Night Skies: Not of this World

Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer

 

For many years, I have found the Jesus Prayer to be an anchor for my life and soul. This is a very interesting video ... not excellent ... but interesting. It makes me thankful to see the faithfulness of Christians around the world.

Why Books? Great Article in Paris Magazine

Despite the prophetic voices saying bookstores, newspapers and print is dead ... many of us love to hold, house and read a real living hard copy book. This is a great article from The Paris Magazine below.

The Right Kind of Electricity By Sylvia Whitman

The Paris Magazine was first published in 1967 by George Whitman my father when the bookshop had been closed by the French authorities because George’s papers were not in order. During the entire year that the shop was closed, he didn’t sell one book but remained open as an open house, free library and guest house for writers from abroad. There were readings, courses and debates on everything from great books to the war in Vietnam or LSD. Describing in the magazine how he came to be a bookseller George said:

Like many of my compatriots I am something of a tumbleweed drifting in the wind. I drifted into bookselling for no better reason than a passion for books except for the classical reason of all booksellers who are self‑employed because they doubt if anyone else would employ them.

Having now drifted into bookselling myself, but in a very different era from my father, I often find myself being looked upon apologetically as a representative of the old world, someone who believes in the book as a living thing. This usually happens when people are about to launch into their love of their newest technological purchase. In response, I find myself saying, ‘Well, it’s the touch, the smell, the sensual aspect of the book that we would miss,’ or even, ‘It’s the photos, metro tickets and notes you find among the pages.’ I then see in their eyes an image of me as a librarian, sipping Earl Grey quietly while reading Jane Austen at the till, with a cat rolled up keeping my feet warm.

But it’s more than that. It’s the spaces books inhabit, the people they attract and the character they exude. It’s the silent community of readers. What other business encourages you to sit, meet people, browse and read a book for hours? It’s also the personal contact when someone comes in and asks for a book, remembering neither the author nor the title — only that the cover is pink; or when you manage to recommend the right title to the right person, and it’s as if something intimate has passed between you; or reading a great story and sharing your copy, with all its folded corners at your favourite bits. And, of course, the topsy‑turvy aspect of the walls surrounding you and the towers of toppling books that may even drop the unexpected into your hands. In fact, if the editor of this issue, Fatema Ahmed, hadn’t been browsing in a London bookshop where she came across something surprising — the original Paris Magazine — this issue would never have found itself in your hands.

We house books of all sorts but we also try to house writers of all sorts. George always welcomed travelling writers, or tumbleweeds as he affectionately calls them, to bunk up between the rows of books. Some of them arrive as hopeful Hemingways, others leave sure that they will be the next Kerouac, but all of them at least experience a book‑lined home on the banks of the Seine.
George wrote in the ’67 issue his own definition of a writer’s needs: ‘All the writer requires is a sensitive skin, a beard, the right kind of electricity in his brain‑waves and a world that is sufficiently disorganized to allow him to subvert it.’
We are still sufficiently disorganized and hope the writer and reader might find the right kind of electricity here. More than forty years after the first issue of this magazine, we are also attempting other new ventures, with a literary festival, weekly readings, a literary prize for the novella, writers’ workshops and many more projects to come. All of this is to create a living space for books, and to invite you to enjoy something local, personal and real. As my father says, the book business is the business of life.

Gestalten TV

 

Wonderful videos on visual culture on this online TV site. You could waste an entire day!

http://www.gestalten.tv/motion/atelier-vostok

A Day with Ruth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday was my first day off in weeks and I spent most of it watching Ruth Reichl travel and cooking videos on the Gourmet website. Her Adventures with Ruth is a wonderfully engaging and informative program that not only introduces us to fabulous places to visit but gives us a peek into the culture through fabulous recipes and delightful chefs. What a great way to spend part of a day!

 

Perspective

"Let a man do right, not trouble himself about worthless opinion; the less he heeds tongues, the less difficult will he find it to love men." George MacDonald and incredible photos from Islay Weblog.  

Islay and MacDonald (again)

You would not think any duty small,

if you yourself were great.

(George MacDonald)

photo from Islay Pictures.

Alain de Botton on Distraction

I don't often read, and have never quoted, Alain de Botton; however, here is what I consider to be an excellent quote on the contemporary difficulty of constant distraction and our tendencies toward indulgence and over-feeding in all areas of life:

"One of the more embarrassing and self-indulgent challenges of our time is the task of relearning how to concentrate. The past decade has seen an unparalleled assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on anything. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible.

