This Is Just to Say

I have finished
the novel
that was on
my computer

and which
you were probably
hoping
you would not have to read

A/C Broken? Try This.

A friend invited us out to his boat for yesterday and today. We had a wonderful time boating, swimming, exploring secret islands, and fishing.

When we returned tonight, however, our home was very hot. We had turned off the A/c to save money, and once reactivated, it always takes about an hour to really cool down.

Problem: it was our daughter's bedtime, and it was too hot for her to sleep.

I used a trick I haven't needed since I was a starving college grad living without air conditioning in New York City.

I took a frozen 2-liter bottle, wrapped it in a towel, and gave it to her as a "cold water bottle."

I can testify that it works. I used to curl up around these cold water bottles in my tiny New York City apartment and sleep soundly. Sometimes, if the heat was really unbearable, I would press my wrists directly to the bottle. (Blood comes close to the surface at the wrist, so it's a good place to apply cold if you want to cool off quickly.)

This is a public service announcement. :-) And one of my claims to street cred, for those of you who didn't know me back in the bad old days. No silver spoons for this gal.

In Whom Shall I Trust?

A functional life requires a certain amount of trust in others and in our surroundings.

Working, we trust that we will be paid; banking, we trust that our money will be safe; driving, we trust that our cars will function reasonably well. We must also trust friends and loved ones in order to live a healthy, fulfilling life.

Sooner or later, we will misplace our trust. Sometimes we do so out of naivete or self-delusion; sometimes we have every reason to trust and still betrayal follows.

The other day, while pondering how to recognize a trustworthy person, I came to a realization as old as the hills.

By their fruit, you shall know them.

Victorians believed that a person developed "character" in youth based on his temperament and training. Good character included courage, loyalty, generosity, modesty, diligence, and manners. Bad character included treachery, selfishness, hardheartedness, boastfulness, etc.

One could detect a person's character by his actions, not his words. Many might talk of charity, but charitable persons actually gave money and served the poor. Truly humble persons praised others instead of themselves, and downplayed their own achievements.

When we choose whom to trust, the best guide is still the Victorian concept of character. The truest measure of a person's character is her deeds. Surface appearances can be deceptive; some wear public masks and try to win admiration by pretending to virtues they don't possess.

As people of faith, we are to love everyone, regardless of how good or bad a person's character may be.

But if we need to evaluate whether to place our trust in a person, we should reflect on how he spends his days, how he treats others, whether he often sacrifices his time out of pure compassion or loyalty. Everyone will make mistakes, and no one should be judged on the basis of one deed, but the balance of a person's deeds over time reveal her character. Only fools trust everyone. We can love someone of questionable character without behaving foolishly.

And then there's the one who never betrays our trust. Scripture cautions many times against placing our trust in human beings.

Do not fret because of evildoers,
Be not envious toward wrongdoers,
For they will wither quickly like the grass
And fade like the green herb.
Trust in the Lord and do good;
Dwell in the land, and cultivate faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the Lord;
And he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him, and He will do it.
And He will bring forth your righteousness as the light,
And your judgment as the noonday.

In Which an Author Makes an Observation Concerning Chapter Headings

My daughter's latest book is Pinocchio (the original 1883 story by Carlo Collodi, not a Disney version).

I checked out several versions from the library. The one that attracted her interest is a gorgeous, large book with beautiful illustrations. The large page size allows the font to be printed in a size that appeals to younger readers. Today, she read all the way through Chapter 17 by herself.

When I picked up the book tonight to read a few pages to her at bedtime, I noticed the chapter heading first.

CHAPTER 17
Pinocchio refuses to take medicine. When the undertakers come, he drinks the medicine and feels better. Afterwards he tells a lie and his nose grows longer and longer.

After reading the chapter heading, I was struck by the vast difference between novels then and novels now.

Writers of the early twenty-first century spend a great deal of time and effort building suspense and tension into their novels to "keep the pages turning."

If we judged nineteenth-century novels by today's standards, we would say that nineteenth-century authors ruined their suspense by giving away the plot in their chapter headings.

How many of today's readers would keep reading if we headed our chapters with plot summaries? I don't mean coy teasers such as "In which a mysterious man brings news." I mean real plot summaries like the one above from Pinocchio.

Nineteenth-century readers were leisurely readers. A book was an artifact to be savored, to be held and enjoyed. They did not want to rush through books to find out what happened. They did not have a hundred other entertainments competing for their attention. The printed word ruled.

