Lift Up Your Hearts!

The Shadow Lamp by Stephen R. Lawhead (Thomas Nelson, 2013)

I'd been looking forward to the next installment of Lawhead's Bright Empires series since I finished #3, The Spirit Well.  (#1 is The Skin Map and #2 The Bone House.)  Fortunately, our library is generally quite responsive to suggestions for new books to acquire, and I recently finished #4, The Shadow Lamp.  Glad to return to the adventures of the characters and to Lawhead's captivating, if disorienting, world, I was alas somewhat disappointed by this installment.  The first three books I found increasingly interesting and well-written, but this one did not hold together as well.  There are so many characters now that even 371 pages provide only snapshots where I was hoping for a movie.

What's more, as the story nears its climax, its Christian foundations have become more explicit.  This is hard to articulate, as it's more an impression than something rational, but I found it more effective in the background.  Unlike many Christian writers, certainly most modern ones, Lawhead does a good job of making it integral to the story rather than preachy.  But that sort of thing is so very hard to do well.  It's akin to the problem of portraying a truly good person; it was C.S. Lewis who expressed the problem best when he acclaimed George MacDonald all but unique as a writer whose good characters are believable and his villains "stagey," instead of the other way around (preface to George MacDonald:  An Anthology).  What Lewis called the "Kappa element" in a story (very roughly, the atmosphere, flavor, or tone that infuses the tale) is what makes it convincing for me, as in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which is shot through from beginning to end with Christian truth that never comes explicitly to the foreground.  The Shadow Lamp loses something by making it so obvious.

All that aside, it was good to become reacquainted with the characters and a truly fascinating and imaginative story, and I'm hoping for better in the final book, The Fatal Tree, due to be released in September.  If you're interested in the stories, by the way, and haven't yet begun the series, I recommend waiting for the last book to be released, so as to be able to read them in quick succession.  It's too complicated a tale to let many months go by between books.

Station X: Decoding Nazi Secrets by Michael Smith (TV Books, 1999)

Writers like Michael Pollan, John McPhee, and Rowan Jacobsen can take the oddest subjects and weave them into a riveting story.  Would that any of them had written Station X!  Michael Smith has a riveting story:  the long-kept secret of the codebreakers that revealed so much of Axis strategy and tactics during World War II.  The facts themselves kept me reading the book, but I'd have finished it in a day if it had been written as I'm sure it could be.  Without a doubt it's a story worth knowing, and you can get a taste of it from Wikipedia.

I had heard, of course, that the British had cracked the Germans' supposedly uncrackable Enigma Machine in WWII, a fact that only became known much later—the techniques were still being used in the Cold War—leaving participants from the lowest level to Winston Churchill unable to talk about what they did during the war.  Here are a few things I didn't know:

• The success was not due to a "big break" that solved the problem once for all, but to many little breaks that added up and to much tedious work—work and breaks that needed to be repeated and achieved every day.  In addition to serious mathematics, cracking the codes required intuition, imagination, guesswork, and persistence.  Old-fashioned, flesh-and-blood spying played a significant role, and good ol' human mistakes (such as starting a message with the very recognizable "Heil Hitler!") were essential.

Success depended very largely on German operators ignoring the rules.  "We could usually break things when we identified the human error and that was what it was all about," said Mavis Lever.  "If the Germans had kept to the rule book and done it properly, as they were instructed to do, then of course we wouldn't have been able to get it out."

Among his many achievements, Tiltman had helped to crack the cipher used by the Japanese naval attaché in Berlin, assisted by the latter's tendency to begin each of his reports with the phrase:  "I have the honor to report to your excellency that..."

• Cracking the codes began during World War I.
• The Poles made the first critical break, providing both irony and concern later, during the Cold War.
• Bletchley Park workers were a motley crew of brilliant and eccentric folks.  The initial group consisted mainly of liberal arts professors, on the grounds that codebreaking primarily required language skills.  When mathematicians were brought in they and their work were viewed with suspicion:  what could they possibly contribute?
• Many of the Bletchley Park appointments were made by word of mouth, someone knowing someone else who might be helpful.  But some recruitment strategies cast a wider net:  They arranged for the Daily Telegraph to hold a timed crossword puzzle contest for any reader who was interested.  Those who solved the puzzle in under 12 minutes were then secretly invited for an interview for Bletchley Park.
• The Bletchley Park group was largely non-military, and functioned best (or functioned at all) because they were not treated as military personnel.  There's an important place for military discipline, structure, drill, and authority, but not when the most essential element of your efforts is creativity.  The military was at first suspicious of these peculiar civilians, and did not think their work could have any value.

There was also to be a number of custom-built brick blocks to house the necessary expansion.  But there was still no sign of the manpower needed to fill them.  The armed forces refused to let fit, young recruits join intelligence.  They were needed to fight the war.

At the beginning of April 1940, shortly before the invasion of Normandy, the OIC [Operational Intelligence Center] ignored Hinsley's report, derived purely from [decoded] traffic analysis, of an unusual build-up of German naval activity in the Baltic.  As a result, the British were caught completely unawares by the German occupation of Norway.

Two months later, Hinsley reported that a number of German warships were about to break out of the Baltic.  Again he was ignored.  It was to lead to one of the Royal Navy's worst disasters of the Second World War, the sinking of the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious.

"For about a fortnight beforehand,  I pretty well rang the OIC once or twice a day and said:  'Look you ought surely to pass a signal out on this.  Can you possibly pass a signal out?,'" Hinsley said. ""They showed some interest.  But were not sufficiently convinced to send a warning to the Home Fleet."

On June 7, 1940, the Glorious and her two escort destroyers were spotted by a German flotilla....

On that day more than ever, I was saying to the duty officer: "For goodness sakes, can't you just persuade them to send an alert or even 'It may be the case'?" He said:  "I can't because first of all my traffic analysis group doesn't agree with your interpretation.  It doesn't see the point, doesn't see there's any evidence, and secondly my boss, the chief of the OIC, will not go to the operational chaps and say send this kind of signal out on your kind of information."

The next day HMS Glorious and her two escort destroyers ... were sunk with the loss of 1500 men.

American Bill Bundy, a law student from Harvard, recalled:

I don't expect ever to work in a group of people that was more thoroughly dedicated and with a range of skills, insight, and imagination that the Bletchley people had....  There were to mathematicians.  There were those very competent people who ran the mechanics of the thing.  It was an extraordinary group, and that was true right across the board in [Bletchley Park], whatever system of selection they used, and I've heard lots of narratives and lots of colorful stories about it, the result was an extraordinary group of people in an extraordinary organization.

Their whole structure was one where you might readily find a major working under a lieutenant or under a civilian, somewhat younger.  Whoever was in charge was the person who had been judged to be more effective at doing it.  It was meritocracy in spades and without regard to where you came from or whether you were a man or a woman, although I think we had a very large majority of men in the senior positions.  But we had absolutely superb women in a lot of key roles.  It was very much integrated in that sense and every other, and it was the only way to do it really.  The old remark attributed to Churchill, "I told you to leave no stone unturned, but I didn't expect you to take me literally," certainly did describe the varied and in some cases rather raffish British civilian contingent.

• Given the enormous value of Bletchley Park to the war effort, it is appropriate to note that much credit for Hitler's defeat goes to the "inferior, defective" people he was trying to eliminate:  not only were a number of Jews on team, but Alan Turing, father of artificial intelligence and a crucial part of the BP code-breaking efforts, was a homosexual who was later stripped of his security clearance and subjected to "chemical castration."
• Another member of the team (of no particular concern to Hitler that I know of) was Peter Hilton, the math professor who was at the University of Central Florida when Janet was, and whose classes never fit into her schedule, despite efforts to make that happen.
• Colossus, one of the machines developed for the code-breaking work, was the world's first programmable electronic computer.  "It was not a universal computer, the universal machine having been spec-ed out in mathematical terms by Turing after the war," [Donald Michie] said.  "But it was semi-programmable, it had some of the properties of a universal computer, and it was a first in terms of high-speed electronics by a very wide margin."
• The British managed to turn every German spy they caught in Britain into a double agent.  I find that remarkable.
• Eventually, the military began to respect and profit from the information provided by the code crackers.  D-Day would have gone quite differently without the Bletchley Park work.  (emphasis mine)

There were gaps in the information provided by Ultra [for D-Day].  The codebreakers had been unable to provide a precise location for 32nd Panzerdivision which was defending the vital British objective of Caen and held up Montgomery's advance for more than a month. l They had also missed the presence of a German infantry division defending Omaha Beach.  But these were the only blank spaces in an otherwise complete and detailed picture of the German order of battle.

• Unfortunately, they then got careless, believing the German cause to be lost long before Hitler thought so.

The evidence about what turned out to be the Battle of the Bulge began in September 1944 and went on until December 16 when the attack happened.  If anybody had ever thought of putting all the bits of information together they would surely have come to the conclusion that there was going to be an attack.

• The codebreakers did better work once they knew that their puzzle-solving was saving lives and making a difference in the war effort.  But there was a downside, too.

Years later, Mavis Lever took her son to see the film Sink the Bismarck.

I saw it go down and suddenly I really did feel quite sick.  I put my head down and my son said to me after a while:  "It's all right, Mummy, it's gone down." He didn't know.  But I was thinking how awful it was that one's breaking of a message could send so many people to the bottom.  But that was war and that was the way we had to play it.  If we thought about it too much we should never have been able to cope.

• Winston Churchill took a lot of heat over his supposed decision to allow the horrific bombing of the town of Coventry rather than let the Germans guess their codes had been broken.  While it's true they did go to extraordinary lengths to keep the codebreaking success a secret, such as never using the information directly unless they could engineer a way to make it plausibly obtained through other means, the problem at Coventry was of a different nature.

In their communications, the Germans used code names (covernames) that began with the same letters as the British towns they were supposed to represent.

[T]he failure to recognize one of these covernames was to embroil the Bletchley Park codebreakers in the controversy as to whether or not Churchill allowed the devastating bombing raid on Coventry in mid-November 1940 to go ahead rather than risk letting the Germans know that Enigma had been broken.

However, it was believed by the Air Ministry that the actual target was elsewhere.

It was only later that anyone realized that the use of the previously unknown codeword Korn, the German word for corn ... was in fact the covername for Coventry, which the Germans spelt with a K.  While with hindsight the Air Ministry's dismissal of Coventry as a potential target is evidence of the poor coordination of intelligence within Whitehall at the time, it was certainly not ignored to protect the codebreakers' secret.

Because the techniques were still an active part of the Cold War, the Official Secrets Act kept the truth hidden for years, despite the damage to Churchill's reputation.

• Some of the consequences of the post-war secrecy were more amusing:

The extent of the British codebreakers' wartime capabilities was so fantastic, that although the Germans were warned by their own experts that it was possible, they refused to believe it.

After the war, Alan Turing and Tommy Flowers travelled to Germany to find out if there was anything that the victorious Allies could learn from the Nazi technological research programs.  When one of the Germans they met showed them a Lorenz cipher machine, they had to pretend they did not know what it was, Flowers recalled.

"This chap then explained how it worked and said didn't we think it was a marvelous machine and we all said yes.  'But nevertheless,' he told us in an incredulous voice, 'Our codes people said the enemy could break these messages in two years." I asked him if he had changed the machine after two years.  'Oh no,' he said.  'Our factories were so disorganized by the bombing that we weren't able to make anmother machine.  But it was safe, absolutely safe.'  That was quite a moment," Flowers said,  "It was a great temptation to turn to Turing and wink."

Station X may not be the riveting book it could have been, but the story is too good to miss.

Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women by Carolyn Custis James (Zondervan, 2011)

I've reviewed three of Carolyn Custis James' books before (When Life and Beliefs Collide, The Gospel of Ruth, and Lost Women of the Bible); this is her most recent and I'm happy to say our library added it to their shelves at my request.  I'm not even going to attempt to rank the four, but just say that Carolyn James isn't losing any steam.  She continues fleshing out her discoveries concerning a Biblical view of the role of women, not only in the church but in all creation.  This time her vision was inspired and enhanced by her reading of Half the Sky (Kristof/WuDunn).

As usual, and despite her own assurances to the contrary, I think James underestimates both the difficulty and the importance of full-time, long-term motherhood, and is in danger of heaping still more burden and guilt on those who are already struggling.  I truly get her position that  "marriage and babies" is an insufficient—downright paltry—vision of God's overall plan for his daughters, implying that the young, the old, and those without husbands or incapable of bearing children are second-class citizens in God's Kingdom.  However, I believe that a vision of childrearing as only a short interlude in one's life is also deficient, and that James misses important contributions of those who have committed to large families (now defined as more than two children), childrearing as full-time work, and homeschooling.  She also appears not to understand how difficult and intellectually challenging it is to do well in such a profession, and how little such people are respected by society (including most churches). 

But that is not James' battle, and one cannot cover all bases in every book.  What she does cover, she handles superbly.

As usual, here are a few random quotations, to give you a feel for Half the Church, and to remind my future self of what's inside.

Literary experts tell us every good story has conflict. ... In fact without conflict a story has no plot. ... Which made me wonder, if God is the master storyteller—the creator of story—and if conflict makes the story, is there conflict before Genesis 3?  ...  If humanity had never fallen into sin, would we be living in a plotless story now?  For that matter, will heaven be plotless?  Is conflict only and always destructive and the result of fallenness?  Or is there a healthy, necessary, constructive variety of conflict that creates a gripping plot and is designed to make God's image bearers flourish and grow?  (pp. 66-67)

Conflict brings out the leader in us, transforms our lives from the mundane to the cosmic, and by God's grace forges us into more compassionate, selfless leaders.  Conflict in our stories isn't in the way; it is the way—to becoming better leaders, better image bearers, to creating a better story—to the fulfillment of the Story.  (p. 97)

I saw a billboard the other day that simply said, "God is not angry."  I get the point:  it was put up by a church wanting to emphasize God's grace to a hurting world, and no doubt frustrated by those who view tragedies as God's punishment.  But it's missing so much.  My immediate reaction?  "What?  God looks on child abuse and sex trafficking and mass murder and is not angry?  What kind of a god is that?"

