Ps and Qs

Manners.  Etiquette. Good behaviour. 
There are many theories as to how "Mind your P's and Q's" came to refer to manners, but in the end it hardly  matters. Today's offering is about manners and etiquette and good behaviour. The topic is one of my favourite hobby horses, so I'll take care to reign myself in (haha!), and stay on point.

What's the big deal?  We live in a casual, informal society, right?  Yes, we do.  But I believe there is always room for politeness.  First of all, good manners are a way of practising, or living out, charity, because they cause us to focus on the 'other', rather than 'me'. Manners are more concerned with the comfort and dignity of other people ahead of ourselves.  There is a line from the movie Divine Secrets of the Ya-ya Sisterhood that niggles at my memory. I don't remember it exactly, but it goes something like this: a daughter asks her mother about love.  Wise Mama responds, "Honeychild, whatever else love is, it ought to begin with good manners."  I agree!  If I care about you, I'm not going to stare at you when your hair is sticking up, or whisper about you to someone else, or ignore you if you're sitting alone in the lunch room, or not introduce you to the other person I'm talking to, or stubbornly hold to my side of the sidewalk when you're coming toward me, baby in tow.

Manners are a useful thing.  They guide us through awkward or unfamiliar situations, giving us templates to follow. Again, they remove 'me' from the equation. It doesn't matter if I'm shy, or feeling cranky - when I meet someone, I say hello, how are you, or Pleased to meet you or a variation thereof. If I need to pass by, I say Excuse me, and always say Please, and Thank you. Even when you don't mean it. And especially if you're Canadian.

There used to be very complex and rigid rules of etiquette. In the upper classes, they were so convoluted there was no hope you could learn them all if you weren't born to it.  I'm glad we don't go to those extremes anymore, but I do think we've lost something when we decided to do away with practically everything. We tend to look down on the finer things like gentility and chivalry - perhaps as being soft and snooty - which is too bad. Because of it we have loud and personal conversations on cell phones in public, to name just one obnoxious example.

Thank you for reading.

Open

O is for open. The tomb is open. It is empty.

Here is the fulfillment of all our hope: that this life is not the end; that death does not triumph over life; that when Jesus said, “Come and follow me, and I will give you eternal life” he meant it; that even though we look (and feel) defeated and empty, the truth is vibrant and living.

 

Here is a little openness from me: I have been a tomb.   That’s what this Lent has felt like. I have been sealed off, closed up, entombed. Going to Mass has been a struggle (one I haven’t always won, I must admit) in part because I feel so isolated, from God, from friends, even from myself. I don’t offer this insight from a desire to wallow, or as a gambit for your sympathy, but merely to reinforce that how I began this post is absolutely true, whether we feel it, believe it, accept it, or not. I went to Mass this morning feeling I couldn’t (or shouldn’t) participate in the Easter joy because I didn’t make the Lenten journey.  Listening to the readings and the homily, I didn’t hear anything I haven’t heard before. There were no new details, no startling revelations, no comforting feelings of supernatural reassurance. But I knew that no matter how hard it is to sit there sometimes, or how strong the temptation is to resist God, I belong there, with Him. So my Easter joy is more subdued than exultant this year, but it is accompanied by deep gratitude for the loving mercy of our God who keeps His promises.

The name game.

I haven't written anything for you today.  Instead, I'm sharing a list of interesting names of authors I've come across since I started this job.

Gifty Amo-Danso  (isn't Gifty a great name?)
John Flowerdew (this must be a British name, don't you think?)
Alaka Holla
Teresa Lavender Fagan
Barrie Brent Bennett
Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos (his parents liked it so much, they used it twice)
Dilip Soman
Andrea Olive (this rolls off the tongue so perfectly)
Marcel Martel
Robin Truth Goodman
J. Jacob Jenkins
Sergio L. Schmukler (a little Latin flavour in your German)
Wheeler Winston Dixon
Esyllt W. Jones
Dominique Audenaert (I liked this one because the last name sounds familiar to me)
Klaus Dieter Wolf (I don't think there could be a more German name)
Tomás F. Crowder-Taraborrelli


Dedications:
To: Ezgi  (this sounds like a diminutive. I wonder what the whole name would be?)

To our canine companions (this was in a book about Jane Austen and culture. I don't think Jane would have approved.)

To my dad who taught me what it meant to be a man. To my wife who gave me brothers and a second father.  You're cute... let's dance.  (In a book about music.)


Do you have any names tucked away that have either tickled  you, impressed you, or bemused  you?
(Celebrity children's names could be a whole category on its own... such as baby North, whose last name is West.)

Monkish

In the words of Beyonce, “If I were a boy, I’d want to be a Monk…”

Ok, so those weren’t her exact words, they were mine. And not that I really do want to be a boy, or that I’m unhappy being a girl, but if I had to be a boy, I think I’d be happy as a Carthusian monk.

Have you watched Into Great Silence?  (I think I’ve written about it before, and I would look into it except that, in Cordon Bleu parlance, is known as “une distraction” and as I’ve got rice on the stove, and also because I’ve burned too many pots and pans lately, and since almost anything else is more exciting than watching rice bubble away, the smallest, unshiny-est squirrel could distract me just long enough for yet another pot to bubble dry so I’ll leave it with this very long parenthetical aside and keep the research for others to do.)

So, Into great silence. I don’t want to mislead you by calling it a movie or a documentary. It is rather a visual meditation using the life of the monks of the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps.

As a work of art Into great silence is stunning, with the backdrop of the mountains and forests and fog and the beautiful structure of the monastery itself. The director used no supplementary lighting, lending a gentle look to each scene, making the aged stones and white robes beautiful and compelling in their simplicity.