By announcing the plot at the head of the chapter, a nineteenth-century author freed the reader from the pressure of reading for plot, allowing her to enjoy the details of the story instead.

Wouldn't it be amazing if we could experience that slower, more gracious way of life?

Let's say someone places a button in front of you and tells you that by pressing it, you can eliminate all recording-based media (no more film, no more CDs) and make the twenty-first century a time when the only forms of entertainment are live performances and printed words.

Would you press the button?

Expanding Territory

Last night I had the privilege of hanging out with some new friends and acquaintances.

Many of them are from very different walks of life than I (and presumably different from one another as well, as it was a very diverse group). It's an "alternative" social group, which is not completely new to either of us as we both spent time in alternative circles during our college years.

I thought the chance to get out and talk to different people was great. So did my husband.

Too often in today's polarized climate, we get bogged down in social groups that are homogeneous. There's not enough interaction between people who differ markedly in politics, religion, race, or class.

I do think it's possible for people to get along and enjoy one another's company even in the face of significant differences, especially if they have a common pastime.

Not Of the World

I've been ruminating on the word "worldly."

More specifically, I'm bothered by the lack of discussion of worldliness in any extended conversation I can remember in the past five years.

Perhaps worldliness has been on my mind because I have to contemplate the potential lifestyle of an inspirational novelist. Every day I read lots of posts from people on the subject of how to get published, how to "market yourself," how to network.

The most famous scriptural injunction about a believer's relationship to the world is that we should be "in the world, but not of the world."

Bringing spirituality into business blurs the line between "in" and "of" the world.

Some people seem to handle this tension by ignoring it. Others support the argument that nothing is too worldly because believers have an obligation to live "in" the world, and we can't do that properly without knowing our culture and using its methods.

But even if we ackowledge that we need to "speak the language" of today, we need to understand the difference between changing our language and changing our beliefs.

Certain common attitudes of our culture do not jive with Christianity. One major attitude that a believing Christian should not adopt is rampant consumerism. I think most believers agree it is not Christlike to make the accumulation of consumer items a top priority. (That doesn't mean we always live by this belief about consumerism, but I don't think many believers would argue with the basic assertion.)

Another aspect of our culture that is incompatible with Christianity is obsession with earthly celebrity and/or status. This one is trickier. What happens when our "celebrity" is a Christian speaker or recording artist? If the person in question is "doing good," is it still wrong to allow celebrity to enter our lives?

I don't know. I suspect that there is a difference between respecting someone's work and idolizing that person. I believe that in many cases, we cross the line between glorifying our Creator and glorifying his Worker. The celebrity status of some evangelists is a case in point.

I don't mean this as a judgment on believers who become celebrities. Many of them are sincere, humble people who happen to be prodigiously gifted. My concern is more with whether or not other believers elevate them beyond the status of other sincere Christians, thus supporting the idea that celebrity is as valid inside the walls of a church as outside them.

Some would say that these people aren't "celebrities," they're gifted role models. I can see some validity to that function of role models in our lives. But if those role models come with all the trappings of earthly celebrity: good looks, high fashion, money, adoring crowds... have we crossed the line and started to behave as if we are "of" the world? Do we still teach believers that a Christian should ignore earthly status? (That could lead into an argument about the diabolically-misinterpreted parable of the shrewd accountant, which some believers want to read in a way that contradicts every other passage in the New Testament, but I won't go there right now.)

I'm concerned that Christian churches, once part of the ultimate countercultural movement, are now so deeply-embedded in our culture that many believers never even question whether they are too materialistic, or too concerned with earthly status. Perhaps they have been told for so long that Christianity is hip and not boring or ascetic that they believe that Christianity is absolutely compatible with any typical cultural choices a contemporary American might make. Again, I'm not judging any individual here, just commenting on an unsettling trend.

Willow Creek Church has long been an advocate of constructing churches along a business model to answer people's "felt needs" (translation: it may not be a real need, but if the church's "customers" feel a need, we should give them what they want). In 2006, the church leaders caused a sensation in the Protestant community by acknowledging that their approach to Christian spirituality had been erroneous. Their internal studies showed that all their "felt-needs" programs did not produce mature, committed, countercultural believers, but, exactly as their detractors argued, created a church "a mile wide and an inch deep."

I don't intend to bash churches at all: some "seeker-friendly" churches have done the faith a service by reminding us that we can't just hole up in steepled fortresses and ignore a hurting world. But this discussion about worldliness is starting to bubble into the mainstream. It's something I need to consider.

What do you think?

Lovable Teenagers

I've been so busy teaching Vacation Bible School this week that I missed my Monday post.

