Canephoros: two snippets

In the face of reflections on 9/11, Bin Laden--scintillating clarity, comfort--from C.S. Lewis, from St. Augustine.




1. C. S. Lewis, after the Nazi invasion of Poland. University Church of St. Mary the Virgin at Oxford on October 22, 1939.

It may seem odd for us to carry on classes, to go about our academic routine in the midst of a great war. What is the use of beginning when there is so little chance of finishing? How can we study Latin, geography, algebra in a time like this? Aren't we just fiddling while Rome burns?

This impending war has taught us some important things. Life is short. The world is fragile. All of us are vulnerable, but we are here because this is our calling. Our lives are rooted not only in time, but also in eternity, and the life of learning, humbly offered to God, is its own reward. It is one of the appointed approaches to the divine reality and the divine beauty, which we shall hereafter enjoy in heaven and which we are called to display even now amidst the brokenness all around us.


2. St. Augustine, c. 400, in a world of siege from Alaric to the Vandal Genseric:

You are surprised that the world is losing its grip? That the world is grown old? Don’t hold onto the old man, the world; don’t refuse to regain your youth in Christ, who says to you: ‘The world is passing away; the world is losing its grip; the world is short of breath. Don’t fear, your youth shall be renewed as an eagle.’

C.S. Coon's poetic tribute to'Wild Bill' Donovan

Louis Menand's review of Doug Waller's "Wild Bill Donovan" lists O.S.S. recruits who are "almost a capsule of mid-century American achievement." One--the anthropologist Carleton S. Coon (a beloved friend of ours in his life)--wrote this tribute to his "free fighter's hero":

On Learning of the death of
Wild Bill Donovan

Wild, people called him, who had heard of his fame
And wild he was in heart and in feyness
But more than wild was the man with the wile of Odysseus
Like the king of Assassins he welded together
An army of desperate, invisible soldiers
Each as bold as himself in single deeds
But none as keen as himself, the leader of all, commander of men
Who could ask, "Jim, will you limpet that ship?"
Knowing the answer, for none would refuse him, or
"Carl, a free ride to Albania?" "Yes? Then you're off,
Ten minutes to Zero," and we would all die for him.
Die for him some of us did, but he died for us all.
Some who are left would burn him whole, like a Viking jarl in his ship
Others would cover his bones with a colossal marble cross
Each to his taste, say I, Yankee, Irishman, Italian.
As many tombs will he have in our hearts as the scattered remains of Osiris,
How lucky we were that he came when he did in the long tide of history
Hail to Wild Bill, a hero of men and a name to hang myths on
As American as chowder, Crockett, and Putnam
A free fighter's hero, may God give him peace.


Carleton S Coon
June 2, 1959

Valentine 2011

Another poem for my sweetheart...

Clear-eyed girl you were, deemed “too
tall”—talking to the old anthropologist
(later—unhinged—“she’s beautiful”
he’d creak) that summer afternoon,
radiant, your yellow ribbon
windblown—his shillelagh tapped
across the dappled granite pavers.

Astride a cascade of longing
and tethered in trust we’d danced
together nights before, anchored
in love. But that day (just perhaps)
some prescient windward flow
of breeze and heaven kept
blowing us together and (unrelenting
as love) enlivened us that day, now.

Later that year we’d marry, then hop
into the Coronet (you still in your wedding
dress) to tell our love to him bedside
as he lay dying. In sickness and health,
through sweet and sour, a girl’s clear-eyed
constancy still persists and nourishes: the love
we’ve shared—once fumbling at words, waistbands
wedding prayers—rises tall, thriving with mercy.

Madeline: reading a book

Our granddaughter Madeline--two months old Jan 5th--reading a soft book...

It Came Upon The Midnight Clear

Christmastide artifact from 1996--it's fun to hear again--the kids were troopers, singing their hearts out.

Wonderfully made: Madeline Phuong Lovell

Sean & Duyen's baby girl born NYC 5 November 2010--19 3/4 inches, 6 pounds, 15 oz--here are a few birthday photos. What a sweetie!--fearfully and wonderfully made!

