Signal Graces

I recently read the book "Flight of Faith" by Frederick Berretta, one of the survivors from Flight 1549, which was forced to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River, after being severely damaged by a bird strike. I was pleasantly surprised by it. It is not a long book - at 140 pages, it is easily read in an evening, if not in a single sitting. It details the author's growth and development in his Catholic Faith, culminating in that life-changing flight, and the impact it had on him spiritually. The writing, for the most part is crisp and to the point. There is not sentimentality here, just simplicity and sincerity. It is not deep, but it is thoughtful, and it encourages you to be the same. If Mr. Berretta takes a little bit too long to wrap up the book, it is because he does have a genuine point to make in his writing, and wants to be sure that he put that point across as well as he is able.

One of the things that made the biggest impression on me, however, was a paragraph mentioning the promises attached to the praying of the Rosary - particularly the first promise:"Whosoever shall serve me by faithful recitation of the Rosary, shall receive signal graces". Now, the Rosary is an important part of the day for my family. We were brought up with it, and we prayed it as a family. I also was, at least, passingly familiar with the 15 promises attached to it. I could not recite them for you, or anything like that, but I have read them before, and know that the Rosary is a well-spring of graces. I must confess, however, that I have never really thought about those promises, and it never occurred to me to wonder what, exactly, a signal grace is. I think, up until now, if I considered that particular wording at all, I interpreted it as singular graces. Rather shocked by my lack of understanding, I looked it up, and discovered that a signal grace is a very specific sort of grace. It is a special grace that allows you to know God's will for you, that gives you a sharp nudge, so to speak in the right direction. Sometimes they come in the forms of 'signs' after you have prayed for an intention. Sometimes, they are just a strong guiding feeling that serves almost like a sign-post for your life. They are special graces that help sanctify you in your duty of state.

It was almost like a revelation to me, because I know that I certainly have had some of those particular graces in my own life. There are several times, in particular, when a large and rather difficult decision was almost made for me, by a very strong sense of the Will of God for me at that particular moment, and I have, in fact, used that very phrase to describe it: it was like I had received a sign. Now, of course, the trick is to trust in God and Our Lady, who send those signal graces to me, and not go about second guessing myself all the time.

Spiders

For some reason (probably because of the variable weather) a rather unreasonable number of scary brown spiders have been coming out of the woodwork, and crawling creepily about the house. They are very spiderish spiders, with fat, squishy, somewhat bloated bodies, of an unhealthy brown shade, equally alarming legs, and a pair of hairy things bristling from where their mouths ought to be. They are large, at least by the standards of the spiders I am used to, and move in a disturbingly predatory fashion. They look like nothing quite so much as miniature Shelobs, in brown rather than grey. I am not much given to the customary yelling and leaping when I am startled by something. I tend to make a single extremely small noise, and draw abruptly back from the startling object. Sometimes I go so far as to place a hand over my mouth, but by and large, I am rather undemonstrative about it. However there is something about these creatures that seems to completely unnerve me, and I am beginging to do little half-leaps of alarm, and go on at a great rate, in a high pale mouse-voice: "Ooooh, oooh, spider! Oh, they're horrible! Just awful!"

The proper thing to do, of course, is the dispatch the things and be done with it. At the very least, I ought to catch them under a cup, and release them outside, where, with any luck, they will crawl into a lingering snowbank, and freeze to death. Unfortunately, I have a greater horror of the squish the spiders make when they are stepped on, than of the spiders themselves; and, dreadful as they are to look at, the idea of getting near enough to one to catch it fills my mind with terrifying and highly unlikely images of them leaping off the floor and getting on me. I might be able to sneak up and cover one up with a cup, but I cannot bring myself to slide a card beneath and remove him from my dwelling place. As a matter of fact, there is one trapped beneath a coffee cup at this very moment. Hopefully, it will die of something on its own, and soon too, because otherwise, I shall have to figure out what to do with it.... or just plan on doing without that cup for a very long time.

Please Pray For

.... The repose of the soul of Diana Wynne Jones, who died on Saturday, March 26th. She was one of the few really good children's authors still writing these days, and I will miss the keen pleasure of seeing her latest book showing up on the new book display at the library.

Also Today...

... is the 67th anniversary of the Great Escape. So after you finish reading a bit of Tolkien, go ahead and watch The Great Escape, with Steve McQueen. Better yet, you might consider reading "The Great Escape from Stalag Luft III" by Tim Carroll.

Happy Tolkien Reading Day!

Yes, that is today. Be sure to read something by himself today. Here is one of my favourite Tolkien quotes:

Breaking Silence

It has been a long time since my last post, and I am heartily sorry about that. Life has been very hectic here the last few weeks, and I have been temporarily without regular internet. I should be back online within a few days, and I will attempt to post regularly again. Hopefully more regularly than is my want.

