Transition Update

When we moved from Maplewood to Saint Louis city three years ago, it took ten months to sell our house.  As we prepare to leave Saint Louis city to move to Durham in the “North” (as the English call it), we’ve sold our house without it being on the market one day.  That is great and we are grateful to God for it, but it also means will are looking for places to stay for about the next three months.  Thankfully, it seems like our housing situation is starting to come together.  We have the month of June covered, at least.  However, if any of our Saint Louis friends need a family of five to house-sit for the summer, please let me know.

Jane-Ellis continues to make excellent contacts in business circles in Newcastle, and I’m confident that, once she gets over there and meets people, she’ll be able to secure a position.  In the meantime, we’re working on figuring out all of the finances, assuming that we’ll be without an income for a few months.

I’ve been taking “Theological German,” a class in German reading for doctoral and masters students at Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis.  Eight weeks in, I’m reading at an intermediate level, which is amazing to me.  Our teacher, Eric Stancliff, has been teaching languages for thirty years, and he’s really good at it!  He’s funny too, which is an important bonus when you’re slogging through three chapters of grammar and 150 new vocab words a week.

The reality of the impending move is starting to dawn on the boys.  This morning we celebrated Charlie’s 8th birthday, and, as the festivities were winding-down, George asked, “Now do we get to move to England?”  I said, “No, George, not today.”  He replied, “Aww, man.  I want to go to England.”  I want to go to England, too, but there is a lot to be done between now and the beginning of September.  So, I’m not quite as excited as George, yet.

Facing the List

I hate lists.  Making them.  Checking things off.  Yet, without one, life is…there is too much, and I will forget.  As a child misses the step in the staircase at night, forgetting, tumbling headlong into an unknown realm.

We’ve made a list.  It is of the things we must do to leave behind our decades of memories of home.  To begin again.  It is long.  I don’t look at it.  I do the things that are there.  I hope I don’t forget.  That others remember.

“Footnote to All Prayer” by C.S. Lewis

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I Know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshiping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolaters, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.
Take not, oh Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in Thy great,
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

“Leap Before You Look” by W.H. Auden

Leap Before You Look

The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.

The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.

The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.

Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.

A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.

December 1940