Last year about this time I posted a visual prayer in response to the what seemed to me the inhumanity and lack of compassion emerging from the newly elected American administration.
This year I find myself struggling against despair, but still praying. I don’t understand how we have gotten so muddled. What happened to “For God so loved the world”? Or “neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female”? “Let justice roll like a river”? or God’s desire is for us “to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before him”?
Here again is “A Christmas Prayer,” for the incomprehensibly deep divine love we celebrate at Christmas to fill all our hearts, and open our eyes to the wideness of God’s mercy, encompassing the whole of Creation.
I’ve just released my first ever YouTube video, in response to what I see as part of America’s growing crisis of compassion: the appalling attacks made by Christians and non-Christians alike on the women and men brave enough to speak out of their own pain to try to halt the silent juggernaut of sexual abuse in our culture. The video is called Women’s Abuse Through a Forest Lens: #Metoo in the Voice of Trees. You can see it here. It speaks of sexual abuse as a tree might speak of human assaults on forests.
I chose to get involved with this divisive issue because it’s where I live: I’ve carried the scars of childhood sexual abuse through most of my life . . . although I’ve never spoken of it publicly before–partly because it’s intensely personal, and partly because of the kind of vilification sure to be aimed at those who do speak out.
stripes
a bruised reed he will not break
How can it be that the old cliches still endure? She must have asked for it . . . it must be her fault . . . she tempted him . . . You know the words, although I hope you’ve never spoken them. How could people believe that human beings, male or female, would join their voices to the #metoo movement and invite such slander without cause?
No, the cause is there. It’s the scarlet elephant in the drawing room, the unspeakable secret, the sin shrouded in silence. It’s the enduring pain in the lives of men and women who’ve been sexually abused–pain as agonizing as any physical illness, and as destructive.
nothing hidden that will not be disclosed
One piece of bedrock wisdom offered to people healing from sexual abuse is to bring their memories into the light and speak them aloud, refusing to accept the shame abusers ladle out to silence them. The voices flooding our media from #metoo are doing just that: coming into the light and speaking their truth. Why are the nation’s Christians not standing with them? “There is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be brought out into the open . . .” Even now light is shining into a place of cruel darkness. Why do we not join our light to theirs?
I’m sure that the #metoo phenomenon has its fakes and charlatans, but “babies” and “baths” come to mind here. More damning to me are the Christian voices that admit abuse is a reality but dismiss its importance. In their eyes we who suffer from such things are Other (lesser) humans: women, children, LGBT, non-white, poor. We don’t matter.
But even if we don’t matter to many of America’s powerful, we matter to the One Creator. We are among “the least of these” who look to our leaders with hope, and whose well-being the living Christ counts as his own.
not a sparrow falls
You can see the images from Through a Forest Lens below. The video is posted on YouTube.
I found myself more than usually burnt out after finishing the launch of Yeshua’s Loom, so I took an autumn break: hiking and photographing the changing forests in upstate NY. Luckily my brother Don came to visit, so we photographed the woods together!
One of my readers said that my photos looked as if I were trying to find windows into the One’s Spirit in the world. I mentioned that to Don, who said that was exactly what he did! Spending deep time with someone who’s known you all your life is incredibly nourishing. Here are some of my photos–taken by the writer at rest, with her brother. Click on individual photos to see a larger size.
The first album is from Ferncliff Nature Reserve in Duchess County:
The second album is from the Devil’s Peak Trail in the Indian Head Wilderness area above Woodstock:
This third album is from a very windy day along the Hudson River:
And finally, the Vanderbilt Estate on Halloween, after I took Don to the airport:
Ancient Vine virtual reconstruction of Roman triclinium
My favorite thing about beginning a new book is all the new research required. It’s like being turned loose in an exotic new universe with an unlimited railpass–but, unfortunately, no maps. The internet can be as irritating as a poorly drawn subway map with half the lines left out or mislabeled, but once I stumble onto the right line, I hardly stop to eat or sleep! If I didn’t go half blind and start hitting dead ends and duplications I might never stop to write. I share T. H. White’s feelings about learning:
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Among the many things I’ve explored in my research for the 5th Yeshua’s Cats’ book, the details of Pompeii’s houses may be the most intriguing–perhaps because I knew absolutely nothing about Roman houses! So, on the chance that you may find the subject engaging too, I thought I’d do a post about them.