The obsession with current events is relentless. We are made to feel that at any point, somewhere on the globe, something may occur to sweep away old certainties—something that, if we failed to learn about it instantaneously, could leave us wholly unable to comprehend ourselves or our fellows. We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds. We leave a movie theater vowing to reconsider our lives in the light of a film’s values. Yet by the following evening, our experience is well on the way to dissolution, like so much of what once impressed us: the ruins of Ephesus, the view from Mount Sinai, the feelings after finishing Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilyich.

A student pursuing a degree in the humanities can expect to run through 1,000 books before graduation day. A wealthy family in England in 1250 might have owned three books: a Bible, a collection of prayers, and a life of the saints—this modestly sized library nevertheless costing as much as a cottage. The painstaking craftsmanship of a pre-Gutenberg Bible was evidence of a society that could not afford to make room for an unlimited range of works but also welcomed restriction as the basis for proper engagement with a set of ideas.

The need to diet, which we know so well in relation to food, and which runs so contrary to our natural impulses, should be brought to bear on what we now have to relearn in relation to knowledge, people, and ideas. Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting."

Phantastes Quotes II

A few more George McDonald quotes from Phantastes accompanied by an Islay photo from the excellent blog, Islay Pictures. The first quote is about the heart's ability to sing at certain times and not at others and what it takes to find a song in one's heart. The second quote is about the consequence of tears. The third quote is about finding the truth of who we are. 

"And now, what songs should I sing ...? I hurried my way to the white hall ... I wandered long, up and down the silent space: no songs came. My soul was not still enough for songs. Only in the silence and the darkness of the soul's night, do those stars of the inward firmament sink to its lower surface from the singing realms beyond .. . Here all effort was unavailing. If (songs) came not, they could not be found."

"Surely this youth will not serve our ends," said I, "for he weeps." The old woman smiled. "Past tears are present strength," she said. ... "Wait for a while," said the (old) woman; "if I mistake not, he will make you weep till your tears are dry forever. Tears are the only cure for weeping."

"Then, first, I knew the delight of being lowly; of saying to myself, "I am what I am, nothing more. "I have failed," I said, "I have lost myself .. ." I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood."

Phantastes Quotes

I have just finished reading Phantastes by George MacDonald. What an extraordinary work ... not quite as extraordinary as Lilith ... but still deeply compelling. MacDonald's writing reveals a goodness, a simplicity and purity of soul while telling captivating tales. He doesn't tell us how to be good ... he shows us through story.

George MacDonald was a Scot and as the daughter of a Scot, I can verify that many of our clan are passionate, loyal, sentimental, often spiritual, mystics whose imaginations create tales of enormous proportion. MacDonald is, after all, the mentor C.S. Lewis attributes to baptizing his imagination. 

Over the next few days, I will post a few MacDonald quotes from Phantastes accompanied by the phenomenal photography from the blog islay pictures. We stayed on Islay a few summers ago and if there is anywhere that captures the mystical ... this island is one of the most evocative.

"Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of painful thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill."

"But is it not ... that art rescues nature from the weary and sated regards of our senses, and the degrading injustice of our anxious everyday life, and, appealing to the imagination, which dwells apart, reveals nature in some degree as she really is, and as she represents herself to the eye of the child, whose everyday life, fearless and unambitious, meets the true import of the wonder-teeming world around him, and rejoices therein without questioning."

Morning Coffee with George Macdonald

At the recommendation of my husband, I have been reading George Macdonald's Unspoken Sermons. Macdonald wrote, "I write not for children but for the child-like, whether they be five, fifty, or seventy-five." George Macdonald (1824-1905) was an exceptional man - a Scot who influenced CS Lewis, Lewis Carroll, JRR Tolkien and Madeleine L'Engle (among others). He had both a vivid imagination and a deeply consistent faith. His mytho-poetic works are my favorites; but, his unspoken sermons offer profound wisdom. Though the language can be hard to understand, here is a quote that has been helpful to me.

"Surely many a whisper of the watching Spirit we let slip through, brooding over a need not yet come to us.Tomorrow makes today's whole head sick, its whole heart faint. When we should be still, sleeping or dreaming, we are fretting about an hour that lies a half sun's-journey away! Not so doest thou, Lord. Thou do-est the work of thy Father."