Books Finished 2024

Here is a list of books I've finished this year (2024):

1. How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, Franklin Foer. This is a fascinating look at the culture of soccer around the world. Understanding various places/peoples' relationship to soccer truly does explain so much about societies around the world. I found this book fascinating. (Thanks to Coach Pill for the recommendation.)

2. The Ring of the Nibelung, Richard Wagner, translated by Andrew Porter. This is a translation of the lyrics to the entire Ring Cycle of Richard Wagner. I wanted to learn more about Wagner, since he is a major influence on both Lewis and Tolkien (and is probably an even bigger influence on modern Western culture through movies/film). The Ring Cycle is loosely based on Nordic mythology, and is bleak and strange, but it certainly has power to get into the imagination.

3. The Ring and the Fire, Clyde Robert Bulla. A concise summary of the Ring Cycle in novel form.

4. Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott. A fun, adventurous read with knights and maidens and Robin Hood and Friar Tuck and battles and jousts. Although this is a little sensationalistic at times, I enjoyed it.   

5. Hamlet, Shakespeare. I went on a Hamlet kick for a few weeks and read it three times. Love this play. 

6. Born Again, Charles Colson. A wonderful testimony that God does amazing, unlikely things. God sovereignly saved a cutthroat political figure and made his life a shining testimony of grace. 

7. The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester. Absolutely fascinating. The story of the relationship between an American doctor who went insane as a result of his experience in the Civil War and the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.  

8. King Lear, Shakespeare. Bleak but powerful. One of my favorite Shakespearean plays. 

9. The Road, Cormac McCarthy. I read this because of McCarthy's place in modern/postmodern American literature. Not a fan. Too dark. Proof that a worldview without God makes no sense. Dark, atheistic books like this one make me thankful for the hope I have in Jesus Christ, for life without Him would be utterly bleak. 

10. Making It So, Patrick Stewart. A fascinating look at the life of an incredible stage/TV/film actor. Stewart is mainly known for his portrayal as Captain Picard, but his Shakespearean knowledge is ferocious. I found it incredibly sad that Stewart sacrificed his relationships with his family for his career. 

11. The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, Alan Jacobs. This was my second time reading this book. Jacobs is one of my favorite thinkers, and he promotes the development of a love of reading by "reading at whim" rather than seeing reading as a matter of eating one's vegetables. His views have affected me profoundly. Great book.

12. The Aeneid, Virgil. I went back and forth between translations by Fitzgerald and Fagles, depending on whether I was reading on my Kindle or in print. This work really illumines my reading of Dante even more. 

13. Driving Mr. Yogi, Harvey Araton. I'm not a Yankees fan, but I admire the team's traditions. This book was more detailed than I was interested in, but I enjoyed it.  

14. Dante's Inferno. Finished this for probably the fifth or sixth time. Read a combination of Musa's, Ciardi's, and prose translations. 

15. Cliffs Notes on Plato's Republic. (I know, I know, I need to read the real thing.) It's important to consider what makes a good society. Plato and Aristotle (even in Cliffs Notes form) make me think about very important questions I don't otherwise think about a lot. 

16. Cliffs Notes on Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. Socrates was an amazing guy. By telling his story, Plato makes us consider what makes for a truly virtuous life.  

17. The Hobbit, Tolkien. Maybe the seventh time or so. Always wonderful.

18. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe. First time through. I'm ashamed that I had never read it. I was prompted to read it when a teacher at our church pointed out that Spurgeon had actually preached a sermon on this novel. I know it's one of the first novels ever, and I respect its place as a pioneer in the genre, but in terms of the story's quality, it loses a sense of unity about three quarters of the way through, becoming somewhat sensationalistic. At the same time, it develops the theme of God's providence in some rich ways. As a side note, I would like to dive a little more into the life of Defoe after reading the afterword in the edition I read.   

19-22. The Rookies, books 1-4, Mark Freeman. As an 11-year-old kid, I read part of this subliterary series about three friends who go from playing high school ball to playing in the major leagues. I never finished the series, but I looked back on these books with nostalgia for years. A couple weeks ago, I found it online, and bought it. I'm enjoying the series not for its quality, but because it's fun to go back in time to 1989.    

