by Christie Purifoy | Oct 26, 2013 | Amish, Books, Pennsylvania, Uncategorized
Here is something you should know: my bookshelves are brimful with the very old and the very odd.
I bring them home by ones and twos. I bring them home by the bag. I bring them home from library sales and thrift stores. I find them in junk shops and antique emporiums. When I wake early on a Saturday morning to scour the deals at a children’s consignment fundraiser, I always rush past the piles of shoes and battery-operated toys to find, there are the back of the gymnasium, the table of cast-off books.
I am lucky enough to live nowhere near a big-box bookstore but in the neighborhood of 4 or 5 well-stocked used bookstores.
This is a post in praise of second-hand books.
I like buying used books because I prefer buried treasure to the latest thing. I like drifting in the past more than jumping on the bandwagon. If books are windows, I prefer they open on a view I simply cannot find in yesterday’s blog post or this morning’s op-ed.
I also like a good deal.
I recently found the DK book of Forgotten Arts and Crafts
by John Seymour at a local second-hand bookstore. I paid seven dollars. Seven dollars for a big coffee-table of a book. A book heavy enough to press maple leaves to perfect, dried crispness.
And inside?
Everything we once knew but have forgotten. This is the book to tell you how your ancestors … thatched a roof, built a canoe, made their tea, washed their clothes. [Big breath here.] Also, how they made nets, and brooms, and coffee. Not to mention, how they built a rock wall, where they stored the dishes, how they mopped the floors, how they blacked a stove. Would you like to learn about peat cutting, blacksmithing, or chair-making? I could go on. And on, and on, and on.
The many full-color illustrations, ink drawings, and photographs in this encyclopedia of forgotten skills make it a great choice for curious children (and their parents). I especially enjoy Seymour’s personal memories and commentary. He is no impartial recorder of forgotten lore. He remembers, he cares, and he believes that this modern world, a world in which very few people know how to make anything with their hands, is not sustainable.
Moreover the British are as inept at making coffee as the Americans are at making tea. So difficult and mysterious does this simple process seem to them that they resort to those horrible ersatz mixtures, either in powder or liquid form, which have no right to be called by the name of coffee. Perhaps there should be an exchange of missionaries between the two countries. – John Seymour
I found this next book at a local store with a good selection of books about the history and culture of “Plain” communities like those of the Amish and Mennonites. But Sue Bender’s Plain and Simple: A Woman’s Journey to the Amish
is no straightforward history or tourist’s introduction. Bender is an artist. Hers is an artist’s meditation on living the good life. Is it possible, she wonders, to live the beauty and simplicity she sees in an Amish quilt? Or, must our modern, busy way of life only ever resemble a crazy-quilt?
Bender’s first encounter with traditional Amish quilt-making in the 1960s led her to the previously unthinkable. This wife, mother, and artist, a woman who had always despised all things domestic, spent months living with two different Amish families.
The result is this beautiful, little book. It is quiet, reflective, scattered with white space and ink drawings. It is a book of good questions and wisdom worth pondering.
Before I went to the Amish, I thought that the more choices I had, the luckier I’d be. But there is a big difference between having many choices and making a choice. Making a choice – declaring what is essential – creates a framework for a life that eliminates many choices but gives meaning to the things that remain. – Sue Bender
My favorite section of any used bookstore is usually called “Local Interest,” or some variation on that. This is where you’ll find the odd little books that would never be given a shelf in a big chain store. They are books rooted in a particular place.
Which means I am not exactly recommending this last book. I doubt it would interest many outside my own Chester County, Pennsylvania. Instead, I mention it for inspiration. This is the kind of odd-ball treasure you will only ever discover through a devotion to the dusty corners where old books lie in wait.
The book is Fine Food, Wine, and Pickled Pine: The Story of Coventry Forge Inn
by Ann Kilborn Cole. I found it at a local used bookstore housed in a converted eighteenth-century barn. All I can say is of course this book would be found living in a converted eighteenth-century barn.
This is one woman’s memoir of working, with her sons, to turn their colonial-era Pennsylvania home into a fine-dining restaurant. Written in the 1950s, this is a quirky, eye-opening, unintentionally humorous book about one family’s dream and the good food that fueled it.
Did I mention there are recipes? I can’t imagine I’ll ever try one, but I spent a happy hour perusing the sample menus and imagining all those mad-men era businessmen and housewives enjoying a special Saturday night out. My very favorite moment came after several breathless paragraphs in which Cole describes a newly invented oven with the potential to transform the high-end restaurant kitchen. I’d never heard the name she used, but it slowly dawned on me that the modern marvel she was describing was most likely … the microwave oven.
Perhaps you imagine you have no time for such a useless book? You know your reading time is limited and there are so many “must-reads” out there? You are right. A book like this is the very opposite of “must-read.”
And that, my friends, is why I love it.
