Writing prompts

lichen

Beatrix Potter

children's literature

windy

Mary Poppins

umbrellas

I am prompted to recall that my umbrella is still at English House, where I had been writing.

Photo is of my umbrella in Kyoto. And properly prompted, I once again I am in possession of it.

A well-wintered life

(WARNING: substantial chemistry content. Theologians and others take a deep breath, I promise there will not be a quiz and that there's a point beyond the chemistry.)

The other day the Boy (who I'm coaching in thermochemistry for Science Olympiad) wondered why the freezing point of water on the Fahrenheit scale was 32^o, and the boiling point 212^o? (The Celsius scale is pinned to the freezing and boiling points of water - a sensible scheme.) I admit I had never given it much thought. Turns out that zero on the Fahrenheit scale is defined as the temperature of a "frigorific" mixture of water, ice and ammonium chloride in a 1:1:1 ratio. (There are many such mixtures, which produce baths of a particular temperature, useful in the days before refrigerators when you needed to produce artificial cold.)

I had never encountered the work before despite years of teaching thermodynamics (frankly, it sounds a bit too pseudo-sciency for my taste - and I do have opinions about what sounds good in a science term) and headed for the OED (the online version, not the one that Math Man brought as his dowry), to find that it is attributed to Robert Boyle in the 17th century.

As it turns out, I was more intrigued by a turn of phrase in one of the quotes given under the figurative meaning: "a well-wintered life..." I tracked down the 19th century reference in Google books to find that well-wintered meant reflective. Winter was a time to be indoors, a time of darkness, a time of year that encouraged — nigh on insisted upon — introspection and stillness: no central heating, no electric lights in those days. You stayed indoors if you could and wrapped up.

How well-wintered is my life? I'm on sabbatical leave, wrapped up in my writing and in my research, but also trying to spend some time in reflection about life. And I'm starting to warm to the idea of wintering over, of letting some things sit out this time. What will happen if I let the ground in which these seeds are planted heave up with the frost, be blanketed with snow, and softened by the melt? God knows.

[Aside: The author rather appallingly posits the opposite as well, those living in the tropics, where light and warmth abound no matter what the season are doomed to shallow living.]

Photo is from a well-wintered walk at Wernersville.

Column: Expansive blessings

I really was terrified of choking on a fish bone when I was little. I ate fish reluctantly in those days and only once it had been smothered in bright orange Kraft French dressing.

The spelling of Blaise here is not the spelling that is used in either Butler's lives on the saints (I have all 5 volumes on my iPad, is that at all eccentric?) or in the Roman breviary - both of which use "Blase"...

This column appeared in the February 2012 issue of the Catholic Standard & Times.

With the crossed candles touched to the throat of each person, the celebrant says immediately: Through the intercession of Saint Blaise, bishop and martyr, may God deliver you from every disease of the throat and from every other illness. — From the Book of Blessings

Difficult to come by in my tiny landlocked Midwest town, and not within the grocery budget when it was, fresh fish was not often on the menu when I was a young girl. Instead Friday dinners alternated between tuna casseroles and macaroni and cheese. My mother, raised on the East Coast, missed fresh fish, and she couldn't figure out why I didn't share her enthusiasm when it made a rare appearance on our table. For this, I blame St. Blaise.

My childhood memories of the feast of St. Blaise are ones of damp wool and beeswax, of a warmly lit church and cold dark winds that sullenly shook the windows, hoping to find a way in. But it was the story of the fishbone that really stuck.

Little is known of St. Blaise's life, he was perhaps the bishop of Sebaste in the 4th century, who died a martyr for the faith. The story of St. Blaise that captured my imagination was of a mother brought her son to the bishop with a fish bone stuck in his throat. St. Blaise prayed and the young boy was healed.

When I was five, the enduring message of the story of St. Blaise (alas) seemed to be, "watch out for bones when you eat fish." Almost five decades later, it reminds me that the stories we tell of the saints and blesseds have an enduring power to them, a way of engaging our imaginations. St. Augustine wrote that we remember the particular deeds of the saints and martyrs "to excite us to imitate them and to obtain a share in their merits, and the assistance of their prayers."

St. Augustine's commentary challenges me to think beyond the assistance that St. Blaise may offer me or what merits he might be inclined to share with me, and to wonder in what way a suburban mother of teen-agers might be moved to imitate a 4th century bishop. What is there in St. Blaise's life that could excite me to similar feats of virtue?

