Category Archives: Uncategorized

Yesterday was Veterans Day, a national celebration in which we salute those men and women who have defended our country to keep the peace. In many ways, the Armed Services are our national border, for they protect us from harm, protect our homes, our communities, our nation. They salute the flag with their lives, and thus embody freedom. They risk all so that we may be free.

My last novel, Angel Mountain, is set in the days between Veterans Day and Thanksgiving, 2018. Those days in California were days of fires and earthquakes, shooters and riots, but we had not yet experienced lockdowns and deadly viruses. Even so, the times called for reflection on the big questions, including, is the world coming to an end? Since then, with the compounding horrors at home and abroad, we continue to ask this, along with life’s meaning, death’s meaning, and so we look to Christ and his coming among us.

God reached down and touched us with Love Incarnate, his Son. What did the Resurrection mean? Surely it was an event that broke the physical rules of life and death and would portend salvation for mankind. It was larger than earthquake and fire, so large it would become tiny and enter our hearts to live, take up residence, infuse our flesh with Eternity.

And so America was founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs about the nature of mankind – the sanctity of life, the dignity of the individual, the importance of the family, of begetting children, of love expressed by spirit and flesh within the sacred protective space of marriage. And yet since the beginnings, there have been divisions, for we are fallen and must be healed, lifted up by Christ.

All this our veterans fight for – the right to believe, to speak, to raise our children with the lessons of history and faith. We are thankful.

Without America, without the shining light on the hill, the world will grow dark. It is time to salute the flag, to renew our vows as citizens, as responsible adults who can dispel tyranny abroad and value democracy at home. For many still yearn to breathe free, these teeming masses that see our Lady Liberty in the New York harbor. They look with hope to America, those who cross our borders. As Emma Lazarus wrote, the words engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty,

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

As we were taught by Judaism and Christianity, we befriend the lost, the poor, the defenseless. Not many other nations do, and those who do so are modeling America. We must continue to be that door in the harbor, that light on the hill. We must not allow the world to go dark.

And so we are thankful to our veterans and all those who have served in these wars for freedom. It seems appropriate that Thanksgiving follows, and in this time we will consider the gifts we have been given, living in the most blessed nation on earth, America. For she has given us the gift of freedom, of faith, and of family. We must not squander these gifts. We must share them.

And most of all, we honor those who risk their lives to protect ours, so that we can continue to salute the dignity of all persons, each one made in the image of God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who loves us so, the God who died and rose again, the God that sets us free. 

I have been revisiting the backstory of one of my characters in Music of the Mountain, recalling a Holocaust escape from Vienna in August of 1938, based on the true story of Maria Altmann, niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer, whose tale is told in The Lady in Gold by Anne-Marie O’Connor. Some readers may recall the movie with Helen Mirren portraying the recovery of paintings stolen by the Nazis when they annexed Austria in the spring of 1938.

Adele (1881-1925) was not living during the Holocaust, but the next generation was, and it is Maria and her family that were threatened by Hitler’s demonic deportations.

While the paintings by Gustav Klimt are beautiful, Impressionist with gold leaf, I was more interested in the Jewish community in Vienna and how they survived or didn’t survive. I wrote about Adele and Vienna in a February post as well as Vienna’s significance in terms of the Nine-Eleven terrorist attack on our shores, that Vienna repelled the siege of the Ottoman Turks on September 11, 1683, after 300 years of war. It was no coincidence that the planes dove into the Trade Center towers, symbols of free enterprise, and Washington D.C., symbol of freedom, on September 11. October 7 also recalled the anniversary of an earlier war with Israel.

Photograph: Abir Sultan/EPA

This recent Hamas terrorist attack on Israel returned my attention to the Holocaust of WWII. Indeed, there are similarities in terms of seeing it coming. Both Israel and the wealthy Jews of Europe relaxed their guard. In Vienna, the Jewish families who built empires on industry and banking, were pillars of society, donors to the arts and public works, with salons of literati esteemed by the ruling class. Gold leaf was appropriate decor for Adele’s portraits.

In returning to the story of Maria Altmann, how did she and her husband escape Vienna? I knew she and Fritz made it to Southern California, and she was alive in the early 2000’s to be consulted about the movie, “Woman in Gold” with Helen Mirren. It turns out Maria died in 2011, after winning her court case to retrieve the painting, but before Anne-Marie O’Connor’s account was published (2015). 

We in America can also appreciate these cautionary tales of being blind to the reality around us. The terrible attacks of October 7 will not be forgotten and may open our eyes, although it is a horrible price to pay to see the truth. Many of the policies of the Left are no longer “Liberal” but racist regarding minority classes, but most ironically, racist regarding Jews, who have been some of the Left’s largest contributors. We shall see how re-alignments form in the next few years.

