tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-237144742024-03-14T01:45:59.746-05:00lifelong flingwe shall not cease from exploration / and the end of our exploring / will be to arrive where we started / and know the place for the first time.Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.comBlogger205125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-10139350381752902412014-10-11T00:50:00.001-05:002014-10-11T00:50:07.176-05:00Time to Move.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Despite years of faithful blogging service through www.blogger.com, I have come to the conclusion that it's time to move and spruce up the ol' write spot a bit. To that end, lifelong fling is making a move across town (after 7 years!) to www.squarespace.com.<br />
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Please hop over to <a href="https://abbey-vongohren.squarespace.com/">https://abbey-vongohren.squarespace.com</a> and also update your bookmarks and shortcuts accordingly. Thank you for your patience and thank you to the good people at blogger. It's been a good run.<br />
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P.S. You will still be able to access most of the previous archived posts (if you should so desire) at the new location.<br />
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See you soon!Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-81237242575537881812014-09-27T12:30:00.000-05:002014-10-04T09:56:45.563-05:00Seasons of (Re)Turning<br />
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<i>"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens." </i><br />
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The end of summer. A hot breath that brings most of us creatures to a standstill. Except for the grasshoppers whose wings click and whir in the blanched crabgrass that grows tall and unruly along the roads that lead to my school from the bus stop. There are crickets too, who bleat rhythmically in the protective shade in the cooler early mornings. Wine-dark bunches of wild grapes appear out of nowhere while their leaves gradually, gravely change their green coats for pale yellow. There are hints of fiery protest appearing along the edges of maples, but they are still stubbornly verdant for the most part. It's not their time - not quite yet.<br />
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In this particular season of seeming stasis, schoolteachers and squirrels alike must again pick up speed, scurry, and prepare for what it coming. Lines of migratory birds form patterns across the sky just as my email inbox receives a flurry of black and white schedule grids. Prairies are reddened with changing grasses even as I don my professional dress and welcome a new crowd of uniformed and bright-faced students. The abrupt change is always something of a shock to the system, like the first really brisk day we get somewhere near the beginning of September. But I love it. I relish the change. It whips color back into my cheeks, energy into my limbs, and the mind is cleared for all it must do ahead.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--MzKWodtzzs/VCbxjHTS0II/AAAAAAAAE3o/bgV6zX34tC8/s1600/IMG_2241.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--MzKWodtzzs/VCbxjHTS0II/AAAAAAAAE3o/bgV6zX34tC8/s1600/IMG_2241.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a>One unfortunate aspect of the upheaval is that whatever I happened to have been in the middle of doing in mid-August- well, those projects are mostly still sitting where they were last touched. One of those has been this blog. However, I would like to signal its return. And come to think of it, this is a logical next step in the change of seasons. It is a fact of life (at least where I live) that when the weather begins to turn chilly, we tend to hunker down, stay in, and turn to our favorite radio programs, books, blogs, and newspapers. I encourage you to join me in this next season of the Lifelong Fling, which will appear about every two weeks and updated mostly on Thursdays. Grab a cup of coffee or a fine autumnal ale this coming weekend, sit down in a cosy spot, and let's relish this many-toned season together.<br />
<br />Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-57474289774017189012014-08-07T10:00:00.000-05:002014-08-07T10:00:02.566-05:00Lost in the Parisian Woods <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Another popular post from the archives this week, and I'll be back to the regularly scheduled program next week. This recounts my experiences while trying to train for the marathon in the city of Paris. Enjoy!<br />
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<span style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://lifelongfling.blogspot.com/2007/01/will-it-go-round-in-circles.html" target="_blank">Will It Go Round in Circles </a></span></div>
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Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-89983282332488603422014-08-01T00:48:00.000-05:002014-08-02T12:24:04.853-05:00Ceci est une pipe.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I dug through the Lifelong Fling archives to find this little post from several years ago in Paris. It was one of the most popular posts and continues to be an enjoyable memory for me.<br />
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I hope you like it.<br />
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<span style="color: #0000ee; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://lifelongfling.blogspot.com/2007/10/stop-and-smell-pipe-smoke.html" target="_blank">Stop and Smell the Pipe Smoke </a>[link fixed]</span><br />
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Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-47127166668156863372014-07-24T23:58:00.002-05:002014-07-25T00:06:01.506-05:00A Miraculous Summer When it begins, summertime is always a long stretch of haze with perhaps a few peaks barely discernible in the distance, but otherwise undefined. It is the catch-all of the year, where I toss all of the catch-ups, check-offs, check-ins, send-offs. I estimate to read a lifetime of books, write innumerable stories, and finish all of the projects. How does reality hash out, with expectations like these?<br />
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It is nothing short of the miraculous, but it is rarely what I planned to happen. Like most real-life miracles, it does not come about when and how I anticipate. There was the week pinpointed in advance by friends for mutual cabin days, for example, when we would come together under the banner of friendship and food a few hours north of the Twin Cities. But instead-<br />
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Instead, I spend a week of mornings running around with children in woods closer to home. We stain our tongue with wild black raspberries and try nibbling on sticky milkweed. Yes, you can bring your pocketknife tomorrow. Did you really just put that toad in a bird's nest? Have you ever read <i>My Side of the Mountain</i>? Let's imagine what it would be like to take on a bear with nothing more than your ingenuity and a hatchet. Let's try building a fire on a windy day. Let's try to remember a world before your Xbox and my iPhone. In that world, I am struck by how the lives of all the creatures intertwine in our magnificent universe, and I am one of those threads.<br />
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A boy stands in a village in the deserted plains of Gaoua City. His life of survival is no game, no summer camp activity. Today, an airplane flies right over him. He pauses on his way to an errand for his grandmother to admire the huge body of the MD-83, its shining wings. He wants to be a pilot someday. That's what he wrote to his American "godparents" last time. The boy does not know it (no one on the plane does yet), but on July 23, 2014, that mighty machine will crash less than an hour later in neighboring Mali to the north. It will be the third major plane disaster in a week, the second in an area of civil unrest. The boy will continue on his way to the market, wondering if the Americans ever have the luck to go aboard an airplane, whether they will return his letter from February, and if they'll remember his birthday gift.<br />
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In a post office somewhere in the United States sits a package with numbers and letters scrawled on the outside that will eventually carry its contents to the eager hands of that same little boy halfway across the world. An airplane will fly it to Ouagadougou - where the failed passenger plane had departed from - and then by truck over bumpy roads to a remote, dusty area with little agricultural promise. And yes, there is a letter inside. It is in French, which means that he'll understand it without the need of translation. And yes, the Americans are going to climb into a magnificent flying contraption very soon. It will take them to a different desert, in Nevada and California - to celebrate ten years of marriage. (Speaking of miracles.)<br />
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After the cabin days that I missed came to a close, the entire party moved south <i>en masse</i> to settle upon our little homestead for an afternoon. I counted seven children who chased seven chickens around our overgrown backyard. Their parents just might need a glass of wine. The yard's a bit ragged, but if you look across it, the yellow primroses are lovely. We also have a goldenrod on its way toward the sky. Primroses close so quickly at nightfall, you can almost watch it happen, like those time-lapse photos strung together on public television. Otherwise, the ground is blanketed thick with broadleaf plantain, creeping charlie, wood sorrel and white clover - so-called "weeds." We shrug. Good food for the chickens. Our table is strewn haphazard with good food for humans, too - beans from the garden, huge cherries, cold cuts, wine, local cider. Babies roll on the floor while cabin plans are hotly contested for the next year. I plan to be there.<br />
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The run to Cub Foods for ham and turkey was unusual; we actually haven't been to the supermarket much recently. There was over 80 pounds of fruits and vegetables crammed into my refrigerator by the end of last week, with more pouring out of the garden each day. These are the green days, when we must either devour with juice-dripping chins or frantically freeze, can, and save for colder days ahead. Abundance, spontaneity, and always more tomorrow. That should strike me as strange. When it starts seeming commonplace and take-for-granted easy, would you please slap me across the face? Thanks. I might need the wake up call. Something like a fellow traveler in this wonder-filled world describes in the experience of driving a car home through rush hour.<br />
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"There are times when it is easy to go numb, when it is easy to forget that you sit in a box of metal, dug from the earth and alloyed, shaped by the men and robots of Detroit. I don't care that I sit three feet above the ground in a machine with the soul and strength of (muffled) explosions. Horses are for recreation; my harnesses are hitched to pounding bursts of fire, and they pull me (gently, please) without complaint, while I collect invisible waves from the air with a magic metal wand and turn them into orchestras, pop stars, and indignant voices complaining about the war...It is easy to be numb to the world's marvels when you've missed lunch and the light is still red." (92, <i>Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl</i>, N.D. Wilson).<br />
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Thing #46 that makes me less numb: when my summer doesn't turn out the way I plan.<br />
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Thing #47: Well-arranged words that make things strange again (e.g., aforementioned <i>Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl</i>).<br />
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Thing #47: Statistics. But only when effectively linked to real people's faces.<br />
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The little card about the boy from Burkina Faso that we received when we first agreed to sponsor him tells us that it is one of the poorest countries in the world and that most adults are unemployed. The children are largely malnourished. Literacy rate: 22%. But Bienvenu is learning how to read. I wonder. Will this mean he'll have a better diet? Will his children have jobs? He told us that besides being a pilot, he'd like to raise animals. I picture what it will be like for him to open his package, with photos tumbling out - images of a couple of Americans and a flock of chickens from halfway around the world. I hope that it is the beginning of something marvelous for him and for us. Miraculous, even.Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-42362157364653234842014-07-18T21:32:00.003-05:002014-07-20T15:24:12.494-05:00Inconveniences...I mean, Adventures! <div style="text-align: center;">
This week was so jam-packed with adventures </div>
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that I am going to have to simply post a few pictures. </div>
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By adventure, I'm thinking along the lines of G.K. Chesterton's wise words: </div>
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<b>"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.</b></div>
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<b>An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered."</b></div>