In the many miracle tales told of St. Blaise, from the healing of the young boy to the return of a widow's stolen pig, he looks for help from God not only for the situation in front of him, but for the broader world. His prayers were always simultaneously for the here and now and the people of God in difficulties in every place and time. I'm quick to pray for the safety of my children each night, but do I remember to pray for other mothers' children? In asking for healing for my father, do I think to pray for the elderly who suffer with chronic pain?

I still get my throat blessed each February 3rd. No longer terrified of choking on a fish bone -- hoping that St. Blaise would notice the prayers of one small girl in a town far away in time and space — I find now in the crossed candles and Triune blessing more than an assurance that God is concerned with our worries (even if they are as irrational as mine over stray fish bones). God's grace spills over, reaching beyond the needs of one to all His people until the end of time.

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Hear, O Lord, the supplications your people make,
under the patronage of the martyr Saint Blaise,
and grant that they may rejoice in peace in this present life,
and find help for life eternal. Amen. – From the closing prayer for the feast of St. Blaise.

Bound by prayer

Bound by prayer

"Do you pray the Jesus prayer?" came the question from the gentleman I'd been introduced to a few minute before. "Are you Orthodox?" "No." (Well, yes, in the sense of orthodox, but I knew what he meant.) The rest of the table gave us a puzzled look, but the subject vanishes as people want to know how the start of my sabbatical is going.

I had made an appointment for sacramental shriving this week while I was up to see Patient Spiritual Director and to take a couple of days to reflect on where I might be going with this sabbatical. It was the feast of St. Anthony of Egypt and my confessor had used one of the apophthegmata of Anthony during his homily at the midday Mass (where he also noted that this St. Anthony is not the same as this St. Anthony).

After we celebrated the sacrament, I asked Lanky Jesuit for another favor - would he bless the prayer rope I wear around my wrist? The what? I handed it over and mentioned that it was apropos to bless it today as the method for tying the knots is attributed to St. Anthony of Egypt. He tied knots in a cord to keep track of his prayers, and the devil kept untying them. An angel then taught Anthony these seven-fold knots, crosses layered over crosses that the devil couldn't touch.

Prayer ropes are traditionally worn by Orthodox religious wrapped around their left wrist as a reminder to pray, but can be worn by anyone who wishes to keep to the discipline. Prayers on the knots can substitute in a pinch (and with appropriate direction from a spiritual father or superior) for one's Office. The Jesus prayer is one traditional prayer said on the rope, but others can be as well. It can be used to keep track of prostrations in prayer, if that's part of your practice. Though it's not a rosary, prayers to the Theotokos can be said on it as well. It differs from a rosary in that it's strictly for private prayer.

I've worn a chotki around my wrist for the last several years, as a reminder to "pray at all times." It's not the traditional 100 knots version with a tassel (to soak up your tears), but 33 knots tied in black wool, in groups of 11, with a simple cross of knots at the end. It's gone unnoticed, or at least unmentioned, all this time. Now twice in one day, I'm answering questions about it. I'm attributing this to St. Anthony....

Aside: The reason I asked to have my chotki blessed is because I lost the one I'd been wearing, somewhere in the potted plants at church (I was helping move stuff...) Perhaps I should have prayed to the other St. Anthony for it's return.

Second aside: Crash, who was reading this over my shoulder — we are traveling by train to Boston — tells me it's not gone unnoticed, just unmentioned.

Billy Collins on lanyards and helminthology

I'm reading Billy Collins' The Trouble with Poetry. I love the rich imagery and dashing snark that characterize Collins' poetry -" The Introduction": "And you're all familiar with helminthology? It's the science of worms." It's good commuting reading, there's time to make friends with a poem or two on each leg of my journey. Beside the seriously refusing to take itself seriously "The Introduction" the collection includes "The Lanyard":

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past —
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

That stanza gave me a Proustian push into the past as well. I can see the picnic bench set out at the summer rec program, the spools of plastic strips, smell the warm blacktop and feel the whisper of my seersucker sundress in the early morning breeze that still held a touch of the cool of the night. I can't remember how many of these I made, and as far as I know none survived, but I can remember my delight when I mastered a spiral form, rather than the simple square. I wondered if kids still made these, or if like the translucent plastic flowers we made by dipping wires into a solution that smelled like my dad's lab, they were creations of memory only.

Yes, they are still made. The stuff from which they are made is called by some gimp, the craft itself is called boondoggle or scoubi. Apparently it's recently been a rage in the UK to make zipper pulls from it. It sounds more useful than my lanyards.

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Photo is from Shutterstock. Used with permission.