The Diaphanous Breath of Angels

 

We live in a harsh world, a world in which we experience daily the transitory nature of life. As I write this post, my husband Patrick is very ill but, as is his way, he is firmly grasping the fringes of his eloquent and poignant life and holding on. Each day when I walk into his room, the words of Walt Whitman from "Song of Myself" come to mind: 

     To behold the daybreak!

     The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows

     The air tastes good to my palate.

Hope returns as I sit by his side, and indeed the little journey to discover the ins and outs of a new word comes to fruition, the beautiful little word diaphanous.

Diaphanous derives from Greek: dia--through and phaino/phanous/phany--to show or make visible. It is usually defined as sheer, delicate, almost transparent, but the word has also been used to describe that which is ethereal. For those of us who love words and the metaphors created with them, this one's a prize.

There is a well-known verse from 1st Corinthians 13:12, "For now we see through a glass darkly...," that seems to be the antithesis of diaphanous. The glass, or mirror, is the apostle Paul's metaphor for polished copper or brass that reflects darkly the image before it. We have come to understand the verse to mean a lack of clarity, of so much more to be understood, later when we are ready. So when we look at the word diaphanous, we imagine those things that are visible, something that not only allows light to pass through but also may even glow with an ethereal light. And such an antithetical image is a hopeful one, much like the garden that Patrick designed for me so many years ago. It is my very own diaphanous breath of angels, especially at dusk.

The back of our house has a number of windows permitting unobstructed views of all sides of the back garden.  Just before the sun goes down, an other worldly pink glow descends on our little space. It is an ephemeral light that deepens every green and pink and red, yellow and orange and white, convincing the onlooker that a miracle is at that moment taking place.

But the garden is not only about light and loveliness. It is a living, breathing, growing, changing pathway to hope and joy. I am a different person when I'm in the garden, my hands in the rich dark soil, performing the rituals of alchemy. 

Twelve bird feeders of all shapes and sizes dot the landscape. The squirrels take over half of them and I'm okay with this, but my winged friends are like angels that visit us throughout the day, soothing and charming us with their birdsong.

 

When I was little, wounded birds seemed to seek out my mother and she nursed them back to health. I fell in love with birds, no doubt, because of her kind and generous diaphanous love. Several years later as a teenager, I discovered Carl Sandburg's famous love poem, Little Word, Little White Bird:

Love is a little white bird

And the flight of it so fast

You can't see it

And you know it's there only by the faint whir of its wings.

Ah, yes, the diaphanous whir of wings. What better description of love than the transparent, ephemeral whir of wings--accompanied by the diaphanous breath of angels.

In this oftentimes harsh world of ours that confounds our sensibilities and strips us of love, replacing it with hate, we need this breath of angels in our lives to guide us and to remind us of that reaffirming cycle of rebirth and second chances. Despite our disappointments, our struggle to make sense of the world around us, we have a choice about how we will respond. If we live in darkness, we can't see the beauty unless we take up the God-given power and knowledge to turn on the light. It is only then that we will recognize the transparency through which that light can shine.

"The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light."  Romans 13:12 King James Bible

       

Sometimes the Road to Happiness is a Bit Catawampus

 

It's clear that as words evolve in the English language, they often change meanings, sometimes only slightly while at other times they shift with dramatic disparity. Such a word falling into the latter category is catawampus, often spelled cattywampus.

If you notice a road wandering off diagonally or a seam sewn off the intended destination, you might describe both as catawampus--diagonal, askew, awry.

But back in 1834 in the word's first use, it was an adverb meaning completely, utterly, avidly.

By 1843 catawampus appeared as a noun in Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit with an even more interesting definition: a hobgoblin or other frightening fantastical creature. 

And from 1864 to today the word catawampus heralds an image of something that is diagonal, on a bias, maybe even crooked as opposed to straight.

If a particular line or path changes so that it looks as if it is diagonal, could it not also be described as diverting from that given line or course? I like to think of words as having metaphorical as well as literal meanings, and that's the direction of this word's linguistic path that we will explore.

No matter how certain we might be about the career we have chosen, there are no guarantees that a person, situation, or new knowledge and understanding might alter our plans. So what could possibly divert us from our intentions and why?

We humans love to change our minds, as long as the idea of change belongs to us and we have initiated it ourselves. Otherwise, we hate change. Sort of. If we don't like our job, we can find another one. College students often decide on a different major midstream and therefore a new career plan. And there are lots of other moves we make when dissatisfied: buying a bigger house for a growing family or downsizing in a smaller house for a life of retirement, moving to a more suitable climate, getting a divorce or a new partner, taking a gap year before entering university. And then there are the unexpected events that alter our well laid plans and redirect us--accidents, illness, and a myriad of other tragic events that deflect us from our intended purpose.

The beauty of going catawampus is the mere idea of change, often a change for the better, something akin to rebirth and transformation, or at least an opportunity for one.

My mother was a hospital administrator in a Catholic hospital run by savvy Irish nuns for twenty years, not a career she envisioned for herself until my father became medically retired early in life. She was a tremendous success and was well-loved and respected in her position. I worked as a ward clerk in the surgery department of that hospital between semesters in college. Having first been the purchasing agent of the hospital and later head of five departments, she was immersed in the world of not only business but also of medicine. She saw that career for me, too, having watched me compete in speech tournaments in high school, thinking I could easily substitute the field of speech pathology for my love of speech and theatre. To please her, I tried it but with little success. It didn't take long to convince me this wasn't the field for me and I switched majors to English and speech. When I graduated with a B.A., I went on to attain two more degrees in the field and taught both subjects for the next forty-six years. My catawampus move prompted a fruitful and rewarding career.

With apologies to Dickens, taking a catawampus path that could lead to a more contented life is not frightening, nor is it fantastical. It may seem like a hobgoblin at first--change sometimes does feel that way, but with a bit of confidence we can get past our doubts and fears and walk down the road to a happier outcome. 

Here I go again, I hear those trumpets blow again, all aglow again, taking a chance...

Okay, now go for it!