Lift Up Your Hearts!

Okay, Faithful Readers.  I'm listening to an instructional video on using PaintShop Pro, and the instructor interrupts his teaching to give a lecture on how important it is NOT to geotag any photos in or near your home, because "you don't want other people to be able to find out where you live.  It's not safe."  Huh?  Has he never heard of a telephone book?  And now with the Internet it's ridiculously easy to find out that kind of information.  Where you live.  What taxes you pay.  What you paid for your house.  Your birthday.  Your family members.  Your political donations.  If you're lucky enough to be a state employee in Florida, your salary.  Google will even show you the flowers in my front yard—at least what they looked like at some point in the past.  So what if someone can tell from my photograph where it was taken?  If anyone wants to do something nefarious, they have plenty of other resources.

I find the feature on my camera that detects and saves location data to be extremely useful.  I'm undertaking the incredibly, ridiculously challenging project of organizing many years' worth of photographs, and the only thing that annoys me about embedded GPS data is that it's not available on most of my photos.  Even my phone camera, which is the first I've had with GPS information, only began recording that data once I found and enabled the feature.

Privacy has always been very important to me.  This may seem odd coming from someone who writes a blog that is shared with the world, but I still consider myself a private person.  "Private" doesn't mean I don't share, any more than "introvert" means I don't like people.  To me, it means (1) I choose what I share and with whom, and (2) I accept that some things are going to be available to others whether I choose to share them or not.  In facing the latter case, I have come to realize that I can either shrink back in fear, or I can accept the small additional risk for the sake of the benefits that have come with new technology and new situations.

My blog audience my not be large, but I know it's diverse, with people everywhere on the privacy spectrum.  So I'll ask:  What's your take on geocoded photos?  Do you use that feature?  If you don't, is it because you don't find a need for it, or because, like my photo software instructor, you think it's dangerous?  If you are worried about safety, what advantage do you think it gives criminals that they couldn't easily get elsewhere?

Malestrom:   Manhood Swept Into the Currents of a Changing World  by Carolyn Custis James (Zondervan, 2015)

Malestrom is the fifth of Carolyn Custis James' books I have read and reviewed.  (Most recently, Half the Church; you can find links to my other reviews there.)  It's similar in style to her other books, which is both good and bad.  Actually, I'm getting a little tired of that style, and of her confidence that she has discerned the feelings and motivations of Biblical characters.  Trivially, may I say again how much I dislike questions at the end of the chapters?  And what was she thinking with the title?  I like wordplay as much as anyone, but we didn't need another excuse to be confused about the spelling of "maelstrom."

Okay, whining over.  The great thing about Carolyn James is that she is an intelligent, seminary-trained, Christian woman who focuses all four of those attributes on questions that the church has not done well at answering.

Such as, What have we done to our men?  As society has redefined what it means to be a woman, and what roles women can successfully fill, has that changed what it means to be a man?  Has the cultural definition of manhood ever been satisfactory?  How can we help our boys to become men when we don't even know what a man is supposed to be?

Not that James provides any down-to-earth, practical answers; she herself states that she reached the end of the book with more questions than when she started.  But she has erected a framework on which to build, and offers several fresh insights to assist with that labor.

Here is my take on that framework:

• The purpose and role of all human beings, male and female, is to be—in life, in action, in relationship—the Image of God that they are.
• The Image of God cannot be revealed without both male and female.  Not male and female individually, but "male and female" together.
• There's an important blank space at the beginning of Genesis.  We see Creation, we see the Fall—what we don't see is how life and purpose were fleshed out for human beings in the time between those events.
• One of the tragic consequences of the Fall was the near-universal development of patriarchical systems of power—the Malestrom—which have pitted men not only against women, but also against other men in a scramble to be at the top of the power pyramid.
• Just because God worked through a patriarchical system to reveal himself and bring about restoration of his image-bearers, that doesn't imply the system itself was good.  In many ways the history of God's interventions is a history of exceptions to the rules of patriarchy, especially once Jesus comes on the scene.
• Jesus is the true Image of God, and the ultimate revelation of the "missing chapter" in Genesis.  He is therefore also the truest and best example of what it means to be a man.  (Or a woman, for that matter, but Malestrom is largely about men.  Women are covered in James' other books.)

You may not agree with all of James' conclusions.  You may groan for less theory and more practice in her writings.  I'm with you on both counts.  But that doesn't change the fact that Carolyn Custis James is a vital voice in the Church today.  She's asking important questions, providing new insights, and challenging us to consider how well our assumptions, our traditions, our words, our policies, and our actions reveal the Image of God to a world that's in a world of hurt.

And now for the quotations.  They're pretty random, but that's where the sticky notes fell.

The malestrom is the particular ways in which the fall impacts the male of the human species—causing a man to lose himself, his identity and purpose as a man, and above all to lose sight of God's original vision for his sons.

For Christians the prominence of patriarchy on the pages of the Bible means patriarchy is important for a variety of reasons, regardless of what our personal views may be of that cultural system.  First, patriarchy matters because it is the cultural backdrop of the Bible.  Beginning with Abraham, God chose patriarchs living in a patriarchal culture to launch his rescue effort for the world.  Events in the Bible play out within a patriarchal context.  But patriarchy is not the Bible's message.  Rather, it is the fallen cultural backdrop that sets off in the strongest relief the radical nature and potency of the Bible's gospel message.  We need to understand that world and patriarchy in particular—much better than we do—if we hope to grasp the radical countercultural message of the Bible.

Second, patriarchy matters because the prevalence of this cultural system on the pages of Scripture, in cultures around the world, and throughout history can easily lead (and has led) to the assumption that patriarchy is divinely ordained.  Many believe this is the way God wants us to live, even though westerners who embrace patriarchy are selective about the few patriarchal elements they retain from the Bible—which is itself an admission that something may be wrong with the system.  Most throw out slavery and polygamy, along with associating disappointment and failure with the birth of a daughter, child brides, honor killings, and inheritance laws, for example.  But they cling fervently to male leadership and female submission in the home and in the church.  Some extend these male/female dynamics to include the wider culture.

