...No matter how many books one ought to be reading, nothing will do for an afternoon in April but the short stories of Lucy Maud Montgomery...

I’ve been reading a lot of Lucy Maud lately. Dipping into one of her novels or re-reading her short stories for the umpteenth time touches such a deep, elemental place inside of me. There’s something about the awakening of the world in spring that makes me long for the companionship of her words—words which awakened me as a child to the beauty of my own aliveness. I’ve never been the same since the day I picked up Anne of Green Gables. As I wrote in my preface to the Low Door Press edition of Kilmeny of the Orchard:

[Anne of Green Gables] touched a flame to the secret yearnings of an awkward and absent-minded and excruciatingly shy twelve year-old girl so that they flared into a glow by which I could see myself at last: not as a vicarious Anne, as might be imagined, but as the Lanier which God had in His heart when He dreamed me up in the first place. He had dreamed up everybody, I saw with a throb of freedom and joy. And it was allright simply to be the person He had in mind, however imperfectly one might keep pace with their companions.

I still get choked up when I try to tell someone what Lucy Maud Montgomery and her writings have meant to me. Spending so much time over the past week indulging myself amid the old friends of her stories has made me think hard about her influence, however, and that of other authors who have kindled my creative ambitions in truly life-changing ways. I’ve been reading and slowly digesting Twyla Tharpe’s The Creative Habit in an attempt to understand and harness my own artistic processes, and one of the exercises she recommends is a long questionnaire entitled “My Creative Autobiography”. It was a fascinating assignment, as she probes you to go back into your earliest memories, tapping the first springs of delight and imagination. At the risk of appearing to interview myself (which would be weird!) I thought I would share some of the questions and my answers in an attempt to express my appreciation to Montgomery and her counterparts in my life:

Which artists do you admire most?

L.M. Montgomery. Alcott, Austen, George Eliot. These are my big heroes. Also Elizabeth Goudge.

Why are they your role models?

For one thing they are all women who literally fought for their creative life. They all led very quiet lives for the most part, but they left an indelible imprint not only on literature, but on me. George Eliot worked under conditions of enormous social censure and she was also up against some mighty ferocious self-consciousness concerning her work. That always staggers me—that she was able to press through that, silence those inner voices. George Lewes had to shield her from all critical reviews of her work and he had to reinterpret her editor’s comments to make sure they were coming across as positively as possible. But she didn’t let this weakness keep her from writing.

Montgomery was clinically depressive, and I am astounded 1) that she was able to work at all, 2) that she put forth so many works of such great beauty, and 3) that these inner ravages never colored her work with a melancholy tone. She did not deny the shadows—but she focused on the light and the beauty that stood out all the more radiantly against them. Her books broke my heart with beauty and made me wildly joyful to be alive. The fact that she was hurting so very much (and in a time when you just couldn’t talk about it) and yet gave such gifts to the world and to me—I love her devotedly for that.

Austen just made it happen in a time when there weren’t a lot of female novelists, and still fewer truly good ones. And she was great, a giantess in a diminutive frame. She just sat in her little parlor and wrote what she knew and what she observed every single day. She changed the face of literature. And she ‘let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.’ I might just love that most about her.

Alcott was fearless and unstoppable. And she was able to write about virtue without ever descending to anything that even smelled like moralizing or preachiness. I don’t know how she did it and I don’t know of anyone who ever came close to her in that.

And dear Elizabeth Goudge. She gave me hope for the modern world and for the aliveness and wellness of beauty in this tired old era of ours. She wrote tenaciously of beauty in a dark time. And she is a mistress of expressing spiritual truths and realities without ever resorting to clichés or anything else that would make people dismiss her. She was incredible at that and I’ve learned of God’s heart and love in reading her books. I also love her beautifully flawed characters. The ones who are shy or who hate sickrooms or who bump the teacart over the carpet. They are all complex, they all have a past and inner demons. They are all so real that one can relate to them. But she never gives up on beauty.

What do you and your role models have in common?

Like Eliot, I am paralyzingly terrified of criticism of my work. It kills me.

Like Austen, I have no wish whatever to write of misery and despair.

Like Alcott, I want to be the Jo March she created, scribbling feverishly away in my ‘garret’. I want to be able to communicate truths about life and human relationships. And she’s my only American on the list—maybe that’s something.

