Lift Up Your Hearts!

Ever wonder why British and American spellings are different if we theoretically speak the same language?  Color vs. colour, traveling vs. travelling, center vs. centre, aluminum vs. aluminium—are these inconsistencies merely some sadist's design to torment the multicultural child?^*  If so, Noah Webster was the man, but he thought he was making things easier.

We've been enjoying tremendously the Teaching Company lectures on the History of the English Language.   I can't recommend it enough:  we've learned many fascinating things about the evolution of our native tongue.  Recently the course touched on American lexicographer Noah Webster.

Dictionary-making has long been a battle between descriptivism and prescriptivism:  Should a dictionary merely reflect the language as it is, or should it be an authoritative recording of the language as it should be?  Noah Webster came down on the side of the prescriptivists, and he had definite ideas of how to clean up and simplify the language bequeathed unto us by those Brits we had so recently sent packing.

So he changed colour to color and centre to center, which he decreed made more sense.  Aluminum vs. aluminium is a more compicated story:  Sir Humphry Davy, who named the element, kept changing his mind, calling it first alumium, then aluminum, then aluminium.  Scientists preferred aluminium, but Noah Webster latched onto aluminum, and as the metal became common enough to enter popular discourse, to what did writers turn for authoritative spelling?  Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language.

I'm working on getting Li'l Writer Guy home from Switzerland, but in the meantime, enjoy this wonderful story of a three-year-old who saved her father's life by walking to a nearby fire station and asking for help.  Note both that young children can be much more competent than we generally expect these days, and that this competence did not arise in a vacuum, but had been nurtured by her parents.  It doesn't have to be, in the words of the reporter, "very un-three-year-old-like."

I can't embed the video, but you can find it on the right of the above-linked page, or here.  (H/T Free-Range Kids.)

The Caller ID number was local; in fact, it was from the town where our church is located, so I answered the phone, fully expecting a recorded message about upcoming parish events.

Instead, it was a live person.  Because she asked to speak with a family member who is currently nearly 5000 miles away, I asked if I could take a message.

"There ain't no message," the caller responded.  "I'll call back."

Well.  There ain't none of our friends who talk like that, so I figured this was a solicitation call of some sort and hung up.  (I'm tempted to tell the next caller that I'm voting in the upcoming election for anyone who does not call to solicit my vote.)  But I wonder.  Who would entrust his message to someone who talked like that to potential customers/voters?

Then again, I shouldn't be so hard on her.  She was probably a minimum-wage hireling, and I've seen worse from official business documents, major newspapers, and professional websites.  I know that language evolves, but "anything goes" cannot be the mark of a higher civilization.

New Year's Resolution #8—in which I detail my renewed attempts at organizing my life—notwithstanding, my dear friend, whose birthday it is today, knows well that it will be a long time before I am half as organized as she was 30 years ago, if not from birth.

Thus it will be a disappointment, perhaps, but no surprise, that my new scheme is not well enough in place for a real, physical birthday card to be arriving at her lovely home in today's mail.  There's hope for next year, but in the meantime, since she is a Faithful Reader and can be counted on to see this post, if not on the day, at least close to it, I offer this substitute:

Happy Birthday, my friend!

You have been an organizational inspiration to me ever since you taught me that laziness is the best motivator.  (And yes, it is easier to have the spices in alphabetical order!)

Just as with #2 Rediscover Feasting, there's a lot more to this resolution than meets the eye.  But if I called this resolution "Get Organized," it would sound boring and not a few of my readers would laugh.

I'm not naturally an organized person, and I've made many attempts to "get my life together."  Some have been more successful than others, but none has stood the Stress Test:  Nearly any system can work when conditions are right, but the only one worth implementing is one that won't fall apart when the floodwaters of life start to rise.   In my case, "floodwaters" is loosely defined to include any disruption in my schedule, bad or good:  from hurricanes and illnesses to vacations and visitors.

That's why I'm so excited about Getting Things Done:  I saw how well Janet's implementation (and she's still tuning it) worked as she made the transition from teacher/graduate student to full-time, first-time mother, a definite stress test, and definitely successful.  I've only just begun to try to implement some of the GTD ideas in my life, and I'm not Janet, but there are promising signs.  If I can avoid any significant stress tests before I get it securely in place, I have great hope.

