The Heart of Austen

I read the book 'Austenland' some time ago and just watched the movie.  The book wasn't bad and the movie was ridiculously delightful, in a nerdy, over the top silly sort of way, perhaps a modern Northanger Abbey?  The plot centers around the thirty something Jane who is unlucky in love and dreams of finding a modern Mr. Darcy.  In her obsession with all things Austen, she seems to have developed a few unsettling habits hoping to approximate her beloved era as much as possible, perhaps to an unhealthy extreme.  She spends her minuscule fortune and in a last desperate leap at love, decides to spend a week living out her dream.  A nerdy little romance plays out, worthy of an Austen book in itself, and all is happily resolved.  It isn't classic literature or moving cinema, just a happy bit of fluff that pokes a bit of fun at the modern Austen craze and perhaps even modern civilization itself, but hardly the source of great philosophical realizations, or is it?

The movie is delightfully satiric when it comes to modern obsessions with all things Austen, especially the romanticization of her witty but cutting social commentaries.  It has succeeded as much as Miss Austen herself, whose books, while humorous, are full of social commentary on her times and humanity in general.  This little gem of a movie likewise reveals something we moderns so ofter overlook: the search for the real.  In a world wherein we feel compelled to create ourselves, to be unique yet all the same, to have no opinion not sanctioned by social approval, and to acknowledge nothing as Truth save that which is dearest to ourselves, this movie throws our shallow reality in our face as suddenly as being smacked with a glove.  Jane doesn't want Jane Austen or Mr. Darcy, she wants real, true, deep things, things that mean Something.

The success of Miss Austen is in her creation of real characters, not fluffy bits of nothing that fall in love and live happily ever after.  Her heroines are flawed, they suffer, they sin, they make mistakes, but they also learn and grow, just as real people should.  Or at least they would in a world that made any sense.  But our world, or rather our perception of it, doesn't make any sense.  We are as feckless, flighty, and vain as Lydia Bennet, Mrs. E, Lady Catherine, Isabella Thorpe, the Crawfords, Mr. Wickham, and dozens of other characters in the Austen canon: characters who do not grow, change, or improve, but rather distort reality to explain away their own discomforts and shortcomings.  We are now a world of such whining, bitter, discontent, and vacuous entities.  And like Miss Austen, 'Austenland' is determined to laugh in the face of the absurd and call us to better ourselves and our world thereby.  Bravo!

Someone gets it!

Most secular Christmas music annoys me, yes that Hippo song is cute the first time and who can begrudge Mommy stealing a kiss from Santa Clause, and everyone loves the upbeat feel of 'Sleigh Ride' and 'Carol of the Bells.'  And then there are the rather innocuous classics like 'Silver Bells' and 'White Christmas' and the kid favorites featuring Rudolph and Frosty, but aside from a few tried and true classics, most of the secular fluff that's come out in celebration of the season in the last century isn't worth the paper it's printed on.  I once endured a middle school choir concert wherein they rejoiced over snowmobiles and snowboarding, ugh!  And I'm not the only one, finally I can come out of the closet!  Find the confession here!

Outlandish Promises

I'm currently going through my extensive body of self-published stories: revising, editing, and the like.  It has been a long time since I've read 'The Serpent and the Unicorn,' and even longer since I wrote it.  I came across one particular storyline that truly made me wonder what I was thinking when I wrote THAT.  Could a person really act like that outside of a sappy, romantic tale?  Then I watched the third installment of the Horatio Hornblower series, the one where the title character and his men are captured by the Spanish and stuck in prison.  He strikes up a friendship with the local Don and together they watched a ship wreck itself on the reef.  This captured Englishman offers to go out and rescue the survivors, at much risk to himself, but the Don only stares at him and says it is too dangerous and only an excuse to escape.  The man promises to return and the Don relents.

After a harrowing rescue the little company is adrift at sea and picked up by the main character's ship.  It is a perfect escape!  Except for that dreadful promise.  But he goes back, his men as well, to fulfill his promise.  They were home free but they chose to return to chains and prison because of a promise.  I know this is a fictional tale but it is a relief to know I am not the only one with such fantastic storylines!  But then it is not such an outlandish tale, at least when you consider that grandest and most epic of all tales, the one the actually happens to be true.

For there was once a Father who made a promise, and though it cost Him the life of His Son, He did not hesitate to fulfill it though the world most certainly didn't deserve it.  This Christmas, remember that outlandish promise, fulfilled in the most unlikely of places two millennia ago, and remember that such love, honor, and sacrifice is never in vain!

"In dark places, when all other lights go out..."

Elijah is often remembered as one of the greatest Prophets of ancient Israel and the scene wherein he engages in a 'prophets' duel' with the prophets of Baal is one of my favorites in the entire Bible.  But I noticed something for the first time the other day.  Right after this gigantic spiritual high, the apex of his career, in the very next chapter he is on the run and has despaired of his very life, sitting down under a tree and waiting to die.  He's given up, he has no hope, no motivation, no joy.  Have you ever been there?  In that dark place wherein death looks cheerful by comparison?  It is a scary place to be.

And what happens?  Has God given up on the man who has given up on himself and the God who has worked many a mighty miracle through him and preserved his life through many long and difficult years?  Does he get his wish?  Nope!  Instead he is awakened by an angel and gets breakfast in bed, such as it is!  Then he's told to hie himself off to some lonely mountain, which he does, but instead of standing on the peak and trysting with God, Elijah sulks in the cave.  Then he's told to go anoint his successor and a couple replacement Kings, but he pretty much ignores that command as well.  But he's still spoken of in the New Testament as a great Prophet!  And he's not alone, there's a whole list of people with screwed up lives, failures, heretics, murderers, slackers...who are mentioned as heroes of the faith in places like Hebrews.  You read their stories, in all their ghastly glory, and then find God can still call them friends, can use them for great things!

