Eh, What's Classical Education, Doc?

 

If you hang around more than one classical Christian school for any length of time, it can quickly become apparent that no one knows exactly what they’re doing. I don’t mean that the teachers don’t know their subjects well, or that the administrators can’t fill out a spreadsheet, or that the students can’t add up a grocery bill—those skills are usually better than the average. But if you ask twenty people in those schools what on earth classical education is, exactly, you will probably get twenty-two different answers.

Some people say a classical education is about the great conversation around big ideas (unlike all those other ways of learning out there). Some say it’s about instilling virtue and despising vice (a definition that could apply equally well to life generally). Is it an educational method involving the Trivium-as-learning-stages—a formulation so “classical” that no one used it until 1981? Or is it a course in Western Civilization, warts and all? (Good luck explaining to your Chinese neighbor how math is peculiarly “Western”!) Perhaps it’s about “Great Books”…but which books are great, who says, and how many of them can you cram down a ninth-grader’s throat before he chokes? Is it about training a kid in “how to think, not what to think”? Or do the particular subjects matter? And then there are the non-academic concerns. Will a student ever be able to get a job with this sort of training? And how does the “Christian” part fit in, anyway? Broad tent? Narrow denominational focus? Do the Romans Catholics count? What about the Mormons? Both of them can claim a fair amount of influence in Western American culture, after all…

You begin to see why, if a certain carrot-crunching, wiseacre cartoon rabbit popped up next to you and wondered, “Eh, what’s classical education, Doc?” you’d be in so much trouble! Yet if you’re reading this blog, you are at least considering this education, if not immersed in it. So what is going on?

You Can Only Tell What You Know

 

"...not that I mean to depreciate [the poets]; but everyone can see that they are a tribe of imitators, and will imitate best and most easily the life in which they have been brought up; while that which is beyond the range of a man’s education he finds hard to carry out in action, and still harder adequately to represent in language.”—Plato, Timaeus (Jowett)

It is a common Twitter trope these days to portray our American elites (political or artistic) as a deliberate set of societal saboteurs, scheming in air-conditioned offices about how to take down the whites and the Christians, the "grillers" and the "normies." They lure us with innocent-sounding phrases like justice and neighbor or a wonderful Episode 1 of a streaming series. The mass of middle America joins in, some with caution, more with enthusiasm. And then--bam--in swoops the Wokeness, the lawfare, the main-character-who-surprise-is-actually-gay-but-still-somehow-just-as-awesome. The trap closes, we conservatives lose another political battle or beloved IP, and the process starts all over again.

On All Those Moscow Firebrands

I live in Moscow, Idaho and my town has something of an infamous name amongst a certain stripe of the Christian faith. And as one dust-up follows another kerfluffle, I often spot a certain amount of internet chatter weighing in on how the leaders here are heretics, or just after popularity, or aren't preaching the gospel but building brands, etc.

Honestly, I can see why that could be your take-away. There are thousands of people who only know these men from their online presence. That's all they see. And just like when you're forced to view a room by peering through a keyhole, that can lead to some odd perspectives. And the particular perspective I want to focus on here is the "they're concerned with politics rather than the Gospel" charge. Closely related is the "they're just building their own brand" charge.

The Myth of the Silent Majority

 

It turns out all the assumptions of the Conservative political project were built on sand.

For years, the “normal folks” assumed that the small-town America of the 1980s was still lurking, unseen, around the corner. That when the crazies (on either end of the spectrum) raised one flag too many, pushed a little too hard, or assumed a bit too much, the “Silent Majority” would rise up and toss them all out. That A-mericuh—Land of the Red, White, AND Blue—would resume its customary sanity and we could all go back to normal. That folks just wouldn’t stand for any more of that s---.

They were wrong.

A Stroll Through Space-Time

You’re always moving.


No really, you are. Stay as still as you can, freeze every muscle you can possibly control, and there you will be speeding along at the breakneck pace of sixty seconds per minute. Sixty minutes per hour. All the time, every day. There are no brakes, no pit stops, no time-outs. Time has the cruise control jammed wide open, and her highway only ends at the Styx.

Then it gets worse. While you are holding that frozen pose, the earth is whirling you about in a violent circle. For most of you Americans, you’re doing the merry-go round at about 600 miles per hour. On top of that, you’re being slingshotted about the sun at the truly cosmic speed of 1.6 million miles per day (that’s about 66,627 mph, for the NASCAR buffs). It’s enough to make the queasy among us want to hurl.

And in every single bit of that time and space, you are either being more or less like God. No neutral ground, no unimportant moments. An idle remark to a stranger can change their life. A chance glance downward can lead to a car wreck. A sleepy word to your wife over a coffee cup can impact for years. And if even the stuff you say in boredom matters, if even the mood you read cereal boxes and tin can nutritional labels (that’s not just me, right?) matters, then everything matters.

Some people have the idea that there are things that are truly trivial. Things that don’t matter and will never matter. “So you’re saying,” they laugh, “that it matters when I take a bite of cracker, or lose a hair? Grow up! Get a life!”

They glance at their own stopped watch and blissfully assume time has stopped as well. No one is traveling. We’re at a rest stop. We can get back on the road when we feel like it, after the cracker box is empty.

Tick tock.

Material Cause

I can only imagine how lonely it is being a materialist.

There is no plan to the universe. There is no god above you, only sky. There is no one who really knows you, all the way down. There is just you. Every day this “you” goes out into a world where most things are trying to hurt, exploit, and manipulate all the other things; worse, they’re supposed to be that way, as Darwin so helpfully informed us. And if you want to make any progress through this war zone toward your goals, no one is really going to help get you there—except, again, you.

The resulting pressure of being a consciously self-conscious materialist must be unbearable. How can someone as limited as the “you” knows itself to be deal with an infinite number of outcomes and an infinite number of possible obstacles (most of them the people closest to you)? No wonder Nietzsche went insane. But there are workarounds. That pressure can be dulled by routines; smothered by the anodyne embrace of sex, drugs, and alcohol; ignored by the mass of flesh-colored emoticons that pass for people in our logic-free society. But I believe most often it is channeled into the Cause.

The Cause can be anything. Better schools for the kids. A new car. The top of the career ladder. Conservative politics. Progressive politics. A famous Instagram account. Freedom. Safety. A Hollywood career. Global warming. The perfect body. One more dollar. One more cat.

All that really matters in the long run is that the Cause inevitably becomes part of the Self. It has to, really—the Self is the only cause-er we know from the inside out, and therefore the only force in the world that is personal. Nobody knows what is really making that other Joe do anything, the same way nobody knows what makes gravity do anything. Some folks with funny Greek names (psychiatrists and physicists, respectively) have pretty good guesses, but they still don’t know. All they know is what the stuff is made of and some of what it’s doing. But we know the Cause—no matter who you are, for you it is the obvious, normal thing to do. Often it is also the thing most noticeable about you, betrayed by social media posts, bumper stickers, clothing, attitude. You give it life, and in return it becomes part of what you are. How many people have you met that one of the first things they uttered was “I am (whatever Cause they are currently chasing)”? The Cause, no matter how trivial, becomes part and parcel of the person. When it succeeds, they do, and when it doesn’t…

Well, that is not to be contemplated, for no man ever hated his own Cause. It must be the fault of all those other Causes out there, competing for the same limited resources, time, applause, and support. In this world there are only those who support the Cause, and those who hinder it. And since the Cause is part of the Self, there are only those who help you, and those who hurt. Failure is personal: it is other people. And the vast majority of them are out to get you.

