Peripheral Ponderings

I’ve been watching a library video series on the world’s mythologies, which is a fascinating subject.   While many tales stretch credulity, there seem to be some character types that consistently pop up.  For example, the trickster who is prone to play pranks on both gods and men.

The Yoruba tribe of West Africa have the trickster named Eshu, and the story is told that he daily would greet two farmers as he walked the path between their two fields.  The farmers were the best of friends, and were so similar in their routines and beliefs that they could barely be told apart.   Ordinarily Eshu wore a black hat, but one day, among other costume changes, he decided to wear a hat that was half white and half red.  After he had greeted them and walked on, the two friends commented on his change of clothing, one saying he was wearing a white hat and the other that he was wearing a red hat.   They proceeded to argue and eventually came to blows, the friendship abandoned in each farmer’s faith in his own sight, and his determination to be right.

When others challenge your point of view, you tend to want to cling to your own assertions without considering that it is possible something else is going on.  The Yoruba myth might be centuries old, but tunnel vision is an all too common human tendency.

My parents were sitting at their dining room table one day, when my father looked out the window and commented on the beautiful gray car that was leaving the neighbour’s driveway across the road.   When my mother looked out the window, she saw a blue car and immediately challenged his statement.  While they were busy arguing about it, my brother (a trickster in his own right) had seen that there were two separate automobiles.  It was unlikely he would have been heard anyway in the scuffle, but he was too busy laughing to clear up the matter.

The role of trickster isn’t necessarily to make trouble – it does seem to be important in challenging the status quo.    The farmers were so alike that there was a kind of stagnancy.   “Error often creates a path that leads you out of your comfortable assumptions.”  (Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From).

During the time my husband owned his own trucking business, he learned that it’s far better to make decisions than to keep hesitating.  Inaction incurs a cost higher than that of making mistakes.   When green summer students were hired at my workplace, accepting their fresh outlook opened up the possibility of implementing new ideas.  From different perspectives, through trials and error, we grow, and go on to new possibilities we’d never considered before.

J.R.R. Tolkien, master of fantasy tale, drew many inspirations from Norse mythology, and wrote the following poem in The Nameton.  To find new views and worlds, as he did, you have to be willing to take that second look.

Still round the corner there may wait,
A new road or a secret gate,
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I,
Shall take the hidden paths that run,
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

 

 

“Perhaps in their humblest guise
We entertain angels, all unaware.
Great things from small acts do grow
When we kind hospitality show.

Trudy Prins

 

 

English is a confusing language – words that look similar often have very different etymologies.   Host can mean thousands of people or angel-armies or stars in the skies.  Host can refer to the communion bread, Christ as the sacrifice who hosts and nourishes us through the sacrament of his body.  And host can mean to open one’s home and cupboard to share what we have with those we love and befriend.

Ontario’s pandemic restrictions have eased somewhat in Stage 3, and it is such a joy to be able to prepare meals, put crisp clean linens on beds, bake tasty treats that can be shared with others.  And to receive hospitality myself, the tea-tray on the patio table with fresh-baked chocolate zucchini bread, gifts that feel like luxuries after months of social isolation.

Our local theatre is once again in need of billets for its actors and stage crew, and it feels good to share our home in this way.  When we built this house in 2010, it was never intended to be for just our own use.   Restrictions will mean smaller audiences for the actors, but their joy is in their craft, and we can be a small part of making this possible for our community.

Over time, I begin to more fully understand that my real Host is the God who provided the harvest bounty I can share with others.  I can open the door to my home, because I have been given a home.   We are all guests on this earth God created as our habitat, none of us entitled to anything.  There is a sacred communion in this providential Hosting, this earth-home and its harvest shared with thousands of others.

The stressful times when we tried to outdo ourselves and others in preparing for guests  have gone, and replacing that is much more joyful and relaxed attitude.  People matter far more than perfection.

In the Biblical story account, sisters Mary and Martha were hosting Jesus at their home.  But Martha, busily banging pots and pans in her kitchen preparations, resenting her sister,  had lost sight of what was really important to her guest.  Mary, sitting at Jesus’ feet, gave him the gift of presence, and was blessed in turn by what she heard.  (Although I think I would have left her the clean-up!)

