Category Archives: Downton Abbey

Miss Missy Elocutes

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Missy

Jack is busy finishing the paperwork for his town council run, so we appreciate Missy stepping in to write this week’s guest blog.

Good afternoon. My name is Missy and I am Foster Cat in Residence at Tales of the Lonesome Pine Used Books. They have invited me to live in their efficiency apartment while I sort my circumstances.

Nothing sordid, mind you, but I was living with a family of six cats and one human staff member up until November of last year, when our housekeeper’s big heart finally gave out. We were all very sad; she was such a good woman.

Of course we had no idea what was in store for us, but we were quickly split up and sent to stay with relations. My companion Smudge and I wound up here. I wouldn’t say a word against Smudge, but let me assure you, we shared nothing but the bills and housekeeping chores.

missy sittingSmudge was quickly adopted, but I’ve been here at the bookstore’s Hostel for Distressed Gentlecats about a month now. My time has not been idle. I’ve run up a pair of curtains for the windows and given the hardwood floor a good scrubbing. I’ve also improved the manners of the staff, and let me tell you, they needed some work. There seem to be four cats in permanent residence, and they had let things slide considerably. I even had to put up a fuss until a clean white towel was arranged under my food service area.

They are kind people, and I know they mean well, but the heart longs for a home of its own, does it not? I would like nothing more than to pack my (clean) ramekins and fluffy pillow, put on my good hat, and go out the door to a quieter, gentler place. While I don’t mind dogs as such, they do make quite a lot of noise. Really, I think it would be ideal for me to live in a home with a couple of younger cats. I could teach them deportment, and the finer points of life, like keeping one’s sleeping area clean, and how to brew a perfect cup of catnip tea. In the afternoon, as they dozed on the verandah, I could read them stories of a morally uplifting nature.

missy walkingAnd while a lady hesitates to discuss private matters, I am of a certain age (oh, all right, seven) and have been… {ahem} seen to down there.

So really, I’m only waiting for the right home to come along: quiet, calm, and with a housekeeper who is prepared to brush my fur at least twice a day. As I say, the people here are kind, but they do seem busy, and I really cannot abide missing a brushing. If you think you could provide these simple needs, do please stop by so we can discuss room requirements and mutual expectations. Thank you for this little chat, and I look forward to getting to know you better soon.

The Monday Book: SAFFRON CROSS by J. Dana Trent

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saffron corssDana and I made Twitter-friends (is that a noun?) a couple of weeks before the Movable Feast of Authors run by Bookmarks, a very active lit-lovers group in North Carolina. The Feast entailed twenty tables of eight people, with authors moving in ten-minute intervals between them–a wild ride covered with online publicity, so Dana and I were in a lot of tweets together. One day I clicked on her icon and found her book was about being an ordained Baptist minister married to a Hindu who used to be a monk.

Well, that sounded intriguing….

Dana and I got a chance to chat after the event, and we traded books. (Don’t tell our publishers, ‘kay? Thanks.) She and Fred had gone on bookstore dates, and I’m fascinated by interfaith connections, so it seemed pretty natural.

More natural than the eHarmony match Dana and Fred made. Her book is less about external pressures put on them by others than personal expectations and changes. That’s what I liked most about her writing. Dana left a lot of space for others to interpret or extrapolate, by holding her narrative to “This is what happened to us; this is what I learned; this is how I understand the contentious points.” Saffron Cross is an honest description of a wife reconciling her full-on belief in Jesus with her husband’s full-on devotion to Krishna.

Early in the marriage, they decided they couldn’t take an easy road and worship separately as each saw fit; they had to share seeking God as a foundation for their shared lives. That made for some very interesting theological points not easy to reduce in a review. If I say that Dana and Fred set up a Hindu-tradition altar in their homes and included Jesus and the Bible in its objects, you might get the idea that this was an easy compromise, rather than a parsed-apart and carefully considered decision about how the two faiths work. You might think about hair-splitting, mental gymnastics, and semantic end runs around scripture.

And that would be the wrong idea, because nothing comes easy in this pragmatic narrative. Back when Sue Monk Kidd wrote about her rejection of male-centered religion, my friends and I who read her memoir were frustrated. She avoided the central question: What about Jesus? If a guy says “I’m the son of God” and you relegate him to “I’m a son of God,” then you’re worshiping someone who belongs in a lunatic asylum. If Jesus isn’t God’s son, he’s a nut case. The “all religions lead to the real God” approach is facile if the only way to make that happen is reducing Jesus’ status.

Dana and Fred don’t take that route; she addresses both anecdotally and in theological observation that she believes Jesus is God’s son. Her meshing this with Fred’s approach, finding peace that they’re both on honest paths, proves less semantic than thought-provoking.

If you’re interested in Christianity because you are a Christian; if you’re anthropologically interested in faith communities; if you’re a Hindu frustrated with Western materialism; if you find marriage stories voyeuristically interesting; or if you like the idea of a woman Baptist hospice minister, you’ll find Saffron Cross a densely packed book that keeps you up late.

And I admit to giggling, thinking of how hard it was explaining Little Bookstore in ten minutes to eight strangers, and there’s Dana sitting down to her tables: “Hi, I’m a Southern Baptist married to this nice Hindu guy…” Oh, to be a fly on the wall.