The Hawk and the Dove by Penelope Wilcock

Mar25

It was Easter, two years after Father Peregrine had come to be their abbott. Easter, the greatest feast of the Christian year, and all the local people had come up to the abbey, and the guest house was full of pilgrims come to celebrate the feast of the Resurrection. So many people, so many processions, so much music! So many preparations to be made by the singers, the readers, those who served at the altar and those served in the guest house, not to mention those who worked in the kitchens and the stables. The abbey was bursting with guests, neighbors, relatives, and strangers.

The Easter Vigil was mysterious and beautiful, with the imagery of fire and water and the Paschal candle lit in the great, vaulted dimness of the abbey church. Brother Gilbert the precentor’s voice mounted joyfully in the triumphant beauty of the Exultet; all the bells rang out for the risen Lord, and the voices of the choirboys from the abbey school soared with heart-breaking loveliness in the music declaring the risen life of Jesus. Easter Day itself was radiant with sunshine for once, as well as celebration. Oh, the joyful splendor of a church crammed full of people, a thundering of voices singing, ‘Credo –I believe.’

In The Hawk and the Dove by Penelope Wilcock, an English mother tells her daughters, especially her fifteen-going-on-grown-up daughter Melissa, stories about their long ago ancestor, the abbot of a Benedictine abbey, and the monks under his care. The stories are deceptively simple and quotidian: stories of forgiveness asked and given, monks who are injured and need healing, others who don’t fit into the abbey life and must learn to do so. However, these are the same issues that Melissa, her mother and sisters must deal with in daily family life, and they’re the same things we try to iron out and work through here at Semicolon House.

In the other two books in the trilogy, the brothers of St. Alcuin monastery continue to work together and grow in community. They also grow older and must confront the difficulties that old age brings in its train. In fact, the third book in the series is about death and dying and living with serious impairments —all to the glory of God. It’s quite timely in these days of “death with diginity” and compassion redefined as hurrying the dying into death, but it may be a bit too much for children. Again, I think the entire family will enjoy at least the first two books in the trilogy.

A few more excerpts:

“Theodore saw his hopes of a new beginning turn to ashes in the miserable discovery that even men who had given their whole lives to follow Christ could be irritable, sharp-tongued, and hasty.” How many new Christians upon becoming involved in a church have stumbled over that particular realization? Monasteries, and churches, are simply places for imperfect people to come and begin to learn to serve and show kindness and love, not places where the already perfected live in flawless harmony.

Fifteen year old Melissa to her teacher in English class: “Mother says, that love is only true love when it shows itself in fidelity, —ummmm, faithfulness. She says if a person has the feeling of love, but no faithfulness, his love is just self-indulgent sentimentality. And that’s what Shelley was like, isn’t it? He wrote fine peoms to his wife and his lovers, but he wasn’t a faithful man. So how can his poetry about love be worth anything if his love in real life wasn’t worth anything?” From the mouths of babes, can an untrue person write truly? Can he write true poetry that he hasn’t lived in some fashion, however imperfectly?

“Mother said these stories were true, and I never knew her tell a lie . . . but then you could never be quite sure what she meant by “truth”; fact didn’t always come into it.”

I assure you that the stories in Ms. Wilcock’s Hawk and the Dove trilogy are quite true —as fiction sometimes is.

Movies for Resurrection Weekend

Mar25

I thought I’d suggest a few of my favorite movies that seem particularly appropriate for watching this week:

Ben Hur. Directed by William Wyler. Adapted from the book by General Lew Wallace. Starring Charlton Heston, Stephen Boyd, and Haya Harareet.

Lilies of the Field (1963). I love the nuns and Sidney Poitier as their hired man. This is a wonderful movie about faith and determination and the meeting of three cultures—Black American, German Catholic, and Mexican American. They all manage to somehow, by the grace of God, build something wonderful in the middle of the desert. Another redemptive and inspiring film.

Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972). Director Franco Zefferelli tells the story of St. Francis re-imagined as a 60’s flower child. It’s set in the late Middle Ages, but it’s veryvery sixties. Still, I loved it when I first saw it, and I watched again a couple of years ago and still found it beautiful. Mileage will vary according to your tolerance for hippie historical.

Prince of Egypt (1998). In spite of the vague “spirituallty” and a few distortions of fact, I thought this movie was very well done. The chariot race at the beginning is a nice nod to Ben Hur, and for the most part, the film was both reverent and dramatically compelling. Not just for kids.

The Hiding Place (1975). Jeanette Clift George is the director of AD Players here in Houston, and she stars in this movie as Corrie Ten Boom, a middle-aged Dutch Christian who is caught hiding Jews in her home during the Nazi occupation of Holland. It’s an inspirational movie from a Christian worldview about sin and suffering and redemption.

