The Gleanings Project: Ordinary Heroes: Celebrating United Church Women

“Walking on Water” Acrylic on Paper, DS

Boughton, Noelle, Ed. Ordinary Heroes: Celebrating United Church Women. Toronto, ON: United Church Publishing House, 2012.

497 Words

[For] those who continue in their footsteps. 

Like the Samaritan woman at the well, I have been offered living water here, inspiration to carry a passionate witness. Like Huldah the prophet, I am excited by a book that offers rich resources for learning about who we are as people of God. Like Joanna, I am reminded to the joy and pain of being a friend of Jesus. And like the Shunamite woman, I celebrate the good that comes of service.

Jesus said, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. (Matt 22:37) (Tindal, 7)

As we read the gospel stories and engage their meaning for our time, we need to find even more creative ways to witness to the gospel story that calls us and challenges us. (12)

It isn’t just the church that is changing; just about all aspects of Canadian society have changed in the past 50 years . . .  demanded new formats of Christian practice to allow people in changing times to continue to benefit from the riches of our scriptures. (15)

Our church’s engagement in a addressing the legacy of the Indian Residential Schools and the impact of colonization is already providing new narratives for the church in relation to radical reimaging and sustainability. (16)

Congregations as we know them will continue to be an active and a valuable option, but not the only option . . . Imagine new ways of being church together . . . (17)

Artist Caroline Pogue created a 16-inch (40.6 cm) Poverty Doll . . . presentations of dolls to dignitaries and celebrities . . .  (52-53)

Mary’s prayer shawl ministry (54)

Leading worship . . . collecting postage stamps . . . (59)

The older UCW members . . . were a great resource for the younger members. (60)

The UCW members worked hard holding afternoon teas, strawberry festivals, and other projects to raise needed funds . . . with God anything is possible, transformation, rebirth, and even reopening of churches become realities. (63)

The studies included, for example, questions about Aboriginal rights or Aboriginal women . . . (71)

New approaches to Bible study such as lectio divina . . . (73)

Beads of Hope . . . HIV/AIDS . . . (77)

Because our labyrinth has been created out of painter drop cloths that have been sewn together . . . we remove our shoes to keep it clean . . . holy ground . . . (80)

She was there to share her Spiritual Journey with a series of original oil paintings . . .  how the Bible relates to today’s world . . . It made me remember the first time God spoke to me . . . (82-83)

I made some good friendships and valued being with other young parents as well as grandmothers as we built community . . . (93)

The Gleanings Project: Reflections

“Good Friday Icon Still Life” by DS

Reflections on Gleanings

As both fiction and non-fiction books are read, places, situations and characters fill the mind. This is what was said and done here in this situation, at this time, with these results. Later we can find these things populating our own thinking.

In past situations of isolation and stress, I foraged my mind for solutions, or at least ways to think about what was happening. I came up with very little. At times it felt like my thinking had frozen. This can happen in grief. It can also happen in times of boredom or discouragement. Our thoughts can become dull.

A way forward I decided, was to set an agenda of random reading, of podcast listening and of YouTube watching. I read what was unread in my bookcase. I perused previously read non-fiction on Kindle. I actually drove to the library and gleaned from the shelves there.

I did not really know what writers meant about the imagination. I saw it as being able to create. I created many interesting artworks. In art school, we were taught that when we ran out of ideas to paint, to look through images from art history.

I never really ran out of ideas. Mine was a mind that came up with more ideas than my body could paint. Yet, curiosity pushed me to research. In some of the images, I saw work similar to my own but more advanced. So those images filled my imagination, gave my work validation, and helped me to grow as I put some of their techniques into practice. I also saw things like how to place a figure in the ground, how to ignore perspective and develop a flattened style, and a way to enflesh what I saw in my mind.

As a follower of Jesus, I had attended the requisite Scripture study groups. Some were fill-in-the-blanks questions, which in the beginning, before I got my theological footing, were quite helpful with both information and devotion. As I applied to seminary I began to see the world beyond the text. This included the world of the text, and the contemporary context, as well as the world inside me. Perhaps I was on my way to becoming puffed up by knowledge. After all, I had systematically figured out my beliefs in detail and they fit together well.

