My marriage has been to me the most nourishing bread. From my marriage I know much of what can happen between a man and a woman - what healing and wholeness, what forgiveness and what strengthening.

But all of the things of which I’ve read in old romances have happened to me in meetings and partings with men who had no claim on me nor I on them. When I read, as a girl, of people wasting away for love, I never believed it. Yet when I was twenty, three days after parting with the man who didn’t love me, I rose up from my couch and found all my ribs cowering, exposed, under my gaze. I’d lost twenty pounds. Those were dark days and it is partly due to them that I finally decided to marry the man who would heal me rather than waiting for a hypothetical man who would do like in the movies. I don’t regret my choice, the more so since the man who is healing me has also proven to be the man who leads me to God and His Church.

This past weekend I experienced something that I hardly know how to understand except in terms of gallantry such as I had thought obsolete. Not all that goes on between men and women can be named in terms of animal desire. Not all that is sexual has to do with sex.

But still, how did gallantry awake for me - how me? How did it come about that three modern men sat sighing around a modern girl, pressing their hearts with their hands, playing the guitar for her by turn, calling her endearing names, refraining from rough language and modern liberties of behavior, waiting on her, asking her to sing, and seizing her hands, crying, when she did? (And then finally, in a protective gesture, sending her home before any of the others got really drunk…) Was it really me, who was never counted skilled in music, never courted by anyone but my husband, never pursued or sought out in any of my native circles?

How did I pass five hours in the guise of a lady? I have been many other individuals - arrogant little girl, awkward and despised teenager, dependable big sister, eager religious debator, depressed college student, desperate and even cruel religious seeker, grateful wife, weary Mama, aspiring writer, and always so much, so very much less than I wanted to be. How did it come about that one enchanted night, the night of my bosom friend’s wedding, I found myself surrounded by a few eccentric and very real men who made me feel adorable in some sense that has far more to do with what I share of feminine nature than with my dubious personal accomplishments?

I think what I experienced was something to do with the nature of masculine and feminine - the part that only appears when the two meet. Protective gallantry, respectful delight on the one side; on the other confiding welcome and modest pleasure.

Begone, bourgeois hopes. I will not seek to be commended to God or man by mere paltry achievement. I do not know what will commend me. But I don’t think that what happened last weekend was meant to leave me in my erstwhile course of individual ambition.

And I hope God blesses these men whom I will never seek to see again, for loving what what was best in me - was it really there? - and for sharing what they shared with me. Did I mention that they were all talented, gentle men themselves? I didn’t want to seem to speak too much of them. They are God’s, not mine. And my husband is waiting for me, a familiar, friendly, patient light in his eyes - the light of full, unique love in spite of full, sometimes sordid knowledge.

It’s a wonder, indeed - what goes on between men and women.

Ah, Wisconsin! Where the landscapes look like patchwork quilts shaken out by gods of earth and sky; and where June is Dairy Month.

After the traffic hell that is Chicago, I crossed the border into my home state and pulled over at the first exit for a rest stop. I stretched; my limbs creaked and eased and my knuckles sank into the good Wisconsin turf lipped by the white flowers and fine green disks of our humble Wisconsin clover. White flowers of clover are good refreshment. If you ever find yourself wandering on a dirt pathway between woods and fields, far from home at lunchtime, that is a useful thing to know. Just make sure that no cows or deer have passed that way too recently. Then pinch the flower firmly at the base of its head, and pull the white spiky petals out one by one. The nectar is at the end of the spike, where it disconnects from the head.

A few dozen swarms of misquitos danced over to welcome me and I greeted then with a friendly if somewhat vigorous wave. Inside the rest stop building I studied a huge state map behind hard plastic, and felt quite efficient for finding the relevant spots in about three seconds. It’s a good settled feeling, to know where you are. Wisconsin has one of the oddest shapes of any of the states. It’s like something that was trying to be born as a flying squirrel or bat. Or a One-Horned Muskopod. But it didn’t quite make it. No doubt due to ‘those liberals in Madison;’ they are generally held responsible for everything that gets aborted here.

What’s odd is sitting in my parents living room typing away at my Mom’s laptop, and seeing green grass out of the corner of my eye through the front window. It seems like I should be looking at snow. However, last winter’s bumper snow crop has turned into this spring’s bumper misquito crop by way of all the flooding they’re getting. My parents’ house is on a hill so the flooding hasn’t threatened them at all. But many of the roads my dad normally drives to work are closed.

They have guniea hens now, my seven-year-old brother informed me as we tried fall asleep, he on his mattress on the floor and me on the sofa next to him. Kid has his own room but he’d rather sleep upstairs with the puppy. My parents are cool with that. You will not meet a lot of people like my parents even if you do come to Wisconsin. It’s been about six years since the last time they didn’t have someone in need living here. Right now it’s an elderly Irish lady, high on spunk and low on health.

My brother explained many things to me as we tried to settle in for the night - what a porkupine looks like when you shine your flashlight in its face suddenly, and why dogs bark in the middle of the night (it’s because they can hear the porkupines moving in the long grass, along with the rabbits and hedgehogs and turkeys.) The older dog, a collie, spends all night out of doors now that it’s hot and now that my parents have guinea hens. The collie will round up the guinea hens if they escape. The puppy will rip their wings off. My brother made a terrific face to explain the horror of the last event. Animal death, and birth, is part of learning about life here in the country.

