How I Answer Dr. Martin Shaw’s Nosy Questions during Quest for the Holy Grail

Friday, January 16

While it was still dark, and I would remain in sleep, the snowplow scraped by. He went north and came back south. We had a bit of snow last night, but nothing Bruce would have to plow. I’ve seen bits of asphalt tossed in the ditch, black seeds that will not sprout. And my wild, young pup, Aiden has dived for them, rolled them into his mouth. I pull off my gloves, reach into his mouth, an pull it out. He’s done this with stones, black walnuts and branches. He’s quick. I fear this will drive us to the ER for a four-thousand-dollar surgery or a dead dog. He’s two months shy of a year. His teeth are all in. How much longer will I have to guard this compulsion?

I looked out the bathroom window and saw squirrels running along branches  and diving between them in the black walnut trees that line our drive. It’s like watching a roller coaster made up of squirrels. They are well fed.

Yesterday Bruce told me to look out the window to see the crescent moon high above the barn. He said it would be dark the next few nights. The moon set in the sky for times and seasons. When I looked for it on my walk, it was nowhere to be found. I have often seen the moon setting in the west during the day as a pale disk or half disk. And when it’s new, it catches earth shine as it settles down to the orange horizon.

Today was the last day of the five-day Martin Shaw’s Quest for the Holy Grail course that was sponsored by The Symbolic World. When the story wrapped up, Bruce and I went to our local Mexican restaurant for lunch because my brain needed to cool with some chips and salsa. I wished I had a classroom of students to show this to my students, especially young men, because Parzival is a powerful coming of age story, and the young people I worked with were in sore need of a truly human story where they could find themselves. But the story would be so foreign to an inner-city kid, well any young person, it might shock them into finding themselves in the story. It’s not same old same old.

Even as a seventy-year-old woman, I found places where my life rhymed with the story. It felt like the story beckoned to see how my life can be mythic. Myth might be too strong a word, but that’s all I can think of to express the pull I felt. And true to my compulsion to write things down to hold my attention, I took notes, which is gauche when listening to such a masterful storyteller. But Shaw was none the wiser, on the other side of the screen.

Shaw looked hand hewn, like the beams holding up our barn, his hair tangled behind his neck, with the magic hanging around him that I have sensed from master storytellers. He sipped whiskey and smoked some kind of cigar. He filled us in on each brand of whiskey before he closed the session. Behind him—books and more books. I wished I could step close and read their spines. Then he played his drum, the rhythm of Mrs. Horse trotting down the road, the rhythm of a warmblood galloping to a fence. He took us to the forests and castles of the thirteenth century. He took us to the mystery of the grail.

Dr. Shaw asked us where do we find ourselves in the story?

When Parzival’s father was killed in battle, his mother grieved so hard, she forsook the castle and courtly ways. She did not want her son in the meat grinder of war. She left the palace and fled to the deepest part of the forest where she raised him. But she was so afraid of losing him, she killed the birds that set up her child’s longing to see the wider world. When he was enthralled with the Arthurian knights who came to visit, she sent him off to find Camelot dressed in sack cloth riding a donkey.

I thought about Bruce’s mother, whose husband died when he was fifteen, and how he stayed home until he was thirty, until he met me. Instead of choosing her, he chose me. He withstood her silences, the backstabbing, the sharp words to make it clear the apron strings were cut. I figured that if I didn’t stop complaining about her slights, I would make our lives miserable, so I did the hard work of blessing her every time I thought of her. This blessing rewired my brain. Contrary to what psychologists say I found I could train my brain to step aside from the anger, frustration, and just not go to the angry place. There were five years when we didn’t speak. We ultimately reconciled.

But I also knew that Bruce wouldn’t have been drawn to me if I didn’t have those same insecurities. I wrestled the fear of abandonment, which made sense since my parents had both died when I was twenty-seven. (Shaw says it’s not good for young people to be around death, but I was whacked with it hard and then five years later my brother died.) Dreaming Bruce walked  away with another woman did not help. I saw therapists, I wrote stories, I prayed.  Just lately I’ve begun to see that fear is something to be rebuked like a snarling red dragon. And it goes away.