I then began to work in the gaps of what was in Scripture, behind Scripture; the things that Scripture did not say, especially the second-hand invisible viewpoints of the place of sometimes unnamed women. There were also gaps in me. As I began to study the skill of writing midrash, I was enlivened by seeing how others had filled in gaps in Scripture stories with cultural knowledge.

A course in the culture of the First Century helped me with the ancient text. The gleanings here from my eclectic readings from the contemporary culture, fill in places, people and situations from my own living. The facts and the stories fill in the gaps of my own knowledge and experience. My goal is for these two cultures to collide in the work to give it depth and a certain width. Like visiting a vineyard, I see the vines, taste the grapes, then back at the welcome centre imbibe the resulting goodness as well as listening to the history or the grapes, the land, the vineyard’s story and that of the vintners. My imagination formed compositions of painted vineyards in full colour.

The gleanings here are about exploration. A few quotes from readings are offered to catalyze interest in reading further; to begin or continue the curious to form a reading and writing practice of their own. This is how we fill our imaginations for later use. Like my grandmother’s ancient water pump, first it had to have a ladle of water poured into the top and the lever pulled up and down a few times, for the resulting water to be poured out. Scripture offers that we can be given living water by the Spirit. In my imagination I can see our reading and writing as priming the pump for the living water to pour through our words to others. Both the ancient and the contemporary source is the risen Jesus.

May the meditations of our hearts and the words of our mouths (pens) be pleasing in your sight oh God.

The Gleanings Project: Sacred Spaces: Stations on a Celtic Way

Photo Collage of Paintings and Shells
Deborah Torley Stephan

Silf, Margaret. Sacred Spaces: Stations on a Celtic Way. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 

2001.

 

492 words

 

“In ancient as in modern times, the human heart has always been looking for a way.” (Silf, 7)

 

“The spirit of the Way will not allow us to pitch camp and stay forever with these artificial certainties.” (8)

 

“One branch of the human family, in the Celtic regions, in the early centuries, after the life of Christ . . .” (8)

 

“We speak even today of some places as being ‘thin places’, meaning that the presence of the invisible and the spiritual in those places is almost palpable. Our Celtic forebears revered such ‘thin places’ as sacred space.” (9)

 

“Space can become sacred . . . when it is saturated in prayer, perhaps because it has been a place of retreat and reflection for prayerful pilgrims through the centuries. It might be an island of Iona in sacred history or it might be an island of prayer in our own daily lives.” (10)

 

“Woven into this exploration of sacred spaces is the thread of our own story . . . weave their own patterns . . .“ (11)

 

“Beginnings . . . times of commitment . . . seasons of setting out . . . turning and returning . . . seasons of companionship . . . boundary seasons . . .” (12)

 

“Christians believe Jesus is God’s sacred space –– one in whom the transcendent creator interpenetrated the created world . . . the Christ-life is being  lived out through time, energized and directed by the Holy Spirit, until every life has been lived and every death has been died. This is the scale of the journey . . . from Alpha to Omega.” (14)

 

“The Celtic infinite knot is one picture of God’s weaving . . . What is it about this symbol that has the power to reconnect?” (25)

 

“My small piece of thread is just one snippet of an eternal spool that God is weaving into [the] Dream.” (26)

 

“Weaving can only happen when two or more strands come together. It is a symbol of community.” (28)

 

“The High Cross . . . the ladder of reconnection.” (43)

 

“In the summer of 1999, British TV viewers tuned in to the sight of the liberation of 800 cats and kittens that had been breeding them for the sole purpose of medical research. It was the last farm of this kind in Britain . . .” (53)

 

“The Weeping Stones . . . Outside the window there was bright sunshine. A short summer heatwave. The garden beckoned. I couldn’t resist to find a few moments of healing peace beneath the trees. A final vigil . . . my on mother . . .” (56)

 

“I have spent many weeks of my life walking the hilltops of my homeland . . .  strings of summits . . . “ (61)

 

“They feel like something very significant is breaking into our lives.” (67)

 

“Listening to the heartbeat of God . . . (78)

Poiesis Life Collection: Studio

“Art for the Sake of the Soul” Collage, DS

Studio (Vignette)

Studio mine

Sunshine

Plays shadows

On easels

Canvases waiting

Paint pots piled on

Table grey spotted with

Gesso white while

Fan whirs air

Down from the

Sky light moss

Dotting ivory panels

Channels for thoughts

Of unseen shapes

Colours of

Imagination

Pouring from brushes

Old and cheap

Creating the priceless

Images of a purple

Piccasso-ed you.