Here is the clearest plan I could find of the basic Roman house, or domus. Unfortunately, although it comes from Wikipedia, the original source is not given. A more detailed description of the separate rooms is available here.
The difference between an moderately wealthy city house and the seaside villas of the obscenely wealthy is clear from the plans below (Villa of Mysteries and moderate city house).
Most Roman houses–modest or palatial–were lined up on a visual axis from the main entrance, through the large public room, or atrium, and eventually out through the courtyard and garden. If you look at the house plan above, you can see this. The view below, of the House of Menander, is typical of a wealthy home. The photo was taken near the entrance, looking through the tablinum, toward the courtyard.
Apart from ventilation, this axis seems intended to give visitors the most impressive view possible of a home when they first entered. After all, status and wealth made the Roman world go round. In the words of the mosaic in the entryway of the merchant’s house below, SALVE LVCRVM, “Welcome (hail) profit!”
If you refer to the house plan above you can follow me as I explore the layout, with examples of the different types of rooms found in Pompeii. BTW, most photos, if not labeled otherwise, came from an amazingly helpful site on Pompeii, https://sites.google.com/site/ad79eruption/pompeii/
Entryway
Even the wealthiest homes in Pompeii opened directly onto the street and shared walls with the houses on each side–unless the owners were wealthy enough to own the entire city block (insula). A back entrance for servants and tradespeople usually opened off a narrow corridor on the side or rear. The street front of the Menander House (above) was slightly set back from the sidewalk by a raised bench, possibly for people to sit upon while waiting to see the master of the house. The metal gate is positioned where the wooden door stood.
Once inside the house, the visitor finds herself in an entry hall called the fauces, #2 on the plan. The fauces below leads into the House of the Ceii. Like almost all the houses in Pompeii, the walls were frescoed in fairly standard styles. Archaeologists now classify early Roman wall paintings as Pompeiian styles 1-4. The style below is #4. If you look at the plan, you can see that the fauces runs between shops that open onto the street.
Atrium
At the inner end of the narrow fauces the visitor emerges into the large main room, or atrium. Most atria had openings in the center ceiling to let in light and collect water for the cisterns, which were buried in the floor. The opening in the ceiling was called the compluvium. The pool that collected the water below and drained it into the cisterns was the impluvium. You can see both clearly in the photo below from the House of the Lararium. Also below is a cut-away diagram showing the location of the cistern, and a closeup of rain spouts from the House of Casca Longus.
From the look of the modern photo below by Roger Ulrich, the atrium isn’t an ideal place to sit on a rainy day! I assume that the rain spouts and guttering in the diagram following would have prevented such drenching rain-spatter.
The atrium was the main public room of the house, and opened onto a room called the tablinum, where the master of the house did business and kept accounts. The tablinum was at least partially open on both the front and back sides to allow for airflow, light, and a clear view into the colonnade and garden. Draperies provided privacy when necessary. Below is Lund University’s virtual image of the tablinum (right) in the House of the Ceii, with the typical hallway or andron on the side (left). An identical andron ran along each side of the tablinum.
Often in Pompeii the rooms directly on the street were rented out to businesses, or used as shopfronts by the family living in the house. If they were rented shops, there was no access to the house itself. As shown on the house plan, these rooms were called tabernae. They could be rented apartments, living quarters for family servants, storerooms, or shops. As shops,they were often thermopolia, or cafes (below), where hot and cold food was served from deep dishes set into marble counters. Businesses like bakeries and laundries usually occupied whole buildings. Craftsmen used such rooms for selling their own goods, while using the house behind as their home and shop.
