Generosity

Tags

Lent, photography, Poetry, religion

View from the South Mountain Trail in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo by Griffin Logue

During the third week of Lent, Frank and I focus on “Generosity” in A Spring in the Desert. In specific, we write about giving and tithes. We have chosen generosity as the opposite of covetousness, one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Covetousness covers a number of things that might not first come to mind when one considers this sin. According to the St. Augustine’s Prayer Book, these are:

COVETOUSNESS is the refusal to respect the integrity of other creatures, expressed in the inordinate accumulation of material things; in the use of other persons for our personal advantage; or in the quest for status, power or security at their expense.

Inordinate Ambition. Pursuit of status, power, influence, reputation, or possessions at the expense of the moral law, of other obligations, or of the rights of others. Ruthless or unfair competition. Putting self or family first. Conformity to standards we recognize as wrong or inadequate in order to get ahead. Intrigue or conspiracy for self-advancement.

Domination. Seeking to use or possess others. Over protection of children; refusal to correct or punish lest we lose their affection; insistence that they conform to our ideal for them contrary to their own vocation. Imposing our will on others by force, guile, whining, or refusal to cooperate. Over-readiness to advise or command; abuse of authority. Patronizing, pauperizing, putting others under a debt of gratitude, or considering ourselves ill-used when others’ affection or compliance is not for sale. Respect of persons, favoritism, partiality, flattery, fawning, or bribery to win support or affection. Refusal to uphold the truth to fulfill duties, to perform good acts, or to defend those wrongfully attacked, because we fear criticism or ridicule, or because we seek to gain the favor or approval of others. Leading, tempting or encouraging another to sin.

Avarice. Inordinate pursuit of wealth or material things. Theft, dishonesty, misrepresentation, or sharing in stolen goods. Cheating in business, taxes, school or games. Making worldly success the goal of our life or the standard for judging others.

Prodigality. Waste of natural resources or personal possessions. Extravagance or living beyond our income, to impress others or to maintain status. Failure to pay debts. Gambling more than we can afford to lose, or to win unearned profits. Unnecessary borrowing or carelessness with others’ money. Expenditure on self of what is needed for the welfare of others.

Penuriousness. Undue protection of wealth or security. Selfish insistence on vested interests or on claimed rights. Refusal to support or help those who have a claim on us. Sponging on others. Stinginess. Failure to give due proportion of our income to Church and charity, or of our time and energy to good works. Failure to pay pledges promised to the Church or charities, when able to do so.

Kind of eye-opening, isn’t it, especially considering it is just one of seven sins? If I am ever feeling a little holier than thou, all I have to do is open up the St. Augustine’s Prayer Book to the Self-examination, and I quickly regain some humility.

But the Third Week in Lent is about generosity and giving. I think this poem by the Poet Laureate of Arizona says it well:

When Giving Is All We Have

Alberto Ríos – 1952-

                                              One river gives
                                              Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

 

Quincey P. Morris

Tags

Fiction, Historical Fiction, vampires

I’ve had to completely switch gears on what I’m writing in order to have an actual agent look at my work. The past week has been spent doing research, research, research. So, now that I have a basic book outline, I need to work on character descriptions. So who would you choose as my Quincey P. Morris model? And in case you haven’t read Dracula by Bram Stoker, Quincey is the American from Texas, one of the three men who ask for Lucy Westenra’s hand in marriage.

Tall and dark?

In between?

Blonde and blue-eyed?

A Spring in the Desert

Tags

Books, Desert wisdom, Devotional, Forward Movement

Frank and I have a new book coming out for Lent 2020 called A Spring in the Desert:

Jesus stepped out of the water of baptism into uninhabitable wilderness, emerging forty days later to offer the water of life for those thirsting for God’s presence. A little more than two centuries later, a group of Christians withdrew from a spiritually barren Roman Empire to find their faith blossom in the stony soil of the Egyptian desert.

We offer a Lenten journey inspired by the many passages of scripture that use images of water in the desert as a sign of the healing and wholeness that come through God alone. To this we add the distilled wisdom of the Desert Mothers and Fathers and the surprisingly rich inspiration of the plants and animals that thrive in an arid land. Along the way, we share the ways our faith speaks to the barren places in our lives and how those times of drought can be a source of strength.

You can preorder it here: A Spring in the Desert

We have also created a video class to go along with it featuring 20 5-minute classes; See the intro video here:

A Spring in the Desert

A Way to the Manger

Tags

Advent, Books, Christianity, Christmas, Devotional

Now available for pre-order, my husband Frank, and I, have written a week of devotions for this book from Forward Movement:

Explore Christ’s birth as recounted in the Gospel of Luke through the lens of the Way of Love and the seven practices of turn, learn, pray, worship, bless, go, and rest. With daily devotions of personal stories, modern examples, art, and invitations to prayer and journaling, the authors challenge you to discover and incorporate these practices into your own life. During Advent and Christmas, walk with the shepherds and the angels, Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah, and Anna and Simeon. All of their paths—as well as yours—lead to the same destination: the humble manger where Love was born.

