Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

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Footsteps at St. Bride’s

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During a recent trip to England, we took advantage of our trip coinciding with London Open House, two successive weekends where citizens and tourists alike can view many buildings usually closed to the public, or take walking tours, or get behind the scenes views of many places that are open to the public. 

One of the places we visited was St. Bride’s Church on Fleet Street, known as “the journalists’ church.” Fleet Street as the home to Britain’s big newspapers is a memory; the newspapers and the journalists moved to other parts of the city decades ago. But St. Bride’s remains, and it’s still known as the place where journalists worshipped. 

A church has stood on this spot since the late Roman / early Briton period. It gets its name from St. Bride, or Bridget, a nun who lived in the late fifth century but who may never have visited London or England.  Several church buildings have been erected on the site. The old medieval church was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and then rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. It was destroyed again, on December 29, 1940, during an incendiary raid by German bombers. But it was rebuilt as close to the Wren building as possible and reopened in the late 1950s.

It’s a beautiful church. We were able to descend through 2,000 years of history to see the crypt, with its old Roman wall, the nameplates found on old coffins, and two chapels, including a small medieval chapel whitewashed and made into an intimate worship space. 

I had some to time to sit in that chapel, and I did. And it was there that I thought I could hear footsteps above and around me. 

Footsteps at St. Bride’s

I hear footsteps here, overhead
and around, echoes of Celts.
and around. echoes of Celts
and Romans, Britons and
Saxons, Vikings intent on loot
and pillage. And the builders
and architects, bricklayers
and monks, whispering of
the Irish saint inspiring it
all. Footsteps become
louder, years passing,
building and tearing down,
rebuilding and reconstructing,
and footsteps running,
accompanied by screams
and the roar of fire. And more
rebuilding, with the Architect
himself stacking the spire
like tiers of wedding cake,
standing in splendor over
the newspapers of growth
and empire so pervasive they
defined generations. I hear
more footsteps, first those
running from the bombs and
then those running to fight
the fire, but above me is ruins.
Yet new architects and
new builders return, workmen,
intent on recreating what
was once there. Newspapers
move on, but the footsteps
remain. They never go away.

A Language Lesson

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I have a short story in the fall edition of Cultivating Oaks Press. The edition focuses on the theme of “fortitude,” and my story is entitled “A Language Lesson.” This is how it begins:

As the train arrived at Heidelberg Station, Sam McClure smiled to remember the first time he’d arrived here. In 1906, he’d just turned 16 and was preparing to spend his high school junior year with a family in Germany. He’d traveled by himself across the Atlantic on the H.M.S. Heimat for Hamburg, sent a telegram to Heidelberg to alert them of his arrival, and taken the train to his sponsoring family. His textbook-fluent German had been more than useful from the time he boarded the German liner in New York Harbor.

The Mittelstein family had been waiting: Dr. Aaron Mittelstein, chemistry professor at the university; his wife Ada; and their three children, Wolfgang, 18, Paul, 16, and Annaliese, 13. Wolfie was preparing to leave for university in Berlin. Paul, known as Mitti for being the middle child, was almost exactly Sam’s age and would share the same classes in Gymnasium, the German school he would attend. Annaliese would be attending Gymnasium with them.

Sam hadn’t known then what the Mittelsteins thought, but for him it had been love at first sight. That love, and what would become his deep friendship with Mitti, sustained him through a huge bout of homesickness and a steep cultural learning curve. He’d come to love this family so deeply that he returned four years later and stayed with them for a year abroad at the university.

To continue reading, please see my post at Cultivating Oaks Press. You can read all of the contributions here.

The Anonymous Spot with an Incredible History

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If you like Brutalist architecture, and I don’t, an excellent example of it is the U.K. Ministry of Justice Building in London. It’s located near Buckingham Palace, where the streets of Petty France and Broadway converge. I’ve passed the building dozens if not hundreds of times, on my way to and from the St. James’s Park tube station. It’s right around the corner from where we stay when we visit London.

