Poets and Poems: Tania Pryputniewicz and “November Butterfly”

To enter the world of Tania Pryputniewicz’s is to walk with Queen Nefertiti in ancient Egypt, Queen Guinevere in Camelot, and Joan of Arc as she makes an appearance in the 21^st century. It is a collection that focuses on women, many famous but many not, but it also embraces notions of history, time, perception and understanding in intriguing and original ways.

Pryputniewicz uses precise, simple words and phrases in her poems. This has the effect of focusing attention on the stories she’s telling, often across several related poems.

For example, a full third of the collection is comprised of poems based on the legend of King Arthur, although none of them are about Arthur himself. Instead, Pryputniewicz writes about Guinevere, Morgan le Fay (or “Morgayne,” as she writes the name here), and Mordred, King Arthur’s nephew / illegitimate son.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

John Lennox’s “Against the Flow”

Four teenagers.

Four teenagers caught up in events far beyond their control – war, invasion, defeat.

They are taken away from their families and the only homes they have ever known, and thrust into a pluralistic society and culture that was simultaneously alien and mesmerizing.

Four teenagers: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.

The war: Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of Judea and Jerusalem.

The pluralistic society and culture: the great city of Babylon.

Four teenagers who not only survived captivity and exile but also managed to keep their faith intact.

It was not without cost. And it wasn’t easy; at times, it was difficult and life-threatening. But they survived, and their faith survived.

John Lennox is a professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford and a speaker on the interface of science, philosophy and religion.  He’s the author of several books, including God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God, Seven Days That Divide the World, God and Stephen Hawking, Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists Are Missing the Target, and Key Bible Concepts (co-author with David Gooding).

He’s also the author of Against the Flow: The Inspiration of Daniel in an Age of Relativism, believes Daniel can speak to us across the centuries.

I discovered Lennox’s book while reading Just Thinking, the magazine published by Ravi Zaharias International Ministries. The latest edition has a lengthy excerpt of Against the Flow. I started reading, and I was hooked.

Then I read this column by Frank Bruni, an op-ed columnist at the New York Times since 2011. Bruni, a former restaurant critic, puts into words what our cultural elites believe about Christianity. They don’t like what they see, and if we have to be forced to change, then so be it.

To quote one of my favorite characters in The Lord of the Rings, “War is upon us.” It is a war that we may have already lost. And it goes far beyond the gay marriage controversy in Indiana.

Lennox, in Against the Flow, says we have much to learn from the account of Daniel in the Old Testament. “What makes the story of their faith remarkable,” he writes, “is that they did not simply continue the private devotion to God that they had developed in their homeland; they maintained a high-profile public witness in a pluralistic society that became increasingly antagonistic to their faith.”

For the next few weeks, I’ll be undertaking a discussion of the book.

What I’ve learned from my reading so far: The book sounds uncomfortably familiar, and uncommonly hopeful. 

A day like any other

(dedicated to Paul Stolwyck)

A day like any other

begins in darkness enshrouded

in an envelope of silence,

the silence before life,

before light cracks

slightly, outlining

the stone

light wrapping the stone

light breaking the stone

The space behind is left

empty, particles of dust

filtering the lighted air,

enclosing a slab,

empty

a slab draped

in discarded shroud

            where is he

            where is my master

            where is my Lord

            where have they taken him

Risen.

Painting: After Night by Paul Bennett.

Saturday Good Reads

Frederica Mathewes-Greene is a Christian who doesn’t oppose gay marriage. This week on Facebook, she posted a link and undertook a discussion about the law in Indiana that has caused so much outrage. The link she shared is noted below. Her Facebook discussion is worth reading as well. With that link below is another one, a discussion of the legislation by a law professor who actually read it (admittedly, not a typical thing to do in this day and age of “we have to pass it to see what’s in it”). And there is a third link - Rod Dreher's conversation with a law professor at an elite university; the professor has to remain anonymous because he is a Christian.

Yesterday was Friday. Today is Saturday. Sunday’s coming.

Poetry

Something Else – John Blase at The Beautiful Due.

Kaki – Frederick Buechner.

The Mariner’s Shadow – Clive S. Johnson

Count it all as loss – Tania Runyan at The Christian Century.

Noir Lyre – Brendan MacOdrum at Oran’s Well.

The Plagiarist – Chris Galford at The Waking Den.

Photography

Flowers – Timothy Good at Photography by Tiwago.

Faith and Culture

How Sujifan Stevens Subverts the Stigma of Christian Music – Atlantic Magazine (Hat tip: Jared Gilbert).

What Palm Sunday Means: God's Street Theatre Comes to Jerusalem – N.T. Wright via ABC Australia.

Faith

After the Tears – Diana Trautwein at Just Wondering.

Napping in Gethsemane – David Rupert at Red-Letter Believers.

Why Does the Resurrection Matter? – Central Presbyterian Church, St. Louis (that’s my church).

The Kiss of Judas – Peggy Rosenthal at Image Journal.

Unrecognizable – Jay Cookingham at Soulfari.