The Gleanings Project: Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies

“Piper at ECUAD” Collage by DS

McEntyre, Marilyn Chandler. Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. Grand Rapids, MI: 

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009.

385 words

“Foster the kind of community that comes from shared stories . . . “ (Mc Entyre, xi)

“There is, in all of us, a hunger for words that satisfy, not just words that do the job of conveying requests or instructions or information, but words that give a pleasure akin to the pleasures of music. “ (27)

“Mere lists of nouns can be poetry.” (38)

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant. . .” (Dickenson, Emily, in McEntyre, 41)

“Opinions are the stock-in-trade of thoughtful people to be earned and held strongly until further evidence requires their modification.” (41)

“The practice of precision not only requires attentiveness and effort; it may also require the courage to afflict the comfortable and, consequently, tolerate their resentment.” (44)

“Healing involves naming the insults and offenses.” (59)

“We inhabit narratives . . . every story provides a space in which author and reader meet . . . some readers . . . become the guides or docents in those spaces.” (78)

“Once we have dwelt in a particular house of fiction, we hold within us the memory of the landscapes and intimate spaces it affords. And that memory furnishes and redesigns our interior spaces where thought is born and nurtured.” (79)

“Our lives are lived in relationship to words, written and spoke, sacred and mundane. They are manna for the journey.” (86)

“Conversation is a form of activism . . .” (89)

“Curiosity is a form of compassion . . . ‘What is it like for you?’” (98)

“When silences are allowed, conversation can rise to the level of sacred encounter.” (107)

“Understand how richness of experience, even the most searing, blesses us in the struggle.” (115)

“Stories are pathways.” (121)

“High intelligence involved in word play offers not only entertainment but encouragement.” (188)

“The story is told of Mother Teresa that when an interviewer asked her, ‘What do you say when you pray?’ She answered, ‘I listen.’ The reporter paused a moment then asked, “The what does God say?’ She replied, ‘He listens.’ It is hard to imagine a more succinct way to get at the intimacy of contemplative prayer.”  (211)

“When the mystics speak of prayer, they are talking about that which will create in us a new structure of consciousness.” (O’Connor, Elizabeth, in McEntyre, 220)

The Gleanings Project: Places of the Heart

“Stanley Park from Ambleside” Phone Photo, DS

Ellard, Colin. Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life. New York, NY:  Bellevue Library Press, 2015.

477 words

“Regardless of what can be known about the thinking that lay behind the careful construction of Goebekli Tepe, six thousand years before the invention of the written word, one thing is clear –– what happened there may represent the very beginning of what has now become a defining characteristic, perhaps the defining characteristic of humanity: we build to change perceptions, and to influence thoughts and feelings; by these means, we attempt to organize human activity, exert power, and in many cases, to make money. We see examples of this everywhere, scattered through the length and breadth of human history.” (Ellard, 15)

“Breathtaking natural phenomena like an inky starlit sky or the depths of the Grand Canyon, or a human-built artifact like a cathedral ceiling, can exert measurable influence on our feelings about ourselves, how we treat others, and even our perceptions of the passage of time.” 

“When we visit a shopping mall or a department store . . . we find ourselves entering almost a hypnotic state with lowered defenses, diminished reserve, and a heightened inclination to spend money on something we don’t need. . .  by careful design.” 

