is in all of it. And he will make it whole, one piece, everything.”
“If you say so. Glory to Jesus Christ.”
She lay her head back on her pillow. The room grew darker and darker with the summer night and the birds made no more sounds.
“Even the fear,” she said. “Even the dreams that lose their wings and fall to the ground. Over an entire lifetime nothing is lost. Not even the grave.”
She heard his breathing. A car’s headlights swept quickly over the room, over his head, her face, their arms and legs and bed sheets, the crucifix at her throat, the dresser, the framed photographs on the walls, the rosary that dripped from a chair, the shirt draped beside it, the ashtray, the carpet, a pair of shoes. All vanished in the dark. She turned on her shoulder and closed her eyes. The morning would bring everything back.

the alignment of the planets

2011-06-07T09:57:00.001-07:00

As with the collection of short pieces just below, The White Birds, this longer story was also a prototype for the novel ZO (2008).

Some of the material was retained for ZO, some was not. So this story is its own entity and makes its own mark. It shared some of itself, but kept its own unique identity, taking a different track than ZO took.

I hope you enjoy it.

The Alignment of the Planets

She would not look through the small grey window of the

train. The night before she had scarcely slept, finding comfort

only in moving her body from one position to another, in turning

her pillow over and over so that she could rest her cheek against

coolness. She had climbed out of the bed and crossed to the

eastern corner of the room where the icons hung and knelt there.

She lit a small candle. Placing her narrow shoulders between the

splinter of flame and her sleeping family. Pavlo watched her. She

seemed to flicker and dissolve, to lose shape and substance. She

disappeared into the light of the candle.

In the morning the villagers had come to stand near the home.

The lane was dark. Pavlo emerged from the house carrying a black

case filled with the tools with which he made shoes and boots. He

removed the fur hat from his head.

“Glory to Jesus Christ.”

The villagers returned his greeting. Pavlo placed his hat

back on his head. Walked to a horse-drawn cart. Set his case in

it. His wife’s brother Vasyl sat on the driver’s seat. He remained

motionless as Pavlo filled the cart with bags and bundles.

The cherry trees moved like smoke along each side of the cart

track. For awhile Pavlo drew in the strong nip of burning wood

from the village. After that it was the smell of the forest. Bark.

Green needles. In a few hours, the sun hot, the odour of resin

overwhelmed everything else, the pine and spruce trees baking like

a sweet bread in an oven. The cart lurched and swayed and Pavlo

sometimes used a hand to raise himself momentarily off the seat.

Savella kept her head down. Cheeks glinting in small pins of light

that fastened onto her skin. Her brother held the reins in one

black hand and stared straight ahead. There were three crows and

they flew in front of the cart for several miles before they

exploded into a squawking and vanished.

Swaying with the train, one shoulder against the side of the

car, Pavlo held Michael as the boy slept. The window was a square

of black.

“Won’t you sleep? I can make a bed for Michael on his seat

just as I’ve done for Lesia and Iakiv.”

“Yes, I see. But I think I will hold Michael for awhile yet.

We are all returning to earlier days. The man behind me with

the cigarette. Who knows how old he is right now? Where his eyes

and feet are? Who is holding him? I am in the village. I am ten or

eleven. I am on the road that leads out of the village. I have

left my bed and gone to walk in the warm night. The air smells

like blood and like flowers. I see myself walking in the dark and

just ahead of my body I see a few willows, a few poplars, a bend

in the road, a creek. No one else is on the road. Over my head.

The stars are fat and yellow. An insect bites. The night is

purple. Draped in the branches of the trees. Hanging. In huge soft

folds. I am in a meadow. I am above the meadow.

Pavlo sensed that Savella was asleep and he turned his head

to look at her. Gradually the hands and the arms came to him, like

poplar saplings growing up out of the black.

The fingers are not small. The arms are pale and smooth but

they are not soft. I have felt them grip my back like white roots.

The Austrian border officials came on board with a lantern,

asked to see passports and money, demanded Pavlo show them his

family’s steamship tickets. Savella sat quietly. One hand on Lesia

who continued to sleep. Savella’s face shift from white to black

as the lantern swung in one of the men’s grip.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“You do not look a day over sixteen. What year were you

born?”

“It is there on my passport, sir.”

“Where are you from?”

“Galicia.”

“Why are you leaving? Is life not good enough for you here?”

“There is a country called Canada.”

“Are you sure there is such a place?”

“Yes. My husband showed me on a map.”

“God knows what sort of ships they will cram you into. People

die on such ships.”

“We will try, sir.”

“You are too young. We ought to make you turn back. Whose

children are these?”

“They are mine. My children.”

The next night Savella slept without interruption, a blanket

pulled to her shoulders. Pavlo now and then saw pricks of light in

the black glass. At dawn, long green fields unravelled from a

smudged sky and sprawled alongside the train’s iron wheels.

Mykhailo pressed his face into the glass, liking the sensation of

cold and the shiver of the pane.

They changed trains several times. White steam burst up over

their ankles and legs. They stepped through banks of it. A soldier

appeared in front of them once, his rifle slung tightly onto his

back. He gave them a fierce glance. Pavlo had emerged too suddenly

from a tumbling of steam, his face white and sharply cut, his feet

unseen. The moment the soldier felt Pavlo’s own fear he relaxed,

though a cool sabre still lay along his spine. Fresh steam sprang

over Pavlo and the soldier like a blast of snow, dissolving just

as it hid their bodies and faces. Pavlo had the sense of peering

at a person he should have known but could not recognize, someone

standing in a winter mist on the far bank of the village river.

“Pavlo.”

“He is a German soldier. Not an Austrian. We are away from

all that. Pick Lesia up or we will not find our train.”

The night was impenetrable. The train clicked and shuddered.

As if it made its way through dense forest. Cars slapped by long

branches. Wheels tangled in stiff, thrusting roots. Savella

thought of how far away her village was and she had to close her

hands into fists as a numbing cold slipped from head to neck to

her fingers and her legs. They were among strangers. A bitter

scent of pipe tobacco made her throat tighten. She was trapped in

the car. On the ship she would be trapped. Surrounded by cold

water. Shoreless water. In Canada her isolation would be complete.

Impossible to reach her village. Impossible to speak Ukrainian.

Her children growing up among a people who had no use for their

language or their customs or their God. The roots of the trees

seizing ahold of your body, pulling you into the earth to feed

upon your breath.

Her head and shoulders stabbing forward.

She jerked a hand to touch the chill of the window. There is

Pavlo. There are Lesia and Iakiv and Michael. She felt an

explosion of anger towards Pavlo, wanted to spit, bent her head

and placed thumb and finger across her eyes.

“Mother of God. Take us back. Change my husband’s mind. Why

are you forcing us to cross over?”

The smell of wet earth steaming in the heat. The sting of

dill. A fistful of long grass. Crushed to release the tall skies

and the deep penetration of the rain. Poppies. Red with a red that

thundered like a forest fire. Wild mustard a yellow that cut open

the eye. Slits across her bare legs. Grass slits across her calves

and thighs and knees. Air in her face, air gleaming with light,

sagging with it, the sun slouching against her head and neck . Her

hair hot as stones, her fingers reaching up to touch, smelling of

oil and salt as they came down, and sweet. Trees whirling with

leaves, rolling one after another downhill, dropping like green

stones into the sky. The river beneath her toes, cool as the black

earth a spade overturns, moving swiftly between the banks, a fast

rain running down a hard-packed road, the long clatter of small

pebbles.

Savella lay in the hold of the ship and listened. Sometimes

the water against the hull was the brown river of the village.

Other times it was the scraping of human nails. She would cross

herself and turn her head so that she could hear Pavlo’s deep,

solid breathing.

They were hardly ever allowed on deck. It seemed to Savella

that all of them had become another form of life, creatures God

had not intended, groping, grunting, stumbling, in a world that

constantly rocked and pitched, sometimes gently, sometimes

violently. There was the perpetual smell of sheepskin soiled with

human sweat, a reek of wet and salt and wool. Urine and feces.

Sweet. Rotten. Cattle that had bawled with fright and jarred

against one another in this same hold, their flesh, their breath,

hot and honeyed with chewed hay and saliva. Savella imagined the

long fields of dark green clover, the purple and pink and white

blossoms, the cows stepping slowly, their mouths working, calves

yanking at teats, emptying themselves in loud, watery streams of

brown. She could not hold the image. For behind the warm smell of

the cattle was the pierce of antiseptic with which they had washed

down the hold in Hamburg.

The darkness rolled. Someone cursed God. There was a burst of

retching. The stink of stomach acid. A heap of rotting tomatoes.

Smashed. Open. Savella’s own stomach reacted. Tried to heave up

its food in response. She put a clove of garlic to her nose.

Another roll. Sounds of choking and the splatter of liquid.

Savella leaned over Pavlo to see if the children had been

awakened. But the three of them continued to sleep. Legs and arms.

Twisted. In the woollen blankets.

The distance she had travelled from her home, her sense of

being detached, of being nowhere at all, of living in a world of

long water, nights of deep darkness and unusual rhythms, all this

rose up to obliterate or stupefy certain habits and instincts, so

that another element submerged in her soul was freed and thrust

upward into her mind and will lke a tall, needle-like column of

iron. Hard, painful, but satisfying. The sharper and harder this

column became the more Savella drew her strength and purpose from

it. The women chattered around her, dark and white, moving their

fingers and hands, but she sat amongst them quietly, eyes on Pavlo

smoking his pipe, occasionally illuminated by fire, and she

nurtured the iron needle that drove up through her being. Her

hands were motionless in her lap, but not limp.

Pavlo felt the strength in her. The hard dark ore that had

been pushed painfully to the surface. His head and stomach became

a slowly turning coldness. He left the men and spent several days

near the ladder that went up from the hold to the locked entry to

the lower deck. He could see slits of light, the outline of the

door.

The rain streamed over their bodies when the ship docked and

the hatch was finally opened. Every sight was extraordinary and

precise, well-lit and sharp-edged even in the storm. The shout of

gulls, the thud of hammer blows on shore, the hum of a fog horn,

Savella seized all of it, laughing to herself and holding Lesia’s

white hand, jiggling it, wind glancing off her cheek, her blouse

drenched and moulded tightly to her shoulders and chest. Salt and

water and cool air sliced like keen knives into her nostrils.

They boarded another train and rain fell away behind them and

colour dissolved the towers of cloud. Green hills peeled back to

stone and plain, trembling in the heat as if a great engine that

fueled the earth forced its exhaust up through a thousand small

ducts in the grass. It was as long as Savella’s hair, undulating

as if it were being combed from one horizon to another. It was as

slender as strands of water streaking over the rocks of a

creekbed. Twisting and churning and cracking open with sunlight.

“There is no end to it,” she said to Pavlo.

After many days the train blew out its air and steam and

stopped. Savella placed her feet awkwardly on the iron rungs and

stepped down to the boards. Persons spilled out around her,

tugging at suitcases and bundles of clothing and cookware. Lesia

fussed in her arms as sun stung the child’s face. Savella stared

at the stationhouse, at the windows and shingles, at the men in

dark uniforms with silver buttons and watch chains that spat heat.

She slowly made her way clear of the black clumps of people and

the station so she could see the rest of the city. There were

trees. houses painted white and made with wood, the sun yellow

over the rooftops and chimneys and over the grass and the bushes.

Away from the train’s shadow light flamed like a match on her back

so that it felt as if her skin were blistering. Lesia wailed.

There is water here. A river. I can smell it. The trees are

full of leaf and growing. There are no hills at my back or in

front of me. The sky is unending.

She found a bench and sat on it, shading Lesia by the curve

of her body. She gazed up at the blue light. Lesia became silent

and slept. A pain nicked and scratched everything within Savella.

The village was too far away. Pavlo was battling with the luggage,

keeping the boys by his legs, his face wet, talking to himself or

to Iakiv and Michael, jerking at the cases.

She strode in front of Pavlo. The heat made the buildings in

the city quiver, as if there were no foundation to them, as if

they were mirages which might at any moment disappear, leaving

Savella and her family abandoned to a perpetual horizon which

neither began nor came to any completion. She started to think

about cold water. A chill cup pressed to her cheek.

They spent the night in a large house where they were given

food and water and part of the floor to sleep on. Many others from

the train were also there. The children collapsed in tangled

positions against Savella’s legs. Next to them a heavy man with a

beard like a shovel raised his right arm higher and higher as he

argued with his wife. Another man bent his back like a sapling and

prayed out loud, an icon positioned on top of a small heap of

suitcases. Babies were crying on the floors above them. Several

windows were open so that a slender draft stirred about the rooms

which were bogged down with the day’s heat and odours of sausage

and sour milk and sweat. Two or three flies persisted in jostling

one another off Savella’s chin and eventually she grew too tired

to flap her hand at them.

Soon the sun took on a rich hue, like a syrup, and the rooms

glowed, the hair of the people in them shimmered as if it had all

been oiled, skin glinted like metal. Savella suddenly experienced

a surge of peacefulness in all parts of her body. She knew this

colour. It meant that soon the sun would set. How many times had

she gazed at this colour on the wheat, on the thatched roofs, on

the women hunched on benches next to the white walls, on the men

leading the glossy horses up from a drink at the river? Dust would

hang like a second sky. She watched the blaze in the room. She

closed her eyes as they brimmed with the burning whorl of light.

Then she opened them again.

She was fifty-four. But she often said to Pavlo, “I am the

young woman who came to Canada.” She still enjoyed his body. The

muscles were there, tight along his bones. She liked it best after

they had been working in the garden. Then he smelled like black

soil and growing plants and roots and water. This overpowered the

scent of sweat and soap and leather. He had smelled like earth and

crops and thunderstorms and sunlight when they were young and

lived in Ukraine. Even after he became a cobbler. When the farm in

Canada had not worked out, when he had brought them to the city

because they needed money and he could make shoes and boots, the

lines of dirt under his fingernails had become streaks of black

polish and his skin tasted like waxes and animal hides and tobacco

and dust. Then they had dug and planted the garden. When he bent

over his cabbages and ripped weeds from among his radishes and

lettuces and cucumbers, the strength of their growth was on his

hands and neck as he lay down next to her in the warm summer dark.

It was on Saturdays or Sundays and sometimes in the evenings

when they fussed over the garden together. Pavlo would encourage

their young son Joseph to pull up carrots with his cousin

Nicholas, Lesia’s boy. He picked the cucumbers himself,

getting them before they grew too large, and pickled them in huge

jars swirling with stalks of dill. She would point out something,

what worms had done, or slugs, or cabbage moths, and he would nod,

perhaps laying down a barrier of salt against the slugs, or

spraying soap and water over the cabbage leaves to discourage the

moths. Often she would picture the two of them as if she were

someone else watching them from the house. She kneeling by the

peas or beans in her maroon skirt and white headscarf. Her hands

black. He with his suspenders crossed over his slim back, standing

in the middle of the spinach and beet leaves, his trousers dark

columns rising out of the green, staring down, thinking,

wondering, a watering can in his fist, dripping, the spout rusted.

It came to her in the winter too, when she looked from the kitchen

into a white yard. If he had brought potatoes up out of the cellar

and cleaned them, even though it was January, his arms and chest

could remind her of the garden and the drenching yellow heat and

she would slip a hand over the bones in his shoulder and place her

mouth against the skin on his throat.

In the mornings she was alone in the backyard. It faced south

and the sun was on her hands and neck by ten o’clock. She worked

on the apple tree in the spring, pruning branches with a small saw

and a ladder. She loved the hot smell of the apple tree shavings

and would rub them between her palms, press her palms to her nose

and face. At the end of May she took a shovel and a fork and

turned the packed earth of the garden. She thumped the large

clumps of soil with the back of the shovel to break them up. The

surface of the garden would be dry but underneath it was still

damp and mud would creep up the sides of her boots to her skirt.

Dark slashes jumped across her cheeks. They dried to grey.

The seeding she did with Pavlo. She sprinkled the lettuce

seeds out of a salt shaker. Pavlo purchased the tomato plants from

a nursery and bent over, scooping with a trowel, he placed them in

the ground. As summer flooded the yard, she chopped at weeds with

the hoe, stepping back and forth on the narrow boards between the

rows. She enjoyed the shock that leaped up her arms with each

blow, the yielding of the soil, the stinging green scent of the

cut weed, the cool dirt on her fingers as she dug out the roots,

the tiny stones that slipped under her nails and bit. Her muscles

welcomed the work, she exulted in this stetching and binding and

swelling. Two hours in the garden and she could look up at the

blue sky silky with heat and feel she was in another country.

For Pavlo the garden was a piece of the farm that had not

worked for him and finally had not worked for Savella’s brother

either. Vasyl rarely entered the large garden plot. Sometimes he

came out and talked to them while they worked, hands in his

pockets. He brought up politics. How many shoes they had made at

the shop that week. He never mentioned the heads of lettuce Pavlo

held in his hand. Or the blood red tomatoes. Or the slim pods

Savella shelled. In a chair under the branches of the apple tree.

Pavlo himself never mentioned the farm. He had left it

behind. The dream had lost its colours when there was nothing to

eat. He had found a job and a house in the city. He had never

wanted to return to the flatness and the wind. Work in the city

was better than land that broke the bones in your arms and legs.

He washed his hands in the spray from the watering can. The liquid

mud dripped into the grass. The garden was better than the farm

had been. It could be controlled. Its distances were limited. It

grew most of their vegetables but it did not destroy them while it

did so. He could grip it in his hand like a boot that was being

stitched.

His back hurt when he leaned over the plants and this annoyed

him. He could see in the mirror that his shirt and pants did not

fit as well. He did not notice anything if he just looked at his

arms and legs. But mirrors and photographs showed him that his

shoulders and muscles seemed to be shrinking. “I am crawling back

into my bones,” he muttered. Even his head seemed smaller. The

wrinkles cut deeper into the flesh around his eyes.

“At least something is left.”

“What are you talking about?”

Savella was sitting up in bed as he came into the room and

closed the door. He shrugged and pulled his suspenders over his

shoulders. He lay next to her. She touched his arm. He twisted.

“Your hands are like torches. In the winter it is like

sleeping in a snowdrift. In the summer you are a pot of steam. It

is impossible to sleep. The room is already like an oven.”

“Nicholas walks past our icons as if they are going to bite

him.”

“Lesia and her family are under our roof. You can feed them.

You can pray for them.”

“They still talk about going to Russia to help Stalin.”

“No. It is just an idea. Each year they grow out of it a

little. They will live more and more here. Instead of out there.”

“How is the shop?”

“Not as many shoes. A few more boots.”

“All the sun will make the tomatoes rich.”

She stood in the middle of the prairie. It had become a

desert. The grass was gone and all the crops. Some stubble poked

like fork prongs up through the dirty yellow sand. A wind was

beginning over the flatness. Now and then it surged and yanked a

fence post out of the ground and hurled it several hundred feet.

It snapped three strands of barbed wire. They began to lash at the

ground. A small house was at a distance. Shingles burst from the

roof like a flock of crows. The open windows kept staring at her

with darkness. Boards were pried loose and tossed into the air.

Through the dust the sun suddenly struck her like an axe across

the face. Her hand came away from her face without any blood on

it. But her cheeks were burning. Flames sprang up her legs and her

skirt exploded. Her hair crackled and when she opened her mouth

black and greasy smoke poured out from between her teeth.

Michael sat on the porch. There were no lights on in the

house. The street was completely dark. His sleeves were rolled up

and his shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his chest. He was

smoking cigarettes down close to his fingers. The elm leaves would

move as if something were leaping from branch to branch. He could

hear the sound of tires rolling over the pavement on Main Street.

A leaf clattered as it fell down through branches and twigs. He

remembered swaying from side to side in the dark as a cart rattled

between cherry trees. The stars had been fastened to the trees

just as they were tonight. Warm and sticky and motionless. Father

had cleaned a fish once under stars as heavy as crushed rock. The

blood had no colour.

Everything is long and black and comfortable. I shouldn’t

have to get up. I ought to be able to stay here. There’s no

people. No shouting. No talking. No shoes scraping over the

gravel. No cars. No light. I’m warm. I’m not thinking. I’m

watching the blackness move over the city. I’m smelling the grass

and the bark on the elms. The cool dampness growing over the lawns

and bushes. Why should I have to get up?

More leaves crashed down through the branches and onto the

road. They were as loud as stones. An insect snarled near

Michael’s arm and disappeared. For an instant he was conscious of

a rose and then there was a breath of dust. He fell asleep. The

leaves continued to drop, landing on the ground with a crack, as

if something small was being broken in two.

christianity malfunction

2011-06-07T08:07:00.000-07:00

How many times have people welcomed you to church by saying, "Welcome to the House of the Lord." Yet that's not a New Testament teaching. It's an Old Testament point of view, when God's presence filled the holy of holies of the Temple in Jerusalem. But that all ended with the coming of the Holy Spirit and the destruction of the brick and mortar Temple by the Romans. The apostles tell us believers are the Temple of God now, living stones built up together into a living Temple where God dwells. So why do we persist in saying the building is the Temple when the Biblical teaching is that the people are the Temple?

