~Joan Didion

Back in my teaching days, I would assign a much-dreaded and labored project called a “paper.” Perhaps you’ve heard of this? Perhaps you’ve written some. My students wrote many and, no matter the caliber of student, most approached them with dread.

Many of my students also labored over them, but not all.

As teacher, I both dreaded and labored, because the work of evaluating said papers was often dread-worthy and laborious in the extreme, and there was decidedly an inverse relationship between the amount of labor a student put into a paper and the amount of labor I had to put into evaluating it.

In other words, the more poorly prepared the paper, the more challenging, time-consuming, and exhausting it was for me to evaluate.

I am sure this makes sense to you.

What I realized only recently is that I never (almost never?) called these assignments “essays.” We reserved the term “essay” for a portion of a semester exam or some sort of test the students were to complete during class. We never called papers “essays.”

Now I’m wondering why. After all, the word “essay” literally means “to try.”

What if that had been the assignment? In the wisdom of retrospection, I’m thinking this would have been an excellent thing to call my students’ papers. Doing so may have relieved some of the dread and given hope to the labor. In writing, what they needed was to try. Yes: Argue, support, prove, explain. Show, tell, justify, deduce. But still, all in all, the product was to be an effort at the thing. An essay.

To try is so much more approachable than, say, to accomplish.

***

The essay is a time-honored literary form, coming to us from Europe in the 1500’s, when French philosopher Michel Montaigne began writing about himself.

Oneself is the subject one (presumably) knows best–but writing about oneself is not enough to make an essay. A journal entry, yes, or a diary. Or maybe even a blog or Facebook or Instagram post, in which one reveals what one is thinking, feeling, doing, has suffered, is suffering, dreams/hopes/wishes for.

There is a place for this. I believe I have named some. But these are not an essay.

True, the essay does come “from a limited or personal point of view” (thank you, Merriam-Webster); and so what we have in the essay is not poetry or fiction, but neither is it journalism.

It is, in fact, “analytic or interpretive” work, a sustained, personal reflection on an idea, a thing, even a situation. And as readers, it is something to make time for, to dig into, to read actively and also to rest in as–if you are able–you watch the writer invisibly at work.

(Did I say to watch the writer working invisibly? Why, yes. Yes I did).

Because a good essay does work a bit of magic. As with the best poetry and fiction, reading it can be a transformative experience. The essayist links together ideas such that new understanding is suddenly laid bare. And the best essayists achieve this invisibly. The reader may never see it coming, but she reaches the end with altered perspective. The writer has lined up these words and these ideas, and the reader has followed them–and suddenly: Oh, look! I see! Here we are.

***

Maybe that is a bit too much to ask of our high school students on the regular.

***

It is, perhaps, a lot to ask of anyone. Many people are made to write, to pin down their ideas and experiences with actual words on actual paper (or screen). But the essayist has a specific function. Her view and experience are doors opened on to ideas, but she must go through those doors. She cannot sit on in self-reflection but rather, using her view and experience, must go somewhere, taking her readers with her.

How is this done?

Enter Charity Singleton Craig to help us. In a work of clarity and generosity, she shows us how to write essays, how she writes them. Anyone interested in writing essays (me! you?) or in uncovering, as you read them, some of that aforementioned magic, should read her The Art of the Essay.

In brief, thorough, and honest chapters, she sketches out how it’s done, beginning–as a gentle teacher might–with the beginning. How does one know what to write about in the first place? And when we’ve decided, what do we include and what leave out? If the subject doesn’t stem entirely from memory, our experience, the dark and less-explored corners of our minds, then can we do research? Craig says yes, giving permission to ask all the questions and do all the investigating.

Because not everyone, you know, is aware of the potential essays to-hand. Sometimes we need to go find them.

Craig goes on from there. We’re helped somewhat at this point (immeasurably, really), but still we need more: how to organize ideas; how to balance those three (!) essential components: “show,” “tell,” and “explain.”