The years my family lived in Oxford, England, were life-changing for all three of us, and I wouldn't trade them for anything. But to be honest, the whole time we were there I longed for the day when we would pack up and move back home to the States.  Most of my friends shared that sentiment.  We were all eager to return to our country of origin and threw parties for each other when the dissertation was successfully defended and one of us was moving home.  We looked forward to the day when friends would celebrate us.

But two of my friends didn't share our enthusiasm for leaving.  Both came from worlds very different from mine and from the life we all enjoyed in England.  One was a Muslim from Pakistan; the other a Hindu from India.  Both were intelligent, educated, and articulate.  One had earned a PhD.  Both came from patriarchal cultures.  Both were successful mothers of sons.  Yet both expressed serious dread as their time in Oxford neared a close and they contemplated returning home.  Why?  Because "home" meant living with their husband's family where they would come under the thumb of their mother-in-law and be treated as a child.  Patriarchy was no picnic for these educated and talented women.

My two friends would have been dumbfounded to read the words in Genesis that follow God's creation of the ezer kenegdo and usher her into marriage.  "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh."  This is not just a romantic statement about marriage that gets repeated in wedding ceremonies in our western culture.  Within the patriarchal world where a man's wife becomes family property, this one sentence in the Bible violates patriarchal tradition and dismantles it.

The Bible is replete with examples where patriarchy is rejected.  Regarding the rights of the firstborn, God repeatedly transforms power relations to invalidate patriarchal priorities.  It happens in stories when God bypasses the firstborn and chooses a younger brother to inherit his covenant promises.  God chooses Abel and then Seth, not Cain; Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau.  Jacob favors Rachel's sons, Joseph and Benjamin (sons eleven and twelve), over their older brothers, but the kingly line goes to Judah, Leah's fourth son.  And when Jacob blesses Joseph's sons, he gives the greater blessing to Ephraim, not his older brother Manasseh despite Joseph's protests.

Patriarchy is the cultural background against which God reveals the newness of his kingdom breaking through as he overturns cultural norms that issued from the fall of Adam and Eve.  In the final analysis, the gospel and the kingdom of God are not endorsements for any world system that is familiar to us in this world.  Jesus is making something new—recovering that missing chapter and the kingdom we lost sight of in the fall.

We are mistaken to try to salvage pieces of a fallen human system like patriarchy.  And while some readers may think this means egalitarianism wins out, even that system doesn't go far enough.

The "iron law of primogeniture" is one of the first and central pillars of the patriarchal system that the biblical narrative demolishes.  Even today primogeniture is a major argument used to bolster patriarchal thinking in the church concerning male leadership and male/female relationships.  The fact that "God created Adam first" is seen as a biblical warrant for male priority over female.  But as we mentioned earlier, God is no respecter of primogeniture, and with astonishing regularity inverts it to carry his purposes forward with a second or third or eleventh son.

Historically men have held physical, social, and political power over women—many in benign ways, but even "benign" falls woefully short of how God intends for us to use this gift.  Young boys are socialized to adopt a "dominant, aggressive, controlling, and sexualized version of masculinity." ... Instead of a gift that multiplies and blesses, power has been distorted into a zero-sum game.

Jesus' message has a double-barreled impact on [gospel-writer] Matthew who lived at both ends of the fallen world system.  He had unjustly oppressed others, even the poor, and was himself a target of abuse, discrimination, and exclusion.  Matthew presents a Jesus who does not inaugurate a kingdom of weakness, but a new kind of power that doesn't flinch in the face of evil but also refuses to engage on evil's terms. ... This is a brand of masculinity that breaks the cycle of violence with mercy ... and peacemaking.  This redefines power in far more subversive terms.

After Joseph takes Mary as his wife, he "shuts down his carpenter shop, gets behind Mary's calling, and adapts himself to his wife and God's calling on her life."  His whole life will be committed to making sure she succeeds in carrying out the mission God has entrusted to her.  Even according to today's egalitarian standards, this is radical.  [This is an example of where I think James goes too far in her interpolations.  Yes, Joseph had to leave town when young Jesus' life was endangered, but there's no indication he stopped working—the family still had to eat!]

Jesus is the ideal man.  Any conclusions we draw about what it means to be a man must begin with Jesus. This does not minimize in any way the fact that he was also God.  But his identity as a human male should never get lost in his divinity.  Jesus' maleness embodies God's vision for how his sons are to live and holds the key for combatting the malestrom.

What is more, it is also profoundly important for women that Jesus was male.  His maleness was integral to the completion of his redemptive task, for it facilitated his ability to expose "the radical difference between God's ideal and the social structures of his day."  Let us not forget that in the ancient patriarchal culture, "only a male could have offered an authoritative critique of those power structures."  And Jesus' regard for women was truly earthshaking.  His actions and relationships as a man vis-à-vis women carry more weight than we can possibly give them and prove even more culturally revolutionary than we generally acknowledge.

One of Jesus' final acts was something only a slave would do—he knelt and washed his disciples' dirty feet.  This is not like today's annual foot-washing services where everyone shows up with clean feet and a fresh pedicure.  Peter's appalled and indignant refusal at the mere thought of Jesus washing his feet demonstrates just how completely unacceptable a thing this was for someone like Jesus to do.  Jesus' reply wasn't to institute seasonal foot-washing ceremonies, but to explain this was how he expected them to live.  I'm not sure the contemporary discussion of "servant-leadership" captures the full intent of what is going on here.  Jesus is being far more radical than merely nuancing male leadership.  Jesus is not telling his disciples to be kinder in their station at the top of the human pyramid.  He is directing them to see themselves at the bottom and to conduct themselves accordingly—just as he has done for them.

Jesus also frees men to express the full range of human emotions, not just in private prayer but in public.  For starters, Jesus displayed love, compassion, sorrow, fear, courage, strength, vulnerability, anger, and dread.  He wept publicly ... in grief over the death of his friend Lazarus and wept openly over the resistance of Jerusalem.  Instead of men becoming pent-up emotional islands, Jesus gives men permission to be fully human, to admit that they struggle and are hurting, and to embrace the wholeness they were created to express as men.  The fruit of the Spirit—"love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control"—are not "chickified" qualities that need to be corrected with hyper-masculine traits, but the manly relational attributes of Jesus.

