COMFORT          

I think I’ve had it wrong. The word comfortable has always sparked mental pictures for me of down bedding or a steaming bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup.

But a recent reading educated me.

Our English word comes from the Old French verb conforter (to comfort). It is made up of two Latin words meaning “with” (used as an intensive to infer a great degree) and “strengthen” or “embolden.” That is, to comfort means to strongly reassure, to fortify, to make strong. It wasn’t until the middle of the 17th century that the word took on the idea of comfort as something that produced physical ease.

Add to this the Greek for paraklesis (such as we see in the biblical “God of all comfort” and several other applications to Father, Son, and Spirit), and my picture of a cozy bed or soothing soup loses force.

If I want to get or give comfort, I guess I need to learn about something more than linens and food!

         THE DOLDRUMS

I’m a bit under the weather today. Not sick, exactly—just slight chills and dizziness and, mostly, a feeling of lethargy.

If I worked for someone else, I couldn’t quite justify taking the day off. As a writer-at-home, I was so looking forward to picking up drafting on my novel, set aside during a recent family vacation. But now I find myself with so much to do and no will to do it, leaving me discontent—as though my day is wasted while it’s only early afternoon, as though I’ve lost confidence in my life vocation that usually keeps me motivated and productive.

I’ve been reading today; it helps me justify my down time. This morning I cracked open a book about the afterlife, started in on my first volume of a new subscription to an academic literary journal, and wiled away some time on the ’Net.

My surfing led me to a lovely post by a blogger who advised that, though:

“The world is broken and we are subject to fear, discouragement and loss of confidence,”

I need only (in the words of Oswald Chambers) to:

“Never let the sense of past failure defeat [my] next step [but instead] . . . Get up, and do the next thing.”

So I think I will be good to myself and (in this order):

• Listen to my body whispering that all is not quite right, and so take a nap, and then
• Listen to my sister, who sagaciously messaged me this morning after I’d complained to her, recommending I take joy, and then
• Listen to my soul that longs to create something worthy, take up my pen (aka, my laptop), and get back to drafting.

          SLIPPER

The elegance of this richly embroidered silk slipper, looking like a cute doll’s shoe at three-and-a-half inches in length, belies its hideous history. More than a century old, it was worn by a bound-footed woman in Formosa (Taiwan) and now sits on our bedroom dresser mounted in a black shadow-box frame. The lady would have been fully grown and was possibly of noble birth, the bones of her feet crushed as a child with resulting infection because of a tradition that had been followed for a thousand years—effective in immobilizing women debilitated by pain. This shoe is a symbol of emancipation that came to our house through inheritance from a Canadian Presbyterian missionary, George Leslie Mackay—my husband’s mother’s aunt’s father-in-law. He was the subject of a 2006 televised Canadian documentary, The Black Bearded Barbarian of Taiwan.

Mackay was born in Ontario in 1844 and studied in Toronto, Princeton, and Edinburgh before leaving for the Orient in 1871. He so immersed himself in the culture of his chosen land that he even married a Formosan wife, who herself became an outspoken critic of foot-binding. He served the people for three decades as dentist, anthropologist, educator, evangelist, and author before he died in 1901. Mackay still retains a widespread reputation in that country as the founder of hospitals and schools, and is the subject of a significant Taiwanese opera production.

Why does this matter to me today? I am currently drafting a scene into my novel about a character whose backstory, though set in North America, is all about the sentiments shown by my husband’s shirttail relative. My fictional character faces cultural issues that are new to me, and I need a guide. Now, I didn’t know much about Mackay before we received this silk slipper—so lovely to look at but so horrendous to contemplate. Today our postmodern sensibilities reject the “damage” done to foreign cultures by turn-of-the-century missionaries, who despised practices of paganism that dehumanized people and destroyed the family unit through such brutality as physical mutilation, slavery, and polygamy. I don’t excuse the cultural sins committed by professing Christians who rejected the ethnicity of the ones they came to serve, but I laud the true social reforms made in the name of Christ. I rejoice that there have been and continue to be loving bearers of the Gospel who, although not perfect, devote their lives in going out to all the nations with the welcome news of salvation in Jesus—a salvation that makes a difference in the here and now.

          CHOCOLATE

I once made the mistake, when speaking to a French friend, of calling chocolate “junk food.” You’d have forgiven me at the time, I’m sure, as I was referring to the thick tablets of chocolate pasted on the top of baby teething biscuits I found in the department store in a small town (Aix-les-bains), where I was camped out with my two girls for several months back in the nineties. You’d have forgiven me, but my friend didn’t, and of course I have since seen the light: I’d been poisoned by North American trends to not realize chocolate is actually one of the basic food groups.

