tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79276108819474563722024-03-05T03:07:09.859-08:00Christin's Words From Sunshine HillMay Words Be Light in the DarknessChristin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.comBlogger130125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-73598647693011925782021-01-22T11:15:00.001-08:002021-01-22T11:15:26.579-08:00ZoomRoom Local Author Reading – Christin Lore Weber<a href="https://art-presence.org/zoomroom-local-author-reading-christin-lore-weber/">ZoomRoom Local Author Reading – Christin Lore Weber</a><div><br /></div><div>Please join me in the launching of my new novel, NO THIS BUT THIS, on February 12th at 5 P.M. Pacific Time. Your free registration is in the above link from Art Presence Gallary.</div><div><br /></div><div>Christin</div>Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-6335397674146906242021-01-15T13:57:00.001-08:002021-01-15T13:57:48.443-08:00When a Lifelong Friend Dies<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVBJCNb2aDzdg1jlOwc-cWDY12OdPwX2qRareNwOOOPOPA7ArkKOB_wVWmuTiEaJSxWoLJBQK84oCjrAXQJd6o5BtzYmsLhJaxvjHAxAeAJrZa0X_hjj1ClET1THzNXJAXQokugS0QrtY/s2000/Bill+Cunningham+and+Jad.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVBJCNb2aDzdg1jlOwc-cWDY12OdPwX2qRareNwOOOPOPA7ArkKOB_wVWmuTiEaJSxWoLJBQK84oCjrAXQJd6o5BtzYmsLhJaxvjHAxAeAJrZa0X_hjj1ClET1THzNXJAXQokugS0QrtY/s320/Bill+Cunningham+and+Jad.jpeg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Bill and his grandson, Jad</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In half-dream last night I saw him in sunlight as an eagle and I must have been the hawk riding the thermals above the Applegate hills. Wind ruffled our feathers and seemed to blow right through us as we circled. Those cries are all the words, I thought, hearing the birds' cries echoing off the ridges of the Buncom Bowl. It was the sound that bound us. Our feathered wings never touched. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It is a rare privilege to have had a friend like Bill Cunningham. He died this week--January 12th. I knew he'd fly soon, but one never really experiences death of a loved one until it happens. For half our lives we had lived a continent apart and saw each other only once, a few years ago when he made the trip west. But all that time, writers that we both were, Bill and I shared our souls in words. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I met Bill in the early 1970s just after I had left the convent and he was one of the priests at the University of Minnesota Newman Center. He resembled a Hoffman Jesus and delivered homilies that urged the congregation to respond. Who could not notice him? Already he was in the forefront of a new and progressive Catholic Christianity--maybe he already was past that, though it still held him in its grasp. When he invited discussion, I loved the challenge and would take him on. It was so stunning--the way he stopped to reflect on everyone's insight or question. He spoke from his sense of compassion, not from some cast-in-stone dogma. He was a Dominican Friar of the Order of Preachers--those who back in the day were in charge of the Inquisition. He, already then, detested (not too strong a word, I think) that historical connection.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">He and I sat on my porch in St. Paul one summer day in the mid-1970s. He was right on the verge of leaving the priesthood and the Dominicans. He'd come to talk it over with my now deceased spouse, Pat Kelly, who had also left the active priesthood, and with me--recently dispensed from convent vows. Bill was deeply in love with Liliana, and his edgy relationship with the Church was beginning to feel impossible to maintain. The angst of finalizing the decision that would affect his remaining life, though, showed itself in his face and posture. He quoted passages from the then popular novel, <i>The Thornbirds. </i>What did it mean to be faithful? The whole struggle felt like such a paradox.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">He married Lili. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfy11RFQ3JUMSX378BUy3pILLtaZIqLku2CfRPyQ-YwKwamjW6hE_je8asKmwKgc6Ky3c3gUYgSs01sfCxX1d8ESM1yvwejz-EdWk7OHLt7IP7oiGOiNF9tvqB6nYgufySUEYZ125koC4/s960/facebook_1610652070304_6755564421086167280Bill+and+lili.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="684" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfy11RFQ3JUMSX378BUy3pILLtaZIqLku2CfRPyQ-YwKwamjW6hE_je8asKmwKgc6Ky3c3gUYgSs01sfCxX1d8ESM1yvwejz-EdWk7OHLt7IP7oiGOiNF9tvqB6nYgufySUEYZ125koC4/s320/facebook_1610652070304_6755564421086167280Bill+and+lili.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div>If I were writing a book, Part Two would begin the day Bill came from Florida in 1985 to spend the afternoon with Pat and me the day before Pat had cancer surgery from which he never recovered. We didn't know that, of course, the afternoon we sat together in my living room listening to <i>Symphony #7 </i>by Ralph Vaughn Williams, with the poetry of Walt Whitman. I still see him in memory--eyes closed, focused, silent, aware, compassionate, as though he saw all our lives in this one moment.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>I do not regret this journey.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>We took risks, we knew we took them,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Things have come out against us,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Therefore we have no cause for complaint.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>-Walt Whitman</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We didn't see each other again for thirty years. In the meantime, though, our friendship developed a character of presence. I had moved to California and remarried. Bill and Lili and their girls lived a creative and socially involved life in Florida. But we phoned. When email became available we did that. Mostly we lived in each others' souls. I was writing my books, now seventeen of them. Bill read every one and commented on all but the last. As our patterns of belief evolved we shared our newest realizations with each other, always reaching deeper and deeper for wisdom. He became more earthy--"I'm a pagan," he insisted--while I drifted further and further into the mystical. Both of us began writing poetry. He would email from airports across the country while he worked as a management consultant. We shared ideas, beliefs, poetry, books we were reading, personal struggles and joys, hopes, dreams. He called himself Pilgrim-Seeker. He called me Dreamer-Weaver. We seemed to share one time and space while also being a continent apart. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Last night in my grief over his death it came to me that very little had changed. As the poet, Yeats, had written, I loved the pilgrim soul in him. Except for the written words we shared for so many years, that soul of his remained. His presence lingers in all my books as well. His last poem written for me holds the paradox:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Failure of Language</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>The role of the artist is</i></span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>to make you realize</i></span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>the doom and glory</i></span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>of knowing who</i></span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>you are and what you are.</i></span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>--James Baldwin</i></span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i><br /></i></span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i><br /></i></span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We once wrote each other often,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">to tell the intimate tales of our lives,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">rich in language, intricate in detail, full</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">of ideas and hope.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Then gradually, we stopped,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">not for lack of caring, of that I'm sure,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">but perhaps because we had drained out</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">of language all we could. Then the sudden</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">harshness in our lives, raw and open,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">the painful death of our spouses,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">left us stunned and speechless,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">standing on a strange shore,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">looking out onto a vast sea</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">where there were no islands,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">no sails, no other shore</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">that we could see.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Perhaps we had given all we could to one another</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">and now had to face realities where language,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">our common gift, once our great solace,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">could not help.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">-September 4, 2020</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Words have done as he said. Words are fragile and eventually cannot hold reality. We ourselves eventually feel more attuned to the wordless winds We set out then, finally comfortable with the silence of our heart's depths, onto the seas of which Whitman and Williams wrote, and Bill, Pat and I contemplated all those years ago. To Bill I now say, set forth and fare thee well. I bear witness to the magnificence of your life, your soul, my dear friend.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Sail forth--steer for the deep waters only,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>O brave soul!</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>O farther farther sail!</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>O farther, farther, farther sail.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Whitman's "Passage to India."</span></i></div><p></p>Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-1639412892552286972020-11-19T09:18:00.010-08:002020-11-19T10:19:23.386-08:00No This But This: New Novel Just Released<p> </p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/No-This-But-Novel/dp/B08M8Y5NQ5/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=No+This+But+This+by+Christin+Lore+Weber&qid=1605807127&sr=8-1"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="469" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjFb2xK9jd7TwQT8lbhdh9Nhm4bMC1pJu1kfv296U0Wv0mjem_lqavkv8-zYSaexK6GdXaD5s58BQJ7b4Ue9qJ0cf_FCRIjDvGUO_oE0BEzOolwjOPFbgfpX_9lQNUvayHYHKVQCdjpro/w315-h469/Cover+No+This+But+This.jpg" width="315" /></a></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/No-This-But-Novel/dp/B08M8Y5NQ5/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=No+This+But+This+by+Christin+Lore+Weber&qid=1605807127&sr=8-1"><br /></a></td></tr></tbody></table><br />My attempts to let this novel go into the world haven't been easy. It has been finished for a few months, just resting next to my computer, waiting for me to DO something. I don't know: blow trumpets or do a few rolls on the snare drum. But there it sat. Too intimate, maybe. But this is not a memoir. The main character and I are not the same person, though I do recognize so much about her responses to life, Her life, a quite different life from mine. Her name is Ella, and she and I are the same age--in the final years of a lifetime. She lives pretty much where I do, but not in the same house. As the story opens, Ella's life is in fragments. She has lost so much and been unable to make sense of her experiences. I may have been influenced by a review by Sandra Scofield of a friend's memoir: "[This] memoir is breathtakingly passionate, painful and exhilarating. A mature and gifted writer answers the question most of us don't dare to ask: Did I live the right life?"<p></p><p><i>No This But This</i> is a work rising up from the way life tends to coalesce and integrate with age and longevity. I wrote it from my soul's depth, and the only part that does not come from there is the the story itself. What an odd experience writing this novel has been. Each character is, as it were, my soul in a different form, with a different history, following a different path, experiencing different challenges and conflicts, and resolving them in ways different from ways I have chosen. </p><p>At first, I didn't know how to classify the book. In a way, it is a memoir, except that these scenes never happened to me personally. By the same token, while writing I was remembering something internal, so intimate that I'm still shaken by having enclosed it in words that describe a fictional scene. </p><p>Like a shaman's journey, the writing of this book seemed to dismember me and cast the scraps of my own life to the wind.</p><p>I'm hoping this: that the completed novel carries in its characters and their story the intensity and intimacy about life's choices that I felt while I was writing. </p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/No-This-But-Novel/dp/B08M8Y5NQ5/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=No+This+But+This+by+Christin+Lore+Weber&qid=1605807127&sr=8-1">To buy NO THIS BUT THIS</a><br /></p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p></p>Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com0Jacksonville, OR 97530, USA42.313458399999988 -122.966986514.003224563821142 -158.12323650000002 70.62369223617884 -87.8107365tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-82590328926601527202020-08-14T12:27:00.000-07:002020-08-14T12:27:51.284-07:00A Dance in the Sky<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBK7K98cOBNztDVY2inLCuM9CEKL7BoiWX9w_rlH_508yFY10ZShU-fuVKkkQHQNPx7kUtKAr9zze_puDJUcGl189Vf4vLGr2pzV3F4zNQzzXtODT-H-poDxu6g1FMaV2Xi-HiDw0G0yk/s1344/John+at+Shasta.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="975" data-original-width="1344" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBK7K98cOBNztDVY2inLCuM9CEKL7BoiWX9w_rlH_508yFY10ZShU-fuVKkkQHQNPx7kUtKAr9zze_puDJUcGl189Vf4vLGr2pzV3F4zNQzzXtODT-H-poDxu6g1FMaV2Xi-HiDw0G0yk/s640/John+at+Shasta.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
John Weber has been a presence in my life since 1954, our high school years.
