Pillars of the Church: The Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul

 

 

Occasionally on this blog I must share some of the "literature" of the Eastern Catholic tradition. The ancient texts that we sing for great feast days are poetic, scripture-steeped reflections on the theology of the feast, often written by saints. The services of Vespers and Matins are particularly chock-full of them. Beautiful imagery sung to ancient melodies in two- or three-part harmony, for the better part of an hour...a true immersion in the joy and solemnity of the day.

 

Peter and Paul is one of the bigger saints' feasts in the Byzantine Church, if the number of hymns for the services are anything to go by. As I sit here writing I am having a terrible time choosing just one to share. The Church has so much to say about these greatest of apostles! But if I must...here is a hymn from the Litija (pronounced lit-YAH), a portion near the end of Vespers celebrated on particularly important feasts:

 

The wisdom of God and the Word who is co-eternal with the Father

Has truly foretold in the Gospel, O all-praise-worthy Apostles,

That you are the two most fruitful vines;

For you bore in your branches the ripe and fruitful cluster

From which we believers are now nourished

And whose taste brings us both sweetness and delight.

Therefore, O Peter, rock of faith, and Paul, pride of the universe,

Strengthen the flock that became yours through your teachings.

 

I love the metaphor of Word of God being nourishing like wine. And now I can't help myself; here's another hymn from Vespers focusing in particular on St. Paul:

 

O glorious apostle Paul,

Who can describe your bondage and sorrow in the cities,

Your tribulations and hardships,

Your vigils and sufferings?

You have suffered hunger, thirst, and cold,

Nakedness and scourging with rods,

The crossing of wilderness, shipwreck and stonings.

You have both angelic and human character,

Bearing all with the help of Christ who strengthened you,

So that you might gain the world for Christ, your Lord.

We, who celebrate your memory in faith,

Beseech you to intercede for the salvation of our souls.

 

I have long been specially attracted by St. Paul; who wouldn't be, really? His is a story comparable to the most thrilling adventure novels, complete with close escapes, shipwrecks, and encounters with kings (although Paul usually shows up much better than the royalty). And such a protagonist, too! His zeal, wisdom, humor and faith shine out in every line of his letters. Who can forget his hearty boasting of his weaknesses? Or his awestruck words on beings "snatched up to the third heaven"? Or his unforgettable plea to the Corinthians, "I beg you, therefore, be imitators of me!"

 

I would if I could. As it is I've adopted him as my patron saint when it comes to my writing, though I admit I could be a lot more consistent in prayer. I tend to only ask for intercession when sitting down to a scene I've been dreading (and procrastinating) for days. But Paul's come through for me most of the time nonetheless!

 

The feast of Sts. Peter and Paul is one of the Church's major summer celebrations, and a special one to me as a writer. They have given such richness and wisdom to our Faith. Let us all try, as best we can, to be imitators of both of them--holy in life and insightful in word.

 

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us!

 



Storm Season with Stevenson and Twain

Last week summer storm season came rumbling and rolling into Chicago. Almost every day was damp and gray and on Saturday we had two storms--a short one in the afternoon and a fury of a downpour in the evening. It all reminded me of two of the most vivid storm descriptions in literature that I've ever read--one a passage from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and the other a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson.

I'll share them in a moment, but first I'd like to note that Twain and Stevenson have more in common than thunderstorms. They were contemporaries. They admired each other's work, corresponded, and even met during one of Stevenson's trips to America. Apparently RLS, on first getting Huckleberry Finn, read it twice through; and Twain's family "bathed in" Treasure Island and Kidnapped.

 

The two authors met in New York in September of 1887, where they sat on a park bench and chatted away the hours. Later Twain recalled part of their conversation:

 

Robert Louis Stevenson and I, sitting in Union Square and Washington Square a great many years ago, tried to find a name for, the submerged fame, that fame that permeates the great crowd of people you never see and never mingle with; people with whom you have no speech, but who read your books and become admirers of your work and have an affection for you. You may never find it out in the world, but there it is, and it is the faithfulness of the friendship, of the homage of those men, never criticizing, that began when they were children. They have nothing but compliments they never see the criticisms, they never hear any disparagement of you, and you will remain in the home of their hearts' affection forever and ever. And Louis Stevenson and I decided that of all fame, that was the best, the very best. (from twainquotes.com)

 

A beautiful little reflection from two deservedly famous writers.