Whether host or guest, all good gifts are meant to be savoured and enjoyed.  Meals together are nourishing to body and soul and times together are priceless.

 

Welcome

Come in the evening, or come in the morning,
Come when you’re looked for, or come without warning.
A warm welcome you’ll always find here before you,
And please enjoy our company, we do implore you.

(adapted from “A Welcome, Thomas O. Davis)

 

GERTY’S QUERTY

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

Quickly I tap my typewriter keys
What a wonderful way to play!
Encoding, inscribing, letter by letter
Type it once, then make it better.

In the early ’70s, if she wanted doors to open in the working world, an aspiring young woman could do no better than to hone the accuracy and speed of her typing skills.  Our high school typing lab was fitted with ancient manual typewriters, the room resounding with a cacophony of clacking and ringing.  As I transcribed my handwritten class notes to prepare for exams, my ability improved.  A personal interview for a position wasn’t even considered until you’d first proved that you were an excellent typist.

By the time I began my first real job in 1973,  typewriters were electric, and instead of clashing keys, the IBM Selectric used an embossed globe of all the characters.  This could be switched out for specialized vocabularies or mathematical symbols.   They were fairly expensive, which I remember well because I once dropped and broke one.

Offices still used Gestetners and ditto machines, and White-Out to correct errors (available in multiple colours for correcting the carbon copies below the original.)  We could not have dreamed the convenience of modern-day wireless keyboards and printers.  Cut and paste literally meant that somebody had taken a first draft, then cut and pasted sentences when re-arranging was needed.  Pages would have to be re-typed for each update.  Turning my talent into cash to help build our first home, I worked late to type manuscripts for economics students and professors.  The keyboard turned words into actual brick and mortar we could live in.

Perhaps the thing that’s most magical about the keyboard begins with the alphabet itself.   In some combination of the keys here is a story, even if I don’t know how to tell it yet.  The tale can travel from my head through my heart to my hands.  It can create imaginary worlds as well as real ones.  The letters on my typewriter keyboard, from the oldest manual version to the newest wireless wonder, have the same potential to create lyrics as an 88-key piano keyboard has to improvise music.  They are both tools, hold keys to new wonders, new worlds.   There’s musicality in words as well as notes, we take notes as well as play notes.  There are major and minor keys, harmonies and jarring juxtapositions.

Sometimes the limited vocabulary of our deepest need or greatest joy can be recalled by the printed word, can become a prayer.  Canadian storyteller Dan Yashinsky* tells the Hebrew story about the Baal Shem Tov, a Jewish mystic and healer and his faithful scribe who were endangered when the crew of their becalmed ship blamed the Jewish passengers.  They were in danger of being killed.  In his fear, Baal Shem Tov had forgotten all his mighty prayers, so he asked his scribe what he could recall.  “Slowly, painfully, the scribe remembered something:  the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.  He began, tentatively, to murmur them aloud:  ‘Aleph, bet.’  The Baal Shem Tov repeated the letters, and even these, the simplest element of language, had such power that they were saved from catastrophe.”

Whether a manual typewriter or the most sophisticated computer, we have a scribe that can carry a profound message.  It’s a miracle that a word written at a keyboard by a solitary person can reach out across time and space.  As people once gathered around the fire to listen to ancient tales, we now can receive a great gift, the wisdom of many others.

See the link below for a light-hearted look at an old typewriter in action:

https://www.jacquielawson.com/sendcard/preview?cont=1&hdn=0&fldCard=3463288&path=393919&pmode=init

 

 

 

*Dan Yashinsky, from book “Suddenly, They Heard Footsteps.”

 

One very great benefit of keeping journals is that re-reading them can not only take you back in time, but offer new insight with the benefit of hindsight.  So, perusing the writing of over 14 years ago, I came across this little incident.

It had been a tumultuous weekend.   At my parents’ home, I’d seen our old 1969 church directory that labeled each family photo by its patriarchal name only (for example, the J. Van Smith family).  In those archives, women and children were not named, effectively rendering them insignificant.  Just being reminded of these attitudes stirred up a smoldering ire.

