READING

I've been following Emma Beddington's blog for a number of years so it was wonderful to read this book at the weekend and understand in a deeper way the journey she has travelled in her 'pursuit' of happiness.

The book takes the reader from the beginning of Emma's fascination with all things French in the library of the Quaker school she attended in York.  The librarian, strangely for a Quaker school, had organized a subscription to the French edition of Elle magazine.

From school to France, a French boyfriend, university in England, back to France, back to England and on and on, she explores themes of displacement, not only by the environment she lives in, whether that be England or France, but also the displacement brought by living and working with a language that is not your first.

And underscroring all of this is the grief following the death of her mother in a dreadful accident.

I can see a movie.  Perhaps Keira Knightley to play Emma?  And her boyfriend?  I'm not really up on my French actors, but perhaps Olivier Martinez?

Go!  Read the book!  It's wonderful.

READING

Reading this at the moment and becoming an expert on the French Revolution!  The book has so many characters from clubs, politics, the court, journalists etc I have had to download Wikipedia's thirty odd pages on the subject to get a bit of an idea where everyone fits in.

Gerda, the book focuses on three main characters;  Georges-Jacques Danton, Camille Desmoulins and dear Maximilien de Robespierre.  If you Wiki them you will find out where they fit into the story.

Hilary Mantel in her introduction..."My main characters were not famous until the Revolution made them so, and not much is known about their early lives.  I have used what there is, and made educated guesses about the rest...a rough guide:  anything that seems particularly unlikely is probably true..."

Things I didn't know, from Wikipedia:

...Freemasonry played an important role...originally largely apolitical, Freemasonry was radicalised in the late 18th century through the introduction of higher grades which emphasised themes of liberty, equality and fraternity.  Virtually every major player in the Revolution was a Freemason and these themes became the widely recognized slogan of the revolution...

...During the Reign of Terror, extreme efforts of de-Christianisation ensued...the establishment of the Cult of Reason was the final step of radical de-Christianisation...Eventually, Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety were forced to denounce the campaign, replacing the Cult of Reason with the deist but still non-Christian Cult of Supreme Being...

...A new Republican Calendar was established in 1793, with 10-day weeks that made it very difficult for Catholics to remember Sundays and saints' days.  Workers complained it reduced the number of first-day-of-the-week holidays from 52 to 37...

I'm on page 587 - 300 more to go!

NEVERTHELESS

nevertheless

adverb

in spite of that;  notwithstanding;  all the same

Last blog on Paul Kalanithi's book WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR.  Here he discusses his thoughts on belief in God and Christianity.

"The favorite quote of many an atheist, from the Nobel Prize-winning French biologist Jacques Monod...

'The ancient covenant is in pieces;  man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged only by chance.'

Yet I returned to the central values of Christianity - sacrifice, redemption, forgiveness - because I found them so compelling.  There is a tension in the Bible between justice and mercy, between the Old Testament and the New Testament.  And the New Testament says you can never be good enough: goodness is the thing, and you can never live up to it.  The main message of Jesus, I believed, is that mercy trumps justice every time.

Not only that, but maybe the basic message of original sin isn't "Feel guilty all the time." Maybe it is more along these lines:  "We all have a notion of what it means to be good, and we can't live up to it all the time."  Maybe that's what the message of the New Testament is, after all.  Even if you have a notion as well defined as Leviticus, you can't live that way.  It's not just impossible, it's insane."

And that is the message of the Bible.  Paul in Romans 7 describes this conundrum beautifully, "I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."  And the Good News is that NEVERTHLESS, God loves us.  And that 'love' is a 'love' beyond all definitions.

The beautiful quilt?  Another one of Robyn's - for her grand-daughter.

READING

David went off to return books to the library when I suddenly remembered I had wanted to blog a bit more about Paul Kalanithi from his book WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR.  Quickly hobbled to the telephone and left David a slow message which I was assured by the recording would be relayed to him as a text.  "Bring   back    the   Doctor   book!"  And brought it back he did.

My little torn paper bookmarks were still in the book so here's the first one.  I'll do the other one another day.

His wife writing the poscript to the book.

"I expected to feel only empty and heartbroken after Paul died.  It never occurred to me that you could love someone the same way after he was gone, that I would continue to feel such love and gratitude alongside the terrible sorrow, the grief so heavy that at times I shiver and moan under the weight of it.  Paul is gone, and I miss him acutely nearly every moment, but I somehow feel I'm still taking part in the life we created together.  "Bereavement is not the truncation of married love," C.S. Lewis wrote, "but one of its regular phases - like the honeymoon.  What we want is to live our marriage well and faithfully through that phase too."  Caring for our daughter, nurturing relationships with family, publishing this book, pursuing meaningful work, visiting Paul's grave, grieving and honoring him, persisting...my love goes on - lives on - in a way I'd never expected."

