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Uncovering a Cover

Posted on May 1, 2016 | Leave a comment

Cover Art v2 (Flattened).jpgThis last week I received (and approved) the cover for my new novel, The Fire Trail, to be released by eLectio Publishing May 10. It always astonishes me when I open that email attachment. I am filled with anticipation, then wonder.

Covers cover things, in this case, the interior pages, the real book. I had signed off on the interior galley earlier, having changed a word here and there, having caught some inconsistencies. They say one never finishes writing a book; one merely abandons it. How true. I usually have a sinking feeling when I sign off on a book, for it is like sending one’s child into the great wide world. Twinges of regret will shadow my exuberance over the release, and I shall be nervous to open a copy once published. Like many authors, I am my most demanding critic and shall always see errors to be corrected and changes to be made.

And so as I gazed at the cover of The Fire Trail I asked myself if it was a good representation of the story and its themes, its characters and their arcs, the burning passion that I had seared onto the pages with my words and phrases. The cover shows the sun setting in the west beyond the Statue of Liberty, the orb of fire falling into a dark horizon, with votive candles flaming below.

I suppose it is a truth (possibly trite) universally acknowledged that humans have their own covers hiding their true selves. Does my outward manner reflect my soul or hide it? Is my book to be judged by its cover? Am I am open book, disingenuous, integrated, whole?

Our flesh, our clothing, and our behavior cover and protect us. We are born with bodies and live within them a lifetime. Body and soul are at once separate and united. And yet we have a yearning to reach out, to experience something other, transcendence beyond ourselves. Some of us make this journey with drugs. Some travel into prayer. Some are absorbed by the beauty and truth of music and art, some lost in work and some in play. In fact, being absorbed in anything, be it work, books, movies, or love of another, pulls us out of ourselves. The movement away from self is a relief, a rest, a relaxation. Self absorption is exhausting. This is why, I am told, that a good sleep is more about the rest of the mind than the body. We need a break from ourselves.

As I peer at these words through the windows of my eyes I know that I desire such escape from self. I am blessed to have found rest in God, in worship, in prayer and praise and sacrament. I’m also re-created through beauty, in music, and in nature when it is friendly not deadly. I have found rest too in books and movies that pull me into another world.

As I gaze at my new cover for The Fire Trail, I ask myself, do the images invite me inside? Just so, our outward demeanors sometimes belie rather than reflect our inward states. Sometimes they protect the inner person with layers of sophistication, sophistry, fads, political-correctness, the zeitgeist of today. Sometimes it is frightening to drop the mask, the public persona, to be open, honest, and loving.

The Fire Trail referenced in the title of my new novel is a firebreak in the Berkeley hills that many walkers and runners enjoy for the panoramic views of San Francisco, the bay and its bridges. It’s a path that safeguards civilization from the wilderness, that protects Berkeley and its university from the firestorms that rage through the dry brown grass of the East Bay hills in late summer.

The Fire Trail considers whether the sun is indeed setting over Western civilization, ushering in a new dark age. But the fire of the setting sun is also the fire of burning votives, those prayers that lighten the dark. And the fire of prayer is lit by the burning love of God.

And so today, this last Sunday in Eastertide, Rogation Sunday, we pray for our world. Rogation comes from the Latin rogare, to ask, and we petition God for peace in the world, and the freedom to pray. In prayer, we unite with God’s sacred heart of burning love.

One of the appearances of Christ after his resurrection was on the road to the town of Emmaus. The two disciples who walked with him did not recognize him as Jesus who was crucified and risen from the dead. It was only when Christ breaks bread (recalling the last supper and the Eucharistic body broken) and vanished from them that they knew who he was. They wondered at their own blindness, saying: “Did not our hearts burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?”

It has been said that when we face the last judgment, we shall either burn with the love of God or be burned by it, for mankind cannot bear too much reality. He must cover himself with anything that will distance himself from real life, from truth and even beauty. C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce, a story about the irreconcilable distance between Heaven and Hell, describes the blades of grass in Heaven that will cut our tender feet if we are not made more real in our earthly journey, more full of the love of God.

And so we uncover our hearts and minds and souls, open them wide to God’s love – in history and in the present – so that we may infuse our culture with his law and liberty, peace and transcendence. Such experience of truth and beauty will make us more real, faith warriors able to protect our culture from the barbaric and deadly, so that that fiery setting sun will rise again, revealing a new day.

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Advent Editing

Posted on November 30, 2015 | 1 comment

writingSince signing a contract with eLectio Publishing earlier this week for the publication of my novel, The Fire Trail, to be released May 10, I have been rereading the manuscript, polishing, fine-tuning. Words and phrases are deleted and replaced, sentences are shaved and reshaped, paragraphs and pages and chapters judged as honestly as possible.

It would seem an appropriate work to tackle during Advent, a season of penitence and preparation as we wait for the celebration of Christ’s advent at Christmas. For like the examination of my words, Advent is also a time to examine my heart, to see what should be deleted from my life and replaced, discouraged or encouraged, torn down or shored up, what should be shaved and reshaped, what should be confessed, judged, and absolved. It is a time when we ask that God’s law be written on our hearts.

For Advent is about change, about the editing of our lives.