People speak of the "angry God of the Old Testament" without considering why he is angry.  Yet anyone reading the Old Testament prophets who speak for him will quickly discover that God is outraged by injustice—when the powerful prevail over the powerless and the privileged over the disadvantaged, when his image bearers are, in any way, dishonored.  (p. 163)

From the beginning of my ministry, I made a conscious decision not to take a public position on the ordination of women.  My focus has been on calling women to go deeper in their relationship with God (instead of trying to subsist spiritually on a light theological diet)/.  My work centers on women in Scripture who are strong female role models of courageous gospel living, and on casting a vision for twenty-dirst-century women and girls that extends from the cradle to the grave, irrespective of their preferred debate camp.  We are God's image bearers, ezer-warriors for his gracious kingdom, and full-fledged members of the Blessed Alliance.

From what I can see, women and girls are a rich and largely untapped goldmine—a powerhouse of blessing, and gifts for the church, of strength and wisdom for our brothers, and of enormous good for the world. ... Taking sides in the debate seemed an unnecessary distraction that would take me off mission and cost me half my audience—something I am unwilling to do.  (pp. 159-160)

Our strengths and gifts are not worth much if we allow them to lie dormant.  To be honest, it's actually dangerous to think God created us to lean on others.  If we do not hone our gifts and live on the ready instead of in a default mode of looking to others, in a crisis or under pressure we are at a loss to use our voices, make decisions, stand our ground, or take the initiative that our circumstances demand.  This isn't theory, for even as I write these words I know several women who at this very moment are overwhelmed because the person they have always depended on is gone or unable to take care of things.  (pp. 94-95)

The Proverbs 31 woman is introduced as a "woman hayil"—the same Hebrew word used for Boaz and signifies "strength" and "power" like that of an "elite warrior similar to the hero of the Homeric epic."  The meaning, however, gets lost in translation, for whenever hayil applies to a woman in the Bible, translators have opted for softer English words ("virtuous," "excellent," "capable," or "noble character").  These words don't begin to do justice to the meaning.  (p. 129)

James is at her best when talking about what she calls the Blessed Alliance:  men and women, the two halves of God's Image on earth, working together, side by side, to accomplish God's purposes, each part being essential to healthy and effective enterprises.  In marriage, yes, but ever so much more than that:  indeed, in everything.  Without both male and female we cannot possibly reflect God's image and fulfill his vision.

God designed the world to stand on two load-bearing walls.  The first load bearing wall is God's relationship with his image bearers.  Without this vital relationship, we are cut off from our life supply—homeless, stranded souls in the universe, left to guess at who we are and why we are here.  The second load-bearing wall is the Blessed Alliance between male and female.  According to Genesis, male/female relationships aren't simply necessary to perpetuate the human race and make life pleasurable and interesting.

Male/female relationships are strategic.  God laid out his game plan in Genesis, and the team he assembled to do the job was male and female.  men and women working together actually predates men working with men and women working with women.  It would be one thing if God confined this male/female team to home and family and then mapped out the remaining territory into separate spheres for men and for women.  But he didn't do that.  Their mission—together—is to rule and subdue the whole earth on his behalf.  Men and women together.  Our relationships with God and with each other are the load-bearing walls of God's original design.

This foundational truth elevates the seriousness of the Blessed Alliance well beyond men "making room" for women and trying to tweak the system here and there to keep us happy.  Much deeper kingdom issues are at stake than resolving debates over disputed passages, deciding who's in charge, resolving conflict, defining his and her roles, and dividing the proverbial pie so everyone gets their fair share.  God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone." This statement means our brothers cannot be the men God created them to be or do the job God is calling them to do without their sisters.  Together, we are God's preferred method of getting things done in the world.  He created his image bearers male and female, blessed them, and spread before them the global mandate to build his kingdom.  (pp. 138-139)

The Enemy's first assault was beyond brilliant and wildly successful.  With a single temptation—firing one shot—the Enemy targeted both load-bearing walls.  It was a direct hit.  One lethal blow brought down the twin towers of God's kingdom strategy.  (p. 140)

I include the following quote strictly for my wonderful, spelling-challenged daughter, who repeatedly writes "unphased" when she means "unfazed."  You are in good company:  it happens to excellent writers with professional editors, too.

Ruling and subduing remind us of our noble calling to care for all creation, but somehow we remain unphased. (p. 52)

And just so I can end on something relevant to the book itself—indeed, it sums up Half the Church quite well:

We must not forget that it is still "not good for the man to be alone."  Men are impoverished and hampered in fulfilling their God-given callings without the honest, full collaboration of their ezer-sisters.  Kingdom opportunities are missed and suffering spreads because not everyone is on high alert or accepts responsibility for what is happening in our world.  It is not godly to hold back our gifts and to know less (or pretend we know less) so that men can lead.  When women bring less of themselves to the task at hand, men are overburdened and we squander our gifts.  (p. 164)

Nunsense was written in 1985, but neither of us had seen it until Sunday.  We went to the performance at Sanford's Wayne Densch Performing Arts Center because our friend Linda was the music director for the show.  As it turned out, we knew one of the main cast members, too—a friend of Heather's from high school.  She played Sister Hubert and did a fantastic job.  Everyone did a great job, actually, though some had better enunciation than others, so we didn't always get the jokes because we didn't catch all the words.

A few of the jokes were less than family-friendy, but they'd probably go over the heads of anyone who shouldn't hear them, and compared with much of what can be seen today, the show is fitting for—well, for a convent!

Afterwards we had a (too) quick bite to eat at the Willow Tree Café.  German food is not normally my favorite out-to-eat meal, but this was excellent and I'd love to have an excuse to go back.

We had the Gourmet Potato Pancakes and the Sausage Sliders from this menu.  Both were worth repeating, although next time I may want to try the Reisen Bretzen.

How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson (HarperCollins, 2005)

The Idle Parent by Tom Hodgkinson (Penguin Books, 2009)

Porter recently earned his ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) certification.  Not to be outdone, I read these books to obtain my IDLE certification.  (A joke that only works if you read it out loud, I guess.)  Unlike Porter's efforts, mine required no exam, although How to Be Idle did at times test my patience.

I read the second book first, on Janet's recommendation, and I'm glad I did.  It is by far the better, as evidenced by having over 30 of my sticky notes whereas the other only has eight.  I suspect that parenthood gave Hodgkinson a little more maturity, as it does most of us.  Even though I know he's exaggerating to make a point, in How to Be Idle there's still 'way too much disdain for effort, responsibility, and moral standards, and much too much praise for smoking, excessive drinking, drug use, unlimited sex, and all-night partying.  On the plus side, he mentions Paul Verlaine twice, a poet I'd never heard of till Stephan introduced me to him.  I love to find connections like that.

From the chapter on meditation, a sentiment I can relate to:

It's hard to drift off into nowhereland when your arousal hormones are circulating wildly as a result of your rage at mobile phone users.  Fantasies of hurling their mobile phones from the train window tend to disturb the search for inner calm.

Much of what Hodgkinson praises I cannot relate to, even a "pleasure" as innocent as remaining in bed until noon.  He's not even talking about getting a good night's sleep—as one would need after another of his pleasures, staying awake till three or four in the morning—but of lolling around, simply being idle.  Even if I were a night person for whom a 4 a.m. to noon sleep felt normal, I'd be climbing the walls if I couldn't wake up, get up, and get to work!  I never did get how breakfast in bed was supposed to be a luxury.

On the other hand, this touches on one of the book's best points:  that we have—unnaturally and to our harm—separated work from life.   We focus our educational efforts too much on training our children to get a well-paying job working for someone else, when we should be teaching them how to discover what they love to do and leverage it into self-employment.  Although he quotes  G. K. Chesterton several times, Hodgkinson does not mention one of my favorite of Chesterton's ideas, though I'm sure he would agree with it:  the world does not really have too many capitalists (owners of the tools of production), but too few.

Another important point, hidden in his obsession with what I'd call slothful idleness, is how essential to the creative process are unscheduled time, daydreaming, staring into space, meandering walks to nowhere, and the like.  Yet we feel guilty for these idle times, and others feel free to interrupt them, because we're "not doing anything."

The Idle Parent retains a modicum of the prejudice against Christianity in general and Puritanism in particular (or rather, the author's misinterpretation of them), and a bit too much respect for Rousseau, Locke and others who seem to know more about theoretical children than real ones.  And he still exaggerates at times to make his point.  But there are some real gems here.

Here follows a ridiculously long list of quotations, and I won't blame you if you are put off by the quantity.  But at least half the reason for making the effort to post them here is so that I'll be able to find them again myself, so I don't apologize.  They're worth taking the time to read, really.

Paradoxically, the idle parent is a responsible parent because at the heart of idle parenting is respect for the child, trust in another human being. It is the irresponsible parent who hands the child over to various authorities for its education and care, whether these be childminders, schools, after-school clubs, sports teams, CBeebies, Habbo, Club Penguin or whatever.  [p. xxi; the last several must be something particular to the U.K.  Boy Scout-type organizations?  TV shows?]

Hodgkinson's kids do go to school, so you can see what I mean about his "exaggeration for a purpose."

Children who have too much done for them cannot do things for themselves.  Have you noticed how they expect their parents to know the precise location of all their belongings at any point?  "Where's my Tamagotchi?" the child whines.  "I can't find my socks."  Piano practice is only done if there is a parent guiding him through every step.  He needs his hand held, but we have only ourselves to blame.  [pp. 2-3]

[T]he mollycoddling and overprotection of children has created a nation of "big babies." If we are dependent and impractical ourselves, then what hope for our children?

Well there is hope, because we can learn together.  We can recapture the lost arts of domestic living.  Simple jobs like making bread, jam and preserves can be done with your kids.  Kids love kneading, stirring and licking the bowl.  Learn to look after yourself and you will teach your children to look after themselves, and before too long they will bake bread for you.  [p. 3]

Instead of using a dishwasher, the whole family should wash up after each meal.  One does the washing, one does the drying, one does the putting away.  It takes a mere fifteen minutes. ... [T]he children will learn to help and what's more, they really will make a genuine contribution.  They will be useful.  And it may help to prevent whining....  This is becaue whining in children results from their sense that they are seen as encumbrances and have nothing to offer.  Only the powerless whine.  So make them useful!  [pp. 4-3]

[I]t has become practically an instinct to spend money, rather in the same way that when in need today we find ourselves almost instinctively reaching for the mouse.  The computer, sold as a tool of emancipation, becomes difficult to live without.  There is a power cut at home, the broadband connection is lost and the result is a terrible feeling of helplessness.  We come to depend on the thing that was supposed to free us.  So with money.  [p. 5]

[Quoting Rousseau] "The mother may lavish excessive care on her child instead of neglecting him; she may make an idol of him; she may develop and increase his weakness to prevent him feeling it; she wards off every painful experience in the hope of withdrawing him from the power of nature, and fails to realize that for every trifling ill from which she preserves him the future holds in store many accidents and dangers, and that it is a cruel kindness to prolong the child's weakness when the grown man must bear fatigue.  [p. 7]

Don't hover around [your children] and ask what they want all the time.  I see mothers hovering over two-year-olds like a sycophantic French waiter, saying, "Well, maybe this flavour of juice would suit sir?  Would you like one of these?"  while the two-year-old shouts "No" and throws stuff across the room.  You are in charge, but you need to create a hierarchy without recourse to authority.  As in the old medieval city, the "common good" of the family is paramount.  Much of the strife of the modern household comes because we have a selfish Enlightenment view of individuality and freedom in our heads.  We see freedom as a matter of asserting our own selfish desire in competition with the selfish desires of others. ... But we are living together and pleasures should be shared and bread broken together. ... And we must learn to live in the world—by which I mean the world out there, the consumer society, the world of jobs and money and shopping—while remaining unvictimized by it.  [p. 9]

Hmm.  Eight quotations already and I'm still in single-digit page numbers.  This is going to take a while.

These days we create for ourselves an absurd panoply of "likes and dislikes" and call it freedom.  It's a commodification of the notion of free will. ... Children pick up on this.  They think that when they shout "I HATE pasta" they are asserting their individuality.  [p. 10]

The key is to make work into something enjoyable. ... And you have a responsibility to enjoy your work as well, or else your kids will grow up with the idea of work as simply a necessary burden.  Every moan you make will be listened to by those little ears.  "Daddy works in a job he hates in order to buy you rubbish to fill your time until the day comes when you will work in a job you hate to pay the bills and pay the mortgage." ... You must not give your child the idea that work is suffering.  That idea will only make it easier for the capitalists to exploit your offspring later.  If children are brought up with the idea that work is suffering, then they won't be surprised when they go to work one day and find the experience painful.  And that means that employers need to make little or no effort to make work joyful.  [pp. 10-11]

Another bit of mothering advice in Locke is to tell the kids off in private and praise them in public.  He notices that parents tell their kids off in public in order that they are seen by others to be firm and strict. ... [B]ut this humiliates the child.  Better to praise them in front of others.  [p. 35]

We should all stop beating ourselves up:  there is no ideal mother and the very idea of a perfect mother is a tyrannical concept used as a method of control by the people in power.  [p. 42]

Tether [children] no more, say Locke and Rousseau.  Let them run free.  Help:  I am trying to let them run free but they are self-tethered to the computer.  [p. 53]

One of the greatest nature philosophers of recent times is Masanoubu Fukuoka, author of The One-Straw Revolution, published in 1978.  This remarkable book was written after Fukuoka had spent twenty years on his small farm perfecting what he called "do-nothing farming." ... [He] does not mean that he sits around doing nothing while everything around him turns into a wilderness.  What he means is that he creates situations where nature will do the work with minimum interference from man.  Therefore he does not plough or add chemical fertilizers to the crops.  Instead he simply puts the rice straw back on the ground after harvesting and scatters chicken manure on it.  As other times he sows clover, which works as a green manure.  That's about it, but he says that with these techniques he can equal the yield of fields farmed with modern methods.  [p. 46]

I don't know if Joel Salatin has read Masanoubu Fukuoka or not, but they'd surely get along.

