Lift Up Your Hearts!

Psalm 22:21, New international Version (NIV) translation: Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

Psalm 22:21, Coverdale translation: Save me from the lion's mouth; thou hast heard me also from among the horns of the unicorns.

No doubt the NIV, product of both modern scholarship and better understanding of Hebrew, is the more accurate rendering. But there is something appealing about Coverdale's version.

And you thought unicorns were pink, purple, sweet, and girly. Clearly they were previously understood to be powerful, fierce, and dangerous.

Watch out next time you underestimate a girl.

Of course, if you've read The Rithmatist, you already know that about both girls and unicorns.

It's funny how often when we react against something we nearly always throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Having had my cultural-formation years, and well as my Christian-formation years, steeped in Protestantism of the more Reformed sort, there were two things it never occurred to me to do: (1) show any particular respect for Mary, the mother of Jesus (except briefly, at Christmastime), and (2) read the Apocrypha—those writings from "between the Testaments" that are considered to be part of Holy Scripture by Catholics but not by Protestants. (I'm simplifying the situation somewhat.)

I think the greatest reason for the first was that Catholics make so much of Mary, often—or so it appears to Protestants—making her seem more important, and more venerated, than Jesus. To avoid that error, it was safest to ignore her. Plus there's no denying a certain historical bias against women. In more than one church of my experience, certain (male) saints are highly venerated, especially St. Paul. Also St. Peter, though he's a bit tainted because he's so important to Catholics. But Mary? Almost no mention at all, and very little honor paid. In fact, we once were called on the carpet over an instrumental-only version of the beautiful and famous Bach/Gounod Ave Maria played during the service. Did I mention that it was instrumental only, i.e. no words, offensive or otherwise?

It's not surprising that I never heard anything from the Apocrypha during a church service. Church readings tend (rightly) to be from Scripture, and if you don't think a book is part of the Biblical canon, better skip it. But these books (more or less) were included in the Bibles used throughout most of Christian history, including by Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and John and Charles Wesley. Luther called them "useful and good to read," though not equal in value to the canonical books. The Anglican "39 Articles" accepts the Apocrypha "for instruction in life and manners, but not for the establishment of doctrine." What's more, they were part of the world in which Jesus lived, and one can see their echoes in the New Testament.

But none of these reasons are why I decided to—finally!—read through the Apocrypha. I was tired of being culturally illiterate. In the world of art, music, and literature, many important works reference stories from the Apocrypha. Even if we consider them completely fictitious, why do we not learn their stories the same way we learn the ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse myths? We know about Apollo and Daphne; why not about Judith and Holofernes?

 
Apollo and Daphne by Bernini, Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio

Cultural literacy aside, what did I think of the Books of the Apocrypha? Mixed. Here's the list, as they appear in my Revised Standard Version Bible (Catholic edition), followed by my reactions. (I deliberately read these books without learning anything about them, wanting to collect my own first reactions, unprejudiced.)

Tobit, Judith, The Additions to Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, and The Prayer of Manassah.

The reading started out well. It was exciting to read the stories, such as those in Tobit, Judith, and Susanna. Several of the others seem to fit in with Old Testament books, but apparently are not considered authentic enough to be included.

The Wisdom of Solomon reads very much like Solomon's writings in Proverbs. Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus) is a collection of similar proverbs, but feels as if written at a later time than Solomon's. Proverbs is one of my favorite Bible books to read, but I found Sirach, on the whole, boring—sometimes even offensive.  Many of the proverbs show wisdom, but others are strange. For instance:

Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good, and it is a woman who brings shame and disgrace.

This one's better (emphasis mine):

Speak, you who are older, for it is fitting that you should, but with acccurate knowledge, and do not interrupt the music.

Speaking of music, how about this one?

Do not associate with a woman singer, lest you be caught in her intrigues.

On the other hand, this is an interesting anticipation of the language of the Eucharist, which if you first encounter it in Jesus' words seems more shocking than it probably was for his disciples.

[Wisdom speaking] Those who eat me will hunger for more, and those who drink me will thirst for more.

Sirach is also the source of the familiar line, Let us now praise famous men. Many such revelations pop up in the Apocrypha: "Oh, so that's where that came from!"