When I edit a manuscript I measure it against certain standards. I’ve learned and hopefully continue to learn the craft of writing fiction, the structure of the novel, the way words, story, plot, and character weave together. I try to fill my ears and eyes and mind with good writing, to absorb vocabulary and symbols and images, to improve my own attempts to hold my manuscript up to a standard. I listen to language, the rhythm and syntax and flow of dialog and description, attending to the music of words and their dance, be it a minuet or a waltz.

Editing is about choice, choice based on a standard. And for mankind those standards were given to us when God wrote his law on tablets of stone, and Moses carried them down the mountain to God’s chosen ones. That law was fulfilled, filled with fullness, made perfect, when Jesus the Christ was born in a hillside cave outside Bethlehem. That law was fulfilled with his life, his death, and his resurrection from death into life, his shattering of the veil between man and God, his making them at-one, in his Atonement.

In the season of Advent we look to Christmas, to the celebration of the birth of Our Lord. We do this by editing our lives using his standards, his rule of law, his law of love. We want to be ready to receive him into the words and pages of our days, weeks, years, to welcome him to live in our chapters and breathe life into our own stories. To be ready we need to edit ourselves.

Some of us think we have nothing to delete or add to our lives. We are fine the way we are. The problem of sin is for others, not us. It is time then to begin with beginnings: the Ten Commandments. Curiously, they are difficult to keep in today’s culture of distraction. The first four are considered sins against God; the last six are sins against one another. Today we’ll look at the sins against God. These will be challenging enough to suggest a robust humility:

  1. God spake these words: I am the LORD thy God; Thou shalt have none other gods but me.
  1. Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them; for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and show mercy unto thousands in them that love me and keep my commandments.

Do I worship false gods? Do I spend too much time, talent, or treasure on anything that is not to God’s glory, not a part of his plan for me? Has my own selfishness hurt my children, and taught them how to be selfish too, to in turn hurt their children, my grandchildren?

  1. Thou shalt not take the Name of the LORD thy God in vain. 

The everyday use of “OMG” today is astounding. The commandment not to use God’s in vain would seem the easiest of all, and yet saying the name of God frivolously, without meaning or reverence, that is, in vain, is a common transgression. We say it. We hear it. We read it. Bestsellers and mainstream movies use this language liberally without thought to the power of words, whether spoken or written. I can edit my tongue, and edit my reading list, but it is more difficult to edit what I hear. A friend’s solution to this oral pollution was powerful: when someone says “God!” or “Christ!” my friend offers up her own prayer by adding “be praised!” The addition, I’ve found, invites holiness into the moment, making each word spoken precious.

  1. Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath-day.

For Christians, Sunday is the Sabbath, celebrating Christ’s Resurrection. I must confess I don’t always feel like going to church on Sunday, but I’m always glad I went. I’ve found that regular worship edits my soul, fine-tuning it, regulating its rhythms and guiding its dance. What happens in that simple hour of song and Scripture and sacrament is mystifying, miraculous. I am changed. Words do not fully explain it but I’ll try a few: I enter disordered and leave re-ordered, I enter guilty and leave absolved, I enter sorrowful and leave joyful, I enter depressed and leave enlightened, I enter dying and leave reborn. Keeping Sunday holy by uniting with Christ’s Body is crucial to the editing of the soul.

And so the manuscripts of Me and You are works-in-progress, to be published in Heaven, on our personal release dates, our new birth-days. There is, for me, much to work on, many areas to refashion and rebuild. The editing is ongoing, with the help of sacrament and song and Scripture, with the advent of Christ in history in Bethlehem, the advent of Christ today in the Eucharist and his Spirit in daily prayer, and the advent of Christ at the end of time.

Lord, have mercy upon us, and write all these thy laws in our hearts, we beseech thee.

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Three Great Ladies

Posted on September 20, 2015 | 2 comments

500px-Statue_of_Liberty_7

I, like many, have been intrigued with the Carly Fiorina candidacy for President of the United States. Many of us have eagerly waited to see if she was more than a CEO with controversial reviews. In the first debate she was clear, cogent, and compelling. In the second debate this last week she was even more so, with a powerful composure, an admirable knowledge of the world, and an iron will, not unlike our “Iron Lady,” Margaret Thatcher, in England. 

Ms. Fiorina has separated herself from other female candidates over the years, aided by Mr. Trump’s inappropriate comment, by making her presidential bid about merit not gender. Women sighed with relief nationwide. Did you hear it? That universal sigh? At last, we thought, someone who understands.

But what I hadn’t focused on, and probably why as a writer I have come to especially value her candidacy, is Ms. Fiorina’s use of language. She is a poet with an intuitive sense of the power of words, images, and symbols. She understands America’s need for the right phrases at the right times to draw our nation together, to heal our divisions.

Her closing statement, using the images of Lady Justice and Lady Liberty, spoke to Americans’ hopes and dreams, our very identity. It explains why waves of migrants are fleeing to the West with only the shirt on their backs, why thousands make great sacrifices for a glimpse of Lady Liberty in the New York harbor, why they count on Lady Justice for their future. It explains why America is indeed exceptional:

I think what this nation can be and must be can be symbolized by Lady Liberty and Lady Justice.

