The Tide in the River

A short verse stuck in my mind over 20 years ago, and has been playing there off and on out of a proper context. I'm pretty sure it came to me in a book of poems for children, and somewhere along the way I incorrectly connected it with Longfellow; when recently I searched around online for a while I found that the author is Eleanor Farjeon.

Only once that I can remember did the meaning fit with the situation, when I was with my dear husband on a short getaway to celebrate our wedding anniversary. We were staying in the company town of Scotia in way-northern California, where the sawmill is built near the Eel River.

After dinner we walked in the dark around the village of Rio Dell close by, and on our way back to the hotel stopped on the bridge to lean over the rail; we listened to the quiet flowing noise and could barely make out the stream down below. Here was the right time and place, and the verse very nimbly popped into my mind, and I recited:

The tide in the river,
The tide in the river,
The tide in the river runs deep.
I saw a shiver
Pass over the river
As the tide turned in its sleep.

         --Eleanor Farejon

Now we're celebrating that blessed day once more, but we're driving to California's Central Coast this time for our little vacation, to the town of Cambria where we spent part of our honeymoon and which we haven't visited since. Maybe we'll go to the beach this time. Let me see, do I know any beach-y verse I could get ready?

defeat of the bogey

Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
      ― G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles

 Linking up to Weekends With Chesterton

More or less of what?

My thoughts about children's books and Lent converge on this excerpt from Richard Wilbur's More Opposites, which I think one of The Most Fun collections of poems and drawings. I don't even require another person to read Wilbur's humorous poems to -- they often make me chuckle contentedly or muse to myself. I see that I already posted this particular one, but it was years ago, and I for one can use it often.

The illustrations of this question in the book include a simple drawing of people with distressed faces holding their tummies. I think the cartoon at bottom makes a similar companion to the poem.

It's #15 in the More Opposites book:

The opposite of less is more.
What's better? Which one are you for?
My question may seem simple, but
The catch is -- more or less of what?

"Let's have more of everything!" you cry.
Well, after we have had more pie,
More pickles, and more layer cake,
I think we'll want less stomach-ache.

The best thing's to avoid excess.
Try to be temperate, more or less.

There is a Mennonite cookbook titled More With Less, from which I gleaned many good cooking ideas in the early days of my homemaking career. But more valuable than the actual recipes was the refreshing concept that one might have more health and more enjoyment of eating and probably more money to spend on other things if you ate less.

Of course this is something we need to keep in mind all the time, not just during Lent. The church fathers caution us not to eat so much food that we aren't able to pray after eating it; an overfull stomach hinders prayer. If it's possible that Less Food = More Prayer....
     Let's just pause and think on that.

Are toddlers lonely? -- Blue Chameleon

A chameleon is the protagonist of Emily Gravett's simple-plotted story with minimalist illustrations and text. He enters the story in a blue state and with the lament "I'm lonely," after which he proceeds to change his colors and even shape as he goes about trying to make friends with a banana, a boot, a spotted ball, a sock, a fish, etc. until he gives up and becomes white and nearly invisible.

A colorful fellow chameleon eventually comes along and is the first to answer the lonely guy's minimal queries such as "Hello" and "Can we hang out together?"

I wouldn't read Blue Chameleon to my children or grandchildren because the social dynamics of the story are so unrealistic and foreign to the world of this age child.

Why introduce someone so young as to not know his colors to the concept of loneliness? If there is a deeper message to the book, it might be that if you are a Colorful Character you might make friends more easily -- yes, why not get the kids started early on, stressing over their self-image. It could be seen as a cautionary tale as well, a heads-up that inanimate objects or fish won't be likely to answer your greetings.

These messages are beyond the concerns of children I have known in my own family and in my day-care business. I haven't seen a child who was worried about friends until at least Kindergarten, and at that time I would rather teach them how to be a friend rather than start them off with the example of discontent and self-focus.

If a child has someone there to read this book to him, he is not alone and already has at least one other human in his life. But if friendlessness is truly a problem for a very young child, I can't see that this story would do anything to help.   

