Lazarus, Come Forth!

Here's a poem to honor the Biblical saint, whose feast day we remember today:

The Convert

BY G. K. CHESTERTON

After one moment when I bowed my head

And the whole world turned over and came upright,

And I came out where the old road shone white.

I walked the ways and heard what all men said,

Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,

Being not unlovable but strange and light;

Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite

But softly, as men smile about the dead

The sages have a hundred maps to give

That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,

They rattle reason out through many a sieve

That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:

And all these things are less than dust to me

Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

Saint Lazarus, Friend of Christ, Pray for Us!

Christ at Play

I believe it is essential to expose our children to as much poetry as possible.  The beauty of poetry is soul-forming.  Great poems carry us beyond our normal patterns and help us to engage the transcendent.  Children are able to absorb poems at an astounding rate, as if they possess intuitive fluency within poetic language.  As Kingfishers Catch Fire is a splendid poem for Advent.  

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

           Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

The Family as a Work of Art

I was the first one up this morning (the girls always sleep in when it is cold).  Left to myself, I picked up Wendell Berry's book What are People For? that I had recently received from my parents as a birthday gift and had not yet had time to peruse.  This work is a collection of some of Mr. Berry's essays.  Wendell Berry is a Kentuckian farmer, who speaks here in reference to troubles on his farm:

It used to be that I could think of art as a refuge from such troubles.  From the imperfections of life, one could take refuge in the perfections of art.  One could read a good poem--or better, write one.  Art was what was truly permanent, therefore what truly mattered.  The rest was 'but a spume that plays/Upon a ghostly paradigm of things.'  I am no longer able to think that way.  That is because I now live in my subject.  My subject is my place in the world, and I live in my place.  


We are accustomed to thinking of art as something that hangs in a museum, or sits reprinted on our bookshelves.  We indulge in art on occasion, but art has very little to do with our day to day lives.  Visiting a museum further contributes to the sense that these great artistic works exist proudly, without organic context, in a void, persisting timelessly.  And then there is life.  There are the stops and gos the ins and outs, real daily hectic modern life.  It may not be pretty but its real.

What if we changed our focus?  What if we made our families, our own natural circles, the location of art?  After all this is where all those significant pieces from the museum came from originally: homes, churches.  It is as though the existence of the museum stands to serve as a reminder that such beauty can no longer exist at home, at prayer.  These works must be protected from the ugliness of "real life."

I am not suggesting that we invest in a lot of artwork and proudly hang it in our homes, or even that we compose our own artwork and put it on the wall.  What I am suggesting is that we see our homes, our families as our lives' own work of art.  Like Berry we might then find that we live in our artistic subject and that our subject is our place in the world, a place of living.  Now this would be embracing vocation.

Advent Reading

If you're looking for spiritual reading this Advent, pick up Joseph Ratzinger's "The Blessing of Christmas." The book is beautifully written and so insightful.

My husband and I read it throughout Advent last year and are doing the same this year. We read a bit in the morning before he leaves for work and in the evening before bed. It's also just a beautiful book with the attractive cover and beautiful art inside. As a sneak peek, here's a bit of what we read today:

"In my daily living, I have little time for Him and little time for myself. I am completely involved from morning to evening in all the things I have to do, and I even succeed in eluding my own grasp, because I do not know how to be alone with myself. My job possesses me; the society in which I live possesses me; entertainment of various kinds possesses me; but I do not possess myself. And this means that I gradually go to seed like an overgrown garden, first in my external activities and, then, in my inner life, too. I am propelled along by my activities, for I am merely a cog in their great machinery.

But now God has drawn me out of all this. I am obliged to be still. I am obliged to wait. I am obliged to reflect on myself; I am obliged to bear being alone. I am obliged to bear pain, and I am obliged to accept the burden of my own self. All this is hard.

But may it not be the case that God is waiting for me in this stillness? May it not be the case that He is doing here what Jesus says in the parable of the vine: "Every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit?"

If I learn to accept myself in these days of stillness, if I accept the pain, because the Lord is using it to purify me--does this not make me richer than if I had earned a lot of money? Has not something happened to me that is more durable than all those things that can be counted and calculated?...

The Lord is here. This Christian certainty is meant to help us look at the world with new eyes and to understand the 'visitation' as a visit, as one way in which He can come to us and be close to us."