What does this have to do with enjoying spontaneity?  To paraphrase Winston Churchill:  Organization is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.  It's very difficult for me to relax (see Resolution #3) and enjoy spontaneous activities—or planned activities for that matter—when the thousand-and-one items on my personal to-do list are whispering, nagging, or screaming at me from my subconscious mind.  Whether or not other people would agree with me on the importance or urgency of the items on this list is not the point.

In order to hang out with friends or take a long, aimless walk and truly have nothing on your mind, you’ve got to know where all your actionable items are located, what they are, and that they will wait.  And you need to be able to do that in a few seconds, not days. (GTD)

GTD is not, first and foremost, about getting things done.  It's a consolidation loan for the disorganized:  all your activity debts—everything you must do, should do, or might want to do—are gathered into one system, with a plan for paying them off in small, easy, but consistent steps.  In the process, mental health improves, creativity is unleashed, and ... Things Get Done.  That's the theory:  we'll see if I will soon be able to say, as Janet did: 

[GTD] turned my life around from always feeling overwhelmed and behind to feeling like I knew where I stood and how to get where I wanted to go.  This freed my mind up to enjoy time relaxing with people rather than always worrying about the known and unknown things I had to do.

Then I will have a chance of being able to enjoy spontaneity.

Progress Report

#1  Read More Books  Now that's more like it!  I'm back on track with six books in July.  I was partly inspired by knowing I had only one month to enjoy Janet and Stephan's library, and partly because it's easy do what the people around you are doing, and Janet and Stephan are often to be found book-in-hand.  Even when they are also baby-in-hand.

#2  Rediscover Feasting  In the land of fabulous bread, cheese, and chocolate, how can you not feast?  The trick is in returning to "ordinary time" at home.  I'm still working on it.

#3  Learn to Relax  I bought a book on Alexander Technique from Janet's teacher, though I only read half of it this month—when I remembered that I would be taking it home with me, I switched my attention to books I would be leaving behind.  I've been trying to increase my awareness of my muscles and trying to learn to relax them.  I also hope to learn something from observing Stephan's way of reacting slowly and calmly to situations, instead of with my normal adrenaline surge....

#4  Like More Things  For progress on this resolution I highly recommend spending six weeks in a foreign country.  Make that living six weeks in a foreign country.  There's something about living daily life that transforms the new from strange to comfortable—or even delightful.

#5  Pay Attention  I keep forgetting about this one.  I got distracted during a critical turn on a walk in Bern and didn't realize what I had missed until I was required to retrace my steps on my own—but I eventually figured it out.  In other areas of life—such as my inveterate multi-tasking—I need to work harder even to think about this resolution, let alone make progress.

#6  Cast Away Fear  Solo travel, living in a foreign country, and childbirth provide good opportunities for practicing Philippians 4:6.  If my victories are baby steps, they are steps nonetheless, and I'm happy about them.

#7 Talk Less, Listen More Whether or not it was visible to those around me, I made some progress here.  It's easier when the conversation is in a foreign language.  :)

... When you're doing a crossword puzzle, the clue is "big name in chips," and you immediately think "Intel."

The answer was "Wise."

I've mentioned Steph Shaw before, when I wrote about Kevin Michael Johnson's Kickstarter campaign (successfully completed; The Raid is moving forward). 

Now Steph has her own Kickstarter project:  creating a full-length album of her new songs.

I've teamed up with producer Sean McClowry here in NYC & we've narrowed down our fav songs for my record. I'm excited to be bringing you all some new music.

The songs are all written.
Producer is on board.
What next?

Well, the cool thing about this project is that, since I'm an independent artist, I basically have total creative freedom -- no record label peeking over my shoulder. However, that also means that it's up to me to come up with the funds to take this on.

Go Steph!

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen (Penguin, New York, 2001)

For now, I can't do any better than to refer you to Janet's review of Getting Things Done.  I found it a difficult book to read, even unpleasant, because it's not well written, and makes my mind feel like a hamster on a wheel:  running a lot but not getting anywhere.

But if Allen's book is disappointing, his ideas still inspire me—even if I did have to come at the ideas the wrong way around, from what other people have said about them.  Most inspirational was seeing Janet's version of the system in action, though I know I would have gotten more out of her explanations—and maybe out of the book—if I'd attempted to implement some of the ideas myself, first.

