Peg Kerr's Journal

*Deep breath*

Okay.

This is maybe the most complicated-in-thought card I've ever done (the card is at the end of this rather long post). I will try to explain it, and doubtless, some will be TL;DR and/or I may miss the mark in explaining it (if so, sorry!), but, well, it is important to me. And it's been the result of/prompted by the sort of deep reflective inner work that I hoped this project would spark, so I'm pretty pleased with it. Both aesthetically and what it's opened deep within myself.

The card started with my tuning into one of the prayer gatherings being held at 8:00 a.m. every morning while the Chauvin trial is going on, hosted by the organization Healing Our City (some of the organizers have ties to the Minneapolis Area Synod for the ELCA, my employer, and several of my coworkers are tuning in every day).

The day's reflection leader, Rev. Frenchye Magee of Hennepin Avenue United Methodist, invited the listeners to reflect on an image, a plant growing in a fractal pattern, which is common in nature, as we considered the thought, "What we practice of the small becomes the practice of the large." Large changes, she explained, begin with the smallest changes we make in ourselves as we engage in the work of social changes and justice, and those changes spiral out, becoming an opportunity to repeat the pattern in ever-enlarging arcs of love and hope and healing that transform the world.

As I thought over the next few days about this meditation, I made the connection with what I am doing in my own life. Last week's card, Books, was about the small, laborious changes I am making in my own life to open up space for something new. This past week, I shipped off my wedding china to a company that deals with used china as part of this downsizing/changing process (see the teacup in the upper right).

"Wait a minute!" you cry in outrage. "Stop right there! How dare you turn a meditation about the changes necessary to bring about social justice into a rumination about downsizing and decluttering. How self-centered and self-absorbed can a white woman be!" Well, yes, but please give me a moment to explain. I promise I will tie it all together.

I have been studying the concept of hygge for the past couple of years, and as I have been dealing with All of Rob's Stuff, I have become aware of the Swedish term döstädning, or as it's called in English, Swedish Death Cleaning. As I have struggled to go through all of Rob's stuff, I have sworn to myself, time and time again, I WILL NOT DO THIS TO MY GIRLS. I am aware that I have to make the hard choices, the small changes--but it's not only about simplifying my life to be kind to others after my death. I need to be aware of the changes I need to make in my mentality--caring more about people than things--not just in preparation for my own death, which hopefully, will be a long ways off yet. But also it's necessary to open up space for the life I truly wish to live.

There is nothing like becoming a widow to make you think about preparing for death. I saw how Rob became less and less tethered to his possessions as he lay dying in the hospital. He didn't care to read or open his laptop, and he didn't show as much interest as expected in the gifts we brought him, certainly far less than usual.

What ties it all together was something prompted by a song included as a part of worship in another Healing Our City gathering later in the week: People Get Ready:

People get ready
There's a train a comin'
You don't need no baggage
You just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear the diesel's hummin'
You don't need no ticket
You just thank the lord
(See the ghostly train at the top of the card.) The song, as well as all the thinking I have been doing about making small changes in my life, made me remember J.R.R. Tolkien's great story "Leaf By Niggle." (You can listen to a lovely recording of the story being read here. Which is coincidentally where I got the script spelling out "Leaf by Niggle" in a font based on Tolkien's own lettering, that you see overlaying the ghostly train. Niggle's perfect leaf, dappled by dew, is underneath.)

Niggle was preoccupied by his own concerns, his hope of painting a perfect tree, leaf by glorious leaf. He is annoyed by the constant demands put upon him by his neighbors, especially the intrusive Parish. The constant interruptions cause him to neglect his work; in turn, his inability to finish his work caused him to be insufficiently concerned about his neighbors. Finally, he was called away from his work because he had to go on a long journey on a train, clearly a metaphor for death ("There's a train a comin' / You don't need no baggage / You just get on board"). It is not until he undergoes a series of small changes (in a realm that reflects Tolkien's Roman Catholic conception of Purgatory) that his heart opens up to his neighbor Parish, and in return, he discovers his Great Tree, a real living tree, as he pictured in his imagination but could not quite capture.

