The Sonnet
This post is for my online friend Alan, aka Success Warrior. We met on The Blogging Network (now Blogit) and we both have moved on to our own, independent blogs. And to various life challenges. Alan is working on finishing his college degree. And his first assignment this semester is to write a sonnet. He asked, on his blog, for pointers, and I started to comment, realised it was gonna get lengthy, and told him he’d have to come visit my playground here to get the dirt. So, Alan, this is for you.
I am highly amused by the timing of his assignment, because I am actually working on a sonnet cycle at the moment and looked up the rules for Petrarchan, Shakespearean, and Spenserian sonnets last night!
There are three major types of sonnet: Italian (also called Petrarchan because the best-known writer of these was a guy called Petrarch), English (also called Shakespearean because the best-known writer of these was a guy called Shakespeare) and Spenserian (a variant of the English sonnet, called Spenserian because …. you get the idea). There’s also the Pushkin sonnet (guess why), which is completely different from the usual sonnet in both meter and rhyme scheme, so I’m not talking about it here.
All sonnets have fourteen lines (well, okay, except for caudate and curtal sonnets, and we’re not going into those here, either, because they are strange poetic beasts and may be confusing to the novice poet) in the meter called “iambic pentameter.”
An iamb, or iambic foot, is two syllables: the first unstressed, the second stressed. When you get five of them together, it’s called iambic pentameter. So, for a sonnet, each line consists of five iambs — a total of ten syllables, alternating between unstressed and stressed. So the rhythmic feel of the poem is ta-TUM ta-TUM ta-TUM ta-TUM ta-TUM. (It always makes me think of a trotting horse.)
Here’s the first and last lines from one of Milton’s sonnets (“On His Blindness”), so you can get the feel of the meter:
When I consider how my light is spent ….
They also serve who only stand and wait.
There’s one more requirement for a 14-line, iambic pentameter poem to be a sonnet. It has to rhyme. And it’s the rhyme scheme that differentiates the different kinds of sonnets. (Mostly.)
The Shakespearean sonnet rhymes this way: abab cdcd efef gg. You can see that it’s made up of three quatrains (groups of four rhyming lines) and a couplet (set of two rhyming lines). Here’s a pretty well-known one.
The Spenserian sonnet rhymes this way: abab bcbc cdcd ee. Again, three quatrains with a couplet, only this time the rhyme scheme interconnects between quatrains. Here are a few examples.
Now, Petrarch was obviously a complex guy, because the Petrarchan sonnet has two requirements: in addition to its special rhyme scheme, it has an outline — a specific layout, if you will. The Petrarchan sonnet has two sections. The first section of eight lines, called the octave, presents a problem and rhymes thus: abab abab OR abba abba. The second section of six lines, called the sestet, gives the solution to the problem, and rhymes thus: cde cde or cdc cdc. Here are some good examples.
So the basic rules for a sonnet are 14 lines, 10 syllables per line in an unstressed / stressed pattern, and a pre-set rhyme scheme based on which type of sonnet you are constructing.
Sonnets used to be very common and familiar poems, but with the advent of free verse, which threw off the restraints of classical poetry (things like formal structure, meter, and rhyme), the sonnet fell into disuse — it was too “old-fashioned” and “restrictive.”
And while it can be frustrating to write sonnets — you can get stuck on a rhyme, or the meter won’t come right — I have found that they are wonderful for distilling disordered thought into a concise, coherent statement. I will often cast problems into sonnet form, just to get to the meat of the problem and work out the best way to phrase a response.
Myriad Projects
If some scientist somewhere could come up with a way to alter the stream of time, I would be so very grateful. I have a boatload and a half of projects that need attention, and there’s nowhere near enough time to address them all. Among the pile of things to do…
I’m discontinuing my blogs on my old “pay-per-click” site, and they aren’t compatible with WordPress, so I’m having to migrate the posts one by one, cut and paste, and backdate the posts so that they are in the correct chronological order. It’s very time-consuming. And I had SIX different blogs on there. One of them will not be migrated here, but will have to be cut and pasted into a Word document for use in a future book. But the other five I do intend to incorporate here. I finished moving the low-carb diet journal tonight.