Like all of Jesus' disciples, Mary [of Bethany, Lazarus and Martha's sister] struggled to understand the upsetting things he was saying about laying down his life.  His words conflicted with her messianic expectations too, especially with daily reminders of the Roman occupation.  So when Mary invades an all-male feast intended to honor Jesus and anoints him with nard—a perfume the ancients used to pour on a corpse and an aroma everyone present recognized—her actions are intentional and infused with meaning that isn't lost on Jesus.  She was his student.  As she sat at his feet, he taught her the same things he told his male disciples about his approaching death.  ...

In the midst of a party atmosphere, six days before the Passover that goes down in history as the Lord's Supper, with the looming battle ahead weighing heavily on Jesus and his male disciples in denial of what awaits him, Mary's anointing breaks his isolation and affirms the mission he's been telling his followers about for a long time.  It's the only time anyone stood with him and said "Yes" to the cross and to the mission his Father has given him.  In contrast, Peter's response was, "Never, Lord!...This shall never happen to you."  At Mary's anointing of Jesus, the disciples all chime in with Judas Iscariot to criticize her and point to the terrible waste of "expensive" perfume.  In utter contrast, Jesus not only defends her actions, he interprets them.  "When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial" adding, "She has done a beautiful thing to me."

Jesus was on a mission to restore the world God created and loves deeply.  He didn't come to make slight adjustments to the way things work in a fallen world.  It was not his intention to offer men a kinder, gentler patriarchy.  His mission was to turn this fallen world right side up. ... To bear God's image inevitably means going against the cultural grain.

I don't change my Facebook profile picture very often.  Nor my cover photo, as evidenced by the fact that the current one is missing two grandchildren.  In fact, I think I've only had three profile pictures since I joined Facebook in 2007.  For a long time I used a version of our Sursum Corda Academy shield, which you see on the left-hand side of the banner at the top of this page.  In 2014 I switched to this picture of Vivienne and Grandma swimming.

While I hate to replace that adorable moment, I think it's time I changed things up a little more often.  Plus, I not could resist this photo of, um, myself with my cup of tea and my handsome prince, sitting on a bench at one of our favorite places:  Leu Gardens, where we enjoy the flowers and others do all the work.  (You can click on the images to see larger versions.)

The sculpture is by J.A. Cobb, and was part of a very enjoyable Ribbet the Exhibit display back in February.

And I'm not the only one in the family with a frog doppelgänger.

Jon and Heather

Vivienne

As I was preparing the last photo for posting, it occurred to me that it resembles something other than our granddaughter.  Sure enough, I found this picture of Edgar Degas' Petite Danseuse de 14 Ans, from our trip to the St. Louis Art Museum.  That had looked familiar in its turn; there's also a version at the Musée d'Orsay, in almost the exact pose as my frog picture.  Now I don't know if it looked familiar in St. Louis because of the Orsay or Ribbit the Exhibit!

St. Louis       Paris (photo from the Musée d'Orsay website)

I like Bed Bath & Beyond.  Their prices can be a little higher than at some places, but there are plenty of opportunities to get 20%-off coupons, and despite what the fine print might say, the coupons never expire.  Most of all, here is the reason I love to buy small appliances at BBB:

Three years ago we bought a new toaster oven.  I've been very happy with our choice, but early this year I noticed that one of the lower elements had developed a split.

The appliance still worked fine, so dealing with the problem dropped to the bottom of the to-do list.

However, I recently realized that the three-year warranty was about to expire, and the element, much to my surprise, had shown no sign of healing over the last seven months.

I wrote to Cuisenart, and I wrote to Bed Bath & Beyond.  Both responded.  Cuisenart's response was acceptable, but felt scripted and was not particularly helpful.  I was beginning to wonder if it was worth the hassle and postage to return the unit.  Maybe I should just fork over another $65 for a new toaster oven.  If I were being cynical, I'd be pretty sure that's why warranty returns can be difficult.

But Bed Bath & Beyond's response pushed cynicism out the window.  What it boiled down to:  There's no limit on our return policy, just take it back to the store.  Now that's what I call customer service.

So this afternoon I bundled up the toaster oven, not without a prayer of thanksgiving for three years of good service, and headed off to our local store.  Thanks to Porter's meticulousness, I had the receipt, but since I wanted to do an even exchange I might not even have needed that.  The cheerful and helpful sales clerk took the old toaster oven and sent me to pick out a new one.  I was pleased to note that they are still carrying the same model, slightly updated, and for the same price as in 2012.  The clerk made the exchange and sent me out of the store with a smile.  Needless to say, I was smiling, too.

As far as I'm concerned, that's more than enough reason to shop at Bed Bath & Beyond.  And to keep our receipts!

The Green Ember by S. D. Smith (Story Warren Books, 2014)
The Black Star of Kingston  by S. D. Smith (Story Warren Books, 2015)

My place beside you, my blood for yours,
Till the Green Ember rises, or the end of the world!

The Green Ember stories began on a porch in West Virginia, with S. D. Smith and his young daughter watching rabbits cavort in their yard.  Soon Smith began telling her stories about those rabbits and their adventures.  Like rabbits, the stories multiplied.  So did Smith's children (though not like rabbits) and they all loved the stories about #RabbitsWithSwords.

Finally, Smith decided to share his stories with a larger audience.  If you want to know more, you can watch what apparently was their Kickstarter promo video.  If it sounds a little funny in places, that's because for some reason the references to Kickstarter have been blanked out in this version.

The Green Ember is just a story. It's not a lesson, it's not a sneaky vehicle to teach you something.  It's just a story.  But I believe in the power of stories. — S. D. Smith

I also believe in the power of stories, whether from a book, a movie, a video game, or any other medium.  Even at my age I must be careful what stories I let myself experience, because I'm so vulnerable to their effects. By now most of you know what's coming, my definition of a good book, slightly paraphrased:  A good story inspires me to be a better person.  These are good stories, not at all in a syrupy way, but shot through with reality, life, action, and beauty.