Lady Liberty stands tall and strong. She is clear eyed and resolute. She doesn’t shield her eyes from the realities of the world, but she faces outward into the world nevertheless as we always must, and she holds her torch high. Because she knows she is a beacon of hope in a very troubled world.

And Lady Justice. Lady Justice holds a sword by her side because she is a fighter, a warrior for the values and the principles that have made this nation great. She holds a scale in her other hand, and with that scale she says all of us are equal in the eyes of God. And so all of us must be equal in the eyes of the government, powerful and powerless alike. And she wears a blindfold. And with that blindfold she is saying to us us that it must be true, it can be true, that in this country in this century it doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter what you look like, it doesn’t matter how you start, and it doesn’t matter your circumstances. Here in this nation, every American’s life must be filled with the possibilities that come from their God-given gifts, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Such patriotism is scoffed by liberal academic elites. But after years of these elites governing, years of dangerous sophistication and overweening arrogance, years of enforced political correctness, Americans are disheartened and angry enough to look to someone brave and true. We bolt our doors and fear the dark. Our streets are not safe. Our police are attacked and prevented from enforcing the law, in communities where the law needs enforcing. And we wonder when terrorists, abroad or at home, will next attack.

I recalled Ms. Fiorina’s Lady Liberty when I recently read Rob Greene’s poetic description of the New York harbor statue (“The World is Still Yearning to Be Free,” Wall Street Journal). He writes of Emma Lazarus’s sonnet engraved on a plaque that was placed on the ground floor of the statue in 1893:

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,/With conquering limbs astride from land to land; /Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand /A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame /Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name /Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand /Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command /The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. /”Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she /With silent lips. “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!”

And to this day, we welcome legal immigrants to our shores, as long as they welcome us, as long as they embrace freedom and liberty, justice for all, speak our language, as long as they want to be Americans, unhyphenated, undivided.

The Statue of Liberty, made of copper, was designed by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, built by Gustave Eiffel, and given to the U.S. by France. Somehow, I would venture to say, our “Eiffel tower” is more powerful (and beautiful) than Paris’s Eiffel Tower. Representing the Roman goddess of liberty, Lady Liberty holds a torch that lights the path to freedom and a tablet of law inscribed with the date of American Independence, July 4, 1776. A prisoner’s broken chain lies at her feet (Wikipedia).

Ms. Lazarus’s poem is titled “The New Colossus,” referring to the Greek Colossus, one of the “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,” a statue erected on the island of Rhodes in 280 BC marking victory over Cyprus. Our Lady Liberty, the new Colossus, is quite a different creation, a “Mother of Exiles,” a “mighty woman.”

And so is Ms. Fiorina. The tablet that Lady Liberty holds is the law of Lady Justice, blind justice, equal-under-the-law justice. Many Americans have forgotten what that means, as it grows more rare with each day. Many Americans feel they have been exiled from their own country or one day will be.

And so I thank you, Ms. Fiorina, for reminding us of these two great ladies, Liberty and Justice, and for giving us renewed hope in America. I pray that you inform the substance and standards of future presidential debates and that having raised the bar, others must reach higher. I pray that those who belittle excellence, who crave clamor over conversation, that they take note that this is how we want debates to be, this is how we want our leaders to sound, this is how we want to be represented to one another and to the world.

For we Americans have become those masses who are so very tired and poor and huddling and yearning to breathe free. We are exiled, and we want to call America our home once again.

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Truth and Lies and Shades of Gray

Posted on April 19, 2015 | Leave a comment

ft5I recently arrowed send and, instantly it seemed, my novel-in-progress flew from my desk in California to an editor on the East Coast. Before I clicked send, however, The Fire Trail had been rewritten with the help of a West Coast editor and other readers. Characters were developed more fully, I hope, scenes added and expanded, plot points remapped, histories made true. 

I am enraptured by what is true, a true truth-junkie. In all of my novels I have tracked and tried to capture truth, turning this elusive and challenging quality into characters who live and breathe, people who people my pages. For it is the artist’s solemn obligation to attempt this invaluable and possibly foolhardy feat, this re-presenting what is true about you and I, our world, our very existence. It is a big and scary subject, and some of us do not want to hear about it, for as T.S. Eliot wrote in Four Quartets, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

We call these realities “hard truths,” and they are ones which make some folks squirm: the definition of marriage and why the state should be interested in its definition, the sacredness of life from conception to grave, the need for freedom linked to responsibility, liberty linked to law, democracy linked to educated voters. Yet all of these truths are necessary for American culture to survive, indeed, for free peoples of the world to survive.

Approaching the election season, we voters must understand these issues in order to decide them. It is good and glorious that we have these months to debate truth, from all points of view. It is good and glorious that as citizens we can learn what is at stake, can recognize when truth is elasticized and remolded, is shape-shifting. In this learning process, we can pull truth back into its proper shape, return it to its true character.

And so in my little novel that flew through cyberspace last week I tried to pull these elastic truths back into their real shapes through my characters. The characters themselves, for that matter, are icons of many people I have known. They speak with voices I have heard. They have been molded with words as an icon is painted with prayer, so that they will one day turn around to face readers and say, “I am… so pleased to meet you.” Thus, the dance together begins, a waltz or a minuet, a conversation between character and reader, slowly, picking up pace and tempo, as the music of language is sounded.