C.S. Lewis' "Adoration in infinitesimals"

Ansel Adams: Tenaya Creek, Dogwood, Rain. Yosemite, c. 1948


One must learn to walk before one can run... We--or at least I--shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, not have "tasted and seen." Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are "patches of Godlight" in the woods of our experience.


--C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, 1964, p.91

Lanesville: a personal (and rambling) appreciation

(This appeared in our local paper, 4 June 2010: here.)















Every year around our anniversary—in belilaced mid-May—my wife and I remember our Lanesville wedding. This year marked our 29th—and memories during this season become incredibly palpable as we walk and drive hither thither around Lanesville, Annisquam, Rockport: a young couple standing there exchanging vows in the church—then (and now) not at all sure what the future held—the window glass clattering in the long windows, the lilacs cut and stuffed in altar vases—my brother and I picking lilies-of-the-valley that morning, winding them into boutonnières with masking tape. I remember Gordon Hugenberger reading how "love keeps no record of wrongs" before the magnificent Vera Cheves played the recessional and we all tumbled downstairs to the tiny vestry for wedding cake and goodies.

We have loved this church from the moment we first worshipped there—it has always had a parish community feel to it. As a young couple new to this Gloucester community Allison and I experienced enormous kindness year after year from families with names like Ahola, Erkilla, Larsen, Macdonald, Gertsner, Aspesi, Haselgard, Craaybeek, Jacobsen, and others. Such marvelous people—the older we get the more these names and memories now become touchstones to us, witnesses to charming lives full of beauty, persistence through hard times, trusting at every turn the God they loved.

As it still does, the place absolutely amazed us then—there was the Lanesville Barnacle Bazaar and Ladies Aid, quarries and pit parties, pig roasts and parades. We remember Sylvester Ahola standing with Saima in their lovely home playing a private fanfare to our wedding. Or the troubled Mildred Muncie praying in church a rambling, inchoate prayer that somehow managed to burst into expansive praise and enormous beauty as it considered everything from starlings to starfields. As a young man I did odd jobs for older folks like Viola Ray, Mardie or Clifton Macdonald, Fannie Jacobsen and others who so appreciated every occasional task I could help with—Lanesvillean graciousness inevitably incorporating tea, coffee, cookies, nisu! A carpentry job might involve keeping an eye on the small fry in the home— Gordon and Jane Hugenberger would then walk hand-in-hand to the old Firehouse for a quick coffee together—but I ramble: these vignettes simply inform this sketch of church and community largely knit together, year after year.

This church—the place and the people—has been in so many ways the heart of our family: many of the most treasured heartfelt aspects of our lives are rooted there—joyous weddings and christenings, the grievous deaths of loved ones—some so very tragic—the play of children, the deep, arresting, practical wisdom of elderfolk—all this wrapped in deep compassion and worship, the beauty of music and song, the heartening, honest, human talk of men and women, young and old, over tea and coffee, in a quiet corner at church or chatting outside while the kids laughed and played.

This throng comes from Lanesville, Annisquam, West Gloucester, Rockport and other towns nearby. Our families and our deepest friendships have ranged across the entire community spectrum: public school teachers, university professors, fishermen, engineers, mechanics, carpenters and electricians and plumbers, cabinetmakers, attorneys, economists, anthropologists, booksellers, antique dealers, writers and musicians of all stripes—the list goes on. We share together our common griefs, joys and worries as we go (sometimes muddling) day by day, yearning somehow to live more and more like Jesus lived.

From my vantage the neighborhoods and community that have historically enfolded Lanesville and the Lanesville Congregational church have always championed a tolerance in community far removed from all things narrow and disquietingly insular. The village of Lanesville is a beautifully unique, spirited place—it’s somewhat fitting that this church reflect that eclectic spirit.

My wife Allison's Oklahoman father used to drawl that "an apple don't fall too far from the tree". And so it is that Lanesville, generation after generation, has nurtured some vibrant, thriving churches—and this particular church has for centuries now been no exception. This church's own eclecticism is testimony to this vital village community as well as to God's spirit reaching across all boundaries, drawing us as a community together, with hearts fully engaged in mercy, forgiveness, love.