 

Now for the first of my summer storms for you:

 

Pretty soon in darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten.... Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely, and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest--fst! It was as bright as glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of treetops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down-stairs--where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know. (from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 9)

 

This has got to be the most lyrical and true-to-life description of a storm in prose that I've ever read. No doubt it was a passage Stevenson loved when he was reading (and re-reading) the book!

 

Stevenson's own contribution to "storm literature" is in poem form, and the setting is transferred from the ole Mississippi to the South Pacific island of Samoa (where RLS spent his last years). But the images created are no less vivid. Read it out loud--his genius use of alliteration summons the very sounds and pictures of a storm.

 

Tropic Rain

(From Songs of Travel)

 

As the single pang of the blow, when the metal is mingled well,

Rings and lives and resounds in all the bounds of the bell:

So the thunder above spoke with a single tongue,

So in the heart of the mountain the sound of it rumbled and clung.

 

Sudden the thunder was drowned--quenched was the levin light...

And the angel spirit of rain laughed out loud in the night.

Loud as the maddened river raves in the cloven glen,

Angel of rain! You laughed and leaped on the roofs of men;

And the sleepers sprang in their beds, and joyed and feared as you fell.

You struck and my cabin quailed; the roof of it roared like a bell,

You spoke, and at once the mountain shouted and shook with brooks.

You ceased, and the day returned, rosy, with virgin looks.

And methought that beauty and terror are only one, not two;

And the world has room for love, and death, and thunder, and dew;

And all the sinews of hell slumber in summer air;

And the face of God is a rock, but the face of the rock is fair.

Beneficent streams of tears flow at the finger of pain;

And out of the cloud that smites, beneficent rivers of rain.

 

His line there on "beauty and terror are only one, not two"...strikes me as very Chestertonian. But we'll leave that literary comparison for another day!

 







Goodness, Beauty, Truth: Wyoming Catholic College

Since I have run out of inspiration to make a real post this week, I thought I'd share instead a beautiful video from my dream school, Wyoming Catholic College. If you don't know about this college yet, you need to learn more. Although not even a decade old, this school out in the middle of the Rocky Mountain wilderness has a unique mission moved by the fire of the Holy Spirit. It's a deeply Catholic Great Books curriculum combined with an incredible outdoors program. In short, it's not just a college. It's an adventure waiting to happen.

I have my sights set on this school for my college education. Next month I'm flying out there to participate in their P.E.A.K. (Profound Experience of Adventure and Knowledge) Summer Program. Two entire weeks of discussing the Great Books, hiking, horseback riding, and sharing the Faith with my like-minded peers. I can think of no better way to start my gap year.

Watch the video and see why I love this place already.

Death, The Awakening: Leo Tolstoy and John Rutter

Spoiler Alert! This post discusses one of the climactic scenes of War and Peace. If you'd like to experience that scene on your own, read no further! (But go find your copy of War and Peace--you've got some work to do.)

As my last year of high school closes (hurrah!), I thought I should cap it off by reflecting on the best Great Books experience I had this semester. Interestingly it includes not just a book but also a piece of music.

I am happy to say that before the age of 17 I have already put the accomplishment of reading War and Peace under by belt. It was a long tramp of a story, not always thrilling, but at its high points very moving, and ultimately well worth it. Here I would just like to give a little reflection on my favorite chapter--Chapter 14, Book 12, to be exact.

Prince Andrew Bolkonski is dying. By this point in the story, we have followed him down a long river of life, including several rapids and not a few waterfalls--his dissatisfied marriage, his ambition in the army, his capture on the field of Austerlitz. His return home on the same night his wife dies in childbirth. His regret and despondency. His newfound love for Natasha, their courtship and engagement. His shock at discovering his betrothed's near-elopement with the shallow charmer Anatole. His return to the army, his fear of death, and his fatal wounding at Borodino.