Have you noticed how some people are saying we should go back to keeping the Sabbath (and not just Seventh Day Adventists)? Some have gone so far as to insist the passage where Jesus says, "Many will say to me Lord, Lord, and I'll say to them, I never knew you, depart from me you workers of iniquity," is referring to people who don't keep the Sabbath. In other words, faith in Jesus and his Cross and Resurrection isn't enough, no, you have to keep the Sabbath too, and then you can be saved. There is no New Testament support for such a position. Jesus himself broke the Sabbath by eating and healing on Saturdays. He asserted that he was Lord of the Sabbath and that the Sabbath wasn't Lord of him. He also insisted that the Sabbath was made for humans, to bless them, and that humans weren't made to serve the Sabbath as if it were some kind of deity. Yet some Christians persist that we were meant to serve the Sabbath and God won't bless us until we do.

The Old Testament is what you follow if you embrace Judaism. Jesus may have used the Greek version of the Old Testament as his Bible but everything changed with his coming and with his Crucifixion and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. As the apostles wrote gospels and letters a new Bible was formed, a New Testament. It is through Jesus, the Messiah, and the New Testament that we look back at the Old Testament and view its prophecies and teachings. Jesus interprets its proper meaning for us - "You have heard it said (in the Old Testament) such and such a thing, but I say to you that it's different now and that the fulfillment of the Law is found in grace, mercy, love and justice, not more rules, and not a Law that acts as if the Messiah hasn't come."

For indeed this present-day "back to the Old Testament" movement is just another version of the people Jesus clashed with and the apostles, people who said you couldn't find God if you weren't circumcised, didn't keep the Sabbath, didn't eat kosher according to the dietary laws found in Leviticus, didn't keep the commandments and the Law, didn't follow the holy feast days. But this is not Christianity - it's Judaism. If you want to convert and be a Jew, go ahead, but don't call it Christianity because it's the farthest thing from Christianity. Jesus and his teachings are authoritative for the Christian, not an Old Testament quoted and utilized as if Jesus the Messiah has never come and transformed and fulfilled everything. The Law may have come with Moses but grace and truth came with the Messiah and it's that grace and truth that a Christian lives by, not the teachings of Moses.

We learn from the Old Testament. We understand its true meaning by way of Jesus and the New Testament. But we do not take it on its own as if Jesus never came. We don't run around talking about "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" as if Jesus didn't change the whole meaning of that verse. We bear in mind that if the Law and the Old Testament could save then there was no reason for Jesus to come and die on the Cross. There would have been no reason for 1st century Jews to repent and worship Jesus, they could have just stuck to Moses. Jesus came because the Old Testament was not enough and could not save and it's still not enough and still can't save. Redemption in its pages only lies in embracing the prophecies of the Messiah and worshiping Jesus as Redeemer and Lord and God. Not in following the Old Testament Law that saved no one and still doesn't.

In the spirit of Jesus, and through his eyes, we can learn what we're meant to learn from the Old Testament, and there's much that can be learned if we approach the Hebrew Scriptures properly. But it is not the book Christians live by and establish as their sole authority. The New Testament is authoritative for Christians and it is Jesus and his words Christians live by. There is a big difference between Old and New and returning to live under the Law is spitting, in my opinion, on the Cross of Jesus Christ and thereby rejecting the heart and soul of the Christian faith.

two ministers

2011-06-07T08:03:00.000-07:00

this story is posted in dedication to Len Hjalmarson, now pastoring in Ontario, who - 20 years ago - said he liked the story because it was about grace - may the God of all grace be with you in this newest part of your journey

TWO MINISTERS

Once upon a time there were two men who went to seminary together.

One of them won high praise from his professors and peers. He was a straight A student. He had his theology down pat. His oratorical powers were smooth and flawless. His skills in administration were unequaled when he was sent out on pastoral field work. All agreed he would become a model minister. And indeed, any church he pastored grew by leaps and bounds. There was no subject he could not preach on masterfully, there was no question he did not have all the answers for. People flocked to hear his powerful preaching, to experience his energetic and charismatic leadership. Soon he became so popular he was constantly away from his own church, preaching and teaching throughout the country. The people were sorry to have him away so much, but they shrugged their shoulders and accepted that he was God’s man for the hour.

The only thing they regretted was they could never get close to him. He was too busy and his flawlessness made him too impersonal. if you did manage to arrange for a counseling session with him, he could scarcely empathize with you in your personal struggle or sorrow because everything was perfect in his mind and in his life. The cool way in which he counseled you, giving solution after solution to every problem, reminded some of a well-functioning machine. But, his people reasoned, he was a great man, and that was part of being a great man. So they swallowed their hurts and basked in his oratorical power, his theological acumen, his dynamic leadership, and his widespread reputation as a man of God’s Word. In church, under the spell of his voice, all became well inside anyway. It was only at home, away from his voice, that the hurts smarted again.

The other of the two men also went to seminary the same time as the first man did. But they had little in common. This other man was not a straight A student. He fidgeted too much when he was speaking in public and sometimes stuttered. He had a hard time organizing things. He often left questions unanswered on theological examinations, claiming he could discover no one solution to the dilemma of trying to discern what God thought about things God had never spoken about. The seminary did not think he would do well in the ministry and shunted him off to a small pastorate in the backwoods. The congregation did not grow in size. His preaching was quiet and he did not have a lot of solid theological answers when it came to group Bible studies. People complained they had to go home and think about what the answers might be. The man was not charismatic, did not attract a lot of attention at church socials or inter-church events or denominational conventions.

But his people shrugged and smiled. Their pastor was not perfect, but they loved him because he loved them. No matter who came to him, or when, he had time for them, and a listening ear for them, and empathy for them. He did not have a lot of answers for those who came to him in pain and dismay, but he had faith and compassion and he gave them hope. They all reflected on how little they thought of him during the week, or after a counseling session, but rather how much they thought of God. It was as if God leaked out of all the seams in their minister’s professional ability and theological erudition. How easy it was to get close to him, yet close to God at the same time.

During the course of the two men’s lives, the two men did not see much of each other. The first man had no time for the disorganized, inefficient, stuttering little pastor the second man became. He ridiculed him before others and often considered that the man was not a strong Christian because his theology was so unstructured. He could not understand why his congregation did not send him packing. As the first man became more and more famous, the stuttering pastor became less and less of an entity to him, except that the first man often caricatured the second man’s personality in his sermons, to illustrate the type of godless and unscriptural minister the age had produced, to the Church’s shame.

Finally, the two ministers died and came into the presence of God. The first man was smiling and confident and stood without fear before his Maker. The second man was quiet and sober and knelt with his head down before his God. But when God turned to the first man, God’s voice and words shattered the man’s flawless composure and drove the smile from his face.

God said to him, “Get out of my sight. All your precise theology and precise prayers have made a horrible racket before me. Not a bit of it was done with love or compassion. Your whole life was a blasphemy. Leave my presence at once.”

The first man collapsed in fear at these words and lay weeping. God turned to the second man. “But I say to you, well done. Stay with me. Your love for God and people has been my joy and crown.”

But the second man looked up at God and said, “I cannot stay and remain with you unless I bring this hurting brother with me.”

God replied, “If you shall accept him, I also will accept him.”

The second man turned and looked at the first man and said in a strong voice: “I do accept him.” And God looked at the first man and smiled, saying, “Join us and remain in the love and presence of your God.”

The first man stared up at the second man in both thankfulness and shame. To his surprise, the man seemed to change before his eyes. In that moment, he saw that the second man was the Christ.

a flawed man

2011-06-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

A Flawed Man

by Murray Andrew Pura

Now there was a man named Vincent. Vincent was not a perfect man. Far from it. Nor did he try to pretend that he was. His imperfections displayed themselves in many ways. He was too busy for church. Now and then he had been seen puffing on a cigar or drinking a beer. He was rough and loud and usually unshaven and always dressed in his sloppiest clothes. But what was most evident and distressing to those who were perfect was Vincent’s language. Every sentence he spoke crackled with curse words. He could not butter his bread or pour himself a coffee without swearing. And since he was the town’s only veterinarian most people had to put up with his coarse language several times a year. When they brought their calf in. Or their dog. Or cat. Or he came out to their farm or ranch to look after a sick horse or cow. Many of the good church folk shook their heads and grit their teeth and muttered under their breaths, “It’s what comes out of a man that defiles him.”

“Why do you put up with it?” demanded the good church folk from other towns. “Go to another veterinarian.”

“He is the only one in town,” was the reply.

“So go to another town.”

“Well, his mouth is bad. But he is good with our horses.”

“With his language,” the good church folk from other towns growled, “he will be busy shoeing horses in hell one day.”

So the years hurried by. Vincent rushed around in his clinic petting dogs and cats and hamsters and giving them needles and he plodded out to the farms and ranches in snow, sleet and drenching rain and took care of the horses and cows and sheep. The perfect people stood and watched and listened and shook their heads and were glad to see him gone.

“One day,” they promised each other, “he will be gone for good and we will get ourselves a better vet.”

“Amen,” the good church folk chimed in.

And that day came. Vincent died. His funeral was not held at a church but at a funeral home. Still, a lot of people and a lot of children attended. Perfect and imperfect, churched and unchurched. Even stray dogs and cats hung around the parking lot and hired hands claimed the livestock were restless that afternoon. It was not a long funeral. One of the local ranchers gave a brief eulogy.

“He was far from perfect,” the rancher said, “but he was there for our horses and dogs. Maybe that’ll count for something. God have mercy on his soul.”

“And his language,” murmured a preacher in the back row.

Meanwhile, Vincent’s spirit stood before the gates of heaven. Tall angels with unsmiling faces stood on either side of him. His rough and unkempt head was hung in shame. Suddenly the gates swung open and a young boy with curly black hair stood in front of him.

“What are you doing here, Vincent?” asked the boy.

“I don’t know,” replied Vincent, head still down. “I did not live a perfect life.”

“No. You did not.” The boy stepped closer. “Lift your head, Vincent. Look at me. Do you know who I am?”

Vincent peered at the young face. “No.”

The boy smiled. “But I know who you are. The man who loved horses. The man who loved dogs. The man who loved sheep.”

For the first time Vincent noticed the boy held a lamb in his arms. It had a mop of thick black curls and the boy was petting it. Vincent smiled back hesitantly. “You love sheep too.”

“That’s true. When I was born there were sheep nearby. As a matter of fact, there were animals all around me. They were the witnesses of my birth and my chief guardians as I drew my first breaths.”

Vincent scrunched up his face. “Who are you?”

“Don’t you know the Christmas story, Vincent?”

Vincent’s jaw dropped. The boy laughed. “Come inside and I’ll tell you about it.”

But Vincent hung back. “I‘m not worthy to come with you into heaven. God knows I’m a flawed man.”

The boy gazed at him with clear eyes. “Yes. But when I was hungry, you fed me. When I was thirsty, you gave me water to drink. I was unknown to you, but you took me into your home. I was naked, but you made sure I was warm. I was sick and you took care of me. I was trapped and caged, but that did not stop you from coming to me.”

Vincent shook his head. “You’re mistaken. I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“When you did it to the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, Vincent, you did it to me.”

Suddenly there were animals running out from between the gates and swirling around Vincent and the boy. Horses, colts, cows and calves, black dogs and white dogs and red dogs, yellow cats and orange cats, brown donkeys and grey donkeys. There was whinnying and yelping and purring and braying and Vincent knelt among the animals and took them in his arms. The boy laughed when they eventually knocked Vincent down and the dogs pounced on his face and licked furiously with their tongues.

“Come inside, Vincent the Righteous,” the boy said, “there are things to see that have been waiting for you since the creation of the earth.”

But Vincent stood up and the happiness slipped from his face. “It won’t work. You know I’m a flawed man. I won’t fit in.”

“Actually, Vincent, you’ll fit in very well,” the boy promised. “The only persons here with me are the ones who are flawed. They are the ones I can help. The others who think they are perfect I can’t do anything for.”

“I’m not righteous, you know that,” Vincent argued.

The boy came over and took hold of Vincent’s hand. His grip was strong. “Haven’t you ever read it in the book?” he asked. “The man who cares for his animals is a righteous man.”

And so Vincent the flawed man, the imperfect man, the righteous man, walked through the gates holding the hand of the Christ child accompanied by all the four-footed throngs of heaven.

for Nahanni
for Charlie

meadowlark

2011-06-07T07:52:00.000-07:00

Meadowlark

A man came to America with his family long ago on Christmas Eve. There were six of them, the man with his great brown beard, his wife, two daughters and two sons. They walked off the train and hired a young man and his wagon to take them to their homestead. Whatever they owned they carried with them in large cloth bags.
It was not a long wagon ride, about forty-five minutes. It was a fine spring day, cool, but with plenty of sunshine and blue sky. The prairie spread for miles all around them. Finally the driver pulled his two black horses to a stop. He pointed to a farmhouse a half-mile away across the fields.

“That is Mister Pishsky’s place. It is his job to help you newcomers to find your land and get off to a decent start. I must go on. I have other errands to run and tomorrow is Christmas Day.”

“Can’t you take us up to his door?” asked the mother. “There is a good wagon track there.”

“I have other errands to run. I am late.”

The father grunted and jumped down off the wagon. He helped his wife and children down. Then he gave the driver three coins. “Thank you,” he said. The driver nodded and shook the reins. He wheeled the wagon in a circle and headed back to town.
The family began to walk up the wagon track towards the farmhouse. The bags were heavy. Every now and then they stopped to rest.

“I am thirsty, Papa,” said one of the young boys.

“At the farmhouse there will be a good well.”

“But how much longer will it take us? The farmhouse is so very far away.”

“No, no. It is not so far. Come. Let us go a little bit further and then we will rest again. It is a wonderful day for walking. I thank God.”

They all picked up their bundles and started forward along the wagon track once again. Suddenly the sunlight vanished as if the sun had set. Great black clouds filled the sky and a wind slashed across the fields. It began to hail and then it began to snow. The family crouched down in the wagon track and pulled their bags over their heads.
Soon the wind was blowing so fast and furiously the air was completely white. The father stretched out his hand and could not see his fingers. The temperature dropped and dropped. The children began to shiver.

“Come,” said the father standing up. “We will be warmer if we walk.”

The family tried to walk but they slipped and staggered and grew confused.

“This is the way we should go.”

“No. This way.”

“You are both wrong. The farmhouse is in this direction.”

Finally the father and mother made everyone sit down.

“You father will go ahead to the farmhouse and bring back help,” said the mother. “And I will stay with you children.”

“Papa, will you be all right?” cried one of the daughters.

The father’s beard was covered in frost. “Of course. The house is only a little ways. I will be back in no time. I will take big steps.”

“Wait!”

The mother held out a long spool of string. “Hold onto one end of this. I will let the spool unwind as you walk. Then you will be able to find us again in the storm.”

So the father wrapped several lengths of string around one of his hands and began to walk forward. He could just see the ruts of the wagon track and he followed them, his head down. The wind shoved and pushed and tried to knock him down. His face and his fingers began to freeze. He would not stop. The string played out behind him as if he were a fish on a line. The thought made him laugh out loud but snow filled his mouth and he did not laugh again.

He lost all sense of time as he trudged forward. The blizzard howled in his ears. There was nothing but white. He could not see the track anymore but he could feel the outline of one of the ruts and he kept his right foot in it and kept on. The string kept unwinding.

He grew colder and colder. It became increasingly difficult to walk since the wind had shifted around in front of him and kept pushing him back. His breath came in rasps. Only the thought of his wife and children freezing to death kept him going. He fell once and got up. Fell again and got up. Fell a third time and sat there a while, stupefied. Then he hurled himself to his feet with a roar and lurched forward once more.

He counted to one thousand once, twice, three, four times. Still he did not reach the farmhouse. His steps grew shorter and shorter and he walked more and more slowly. Perhaps I have walked past the farmhouse, he thought. Perhaps I have missed it in the storm. I should turn back.

No, do not turn back, a voice inside him said.

I must. I have walked past the farmhouse.

Do not turn back.

I must.

He was still arguing with himself when suddenly the string became rigid. He tugged but there was no more of it. If he dropped the end of the string and went forward he might never find his family again even if he did find the farmhouse. He stood still for several minutes while the wind chilled him to the bone.

I cannot go any further, he thought. I cannot let go of the string. I can either stay here and die or go back and die with my family. My God, there is nothing more I can do.

He turned around, fell, got up, and began wrapping the string around his hand as he walked back the way he had come. He would take them all in his arms, he would hug them and kiss them and say a prayer, and then the wind would cover them with a blanket of snow and they would fall asleep. It would not take long. He kept his head down and put one foot in front of another. They were like blocks of ice.

Suddenly a bird sang. A beautiful high sweet song that it repeated again and again. He stopped. He was certain he had imagined it. But it came once more.

It was a lark. He did not know what kind of lark for this country was new to him. But it was a lark. Small they are, he thought. Just thin bones and even thinner feathers. How is it that it has survived the storm this long? How can it sing when the storm is so brutal and blinding? As he thought all this the lark sang once again, as if sunlight had been collected in its throat and released as a sound.

A surge went through the man. My God, he prayed, if the bird can defy the storm, so can I. If the bird can choose to live despite all of this, so can I. He turned around and lurched back to the end of the string. Then he bent down, one length of string wrapped around his right hand, and began to untie the laces of his tall boots. He fought with the numbness in his fingers and the ice on the knots. But one after another he pulled the laces free.

Each was about two feet long. He tied one to the end of the string and tied the second lace to the first. Then he stood up and looked through the frost on his eyelashes into the white of the storm. He took one step. Another step. A third and fourth. He reached the end of the laces. My God, I am not done yet, he said between his blue lips. He stretched out his left hand as far as he could into the driving snow. And he touched a wall.

Wood it was. He scratched with his fingers. Wood nailed and painted. He tied the end of the lace firmly to a belt loop on his pants. Then he leaned forward and hammered on the wall with both his fists.

“What is it? Who is it? What are you doing out in this storm?” A small man rushed around the corner of his house with an iron poker in his hand. He stopped dead when he saw the bearded man leaning against the wall of the house covered in snow and ice.

“My family is caught in the storm,” the bearded man rasped. “Help me get back to them.”

The small man got his wagon out of the barn and harnessed one of his horses to the front of it. The bearded man rolled up the string as they drove into the storm and they found the family huddled up under their bags, wearing all the clothing they had, white-skinned and half-dead. They got them into the wagon and followed their own tracks back to the house before the blizzard filled them in. The family staggered inside and sat in front of a roaring fire where the small man’s wife and children gave them dry clothes to wear and topped them up with hot tea and brought them back to life. The Christmas tree gliitered with warm lights and at the top, instead of a star or an angel, there was a paper bird one of the children had made in school.

For years afterwards people would come up to the bearded man’s homestead in dry and dusty weather. They might ask for directions or a drink of water. They would look at the sign over the front door.

“Most people put up paintings of eagles and hawks when it comes to birds,” they would say. “Or paintings of deer or bear or a wolf if they want a strong animal.”

“Why a meadowlark?” they would ask. “Why that?”

two for a penny

2011-06-03T13:50:00.001-07:00

Two For A Penny

She always told him, "God sees the sparrow fall. Put out seed.

Fill the birdbath with fresh water. Elijah was fed by ravens. The Holy

Spirit perched on Jesus like a dove. If you have faith you will rise up

with the wings of an eagle. Never forget the birds. They are closest to

God."

As a boy, he would answer her, "What about people?"

"Birds don't sin. People do."

"But doesn't God love people?"

She would sniff. "Look at the birds in the sky. They don't sow

seeds or harvest crops. They don't store wheat in barns. Our Father in

heaven takes care of them."

"Father Duchak says Jesus wants us to love one another."

"Jesus. Do you know what Jesus says? Not one sparrow can fall to

the ground without God knowing about it. That's how important birds are to

God."

"Aren't we worth more than sparrows?"

"It's anybody's guess. But if you want to do the kind of good deeds

that will make up for the evil in your life you will put out bird seed

every day. And not the cheap kind either."

The birds had come and gone from her yard thousands of times since

those talks. Now he had phoned to say he was bringing her sister by for a

visit. It was the Orthodox Christmas season, two weeks later than the usual

holiday, what they always called Ukrainian Christmas because Ukrainian

Catholics kept the same religious calendar as the Orthodox Church. The snow

was thick on the ground. She spotted them through the frost on the window

before they rang the front doorbell.

“Go around to the back!” she called and rapped her fist on

the glass. They looked at her and she swept her arm toward the

side of the house two or three times. “To the back!”

She got there ahead of them but waited until her nephew

knocked. Then she turned the lock and opened the heavy wooden

door. Her body cringed. “Hurry up, hurry up,” she said, starting

to close the door before her nephew and her sister were in the

house, “you’re letting the cold air in.”

Her nephew hugged her. “Hi, Aunt Helen. Merry Ukrainian Christmas.”

“Don’t take your coat off yet. I need you to do something.”

She took a key and keychain from a rack beside his head. “My

neighbour left a big sack of bird seed in the shed. The feeder is

right by the kitchen window. It hasn’t been filled for days.”

He took the key. “How much do you want me to put out?”

“You can see the feeding station, can’t you? The poor

creatures must be starving. Thank you, darling.” She suddenly

leaned forward and puckered her lips. Her nephew gave her a

quick kiss and went out.

The sister stood just inside the door with a heavy black coat

on. “Hello, Helen. Merry Christmas.”

