I guess that makes me prime straight-jacket material because I wouldn’t have it any other way. From the inside looking out, life outside of the Church is terrifying. I promised a group of people I would look out for them and they promised me they’d get my back. You don’t get that same sort of solemn vow made before God outside.

So I suppose it’s a good thing our Father doesn’t run on human intelligence. His wisdom and his sense of humor are boundless which is how we ended up with the Church as we know it. A bunch of misfits all lumbering in twenty different directions while our Dad smiles and somehow makes our childish attempts work out. We are the Church, the chosen, the worst of the worst and the beloved. We are a bride being groomed for a husband who proves His love for us every single day. May we ever stand to give Him praise. Amen.

“Arise”

We will make it out alive
There’s a note in the pages of the book
So Sleep tonight,
We’ll sleep dreamlessly this time
When we awake we’ll know that everything’s alright

And sing to me about the end of the world
End of these hammers and needles for you

Hold on to the world we all remember fighting for,
There’s still strength left in us yet
Hold on to the world we all remember dying for,
There’s still hope left in it yet

The snow on your face, and your razor blades
The twilight is bruised and there you lie

And sing to me, about the end of the world
End of these hammers and needles for you
We’ll cry tonight, but in the morning we are new
Stand in the sun, we’ll dry your eyes

Hold on to the world we all remember fighting for,
There’s still strength left in us yet
Hold on to the world we all remember dying for,
There’s still hope left in it yet

And sing
Sing
Arise

Arise and be,
All the you dreamed, all that you dreamed

Arise and be,
All the you dreamed, all that you dreamed

Arise and be,
All the you dreamed, all that you dreamed

Arise and be,
All the you dreamed, all that you dreamed

But then there are the gems. Those books that made just a bit of sense when you first read them. Those books that require too much experience of the reader to make any sense to the thirteen-year-old trying to figure them out. Read now it’s like a light coming on in a closet. You always knew there was something there, but just could never find any of it. Now the motives make more sense and the long, dragged out descriptions with no purpose fly by and suddenly become the foundation for half the story.

I am rereading C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy (yes, Seth, trilogy) and it is making so much more sense to me this time through. Last time I read it I was around fourteen years old. I got the basic premise of a man travels to Mars and then Venus. I understood that the third book is a modern fairy tale and thought that concept was very cool. But just about everything else went right over my head. All the symbolism, the internal conversations, the wonder, depth and splendor of Lewis’s worlds and stories blew right by me. I was expecting this time around to be better, but was completely unprepared for how much better it would be.

Book one of the trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, introduces our main character, a philologist named Ransom. He in kidnapped and taken to Mars where stuff happens and then he gets back home. It’s way more interesting than that, but that book isn’t what I want to talk about. In the second book, Perelandra, Ransom goes to Venus, know in Old Solar as Perelandra, on a mission for Maleldil, the Jesus figure of the story. He lands on the planet and finds himself in paradise.

Lewis’s descriptions are vivid. This is Venus, the planet of pleasure. But on Venus is pleasure without sin. There is nothing to pervert the enjoyment of the planet. There is food right at hand that nearly requires a new word to describe it. It is better than our food like a chocolate cake is better than mud. All is soft and easy and pleasant. It is a world of sensuality without lust or perversion. The colors can only be called blue, green or red because that’s the closest we who walk the silent planet have ever known. But they are brighter, more vibrant than our colors like the sun is brighter than a mine shaft. All is good on Perelandra, though ‘good’ is too simple of a word to describe what is depicted in the book.

Ransom meets a woman, the Green Lady, who is the Eve of Venus. She has been separated from the King, the Adam of story, though this only brings her joy as now she can look forward to being reunited with him. She and Ransom have many conversations about the world and about God. She is a very young woman with very simple thoughts and Ransom unconsciously goes about helping her to be wise. It is very pleasant for them both to sit among the animals and talk of great matters in the very presence of God. But then the Tempter comes.

It’s Eden all over again. There is a new Eve is all her splendor listening to the almost-lies of the Devil. He is patient and cunning and she has become used to contemplating what an outsider says about the world and doesn’t have any words in her language or world for ‘evil’, ‘lie’, ‘bad’. She hopes to be wise. All that stands in the way of Perelandra falling is Elwin Ransom, a middle-aged philologist from Cambridge.

It was like watching a horror movie in slow motion. In my mind I’m screaming at Ransom to do something as the Enemy twists the truth around and around until it is unrecognizable. Ransom is doing his all, he is holding the line as best he can, but he is only a man. He needs to eat and sleep, he needs to rest. The Enemy doesn’t. Everything hangs on Ransom and even he knows he will lose eventually.

