doll on a music box

It was too windy to play outside. I mean, tornado warnings - in Arizona! So we put on dresses and acted out the Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang song, "Doll on a Music Box." We wish we could have done it as well as Truly Scrumptious - but we did our best to fabricate the mechanical key-turning sounds to signal the changes in our posture.

love is walking hand in hand

The picture is of my brother and me - at ages 3 and 2, respectively. We are wearing our parents' down vests which, my mother reminds me, were very 'in' at the time. I love how tightly our hands are clasped; I love how unbridled our joy is, the joy of children before they have become aware that they have 'selves' to project and protect and get in the way of all sorts of things. But most of all I love the little blonde boy in the picture... he is all grown up now, except for - well, except for a great many things. And that is just one of the things I love about him.

gesticulations

jaune

Seeing

The latest volume of "Seeing the Every Day" arrived in my mailbox yesterday along with a note from my grandmother. She raised nine children and her advice to me was as simple as the themes woven into the pages of this magazine: "Your girls are growing fast. Enjoy them while they're little."

I was overcome with an urge to clear my schedule, squeeze some lemons into lemonade, and spend the afternoon sitting on a porch swing reading picture books to the girls. I couldn't resist photographing the cover - is there a more beautiful color than celadon blue? - along with my favorite oven timer, a reminder that my Grandmother, of course, is right. My time is limited - one day these babes will be grown and gone; and I want to be vigilant about making room in my life to be swept up by the small things... I know one day I'll look back and recognize how big they really were.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

“What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? And what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” ~Mark 8.14-15

People are as different as flowers – we may all start out naked and screaming, but we have been created differently. In other words, you will never plant a rosebush and end up preening violets. But not only are we innately different, we are planted in different locations; brought up under differing conditions; we bloom at different times; emit different “aromas;” and exhibit an infinitely different array of colors.

For this reason, our values differ. What inspires awe and wonder in you may cause me to throw up my hands in bewilderment or disdain.

But where we are the same, where we are basically different manifestations of the same type, is in our intrinsic desire to worship… to glory in something, to prize one thing above another, to say, this – this more than that is worth living for, fighting for, dying for. In short, we all bend our knee to something…

When a man's inclinations are directed toward God the Christian calls this just adoration; when they are directed toward other people or things - or even ideologies - we call it idolatry.


Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is a book about what happens when a man - Dorian Gray - surrenders to idolatry.

Initially, Dorian's brand of idolatry presents itself in the form of vanity. His pristine appearance attracts the attention of a painter named Basil who declares Dorian his "ideal," and insists upon painting his portrait. Once complete, the painting is dubbed a masterpiece. But over Dorian it has a particular power: the moment he looks upon it his sense of his own beauty is aroused; and with it, the horrible realization that he will someday grow old and ugly.

And so in a moment’s madness, Dorian makes a mad wish: he offers to exchange his soul for the likeness of the portrait.

Ten, twenty years pass by. Outwardly Dorian remains as handsome and unspoiled as he was on that budding day in June when the portrait was first completed; but hidden in an upstairs room beneath a sheath of velvet, his portrait lives to record the image of his soul. With every act of betrayal, every stroke of malice, every assertion of self-will, the painting devolves until it becomes a grotesque image of corruption and decay.

In the meantime, Dorian's life has taken on the qualities of a work of art. Life is a play of which he is the author; and people are mere characters, “written out” or extinguished, if they fail to act out the part he has assigned to them. Human behavior is not evaluated in terms of "right" and "wrong;" but in terms of what is beautiful or ugly, dramatic or undramatic, interesting or tiresome. "That is all." In this sense, people are not “real” to Dorian but instead they are dolls in a dress-up parlor, valuable only to the degree that they succeed in satisfying his lusts or appealing to his sense of 'drama.'

This is precisely what happens when we give our souls in worship to that which is not God: we will ultimately sacrifice everything – not just our physical and spiritual well-being, but people, even those dearest to us – for that thing, whatever it may be.

