Meeting the Author

Guest lecturer: Kristin Tubb it said in the syllabus. Assigned reading for the week: Selling Hope by Kristin Tubb. Ok, I thought. That'd be interesting. The author's coming to speak to us. Did I hear an oh wow coming from someone? Two weeks ago, Julie Donelson (Jules), author of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, came to guest lecture too. You're so lucky! Did someone say?

To be honest, I was not as excited as it might be imagined I'd be. For one thing, I was not familiar with Kristin Tubb's books. I needed to know what I thought of her books first, so that I could carefully measure just the right amount of excitement to feel about her visit. What if I didn't like her books? Then having her come would really be just so-so. As for Jule's visit, well, she is a blogger, not an author. At that point, I was still weighing in my mind if blogging was a respectable genre, or not. I'm still thinking that no, there is a big difference between writing a blog, and writing a book. I must be honest - there is something weighty about having written a great book that makes me go oh wow.

And I'm sure that's not an uncommon sentiment. Oh wows were audibly heard today when Kristin shared with us today that she had the chance to interview Madeleine L'Engle over the phone as a sixth grader. I mean, it was the Madeleine L'Engle she was talking about.

In no way do I mean that we should attribute differentiated amounts of respect to people because of their achievements. But I do think I understand what makes us go oh wow when an author of a great book comes to visit. Books are little worlds in their own entities; to escape into a book is a phrase often heard used. For an hour or two, we are conscious not to the reality in which we are a part of, but the created reality of the book. For a great book, this is truer than true. And so, the respect, the wow factor, is given because of the world imagined, created.

Or is it? Because authors don't create the actual worlds, they only imagine them to be, and write them into a book. But we would, for a time, believe in the reality of their worlds, we would be awed by them. We would go so far as to feel oh wow.

And yet. What about this world we live in? What about the epic proportion of its story? What about the characters upon characters, each complex beyond description? What about the backdrop for each anticipated scene, each on the perfect setting? Why do we not have more respect for its creator? Is it because it is beyond what we can comprehend? Is it because we cannot grasp it with our hands, and dictate its workings the way we can with a book? Is it a great story only when all goes according to our will? Only when we can somehow wrap our minds around it?

Dear Heavenly Father, I want to approach you with oh wow all the time. This story you have written, the pages of which I am walking in, is beyond my grasp. I fail to read between the lines, I do not realize my motivations or those of others. I fail to have faith that you know the plans you have for me. I worry that I'd ruin those plans. Let the limitedness of my own mind never keep my spirit from breathing oh wow at a limitless God.

The giving of imperfect gifts

One of the surest ways of holding back from giving is to think, "I haven't got the perfect gift for her". It's what also keeps me from helping someone else: "I don't know enough about _______ to help", "someone can do this better than I can". How foolish. And what a lonely world it would be, if we had to always wait for the best person to help us, before we could receive help. How few gifts I would receive, if only perfect gifts were acceptable.

The recipe was from Happy Home Baking. The special one with the heart was for my husband.

Earlier today, I made a tray of pineapple tarts: imperfect pineapple tarts. Somehow, the dough didn't roll well and kept cracking when I was trying to mold it. It was frustrating, especially when each misshapen, cracked tart exacerbated the anguish I felt at being further and further from having perfectly-formed pineapple tarts for my friends this Chinese New Year. I had looked forward to this all week, so the disappointment was intense.

To offer a gift takes courage; the gift might suffer rejection. But to offer an imperfect gift takes even more courage; it seems the odds are greater that it will not be accepted.

So take courage, my soul, take even more courage since your life is a daily offering of broken, misshapen gifts, each bearing the precious promise of redemption, to be fulfilled once each gift is offered, faithfully by the One Source of all gifts.

Greater

Today just wasn't one of those days I came home feeling on top of the world. It wasn't anything major, just the combination of challenging assignments at school and the cold of the winter's day.

It was just the shadow cast by the apprehension that I wouldn't be able to accomplish various assignments well, the echo of the voice of an accusation from the past of some failure, the sense of defeat suggested by the chill of winter getting to what felt were my bones, though I had worn my thickest gear.

The last class for the day ended with a lecture on multimodal composition. It was definitely very interesting to hear of how modal strands can be combined in varied ways to achieve the composer's desired effect, like in book trailers. It sounded challenging, nonetheless. If only I had tried more of this sort of thing with my students in the past...

I called my husband on the phone for a ride home. Voicemail. Heavenly Father, please? Call again. Voicemail.

