Almost Thanksgiving…
If this causes you to think about holiday shopping, then check out Kristin Berkey-Abbott’s excellent list of poetry books to buy:
http://kristinberkey-abbott.blogspot.com/2009/11/books-with-spine-for-your-holiday.html
and poetry chapbooks:
http://kristinberkey-abbott.blogspot.com/2009/11/chapbooks-make-great-stocking-stuffers.html
If you’re thinking about applying for a residency, Susan Rich give some tips at her new blog:
http://thealchemistskitchen.blogspot.com/2009/11/artist-residencies-what-you-should-know.html
And, if you want to know what I’m doing, we’re celebrating quietly as our families are out in the Midwest and most of our friends in the Northwest. I’ve ordered some duck, as there’s no point roasting a turkey for two, and I wanted to try something different. (Probably serving with a cranberry-cherry sauce on top.) Also on the menu: cornbread stuffing with dried cherries and pine nuts and maybe a little duck confit, a delicata squash baked with cranberries, and a mini pumpkin-cheesecake. Probably that’s already too much for us, and I haven’t even counted a potato or green veggie dish!
Remembering what to be thankful for. I love seeing the trees with their orange and red leaves against a sharp blue sky – I missed fall while I lived in San Diego (too sunny and desert-like – plus a lack of trees) and Seattle (where we’d have one day of fall, then a rainstorm knocked down all the leaves, then we’d start nine months of rain.) I am thankful for a steady stream of sunny days in between rain showers here. I’m thankful for all the kind back-channel notes I received about my post on being childless, from people with children and people without. I’m thankful for poets and for people who read poetry. I’m thankful for friends who don’t forget about me even though I keep moving away, and for friendly gestures from new acquaintances. I’m thankful for writing, thankful for some employment, thankful for my husband who has been an extra super-superhero as I’ve been on crutches most of this year (broken foot, sprained ankle, then another sprained ankle after that…) and he has been on housekeeping, cat-caretaking and grocery-shopping duty. I’m thankful I survived the scariest bout of pneumonia I ever had this year. I’m actually really thankful that a new year is about to begin, hopefully a better, healthier year, a year full of promise and opportunity.
Happy Thanksgiving! And the holidays and Christian Humanism (or, I John 4:12 and the Greatest Commandment)
So, Jessica Smith and The Poetry Foundation Blog have got me thinking about the kind of Christianity I could really embrace. Jessica mentioned that she’s not religious, but that the verse “No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us” ( I John 4:12) pretty much sums up what a religion should be about.
Ange Mlinko on the Harriet Blog talked about how Auden got in trouble with Christian friends and Rationalist friends alike for valuing the commandment “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” above the rest of the cannon or the Church (which, as Ange points out, Jesus said in a related verse could be used to replace entire Old Testament Law.)
These days, Christianity has a terrible rep in America, as a bunch of smug, self-righteous people trying to start another set of crusades (cough, President, cough.) But I think of back when I read the Bible myself at 12 or 13 (complete with rainbows and Jesus-hugging-sheep pictures!) that I was really struck with I John 4:12, and that I thought, that is really a God I could picture and get behind, a God who, crazy as it sounds, is love. I think the verse in I John goes onto say something about “God is love. He who does not love does not know God…he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” (This is a paraphrase, I don’t have it memorized.) It really puts that religious stuff in perspective – listen, if we can’t get be kind and stuff to all the crazy people around us (our families included – and they’re the craziest of all, usually) then we don’t have any business going around saying how much we love God.
In high school my Honors European History class studied Christian Humanism, and several pieces of work by Erasmus (In Praise of Folly was a really witty piece of writing I still enjoy reading) and Blaise Pascal. Like Auden, they were intelligent, educated people who didn’t believe the Church was really acting for the good of the average person, and encouraged people to 1. think for themselves, read the Bible for themselves, which was pretty radical in the 1500’s etc. and 2. do that thing where you love your neighbor instead of doing a lot of religious rituals.
Hmm. Must be all the Christmas music in the air, but that all sounds good to me. I’m basically a selfish person, and tend to forget that the people around me (the slow person in line, or the idiot weaving over both lanes going 40 in a 55 mph zone) are real people, with internal lives and struggles, just as valuable as me. It would be good for me to remember more often that the best way to be a spiritual person is just to be decent to the person next to me.
Pshaw. What will happen to my Villainess reputation if I keep up this kind of talk. Bah Humbug I say! Poison apples (and pumpkins) for all!
Plus, I just got done watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. If that doesn’t make you all sentimenal for your high school history theology-studying days, I don’t know what will.
