As she walked along, she dramatized the night. There was about it a wild, lawless charm that appealed to a certain wild, lawless strain hidden deep in Emily’s nature – the strain of the gypsy and the poet, the genius, and the fool.
from Emily Climbs, chapter 10.
A Girl of the Limberlost, by Gene Stratton Porter
This lovely book is the second novel my mom read aloud to me. Just the two of us cuddled on the couch of an afternoon in a tiny green house in Tennessee, reading all about the lovely Elnora. Set in the haunting “Limberlost” woods and swamp, this is the story of a girl gifted with a love of nature and her father’s love for music. Her mother blames her for the death of her father, so Elnora must, in large part, fend for herself as she grows older, scavenging the Limberlost for the exotic moths coveted by collectors. This book is singularly responsible for the butterfly mania I developed as a child and hold to this day. It is also an old-fashioned romantic read, full of nature and friendship and an old timey love of innocent beauty. Freckles, it’s loose prequel (as in not directly written to precede Girl of the Limberlost, but set in the same place and with a recurring character) is also one of my favorite summertimeish reads.
Emily of New Moon Series by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Since everyone knows about the Anne of Green Gables series by this author, I’m going to list a series she wrote that most people don’t know about. I can’t decide which series I like better, but since the Emily one is about a girl whose whole soul reaches to write, I might go with this one. Emily is a quiet, black-haired little girl grieving her father when she comes to live with her two maiden aunts on a rural farm in PEI. She loves the beauty of the world, is a fast friend, and a surreptitous writer as she scribbles away in the “jimmybooks” her Uncle Jimmy smuggles her despite her aunt’s disapproval. The series follows Emily as she enters high school, decides which writing path she will take, and discovers what old Scottish highlanders called “the Second Sight.” There is a quote I’ll be posting later this week from the Emily books that always comes back to me when I think of the writer’s life. Like all Montgomery novels, these are brimful with a love of nature and friendship, and a celebration of beauty.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
I read this just last weekend. The ever-lovely Annie sent it to me for my birthday. I had a restless Saturday hour and was in dire need of a soulful, but light book. I wanted color, romance, English villages, WWII, that sort of thing, and oh but I got it in this gem of a book. One of the few modern novels I’ve read of late and loved, it is told entirely through letters to and from a writer named Juliet Ashton. Having gained a bit of popularity with a war-time column, Juliet embarks on a harrowing tour of England. In the midst of it, she receives an unexpected letter from a man who lives in the channel islands and has just discovered a book of hers. Thus begins a correspondence that results in her discovery of a literary society formed on the isle of Guernsey during the Nazi occupation of the channel islands. This book is a celebration of friendship and the power of story to hold the heart strong even in grievous times. This is an easy find – I saw it last week at Barnes and Noble.
It doesn’t take much to get me to rattle off a booklist. I still giggle with my best friend from high school about the time we stayed with a family in Boston. “Could you list me a few great books for my middle-school girls?” asked our host mom. Amidst the bustle and hum of three moms packing picnics and the din of the twelve kids that comprised our families, I plopped down on the kitchen loveseat with pencil and paper. Not a further sound did I hear as I scribbled down favorites like Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, and All-of-A-Kind-Family, keenly aware that my brain was spouting book titles much faster than my pen could catch them. Only when my friend poked me in the ribs and whispered in my ear, “Sarah, good grief. I think forty titles is enough. And you’re about to be abandoned,” did I stop. What can I say? I love me my books.
So, when Susan requested a list of favorite fictional books, and Amanda seconded it, I delightedly scrambled to acquiesce. (Thank you girls, for a lovely hour!) I think I’ll do several booklists in the following days as this one has been such fun; one of fiction, one of non-fiction/essays/spiritual, and one of children’s literature. Each list will be highly subjective, I warn you, the only criteria being the fact that these books are living to me, friends for whom I am passionate, each of whom has shaped a room in my soul.
