broken ground

5/1/24

. . .

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)

4/9/24

3/27/24

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

3/15/24

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

2/20/24

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

2/7/24

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.

11/14/23

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

9/24/23

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.

5/16/23

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

2/2/23

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.

1/20/23

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.

3/12/22

[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

12/16/21

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

3/6/20

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.

1/17/20

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.”

1/14/20

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

11/14/19

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"

11/4/19

. . . 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."

11/4/18

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.

3/15/18

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.

2/14/18

I am always amazed when I watch the Olympics. These athletes are immensely talented and incredibly dedicated. They prepare their whole lives for one short moment of competition that plays itself out in front of millions and millions of people.

What stands out to me about Olympians isn't as much their athletic ability (which is unbelievable), but their motivation. They are disciplined. They are driven.

And that intense motivation is key. What is it that drives people to spend hours and days and months and years of their lives trying to win a medal? Why all the training and all the sweat and all the grueling days? Is it really just to win a little piece of metal and stand on a podium?

A few years ago I read Donald Miller's book Searching for God Knows What. And although I didn't agree with everying Miller says in the book, I think it's very insightful regarding what motivates us as human beings.

In chapter 8, "Lifeboat Theory," Miller points out that we feel that we have to prove ourselves to others. We have to give the people around us some proof that we belong. This need for acceptance is the reason that people strive to be cool, or popular, or intelligent, or athletic, or good-looking, or wealthy, or whatever. It's why people buy the clothes they wear, it's why they listen to the type of music they listen to, it's why they identify with certain sports teams and certain brands. It's why we're on Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. We're desperately striving to impress people.

We feel that we have to prove to other people that we belong, and this need for acceptance drives almost everything we do.

Miller starts the chapter this way:

When I was a kid in elementary school my teacher, Mrs. Wunch, asked our class a question that I've come back to about a million times, trying to figure out an answer. The question she asked went along with a lesson about Values Clarification, which is a fancy name for learning how to be a snob. This is how the question went:

"If there were a lifeboat adrift at sea, and in the lifeboat were a male lawyer, a female doctor, a crippled child, a stay-at-home mom, and a garbageman, and one person had to be thrown overboard to save the others, which person would we choose?"

I don't remember which person we threw out of the boat. I think it came down to the lawyer, but I can't remember exactly. I do remember, however, that the class did not hesitate in deciding who had value and who didn't. The idea that all people are equal never came up. As I was saying before, we know this sort of thing intrinsically. Or at least we thought we did.

Miller goes on to point out that because of the Fall, we all feel like this. Society is like a lifeboat without enough room for everyone, and everyone is competing to show why they have worth, why they should be accepted, why they are good enough to stay on the lifeboat.

In other words, because of the Fall, we have all lost the thing that gave us a sense of perfect and total acceptance and love, and now we feel like we have to earn it from the other people around us. So we have to compete with each other.

This sense of competition is all around us. Society is set up to make people feel like they have to prove to everyone else that they belong on the lifeboat. For example, Miller points out that almost every reality show on television is about seeing who gets to stay on the lifeboat and who doesn't.

Think about it. Almost every reality show is a contest about who gets to stay and who gets kicked off. Top Chef. American Idol. The Voice. Last Comic Standing. The Bachelor. The Bachelorette. Survivor. It's all about who's better than who.

In fact, Miller mentions a show called Rank! in which people on the show get judged on some random criteria such as who has the best eyes, who has the best hair, who has the best body, etc. This would sound cruel, but it's so normal. This sort of one-upsmanship starts as early as preschool, when kids argue over who has the better toys, who has the better backpack, who's dad has the better job, etc.

This is how it feels to be human: I have to prove myself to the people around me. I have to show them that there's something good about me--my sense of humor, my sense of fashion, my athletic ability, my intelligence, etc.--some reason that they should accept me. Because if they don't think highly enough of me, I'm devastated.

I have to believe that this is at least part of what drives some Olympians. This is the reason that they have trained and trained and trained for years and years and years. This is why they have traveled across the world. This is the reason that they have prepared their whole lives for a competition that may last only five minutes. This is the reason they face the unbelievable pressure.

Because if they win, if they get to stand on a podium for two and a half minutes while the anthem plays, if they win that little piece of metal, they will prove to everyone else that they belong.

As a Christian, I'm thankful that I don't have to feel that pressure. I know that I am totally, completely, and utterly accepted by the only One who matters. I can have a sense of love and acceptance and worth that makes the opinion of others utterly irrelevant. I can receive the love of Christ, who loved the people who were kicked off the lifeboat--the poor, the lame, the lepers, the Samaritans, the losers. I can know the love of the Christ who looked into the eyes of someone such as John the Apostle, giving him such a sense of worth and acceptance that for the rest of his life, he identified himself as "the disciple who Jesus loved."

Lifeboat living is infinitely tiring and never satisfying. But Christ loves me and accepts me because of His work on the cross. He alone satisfies. For that I'm thankful.