Art is a medium of truth. It is a way of expressing the inexpressible, explaining the unexplainable, touching familiar notes deep within our common heart, as though we were an orchestra playing a symphony. The artist reaches into clay or image or symbol, tempo or melody or chord, and re-molds it to show something true about each of us. The medium is only that, a medium, material used to tell us about ourselves, who we truly are.

Unfortunately with the rise of advertising over the last century, truth has become malleable, slanted, slippery. And with advertising we recognize this, we are forewarned, and we hesitate before believing that snake oil will cure blindness.

But in the process, journalists, publishers, and politicians have been tempted to also twist and stretch truth, so that honest elections are held hostage to news media, be it print, video, or electronic. Shades of gray stretch as far as the eye can see. Colors and definitions disappear in a wasteland of relativity. What are we voters to do? We can only be aware, beware, and be wary of the lie that there is no truth, no right way forward.

And so as we listen and read, as we consider what direction our nation should take, who should lead us through the wilderness of our world, I am glad I created characters who live within the debates. I will refine them with honest fire, hammering and shaping their golds into revelations, beautiful and good and true.

For in the end, this is what we all desire, to know in truth where we have come from, where we are, and where we are going.

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A Woods of Words, a Forest of Phrases

Posted on February 8, 2015 | 4 comments

FT YelpMy novel-in-progress, The Fire Trail, has left home for a few weeks. I finished up the first draft and sent it out into the great wide world to see how it would fare. But I miss the characters. Zachary left his music and poetry with me, so I have that. I go to Anna’s exercise class on a regular basis and often think of her. Jessica introduced me to the history of Berkeley, coloring my weekly visit to my Berkeley office. And Father Nate left me his old prayer book to thumb through.

The Fire Trail first flew away to my local editor. Another copy has nested with the Sisters of the Presentation in San Francisco, and a third manuscript found a home with my bishop who understands people and thus character. Later, when the manuscripts come home, I shall incorporate their suggestions and shall send it out once again, a final draft, to visit proofreaders familiar with Berkeley and the University of California.

It is a miraculous thing, how a story can grow like a living creature.

I read recently that our brains are always changing, constantly being remolded by experience and use. Tissue is repaired, damaged cells healed. I marveled at this vision of life itself, the changing nature of our cells, our bodies, our minds, as we age and interact with our world. Nothing stays the same. We are ever-moving, ever-growing, ever-dying, amorphous.

And so I considered the power of choice, of free will, of my own ability to govern that moving, growing, and dying so that instead of drunkenly swerving down the road of life, my span of time might take on a certain shape, might follow a rational, reasonable course. As I pass each crossroads, I must choose. I can stop, turn around, and go back. I can turn; I can go forward, crossing the road. I can repent; I can deny there is a choice. I must choose, again and again, for there are many, many crossroads.

But all of these choices are informed by knowledge. I must know where I am going, and perhaps more importantly, where I have come from. The ability to choose wisely assumes also that I live in a culture of freedom, either in the West or in a place imbued with Western ideals of freedom and democracy. Choosing the right road  assumes I was raised to choose and cherish liberty and justice. It assumes I have been taught self-control and responsibility, the pillars of freedom. It assumes I have been taught the history of Western culture, from Abraham to Greece to Europe to America and the West’s many flowerings worldwide.

I was fortunate to receive my public school education in the fifties and early sixties, just in time. I don’t recall feeling unsafe. There were no bullies or knives or guns. Teachers were allowed to discipline, for self-esteem was achieved through hard work. America-bashing was not yet fashionable, but would be soon. The flag flew high and proud. It was neither worn as clothing, nor burned in hatred. I was taught symbols matter, language matters, and all lives matter, not just some. Our political leaders spoke of America as precious and exceptional, necessary to world peace. I was also blessed with growing up in the beating heart of the Church, so that where I came from and where I was going was clear and comforting and inspiring, all three. I strayed for a time, but, to paraphrase Waugh and Chesterton, God pulled me back with a “twitch upon the thread” and help from C. S. Lewis. The twitch would have been more difficult without the thread already in place. It appeared God had pulled Lewis back in a similar way.

And so as I witness the foundations of Western culture crumble, that is, the education of the next generation through social ideals as well as classroom texts, I take some comfort in my little novel of ideals and text, The Fire Trail. I pray that I make the right choices in the next few months with regard to the novel’s sculpting and firing, so that the pages glow like amber embers. My attempt may be too little too late, but I’m glad, as I traveled my my own trail, that I chose to write these words, to breathe life into Jessica and Zachary, Anna and Nate, so that they could turn their own pages, make their own choices as they journey on the trail through my woods of words, my forest of phrases.

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Thanksgiving for the Life of P. D. James

Posted on December 7, 2014 | 1 comment

AVT_P-D-James_9961I was greatly saddened to hear of the death of P. D. James at the age of 94 in her home in Oxford. 

I discovered James’s detective novels many years ago in my quest to find literary mentors, authors who could teach me, mentor me, in the craft of writing. I read everything she wrote, some works several times, studying her phrasing, her metaphors.

