Discovering people who love Narnia is the closest thing there is to actually waking up and discovering you’re in Narnia. From the time I was ten I felt the same longing of those fictional English schoolchildren who found their way in though several different portals between that magical world and this one, that constant desire to return, to see Aslan again…
So when my children were born, I set about imparting a love of Narnia (and books) in their hearts.
My oldest loves books to this day. Narnia, however, never seemed to hold the same Deeper Magic for him that it does for me.`
Until recently.
He began reading the series to his five-year-old daughter last year and Narnia pulled him in. All the way in.
That is what Narnia does.
He would text me at different points on his adventure, the same adventures I’ve had over and over all my life. The snow. The lamppost. The thaw. Talking Beasts. Dr. Cornelius. Bree the Horse. Boarding the Dawn Treader. Meeting Reepicheep. The royal line of kings. Falling in love with Aslan, over and over and over again…
At the beginning of The Last Battle, this text: It’s heartbreaking.
Later: I got to the part where Cair Paravel has fallen and Tirian says Narnia is no more…am weeping…
Later still: Just finished The Last Battle. It broke me.
I learned from my little granddaughter, who whispered in my ear: “He cried so much that I told Mama we should be really nice to him. His eyes were all red.”
My boy, my boy. Once Narnia gets a hold of you, it never lets go. It’s in your blood, forever and ever.
Trust me.
It is but the beginning.
For Christmas he gave me this necklace with Lucy and Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
My son challenged me to make something with this roll of my metaphor dice: loss, elusive, junkyard.
This is what I have, so far…
Junkyard Loss is Not Elusive
It is said that imagination is the junkyard of the brain where used things lie in limbo until they are destroyed taken back by the grass or called into service again
which is to say no experience is wasted only catalogued and stored in the deep recesses of memory until the need for it should arise in solving a problem in creating a new thing in connecting patterns in different ways of seeing relating expressing understanding
which is to say that beloved childhood doll with the cracked face or the scent of your father’s shaving cream or that dog, that dog that chewed up your best shoes but slept every night by your side long ago, so long ago comes bounding back for a specific purpose
for there is unseen order in a junkyard where used things lie in limbo until they are called into service again or destroyed or taken back by the grass.
I will call it as I see it from the ever-shifting sands at the shoreline looking out over the vast and raging sea called School nowadays
so much debris in those rolling waves flotsam and jetsam of curriculum of standards a wreckage of data certainly broken systems and even “learning decay” -phew- how’s that for positivity
it is not that I don’t have faith
I do
I believe in kids
I believe in teachers
I believe in overcoming
I also believe everyone doesn’t believe
and I know as I hear the crashing waves and the gnashing teeth that the current will drown us all if we pull apart
if only if only I could build a sturdy ship I’d name it Collaborative Spirit
and if I could just get everyone on board
we’d sail over and through and beyond what we can even imagine
together
it’s just that one person can’t build a ship (or relation-ship) alone
no
building the Collaborative Spirit takes all hands on deck
that’s how I call it that’s how I see it from the ever-shifting sands at the shoreline looking out over the vast and raging sea called School nowadays
Relationships are the fabric of our lives. They should be treasured every day, but sometimes we get caught up in the stresses of life and forget to express gratitude to those we love most. How can you show more appreciation and kindness this month?
This notion of relationships as fabric captivates me. Fabric is made of woven or knitted fiber. Some fabrics are delicate. Some are strong. Fabric can tear. I remember a skirt I bought as a teenager when I started making some steady money of my own. High-waisted, flared, houndstooth, almost ankle length. Tons of fabric. It hung in rippling folds, fabulous in its 1980s way. I adored it. I was wearing the skirt, and hadn’t had it long, on the day I knelt in the floor to pick something up and inadvertently stepped on it with my high heel, which tore right through the fabric when I stood up…rrriiiiiip.
A six-inch tear in the lovely houndstooth, to my horror. I might have cried (I cannot recall) but I wasn’t ready to pitch the glorious skirt.
I brought it to my mother.
She was a seamstress who worked for a major department store. She tailored men’s suits, fitted bridal gowns (“these girls want the dresses completely remade”), and took in sewing at home. Many a night she spread fabric across the kitchen table, pinned patterns, marked and cut the cloth with sharp scissors, a rhythmic snip-snip-snip. She made several stuffed animals, like mice and precious long-eared bunnies with a wardrobe of changeable clothes. Her work was stellar; everyone said so…
“Mom, can you fix this?”
I handed her my voluminous, mutilated skirt.
She considered the rip, held it closed with her fingers, puffed on the cigarette clamped in her lips.
“I can try.”
She fixed it. Not like I’d imagined. The stitching was bulky and obvious. “I had to go over it more than once,” she explained. It looked as big as a train track to me. Like the garish stitching on the Frankenstein monster’s brow.
I loved that skirt. I’d paid too much money for it to just throw it away. Maybe I was expecting magic…
I wore it anyway, hoping the long folds in the natural draping of all that fabric would hide the ugly scar. Most people never noticed, but I knew it was there.
