Mystical Realms Newsletter for February, 2013
jef.m...@gmail.com
Greetings!
And welcome to my newsletter for February, 2013! Please feel free to forward this to anyone you think would be interested in keeping up with me! To receive these newsletters regularly, please drop me an email or subscribe online from my website (http://www.JefMurray.com ) or at:http://groups.google.com/group/Mystical_Realms . Notices of events and items of interest are at the bottom of this email.
Ponderings ==============
When I
think of Lent, a bubbling brew-pot of images boils in my head. Most of them have to do with Mardi
Gras, that tinsel trollop of Catholic
feast days. I can recollect more strangeness associated with Lent and Mardi Gras than with any
other liturgical season.
We were never actually in New Orleans during
Mardi Gras, although Lorraine and
I were there once for its aftermath. In the French Quarter, as the forty days progress
and the memory of Ash Wednesday fades,
things pick up again. There are curious echoes of Carnival on Canal Street: St. Joseph's Day brings floats
and parades and women
flashing bare bosoms for booty. This
despite the fact that March 19th always
falls during the Great Fast.
Lent is desert time. It's time for pulling back
before the boomerang of
Spring-then-Graduation-then-Summer-Vacation. Lent is sand in shoes, the buzzing of blowflies.
We really don't like Lent.
What we like is Mardi Gras: the big party with
no rules. "Play it again,"
yells the crowd to the Pink Panther, and he obliges on his saxophone. Masques mutate and
transmogrify from before dawn through morning,
noon, and night. Alcohol fuels fetishes, faux fowl, fantasy figures, each more desperate than the last to
hold onto the Fat of Tuesday. Carpe
Diem!
But it escapes, and we're left with...Lent.
I've never seen it, but I've heard that just
before midnight on Mardi Gras,
New Orleans police officers link arms and sweep the streets. A blue-black billy-clubbed tide floods
each alley, each shop doorway. The
voodoo nooks close, the bars empty in advance of the surge. Tourists, heads swimming, tired of
using door stoops as latrines, stagger
or crawl to hotel rooms.
At midnight, the clock strikes. The streets are
stripped of all but broken beads,
dented dubloons, cracked coolers.
Now the bust begins. The drummer has been
dismissed; the piper must be paid.
Some of us take all of this seriously. During
Lent, we try to mortify ourselves...to
feel what it might be like to make do with a dollop of dearth. Starved body steels will and
strengthens soul...so it's said. "Going
short for Lent" meant just the three pints of beer in the morning for C.S. Lewis. Tolkien teased
him for such abject asceticism.
So, Ash Wednesday comes. How should we approach
it? This is the stopping off
point...the way-station on a course from costumes to Calvary. We've all a ticket to post at
the door, but not all of us want
to go in. Better glitter than Golgotha, we figure…and I'm as bad as anyone.
But, I think, this Lent, instead of giving up,
maybe I should give in. The one
thing we're supposed to do during the Forty Days is pray. I hate prayer, and as a result, my forty
days are often forty thieves...each stealing a single chance for reflection, each
day's pale promise pinched.
So...to be still. To molt the mask, to hush the
braying horns, to go with God.
This is what I seek. And what I wish for you on
your own journey to Jerusalem.
Nai Eru lye mánata (may God
bless you)
Jef
Prospects ===================
• The third great gathering of Tolkien fans in Kentucky has now been announced for September, 2014! A Long Expected Party 3 (acronym “AL3P) is now open for registration, and the 170 beds available at Shaker Village for the event are already largely claimed. Nevertheless, you can still register, and offsite lodging is still available. I’m delighted to announce that I will be one of the three guests at the event thus announced, and that the other two are Dr. Michael Drout and Dr. Amy Sturgis. For more information, see: http://www.alep-ky.us/
• My first book, “Seer: A Wizard’s Journal”, continues to be offered by Oloris Publishing, and was recently reviewed by the British Fantasy Society. You can read the review here: http://www.britishfantasysociety.co.uk/reviews/seer-a-wizards-journal-by-jef-murray-book-review/
Oloris is dedicated to bringing new multimedia works to fantasy, mythology, and sci-fi fans worldwide, and I am honored to have had “Seer” chosen as their first publication. To learn more, see: http://shop.middleearthnetwork.com/Oloris-Publishing_c2.htm