When the Universe Paused and Held Its Breath...

This morning, as I was flipping through The Liturgy of the Hours to find my place in Lauds, my eye fell on the following selection in the Office of Readings. The harrowing of hell, when Christ descended to the abode of the dead to free the imprisoned souls of the just, is a popular theme in Early and Middle English literature, especially in the mystery plays. I've always found them charming -- a sort of early Catholic fan fiction. In the Creed, we affirm that "he descended into hell" -- but no one knows exactly what it was like. It is a gap which human imagination longs to fill.

I suppose this sermon is much older. In a fictionalized form, it depicts the meeting of Adam, the first man, and Christ, the new Adam.

From an ancient homily on Holy Saturday
(PG 43, 439, 451, 462-463)

The Lord descends into hell

Something strange is happening — there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and Hell trembles with fear. He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, He who is both God and the Son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the Cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone, ‘My Lord be with you all.’ Christ answered him: ‘And with your spirit.’ He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.’

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in Hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I in you; together we form one person and cannot be separated.

For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the Cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in Paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in Hell. The sword that pierced Me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly Paradise. I will not restore you to that Paradise, but will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The Bridal Chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The Kingdom of Heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

National Grammar Day

Today is National Grammar Day, hosted this year by Mignon Fogarty (a.k.a. Grammar Girl). Click here to join in the festivities which include a special Grammar Day song.

Naturally, my favorite part was the links to a grammar noir series written by writer and editor John MacIntyre on his blog, "You Don't Say."

Part I, 2010

Part II, 2010

Part III, 2010

As for myself, I plan to celebrate by curling up with a nice grammar book today. But which one? My trusty copy of Warriner's English Grammar and Composition? (I picked it up at a church rummage sale for only 10 cents and it has given me decades of useful service.) My massive copy of Writing Handbook by Bernard J. Streicher, S.J.? It's my go-to source for when to capitalize religious terms. One of Karen Elizabeth Gordon's slim, light-hearted volumes such as The Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed. Or perhaps the granddaddy of them all, The Elements of Style by Strunk & White. I think that may have been my very first grammar purchase, either at the end of high school or the very beginning of my freshman year at college.

I suppose there is something pathetic about admitting that one enjoys reading grammar books. How much worse it must be to admit to having two shelve's worth of books about words, grammar, and writing. Can we say, "doesn't have a life"? But given my love of reading, is it surprising that words and the use of words are the very breath of life to me?

Administrative Update

A troll has seriously spammed my comments, so until further notice I have enabled Comment Moderation. It seems to be a somewhat inept troll since all the posts it "commented" on were one or two years old. But it was such a pain to delete them (over a dozen!) that I'd like to prevent any further occurrance.

In a World of Books

I liked this little walk through a book world:

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

This stop motion film was made for 4th Estate Publisher's 25th anniversary. I don't know anything about this particular publisher or its books, but I loved the image of the little man coming out of a volume and walking through a world of books. (By the way, if you have trouble watching it, be sure to click the HD IS OFF button.)

When I was a little girl, I couldn't help feeling that there was something magically alive about books. That if one could only find the key, one could, like Gumby, slip inside a favorite title and live in its world. Though I suppose it would feel dreadfully Calvinist to live inside a book you'd already read. Everything would seem depressingly preordained. (I recall in Edgar Eager's Time Garden, when the children wrangled a trip into Little Women from the Natterjack, how relieved they were that Beth was home with a cold that day rather than out sledding with Jo and Laurie. They'd felt a bit queasy at the thought of meeting her, knowing that she dies in the second volume.

Or perhaps a book's characters might somehow slip into our world. I still recall a very old cartoon (Was it a Max Fleisher or a Warner Brothers?) which took place in a bookstore. During the night the book characters crept out and frolicked on the shelves. Seemed plausible to me.

7 Quick Takes - Catch All Edition

Seven Quick Takes hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary

1. Seraphic not only finished "Eilidh and the Empty Fame," but she's now posting segments of "Eilidh and the Christmas Spirit." If you were pitching this as a movie it would be "Bertie and Jeeves, only female and in Scotland -- and um, Catholic." Though it seems to me that some of Lady Bramble's relatives could have wandered in from an Evelyn Waugh novel. Both stories are posted here (in reverse order since it's a blog). I really like Catholic fiction that's not what people expect when they see that label.

2. Yesterday, while shelving books in the library, I noticed an unintentionally amusing title: The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by Andre Compte-Sponville. We aides aren't supposed to pause to read jacket blurbs, so I'm not sure how the author reconciles spirituality with a belief in the existence of nothing beyond the material world. Perhaps, like many people, he equates spirituality with simply being nice. (Reviews on Amazon are mixed.)

3. I had a really weird dream last night, possibly triggered by my visit to the Road to California quilt show on Sunday. Though the details have faded, I distinctly remember that I was in search of dish towels with embroidered redwork designs showing Cthulhu engaged in different chores for each day of the week. You know, wash on Monday; iron on Tuesday; sew on Wednesday; etc. When I was a girl, you could buy Aunt Martha's iron-on embroidery transfers for this sort of thing at Woolworth's. But they featured cute little girls, kittens, or duckies. Not Cthulhu. And the really odd thing is that I don't think I've ever read any Lovecraft.

