Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor

Becoming acquainted with Barbara Brown Taylor through reading Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith and now Learning to Walk in the Dark has given strength to my spiritual journey. Our Contemplative Prayer Group finished this book in May and as a result of the group discussions, it was filled with gemstones for me that I would have missed without their insight. I am indeed blessed with this wonderful group and I thank God for bringing us together.

It took a few chapters for the author to get the foundation established for the reader to have an understanding where the book was guiding you. You keep finding mindsets you have on darkness that has influenced your paths. But as the book jacket tells us "Taylor is our guide through a spirituality of the nighttime, teaching us how to find God even in darkness, and giving us a way to let darkness teach us what we need to know."   

My copy of this book is really marked which is what I use when I review a book at a later time ... may as well start on page one for this book. Taylor begins chapter one with this appropriate scripture: "I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name. Isaiah 45:3."   Here is one of the many quotes scattered throughout the book: 

There is a tendency for us to flee from the wild silence and wild dark, to pack up our gods and hunker down behind city walls, to turn the gods into idols, to kowtow before them and approach their precincts only in the official robes of office. And when we are in the temples, then who will hear the voice crying in the wilderness? Who will hear the reed shaken by the wind? ... Chet Raymo, The Soul of the Night

And at the end of the book the prayer of Thomas Merton from his book, Thoughts in Solitude.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Meditations On the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life by Thomas Moore

This beautiful gift book was purchased at a used book store many years ago and remained unread until June when I was in need of readings that were short. The timing was so perfect that I place this experience in what is called "when the fullness of time came."  This section is from the author's foreword explaining these meditations:

While our society may not seem terribly interested these days in monastic life, it is clearly hungry for a kind of spirituality that is neither divorced from ordinary life nor escapist in tone. We may not need new leaders and new philosophies as much as the recollection of old images from the past. Monasticism may appear to be dying, but that fading of a way of life offers us an unusual opportunity to regard it with increased imagination, drawing its lessons and attractions into our own lives, no matter what external shape our work and home life may take. The ghosts of the monks still speak. We have only to listen to them with subtle attentiveness.

This is one of the meditations that spoke to me and gave a new word .... Melisma.

 Sometimes in their chanting monks will land upon a note and sing it in florid fashion, one syllable of text for fifty notes of chant. Melisma, they call it. Living a melismatic life in imitation of plainchant, we may stop on an experience, a place, a person, or a memory and rhapsodize in imagination. Some like to meditate or contemplate melismatically, while others prefer to draw, build, paint, or dance whatever their eye has fallen upon. Living one point after another is one form of experience, and it can be emphatically productive. But stopping for melisma gives the soul it reason for being. 

The Lessons of St. Francis by John Michael Talbot with Steve Rabey

I am much more familiar with John Michael Talbot's music than I am his writing. I was introduced to his music with the Heart of the Shepherd album a very long time ago when I was recovering from pneumonia.  He is a musician, teacher, and writer who practices the Franciscan traditions. In 1980 he founded Brothers and Sisters of Charity, a monastic community located in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, based on the Franciscan principles of simplicity.  Another Franciscan monk and author of The Journey and the Dream, Murray Bodo, gives this review for the book:

This small wisdom book combines personal narration with practical advice to cut across all religious traditions. Through the universally loved life and works of Francis of Assisi, the author weaves a guidebook of spirituality for moderns. The whole tapestry works because the strands are strong and reliable. The reader is invited to take up those threads and make, not a medieval tapestry, but a refashioned modern life after the pattern of St. Francis.

Talbot's album entitled Troubadour of the Great King consists of musical versions of the favorite scriptures ad prayers of St. Francis. 

The Ordinary Princess written and illustrated by M.M. Kaye

A delightful fairy tale to read when resting from gardening. It was so refreshing to my body and mind that it  prompted me to locate the big book of The World's Best Fairy Tales and read a few favorites from my youthful energetic days. In the foreword, M.M. Kaye says she created this story about Princess Amethyst in an apple orchard in full bloom in the county of Kent in England. Not once did she remember needing to use her eraser as the story wrote itself. And the illustrations scattered throughout the book are contrasts between the ordinary and the ornate. The adventures of the seventh princess was just as Fairy Crustacea said "being ordinary will bring you more happiness."        