From a writer’s perspective it was skillfully done. Lewis spent enough time on Perelandra before the Evil showed up that I’d come to love it. Actually, I’d come to long for it. It woke a hurting in me like being homesick for a place I’d never even visited. To walk along the floating islands in the warm ocean with the golden sky above. To ride on the mighty fish as they race through the waves. To sit with the Lady as she was delighted with everything around her. A delight that had never known anything else. Her joy was nothing like mine. My happiness is when something is good instead of bad. There is a bitterness in each smile because always there lurks the knowledge that it could have gone otherwise. And there is a fear behind each surprise joy because next time it will not go the same. Next time there will be sorrow instead of delight. So much of our happiness is based on the pain we have known.

But not so the Green Lady. Lewis talks about how sometimes Ransom couldn’t look her in the face because there was too much pure virtue in her face, too much pure joy unmingled with tears. She delighted in a thing because it was delightful and it made her happier than she had been a moment before. There was no doubt in her mind that the next thing would be just as wonderful.

Towards the end of reading the book I came down with an ear infection. Once again I was trying to find a way to explain the sensation of an infection in my head and once again I was overwhelmed by everyday sounds. My body died just a bit more. I was sick and hurting again. All because Mother Eve listened to the Deceiver.

So, I’m shouting still more for Ransom to do something. Perelandra must not fall. It must stay pure and unsoiled. There must not be a repeat of what happened here on the silent planet so long ago.

I’d read the book before and knew how it ended and still I’m figuratively jumping up and down and shouting. It is a powerful book and a very different read now than when I first read it. Though I’m afraid it’s ruined me for Earth. There’s a longing in me now for a place that doesn’t exist. If it did I’m not sure I’d go; I would just bring the darkness in with me. So I remind myself that even Perelandra is just a picture of a place that is real and will be. And when I walk on the floating islands or the streets of gold there will be no more darkness to carry. Then my ears will be healed with no possibility of infection and I will be able to rest under the golden sky.

Afterwards an elder likened the old preacher to a race car. There’s a phrase that comes from racing culture- “Drive it til the wheels come off.” That is indeed what Pastor LaMay is doing. He’s driving for Jesus until the wheels come off and it’s time to rest.

I pray that someday the same will be said of me.

We were camping. Just Mom, my sisters and I. It was fall which is the best time to camp especially at a National Park in the Allegheny mountains. The mornings are crisp like a fresh Honey Crisp apple and the nights are cold. The temperature slowly climbs to warm in the sun as the day goes on and then plummets at night just in time to sit by the fire thinking about nothing much. Normally we camped in the upper part of the campground at campsite 74. It was a walk-in site, within sight of the road, but up a hill, over a creek and through the woods. But since Dad wasn’t with us he didn’t want us to be that far from the road and fellow campers. Or maybe the upper loop was closed because it was getting into the off-season. Either way, we were in the lower loop which was right next to the playground. The playground had a two level log cabin that was a perfect place to play. We were a blessed group of children in that I don’t think any of my siblings ever got too cool for playgrounds. So when we weren’t doing something else my sisters and I were at this playground, climbing the outside of the log cabin and riding the giant caterpillar.

Ostensibly this was a field trip so there was a lot schooling that happened. We took long walks while Mom explained about pigments. Chlorophyll reigns supreme until, as the leaf slowly dies, it is overthrown by other pigments. I held in my hands leaves the color of fire as my mother’s voice rolled over me. We sat at a picnic table under the trees as she explained about sunlight, water and chemical reactions. The wood was rough on my finger tips as I picked a leaf out of the pile. We walked along the road as she talked about evergreens and deciduous trees. The crunch of our feet on the gravel was the only human sound to hear. We sat in the sunlight and listened as she passed down a slice of knowledge that I have never forgotten.

Sometimes I forget I still know what she taught, but as I read all the information came flooding back. And with it came memories of this grand field trip into the woods, under the trees, through the leaves. This trip into the very heart of autumn to learn about it and experience it at the same time. The feel of the wooden picnic table, the swish crunch of the leaves we walked through, the smell of the campfire, the dying glory of the leaves still clinging to their trees. The feeling of twilight on a sunny noon, or the crispness of night in the mountains.

My classroom is far more pedestrian than my mother’s was, but I can still use to get her grandchildren excited about plants and growing things. I’m not teaching in the midst of autumn yet, but when it comes you can be sure I’ll do my best to get the kids out into it. To experience the glorious burst before the winter.

It wasn’t raining right at first. The wind carried to us the smell of rain as it swept from unknown and mysterious places, past the house and off to where the wind goes when it’s outrun a storm. It blew through my hair, brushed against my skin and made me long for wings. But then the rain came.

It was like a wall of water, some ancient siege tower being marched down 10th Street. It moved with a stately and inexorable grace. On our side of the wall all was dry though much harried by the wind. On the far side of the wall torrential downpour held court. I only had a very few moments to appreciate this though because stately though the rain’s progress it was also incredibly fast. The wall of rain rushed at us and would have swept over us, adding us to its list of conquests if not for the porch we stood under. Even then the rain and the wind conspired together to get us pretty wet.