Currently reading or on temporary hold:

1. A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor. Really, really enjoying this!

2. Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World, David Denby. 

2. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, Walter Isaacson. 

3. Cliffs Notes on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. 

4. A Shropshire Lad, A. E. Housman.

5. The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien. 

6. In my daily Bible reading, I have read through the Old Testament from Genesis to Job this year. I'm currently reading the Literary Study Bible (ESV).

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all. 

--Thomas Szasz

 I have just discovered Kipling's "Gods of the Copybook Headings." There's a lot of wisdom in this poem.

How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose and was now glad to reject! You drove them from me, You who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, You who are sweeter than all pleasure, … You who outshine all light yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts, You who surpass all honor though not in the eyes of men who see all honor in themselves. At last my mind was free from the gnawing anxieties of ambition and gain, from wallowing in filth and scratching the itching sore of lust. I began to talk to You freely, O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation.

Augustine, Confessions

Chenea Bond has an excellent rationale for banning the use of AI in her classes. 

I grew up in a Christian tradition that highly valued truth and goodness but in which beauty had no intentional place—and certainly not as an “ultimate value” worthy of pursuit for its own sake. We would hear about the beauty of holiness. And the beauty of nature was to be praised because it was God’s handiwork, but the accoutrements of man-made beauty were seen to easily distract the church from its God-given mission. The pursuit of beauty—as I learned in my childhood experience as well as in my historical research—was associated with refinement, excess, and wealth. Leaders like David Lipscomb (1831–1917) spoke sharply against beautiful and expensive church buildings—and the well-to-do members who built them. The church, he believed, was “the especial legacy of God to the poor of the earth”; the rich—the usual patrons of the arts—tended to be the “great corrupters” of the church.

We also tended to read the Bible with a kind of flat-footed literalness that focused on facts and commands. In one of the most common formulations in denominational heritage, the gospel was facts to be believed, commands to be obeyed, and promises to be enjoyed. In this way of reading, one must push past the “highly-colored imagery” in Scripture and retain only the “real facts and unadorned doctrine.” The “poetic element” must be “rendered simple.”

"Where the Beauty Came From," by C. Leonard Allen

Last night I finished Patrick Stewart's memoir Making It So, and I want to jot down some brief thoughts.

Several aspects of the work were fascinating to me: Stewart's early life in Yorkshire; his falling in love with the stage and his development as an actor; his love of Shakespeare; his life as a popular TV and film actor; and much more. As he describes certain special moments that he experienced on stage, I'm reminded that there is a magic in the moment as people do something great together in real time. I have experienced the same sense of magic as a teacher. 

But I also was reminded of the importance of priorities. Stewart sacrificed his family for a career. He is an enormously generous, kind, talented man; but by putting his career above his family, he lost something far more important, and these regrets come through powerfully and sadly in his memoir.  

When evening has come, I return to my house and go into my study. At the door I take off my clothes of the day, covered with mud and mire, and I put on my regal and courtly garments; and decently reclothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for. There I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours I feel no boredom, I forget every pain, I do not fear poverty, death does not frighten me.

Niccolo Machiavelli, qtd. in Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

If we pay no attention to words whatever, we may become like the isolated gentleman who invent a new perpetual motion machine on old lines in ignorance of all previous plans, and then is surprised that it doesn't work. If we confine our attention entirely to the slang of the day--that is to say, if we devote ourselves exclusively to modern literature--we get to think the world is progressing when it is only repeating itself.... [I]t is only when one reads what men wrote long ago that one realizes how absolutely modern the best of the old things are.

Rudyard Kipling, "The Uses of Reading"

. . . 

And one of them, who seemed to take offense,

perhaps at being named so squalidly,

struck with his fist at Adam’s rigid belly.

It sounded as if it had been a drum;

and Master Adam struck him in the face,

using his arm, which did not seem less hard,

saying to him: “Although I cannot move

my limbs because they are too heavy, I

still have an arm that’s free to serve that need.”

And he replied: “But when you went to burning,

your arm was not as quick as it was now;

though when you coined, it was as quick and more.”