I'd prefer to teach colors with a book like The Color Kittens -- not that anyone is in dire need of a book to learn about this aspect of every single item in his environment.
 
The animal in this story is not a good representative of his species; real chameleons use their color-changing abilities in order to make themselves unseen, not the opposite. To hide from enemies, not to make friends. And I'm pretty sure they don't change their shape, or take on more than one color at a time, unlike these storybook creatures -- or the stuffed toy in my living room -- who go about with all their colors shining brilliantly at once.

I suppose the biggest problem with this book is that I find it boring, so I am annoyed with it and try to figure out what bothers me. Too many books for the very young aren't any fun for the adults and I suspect that that is one reason they don't read to the children as much as might be profitable. Next time I should write about a book I love to read to children. But you probably already know about all of those!

Philosophy of Pie and Picnics

Vegan Coconut Pie

Between tonight and tomorrow this subject must become theoretical, as Monday my church begins fasting in preparation for the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. Though I admit to making vegan desserts, like this coconut pie for Father L.'s birthday, usually I'd rather just wait until a fast-free day to enjoy the butter and cream. Hey, by then I'm happy to pour cream in my coffee and call it dessert.

But that's not festive enough for a picnic, or for a tea party. I think both of those events demand some cake, if they are going to be traditional (in addition to the scones, if you want those). Sadly, our family is generally lacking in cakes, with the major exception of Pearl, who learned on her own and makes lovely ones. I don't think her household lacks cake; I don't know anything about their picnics.

The rest of us, going back a couple of generations and on both sides of the family, eat pie. One of us even declared, "Cakes are for looking at."

I can't grant that much myself, because my very few attempts at cake decorating beyond the sprinkling of some coarse sugar did not draw any comments about prettiness. My favorite topping for children's birthday cakes of long ago was an array of gumdrops -- but with that we start slipping into the candy category.

It may have been Big Sister Pearl who baked this birthday cake for Soldier, using plenty of that ingredient that is so important. I can see something in his expression that hints at what he would do 20 years down the road: leave cake out of his wedding altogether, in preference for pie.

I blame bloggers for giving me the feeling that something is missing. Have you noticed how many blog posts have been written about this or that recipe for cake, which comes out of the oven in the late morning or afternoon just in time to have a slice with some tea, at the kitchen table with the children just home from school, or just taking a break from homeschool?

Proof that I baked a cake

It's not clear how I would work that tradition into my lifestyle at this point. My husband would be alarmed and reluctant, to put a good spin on it, and might not eat any cake. I'm considering reviving my Girlfriends Tea Parties just so I can make a cake or two. When I did this before it was a great way to try out a few of the hundreds of dessert recipes I have in my collection. After we sampled them together, all the ladies took home most of the leftovers to share with their sweeter-toothed husbands.

One huge advantage to packing the cake into a basket instead, to be eaten on a blanket spread under a tree, is that I wouldn't have to clean the house beforehand. But the Old English style of picnicking has also not caught on in the Glad Tribe. Our group has favored throwing handfuls of trail mix into their mouths so that they can get to the mountain peak and back before dark. None of this leisurely sitting around eating and fattening up.

But I have a new desire to broaden our style in that regard, too, probably from reading too many blog posts about Wind in the Willows and grown-up girls taking their Toad and Mole dolls on outings with yummy noshables.

It's good that I will have a few weeks to think about these important questions -- or rather, not to think about them. And by then I'll be too busy getting ready for a new grandchild, and getting ready for a trip...Then there will be another fast, and then another new grandchild. All these ideas for events that require a Lot of Planning really don't fit in this summer.
 
But it won't take long to throw together a pie to set before my dear husband, a blackberry or cherry would suit just fine, and leftovers won't be a problem.

Listening to Pooh

Nearly 20 years ago I sat for hours reading Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner into the tape recorder, so that my youngest could listen to the stories at night after she got into bed. It was a challenge to find the time and to keep the lively house noises outside of my bedroom door, but I kept at it for many recording sessions, and she got at least one long cassette full of my sleep-inducing voice.

