____the Rafters Scriptorium

The Ballad of Jane (Austen)

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 04:23:00 +0000

Below is a filk I wrote recently while on a bit of a Jane Austen kick. I couldn’t help it, the chorus kept ringing in my head….Jane! The lady called Jane!

I hereby release these verses into the public domain, so have fun! I would however appreciate it if you could try to keep my authorship attached if you should repost it. I would also love to hear if you have added any more verses—feel free to make suggestions in the comments to this post—and if you can capture any performance on YouTube or the like, please let me know!

For any who don’t get what this is all about, have a look at this blog post:

and now, without further ado, we present:

The Heroine of Hampshire or, The Ballad of Jane (Austen)

A Lady

aka Donna Farley

Jane! The lady called Jane!

She put down her sewing and picked up her pen

She wrote about ladies and rich gentlemen

Our love for her now is not hard to explain

The Heroine of Hampshire, the lady called---Jane! (spoken, aside: Austen, that is…)

Now Jane saw the unmarried ladies

Just wanting to get on with life

But their homes were threatened by entailments

(in Mrs. Bennett’s voice): “They need a rich man in want of a wife!”

So Jane said, “Let me invite you to my shindig—

It’s all about Prejudice and Pride.

The gentlemen will all be dressed in tightpants

Because they are in want of a bride.”

Oh, Jane! The lady called Jane! ….

Now the Bennets had five lovely daughters

Lizzy, Mary, Kitty, Lydia, and Jane

(spoken, aside: Not the same Jane as Jane Austen the Heroine of Hampshire, you understand, just a character in her book, and not even the main character, that’s Jane Bennet’s sister Lizzy, also known as Eliza, Elizabeth, and Miss Elizabeth Bennet. In the eighteenth century, Jane is a name as common as pins.)

All right, let’s try that verse again—

Now the Bennets had five lovely daughters

Lizzy, Mary, Kitty, Lydia, and Jane.

Not one prospect of a husband amongst them,

But at least they had a good family name.

(Though I’ve heard that there was another sister

--the family had to have her locked away

In some backwater place known as Canton--

As I recall it, Vera was her name.)

Oh Jane! The lady called Jane! (sing it! Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane—Austen!)

She put down her sewing and picked up her pen

She wrote about ladies and rich gentlemen

Our love for her now is not hard to explain

The Heroine of Hampshire, the lady called---Jane!

When the Bingleys invited the Bennets

To come to the Netherfield ball

The sisters put on cunning bonnets

So the rich men would dance with them all.

Now, Mister Darcy gave a poor first impression

And Lizzy’s family made her want to die

This romance would never find expression--

Till Darcy noticed Lizzy’s fine pair of eyes.

Jane, the lady called Jane…(spoken: Jane Austen’s pen is just getting warmed up now, folks!)

Then Lydia ran off with Mister Wickham

While her mother collapsed in a faint

Darcy said, “Lizzy dear, I love you but I fear

Your family is quite a disgrace!”

Lizzy said, “Sir you know I am a lady

But a gentleman you certainly are not.

Man up! I need a big damn hero!

And you are the only one I’ve got.”

Jane, the lady called Jane….

Well Darcy was properly chastened.

As it turned out, he wasn’t all that proud,

So when Lizzy got a look at his mansion

She said, “All right, I’ll marry you now!”

The young man having changed his manner

The young woman therefore changed her mind

Now Jane Austen’s novel had a happy ending

And the marriage register was signed.

Oh Jane! The lady called Jane! (sing it! Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane—Austen!)

She put down her sewing and picked up her pen

She wrote about ladies and rich gentlemen

Our love for her now is not hard to explain

The Heroine of Hampshire, the lady called---Jane!

Now this is just one of Jane’s stories

(I haven’t yet read all the rest)

She wrote five other very clever novels

Back in the day on the old Earth That Was

So here’s an end to the ballad of Jane Austen

A heroine for you and for me

I hope that you’ll read all her stories

And I hope that you find Serenity.

Oh Jane! The lady called Jane!

She put down her sewing and picked up her pen

She wrote about ladies and rich gentlemen

Our love for her now is not hard to explain

The Heroine of Hampshire, the lady called---Jane!

==========================================

The Original “Ballad of Jayne (The Hero of Canton)” from Firefly

lyrics and easy guitarchords found here:

Or listen to it here:

And lastly—I don’t know who these people are other than fellow Browncoats, but they do have pretty cunning bonnets and that makes them THE COOLEST.

Tracy McMillan- The Sequel: Jane Austen's Evil Twin

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 17:00:00 +0000

The recent spate of discussions on Facebook over Tracy McMillan’s snarkticle “Why You are Not Married” got me thinking about the huge challenges our Christian singles face, both men and women.

And I think Tracy McMillan is Jane Austen’s evil twin. Or maybe just wannabe.

The Huffington Post article is here.

My response is in my previous blog post.

Having made that lengthy post in response to the article, here in Part Two I address not so much the article per se as the flurry of excited reposts.

Now, I want to begin by mentioning that the single men who crowed at McMillan’s caricaturization of today’s wannabe-brides as bitchy, shallow, slutty, selfish liars who have poor self-esteem—those men who crowed do actually have some excuse. They are trying as desperately as single women to navigate the murky waters of today’s marriage market. The article is so funny to them because it actually does speak to their unfortunate experiences with some women.

And kudos to those single women in the various discussion forums who had the humilty to admit that, yes, there is a grain of truth to it all.

Props also to the loyal and true and honest married women who piped up in defence of their single sisters with the obvious: this constellation of nasty character flaws is shared out equally enough among married women and single women. (Some of the points no doubt apply to men, married or unmarried, as well.)

But those married women, and even married men for gosh sakes, who saw this mud flung at the single ladies and then snickered and made cutting remarks sotto voce to each other, like the Bingley sisters at the country dance, looking down on the local girls in their outdated ball dresses…

Ahem. Mr. Knightley has a few words for you.