So, why don’t we finish this post with a quotation from yours truly?
Reading is not an item for the to-do list. Reading is a way of life, and life should never be contained within the confines of a bestseller list. – Christie Purifoy
by Christie Purifoy | Oct 22, 2013 | Dreams, Grateful, Jesus, Scripture, Uncategorized
I’ve mentioned this before.
I do think it’s worth repeating.
I believe the secret to the dreaming life is knowing when to let go of a dream.
***
Here is what I have neglected to mention: that dream never really goes away. There are days when you see it back there in the past and you thank God your dream was never realized. But there are other days and other dreams. You look back at them and you ache for the younger you who poured so much of herself into that dream. You wonder, what was the point of all that effort? Was it for nothing?
All this makes you a little less eager to embrace new dreams.
***
I shared my story this week. I wrote it out: how God spoke to me and the language was my desire. But there is more. There is always more to our story while we are living it.
Here is Part Two: My dream came true (the dream I never could have imagined on my own), and it is good. But the old dream, the dream I willingly released, still comes creeping back. Some days, I look over my shoulder. I remember how in that dream I was called professor (not stay-at-home mom). In that dream I wore heels (not muddy garden boots). In that dream I had an easy answer to the question what do you do? In that dream I was admired, respected, and I stood at the front of the room.
Like many dreams, it was a muddy swirl of selfishness and altruism. Of wisdom and foolishness. Most days, I am relieved that I no longer keep office hours. No longer grade essays. However, there are days when I look at the interview jacket in my closet and wonder, with something that might be an ache, if I’ll ever wear it again.
I’m not sure I want to wear it again.
I haven’t given it away, either.
Old dreams are never fully discarded. There is no donations drop-box for the dreams we outgrow.
***
Standing in the doorway of my closet, fingering the polished fabric of that interview suit, I fear I am Lot’s wife. Will I, too, be punished for looking back?
That is a story I struggle to comprehend. It reads to me like something from the Greeks. Mortal women transformed into swans and trees and the shape-shifting gods who chase them. Certainly, the Bible is a strange collection of legend and history, myth and poetry, wisdom and epistle, but I believe it is God-breathed. Where is God’s life-giving breath in the story of Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt?
But Jesus says remember her and so I do (Luke 17:32). I remember her, and I remember that with the next breath he says whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and I remember that I have lived the truth of those words.
I remember how he lived them, too.
Maybe it isn’t a question of punishment but of choice. I can look back and cry my life away. I can squander these good days with endless longing and salty tears.
Or, I can listen. I can trust.
I can be grateful for memory. I can be grateful for the persistence of old dreams.
I can wake up every day eager to let it all go one more time, and one more time, because I know the only way to live is with empty arms.
***
by Christie Purifoy | Oct 21, 2013 | Dreams, Florida, Grateful, Home, Pennsylvania, Uncategorized
“The language of souls is their desire.” – Gregory the Great
Desire.
Like every good thing, it can be twisted. Exhibit A may be the wandering Israelites and their golden calf, but exhibits B through Z are not hard to find. No need even to name them.
Well aware of exhibits A through Z, desire begins to look dangerous. It begins to look like fire. Afraid of being burned, we push it aside, we cover it up, we warn our children about playing with fire, and we forget. We forget how much we need that life-giving warmth.
I can remember the day my Sunday New York Times magazine flipped open to a photograph of an old, rambling farmhouse. I sat in my Florida ranch home with its persistently green vegetation, and the desire I felt for that other house nearly knocked me out of my seat.
In the picture I could see trees turning orange, pumpkins on the porch, and a tower room that looked perfect for a writing desk. I imagined children (a bigger crowd than my own three) running across the lawn, while someone (couldn’t be me) watched from the windows. I pictured a henhouse and vegetable garden off to the side, and a woman writing stories in the tower room (of course, she wasn’t me; the only thing I’d ever written was a dissertation and that was an experience I was not eager to repeat).
In that image, I could see an entire life. It looked beautiful, but it could never be mine. I didn’t even consider it. That would have been like considering a trip to the moon.
I was a mother of three (there would be no more), I had recently applied for a tenure-track professorship at a small Florida liberal-arts school, and I was, however reluctantly, mapping out a future among the palm trees.
But those northern maples were blazing in my magazine, and I could feel their heat through the page.
Here is a long story made very short: God was speaking to me, and the medium of communication was desire.
It is a dangerous thing to listen to that voice. One day you are living reasonably, making reasonable plans, and fulfilling every obligation and expectation, and the next? You are on your knees warming your hands over a magazine picture until … you are consumed.
You have played with fire, and your life will never be the same.
Praise be to God.
by Christie Purifoy | Oct 19, 2013 | Books, children, Food, Stories, Uncategorized
There never is enough time for reading, is there?
