He thought to keep himself from Hell
by knowing and by loving well.
His work and vision, his desire
Would keep him climbing up the stair.
At limit now of flesh and bone,
He cannot climb for holding on.
"I fear the drop, I feel the blaze --
Lord, grant thy mercy and thy grace."
Wendell Berry from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997, p108.
It's now a rule. Every year I need to re-post one of my favorite poems, "The Lanyard" by Billy Collins, on the anniversary of my mom's death. That's today. She died in 2007 from cancer at the age of 59. It's not really meant to be a sad poem, though it is now that for me. It's supposed to be sorta funny and insightful, as the video shows.
So here's to your Mom and mine. Video is of Collins reading and the text of the poem is below that.
The Lanyard by Billy Collins
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
Here's two photos taken with my camera phone. Just goes to show you can do some pretty cool things without shelling out a bunch of money for a digital SLR. The first is from this week when the boys were at a laser tag place for a birthday party. That the floor of an upstairs party room. The second is from a year ago tomorrow in downtown Woodstock, IL.
Writers on Writing is a favorite podcast of mine in which Barbara DeMarco-Barrett interviews authors, poets, and literary agents on the art and business of writing. Last night I listened to her interview of the American poet Marvin Bell. I really enjoyed it, especially his reading of "To Dorothy," a poem about his wife. Today, as I think about it, it's also a poem about my wife. I love you, sootie.
To Dorothy
Here's a video of Marvin Bell talking about poetry. It's short...
"Goodnight" by David Ferry (via, from the book Of No Country I Know)
Reformissionary was mentioned in today's Northwest Herald newspaper, "Banking on a Blog." If you stopped by because of that article, welcome! I was interviewed for an article on blogging. It wasn't all that, but I gave a little advice. There is a mistake in the paper edition, but the online edition is fine.
Billy Collins is one of my very favorite living poets. His poetry has a beauty and realism to it that seems unpretentious and able to be enjoyed and understood by anyone and everyone. There's too little of that today. He also regularly injects humor, which I find refreshing. I've posted stuff from Collins several times the last few years and I'm sure his name will come up a few times this month.
To start National Poetry Month 2009 I give you a video of the wonderful Billy Collins reading "Litany." You can find this poem in his book Nine Horses and you can read it online at Poetry Foundation...
I have relaunched my Living in Woodstock, Illinois blog (old one here). I was posting inconsistently and I just wanted to do better. So a fresh look gives me a little motivation to gett'r going again. Unless you live in McHenry County with me, don't comment there. It's meant to be a local blog and most of you are not local. But I thought you might like to see it.
Living in Woodstock, Illinois is really about my experiences as a resident of Woodstock/McHenry County. I figured it would be a great way to interact with my culture. I post my photos, talk about restaurants and cafés, local sports and kid stuff, nearby places that a resident here is near enough to travel to (like downtown Chicago), and a lot more. It's meant to be a positive expression of what life looks like here because I love where I live.
Molly Update: Molly is very, very tired. Every day she sleeps about the right amount of time and feels like lying down for the rest of the day. She can't nap well and never feels refreshed or energized. It's very frustrating for her. I regularly walk in the house or walk upstairs from my office and find her on the couch or in the bed. Her attitude is in the right place but her body just won't keep step. Calls to the neurologist and medication adjustments continue.
Links...
Curator: An American Beer Garden. If wishing made it so.
Listen free to the new Great Lake Swimmers album, Lost Channels, at Paste.
Seth Godin: Ignore Your Critics
Jonathan Dodson: Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?
Tim Chester: A review of Rob Bell's Everything is Spiritual
Donald Miller: Advice on writing from Stephen King. Unfortunately Miller spells it "Steven" which should be another piece of advice on writing. While we are on writing, what about cut and paste writing?
Kevin Gregg is the Cubs' closer, not Carlos Marmol. It's not as sexy to set up, but Marmol has been good at it.
Rapping flight attendant...
Who is pumped?! I look forward toNational Poetry Month (April) during the other 11 months, and now it starts up tomorrow. You can check out my '07 and '08 posts to whet your appetite. It's going to be a month full of delight and pain and discovery and contemplation. I hope you, even if not a big fan of poetry, will awake a bit more through poetry to the wonder of things usually unnoticed. Here are a few quotes about poetry to get us thinking...
Poetry fosters and nurtures life by finding wonder in the nooks and crannies of ordinary life. (via)
Poetry is what gets lost in translation. -Robert Frost
Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted. -Percy Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, 1821
Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry. -W.B. Yeats
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. -Plato, Ion
My boys love this commercial...