Now back in Natasha's care, he has forgiven her and loves her more than ever. But he cannot survive. He senses this and is terrified. But then he receives a mysteriously insightful dream. In his dream he sees a door, feels a horrifying presence behind it:

Something not human--death--was breaking in through that door, and had to be kept out. He seized the door, making a final effort to hold it back--to lock it was no longer possible--but his efforts were weak and clumsy and the door, pushed from behind by that terror, opened and closed again.

Once again it pushed from outside. His last superhuman efforts were vain and both halves of the door noiselessly opened. It entered, and it was death, and Prince Andrew died.

But at the instant he died, Prince Andrew remembered that he was asleep, and at the very instant he died, having made an effort, he awoke.

"Yes, it was death! I died--and woke up. Yes, death is an awakening!"

This is the insight that brings him profound peace, deeper than any he has experienced so far. And it will be his last:

From that day an awakening from life came to Prince Andrew together with his awakening from sleep. And compared to the duration of life it did not seem to him slower than an awakening from sleep compared to the duration of a dream.

This I found astonishing. Everything that we have gone through with Andrew--ambition and regret, love and hate, sorrow and joy--all this the mere length and vagueness of a dream compared to the Life beyond life? This is a thought to mull over, to hold in one's hands.

When Prince Andrew died I didn't cry. I almost did. I felt an emptiness like I had never felt before at the death of a fictional character. But I had been in this character's mind and soul, been privy to his blackest fears and most brilliant joys. And now he was gone, simply, quietly gone. And I could only ask the same question as his sister, Princess Mary, and Natasha: "Where has he gone? Where is he now?..."

At the same time that I was soaking in this mystery, my high school chorale was rehearsing the first movement of John Rutter's Requiem. And I suddenly realized that the piece drew, in musical terms, almost exactly the same picture as Prince Andrew's death scene. Beginning with bleak and dissonant chords, it moves into mounting moans of despair, only to be abruptly pierced with light and the sweet, serene, gorgeous main melody. It was the same theme--death is an awakening!--translated into sound. For the rest of the year that was my personal connection to the music--Prince Andrew Bolkonski awakening from life to death.

Finally, I invite you to share this experience by clicking on the six minutes of profound beauty below:

A Minor ~ Margaret Ann Philbrick

 

Note: Recently I was contacted by author and writing teacher Margaret Ann Philbrick to review her new novel, A Minor. I am honored by this opportunity--my first little break into the writing and publishing world! (Thank you again, Margaret!) As such, this is a new experience for me. I do not typically read contemporary romance, so I have little idea what a good book in that genre should look like. I can thus only give my general opinions, which I hope are honest. Thanks for understanding!

~

 

The first thing I must say about this book, is that you absolutely have to listen to the music. Whether you're reading the hard format or the e-book, use the links provided to pull up all the beautiful piano pieces which weave this story together (I can particularly recommend the Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1--but listen to them all). Ms. Philbrick has given us readers a unique glimpse into her creative process, and the emotional enhancement the music gives to the story is not to be missed.

 

A Minor is a tale of many loves. It opens with the estranged love of concert pianist Clare Cardiff and her husband Nero, who decide to separate temporarily for artistic reasons. While Nero stays in New England, hoping to excel at his potter's wheel out of his wife's shadow, Clare goes out to the Chicago suburbs to teach and re-group. There she discovers a new love in her student Clive Serkin, an exceptionally talented young pianist. Sensing greatness in him, she points him toward the prestigious Tchaikovsky Piano competition in Moscow. But just as Clive is becoming to her the son she never had, Clare discovers that she is developing early-onset dementia. While Nero takes her back to New England for medical testing, Clive--who has fallen innocently but deeply in love with her--must find strength in his music to go on to the international competition alone. 

 

All through this tapestry of loves pulses the love of music--the characters' and the author's. Ms. Philbrick has a lovely and knowledgeable way of describing music in words, which anyone, not just musicians, can appreciate. However, this translation of one art form into another still leaves something to be desired, which is why you must listen to the music. It's wrapped up inseparably with the story.