Truth is true. Truth exists. Daily we must seek it, live by it, else how can we possibly function? It is easy to look away from unpleasant truths, but perhaps the greatest danger in covering our eyes is our very survival. For if we think all nations mean well, all peoples desire our good, evil is a fiction, and morality is a human invention, we have our heads in the sand, or perhaps Plato’s cave. We need to seek the light of truth, to see honestly the truth of human fallenness, in order to protect our peoples, our many glorious peoples, all of our races from everywhere on this good Earth.

Some have called for a ceasefire in Israel. True history of the region and the terrorists themselves would shout that this is foolish. Andrew Klavan of The Daily Wire wisely said that war is a grave evil, but we go to war to prevent a graver evil.

How true. World War II recalls this truth, including the horrendous and controversial bombing of Japan. September 11, 2001 recalls this truth, including our own war on terrorists abroad and the domestic tracking of our citizens. Today’s vulnerability recalls this truth, as open borders invite terrorists into America, our communities, our homes. There are people that mean us harm. Wake up from woke, America.

The West is wealthy and spoiled and decadent. We need to learn from history, not rewrite it. October 7 is a painful reminder. Wake up, America!

There are times when I sense we are entering a new Dark Age, for the signs speak for themselves – the rise of tyranny, lies, and prosecutions of the innocent, terror attacks instilling fear and horror, demanding war as self-defense. Evil masquerades as good, lies are said to be true, and children are maimed by school authorities. These are dark times.

Hope seems to spiral into despair.

And then there is God, as my good Bishop Morse of blessed memory often said. In the deepest darkest places God finds us, takes our hand, lifts us up to see the light, His light. He made it. He made us.

And then there is today, the Feast of Christ the King, a celebration of the victory of life over death, light over darkness. We celebrate the Lamb of God who becomes Christ the King on his throne in glory. We celebrate this victory that outshines all defeats, all darkness. We look to Him to quell the demons of fear that maim and butcher the innocent. We look to Him to pull us from the precipice and bring us home on His shoulders, to cure our blindness and heal our deafness and give voice to the humble and meek. Only Christ the King can redeem our world of death and darkness.

We are entering a season of long nights and lessening light, approaching the end of October. It is a time that masquerades, costumed as something it is not, on All Hallows Eve, Halloween. Once a children’s time to dress in costumes and play pretend and knock on friendly doors and collect candy, this ritual has become grisly and morbid, one often not suited for young children. I noticed the change in the ‘fifties, when local boys decided it would be fun to stream toilet paper over our neighbor’s tree. Normally we would call this vandalism and trespassing, but on Halloween it was allowed. At age ten, I considered it rather scary and was leery after that about trick-or-treating in the dark in our neighborhood. The tricks didn’t seem worth the treats. 

Christians, of course, celebrate The Feast of All Saints the following day. The day after All Saints, we remember in prayer All Souls, giving our pastors lists of family and friends who have entered Heaven, to be remembered in the Church’s prayers. And so the darkness of Halloween is enlightened with the hope of Heaven, the promise of Eternity with our God of Love. In a sense, and certainly true historically, All Hallows Eve, meaning the evening before All Saints, was a corruption of the true holy-day, as if Lucifer needed to muddy the joy of the saints with death and darkness the night before.

When my son was young, in the ‘eighties, this strange cult of death was even more obvious. Fairy tale costumes portraying virtuous heroes of the past had been replaced with goblins and ghouls, skeletons and werewolves, monsters of hell rising from the earth, that portrayed vices and viciousness, maiming and cruelty. I was grateful that my son went out as a baker one year, and a ghost another year, and a robot when he was seven, R2-D2 from Star Wars. I was a single parent at the time with little to spend on costumes so we manufactured one out of grocery bags and tin foil, but when I heard someone say from the doorway as he offered candy to my son, “Ah, how clever, a Safeway bag!” I worried about my son’s reaction. But he was mainly interested in the candy and was eager to visit as many houses as possible (supervised from the street by his mother).

Today, our Anglican Province of Christ the King celebrates their patronal festival. In this world, we hold on to our King, grateful to have preserved the Episcopate, the line of bishops going back to St. John the Evangelist in the first century, the apostle of love. Some of us were in Denver on January 28, 1978 (our good Dean Napier carried the Christ the King banner) and witnessed the consecration of Robert Sherwood Morse to preserve this episcopacy through the centuries. From there our band of truth-tellers welcomed others, so that matters of faith and practice could continue unbroken. These matters were credal ones, issues of belief in key doctrines, or truths, but the one that cannot be denied is the Resurrection of Our Lord, for all else depends on this. Once you believe in the resurrection (and there is plenty of evidence to believe), you have to ask, what does this mean to me, that the Son of God came to earth to love me so? You have to ask, how will I live my life now that I have come to see so clearly? The Resurrection changes everything.