So when I learned recently that an old college buddy of mine had just embarked on a “bean-to-bar dark chocolate” operation in Minnesota, I promptly ordered a selection of his product—made from cocoa beans grown in Belize, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. The Meadowlands Chocolate bars arrived in my rural mailbox yesterday, and so this morning—before sullying my taste buds with my usual breakfast of oranges and yogurt—I tested them.

Unbelievable! This chocolate is the real stuff. The wrapping on each bar bears a description—like a wine bottle—of the influences and flavors to be found within, using words such as dark, earthy, rich, nutty, hints of rum, spice, mango, subtle wood aroma. Not fancy filled candies for delicate fingers, these bars are something to sink your teeth into. The winner for me (today at least, though I will change my mind as soon as I’ve consumed it and can eat the next) is the Belize bar, described thus: Bright, fruity overtones. Hints of sweet vanilla.

I was thinking of dieting. You know, after-Christmas bulge needing to be shaved down a bit. But now that I’ve ruined it for today anyway, maybe I should just forget about the yogurt and have another piece of heaven.

          DRAFTING

I’m in the mode. My desktop (okay, kitchen table) is stacked high with computer, binder of plot notes, reference books, sheafs of paper, pens, cups of cold coffee.  I’ll likely wear my housecoat till late afternoon, only dressing in order to walk on my elliptical while watching Dr. Phil. My suppers for hubby currently consist of holiday leftovers and I’m sort of relieved when he says he’ll eat out. I’m a bit of a mess and I don’t see it getting much better before spring–if “better” means I come back into the real world for most of the day.

I love writing! This is only my second novel, but I learned a lot while drafting my first. I learned that it takes much longer to get a book into readable form than I plan, and that pulsing purple passages will likely die of deletion, and that the storyline needs to keep moving along. I learned that I have about fifteen minutes of intense creativity upon first waking in the mornings, when “ah-has” come clear to me. I learned that if I hold onto a thought too long without scratching it down on paper, I lose it, but that if I make too many temporary notes, they hold me captive and freeze me up when I’m trying to maintain the flow.

I’m writing such a scene right now; I have something particular I’m trying to say (my viewpoint character in this segment is a dead “historical” character with a very specific message to pass along), but I’m struggling to condense the thought while keeping the pace and feel of the story.

At the end of the day, I don’t even know if this novel will sell. In fact, at this point I’m only trying to get a readable first draft to entice the agent I have been eyeing up for eighteen months. I’m impatient with myself; though I love to draft, I want to be able to write more more a day than actually happens. I’m torn between pushing myself anxiously to finish and ambling along with the joy of immersing myself in the fiction. That is, I’m not sure the pragmatism of expediency is worth losing the vibe.

And my friends are forgetting about me: out of sight, out of mind. I’m holed up in my cozy kitchen and so glad to be here! But my inner focus shuts down my extroversion when I’m drafting. I’m glad for the excuse of Canadian winter, when sensible people don’t quickly rush off to town on country roads but condone their antisocial behaviour by blaming it on the weather. It makes drafting forgivable.

        THE DOT

My fourth-grade teacher made a single, round mark on the board as he stood in front of the classroom. “A dot is the end point, like the hole in a garden hose,” he explained. “If you tip the dot sideways, it becomes a line that runs on a plane forever.”

Thus was my mind first opened to the notion of infinity.

For a graduate school project in 1999, I “curated” an art show by Elma Eidse Neufeld named AMATE:LOVE! and wrote the guidebook, which begins:

Unspoken, then pronounced by the First Speaker, the invisible Logos took on form, became seen. The seed of all symbols, the dot is the innermost essence of the visual, the contact point between Creator and created, the touch of the finger of God. It is the spot at which pencil meets paper, the genesis of art and the germination of the written word.  Like warm breath on a frosty windowpane, it creates an aperture onto the cryptic world of imagery.

This morning while reading a devotional commentary by the late Donald Grey Barnhouse, I contemplated the idea of a single word functioning like that dot on the chalkboard, that melted spot on the window–a written word acting as the visual cross-section of an idea that leads to eternity. The author’s point was that the concept behind the particular word he was considering (“righteousness,” appearing first in Genesis 15:6) continues on in “every page and in every line” of the Bible–from righteousness as an attribute of the Almighty, through the loss of righteousness in Lucifer and mankind and its manifestation and re-establishment through Christ, to its ultimate, yet-to-be-seen triumph in all creation. Of course, the author was describing what we call a theme or motif–something I’ve been writing about for a couple of years now (see MOTIFS).