Luke 12: 13-21 tells the story of the rich fool, who cared only for building barns and piling up his wealth, until God required his soul to come to death, and what good did his riches do him then? A related parable is the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31: a rich man thinks only of his possessions and his own pleasures, ignoring the downtrodden Lazarus outside his gate until both come to death, and what good did his riches do him, in comparison to what he should have done for Lazarus? (“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again [in Dickens' A Christmas Carol]: “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”)

What should we do for Lazarus? What should we do for Parish? What should we have done for George Floyd, who had his life cut short by death? What small changes do I need to make in my life to open myself up to them? I hasten to explain that I'm not trying to say that de-emphasizing possessions is the work here; it's part of it, but mostly I'm pointing that process out as a metaphor for the work. I hope I can escape self-absorption, and make the changes to turn my attention away from mere things to the people around me: my neighbors Lazarus, and Parish, and George Floyd. And I have to make the small changes to root unhappy patterns out my life, including, yes, the inner racism I am training myself to see, the small selfishnesses, like putting away and getting rid of the old familiar things in my life that are no longer appropriate to the life I wish to lead. And in doing so, I think I can open myself up more fully to truly seeing and helping my neighbor.

It is difficult. It will take many small changes. But death is one of the few certainties in life. It puts so much into perspective, and things become so much clearer.

(So...did I manage to tie it all together? And did you actually read through all the way to the end???)

Changes



Click here to read about the 52 card project and see the year's gallery.

I have not been posting much because as you know, hey, cancer. But more than that, a cascade of Bad Events over the past few months (i.e., Rob's cancer), including a few more I haven't even talked about here have made things to start to feel pretty rough after almost a year of feeling quite good.


The Wave - Committee/Council Suit (Bridge card)
I am the One who can see it, in the distance but coming toward me, like a gigantic wave rising over the landscape, a doom I cannot escape. I want to flee, but I know that it's hopeless to even try. I just stand, paralyzed, knowing exactly what will happen as I watch it tower above me, crystal drops scattering like poison, and I wait for it to smash into me, sweeping me away to drown in cold nothingness.

>>>

For me, this card is about the vulnerability of fearing a recurrence of mental illness (specifically, depression in my case). I suppose it could be about anything you see coming toward you that you fear but cannot stop. Actually, now that I think about it, it would be applicable to cancer treatment, too, after you've received a diagnosis and before you start treatment.

It's also a reference to something I found in Tolkien's letters which he eventually worked into his fiction: he had a troubling recurring nightmare for years about a wave coming toward him across a landscape:

At the climactic moment of the Lord of the Rings, Faramir says to Éowyn that he is reminded of a "great dark wave climbing over the green lands and above the hills, and coming on, darkness unescapable. I often dream of it." The couple are as yet unaware of the passing of Sauron, but the symbolism is apt. Tolkien puts into Faramir's words a recurring dream that had troubled him since childhood: a "dreadful dream of the ineluctable Wave, either coming up out of a quiet sea, or coming in towering over the green inlands".

Tolkien felt that this 'Atlantis haunting' was symptomatic of a tale of universal mythic applicability, a theme "so fundamental to 'mythical history'--whether it has any kind of basis in real history…that some version of it would have to come in [to his legendarium]". Tolkien's version of the Atlantis legend was the tale of the downfall of Númenor, explicitly identified with Atlantis in many of the versions of the story that Tolkien wrote. The first was in the sketch for the novel The Lost Road, drafted around 1936 but soon abandoned.

Original reference here.

Mark Oshiro of "Mark Reads" (of Mark Reads Twilight and Mark Reads Harry Potter fame) is now tackling J.R.R. Tolkien. He is on chapter 5 of the Hobbit and has just met Gollum.

It's hilarious.

You can also follow Mark on Twitter at @MarkDoesStuff.

Here's a fanfic in the Lord of the Rings universe, which is one of the best fictional depictions of depression and what it's like that I've ever seen. Another Way of Leaving. About this story, the author, Jodancingtree, writes:

What if Frodo had not been given the option of going with the Elves? His wounds are not healing, and the desire for the Ring torments him. Is death his only escape? Caution: suicidal depression.

I was so impressed by it that I wrote to her a number of years ago, and she replied, mentioning, if I remember correctly, that she had a relative who committed suicide. She gets it. A wonderful character in the story is Radagast the Brown, a minor character in Tolkien's work, the wizard with dominion over animals and birds. The story isn't long, only a little over 10,000 words or so.

