:: How Complaining Rewires Your Brain For Negativity by Dr. Travis Bradberry @ The Huffington Post [There is important information in this post for all of us. After a hilarious conversation on Facebook (and on a less serious note), I’ve started having my kids sing their complaints and arguments to me with jazz hands.]
Repeated complaining rewires your brain to make future complaining more likely. Over time, you find it’s easier to be negative than to be positive, regardless of what’s happening around you. Complaining becomes your default behavior, which changes how people perceive you.
And here’s the kicker: complaining damages other areas of your brain as well. Research from Stanford University has shown that complaining shrinks the hippocampus—an area of the brain that’s critical to problem solving and intelligent thought.
And
When you complain, your body releases the stress hormone cortisol.
:: Here's How Marcus Aurelius Got Himself Out Of Bed Every Morning @ Business Insider [This absolutely tickled my funny bone, but it is so profound. Getting myself out of bed in the morning is a struggle, and I think I need to try some his self-talk. Go read the whole thing.]
At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: 'I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?'
— But it's nicer in here ...
So you were born to feel 'nice'? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don't you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you're not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren't you running to do what your nature demands?
:: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett [Luke and I are working on his persuasive essay for this book, two years after Levi and I discussed it. Chapter 27, In the Garden, is my favorite, and the first few pages concern the power of negative and positive thoughts, for Mary, Colin, and Archibald Craven.]
"In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done--then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts--just mere thoughts--are as powerful as electric batteries--as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live."
“…While the secret garden was coming alive and two children were coming alive with it, there was a man wandering about certain far-away beautiful places in the Norwegian fiords and the valleys and mountains of Switzerland and he was a man who for ten years had kept his mind filled with dark and heart-broken thinking. He had not been courageous; he had never tried to put any other thoughts in the place of the dark ones. He had wandered by blue lakes and thought them; he had lain on maintain-sides with sheets of deep blue gentians blooming all about him and flower breaths filling all the air and he had thought them. A terrible sorrow had fallen upon him when he had been happy and he had let his soul fill itself with blackness and had refused obstinately to allow any rifht of light to pierce through. He had forgotten and deserted his home and his duties.”
"Everything they remembered had this in common: it was memorized in a community. What they had crammed for on their own was lost. What they had worked at together stood a far greater likelihood of clinging to the mind."
“The scholar derives his excitement and motivation at first from snapping discrete pieces together and, in time, from seeing the image of the whole puzzle begin to emerge. His excitement, as well as his chances for completing the puzzle, however, depend on his being given a sufficient number of pieces from the same puzzle”
What happened brings to mind Pope Benedict XVI’s observation that the most convincing arguments for Christianity aren’t propositional arguments at all but rather the art and the saints that the faith produces—that is, the stories Christians tell and live…
Argument has its place, but story is what truly moves the hearts and minds of men. The power of myth—which is to say, of storytelling—is the power to form and enlighten the moral imagination, which is how we learn right from wrong, the proper ordering of our souls, and what it means to be human…
Kirk understood that the world might be won or lost on front porches, in bedrooms at night, around family hearths, in movie theaters and anywhere young people hear, see, or read the stories that fill and illuminate their moral imaginations. If you do not give them good stories, they will seek out bad ones.
“And the consequences will be felt not merely in their failure of taste,” Kirk said, “but in their misapprehension of human nature, lifelong; and eventually, in the whole tone of a nation.”
'Chuck Colson wisely said that “politics is downstream of culture.” And what feeds the ecosystem of culture more than anything else? Stories. Stories. By the time the election comes, it’s too late. It’s been too late for a long time. Our hearts were already won over by the stories we loved as children, the tales that shaped us as profoundly as anything else in life. Likely more.'
"There are times when the burden of need and our own limitations might tempt us to become discouraged. But precisely then we are helped by the knowledge that, in the end, we are only instruments in the Lord’s hands; and this knowledge frees us from the presumption of thinking that we alone are personally responsible for building a better world."
"We have no commandment from God to make the world a better place. We have no commandment from God to “make a difference.” Only God makes a difference, and only God knows what “better” would actually mean. As Christians, the proper life is one lived in accordance with the commandments. We should love. We should forgive. We should be generous and kind. We should give thanks to God always and for everything."
"Many of Flannery O’Connor’s stories portray the ineptness of men to uphold traditional ideals of manhood. The men show no leadership, they do not protect or care for their family members, they lack all manner of chivalry, and they lose a sense of priority as they commit to careers and professions or social and political agendas at the expense of their family members. In these stories, the failure of men to live with honor, integrity, and magnanimity leads to tragic loss of family members they neglected in their pursuit of political causes or personal desires."
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SKIP THE REST OF THIS POST IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO READ ABOUT POLITICS ON THIS BLOG.
"Despite his wickedness, many Christians are being rallied to Trump’s cause by the idea that we must do anything to prevent a Clinton presidency. However, I want to say boldly that a Clinton presidency is not the biggest thing at stake in this election. The biggest thing at stake in this election is the church’s prophetic voice to the culture. The church’s role in the national discourse is at stake and that is far more important than who the next president is. Trading our voice in culture in an attempt to prevent a Clinton presidency should be a horrific thought to us.”
[If anyone comments on this post to tell me that any critique of Trump is support for Clinton, or that my vote for a third party is not actually a vote for a third party but a vote for Clinton, or that a third party can’t win, or that Trump’s character does not matter because Clinton is worse, or that Trump is a “Christian,” or that God can use anyone, or that character doesn’t matter because we are not electing a religious leader, or that I’m singling out Trump because I did not post about Clinton, or that we only have two choices because our secular world tells us so, or that I must not care about the world my children live in, then they have completely and utterly missed the point of this post.]