Helen poked a hanger at her. “Here.”

“I’m chilled. I’d like to keep my coat on for awhile.

“Suit yourself.” She snapped the hanger back on the steel rod

in the closet. The other hangers swayed and clattered.

Helen filled a pink kettle with tap water and put it on the

stove. Then she placed cream and sugar on the kitchen table. It

was covered with an oilcloth of yellow and white daisies. Her

sister followed her into the kitchen. She laughed. Lines and

wrinkles popped up on Helen’s face and her eyes narrowed. “What’s

so funny?”

The nephew was grinning in at the kitchen window and flapping

his arms like a bird. Helen went over and called, “Never mind

fooling around! Put out the seed!”

What? Matthew mouthed back at her.

Helen jabbed a finger at the feeding station. “Put out the

seed!”

Matthew hefted the 50 pound bag in his arms and began to pour

black sunflower seeds into a wooden trough covered by a wooden

roof painted with blue jays. Helen watched, her lips in a pout.

The kettle started to whistle and steam shot up to the ceiling.

“Of all the times to be acting the clown,” she said.

She took the kettle off the element. A ceramic teapot in the

shape of a hen was on the counter. She poured the hot water into

it, set the kettle down, and placed two teabags in the pot. Then

she snugged a tea cozy down over it. It had humming birds on it.

She put the teapot on the table next to the cream and sugar.

“Are you coming or going?” she asked her sister.

“What?”

“Are you going to sit down and have some tea?”

“All right.”

“There’s cups and saucers in the cupboard over the sink.”

Helen walked out to the dining room and opened the china

cabinet. She came back with her own cup and saucer and placed them

on the table. Then she sat down and removed the cozy and poured

tea into the cup. It had a gold trim. The tea came out yellow.

“It’s weak,” said her sister, coming back to the table with a

chipped cup and saucer. “You should wait a little longer.”

“It’s fine as it is.” Helen put the cozy back over the pot.

They sat at the table, one at either end. A thick black Bible,

speckled with bits of sugar, lay beside the creamer. They heard the

thump of the shed door. Then the crunch of Matthew’s boots over

the snow on the sidewalk. Helen stirred sugar in her cup and

looked over her sister’s head. The spoon clicked against the sides

of the cup. There was a gust of icy air.

“Close the door behind you!” she called.

Matthew grunted as he removed his boots. The hangers jangled

as he hung up his jacket. Helen looked out the window. He came

into the kitchen rubbing his hands together.

“Must be 20 below,” he smiled.

“It may take days for the birds to come back,” said Helen.

“There hasn’t been seeds there since the weekend.”

Matthew sat down between the two sisters. “Couldn’t get here

any sooner.”

“You could have come after school.”

“I have classes at the university until ten on Mondays.”

“The cups are in the cupboard over the sink.”

Matthew got up and crossed the kitchen floor. “What kinds of

birds do you get here, Aunt Helen?”

“All kinds. Mountain chickadees. Chestnut-backed chickadees.

Now and then a white-breasted nuthatch. Blue jays. Northern

flickers. I love the northern flickers. They have big black spots

all over their chest. And a beautiful black crescent.”

“What about the summertime?”

Helen laughed. “The hummingbirds come and fight over the

water and honey I put out. The rufous and the calliope. They dive

bomb one another. And I get yellow birds. They’re wonderful.

The townsend’s warbler. Wilson’s warbler. Western tanager. It’s as

if someone took scissors to the sun and snip-snip, a bird.”

They looked out the window at the feeding station. It was

black with seeds but no birds had flown in to eat them. “It will

take days,” said Helen.

“Do you want some tea, Aunt Nellie?” asked Matthew tugging

the cozy off the teapot.

The tea was a dark brown.

“Is that too strong for you, Aunt?”

“I put in lots of cream.”

Helen was staring out the window. “There are some fox

sparrows on the fence on the other side of the lane. And chipping

sparrows on my neighbour’s clothesline.”

“Where?” asked Matthew.

Helen pointed. “Right over there. See them?”

“How can you tell what they are? They just look black to me.”

“I’m not blind.” Helen slid a book into the centre of the

table. “Take a look. Their pictures are in there.”

“I believe you.”

“Go ahead.”

Matthew picked up the book and flipped through the pages.

There were hundreds of colour photographs. “What an incredible

book.”

“My niece in Toronto bought that for me. Heather. She signed

it in the front.”

“I see that. It looks great. Aunt Helen, I’m working on this

project for school. Kind of a geneology. A family history. That’s

why I asked Aunt Nellie to join us today. She’s been telling me

about what happened during the war.”

Helen clicked her spoon around the inside of her cup. “What

has she been telling you?”

“You must have known her husband. And her son.”

“I knew them.”

“She was talking about how they were in Europe when the war

broke out. The Germans rounded them up. She never saw her son or

her husband again. She was taken back to Germany and forced to

work in a factory in Berlin.”

Helen dropped her spoon on the oilcloth and leaned across the

table. Her eyes were green and white. She spoke rapidly and loudly

in Ukrainian. Nellie lifted her hands away from her cup and

responded in short sharp sentences in Ukrainian. Helen looked at

Matthew.

“So if you are listening to her why are you coming to me?

What do you need me for?”

“I want to know what you remember about Aunt Nellie’s son and

husband.”

“Why are you asking me? You already talked to her.”

“Aunt Helen. Of course I talked to her. It was her son. It

was her husband.”

“She was the one who talked them into it. Her and her

Communist Party. We must go and help Stalin. We must go and help

the Soviet Union. We will build a new Ukraine. She dragged them

over there. Nicholas was a beautiful boy. He waited on me hand and

foot. Shovelled my sidewalk. Brought me groceries. Never forgot

the bird seed. A Clark’s nutcracker fed right out of his hand. Off

to Russia. Stalin had starved everyone to death. Still she

wouldn’t come home. The Germans attacked across the border and

shot Nicholas. And her husband. But they didn’t shoot her.”

“I lost my son,” said Nellie.

“You had no business taking him there. He belonged here.”

“What do you think it did? It broke me in two. I did not want

it.”

“Then why did you stay? You saw what Stalin did.”

“I did not know the Germans would come.”

“You knew.”

A large bird landed at the feeder and began to probe at the

seeds with its long beak. There were black spots on its chest.

“Don’t move,” Helen whispered. “It’s a northern flicker.”

But Nellie slapped the flat of her hand against the table. “I

did not want it!”

The bird jerked its head at the window. It spread its wings

and vanished. Helen threw a hand at her sister.

“Look what you have done! You destroy everything!”

Nellie sat back in her seat and murmured a phrase in

Ukrainian. Matthew traced the pattern of a daisy on the oilcloth with his

finger. Then he started to collect the cups and saucers.

“What are you doing?” asked Helen.

“We should go.”

“Sit down. I will put on the kettle. You can do with some

fresh tea.”

“Aunt Helen. I don’t want to see you two fight.”

“We are not going to fight.”

She walked to the counter and picked up the kettle and ran

the tap water. Then she put the kettle on the stove. She came back

to the table and picked up the teapot. The cozy was lying beside

it. She placed her hand on the side of the pot. It was warm. She

glanced out the window at the mound of black seed under the small

wooden roof. Already a small bird had made its way the feeder and was

thrusting its beak in and out of the black shells with short sharp

stabs.

"His eye is on the sparrow," she said.

the change-of-heart evangelist

2011-06-03T08:22:00.000-07:00

The Evangelist

by Murray Andrew Pura

There was a man of God. And everywhere this man preached churches and auditoriums were packed and thousands came to believe in Christ. He travelled all over the world. He crossed and re-crossed the oceans. Millions became converts to Christianity because of him. He slept in snatches. He only saw his wife and children two or three times a month. His children mailed him packages of their drawings which he never had time to open. “I am a man on a mission,” he said, “and that mission is to save the lost.”

One rainy day the evangelist sat down with his board of directors. “You know,” he told them, “something is not right.”

“What’s the problem?” they asked him.

“Well, I have been reading about the state of Christianity here in the western world. There are as many divorces among Christians as there are among any other group in our society. Almost as many cases of wife abuse and child abuse. Almost as many addicted to pornography and gambling. Almost as many racists and warmongers.”

“So what’s the problem?” they asked him.

“If the Holy Spirit really is in our converts,” he replied, “they ought to be better than that.”

They laughed and slapped him on the back. “These things take time. Why do you think Paul had to write so many letters of correction and instruction? You just keep bringing them into the Kingdom and after awhile the sheer weight of numbers will make a difference.”

So the evangelist kept on preaching in packed churches and packed auditoriums and thousands and millions kept giving their lives to Christ. But the world did not change. It seemed to the evangelist that it was getting worse. And for all the impact his converts had on society they might as well have never been.

“Nothing has changed,” he told his board of directors a year later.

“What is it you want to change?” they asked him.

“I want marriage to be stronger in our churches,” he replied. “I want to see wife and child abuse eliminated. I want to see racism eradicated. I want to see Christianity make a difference to right and wrong and the sacredness of human life. I want more integrity. More justice. More courage.”

They smiled and shook their heads. “The pollsters can’t measure the work of God in a human life,” they chuckled. “It isn’t a question of divorce or abuse or racism. Or integrity or justice. It’s simply a matter of trusting God.”

“What should I do?” he asked them.

“Just keep on preaching and saving the lost,” they told him. “Once they are in a church program for awhile they will change into the kind of people they are meant to be.”

“I’m not so sure,” he responded. “Why haven’t those changes happened by now?”
They grinned and shook their heads. “These things take time. Keep your head. Just continue to do the work of God.”

So the evangelist went back to the halls and arenas and millions came and millions believed and another year went by and still the world did not change and still the church seemed to be making no difference. So one warm night in Atlanta the evangelist came to the pulpit and poured out his heart. Only a few hundred came to Christ. The following night only a few dozen. The final night none.

“What’s going on?” the board of directors demanded.

“I am telling the people about Christ as I have always done,” the evangelist replied.

“No, that can’t be,” they challenged him, “because the response is no longer the same.”

“Well, it’s true that I have added a few things to my messages,” he admitted.

“What things?” they snapped.

“Come to Toronto next week and find out,” he invited them.

They did. For three nights they sat in the Sky Dome and listened to him. On the first night, he told the crowds that if they believed in Christ they had to be ready to face contempt and disgust and hatred. On the second night, he told the crowds they might never have cars or homes or TVs or even a proper place to sleep again. On the third night, he told them that if they wanted to believe in Christ they had to be ready to die.

The board of directors held an impromptu meeting in the evangelist’s hotel room at midnight. “This is totally unacceptable,” they said.

“Why?” he asked them.

“You are not being Biblical,” they growled.

“Jesus told us to carry a cross like he did,” the evangelist answered.

“First get them saved,” they demanded, “then you can tell them about the cross.”

“Jesus said the son of man had nowhere to lay his head,” the evangelist spoke up again.

“You do not tell new converts the hard things!” they barked.

“In the sixth chapter of John, “ the evangelist reminded them, “Jesus said things that were so hard most of his converts gave up on him.”

“They were disciples,” the board of directors shot back, “not new believers.”

“We do not even say hard things to disciples,” he responded.

“Leave that to the church programs,” they muttered. “You do the work of an evangelist.”

“Jesus told the rich young ruler,” he said, “to sell all he had and then follow him.”

“Never mind,” the board warned. “The bottom line is this. Bring the people into the Kingdom or you’re fired.”

The next week the evangelist was in New York. Come and die, he told the crowds. Give up your dreams and schemes and take on God’s, he preached. Pick up the thing that can kill you and carry it, he shouted. Go where women and men are most desperate and find God’s salvation, he promised. Give away your money, give away your guns, give away your land, and you will find treasure in heaven, he challenged, and then come and follow Jesus. In one week only three hundred people gave their lives to Christ. The board of directors fired the evangelist as they crowded into the washroom after him at the completion of his last message. “Your mission,” they snarled, “is finished.”

The evangelist went home to his family and stayed with them a year. Then they boarded a camper together and drove to Mexico. Old friends remembered him. Although another evangelist now spoke at all the big auditoriums in the big cities they found him a few churches and a few halls to speak at. He spent a month in Mexico emptying those halls and churches. Only two hundred people decided to believe in the Jesus he was preaching about. Then the evangelist followed the spring into Texas and the American South.

Come and die, he preached, and he emptied halls from Austin to Nashville. Give up your authority, give up your hatred, give up your racism, give up your prestige, he pleaded, and eight people became Christians after four days in Richmond. His blood, his body, that’s all you need, he said in Orlando. Get rid of your toys and follow Christ and heal a hundred people’s lives. “If you want holiness in every bone and fiber of your being, follow Jesus,” he whispered in Washington. “If you want to be turned inside out and live upside down, follow Jesus. If you want to be a stranger, a pilgrim, an unknown on this earth, follow Jesus.” “His evangelism,” ministers throughout America concluded, “is unbalanced.” “Maybe, maybe,” some other ministers murmured, “but when his converts come to our churches they are not the ones who say, Meet my needs, or, I don’t like the worship music, or, Those children are too black and too loud. His converts are the ones who come and try to live out all the teachings of Jesus.”

For years he drove the camper from city to city and from town to town. Two persons came to Christ in one place. Five in another. Sixteen somewhere else. Always in small halls. Always with smaller and smaller crowds. But on his second and third runs through those cities and towns many ministers attended and encouraged all sorts of people to join them. The physically and mentally challenged. The poor. Battered women. Men just out of prison. The unhappy rich. The burnt out powerful. The cynics. The bitter. The angry. The obsessed. “One convert to Christ from his preaching,” the ministers said, “is the equal of a thousand already warming our pews.” Only a handful might respond to his messages, pastors in Dallas and Chicago and Los Angeles conceded, but those handfuls were changing the face of America.

One night when they were camped in a trailer park near Phoenix he laid down on his bed and died. There were drawings all around him and he had stopped speaking in the middle of a story to his two youngest, David and Rachel. “So the man gave up everything,” he was saying, “for this incredible pearl.” Some ministers in Europe and North America shrugged when they heard the news. “He turned his back on the Kingdom,” they grumbled. “It’s just as if his life ended five years ago in New York.” Others agreed: “He kept saying the message wasn’t strong enough. That Christianity wasn’t changing the world. But look. There have been changes. And all without his help.” A few shook their heads, “Can’t you see? It’s his message that has started to give us the kind of Christianity that is making the difference. It wouldn’t have happened without him.”

“Nonsense,”scoffed a number of denominational leaders. “His numbers were miniscule. They made no impression on our society. The big churches are responsible for this great awakening.” “Funny,” growled the Texans, “we never thought God ever needed a whole lot of people to make his point.”

Few came to his funeral in Vermont. The flowers left at the grave quickly blackened in an October frost. Crows and magpies perched on his headstone. But when spring came robins and meadowlarks took their place. It was an old cemetery where his parents and grandparents had been buried and it was not always well tended. Grass and thistles swarmed around his stone. Rain and snow erased the lettering after a hundred years.
In a new century, people came looking for the grave. Ministers, scholars, church history professors, ordinary folk.

“The great evangelist,” one PhD mumbled as he searched. “Why couldn’t they have marked his grave properly, for heaven’s sake?” A woman in his party rested her hand on a blank headstone and scanned a cemetery that jumped with blue and purple and yellow flowers. “Perhaps, Dr. Steeves,” she said, “because they didn’t think that he was a great evangelist.” “Nonsense,” rumbled the professor, bending down to squint at an inscription beneath a tall angel. “The verdict of history is clear. You’ve read more of the transcripts of his messages than I have. His words were brilliant. They changed a whole world. Did people fail to recognize St. Francis or Martin Luther or John Wesley for who they were? No generation on earth could miss the influence God had through this man’s life.”

written in the stars

2011-06-03T08:20:00.001-07:00

They say the day of the Christian is ended and the day of the Pagan has returned. It has outlasted the era of Christianity and now is the time of its resurgence. Some say it is humanity’s most natural state and its most profound and that it was inevitable that it should one day regain its proper ascendancy in human thought and spirit. Christianity has had its hour and now it will wither and die. But Paganism, rooted in water and earth, will last as long as the earth and stars and, even if it must go into hiding for a time once again, can never be extinguished.

But it is Christianity that was before Paganism. It was in the stars before there ever was an earth and it was in the earth before there ever was man or woman or beast. The face of the one God has always been seen in what has been made. That God was before the Paganism of roots and grasses and gods and it will outlast that Paganism. He was first. He will be last. Paganism will have its brief flareups like a dying fire. And then it will be ash. And that ash will mark a cross on the foreheads of woman and man as we honor the return of Christ.

Christ is the man who is both earth and spirit, the stuff of stars and the stuff of infinity, the heart of what is human and the heart of what is God. There is no killing him. For he rises from the dead. At the beginning Christianity was a few among many, persecuted, scorned and put to death. Yet the coals always burned. And eventually grew into a blaze. There were always those who were false fire, who acted in Christ’s name but who were never his. But there were also those who lived and breathed Christ in every generation. Even now, as Paganism rears its horned head in apparent triumph, they are upon the earth, they are fire in the root system of the earth, they flicker underground, and at the right time, the flames of the Christian faith will soar to the heavens once again and purify the earth.

Before there ever was a Paganism there was a Christianity in the constellations and in the stones of the mountain streams. Not simply a monotheism, a Christ in clay and granite and neurons and the speed of light. He made them all and all their essence is in him. It is Christianity that cannot be vanquished. It is the building blocks of all spirit and all earth. All is linked to its truth. Once begun it does not end. It is forever.

Paganism will have a few days, a few hours, as God counts days and hours. Then it will submit again to the Lord of heaven and earth. It will cower and kneel. And although it shouts lustily to the four winds and the seven seas today, tomorrow it will be sprawled in the dust and none will be able to raise it again. It will wink out in a great swelling of light. I am not afraid. Paganism does not return to conquer or to rule or to write the last chapter of the human race. It has one brief moment before the bright fires of faith consume it, a bright fire of sun rising to mark the better day, day unending, the vast lighting of all nights, all dark that ever was, all falsehood, lit and inextinguishable.

Many will say, “Paganism has finally chased Christ off the face of the earth. We will not see him again.” Christ is not gone, nor are his people. They are everywhere, in every nook and cranny, in cave and high tower, in secret and well-known, hidden and in plain view. They can never die since they are Christ’s and Christ is limitless. He will claim his earth and his own will claim it with him. Let Paganism watch its back. Let it burn its secret fires and whisper its arcane knowledge but let it do so with one eye cocked to the heavens. Let it tremble. For I will not tremble nor will the people of Christ. The light has come to the darkness but the darkness has never been able to put it out. The Christ season has not wound down. There is another just coming more powerful than the last. His glory will engulf the earth in the holy Spirit of God.

The Christians are not gone and their greatness has not vanished. For Christ is immortal and his people are immortals with him. Christianity has always been and always shall be.

a virtual interview with murray pura

2011-05-31T21:43:00.000-07:00

VIRTUAL INTERVIEWS ANAM CARA™ presents writer Murray Pura author of The White Birds of Morning:

VI: You have several novels out and two volumes of short stories as well as a number of works of non-fiction. In addition, two more books of fiction are due to be released by US publishers in January 2012. Where does The White Birds of Morning fit into the program?

PURA: It's the sequel to the novel Zo that was released in 2008. Both of the books are part of a series of novels dealing with the Chornavka family. Zo covers the years from 1911-1932 and White Birds covers the years 1932-1943.

VI: Without giving too much away, how do the two books tie into each other and what is White Birds about?

PURA: Both books are based on the lives of two of my aunts. One was a strong Communist in her earlier years and the other a devout Catholic. It was difficult growing up with them because you could never invite them to the same family gathering at the same time or there would be conflict. And not simply because of their different beliefs. They just plain didn't like one another. So I took this conflict and went back to the beginning of the 20th century and made a story out of it. It's not biography though. I just use the basic framework of their lives to tell the tale - it's a work of fiction after all. But it's built around the relationship between the two sisters.

VI: Zo was about the Vatican wanting to canonize one of these sisters.

PURA: Right. The Catholic sister is a candidate for sainthood. So an emissary from Rome comes to question the sole surviving brother who happens to be ending his years as a Trappist at a monastery in America. He is not happy about the Vatican's plans and is very hostile towards the emissary and his questions about his sister's life. Her name is Zoya, Zo for short.

VI: So how does White Birds pick up on the story?

PURA: We are still looking at the lives of the two sisters. But we spend more time with the brother who is telling the story whose name is Andrew. He falls in love and while all sorts of terrible things are going on around him - Naziism, Stalinism, world war - his love endures and gives him something to hold onto.

VI: What about the sisters?

PURA: In real life, the Communist sister brought her family to the Soviet Union to help Stalin and, in true revolutionary spirit, save the world. And she ran into some pretty shocking things that Stalin and the Soviet Communists were doing that the newspapers of the day, including The New York Times that had reporters there, weren't talking about. So in White Birds we have the Communist sister doing the same thing - bringing her family to the USSR to make sure the Communist Revolution surges forward and running into a brick wall of Soviet atrocities.

VI: You say the book runs through to 1943 so how does the Second World War figure in the story?

PURA: The Communist sister is there when the Germans invade, living in Ukraine. By the time the German Army comes, in 1941, the Ukrainians welcome them with open arms. Stalin has been so cruel to the Ukrainian people that Hitler and his Third Reich look good to them - at first.