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There will be more words next week, as usual.</div>
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Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-22500344876471561252014-07-10T13:40:00.004-05:002014-07-10T13:40:59.808-05:00Leave the Edges Wild <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There is a band whose songs and open-hearted life have consistently sustained me with good soul-food: Over the Rhine. <a href="http://lifelongfling.blogspot.com/2013/09/all-of-it-was-music.html" target="_blank">I may have mentioned them before</a>. They have faithfully described and inscribed reality onto my mind and heart for some time now. Their song "Lifelong Fling," for example, has flown over this little writing space like a banner from the beginning. Now, another thought from their creative universe comes to fruition in my life, that of "leaving the edges wild." The idea surfaces in their most recent album, <i>Meet Me at the Edge of the World. </i>Linford Detweiler, who heads up the group with his wife Karin Bergquist, explains the significance of this phrase in a <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2013/10/leaving-the-edges-wild-an-interview-with-over-the-rhine-part-1/" target="_blank">delightful conversation</a> with the good people at Image Journal. He explains that when they first bought their farm in rural Ohio, his father heard birdsongs and saw flora and fauna he hadn't seen in years, and so urged them to "leave the edges wild." The image is a fruitful one and they return to it multiple times on the record.<br />
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As do I when I spin the vinyl and hear it again making deep grooves in me, in the quiet summer night, accompanied by ice clinking in my glass. <i>Let go.</i> You don't need to hem in every minute of every day. Leave the edges wild. Or, to use an Old Testament metaphor, don't gather every last bit of grain behind you when you harvest - leave some for the widows and orphans. This is good news to my harried heart, as I tend to the exacting. I sigh deeply, wish I were different, and then hope to learn a new approach to my brief hours and weeks.<br />
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Put another way, I am being schooled in spontaneity. A late-night hankering for scotch and live music leads us to gathering around the T Collective. The musicians (usually a grouping of different artists every time) throw out sounds and craft them on the fly. "Did you plan any of this?" I inquire during the set break, gesturing toward the stage. No, she answers, it is improvisation tonight. There are wild edges to the creations - screams and drones and pops streaming out continually, making something new out of nothing. When I try to describe the listening experience, it comes out again in terms of food. It is like eating a good meal made out of raw art: nutritive, homegrown, and satisfying. Like snipping greens out of the garden for breakfast.<br />
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Speaking of our little "urban farm," it is "loosely-tended" this year. Plant, uproot, let it go crazy. Wild edibles are a new favorite- purslane, dandelion, wild sorrel, and the like - and my man slyly suggested that maybe it would be better that he <i>not</i> mow the backyard. You know, just in case he destroyed something important. Sure, our chickens decimate everything with their tearing little beaks anyway. Like the hosta. (Oh well. I guess our hens are widows and orphans in their own way.) Plus, after a steady diet of healthy greens, they give back, prodigiously turning out eggs with yolks the color of Valencia orange peel.<br />
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Maybe a balance can be struck between the planned and unplanned, the structured and the spontaneous. For me, summer is a lesson in letting things grow outside the boxes in our calendar days and measuring them otherwise. Not in minutes or hours, nor even in coffee spoons. Rather, in thanks for surprise feasts of all kinds found in the margins of need and in the present moment unmeasurable that swells to satisfied fulness. Lord, remind me to leave the edges wild.<br />
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Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-27092259813021247172014-07-03T12:18:00.000-05:002014-07-03T12:18:51.247-05:00How to Hold a Bird. A Tribute.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DdOPQyLk7f8/U7AeRHrvsFI/AAAAAAAAEwA/0xvbrROAwxw/s1600/KathyHeidel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DdOPQyLk7f8/U7AeRHrvsFI/AAAAAAAAEwA/0xvbrROAwxw/s1600/KathyHeidel.jpg" title="" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kathlyn Heidel, 1938-2014</td></tr>
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I came to Lowry Nature Center in Carver Park Reserve for the first time on a class field trip at age eleven. The outdoors had always been a very natural habitat for me. Do you know that first conscious breath from your cosy sleeping bag on a chilly, fresh morning while camping? Some of us would prefer to stay snuggled up and wait for the coffee to arrive. Myself, I happen to belong to that class of people whose eyes pop open to that situation and get right to zipping the door open to see what the morning sun looks like. I love that thrill of exiting the close quarters of a tent (or house) to let me out to the bright, green-glowing world. That is so often where the adventure always begins - in books and in real life - and that is probably why I love it so much. (Even wardrobes open to a snowy wood.) Plus, somebody has to get out to the fire to make the coffee for the snugglers.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XE5nEF1B-aE/U7AbHNAAZ3I/AAAAAAAAEvU/1fCcpRrks3E/s1600/Abbey+with+the+Kestrel.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XE5nEF1B-aE/U7AbHNAAZ3I/AAAAAAAAEvU/1fCcpRrks3E/s1600/Abbey+with+the+Kestrel.JPG" height="282" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me, circa 1991, with the Saw-whet Owl</td></tr>
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My mother, who is a snuggler, made the remarkable decision to rouse herself blue-morning-light-early a couple of mornings a week and drive me along the winding country roads out to Victoria. I knew that when we turned at the lone Dairy Queen standing in the fields, we were close. A few more miles down the road, I'd get out, binoculars in hand, and head into the center, looking for Kathy in her office. Of course, she was never there. She was almost always outside, hands on her hips, looking at her surroundings. Always looking. And seeing.<br />
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"Hi! What are we doin' today, Kathy?"<br />
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"Oh, you'll see."She meant it. I would<i> </i>see - <i>really</i> see, my eyes be made to open even wider. Once she taught me that the retina was thicker on the peripheral, so if I could exercise that part of my eye to spot birds and critters, I'd see them more readily and clearly. But before anything magical like this could happen, I knew I had to hold my nose and do the chores.<br />
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"Should I go feed-"<br />
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"Yes, do that first. Then we'll go for a walk."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The "Wetlands", Carver Park Reserve</td></tr>
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Almost the first thing I was taught was to pull dead mice out of the freezer, put them in warm water to soften, give them a couple of snips, and bring them over to the two birds of prey kept on site for educating the visitors. One was a small owl; I think the other was a kestrel, and both were rescued but unable to enter the wild since they were permanently handicapped. I had watched the naturalists hold these dignified little birds on their hands with a leather glove which seemed very akin to the falconry that I had read about in tales of King Arthur. I wanted more than anything to learn how the handlers so deftly wove and tucked the leather strappings through their fingers; they did it perfectly every time so that the birds would be constrained to stay on your hand but still be comfortable. Before I could give that thrilling experience a try, however, I had to learn how to care for them in a daily way, which meant thawing dead mice. That was one way to hold a bird; to take on a regular, messy task for the sake of something greater. In a word, humility.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Certificate for "Developing Sensory Awareness" Course</td></tr>
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When Kathy would take us on walks, it was not only the visual senses that were encouraged to open and sharpen. Sounds, smells, tastes, tactile experiences - these were all part of what she called "sensory awareness" which needed constant care for the sake of accurate observation. How many different ways could you hold a bird in your mind so that the next time one came along, you'd be able to identify it? The sound - whether drum or whistle - was essential. You could not quite smell a bird, but you could certainly touch them, especially if you hung out with Kathy long enough. Bird-banding was a favorite activity, and we'd come out early some Saturday mornings to help her. If you hold a bird upside-down, they calm and (sometimes) even fall asleep, giving the bander ample time to disentangle their delicate feet from the threads of the mist nets that caught them, encase their tiny legs with a small, light, metal band, and flip them over to let them fly free. Kathy was so well-choreographed in her movements that she could nonchalantly pick up a bird mid-conversation, apply the band, and release the creature before it even knew what had happened, tossing the number off to the person designated to keep the notebook. That was another way you held a bird - in your memory, faithfully recording sightings year after after, building an understanding of their web of movements over the region. In short, she taught me patient observation.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Kathy's Prairie", Dedication 2014</td></tr>
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About two weeks ago, I drove myself along those same rural highways that wend through the prairies and marveled at the beauty of this country still untouched by the developers. They do slink around the reserve, draining wetlands and putting up cookie-cutter houses where they can, but the protected land still keeps them mostly at bay. An email had arrived from my sister-in-law a few days previous: "did you know about the memorial for Kathy?" No, I hadn't heard. I knew she had been very sick - heard that through the grapevine somehow. Now, we were invited to come together at the nature center, celebrate her life, and dedicate her prairie.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wild Lupine in the Prairie, 2014 </td></tr>
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The prairie. Kathy's dream when I first worked at the park had been to restore this small section of the reserve to native prairielands. Here she had shown me yet another way to hold a bird. If you could bring back the homeland of the bobolinks, orioles, meadowlarks, falcons - they too would return. And it worked. When I was a junior naturalist, I remember squinting up one day at a bright goldfinch who had caught a tall stalk of big bluestem and was swaying back and forth over my head, a brilliant yellow dot moving in the blazing white-blue sky. Sitting back on my heels, I admired him for a moment, and then went to the task at hand, which had been to weed the prairie. Yes, weed the prairie. I spent many hours taking out the non-native sweet clover that tended to crowd out the native grasses and wildflowers.<br />
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It had been slow, hot, bee-stinging work, but here I stood - almost 25 years later - at the commemoration of "Kathy's Prairie." There were a few words spoken in her remembrance, but soon the crowd was squatting in the grass, comparing diverse leaves, exchanging excited finds. "Did you see this orchid? There's a new book about that!" "Did you guys know there's wild lupine over there?" I stepped back for a moment with a sigh - somewhat sad, fully joyful. At her memorial, here was Kathy's legacy. A whole community touched by her lessons, among them: humility in work, delight in the outdoors, meticulous observation and recording, and the importance of securing a future for the natural world. And in all of these things, how to hold a bird.<br />
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Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-57986348341066461742014-07-01T08:45:00.003-05:002014-07-01T08:48:59.891-05:00Preview: A Person of Influence <a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mi_8XmIk6ws/U7K6n78RMsI/AAAAAAAAEwY/Scx9o9wd-P4/s1600/IMG_4546.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mi_8XmIk6ws/U7K6n78RMsI/AAAAAAAAEwY/Scx9o9wd-P4/s1600/IMG_4546.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a>In preparation for this week's post on Thursday, I'm thinking about a person of great influence in my life. What sort of qualities have your best mentors possessed? Was your relationship formalized or did it grow organically out of another kind of friendship? Did you choose a different path because of them?<br />