Atria sometimes had an open alcove to one side, perhaps where guests might be seated, called an ala, (#10 in the domus plan above). The photo of the atrium in the House of the Vetti (below) shows an ala on the left. The entrance is to the right.
Atria also commonly housed household shrines (lararia) as well as elaborate strongboxes intended to demonstrate the family’s wealth. (below)
Virtual altar by Ancient Vine
Cubiculae
The small closed rooms called cubiculae on each side of the atrium are bedrooms, either for guests or family. The House of the Orchards had two bedrooms lavished painted with gardens (below). Bedrooms were also located upstairs, and sometimes opened off the courtyards.
Bedrooms rarely had windows. For that matter, neither did the rest of the rooms in the house. Except for rare windows in rooms facing into the peristyle, the only windows in Pompeiian houses tended to be tiny and set high up on the walls. The exception to this rule were in very wealthy homes on the coast itself, where windows with sea views might be found in any room of the house.
Windows into peristyle in House of the Prince of Naples
Of all the cultural differences between ancient Roman houses and modern American ones, the thing that surprised me most was the placement of family bedrooms around the main room in the house–the one most frequently visited by strangers. Although this arrangement was the result of older housing patterns built around a courtyard as a common living space, nothing else quite communicated to me the vast difference between “personal space” or privacy as I understand it and the ancient Roman one.
Here is a virtual reconstruction of a bedroom from the House of the Tragic Poet:
Peristyle
Immediately past the atrium and the tablinum with their adjoining rooms, was the courtyard, or peristyle, a colonnaded garden space with rooms around its side. Larger, wealthier homes often had more than one courtyard, as well as a large open garden. The rooms around the peristyle were usually used for dining and entertaining: the triclinia, or dining chambers, and the excedra, or banqueting room. Wealthy homes often had several triclinia. The kitchen (culina, #12), latrines, and baths (in very wealthy homes) were in this back area as well. Oddly enough, the latrines were often located in a corner of the kitchen, perhaps because of the easy access to water.
Because most of the upper floors of Pompeii’s houses were destroyed, piecing together a lifestyle that includes them has been difficult. A few still stand, and virtual reconstructions have been attempted:
The multiple stories of some cliff-side villas withstood the eruption better– for instance, the House of the Relief of Telephus at Herculaneum:
The larger mansions often had multiple pools and fountains in the peristyles and gardens. One house in particular, the House of Octavius Quartio, has an extravagant series of fountains and canals. The House of the Large Fountain has a particularly fine fountain (below).
Below is a selection of Pompeiian wall paintings and mosaics. I hope you’ve enjoyed your tour!
I’ve been thinking a lot about how This Madness of the Heart (and all the following Miranda Lamden Mysteries) fit together with my Yeshua’s Cats series–and why I feel certain the two series can coexist as books by the same author. But since my reasons are more feelings and instincts than logic, I’ve had trouble putting them into words.
So I did what I often do when I need to make sense of something: I created a piece of art (below). After all, what good is an art therapy degree if you can’t use it to clarify your own confusion? If I’m lucky, by explaining the image I’ll be opening up what lies behind it!
The Sleuth, Chi Rho, and the Cat
So, what are you looking at here?
First, I chose a Hubble image for the background: “Interacting Spiral Galaxies” . . . surely ideal for this project, since galaxies don’t often interact–anymore than churchfolk and professor-sleuths! It felt like a propitious beginning.
Hubble, Interacting Spiral Galaxies
Three interlocking circles fill the foreground. The center circle pulses with a glowing gold and green light; the Christian Chi Rho emerges from its heart.
What is the Chi Rho? Like most symbols, it has different meanings across cultures, but for me it’s a symbol used by early Christians in the first three centuries after Yeshua’s birth–before Constantine transformed it into an imperial banner (the cross didn’t emerge as a Christian symbol until after the year 500).