Even in his absences he has been present. This new book contains my memories of
presence with him. The writing took me all that time. Even while I was veiled, a
Catholic Sister in a convent, I wrote poetry inspired by him. Even while I was
married to Pat Kelly, my first husband after leaving the convent, I wondered
where John might be. And when Pat died, I thought I could feel John's presence
coming nearer every day. And sure enough, one day a few months later John came to
find me.</span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I had written of him in journals and seen him
in dreams, then suddenly, in 1985, he was standing right before me in a
Minnesota coffee shop. He was saying, "You are exactly the same," and
lifting me high and higher while both of us were laughing with the magic of it
all, the miracle. We seemed to be dancing in the sky.</span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We joined our lives, married for twenty-three
years, and then he died in 2008. I kept writing. All of it. A book, though, is
more than just the writing of a life. I had to find a tone, a rhythm for the
dance. It took another twelve years for that. But here it is.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWpWrWWPi79ZhCfs3mHD9umTazTBA7wd4N1yzcJBgyTcM6iUrs3JraMaFIVdxyso_i9_YdehURodOBFpo2enAvsPg8fIO5XpvYCHVc9sy4iVrYjRB7KN-LKKk5Zp3op19rR_p808TJrFM/s499/A+Dance+in+the+Sky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWpWrWWPi79ZhCfs3mHD9umTazTBA7wd4N1yzcJBgyTcM6iUrs3JraMaFIVdxyso_i9_YdehURodOBFpo2enAvsPg8fIO5XpvYCHVc9sy4iVrYjRB7KN-LKKk5Zp3op19rR_p808TJrFM/s0/A+Dance+in+the+Sky.jpg" /></a></div> <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I'm grateful to announce the publication of <i>A
DANCE IN THE SKY, A Memoir. </i>It is the second volume in a series titled <i>Three
Husbands. </i>(The third volume is still in the realm and form of experience).
You can find volume 2 at Amazon.com in both paperback and kindle formats. Or
you can order it from your local bookstore.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For your enjoyment I've included a little scene from 1958 when John and I were first aware of our love, but both of us were already committed to a different kind of life--he was signed up for a career in the Air Force, and I was already accepted to enter a Roman Catholic Convent. He was 18 and I was 17 years old.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style, serif;"><i>It is a Friday night in spring, and John has shown up for the Teen Club dance at the Moose Lodge. He'd never attended before, and my heart knows he has come that night because I will be there. We dance. I leave with him. In memory I am walking down the hill with John towards the Baudette Bay. We turn the corner and walk alongside the bay all the way to my home. The air smells of wet leaves. I'm an April crocus. I'm water pressing under river ice, flowing towards the lake, breaking winter from beneath. Nothing can stop this movement. It is the attraction that moves the stars. I catch his eye.</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style, serif;"><i>He gazes at me--in the classroom, at Mass, from the Plymouth cruising down Main Street. When I walk beside him I am safe; I am who I am; I find myself; I feel the warmth of him even without a touch. He is John. He is God. How can there be any difference? My mind tells me there is certainly a difference, and I am moving towards danger. 'You be careful!' my mind warns. 'If you really do intend to answer God's call, you will have to leave this boy and soon. Don't fall in love; it will be too hard.' But it is too late. I am in love already." </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style, serif;">I hope to meet you in these pages. You can purchase the book at Amazon.com.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/author/christinweber">https://www.amazon.com/author/christinweber</a><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Christin</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><br /><p></p>Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-42946738911312490502020-03-31T15:24:00.000-07:002020-03-31T15:24:04.889-07:00A Memoir of Early Childhood<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Just before Christmas 2019 a box filled with copies of my newest book arrived at my door. Here it is! A book of stories from my early childhood when I was Mary Jane Lore and my world consisted in the boundary waters of Minnesota and Ontario, Lake of the Woods, at my grandparent's fishing resort. I am one of the few people who remembers these places as they were in those days, 1940-1948, or who collected the stories of the olden days before my birth when even grandparents had been young.<br />
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A few years ago I began to go through old pictures given to me by my Grandmother Elizabeth Klimek and by her eldest daughter, my Aunt Eva Mapes. One picture at a time I took from bags or boxes and pondered, smiling or weeping but always remembering. Then I wrote the story of the person or place depicted. In the writing I let myself enter the little girl Mary Jane's experience as a three, four, or five year old--those flashes of memory that seem permanently sealed upon my heart and mind. Woven among those episodes and images the now much older writer in me, Christin, followed their trail to where it faded into forgetfulness or was lost altogether. The crumbling of houses and landscapes. Development of something new. Death of the old and then the death of those who remembered them.<br />
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At first I recorded these stories and descriptions in another blog by the same name as the book. Then as I kept getting older and saw my grand nieces and nephew being born and already older than I was when I experienced this life and land, I began to think it needed to be a book that the Klimek and Lore families could hold in their hands. And then I thought of the place, Baudette, Minnesota and Lake of the Woods County for which these stories are part of history. And then I thought of old people I've known all my life--how they enjoyed telling the stories of their past.<br />
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When my grandmother told me stories I enjoyed it and could see that she enjoyed it, too. But what I have experienced now that I didn't appreciate as a child is the absolute pleasure of storytelling, especially for the elders among us. The joy is this: we return in memory to places and people that no longer can be found anywhere on earth. Every time the story is repeated we find ourselves in that place among that company. That entire world is resurrected in our minds. What could be more glorious than realizing that even in the sad stories, the painful ones, being there again is good. My Aunt Edith from the Lore family told me many stories about my Grandma Klimek from years before I existed. When Edith was a teenager she worked at the resort and my grandmother was her boss. And every time Edith told the story while I visited her (over and over and over) her characterization of Grandma differed just a bit. It was growing. She actually was redeeming my grandmother as she re-imagined the story. She also was redeeming her perspective on that time of her own life when she saw the content of an experience far more and more clearly than its context. She became more compassionate as the story of my grandmother and her boss developed. And every single time she insisted on her memory's accuracy and that her story was absolutely true.<br />
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It is the task of age to integrate the person's entire life. A memoir unlike autobiography gathers together the truths stored in the heart more keenly than in the mind. It is a compassionate view of life. We attempt to get the facts right, but ultimately that isn't the goal. A memoir records a person's attempt to bring wholeness to memories from a limited time of life. And while it doesn't deny the wounds inflicted by all sorts of violence, a memoir searches into even the most painful time until it can lean towards understanding and compassion.<br />
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The book is available for purchase on Amazon.com, only in paperback. It is full of pictures as well as stories which made a Kindle ebook a bit beyond my skills.<br />
<br />Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-17599469536781881712020-01-12T15:11:00.001-08:002020-01-12T15:11:23.233-08:00Writing on the Oregon Coast<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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John and I spent a few stormy days on the Oregon Coast last week. My hope was to work on my new novel which I started almost a year ago after publishing CHIARA REFLECTIONS, poetry from the heart of Clare of Assisi. Still in the grip of poetry and also of my experience of writing my novel, WIDOW'S WALK, I easily fell into an intuitive style of composition. As soon as my creative function was convinced about my intention not to plan ahead--to have no outline, no sense of plot or theme, nothing but a kind of inner space, something awoke in me. She was an old woman, a hermit, with dreams and memories and a deep question about her life that she never had resolved. </div>
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At the coast I opened the document to the 172 pages I'd written in the past six months. So far, so good--even though I still didn't know quite where I was headed. I had followed through on the intuitive process and remain excited over where it had taken me from that first day in the springtime of 2019 to where I found myself and my fictional characters now at the beginning of 2020. </div>
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The old woman whose name turned out to be Ella, already in the first chapter wonders about her mother. She ponders...</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">She
walked where land is flat. She wrapped her wind-blown hair in a kerchief,
waiting out the war. She held my hand. The river emptied into Wood Lake at Four
Mile Gap. We searched the beach for arrowheads and chunks of pottery left by
the Originals. She told stories of olden days. We sat underneath a paper birch
tree and she gazed out to water’s end where, in the evenings, sunlight turned to
topaz then to garnet and made her cry. She drew up her knees and bent her
forehead down to rest on them. Her sobs were flights of birds. “Mama, Mama,”
emerged from me like the mewing of our banished cat. I used the wings of her
birds to make my way inside her to investigate the branches of her soul. I
opened the gates of her deep red heart and went inside where echoes of her sobs
bounced off my mind like puff balls from milkweed. “I cannot, I can Not,” the
milkweed puffs sang like baby birds born and trapped inside me. Her knees could
no longer hold her head and all her body was a puppet when fingers release the
strings. She collapsed and came apart around me. Oh! </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Mother
slept in her tears and with my most gentle finger I one by one gathered every
drop and placed it on my tongue where it would become a part of me and stay
through all my years.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Why
did she cry? What could she not? Is there anyone…? No one? None? I could not
and so I knew her at the very least that much. For years I hoped someone could,
but then she began to keep a gun in the top drawer beside her bed and I knew. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Distance
for her was absolute.</span></span></div>
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I know this: I will continue.</div>
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Christin Lore Weber</div>
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copyright, 2019</div>
Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-27287869413781796482019-05-20T12:42:00.000-07:002019-05-20T12:42:23.081-07:00My First Book of Poetry<br />
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In this life I’ve not travelled much outside North
America. Go deep, an inner voice instructed, and so I let that happen first on
the boundary waters of Minnesota and Ontario, and then in a convent beside the
Red River of the North. In the middle of life I uprooted myself and came to be
transplanted on the Pacific Coast. Later I would make a few short trips to
England and Ireland. I never travelled far from the waters of earth, and water
became a mirror from which soul might reflect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Our years are seventy, and eighty if
we are strong,” the Hebrew Scriptures say. And I was in my seventh decade
before I traveled with my new husband, author John R. Sack, to Italy to
celebrate our marriage with a pilgrimage to the holy places of St. Francis and
St. Clare. He had written an historical novel set in the era just after the
death of Francis, a book which had brought the two of us together in what he
calls our wisdom years. And in 2011 we wanted to walk the paths that Francis
walked and to visit the convent of San Damiano in Assisi where Clare had lived.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Although I had connections with women
in Minnesota who followed the Rule of St. Clare and lived lives of enclosure, I
hadn’t entered a Franciscan convent myself. I had, however, considered it as
early as my twelfth birthday. I received a book from the Franciscans of Little
Falls, Minnesota, explaining the Franciscan way of life, but the Sisters in the
town where I lived were not Franciscan, and they were the Sisters I knew,