The biggest disappointment was the Maccabee books, not only because they are much like my least favorite parts of the Old Testament—war and more war—but mostly because the story of the miraculous eight-day supply of oil, which is the event celebrated at Hanukkah, is not there, where I expected it to be. Apparently that event, though it occurs in the time of the Maccabees, was not written down until much later, in the Talmud.

I very much enjoyed the between-testaments "feel" of the books, particularly in the ones that are not just additions to Old Testament books. You can see how Jewish thought is evolving, in particular to include belief in resurrection and life after death, and in the Messiah whose coming was fully anticipated to bring military triumph to the Jewish people.

1 Esdras reads like normal Old Testament history, but 2 Esdras is just plain weird. If you enjoy Revelation, you'll love 2 Esdras.

My verdict on the Apocrypha? I'd say Luther was right. It is "good to read," though not as infallible Scripture. It is at least as interesting, helpful, and important as the history, wisdom, and stories we read from other sources without thinking twice about it.

I see no reason why the books of Apocrypha, honored in religion and culture for most of their history, should in modern times be in such disfavor. I won't be reading them annually the way I do the Old and New Testaments, but I'm glad I finally made their acquaintance.

What's next?  I'll begin my yearly cycle again when Advent comes, but in the meantime, since I just finished reading C. S. Lewis's book, Reflections on the Psalms, I think I'll run through the Psalter. For this purpose I'll step briefly away from the Revised Standard Version and pick up my 1928 Book of Common Prayer, which retains the Coverdale translation of the Psalms. I think I'm still reacting to my two years with The Message. After this, I'll revert to the more middle-of-the-road RSV. Lewis says,

Even of the old translators he [Coverdale] is by no means the most accurate; and of course a sound modern scholar has more Hebrew in his little finger than poor Coverdale had in his whole body. But in beauty, in poetry, he, and St. Jerome, the great Latin translator, are beyond all whom I know.

What a pity we can't get both modern scholarship and beauty!

When it comes to travel, I'm a huge fan of Rick Steves. Not of his politics, but if you avoid his more informal, off-the-cuff broadcasts, such as the ones you'll find on Facebook, you can mostly avoid that; his shows and guidebooks have the advantage of better editing. We've found his products enormously helpful in planning a visit to an unfamiliar city, from finding hotels to organizing our days to learning about the sites and sights we are seeing.

That said, we differ from Rick on sightseeing almost as much as on politics. If he says a museum visit will take an hour, we know to count on three. And we are simply not the least interested in the nighlife of a city, which he finds vital and stimulating. Neither his television show nor his guidebook mentions our great discovery about visiting Rome: Do as much as you can in the morning. (More on that in another post.)

Then there's people-watching. Apparently that's one of Rick Steves' favorite activities, as he frequently mentions it as a highlight of a trip. I've never seen the attraction, so I made a point one night, while enjoying gelato in the little shop down the street from our hotel, to try the exercise.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't remain focussed.

I'd start out taking notice of the people around me: the man carrying his crying child, no doubt exhaused from a day of sightseeing; the fashionably-dressed women accompanied by scruffy men; the customers who thought a single cigar worth the €20 price tag. I noticed with appreciation a woman whose grey purse exactly matched her grey suit—I've never in my life bought a purse to match an outfit. Then I noticed another woman whose bright orange purse exactly matched her bright orange outfit ... and my mind was off down a rabbit hole.

That purse can't be useful with very many colors. Does the woman wear nothing but orange? Does she have a purse for every dress she owns? I can barely handle three: something I need is inevitably back home in another bag. And I cringe at the cost every time I need to replace a worn-out purse; I can't imagine spending money on one that is useful solely for one outfit. She doesn't look wealthy. Then again, what does "wealthy" look like; how can I presume to judge her financial situation? How, for that matter, can I presume to judge her spending priorities? Why am I staring at her anyway? Seems downright rude to me.

Reluctantly, I hauled myself back to the nightlife around me, but soon my internal voice (a.k.a. Li'l Writer Guy) took over again. After about twenty minutes of such struggles, I gave up on people-watching.

Perhaps it's a sport for extroverts, who apparently do not engage in this constant internal dialogue. (I can't imagine that, but I'm told it's true.) At any rate, I found the exercise moderately interesting, but nearly as exhausting as a three-hour museum experience.

