History Outside my Door

I went out the other day before it turned warm to test the new cold weather clothing I bought for my trip, and came across this about 50 yards or so from my house. The ancient split-rail fence that ends at my driveway leads directly into it. It looks like it was some kind of fighting position: the stone berm gives excellent cover and concealment, and the position overlooks the entrance to the road up here from the highway. I can't say for sure that's why it was built: could be some kind of dike for rainwater runoff, or even part of a livestock pen. But I'm guessing somebody was watching movement along the trail that eventually became Hwy 33.

More Gems from Richard Llewellyn

"There is a lot of nonsense talked about love, and most of all by the people who have never known it, who have no spirit within them to inspire it in others. Talk of love in such mouths is a grossness, indeed."

"There is a look in the eyes of a man in love that will have you in fits unless you are in love yourself. If you are, you will feel something move inside you to be of help to him, to try and have him happy even if there is no chance for you.

[...] You will see a part of it in the eyes of sheep fastened to the board and waiting for the knife. The other part you will see only in the eyes of a good man who has put his heart into the hands of a girl. It is a light that is rarely of the earth, a radiance that is holy, a warming, happy agony that do shine from inside and turn what it touches to something of Paradise." 

 

The World's Best Reading

I've been collecting these since I first came across a few volumes of Dickens in a thrift store many, many years ago--for around $1 apiece. They're really lovely books: 1/4 leather bound with a nice variety of colors and patterns, decorative endpapers, nice illustrations (at least up until 1999), and, as you can see from the titles in the photo, they really do represent some of the world's best reading (they start with "Little Women" in the photo, the others before it are from different collections). They're published by Reader's Digest (no, they're not condensed: they are complete and unabridged), and are sold new as a subscription service; one title per month for $30 or $40 I think. But I've obtained all mine for $10 or under from thrift shops, used bookshops, Amazon, and ebay. Booksellers don't know what to do with them because they don't have a upc code, never having been intended for retail. I'll let pass the obvious comments that brings to mind on the state of our society.

Anyway, I am most pleased with my latest acquisition, which is one of a handful released only in the UK or other parts of the former British Empire.

What a lovely book! (so far) The Welsh have an ancient reputation for an innate mastery of words and language, and Llewellyn's writing bears it out. (ok, I admit being a little predisposed to believe it, being Welsh on my mother's side). A few examples:

"But in those days money was easily earned and plenty of it. And not in pieces of paper either. Solid gold sovereigns like my grandfather wore on his watch-chain. Little round pieces, yellow as summer daffodils, and wrinkled round the edges like shillings, with a head cut off in front, and a dragon and a man with a pole on the back. And they rang when he hit them on something solid. It must be a fine feeling to put your hand in your pocket and shake together ten or fifteen of them, not that it will ever happen to anybody again, in my time, anyway. But I wonder did the last man, the very last man who had a pocketful of them, stop to think that he was the last man to be able to jingle sovereigns.

"When we sat down, with me in Mama's lap, my father would ladle out of the cauldron thin leek soup with a big lump of ham in it, that showed its rind as it turned over through the steam when the ladle came out brimming over. There was a smell with that soup. It is in my nostrils now. There was everything in it that was good, and because of that, the smell alone was enough to make you feel so warm and comfortable it was pleasure to be sitting there, for you knew of the pleasure to come.

It comes to me now, round and gracious and vital with herbs fresh from the untroubled ground, a peaceful smell of home and happy people. Indeed, if happiness has a smell, I know it well, for our kitchen has always had it faintly, but in those days it was all over the house."  

"She had on a straw bonnet with flowers down by her cheeks, and broad green ribbons tied under her chin and blowing about her face. A big dark green cloak was curling all round her as she walked, opening to show her dress and white apron that reached below the ankles of her button boots. Even though the Hill was steep and the basket big and heavy she made no nonsense of it. Up she came, looking at the houses on our side, till she saw me peering at her from our doorway, and she smiled.

Indeed her eyes did go so bright as raindrops on the sill when the sun comes out and her little nose did wrinkle up with her, and her mouth was red round her long white teeth, and everything was held tight by the green whipping ribbons."

 "'Bad thoughts and greediness, Huw,' my father said. 'Want all, take all, and give nothing. The world was made on a different notion. You will have everything from the ground if you will ask the right way. But you will have nothing if not. Those poor men down there are all after something they will never get. They will never get it because their way of asking is wrong. All things come from God, my son. All things are given by God, and to God you must look for what you will have. God gave us time to get His work done, and patience to support us while it is being done. There is your rod and staff. No matter what others may say to you, my son, look to God in your troubles.'"