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What was so very magical about that person?Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-32983218428325387072014-06-26T16:00:00.000-05:002014-06-26T16:00:00.685-05:00Think.<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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A small stack of unevenly-cut cardstock sits next to the mirror on my dresser where I prepare for the day. I glance down and notice the scrawls for the first time this morning. With a quick movement, I slip them into my pocket, finger the worn edges, and make a mental note to pull them out later, anticipating a probable hour of need.<br />
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My soul is a forgetful creature. You would think that out-and-out revelation would have more staying power, those brief but holy flashes when I see life clear and pure. This is good. That is true. This is the way, walk in it. Monumental moments, and yet even half a day later, the glimpse has been forgotten in the swirl and eddy of a million synapses since. We manage to pack a delicious, nourishing lunch most days so we don't end up standing in front of the vending machine with a forlorn dollar bill contemplating candy bars. But when it comes to our heart-hunger, somehow we are not always as purposeful.</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f7A2iQX64k0/U6nEOLr8JfI/AAAAAAAAEtg/areTU7De_7o/s1600/IMG_3036.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f7A2iQX64k0/U6nEOLr8JfI/AAAAAAAAEtg/areTU7De_7o/s1600/IMG_3036.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a>Maybe we ought to construct phylacteries, or some other kind of storage unit of reality whereby written language comes to the rescue. The Jewish people understood that you could carry transformative words through memory and other devices. There, on your forehead and on your doorposts, they would remind you of the past, define your actions and your affections, and prepare you for the future. <i>And it will be like a sign on your hand and a symbol on your forehead that the Lord brought us out of Egypt. </i>Bundle up some truth and take it with you today; you're going to need it something desperate. Tell your heart to tell your heart all that it has learned. Learn to talk to yourself.<br />
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Nowhere is this idea more plain to me lately than in the writings of Hannah Arendt, one of the most significant thinkers of the late 20th century. The <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1674773/" target="_blank">recent film</a> on her life is a good introduction to some of her ideas, and the film itself cleverly demonstrates how she lived them out. How, you might ask, do you dramatize thinking? Well, let's just say I lost count of how many scenes featured the woman reclining on a sofa, lighting up a cigarette, and staring pensively into the air. (Another variation was sitting in front of the typewriter, lighting up a cigarette, and staring pensively into the air.) At first, I grew restive with the repetition. I was just about ready to divide my attention (ironically) with another open window on my laptop when the obvious occurred to me. Here was a picture of a life devoted to focused attention, and one's ability to engage in a particular level of mental activity, according to her, determined one's ethical fate.<br />
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From what I can gather, Arendt claimed that a human being must have a inner dialogue between self and self in order to remain a morally-conscious person. People who have forfeited that conversation are no longer self-reflective, which she believed made humans actually unable to make ethical decisions. Her primary example of this was Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi S.S. guard who was tried for his war crimes in the 1960s. His banal repetition of the "reasons" for his actions during his trial made it clear to her that he in fact had no reason, or reasoning, of his own. In other words, we are capable of great evil when we give over active, personal thinking to a passive inhalation of received ideas. Thinking is what makes us human.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Adolf Eichmann</td></tr>
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It may be that we are not in danger of blindly following a regime like Eichmann. (Or perhaps we are closer than we realize.) But regardless, I have noticed personally that subconscious language is highly formative. Without fail, there is an inner conversation churning and humming in the background, whether I'm paying active attention to it or not. And it is in the seasons where I do not take time away from the feverish pitch of the day to examine those thoughts that I become most controlled by them. A subtle tyrant quietly erodes my freedoms and slowly feeds me the slightest of lies until I am mastered by the most outrageous and otherwise unbelievable beliefs. In these instances, I realize my Eichmann-like vulnerability.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-X7xEBsp-udg/U6nEuIPuxcI/AAAAAAAAEto/Hz6ueL3d9-Y/s1600/IMG_2999.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-X7xEBsp-udg/U6nEuIPuxcI/AAAAAAAAEto/Hz6ueL3d9-Y/s1600/IMG_2999.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a>How can this pattern be disrupted? It is tempting to feel the strength of this inner tyranny and become fearful. We see the effect that that the "matrix" has on us. We panic and shun the influence of hubbub and buzz; pull the plug on our computers and go off the grid. We close all gates to our eyes and ears that we can think of. Heavens, how did that awful stuff get in there? And there is some very real benefit to disengaging, regrouping, and contemplating things from a distance. Maybe this is what Hannah was doing behind her ubiquitous cigarette. It certainly seems to be the life Wendell Berry proposes when he writes: <i><a href="http://www.context.org/iclib/ic30/berry/" target="_blank">So friends, do something everyday / That does not compute.</a></i> This may mean I decide to quit Facebook for three years, or it may mean I pause for two minutes in the middle of a task-ridden day to re-read the little card in my pocket and pray. However it looks, stepping back is vital to one's personal and our collective well-being.<br />
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But what happens next? How do we enter again, flip open the typewriter or computer, and remain mindful? Certain branches of all religious traditions have encouraged their followers to live apart: the contemplatives, the mystics, the separatists. These have their place in church history, to my way of thinking. But for most of us, avoidance of "the world" can also become an excuse to sidestep hard questions. The abnegation of engagement is particularly prevalent in my generation in regards to religion and politics (sinners of whom I am chief). Because the public square has become so sharply polemical, we think it justifiable - if not a matter of survival - to mostly disengage.<br />
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I ache for a better way, one that entertains cultural questions while eschewing cultural brainwashing. Can we learn a kind of graceful rhythm by which we retreat and return with refreshed vision, able to see this <a href="http://lifelongfling.blogspot.com/2013/09/be-blessed-you-dear-god-created-world.html" target="_blank">blessed, dear God-created world</a> for what it is and ought to be? How does one tend that essential, inner conversation while still remaining connected to the outside? In short, how do you rightly love the world? </div>
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Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-83857408935744958862014-06-17T14:30:00.000-05:002014-07-08T07:49:16.496-05:00On Tabernacles <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I love the word tabernacle. It is one of those words that trips off the tongue and lips in a very satisfying way. Just try it, nice and slow. Tabernacle. I type out the letters one by one and tag on "etymology" in a search engine eager to help. Did you mean...? When I click my yes, I uncover the word <i>taverna</i> (hut or tavern), and <i>tabernaculum</i> (tent). Well, here's a humble beginning for a word which later came to describe something so exalted; nothing less than the bejeweled house of the God of the Hebrews. It was this, his <i>mishkan</i> (residence), which made it possible for the unseen presence to travel with them seen, all the way through the wilderness.<br />
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I've been contemplating for some time how a home might a sort of tabernacle or dwelling place for something other than just us. As in, a presence unseen. People talk about houses being haunted, and even if you think that's bogus, we all seem to be able to agree that spaces have a certain feeling to them. What must one do to create a positive atmosphere (at the very least), or even to invite the presence of the living God (to be a little bit more specific)?<br />
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For starters, there's always the original tabernacle-building in Exodus. If we look close, we see a man named Bezalel who peeks out of the shadows of the story and takes the spotlight for just a moment. This master craftsman apparently had his "spirit stirred" to put his hand to metalwork and other skills. He, along with other similar souls, were charged with constructing the tented sanctuary as a total work of art. The combination of strong, learned hands and artistic sensibilities was due to specific "wisdoms" they had been given. Wisdom to wield, weld, and make new worlds. <br />
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I am in the middle of re-making my kitchen and I want that wisdom. Right now, it all smells of fresh paint and...spice. A week ago, I dumped everything into new jars which brought order and beauty but also fragrant, escaped clouds of scent. The madras curry, for example, greets everyday me when I come in to make breakfast. Perhaps a little like incense in a church.<br />
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Do you think of your home as a sacred place? How long did it take to make it that way? What are the practices that you engage in to keep it holy? </div>
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<!-- Blogger automated replacement: "https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-fU5NU7Oa3BE%2FU6B5Kv_odpI%2FAAAAAAAAErE%2FE0jZh1YHBF0%2Fs1600%2FIMG_4489.JPG&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*" with "https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fU5NU7Oa3BE/U6B5Kv_odpI/AAAAAAAAErE/E0jZh1YHBF0/s1600/IMG_4489.JPG" --><!-- Blogger automated replacement: "https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-HX1NQtQkt40%2FU6B505OxcrI%2FAAAAAAAAErs%2FRDaBMKeK33Y%2Fs1600%2FIMG_4531.jpg&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*" with "https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HX1NQtQkt40/U6B505OxcrI/AAAAAAAAErs/RDaBMKeK33Y/s1600/IMG_4531.jpg" -->Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-55850449837115685972014-06-14T18:15:00.000-05:002014-06-26T00:25:38.215-05:00From Garden to City <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IQwfCk8FYzk/U5o1fsW0LdI/AAAAAAAAEqE/tHFNg_fpTho/s1600/IMG_4486.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IQwfCk8FYzk/U5o1fsW0LdI/AAAAAAAAEqE/tHFNg_fpTho/s1600/IMG_4486.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a>It is said that we begin in a garden and end in a city.<br />
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In these first ten early years as a married couple, we have always been at our best, our most-loving, in gardens. Though we live in the middle of a city, we are oddly compelled to carve, till, and plant the little tenth of an acre around us. We pore over articles about compost, chickens, seeds, and planting dates. We cultivate the soil to bring forth vegetable, flower, and fruit of all kinds. I think of the tensions that ease when I take up a spade and he takes up a rake and we labor as one. At those times, one must let go of any extra weight in order to work for the common good.<br />
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Later, after hours in the burning sun, we take up food and drink with tired grins and light hearts. The things we set aside in order to work together now seem unnecessary, even petty. Through this mindful labor perhaps we reverse, in part, the curse. "In pain you will eat of the ground all the days of your life...by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground." To find happy satisfaction in our work is part of renewing earth - our bodies and our abode. All is from dust, but only we are god-breathed. Because of this, we will rise again the next morning and we will be presented again with the hard but joyful choice to "practice resurrection," as a "mad farmer" <a href="http://www.context.org/iclib/ic30/berry/">once put it</a>. And one day we will awake to the real resurrection, life for keeps.<br />
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But before we go there, a brief glance back to the garden. It is written that God planted many things there that were good for food. And for all the infamy of that one particular fruited tree, there must have been hill upon rolling hill of bounty otherwise. When we bought our slice of earth over a year ago, there was nothing. Empty and void, neither shrub nor weed to grace the neutral drop cloth of dirt. But the spirit hovered over the surface, so to speak, and soon compelled us to act, to re-create this sad, vacant little world.<br />