Yes, I realized I just used the term "reality" about a book with anthropomorphized animals.

It was a little jarring at first to wrap my head around the idea that the rabbits have both human and rabbit physical characteristics.  That is, they are fully capable of using their front paws as hands (e.g. wielding swords, making stained glass windows, knitting), while their hind legs are rabbit-style powerful weapons.  But it didn't take me long to get over it.  (I wonder if it helped or hindered that I was at the same time reading Uncle Wiggily's Adventures.  For the record, much as I respect the bunny rabbit gentleman, The Green Ember is 'way better.)

Let's see, what do I like about this book, other than its positive impact and the fact that I was immediately entranced and didn't want to put it down?

• The primary protagonist is a strong female character.  I've mentioned before how I grew up with books that made me embarrassed to be a girl, and nearly always identified with the male characters instead.  Here's a female character who can think, fight, nurture, worry, and push herself beyond her limits. 
• This rabbit heroine is named Heather!
• The secondary protagonist, Pickett, is highly intelligent and mathematically talented, and his gifts don't make him a freak, but rather a valuable asset in the community.
• Due to his young age and the trauma in his life, Pickett has some dangerous emotional issues.  The wisest rabbits in the community don't seek to make him "normal," but instead help him find healing through becoming more, not less, himself.
• This is very much a medieval rabbit world.  They fight with swords and arrows—and feet and just a little bit of gunpowder.  They make clothing by hand.  Skills are learned through apprenticeship.  Somehow chivalry and honor and high callings fit better in a medieval-themed world, as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis amply demonstrated.  Even George Lucas peopled his high-tech future with swords and knights.
• The rabbit community values, supports, and praises excellence in every good endeavor, from cooking to fighting to building to storytelling.  The end of the rabbits' world seems imminent, yet they emphasize the importance of the arts, and value doing the work of ordinary life extraordinarily well.

The ending of The Green Ember begs for a sequel, and I understand one is in the works.  In the meantime, there's Smith's second book, The Black Star of Kingston.  It's a distant-past prequel to The Green Ember, and definitely enjoyable to read in its own right.  It's not quite as satisfying, mainly because it's much shorter, but also because the strong female characters are mostly missing.  Perhaps even rabbit civilizations need to develop over time. 

Thanks, Serina T. for recommending The Green Ember, and especially for letting me know about the amazon.com special when I could get the Kindle version for free.  I'm hooked, of course, and bought The Black Star of Kingston at full price.  Not that $3.99 is going to break the bank around here.

The Pope is getting all the publicity, but he isn't the only head of state visting a city of historic importance these days.  Last week King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain came to St. Augustine, the oldest city in the United States.  St. Augustine is celebrating its 450th anniversary, having been founded by the Spanish on September 8, 1565.

I'll bet the Spanish monarchs, cheered as they were by adoring crowds, didn't make nearly as much of a mess of the city as the visit of Pope Francis is expected to do to Philadelphia.

This is my 100th blog post for this year, and I think it fitting to dedicate it to promoting another blog, just five months old but very promising:  Blue Ocean Families.

Inspired by the business concept of Blue Ocean Strategy, the Blue Ocean Families team seeks to answer the question, How can we leave this frantic modern life and carve out a peaceful blue ocean for our families?

Blue Ocean Strategy: Don’t beat the competition, make it irrelevant.

The creators of Blue Ocean Strategy illustrate their idea by envisioning traditional markets as a bloody red ocean of cut-throat competition. They propose that businesses should leave this deadly environment and carve out untapped market space (i.e. a customer base nobody else is reaching). They call this unique market space a blue ocean and explain how to create one in any industry.

Blue Ocean Families: Turn the competition into community.

The red ocean is where we try to keep up with the Joneses and fight the mommy wars. A blue ocean family doesn’t follow the status quo, but celebrates and develops its uniqueness while living in community with other families.

Here are five of my favorite posts:

Can We Trust the Path of Learning that Our Kids Choose?

Support for Parents on the Road Less Traveled

The Cost of Creativity: 9 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Want Creative Kids

Learning to Eliminate: Cultural Context

Entertainment Rethink:  Don't Forget Fun!

(It was hard to pick just five, but then I am biased.  I suppose that in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that the founder and primary author of Blue Ocean Families is my daughter.  But that would be bragging.)

Picture the Blue Ocean. This peaceful haven is a place where just one family swims and where each family member can thrive. They have room and laughter, and time to explore and expand. They threaten no one because they chose to leave the Red Ocean and carve out space to make their very own Blue Ocean.

How do you create a Blue Ocean – a unique family culture – where each member has the freedom to thrive AND where success helps others rather than threatens them?

That’s the question I want to explore in this blog. It’s little more than a vision now, but if you find the idea intriguing, then please join me on my journey!

Ah, I knew there was a reason I didn't want to have Amazon's "1-Click" purchase button turned on.  But when buying Kindle books, there's no choice.  Tonight I was browsing their daily deals and, somehow, accidentally clicked on a "Buy now with 1-Click" button.  I think the problem was related to the fact that something—my computer, Firefox, Norton, our ISP; I don't know the culprit—has been making the Internet unpredictably slow.  For a while it will go just fine, then lag by several seconds.  For example, typed the first half of the previous sentence in real time, then the last half took in all my keystrokes before appearing all at once.  The mouse has a similar problem, so the computer must have registered a click in the wrong place.

Whatever the reason, I was on the phone to Amazon right away.  There really needs to be a "cancel this order" button.  I know how to do that with physical orders, but could see no way to do it with the digital order.  So I called.  Yes, I, even phone-phobic I, picked up the phone.  The cost was only $1.99, not a high-risk financial move, but two bucks is two bucks, and it was definitely not the  kind of book I wanted cluttering up my Kindle.

Despite language issues, I think the Amazon rep got things straightened out for me.  The book disappeared from my Kindle all right, but the refund of my charge should come "within two to three business days."  I'm hoping it will be a bit faster than that, just because I don't think it should take so long, but I'm happy to know that such accidental purchases can be undone.  Maybe next time I'll find a "cancel" button—but I'm also hoping there won't be a next time.

