Frat-Snapping at the C. S. Lewis Retreat

You know how it goes: someone mentions Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy and you just can't help but react in the affirmative.

So there I was, the only 20-something in a crowd of roughly 80 people who were all closer to retirement than college graduation, trying to frat snap as the speaker continues on about examples of allegory.
That's when the longing hits me.

I missed the HRC, and everyone there at the retreat was looking for their own version of it.

One woman who flew all the way to Navasota, Texas from Maryland tells me she's been back several times because "these are my people." That same night at the Bag End Cafe, a small open-mic session at the end of the day, a man named Skip tells me from under his cowboy hat that he keeps coming back because he loves ideas, and he wants to talk to other people about ideas. The C. S. Lewis retreat is where he finds that. Early in the first day of the weekend retreat one of the directors asks everyone who has returned to the retreat and made a life-long friend there to stand up, and most of the room does. Some stood up exuberantly, and those that could not stood up on canes.

I won't be going back to the retreat. While I did indeed learn and I do think I made a new friend, it filled me with longing more than anything. These people in their 40's and 50's talked about companionship and amicability of fellow Lewis fans like this was the only place they had ever found it. I believe them. So many were looking for the very thing I had known and lived in for a solid three years - and here they had it, for a few days once a year.

How blessed I was to not find community at the C. S. Lewis retreat, knowing that I had already found it elsewhere! 

This new phase of my life does not bring with it friendly notes on my door nor laughter at midnight. There are no keen ears for my schemes, no ready hands to bring them to life. I haven't been asked for advice on boys in months. I miss hearing Emma laugh.
While I might long for the blessing to be in the same conference room with all of my dear friends again, dissing professors and translations with playful smiles, at least I have known it. I have experienced intimately that  feeling which so many others were looking for that weekend. And because I have known it, I recognize it when I see it.

I can't actually frat snap, but I tried. It was a pure, unadulterated reaction to hearing one of my most beloved books mentioned. Pure, silly joy.

 It's the kind of reaction I'm going to have whenever I see any of you again.

Horace, Odes 1.11

My translation

Mind you don’t ask—it’s wrong to know—what end to me or you

the gods will give, Leuconoe, nor try the horoscopes

of Babylon. It’s better to submit to what will be,

whether Jupiter will give more winters, or just this,

which now wears down against the high opposing cliffs the sea

of Tuscany. Be wise, pour out the wine, and to brief space

prune your long hopes. While we are speaking, time flies on

with envy: pluck the day, trust little to the time to come.

Latin text
Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi
finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
temptaris numeros. ut melius, quidquid erit, pati.
seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare
Tyrrhenum: sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi
spem longam reseces. dum loquimur, fugerit invida
aetas: carpe diem quam minimum credula postero.

What does it mean to be "co-heirs with Christ"?

Someone was telling me the other day that becoming a catholic after growing up a Protestant was like finding out you were born into royalty and no one had told you.

I, (who have not become catholic), did know I had been born into royalty. I was raised by romantic nerds who read too much Narnia. They didn't really understand what they were reading a lot of the time (do any of us?) but they knew it was true. So I knew that to be a christian was to be royalty, I just had little idea what royalty was. So what does it mean that we are adopted children of the King?

I knew we were "heirs with Christ," whatever that means. I knew that Peter was supposed to be the high king of Narnia and that was pretty cool. It meant he got to wear a crown. I knew Simba had a responsibility to take back his kingdom and I certainly knew what a responsibility was. I knew Aragorn was really cool and could do all sorts of useful things. But all these things were just cool. My understanding of being “co-heirs with Christ” was not much more nuanced than a childish desire to be a princess and to go on adventures.

Going back now and rereading the Lord of the Rings and Narnia and Hosea and 1 & 2 Samuel and many other things, it seems that I didn't know what a king was at all. There are lots of things these kings and queens do that didn’t fit with my understanding of royalty. I didn't know why Aragorn is recognized as king for having "the hands of a healer." I didn't know that "always a king or queen of Narnia" meant something more than vague nobility; it is also a duty. I didn't know why Simba could save a country that Nala couldn't. I didn't know that Nala was also royalty in any meaningful sense. I didn't know that Lucy's cordial was a gift for the queen, and not just a tool for use by the most compassionate female available.

While I was told I had responsibilities as a Christian, those responsibilities were all evangelism; there were no others. I didn't make the connection that those duties of the Christian are also those of the voice crying in the wilderness "make straight the paths of the Lord," of giant slaying, of having the hands of a healer, of standing at the front of the army and leading it fearlessly, of caring for one’s people, and of exposing treachery. Those ideas were all presented, but they were disjointed and misplaced. The puzzle slowly comes together, and the result is a heavy picture of honor and responsibility. Yes I am an heir with Christ, and do get to be nobility. That is an honor. That honor is not cheaply bought. The princes and princesses here in our church have that honor because they have to ride at the front of the army. The title is not really earned, it is given as adopted children, but it is profoundly expensive. It costs your whole person and then some. In order to be a king or queen you have to be more than you are, and so you need the title and the honor. It will be called upon.

Part of that responsibility lies in claiming the title. Simba and Aragorn are both born into kingship, but both of them have to claim their kingship, and the act of claiming it is their most important and most difficult duty. T'Challa wouldn't be the king he is if he didn't defend that title from people who want it only for the glory. Scar tells Simba “you don’t understand! The pressures of ruling a kingdom—“ and Simba finishes his sentence: “—are no longer yours.” Simba is not taking the title and glory and submitting to its responsibilities, dangers, and pressures. Rather, he is claiming the responsibility and the title that goes with it. A king has a duty to his people not to treat his title lightly; he needs it to lead them well.

Another part of that responsibility is knowing who else is in charge. The other kings and queens of Narnia (all of them) know that Peter is the high king, obey him (even Edmund), and all respect one another, letting each do the thing they are best at. Aragorn wouldn't be half the king he is if he didn't know how to serve under another king, bow to the king of Rohan in his own hall, know what a force of nature a shieldmaiden of Rohan is, recognize that even the king of Gondor and Arnor can marry above his station, obey his foster father/father in law, and accept the authority of Galadriel. There have to be other royals; no one person can rule alone. (Though how we are all royalty is the subject of another paper.)

We are all co-heirs with Christ. We are princes and princesses of the coming kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. Our high King will return, with the sound of a trumpet, and raise the dead. We are his children, fighting and working until he comes. It doesn't necessarily take Catholicism to realize one is royalty. Just ecumenical education in our own history. And that realization is tremendous, wonderful, awesome, and sobering. Christ has conquered death, but until he returns in glory he and his co-heirs are still fighting for the salvation of the world. And he has a royal army. Our family has in it women who died in battle, princesses who slew and tamed dragons, men who liberated slaves, kings and queens who conquered death, mystics who understood mysteries of the faith, and ordinary everyday men and women who gave their lives to feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, healing the sick, visiting the imprisoned, and burying the dead.

Take care of one another. We are sons and daughters of the King of kings. We have work to do.


A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” ... Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
Isaiah 40:3-5, 28-31

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. ... The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. ... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:14, 16-18, 37-39

"Crutch" - a poem

Crutch                                                                                                                                                             

The butterflies in my stomach are

Shy yet vivid things

And when they first saw you

They peeled open their wings.

My stomach is a small space

But they manage to fly high

When on some chance morning

You smile, wave, walk by.

It is absolutely sickening

My hot, feverish blushing:

It's a symptom of the butterflies,

Their tiny heart-beats rushing.

Some times it gets so bad

I double over, nauseous.

The butterflies saw you get nervous,

Saw you regard me with something cautious.

There is a butterfly named

For every boy for whom I've had a crutch:

-a winged-turmoil in my belly

-a hope that hands might touch.

Very Old, Very Scary Things

Do you ever get that feeling when you’re reading about something old, very very old, older than the Latins ever were, and you feel that what you’re reading is somehow dangerous? Like you might come across a secret that is too old, and that you don’t necessarily want to know, and you feel like you might wake something ancient and terrible, but you also can’t stop reading. You might take one too many steps into the woods and you won’t be able to find your way back. And you realize, as you think it, that you are not in fact in the woods: you are in your own chair in your own house in the broad daylight. But if you weren’t in such a safe, well lit place, the words you’re reading, the secrets you’re hearing might not fit in the book, and maybe these words should not darken this room. The vague fear is enough to quicken your heart and freeze your body as though you’re hiding, and you hardly breathe except to turn the page. Let me demonstrate. 

