2014 Books

With this being the third of January of 2014, I have decided to keep track of the books I read this year. I did this for a few years when I first began my blog eight years ago and would like to do it again. You can see the list to the right of this post.

I read about Crossing for Safety by Wallace Earle Stegner somewhere on the internet and bought a used copy. It was published in 1988, when I had three children and was not reading much except quick mysteries. Its description as a quiet book about two couples intrigued me, as well as the date of its publication.

The narrator of the book is the male member of one of the couples, who is about 64. That is almost my age, so his reflections seemed relevant as to our age perspectives. These couples met while they were in graduate school. The book chronicles with flashbacks their relationships and challenges as they grow and change. It is an interesting book.

It evidently was the last book that Wallace Stegner wrote before his death in 1993. It was so well-written that I plan to read more of his books, but will get them from the public library if possible.

May Sarton

May Sarton
1912-1995

Recently I read two books by May Sarton: The Magnificent Spinster and The Education of Harriet Hatfield. Although I knew the author's name, I had never read any of her books before. I first read The Magnificent Spinster, which is about a woman's life from childhood to her death as written by a former student. This was a woman who remained single all her life, but who had a zest for living that inspired and nurtured many around her. It is what I assume a "novel of manners" is like. It is a good story, without excitement and intrigue.

I coincidentally found The Education of Harriet Hatfield at Half-Price Books. It struck me because it was about a 60 year old woman (which is my age) who opens a bookstore for women after her partner of 30 years died. It is the story of her "growing up." There is more drama in this story than the first one.

Both books give positive attention to lesbian partnerships, which got me interested in finding out more about May Sarton, especially since she was born in 1912. She lived with a partner for 13 years and evidently wrote about their relationship in Honey in the Hive, which I have not yet read.

The Unitarian Universalist Association has an interesting article about her:

"Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing, 1965, is often referred to as Sarton's "coming out" novel and one she admits she could not have written while her parents were alive. With its reissue in 1974, to which Carolyn Heilbrun contributed an important introduction, Sarton's work gained academic recognition, especially by feminist critics. Subsequently her work began to be studied in literature classes and college women's studies programs. Although she appreciated the recognition, Sarton believed that the label "lesbian writer" might limit and distort perception of her work. She wanted to be read as a writer who dealt with themes of universal interest. She had, in fact, already written novels about family and married life. "

What an interesting woman. I am sure libraries have many of her books, as she started writing in the 1930's.

An Amazing Woman

If you like to read biographies, I have one to suggest to you: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips. I spent this weekend reading about this amazing woman I had never heard of until I looked at someone's list of recommended books to read and found science fiction selections by James Tiptree, Jr., whom I had never heard of until then!

Alice Bradley Sheldon
1915-1987

"Unsure what to do with her new degrees and her new/old careers, Sheldon began to write science fiction. She adopted the pseudonym of James Tiptree Jr. in 1967. The name 'Tiptree' came from a branded jar of marmalade, and the 'Jr.' was her husband's idea. In an interview, she said: 'A male name seemed like good camouflage. I had the feeling that a man would slip by less observed. I've had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation.'

"The pseudonym was successfully maintained until the late 1970s. This is partly due to the fact that though it was widely known that 'Tiptree' was a pseudonym, it was generally understood that its use was intended to protect the professional reputation of an intelligence community official. Readers, editors and correspondents were permitted to assume gender, and generally, but not invariably, they assumed 'male.' There was speculation, based partially on the themes in her stories, that Tiptree might be female.

"'Tiptree' never made any public appearances, but she did correspond regularly with fans and other science fiction authors through the mail. When asked for biographical details, Tiptree/Sheldon was forthcoming in everything but gender. Many of the details given above (the Air Force career, the Ph.D.) were mentioned in letters 'Tiptree' wrote, and also appeared in official author biographies."

For ten years (1967-1977), Tiptree was a prolific science fiction author and writer of letters. That was the time that we graduated from high school and went to college and graduate school. I do not remember anything about her dramatic unveiling as a woman, even though at the time I was reading such magazines as "Saturday Review" and "The New Yorker." However, I was not interested in science fiction.

Have you ever heard of James Tiptree, Jr.? Or read any books by him/her?