If your Facebook community were Jane Austen’s world, it would be a country shire full of people who know what you are saying about them to whom. Believe it or not, everything that gets posted on Facebook is personal—or at least has the potential for personal repercussions.

So go down your long, long list of Facebook friends and look at all the single ladies. If, before you posted your ‘likes’ you didn’t think about how offensive Tracy McMillan’s article could be to those who are single by chance not choice, perhaps you have been what Ms. McMillan calls ‘selfish’, or more precisely, self-centered.

On the other hand, if you –did- think of any of those single ladies before you gave thumbs up to the list of character flaws slapped onto them by Tracy like a mailing label addressed to hell, maybe you just committed an act of passive-aggression. Something that’s generally loathed by both men and women who are on the receiving end of it, in my experience (Tracy really missed the boat on that one when she didn’t include it in her list of courtship-killers). In any case, the single ladies who found your ‘likes’ on her vicious remarks would have to wonder, Is that how they see me? And do they really mean to tell me so in this indirect way?What am I supposed to do about it? (And later, perhaps: Well, who the hell asked them, anyway?)

You see, in Jane Austen terms, you married ladies are the haves, and the single ladies are the have-nots. In our confused but sometimes still stratified postmodern social order, you have a “higher status” than they do. Although each of them, just like you, was born a Gentleman’s daughter, in terms of the “wealth” of marital status you are rich and they, like Miss Bates, are poor.

And Mr. Knightley says of hitting people while they are down, Badly done, Emma!

I call Tracy McMillan Jane Austen’s evil twin because, very much like Jane, she has made some sharp observations of the particular world in which she moves. However, Jane’s satire of the foibles of her fellow gentry is fine and accurate as needlepoint, while Tracy’s is a post-modern in-your-face performance piece: ugly as sin and yet astoundingly self-righteous in a way that Jane’s work never is.

To the single fellas who thought the article was hilarious because Jane’s evil twin had managed, in the middle of her snark, to put a finger on some of the things that discourage young men from coming courting these days: Mr. Knightley may not have anything specific to say to you, but I believe you may well have earned yourself the disapprobation of the likes of Mr. Darcy and Colonel Brandon. And if you do not know what the heck I am talking about, time to swot up on your Jane Austen, if you ever truly hope to make a match with a suitable young lady. You too need to have a look at all the single ladies in your friend list and think about how your enthusiasm for Jane’s evil twin sounded to them. Let us hope that your approval of Tracy McMillan’s rude and unkind terms describing them has not already so lowered you in all their estimation that they will ‘cut’ you in public (that’s the Austen equivalent of defriending, in a big way and with great savoir faire.) It is possible you will never know how they might one day have received your suit, “had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.”

No, we don’t live in Jane’s world any more, so Tracy McMillan’s article is quite explicable in terms of her life experience. She is a worldling, and one much in need of compassion due to her history. It is not surprising, although it is annoying, that she is utterly oblivious of the very existence of both men and women who do put character first, and who choose chastity while they wait to find their proper mate. I don’t blame her so much for the stupidity of spewing all over an entire class of fellow females in the article, though I think her conclusion is a hypocritical and fatuous attempt at some kind of postmodern ‘spirituality’. But oddly enough she has lived a life in some ways just as constrained and narrow as Jane Austen did, though Tracy seems to be unaware of her own lack of freedom.

What I did find appalling was the speed with which the chortles at this ugliness made their way around Christian circles. Christian singles have a hard enough time as it is, being made to feel in subtle and mostly unintentional ways that they are failures in some way for not yet having found the person to whom they wish to be yoked for a lifetime of service in and to Christ. To have this sledge hammer of mockery lowered upon them is way over the top.

The ancient attitude to humour was rather negative, it must be said, and the reason is that so much humour is in fact aggressive at heart. Jane Austen’s humour is, as I said above, subtle and artful, but her evil twin’s is violently and crudely mean-spirited.

It certainly does no harm to encourage those Christian ladies hoping one day to be married to behave with discretion, kindness and every other virtue. But it must also be said that a Gentleman’s daughter rightly wishes and expects to one day be wed to a gentleman, and to live in a community where others behave like ladies and gentlemen.

Knightley is able to deliver a deserved rebuke to Emma for her failure to behave like the lady she was born to be because he has known her forever, and Emma knows how much he thinks of her. Mr. Knightley would never stoop to participating in humour that demeans the entire fair sex, nor would he presume to offer even a deserved rebuke to anyone from whom he had not previously earned the right of a hearing.

Be a Knightley, gentlemen, and you will have a good hope of one day finding your Emma, who in turn will experience what Austen’s Emma did: “It darted through her with the speed of an arrow that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!”

Tracy McMillan's Nasty Article about Single Women

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:49:00 +0000

from my Facebook note:

You read my title right. The link is making the rounds on Facebook right now. One commenter said something along the lines of while they agreed with some of the points, they felt it left kind of a nasty taste in their mouth in some way, and I think a closer look at the article will help sort out why.

Yep, it's amusing, and on the surface has some good points. The comments at the Huffington Post (so many that comments have now been closed) are all over the map, from feminists outraged at what looks like a ‘good little wife’ portrait, to men cheering her on, and various other points in between or out in left field.

A few commentators suggested there needs to be a “why you are not married—men’s version” rebuttal article, but I think they have the target completely wrong.

The true rebuttal article should be ‘Why you ARE (or have been) married”.

So let’s see what it would look like if this article was written by single women and addressed to Ms. McMillan. (Warning: some crude words included, necessary to respond directly to those in Ms. McMillan’s article.) Please do not tell me 'but she's talking about herself'; I explain why that is not exactly so further down.