To which the dropsied one: “Here you speak true;

but you were not so true a witness there,

when you were asked to tell the truth at Troy.”

“If I spoke false, you falsified the coin,”

said Sinon; “I am here for just one crime—

but you’ve committed more than any demon.”

“Do not forget the horse, you perjurer,”

replied the one who had the bloated belly,

“may you be plagued because the whole world knows it.”

The Greek: “And you be plagued by thirst that cracks

your tongue, and putrid water that has made

your belly such a hedge before your eyes.”

And then the coiner: “So, as usual,

your mouth, because of racking fever, gapes;

for if I thirst and if my humor bloats me,

you have both dryness and a head that aches;

few words would be sufficient invitation

to have you lick the mirror of Narcissus.”

I was intent on listening to them

when this was what my master said: “If you

insist on looking more, I’ll quarrel with you!”

And when I heard him speak so angrily,

I turned around to him with shame so great

that it still stirs within my memory.

Even as one who dreams that he is harmed

and, dreaming, wishes he were dreaming, thus

desiring that which is, as if it were not,

so I became within my speechlessness:

I wanted to excuse myself and did

excuse myself, although I knew it not.

Dante's Inferno, Canto XXX (Mendelbaum's translation)

Recommended Reading (Updated)

 A student recently asked for book recommendations, so I updated my list. Here it is in its most current form.

Fiction

• Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis (My favorite of his novels.)
• The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (The best!)
• Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen. (All of Austen's novels are excellent. I tell students that this one is a good place to start.)
• Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
• A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens 
• A Room with a View, E.M. Forster
• Howards End, E.M. Forster
• Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson 
• I love Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, but it is too long.
• Whalesong, Robert Seigel (A great YA book.) 
• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (Thought-provoking and prophetic about our technological society.)
• The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
• The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis (Much wisdom for the Christian life, told using sort of reverse psychology.)
• Perelandra, C.S. Lewis (The whole Ransom Trilogy is very good, but this, the second in the series, is my favorite. Echoes of Paradise Lost.)
• The Giver, Lois Lowry (A profound reminder of the importance of history.)
• Henry IV, Part 1, Shakespeare (Shakespeare's plays are meant to be seen, but I love reading them. This one is hilarious but also a great coming of age story. I also love Hamlet, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, etc.)

I should note that sometimes when I read fiction, I read with help—Cliffs Notes, or a critical essay, etc. There's no shame in that! 

Non-Fiction

• The literary criticism of Karen Swallow Prior, Leland Ryken, and Gene Edward Veith is excellent. All three authors have written extensively on literature/reading/books. Karen Prior has editions of some of the classics, such as Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, and Sense and Sensibility.
• Alan Jacobs always makes me think! 
• Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand (Amazing story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympian and World War 2 prisoner. Even better for Christian readers.)
• The Boys in the Boat, Dan Brown (Awesome story of the 1936 Olympic Rowing Team. My favorite character is George Pocock, the sage-like British guy who builds the boats.)
• The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edward Morris (Fascinating account of Theodore Roosevelt's early years.)
• Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis (Excellent apologetics and practical advice for living the Christian life.)
• The works of Francis Schaeffer, especially How Then Shall We Live?
• The Christian Imagination, Leland Ryken (Fantastic collection of essays on literature, poetry, fiction, and writing.)
• What Are People For? Wendell Berry (IMO, you need to take what Berry says with a few shakes of salt, but he has helped me see the importance of local culture, problems with the consumer economy, etc.)
• Born Again, the biography of Charles Colson, is encouraging.
• Crunchy Cons, Rod Dreher (I feel like this book helped me find a political home, although sometimes Dreher is slightly alarmist. I also enjoyed his books How Dante Can Save Your Life and The Little Way of Ruthie Leming.)
• Engaging God's World, Cornelius Plantinga (Helped me see that all of life is sacred, and a calling to so-called secular work is a holy calling.)
• Creation Regained, Albert Wolters (The best book I've ever read on Christian worldview.)
• Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis, George Sayer (My favorite bio of Lewis, written especially with an eye towards books that affected Lewis.)
• Augustine's Confessions is uplifting. I like the poetic translation of O'Rourke.
• Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman (A warning about how media has destroyed serious political discourse. A must-read to understand today's political situation.)
• Desiring God by John Piper was very important in my spiritual development when I was in college. I have enjoyed a number of his books.
• A couple of good books on writing: The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White, and On Writing Well by William Zinsser.

