References from past events
Dalfonzo, Gina
Dorothy and Jack: The Transforming Friendship of Dorothy L. Sayers and C. S. Lewis
Duriez, Colin
Dorothy L Sayers: A Biography – Death, Dante and Lord Peter Wimsey
Emtage, Sarah
Paperscape
Emtage, Sarah
The Second Rate Poetry of S. M. Emtage
Peterson, Eugene; Philip Yancey; Luci Shaw (Primary Contributors)
Songs from the Silent Passage: Essays on the Works of Walter Wangerin Jr.
Tait, Jennifer Woodruff
Christian History in Seven Sentences: A Small Introduction to a Vast Topic
Tait, Jennifer Woodruf (Managing Editor)
Christian History
Issue 140
Jack at Home
Tandy, Gary L.
The Rhetoric of Certitude: C. S. Lewis’s Nonfiction Prose
Recommendations from
1 October 2021
John Stanifer:
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
Sara Carter-Easter:
Paddington Marches On by Michael Bond
G. Connor Salter:
Reading Evangelicals by Daniel Silliman
Stephen McCartney:
Dunkirk by Jonathan Levine
Charles Beach:
Silence by Shūsaku Endō
Silence & Beauty by Makoto Fujimura
Betty Aberlin:
The Weaver’s Grave by Seumas O’Kelly
Goodbye & Good Luck by Grace Paley
Danny’s Trip To L.A. by Danny Hoch
A Visit by Shirley Jackson
Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen
Jennifer Woodruff Tait:
“World of the Five Gods” series by Lois McMaster Bujold
also from Vorkosigan Saga
Molly Zakrajsek:
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Art in a Hair Shirt by Amy Goldin
Sarah Emtage:
Pride and Prejudice,
Emma,
Mansfield Park,
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Richard Risto:
A Wizard of Earthsea,
The Tombs of Atuan,
The Farthest Shore by Ursula Le Guin
Melissa Ricke:
The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke
Richard James:
Oh Watchman! by Agnes Sanford
Abigail Palmisano:
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Cynewulf
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett
The House of Fame by Geoffrey Chaucer
Don Gauger:
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot
Bob Trexler:
The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor
A Distant Trumpet by Paul Horgan
Devorah Allen:
Watership Down,
Plague Dogs,
Shardik by Richard Adams
James Stockton:
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence
Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson:
Vipers’ Tangle by François Mauriac
The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane
Magnus by George Mackay Brown
Paul Michelson:
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov
Roy Wallen:
Here at Eagle Pond by Donald Hall
Joan Eitzel:
The End of the Affair,
Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene
David Lenander:
The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston
Joe Ricke:
“Happiness”,
“Let Evening Come”,
Otherwise by Jane Kenyon
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Joe Ricke, 17 December 2021
End of Father Christmas bit in Narnia . . . . and then . . .
Tolkien: I must say, I dislike this intensely! What I mean to say is that this hodgey-podgey Narnia nonsense remains outside the range of my sympathy. It really won’t do you know! I mean to say – “Nymphs and their ways,” and “The Love Life of a Faun.” Really, Lewis. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ll tell you about the love life of a faun and it won’t be in a children’s book, I can assure you.
Lewis: But you see, Tollers . . .
Tolkien: And about “FATHER CHRISTMAS,” let me tell you something Mr. Wardrobe. I KNOW Father Christmas, and this is NOT Father Christmas! Father Christmas wrote letters from the North Pole, and he had a pesky North Polar Bear, but he NEVER gave a sewing machine to a talking female beaver.
Lewis: (under his breath) it’s a supposal
Tolkien: What did you say? There’s no such thing. A sewing machine to a talking beaver? Do you think I’d do anything like that in my hobbit books?
Lewis: maybe
Tolkien: No sir, I would not. Also, you don’t seem to understand the distinctions between kinds of dwarves. Spelled D W A R V E S.