“A walk through a busy, urban street market teeming with colorful wares, the delicious aroma of food, and a hubbub of human activity . . . can cause our moods to soar.” (16)

“The areas of our brain that process feelings are widely distributed . . . It is difficult to overestimate the importance of such findings for our overall understanding of how the brain produces adaptive behavior . . . “ (19)

“Walls reinforce or perhaps even create social conventions and cultural norms. The invention of dedicated sleeping spaces in homes changed our views about sexuality. The design of traditional Muslim homes and even of streetscapes reified beliefs about gender and generational divisions.” (25)

“Despite our modern state of detachment from the conditions that originally shaped us, most of us still crave contact with nature . . . We are innately attracted to elements of places that for our forebears might have made the difference between life and death . . . When we visit new cities, we naturally gravitate toward whatever verdant squares and gardens may be on offer. “ (30)

“Our preferences for the appearance and arrangement of trees takes us one step beyond simple spatial consideration and into the realm of color, texture, and form.” (36)

“One can see the hallmarks of these preferences in almost every aspect of our behavior, from where we choose to walk and sit, what we like to look at, and how we try to arrange our lives, alternating as much as possible between powerful forces of technologies that shape our attention and the restorative effects of natural settings . . . More than any other single factor, our cravings for nature underlie the psycho-geographic structure of our lives.” (51)

Even visiting gardens virtually can have powerful effects. Here is one where I recently explored the blue poppies online at Reford Gardens in Quebec:

Historic Gardens

Blue Poppies

. . . 

The Gleanings Project: The Call of Stories

“Upstairs Cafe at Art School” Phone Photo, DS

Coles, Robert. The Call of Stories. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989.

487 words

“As I have continued to do psychiatric work with children, I have gradually realized that my teaching has helped that work along –– by reminding me how complex, ironic, ambiguous, and fateful this life can be, and that the conceptual categories I learned in psychiatry, in psychoanalysis, in social science seminars, are not the only means by which one might view the world.” (Coles, xvii)

“The conversations have been about certain books which I use and use in various courses . . . a collective exploration of the personal responses . . . suggestive power . . .” (xviii)

“Concentrate on understanding her, not on trying to change her behavior.” (9)

“I wanted to hear more about her, not about the ‘symptoms.” (10)

“I allowed the patient’s ‘agenda’ to take over . . .” (13)

“As active listeners, we give shape to what we hear, make over their stories into something of our own.” (19)

“Why not let her story keep unfolding . . . “ (20)

“Few would deny that we all have stories in us which are a compelling part of our psychological and ideological make-up.” (24)

He ended with a plea for ‘more stories, less theory’.” (27)

“Their story, yours, mine, –– it’s what we all carry with us on this on this trip we take, and we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them. “ (30)

“It’s sad the way people get lost when they run up against other people.” (42)

“She was able to announce, at one point, that Pride and Prejudice offered parallels of sorts to the circumstances in her high school.” (43)

“Sometimes, it’s those ‘down’ moments when you do your best thinking.” (49)

“There are worse words than cuss words, there are words that hurt.” (51)

“Her stories worked their way into the everyday life reality of their young lives: watching their mothers iron, and thinking of a story; watching a certain heavy drinking friend, relative, neighbor, and thinking of a story, watching children in church, and themselves in school, and thinking of a story.” (57)

“You feel ashamed of yourself for those ideas, until you get to realize that lots and lots of people (maybe everyone) has them –– at least sometimes.” (59)

“With a novel . . . [if] you take things slowly, and get your head connected to what you are reading then (how do I say it?) the story becomes ours. No I don’t mean ‘your story’; I mean you have imagined what those people look like, and how they speak the words in the book, and how they move around, and so you and the writer are in cahoots . . . feel his isolation, his bad luck, and react with anger at the wrongs done him.” (64)

“Some novelists, of course, are forthrightly concerned with ethical reflection.” (82)

“The stories are emotionally powerful and have a strong effect on the students.” (89)

“We got together weekly from then on.” (93)

The Gleanings Project: Introduction and The Gift of Being Yourself

“Art for the Sake of the Soul” in Collage Book, DS

Introduction

In my youth I avidly read each book required by courses. I joined into class discussion, my hand always in the air. Debates fascinated. Once upon a time, in a flurry of defences, I argued against free will. When I listened, I became convinced of the other side, for a lifetime. Mrs. Krueger was the freedom fighter. I wonder now at her background. Were her arguments from experience?