Are we telling stories of hope or fear? Love or hate? Do the right thing regardless of the outcome because God is in control, or the end justifies the means? Be a person of integrity even if no one is watching, or do what it takes to win? Christianity is the “long view” or American politics is the “long view”? In whom are we placing our trust and confidence and fealty?
“Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” ~Mary Oliver
The other day my son called to me, “Mom, come look at this white flower!” Lo and behold, after we’ve lived here for almost a decade, a couple volunteer calla lily plants appeared in my hedge. They used to be my favorite flower! Astonished, indeed.
"Together these experiments indicate that drawing enhances memory relative to writing, across settings, instructions, and alternate encoding strategies, both within- and between-participants, and that a deep LoP, visual imagery, or picture superiority, alone or collectively, are not sufficient to explain the observed effect. We propose that drawing improves memory by encouraging a seamless integration of semantic, visual, and motor aspects of a memory trace."
"We will see one day with such an unbroken, sacramental vision. All things. All things for the inexhaustible wonders that they hold, for the inexhaustible glories they reveal of the mind of the artist and storyteller who created them. But fairy tales, and luminous paintings, and the voices of cellos and the taste of a wild, sun-warmed blackberry or the sparkling of a chalice held aloft or the visual force and scale of a wide, windswept ocean can sometimes jar us back to that sacramental vision, even if only for a brief, precious moment."
"This desire for a place to call home provides one of the strongest themes for authors, poets, and artists of all kind to weave throughout their works. We may laugh at the sugary sentimentality of a glowing thatched cottage, covered in flowery vines and surrounded by a picket fence, but the desire for a place to call one’s own is no laughing matter."
“Thinking like a novelist, then, we’ll attend to the meaning by attending to setting, plot, and character. We won’t ask general questions like “What does Christ’s lordship mean for my life?”, but rather, “How, at this moment, could Christ’s lordship be communicated through the way I set the table for dinner?” (His person and reign are beautiful; set the table beautifully, with order and colors and flowers.) Not “How can I present the gospel to my coworker?”, but “What sort of character is my coworker—what are his quirks, his foibles, his virtues, his vices, his longings—and where among all this might he be met by Grace?” (For some characters, of O’Connor’s at least, Grace comes like a textbook hurled between the eyes or a serial killer’s gun in the face.) Not “How can we make Christ the center of our homeschool routine?”, but “How does the rhythm of our school-day sound out our dependence on the Lord?” (It’s a matter of actual spoken words and prayers and songs.)”
"This vision of childhood, in which the role of parents is to trust children and the role of children is to keep that trust, to be honest and good and, above all, not duffers, is to me a purer, sweeter, and infinitely more potent vision than any other a child is likely to encounter in literature. As Chesterton observes in Orthodoxy, “The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal.” The world of Swallows and Amazons is a normal child’s ideal world, quiet and sheltered and kind, but full of startling and unexpected things, some of them real and some imagined."
"These voices, contemporary and classic, have helped define my classroom culture to such an extent that on the rare occasion when I postpone the “Poem of the Day” until later in the class period, my students interrogate me about it."
"I expected Kern to rattle off these types of standard arguments. And, while he did hint that there are different kinds of magic, he went in a totally different direction than I was anticipating. And although I was initially confused by the approach that he took, I really should not have been at all surprised that he would take us back to the place that he almost always comes home to: Jesus Christ and Homer."
“There is absolutely a time and a place for The Pokey Little Puppy and Barnyard Dance, just like there’s a time and a place for footie pajamas. But as children grow, fear and danger and terror grow with them, courtesy of the world in which we live and the very real existence of shadows. The stories on which their imaginations feed should empower a courage and bravery stronger than whatever they are facing. And if what they are facing is truly and horribly awful (as is the case for too many kids), then fearless sacrificial friends walking their own fantastical (or realistic) dark roads to victory can be a very real inspiration and help.”
“See, there is a kind of magic that happens when we read a book. We don’t merely enter another world, but that world enters us, marks us. It seems appropriate to record the intersection, the details that make up the context of our reading.”
"Like Martha in Luke 10:41-42, we Christian classical educators are “anxious and troubled about many things.” So, like Martha, we must be reminded that “one thing is necessary.” Before we are careful about identifying phonograms or introducing new vocabulary words, we must first place our students at the feet of stories or poems—indeed, at the feet of language itself—and help to awaken a sense of what the philosopher Josef Pieper calls receptive openness or attentive silence. That is to say, we must help our students to choose, like Mary, that good portion that will not be taken away from them."
Suffering is opposition to the present moment and demand for the next moment. Suffering is having this but wanting that. Suffering is the search for the next thing. Suffering is the mental roaming we do for what might be.
Suffering, for instance, is trying to read something brilliant, while wondering about something better.
I find myself in a time of waiting right now in certain facets of my life, and this project was birthed out of that—being present with waiting, present with solitude. These paintings are marking time, and they are also calling out beauty where you might not expect it—in the extremely ordinary.
"A dictator has to be a demagogue; a man like Mussolini cannot be ashamed to shout. He cannot afford to be a mere gentleman. His whole power depends on convincing the populace that he knows what he wants, and wants it badly."
The human voice is my favorite instrument, and reading aloud is important in ways that I can hardly express. Ordinary and ancient magic: breath and sound and time, weaving a narrative. And whether it’s a story of return, Mole to his home, or a story of grand adventure, Marie-Laure and her Uncle Etienne with Jules Verne on the Nautilus, to begin aloud together, especially a longer work, always involves both risk and promise—the risk of interruption, broken narrative, and the promise that the reading will always be shared, requiring patience and fidelity, when, like Marie-Laure, we are tempted to read on alone.
Let me add one more point on this score: The failure to recognize male distinctness leads to a marginalization of femininity. I just read a sample reading from a 2011, fourth grade National literacy test about a girl wrestler named Daisy. A story for fourth grade boys about a girl wrestler? Why don’t boys enjoy reading?