I’m not a fan of simple sentences, but prefer sentences textured and layered with phrases, fearlessly long, unafraid to pull the reader alongside its subject in search of a predicate, looping and climbing and decorating and meandering. Reading P. D. James verified that one didn’t have to write in the “modern” way of Hemingway and all the deconstructionists who followed suit. One could indeed write like Henry James or Dickens or Bronte and not be pilloried for it. She wrote literary fiction that happened to be detective fiction, and I wish she had received greater acclaim for her talent.

Nevertheless she was wise to have written within the known and comforting structure of detective fiction, a decision that seemed to bar her from the big prizes but increased her audience. In the process she enriched the genre with layered syntax and language, and created characters with character and depth. Adam Dalgliesh was a modern hero, with all of the complexities of a truly good man. We cared about him and about those he gathered around him.

COVER COPY compressedIt wasn’t until fairly recently that I realized she was a fellow Anglican. My third novel, Inheritance (OakTara, 2009), was largely about the history of Christianity in England and thus predominantly the history of the Church of England (set in London, Oxfordshire, and Glastonbury), with many Book of Common Prayer scenes. So I tried to reach Baroness James to send her a copy as a small thank you for all she had done for me. I couldn’t find an address, email or surface mail.

002So on one of our visits to London (May, 2011), I dropped off a copy at her agent’s office, not far from Holland Park. I tapped a buzzer alongside a green door and traipsed up narrow stairs to the offices of Greene and Heaton, 37 Goldsmith Lane, where a receptionist welcomed me. Yes, she would be happy to forward the novel to Baroness James along with my letter. A few months later I received a lovely thank you note from Baroness James.

In the note she expressed concern over the changes happening in the Anglican world, with hopes things would somehow work out. She said she didn’t know when she would get to reading my novel, since she was deep into her novel-in-progress, and couldn’t seem to find enough time to write. This turned out to be Death in Pemberley, her salute to Jane Austen. For my part, I was simply delighted, as any fan would be, to have received her note.

I have been greatly in P. D. James’ debt for many reasons. Her writing style validated my own (or so I thought); she wrote long complicated sentences and so did I. She was Anglican and loved the Book of Common Prayer containing the poetic prayer-collects of Thomas Cranmer and the Psalter, read or sung mornings and evenings, in many Anglican churches throughout the world over the years.

P. D. James grew up attending weekly Evensong. I believe that it is the rhythm of the Psalms along with those poetic prayers of Cranmer she memorized in school, that have so defined the rhythm of James’ style as well as my own. Another writer-friend, raised on the Psalms, within the Psalms, writes this way too. We grew up with these rhythms, the meter and melody becoming part of us.

P. D. James, along with a handful of other scholars and writers I have come in contact with, appreciated the beauty and truth of these prayers. They created a moral universe where a just and loving God heard our prayers and answered them. And in her works she sought this ordered beauty and truth, by making order out of disorder. She said she was drawn to crime fiction for it created a moral universe that was disordered by murder, and it was necessary for the hero to return order by solving the murder, and providing, if not God’s justice, a “certain justice.”

Because of her own life’s challenges and sufferings early on, she was equipped to create vivid characters. She was also able to write of the grit and grime of murder, the horror and ugliness of violent death. She wrote with a realism new to detective fiction at the time, unlike Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle. And yet she provided redemption by returning order to the world.

One of the greatest gifts an artist can give to his or her culture is to civilize the barbaric places in the individual and in society. It is this civilization that the Book of Common Prayer has represented, and that P. D. James has reflected in her own way. How do we impose order upon disorder in our hearts and in our communities? Artists, to be sure, have a moral responsibility to civilize us, encourage us to be civil, to love, to light up the dark places. In my own novel-in-progress, The Fire Trail, I’m exploring some of the boundaries of darkness and light, borderlands where the barbaric has made alarming inroads in today’s culture.

Thank you Baroness James. You have ordered our disorder in so many ways, civilizing our hearts and minds.

Rest eternal grant unto her, O Lord, and may  light perpetual shine upon her.

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Flying the Flag

Posted on October 5, 2014 | Leave a comment

american-flag-2a2My novel-in-progress, The Fire Trail, is progressing. But little did I know, when I set this novel in Berkeley in September of 2014 (a decision made at least a year ago that almost seemed arbitrary), that so many events would collide in this month that illustrated my themes.

I’m not sure why I didn’t focus on the Nine-Eleven tragedy to begin with, but I didn’t. I was thinking of the time of year, time of sunset (and thus daylight versus darkness). I was thinking of temperature and dryness, and well, naturally, fire hazards. I wanted school to be in session, so that sort of ruled out the summer months, and while dry it needed to be beautiful with a trail that students would run. September seemed the answer. I plotted the month out, day by day, wondering how many weeks the plot should encompass. How long does it take for two strangers to fall in love?

The story begins on September 3 and my characters appear in the next few days. In real life, wars around the world had been escalating over the summer. Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared, becoming a “ghost” plane, never found. Russian fighters shot down a passenger airline over Ukraine. Islamic terrorism was rising and homegrown terrorists from Britain had usefully dangerous passports into the West. Journalists were beheaded and their killers boasted. Events, again and again, and seeming ongoing, verified that the Western Civilization’s borders were being breached by fire.