Point for point, Ms. McMillan, why you are married:

1.) You’re a bitch, by which I mean, yes, you are angry. Maybe you are/were married because you managed to find yourself a man who isn’t strong enough to stand up to you. Believe me, there are people who have stayed married for fifty years on that basis. Or, more likely in your case, you are pissed at the way your three marriages turned out, to say nothing of your relationship with your father (check out her memoir if you want to know what that’s about); but in order not to take out your anger on your husband or, let’s face it, yourself, you project the anger—onto, say, single women. You deal with your life’s disappointments with an aggressive style of humour.

2.) You’re shallow. You could be making the world a better place by being single and spending your time volunteering with the Peace Corps overseas or with a local soup kitchen. Instead you spent a year’s income on the dress, the party, and the honeymoon trip. Meanwhile, you didn’t really wait for a man of character—you settled, three times in a row, and the last one was apparently the worst. Shouldn’t you have been learning from the earlier mistakes, and making improved choices as you went on? But the only thing that mattered was that ring on the finger. Oh, and being funny, no matter who gets tarred with the broad brush of your snark.

3.) You’re a slut. You’ve already been married three times, once when you were pregnant. But you still don’t really have the concept of chastity, and blame your neediness for a permanent relationship after you have sex with men on oxytocin. Yet somehow you have decided to quietly ignore that other popular chemical scapegoat, testosterone, and talk about looking for a man of character. Meanwhile, you can’t even imagine that there would be single women of character who aren’t even getting the time of day from men (of character or otherwise) because they are committed to waiting for marriage.

4.) You’re a liar. Your man is cheating on you, and you tell the world you are happily married and that a good little wife should just feed him his mac and cheese.

5.) You’re selfish. All those single women whom you called bitchy, shallow, slutty and liars? You don’t call them that when you want them to babysit your kids for you. (Oh, wait, maybe that one should go under ‘bitchy’ above…)

6.) You’re not good enough. Oh, I don’t think that, you do. You are so thrilled and excited to have made it to the altar, yet you still feel so inferior that you have to put down other women, the women who don’t happen to have a ring on their finger yet, because you are envious of their freedom to do what they want and when, and the kudos and money they are accumulating on their career paths.

Of course, this is not as funny as the original because I don’t write snark for a living. But you get the idea, I hope. If you think many of these points are not only offensive to married women but also ridiculous, you are correct.

Now, I know McMillan wrote her article out of her own experience and when she addresses it to “you”, she sorta means herself. But only sorta.

Because it sounds funnier, in that vicious sort of way that popular snark has, if it’s aimed at somebody else, so she addresses a ‘you’, which the article makes clear is mostly women on career tracks who suddenly wake up and realize they actually do want to get married. Which demographic, in fact, is nother own —she was married three times and had countless other failed romantic relationships. She’s apparently got something against these women whose experience of singlehood is in fact not what her own ever was. And while she has only directly targeted career women who now realize they want to be married, all single women are basically getting sideswiped by the namecalling “bitch” “liar” “selfish” and so on.

And when considering how useful her advice about marriage might be, let’s remember, however amusingly she makes her points, her own relationship track record is piss-poor. She has boasted, and demonstrated, that she knows how to get married—but not that she knows how to stay that way, let alone make it a good marriage too.

Tracy McMillan’s concluding paragraph is so wrong in so many ways— wrong because it’s –almost- right, and then she goes and spoils it. When you get to the most important point of it all—“Accepting your own dear self”—you go back to the beginning and notice what a condescending attitude she has towards men. Worthy of any 19th century missionary out to reform those savage natives. And don’t forget, these aren’t your average men she’s talking about—they’re men of character, because she wouldn’t marry any other kind:

“The bottom line is that marriage is just a long-term opportunity to practice loving someone even when they don't deserve it. Because most of the time, your messy, farting, macaroni-and-cheese eating man will not be doing what you want him to. But as you give him love anyway -- because you have made up your mind to transform yourself into a person who is practicing being kind, deep, virtuous, truthful, giving, and most of all, accepting of your own dear self -- you will find that you will experience the very thing you wanted all along:

Love.”

That bit about transforming herself “into a person who is practicing being kind, deep, virtuous, truthful, giving” is damned poetic, especially the punchy conclusion “the very thing you wanted all along: Love.” Wow, is she ever a wonderful person…I know, because she just told me she is. Even though, with three failed marriages and many bad relationships behind her, she is coyly not telling us in the article if she is currently in a stable relationship or if so how long this one has lasted…..

Meanwhile, the kind, deep, virtuous, truthful, giving Tracy McMillan smugly snarks at single women, blaming them for not being married like she is, and looks down from this towering moral height on those undeserving, farting men.

All I can say is, any man who really wants a woman who thinks like this, deserves what he gets. He may get his macaroni and whatever it is that she calls Love—but he won’t get any respect, for she has none to give to men, women, or herself.

Part Two: Tracy McMillan and Jane Austen

Prevent your vent

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 01:32:00 +0000

When you get cut off in traffic, dissed by acquaintances, or double-crossed by a co-worker, you need to vent, right? Flip them the bird, swear, yell, call them names? Or maybe not vent so directly...instead, rant about it to a friend, pummel a punching bag, run a few miles, break some old dishes?

Not according to the study discussed in this blog post:

"Venting feels great. The problem is, it accomplishes little else. Actually, it makes matters worse and primes your future behavior by fogging your mind....If you think catharsis is good, you are more likely to seek it out when you get pissed. When you vent, you stay angry and are more likely to keep doing aggressive things so you can keep venting. It’s drug-like, because there are brain chemicals and other behavioral reinforcements at work. If you get accustomed to blowing off steam, you become dependent on it."