There was once such a creature as a hornless rhino, with a thick grey hide, kind soft eyes, and elephantine legs, whose hocks would come up to your shoulders. He wandered the breadth of Eurasia before there was a line to break it. 

Hippos once swam in the Rhine. Hyenas hunted great shaggy rhinos who ran like horses across Russia and whose pelts dragged the ground, and women painted them both into magic caves hidden deep in French forests that we still greet with whispers. 

Europe’s lions were bigger than a tiger, and could touch their nose to yours. They were maneless, and their coats were blonde, or gray. The elk of Germany and the British isles had twisted mantles of horn wider than a car is long, and their withers would clear your head. 

Sloths grew tall as streetlamps. They were behemoths with hides so thick spears bounced off their sides, and they had claws as long as your foot. And they would meander across the plains and forests of Texas. 

Some sloths lived in the depths of the sea, dripping with seaweed and ancient eyes, bigger than an elephant and heavier than a sea cow. 

A sea cow, by the way, is not a manatee; it is the size of a semi truck. They’ve been extinct since 1760, but a fisherman in the fifties thought he saw one. 

There were elephants that had four tusks.

And two trunks. 

Or a jaw that looked like a trunk. 

America’s lions were cinnamon red with paws the size of dinner plates. Armadillos were not much bigger than a car. (Did you know modern armadillos can be 5' long?) America’s zebras had brown stripes, and the bears would dwarf a grizzly. 

There were once hogs, ugly as sin, who were as big and as fast as a horse. They’re called “Hell pigs”

There were people in Europe before the people we know as Europeans came. Some say the modern Europeans killed them. Others say the modern Europeans moved in quietly and married them. Still others say that they were a quiet, gentle people who moved into the shadows until they died out. The Finns and the Hungarians and a handful of scattered people of Russia may still speak a descendant of their language. They may speak something else entirely. 

Do you know what Old English sounded like? It had letters you’ve never heard of, and fourteen vowels. Do you know what tongue the ancient kings of Scotland used? Have you ever met an old Irish farmer who speaks no English, but a tongue older than we can even know? 

When you read the story of the Exodus, do you ever think about what words they are speaking? We can’t even today tell you how they are pronounced. If you heard them, would you know?

Do you know that there are stars that move at near the speed of light? There are stars thousands upon thousands of times the size of ours. There are stars so small, so bright, spinning so fast, that one can keep time to the millisecond on them, and a tablespoon of the stuff they’re made of weighs more than the human race. 

Why is this knowledge dangerous?

If it isn't, why does it feel like it is?

Why do we have bridesmaids?

This is more of a theological justification than a historical one. 

There are four virgins standing behind the bride, all of whom have little idea why they are standing there, except that our friend wants us there. None of us know exactly what she’s getting into, we just know her and what she needs. We can pray for her, but we are praying through the fear and adrenaline and the unknown; we know as little about this as she does. Her mother and aunts and the women of the church who have cared for her in college, who love her as their own, are praying for her and praying well. But her bridesmaids are praying differently, as her maiden peers. We aren’t naive, it’s just that our understanding of what she is preparing to do is only conceptual. We are praying as unmarried women on the threshold of married life; we are on the same side of the gate. We cannot cross with her into her new country, but we can walk her to the gate that the mothers of the church have already crossed. That’s what it seems like, at least, as we walk through the kitchen and into the sanctuary in front of her. 

Our friend is going where we can’t follow her, and our task is to escort her there, strengthen her on her way (there’s a verse in the Song of Songs about “refresh me with apples for I am weak with love” and I’m pretty sure we did that. I certainly handed out a lot of apples), pray for her, and defend her from all the dozens of people who want her attention. But all these tasks are not for the married people whom she joins, and certainly not for her future husband, who is also a virgin and crossing into the same unknown country. It’s for four virgin women, whose job is so important that they are not to be distracted by menial tasks like decorating and setting tables up and fetching the cake. Even four high achieving control freaks are too busy. She legitimately needs the cloud of us surrounding her. I don’t think I object to having married bridesmaids, and if I ever get married this now-married woman will be there, but a married bridesmaid has to go home at the end of the day. We can sleep next to her. 

