CHANT OF LIFE

Several years ago when Isabel Anders and I were working on Chant of Death, a mystery based in a Benedictine Abbey in south Louisiana, we simultaneously listened to recordings of Gregorian chants while doing the writing. Gary Entsminger and Susan Elliott, co-publishers of Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado, who had issued a contract for Chant of Death, also began to listen to recordings of Gregorian chants when they prepared the book for publication. The four of us developed something called "collective intention" about this particular novel. Isabel and I have always said that Chant wrote itself, and we completed it within six months. Chant contains many allusions to Gregorian chant, to monastic life and metaphysical ideas, and it's an exploration of both the holy and the profane in a tightly-knit mystery of 146 pages.

Last week-end, I attended a silent retreat entitled "Praying the Psalms," sponsored by the Sisters of St. Mary at Sewanee and featuring Sr. Madeline Mary and The Rev. Suzanne Warner as leaders of meditations on the Psalms, including those that we chanted at Morning and Evening Prayer each day. I was again introduced to Gregorian chant, especially those based on Psalms included in the Office of Morning Prayer in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. These Psalms that we chanted had also been chanted by Benedict's monks and had been prescribed by Benedict to educate monks about leading a holy life and to show them how the Gregorian chants inspired connections with God.

One of the articles distributed by Sr. Madeline Mary during this retreat was an article entitled "On Good Health and Gregorian Chant" that featured an interview with a famous French Audiologist named Dr. Alfred Tomatis, and which was the core of a CBC Radio Documentary called "Chant." It was later broadcast on NPR in the United States. The article had been taken from the bulletin of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Latin Mass Community in Littleton, Colorado.

The interview tells the story of the head of a monastery in France, an abbot who had changed the Benedictine Rule to exclude chanting from the monks' daily schedule, an elimination of six to eight hours in their daily activities. Curiously, after the abbot excluded the chants, the monks began to complain of tiredness, and medical specialists were called in to treat them. Various treatments were explored, including that of adding meat to their normally vegetarian diets because they were told they were dying of starvation. Seventy of ninety monks had begun slumping in their cells and seemed devoid of energy. The addition of meat to the diets of the tired monks had no effect on them, and they continued to suffer from the curious lassitude.

St. Mary's Chapel, Sewanee TN

The abbot called in Dr. Tomatis, the French audiologist, and he treated the monks with sound only, primarily Gregorian chants, explaining that the chants, when sung in Latin, follow a relaxed physiological rhythm that is described as "pure," affect the cortex of the brain, and provide the channel for perfect listening to a higher power. The audiologist played the music of Mozart and Gregorian chants from the Abbey of Solemes, particularly the dawn and midnight masses for Christmas, and within months, the re-introduction of the chants in Latin had revived the health and energy of the French monks.

The article also revealed that Menninger's Clinic in Topeka, Kansan uses Gregorian chant to help their patients recover. This is a very brief resume of the interview with Dr. Tomatis regarding the relationship of Gregorian chant and good health, but the results resonated with the ideas that Isabel, Gary, Susan, and I had about playing Gregorian chant music to inspire the writing of Chant of Death. I remember the time as a highly energized period in which the creative process was heightened by ethereal stimuli and resulted in Chant, a book that Isabel and I still regard as a "mystical mystery."

THE TIME OF BLESSINGS...

On this rainy cold day in New Iberia, Louisiana, just a few days before Thanksgiving, I sit at my window overlooking the patio with the fat chiminea on it and the backyard strewn with wet leaves and think about blessings—the warmth of central heat and a healthy breakfast reminding me of all good gifts available in this age of post modernity.

Several books about blessings that help me with expressing thanks for plenitude and certainly elevate my evocations of thankfulness lie on the dining room table. One of them is a volume entitled To Bless the Space Between Us by John O'Donohue, an Irishman whose work encompasses blessings for getting married, having children, eating bountiful meals, and other ordinary events. In the book, O'Donohue explains that blessings of things, people, and events is a way of life and can help transform the world. The volume was given to me at Christmas three years ago by my friend, Isabel Anders of Sewanee, who also writes books about blessings, several of which are: Simple Blessings for Sacred Moments, A Book of Blessings for Working Mothers, The Lord's Blessings, and Blessings and Prayers for Married Couples.  