The study discussed was conducted in the 1990s, but somehow this devotion to venting seems to still be the default in our society. And it explains what I keep seeing in internet discussion forums. Maybe it explains something about the UK riots too. Venting feels good, and we are predisposed to do what feels good. As if that weren't enough, the world keeps telling us we -ought- to do whatever feels good. Saint Nilus the Ascetic says that "anger is akin to gluttony; both result from our craving for personal physical pleasure and psychological self-satisfaction."

The author of the study, Brad Bushman, also notes one particularly worrying matter raised by some of the results regarding 'displaced aggression'. The subjects in the study who read an article falsely claiming the effectiveness of venting their angries by hitting a punching bag, it seems, were also those most likely in a later part of the study to take aggressive action against other persons. Bushman suggests that this raises the possibility that 'media advocacy of catharsis [i.e., displacing your anger in violent physical action] could have the socially undesirable effect of fostering displacement of aggression onto innocent targets.'

Do note that neither the blog author nor Bushman are advocating stuffing your anger down as an alternative. That's the opposite error. But I think it interesting that the traditional Orthodox approach doesn't advocate anything like venting. Anger is one of 'the passions', the inflamed appetites and compulsions that so easily rule us fallen and imperfect humans.

What do the Scriptures and the fathers say about dealing with anger?

Well, I guess we all know the verses about 'Be angry and sin not' and "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath'. Which is our starting point, but in itself only tells us the what and not the why or how.

I find it interesting that some of the sayings from the desert fathers and others have things to say that are right in line with the results of this study.

"The first step toward freedom from anger is to keep the lips silent when the heart is stirred." John Climacus

And here is another, from Partiarch Kyrill of Moscow: "What means does the Church offer us for overcoming the vice of anger? The first and foremost means is silence. Set, O Lord, a watch before my mouth (Psalm 140:3) – we must remember these remarkable words of the psalm each time we suddenly feel the urge to vent our anger against our interlocutor or against someone with whom we work or live. The ability to keep thy tongue from evil means to do good (Psalm 33:13, 15)."
No venting there, eh?

Secular psychologists suggest the same:

"The 4 Ws of Venting: 1. Wait. When you feel triggered, commit yourself to giving some time for the situation to process. In other words, allow that prefrontal cortex to make sense of it all. Angry at a driver? You can choose not to act on your reaction. First, take at least a minute to just breathe."

Bushman suggests that when angered, rather than hit the punching bag, we delay our reaction, relax, or distract ourselves with an activity 'totally incompatible with aggression'. Sounds like:

"Stirrings of anger are calmed by psalmody, magnanimity and mercifulness." Abba Evagrius

Fr. George Morelli describes how a 'time out' to meditate on the goodness and humility of our Lord and of course pray for His help can defuse anger: "We can reflect on the words of St. Mark the Acetic: Do you want the tree of disorder -- I mean the passion of bitterness, anger and wrath -- to dry up within you and become barren, so that with the axe of the Spirit it may be 'hewn down and cast into the fire' together with every other vice (Matt. 3:10) ...If this is really what you want keep the humility of the Lord in your heart and never forget it...Call to mind who He is, and what He became for our sakes. Reflect first on the divine light of His Divinity revealed to the essences above [the angels] (Eph 1:21)...Then think to what humiliation He descended in His ineffable goodness, becoming in all respects like us who were dwelling in the dwelling of darkness and the shadow of death (Mat 4:16)." Petition Our Lord's help in this way to help restructure."

and here is another, on the Jesus prayer:

One more very good article on the topic of anger.

and I'll just stop now. This isn't a very organized post, but all the articles at the links are worth a look, so if you want to prevent your vent, I do urge you to have a look at one or more of them.

No more special than a grain of sand....

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:13:00 +0000

I just found the poem below in a notebook from last year's trip to Rockaway. It seemed such a perfect fit with the story about these images of individual grains of sand, from this story.

Sun like love on my cheek

Breeze like comfort on my shoulders

Clouds like promises bright and full

I have hit the road and won’t turn back

Nothing can stop me now

As I kite down the beach,

Not even the string of mundanity.

I do not need to be more special than any

individual grain of sand on the shore

content to know

I am no less

Christ is Risen! Celebrate the Feast of Feasts

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 04:38:00 +0000

I'm not here...this is being auto-published. Because I'm probably at church, or feasting, or catching a nap between church and feasting....

Everything you didn't even know you wanted to know about Holy Pascha, the Feast of the Resurrection of Our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, aka the Eastern Orthodox Easter, can be found at this wonderful site, Feast of Feasts.

I have two articles among the many by other Orthodox authors. Enjoy the site-- you can spend a lot of time there!

Tearing at Icons

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 22:38:00 +0000

Göreme valley open air museum; Cappadocia, Turkey, photographed by George Jansoone on Wikimedia

Defaced. Desecrated. Mocked. Scorned.

.....and Orthodox Christians are doing it this Lent.

Not to these fresco icons in Turkey, of course. To each other.

I am ashamed.

Each and every one of us human beings is an icon of Christ. Yes, that leper over there too.

Yes, that "gay guy" there and that "right-wing bigot" here and that stuck-up cheerleader here and that abortionist there. Everyone, including these villains we love to hate, according to our own various definitions of villain at any given time.

That woman, that man, that family member, that stranger, who disagrees with you.

Please understand, I am not a relativist. I am not just saying "Why can't we all get along?" I am what most would call a very conservative Christian, though I really detest labels. I am where I am -- in the Orthodox Church-- because I believe it is the true faith. My family did not leave the Anglican Church for Orthodoxy to flee any particular politically correct issue, but because we were already going in the direction of the apostolic Christian faith while our church was going away from it. There is a difference.

I'm not a bandwagon-jumper-on. I'm not an Orthodox Peace Fellowship kinda gal, but if I were American I wouldn't be a tea-partyer either. And yet I am not a Pollyanna either, who thinks we should all stick our heads into our icon corners and stay there.