A Protestant's Passion for the Virtues of Thomas -- Carl Trueman at First Things (Hat tip: my brother, Jim Young).

Christianity, when properly understood, is a religion of losers - Giles Fraser at The Guardian.

Culture

How the Millennials Became a Generation of “Experts” – Matt Appling at The Church of No People.

Indiana and its Aftermath

Gay Marriage Isn’t About Justice, It’s About Selma Envy – Hans Fiene at The Federalist. (Hat tip: Frederica Mathewes-Green).

Ironies in Indiana – Mark Movsesian at First Things.

The Post-Indiana Future for Christians - Rod Dreher at American Conservative.

Writing

The value of our art – Billy Coffey at What I Learned Today.

Fun

Fascinating Secrets of St. Pancras Train Station – Anglotopia.

Top photograph by Ken Kistler via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The prophet stares

 

After Mt. 23: 37-39 and Luke 19:41-44 

The prophet stares at the city,

the city with its houses and

palaces, temples and shops

bustling in commerce, filled

by the baying and howling

of animals, a noise

redolent of life. 

He stares, and weeps

at the ignorance of the city,

its deafness and desolation,

its destruction, blood

flowing in the streets,

sufficient to extinguish

the fire. 

Painting: Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, oil on canvas by Enrique Simonet (1892).

William Brown’s “Burke’s War”

Bob Burke heads a telecommunications company. He’s flying back to his home base of Chicago from Washington, D.C., where he learned that the Defense Department is chucking his company’s bid for a major work program in favor of a lesser known company. It could mean layoffs. He’s not in the best of moods, and trying to drown his problems with Scotch. As the plane comes in low for landing, he looks down from his window, and sees a man strangling a woman on a rooftop.

Bob Burke’s life is about to turn upside down.

That’s how Burke’s War by William Brown begins, and it never lets up. The flight attendant, the airport police and the local police all disbelieve his story. But Burke knows what he saw, and he’s rather relentless in pursuing what he believes was a murder.

Burke, a former special forces soldier in Afghanistan and Iraq, finds himself up against an estranged wife who’s determined to get control of the business; the head of a pharmaceutical company with a penchant for violent rape; the pharmaceutical company’s security; and part of the Chicago Mafia. People begin to die, including some close to Burke.

Burke declares war. Shootings and violence pile up.

If you like action and suspense, William Brown packs it into his stories. The reader hands on as events propel the narrative forward.

William Brown

Do I believe things like this could have in suburban America? No. Did that stop me from enjoying this story? Also no.

Brown is a storyteller. From the very beginning, the reader is wrapped into this unlikely of heroes, a young CEO trying to save his company. We gradually learn there’s more to this CEO than meets the eye. So do the bad guys. And there are a lot of bad guys.

Burke’s War is described as the first in a series. I can’t wait to see what the “telephone guy” gets up to next.

Related - My reviews of Brown’s previous books:

Amongst My Enemies

Winner Lose All

The Undertaker

Aim True, My Brothers

Thursday at Noon

Photograph of Chicago skyline (facing west toward Michigan Avenue) by Matt Hobbs via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Fight Back with Joy: Praying for Springs

For a time. in between formal communications jobs, I had my own consulting business. The first two years were good ones, but then a recession caught up with me and business dried up. It didn’t disappear, but it became very, very difficult; jobs were few and far between.

In our Sunday School class, we shared what was going on and asked for prayer. Some weeks later, an envelope containing three hundred dollars inside of a card showed up in mail. No name. Just a $300 gift.

We were not in dire financial straits. But we were discouraged. And that $300 gift was a blessing far beyond the amount of the money. It was finding a little oasis in the desert.

We have each experienced desert times –when everything seems pointless, your body is close to exhaustion, you don’t think you can read one more newspaper without throwing up, an illness is more and more debilitating, a family problem that seems never to be resolved, a crisis in faith or hope. We’ve each been there, and likely more than once.

Life is not easy.

In Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears, Margaret Feinberg talks about those desert times, and how important finding those springs in the desert can be. While she’s struggling with the side effects of chemotherapy, she receives a reference to the Book of Judges, the story Othniel and how he wins the hand of Caleb’s daughter, Achsah. After they’re married, she asks her father for a piece of thriving land in the desert, one with springs of water. And Caleb complies, giving her and her husband both lower and upper springs – an assured supply and more than she asked for.

Feinberg is able to find her own springs of water, one of which was a Bill Cosby concert in Vermont. These springs are vital for all of us; they are what keep us going when we face trials, problems, and situations that we hope are problems and not conditions that have to be endured.

As many times as I’ve read the Book of Judges, I did not remember the story of Othniel and Achsah. It’s right there in the first chapter, verses 11 to 15 (Feinberg paraphrases it as only a storyteller can). What I did remember was that Othniel eventually became one of the “Judges” or rulers.

Those springs of water worked well for him, too.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading Fight Back with Joy. To see more posts on this chapter, “One Prayer You Don’t Pray But Should,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.

Photograph: Desert Oasis via Wikipedia.