"The library was a little old shabby place...

... Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church." 

~ A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 

Because I Love Both George MacDonald and Books

“As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book.” 
~  George MacDonald

(Photo thanks to Tim Kimberley, Free Images.) 

More -- Yes, More -- Quotes from In This House of Brede

Photo courtesy of Nat Merry

~~~~~

"She certainly doesn't make much effort," Philippa had to say.

"Only in trances," said Julian, scornfully.

"We don't put much faith in ecstasies here," Dame Ursula had told them. "The nun you see rapt away in church isn't likely to be the holiest. The holiest one is probably the one you would never notice, because she is simply doing her duty."

~~~~~

"Wouldn't the best penance," asked Abbess more gently, "be in doing what you are asked? What you can do?"

~~~~~

"A young nun has to realize what it is she has renounced; love, human love and marriage, must be shown to her as tender and desirable, as is the gift of children. She must learn there are not compensations."

Dame Clare's eyes flashed as she thought of "all the twaddle people talk...The lack of these things will gnaw at her all her life, leave holes in her, yet she must be just as warm, as self-denying and hard working as any wife or mother, and just as loving, without anyone to hold on to. Somehow most of us do it. Lady Abbess used to say, there may be lazy Benedictines and comfortable Poor Clares, but she had never met them."

~~~~~

"Give us a really good meal, something filling."

"Such as?"

"Roast lamb and pancakes," said Abbess without thinking.

Dame Agnes sanctioned  Irish stew and hasty pudding, and got her first reprimand ... "It's not your business to penance the community! Mortification should never begin in the kitchen."

~~~~~

"I am a woman...Look at me."

"I can't see past all those trappings."

"That's the trouble," [she] said sadly. "So few people can--but please try."

~~~~~

"It has been a long, hard road...especially at first, those small tormenting things."

"They were only pinpricks."

"Martyrdom by pinpricks can be very painful."

Quote for the First Tuesday in Advent

"We always want this thing or that thing, and even when we have Jesus Himself in our breast we are not satisfied. Yet He is all that we could possibly desire..." 

~~ St. Francis de Sales 

A Quote For All Saints Day

"As the world must be redeemed in a few men to begin with, 

so the soul is redeemed in a few of its thoughts, and works, and ways to begin with: it takes a long time to finish the new creation of this redemption."

~~ George MacDonald 

My Work Here is Done

Tonight, while the girls and I were walking the dog, I realized that I can throw out any quote from The Office* and Anne and Betsy can finish it.

"Cool beans, man, I live by the quarry," I said.

"Hey, we should hang out by the quarry and throw things down there," Betsy said.

(She even got the emphasis on the right word.)

"Identity theft is not a joke, Jim!" I said earlier today.

"Millions of families suffer every year!" Anne dutifully replied.

Sigh.