It's not enough to say, Let's get our minds out of the gutter and concentrate on the beauty of our Orthodox services. Beauty can so easily mask the passion of anger. Beauty will save the world, says Dostoevsky, and I certainly wouldn't argue with him...but unless the beauty we are talking about is soul-deep, it is no better than a whitewashed tomb. We need to face our difficulties, but we don't have to be ugly while we do it.

As St. James says, "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness." We'll be at church this weekend, with our awe-inspiring chant and lovely candlelight and glorious icons...well, and the not-so-glorious icons. The ones that have been dirtied and warped by our fallen nature and our life-wounds. The ones just like us. And next time we look at the internet, we'll be 'seeing' more icons just like us. Why do we think it is okay to 'curse' them, when they are made in God's likeness?

I am not invoking 'civility' as a means of short-circuiting the debates and smoothing over everything nicey-nice. That's the way things tend to be done here in Canada, but as I said, I am a pretty conservative Christian, and thus out of step with the mainstream Canadian culture. I am just saying that lack of civility reflects worse on those who employ it than on their opponents. These tactics are means of defacing and desecrating your fellow human beings, the walking icons that God Himself made.

The troubles disturbing our Lent are not small. We should not ignore them or minimize them, though not everyone can or must spend time engaging in discussions. At the same time, humility demands that we acknowledge that we are like those five blind men and the elephant. I understand that some earlier participants in this brouhaha 'started it', with occasional language that could have been moderated somewhat. But frankly that 'side' of the debate has been far outstripped by the newcomers from the 'other' side, who have attacked them with cruelty and sarcasm that they have honed to a comedic art form. When these newer folks first arrived on the scene, I willingly gave them a hearing as providing another part of the elephant, but now it seems to me they have grown overfond of the sound of their own voices. They seem more excited about the myriad ways they can stick it to the other side, earning applause from their readers for the entertainment, than about finding solutions to our problems.

I personally don't do gentleness very well, so I have a long way to go with this stuff. But for a start, could we stop seeing the mockery and scorn in the satirical headlines, Straw-Man-and-Pharisee videos, and insulting graphics? The truth is, the addiction to these kinds of debate tactics suggests a bondage to the passion of anger. Leaping with delight on every opportunity to mock other church members in dehumanizing ways is exactly like an iconoclast tearing the faces off icons, leaving them blank and unreal. That is, unreal in the minds of the iconoclasts. God knows how real each and every one of us is.

We need to let our light shine before the world-- not run around setting our own brothers' and sisters' hair on fire with our unbridled tongues. How did the early Christians manage to do this? Tertullian paints a picture that looks nothing like our current situation: he says the pagans would remark about the Christians "See, they say, how they love one another, for they themselves are animated by mutual hatred. See, they say about us, how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves would sooner kill."

Wow. Does that sound anything like what's going on across the Ortho-net right now? Maybe Tertullian was painting too flattering a picture of the Christians of his day-- but should we be proud of how far we are from this ideal?

Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 01:01:00 +0000

Everyone who knows me knows about my fondness for Saint Cuthbert. Today is his feast.

If you didn't already know, I have an entire blog dedicated to Saint Cuthbert.

That'll keep you busy for a while!

But if you'd like to just read a short bit about his life, try here.

Saint Patrick of Ireland

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 21:05:00 +0000

He's a biggie. You'll easily find more about him elsewhere. Meanwhile, on my other blog, here's a book review of Paul Gallico's biography of Patrick, The Steadfast Man.

Earthly Pleasures and Villains we Love to Hate

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 00:50:00 +0000

In last night’s PreSanctified Liturgy there were a lot of verses and prayers about turning away from earthly pleasures. That’s one of the things we do in Lent, in order to concentrate on God. It’s not that pleasures, even earthly ones, are bad. As C.S. Lewis mentions in The Screwtape Letters, God is the one who invented pleasures. Pleasures are great. The problem lies not with what God has created, but with us, with our fallen, wildly-out-of-proportion appetites for pleasures.

We get right down to basics when we fast from food, in quantity, variety, and timing. We say no to the very simplest of pleasures, the satisfying of hunger, as well as the attendant pleasures of flavour, texture and temperature. We also say no to the pleasure of freedom of choice, of indulging our preference for heavier, more luxurious foods like meat and dairy, and for our own particular favorites.

The truth is, one reason we need to fast is because we don’t understand pleasure at all. It’s a pointer to the one who made it, a gift made to order by the One who created us and who loves us better than we can imagine. But because we are fallen, we are hooked on pleasure from the beginning. If you fall and break your bones, you will be painfully bruised and swollen, and that is what our appetites are like too.

It’s easy to see that with bodily appetites, but there are pleasures not of the body which are nevertheless earthly, good in the right measure, but deadly as a steady diet. Think of the pleasure of being complimented. Compliments are good in many ways, from forging a relationship to boosting confidence. But like the bodily appetites, our psychological appetites too are often swollen—and the more they are fed, the more ravenous they grow. Unchecked, this growth is thoroughly malignant, and ends in the kind of narcissism often seen in unbalanced celebrities. Much more could be said of this appetite for the pleasure of attention and affirmation in our society, but there is no room in this post.

Perhaps still more chilling is this little quote from Byron:

“Hatred is by far the longest pleasure; men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.”

The Psalms speak of God Himself hating injustice and evildoers, but in God what is called hatred is not the distorted thing we humans make of rejecting wrong and those who perpetrate it. In fiction or the movies, it’s wonderful to have a villain that we ‘love to hate’.

These fictional characters are not real, so it’s safe for us to enjoy the pleasure of hating hate-worthy things in a personified form. But the fallen human pleasure of hatred, when turned on those around us, is I think no longer merely earthly but in danger of becoming diabolic. It is the pleasure of the Pharisee, which savours looking down on the object of our judgement with disdain. Where this leads on a social and international level we have seen in our sorry human history, and can see in the news every day.