Materialism wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Instead of turning the universe against you, it was supposed to bring freedom from the Great Enslaver, Religion. After all, hadn’t it given us the Industrial Revolution? Was not Utopia in sight at the turn of the last century? Finally, we could feed and clothe the world, travel around it at lightning speeds, and explain virtually every natural phenomenon (not to mention the supernatural) we saw along the way. Man’s labor could accomplish anything. We bored through mountains, bridged oceans, harnessed the lightning bolt, caught and rode the very winds. There was a price, of course—work became mostly boring, stifling, repetitive, and soul-killing. But we didn’t believe in souls anymore, and until we figured out how to fix that (and of course we would) there were escape hatches. Sex has always been a popular choice, but now there was “reaching the top of the ladder” and “vacation” and “recreation” and most importantly “progress” to help it out. Every machine needs a little oiling now and then, and materialism’s two major oils were sex and science. Each could save you from the perils of the other—sex made the Self feel real in a sterile scientific world, and science made the ugly biproducts of a sexual liberty less and less of a problem.

Enter Roe v. Wade.

Now Roe v. Wade is dead, and the response is showing just how much of a Cause it is for so many people out there. When those judges struck it down, they struck down all those Selves, too. No wonder the Christians are being exhorted to “be sensitive” or “watch our tones”—they are strolling through the middle of a mass grave, and a cheery whistle just seems like the final unwitting insult to the Apocalypse. “Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of selves, heaps of Causes, dead bodies without end—they stumble over the bodies!”

Long ago, a reluctant African academic also lived through an Apocalypse. He was exhorted to be sensitive, to watch his tone, to cautiously mourn with those who mourn, to love these Selves as they loved themSelves and their own threatened bodies. Instead he glanced at the shattered Cause around him, and he gave the following exhortation to those around him:

“There is no need to be instructed to love oneself and one’s body; we always love what we are and what is inferior to us but belongs to us, according to an immovable unvarying natural law, one which was also made for animals, because even animals love themselves and their bodies. It therefore remains for us to receive instruction about what is above us, and what is close to us. Scripture says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. The aim of the commandment is love, a twofold love of God and of one’s neighbor. No class of things to be loved is missing from these two commandments…The person who lives a just and holy life is one who is a sound judge of these things. He is also a person who has ordered his love, so that he does not love what it is wrong to love, or fail to love what should be loved, or love too much what should be loved less (or love too little what should be loved more), or love two things equally if one of them should be loved either less or more than the other, or love things either more or less if they should be loved equally. No sinner, qua sinner, should be loved; every human self, qua human self, should be loved on God’s account; but God should be loved for Himself.”—Augustine of Hippo, De Doctrina Christina Bk. I

Love God, love His Cause, and love all those selves out there like they were your Self, in that order. That includes the million-plus helpless kids who now have a better chance to see the light of day. 

Be thankful, and rejoice, for Material and Cause is not all there is. We know it, because Roe is dead, and the fight is just starting.

On Distracted Students

Note: While the personages mentioned in this are fictional composites, the situation is, sadly, one I face often in online schooling.

Dear Mr. S—,

Thanks for reaching out. Far too many parents never even notice that their child is having trouble in my class until it is far too late to do something—I’m delighted to find that you are staying so involved.

You said in your email that John is having trouble staying focused, you’re not quite sure how to help with that, and you’d like any advice I can give. You’ve caught him multiple times during class with several windows open on the computer, chatting with friends, listening to music, or doing anything besides solely paying attention to me and his other teachers. You know this is occurring on a regular basis, but don’t want him to always do school directly under his parents’ eye, since “that would defeat the reason we put him in an online class in the first place.” You're considering switching to a more traditional schooling format to solve the problem. Does that seem an accurate summary?

I have noticed two major categories of student who struggle with staying focused in online classrooms; each tending to arise from opposite ends of the aptitude spectrum. The first is the student who is bored stiff—he thinks he knows everything (or at least quite enough to pass the quiz) and quite often he does. The slow plodding required for the slower students in the class causes him to disengage and seek more diverting material. If asked a direct question, it only takes a few seconds’ work to figure out the context and come up with a reasonably correct answer—easily covered by the excuse of “tech trouble.” He’s not being challenged, and no amount of lecturing from Mom and Dad will change that. After all, he will think, he’s making good grades—isn’t that the point of school?

The second student, instead of being bored, is overwhelmed--no matter what he does, he can't understand ninety percent of what the teacher is saying. He’s reading massive textbooks that don’t seem to make sense either, but all the other kids in class appear to somehow be getting this, particularly the four or five who always come up with those questions the teacher likes so much. Since no one likes to appear dumb (particularly in front of a bunch of cute girls) admitting he’s lost and asking for help is out of the question. So, he might as well do something fun—and comprehensible— instead of sit there and feel stupid. If the teacher asks him a point-blank question, he also can easily pretend tech trouble, and quickly slip back to his game. If lectured, he can semi-honestly assert he’s doing the best he can, but school’s “not really his thing.”

As a quasi-third option, there is also the student who has simply developed a systemic lack of discipline (which shows up most pointedly when surrounded by bright, shiny objects like screens). He wants to pay attention, and sometimes can when the topic is interesting enough, but his default state is to chase the latest impulse. With so many pleasurable options a click away, that impulse is easy to gratify. This type feeds into our first two options quite regularly: the brilliant student can indulge his curiosity, the slow one his apathy.

You will be better able than I to judge where John falls. A few questions for a week straight at the dinner table about “what he learned that day” should provide a pretty easy diagnostic tool. As far as solutions go, I haven't been a parent myself yet, but here are a few educated guesses:

If you think John’s the smart-and-bored type, then I suggest you tie something he actually does value—time with friends, reading, sports, whatever—back to his grades. If he doesn't meet a certain grade in the class at any given time, he doesn't get that privilege that week and must spend it on school instead. Don't be afraid to set the bar high! Since this type of student is motivated more by laziness, if you can make him sufficiently uncomfortable, he will move. And if he's making straight A's and still goofing off half of class, then he just needs more responsibilities (because he can obviously still handle it). Make him go get a job, join a club, start learning a trade, play a sport. When the grades finally start to drop, ease off about an hour’s worth of tasks a a week, and watch him go.

If you think John’s the overwhelmed type, you might require him to attempt asking or answering at least one question in class every day—and then check up on him. If he does that I will hear from him often, and he will usually be wrong, since he doesn’t know what is going on anyway. That will be both humbling and discouraging at first, but it will have the long-term affect of both forcing him to pay strict attention and to recognize exactly what he doesn't know. Since he’ll be getting daily personal explanations of his mistakes from me, it should also boost his understanding. Eventually, that should build into a fair amount of confidence--thus solving the problem. It's also helpful if you can ask this sort of student to synopsize what he learned that day at the dinner table. Roll out a whiteboard or something and ask for a 5-minute demonstration and summary. If he can't do it, then you know some extra study time is in order and he should, too. (Actually, this exercise is one of the most valuable things a parent can do for any type of student, period.)

If you suspect it is merely lack of discipline, the counterintuitive solution here is to pursue that discipline outside of class time rather than inside it. Does your son always make his bed? Write legibly even on homework no one will ever see? Complete chores on time and well? A kid who regularly does all that and more probably won't give you much trouble in class itself. This is arguably the hardest problem of the three to fix, because it requires both a lot of attention and a whole new set of habits, but it has the biggest payoff, as well. Your son is always going to be living in a digital world, and the sooner he masters it, the less it will rule over him. One of the drawbacks of online schooling compared to traditional homeschooling is that kids often spend a significant portion of the day away from their parent’s direct oversight. As you note, that’s a feature, but often it becomes a bug: the student develops some bad habits before parents can even notice. If that's where John is, then all you can do is thank God you noticed now, do some heavy-duty praying, and try to do some retraining. It will be unpleasant for both of you, but the harvest will be joyful.

If you truly think the only way to solve this is pulling him from school, I understand. Some kids just can't handle the manifold temptations and distractions that come with distance learning. I would far rather John learn self-discipline in another school than merely stick with me. But since you’re here now, I hope the above advice is useful.

May God grant you wisdom.

Scott Adams is Right--Pt. I

 

Yes, to some people, this is funny. But whether Scott Adams did it on purpose or not, it’s also rather profound.

Wait, you ask with a smile. Are you seriously suggesting that “preferred pronouns” are a sign of the death of Western civilization? Actually, you think this too, whether you know it or not. You just may not have noticed yet. But to get there, we have to go on a bit of a detour first. Actually, it winds up being a pretty long detour, so I have split this post in half. Part I of this post will briefly cover the development of the current idea of our civilization, Part II will contrast it with the idea of personal pronouns and show why they cannot both work.