Life Is Beautiful(La vita e bella, 1979). This film is in Italian with subtitles; it’s about a Jewish man and his son and his wife being placed into a concentration camp during World War II. However, it’s sort of a comedy or maybe a tragicomedy. Anyway, it’s very moving and bittersweet. Not for children.

Fiddler on the Roof (1971). Tevye the Jewish milkman talks to God and tries to understand his wife Golde and looks for husbands for his six daughters. Unfortunately, the world is changing, and the dependable things in Tevye’s life are becoming few and far between. Nothing to do with Passover or the Resurrection, but it just feels right for Passover week.

The Ten Commandments (1956). Biblical epic directed by Cecil B. DeMille. I prefer Prince of Egypt, but no one should miss Charlton Moses.

The Robe (1953).I prefer the book, but the movie is vintage 1950’s Hollywood with Richard Burton and Victor Mature.

Jesus, aka The Jesus film (1979). This movie is the most watched film of all time; missionaries show it to rapt audiences all over the world. Based on the gospel of Luke, it’s Biblically accurate and well made. Resurrection week (before or after Easter Sunday) seems like a good time to review —or find out for the first time —who Jesus really was and what he really said and did. After the movie, read The Book.

Scandalon by Michael Card

Mar25

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. I Corinthians 1:22-24.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Mar25

I first read Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities when I was in ninth grade. Three of us—Christina, Teresa, and I— wrote a chapter-by-chapter summary of the entire book, making our own little study guide to the novel as a school project. We did this before the age of personal computers and before any of us knew how to type. Type written nevertheless but means of the hunt and peck method, I can’t remember exactly what the finished product looked like—it did have a picture of a guillotine on the front— but it was a lot of work.

The themes of death, burial, imprisonment, rescue and resurrection are woven throughout Dickens’ tale set during the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Doctor Manette is rescued from a living death inside the Bastille. Jerry Cruncher is a “resurrection man” who digs up dead bodies to sell them. Charles Darnay is rescued and recalled to life twice during the novel, once when he is on trial in England and again when he is headed for guillotine in France.

But the most vivid representation of death and resurrection comes at the end of the novel when the reprobate Sydney Carton gives up his life to save Charles and Lucy Darnay and to ensure their future together. Carton is walking down the street when he remembers these words from Scripture read at his father’s funeral long ago:

“I am the resurrection, and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.”

Now, that the streets were quiet, and the night wore on, the words were in the echoes of his feet, and were in the air. Perfectly calm and steady, he sometimes repeated them to himself as he walked; but, he heard them always.

The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the water as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light of the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to Death’s dominion.

But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those words, that burden of the night, straight and warm to his heart in its long bright rays. And looking along them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light appeared to span the air between him and the sun, while the river sparkled under it.

The strong tide, so swift, so deep, and certain, was like a congenial friend, in the morning stillness. He walked by the stream, far from the houses, and in the light and warmth of the sun fell asleep on the bank. When he awoke and was afoot again, he lingered there yet a little longer, watching an eddy that turned and turned purposeless, until the stream absorbed it, and carried it on to the sea.- “Like me!”

A trading-boat, with a sail of the softened colour of a dead leaf, then glided into his view, floated by him, and died away. As its silent track in the water disappeared, the prayer that had broken up out of his heart for a merciful consideration of all his poor blindnesses and errors, ended in the words, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

On Good Friday, when we are in the midst of death and sin and darkness, it does sometimes seem a if “Creation were delivered over to Death’s dominion.” A blogging friend sent out a tweet earlier today saying that he had “difficulty ‘pretending’ on Good Friday that Jesus is dead.” Of course, Jesus isn’t dead, but as far as imagining the feeling of despair and “being delivered over to death”, I have no trouble whatsoever. Sometimes things in this world are very dark, and the very hope of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and our eventual resurrection with Him is all that keeps me from utter despair.

Thank God for Resurrection Sunday!

The Bomber’s Moon by Betty Vander Els

Mar22

This fictional treatment of missionary children escaping World War II China reads almost like a memoir. In a brief search on the internet, I couldn’t find any information about the author, Betty Vander Els, but I would almost bet that this story is a fictionalized version of her own experiences or those of a very close friend. In the book in 1942 “Ruth”, about eleven years old, and her younger brother, Simeon, are sent away to an emergency boarding school for missionary kids so that they won’t end up in the concentration camp of Weihsien, captured by the approaching Japanese. However, their emergency school site is no safer from Japanese bombing raids than their homes were, and so the children are evacuated over the Himalayas to Calcutta.