Before I completed the project, one tape broke and I became disheartened about the loss of so much work. Then we found a professionally produced edition of Pooh stories and young Kate made do with someone else's voice in her ears as she drifted off. It was a long time before she got tired of this Pooh routine.

Now Scout has the homemade tape; you can see him wiggling before the sound system in this short video his mother made, listening beyond his years as she (not the one I made the tapes for) used to do. Pippin would stand by the radio to hear the adult program "Unshackled," and sit patiently and attentively while I read books more on the level of the oldest children in our tribe.

Cassette tapes are antiquated now, and players not so available as they used to be. I'm sure my Pooh tape won't live a lot longer. But now, by means of a digital camera, a minute of the story has been preserved against its demise.

Snowmen and Jello - Christmas

Two Glad Grandboys

While we are waiting for Christmas and preparing our gifts, and thinking about what Santa and our parents are preparing for us, children are lucky if we have some snow around with which to build a snowman or snowlady.

My own grandchildren sometimes have that. But when I was a child, I only had the beloved "Frosty the Snowman" 45 to play on my little record player.

It's the only record I remember from my youth until I bought such ones as "Like a Rolling Stone," and I listened to the Frosty tale over and over so that I can still hear the voice -- maybe it was Red Foley -- in my head. On the other side he sang "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." The image below is not quite like what I owned, but it evokes the memory well enough.
 

I remain snowless, and don't mind a bit. Besides, I can watch "The Snowman" on video. Those who lack the technology for watching movies (and I know there must be some of those people still, though they are probably not the ones reading this) could read the wordless book The Snowman.

But the video is so enchanting, with its haunting tune. The first time I borrowed the movie from the library, it was a version with the song, but since then I have only found it with a purely instrumental score. We are all fortunate now, and I am more than pleased, because I can share with you what I found on YouTube, a clip that includes sung lyrics of "Walking in the Air."



















When I turned fifty a friend took me browsing in a quilt shop to pick out a few pieces of fabric as a birthday present from her. Several prints called to mind images from the adventures of the snowman and his little boy, and I took rectangles of them home with a theme brewing.

I sewed by hand several potholders that I call my Snowman Potholders. Of course, they have nothing to do with Christmas, except for their frequent role in pulling pies out of the oven for Christmas dinner.

Waiting....We Orthodox are still waiting until December 25 (or January 7) for the feast and waiting to feast, because we are preparing our hearts, which are tightly bound to our bodies. But participation in the Advent fast needn't mean that children of any age must forgo all goodies. I made this festive rainbow jello for one Christmas Day, but while we are still fasting it seems to me it could easily be made with some soy or coconut milk replacing the small dairy part of the recipe.

RAINBOW RIBBON DESSERT

1 (3 oz.) package (each flavor) raspberry, lime, orange, lemon, and strawberry Jell-O
6-1/4 cups water
1-1/4 cups evaporated milk

Dissolve raspberry Jell-O in 1 cup boiling water. Remove 1/2 of Jell-O to a bowl and add 1/4 cup cold water. Place into a 9-inch square pan. Place in refrigerator until slightly firm. To the remaining half of Jell-O, add 1/4 cup evaporated milk. Cool and place over slightly firm layer in pan. Continue procedure with remaining flavors of Jell-O in this order: lime, orange, lemon, and strawberry. Cool each mixture before layering. Chill completely. Cut into squares to serve. Yield: serves 8 to 12. 

Now I'm trying to figure out how to tweak this colorful recipe into a frozen dessert. It already has the brightness of Tolkien's wintery image, and I think I might attract my snowmen friends to my holiday table if I just advertise that for dessert we are serving a treat called "Northern Lights."


(This is the third in my contributions to Pom Pom's Childlike Christmas Party.)

Waiting and Weakness - Christmas

Holy Trinity Cathedral in San Francisco

The greatest pleasure and thrill of Christmas can't be had without a little waiting, something like children of yore had to do, when their Christmas trees weren't even ready for viewing until Christmas Day.