And just have a look at those villains we love to hate…fact is, the very reason we hate them is usually because they not only hate us in the persons of the story heroes, they also take pleasure in hating us.

Let's enjoy the melting of the wonderful wickedness of the Witch of the West. But let's do a quick reverse when we find ourselves hating those bad drivers, corrupt politicians, crazy-making neighbours, even sometimes our nearest and dearest and most trusted. Even, sometimes, when the hatred is aimed at someone who is a real life villain-- an abuser or violent criminal. (Well, perhaps not such a quick reverse then-- anger at least is a defense mechanism to help us not foolishly trust the untrustworthy. But hate indulged will eventually hurt us worse than it will hurt the villains.) If you have ever felt hatred being aimed at you, you know it is a powerful force, hurtful and maybe even damaging. And dehumanizing. For you may find the hater has ceased to remember that you are a real person, not a fictional character.

But we are real, and need to remember that the hater is not a fictional character either. If they let themselves progress from hating to enjoying the hating, then they are in great peril of descending into a diabolic form, but it is not too late for repentance while they still draw breath. If we return hate in kind, we are in equal peril.

No mere human is ever truly or entirely the enemy.

Not in Control

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 21:13:00 +0000

My poetry muscles are way out of shape. This is one I started on last year and recently revised a little. --DF

Not in Control

I will not be a band wagon jumper-on.

Truth does not depend on me.

Salt of the earth needs no sugary showers--

the one preserves food, the other rots teeth.

You blame the devil and talk

of enemies

because in the smoke and fog

you can only see darkly

shadows of the unspeakable

and hear echoes of the unthinkable.

Didn't anyone tell you

truth is light

a broom that will sweep away the cobwebs of fear.

Listen don't you get it yet?

We are not in control.

Understand: this is not bondage, but freedom and peace.

Bearing the Saint in podcast now!

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 04:09:00 +0000

Dr. Chrissi Hart of Readings from Under the Grapevine has begun the podcast version of my young adult historical novel, Bearing the Saint. I haven't heard it yet myself, still haven't fixed my speakers (not missing them that much, to tell the truth!) So I would love to hear what you think of the reading....

This program focusing on children's books is found on Ancient Faith Radio, where you will also find my husband's regular Bible Study series, The Coffee Cup Commentaries, along with numerous other enlightening programs. There is one track for talk and another for some of the most glorious music you will ever hear anywhere.

If you like what you hear of Bearing the Saint in the podcast, you can buy the book from several outlets including Amazon.com.

More books by my writer friends!

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:57:00 +0000

A trio of exciting new adventure books for young people.

Linda Finlayson has two new entries in her Risk Takers Series from Christian Focus Publications in the UK. I've read all of these in early draft form. They are fast-paced vignettes of Christian heroes throughout history. Danger and Dedication features characters as diverse as Moses, Paul, William Tyndale, and more modern missionaries to the far east. Fearless and Faithful showcases heroines from Ruth and Abigail to Mary Slessor and Gladys Aylward. This series includes study material such as maps, glossary and quizzes at the back of each book, making it a great resource for Sunday school, Christian schools and homeschoolers. For preteens and teens. You can get these books and Linda's previous three books through Amazon as well as from the publisher.

On the fiction side, Fr. Seraphim Gascoigne brings us The Landing Place, with the exotic and awe-inspiring setting of Mount Ararat in the days of the Russian Empire. The likeable young pilot Nikolai who crashes on the mountain, the mysterious old hermit Simeon and his lovely mute granddaughter Natasha are helped in their quest by the Hasasori caretakers of the mountain. If like me you find you are not too excited by the machinations of the Turkish army captain and his Azeri troops in the early chapters, don't hesitate to continue reading-- Nikolai's adventure on the strange and wild mountain gets better and better as it goes on! Telling you any more would be, well, telling... read more and order a copy here. Teens and older will enjoy this book.

Interview on Facebook group!

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 00:12:00 +0000

Simon Rose interviews me today on Facebook. If you are on Facebook, follow this link to the Children's Writers and Illustrators Group.

Honey and Vinegar

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 04:20:00 +0000

Attitude of entitlement T-shirt from despair.com

I keep hearing about various studies showing that Gen-Y is supposed to think themselves more 'entitled' than any other segment of society. Whatever the statistics say or however the scholars arrived at them, I just don't think any one generation has any monopoly on this insidious attitude.

The other day my husband and daughter got blasted by a neighbour in our condo's parking garage. We are, apparently, 'selfish' for parking the one car we own partly across the line between the two spots that happen to come with the unit we moved into six months ago. It doesn't matter that we pay for the second spot in our strata fees-- this neighbour felt entitled to pull her car through our second "empty" space from her space, which faces ours. She would rather pull ahead through our space than back out of her own space, as everyone else in the garage has to do if they don't happen to have an empty space in front of them. Our failing to park carefully within the lines between our own two spaces was preventing her from doing what she felt entitled to do.

My husband answered her kindly, and explained that with his limited peripheral vision he was afraid of damaging the car on the pillars on the sides if he pulled in too close to them. In fact just a couple of weeks ago our side mirror was damaged. We don't know just when it happened, but it has made us all the more wary of parking too close to the pillars in the underground garage. He didn't really owe her any explanation, of course, because the spaces are ours to do with as we please. I'm lousy at parking too, especially after years of having our own driveway, so I also park well away from the pillars.

The neighbour wasn't mollified by the soft answer from my husband. The crazy thing is, she has apparently fashed herself over this matter for six months. (And I had been helpful to her, too, early on when we moved in, though I suspect she doesn't remember who I am.) She had to know she had no right to demand use of the space-- but in fact she never did actually demand it, let alone ask, she just convinced herself that if we didn't have a second car, she should be able to pull through it; and since our parking prevented that, she did a slow burn till she could contain herself no more. Seemingly she also convinced herself that our motives for parking the way we did were 'selfish', and this justified her telling us off.