This was a portion I found particularly helpful. I think I do a pretty good job of showing and an adequate one of telling, but until I read this book, I thought that explanation was anathema. Should it be? Craig: “Exposition operates in the dimension of abstract ideas, examining and analyzing information and events.” It “often sets essays apart from other types of creative nonfiction…. It’s the X factor that allows for exploration, inquiry and even counterpoint to the life circumstances, the destination, or the story being written.” It is, in other words, essential to the essay. Thank you, Ms. Craig.

More essentials follow: the value of place in an essay–which elements are necessary to set the scene; the importance — and risks– of writing about people one knows; the value of finding one’s voice (through pursuit of clarity–novel and so true!) in one’s writing.

And Craig talks us through those difficult things: self-editing, the failure of a work to meet one’s expectations, the challenges and disappointments that come in the pursuit of publication.

This book is thorough and, as I’ve said, honest. But it is most of all generous: not just because of the appendices (invitations to respond to each chapter and to practice peer review; resources for publishing options), but because, throughout the book, Craig talks about her own experience as a writer.

She writes essays. She has been published in many places. And yet she is not free from the difficulties and insecurities that writing means. She is simply willing to help others learn what she has learned–and she’s willing to draw from her own experience to teach us.

***

An act of generosity is, by definition, a humble one. After all, true generosity means risk–and Craig’s willingness to expose her own misconceptions, mistakes, and frustrations as a writer all work here to help others improve their writing.

And an essay, I am realizing, is also a humble thing. It intends only to try, which means recognition from the outset of the project’s ambition– which, in the case of the essay, is no small thing: the essayist invites you into her perspective and experience and then deliberately takes the back seat. This piece of work is not about her at all; it intends, rather, to be a gift. She offers her experience as a view onto ideas so that the reader can think, perceive, learn and, yes, be changed.

But to try something is also to risk. The risk of exposure, embarrassment, failure. Writing–and writing essays–implies risk. It’s inherent in the project.

But Craig thinks it’s worth it.

I do, too.

The essay, as it turns out, is for you, even if you like the word “I” as much as any other word in the English language and want to use it boldly–or, if you sometimes start writing before you know what you want to say and discover something new by the time you’ve finished. The essay is your words and your mind, lit up.

-Charity Singleton Craig, The Art of the Essay

You will love this book. Head here for details. And see below for gifts based on your order!

Order The Art of the Essay before October 1, 2019, and receive free resources to help you turn your ordinary life into extraordinary words.

LEVEL 1: Order 1 copy of The Art of the Essay and receive the free downloadable guide “How to Plan Your Personal Writing Retreat.”

LEVEL 2: Order 2-4 copies of The Art of the Essay (one for you and one for a friend?) and receive “How to Plan Your Personal Writing Retreat” plus “12 Top Writing Tips Worksheets.”

LEVEL 3: Order 5 or more copies of The Art of the Essay (one for you and one for each member of your writing group?), and in addition to receiving “How to Plan Your Personal Writing Retreat” plus “12 Top Writing Tips Worksheets,” I’ll also offer you or your writing group a one-hour video session about essay writing, help with a specific project, or just Q&A about writing essays or any other issues related to the writing life.

All of the bonus gifts will be sent on or before October 1, 2019.

https://charitysingletoncraig.com/the-art-of-the-essay/

The post On The Art of the Essay appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

It has always been the field at the bottom of our neighborhood, the backyard of the community pool. Earliest memory finds us there with baby William at his first Easter, eight months old and unable to walk and sitting in the sand that is the volleyball court. We were late for the egg hunt, but really, he wouldn’t have been able to hunt for eggs yet anyway.

Soon enough it was the field where he first played soccer, and Everett and Emma after him. Once, on the sidelines of a friend’s game, little Everett accidentally scratched Will’s eye, and we ended up spending a good portion of the afternoon in the emergency room.

And once, distracted by the action of six-year-old William’s game, Bill and I both were surprised to find the game stopped by the cry, “There’s a baby on the field!” and one of us (both?) went hurrying out to retrieve our toddling daughter.

At age four, little William came crying toward us. He didn’t like the game. He didn’t want to play anymore. I stood with infant, stroller and toddler and wondered what to do, but Bill made an early show of fatherly wisdom that we still talk about today:

“You don’t have to play,” he told our teary boy, “but first I want you to go back out on the field and kick the ball one more time. Just once more.”