When you are alone in that dark place, you are not alone.  No other human person understand what you are going through, but that does not mean you are not understood.  Whether you have just succeeded in spectacular fashion or feel like your life is over because of some mistake, you are no alone.  We are none of us so great or so wretched that we are beyond redemption or the reach of His love.  But we must choose to take His nail-pierced hand when He offers it; when that still, small voice whispers, will we listen?

Lazy blogging at its best!

Here's a nice little article on one of my favorite literary heroines and her approach to life in general and suffering in particular, well worth a look!

An Incomprehensible Classic?

I finally got a real (vs. a virtual one) of 'Pride and Prejudice,' and with it came a two page synopsis and analysis of what was to come.  Apparently Jane Austen writes entirely of marriage, according to the introduction, and then it goes on briefly trying to reconcile Miss Austen's writings with modern feminist thought, that certainly it was the stultification of her society that thus rendered her stories so abhorrent to modern thinking.  I'm glad I read the intro, for as often as I've read Austen or watched the various films, I never knew what she was trying to say!  Yes, you are detecting a heady dose of Austenian snark in that comment, whereas this writer gets it.  Austen writes about many things, including marriage, but one might as well say she writes of horses or whist by that theory.  Rather, her main topic is ever virtue or its lack.

But in a world where virtue and political correctness are synonymous, what should I expect?  Oh that she had lived to write a satire of our modern societal messiness!  Yet her works live on in popularity even 200 years later though many a modern much celebrated work of literature has flourished for a day and then been forgotten.  For though our technology and our cultural morals may change, at heart, man is ever the same creature.  This is why Miss Austen's works and writings like Ecclesiastes are still viable centuries after their publication.  My only fear is that there are far more Wickhams and Lydias in the world now than in Miss Austen's day, that the Darcys, Elizabeths, Bingleys, and Janes are all but extinct.  But that is like saying one should not have children because the world is such a dark and dangerous place: it has always been so.  The virtuous are rarities, even in Miss Austen's novels and history is a story of darkness for as far back as memory can reach.

And why should I be surprised that critics and academians and the literary elite misunderstand the works of Miss Austen?  Such too is an all too common failing of man: we see in a work only what we wish to see and hear only what we wish to hear.  We must either twist the meaning or dismiss as bunk anything that does not support our own goals or ideals.  But let he who has an ear, hear and he who has eyes to see, behold all that is good and right and true, to enjoy the delightful wit of Miss Austen, and to all who cannot, I am truly sorry for you.

When Joy Knocks

There's a monster in my house.  It upsets all my ideals of efficiency and order, save in the area of mayhem, which is carried out in a frighteningly efficient manner and with a smile to boot.  She's a strange creature, this Miss Joy, in a home occupied by two adult efficiency fiends and one junior member of the OCD squad.  We are all insecure and uptight and preoccupied, but nothing fazes the little monster.  She leans back and flops down, sometimes into midair, never caring if there is anything or anyone to catch her.  She shoves her way into your lap or arms, behind furniture and into starless closets, fearless.  You tell her 'no' and she smiles at you, makes some adorable little noise of indifferent acknowledgement and plunges in anyway.  All those neat and tidy milestones her brother nailed early, she could care less about, getting around to it when it pleases her; enjoying her food rather than worrying about learning the strange art of utensils or loving the joy of messiness when he would cry if any dirt whatsoever got on his rubber boots.

We accidentally, or rather providentially, named her Joy twice over, this little imp three years in the coming.  My nice prosaic girl name, which had resided in my imagination for well over a decade, was  cast aside in a moment, for that is quite literally all we had to consider the matter, for she came into our lives as abruptly and unannounced as ever she lives life now.  We got a call one evening, 'the call' as the adoption community puts it, that after three years of nothing, of waiting, of nearly despairing it would ever happen, it did.  We drove four hundred miles to a hospital to meet our new family member, of which we did not even know the sex.  We went into the room and met our little girl, and her mother had named her.  It wasn't the Name, agreed upon and cherished for so many years, it wasn't even on the List of other names I rather liked, but it was her, she could be nothing else.  We did ask to change the proposed middle name to Joy, to which the parents agreed, none of us knowing the meaning of the first name, which turned out to be Gaelic for Joy.  Our double portion of Joy.

And she is a Joy, sweet and happy and ridiculous and carefree and social and fun, tearing down the walls of our fear and care and worry as easily as she tears up the living room.  Teaching us what Joy is, what Trust is, what it means to live Fearlessly, how to enjoy the moment and play in the laundry; showing us what it means to be a Child of the Kingdom, not worrying about tomorrow but living in today.  It's a message our family desperately needs, and also our entire Western Society.  We are drifting into the dangerous waters of utilitarianism, wherein nothing is valuable unless it is useful.  The old, the young, the weak, the poor have no use and therefore no value in the eyes of Society, but it was to these very folk the long prophesied King came, not with an army or trumpets or a social media campaign or slick TV ads, but rather in the guise of a baby, born to the poorest of the poor in so socially awkward a manner as to endanger his mother's life and thereby His own, which might have been the kinder end, for He died in the most gruesome way imaginable, as the worst of criminals and traitors did.  But one cannot kill Joy!  Love triumphed over Death and the power of Darkness was broken, that the meek might verily inherit the earth.

Is it time for a disruption in your neat and tidy life?  If Joy knocks, will you open the door of your heart?  Once you let it in, you will never be the same, and that is a very good thing!