I have to tell you about our "junior guide" at VBS. Junior guides are teenagers who run around with our camp groups and help the teachers.

My junior guide is named Zach.

He is the coolest kid. He is really compassionate with the little first-graders. If he thinks they may be hurt or otherwise in need of assistance, he's there immediately. He's not overly concerned about his peers; he'd rather pay attention to what we're doing in camp. I wouldn't be surprised if he chooses a teaching profession when he's older, as he seems quite interested in what I'm doing during the teaching segment of VBS. (The other segments are music, craft, and games.)

The other lovable thing about Zach is that he wants to participate as much as possible in the activities of camp. He was our first volunteer to be "David" in the activity where we ALL played King Saul and simultaneously hurled cardboard spears at David. (Yeah, VBS is a fun and violent occasion.)

When I see a teenager like Zach, I'm encouraged by his ability to see past himself, to nurture others, and to do good.

It's Only Natural

Someone told me a horror story the other day.

She lives halfway up a nearby mountain, where the wildlife is more abundant than it is here in our suburban setting.

While out in her garden pulling weeds, she heard a funny clicking sound.

She looked up to see a tarantula a few yards away, crawling slowly toward her.

But that's not the horrifying part.

The clicking came not from the tarantula, but from a large wasp that was hovering over the tarantula and stinging it repeatedly.

She recognized what was happening from a nature special she had watched not long ago. The wasp was a Tarantula Hawk Wasp. It was laying eggs in the tarantula that would eventually hatch, allowing the wasp's larvae to eat the tarantula from the inside.

"I felt sorry for the poor tarantula," she told me.

Me too.

As I was riding along in the van with my husband a few days later, my thoughts returned to this story.

"Brandon," I said out of the blue. "There are some creatures in this world that are not of God. That Hawk Wasp is straight from the devil."

"Tarantulas aren't exactly nice, cuddly creatures either," he replied.

I took his point. But the horror of the wasp and the tarantula remained, like a vision out of The Lord of the Rings or The Screwtape Letters: twisted, venomous, parasitic creatures devouring one another in an evil embrace.

In our protected twenty-first century world, we no longer see nature's horrors. In the eyes of many people, "nature" can do no wrong. Reruns of the Crocodile Hunter feature Steve Irwin attempting to convince us that the crocodile, a mindless killing machine, is a lovable species. "Natural" is the ultimate compliment for beauty or for food.

I'm not knocking natural beauty or goodness: I agree that backyard tomatoes taste better than storebought ones. A beautiful landscape can fill me with awe, humility, and gratitude. Studying science impresses me with the clockwork intricacy of creation and the virtual impossibility of a random origin of life.

But there is a reason why the scriptural description of a fallen state of humankind is "natural." The opposite of a "spiritual person" in the Bible is a "natural person."

Nature has fallen, along with humankind. She is no longer good, as she would be if she were a pure emanation of God. C.S. Lewis explains this fall as the origin of carnivorousness, as the reason for animal pain. It is Satan, not God, who inflicts suffering on animals and humans.**

Did Satan actually create the Hawk Wasp, in some noxious smithy that issues nasty creatures? No. He cannot create, he can only twist and destroy. Nothing that afflicts us in nature (or human nature) was created by evil. Our sexual impulses, for example, are a gift from God. It's the Fall that twists the goodness of this gift and tempts us to seek sexual variety, instead of taking equal joy forever in the spouses of our youth.

In heaven as in Eden, animals will not eat one another, nor will humans torture one another with mindless cruelty. We will see the restoration of pure goodness.




**Mention Satan today and you risk becoming as ridiculous to many readers as a caricature on Saturday Night Live. I encourage anyone who may be tempted to scoff or laugh to read C.S. Lewis's Perelandra. I too once discounted the existence of evil as a palpable force. Lewis made me think long and hard about my unexamined skepticism.

The Writing Child

My friend Billy writes excellent creative non-fiction exploring the spiritual underpinnngs of ordinary life. Yesterday, he wrote about his five-year-old son's wish to be a writer when he grew up. You can read that post here.

I share Billy's mixed feelings about having a child who wants to be a writer.

When my daughter was five, she stated that she wanted to be an "offer who writes books." She has since moved on to aspire to own a bakery or become a sushi chef at the grocery store. Nonetheless, her behavior bears the telltale signs of latent writerdom. She composes little stories on the computer. She loves words, especially unusual or funny words like "uglicize." She reads beyond her grade level and most importantly, she has a powerful interior life. When we ride around in the van together, she does not keep up a running monologue. Instead, she lapses into periods of silence during which her mind travels far and wide. These silences usually end with random questions or statements. "Mom, how do they make stoves?" "Mom, is it OK to have bullies in a play?"