William re-entered the game and kicked the ball once, twice, lots of times. And he played soccer forever after.

Our days of sitting sideline on that field are long over now. Each of the children graduated to different sports or different fields or both, and now that field serves only as backdrop to the pool. Occasionally I see parents like we once were toting bags and chairs down the hill, their children racing ahead of them. We ourselves haven’t been down on that field in I don’t know how long. We have no reason to go.

But it’s funny how I know that field and how it’s divided up for games. There is where I sat with my in-laws, there where baby Emma played in the grass during practice. There where Will sustained the eye injury, and where his father encouraged him back onto the field.

***

We pulled into the driveway this afternoon to see our kids all leaving the house. They were dressed for playing. “We’re going down to the field to play soccer with Nathan and Katherine. You come too!” they said.

It was 82 degrees and the sky had only scattered clouds. We changed our clothes, we grabbed some blankets. I brought the novel I’m currently reading.

And of course we took the dog.

***

The days around here are full and normal. All five of us aren’t always home for dinner; people come and go based on class, meetings, work, friends. But I am consistently aware of two realities:

1. we are on borrowed time and
2. this isn’t going to last.

By the end of the coming summer, Will will be married and Everett off on his gap year or in college.

Everything will be different so soon. Which is fine and good and the normal, healthy course of things.

But what I’ve decided in these weeks and months of “last times” is to *not* pressure the family to make something of it–to plan trips and getaways and special events. Instead, I’ve just decided to let it come and enjoy it.

It’s been working out nicely.

***

This afternoon, in glorious 80-degree, sun-soaked winter light, I tossed a Frisbee with my dog and family. I watched my kids play soccer and walk handstands across the field. I lay on a blanket next to my husband and listened for the umpteenth time to his recent playlist, which includes all kinds of things I would never hear if it weren’t for him, plus the occasional number from Hamilton.

I watched our dog make friends with a bear (okay, it was a dog, but it was hard to tell) named Gus, and I watched my husband make our dog a drinking bowl out of a Frisbee.

I lay on my back and read my book. I lay on my back and watched hawks make wide circles in blue sky. I lay on my stomach and sang harmonies to Bill’s playlist and realized that I actually can read something as gorgeous and complex as Wolf Hall while enjoying Mood Robot. 

I closed my eyes and felt the sun soak through my clothes. I listened to the sounds of my grown and near-grown children play soccer with their friends. I watched their young, strong, powerful bodies run across the field. And later I discussed some of the merits of Wolf Hall with Nathan and Katherine, who asked me to read them a sample. Which, of course, I did.

***

The field at the bottom of our neighborhood is where my children learned to play soccer. It’s where baby Everett gave little William an eye-scratch and where Emma got a soccer trophy (I remember how badly she wanted one).

But today, if you were to come down to the field with me, I would show you where our grown-up children played and where I played with them, where the soccer goals were and where Will did his handstands.

Where our blankets lay and I used my purse as a pillow and read a book or didn’t on a February afternoon.

It was right there. I remember.

The post Field Day appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. 

I started in earnest on a new book today.

It wasn’t one I’ve been meaning to write. For some time now, the list of what I’ve been meaning to write has been the same: a next novel (working title, Church + Main, named for a building project those local to Durham might recognize); a non-fiction children’s book (which has been in process For Some Time Now and shouldn’t take all that long once I set my mind to it (famous last words)); and a work of non-fiction for grown-ups, a quasi-historical effort that tells the story my extraordinary Uncle Bob and, in so doing, also the story of my father’s growing up–which is a fascinating story in and of itself. I am still going to write all of these.

But the book I started in earnest today is none of the above.

No. This book was born the morning after Thanksgiving while I was sitting with my husband in our living room. We were enjoying our coffee and talking with real gratitude about the goodness of God in our lives.

And also the things that have been difficult.

Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself.

Later that afternoon while I was walking the dog, the ideas for this book–stemming from that conversation–would not keep quiet in my brain, and I when I got home I told Bill: I’m going to write a book about that.

