A Hope Carol

 A night was near, a day was near;
  Between a day and night
I heard sweet voices calling clear,
    Calling me:
I heard a whirr of wing on wing,
  But could not see the sight;
I long to see my birds that sing,—
    I long to see.

In "A Hope Carol," Christina Rossetti sings the twilight hopes of Advent. The speaker finds herself in half-light, where ordinary time no longer makes sense: day and night approach at once. The voices she hears--winged voices, heralding joy--are "clear" but invisible. 

I can think of no more fitting poem for the final hours of Advent. We have heard from Scriptures, carols, prophecies, and traditions that joy has come, comes now, and will come again, but what we see so often argues against our hopes. We hear, but we long to see.

Below the stars, beyond the moon,
  Between the night and day,
I heard a rising falling tune
    Calling me:
I long to see the pipes and strings
  Whereon such minstrels play;
I long to see each face that sings,—
    I long to see. 

"Below the stars, beyond the moon" -- now space cavorts and shifts, making room for something that sounds like a fairy tale, or a gospel. The "rising fall tune" is sanguine but not naive, mournful but not despairing. And it calls. It calls us not to some generalized goodwill, but to a desire for intimate and particular love: we long to see "each face that sings."

To-day or may be not to-day,
  To-night or not to-night;
All voices that command or pray,
    Calling me,
Shall kindle in my soul such fire,
  And in my eyes such light,
That I shall see that heart’s desire
    I long to see.

At Advent, when my longing for a cozy vacation seems at odds with my desire for revelation, when I know that I long for Christ but can't imagine what his coming will actually mean, I take comfort in Rossetti's ability to set hope in resonance with uncertainty. But no, not uncertainty: with space, waiting, humility, silence?  She does not doubt that vision will come; she does not doubt that she will see, but she cannot name "that heart's desire." She concludes with her refrain, "I long to see" -- the same refrain we have heard from Simeon, from Anna, and from a thousand other mighty and minor prophets. 

Some days I boast precise visions of how the Incarnation ought to change the world. I grasp hold of programs, doctrines, or theories that seem to fit with my interpretation of Christ's words and ministry. These programs can be good, for they are, like church-buildings, man-made places to work for the glory of God. Such structures can be beautiful, effective, and holy.  In these last hours of Advent, I am spending time with my sister Rossetti. She has become one of the the "voices that command or pray, / Calling me." 

She calls me to step out into the cold twilight, to walk toward a place "Below the stars, beyond the moon," and to watch for the light.

Back in time

Dear Indiana,

Until 2005, you had the good sense not to observe Daylight Savings Time, and in that resistance, you shaped my eyes and spirit in beautiful ways.

While growing up on your western edge, I didn't think much about Daylight Savings, though I was proud that my otherwise-bland state had at least one mark of distinction. During my first semester of college, however, I experienced a "time change" for the first time, when my roommate insisted that we change our clocks in order to satisfy some sort of enforced chronological economy.  I was troubled to think that we could so recklessly rename and tamper with the hours and minutes. How arrogant, I thought, to wrench the clock away from the sun, conforming instead to railroad tables or agricultural conveniences. I wanted the hours on the clock to be a perfect language, signifier conforming sweetly to signified. Instead, I faced a truth I was learning, at the same time, in my first linguistics class: that human languages were arbitrary, flawed systems for stumbling into meaning, not pure and perfect lanterns shining into the truth of things.

Perhaps because I associate my first time change with such philosophical and spiritual dislocations, I remember my eighteen years of Indiana-time so fondly. I realize that you had plenty of good economic and logistical reasons to join the silly Daylight Savings Time bandwagon, but by waiting so long, you gave me something precious.

As a child, I could look out our kitchen window and name the hour perfectly. Each year, daylight slowly, slowly contracted toward the December solstice, then slowly, sweetly grew toward June. Our house faced due east, and I could measure the season through the shadows that fell through curtain laces and tree branches.  Living through these slow hours, winter never surprised us, and summer was coy, offering her delights only after we had endured a patient and penitent spring.