Last Sunday, our church celebrated the Feast of Michael and All Angels.  Also known, it turns out, as Michaelmas, a term I had only known thanks to a murder mystery in which "Michaelmas daisies" are featured.

The sermon included a short dissertation on the difference between actual angels and our popular conception of those beings, which reminded me of the observations we made during eight days of bingeing on Italian art while visiting Rome.

Biblical angels apparently feel the need to begin their encounters with humans by words like "Fear not."  I'm guessing it's a pretty overwhelming encounter.

Angels in art?  All too often they look as if they are about to announce, "Aren't I adorable?"

Promising, practical ... and, as with so many applications of massive data collection and analysis, maybe a little perturbing. This post is primarily for the materials scientist in the family, but it should be interesting to anyone.

Scientists at MIT and Berkeley, using Artificial Intelligence algorithms to pore over abstracts from papers related to materials science, have successfully predicted scientific discoveries.

Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory used an algorithm called Word2Vec sift through scientific papers for connections humans had missed. Their algorithm then spit out predictions for possible thermoelectric materials. ... The algorithm didn’t know the definition of thermoelectric, though. It received no training in materials science. Using only word associations, the algorithm was able to provide candidates for future thermoelectric materials.

Using just the words found in scientific abstracts, the algorithm was able to understand concepts such as the periodic table and the chemical structure of molecules. The algorithm linked words that were found close together, creating vectors of related words that helped define concepts. In some cases, words were linked to thermoelectric concepts but had never been written about as thermoelectric in any abstract they surveyed. This gap in knowledge is hard to catch with a human eye, but easy for an algorithm to spot.

In one experiment, researchers analyzed only papers published before 2009 and were able to predict one of the best modern-day thermoelectric materials four years before it was discovered in 2012.

This new application of machine learning goes beyond materials science. Because it’s not trained on a specific scientific dataset, you could easily apply it to other disciplines, retraining it on literature of whatever subject you wanted.

Here's an article from MIT that's a bit more technical.

MIT and Berkeley may be doing this particular research, but anyone want to guess where the Word2vec algorithm was developed?

Google.

I posted the following back in 2011, and its message is just as vital today. Unfortunately, the link to the Occasional CEO article no longer works. I'm hoping that Eric, who occasionally stops by here, will provide the correct information—at which point I'll fix the link.

Educators, please don't miss this post on innovation from the Occasional CEO.

Children in America used to want to become cowboys and Indians, doctors and firemen, astronauts and acrobats. Now they want to become entrepreneurs and innovators. They are told they must change the world, often before they enter it.

But 90% of the population should not become innovators.

It’s not because they can’t do it well, though that’s possible too. It’s just that innovation can cause great damage to the things we love. To the guy making the fries at McDonalds or the pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks: Don’t innovate. To the person building the next lot of iPhones from which I’ll be purchasing one: Please don’t innovate. To my tax accountant: Do Not innovate. The mechanic fixing my car. The pilot flying my plane. To the fine people at Apple: For goodness sake, stop sending me updates and new operating systems. I hate em. Just when I get everything the way I like, you innovate me into something that costs me two hours at the Apple Bar. Where, incidentally, I want zero innovation from your hip kids in blue shirts. Just follow the FAQs and fix my iPad.

When we complain that schools are not teaching our kids to innovate, I say: Bravo! People who can innovate will always find ways to innovate, while most of the rest of us need a serious tutorial in how to follow directions. Show up on time. Do our jobs. That’s not something that comes naturally for many human beings.

There’s nothing less intelligent or inferior about people who practice consistency. Consistency takes extraordinary talent, just like innovation. ... We have made innovation glamorous and consistency somehow mundane and less worthwhile. That’s our fault, not the fault of talented people whose consistency, attention to order, willingness to show up all the time and insistence on a little good ol' tradition improves our lives.

Here endeth the lesson; the following is my editorial comment:

Children do not need to be taught to be innovators and inventors. They need to be taught the facts and skills that will become materials and the tools with which they can innovate, practice consistency, or both. Then they need freedom and time and opportunities to learn to use those tools effectively.