I have three partially completed hooked rugs that I want to finish and get done, and the beginnings of a black-and-camo rag rug to braid, coil, and sew.
I have enough clothes to start my own “gently used” boutique. I’m cleaning these and sorting them for giveaway, consignment, yard sale, or donation. And a few of them are being saved for either sentimental (cute baby outfits) or cockeyed optimist (one day I will be this small again) reasons.
I’m also catching up on about three years worth of ironing. Ugh.
Then there are the books. I am trying to organise and catalogue my books. There are about 10K of them. Maybe more. Probably not any fewer. LibraryThing is very helpful with this project, but it’s still time-consuming.
And the paperwork. I don’t even want to think about the paperwork. Where does all this stuff come from? It’s like, filling half my house … all this paper.
I was doing everything at once, which I should have realised was profoundly stupid. I came to my senses last weekend and prioritized. This week’s goal is to complete the ironing and decide what to do with the clothes that are in the house. (The ones in storage can stay there until the house is in order and the other projects are done.) I want that project done by Sunday afternoon. Then I’m going to tackle the paperwork, one box a day until it’s all done. The blogging gets one-half to one hour a day — because my subscription to the old site expires in February, and I want the old stuff moved before I discontinue the subscription.
So days are busy and it’s hard to make myself quit and go to bed at a reasonable hour. But I’m trying to be disciplined about that, because I gain weight and get sick if I don’t get adequate sleep.
Still, I would very much like it if I had a time-turner or some kind of way to be able to do more than one thing in more than one place at a time.
Religion at Work
I’ve been pondering this post for many weeks now, because I have come across something that disturbs me, greatly, but putting it into words has not been easy.
I read the Brazen Careerist blog, by Penelope Trunk. I don’t recommend it to many people because her subject matter is often totally NSFW (not suitable for work). But I still read, because I do pick up interesting insights and a lot of food for thought. The blog also gives me a window into the mind of a fairly typical liberal Democrat. And the blog talks a lot about the effects of Asperger’s Syndrome on one’s work life. Since the 2005 wreck left me with a lot of Asperger-like symptoms, I find the information on the blog to be helpful in integrating my somewhat-shattered mind with the minds of those whom I contact at work.
In any case, Ms. Trunk has had a poll running for some months, in which she asks the question “To what extent does your religion determine your choices at work?” The question doesn’t disturb me, but the answers do. Since day one, the results have been almost static, though the number of respondents has climbed from a few hundred to more than two thousand. I know, because I have watched the evolution of the results very carefully.
Here are the results:
Not At All: 61 % ….. (1233)
Not Often: 12 % ….. (240)
Sometimes: 11 % ….. (221)
A Great Deal: 16 % ….. (325)
So of the 2019 people who have responded, seventy-three percent (73 %) say that their religion seldom or never affects their work life. And, as I said, those results have really not changed significantly since the first day of the poll.
Am I the only person who finds this disturbing?
I’m a Protestant Christian, and my religion is quite clear in its expectation that its principles should be carried through all of one’s interactions in life. But I have also had fairly wide exposure to other religious systems. Enough to say that most religious systems are intended to infiltrate the follower’s entire life. Work, play, home … everything.
I understand that not all of Ms. Trunk’s readers will profess any religion — her comments often spark responses from self-described atheists and agnostics, as well as from adherents of belief systems across the entire religious spectrum.
But I find it disturbing that nearly three-quarters of respondents to this poll don’t find their religion dictating their choices at work. I find myself surprised to be in a minority. I really expected different results as I watched this poll evolve. I really expected that the numbers would settle at around 50 / 50. Or even with those influenced by their religion having a slightly greater proportion than those who are not. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this poll’s results “rocked my world.”
While I have a nodding acquaintance with many belief systems, I am most knowledgeable about Christianity and Judaism. Both religions teach such principles as not stealing, not lying, not cheating, and fulfilling your agreements. That means that such things as goofing off at work, taking company supplies for personal use, lying to clients or vendors, holding invoices, and the like, are forbidden.