Very few men and women my age have enjoyed this privilege of slow time, seasonable time. Instead, most members of my generation were born into a world where time is all chronos: humans  at war with their clocks, wrangling time into systems that can mandate hours at the office, but which make little sense to children and morning glories and other wise creatures.

But you, my dear, backward Indiana, let me grow up in kairos, the appointed seasons of the sun and  the Holy Spirit. If this means that I often find myself, to borrow Wendell Berry's words, "bewildered in our timely dwelling place," so much the better.  The disorientation reminds me that I should always  mistrust clocks, for they never mark the times that matter.


Your prodigal daughter,

Bethany

Indiana sky: my first and favorite timepiece

     

My hypothetical husband, the spy

This week, I'm visiting my hometown in Indiana. My mother and I just had the following conversation, and it was too good to keep to myself: 


Mama: You've had enough big life events in the last year. Let's not get married this year.

Me: Married? But I'm not even.....

Mama: Oh, I know, I know. But these things happen.

Me: Even if I were to fall in love and decide to marry someone, I wouldn't want to be engaged this year.

Mama: But you always said you wanted a Christmas wedding....

Me: Good grief, Mama, I've been unmarried for twenty-nine years already; I think I could manage to wait until the next Christmas.

Mama: But there might be a war.

Me: A war? So, you want me to move up the date of my hypothetical wedding because of a hypothetical war?

Mama [nodding]: He might be a spy. [pause] You know, I had a friend in college who had to get married in a hurry because her husband was going to jail. [pause] Don't marry someone who's going to jail.

Me: I won't. Unless it's for defending civil rights, or something like that.

Mama: Right. Don't marry someone going to jail unless he's going for a just cause.

Me: Okay, Mama. I promise.

(From the  State Library of Queensland. No known copyright restrictions)

Thankful: Indiana

Today I am thankful for Indiana. I didn't think much about it for the eighteen years I spent growing up there, but it was (and is) a Good Place: a place with trees, public libraries, farm festivals, gentle hills, red leaves in autumn. Returning to Indiana reminds me that home is not always a place that matches our abstract principles about what-makes-a-good-place-to-live, but is often rooted on something far more concrete and simple: it is a place that allows a wandering daughter to rest in things she could love even before wit and memory gave them names.

What are you thankful for today?

I have a photograph

Directions: Go the town and the house where you grew up. Find the old photo albums. Open the one you never paid much attention to as a child. Glimpse the world as it looked when you were born. Marvel at familiar faces looking impossibly young. Resolve to take more pictures.

Memorial Day Weekend, 1982. Mama (age 26) and her younger brother.

Christmas 1982

January 1984. Me with my uncle and (future) aunt. They would marry later that year.

Summer 1984. The year my parents and I moved from Texas to Indiana.

Leaving Home

In a few hours, I will board a Texas-bound train in St. Louis.  For more than a month I have been enjoying some time in my first and longest home. I'm not particularly sentimental about Indiana, but I do love the house I grew up in, and after five years in Texas, I love a place where the rains fall heavy in June.  Since I first left home for college, sharing this place with friends has been one of my quietest joys. If you were here, we would work at the dining room table, then go for a walk under the old trees, and end our day on the porch together. This is a good place. This is home.

A place where words are gathered and sent with care.

A place where someone brings me flowers as I work.

A place with room for friends.

A place where naps are encouraged.

A place we pray.

A place I must leave.

Back Home Again in Indiana

Between packing up and moving out, taking a train from Texas to Indiana, and scrambling to finish a draft of my first dissertation chapter, I've been a bit preoccupied for the last two weeks.  However, I have several posts planned from my Hoosier homeland (my childhood home, though not my birthplace).  Tonight, a bit of nostalgia.

Earlier this year, I posted some reflections on gardens as a way of understanding home, and I included one of my favorite pictures -- a snapshot of my father with me in his garden, sometime around 1987, when he was a trim 30-something, and I was a wee wisp of a girl. More than twenty years later, we decided we needed an updated version.

Squinting against the sun in 1987. I wish my father still wore those shoes.

Still squinting in 2011. I'm smiling goofily here, but I promise I was happy.

Tonight, I'm thankful that this house is still home, even more thankful for the people in it, and glad to see my father's garden still grows.  What makes you grateful today?