She went on to write a much longer work which recounts the tale of how Frodo goes with Radagast back to Mordor and in doing so, was healed from his despair: Following the other wizard: Journey into Healing. Moving and insightful. (Also notable in that Frodo actually makes friends with orcs, which is something I've not seen before. It's not played for laughs, and she absolutely makes it work. She wrote two more sequels after this, following the story of one of those orcs: The Queen's Orc and The Grey at the End of the World.)

Anyway, I highly recommend the first two stories for anyone who has ever had to deal with mental illness (or loved someone with it), especially depression. If you read them, drop me a comment to respond; I'd really like to hear from you.

A newly translated Russian novel retells Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings from the perspective of the bad guys. From Laura Miller's column at Salon:

As bad lots go, you can't get much worse than the hordes of Mordor from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Led by an utterly evil disembodied entity who manifests himself as a gigantic, flaming, pitiless eye, and composed of loathsome orcs (or goblins), trolls and foreigners, Mordor's armies are ultimately defeated and wiped out by the virtuous and noble elves, dwarfs, ents and human beings -- aka the "free peoples" -- of Middle-earth. No one sheds a tear over Mordor's downfall, although the hobbit Sam Gamgee does spare a moment to wonder if a dead enemy soldier is truly evil or has simply been misguided or coerced into serving the dark lord Sauron.

Well, there's two sides to every story, or to quote a less banal maxim, history is written by the winners. That's the philosophy behind The Last Ringbearer, a novel set during and after the end of the War of the Ring (the climactic battle at the end of The Lord of the Rings) and told from the point of view of the losers. The novel was written by Kirill Yeskov, a Russian paleontologist, and published to acclaim in his homeland in 1999. Translations of the book have also appeared in other European nations, but fear of the vigilant and litigious Tolkien estate has heretofore prevented its publication in English.

That changed late last year when one Yisroel Markov posted his English translation of The Last Ringbearer as a free download. Less polished translations of brief passages from the book had been posted earlier on other sites, but Markov's is the "official" version, produced with the cooperation and approval of Yeskov himself. Although the new translation's status as a potential infringement of the Tolkien copyright remains ambiguous, it may be less vulnerable to legal action since no one is seeking to profit from it.

The novel still has some rough edges -- most notably, a confused switching back and forth between past and present tense in the early chapters -- and some readers may be put off by Yeskov's (classically Russian) habit of dropping info-dumps of military and political history into the narrative here and there. For the most part, though, "The Last Ringbearer" is a well-written, energetic adventure yarn that offers an intriguing gloss on what some critics have described as the overly simplistic morality of Tolkien's masterpiece.

Read the rest at the Salon link above.

kitgordon reminds me that today is Professor Tolkien's birthday.

If you'd like to join the world-wide birthday toast at 9 pm Minneapolis time, info is here.

I got this meme from minnehaha:

Comment on this post. I will choose seven userpics from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are using them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so others can play along.

Here were the icons minnihaha K. asked me about:

This is from the movie Sense and Sensibility (of the Jane Austen novel of the same name) and it pictures the actress Emma Thompson in the part of Elinor Dashwood. Throughout the book (and movie) the reserved Elinor ("Sense") stands in contrast to her sister, the romantic passionate Marianne ("Sensibility"). At the course of the novel, Marianne, who has always rather looked down upon Elinor for what she terms her coldness, learns that Elinor feels just as passionately as Marianne herself, except that she (unlike Marianne) exercises discipline over her emotions for a variety of reasons: because it is more honorable, more temperate, and because she does not wish to give her family and friends pain when she herself is hurting. My emotions have always been a difficult part of my own character to manage, and much of the process of my maturation has been learning how to handle them appropriately. I have adopted what I call my "Elinor Dashwood" mode (and I use this icon) to describe those times when my emotions may be tumultuous and painful, but I do not feel it is appropriate to make a parade of them, or to speak directly in my LiveJournal of what is bothering me. See this entry where I began the metaphor, and all of my entries tagged "Elinor Dashwood" here.