I found a review of one of Tiptree's books, which also has a link to the book The Women Men Don't See. This review makes me want to read it.

Swami Abhishiktananda

Abhishiktananda
(Fr. Henri Le Saux)
1910-1973

Henri Le Saux grew up in Brittany, France and excelled in his studies, which continued after he joined the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Anne of Kergonan when he was 19 years old. He felt particularly drawn to the Greek Fathers, especially Gregory Nazianzen’s Hymn to God Beyond All Names:

You who are beyond all, what other name befits you?

No words suffice to hymn you. Alone you are ineffable.

Of all beings you are the End, you are One, you are all, you are none.

Yet not one thing, nor all things. . . . You alone are the Unnameable.

Such Emptiness was a prelude to his call to India, which became an obsession around 1934, when he was only 24 years old, before his ordination. It took 14 more years of persistent asking, writing, and waiting before Henri was sent to India (in 1948), which he never left. He traveled in India and struggled with his Christian faith and the mystical experience of advaita (non-duality).

"He remained a priest, and he remained a Benedictine monk but he was a long way from the average expectations of a Catholic priest. He was beyond all structures, yet he remained a disciple of Jesus. As far as the church is concerned, he never left it but he did become distanced from it. He came to see more and more clearly the false duality of the church, for instance, in regarding people as active or contemplative. In the end even the Mass became unimportant: he could celebrate or not. Everything was divine, so it didn't really matter. But when he did say Mass, it was a momentous occasion, for he was at the level of knowing beyond any words." (38)

De Boulay, Shirley. Swami Abhishiktananda: Essential Writings. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007.

The other night when I could not sleep, I found an old used copy of Abhishiktananda's book "Saccidananda: A Christian Approach to Advaitic Experience." I am currently reading it again (for the "first" time) and then re-discovered Shirley Du Boulay's book on my shelves, too. So I am newly intrigued by this amazing mystic who experienced Christ from the depth of Hindu spirituality.

Google ABHISHIKTANANDA to find out more about him. A good resource is here, with a collection of articles by him here.

And what prompted me to start writing about him was this quote that I boldly highlighted in Du Boulay's book:

"Only to the extent that you are not attached to any thought, to any point of view, to anything at all, that you do not desire or fear anything, that you do not feel delight or sorrow in anything--only so can the void be created in your intellect. If I am worried about what will happen tomorrow, about what I will have to decide tomorrow, I will not be able to reach this void. I must have absolute faith in this mystery of the beyond into which I throw myself. Whether I call it Christ, Shiva, Parama-atman does not matter. Total acceptance that someone is there to receive me, to take complete charge of me, or rather that in the end I will find myself set free from all my present limitations."
~~July 27, 1955, Diary

De Boulay, Shirley. Swami Abhishiktananda: Essential Writings. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007.

That's detachment.

Always a Beginner

"The mission of the church is just loving people. And our confession? What is our confession? It is that we do not know how to love. Until we have made that confession, there is nothing to be learned. We cannot even be a beginner with the beginners, and in the school of Christianity there is nothing else to be but a beginner."

~~Elizabeth O'Connor, Search for Silence, p. 23.

"When desire for love is felt, owned, and intended, some kind of prayer happens. In one form or another, prayer is the beginning and the way of being in love. If we are to say yes to love's invitation, to whom do we say it? In part, we say it to ourselves when we claim our desire and intention. But we are also committing ourselves to receiving a gift, and thus must address the giver. Prayer is the only way we can integrate our intention with our dependence on grace."

~~Gerald G. May, The Awakened Heart, p. 58.

I have read and heard that we are always beginners in the spiritual life. I believe that Saint Gregory of Nyssa wrote about this, too. Although sometimes embarrassing, it is also a relief to realize I do not "know it all," and am starting anew each moment. Thank you, God!

This is a day of new beginnings,
time to remember and move on,
time to believe what love is bringing,
laying to rest the pain that’s gone.

For by the life and death of Jesus,
love’s mighty Spirit, now as then,
can make for us a world of difference,
as faith and hope are born again.

Then let us, with the Spirit’s daring,
step from the past and leave behind
our disappointment, guilt, and grieving,
seeking new paths, and sure to find.