The complex was designed by Sir Basil Spence, a celebrated architect associated with the Modernist / Brutalist style (some call it the Soviet style). In fact, Spence had a plan to replace most of the government buildings in Whitehall with buildings like this one. Fortunately, the plan never became reality, except for this building which at its top resembles Darth Vader. At least Darth Vader had a personality.

On a recent visit to London, I signed up for a walking tour of the Petty France area, offered by London Open House. It’s a rather neat program offered each September, with hundreds of places to visit or numerous walking tours you can take, all focused on architecture. The Petty France tour was right near our hotel, so I thought, why not?

The Adam and Eve Pub on Petty France

The thing about London is that it’s been built, destroyed, rebuilt, attacked, burned, bombed, and rebuilt yet again for the past 2,000 years. Wherever you go, you see what’s there, and you also know you’re walking upon the ghosts of history. A lot of ghosts, and a lot of history.

After several stops and chats, including one in front of our hotel which the guide explained had started out as a block of mansions, or flats, we turned on to Petty France. The street got its name in medieval times. It was the center of the wool trade, and because so much English wool went to the continent, it passed through the hands of the French wool merchants, who lived in this area. The name was changed during the French Revolution (when anything French was suspect in Britain) to the Duke of York Street, and then it was changed back to the Petty France in the World War I period, because France was now an ally and there were just too many Duke of York streets in England for the postal office to keep track of.

We passed the Wellington Guards Barracks, and then we stopped at the corner of the Justice Ministry building pictured at the top.

If you wanted to design something that looked nondescript, anonymous, and vaguely threatening, this corner is it. It’s difficult to imagine anything historical ever happening here; Sir Basil’s brutalist building shuts the imagination down hard. And yet this spot is one of the most significant spots in the history of English literature.

The only hint is the pub diagonally across the street. It’s called the “Adam and Eve,” and on weeknights and especially Fridays after work, patrons spill out onto the sidewalk and even into the street, chatting and drinking their pints.

Our tour guide pointed to the pub and asked if any of us could guess where we were standing. None of the 30 people on the tour had a clue, so he told us.

In a house that occupied this personality-less spot, between 1652 and 1658, the poet John Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Actually, he dictated it, a necessity because of his blindness. He referred to this house as “a pretty little garden house;” Vic Keegan’s Lost London has a nice illustration of what the house looked like superimposed on the photograph of the Ministry of Justice building.

History abounds in this part of Westminster. Around the corner from the Justice building is a home built by John D. Rockefeller. The Queen Anne architectural style began here. The collection that eventually became the British Museum started in a house here. The model for M in the James Bond stories lived here, and he actually had a tunnel connecting his house on Queen Anne’s Gate to the Special Operations Building on Broadway. The Cockpit Stairs leads down from Queen Anne’s Gate to connect to Birdcage Walk, and, yes, it’s named for the cock fighting that went on in the 17th century. The printer William Caxton has his presses here for a time.

But it was that spot where Milton’s house had stood that stayed with me. The house had likely disappeared long before Basil Spence arrived with his concrete. But here, on this spot I’ve passed so many times, a blind poet composed one of the greatest poems in English literature.

The Random Act of (Finding) Poetry on the Web

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My love for poetry developed in three critical times. First was discovering T.S. Eliot in high school, introduced by a wild and larger-than-life English teacher who wore turbans and proclaimed that Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann was the greatest work of American literature. Well, no, but she was right about T.S. Eliot.

The second critical period was through a friend in the early 1980s, who said I couldn’t be a “real speechwriter” unless I read Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and Wallace Stevens. I don’t know whether he was right or wrong, but I took his advice to heart and started reading them.