John and Allison Lovell
Rockport, Ma.

When the World Was Young

A magnificent, heartening reflection by a dear friend of ours, our best man Jim Rotholz.

Old photos

Fun old photos, from Uncle Doug...


...of the two of us, c. 1983:




...and of darlin' Allison in Dallas, age 13:

Wicked Winter flows into softer Spring

(A delightful poem by a friend of ours.)


Wicked Winter flows into softer Spring,
not change for loss, but growth;
A constant circuit of renewal-repose.

While the sun, only a shadow of its Creator,
seeps through solid ground
To disquiet all that rests.

Whether by blanket of mist, rain or snow,
the smallest creatures are not forgotten
In sweet balance of diversity-fidelity.

And I in my pulsing chamber
am not much different
But to possess the gift of reason.

A gift or a curse?
I will not argue but rather submit
To every blessed pain-pleasure of growth.

-Jane Lucia Erikson, 1972

Right me up: "...your love stands firm forever..."

On our vacation last year to visit our wonderful family in Wisconsin, we grew fond of this song, State Radio's "Right Me Up"...

And then I happened across this sermon by Chris Taylor, referencing the song--and it seems to capture what first attracted us to the song.

Right Me Up

Valentine, 2010

A poem for my best friend. Twenty-nine years ago, Allison and I announced our engagement--on Valentine's Day, 1981.

We've always loved Robert Frost's poem "Directive" and its first line's spare (honest, meager) framework ("back out of all this now too much for us")--upon which the poem below builds, remembering how God carries us.




Valentine, 2010
Beyond your eyes, graced green
and dazzling beyond all spectrums,
comfort comes (in your words, in your laughter) and always, always,
kindness cascades through your love--too, too
often ignored, assumed, a luxury always lavished
upon this family, this man,
this lustrous life we have together. Magnificence,
opulence like this--how were we so blessed?--our prayers
festooned this love from the get-go: garlands of gladsome
amens, heartsick sighs, woeful worries, hushed hallelujahs.
Let's two together remember our only hope (from the beginning
lifting us when we were leveled, afflicted, careless)--that nothing
thoroughly planned out, not the most beneficent strategy
had much success apart from the Love that carried us
in far stronger arms always, always.
So my darling--whose beauty, voice, and grace glances
now like light against everything in my world (my dreams,
our talk, this family, our prayers)--here's praise for you,
winnowing beauty somehow from even drab, shabby days,
tenderly easing children's hurts, bearing more than beauty
ought to bear--carrying, being carried--always, always.
One time long ago we sang out full-throated hymns to heaven's
music and mercy--we danced for a moment--we yearned, yearned together
upon a crag in a seaside meadow, laughing heavenward that night and
chattering from a chalice of hope, uncertain the days ahead.
How I love you, I said: your eyes, your voice. How I love you
forever now I say: a friend fashioned like no other, no
other--a mystery to me even now, brimming with delight and laughter,
radiant, heartening--your breath twinned to my breath, hopes pinned
upon each other's hope in a Strength carrying us together,
singing love songs, lullabies, victory hymns forever, forever.

Ione Shaw Lovell, 1921 - 2010

LAGUNA WOODS — Ione LaCygne (Coats) Shaw Lovell, 88, wife of the late Robert Calvin Lovell, died peacefully at home on Friday, Jan. 15, 2010 surrounded by her family. Before retiring to Laguna Woods, Ione lived many years in South Pasadena and Glendale, CA, and earlier in Suncook, NH.

She was born in Los Angeles on Dec. 11, 1921, the daughter of Kenneth S. Coats, and Mabel D. (Loberg) Coats. Ione grew up in Highland Park, CA, graduating from Franklin High School.

She found satisfaction for many years working in the travel industry, for many years owning and operating the Exodus/Argosy Travel agency in Glendale. Earlier she managed her own flower shop in Suncook, NH. As a young woman, she worked successfully as a photographers model, and at Lockheed during WWII.