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The landscape slowly took shape as we spoke it into being, mostly during the long winter months. What has emerged so far? Our first tree, a cherry, stands at the ready to be fruitful and multiply. The food scraps we threw in the compost pile after dinners last summer have worked magically into rich, dark, living loam that will feed this year's crop. We have been scattering bright radishes over greens fresh from the garden for months already. And bits of potato gone to sprout are hilled up in a bin, working silently to push tubers out on all sides. So I say, in faith believing. No peeking until fall.<br />
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There are also gifts that arrive unplanted. Sprigs of mint from unseen roots deep. A mulberry tree on the property line, and crabapples from the neighbor, which simply breaks down the idea of a property line. Even the forest sometimes creeps onto our modest plot to surprise us. This year, the late spring rains birthed a crop of about two dozen morel mushrooms, which we happily unearthed. Omelettes were awfully special that week.<br />
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So here we are, living with a bit of Eden and a bit of the new Jerusalem. (Holy Land deli up on Central helps to re-enforce this impression.) Our chickens escape and run down the alleyway. We harvest wild pears while a city bus zooms past on Johnson Street. We buy bales of hay from Home Depot. And yet there is something that feels right about the colliding of these worlds. We yearn to bring green, pulsing, cyclical life to burst upon the gray concrete grid. And it seems equally good to imagine and build cities that are safe, beautiful and brimming with the intellectual and artistic foment that only comes when scores of people live in close quarters.<br />
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It is well-said that we begin in a garden and end in a city. From our mysterious, shadowy and god-breathed genesis, we move toward the greatest of revelations, the unveiling of the holy city and her descent from heaven to earth. Crying will be no more. Death shall be no more. Night will be no more. The city will be lit by God himself, who will make his home with man.<br />
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<br />Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-82008236721599827502014-05-17T12:45:00.001-05:002014-06-26T00:28:55.942-05:00Bird By Bird <br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NDnqiz3PXuw/U3eFV1NWueI/AAAAAAAAEoU/kERYp9Q4IdU/s1600/IMG_4381.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NDnqiz3PXuw/U3eFV1NWueI/AAAAAAAAEoU/kERYp9Q4IdU/s1600/IMG_4381.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a>Months. I have not put pen to paper or finger to key or even voice to tale for weeks end-to-end. I used to feel a leaden weight on top of me when this happened, perhaps guilt that I was not sufficiently pursuing, describing, writing reality. It's daunting enough to take in the universe through one eyes, ears, mouth, nose, fingers; letting it come out again in some kind of semi-coherent form is impossible. These days, I am more like a pregnant woman who feels the need to eat and eat, and let something grow and mature inside of me for a long while before it's ready to be birthed. It still might put a strain on my back, but at least it's pain with a purpose. Bob Dylan describes a period of time in his life when he did virtually nothing but read voraciously in a friend's library. He says: "I stored all those things away...figured I'd send a truck back for it later.<br />
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There is a point at which one must sit down and devote actual time to actual writing, to send for at least one of those truck shipments. I am not first one to feel overwhelmed by the pressure of this task, of course. In one of her delightfully meandering accounts of writing and life, Anne Lamott recounts a vivid story from her childhood:<br />
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<i>"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to years, surrounded by binders and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'." </i><br />
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So here I am. I will take it bird by bird, and I mean that quite literally. I find birds perched everywhere in my life, from earliest childhood to just yesterday. It would not be an exaggeration to say that these are the creatures through which God most consistently speaks to me personally. I think of yesterday evening when the declining sun rays blazed through the fingered translucent plumage of a bird fluttering away from me in the wood, and my throat caught on the beauty, as it did for the Provencal poet of old, "Can vei la lauzeta mover...alas contral rei"" ("When I see the lark move...wings against the sun"). Carefree, beautiful, and temporal.<br />
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Another image alights in my memory: the minuscule, featherless body that curled up to die on our doorstep a few summers ago. <a href="http://lifelongfling.blogspot.com/2012_07_01_archive.html">Oliver</a> taught us what mercy demands and how unconditional love simply sprouts in your heart and will compel you to joyfully fulfill those demands, no matter what the cost of time, effort, and heartache.<br />
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There is something about the fragility of these creatures. They appear so capable, soaring above the rest of us, singing gorgeously. Who in the animal kingdom wouldn't give an extra leg or a spare gill just to have the ability to fly or weave a sweet song? And yet under that impressive array of feathers are tiny, delicate bodies and the need for constant, almost frenzied nourishment.<br />
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Look at the birds of the air. That's what Jesus said to do. I imagine the moment when he first said this. Maybe a flock of sparrows had just swooped over their heads, finding shade from the hot Galilean sun. Maybe the disciples were fussing over how the monthly budget was going to work out, because the math never seemed quite right. (There were catches of gossip here and there that someone might be pilfering from the common purse.) "But we need this much for bread!" "We've got to help so-and-so's mother, too!" "My tunic - absolutely threadbare! I never would have let this happen before, before...Jesus". And just then, while their fragile, burdened shoulders are curved over account books, Jesus points to the chattering birds. Look! He says. The disciples don't all notice right away; some are still absorbed in working out the figures. (They always relied on Matthew for that.) Look! He says, more insistently. What? Heads pop up, wondering whether they are in for another puzzling lesson that will make them ache with desire to understand. <i>Look at the birds of the air. They do not toil or spin, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. </i>Easy enough to understand; so hard to learn.<br />
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Centuries later, a bishop named Augustine lays the weight of a heavy head and heart under the fig tree and thinks back over his life of toil. What has it all been, but rhetorical spin to promote his own self at all costs? He remembers every detail he can eke out of those miserable, creeping hours and writes God into the story, in-between the pain. It was God who provided him with the ability to speak, an education, with a love for beauty, with books; even with the milk from his mother's breast. God fed him through His mother, and with the physical nourishment he took in a taste for Jesus Christ, a craving which wouldn't be satisfied till many years later. The father in heaven fed him. <i>And why are you anxious about clothing? If God so clothes the grass of the field, will he not much more clothe you?</i> Stop hiding behind those fig leaves in shame and let me clothe you. Let me feed you.<br />
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There are birds in the house again. Every morning I get up and go first thing to the cage in the window in back. There are four little chickens, each a different color, each with two wings, which makes eight wings all flapping and declaring with one squawk the glory of God and the need for some exercise. They are getting a bit big for their confines, so we let them roam. Only a month ago, they were inside of a shell in Iowa somewhere. Then they were shivering, swaying balls of fluff coming home in a tiny brown cardboard box. Now the "girls" are more like adolescents, tall and gawky.<br />
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Just try to sit down and get some writing done. The girls will get you out of your chair. They are compelling, each with her own personality, wit and whims. The black one is small and sweet. The yellow one, a gourmand who rips at her food with relish. The brown-black one is large, crabby and bossy. (She must be disconcerted by the fact that the humans are bigger than her). And then there's Red over here, calm and collected, the peacemaker. It never gets old, to see them enjoying their food, growing and changing, new feathers sprouting each hour.<br />
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Why would my all-powerful and loving father in heaven be any less attentive to me? His care and concern far surpasses the affection we may have for a group of pecking, squawking biddies. There is a reason God looked at His creation and said: this is good! We need all of these sparrows, swallows, warblers, chickadees, cardinals, crows, chickens, ravens, catbirds, hummies and finches. We must experience physical, breathing, winging, singing metaphors to really get it. Abstraction about God's care for us alone won't do. Look at the birds, their wings flapping wildly, the frantic pecking for food, satisfaction from an open hand. Look at them. And thank the father in heaven, bird by bird.<br />
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<i>Addendum: I was struck by a very obvious fact upon re-reading this post. Birds are also the central metaphor in my book, <u>Fledgling Song</u> and would give me the opportunity to do a shameless plug for it. : ) You can find my novella <a href="http://www.electiopublishing.com/index.php/bookstore#!/~/product/category=4758365&id=26529233">here on Electio Publishing</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fledgling-Song-ebook/dp/B00E89ERJE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375244752&sr=8-1&keywords=fledgling+song">here on Amazon</a> if you've never read it before. If you have read it and have an opinion, please write a review on Amazon and help me tell the world. Spread the word! </i><br />
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<i><br /></i>Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-77366911366525545752014-03-11T23:03:00.002-05:002014-06-26T00:31:40.318-05:00A Curious Sound<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JcJRc6rckJk/Ux_KS9mpQsI/AAAAAAAAEks/ztXDmU7WS20/s1600/IMG_3287.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JcJRc6rckJk/Ux_KS9mpQsI/AAAAAAAAEks/ztXDmU7WS20/s1600/IMG_3287.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></span></a>
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In C.S. Lewis' <i>The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe</i>, a young boy named Edmund trudges miserably through the woods which have been frozen in always-winter-yet-never-Christmas by the White Witch's power. He, too, has been under her spell. But as he plods in servitude under the imperious eye of his mistress and her cruel dwarf's whip, he hears something that breaks through the monotony.<br />
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"There...seemed to be a curious noise all round them, but the noise of their driving and jolting and the dwarf's shouting at the reindeer prevented Edmund from hearing what it was, until suddenly the sledge stuck so fast that it wouldn't go on at all. When that happened there was a moment's silence. And in that silence Edmund could at last listen to the other noise properly. A strange, sweet, rustling, chattering noise - and yet not so strange, for he'd heard it before - if only he could remember where!" Then all at once he did remember. It was the noise of running water. All round them though out of sight, there were streams, chattering, murmuring, bubbling, splashing and even (in the distance) roaring. <i>And his heart gave a great leap (though he hardly knew why) when he realised that the frost was over."</i></div>
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This is one of the first great signs - not only of spring in Narnia, but also of the melting of icy hearts like Edmund's - or, like ours. We may not even recognize the noise of running water if it's been a very long time, but if it sweet to us even in its strangeness - this is the first hint that there's hope. Our heart gives a great leap, though we may not quite know why. Life is awakening from slumber deep down under year-laden layers of snow, and we sense things moving in spite of our still-heavy eyes. </div>
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</span>We were woken early from the literal winter-slumber this year quite suddenly. Several weeks ago, we threw a few things in a suitcase, dragged it laboriously through the snow and ice (this was before Minnesota's spell was broken), and hopped on a bus, a train, a plane - to another place. It was rather Narnia-like, stepping through a door into another world. I have never quite gotten over the magic of plane travel.<br />