Now my computer/Internet/browser/whatever really needs a rest.  Maybe it will feel better in the morning.

When I saw this poster at our library I did a double take, and had to record it.  We have a friend who trains assistance dogs, and I'd always thought of them as animals that did for people what the people could not do:  being eyes for the blind, ears for the deaf, or hands for those with limited use of their own.  So how, I wondered, does a dog help those who can't read?  Our friend would tell you that her dogs are very clever, but not even she will claim that they can read.

Well, it turns out that it's not reading assistance these dogs are giving, but reading education assistance.  So I'm guessing that it's our educational system that's handicapped here.  There's a video below that explains the program, in which children who are academically or socially impaired get the opportunity to read out loud to specially-trained dogs.  As our librarian explained, "The dogs never judge; they just listen."  I'll make no judgements about the program itself, which apparently has been quite successful.  If it helps kids and doesn't cost a boatload of tax money, go for it.  I will, however, vent a little about a society and a system that apparently make such interventions necessary.

How have we managed to make such a hash of learning to read?  Children are born smart.  Every normal child learns to speak a language (or two, or three, or seventeen) before he ever sets foot in a school.  Indeed, he learns the very concept of language.  If his parents are Deaf, he learns to sign as well.  He learns all this with no formal lessons, no studying, no special programs, no certified teachers, no expensive curricula.  Humans are as well-designed for reading as for speaking; how is it that we have made reading so difficult to learn?

Do these children have no parents to read to?  No siblings?  Are they too busy and impatient?  Do they have no pets of their own?  Not even a stuffed animal?  I'm guessing the sad answer in too many cases is yes.

The "reassurances" near the end of the video sent chills down my spine.  These aren't just ordinary pets; all dogs and handlers are "professionally screened, trained, and tested."  "Teams wear identifying shirts, bandanas, and badges."  The animals are specially treated against allergens before interacting with children.  And of course, they are all insured.  What kind of a world have we created?

I wonder how much of the benefit the children receive comes from the physical affection given and received with the dog.  That's a good thing, but it's tragic that the children are no longer allowed to exchange that affection with their teachers and human volunteers.  And each other, for that matter.

Hmm.  Maybe we should expand the program.  Who wouldn't benefit from a chance to interact with an affectionate, well-trained dog?  I'm thinking workplace stress-relief programs.  Microsoft and Google, are you listening?

The Upside of Stress:  Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It  by Kelly McGonigal (Avery, 2015)

For a book that has such an important message, and which my read-through has left bristling with sticky notes, this was surprisingly hard to finish.  It's equally hard to summarize for this review.  I'd hoped that McGonigal's TED talk would be an inspiring summary, so I wouldn't have to say, "read the book."  But the talk lacks the details and documentation of the book, and, since it came before the book, lacks several key elements.  So I'll say it:  "Read the book."

Now, I know that most of you won't, so here's a taste.

Despite everything you've heard, it's not stress that's killing you.  What's killing you is believing that stress is killing you.  If you see stress as a positive force, it does you no harm.  Like grasping the nettle.

Oh, great.  So not only is stress killing me, but it's all my fault because I can't make myself pretend it isn't killing me....

Relax.  It's not that bad.  Really.

As a health psychologist, Kelly McGonigal had made a career out of telling people how bad stress is for their health, and teaching them techniques to help reduce it.  But then she came across a study that indicated that by encouraging people to fear and avoid stress, wasn't helping them, but making their lives worse.  She might have ignored, or discredited the research, but instead threw herself into investigating this crazy idea, and came away convinced.

In 1998, thirty thousand adults in the United States were asked how much stress they had experienced in the past year.  They were also asked, Do you believe stress is harmful to your health?

Eight years later, the researchers scoured public records to find out who among the thirty thousand participants had died.  Let me deliver the bad news first.  High levels of stress increased the risk of dying by 43 percent.  But—and this is what got my attention—that increased risk applied only to people who also believed that stress was harming their health.  People who reported high levels of stress but who did not view their stress as harmful were not more likely to die.  In fact, they had the lowest risk of death of anyone in the study, even lower than those who reported experiencing very little stress.

The researchers concluded that it wasn't stress alone that was killing people.  It was the combination of stress and the belief that stress is harmful.  The researchers estimated that over the eight years they conducted their study, 182,000 Americans may have died prematurely because they believed that stress was harming their health.

... According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that would make "believing stress is bad for you" the fifteenth-leading cause of death in the United States, killing more people than skin cancer, HIV/AIDS, and homicide.

But there's good news:  very small changes can have a great effect on how we look at stress.  A brief lecture on the benefits of stress, ten minutes spent writing about what values we find important; such brief interventions have been shown again and again to have long-lasting effects.  This isn't a think-and-get-rich plan, nor a placebo effect, but more of a butterfly effect.

[T]o many, these results sound more like science fiction than science.  But mindset interventions are not miracles or magic.  They are best thought of as catalysts.  Changing your mindset puts into motion processes that perpetuate positive change over time.

A belief with this kind of power goes beyond a placebo effect.  This is a mindset effect.  Unlike a placebo, which tends to have a short-lived impact on a highly specific outcome, the consequences of a mindset snowball over time, increasing in influence and long-term impact.

I'm very bad at doing the "exercises at the end of the chapter" in any book, but even so, simply reading through this one has already made a difference in my life.  How much remains to be seen, but the butterfly has flapped its wings, and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.

And now for the quotes.  Extensive, yes, but I'm still leaving too much out.  If you can get the book from a library, as I did, it will be well worth your while; it's repetitive enough that you can skim and get the major points.  Is it worth $13 for the Kindle version?  I don't know; maybe it depends on how stressed you are....

Fear, stigma, self-criticism, shame—all of these are believed, by many health professionals, to be powerfully motivating messages that help people improve their well-being.  And yet, when put to the scientific test, these messages push people toward the very behaviors the health professionals hope to change.

The new science also shows that changing your mind about stress can make you healthier and happier.  How you think about stress affects everything from your cardiovascular health to your ability to find meaning in life.  The best way to manage stress isn’t to reduce or avoid it, but rather to rethink and even embrace it.