That thought is on my mind as I say Hello! to all the friends I see here at Pom Pom's Childlike Christmas (blog) Party, a party for which we can show up four times over the next month! I had barely noticed the open invitation, with no time even to lay a finger aside of my nose, when she added me to the published guest list -- I was signed up! I am happy to attend, Lord willing, by posting a blog each Wednesday.

It seems to me that the way we Eastern Orthodox Christians get into the Christmas spirit can be combined with the theme of children and simple pleasures that Pom Pom describes:

"Yesterday I asked my students, 'Why the big greed festival over the holidays? Aren't we fine right now? Don't we have enough?' ...Here at Pom Pom's Ponderings, we are going to think about the simple pleasures of the holidays, the childlike wonder that doesn't involve the ka-ching ka-ching of the cash register....four holiday Wednesdays of posts that attend to the simple childlike thrills of Christmas. ....that babe in a manger and the children He loves and cherishes."

The modern world likes to jump into Christmas immediately after Halloween or Thanksgiving, but the more traditional way to celebrate involves some Anticipation and Preparation. Children might think of it as Waiting and Getting Ready. Some of us have been in Advent, which we call the Nativity Fast, since November 15th.

I'm not experienced in helping children to forgo the treats that are pressed upon them in every shop and neighbor's house at this time of year, but even before I found the Church and its traditions I tried to keep the family thinking ahead to a special Holy Day, and not just because of the presents.
 
We need some weeks to sing "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!" and for it to register in our minds that God's people had to wait many generations and thousands of years for the coming of the Savior. A little bit of suffering in the form of doing without the usual quantity of food, or rich foods, (in the Orthodox Church we eat less, and almost vegan, when fasting) can make it more real for us that the world before Christ was suffering under the curse of sin. We feel our own weakness, too, when eating less, and that can soften our hearts.

Why the photo of Holy Trinity Cathedral above? My church and sister churches sponsor Advent retreats every year, usually a day or half a day when we can hear a lecture and attend services together to help us focus on the coming feast in a fruitful way. Last year I went to one at Holy Trinity and took the picture. (By the way, I saw the same flowering plant at a winery last week and still don't know what it is.)

One children's book that might contribute to a child's understanding of time and the processes that are necessary preliminaries to accomplishing a goal, in particular a few points on the timeline of our salvation history, is The Tale of Three Trees, "a traditional folktale retold by Angela Elwell Hunt with illustrations by Tim Jonke."

Three small trees stand on a hilltop and dream about what they might do when they are grown. One wants to be a treasure chest, one a sailing ship that carries kings, and one just wants to stay where it is and point to God.

It takes many years for them to get big enough to be cut for lumber and fashioned into items that play a part in the earthly life of our Lord. The first tree is made into a manger -- and this first creation of wood that the Christ Child came in contact with establishes the story as one for Christmas.

All the trees feel initial disappointment and humiliation, none more so than the one that is made into a rude cross and used for violent purposes: "She felt ugly and harsh and cruel." But in the end all of the trees realize the blessedness of being used for the glory of God, and the young reader is reminded of the reason a Baby was born at Bethlehem.

Even our Lord Jesus went through a period of preparation, growing up as a man for 30 years before He began His ministry, but He surely wasn't idle during that time. As we wait for Christmas we can prepare our hearts by prayer and fasting and acts of love.

Those of us with families are blessed to have many possibilities under what might be the Acts of Love category. (They might even include some noise of cash registers, but I won't say any more about that at this party.) I know I have cookie-baking, doll-clothes-sewing, decorating and menu-planning and making up beds on my list.

The truth is, I'm not very good at being child-like before Christmas. I feel so many responsibilities that children don't have to concern themselves with, and I get pretty busy with all the fun type of preparations.

Somehow, though, all of that, when combined with participation in the church traditions and services, adds up to make me feel some of the longing and the weakness that are appropriate right now.

I'll post on Wednesdays more about some of the simple pleasures that our family has enjoyed over the years, even while remembering that the fullness of joy, the acting like a child, will start on December 25th. And won't it be wonderful!