Like Goudge, (and Dostoyevsky!) I believe that beauty will save the world. I believe that pointing people to beauty is essentially pointing them to God, whether they realize it or not. And like her I am pretty private and reserved outside of my sphere. I don’t like the business that has to do with an author’s life (or I won’t, I guess, if I ever become one) and I require enormous amounts of solitude in order to get anything done.

Like Montgomery, the beauty of this world broke my heart, and, like her, I can’t bear not to tell about it. She wrote of a place that she knew and loved intimately and she gave it to me and made me love it. She showed me that was what I was to do with my place.

~

This last question isn’t really related to the inspiring authors theme, but I couldn’t help tacking it on. Whenever I read over this answer, I get tears in my eyes. Although I dashed it off in a tare of writerly passion, I meant every word with all my heart.

What is your greatest dream?

To write something that would show someone else that God is as good as they have always secretly dreamed He would be. And more.

To create a world through story that would be a place in which other souls might encounter something of who God is—something they might not have otherwise encountered.

To awaken hearts with beauty. To carry cups of cold water to a parched, heartbroken, homesick world.

I want to write stories that tell the truth and that are laced and haunted with the beauty of Eden.

I want to do what my most beloved authors have done for me: not only point the way home, but throw light on the loveliness of the journey. I want people to read my stories and know that they are not alone.

Jesu, juva.

This is what joy looks like:

It looks like walking over the lawn in that time
of late winter’s striving with early spring,
when late afternoon and early evening brush fingers in passing,
throwing careless glances over shadowy shoulders,
and all the wealth of the sun’s golden fame has been heaped in the treetops,
mounted and piled among the far-flung boughs like plunder, forgotten—
or abandoned—in sudden flight. (Boys once sought a piece of this prize,
aiming their winged darts into all that opulence, hoping to see their arrow
gilded before falling to earth once more, transfigured.)

All earth holds its breath, waiting, for that one, clear, cold note;
for the ache of the thing that is surely coming; for the nativity of the world.
(You have forgotten to wait for it, sitting indoors with your fingers
interlaced, or kneeling to blow on bloodred coals yet smoldering upon a bed
of grey ash. But now you remember, stung alive by that keen air,
bearing tinctures of delicate things for all its rude handling—violets and tiny white feathers
and bits of blue shell at the foot of a tree. Forgetting takes time, but
remembrance is the matter of a moment.) It is then, when you have finally

opened your eyes that the miracle steals on tiptoe, lifting with smallest hands
the bank of heavy cloud which has sullened and saddened the earth all day,
throwing out in one radiant glance enough glory to christen the world. Thus known
and named, all things sing back themselves for sheer gladness, in flashes of
birdsong and music of color: Glory to thee and all thanks to thee, O Namegiver!
In that light, all is canticle and verse; all is wild tumult of praise: leaping serum
of veining sap and homing dove and bright cacophonous rooster’s crow!

And yet, the bird in the hedge falls silent, checked in his mad virtuosity
by that strange creeping splendor decanting itself like summer wine, casting a holy blush
over every living thing. It is in that moment, poised in perfection upon
the very doorstep of eternity, that you catch the echo of scarce-dreamed-of
desire, resonating down darkened vestibules, haunting the ventricles
and chambers of your heart. For one searing instant, you prize past all equal
the spangling of sun-shot tears trembling from the naked branches; the rising incense
of mist is more costly than gold, and that one aureate wisp caught among
the dark tresses of the pines far more precious—and then you know:

You are more alive than flesh and bone could ever hold;
more vital than body and blood and thought.

You are made for more
rapture than one life can contain.

Margot Fonteyn as Odette in Swan Lake

I’ve lost count of how many times I have given up ballet.

Every time there has been a bend in my road, it seems, ballet has been the thing to go, flung off the back of the wagon with the sudden turning. Weeks, months—and in this latter case, years—have intervened. But it keeps coming back, like a faithful retriever that won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. And I have made room for it in my life again. Again.

Isn’t that just the way with the things we love—I mean deep-down love till they are a part of the very essence of our personalities? They keep popping back into our lives with a persistence that can be downright comical. And sometimes, as in my case with ballet, utterly humiliating. It has been seven (seven!) years since I pulled on my Blochs and walked into a ballet studio. Seven years since I’ve sunk gratefully into the deep stretch of a plié or thrown my leg up on a barre without a thought for the morrow. Seven years since that inglorious tumble that destroyed my right ankle and brought my weekly ballet classes to a screeching halt.