Now, I’m not saying that I am perfect about following these principles, but my imperfection doesn’t negate the fact that the principles are there. When I “take five” and play Solitaire instead of typing the report that’s due, I feel guilty. When I jot down my grocery list on the company-provided steno pad, I feel guilty. My boss isn’t paying me to play Solitaire or plan my shopping, and he certainly didn’t purchase that pad for my personal use. When I get to work a few minutes late, I feel bad because I have broken my agreement with the company to be available to them at a certain time. When my boss says, “Tell him I’m not here,” do I obey and tell the lie, or do I change the wording — essentially disobeying orders — to avoid lying? (After all, “He is not available just now” is not a lie, but it conveys the same message as “He is not here.” But it is also not what my boss told me to say.)
So I find that even though I’m not perfect at following the ideals set down by my religion, it does influence me. I have often replaced a steno pad or stayed late to make up for a tardy arrival, because my religion requires that I not steal time or supplies from my employer. I “disobey” and re-word messages so that I do not have to lie. And I think twice before opening the Solitaire game or jotting down my grocery list. It’s not really a conscious thing, except when I’m resisting the temptation to surf the web instead of compiling reports.
And it disturbs me to think that three-quarters of the people around me don’t have any compunctions at all in this regard. Their religion doesn’t inform their choices. It apparently doesn’t even nag at them when they do something that their religion classes as wrong behaviour. And I am, therefore, left with the question: “What purpose does your religion have, if it’s not influencing your choices in all aspects of your life?”
Degrees of Sin
We tend, in our human minds, to think of levels or degrees of sin. There’s the little white lie that “doesn’t hurt anybody,” and there’s the really evil-wicked-mean-bad-and-nasty stuff like murder and rape. So we see Hitler as this depraved man responsible for the murder of six million Jews, and think “He’s a terrible sinner!” But when we tell a little white lie, we don’t see ourselves as a terrible sinner. In fact, sometimes we see ourselves as kind and charitable because the lie spared someone’s feelings.
But here’s an “OMG, I can’t wrap my head around that” concept for you:
There are no degrees of sin in God’s eyes.
Think about that! It’s hard to see that the angry words that we said to our child this morning are as bad as what Hitler did. Or that the woman who gossips about her neighbours is just as bad as the man who beats his wife or kids in a drunken rage.
What would it mean to you if you really believed this? If you accepted that when you lose your temper and say something hurtful to someone, it’s just as much a sin in God’s eyes as the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein.
To God, sin is sin. And anything touched by sin, is sin. In Isaiah 64:6, God tells the children of Israel “all of your good works are like a pile of dirty diapers in My sight” because of the condition of their relationship with Him.
(My paraphrase. The actual words in the KJV are “all your righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” The Hebrew word translated “righteousnesses” means “good deeds.” The word translated “filthy rags” refers to something so revolting that I don’t even want to think about it. ”Dirty diapers” is close enough. Essentially, God is saying that good works done without a right relationship to Him are utterly loathsome and disgusting.)
The point is that these people were living in rebellion against God, but were trying to please him with good works. And God says that because they were, basically, hypocrites, their good works are no better than a pile of soiled nappies. Their good works were contaminated by their rejection of the relationship with God.
In those days, you restored your relationship to God by making an animal sacrifice to “pay” for your sin. They called it a sin-offering. The animal had to be pure and without any flaws. It had to be killed in a certain way, and its carcass had to be butchered and disposed of in a certain way. We don’t do animal sacrifices now. We don’t have to. Because, for Christians, Jesus is our sin-offering.
When you become a Christian, you pray and tell God you are sorry for offending Him with your sins, and you ask that He cleanse you with Christ’s blood and credit you with Christ’s righteousness, making you a new person. That is the beauty of Christ’s sacrifice — His Crucifixion restores our right relationship to God. His resurrection proves that the sacrifice was acceptable and that anyone who trusts in it by asking to be covered by it will be considered clean of sin.
