Florida vacation in 1974 to visit D’s family, following our first year in seminary
Finally! Back to seminary days! This post is about the most important skill I learned at Fuller Seminary. I didn’t expect it to be life-changing. But first, an important digression.
Several years ago Read the rest of this entry »
The photo above isn’t at all connected to my dream. It is, however, a magnificent view of a tiny corner of stuff the good people at Longwood Gardens take care of so I don’t have to take care of it! Isn’t that wonderful? I think so.
Now here’s the dream. Read the rest of this entry »
What have I stored up for later in the pantry of my mind? In the subterranean corners of my basement, or upstairs in the attic?
Stuff. Lots of it. Not bad stuff. In fact, Read the rest of this entry »
What a week! Up and down, but on the whole, more up than down. Chiefly because of little things that kept interrupting me, reminding me there’s way more to life than health issues.
Best of all, Mother Nature reasserted her right Read the rest of this entry »
~~~St. Paul’s Girls’ School, London
The following words and images came to me recently while listening to Gustav Holst’s Brook Green Suite. He wrote it from his hospitable bed a year before he died in 1934. Read the rest of this entry »
9:05am, Monday. I wrote this immediately following breakfast today. Trying to capture how I felt and then let my mind and heart go wherever I needed to go. Read the rest of this entry »
~~~Diamond listening to the voice of North Wind from his hayloft bedroom
Do you ever wish for a lullaby? George MacDonald’s sonnet for today reminds me of a lullaby. It instills trust, not fear.
He begins with “O Father, thou art my eternity.” In his sonnets, MacDonald doesn’t often call God Father. Even here he reverts later to his more often used “Lord.” But not until he sets the stage with “O Father….”
I own an edited volume of MacDonald’s letters. The first letter in the volume was written in 1833, the year after MacDonald’s mother died. He was 8 years old. His letter begins “My dear Papa,” and ends with “I remain, my dear Papa, your affectionate son George Macdonald.”
He writes from Portsoy, Scotland, where he’s staying with his younger brother at an aunt’s home. He wants his Papa to come and stay with them until they return to Huntly. He doesn’t like drinking the water here, so refuses to drink it. He also says, “I am sorry that my writing is so bad but my pen is very bad.”
There’s something simple and straightforward in his letter that reflects child-like trust in Papa. He tells him about his visit, including the state of his health (not good) for the last few days, and finding the carcass of a whale that had washed up onto the shore.
These and other bits of information add up to this: he misses his Papa and longs to see him. Something of that spirit pervades this simple, straightforward sonnet written to his other Father.
August 6
O Father, thou art my eternity.
Not on the clasp of consciousness—on thee
My life depends; and I can well afford
All to forget, so thou remember, Lord.
In thee I rest; in sleep thou dost me fold;
In thee I labour; still in thee, grow old;
And dying, shall I not in thee, my Life, be bold?George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul
Augsburg Fortress Press 1994
Here, as in his phantasy tales, MacDonald challenges himself and us to think about reality from the outside in.
For example, when North Wind comes to visit Diamond the first time, Diamond is trying to sleep in the drafty loft of a stable house where he and his parents live. There are cracks in the timber walls, and holes through which icy North Wind blows in the winter.
The holes are covered with pieces of brown paper. Sometimes they come loose and must be replaced. Over several days, North Wind keeps blowing the paper from one of these holes. Diamond is at his wit’s end. It’s cold and he doesn’t want to get up and cover the hole yet again.
One night he hears a soft voice just beyond the paper-covered hole. He puts his ear to the hole. Sure enough, North Wind is trying to get his attention. She wants him to remove the paper from the hole so she can see out her window!
Her window? How could that be? Isn’t this Diamond’s hayloft bedroom? And his little window?
As it turns out, it is not! This is North Wind’s window which she herself made, and from which she looks out of her great house into Diamond’s house. Which, by the way, is actually contained within Her World. She isn’t an intruder at all.
Getting this basic fact clear takes a while. It isn’t easy for Diamond to grasp North Wind’s strange perspective.
MacDonald’s sonnet above, like others, conveys his God-centered perspective. We exist within and as part of God’s reality. Created, pursued, challenged and watched over from cradle to grave and beyond.
Remembered by God, we can work and rest peacefully in every stage of life, death and beyond. Though it may seem God is absent, God will not forget us, even if we forget ourselves.
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 13 February 2016
Wood Carving by Arthur Hughes, included as an illustration in MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind. Illustration found at etc.usf.edu.
I’m in the shady if not elderly bracket of life. You know. That time of life when people start treating you differently. Sometimes they don’t know whether to do obeisance because you’ve lived so long, or whether to treat you as Read the rest of this entry »
…of this tunnel. Or perhaps I’m becoming accustomed to waiting and then waiting some more?
I had a good conversation with my primary care doctor late this afternoon. She reviewed all reports from two specialists I’ve seen in the last six weeks, and talked with me about my options.
Bottom line: Read the rest of this entry »
That’s all I have to do — open the windows to God’s wind.
During the last 24 hours I’ve been up and I’ve been down. So far down I thought my mind wouldn’t escape its endless loop in the early hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep. Read the rest of this entry »