The story reaches its climax when Dorian leads Basil upstairs and, in a moment of passionate exchange, flings off the curtain to reveal a look at the picture, now utterly unrecognizable to the painter who painted it.

“Christ!" Basil cries, "What a thing I must have worshiped! It has the eyes of a devil.”

And so we will all exclaim when once we are given an unmediated look at those areas in our lives where we have been guilty of idolatry.

“Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him, Basil,” Dorian says. And so his character proves.

Above all, The Picture of Dorian Gray magnificently illustrates the point that man is, principally, a spiritual being; that his actions have spiritual consequences; and that what he chooses to worship will ultimately enslave him, resulting in either his downfall or his redemption.

As Dorian himself admits, "The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each of us. I know it.”

Everyone should read this book.

Through the Looking-Glass

I don't know about you but evenings are often the hardest times for me to stay spiritually focused. I am usually tired; and it’s easy to let mad thoughts run wild.

Last night’s battle was particularly thick … and so I did what I always do in moments of acute psychological crisis: I reached for a box of chocolates and a book. The one lying on my bedtable just now is Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and it is wonderful.

I opened to where I’d left off: Alice is standing on the edge of the forest in Looking-Glass world, talking with the White Queen. The sky is growing light and Alice, who mistook a large crow for the sunset, is relieved:

“‘The crow must have flown away, I think,’ said Alice. ‘I’m so glad it’s gone. I thought it was the night coming on.”

‘I wish I could manage to be glad!’ the Queen said. ‘Only I never can remember the rule. You must be very happy, living in this wood, and being glad whenever you like!’

‘Only it is so very lonely here!’ Alice said in a melancholy voice; and, at the thought of her loneliness, two large tears came rolling down her cheeks.

‘Oh, don’t go on like that!’ cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair.

‘Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you’ve come today. Consider what o’clock it is. Consider anything, only don’t cry!’

Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. ‘Can you keep from crying by considering things?’ she asked.

‘That’s the way it’s done,’ the Queen said with great decision: ‘nobody can do two things at once, you know.’”

I dog-eared the page and leaned back in wonder. Why but for the Christian that IS precisely how it’s done! I thought. At least, in a way.

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to remain angry when you are considering the charge to "Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice;" and to "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you" (Eph. 4.31-32)?

How difficult it is to ruminate on an unjust word when you consider Christ, who, “...while being reviled, did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously!”

It is so very hard to be ungrateful when I remember Paul's bold declaration to the Philippians: “[M]y God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4.19).

But responding in this way to the trials of life necessitates a kind of mental discipline; it requires the willful act of choosing one thing over another, of electing ‘this’ instead of ‘that’ - often in defiance of one's deepest feelings and inclinations.

Perhaps my biggest challenge is willing myself to move these words from the pages of my Bible to the deepest recesses of my heart; and to discipline my mind to meditate on the words of God when it is often much easier to compose elaborate arguments against Him.

In such moments, my greatest motivator to overcoming my own obstinate nature is the fact that when I open my Bible I am being given the opportunity to encounter a Person.

For the Bible is not just a compilation of words, written to delight or distract me from my current emotional crisis. Neither is it a self-help guide to positive thinking. No, it is a means of accessing the living, breathing Savior of the Universe. As a living testament, it reveals not only God’s character, but God Himself: and where the Spirit of Christ is, there is power - power to sanctify and cleanse, but most importantly to transform the parts of my mind which would otherwise conform to the thoughts and opinions of this world.

For all of these reasons, I consider meditating on Scripture to be the best form of psychotherapy there is … not only because it is a means of gaining intimacy with Christ - though that should be reason enough all on its own - but because it works.

"And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." ~Romans 12.2

Objects D'Inspiration

Evocations

In Case I'm Feeling Blue

...all I have to do is take a look at you.