In the meanwhile, I hope you all had splendid St. Patrick's Days and St. Joseph's Days.

On Writing

Not too long ago, Katrina over at World Crafter wrote a post in praise of the author Diana Wynne Jones, and asked what authors her followers read over and over again, just to see how they DO it. It was a good post, and I originally was going to respond with a comment, but the question got me thinking about my own favourite authors, and what it is about their writing that resonates with me, until I felt I really ought to do a post of my own on the matter.

To begin with, I very seldom read a book just for the story. I read it for the writing as well; for the author's use of language, use of words, ability to draw me in, to make me think, "I like that sentence there! It says exactly what it means." I like authors with a definitive style, who have their own unique way of putting words together. I am beginning to notice that an author's writing will often pull me out of a story, sometimes with a start of delight over a particularly fine bit of phrasing, sometimes for exactly the opposite reason. If I like the writing, I will slow down and savour the experience of reading it, if not, I tend to skim through the book, rather than reading it. The authors I that I go back to over and over, have diverse styles, but they all have something distinctive about their writing that I admire, and would like to imitate, at least in some small degree.

J. R. R. Tolkien: Thanks to The Lord of the Rings, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, The Silmarillion, Tolkien has got himself pegged as a writer of epic fantasy. There is no question that he does excel at that particular style, and that there a few authors who can touch his deliberate and controlled prose - elegant prose which is weighty, but never ponderous. However, he was a very versatile writer as well, who could be delightfully droll and humourous - consider Farmer Giles of Ham - or quietly thoughtful, as in Smith of Wootton Major. Regardless of the style, however, what always sets him apart from the rest, is his ability to use exactly the right word no matter what. It came so naturally to him, that you don't even realise how brilliant he was, until you try to find something similar. There is nothing similar enough to Tolkien to satisfy the desire for that particular quality of writing.

Patricia McKillip: She is not the sort of author that I would recommend indiscriminately. With the notable exception of "Winter Rose", her books tend to be light on plot, and a trifle disjointed. However, I cannot think of another living author who can write in such densely poetic prose as she does. She weaves brilliant, jewel-coloured tapestries of words, her pages bursting with flowering images, glowing scenes, golden glints of myth peeking out amongst the leaves of narrative. She uses unexpected words to good effect and knows the value of using plain, solid words without adornment. If the worlds she creates seldom become more than the bright scenes that appear in the borders of a medieval manuscript, her characters little more than figures picked out in crimson and gold against their brilliant backgrounds, she can be forgiven for the sheer beauty of the picture as a whole.

Robert Lewis Stevenson: His easy, almost careless style of writing is deceptive. He had great control over his narrative. He wrote with economy; there is no extraneous narrative, but neither is it stinted. He has an unfortunate inability to write genuinely engaging main characters, it is true, but he more than makes up for it with secondary characters like Long John Silver or Alan Breck Stewart. The thing I most admire about his writing, though, is that he had a real flair for dialogue. His conversations sound genuine, and accomplish the rare feat of not only giving you insight into the characters, but also advancing the plot.

Charles Dickens: My family are mostly not in agreement with me on this one. The general opinion seems to be that he was paid for his writing by the word, and you can tell. Much as I like Dickens, I must admit that there is some truth to that sentiment, and furthermore, acknowledge that one must be in the mood for Dickens in order to get through his books. Still, he had such an astonishing knack for memorable phrasing. How can one not admire an author who can inform us that Marley is as dead as a doornail, and the produce the following paragraph: "Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail." It is brilliant, humourous without diminishing the gloomy pronouncement that started the book. Dickens has a rather unjust reputation for sentimentality. Unjust, I say, because a number of his books - Oliver Twist, for example, or A Tale of Two Cities - are deadly serious in their subject matter. I rather think that what is taken for sentiment in most of his books, is actually a high esteem for the home, for charity, for virtue, which moved Dickens deeply.

P. G. Wodehouse: His plots are completely predictable; he recycles characters and scenes; he tosses in abbreviations and odd catch-phrases. At first glance, there seems to be no substance to his books at all... and yet, somehow, inexplicably, it always works. You know exactly what is going to happen in it. You know that the plot will spiral out of control, that increasingly tangled complications will keep arising, that all sorts of highly questionably enterprises will be undertaken for the noblest of reasons, and that at the end, it will - miraculously - all come right, and the rather dimwitted hero will get the girl of his dreams. Yet, there is a sort of fascination to it. I find that I read his books for the sheer pleasure of trying to figure out how he manages it, and wondering why it never grows stale.

There are, of course, a lot of other authors that I enjoy, these are just the ones who come most readily to mind... oh, and of course, Diana Wynne Jones too, for all the reasons Katrina laid out. A hearty thanks to her for bringing the subject up!