For more info, see here: A Way to the Manger

Camp NaNoWriMo

Tags

Books, Fantasy, Fiction, novel, writing

I’ve decided to take a break from A Sand County Almanac while I work on my current project, Eliora.

A promise made a decade ago brings two former lovers back together again. But Sigrim is engaged to be married to Hanne, and Eliora is being wooed by the very jealous Bela. A series of misunderstandings sets up a feud between Sigrim and Bela that comes to a head more than twenty years later.

I have decided rather than set this book in the past of this world, which would involve a lot of research to make it historically correct, I will set it in a future Thirteen Kingdoms and it will take place a couple of centuries following the events of The Hallowed Treasures Saga.

The trilogy is currently available on Kindle for 99¢ each.

October

Tags

A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, Autumn, October

by Charles W. Schwartz

It is October in Wisconsin and Aldo Leopold turns to the subject of the fall hunt. I have to admit that I have only been hunting once in my life and that was because I was doing a story for a daily newspaper on a hunting club.

They tried to fool this Girl Scout into thinking that golden raisins were deer scat, but I knew better. Once they realized I (my husband who was photographing the story had hunting experience) wasn’t a nature novice, I was treated with more respect and had a wonderful time. And I never told them that I was secretly pleased that no deer died by our hands that weekend.

But in A Sand County Almanac, Leopold reminisces about hunting for grouse and pheasants:

“There are two kinds of hunting:” he begins, “ordinary hunting and ruffed-grouse hunting.

“There are two place to hunt grouse: ordinary places, and Adams County.

“There are two times to hunt in Adams: ordinary times, and when the tamaracks are smoky gold.”

Smoky gold tamaracks

“The tamaracks change from green to yellow when the first frosts have brought woodcock, fox sparrows, and juncos out of the north,” he writes. “Troops of robins are stripping the last white berries from the dogwood thickets, leaving the empty stems as a pink haze against the hill. The creekside alders have shed their leaves, exposing here and there an eyeful of holly. Brambles are aglow, lighting your footsteps grouseward.”

Musing on an abandoned farm that he passes, Leopold becomes aware that his dog has  been “pointing patiently these many minutes.”

“I walk up,” he writes, “apologizing for my inattention. Up twitters a woodcock, batlike, his salmon breast soaked in October sun. Thus goes the hunt.”

Leopold then reflects on early risers, what he says is a “habitual vice in horned owls, stars, geese, and freight trains.”

by Charles W. Schwartz

“Some hunters acquire it from geese,” he continues, “and some coffee pots from hunters. It is strange that of all the multitude of creatures who must rise in the morning at some time, only these few should have discovered the most pleasant and least useful time for doing it.”

“Early risers,” he writes later, “feel at ease with each other, perhaps because, unlike those who sleep late, they are given to understatement of their own achievements. Orion [the constellation], the most widely traveled, says literally nothing. The coffee pot, from its first soft gurgle, underclaims the virtues of what simmers within. The owl, in his trisyllabic commentary, plays down the story of the night’s murders. The goose on the bar, rising briefly to a point of order in some inaudible anserine debate, lets fall no hint that he speaks with the authority of all the far hills and the sea.

“The freight, I admit, is hardly reticent about his own importance, yet even he has a kind of modesty: his eye is single to his own noisy business, and he never comes roaring into somebody else’s camp. I feel a deep security in this single-mindedness of freight trains.”

by Charles W. Schwartz

“One way to hunt partridge,” Leopold notes, “is to make a plan, based on logic and probabilities, of the terrain to be hunted. This will take you over ground where the birds ought to be.

“Another way is to wander, quite aimlessly, from one red lantern to another. This will likely take you where the birds actually are. The lanterns are blackberry leaves, red in October sun.”

Guess which is Leopold’s preferred method.

“Red lanterns,” he continues, “have lighted my way on many a pleasant hunt in many a region, but I think that blackberries must first have learned how to glow in the sand counties of central Wisconsin.”

The red lanterns of fall . . .

“At sunset on the last day of the grouse season,” Leopold concludes, “every blackberry blows out his light. I do not understand how a mere bush can thus be infallibly informed about the Wisconsin statutes, nor have I ever gone back the next day to find out. For the ensuing eleven months the lanterns glow only in recollection. I sometimes think that the other months were constituted mainly as a fitting interlude between Octobers, and I suspect that dogs, and perhaps grouse, share the same view.”