Christ is alive, and goes before us
to show and share what love can do.
This is a day of new beginnings;
our God is making all things new.

-Brian Wren, 1978

Discipleship

"The words of Mother Emmanuel, head of the Carmelite monastery in Mark Salzman's novel Lying Awake, could be words addressed to us: 'No matter how many times we hear what it costs to follow Christ, we're still shocked when the bill comes, and we wonder all over again if we can pay it.' This seemingly unattainable life of a disciple only reminds us that we are all works in progress. We are always letting go and learning to love with a more inclusive love. The call to discipleship invites us to go beyond where we are now, to open ourselves to divine love, and to live as friends. Each of us will live as a disciple in a way that corresponds to our openness to the Holy Spirit. Jesus has shown us the way of inclusive love and liberating power. But the details will be of our own making. The form we give to our discipleship will fit the circumstances, needs, and problems of our day in a way that witnesses to the vision of Jesus: that all peoples be brought under the inclusive reign of divine love." (200)

Gula, Richard M. The Call to Holiness: Embracing a Fully Christian Life. New York: Paulist Press, 2003.

Abundance

"Charity is not a matter of degree. It is never nice. It wells up out of a sense of abundance, spilling indiscriminately outward. True, your abundance may complement someone else's lack, which you are moved to fill, but since your lacks are being similarly filled, perhaps by the same person, perhaps by another, reciprocity rather than domination frames the interchanges. . . .But absolutely everybody has abundances.

". . . .an abundance may not take a form you much like."

~~Nancy Mairs, Ordinary Time: Cycles in Marriage, Faith, and Renewal, p. 163.

Nancy Mairs has an interesting article on "Finding the Holy Here and Now."

Spiritual Practices

"Spiritual practices become life transforming to the extent that they help us to see differently and to behave differently. Even though we may not always be able to change what we see, seeing it differently helps us to respond differently. Perception, remember, informs moral judgments. Once we see the stranger as neighbor in need, we might respond differently. Spiritual practices open us to see and judge all things in relation to our experience of God and our commitment to care about what God cares about." (155)

"Since God is ever present to us in the Spirit at the depths of human experience, we really cannot clearly separate our relationship to God (spirituality) from the way we live in the world (morality), for our relationship to God is mediated by the way we respond to all things. . . . Spirituality focuses on our relationship with God and morality on who we are to be and how we are to behave in the world. For the Christian believer, who we are and how we behave are functions of our experience of God." (211)

Gula, Richard M. The Call to Holiness: Embracing a Fully Christian Life. New York: Paulist Press, 2003.

This was a book I read in a long-ago ethics or morality class I took at the Oblate School of Theology, preparing for my master's degree in theology. I am looking at it again and seeing what wisdom Gula shares.

Dualistic Thinking can be Death

"Death is what takes place within us when we look upon others not as gift, blessing, or stimulus but as threat, danger, competition. It is the death that comes to all who try to live by bread alone. This is the death that the Bible fears and gives us good reason to fear. It is not the final departure we usually think of when we speak of truth; it is that purposeless, empty existence devoid of genuine human relationships and filled with anxiety, silence, and loneliness."

~~Dorothee Soelle, Death by Bread Alone, p. 4.

This reminds me of dualistic thinking as described by Richard Rohr. I heard him say at that conference:

"God cannot 'get in' when we are in a moral, judging, worthiness contest."

When I put myself higher or lower than someone else, I am blocking my perception of God in them and in me. That is dualistic thinking and is a trap I fall into, especially since I think my enneagram number is six and doubting oneself is one of its (my) failings. But then I may be a nine, so nine or six is my conundrum.

Our New Priest

Our new priest is Sandy Casey-Martus, who is leaving All Saints Episcopal Church in Austin, TX as associate rector to be rector of my parish, All Saints Episcopal Church in Corpus Christi, TX. Her first Sunday is Feb. 15.

She and Carla R. Mancari are authors of a book The Lessons: How to Understand Spiritual Principles, Spiritual Activities, and Rising Emotions. In this book, they teach about Christ-Centered Prayer, which is also a website they maintain.

This is the topic of a conference I am attending all next week: January 17-23. I am eager to meet Sandy!