1/20/18

I found some of Ross Douthat's comments in an interview with Tyler Cowen (via Rod Dreher) very thought-provoking, especially his comments that we are living out today the story that will become "the epic of heaven"--"the story that will be told in the streets":

I think that you could make the argument that narrativity is the way in which God has revealed himself in the world from a Christian perspective, from a Judeo-Christian perspective. You know the Old and New Testaments contain a lot of theologizing, but they are, above all, narratives. They are stories of a chosen people. They are travails and betrayals and wars, and miseries, and judgments, and all the rest. And then there’s a story in the New Testament that is, as the cliché goes, the greatest story ever told .. . .

But I think to the extent that I would defend my own instincts and my own approach — sometimes I say this to my children when I’m clumsily trying to indoctrinate them in my faith; I say “you are living inside a story, and God is the storyteller.” And again, this is not a thought original to me at all, but God is the storyteller and you are an actor within that story. And the difference is that in this story, God, Christians would say, God himself enters the story: he becomes a character in the play, which is a very difficult thing for a playwright to normally do.

But that story, the fact that God is a storyteller, tells us something reasonable about how best to approach him and that it is not just OK, but completely plausible to approach him through narrative, through poetry, through art, through stories, and so on. And there is a sense — I think this idea I’m stealing from Alan Jacobs, who wrote a biography of C. S. Lewis — but I think there’s a real sense in which — and maybe this speaks to the failure of Western theology over the last 50 years — but Christians in the West, in the United States — well-educated, would-be intellectual Christians — tend to be heavily influenced by storytellers, heavily influenced by Lewis, heavily influenced by J. R. R. Tolkien, heavily influenced even by Dorothy Sayers and her detective stories, heavily influenced by Chesterton’s Father Brown stories.

I think it’s probably fair to say that Chesterton’s Father Brown stories had as much influence on my worldview as his more sort of polemical and argumentative writings. And, again, I think therein lies some important insight that I haven’t thought through, but I think you’re correctly gesturing at, about a particular way of thinking about God and theology that isn’t unique to Christianity, but that is strongly suggested by just the structure of the revelation that we have. Marilynne Robinson has a line, I think in Gilead, about — one of the characters is imagining that this life is like the epic of heaven. That we’re living in the Iliad or the Odyssey of heaven. This is the story that will be told in the streets.

And I think that’s a very powerful and resonant and interesting way of thinking about our lives, but thinking about the Christian view of history that we’re living inside a very, very interesting story that people will be talking about in heaven for a long time.

1/19/18

Micah Mattix has a fantastic essay on Paradise Lost in the latest issue of The Weekly Standard.

12/24/17

A couple mornings ago, I finished Parker J. Palmer's A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. The book resonated with me in several ways.

A few years into his career, Parker J. Palmer found himself adrift. He cites Dante's words at the beginning of The Divine Comedy to capture his place at that time: "Midway on our life's journey, I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost." He went through some difficult days of depression, but he received the treatment and support he needed and found his way through it.

This resonated with me because the issues that led to his problem are common to people my age. Palmer explains that over time, we tend to burn out and lose authenticity. We tend to lose our way and our purpose. The epigraph for the book, lines by Leonard Cohen, sums up the issue:

The blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul.

This loss of purpose resonates with many people like me. We know that we have to find a way to get all the work done, to somehow pay the bills, to somehow keep the people in our lives happy (or at least not actively ticked off at us) when they don't understand, and to just keep on keeping on. And it's not easy.

Here are some of the points I appreciated in the book.

We need renewal. Over time, "we become separated from our own souls. We end of living divided lives, so far removed from the truth we hold within that we cannot know 'the integrity that comes from being what you are.'" This results from burnout from a career, from difficult relationships, and from life.

Somehow, we need to find time to reflect on our lives, and specifically our souls. Parker Palmer runs conferences for teachers and other professionals, and he explains, in this book, group exercises that he uses to help people reflect on what is driving them. He tells a lot of stories of people who discover important things about themselves--motivations, or fears, or whatever--that result from these reflections.

It takes time to know our deepest values, beliefs, and motives. But in today's culture, we just don't have time. I don't have time. Reading this book on my Christmas break was very refreshing, and I was encouraged to try to take more time to reflect on my own life.

Good discussion with others can be therapeutic. As a teacher myself, I was fascinated by Palmer's concepts of the circles of trust. Just talking through an issue with people who don't judge, who just let you talk, can help you find your way. Palmer uses these discussion circles to help people learn from each other, but more importantly, to learn from themselves, to let their souls emerge in a non-judgmental group of colleagues. I want to integrate circles like this into my classes.

The journey toward an undivided life is essential. Palmer wants people to learn to live out who they really are; to be authentic and real with others at work, at home, at church, and in society. He explains that we tend to hide who we really are because of fear. We have pressure to put a face on from people higher up the chain, or from people who we fear won't accept us as we really are. So we are often not fully true to our values. Palmer says that we each need to figure out what is truly important, what is truly good, and align our lives with that and live it out.