And he said: Good.

Fast forward some weeks and here we are, with several pages of notes that came all in a rush and then piecemeal for some time afterward. All I did for several hours this morning was to organize these ideas, to figure out how and where they went together and so create a framework for a book.

Shortly, I will type the ideas into a kind of outline (as the grid situation I’ve got for myself won’t do for others) and send them off to a pastor friend who has agreed to give them a look.

And then we’re off to the keyboard, where this skeleton of ideas will gain ligament and sinew, muscle and skin.

It’s no big deal, right? I’ve done this before. Writing, these days, is my job.

The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever.

But for a moment there at the beginning, with my pens waiting, the notebook open and the laptop, some source books within reach, I felt it again: the doubt that, it seems, must come with any creative writing endeavor.

Should this be done? And can I do it?

Can I? 

There’s only one way to find out.

Every morning you climb several flights of stairs, enter your study, open the French doors, and slide your desk and chair out into the middle of the air. The desk and chair float thirty feet from the ground, between the crowns of maple trees…. Birds fly under your chair. In spring, when the leaves open in the maples’ crowns, your view stops in the treetops just beyond the desk; yellow warblers hiss and whisper on the high twigs, and catch flies. Get to work. Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair. 

***

This post comes to you with gratitude to the amazing Annie Dillard, from whose The Writing Life the italicized passages come.

The post New for a New Year appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

I feel as if I’ve done a lot of traveling lately. It’s that time of year, right? Summer vacation. We’re gone, we’re here, we’re gone again.

Definitely not complaining. I love to travel. But lately it’s got me thinking about how I pack.

Like most people (everyone?), I’m guessing I have the normal categories: clothes, toiletries, shoes. Standard, right? That’s standard.

But when it comes to packing, what really matters to me is the Carry-On.

You know the Carry-On. That’s the smallish bag you keep with you on the plane, the one you squeeze into the space under the seat in front of you. The one that holds your wallet and your chapstick, maybe your toothbrush (depending), and anything else you’ll be wanting to grab during the flight.

So the Carry-On is vital. But for me, it’s not just for planes (do you do this, too?). It’s for car-travel. And even though we don’t have to wedge it under the seat in front of us, it’s what my daughter and I have come to call it even for travel in the car. We always pack a Carry-On.

In a way, the Carry-On is the Most Important Luggage of my trip. Because while I consider the clothing, shoes, etc. to be necessary, the Carry-On sort of contains (this sounds so ridiculous) all my hopes and dreams.

Okay, granted. That definitely sounds over the top. Bear with me.

The Carry-On represents, firstly, that 1) I’m going to be away from the normal demands of my life for awhile, and 2) I’m going to Sit.

Sitting is not a normal thing for me. Even if I’m writing, I try to spend much of the time on my feet. Sitting isn’t terribly good for you; and also, I manage a household. On any given day, I am up and about Doing Things, and I am doing these things Most of the Time. Most of what I do, on any given day, does not find me doing the sorts of things that one can find in my Carry-On.

As such, my Carry-On usually contains things I Should Get To. Blank paper and envelopes for notes I need to write, a bill I need to take care of. The general flotsam of my desk, culled and reorganized (or not) into a doable, smallish stack suitable for the road.

And it contains the Dailies. My Bible, my journal. Whatever it is I’m reading at the time. My laptop and its power cord. A phone charger. The Things I Need to Do My Job(s). (Writer. Mother. Wife. Person.)

Then finally (here is where the Hopes and Dreams come in), it holds a representation of the Things I Would Like To Do. As in, if I had All the Time in the World. Which one basically does (or can imagine one does, anyway) if one is flying to Shanghai. Or riding as passenger around New York City. Or anywhere at any time ever on I-95 near Washington D.C.

Hopes and Dreams are really hard to get to, but maybe if one simply had Enough Time….