I was more to be found on the dance floor than at the library door. I married young and had my children. It was then, in the hours after bedtime, and during naps, that I read as if my life depended on it. The first tome was Gone With the Wind. I began university and was interrupted by life many times. This became my pattern. 

The Gleanings Project, to begin in the New Year, will be part of one of those interruptions. I will glean books for glimpses of knowledge and wisdom, fun and study, using fewer than 500 words. Later, I will get down to serious work again. Thank you for being companions on the way. Your likes and comments are awesome.

. . .

Benner, David G. The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004.

500 words

“Jesus’ paradoxical teaching . . . it is in losing ourself that we truly find it . . . I have done neither [here]. . . journey of finding our authentic self in Christ and rooting our identity in this reality is dramatically different from the agenda of self-fulfillment promoted by pop psychology. ” (13)

“The goal of the spiritual journey is the transformation of the self.” (14)

“Beneath the roles and masks lies a possibility of a self that is as unique as a snowflake.” (15)

“A humble self-knowledge is a surer way to God than a search after deep learning.” (a Kempis in Benner, 20)

“Personal knowledge is never simply a matter of the head. Because it is rooted in experience , it is grounded in deep laces of our being. The things we know from experience we know beyond belief. Such knowing is not incompatible with such belief, but is not dependent on it.” (25)

“Paradoxically, we come to know God best not by looking at God exclusively, but by looking at God, then looking at ourselves –– then looking at God, and then looking at ourselves . . . mostly fully known in relationship to each other.” (26)

“God’s call to a deep personal encounter . . . is an invitation to step out of the security of the boat and meet Jesus in the vulnerability and chaos of our inner storms.” (31)

“Revelation is not simply something that happened at some distant point in the past. If it were, all we could ever hope for is information from this historic event.” (34)

Because God is love, God can only be known through love . . . This is transformational knowing . . . also requires surrender . . . Genuine knowing also demands a response . . . To surrender to Divine love is to find our soul’s home.” (35)

“Relationships develop when people spend time together . . . the essence of prayer . . .Spirit-guided meditation on the Gospels. ” (37)

“The meditation I am recommending is not the same as Bible study. It is more an exercise of the imagination than it is of the intellect. It involves allowing the Spirit of God to help you imaginatively enter an event in the life of Christ as presented in the Gospels.” 

“My journey, however, has not been easy. I have trouble visualizing things . . . But . . . allowing myself to daydream on it –– is sharing Jesus’ experience with Him . . . slowly moving to a new level of personal knowing of Jesus.” (39)

“Coming to know and trust God’s love is a lifelong process . . . allowing our identity to be re-formed . . . core of the spiritual transformation. “ (51)

“In human community . . .” (52)

“Spiritual transformation, not self-knowledge is the goal of Christian spirituality. “ (72)

“Every moment of every day or our life God wanders in our inner garden, seeking our companionship.” (88)

. . .

Meandering Through the Writings of Others as a Practice of Lament, Knitting: A Novel

“Pink Hearts, Grey Stripes” by DS

Often, I feel myself smiling as I read the words of a novel. I recognize something of my life in the words. Sometimes I hide a personal comment in the offerings here.