And so I walk back, mainly trying to keep warm, but still managing to notice the calmness of the azure sky, faintly turning to evening, and the confidence of the sandstone church building, standing still after all these years.

Home at last. Music is playing. "It's a cold day out," I tell husband. It's nice to see him. He feels my hands, he feels the cold. He takes me into his arms for a warm hug. I hear the lyrics of the song that is playing. They are precisely:

Here in your arms

I know what I am

I'm forgiven

I'm forgiven

And I don't have to carry the weight of who I've been

'Cause I'm forgiven

Wow. A God-orchestrated moment of manifested tenderness. I feel like God and I are starring in a book trailer for the movie, Forever Love. It is a multimodal production in every way, and more powerful than any book trailer I've ever watched. Plot: Just an everyday story of feeling challenged by the world, and saved by the living God. Setting: The juxtaposition between the biting winter air and the warmth of the home. Theme: Divine love, manifested through human arms. Soundtrack: Forgiven, by Sanctus Real.

Director: My loving Heavenly Father, who sends this precious experience to remind me that my identity is found in Him alone, who longs for me to cease striving, and know that He is God.

Applesauce Streusel Muffins

I successfully finished all my homework and readings for the day by evening time, so I decided to bake something! There was a very old golden delicious apple in the fridge, from months ago, so I decided to cut it up for applesauce. It was the plainest applesauce possible, just the apple, and a sliver of lemon. Not even a bit of added sugar.

So I had applesauce. Unsweetened applesauce. And I still felt like baking. To be precise, I had just over half a cup of applesauce. This meant that my internet recipe hunt for an apple quick bread or muffin recipe had to require just that amount of applesauce, or twice the amount. (I found one, which required 1 cup of applesauce. I could have halved the recipe, but that would make one and a half eggs. No good.

And so, voila! (I have been watching too many black and white Julia Child episodes on youtube, can you tell?) Apple muffins!

Applesauce Streusel Muffins

Recipe adapted from Epicurious

Makes 6 precious muffins

Ingredients:

For the muffins:

3/4 cup all purpose flour

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon powder

pinch of salt

1 egg

1/2 cup minus 1 tbsp light brown sugar

5 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (homemade, if possible!)

1/4 cup pecans, chopped

For the streusel topping:

2 tbsp all purpose flour

2 tbsp butter (chilled, cut into cubes)

1 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp pecans, chopped

Putting it together:

Preheat the oven to 4oo°F. Grease six muffin holes with melted butter. Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt together. Beat the egg. Add the sugar to the beaten egg and stir to mix. Add the melted butter. Stir to mix again. Make a depression in the flour mixture, and pour this wet mixture in. Add the applesauce. Mix everything together, with just a few stirs. Be sure not to over-mix, as this may result in leathery muffins. We're not preparing juggling balls! Spoon the muffin batter into the prepared muffin holes. Each hole should be 3/4 filled or so.

Now for the streusel. Start with the flour, cinnamon and sugar in a mixing bowl. Plonk the butter cubes into the flour, and roll them about to coat. Using just the fingertips, rub the butter into the flour. At first the mixture will look like mostly little flour crumbs with some huge butter chunks. You want to rub-in until there are only medium-sized crumbs. Add the pecans and mix.

Finally, simply spoon the streusel topping generously over the muffins. Then, into the preheated oven they go, for 20 minutes. Proceed with doing the dishes, while the aroma of cinnamon, apples, and the just generally pleasant smell of things-baking-in-the-oven make you wanna go, "Ahhhhhhhh!"

Just as long as we're together

Stephanie Hirsh- that’s her name. Judy Blume's Stephanie Hirsh, main character of 'Just as long as we're together'. Stephanie Hirsh, the eternal optimist, according to her best friend, Rachel. I’m surprised by how much I remember of a book I read almost twenty years ago; but then again, I did read this one over and over and over again.

It was just that phrase that floated up today and arrested my attention. The eternal optimist. On hindsight, Rachel had called Stephanie that almost in a belittling manner, as if there was something wrong with being an optimist.

I don’t remember ever having thought about it then, but now, it is so obvious why Rachel, supposedly the more mature of the two friends, would think it naïve to be an optimist.

Perhaps it was my own naïveté, but it could just be because I knew little of American culture then. I could be wrong in attributing this to the American culture, though, this could be more universal than that. But it is probably true to say that it is considered “cool” among American youth to speak negatively. Complains, criticisms, writing off – to the extent that someone who’s always holding a positive opinion is deemed a misfit, or an idealist.