VI: Does White Birds center around the dynamic between the two sisters?

PURA: It's always there, and the Catholic sister winds up in the USSR as well. But in White Birds we look at the whole world through the eyes of the brother who is telling the story and we hear his struggles not only with Russian and German atrocities but atrocities done by people who say they are religious or spiritual. Some of them are SS. Some are death camp guards. Some ship innocent people off to Stalin's labor camps in Siberia. And he tries to reconcile their beliefs about Jesus with what they are doing to other people. He discovers that it is not only Christians who are doing these things but Buddhists and Muslims as well and not only religious people but atheists and agnostics. He realizes it is a human race thing. So, on the one hand, the Vatican is still probing into his sister's life and whether there were miracles and, on the other hand, the brother is trying to figure out who really are the saints and who really are the sinners.

VI: Are all the believers hypocrites?

PURA: No, of course not. That is what makes Andrew's struggle so sharp. One of those closest to him, a niece named Zhanna Yeva, truly embodies the spirit of Jesus Christ while all around her others do not. She is a light and an inspiration to him during a very dark time. I guess the reader is invited to choose what they think constitutes a good person or a spiritual person or a true Christian. Who are the saints, so to speak. What sort of people really bring light into the world and what sort of faith in humanity or faith in God really makes a difference?

VI: And all wrapped up in a love story and a romance?

PURA: Love doesn't stop even when there is war and cruelty and darkness. That is one of the great blessings of the human race - an ability to love and forgive and hope and seek for something more true and more real no matter what else is going on.

VI: So is White Birds a book of hope?

PURA: Yes - of honesty about what humanity is capable of on the dark side, but great hope about what humanity is capable of on the love side.

VI: Before we go, I want to mention that you have two new works of fiction being released on January 1st, 2012. One is with Barbour Publishing and the other with Harvest House Publishers. Are these volumes going to be different than The White Birds of Morning?

PURA: Quite different. But still stories of love, courage and faith in the midst of great struggles and challenges.

VI: Well, we look forward to discussing those two titles with you in the fall. All the best with your writing plans for the summer months.

PURA: Thank you very much.

VIRTUAL INTERVIEWS ANAM CARA™ plans to interview author Murray Pura about his two new books in September, 2011. His other works of fiction presently include Mizzly Fitch, Zo, Mister Good Morning and The Poets of Windhover Marsh. Recent non-fiction includes the books Rooted and Streams, both published by Zondervan. He has been a finalist for the Dartmouth Book Award, the John Spencer Hill Literary Award and the Kobzar Literary Award.

The White Birds of Morning is published by Windhover Marsh, an imprint of Clements Publishing of Toronto. It was released in April 2011 and, if not on the shelf, can be ordered through your favorite bookstore or online through Amazon.

the parable of the king

2011-05-31T07:30:00.001-07:00

THE KING, THE PRINCE AND THE PEASANT

by Murray Andrew Pura

Long ago and far away there lived a good king who ruled wisely and justly over his kingdom. Often he would leave his throne and take off his crown and dress in the simple clothes of a beggar. Attired like this he could wander about his kingdom without being recognized and visit with his people in their homes or take meals with them in their taverns. In this way he understood what was truly going on within his borders and what his people needed and what they feared.
But he did not go out on these excursions in disguise only in order to help his people. He also did it because his very best friend was a peasant who raised sheep on a green hill by a small cottage. At this cottage the king could laugh and sleep in late or help shear the sheep. He could talk about anything he liked. Walk about the cottage with one shoe off and one shoe on. Cook the food. Eat coarse black bread and yellow cheese. Ride a horse without his bodyguards. In short, he could be himself.
It was his friend who made this possible. Even though he was at least 20 years younger than the king he was not afraid of the great man. He did not expect him to act like a high and mighty king and he did not expect to be treated like a lowly peasant. He simply enjoyed the king for who he was, crown or no crown. And this was precisely the atmosphere the king needed in order to relax and be refreshed and renewed in his body and his spirit.
“You remind me of my son,” the king said one day, sitting at a table near the fire with the peasant. They were both eating black olives and spitting the pits into their hands.
“What is he like?” asked the peasant.
“Young like you. Quiet. A good listener. Someone who brings freedom to those who know him.”
“I should like to meet him.”
“That day will come. Perhaps this summer we will both show up at your door as tinkers. We will be riding mules and selling pots and pans.”
The peasant laughed. “That is a pleasing image. The king and his son riding mules rattling and clanging with tin pots.”
The king smiled. “It would not be such a bad life.”
Now one morning, many months after the king’s last visit, the peasant rose early in the morning to tend to his sheep. It was lambing season and he was anxious that he should lose none of his newborn to the wolf or the fox. He quickly took some bread and cheese and olives while it was still dark, wrapped his cloak about his shoulders, picked up his staff and went up the hill. Two lambs had been born during the night and both were doing well, taking their mothers’ milk. He could see that many more of his ewes were ready to give birth at any time. So that night and for many nights after he slept on the hill with his flock. He lit fires and sang songs and thanked God for every lamb that came into the world. When he slept he rolled himself into his thick cloak and used a smooth flat stone for a pillow. Twice he chased off foxes and once a wild dog, threatening them with the tall staff that he had cut from an oak tree.
One night the bleating of his sheep woke him and he sprang to his feet ready to wield his strong staff. At first he could see nothing in the darkness. Then he heard a grunt and spotted a man lifting a lamb under each arm and loading them into a horse-drawn cart. He ran up and demanded angrily, “Neighbour, what do you think you are doing?”
The big bearded man was startled by the peasant’s appearance but quickly laughed it off and scooped up another lamb. “I work for your landlord. You are behind in your rent and I am here to take what is due him.”
The peasant seethed. “In ten years I have never missed a payment on my rent.”
“Well,” the big man answered, loading two more lambs into the cart, “rent went up the first of March. And you haven’t paid the increase. But not to worry. Your lambs will make up what’s owed.”
“I was never told about a rent increase.”
“Well, you’ve been told now.” The big man counted the lambs in the cart. “Twenty. That ought to do for this load. I’ll be back in a few days to pick up the rest.”
The peasant blocked the big man’s path. “Put those lambs back with their mothers.”
The big man guffawed. “What is this? The mouse that roared?”
The peasant lifted his staff. “Put them back.”
The big man shook his beard. “I don’t have time for this.” And he lifted the peasant in his brawny arms and threw him to the ground, almost splitting his head open. Then he turned to take the halter rope of the horse in his hand and lead the mare down the hill. “I’ll be back on Sunday,” he said. “See that you have the newborns ready for me.” And with the lambs crying for their mothers and their mothers crying back, the big bearded man began to walk the horse and cart down the slope.
The peasant got to his feet, shook his head, heard the bleating of the lambs and picked up his staff. His head pounded. Fire roared up through his arms and chest. He raced up behind the big man and shouted, “Put them back!” And when the big man growled and turned to fight, the peasant struck him once, twice, three times with the oak staff until the big man collapsed on the grass. Panting, the peasant bent over the man. When he saw that he had killed him, he carefully lifted each lamb out of the cart and took them back to their mothers. Then he pushed and pulled and loaded the big man’s body into the cart and led horse and cart down the hill to the village to knock at the door of the sheriff.
That day the king watched the sun rise in a glorious rainbow of reds and golds and purples. Then he washed and ate a hearty breakfast and put on his kingly clothing and sat on his throne to conduct the business of the day. He could not believe his eyes when the doors to his chamber opened and the guards brought in a man, a peasant, his friend, chained hand and foot followed by the sheriff and a whole mob of people weeping and shaking their fists.
“He has killed my husband!” shouted one woman.
“He has murdered my son!” shouted another.
“He has slaughtered this lad’s father!” shouted yet another.
“Silence!” thundered the king and all became silent. He turned to the sheriff. “What is this?”
The sheriff bowed. “It is not a difficult case, your majesty. This peasant confesses to the crime. There was a quarrel over some sheep. This peasant struck the dead man three times with his staff. He killed him.”
“Murder! Murder!” cried one woman.
“We demand justice!” yelled a large man. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!”
“Enough!” The king thumped his sceptre against the floor and the jabbering again ceased. Then he looked the peasant in the eye. “Is all this true?”
The peasant lifted his head and looked at the king. There were no beggar’s clothes on his friend now. No olive pits in his hand. Instead he was dressed in scarlet and gold and a crown blazed from his head and the sceptre flashed like lightning from a clenched fist. There was no laughter on his lips and his face was as fierce as a hawk’s. The peasant swallowed and bowed his head. “All that your sheriff says is true, my lord. He claimed he was taking my lambs for overdue rent but I did not believe him and I struck him down.”
“That is so, your majesty!” called a thin man with the face of a weasel. “This peasant was months behind on his rent and I sent the man he murdered to collect. A most trustworthy man.”
“I knew nothing about an increase in rent,” the peasant said.
“Is that cause enough to kill a man?” the sheriff asked quietly. “Why did you not come to me before striking him to the ground?”
The peasant shook his head. “I lost my temper. I am sorry.”
“Sorry?” screamed one woman. “What good does that do?”
“Words mean nothing!” yelled another. “A life for a life!”
“We demand justice from the king!” shouted a third.
“The law is clear, your majesty,” the sheriff said while family and relatives wept and raged. “The peasant killed for no good reason. His life was not threatened. The landlord had a legitimate claim on the sheep for rent due him. Instead of coming to me for assistance, the peasant took it upon himself to take the law into his own hands. Now a man is dead and his family mourns. The laws of our kingdom are clear and they are just. A life for a life.”
“A life for a life!” the mob roared.
The king rose to his feet. The mob grew quiet. “I will pronounce judgment,” he said. He looked his friend in the eye and raised his sceptre. “With your own mouth you have confessed. An apology does not bring the dead back to life. Our law knows of no other remedy than to pay back eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. You will be taken to the place of execution tomorrow at dawn. There your head will be separated from your shoulders. The debt of blood will be paid and the kingdom will continue to exist in harmony and in peace. This is the decree of the king.”
“The king has spoken!” all the people responded.
The peasant was led away by the guards and taken down deep into the bowels of the castle and thrust into a dirty cell in the dungeon. There he was chained to the wall by his arms, in addition to remaining chained at his ankles and wrists. The dungeonmaster laughed. “You won’t be needing your arms. We don’t feed the guilty the day before their execution. We feel concerned about their souls. We think a fast is good for them. Helps cleanse them of their sins.” And he closed the iron door to the peasant’s cell with a crash.
Meanwhile the king remained on his throne throughout the day, settling every matter that was brought before him with wisdom and with justice. But at night, alone in his bedchamber, he laid his sceptre on a red velvet cushion and placed his crown on a white marble table and sank his face into his hands and wept. Great sobs shook his entire body. He knelt by his bed and tried to pray but he could not. And his loud groans reached the ears of the prince.
Now the prince had just returned from a long ride on his golden horse, examining the woodcutting that was going on in the huge forests that lay just beyond bowshot of the castle. He was washing his face and changing his clothes when he heard his father crying. He came and knocked on the door and entered the king’s room.
“Father,” he said in alarm, seeing the king collapsed by his bed, “what is it? What has happened to crush your spirit like this? Are you ill? Has someone died?”
The king rose and hugged his son close to him. “My boy,” he said, “you speak the truth of it. A good friend, my greatest friend, is as good as dead. And I am the one who has executed him.”
“What? The peasant? Is he guilty of a crime?”
“Aye, guilty, he confesses it. It was done in a hot temper. No doubt he thought he had reason to strike the man taking his lambs. But not to kill him.”
“Can’t you pardon him?”
“What? With the dead man’s family and relatives baying for his blood like hounds on the hunt? The law is irrevocable. He took the life of a man. Now his life must be taken. If I break this law for him I break my kingdom. I break justice. My name will be muttered with a curse in all corners of our land. My rule will be at an end. The blood debt must be paid, my son. Or the world that we know will come off balance. It will fall to pieces.” The king turned from the prince and walked to the window to look out at the gathering darkness. “No. He is lost. I cannot save him.”
All that night the king did not sleep. He sat at the table in his room. Or he looked out the window. Or he paced. Nor did the peasant sleep. Even if he had felt like resting, he could not. Whenever he tried to relax his legs his arms burned like fire as they strained against the chains on the wall. He looked and looked into the windowless darkness and listened to the rats chittering in the corners. The prince did not sleep. He worried for his father and he worried for his father’s friend. He called for his counsellors. “Surely there is another way of satisfying the law and rendering justice in this case,” he said. His counsellors shrugged. “The law is the law,” they answered him. “When it comes to death there are no loopholes.” But the prince studied the great books of the kingdom himself until dawn began to crack the sky.
As soon as a slit appeared between heaven and earth the dungeonmaster unlocked the door to the peasant’s cell with a clatter and two guards came to drag the peasant to the place of execution. It was a large open square within the castle. A massive block of oak, stained black with old blood and scarred with cuts from the blows of the mighty ax, stood in the centre of the square. Guards in armour ringed the block and the dead man’s family and friends seethed and surged around the guards. The king stood with his retinue on a dais. A path was cleared for the peasant. He was taken to the block and told to kneel. A monk in a long brown robe prayed over him. Then the executioner appeared, walking slowly out of a door in the castle.
He was a big man with thick arms and legs and a chest like a boulder. A black hood covered his face. His hands were like stones and in them he carried the great silver ax. He stood over the kneeling peasant. Even the crowd was afraid of him and ceased to move or speak. He looked up at the king and waited.
“Now justice is seen to be done!” cried the king.
“Now justice is seen to be done!” responded the crowd.
The executioner lifted the enormous ax and swung it up over his head in a smooth arc. He paused. The muscles in his arms and wrists suddenly bulged and the ax dropped.
“Stop! In the name of the king!”
The executioner grunted and halted the ax blade just inches from the peasant’s neck. The crowd turned to look at the prince. He was striding across the square, his cloak of scarlet flapping behind him. “Release this man,” he commanded the guards. The guards looked up at the king.
“What are you doing, my son?” demanded the king.
“Doesn’t our law say a life for a life?” the prince asked the king.
“Yes, my son. You know it.”
“Then I claim the ancient law of exchange. A life for a life. Let the prisoner go free. I will take his place.”
“No!” shouted the king.
“No!” shouted the crowd.
“It is the law!” cried the prince. “No one may hinder me! I do this act freely and of my own choosing. No one has forced me. No one has put any gold in my palm. I gain nothing. But.” And suddenly the prince’s hard and frosty face warmed with a small smile. “But my father will gain a second son.” He turned and looked at the crowd. “It is my right. It is the law of exchange. A life for a life.” He looked up at the king who was trembling and whose eyes were shining. “Do not be afraid, my father. I am going to God. And you will join me when he sees fit.” The prince helped the peasant to his feet. “Do not be afraid to be free. There is much good you can do. Just remember who your father is now. The same man who has been my father since I was a newborn.” He turned to the hooded executioner. “Do your duty. See to it that the blood debt is paid. Set my spirit at liberty.” Then the prince knelt at the block of oak.
“Now justice is seen to be done!” cried the prince.
“Now justice is seen to be done,” murmured the monk. But only he spoke. Everyone else was silent.
The executioner seemed unsure of himself for a moment. Then he hefted the huge ax in his hands and lifted it up over his head. He paused. Then he threw his muscles into the blow and brought the blade swiftly and surely down onto the prince’s neck. As the ax struck home a guard slashed the through the chains of the peasant with one stroke of his sword. “Now the law is satisfied,” said the guard. “Go. You are a free man.”
The peasant stood in that light of purest gold that always cloaks the earth for a few minutes at the beginning and the end of each day. He watched the crowd turn from the block with their heads down. He saw the executioner wipe his blade clean with a red cloth. He followed the movement of the king as he came off the dais and knelt and held the body of his son. He heard a lark singing and the king weeping. Then he turned and fled, the broken chains clanging against the ground as he ran.
He did not stop running until he reached his cottage. His sheep were milling about the door but he thrust through them and went inside and barred the door. Then he sat on a chair in front of the ashes of the fire and buried his head in his hands. The sun spanned the sky and disappeared. The earth grew dark. He could hear the bleating of his flock. But he did not move. He did not eat or drink. He acted as if he were dead.
At midnight there was a knocking at the door. The peasant did not get up to answer it. The knocking came again. And again. Still the peasant would not rise from the ashes of the fire. Finally a voice came through the door. It was the king.
“My friend. Open the door. It is I.”
But the peasant said nothing.
“I come in peace. I have brought some bread and cheese. Let us share it.”
Still the peasant said nothing.
“I have travelled a long way on foot. I am tired. I am cold. The night is dark. Open your door to me. My son.”
At these words the peasant slowly rose to his feet, walked to the door, unbarred it and opened it. There stood the king in the light of a waxing moon. He still wore his royal robes but they were torn and stained. The peasant stood just inside the doorway. Both men had the footpaths of weeping upon their faces.
“I am not worthy to be called your son,” said the peasant.
“Your brother thought you were,” answered the king.
“He did not know me.”
“But I do.”
The king embraced the peasant and kissed him on the cheek. Then he came inside and set a leather pouch on the table. Out of it he drew bread and cheese and, a rarity, one red apple. He took two of the peasant’s pewter cups and dipped them in a bucket of rainwater and placed them beside the apple. Finally he knelt at the hearth, took some wood, blew on the coals banked in the ashes and kindled a fire. It’s yellow light filled the room and began to work heat into their bones.
“Come and eat,” said the king.
The peasant sat at the table with the king and tried to chew some of the bread. The manacles on his wrists clanked against the wood. “Wait a moment,” said the king. He took a large key from a pocket. He smiled. “The dungeonmaster gave me this.” The peasant also gave a small smile: “I’m certain he gave it willingly.” The king laughed and reached over to unlock the broken chains on the peasant’s wrists. Then he knelt and unlocked the manacles on the peasant’s feet.
“How does that feel?” asked the king.
“Much better.”
The king threw the chains out the open door into the night. There was a clatter of hooves. “My sheep,” said the peasant. The king nodded. “They’ve missed you. Let us eat up quickly and tend to them.” “All right,” answered the peasant. The king took a small knife out of the pouch and split the apple. “Would they still be lambing, my son?”
The peasant looked into the king’s eyes. “Yes.”
“Then we had better be prepared to sleep outside a few more nights.”
“I think so.”
“Do you have a heavy cloak I can borrow?”
“I have several.”
“One will be enough. Or do you think my bones are so old that I will need three or four?”
“No. One good one will be all you need. Here.” The peasant got up and took a blue cloak from a hook near the fireplace. Then he offered it to the king. “This will be just right for you. Father.”
The king smiled and nodded and his eyes gleamed. “Thank you, son.”
So they finished what they could of the food and went out into the night and walked up the hill and the sheep followed them. The peasant counted and then counted again. “There are six new lambs,” he said, “but one ewe is missing. She has probably gone off to some little nook or cranny to give birth. I doubt she’s gone far. I know her. Sit down and rest, father. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“Not on your life,” replied the king. “I’m coming with you. I’ve been locked up inside that confounded castle long enough.” He got to his feet. “Let’s go.”
So father and son walked out under the stars together to look for the ewe and her newborn. As they went they both thought of the prince but talked of the weather. They searched for an hour before they found the ewe. The son went to pick up the lamb but the father beat him to it. They returned to the flock and bedded down for the night. But not before the father pulled a large gold ring off his finger and slipped it onto the finger of his son.
“Thank you,” said the son.
“You have probably not thought of it,” said the father as he burrowed into his blue cloak, “but you are a prince now. What do you think of that?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“A prince has much to learn. But there will be time enough for that. Right now there are more important things. The sheep. The hill. The stars. Bread and cheese. Olives.” He peeked out at his son from under his cowl. “And pots and pans. Do you think we’ll have a few weeks to spare to be tinkers before we return to the castle? I know a man who will lend us a good mule.”
They both laughed. Night became morning and morning became many days and many days gathered themselves into months and years and they lived and breathed and ruled the kingdom with wisdom, with justice and with mercy. And of all people in all worlds, possible and impossible, the two of them lived to the height, to the depth and to the breadth of all that was brightest and most wonderful.
And they never forgot.

portrait of a great soul

2011-05-31T07:26:00.000-07:00

Portrait

by Murray Andrew Pura

He was the greatest painter in the land. And he took for his subject the very least person he could find. “I would like you to sit for a portrait,” the painter said to the beggar when he found him on the street. “Please come with me to my studio.” Befuddled, the man walked beside the famous painter up one avenue and down another. His clothes were in rags. His teeth were black and crooked. His hair hung like weeds down past his shoulders. Leprosy had rotted out his nose and made stumps of his fingers. One eye was white with a cataract. The other often rolled back up into his head. Sores broke and bled over his skin. And his skin was as rough and grey as the bark of an elm. Nevertheless, once they arrived at the studio, the painter sat the man down in a chair of golden oak and spread a backdrop of blue velvet cloth behind him. Then he brought out his palette and sable brushes, propped up a white canvas on his wooden easel, and began to paint.