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Our destination was the sunlit lands of San Diego. We arrived in the cool of evening, but the mere fact of being able to stand outdoors comfortably at the airport and watch palms gently giving in to light breezes - this was a revelation. Our shoulders, long hunched from chilliness, relaxed. Our faces felt the humidity and rejoiced. This was going to be good.<br />
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The next day, we were whisked to a little place in southern California called La Jolla, stunning with its varied sea life, craggy coves, and vistas. The sunset by the end of the day was breathtaking, but the best part was that we spent most of our day inside of that landscape. We learned how to balance a paddle-board and then followed a friend over two miles out to sea into pods of dolphins, whiskery sea lions, bright garibaldi fish, and shadowy groups of leopard sharks shifting below. We decided that Sea World just might be a little bit of a let-down after all of that.<br />
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Despite the unfamiliarity of San Diego (what is that thing glinting in the sky - oh! Is that the sun?), we were greeted many times by the familiar faces of old friends. Here we were, in surroundings that were bright and and novel - but we were with dear people who have many times generously hosted us, broke bread with us, shared beauty with us, and provided us with much-needed rest and play. Here was a home where lemons grew in the backyard. Where I laid out silverware on the patio table for lunches. Where one could lay around and read, sleep, talk, cook, or - if so inclined - run out the back door, and straight onto a mountain.<br />
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One was so inclined. Winding suburban streets suddenly gave way to a gravel trail, which became "Black Mountain Trail" and I was off, ocean visible far in the distance. As a climbed higher and higher, I ran out of breath more easily, but I felt pushed on by something else - what was it? It was a curious feeling, one I hadn't felt in a while. It was energetic desire, leaping up like Edmund's curiosity, reminding me of beauty and the love of running and how fine God's creation looks when you open your eyes to it.<br />
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At that point, since it had been about a day since we'd been to the beach, so it was of course time to return. We basked in the incomparable luxury of time; walking the length of a beach while the sun slipped down, near a little town called Cardiff-on-the-Sea. This was the site of another sweet reunion and renewal of friendship. Good company, good food, good local wine. Just good. So much good. The sands were golden - almost too bright for our eyes.<br />
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Speaking of the bright, there is a certain savage beauty to the winter where we live, in the “tundra” as we call it with semi-fond chagrin. (Some of us more fondly than others, I recognize!) Having always been a lover of snow, ski, brisk, bright white-lovely days, I never have had the typical wintertime fly-me-to-a-beach reflex. It always felt a little bit like cheating myself out of seasons. However, this long year's trudge through frozen windshield wipers and frigid strings of subzero weeks wearied me in its sameness. It's always winter and only once Christmas (so long ago!). The monotone days were difficult to surmount.</div>
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This is perhaps why our adventure felt almost miraculous. The word that we could not stop using was "blessed." Every single day was a yes, an amen - even the rainy ones near the end were this way, full to the brim of glory, fun, and shimmer. Each experience was an opening of our eyes, ears, mouths, and hearts to another reality - of the warmed side of God's green earth. We may have been in a long season of waiting, but things are beginning to melt here back at home, too. The roar of San Diego's ocean waves still echo in my ears like a seashell, but I'm also starting to hear it underneath Minneapolis' lakes and rivers. I don't think it's my imagination. The spell is beginning to break, and my heart is on the verge of a great big leap...<br />
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<!-- Blogger automated replacement: "https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-j_VShEhCQVs%2FUx_IW4qNA4I%2FAAAAAAAAEjQ%2FvTV1SqOUsSE%2Fs1600%2FIMG_3487.JPG&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*" with "https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j_VShEhCQVs/Ux_IW4qNA4I/AAAAAAAAEjQ/vTV1SqOUsSE/s1600/IMG_3487.JPG" -->Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-1343690224894995622013-12-04T19:34:00.001-06:002013-12-04T19:35:18.815-06:00Advent Thoughts, Hope<br />
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"This is the day that the Lord has
made."<br />
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What day?</div>
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Obviously, this particular day, made up
of 24 hours. Or for the Romans, 12 horae. Or however else we want to
divide the light we've been given. Every bit of it has been fashioned
by the Creator, the one who said let there be Light, and divided the
light from the darkness, and called the light day. Speaking of the
Romans, their night hours were divided into 4 vigiliae, which means
watches (like vigilant). That's quite telling! Day is so desirable
that the night hours are spent watching for it. The students I
have the privilege of teaching just read the tragedies of Aeschylus,
which begin with a watchman waiting for the light of morning as for a
beacon. And in Psalm 118, the poet waits for the Lord “more than
the watchman waits for the morning, more than the watchman waits for
the morning." It's almost like he repeats this to himself in
order to keep his grainy eyes squinting despite his weariness. </div>
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Whether you're a night owl or whether
you really do love mornings, there is a deep longing in all of us for
light, for the sun. We feel it especially acutely these winter days,
when the sun lays itself down rest in the afternoon, and is shy to
rise again in the morning. We are of the day, this day of the Lord!
Let us live like it, awake to the stunning realities all around us,
whether it's the curve of a parabola, the turn of phrase in a fine
story, or the quiet kindnesses of a fellow human.</div>
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I remember singing a song in Sunday
school as a little person: “This is the day, this is the day, etc."
Very perky. I sang it with gusto – both at church and at home.
Maybe a little too loud too early in the morning for my brother and
my mom, who needed more time before they were ready for my screechy
voice, however exuberant. And as I yelled it at the top of my lungs,
I was looking out the window, addressing that particular day –
whether it was pouring rain, floating snow, or bursting with sun rays
–declaring that THIS is the day! This one, right? Thursday December
5? </div>
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Yes. But I don't think that's only it.
Just this week, while reading Psalm 118, I had a realization
that knocked me back into my chair. The day we live in is oh so much
bigger than Thursday, Dec. 5. Check this out: </div>
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The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.</div>
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This is the Lord's doing;
it is
marvelous in our eyes.</div>
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This is the day that the Lord has
made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:22-24)</div>
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The stone that the builders rejected as
a cornerstone, a prophecy about Christ. He came down from heaven in
the form of a vulnerable little baby and from the very first was
rejected by humans who were apparently trying to building something
else. Despite all, despite death, he became the main stone that sets
the foundation. Who did it? Certainly those builders had nothing to
do with it; we had nothing to do with it. The Psalmist tells us:
“this is the Lord's doing.” We can marvel at it, like the
Psalmist, like the shepherds, like the Wise Men, but we certainly
didn't bring it about. Our calling is to marvel and rejoice at what
He's done for us.</div>
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Then do you see it? </div>
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What if “the Lord's doing” and “the
Day He's made” are one and the same? What if Christ becoming
Christmas for us (and Good Friday and Easter and our King Coming) -
what if it is all a Great Big Day we live in and breathe deep and
have our true being? </div>
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I think this is going to change how I
live, if I manage to let it sink in. When I awake to my alarm next
morning, I will not only bow my head and thank him for the breakfast
of this particular day – but maybe I'll remember this Great Big
Day, too, the one made up of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, and the
hope of His Coming again all rolled into one.</div>
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My eyes catch on the verse on the
church bulletin: "First Sunday of Advent. The Spirit and
the Bride say come." </div>
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Yes! Come and relieve your watchmen.
Satisfy our aching hope. </div>
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Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-74774281176307303752013-11-30T09:37:00.002-06:002013-11-30T09:39:30.847-06:00Hungry Eyes, Hungry Mind<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A tired pile of student quizzes lies haphazard, halfway read on the desk in front of me. I yawn large and the back of my head touches the headrest of my too-comfortable chair. Though I am surrounded by colleagues, I lose consciousness for a moment, and start back into awakeness, unaware whether it's been five minutes or fifty. The third cup of coffee did not have the effect I had hoped; it is time for more drastic measures. Make it bright, dazzling, and cold.<br />
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In one dramatic swoop, I leap up and grab my coat with the hope that the bright, stinging cold of the outdoors will revive me. As it happens, it does - but not only this. Rather, it awakens of the eyes of my heart, goads me to beauty-hunger again. It takes just a taste of it, and my appetite is back again to raging. The framing of a single leaf by the white winter rays. A pussy willow stalk, half consumed by swirling autumn winds brings to my mind the other day- when all the air was downy with their shedding summer coat in the park. It had been like a warm autumn snowstorm, flurrying over the marshlands of Loring Park. Oh, how I wish I would take the long way home more often.<br />
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The swelling on one plant looks familiar, but I cannot recall why exactly. I see it, and the impression on my mind is that there must be a bug inside somehow. Why do I think this? A bit of knowledge planted long ago, as it happens - like the grub of the gallfly, who plants his seeds deep in this plant and lets it swell in reponse. I pull up a chair next to a fellow teacher after my brisk, brief adventure outdoors and he reminds me of the story. Yes, this is a goldenrod plant, that's what I had recalled. I get new details, too. Apparently, the larvae of the gallfly secretes a substance which functions almost like a localized steroid, creating the abnormal growth that we see. He also takes advantage of the warmer autumn days to dig a tunnel of escape for the springtime through the bulge - a backdoor, since he'll be too sleepy and weak come next spring. Finally, he releases an antifreeze substance from his body, which insulates his winter home. Wouldn't that be something - if we could skip the Home Depot trip and just open our mouth and shoot out window insulation film over our windows?<br />
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We ended up dissecting it on my desk and found the grub (which unfortunately arrested the fly's life cycle, but helped my own along). It had already dug a tunnel through almost to the outside, but not quite breaking through. We marveled at the spongy, corky structure, the thought, the design so intricate.<br />
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Sometimes you just have to push aside the piles of paper that you think are necessary in order to doing something immediate and beautiful.<br />
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And then the bell rang. And I was hungry again.<br />
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<br />Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-16054327011653936092013-10-29T23:47:00.001-05:002013-10-29T23:47:44.098-05:00Burning Bushes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">E</span>verywhere I walk these days, the trees have burst into varicolored flame. Tiny tongues of fire lick up everything from humble turnpikes to generous stretches of river valley. The blaze reaches to the sky; sometimes an austere grey canvas, sometimes a dizzying, robin-egg blue. In the aftermath, we are surrounded by the embers, and the nose catches the musky scent of smoke devouring the annual sacrifice spiraling down. Soon the odor will be hushed by winter's chilly blanket, but for now the picture is still poignant and sharp.<br />