 

Ms. Philbrick handles all her characters gracefully, especially the relationship between Clare and Clive which is most prominent in the book. Some of the secondary characters could have been more rounded out, with, however, the notable exception of Nero--the most troubled and complex figure in the story. Although possessive to the point of violence, he really does love Clare, and his greatest regret is the child they never had together. His tragic attempt to survive without her, only to lose her again to dementia, adds a dark but enriching note to the story.

 

Ms. Philbrick's prose style matches the formality and elegance of the classical music she describes. The only place this was a drawback was in the dialogue. While I understand the author's desire for beauty and integrity in the whole book, I feel she could actually better accomplish this through more natural dialogue. When even commonplace exchanges between characters were written in a formal style never used in real life, I found it distracting and distancing. The eloquent dialogue did work, however, in the passages where the characters were deeply discussing music--an appropriate context.

 

Overall, a graceful first novel and a unique literary-musical experience, A Minor will appeal to lovers of all things beautiful.

Stevenson's Impossible Dream: "If This Were Faith"

 

 

Is there anyone who hasn't shivered with joy listening to the great song "Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha? (If you haven't heard it, go find a recording of it right now--you need to shiver with joy.) I cannot hear it without being lifted up and rejuvenated to my own quest for truth as a writer and a Catholic. Don Quixote may have been mad, but he was righter in his spiritual world than most of the rest of us. There's only one way to dream the impossible dream, fight the unbeatable foe, bear with unbearable sorrow, and reach the unreachable star--by submitting ourselves to God's grace and love in our daily lives (in this I am still a very novice page!). 

 

However, in this post I'd like to direct your attention to a non-fictional but no less unlikely Don Quixote, a skinny Scot with a penchant for words--Robert Louis Stevenson. RLS was a fine writer and poet, but he also loved people, and had a strong sense of right and wrong. A description of him written by his wife, Fanny, shows this better than any words of mine:

 

...[T]he path for himself showed plainly enough before him, and it was his duty to swerve neither to the right nor the left. He believed he had no rights, only underserved indulgences. He must not eat unearned bread, but must pay the world, in some fashion, for what it gave him,--first, materially, then in kindness, sympathy, and love. Class distinctions, so strictly observed in England, he could not tolerate and never gave the slightest heed to their limitations. "Ladies?" he said in reply to an observation by a visitor, "one of the truest ladies in Bournemouth, Mrs. Waats, is at this moment washing my study windows." Once, coming upon a crowd of young roughs who were tormenting a wretched drunken creature of the streets, he pushed his way through them, and amid their jeers offered his arm to the woman and escorted her to the place she called home. "Don Quixote," he once said to my son, with a startled look, "why, I am Don Quixote!" Too much ease frightened him; he would occasionally insist on some sharp discomfort, such as sleeping on a mat on the floor, or dining on a ship's biscuit, to awaken him, as he said, to realities; and nothing pleased him more than to risk his life or health to serve another. [...] Meanness or falsity or cruelty set his eyes blazing, and his language on such occasions became far from parliamentary.

 

So we even see that Stevenson explicitly identified with Cervantes' mad knight.

 

Recently while reading through RLS's poetry collection Songs of Travel (during breaks at driver's ed class, to keep my imagination from going totally dead), I encountered what seems like Stevenson's own "Impossible Dream". Written over a hundred years before the acclaimed song, "If This Were Faith" expresses the same sentiments in very stirring verse:

 

If This Were Faith

 

God, if this were enough,

That I see things bare to the buff

And up to the buttocks in mire;

That I ask nor hope nor hire,

Not in the husk,

Nor dawn beyond the dusk,

Nor life beyond death:

God, if this were faith?

 

Having felt Thy wind in my face

Spit sorrow and disgrace,

Having seen Thine evil doom

In Golgotha and Khartoum,

And the brutes, the work of Thy hands,

Fill with injustice lands

And stain with blood the sea:

If still in my veins the glee

Of the black night and the sun

And the lost battle, run:

If, an adept,

The iniquitous lists* I still accept

With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood,

And still to battle and perish for a dream of good:

God, if that were enough?