Away those seven years have flown: into travels and tramping, the new adventure of a barn-full of animals, the opening of a shop, gardening and beekeeping, and, more lately, the serious and sustained effort of writing a novel. They have been years of great growth and change, and my soul has been stretched in ways I could not have imagined. In many ways, I am not the same person I was seven years ago—and that is a good thing. We are not static creatures; we were made for ever-broadening horizons, for lands beyond the boundaries of the little maps we’ve sketched for our lives. I believe that we shouldn’t be too comfortable, reaching only for that within our grasp. As wayfarers in this world, we were literally created to reach for the stars.

All that said, I do believe, and firmly, that there are things which make us up as individuals that are unique and irreproducible—things that do not change. Leanings and loves and insights that are as distinct as there are human beings to divide them among. I love how George MacDonald put it:

As the fir-tree lifts up itself with a far different need from the need of the palm-tree, so does each man stand before God, and lift up a different humanity to the common Father.

When I was a child, there was a framed watercolor on my wall that an artist friend of my mother’s had painted for me, illustrating an Eve Merriam poem which she had rendered in gorgeous, sweeping script. It hung above my bed through all the room-swaps and re-arrangings over the years, from the time I was a baby until I left home as an adult. I have always loved it, and felt it to be a special charge never to lose myself amid the hurried homogeneity of the world:

Isn’t it strange
that however I change
I still keep on being me?

If I say “yes”, or If I say “no”;
If I go fast, or If I go slow;
When I’m at work, or when I’m at play:
Me I stay.

The greatest artists have always tapped their childhood obsessions and passions for inspiration, whether they emerge as recognizable in their work or not. And it is always a very grounding experience for me to remember where I came from and all the loves that have combined to inspire me to live creatively and joyfully. To remember my own name, as it were; to circle back, in all my wide-eyed exploration of God’s potential in this life, to the things that make me…me.

Ballet has always been one of those things. And, on a much more fundamental level, so has writing. When I was a little girl I used to make my own business cards by pinching a couple of my dad’s (they were, after all, just the right size) and writing on the back, along with my name and a rather unimpressive doodle of a pointe shoe:

Professional Dancer.
and Writer.

Over the years, of course, my passion for words trumped my love-hate relationship with pirouettes. Writing is how I interpret the world; how I make sense of my own life and reach out to other people. Sometimes, even, how I pray. Black words on a white screen are my love language, and can produce in me an excitement (or despair!) like no other endeavor. But there will always be a place in my heart for pink leather slippers and raggedy leg warmers. For the heart-melting loveliness of a grande pas des deux and for the joy of seeing a prima ballerina achieve that fairytale weightlessness that dancers have been pursuing from the first origins of the form.

For the satisfaction of utter exhaustion at the end of a thoroughly challenging class.

This past Saturday, I did it. I can’t say exactly what forces conspired to tip me over the edge into a decision to resume my ballet classes; all I can say is that it suddenly occurred to me that it was time to go back—that I wanted to go back—and before I knew what had happened, it was a done deal. Seven years kept haunting me like a refrain: I knew it was not going to be pretty after all that time. I tried to prepare for the coming ordeal by stretching out every day during the week leading up to my first class, but it did little to assuage my fears. For, you see, I found a warning my teacher had given me years ago to be all too (painfully) true: if once you walk away from ballet for any significant portion of time, all those muscles and ligaments and tendons you’ve fought so hard to lengthen will actually end up shorter than they were before. (Your body’s snarky little way of saying, Take that for treating me this way, perchance?) I was, um, horrified, at how much ground I had lost.

Natalia Makarova as Odette

It’s amazing the parallels to be drawn between physical rustiness and the mental lethargy that creeps over any absence from one’s craft. At the same I was deciding to throw myself headlong into the ordeal of a ballet class, I was wrapping up what proved to be a surprisingly arduous writing challenge with my beloved friend and partner in words, Laura. (Which will explain, perhaps, my long silence around here!) We had set apart six weeks, from mid-January to the end of February, to write like the wind on our current manuscripts. I was excited and motivated and starry-eyed…

…and shocked to find how out of shape I was.