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A burning bush is a sign, a happening, a conversation with God himself. It means shedding your shoes in awestruck wow, being thankful for the beauty of the earth. This experience usually catches us by surprise, interrupts us, and we must let it. On Mount Horeb, Moses is preoccupied with the daily work of caring for his father-in-law's flocks when he notices the burning bush. He says to himself, "I've got to see why this bush is not burned up, though it is in flame." Then, after he turns aside to<i> look</i>, he <i>hears </i>the Lord speaking to him. It's like those words in the hymnal:<br />
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<i>For the joy of ear and eye</i><br />
<i>For the heart and brain's delight,</i><br />
<i>For the mystic harmony</i><br />
<i>Sinking sense to sound and sight ("For The Beauty of the Earth", 1864). </i><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ta7mFcrwDpI/Um8YgJVgRUI/AAAAAAAAEXw/0vAfAsYchy0/s1600/IMG_2201.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ta7mFcrwDpI/Um8YgJVgRUI/AAAAAAAAEXw/0vAfAsYchy0/s320/IMG_2201.JPG" width="320" /></a>This is actually quite extraordinary if you stop to think about it. How is it that Something flashes and leaps through the gate of the eye, crashes through to the mind and makes the Image on the retina<i> mean </i>something, sinking it down to the level of sense? Not only that, it opens up the other senses, like hearing, tasting, smelling, touch - maybe a host of other sensations yet undiscovered. Could it be that Imagination is simply responding, much like Moses did to the burning bush? That is, turning aside from routine, following a curiosity, humbly shedding shoes, and finally - maybe - hearing from God Himself?<br />
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Because I am a writer, I spend a good deal of my time grouping words into images in order to have an impact. The stakes are pretty high. I wait for tongues of fire - to speak truth in as many languages as possible. How else am I to get people to turn off from the normal path? If I want to arrest my reader, it could very well be with a common thing - a shrub or a house or a spoon or a library - but to make it worth leaving the task at hand, it must be "on fire" somehow. Not only that, a further miracle must occur. That a tree would burn is plausible. That a burning tree is not consumed is impossible. It is that leap from the everyday to the miraculous that I want to effect for those who read my writings, and that is no small feat.<br />
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There is another possibility in art, and that is to let the bush burn to the ground. Afterwards, you deal with the ash and aftermath. It may be that something may rise, Phoenix-like, but it must be utterly lost before it can be found again. This is beauty in the midst of devastation. The German artist Anselm Kiefer gives us a glimpse of this approach, with his massive, post-apocalyptic projects that build with remains of the manmade world.<br />
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The recent documentary by Sophie Fiennes which features his work is entitled "Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow" (2010), which is Kiefer's paraphrase of a verse from Isaiah. In the passage to which he refers, we see the city after the Day of Judgment. The people are left with crumbling ruins where "thorns will overrun her citadels, nettles and brambles her strongholds" and birds and jackals run wild over the tumbled stones. It's a desperate picture, one that resounds with the human condition in many respects, and one that Kiefer seems to insist upon in his work. Another example is his re-imagining of libraries (maybe the ancient one at Alexandria, burned down according to legend) as a massive, leaden bookshelf overcast with gloom and ashen hues. Maybe he is attempting to bring substance to a lost thing. Some of his leaden books literally have wings attached. Is this tragic or hopeful? Or both?<br />
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Maybe the test of a well-wrought image is whether it burns up with the consuming. And the test of a culture is what it does in the wake of the disaster. Are we capable of recognizing good images in the vast, charred morass of media and cultural production? Vigen Guroian, an ethicist, has suggested that we are in a crisis of imagination, and that this is a deeply moral problem. I tend to agree with him. As he explains: "The moral imagination is...the very process by which the self makes metaphors out of images given my experience and then employs these metaphors to find and suppose moral correspondences in experience." (24, <i>Tending the Heart of Virtue</i>). This is not a simplistic matter of right and wrong, not initially. It begins with a failure to see, to delight, to understand - but the consequences are far-reaching.<div>
<br />Please. Let us look for the beauty. Yes, this world is scattered with emptied images that invite us to grieve. But it is also full-to-bursting with blazing branches that refuse to be consumed. It is time we took off our shoes and listened.<br />
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Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-53797994575144336582013-09-30T23:49:00.003-05:002013-10-01T16:52:43.938-05:00All Of It Was Music<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Hiah8xjohZ4/UkoyOzNk8TI/AAAAAAAAET0/w6cJdWnh1Js/s1600/IMG_2137.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Hiah8xjohZ4/UkoyOzNk8TI/AAAAAAAAET0/w6cJdWnh1Js/s320/IMG_2137.JPG" width="240" /></a> <i>The night was bending in a grin </i><br />
<i> As streetlight shadows tattooed skin </i><br />
<i> Whatever we were tangled in</i><br />
<i> All of it was music.</i><br />
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This longtime love of mine, Over the Rhine, drove into Minneapolis this weekend. They opened their guitar cases and their mouths wide and cried out an anthem to faithful presence. All the livelong night. They ran their fingers along fretboards and traced the lines of the map they had traveled all these years. I've been along for part of that.<br />
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Since my dear friend introduced them to me in high school, I have been hooked. Once, the two of us drove eight bleary-eyed hours down to Cornerstone Music Festival just to take in their show. Another time, my man and I happened to be in Seattle when they filled a little club in the Ballard neighborhood with people and...<i>themselve</i>s. In-between the sightings, their lyrics have provided proof-texts for my own life experience. Generous-hearted artistry and faithfulness seem to go hand in hand. Hallelujah.<br />
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As it happened, there was great deal of music to be had this weekend in my hometown. Speaking of faithful presence, the husband had his dance card full with practice, rehearsal, and a show. So, I struck out on the town to find my fortunes with friends new and old. The result was treasure.<br />
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First, I gathered with the faculty at school to listen and learn about the music of Arvo P<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">ä</span>rt. I had heard his name in passing before, and it had always had a magical quality to it, like if I chose to put myself under that spell someday, it would be very, very good. I was not disappointed. A longtime friend and colleague skillfully led us through P<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">ä</span>rt's music and ideas, especially the concept of "tintinabullation." The composer coined this word to describe his work that includes: bell-like sounds, meaningful repetition, and an anchoring in deeper musical theory. (Like centering around the triad and home chord, for those of you so inclined.) When it came to the hearing, I was floored. Here was a "minimalist" composer that I could get behind. There was a warmth and humanness to his sounds that was intensely attractive in a way that others (such as John Cage and Phillip Glass) have never achieved for me, personally. My ears and mind were still ringing with his music when I wandered over the Cedar Cultural Center to catch Over the Rhine playing. Which. was. lovely.<br />
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The next evening, I was very fortunate to visit the Dakota Jazz Club, again, thanks to a friend. (This is becoming a theme, it seems.) The great Dave Holland was playing with his Prism project (Craig Taborn, Kevin Eubanks, Eric Harland), which is a jazz fusion sort-of thing. Much like the P<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">ä</span>rt, I mentally prepared myself for a musical "workout," as in I thought that it would be very good - but kind of difficult to take into my ears and have my brain process it. And, like my previous experience, nothing could have been further from the truth. The music drew me in with its nervous excitement and joyous stretches of notes. What's more, Dave came over after the show and chatted with our table about what jazz means. "Improvisation is listening," he said. Also, he suggested that a person's character dictates how they will play: a generous man will play that way; a selfish man will play accordingly. That is, jazz, with its fluidity between form and freedom, provides a forum for the playing-out of personality. Finally, the advice he received once from another famous musician as a young man, "play it all." Don't limit yourself to a certain style that you happen to take a shining to right now. <i>Play it all. </i><br />
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For example, what do you do when you find wild pears in the neighborhood park? You play it all. You try something new and outside of your vocabulary. To that end, several weeks of ripening and painstaking hours of labor later, the juice is set up as<i> must </i>for future cider. Not to mention the fifty-some pints of wild grape jelly brought in from riverbanks and suburban side yards a few short weeks ago. All of that bounty just keeps on comin', and we are trying to put it all up somewhere. All of it, music.<br />
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Or when the unwinding summer leaves you with a dry dusty warmth and hankering for cooler winds, you go out into it. You catch the last yellow rays of the day and the flow of blue riverstream. It's all etched in the driftwood cast up on shore, and you sit for a minute. With a brother, a lover, a friend. Play it all, to the last note.<br />
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As I write this, there is still music rumbling the floorboards of our home and I hope that never changes. Tonight, the Boom Boom Room* is a thumpin' in the lower regions, preparing for their imminent appearance on the surface of the Twin Cities music scene. In contrast, last week at this time, it was all mandolin and ringing voices as we enjoyed an impromptu confluence of food, friends, musical instruments and wine.<br />
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Regardless, all of it. Music.<br />
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*<a href="http://www.chancehoward.com/#!contact/c21nl">More information here.</a><br />
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<br />Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-11595796164183813732013-09-02T11:30:00.002-05:002013-09-24T13:49:36.173-05:00Be Blessed, You Dear God-Created World<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Alyosha stood gazing </span>and suddenly, as if he had been cut down, threw himself to the earth. He did not know why he was embracing it, he did not try to understand why he longed so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss all of it, but he was kissing it, weeping, sobbing, and watering it with his tears, and he vowed ecstatically to love it, to love it unto ages of ages"(362).<br />
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At this early moment in <i>The Brothers Karamazov </i>by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the young Alyosha is overcome with a love yet to be defined. For many years, he had been living in a monastery and studying under Father Zosima, an ancient known for his mystery, wisdom, and extraordinary love of people. However, as his beloved teacher fades from this world and prepares for the next, he tells Alyosha that the thrust of his life will soon carry him out of the little community and into the great outside, to "sojourn in the world".<br />
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The young man is very unsure of this path at first, and struggles to understand why it must be so. Finally, one day at the vigil surrounding Father Zosima's coffin, Alyosha has a vision of the dead man rising and coming over to speak with him one last time, encouraging him once more: "Begin, my dear, begin, my meek one to do your work!" The young man is filled with wonder and runs outside to the starry dome of a sky, thrusting his head into it and marveling.<br />
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It is at this point that he falls to the earth and embraces it, sobbing, vowing, loving. He finally surrenders to the shape of his life as God would have it. "It was as if threads from all those innumerable worlds of God all came together in his soul, and it was trembling all over, touching other worlds...some sort of idea, as it were, was coming to reign in his mind."<br />