"Lewis points out that there is always some crisis, some alarm that demands our attention; there are always a million and one things more important than reading Homer. Yet we continue to read Homer because we are not creatures whose behavior is solely guided by a crabbed criterion of usefulness. We are creatures made in the image of a Creator who makes things that He does not need, things that are not of use to Him. As we imitate His excess, we play music and recite poetry and tell stories... We should not be ashamed of the uselessness of the liberal arts, for making what we do not need, and doing what we have no ordinary use for, is part of the glory of being made in the image of the infinitely creative God."
Christian theology is rich and creative and full of imagination, that's broad enough to take up residence among all kinds of human cultures. It contains within itself the idea that art exists as a good unto itself, not just a utilitarian vehicle for messages. (In the Greek, the Bible calls humans "poems" -- I love that.) There is no reason Christian movies can't take the time to become good art. Each one that fails leaves me furious.
"I just couldn't see myself going home — next thing you know, they're in the kitchen trying to cook their own food and burn the place down," Rowland says. "Even though they wasn't our family, they were kind of like our family for this short period of time."
For those of us who labor in the arts and who believe in transcendence, here is a place to start. Some are called to be prophetic goads, and some giants may hammer in firmly embedded nails. But the rest of us can aspire, with no tinge of shame, to scribbling in the sand. Spaces need filling. The father of cellist Yo-Yo Ma spent World War II in Paris, where he lived alone in a garret throughout the German occupation. In order to restore sanity to his world, he would memorize violin pieces by Bach during the day and then at night, during blackout, he would play them alone in the dark. The sounds made by the reverberating strings held out the promise of order and hope and beauty. Later his son, Yo-Yo, took up the father’s advice to play a Bach suite from memory every night before going to bed. Yo-Yo Ma says, “This isn’t practicing, it’s contemplating. You’re alone with your soul.”
You lose elections long after you lose the stories that shape. Elections are a hundred years too late to save us. In other words, an election only reveals the stories we believed, loved, and allowed into our hearts to shape our affections. Elections are more effect than cause.
Like a Flannery O’Connor story, Golding’s ending completes the meaning of his work, not by resolving it, but by creating the possibility of resolution. The characters are not saved, but they are prepared for salvation. And readers are prepared along with them, for they, too, have been given the opportunity to take a long, hard look at themselves.
:: Candor: What Jane and Lizzy Bennet Can Teach Us about Charity @ Roman Roads Media [The Four Loves | A Series Exploring C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves] What a beautiful essay! Again, I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time last year (though I had watched both movie versions numerous times) and The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis is on my to-read list this year.
This will sound very anticlimactic, but when we face our human enemies, we need to face them as literary critics. A good critic does not react to what he reads. He reads it. He reads it carefully, over and over if necessary. He considers its genre, its context, its author, its author’s intentions, stated and unstated. He considers what circumstances the author himself may have been reacting to. And then, given all that consideration, he gives the work the most generous interpretation he can. The virtues of a literary critic are patience and generosity, but something deeper too: the good critic has to want there be something in that book to be understood—something, however small, that is worth understanding.
But I would submit that our starting point and first response to the question, “What makes a woman beautiful?” should be “Participation in the image of God.” Man is created in the image of God, male and female, but woman is given a special aesthetic placement in that order—she is the glory of man. She bears the image of God in a unique way—a way that’s glorious and beautiful, a way that’s defined and measured by participation in something greater and more universal than herself.
Lewis realized that anyone who has never read widely is liable to become a prisoner of narrow and weakly held opinions, because his experience is limited by his own time and place. The one who participates in great literature, on the other hand, encounters the opinions of a host of other thinkers. He can see the consequences of their ideas without having to adopt their philosophies himself. In the process of comparing his assumptions with those of others, his own worldview gains strength and clarity.
"I think Berry makes a profound point about the community being imperfect and yet that imperfection is just what we need to grow. The Enlightenment has us all obsessed with creating the perfect environment for us to achieve our potential. But maybe our obsession is making it harder for us."
Third, words reveal the contents of our minds and hearts. That means words involve a certain amount of vulnerability. We are disclosing to the other something personal and private. We are uncovering something of our interior life, something of ourselves.
The term he uses for this--jaggedness--is perfection. I have at least two kids who are much more jagged than average, for sure. This article is excellent, especially paired with a re-reading of the children's book Understood Betsy:
"'What's the matter?' asked the teacher, seeing her bewildered face.
"'Why--why,' said Elizabeth Ann, 'I don't know what I am at all. If I'm second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-gradespelling, what grade am I?'
"The teacher laughed. 'You aren't any grade at all, no matter where you are in school. You're just yourself, aren't you? What difference does it make what grade you're in? And what's the use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you don't know your multiplication table?'
"'Well, for goodness' sakes!' ejaculated Elizabeth Ann, feeling very much as though somebody had stood her suddenly on her head.
"'What's the matter?' asked the teacher again.
"This time Elizabeth Ann didn't answer, because she herself didn't know what the matter was. But I do, and I'll tell you. The matter was that never before had she known what she was doing in school. She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up, but in that moment, she had her first dim notion of it, and it made her feel the way you do when you're learning to skate and somebody pulls away the chair you've been leaning on and says, 'Now, go it alone!'"
"The prosperity gospel has taken a religion based on the contemplation of a dying man and stripped it of its call to surrender all. Perhaps worse, it has replaced Christian faith with the most painful forms of certainty. The movement has perfected a rarefied form of America’s addiction to self-rule, which denies much of our humanity: our fragile bodies, our finitude, our need to stare down our deaths (at least once in a while) and be filled with dread and wonder. At some point, we must say to ourselves, I’m going to need to let go."
"He will feel that any long-continued service to [the topic of prosperity] will produce a soggy, formless, and sentimental literature, one that will provide a sense of spiritual purpose for those who connect the spirit with romanticism and a sense of joy for those who confuse that virtue with satisfaction."
