Book Flash: The Heaven Tree Trilogy by Edith Pargeter

Well, some of you have commented that I haven't posted through most of the summer.  This is true.  Other priorities crowded in and demanded my time.  Well, I am back.  For starters, here is a recommendation for those of you who are making that list of winter reads...or if you are in the southern hemisphere, summer reads.  It reads marvelously at any time of year. :)

This book is one of my top ten favorite novels.  I recently re-read it and was reminded why it lives in my imagination. This is the same author who writes as Ellis Peters and created the Brother Cadfael series, also great reads.

I couldn't write it better...so here is a review straight from goodreads:

A trilogy of novels set in twelfth-century England and Wales--The Heaven Tree, The Green Branch, and The Scarlet Seed--chronicles the adventures of master stone carver Harry Talvace; Ralf Isambard, Lord of Parfois; and their two sons.

Set on the volatile, hotly disputed Welsh border, this full-bodied, swift-moving story of deadly politics, clashing armies, and private passions sweeps the reader into its characters' grand quest for justice and vengeance. The trilogy focuses on Harry Talvace, who bears stamped on his face the lineage of Shrewsbury's Norman conquerors. Born to aristocratic parents and nursed by a stone mason's wife, he grows up fiercely loyal to his breast-brother, the sunny, irresistibly charming Adam. Harry also discovers that he has a gift--the ability to carve stone with the sure hand of genius.

In his fifteenth year, Harry's devotion to Adam and his obsession to sculpt set into motion the thrilling tale of Volume One, The Heaven Tree. Rebelling against his father and fleeing England to save Adam, Harry finds his destiny entangled in the affairs of commoners and kings, divided by two women--the courageous dark-haired Gilleis and the beautiful courtesan Benedetta--and pledged to the brooding, mysterious Lord of Parfois, Ralf Isambard, who sponsors Harry's monumental creation of a cathedral. And while Wales and France challenge England's crown, these men and women follow their desires toward jealousy, pitiless revenge, and passion so madly glorious neither time nor a merciless execution can end it. 

In Volume Two, The Green Branch, Harry's son, young Harry Talvace, is drawn into the fabulous intrigues of the court of Llewelyn, Prince of North Wales, and bound by a blood oath to find and kill his father's old enemy, Isambard. Yet the threads that bind his life to the ruthless Isambard are not so easily severed, as Harry falls under the spell of the aging warrior lord.

The concluding volume, The Scarlet Seed, brings full circle this tale of implacable enmity and unshakeable loyalty. As a kingdom shudders under the flames of civil war and captor becomes captive, the final siege of Parfois creates a climax to this tale so majestic, noble, and heartbreaking no reader will ever forget it.

Happy reading!

The Cosmic Company We Keep

I was moved as we prayed together in the basilica, our husbands underneath in the crypt, in conclave discerning who God was calling to be the next archbishop of the Anglican Church of North America.  We, the bishops' wives, began to sing together, and I was keenly aware of the company of saints represented all around us in the beautiful stained glass windows, in the paintings, in the plaster reliefs and carvings.

This decision of the ACNA leadership was being made in a transcendent company of historic and Christian saints who are even now alive around the throne of God entering into perfect worship and the intercessions of Jesus on our behalf.  I had a divine sense of the company of heaven underneath us, buried, around us in the windows, and above us in the dome, their prayers, their sacrifices, their hidden deeds, supporting us beyond their own earthly lives in a holy protection.  Their lives remind us that giving all in this life is worth it.  Their sufferings remind us that this too is passing--the eternal weight of glory is now theirs.  As I looked into the windows, the light from heaven shone through them into this moment of time, this darkening time in our country and our world.

The older I get the more aware I become of the veil that hides us from the unseen realities.  It seems less like a wall and more truly like a veil with stirrings behind it, a soft covering that keeps it all a mystery yet to be disclosed.  Though at certain moments I can see more than at others, I carry a constant awareness of life on the other side of that veil.  This expands my vision of my life.  I am living in the company of angels, those who have died in Christ and so are living, and all creation that praises the Lord and waits with me for the ultimate redemption.