Chi Rho, early 3rd C catacomb
The Chi Rho gets its name from the two Greek letters that overlap to create the symbol: Chi and Rho, the first two letters of the Greek word Christos, or Christ. In the image above, the Greek letters Alpha and Omega are added. I did experiment with using a cross in the center circle, but I like the visual effect of the Chi Rho better, probably because it has “rays” like the sunburst. Anyway, the central circle is meant to be the Christian faith–not the organized religion–but the living faith of all the individuals who hold themselves to be Christian.
The circle to the right is Mari, from Yeshua’s Cat, turning aside from a path in a green forest to investigate the central circle. In her circle she represents all of the natural universe. Creation. Everything that exists naturally, apart from the intervention of humankind. This natural order also includes human beings, since they’re part of the created universe–but not their civilizations.
The totality of the created world–as we know it on Earth–is flowing back from Mari’s search like the tail of a comet.
The circle on the left is where Miranda, my detective, lives. Her circle is the world of human civilization–urban, complex, multi-cultural, and often unsure exactly what they believe. Many, like Miranda, have their roots in Christianity, but have turned away from the church. Spinning out from her circle is a spiral of different world religions. But in her circle she, like Mari, has paused to examine something about the Christian faith that has caught her eye.
Both Mari and Miranda live outside the Christian fold, and they approach it from opposite directions. Mari moves from the non-human, natural environment, Miranda from a detached, urban, academic world. Still, both find themselves intrigued by the light in the center circle. Mari has the easier approach: Yeshua introduces himself by saving her life, and she joins him as a friend. But Miranda has been scarred by her Christian experience; she mistrusts the church and its agendas. As a professor, she sees all religions as examples of the human yearning toward the divine. Truth claims don’t enter the picture. She simply records what she observes, without making judgments. Her methods are catlike: she steps cautiously toward anything new, not committing herself, poised to slip back into the shadows if conflict threatens.
I knew a number of women like Miranda in my years apart from the church. Their worlds were full and rich, but they didn’t screen their experiences through a Christian worldview. Yet they were sometimes attracted by a light shining out from this tradition many of them had left behind.
. . . maybe the light shone through a person
a man like Elmus
or as comfort in the midst of evil
perhaps through the One’s presence in some crisis of their own
or simply in prayer and meditation.
But today we live in a world where it’s increasingly difficult to say, “I believe.” The language is lost. What does it mean to believe? Who are we believing in? People who live in the secular world can’t respond to most Christian overtures–because they don’t understand the words anymore. God-talk is becoming literal non-sense to those outside the churches.
People like Miranda are who they are, just as cats are cats. Each responds to life according to their gifts . . . but for some reason those inside and outside the churches are drawing further apart.
Perhaps we might learn from the effort, and love, we put into cross-species communication with our cats (and dogs, gerbils, birds, and ferrets) . . . and look at the incomprehensible human beings around us as if they concealed inner selves as delightful, unique, and full of surprises as a cat’s. It’s not really such a stretch.
I happen to find the lives of alienated Christians intriguing, perhaps because I’ve been there myself. And if the polls are right, their numbers are growing. Their honesty is often fierce, like their determination never to be taken in again by faux-Christianity and self-serving lies. Sadly we don’t have to look far to find the lurking predators they’re avoiding. And that’s what This Madness of the Heart is about.
Miranda peers into the light of Christian faith–but she looks from a place apart. Her own experiences haven’t shown Christianity to be that promised “light to the gentiles.” So she watches, examines, records, and considers. In the meantime, I feel privileged to narrate her journey.