Kid finally got to sleep despite the one lucky misquito that found its way inside, but I’m getting too old to sleep on the sofa. So I wandered downstairs and sacked out on top of my older brother’s bed. He’s away camping with his cool guy friends. Yeah, here cool people go camping when they want to live it up. I didn’t sleep much. Around 4:30 I heard my Dad leaving for work so I got up to see him off and we sneaked in a five-minute version of one of our old theological conversations. So much hasn’t changed. I laughed so hard driving in when my little sister called asking me to pick her up from her best friend’s house before I even got home.

About the only thing that’s different is me.

But coming back here I realize that there’s part of my that will never change. It’s the part that says “this is my own, my native land.” Native, of course, refers to the ground on which one was born. I never left Wisconsin to live, until three months ago. Despite all the talk in politics and so on about patriotism, I sometimes wonder how anyone can experience patriotic sentiments if they don’t feel their heart attached to a very specific bit of this Earth.

I loved a little paragraph in Lord of the Rings, which I can’t find now…two of the characters are discussing their love for the elves and all high things. And one points out that you have to love lowly things first; you need good earth to sink your roots into before you can stretch up and aspire to higher loves. I guess for me, Wisconsin is The Shire.

No grass appears either fine enough or thick enough, and every other landscape is either to rough or too dull compared to Wisconsin’s gentle hills. Right about now the birds and the swamp frogs are finishing their throaty contest and Wisconsin’s natural green and gold is making its way up the hill on which we are set. My parents have a dirt driveway about a quarter of a mile long. If I run up and down it four times that’s two miles.

So long.

I am a fool
And I know why:
I was born under
A bronze, bronze sky
A mewling bird
Fell from its nest,
And died within
My mothers’ breast.

A warring girl
With bronze, bronze hair
Called to the wind
But none was there;
Spoke to the grave
With no reply
Then something gave
In her bronze, bronze eye.

O come with me
Who on the earth
Creep haltingly
Twixt death and birth
O come with me
All you who long
For more to be
Than fair and strong.

And you who crave
For other worlds
Beyond this world
And every world
We shall mourn sore
What death has sown
And stand up more
Than men have known.

Tune base: O Waly Waly (The Water Is Wide)

I think grandchildren have a special vantage point. By the time we meet our grandparents, they’ve probably made most of their mistakes and learned most of their lessons. Their secret journey, unobserved by others, has imperceptibly carved itself into their faces. When a little child looks at grandpa she knows who he is…maybe in her innocence she even catches of a glance of his eternal face.

I also think that there are lives that are so whole that when they end, you realize they’ve told the story of all of our lives. Alvin, my grandfather, had that kind of life. As I knew him, he was handsome and debonair and defiant; and he had his own brand of funny. If you listened to him you found he was a deep thinker with a penetrating and progressive mind. He felt deeply, we all knew that, even though we respected the veil he often tried to put over his feelings. Most amazing of all to me, he didn’t seem the sort of person who simply let life happen to him. He was always an actor in it. We all know about the amazing amount of knowledge he discovered in the last ten years of his life alone.

Grandpa always loved good things. And I think for me that defines him most…he was someone who adored goodness. He founded a thriving, happy family, and he married a lovely, accomplished lady. He loved the good things of this life; and then when he finally stood on the threshold between worlds, and looked into that life that invisibly penetrates this one, he seemed to see, more clearly than many of us who talk about God all day long, the Good. He saw what was Good. And just as intelligently and eagerly as he embraced living this life, he then embraced the Good of the life to come.

“You can’t stop being Alvin.” That was one of the last things I said to him. And I think for those of us who love him, that might stand for the whole story. For us grandkids, for all who knew him, he’ll never stop being Alvin.

Grandpa…
May God rest your soul.
May Angels escort you to your place
May the name of Jesus be ever on your lips
May these eyes that closed in death open upon Life Eternal.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners.

The Wall Street Jounal Online linked to this recent blogpost about Russia, National Intelligence and the Mythical Iranian Nuclear Program.

A Putin-admirer we all know and love is the intelligent author of this post.

“A man who involuntarily obeys any direct command and only thinks about it afterward is an automatic nominee for Best Husband of Year Award“ 

This morning my beloved husband and I woke up late because we stayed long at vespers last night. I went into Johnny’s room and changed and fed him. When I returned to the bedroom Scottie (my husband) was still in bed, staring at the ceiling in the midst of one of his daydreams. That’s not the part that bothers me because I know he’s just thinking about how many points to charge for his space-dwarf blasters in the Warhammer race he’s inventing. (Yes, my husband’s hobby is playing toy soldiers with other fully-grown men. No, I didn’t know that could happen, either.)

 I didn’t truly yell at my well-loved lord and master, but I did pull off a very nice faux-yell.

“Get UP!”

 He jumped out of bed like his butt was on fire.

I fled from the room laughing while my adored spouse called threats after me to the effect that if I continued to impersonate his drill seargants the consequences to my derriere would be dire.

 It’s helpful for military wives to know that they can put all that government training to good use every now and then. A man who involuntarily responds to a direct command, and thinks about it only afterward, is an automatic nominee for the Best Husband of Year Award.

 Spread the good news.