Ione was a longtime member of Lake Avenue Congregational Church, Pasadena, and later Grace Hills Chapel, Laguna Woods. She was for many years president of the Soroptimist International Glendale club. She was a member of the Christian Wheelers club, enjoying the adventure of camping and the club's camaraderie.

In her spare time she enjoyed crocheting, reading, and graciously entertaining friends and neighbors in her home. She loved animals, and the beauty of nature--all strays were nurtured in her home. In earlier times she was active as a young Republican, and continued to enjoy spirited political conversations in later years--often with her grandchildren.

Ione will be remembered as a beloved mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend to her family and friends around the country--from New England to Wisconsin to California. Ione remains treasured by so many of our related families: the extended Lovell, Coats, Shaw, Cunningham, Torres, Rohrer, and Simcox families.

In addition to her husband Robert, she was predeceased in 1951 by her beloved first husband, Roger Tolles Shaw.

She is survived by her brother, Leighton Coats and wife Joanne; her three children, Robert Shaw and companion Kay McCann of Las Vegas, NV, James Lovell and wife Sheryl of Fountain Valley, CA, John Lovell and wife Allison of Rockport, MA; and four grandchildren, Sean Lovell and wife Duyen, Cameron Lovell, Jessie Lovell, and Robert Lovell; and friend Nobuko Yamanobe, beloved as a daughter.


Shorter copies of this obituary can be found posted at the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register through February.

Sing lullaby...

A wonderful Basque carol (Douze Noëls populaires en dialecte souletin, 1895), paraphrased Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924)


The Infant King

Sing lullaby!
Lullaby baby, now reclining,
sing lullaby!
Hush, do not wake the infant King.
Angels are watching, stars are shining
over the place where He is lying:
sing lullaby!

Sing lullaby!
Lullaby baby, now a-sleeping,
sing lullaby!
Hush, do not wake the infant King.
Soon will come sorrow with the morning,
soon will come bitter grief and weeping:
sing lullaby!

Sing lullaby!
Lullaby baby, now a-dozing,
sing lullaby!
Hush, do not wake the infant King.
Soon comes the cross, the nails, the piercing,
then in the grave at last reposing;
sing lullaby!

Sing lullaby!
Lullaby! is the babe awaking?
Sing lullaby!
Hush, do not stir the infant King.
Dreaming of Easter, gladsome morning.
conquering death, its bondage breaking:
sing lullaby!

Hardship

I'm not entirely enamored with some of President Obama's initiatives, policies--but do love this remark from 2007:

"I take away the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism..."

This reminds me of the honesty and hopefulness in Jesus' words:

"In this world you have many troubles. But don't be afraid: I have overcome the world."

John 16:33

California, 1963: Wisps of age

A terribly double-exposed and poorly transferred video of graduation day at El Centro Elementary, June 1963--a remnant/artifact providing just a wisp of that day--Mr. Edgar our principal, the ceremonial ringing of the bell by students, etc.

The clip also has the images of my family & cousins swimming in Wisconsin on our family vacation later that summer, cavorting in the lake, sliding down the waterslide--the conflation of happy memories, and the beginning of my father's nearly predictable tendency to double-exposure...

Given its poor quality it's best viewed in large format...




The soundtrack is 'Massasoit' penned in 2003 in honor of one of the most magnificent, courageous and beloved friends ever--Dan Swensen. (A tribute to Danny as beloved professor, here.)

Elizabeth Bishop's Sestina

When son Cameron was in 4th grade, Cam asked teacher Mrs. Gray if his dad could share this lovely poem with the class.

Thanks to the esteemed Donna Gray's invitation, I soon witnessed a class remarkable for its depth of insight, its delight in the sestina structure--we seemed to talk about its meaning forever. An absolutely delightful poem--can't wait to share it with grandchildren, insha'allah!



Elizabeth Bishop


Sestina
Elizabeth Bishop, 1956

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

Uncle Bobby

Just home from two weeks in Laguna with family which causes us to reflect on the blessing that family is. Here's a photo of Uncle Bobby with Cam & Jessie, Wheelers' Point, Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1992.

