a grief observed - c.s. lewis (1961)

how long does it take to gather the courage to read a book? in my case for this book, perhaps twenty-odd years. it was as if i feared the very reading of the manuscript would precipitate the tragedy of which he writes.

having finally got on with it, i learn that the dread of anticipation exceeds the pain of plowing through it.

for one thing, it is mercifully short. four chapters and he is done. for another, he is honest and provocative and vulnerable and bare. but not, as perhaps i feared, stuck in the rut of his pain. 

bereavement, he posits, is as much a part of love as courtship and marriage and the honeymoon and the loving. 'twas a time such a posit would have been unthinkable. having known so much joy and fulness with HOM, i am willing to begin to consider this may be so.

we look through the glass darkly. sometimes we are granted to misunderstand a little less completely.

God's hotel - victoria sweet (2012)

this book is gentle and sharp and measured and incisive and slow and inexorable and rather subversively inspiring.

it reminds me of the community hospital where i get to spend some time, where we don't have the latest or the fastest or the most detailed, although we have a phlebotomist and radiology, much like sweet's hospital.

it tells me that there is value in learning the patient's story and examining the old fashioned way like i was taught and the way i try (sometimes in vain) to teach it, because it can be kinder and cheaper and more accurate.

it teaches me a new word, inattendu. to be a pilgrim, sweet says, is to know the beginning and the end, and to have adventures in between. the unexpected in the in-between is not unwelcome because it is part of the journey.

dancing with dementia - c. bryden (2005)

an almost unbelievably upbeat book about that most feared of all diagnoses, dementia.

several points strike me as i speed my way through this book in the wake of the odd aftertaste of another dementia book, before i forget by b. smith and dan gasby:

• in the interest of accuracy, she has FTD, not Alzheimer's.
• she sees herself as the embodiment of three layers - the cognitive who and what that is most visible and is lost soonest, the emotional with which she engages others and over which she is losing control bit by bit, and the inner core of who she is in her spirit, which she does not lose. dementia takes her memories and her thoughts but has no power over her core self. i suppose, having lived with dementia for twenty-three years (by 2018, not 2005), she has some authority in this.
• and she says, why does it matter if i cannot remember... if i enjoy your visit, why must i remember it?... let me live in the present. if i forget a pleasant memory, it does not mean it was not important for me.

a remarkably wise book, this. it reminds me of that old promise that nothing shall separate me from the love of God.

hear ye, HEAR YE!

the easter affirmation, to be read in progressively louder tone as font size increases.

one cannot help thinking that the triumphant proclamation upon which the christian faith is built deserves more considered and innovative treatment than that of decibels alone.

easter morning thoughts

there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins

and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

e'er since by faith i saw the stream thy flowing wounds supply

redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till i die.

- william cowper

the cross and the resurrection redeem me from more than i care to consider

and make me worthy of more than i will ever grasp.

thank God.

good friday

a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief...

i make a startling realization in the wake of the familiar words. when i say God, this is my heavy heart and the bitterness of my spirit; what can you do to sweeten it? really he is telling me child, i know your sorrow and your grief. i drank the cup you could not drink.

he shares my burden.

surprised by joy - c.s.lewis (1955)

he calls it joy, this ephemeral longing that comes upon him and catches him unawares when he reads a passage of a book, or when he contemplates a scene, or when he remembers a memory. it is the pursuit of this, he believes, that leads him to God.

why does he call this joy, i wonder. when we usually think of joy as an uplifting of the spirit and countenance, why does he link it to this elusive feeling that needs to be described almost laboriously? i begin to realize that the opposite of joy is not, perhaps, sorrow, but longing. and if longing, then joy must be the fulfilment of that longing. there is a logic to this strange nomenclature.

and i have felt that joy too. i have felt that unexpected burst that expands my soul and gives me, momentarily, a glimpse of something far bigger than i am, when i chance upon an empty road, or when the storm clouds come in their ominous glory, or when i hear danny boy, or i join in a chorus of how great thou art. so joy is my glimpse of the eternity that God puts in my heart, and i am the richer for having read about it.