The contrast between the children’s petty day-to-day concerns and the enormous events that are happening around them is one focus of this book. Ruth considers herself to be a naughty girl. She gets spanked (or strapped as the book calls it) a lot. But her infractions seem petty and inconsequential, too, for the most part: wandering away from the group, forgetting responsibilities, being disrespectful to teachers. Ruth’s concerns are to survive school and her nemesis, Miss Elson, and to take care of Simeon as her parents have charged her to do. The book paints a vivid picture of what it must have been like to see the war and its effects from a child’s point of view.

Ruth is a bit of an annoying child. She calls Simeon “dope” and “dummy” and “cowardly custard” and other such epithets frequently. She does forget to do her work, and she and her friend Anne play tricks on the teachers and band together to outwit the other children and get their own way. However, at the same time Ruth is quite concerned about taking care of Simeon, and she tries to teach him to be tough and to stand up to hardship. Simeon and his friend, Paul, are both daydreamers and and imaginers who run away, get lost, and find themselves in trouble with alarming frequency. And ever in the background and on the periphery of the children’s lives, there are Japanese bombers, American flyers, Chinese children, and Indian amahs. The setting is both exotic and dangerous, and Ruth and Simeon sashay through all the danger and foreign cultures with style and childlike confidence. In short, they act like children.

There’s a sequel (that I haven’t read) with the same characters called Leaving Point: “Home from boarding school to spend Christmas with their missionary parents, fourteen-year-old Ruth and her brothers find that the Communist Revolution has brought about many changes and new restrictions that complicate Ruth’s growing friendship with a young Chinese girl who may not be what she seems.” (Goodreads)

Web of Traitors by Geoffrey Trease

Mar21

A mysterious plot to overthrow the democracy of Athens is foiled by young Alexis and his friend Corinna. The story includes appearances by Socrates, Plato and Xenophon, competition at the annual Athenian drama festival, and an exciting torch race through the countryside near Athens. Alexis, the Athenian second son of an Athenian nobleman, and Corinna, alien daughter of a cook and innkeeper, form an unlikely friendship when they meet out in the country near Alexis’s father’s farm. And the two of them discover that that the Spartans are in league with an exiled Athenian traitor to overthrow the Council and install themselves as dictators.

Subtitled “An Adventure Story of Ancient Athens” and originally published in England as The Crown of Violet in 1952, Web of Traitors is a good accompaniment to the study of ancient Greece in history. The student who reads this “adventure story” will be introduced to Athenian theater and sport, to the rivalry between Athens and Sparta, and to the culture and customs of Athens. However, this novel is not just a history book in disguise. The characters are fun and fresh and believable, and the story itself is intriguing enough to hold the interest of middle school readers, even of those who go into the novel with very little knowledge of interest in ancient Athens.

According to Jan Bloom’s author guide, Who Then Should We Read?, Geoffrey Trease, a British children’s author with a background in the classics and in theater, “once commented that he could write about any period if he could figure out what made those people laugh.” He wrote more than fifty historical novels for middle grade and young adult readers, set in all different time periods from the Athens of Socrates and Plato to the time of Shakespeare (Cue for Treason) to the French revolution (Victory at Valmy). His novels are said to combine historical accuracy, adventure, and a love of drama to make great reads.

Here are a few of Trease’s novels, along with the setting of each, that I would like to read and to own for my library:

Message to Hadrian: Roman Britain.
Escape to King Alfred: Ninth century during the reign of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex.
Cue for Treason: Shakespeare’s England. I already own this one and plan to read it next.
The Silken Secret: Eighteenth century London and the beginnings of silk manufacture in England.
Victory at Valmy: French Revolution.
The Iron Tsar: St. Petersburg during the reign of Czar Nicholas I.
The White Nights of St. Petersburg: 1916, the Russian Revolution.
No Boats on Bannermere: contemporary with publication in the 1940’s.

In fact, I’m excited about reading as many of the books of Geoffrey Trease as I can get my hands on. I like this first book of his that I’ve read far better than I enjoyed the few books by G.A. Henty that I’ve read. Henty is popular among homeschoolers, but I think for exciting and informative historical fiction, I may decide that Trease is better.

Saturday Review of Books: March 19, 2016

Mar18

“No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.” ~Lady M.W. Montague

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Hereâ€™s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesnâ€™t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where youâ€™ve written your book review. Donâ€™t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after youâ€™ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book youâ€™re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews theyâ€™re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read.

The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap by Wendy Welch

Mar14

The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: A Memoir of Friendship, Community, and the Uncommon Pleasure of a Good Book by Wendy Welch.