Poetry

• Collected Poems, Wendell Berry (Great stress relief. Beautiful and thought-provoking poems.)
• The Angles of Light, Luci Shaw (I also enjoyed her collection of Christmas poems, Accompanied by Angels.)
• Collected Poems, Gerard Manley Hopkins (Probably my favorite book of poems.)  
• The poetry of George Herbert is excellent and very edifying.
• I also have greatly enjoyed the poetry of Malcolm Guite.
• For the brave: Paradise Lost, Milton; consider reading along with C. S. Lewis's Preface to Paradise Lost. And Dante's Divine Comedy is mesmerizing. There's a helpful podcast called 100 Days of Dante, which I found (mostly) very insightful.
• Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot (After multiple readings, I still don't get it all, but I have greatly enjoyed reading it. A helpful companion is Helen Gardner's The Art of T.S. Eliot.)
• I love The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneiad (Robert Fagles' translations are my favorite). 

Students tend to turn to ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence tool, when faced with increased academic workload and time constraints, according to new research published in the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education. The study also reveals a concerning trend: reliance on ChatGPT is linked to procrastination, memory loss, and a decline in academic performance.

ChatGPT linked to declining academic performance and memory loss in new study, by Eric W. Dolan

Writing is two things above all: it is a craft, and it is a personal communication. (I suppose some technical writing might be excepted from this.) Writing that claims to be from me to you but is actually from me and my Bot—or even just my Bot—to you is inauthentic and sometimes even deceitful. It involves a person in the reader, but the personhood conveyed through the writing is compromised. This writing involves impersonation as much or more as it involves a real person in the human author. And insofar as writing is a craft, if I were in a Medieval-style guild for writers, I can’t imagine letting an apprentice pose as a master or even a journeyman simply because he had found a way to impersonate one, to produce something that poses as masterful work.

"Is It Okay to Use Grammarly?" by Dixie Dillon Lane

 Ted Gioia's "State of the Culture, 2024" is full of insights about where we are as a society. 

 As teacher of writing, I've already come across multiple situations where a student has used AI to help create an assignment. As I read students' essays and other writing assignments, there are times when there's just a certain sixth sense that says, "This is not human writing." It's very subtle, but the sense of non-humanness is definitely there. 

I found this article on the topic by Miriam Bowers-Abbott and Wyatt Abbott illuminating. Here's an excerpt:

 Connectives are a large group of terms inclusive of conjunctions (such as and), prepositions (such as before), and adverbs (such as however). There is a precedent for using such terms as a means to distinguish the backgrounds of language users, often as a means to differentiate between native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) of a language. In a comparison of student English essays by NS and NNS of French origin, Granger and Tyson (1996) found that NNS were far less likely to use a term such as “instead” in their writing. At the same time, the researchers found that NNS used a term such as “indeed” at nearly four times the frequency of NS. Ma and Wang (2016) compared essays written in English by British and American students to essays written in English by Cantonese students. In the study, researchers noted many similarities in connective usage, but also noted that NS used the term “because” with higher frequency. Kuswoyo et al. (2020) compared language usage in NS and NNS of English among engineering lecturers. The researchers found that the NNS tended to use “and” and “so” more frequently than NS in lectures.  

 

 If McDonaldized church makes the case for increased efficiency, calculability, predictability and control, Slow Church makes "the case for taste"--specifically the case for "the taste of the place," and for "faste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps 34:8). Taste is the most intimate of the five senses. Seeing allows us to experience something from a great distance. Think of the vast expanse of land, water and sky--technically called a viewshed--visible to the human eye from the top of a hill. Though our sense of hearing is not as far reaching as our sense of sight, we are still able to hear a crack of thunder or bells in a church steeple. Our range of smell is even closer. Touch closes the gap completely. We know that human touch is vital to physical, emotional and spiritual well-being, but it is still only surface to surface. Taste goes deeper. As Brother David Steindle-Rast, a Benedictine monk, has written, "Tasting what dissolves on our tongue dissolves the barriers between subject and object. What we have tasted we know 'inside out.'" Thus to come to know the taste of a place is to blur the line between ourselves and the other. It thwarts the forces of alienation. As I become part of my place it becomes part of me. 