Long and Boring Road

Our family loves the books by Byron Barton, like Trains and Machines at Work. Plenty of everyday and exciting things happen in these books, and the stories are told with few enough words that toddlers end up memorizing the text and can "read" the book to themselves or to others.
  
Along a Long Road seems like it is trying to be such a book, but I think it fails miserably. Unfortunately I don't have a toddler to try it out on. On second thought, I wouldn't try it out on anyone, because I don't do that. I have to preview a book and make sure that I like it before I will read it to a child, and I could barely get through this book by Frank Viva.

The picture book features stylistic pictures of the long road, made shiny by some plastic coating, and a very long man riding his long and stretchy bicycle. According to the text he rides and rides, “again and again.”

I haven't known small children to be very interested in bicycles. They like their trikes, and boys especially seem to love heavy road equipment, trains, and motorcycles. One more reason to pass on this book.

About the only thing both my husband and I liked was the picture of a pregnant woman whom the cycling man passes. I suppose there are plenty of items along the road that one could talk about with a child, but no story to keep the long road from getting tedious.

I quickly got tired of the man and his weirdly shaped vehicle, expressed in only three colors, plus black. The artwork reminds me a little of an odd and favorite book of ours, The Clock, by Esphyr Slobodkina of the abstract expressionist movement. Slobodkina is better known for her picture book Caps for Sale, but long ago I found a beat-up copy of The Clock, which is a captivating story.

Maybe Along a Long Road would be pleasing to a very early reader, or a delayed reader, who might be able to relate to the sign for lottery tickets or a distant view of a carnival, and who would find satisfaction in reading the words "again and again" again and again. Not that I can imagine a child like that. If anyone out there has had another experience with Viva's arty book, I would like to hear about it, even though I will soon take it back to the library for good. Give me Barton any day.

Limón in the Cazuela

 

The Cazuela That the Farm Maiden Stirred by Samantha R. Vamos is a delightful Hispanic incarnation of The House that Jack Built. It tells the story of a rice pudding from the farm to the table. The reader is introduced to two new words, first in English, every time he turns the page. From then on, those key words are only written in Spanish. 

Before I opened the book, Mr. Glad was enjoying it and noticed that the word for lime was much like our lemon. That made me wonder what the word for lemon is.

A New World Spanish-English Dictionary sits on the reference shelf here as a leftover from the days when four of our children in turn studied Spanish. Even though their father and I never did study that language that is so useful, almost essential, in California, we've lived here our whole lives and have picked up some vocabulary, sometimes by consulting this word book, as I did on this occasion.

The hen helps by grating the limón

I don't know why, but my dictionary is wrong about limón. It says that it means lemon, and that if you want to talk about a lime you say lima. I found it hard to believe that this book written by a woman with a Hispanic name, illustrated by a man with a Hispanic name, with the intent of teaching 21 words, would get any wrong.

But I have a friend who is married to a Mexican man and teaches at a bilingual school, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to ask my local expert. She wrote, "Okay babe. Limón means lime and limón agria or limón Amarillo can mean lemon. There is a lemon-like fruit called Lima limón. There are not lemons like we have here in the U.S. in Mexico." That seemed a pretty authoritative word on the subject.

This is a picture book, an Easy Reader, so I must not forget to mention the illustrations, which as you can see from these sample pages I photographed are party-bright, full of the joy and fun of cooking together. 

At the back you will find a glossary with pronunciations, in case your Spanish is rusty, and best of all, a recipe for rice pudding. What I would love to do with a young child is read the book, make the pudding together while using the English and Spanish words to talk about the ingredients, and then read the book again while the cazuela simmers.

I would rather one of my grandchildren helped me in the kitchen, while we keep the animals outdoors or in the pages of the book. But an arroz con leche pudding with plenty of crema and some zest of limón would suit me just fine.

Swan Lake stories

I really got into the Swan Lake story last Spring. It all started with an Amazon.com recommendation, from which I learned that Mark Helprin had written a book-length adaptation of the tale that was most famously told by Tchaikovsky's ballet. There were surprisingly few reader reviews of his book given that they were nearly all gushingly positive, some saying it was the best book they had ever read.