If those who have died in Christ are most fully alive, then certainly they are living in a kingdom that we share with Christ.  And the angels...ahh, the angels.  They are all around us.  We are simply not allowed and are unable to lift the veil.  At times, God lifts it, for reasons I do not know, but when he does, it is a glimpse that reminds us of our eternal lives that extend beyond us.  I am often reminded of Elisha surrounded by Syrian horses and chariots.  His servant was distressed, "Alas, my master, what shall we do?" [Elisha] said, "Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them."  Then Elisha prayed, "O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see."  And it says in 2 Kings 6: "So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha."

This awareness of the cosmic company, this cloud of witnesses, replaces fear with the assurance of ultimate victory.  The gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church.  It also makes us more aware of the company we keep here on this earth--the global company...God's kingdom that is alive and growing all over the world.  I carry in my heart everyday my fellow brothers and sisters that are suffering because they know they are first of all citizens of heaven.  They suffer for being followers of Jesus.  I pray for them to be faithful, not to be discouraged, and to forgive their enemies because we need them to shine into the darkness of the world and also illuminate our darkness. Their faithfulness has cosmic implications.

I know some of you who are reading this live in places where you suffer for the Gospel.  Please pray for us in America.  We desperately need your prayers, and we hardly know how to pray.  The Holy Spirit will guide you.  Suffice it to say that true Christians will be called upon to stand, and the day is growing dark.

When we come to church it should not be simply to have some individualized experience of worship or to be fed some deep thoughts from the Bible for the week. We should be stepping into an eternal light, swept into the expansive and cosmic world in which we take our places with the heavenly hosts in worship.  At the communion table, we are joining hands with all who claim Christ and heaven as their place of true belonging, those who are already there, and those of us yet to join them. At the altar, we intersect together outside of time, or in eternal time, as the veil of worship that surrounds God is expanded to include us all.  This enables us to live our Christian lives, not alone, but in community.

In those moments of worship, I am pulled up by those beyond this world, and I am propped up and able to stand when those around me stand firmly. As I looked at the stained glass windows, I felt the blessing of these faithful lives shining down on me, calling me not to waver, calling me up into that cross that was lifted high. We need this cosmic fellowship to live our small lives in the grand scheme where they belong, to live in this time and God's time.  We cannot live our lives in the fullness for which they were created without living with roots planted in our ultimate home with the full company of heaven.

Lord, open our eyes that we may see the company we keep.

images are of the St. Vincent Archabbey Basilica, courtesy of Flickr

A Poem for the Impossible Journey

When God calls us to a difficult journey, we sometimes despair that we cannot make it. God, of course, knows that.

He has already made provision for us to do the impossible.

Such is the case with a story I have always loved-- the story of Elijah after he has had a spiritual victory over the prophets of Baal, has seen the miracle of fire from heaven, and the miracle of rain after a three year drought. He is afraid and in despair and falls asleep.  

Two times an angel visits him, touches him, saying, "Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you," provides him with a cake on hot stones and a jar of water, and then lets him sleep again. Elijah was able to go forty days and forty nights in the strength of that food until he arrived at the mount of God. (Often in Scripture the mountain is the place of miraculous provision).  

I wrote this poem for my husband when he became a bishop, as I knew it would require supernatural provision. Now I submit it to all of you who are on a journey that requires food from heaven just for you to make it one more day. May you know that God is giving himself to you. Go to the mountain of the Lord, for "on the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided."

Arise and Eat

Arise and eat

for the journey is too great for you.

You are only made of atoms

and mountains will have to move.

Water will need to come from stone,

and you will have to live on more than bread.

Arise and eat

for the journey is too great for you.

I have food you know nothing of.

This food is mine prepared for you

by angels at the hearth of heaven.

This, my hand, will feed you.

Arise and eat

for the journey is too great for you.

Your prayers cry out for ancient fire,

but it is living and will singe your skin.

This is my hand, made pure by fire,

and I baptize you with it.

Arise and eat

for the journey is too great for you.

Those who have not bowed to Baal

must be gathered for the approaching reign.

This, my hand, that gathers oceans

in a water-skin will discharge the waters.

Arise and go.

Lift your robes and run.

Do not fear the evil charging at your back.

I will meet you on the mountain of miracles

where all will be afforded.

This, my right hand, is yours.