In a similar spirit we must stop interfering with the lives of our children.  This does not mean abandonment, any more than natural farming means that you let the brambles take over.  Neither does it mean that you don't think about what you are doing and take responsibility for it.  You also need to provide good soil for the kids to grow in, for your little seedlings.  The plethora of consumer objects and the non-stop advertising that pushes them on children is a commercial form of interfering.  Consumer objects are like chemical fertilizer:  they seem like a good idea at the time but as each year passes more and more are needed.  And children become reliant on them.   All are diversions from the natural life of the spirit, which can actually rediscover itself on the rocky shores, by the sea, on the moors, in the woodlands, in the wild places or even in the cracks between paving stones.  [p. 48]

The whole purpose of this book is to encourage you to resist the work-hard-in-isolation Puritan culture and its inventions, such as school and the full-time job, and bring back some good, old-fashioned conviviality and providential thinking, in childhood as well as adulthood. [p. 53]

The primary objection to home-schooling, always made by dullards who have not thought the matter through, is that "school provides social life."  The home educators fight back with the convincing argument that the social life they get at school is not necessarily a healthy one:  "The social life of most schools and classrooms is mean-spirited, status-oriented, competitive and snobbish."  They also point out that it's easy for parents to organize a social life for the kids:  friends come and play, learning groups are formed with other home educators in the area, and there are umpteen sport, outdoor and drama classes available.  They point out that these out-of-school relationships are based on mutual interest and emerge from choice rather than necessity.  [pp. 66-67]

Sadly, Hodgkinson here makes the same mistake I did.  While arguments such as these have silenced those who think that the purpose of socialization is to make friends and learn to get along with others, a new twist has arisen:  I first noticed it in Germany, but I've even heard it spoken here, from those who believe (often strongly) that school socialization is necessary in order that all children absorb the values of the prevailing society.  These people (and governments) are not impressed by personally-chosen relationships.

Another alternative is flexi-schooling—school is used as a resource rather than a center of confinement.  ... The most important factor in all this is probably parents' own mental attitude.  If you have respect for your child, if you are not trying to mould the child into some perfect ideal, then all options are valid.  We are not talking about a glib list of rules for you to apply in order to make your children happy.  In fact, we are not aiming for happiness; we are aiming for strength, freedom and joy in our children and in ourselves.  We're aiming for satisfaction.  [pp. 67-68]

People today spend money on cars, holidays, enormous televisions, usury charges and mobile phones but will not spend a single penny on their children's education.  Most families could save £10,000 a year at a stroke by cutting out all such luxuries.  Think about your priorities.  [pp. 72-73]

Only the hard-working and talented tend to continue with music beyond primary age.  And then unless they get really good, they might be put off for life.  Victoria [his daughter], for example, reached Grade 6 on the piano, but she never goes near one (even though we have a piano in the kitchen) because she still has no confidence.  Grade 6 seems not really very good to her (it seems like genius to me).  Schools tend to turn out adults with many skills and lots of fear.  There is a wrong-headed notion that something's not worth doing unless you're the very best at it, which leads to most of us doing nothing at all.  [pp. 107-108]

Wrestling Time:  This, though I say so myself, has been a great success.  We now do it every evening after tea.  My motivation was that the boys, in particular, seemed to have an abundance of pent-up energy, which was being expressed in unhelpful ways, such as screaming and tantrums and generally smashing things up.  But wrestling is also great fun, for kids and for Dad, and leaves Mum free to do some jobs without being hassled. lt's me against them.  The three children stand on one corner of the rug in the sitting room, with me at the other corner.  I say:  "Round One, three, two, one," and then Henry says, "Ding ding."  We then prowl around one another in the ring.  I lock arms with Arthur, making growling noises, and then hurl him into the air.  The other two jump on my back, like little monkeys trying to bring down a bear.  The game is either that I hold all three of them for ten seconds, in which case I have won that round, or they hold me down for ten seconds.  We absolutely love it.  Henry wants to do it all day:  "Daddy, can we do Wessling Time?" he asks me while I'm working.  It's just really good to holler and shout, and to watch their faces flush red with excitement.  It tires them out and I hope provides an outlet for the wild thing within.  [pp. 125-126]

[W]hen a child is in charge of some part of the household economy, such as the egg production, it means that they are actively and helpfully contributing to the household economy, which they love to do.  A burden and a hindrance no more.  They become a useful addition to the domestic labour force.  And, what is also important to the idle parent, they are learning that "getting a job" is not the only way to make money.  As I have said elsewhere in the book, I will consider my education of the children to have been a success if they end up being self-employed in some way or other.  [pp. 155-156]

If you don't want your children to spend all their time on the computer, then don't spend all your time at the computer.  Teach by example, not authority.  [p. 162]

Be careful, too, of excessive praise and blame.  Act like what they do is normal and expected when it's good.  Too often we eject a torrent of praise so hyperbolic it sounds like surprise. ... The idle parent, in contrast to the shrieking praising-and-blaming parent, should pay it cool and expect the child to be cool as well.  [p. 162]

[Jean Liedloff, author of The Continuum Concept] suggests that "children ought to be able to accompany adults wherever they go."  This, of course, is not easy with our modern working lives. So change the situation.  Are full-time jobs for both parents and high-cost nurseries the only way we can imagine to organize our lives?  It seems crazy to me.  [p. 163]

The dialectic of work=bad and life=good is one of Western society's most pernicious and controlling myths and must be smashed without delay.  Incorporate your children into your life.  Do what you want to do and let them follow. l I have never found for a moment that having children stopped me doing what I wanted to do—bar going out to the odd dinner party, and who cares about that? [p. 164]

Children are forgetting how to play.  Or they are never learning in the first place.  This is the great concern of those of us who worry about our screen-dominated age.  Over-stimulated almost from birth via the telly and the computer, children become accustomed to an intense blast of colour, sound, music and words—and to living life at one remove.  Frightened by neurotic parents who believe what they read in the papers and consider the real world to be fraught with danger, kids retreat into "safe" virtual worlds where there is no knee-grazing, no frozen water, no trees, no wood, no nails.  Just a screen and a mouse and splendid isolation.  Is this our vision of the future?

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War by Joe Bageant (Crown, 2007)

It is good for me occasionally to read something written by someone I disagree with.  After all, I frequently find wisdom in unexpected places, and have been trying for five years to put my aphorism, "the wise man recognizes truth in the words of his enemies," into common usage.  (With spectacular lack of success, I might add.  A Google search nets seven results, all from my own blog.)  This book was difficult, and I haven't yet been wise enough to discern much useful truth, though by the end I was able to understand the author a bit better, I think—and to feel sorry for him.  He's ashamed of his background, he's afraid of the future, he's angry at the injustice he sees, and he thinks he knows where to assign the blame.

It was not my Christmas present.  I was only the courier, and if I don't like it, well, that's what I get for reading someone else's gift merely because it passed through my hands in the delivery.

Joe Bageant grew up in a small town in Virginia, not all that far from my own West Virginia/Western Pennsylvania ancestors.  Unlike most of his neighbors, he went off to college and, as my strongly right-leaning friend would say, became thoroughly drunk on the "Liberal Kool-Aid."  He became a hippie and a journalist and a hardline socialist.

Writing about his roots, he occasionally comes across as sympathetic to the sorrows of those who share his hometown, but mostly with a condescension that is difficult to stomach:  Surely the only reason they don't see the world the way he does is that they have been ground down by their corporate, industrialist, Republican masters who conspire to keep the serfs stupid, ignorant, poor, and sick!

By the end of the book I was convinced that his conflicted response to his own people—alternate sympathy and loathing—is due to his own self-hatred.  Sorry to go all pop-psychology on you, but he clearly has never forgiven himself for being white, and Scots-Irish at that.  To hear him tell it, all the troubles of the world are the fault of people who are white, of Scots-Irish descent, and/or Christian.  He himself is guilty of the first two, and if he managed to shed the last, to his embarrassment his own brother is a pastor—even one who admits to having cast out half a dozen demons in his time.  In an attempt to atone for these sins, Bageant indulges in what would clearly be branded "hate speech" and earn him the harshest opprobrium were the objects of his screed black, of Hispanic descent, and/or Buddhist.

The best chapter, oddly enough, is the one on guns, hunting, and the Second Amendment.  I say "oddly" because I dislike both guns and hunting, but appreciate Bageant's demolition of the standard Liberal gun-control reasoning.  Here he seems at last to understand his own people, even though he no longer has use for guns himself.  I suspect the recipient of this book will like this chapter a lot.

Although there are many places where I nearly threw the book across the room because of what I see as Bageant's ignorance and irrationality, he occasionally has some impressive insights:  as, for example, when he accurately predicted the subprime mortgage crisis well before it became obvious to the world.  On the other hand, Porter predicted that, too.  It's a lot easier to see that something is a house of cards than it is to do something constructive about it.

I'm also struck, again, by how much the far Left and the far Right have in common.  It's the Right that usually gets mocked for stockpiling food and water and otherwise preparing for the coming Doomsday, but Bageant is just as pessimistic.  He may see different causes for the impending disaster, but he's sure it's coming.  It's those of us in the middle who just keep on keeping on with life, expecting neither heaven nor hell anytime soon.

Here are a few quotes—then I have to go wrap the book.  :)

"Class" ... is defined not in terms of income or degrees but in terms of power.  Especially regarding labor.  If you define "working class" in terms of power—bosses who have it and workers who don't—at least 60 percent of America is working class, and the true middle class—the journalists, professionals and semiprofessionals, people in the management class, etc.—are not more than one-third at best.  Leaving aside all numbers, "working class" might best be defined like this:  You do not have power over your work.  You do not control when you work, how much you get paid, how fast you work, or whether you will be cut loose from your job at the first shiver on Wall Street.  "Working class" has not a thing to do with the color of your collar and not nearly as much to do with income as most people think. ... There are no clear lines, which is one reason why the delusion of a middle-class majority persists. [p. 11]

His definition makes a certain amount of sense, though I would argue that he's stretched the term "working class" to near meaninglessness.  His definition covers computer professionals, teachers, and even many doctors.  Who's left?

[The people who are too poor for decent housing and who can't avoid getting ripped off by predatory mortgage brokers and real estate agents] are ordinary working Americans, some of them making fair bucks.  Take Karen and Marty.  She is a physical therapist and Marty is a supervisor at the GE light bulb plant.  They earn $42,000 and $40,000 respectively.  According to the mortgage officer's calculations, they could comfortably afford a house costing $182,000.  Nevertheless ... they come to him having chosen a house costing $320,000. ... "The industry allows them to borrow to the absolute edge of their ability to repay," [the broker] says.  "What we never see when we drive by those big developments are the people inside surviving on tuna fish sandwhiches and living on the cusp of affordability.  If gas and heating oil go up, they will lose their home." [Eventually] they will walk away from that house and all the stuff they bought on credit to furnish it.  [pp. 109-110]

Good analysis, and I'll certainly give the industry plenty of blame for making possible, even encouraging, foolish loans.  But Bageant misses the boat by absolving the borrowers of personal responsibility for making poor financial decisions.  If you're making $82,000/year, even if it is on two incomes, I don't see how you can be considered "poor"—except, perhaps, in judgement.

Measured by pure ownership of "stuff," working people have never been better off.  Tom Henderson is cruising the boat shops for a new bass boat, and even Nance is considering a vacation in Cancún.  None of them has any grasp of the staggering changes taking place in the world, least of all that they are going to be steamed when the bottom falls out of the mortgage and construction games, when the cheap oil fiesta is over and even the Wal-Mart parking lot is empty.  [p, 110]

Bageant and I see the same problems, but where he sees hapless folks deceived and ground down by greedy corporate bastards, I want to ask how the public schools can justify taking the better part of 13 years of these people's lives and graduating them with no grasp of basic budgeting and financial common sense.  [A staunch advocate of public schools, Bageant seems to think that the only reason for the existence of private and home schools is so whites can avoid sitting in class with "brown people."  Where that leaves non-white homeschoolers in his mind, he doesn't say.]

Fundamentalist Christians look around at AIDS, warfare across the globe, crime, the rise of narco-states, and ecological collapse, and they see confirmation of God's plan.  Rev. Rich Lang of Trinity United Methodist Church in Seattle says, "This theology of despair is very seductive and it is shaping the spirituality of millions of Christians today." [p. 166]

I won't even try to get into how badly he misuses and especially mis-applies the term "Fundamentalist Christian," and misunderstands the theology he attempts to explain.  It is certainly one of the points on which I wonder if Bageant and I are even on the same planet.  I include this quote because he apparently misses the irony in his derision of those who hold this view:  Bageant has his own "theology of despair" about the future, every bit as depressing and seductive as this, but without any hope that good can work through even the worst disaster.

Constitutional scholars and historians who have actually bothered to study the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, among them Joyce Lee Malcolm, author of To Keep and Bear Arms:  The Origins of an Anglo-American Right, conclude that they were created to protect the citizen's right to arms.  The three-volume Gun Control and the Constitution, edited by Robert J. Cottrol, assembles historical documents that are hard for gun control advocates to challenge.  So they avoid them.

From the beginning there has been a racial aspect to the nation's gun laws, often masked by pieties about gun safety.  Much has been written about this, but the subject has been avoided by liberals, siezed on by Libertarians, and misused by the crazier right-wing gun advocates. ... The fact is that the right of every citizen to own a gun was taken for granted in this country until periodic race and immigration issues brought it into question.  After the Civil War southern whites denied blacks the right to own guns.  Consequently, race and gun ownership were factors in the ratifying of the Fourteenth Amendment. ... Supporters of Negro rights understood that an armed citizen "suffered significantly less likelihood of oppression"—shorthand for being lynched.  [pp. 142-143]

When reading these quotes from Bageant's gun chapter, it is important to remember how left-wing he is  in the rest of the book.  I always take note when I hear the same message from widely divergent sources, as happened when an evangelical Protestant theologian living in Switzerland (Francis Schaeffer in The God Who Is There) and a self-described lapsed Catholic schoolteacher from Pittsburgh (John Taylor Gatto in The Underground History of American Education), writing on issues that apparently differed markedly, made the same historical and philosophical point. Ditto here.  If Bageant takes on the gun-control lobbyists, with whom he probably agrees on most other points, he may or may not be right—but it's a pretty good sign I should at least pay attention.