I’ve loved this song most of my adult life, but always wanted it to say more, somehow. So I eventually wrote my own adaptation, below. It follows the original tune of “Simple Gifts,” with its erratic rhythm (the beats of the verses should be 13-11-11-11, and the refrains 8-10-8-10)
Bringing C. L. Francisco and Blair Yeatts Together
I imagine two women walking a little apart in an autumn wood where filtered sunlight hangs in the air like rainbows cast by stained glass windows. They might be sisters, although separated by many years: one has dark hair with ruddy highlights, while the elder’s hair shines silver in the shifting light. Both are tall, with the easy gait of serious walkers, loose denim skirts swirling around their legs as they stroll. Each gazes at the wood intently, reaching out to touch the trees . . . a beech here, an oak there . . . eyes shining with pleasure. The same surety of a benevolent Creator’s love undergirds both, rising up through the fallen leaves like an unfailing spring. But there they part ways.
The younger woman knows herself wounded and angry, torn from her roots, unable and unwilling to return to them. Life for her is a trackless horizon, where she must make her own way among a maze of confusing choices,
. . . a life rent by the emptiness of years alone, of stubborn search and dead-end roads, a renegade among the certain, a voiceless stranger in the garrulous crowds.
The older woman has made her peace with that old pain, accepted the paradoxes, and learned compassion for herself and the ghosts of her past. Her eyes dwell on the infinity of light surrounding her. She falls back into shadow only rarely, and when she does, she knows the light holds her still.
Yeshua’s Cats speak with the voice of the older woman. The Miranda Lamden Mysteries live in the younger woman’s world, overlaid with the hindsight of the elder. But they are both the creation of a single heart. I hope this post may help you bring them together. I’ll also say that, with the exception of a few creative details necessary to establishing a pen name, all Blair Yeatts’ memories and thoughts shared in posted interviews are C. L. Francisco’s own, although offered from the perspective of that younger self.
Blair Yeatts’ This Madness of the Heart was my first book, apart from a mammoth PhD dissertation and an unpublished memoir. I finished the original draft almost 20 years ago, as a way of venting my hurt and anger at the dirty tricks and character assassinations in the fundamentalist takeover of a conservative protestant denomination. As often happens in revolutions, a zealous minority overwhelmed a more moderate and less vocal majority, and then ruthlessly silenced those who disagreed with them. This previously loose-knit denomination had a cherished history of settling doctrinal disagreements locally: churches had simply split, becoming the 1st, 2nd, etc., churches in a given town. Dissent was in their blood, like the freedom of the individual believer. But this ultra-conservative minority targeted the whole assembly of churches in an iron-fisted power grab.
Once the coup was accomplished, dissidents had two choices: either bow to the doctrines of the new power elite, or leave the church. The denomination of my youth was swept away in a furor of self-righteous certainty. Pastors, professors, and church leaders were driven out. Hearts and lives were broken. Doctrine was narrowed, warped, and set in stone. Callings scorned and contracts withdrawn, women clergy left to find ways to minister among people with a wider view of God’s mercy. A few powerful men now controlled the hearts and minds of the denomination’s mostly oblivious members. There was nothing I could do . . . so I wrote a book.
Unfortunately, trying to read Madness’ original draft felt much like Harry Potter opening the screaming book in the Hogwarts’ library: the anger I’d poured into it flamed from its pages. I realized this at the time, and set it aside—for almost twenty years—until I could return and treat it as a mere story. Then I wrote most of the anger out, leaving a fast-paced tale about a slimy charlatan with an honorary divinity degree in a haunted hollow in Appalachia. The story is admittedly over the top . . . vengeful ghosts don’t play feature roles in most grifters’ lives. But where evil thrives, its deadliest mass tends to hide beneath the surface . . . often masquerading as holiness.
I found myself alienated from the Christian faith during two periods in my life: first for the decade spanning college and my early twenties; second, beginning with the fundamentalist takeover and stretching across another 10-15 years. I still find myself at odds with much of the organized Church. I wrote The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat as an expression of my own faith in a Jesus of Nazareth who speaks with love and compassion, untouched by the legalism he challenged. A cat’s voice seemed appropriate for the task. The first book has now multiplied into four, with a fifth on the way.