But didn't her mommy ever teach her that you get more flies with honey than vinegar?

We park how we park, in our own bought and paid for spaces, because we feel better about it that way. But if instead of chewing us out over something she falsely considered herself entitled to-- if instead of that she had _asked nicely_-- I think we would have thought about trying to adjust to the single parking space and making it possible for her to pull through, even though there would be a risk we might scrape our own car up against the pillars on the other side. Seriously, how easy is it to say "No" to the face of someone who comes and says, I know this may be asking a lot, but it would really help me and I would really appreciate it if you etc etc?

However, people who feel entitled don't ever seem to consider asking nicely.

I saw something similar happen to a friend recently, who was asked to do a favour for another person-- but the 'asking' was done in a manner that made it clear that my friend should consider it an honour to help the other person. As if the other person was the one doing -him- a favour. The favour-asker didn't get what they wanted, and then threw a tantrum and blamed my friend for being uncooperative.

I don't even feel indignant about our neighbour. She's just deluded. But now she's embarrassed herself by this fit of pique. I arrived in the garage from a shopping trip the other day to find her using our spaces to exit a friend's car. I didn't mind in the least waiting a few moments to pull into my spot. I waved and smiled, but she was too embarrassed to meet my gaze and got her friend to move out of the space quickly.

Honey and vinegar. Our neighbour was too focused on her own sense of entitlement to consider just coming to us and asking whether we could maybe park differently because she would find it easier to pull through our spaces than to back up. My friend's favour-asker was too stiff-necked to show a little appreciation and respect of someone who could have helped them greatly with their project.

Something to think about. Is the default condiment for our communication style honey? Or vinegar?

The day has come!

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:48:00 +0000

The Publisher's back cover copy:

Edmund is just an ordinary fisherman¹s son from the island of Lindisfarne, whose one great talent and joy is running as a messenger for his bishop. But when Viking invaders threaten the holy island and its great treasure, the relics of St. Cuthbert, Edmund¹s life changes forever. Along with his whole village, he must accompany their beloved saint on a perilous pilgrimage that will carry him across England, through adventure, heartbreak, miraculous deliverance, and love, all the way to manhood.
Bearing the Saint brings to life the late ninth century in Northumbria, a turbulent period of invasion and conquest that concluded with an uneasy peace between Saxon and Dane. This gripping story, infused with the holy breath of St. Cuthbert, will hold readers of all ages spellbound.

Read Chapter One

The book is currently gone to press and will be in the publisher's warehouse in a few weeks. Review copies are being sent out to a number of outlets in the UK and North America.

Meanwhile, you can Pre-Order from Amazon.com

The Writer's Exciting Secret Identity

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sat, 22 May 2010 00:15:00 +0000

We writers like to commiserate with each other about how little we are understood and appreciated by those around us. But every now and then a special little ego boost comes along, like this one I want to share with you:

I once got a phone call from a woman who had visited our church a while before and picked up a copy of my poetry chapbook at our book table. She wanted to order five more for Christmas stocking stuffers. This was enough to make my day in itself, but it was her next remark that had me walking around grinning all weekend.

"You know," she said, hesitating over her wording, "It's not that I didn't, um, think much of you before, but, well-- you meet somebody, and they seem so _ordinary_, until you realize they've written something like this!"

So remember, gang-- underneath the street clothes, you are wearing the spangly spandex uniform with the big letter "W" for "Writer" emblazoned on your chest!

This video is for you!

Still Fantastic after all these years.....

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Fri, 07 May 2010 01:22:00 +0000

There is nothing quite like that first fiction sale........

Back in the day-- we are talking mid-1980s-- I was living at St. Tikhon's Seminary, and teaching myself to be a writer with self-invented writing exercise that involved long walks in the beautiful Northern Pennsylvania countryside.

I wrote it out longhand, revised, then typed it up on an electric typewriter, making a carbon copy as I went. GOLLY it was a messy business in those days! I won't even think about how it was done in Dickens' day, or Shakespeare's.....

I didn't know the submission protocols so I made a few false steps. Started studying The Writer and Writer's Digest magazines harder. Entered the fledgling Writers of the Future Contest for SF
(which is now celebrating its 25th anniversary) and got to the quarter finals but was not one of the runners-up included in publication. But it was certainly something to include in a cover letter as I went to magazines. I pored through The Writer and the Science Fiction Chronicle (which now seems to be defunct) for markets...these days you'll find more up to date market resources online, of course, but the process of submitting and getting rejected or accepted takes longer than ever, alas.

There were few markets for my story because of the length-- 12,000 words, which is long for a novelette though short for a novella....and most magazines will only take things under 7500, which is the length of a longish short story.

I think it must have been in SF Chronicle that I found the call for submissions to the very first proposed Catfantastic anthology, which made it a perfect match for "It Must Be Some Place". An anthology has a lot more flexibility for length than magazines do, and it was tailored exactly to the subject of my story-- fantastic stories about cats. Mine was about a wizard's apprentice, told from the cat's point of view, a humorous adventure set in Some Place, that strange dimension where lost things end up-- everything from lost musical notes to the socks that disappear in your dryer.

The reply took four months-- but it was a YES! It was a thrill because it was my first sale...and a professional sale at that. Sadly, the rates of pay for short fantastic fiction has scarcely increased at all since that time-- more than twenty years after this sale, the PROFESSIONAL magazines and anthologies still pay only 5-10 cents a word. It can't be helped....it's a buyers' market, and there is too much competition and too small a market.

CATFANTASTIC did better than your average anthology, tapping into a widespread love of cats, even among those who didn't normally read fantasy fiction. In fact it had several printings, spawned further volumes, and I believe has been translated into several languages. And it did so well it paid the contributors ROYALTIES on top of the advances we got-- that's quite unusual for an anthology.