Take the trip I’ve just returned from. We were gone for exactly one week, and my Carry-On for the ride in the car to and in and from New England included the following: my journal, Bible, Psalter, notebook. Issue # 37 of Ruminate magazine and the July-August issue of Smithsonian. My mother’s journal (not my mother’s journal, but the journal I keep and write in about being a mother). My laptop, its charger. A blank thank-you note; a Compassion International letter. A new book of poetry written by Christopher Janke; a creative non-fiction book, Wake, Sleeper, by Bryan Parys. Andy Crouch’s Culture-Making. A copy of my novel (can’t quite say why) and the wonderful sci-fi, literary fiction brilliance that I’ve read once before but am So Glad to have re-read on this trip: P.D. James’ Children of Men.

That’s for one week, Saturday to Saturday.

Listing it out like this (or looking at it in its bulging bag, or swinging it over my shoulder to tote to the car) makes me feel a little bit silly. Do I truly imagine that I’ll get to it all?

And yet. It’s an interesting thing to distill it like this. To pack into a discreet container The Things One Really Loves and Hopes To Do.

This is where the moral goes, right? The application. The metaphorical point to all of this.

Truth be told, I don’t really know what to say. I could ask in a tone tinged by a Capital One advertising campaign: “What’s in your carry-on?” Or I could encourage young mothers who don’t currently have time or room for carry-ons of their own that they might, someday, have carry-ons in their futures.

Or I could comment on the truth: that we got home on Saturday night and most of the laundry was done by Sunday, but I didn’t fully unpack my carry-on until Monday night. Or was it Tuesday? Because, for the most part, I wasn’t using any of it.

In which case the point would be how hard it is, in this life, to make time for what I love. For what we love.

And that maybe it’s vital to do so.

“Such things, I grant you, have nothing of virtue in them; but there is a sort of innocence and humility and self-forgetfulness about them,” says Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. As such, this notorious demon suggests, delights and joys are dangerous because they very well might–horrors!–lead us to God.

I love this very much.

What is it with God and delight? What is it with Him and pleasure? The more I look for Him, the more I see Him appealing to me with precisely this: the things that truly delight me; the things I most desire (Psalm 37:4).

No matter how hard omni-media try portray Him as Kill-Joy; no matter how the Commandments are preached as prescribed misery, I have learned and am learning that the opposite is the case: that the One who declared this world Good is also the author of delight.

That yes, He has rules and laws, but these, too, when followed, are actually meant to be life-giving. To delight us.

That He Himself is actually the greatest delight we can know, and all the other delights of this world–like a cold beer, the soft fuzz of a newborn’s hair, sunlight limning a cloud or the stunning beauties of a well-crafted phrase–are the edges of the beauties of Himself.

Which amazes me.

And also makes me hope (Oh! here’s the point!) that you always pack a Carry-On. That you don’t leave it untouched at the foot of the stairs, but that you dip into it often and are repeatedly delighted. And that you find Him also (somehow) tucked miraculously inside.

The post Carry-On appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Here’s to imagination, and the world of fiction that can be so good at inspiring it.

Here’s to the first novel ever read to me– before the Little House books, before Lewis’ Narnia.

Here’s to a book about rejects all in polite society: a pig, a rat, a spider.

Here’s to an unflinching look at real life on a farm, from a vivid description of the slop bucket to the turn of the seasons, from the joys of a barn swing to a pig confronted by his own mortality.

Here’s to characters surprisingly real and to believable relationships among them: parent and child, naive newcomer and established resident, child and pet, rat and everyone, farmer and pig, friends.

And while we’re at it, let’s celebrate the writer’s deft management of it all: never heavy-handed, always honest, informed and wise in his informing. Eliciting compassion but not insisting on it, marked by humor but never forcing it.

Here’s to a writer’s joy, talent that loses itself in the telling– the very best kind of writing. Here’s to E.B. White’s wise imagining of a goose’s speech patterns, and his celebration of wonder over genus and species, and his elevation of good manners entirely informed by kindness.

Here’s to E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. My mother read it to me when I didn’t understand how old I was. I did my first book report on it in 4th grade. I read it– more than once– to my children.

Here’s to all of the reasons to love it. You love it too, don’t you? Let’s do ourselves a favor and read it again.

Happy 60th Birthday, Charlotte’s Web!