It took several weeks. At night the painter gave the man his bed to sleep in and curled up on the floor. They shared soup and bread and cheese together and pot after pot of strong hot tea. Colours worked themselves under the painter’s fingernails and over his ebony skin. He chewed the ends of his brushes when he was trying to think. On sunny days he opened all the shutters and let light blaze over teacups and saucers and the man’s face. If it was overcast he kept the shutters closed and lit one or two candles. Once he asked the beggar to sit in the chair until four in the morning. The man could barely keep his eyes open. But the painter rewarded them both with a bar of Belgian chocolate as long as his arm.

Finally the portrait was done. “Come and look,” the great painter invited the man. When the beggar limped over to see his portrait he was stunned. “But this is not me!” he protested. The man in the portrait had hair that was washed and combed and that gleamed like silver. His skin was clean and whole. His nose sat strong and straight in the centre of his face. His eyes were rich and brown. The hands folded in his lap had fingers that were long and delicate. His lips curled in a small smile that hinted at the sturdy white teeth behind. The painter put an arm around the man’s shoulders. “Everything I have painted,” he said, “I found in your face.”

Once the canvas was perfectly dry the painter placed it within a gilt frame and gave it to the man. “Cover it with a rag,” he said. “But show the portrait to everyone who puts a coin in your cup. Tell them it is a painting done by the Master. Word will get around soon enough.” The man did as the painter told him. At first very few people would pay to have the rag removed though many asked what the rag concealed. “A portrait done by the Master,” the man would tell them. “Nonsense,” he was told. But the mayor of the city finally came and asked for the rag to be removed and placed a large coin in the man’s cup. When he saw the portrait the mayor was astounded. “I had heard rumours that this was in fact a great painting,” he said, “but now I can see for myself it is a masterpiece. It could be hung in any gallery in Europe and command attention.” Soon the mayor’s words spread from one end of the city to the other. Hundreds and thousands came to place a coin in the man’s cup and then wait to see the rag removed.

The man used the money to buy better food to eat and white soap to scrub his hair and skin with. He paid a doctor to remove his cataract and straighten his crooked teeth. A nun found him and cleaned and bandaged his sores. A woman who owned a clothing shop came and placed soft deerskin gloves on his hands. A man brought a glistening burgundy scarf to wind over the hole in the centre of his face. As the coins spilled over the top of the man’s cup he bought food and clothing for the other beggars on the street.

Many people asked the man to sell them the painting. But he would not. He slept with the painting in his arms and he carried it with him wherever he went. But an old beggar who befriended him stole the painting one afternoon while the man was napping in the warm yellow light. When he awoke he cried out and limped through the city looking for the portrait. But he never found it. Soon enough his money ran out and no one came to place coins in his cup anymore. His hair grew scraggly again and his skin thickened with dirt. The gloves rotted from his fingers and the scarf became a black rag. In a few months the leprosy took both his eyes and ate away his entire face. He died and his body was scooped up into a cart with the other street dead and carried outside of the city to be burned. By the time the master painter heard of the man’s plight it was too late.

The portrait passed through many hands and many countries. After several centuries it grew dark with dust and grime and, as the great painter who had done the portrait was no longer in vogue, it was placed in storage in the basement of a museum behind rows and rows of other old paintings and forgotten. Yet the memory of the portrait was not quite forgotten. When the great painter became fashionable once again people hunted throughout the world for his painting called Portrait of a Leper. Its worth was estimated in the hundreds of millions. But no one ever found it.

One year a restorer of paintings was looking through the storage area of a museum for paintings that deserved to be reintroduced to the public. For months he ignored the dark painting every time he worked his way down its row. However one morning he paused to consider it. He felt its restoration would be something of a challenge and who knew what the removal of the grime and darkness would reveal? He set to work on it at once.

He carefully cleansed the canvas. Matched faded colours and reapplied them. Removed flaking and painstakingly rebrushed the area. A cheerful face slowly revealed itself. “Why, this is marvelous,” the restorer said to himself, “but whose face is this and what is the name of the artist who painted it?” When he finally reached the lower right hand corner the name of the great painter emerged. He brought the painting immediately into the office of the museum’s curator. “This is the work of the artist who painted Portrait of a Leper,” he announced.

A special show was arranged around the unveiling of the restored portrait. Thousands of art critics and connoisseurs descended upon the museum. When at last the face was revealed everyone was astonished. “This is a painting of his that was never known,” they declared. “It is a new masterpiece.” When one critic wondered aloud whether it might not indeed be the missing Portrait of a Leper he was scorned from New York to Paris to Rome. “Take a look at that face,” the others demanded. “Is that the face of a man ravaged by leprosy? Look at how beautiful his features are.” So it was decided that the restored painting should be named Portrait of a Great Soul.

looking for alexandria

2011-05-31T07:23:00.000-07:00

this story is posted in dedication to Morganne Jones, writer, poet, and dreamer

LOOKING FOR ALEXANDRIA

She bent with the brown and green grasses that bent in the wind off the sea. Sat in the sand and hugged her knees and curled herself into a ball. Her hair lifted and streamed toward the east like robins. You are dying, Mother, you are dying, dying. I do not know what to tell you. I cannot give you shiny cards with pictures of flowers and sweet verses from the Bible. I am the one who must talk to you. It is my words I must use. But I do not have the vocabulary, I do not have the syllables, I do not have the grammar or the syntax, I do not have the rhyme.

She traced letters on her palm with her finger. Part of her mind struggled with the words, another part with the whole pattern that was emerging like a skein of geese unravelling in the sky, another part was conscious of the wind and the grasses scraping against one another, yet another knew the sea was behind her and that it was boiling with whitecaps. No. The word is too long. The sentence does not work. This close to the sea the waves do not sound like wind in the treetops. They are brutal. Another word, this word, is better, all right, come, the rest of you come, tumble over me. Even with this sweater, this thick green sweater, I am getting chilled. I don’t care. I have to write it here. My room has too many walls and its air has no water or salt. That works, that works, that flow works, come on, stream into my arms and fingers. Time for the paper in my pocket and the yellow pencil and the creases I must bump the letters over and the curve of the rock I must follow. The paper is like a whitecap curling out of my lap. I can see the waves behind me breaking open white and clean like this paper I am writing black letters on. Black letters like the bits of debris in the grey ocean, the green ocean, and there is that gull talking again, muttering like Professor Reamings lecturing us about Virginia Woolf. Now my fingers are cold splinters of granite scratching up the page. But I am going to finish it here, Mother, right here, because this was where you took me for picnics. Except you could never turn your back on the sea and the miles of painted air.

“So you wrote this?”
“I did.”
“And you thought it would be appropriate.”
“Yes.”
“You never had any second thoughts about it?”
“No. I wrote it for my Mother.”
“You gave it to your Mother before she died?”
“Yes.”
“Did she read it?”
“I read it to her.”
“Good God.”
“She liked it.”
“How could she like it? A poem about herself rotting out. A poem about cancer.”
“A poem about life.”
“Is that what you think?”
“A poem about love. She understood it.”
“How do you know?”
“She has a way of smiling.”

The pastor took off his glasses and leaned back in the chair behind his desk. The three deacons, one man and two women, took this opportunity to look at him so that they didn’t have to stare at the young red-haired woman sitting in the chair. The pastor blew some air out of his mouth in a gust and glared at the line between ceiling and wall.

“Alexia. When we gave you the church paper to edit it was with the understanding that you’d keep any poetry experiments to yourself. We want inspirational writing in the paper. We want to build up people’s faith. Not tear it down.”

“That’s why I put the poem in.”
“What?”
“To build up people’s faith.”
“Are you joking?”
“You seem to be making some kind of assumption that faith grows without any struggle. No rain. No darkness. No frost.”
“Alexia, in case you haven’t noticed, people don’t come to church for struggle. They get enough of that during the week. Here is where they come for peace and happiness. This is where they come to rest their souls. They come here for answers. Not questions.”
“That seems very different from the way Jesus treated people.”
“What do you mean?”
“His sentences were like razors, don’t you think?”
“No. I don’t. Alexia, do you have any idea how many complaints we’ve received about your poem?”
She shrugged.
“Twenty-six. Twenty-six complaints in a church of two hundred and fifty.”
“Did anyone call to tell you they liked it?”
“One person.”
“That’s something.”

“That’s nothing. Alexia, we’ve always thought a lot of you and your Mother. We’ve thanked God for you in the past. So we’re willing to give you another opportunity to do it right. Some people want us to take the paper out of your hands. We think Christ would give you a second chance.”

“However,” spoke up one of the women, the one Alexia thought of as Mrs. Watermelon and Cucumbers because of the scent of her perfume, “you need to let us see the paper each week before you print it.”

The pastor nodded. “That’s right. We’ll look it over.”
“Especially the poetry?” asked Alexia.
“Everything. If we like what we see we’ll give you the all clear to print the paper and distribute it to the congregation.”
“What day do you want it?”
“You print on Thursday, don’t you? I’d like to see the proof before the Wednesday night church supper and prayer meeting. The deacons will be there as well and they can take a look at the same time. If everything is fine we’ll give you the green light.”
“And if it isn’t?”
“You’ll have ample time to make corrections.”

It was Tuesday. Alexia went home to her apartment, fixed supper, sat looking at the wall while she ate. Then she washed and dried the dishes and put them away. It was a warm night in September so she stood on her fifth floor balcony and looked out over the city to the sea. She could always catch a glimpse of it between two highrises. A half moon ignited a flat calm. You are the poet, God. Compared to you I feel like a fraud. You say stronger things than I do. You say it better. But this is what you put in my fingers so I have to do what I can. She went back inside, got into her black robe, brushed out her hair, and tucked her legs up under her on the couch. She held a red spiral bound notepad and a navy blue pen that wrote in green. I wonder if they would agree to all these colours?

Some of her poems game out in a gush. A artesian well of words and sounds. Tonight she scribbled and scratched and balled up sheets of paper and finally gave up in disgust at one o’clock. What is the use in praying if you won’t even help me? She lay under the covers in her bed and stared at the squares and spheres of city light bobbing on her ceiling. I was going to buy heavier curtains to keep out the light. Or vertical blinds. Would this bunch have let you print and distribute Job to the churches of the world? How about Ecclesiastes? Or Psalm 73? Or Psalm 88? The darkness is my closest friend. How did Heman get that one past you? Maybe I ought to try that. Throw Job and Gesthemane and Psalm 88 into one pot and see how the colours mix. If they argue with me I’ll tell them you wrote it. She sat up and turned on her bedside lamp and, not wanting to go out to the living room, opened a bonded leather Bible from the table next to her pillow and jammed words together on the blank pages at the front with a red pen. The more she wrote the better she felt and by three o’clock she swelled with a white light and a white heat. Her mind and heart and the flow of her blood glittered with the purest fire as she finally lay back to rest. When I worship like this it’s easy to think of dying. It’s easy to think of loving you forever. Everything inside me has been rinsed by a stream that is clear and cold and hard and emerald.

The next day should have been difficult. She’d only had five hours sleep. But the bright flames of last night’s creating still licked up and down the veins and bones of her arms. Teaching Shakespeare and Milton and Dante at the college she felt like she was standing in silver rectangles of radiance. She brought the four page church paper to the potluck that evening, contributing three bags of potato chips, the only person who ever brought ketchup and dill pickle and roast chicken and then mixed them all together in one bowl. The pastor and his three deacons ate quickly and left together for his office with the church paper in one of his hands. Five minutes later Mrs. Watermelon and Cucumbers was sent to fetch Alexia.

“All’s well?” smiled Alexia.
“Nothing’s well,” said Mrs. Watermelon.
The pastor was at his desk again. “Alexia, everything is fine except for the poem. It’s one of your poems again, I take it.”
“Sort of.”
“The Darkness Is My Closest Friend. Good God. What kind of title is that?”
“It’s God’s title.”
“What?”
“I took it from Psalm 88.”

The pastor and the deacons riffled through their copies of the Bible. “It’s not in mine,” said one. “You’ve taken it out of context,” said another. “When it says the darkness is my closest friend,” sniffed Mrs. Watermelon, “it doesn’t mean the darkness is my closest friend.” “Look,” said the pastor in the manner of pronouncing the final word on the subject, “just because God does it doesn’t mean you can do it.”

“So you’re rejecting it?” asked Alexia.
“Not the whole paper,” said Mr. Sharpe, a lawyer. “Just the poem.”
“You want me to write another poem?”
“Or drop it,” said Mrs. Bland, the other woman.
The pastor took off his glasses. Alexia became a soft smudge and he felt comfortable looking at her. “What time do you print?”
“About four. At the college.”
“If you write a new poem bring it to me here at noon tomorrow. If it’s good I’ll give you two thumbs up. All right?”

Alexia sat through the prayer meeting that night as if she had been calcified. When people shared scripture passages she wanted to stand up and quote from Psalm 88 or Psalm 42 - “All your waves and breakers have swept over me!” - or shout: “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani!” She wanted to strike a Shakespearean pose and sweep a dark cloak about her and mutter, “This too is of God.” But she remained sitting with her eyes closed. I am not one of your people. I am not one of your people. Knives worked themselves up under her skin and pried it from her bones. At one point she opened her eyes and read her poem again, creased and crinkled in her lap.

At home she peeled a banana but only took one bite before putting it down on top of a book on the coffee table. She did not get into her robe. She did not brush out her hair. She did not clean her teeth. She sat on the couch and scrunched her knees up under her chin. I felt so good with you last night. I felt so good about the poem. Now it’s gone. I am not going to do this all over again.

The cover of the book under the banana showed a man sitting on the banks of a blue stream. It reminded her of how she used to put her poems underwater after she wrote them. This was when she was ten or eleven. She would put each fresh poem in a ziplock bag and place it in the creek near their home and weight it down with stones. A full hour was required to make the poem a true poem. She loved to watch the running water slip blue and green and white over the plastic bag and cause her printed words to flicker or elongate or disappear or pop up in big silver bubbles. Finally she would pluck the bag dripping out of the creek and remove the poem. “Now it is yours,” she would say to God as she stood with wet hands under the willow trees. That night she would place the poem in her Bible and slip the Bible under her pillow so she could sleep with God’s words and her words. She was also sure this would give her inspiration for her next poem.

“What did I do with all those poems?” she asked out loud.

It was just past midnight. Another late night. I can’t keep up this poet stuff. Give me another calling. It’s as bad as being a prophet. Always getting caught between the horns of the altar and slain. The title of the paperback on the coffee table was The Distracted Preacher and other stories by Thomas Hardy. Hardy made her think of another Thomas, another T.H., Thomas Hooker, and thinking of Thomas Hooker mader her think of another Anglican, John Donne, which made her think of another Anglican and pastor and poet, George Herbert. A verse may find him, he had written, who a sermon flies, and turn delight into a sacrifice. She tapped her fingernails against her teeth. Which one of them had written about truth coming through the brittle crazy glass of their lives and words? Like sun through the erratic shapes of stained glass? She picked up the remote and pointed it at her TV. Someone came on singing with their dog about a new minivan and she clicked it off again. The pastor did not want her to talk about death. He did not want her to talk about suffering. Perhaps he would let her talk about truth, about all the pastors and priests who had been poets and had invited God to pour hot light through them.

“Why are the personnel managers or the businessmen or the evangelists or the entrepeneurs the only role models for pastors and priests? Why shouldn’t artists be role models too? Why not poets? What is the Bible? A work of art or a Volkswagen manual? Poetry or a spreadsheet?” She said all this to her bathroom mirror where she had gone to splash her face with cold water. Twisting her hair up on her head she thrust several pins through it. Then she went back to the couch and picked up a pen she had been using to underline passages in Hardy’s book. The only paper close at hand was a stack of white napkins. She scrawled on these.

I need a stronger metaphor. Stop doodling. That is a police siren. No, it’s a fire truck. God, help them help. Don’t imitate Hopkins. Write your own writing. Something with an A. I’m starving. I’m freezing. Where’s the red throw that’s supposed to be on this couch? That’s too weak. I hate it. This is better, let it come. I should have had some coffee. It’s too late for coffee now. Light, patterns of light, shadows, long shadows in the afternoon and small shadows when the sun is overhead and no shadows when the sun is obscured. Deep lines etched in a deep face. Faith chiseled in skin and bone. I need another syllable. That word is no good.

She hurried from a staff meeting to the pastor’s office at noon the next day. He was eating a tuna sandwich with sprouts. He leaned back and closed his eyes and chewed. His glasses sat on the desktop. “Read it to me,” he said. She pulled the crumpled napkins out of her purse. It was a good thing she had numbered them all at breakfast.

The sunlight coming through the venetian blinds made stripes on the pastor’s face as she read. His eyes were closed. He had stopped chewing.

“I was inspired by other pastors when I wrote this,” she said when she had finished. “Donne. Herbert. Hopkins.”
He finally spoke. “Who are Hopkins and Herbert and Donne?”
“Ministers. Hopkins was Catholic.”
The pastor’s eyes blinked open and he looked at her.
“No darkness,” she smiled.
“Some.”
“Hard to talk about what light is if you can’t define what darkness is. They play off each other.”
The pastor drummed his fingers on his desk. “English wasn’t my strong suite in high school. But I did well with Math. At seminary I won the Greek language prize.”
“Can I print this poem?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not as bad as the others. But it’s still not good enough. Why do you make this so hard, Alexia? Go down to the store and pick out a couple of cards. That’s all the poetry you need.”
“You want us to have a Coutts-Hallmark faith?”
“That’s all our people require. Look, Alexia, if you want to go to Hamlet or Macbeth on Friday nights, go. But our people don’t want to go there. They don’t want a faith built on beautiful language and fancy words. They don’t want to think. They want their faith to be a faith of action. They want things in bite-sized chunks. Concepts they can get a hold of immediately.”
“You mean like bumper stickers and T-shirts?”
“They don’t need a dark night of the soul. They don’t need light that’s too bright to see. And they sure don’t need all your similies and metaphors and distractions. Just tell them the truth straight out. Don’t beat around the bush.”
“You mean no parables. No stories.”
“I mean keep it simple. The people in our church don’t want to be deep sea divers, Alexia. They’re beachcombers. Give them stuff they can recognize instantly and pick up and take home.”
“You want me to write a poem about beachcombing?”
“I don’t want you to write a poem at all. The paper is good as it is. Just print what you’ve got. You can show me another poem next Tuesday. And please. For my sake, Alexia. Could we have something where the sentences make sense and I don’t have to scratch my head? Something where the words rhyme? Make God happy and me happy at the same time.”

She finished typing the paper on her computer at five o’clock. She put a happy face where the poetry was supposed to go. I don’t care. I just want to go to bed early tonight. I’ll write something else next week. A book was open on one corner of her desk. She had been looking up All Saints Day earlier in the week. The word Alexandria caught her eye. Alexandria in Egypt was second only to Rome in importance during the height of the Empire. Its fame as a centre of rich Christian thought dates from the end of the second century AD under the influence of Clement and Origen. It increased in importance under the bishoprics of Athanasius and Cyril in the fourth and fifth centuries. It contained the most important library of its time, a library that was considered one of the wonders of the ancient world. The collection of books was damaged by several wars but maintained significance until its final destruction by the Moslem conqueror Omar in the seventh century. Alexandrian theology was profound. It emphasized the reality of the spiritual world and the allegorical interpretation of scripture. It also stressed the divine nature of Christ. There was no hesitation in declaring that when the Incarnate Christ suffered it was God suffering. A great seaport, ethnically diverse and cosmopolitan, Alexandria was one of the brightest jewels of the early Christian faith, providing a mixture of profound faith and orthodoxy along with a marked creativity. It also contained all the challenges to that orthodoxy that the Roman Empire could spawn. Nevertheless, it was here that Athanasius, though exiled five times, made his stand for both the deity and the humanity of Jesus Christ.

Alexia looked at a map of ancient Alexandria which showed where the city walls were located, the dockyards and quays, the amphitheatre, gymnasium, stadium, hippodrome, medical school, hall of justice, library and museum. The lighthouse known as the Pharos of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, had been almost 400 feet high and stood on Pharos Island, just offshore from the city. Alexia’s imagination was crammed with ships driven by red and orange sails and a blue Mediterranean waterfront teeming with people of every sort of colour of skin and every sort of garment and costume. Chariots rattled over the sunburnt stones and Roman armour blazed in the packed streets. She stood amongst hundreds of thousands of scrolls while dust motes sparked the air. Modern Alexandria, Al Iskandariyah, is the second largest city of Egypt and its chief port. It is built over the streets and the ruins of the ancient city which have never been excavated. Alexia tapped a pen against her teeth. The new was built on the old. Forgotten. But still in existence. She gazed at a colour photograph of Corniche Drive in Alexandria, a street that ran along the crescent shape of the harbour, along brown and yellow beaches, and she looked at the Mediterranean sea and beyond it to the desert over the housetops, the desert that swept and surged a thousand miles to the south, the sands and heats and flies where the desert mothers and fathers had forged their gleaming spirituality out of thin air. Desert asceticism, the book said, brings to life the philosophers’ dream in the midst of ordinary people.