For Christians, so long as we are doing good works through the strength of Christ, repenting and asking forgiveness for our sins, and maintaining a right relationship with God, then our good works represent an outpouring of God’s love through us. The minute we start priding ourselves on our service or our goodness or whatever, the instant that we take our focus off of the righteousness of Christ and begin preening ourselves on our “goodness,” at that moment our good works lose their goodness and become nasty.
Are you familiar with the Seven Deadly Sins? (pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, slothfulness) They are a convenient way to categorize sin, but none of them is any worse than telling a lie or spreading gossip. What about the Seven Holy Virtues? (humility, charity, kindness, patience, chastity, temperance, diligence) These are simply a convenient way to categorize right behaviour if and only if that right behaviour springs from Christ working through a person. But the Seven Virtues can be practised sinfully.
I’m sure you’ve met people who were “good” people doing “good” things, but who were tiresome or obnoxious in their “goodness.” By glorying in their goodness, they destroy it completely. Remember the praying Pharisee: “Thank you, God, that I’m not a terrible sinner like that thieving tax collector over there. I fast and pray and give alms … I’m just so good.” And Jesus said that the Pharisee was not the one upon whom God showed favour. Nope. The favoured one was the wicked tax collector, who simply prayed “Oh God, have mercy on me, for I am a sinner.”
Now, while God wants us to be fully aware of the magnitude of sin, and to understand that our “little” sins are no less sinful than Hitler’s “big” sins, He doesn’t want us dwelling on it. He doesn’t want us feeling like we are impossibly bad people.
What He wants is for us to say, “I am a terrible sinner. But God loved me enough to make a way to fix my sin, and He sent His Son to pay the price for me. And I accept that payment on my behalf. I will go where God leads and do as He bids me because I am grateful for His sacrifice and I want to help others know the Love that has set me free.”
In other words, He wants us to accept ourselves as sinners, accept His atonement that makes us righteous, and then go about our business without a lot of fuss. And without making a distinction between ourselves and those “bad, bad people” who murder, rape, or steal.
For Ladies Only: Regarding Modesty
This one is for my lady friends only, please. If you are one of my gentlemen friends, please come back tomorrow, because today’s topic is not suitable for mixed company.
Like many people yesterday, I reviewed my Facebook home page in puzzlement as friend after friend posted an apparently random colour on her status. I did not know what it was about until this morning, when a male friend asked on his profile “what’s with the colours?” and several of his friends posted that these people were posting the colour of their brassieres to help raise awareness for breast cancer research. I was shocked.
I was even more shocked (and I think my friends would have been, too) by the comments left by the men who were answering the question. More than one of them said he wanted to see pictures! And while I know that some of those men don’t profess to be Christians, at least a couple of them do.
So I was glad to see that at least one of my Facebook friends had taken exception to the idea — publicly. Her status said, “As Christian women we wouldn’t stand up in church and announce such things as ‘colors’ to our fellow brothers, so why would we do it here on FB? Please ladies, don’t do things that may cause our brothers to sin.”
And wow, did she take some flak! While there were several women who thanked her for the different perspective and stated that they were going to change or remove the colour posts from their FB pages, there were a few who responded with a vitriolic attack.
I’m no prude, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for others to know what colour undergarments I am wearing. I would be horrified and disgusted if random women walked up to my brothers and announced that they were wearing black undergarments. If I were married or engaged, and other women came up to my husband or boyfriend and announced that they were wearing red underwear, or no underwear at all (and yes, I did see a few people post “commando” or “none”), I would probably have to be physically restrained. Because I would be outraged by such an offensive comment made to a man who was clearly committed to me. I don’t want to imagine what you look like in your underwear — whatever colour you may choose — and I don’t want my husband or boyfriend visualizing you that way, either.
Beyond that, for those who claim to be Christians, we are under orders to live modest and seemly lives, to refrain from causing others to sin or be tempted to sin, and to maintain purity in our actions. We are called to practise Christian charity. It is, at the very least, an affront to charity to announce the colour of your undergarments to the world. It is certainly immodest. And from the men’s responses, it is clear that both Christian and non-Christian men were being tempted to impure thoughts by the postings.