Our Western Civilization

“Civilization” is a pesky word that is hard to define. Just try for a second. To our grandfathers it often meant grand cities of towering buildings instead of mud huts and loincloths. In a history book it can refer to any large, probably rather urban, gathering of people, i.e. “the Mayan civilization.” To an academic these days it might merely be the lingering Power of the White Heterosexual Male. To a hiker just coming off a two-week walk in the wilderness, it can often be the humblest porcelain toilet in the most run-down, filthy gas station you have ever seen (the academic might then point out that the toilet is also white, or at least used to be.)

We get the word by way of the Latin civilitas, which carried the idea of the manners necessary for the running of the Roman state. Romans were expected to act a certain way in public; if one did not, one was a “Greek-lover,” or a “barbarian,” perhaps a dramatic fool like Nero—at any rate, someone not worth respecting. A foreign king might have been wealthy and powerful, but Rome did not merely value power. If some king got a good report from a Roman historian, he was more than grand or authoritarian—he had civilitas, or as we might say, he had good manners. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. A “homo civilitatis” meant someone who lived in Roman society and by its rules, as distinct from the barbarians.

Over the next millennium, Christianity took that notion and built on it. The idea of proper manners became married to the idea of the proper man; one who knew his place in the cosmos (God’s regent on earth) and his station in his own country (from the king to the beggar). This became the medieval standard of civilization. There was still a sense of superiority to the uncivilized, but it was now derived not from citizenship in one particular powerful city, but instead in a proper worship of the true God. A “civilized man” meant someone who lived in Christian society and by its rules, distinct from the pagans.

As Enlightenment rationalism leached its way into this worldview, the idea of worship began to be divorced from man. The philosophers and deep thinkers of this period made the curious assumption that after a thousand years of Christian training, certain morals and manners were actually natural to men—particularly white-skinned men. Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary leans toward this view when it defines civilization as “the state of being refined in manners, from the grossness of savage life, and improved in arts and learning.” Instead of “Christian civilization” we now had “Western civilization”: a vaguely Christian moral compass married to the tremendous technological advances made by the Scientific Revolution. A “civilized man” meant someone who lived like a European, distinct from the darker-skinned society any other place on the globe.

Whether a modern person likes it or not, it is this Western civilization that built the American system of government, laws, and manners (though it was reinforced, joined, and in some cases supplanted by the older medieval view). The idea that you can elect a leader, retain the right to disagree with that leader publicly after an election, and do whatever you wish with your free time (without that leader having the least say) are all direct fruits of it. So is the Bill of Rights. So is the ability to walk down the street without having to move aside for a superior human being. So is the idea that you can walk into a courtroom and have a case decided by what you have done, and not who you or your opponent are. And it also means enjoying the richest, most technologically adorned lifestyle in history. In a contrast to Webster, the OED currently defines civilization as “the stage of human social and cultural development and organization that is considered most advanced.” (Note the idea of progress.)

So currently, the (Western) “civilized man (and as you must say now, woman)” means someone who lives by ideas of electoral and legal equality, in a state of technological advancement; distinct from any society either hierarchically structured, or less technologically developed. This is why it is possible (though rarely politically popular) to speak disapprovingly of Chinese, African, or Indian civilization as inferior to the United States’, they are either repressively unequal (China), underdeveloped (Africa), or both (India). These emphases will be important when we get to Part II.

Paying Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Have you ever suddenly glanced up from your screen and realized you had been scrolling for far too many minutes?

Of course you have. That is what Facebook, Instagram, and the rest of the social mediums and sorcerers are designed for, after all: to pull you in, keep you there, and give you a magical dopamine high while you do it. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

(ooh, you didn’t see that coming, did you?)

Those of you who know me well know I love entertainment media more than most. I read thousand-plus page books. I’m the kind of guy that caused Netflix to come up with the binge-watching format. I sing along with musicals (and southern gospel cds). And I did once watch the entire Lord of the Rings extended editions back-to-back-to-back—although it took a little more manly fortitude than I was planning on. Short version: I like entertainment, artificial dopamine highs, and the advent of the Age of the Screen. All for it! Pop the corks! Cue the golf applause!

But where it gets dangerous—particularly for me and those of my ilk—is when all that magic happens by accident or for the wrong reason. Such as when you’re planning on writing a homework assignment and you watch three hours of Star Trek instead. When you call your brother and instead of asking about his soul, you ask about his movie preferences. When you are scrolling down your feed and bump into an exchange that was typed with both fists, in all caps, with little understanding, patience, or grammar. Social media is magic. I can revel in the vacations of my friends, keep up with the growing families of my cousins, find out about cool events in my area that otherwise would have flown under the radar, and all from the comfort of my desk. But it has a dark side, too: insulation from real people, fomenting of envy, and a large amount of time consumed in doing absolutely nothing either productive or truly relaxing. When was the last time you looked up from scrolling and felt well-rested, refreshed, and satisfied down to your toes?

Since you’ve gone to my Facebook page (which is, I presume, why you’re here) you may have noticed that mine’s a few degrees off of standard. It’s a little light on pictures of my daily life, rarely says anything political (or even informative), and my friend group is rather...limited. This post is about telling you why that is, (yes, I do it on purpose) in the hope of inspiring you to take a look at your own feeds and pages and make a few conscious decisions about where, what, and when. Let me pull back the curtain and show you how a few nuts and bolts go into the page that is my public Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

First off, I only friend people I know well enough to have an actual, casual chat with in real life. Facebook is far more like an extended living room conversation that way, instead of an envy platform. This means, by the way, that if you tried to friend me and I didn’t take you up on it, you should talk to me more. Hint hint. This has the added advantage of keeping uncharitable offenses down to the minimum. I’m sarcastic by nature—some might say I’m jammed down on the “chronically sardonic” end of the scale! I have found over the years that social media is about the worst possible media for conveying such sentiments. (Though emojis have helped.) People have a hard enough time telling if I’m being serious when they can see my eyebrows and hear my tone of voice. Hopefully knowing me in person cuts down on the possible misunderstandings. Second, I actively try to keep what I post either inspiring or funny. I actually do want people to walk away from their social media time refreshed and satisfied, particularly in a world that is scary, strident, and incessant. If one of my “It Happened at WinCo” or “Bachelor Chronicles” makes your day a little better, I’m meeting that goal. Third, I will post pretty much no political/religious controversy. You’re always preaching to the choir or ticking somebody off, at a distance where you can do nothing about either. There may be a helpful way to do that, but I know that I can’t; at least not in that medium at my point of life. If you like doing those things, go for it, but that’s not my cup of tea. Fourth, remember that barring an EM pulse or a systemic electrical shortage, those posts are more or less permanent. Do you really want your employer, future spouse, or God Forbid, your kids pulling a few of these things up at a later date? The mind, as Jeeves said, boggles.

I’m sure there’s more to say, but that should do for the present. Go forth, and scroll no more!

Fine, I’m kidding. But at least think about why you do what you do when the screen is lit.

Words and Water Worries

The trouble with impromptu activities is the lack of planning. Water, for instance. Water would have been nice.

I’ve got four slightly-uphill miles left until I reach home; or more accurately, the refrigerator. Twelve other miles behind me have narrowed my focus wonderfully. When Jesus promised that those who drank living water would never thirst again, the inhabitants of arid Palestine must have felt like this. That sounds amazing. Tell us, is this living water chilled? Does it come with ice cubes in the door, like in Texas? That would be great.

Today was not supposed to be an exercise in cameldom.

It was actually supposed to be a quick bike ride over to Wal-mart for footwear. My tennis shoes were on their last leg and starting to look like they’d escaped from the wardrobe department of a zombie apocalypse. I started getting a blister last night at work because the left shoe had a gap in the padding that went clear to the rubber. So I dutifully plodded off to go find a pair of shoes to last me another eighteen months. After finding a pair (black, so I don’t have to change socks after school; and cushy, so I still have blood flow at work) I strapped them on, tossed the old ones in a nearby can, and stood exultingly in the breeze.