The book wasn't nearly as much fun to read as Don Aslett's books on controlling clutter, but I think they have a lot in common.  Getting Things Done is a lot about controlling the clutter in our minds.

"What's the next action?"  The answer to Allen's favorite question is, "Implementation."  But that's not really an answer, since "implementation" isn't a discrete action, but a mammoth project.  I hope to accomplish some baby steps this week, and—eventually—report back on the results.

Catching up a bit, since I missed July 4:

Happy Independence Day

to my country, and

Happy Schweizer Bundesfeier

(Fête nationale Suisse, Festa nazionale svizzera, and Fiasta naziunala Svizra)

to my country-in-law!

I was a Brownie, then a Girl Scout as a child.  Even then I was somewhat disenchanted, as I knew—thanks to my father's experience as a Scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts—how much more interesting the program, the experiences, and the skills learned would have been if only I'd had that Y chromosome.

Nonetheless, we had a good time, thanks to my father, who took us mountain climbing and taught us to build fires and tie knots, just as he had his Boy Scouts, and to a renegade leader who battled the Girl Scout bureaucrats for the right to take our troop on a tour of Europe.

By the time our own girls were of age, however, the Girl Scout program had, in my opinion, degenerated much further, becoming more "relevant," more "modern"—and even less fun.  What worked for us was the YMCA Indian Princess/Indian Guide program with its regular campouts and greater freedom to customize the local tribe's activities.

If we had young children now, I don't know what we'd do; the Y program has changed, whether for better or worse I know not.  But I do know what we would NOT do:  subject our girls to the new Girl Scouts.

Two years shy of their 100th birthday, the Girl Scouts are going through a midlife crisis of sorts, rethinking everything except their cookie recipes. 

Struggling to maintain its relevance after years of declining membership, the organization is rolling out a rebranding campaign — for the first time in 30 years — throughout the country this month, trying to shed the quaint image of crafts and campfire songs and reposition itself as an agent of change for girls.

This fall, the Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas ... plans to introduce a new initiative, called Gamma Sigma. ... “Gamma Sigma suggests a club with sororitylike traditions like pinning and candlelight ceremonies that appeal to girls,” said Ann Maria Chavez, the council’s chief executive.

Traditional badges are out. Gamma Sigma will have speakers, workshops and experiences intended to bolster girls’ self-esteem and decision-making, Ms. Chavez said.

Can you say, "B-O-R-I-N-G"?

At least they're not messing with my Thin Mints.

Common Sense 101: Lessons from G. K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist (Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2006)

I tried to take a shortcut.  With only three days before leaving the J&S Library behind, I chose this instead of a book by Chesterton himself.  Although somewhat unsatisfactory, it was probably the right thing to do:  The summary has left me thirsting for the Real Thing.

Many times throughout the book I found myself wanting to say to the author—as I wanted to say to the editor of Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils, which I reviewed in January—"Enough of what you think Chesterton is saying; I want to hear more of what he has to say!"  But Chesterton can be tough sledding at first, so reading a historical and contextual introduction is not a bad idea.  Dale Ahlquist is the president of the American Chesterton Society, which might be another good place to begin.

Although there is much I could quote from Common Sense 101, I'll refrain until I have the direct words from one Ahlquist would freely admit is the better writer.  Instead, I'll include a Christmas poem, not by Chesterton, but by his wife, Frances Blogg^* Chesterton.

How far is it to Bethlehem?
    Not very far.
Shall we find the stable-room
    Lit by a star?

Can we see the little Child?
    Is He within?
If we lift the wooden latch,
    May we go in?

May we stroke the creatures there —
    Ox, ass, or sheep?
May we peep like them and see
    Jesus asleep?

If we touch His tiny hand,
    Will He awake?
Will He know we've come so far
    Just for His sake?

Great kings have precious gifts,
    And we have naught;
Little smiles and little tears
    Are all we brought.

For all weary children
    Mary must weep;
Here, on His bed of straw,
    Sleep, children, sleep.

God, in His mother's arms,
    Babes in the byre,
Sleep, as they sleep who find
    Their heart's desire.

One of the fun things about spending foreign money is that it doesn't feel like real spending.  It feels like play money, Monopoly money.  I don't know at what point I crossed the line, but I'm definitely past that.  Swiss francs are now real money, and I look at the green American paper in my wallet and think, "What is this?  Do people actually accept this as payment?"  No doubt that will not last long, once I am home, but it's a weird feeling.