Staunch antigun journalist and author Robert Sherrill ... did not shrink from writing:

The Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed not to control guns but to control blacks, and inasmuch as a majority of Congress did not want to do the former but were ashamed to show that their goal was the latter, the result was they did neither.  Indeed, this law, the first gun control law passed by Congress in thirty years, was one of the grand jokes of our time.  First of all, bear in mind that it was not passed in one piece but was a combination of two laws.  The original 1968 Act was passed to control handguns after the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated with a rifle.  Then it was repealed and repassed to include the control of rifles and shotguns after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy with a handgun.  [pp. 144-145]

For a decade criminological studies have demolished the cartoonishly over-simplified notion that people are more likely to kill a family member [with guns in the house] than they are an intruder.  To the contrary, the literature shows that self-protection weapons really do protect their owners.  Among the many studies proving what no antigun lobbyist wants to hear are those of Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, whose research indicates that about two and a half million Americans successfully protect themselves with guns every year. ... More than two million people are spared becoming crime victims because they own guns.  Almost never do these cases involve firing the weapon.  Displaying it and saying "Get the &^%$# out of here" seems to do the trick.  If that doesn't work, a shot in the air does.  Also disproved were the claims that every domestic fight and minor argument would turn into bloody shoot-outs.  I just didn't happen.  More than a million Americans are licensed to carry personal firearms, yet researchers find that misuse by this group has been statistically negligible.

Now that most states have passed laws allowing honest citizens to carry concealed weapons, gun advocates are being proven more right than they ever hoped to be.  Joy of joys, it is women—in fact, poor urban women—and the poor in general who benefit most from concealed-carry laws.  It doesn't get any better than that when it comes to serving up cold crow to Democratic gun controllers.  Large declines in rapes and attacks on women have occurred whenever the laws have been enacted.  A study by John R. Lott Jr., author of More Guns, Less Crime:  Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws, found that the urban poor and minorities lived more safely with guns in their pockets or purses:  "Not only do urban areas tend to gain in their fight against crime, but reductions in crime rates are greatest precisely in those urban areas that have the highest crime rates, largest and most dense populations and greatest concentrations of minorities." Even though Lott is a bit too far right for my tastes, More Guns, Less Crime is a good book.  Neither camp in the debate is made up primarily of liars, and both sides would do well to listen to one another once in a while.

Most liberal antigun advocates do not get off the city bus after working in the second shift.  Nor do they duck and dodge from street light to street light at 1 a.m. while dragging their laundry to the Doozy Duds, where they sit, usually alone, for an hour or so, fluorescently lit up behind the big plate-glass window like so much fresh meat on display, garnished with a promising purse or wallet, before they make the corner-to-corner run for home with their now-fragrant laundered waitress or fast-food uniforms.  Barack Obama never did it.  Hillary Clinton never did it.  Most of white middle-class America doesn't do it either.  The on-the-ground value of the Second Amendment completely escapes them.  [pp. 146-147]

According to studies by press organizations, three-quarters of U.S. newspapers have advocated severely limiting gun ownership....

When it comes to gun control, even credible sources such as the Government Accouting Office cannot get media coverage.  What never makes the news are facts [supporting the value of private guns in preventing crime] ... from the National Institute of Justice (the research arm of the Department of Justice) and GAO reports on firearms. [p. 148]

Approximately 200,000 women defend themselves against sexual abuse each year.  The Carter Justice Department found that nationwide 32 percent of more than 32,000 attempted rapes were committed, but only 3 percent of the attempted rapes were successful when a woman was armed with a gun or a knife. [p. 149]

Newspapers, radio, and television give the impression that school shootings and gun accidents among young children are increasingly common. The truth is they are both very rare and declining.  More guns supposedly equals more violence, but over the past four decades, as the stock of civilian firearms rose by 22 percent, fatal gun accidents dropped by nearly 70 percent.  People believe what they want to believe, even people who pride themselves on being more educated, rational, and objective....  [p. 149]

Did you catch the most important line in the book, a few paragraphs ago?  Here it is again:

Neither camp in the debate is made up primarily of liars, and both sides would do well to listen to one another once in a while.

Repeat ad infinitum, over all issues.

Better Than School by Nancy Wallace (Larson Publications, 1983)

Child's Work:  Taking Children's Choices Seriously by Nancy Wallace (Holt Associates, 1990)

These stories of the education of Ishmael and Vita Wallace have been high on my list of favorite books since our own homeschooling days.  Recently I re-read them both, confirming my suspicions that the Wallaces—flying by the seat of their pants in an era when homeschooling was almost unheard of, and often illegal—discovered many of the principles now refined in Project-Based Homeschooling.

The last time I read about the Wallaces' struggles with onerous regulations and imperious school boards, I noted how blessedly out of date it was, for although there are still those in the United States who would make homeschooling illegal again if they could, for the most part homeschoolers here can rest in the knowledge that the right to direct the education of our own children is recognized in all fifty states.  This time, however, I read those parts of the books with renewed interest, since Switzerland, while much more advanced than the U.S. in some areas, is woefully behind us in this.  Some of the Wallaces' experiences and arguments may turn out to be relevant, or at least to give inspiration.

Don't you just hate it when you read an inspiring story from the past and have no idea what happened to the characters in subsequent years?  With Vita and Ishmael, at least, that question can be answered by visiting their Orpheo Duo website.

Here are a few, somewhat random, quotations.  You really need to read the books to get a good sense of the story, however.

Walking into the meeting knowing that we had a majority [of the school board] on our side was a lot better than not knowing what to expect, but I guess I really wanted more than that.  I wanted the whole board to admit that we were doing a terrific job with our kids and to be interested in our approach to education.  After all, there was a lot the public schools could have learned from us.  What disturbed me the most was that not only were two of the board members completely uninterested in what we were doing but they seemed to want the kids to go to school no matter what.  When I wrote about this to John Holt, he responded with some very insightful remarks that I'll never forget.  "One of the saddest things I've learned in my life," he said, "one of the things I least wanted to believe and resisted believing for as long as I could, was that people in chains don't want to get them off, but want to get them on everyone else.  'Where are your chains?' they want to know.  'How come you're not wearing chains?  Do you think you are too good to wear them?  What makes you think you're so special?'"  (BTS, 114-115)

It always puts me on edge when people talk about Ishmael as being "gifted."  I get even more uptight when they politely inquire whether Vita is "the same" as her brother.  No, Vita isn't the same.  Her personality is quite different and so are her interests and ways of learning.  But most important, neither child is an aberration—a creature born from a normal set of parents but with an extra set of wrinkles on its brain.

True, even I am struck when I see Vita, who is five, happily typing away at a story on the living room floor, or hear Ishmael, at age nine, alluding to Hamlet or Macbeth; but at the same time I know that Bob and I had a lot to do with the way the kids are—they weren't born that way. ... Now if Ishmael had become a math whiz while growing up in this house, which was almost barren of numbers before we took him out of school, I'd seriously begin thinking about "giftedness" or brain wrinkles, but that never happened.  Instead, we are raising two normal kids who happen to enjoy reading and writing. (BTS, 135-136)

Neither Ishmael nor Vita slept through the night until they were about three or four years old.  Not only did they liven up around midnight, but they always insisted on company. ... Finally, we managed to hit upon a fairly satisfactory compromise.  Ishmael first, and later Vita, would sit in bed and listen as Bob and I took turns reading to them.  We read thick books with few pictures in the hopes of boring them to sleep. ...  The big trouble, though, was that the kids didn't bore easily.  Often we had to read for hours at a stretch—but at least Bob and I insisted on reading the books that we liked.  (BTS, 136)

It was a really scary thing to face up to the fact that we might risk being labeled criminals or child abusers by moving casually into a state which might, for all we knew, prohibit homeschooling or have such stringent regulations that we couldn't possibly meet them.  As I anxiously researched New York State's education laws and court precedents, I had visions of Peter and Brigitta Van Daam, home-schoolers in Rhode Island.  Thanks to the TV screen at a neighbor's house, I had watched them bravely waving good-bye to their children as a policeman drove them off to jail for failing to comply with the state's compulsory attendance law.  I thought, too, of the Sessions family in Iowa, in and out of court for years while fighting to keep their boys out of school, and of John Singer, the father of seven children in Utah, whose battle with school authorities ended tragically when he was shot to death in a battle with some sheriff's deputies.  (BTS, 238)

[A]s musicians usually judge the talent of young beginners, these children were not at the start unusually talented.  I know some of the tests by which musicians try (to no useful purpose) to measure and judge musical talent in young children, and by these tests and measures I don't think either of the Wallace children would have been called more than average.  They have gone as far as they have not because they began with unusual talents but because they have the good luck to have parents who love and make music, because their mother is herself a very sensitive, understanding, patient, and skillful teacher, because they have been much encouraged without being in the least pressured, and because—since they don't go to school—they have time to work on music as much as they like.  (BTS, Introduction by John Holt)

Vita and Ishmael are impressively competent at their chosen work, so much so that some readers may think this is a story about prodigies and consider it irrelevant to their own children or children they know.  Child's Work is, indeed, about Vita's and Ishmael's skill at music, composition, art, and writing.  Yet if this were all that Nancy had to tell, the book would not be as useful as it in fact is.  For Nancy, the most interesting question about Vita and Ishmael is not, "What can they do?" but "Why have they been able to do so much; what conditions have allowed them to flourish?"  If we think of Vita and Ishmael as prodigies, we avoid having to think about what helped them become as competent as they are.  What if all children had the time to experiment, to pursue their own work, to draw on the resources around them?  Might we then discover that children's capacities, and their ability to find work they love and pursue it wholeheartedly, are greater than we ever dreamed?  (CW, Forward by Susannah Sheffer)

When we first took Ishmael out of school nobody had yet had enough experience to tell us what was "normal," what was possible.  In the beginning, at least, we had to discover it all for ourselves.  Eventually, what came to seem to us the most normal was, in fact, our biggest discovery, and one that in many ways led to all the possibilities that homeschooling has since opened up for us.  It was this:  that when Vita and Ishmael are busy, they are simply busy.  Despite the ways and attitudes of the rest of the world, they refuse to see a distinction between schoolwork and everything else they do.  They are genuinely baffled when people ask, "But what do you do just for fun?" as if to imply that doing anything of real value and importance couldn't by definition be classified as giving light-hearted pleasure, and that after a hard day's work, we all need a change.  "But why?" I see Vita and Ishmael wonder.

Once, when a reporter came to interview Ishmael, he was so amazed by Ishmael's bemused attitude that he said, "Oh, come on now, isn't there anything you have to do that you don't like?"

Ishmael thought and thought, his chin resting in the cup of his hand.  Finally, to save time, and almost certainly because I was feeling desperate to appear at least somewhat conventional, I said, "Well, you don't really like math that much, do you, Ishmael?"

"Yes, I do," he said.  "Algebra is really beautiful—at least when it works."

"What about taking out the trash, then," the reporter persisted.

 "Well," Ishmael said thoughtfully, "I haven't done much of that.  I'll have to try it."  (CW, 5-6)

"Always do your own work.  Never copy other people's."  This lesson haunts most of us throughout our school years.  It is one that, until Vita and Ishmael managed to teach me otherwise, I accepted without question.  Yet now it seems to be one of the major misconceptions about learning that the schools perpetuate.

When we take it for granted that there is a clear distinction between knowing and not knowing ("Vita can't yet read"), we tend to become so sure of "right" answers that we don't realize the importance of allowing children to discover for themselves what is right and to develop their own solutions and their own methods for arriving at those solutions.  Out of impatience with our children's tentativeness, as John [Holt] puts it, and a suspicion of their chosen methods, we all too often threaten their ability as scientists and separate them from their own curiosity.  Once humiliated by my second grade teacher, I lost all sense of the meaning of multiplication.  It took me years to rediscover it.  (CW, 54)

As writers ... Vita and Ishmael used us the way Bob and I use each other, as colleagues rather than simply as teachers.  Vita didn't want unasked-for help with spelling, but she certainly wanted help with style and clarity, even at four or five.  (CW, 61)

I remember John Holt on one of his visits to us, pacing the kitchen floor and saying with some agitation, "Some people just don't understand!  Tennis would be no fun at all if we simply hit the ball whenever we liked.  It's the court, the net, and even the rules of scoring that make the game worth playing at all."  As if inspired by the very limitations ... that [literary] forms establish, Vita and Ishmael have always experimented in their own writing with different literary styles, imitating (or more accurately, intuiting the rules of) the grammatical structures that the specific form demands.  (CW, 63-64)

John Holt wrote, "We do not ask or expect a child to invent the wheel starting from scratch.  He doesn't have to.  The wheel has been invented.  It is out there, in front of him. ...  A child does not need to be told what wheels are and what they are for in order to know.  He can figure that out for himself, in his own way, in his own good time. ... The whole culture is out there.  What I urge is that a child be free to explore and make sense of that culture in his own way."  (CW, 96)

[S]o often our expectations lead to disappointment and sorrow.  Yet if we were absolutely detached from the world—even if we had no sorrows—that would be terrible.  I'm convinced that we were born into the world in order to live in it and be attached to it, and if attachment to other people and things gives us sorrow, all that means is that happiness is not the absolutely most important thing in life.  (CW, 96; Ishmael Wallace, age 14)

Project-Based Homeschooling:  Mentoring Self-Directed Learners by Lori Pickert (independently published at CreateSpace, 2012)

Janet's enthusiasm over Project-Based Homeschooling led me to be sure I read the book while I had access to it in Switzerland.  I had to get over some misconceptions, and I found the ideas intimidating, but I agree:  it's a must-read for homeschoolers, and in truth important for all parents.  Maybe for everybody.

The Misconception  Way back when, in our homeschooling days, a popular approach was called Unit Studies.  Here's an essay on unit studies as they relate to what's now called Classical Education; it give a pretty good idea of what they are about.  Basically, you pick a topic you hope your child will be interested in, and integrate the teaching of all subjects into a study of that topic.  At the time, I found the method too structured, too school-at-home, and too much work.  I assumed project-based homeschooling was a re-working of unit studies.

I was wrong.  There are similarities:  a child working on a project is integrating many disciplines and skills together.  But project-based homeschooling is an excellent example of why unschooling, well done, is absolutely not the "let the kid play video games all day" approach its detractors think it is. 