And so in our little chapel in Berkeley, I gave thanks for the love and light of Christ the King, and when the Gospel was sung by our good priest, sunlight shafted through the high windows, enshrining the chancel. It was a vision of love, of knowing, of seeing the truth of Christ, that goodness conquers evil, love conquers hate, and the victory is ours in the precious name of Our Lord Jesus.

All we need to do is believe. It changes everything.

It’s raining!

Need I say more? Our thirsty hillsides are happy.

It’s a light rain, but for California in October, it’s a welcome respite and a protection against fire in the midst of our fire season.

Changes in weather still startle me after all these years. They remind me we are mere visitors on this earth, granted we are caretakers of a sort, but we see the world around us as separate from ourselves. We are conscious beings, seeking meaning in life, yearning for connection, all the while single and alone, sometimes lonely, creatures standing outside the world and looking in.

We look to art – words, music, paintings, sculpture – to interpret our world for us, give us vision into how it all fits together. We want to understand the mystery and miracle we see in time past, present, and future. Not understanding why leaves us vulnerable, scared.

And so today in a time of ugly art, dissonant art, angry art, I find the Church to be a welcome feast for the mind, the senses, the heart, and the soul. At least I find this in the Anglican liturgy, if you can find a church that celebrates the traditional Eucharist. For here, with a few other seekers, we are treated to soaring song, rising incense, poetic diction, and Holy Scripture that unravels the mysteries and miracles of our lives in our time. Our preacher helps with this, speaking for God, condensing and concentrating God’s Word into a fine wine we sip and enjoy. We nod and we smile with recognition. Yes, that’s the way it is! I experienced it just like that, and now I understand what it is that I experienced.

Our preacher is not interpreting these answers on his own, thankfully. He has over two thousand years of Church teaching, Church debate, Church conclusions. He has his own life-time on earth so far, his learning from others in this time, his humility in terms of that learning. But the good news is that there are answers to our many questions. There are answers to who we are, what we are, where we are, where we are going, why and how. And we too, pray for humility as we listen to others and join in their song of God, join in their dance of beauty, as bread and wine welcome the Real Presence of Christ.

Our years and our months and our days are gifts given to each of us, time to find the answers to these questions. And not only find answers in our time on earth, but to rejoice in the beauty and goodness of those answers.

There are those who turn away from God and from his answers for them. For there are consequences to asking and receiving and knowing. There are responsibilities, once we carry the cross of Christ’s redemption. As said in our Gospel lesson this morning, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” (Matthew 22:1+) These words, spoken by Christ, are difficult ones. He tells the story of the wedding guest with unsuitable garments who is thrown into outer darkness. But today I understood those words. Today I realized, listening to our good preacher, that when we accept the invitation to the feast, we accept the responsibilities of being present at the table. We put on our garments of virtues, not vices. We honor the Master of the Feast properly. For we have been called, to be sure, but we also want to be chosen.

And so, like so much of Holy Scripture, we learn it is about our hearts, our deepest desires, how we decide to live our lives. It is about what we do when we are invited. And as we choose to attend the feast on a Sunday morning in a chapel in Berkeley, we take part as we should – singing, confessing, praying, opening our hearts to mystery and miracle at the Eucharistic table.

When we do this, bit by bit, song by song, prayer by prayer, we are given answers we did not expect. We are shown magnificence we did not see. Our parched hearts are watered by the rain of love.

And we turn to our neighbor and see them in a new way. We see our family members in new ways. With each turning and seeing, doors are opened in our souls, doors we didn’t even know were there.

And we leave grinning like a child, full of joy, mysterious and miraculous joy.

I have been reading Joseph Epstein’s curious book, The Novel, Who Needs It? I have often asked the same question, given my fascination with writing novels with ideas, and have hopes of learning from this most distinguished man of letters.

My question takes a slightly different form, that is, is there a place today for novels of ideas? Is there a place for novels that incorporate serious themes, questions, even political and social ideas (horrors), so very unfashionable, into character and plot. Epstein admires the nineteenth-century era of long dense novels, as do I. My concentration in my BA Literature was Charles Dickens and I appreciate the long sentences and paragraphs and character development so at war with the twenty-first century mind. I particularly appreciated Dickens’ ideas, writing at a time of child labor and poor houses, experiences he endured as a child.