So, to my Christian sisters, I say: before you join in a trend or movement — even one that seems to support a good cause — please think carefully, or even pray for wisdom. Make sure that it is something that God would want you to do. Something that, should you have to stand before Jesus and talk about it, you wouldn’t be ashamed. I can’t speak for others, but I would be ashamed to stand face-to-face with Jesus and say, “Yes, I told several thousand people what colour my underclothes were.” Not that I am ashamed of my underclothes, but the immodesty of having announced it to the world would make me ashamed before my Lord.
To my friends who do not claim to be Christians, I appeal to your own sense of rightness. Would you want some random female coming up to your husband, boyfriend, brother, or dad, and saying, “I’m wearing pink underwear”? Do you really think that such announcements trigger thoughts like “Oh, I need to contribute to breast cancer research”? I don’t want to be offensive, but if you really think that the average man would think about breast cancer research after being told what colour your underwear is, then you are very naïve and do not understand men’s thought-processes at all.
Just because it’s typed on Facebook doesn’t mean that it’s any less outrageous or immodest. Now, if you are looking to outrage and cause discomfort, that’s a whole nother issue altogether — one that I do not intend to address. But if you are hoping to raise awareness about breast cancer and hoping to inspire people to support breast cancer research, there are much better, much more socially appropriate ways.
Human Amphibians and the Law of Undulation
I had actually intended to post about just the Law of Undulation today, as I have been listening to C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters over the last few days, and his concepts of the Law of Undulation and of humankind as a hybrid, amphibian creature subject to that law have been occupying my thoughts greatly.
But in looking for someplace online to which I could refer readers for the explanation of the Law of Undulation (scroll down to sections VIII and IX for the pertinent information), I came across this blog article, and felt strongly compelled to share it in addition to my own thoughts. (And please do read the info in the links, or you will totally not “get” what I’m going to say next.)
I am, in some degree, in a “trough period” right now. A questioning time. The reasons would fill a week’s worth of posts and are not worth going into here. Suffice it to say that I am struggling with “a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished” and I am “wondering why [I have] been forsaken.” Fortunately, God brought Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, and The Screwtape Letters back to my shelf (they’ve been lost in my Room of Doom for several months) just in time to remind me that I have been here before, that this is a temporary state of affairs, and that my assigned task, my orders, my “cross” is to simply obey.
And then came the blog article, which adds to the assurance that this is a short-term dry spell the certain knowledge of my worth and dignity as a human being. Ever looked in the mirror and wondered “God, why in the world did you ever bother creating me? What were You thinking?! I hope to goodness you threw that set of plans away, because the prototype sucks.”? Yeah.
Well, as Aslan says to Prince Caspian, “You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve … And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth. Be content.”
I have often read that passage in Prince Caspian and been comforted by it, though without clearly understanding why. So I am grateful to Sarah Arthur for putting into words what my spirit glimpsed and held to, though it could not articulate it.
“Painful” does not begin to describe my heritage, though I know for certain that my past is not half as horrific as that of some of my readers. And there have been many, many times over the past few weeks that I have wished most heartily that I could go back to the age of 12 and just redo the entirety of my adult life. Yes, I would even go through adolescence again, just to have the chance to undo some of the choices I have made.
But regardless of my past, I am a Daughter of Eve, created in the image of God and, through Christ, indwelt by the Creator and Ruler of all creation. My painful past is only a part of my heritage, and it has been covered by the Blood. Therefore, I, like Caspian, need to be content.
And, too, like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, I need to remember that no matter how disastrous a choice may seem, no matter how worthless my life may feel, I have impacted many for good. God may, or may not, choose to reveal those whom I have touched to me in this lifetime, but the fact that I don’t know about them doesn’t mean that the good contact didn’t happen. God probably keeps a lot of that sort of thing from me so I don’t get smug and proud and self-satisfied.
Anyway, so this little frog is crouched in a trough, hoping to stay more or less afloat until the Master comes and lifts me out again. I hope that my readers who have difficult pasts, or who find themselves in a low point, will find the words of CS Lewis and the explanations of Sarah Arthur as helpful and encouraging as I did.