I can hardly regret having escaped the appalling waste of time and spirit which would have been involved in reading the war news or taking more than an artificial and formal part in conversations about the war. To read without military knowledge or good maps accounts of fighting which were distorted before they reached the Divisional general and further distorted before they left him and then "written up" out of all recognition by journalists, to strive to master what will be contradicted the next day, to read and hope intensely on shaky evidence, is surely an ill use of the mind. Even in peacetime I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be known before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and the fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress had been divorced in California, a train derailed in France, and quadruplets born in New Zealand. — C. S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy

Written more than sixty years ago, even more applicable today.

I read a satirical article recently in which someone from Political Group A wrote as if he were from Political Group B. Except for the vituperation and bad language, it reminded me of a "debate" I once heard at a former church, which had been billed as a chance to hear both sides of a controversy, in a debate format. It was a good idea; there was just one problem: The underlying assumption was that most if not all of the audience agreed with one side, and in fact so did the presenter of the opposite side. In a formal debate one is expected to be able to expound and explain a position whether or not one agrees with it—but this presenter apparently had no intention of doing so; his facts and arguments seemed selected for the purpose of making it clear how stupid they were.

The result of the event? Those who already believed in the chosen position went away cheered and even more convinced they were right. Those who believed in the position that was mocked went away convinced that there was no hope for understanding or reconciliation (and this in a church!). And some of us were merely embarrassed.

I get it. We all need the encouragement that comes from talking with like-minded people. But I'm pretty sure that mocking and demonizing one's opponents is the worst form of cheerleading. It's bad for our own souls, and if it falls into the hands of those opponents, it does not change their minds but saddens and hardens them, possibly beyond recovery.

Which brings me to an enlightening article by James Clear: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds. It is well worth taking the time to read the entire article. Clear does not deal directly with the issues of anger and mockery, but illuminates a bigger problem: most human beings do not develop their views of the world based on rational argument—and we don't change our minds that way, either.

(Clear unfortunately plays fast and loose with singular vs. plural in the article. It drives me crazy. But I've let his words stand as he wrote them.)

Humans need a reasonably accurate view of the world in order to survive. If your model of reality is wildly different from the actual world, then you struggle to take effective actions each day. However, truth and accuracy are not the only things that matter to the human mind. Humans also seem to have a deep desire to belong. ... Understanding the truth of a situation is important, but so is remaining part of a tribe. While these two desires often work well together, they occasionally come into conflict. ... We don't always believe things because they are correct. Sometimes we believe things because they make us look good to the people we care about.

Parents, if your child has already become dependent on a peer group, don't be surprised to find that he is deaf and blind to all the facts and logic you throw at him.

Social media, which ought to be a great place for the lively interchange of ideas, is perhaps the worst, because any attempt to move away from the consensus of one's Facebook friends is likely to be immediately called out and derided. We may be a long way from the Medieval Church, but excommunication is still a devastating threat.

If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties. You can’t expect someone to change their mind if you take away their community too. You have to give them somewhere to go. Nobody wants their worldview torn apart if loneliness is the outcome. The way to change people’s minds is to become friends with them, to integrate them into your tribe, to bring them into your circle. Now, they can change their beliefs without the risk of being abandoned socially.

The British philosopher Alain de Botton suggests that we simply share meals with those who disagree with us:

“Sitting down at a table with a group of strangers has the incomparable and odd benefit of making it a little more difficult to hate them with impunity. Prejudice and ethnic strife feed off abstraction. However, the proximity required by a meal – something about handing dishes around, unfurling napkins at the same moment, even asking a stranger to pass the salt – disrupts our ability to cling to the belief that the outsiders who wear unusual clothes and speak in distinctive accents deserve to be sent home or assaulted. For all the large-scale political solutions which have been proposed to salve ethnic conflict, there are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force them to eat supper together.”

I'm sure it's no coincidence that Jesus set up the meeting together of his disciples, his Church—which would mix together people of great differences in race and religious background, social class and culture—to center around a meal.

Another reason friendship is the best vehicle for exchanging ideas is that we are more likely to be convinced by someone with whom we already have much in common.

If someone you know, like, and trust believes a radical idea, you are more likely to give it merit, weight, or consideration. You already agree with them in most areas of life. Maybe you should change your mind on this one too. But if someone wildly different than you proposes the same radical idea, well, it's easy to dismiss them as a crackpot.