I love when I find that a book is as beautiful inside as out. Or a woman, come to that.

The Gods Hate Me, Part II

My sleep apnea machine finally arrived--and it doesn't work right. Now I've got to send it back and wait for them to fix or replace it. Reservations cancelled, tickets refunded (hopefully). No chance of getting out before Christmas now, and probably not before the New Year. Bah.

Oh, well.  The key to a good plan is flexibility.

And, of Course: I'm Sick

If I were a pagan, I would swear that the gods hate me. But unless it turns out to be full-blown influenza or I become bedridden with a fever or can't go more than 10 steps from a bathroom, it's not delaying me. F.I.D.O.

Reservations Made, Tickets Purchased

I'll be leaving Charlottesville on Amtrak this Friday afternoon; arriving in Fort Myers Saturday evening, catching the ferry the next morning, and should be in Key West around noon. I like the symbolism: December 21st is the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, so I'll be beginning my journey on the first day of the astronomical new year.

Tuesday's Gone

"But now I discovered the wonderful power of wine..."

"I understood why men become drunkards. For the way it worked on me was--not at all that it blotted out these sorrows--but that it made them seem glorious and noble, like sad music, and I somehow great and reverend for feeling them." -- C.S. Lewis

Planned Itinerary--Key West to Big Cypress

The first part should be relatively easy--absolutely flat ground, low to medium daily mileage, paved trails and roads. The only real drawback is the absence of places to just camp: I'll have to use commercial campgrounds, state parks, and a couple of motels. But of course, it won't really be all that easy, as I'll just be beginning to undergo the adjustment process--hardening of feet and shoulders, general fitness, and the psychological change from relatively sedentary indoor living to an active outdoor life. So, in some ways, this will probably be the most difficult period of all. My mother thinks I'm going to be blown off the Overseas Highway into the sea, but with almost 300 pounds of me plus 50 or so of rucksack, I kind of doubt it. :) The biggest challenge here will, I'm sure, be the discomforts that accompany my various injuries and disabilities on top of the normal aches and pains of getting in shape. I've packed every pain medication I've been prescribed over the past two or three years (most of which were still sitting in my cabinet, as I rarely take them).

I'm hoping to see an American Crocodile during this portion: as I understand it, they're mostly in the coastal marshes.

Good News, Bad News

The Good News: the main piece of gear that has been holding me up (a portable, solar-charged CPAP machine for sleep apnea) is finally on its way, and should be here early next week. So assuming the few other little things that are still en route arrive by mid-week, I should be able to get going as planned.

The Bad News: I got a ticket today for an expired inspection sticker, so I've got to run around getting the inspection, taking it to the courthouse, and probably buying new tires and maybe brakes, as I seriously doubt the current ones will pass. Yeah, I know, safety and all that. But I was kinda hoping to put it off until I got back. Anyway, a bit of a hassle and probably several hundred dollars that I didn't want to spend right now, after all I've invested in equipment and supplies. Oh, well, that's what savings accounts are for.

Taking a Walk to Clear My Head

"I said not long before that work and weakness were comforters. But sweat is the kindest creature of the three--far better than philosophy, as a cure for ill thoughts." -- C.S. Lewis

I am within a couple of weeks (hopefully) of departing for the first half of my Eastern Continental Trail walk. The ECT is basically an extension of the Appalachian Trail in both directions, to the ends of the continent. I'll be starting in Key West and, for phase I, ending at my house in the mountains of central Virginia which is, conveniently, 4 miles from the AT and just about halfway through the continent. In phase II, I'll go from my house to the Cliffs of Forillon at Cape Gaspé, Quebec.

I'm fervently hoping to be gone before Christmas, but am tied up with gear woes at the moment and feeling rather restless and frustrated. Preparing for this trip has been much more complicated and expensive than I had anticipated. If I can't get off within the next week or so, I'll have to wait until after the New Year, as train tickets are expensive and hard to come by from about Dec. 20 until Jan 2.

I'll be taking Amtrak from Charlottesville to Ft. Myers, FL, then a ferry across to Key West. I like trains. And boats. And I detest flying, since it became an exercise in dystopian control. Then, the winter months will be spent hiking through Florida. with a special goal of getting through the Everglades before the weather turns hot and the rains start: if you walk through in the winter dry season, you're only wading through knee or thigh-deep water rather than waist or chest-deep. Then a much anticipated break while I visit my dear friend Jessica in Orlando, and on through northern Florida. Another short break at my uncle's hotel in Panama City, then a roadwalk through southern Alabama before picking up a series of shorter backcountry trails which will link to the AT in Georgia.