loved, and joined. Consequently, I was not prepared for what happened to me in
Assisi.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In Assisi I met Chiara—Clare’s name engraved in Italian on the statue
honoring her in the cathedral there. I truly have no way to describe how this
happened. I can describe the places John and I visited, the stories we were
told, the landscapes, caves, and churches—the worn stones on which these people
once walked. Something of them, Francis and (in her Italian language) Chiara, remains
alive there, and it shook me to my core. It burned in my heart. I entered a
cave, touched a stone, knelt in a small chapel, stood on the stone stairs in
San Damiano and something so powerful took hold of me, over and over it took
hold, making even simple breath a whirlwind. “What am I going to do?” I fell
into John’s arms and wept. This thirteenth century woman had grasped my soul
with an intensity too great for me, but she wouldn’t let me go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Back in
Oregon we dedicated our home to her. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_Toc6398936"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_Toc4327984"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_Toc3977008"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Toc4327984;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Toc6398936;"><span class="Heading3Char"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Casa Chiara Hermitage.</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Heading3Char"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And now,
these poems.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Sometimes I watch her; sometimes she
speaks in her own voice to me. The poems came through me in both third and
first person, but all of them are reflections of Chiara as I bent back towards
her, as I gazed. Her spiritual teacher from childhood was a man from her own
town of Assisi, Francis Bernardone whose imprint on his town, his country, his
church, and the entire world’s history remains. Francis and Chiara of Assisi have
been relevant in every era up to our own. And back in the thirteenth century
the young woman named Chiara left her home to join Francis and his dream of
living exactly as Jesus of Nazareth had lived—an authentic Christianity. And
Chiara loved him, loved both of them—Jesus the Christ and the poor man, Francis
of her own home town.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Both Francis and Chiara lived
extraordinary lives. Both were mystics burning with divine love. This love
united them and it was in this love that they recognized each other. Despite
stories and movies to the contrary, I don’t believe they ever had a sexual
relationship nor desired one. All love of that sort was burned in a divine and
universal fire and transformed into the very love of God, so profoundly that
their love for one another became identical with their love in and for God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In my journal I wrote: </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">Here's what I know about Clare's yearning. In the
museum below Santa Chiara Cathedral in Assisi is an alb made of lace which she
made for Francis. I can't remember how many years she worked on it. It's like
spider webs, fine, almost falling apart now even behind the glass. Something
about that lace holds a fierce yearning, one she believed she shared with
Francis. Was the union in the simple understanding that someone in this world
experienced a yearning as intensely as did she? Such yearning cannot be
mingled, I think. It is solitary. But just knowing that someone else
experiences such infinity of longing causes love. As though the lace were a
language of the soul to say, “I want to veil the profound darkness in you with
these webs of white lace, something of light, so that you do not succumb to
your desperate aloneness, so that you do not give way to a belief that darkness
is all there is, but that having finally touched the deepest fields of night,
even there you will realize that there is yet More, there is a fullness opening
to you, an endlessness that not only fills you completely, but is what you are.
And it is Light. It is Love.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">Maria Popova writes, “Even the farthest seers
can’t bend their gaze beyond their era’s horizon of possibility, but the
horizon shifts with each incremental revolution as the human mind peers outward
to take in nature, then turns inward to question its own givens. We sieve the
world through the mesh of these certitudes, tautened by nature and culture, but
every once in a while—whether by accident or conscious effort—the wire loosens
and the kernel of a revolution slips through.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">From time to time I wonder if these
mystics, Chiara and Francis, found their way through the mesh of certitude to
glimpse truths beyond their era’s horizon, truths that science only recently
would discover, or that a psychology of self-integration would realize. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chiara, herself proclaimed a saint by the
church she both loved and challenged during her life, was a woman who claimed
her womanhood and the freedom it accorded her. She was the first woman to establish
a religious community of women living according to a structure and rule she
herself designed. Up to then nuns lived according to rules written by men such
as St. Benedict and St. Augustine. The Poor Ladies of San Damiano lived
according to the Rule of Chiara. She petitioned Rome again and again to approve
her plan. And she didn’t die until the Pope finally agreed. Already, though, groups
of “Poor Clares” had come together across Europe. In Bohemia the woman, Agnes
of Prague, a royal woman betrothed to the Emperor Frederick II, chose instead
to follow Chiara and establish a group of Poor Clares in her own country. The
letters between Chiara and Agnes along with the unique Rule and Testament have
formed the basis of study, spiritual enlightenment and women’s rights even to
this present day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We humans rarely if ever know what we
set in motion simply by living our lives and making what choices we can.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">These poems are the product of prayer and contemplation. They are
historical only in the broadest sense. I hope, however, they remain true to the
spirit of Chiara even while their details are mostly images derived from my own
imagination. (from the Introduction)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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You can purchase this book by ordering it from your local bookstore or by going directly to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Christin+Lore+Weber+books&ref=nb_sb_noss" target="_blank">Chiara Reflections</a>Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-16714047671499955532019-02-24T13:59:00.000-08:002019-02-24T14:12:18.439-08:00EVIDENCE<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span>
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<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: white;">Work begins in the intersection of night
and day; in darkness. Material life tumbles out onto me. Heavy life. How can I
carry it? How bear it, aching? “I am overwhelmed,” I complain to John as he
plans his garden, soon to be added to our care. I imagine vegetables tumbling into
sinks, soil everywhere, choking the spaces, taking the time, burying us in
tangles of vines, clumps of rot, bubbling pots of produce, the heat of summer
kitchen when already we have too much. I have too much. I’m bent under the too
much. Dust collects on books, on trinkets, keepsakes. I can’t breathe due to
the weight of it. It is a grave. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Tucked into crannies wait the refuse of
past years. 1985. I find an expanding file of letters, cards, clippings, while
searching for fragments of time with Marie</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Garamond, serif;">—</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">her
poems, snatches of words collected before we had e-mail and the pulse of life
in my mind flowed through a pen onto paper. The press of pencil or pen onto the
page carried the life of the person’s hand. The length of a line carried across
the page before the hand released and lifted. Death has taken the bodies of the
people who held the pen, but their lives remain in the lines.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: white;">How can I rid myself of such evidence? How
can I live underneath it? Here is a letter from someone named Michele. Lines
bend beneath her feelings. My eyes touch the lines like fingers touching her
skin, tracing a path of tears down her face. She left my life almost fifty
years ago, but the letter remains. It is a relic. It has power. One only letter
such as this could be framed and worshipped as a fragment left behind of God. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: white;">Creation requires space. Even burial under
beauty, under love, under food will choke out life, will suffocate. But each
fragment pleads to remain, to be.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<br /></div>
Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-43076494922015092032019-01-27T12:31:00.000-08:002019-01-27T12:49:04.711-08:00The Word is Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjMhulxiWtJP7uBeIIe6G0PzvRdrHqd-g1Lri_bF3l_kRAH5ePxaLxOlQI-ANFuzbDNZGo1B0XKLuITLhPuqhnMawke3H6Lbt5t4H-BzFhqHofI0Zxdva0ECKtPk0-LHSJzn9q03Fa2KQ/s1600/20180207_195302.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="735" data-original-width="1031" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjMhulxiWtJP7uBeIIe6G0PzvRdrHqd-g1Lri_bF3l_kRAH5ePxaLxOlQI-ANFuzbDNZGo1B0XKLuITLhPuqhnMawke3H6Lbt5t4H-BzFhqHofI0Zxdva0ECKtPk0-LHSJzn9q03Fa2KQ/s400/20180207_195302.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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</div>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
If I could bring to you through words<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Everything
that can be seen,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Felt, held,
imagined, envisioned, danced, sung,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all the other ways we know the world <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Mystery
that holds that world and worlds infinite,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I would. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
If I could
find a word,<o:p></o:p></div>
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But that
word would need to reach into the unending depths <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Of the
multiverse.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would need to echo
into the unknown and unnamed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So all my
life, the form of it,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Became a
search for words,<o:p></o:p></div>
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The
contemplation of each one,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
stringing them upon the thread of intuition,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The hope that together they will ring like bells.<o:p></o:p></div>
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These are my
books. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
These are
what I give<o:p></o:p></div>
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In hopes
that the frequency of their sound will reach you <o:p></o:p></div>
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Wherever you
might be in time and space<o:p></o:p></div>
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And where you might be beyond. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
These are my
books,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
That no
matter the topic or the genre of each one,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I hope will
open you and move you<o:p></o:p></div>
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Into
vastness of the ordinary,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Eternity of
the moment,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Fullness of
life<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
That also
can be found in your each breath,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In your every word spoken, written, and received.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br /></div>
Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-21941691484852196622019-01-24T10:35:00.001-08:002019-01-24T10:35:37.616-08:00Leave A Message<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrgVkAFkoUR7uNISqeTh_bvA2hc3tKsvx_PZrkrLqmGPgAjjzjyBUy2Z0zveWd3gYcVSziXoj2R6g2-hLFArgZ-vLPZQ5u0cpUnvcJOJaSc7G1CNjQqUtixOPKd-00o4HlA1tEwQbd99o/s1600/Dawn+at+Sunshine+Hill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrgVkAFkoUR7uNISqeTh_bvA2hc3tKsvx_PZrkrLqmGPgAjjzjyBUy2Z0zveWd3gYcVSziXoj2R6g2-hLFArgZ-vLPZQ5u0cpUnvcJOJaSc7G1CNjQqUtixOPKd-00o4HlA1tEwQbd99o/s400/Dawn+at+Sunshine+Hill.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dawn at Sunshine Hill<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 110%;">It is January of a new year I hope to
keep from breaking my heart. What choices can I make in this ambiguous world? Early
in the month the nightmares came, the quaking in the deep reaches of the soul,
the cries of something caught—imprisoned there. Of wings breaking against bars.