Alexia was alone. All her colleagues were gone and the offices were silent. She opened a can of Coke that popped and fizzed and bit into a multigrain bagel. I can go to Alexandria. It is still there. I can go to its modern streets and tear up some of the asphalt and get down below to the city’s foundations. I can find pottery and bones, maybe Athanasius’ bones, maybe Origen’s, I can find scrolls with wisdom the Christians once knew but have forgotten. I can find the desert where Saint Antony struggled. I can take a boat or a plane and go there. I can find Alexandria. I can find Alexandria’s God. “Only a poet,” she said to the clock on the wall, “could understand enough of the significance of Alexandria to even begin to convey the chiaroscuro of it to the modern ear.” Mumbling Athanasius contra mundum she deleted the happy face from the computer screen and began to fill the empty space with words that came in a jumble and a jangle out of her head. The keys clicked softly under her white fingers. It was two o’clock before she had printed 75 copies of the paper and returned to her apartment. She stood in a sea breeze on the balcony for a moment before collapsing into her bed. It’s just as if you had kissed me.

That Sunday she stood in the church foyer and handed out the paper just as she did every week. The pastor came up behind her and patted her on the shoulder. “Mind if I take one?” he asked. “Here you are,” she said. He walked away but was back in a minute, his face flushed.

“Give me the rest of those,” he demanded in a whisper as people came through the door.
“No,” she whispered back.
“You are finished, finished here,” he grated. “You will never edit this paper again. You will be given no leadership responsibilities in this church.”
“Did you read the poem?”
“I don’t have to read the poem. It’s there and it’s not supposed to be there.”
“I can’t believe you wouldn’t like the poem.”
“That’s not the point. You didn’t pass it by me first and you knew you were supposed to do that. I’m responsible for what goes into these people’s heads.”
“Well, I would give you the rest of the papers but there aren’t any left. I’m afraid the poem has already gone to the people’s heads.”
“We’ll see about that.”

Alexia stood at the back of the church as the service began. After his opening prayer, and before the choir sang, the pastor smiled and said, “You were all handed the church paper when you came into the sanctuary this morning. Unfortunately, we need to ask for the papers back. Their distribution was premature and there is some misinformation that needs to be corrected before we can return them to you. If you’d like to hand your papers down to the end of each pew the ushers will collect them. Thank you very much. I’m sorry for this inconvenience. We’ll get them back to you just as soon as the problems are sorted out.”

There was a rustling as the papers were handed from person to person. The choir began to sing Amazing Grace and Alexia turned and walked through the doors and down the concrete steps. Elms were yellow torches up and down the street. She paused and wondered which way she ought to go. Someone called her name. Mrs. Marsh was coming slowly down the steps using her cane.

“What is it?” asked Mrs. Marsh, squinting at Alexia from behind her thick glasses. “Something you wrote again? One of your poems?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Marsh had been a high school Math teacher for forty years. She handed Alexia her copy of the paper. “Go ahead and read it to me. I can’t be bothered fishing out my magnifying glass. It’s so big and clumsy.”
“You want me to read it to you right here?”
“No better place. But let’s walk down the street a ways and settle into a bench there. The one under the tall elm.”

They sat together on the green iron bench. Cars and buses drove past. A few yellow leaves landed on the round navy blue hat Mrs. Marsh wore over her stiffly permed white hair. “All right, my dear,” she said. “You go ahead.” Alexia leaned close to her so that she wouldn’t have to raise her voice.

“Well, fine, that’s just fine, that’s lovely,” said Mrs. Marsh when Alexia had finished. “I don’t know what they get excited about. Morton wasn’t that good at Math and that’s why he can’t understand poetry. It’s about rhythm and metre, isn’t it, my dear? No, he had a hard go of it in Math and Mrs. Williams told me he was no good at all with the English language. I expect that’s why he went into the ministry. Well. That wasn’t kind of me, was it?”

“Perhaps he’ll still read the poem. I think he almost liked my last one.”
“Perhaps. Who knows? I don’t imagine he believes poetry has anything to do with God.”
“Not my poetry at any rate.”
“If he got a proper translation of the Bible, one that didn’t hide all the poetry in paragraphs, he’d soon be seeing God’s world in a different light.”
“I did mention Donne and Hopkins to him.”
Mrs. Marsh snorted. “Morton would think they played for the Mariners or the Seahawks. Now. Enough of that. Did you bring your car? Why don’t you come over to my apartment for lunch? I’ll brew some tea. I have some fresh scones from my daughter.”
“I’d be happy to come over, Mrs. Marsh.”
“Well, help me up and let’s get on about it.”

Alexia did not return to the church even though the pastor left plenty of messages on her answering machine about wanting to get together for coffee. Instead she booked a flight to Egypt where she intended to spend her Christmas holidays. And she read more about Alexandria. Euclid had lived and studied there. Julius Caesar had accidentally burned part of the library in the Alexandrian War in 48 BC. Did Mark Antony compensate for the loss by giving Cleopatra 200,000 scrolls from the library at Pergamum, a library that was Alexandria’s only rival? The Roman Emperor Aurelian damaged the library again in 273 AD as he fought to reconquer Egypt. The city planned and built by Alexander the Great was in ruins by the time Napoleon arrived in 1799. At that point it had been used for hundreds of years as a quarry for new buildings. When modern Alexandria was erected on the same site most of the ruins, including those of the library, were eliminated.

“But something, something could still be there,” Alexia told her mug of coffee.

At night she sat up in bed and held the book in her lap that contained the map of ancient Alexandria. She traced a line she would walk. From the lighthouse to the Temple of Artemis and the Royal Palace. Down through the Gate of the Moon, past the army barracks and along the Boulevard Argeus into the Jewish Quarter. Through the Canopic Gate to the Hippodrome and then south along the canal to the Gate of the Sun. Up the Boulevard Serapis and right on Meson Pedion to the Library and the Mausoleum. Finally to sit down at a stone table with two or three scrolls and carefully unwind them. Reading words that had been lost for more than two thousand years, ideas and wisdom and history that no one knew, theology that no woman or man had ever considered. At sunset to hold all she had seen and walk up through the Necropolis, then down to Eunostos Harbour and along the waterfront to the shore of the Eleusinian Sea. Waves and red sun and the dark.

From the history of Alexandria she turned to reading about Origen and Clement and Cyril and Athanasius, especially Athanasius and his books on Saint Antony and Christ’s Incarnation. This led her to read The Sayings of the Fathers which had been written by hermits like Antony who had lived along the banks of the Nile River not far from Alexandria. Then The Conferences of Cassian which recorded John Cassian’s interactions with the desert fathers. She saw herself sitting in the desert and fighting sapphire-eyed demons with prayer and fasting. Every Friday she went without food from dawn to dusk, then took bread and wine in Christ’s honour and went to bed.

An old man said: I never wanted work that was useful to me but loss to my brother. For I have this expectation, that what helps my brother is fruitful for me.

A brother who had sinned was expelled by the priest from the church. But Abba Bessarion stood up and went out with him, saying: I too am a sinner.

Abba Poemen said: Teach your mouth to speak what is in your heart.

Amma Sarah said: If I pray to God that all people might be inspired because of me, I would find myself repenting at the door of every house. I would rather pray that my heart be pure toward everybody.

Every Sunday she had lunch with Mrs. Marsh at the elderly lady’s apartment.

“You ought to let me treat you from time to time,” said Alexia.
“Never mind. This is good for me. People still ask about you.”
“Do they?”
“Are you still reading about Alexandria?”
“Yes.”
“Still intending to go there at Christmas?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there is nothing wrong with that. But if Alexandria can never be here - ” she banged her cane against the floor several times - “right here, then it will not be anywhere.”
“Alexandria can help me understand what it is that is supposed to be here.”
“It can. It might. I suppose you have been reading the desert fathers? Yes. You told me you were. Well, I found something in one of my anthologies.” She picked up an index card from beside a plate that had a sliced muffin on it. The handprinting was large and dark. “Abba Sisoes said: Seek God, and not where God lives.”

Alexia drove down to visit her father in Portland one weekend. On Saturday night after he had gone to bed she clambered around in the cold attic opening boxes and trunks. She’d had a dream of a small red suitcase. It was something she had used when she was a child. She found it under a pink strip of insulation. Her poems were inside it, all the ones she had placed underwater, stacked neatly in piles of twenty and tied with green and blue ribbons. The ribbons were stiff and brittle and broke apart when she tried to untie them. She sat on the bed in her old room and read each of the poems. My God, how can we be so wise when we are ten about rain and beetles and plum trees? And so obtuse when we are thirty?

“We used to be warriors fighting evil in our hearts,” she complained to Mrs. Marsh. “Wrestling dark thoughts and wicked inclinations. We used to be wise women dropping words into souls like stones into brown ponds. We used to be poets. Now it is all about numbers and how we can keep people in our programs and our pews.”
“We are usually more reckless when we are children. More spirited. It is just as true of a young Christianity.”
“And my poetry. I always thought of myself as childlike. But I look at these poems in my handwriting with all the perfectly round ohs and prefectly green caterpillars and perfectly yellow owl’s eyes and I am nothing like that now.”
“The new city is still built on the old.”
“Yes, but what good is that if the old is obliterated? It is one thing to keep some of what is old and work it into the new. But what if none of the old is left at all?”

She walked on the beach in a sunset that was a conflagration. Out there is Alexandria. Out there is our childhood. Our youth. But what is left? What will I find? Broken things. Missing things. New buildings. The old structures razed. Young Egyptians who do not care about hermits or monks or bishops that have been dead for almost two thousand years. If Alexandria is not there anymore, not even under the pavement or out in the desert, where is it? Where can I find it? Is it only in my mind? Or does it still have skin tissue and blood vessels and green eyes? If it is still here, where is it sitting? How does it breathe?

Two weeks before Christmas she had just finished supervising an exam when Pastor Morton showed up in the doorway of the classroom. He was in jeans and a sweatshirt. He smiled.

“Alexia.”
“Oh. Hello. I’ve just finished an exam with my students.”
“An exam for poets?”
She laughed. “I suppose.”
“Alexia. I wanted to tell you. I read your poem. The last one you wrote. It took me awhile to get around to it, didn’t it? Listen. I had to tell you in person. I don’t understand all of it. But something in me wants to. I think it’s a fine piece of writing.”
“I’m very surprised. But thank you.”
“I want you to come back to the church.”
“Pastor. I don’t think it would work.”
“I want you to write another poem. A lot more poems. I want you to read them to us.”
“I can’t go through all that again. I guess I’ve become something of a hermit in the past few months. Praying. Reading. Struggling. I don’t think I can come back and be cross-examined by you and Mr. Sharpe every Wednesday night.”
“There won’t be a cross-examination. You can stand up and read them from the pulpit.”
“Without you knowing what I’m going to say?”
“I’m going to take a risk.”
“What do the others think?”
“They think the poems you write matter.”
“All of them?”
“Enough of them.”
“I don’t think I can do it. I’m sorry.”
“Alexia. We need God to speak to us this way.”
“Why?”

The pastor’s lips and face jerked as he tried to explain. Alexia thought he was going to collapse. “One of the Benjamin children took ill after you left. You must remember Justin. It was diagnosed as leukemia. I preached and preached but it made no difference. The family withered away as Justin got worse. We all withered away. He died. The way I spoke. The way I prayed. It was like a thick grey dust that settled on everything. I found a poem of yours between the pages of a hymn book. I read it to the congregation a week after Justin died. For a moment it was like a clean rain. But then it was gone. Alexia. We’re drying up. And you’re the only poet we have.”

That Friday night she broke her fast with a small round of bread she had baked herself and a cup of dark red wine. This is my body. This is my blood. Rain clamoured to get into her apartment and, remembering the ten year old she had been who understood storms and showers, she opened the balcony’s sliding glass door and let it gust over the ceramic tiles of the floor and over her face and hair. Tell me what to write. Put into me what I can write. Don’t you come from God? Then she shut the door and smoothed down her hair against her wet skin. She plucked a red throw from the back of a chair, wound herself in it and squirmed into a comfortable position on the couch. What am I supposed to say? Am I suposed to give them back their childhood? Show them the star over Bethlehem? Build each one a hut in the desert? Coax them to put a finger in Hopkins' inkpot?

There was only a stubby yellow pencil on the coffee table, a cold cup of Earl Grey tea from the night before and a book with a red cover entitled Western Asceticism. The rain talked on the glass. She began to print words on the inside of the front cover. There were two blank pages and when she filled them she turned to the back of the book where there were three more. Although she had begun with printing it turned into her written scrawl halfway down the fifth page of the poem. Her face was warm. When she became stymied she rubbed her hand up and down her leg and made vertical lines, up and down and up and down, with her pencil. She always began again in a sudden fury of sentences. When she had used all the blank pages she stopped.

“That’s enough.” she told the rain. “I have nothing more to say to you.”

She thought about placing the book under her pillow but it was too fat so she left it by the bread crumbs and the small ceramic cup with a dark ring at the bottom. Then she brushed her teeth and brushed her hair and got into bed. Her childhood poems were stacked on her bedside table and she thought about turning on the lamp and looking at one or two. But she closed her eyes, suddenly opened them again and glanced around her, then lay her head back so that her hair spread over the white pillow. It appeared as if someone had composed every delicate strand to lie in a precise way.

january 1st 2012 release dates

2011-05-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

I've just gotten word that two of my books will be released in the US market at the same time by two different publishers.

A Bride's Flight From Virginia City, Montana, a kind of love story-thriller set in 1875, will be published by Barbour Publishing of Ohio and hit the shelves January 1st.

If I Take the Wings of Morning, a love story set during World War I that has an Amish twist (conscientious objectors), will arrive at the same time, January 1st, 2012, courtesy Harvest House Publishers in Oregon.

Virtual interviews, Q&A, promo material, etc., will be released on this site starting in the summer/fall. There will also be special emailings to any who are interested.

Thanks for your support and I look forward to interacting with many of you about these books, why I wrote them and what they are about (without giving away too much and spoiling the stories :o)

I expect the books can be pre-ordered so that both titles can be presented as Christmas gifts in 2011. More on that as I know more.

I continue to work on new writing contracts with the Oregon publisher at this point and will give you future updates on how those books are doing.

A blessed Memorial Day Weekend to my American friends. We'll talk to many of you soon.

Murray

the bible study

2011-05-26T07:04:00.000-07:00

THE BIBLE STUDY

Now there were two women. Both went to different churches but they got together once a week to talk with each other and to discuss the things of God. The first woman was in a Bible study group that helped them learn what they were supposed to believe. They merely directed their questions to the leader of the Bible study, a pastor, and he gave every question a definite answer. They simply had to memorize what he told them and they had the solution to each of their problems. This brought them great satisfaction and a great deal of peace.

The second woman attended a Bible study in her church where the leader, also a pastor, would not give them definite answers to their questions. In fact, he hardly gave them any answers at all, but instead preferred to answer their questions with another question, which would get them thinking about why they had asked their questions in the first place. They wound up reading the Bible on their own, even praying, and they always came back to the Bible study group with more complex questions than the simple ones they’d started out with. This did not bring a great deal of peace, it brought about a great struggle within each person. Some of the members of this Bible study group left - they wanted a Bible study where they would be able to get plain yes and no answers to their questions, plus whatever additional information the pastoral leader might deem appropriate. After all, why were they paying this fellow?
Despite all this, the second woman enjoyed the Bible study, enjoyed the struggle, though it sometimes cost her sleep, though it sometimes cost her peace of mind and heart.

When the two women got together, the first woman would say: “How good our Bible study leader is, how wise, how many answers he has, he has set everything straight for me. I have the understanding I craved for all the things that happen in my life. I have found peace and truth.”

And the second woman would say: “I cannot tell you that I have answers for all the things that happen in my life. I cannot say I have peace or have all the truth. But I certainly have prayed more and read the Scriptures more since I joined this Bible study group. I feel I am wrestling with God.”

“Well,” responded the first woman, “suit yourself, but if you ask me, anyone who lacks peace in their Christian life isn’t getting enough of the teaching they need.”
So the one woman had her peace and the other woman had her struggle.

It happened that in the first woman’s church, her Bible study leader, the pastor, had an affair with another woman in the study group. It was discovered and he was fired from the church. Soon after, the first woman experienced a suicide in her family, and then her husband contracted cancer, followed by her youngest child being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. These blows, falling one after another, shattered her peace, and when she sought answers from the Scriptures, she could not find them. The answers the disgraced pastor had given her, all of which she’d memorized, seemed empty. She did not know who to turn to and there was little within her own self to rely upon, her faith had been built on her pastor’s, and her pastor’s faith had fallen. He was living with the woman he’d had the affair with. He told anyone that tried to contact him that he was sick of performing and of having to play God. He wanted nothing more to do with churches or Christians. The first woman was crushed.

The second woman also experienced a good deal of hardship at this time. Her husband was pinned under a heavy piece of metal at work. One leg was severed at the knee. He was bitter and angry. The woman’s children could not accept their father in this state, nor could they talk to him, so they stayed out increasingly, kept away from the house. She agonized about the trouble they might get into. On top of it all, her mother, with whom she was very close and in whom she confided everything, suddenly collapsed with a stroke. By the time the woman had made it to the hospital her mother had lapsed into a coma. She did not know where to turn - except to where the struggles of the Bible study had always taken her. She fell on her bed and prayed to God and poured out the pain of her heart.

Catching her by surprise, many truths she had fought and struggled with God over welled up in her to answer her cries. She knew them to be real for she had wrestled them through for herself. This was no second-hand faith God had fashioned in her. The Scriptures blazed with light. No, it was an authentic faith God had personally forged in her soul. She was able to get up off the bed with the peace she had never had before. When she learned of the plight of her friend, she went to her immediately and gave her the strong comfort she could out of the peace and faith God had worked in her own heart. And together, through the Word, through prayer, through the Spirit, and through the fire, the two women entered into life - a new and hitherto undreamed of reality between themselves and the One who was there for them.

the last honest man

2011-05-25T17:35:00.000-07:00

The Last Honest Man

Everything Arden said about other people always turned out to be true so he knew he was not doing wrong. “I’m God’s last honest man,” he liked to tell people. He had a calling, he said, to tell the truth even if it hurt, to get it all out and let the chips fall where they may, to stir the pot and make sure what was below the surface came to the top. He even had a T shirt made up that said, A Honest World Is An Honest To God World, and had a bumper sticker on his Porsche that read, It Ain’t Gossip, It’s God’s Truth.
Many times men and women had come to him and begged him not to speak up about something he knew. It will cause incalculable harm, they told him, it will start a war in our church, in our family, in our city. He always shook his head. “Honesty is the best policy,” he responded. “It’s closest to God’s heart.” When his words brought about the predicted turmoil and hatred and strife he would admit it was rough to watch. “It’s a tough love,” he confessed, “ but the truth is out now and God knows what he’s doing.” He ate well, slept well, was a good husband to his wife and a good father to his children. “An honest man’s pillow is his peace of mind,” he was fond of saying. He did lose friends and gain enemies because of the path he took but he shrugged his shoulders: “That’s what happened to Jesus and the prophets, right? Woe to you when all men speak well of you. But blessed are you when are reviled and persecuted. Great is your reward in heaven.” Without truth, there was no faith, no spirit, no God. So Arden continued to speak up, went to church on Sundays and Wednesdays, read his Bible every morning and evening and worshipped God day and night. He lived the good life.
One night as he slept alone in his bed a sound woke him. He sat up and stared into the darkness. "Who is it?" he asked. The room erupted with white light and white flame. His skin felt like it was burning off. He cried out, "Oh my God, oh my God," and put his hands to his face. Words came to him out of the light like physical blows, softly at first, then louder and harder and more rapidly as if stones were crashing onto his head.
Inflicter of pain, he heard. Arrogant one. Heart of flint. Sower of dissension. Spawner of turmoil. Grief giver. Dark gatherer. Smug. Pitiless. Preventer of life. Grace killer. Confuser. He who cloaks in depression. Man of no mercy. Stone thrower. Torturer. Hell nurturer. Hope smotherer. Fosterer of anguish. Breeder of war. Blocker of truth.
"No, no!" he shouted out. "I am a truth teller. Always. I do not lie."
"But you do lie. I am their righteousness and you speak those words to me."
He did not want to open his eyes but he could not help himself. He sensed he was about to see Jesus. Images of a man in a beard riding a donkey and healing the sick and breaking bread flitted across his mind. What he saw instead was a pillar of scorching flame. Eyes blazed out of it. There were feet like lava. A face emerged that was a pitiless desert sun. The voice was a storm of wind and water and rock.
"You accuse your brothers."
"No."
"You curse your sisters."
"No."
"You spit on your fathers and mothers."
"I only speak what is truth."
"If there is no love there is no truth. If there is no love there is only noise. If there is no love there is only fear."
He was overwhelmed and fell forward on his bed. A dread that made him sick to the core of his being passed over him like a wing.
But God is love, he thought.
No sooner had these words crossed his mind than the feeling of dread vanished. He opened his eyes and sat up. The room was still white with light but the flames danced now and heat no longer burned his face. The voice sounded like a brook moving among the stones, green and bright and speckled with trout.
"Speak the truth. In love. Give all you possess to the poor. Move mountains. Surrender your body to the flames. In love. Exchange fear. With love. Do the greatest thing. Love."
Suddenly the room was empty of white light. He got up, slightly light-headed, went to the window, parted the vertical blinds and peered out at the street.There were stars in the sky but the east was pale. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the glass.
They say he was a different man after that night. He still went about speaking the truth to people. But some who looked on protested that all he really did looked suspiciously like love, no more. You are supposed to tell the truth to these people, they told him, not love them up. Which is easier? he responded. To speak the truth to someone or to say I love you? The truth is, he smiled, that there is no difference.
He infuriated a great many. But he brought truth to a great many more. Families were healed. Friendships restored. Faith replenished. Those who wanted truth that was not truth, because there was no love in it, spent a lifetime among shadows and stones and dry stream beds. For those who wanted more of it, there was more of it, more than a lifetime. And for those who wanted more of the truth that was truth, and all the love that went with it, there was more of that too, as much love as there was God and just as endless.