Projects of this sort are the child's idea and the child's responsibility.  That doesn't mean, however, that the parents are off the hook.  It seems to me that the work involved in observing and coaching a project is much harder than following a curriculum.  Which leads me to ...

The Intimidation  I love the ideas.  I really do.  But even as a do-it-yourself, lone wolf kind of homeschooler, this is out-of-my-comfort-zone thinking.  Probably because if Earth is my comfort zone, art projects are somewhere around Neptune, and so much of the examples here involve using art materials.  The author seems to think it natural to work through one's ideas by making a painting or modelling in clay.  I don't believe I've ever in my life even thought about doing that—and I've live a lot of years—so the idea of coaching a child to do so leaves me queasy.  Fortunately, Lori Pickert was kind enough to explain, in a comment on Janet's review, that "if drawing and painting make you nervous, there’s still building, writing, designing t-shirts and websites, putting on skits, making brochures and posters, etc. etc. etc.—it’s more about helping kids figure out a way to help others learn and along the way that reinforces what they know/don’t know and how you collaborate, share, etc."

Also, she's careful to give the neophyte a break:

Surprisingly often, people will champion self-directed learning for children but not allow those children's parents the same freedom and respect.  It's their way or the highway, and you had better start doing it the right way (their way) right away.  Your kids should learn at their own pace, follow their interests, and you should trust that they'll eventually learn everything they need to know.  You, on the other hand, should get with the program, right now, 100%, or else.  You don't need to have your own opinions or ideas; ours will suffice.  There's no time to experiment and see if these ideas work for you; take it on faith or you're part of the problem.

If your child deserves to learn at his own pace and have his own ideas, so do you.  Whatever you champion for your child, make sure you also give to yourself:  the right to follow your own path, work at your own pace, follow your own interests, make mistakes, and try again.  Whatever you want for your children, you are far more likely to help them achieve it if you live it yourself.

It's hard to do justice to the project-based homeschooling concept without taking a lot more time and effort than I'm willing to put forth at the moment—not to mention that I'd need the book, which presently is some 4500 miles away.  However, I do have some excerpts, which I copied down before relinquishing the book.

The quotes

Helping your child direct and manage his own learning does not mean immediately giving him complete control of his entire curriculum.  You can balance assigned work with self-chosen work.  We are talking about that essential portion of your child's learning life that you will devote to helping him do his own self-chosen work—you get to decide how big that portion will be.

There are many things you can do to help your child direct and manage her own learning, but perhaps the most important one is choosing how and where to put your attention. ... Think about what you value most, because that's what deserves your attention.  Your child will respond by doing more of whatever earns your focus.

Creative work requires big chunks of unscheduled time.  It requires freedom to explore, to try different things, to just think and imagine—and it requires a relaxed mindset.  It is impossible to take your time and explore an idea in many different ways if you feel pressured by a lack of time or someone else's expectations.

I agree that this is the ideal, though I can't help thinking of all the really great creative work throughout history that developed under intense pressures of time, patrons' expectations, and even hunger.

Better-quality art supplies make for more beautiful representations and encourage your child to put more care into their making. ... High-quality materials arranged beautifully send a message to your child that his work is important and valued. ... They say, "Your work matters.  You deserve the best." ... Quality materials inspire quality work.

If you have more than one child doing project work together, they may need to learn to trust the abundance of materials in the art studio or workspace.  They may want to glue thirty buttons to a single piece of paper—they would rather use up all the materials than risk having them used up by someone else.  Rather than setting limiting rules like "three buttons per person per day," you might want to ride it out and let them see that when they use things up, they'll be replaced.  (It can help to start by offering cheaper materials first.  Popsicle sticks come to mind.)

A child who draws, designs, creates, and builds every day is more likely to feel confident and optimistic about his skills.  The more practice he has, the more fluent he will become. The more it's a part of your ordinary routine, the more likely he is to be able to articulate his ideas the way he envisions them.

Giving your child a lot of isolated, one-off experiences (say, with weekly themes or random field trips) is like giving her one plastic brick, one wooden block, one gear, etc.  She has a handful of things to construct with, but what can she make?  The pieces don't fit together.  Your child can't combine them to make something meaningful. ... Having a series of isolated, stand-alone experiences—at trip to the orchard, a visit to the planetarium, a day at the zoo—lets your child learn a little bit about several different things. ... Moving from one opportunity to the next, she never gets the chance to dig below the surface.  Having a series of experiences that connect meaningfully to one another allows her to begin to do more challenging intellectual work.  A trip to the orchard, a visit to a local farm, interviewing the produce manager at the grocery store, back to the orchard, talking to the local extension officer, dissecting and sketching apples, planting an apple tree, going to the nursery, visiting a different orchard at the university—all of these experiences connect to one another.

I can appreciate the need to go into depth—without believing any less in the importance of having many, varied experiences.  It's the breadth of experience that leads to further interest that leads to the desire for depth.  I guess it's one of those profound truths for which the opposite is also a profound truth.  (I learned this concept from Gretchen Rubin, but apparently Niels Bohr was there before her.)

Remember to let your child's ideas take precedence. ... Don't take over.  Don't flood him with your own ideas; write them in your journal and save them for later. ... Keeping track of your own ideas can help you stay alert to possibilities, but make sure your child is focused on his ideas, not yours. ... If you have a particular thing in mind—an answer, an idea, a plan—then you may miss your child's idea, question, or plan.  He'll figure out quickly that you're thinking of or fishing for a particular answer or response, and he will either stop driving the project and focus on pleasing you or shut down rather than offer up something he suspects may be wrong or not what you want.

When she's working, it's inevitable that she'll become stuck, make a mistake, or become confused.  Help her by modeling how to work through it rather than just giving her a solution.  Don't straighten out her thinking for her—let her tease the knots apart by herself.

If you see your child headed off in the wrong direction, don't jump in to correct him.  Wrong turns can lead to great discoveries, and self-caught, self-corrected mistakes are more likely to be understood and remembered.

When he's frustrated or angry about something that went wrong, don't cheerlead and don't become upset yourself.  Project calm acceptance (things will go wrong; it's inevitable) and optimism (you can always find another way; there's a solution somewhere).  Suggest to your child that he can put his work away and look at it again tomorrow if he's not ready to try something else right away.

Avoid empty, nonspecific praise:  "Great job." "Beautiful drawing." "Good work."  Make statements that describe your child as a powerful learner. ... "That was frustrating when the wheels fell off, but you didn't give up and you fixed it." ...

Let your child talk about his work.  Rather than praising him with words, show him with your actions how much you value what he's doing.  Listen, pay attention, and always follow through when you make a promise. ...

Instead of praise, focus on building a family culture that appreciates, celebrates, and cultivates meaningful work through daily conversation, sharing, dedicating time to it, and giving it a place of honor in your home.

You help her reflect on and assess her work, so she can judge whether she has made her best effort and reached her goals.  But she gets to be the judge.

Reflecting is crucial for transforming a simple learning experience into a larger experience about learning how to learn.  In project-based homeschooling, we build reflection into the learning process.  Rather than stopping with a finished product, we invoke that slow learning and build in an extra step, which sends us back to consider, refine, and revise our ideas and the work.

In project work, you can't just keep taking things in—you have to put something out.  You have to create, you have to build, you have to interpret.  You have to share.

Ouch. This is why I can't keep taking photographs without organizing and editing them for others to enjoy. This is why I mustn't continue to indulge in the pleasure of doing genealogy research without taking the time to present the data in a way that others can understand and appreciate it.

If you want to help your child learn how to finish—and it might be the most important lesson in this book—you must become a person who finishes.

Keys for finishing:

• Show up.  Commit to making the time and using the time.
• Use small goals to accomplish big goals.
• Set yourself up to succeed:  put a system in place.
• Aim for learned competence.  ["Value effort over end results.  Accept that people who do challenging work are always going to make mistakes along the way.  Focus on nurturing the habits and attitudes that support strong thinking and learning."]

Your core values must align with your goals, which must align in turn with your everyday choices.

Really listen to what adults around you say about children—not their own children, but children in general.  Many adults think very little of children and their abilities and motives—possibly because they think very little of themselves and their own abilities and motives.  They transfer their negative beliefs onto children.  If adults thought of themselves as strong, capable learners who enjoy challenges and want to contribute, presumably they would see children the same way.

The Follow-Up  There's much more information on the Project-Based Homeschooling website.  Here's a quote I like from an article on boredom.

We want [our children] to choose intellectual, creative activities—in general, we want them to choose higher-value ways to spend their time. But how do we support that?

Parents bemoan the fact that all their kid wants to do is watch TV and play Xbox. Yet the heart of their home is set up to look like a shrine devoted to exactly those two things. There’s a TV the size of a twin bed and every chair in the room—the most comfortable chairs in the house, by the way—[is] arrayed around it in rapt devotion. The Xbox is nestled alongside.

When you compare that shrine to screen-based entertainment to the area of the house devoted to their child’s other interests....  Oh, wait. There is no area like that.

The Connection?  I think it's no coincidence that Project-Based Homeschooling reminded me of the early days of unschooling.  Recently I re-read Nancy Wallace's Better than School and Child's Work and was struck by how much the education of Ishmael and Vita Wallace was very much an embryonic form of this concept.

The Conclusion  As I said, I'm indimidated, because this approach appears to have a steep learning curve. But I'm sure it could be of value in my own projects, so I plan to look into it further. I'll end with one more quotation, one that epitomizes the unschooling philosophy as I remember it, and shows how much the term has morphed over time, at least in the minds of the news media and the general public.

Children, even when very young, have the capacity for inventive thought and decisive action.  They have worthwhile ideas. ... They want to be a part of things.  It's up to us to give them the opportunity to express their creativity, explore widely, and connect with their own meaningful work.

Many parents and teachers agree readily that children have these abilities, but they want to believe they can (and perhaps should) blossom naturally with no interference from adults.  Traditional educators think this will happen in the child's free time—presumably sometime between the school bell ringing in the afternoon and bedtime, in and amongst homework, extracurricular activities, team practices, and play dates.  Many parents want to believe it will happen if their child has adequate free time.  They hope their child will drift naturally away from the TV set and the video game console toward literature, nature, and science.  They know that their child is intelligent and creative, and they expect—or hope—that deep thinking, rich exploration, and a strong work ethic will follow.

We can do better than that.

Rather than expecting children to seek out a balanced life all on their own, we can help them live it.  We can create an everyday life that prioritizes what we value most.  We can help our children grow up experiencing creativity, inquiry, and making ideas happen as part of their normal, everyday life, from their earliest days.

We can help them live a life based on learning and doing.

3 Theories of Everything by Ellis Potter (Destinée Media, 2012)

It’s a good thing this little book is only 111 pages long, and easy to read to boot, because with our whirlwind sightseeing schedule—or what passes for whirlwind when 1.5- and three-year-old tornados are involved—there hasn’t been much time for reading.

The author is a former pastor of my son-in-law’s church, and that’s all I know about him because there’s no author blurb and I’m writing this “blind”:  we’ve had no Internet for two days.  And when it comes back I’ll be too busy/lazy to change the above.  [Correction:  I did find this short bio of Ellis Potter that covers a good deal.]

As I said, it’s a quick read, but well worth the attention.  Potter’s search for absolute reality took him all over the map, so to speak, two of the notable stops being as a Buddhist monk and as a Christian pastor.  3 Theories of Everything is a brief and admittedly greatly simplified look at Monism, Dualism, and Trinitarianism, its strongest point being the obvious respect Potter has for all three, despite having decided that Trinitarianism comes closest to describing the true nature of the universe.

I’ve had my fill of arguments that think to prove their premises by sketching a false picture of their opponent’s position and mocking it into oblivion.  What kept me reading this book, which had the potential to be just that, is that it isn’t.  Potter is not one of those preachers who sees nothing but irrationality and evil in other religious beliefs and practices, even though he feels strongly about the truth of his own.

Besides that, my favorite part of 3 Theories of Everything is the discussion of relationship as the heart of Trinitarianism:  God alone is God, and God is not alone.  Unity and diversity, relationship, love, service, obedience, and sacrifice existed in God Himself before the creation of the world, and thus are fundamental to the very nature of the universe.  Adam needed his relationship with similar-but-different Eve to be fully human.  We are not ourselves in ourselves, but in relationship with others.

Potter is annoying sometimes, a little too Baptist in some places and a little too patriarchal in others, but his humility makes this easy to forgive.

God Is Red:  The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China by Liao Yiwu, translated by Wen Huang (HarperOne, 2011)

After reading Liao Yiwu's The Corpse Walker, I knew I had to order God Is Red.  Being pressed for time Having grandchildren to play with, I'm going to take the lazy way out with this review and quote the dust jacket:

When journalist Liao Yiwu first stumbled upon a vibrant Christian community in the officially secular China, he knew little about Christianity. In fact, he'd been taught that religion was evil, and that those who believed in it were deluded, cultists, or imperialist spies. But as a writer whose work has been banned in China and has even landed him in jail, Liao felt a kinship with Chinese Christians in their unwavering commitment to the freedom of expression and to finding meaning in a tumultuous society.

Unwilling to let his nation lose memory of its past or deny its present, Liao set out to document the untold stories of brave believers whose totalitarian government could not break their faith in God, including:

• The over-100-year-old nun who persevered in spite of beatings, famine, and decades of physical labor, and still fights for the rightful return of church land seized by the government
• The surgeon who gave up a lucrative Communist hospital administrator position to treat villagers for free in the remote, mountainous regions of southwestern China
• The Protestant minister, now memorialized in London's Westminster Abbey, who was executed during the Cultural Revolution as "an incorrigible counterrevolutionary"

This ultimately triumphant tale of a vibrant church thriving against all odds serves as both a powerful conversation about politics and spirituality and a moving tribute to China's valiant shepherds of faith, who prove that a totalitarian government cannot control what is in people's hearts.

Because I can't resist and in order to make this a little more personal, here are a few quotations.

The surgeon's story is particularly interesting.