The post Birthday appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

We began with the poetry of A.A. Milne– you know, the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh– and went on from there to read all of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. I would sometimes laugh out loud as I read those delightful tales, and remember William leaving off nursing to stare at me, wondering why in the world I was laughing.

The reading continued. When nursing a second newborn, reading aloud was the perfect activity for my then two-year-old William, and I employed it again when it was an infant daughter in my arms. Of course by that time I had little ones at each elbow, but it worked well nonetheless.

And reading continued to be The Thing long after nursing. Reading was a major component of our homeschool, an important activity for before bed, a good way to start the day, and a great thing to do when the natives were restless: in those late-in-the-day hours before daddy came home, when the children were overtired and it was too late for a nap, when they had commenced to argue. Remedy? Read. Read, read, read.

It’s been harder, in recent years, to do this. School schedules, sports schedules, homework demands mean that I’m not reading to all of them at once and, on some evenings, I’m not reading at all. And then there’s the problem of which books to read: how to find something that works for a girl who’s eight and a boy who’s thirteen, not to mention the newly-eleven-year-old who also has Definite Opinions. Yes, it can be tricky. It can be, in fact, easier not to do it.

To say that this doesn’t make me sad would make me a liar; to say that I don’t recognize the certain inevitability of it all would do the same.

*sigh*

And then last night they were all being herded towards bed. Bill had gone out for a little bit, the boys were off brushing their teeth, and I was tucking Emma in. And then I saw it, its weary binding peeking out at me among the many selections on Emma’s bookcase: The World of Pooh. I decided to give it a try.

The boys were called in; we made space on the bed. And then the four of us lay there and I read aloud Chapter VII In Which “Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest, and Piglet Has a Bath.” And my children (some of whom aren’t, really, children at all anymore)listened and they listened and they laughed.

We all laughed. We laughed quite hard. The laughing made it difficult, in fact, at Certain Moments, for me to read At All. And when that was over, they asked me to read Certain Moments over again.

This was So Good.

I don’t know if we’ll keep this up. Not all of the chapters are quite as funny as Chapter VII and, with school starting up tomorrow, we’ll be back in the thick of difficult schedules. But I wrote this here for posterity, for maybe (at the very least) me: on January 3, 2010– despite their ages and some indications to the contrary– the Stevenson children were not grown up. Not Entirely. Not Yet.

The post If Not Always, Then At Least Maybe Sometimes appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

I’m teaching a new class this fall: Modern and Post-Modern Literature. It’s a senior English elective, and I am once again teaching the same group of students I taught humanities to for their 9th and 10th grade years. It’s lovely to be in the classroom with them this last time. They were so young once, and soon they’ll be gone– on to the next adventure.

But yes, the class is a new one for me. I had a great time selecting the novels, poetry, plays and stories for our syllabus, and I hit them with a hard one right off the bat: Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.

I love it. Oh, how I love it. It really might be one of the Best Books Ever, and I am enjoying it even more in the teaching– discovering again and again new and amazing things, reveling in Woolf’s amazing prose.

But it isn’t an easy book. I was warned away from it: Mrs. Dalloway is more accessible, they said.

Well, I like Mrs. Dalloway, but I really love To the Lighthouse.

I put it on the syllabus.

And then there we were, two weeks ago, reading together that opening passage. And suddenly I felt afraid– because I thought for certain that this book would just be too hard for them.

And it was Too Late to change my mind.

But we’ve worked our way through it. We’re very nearly through. And our conversation is insightful and rich. And yesterday three of them (3) said of this amazing and difficult book, “I Love It.”

Well.

What else is there? Is there anything else for this English teacher? Anything else at all?

I don’t think so.

On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High

where Queen Elizabeth
my cat met me
and licked my fins
till they were hands again

–D.C. Berry

The post Because They Said They Love It appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

This day was no more difficult than any other day. Nor was it easier. It was fine. And full. And, as ever, productive.