This is a good reminder to people like me, who like to broadcast information and arguments via Facebook or blogs:

If you divide [a spectrum of belief] into 10 units and you find yourself at Position 7, then there is little sense in trying to convince someone at Position 1. The gap is too wide. When you're at Position 7, your time is better spent connecting with people who are at Positions 6 and 8, gradually pulling them in your direction.

Here's an argument that hits in the gold for a book-loving introvert:

Any idea that is sufficiently different from your current worldview will feel threatening. And the best place to ponder a threatening idea is in a non-threatening environment. As a result, books are often a better vehicle for transforming beliefs than conversations or debates.

In conversation, people have to carefully consider their status and appearance. They want to save face and avoid looking stupid. When confronted with an uncomfortable set of facts, the tendency is often to double down on their current position rather than publicly admit to being wrong. Books resolve this tension. With a book, the conversation takes place inside someone's head and without the risk of being judged by others. It's easier to be open-minded when you aren't feeling defensive. Arguments are like a full frontal attack on a person's identity. Reading a book is like slipping the seed of an idea into a person's brain and letting it grow on their own terms.

I'd be with him 100% here—except that so many people these days simply don't read books. I wish Clear had addressed a far more effective, even insidious, way people are now being induced to change their beliefs. The seeds planted by music and the visual media slip in far more easily and take root much more deeply than those planted by logical arguments in books. Certain books of fiction do that well for me, but as I said, few people read. The movie version of The Lord of the Rings has affected far more people's beliefs than the book (the worldviews are not the same)—and the influence of Star Wars is several orders of magnitude greater still.

Finally, Clear makes the much-needed point that bad ideas and false stories persist because people continue to talk about them.

Silence is death for any idea. An idea that is never spoken or written down dies with the person who conceived it. Ideas can only be remembered when they are repeated. They can only be believed when they are repeated.

And how are bad ideas most often repeated? When we complain about them!

Before you can criticize an idea, you have to reference that idea. You end up repeating the ideas you’re hoping people will forget—but, of course, people can’t forget them because you keep talking about them. The more you repeat a bad idea, the more likely people are to believe it. ... Each time you attack a bad idea, you are feeding the very monster you are trying to destroy.

Fortunately, there's a solution, albeit one that is more difficult to implement.

Your time is better spent championing good ideas than tearing down bad ones. Don't waste time explaining why bad ideas are bad. You are simply fanning the flame of ignorance and stupidity. ... Feed the good ideas and let bad ideas die of starvation.

Of course, there's still a place for correcting misinformation. (Emphasis mine)

Let me be clear. I'm not saying it's never useful to point out an error or criticize a bad idea. But you have to ask yourself, “What is the goal?” ...

When we are in the moment, we can easily forget that the goal is to connect with the other side, collaborate with them, befriend them, and integrate them into our tribe. We are so caught up in winning that we forget about connecting. It's easy to spend your energy labeling people rather than working with them.

If our goal is not "to connect with the other side, collaborate with them, befriend them, and integrate them into our tribe," what business is it of ours to try to correct them?

I never fail to get a kick out of the way my mind has a mind of its own. There are things I know that I don't know I know, tucked away in the depths of those "little grey cells," waiting to be called forth, or more likely, to bubble up at random times, unbidden.

For example, there was the time I saw an interesting-looking butterfly flitting around the garden, and into my mind popped, "It's a gulf fritillary." I had no idea I knew what a gulf fritillary butterfly was, but I know I'd seen the identification before, having quite long ago made a book about butterflies for our grandchildren. It was there in my mind, somewhere, even though I could not have voluntarily recalled that information.

Then there was this, quite recently: I had just finished reading C. S. Lewis's Surprised by Joy, and when my eyes passed over the title of the book on our kitchen counter, my mind filled in, "Impatient as the wind." After a moment's wonder, I realized that I was quoting a poem, and my next thought—again unbidden—was, "It's probably Wordsworth." Which, I later confirmed, it is. I have no idea from what depths that knowledge was dredged, nor why, at this particular time and place, it came to me.

Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom
But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—
But how could I forget thee?—Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

I had been looking at the book and its title multiple times a day for several days, yet never once in those previous days had the poem come to mind.

I'm reminded, also, of the time early in her mathematical education, when our younger daughter cried out in frustration when I—dutiful teacher!—asked her to show her work, instead of just writing down the answer to the problem. "I can't show my work!" she exclaimed, "There is no 'work'—there is just the answer!"