T.S. Eliot

Third was the year 2009. Idly searching on the web for something unrelated, I found The High Calling Blog, which mostly focused on the daily practice of faith in our work but also had a regular poetry feature, “Random Acts of Poetry.” This Friday feature involved poems on a stated topic with links to others writing on the same topic. One thing led to another, and not too long after that, I was participating in Random Acts of Poetry and eventually The High Calling itself. 

The faith-in-work site came to an end in 2015, but the idea of Random Acts of Poetry lived on at Tweetspeak Poetry. It’s become an annual event, and it’s focused on painting poetry in the public square. It’s held on the first Wednesday of October, which this year will be October 2.

Tweetspeak Poetry has several resources to help – a handbook you can download for free, poetry prompts, ideas for how to bring poetry into the public square, examples, and more.

In 2017, Random Acts of Poetry Day coincided with a vacation in London. I planned ahead of time and printed out several poems by different authors already and cut down to size for suitable abandonment in different places, like our breakfast table in the hotel, a London double-decker bus, a display table at the National Theatre, and on the tube or underground. You don’t know what happens to the poems, and that’s the fun in the randomness – imaging how a poem by Eliot or Emily Dickinson or William Carlos Williams or even you might be read and understood by a stranger.

I rediscovered this poem I wrote back in May 2010. It wasn’t left randomly somewhere; it was linked from the High Calling site. The prompt that day was to go to an ancient place and relive the moment. I went back to ancient Greece. The subject is one of the handful of people who heard the Apostle Paul in the marketplace in Athens and followed him; most of his listeners that day thought he was insane. But a few didn’t.

St. Paul in the Areopagus by Raphael (1515)

Dionysus

Yet another day in this ancient place, this Romanized sepulcher,
this urbanized temple to worship what never was, this sacrifice
of marbled skin and stone life-blood, paleness of what was.

Yet another span of hours, sameness and tedium; another day
of listening to the new ideas that are neither new nor ideas,
because of the baneful and prideful duty of an archon.

Today a respite from legalities – a babbler commending us for
our gods, known and unknown. What an impudent fellow, as if
our gods known and unknown actually cared for him and for us.

Although he speaks socratically, with both passion and calm,
like a voice of iron in the forge, does he know the fate of Socrates?
We kill our prophets; assassinate our heroes; poison our truthsayers.

I half-listen until I see Damaris, seated at the front of the crowd in
rapt attention, hearing the babbler’s siren song. Damaris, my soul
mate, my consolation and affirmation that I am not wholly mad.

She is transfixed. The others murmur, laugh and snicker. I turn to
face the babbler, with his thorned flesh. And in that flash of time I
first listen, my soul is seared, torn, shattered like smashed stone.

My heart is pierced; my heart so dead in sameness and tedium, is
stabbed, consumed with the same words that force the crowd’s
laugh and sneer to rise in an illusion of levitation and levity.

The babbler’s piercing look silences the crowd. He leaves with his
few close behind him. I stand to see my white robes now stained
with spilled red from my fingernailed palms, an archon’s stigmata.

Silence gives way to sardonic sneers of those who cultivate minds
of emptiness, the intellectualism of the void. I run to catch the
babbler with the thorn and piercing look, Damaris at my side.

I am broken, she says.
I am not mad, I say,
and run faster.

Consider joining in the fun and celebrating Random Acts of Poetry on Oct. 2. And leave a comment at the Tweetspeak Poetry site with a link or a report.

Top photograph by Jon Tyson for Random Acts of Poetry Day at Tweetspeak Poetry.

“The Blackbird & Other Stories” by Sally Thomas 

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A little girl tries to lead a normal life – dance revues, school – while the shadow of her mother’s illness seems everywhere. If she focuses on dancing “The Blackbird,” she’ll be fine.

A couple try to make sense of their grown son’s suicide, even if you can never really make sense of that kind of tragedy. Or you’re traveling with your grandparents, trying to escape, or deal with, a family breakup. Or a spouse dies, that “little cough” having turned into something fatal. Or your youngest child is born with a skin condition that essentially makes him allergic to sunlight, and you have to re-orient everything you know and do. Or you take refuge from your spouse’s beach house, the one in your family for three generations, the one containing memories of every childhood vacation. 