And that’s when it hit me. Wal-mart was already on the edge of town, and I’d been musing about the need to get a little exercise today. Why not bike the seven miles to Pullman? Sounds fun. It’s not all that hot. I’ll be fine. So off I went: an impromptu excursion.

And, at first, it went swimmingly. There was a hint of a breeze, the noon sun gently baking me from a few million miles away... you know, if I’d known I was going to be out in this a few hours instead of a few minutes, I’d have worn sunscreen. This is going to take my ruddy Germanic tones a few shades up the chart. I glance at my arm. “Ohhh, he’ll feel that tomorrow!” “I think he is feeling it now!” “Ouch!” The Balto quotes roll out easily, accents and all, despite the lack of audience; I am alone as usual these days. Oh, well. I’m sure the angels enjoyed it.

Pullman is still in one piece and swimming with growing bustle as new freshmen and their parents make their first trip to Washington State. Part of my track crosses the campus, and on a further impromptu whim to my impromptu whim, I swing left. The WSU library is up here somewhere, and I have nothing else planned this afternoon. Now, let’s see. Logic dictates that a library, being an important building at a college, will be on the older part of campus, and the oldest parts of campuses are generally in the middle (and in this case, at the top of a rather steep hill). One map and rather less oxygen later, I found it. The surroundings—both inside and out—were a sharp reminder of what a big business education has become. I attended Texas A&M for a year and a half, and I know what the look, smell, and feel of plenty of state money is like. WSU has it. After three years of a one-room library and meeting in professor’s living rooms, it feels strangely decadent to look out a thirtyfoot library window at football players stretching on crisp Astroturf, a well-paid coach advising every third or fourth one. You can almost smell the dollars. The ungrateful students swarm by, superbly unaware of the prestige, power, and often wickedness they are financing. “Ignorance is this.” The library is spacious, modern, all lack of angles and unscented light. They only have one book by C.S. Lewis—such shame. They try to make up for it by four full stacks of Native Americana. I remain unimpressed. My hunt for the military history section takes me across the rotunda to the older section—the original library. 
Suddenly I’m in a very different world. That inimitable old library smell, the bare wooden desks and chairs, the relentlessly right-angle stacks narrowly crowded from dark floor to ceiling, few windows and less fresh air—here is the heart of scholardom on Earth. I am content. Here are words enough for any lifetime, words upon words upon words; some good, some bad, all bound and waiting patiently for wanderers like me. A few hours are spent reading half a book on dreadnought battleships, but outside the sun has moved unseen and other obligations approach. I return to modernity and its curves, pastels, and overabundant light. While the helpful young lady at the circulation desk grants me a library card, I glance at the wall, where a plastic pink triangle sign simperingly proclaims this area a “homophobic free zone, where we are happy to care for your needs however we can.” If that’s the case, they really ought to deny me that library card in the name of consistency. I muse idly while waiting over the irony of taking the pink triangle—the concentration camp badge in Nazi Germany for convicted homosexuals, like the star was for Jews—and making it into a sympathy sign. An object of reproach turned into honor. Christians, actually, have done the same with the cross. We are just so far removed from that hideous method of torture that it no longer registers. Our Lord also died a cursed death far outside the “respectable” pale, and belief in that cause also changed the world. A good reminder from a foul source.

Then it’s off though the maze of campus for home. I suffer repeatedly the uniquely civilized problem of knowing exactly where I am and where I wish to go, but having no legal route to get there. Turns, U-turns, and a mile long detour finally get me down the hill and back to the Chipman Trail. As the late afternoon sun adds nearly ninety degrees to the air, my thoughts turn to water. Camels are truly blessed creatures in spite of the hump. But at last my refrigerator is in sight and the impromptu excursion is over: I am the richer by a library card, two shoes, and a light case of sunburn. Not a bad afternoon’s work.

Stuck in a Rut

You ever feel like you’re stuck in a rut?

You struggle out of bed, bump along to your standard breakfast, rattle on to your tolerable job, just keep going through the motions, same old tasks, same old people, same old words, lies, sins. Nothing ever seems to change. God hasn’t accomplished anything for you (or with you) that you’ve noticed in months. You’re old and grouchy and tired (no matter how young the calendar says you are) and others keep passing you up on the highway of life every day.

Sound familiar? I have those days. Some days I have them more than others. The days when nothing is really out of the ordinary... but nothing really seems to be a blessing, either. The ones where God seems to have wound you up, spun you... and walked away. The days you’re caught on an alto drone note and just marking time. Meh. Bleagh. So what?

We had a Bible study this morning. In the midst of eggs and sausage and earnest discussion, Proverbs XIII 15 caught my ear.

“Good sense wins favor, but the way of the treacherous is an enduring rut.”

Wait. The treacherous get stuck in ruts?

I know this the alternative translation, the one in the footnotes, but to my mind, it is far more picturesque. At one summer camp in my youth in Texas, there was a piece of the old Chisholm Trail where you could still see 150-year-old-ruts, etched by covered wagons, inches deep, in solid rock. Those teamsters rolling north were set in their ways, it seems—just like the treacherous.

But these treacherous ones require a direct object to their verb. To whom are they treacherous?

A) A loyal servant?

B) A friend?

C) A king?

The correct answer is, for the Christian, “All of the above” for Christ fills all those offices. If Proverbs is right (and it is) only the fools, the wicked, the ungrateful are left to plod down life on the same road, shoulders bowed and bulling through by the main force of their will. Glance at the preceding part of chapter thirteen. They are unable to turn away from the “snares of death” because they have no good sense. And sense comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. And this reverence for the commandment mentioned earlier extends to all God’s words, not just his written ones.

Has he spoken you a rainy, grey, textureless day? Thank him for the blessing of crops that grow and water that goes down cool. Has he spoken you a slow, meandering life? Thank him that he knows your frame and did not burn you out in a flaming lesson on overconfidence. Did he give you a community where you seem the least among the brethren, able to contribute nothing of value? Thank him for the opportunity to grow and learn if not to give. And if you’re growing and learning, you won’t feel left out and static.

Wake up and feel stuck in a rut? Thank God and wait. Sometimes he’s just waiting for you to let go of the steering wheel.

Antepenultimate

I’m guessing most of you, if you’re old enough, remember a day that you realized that your life was different than you planned.

And I don’t just mean at the end of the week, when you realize you haven’t made it to the grocery store again. I mean the big stuff. You’ve dreamed your whole life up to now of doing something: seeing the pyramids, being an astronaut, buying that certain car, marrying that girl, making that amount of salary. And then one day, you realize that you probably—or certainly—never will. That’s just not the way your life can go now. You missed the turn. Whether through active choices or passive ones, you wound up at this little spot on the map of your life that reads YOU ARE HERE.

I had one of those days recently. I took a look at one of my dreams and noticed that if I’d really wanted that, I should have made a different choice or two (or ten) half a decade ago. It’s a little late now.

This may be what they call a mid-life crisis. If it is, I hit it early (just like my birth.) Or I’m only going to live into my fifties. (Either is quite possible, if you think about it.)

And these missed turns on the road of your life don’t generally come along on sunny days as you travel a bucolic byway beneath a few wooly clouds and flash a grin at the flabbergasted bunnies by the culvert. You’d notice then. They come in the sleet storms, thieving fingers of wind striving to steal your hat from your head and breath from your lungs, two raindrops tickling coldly down the back of your neck. You haven’t seen the sun for days, it seems, and even God is silent when you stop to ask for directions.

To change the metaphor, it’s like living in a novel.  There comes a point in every good story when things get hard and dangerous, wild and wooly. The hero goes down for the count (and it’s usually his own fault). And if you’re not one of those heretics who skip to the end of the book first, you almost don’t want to keep reading; because there is no way under heaven it’s going to turn out like you hope it will. The sea pours into the dike. The plane’s engines start to cough. Edmund heads off with the White Witch. Frodo lies still under the cliffs of Cirith Ungol. Bigwig is in the wire. David stares at Uriah with fear and frustration and murder in his heart. Adam grasps a fruit in desperation.