Portobello by Ruth Rendell

There isn't anything like finding an author that is "new to you" that offers forty years of books just waiting for you to read.  If her other novels are anything like Portobello I will be a satisfied reader.  Must add her name to the list of authors/books I look for at used book stores. Portobello is a tale that weaves together the lives of several people in one neighborhood in London and the consequences that change them all.  It is written  in such a natural way that you feel as if you are actually in the neighborhood yourself and observing these happenings.  Thanks again to Gypsi for suggesting this author to me.       

The Heaven of Animals by Nancy Tillman

The perfect beauty of the art in this book cannot be described and the story so needful by anyone who has lost a dear pet.  A friend suggested we should read this book when we lost our dear Daisy Beagle. I found a copy at the library and knew I had to have my own copy.  It was indeed a comfort to us and we frequently make references to this dear book.  All pet lovers, young and old, should be friends with this book.  

http://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Animals-Nancy-Tillman/dp/0312553692/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1436322053&sr=8-1&keywords=the+heaven+of+animals

  

What happened in May & June?

I did read, but I did not blog. Reason: GARDENING, which is wonderful and satisfying but time consuming and physical.

Here is a list of young adult books I read in May for discussions with Zachary, a rising 4th grader who enjoys talking about the American history he is learning in school. I needed a review to hold up my side of the conversations, so a trip to the public library was necessary. I always refer to Zachary as my sister's grandson (Susan Wheeler Robinson 1956-2014) for continuity of her position in his life. Because of these conversations, I was able to share some Wheeler family history with Zachary: Rev. John H. Wheeler (1793-1871) fought in the Confederate Army (29th Regiment NC Troops Co. B ) as did his seventh son John Henry Wheeler (1837-1907) but his ninth son Hiram Wheeler (1847-1907) fought in the Union Army (2nd Regiment NC Mounted Infantry Co.H). The loyalty in the Wheeler family was divided as was many others in the Western North Carolina Mountains and Eastern Tennessee
.. 
Confederate Soldier and Union Soldier by Denis Hambucken
Causes of the Civil War by Shane Mauntjoy
The White House is Burning by Jane Sutcliffe
The Day Fort Sumter Was Fired On by Jim Haskins

During this time, I also read Amazing Women of the Civil War by Webb Garrison and Civil War Women edited by Frank McSherry, Jr., Charles G. Waugh, and Martin Greenberg.  Both of these books were gifts from Gypsi and  perfect reading material for these months as they were short stories. Civil War Women was compiled to show the Civil War through women's eyes in stories by such authors as Louisa May Alcott, Kate Chopin and Eudora Welty.  Amazing Women of the Civil War was truly fascinating stories of women who were more involved in the war than most women by being spies, soldiers (an estimated 300 fought on the battlefield), journalists and angels of mercy. 

Reading The Year Without Summer by William Klingaman and Nicholas Klingaman was a result of a  FaceBook post regarding weather. It is almost unbelievable how one volcano eruption really did change history.  Product review from Amazon:

Like Winchester's Krakatoa, The Year Without Summer reveals a year of dramatic global change long forgotten by history

 In the tradition of Krakatoa, The World Without Us, and Guns, Germs and Steel comes a sweeping history of the year that became known as 18-hundred-and-froze-to-death. 1816 was a remarkable year—mostly for the fact that there was no summer. As a result of a volcanic eruption at Mount Tambora in Indonesia, weather patterns were disrupted worldwide for months, allowing for excessive rain, frost, and snowfall through much of the Northeastern U.S. and Europe in the summer of 1816.

In the U.S., the extraordinary weather produced food shortages, religious revivals, and extensive migration from New England to the Midwest. In Europe, the cold and wet summer led to famine, food riots, the transformation of stable communities into wandering beggars, and one of the worst typhus epidemics in history. 1816 was the year Frankenstein was written. It was also the year Turner painted his fiery sunsets. All of these things are linked to global climate change—something we are quite aware of now, but that was utterly mysterious to people in the nineteenth century, who concocted all sorts of reasons for such an ungenial season.

   Making use of a wealth of source material and employing a compelling narrative approach featuring peasants and royalty, politicians, writers, and scientists, The Year Without Summer by William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman examines not only the climate change engendered by the volcano, but also its effects on politics, the economy, the arts, and social structures.

As a result of reading The Year Without Summer, I had to read Mary W. Shelley's Frankenstein which was written during that cold summer.  It proved to be a book way beyond any expectation I had formed and putting it down was very hard and reading it again will be a pleasure.