A critical skill of an ER surgeon is to diagnose fast and accurately, and then act.  You can't play games.  But as an administrator, none of the skills I had acquired applied.  They played by a different set of rules.  In my leadership position, I initiated some reform measures.  The school assigned me a ... car, but I asked the authorities to sell it and spend the money on the hospital.  I rode my bike to work every day.  I abolished the traditional big staff banquets during holidays and banned the use of public money for eating and drinking.  I also tightened up on reimbursing expenses.  All of those measures hurt the interests of other leaders; they hated my guts and conspired against me.  It was very frustrating and depressing. ... I got hold of a Bible.  I was examining my life at that time.  I felt extremely frustrated with my work as a deputy dean.  The Bible taught me to be in awe of God and to love, two important qualities that the Chinese people lacked.  Too many Chinese will do anything for trivial material gains and have no regard for morality, ethics, or the law.  How do we change that?  Can we rely on the Communist Party?  Can we rely on government rules and regulations  Apparently not.

Why does this description of the medical problems in Communist China sound just a little too familiar?

I couldn't work [at the big government-run hospital] out of conscience.  Say a patient, tortured by illness, sits in front of you, staring at you, hoping you can find a cure for him.  What kind of medicine should you prescribe?  Many meds do the same thing, but their prices can vary sharply.  I would prescribe the cheapest and most effective.  But if I continued to do that, the pharmacy and the hospital would be upset because I have undermined their profits, disrupting the cozy deal between pharmaceutical companies and hospitals.  When you break hidden rules and harm the collective interests of hospitals and doctors, you find yourself very alienated. ... As a Christian, I have to tell my patients the truth.  I cannot lie to get more money out of them.

American television isn't all bad.  Who'd have thought M*A*S*H could be an answer to prayer?

I told the minister that I would do [breast cancer surgery] for free, that I had done far more complicated surgery than what was required here, and he needed to trust me.  He looked at me in disbelief, as did the villagers gathering around us.  I'm not sure which of my assertions they had the most trouble believing.

I wanted to take the woman back with me to Kunming so I could use a proper operating room, but she didn't want to leave her home.  That night, I knelt and prayed, and as I was praying, an old American TV show popped into my mind—a team of cheerful doctors doing surgery while cracking jokes, a mobile army hospital, tents in an open field, the war in Korea. ... I felt inspired.  The next day, I bought some basic surgical instruments to supplement the ones I carried with me, and we did the operation in her bedroom.  Her bed was a wooden plank; no table necessary. ...  The room was very dark; even after we opened all the windows, it was still pretty bad.  I tied four flashlights together and had the grandpa hold them as operating lights.  That grandpa was strong and in great health.  He stood there for hours without moving, holding the light steady. ... It was a sweet feeling to be there with the poor villagers and to do God's work, though I never thought I'd ever have to perform surgery in quite those conditions.

From another man's story of life under Chairman Mao, evidence that if some of China's ills aren't that far from ours, some are almost unimaginable.

You are too young to understand what it was like.  We were treated much worse than animals.  People would torture us whenever they felt like it.  During the peak of the campaign, the government work teams fanned the sentiment of hatred.  Even the nicest and kindest peasants began to wave their fists and slap or kick us.  Toward the end, revolutionary peasants didn't need a reason to kill a landlord.  At public denunciation meetings, people became carried away with their emotions and would drag someone out and shoot him on the spot. ... Nobody questioned this ruthless practice or took responsibility. ... The work-team members didn't dare ignore the voice of the people.  Once people became brainwashed by Communist ideology and by Mao's propaganda, their thinking became chaotic.  All humanity was lost.  At its peak, even the work team found it hard to rein in the fanaticism.

Let me explain.  In this area, it was rare to find anyone who was not addicted to opium or gambling.  Only those who had embraced God had the stamina to kick their habits.  When I was a kid, I remember that people in this area didn't grow crops.  Instead, they grew poppies. ... They also gambled heavily.  This was a very strange phenomenon.  People's wealth switched hands very quickly.  In the afternoon, the person might be a rich landowner.  By evening he was homeless, having gambled everything away—his land, his house, even his wife.

When the Communists came, they banned opium smoking and gambling, and they banned Christianity.  Apart from working in the fields, people didn't have anything else to do in the evenings.  Political campaigns turned into a form of entertainment. They devoted all their extra energy to beating up people, killing people, and confiscating the property of others.  Those homeless drug addicts and gamblers suddenly became loyal revolutionary allies.  They didn't have to pay off their debts; their gambling and drug habits, their poverty, the practice of pawning their wives and children for drug money, their homelessness, everything was the fault of landlords exploiting poor revolutionaries.

Poverty became a badge of honor, and the children of the poor became the offspring of the true proletariat.  They felt superior to everyone else and were well fed and clothed.  They didn't even have to take any responsibility when killing someone at public denunciation meetings.  That was more fun than smoking opium and gambling, don't you think?

The Communist Party's policies might have been well meant, but the people who implemented them took a lot of liberties and interpreted them in their own way.  Random killing was quite liberating.

The stories of those whose faith saw them through the impossible years is humbling and inspiring.  As in The Corpse Walker, Liao Yiwu is careful to place more blame on past administrations than present, but he does give a glimpse into the struggles of the modern Church in China, including the friction between the official, state-controlled churches and the house church movement.  Perhaps the attitude of this new convert is also eerily familiar.

[T]hree religions are practiced in our home.  Everyone does his or her own stuff.  Why can't they form a uniform family religion so we don't have to fight all the time?  It's kind of strange.  As a kid, I would go with my dad to Buddhist temples and mimic the gestures and facial expressions of the Buddhist statues. ... When I was with my mom, I would attend services at an old church.  People sang hymns.  It was kind of grand and cool.

I prefer Christianity.  Buddhism is too regional, secular, and not cool.  Those old men and women, those wealthy businessmen or government officials, go to the temples, burning incense and praying for trivial stuff, such as more money, more promotions, and more luck.  Taoism is way too highbrow, not attainable.  I think Christianity is the only one that's all encompassing. ...

People in your age group are too political.  You guys are too interested in politics.  It's different with my generation.  Sometimes it bothers me.  I attended a house church one time.  When we were reading the Bible, a minister or a church elder suddenly stood up.  Without getting everyone's approval, he started to deliver a political statement and then asked eveyrone to pray for so-and-so who had died for the Lord, and then so-and-so who had been arrested by the government.  He also asked us to pray for the sins of the government.  He totally changed the mood of the gathering, making it depressing and tragic.  Several members started to cry after hearing his political plea.  I guess I was too young and didn't have that much experience.  I felt awkward.  I thought, Why don't we let God do God's work and Caesar do Caesar's?  Why do we always mix the two?  The government wants to politicize religion, and some Christians are doing the same thing.  These things kill my spiritual appetite.

What I Saw In America by G. K. Chesterton (originally published 1922)

In 1921, G. K. Chesterton embarked on a lecture tour of the United States, and "everybody who goes to America for a short time is expected to write a book," so he did.  This is no travelogue, however, but a set of serious essays inspired by Chesterton's observations.

It was only after graduating from college that I began to have an appreciation for the study of history.  During my school years, the world was divided into "math/science people" and "English/history people." Being both good at math and an avid reader of science fiction, I was clearly one of the former.  The reasoning behind this idea that one should not be good at, nor even interested in, all of the above escapes me as much as why I allowed myself to be so labelled.

While I would still choose reading and mathematics as of all the school subjects the most important for a child to master "early and often," I'd now put history a close third.  I know of no other way to counter what C. S. Lewis called "chronological snobbery."  It is far, far too easy for us to assume that progress only goes in one direction, that we have come "sooo far" from our predecessors socially as well as technologically.  Reading history—especially writings that were current at the time—is the best way I know to understand that the people of the past were human beings like us rather than incomprehensible, unenlightened savages.  To use an extreme example, it is easy to hate Adolph Hitler, almost as easy to revile the German people (and others) for not rebelling wholesale against the evil he brought on, and pathetically easy to assure ourselves that we would never let anything like that happen today.  But never in all my schooling did I experience a serious attempt to understand historical events and situations as they were seen at the time by intelligent, thoughtful, normal people.  We are appalled when Hitler speaks of the "Jewish problem," but don't make the effort to figure out what it was about the circumstances that made the Jews a particularly acceptable scapegoat.  We're taught, as I was in school, that white southerners were evil to resist having their children bussed across town to attend black schools; I never had an appreciation for the many non-racially-motivated reasons not to place your child on that sacrificial altar until I spoke with someone who had lived through it.  By no means do I subscribe to the theory that in the attacks of September 11, 2001 we "got what we deserved," but if we—or at least our policy analysts—had been in the habit of looking at ourselves and our actions through other eyes, we at least would not have been so surprised.  

What I Saw in America is a great antidote.  Chesterton is so insightful that it's easy to think of him as outside of his cultural and historical surroundings, but he was writing nearly a century ago.  Think for a minute of what the world was like during his 1921 American tour.  (Maybe you do this kind of thinking all the time, but it's new for me.)  The Civil War was closer to 1921 than the Korean War to 2013.  Arizona and New Mexico had only been states for nine years, and last of the Indian Wars were but a few years past.  Prohibition was new.  Harding was the newly-elected president.  The Panama Canal was a mere seven years old.  Chesterton's essays glow with the perspectives of both another culture (British) and another time.

I don't claim Chesterton is always easy to understand, especially for someone who knows little about America in that era, and who doesn't possess the everyday knowledge he expects to be common to his British audience.  But he's always worth reading, nonetheless.  Very thought-provoking, but alas, not further-post-provoking at this time.  Life calls.

Is College Worth It? by William J. Bennett and David Wilezol (Thomas Nelson, 2013)

It is the best of times and the worst of times for education.  From preschool through higher education, there has been a steady decline in the quality of public education in at least the half-century I’ve been observing it.  If my father is to be believed—and he was always a very reliable source—it’s been declining for a lot longer than that.  He was frequently appalled at my generation’s ignorance of basic history, geography, and literature.  (He’d have said the same thing about basic arithmetic, but he was surrounded by engineers.)  It doesn’t take much observation to realize that today the average American’s grasp of those subjects makes me look brilliant.

At the same time—and my father would concur—in some fields, for some people, knowledge and ability has soared.  As a science fair judge, he was blown away by the scope and quality of the research done by high school students.  His own high school had offered no math beyond trigonometry, and it was rare among high schools to offer even that.  My high school offered only one Advanced Placement course—and that for seniors—whereas our children had at least a dozen to choose from, beginning as freshmen.  And yet only a few students were actually prepared to take advantage of the generous offerings:  back in fifth grade, I would have said the expectations of their teachers were well below those of my own, and far below those of my father’s.

Despite the best efforts of educators to mush us all into a sameness at any level—better all low than some higher than others—there has always been an upper class and a lower class when it comes to education, and there always will be.  What I’ve been noticing is that the highs are getting higher, the lows are getting lower, and the middle class is rapidly descending—much as is happening with economic measures.

I’m hoping the economic situation does not lead to revolution, but there’s a crisis and a revolution coming in education and I say, bring it on!

Except for Catholics, for whom parochial school was usually an option, and the rich, who had their exclusive, expensive private schools, for as long as I remember—and a long time before that—sending one’s children to the local public school was the assumed, unquestioned, default position.  About 40 years ago Protestant schools began to flourish as well, as more and more Christians found themselves less and less happy with the values being taught in the default schools.  Secular private schools arose to meet the needs of parents of the hippie generation who wanted a different approach to education for their children.  And then came homeschooling, for which there are nearly as many reasons as there are homeschoolers.  Even public schools got into the act, with magnet schools and some—though pitifully limited—choices offered to families.  What all these new options have in common is that more parents and students are now thinking about what’s best for their situations and making informed choices, even if they end up in the default position anyway.

Bennett—former U.S. Secretary of Education—and Wilezol wish to see the same thing happen at the level of higher education.  Just as our public schools have consistently consumed higher and higher sums of money for lower and lower return, so college tuition has risen explosively and yet left an unconscionable population of young people with staggering debt and no employment beyond what they could have found with just a high school diploma.  Everyone from parents to high school guidance counselors to college financial aid advisors to President Obama is urging high school students to make college the default option, and Bennett says this is a disaster waiting to happen—or rather having already begun.  College education, he says, is likely to be the next “bubble,” and when it bursts it will be as bad as the housing bubble.

If I were rating solely for the ideas presented in this book, it would receive five stars.  But the writing could have used a better editor—more than once the same story is presented twice—and the sheer quantity of numbers thrown about is overwhelming and wearying even for a math geek like me.  But even though I’m skeptical of some of Bennett’s numbers—if only because he sometimes uses the same statistic to bolster opposite points—there’s more than enough convincing evidence to prove his thesis.

Everyone considering attending (and/or paying for) college within the next 20 years should read this book.  Now.  What’s best about it is that the authors present facts, figures, philosophies, and scenarios but fall short of (better, rise higher than) answering the title’s question either yea or nay.  Whether or not college is “worth it” is a complex issue comprising such questions as, “for whom?” “for what purpose?”  “which college?” and “at what cost?”  The objective of Is College Worth It? is not to dismantle the higher education system in the United States, but to rethink it, above all encouraging students and their parents to put aside their prejudices, do their “due diligence,” and choose what is best for their particular situation, rather than simply taking the default. 

Reading the first section of the book, it is tempting to wish that Bennett was not so focused on the “return on investment” of a college education in purely financial terms.  Isn’t college all about growth and maturity and broadening one’s horizons?  Has someone who choses homemaking, motherhood, volunteer work, or working for less than his or her maximum potential income wasted a college education?  “Yes,” and “not at all,” the authors would say later on, but for many reasons the economic calculation is more relevant than ever before.  Students have been sold a bill of goods—by those who should know better—that going to college will guarantee them higher-paying jobs.  On average, this is true, but “average” includes doctors, lawyers, and petroleum engineers, which masks what happens to anthropology, religion, and women’s study majors, let alone the 40% of first-time freshmen who fail to graduate after six years of college.  College costs have skyrocketed, a fact cleverly hidden from students by college financial aid offices, which class as “aid” whopping loans that “don’t have to be paid until after you graduate.”  It’s astonishing how many college-bound teens have graduated from high school without realizing the effect on debt of compounding interest.  Then again, they’ve been lured by the siren song of, “it’s an investment; you’ll easily pay it off once you’re earning a paycheck."  Which is patently false for an increasingly worrisome segment of the population.  They’re defaulting, they’re mad, and all they can do is Occupy Whatever and whine that the world is unfair.  To be fair to them, it is our generation that let them think that college was a time for lavish living, wild parties, and little work—all on someone else’s dime $100,000.  Now the bill has come due, and they realize that much of it was on their tab after all.

How did we get to the point where college is where children go to become morally and financially wasted?  I suppose my generation—the ill-named flower children—deserve much of the blame for the moral degeneration.  But the proliferation of massive, crippling student loans is of more recent origin, and Bennett puts that at the combined feet of the Federal government and the colleges themselves.  Intentions were good, but you know the rest of that saying.  The dramatic increase in student loan money has fueled not only correspondingly increased tuition, but has led colleges (who have no stake in the loan repayment) to push loans on students who have no reasonable expectation of being able to pay them off.   In order not “to leave (Federal) money on the table,” colleges have every incentive to accept students who are not fit for college, and to lower academic standards so they bring in student aid dollars for as long as possible.  More sickening still is the use to which much of the increased tuition money—not to mention alumni donations—is being put:  the proliferation of obscure departments, enormous sports facilities, luxurious dormitories designed to wow prospective students (our own University of Central Florida is a recent case in point), and obscenely high salaries and benefits for a few super-star professors and administrators while more and more classes are being taught by poorly-paid adjunct professors with no benefits.

It’s a situation that’s bound to blow up sooner or later, and Bennett predicts (and perhaps hopes, for the sake of necessary if painful correction) it will be sooner.  It was a decade or so ago that a math professor friend prophesied that someday parents would wake up to what they were actually getting from their extravagant college outlay.  We’ve been a little slower on the uptake than he expected, but the time is coming.

There is some good news:    First, contrary to common belief, there are many good, well-paying jobs that do not require a bachelor’s degree.

One study conducted by Georgetown University found that by 2018, nearly fourteen million jobs will require more than a high school education but less than a bachelor’s degree. … In 2012, the Bureau of Labor Statistics identified twenty jobs typically requiring less than a bachelor’s degree that had a median salary of $50,000 or more, far above the median annual wage of all professions of about $34,000.  These included air traffic controllers ($108,000), dental hygienists ($68,000), and geological and petroleum technicians ($54,000), jobs that won’t disappear anytime soon.  Many of the jobs on the list were in health care and technology, two fields repeatedly shown to be in the top echelon of fastest-growing economic sectors throughout the next decade.

What’s more, many of these are jobs that are now going to non-citizens, because too few Americans have the necessary skills.  Bennett’s strongest plea is the establishment of an apprenticeship/certification system to which students with the appropriate interest and ability can be directed in lieu of four-year college, or even earlier.  Instead of struggling, languishing, or partying through college, these students could be bringing home a respectable paycheck years before their age-mates graduate with massive debt, a room in their parents’ basement, and a job as a Starbucks barista. 

Best of all, thanks to the Internet, higher education is even now in the throes of a revolution similar to that which opened up pre-college education.  The monopoly claimed for centuries by the brick-and-mortar university model is becoming increasingly available for free—or at least for a whole lot less.  There are still some bugs to be worked out, but the handwriting is on the wall.  The following story is long, but worth the effort to type it in.

One of the men responsible for what may be an Athens-like renaissance in higher education is Sebastian Thrun, Google’s vice president and pioneer in artificial intelligence and robotics.  Known in science circles for his engineering feats—like Stanley, the self-driving car—Thrun is using his technological prowess to make quality higher education available to the world.

In 2011, while teaching a graduate-level artificial intelligence class at Stanford University, Thrun lamented that his course could reach only two hundred students in the suburbs of Palo Alto.  So, he decided to offer his own free online class, with the same homework, quizzes, and tests that he gives to Stanford students.  He announced the proposal with a single e-mail.  Before he knew it, he had a flood of takers. … “Usually I reach about 200 students and now I reach 160,000.  In my entire life in education I didn’t have as much impact on people as I had in those two months.”

By using online videos and educational resources, Thrun’s class was being accessed by students from all corners of the world.  In fact, the students translated the class for free from English into forty-four languages.

Until now, an overwhelming number of these students—many in developing countries and lacking standard education credentials—never would have had a chance at a Stanford-level education.  Yet their appetite for quality education was strong.  When Thrun began testing his new hoard of students, all of the students taking the class globally and at Stanford, the top 410 students were online students.  The 411^th top performer was a Stanford student.  “We just found over 400 people in the world who outperformed the top Stanford student,” Thrun said.

Realizing the potential at his fingertips, Thrun launched Udacity, an independent online education company that provides high-quality education at low cost to virtually everyone.  … There are no admissions offices, and anyone can sign up.  After the class, students can choose to certify their skills online or in one of Udacity’s 4,500 testing centers for a fee….

The classes are structured much like university classes, but instead of traditional types of lectures, all-star professors give video presentations that directly engage and challenge students.  Thrun is using technology not only to transform educational access and curricula but also teaching.  For the past thousand years, professors have been lecturing at students.  “[It’s] like trying to lose weight by watching a professor exercise,” quips Thrun.  Now he is leading a new charge—interactive, student-focused technology education. …

As you can imagine, Thrun’s enterprise has rattled the foundations of the education establishment.  His critics say that a Udacity certificate is worth nothing, and how can one know the true identity or scholastic work of a student on the free-for-all jungle that is the Internet?

[Thrun] said Udacity has already partnered with more than twenty companies that verify and accept the certificates of course completion.  Some are already hiring graduates of Udacity courses.  [I would add, who cares?  Hire the person for, say, a three-month probationary period.  Either he can do the work or he can’t.  If he can’t, let him go; if he can, what does a certificate matter?]

We asked Thrun if his enterprise and others like it will be the end of higher education as we know it—exclusive enclaves for a limited number of students at high tuitions.  “I think it’s the beginning of higher education,” Thrun replied.

Much of traditional American higher education prides itself on a false promotion of diversity, opportunity, and excellence.  But to our knowledge, with one class alone, Thrun has provided a level of diversity, opportunity, and academic rigor not seen before.  People from any country, any background, and any income level can receive an elite education at virtually no cost.  We have been talking about equal educational opportunity for years.  This may be its true advent.

Bennett still finds plenty of scenarios under which it is best to go to college.  If money is not an issue for you—or more likely, your parents—you are one of the few who can afford to choose your school and your major without regard for future earnings potential.   If you’re a very good student and can get into one of the elite universities, it’s probably worthwhile to take on some debt, because even though those who know assure me that the quality of education even at Harvard has declined considerably, the quality of the school’s name, its students, and the connections you will make there still translate into financial reward sufficient to enable you to repay your loans without undue hardship.  But if you’re really, really good, you may want to find yourself a way directly into the workforce—such as the son of some friends, who because of his expertise in a narrow field was offered a job straight out of high school making more money than most college graduates.  He lives a good life in California, loves his work, and has already advanced significantly in the field.  Despite his parents’ fears, it would have been foolish for him to waste four years getting a degree.

What about those who can’t afford college tuition, won’t be going to an elite school, and still want to go into a field that requires a four-year degree or higher?   Think about getting creative:  Pick up what credits you can through Advanced Placement, community college, or online classes, particularly those credits that are required but in which you have little interest, then transfer to a four-year school for the last year or so.  You’ll save yourself a lot of money, and it’s the junior and senior courses in which the interaction with professors and fellow-students is most important.  (Just be aware of credit-transfer policies.  Sometimes state universities are excellent, and required to accept community college credits.  Unfortunately, you’re likely to find your community college colleagues less inspiring than in high school, and the courses less rigorous, which is why it’s better to get credits in courses you don’t care much about.)  If you’re considering post-graduate education look for a less-expensive undergrad school that is still good enough to impress the school you want to give you your final degree.  And if you want to major in the fine arts, or gender studies, or something else with few job prospects, consider taking a second major, or otherwise acquiring skills to fall back on while you are awaiting a job in your dream field.

Or, you could do what we did, and what our children did:  choose parents whose own parents paid for their college educations, and who felt an obligation to pass on the blessing.  But I suspect even that is no longer sufficient.  Students today need to be much wiser, and more creative in their college choices than we were, and than our children were.  On the whole, that’s a good thing, a needed wake-up call.  Following  the default actions of the crowd is rarely advantageous.  Parents, too, need to consider that spending money on a child’s pre-college education (private school, high-quality homeschool materials, specialized camps, educational travel) may in the end be more valuable than saving extensively for college.  Note to parents:  that’s not a go-ahead to buy an expensive boat or golf club membership, unless your child happens to be Jacques Cousteau or Tiger Woods.  Note to students:   above all, get out of your heads the idea—no matter how widespread among your peers—that the purpose of college is to party with your friends.  (Unless it’s on your own—unborrowed—money; then, as you please.)   You can buy a LOT of beer with just one semester’s tuition payment.

The bottom line is:  go into the post-high school decision well-informed, well-prepared, with your eyes wide open.  A good place to begin is by slogging through Is College Worth It?

When Life and Beliefs Collide:  How Knowing God Makes a Difference by Carolyn Custis James (Zondervan, 2001)

As I mentioned before, I first read When Life and Beliefs Collide in personal circumstances that led to a great reluctance to tackle any of the author’s excellent subsequent books.  Only a few years previously, we had left the church which remains to this day both our best and our worst church experience.  Because James’ husband was in the leadership of what had become (or revealed itself to be; I’m still not certain which) an oppressive, even abusive situation, I had assumed that he and his family were in agreement with and partially responsible for the oppression.  This was confirmed in my mind when I read glowing, positive comments about “our church” in When Life and Beliefs Collide.  Re-reading it now, I’m amazed at how effectively that blinded me to the strengths of the book, how bold it was, and indeed how much of a risk James took in writing it.

This is a “women’s book,” written as it was in a situation where women, no matter how qualified, did not teach men, but as theologian J. I. Packer said, “[This] book seems to me to be a must-read for Christian women and a you'd-better-read for Christian men, for it gets right so much that others have simply missed.”  The heart and soul of James’ work is the importance of theology in the lives of everyone:  male and female, young and old.  Don’t let the word scare you into thinking this is a dry, academic subject:  as James says on the masthead of her website, the moment the word “why” crosses your lips, you are doing theology.

James makes many excellent points, every single one of which I missed the first time because of the prejudice I brought to my reading.  Mighty scary, that.

As usual in my reviews, the following quotations are not meant to be a summary of the book as a whole, but are instead ones that struck me for one reason or another and which I want to remember.

Many Christian men seek wives who know far less than they do or who have little interest in theology. The assumption is that a woman who knows less will make a better wife.  Her ignorance will be an asset to the relationship, or as another woman put it, “The less a woman has in her head, the lighter she is for carrying.”  This assumption leads women to conclude that the godly thing to do is hold back for his sake.  And so the age-old game carries on—a woman keeps herself in check to make a man look good.  It happens all the time.

How differently the Bible portrays women.  There they are admired for their depth of theological wisdom and their strong convictions.  Women in the Bible did not need anyone to carry them.  Their theology strengthened them to get under the burden at hand.  Contrary to current fears, these wise women did not demean, weaken, or overthrow the men.  They empowered, strengthened, and urged them on to greater faithfulness and were better equipped to do so because of their grasp of God’s character and ways.

Far from diminishing her appeal, a woman’s interest in theology ought to be the first thing to catch a man’s eye.  A wife’s theology should be what a husband prizes most about her.  He may always enjoy her cooking and cherish her gentle ways, but in the intensity of battle, when adversity flattens him or he faces an insurmountable challenge, she is the soldier nearest him, and it is her theology that he will hear.

Glory is the uncovering of God’s character—the disclosure of who God is.

I love that last quote.  I haven't thought much about it yet, but if it's a reasonable description of what is meant when the Bible talks about God's glory, many Biblical passages suddenly make a lot more sense, particularly the ones that appear to show God as a petty tyrant, concerned most of all with making himself look good at others' expense.

[T]he Father’s glory—his reputation—is on the line in our race.  God’s glory cannot be separated from what he does, from his plan for you and for me.  God cannot be glorified if his goodness breaks down along the way.  If he fails to be good for a split second, or if even one runner crosses the finish line with a negative report of his faithfulness, then shame will displace glory.  The promise of God’s glory is the guarantee that no story will put God to shame; they all will only add to the mounting evidence of his great goodness.

The night Mary [of Bethany] went public with her theology [anointing Jesus for his burial], my search to find a great woman theologian ended.  In Mary’s ministry to Jesus, I found what I had been looking for and more.  She was, as I have argued, not simply a great woman theologian.  She was the first great New Testament theologian.  On the dark side of the cross, she was the first to understand the gospel.  She listened and believed, and so she was the only one who ministered to Jesus.

[W]e would do well to ponder some important issues raised by Mary’s actions that night. Her actions poke all sorts of holes in the notion that it is ungodly, unfeminine, insubordinate, and pushy for a woman to take the initiative.  Here we see Mary taking the initiative in public, on a theological matter, and in a gathering of male leaders.  What is more, she did it right in front of Jesus.  And to everyone’s astonishment, Jesus praised her for her actions.  Jesus taught a brand of theology that was living and active.  It did not lead Mary to withdraw into passivity or wait for a man to do the job; it led her to accept responsibility, step out, and take action where she saw a need.

This is not to suggest, however, that Mary’s actions leave room for women to be offensive, insensitive, or cavalier toward others.  Mary didn’t elbow her way into the room or behave disrespectfully toward the disciples, although they were in fact offended by her actions.  Her conduct was above reproach, filled with grace and graciousness.  The fruit of the Spirit must always govern how Christians interact with one another.  This underscores the importance of fixing our eyes on Jesus to know him and his ways, so we will reflect him when we step out.  Mary was not putting herself forward, fighting for herself, her rights, or her sex.  She was fighting for her Lord.

The point of Mary’s story is not … that women will do a better job of things than men but that in the body of Christ, men and women need each other.