and Both of these icons (as well as my default icon) are representations of what I have come to call the Holy Tree. I first became aware of the term by reading Tolkien: he loved trees dearly, and they became central to his mythology, as depicted in The Silmarillion. (In the first manifestation of the world, there was no sunlight or moonlight. Instead, there were the Two Holy Trees, Telperion and Laurelin, from which shone golden and silvery light.) This idea has mingled in my imagination with my favorite poem of all, Yeat's The Two Trees. (I was introduced to it by Loreena McKennitt, who sang it as a song on her album The Mask and the Mirror.) The poet speaks of a magical tree which grows within the human heart, and contrasts that with a false vision of a blasted, barren tree, which may be seen when demons hold up their bitter glass (a mirror). To me, this poem is about one of the central struggles of my life, and it words it so beautifully. I am too apt to believe the demons who hold up the bitter glass, and show me a vision of a blasted and barren tree. I have been trying to see more clearly the holy tree, which the poet assures me grows within my own heart. The song is also a damn good description of cognitive therapy, one of the best I've ever read. When depression gets its claws into me, my tormentors are, indeed, the "ravens of unresting thought," who shake their ragged wings, alas. The key, the poet says, is to turn the eyes away from the bitter glass, with its false vision of the blasted tree, back to the holy tree within the heart. The first tree icon, highly stylized, I posted because I was considering it as a possible tattoo (it was on the cover of a devotional booklet distributed by my church). I still love the design, but I know it would have to be simplified and I am not sure I will ever do it (the idea of my getting a tattoo does horrify some members of my family). The second tree icon was taken from a watercolor done by Tolkien himself, picturing the Mallorn trees of the Golden Wood (from The Fellowship of the Ring).

This candle is an evocation of another important concept from Tolkien: A light in dark places, when all other lights go out. (This is a reference to the Vial of Galadriel, which was a source of light to Frodo in the cave where he encountered the spider Shelob. I use this icon when the depression seems to be waxing and the Light seems to be waning. I use it to remind myself that there is still light there, and I need to remember and draw courage from that.

This is a line from Pride and Prejudice, something said by the insufferable, bossy Lady Catherine DeBourgh. I swiped it from www.pemberley.com. I thought it might be good to use when I wanted to comment on other people's journals, although since I swiped it without permission I feel guilty about having it and so I haven't used it that often. It was actually these Pemberley icons that gave me the idea of creating my Tolkien icons.

This is a picture of the ice palace in St. Paul, taken from the air, at night. I was trying to write a fantasy novel, where the central character was the architect designing it. Unfortunately, I lost my way, and the book has been abandoned for now.

Another lovely essay from fictualities, this one on Frodo's freedom to choose and what this means thematically.

(Really, I shouldn't keep having to point to her excellent essays; just friend her yourself so that you have the pleasure of reading them on your own friends page.)

*hums along to music playing*

Far over the Misty Mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away 'ere break of day
To claim our long forgotten gold . . .

This poem, "The Two Trees," by Yeats, is my favorite poem in the world. I was introduced to it by Loreena McKennitt, who sang it as a song on her album The Mask and the Mirror. (Which is a corking good album, and you should get it. Yes, you should.) Listen to a clip from this beautiful song here.

I have thinking a great deal about the holy tree in the poem. To me, this poem is about one of the central struggles of my life, and it words it so beautifully. I am too apt to believe the demons who hold up the bitter glass, and show me a vision of a blasted and barren tree. I have been trying to see more clearly the holy tree, which the poet assures me grows within my own heart. The song is also a damn good description of cognitive therapy, one of the best I've ever read. When depression gets its claws into me, my tormentors are, indeed, the "ravens of unresting thought," who shake their ragged wings, alas. The key, the poet says, is to turn the eyes away from the bitter glass, with its false vision of the blasted tree, back to the holy tree within the heart.

I also love it because it seems to reflect what I feel deeply about the heart of flesh/heart of stone.

Tolkien cared deeply about trees, and they are central to his mythology. Thinking about the holy tree, I decided to make several icons using his drawings, and I'm pretty pleased with them:









and



, which is a detail from his painting "Lothlorien in the Spring."

I would love it if someone who is more knowledgable about icon making than I am could do an icon of just one mallorn from that painting. Does anyone know how to isolate just one tree from that forest and make it an icon all on its own? Thanks for any help anyone might be willing to give!

The site where I got the Tolkien paintings to make the icons is here. The Lothlorien picture is here.

Edited to add: knitmeapony came through! Thanks!

J.R.R. Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892. Join fans and friends around the world at 9:00 p.m. your local time to offer a toast to "The Professor."