In The Mind of the Maker (also on my "currently reading" stack), Dorothy Sayers quotes C.S. Lewis:
"There is kindness in Love: but Love and kindness are not coterminous...Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering... It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms..."
"Margin is not the wasted space on the page where more words could have gone if only we would knuckle-down and work harder. Margin is the place where the words we carefully compose and place show their best...
"Margin makes your story clear, legible, and beautiful. At least, if your story really is beautiful, the margin will not contradict it. It will enhance and testify to its worth and beauty, to how compelling it is."
By this philosophy, beauty incites spiritual longing.
Today the word eros refers to sex, but to the Greeks it meant the fervent desire to reach excellence and deepen the voyage of life. This eros is a powerful longing. Whenever you see people doing art, whether they are amateurs at a swing dance class or a professional painter, you invariably see them trying to get better. “I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart,” Vincent van Gogh wrote.
Some people call eros the fierce longing for truth. “Making your unknown known is the important thing,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote. Mathematicians talk about their solutions in aesthetic terms, as beautiful or elegant.
'Crow describes this undetected pressure to create an identity for oneself as a kind of subtle bondage. He finds its source in his education: “If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free; for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far: I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself…”'
In some ways, today’s teachers are simply struggling with what the Harvard Business Reviewrecently termed “collaborative overload” in the workplace. According to its own data, “over the past two decades, the time spent by managers and employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50% or more.” The difference for teachers in many cases is that they don’t get any down time; they finish various meetings with various adults and go straight to the classroom, where they feel increasing pressure to facilitate social learning activities and promote the current trend of collaborative education.
There is a way to relieve the burden on yourself to be providing the all-too-elusive “complete education” for your children at every moment. And it’s the same solution to the opposite problem, which is resting too much confidence in that school you are sending them to — the one that you may be paying a lot for, but which simply can’t give them the depth of experience with a life lived with books that they need.
“This book does not seem to have any Christian lessons in it,” she said. “It’s disturbing and full of hopelessness and despair. Is there a way to redeem this story, or at least understand it better, by reading it from a Christian perspective?”
The truth is, Darcy is sometimes placed so high on a pedestal that we forget the many ways he is very much like your modern everyday man today—full of his own flaws and far from perfect.
Jane and Bingley, Elizabeth and Darcy, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, even Charlotte and Mr. Collins—every relationship Austen portrays teaches us what it is to be devoted, selfless, authentic, and most of all open-minded to love. But especially as a man, I can tell you, I find it all extremely relatable. Here’s why.
Still, I am an optimist. Most nights last year, I got into bed with a book — paper or electronic — and started. Reading. One word after the next. A sentence. Two sentences.
Maybe three.
And then … I needed just a little something else. Something to tide me over. Something to scratch that little itch at the back of my mind — just a quick look at e-mail on my iPhone; to write, and erase, a response to a funny tweet from William Gibson; to find, and follow, a link to a really good article in the New Yorker. E-mail again, just to be sure.
The left hemisphere of our brain is where our judgment resides. It is the logical part of the brain. Our right hemisphere is where our emotion resides. When boys aren’t using good judgment, they are having a difficult time accessing their left hemisphere. Sometimes, this is due to a lack of essential fatty acids, essentially brain starvation. Information can’t travel across the corpus collosum if it isn’t nourished properly. The solution is for us to fatten up their brains!
:: A Crash Course in The Art of Constructive Critique @ Psychology for Photographers (and other creative professionals) [I’ll admit it: I am not good at receiving constructive criticism. This article, however, shares great advice for giving constructive critiques in this culture of widespread online criticism. These are fantastic general tools for peacemakers in leadership positions (hello, parenthood), as well.]
A constructive critique is delivered in a manner, time, and place that the recipient will 1) hear you out and 2) be likely to take action. That means it has to start with compassion and genuine concern. Advice given out of frustration and anger will elicit defensiveness and retaliation - not action.
Before offering a critique of someone’s work, check yourself: Who are you writing this for? You? Them? The gathered audience? Know your motivations. If you’re trying to help, meet them in a way and a place that they will hear you out.
"Did C. S. Lewis foresee the rise of Donald Trump? Not specifically, I’m sure. But Lewis had a remarkable understanding of human nature. He knew what it was like to feel that all hope was lost. And he knew that fear and despair can drive decent people to look for someone, anyone, who projects an appearance of strength."
We’ll wrap up this post of links with an entertaining and brilliant video.
We’ve received around 10 inches of rain so far this month (our average precipitation for the whole month is 7.5). So, yes, it feels as if we’re drowning some days.
We’re headed into our busiest holiday stretch. And that’s why Lola puked all over me yesterday. Yes, it felt as if I were drowning.
But. Immanuel, here with us. In sun or rain. Health or sickness. Joy or heartache. Accomplishments or failed attempts.
"Necessity might be the mother of invention, but I am the mother of good intentions. So many of them."
"I want my own burning bushes but these are the terms: tell me what I want to hear, show me You’re with me, and let’s do this now because I’m tired of waiting."
Aquinas tells us that, “Wonder is…desirderium sciendi, the desire for knowledge, active longing to know.”
:: You Barely Make a Difference and It’s a Good Thing @ Glory to God for All Things [This was a difficult blog post to read and I’m still struggling with it, but I love how Andrew Kern summed it up on FB: "Love your neighbor and let God decide if it will make a difference. When you try to make a difference, you are turning Christ like love into power over others."]
We have no commandment from God to make the world a better place. We have no commandment from God to “make a difference.” Only God makes a difference, and only God knows what “better” would actually mean. As Christians, the proper life is one lived in accordance with the commandments. We should love. We should forgive. We should be generous and kind. We should give thanks to God always and for everything.
[Me] ISFJ - Settles down to watch their favorite holiday specials that they’ve been enjoying every year since childhood. [Luke] ESFJ - Starts viciously baking and freezing treats two months ahead of time. Nearly explodes with excitement planning their holiday party.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period…”
“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.”
