Nostalgic Nod to a Funny Fellow

When I started my blog, the title Of Books and Boys was perfect. It reflected the two primary loves in my life. Perhaps I need a new handle or even a new blog. After all, the cute little stories of the past have given way to much more difficult tales in the present, and teen boys don't really want to be the subject of my ramblings. Still, despite the bad early writing (often dashed off between midnight and 2 a.m.), I'm glad I captured those warm fuzzies in days gone by. I mean, my middle son was such a funny little fellow! He was a parrot who often spouted random things. Here are a few zingers from his younger days:

"Don't just dream of beautiful skin; make it real!" (from a Proactiv commercial, I realized a few days later)

Walked up to his dad and said: "Do you care to see my butt?" (Perhaps from my constant admonishment, "Nobody cares to see your butt!")

When I refused to buy him something in the store: whining, glare, and then a hostile "You, MOM YOU!"

When I complained how long the dishes were taking to wash: "Why don't you sing the Spiderman song? It will make your work go faster."

While at Buffalo Wild Wings watching the big-screens: "Look! Look! There are holograms!" to which I responded, "You're only six; how do you know about holograms?" With a duh look - "From Scooby Doo." I pursued further, "So, what is a hologram then?" He looked at me and lowered his head, saying, "I'm not going to spill ALL my secrets in a public place."

After desperately looking for a lost toy, he cried out, "Mom, I found it! And there, standing in the moonlight, was THIS!" When I asked what prompted those words, he shook his head and replied, "Mom, it's from the weiner dog book, remember? 'And there, standing in the moonlight, were a couple of ornery cats.'" (from Dav Pilkey's The Hallo-Weiner)

Let's just say I'm needing a nostalgic look back as we plod forward these days.

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Side-line up-date:

My oldest son, Bryce, lives in Houston, Texas. On Sunday night, February 14th, both his power and water were shut off. Thankfully, he managed to stay warm enough in layers, saved the food in the fridge by placing it on the balcony, and flushed toilets using water from the apartment's pool. His power came back on February 16th and his water was restored on February 18th. He called last night. Today will be his first day off in ten days after working ten hour days in attempts to get his workplace plant back up and running. He said they had little advance warning that the power was going to be shut off, so they didn't perform any of the normal preparations for such an event. It is an absolute mess (broken pipelines, sewage, etc.) and so many of the chemical plants in Houston are facing similar dilemmas. - Bigger boys, bigger problems.

On the home front:

I didn't notice anything as we drove to the ranch yesterday morning, but on the drive home discovered two house frames have gone up on the field next to us. Oh, how discouraging! It is happening so quickly. Our little oasis in the country turning into chock-a-block homes just across from our front meadow.

Book Review: Yes to Life

I cannot imagine the anguish Holocaust victims faced in the atrocities afflicted on them. Yet even when stripped of all dignity and freedom, Viktor Frankl continued to find meaning in life. After three harrowing years of bondage and demoralization, he emerged and rewrote the contents of a manuscript confiscated with his belongings. Man's Search for Meaning came together in nine intense days of writing. A year later, the lectures compiled in this book, Yes to Life, were delivered in Vienna. What amazed me most is that he didn't respond simply to the fate of the Jews, but expanded his argument to include any threatened life (be it internal, by suicide, or external, by society). He writes, "Our unique strengths and weaknesses make each of us uniquely irreplaceable."

Frankl affirms the value of every life. Each individual person matters. He expresses the arguments he is most familiar with from his time under the Nazi regime, "it would be conceivable that the state, as the guardian of public interest, should free the community of the burden of these highly 'unproductive' individuals [be they elderly or incapacitated by mental limitations] who consume the bread of the people who are healthy and fit for life." But Frankl asserts every person holds value. In those concentration camps, Nazis deemed only those fit for work as worthy of life. Frankl urges three separate areas give life meaning: in creating, in experiencing (loving), and in reacting favorably to what fate inflicts. "[Death and suffering] do not rob the existence of human beings of meaning but make it meaningful in the first place."

We cannot foresee when that suffering will come to us that will lend even more meaning to our lives. "None of us knows what is waiting for us, what big moment, what unique opportunity for acting in an exceptional way." He urges his listeners and readers to say yes to life in spite of everything because each hour is a gift with promise. Frankl inspires us to live in exceptional ways through our actions and reactions to what life presents. He writes, "Any hour whose demands we do not fulfill, or fulfill halfheartedly, this hour is forfeited, forfeited 'for all eternity.'" With Frankl, I want my life, my suffering, my death to bear meaning. May I live up to that responsibility. May I not shrink back when called upon to suffer.

Book Blurb: Someone Like You

I have always enjoyed Karen Kingsbury's writing. My favorites: her Red Gloves series. In my search for clean audio books, I knew I could trust her to give an intriguing story. Her characters face realistic dilemmas and exhibit faith that allows for doubt. In Someone Like You (a stand-alone novel with characters from her Baxter Family series), 22-year-old Maddie West cannot believe her parents never told her they adopted her as a frozen embryo from another couple. (I find that hard to believe, too - who could do that?) A stranger delivers this news and invites her to Portland, Oregon, to meet her biological parents. This throws her tidy world upside-down, and she struggles to regain her footing. Of course, the stranger is handsome. Of course, there's chemistry. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a love story. Definitely a Christian novel (a death's door conversion and a bit preachy), but an issue-driven topic worth exploring. 

Book Review: The Hungering Dark

What a thrill it was, in my early twenties, to sit under Frederick Buechner's teaching! I spoke with an old college friend on the phone this past December, and she mentioned our rare opportunity. She said she wished she had spoken personally with him. In my memory (granted, my memory is faulty sometimes), I went in during his office hours to speak with him about my final paper. After she mentioned him, I spotted my old copy of The Hungering Dark and plowed through it once again.

Here are a few sound-bites I gleaned:

"We must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously."

"The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt."

"One life on this earth is all that we get.... we are fools if we do not live it as fully and bravely and beautifully as we can."

On why we struggle with accepting Christ's sacrifice to save us, he writes: "To accept such a gift from another would be to bind us closer to him than we like to be bound.... if another man dies so that I can live, it imposes a terrible burden on my life. From that point on, I cannot live any longer just for myself. I have got to live also somehow for him, as though in some sense he lives through me now as, in another sense, I live through him."

On how the world has never been riper or hungrier for God's return: "In some way we cannot imagine holiness will return to our world. I know of no time when the world has been riper for its return, when the dark has been hungrier. Thy kingdom come... we do shew forth the Lord's death till he come... and maybe the very madness of our hoping will give him the crazy, golden wings he needs to come on. I pray that he will come again and that you will make it your prayer. We need him, God knows."

Those words could well have been written yesterday instead of 50 years ago. Buechner sits in the doubt and the struggle. He acknowledges that this world is dark and full of woe, but he recognizes that a light shines in the darkness. We can still choose to accept that light. I say, with Buechner, come Lord Jesus, come!

Book Blurb: How to Write One Song

I wrote a song once, when I was a teen, before the mystery and intimidation had any chance to hold me back. Despite no aspirations for further songwriting, I was pretty sure How to Write One Song would have something to offer concerning the writing process. Some valuable take-aways: if you call yourself a writer, you are a writer - believing is half the journey; like all writing, you can't expect to sit down and create magnificence right out the gate - it takes routine and practice and a certain amount of faith in the process (think "if you build it; they will come" - although that wasn't in this book); a lot of preliminary writing involves playing with words and ideas; the best writers listen/read; while you can "write what you know," you can also write from outside yourself - take yourself somewhere new; timers and deadlines can be your friends; gag your inner critic and be willing to write crap because you might find a gem amid the manure; and finally, does it really count if you haven't shared it with someone else ("if a tree falls, etc.")? Hmm - good question.

Book Blurb: Rhythms of Renewal

After a stressful, anxiety-inducing 2020, we've all come to expect uncertainty and an ever-altering landscape. What better time to pick up Rhythms of Renewal: Trading Stress and Anxiety for a Life of Peace and Purpose by Rebekah Lyons. She suggests two inward rhythms - rest and restore - and two outward rhythms - connect and create. While nothing in the book was entirely new (take time to recharge and set goals, initiate friendship, pursue a passion, etc.), she does an outstanding job of backing each principal and suggestion with stories from her own fascinating life. In her initial story of a panic attack she experienced when locked in a two-foot square bathroom, she should have experienced even more panic because I was right there with her in that tight space. She tells tales of various creations: from sewing and cake-baking to crafting and chicken-raising. I'm ready for a road trip to Franklin, Tennessee, to meet Lyons and, of course, Andrew Peterson. She sounds like my kind of person: a musician, writer, solid Christian, devoted mother, special-needs champion. It was so good to begin a new year with sound advice and a reminder to breathe.

Book Blurb: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist

So much for my resolution to read less random books. This was a random selection (mildly interested) from the library's recent acquisition list. The graphic possibilities lured. I will say this author bares his soul for all to see and is authentic and real about the struggle for recognition as a creator. I read it in no time, while waiting for Trevor at his ranch job. It was a great selection for that because it held my attention without taxing my brain. The author's near-death experience prompted reflection on his drive to produce and kindled my own reflections on my passions and pursuits.

Book Review: The Cloister Walk

When my friend, Kyle, suggested I read Kathleen Norris's acedia book, I checked out every book of hers on loan from my public library (while waiting for the interlibrary loan of the Acedia title). She published The Cloister Walk before Amazing Grace, so I tackled it first. Of the two I've read, I preferred Acedia and me. It took time to digest her writing. I copied various quotes. Yet, some parts didn't sit well with me. Perhaps this is because I don't come from a Catholic background. Perhaps this is because I take a different view of Scripture, not as metaphor to bolster with messages one "can live with."

Kathleen Norris is a Benedictine oblate who is also a writer. The Cloister Walk chronicles her thoughts while staying at various monasteries and what she has learned from cloistered living that can apply to writing and marriage. I valued her insights on writing and marriage, but ignored the veneration of saints and virgin martyrs. I appreciated her comments that matrimony plunges one into "the strenuous process of redemption." Or this comment about writing: "To answer a call as a [writer] is to reject the authority of credentials, of human valuation of any kind, accepting only the authority of the call itself." I second her take on the Psalms: "The value of [Psalms] lies not in the fact that singing praise can alleviate pain but that the painful images we find there are essential for praise, that without them, praise is meaningless." 

However, I reject her belief that we are all intrinsically good and that sin is an aberration from who we are, made in the image of God. While He made us in His image, our natural bent toward sin keeps us from union with Him and thus, our need of a Savior. (Read Romans 5 - By one man, sin entered the world, and by one man, Jesus, grace abounded with the gift of righteousness and reconciliation.) Without Christ as the crux, you simply have "religion." It is only when you recognize your deep need for His substitutionary death on your behalf, paying your sin penalty, that you gain His righteousness and accept his atonement.

Despite this disagreement, I enjoyed reading this book. How marvelous when, in one section, Norris recalls a time in Chicago when her father, wearing his navy trench coat, offered to relieve the cornetist in a caroling Salvation Army band at a kettle. Lovely image. And I concur with her conclusion in one chapter, "Blessed are those who throw the church doors open wide." While I appreciate spiritual retreat, I don't imagine I'll be travelling the cloister walk soon.

Book Review: The Midnight Library

"I want a do-over!" How often I've wished for a second chance to remedy some wrong I've committed, some individual I've let down, some guilt I can't bear. To be human is to regret. We can't always avoid missteps in relationships. We're bound to look back on some decision and question whether it would have made a difference if we had taken the road less travelled. So, what if you could go back and have a do-over? What if there were as many variations to your life as tiny decisions you've made - parallel universes where you could right your wrongs? In normal process, a leads to b leads to c, but if you remove a, then b and c must shift as well. The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig, presents a world with infinite chances, infinite variations on a life. It is the background music of It's a Wonderful Life blended with lyrics from Blake Crouch's Dark Matter. 

Nora Seed is having a tragic day. She feels guilty for backing out of a wedding. Her brother is avoiding her and her best friend is distant. But soon, the universe piles on even more. She loses both of her jobs and a car kills her cat. Nora is tired of letting others and herself down. Like George Bailey, she's ready to bail. But instead of peaceful nothingness, she lands in the Midnight Library. Instead of an angel to prove her value, she has her school librarian to offer endless books full of different versions of her life. Each book allows her to counter some regret. Imagine the potential of such an experience with an endless variety of options and outcomes! As the librarian notes, "Every move you make opens a whole new world of possibilities, in chess as in life." But what seems a gift can easily turn to a purgatory. Will Nora find a life that isn't disappointing? Is there such a thing as a perfect life?

Most of my favorite books begin with an author's well-crafted "what if?" question. Haig's premise is intriguing. The story swept me in so much, I willingly overlooked unsavory aspects. The book contains plenty of foul language. Such language presents a genuine struggle for my audio book time. I don't wish to field questions from my teens on why I don't want them to swear, yet listen to books full of filth. (I should note, I loved Carey Mulligan's narration.) But the ideas were so worth the contemplation! I'm still pondering how our lives shape us and how we shape our lives.

The writing was outstanding. What a perfect name for the protagonist. She was, indeed, a small seed, ready to grow into who knows what. I especially appreciated his similes and metaphors. They were fresh and fitting and added depth to the story. The premise was well-executed, and the plot kept me hooked. I hit a minor speed bump when the author cataloged variations of her life ("In one life, she..., in another life she...") about fifty times. Groan. Plus, it seemed far too many of the lives were extraordinary - glaciologist, olympic swimmer, rock star, etc. - a bit unbelievable. But, still, its life-affirming message rang true. 

I will ponder this book for a good long while. I will no longer assume that my regrets are absolutely regrettable. It was a reminder of that old saying, "When God closes a door, He opens a window." Perhaps what I consider a terrible outcome truly saved me from an even worse outcome. Plus, I may consider even tiny decisions with more care, given this book's message that even small actions can lead to big alterations. It wouldn't surprise me to catch myself daydreaming about the alternate existences I might have lived, ha! Then again, thinking about how Nora arrived there, the Midnight Library may be the only library I never wish to visit.