A single word, as the written symbol of an idea, can thread its way from today all the way to forever. 

I’m currently drafting my second novel. It’s in pretty rough form right now as I’m concentrating on plot and character development; I’ll take time later to refine word choice. But one word that keeps popping out at me in this novel is home, which pings all sorts of emotions for me. It speaks of childhood comfort at the family table and coziness before the fireplace, of anticipation when I left for school, of joy in new life with my rancher husband, of great satisfaction as I watch my children establish their own homes. Mostly, it brings to my heart a sort of longing for the eternal.

What word threads its way through your life? Share it with me here, please!

          SOURDOUGH BREAD

A batch of sourdough starter lives in a glass container in my fridge. I mixed it up last month and used some to make delicious loaves of white and rye breads, but the joy of sourdough starter is that the leftover keeps ripening and increasing in flavour so long as it’s fed weekly (with a half-cup of water and a half-cup of flour). It’s almost time again for another baking session.

Today, in response to several requests from Facebook friends, I’m here posting my recipes for the starter and the two types of bread I recently made (though keep an eye on my “engage” blog for further experimentation). Purists don’t use commercial yeast, but I do–it speeds the process and makes a lovely bread! Check online for many variations in recipes and methods.

SOURDOUGH STARTER: Soften 3 teaspoons active dry yeast in 2 cups warm water till bubbly (10 minutes). Stir in 2 cups all-purpose white flour (or you can use rye or other desired flour). Cover tightly and let stand at room temperature for at least 2 days, stirring occasionally. (You can forgo the yeast and let it stand on the counter for up to 10 days if you want a more authentic, extra-sour flavour, but first check this link for method). After this initial ripening, store loosely covered in fridge till needed (NOT in an airtight container) and “feed” every week with about 1 tablespoon of flour and 1.5 tablespoons of water. When removing some starter for baking, replace amount of starter taken out with equal amounts flour and water stirred back into the starter; let stand overnight on the counter covered lightly till again bubbly and then return to refrigerator for storing.     

SOURDOUGH WHITE BREAD: Mix 1 cup of sourdough starter with 1 cup water and 2 cups white flour in large bowl; let stand covered at room temperature overnight. Soften 3 teaspoons active dry yeast in 1 cup warm water till bubbly and stir into bread along with 1 tablespoon salt and about 4 cups white flour. Knead till elastic. Place in lightly floured bowl and sprinkle flour on top. Cover with cloth and let rise till double (2.5-3 hours). Punch down and knead lightly. Shape into two rounded loaves and let rise till double (1.5-2 hours). Brush with one egg beaten with 1 teaspoon water. Bake 25 minutes at 450° (For heavier crust, I place a pie tin of water on a lower rack during baking to create steam).

SOURDOUGH RYE BREAD: Mix 1 cup of sourdough starter with 1 cup water and 2 cups rye flour in large bowl; let stand covered at room temperature overnight. Soften 3 teaspoons active dry yeast in 1 cup warm water till bubbly and stir into bread along with 1 tablespoon salt, 1 tablespoon caraway seed, 1.5 teaspoons poppy seeds, and about 4 cups rye flour. Knead till elastic. Place in lightly floured bowl and sprinkle flour on top. Cover with cloth and let rise till double (3 hours). Punch down and knead lightly. Shape into two thinner, tapered loaves and let rise till double (1-1.5 hours). Brush with one egg beaten with 1 teaspoon water. Bake 25 minutes at 450°  (For heavier crust, I place a pie tin of water on a lower rack during baking to create steam).

Let me know how your bread turns out, and share your own recipes here!