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” ~Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
::
"To know and to serve God, of course, is why we’re here, a clear truth, that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through. What else will do except faith in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word.
"What is the last word, then? Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids — all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.” ~Garrison Keillor, We Are Still Married: Stories & Letters
And here’s the lesson that was reinforced for me: In a world where influence now explodes with the power of a sound bite or the speed of a tweet, never doubt the steady impact of a well-lived, other-oriented life. Consistency over time.
“With Jesus, the kingdom of heaven is found in the ordinary,” Shriver said. “Bread and wine from the kitchen counter, fair wages for the worker, caring for your neighbor.”
"Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused.” ~Alan Cohen
The same technique can be used with all sorts of areas in our lives where we are defeating ourselves. The question is, what constitutes a satisfactory job? What do we really need to do to be a good father, a good employee, a good wife, a good teacher?
When you were a kid, your mom probably told you that who you hang out with matters. Well, that’s still true. If you’re going to be on Facebook, you’re going to be hanging out with a lot of people and ideas. Those people and ideas are shaping who you are becoming.
“I’m learning to expect questions I cannot answer - that’s easy; I just say that I can’t answer them. What is far more difficult is questions I would rather not answer.” ~ Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet
So I am forever a novice and I can’t afford to be an expert in everything; but I also can’t afford to not be curious and sometimes, curious leads me down a path that just simply dead-ends.
I have to be alright with some mystery - that’s what makes God, God, and me, not God. What if we really could understand and explain and discern every curiosity, every difficult thing? With nothing left to learn, how would we spend this life?
On one side of the stage at a maximum-security prison here sat three men incarcerated for violent crimes.
On the other were three undergraduates from Harvard College.
…The debaters on both sides aimed to highlight the academic power of a program, part of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., that seeks to give a second chance to inmates hoping to build a better life.
…The Bard program’s leaders say that out of more than 300 alumni who earned degrees while in custody, less than 2% returned to prison within three years, the standard time frame for measuring recidivism.
There is, however, a sense in which those who turn their back on fairy-stories are also turning their back on the very world in which we live because, as Chesterton insists, we don’t live in the best of all possible worlds but the best of all impossible worlds. If we have the eyes of humility, the eyes of wonder, we will realize that we are living in a fairy-story, and not only any old fairy-story but the best of all fairy-stories.
She’s not suffering the type of vocational crisis that I think our well-meaning Christian culture can emphasize, worrying over what her “calling” is. She goes through her life, and when she sees an opportunity to bring beauty to a place that was short on it, she takes it. That’s all.
If God makes the world, populates the world, infuses the world with every kind of ethical meaning, then the signature of God is the beauty of the world. Why even imagine a mystical experience when we’re born into one, submerged in one, day after day?
"Let us offer to the young some (let it be four) clear years for becoming not a this or a that, but for learning to be a human being, whose powers of thought are well exercised, whose imagination is well stocked, whose will has conceived some large human purpose, and whose passions have found some fine object of love about which to crystallize."
"A lecture is not the declamation of an encyclopedia article. In the humanities, a lecture “places a premium on the connections between individual facts,” Monessa Cummins, the chairwoman of the classics department and a popular lecturer at Grinnell College, told me. “It is not a recitation of facts, but the building of an argument.”
:: Classical Chats with Matt Bianco [The four levels of knowledge]
:: I love this story about an extraordinary man named Derek.
[W]ho I really am comes out in the worst moments, not in the best, and I think sometimes that the words I write (which are the thoughts I think) are the truest forms of my soul - with all the commas missing and misplaced; the lack of degree, obvious; the semi-colons placed wherever I want them because that’s just how I think they go and I don’t have to be an expert to tell you what life is like, in so many words.
"It seems to me that praise is the difficult thing, the advanced thing, the thing that requires the most thought and courage. Criticism, by comparison, usually (not always) seems cheap to me, and much of our intellectual culture seems filled with cheap shots...The flaws are the low-hanging fruit. So you can always find things to criticize, and being negative seems socially safe. It has an element of cowardice in it. The crowd cannot call you a fool if you beat them to the ironies, and a satirical countenance is always superior. In the face of that, we must learn how to praise."
"All I can really say at this point is that people are difficult at every stage and our desire to complain about our restless baby, tantrum-throwing toddler, tormented teen, or even our aging and forgetful parents, is a desire to put ourselves in the middle of whatever it means to be grown-up."
'“What are all these fragments for, if not to be knit up finally?” That question from Housekeeping haunts Robinson's other novels, and is a clue to the Robinson's depiction of “a longing for wholeness and repair that has no answer in this world.”'
'We have all encountered novels, poems, paintings, and music of sincere and unimpeachable sentiment that were nevertheless so bad they made our teeth hurt. What L’Engle intuited about art was a principle that Flannery O’Connor named: “The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that, because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality . . . . But the real novelist, the one with an instinct for what he is about, knows that he cannot approach the infinite directly, that he must penetrate the natural human world as it is.”'
Hans Urs von Balthasar speaks of Christ as “the image that reveals the invisible God” (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, 32). Christ is therefore the greatest icon or image (even from eternity as the Word of God, but made accessible to us in the form of man in the Incarnation), through which we can contemplate reality. The highest expression of this image on earth, however, is grotesque. When we love Christ, we “have been inflamed by the most sublime of beauties—a beauty crowned with thorns and crucified” (ibid., 33). The ultimate meaning of human life and the deepest glimpse that we have into the eternal love of God comes to us on the Cross. This tells us something of the deep meaning of human suffering, in which we can catch a glimpse of this love, or at least an order toward it, even if unfulfilled.