By the way, if any of my local Virginia friends would like to volunteer to drive me to the train station... :)

This is my Quest

This has been my code since I first heard Jim Nabors sing it on TV when I was a small boy.

"It is the mission of each true knight...his duty...nay, his privilege:

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love, pure and chaste, from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a Heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star"

Think I'll pack up and go...

I don't have any reason to feel positive toward this girl...but I still like her music. And this song is just how I'm feeling.

Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted

"By 'mourning' Jesus, of course, means doing without what the world calls peace and prosperity: He means refusing to be in tune with the world or to accommodate oneself to its standards. Such men mourn for the world, for its guilt, its fate, and its fortune. While the world keeps holiday they stand aside, and while the world sings, 'Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,' they mourn. They see that for all the jollity on board, the ship is beginning to sink. The world dreams of progress, of power and of the future, but the disciples meditate on the end, the last judgement, and the coming of the kingdom. To such heights the world cannot rise. And so the disciples are strangers in the world, unwelcome guests and disturbers of the peace. No wonder the world rejects them! Why does the Christian Church so often have to look on from outside when the nation is celebrating? Have churchmen no understanding and sympathy for their fellow-men? Have they become victims of misanthropy? Nobody loves his fellow-men better than a disciple, nobody understands his fellow-men better than the Christian fellowship, and that very love impels them to stand aside and mourn. It was a happy and suggestive thought of Luther, to translate the Greek word here by the German Leidtragen (sorrow-bearing). For the emphasis lies on the bearing of sorrow. The disciple-community does not shake off sorrow as though it were no concern of its own, but willingly bears it. And in this way they show how close are the bonds which bind them to the rest of humanity. But at the same time they do not go out of their way to look for suffering, or try to contract out of it by adopting an attitude of contempt and disdain. They simply bear the suffering which comes their way as they try to follow Jesus Christ, and bear it for his sake. Sorrow cannot tire them or wear them down, it cannot embitter them or cause them to break down under the strain; far from it, for they bear their sorrow in the strength of him who bears them up, who bore the whole suffering of the world upon the cross. They stand as the bearers of sorrow in the fellowship of the Crucified: they stand as strangers in the world in the power of him who was such a stranger to the world that it crucified him. This is their comfort, or better still, this Man is their comfort, the Comforter (cf. Luke 2:25). The community of strangers find their comfort in the cross, they are comforted by being cast upon the place where the Comforter of Israel awaits them. Thus do they find their true home with their crucified Lord, both here and in eternity."  -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (emphasis mine)

"No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his well-being, to risk his body, to risk his life, in a great cause." ~ Theodore Roosevelt

"The humble person will stick both to truth and to love." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer and Lewis on Love

"Human love lives by uncontrolled and uncontrollable dark desires; spiritual love lives in the clear light of service ordered by the truth. Human love produces human subjection, dependence, constraint; spiritual love creates freedom of the brethren under the Word. Human love breeds hot-house flowers; spiritual love creates the fruits that grow healthily in accord with God's good will in the rain and storm and sunshine of God's outdoors."

"Spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ and that love of others is wholly dependent upon the truth in Christ."

"Because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not desire direct fellowship with them. As only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others, too, can be saved only by Christ himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. (emphasis mine) The other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man, died, and rose again, for whom Christ bought forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Because Christ has long since acted decisively for my brother, before I could begin to act, I must leave him his freedom to be Christ's; I must meet him only as the person that he already is in Christ's eyes."

(all quotes from Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

These words are written of the love of Christian fellowship, or philos, but it seems to me that they also can be applied very aptly to eros or romantic love. And, since the desires of eros are so much stronger and more clamorous and inherently selfish, the need to surrender them to Christ is correspondingly more vital.

But does this mean that we are to live some sort of sterile, "purely spiritual" life, without emotion or human attachment, either in fellowship or in marriage? Even if that were possible, I think not. God created all our loves, and wants us to experience and enjoy them; but in submission to His will and His unselfish (or, as Lewis would call it, "disinterested") love. It is not the affection, or friendship, or erotic desire that is the sin: it is the disordered need of the fallen self to use the other for one's own fulfillment, gratification, and reassurance. Once the will, the self, and the needy, dependent types of love have been surrendered to Him, He gives our loves back as something higher and better, in the same way that He gives back ordinary bread and wine as His transformative and cleansing body and blood.


“When He talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.” -- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Both Sides Now

"Every impulse of feeling must be guided by reason." -- Jane Austen

"We are never so helplessly unhappy as when we lose love." -- Sigmund Freud