Lessons from Cell 92

I am sitting tonight with a heart full of poetry and no words. Not terribly productive, perhaps, but beautiful. Deep thoughts have been stirred within me by reading Bonhoeffer's biography; I dread the approaching final chapters, for I know he is executed and it aches me. I dread it, and yet he was so brave a man, so noble a man, you can't help but feel it was a fitting end. I know that sounds horrible, but it's not, when you realize a martyr's death--a crucifixion--is the sort of death Jesus died. And the lives of those who share in that manner of death seem to echo in deep, holy tolls throughout the rest of history. Would the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer rattle us so poignantly if he had lived to be an old man and died of congestive heart failure? I think not. No, people like Bonhoeffer, Sophie Scholl, Peter and Paul and so many others are the people who have left beautiful legacies. It is still sad, though, this approach to re-living a great man's death. Reality and history have been meshed inextricably in my mind, what with the Ukraine Crisis and reading about World War II in Bonhoeffer, and generally being in a thoughtful mood. So I read slowly, savouring the lessons in peace and patience given to me across the years by this kind, extraordinary man, and approach the end of the book a different girl than I began. It is times like these I know I've read a book worth reading.

The day has been beautiful and mild, feathered with sunlight and warmth and the peaceable kiss of Winter's surrender. I would fair say with Browning's Pippa: "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world"; and so it is, in these moments. To live by moments rather than years is such a richer existence. You might say, "That was a bad year", but you could never say, "Those were a million terrible moments." Perhaps that is the key to living under the Mercy: taking life as it is given us, which is breath by breath. More beauty is captured and held and inspected, living this way. There will be room for three hundred and sixty-five sunsets in the twelve-month. I'm nearing my twenty-second birthday; I'll have seen eight thousand and thirty sunsets by the time I've had my birthday, but is that any reason I ought to miss a single one more? I think not. I have kissed the baby's dimple a thousand times if I have once, but is there a reason I oughtn't to kiss it again today and yet another time tomorrow? Someday he'll grow too old for such nonsense, but not for a while yet. I've seen the sun shine through my window every morning (more or less) since I was born, but is that a reason the fire-dart of sun flared through a falling dew-drop shouldn't astonish me as much as it did when first I saw it?

We take too broad a view of things. We've forgotten how to appreciate minutiae. While imprisoned, Bonhoeffer wrote to his parents of a thrush that sang in the prison courtyard every morning, and again in the evenings. He wrote of the gift of solitude and how he was happier he'd been imprisoned, being accustomed to and liking solitude, than another of his friends. This wasn't a Pollyanna triviality: this was a man in tune with God's ways, pressed into the heart of God, living with borrowed and sustained courage and joy in knowing his life was not his own. To be given examples like him and gifts like these, I feel keenly the call to a higher existence and a nobler life. How can anyone not realize we were destined for eternity when they feel these things? I should make a terribly morose Atheist, for I think I would always wish there was an existence beyond this life and always trying to look for it, hoping against hope. Thank God I have access to the same peace and courage as Bonhoeffer. I can live under the Mercy; I can listen for thrushes. Life, lived in step with God's heart, is never truly complicated on His eternal level. Hands fixed on earth, heart fixed on heaven; that's the way to live this noble life.

The Pain of Too Much Inspiration

"Have you ever had an idea that is so perfect it just hurts?"