I've long been curious about Helprin and the many books he's written. Some of my family and friends have read his novels, stories, and non-fiction pieces. I had a feeling that I should appreciate him more than I did, and I planned to try again to read his fiction. I was sure his Swan Lake would be good, and I nearly ordered it without previewing it. But then I saw that it was first of a trilogy, and people were less thrilled with the sequels, so I got it from the library instead to see for myself before investing on behalf of a grandchild.

While I was at it, I borrowed three other juvenile versions of the story, so I would have something to compare with. On the first day of Lent I read all four of the books -- I know, it was an odd thing to do that day -- and scratched out some thoughts. After returning the books to the library in the interest of focusing on more appropriate matters, I forgot all about the subject, until today, when I decided I should gather everything up finally.

Helprin's version (©1989) would have to be counted my least favorite of the four. It's the length of a short novel, and his story is fleshed out with several characters who don't appear in the more common tellings. It's the most changed, interesting and complex story, but maybe too complicated. The story’s flow is interrupted with goofy details and sidetracks that detract from the moral weight. The narrator’s voice is not that of a believable old man, not that of the man who has enough wits about him accomplish what he does. Yet he's supposedly a sage.

I also did not like the loosed morals of the characters, who literally "shack up" together and have a child, who figures in the politics of the realm in the sequels, as I understand. The prince never does behave in a very noble fashion that I can see. And what's the good of a fairy tale if the prince is at best only a foolish boy?

I'm really not competent to even know what it is about Helprin's fictional style that puts me off. Probably it's only a personal preference or lack of foundation that makes it hard for me to enjoy him. But I think that I'm through trying.

My next-least favorite of the bunch of Swan Lake tales that I read was Swan Lake, retold by Anthea Bell, illustrated by Chihiro Iwasaki (©1984). I liked the watercolors, but there weren't enough pictures of swans for my taste. And the story line was thin.

Swan Lake, adapted and illustrated by Donna Diamond (©1980) was second-best of my stack. It was thorough story-telling, including more motives and complications, with nice black and white, dreamy paintings.

My favorite was Swan Lake, retold and illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger (©2002). The illustrations were pleasing to me, and after mentioning several versions of the ending, the author makes it into a happily-ever-after story.

After all my literary wanderings, I'm left wondering if perhaps this tale is best told through a ballet performance. I know that even in that form there have been widely divergent versions of the story, but I can't help thinking that the rich visual and musical elements would make the whole experience more satisfying than did any of these books.

California Mountains - Getting Over

I posted this photo last summer, too!

My husband and I drove our car back and forth over the Sierra Nevada mountains this month. We had several highway options, but no matter which pass we choose to chug up I am always reminded of the forebears in covered wagons going cross-country, and the more recent grandparents driving cars like this on one-lane roads. That's my mother in the middle of this photo taken in Yosemite.

On the Monitor Pass south of Lake Tahoe

Giant Blazing Star on Monitor Pass

My little SUV has four cylinders to propel it forward, which sometimes ends up a bit slow on the steep grades, but at least we have no worries about our horses struggling through raging streams, or the possibility of our wagon tipping over or breaking a wheel on the rocks.

That is, if I can stay on the road -- it's so easy to get distracted by the wildflowers and swerve too wildly at the turnout for a photo op.

We passed over the Sierras by way of three different routes and summits this trip, and also drove over another pass that doesn't cross those mountains.

We came at our first stop, Lake Tahoe, from the northwest, over Donner Pass. Ah, the Donner Party -- what an uncomfortable story, one that raises severe ethical questions. My heart breaks for those pioneers who got bogged down and starved in the snow. Patty Reed's Doll is a book that somehow manages to tell the tale for children. I recently gave it to granddaughter Annie for her birthday.

Leaving Tahoe after camping for two days, we took the Monitor Pass to the eastern side of the Sierras. Its summit is over 8,000 ft. At the top one drives through rolling "hills" as pictured above, with a mixture of meadows, conifers and sagebrush, and wildflowers galore.