When Mary sat at Jesus’ feet for the first time, the door to learning theology opened wide to women.  But when she knelt at his feet this last time, the door to ministry swung open for women too.  The need Mary sensed in Jesus wouldn’t have been answered by the sumptuous plate of food on the table before him.  Nor would it have been good enough for her to wait passively on the fringes, praying for one of the male disciples to notice what was needed and do something.  The Holy Spirit had opened her eyes to the need.  Jesus had trained her to be active and to contribute … and so she stepped out to anoint Jesus, not to shame anyone else or because there wasn’t a man who was willing to do it but because this job belonged to her. Mary offered pastoral ministry to Jesus, which he warmly and publicly accepted.  Jesus’ response to Mary’s critics gives women permission to think in wider categories for how we can minister to others.  On this momentous night, Mary set a precedent for us to follow.  A woman’s theology opens new spheres of spiritual ministry in which she can readily engage—spiritual ministry to other women, to children, and also to men.

Some military organizations ban women from their ranks.  But Jesus wants them in his.  Furthermore, female recruits, such as Mary, are not in the way or a liability to the troops, as some might fear.  Neither are they a disgrace to their sex.  In the trenches of the war zone, God’s army is stronger for its female theologians.  It is the crown of our womanhood, the essence of true femininity, the highest praise ever accorded a female that it should be said of any of us, she was “a brave and godly soldier in the army of the Lord.”

The war zone is no respecter of gender.  The inclusion of women in the ranks of God’s army is not to meet some affirmative action requirement or to ensure women receive the same treatment as the men.  The simple yet revolutionary reason for including women is because the army needs them.  God never intended for women to sit on the sidelines and await the outcome of the battle the men are fighting.  He meant for us to be theologically active and engaged right alongside the men on the front lines of the battle.

The Bible doesn’t teach a theology of women that applies only to a subset of the female population or fits only certain seasons of a woman’s life.  God’s calling for women applies to all of us from the cradle to the grave, whether we are single or married, divorced or widowed, childless or moms, infirm or able bodied.  Our conclusions (if they are true) should fit any woman’s life, under any circumstance, at any point in history, and at any location on the planet.  That is the nature of truth and the reason we need to stick together as we study.

[Adam and Eve’s] “bone of my bones” union meant no one shared a greater interest in his welfare or a deeper concern for his struggles.  She was his rib, formed to protect and defend his vital organs.  God did not create her to let her husband do the thinking while she flattered, cajoled, complied, and shored up his male ego.  Her mission was to build him up in God, to stand with him in truth and to oppose him whenever he veered onto wrong paths.

The greatest asset a woman brings to her marriage is not her beauty, her charm, her feminine wiles, or even her ability to bear a child.  It is her theology.  Every wife is her husband’s partner, pastor, spiritual counselor, motivational speaker, and his fellow soldier in the war zone.  With her eyes fixed on Jesus, she is less inclined to make her husband, herself, or her children the center of the universe.  With head and heart filled with the knowledge of God, she will find strength to enter the fray and wrestle with all of life’s problems alongside her husband.  As she lives in the light of God’s sovereign goodness, she will radiate hope and courage to him in the darkest hours.  With her feet firmly planted on God’s holy character, she will find boldness to stand up to her man when his disobedience is tarnishing God’s glory.  And her husband will only be the better for it.

When God raised the problem of Adam’s aloneness, he never said, “I am all you need.” Instead of giving Adam a lecture on contentment or a sermon on God’s sufficiency, God formed a woman—a tangible, flesh and blood human being—to come alongside and, in her own imperfect way, enter into his struggles.  He commissioned a person to stand in the gap and be there for the man.  But women aren’t somehow better suited to cope with aloneness than the man was.  Everyone needs an ezer ("strong helper")—especially women who are living in crisis.  The ezer’s ministry is not simply about the role of women in marriage.  It is something all Christians are called to do for one another.

There are plenty of times in my life that I look back on and hate to think what would have happened if someone hadn’t been there for me.  Often the friend who reached out didn’t have any experience with my particular struggle.  But that didn’t seem to stop them from trying or hinder them from getting through.  Elderly women were strong for me when I was a teenager and a young adult.  When I was single, my greatest support came from three women who had married in their teens.  Sometimes, the one who is an ezer for me is my daughter.  There’s no minimum age to do his work.

Fitness-conscious Americans should have little trouble grasping the implications of this biblical imagery for the church.  Health is a whole body concern that is jeopardized if any organ or limb is weak or not functioning properly.  The person who has one strong leg and one that is weak is not viewed as strong because they have a strong leg.  To the contrary, they are lame and in need of physical therapy to restore the weak leg to full strength. … When women are encouraged to take a passive role, the church becomes more like a stroke victim shuffling down the road, dragging a limp and lifeless leg along behind.

A woman’s ministry in the church (and the principle holds true for a man too) is defined in concentric circles, beginning with those nearest to her and moving out until the entire church is encompassed.  This principle isn’t taken from some book on ministry methods and guidelines but from the Scriptures that establish marriage and family as the primary ministries both for men and for women.  During certain phases in a woman’s life, her family may be her only ministry.  But who can overstate the importance of investing ourselves in our marriages and in the lives of our children?  Ministry to the family is kingdom work that edifies the body of Christ.  A mother rocks the next generation of the church in her arms, and one way or another, the church to come will feel the effects of her spiritual influence.  Her husband and her children will either draw strength from or be weakened by her efforts as a pastor, teacher, and counselor at home.

Sadly, in the church today, important ministries are overlooked or done poorly because the feminine perspective is missing.  Again the point is not that women have superior gifts to offer the church but that men and women need each other in the church and that we harm the church when we minister selectively rather than freely to anyone who needs our help.

Mary may have the privilege of anointing Jesus for his burial.  But Martha claims the honor of being the only woman in the Gospels to proclaim his true identity.  Martha’s confession ranks her as one of the few individuals who, before the resurrection, affirmed Jesus as the Son of God.  “Yes, Lord,” she tells him, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”

Those who know God find deeper meaning in the ordinary and extraordinary moments of their lives.  They know that he is in control and that he is good here and now, no matter what is happening.  Strange as it sounds, theology belongs in the kitchen every bit as much as it belongs in the pulpit or the seminary classroom, perhaps even more.

Difficult Personalities:  A Practical Guide to Managing the Hurtful Behavior of Others (and Maybe Your Own) by Helen McGrath and Hazel Edwards (The Experiment, 2000, 2010)

When I was in college, I remember this complaint from the psychology majors:  taking the required Abnormal Psychology course convinced them that they—and all their friends—were abnormal and psychotic.  Reading Difficult Personalities is like that, or like reading a list of symptoms and convincing yourself that you have some deadly disease.  The book is an exhausting, if not exhaustive, description of difficult personality types, and it's impossible not to think, "Oh, that's just like him," "She does that all the time!" and "Oh, no!  Is that really what I'm doing to others?"  Worst of all is the section on the sociopathic personality, which will have you seeing sociopaths around every corner and looking askance at those you think you know best.  That may be a slight exaggeration, but it's pretty scary to realize that most sociopaths are hard to identify before it's too late and they've done extreme damage.

What makes the book more useful is realizing its limitations.  In this I was saved before the page numbers got into double digits, since the section on signs of extroversion includes that extroverts "tend to think out loud.  In talking, they find out what they think," and "often interrupt without realizing that they are doing it."  That is such an accurate description of dyed-in-the-wool introvert me that I wasn't a bit surprised to find that not only I but nearly everyone I know has some characteristics of most of the personality categories the authors analyze, even those that appear to be polar opposites.

Although meant to be accessible to a lay audience, the book reads more like a textbook:  quite technical, and frequently referencing the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  I think it might be more useful as a reference book than as one borrowed from the library for casual reading.  There are many suggestions for (1) dealing with someone who exhibits difficult personality traits (especially in the workplace), and (2) controlling one's own quirks and minimizing the damage done to others.  If I knew that I, or someone else, was clearly struggling with a particular problem, I might find the suggestions useful, but short of that I find the content far too broad—even contradictory—and overwhelming.  The authors do give some real-life, specific examples, but the book could use a lot more of them, and more examples of successful ways of dealing with problems, rather than just delineations of the problems themselves.

Traits covered include Extroverts and Introverts, Planners and Optionizers, Thinkers and Feelers, Negativity, Superiority, Bossiness, The Anxious Personality, The Inflexible Personality, The Demanding Personality, The Passive-Aggressive Personality, The Bullying Personality, and The Sociopathic Personality.  Each is discussed in terms of how normal people exhibit these traits, what is typical of someone for whom this is a significant pattern of behavior, what the person is thinking as he acts in that way, reasons behind such behavior, strategies for dealing with someone of this personality, and strategies for changing your own behavior if you see the trait in yourself.  Sometimes the authors point out the positive side of a particular disordered trait as well.

Here are a few quotations, in no particular order and of no particular importance other than they were the ones I typed up before getting tired of the exercise.

Some people prefer a relatively decisive lifestyle in which events are ordered and predictable.  ["Planners"] prefer to have closure and structure in their lives and make reasonably speedy decisions in most areas..  Deadlines are kept.  They like structure, routine and order, and they plan to make their lives reasonably predictable.

Others have a preference for a less structured and ordered lifestyle, characterized by keeping their options open.  ["Optionizers"] are reluctant to make decisions, always feeling they have insufficient information and that something better might come along.  An optionizer prefers a lifestyle that is flexible, adaptable, and spontaneous, and not limited by unnecessary restrictions, structure or predictabillity.

I sent the following quote to Lenore Skenazy of Free-Range Kids, who is always berating "worst-first thinking."  Turns out it has a psychological category all its own.

Protective pessimism can take many forms, but essentially it is about always assuming the worst will happen and behaving accordingly.  Protective pessimists believe that if something can go wrong, it will.  If something bad can happen, it will happen, and it will happen to them.  Rarely do they expect good outcomes.  So they miss out on the joy of anticipation and dwelling pleasurably on the "nice" aspects, in case the gap between pleasurable "dreams" and the reality is too great. They are not game to tempt fate by hoping, dreaming, or wanting, in case they get caught unprepared by negatives.  They prepare for disillusionment, sadness and tragedy by protecting their projections with pessimism so they will not get caught by future disappointments.  Instead of living up to expectations, they live down, and are often negative in other ways.  Other people don't like being around pessimistic people because they can be contagious.

Mistakenly, bullies are often perceived as poor souls with a marked inferiority complex and low self-esteem who bully others because of inadequacy.  Research, however, suggests that few playground or workplace bullies are like this, although domestic bullies may be.  Bullies were once believed to be socially inept oafs, but research now confirms that they are more likely to be highly skilled people capable of sophisticated interpersonal manipulation of others.  They can send a victim over the edge without anyone seeing the "pushes" they use.

Only about 5 percent of the population has such severe problems with anxiety that their behavior would meet the criteria for a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder. ... However, research suggests that maybe up to 30 percent of the population has an anxiety predisposition, that is, a mild to severe tendency to magnify threat and, too readily, release adrenaline and other fear hormones into their bloodstreams.  They often feel stressed all day with no real justificaton.

Early experiences of fearful situations can then create minds that are biased toward exaggerating the potential for danger.  They remember every frightening experience and, on being exposed again to similar situations or reminders of those situations, retreat from the threat or freeze in fear. ... [W]e have termed these people flooders as they are often flooded with fear.

• Flooders have a hair-trigger response to any situation that they perceive to be threatening, even if sometimes they are not verbalizing to themselves that a situation is actually threatening.
• They experience fear reactions to a great many situations that others would not interpret as threatening.  Because their body is often awash with fear, they train their brains to retain fearful memories, to selectively attend to potential threat, and to overinterpret situations as threatening.
• They tend to be less able to "turn off" the fear hormones once they are discharged into the bloodstream.  It can take up to 60 minutes for the body to return to normal after a strong adrenaline surge, and flooders have often had several surges in a row without realizing it.

That hit home to me more than anything else in the book.  Most of the authors' suggestions for dealing with the problem, such as "focus on facts and statistics to reassure yourself that the likelihood of a particular danger is less than you believe it to be," I don't find to be of much help.  I know that.  But in the fraction of a second it takes my body to react to the ringing of the phone, a loud noise, or even the quiet but potentially painful words, "we need to talk," there is no room for rational thought.  I know that it's only a very small portion of phone calls that bring me news of death or disaster, that most loud noises are harmless, and that few conversations actually require me to make difficult decisions or accept painful criticism.  But that knowledge only allows me to begin the process of calming the fear reaction after it has begun; it's not preventative.

["Successful sociopaths"] are no less sociopathic than the "unsuccessful" type, they just do it differently.  There is often no violence involved, although some pay others to be violent on their behalf.  They differ from the "unsuccessful" category in that they are adaptive, that is, they have enough skills and advantages to be successful by honest effort if they choose.  But they don't.  Out of greed, an overwhelming drive for power, and a thrill-seeking orientation, they choose deceit and dishonesty instead.  They are more likely to get away with their sociopathic behavior for a long period, as they are often charming, well-networked, and know how to exploit the system.  Their associates often cover for them, not realizing the extent of their antisocial and exploitive orientation. ... Sociopathic patterns of behavior are found in many powerful individuals who achieve political, entrepreneurial, sports, and business success.  But their behavior threatens the safety, well-being, and security of individuals, businesses, and our overall society.

One other thing I learned from Difficult Personalities:  As I had suspected, psychologists think we're all crazy, and the line between normal and abnormal is only a matter of degree.  It reminds me of a brain developmental specialist who said that everyone is brain-damaged, but it's more obvious in some than in others.

Asian buffet restaurants are kind of like IHOP as far as I'm concerned:  you need to go there every few years to remind yourself of why you don't go there more often.  The idea always sounds so good ... and the reality always disappoints.

We had a coupon for the new World Gourmet restaurant in town, so we went there after church on Sunday.  (The link is to the one in California, but it looks like the same thing.)  You can't say they don't have variety:  I wouldn't go so far as to say world, but there was what I'd call standard American fare in addition to the Asian food.  But as usual, the quality just wasn't there, nor can you expect it with all that quantity and variety.

Still, the selection was nice, the honey chicken was especially good, and—when I made a point to be the first one in line when the new batch came out—so were the French fries.  Whenever I'm in a place like that, I think of a football-playing friend of Heather's in high school:  he could really have done it all justice.  Me?  I took what I liked, and for once didn't eat too much.  Someone has to make up for the football players.