I think we all know a lot more than we think we do—not everything we learned went in one ear and out the other. The problem is not so much knowledge as retrieval. It's all the more interesting to me because one of our grandchildren appears to have this undependable retrieval system under much better control than most of us: When he learns something, he knows it and he remembers it—at least a lot better than most of us do. How does that work?

And what other fascinating facts are there, sleeping in the recesses of my brain, that I know but don't know I know until they choose to reveal themselves?

I was eleven years old when the Beatles first came to America. The cultural effect, as viewed from sixth grade, was more momentous than the Cold War. Air raid drills—filing out of the classroom at the sound of a siren, covering our heads and leaning up against our lockers—we considered a normal part of life, but the Beatles dropped like an atom bomb on our world.

Their debut on The Ed Sullivan Show left me less than impressed. I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Truthfully, I still don't. Oh, I listened to Beatles songs, I sang Beatles songs, I even almost liked Yesterday. That was the cultural water we swam in, back in the mid-60's.

My negative feelings toward their music were exacerbated by a detested art teacher. No doubt my memory does her a disservice, but I hated her looks and style of dress, especially her heavy makeup, which bordered on scary—and most of all I hated that she single-handedly dismembered, destroyed, and demolished any thought I may have had that I could ever learn to draw. Art class was torture to me, and the fact that she insisted on playing Beatles records while we worked added injury to insult. I'm sure she thought she was doing us a favor, and I suppose that for most of my classmates she was right.

Some of the boys and nearly all of the girls were stark, raving mad about the Beatles. I never saw anything like the screaming crowds and high emotions that followed them wherever they were glimpsed. It's possible that my dislike of crowds and my distrust of mob mentality had their birth right there. I always say that the 1960's have a lot to answer for.

That's the backstory.

Our choir director recently went to New York City to attend a workshop. Broadway musicals being for him a large part of both vocation and avocation, he attended several while he had the opportunity. At one of them, he recognized the man who sat down beside him: Sir Paul McCartney.

Knowing Tim, he was (outwardly) cool and calm and didn't even trouble the man for an autograph. Inwardly I can only guess.

Being faceblind, I wouldn't even have recognized the former Beatle. Besides, I'm the kind of person who can go to New York City for two weeks and never see a Broadway show, preferring to spend all that glorious time in the New York Public Library. It was thrill enough for me to run into Gary Boyd Roberts, the New England Historic Genealogical Society's genealogist who guided my first faltering steps in family history back in Boston seventeen years ago.  (For those who are wondering, I had no trouble recognizing him, because I heard him speak before I saw him.)

But had they been in Tim's position, most of my female friends in middle and high school would have fainted on the spot.

I've been looking over some of my posts from years ago, and rediscovered this inspiring short film.  Take a 16-minute break and smile today.

It's time to reprise a favorite G. K. Chesterton quote.

Sex is an instinct that produces an institution; and it is positive and not negative, noble and not base, creative and not destructive, because it produces this institution.  That institution is the family; a small state or commonwealth which has hundreds of aspects, when it is once started, that are not sexual at all.  It includes worship, justice, festivity, decoration, instruction, comradeship, repose.  Sex is the gate of that house; and romantic and imaginative people naturally like looking through a gateway.  But the house is very much larger than the gate.  There are indeed a certain number of people who like to hang about the gate and never get any further.

— G.K.'s Weekly, January 29, 1928

Item: Football player Colin Kaepernick kneels before the American flag during the National Anthem as a protest against racism in America, and kicks up a storm of protest and counter-protest. He is accused of being disrespectful to the flag and the country.

Item: Nike, the shoe company, decides to make an Independence Day-inspired line of sneakers featuring the "Betsy Ross" flag, then reneges when Kaepernick objects, saying that the flag is a symbol of racism.

Item: Another shoe company takes up the slack—and I'd say the profits, except those are apparently going to a veterans' charity—and starts producing shoes with the Betsy Ross flag design. It is cheered by those who are offended by both Nike and Kaepernick.

Has the world gone totally mad?

No one can truly know another's thoughts, but I'm pretty sure that when Mr. Kaepernick knelt during the National Anthem he was not expressing his respect for America and her flag. I'm equally confident that the manufacturer of the new shoes sees this as a way to express love for flag and country—giving no thought to the idea that the flags thereon would soon be worn on the feet and dragged through the dirt.