John Pattison, Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus

I'm currently reading C. S. Lewis's Studies in Words. 

Two things particularly stand out to me as I am reading this book: first, the breadth and depth of Lewis's reading; and second, his incredible memory of what he has read. Let me give an example. In the second chapter of the book, he is discussing the different meanings of the word "nature" down through the centuries. One of these meanings is Nature personified, or "Great Mother Nature." Lewis discusses this usage in the following paragraph:

[The use of the word "nature" to refer to] Great Mother Nature has proved a most potent sense down to the present day. It is 'she' who does nothing by leaps, abhors a vacuum, is die gute Mutter, is red in tooth and claw, 'never did betray the heart that loved her', eliminates the unfit, surges to ever higher and higher forms of life, decrees, purposes, warns, punishes and consoles. Even now I am not sure that this meaning is always used purely as a figure, to say what would equally make sense without it. The test is to remove the figure and see how much sense remains. Of all the pantheon Great Mother Nature has, at any rate, been the hardest to kill. 

Lewis is referring to several famous passages on Nature from English letters--Tennyson, Wordsworth, Darwin, etc. Yet nearby this paragraph, he refers to Langland, Bernardus Silvester, Chaucer, Aristotle, Plato, Euripides, Addison, Milton, Spenser, and others. What strikes me is that Lewis is writing in a day without Google Scholar and without library databases. He is probably sitting in the Bodleian as he writes this, but much of this is off the top of his head. 

The gulf between the modern "well-read" reader (such as an English prof) and a reader like Lewis is immense. I read Lewis in awe, but love to learn from him.

 On the surface, practices of modern education seem to be morally neutral, but often they cultivate dispositions that are antithetical to Christian formation. Consider the use and abuse of PowerPoint in the college classroom. The beauty, goodness, and depth of many topics cannot fit within the container of the PowerPoint lecture, yet it has become a default means of transferring information to students—in part because it is so efficient. The overuse of PowerPoint encourages students to imagine their education as the collection of useful facts. Previous cohorts of students digest these useful facts and turn them into flashcards on sites such as Quizlet, which further reduces the incentive for deep engagement with course material. Students whose educational experience is defined by sitting through PowerPoint lectures, studying on Quizlet, and taking multiple choice exams learn to envision the world as raw material to advance their careers, rather than creation imbued with God’s grace and love. This approach to education does not transform minds, but instead conforms them to a secular vision of reality.

"Secular Formation in the Christian College Classroom," Phil Davignon

 A friend of mine shared the essay "Reclaiming Awe: An Advent Prayer Experiment with My Students" with me a few weeks ago, and I've thought about it a lot since I read it. An excerpt:

Feeling completely at ease with God is not wrong so much as it is imbalanced. In constantly relating to God as my heavenly Father and friend, I have slowly lost my sense of awe. Over time, I’ve stripped God of attributes that make me feel uncomfortable—holiness, sovereignty, omniscience—and fixated on the ones I take comfort in—kindness, trustworthiness, love, and patience. God has become a glorified version of the best of human characteristics: a God who is reliable but not majestic; a God who is reassuring yet not fear inducing. My lack of awe is most evident in my prayer life. Over the years, I’ve adopted a casual approach to prayer where I primarily communicate with God while doing other things—walking the dog, driving to work, or sitting in my favorite chair sipping coffee. In short, most of my prayers are distracted and lacking any sense of the divine.

In You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World, Alan Noble has an insightful passage in which he discusses differences between the sense of crisis produced by the modern sense of identity, and the spiritual crises of people of the past, who were not enslaved to a need to produce their own sense of identity. Dante's Divine Comedy shows us this contrast with the modern sense of identity.