A newer book on the dining table is a compendium entitled Bless This Food, which contains ancient and contemporary graces from around the world—prayers from Native Americans, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sufis, Jews, Unitarians and others of various faiths. As the author, Adrian Butash, says: "food is the thanks-giving link and universal form of expression for gratitude to the Almighty."

In the introduction to his book, Butash writes briefly about certain cultures and customs centering around blessings and hospitality, and I was fascinated with the section about Chinese dining customs. He describes the Chinese custom of sending dinner invitations in a red envelope—red being the color of festivity—and the spontaneous seating arrangements so that no person is left standing while another person is seated. After the guests finish the meal, the host escorts them all the way to the door because the Chinese believe that "if you escort a man at all, escort him all the way." Included in this notation about Chinese dining is a reference to a Chinese poem, "Inviting Guests," which dates back to AD 273 and gives readers a look at ancient Chinese hospitality that reflects the pleasure of sharing and enjoying life through the "entertainment of guests with warmth and goodwill."

A P.S. to Butash's explication of Chinese blessings that use the vehicle of poetry is the fact that the Chinese express love in their blessings, dealing not with love as we envision it, but with friendship because Chinese poetry is influenced by the Three Teachings of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism: the importance of being unselfish, loyal, and courteous. When I read this passage, I thought of one of Isabel's books entitled The Faces of Friendship in which she speaks of friendships (which aren't confined to the Chinese culture): "A friend is one whose essential beingness, whose presence in the world, has touched ours at some point. And from such points of touching we measure our time, our very lives before and after..."

So, my thanksgivings are not just food blessings but include celebrations of friendship as I think of all the friends who have, as the Chinese say, been "loyal, unselfish, and courteous" to me. However, I'm not sending out any invitations in red envelopes a la Chinese style—Thanksgiving dinner will be a la American style (with some inclusions of Cajun fare) but I do hope to entertain my "guests with warmth and goodwill."

MYSTICAL FOREST

While residing in this “mystical forest” in Sewanee, Tennessee, I’ve completed another book of poetry which is now available on amazon.com and, of course, at Border Press. I’m blessed to have the quiet time necessary to write while living on The Mountain, and some of the poems are about my life here. The title poem explores the feelings of an artist (my brother Paul) when he painted his perception of a mystical forest for his wife, Lori.

A section of the book focuses on another chapter in the ongoing “Going to Diddy Wah Diddy” saga, a saga fueled by postcards my mother bought on my childhood journey to California during the 40’s. Other poems focus on everyday life and people in Louisiana and on the Cumberland Plateau, as well as a poet’s struggle with the past and aging.

That’s a brief summary of the book. I’m not so self-aggrandizing as to review my own book, so I include here some of the wonderful affirmations and endorsements of Mystical Forest written by other authors, teachers, and poets:

“Mystical Forest is a feast of a book. It finds its spiritual rhymes in poets as various as Donne and Herbert, as various as Hildegard, May Sarton and Mary Oliver. Diane Marquart Moore is a metaphysician who brings the sacred to this world she loves even with the dirt and grit ever in it; even with the hurt and wound ever a part of the mystical pact. Just as she loves and honors the imperfect world in these poems, so too does she love and honor whatever comes before and whatever comes afterward. If you should hear something like the birdsong of Olivier Messiaen and the risings in Arvo Pärt’s compositions when you read these poems, you are not just hearing things. Moore is that good.” –Darrell Bourque, author of Megan’s Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie, and former Louisiana poet laureate.