Lewis: That’s bosh, Tollers.
Tolkien: DWARVES, Lewis. And beavers don’t like sewing machines.
Lewis: Do Hobbits like fireworks?
Tolkien: What did you say?
Lewis: Do Hobbits like fireworks?
Tolkien: OF course they do.
Lewis: No they don’t.
Tolkien: Do!
Lewis: Don’t!
Tolkien: Do!
Lewis: How do you know?
Tolkien: Do you know how many drafts I’ve written, late at night after grading the examinations. have I mentioned the examinations lately? And my fourteen children? This is how you write MYTH, Lewis, you don’t just dash off a notebook and send it off to a publisher. It’s tedious, slow work. On the back of scraps of paper.
Lewis: Scraps of paper? You were lucky to have scraps of paper. Warnie and I write in the margins of shopping lists that dear Mrs. Moore keeps because she can’t bear to throw things away.
Tolkien: Don’t talk to me about your dear Mrs. Moore, Mr. Protestant. Listen to me, you can’t just dash off a story on some shopping lists or in a notebook lying about the house and send it to a publisher.
Lewis: What? Let me check Joel Heck’s chronology. Ah, as I thought, I haven’t done that yet.
Tolkien: But you would, wouldn’t you?
Lewis: Yes, I suppose so. If Heck says I did. But you know what I wouldn’t do?
Tolkien: What?
Lewis: Hobbits and Fireworks.
Tolkien: OF course you wouldn’t. Because you don’t understand the myth. And besides, you write allegory, and that will NOT do.
Lewis: Allegory? No, I don’t. I write about Allegory. Wrote a big important book about it? Have you seen my big important book of scholarship> It’s a major work of scholarship, Tolkien. Written still in my 30s. Let me read you some of the reviews.
Tolkien: Shut up! You write Allegory! You insist that everything means something else. Lions, Witches, Stone Tables. Admit it, Narnia is an allegory!
Lewis: No, it isn’t.
Tolkien: Yes, it is.
Lewis: Isn’t!
Tolkien: Is! Everything means something else.
Lewis: Alright then, Professor. What does the Faun represent?
Tolkien: Well, I don’t know, how do you expect me to . . . .
Lewis: What about the nymphs?
Tolkien: Don’t ask me.
Lewis: Sewing machines?
Tolkien: What?
Lewis: Beavers?
Tolkien: That’s easy . . .
Lewis: What? What to the beavers represent?
Tolkien: Well . . . give me time . . . talking animals?
Lewis: No, that’s what they are. That’s not “something else.”
Tolkien: Well, maybe not the beavers.
Lewis: Well then, what does Father Christmas represent, in the ALLEGORY?
Tolkien: Ummmm. Lewis, you know it really won’t do, you can’t bring Father Christmas into a story about talking animals in another world in which you don’t even make the proper distinctions between the dwarves.
Lewis: What? Red and black, what more do you need, in terms of dwarfs?
Tolkien: As I said, you can’t bring Father Christmas into . . . .
Lewis: Yes you can.
Tolkien: How? When?
Lewis: In a myth.
Tolkien: What?
Lewis: A fairy story?
Tolkien: It’s not!
Lewis: A supposal?
Tolkien: A what? What’s that? I’ve never heard of that.
Lewis: Well I just invented it. It’s a sort of story in which fauns in scarfs (that’s S C A R F S) walk through the snow and Father Christmas gives sewing machines to helpful talking beavers . . . in the melting snow because the Witches reign is over!!
Tolkien: Supposal? Never heard of such a thing.
Lewis: Well that’s too bad, because I had a supposal the other day that I thought you’d like.
Tolkien: You did? What’s that?
Lewis: Oh nothing. Might be a bit too allegorical for you.
Tolkien: Well, go ahead.
Lewis: Say please first.
Tolkien: Lewis!