Continuing south on Hwy 395 we rose above 8,000 feet again to get over the Conway Summit, a pass that doesn't take you as the others do in a generally east-west direction, but gets you over a plateau just north of Mono Lake.

One might ask why we would want to go to all the trouble of climbing mountain passes on pavement, just to go on a hike...Why not ascend on the closer, western side? Well, if one likes to visit the highest altitudes, but doesn't want to get sore feet walking for days, the smartest thing is to let your car do the work of getting part way up, by going over. The eastern approach is quite steep, and the Owens Valley floor itself is already aound 4,000 ft. elevation, so you've got a good head start if you come at the peaks from that side.

To get to our trailhead, we only had to steer upward and our four cylinders climbed over 5,000 ft. in less than half an hour. Yes, it does take us most of a day's drive to get to the eastern side, but it would take me a week -- or more likely I'd never go -- to get to the same places by way of the more gradual western approach.

After our adventures on either side of the Owens Valley, we drove back up Hwy. 395 to the Sonora Pass to get home.  The sign at the top reads "9,624 feet." It's the second-highest pass in the Sierra Nevada, after Tioga Pass which runs through Yosemite National Park and which we won't be traversing this year.

On the Sonora Pass, July 2011

It was quite beautiful up there. For the first hour or so on the highway we hardly met a car. By lunchtime we'd descended to hot lands again, and felt the mountains slipping behind us.

But I am so far ahead of myself, talking about the end of the trip when I've only begun to tell about the beginning. More to come soon, about our summer mountain adventures.

(next in the series: Tahoe, Rivers and a Song, Directions and Points )

The Hungry Soul - Struggle to Stand

Other posts on this book: The Hungry Soul -- Intro (Why I love this book) and The Hungry Soul -- How Science Disappoints

The charming children we get to know in the recent documentary "Babies" are, at the end of the film, struggling to become toddlers, persons enjoying the upright posture that is a mark of homo erectus. They don't even think about it, because it seems to be a given that children want very much to stand up and walk. 

That is, unless you are Lazy Tommy Pumpkinhead, who lives in an electric house that does everything for him; Tommy can't bring himself to get out of bed or even stand up without assistance. But his story is meant to teach any self-respecting child to be self-respecting, to be human, and not lazy. He is the hero of a children's book I liked to read to our children.

In the chapter on "The Human Form," in his book The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of our Nature, Leon Kass examines how the erect and forward-facing posture that distinguishes us from most of the animal world contributes to our outlook and coordinates with our calling to be lords of creation, as it were. He takes many of his foundational ideas on this subject from the neurologist-psychologist Erwin Straus, and from his essay titled "The Upright Posture."

In my reviews I'm skipping around in the book, but I should explain that the first chapters make a case for the primacy of form. That is, all living beings are more than a collection of the same kinds of particles. Even though absolutely all our material is replaced during our lifetime, we retain the same recognizable form. And as this is a book about the human soul, the subject is next narrowed to the human form. From there the author goes on to discuss what humans do with these bodies.

The uprightness of our form is what I am trying to stick to in this post. I think of this a lot now, when I wake up in the mornings and am lying in bed for at least a few seconds. Rarely do I have to get up with an alarm clock, for which I am grateful. But at this time of my life no baby is demanding that I get up to feed her and no child will be late for school if I linger a bit. This morning when I woke I realized that God had answered my prayer to be wakened in time to go to Bridegroom Matins, so I hopped out of bed.

But it isn't always so easy. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could keep that verve that children have, that makes them get up, or cry to be let out of their cribs, as soon as they wake up? It seems that God gives us a special grace, when we are new to the world, to work hard at standing before we know what work is.

Though upright posture characterizes the human species, each of us must struggle to attain it. Our birthright includes standing, but we cannot stand at birth. Feral children who have survived in the wild were not found upright but were able to become so. As with other distinctively human traits (speech, for example), human beings must work to make themselves do or become what nature prepares them to be or do. Upright posture is a human, and humanizing, accomplishment.