I hadn’t so much as glanced at my story since before Christmas. It took me a good two weeks just to relearn how to sit quietly in a room by myself for hours at a time, and longer than that for my characters to start talking to me again. (I think they wanted to make sure I was in for keeps.) My heart was literally pounding when I pushed that last ‘save’ on Friday afternoon—whether from the exhilaration of crossing our defined finish line, or from the massive infusions of caffeine that had sustained me over the past few weeks, I can’t really say.

But it felt good. Good in the way it felt good when I staggered out of that ballet studio the next day on trembling legs. Even the glaring flaws in this wildly, unapologetically imperfect of drafts could not diminish the bone-deep satisfaction that it was done. Eight more chapters in the bag.

Likewise, the fact that my body didn’t seem quite inclined to do the things my brain was telling it to in ballet class could not detract from the delight I felt in recovering this piece of myself. The muscle memory, though corroded with disuse, was still there; the tactile satisfaction of that barre under my hands and the floor smooth beneath my feet was intact, unabated since I was eight years old, studying at that same school, executing my tendus and relevés and glissades for the formidable (and exquisitely ladylike) ballet mistress to the accompaniment of an elderly Russian woman at a piano in the corner. Thirty years, and still that very same joy. It was like meeting an old and trusted friend.

The morning after my class, I could not move. Getting out of bed was a nightmare; putting on my socks literally brought tears to my eyes. I didn’t know I could hurt like that. It would have been supremely tragic—if Philip hadn’t kept making fun of me.

“Don’t make me laugh,” I’d groan. “It hurts too bad!”

For three days I was a wreck. I crept around like I was about 1000 years old; the simplest of household tasks elicited a string of groans and whimpers. On the evening of the third day, I knew what I had to do—the last thing I felt I ever wanted to do:

I got my aching bones down on the floor and started stretching out. And it hurt…good.

While I’m taking a few days away from my novel to recover from the mental exhaustion of our challenge, I’m trying to keep my mind and fingers limber, as well. And I’m replenishing the springs with other things that I love, feeding the muse with long walks and moments at the piano and poetry.

And ballet.

I read somewhere that writers should be sure to cultivate other interests and challenges in their lives that don’t involve words. I’m so grateful for the chance to rediscover the language of dance again.

Again.

I may lose many things and
Frequently do.
I never lose me.
Does that happen to you?

from Me, Myself and I by Eve Merriam

Merry 7th Day of Christmas to you all, and a Happy New Year! It’s been a glad (mad) bustle of a December and all my scribblings of late have been merely a desperate attempt to catch these sweet days in my journal as they fly. But I wanted to share this piece that I wrote for The Rabbit Room last New Year’s, as it’s something I need reminding of again, here on the cusp of 2013. Here’s to a fresh, blank page, my friends, and to all the good things our God will write upon it, in your lives and in mine…

In the twelve years that Philip and I have been married, there are only two New Years Eves we’ve spent at home. Once, early on, we had my parents over for a formal dinner. We toasted with champagne cocktails and set off a few decorous little fireworks, and Daddy chased Philip around the backyard with a flaming Roman candle, laughing all the way. The other saw me in bed with a cold, asleep well before the stroke of midnight. Every other year we have been in company of lifelong friends, gathered about a familiar hearth for an evening as comfortable as it is refined.

But this year I was too sick to go out. The kind of sick that called for soda crackers and painkillers. Philip picked up takeout that I couldn’t eat and a bottle of champagne at the grocery store, just in case. We played backgammon by the fire and listened to a stack of Christmas records and reminisced rather drowsily over the highlights of 2011. I kept threatening to go to bed and Philip kept nudging me to stick it out. Nearing midnight he disappeared into the kitchen and came back with toasting glasses: Coke for him and ginger ale for me. The perfect accompaniment to my saltines.

In many ways, such a quiet, reflective evening seemed to me an appropriate way for this year to go out. It was a wonderful year, rich and heavy with blessings, and we had many treasures to turn over in our talk by the fire that night. But 2011 also saw the continued deferment of a hope long-cherished, one which the very marrow of my soul was worn out with waiting for. January after January I have seen the new year as a fresh chance, a clean slate upon which the Lord just might create the desire of our hearts—a miracle, no less, but one which His lovely character has given me courage to keep looking for. But this New Year’s I just couldn’t seem to find my hope. It was exhausted: buried away like a tired bird in its hidden nest, head tucked under its wing and a veritable thicket of impossibility screening it from view.