"Let us encourage children to experiment and play with words, remembering that what they do and how they learn is vastly more important than what they produce. Children who are free to play with words will fall in love with words; time, maturity, and life will help them balance creativity, eloquence, and conciseness. It is okay, in fact good, for children to be bold with words—even to an extreme. We don’t know what they will be called to do in life. One may become a technical writer or a playwright while another may become a novelist or journalist. Our job is not to decide what is “good” or “right” and chisel too early, but to feed, nurture, encourage and build up the child with the “stuff” of language and the joy of using it. Our work is to help form the linguistic marble from which they will create their profession or vocation; and others will help carve it away. For a sculptor, more marble is better than less."
The unique wonders of the human eye, of light, of time, and of color allowed us to see colors that we hadn’t drawn on the paper. Does that mean the ink was not there? Of course. Does that mean the beauty was not there? Of course not.
"But knowledge isn’t enough; if it were, anyone graduating with a biology degree could recreate Audubon’s bird portraits or Leonardo’s anatomical figures. Observation skills are crucial. The abilities to see without bias and to focus on detail and pattern require training, not talent."
"Amateurs are vital for the work of culture care. Amateurs turn art into art by completing it with their own experiences. They reflect wonder and joy to the experience. They let culture flourish with their resources, attention, prayers, and enthusiasm."
"The greatness of [humanity] is to accept [our] insignificance, [our] human condition, and [our] earth, and to thank God for putting in a finite body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small and daily gestures of love and forgiveness. The beauty of [humanity] is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day."
In many ways, the highlight of the course is a peculiar little test that I administer about mid-semester, when students’ heads are abuzz with the conflicting claims of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Darwin, and Gould: Is the natural order a theophany or the battleground of rabid genes? What is man, that he is mindful of nature? As we all agree afterwards, the quiz tells us something—but we’re not sure just what—about how we apprehend the world, ourselves, and (for those students so inclined) the Creator.
The quiz is simple enough. I offer a list of fifteen items (it varies from year to year): mouse, boy, sun, angel, ant, crab, Norwegian pine, corn, amoeba, hamburger, potato, Moby Dick, Taj Mahal, Rolls Royce, the idea of the good—and I ask students to rank them, using whatever scale they deem most important…
What does it mean to live a good life? What about a productive life? How about a happy life? How might I think about these ideas if the answers conflict with one another? And how do I use my time here at college to build on the answers to these tough questions?
"So fill your sons and daughters and students with music and food, images and ethics, cult and virtue which has received time and tamed it, lassoed its awful power and flown to the moon on its steam."
"Speaking of which: almost any organic metaphor for learning will be better than a technological one. I know very little of the actual process of grafting trees and plants together, but the picture itself is a striking image of what real learning is actually like. When you really learn a poem by heart, for example, and take it into your soul, it becomes a part of you. It isn't something you have to consciously go and look for to summon forth only when you want it. The poem becomes a blossom that hangs gracefully from you. When you really learn something, it becomes a part of you; when you really memorize something (the kind of memory discussed in the aforementioned podcast) you don't have to worry that it will be lost in a flush of information or data that might very well be lost, deleted, or corrupted."
He spent considerable time outdoors, often alone, observing and absorbing his world in a healthy, visceral way. Maria Montessori asserted, “Play is the work of the child,” and indeed my son worked at play. (G. K. Chesterton noted that the reason adults don’t play more is because it requires too much effort.) So it was the combination of imaginative recreation, huge quantities of great literature, and a small but steady rigor of simple academics that got us over the hump and into the homestretch. And where are we today?…
"That word “endless”—does it describe our desire or fear? Occasionally we express the longing for something to be endless: youth, a moment of beauty, summertime, joy. But the word also voices our complaint against grading papers, planning lessons, doing laundry, disciplining children, fighting cancer, resisting temptation, confessing sin, and other toils that have no end."
"We have ignored what matters most. We have neglected to teach them that one cannot think critically without quite a lot of knowledge to think about. Thinking critically involves comparing and contrasting and synthesizing what one has learned. And a great deal of knowledge is necessary before one can begin to reflect on its meaning and look for alternative explanations.”
"In this one combination of literature and math, Fruchter has hit on many learning standards. Students are reading and interpreting literature, writing creatively, interpreting a math problem in multiple ways, showing solutions in various ways, using functions and factoring."
There are good reasons to repeat the same idea in different words. It adds emphasis. And, more importantly, it sounds nice. Some words just belong together. They are sometimes alliterative (e.g., dribs and drabs, house and home, prim and proper, vim and vigor) and always nicely rhythmic. I believe it’s this pleasing aural quality that makes these idioms so sticky.
[Left: beach reading. Right: ChocLit Guild in the garden after sunset under the twinkle lights. Via Instagram.]
The Book Challenge Continues.
I had a slow first half of the month and made up for it by the end. I’m looking at my list, however, and wondering how many more I’ll be able to read by the end of the year. It probably would have helped if I had not added 20 books plus re-reads to the original list! I think I’m up to 49 completed this year. That number is high for me, but it does include several children’s books (and two adaptations of classics). There are 30 books left to complete the list, and obviously I won’t get all those read (particularly considering many are heavy or lengthy reads) in the next 17 weeks. I’ll have to roll them over onto next year’s list (which is already quite long!).
Invitation to the Classics (culture/education/faith, read intro and the commentary for Don Quixote, Gulliver’s Travels, Pride and Prejudice, Moby Dick, and Great Expectations (Dickens))
The genius of Homer, Austen, Tolkien, Dostoyevsky, Dante, Augustine, Milton, Shakespeare, Twain, O’Connor etc. was not born into them. They were readers before they were writers. Educator Charlotte Mason said in the nineteenth century:
“Now imagination does not descend, full grown, to take possession of an empty house; like every other power of the mind, it is the merest germ of a power to begin with, and grows by what it gets; and childhood, the age of faith, is the time for its nourishing. The children should have the joy of living in far lands, in other persons, in other times—a delightful double existence; and this joy they will find, for the most part, in their story books.”