I don’t know exactly why it is important that we stand behind her on the stage as she gets married, but the weight we held was almost as though we were physically supporting her. If it is true, as I suspect, that spiritual things in general weigh a lot more than we tend to give them credit for, we may in fact have been supporting her whole weight, and this woman, while physically no taller than me, is a spiritual giant. She is a dancer; she can hold herself up physically. It is spiritual strength that she needed. (And physical, hence the “refresh me with apples” comment). We had been praying her her without ceasing for four days before this, and if you had walked into the apartment we all shared, you could tell. The Holy Spirit had filled that place and the angels surrounded it, and there was no ability even for us to be stressed or anxious about anything other than our friend’s impending marriage. I am rarely tempted to refer to the Holy Spirit in feminine pronouns, God is beyond gender and what pronouns I use don’t bother me, but in that apartment there were no other pronouns to use. Love Herself filled that place, laughed with us, held us all as we cried, and watched us as we slept. Whatever our personal spiritual journeys may be, they were all put on hold. Love was there, and we were Her handmaidens. She must be obeyed. 

The bride’s father handed her off, but we did too. We spent a whole day making sure he was the only man who could approach her, and sometimes the only person who could. We walked into the sanctuary before her, but before that we had preceded her into any given room to make sure the coast was clear and the space arranged. And after her father hands her away and a different father (we don’t call our pastor “father,” but that is still his job) marries her before our Father in heaven, she now belongs to her lover and her lover to her and she is no longer ours. The change is immediately palpable. We can dance with the groomsmen, make sure the party goes well, talk to other guests to ease the burden on the couple, but she’s not ours anymore. We saw her off, tore down tables, and went home together exhausted. We have not lost a friend, but in a real way she truly does not belong to the same realm she did two nights before, with seven or eight unmarried girls giggling on the floor at one am, cooing at dresses and making jokes we didn’t understand. 

She is of course always welcome there, but it will not happen easily, and never accidentally. Girls’ nights will henceforth be planned and her husband notified that she’ll be gone or back late. She has gained more than any of us can understand, but it is also obvious why the Greeks used to compare marriage to death. This is a joyous sense of the word though, one the Greeks couldn’t have understood. Marriage is like death in a way like baptism is like death, where in death she lives for Christ. In their union is the image of Christ and the Church. His delight is in her and hers in him. What she gains is something I cannot fathom, and is an image of the impending glory of the church that I will participate in then but cannot see now. Her husband stands there as the symbol of Christ. Her four staunch defenders, who have ministered to her all week, are no longer needed. We part before the altar and present our friend to the man who makes her heart sing. 

Why Sewing is Art

Detail of the Prestonpans Tapestry taken from Textile Research Centre Leiden.

This is a scene from the Prestonpans Tapestry. It depicts a battle that took place in 1745; it was made in 2010.

Does that surprise you? Probably. We tend to think of embroidery, and of sewing in general, as quaint, outdated, not to be taken seriously. But in fact, sewing has never been taken seriously as an art form, and it should be.

Women's work

Part of the reason it has never been taken seriously is simply because it has never been confined to an elite group. It has always been a necessary part of the lives of even the poorest people, and it is traditionally considered “women’s work.” (Most—though not all—of the embroiderers who worked on the Prestonpans Tapestry are women.) It’s not that sewing is a mere craft and not an art, and therefore it was consigned to women; rather, sewing was consigned to women, and therefore it was considered a mere craft. But it’s 2019, so let’s take another look. Are there any other reasons not to consider sewing an art?

Obviously not all sewing is art, and not all artistic sewing is great art. Mending a garment is as pragmatic as painting a house wall (although both can be done with neatness and elegance). The average cross-stitch design has, perhaps, the artistic value of the average napkin doodle. But, by the same token, the Prestonpans Tapestry has the artistic value of any gallery painting.