"I Will Carry You"

Doing the truth

Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.
-Isaiah 46:4

“He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart.”
–Isaiah 40:11


Elizabeth Anscombe

Married for nearly sixty years, and nurturing three sons and four daughters, Mrs. Anscombe was a beloved wife and mother when she died at home in Cambridge in 2001, surrounded by family prayers. Wittgenstein's prize student and protege, Elizabeth Anscombe was also one of the foremost philosophers of the twentieth century, whose convincing logic as a young woman at a university debate with C.S. Lewis in 1948 persuaded the intellectually honest Lewis to rewrite a chapter in Miracles. 1 With her penchant for rigorous intellectual honesty and for putting her faith into action, she whole-heartedly loved her God. Though troubled in the last few years of her long life by a heart ailment and nearly crippled in a car accident, Elizabeth Anscombe wrote what would be her final lecture, entitled "Doing The Truth"--a touchstone to St. John 2, and a fitting capstone to a life engaged not only in philosophical studies of human action and intention, but chiefly in a lifelong passion for her God.

If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in the darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
–1 John 1:6,7.

"Doing the truth"—from Cambridge to Lanesville—is manifest simply in the ardent, faithful acts of daily life by imperfect, broken men and women who together yearn and pray to love their heavenly Father more and more. “Doing the truth” is no solitary endeavor, or something we ourselves somehow accomplish—it is not some tidy, uncomplicated enterprise in the midst of our otherwise messy and often heartrending days. C.S. Lewis urged that "by doing the truth which we already know, let us make progress towards the truth which as yet we are ignorant of."3 Step by step, “doing the truth" is simply an allegiance to walk in the light day by day in fellowship with one another and with our "Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ."

"Doing the truth" extends immeasurably beyond even our best plans and most beneficent strategies--as godly as those plans may be. In “doing the truth” we remember that whatever we do, God carries us. From this vantage, we have one humble purpose: to love God and our neighbor—where as C.S. Lewis pointed out “your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”4 Our own strategies are welcome and necessary--but they are the prayerful plans and deliberations of men and women already securely enfolded in the arms of their heavenly Father.

“Doing the truth” is rooted in God’s great and utterly sacrificial love for us—with His lavish love we’ve been given everything. We are then free to proceed boldly beyond the things that would perhaps keep us from doing His purpose, from extending His mercy throughout our community and the world. Our confidence to pray, to act and to serve rests entirely in Him, our surety in a loving Father who carries us “close to His heart.” A fitting nineteenth-century Danish meditation from Soren Kierkegaard reminds us to Our Lord’s love, redemption, strength and rescue as he carries us:

O Lord Jesus Christ, there is so much to drag us back: empty pursuit, trivial pleasures, unworthy cares. There is so much to frighten us away: a pride too cowardly to submit to being helped, cowardly apprehensiveness which evades danger to its own destruction, anguish for sin which shuns holy cleansing as disease shuns medicine. But Thou art stronger than these, so draw Thou us now more strongly to Thee. We call Thee our Saviour and Redeemer, since Thou didst come to earth to redeem us from the servitude under which we were bound or had bound ourselves, to save the lost. This is Thy work, which Thou didst complete, and which Thou wilt continue to complete unto the end of the world; for since Thou Thyself hast said it, therefore Thou wilt do it—lifted up from the earth Thou wilt draw all unto thee. 5

Hallelujah!


Notes:

1. Anscombe and Lewis debated 2 February 1948, at the Socratic Club, Oxford. See Lewis, C.S., God In The Dock (Grand Rapids: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing, 1994), p. 144.

2. This use can be seen not only here in John's first epistle, but in his gospel as well: "But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God" (John 3:21 KJV).

3. From a letter to Fr. Calabria, 13 January 1948. See Lewis, C.S. and Calabria, Don Giovanni, The Latin Letters of C.S. Lewis, (South Bend: St. Augustine's Press, 1998), p. 43.

4. Lewis, C.S., The Weight of Glory, (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), p. 14-15.

5. Kierkegaard, Soren, The Prayers of Kierkegaard. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 87.


(The original PDF can be found here: I Will Carry You)