I can see why. A mature view of life does see life not in terms of the beautiful parts alone, ignoring the painful bits. Growing up certainly involves knowing that things may not always turn out hunky-dory. But this mature view does not exclude the possibility that one sees hope in difficult circumstances, finds fulfillment in working hard at challenging tasks, and chooses to see the good where there is an equal chance of seeing either.

Some would call such person an optimist, even an eternal optimist, but there is nothing belittling about such a title, and certainly nothing naïve.

The true eternal optimist can only be someone who puts her hope, or trust, in God alone. In other words, someone with childlike faith. There is nothing naïve in this.

Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you. Psalm 9:10

I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. Mark 10:15

Finding my way back

I had set out to a destination to write, with a backpack filled with pencils and a writing pad, only to arrive, and realise that my backpack had a hole, and that the pencils had one by one, fallen out along the way.

No, that's not what's happening at all.

Writing was the theme of the day. In class, a professor made a comment that some have feared not having current presidents’ correspondences in the future, as emails have become the predominant mode of communication now. We all know how highly curators value past presidents' letters for what they tell of the thinking that led up to the decisions they made, or the standpoints they held on so resolutely to. I know how I've loved reading Elisabeth Bishop's letters while studying her poetry, enjoying especially those moments she'd let me into her most private, everyday moments by writing of the most mundane daily events. A classmate also shared today that her relatives had discovered a trunk left by her ancestors in an old farmhouse, containing love letters between her great grandparents. Her grandmother had framed a pair of the letters, and given it to her as a Christmas present. Then there was the conversation in class about ‘flow’, and how important that is, especially for writing. How I miss letters. How I miss writing and language.

Recently, it has seemed to me that words no longer dance off my finger tips and compose themselves spontaneously into crafted language. How, then? What, then? It is easiest to seek out a scapegoat. Is it the years of academic and office writing? Is it an inevitable reaction to reading far too much internet writing, and therefore losing that sensitivity to language? Worse, could it possibly be what I had suspected at eighteen, that it would harm me to listen to too much cliche-filled American English?

I would be a fool to think of any of those as valid reasons. I would be wise to make the real reasons plain.

I have not made space to write; neither the space in time, nor cognitive space, nor emotional space, nor even physical space for words to lounge around on paper or bytes. I have allowed the ultra-fine particles of internet dust to not only settle, but percolate thoughtlessly into every pocket of space I have. Real writers, on the other hand, make space to write. Christopher Paul Curtis, author of 'Bud, not Buddy', for example, did not resign himself to allowing his blue collar car manufacturing job to form his identity. Instead, he negotiated for a schedule that allowed him the space to sketch - in pictures and in words. Over twenty years later, those word-sketches grew into the Newbery-winning 'Bud, not Buddy'.

It is also sheer laziness that has supplied me with ample excuses not to write - including the one which says, "don't write, because you're not good at it." The truth is: I have encountered more good writing recently in all sorts of unexpected places than ever before, especially the internet. And, it's all sorts of good writing: challenging my previously held notion that good writing needed to have that certain felt, inherently undefinable quality. I now know that good writing can be, is needed, is powerful everywhere. This has caused it to seem like writing well is an increasing unsurmountable task; and hence the many excuses not to even try.

So, no. No pencils have fallen out, and the backpack hasn't suddenly developed holes. Rather, this craftsman has collected pencil after pencil on her journeys, starting quite a pencil collection in her backpack and weighing herself painfully down. When instead, she should be writing - using those very pencils.

The rusty typewriter

In short, my writing mind feels like a rusty, dusty, creaky, cranky, reluctant, and neglected typewriter.

But, it is time to write again. The name of this blog will no longer be relevant. But, there isn't any other name that seems suitable for naming this blog either. I plan to write on faith, education, reading, books, creative endeavours, and other little things noticed in life. But beyond these, my larger goal is simply to write again, as a way of practicing the craft of writing, and training myself in its discipline.

I expect there will be things written of comparative worth, where one tries to measure worth of writing. There will also be times when writing is mere drudgery, instead of the deeply satisfying creative act I usually think of it as. There will be times I wish I could bring more of my faith into my writing, times when I wish I were more accurate or intelligent in discussing Important Educational Matters. There will be other times I wish there were more pictures in my blog, and other times I would fuss about the lack of an audience reading these words.

But then I will see this post, and be reminded that just as extensive reading can grow a reader, extensive writing can grow a writer too.