And the beautiful quilt above?  It's me reading with dear old Dougal beside me.  The little girl, bottom left is my earliest memory, standing at the gate telling everyone who passed that I was going to start school soon, Scottish background top left. Summerfield barn and red bench which we scattered everywhere we lived after a visit to Switzerland, Glasgow University where I started and didn't finish an MA - but developed a strong interest in Scottish Literature and Economic History, the beautiful MacIntosh chair made by David, the roses he has given me, each of the past forty seven years, the gum tree, symbolizing my new home which I love and the bluebird representing David, always at my shoulder and always full of love.

And the quilter?  My dear friend Robyn who is, at this time travelling the same road as Paul's wife.

MAKING SENSE OF HIS OWN EXISTENCE

David picked this book up from the Library for me yesterday.  I read a review on the book some time ago, took myself off to the Library and ordered it in.  There were twelve people ahead of me waiting to borrow it.  Yesterday an email arrived in my inbox and David went and collected it for me.  I finished reading it last night before I went to sleep.

From the flyleaf:

"Paul Kalanithi was a neurosurgeon and writer.  He held degrees in English Literature, human biology, and history and philosophy of science and medicine from Stanford and Cambridge universities before graduating from Yale School of Medicine.  He also received the American Academy of Neurological Surgery's highest award for research."

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, he was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.

This book was written during his illness, before and after his daughter was born.  Here's a 'taste'.

"...I had learned something, something not found in Hippocrates, Maimonides, or Osler:  the physician's duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence."

 And for his daughter to whom the book is dedicated:

"...When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man's days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satsified.  In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing..."

ANOTHER GREAT BOOK

Greer sent this book to David for his birthday and I've just finished reading it.

The Guardian review here emphasizes the theme of, "...what happens when real life is exploited in fiction..."  For me though the major theme of the book is how the children are affected from the breakdown of their parents' marriages.

Anyone reading this book while considering having an affair or leaving their partner would, I think, think twice.

A NEW IDEA OF GREATNESS

While the leg heals, I have lots of time for reading.  Here's an excerpt from this book:

"...The second major feature of Jesus' life;  Jesus lived for others.  He was not simply called but actually was the friend of publicans and sinners.  He befriended the rabble, the riffraff of his own culture.  One of the mysteries of the gospel tradition is this strange attraction of Jesus to the unattractive, his strange desire for the undesirable, his strange love for the unlovely.  The key to this mystery is, of course, the Father.  Jesus does what he sees the Father doing, he loves those whom the Father loves.

The gentleness of Jesus with sinners flowed from his ability to read their hearts and to detect the sincerity and goodness there.  Behind men's grumpiest poses and most puzzling defense mechanisms, behind the arrogance and airs, behind their sneers and curses, Jesus saw little children who hadn't been loved enough and who had ceased growing because someone had ceased believing in them. Perhaps it was his extraordinary sensitivity and compassion that caused Jesus (and later the apostles) to speak of the faithful as "children", no matter how tall, rich, clever and successful they might be.

When Jesus tied a towel around his waist, poured water into a copper basin, and washed the feet of the apostles (the dress and duty of a slave), the Maundy Thursday revolution began, and a new idea of greatness in the kingdom of God emerged..."

A HILARIOUSLY GOOD READ

Recommended by Emma over here and a review here.  Set in an old-folk's home in England in the 1970's.  I haven't, ever, laughed out loud so much while reading a book.  It would make a fabulous BBC series.  I can even recommend actors for the parts if the BBC reads this blog and needs some ideas.  So, you remember that British series, set in a hospital with three women who were the main actors?  One was the head nurse, Jo Brand the regular nurse and one who was a doctor.  Well BBC, the one who played the head nurse is definitely the one to play Matron in this series.  Please make contact if you need further ideas.  I'm full of them.  PS  Found a link to that BBC series here.  I noticed several of the episodes were directed by Peter Capaldi.

HIS FIRST WORD TO US

"...Yet he (a man Jesus met - Matthew 5) was called, as we are called, to listen attentively to God's first word to us.  This word is the gift of ourselves to ourselves - our existence, our nature, our personal history, our uniqueness, our identity.   All that we have and are is one of the unique and never-to-be-repeated ways God has chosen to express himself in space and time."