God hangs on a cross.

One of my favorite words as a ten-year-old was antepenultimate. (æn.ti.pəˈnʌl.ti.mət) It’s Latin based, an adjective, and basically means “the thing before the thing before the last thing.” For example, Thursday is the antepenultimate day of the week. The twenty-ninth is the antepenultimate day of July. And after the antepenultimate, comes the penultimate. In a good novel, you have at least one antepenultimate build-up, a penultimate crisis, and the final, crashing resolution. In a really good one, you have several.

In one sense, all of human life is the Antepenultimate. From the first squalling breath to the last shuddering gasp, every son of Adam and daughter of Eve lives in the crisis. We ride the shock waves, travel the journeys, and generally wind up nowhere near where we wanted to go ten years ago. If we had known our current destinations a decade ago, we’d be terrified, disappointed, or both; no matter how good (or terrible) it would seem. We’d probably be so worried about how to achieve (or miss) this spot on the map that we’d freeze. It’s not really good to know that you’re in the crisis part of the novel as a character...it tends to chill the blood.

And wherever you wind up, eventually comes the greatest crisis. Death, the Penultimate Event. If you cross that bridge, your GPS has no way to recalculate your route. One way only.

But then you reach your Ultimate (in both senses) destination. And once you’ve made it there, the route you’ve taken—missed side roads, exits, gas stations, and all—will make perfect sense. It will, literally, be the only road you could have taken to get Home. You climb out of the car, stretch, and grin in sheer, tension-melting relief.

Made it.

Remember that the next time you missed a turn.

New Years, Old Years, and Jet Skis

My pastor challenged me yesterday. He mentioned that the divide between the old year and the new was a good time to take stock of what you’ve achieved (or failed to achieve) during your last trip around the sun—and what you expect to get out of the next one.

Man, I hate it when he does that.

See, by preference, I’m a drifter. I prefer my achievements to float up in front of me like logs on the flume ride at Six Flags—dead center and obvious, get on if you want, no pressure, it’s nice and slow. If I don’t manage to catch that particular one, there’s always another one arriving with a small splash about thirty seconds later. There's only one channel to ride. No failures. No missed opportunities. No regrets.

But I got challenged to a retrospective. And if you look back at last year—really look—my life looked less like a log ride and more like piloting a jet ski through some tricky sandbars during a glowingly thick fog... on the ocean.

Heeeere we go! Full steam ahead, sixty minutes an hour, seven days a week, and oh, yeah, the brakes don’t work so great anymore. Yes, I have a partial map, but with the wind, and the spray, and the fact that I can only see about six feet in front of me... I think I missed a few turns. Scraped some paint off the bottom. One of the gauges is cracked. I might have wound up in entirely wrong part of the ocean—it’s hard to tell. There’s too many drops clinging to my crooked glasses to see much of anything.

All water looks alike at half an inch.

Okay, the metaphor ran away from me... just like last year. In retrospect: I really didn’t mean to wind up in this chair at this moment, I had other plans. I was going to have a different roommate, be dating a really nice girl, have way more money in the bank, and probably no longer be working a full-time graveyard shift during school. Oh, and I was going to be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay holier. The complaining and the envy and the slothfulness—gone. I was going to be God’s perfect child by now.

(I’m picturing the Father smirking behind his hand, like you do when your two-year old announces that she is going to cook breakfast “all by herself!” Sure, kid. Knock yourself out. Just don’t put your spoon in the microwave with the Fruit Loops.)

Did I have a banner year? Not really. I’m still single. I’m still mildly in debt and clawing my way above the poverty line. I never made the dean’s list in school (of course, I never really planned to). I sinned against a bunch of people, complained to a bunch more, and was only as holy as I had to be most of the time. Depressing, isn’t it? (Maybe I actually crashed the jet ski...)

But perspective is everything. It wasn’t a bad year, either. I’m still in one piece, relatively healthy, and making enough money to eat with, which is more than a lot of folks can say. I got to watch my old roommate trade me out for a fantastic wife. I’m learning great and wonderful things with a bunch of joyful and reliable Christian people, day in and day out. I have a pastor who gives me challenges (that hopefully lead to far more than blog posts!). I have reliable friends. I have a great, enormous family. And I have a whole year ahead to give it another shot. So what if I’m dripping wet? I’m in the water, where I’m supposed to be.

Where will I be a year from now? God only knows. Possibly still in this chilly chair, single, with a different pesky roommate and more gnarly, tangled sins than anybody but Christ could count. But maybe not. After all, if you’d told me four years ago that I’d be sitting here, I’d have laughed you out of the room.

So here’s to Anno Domini MMXVIII. In prospect (can I do that?): This year I hope to pay senior year down, begin to pay off my loans, be the best friend I can be to my pals, write a lot more, read a lot more, come up with a senior thesis, and not get any more cavities. And, shoot, maybe find a date. And while we’re at it, I hope those close to me can look back and say, “Wow, James, you’ve really grown more godly this year.” Feel free to hold me to that.

Toss me the keys to the jet ski. It’s time to climb back on.

Ambulatio Noctavaga

The sound of the bell washed out over the sparkling hillsides, breaking the silent night with a smooth silver tone—just once, and then the silence overwhelmed it again.

I smiled. “Expect the first ghost when the bell tolls one!”

Nothing happened. I hadn’t really expected anything to. The sudden appearance of a ghost at one in the morning this Christmas Eve would have shocked me just as much as Marley did Scrooge. The moment had passed, and things were as it should be: cold, crisp, and very clear. I gave up staring toward the church steeple and concentrated on not falling as I strode down the ice-glazed sidewalk. Whoever had shoveled it had given it their best shot, but they hadn’t quite reached the concrete.

It’s cold. My phone says that nature only has four of her degrees tonight. I wonder idly which four. A bachelor’s, two masters, and a doctorate, perhaps? She gave the rest up. They’ll be back someday, but tonight their absence can be felt by every inch of my cold legs. Only a thin (it feels thinner than normal) layer of blue sweatpants stands between them and all those missing degrees, sucked into the winter degree vacuum. As long as I keep moving, they’ll survive. The rest of me is fine. My power plant is insulated by four layers of cotton and polyester blends; my toes wiggle securely in a massive pair of twelve-year old floppy, toasty boots. If I’d been able to remember where my long johns were stowed last winter, I’d be perfectly outfitted for this little stroll.

Everything sparkles. The snow, the trees with their thin layer of snow and thinner layer of ice, the deceptively dark-hued roads. Streetlights and starlight glitter off every surface. There might be a moon floating somewhere too, but I can’t find her. The brightest thing in the heavens is a lone star in the south that I’m fairly sure is Venus, the Morning Star, an appropriate symbol of hope to men for millennia, just like this Christmas Eve.

I’m sure anyone who saw me trudging along through the three inches of snow wondered why I was there. An hour past subfreezing midnight isn’t exactly a popular time for a constitutional. One of the perils of working a night shift is that your clock can get really off, and I woke up this midnight fresh as a proverbial summer daisy. It felt like a good time to return the library books that were due yesterday. So I layered up, and off I went.

I actually had more company than I expected. A diesel truck grumbled its way down Washington Street, loudly voicing its displeasure for being forced to labor in the icy darkness. I glimpsed a party through yellow windows playing board games, coats and hats still on in an attempt to bolster poor insulation. Later, as I returned down Main, a quartet of WSU students wobbled stridently up the opposite side, their restraint removed and chilly bodies fortified by internal application of alcohol. Further on, the two lone employees of a bar stood together just inside door, waiting the fifty minutes until closing time would let them go home. Twenty years ago they would have been flirting. Now they’re just both on their phones.