[H]ow you think about aging affects health and longevity not through some mystical power of positive thinking but by influencing your goals and choices.

[P]eople who endorse a stress-is-harmful mindset are more likely to say that they cope with stress by trying to avoid it.  For example, they are more likely to:

• Try to distract themselves from the cause of the stress instead of dealing with it.
• Focus on getting rid of their feelings of stress instead of taking steps to address its source.
• Turn to alcohol or other substances or addictions to escape the stress.
• Withdraw their energy and attention from whatever relationship, role, or goal is causing the stress.

In contrast, people who believe that stress can be helpful are more likely to say that they cope with stress proactively.  For example, they are more likely to:

• Accept the fact that the stressful event has occurred and is real.
• Plan a strategy for dealing with the source of stress.
• Seek information, help, or advice.
• Take steps to overcome, remove, or change the source of stress.
• Try to make the best of the situation by viewing it in a more positive way or by using it as an opportunity to grow.

I call this the stress paradox.  High levels of stress are associated with both distress and well-being.  Importantly, happy lives are not stress-free, nor does a stress-free life guarantee happiness.  Even though most people view stress as harmful, higher levels of stress seem to go along with things we want:  love, health, and satisfaction with our lives. … The best way to understand the stress paradox is to look at the relationship between stress and meaning.  It turns out that a meaningful life is also a stressful life.

[R]aising a child under eighteen significantly increases the chance that you will experience a great deal of stress every day—and that you will smile and laugh a lot each day.  Entrepreneurs who say that they experienced a great deal of stress yesterday are also more likely to say that they learned something interesting that day.  Rather than being a sign that something is wrong with your life, feeling stressed can be a barometer for how engaged you are in activities and relationships that are personally meaningful.

When you believe that stress is harmful, anything that feels a bit stressful can start to feel like an intrusion in your life.  Whether it’s waiting in line at the grocery store, rushing to meet a deadline at work, or planning a holiday dinner for your family, everyday experiences can start to seem like a threat to your health and happiness.  You may find yourself complaining about these experiences, as if your life has gone off course and there is some stress-free version of it out there waiting for you. Consider that in a 2014 survey by the Harvard School of Public Health, the most commonly named sources of everyday stress included juggling schedules, running errands, commuting, social media, and household tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and repairs.  These are normal and expected parts of life, but we treat them as if they are unreasonable impositions, keeping our lives from how they should really be.

It was this mindset—not some objective measure of stressful events—that best predicted the risk of death among the mean in the Normative Aging Study over five decades.  Summing up the study as “stress kills” (which plenty of media reports did) doesn’t make sense. … The same experiences that give rise to daily stress can also be sources of uplift or meaning—but we must choose to view them that way.

A bunch of Stanford students agreed to keep journals over winter break. Some were asked to write about their most important values, and how the day’s activities related to those values.  Others were asked to write about the good things that happened to them. … [After the break,] the students who had written about their values were in better health and better spirits. Over break, they had experienced fewer illnesses and health problems.  Heading back to school, they were more confident about their abilities to handle stress. … Writing about values helped the students see the meaning in their lives.  Stressful experiences were no longer simply hassles to endure; they became an expression of the students’ values. … [S]mall things that might otherwise have seemed irritating became moments of meaning.

It turns out that writing about your values is one of the most effective psychological interventions ever studied.  In the short term, [it] makes people feel more powerful, in control, proud, and strong.  It also makes them feel more loving, connected, and empathetic toward others.  It increases pain tolerance, enhances self-control, and reduces unhelpful rumination after a stressful experience.

In the long term, writing about values has been shown to boost GPAs, reduce doctor visits, improve mental health, and help with everything from weight loss to quitting smoking and reducing problem drinking.  It helps people persevere in the face of discrimination and reduces self-handicapping.  In many cases, these benefits are a result of a onetime mindset intervention.  People who write about their values once, for ten minutes, show benefits months or even years later.

When you can’t control or get rid of stress, you can still choose how you respond [to] it.  Remembering your values can help transform stress from something that is happening against your will and outside your control to something that invites you to honor and deepen your priorities.

When stress is part of what makes something meaningful, shutting it out doesn’t get rid of the stress.  Instead, taking the time to fully process and make meaning from what is stressful can transform it from something that drains you into something that sustains you.

A few things stood out about people who thrived under stress.  First, they thought about stress differently.  They saw it as a normal aspect of life, and they didn’t believe that it was possible or even desirable to have an entirely comfortable, safe life.  Instead, they viewed stress as an opportunity to grow.  They were more likely to acknowledge their stress and less likely to view every struggle as a catastrophe headed toward a worst-case scenario.  They believed that difficult times require staying engaged with life rather than giving up or isolating oneself.  Finally, they also believed that no matter what the circumstances, they must continue making choices—ones that could change the situation or, if that wasn’t possible, that could change how the situation affected them.  People who held these attitudes were more likely to take action and to connect with others during stress.  They were less likely to turn hostile or self-defensive.  They were also more apt to take care of themselves, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  They built a reserve of strength that supported them in facing the challenges in their lives.

This is what it means to be good at stress. It’s not about being untouched by adversity or unruffled by difficulties.  It’s about allowing stress to awaken in you these core human strengths of courage, connection, and growth.  Whether you are looking at resilience in over-worked executives or war-torn communities, the same themes emerge.  People who are good at stress allow themselves to be changed by the experience of stress.  They maintain a basic sense of trust in themselves and a connection to something bigger than themselves.  They also find ways to make meaning out of suffering.  To be good at stress is not to avoid stress, but to play an active role in how stress transforms you.

Although most people believe that the best strategy under pressure is to relax … [often]  the opposite is true.  [W]elcoming stress can boost confidence and improve performance. ...

[The football team] described their pre-game stress as being “amped up” and “excited.” They even tried to increase their adrenaline, knowing it would help them perform.  But when [they] talked about the same adrenaline rush before exams, they used completely different language.  Then it was “nerves,” “anxiety,” and “choking under pressure.” ...