Excerpt from Manning's book above (Italics mine)

PREPARING CHILDREN HOW TO LEARN HOW TO.....

Emma posted an article on the Finnish education system on Facebook.  Here's another article from Smithsonian.com.   A key phrase from the article stood out to me..." We prepare children to learn how to learn, not how to take a test."  May sound simplistic, but it's not.  I am aware from reading articles on postmodernism that today's reader prefers information in short bites.  This isn't a particularly short bite but well worth a bit of perserverance.  It's a wonderful gift, not only to watch a child suddenly 'get it' but also to teach that child the process that is required to reach that point. Anna's post on Home Schooling Heresies (see previous post) adds to this idea.

HOMESCHOOL HERESIES

Some Home School heresies from Anna at Pleaseant View Schoolhouse.

http://pleasantviewschoolhouse.blogspot.com.au/2007/05/homeschooling-heresies.html

THE FISH IN SCOTLAND DISCOVERED SOMETHING NEW

In the midst of the varied discussions on the proposed changes to marriage laws Rabbi Sacks in November last year, delivered this keynote presentation in front of an audience of faith leaders and scholars from across religions and 23 countries around the world.

"I want this morning to begin our conversation by one way of telling the story of the most beautiful idea in the history of civilization:  the idea of the love that brings new life into the world.  There are of course many ways of telling the story, and this is just one.  But to me it is a story of seven key moments, each of them surprising and unexpected.

The first, according to a report in the press on 20th October of this year, took place in a lake in Scotland 385 million years ago.  It was then, according to this new discovery..."

You can find a transcript of his presentation here.

TELLING THE TRUTH...

Reading this wonderful book again where the writer uses the play King Lear to discuss the Gospel in a creative way...

"...The crazy Zen monk holds a stick in his hand and says, "What have I got in my hand?" and the eager searcher after truth but only after a particular truth says, "It is a stick."  Then the monk hits the man over the head with the stick as he richly deserves and says, "No, that's what it is," or doesn't even bother to say it.  Pilate asks Jesus what is truth - is it what Plato said, or Maimonides, or Aquinas, or Tillich...and what Jesus hits Pilate over the head with is Pilate himself.  Jesus just stands there in silence in a way that throws Pilate back on his own silence, the truth of himself."

TO BEGIN,

begin.

                                                                                          William Wordsworth

You're all encouraging me with your comments on Facebook!

GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS

To hold this little book in your hands is to imagine you are holding a beautiful poetry book and indeed, the writing looks and reads like a collection of poetry but, it is very much a novel.

There are three voices in the book, the father, his two young sons and the crow who moves in to the home until he is no longer needed.

Buy it and treasure this jewel.

CLEVER GIRL

In the middle of this book and loving it.  The principal character was born around the same year as I (1951), and the book chronicles her life from childhood to middle-age.  The chapters are like mini essays with the 'happenings' of the particular period finished at the end with a poignant observation about her thoughts on looking back at that particular period.  She captures the essence of the periods she writes about.  "Listen to this David!" and I read him a passage.  "Wasn't it just like that?"...

"...People forget that in 1966 there were still bomb sites:  it took a long time to stitch back together that fabric of our cities ripped open by the war - or rather, not to stitch it back at all, but to tear the fabric out and throw it away and put something different in its place...Sometimes I'm nostalgic now for that old intricate decay, as if it was a vanished subtler style, overlaid by the banality of making over and smartening up that came later.  My mother never was nostalgic.  She got out the minute she had the chance..."

An edit to this post...

There was a note at the end of this book which said that two of the chapters had been published by the New Yorker as short stories, something I picked up while reading - a certain completeness about the chapters.

BEDROOM PAINTING

Well, the new bedroom timberwork and painting has been completed.  The quilt on the bed though is still to be finished.  I've been working on this one for years and years.  All the circles, large and small, have been made out of 'scraps' from my material hoard.  Circles are all hand-made and appliqued by hand on to the background.  Now I'm in the process of quilting the three layers together.  Top layer - the circles, middle layer - the batting and bottom layer - the backing of the quilt.  I'm quilting all the seams of the background, the circles themselves and another circle within the circle.  Have decided to really get my head down and get this finished, so the plan is to do a bit each morning.

Have only put up one 'picture' so far, a cross stitch made by Greer.

And especially for those who like reading, I put a few of my very favourite books on the side cupboard specially for the photograph!

Oops!  They're all on top of David's library book!

Remember you can click the photograph to enlarge it!