The Miranda Lamden Mysteries have roots in those secular years, as well as in my lifelong love of mysteries, starting with Nancy Drew and most recently Charles Todd. They are not Christian mysteries. Neither are they “cozies” (emerging from a cozy mystery feels to me like struggling out of wad of cotton batting back into the realities of life). Ugly or not, if a thing is part of human experience, it’s fit to write, and read, about. Violence is part of life, and so are pain and tragedy; they belong in novels, and you will find moderate amounts in mine. But I also write about what I call “spirit” or “faith” or “redemption”—pick whichever word you like: without it the unremitting darkness of despair grinds human beings into something subhuman.
I write mysteries I’d like to read: novels of danger and intrigue, with depths of love and pain, where characters wrestle with despair and disaster, and fight their way through to the light. They surmount capricious hazards without toxic overloads of violence or sex. Spirituality and questions of meaning drive both cast and plot. I don’t strive for great literature, but for a read an intelligent mystery-lover would welcome at the end of a long day—and have difficulty putting down. I don’t guarantee happy endings, but I never end a book with despair and shattering loss of meaning . . . endings may be bittersweet, but they’re always suffused with hope.
If you’re a Blair Yeatts reader, would you like Yeshua’s Cats? If you’re a Yeshua’s Cats reader, would you like the Miranda Lamden Mysteries? Here’s my take.
Yeshua’s Cats are intended for a Christian audience, although reviewers have repeatedly assured readers that their appeal is much broader. The two most recent books, The Cats of Rekem, and Cat Born to the Purple, have both been chosen for Indie Reader’s “Best of” new book list for 2015 and 2016 respectively. But if you’re a devout atheist, or not at all spiritually inclined, I suspect you wouldn’t like them. If you’re a cat-lover you might leap all other boundaries and enjoy them anyway.
The Miranda Lamden Mysteries are full of spiritual matters of one sort and another, since Miranda is a professor of religion and an expert on paranormal phenomena . . . they’re for spiritually curious readers. But if you’re a conservative Christian who thinks preachers can do no wrong, you won’t like the first book. If you believe that you’re in possession of the only truth, and don’t care to consider anyone else’s perspective, you won’t like any of the books in the series. Like Miranda, I’ve spent much of my life in institutions of higher learning, and I’ve seen too many people convinced of the unassailable rightness of their own opinions, mistaking the echoes of their own thoughts for the voice of God. That way lies the Inquisition.
Goya, “Scene from the Inquisition”
So why did I reverse direction and decide to claim these mysteries as my own? I think the presidential election made my choice for me: the tragedy of my denomination is now replaying on the national stage, and my mysteries have become appallingly relevant. In Miranda’s words, from This Madness of the Heart:
How had we stood by and let such a man amass so much power? Why were the good people of the town not fleeing the contamination of his spirit? How could they not sense the heart of hate beneath his harangues? Any amount of violence might erupt from the bloodlust JJ was whipping up among God’s elect. Religion! Why did the search for ultimate love so often end in hate?
“What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
I realize that choosing a side in a divisive political—and religious—controversy may alienate me from some of my readers. I hope not. But for me this has become a matter of conscience, and keeping faith with myself . . . as well as with my faith.
Freedom of conscience has always been our privilege in America, but it didn’t come free: it was bought with the lives of people desperate for liberty, and its defense lies in our hands today. I pray we will have the strength and integrity to preserve the freedom our founders entrusted to us.
Apart from ventilation, this axis seems intended to give visitors the most impressive view possible of a home when they first entered. After all, status and wealth made the Roman world go round. In the words of the mosaic in the entryway of the merchant’s house below, 
Atria sometimes had an open alcove to one side, perhaps where guests might be seated, called an ala, (#10 in the domus plan above). The photo of the atrium in the House of the Vetti (below) shows an ala on the left. The entrance is to the right.