Writers know how writers think. Whether it comes through nature, nurture, or both, we can recognize the writing mind when we see it. My daughter has the writing personality. She doesn't know it yet, and I'm certainly not going to push her into it and risk killing her love for it.

So what is a real writing personality? Well, part of it is a kind of separateness from the world. I don't mean alienation. It's more like a deep independence that resists easy answers--a mind that goes searching for meaning whether its owner likes it or not. When I go to writers' conventions, it's almost shocking to see this same independence and interiority looking out at me from (almost) every face. I occupy the more social end of the writers' spectrum. I've found that my role at conferences is often to pull people out of their silent rumination at meals and get them talking to one another. But when they do start talking, oh, the fascinating and honest things they will say!

That independence makes writers capable of living out the greatest constant in the writing life: solitary thought and effort.

It's not always easy. There are times when I think of how much simpler my life would be if I were not a writer. I could spend more time with my friends and family, go to more happenings about town, watch more TV and movies, do all the things people do with their free time.

But I don't think I would be happy.

Writing allows me to live ten lives in the the time I would otherwise have lived one. After sharing the rich experience of my characters during the heights and depths of the greatest moments of their lives, I can't imagine not writing.

I have to admit that if I had a constant supply of the kind of novels I like to read, I probably would sit around consuming them instead of writing. But that ain't gonna happen. I don't like standard category fiction. I don't like standard literary fiction. I'm picky, and my punishment for it is that I myself have to write the type of novel I like.

Authors have been my best friends throughout my life--never fickle, never too busy to talk to me, radically democratic and unconcerned with the status of whoever is holding their book at any given time. Writing for its own sake is a generous act, an offering of communion and fellowship, and that's why it is good for the soul. (One of my critique partners and I talked the other day about the most common flaw in novels, which is writing for oneself instead of writing for others. Novels written for the sake of their author fall flat unless the reader happens to share exactly the same areas of self-rationalization and desire--a rare occurrence, what with the infinite variety of psychological profiles in the world.)

I don't care if my daughter ever wants to be published, or if she writes fiction or nonfiction. I just know that writing is the greatest blessing I've ever received, always a comfort to me even when nothing else seems to be going right. Despite the sacrifices that writing entails, I want my daughter to have this blessing too.

Educating Congregations

This week, I will attend a committee meeting about adult education in our congregation.

I'm a researcher by nature and by training. If someone asks me to serve in a capacity in which I have no formal background, I'm going to show up with a couple of books in hand.

I have experience in adult education, but I have no theoretical background in adult spiritual education. I set out to remedy this gap by reading Charles S. Foster's Educating Congregations: The Future of Christian Education.

Wow! What a book. Though Foster published it in 1994, his insights about our culture and the place of religion in our culture are just as applicable today as they were fifteen years ago.

One of my favorite aspects of his work is the way he synthesizes the thought of previous scholars to create a compelling case. Here is Foster's interpretation of an idea from Carter's The Culture of Disbelief.

Marginalized from the rest of the institutions of the community, religious communities and families continue to provide loving support for persons, but "no longer challenge the dominance of utilitarian values in the society at large." In a strange twist, Christian and Jewish congregations end up reinforcing the values of a hostile and fragmented world by "caring for its casualties" rather than by challenging its assumptions.

I could have told you in a roundabout, flailing way that many churches no longer challenge worldly assumptions: one obvious example occurs when churches cater to wealth and position, and nobody will sit with the weird ugly lady at the potluck. But without reading Foster's expert synthesis, I could not have described the problem succinctly.

I'm going to give some props to Catholics here. In the Catholic churches I attended as a girl, worldly assumptions were challenged very seriously all the time. I admire the strong stance of many Catholic churches against greed and consumerism and in favor of social justice for the poor and the oppressed.

Protestant churches also have their strengths, including attention to scripture and emphasis on personal relationship to God. As Foster notes, however, our corporate memory of sacred text, music, and story is fading.

I can't recap his argument in full here, but if you want a really provocative and valuable read, check out Educating Congregations.

My Tri-cornered Hat

I wore this to the grocery store yesterday, in honor of the American Revolution.

Sometimes, you've gotta do something just to make people smile.

It worked!

Paul Revere's Ride

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
Wanders and watches, with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,--
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadow brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,---
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,---
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.


--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow