The Well Digger's Daughter

Today is a Movie Review day at The Catbird Seat! At the insistent urging of my eldest daughter (The Fireman's Daughter), I recently watched "The Well Digger's Daughter" on Netflix. I'm so glad I did. It is easily one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. Cinemaphotography at its finest. The French countryside, the period clothing, cars, homes, and characters, the writing, the acting, the music (unremarkable, but fitting), the story - all combine smoothly and beautifully to create a lovely and memorable film.* 

It is the story of a widowed man, Pascal Amoretti,  a well digger by trade in Provence, France, working hard to care for his six daughters. The eldest daughter, the beautiful, virtuous Patricia, is considered by him to be a saint, and his love for her is deep and unaffected. "She isn't a daughter, she's a treasure from the Good Lord.", he tells a friend. Patricia (a young adult) has taken over the role of mother to her younger sisters and cares tenderly and competently for them and her father. In the opening scene she meets a handsome young man who helps her cross a stream as she is on her way to deliver lunch to her father. 

Their attraction is mutual and immediate, and we fully expect this handsome devil to play an important role in Patricia's life. And we are correct.

 We also meet the father's co-worker/employee. The kind, but older and...um...less handsome...Felipe, reveals his interest in Patricia, and Pascal agrees to approach her about accompanying Felipe to the local air show on the following day. The stage is set. She goes to the air show with the dear Felipe, but, you guessed it, ends the day with the dashing young stranger, whom we now know as Jacques, the wealthy son of a shopkeeper.

Jacques is suave, sophisticated, charming, exciting (he rides a motorcycle), and....persuasive. Patricia is soon "in trouble", and Jacques is called away to serve France in WWI, unaware of Patricia's plight. What ensues and unfolds is one of the most stirring stories I've ever seen on the screen.

Shaken to the core with grief, foreboding, shame, and fear, Patricia tells her father. And then we see something rarely seen in films or books or real life. This broken father simply loves this broken daughter. Sweet, solemn, sad comfort.

He joins her in grief, but unflinchingly faces the reality of their joint shame. 

"The Well Digger's Daughter" is the story of  how to face pain, adversity, poverty, shame, and human failing with grace and courage. The pathos of this cinematic narrative is palpable. It is the embodiment of all that is right and good and winsome about the human experience. It is a radiant light held aloft as a guide to the eternal truth found in First Corinthians of the Bible: "The greatest of these is love". Yes, indeed, "The Well Digger's Daughter" demonstrates in the most artful way imaginable that love...really does conquer all.

*Caveat: this is a French film with English subtitles, and it is simple, slow, and possibly predictable. If any of these are deal breakers for you, then...well...perhaps you should broaden your horizons a bit! :)

Ad Astra Per Aspera

Last year when I visited our state capitol, it was a mess, with makeshift plywood walls, tarps, and scaffolding everywhere. The renovations on the interior have been mostly completed since then, and I have been eager to get to Topeka to take a gander for myself.

Today I got lucky and hitched a ride to our Capital City with my darling daughter. Daughter Number Three serves on the state CURB (Citizens Utilities Ratepayers Board). Appointed by Governor Sam Brownback, she attends quarterly meetings at the Kansas Corporation Commission building in Topeka. I tagged along today, and while she attended her meeting, I went over to the capitol building to see the renovations and to speak to several legislator friends.

Wow. What a splendid treasure, our beautiful capitol. I went up, down, and all around snapping away.

This is a large hooked rug representation of our state seal, which hangs outside the Senate Chamber Visitor's Gallery. I love our state seal. Here is the Senate President's desk.

These beautiful copper columns, also in the Senate Chamber, were hand cast in Italy in the 1880's.

Our gorgeous rotunda from the ground floor.

(click on this one, you'll be glad you did!)

The fabulous copper columns at the top have been polished 'til they glow.

Here's a closer look... 

The library got a make-over too...shhhhhh...

They removed many layers of paint to restore the lovely artwork on the ceiling.

The new, stunning, highly polished brass railing hosts a Kansas sunflower garden! 

 The House

Look at those fabulous marble columns. The names you see all around the top of the room, are those of ten prominent abolitionists, and were discovered in the 1998 restoration. Cool, huh?

Gazing down on the second floor rotunda - home to our four famous Kansans...

Dwight Eisenhower, William Allen White, Arthur Capper, and...

our particular Kansas Darling, Amelia Earhart! :)

The marble throughout the capitol is astoundingly beautiful. Rose marble, dark red marble from Belgium, black and white from Georgia, brown from Tennessee. Marble from Italy and Mexico found a happy home in Kansas, as well!

 Look at this lovely gold leaf molding and the vivid color of the fantastic murals that cover the walls of the second floor... 

...which, of course, includes the piece de resistance (in my opinion)...

our glorious Tragic Prelude by John Curry - the representation of John Brown and the antislavery movement. I have always been an ardent admirer of John Brown, and do not believe he was the crazed fanatic depicted here and in so many history books. Being willing to die for one's beliefs does not make one crazy...it makes one courageous and intrepid...a man or woman of valor.

Here is where I will interject my only criticism of the restoration/renovation process that the capitol has undergone. The lighting on the murals is horrible. What were they thinking? Did they consult anyone from an art museum for advice on how to highlight and showcase all these beautiful paintings without that dreadful glare? There is no vantage point from which to view these works of art without that garish glare. Disappointing at best, really aggravating at worst!

..................

One of the most striking elements of the work done can be seen on every floor...because it is the staircases! I've been to this great building many times, but never noticed the balusters that make up the balustrades. There are thirty of them from the ground floor to the fifth. And every single one is crafted of copper. I hadn't noticed them before, because they were tarnished and dark. Now they are stunningly polished and positively glow! Those beautiful copper balustrades, topped with shining brass handrails, make the whole place....glow. I can't think of another word! Not sparkle nor shine...because the effect is suffused with warmth. Yes. They just glow.

These lovely stained glass windows by Topeka artist Patrick McKinney, were installed in 1976 during the U.S. Bicentennial celebration.

Time to go. I'm so grateful I got to see this grand edifice that is a monument to all that I love about my home state. Kansas. Open and free, land of a rich heritage of pioneering spirit, hard work, determination, and courage. Temperate yet bold, modest yet proud, we embrace blessing with gratitude and face adversity with grit. As with all brilliant art, each of these characteristics are clearly depicted through the sculptors' gifted hands, the artists' skilled brushstrokes, and the mastery of the multitude of masons, carpenters, iron and metal workers, and architects. 

I walked back out into the crisp, clean Kansas February day. The work on the capitol dome continues, she still bristles with scaffolding. Even so, I thinks she's lovely.

Ad Astra, the bronze Kanza Indian created by Salina sculptor Richard Bergen, stands proudly atop the dome, depicting our state motto, "Ad Astra Per Aspera" - to the stars through difficulty - his arrow appropriately pointing to the North Star.

...and no, darling, I am not trying to peek beneath your loincloth...

I love you, Kansas! 

The Art of Homemaking

The January table bids thee adieu.

I adore my January table. My lovely, snowy vintage tablecloth, my new cream table runner from the Dollar Tree, my eclectic assortment of white candles, my silver candlesticks and darling silver snowflake votive holders. These all come together every January to create a clean, crisp, wintry tablescape that heralds the New Year and says goodbye to the Christmas table.

Decorating my home for the changing seasons and holidays has always been a particular pleasure for me. I love change. I love moving the furniture, I love changing the dining room tablescape, I love using different dishes, I love changing up little details in the decor. When the kids were home, and even now with just the two of us, I frequently set the dinner table with candles or fresh flowers. Beauty is all around us all the time, we must be the catalyst that causes our families to see it, to desire it, to appreciate and love it. I always took great care in the art and decor I chose for our walls. Scripture has always been paramount, and beautiful, classical art. Even though children seldom talk about such things, they are being influenced by what they see every day.

I also love sameness. Sameness is what most often appeals to children. Children tend to feel more secure when they can depend on certain things in their lives not changing. Children, especially small children, thrive on routine. They like their mealtimes at the same time with familiar foods, they come to expect their naptimes, even when they balk and cry, their little bodies and minds and hearts are comforted by counting on Mom performing the same rituals every day. It is the most important form of discipline that children receive, this confidence that Mom and Dad can be depended upon to perform the same tasks every day, meting  out the same correction for rules broken, reading the same books aloud before naps, greeting each day with a smile, a hug, and, when children are still small enough to allow it...a cuddle. Sameness. It instills a sense of belonging, family, home. It makes memories.

Change and sameness. Both are important components to the art of homemaking. Homemaking is so much more than simply being a "stay at home mom". Homemaking is the fine art of creating a place in your husband's and your children's world where they are safe...in every sense. Safe from harm, safe from the elements, safe to be honest and vulnerable, safe to be angry, happy, silly, sad. A place where family members are safe from rejection, even at their very worst; and the absence of the fear of rejection births the most important safety of all....the freedom to fail. 

Creating this climate is what real "homemaking" is. It requires diligent, Herculean effort, eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. "A woman's work is never done" is far more than a cliche, it's the gospel truth. Because as important as making your home a safe harbor for your family is, what really matters...and what really requires so. Much. Time. ...is simply being available. The most difficult thing about homemaking is juggling the myriad tasks involved in running a household, while somehow at the same time availing yourself to each member of the family for whatever needs each individual has at any given moment. Hurt feelings, disappointments, failures, anger and resentment, jealousies, injustices, broken hearts, anxieties and fears...all these are brought to Mom. Sometimes by several family members several times a day! Wise homemakers become adept at making family members feel as if they are the most important people in the world at the moment of their need. Whirling thoughts of the dozens of things needing your attention are pushed aside as you rock that cranky toddler, hold that disappointed little sister on your lap murmuring sympathy and encouragement, sit on that teenager's bed while they cry bitter tears over lost love, listen with empathy to the husband's discouragement. Availability. Flexibility. Sensitivity. Homemakers must be all things to all people all the time. A very tall order...accompanied by heaping doses of guilt. 

A tough job indeed. One that can only be accomplished through the power and presence of our Father in Heaven. Women whose heart's desire is to know Christ and to make Him known, must be ever mindful that our work is not for our families. It is for our Lord. We do everything we do "as unto the Lord". This is the impetus behind it all, and what gives our work meaning and purpose far beyond ourselves and our families. 

So goodbye January! Hello February with your pink table cloth and red candles! Time to change it up...same as every February.     

 

The Hound of Heaven

I recently re-read The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson. It is profoundly moving and convicting to me. It has the unmistakable crystalline ring of Truth. Carefully crafted, beautifully written, a treasure. Do yourself a favor and read it. :) I've copied it here in its entirety following my review of this matchless poem.

"The Hound of Heaven" is one of the most beautiful and insightful poems ever written. It is a perfect word picture of deviant, depraved, defiant Man running, running, running from God...from Love...who is personified as the Hound of heaven. Thompson's skillful and brilliant use of language is unsurpassed.

Man's senseless, blind flight from God takes him "across the margent of the world...to the gold gateways of the stars", mindlessly thinking he can hide from Him - "I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon; With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over From this tremendous Lover—Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!" How foolish - how childlike - we are.

The fear that drives the flight is always this: "For,though I knew His love Who followèd, Yet was I sore adread Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside." We run from Him seeking everything but Him, knowing in our heart of hearts that ending the chase means yieldedness...surrender. What a stiff-necked race is humankind. And yet He follows calling, wooing, loving open-armed: "Still with unhurrying chase, And unperturbèd pace,Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, Came on the following Feet, And a Voice above their beat—‘Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.’"

This poem and its timeless truths and themes has stood me in good stead over and over as I guided five children through the difficult passage of childhood to adulthood. I've often gently reminded each restless, wistful, sometimes broken - sometimes angry, teenage heart that they are simply running from the Hound of Heaven. 

The inspired, profound truth and beauty in this poem always bends my knee to the Lord of Lords - sorry and shamed...again...that I've run from the Hound of Heaven. 