Knitting: A Novel by Anne Bartlett. 2005

 989 Words

*** Jack’s funeral Sandra *** more hugging and caring *** first widow among them *** Martha was decidedly uninterested in churches; the last time she had been she was ten years old and had bitten an old man on the hand, for good reason. *** She wore her glasses now for knitting. *** In a moment of clarity, like a knot that untangles itself when tugged at both ends, the knitting problem resolved. *** They would have no children. *** Jack like Sandra, had begun academic life as a historian. *** She turned over and felt for Jack’s pajamas under the pillow. *** In the evenings Martha listened to Radio National . . . *** Knitting was the one thing Martha could do better than anyone else. *** nationally known designer *** All winter she had live in three pairs of pants . . . one night . . .  She waxed her legs and painted her nails bright red. *** So instead of buying a dress, Sandra knelt on the paving bricks and felt at the man’s throat for a pulse. *** There was something disarming about this other person who had stopped to help a stranger . . . *** Clifford *** epilepsy *** Sandra prided herself on being honest but felt she was slipping. *** Under the framed feathers, Sandra was sleeping. She could hear a cello. *** Nearly done with no mistakes *** Outside the Art Gallery was a banner advertising an international exhibition of fashion lace. *** Martha realized suddenly that this was a kind of lace, that there was a man wearing lace – a big black man at that. She raised her eyes. Both he and the garment were beautiful. *** Sandra envied Kate’s ease with people. *** Martha’s bags were by the wall where she could keep an eye on them. *** At one point they discussed knitting . . . Sandra’s work teaching textile history  and theory. *** Some life force in the creative act kept her sane. *** There’s no words, no rules. *** Each one [was] jeweled with balls of richly colored wool, rose, amethyst, amber, jade, sapphire, opal, emerald, jet. *** 1869 painting by Bouguereau, The Knitting Girl *** Something to demonstrate the intersection of language and women’s work . . . *** That’s just how he is. He reads, you know. He spends whole days in the library. *** She couldn’t seem to get past camellias and daffodils. *** Pink roses, red roses, yellow roses . . . *** Sandra, needing a new haircut before she went to the conference . . . *** ladder climber *** Grief was like a disease. Sandra was having a relapse . . . *** What should I call myself . . . Madmartha . . . *** It was a long way to Wollongong, on the east coast. *** Sandra was a word gobbler. *** Participants were emptying their bags of wool scraps . . . *** Spinning, weaving, knitting, all part of the long tradition of women’s work that had survived even the efficiency of the industrial revolution. *** Years ago she had written a paper . . . *** In the act of making things, just by living their daily lives, they also make history. *** In spite of their differences Sandra had grown fond of Martha . . . *** She took a strand from two adjacent greens . . . wound a new ball of double thread . . . a transition piece, a kind of editing, linking two paragraphs that didn’t quite fit. Their crafts were not so different after all. *** Martha sighs heavily . . . Manny rides his bike to work and on the way home . . . *** I’m making a weeping scarf, a mourning scarf. *** I must fix the mistake so I can knit and keep calm, so I don’t make more mistakes. *** Tony enjoyed Martha’s company . . . *** No, I got baptized. *** We’re going out to dinner. *** I know my limitations. *** The pattern instructions read like some kind of code. *** Martha needed a cup of tea. *** a collaborative book *** Look at those sea colors. *** She didn’t have Martha’s color sense. *** Sometimes she felt another presence . . . This work was different from the rest; this work gave more than it took, strengthened her somehow. Like dipping into a well. *** When she was doing work she enjoyed, at a subterranean level she was searching, questioning, trying to pin down her own motives. *** Mint – that was the color . . . The little green dress . . . Sandra in green. *** Martha had seen an adult tricycle before. *** Red. It was a beautiful color, that’s for sure. *** Martha looked around the room at the bags of wool . . . *** If she knitted eight hours a day, she could do it. *** Sandra sensed a flaw in the glass. *** Get off it, you lummox. *** Outside it was like a furnace. *** That’s a row. . . it’s handmade . . . *** a bold Fair Isle *** Salvation Army truck *** She was hoping to  extract an introduction to a university in Germany. *** Patterns, numbers, needles. *** Martha was sweating. *** The pain started then, vague at first . . . went on and on. *** I know you feel cold. *** If you have odd stitches, you make moss stitch. *** Why do you knit, Martha? *** The mind is like a cat in the wool making tangles. *** She told me in confidence. *** a reproduction of a medieval knitting Madonna *** Clean and neat and ordinary. *** Would you like to put those roses in water? *** With his kiss the whole room exploded into flames. *** The moonlit garden was thick with past conversations. ***

A knitting Madonna:

Detail of a polyptych by Tommaso da Modena (1325-?75).

Meandering Through the Writings of Others as Lament Practice: Phantastes

“Gardens at Ceperley House” Phone Photo, DS

“One of the tasks of fiction is to offer models of human experience that are meaningful and that seem to be alive.” Arwa Haider, London Calling.