I’ll start with fiction (broken up into two posts), since stories are my favorite anyway. The yarns below range from by the fireside on a snowy day, to the sort you pull down off the shelf when your heart is breaking and you can’t talk about it, so you read instead. Quite diverse too, these tales, a merry mixture of classics, modern fiction, fantasy, fairy tale, and a taste of the good kind of romance thrown in for fun. When I can, I’ll list a few extra recommended titles by each writer, as I’ve limited myself to review only one title per belovedest author. (Lest you too be tempted to poke me in the virtual ribs and whisper “good grief.”)
Pilgrim’s Inn, by Elizabeth Goudge
I always knew there could be something sacred in old houses, but it took Elizabeth Goudge to first articulate it to me in this, my favorite of her works. The Eliot family feels itself altogether ravaged by WWII and a world generally unravelled, so they make a somewhat reckless move to the country and buy an old “pilgrim’s inn,” a wayside house run by monks in the long ago years when devoted souls made their pilgrimages to holy sites across England. With the spirit of a merry host seeming still to haunt the house, and a wood dappled by sunlight and secrets out its door, the family settles into a country round of hearthside tea and gardening that is a healing they barely knew to ask for. When the simple shepherdess Sally and her father, a famous artist, join the crew, plus David, the troubled and brilliant actor and handsomest of the Eliots, “The Pilgrim’s Inn” becomes a refuge where love and redemption are born anew. Goudge’s ability to capture the spirit that inhabits the very substances of earth; land, houses, trees, rivers, gardens, is something that always makes me step out into the CO pines with renewed wonder. Her keen perception of human foibles and desires also make her somewhat of a spiritual mentor. She is one of my favorite authors ever. If I ever write a P.h.D. thesis, it will be on something by her. Other books by Goudge: The Scent of Water, Gential Hill, Green Dolphin Street, The Rosemary Tree
Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry
I was warned about this book before I read it. Good thing too, because it is the sort that turns your eyes from its pages into a firm, if gentle probing into your own life. Such a simple book, just the life of Kentucky farm wife in the years during and after WWII, told in her own quiet, unflinching voice. But oh, the beauty of it. I have said before that Wendell Berry is a writer who settles you down into his story, and thus, into your own life. No escapism here; instead, the slow rise of days, words, weather, crops, and biscuits, marriage, and children, and the sweat it takes to live from the land and the depth of soul that becomes the inheritance of those who stick it out. You read this and you see yourself, and rediscover your own capacity to love and create, and your own need to grieve. One of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read.
Also by Berry: Jayber Crow, Remembering, Fidelity, A Place on Earth
The Hawk and the Dove, by Penelope Wilcock
Another quiet sort of book that lightens one’s eyes to all that is ordinary, and wondrous, this is actually a set of three novels all chronicling the life of Father Peregrine, the Abbot of a Benedictine monastery in medieval England. With sharp wit, impatience, and a heart that craves true humility, Father Peregrine is a compassionate, if forceful leader of his monastery, a faithful guide to the brothers, and a man who seeks God in the rhythms of the every day. This is restful reading, best experienced by a window with a cup of tea.
I’m wild with jealousy at that fact that Andrew Peterson got to spend an afternoon with Wendell Berry. However, he is generous enough of heart that he shared his lively view of the experience over at The Rabbit Room. You should definitely take a look: Paying Attention: A Visit with Wendell Berry.
And then you should go start one of Berry’s novels. I recommend Hannah Coulter.
Dappled the sky and sylph-like the sway of candles on our table here at the Broadmoor. The wild west seems an unlikely place, but someone had the idea to nestle a five-star hotel here, right against the southernmost mountain in town. I am eternally grateful. When all the family is home and we’d like to pretend we are somewhere in Europe as we discuss ourselves to death, we head down here, split omelets, drink a thousand and one cups of coffee and act as if we own the place. After a feast of a breakfast this morning, we’ve all taken a few minutes now to write, or read, or stare over the lake. I’ve turned here because my mind churns with the topic just debated and I want to write it out and find out what you think. It’s been on my mind all this summer and it came to a head today. What is the truth about personality? Is there value in understanding the quirks of my (or anyone elses’s) particular mode of being?