The President addressed the nation on Wednesday, September 10, the night before the Nine-Eleven memorial. His words seemed too little too late, but indicated a more forceful course in military action. Many Americans hoped and prayed that a clear message would be sent, that we would fight for our peaceful world, we would die for our freedoms. We were still the power that defended liberty and representative government.

So I finally realized my story had placed the September 11 memorial of the Twin Towers attack at its very heart. The story’s action would rise to this point, and then fall away from it. For in our own American history, September 11, 2001, will remain a watershed moment. It is an event that changed us as a nation, woke us up. Some have gone back to sleep, but, thank God, some have remained awake, watching and listening, if not always alert. Those who see the threat for what it was and is – an attack on our way of life as Americans – turned to examine our culture to understand how to be better prepared. Those who recognize the flames coming toward them are sounding the alarm. They are working hard to keep the fire trail clear, retain a true fire break.

Democracy requires patriotism, a civic devotion instilled in school. Classical societies knew this. Our founding fathers knew this. Many have recognized that a good society must cultivate good citizens, men and women educated according to a value-laden curriculum, instilling virtues that allow them to live peaceably together in pursuit of the common good and individual happiness. Instead, the last sixty years has seen a steady erosion of this foundation. Academia has grown cynical and elite and out-of-touch with what actually produces the culture that allows them the liberty to speak, to be cynical and elite and out-of-touch. The ivory towers, like Babel, have risen higher and higher, the windows darkened with ivy, the rooms dim. Patriotism has not been fashionable. Inclusiveness has prevailed. The American way, the way of Western Civilization, these elite say, is just one way among many. We are not exceptional.

Alas, it is not one among many and we are indeed exceptional. America is truly a shining city upon a hill, as was Athens and Rome and Paris and London to the degree that they allowed democratic values to thrive. Over two millennia the development of free thinking peoples and their systems of governing has been unique to the West. So what happened? How did freedom and the flag become something to look down upon from on high? How is it that our homegrown intellectuals sneer and deride the stars and stripes?

Yale historian Donald Kagan writes in the Wall Street Journal:

“Jefferson meant American education to produce a necessary patriotism. Democracy – of all political systems, because it depends on the participation of its citizens in their own government and because it depends on their own free will to risk their lives in its defence – stands in the greatest need of an education that produces patriotism. I recognize that I have said something shocking…”

Indeed. Too many schools haven’t taught love of country for generations, and battles continue to rage in school boards over teaching patriotic curriculum, American history that explains who we are, what we stand for, and what we have to lose if we don’t fight for those ideals.

These are urgent matters for our country. So as I tell the stories of Jessica and Zachary, two grad students at U.C. Berkeley who have come of age in this world and question some of its assumptions, I marvel at how these events have supported my September themes. For Berkeley celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, and this last Wednesday crowds gathered at Sproul Plaza around the corner from my little publishing office. Aged speakers reminisced how they defended free speech by standing on top of police cars with bullhorns.

Today, political correctness reigns at Berkeley and those speakers have become faculty. It is their turn to squelch opposing points of view, promoting those professors who agree with them, isolating those who do not tow the party line. As they preached their creed around the corner from my office, I was meeting with a committee dedicated to establishing a Center for Western Civilization on the corner of Bowditch and Durant. I didn’t realize it at the time that we were huddled and planning quietly while the free-speachers were calling for free tuition and telling tales of sixties sit-ins. I read about it later in the paper and I smiled.

I have reached September 11, 2014 in my manuscript and have written Zachary’s reflections on this horrific day, for reflections on history reflect my character’s character. Soon I shall write the reflections of his mother Anna, and lastly, the reflections of Jessica. And so I shall weave American history into their stories, to enrich what it means to live in this exceptional land of liberty.

And I’m going to place an American flag on the porch of Comerford House, the center of the action. It shall ripple in sunlight and in shadow, high above the bay, looking out over shadowy Berkeley and the shimmering San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate. It shall mark the fire trail that runs behind the house.

To read the first six chapters of The Fire Trail, go to www.LibertyIslandmag.com, click on Open Range, or find my Creator page.  

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Singing with Angels

Posted on September 28, 2014 | 2 comments

330px-Guido_Reni_031Today is the eve of the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, or “Michaelmas.” Michaelmas marks the end of harvest, the beginning of fall and the shortening of days.

I believe in angels. They have fluttered through my life, ordering and arranging, guarding and nudging, strengthening and leading. And so today in church I was especially pleased to rediscover this marvelous hymn, #122, sung to a traditional Irish melody:

Angels and ministers, spirits of grace,
Friends of the children, beholding God’s face,
Moving like thought to us through the beyond,
Moulded in beauty, and free from our bond!
 
Messengers clad in the swiftness of light,
Subtle as flame, as creative in might,
Helmed with the truth and with charity shod,
Wielding the wind of the purpose of God!
 
Earth’s myriad creatures live after their kind,
Dumb, in the life of the body confined;
You are pure spirit, but we here below,
Linked in both orders, are tossed to and fro.
 