     OUR HEARTS CAN REST AT HOME

“My grandmother,” I said in a low tone, “would have said that we were all in exile, and that no earthly house could cure the holy home-sickness that forbids us rest.”                                                                                              (G.K. Chesterton, Manalive)                                                                                                           

I just returned from a weekend of speaking at a women’s retreat in the wooded surroundings of Cypress Hills Park (Saskatchewan). Preparing and delivering the three presentations was a pleasure–and I continue to learn about how my heart can rest from its wanderings, spiritually at home. In this series, I considered the following definitions:

• HOMELINESS: The cozy, intimate sense of peaceful domesticity, where one is known and loved
• HOMELESS HOMESICKNESS: The rootless, ungrounded condition of the displaced wanderer gone astray, possessing no dwelling or place of security but only hopeless heartache and inner longing for a far-off household
• HOMECOMING: The joyous return to the hospitable haven of the hearth and home to which one belongs

My cheering section accompanied me (daughter, niece, sister-in-law) and sat in the front row of the roomful (40+) of ladies, laughing and nodding appropriately. On Sunday morning in the sharing time, one of the younger retreat attendees–a newlywed–mentioned that my talks had given her the words she needed to pass along encouragement to her husband. Another woman said that she’d had an aha! moment in the middle of my second session. This type of commentary confirms not that I speak well but that my point is getting across. I care about the message more than the method; that is, the content of my talks is much more important than the way I speak. But I know that, for me to make the content accessible, I must hone communication skills. It’s a fun challenge!

          SNIP SNIP

Check this out for an up-close-and-personal peek into the fictional mind of the main character in my debut novel, The Third Grace. Aglaia, a 32-year-old costume designer, was originally interviewed (through her creator, moi) by “Beyond the Books” during my online book tour last fall, but you might have missed reading her comments.

* * *

BTB: Thank you so much for this interview, Aglaia.  Now that the book has been written, do you feel you were fairly portrayed or would you like to set anything straight with your readers?

Thanks for inviting me here. You can call me Mary Grace, if you find it easier to pronounce than ah-glay-ah. I go by both names now. I used to hate the name my hayseed parents gave me, so the summer I was seventeen, I decided to change it—and myself!—into the personification of grace. Aglaia is the name of a Greek goddess, you know.

As to your question, I think I wasn’t portraying myself very honestly to begin with, rubbing shoulders with influential Dr. Chapman like I was some sort of diva, and ignoring my boss’s careful warnings and my childhood friend’s overtures. But in self-defense, I’d worked hard at erasing my rural past, and—what with this work trip to Paris coming up—the last thing I needed was another reminder about that long-ago affair.

Actually, the author was brutal with me. She forced me to take a look at who I really was and where I was heading. And she caused me a great deal of pain when she flooded me with non-stop memories of that long-ago summer of love and loss.    

BTB: Do you feel the author did a good job colorizing your personality?  If not, how would you like to have been portrayed differently?

What a loaded question! Wouldn’t we all like to come across as something we’re not? My boss put it well when he said, “I spent so many years fearing I’d be discovered for the fraud I really am.” And he’s one of the most genuine people I know! It’s rather ironic that he’s in the business of disguises, isn’t it?

As for myself, I deliberately left the Nebraska farm girl far behind when I moved to Denver, and I’ve been climbing the ladder to success in the posh world of the arts ever since. So when Dr. Chapman—Lou—was up in my apartment that evening sipping wine with me, and my backward mother barged in with the smell of the barnyard and her ridiculous request, I almost choked with embarrassment. I think the author did me a service in the end, though. You see, I wasn’t facing myself. I’d been denying an aspect of my real personality that she insisted on showing me by putting me in some very uncomfortable—albeit exciting—situations.  

BTB: What do you believe is your strongest trait, Aglaia?

Definitely my creative imagination! It’s what’s taken me to an international level in artistic accomplishment despite my lack of academic credentials. I was born into a religious environment that looked down on “vain imaginings.” My dad didn’t even like to hear my brother and me sharing our nightmares at the breakfast table, for Pete’s sake, and I had some doozies—not to mention my conscious daydreams! Of course, sewing was valued at home, and early on it became my main outlet for expression. But I harbored a rich inner fantasy life, especially once François entered the picture with his own storytelling, whispering in my ear and filling my heart with a yearning for something more.   

BTB: Worst trait?

Again, I’d have to say my creative imagination. The flip side of the coin has been that I’ve almost drowned in my reveries, my soul overflowing with emotions and saturated with a dark obsession over mythology, sensuality, and troubling thoughts about God. I mean, with all these voices going on in my soul, who’s to say which one I should listen to, anyway? That’s the question I had to ask myself throughout this novel.   

BTB: If you could choose someone in the television or movie industry to play your part if your book was made into a movie, who would that be (and you can’t say yourself!)?

I think Drew Barrymore would be able to represent the conflict between my two selves, the country girl Mary Grace and the sophisticate Aglaia. Barrymore plays glam with a sort of self-conscious naiveté, doesn’t she? There’s a humility and rootedness about her. Also I think she’d really enjoy the food she’d get to eat in the movie—foie gras and cream sauces and French cheeses and even some good old Mennonite fare that still makes my mouth water! (For all her flaws my mom, Tina, is a fantastic cook.)