Agendas to "fix" other people tend to shut them down. Parker reminds us that our souls are shy, and that when we feel someone has an agenda to "fix" us, we clam up. I know that I have developed, over the years, a deep reticence to even talk to people that (I sense) want to fix me. There are people that, to this day, I tend to avoid because, maybe even years ago, they tried to set me straight theologically or in some other way. This uninvited invasion doesn't work unless the person deeply trusts the other. And that trust isn't built up in a day, or by corporate mandate.

For me, trust builds only when the person I interact with doesn't make me feel disapproved, judged, or manipulated. I don't feel at ease with someone who seems to have an agenda of fixing me. I already know I need to be fixed. I can use a person's prayers a lot more than I can use his or her attempts at setting me straight.
I need to learn to listen. Palmer describes group exercises that he conducts that are about helping people listen. Our true souls emerge in conversation only when we sense we are not being manipulated, judged, or given an agenda for the conversation. I must learn to listen authentically, and not listen with an agenda of "fixing, saving, advising, and setting each other straight." Only when I do that do I invite the other person's true soul to emerge.

Palmer reminds us that so much of our interaction with others is not truly authentic. We often adjust our opinions, message, etc., based on the subtle body language we receive, positive or negative; and so we often tell others what we think they want to hear, not what we truly, truly believe. Palmer's circles of trust are designed to let people's souls emerge, and that only happens in conversations that involve no agenda to give advice or fix others.

The soul of every individual is a beautiful, precious thing. Every single person we know has inherent dignity, and whenever we insult, disrespect or ridicule another person, we are committing an immoral act, an act of spiritual violence. I want to live a life where I never speak or act toward another person with shame or unkindness. I'm reminded of the saying, "To know all is to forgive all."

Finally, let me end by just mentioning that there is a wonderful passage in the book where Palmer offers meditations on "The Poem of the Woodcarver". There is so much in this story, and our interpretations of this poem tell us so much about ourselves. This was my favorite part of the book.

12/18/17

I have a new post on Humane Pursuits, The Flash Mob as a Portrait of Grace.

11/25/17

The point of going to the bookstore is to experience its glorious inefficiency, its Romantic signaling of something transcendent, its countercultural cultivation of quietude and dignity.

The preservation of these qualities, the qualities which the remnant of independent local bookstores represent, ought to preoccupy conservatives. It is we, those who most ardently resist the values of our age, who ought to be about the business of actively cultivating all that the small, independent bookstore betokens. Regardless of what they stock, such places serve as an outpost of ideas and attitudes our culture has rejected, an oasis of value in a copious sea of junk.

Unfortunately, we conservatives are too often in the grip of the kind of free-market fanaticism that fetishizes global competition and its twin evil, efficiency. In this, as in so many other things, conservatives have operated in ways counter to our professed goals. Like everything else in modern America, our conservatism is shallow, geared not toward the active cultivation of institutions which, like the neighborhood bookstore, propound in their very being lasting values, but rather geared toward reflexive hatred of Democrats and kneeling football players.

For this reason, movement conservatism has something dire in common with the local, independent bookstore: Both could disappear. Preventing that will require turning conservatives’ attention away from the daily convulsions of the mainstream media and back to deep reflection on the lasting virtues of the true, the good, and the beautiful. We must deepen our hearts and refine our minds if we desire a future that reflects all we hold dear. Such a change can only happen, of course, on the individual level by those willing to sit a while, willing to read and consider, willing to be quiet and inefficient.

Dean Abbott, "The Glorious Inefficiency of Local Bookstores"

10/23/17

I have a new post on Humane Pursuits today. It's about Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem "Hurrahing in Harvest."

10/17/17

In this difficult time of failed public expectations, when thoughtful people wonder where to look for hope, I keep returning in my own mind to the thought of the renewal of the rural communities. I know that one resurrected rural community would be more convincing and more encouraging than all the government and university programs of the last fifty years, and I think that it could be the beginning of the renewal of our country, for the renewal of rural communities ultimately implies the renewal of urban ones. But to be authentic, a true encouragement and a true beginning, this would have to be a resurrection accomplished mainly by the community itself. It would have to be done, not from the outside by the instruction of visiting experts, but from the inside by the ancient rule of neighborliness, by the love of precious things, and by the wish to be at home.

Wendell Berry, "The Work of Local Culture"

10/3/17

For medieval people, everything was a sign pregnant with meaning. "Dante's universe did not simply exist; it meant, and it meant intensely," writes Louis Markos. "The universe was less a thing to be studied than a poem to be loved and enjoyed." For the medievals, the whole world was an icon of the divine, a manifestation of God. That is, God wasn't a distant, absentee figure but as close as the sun in the sky, the wind in the trees, the cry of a baby, and the sigh of a lover.

Rod Dreher, How Dante Can Save Your Life, p. 45