I've long been in favor of following the lead of the many countries that have replaced their lower-denomination bills with coins.  Now that I've worked with such a system for over a month, here are some observations:

• The lowest Swiss bill is the 10-franc note.  There are 5-, 2-, 1-, and 1/2-franc coins.  Practically speaking, this means I can no longer ignore coins.  In America, when I get change back from a purchase, I usually dump the coins in my wallet without checking them, as no error can cost me more than a dollar.  Here, where the change might be worth nearly ten dollars, it's worth at least a quick glance.  I was quite proud of myself when I noted in one transaction that the cashier had mistakenly given me a 2-franc coin instead of a 5-franc coin.
• I had to train myself to make a point of using coins.  Using bills all the time results in a heavy wallet; once I discovered I had over Fr. 40- in change!  Once you get used to the idea of not ignoring change, however, it's not a problem to keep the quantity down to something reasonable.
• The lowest denomination coin is the 5-rappen piece.  This is a good practice; I see no need for the U. S. to continue to mint cents, other than to feed those fun machines at tourist sites that make elongates.  The existence of those machines is to my mind the only compelling reason for keeping the cent.
• I've gotten quite good at paying with change, but still have trouble distinguishing the 1-franc coin from the 20-rappen piece, and the 1/2-franc coin from the 10-rappen piece, when they are jumbled up in my wallet.  I have to look at the number on the coin to be certain, and I find that annoying.
• Swiss merchants don't blink when you hand them a 100-franc bill; in the U. S. I don't like carrying $100 bills because clerks suspect them of being counterfeit, and even if convinced a bill is real, will grumble if your purchase is small.
• Paying with cash is much more common in Switzerland than in the U. S.  Debit cards are handy, though, when buying train tickets; trying to convince the automatic ticket machine to accept your bills (or coins) can sometimes be a problem.
• A common debit card is the Post-Finance card. Once you get over the shock of thinking of a bank and the post office being the same organization, you begin to wonder if the system works because the former subsidizes the latter.  (I have no idea if it does; the thought just occurred to me as a possible explanation for the mysterious combination of banking and postal services.  I know that combination is not just in Switzerland, but I haven't researched how it might have come about.)
• Nearly all shopping is done with Swiss francs, but I've noticed that in shops catering specifically to tourists they will sometimes give the price in Euros as well.

Shopping here is as fun as shopping gets because (1) I can walk where I need to go, (2) it's usually not urgent, but part of the process of exploring the city, (3) there's still a challenge in paying with the right change instead of merely handing over a large bill, and (4) there's always the thrill of trying to get by without English.  The last is much easier than I had imagined.  Knowing a few words of German—notably "please," "thank you," "where is?" and "I'm sorry, but I don't understand German"—goes a long way.  It's also a great help that the cash registers display the total price, so I don't have to try to understand rapid-fire cashier language.  I'm happy to report that I have managed totally in a combination of German, Swiss German, and gestures—except for one of my trips to the tea shop, where the clerk spoke in English because I had filled out a form with my U.S. address.  My proudest moment was asking, "Wo sind die Stilleinlagen?" and making myself understood with no need for repetition or gestures (the latter being a very good thing).

Covenant and Communion:  The Biblical Theology of Pope Benedict XVI by Scott W. Hahn (Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2009)

I read this book quickly, because it's a book to be read slowly.  I should have guessed from the names on the dust jacket quotes—names like David L. Jeffrey, Hans Boersma, and Tremper Longman—that Covenant and Communion would be more like a book from a seminary library than the local Christian bookstore.  There's a lot of heavy theology here, and I currently have neither the time nor the inclination to do it justice.  However, that didn't stop the text from grabbing me occasionally and slowing me down enough to pull a few quotes.  Quotation marks set off Pope Benedict's actual words.

The church is the living voice, the viva vox, of the Word of God....  Scripture is at the center of the Church's tradition, but tradition is properly understood as the whole of "the responsive Word of the Church"—a living dialogue in which the Church constantly listens to the Word addressed to her and responds to the claims the Word makes on her through her preaching, teaching, doctrine, and liturgy.   More than that, tradition is a participation in the power of God promised to the Church by Christ.  It is nothing other than the fulfillment of Christ's promise to be with his Church in the Spirit until the end of the age....  Tradition, then, is nothing less than Christ's living and saving and interpretive presence in the Church.