I had been asking the Lord all that afternoon to show me what faith looked like in this place I am in, what shape hope might take as a symbol for her beleaguered campaign. I so wanted to end the year on a positive note; to know the radiance and splendor in the darkness, even if I couldn’t see it. I didn’t want this Christmas season to go out—and thereby be defined—by sadness and disappointed hopes, but by joy, and by a confident expectation in His ultimate goodness. I wanted the statement of faith I had endeavored to make with this holiday, the deep confession it had been of His perfect love and faithfulness, to shine out strong, not in spite of disappointment and deferred hopes, but in the face of them.

But I was so tired.

“If I can’t run to You,” I told the Lord, “then at least I can lift my head and hold out my arms.”

So midnight came, and not a moment too soon for my taste. We listened to the clock in the hall roll out the long chimes and clinked our soft drinks and laughed about how tame it all was. And then I said I was going to bed in earnest. I hoisted myself up and took a last glance at the Christmas tree, all stars and magic in the gloom.

And it was then that the fireworks began.

It has been so long since we have been home on New Year’s, we had no idea what a spectacle our neighbors had cooked up in the interim. I dropped back down beside Philip on the sofa and we sat there listening for a while, expecting it to end any moment. But the bangs and reverberations only escalated.

Philip suddenly sat up.

“Those are big—I’ll bet we could see them!”

So we jumped up and hastened outside into the cold, and there, across the road and all along the winking line of neighboring house lights, we saw the blooming explosions of color and light flaming out above the trees. Red and green, blue and gold: all profusions of falling stars with joyous booms to accompany. It was glorious, and completely unexpected: fireworks that had undoubtedly crossed the state line from vacations and holidays, flung recklessly out into the night for weary, unknown souls to feast upon. I could hardly conceive of such benevolence. Joy simply blazed up in both of us—it was as if we had never been tired; I had never been sick or sad. Philip ran to gather all the fireworks we had and I ran in the house and came back out on the front porch (in my coat this time) with the bottle of champagne and two glasses.

“I don’t care if this makes me sick,” I laughed as Philip poured mine and the bubbles foamed up and ran down over the sides of the flute.

It didn’t. I sat and watched the show over the trees and the beautiful little spectacle that my husband was staging for me there on our own front walk, sipping my champagne and looking up at the real stars overhead in the clear, cold sky. Our fireworks were not as impressive as our neighbors’, but they were exquisite to me. They were radiance in the darkness and a splendor in my own heart. Glory flaring out with a sudden beauty that made us laugh, and also made me want to cry a little bit.

A bird woke in our holly hedge and protested all the noise. I shushed her back to sleep with a smile.

Joy and sorrow—twin eggs of the same nest. They make their home together and sorrow will always wound and ply her merciful steel upon the human heart. But it’s the joy that breaks it.

It wasn’t the New Year’s we had planned or expected—even a few moments before. But there we were, sitting out in the cold on our own front steps in coats and pajamas, drinking cheap champagne and watching a New Year bloom in a sudden exultation of falling stars and kindling hopes. And although this January was scarcely half an hour old, my mind was filled with the words of The Innocence Mission song July:

the man I love and I will lift our heads together…
the world at night has seen the greatest light: too much light to deny…

Lord Jesus,
Master of both the light and the darkness,
send your Holy Spirit upon our preparations for Christmas.
We who have so much to do, seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day.
We who are anxious over many things, look forward to your coming among us.
We who are blessed in so many ways, long for the complete joy of your kingdom.
We whose hearts are heavy, seek the joy of your presence.
We are your people, walking in darkness, yet seeking light.
To you we say,
Come Lord Jesus….

~Henri Nouwen

Today I’m making gingerbread for the Christmas tree and wreaths for the kitchen windows. Tonight we will trim our tree and tomorrow I will hang the Advent Wreath in the den window and light the candles for the first time. I cannot believe that this blessed time is really upon us. But in the midst of my bustle today, I wanted to drop a little line here to wish you all a most holy and wondrous Advent and days of increasing joy as we approach Christmas. (How long these December days seemed to draw themselves out when we were children, and how they vanish and flee as adults!)

I also wanted to share a piece that I wrote for the Art House America blog, if anyone is interested. I have to say, this was seriously one of the most difficult things I have ever written–like I told one friend, I wrestled this essay to the ground and came up limping. It’s something I rarely talk about, and I confess to a certain degree of inner conflict over even posting this link. There is an illusion of safety, you know, in relative anonymity. But it’s not safety we’re made for–it’s goodness. The goodness of God and the honor of sharing that goodness with other souls. Forgive my fear and trembling, kind friends, and thank you for the many ways in which you have given me courage to keep putting words out there.