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He saw it all, in a sudden flash - and it changed him forever. He saw how life was made of the intricate interweavings of the great cumulus-inhabited expanses above, the clouds of dust beneath, and all the life that man's breath can breathe in-between. By stretching out his hands and grasping the earth with the love that had grown in him for years, he could embrace the ugly, the pain, the beauty, the suffering - and thereby aid in its transformation into the kingdom of God. Three days later, he leaves the monastery.<br />
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I wonder, do I have that kind of courage? Do I lay hold of it all, letting my hands be pierced through by the thorns while my nose takes in the winey scent of the bloom?<br />
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Another place where I have glimpsed this vision of love for the world is in the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, through the new biography by Eric Mexatas, <a href="http://www.ericmetaxas.com/books/bonhoeffer-pastor-martyr-prophet-spy-a-righteous-gentile-vs-the-third-reich/">Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy </a>and also a collection of Bonhoeffer's writings and thoughts, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1460675.Meditating_on_the_Word">Meditating on the Word.</a> As a young man at college and seminary, Bonhoeffer showed an intellectual brilliance and steadfastness to principles that impressed both liberal and conservative theologians alike. Several famous German seminary professors courted him with the hope that he would work under them. His family, historically aristocratic on all sides, encouraged his career as it seemed to lead toward promise of recognition in university circles (even if he <i>had </i>picked religion of all things - this in a family of doctors and lawyers).<br />
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He walked this path for a time, distinguishing himself in the city among greats such as Karl Barth and the venerable Adolf von Harnack. His course of study required several appointments as a pastor (usually seen as a tedious necessity to young theology students), but young Bonhoeffer was attracted to this hands-on, practical working-out of his ideas on the church. Increasingly, he devoted his time to organizing much-needed Bible studies for young people, visiting the old and sick, and crafting stunning sermons that would draw the minds and hearts of his congregants toward God. He did not really abandon his studies, but rather the desire to make them official and institutionalized slowly drained away. His energies were directed more and more to the people who were <i>outside</i> the towering walls of the university.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XwhsIyNRZEM/UiTKBLlrwDI/AAAAAAAAERU/BVd-HSBKYdE/s1600/IMG_1978.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XwhsIyNRZEM/UiTKBLlrwDI/AAAAAAAAERU/BVd-HSBKYdE/s320/IMG_1978.JPG" width="320" /></a>I should be clear about this. Bonhoeffer <i>never</i> stopped learning and thinking, not even after he was imprisoned by the Nazis. His personal reading lists and output in the form of writing was prodigious, especially during his imprisonment, but there was a distinct shift. He wanted it to serve the world, to love it. Even when that world turned on him and many other righteous persons, as it did under the Third Reich. In a letter from Tegel Prison to his best friend Eberhard Bethge, he wrote the following, first explaining the way in which Christ had been "in the world":<br />
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"The answer of the righteous person to the sufferings which the world causes her is to bless. That was the answer of God to the world which nailed Christ to the cross: blessing. God does not repay like with like, and neither should the righteous person. No condemning, no railing, but blessing. The world would have no hope if this were not so."<br />
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He then goes on to explain the Christian's role in the world's redemption:<br />
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"The world lives and has its future by means of the blessing of God and the righteous person. Blessing means laying one's hands upon something and saying: <b>You belong to God in spite of all.</b> It is in this way that we respond to the world which causes us such suffering. We do not forsake it, cast it out, despise or condemn it. Instead, <b>we recall it to God, we give it hope, we lay our hands upon it and say: God's blessing come upon you; may God renew you; be blessed, you dear God-created world, for you belong to your creator and redeemer. The renewal of the world, which seems so impossible, becomes possible in the blessing of God.</b>"(<i>Meditating on the Word</i>, 99-100, emphasis mine).<br />
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This was from the pen of a man who would be murdered by Nazi soldiers not one year later. Like his Saviour, he "loved them to the end," even his traitors.<br />
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I find myself at a beginning. I am not sure what it all means. Like Alyosha and Bonhoeffer, it will be defined as I step forward into it. What I do know is that it has something love, the world, suffering, and beauty. My refrain for the sojourn: "Be blessed, you dear God-created world."Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-79976396645106545732013-08-23T06:34:00.001-05:002013-08-23T06:34:21.385-05:00Let's Have Some Love<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I will be back again soon with a proper post about life, the universe and everything, but this is a simple appeal for some feedback on my novella, <i>Fledgling Song</i> (2013). If you've read it, please consider posting a review on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fledgling-Song-ebook/dp/B00E89ERJE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375244752&sr=8-1&keywords=fledgling+song">Amazon</a> or <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18275633-fledgling-song">Goodreads</a> or <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fledgling-song-abbey-von-gohren/1116243684?ean=2940148569015">Barnes & Noble</a>. (Or all three!) It is a fact that we live in an age when things are evaluated rather simplistically: thumbs up/thumbs down, five stars, or the ultimate limitation - just "LIKE". However, this is the language of our time - online at least - and if you would be so kind to speak up honestly and truly about what you thought, that would be very helpful!<br />
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To that end, I am sending the first ten people who write a review a free, signed copy of the book. So, let's have some love!Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-82196754219386740122013-08-12T13:00:00.000-05:002013-08-12T18:41:15.762-05:00Pull in the Bounty <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There are times when you rock back on your heels and think, wow. Look at the feast about me, so much <i>good. A</i>nd it's easy to see. Plenty of other times, things send you falling back full on your rear end, and you're thinking the opposite. At least at first. But you still end up saying, wow. And maybe even (if you are open to it): look at the feast about me. The psalm-poet wrote that his God "prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies." And that sort of feast, in the midst of fast, is particular. Love is sharper and more poignant and pierces deep.<br />
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But these days, we are surely pulling in the bounty. My "five and country senses" are insufficient to take in the harvest. Like a poet said, "the five eyes break". They almost ache, they are so overladen with good. The other night was such a moment, felt in the half-light by dirt-encrusted fingers. After a back-bending day of hard labor pulling roots, weeds, snapping and cracking the dead wood, we paused. Above our heads, an apple tree heavy with early fruit. Below, the already-windfalls gave off a sharp cider smell. We stood beneath, expectant. There would soon be rain, the crackle of electricity in the darkening air. Shake it. Again. Just send a few more down, pound the ground with a shimmy up the trunk and a jostle. Watch your head! One smacks me on the back and I laugh. On the way home, the car smells of apples and the rainwater slaps the windshield like more fruit falling. I think, good. The gardens will rejoice themselves. We rejoice ourselves.<br />
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<span style="text-align: left;">Another evening, I feast on sounds. They are everywhere, flowing in and around this home that I love. On the front stoop with half of a cigar and a book of essays by Marilynne Robinson, a jazz record giving its final contented crackle just inside the open window. And then- not silence, but something very like it. The click of a june bug in the light above my head, a</span><span style="text-align: left;"> cricket grating away on the front door, a faint train hallooing its reedy warning, kids down the block cackling, the wind cool in the trees when all else calms down. It was a concerted effort of the here and now to be full and complete and good. What an extraordinary thing in the already-not-yet world in which we live - that I might be present at such a gathering. </span><br />
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: left;">May I be more present at such gatherings. </span><br />
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The savoring of days through our mouths and tastebuds is bountiful above and beyond. It's astounding, really, when you tear up roots almost forgotten, and you find they've swollen beyond recognition, ready to eat. Last time you looked, they were seeds then maybe leaves. Have you ever had beets with fresh mint? Hardly a meal we assemble at home lacks at least something from the modest plots outside. Tomatoes, green beans, beets, radishes, crabapples, mulberries, juneberries, chard, zucchini, greens, bright yellow squash, and herbs of every savor.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lkrAHSTCMu0/UgB7ZnLIKQI/AAAAAAAAEMc/ObAqJ0oCWoY/s1600/wedding+photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lkrAHSTCMu0/UgB7ZnLIKQI/AAAAAAAAEMc/ObAqJ0oCWoY/s320/wedding+photo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="text-align: left;">I wonder. How long have we waited for this place without knowing it? Here, our home. It</span><span style="text-align: left;"> is a place where the creativity can spill out</span><span style="text-align: left;"> into all of the nooks and crannies, becoming a wildflower garden, a painted wall, a synthesizer line wafting up the stairs, a new sort of dish, an ingenious way to re-route rainwater, a collection of music next to the record player that turns and turns. </span><span style="text-align: left;">We pull in the bounty of those turnings, those refashionings and renewings. We count now nine years between us and the black and white photograph. I like the French way of counting age - we</span><i style="text-align: left;"> have</i><span style="text-align: left;"> those years, they are a possession. We have seen many harvests -lean and plenty - and now we have a place where we can lay up our larder for a while. And I don't just mean beets and apples.</span><span style="text-align: left;"> Happy anniverary, happy home. </span></div>
Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-44542871198151703602013-08-09T09:36:00.003-05:002013-08-09T09:36:59.564-05:00Claire Meets her Mysterious Neighbor
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<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XKE7Zg0SZ4k/UgT6aCTLYRI/AAAAAAAAEOk/pIp5eWBwWFY/s1600/CIMG2454.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XKE7Zg0SZ4k/UgT6aCTLYRI/AAAAAAAAEOk/pIp5eWBwWFY/s320/CIMG2454.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">She finished the last few hundred yards to the </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua,Italic';"><i>jardin</i>, </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">letting her fingers touch the rough spindles of
the iron gate, painted over with more gleaming black to cover up the rust. She paused at the model of the
small stegosaurus outside the Museum of Natual History adjacent to the garden. It always made her smile
to see this ancient creature standing defiantly in the foreground of perfect rows of plane trees and
manicured herb gardens– a funny mixture of scientific order and wild, unbridled eras of prehistory.
Science really was a work of the imagination. This elevated Claire's spirits considerably, and she turned
towards the length of the park stretched out before her, when a voice behind made her jump.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“How </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">they thought up that creature from a pile of bones, beyond me.” Claire turned and saw her
neighbor leaning on his cane, his gray beard pointing skeptically at the statue in front of both of them.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“Sir, </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">you find it ridiculous?”
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“In </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">my time, we could identify each bone precisely within minutes with nothing more than a
reference book, counting the occurrences in each square meter, measuring– the young folk these days with
their computer simulations and what have you—they have no idea . . .”
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“I </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">love to count.”