Relationships are the fabric of our lives.
Fabric can tear. It can be mended, but it won’t be exactly as it was before the ripping.
So it is with relationships. We wear the scars in hidden places. How much could be avoided by careful attention and mindfulness in the first place…especially if we value a relationship…
Sometimes we get caught up in the stresses of life and forget to express gratitude to those we love most. Show more appreciation and kindness…
This goes a long way in preventing the ripping, the unraveling.
In every relationship, great or small.
The thing about relationships: they never really end. They are with us, always within us, inextricable as the silkworm’s thread to silk fabric, forming the infinite intricacies of our days, our stories, our lives.
Winter mornings dawn in gray monochrome before the sun bursts on the scene like a passionate artist with its gilded palette
Driving to work in this gray in-betweenness I note the doves always sitting on the power lines like heralds their plump bodies of soft sandy colors framed by the oyster sky
reminding me: look for the peace this day live as peacefully as possible this day
Then, in the strange way of life as I drive home weary and worn the golden part of the day nearly spent what should I see on other power lines?
Hawks big and breathtaking still as statues painted in shades of rust
They might remind some people of raw bloodthirstiness or predatory fierceness but their beauty fills me with such awe that it’s all I can do to keep my eyes on the road driving home
as I think about how my winter days are bookended by birds and how there’s something inherently sacred and profoundly satisfying in that.
(One of these days, when I can stop the car safely, I am going to get my own photos of my hawks…)
******* with thanks to Ruth at SOS-Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog for today’s inspiration to write: “You are invited to linger in your winter memories, reach deep and pick a golden moment to share.”
“Heart” is the Spiritual Journey prompt for this first Thursday in February. Thanks to Linda Mitchellfor hosting our group of writers.
On a Sunday afternoon at the end of July, 2019, my husband had a massive heart attack and cardiac arrest. He was resuscitated by EMTs and went straight into surgery after arriving at the hospital. He got four stents and spent several days in induced hypothermia to reduce trauma to his brain, which can happen when blood flow has ceased and is suddenly restored. He recuperated slowly, painfully; his sternum had been broken by the CPR which saved his life. He came home. One morning in September he woke to jolts in his chest and tingling down his arm. I took him back to the hospital. More heart attacks. This time he had four bypasses. The surgeon mended his sternum with a little metal plate.
He is doing well now. In fact, up until winter settled in, he was doing eight-mile hikes in the park a couple of times a week and feeling as good as he ever has.
As this first Thursday in February drew near with Valentine’s Day and “heart” as the Spiritual Journey prompt for the month, I thought of a couple of things I might like to explore. I had chosen one, in fact, when I saw the heart-shaped hospital pillow that remains in our bedroom. This pillow was given to my husband after the bypass surgery. His attending nurse wrote on it with a Sharpie: “Keep hugging your heart!”
I thought, this is it. This is what I need to write about.
These pillows are given to all patients recuperating from open-heart surgery. The patients hug them when they have to cough or sneeze, lessening the severity of the jolt. The pillow protects the incision site whenever the patients move and when they practice the necessary deep-breathing exercises for their lungs.
It just so happens that the hospital where my husband’s surgery and recuperation has the lowest mortality rate in the country for heart bypass patients (according to reports from 2017-2019). It also just so happens that the county’s resuscitation rate is the highest in the nation. So, if you’re going to have cardiac arrest and need cardiac surgery, it’s the best place to be.
My husband is evidence of this.
I think about the surgeon who held my husband’s heart in his hands, who grafted those bypasses. He told us that as soon as the first graft was done, my husband’s heart immediately began beating stronger; it was hungry for the blood. It wanted to live.
Now. Where’s the spiritual element in all this, you ask?
Beyond the miracle that one human can cut open another and repair his heart, and that this repaired person can heal and live life awhile longer, is the Great Physician who is able to transform hearts and lives. When I was young, I attended a Bible study group in which a couple of guys could play guitars and we’d often sing this version of Psalm 51:10-12:
Create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a right spirit in me Create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a right spirit in me And cast me not away from thy presence, O Lord, take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and renew a right spirit in me.
Godly heart-grafting, I would say. Cleansing, taking away the bad parts, restoring. The heart must be transformed before the spirit can be renewed. Sometimes a great deal of work must be done…but the Lord is able. If we let Him work. If we are hungry for it. We often think of letting Him into our hearts but it’s really more a matter of offering our hearts—battered, damaged, tangled, sick as they may be—to Him. He knows exactly what is needed. Psalm 51 is the cry of David’s heart after Nathan the prophet confronted him with his adultery and murder. It can be the cry of any of our hearts as we place them in the healing hands of Almighty God, craving His mercy.
I rejoice that my husband lives, that he was made well, that the hospital and the EMTs are the best around.
I rejoice more that the Lord forgives and heals hearts and spirits. He works on my own, daily. He is the physician and the pillow, the healer and the comforter. The ultimate heart-hugger. He is the best place to be.
Not to mention that His own mortality record is unsurpassable.
lit bits and pieces 