I forget where I saw a reference to this delightful nonfiction book about a little bookstore in rural southwestern Virginia (Appalachia), but big thanks to whomever it was that recommended the book to me. The actual name of the eponymous bookstore is just about too long to fit on the cover of the book: Tales of the Lonesome Pine Used Bookstore, Crafts, and Cafe. The owners Jack and Wendy Welch serve up Scots shortbread, tea, both iced and hot, and loads of used books in every conceivable genre. Ms. Welch, in her memoir about how two inexperienced innocents started a used bookstore on a shoestring and a prayer, gives unwary wannabe bookstore owners fair warning: running a halfway profitable and successful used bookstore is hard work, especially in a small town of about 5000 people. Don’t try this at home, folks. Well, the Welches did try it at home (they live upstairs above the bookstore); however, after reading The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap, I wouldn’t dare to copy their business plan. If you are an aspiring bookseller, I would at least advise reading Ms. Welch’s book to get some idea of what you may be getting yourself into.

Nevertheless, this book about books and bookish people was a great read. As you can see from this video of A Typical Day at Tales of the Lonesome Pine, the little bookstore would be a lovely place to visit, even with all the cats and dogs running loose. (I’m not an animal person, but I love my books enough to put up with a few animals.)

When Ms. Welch quoted C.S. Lewis, Edith Schaeffer, and the Dalai Lama within the first fifteen pages of her book, I knew I had found a kindred spirit. Then, the subtitle of “community and the uncommon pleasure of a good book” is so akin to my little project of creating a community of families who love good books in my little private library. I just settled in and read all about Jack and Wendy and their adventures and misadventures in their little bookstore. I promise that if I ever get anywhere near southwestern Virginia and Big Stone Gap, Tales of the Lonesome Pine Bookstore will be high on my itinerary. And just reading about it made me want to go on a used bookstore adventure trip of my own.

So, what are the best used bookstores in your neck of the woods? Where do you go when you want to browse, and smell, and dip into a multitude of old books?

Saturday Review of Books: March 12, 2016

Mar11

“[D]on’t ever apologize to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that’s what they’re there for. Use your library). Don’t apologize to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend’s copy. What’s important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read… ” ~Neil Gaiman

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read.

The Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt

Mar10

Another book for my Around the World project, The Letter for the King (De brief voor de Koning) was published in 1962 by the Dutch author Tonke Dragt. It won the Children’s Book of the Year award in the Netherlands and subsequently in 2004 was chosen as the best Dutch youth book of the latter half of the twentieth century. The book has been translated into over sixteen languages, most recently with an English translation by Laura Watkinson.

It reads like a translation from some other language or some other world, which helps rather than hinders the sense of an otherworldly quest in another time and place. The simplicity of language, sentence structure and plot all remind me of Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. The setting is also Arthurian, but in an imaginary world of three kingdoms, knights with different colored shields and horses, and just a touch of magic and wonder.

Tiuri, a young squire about to become a knight, is interrupted during his overnight vigil which precedes his knighting by a whispered call for help. Tiuri cannot resist the urge to go to the aid despite his promise to keep vigil without talking or leaving the chapel all night. And so Tiuri’s real vigil and real testing begin. The Black Knight with the White Shield who asks for Tiuri’s help gives him a letter to take to the king of a neighboring kingdom. Tiara must keep both the letter and his mission to deliver it secret.

The rest of the book chronicles Tiuri’s journey, both his journey to Unauwen, the kingdom where he is to deliver his secret and vital letter and his journey to manhood and knightly honor and valor. Tiuri learns to keep his word and stay the course, not in a one night vigil, but in many weeks of dangerous travel through treacherous terrain with enemies all about him. He learns to trust the trustworthy, to show kindness even to his enemies, and above all, to remain faithful to his quest.

Those children who enjoy the Arthurian stories as retold by Howard Pyle or Sidney Lanier or Roger Lancelyn Green should enjoy this tale of knights and adventures set in another medieval world similar to the Arthurian one in tone, culture, and values. The underlying moral code and understanding is Christian, with Christian symbols and artifacts such as chapels, a crucifix, monks, and prayers popping up all through the story, even if Christ and Christianity are never mentioned explicitly. Christian values are illustrated in Tiuri’s quest: mercy, faithfulness, love, and courage.

The Letter for the King is a more straightforward, less complicated journey story for fantasy lovers who want a big thick novel but are not quite ready for the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings. As a follow-up or companion readalike to the tales of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, this book would be perfect. Ms. Dragt wrote a sequel to A Letter for the King, Geheimen van het Wilde Woud (Secrets of the Wild Woods) in which a grown-up Tiuri has more knightly adventures.