Adults in the West have the relatively common experience of waking up one day and concluding the roles, relationships, obligations, and lifestyles that once defined their identity are no longer fulfilling. And in that moment, a modern person can come to feel that it would be immoral not to follow this new, truer identity---even if it hurts many people around them. Of course, if we really are responsible for discovering and expressing our identity, the moral pressure to be true to yourself regardless of how it affects others makes perfect sense.

People haven't always experienced identity crises as normal. In fact, where modern people suffer from identity crises, earlier societies suffered spiritual crises. The best example of this is Dante's The Divine Comedy, which famously begins: "Midway on our life's journey, I found myself / In dark woods, the right road lost." One reason these lines have resonated with readers for centuries is that the poet is describing a common human experience: waking up halfway into life only to discover you are lost. Perhaps you wake up one morning questioning whether your life is worth living. Or you might wake up wondering who you are. Regardless, the image of suddenly discovering that you are off the "right road" and lost in the "dark woods" is a resonate one. But the "right road" meant something different to Dante than it does to us today. Dante has not lost his identity; he is not confused about who he is. He has lost his spiritual vision.

Soon after he finds himself in the dark woods, Dante sees the sun rise over a mountain. He desperately tries to climb the mountain and get closer to the sun (which represents the Son of God and divine illumination), but he is stopped by three animals representing his sins. At this point the poet Virgil appears and leads Dante through Hell and Purgatory and up to Paradise. For Dante in the fourteenth century, the question was not "Who am I?" but "Who is God?" and "How can I grow in Christlikeness?" The Divine Comedy describes one man's efforts to know God, but it is also the poet's way of describing the spiritual journey that everyone must take. In the process of knowing God, Dante learns more and more about himself, about his sins, and the ways God has blessed him. But self-knowledge is a byproduct of knowing God; it is not the goal. The goal is to know God and become like him. 

If The Divine Comedy were written today, I think it would be the story of one man's efforts to know and express himself--that's the life journey that every modern person must take. The "right road" would not represent the way of Christ, but a process of self-revelation and actualization. The "dark woods" would represent an identity crisis, and the beasts blocking the way to self-actualization would be cultural expectations and self-doubt instead of sins. A modern Divine Comedy might still include religion or God, but only insofar as they help the protagonist discover their real, true self--a complete reversal of the Italian poet's original vision. From Dante's spiritual crisis to our modern identity crisis, the search moves from external to internal sources. One way to understand that shift is to recognize that unlike the fourteenth-century poet, contemporary people tend to believe that they are their own and belong to themselves, and as a result, their identities are in question. We can lose our "self" in ways that wouldn't have made much sense to Dante.

[Some] people believe … that any community attempt to remove a book from a reading list in a public school is censorship and a violation of the freedom of speech. The situation here involves what may be a hopeless conflict of freedoms. A teacher in a public school ought to be free to exercise his or her freedom of speech in choosing what books to teach and in deciding what to say about them. (This, to my mind, would certainly include the right to teach that the Bible is the word of God or the right to teach that it is not.) But the families of a community surely must be allowed an equal freedom to determine the education of their children. How free are parents who have no choice but to turn their children over to the influence of whatever the public will prescribe or tolerate? They obviously are not free at all. The only solution is trust between a community and its teachers, who will therefore teach as members of the community–a trust that in a time of community disintegration is perhaps not possible. And so the public presses its invasion deeper and deeper into community life under the justification of a freedom far too simply understood. It is now altogether possible for a teacher who is forbidden to teach the Bible to teach some other book that is not morally acceptable to the community, perhaps in order to improve the community by shocking or offending it. It is therefore possible that the future of community life in this country may depend on private schools and home schooling.

-- Wendell Berry, from Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community

As an introvert who dreads small talk, the idea of conversation as a Christian practice, aside from its content, slightly horrified me. Growing up as a daughter of American Evangelical Christianity, I gleaned somewhere that the ultimate purpose of speech is always conversion. My American roots affirmed this in their own way: to be an American is to be bold, to stand up for yourself or for what you believe. Words are a tool to achieve specific ends, whether valiant or selfish. My impulse is to resist the insipidity of so many light conversations and reserve my energy for “what really matters” – conversion, depth, insight.