I care nothing for Nike (their shoes are out of my price range) and no more for Kaepernick than is required of me by my claim to be a Christian (usually less, I'm afraid—but I can't blame him for my own fault). But it was firmly impressed on me as a child that kneeling is the ultimate gesture of respect, save only for complete prostration, and that wearing the flag as an article of clothing—let alone footwear!—is disrespect beyond the pale.  I believe that attitude has the force of history behind it.

It's at this point that my inner cynic rises up and declaims, "A plague on both their houses!" How can we hope to communicate when words and symbols have inverted their meanings?

Having recently emerged from a long labor, I am again amazed at how like childbirth is the creative endeavor.

The creative endeavor in question was a new book. Not that kind of book, I hasten to assure my friends and relatives who are published authors. My speciality is Shutterfly photo books—primarily for our grandchildren—with titles like The Art of Frederic Edwin Church, The Cantons of Switzerland, and Grandma and Dad-o Visit the Gambia. But if my artistic efforts are on a small scale, they are nonetheless artistic efforts, and extraordinarily like that highest of creative works of which mankind is capable, the co-creation with God of a unique human being.

As usual, this book began with nothing but a joyful idea and a due date: I had an offer for a "free" (pay only for shipping & tax) Shutterfly book with an expiration date of June 30. At that point I had no idea what the book would be about, just that it would be. The project perked along happily in the back of my mind as I occasionally thought about possibilities and laid the groundwork. Ah, the early days, when the delivery date seems so far away! I had plenty of time, and expected an easy "pregnancy."

As happens all too often, life took some unexpected turns, some good, some bad. Complications developed.

We had planned a major trip in May and June, which always plays havoc with my projects, but in this case there were two time periods in which I thought I could count on quiet time for some intense work. During our New Hampshire visit, all of the family but me were to have gone on a four-day camping trip, leaving me alone in the house to create. Later, during the Connecticut portion of our trip, we were to be there a full week before the main event, and our plans were simple: Porter—talk with his dad, work around the house, and play board games with his sister; Linda—work on this project! Almost two weeks of very little else to do? Surely I could accomplish much!

Yeah, right. First monkey wrench? Not long before the start of the trip, Porter experienced what turned out to be an intense sciatica attack. It was a miracle he was able to lie down flat for the MRI—which showed that his spine is a ticking bomb, ready to cripple him whenever the bulge hits the sciatic nerve. Despite this, we prepared for the trip in between medical necessities, and had some unexpected company (of the best kind!); in the end he was feeling well enough to want to make the trip. I wasn't so sure, but by another miracle he managed to make the long, long drive, only stopping more frequently than usual to rest and stretch. We arrived in New Hampshire only one day later than planned, and the camping trip was the following day! At that point, I felt I needed to be wherever Porter was, especially in a camping situation. We both decided to go, and it was great fun.

But there went the first writing session.

The second one was obliterated through two factors: (1) Porter's 92-year-old father became ill, and (2) we decided to bring two of our grandchildren with us when we left New Hampshire. So that week was spent on other activities—those more important than writing and those more fun. That's "fun" in the general sense—I find the creative process immensely satisfying, and yes, fun (most of the time), but not many agree.

When finally home (though not back to normal), I realized my due date was rapidly approaching and something had to be done about it. We all know that induced labors are more intense and painful than natural labors, and so it was in this case. Soon I was in my least favorite part of the book-creating process: wading through huge piles of data, making painful decision after painful decision necessary to make it all manageable. When the pain was at its worst I was ready to give up due to frustration and exhaustion. Of course, I was then in "transition," the point where laboring women are ready to jump out of windows—or defenestrate their husbands.

On to the blissful agony of the "pushing" stage, where the labor pains finally make obvious progress and the end is in sight. I had created the covers—for some reason, having the covers done makes everything else seem possible. I was on a roll. Only the necessities of life stopped me. I love this stage! The work was still tedious and painful: the process of making a photo page consists mainly in deciding what not to use, reluctantly casting aside photo after photo that just won't fit. To use another analogy, you can't make a sculpture without removing the wood or the stone, and the closer you get to the finished work, the more important and delicate each removal is. But oh the thrill as each page fell into place! Normally I'm good for nothing but sleep after nine o'clock at night. I blew past that mark, unheeding. Rarely do I work as efficiently and as effectively as I did that night, despite the lateness of the hour. Nine, ten, eleven, midnight—the hours passed and the pages slowly and steadily fell into place. It seemed nothing would stop me.

