Redbud

Redbud

Upraised hand
Cupped for blessing
Fingers
Splayed in praise

© Glenda Mathes, 2006

My many readers may wish to note that I've replaced Dulce Ridens, Dulce Loquens (the cento in the sidebar) with Vespers.

Creativity

My friend Angela and I met on Friday and discussed, among other things, creativity.

Angela and I met in the creative writing class that became the first step in my bachelor degree marathon. A marathon that will end, the good Lord willing, when I graduate from the University of Iowa on May 13.

In the nearly thirteen years since we first met, Angela and I have tried to meet about once a month. We began by meeting to critique each other's writing, and we sometimes still do that. We've had some long intervals between meetings, the most notable of which was the entire year that elapsed before our meeting last February. (We both had a lot of things going on in our lives last year.) The lapses don't seem to matter since she's one of those people with whom it's possible to immediately pick up from where we left off.

In our Friday discussion, we talked about how we've both grown increasingly convinced that creativity is not so much an innate gift as it is something that occasionally surfaces while slogging through hours of disciplined writing.

It's just like quality time with children. Quality time only materializes within the context of quantity time; it cannot be manufactured.

With that in mind, I'm trying to make more time for writing that isn't to meet a deadline. If I ever write a novel, I'd like it to stand on its own. I don't want to write a "teaser" novel for the CBA market with the idea of garnering a contract for two or three sequels. I'm sure there's money in that, but it just doesn't seem like literature in my mind.

I would rather forfeit financial gain and retain literary integrity.

My Heart an Altar

Bits of hymns often fill my mind. This morning it’s:

Teach me to love Thee as Thine angels love,
One holy passion, filling all my frame—,
The baptism of the heaven-descended Dove;
My heart an altar, and Thy love the flame.

After spending some time looking through the Blue Psalter Hymnal this morning, I finally did a Google search and found the hymn’s name: “Spirit of God, Dwell Thou Within My Heart.” The above words constitute the last stanza. The first four stanzas are:

Spirit of God, dwell Thou within my heart;
Wean it from earth, through all its pulses move;
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as Thou art,
And make me love Thee as I ought to love.

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies,
No sudden rending of the veil of clay,
No angel visitant, no opening skies;
But take the dimness of my soul away.

Didst Thou not bid us love Thee, God and King?
All, all Thine own; soul, heart, and strength, and mind.;
I see the cross—there teach my heart to cling;
O let me seek Thee and O let me find!

Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh;
Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear;
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh;
Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.

George Croly wrote those words in 1854. Some of the phrases I particularly like: “dwell within my heart…through all its pulses move; no sudden rending of the veil of clay, Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer,” but the best is the last line of the last stanza: “My heart an altar, and Thy love the flame.”

Even though Reformed Christians don’t often use altar imagery, I find it beautiful. Our wholehearted desire ought to be to expend our essence as living sacrifices, fueled by God’s love to his glory.

Pelicans

The pelicans are back.

On Saturday afternoon, they were soaring in spirals like synchronized swimmers above the dam, and on Sunday morning they were crowding the sand bar and bobbing in the churning water below the dam.

Seeing them return is one of the joys of spring, just like seeing the first color of the season in the crocus blooming beside the driveway.

Pelicans soaring in synchronization and colors bursting from the earth fill me with joy and thankfulness not only because they signal the end of bleak winter, but also because they evidence God's continued provision.

They remind me that every new cycle of springtime and harvest brings us one year closer to the day of Christ’s return.