A Severed Wasp by L'Engle and the Questions I Found

I finished re-reading 

L'Engle's A Severed Wasp.

It was a suspenseful ending; an ending that held but

that that left me with a lot of unanswered questions. 

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First, you must realize where the title is from, 

and that the book makes clear mention of:

“I thought of a rather cruel trick I once played on a wasp. He was sucking jam on my plate, and I cut him in half. He paid no attention, merely went on with his meal, while a tiny stream of jam trickled out of his severed esophagus. Only when he tried to fly away did he grasp the dreadful thing that had happened to him. It is the same with modern man, and there was a period -- twenty years, perhaps -- during which he did not notice it.  

It was absolutely necessary that the soul be cut away.  Religious belief, in the form that we had known it, had to be abandoned." 

—"Notes On The Way", George Orwell: The Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters. Volume Two, ISBN 1-56792-134-5

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Thankfully I found more of this online here.

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I have a lot more to think on this,

and I am wondering if in part,

esp. if L'Engle thinks this quotation to be true,

if she got it wrong.

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I will try to get back to that.

*

Meanwhile,

and by the way I will be discussing this book in depth so if you need

a 'spoiler warning' this is it,

I am thinking of the main character Katherine, who is now

a newly retired pianist who still is in her prime 

in terms of performance and is well loved.

*

She is going over her life and the people she knew,

most of them all passed on to what the next life is and she,

still living is sorting her life out.

*

By the time L'Engle wrote this book she was already

going towards doing this for herself.

Her husband was still alive but

she is already writing characters who 

are living after the death of their husbands 

and she herself uses her lines from this book to describe

the loss of her husband in 1986.

*

You see L'Engle tying up a lot of loose ends in this book;

various characters, from other L'Engle books, grow up, have families, 

and L'Engle's first character from her first book,

The Small Rain meets a bunch of them in

A Severed Wasp.

*

When I first read this book, I was at TWU

and it was between 1999-2001, so about at least 14 years or so ago.

I was then 21-24  years of age, depending on what year I read it.... 

I was a young woman, still figuring a lot out,

I had lost a woman who was like my spiritual mother,

I was trying to figure out the mess the world had made, 

especially in academia, of gender and gender roles and I was reading 

many books to try to figure things out.

*

From what I remember of reading this book the first time,

and reading her Small Rain as well,

was that I could relate more to the characters lives when

they were young.

L'Engle has Katherine narrate how when she was young

she still needed a lot of mothering and fathering,

even into her twenties.

*

I know in my twenties I felt a lot of that need still as well,

though I can't say my parents were at all inept and I can say today

that my Mother is one of my closest friends and my Father

one of my trusted advisers in my life. 

*

I am just under 2 years from 40, 

whatever that means,

and I am sure sometime I will see how 'young' I still am.

*

But I have, I see, done some growing up in the last years.

They say marrying will do that.

Lots of learning in marriage, 

including standing and walking on one's own two feet.

*

Fr. John of the book Everyday Saints 

is very clear about how spiritual children need to learn

to stand on their own two feet and a spiritual father is not

one to carry one as much as to point one in the right direction.

See this lovely article about him, I highly recommend it.

*

Life is never just one thing but a juxtaposition of many things as well.

I realize that I relate to the character Katherine also in what

some expected of her and what she had to define boundaries about

who she is and is not.

*

When I was not even in my twenties I was going to a Mother-Daughter banquet 

in place of a Mother who had died.

Katherine in this book is often asked by the words and/or actions of others

to be more than she is (a person's Mother or Confessor for instance) 

and she has to firmly put the others

back in their place so that they can come to themselves and 

make the choices they alone can make.

*

I am pondering this a lot lately.

*

I really liked the line by the retired Bishop Felix who said when he was young

he was lonely and trying to get past this feeling,

had not realized that everyone deals with loneliness and that when he was 

younger he did not yet know this;

I think this is actually quite freeing.

Somehow Bishop Felix describes 'getting over himself' here.