Lo, How a Rose

Almost a year ago I had the pleasure of announcing the first title in the newly-inaugurated Low Door Press, a bindery dedicated to producing books created entirely by hand. The response to Kilmeny of the Orchard was overwhelming—and heart-warming. I cannot even begin to say what your enthusiasm and encouraging words have meant to me during this journey into bookbinding. My passion to create a work of beauty that would not only honor the book itself, but reflect the time-honored craft of book artisanship has meant with such sympathy in the world beyond my little workshop, and I am deeply blessed. Say what you will about the degeneracy of the age, I am thankful to live in a world in which I can still make books by hand—and in which there are those who will still appreciate them.

From the original book description:

The pages are acid-free rag content and the signatures were folded and sewn entirely by hand onto cotton tapes with Irish bookbinder’s thread. I used an archival PVA book glue and traditional English mull for the binding, and the headbanding at the head and tail of the spine are silk. The book cloth is Dover linen and the endpapers are Italian cotton. The artwork, consisting of a cover plate and frontispiece, is from original oils painted by my sister, and the cases were individually debossed and inked on an early-twentieth century engraver’s press. I would not even be able to begin to say how many hours went into each book, but I can avow that every one of them was a labor of love.

Keep in mind that any slight imperfections are owing to the fact that these books are handmade from start to finish. The only modern machine involved was the printer.

You can read more about the process here, if you’re interested.

The original run of 100 books took over two years to complete, but today I am happy to be able to say that the final 15 books have been listed in the Shop.

Unfortunately, due to copyright restrictions, I can only sell them to residents of the U.S. Thank you for your understanding.

November 14th

I’m sitting by my kitchen fire this chill November evening after a long day of almost monkish domesticity. I’ve been so industrious today that this welcome pause is almost too much: the warmth of the fire and the weariness of my bones is conjuring a somnolent spell I can scarcely resist. But my heart is wide awake, enlarging with a quiet presence that I can’t gainsay. Tired as I am, I must find utterance for this shining thing within, howsoever imperfectly. It’s so persistent, so ingenuously obdurate, I fear if I tried to go to sleep now I’d simply lay there spinning words and weaving sentences, the threads of which have been darting around the corners of my mind all afternoon. I have to acknowledge this radiance that has settled to roost in my heart like a homing bird—because it’s my own joy, come back to me in a silent rush of unseen wings.

It’s been just the kind of day I love—just the kind of day to coax my joy out of hiding. I’ve been so intent on surviving mere circumstances recently that I’ve scarcely noticed the springs of my life were running dangerously low. It wasn’t until I felt that sudden uplift this afternoon at the sweet scent of decaying leaves, that giddy plunge of happiness borne on a gustering autumn wind, that I realized what had happened—and what was happening again, in the mercy of God. He has been kindling my weary soul the past few days with sword-flashes of light: a fireside evening with a sister-friend, swapping grace tales over a pot of tea; the laughing joy of watching a Nubian goatling bound and stot into the shocking freshness of a November morning; the stupendous simplicity of a nourishing soup and the tang a Winesap apple so laden with happy associations it almost summons tears. And brimming over all, the mounting, blooming wonder of Advent, approaching on tireless wings. So many of the year’s heartaches have dwindled to their proper proportions before that bright-gleaming Bird.

And this very fact is grace in itself, and the source of so much of my joy on this mid-November night. Much as I hate to admit it, three days ago I was paralyzingly overwhelmed with the thought of the holidays. This year has taken so much out of me that I felt I had nothing left to give, particularly in this season that I love best. I was so overwhelmed, in fact, that I sat down to have it out with God one morning with something akin to Jacob’s desperation in wrestling with the angel. Give me some guidance or I perish! I settled on the couch with my Bible and an enormous cup of tea, prepared to stay there as long as it took, despite the obnoxious insistence of my planner and a Monday to-do list that was more than I could possibly accomplish in a week. If I couldn’t find my lost place of peace, then all my best-laid-plans were worse than worthless, and I knew it.

And this is what God said:

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens.