It was the world struggling in the dark. It was the song of freedom caught in a
paralyzed throat. From deep in the world’s soul I have sensed the unending
yearning to sing, to fly, and I have felt the quaking behind closed doors,
impenetrable walls, the paralyzed will. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 110%;">I hesitate to put this into words.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 110%;">We of this world have now been taught
the stranglehold on life itself, on truth, on goodness, beauty and the unity of
being that once we knew to be our destiny. We recognized it from the way it
mirrored the depth in us. Each morning now I wake wondering. How can I meet
this thing that slouches towards us? Resisting it seems not to work. Is there a
possibility of calling forth from it that bird with broken wings? And if so,
what is the charm that must be worked, the song that must be sung?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 110%;">If anyone knows the answer, leave a
message underneath a stone or in the knothole of your favorite tree. If you
still can sing, let your voice be heard humming in the grocery line. If you are
even now blessed with flight, soar, and let fall upon the cities, on mountains
and deserts where the hermits live, and let drift across the yards of people in
small towns pearly scraps of hope, green faith, and the translucent rain of
love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-2712101370480862892017-02-12T16:35:00.000-08:002017-02-12T16:36:23.858-08:00Trimming<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyp03p5i18oW4W-dVI2fXAodaXqcJ61nGydRFuIfIwiI5iIfuy9FC_l2DoWCeQj0zHSergQYxEhJBgHyFerBAOHLtkwG7aSApC-tCsXXKekFStaqv3iiagzvpbOPQQH5-6hDZ0sXCI40k/s1600/20161206_144606.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyp03p5i18oW4W-dVI2fXAodaXqcJ61nGydRFuIfIwiI5iIfuy9FC_l2DoWCeQj0zHSergQYxEhJBgHyFerBAOHLtkwG7aSApC-tCsXXKekFStaqv3iiagzvpbOPQQH5-6hDZ0sXCI40k/s320/20161206_144606.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Today I spent a bit of time trimming the lavender way down. Tomorrow I'll get to the grasses. The pink lost its color with the snows of January, and new shoots already are appearing at the base. It felt like springtime down below the porch.<br />
<br />
When I came in I began rummaging around in my Word files which are about as messy as files can get with partially done manuscripts, titled first one thing, then another. I opened one called "A Delicate Balance," which I thought would be the unfinished novel once called "Small Hands," but it was just a snippet. I found it intriguing. Maybe I need to go back and work on this, I thought, as I changed a word here and there and eliminated a sentence that made the entire paragraph sentimental. Just another kind of trimming. Spring cleaning. (I don't do that so well either ;)<br />
<br />
Here's the snippet. Are you at all intrigued?<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
---<span style="font-family: "bookman old style" , serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.25in;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "bookman old style" , "serif";">Eva
called Lewis late while the rates were low. His voice saying hello made a warm
spot for burrowing. Where are you right now? She wanted to know, to be there
with him, to sit on his old bean bag chair, to hold a glass of wine, to talk by
candlelight. There was no phone in the attic at Mama’s, so she had to talk
low. No one should hear the things she wanted to say to Lewis. He was her
confessor. She sat in her mother’s kitchen where the phone hung on the wall. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "bookman old style" , "serif";">Are
you sitting on the sofa? She asked Lewis. Do you have candles lit?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "bookman old style" , "serif";">Lewis’s
light would flicker, casting first this plane then that one into shadow. She
sought the plane of kindness. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "bookman old style" , "serif";">“What
can I do?” She asked him, not knowing if she meant her mother’s one lie or the
extension of that lie through all the years. One adjustment in the tone-poem of
being and the whole composition could be lost—or could become a masterpiece.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "bookman old style" , "serif";">“I’ll
send you some new reeds for your <i>oboe d’amore</i>,” he said. “You can
practice while your mother is painting. It will do you good.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "bookman old style" , "serif";">“Lewis?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "bookman old style" , "serif";">“I’m
here.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "bookman old style" , "serif";">“Lewis,”
the words choked her. “When she dies…” She stopped. She had said it, but didn’t
know if she could go on or if her voice simply would fade into the kind of silence
she’d experienced as a child.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "bookman old style" , "serif";">“Imagine
the music, the progression of tones in your mind, Eva.” Lewis said in a steady
voice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "bookman old style" , "serif";">She
did as he said and imagined the music, the interval of yearning that had found
its home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "bookman old style" , "serif";"> “When she dies,” she asked again, “how will
I survive it if all my life we’ve both been someone other than what I thought?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "bookman old style" , "serif";"> What if we both disappear, she was thinking
but didn’t say aloud, and the world goes on as though we’d never been?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "bookman old style" , "serif";"> “You’ll always be Eva.” Lewis said in that
low, calm voice. “And if you forget, I’ll be here to help you remember what
that means.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-84431494026804792742017-01-05T14:50:00.000-08:002017-01-05T14:50:12.107-08:00New Memoir<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinHXkaHswCvtgTyOaQGqC83zc1_yAeccLKZFv56BQKO8B6VO6qqbPlAR96pFJGtD1-B9vXFE2EuJ8W33F_hZ6Ypa8Ea-qPU5bRKSmjdQz9nT-09w8_TJoVvG5zJPhAZR27oP29HHvsvaQ/s1600/ROOT+OF+BEAUTY+flyer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinHXkaHswCvtgTyOaQGqC83zc1_yAeccLKZFv56BQKO8B6VO6qqbPlAR96pFJGtD1-B9vXFE2EuJ8W33F_hZ6Ypa8Ea-qPU5bRKSmjdQz9nT-09w8_TJoVvG5zJPhAZR27oP29HHvsvaQ/s640/ROOT+OF+BEAUTY+flyer.jpg" width="494" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Event Flyer for this first volume of my Husbands Trilogy</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-51936651439466393672016-07-23T13:55:00.000-07:002016-07-23T13:55:25.203-07:00A Summertime of Politics and Paradox<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaMfmKwBmjYo0Ub2fbDwV3zAA6xVJQh_ZqxYi2D58gbl-yvEaCM8A-cAQjJzZo7o4yNnGEmHx8dIR68u0foij6xRShamNcKBdcx-GvYnubgs6oQP-OArSBszbEYaXpmgg4mYHgo1hyphenhyphenWNc/s1600/IMAG1952.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaMfmKwBmjYo0Ub2fbDwV3zAA6xVJQh_ZqxYi2D58gbl-yvEaCM8A-cAQjJzZo7o4yNnGEmHx8dIR68u0foij6xRShamNcKBdcx-GvYnubgs6oQP-OArSBszbEYaXpmgg4mYHgo1hyphenhyphenWNc/s400/IMAG1952.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">I woke this morning to sunlight and
this glorious natural world of which I am part. From nature all around and
within me I can learn. It is summer and the plants and animals are experiencing
the paradox of maturity</span><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">—</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">that withering and death cannot be separated from the still
emerging new life. The deer are eating some wildflowers down to their
roots. The oak tree by the deck will not
make it into the next season. I ponder how it is essential to hold all of it
together in both mind and heart, and this thought immediately spins me a degree
further around to the present condition of the human world, the consciousness
of which is also caught in paradox.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">The world is caught up this summer in
the sometimes creative, often insane dialectic of a USA National Election, with
its always carnival-like conventions that showcase with thick irony issues of
global mass creation or destruction. I’m not a political person, so I can
barely suffer these days, and yet I watch them, ponder them, participate in
them, because I want to understand as best as is possible for me, what we are
in for. I know it is a world event because what we do as a nation affects the
entire world. One World is now a fact. Isolation is no longer an option where
information travels at the speed of thought.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">I’m not a political person, so I’m no
expert in political science, nor economic theory, environmental science, civil
and legal rights, and the rest. It seems to me that each of us has the
opportunity and responsibility to approach our electoral choice from the base
of experience, education, and frame of reference we know best. That is our gift
to the world. For me that means from the focus of the human soul and mystical
spirit. What effect does a candidate’s world view and political platform have
on what I know about the human soul, both individually and as a world? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">When all of us are combined we should be able to present to the electoral process a wholeness of perspective. If you are a mom,
be the nation and world’s mom; if you own a business, vote what’s best for the
business of the world; If a farmer, see that the land is cared for so that the
peoples might be fed; if a teacher, seek and spread and support the truth; and
so forth…you get my meaning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">From my own perspective I would need to
choose people and policies that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">-Integrate rather that separate, divide,
exclude<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">-See morality as complex rather than simplistic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">-Are able to distinguish legality from
morality<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">-Embrace opposites and opposition rather
than attempting to eliminate them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">-Promote rational thinking and heartfelt
compassion rather than fear and rejection at all levels of individual, communal, national and international discourse and interaction<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">-Honor mistakes as essential to the creative
process, and as openings to new ways of thinking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">-Encourage new forms of thought, imagination,
and life style<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">-Revive the arts as essential to human
growth and development <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">-Reflect citizenship not only of the USA,
but of the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-87386338696884211062015-07-09T10:58:00.001-07:002015-07-09T10:58:32.314-07:00Carol in the Hand of God<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carol in the Hand of God<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">
My dear friend, Carol Rieke, died yesterday. Please read my tribute to her life <a href="http://christinspaces.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">HERE</a></div>
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<br />Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-47027324869560281022015-04-01T12:28:00.000-07:002015-04-01T12:41:04.709-07:00The Edge of Tenderness<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Convent Years<br />
<br />
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<span class="MsoSubtleReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I will love you even when my
love of you is ended.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="MsoSubtleReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I will desire you even when