Functional objects

When we move away from tapestry and embroidery to aspects of sewing such as garment design and construction, things get a little more complicated. There is a qualitative difference between a sewn object and a painting or symphony: most sewn objects are functional (garments, furnishings), while most paintings are, apparently, not.

A valid question would be, why does our definition of “fine art” exclude functional objects? We could probably circle right back into classism here, but I don’t think that would completely cover it. There really is a qualitative difference between, e.g., sculpture and architecture, between objects that have a use and objects that don’t. What is very hard for me to see, though, is why objects that have a use should be considered somehow lesser. If you need to make a distinction between the “decorative arts” and the “fine arts,” go right ahead—as long as this distinction is analogous to that between painting and music, between different types of equally valid artwork.

The special beauty of sewing

Indeed, the decorative arts can have a kind of elegance not available to the fine arts, precisely in the appropriateness with which they fulfill their function. A beautiful garment that is also amazingly comfortable, a beautiful building that is also exquisitely livable, a beautiful dish that is also incredibly useful—the external constraints of human bodies, needs, and uses don’t limit these artworks, they prompt extraordinary design that has a beauty all its own.

A further reflection: the boundaries between functional objects and other objects are sometimes much blurrier than they initially seem. Take a mural (I’m looking at one right now). It’s a painting; it’s primarily decorative, right? But it also functions as being a wall. Sure, you could have the wall without the painting—and we could all wear burlap sacks every day. But what fun would that be? The art isn’t in the fact that you put paint on a wall or cloth on a body; it’s in the way you do it and the beauty of the result.

I’m not saying that my sewing projects are the equivalent of the Sistine Chapel ceiling; they’re more the equivalent of a painting of a horse that a relative did at a community arts class, and now you have to keep it around because your relative did it. But that’s not because sewing isn’t art. It’s just because I’m not all that good at it yet.

(...Well, as to that, you’ll have to judge for yourself when I post pictures of my work!)

Singing

for Profs. C.H. and A.A.

How to sing:

first take a breath,

then another.

Let your stomach expand,

big enough to hold

all you’ve ever felt.

Stand.

The conductor’s hand

hovers at its peak.

Wait.

Better to start late

than without the others.

Don’t let your heart falter

in that airy zipline moment when

the first note soars out and finds itself.

Lean into harmony

as a bird into wind.

Keep going up

and never come down.

---

Jamie Wheeler

Matronly Monday #1

A weekly feature where I wear something that a motherly figure in my life used to wear, but which I have stolen borrowed. The descriptions will be fact, fiction, and not a lot about fashion.

Who: my mother

What: yellow polyester jacket

Wear: black skinny jeans, black flats, grey sleeveless turtleneck

I pulled this jacket out from the back of my mom’s closet. My mom says that this jacket is from the 80’s, and that it was always too warm for her to wear.

The jacket is warm, but the warmest part is its bold yellow color. I was expecting someone to call me Big Bird all day, but no one did. I even prompted the question by asking “Don’t I look like Big Bird?”

“What? No.”

Quite disappointing.

Next time I might wear it with orange stockings.

---
Heather Bayless
Photo: Kaitlyn Morris

God's Laundry

It smelled like God’s laundry outside.

A bit like dryer sheets, mostly like clean air. He must have hung it out sometime before noon. By 2 p.m. the sun shone brighter and warmer than it had all winter. 

There are parts of campus you will not see unless you try to see them. There are parts of campus that you will never see – building doors and coat closets and the mysterious places the cats go at night. Most are uninteresting, though I would like to see the cats. 

The trees are either evergreen or bare. Along the bank of the river, next to the fields, a turtle bobbed and stuck its necks out for a bit of the sun. I have grown so pale that 30 minutes into my walk I’m feeling a burn. 

Everything here is beautiful, just sometimes it takes me saying it over and over to realize it. 

I do not want to leave, but I would hate to stay. Part of these three and a half years has been accepting the passing of seasons. I now know that seasons are beautiful.

The lamp-posts dedicated to fallen soldiers: beautiful. 

The dead cicada skin on the path: beautiful.

The dread of homework: somehow, beautiful. 

Our dead friends and our grief: beautiful.

The unknown: beautiful.

Beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful.

---

Heather Bayless

Photo: Kaitlyn Morris