I'm so proud.

~~~~~

*Or You've Got Mail or Ghostbusters or Parks and Recreation, or Doctor Who, or Lost, or Tootsie, or ....

A quote from St. Jane Frances de Chantal on her feast day

"If we patiently accept through love all that God allows to happen, then we will begin to taste even here on earth something of the delights the saints experience in heaven. But for this we must serve God willingly and lovingly, seeking to obey the Divine Will rather than to follow our own inclinations and desires. For the perfection of love demands that we desire for ourselves only whatever God wills. Let us implore the good God unceasingly to grant us this grace!"

~~ St. Jane Frances de Chantal

And one from her spiritual director, St. Francis de Sales:

"It is far better to do a few things well than undertake many good works and leave them half-done."

Flannery for Lent

"I feel that if I were not a Catholic I would have no reason to write, no reason to see, no reason ever to feel horrified or even to enjoy anything."

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

"What first stuns the young writer emerging from college is that there is no clear-cut road for him to travel on. He must chop a path in the wilderness of his own soul; a disheartening process, lifelong and lonesome."

I was once, five or six years ago, taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater. . . . She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual. We went at eight and at one, I hadn't opened my mouth once, there being nothing for me in such company to say. The people who took me were Robert Lowell and his now wife, Elizabeth Hardwick. Having me there was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them. Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the 'most portable' person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, 'Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.' That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest is expendable."

~~ Flannery O'Connor 

It's the anniversary of Michelangelo's death, which brings me to food choices in Lent

Why, you ask?

Before Lent began, Atticus mentioned (can't remember where he heard it -- something on NPR the other day?) that perhaps for all of Lent we should adopt Michelangelo Buonarotti's diet of choice. Supposedly, it consisted of cheese, pears, bread, olive oil, and wine.

That sounds heavenly.

Too heavenly for Lenten eating.

We adopted some other dietary changes.

Alas.

Quote for the first Monday in Lent:

"Birds have nests in trees and stags have thickets where they can find shelter when the need arises. Deer know where to take cover, either to hide or to enjoy some cool shade during the summer. So also our hearts should each day choose some place, either on Mount Calvary or within Our Lord's wounds, or in some other place near Him, as a retreat where they can retire at various times to refresh and restore themselves during their exterior occupations.

There, as in a stronghold, they can defend themselves against temptation. Blessed will be the soul that can truly say to Our Lord, 'You are my place of strength and my stronghold to give me safety, my roof against the rain, my shade against the heat.'"   

~~ St. Francis de Sales 

My Current Desktop Quote

I see it every day when I open my laptop:

"All you have to do 

is write one true sentence. 

Write the truest sentence 

that you know." 

~~ Ernest Hemingway 

"And in fact it is by falling in love with a subject ..."

Thinking again about the Homeschool High School carnival and wanted to share this quote from Kenneth Clark:

Now, although I believe that this part of education* is the most important part, it has one great defect. One may achieve intellectual discipline, but one doesn't remember a single thing that one learnt in that way, because one doesn't absorb it. I can't translate the simplest Latin inscription, and if you ask me what Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is about I couldn't tell you. 

Education has another aspect -- what you learn through delight. It is a pity that the Nazis spoilt, by adopting it, a very good slogan: "Strength through joy." And in fact it is by falling in love with a subject, a period, a style, an individual hero, that one absorbs something so that it becomes a part of one's living tissue, and one never forgets it ... And the first advice I would give to any young person is, when you fall in love with Roman baroque or with the essays of Montaigne or with whatever it may be, give up everything to study that one, all-absorbing theme of the moment....

*Clark is referring here to intellectual discipline, of which he says, "It's absolutely vital to the conduct of life, and it's absolutely vital to the action of the mind throughout the whole of the rest of one's life. We used to achieve it by having people learn Latin, the most disagreeable thing I've ever done in my life. I did it for ten years and hated it all the time. But I did get some sort of -- well, I suppose one can only call it intellectual discipline out of it."

Quotes For a Sunday

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. 

You can only see as far as your headlights, 

but you can make the whole trip that way.”

~~ E.L. Doctorow

“I want to live other lives. 

I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get. 

Writing is my way of making other chances."

~~ Anne Tyler

“A writer is someone for whom writing 

is more difficult than it is for other people.”

~~ Thomas Mann

(Gotta love Writer's Almanac.)

From Today's Office of Readings

"Therefore, we ask that we may know what we love, 

since we ask nothing other than that you give us yourself. 

For you are our all: our life, our light, our salvation, 

our food and our drink, our God. Inspire our hearts, I ask you, Jesus, 

with that breath of your Spirit; wound our souls with your love, 

so that the soul of each and every one of us may say in truth: 

Show me my soul’s desire, for I am wounded by your love."

~~ St. Columban 

Quote for a Saturday

"Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. 

Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve 

them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life."

~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson 

(h/t:  C. Hope Clark) 

Happy Birthday to A Wrinkle in Time

It's fifty years old!*

~~~~~

Here's an NPR story about the book, and here is one of my favorite L'Engle quotes: 

"You have to write the book that wants to be written. 

And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, 

then you write it for children." 

Rebecca Stead, author of the excellent When You Reach Me, gets it. In the NPR article, she says: 

"A Wrinkle in Time also asks these huge questions, really, about the universe, and good and evil, and the power of love, and all of this crazy science and complex ideas. It assumes that kids are able to think about all that stuff. I think that a lot of people forget that, or never realize it, but a children's book is really the best place to ask big questions. Our worlds get smaller as we get older," Stead says.

~~~~~

Here's a quick round-up of my past L'Engle posts:

Anne-with-an-e's review (written when she was 14) of A Ring of Endless Light.

Some great L'Engle quotes.
(Updated to note: I fixed the quote link and it should take you to the right location now. And, here's a link to every post in which I ever mentioned Madeleine L'Engle!)

My fangirl moment with Madeleine L'Engle.