Such simple words, but what enormous freedom they bore to me! I don’t have to “do it all”, and I don’t have to do it all at once. There are seasons for ambitions and for rest, for lavish acts of love and for homely gifts, for weaving words madly into story and prose and for sitting quiet and prayerful with pen poised over a Christmas menu. God has been reminding me keenly of late (life-changingly, I really believe) that He is not asking me to do things for Him, but to walk with Him. And I am coming to understand that so much of the intimacy of that journey depends on understanding the season I am in and how best to love God from that particular place. I read through the list of seasons which the chapter in Ecclesiastes tallies, and I found myself asking God to tell me the season I’m in.

It was scarcely out of my mouth when quick as a wink the words blazed on the page and burned in my heart: a time to embrace.

A time to kiss all the faces of my beloved ones. A time to pour into the lives of those I love. And a time, itself, to be embraced, for it will not come again. Though Advent invades our lives every year with its blessed presence, though the beloved bother of the holidays puts everything on hold that can be put on hold, this particular time will never come again.  It was both sobering and exhilarating, a lightning charge of joy and energy that seemed to shock through me and shock all my joys awake. Nothing—and I mean nothing—has been the same since. A joyful anticipation has burgeoned and bloomed in my heart and every familiar, commonplace thing I see around me seems bathed in its light. I really feel like the Lord whispered to me the grace of the season and my spirit rose instinctively to greet it—because it is my place. It where I am to be for now, in the mercy of God, waiting and preparing beneath His sheltering wings. There is no other explanation for this return of joy and energy. And it’s real.

Today the music of Palestrina filled my home with soul-soothing accord, a whispered acknowledgement of things to come, a respectful nod to the swelling anthems of the holy season that is gathering its glory to visit us once more. Almost an advent of Advent, it seemed. The strains and harmonies and antiphonies bore my heart along with a joy that felt newborn as I polished silver and washed curtains and mulled over Christmas centerpieces while the fire hissed and crackled companionably on the hearth. And over all, stitching everything together into one fragrant, intentional whole, the aroma of apple butter brewing away, decanting a magic of all that is wholesome and homeloving and good. My home was filled with such a warmth of spices and woodsmoke it felt like an embrace.

So, the season is upon us.

And my arms are open wide.

You cannot get to England by bus, or train,
          or any of the customary modes of transportation.
Even a car will only bring you to the gates—
          but these are everywhere, of course, wanting but
                     the beholder.

There will be a style, or a post worn smooth
          by fellow sojourners’ hands,
                     and a small wooden sign pointing the way to England.
They really can’t be missed, these portals, though they often are,
          hurried past in what must seem an insult to their invitation.

To find England, you must venture from the toil trodden ways
          into unmarked lanes and well-worn footpaths—
                     the arteries and leafy veins of her evergreen heart.
You must stain your fingers purple with the fruit of the jeweled hedgerows,
          and grant a respectful audience to the robin bursting
                     his heart with song for you in the hawthorn hard-by.
You must sally forth like an adventurer of old, with sandwiches
          in a field bag and a water bottle bouncing against you knee and
                     perhaps a stick for good measure, though certainly not required.

You will need a map, limp with much folding, and a pair of stout shoes,
          impervious to mud and the occasional ford. And a heart that bends its
                     knee to beauty. That is all.
And what will you gain for such vagabond ways? For the lane’s
          gentle summons and your kind heart to heed it? Well might you ask,
                     and full fair I make answer—

Yours will be the spice-scented fern and all the oriental wealth of the wild
          foxglove, nodding in courtly deference as you pass. The furze will spangle
                     its gossamer with diamonds for your pleasure, and your way
will be cast with the pearls of the wood dove’s plume. The emerald moss
          will offer itself for your repose—so velvet a throne a queen might covet!—
                     and the woods, with their holy aisles and long-shadowed silences,
will hold their breath in reverence for your prayers, while the wind chants antiphonies
          among the orieled patches of sky.

A field will bare its green bosom and cosset your soul, like the lambs and ewes
          nourished thereby, and you will long to lie down in that peace,
                     it will be so sweet. And cresting
some hill, steep and irresistible of ascent, you will find yourself sudden monarch
          of all you survey: an ancient domain cast from your height
                     in all points of the compass.
A kingdom primeval of verdure and gilt,
          fading past sight into blue dreaming hazes.