-Eloise at the Plaza

Unfortunately for me, yes. Often I get ideas so perfect they hurt and then consume me because they WILL be worked upon however little I actually want to abandon current projects. Lots of story ideas have come clamoring at me these past couple of weeks as I wrote The Windy Side of Care and went back to finishing edits on Fly Away Home. Autumn always furnishes more inspiration than I know what to do with, so I always store it away like a miser and sort it out later on.
I can't work on a complex story like The Baby while my time is chopped up by schedules and politics and hardly any time to write--Baby is at that tangled stage I come to in every story where only clinging to the mizzenmast and peering through the sleet gets me through; right now I don't have time to cling to any masts so I'm sticking with fleshing out a few other story ideas and seeing what will come next after The Baby. Perhaps I'll even work simultaneously; we shall see. After next week when my schedule clears I intend to put my nose back to the grindstone with him.
The Windy Side of Care has come back from several readers with varying degrees of criticism which I am sure will be wonderful in the editing stages; for the most part I'm encouraged--people seem to like it pretty well and most have assured me that it has twists they never thought a Cinderella-story would take, so that's pleasant to hear; there is only but so much you can do with rags-to-riches bones that still have to have all the fleshing out of classic Cinderella-isms to qualify.
The excellent Bree Holloway is working on a mock-up cover for Fly Away Home which I'm excited about. I've wanted to make a little emblem for it for some time but my skills when it comes to things like that are nil. Soon you'll be able to put a face with FAH. (woo-hoo!)

Of the new story ideas, Murder, Miss Snubbins, Brownstone, and Much Love, Goldfinch are the main troublemakers. Much Love, Goldfinch is set in the thick of WWII and will be an historic spy-thriller for which I'm extremely excited. I have been reading The Secret Armies and garnering much inspiration. WWII has always been a favorite time-period of mine and the whole subject of espionage and Resistance-workers has always enthralled me. You might not know this, but until I was thirteen or so, I was intent on being a spy when I grew up. Ho-ho and all that. I have very little concrete plot for Much Love, Goldfinch, but I am looking forward to seeing what could come of it; the possibilities are endless. Funny enough, Henry IV and Henry V are playing into the inspiration-field too. And Red Dawn and Sophie Scholl. And we can't forget the fellowship in The Lord of the Rings, and the some extent The Zion Chronicles. I've always longed to write a book about a fierce remnant, and Much Love, Goldfinch might become my outlet for this percolating idea that has been teeming around for the last several years.

One of the young  Polish agents in The Secret Armies

I have given you a scrap of letter from the aforementioned just to tease you. Do you think I ought to proceed with caution?

Dear Hog Nose:

In the art of espionage, you’re never asked to know your comrades. In fact, knowing them--really knowing them--is almost as big a mess-up as telling a Gestapo agent to his face he’s a dirty German dog. Did you obey well enough to not be hurt by my capture? I bet so, seeing how you reacted to Jelly’s death: a grim laugh; not a single tear. A “better watch your step, sister,” for me.

But of course I’m Goldfinch--the little bird who taunted big Luftwaffe eagles, bit the Gestapo’s backside, and lived through their tortures to write this letter.

Concentration camps aren’t so bad, and there are several other women here who--if I interpret their screams of pain correctly--did something a heck of lot worse than me. Course I don’t have my toenails anymore, but I didn’t squeal so that’s all right; I was braver than that and to be straight with you, I’m a little surprised. Makes me want to march around this dinky joint singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and get a little exercise to ease the burning pain of being crouched here ad infinitum. I’m tired of darkness and whispering and no showers. Send me a fresh tube of lipstick if you can--mine’s almost out and you know how I hate to see a Fritz without any. Also, I’m craving chocolate bars and my guard swears at me in German when I ask if the Americans have sent me any.

Hog Nose, I’m writing this letter because I know you’ll never get it. I’m not getting out of here and I pray to God you’re never getting in here. That means nothing I can tell you will be any worse than sitting here--eight months since my imprisonment--in complete silence with my secrets for company. All your scooping and digging and you never found out. Well. Guess I won the bet after all.

People used to check weather forecasts--remember that? You and me sitting in the corner of the le cafe rose drinking coffee and talking about rain while waiting for the convoys to come along? Here, the prison grapevine predicts whose turn it is at the shooting squads. You’ll never get this letter, yeah, but I’d better write it anyway before the weatherman calls for Goldfinch.

...Well. Ten minutes and the words won’t come. Forecast clear and no clouds on the horizon just yet. I’ll save my news for another day. Send the lipstick.

Much Love,

             Goldfinch

Have you set any particular writing goals for October and if so, what are they?