Some days are heavier than others, yes? I would say it’s atmospheric, but the humidity hasn’t kicked in yet, and the skies today were mostly clear. Maybe it’s atmospheric in another sense though, in the Prince-of-the-Air sense, in that sense that war is being waged above and, even, all around us. The sense that battles go on– daily, momentarily– for our souls.

Maybe.

Still, it wasn’t a hard day. It was a day full of good conversations with students about papers, and rehearsals for a drama production, and meetings about the business of school. Yet I questioned as I drove home the effectiveness of my teaching. I doubted my impact as a parent. And under it all was that vague lack, that Absolute Depletion, the emptiness that comes of Spending It All.

There were tears (oh, yes) when I came home this afternoon. Some days it Just Can’t Be Helped. Tears and prayers and more tears. But there was Bill, too, and the comfort he brings. And then a long and hard walk and all the newborn (still so new) leaves. And tomato soup and a glass of red wine for dinner.

Then just as the bedtime routine was Nearly Complete, Everett made an announcement: “Oh, Mom, I forgot. I’m supposed to read you a page of something.”

“A page? What do you mean?” I wanted to know.

“Just a page. Read a page aloud. My teacher wants us to.”

He already had the book open: The Return of the King, lying where Will had left it on the coffee table. Everett had opened it to Will’s bookmark. He was ready to read.

“Okay,” I said. “Go ahead.”

And so he read:

Crouched under a great boulder they sat facing back westward and did not speak for some time. Then Frodo breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s passed,” he said. They stood up, and then they both stared in wonder. Away to their left, southward, against a sky that was turning grey, the peaks and high ridges of the great range began to appear dark and black, visible shapes. Light was growing behind them. Slowly it crept towards the North. There was battle far above in the high spaces of the air. The billowing clouds of Mordor were being driven back, their edges tattering as a wind out of the living world came up and swept the fumes and smokes towards the dark land of their home. Under the lifting skirts of the dreary canopy dim light leaked into Mordor like pale morning through the grimed window of a prison.

“Look at it, Mr. Frodo!” said Sam. “Look at it! The wind’s changed. Something’s happening. He’s not having it all his own way. His darkness is breaking up out in the world there. I wish I could see what’s going on.”

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But with that lack a fear comes, I think– a fear not unfamiliar and not un-overcome in the past, not undefeated, no, but real and seemingly portentous nonetheless (when will I learn?): I will not ever write anything ever at all.

There are all sorts of measures to combat such things. Writing days, for example, or writing afternoons. Of which I have had none in months, and none looming. No Time, No Time. Writing here sometimes helps. It may not be anything that requires any kind of sustaining (and there, O Reader, is the rub, yes?), but writing on these pages can show me, from time to time, that I can, in fact, write. That helps. Yet this, as I’ve said on these pages even recently, seems Difficult.

Then yesterday I realized something important, something that seems as though it might help: I Need to Read.

It’s not that I’m not reading. I’m almost through Augustine’s Confessions, for heaven’s sake, and I’m making my way through Wordsworth’s Prelude. But these are for a class I’m taking, and neither author of those texts produced (in those instances) anything like what I’m going for. I also do a good bit of reading for teaching. I recently acquired J.I. Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. With my students, I just read Amadeus, and before that, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. When it comes down to it, I am reading All The Time: my students are forever submitting work that I must Read, and Study, and Think Through. And many of them are Good Writers. And all of them are Improving.

But none of them– neither students nor Wordsworth nor Packer– is creating even close to the kind of thing I’d like to create. Someday. When I have the Time.

So yesterday I decided that, to save myself, I Must Read. Must. Read. Some Good Prose. Some Thoughtful Prose. Something Fiction.

It felt like a luxury, really it did, to open the book that had lain so long on my nightstand, and to know that I was reading this for no one other than myself. My very own self. My own thinking and reading and writing self. And it felt So Much Better.

“I picked him up in my arms and I carried him home.”
So Nathan would end the last of the stories of his childhood as he told it to our children.
This was in 1940. Nathan was sixteen. He and Jarrat, his dad, his dad’s brother, Burley, and his grandpa Dave– the three of them had gone down into the river bottom, taking a team and wagon, to help a neighbor put up hay….

Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter

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“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

–F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

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