It was a time when men, as breadwinners and heads of their household, could unilaterally make decisions that impacted the whole family.    The needs and wants and views of wives and children were seldom solicited or taken into account.

By Monday afternoon, after I’d come home from work, the anger had somewhat subsided.  When I looked out onto the front porch, there were two doves sitting contentedly, just looking out together.   And I was comforted by that scene.  Perhaps we could craft a peaceful way of being together, too,  if we followed them as our inspiration.

At times the animals around us can soothe us.  Our family dog, Kayla, would scurry away to her corner, an old unused shower cubicle in the back hall bathroom, if voices were argumentatively raised.  So that we would laugh instead, her barometer an indicator of stormy weather so that we could take shelter.

In the picture of a tiny bird battling heroically as storm winds threw her little body in different directions, I saw a metaphor for the tumult I was experiencing in making life-changing choices, tossed by inner gusts that threatened loss of control.  All of us, animal or human, are trying to be survivors as we make our way in a sometimes tempestuous world.

Through trial and tragedy, for every creature God expresses care and concern.  Nothing escapes His notice, even the smallest of sparrows.  Psalm 145 reassures us that we have a compassionate God,

The Lord is faithful to all his promises
and loving toward all he has made.
The Lord upholds all those who fall
and lifts up all who are bowed down.
The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food at the proper time.
You open your hand and satisfy the desires
of every living thing.

In season and out of season, living and dying, all of us from the tiniest of creatures to the giant behomoths of the sea are held in the hands of our loving God, the Creator who shaped us all.

None of us is ever insignificant or  invisible to Him, because He is the God who sees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every year, about a month before summer solstice, the sun directs light toward our front door from the northwest.  It lasts about two months before the inexorable tilt of the earth pulls the light shafts away for another year.   The refraction of its rays through the chariots of fire stained glass has a mystical feel, the light dancing like flames.  Each year this is a welcome reminder of another year of earth-time we’ve been given.

Light is fascinating, its spectrum far beyond what we are able to visually comprehend.  A pool of sunlight on a winter’s day invites basking.    In summer, we watch the beams dapple through the leaves of the trees, light and shadows forever shifting in the breeze, or sparkling on a lake.  A favourite spot for morning quiet time is the kitchen table, as I watch the sun begin its day’s journey in the east.  The ever-changing colours when the sun sets at days’ end calls me to vigil with the evening sky, riveted by the spectacle.  Through the night, the moon dangles in the sky like a pendant, stars twinkle like jewels against the black-velvety backdrop.

Rachel Naomi Remen writes of the time when she was a young volunteer in a nursing home, sent to entertain a very old woman with senile dementia,  Finally giving up on interesting her in any activity, Rachel just sat quietly with her as she looked out the window.  But before she left, her curiosity compelled her to ask the old woman what she was looking at.  “Slowly, she turned toward me and I could see her face for the first time..  It was radiant.  In a voice filled with joy she said, “Why, child, I am looking at the Light.”

Light was created by God, both the sun and other heavenly bodies that he caused to reflect it.  In response to the greater Light, human beings can also be light bearers, carrying a spark of the Divine.  In worship, we light a candle when we open God’s Word, symbolizing the light that it kindles in our souls.   As God called forth light on the first day of creation, so he speaks it into our darkness and chaos.

Our vocabulary is full of light’s reflections.  A person can light up a room.  We can be enlightened so that we can see the bigger picture.   We reflect on our experiences.  We use the picture of a lightbulb for the eureka moment, the spark of an idea.   We can let our light shine, turn on our “heart light.”  At my grandfather’s funeral, the officiating minister remarked that though our Opa had become blind, when he turned his sight inward he found beauty inside his soul.  If we let it, a light can increasingly glow through our frailties.

“Frodo (from Lord of the Rings) has no superficially heroic dimensions.  He simply goes on from one day to the next, through despair and beyond it, and as he goes, Sam sees a kind of light growing within his master.”   Helen Luke

The Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh expresses his desire that the young view light, not only in creation, but also follow that lit pathway to see God.  His poem is called  “The Child.”

“Child, there is a light somewhere
Under a star
Sometime, it will be for you
A window that looks
Inward to God.”