I told Lady, “Close your eyes and wish everyone a Merry Christmas,” and this is what I got …

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Because it was too windy to deer hunt, I dove into 2023’s reading regimen a few days early.

This biography of Melville, focusing on how and why he came to pen Moby Dick, is not disappointing.

Grateful for Melville’s persistence, even given his dark vision, and for the massive themes and prognostications of Moby Dick.

Grateful, too, for Delbanco’s thoughtful bio of the literary leviathan.

Bibliophiles may track with the tendency to read an author’s oeuvre. That is my pattern.

For this December, I have elected Don DeLillo as my writer whose works to read through.

Tonight I am away from my loved ones, and so I will read the slim volume The Silence.

I have read DeLillo’s acknowledged masterpieces–Underworld and White Noise.

Both are tomes–quite heavy novels, novels of ideas and of several hundred pages each. But now I’m reading through the balance of his body of work. Some of them, like The Silence, are just over 100 pages, an easy read on a quiet evening.

DeLillo’s enduring themes involve questions regarding the predominance of technology in our lives; the increasing imposition and power of government/bureaucracy; the loss of the individual; and the fate of the individual–especially the artist–and his/her creation (art), whether that’s a play, a poem, a painting, a sculpture, a short story, a novel, a dance, a symphony, or an opera.

I miss my loved ones, miss our critters on my lap as I wrap up in a blanket as I study.

But I’m grateful for quiet evenings, too, because they make me appreciate the times I do get to be at home with them, and going to our church, being with the body, singing the hymns, fellowshipping, and confessing the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

I was able to travel home this weekend.

I laced up my boots and hit the hills and valleys.

With recent rains the creeks are running again and the wildlife is abundant.

Sometimes I was watching deer; other times they were watching me.

Thankful for times like these to be in the woods, crossing creeks, walking along the lake, listening to the water, hearing the fowl.

No accidents. One can but recognize the work of the sovereign Craftsman.

Got home, saw the family, watched a movie, drank some coffee, slept in my own bed, got a couple of new books in the mail, ate Chinese food, walked the dogs, hiked with the wifey, and looked out from the kitchen window to see this little girl bed down behind the house. My cup is full.

Today I was able to be among fellow soldiers in the Midwest and teach classes required of us each year.

As I pulled into the location where the training was to occur, it was early, the temperature was well below freezing, and the whitetail deer were grazing the scarce green forage visible in the training area. Geese swam out away from where I parked the rental vehicle I was driving, and I followed the path to the classroom.

Shortly thereafter, soldiers from the unit began to arrive and they helped me set up the tables, chairs, etc. for the training. The staff at the facility were super-friendly and helpful, and soon we had begun. I could smell the fresh coffee brewing in the lobby and I had no technical/IT issues with my computer (my abiding specter as a Luddite).

I don’t understand why bucolic scenes (like the one above) move my soul the ways they do, but for me, peaceful scenes like what I drove in among this morning across the Big Blue River, and seeing the deer hunt for food, and watching the geese paddle across the pond, and watching the sun rise behind the trees and fall upon the water, and to be able to teach and minister to fellow soldiers, it just doesn’t get much better for me.

Thankful for days like this and the opportunities presented therein.

The Passenger is volume one of McCarthy’s most recent books. And Stella Maris is volume two.

I had several hours on planes recently to read both.

The Passenger, I think, could have been trimmed. There were multiple stories going on throughout the book and they did not resolve fully. Perhaps that is the reasoning behind Stella Maris.

But when I finished it (Stella Maris) today, I looked around to make sure no one was watching me. It was that emotionally powerful.

The backstory of Bobby Western, of Alicia’s childhood, of their brilliant minds and soaring spirits, and of the lines (whether real or imagined) marking intelligence, imagination, genius, madness, love, and sorrow, the second volume is powerful.

Creation, physics, language, Bach, Oppenheimer, war, Milton’s Satan, Hamlet’s musings, mathematics, and more … it’s all here.

Though ninety percent dialogue, what McCarthy does in his lyrical understatement approaches words’ capacities to convey pathos.

What a marvel McCarthy is to the literary world.

So thankful he has followed his mad genius and brought needed light to this present darkness.