The director, Philip Groening, waited 16 years for a reply from the monks after asking if he could film them. I wonder if the wait influenced his approach to the final film, because it is a quiet, unhurried glimpse at life within those walls. The viewer, to properly appreciate it, must be as unhurried and patient to begin to appreciate this brief experience of monastic life.

Groening lived and filmed in the Charter House for 10 months. I’d so like to see the footage that didn’t make it into the final cut!  As it is, I find myself wanting to direct the camera to show me what is behind that corner, what goes on upstairs, what does the garden look like in the summer, how exactly do they make the Chartreuse liqueur, what are the meals like on feast days, does the Abbot meet with other Abbots of the order, what is the training like for the novices? (There are novitiates to the order while this was filmed. We see the monks process the young men to their new cells… and then leave. What is it like to suddenly be on your own like that?)  oh, and so much more!  I loved seeing how they cared for the oldest monk, watching them getting hair cuts, seeing them skiing down the slopes in their shoes and hearing them laugh, listening in on a conversation during one of their communal times… and especially hearing them chant the offices. 

I know a life like theirs is a distinct and very rare vocation.  Without that definite call from God, a person would either whither into a dry husk of a person, or become bitter and angry.  Neither outcome are healthy for the individual or the community, which is why right discernment is so important.  Still, I can’t help but think that I’d love to have a little cell of my own (they are small but not actually tiny, spread over two floors. One level has their work space and wood shop (they cut and stack their own wood), and the other has their simple bed, a prayer nook, a simple work table for studying and reading, a little table for meals, and a wood stove.  There is a little hutch that opens to the corridor outside, through which their box containing the daily meal is passed. Each cell opens on to a walled, individual garden, and each monk tends his own, so he has his own patch of the outdoors within his own walls.)

Not every monastery has the French Alps in its backyard with the moody drifts of fog and the gentle cling-clang of cowbells as its soundtrack.  Not every monastery has such long-standing, reassuring, and glorious architecture.  Those are all elements that draw me to this particular group of this particular order.  As for being a monk rather than a nun, well, I’m not keen on the idea of living with only women!  I’m sorry, but there it is. 

I think I might pull this out and watch it again this Friday.  It’s time to go into great silence.

The Lighthouse keeper

It had been a beautiful blue-sky day – that perfect shade of Happy Blue – dotted with thick white cotton ball clouds. Gulls dance in the soft breezes, their cries echoing the happy sounds coming from the children playing on the sandy shore of the bay.  White triangles of sails glide over the water, while farther out over the deep, longer, bulkier vessels plod forward, too weighed down with importance to play in the waves.

Later, the clouds lower and darken, made heavy with the rain they will soon release in torrents on the earth. The sky, too, darkens – an ominous promise of the storm to come.  Families scurry to pack up children and blankets and hampers by the first fall of rain. Once jolly waves are churned into a froth, causing the dogged ships in the distance to hunch their shoulders against the forceful wind, unwilling to stray from their course.

The sky is petulant now, working its way to a sullen temper tantrum, hurling rain from the blackened clouds, growling with thunder, and moaning with wind.

High above the seething water, on an outcrop of sturdy rocks stands a watchtower, placid, unmoved, and tranquil amidst the turmoil.  A light of safety and reassurance flashes around in a steady rhythm, unchanging in weather fair or foul.

And in that watchtower lives a lone guardian – the keeper of the light.  The bay is his to protect, and the deep as far as he can see. He carefully tends his tower and watches over the ships that pass back and forth beyond his windows perched high over the water.  It is driving storms like this he loves best, feeling the power of the elements working against the enduring presence of his tower, knowing that the stone walls and circling light will prevail. All are kept safe on his watch, though they know not his name or his face.

Lighthouse of Port SOHOE
Photo by NLE  (Mama Nut)

K is for wooden shoes

Klompen are traditional Dutch shoes, the whole-foot wooden clogs. You’ve seen pictures of them – might even have a pair in your garden. They (like tulips and windmills) are so evocative of Holland, that the Dutch at times have been known as Kloggies, though I’ve never been clear on whether that’s pejorative or not. I love them, you see – the shoes and the people, so to me it’s a term of endearment.

Klompen aren’t just quaint, though. They are practical and – this may surprise you - even comfortable. While millions are made every year for tourists to bring home as souvenirs, there are still many Dutch who wear them for their work in factories, on farms, or while gardening, as they are practical, which the Dutch love, but also hard-wearing and provide excellent protection against wayward cow hooves. 

When we lived in Germany we’d visit mom’s family in Amsterdam during the summer, and spend some time ‘at the camping’ which the Dutch are fond of doing. While there, I’d either be barefoot or in klompen. They were rain-proof, mud-proof, great for walking in the dunes, and I could run as well in them as in regular shoes.  After enough time, the inside gets worn down to perfectly conform to your foot. Talk about a custom fit! I carried on the tradition, wearing them on our own family camping trips, and would still wear them today while working outdoors if I had a pair that fit. The only pair I have now I wore as a child. They sit decoratively in the kitchen, reminding me of happy times.

I’m a Kloggy and proud of it.

 

FSF - Feathers

Five sentence fiction, in which a story is told in five little lines.
(Sponsored by Lillie McFerrin Writes)

Feathers

Scene: evening; light, diffused by ripples of the lagoon leads us to a golden puddle spilling out from the open door of a ballroom. Gentle sounds of lapping water as a beautiful woman steps gracefully out of the gondola, gloved hand gently grasping the fingers of a lucky gentleman there just in time to make every other man envious. She is dressed in an elegant, inky black evening gown over which she has carelessly thrown a black velvet cape. Everything is in black, from her dark raven hair to the blue-black of satin shoes glimpsed beneath her skirts. All the more dramatic, then, the crimson of her lips and the iridescent blues and greens of the feathers trimming the mask that had everyone asking: isn't that...?