*

I am pondering the fact of the sadness in this world

and that many are in need of help and I can't help them or 

in anyway save them from their situation or the consequences of choices.

*

And I have a lot of new questions from this book...and thinking on

many things in my life related to it... 

What does it mean to grow up?

What is friendship? What is balance in life and in friendship? What about the many times

that by circumstances one cannot be balanced?

Can their be friendship that is vulnerable about one's struggle

without the need of the other to solve this struggle?

*

For even though Katharine puts up boundaries, she ends up

healing a lot of people and solving huge problems that

really were not hers at all.

*

What does it mean to grow up

and does one ever not need one's Mother?

When one is old and is the Grandmother like Katherine in this book is,

is it only pain that leads one to maturing so that one

is suddenly the one that others look to?

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Anyway, questions from this book.

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I hope to get back to the other theme I mentioned, 

there are so many in this book,

but I understand a bit more about history and what the characters

who lived through World War II were trying to 

come to terms with

and Orwell's quotation is very important and enlightening in all of this. 

About today... and other days... or what about England during the first half of the 1900s

So...
on Tuesday we found a note saying that
a package was waiting for us,
never mind that we were both home
at the time when they were there
delivering the note about the package.
Anyway,
next day I trotted off the post office,
since I had things to mail for Christmas,
including many cards...
*
We had mailed a box of books, mostly
that I had waiting for me in MI, English major that I was...
we mailed them book rate but insured,
and so they came and was the package waiting for me.
*
Well, that was a heavy package.
Luckily I was going to go out and buy a new
box of clementines so I had my trusty
red cart with me.
*
I stayed there taking all the books out,
re-bagging them
and then was on my way home...

when a woman told me that she was watching me
put the books in the cart and said
you should do an ad for that cart
I could not believe you got all those books in there!
It's true and more over because of the cart,
I did not have a sore back from walking a few blocks home.

Well, I have a good sense of how to pack
and utilize space.
The top book is an old used copy of a book
called
Bloomsbury at Home
that is rather a coffee table like book on
the crowd that Virginia Woolf was in.
I used to collect her letters and journals,
had to read a few of her novels for my undergraduate
in English Lit.
*
I find it well, fascinating, strange, of note and peculiar
all at once that both
the Inklings and Bloomsbury
were happening nearly at the in time;
perhaps it is not surprising that the Inklings were,
if Wikipedia is correct on it, later
and it seems during the time of WW2.
*
One of my more,
I guess you would say,
intellectual interests, 
has long been England in the first half of the 1900s.
*
I don't know that I have written a post on
why feminism failed me
and I am still not sure if I could articulate it all,
but Kathleen Norris' books helped.
Years ago I was quite fascinated and frankly stupidly
deluded by feminism and wrote what now seem
to be the most simplistic papers that were
shallow in reading literature, shamefully so,
at least my read on Tolkien.
Virgina Woolf, no offense to her,
I discovered during that time...
*
Meanwhile,
I have long wanted to know why?
Why did so many artists and intellects reject God,
our Loving Saviour, the Church, traditions of the church,
traditional society?
If you know anything about Bloomsbury,
you will know that they were not only non-believers
but ones who took a lot of license in terms of moral behaviour.
*
Well I talked to Mr. Husband,
who has a good mind for history,
about it.
He said that many try to replace God and the need for
transcendence through licentious behaviour;
I think many it seems replace God by the often appealing idol of
Art and Writing.
It seems also that there was a great deal of epicureanism and
the belief that there is no need to worry about an after life.
*
I find it really pitiable,
in the old sense of the word,
as in sad, lamentable, needing mercy,
that Virginia Woolf was so hard up against God,
that she had such severe mental struggles / illness,
that while she was with private means and
great connections,
sees things in ways that I find to be most sad.
*
Yet I don't know what to say to her;
she writes of Christina Rossetti's life
and says it is the first thing / example of
what she would have as a case against God,
how she, Rossetti that is, sacrificed so much, love, her writing,
and at the end had a religious crisis.
*
Some how this seems to be a bit,
well, not quite seeing things the way I would at any rate.
It makes me think of Jane Kenyon and how
her going to India had shook her;
she was working on a poem that
wrote of a possible religious crisis,
a poem that she did not finish nor wanted published,
but published it was.
Jane, if you did not know,
suffered from severe depression and wrote many poems about it.
She also wrote of God and at times her poems has
such a depth because you know she fought
melancholy of a deep sort
and yet she had and came to faith in Christ.
*
That Jane suffered, that she struggled,
even that she was shook by India and the poverty,
does not to me seem to be something that
I would say is an example of a case
against God.
*
No, something would not be understood then.
The suffering of Christ,
the patience of Christ,
the love of Christ;
did He not know every suffering and temptation known to man?
Does Christ not dwell with us
deep, invisible often but really, solidly, with us,
when we can't sense Him or His Presence.
To say suffering is a case against God,
well, it's a very used one, often that is,
but it seems short-sighted.
*
Now that Virginia Woolf has a case
against God, well,
that is nothing new in itself,
and really in some form at least,
she seems to say that suffering is the reason
she is against God or of the idea of His existence,
at least in that early journal of hers in 1918.
*
Sometimes I think, since I am short on bookshelf space,
that I should just give away all my books
on Virginia Woolf and the others.
But yet I have this desire to understand history,
a history of letters in that I am often drawn
to reading non fiction letters of all sorts
and am quite taken by the time period before, during and after
the two Great Wars.
*
Any comments on this topic or on books and when to keep,
what it means to keep them or not...
quite welcomed.
*
About this week, these days.
I am buried in card writing, package taping,
emails and ink.
But I put out the lovely table runner yesterday.