This book was co-edited by one of my favorite childhood writers, Andre Norton

And I was unhappy with one bit of editing she did, but that's a story for another time. I also plan to post a teaser of the opening of the story on my Deja Pubd story archive but it will take awhile, because no electronic file of the story exists, and I will have to type it in by hand.

Meanwhile you can still get hold of it on Amazon.

Found in the Files: A Letter from L'Engle

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:40:00 +0000

Yes, this is a letter I received from that Madeleine.

The story she refers to is "Cold Hands, Warm Heart", which I have reposted in my story archive, Deja Pubd.

Sadly, my final remaining copy of the original publication, an issue of a now-defunct small local zine called Horizons SF from the 1990's, disappeared when I lent it to someone who lost it. (After which I stopped lending my personal copies. Many other writers have made the same mistake I did of lending like this to someone they trusted, only to lose something irreplaceable. A lesson learned the hard way.)

However, the copy I sent to Madeleine, an author I have much admired since I was a child, apparently still remains. A Google egosurf looking for various references to my own writing happened to turn up the odd fact that my story had remained amongst Madeleine's effects. It is now in a box of assorted material (one of many, many boxes!) in the archives containing Madeleine's papers in Wheaton College Library.

My Children's Picture Book now available on Amazon!

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:35:00 +0000

Read more detail about this book, Saint Cuthbert, and my upcoming YA historical novel about the followers of Saint Cuthbert, Bearing the Saint, at my dedicated Saint Cuthbert Blog, HALIWERFOLC.

The Daily KidLit Quote Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:36:00 +0000

Wouldn't it be fun if there was a blog updated every week day with a new quote from Children's literature?

Wouldn't it be more fun if every reader of the blog was welcome to submit their favorite quotes for posting, with remarks about why they like the quote?

Wouldn't it be still more fun if the readers got to include a link to their own website in the post?

And more fun still if the readers who have a KidLit blog can have their blog added to the blogroll?

And the best fun yet to have a daily quote feed onto your own site or blog by adding The Daily KidLit Quote Blog to your own blogroll?

This is my new, just-launched, reader-participation blog, The Daily KidLit Quote Blog.

Come on over and join the fun!

Camellia Chameleon now online and in print!

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 03:28:00 +0000

The Hero with a Thousand Faces......

You can read my Hallowe'en/Fairy Tale/Humour/Urban Fantasy/Superhero/YA story in the fabulous zine of Superhuman fiction, 1000 Faces online now!

In "Camellia Chameleon", a suburban kid suddenly discovers she can change parts of herself at will-- and decides she doesn't like it! But on Hallowe'en a threat to a neighborhood child forces Cam to reconsider.....

Plus many more exciting stories. The issue is also available for download to e-book or POD. See the site for details!

Cover Artist chosen for Bearing the Saint!

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:27:00 +0000

Have a look at the wonderful artwork of Sarah Marina-- I have already seen a rough sketch for the cover of Bearing the Saint, and she will also be working on some maps for the interior of the book. I think perhaps a bit of spot art as well. As you can see, as well as doing figurative illustration, she is also an accomplished calligrapher.

Writing from the Lost & Found: Mere Faithfulness

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:15:00 +0000

I'm moving. So I'm decluttering. And my writer's study is the part of the house that hasn't had that done since, probably, forever.

It's fun to come across old work....which will eventually, some of it, lead to new ideas. It's like turning over the soil in the garden, I think. Well, what do I know, I have a black thumb...but anyway, I have turned up a few poems and things that have never made it onto the computer, unless maybe onto the big old floppies that died a long time ago in the pre-internet age. So perhaps I'll put a few of them up here.

The one below is so old I have no idea what might have originally inspired it, but it still speaks to me about something I have grown to believe ever more strongly as I age: faith is not about flash, not about drama, not about success. Faith as we find it in Scripture and Tradition is not an irrational belief that can't be dislodged from our heads despite all logical argument, nor is it some warm fuzzy feeling we've squirreled away in the deepest recesses of our heart. Faith in the true Christian sense is mere faithfulness.

This is not the faith that sells books or builds TV 'ministries', that makes observers go Ooh-aah! Faith that does those things verily hath its reward. This is the faith of fall down and get up, fall down and get up. This is the faith of going into your closet to pray rather than blowing a trumpet before yourself in the market place.

This is the faith that moves mountains....even if only, sometimes, by chipping away at them one bit at a time.

What a Heaven is For

Heaven or Babel—
How do we know?
Reaching, by Browning’s advice,
Perhaps we grasp
Nothing
Perhaps idolatry.
Better first grow roots
Deep in the soul
To drink of still waters;
Sleep stone-pillowed
Beholding angels;
Tend sheep and keep watch
For fire from above.
Do not forget
To take off your shoes

Donna Farley/1991

Dropping a few literary names....

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:14:00 +0000

The novel is handed in to my terrific editor, Katherine Hyde, who as well as editing for Conciliar Press and doing freelance editing and layout is also a writer with a new picture book out about Saint Lucia.

I had a lot of last-minute feedback on my YA historical novel Bearing the Saint from my two generous and perceptive regular beta readers, Bev Cooke and Linda Finlayson, who both have some wonderful books in print.

While finishing I had a lot of patience from my whole fabulous family and especially from my fabulous husband who is also, you guessed it, an author of oh, a few volumes......

The Ravens of Farne , the Saint Cuthbert picture book is scheduled for publication in February 2010. Wonder if I can work some kind of Olympic spin on it.......that one was shepherded through the editing process by my other super editor, Jane Meyer . Guess what, she is an author too........

Thanks also to everyone who has been encouraging and praying for me through these projects-- writers and non-writers alike! .

I'm too tired to post anything more creative now. If no-one has ever told you, believe me, writing a book is a lot like having a baby.