Austen, the queen of frosty drawing rooms and the witty retort, challenged me. She deliberately sets aside content or ends. Austen endows actual, often trivial conversation with the heavy weight of human flourishing by virtue of its form. Conversation comprises both utterance and silence. We fill up space, express need and desire, offer ourselves, and convey information through our voices. We give space, attend, and submit to another’s thoughts and feelings while we silently listen. Conversation’s function to form people lies even in the simplest chats, in the attentive give-and-take between persons. In practicing mere conversation, there’s a capacity for us creatures to become more alive, more like the Creator.

From The Weight of Words and Silences by Grace Hamman

This year I've been memorizing poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. So far, I've memorized "To R.B.," "God's Grandeur," and "Pied Beauty." And this morning I finished my fourth, "The Sea and the Skylark":

On ear and ear two noises too old to end
Trench—right, the tide that ramps against the shore; 
With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar, 
Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend. 

Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend, 
His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score 
In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour 
And pelt music, till none ’s to spill nor spend. 

How these two shame this shallow and frail town! 
How ring right out our sordid turbid time, 
Being pure! We, life’s pride and cared-for crown, 
Have lost that cheer and charm of earth’s past prime: 

Our make and making break, are breaking, down 
To man’s last dust, drain fast towards man’s first slime.

Philip Henry, in a letter to his son Matthew Henry, the great commentator:

See your need of Christ more and more, and live upon Him. No life like it; so sweet, so safe. My Savior is mine in all things. We cannot be discharged from the guilt of any evil we do, without His merit to satisfy; we cannot move in the performance of any good required, without His Spirit and grace to assist and enable for it; and when we have done all, that all is nothing without His mediation and intercession to make it acceptable, so that every day in everything He is all in all.”

I really enjoyed "Rediscovering the Wisdom in American History," a great essay by Wilfred McClay, in a recent issue of Imprimis.

Mick Herron on re-reading the novels of John le Carre:

Re-reading is often deemed comfort reading, and of course it can be. But books that are embedded in your history are rich in association, and picking them up often retriggers the emotions they provoked the first time, emotions allied to the feeling of being young. Comfort reading can be the most uncomfortable kind of all. I remember buying The Honourable Schoolboy at a bookshop in Newcastle that no longer exists; I remember taking it on a marathon coach journey, the length of the country; and I remember reading much of it in my first ever hammock in blistering sunshine – my first foreign holiday, not far from Nîmes. Similarly, it matters to me that my copy of Smiley’s People – a first edition given to me as a birthday gift – is identical to the one I borrowed from my local library in 1979 or 80. When I pick it up, I feel my younger self tugging at my sleeve, asking for his book back.

Samo Burja has some good advice about reading books vs. following the news:

A few years ago, I was asked by a friend what news sources they should follow to understand the Syrian Civil War. I replied they shouldn’t follow any news at all. My recommendation instead was a six month break from Syrian news, supplemented by leisurely reading through six books on Syrian politics, economics, and culture. I pointed out they could read them on their phone just as conveniently as they could read tweets or articles. My friend was taken aback but followed the advice.

Critiques of news media are much more in vogue now than they were in 2015. People bemoan the poor factual accuracy or manifest political bias of today’s media, whether that means established newspapers like The New York Times or social networks like Facebook. But there is a more fundamental problem with news: it can provide information, but isn’t structured to educate you into someone who could understand this cherry-picked information. Formal education often fails to provide this vital foundation.

After six months, my friend thanked me. They said they now barely follow any news on Syria, but when they do it has gone from perplexing to understandable. The fragments of information no longer landed only as emotional bursts of excitement or anxiety, but rather helped contribute to a solid picture of the region. They asked me a more difficult question: what books should they read to understand not just Syria, but global society as a whole?

Books are incomplete instruments for instruction. They don’t respond to the reader and cannot directly answer questions, and they require a strange and systematic process of study that goes beyond mere reading. In physics education, for example, one will pair up the mastery of theories with tests of solving mathematical puzzles as well as a course of practical experiments that tie those to one’s senses. For the study of society, there would have to be analogues.