Even in situations where it seems obvious that calming down would help, being amped up can improve performance under pressure.  For example, middle school, high school, and college students who have greater increases in adrenaline during exams outperform their more chilled-out peers.  Green Berets, Rangers, and Marines who have the highest increases in the stress hormone cortisol while undergoing hostile interrogation are less likely to provide the enemy with useful information  And in a training exercise, federal law enforcement officers who showed the greatest increases in heart rate during a hostage negotiation were the least likely to accidentally shoot the hostage.

[A] tend-and-befriend response makes helping others a surprisingly effective way to transform stress.  For example, researchers at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania were interested in finding a way to relieve time pressure at work.  you know the feeling:  There’s too much to do and not enough time to do it.  Time scarcity is not just a stressful feeling; it’s a state of mind that has been shown to lead to poor decisions and unhealthy choices.  In this study, the Wharton researchers tried out two different ways to relieve the feeling of not having enough time.  They gave some people an unexpected windfall of free time and asked them to spend it however they wished.  Others were asked to spend that time helping someone else.  Afterward, the researchers asked participants to rate both how much free time they had available right now and how scarce a resource time was for them in general.

Surprisingly, helping someone else decreased people’s feeling of time scarcity more than actually giving them extra time did. Those who had helped someone else reported afterward that they felt more capable, competent, and useful than people who had spent the time on themselves.  This, in turn, changed how they felt about what they had to accomplish and their ability to handle the pressure. …  Their newfound confidence also changed how they perceived something as objective as time; after helping someone else, time, as a resource, expanded. ... The Wharton researchers summarized their findings whith this advice:  “When individuals feel time constrained, they should become more generous with their time—despite their inclination to be less so.”

[P]eople who can find a benefit in their struggles show a healthier physical response to stress and a faster recovery. … [T]his research doesn’t suggest that the most helpful mindset is a Pollyannish [sic] insistence on turning everything bad into something good.  Rather, it’s the ability to notice the good as you cope with things that are difficult.  In fact, being able to see both the good and the bad is associated with better long-term outcomes than focusing purely on the upside.

Stress caused by the news, as opposed to stress caused by your life, is unique in its ability to trigger a sense of hopelessness.  Watching TV news after a natural disaster or terrorist attach has consistently been shown to increase the risk of developing depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.  One shocking study found that people who watched six or more hours of news about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing were more likely to develop post-traumatic stress symptoms than people who were actually at the bombing and personally affected by it.  It’s not just traditional news programs that instill fear and hopelessness; stories of tragedy, trauma, and threats dominate many forms of media.  In fact, a 2014 study of U.S. adults found that the single best predictor of people’s fear and anxiety was how much time they spent watching TV talk shows.

We all tell stories, and the stories we choose to tell can create a culture of resilience.  How do you tell the stories of your family?  Your community?  Your company?  Your own life?  Consider how you might make room for stories that reflect the strength, courage, compassion, and resilience in yourself and in your community.

It's not much of a post, I'll admit.  But I'm one short of my goal of writing at least ten posts per month, and this month ends in three minutes.  See previous post for why I'm writing at this hour.  No, I'm not a slave to that goal, but if I can do it, why not?  It's the perfect excuse to offer one of my favorite poems, by John Masefield

Laugh and Be Merry

Laugh and be merry, remember, better the world with a song,
Better the world with a blow in the teeth of a wrong.
Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of a span.
Laugh and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of man.

Laugh and be merry:  remember, in olden time,
God made Heaven and Earth for joy He took in a rime,
Made them, and filled them full with the strong red wine of His mirth,
The splendid joy of the stars:  the joy of the earth.

So we must laugh and drink from the deep blue cup of the sky,
Join the jubilant song of the great stars sweeping by,
Laugh, and battle, and work, and drink of the wine outpoured
In the dear green earth, the sign of the joy of the Lord.

Laugh and be merry together, like brothers akin,
Guesting awhile in the rooms of a beautiful inn,
Glad till the dancing stops, and the lilt of the music ends.
Laugh till the game is played; and be you merry, my friends.

We didn't come nearly as far south as usual on our trip home from Connecticut, because we enjoyed a wonderful visit with my cousin, her husband, and other family members.  We hadn't seen each other since my Dad's memorial service in 2002, and only just scratched the surface of reminiscing and catching up.  We could have lingered longer over breakfast, but we needed to get going, and anyway, our hosts were dealing with a clogged kitchen sink.  It was a great visit, but it meant we were still nearly 850 miles from home.  We were thinking of stopping around Savannah, but ... things happened.

The trip began uneventfully, unless you count the good event—the trip from Washington, DC to Richmond has never been so easy.  Probably that's because we're usually hitting that stretch in the late afternoon, and this was morning.  No traffic problems at all!  But we made a gas stop in good old Walterboro, SC, and as we drove away the car door locks began randomly and repeatedly cycling:  lock, unlock; lock, unlock.  We tried this, we tried that.  We searched the Internet, where what we found most useful was learning that other people have had the same problem, though there was no consensus as to a solution.  I whined on Facebook, and received some replies that cheered us up, but no practical suggestions.  Our own mechanic had gone home for the day.

So we just kept going.  Instead of stopping in Savannah, we decided to go straight home, not knowing what might happen if we stopped the car and left it overnight.  There were some promising breaks in the lock cycling, but it would come back again.  And again.  Until finally it didn't.

Although we no longer had our Personal Percussion accompaniment, the I-4 stretch had enough to keep the driver awake:  a long construction zone, with no street lights and no lane markers, in the pitch dark and pouring rain.  At least the other folks on the road had the sense not to be driving the posted 70 mph speed limit.  But we made it to the grocery store, where the car locks behaved normally, for a few staples and some sushi for dinner—as I said, we hadn't wanted to stop the car while far from home.