I desire you no more.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.3333330154419px;"><i>HYMNS TO THE CHURCH</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.3333330154419px;"><i>by</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.3333330154419px;"><i>Gertrude von le Fort</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Even as a little girl I wanted someday to become a nun. The sisters came to the little town where I lived only once a year, for two weeks in June. How could I know I wanted to join them and live their way of life? I really knew nothing about them. These women in their long dresses and veils mystified me, filled me with awe, and at the same time instilled in me that kind of shyness born of fear. It probably was the mystery of them that drew me, that held me, that never really let me go even when I almost chose to end my life to find a way away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Here is the story of my fourteen years with the sisters--from mid-1958 to early 1973. During this era many young women entered and subsequently left convents. We became Catholic Sisters in one world, and left the sisterhood in another. Viet Nam was happening. Cultural transformation was happening. Our contemporaries in the society outside the convent protested or embraced the changes taking place, not only in the world at large, but in the Catholic Church. The rigid Pope Pius XII died and was followed by the old but charismatic Pope John XXIII who called an ecumenical council in Rome--the iconoclastic Second Vatican Council which paved the way among Protestants for the Emerging Church Movement of the new millennium. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">My contemporaries in religious orders and congregations of that era reeled with excitement and confusion. We were just learning what it meant to be Catholic women with vows when the secure structure beneath us began to give way. We stood on quicksand. It actually took years to realize what was happening, years of thinking we knew who we were and then realizing at some moment in time that we really were not what we had thought. It didn't matter on which side of the changes we found ourselves, we discovered ourselves in the situation described by T.S. Eliot in his <i>Four Quartets: </i>"Last year's words belong to last year's language, and next year's words await another voice." Some of us left that life because the life we thought we chose no longer existed, others left because the transformation we anticipated wouldn't happen fast enough. And possibly some of us, feeling caught in a cultural and religious whirlwind felt we could no longer breathe in such a wind, and left merely to survive.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">For me it was centrifugal force. I think so, anyway. I'm an old woman now and I've never gotten over it. This memoir is one I've written many times in many ways, but its final form is the result of letters from my mother written to me at least weekly during all the years I spent in the convent. Many of these letters she sent survived. When she died in 1993 I organized them and put them in plastic page savers in a loose-leaf notebook. I read them once again as I worked. We went through those years together, she and I. Our hopes, our confusions, our sufferings, sometimes our realizations correspond. It was in the spaces between our letters that I finally found a way to write this memoir.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Here's the blurb I wrote for advertising this new book:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large; text-align: center;">Caught in the turmoil of renewal resulting from the Catholic
Church's Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, a young nun and her mother
struggle to understand and live their faith in a new and often unfamiliar
religious world. Sister Christin, eager to implement the new directives from
Rome, finds herself with theological vision but without guidelines, wisdom, or
life experience to create structures for living that vision. "No one knows
how to do this!" Humorous and sometimes tragic results ensue. Her mother,
Alyce, proud of her daughter but at the same time concerned for her welfare at
such an unstable time, encourages and warns her of possible dangers through
letters and occasional visits to the convent. As the two women exchange these "words
in their fingers," the reader will experience the effect their church in
turmoil has upon the lives of each of them. </span></div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">This is a memoir of a turning point, a thin place in the texture of an ancient
institution, of a surrounding culture on the edge of a new understanding of the
world, and of the souls of even the most common women who lived through those
times and attempted to influence the outcome. For the human soul, it was an
edge both terrifying and tender.</span></div>
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</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<br />Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-53950950225896945052015-02-07T16:18:00.000-08:002015-02-07T16:18:46.101-08:00With That From The Earth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTvpumLPlcK-d_Fjq1Gt5zfD9bj6Mh1zJz0-6hbY_TX4kg3dNocd3cQTlpIdPrC0XUi1O3DUCubMASdXEmEu4LV51qKTzzzOqEbK3PhhRqsu0x-OQ6QEKituMJx6zVuFCo3vjmkckgGEw/s1600/IMAG1174.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtFCJfpywrke6NQswS16x98yKqvYEMuxwThZ8wNXEYNCw-9pqALFGcOqWoi3U5HOKKWKy7Z0fyTyOyR8e62ZbuoEAmVhrlVjq33ilxzal19mJV2BHd2u1rbBrZkypk_9I6MEh7hPdQBYU/s1600/11_000.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtFCJfpywrke6NQswS16x98yKqvYEMuxwThZ8wNXEYNCw-9pqALFGcOqWoi3U5HOKKWKy7Z0fyTyOyR8e62ZbuoEAmVhrlVjq33ilxzal19mJV2BHd2u1rbBrZkypk_9I6MEh7hPdQBYU/s1600/11_000.JPG" height="400" width="276" /></a></div>
This poster hangs in my kitchen at Sunshine Hill. I first saw it in the home of Nor Hall back in Minnesota and went right down to a Grand Ave. gallery to find one for myself. It cost twelve dollars or near that, making it expensive for me at the time. Now Google tells me it is out of print. It has hung on the walls of each successive home: in California, Washington, and now in Oregon. Every day I gaze on it and never tire of its secrets. The words which might be too small for you to see, but which I read every day, have become a life commitment:<br />
<br />
<i>With that from the earth, beauty I will create. With that beauty, my soul I will give.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
This is the original community of woman, the elemental feminine, one could even say the Divine Feminine within and at the heart of matter. That's what the painting says to me. Go deep, it says, to find them. Go into the core of the mountain, the core of the body, the core of the universe, and they will be there weaving and painting and whispering the words of beauty.<br />
<br />
There are seven women. In the ancient wisdom, seven represents the wholeness of the natural world. It is a sacred number in virtually every spiritual tradition. You might say, "Christin, there are eight of them--look, there's another woman, one they've painted and framed." Yes. I've noticed that. Eight represents the world to come, the world beyond this world, the fullness that encloses this world and is unending. This is the image of their desire.<br />
<br />
When you Google the meaning of seven the information is virtually unending. For me, after all these years of gazing at this painting, I realize that meaning emerges from the task of bringing the light of Spirit into the material of earth to create beauty. This can happen every moment because earth is what we are and Spirit is what flows into and through us. Seven are the number of notes in the diatonic scale; we are the musicians; Spirit is the music. Seven are the colors in the rainbow; we are the artists; Spirit is the inspiration. Seven are the way-places on the mystic mountain, we are the pilgrims, Spirit is the ever expanding energy by which the mountain is transformed into beauty by the giving of our souls in even the smallest and most common task.<br />
<br />
Like right now. I'm on my way to the kitchen to start making supper. On the way I'll glance over at the seven women in the mountain of being and say Thank You. You have taught me much. Let's get the kettle out and whip up a bit of delicious beauty!<br />
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<br />Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-5653535089344758022015-01-12T13:35:00.001-08:002015-01-12T13:35:38.697-08:00The Lark Ascending<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUi0J7PGQFWLJx1xvbjmQ9mM5qqQeUrK2CwLJ-PHTfxQPs7V7haX1YX3UG7qIKrneoEhwzMV6I_XNlOeWqEfb0iVIQ8d4eyjhNwb7tfqSdgRYl5hiKOiN0ocY_3m3FLbwaaFXQS3WyrQI/s1600/Marie+Schwan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUi0J7PGQFWLJx1xvbjmQ9mM5qqQeUrK2CwLJ-PHTfxQPs7V7haX1YX3UG7qIKrneoEhwzMV6I_XNlOeWqEfb0iVIQ8d4eyjhNwb7tfqSdgRYl5hiKOiN0ocY_3m3FLbwaaFXQS3WyrQI/s1600/Marie+Schwan.jpg" height="400" width="271" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sister Marie Schwan<br />
1933-2014<br />
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Sometimes in life, if you are more than usually blessed, a person will come quietly into your heart and never leave. Time won't make a difference, nor will place--physical presence of a beloved is overrated. Marie died December 30, just a few weeks ago, and I still hear her singing, like the lark ascending from what is deepest to what is highest as she makes her flight from realm to realm, from this earth, from this galaxy, from this universe, through the multiverse, into that totality of Being we try to utter in our feeble way, crying AH! Spreading wings and crying GOD! Dissolving, she is, in a burst of flame, in a song impossibly high. I hear her still in me as she soars. Her promise in that farewell song is this: <i>I am not leaving. This burst, this cry, this sweet flight, this surrender -- I am oneing with the All. Never again will you NOT hear me, feel me, know me, love me in the deep heights, in the farnear of pure essence that you ARE.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
It's hard, though, to surrender those intimacies mediated by the beauty of this earth.<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: justify;">Sister Marie Schwan is the mother of
my soul. She will remain that in this world and the next. She taught me to
think, to pray, to love. She gave me a deep sensitivity for words and for The
Word. It is she who encouraged me to become a writer.</span><br />
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I was twenty and she was twenty-seven
when we met as student sister and master teacher at Marywood. She filled me
full of memories that still guide my life. We were faithful to observances that
sprung from our love for each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">That she would be a visionary, that she
would whisper her visions into my soul, that her descriptions would be vivid
and beyond the wild of nature or the invisibility of God, that she would smile
and tell me to see.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That she would open the writings of Thomas Merton, Jessica Powers, Gerard Manley
Hopkins, Paul Claudel, Gertrude von le Forte, Emily Dickinson, and T.S. Eliot, and drop their
words into my mind and heart; that I would catch my breath and love her for the
gift of them. We would read them together. She loved the lark from Claudel's <i>Tidings Brought to Mary, </i>all wings and no feet like the cherubim, crying out in its ascent towards God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That she would form the thought
patterns of my mind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That she would give structure to my
creative imagination.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That she would dissolve the dualities
and extol Wisdom, the knowledge gleaned from love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That she would carve a path and I
would walk that path gladly. That she would plant me in the future before the
future was here. That I would begin to live in her dream.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">A few hours before she died, I was sitting in my living room by the Christmas tree, watching the candle beside her photograph burn down. Music played quietly in the background. For three days I'd kept vigil, though in miles I was far away from where her body lay. She was not alone; I knew that. Her Sisters of St. Joseph kept their own vigil, someone with her every moment as her body made that mysterious transformation into spirit. Suddenly I heard the violin begin to climb. I caught my breath. I rose to my feet. "The Lark Ascending," by Ralph von Williams. Those tones that seem played on the heartstrings. Higher, Higher, seeming finally to dissolve into the Cosmic Silence. </span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">John came into the room to find me in tears. "It's Marie." I told him. "She came to say goodbye."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: justify;">I am so grateful.</span> <i> </i></div>