Who writes novels of ideas today, or in the last fifty years? Who writes these and still is published? They may make one think, and that is challenging for many, especially if the thoughts “trigger” negative feelings.

I find the discussion particularly curious, given many are bemoaning the current culture of death and propaganda, saying, the truth tellers, the Jews and the Christians (who are required to try not to lie) have ceded the ground to nihilism, socialism, communism, and may other isms that prop up a culture of tyranny and death. We are told by these astute observers of our culture that we should have been writing novels with ideas, films with ideas, for art, don’t we all agree, informs culture.

And yet, as a present-day novelist, I am told not to preach, not to teach, but to embrace passion, particularly illicit passion, hedonistic characters, and demonic deeds. I am told to check the boxes if I want a publisher, and the boxes are many and illicit. Can’t go there.

I suppose Aesop’s fables were of the preaching variety too. And fairy tales that warned one of witches in forests that gobble children. And morality narratives of all kinds, reflecting a cosmos of good and evil, virtue and vice, the stock and trade of Judaism and Christianity.

And now we have wars and rumors of wars, serious threats to our democracy, challenges to America, the one country in the world, or should I say on the planet, that can defend the innocent against the guilty, the peasant against the tyrant, and truth against lies.

Many are speaking of the rise of evil in our world. Evil lives in all of us, as Solzhenitsyn said, in every heart. The question is, how do we root out evil in our own hearts? We define it so that we can recognize it so that we can destroy it within ourselves. Again, Judaism and Christianity point the way with lists and laws and confession and repentance and forgiveness. With virtues and moral theology classes (highly recommended).

It turns out that Joseph Epstein, whose writing I greatly enjoy, as essayist and culture defender (not warrior), while he has written numerous short stories but has never written a novel, and I wish he would write one so I can learn from him. But critics often don’t write in the genre they criticize.

There are other writers whom I greatly admire who comment on the arts culture of today and bemoan its materialism and self-centered creeds, immediate gratification, lack of responsibility, denial of the work ethic, and many more. But then without the God of the Jews and the Christians, this is what we get – we become our own gods.

I will continue writing my novels of ideas, characters placed in today’s culture, for good or ill, who must grapple with virtue and vice. There is so much to say, so many characters to fill the pages, so many challenges to life in this third decade of the twenty-first century.

The wars and rumors of wars are a constant that humanity must face, just as each of us must face our own inevitable death. But considering the nature of humankind, who he is, why he is what he is, where he has been and where he is going, is no small thing. And today, it is vital that each of us think again, ponder good and evil again, consider virtues and vices and how to live with one another. How to love one another.

And so we are back to the loving and demanding God of Abraham, the God of the Jews and the Christians. We need to listen to him so that we can make sense of this world in which we find ourselves. We need to listen to the law and be held accountable, for one day we will face judgment whether we believe in judgment or not.

In the meantime I’m sticking with my characters who debate some of these questions, question some of these debates, and in the end, I, along with my characters, will be accused of preaching and teaching. So be it.

And also in the meantime I’m hoping someone else will write a novel of ideas we can all learn from, to see how it is done, and how to live our lives the best way possible.

Victor Davis Hanson recently wisely observed that working on his farm balanced mental work with physical work to leave him more whole, or words to that effect. There is truth to this, that all mind or all body makes for a lopsided individual. We have been created with both, and perhaps it is also true that one influences the other, even corrects or directs the other, in some miraculous complementarity.

As I type these words, I am combining, to a degree, both faculties, the physical fingers placing my thoughts onto the keyboard and onto the screen and then, with the tap of a tab, with the touch of “Publish,” my intellectual fingerings fly into a cloud, our word for something some of us can’t visualize, involving wave lengths or something that abbreviates to WIFI or Internet.

And so as I worked in the back yard the last few days, I thought of VDH’s words and appreciated the ache of my back, the movement of the hose as I unwound and rewound the coils, allowing the water through the long yellow snake of plastic. I really must get one of those trolleys, I thought, realizing the hose had become a workout on its own. But it was good to be outside (in the shade), good to breathe the air deeply, good to clean things up a bit, good to see such direct result of my labor.

I felt grounded by the ground, by the dirt, by the soil, by the plant in the pot drinking up the water from the hose. My thoughts reminded me of Francis Etheredge, probably the most brilliant and under-appreciated Catholic poet of the century, and his garden in back and how he created a book of poems and essays from his relationship to the earth and his relationship to God the creator through the earth. An Unlikely Gardener is soon to be released, and I was honored to write the Foreword, my son Tom contributing an endorsement.

My thoughts then drifted to Tom’s love of the earth and landscaping. He too is grounded, balanced by his work, sculpting God’s garden as he once called it. The vast intricacies of life can be seen in the outdoors, whether sculpted or not, tamed or wild. We are a part of creation, and our bodies respond to the world into which we are born. In some sense we are wild creatures, or part of us remains wild, and we yearn for the conversation we have when we step outside. It is a conversation with an old friend, nature, sunlight, clouds, rain, and a conversation with the creator of all this splendor.

Perhaps it was St. Francis of Assisi (feast day last Wednesday) who tapped my shoulder this week, pointing out the birds of the air, the scuttling jack rabbit, the formal-stepping quail that cross the patio from one side to the other as if it were a great dry route across a desert, from greenery to greenery. Curious things, quail. They can fly but choose not to most of the time; instead they prance prettily in order, scuttling to keep up, groups of ten to twelve, sometimes babies, sometimes older teens ready to leave and start their own family. And so it goes. Life.

What prompted my wild excursion into the backyard? It was the pigeons who had nested on the roof, actually building nests in the chimney, covering the roof tiles with splashes of white. We worried what kind of takeover this was, and while I love to watch them fly, soaring in formation (truly an amazing wonder), we decided to take the matter in hand and hire experts to see what was what on the roof. By the end of the day, they had removed the pigeons and all calling cards, previous homes (alas), and set up some deterrents that have worked so far. I’m glad to say they still soar in our skies, lighting lightly on my patio, for a drink from the planter basin, but not for long.

There was still a necessary cleanup of the patio, and this called me into the sunlight from the shade of my house, pulled me out of my meditative reading and writing, and into the dance with the natural world.

We are curious creatures, you and I, made in the image of God Almighty. Little mortals, made immortal in his image. We sense this from a deep place within, the heart or the soul or the mind. We sense we are made for something else, and our yearning for happiness and beauty and goodness and justice is planted in this place within. Our yearning for something that is fleeting in this earthly world gives us the hints and guesses that grounds T.S. Eliot in his magnificent Four Quartets.

I don’t live on a farm as VDH does, but he’s profoundly correct. We are body and soul, and we are grounded from our flights of fancy by the real world all around us. It is a real world of matter that matters and lives and dies, crumbles to nothing, having bloomed just for us. We have little power to control the climate and its changes, but we can protect ourselves from its sharper elements, its heat and its cold, as we pretend to be groundskeepers here on planet Earth. For as I cleaned up in the backyard, and as I do the same inside keeping a house clean, I know it is a recurring endeavor, that what I have done this week will be undone next week, and certainly will need redoing again and again in the course of a year, a lifetime.

It is a dance with life, I suppose. And I’m glad to be dancing, listening and learning the tune the stars sing, to one day follow the song through the galaxies to the heavenly city of Jerusalem, to dance with our Lord of love, our creator and redeemer.

Friday was the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels. I find angels to be special gifts we are given. They are messengers, guardians, and protectors. It is easy to forget that they are all around us. I firmly believe that I have my own guardian angel that prompts me, protects me, and encourages me.

We are told that Michael and his godly angels drove Lucifer and the demonic angels from Heaven, in St. John’s great vision revealed to him on the Island of Patmos:

“THERE was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” (Revelation 12:7+, Book of Common Prayer, 252)

This is a powerful passage, one that predates Adam and Eve and their fall from grace, one that finds Lucifer in the form of a snake tempting Eve. But Mary becomes the new Eve, grinding the serpent with her foot, giving birth to the one who will overcome Lucifer by his own blood, the “blood of the Lamb.”

For now is come salvation, strength, the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ.

And so in this rich passage, we see the beginnings and the endings, so that we understand our gift of salvation in the endings, either of our earthly life or the end-times of Earth. Either way, we are welcomed by Christ into his Kingdom. We are welcomed to the great feast, the supper of the Lamb, the Heavenly table. We are invited to be a guest, to make merry with many others who have said yes to Christ, yes to his invitation.

In the mean-time, we on Earth watch the creeping and slithering of the dark angels, the demons. We see persecution of believers, persecution of faith, persecution of virtuous living and those who seek to practice the moral law given to our world in time. We see silencing and shunning, redefining truth to embrace lies, filling a vacuum that many Christians have left when they ceded the public square to a secular culture.

For Christ gave humanity entrance to the Garden of Eden and we have chosen to remain in the jungle of death. We have chosen to look the other way, passing by the wounded man on the side of the road, wanting only to be left alone. We must speak the truth, that men are men and women are women, that parents have the right to raise their children and determine their education, that abortion can only be an option when the life (not just the health) of the mother is at stake. We must call genocide by its name, and all holocausts by their deeds. We must defend the defenseless, execute our laws, respect justice meted out equally. We must respect all persons, unite and not divide, for everyone is made in the image of God.

And so I am thankful for Michael and all his Angels. I pray they give us courage and wisdom to fight the good fight, meet hate with love, and speak truth to lies.

We know how the story ends. God wins. We want to be on God’s side, to be sure. We want to be on the side of life not death. There will be an accounting.

For as my bishop of blessed memory reminded me often, all is grace.

I’ve been thinking about home, having just discovered a beautiful book series called The Theology of Home by Carrie Gress and Noelle Mering. What is home? Home on earth is where our family is or was, where we feel (felt) safe and loved. Home is where we are seen as the individual we see in ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, our habits and ways of living and speaking. Home is not a house as the real estate folks insist. Home is a gathering of a family who loves us unconditionally (ideally).

My mother-in-law was not raised in a normal home. She was moved from foster care to foster care, at one point sleeping in a bath tub. Yet she valued home for she yearned for it and created, I believe, a home for her sons and husband in the 1930’s and 1940’s. She extended her home to her church home and her school home with volunteer work and leadership. She was a devout Methodist, and she knew about home from her Lord, whom she would meet when she returned to her heavenly home.

I recently saw “Fahrenheit 451” (the remake, 2018) in which home and family are enemies of the state. Several images have stayed with me, ways of speaking truth to a dying culture, warning us that we are on a path away from our heritage of freedom, a crooked path we need to make straight, one taking us away from our nation’s home, the founding principles and documents (creeds, essentially) that form our cultural home of freedom.

The story is set in a world in which the written word must be destroyed. Books are burned, movies are burned, anything offering ideas or debate or history is burned, and speech of this nature is against the law. The rationale given is that these books that allow people to think, especially to argue, destroy the peace and happiness of humanity. We are much better off, it is decided, if we don’t think at all. There is a daily dose of eye drops that aids this tranquility, so that every citizen can find the peace (and by inference, happiness) they so desire.

Peace. We all want peace, right? But at what price? Many already drug themselves to deaden their emotions, to feel less pain, to avoid suffering at all costs.

The alternative, allowing people to speak, to write, to debate, is fraught with challenges. Thus, in democracies or republics where we are all given a voice (in theory), rules must be followed, respect maintained, and at the end of the day debaters shake hands. In peace. A framework, the Founders believed was important – checks and balances on the powers of government, free elections, and goodwill, so that there is a just, even-handed, playing field for all.

It appears we must be dependent upon individual goodwill, an honor system. Manners, customs, traditions that birth goodwill must be nurtured and taught to the next generation. Rules of behavior are learned from a young age in the school of the family, for we learn by living together in close proximity. We learn to love one another, not necessarily like one another, a difficult thing to do, from our parents, and our grandparents. We learn that love means sacrifice and possible suffering, for love is a gift given to the beloved, the gift of oneself, one’s time, one’s care. It is the gift of coming home.

When the family is attacked, we lose God’s way of teaching us how to live together, how to be civil.

And without civility, we cannot speak to one another. We cannot write contrary thoughts. Without respect for all persons, if not all viewpoints, we find ourselves at war with one another, rather than at peace.

And so this movie is about a world that has given up on civility between speakers and thus must silence speech of any serious or profound nature. But there is an underground world of booklovers who seek to save the many conversations between reader and writer since the first scratches discovered on the walls of caves. These secret librarians do more than save the books, however. They memorize their contents.

Memory is the handmaiden of history, for memory holds close these alternative views, these alternative actions that populate the past – the disagreements, the wars, the cultures who defended the right to write and the sanctity of speech. Memory reminds us what happens when freedom is lost, when mankind is silenced, when gatherings are disbanded. We do not have to reinvent the wheel, as they say, or more to the point, reinvent civilization, reinvent the home.

Today we see a conscious effort to divide the family and families of faith found born in churches. These institutions nurture personal choice, personal responsibility, and personal civility with a litany of vices and virtues. The list is clear and forms a path to civility and freedom of speech:

The Theological (theos=God) Virtues

1. Faith: Belief in God and His love for us.
2. Hope: Belief that God will work out all things for good.
3. Charity (Love): Love of God and of our fellow men.

The Cardinal (Important) Virtues

1. Justice: Being fair to others.
2. Prudence: Thinking before acting.
3. Temperance: Not over-eating or over-drinking.
4. Fortitude: Courage and endurance

The Ten Commandments etched in stone on Mount Sinai give us a way to love one another, civilly. The Church and the family provide methods to confess one’s vices, to repent, and to be forgiven by the supreme justice of all, God the Father, and to cultivate the virtues. The architecture of peace lies in this tradition, a Judeo-Christian tradition that teaches us how to honor all mankind, born and unborn. 