Lila: A Novel [I had a more difficult time getting into this novel than Robinson’s previous two novels in the series, but the story was greatly rewarding in the end. What a beautiful picture of grace the author masterfully paints. Marilynne Robinson is at the top of my list. 4 1/2 stars]
Hood [Hood is the first Stephen Lawhead book I’ve read. It is a retelling of the Robin Hood myth. It was well-told and entertaining, but not excellent. I’d like to try another series by Lawhead. 3 1/2 stars]
A Girl of The Limberlost (ChocLit Guild) [Sweet, safe, turn of the century romance novel by Gene Stratton-Porter, full of natural history. 3 1/2 stars]
The Chosen [A fascinating look at Jewish culture in 1940s Brooklyn, New York, written by Chaim Potok. I was captivated. 4 1/2 stars]
Beloved [Toni Morrison has given us a tragic and graphic but exquisitely-written narrative that seeps the reader in the culture of slavery. Haunting. 4 1/2 stars]
The Book Thief [The narrator (death) and the writing style were very imaginative, picturesque, and poetic. I appreciated reading a book about WWII that gave a bit of insight into the daily life of average poor German citizens. Several characters were endearing. But Hans—I think I love him. Tough but beautiful ending. 4 1/2 stars]
*Whose Body? [Lord Peter Wimsey debuts in this detective novel by Dorothy Sayers. Slightly reminiscent of P.G. Wodehouse, but not nearly so silly, Whose Body? is the first of the series. I mostly read this one so that I could work my way up to Clouds of Witness. 4 stars]
Catch-22 [This was a tough read for me, and I wished it had been about half as long. I cannot read 400+ pages of satirical nonsense before my head explodes. It gave me more to think about, however, as I was reading Unbroken since both books are about bombardiers during WWII. It is an important modern classic, but not at all enjoyable to read. 3 stars]
Lord of the Flies [Lord of the Flies was not cheerful, by any means, but not quite as grim or at least not as explicit as I was expecting. Important modern classic, not particularly enjoyable. 3 1/2 stars.]
The Great Gatsby [Quintessential Jazz Age and a cultural imperative. 4 1/2 stars.]
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn [A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was s.l.o.w. reading for me without much of a plot. It was beautifully written, though, and certainly felt like an authentic childhood and coming of age in Brooklyn at the beginning of the 1900s. Much of it reflected the author’s experience. I really began connecting with the story in chapter 39 (yes, that far in) when the main character, Francie, was discussing her writing with her English teacher. Their conversation (disagreement) about beauty and truth hit the mark. The author clearly saw beauty in her childhood experiences, even in the midst of poverty and hardship, and she wanted readers to experience her life vicariously. “It doesn’t take long to write things of which you know nothing. When you write of actual things, it takes longer, because you have to live them first.” It was honest (but not gritty) and often sad (yet hopeful). I’m thankful for the chance to walk in Francie’s shoes, even if it was a long walk. A classic. 4 1/2 stars]
The Signature of All Things [This is a brilliantly-told narrative, even if it took quite some time for the story to get going. (The beginning is interesting, but the first 13 chapters all seem to have the same pacing.) I have very strong feelings about this one, but it is a bit of a pendulum swing when I consider it. It disturbed me. I think I hated it. But maybe, if I read it again, I’d love it. Oddly, it reminded me in some ways of Till We Have Faces, which I didn’t hate. I don’t even know how to rate this one. 4 1/2 stars for the excellent writing. 2 stars for enjoyment.]
*Godric: A Novel [My feelings about Godric were similar to my feelings about The Signature of All Things, though I was more frustrated than disturbed and Godric wasn’t as long. I think I hated it, but maybe I’d love it if I re-read it so that I could understand it better, see more deeply. I suppose good writing is writing that makes you feel and think, in which case both books are excellent. I don’t know. But I hate hating books. It makes me feel shallow and imperceptive. Am I not intellectual enough to love books that aren’t enjoyable? I think I have to be prepared ahead of time for a tragic or graphic or dark story like I was for Beloved or Till We Have Faces. I also find it fascinating that stories can speak so differently to people. Again, it is true: no two people read the same book. 4 stars for the writing, 2 1/2 for the enjoyment.]
Merry Hall [I loved Down the Garden path by Beverly Nichols, and Merry Hall did not disappoint. It’s like P.G. Wodehouse in the garden. Quite hilarious. The little vignettes are somewhat unconnected, though, and there is no driving narrative, so I didn’t find myself needing to continue reading. 3 1/2 stars]
*Go Set a Watchman: A Novel by Harper Lee [Megan Tietz has already given a phenomenal thoughtful review on Sarah Bessey’s blog. This book is a completely different experience from To Kill a Mockingbird. It feels like a light read, somewhat rambling (though not unpleasantly) with flashbacks to Scout’s growing-up years, until at least two-thirds of the way through. And then a tornado hits for the last fifty pages. My emotions were all over the place and I was worried about how it was going to end. But the conclusion is incredible. Friends, we are all so human. Humility. Grace. Love. Hope. (P.S. I still love Atticus.) Also, this is more of an adult’s book than To Kill a Mockingbird. There is language, but it’s more about the age and transformation/conflict of Scout/Jean Louise. 4 1/2 stars.]
*The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel [This is a charming and delightful modern novel. I needed something light after a run of several difficult novels. I liked this one in a way similar to The Rosie Project. Quirky. Modern. Not depressing. Not cheesy. Not squeaky clean, but not gritty. 3 1/2 stars]
*The Little Village School [Charming story. Sort of like Mitford, but centered around a school in England. 3 1/2 stars]
Pride and Prejudice (ChocLit Guild) [For years I have adored both the BBC movie version with Colin Firth as well as the newer movie version with Matthew Macfadyen, but I had never read the book! Now I can say that I’ve read it. But, honestly? It was delightful in the same way that the movies are delightful. (grin) Both movies retain so much of the story (particularly the longer BBC movie version) and the original dialogue, that I simply replayed the movies in my mind throughout my reading of the whole book. And then I wanted to watch the movies again. I’m not sure how to separate my love for them, so I’ll rate them together: 5 stars.]