I’ve heard the same thing from so many of you. Something like Oh no! More recommendations! I’ll never catch up! Of course, I know you’re winking. I know you’re dropping everything to read that novel though there are so many more important things to do.
And we wouldn’t want it any other way, would we?
When I’m honest with myself, I am never truly afraid that I won’t make it to the bottom of my must-read list. When I’m honest with myself, I know that my real fear is this: I am afraid I will run out of good books. I am afraid I’ll be caught waiting for a child somewhere and I won’t have a good book in my car. I’m afraid the baby will fall asleep at the exact same moment when the kids busy themselves with a game and I won’t have a good book on my desk.
I know. This is crazy talk. But let’s just make sure shall we? Let’s keep those bookshelves and nightstands and library order queues nice and full.
As always, I am here to help.
(P.S. This post includes affiliate links. You can find more info about those right here.)
Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them. – Lemony Snicket
This was my recent stop-everything-must-read-to-the-very-last-page reading event: The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel
by Neil Gaimon.
I’ve mentioned before my weakness where fairytales for grownups are concerned. Gaimon’s newest book makes an excellent addition to this list. It is the book I want to write when I grow up.
This is a slim novel about a young boy living in an old house on a country lane in England. On the surface of the story, you’ll find a fairy ring, three generations of mysterious, ageless women, and an evil housekeeper/creature. Beneath the surface, you’ll find a boy growing into a man, a family breaking apart, and all the big questions about life and death and loss and the meaning of it all.
This is what I love about fairytales: something small and simple like the death of a beloved kitten is at the same time something big and meaningful and important. It is both. This is a novel exactly like the ocean at the end of the lane: it is so much bigger on the inside than it appears to be from the outside.
‘Grown-ups and monsters aren’t scared of things.’
‘Oh, monsters are scared,’ said Lettie. ‘That’s why they’re monsters. And as for grown-ups …’
– Neil Gaimon
My love for books about food (a category not to be confused with actual cookbooks) is well documented on this blog. A new-to-me classic of this genre is Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen (Vintage Contemporaries)
.
These essays are part memoir, part hilarious confession, part cookbook, and, well, I’m sure a few other secret ingredients have been added to the mix, but the result is delightful.
Colwin was a writer and a home cook. Her book is funny, informative, and mouth-watering. Most of all, it’s a book that makes me just that much happier in my kitchen and at my table. Good things happen at the table, whether we’ve cooked our meal on a hot plate or a community center’s professional oven. Colwin knows this and celebrates it. And I love her for it.
The ultimate nursery food is beef tea; I have not had it since I was a child, and although I could easily have brewed myself a batch, I never have yet. I am afraid that my childhood will overwhelm me with the first sip or that I will be compelled to sit down at once and write a novel in many volumes. – Laurie Colwin
Here’s a book I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you about, but maybe you have yet to pick it up? It’s Betsy-Tacy (Betsy-Tacy Books), the first in the series begun in 1940
by Maud Hart Lovelace.
I somehow missed this one as a child. My firstborn (recently turned ten) nearly missed it. But, thank heavens, we rectified that error in time. This may be a book well suited for little girls (ages four to eight, perhaps?), but, really, we are never too old to snuggle on the couch and read about childhood through the eyes of best friends Betsy and Tacy.
This is an old-fashioned book full of old-fashioned pleasures. Playing paperdolls. Building a backyard house out of a piano crate. Filling old bottles with rainbows of colored sand. It isn’t a life without hardship or sorrow, but it is a life made beautiful by friendship and imagination.
I’m not sure we’ll make it to the end of the series (Betsy’s Wedding? Maybe not). But this first book is a treasure.
Besides the little glass pitcher, she got colored cups and saucers, a small silk handkerchief embroidered with forget-me-nots, pencils and puzzles and balls. But the nicest present she received was not the usual kind of present. It was the present of a friend. It was Tacy.
by Christie Purifoy | Oct 14, 2013 | children, guest post, motherhood, rest, Stories, Uncategorized, Waiting, Work, Writing
And I am sorry. I wanted to give you metaphors that sing, but I have only this empty page and a blinking cursor. This is doubly unfortunate because today’s essay was intended for the column at Living the Story. In other words, today’s essay had a deadline.
I feel embarrassed by this blank page, as if it exposes something of which I am deeply ashamed. It seems to matter more than a blank page should.
This page is my life, I think. I rush and worry, trying to fill it up with words. I am terrified that I might run out of words.
Typically, I fill my empty pages quickly. So quickly, in fact, I rarely notice their emptiness. That this page has stayed blank longer than most, I blame on my ragged throat and tissue-burned nose. I blame it on my flexible work-from-home husband who was not, this week at least, able to work from home. I blame it on the baby girl whose cough matches my own.