The last night our friends were here, we threw a personality party. Now, my family are all amateur psychologists because of my parents involvement with the “MBTI,” otherwise known as the Meyers Briggs Type Indicator. This is a system of personality based on Jungian archetypes and worked out into sixteen distinctive personality “types” by a brilliant woman named Isabel Briggs Meyers. My dad is actually trained to administer the tests, and we kids have been conversant in the intricacies of extrovert/introvert, intuitive/sensate, etc. for years. (I’m an INFJ for the initiated.) Not a friend can come for an extended stay at Chez Clarkson without the lot of us raring to enlighten them as to their particular MBTI profile. We’re all out-of-the-box thinkers, but in this one area we love to define our friends and ourselves. This view of personhood has averted much conflict and birthed much compassion in our otherwise opinionated family.
It’s also freedom. Amidst the other night’s hilarious uproar of discussion, I saw what relief it is to know yourself. The introverts twitted the extroverts who roared back in playful mockery of the dreamers, who looked down dramatic noses at the doers. All in good fun, all in a sudden buoyancy of acceptance. To discover that at least a few of your quirks are not due to inadequacy or sin, but to the whimsy of God’s own creativity is intensely liberating. It frees you to love yourself and the other quirky people near you.
It’s not as if we can help it – we burst from the womb with a compact, yet entirely unique soul in place. From infancy it drives the way we relate, learn, and grow. We are defined by our personalities. This morning, my mom told how each of us kids loved certain things from the time we were babies: Joel, my composer brother, could sing his own harmonies at three. I read voraciously from tiny girlhood. Nate, my actor brother, charmed and performed and created all manner of things. Joy, actress, designed costumes and wrote scripts and considered herself in charge of the world from babyhood. Born with those loves, we lived out the selves God knit when we were yet cloistered in the womb.
May you treasure wisely this jeweled, gilded time
And cherish each day as an extra grace
Whose heedless loss would be a tragic crime
In today’s tasks may you find God’s tender face.
May you know that to miss love’s smallest chance
Is a lost opportunity, a senseless waste.
May you see need in every anxious glance,
May you sort out of the dull and commonplace
An invitation to God’s merry, manic dance
And may the Lord of the dance bless you
As he invites you to the dance of the hallowed present
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen
-Father Andrew Greeley
Friends from afar and rainstorms like gods descending in fury have been the gift of our last two weeks of summer vacation. Both my brothers are home (well, Nate is almost here) and along with them a whole family of dear friends. Our house feels like Noah’s ark – crammed with countless creatures all eating and laughing and sailing the seas of discussion at all hours of the day.
After a jaunt down to the artsy part of town this morning, we got caught in yet another shrieking fury of a rainstorm and got home soaked and chilled. There was nothing for it but to light candles and kindle a fire (summer fires are one of the many joys of being a Coloradoan). Tea was brewed in a fat cobalt pot, mismatched teacups piled on a silver tray, and scones warmed in the oven. We lounged around our living room, the soundtrack from Ladies in Lavendar keening in the background.
Now, I must inform you that I am the introvert of introverts. I sometimes have these odd, panicked moments of thinking, oh no, what will we talk about now? If you are an extrovert, just ignore me. I know I’m strange. Nonetheless, even with my best friends, I sometimes wonder what I will say to keep the conversation going. Today though, I had a small revelation. We had all just settled in when my mom, cozy as a queen in her chair commanded, “okay, everyone has to tell a story from their own life.”
The rambling, hysterical round of epics that followed never slowed from the minute we sat down to the instant we rose to start the feast for dinner. From tales of disastrous mountain hikes to the meeting of famous people, to unforgettable midnight rambles in tiny, English villages, we filled an hour with stories. There was never a lag, never an out-of-place silence. Once told to tell our stories, to share whatever it was out of our own memory of life lived thus far that had most tickled or touched us, we spoke. Even the introverts. As we got up to the clatter empty teacups, I had a moment of clear realization. We’re all born storytellers.
Scratch a soul and they bleed a story, I’m convinced. We are all full of the tale of our lives, always connecting the dots of existence. The sum of our laughter and what we have seen and felt, and the people we have felt it with is the sum of who we are. To speak out the memories of what made us who we are is a vital part of how we craft our existence. But it is also a key element in the foundation of a friendship. It is by sharing stories that we knit souls and come to know each other. And I think we’re probably all just waiting to tell our tales, if only someone will ask.
Story, I’ve decided, is what good conversation ought to be. I think I dread social situations sometimes because conversation exists on such a shallow level in modern times. I hate small talk. How can trivial pleasantries turn a stranger into a true friend? I’ve spent so many evenings, parties, and meals on conversations that don’t mean a thing to anyone involved. The introvert in me dreads trying to come up with yet one more hour of talk that has no purpose but to pass some time. And yet today, it took just one comment from my mom to get the lot of us merrily talking the hour away. At the end, we knew far more about the loves and laughter of each other’s hearts than we did when we sat down. Real conversation, the sort that makes souls known, consists of shared tales; the discovery of which ideas and scenes and happenings made us, formed our faith, livened our passion.
So now, whenever I feel that introverted panic rising, I shall simply grasp my teacup like a queen and request a merry tale. Or maybe even be brave enough to offer my own. Let the storytelling begin…
Last night I walked with mom and saw the sky empty at dusk. Like a slow tide dying away, the light fell back, back, and the foam of it clung creamy to the blackened hills. Above, the sky curved over the earth like a navy blue crockery bowl and in it, adrift, one diamond and over that a scimitar of moonlight, needle thin.
I felt blessed to see again. I need to behold, with flesh and blood eyes, this touchable, tasteable earth. I feel as absent from it as if I had been on a journey to outer space. This summer has helped me to realize that you can get so far into your brain, so lost in your own worries and thoughts, that life, in its dance and bluster around you, falls back, dimmed. I finished a journal recently, glanced through it and realized that most of this year’s writing has been of inner debate. The tumblings of my own heart made such a clamor inside me, I lost sight for all but that. I look back at other journals, from earlier years, and find tales of sunsets and stars, or ordinary hours, or friends, and I know. It is not that small beauties have passed away from my present life, but that I have passd beyond reach of their shelter and dwelt in my own confusion.
Worry is a hot little cave I carve out in myself. None of the outside trouble is changed by the presence of that fretting space within me, but I feel that I can keep some hold on my life, control my problems by giving them a place to live in my heart. Then I get locked in with them. And that hot, black space is the house from which I think and see the world.
Beauty saves me. Like the sky at dusk on my evening walk, some glint of star, or touch of a friend, or note of a song calls me back. Beauty unlocks the black little door in me, and my worries scatter, and I walk out, weak, wide-eyed, into life. And the blue above me is vast as joy and the dark is not choking and hot, but wide and fresh with starlight. My fretting is answered simply by the fact of the hugeness of the earth and sky, the loveliness that exists beyond any touch of my worry. “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” says the Psalmist. The miracle is that I can. That God so crafted the world that beauties should abound, that every sense should find joy in this earth, and every joy craft a road we can follow in faith. Not to dark little caves do those roads lead, but to a wide place of peace beyond the edges of the world.
Detail the first: do you know how much you hearten me? Your comments on the last post were cool cordial to a thirsty writer’s soul. However, if in checking back to that post you observe that all the comments have disappeared, well. As with so many endeavors, a bid for simplification got complicated. I am trying to set up comments so that people can receive follow ups if they want, and I can reply back to them a little easier (imagine that!). I have all the old comments safe, just stymied as to how to get them to come back. I shall figure this out in the very near future.
Detail the second; I forgot to mention last week that I had a post up at The Rabbit Room. It’s called Lessons in Shared Dreaming.
Third, I have decided to begin the slow, arduous, but rather enjoyable task of summing up some reviewish thoughts on the books I have read. I find this to be a good discipline anyway as I usually devour stories and then wish I had time to consider them in far more depth. I’m going to use Goodreads for this. I’ll post reviews here too, but all will be archived in the Goodreads stuff. So friend me if you like – I’d love to carry on bookish conversations and hear your thoughts on the books you read as well. As part of this, I’m converting the “Library” section into a Goodreads montage. Click on a book to see my review. (Well, eventually. It will take awhile to review all those books.)
And last. A good storm terrifying the eastern sky just as dusk closes in for a kiss is one of my favorite sights in the world. You might like it too.