The day before that I baked.

I hope to bake again if I can get the cards done.

I am working on a wash cloth,
a knitted scarf and still have to finish the slippers.

 

I am still waiting to see what is going to come
in the mail every day...

Bread and our days

 

So bread.
I still end up baking about three loaves at once.
I bake it longer than the recipe calls for
as I can't get the bread in the oven without
pulling the rack out and
then pushing them on to the
already hot pizza stone.
This past time two of the breads stuck and ripped
at the bottom.
I am wondering if I am not flouring the pizza peel
enough which leads to them not wanting to
move quickly from peel to stone.
Suggestions are welcome...
*
So now that it is November it seems that all is very busy here.
Yesterday, I made it to a neighbouring town
to do some shopping.
Christmas shopping, odds and ends shopping.
I went to a mall.
You know malls are not what I remember when I was young.
The loud music, the TVs in the food court,
the blatant TV girl talking loudly via speakers while I am eating
saying what is in style and how to wear one's makeup.
Now I love beauty and that includes clothes
but I don't understand the need to be always
'in style' for what is 'this season'.
It just seems such a lie.
Wear this lipstick this way and you day is made,
your life complete and wow, don't you look better than
the way you formerly wore your lipstick?
Why do we listen or believe this stuff?
*
For me it is more wear what is beautiful, modest and becoming.
Each has their own way;
for me it is long flowy skirts, a nice tailored jacket or
one of my sweaters.
Most are not new and if I had to redo my wardrobe I
would look for what I already have.
*
I remember when I was a teen I would go with siblings
to get a cinnamon roll at the mall.
Big ones that we would split.
It was wonderful, that time with my Mom.
I felt like I was projected into a surreal futuristic world,
there in the mall with
a guy's voice talking about the latest movie and you look up
and there are two screens,
one with the guy telling you about the movie and the other
clips from the movie itself.
I felt like I was walking in the future, as if I was
suddenly flipped through a trap door and found myself in a
very strange place.
*
Mr. Husband laughed at me when he heard
that I had gotten fast food Chinese
at the mall;
it was about 4:30 and of course everything was taking
much longer than I had hoped for and all I knew
was that I needed food and fast.
I got, in Mr. Husband's words,
the low end of Asian Fast food and he knew
exactly what place I went to without knowing the mall at all.
Of course there are food chains here in NJ I've never heard of
so little did I know.
All I know is that rice, shrimp and veggies on a Wednesday is
OK by me! :)
*
One my way back home while waiting for public transit
there was a man preaching a sermon of some sorts
from the Bible.
A bit bizarre, and it always seems that these sort of preachers
are removed from people's lives and are marginalized themselves.
*
Well, there a still a few things I need
and the only place I know to get them is that same
strange mall with all it's noise,
pictures flashing and everything screaming
this is the latest greatest and if you don't have it now
you won't be in the know.
Of course they ignore that next season they will
say the same thing, different product.
It's not that I do not like new but that I do not like
how our society can not live in silence,
without images and sounds blaring.