You do God’s bidding unshaken and strong;
We are distraught ‘twixt the right and the wrong;
Yet would we soar as the bird from the mesh,
Freed from the weakness and wonder of flesh.
 

Percy Dearmer, 1867-1936

Angels are “free from our bond… free from the weakness and wonder of flesh.” We, however, are “Dumb, in the life of the body confined… Linked in both orders… tossed to and fro.” We are made for another country, to be sure. We are alien creatures on this earth, sensing another home, a home calling us. Each time we respond to goodness, beauty, truth, and love we are touched by this heavenly world. We are pulled. Each time we pray, each time we make the Sign of the Cross, each time we receive the Holy Eucharist, we reach and touch heaven. We are both body and spirit, unlike angels, who are only spirit. We have a foot in each world; we straddle two countries or perhaps toggle between.

And it is true, as Father Dearmer says, that our flesh is both weak and wondrous. Today, as cultural forces seek to merge the male and the female, to create androgyny and deny gender, I see this wonder disappearing. Men and women were created to be delightfully complementary to one another; they are uniquely different and yet when joined together they produce new life. So within the sacred union of marriage, God works these miracles, transforms our fleshly weakness into creative strength. He unites heaven and earth through our flesh.

Michael the Archangel is described in Scripture as the great warrior-angel who defeated the rebel angel Lucifer in the war in heaven.  And of course there are choirs of angels, angels appearing to comfort and guide as well as protect, messenger angels bridging heaven and earth. There are many accounts of people seeing angels, often testimony of children whose vision is unguarded.

Angels are “unshaken and strong,” but we are torn between “right and wrong.” And yet, angels help us to choose when we are torn and strengthen us in our good choices. For angels wield “the wind of the purpose of God.”

I pray for such a wind daily, especially as I work my way through the first draft of my novel-in-progress, The Fire Trail. I know that I cannot write it alone. I need help and, as I reach for help, angels lift up my hands to the heavens, leaving my feet firmly planted on earth. I can feel the stretch of my soul, my mind, my heart, and sometimes it hurts.

I pray for such a wind for our nation and those of the Western world, as we fight to defend our boundaries, both of liberty and land, as we build a wide fire trail to keep out those who will burn to ash our way of life, our freedom.

I pray for the angels all around us to open our eyes that we may see the truth. And I thank God for Father Dearmer and his dear portrait of our ministering heavenly friends.

As the Mass ended this morning, we sang another powerful hymn, #600, and my husband turned to me to whisper, “My favorite.” The organ thundered and as the crucifer and torchbearers recessed triumphantly down the aisle, followed by the clergy in their gleaming white robes, we sang, “Ye holy angels bright, Who wait at God’s right hand,/Or through the realms of light/Fly at your Lord’s command,/Assist our song, For else the theme/Too high doth seem/For mortal tongue…”

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On Shame and Shakedowns

Posted on July 20, 2014 | Leave a comment

Writing ImageI just counted the tabs that appear across the top of my computer screen, those websites that I check regularly, and I seem to have fourteen, not counting OakTara (my publisher), Amazon, and Goodreads. Seven are websites I maintain, adding new content on a regular basis, and seven are sites to which I occasionally submit. 

My latest addition is Liberty Island (www.LibertyIslandmag.com), a site supporting conservative fiction authors. I recently posted the first chapter of my novel-in-progress, The Fire Trail. Last night I read a short story that so closely mirrored my own family experience (my husband and I are way outnumbered by vocal leftists), I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry with relief: “Caravaggio’s Isaac” by Scott Steward Smith. The story therapeutically re-enacted some of my own life trauma.

Words matter. Ideas matter. Words and ideas drive and form culture.

I haven’t seen Dinesh D’Souza’s movies yet, but I am looking forward to them. Jay Nordlinger recently wrote about D’Souza in National Review (July 21, 2014), saying that D’Souza contends that “the shaming of America is related to the shakedown of America.” Many liberals, with the power of the media to pummel conservatives, accuse and judge America, exaggerating the dark side of our history and twisting the truth, not telling the full story. They say we steal, we commit genocide, we enslave, we conquer, we degrade. This is the one-sided “narrative” told again and again in our schools and our news outlets and our books and our movies. Many generations have been raised on this self-loathing. Many are ashamed to be Americans.

The dictionary defines “shakedown” as the act of taking or restructuring through threats or deception. Accuse Americans even falsely and they feel guilty, regardless of the injustice of the accusation. When they feel guilty, they open their wallets. They vote the ticket that absolves their guilt, regardless of unwise policy, regardless of harm to our country. Many wealthy find the shaming and shakedown of America agreeable. They feel guilty also, but it is the guilt of the rich, and their guilt is absolved. They use their play money to support those who tell the story they want to hear, regardless of what works to grow our country, protect our country, or advance world peace and prosperity.

So through this shaming, America is deceptively taken and restructured.

And in this restructuring, the creation of a culture without free speech, without the institutions of family and church, will, ironically, eventually silence even the press that now appears to support the shakedown. And they don’t seem to see it coming.