But finally, at 3:30 a.m., something did. My Shutterfly deal expired at midnight Pacific Time, and I still had four pages to go. Often, when I've barely beaten a deadline (never this late before!), once the deadline is actually past, Shutterfly will extend the offer by one more day. Not so this time, when I could have used it. By 3:30 it was clear that there was no point in pushing myself any further. I had another offer almost as good that didn't expire for another week. I went to bed at an hour very near to the time I often arise in the morning. Not since the birth of my firstborn had I worked through that much of the night.

The next day I was glad I had gone to bed, albeit for what turned out to be only a couple of hours' sleep, because there was still most of a day's worth of labor ahead of me. Of course, my sleep-deprived brain wasn't as efficient as it had been the night before! But I made it, and—after much more proofreading and editing than if I had finished the book at 2:55 the previous night—I clicked on the "Order" button and the baby was born!

And here's where the childbirth analogy breaks down. I won't actually have the book in my hands for at least a week, for one thing, and for another: with this particular book the pain is gone and the sleepless nights are done.

I chose the subject of this book for two reasons. One: I think it will bring delight to Porter's father, who could use some sunshine in his life right now. Two: since I could make it with no text, and I had plenty of appropriate photos at hand, I thought I could do the job quickly. I even thought of trying Shutterfly's feature where they take your photos and make them into a nice book for you. But I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. I have my standards, and I must tell the story myself. So be it.

On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy died. I vividly remember a television commentor remarking that 60 people had also died that day in a horrific nursing home fire. In God's eyes, he admitted, those deaths were equally important, "but we are not God."

Death is all around us, every day. Some deaths move us more than others. To some extent, that's as it should be; if your own mother's death isn't more significant to you than the death of a random woman in South Dakota, there's something wrong with either you or your mother. I get that.

What I don't get is what moves the general media, and thus (sadly) the general population, to chose to highlight, amplify, and honor certain deaths for which most people have no personal connection. One child dies in a hurricane, and it's played over and over on the news. More than a dozen children die weekly in auto accidents, and rarely get airplay. Workplace or school shootings arouse great fear and anger, but gang-related violence is mostly ignored. The death of Travon Martin brought intense media attention from all over the world to Central Florida; the concurrent brutal death-and-burning of two young men on a bike trail nearby was all but ignored even by local media.

And then there are ostensibly minor events—like the Sandy Hook shooting, and Orlando's Pulse nightclub attack—which have taken on iconic status, with commemorations that amount to the feast days of some American secular religion.

I do understand that. Human nature, even that of hard-boiled atheists, needs a form of religion, and anything at all can spring into the vacuum created when more traditional forms of faith are abandoned. What I don't understand is why churches buy into it. I'm not even sure why churches celebrate Mother's Day, Veteran's Day, and other secular holidays—much less Super Bowl Sunday, which, no kidding, has been honored at some churches I've been in.

This is no commentary on what my own particular church does or does not do. I am on vacation in a place where the church celebrations are Pentecost and Trinity Sunday; I can't speak for what's going on back home. But if it's like previous years, churches all over Orlando will be talking about the Pulse attack, and tolling their bells 49 times. I don't think that's necessary, or even important. But for those churches who do choose to join in the secular remembrance, I have one plea:

Ring your bell 50 times.

You will hear again and again that 49 people died in the Pulse shooting. But the true number is 50. Any church calling itself by the Name of Christ must acknowledge that the 50th death—that of the attacker—is just as important, and just as tragic, as the other 49. As I wrote a year ago,

The natural way is not the Christian way. It is very, very clear that we are to love our enemies, which at the very least means mourning the violent, if necessary, death of this angry and unstable young man. He, as much as any of the other victims of this tragedy, was someone's son, someone's brother, someone's father, a human being, created in the image of God—no matter how distorted that image had become.

As that commentator acknowledged more than 50 years ago, we are not God. But if we are Christians, we should try to be more like him, and less like the world.