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Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-9121040961229660142014-10-15T15:25:00.000-07:002014-10-15T15:25:32.466-07:00The Blue Shawl<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Sometimes a story weaves in and out of a writer's life for many years and is rewritten time and again as new insights and realizations come to light. Each re-write develops a different thread of the weave, adds dimension, emphasizes certain colors over others, gives complexity to the pattern. But in the end, only one story can survive to be told.<br />
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In my files seven manuscripts, precursors of this novel, <i>The Blue Shawl</i>, rest. They are tied with string and will never be published, never even read again. Have you ever imagined what your own life might have been like if, at a crucial moment, you had made a different choice? Or if circumstances had conspired to place a different person in your path than the one who turned out to become your spouse? Parallel lives. The intriguing might-have-been.<br />
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During over twenty years I never lost my fascination with the woman, Milda Schatz. What was her secret? And even after I knew her secret, how could I reach deeply enough into her soul to find words for her fears, betrayals, desires, determination, passion -- the intensity of a life so different on the outside from what it was within?<br />
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<i>The Blue Shawl </i>is my third narrative of strong women across three generations who are faced with choices that will lead them to either integrity or despair. (<i>Altar Music, Gypsy Bones, The Blue Shawl).</i> This is the story that initiated my search, that took the longest to write, that is most layered with meaning and dear to my heart.<br />
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<i>The Blue Shawl </i> will be available at <a href="https://www.amazon.com/author/christinweber" style="color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.7272720336914px;" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.com/author/<wbr></wbr>christinweber</a><br />
for purchase in either paperback or ebook format by November. <br />
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<br />Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-39575873544330535852014-07-21T11:50:00.001-07:002014-07-21T11:50:39.571-07:00Drought<br />
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<i><span style="background: #EAEAEA; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.5pt;">This is the
land which ye</span></i><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.5pt;"><br />
<span style="background: #EAEAEA;">Shall
divide by lot. And neither division nor unity</span><br />
<span style="background: #EAEAEA;">Matters.
This is the land. We have our inheritance</span></span></i><span style="background: #EAEAEA; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.5pt;">.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="background: #EAEAEA; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.5pt;"> -T.S.
Eliot, “Ash Wednesday”</span><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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The land thirsts. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The earth cracks open like old
skin<o:p></o:p></div>
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Like hands of the farmer, bleeding<o:p></o:p></div>
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As he digs through stones that
surface<o:p></o:p></div>
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From the hardened clay.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The sky has turned to flame.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Lungs ache breathing the triple
digit air. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Attempts to bring water up from
deep aquifers<o:p></o:p></div>
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Deplete the natural wells.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Star thistle, goat’s weed, and
poison oak<o:p></o:p></div>
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Flourish in aridity;<o:p></o:p></div>
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The wilderness will not become a
garden this year.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Green is a luxury earth cannot
afford. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Here in the dark container of night
I sit in artificial light, working out a plan for sprinkling systems although
at this point in the devastation what power or intelligence do I have? Nature
will not submit to being fixed. Earth will not be moved. The man-made pipes
crack and break in the farmer’s bleeding hands. He sits in the rocks and hits
at the stony ground. I watch him, a man from the caves wielding the tool of
inadequacy. Neither he nor the world can weep.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Here among these rocks in the
darkness of my soul I sit remembering. Others have visited this place where
gardens become desert and life’s bones lie scattered. They have heard the locusts’
song.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Who can surrender to this?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Who can surrender? <o:p></o:p></div>
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Because it won’t be worked. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Our strength is puny here.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mind fails. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Heart slows or beats too fast,
and neither matter <o:p></o:p></div>
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because nothing can be done.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is the end of doing. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Surrender is a must. But who can?<o:p></o:p></div>
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How much must be lost before we let it go?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-92191072013599523602014-07-01T12:35:00.001-07:002014-07-01T12:35:32.303-07:00Life According To DreamsYou haven't seen me here in quite a while. It isn't that I haven't written anything. I have. But journals tend to be private documents, and dreams are keys to the soul for those who have a knack for interpretation. Since I last wrote here my dreams have taken up all my writing time. When the flood of dreams began it lifted me on a surge of images right out of my bed to my computer where I wrote for hours. Do you dream like that? Passionate dreaming. Integral dreaming. Dreams that intuition declares must mean something, must be doing something to you, changing you somehow that you don't yet comprehend.<br />
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Sri Aurbindo--a King's College (Cambridge) educated Indian man born in Calcutta who became an activist, a philosopher, a Yogi, and a saint (1872-1950)--placed dreams within a universal context of being. "In sleep we leave the physical body, only a subconscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds. In each we see scenes, meet beings, share in happenings, come across formations, influences, suggestions which belong to these planes...Planes of supraphysical existence, worlds of larger life, mind or psyche which are there behind and whose influences come to us without our knowledge. Occasionally we get a dream from these planes, something more than a dream, -- a dream experience which is a record direct or symbolic of what happens to us or around us here." [from <i>Integral Yoga]. </i><br />
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Meanwhile Carl Gustav Jung, exploring his own psychological experiences, was reaching a similar awareness. His dreams tapped into something so vast and beyond his individual consciousness that he found himself in a timeless experience of the blood bath in Europe that hadn't yet happened, but that he would recognize later as the First World War.<br />
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Neither of these giants of the human soul were the first to engage in this exploration. It's been going on since what we call the Dream Times in most ancient and not so ancient cultures. It's just that they both spent their lives studying consciousness, and they wrote about their findings in a language that strikes us as more scientific than the language of the mystic. This is not to say they didn't also use poetic and mythic language. They did. Read Aurobindo's <i>Savitri. </i>Read Jung's <i>Red Book.</i><br />
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Many writers begin with dream. A poet, a novelist, a writer of memoir, the musical theorist, the philosopher of art. Those are obvious. But who is not telling us where they begin? The cosmologist? The theoretical physicist? The historian? Go deep enough into reality and eventually one passes through the realm of dreams. Its language is one everyone would do well to learn.<br />
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If I learn this language will it change my life? Even this old life? Dreams may be constellations in the sky of the soul. If I travel through the dark, should I not pay attention to their light and the map it provides?<br />
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I chart my being by the stars</div>
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By constellations</div>
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In the skies and in the cells</div>
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In whorls of ancient trees</div>
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Along the pathways of the soul</div>
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The heights and deeps</div>
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Fire and emptiness</div>
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A new leaf emerging from the stem.<span style="color: #5a5a5a; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 120%;"> </span></div>
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Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-48863981653335827462014-02-19T08:29:00.002-08:002014-02-19T08:29:58.064-08:00A Delicate Balance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Just look at this exquisite photograph by <a href="http://www.vintimo.com/" target="_blank">Sandy Rubini</a>. I'm amazed by her eye. Just imagine to have captured this image in the moment of its delicate balance. Not only is she talented; she is gracious. When I proposed that we might collaborate once more (her photography also graces the cover of my novel, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/GYPSY-BONES-Christin-Lore-Weber-ebook/dp/B005FY0X58/ref=la_B001H9MJTI_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392823662&sr=1-8" target="_blank">Gypsy Bones</a>), she agreed. It had been my intention to publish a fourth novel, then titled<i> Small Hands, </i>but as I have been revising it, I've become unsure. At first I felt unsure only about the title. For a while I started thinking of the story as expressed by the water drops, the rain, the tears, and turned to a different phrase from the poem by e.e. cummings that gave me<i> Small Hands. </i>So for a month or so the book was called <i>Not Even the Rain. </i><br />
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Sandy's photograph was drawing me into a project I'd not yet been able to imagine.<br />
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And I began calling the novel <i>A Delicate Balance, </i>the same as the title that graces the photograph. At that moment it ceased being a novel at all, and became an imagination of something in my life I have hesitated to capture in words: marriage to three very different men and surviving the death of two of them. <br />
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The process of writing any book is a delicate balance between what we know and what we have not yet dared to know. The excitement of beginning can trick us into entering what seems simply a cave in which we might find gems. But soon the cave reveals itself to be a labyrinth along the paths of which are secret rooms, amazing turns, dead ends, darkness--all of this before arriving at the center. The center is the core of earth. The womb of being. The balance of opposites. the perfect sphere. (I'm trying not to mix my metaphor, though I fear that is what is taking place) The word, the phrase, the story in which a life makes sense.<br />
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Creating anything takes daring (as you can see from the jumble I made of that metaphor) because an artist, whether photographer or writer must in the doing of it face the truth and then present it with a balance that is beautiful.<br />