Further, true autodidacticism is a rare gift. To maintain motivation over a few months, learning has to be its own reward. This reward of learning must somehow be tied to understanding the world as it is, rather than pursuing theories for the sake of entertainment.

Much has happened throughout human history, and much is happening right now. Too much to ever fully catch up on. The focus should rather be on equipping someone with the theory and skills needed so they will process, absorb, and retain the information they encounter throughout their intellectual lives. This merits a methodological approach tailored to individual investigation and practical application.

The order in which one reads also matters. Important parts of certain books are unlocked by the understanding gained from another. This is obvious for disciplines like theoretical physics, but the same goes for a serious study of society.

Samo Burja, "Eight Books to Read"

. . .  There are pressures. Responsibilities abound. Concede that point. But be stressed out and do not sin. God is faithful. His care for David in reference to his promise secures care for me. Right there with David, the object of my hope is the same. I look to the same Messiah. God's unfailing love for me in Jesus reaches down into the details of my life and wields them for my good (Romans 8:28). So rather than blow off steam toward my kids, I can ponder in my own heart and be silent. I can trust in the Lord. I can bank on the fact that he's got all this under control. And that makes me a different person.

Jonathan Parnell, "Be Stressed Out and Do Not Sin."

This morning I came across a passage in a letter from John Wesley to another preacher, whose preaching was apparently ineffective. One part of Wesley's advice to him was to read:

What has exceedingly hurt you in time past, nay, and I fear to this day, is want of reading. I scarce ever knew a preacher read so little. And perhaps, by neglecting it, you have lost the taste for it. Hence your talent in preaching does not increase. It is just the same as it was seven years ago. It is lively, but not deep; there is little variety, there is no compass of thought. Reading only can supply this, with meditation and daily prayer. You wrong yourself greatly by omitting this. You can never be a deep preacher without it, any more than a thorough Christian. O begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercises. You may acquire the taste which you have not: what is tedious at first, will afterwards be pleasant. Whether you like it or not, read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days, and a petty, superficial preacher. Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow. Do not starve yourself any longer. Take up your cross and be a Christian altogether. Then will all children of God rejoice (not grieve) over you.

 This is good advice not just for preachers, but for all believers.

I have been meditating lately on Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “Patience.” It's like the Lord sent it my way right when I needed it.

Patience, hard thing! The hard thing but to pray, 
But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks 
Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks; 
To do without, take tosses, and obey. 
Rare patience roots in these; and, these away, 
Nowhere. Natural heart’s ivy, Patience masks 
Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks 
Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day. 

We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills 
To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills 
Of us we do bid God bend to him even so. 
And where is he who more and more distills 
Delicious kindness? — He is patient. Patience fills 
His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know. 

This poem is complex, but it is wonderful for reflection, and honestly, I need its message right now. Here is it in my own words:

Patience is a hard thing. It is hard to ask God for patience. When we ask for patience, we ask for war; we ask for wounds. The tasks that build patience are wearying. It is wearying to do without. It is wearying to take the trials that patience gives us. It is wearying to simply obey. But it is only through these trials that the rare virtue of patience blooms. Without these trials, patience won’t grow. Patience is the ivy that grows over the ruins of our former goals and dreams. But that ivy basks in the sun, producing leaves and flowers. 

Yet patience is still hard, and in times of trial, we hear the clamor of our souls. Our hearts are vulnerable, and trials bruise them. Yet we ask God to bend our rebellious will to Himself even more. And what is the character of that God? He uses these trials to show us His kindness. He is patient. It is patience that fills God’s honeycombs, but that sweet honey is produced in slow ways that we must submit to.

April and I are finding that this is a difficult stage of life. It’s not easy to raise three children in today's world and today's economy. It’s not easy to commit to the sacrifices of keeping three daughters in a Christian school, of working in ministry, of dealing with difficult trials that have been sent our way, of trying to live as the Lord has directed.

But it’s a blessing to know that God is patient with us as we learn. Slowly but surely, He molds us to the image of His Son. And although that process seems to be very, very slow, we trust that someday the reward will be sweet.

But in the meanwhile, I need patience.