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“Eh? </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">Oh well, good. </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua,Italic';"><i>Tant mieux</i>.” </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">Claire still could not place his accent, nor stifle her curiosity any
longer.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“Sir, </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">may I ask where you are from?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“Do </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">you count bones, then?” he asked, ignoring her question.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“No...no, I am studying microbiology—er—specifically </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">in the Camargue region.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“Humph. </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">What are you doing here?” Claire felt her cheeks getting warm with the incessant
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">queries—and the ambiguity of this last one. She had not been obliged to explain herself to anyone for
months, and had rather forgotten how.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“Sir, </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">I—”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“My </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">name is Arthur—Art.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“Okay </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">. . . Art. I am doing a </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua,Italic';"><i>stage</i> </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">here at the </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua,Italic';"><i>Institut Pasteur</i>.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua,Italic';"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“Oh, well. That’s good enough, I guess.” </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">Claire meant to hide her disappointment at his dismissive
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">tone, but must have failed, for he cocked an eye in her direction from under his ever-impressive brow, and
added, </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“I </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">suppose you like that, then?” </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua,Italic';"><i>Like it. Well, yes.</i> </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">She turned in the direction of the stately building
and opened her mouth to respond, but he interrupted her again: </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“I </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">walk past those doors every day—part of my morning constitutional.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“Why?” </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">Her little word seemed rather bare and inquisitive, like a sharp scalpel, but it was too late
to draw it back.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“Habit. </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">I used to work across the garden, here.” Art turned slowly on his heel, poked with his cane
at the chalky sand, and shifted his weight. </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">“But now I’m the dinosaur.” </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">He guffawed loudly, immensely </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">enjoying the joke at his own expense. Claire smiled politely but dared no more. After his shoulders
stopped shaking in leftover laughter, he nodded to her as if they were simply passing in the street, and
continued his stroll across the shadow lines of the bare, leafless trees. He never had mentioned where he
had come from, or where he was going. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">That evening, she ran a dull peeler over a few tired, rubbery carrots, hoping to revive them in yet
another bowl of couscous. </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua,Italic';">He’s worked in my lab? He walks past every day! How could this be the first time I’ve
</span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua,Italic';">seen him? </span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">Claire shivered. Maybe he was the ghost of some former, misunderstood biologist, nervously
floating through the gardens and halls, still vying for a long-lost peer review of a research paper. But
seriously. She and Art had lived not eight feet apart for four months, only rarely crossing paths, never once
exchanging words. Now, he kept appearing out of nowhere and thoroughly haunted her thoughts. She set
the water to boil and grabbed her notebook, anxious to record the course of events, to better understand
them, to give bodies to the phantoms wandering in and out of her brain...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">***</span></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua';">An excerpt from my novella, <i>Fledgling Song</i> (2013). </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">© Abbey von Gohren</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Available now in paperback and ebook at: <a href="http://www.electiopublishing.com/index.php/bookstore#!/~/product/category=4758361&id=26529235">Electio Publishing</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fledgling-Song-Abbey-von-Gohren/dp/0615858678/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376058489&sr=8-1&keywords=fledgling+song">Amazon</a>, <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fledgling-song-abbey-von-gohren/1116243684?ean=2940148569015">Barnes & Noble</a>. </span></span><br />
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Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-42303599356201976212013-07-30T08:46:00.001-05:002013-07-30T08:50:50.191-05:00Release of Fledgling Song <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LXSGR4tLLHg/UffAXPsME2I/AAAAAAAAEIE/hjtV_mgnNb4/s1600/IMG_1595.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LXSGR4tLLHg/UffAXPsME2I/AAAAAAAAEIE/hjtV_mgnNb4/s320/IMG_1595.JPG" width="213" /></a></div>
I am overjoyed to announce the official release of my novella,<i> Fledgling Song </i>(2013, Electio Publishing).<br />
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<i>Fledgling Song</i> traces the
thought life and wanderings of Claire Sivert, a young Canadian woman
living and studying biology in France. Caught between the wilderness
landscapes of her native Manitoba and the winter-gray cityscapes of
Paris, she struggles to find a firm footing. Besides yearning for a
sense of place, she is also caught between two eras of her life.
Painfully vivid memories from her childhood and tentative hopes
rooted in the present intermingle as she moves through her days and
records her musings in her faithful journal. Full of wonder and yet
delicately unsure of herself, Claire learns through several
encounters with new friends how to be bold and face her past and
present, however imperfect.</div>
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A perfect end-of-summer read! </div>
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Available at <a href="http://www.electiopublishing.com/index.php/bookstore#!/~/product/category=4758361&id=26529235">electiopublishing.com</a> in paperback and ebook and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fledgling-Song-ebook/dp/B00E89ERJE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375192227&sr=8-1&keywords=fledgling+song">amazon.com</a>. </div>
Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-68780362955588154982013-07-28T18:44:00.001-05:002013-07-28T18:44:56.652-05:00Let Us Name<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cINeLtaRC9k/UfWpfQESUEI/AAAAAAAAEHc/6A-UATSqRO0/s1600/IMG_1443.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cINeLtaRC9k/UfWpfQESUEI/AAAAAAAAEHc/6A-UATSqRO0/s320/IMG_1443.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
It has been a longtime favorite thought of mine that poetic language is, by definition, naming things properly. I have alluded to this idea previously in conjunction with <a href="http://lifelongfling.blogspot.com/2011/03/eucharisteo.html">my own sense of calling</a> on the Fling, and many other thinkers have dwelt on it and enriched my own understanding as well over the years. Adam's work as the first poet is implied, for example, in Bob Dylan's "Man Gave Names to All the Animals." The song ultimately demonstrates that our choice of words can have drastic implications. It begins with the typical Dylan, off-the-cuff whimsy:<br />
<br />
He saw an animal up on a hill<br />
Chewing up so much grass 'til she was filled<br />
He saw milk comin' out but he didn't know how<br />
"Aw, think I'll call it a cow"<br />
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However, the last stanza ends abruptly - and, more importantly, nameless.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cuTuN4myoHc/UfWqA7Pen3I/AAAAAAAAEHk/_gHCRaBqJOo/s1600/IMG_1446.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cuTuN4myoHc/UfWqA7Pen3I/AAAAAAAAEHk/_gHCRaBqJOo/s320/IMG_1446.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
He saw an animal as smooth as glass<br />
Slithering his way through the grass<br />
<span style="text-align: center;">Saw him disappear by a tree near a lake...</span><br />
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We, after the fall, are left to finish the sadly obvious, the unsaid, the deadly. There has got to be some crucial relation between the thing itself and the thing we call it. If one is able to correctly use words (either spoken or written) to evoke and reflect an experience and it can be very good, then might improperly wielding words have the opposite effect? Or what are the consequences of simply failing to name correctly, as in Dylan's depiction of Adam, who retires in shamefaced silence? If only he had shouted "SNAKE!" to Eve in time...<br />
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At the end of last semester, I toiled through Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "The Poet" in the faculty room with a few other teachers. I say it was hard work because he obviously had some Very Large Pronouncements to make, being Emerson, but the most tantalizing tidbits were deeply rooted in large sections of dense prose. Such as, "the poet is the Namer, or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which rejoices in detachment or boundary." Whew. I get it, but wow. (There were plenty I didn't.) Or, "language is the archives of history...language is fossil poetry." This is what sometimes happens when poets try to write literary theory - opacity and metaphors galore. But the fact that it is "rejoicing to the intellect" to delineate <i>here</i> but not <i>there </i>is a gorgeous and true thought. And the fact that we humans do this with our <i>words</i> is even more stunning. It reminds me of that stirring passage in Job where God is re-telling how he created the waters, when he informs them in no uncertain terms :"This far you may come and no further, here is where your proud waves halt." Who is this, that even the winds and the waves obey Him? And yet, if we are to have dominion as His children and heirs, do we not engage in a similar activity? We point at things, perhaps tremblingly, and say: "After this preposition, and before this noun - this is where your proud waves halt."<br />
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All of this has been fresh in my mind this past week as I ground my way through the arduous task of naming and re-naming my book. As it happens, "working" titles can be dangerous. You just might find yourself a week before the publication date thinking to yourself: <i>Hm. That's not it at all</i>. <a href="http://bookriot.com/2013/05/14/5-books-with-awful-original-titles/#.UZlz7dLjOak.twitter"> I read today</a> that <i>Gone With the Wind</i> was originally entitled <i>Mules in Horses' Harnesses</i>. This gave me hope, but not until after the four or five days I spent sweating over the same set of a dozen words or so, arranging and re-arranging to find just the right fit. Thanks to a happy confluence of brainstorming friends and a one a.m. ah-ha moment which got me out of bed and back to the yellow legal pad, I think we've got it. <i>Fledgling Song.</i> I remember telling one of these very helpful friends that I was surprised at how much work it was to find a good name. If it was just the right thing, shouldn't it fall just into place? But no, apparently book titles can be a somewhat messy procedure.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cEaRXn6z9f8/UfWrJRf9gTI/AAAAAAAAEH0/z80ZXFF-8vw/s1600/IMG_1444.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cEaRXn6z9f8/UfWrJRf9gTI/AAAAAAAAEH0/z80ZXFF-8vw/s320/IMG_1444.jpg" width="240" /></a>As with naming anything, I suppose. Have you heard the nearly epic tales of parents who are trying to select a name for their child? I haven't been in this enviable position yet in my life, but if the book was any indication, it's going to be a long haul. It comes down to the fact that names do matter. Proper names are only a subset of the larger human project of rightly naming all things, but it is the one that most people participate in over the course of their lives. You may never write a poem (though I hope you do), but you will probably name a child if you haven't already. The enormity of our responsibility as Namers is brought home to us in a myriad ways, but "baby names" are one of the most common, frustrating, and endearing ones.<br />
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But how about the discovery of an unknown sea creature? Or a new planetary moon? Or new facets of our own genetic code that we once thought to be non-essential and now calls for a nobler term than "junk DNA"? Or the feeling that you got that one time that made you gulp down your tears, because you had nothing to call it?<br />
<br />
The frontiers lay in vast swaths in front of us. Let us, therefore, name.<br />
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<br />Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23714474.post-74677074261956517242013-07-16T22:30:00.000-05:002013-07-16T22:42:13.047-05:00Pinning up Stars<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">H</span>ere is a little taste of the upcoming novella. I just received word that it is scheduled to come out week after next, in paperback and as an ebook. This is all very head-spinning and wonderful. I'll do the best I can to keep you all updated, so please check back often for more details. Much love to you all. Thank you for reading. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">***</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span>ometimes words
are like points plotted out on a graph – only in laying them out
can I find the needful pattern. Pin them down. Push the pins in all
the way. But Peter, my thumb hurts when I do that. His big, calloused
hands were better suited to the task. We were hanging maps of the
stars on the ceiling of my bedroom. I remember he promised me I could
put glow-in-the-dark stars up for every constellation I learned to
identify. I love to count, he said. I will count them all someday.
And I believed he would, his curly- headed silhouette thrust into the
starry sky. But I will spend my days with gaze downwards, bowed down
like a broken reed in these endless winter marshes. </span></div>
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***</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; font-size: x-small;">© Abbey C. von Gohren and Electio Publishing</span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; font-size: x-small;">, 2013-2015. All rights reserved.</span></span><br />
<br />Abbey von Gohrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664256199567885noreply@blogger.com2