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Shall I undertake it? Shall I follow the call of Sandy Rubini's photograph? Can I? Does it matter if I fail? Maybe I need to ask that question of those husband spirits that surround me every moment I remain alive. I know I have in me an image of their love like a drop of rain at the tip of a leaf. I'm inside it. The perfect sphere reflects the perfectly coordinated rainbow light of the spirits of my three beloveds. But what else do I see and am not yet aware that I see? And will they show me?<br />
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So shall I write? <br />
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<br />Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-28106671572662638662014-02-08T12:03:00.000-08:002014-02-08T12:03:07.372-08:00Misty Morning Communique: Do We Understand One Another?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's been raining--a true gift for us here in southern Oregon where the drought gave us only nine inches of rainfall the entire 2013. Not that it is raining torrents, at least not up here on Sunshine Hill. No, it is something between a mist and actual rain. If you were to visit, you would find me in my writing room looking at the mountains to the southwest--towards California and the ocean. You'd notice I was quiet; I like the rain. Also, though, I'm thinking about communication. The word suggests that the act of communication is related to communion, an intimate act. But what actually happens when we speak a word or offer a work of art or dance on shining blades?<br />
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I pause here and stare at the monitor. Last week my reading of Sri Aurobindo impressed me the idea that we understand a communication in accord with the frequency of vibration we experience when we take it in. So this meant to me that we could read the same words (or contemplate a work of art) again and again and each time experience them at least somewhat differently. Father Roman, one of my novitiate teachers, used to say that we could spend our entire lives with one verse of the Scriptures and never exhaust its meaning or its beauty because the Divine Word is infinite. And St. Clare used to teach contemplation on the crucifixion of the Christ as a mirror into which we could gaze eternally and never reach the fullness of that gaze because Divine Love is infinite. Probably Aurobindo would suggest that "my" vibrational frequency would need to correspond to the divine vibration for full communication to take place. And I wonder: is that everlasting Life?<br />
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This is how my mind occupies itself, with such thoughts as these. Sometimes even my dear friends seem to be looking as me as though I've (what's the cliche?) gone off the deep end. You've seen Tarot's Fool, right? Dancing mindless on the edge of the world's precipice.<br />
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Then yesterday a friend sent me a link to an astrological site providing insight into what it can mean if Mercury is retrograde. (Such is the present situation.) Basically: communication will be scrambled, dead-ended, misunderstood, out of sync. (The vibrations between us won't match. Maybe you are feeling that way as you read ;) I know almost nothing about astrology, but I'll try to listen to wisdom from any tradition. Also, I did have my birth chart done back in the 80's, so I know that Mercury is in my sun sign of Scorpio--the only planet there, in fact--which if I understand correctly, impels me towards communication. Writing. Teaching. You get the idea. Maybe I should be out in the mist today, scattering wild flowers in the bare round area above the septic tank rather than here in the chair by the window attempting to defy retrograde Mercury!<br />
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Here, though, is the thought that has made music when vibrating in me: When the word leaves my fingers, when I click SEND, or publish a book; or when I share a thought with an individual or a group and the word is received by another it is always a combination of what I think I said with what the other person has received. The word passes through the vibrational pattern of the other person's mind, soul, history, experience and is understood accordingly. The communion of our thought and experience is a new thing, no longer totally "mine," but created by and belonging to the two of us together until we share with yet another and the belonging and the letting go increases exponentially.<br />
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The backdrop to all of this turns out to be unspeakable--the synthesis of all words and every communication, and the transcendence of that synthesis through the Eternal Word into the Infinite Silence. We dare not speak, cannot define this Silence because it is limitless. In that Limitlessness all is One.<br />
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Today the nearest I can approach is through the mist, because as you must realize if you persevered to the end of this twisting, turning mind trip, attempts to put such things in human words don't work as well as mist on eyelashes and a drop of rain upon the tongue.<br />
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Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-14564811239984064302013-12-31T09:43:00.000-08:002013-12-31T09:43:26.546-08:00Beginning Without End<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My mind is all a twirl, flitting, sparking, wanting not to rest on just one thing. Yet, wanting to delve, wanting to plumb the living depths of all the thoughts, the images, the memories, the dreams that every moment offers. Where is my discipline? I cannot focus anymore on any one thing. A winter robin lands on the oak branch. Where did you fly from? I want to ask. I want the time to ask. What thermals did you ride? How does the cold air hold you? Where will you go? How do you sustain yourself? But the bird is too fast for all these wonders. She has flown off before I've had the time.<br />
<br />
Where does the time go? Will there ever be enough of it? There never will be, will there? The suspicion rises now that time might well be in the breath we use to ask the question, but cannot yield an answer that will satisfy. It flows too fast. Every book I've ever devoted myself to writing is a question hoping for an answer. But its ending always seems to be an opening out of its own limited "time" into some further wonderment, new world, new time, new question that seeks answering.<br />
<br />
These last few days of the calendar year lines from Psalm 26 have been on my mind:<br />
<br />
"Of you my heart has spoken:<br />
'Seek God's face'.<br />
It is your face oh Holy One that I seek;<br />
Hide not your face."<br />
<br />
And out from those words comes the realization here is the question without end, the answer that never will be fathomed, the reality behind all appearance, the eternity in every moment, the heart's longing that will not be satisfied, the Face behind all faces, the allure that draws us, the never ending mystery, the Beginning that breaks forth from every Ending.Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-34329431177387853312013-09-10T11:55:00.000-07:002013-09-10T11:55:09.999-07:00Remember and Forget<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Yesterday was my sister's birthday. She would have been sixty-four. Today I am more in her presence than I was then. Then, yesterday, I kept forgetting. "Oh, it is Liz's Birthday," my mind would say, and then even as I tried to grasp the memory, it was gone, and the apple tree had taken its place,<br />
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<br />
or the pile of boards on the burn pile,<br />
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<br />
or the ruined juniper poignant with just a memory of green.<br />
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<br />
Why couldn't I hold her? Several times the thought: visit Facebook, see what Krista is saying about her mom on this birthday. It didn't happen, not until darkness when, somehow, under that veil, I could feel something like the brush of a wing of possibility. <br />
<br />
In just a few words the daughter held the mother perfectly.<br />
<br />
What else could be said? I clicked the "like" and thought, oh, but it is so much more than that.<br />
<br />
Afterwards, on my way to sleep, time collided with itself, years and visions interpenetrating. I leaned over her bassinet, seeing my sister for the first time, loving her immediately, touching the wisps of soft reddish hair, baby hair, singing lullabies in my nine-year voice. And in a oneness only experienced in dreams I leaned over her death-bed, whispering "my little Betsy," unable then to sing but only to weep, our tears dissolving into one another's. And right there in that combined vision I felt her holding me. She wrapped her risen spirit around me on her birthday night, and I could feel the joy of her and the loss of her, the life and death of her, the blood of her spirit in the ache inside my heart.<br />
<br />
It is almost too tiny and too immense to hold, too far and way too near to touch or see.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
In Memory of My Sister, Liz</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
1949-2012 </div>
Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7927610881947456372.post-16020491611874210262013-08-23T14:59:00.000-07:002013-08-23T16:17:19.264-07:00The FarNear Journals Is Released in Paperback<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrw3XZ9LAUSJGV8Fquwv6e6zqZ3dNl_wk_bBkLsEGuQy0nOwc5yLMPHNb8aWB1jvHJXIvr0Z8cEFMT36gU2qxlzN3bQINAyBbKNRQElbTd1nR2_acwiVUD3Z8Xt_q4D2m3uWeVGefMlBU/s1600/BookCoverPreview.do.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrw3XZ9LAUSJGV8Fquwv6e6zqZ3dNl_wk_bBkLsEGuQy0nOwc5yLMPHNb8aWB1jvHJXIvr0Z8cEFMT36gU2qxlzN3bQINAyBbKNRQElbTd1nR2_acwiVUD3Z8Xt_q4D2m3uWeVGefMlBU/s400/BookCoverPreview.do.jpg" width="268" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In Print</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
What a joy it is to announce the availability of my newest novel, THE FARNEAR JOURNALS. You now can buy it from Amazon.com either as an ebook or paperback.<br />
<br />
Not long ago I blogged about the book itself <a href="http://christinloreweber.blogspot.com/2013/07/new-novel-on-way.html" target="_blank">New Novel on the Way</a>. You can check it out there.<br />
<br />
And here is the first chapter to whet your appetite:<br />
<h1>
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></h1>
<h1>
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></h1>
<h1 style="text-align: center;">
</h1>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />
<br />
<br />
Is not the whole point of life to live it fully?</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To stretch myself from one end of it to the other,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Pulled taut by the tension of love</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Tantalized by life’s beauty</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Being both star and seed, planted</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
In ether and in earth?</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Sophie Marie Loire</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Journal Volume I</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">MOTHER
MADALAINA CAPPED</span><span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";">
her fountain pen. The last of the three letters would need to wait. She picked
up her Book of Hours, turned off her desk lamp then stood a moment, gazing out at
the moon. Her sandals flapped against the stones of the empty hallway as she
made her way through the cloister towards the chapel. She opened the carved
wooden doors and closed them quietly behind her. The six elder nuns, all but
ancient Sister Hilda, knelt awaiting their prioress, like so many pillars set
against the coming night.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";">The letters would go out with
the morning mail. “Please come.” She had signed them "Laina," the
intimate name all of them had called her once. She hoped the intimacy didn't
make her sound desperate or as though she were pleading. “And bring your
journals—if you still keep journals. Remember how Sister Joseph Marie insisted
that we do that?” To be truthful, she was pleading, but she didn’t want the
three x-nuns to realize, until the four were standing face to face, how much
she needed them. Teresa Moore, “Tess.” Janet Nash. Clara Fox. Hopefully all
three of her former sisters would come. True, their lives had taken different
turns since they'd left the convent during the massive exodus of the late
Sixties and early Seventies, but surely some remnant of their bond remained.