the Las Vegas god

2011-05-25T17:33:00.001-07:00

THE LAS VEGAS GOD

At first, all goes well.
He marries an outstanding woman, he invests money wisely, he becomes a millionaire. He makes international news early on when he hands Mother Theresa a check for for fifty million dollars. “My tithe,” he laughs.
All the Christian talk shows want to interview him. “God made me rich,” he tells them. “I give the good Lord the credit. There are certain universal laws that God has laid down. Provided you go along with them and don’t commit any violations, God will bless you. It’s as sure as gravity. And we’re not just talking about spiritual blessings, as important as those are, of course. We’re talking about the material world. The Lord knows we need money. He used money when he was on the Earth. He had flesh and bones to feed. He had to put clothes on his back. He needed money. So he gives us money too. My favorite Bible verse is that one where Paul says, ‘My God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory.’ Yes, amen. My own life proves the truth of that. I made my first million selling pews to churches. Now that’s a fact.”
James Oscar Buttering; his face on TIME, NEWSWEEK, and CHRISTIANITY TODAY. A model home. A model wife. A model car. All postpaid from God.
He played God the way some men play VLTs or the machines at a casino. He reasoned that if he pumped in enough prayers, enough worship services, enough charity and tithe money, sooner or later God would come across with paydirt - the right business merger when Buttering needed it, the right car, the right solution for a critical family problem. He was not an insincere man. He considered that his tithing and his church attendance and his humanitarian deeds were investing in God - he expected a return on his investment. And God always came through. He was not only practical with his blessings but dependable. You might even say predictable. You live holy and give God ten percent of your income and don’t swear or smoke and sure as the sun would rise God would fix you up like the Prince or Princess of Wales on their wedding day. He had another favorite Bible verse, “Come unto me all you that labour and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest,” but he always misquoted it, saying instead, quite innocently, “Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you the rest.”
But troubles will attend even the most rock-solid investment. And after you’ve lived a while you know, as William Shakespeare said, that troubles prefer to travel in bunches, they like to keep each other company. So it was for James Oscar Buttering.
First it was his wife. She left to find herself. Then it was his home: half his children wound up on drugs and the other half disappeared. Then it was his car, or at least one of his cars - it broke down, utterly fell apart, on his way to work. When he finally got another limousine out to where he was stranded on a traffic-jammed freeway, it was only to pick up his car phone and learn that oil prices had plunged, ruining a third of all his investments. But not to worry. Diversification. Unfortunately, the troubles had learned all about diversification themselves.
A revolution the government had sworn to him would never get off the ground did, destroying his coffee stocks. His airline went bankrupt. South Africa froze his diamond assets. His fleet of luxury liners all went down in the same harbour on the same day due to a freak out-of-season storm. He couldn’t collect on the insurance because none of his vessels was carrying coverage for that kind of storm. “It wasn’t an act of God,” said the broker, “it was a typhoon, and as you see, clause F.4 specifically rules out coverage in the event of a typhoon.”
By the time James Oscar Buttering got to his office, it was all he could do to push through the reporters, the stock brokers, the government officials, the politicians, the bank managers, and last, but not least, the lawyers, and get into his private washroom to take the rumpled, sweat-stained shirt off his back - the state in which James Oscar Buttering remained the rest of his life. Peeking out behind the washroom door, he wondered that there wasn’t a clergyman or two on hand in the crowd to administer last rites. There wasn’t, but they showed up soon enough.
It was a week later and James Oscar Buttering had just finished lining up at the food bank and he had his feet up because they hurt like blazes. He had a cold room in a warehouse with a hot plate and a seaweed green fridge. He had been living on macaroni and Libby’s beans for five days and was resting a bit before he got back on his feet and started to boil the macaroni for the required seven minutes. His thumb was bandaged, sliced open on a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, a low calorie can, as a matter of fact. James Oscar Buttering still had enough left in him to snicker at someone’s concern for the poor’s cholestrol intake. He’d forgotten what butter and eggs and red meat looked like and he’d already lost thirteen pounds.
The clergymen, however, three or four of them, had not lost any weight in a long time. In fact, they were quite plump - a sign of grace according to James Oscar Buttering’s pre-bankruptcy theology. All of them had known him in his earlier life. Now they sat around on such things as they could find to sit around on. They coughed and smiled and mentioned the weather. Finally, they got to the point: Did James Oscar Buttering want to pray?
“Not particularly,” said Buttering.
The clergymen exchanged glances. One of them leaned forward.
“James,” he said, “this mess won’t straighten itself out until you lay it all before God and ask for forgiveness.”
“Me?” snorted Buttering. “Why should I be asking God for forgiveness? God should be asking me.”
That started it. The clergymen began to accuse Buttering of arrogance and blasphemy and of having a cold heart towards God. They probed for the sins that had led God to punish him with his bankruptcy. When he answered one, another immediately began to argue with him.
“You have said it yourself a thousand times,” they cried. “If you are good and holy, God will take care of you and bless you. But if you break God’s laws in some way you can expect trouble and a miserable life. Isn’t this what has been happening to you?”
“I did nothing wrong!” Buttering raged. “I did no sin. I never shirked any of my responsibilities. I went to church. I tithed. I prayed. And this is how God repays me. He ruins an innocent man. I loved God but where has it gotten me? You think I’m corrupt, my former business colleagues sneer at me when I shuffle by in the streets, people look the other way when they see me sitting in the park, even children call me names and throw things at me. This is how God rewards his friends. I shouldn’t have wasted my time being so good and religious.”
“Ungrateful man!” the clergymen responded. “After all God has done for you!”
“God was just playing with me the way a cat plays with a bird,” snarled Buttering. “He was setting me up for the fall. Now I’m here, right where he wants me. God betrayed me!”
Buttering made a fist and raised it towards heaven, shaking it, his face clenched in anger.
“Who do you think you are?” roared Buttering. “Who do you think you are?” Prayer can be an interesting thing, for certainly, shouted as it may have been at the top of his lungs, what Buttering had uttered had still been a prayer. We often pray because we were raised by our parents to pray, or because the Bible and the minister say we ought, or because it makes us feel good inside, or because we’re desperate. Whatever prayer means or doesn’t mean to us, we certainly would be surprised to realize God was actually listening, God, the Maker of the worlds, the Spirit beyond time and beyond earth. Imagine if God talked back. There we are, mumbling something over our chicken and salad, and a voice comes back at us out of thin air.
In this respect, James Oscar Buttering was very little different from any of us. Prayer was fine, but there was work to do, and even Jesus had said he had to be about his Father’s “business”. So James Oscar Buttering had prayed dutifully and worked heartily and when he raised his fist to God and raged it was, if not exactly rhetorical, certainly a personal indulgence, a venting of his emotions. He did not expect an answer. He got one.
It is difficult to relate exactly what happened. Talking to the clergy about it later, they merely glanced away and muttered a few indistinct phrases. James Oscar Buttering would nod and sometimes smile and say things like: “I looked into my soul.” Or even worse: “I looked into God’s soul.”
Apparently, what had occurred was this: As James Oscar Buttering shook his fist at the sky, or to be precise in this instance, the warehouse ceiling, a voice came crashing out of the rafters, “I am not a Las Vegas slot machine, James Oscar Buttering.” Then, instead of the usual Hollywood pyrotechnics, a breeze fresh with the smell of earth, and forest in the rain, and salt sea blew through the warehouse. Nor was the voice a bass.
What God said in that warehouse full of wonderful breezes and scents went something like this: “I’m not your good luck charm. I do not fit into your wallet with your credit cards. I am not a bank. You do not find me in toy stores. You do not find me in pet stores. You cannot put a leash on me. I do not do tricks. I am not for sale. I am not a Pisces or a Capricorn or an Aquarius. You cannot predict me. I am not your employee. You cannot hire me. I do not answer to your laws. I do not answer to you. I am, James Oscar Buttering, the living God, and you are not my equal.”
When I was piecing all this together, I looked Buttering up. He was hoeing a modest squash patch behind his small home. He had remarried and his children, one still struggling with an addiction, lived with him and his new wife. It had been an extremely warm fall and a thunderstorm was coming on. It was that still and calm half-hour before it broke that we talked, he leaning on his hoe, I leaning against the white picket fence.
“I’ll tell you what came out of it,” he said. “We hear a lot about wife abuse and child abuse these days. We even hear about animal abuse. But we never hear about God abuse. I was using God. I couldn’t take him as he was. I could only have a relationship with him if he was the kind of God I would be if I was God. He had to measure up to my standards. He had to be my “yes” man. Or he wasn’t worth having. I’ve learned since then to get to know him. I’ve learned to value him for who he is, not for what I can get out of him.”
Buttering died a few years later of leukemia. The pain was intense. I visited him once in hospital and his face was shriveled and far away. He was muttering under his breath. Then he looked up at me. “I am angry about this disease,” he whispered. “At the warehouse God told me he had answered me because it was the first time I’d been honest with him. He said he could handle criticism and he told me to keep it up. I have.”
I was the only one at the cremation. His new wife had lost interest in him when he had contracted his illness and his children were living their own lives in other parts of the country. I kept the urn and buried it in my garden to see what would grow over it. But I kept a handful of ashes in my pocket and climbed a hill near my home. I threw the ashes into the air and the wind snatched them, sifted them, and carried a few of them off. It seemed appropriate.

amish grace

2011-05-25T17:30:00.000-07:00

I picked up a film this past Christmas for my wife.

I bought it to go along with a book by Kraybill et al on the same theme: the Amish school shooting of 2006 in Nickel Mines, PA.

The title of both is the same - Amish Grace.

Not having heard anything about the film, since it isn't a Hollywood release, I was taken by surprise.

The acting was so real that, at times, I felt I wasn't watching a movie anymore, but looking in on actual events through an open window.

The script was top notch. The cinematography was excellent. Direction was crisp and the pace of the film perfect.

The movie does not dwell so much on the actual shooting of the ten schoolgirls, five of whom died, but on the emotional aftermath of the terrible act.

It shows you that, yes, the Amish community chose to forgive the killer (who shot himself) and to love and embrace his wife and children. But it also shows you it wasn't always easy. The Amish are not stoic chock-a-block religious monoliths - they are human beings who weep and agonize as we do. It's just that they go to a deeper place with God than most when they suffer. And, above all, they constantly challenge themselves to live like Jesus.

The movie was so well done that I felt the emotional impact for days afterward. I still feel it as I write this.

It would be a strong enough story even if it were fiction.

The fact that the shooting actually did occur and the Amish, including the parents of the slain girls, actually did respond with forgiveness instead of vengeance, with the love of God instead of hate - especially when they had every reason to indulge in wild grief and fury and hardness of heart - makes this one of the most important films I have ever watched. Were I still pastoring at the present time, I would build a whole worship service around the viewing of the movie.

It is an astonishing story.

I offer it to you as an important gift. If you have ever suffered acutely, in particular over things that made no sense in their cruelty and which, despite hours of prayer, could not be undone - if you have ever been badly hurt and had, or still have, trouble forgiving, yes, even forgiving God - if you wonder what it means to love the unlovable and forgive the unforgivable and to do so in the spirit of Jesus - please find this movie and put aside a time of quiet to watch it.

And let me know what the movie has meant to you by simply writing a comment below this blog.

in Christ

Murray

the kite shop - a story about oregon

2011-05-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

the kite shop

THE KITE SHOP (a story about Oregon)

The rains swept in off the Pacfic, long grey clattering chains of cloud and wet that battered the pavement and knocked the light out of the sky. They chilled skin and bone and blood. Inside me, Simon thought, all of it is inside me. He pulled off the highway into a motel parking lot. The t was missing in the sign. Mo-el, he said with his lips. It sounded like Hebrew. But what did it mean? God of what?
“What?”
His eight year old boy popped up his head from the back seat of the SUV.
“Nothing,” he replied.
“God of what?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing what?” His wife opened her eyes. She had been napping in the seat beside him.
“Nothing, that’s what,” he said.
“Dad was talking about the God of Nothing.”
“What?” His wife looked at him.
“Let’s just stop the whole what thing right now. This is the place, right? I’ll go in. Is Cheyenne awake?”
“I’m awake.”
“You and Austen can come in and help me pay for our room.”
“Okay.”
After supper and TV everyone bedded down, Austen in a hide-a-bed, Cheyenne in a single twin, he and Alicia in a queen. Rain cracked its whip against the windows. Simon lay awake. He moved his lips in the dark: Three days in this stinking rain. Then he had another thought: The rest of my life in this stinking headspace. Where is the God of all mercy? Where is the God who turns darkness into light? He finally began to dream and when he did it was about building a huge boat that kept listing to one side and taking in water.
It had stopped raining in the morning but the clouds, it seemed to Simon, were only about a foot off the ground. The kids were racing around scooping up breakfast items laid out buffet style while he picked at his grapefruit. He glared out the window at the soggy sky.
“Why are we staying here?” he complained. “Let’s push on to California. It's almost Christmas.”
Alicia took a bite out of her slice of toast. “Our rooms aren’t ready yet. We aren’t due to be at Disneyland until Friday.”
“Let’s rent rooms somewhere else in Anaheim.”
“Do you know how expensive that would be? We’ve already paid for three days here.”
“Why are we doing this to ourselves?”
“Because the Oregon coastline is beautiful.”
“What coastline?”
“It’s across the highway.”
“A rock beach, right? Rock and stone and lots of boulders.”
“Is the grapefruit sour,” asked Alicia, “or is it just you?”
The beach turned out to be smooth and wide and white. Quite pleasant, Simon admitted to himself, if it wasn’t for the cloud cover scraping its belly across it. Austen chased Cheyenne with a seaweed whip and Alicia twisted her fingers around his as they walked.
“Honey, you can’t think about the church forever.”
“Why can’t I?”
“It’s over. Give it to God.”
“What is he going to do with it?”
“At least we got a nice vacation out of it.”
“That’s right. Two weeks in Costa Rica, all expenses paid, and then you come back, well rested and full of the Holy Spirit, and they fire you.”
Alicia kicked at a shell. “I guess that’s the only way they felt they could soften the blow.”
“Ah, yes. These three remain. Faith. Hope. Love. And the greatest of these is guilt.”
It began to rain again. Not too hard, he thought, just enough to trickle down the back of your neck and makeyour shirt cold and damp. Cheyenne was calling that she had found something in a pool and Alicia went over to her. Simon stood looking at the body of a dead seabird half-buried in the sand.
“The beautiful coastline of Oregon wasn’t very beautiful to you, was it?” he said.
He walked past. The wind began to blow. The Oregon coastline hasn’t done a heck of a lot for me either, he thought. Rain kept hitting him in the eyes but he refused to wipe it away. All he would do was shake his head. Like a bulldog with a grip on something, Alicia said, watching him. But speaking so quietly Austen and Cheyenne never heard a word as they dug a hole in the sand and planted gull feathers around its perimeter.
The rain increased during the night and Simon felt trapped. He put on a jacket with a hood and slipped outside without waking anyone. He crossed the highway and trudged along the beach until five in the morning. Dawn was the colour of mopwater. The black of the night, Simon decided, had been more attractive than the light of day.
“Nice place you got here,” he said to God.
Simon was a stormcloud all day. There was one walk in the rain - "It feels like pins against my skin," Alicia said and he responded, "Or like nails" - a pillowfight in which he was far too savage and had to apologize for making Cheyenne cry, TV shows the others liked but which brought out his sarcasm, a row with Alicia over who had eaten the last chocolate bar. He rumbled out into the night again and let the rain flatten his hair against his skull. Ugly outside, he thought, ugly inside. Light from streetlamps made the roads and lanes shine like plastic. He crossed over to the beach and went up to his waist in the saltwater. Waves churned and sloshed around him. One surge broke over his head and made him cough and spit.
"Your waves and breakers have swept over me!" he shouted. "With all your waves you have overwhelmed me!"
He crept back into the dark motel room and towelled himself off in the washroom. He lay down quietly beside Alicia but she was not asleep.
"You used to fly once," she whispered. "You had big wings. You went high above the canyons."
"I used to lead the procession to the house of God. With shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng."
"You smell like kelp."
"I went for a swim."
"Will you be any happier in California?"
"Not if it's raining."
It was still black as Coke when he got up at four and went outside. A massive cloud was being tugged out of the sky towards the north and the air all about him had a freshly washed gleam. He stood in the middle of the empty highway. He could smell the wet pavement. Seaweed from the beach. Sand. Saltwater. And something else. He could smell the sun. He looked inland to the east and there it was, the top of a yellow translucent head edging over a wall of earth. Enormous. Filling more sky every time he breathed. Black became metallic blue. Venus was as white and sharp as a silver pin. More blue now, more and more of it, seven shades of it, moving in and out of one other as if they were liquid, as if a silent wind were shaping them and reshaping them into an intentional cosmic pattern. That is what I would like it to be inside me, he thought. This moment. This dawn. These colours. This beginning. That is what I want inside.
It was Christmas Eve. He was quiet as they ate breakfast. Cheyenne held his hand as they walked the glistening white sand and Austen kept showing him crabs. Alicia sat with her legs stretched out in front of her gazing at waves bright as the tip of a welder's torch. A few dogs raced back and forth and several people had kites up. They were bits of colour loose in the air.
"Dad!" said Austen. "Can we get a kite?"
"Would you like one too, Chey?" he asked his daughter.
"Sure," she smiled.
The four of them went into the town and walked up and down the streets. They wound up back on the strip that faced the highway and the beach. Cars and trucks in a hurry flashed past. Austen pointed. "There's a shop."
It was long and low and more like an old cottage than a shop. The roof sagged, the windows were large and framed by unpainted grey wood, kites hung limply from the eaves right around the building. The windows were crammed with more kites and spools of string and long cloth tails. It seemed untidy to Simon.
"Look at the colours!" Cheyenne shouted and the children yanked open the shop door.
It was much bigger inside than he had expected. And darker. And cooler. The only light was what came in through the windows. The owner smiled through his grey and white beard and glasses and said hello and went back to talking with a customer. People were scattered throughout the store. Simon's family roamed from one display to another. Kites hung from the rafters by the dozens, they hung from pillars and posts, they rested on counters. There weren't really any aisles. You just made your way around as best you could.
Simon stood by himself next to a kite that was a biplane. He could hear people talking, even his own wife and children, in subdued voices, as if they were in some kind of gallery or sanctuary. There was a rustling and a movement around him every time the door opened. A dragon stirred over his head and nearby a unicorn tossed its mane. You seem anxious to get out of the store, he said softly. The sky is where you belong, isn't it?
"Gettin' kind of warm in here," said the bearded owner and he propped open the door with a great slab of silver driftwood.
The sea breeze moved into the store unchecked. A diamond kite squirmed on the left, a delta kite on the right near the ceiling. A spiral banner spun and stopped. A hawk on a shelf grew restless and sprang up and onto the floor at this feet. He picked it up. You are being cautious, Simon said to the wind.
A sudden gust made the store jump. Every kite leaped and strained at the string that held it. The breeze steadied and then came on without stopping. Colours whirled and fabric fluttered. All the rafters danced with eagles and dolphins and flying fish. Light flashed back and forth. The walls moved and the entire shop seemed to spring into the air, spin and drop. Brightness surged up in Simon's chest. Everywhere he looked there was life and a yearning for air and space and freedom. I would have to buy you all, he said with his lips. Then he scopped up an orca and a diamond with porpoises sewn across it and headed for the till.
"Come on, let's go!" he shouted above the flapping and creaking. "I've got two kites. You guys get two more."
They filled the blue sky that day because in the end they bought seven kites and put them all up to colour dance in the sun. Simon sprang across the sand and in and out of the waves. All that night they slept with the kites in the room with them and all that night everyone heard the kites moving about in the dark. They did not go to Disneyland and they did not care because the sun rose again and the west wind came swiftly across the waves of the sea and the kites flew and were free and they were free with them and it was the morning of Christ's birth. Simon returned to the kite shop - banners streamed from its rooftop, the kites attached to its eaves hurled themselves up against their strings and swirled, the entire store swooped and swung - and walked up to the bearded man.
"How can I help you?" asked the man.
"I will buy the shop," said Simon. "How much?"
The bearded man squinted through his glasses. "How much for all our inventory?"
"How much for all the inventory, all the kite tails, all the spools of string, all the windows and all the walls and every corner of the roof."
"You want to be a kite seller?"
"I will sell kites and they can have God as well."
The man looked at Simon, took off his glasses and looked again, breathed on his lenses and rubbed them with the bottom of his T shirt, put the glasses back on his face and smiled at Simon as if seeing him for the first time. He put out his hand. "I think that can work," he said.
Simon preached there and the kites spun and lifted over the heads of all the people who sat and listened. The door was always open during worship, even during the winter rains, and the entire shop seemed to smile because of it. Alicia played her cedar flutes and Cheyenne her keyboard and Austen his hand drum but when the church prayed there was only the sound of the kites moving. They were sold on every day but Sunday and once a month in fine weather the whole congregation trooped down to the beach with their favourites and let them fly free and high while they sang hymns and Simon fingerpicked the tunes on his Bernardo Chavez Rico handbuilt acoustic guitar.
Simon came back to life, he forgave and was forgiven, he loved, and stood on the beach most mornings and faced the sea and the west wind and prayed to God and put saltwater to his face. Deep calls unto deep, he said with his lips. And they never called the church anything else but The Kite Shop and a lot of people found life there, not just Simon. They stopped often on their way to work during the week to look at the cottage dance in the wind and the kites pull their strings taut and ache for the sky and to watch Simon stand among the kites and move his lips and, every now and then, as if he were a kite himself, stretch his arms towards heaven and float above the earth.

when God comes in small things

2011-05-24T08:22:00.000-07:00

The blog below is the story of Elijah from 1Kings 19 retold in “modern dress”. Elijah went from a high point in his life to a major low point within 24 hours. That sort of experience is something any number of us can relate to.