That they cannot be OK with what is becoming or modest
but instead tend towards what is flashy or
unbecomingly suggestive.
*
It's like being in a room with a large loud TV and no icons.
It's like being in a room that is so full of stuff
but yet deplete of everything or of that which is essential.
*
It is no wonder to me at least why I have slowly
ceased to listen to much outside of classical or Orthodox music.
Or why lighting a lampada or two makes the whole day go better.
God can do wonders in our lives with very little on our part.
Sometimes I forget this.
*
Meanwhile, most of my shopping is done right here at home.
It makes me see, irony acknowledged,
why buying things online is so attractive;
which is quite new, really,
if one thinks about it.
Months back Mr. Husband and I signed up for
Amazon Prime when we realized that what we were ordering
the shipping would be near the cost of Amazon Prime for one year.
It is so convenient.
*
I remember when Amazon was new in year 1999-2000 and
giving email addresses, credit cards and passwords
were new and uncertain.
It was one of my undergrad friends, C., who helped me get an
account that year at his computer so I could order a book.
Well, now I order anything from books, folding tables,
GF flours to vanilla beans.
*
The latest thing I am gearing up to do is to make my own
vanilla extract.
I first heard of it from Rebekah's post and then again
by Katherine's.
 I got thinking more seriously about it when I realized that
not only was I running low on vanilla but the
vanilla I have was made with water, alcohol and corn syrup.
Now Crisco I can admit to using,
like in the cookies that are so like a brownie
that eating one is more than enough,
well at least until the next meal, ahem... ;)
And I think I paid good money for that vanilla extract!
So I am hoping to make my own since it will be better, save money
and, everyone says, be nice gifts to give out.
*
Speaking of those brownie cookies,
I am hoping to bake them again later with cherries in them.
Yum.
*
So it is nearing the Christmas Lent;
starts on Thanksgiving for us on the old calendar.
I am already thinking about things I need to get
baking wise ~
what do you do for baking?
I'm seeing recipes using apple sauce and
vegan margarine.
What margarine do you use?
*
It is a cloudy day here
but yesterday was so beautiful; the sun was out;
leaves were yellow; kids were playing.
Speaking of kids playing it took me sometime
to remember what we called them when I was a kid:
why, at least in Canada, are things we used to call
Jungle Gyms now called
Play Structures.
Seriously I see this as a sign of a very
confused society, drunk and stumbling with
a political correctness that well
does not work for me and seems at best confusing to
those younger than I.
*
I would be apt to say that I have been born in the wrong century
but I don't really believe this, if I am honest.
It was hard back then in ways I don't know that I could of dealt
well with... not to mention that I would not of
been able to do much if I had the same need for glasses
to greatly improve my eyesight  as I do at present.
*
Do I miss what we see as a more civilized past,
yes; though in listening to the book on Wilberforce
I see that things were poor then too;
I admit that I wish we had a
society of manners to lead our culture
back to where it should be.
*
Well, we start with bread and we end
with society.
They do go together.
*
We need Christ who offers Himself in
Bread and Wine
to us sinners,
surely needing better manners,
myself included.