These are a few of the stories in The Blackbird & Other Stories, the new collection by Sally Thomas. Comprised of eight stories and one novella, Thomas explores life in contemporary America, where marriages flounder and fail, children die, someone you know and love is going to be on the autism spectrum, and dementia and its annihilation of memory always threatens. Underlying all the stories is the subject of faith, or lack of it, never overtly there but only a subtle presence, almost a reminder of something lost. 

But being lost doesn’t mean unimportant. In one of the stories, “Not Less Than Everything,” faith has an important part to play.

Three of the stories and the novella (“The Happy Place”) are about members of the same family, especially the mother Caroline and the daughter Amelia. You read how their lives unfold, and you ache, all the while sensing that there is something here to hold on to while life throws everything at you. These are people you know; they may even be your own family.

Sally Thomas

Thomas is a poet and fiction writer. She serves as the thesis advisor for the M.F. A. program at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. She’s published two poetry chapbooks and collection Motherland, with a second collection being published this year. Thomas served as co-editor (with Micah Mattix) of the anthology Christian Poetry in America Since 1940. Her writing and poetry have appeared in numerous publications, including Plough Quarterly, North American Anglican, Dappled Things, First Things, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Public Discourse, Southern Poetry Review, and many others. With Joseph Bottum, Thomas is the co-editor of Poems Ancient and Modern, a poetry newsletter on Substack.

The Blackbird & Other Stories is a collection that asks, how do we make our way in a broken, fallen world? Or conversely, how can we make our way without faith?

Related:

Works of Mercy by Sally Thomas.

Top photograph by Nick Fewings via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Write & Publish Organically” by Catherine Lawton

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Sometimes I think more people write about writing than actually write. I follow several writer blogs, web sites, online magazines, and Substack listings, and just keeping up with those can be overwhelming. I’ve read and read lots of books on the subject. This is all in addition to the writing itself.

But it is a good idea to step back from time to time and think critically about what you do and how you do it. And to figure out if you can do it better. A new book on writing that is aimed at Christian writers but easily applies to all writers is Write & Publish Organically by Catherine Lawton. And it is a gem. 

Lawton uses a rhyming scheme to explain what she calls organic writing and publishing.

First is “soak.” All writers are soaked in modernity; Christian writers have to strive for being soaked in God’s presence. It’s not easy; she points out that the idea of faith has been shifting from an institutional framework to “unmediated experience.” For Christian writers, grounding in God’s presence is essential.

Second is “spoke.” Lawton details what she learned about writing rom “being practically raised in a church pew.” That understanding include the power of words, the joy of writing and publishing, the importance of being heard or getting the word out, and the value of reading and sharing books.

This is “evoke,” or letting one’s imagination awaken. That’s followed by “provoke,” or stopping playing it safe and getting out of one’s comfort zone. And fifth is “stoke,” where she describes marketing strategies for both writers and publishers.

Catherine Lawton

She includes three useful appendices – publishing models; the publishing process; and marketing for introverts, which likely describes the majority of wrtiers. 

Lawton has been writing and telling stories since childhood. She’s published fiction, poetry, essays, and non-fiction. She’s also the founder of Cladach Publishing, a Christian publisher of memoirs, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. The firm is based in Greeley, Colorado.

Write & Publish Organically is a guide not only for young writers beginning their careers but also established writers. Particularly helpful is the idea of being centered (for Christians, that means centered in God). It’s a work filled with insights and helpful advice; Lawton works both the writing and publishing sides of the business. She’s distilled what she’s learned into a highly readable book.

And reading it is a good way to think about writing.

Note: The book will be released on Monday, Sept. 9.

Top photograph by Andrew Neel via Unsplash. Used with permission.