4. Having recently noticed that Neil Gaiman won the Newbery in 2009 for The Graveyard Book, I decided to give it a go. Ho, hum! An interesting premise -- human baby raised by the ghosts in the local graveyard -- but rather disjointed in execution. Perhaps that is not surprising since the author says that it took him twenty-some years to write the book and that it initially started with what is now chapter four. The Graveyard Book doesn't really begin to act like a novel until near the end.

5. For more timely Newbery excitement, click over to Everyone's a Winner as Peter Sieruta of Collecting Children's Books uses Twitter and a cell phone to help a book seller friend place her orders for the new award winners as they are being announced so that she'll have have copies in stock for the Award Day rush.

I was very glad to help her out. In these uncertain times, independent bookstores -- the kind where they know your name and make personal recommendations -- are having a terrible time competing with the big chains and dot.com dealers. When Awards Day rolls around, everyone --from local libraries to first edition collectors -- calls or drops by my friend's store, trying to find the winning titles. So it was very important that she have these books in stock; her business depended on it.

I also enjoyed reading his reflections on the books that won and those that didn't.

6. Who knew that there was a blog devoted to the Dewey Decimal system? Appropriately, it is called 025.431: The Dewey Blog. Tuesday's entry concerns dark matter and the Milky Way.

The comprehensive (and interdisciplinary) number for dark matter is 523.1126 Dark matter; an example of a work classed there is In Search of Dark Matter.

The comprehensive (and interdisciplinary) number for the Milky Way is 523.113 Milky Way; an example of a work classed there is The Milky Way.

Where should a work about dark matter as part of the Milky Way be classed?

If this is the geeky sort of thing that makes your heart go pitter-pat (and I have to admit that mine does), click here to find the answer and the reasoning behind it. Someday I'll have to write about the fun I had cataloging the library at my previous parish.

7. Have you been to see my other blog, Quilting Bibliophagist? (When I'm not reading, I quilt.)

Don't Go Out Without One

". . . Laurie led the way from room to room, letting Jo stop to examine whatever struck her fancy; and so at last they came to the library, where she clapped her hands, and pranced, as she always did when especially delighted. It was lined with books, and there were pictures and statues, and distracting little cabinets full of coins and curiosities, and sleepy-hollow chairs, and queer tables, and bronzes;l and best of all, a great open fire-place, with quaint tiles all round it.

"What richness!" sighed Jo, sinking into the depth of a velvet chair, and gazing about her with an air of intense satisfaction. "Theodore Laurence, you ought to be the happiest boy in the world," she added impressively.

"A fellow can't live on books," said Laurie, shaking his head . . ."

--Little Women by L.M. Alcott

Oh, I don't know. A fellow might try.

I remember, when I was in high school, standing in line to enter the gym for one of those mandatory pep rallies which regularly interrupted our alleged education. As usual, I'd brought a book to help me endure the tedium. (I am so not into sports!) Upon seeing me, a girl whom I knew slightly gave a snort of exasperation and said, "You know, there is more to life than books." Without raising my eyes from the page, I replied, "Yes, but there's more to life with a book than without." I'm still pretty much of that opinion. Cosmically speaking, books may not be the most important things in life. But they certainly help you get through the bad bits.

Elidith and the Empty Frame

Canadian writer Seraphic is on another fiction spree at her current blog, Seraphic Goes to Scotland. It's called "Elidith and the Empty Frame," and has a lovely tone inspired by, but not slavishly imitative of, P.G. Wodehouse. (Think Bertie & Jeeves, only female and in Scotland.)

The sunbeam, hitting me at that particular moment and at that particular angle, had all the force of an atomic bomb. With a shriek, I threw a pillow over my pulsating head. My first thought, of course, was that Edinburgh had been vapourised. But, since cogito ergo sum still seemed to apply, I attempted speech.

“Eilidh?”

“Good morning, Lady Bramble.”

“Are we dead?”

“It would seem not, Lady Bramble.”

“That bright flash did not, in fact, betoken a catastrophic event?”

“Och no, Lady Bramble. It’s a bonny day, aye.”

I had a dekko around the pillow. The girl was clutching a velvet curtain in her hand and looking out upon Moray Place with a pleased expression not unlike that of old Angus Bàn, my grandpapa’s factor, when sitting down to a new-cooked trout.

“It’s bloody early for it to be day,” I said. “It strikes me as rather unfair.”

“But, Lady Bramble, it is nine o’clock.”

That put a different complexion on things. I removed the pillow.

“Good heavens,” I said. “Is it really? Whatever was I up to last night?”

To read all of the chapters, click on the Elidith label at the bottom of chapter 1. Then scroll down. Since they are on a blog, the chapters are in reverse order.

I am following it avidly though I fear that she will break off the narrative at some point -- either because she decides that it has no future, or because she suspects that it does and wants to make us wait until it's published.

BTW, Seraphic has a book coming out this spring from Novalis based on her original blog, Seraphic Single. It's called Seraphic Singles: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Single Life. I plan to pre-order as soon as it shows up on Amazon.