Lewis: Alright, well it’s about this patient but frustrated writer. One might say he’s dogged. That spelled D O G G E D. Well maybe he’s a writer, or an artist, I’m not sure. But he’s working on a story or a painting or a song or something about . . . a tree. A really mythic tree (haha). Well, I suppose it’s a tree, but all he ever works on is one leaf. Get the idea? Just day after day, year after year . . . One leaf. That’s all he ever works on.
Tolkien: One leaf? That’s all. Just niggling away all that time?
Lewis: That’s right.
Tolkien. That’s ridiculous.
Lewis: (under his breath). That’s allegory.
Tolkien: Well . . . might work if you put in fireworks.
Lewis: And Father Christmas. [laughter from both] Cheers, Tollers. Happy Christmas.
Tolkien: And Happy Christmas to you, you old blinking allegorist.
———————————————————-
Molly Zakrajsek background
Biographical sketch
Molly Z. is a Professional Artist with a passion for designing spaces and experiences that inspire creativity and connection. She consults with designers, architects, planners, government, and cultural institutions to create large-scale public art installations. In every endeavor she seeks to awaken the creativity in others, to achieve aesthetic excellence and to restore public spaces by bringing people and communities together through artistic experiences.
Initially trained as a graphic designer and digital illustrator, she began her career contracting with agencies and designers. In 2009, she illustrated the Polar Play Zone Exhibit at the Shedd Aquarium and experienced the transformative power of art in a shared community space. Creating and collaborating with the Aquarium gave her work a sense of permanence and deeper purpose – to fill public spaces with thoughtful, energetic, lasting works of art.
Over the years her artwork has become a significant part of Chicago’s artistic tapestry, permanently installed at the Shedd Aquarium and on Michigan Avenue at the Starbucks Roastery. She has partnered with CTA, Metra, neighborhood organizations, corporate and private businesses, educational, and religious institutions to revitalize interior and exterior public areas. Her professional experience also includes a variety of designing, advising, brainstorming, presenting, collaborating, curating, hiring skilled teams, working with students and volunteers, developing community workshops and installing large works of art in unique and varied places.
As an educator, leader, and consultant, she engages with people in a way that ignites curiosity and purpose through the art making process. She guides others to explore their world and implement their ideas. Understanding the process of creative development, collaboration and meeting deadlines in a professional manner, she enjoys working diligently to create opportunities that inspire a sense of respect, delight and ownership within communities.
Artist statement
Exploring rhythms and patterns of human experience through the art process, my work offers viewers the chance to become aware of unity as an organic, living whole. I often use biomorphic forms, naturally occurring patterns and shapes reminiscent of living organisms as a means of creating dialogues that spark transformation. I have always been interested in heightened visual experiences where vibrant colors interact with meticulously, embellished worlds.
The intent of the ideologies and experimentations of the Pattern and Decoration Movement of the 1970’s was to widen the art field by incorporating visuals that were traditionally labeled feminine, domestic, decorative, pattern, or primitive. Most of these artistic traditions are connected to mythical stories and spiritual meanings, enriching the culture and objects of every day life. I am inspired by the universal imagery that connects us to people and places of the past and present. Used throughout history, patterns are the most social and global of all art forms. I intentionally combine symbolic, abstract, organic, and geometric patterns to create an inclusive, multicultural, harmonious effect.
I long to see beauty reflected in our everyday lives. I make art to bring out the creativity in others, so they may find an expression or a voice that brings hope or inspiration to their circumstance and relationships. Life can be full of conflicts and fears. I create to remind others of the power of art and beauty over hardship and struggle. My colorful agglomerations are a visual echo of the adversity and optimism in the human experience. Intentionally choosing imagery that speaks of growth, transformation and vitality in life, the finished compositions combine nature symbology with elaborate line work, layers, textures, patterns, and colors. My hope is to share a brief moment of awe and joy with those who experience the work, causing them to smile. I believe this is one of the most powerful responses to creativity and enhances our daily lives beyond measure.