Elijah had just called down fire from heaven in 1 Kings 18. It consumed a sacrifice he had offered to God. He then had the priests of the false god Baal slain. He was trying to secure Israel’s calling as a holy nation before the one true God. But when Queen Jezebel said she’d kill him for what he had done, and when he saw that no one would stand up to defend him, he fled into the desert.

Not taking any food or water he was basically making a decision to go into the desert to die. “It’s enough now, Lord,” he says, “take my life, I’m no better than my fathers.” (1 Kings 19:4) He collapses under a broom tree where an angel gives him food and water. This rejuvenates him to the point where he is able to make his way to the mountain where Moses met God and received the Ten Commandments.

Elijah expects to see God come dramatically in the wind or fire or earthquake to meet with him. Instead God unexpectedly comes in a soft whisper. The Lord reaffirms Elijah’s call as a prophet by sending him back out of the desert to take care of a number of important matters – anointing two kings and also anointing a prophet, Elisha, to replace him. Despite Elijah’s sense that nothing was going right and that the enemy had won the day, none of God’s plans had been frustrated and everything was going forward as God intended. Elijah was not the only one in the world who had remained faithful. “I will leave 7000 in Israel,” God assures Elijah, “all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.” (1 Kings 19:18)

At the start of 1 Kings 19, Elijah was worn out, frustrated, frightened and depressed. He had had enough of life and what it threw at him. He had had enough of serving God. Running from the reality of the world he lived in he would have died in the desert heat if God had not intervened. And it is surprising how God does intervene.
God does not yell at Elijah, shout that he’s a prophet and that he should have more faith and more courage. He does not condemn Elijah for his mental and emotional exhaustion, for his lack of spiritual fortitude or for the fear that has made him panic. Instead, right after Elijah asks to die and drops down under the broom tree, an angel from God touches him and wakes him and offers him food and drink. The angel does not kick him or shove him and tell him to get back on his feet and keep going. In fact, the angel tells him to eat more, drink more and sleep more because the journey is too much for him to take. In this way, Elijah is restored to the point he can complete the long walk to the mountain of God.

So God deals gently with Elijah in his burnout and offers small and simple and ordinary things to restore him – sleep, water, meals. Nothing big. Nothing spectacular. Things we take for granted – until we are denied them. At which point we realize the small things of sleep and drink and food are actually very big things in disguise and without them we would die.

God continues to renew Elijah in gentle ways and small ways. Once Elijah is at the mountain he expects God will appear in a big way. After all, Elijah is a prophet and he is the kind of prophet who is used to God making his presence known in an electrifying and explosive manner – such as sending fire from heaven. Yet again, as he did when Elijah collapsed under the broom tree, God surprises – he does not arrive in the fireworks. Not in the wind or fire or earthquake. No booming voice or thunder – God comes in the still small voice. (1 Kings 19:12 KJV)

The Lord does not chastise Elijah on the mountain anymore than he did out in the desert. He merely sends Elijah back to complete the work he’d been given to do, this small thing of finishing his job, which is also the big thing of fulfilling his destiny. He encourages Elijah by telling him many others have remained faithful. All is not lost.

Like Elijah, we often feel like quitting in a big way, of throwing it all over and stalking off. This feeling hits us when we are exhausted, depressed and demoralized. At such times we need to remind ourselves of how God treated Elijah when he was in that condition. Small things that were really big things: something to eat, something to drink, some sleep, a gentle touch, encouraging words, a quiet voice, a plan for tomorrow.

When we are in desperate situations we think the only way God can make a difference is if he comes to our rescue in a larger-than-life Hollywood blockbuster way. We even think that God coming in such a way is the only Biblical manner in which he does come. Yet Elijah’s story shows us that God often comes in small ways too. Sometimes ways that are so small we can miss him because we are too busy looking for the surround-sound big screen miracle or breakthrough. What if Elijah had eaten and drunk under the broom tree and thought, “So what? It’s just bread and water,” without stopping to recognize that a divine hand must have put those meals there for him and that God was taking care of him in the middle of his suffering? Small things that bless us say a lot about the big God who gives them to us.

Yet whether the way in which God chooses to come to us is in a big way – like sending down fire from heaven – or in a small way – like speaking to us in a whisper – what is most important is not the manner in which he comes but that it is God himself who is coming to us. Too often we think the Biblical teaching has God coming in a storm of power or on the wings of the wind or it’s not him. But that is only part of the story. He comes in the shape of a dove and in a still small voice as well.

Just as Elijah came to realize that God works in different ways, we need to realize God may very well be working in our lives through tiny but significant events. We look for a volcano and we don’t see it so we believe God has abandoned us. What we do not see is God has come in a spark or by means of the light of one thin candle. What if Elijah had not eaten the food or swallowed the water in the desert, saying such things were not big enough and that he needed something much bigger from God? He would have died. Suppose he had said, “No, I refuse to accept the still small voice. God doesn’t do that sort of thing. It’s the wind or fire or nothing.” Then he would have missed out on some of the most important words God had to say to him in his life.

We pray and stare out the window of our lives and look for the downpour of blessing that will bring everything back to life. What we do not see is God has come in a drop of rain or in a soft patter of drops. They have the capacity of refreshing us and restoring our souls if only we will see these drops for what they are and open ourselves to them – the very small and gentle touches of a great God, touches that can alter a universe or bring new hope and life to the human heart.

It may not have been Elijah’s call to be a prophet but I certainly felt God was at work encouraging me to spend a summer overseas in missions. And it was bigger than that. I had also spent more time in prayer than at any other time in my life and I was certain God was also calling me to serve him in the same way Peter and Paul did – leaving everything else behind and spending all of my days preaching and teaching the gospel.

So I had great expectations. I was confident the summer overseas would confirm what I felt. There was no doubt in my mind God would supply the finances I needed by the date I needed them. In my mind I was already in foreign cities sharing with others the love of God that was so evident in Jesus Christ.

I made my preparations, packed my bags, finished my final weeks at my job and was sure the extra money I had to have, even though it was a large amount, would arrive in the mail or on my doorstep or in the offering plate at any moment. My preparations included getting a series of inoculations from the public health nurses. Painful and numerous though they were I was happy to bare my arm because every needle brought me that much closer to the call to serve my God.

But the days and weeks went by and the deadline loomed and the money did not come in the mail or on my doorstep or in the offering plate. The heavens did not part and an angel did not come down with a check. Cash did not suddenly appear under my pillow with a note from Christ attached. It began to look as if my confidence that God had called me to serve him was misplaced and that this was going to be one of those dreams that never become real.

Very faintly I felt I should keep getting the inoculations. If by some miracle the money did come in and my needles were not up to date I wouldn’t be permitted to board the airplane. So I carried on with the shots long past the point where I still felt strongly that God was calling me overseas and to lifetime ministry.

I eventually reached a place where I was prayed out and worn out. Yet I kept up with the needles. It was a small thing but I kept on showing up at the medical clinic every week or ten days. Elijah had just enough strength to walk out into the desert. I had just enough strength of heart to take the bus to the clinic and roll up my sleeve. Some of the needles had no long-lasting effect on me but some left my arms throbbing for days. A series for the bubonic plague, should I wind up east of the African coast, made it too painful to straighten my arms so I went about for a day with my arms bent up like a praying mantis. Part of me asked: What is the point of going through this discomfort since you’re obviously not going anywhere?

With the deadline only a few days away I was depleted and discouraged. Like Elijah, I no longer believed my life was in synch with God in the way I felt it used to be. The needles were raindrops but I didn’t know it. I saw them as painful reminders of my failure. Instead they were a persistent and insistent reminder, one after another, of God’s faithfulness.

For Elijah, God eventually spoke quietly to him and sent him back to fulfill his mission. For me, I had my final needles and went back outside the clinic and sat on the bench to wait for the bus. The inoculation regimen was completed and I had nowhere to go but back to my house. Crossing the ocean for Jesus was pretty much a lost vision. I had no idea what God was up to and I did not know what to do next.

A young woman from our church youth group, a good friend, showed up and sat beside me on the bench and asked how I was, were the shots really finished? I greeted her with a weak smile and said I was fine and yes, the needles were finished. She hugged me and placed a small white envelope in my hand. I opened it and it was full of money, all the money I needed to go with the missions group overseas. I looked at my friend in shock. She smiled but shook her head before I could ask my questions.

“No,” she insisted, “I can’t tell you who it’s from. I promised. It’s a gift from God. That’s all you need to know. Just thank him and follow him.”

It took a long time for it to sink in. What God had prompted another to do to make sure I flew across the Atlantic astonished me. It was too good to be true but now I realized with God many things are too good not to be true. That summer did change everything and I did follow God’s call into a life and ministry dedicated to him.
But I understood that if I had not kept up with the needles, even with the white envelope in my hand, I would not have been able to go on the mission trip. Officials would have looked at my vaccination booklet, seen that the full set of shots had not been administered and all the money in the world would not have been able to buy my way on that airplane. A still small voice had urged me to carry on with the needles regardless of circumstances, to keep going even when it looked like they were a waste of time. But they were the raindrops, the tiny scattering of raindrops that always precede a heavier downpour. So small, so simple, nothing spectacular, not pleasant in even the least of ways, yet they were God’s indication that I had not been forgotten, that his plans for me were going to be fulfilled and that he was remaining with me day and night. As much as the money in the envelope, the needles were God’s gift, a promise hidden in something ordinary that all would happen as he said.

the elijah story in modern dress

2011-05-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

He had had enough.

No one understood. No one supported him. He was tired of going it alone. Dead tired.
All the good changes he had tried to make. All the things he had done to help people. Everything he had stood for. It had all come to nothing. No one cared about anything he had done. No one cared what happened to him. Even God seemed far away.
He was alone. And now persons from the government were out to kill him.
So he fled with his bodyguard into the desert. Once they reached the burning sands that stretched for hundreds of miles he turned to his bodyguard, who had stuck with him through thick and thin: “Look, it’ll be better if I go it alone from here. It’s harder to track one person than two.”

The bodyguard was reluctant. “I’ve always protected you,” he said, dark sunglasses covering his eyes. “I’ve always had your back.”

The man clapped his bodyguard on the shoulder. “I know. I’m grateful. But we have to break up the partnership here and now.”

He began to walk further out into the desert. The bodyguard watched him go. Once he got behind some scrub and was out of sight the man dropped the bag carrying his food and his water bottles onto the sand. Then he carried on.

The sun hammered onto his back and shoulders. He threw off his hat and sunglasses. The heat went like nails into his skin. Sweat poured into his eyes.

“I don’t care, “ he muttered as he walked along more and more slowly. “I’ve had it. I want to die. There’s nothing left to live for. I’ve done all I can and I’ve come up short.”

He began to limp. His eyesight blurred. Staggering towards a small tree that had somehow survived the hot days and cold nights he finally collapsed. A scrap of shade covered his body and face. His head was pounding.

“It’s enough, God.” He closed his eyes. “I didn’t make a difference. I’m no better than the others who tried before me.”

He fell into a troubled sleep that he hoped would end with his dehydration and death. He began to have strange dreams. In one of them someone who burned as bright as the desert sun offered him water and food and he drank and ate. In another dream the person came back with more food and water and spoke to him: “Eat some more. Drink some more. Sleep some more. The journey is too much for you.”

The man wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he opened his eyes. There was a vivid orange dawn. He felt fit and rested. He got to his feet.

“I’ll go to the place where others say they’ve met God,” he told himself.

He set out and after a number of days found the mountain, climbed it and went into a dark cave. As he rested he thought he heard a voice: “What are you doing here?”
The man did not seem surprised to hear a voice. He was ready with a response. “Look, I’ve done everything I can for God. I’ve worked hard to change this world for the better. I’ve killed myself trying to get false gods out of people’s lives. Now they’re after my blood.”

The voice came again: “Go and stand on the mountain.”

The man sensed a growing presence of the holy like a weight pressing down on him. The air in the cave seemed to get heavier and heavier.

Now God will make it all right, he thought. Now he will come in a big way and deal with my enemies and turn this world upside down. Now he will make everything in my life brand new. And he’ll do it all like a fireworks display on the 4th of July.
A huge wind roared out of the desert and crossed the mouth of the cave but God was not in the wind. Then fire streaked out of the sky and the man said to himself, “All right, God will be in the fire, for sure,” but God was not in the fire. Puzzled, the man waited. Then he braced his hands on the walls of the cave as an earthquake shook the mountain and opened great fissures in the desert. “This is it,” he said. But it wasn’t. God was not in the earthquake either.

Where are you? he wondered.

Then he heard a small sound. He had to focus hard to hear anything. It was no more than a whisper.

But God was in the whisper.

The man stood in front of the cave and bowed his head.

“Go back to where you came from, “ God said quietly. “I have a plan for the days ahead and that plan hasn’t been completed yet. There is more for you to do and I will give you the faith and strength to do it. I know it has been rough. But listen – there are 7000 others who are fighting the fight you are fighting. You may not know them but they are on the same side you are on. You are not alone. You have never been alone. I am with you.”

holy quotes 26/answering to God

2011-05-15T16:11:00.000-07:00

They want me to write differently. Certainly I could, but I must not. God has chosen me from thousands and given me, of all people, this talent. It is to him that I must give account. How then would I stand there before Almighty God, if I followed others and not Him?

Anton Bruckner, Austrian composer (1824-1896)

a prayer for the God journey

2011-05-15T14:45:00.000-07:00

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.

Thomas Merton, American Christian (1915-1968)

vindication

2011-05-14T15:21:00.000-07:00

On my DVD copy of the film Patton there is a short intro by the man who wrote the screenplay for the film.

He tells us he was 26 or 27 when he did the screenplay. The studio liked it and didn't like it. They kept it to make use of but they fired him because they thought it was too weird.

A few years later he was working on the set of The Godfather and his film crew happened to cross paths with another film crew. The man asked the other crew what they were working on and they told him, "Patton."

"Really," he responded in surprise. "Whose script are you using?"

"Some guy named . . . " and they used his name.

"Hey, that's me!" he told them.

Patton, based on this man's script, came out shortly afterward. It went on to win several Academy awards including Best Picture, Best Actor and . . . Best Screenplay. This man found himself in a tux on Oscar night clutching a small gold statue, much to his surprise and delight.

It couldn't have come at a more opportune time. The studio producing The Godfather was thinking of firing this man from their set due to his unusual (read "creative") ideas. However once he became an Academy award winner that changed everything and all talk of firing him went out the window. He stayed with The Godfather which eventually won several Academy awards of its own. The man's name was Francis Ford Coppola and he went on to make such films as The Black Stallion, American Graffiti, Lionheart, Apocalypse Now and The Godfather Part II.

He comments on how the things the studio thought were so weird about his screenplay have now become some of the most iconic images of the film, the scenes that are most remembered and praised. So he tells us, "Look, don't be discouraged when people don't understand or appreciate some of your deepest and most creative ideas. Stick to it. Don't lose your vision. The day will come when you will be understood. And maybe even rewarded."

This is something I'm sharing for all you writers out there who want to be published. It's something I'm sharing for all of you who are artists in any way, shape or form and who want to be understood. I'm thinking of pastors, church leaders, youth leaders, public servants, street lawyers, teachers, professors, psychologists. I'm thinking of everyone.

Don't give up on your deepest and truest ideas. Don't surrender your originality. Don't toss away your different angle, your unique perspective, your unusual way of approaching an issue, a problem, a mystery. Don't bury a special way of talking about God and prayer and faith. If you have something important to say, stick with it. The day will come, Lord willing, when what you have to say will be heard, when what you have to show the world will be seen. Don't lose heart. Continue to be your distinct identity in Christ and the day of vindication will come.

3 Trust in the LORD and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
4 Take delight in the LORD,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

5 Commit your way to the LORD;
trust in him and he will do this:
6 He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
your vindication like the noonday sun.

(Psalm 37)

unanswered prayer

2011-05-09T10:34:00.000-07:00

Some will say there is no such thing as unanswered prayer, that's God responses fall into three categories: yes, no and not yet.

While this is a nice neat little package it doesn't help the people who are suffering and not seeing any divine help coming their way. To me, responding to another's pain with a theological category is very much the approach of Job's comforters - their words didn't connect at the heart level and they caused more hurt instead of easing the agony.

An unanswered prayer feels like what it is, a no or not yet, but that doesn't help a person understand why. And there usually is no possibility of getting a response to why unless God grants a special revelation into his inner workings. For the most part we are never granted that kind of look into how things tick supernaturally. So we are left with the feeling of being let down or abandoned or ignored, the same way we'd feel if we asked a friend or neighbor for help and got silence in response.

A "why answer" helps people cope. In its absence all kinds of reasons for silence in the face of our prayers are conjured up: God hates me, God doesn't love me, there is no God, there is a God but he doesn't involve himself in human affairs, I have some great sin in my life that is blocking God's power, I need to fast more, I need to pray harder, there is a special formula for getting God's attention and I don't know it. Books purporting to give you the right theology for coping or the right formula for overcoming number in the thousands.

I have prayed for different things simultaneously and seen some clearly answered and doors flung wide open while the other prayers never appeared to receive any attention at all. After a lifetime of God's selective response and intervention I have come to the conclusion he works from a different clock, a different timetable and a different set of priorities and principles than I do. I have watched good men die and evil men live and later die, never repenting of their deeds, and I know the stock response to this is that God gave the evil man more time in order to give him another chance. But such an answer, which we cannot know is true or not since we are not God, does not deal with the pain of the family that lost a father and husband too soon (from our point of view). The "why" is not answered and the grieving are left to grieve without comprehension.

Yet God chose for it to work this way. Yes, we have The Fall and the sinful human race and Satan and a broken world, none of which was part of the original plan. But still it remains that in dealing with a broken world and broken humans it was God's choice for prayer to work in the fashion we are used to: some answers come quick, some don't, some may not be answered in our lifetime. We are left with believing (or not) in a God of love regardless of harsh realities and we are left with living a life of faith that doesn't dwell on what is seen but what is unseen.

For some the challenge is simply too great in the face of intense and unalleviated suffering and they walk away from God, sometimes for a while, sometimes forever. Others hang on to faith but do it grimly with little joy or celebration left inside. I myself long to consistently live out a third way: life in the midst of the suffering and joy despite the added suffering of unanswered prayer. Sometimes I'm able to do this, sometimes I'm not. Certainly without the help of the Holy Spirit it is impossible to live out the third way of dancing in the dark.

If people are convinced it is all part of God's plan, and that the bottom line of God's plan is love, they gain great strength in the midst of suffering. But this is easier said than done when the suffering is 12 on a scale of one to ten. There is some suffering that seems to be beyond belief. How some rise above it without becoming bitter or twisted can only be explained by a touch from God, a touch they wanted and reached for rather than rejecting it. For those who do not believe it can only be explained by the same touch, whether or not they wanted it or acknowledged it. Sometimes what we really want goes beyond what we say we do or do not believe for God is working with a deep spirit in each of us that expresses the truest of our desires or hopes regardless of what we think with our minds or express with our lips.

I myself, in the midst of prayers I wanted or needed answered yesterday or last year - or almost, it seems, in another lifetime when I was 5 or 15 or 25 - take comfort in the midst of snarls of spiritual barbed wire by the fact that Jesus faced unanswered prayer too, unanswered in the sense that he didn't get the answer he wanted. Three times he asked God the Father to eliminate the necessity of the Crucifixion and three times he did not get the answer he craved. Finally, in an act we are all familiar with, he realized it wasn't going to go exactly the way he wanted, and he accepted and submitted to "Thy will be done" rather than "my will be done." Which did not mean the whip or nails hurt any less nor did it make the Cross any less lethal. It just meant he had fixed himself in God's will despite the pain and the darkness and that he gained strength and a right perspective from that.

In my wrestling with unanswered prayer, I want to be where Jesus was by the time they came for him with cudgels and swords and torches in the night. For my salvation comes from the Cross that Jesus died on. And that Cross came about due to unanswered prayer. I can only hope to God all my unanswered prayer ultimately results in more life, not less, in more redemption, not less, in more of God and God's love in the world, not less.

And that will be the answer for me as it was for Jesus: light shining out of darkness. His Cross becoming Light. And all my crosses becoming light too.