This is no small thing. This is not something to ignore or toss out or silence.

And so, in my novel, The Music of the Mountain, I explore some of these challenges in our world today, as I have done in The Fire Trail (2016) and Angel Mountain (2020). Our world is close to the book burning described by Ray Bradbury. We have allowed the shunning and firing of those who say the wrong words. We look away, as they did in Hitler’s Germany in the 1930’s. Our nation is moving closer and closer to silencing by force.

In the film, each person in the underground book world has memorized a book. In some sense, he or she has become the book, embodying the book. Just so, we must not forget virtues and vices and their importance to our lives of freedom. We must not forget the creeds, the psalms, the Scriptures that light the path for all humanity. We must learn these rituals and hymns and responses by heart, to be engrafted upon our hearts.

We must not forget how to love one another, how to form families, how to bear children, and how to gather together in faith communities.

We must not forget that we are words, spoken words, created in the image of God, our ultimate home.

One of the delights of being a Christian is that I am never bored. Or at least I cannot recall the last time I was bored, and given my memory and age, it may be true that I’m not to be trusted.

Nevertheless, I continue to marvel at the created world, including cats and people. And so that is my excuse for detouring into Ancestry this last week and allowing chunks of time to be happily offered to my relatives, living and dead. For each person is a work of art, a universe, a miracle and a mystery, and I am told by some folks who have returned from Heaven (near-death experiences) that we will see our family, at least those in Heaven. They even form a greeting committee in some cases. Only Heaven knows, as my grandmother, of blessed memory, would say, chuckling and grinning, tilting her head in an impish manner.

One way or another, life is certainly an adventure.

But I was able to write a few passages in The Music of the Mountain, filling in the character of my ethics professor, Patricia Norton, with a little more backstory. She has a secret, of course, and she has suffered for it. Such suffering haunts her, as suffering does to most of us, and while many seek therapy as my Patricia has done, I for one  prefer prayer and memorizing Psalms and other parts of the Daily Offices, highly effective at banning the ghosts of suffering. I have built a library, I suppose, in my memory bank, that I draw on now gratefully, reciting the Venite and the Te Deum and Psalm 100, Glory be to God… There are responsory prayers too, called versicles, I learned from an author I am editing, with a view to soon publishing his booklet, Praying the Daily Offices, with our American Church Union Publishing group.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. Revelation 3:20 ++ Artist is William Holman Hunt 1827-1910, United Kingdom ++ Title is LIGHT OF THE WORLD.

It is a richly textured life, this world of conversations with God. For I listen for his voice, and hear it in many ways, through other people, through thoughts that come to me suddenly, unbidden, that clearly are better than my own. So I invite Him in as often as possible, rather than leaving Him on the front porch knocking as seen in this image by by Holman Hunt.

I have come to believe that He needs an invitation. Having set up free will in order for us to freely love, He likes to be invited into our hearts and thus into our world. So I try each morning, with my first cup of coffee, to strike up a conversation with Almighty God. And see what happens. At least He knows that my door is open.

What if we all asked Him into our hearts, say, once an hour? Is this how He can see the world, only through our eyes? Residing within, He sees what I see and He knows my thoughts too. He knows me.

Some friends in Kentucky who run the retreat house, Nazareth House, and know something about prayer taught me to breathe the Holy Name of Jesus in and out, and I do when I remember. That is a kind of invitation too, and a jeweled tool to add to my treasure chest of hymns and prayers and eucharists. For the more we bring him into our bodies, the easier it will be to ascend that ladder to Heaven.

And so in the discovery of some of my ancestors, as well as some of my living relatives, I have been given a lovely gift, a necklace of diamonds reflecting many different facets and faces. It is hard to believe, really grasp, the marvelous intricacies of humanity, the genetic codes, the bits inherited and bits created in a lifetime of choices, all forming me. And you. And everyone everywhere, no two alike.

Animals too. No two alike. Plants. No two alike. How can such infinite variety be comprehended? That is one of the arguments recent scientists have made for the existence of God. The Discovery Institute is a good place to start that journey. And I have written about these things in my novels and in these pages, for the journey through our own time becomes more and more joyful, not less. There are always discoveries, always God noticing that the door is open, always God, the Creator of the Universe, loving us enough to become one of us, to enter each one of us, to live inside each one of us.

It only gets better, this river of joy.