MacDonald, George. Phantastes. 1858.

935 words

*** Old fashion of Scottish Christianity . . . *** MacDonald illustrates, no the doubtful maxim that to know all is to forgive all, but the unshakeable truth that to forgive is to know. *** Aberdeenshire *** poverty *** sunny, playful man *** He had accompanied me all the way . . . *** poetry *** a faerie romance *** I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of mind . . . *** Ah! That is always the way with you men, you believe nothing the first time . . . *** I looked deeper and deeper, till they spread around me like seas, and I sank in their waters. I fogot all the rest . . . *** I saw that a large green marble basin, in which I was wont to wash . . .  was overflowing like a spring, and that a stream of water was overflowing the carpet, all the length of the room . . . And, stranger still, where the carpet, which I myself designed  to imitate a field of daisies . . . seemed to wave in a tiny breeze that followed the water’s flow . . . *** After washing as well as I could in the clear stream, I rose and looked around me. *** No bird sang. *** I remembered what the lady had said about my grandmothers. *** Those you call fairies in your own country are chiefly the young children of the flower fairies. *** All for the good of the community! said one, and ran off with a great hollow leaf. *** By this time, my hostess was quite anxious that should I be gone. *** The immediately surrounding foliage was illuminated by the interwoven dances in the air of splendidly coloured fire-flies . . . *** I was too horrified for that. *** The face seemed very lovely, and solemn from its stillness, with the aspect of one who is quite content but waiting for something. *** I cannot put more of it into words. *** I felt as if I was wandering in childhood through sunny spring forests, over carpets of primroses, anemones, and little white starry things . . . Some of the creatures I never heard speak at all. *** I took my knife and removed the moss . . . *** a block of pure alabaster enclosing the form, apparently in marble, of a reposing woman . . . *** I had found myself, ere I was aware, rejoicing in a song . . . *** Great boughs crossed my path, great roots based the tree-columns, and mightily clasped the earth, strong to lift and strong to uphold. *** Come to my grotto. There is a light there. *** such a delicate shade of pink seemed to shadow what in itself must be a marbly whiteness of hue. *** I walked on the whole day . . . *** a self-destructive beauty *** Various garden-vegetables were growing beneath my window. *** folly *** delicate greens of the long grasses, and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel . . . *** I was so bewildered – stunned . . . *** We travelled for two days, and I began to love him. *** She carried a small globe, bright and clear as the purest crystal. *** Colour floated abroad with the scent . . . *** A pale moon looked up from the floor of the great blue cave that lay in abysmal silence beneath. *** At length I came to an open corridor . . . *** The sides of the basin were white marble . . . *** The waters lay so close to me they seemed to enter and revive my heart . . . I saw above me the blue spangled vault, and the red pillars around. *** The third day after my arrival I found the library of the palace . . . *** I read of a world no like ours. *** One evening in early summer, I stood with a group of men and women on a steep rock that overhung the sea. *** Though of a noble family, he was poor, and prided himself upon the independence that poverty gives . . . ***Cosmo began to comfort himself with the hope that she might return, perhaps the nest evening at the same hour. *** His engagements were neglected. He cared for nothing. *** Cosmo, if thou lovest me, set me free, even from thyself . . . *** One night he mingled with a crowd that filled the rooms of one of the most distinguished mansions in the city, for he accepted every invitation . . . *** At length I arrived, through a door that was closed behind me, in another vast hall of the palace. *** The pillars and arches were of dark red. But what absorbed my delighted gaze, was an innumerable assembly of white marble statues, of every form, and in multitudinous posture, filling the hall throughout. *** Instinctively, I struck the chords and sang. *** Ever as I sang, the veil uplifted, ever as I sang . . . *** I had no means of measuring time . . . *** A blessing like the kiss of a mother, seemed to alight on my soul, a calm, deeper than that which accompanies a hope deferred, bathed my spirit. *** Ere she had ceased signing, my courage had returned. *** I put my life in my hands. – The Book of Judges *** They were about twice our height, and armed to the teeth. ***