BTB: Do you have a love interest in the book?

I’ll say, though he’s lived mostly in my mind. I mentioned him already—François, the French exchange student my brother invited to the farm that summer fifteen years ago. Boy, he was a breath of fresh air! All the girls in the village were crazy about him, but he chose me over any of them. I least, I thought so . . . Anyway, that summer ended very badly and I’ve been mourning on several fronts ever since. So I was so thrilled—and anxious—for the chance to actually look him up again when I went to Paris to deliver one of my costumes.

BTB: At what point in the book did you start getting nervous about the way it was going to turn out?

Everything was going fine with my life until my mother pushed that Bible onto me. She had the silly idea that I could hunt François down in Paris after all those years and return it to him. Ludicrous! I could have shut her up by just dumping the thing—like I’d burned my own copy back on the farm when I decided to push God out of my life.

But when a museum postcard fell out of that Bible, picturing the Three Graces that François had been so hung up about, and then when I noticed his very own handwriting penciled into the margins of that book—well, I couldn’t resist checking it out. The first two of his phrases, noted right there in Genesis, read, “In the beginning, the gods created” and “Naked and we felt no shame.” Did I blush! I grabbed that book and kept it away from prying eyes until I had time to look through every one of those margins. My suspicions turned out to be right: François had jotted down many snippets that brought to vivid recollection all the seduction of that summer, step by delicious step!

BTB: If you could trade places with one of the other characters in the book, which character would you really not want to be and why?

Definitely Joel, my brother. He’s dead . . . I don’t want to talk about it.

BTB: How do you feel about the ending of the book without giving too much away?

Well, put it this way: I’m satisfied that everything was neatly tied up. I sure was surprised at the turn of events in several of my relationships, though, and can’t say that I’d have written this book the way the author did. I’ll say this in her favor: She did allow me to have a good time in Paris (Deb loves that city, you know), and she let me take great satisfaction in my craft of costume design (she’s done her fair share of that, as well). Also, if I’d been left to my own devices without the author’s invention, I’d never have figured out the mystery behind the Three Graces! 

BTB: What words of wisdom would you give your author if she decided to write another book with you in it?

I’d beg her to bring back Eb—I’m talking about Mr. MacAdam, manager of Incognito Costume Shop. That man is so wise, even if he does remind me of a funny little Scottish garden gnome! And I think the author should send me on another exotic trip. I hear she’s writing up another book now with some fascinating foreign destinations! 

BTB: Thank you for this interview, Aglaia—or, I should say, Mary Grace.  Will we be seeing more of you in the future?

No, sorry but I’m too busy with my current successes.

          MY GRANDMA’S CAST IRON POT

My mom handed down to me this vintage four-quart Dutch Oven along with farm-girl instructions on how to stew a hen. The timing was perfect—it so happens that the main character in my current novel, Libby, has inherited just such a soup kettle from her own grandmother, and I’ve committed to making every broth and gumbo along with her (as I write the story) to test her tastes. Check my first experiment (which turned out delicious) by reading a draft paragraph and maybe trying the recipe yourself:

Libby placed the cast-iron kettle on the back burner and turned the heat on medium until the butter began to sizzle. She softened slivered carrots, celery, and onions without browning them and then blended in a dusting of flour, a pinch of sea salt, and a cup of water, simmering just till it thickened. Wanting to retain the delicacy of the milk she stirred in next, she decided to forgo heavy seasoning; warm milk was a natural sedative, and she was designing this soup for Zinnia, who suffered insomnia after yesterday’s upset with the hoodlums. Poor Zinnia, confined to a diet of instant noodles and canned tuna or whatever she happened to find at Dollar Tree. But Libby had planned a special flavour for her, picked up today on her walk. She buried her nose in the bag and took a deep whiff of the imported garlic-herb Boursin cheese before melting it into the pot, stirring while the chowder made its way back to a simmer. Libby lifted a spoonful of her milky soup-in-progress—her SIP, as she called it—to her lips but found it not quite to her liking, so she finished it with a scraping of nutmeg for both flavor and sedative effect. She hoped it would soothe Zinnia into sleep—and herself, as well.

I can tell that this winter my kitchen will be full of soup smells. Leave a note with your own favourite recipe—it might just make its way into my novel!