Words matter. Story matters. When an unborn baby is called a fetus it is easier to kill it. It is an it not a he or a her and has no rights greater than the mother’s convenience. Other words make it easier to submit. Her “convenience” becomes an issue of “health.” She is making a “choice.” One could also say a murderer makes a “choice.” But the right to choose resonates with our desire for freedom. It sounds good. Words matter. We feel for the woman with an unplanned pregnancy. It might limit her options in life. That’s one side. But the child might open new worlds to her. That’s the other side we don’t hear. We want to absolve her of her guilt, soon to be grief, by saying it is her “choice.” We are a caring people. The liberals accuse, “For shame, pro-lifers, you do not care enough. You are warring against women.” Warring? When a new life is created and protected? Sounds like pro-lifers are defending women. Shakedown. Threats and deception. Words matter.

We should not be ashamed of America. We aren’t perfect, no nation is, no person is. But we must acknowledge what is good about our country in order to preserve it and water and feed it, in order to survive even flourish in a world that could quite possibly destroy our freedom and our way of life. We must be respectful and honorable, law-abiding, law-giving, law-enforcing. We must practice courtesy, return manners to our discourse, whether personal or national. We must wait our turn, not cut in line, share from love and not coercion. We must care for one another, giving generously to charity. We must encourage creative enterprise, inspire the next generation to use the minds and hearts God has given them to make a better world. We must vote, armed with knowledge of the issues and the candidates. We must be responsible to our nation, to our communities, to our families. We must support religious institutions that provide the myriad of services we take for granted in a democracy, from hospitals to schools to soup kitchens.

And most importantly we must be unashamed to speak, to use words and tell stories while we can, tell the truth about our country, our people, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us God.

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Focusing on God

Posted on June 22, 2014 | Leave a comment

I’ve been sitting in my home office looking out the window, meditating on the sun glancing off olive tree leaves, considering what to focus on this afternoon in this space, this First Sunday after Trinity and this Octave of Corpus Christi. I’ve got multiple projects on my desk – pieces promised  (two posts, two reviews), the final draft of Father Raynes’s Darkness No Darkness (an ACU reprint), a booklet reprint for one of our parishes, copies of The Magdalene Mystery to be sent to the Filipino priests I met in Rome, and lastly, my novel-in-progress, The Fire Trail, which I have returned to, determined to give it a couple of hours each day, but alas, not succeeding. Oh, and did I mention the brochure the Bishop asked me to help write and the Facebook site we will be setting up for our seminary chapel, St. Joseph of Arimathea?

I could write in this space about any of these things that clutter my little brain, but which one or two or three? Suddenly, across the lawn loped a coyote, at least I think he was a coyote. He was slim, the size of a midsize dog. Long narrow snout. Darkish gray, like a deer. Clearly wild and headed across our front lawn and down the hill toward the base of Mount Diablo. Clearly focused.

I suddenly realized how important choices were. I thought of all the ideas roaming in my head and how this coyote banished them in an instant. He focused my attention on his swift run through the plowed golden grass of the hill. He focused my attention on focusing. I wanted to run swiftly, on target, like he ran.

We are bombarded with choices every day, ways to spend our time, ways to waste our time, ways to kill our time. With each choice, we move in a certain direction and are then bombarded with more choices. How does one choose?

St. Joseph's 002compWe attended St. Joseph’s today, our seminary chapel in Berkeley a block from campus. It was easy in that domed and tiled space to become focused, to not waste any of the hour given. The organ thundered as we sang, Alleluia, Sing to Jesus. The acolytes and clergy processed in with flaming candles and crucifix held high. The stone altar was alight with six white wax pillars framing the tabernacle. Soon we were praying together the familiar words of the Anglican Mass, poetic language going back to the sixteenth century. We listened to Holy Scripture and the preacher preached on the Feast of Corpus Christi celebrated this last week, the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, the Real Presence of Christ in the bread and the wine of our Eucharistic celebration.

We were focused in that hour. We had made choices this day, decisions not to go to the park, not to go shopping, not to have a late brunch or lunch, not to sit here and work on projects at my desk. We didn’t have to choose to get up early since the service was at 11:30, for which we were grateful. But we did have to choose to take a couple of hours out of our Sunday to worship God with his Body of Christ in Berkeley.

And that choice made all the difference. It will make all the difference in my life this week, and it made all the difference in my life last week. Our preacher said that there was a time in his life when he he didn’t choose church, he didn’t choose to have God in his life. He chose other things to do with his time given. But soon he felt a deep emptiness in his soul. Soon he was hungry for God and it was a hunger that he couldn’t fill with other choices. So he returned to church, and I am glad for that, for he is a powerful preacher, bringing the intimacy of God’s love to each one of us.

Choosing is like carving, with careful attention given to each shaving of the soul. We whittle away at our lives to create a sculpted image, the person that God intended and intends us to be. We need to be careful to carve in the right places, to choose no sometimes and to choose yes other times. So we need an educated soul, as well as a fully fed soul. We need God’s Word through Scripture and sermon, and we need God himself, through the mysterious miracle of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist.

The coyote was heading for food and water, I am sure. Our choices are more subtle and yet just that simple too. For choosing God, choosing to worship and be fed and watered by him each week, lightens our darkness, and makes all the other choosings easy.

I became, have become, focused, for life has come into focus, at least until my next encounter with God.

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