Kass quotes Straus:

Before reflection or self-reflection start, but as if they were a prelude to it, work makes its appearance within the realm of the elemental biological functions of man. In getting up, in reaching the upright posture, man must oppose the forces of gravity. It seems to be his nature to oppose nature in its impersonal, fundamental aspects with natural means. However, gravity is never fully overcome; upright posture always maintains its character of counteraction.

And Kass elaborates:

Effort does not cease with rising up; it is required to maintain our uprightness. Automatic regulation does not suffice; staying up takes continuous attention and activity, as well it should, inasmuch as our very existence is at stake. Awakeness is necessary for uprightness; uprightness is necessary for survival. Yet our standing in the world is always precarious; we are always in danger of falling. Our natural stance is, therefore, one of 'resistance,' of "withstanding,' of becoming constant, stable.

It doesn't get any easier, does it? As we get older and weaker, the temptation is to sit down more often. I notice that tendency in church, where in my tradition we stand during the services, which means for one or two hours at a time we stand. What better attitude could we take toward The Holy Con-substantial Life-Creating Trinity?

Yes, we can prostrate ourselves, and I know people who do that when their ailing backs prevent their standing in prayer. But I notice in the Bible that after people fall on their faces before messengers of God, they are told to stand up. The Psalms speak of standing in His presence, and in the New Testament we are told, "...having done all, to stand."

Stand firm, stand in the gap, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord...The posture is both a metaphor for and a support to our efforts, the whole Christian life being a struggle against laziness, even to the point of, "Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest." (Hebrews 4) Perhaps if I stand a little longer than is comfortable in church, or work a few more minutes at my household chores before sitting down, it will make me call out to God and ask for help to be the kind of person He wants.

And if I doubt my ability, let me remind myself, "You've been doing this your whole life, resisting gravity, walking this precarious walk against natural forces that want to pull you down. You can keep doing it, you can!" I will call to mind the words of T.S. Eliot: "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." And not forgetting the difference between the metaphor and the reality, I'm only too aware that some people who are no longer able to stand with their bodies are standing in the gap for me.

As to lying in bed, for most of us it is a near necessity, though the saints' lives testify that some of them avoided it like the plague. One wants to avoid the condition described in Proverbs 26, "As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed." I haven't yet figured out how exactly it fits in without spoiling my thesis, but I have to mention my dear G.K. Chesterton's delightful essay, "On Lying in Bed," in which he cautions tongue-in-cheek against legalism and hypocrisy, mostly about how early one rises:

A man can get used to getting up at five o'clock in the morning. A man cannot very well get used to being burnt for his opinions; the first experiment is commonly fatal. Let us pay a little more attention to these possibilities of the heroic and the unexpected. I dare say that when I get out of this bed I shall do some deed of an almost terrible virtue.

This drawing of Lazy Tommy illustrates what happens after he is all dressed and fed, and the long afternoon stretches ahead of him with nothing to do but propel himself up the stairs -- not walking, but crawling, it should be noted -- but his bed is the attraction that gives him that much energy.

I like this picture, only because it shows that even Tommy is capable of struggling. Maybe we could think of him as a late bloomer, crawling when he should have learned to walk -- but at least he is showing some spunk. At the end of the book he experiences enough discomfort resulting from an electrical outage and the failure of technology that he resolves to "turn over a new leaf."

As I finish this post we are in Holy Week. All through Lent I wanted to write something about the wonderful midweek services that we have (and at which I hope to worship tonight), but it seemed to be beyond my ability to capture even a bit of the sweetness in words. One thing I love about them is that all the Psalms that are called Songs of Ascent are read at each service. And the last of those, Psalm 134, provides a fitting picture of our souls' posture before our God.

Behold, bless ye the LORD, 

all ye servants of the LORD, 

which by night stand 

in the house of the LORD. 

Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, 

and bless the LORD. 

The LORD that made heaven and earth 

bless thee out of Zion.

Further posts on this book: The Hungry Soul - How Science Disappoints