“‘A small world blooms/at the edge of a disturbed bay’ in numerous poems of Diane Marquart Moore’s newest collection, Mystical Forest. Whether in an affirmation of solidarity out of a history of abuse (‘Barbara’s painting’) in solitary prophecies received on a family pilgrimage by the young poet-to-be, or in a couple’s intimate twirl on the dance floor of the world (‘Dancing With the Stars’)–Moore’s poems illuminate small worlds with precision and poignancy as though one is entering the mystical purple light of her artistic mother’s ‘fragile dream.’ Is the real world truly the ‘backyard of paradise’? Could an owl’s hole in a tree offer a refuge of escape? Can a blast of Mozart sonatas evoke a world to counteract the doldrums of a gray winter’s freeze (‘Too Much Gray in the Day’)? These artfully crafted poems–‘words creating the plenty/of moments left standing’ – answer Yes.” –Isabel Anders, author of Miss Marple: Christian Sleuth; Becoming Flame; and Spinning Straw, Weaving Gold.

“With a poet’s craft, with a painter’s eye, Diane Moore’s evocative poems lead to places that are personal and universal. ‘Giving birth to simple insights,’ Moore writes – just one more reason to follow her on a rewarding journey.” –Michael Miller, author of Into This World.

“This wonderful collection sings of friends, family, and place, but also of loss, regret, and wonder – all part of a life well lived, richly imagined, and beautifully expressed. Its poems resonate with clear observation and earned wisdom. Whether tracing a childhood odyssey out west, or simply capturing the landscapes of her Louisiana and Tennessee homes, Diane Moore gives us a world that brings us back to our own with renewed clarity and insight.” –Mary Ann Wilson, Departments of English and Women’s Studies, University of Louisiana, Lafayette.

I’m humbled by the endorsements these fine writers have written about Mystical Forest and hope that you enjoy this, my 34^th book. 

MISS MARPLE: CHRISTIAN SLEUTH

One of the reasons author Isabel Anders and I decided to co-author a mystery entitled Chant of Death was a mutual interest in mysteries, and both of us shared an attraction to the work of Agatha Christie, The Queen of Classical Mysteries. We often pondered why we were attracted to the mystery genre, and I penned a poem about this subject, the last stanza ending with a query:

“Is it the heavy step of justice on the stair,
a voice announcing case closed,
last appeal denied, tragedy averted…
no more monsters under the bed.”

However, Isabel answers the question more fully in the introduction to Miss Marple: Christian Sleuth, just released by Circle Books/John Hunt Publishing. “[In] dramatizations of various detective series through the years, we’ve found that they offer more than brainy entertainment,” she writes. “Escape, certainly, from one’s own issues and struggles. Answer to mysteries that make one feel that the problems of the world can be understood and intelligently dealt with. Satisfying resolutions within a limited scope and time frame…”

Isabel continued to probe what she calls the knottier issues in mysteries, that of struggling with what it means to deal in discernment of good and evil – and to enable the good to win out…” and the result was Miss Marple: Christian Sleuth, a literary criticism of Agatha Christie’s famous character whom Christie said in her autobiography she “had no intention of writing about for the rest of her life.”

Isabel presents readers with lessons about life, through an analysis of the personality and psyche of this Christian sleuth, a quiet , elderly woman who insinuated herself into Christie’s life in the same manner that she entered Isabel’s life – then became a major force in both women’s lives. Although Isabel does not set out to defy Hillary Waugh’s criticism (Guide to Mysteries and Mystery Writing) that Christie was weak on characterization, her explication of the genteel Miss Marple as a force to reckon with is a cogent defense against Waugh’s assessment of Christie’s ability to create a strong fictional character – one that she ended up writing about for a major part of her life.

Through the twelve novels described as the “Marple/Christie oeuvre,” Isabel offers us insight into the truth and good in a literary character who appears to be an old woman knitting, gardening, and, yes, interfering in village murders, but who is a redoubtable Christian and a model for those who want to live out a productive old age. Isabel writes, “Jane Marple herself illustrates in exquisite particularity how the Christ-life can be lived through discipline, by attention to facts, and especially to loving concern for the needs and problems of others, in whatever circumstances one finds oneself, provincial or cosmopolitan…”

Isabel reveals to us that the elderly amateur detective reads Thomas a Kempis’s Imitation of Christ every night and prays about everything, and we are surprised at how much of her spirituality is revealed through Christie’s novels which Isabel probed deeply. However, through Isabel’s lens, we also see that Miss Marple is no prude and entertains the prospect of danger with both compassion and grit – Isabel points out her unflappable attitude in The Moving Finger, in which Miss Marple says: “…we are not put into this world, Mr. Burton, to avoid danger when an innocent fellow-creature’s life is at stake."