Parzival’s love story, where Condwiramurs comes to his bed chamber, and they simply laid together and later how it took three days to consummate their love was gorgeous and runs so counter to our contemporary“mad rush to the genies.” Sweetness. When Parzival sees a vision in specks of blood in snow and a falcon’s wing, he longs to return to her. It’s so good to hear a story about a man’s faithful love for his wife.

Like Parzival I left home, and while I looked back with weekly phone calls, once I was in my first job, both parents died within the first year of my employment as a publicist at Crossway Books.

Shaw asked what legacy did your parents leave you?

My mother said there’s always room at the top and encouraged excellence. I guess I found the top when I was one of two out of state poets accepted at the University of Arkansas’ creative writing program that semester. I guess I found the top when I turned out to be one the top publicists in the evangelical book market in the early 80’s. But the “top” in those places carried a significant price.

My MFA program might have taught me how to write an English sentences, but they also taught me to be understated, a kind of writing that damaged my chances to be published by top New York and Indie publishers just before the publishing industry flipped upside down. Several editors said something like the signal is like a radio station coming in and out of range on a long trip. The characters were sometimes clear and sometimes faded. I hired an editor who taught me how to bring them alive. She taught me not to afraid of emotion on the page. I reworked The River Caught Sunlight for about fifteen years. Those revisions dumped me into a steady peace. When I taught first year English to developmental students I slid away from the top and became an instructor, which was a non-tenured job that felt precarious, but held steady for twenty years.

Now I don’t care about the top, I’m content with my quiet life. I don’t have the desire or the energy for the hustle. I’m honored that you read my words. 

Dr. Shaw  asked hard questions: Do you have agency?  (Yes.) Do you feel witnessed in your life? Have you sent something into exile?

Have you sent something into exile? Yes. Mrs Horse. This mare taught me how my fear–This mare could hurt me–was a lie. Just because I perceive it doesn’t mean it’s true. As a youngster she had many opportunities to nail me and she didn’t. We had good teachers, especially when I trained her to drive, but now there doesn’t seem to be anyone to come out to the farm and lend their confidence. She has gotten heavy in the bridle. I need help to remedy that. I’m not going to switch bits without good advice. There are times when I need more than breath and my voice to bring her back. And she does come back. 

Dr. Shaw asked about our first mentor. Mine was Judy who came to our house and trained Trigger, a Shetland hackney pony, who needed schooling to be safe for me to ride. Even so, her favorite thing was to sink down in soft, plowed dirt and roll. She was an escape artist too. 

Judy helped me buy my second horse and trailered us to assorted horse shows around Albany County. Judy knew me well and predicted, no prophesied that I would be working with inner city kids one day. I remember the stretch of Font Grove Road where she said that, between Furman’s barn and Zeke Donato’s. That work didn’t seem possible and yet I tumbled into it for twenty years as an instructor at Northern Illinois University.

When it was time to part with Trigger, I did the same, with her new owner, mentored her a bit. We explored the remote valleys between my parents’ farm and Slingerlands after school and on weekends. Mary became a world class Judo competitor and sat with me through my losses.  

Mrs. Horse watches me with Aiden through the rails in the fence. She says what were you thinking adding another dog, who will take time, when you don’t even have time for me?

Even I wonder what I’ve done inviting Aiden to our home. Omalola nearly says the same thing. She watches me making much over Aiden. They have taught each other bad habits—jumping on counters, grabbing leashes, barking. Not coming in the house and darting into the yard, doing their ra rah thing, growling and rearing and grabbing necks and finally breaking into a run. This morning I opened the gate to the yard when they got loosea and thankfully they ran in. Both dogs are happy to walk quietly along side as long as I offer treats, is a bitter ask for my hands. Bruce has stepped in to help with walks. Aiden stays by him during the day so he can be outside his crate and quiet. As inappropriate as Aiden is for us, as a wild puppy, he’s staying with us. We both have said this is why dogs like him end up in shelters and rescues.