But in spite of these, except for my own crunchy tread over potato-chip snow, it was remarkably quiet. I understood why all the old carols always mention the stillness of winter. In the days before the internal combustion engine, it must have been still indeed. Even so much further south in the bleak lands of Palestine, the coming of those angels would have been a mighty shock to shepherds used to “the bleak midwinter, when half-spent was the night.”

My thoughts drift from silence to carols, to my family far away in the warmth of Texas and Kuwait, and to my friends home with their families in places far and near, and I pray that they will know how blessed they are. For every Christmas many of us get a tiny glimpse of what the Eschaton, Tolkien’s Eucatastrophe, will be like. For we will be home, everlasting joy and food and drink will flow in abundance, and the family will be complete. We will go from wandering alone in the cold night—as fun as that sometimes is—to the warmth of the flame imperishable and the everlasting light of the Morning Star. My final thought as I knock the snow from my treads and twist the knob, ready to warm my knocking knees? Never take Christmas for granted. But don’t think that’s as good as it gets, either. 

The Sirens and Charybdis

It’s 0005. (That’s 12:05 AM, some of you.)

I’m up due to circumstances entirely within my control but outside my choice. You see, I’m in school, and I work a night shift. So occasionally when I get a day off, I wind up awake in the wee hours of the morning, blinking and wondering what on earth I’m supposed to do. I certainly ain’t sleeping.

Of course, the answer always lurks around every corner of every book on the floor and note on the desk: homework. There is always homework. Outline this. Study that. Memorize this. And with term finals starting in three days and plenty of work to still consider and the fact that I really haven’t grown any more disciplined than the old days of “eat, drink, and watch movies, for tomorrow is a test day” all piling up over my head, homework seems less of a duty and more like a hulking monster. A great, hungry, dragon-toothed, all-consuming monster; eating up all my joy, and time, and energy. “You want to read a book for fun?” he snarls. “Ha. You have an essay to write and a six-hour project due Thursday. You haven’t even touched them. And there’s your summary due tomorrow. Done any of that? That’s in twelve hours, mind. You want to talk to God about your future, your worry, your sins and triumphs? No time for that, miserable fool! I have consumed it! I will consume it all!”

Panic.

And when I panic, my habit is to run to my old false gods. Entertainment. Oblivion. Had I lived a hundred years ago, I’d be at the tavern, a large mug of something in my hand and two more empty beside it. Fifty years ago, I’d still be at the mall beating a high score on Pac-man or out cruising with the radio turned way up. Now I click a few times and watch Facebook or Netflix fade into a thousand little pixelated opiates; idols soothing and whispering, “Who cares about tomorrow? Dopamine, not deadlines.”

Odysseus didn’t get it quite right. Most of us don’t have to sail between Scylla and Charybdis, but between the Sirens and Charybdis. On the one hand is the great sucking monster of duties and obligations, pulling our effort, money, and time itself in like a great black hole. But push your way outside of that and you drift into a misty, golden-hued land of lotus fumes and soothing notes, promising to fulfill your every desire. Of course, it’s a trap. Death waits there as surely as at the bottom of Charybdis’ rotting, gaping maw. But it seems much more pleasant, and far more gradual. Listen to them sing: Why die today, listener? Far better to linger on in our voluptuous land of sensate stimulation. Are you not weary with much toil? Your roommate’s asleep. No one will ever know, and food eaten in secret is sweet. Come to us, and we will give you your heart’s desire. You wish for victory and bloody triumph? We have a thousand varieties, enough for a lifetime. You wish for a pretty companion? We have every kind, more than Solomon’s whole harem, without a disagreement or misunderstanding to be seen. You wish for peace? We have every Hallmark moment you could devise and ten more, all with just the right chords playing in the background. Come to us, and be free. Come to us and be happy. Come. Come. Come.

With that kind of siren call pounding in my blood and no other prospects but Charybdis’ dark vortex of school and work and endless chores, is it any wonder why I drift towards Siren Island so often? There doesn’t seem to be any other way out. Damned to either work myself to death or waste my life—I might as well pick the more pleasant option. There’s no other choice.

That’s a lie, of course. There is a way out, no temptation beyond what we can bear. But we have to find it, and it’s not where we think it is. Unlike Odysseus, God doesn’t give us a vanishingly small belt of safe sea in between our painful callings and our fleeting pleasures. We don’t have to constantly trim sail to maintain course between two dangers. He gives us an escape. There’s an exit sign flashing in the gloom. Unfortunately, it’s right in the middle of Charybdis’ dark, slurping mouth. “No, wait,” we think. “That can’t be right. God screwed up.”

If I can screw up, what chance is there for you, child? Look to the ant, go to your labor. Dive all the way in to it and hold nothing back. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. That includes work and homework and the dishes, you know—even every second of your time. For everything there is a season.

“Wait. Don’t you want me to be happy? What about pleasures and joy? Don’t the Sirens promise more of those than that monster of work, Charybdis?”

Why this aversion to work, son? Even I work in creating, sustaining, saving and beautifying. This is the path of life, where at my right hand are pleasures forevermore. There is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot and my gift to man.

Gulp. “If I go that way, there’s no way out. I’ll die.”

Yes, you will, He chuckles. But that’s all right. I’m in the resurrection business. 

Barbar-Y-ans: Men and the Differences of Civilization

Yes, this is pretty much my mother every holiday...

I just went home for Christmas. It was glorious. Every time I opened the pantry, there was food. Meals appeared on the table around six in the evening with scientific, predictable regularity. It was varied: chicken fried steak, breakfast casserole, turkey, cherry pie, green beans, mashed potatoes. It was endless: second helpings, third helpings, for twelve people. It was beautiful: eaten atop a tablecloth; with real napkins; a knife, fork and spoon to every plate; pitchers for the beverages; a centerpiece gaudily blocking your view of the sibling across the table.

And it wasn’t just the food. When you sat down to read in the easy chair, bookshelves placed to maximize space greeted you near at hand. Lamps adorned end tables and strategic corners. Decorations—almost unnoticed until you looked for them—lent a general air, a theme almost, to each room. Don’t even get me started on the Christmas stuff overlaying all this.

Home. I roll out of bed, shake my head, and wander to the kitchen; a bare white, frill-less affair which is (at best) merely clean. I yank open the refrigerator, grab an egg I hard boiled the day before, whack it a few times on the counter. The salt shaker is almost empty. I dust the egg with it, eat it in three bites over the sink, and chuckle at the difference between this and three days ago. Breakfast is served. Welcome to the key difference between a bachelor pad and a home: civilization.

Webster defined “civilization” as “The act of civilizing, or the state of being civilized; the state of being refined in manners, from the grossness of savage life and improved in arts and learning.” And I think access to this state is granted largely by the hand of women. If you want to build a great nation, a great city, a good home, you need the influence of women. Exclusive Y-chromosomes won’t cut it. Haven’t you ever wondered why manners and women are often so closely associated? When someone is rude and mannerless, the common thing to say is “chivalry is dead” not “manners is (are?) dead.” Women define polite society in ways that are literally everywhere.

Entering a building? Open the door. Walking along the street? Take the outside. Eating something? Pull her chair out and serve her first. Going somewhere fancy? Wear stark black and white and watch the colors, shades, and tones beside you become even more glorious by sheer comparison.  Setting the table for stew? Use the forks and knives. Yes, we all know that no one will actually use the forks and knives , that they will get dirty, that the twelve-year-old will get stuck washing three times the amount of silverware the meal actually needs. Need is pragmatic, utilitarian, male. The point is civilization—beauty. Speaking of beauty, Beauty and the Beast made this point about the influence of the fairer sex nicely. Remember how the Beast ate like a barbarian (or dare I say, a barbar-Y-an)? It was practical, quick—and utterly unsuitable for company.

This is not to say that men cannot build their own societies, their own civilizations, by themselves. Of course they can. But I think they differ qualitatively from what we commonly think of as civilization. The highest expression of male organization is not the ballroom, the state dinner, Christmas, or the welcome mat inside a cozy cottage. If civilization is the “state of being refined in manners, from the grossness of savage life…” then the Y-chromosome version is the art of refined savage life. Put a bunch of guys together for long enough, and they will produce hunting lodges paved in pelt and accented in antlers. They will not build homes and families dedicated to inviting others in; they will build armies and battleships, refined to the startlingly sharp purpose of keeping other people out.  The opposite of the welcome mat is the bayonet.