Miss Marple is an icon and heroine of detective fiction deftly presented as a model of Christian charity, a true “woman for others,” as Isabel calls her. A reading of this excellent literary explication can only bring us to the agreement that “professional detectives are no match for elderly spinsters.” (Agatha Christie upon the publication of The Body in the Library).

This is a journey with a lovable character that will take readers of the Miss Marple series by surprise and provides an exploration into the Christian aspects of Christie’s work, delivered in nine discerning chapters. The book is complete with bibliography, notes, and study group discussion questions.

Isabel Anders is the author of more than 25 books for adults, children, and young adults, including three recent spiritually-themed study guides Becoming Flame, Spinning Straw, Weaving Gold: A Tapestry of Mother-Daughter Wisdom, and Miss Marple, Christian Sleuth.

SPINNING STRAW, WEAVING GOLD…

On Sunday, my friend Isabel Anders, gave me a copy of her latest book, one of over twenty inspirational books she has written during her career as a spiritual writer. Spinning Straw, Weaving Gold, A Tapestry of Mother-Daughter Wisdom contains poetic conversations between mother and daughter about female spirituality that is connected to the physical and material, such as the actual weaving of cloth. The conversation is a metaphor for the spinning and weaving women do to create their tapestries of wisdom to be passed on to future generations of females.

This small book of 43 pages includes quotations from many wisdom writers and poets, including Sally Fox’s book of days, The Medieval Woman, and Anders uses the medieval practice of spinning to illustrate the concept that the spinning/weaving process is based in the “good material feel of work in the world that can lead to creative consequences…the slower process through which she gains experience, sifts and filters it through her natural stages of development.”

Anders invites reader to consider how spinning that which comes to women in the good and bad circumstances of their lives enables them to weave straw into gold, especially when the weaving and spinning are operations of love.


Spinning Straw, Weaving Gold is the second in a collection of that which Anders calls “uncommon mother-daughter dialogues” that call attention to the small scenarios of women who struggle and become successful in the weaving of their various tapestries.

I particularly liked the section entitled “Wisdom of the Unseen;” e.g., when the daughter asks, “Mother, what is our trade and how may we describe the work of our life?” and receives the reply: “St. John of the Cross wrote, ‘My occupation is Love. It’s all I do. We can do no better.’” And another dialogue: “'How does the Spirit come to us since we cannot see the ‘wind’ of its presence? How can we know we’re being led and shown the way?’ the daughter asks. The mother answers: ‘The great da Vinci has said, ‘When the Spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.’ Then the Mother points to their newest tapestry.”

This is a book of poetry and meditations derived from the world of women and grounded in spiritual wisdom. After reading it, I know that each time I announce the Gospel (as a deacon) in church, I’ll think of Sophia and how the Greek Orthodox deacons say that name preceding the Gospel because it means that they are reading “wisdom” to the congregants – I’d love to announce the reading that way, and I know that if I did, Anders would be among those in the congregation at St. Mary’s who would vigorously nod her head at the invocation.

One of the sage observations in Spinning Straw, Weaving Gold is the quotation from St. Catherine of Siena: “Make two homes for thyself, my daughter. One actual home…and the other a spiritual home, which thou are to carry with thee always. These are the two lives we are building as we labor, sometimes all in one motion.”

Complete with notes, Study Questions, and Bibliography, this small volume is tightly woven with wisdom in dialogues created from the pieces and scraps of Anders’ own life…and that of many writers of wisdom literature. The result is a rich tapestry of carefully-chosen colors.