Elizabeth, Olympia and I stood on the porch watching the rain dance on the street, the wind rush along and the lightening play in the sky. Tom came home, expressed much concern about the refrigerator not having any power and had to go check on the popsicles and beer to make sure they wouldn’t spoil. It was decided that they were probably in grave danger and so we did our best to dispose of as many as possible.

It was a pleasant evening. We sat on the porch long after the rain had moved on to watch the lightening flash in the sunset, to smell the rain-soaked ground and to feel the last straggler of wind, now cool and carrying the rain like ocean spray, brush against my face.

Thing is, I’m pretty sure it was the contrast that really appealed to me. Flowery embroidery on a soft pincushion would have nice, but it wouldn’t have satisfied me nearly as much as imposing girliness on this tough work tool.

I was thinking about this because a few days before that, Gabrielle pointed out that my answer about compliments on a recent Facebook tag was not entirely accurate. I said that I mostly get compliments on looking nice and being pretty cool for a girl. Gabrielle posited that these aren’t actually the compliments I get the most, they’re just the compliments that stick in my head the most, because those things are important to me.

Suddenly, large portions of my life clicked into place. When I was little, probably seven or eight, I read a book called Once Upon a Summer. One of the characters was described this way: “She could shinny up a tree as fast as any boy, too, tuckin’ her skirt in around her elastic bloomer legs in order to get it out of her way. She could also skip rocks and throw a ball. She would take a dare to walk the skinniest rail on the fence and outdo any fella at school. Yet somehow when she hopped to the ground and assumed her role as ‘girl’, she could be as proper and appealin’ as could be, and could give you that look of pure innocence fittin’ for a princess or an angel.”

I instantly decided that I wanted to be her someday. I wanted to avoid all the silly brainlessness of being ‘girly’ without sacrificing the frills. I wanted to indulge my interest in weapons and ninja without losing my ability to match a purse perfectly with my outfit. I wanted to be a warrior princess.

Now, none of this is really surprising, but there are a couple interesting realizations here. One, is how close to foundational this is for me. The primary tenet of my life is that Christ is King over everything, and the entire focus of my existence is on obeying and worshipping Him. One of the secondary tenets seems to be that I should be strong, intelligent, and brave WHILE being irrevocably female. It doesn’t sound so very strange when I put it like that, but sometimes it’s hard to embrace both sides of that in a fallen world.

The second weird realization for me is that I’m actually living this childhood dream. Sure, I’m not as cool at it as I always imagined, and it definitely impresses fewer guys than it did in my imagination… But still, I can go from talking weapons to color coordinating my plate with the rest of my outfit to plotting world domination and back to straightening my hair with nary a second thought. Because I really am that…well…bizarre, I guess. And still, the one and only Duct Tape Valkyrie.

Our friend’s house is set on a large piece of land that holds a bit of forest and a creek. A creek like the one I grew up near, a creek with deeps and shallows. A creek who’s waters still carry the memory of winter, but which stands in the warm spring sunshine. The trees along the creek bank are slowly losing their ground, their tangled roots now extending into air. They reach down into the water searching searching for ground to heap on themselves. All they find is deliciously wet sand and mud.

The stones that line the bottom of the creek are round, smooth, worn by the rush of water. The stones are smooth, but my feet aren’t quite used to them yet. They hurt my feet like a bittersweet memory: the pain is real and impossible to ignore, but worth all the joy. I stagger through the water trying not to limp and hobble, but getting lost in nostalgia.

I’m half there in the creek on Friday and half ten years old again playing in a creek 650 miles away. We would start a few blocks from our house and follow the creek down to the lake. We’d see how far we could get without getting wet, just walking on the rocks sticking out from the creek bank. We were explorers, adventurers, brave hearty souls with a mission. The sun was hot then, too, and the water was cold. We wore shoes in the water trading full experience for painlessness. So many days spent in that water.

And then I’m back in the creek in Tremont watching Noah throw rocks and making sure Justice doesn’t fall into one of the fews spots over his head. Arianna’s riding a tube through the current, Isaac is trying out a homemade raft and Samuel is out of sight around the bend. I’ve never seen around that bend. There could be anything around that bend. If we follow it long enough maybe there’s even a lake somewhere down the creek that could satisfy even this Erie girl when she gets homesick.

We climb out and change clothes because Espi, the lady of the house, was wise enough to tell us to bring extra clothes. We play in the sun andwe sit and talk. They grill for us and I spill my entire plate on the floor by accident. Their dog decides he likes me. We were going to leave after root beer floats, but by the time Samuel, who was helping plant lilac bushes, finishes his we are deep in a movie and I can’t bear to pull us away. Justice falls asleep against me during the movie and Noah falls asleep in the van. We get home late and everyone goes to bed. A perfect end to a perfect day.

Thank you, Candlers.

In my arms I’m holding a newborn baby. She was born early this morning and is all round chubs and pink skin. And her name is Hope. Hope Deliverance Ben-Ezra.

Welcome to our dark world, my dear. May you bring hope with you wherever you go.