The Hound of Heaven

by Francis Thompson

I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated
Adown titanic glooms of chasme d hears
From those strong feet that followed, followed after
But with unhurrying chase and unperturbe d pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat, and a Voice beat,
More instant than the feet:
All things betray thee who betrayest me.

I pleaded, outlaw--wise by many a hearted casement,
curtained red, trellised with inter-twining charities,
For though I knew His love who followe d,
Yet was I sore adread, lest having Him,
I should have nought beside.
But if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of his approach would clash it to.
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clange d bars,
Fretted to dulcet jars and silvern chatter
The pale ports of the moon.

I said to Dawn --- be sudden, to Eve --- be soon,
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover.
Float thy vague veil about me lest He see.
I tempted all His servitors but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him, their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue,
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind,
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue,
Or whether, thunder-driven,
They clanged His chariot thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn of their feet,
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following feet, and a Voice above their beat:
Nought shelters thee who wilt not shelter Me.

I sought no more that after which I strayed
In face of Man or Maid.
But still within the little childrens' eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me.
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair,
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
Come then, ye other children, Nature's
Share with me, said I, your delicate fellowship.
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning with our Lady Mother's vagrant tresses,
Banqueting with her in her wind walled palace,
Underneath her azured dai:s,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice, lucent weeping out of the dayspring.

So it was done.
I in their delicate fellowship was one.
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies,
I knew all the swift importings on the wilful face of skies,
I knew how the clouds arise,
Spume d of the wild sea-snortings.

All that's born or dies,
Rose and drooped with,
Made them shapers of mine own moods, or wailful, or Divine.
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the Even,
when she lit her glimmering tapers round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
and its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine.
Against the red throb of its sunset heart,
I laid my own to beat
And share commingling heat.

But not by that, by that was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah! we know what each other says,
these things and I; In sound I speak,
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor step-dame, cannot slake my drouth.
Let her, if she would owe me
Drop yon blue-bosomed veil of sky
And show me the breasts o' her tenderness.
Never did any milk of hers once bless my thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase, with unperturbe d pace
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
And past those noise d feet, a Voice comes yet more fleet:
Lo, nought contentst thee who content'st nought Me.

Naked, I wait thy Love's uplifted stroke. My harness, piece by piece,
thou'st hewn from me
And smitten me to my knee,
I am defenceless, utterly.
I slept methinks, and awoke.
And slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours,
and pulled my life upon me.
Grimed with smears,

I stand amidst the dust o' the mounded years--
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst like sunstarts on a stream.
Yeah, faileth now even dream the dreamer
and the lute, the lutanist.
Even the linked fantasies in whose blossomy twist,
I swung the Earth, a trinket at my wrist,
Have yielded, cords of all too weak account,
For Earth, with heavy grief so overplussed.
Ah! is thy Love indeed a weed,
albeit an Amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must, Designer Infinite,
Ah! must thou char the wood 'ere thou canst limn with it ?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust.
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver upon the sighful branches of my
mind.

Such is. What is to be ?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind ?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds,
Yet ever and anon, a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity.
Those shaken mists a space unsettle,
Then round the half-glimpse d turrets, slowly wash again.
But not 'ere Him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal; Cypress crowned.
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether Man's Heart or Life it be that yield thee harvest,
Must thy harvest fields be dunged with rotten death ?

Now of that long pursuit,
Comes at hand the bruit.
That Voice is round me like a bursting Sea:
And is thy Earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me.
Strange, piteous, futile thing;
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of Naught (He said).
And human love needs human meriting ---
How hast thou merited,
Of all Man's clotted clay, the dingiest clot.
Alack! Thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art.
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save me, save only me?
All which I took from thee, I did'st but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms.
All which thy childs mistake fancies as lost,
I have stored for thee at Home.
Rise, clasp my hand, and come.
Halts by me that Footfall.
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
Ah, Fondest, Blindest, Weakest,
I am He whom thou seekest.
Thou dravest Love from thee who dravest Me.