So, as I think of this week, and the moments I shared with family living on Earth and family living in Heaven, I wonder at it all. It is so magnificent, and there are not words to describe this, the indescribable. Hence we try to paint pictures and tell stories and sculpt heroes and heroines. Hence we speak as best we can, speak the truth, once we have allowed our Lord to live within us.

Simple worship. Simple seeing. Simple love. It’s all quite simple, this trusting God to make all things right. We simply open the door and invite Him in. As often as possible.

I’m pleased to say I have finally found a few hours to return to my manuscript, the first draft of my eighth novel. I have found that as I age, I move more slowly with more aches and more pains and greater care not to trip and fall. And as this natural progression occurs, one that pulls me toward my final, eternal, and glorious destination, I am also caretaker for two others, my mother (103) and my husband (88, but I didn’t tell you). So oddly, there is less and less time for… playing around with words.

I’m beginning to think writing a novel is rather like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. This may have been said already (another loss, memory) in these pages, but it struck me this week that I can create the pieces to the puzzle, one at a time, and then fit it all together with plot and character. So I created a file of “bits and pieces”), paragraphs my characters are not yet ready for, to be used sometime in the future chapters and pages of the book. I may not use them at all. I have learned to part with 75% of what I write, when I give the finals a good scrubbing. Tests must be passed to achieve clarity and pacing. Chapters must be short to attract the general reader who, they say, reads at a fifth grade level. It’s probably 3rd grade now, with all the “graphic novels.” I used to think graphic novels were porn, but no, they are comic books. How did this happen to our people?

But those tests will be much later, after readers have read drafts and editors have weighed in. And at the end of the day, I won’t be woke enough to appeal to today’s publishers. But I’m happy to slip under the radar, in exchange for telling the truth as I see it, nothing but the truth, so help me God.

And I do need God to help me. He gave me some good ideas this morning in our little Berkeley chapel. I jotted things down as we sang and prayed and listened to our good vicar preach on healing of body and soul (hint: the Gospel was about the healing of the ten lepers). And the Epistle before that was the amazing St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians (5:16+). He likes lists, and so do I, since they are easy to understand, and even memorize. He gave us two lists today, the Works of the Flesh and the Works of the Spirit. He speaks of misuse of the flesh, against God’s law, and the rewards of the Spirit:

Works of the Flesh, those against God’s law: Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like… they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

(Christians revere the flesh, the body, for we were created by God, but we understand we must observe those boundaries ordained by our Creator. These laws, when kept, help us experience the second list, the fruits of the Holy Spirit.)

Fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

This instruction was helpful, given my novel-in-progress involves a Professor of Ethics who assigns memory work. But she is not a believer. Where does she find her moral compass, the law? Is there a natural law some speak of? And so I look to the Moral Theology class I’m auditing on Zoom, taught by Bp. Hansen. While I’m not keeping up with the reading, I pray I will absorb some of the ideas in the class. I have always found the moral law fascinating, ever since I read Mere Christianity the first time, and followed Lewis’ argument that right and wrong were clues to the universe. At the time, at the young age of twenty, he offered enough logical proof for me to begin a faith journey that I am still enjoying, fifty-six years later. 

And today, in an increasingly secular world, many are concerned with moral law. If there is no outside arbiter or author of said law, can it govern a society? I’m not sure it can.

But I digress. I have found these readings to be good reminders of how the universe is, indeed, set up. Mankind is its own universe in a sense, and Christians have the magnificent means of understanding who they are and are meant to be. We do this through our sacred texts and rituals, words and song that form their own informed work of art.

Looking back to this morning, the experience of singing and saying and listening and learning together with others, where many voices become one voice, and many prayers become one prayer, I see a sculpted hour that is indeed its own work of art. It was an hour of our time, mine and other faithful, that became a creation of love, a song or symphony of praise, an offering of men and women to their Creator. And in return, Christ gave us himself. Pretty good exchange.

I can’t think of anything quite like it. Somehow this morning and many other Sunday mornings will work their way into my novel, for how else can you describe the indescribable? I think I shall have my Father Adams reminisce about the glory days when the chapel was open, before the pandemic, before the lockdowns, before the closures and the riots and the lootings. When he does, maybe reminiscing to Professor Norton, he shall describe what I saw and said and sang this morning.

And it is curious, that our liturgy developed when an illiterate people took part, many centuries ago. You don’t have to be able to read in order to hear and say and sing and see. If you go regularly you learn by heart, engrafted on your heart. It may be that this is the liturgy of the future, as we turn the clocks back to an illiterate time, a time of graphic novels, pictures, apps, and screens.

And this too may find its way into Music of the Mountain, set on Angel Mountain, a story of how we saved Western Civilization, one book at a time, one song at a time, one prayer at a time, one chapel kept open at a time of closures.