Women gave us meals with seven courses and thirty-two forks; men gave us carry-out pizza and that utilitarian (and ugly) utensil the spork. Now there are days when I’m greatful for my barbarian bachelor pad. It is disgustingly easy, charmingly disorganized, and there’s nothing to dust under on the shelves. But refined relationships—civilization—do not develop in a bachelor pad among the Y-chromosome crowd.

That takes the other half of humanity.

"You're Not A Match for Him, Cap"

The scene is tense. A nine-foot-tall robot is this close to taking over the world and wiping out humanity. Just one man is close enough to stop him. But this man (while a very strong and active man) is only that—not enough to stop this remorseless mass of metal.

It’s comic land, of course, and a Marvelous one, at that. Captain America is going after Ultron in Seoul during the epic Avengers: Age of Ultron, and he is alone. None of the team capable of going toe-to-toe with the villainous robot—Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk—is even on the same continent. It’s up to him.

And at the precise moment he goes into the fray and is dodging fire, his teammate calmly informs him, “You’re not a match for him, Cap.”

Encouraging. Real sunshiney bedside manner you have there, Hawkeye. Way to stand by your teammate.

I can relate. Most of my focus problem stems from another monster of modern technology: the entertainment culture. Whether that’s computer games and Netflix or the darker side of the net, it seems irresistible. Sit down. Be consumed. You tried scheduling? No dice. You try abstaining? You have to be near it for work. The siren call draws you in and consumes not only your free time but your sleep and time for other projects. You get hollow eyed and exhausted and instead of learning your lesson, you just fall quicker. Every time, nothing works. You try to fight your habits and desires, and you find out… you’re not a match for him, Cap.

Eye roll. Thanks, Barton.

No, actually that’s good news. You see, laziness/gluttony is a sin. It stems from Sin, proper. And if there was ever a monstrous baddie that was too big for one man to fight, sin qualifies. You really can’t win, James my lad. Not a hope. Impossible. Might as well give up. What’s the world worth, anyway?

But against all measured wisdom, Cap shows us the right solution. Jump in and fight. Go hand to hand. Slow it down with every trick, dodge, and evasion in the book, even if it feels like you’re throwing peas at a tank. Hurl the shield and watch it bounce off. Again. And again.

You don’t have to win. You just have to slow it down long enough for help to show up. Sin is inherently self-absorbed. It likes to forget about God. The greatest Power of all time, the one who promised never to leave you or forsake you. You may complain that He’s not here. You’re fighting alone just as usual. God’s absent!

Of course He is. Like any good hero, He likes to show up just in the nick of time. The story’s better that way.

So the next time temptation, technological or otherwise, stares you in the face and your mind tells you with a perfectly straight face, “You’re not a match for him, Cap,” what do you do?

Jump in. Throw the Shield.

Send in the Clouds

I have said often (as the poor friends who hear all my smart remarks five times probably know) that God smiles indulgently as his children smear oils and watercolors on canvas, and then proceeds to use water vapor, colliding helium atoms, hot and cold air currents, and planetary rotation to paint something like this… every twenty-four hours.

Less, if you count the sunrises and sunsets. It also changes every second that you watch it, looks different depending on what longitude you happen to be at, and can’t actually be fully captured by a photograph. At least, that’s what my shutterbug friends tell me.

Most people like sunshine better than clouds. Bright, luminescent days full of deep green grass and deep blue sky and deep, clear water to drink as it sparkles. Those are the days for fun, for picnics, football, painting, flying kites. Cloudy days are for scrubbing floors and listening to old lugubrious country songs. Even on mostly sunny days, clouds are when your mother shivers and reaches for her second sweater. Nobody likes clouds.

But did you ever stop to think that without clouds, sunsets wouldn’t be nearly as glorious? They cover the light, sure, but in the right place they can reflect it, refract it, and produce more colors than we have names for. Rose. Purple. No, pink. Rosurplink?

Life is like that. Who wants clouds in their life? A lost job. A sick relative. Addiction. Depression. Loneliness. Pressure.  It can seem like they cover you and suck all the joy out of life, all the light and warmth out of your picnic. You shiver and reach for that second sweater, thinking something like, “Ah, how the Lord in his anger has set the Daughter of Zion under a cloud!” And then, if you’re watching, if you’re standing in exactly the right place, the sun behind the clouds makes an appearance. And the troubles change color. “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” So wrote another fellow named James. And he was, if I may freely translate, telling all you sunshiny people that you should ask God to send in the clouds. Otherwise, where is your testimony? Who tells others of their thankfulness for how God got them through the blissful Hobbiton days of life? It is in the Paths of the Dead and the slopes of Caradhras and Orodruin where stories are made. If the sun always shone uninterrupted, where would your sunsets come from? This is how God works. Darkness turned to glory. Crosses turned to honor. Clouds… turned to sunsets. Clouds are what make the relatively ordinary circumstance of the sun dipping below the horizon into something you pull over and watch until it stops.

Actually, it technically never stops at all. Sunlight is always angling off of some atmosphere somewhere. God just ceaselessly speaks the word “sunset” (or sunrise, depending on your point of view) and there is sunset. And God sees that the sunset is good. “See, look what I painted you. Right there. Just for you and the few hundred in the right spot to see it. Darkness made into even better light. I even gave you those wonderful eyes to see it with. Look, look, before it’s gone! You missed it? Well, don’t fret. I’ll do it again tomorrow.”

The Normal World

Black. White. Cops. Snipers. Muslims. Gays. Innocents. Guilty. Dallas. Orlando. Ferguson. Paris. Boston. New Town. Virginia Tech…

They roll by in soundbite ribbons at the bottom of screens. They pop up in newsfeeds as we see what our friends are up to. The next day, they glare crookedly out of glass-fronted boxes, daring us to spend a few hard-earned quarters on an actual newspaper.

I wonder what our great-grandfathers would have thought about that?

The headlines, not the newspapers. A world where fifty people can die in a day—that’s nothing. In 1911, 126 people died in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. 130 died in 1944 Chicago as a result of a natural gas explosion that leveled a square mile of the city. Over six thousand died in the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. And that doesn’t include the wars. But a world where individuals can kill others just for being different—en masse and at random—what kind of a world does that look like?

The normal one, actually. Those who lament about such crimes, such unheard-of atrocities, really betray their ignorance, or perhaps more charitably, their innocence. The fear of the unknown, of the different, of the outsider—these drove most of human civilization. For in most places and times, the guiding motive in relationships with outsiders was one of suspicion and hostile distrust. Love your enemy? Please. Be realistic. Protect the tribe! Defend the clan! Guard the city! The foreigner, the barbarian, the infidel, the gypsy—it was safer to be rid of them. Banish them. Kill them. In the city square or the battlefield if you can, in the dead of night or the alley if you can’t. And the guns? Please. That’s a pretty merciful way to go. They used to use swords. Nooses. Or bonfires. Hitler is famous, not because his goals were a new idea, but because he figured out how to accomplish them in the scientific-industrial manner—cleanly, efficiently, and wholesale. Before that you had to do messy genocide like the Assyrians.

When faced with those who are different from you, the natural result is to assume that something is wrong with the other guy. I’m a white middle-class Harvard businesswoman from the suburbs, so it must be the black boy’s fault. I’m a fatherless, abandoned kid whose mother won’t stay off drugs, just trying to survive in a hostile world, so it must be the cop’s fault. I’m a teenager who after a lifetime of ennui and purposelessness finally finds something that demands total commitment and promises total reward, so, as the Prophet said, it must be infidel America’s fault. All three of these can grow up in the same city, root for the same ball team, even go to the same supermarket—and in a very real sense speak totally different languages. Try the word America out for starters. What does that mean for each of them? Opportunity? Oppression? The Great Satan?

And lo, secularism claimed that it could reach past that language barrier, that through education, or societal improvement, or some other fifty billion dollar program it could remake brutal man into a naturally loving cooperative, where being different was appreciated, not feared. The lion could lie down with the lamb, Muhammadan with lesbian, police chief with junkie. All those differences really didn’t matter (unless you were trying for a scholarship or government position.) The Federation of Star Trek in real life.

Fifty years (perhaps more) later, here we are. Kill the pigs. Deep six the sodomites. Allahu akbar.

If you suppress the differences, they pop out eventually. If you magnify them, you can’t get anything done. Catch-22, secularism. So much for the brotherhood of man. You can’t even figure out how to define one of those anymore, anyway.

People don’t ever naturally love what is different. That’s a Hollywood myth, reinforced by cute pictures of ‘innocent’ children playing on the same playground. The pictures that don’t ever show you the playground bully or the name-calling. Rogers and Hammerstein were wrong: you don’t “have to be carefully taught.” We just like to love... what’s just like us.

And then a man came into the world. He was like us in every way except one: his love went where it wasn’t supposed to go. Gentiles. Tax collectors. Rich fat cats with education. Poor prostitutes with none. Warmongers. Bottom-class laborers. Outsiders—and insiders. Dark men from Ethiopia. Light men from Rome. He loved them all so much that it threatened the very existence of order, and so they killed him outside their city as a troubler of the peace. Someone had to pay, and it was his fault.

And then he kept coming back. Greeks started eating with Jews. Rich men sat with poor men on the first day of the week. The woman who could give tuppence was valued as much as the man who gave talents of gold. He was the countryman, he was the urban nobleman. He was everywhere. So they killed him again. And again. And again. It was his fault the city fell, that the plague came, that the harvest was poor. Justice was done. His fault.

Finally they gave in through sheer exhaustion. They watched as the lion laid down with the lamb, as unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind became commonplace. Oh, there were hiccups, flare-ups, occasional imbalances. But eventually everyone got so accustomed to this state of affairs that after a millennium, they assumed it was normal, the base state of mankind.

But it’s not. That kind of unity only comes when we can look not at but through our differences to something beyond. But what? An abstract “brotherhood of man” will only cut it for the mushy, imaginative, often gullible ones. A lofty government that can force you to love at the point of a bayonet will only appeal to the greedy ones who love power. Even the other religions won’t love everybody the same, not if they want to remain unchanged and consistent. Women, heathen, the unenlightened, the unborn, the old, the unfit—somebody has to pay. It’s their fault.

But it’s our fault. We did it. The Triangle Trade. Auschwitz. Boston. Orlando. Dallas.  But that man who loved in the wrong places took the blame. Justice was done. We’re not guilty. And so we have nothing left to protect, and nothing left to hate in the others. Here is unity. We speak the same language, with the same Word, behold, we are one people, and we have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what we can do. And nothing that we are commanded to do will now be impossible for us.

Change the “normal” world. Love God. Love your neighbor.

Cavalry and Calvary

          

           English is stupid. That is a direct and oft-repeated quote from my best friend, and while I’m not sure I agree with him, I do admit that English is at least frustrating. Homonyms, homophones, sloughs and doughs and roughs: all bewildering to foreigners everywhere. But that’s not really what this is about. We are not here to discuss and lament the vagaries of our mother tongue.  In order to get to the original germ of this idea—the mustard seed of this post—we must hop in the nearest DeLorean and go back a bit. Say somewhere around the fall of A.D. 1997, in Germany.

I was six or so then, and was bouncing around the apartment doing something I always thoroughly enjoyed: singing. At that particular moment, it was the old Baptist hymn, “At Calvary.” So I chirped away with gusto, building volume as I neared the chorus: “…knowing not it was for me He died, at caaavaaaalryyyy!” Really, a natural mistake. To someone who knew his father was with an Army cavalry unit and whose favorite toy was a group of Playmobile Old West Cavalrymen, what other word was there?

But my father happened to be in the vicinity. “Actually, son, it’s cal-vary. Cav-alry is on horses. Cal-vary is the hill outside Jerusalem where Jesus died, also called Golgotha.”

Ah, my young mind thought. Well, I feel sheepish. That’s really close to the same. Funny. Oh well, life is short. Back to singing!

But the odd coincidence stayed with me.

Nearly twenty years later, I still like cavalry. One of my favorite movie phenomena, as a matter of fact, involves cavalry. Everyone knows that in a western, one of the good old ones, that when the wagon train is on its last wheels and the Indians are about to triumph—the bugle blows, the flag flutters, and the cavalry rides up to save the day. I call any moment when someone shows up—unexpectedly and out of the blue—to save the day a Cavalry Moment. Usually it’s not the main character, and if it is, he’s not the main character in that particular scene. Sometimes it’s a character you only see that one instance, here and then gone. But the day would be lost without them.

Why do these situations give us chills? Why does the adrenaline rush when some person or group—often before unseen for the entirety of the story—swoop in and tip the scales?

I believe God—who Authored authors, after all—built it in. After all, He executed the ultimate Cavalry Moment. A penniless carpenter being crucified like a robber on a hill turned out to be the salvation of the entire world. Which hill, because English is stupid, turned out to be named Calvary. Just ‘cause it could. I love God’s quirky plot twists.

Merely for fun, here are my top ten Cavalry Moments in cinema. They all still give me chills even after years of seeing some of them happen every time I watch that film.

10. Movie: Stagecoach. This is the one that almost birthed the cliché, as it were. The cavalry rides up and saves the passengers of our eponymous transport from destruction. Charge!

9. Rio Bravo. At the final gunfight, when Stumpy (Walter Brennan) shows up after being left behind and keeps John Wayne from being surrounded. Heh, heh!

8. The Longest Day. When Capitaine Philippe Kieffer of the Free French Commandos manages to show back up with a Sherman tank, with a big ol’ 75mm gun.

7. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. When the Dwarves show up to rescue Bilbo from being roasted. Not in the book, but I liked it anyway. It made the Company cool all of a sudden.

6. Superman Returns. Okay, fairly lousy movie, but that shot of Superman flying in front of the minigun bullets to save the guard made it all worth it!

5. Star Wars. When Han flies out of the sun and blows a TIE to smithereens, literally saving Luke’s tail. Really, how many people get to startle Darth Vader?

4. The Avengers. Loki is about to kill that old German man in Stuttgart merely to emphasize a point, and we all think he’s going to get away with it. Until somebody with a red, white, and blue shield drops in…

3. Guardians of the Galaxy. Star-lord and the Ravagers are attacking Ronan’s warship. But there’s too much incoming fire. There’s no way that they can make it—but then the Nova Corps shows up. Classic.

2. Facing the Giants. Okay, I know everyone is going, “Huh?” But I count David’s dad standing in the end zone, encouraging his son, as a Cavalry Moment. That’s love, right there. And the win wouldn’t have happened without him, right?

1. Star Trek. You know, the new one, with Chris Pine. Spock is in the small Vulcan ship, charging straight at Nero. He knows fully well that the massive number of torpedoes coming at him spell out his doom, and he is resigned to it. Then the Enterprise comes out of warp and in a beautiful display of firepower takes out all the incoming weaponry. I like that ship. You know, it’s exciting!

 

No, I didn’t forget. In a class all of its own stands my final favorite, the queen of the lot, the one that makes use of this trope so often but never dulls it. Its author, J.R.R. Tolkien, remains the only person who can give me that “chill down the spine” sensation merely from reading the printed word. I salute his genius, and awareness of the way the world is made that let him write so well.

0.       The Return of the King. Whether it be Sam carrying Frodo, Aragorn coming off of the ships, Boromir defending Merry and Sam, or that great charge of six thousand spears riding to Sunlending and death, this remains the one to beat. Forth, Eorlingas!

Thanks for coming along my trip down adrenaline lane. If I missed one of your favorites, sound off in the comments. Maybe I’ll have to add something to my watch list. And remember when you hear them blow the Charge that Calvary, not cavalry, gave us the greatest moment ever.