There the wind will show you its wildness, lifting your heart clean off
          its sane footing. And there the white gulls will wing their aerial
                     dances for your delight.
All of these things I give you in promise, and more that cannot be uttered,
          so great is their gift. If you will but commit your ways to the countryside,
                     returning the kiss of the gracious sun
and lifting your face to the favor of a wind-washed shower; if you will but love
          the elf-light passing through clouds and gamboling over the landscape
                     with ripples of grace,
and court her fairy-haunted hollows in silence and sweet fancy—

—then, O wayfarer, I pledge with all the firm compact of gallantry’s code—

          You will find her, England fair.

                     And your heart will not be unlost.

I wrote this poem in England last autumn on a beloved Dorset hilltop, and I’m missing the place so painfully I thought I’d share it. Incidentally, I penned another which I wrote about here, and which managed to find its way into print this autumn by way of The Molehill.

This year has been flying so fast it seems every time I turn my head another month slips by. How can it already be October?

I’ve been so busy of late, both at home and abroad. In September I had the joy of a much-anticipated houseguest, and later that week she was able to journey with Philip and me up to Nashville to attend The Rabbit Room’s annual Hutchmoot gathering. (And if you’re wondering what the heck a Hutchmoot is, well, all I can say is it’s a jamboree of Feasting and Story and Song, heavily influenced by the legacy of the Inklings and with a fringe element of pipe smokery. Basically, a four day meeting comprised of people who, as L.M. Montgomery would say, have not forgotten the way to fairyland.) I don’t think we drew breath from the moment I picked Sarah up at the airport—the time was so precious and the topics we had to discuss were so many and varied—that is, not until we actually got in the car to drive up to Tennessee. Poor Philip had to ride for four hours in total silence as Sarah and I pored over books and stared thoughtfully out the window and jotted notes in last minute preparation for the talk we were giving together the next day. But aren’t those the best kinds of friends, the ones with whom you can be easily as quiet as loquacious?

I’m working hard to get more books listed in The Shop in the coming days. I have some lovely new (old) titles that I’m really excited about. But in the meantime, I thought I’d give you just a little taste of what I’ve been up to…

First of all, I am delighted to announce that The Rabbit Room has released its first ever anthological journal, The Molehill, a collection of original works by the contributors to this remarkable way-beyond-merely-online community. (There are also pieces by the venerable Walt Wangerin, Jr. and the dearly-loved and esteemed Sally Lloyd-Jones—facts which nearly paralyzed me with terror at the outset of crafting my own short story contribution.) As editor and general book art genius, A.S. “Pete” Peterson has done a simply breathtaking job with this book—I knew it was going to be beautiful, but I was blown away when he put it in my hands at Hutchmoot last month. In his preface, he calls it a “family photo”,

“a snapshot of a group of people and where they are at this moment in time, in their writing, in their lives, in their spiritual journeys, in their understanding of stories and songs and the world around them.”

Well, if that’s the case, I couldn’t be happier to be a part of this family, and to be squinting at the camera between Andrew Peterson and Sarah Clarkson, two of my favorite people in the whole world. (And again, on page 163, shouldering up to Evie Coates, pro bon vivant and veritable wizardress of the kitchen realms—can you tell I love these people?)

The Molehill is available in The Rabbit Room store, and you can read Pete’s preface in its entirely here. Trust me, this book is a gem, over two hundred pages bursting with essay and story and poetry and pictures—and recipes! And, as Philip pointed out, the best thing about it might just be that enticing little “vol. 1” on the cover. Here’s to The Molehill, and many more to come!

In other news, I have been writing like mad on my novel. That’s all I’m going to say about that, as I’ve placed myself under a dictum of silence till the thing is done. (It’s so much easier to talk about writing than to, you know, actually write.) I’m also mortally afraid of scaring away the muse by even pretending I’m sure what she’s up to; as it is, I’ve been tempting her to stick around with every treat and morsel I can think of. I’ve made a steep challenge for myself, a deadline for this draft, and it’s going to take a sustained and determined effort to pull it off.

Here’s a snapshot of my reading and research materials. Just the sight of all those titles spelling out the way my thoughts and heart are turning towards my novel of late are enough to drive me back to my desk.

And, finally, in a last heartless tease, I’m going to leave you with an image that will give you an inkling of one more direction in which my ambitions are bent these days. Formal announcement forthcoming, but things are definitely beginning to percolate around here…

Happy October, friends!