--Katherine Ruch

Living in Vertical Time

The Narnia Chronicles by C.S. Lewis open in all of us, even as adults, that mysterious longing for a world beyond this one in which we live our daily lives.  How we long to step into a wardrobe and discover a world where our responsibilities are different, and we have a community so much larger than the one in which we currently transact our business--a community populated with all sorts beyond our imagination.  It is a place where good ultimately wins, and the King comes and saves the day.

What C.S. Lewis is giving us in Narnia is an intuition of the Real.  Our lives lived in such a small frame, limited by our clouded and sophisticated vision, could and should expand into a broad space that is not fictional, but real.  The REAL world we live in with God is much more expansive than our imaginations could ever fathom, but most of the time our world seems, instead, constricted and binding.

How do we get to that expansive place in our minds and hearts, in which our REAL LIFE encompasses what we see but also what we do not see (that is just as real)?  I believe this requires a training of the inner vision, practicing the presence of the Unseen Real.  Every time we enter into worship of truth and spirit, we align ourselves with that reality larger than ourselves that stretches us beyond our tiny existence.

We have just walked through Holy Week.  In our journey with Christ as a Church, we experience the filling of time with eternal space.  Our normal experience of time, as a created being, stretches for us in a linear way.  When we come into worship, God lets us experience the stretching and filling of time in a vertical way.  The grief in the Garden, the cross, the resurrection, come present to us in our immediate experience of time.  We are in time outside of time.

Our church has many Holy Week services: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday Stations of the Cross, Good Friday Evening Service, Easter Vigil, and Easter Day. Since my husband is the priest leading most of these services, I arrive with my six children, exhausted, dragging in snacks, diaper and wipes,  water bottles, carrying the remains in my heart of what it took to get out the door: "What do you mean you still have to comb your hair?" "Put your coat back on."  "Where is his other shoe??!!" "Turn off the lights, please." "Where is____?" "Who let him out in the garden? Now he is all dirty." I apologize all the way to church for my impatience and harshness.  I am weary, and am prepared to face a service in which my youngest will be quiet, but crawl all over me, need to be kept busy, and different children will go and come with their different responsibilities...choir, acolyting, etc.

But as I quiet myself and enter into the presence of God, I find my time intersecting with another time that infuses meaning into this time.  I see my children washing each other's feet at Maunday Thursday;  I see them at the cross praying; I see them dancing at the Vigil and singing with such abandon.  I can bring them here where time in God's kingdom intersects with ours;  and we can be drawn out of our petty concerns into the vastness of freedom and release in God. This is the reality that will ultimately be my full reality.  For now, however, I live learning to find inner highways to Zion, God's dwelling. (Ps. 84, "Blessed are those...in whose heart are the highways to Zion.")

The cross is the ultimate meeting of eternal time with chronological time...the horizontal meeting the vertical.  God who created time, comes into time and sacrifices himself--a sacrifice that saves both those before the cross and after. It operates back in time.  His resurrection is also this divine intersection, visiting even those who had died before with his living presence.  The cross and the resurrection create a bridge for us between our current time lived out on this earth, making a way for us into the eternal time of God.  Literally, Jesus, in his body, makes it possible for us to reach outside of our finite time.

It is beautiful to be expanded in this way because we can become so small in our existence, living without awareness of the vastness of the life to which we belong and that we have been so freely given: Eternal Life...not just eternal in its horizontal direction, but eternal in its vertical direction.  In other words, at any moment we can enter into a vertical experience of time that takes us into God's presence, that unbounded by time, moves in and outside of our time.

If God could condense his vastness into a small baby, can he not take us, in our smallness, into his vastness, expanding us into his depths and heights? As we receive his presence, we receive a world that needs new eyes, new ears, new perceptiveness, indeed, a new heart and spirit to be able to engage it.  These eyes and ears that we have are not accustomed to seeing beyond our cramped spaces.

Training our imaginations and spirits to see and know the kingdom of God in the now of our lives is a lifetime journey.  And we only embark on it one step at a time.  The first step is to stop and be in the moment God has created and ask him to infuse it with his kingdom.  He walks through walls and the limits of minutes, for he owns all space and time.  And if we so desire, he will take us to his kingdom, or better said...will bring it to us right where we are.  "The kingdom of God is near."