Gulliver's Travels (An abridged re-telling) [I love this retelling and the illustrations are fantastic. A must for cultural literacy. 4 stars]
Moby Dick [I knew I wouldn’t end up reading this one this year (or ever), so I grabbed an excellent graphic novel version. This month a friend shared with me an interesting essay titled Why You Should Read Moby Dick by R.C. Sproul. I still don’t know if I’ll read the unabridged version, but I appreciated having some deep ideas to think about as I read the graphic novel.]
The Law and the Lady (Or any book by Wilkie Collins. ChocLit Guild) [Gripping Gothic mystery by the author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone. Wilkie Collins was a contemporary of Dickens and he creates quite the Dickensian character, Miserrimus Dexter, for this novel. My attention was captured from the first chapter and I couldn’t put it down. Entertaining and satisfying. 4 1/2 stars]
Hamlet (CC Moms Book Club) [deep reading in progress]
The Door in the Wall (CC Challenge A) [A wonderful coming of age story set in Medieval times. 4 stars]
A Gathering of Days (CC Challenge A) [This was my least favorite of all the Challenge A literature selections. Somewhat boring and forced. I didn’t care for the journal-style writing. 2 1/2 stars]
Crispin: The Cross of Lead (CC Challenge A) [This was my favorite of the Challenge A literature selections. I ended up purchasing the other two books in the trilogy as well as several others by the author. Another great coming of age story set in Medieval times. 4 stars]
*A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park [This was an excellent read about a boy from war-torn Sudan. Highly recommended for adults as well as children (though it may be a little much for very young or sensitive children). This will be one of my favorite books this year. 4 1/2 stars.]
*In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Lord [This is a darling book about a little girl who moves from China to New York in the year 1947. It is a well-written simple chapter book. I would have given it four stars if it hadn’t been for two short events in the book that I did not care for. First (and this is a nit-picky complaint), a bully at school gives her two black eyes while swearing at her, and the words are bleeped out in asterisks. Shirley refuses to tell her parents what happened because she knows the bully would take it out on her. Her resolve not to tattle is rewarded by the bully becoming her friend the next day. Second, Shirley’s next friend tells her that she wants to show her something and swears Shirley to secrecy. The girls sneak into the friend’s dad’s office (he’s a psychiatrist) and the friend shows her a book (presumably a medical book) with pictures of naked people. Shirley pretends enthusiasm, but has no desire to look at the book. The story takes only a couple pages, but it begins with “Only one aspect of her friendship with Emily would have displeased her mother, but she was not likely to find it out, and so Shirley did not trouble herself too much over it.” It was this second event that just didn’t sit well with me, partly because the rest of the book is wonderful for 8-11 year olds. 3 stars.]
*Escape From Mr. Lemoncello’s Library [Put Charlie and the Chocolate Factory together with Chasing Vermeer and Hunger Games (without the grit), add the Dewey Decimal System, board games and puzzles, trivia, and a gazillion book and author references and you get the middle grade adventure Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library. I thought it was great fun, and my boys loved it. The prose is very simple and modern, but the novel definitely sends the message that learning and reading can be quite exciting. 3 1/2 stars]
*Dominic[Dominic has to be one of my favorite children's chapter books ever. Philosophical, adventurous, charming, and hilarious for children and adults alike. The high level of vocabulary makes this book a fantastic read-aloud. If I had to use as few words as possible to describe this book, 'joie de vivre' sums it up nicely. "The boar began crying again. Not out of sorrow this time, but out of excruciating joy. 'How can I ever, ever in this world, not to mention the next, and disregardless of unforeseen contingencies, adequately thank you!' he said. 'I can't even begin, let alone work up a proper preamble to a beginning, to tell you how unendurably happy you've made me. But I'll try...'" 5 stars.]
Junk Food
*Highland Fling [So fun. So easy to read. So not edifying in any way. (grin) 3 stars]
*Paradise Fields [I enjoy this author, but this was probably my least favorite book of hers. 2 stars]
*Undetected [Tom Clancy meets Grace Livingston Hill. Well-researched and interesting details about sonar. Squeaky-clean and positive Christian romance. Not painfully written. Probably just a tad (ha!) unrealistic and idealistic. If I were willing to be totally honest, I would tell you that this genre is smack-dab in the middle of my comfort zone and the easiest, most enjoyable thing for me to read. But I don’t want to admit that. (wry grin) 3 stars]
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (ChocLit Guild) [Excellent story. I loved reading about Zamperini’s life and all the non-fiction facts and stories that are woven together to create Unbroken. It is a heartbreaking narrative in (many) places, but ends with such redemption and grace. I felt like the writing was a bit forced in places, as if the author was trying too hard, but otherwise it was fantastic. 4 stars]
*The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (ChocLit Guild) [Outstanding. The author deftly weaves multiple stories into one cohesive whole: the Pacific Northwest, logging, mining, the building of the Hoover Dam, the Depression, the Dust Bowl, the history of rowing, the construction of rowing shells, Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the intimate life story of Joe Rantz (and details of the lives of several other men), and the 1936 U.S. Olympic rowing team from the University of Washington. 4 1/2 stars.]
*84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff [A charming collection of correspondence between a New York writer and a bookshop in London from 1949-1969. 3 1/2 stars]
Invitation to the Classics: A Guide to Books You've Always Wanted to Read [Excellent companion to the classics. I’ve read the introduction and will read the entries for each classic as I finish the classic itself. The entries include information about the author and the historical context as well as issues to explore within each book. Written from a Christian worldview.]
