Confessions of an Unlucky Good Girl…

Vilonia, AR.

It is Tuscany yellow. The room where her 
Mind will not stay. His is Othello’s
Rage portending a thousand slaughters. 
The sun has set. Death rehearses
Violent hours. She hopes in sleep,
Perchance to dream, to wish—to be 
No more unsifted. She Knows not 
What she shall be. A battered Bitter’d 
Soul sings a dirge. Weep willow—
For Barbara as she cries. 
“Come all you forsaken and mourn you with me,
Who speaks of a false love, mine’s falser than he
—for I may die with his wound.”  
She fears she does not yet know Who. 
He spoke no words, He heard none too. 
His razor sharp, His cuts heal. 
Made serene in His tempest. Wreck’d by the Quiet.

So begins the prologue of the literary memoir of a formerly good girl. Existential angst? Uh-huh. Crisis of meaning? You bet. Boethian? Most assuredly. “I find your writing is elegant, almost poetic at times—you have a real gift of written expression, it is obvious you are well read,” responded a major publisher. The manuscript outlined the bad fortune of a family overtaken by a number of disorders, betrayal, corporate espionage, AIDS, abandonment, patricide, filicide, suicide, and an eros that dare not speak its name. Like Boethius, who suffered grave injustices through no fault of his own, she was alone in a room with an almost disinterested stranger pondering the unlucky turn of a home destroyed. The misfortune is spiritual fodder for “all things working together for the good.” What is good? Surely, a book deal is good. But, the publisher urged her to “go back through it and make your points a little more starkly, but not luridly.”

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Published in Front Porch Republic: https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2020/09/awakening-to-virtue-confessions-of-a-well-read-unlucky-good-girl/

Domestic Arts and the Mundane

Vilonia, AR. Sarah Orne Jewett was an American short-story writer, best-known for The Country of the Pointed Firs. Like Wendell Berry, she belongs within the tradition of American literary regionalism, also known somewhat condescendingly as “local color” realism. Labelled “the best piece of regional fiction to come out of nineteenth century America,” Pointed Firs is layered with meaning. Feminists laud Jewett’s exceptional abilities as a writer, and modern scholars co-opt her anachronistically to fit postmodern narratives, but her Congregationalist Christianity, which is implicit throughout her work, remains neglected. Jewett emphasizes a concern with caring rightly not only for one another, but for God’s good earth.

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The Domestic Arts: Finding a Quiet Dignity in the Mundane

A Graced Grit Eulogy to Charles Portis’ “True Grit”

Graced Grit: A Hymn-laced Eulogy to True Grit Author Charles Portis

By Barbara A. Castle

Vilonia, AR. Charles McColl Portis’ funeral was February 25th at the Second Presbyterian Church in Little Rock, Arkansas just thirty some-odd miles from my home. It was an intimate and understated affair, just as Portis might prefer. A close friend reminded us of Portis’ genuine humility; the simple American-flagged draped coffin appeared small compared to the man in repose. His friend’s thoughtful, tender words came after “A Mighty Fortress is our God,” the reading of Psalm 23, II Timothy 1:8-14, a homily, an Affirmation of Faith in Christ and “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.”

Surprised by Epistemology: Pt. 2

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John Bunyan, The Iliad

Cowering at Sovereignty

First, I would have to intellectually deal with the problem of sovereignty before the problem of pain. The doctrine of grace would be settled by necessity. No more claims to the convenient middle ground in which I could keep present company. Either tomorrow was determined by my choices or I would agree with Homer and grant that power to the plan of God. Too much was at stake to risk the former.

Life had become a frightful labyrinth of shattered glass beneath bare feet. My journal entries for over a year began with the words “today there is a feeling of impending doom…” It would be a decade before I read the Iliad, yet instinctively that “rage” against the father was about to wreak murderous doom with “countless losses, hurling down to death.” That loss came immediately and so did my repentance.

The thought of losing more than we already had was the one inconsolable grief that paralyzed my faith, causing me to cower at His Sovereignty. The next blow would be final, if there would be one. Bloodied and broken, metaphorically speaking, there was no room for error. John Bunyan wrote,

It came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house, he would sell me for a slave.

Was the worse yet to come? Our tragic epic had only just begun and the Proem declared the end, ….or so it seemed.

Surprised by Epistemology – Pt. 1

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Achilles, epistemology, Homer, The Iliad

Drawing from an epiphany after reading the Iliad and The Republic, my own understanding of worldview has shifted from a mostly intellectual undertaking, to a new paradigm in which the metaphysical is as mystical and yet down to earth as swift-footed Achilles.

In practice, my epistemology was correct, but in naming it, I opted for the good country sought by Lot instead of faithful Abraham who received his son raised from the dead in a vision. True epistemology is found by a faith seen with the eye of the imagination. Homer was on to something.

While abhorring the post-modern tendency toward reductionism, where the goal is to strip down the machinery to the last bolt, I found myself committing a similar outrage. Like Socrates, my journey up from darkness was met with blinding light in which I assumed the revelation of the logical and reasoned assent was mission accomplished. “Ah, so that’s what they meant,”…I thought as I enthusiastically high-fived others who were emerging from Plato’s cave.The on-going quest to descend and escort more of humanity up from wrong-headed thinking was a mission field (the future of civilization depended on it). Worldview is after all philosophy…isn’t it?

The Muses Sang
I had wrongly assessed the epistemology that rescued me. It wasn’t so much in knowing, but more in seeing with the eyes of the imagination…knowing by way of a narrative.

At least I had known where to begin to find the answers. Oswald Chamber said, “Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.”