The mutual love, they must still feel it, or at the very least, remember it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> In August Lake Superior can be complex as a woman of many
moods. If human bonds couldn’t draw these former nuns to return to this place,
perhaps their bonds with nature could. Surely they hadn’t forgotten how the
four of them used to stand on the granite rock that jutted into the lake, and
cry into the wind. If Sister Joseph Marie had seen them! It made Laina chuckle,
just remembering. But she hadn’t. The novice mistress never caught them at it.
They joined hands and leaned against the wind, the powerful surf absorbing
their voices as though they cried into the open mouth of God. The cry was
wordless. A scream, really, a dissonance of tones that couldn’t blend, and yet
that cry thrilled her with its raucous insistence, never to be duplicated. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> August fifteenth would mark the thirtieth anniversary of
their acceptance as aspirants into the cloister. Laina had invited them to
return for nine days, a reunion, a vacation in this spectacular place. They
each would be aware of the date’s significance. They would arrive for Vespers
on August 6<sup>th</sup>, the Transfiguration of the Lord, and stay through
August 15<sup>th</sup>, the Assumption of Our Lady. But just in case the
religious significance were not sufficient, she had attempted to tantalize them
with promises of renewed friendship, of shared memories, of present day
revelations, of solitary walks along the beach below the convent and on the
rocks above. Each could have her private room. Laina could waive the cloister
rules for these women who once had lived here anyway. Many rooms in the
cloister were empty. Only seven other nuns remained at Our Lady Star of the
Sea, and all but Laina had grown old. Thirty additional years separated her
from the youngest of the others. All those in-between had returned to the
world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> After the prayers of Compline, the other nuns retired to
their modest rooms. They removed their simple habits, post-Vatican-II habits,
inelegant smoke-blue dresses reaching mid-calf, with white polyester detachable
collars, and lighter blue veils without flow, like the veils of army nurses
during World War I. Most still wore long seersucker nightgowns and all slept on
the hard, narrow beds that had been in their rooms, or cells, since the convent
was founded at the turn of the century by the American mystic, Sophie Marie Loire.
Hopefully, soon to be <i>Blessed</i> Sophie Marie Loire, as the sisters had
presented her case for beatification and eventual canonization by the Holy
Father in Rome. The old nuns prayed each night for miracles in her name. All of
them had known her personally, and each of them testified daily to their
founder’s sanctity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> “And you are her successor!” they fondly reminded Laina
during recreation several times a week. “We are depending on you, Mother, to
make her known. Once she’s beatified, girls will begin to join us again.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";">That would take a miracle of
the first degree, and Laina knew it. Few Catholics receive the call to
contemplative monasteries in any era, and right now Rome was drifting,
attempting to regain a foothold in doctrine. The rock of Peter, green with
mysticism such as Sophie Marie's, might feel slippery under the new pope's feet.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";">Laina didn’t retire to her
cell but returned to her office. The moon rode high over the lake, its
reflection giving the darkness an eerie iridescent quality. Light without
color. Moon shadows, like in the Cat Stevens song. She smiled. The world
wouldn’t think she could know about Cat Stevens, cloistered nun as she was and
had been all these thirty years. She took off her veil, shook her hair loose
and lifted her habit off over her head. From the bottom drawer of her desk, she
took the caftan that Stephen had brought from India. It was the green-gold of
her hair, and she had wondered, when she lifted it from its wrappings, at the
coincidence. He was Father Stephen
Harris, the convent chaplain, devotee of Sri Aurobindo of Pondicherry, and
former pastor of St. Rose of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lima</st1:place></st1:city>
in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Duluth</st1:place></st1:city>. He’d
spent the summer of 1983 traveling from ashram to ashram, gleaning what he
could of the teachings of Aurobindo and Sweet Mother from those who had
actually known them and once sat at their feet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";">Laina let the caftan float
down over her head and stood in the window feeling, herself, like a reflection
of the moon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> The phone rang. She reached for it quickly, before it
could ring again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> “Convent of Our Lady, Star of the Sea. Mother Madalaina
speaking.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> “Laina, it’s Philip.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> “Bishop! How good to hear your voice.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> “Do you have time to see me this evening?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> “Is something wrong?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> “I'd like to get your perspective on something that's
come up. I'll explain when I arrive. Can you make time?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> A warm breeze entered through the open window of her
office and stirred the silk.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> “You know I can, Philip.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> “Good, I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> “It would be best not to disturb the other sisters. Meet
me on the promontory above the convent. I’ll wait on the bench there,
overlooking the lake.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> “Good plan. I’ll see you there.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> Laina set the receiver back on its cradle. Philip. She
hadn’t seen him in several weeks. Such a difficult time for him, caught as he
was between the Vatican and his instincts concerning the often raw needs of his
brother-priests. They also were caught between their consciences and the rigid
laws they were sworn to uphold despite the moral agony of so many of their
parishioners. Nor were they exempt from sin themselves. Many of them lived
ahead of church renewal, fumbling, with little real guidance from Rome, to
embody the theological visions of the Second Vatican Council. How much of the
renewal was simply doomed to disappear—a mutant experiment in the church's
evolution?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> When Philip came to her for advice, or Stephen looked at
her with his deep questioning eyes, she wondered about her own destiny. Called
to monastic solitude, could she also be destined to love these men? When she
was with them she absorbed their anger, their competition, their lust to
fulfill their dreams, their despair and the violence of spirit it spawned in
them, tearing at their minds and hearts. She held their hands. She allowed them
access through eyes that she never turned away. She let them rest their
weariness against her. Sometimes they wept.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> Stephen came to her each week just to sit with her in
stillness, gazing into her eyes as though they were water and he swam through
them, through her, and into God. The Divine Gaze was a practice he'd learned in
India from his guru. He left her presence trembling. “You give me hope,” he
would whisper, kneeling for her blessing. “Without you I would be lost.” And
his words tore at her heart. “I’m not the one you're seeking,” she would tell
him over and over, and he would agree but also insist that her ability to sit
in silence across from him, purely accepting him--all of this could be found
nowhere else in the church, in no one else, and without her he would be bereft
of life itself. Bereft of the Holy Spirit of God. She would bless him in the
name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier, and he would gasp as the
blessing shot straight to his heart. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> The bishop, in contrast, sat beside her, talking, not
looking at her, both of them gazing out towards the lake. Often they met at the
promontory. He admitted his failings, though she had no power to absolve him.
“You make it possible for me to speak the truth, to say to God the words that
must be said." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> No one is perfect, she thought as he confessed in her
presence to his God. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif";"> She changed back into her habit. It wouldn’t do to meet
the bishop in a silk caftan. She slipped her bare feet into her sandals and
lifted her profession cross from the desk where she had laid it moments before,
letting it fall over her head where it rested, simple and wooden, above her
breasts. Then she left the convent by way of a back door through the sun porch.
She walked slowly up the path to the promontory. She went all the way to the
end, to stand on the white tip the novices once named "Aphrodite’s Arm."
From there it seemed that she stood upon the moon’s path and she began to
wonder, watching the moon’s slow progression, where that path might lead. Her
lightweight veil drifted on the currents of night. She prayed in her silent
way, imagining herself as love itself, flowing in moonlight through the world
of suffering humanity. She went out of herself as water to the thirsty, as food
to the hungry, as comfort to the sorrowing, as mercy to the afflicted. “As You will,”
she whispered to whatever God might be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Plantagenet Cherokee","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> She heard behind her the crisp
footfalls of the bishop. She turned around. “Bless you, Mother Madalaina,” she
heard him say as he offered her his hand, and she went down on one knee to kiss
his ring.</span>Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com1