And then we were home!  All seemed well, and we walked over to the neighbors' to pick up our mail.  There we discovered that both of them were sick in bed.  This is relevant to my tale because of what happened next:  Porter went to turn the water to the house back on, and discovered the valve was leaking—and who knows how long it had been.  He had the material needed to repack the valve, so instead of enjoying our sushi, he went to work.  Normal procedure would have been to borrow from our neighbor both his assistance and the tool needed to turn the water off at the street.  But ... (see above).  Not without difficulty, Porter managed to make do with me as an assistant and wrenches plus a lot of effort to turn the water off, then on again, then off again when we realized things were still leaking, then on again when the repair was finally complete.  Well, almost—we have water, and we've left the finishing touches for a time when, we hope, the "sun comes out and dries up all the rain."  So the day that began with plumbing, ended with plumbing.

Oh, and we also replaced the battery in one of our smoke detectors, which was beeping so insistently I could hear it from outside the house.

We may be getting to bed a lot later than we had hoped, but we're home, we're thankful for a wonderful vacation and a safe return, and we trust that daylight will reveal no further problems—our neighbors keep a good eye on things while we are gone—and we finally had a chance to enjoy our sushi.  Soon we will be off to bed, after I write one more post....

After spending two weeks with our this-side-of-the-Atlantic grandchildren, I find myself puzzled.  I've researched the genealogies of both sides of the family pretty far back, and have yet to discover where the mountain goat line comes in.

I've written about this before, when a park maintenance man berated us for allowing a 14-month-old to climb freely over the playground equipment.  Now that toddler is four-and-a-half, and correspondingly even more sure of foot.  Nor are her siblings any less coordinated.

One of our favorite Maggie P. activities (besides eating M&M's) is to walk to the Outer Light.  This includes traversing a half-mile-long stone breakwater, which of course is the most fun part of the trip for the kids.  Most of the huge granite rocks are flat enough for easy hiking, but there are good-sized gaps, and some tricky spots, particularly where unfortunate ships have shoved the rocks askew.

On this particular day, the five oldest children—Jonathan (11.75), Noah (9), Faith (nearly 7), Joy (4.5) and Jeremiah (2.5)—made the trek, along with Grandma (old enough) and Dad-o (ditto).  The three oldest had no intention of walking sedately and carefully across the rocks.  Oh, they were careful enough—but at a running pace.  I walked with Joy, while Porter and Jeremiah brought up the rear.  Jonathan had time to run out, back, and out again well before the four of us arrived at the lighthouse, but it was only short legs that held us back.  Or so I thought, until the trip back.  Jeremiah kept a grip on Porter's hand, but leapt over foot-wide fissures with ease and confidence.  Joy was completely reliable, and I only reminded her a couple of times (probably unnecessarily) that the danger was not in the rocks, nor the speed, but in not paying attention to where her feet were landing.

As we neared the lighthouse itself, Faith, who had waited there for us, informed Joy that the final stretch was a bit difficult (true).  Joy drew herself up to her full height and proclaimed "I'm four!  Last year I was only three!"—with all the indignation of a teenager's, "But Mom, I'm almost an adult!"  And proceeded to climb all over the area of jagged, randomly placed and spaced stones—with a lot more agility than her grandmother, I can assure you.  Even Jeremiah insisted on going wherever his siblings went, dragging Dad-o with him.

On the return trip, only Jeremiah consented to stay with an adult, and his slower pace was due more to his two-year-old desire to stop and examine everything (Porter steered him deftly around the dead and decaying cormorant) than to his size.  Joy threw off all fetters and flew (safely) across the rocks, behind but no less carefree than her siblings.  I thought I might catch up with her at one of the tricky spots, but she maneuvered through them with no hesitation.

I confess that I was relieved to have everyone's feet back on solid sand, but it was a great trip, and I was humbled by the exuberant courage of the young, who know that a challenge is what turns a simple walk into an adventure.

Frankly, he didn't look like the kind of man I'd bother to speak to at a gas station just off I-95 in Virginia.  Grizzled, rather the worse for wear, probably living a hardscrabble life—at least judging by appearances.  But there was a Confederate flag in his truck's front license plate holder, and it made me smile.

I'm a Northerner by birth and upbringing, and even though I've lived almost half my life in Florida—well, from Central Florida you actually have to travel north to get to the South.  So I have my full share of prejudices, and there are days when encountering such a man might have scared me.  But today, as we passed together through the convenience store doors, I remarked, "I've never been a fan of the Confederate flag, but I've always been a fan of the underdog, and today your truck made me smile.  Thank you." The man gave me a gentle smile of his own, and a kindly (maybe even relieved) twinkle touched his eyes as he responded simply, "thank you."

I may not live in the True South, but multicultural Central Florida has helped me lose at least a little bit of my uneducated and frankly self-righteous and snooty attitude towards its people.  And to appreciate that neither side in the Civil War had a monopoly on righteousness, self-sacrifice, and courage; that atrocities are carried out under the flags of many nations and many causes; that thinking you have the right to deride someone for his ancestors only means you haven't looked closely enough at your own; and that attempting to erase history is the mark of a totalitarian state.

The brouhaha that has erupted over Confederate flags and monuments to Confederate soldiers made me realize that our country is not as far from the iconoclasm of Daesh (a.k.a. ISIS) as we'd like to think.  It makes me grateful for one man and his truck, refusing to bow to the forces that would obliterate his past.  One does not learn from history by forgetting it.

And so, bizarre as it might seem, the Confederate flag brought me a little closer to another human being today, one who I would otherwise have treated as beyond the pale.  And so I salute that old Virginian, and sing with Robert Burns,

Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth
Shall bear the gree an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's comin yet for a' that,
That Man to Man the warld o'er
Shall brithers be for a' that.

Side note:  Immersion in the works of George MacDonald has been of great assistance in understanding and appreciating Burns.

Here's the whole poem, and a translation.

And for your listening and viewing pleasure, the whole song, with pictures of Scotland. 

The one good thing about living so far from our grandchildren is that their growth between visits is often dramatic, and easier to see than when one's data points are closer together.  But Nathaniel, six months old, certainly made the most of our two weeks together.  When he arrived, he was a good crawler (commando-style), but had just begun to take some wobbly creeping (hands-and-knees) steps.

Before the second week was out, he had a good, solid, cross-pattern creep, i.e. was able to get across the room and into trouble in no time at all.  And never one to rest on his laurels, Nathaniel wants to cruise!