~~~~~

And, from an online writing pal, Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda, here's a great interview from June, 2000 that ran in St. Anthony Messenger magazine.

~~~~~

*Ramona looked over my shoulder and said, "Wow, Mommy, you're older than A Wrinkle in Time." I said, "Yeah, honey, thanks for pointing that out," and she replied, "No problem. It's what I do best." 

Quote for a Sunday

Beautiful post from Eileen at Let us Rejoice, which includes this quote from Fr. Joseph Payne:

"We who follow Jesus dare not live the message of love in muffled and muted fashion. If Jesus was really present, we who believe in Jesus must be really present, or the gospel will be sung by us only in hushed tones."


Do yourself the favor of reading the whole quote, the whole post.

Quotes for a Thursday

 from Through the Year With Mary, January 12: 

"I force myself in vain to meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary; I don't succeed in fixing my mind on them. For a long time I was desolate about this lack of devotion which astonished me, for I love the Blessed Virgin so much that it should be easy for me to recite in her honor prayers which are so pleasing to her. Now I am less desolate; I think that the Queen of heaven, since she is my Mother, must see my good will and she is satisfied with it."

~~ St. Therese of Lisieux

A great saint admitted her struggles with prayer; pray for me to humbly persevere, Mary, just as the Little Flower did. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From Charlotte's Web (which I'm reading aloud with Ramona), on Wilbur's plans for the day:

"From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still, and think of what it was like to be alive, and to wait for Fern."

Quote for a Sunday

“We cultivate a very small field for Christ, but we love it, knowing that God does not require great achievements but a heart that holds back nothing for self.... 

The truest crosses are those we do not choose ourselves.... 

He who has Jesus has everything.” 

~~ St. Rose Philippine Duchesne 

A Deliberate Life

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, 

to front only the essential facts of life, 

and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, 

and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

~~ Henry David Thoreau 

Shortly after I started this blog, I considered alternate names for it -- I humbly acknowledged that "Karen Edmisten" is not particularly clever, and I daydreamed about what I might've named my blog had I given it more thought before I hit the "Create Blog" button. My favorite alternate-universe name was A Deliberate Life.  It summed up what I want my world to be: Deliberate. Thoughtful. A life with love and purpose. Conviction.

"Deliberate" also tends to conjure the notion of "A Plan." But I've never been terribly good at plans, and certainly not at anything like The Five Year Plan.

But not to worry, because "deliberate" and "planned", it turns out, are not at all the same thing.

I can think of numerous deliberate lives that were not particularly planned.

Take Robert Frost, for instance. Although he went to Dartmouth and Harvard, he never earned a degree. He worked at a variety of jobs just to make a living. A biography at Poets.org notes that "Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel." From the outside, before anyone knew that Robert Frost would be Robert Frost For Heavens' Sake, he might've appeared to be something of a slacker. A job hopper. People perhaps shook their heads over the college dropout.

But he was deliberate.

He was a poet. It's who he was, and he knew it.

Van Gogh was an artist. He was a mess, but he was an artist, and he knew it. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta fed the hungry for Jesus, even when she felt dry and far from His embrace. It's who she was. Marie Curie was a scientist, Madeleine L'Engle was a writer. Though difficulties and sufferings came upon them, they lived deliberately. They knew the essential facts of their lives.

At my house, we will embark this week on our twelfth year of homeschooling. My life has been full of meanderings, changes, about-faces, and periods when I appeared undoubtedly to the world to be a slacker. But, since my conversion, I have been living that deliberate life. Unquestionably still full of twists and turns, alarming developments -- such as becoming a mother, becoming a Catholic, becoming a homeschooler -- and messy days and sometimes anguished nights. But deliberate.

I know who I am.

And I can only hope that as we continue to follow this adventure that is homeschooling -- as we look at the final year of "high school" (whatever that is, really), and college, and job and life possibilities, and the swirling middle of the teen years for another daughter, and at an age that the world calls "fourth grade" for yet another --  that I can pass on to my cherished children the essence of the soul-calming peace that comes with knowing how you want to live.

I followed Jesus because I wished to live deliberately, 

to front only the essential facts of life, 

and see if I could not learn what Jesus had to teach, 

and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not loved Him. 

Quote for a Thursday

Remember to keep in mind that all the past is nothing

and that every day we should say with David, "Now I begin to love my God."

~~ St. Francis de Sales