She knows the baby signs for “milk” and “more” and “banana” but not for “sick.” I have to read it in the way she clings to me, the way she asks for food then tosses it down, the way she makes it impossible for me to live. Because isn’t my life composed of tasks ticked off, essays written, deadlines met? Which means today my life is not being lived. It means today this essay is not being written.
Or is it?
Perhaps even our blank pages have stories to tell?
I hope you’ll click through to read the rest of this one for the Living the Story column at the website BibleDude.
While you’re there, I hope you’ll leave a comment and let me know you stopped by.
by Christie Purifoy | Oct 12, 2013 | Books, children, Faith, God, motherhood, Poetry, Religion, Uncategorized
Ours is a house full of invalids. Which means this week little has been written but much has been read.
Really, the hardest part of a cold for me may be the burning, tired eyes. I should probably just close them, but I don’t want to waste all of this lying-abed time with actual resting. Reading, that’s where it’s at.
Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live. – Gustave Flaubert
A friend recently gave me a copy of the new memoir by Kimberlee Conway Ireton: Cracking Up: A Postpartum Faith Crisis
. I gobbled it up. Though, I should tell you, this is a book worth taking slow. In fact, the short chapters and brief, fragmentary interludes ask for it (but I was being greedy).
This is a simple story, simply told. I don’t mean that it’s simplistic. Rather, it is beautifully spare. Sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking.
Ireton hangs the story of the faith crisis she endured after the birth of twins on the scaffolding of the liturgical church calendar. The result is an exploration of one soul’s dark night that is both unique and universal.
This is the big story of Christ written very small. And that is something worth praising and worth seeking out. Advent, Lent, Easter … those are big stories, and we can become too much accustomed to their familiar contours. Sometimes we need to read them again in small ways. I am grateful to have read them here, in the small story of one year in one woman’s life.
How glad I am that I didn’t miss those cherry blossoms, that they caught at the corner of my vision, that I turned my head and saw. ‘They’re pretty,’ Doug said. But they were more than pretty. They were the color of hope. – Kimberlee Conway Ireton
Speaking of babies (oh dear, I am sometimes not very good with transitions), if you have had a baby within the past few years then you probably know this next book. You know it because I sent you a copy. Yes, this is my go-to gift for new babies: Psalms for Young Children
by Marie-Helene Delval.
We are so skilled at introducing our children to Bible stories. We decorate their nurseries with Noah’s-Ark-themed prints. We talk about Jesus while they glue cotton balls to pictures of sheep. But the Psalms? Sadly, the book I spend the most time reading can be the one I spend the least time sharing with my kids.
Of course, I do think children should be introduced to the actual Psalms. During Lent last year, my daughter read the same Psalm to us every night at dinner. The repetition was powerful and needful. However, I also think children, especially young children, can benefit from an age-appropriate introduction to the questions, concerns, and poetry of the Psalms.
What you will find in Psalms for Young Children are paraphrases written in child-friendly language. But they are not watered-down, exactly. They are Psalms from a child’s point-of-view, and they are lovely and prayerful even for the adult reading them at bedtime.
God, when I’m in my bed / at night, I think about you. / And then I’m not scared of / anything. I can fall asleep / quietly and in peace. – Psalms for Young Children
I hesitate to make this next recommendation. It is almost as if I want to pause, to make sure you are ready to appreciate a book like this. I’m afraid that sounds selfish, prideful. Really, I think my motivation is only this: I love this book and I feel so very protective of it. It is one of the most powerful, most devastating books I have read in a long time.
The book is Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer
. Wiman is an accomplished poet and was, until recently, editor of Poetry magazine. Seven years ago, he was diagnosed with an incurable cancer. This is a reflective book about life, art, and belief, and it was written in the valley of the shadow of death.
I’m afraid putting it like that makes it sound rather lovely, but Wiman will not let us forget this valley is made up of hospital rooms, searing pain, and medications almost worse than the disease they’re meant to fight.
It would be wrong to say that Wiman returned to the Christian faith of his childhood after being diagnosed with cancer. Though, on the face of it at least, this is true. Rather, I think Wiman would say that cancer revealed to him the God who had always been there, a presence revealed through absence..
This is not a book for those who feel quite comfortable with the Christian faith. This is a book for anyone who finds the language of belief too often a hindrance rather than a help. This is a book for mystics and lovers of poetry.
This is an uncomfortable, even difficult book. It’s central emblem is not the empty tomb, but Christ crying out his forsakenness on the cross.
It is also a book I found to be so wise and true, I copied whole pages into my journal. The paperback edition doesn’t arrive till spring. I suggest buying the hardcover. If you are like me, you will fill it with notes. You will look forward to reading it again, wrestling with it again, even before you’ve read it through once.
To fling yourself into failure; to soar into the sadness by which you’ve lived; to die with neither defiance nor submission, but in some higher fusion of the two; to walk lost at the last into the arms of emptiness, crying the miracles of God. – Christian Wiman