*lists=  jousting arena

 

If to feel, in the ink of the slough,

And the sink of the mire,

Veins of glory and fire

Run through and transpierce and transpire,

And a secret purpose of glory in every part,

And the answering glory of battle fill my heart;

To thrill with the joy of girded men

To go on for ever and fail and go on again,

To be mauled to the earth and arise,

And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen with the eyes:

With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night

That somehow the right is the right

And the smooth shall bloom from the rough:

Lord, if that were enough?

 

The rhythm of this poem is the most jagged I have ever seen from Stevenson; I feel he must have written it in one of his high passions against meanness or falsity or cruelty. But read the last stanza again. It is so rich I cannot take it all apart. It's not just the ode of the knight. It's the cry of the artist, seeing beauty transpierce--(what a word!)--transpierce and transpire our fallen world. It's the song of the sinner, being mauled to earth by passions only to rise again. It's the joy of the saint--to contend for that lovely Thing not seen with eyes, but with the soul.

 

Let us all take hope in God's "impossible" dream for us that is the most real thing in the world.

 

 

 





Honest Alan: A Tribute

A note: Of late I have been posting on the sublime, the good, the true, the beautiful. This post is on the merely fun. Please forgive my outburst of Scottish geekiness!

Another note: My apologies, I got the date mixed up! June 2, not May 2, was my Scottish epiphany. Well, here is Alan anyway, a month early.

~

Looking at the date today, I realized it was rather significant--for me at least. Two years ago today began my obsession with all things Scottish. The blame lies with a writer named Robert Louis Stevenson, who brought to life one of my favorite fictional characters on the face of the earth. Introducing Alan Breck Stewart: clansman of Appin, Jacobite rebel, swordsman, piper, Gaelic poet, with an elephant-sized ego and a heart of gold. You'll be seeing several versions of him in this post, but the one I always carry in my mind is Stevenson's first description of him in Kidnapped:

He was smallish in stature, but well set and as nimble as a goat; his face was of a good open expression, but sunburnt very dark, and heavily freckled and pitted with the small-pox; his eyes were unusually light and had a kind of dancing madness in them, that was both engaging and alarming...

Please enjoy my own tribute in verse to my favorite swashbuckling Highland rebel. And then go read Kidnapped.

The Ballad of Alan Breck

O, have ye heard o' Alan Breck?

O, cam ye by nae word?

He's a dancin' madness in his e'e*,

An' a hand on the hilt o' his sword!

*eye

Young Alan trod the hills and crags,

His foot kenned* every stone,

For Appin and the Breadalbane

Were his heart-land an' his home.

*knew

Down by lang Loch Leven's shores

With the wind in the birches cryin',

He'd whistle mony a merry tune,

As would leave the birds all sighin'.

Now Alan was a swordsman's son,

He learned the fencer's trade,

An' often joy and pride he took

In the singin' o' the blade.

 

 But then man Alan's father died,

An' left him gey* an' poor,

So Alan went for sodger's* pay,

In the army o' King George.

*very   *soldier's

Ay, Alan once a red coat wore,

Because he had nae money,

But now he's changed it for a blue,

An' one that's much mair bonny!

He cannae stay in Scotland now,

For the savin' o' his neck,

For there's a hundred gleamin' pounds

On the head of Alan Breck.

Go on, ye redcoats, search the hills,

An' guard the Glencoe heights,

But all ye'll catch is a fleetin' glisk*

O' the canny Jacobite.

*glimpse

 

An' 'ware, ye seamen, when the fogs

Come swirlin' round the deck;

A mettled voice, a flashin' e'e--

It may be Alan Breck.

He's a Hielandman forever,

An' a Stewart tae the end;

Tho' a feisty, fechtin'* warrior,

He's a true an' doughty friend!

*fighting

O, have ye heard o' Alan Breck?

O, cam ye by nae word?

Ye'll ken him by his dancin' e'e,

An' the hand on the hilt o' his sword!

 

~Poem Ó

Mary Jessica Woods, 2013