Just found out several Bob Dylan albums are only $6.99 to download at Amazon. Worth picking these up!
Self-Titled
The Times They Are A-Changin'
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
Blonde on Blonde
Highway 61 Revisited
Nashville Skyline
Bringing It All Back Home
Write this down: Manchester Orchestra (MySpace). It's not an orchestra, it's the name of a band. Their 2005 album I'm Like a Virgin Losing a Child is only $7.99 to download right now. They also have an EP, Let My Pride Be Left Behind, from 2008. Their new album, Mean Everything to Nothing, is coming out on April 21st (pre-order, pre-order LP with bonus CD). I can't wait! I have a feeling this album is going to be a stunner since the first three tracks I've heard have been outstanding. Download new song "I've Got Friends" for free. In the weeks leading up to the album they are releasing videos for the songs, really an eleven part musical journey. I have really, REALLY enjoyed the first two. Part 1...
View Part 2, "Shake It Out," at Spin.com (can't find embed code). Also see this this wonderful acoustic set by Andy Hull.
As most of my readers know, The Avett Brothers have been a favorite of our family these last few years. I continually get feedback from folks who have found the Avett's through Reformissionary and come to love them as we do. Some good stuff out there right now about the band, including articles by American Songwriter Magazine and Rolling Stone. They also have a new album coming out this summer called I and Love and You. Look for it. I'm sure I'll be talking about it as the release date approaches.
I love throwing more Avett Brothers videos out there for you, and here's a great live performance of "If It's The Beaches"...
And here's a little video interview with The Avett Brothers at SXSW by last.fm...
Also of note, and I just keep forgetting to mention this, the Tim Keller Wiki.
I found two remarkable quotes, from different sources, and realized they were from the same speech from Karl Paulnack about music. Here's one of them (via)...
I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we cannot with our minds.
With that in mind, I present to you an obvious basic human need...Music Monday. First, Neko Case has a new video for "People Got A Lotta Nerve" off her excellent new album, Middle Cyclone (download, CD)...
DM Stith's Heavy Ghost (download, CD) continues to haunt me. The short, first track is "Isaac's Song." Here's the video with Stith's art, about the story of Abraham and Isaac. Put yourself in that story and walk with them into the forest with your father...
Some current Amazon MP3 deals you need to check out: M. Ward - Hold Time ($5) is brand new, The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America ($1.99) is great anthemic bar music, Radiohead -- The Bends ($6.99) is a nearly perfect album that everyone should own, and Alejandro Escovedo - A Man Under the Influence ($6.99).
The first is something fun I did with Elijah's concert photo from this week. The second is rural Kentucky in April of 2006. Got some great photos from that trip. My photography.
The Curator is a new (fall of '08) website of the International Arts Movement (IAM). I think IAM is great and this website should gain a large audience.
The Curator launched on August 29, 2008 as a web publication of International Arts Movement(IAM), which announces the signs of a “world that ought to be” as we find it in our midst, and seeks to inspire people to engage deeply with culture that enriches life and broadens experience.
In keeping with IAM’s belief that artistic excellence, as a model of “what ought to be”, paves the way for lasting, enduring humanity, The Curator seeks to encourage, promote, and uncover those artifacts of culture – those things which humans create - that inspire and embody truth, goodness, and beauty.
The founder of IAM, Makoto Fujimura, is interviewed (part 1, part 2) at The High Calling.
The more I look through The Open Sourcebook the more I love it. About the site...
You can submit materials and request materials as well. The site was created by Sojourn Music (really good guys) and The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.
Molly Update: Mol has been tired lately. Meds help her sleep, but she has just been dragging. We'll see what the neurologist says next appointment. No results on her neuro-psych test...other than Molly doesn't know jack about Madame Curie and can't do mental math as good as our 6 year old. Fortunately for her I married her for her body and not her mind. :) And yes, I had her permission to say that.
Jonathan Dodson: The Missiology of St. Patrick
Resurgence: Vintage Saints - St. Patrick
Devotional Christian has potential.
On March 26th Mark Driscoll will be on Nightline with Deepak Chopra and others discussing whether or not the Devil exists. That should be fun.
DA Carson: Portraits of Jesus in John's Gospel
Stephen Nichols: Jonathan Edwards' Apologetic In Theory and Practice
Tim Chester: Mission Planning in Acts
Resurgence: Interview with Matt Chandler (3.9.09)
Found at Culture Making: "Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture—why would anyone bother with music? And yet—from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.” "
Finally Tonight, Jesus...