As far as being witnessed in my life? Yes I have, most recently by Dr. Shaw himself, who has kindly read my work. I fear he will be like Cundrie, the wild woman who shamed Parzival because he failed to ask the question, a question that would have healed the fisher king and the land, if I don’t settle down and at least make a draft of Baptisms of a Sorta Former Evangelical or How I Made Peace with My Name and My Ass.

The core of the Parzival story is healing, cosmic healing, that comes about when a person, walks the walk of becoming truly human, and receives what can only be given by grace. The grail part of this story is mysterious and hopeful and harks back to an’d  old human story—Cain’s murdering Abel.

I was knocked back when Dr. Shaw mentioned that magical things happen under linden trees. It was under a Linden tree that Parzival met his first mentor, Gurnemanz, who taught him how to be a knight.

Our linden tree was smuggled into the US as a slip inside a boot and planted next to our house. Now it is a tall, robust tree next to our house. Bruce has to clear its leaves and seeds from the gutters. (That’s the tall part of our house where he has to hoist a utility ladder, pulling the top up with a pulley to reach it.) I hold my breath every time he does this, but he’s not afraid of heights and was trained to climb telephone poles just using hooks. Two summers ago, I planted hostas and ferns at the base.

I wanted Dr Shaw to say more but he was speaking at a fast clip. Maybe our little farm has more presence, more magic than I thought. After all I imagined my way to this farm by writing about how Janice, my alter ego, flees her life as a high-powered publicist and settles in a farm in northwestern Illinois. I imagined a standardbred training farm around the corner from where she lived and a railroad track.

We bought our farm and discovered, a standardbred racing stable was being built around the corner. The horses are no longer there but we still call it the horse farm. Bruce and I find great entertainment watching the trains taking ethanol east and bringing empties back west. We listen for its horn off in the distance and watch it come by. It’s especially spectacular when the headlamp lights up the trees at night.

Well, I got my answer in Shaw’s masterful explication of the Parzival story Snowy Tower:

In Slavic culture the tree is associated with the habitation of goddesses of love; the romans also considered it a tree of love and fidelity. In the Greek world, Zeus and Hermes turned a man into an oak tree and his wife into a linden. Bees love the scent of the trees, so they are often called ‘bee trees’, They are also a place of ferocity—the linden worm a form of dragon, is said to abide underneath its branches.

The linden tree also has an air of authority. In German communities, they not only danced underneath its branches, but held specific meetings on the nature of truth and peace. The belief was that the tree itself would assist in getting to the core of the discussions. The Celts held to this, holding judicial cases in its shade. The heart shaped leaves confirmed its reputation as the tree of Venus. (72 – 73)

Maybe that’s why former owners brought it here from Berlin. Maybe they remembered the dances and meetings held in their community. Maybe they thought the tree would bring peace. Our first years here weren’t so peaceful, though. I don’t think the house appreciated all the changes we made—knocking out narrow, haunted stairs and making wide stairs with a landing, making two bathrooms, a new kitchen, dumping lathe and horsehair in one part of the house, and refinishing the beautiful yellow pine floors that had been covered in brown paint. It took a few years before the house’s stiffness, like a horse ready to buck, relaxed.

Our squirrels jump to the linden tree from the black walnut trees across the driveway. I had no idea I might be digging around a wormy dragon when I planted my hostas and ferns. Aiden likes to pee nearby. My hope is to bring that truth and peace to this place, for our guests to feel, and the people who will come after us, rest when they come here. Every day I walk out I draw down thanksgiving, and the earth swells with God’s love.

Last night when I was drafting the first part of this, the wind socked the house hard. Bitter cold  was making her way to us. I will be throwing more hay to Mrs. Horse and stuffing handwarmers in my mittens, eyes watering, smacked by the cleansing air.

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