It is important to keep in mind...that revelation for Benedict is not limited to the written word of Scripture.

"A God who cannot intervene in history and reveal himself is not the God of the Bible."

The Christian faith is not faith in a series of propositions but faith in a historical person.

What is important for us is to recognize that Benedict's theology and exegesis presume as absolutely vital the unity of salvation history—reflected in the unity of the Old and New Testaments—and the principle that Jesus Christ is both the culmination of that history and the interpretive key of God's revelation in the Scriptures.

As the words of Scripture, by their very nature, must admit of more than their literal meaning, the same is true of the historical events recorded in Scripture....  Thus while the events recorded in the Bible are factual, their meanings far transcend "historical facticity" because God in his Spirit is their author.  Indeed, because God is acting in the biblical narrative, "...the events carry within themselves a surplus meaning...giving them significance for all time and for all men."

Benedict rejects as unbiblical the sharp dialectic between Law and Gospel introduced by Martin Luther....  Benedict establishes from his close readings of the texts "the inner continuity and coherence of Law and Gospel" and the "deep unity between the good news of Jesus and the message of Sinai."  The hinge on which this unity depends is...the figure of Jesus Christ.

"The church is there, not for her own sake, but for mankind." 

"We can see in [Acts 2:42] a sketch of the primitive Christian service of worship, which starts with the teaching of the apostles, that is, with the proclamation and hearing of the faith of the Church, of the Word of God that is alive in her and that thus becomes the basis for liturgical and living fellowship:  it reaches a climax in the eucharistic encounter with the Lord, who gives himself to us as bread, and resounds in songs of praise.  The Church is adoration."

Benedict demonstrates that the New Testament portrait of Jesus is that of a person in constant prayer.  The prayer of Jesus is not abstract or monologic.  Rather, the prayer of Jesus is an intimate, intense, and sustained dialogue with the God he calls "Father." The Church's earliest confessions and hymns, which profess faith in Jesus as the Son of God, only confirm the witness of the apostles and the testimony of the Scriptures—that Jesus lived in unbroken "primal conversation with the Father."

The Father that Jesus prayed to was "the God of the fathers," the patriarchs of Israel, and Jesus prayed as a child of these patriarchs, as a son of Abraham.  He was part of this ancient family, this people of God.  This, too, is vital to Benedict's theological understanding.  Jesus prayed with his people, in conversation with the Scriptures of Israel, as is vividly depicted in the Transfiguration, where he talks personally with Moses and the prophet Elijah.

We can speak to God bcause God has spoken to us—because he has come to us as a Word and because in his inmost life in the Trinity he is a relationship.  The prayer of Jesus reveals that the heart of the Trinity is a familial, filial relationship of love.  God in his inner essence is a dialogue of love, and our prayer, both corporately in the liturgy and privately, is a participation in this filial and familial dialogue.

[The Lord's Prayer] illuminates this point.  Even when the believer prays the "Our Father" privately, he or she prays as a member of the family of God.  It is never my Father.  The prayer of Jesus is always personal and simultaneously the prayer of one who knows himself to be part of a family.  "Prayer is always praying with someone," in the communion of the Church, in the body of Christ, in the family of God.

As our prayer is never alone, neither is it something we can do of our own initiative.  Prayer and worship are our response to the God who has first spoken to us.  God's Word to us is a gift, the gift of himself; it is the opportunity to participate in his familial dialogue of love.

"What had always been intended and could never be achieved in the Old Testament sacrifices is incorporated in [Christ].  God does not desire the sacrifice of animals; everything belongs to him.  And he does not desire human sacrifice, for he has created man for living.  God desires something more:  he desires love, which transforms man and through which he becomes capable of relating to God, giving himself up to God.  Now, all those thousands of sacrifices that were always presented to God in the Temple at Jerusalem and all the sacrifices performed in the whole course of history, all this vain and eternal striving to bring ourselves up to God, can be seen as unnecessary and yet, at the same time, as being like windows that allow us, so to speak, a glimpse of the real thing, like preliminary attempts at what has now been achieved.  What they signified—giving to God, union with God—comes to pass in Jesus Christ, in him who gives God nothing but himself and, thereby, us in him."

The Liturgy of the Word in the Mass presumes the unity of salvation history and in fact tracks and unfolds that history, beginning with readings from the Law and the prophets, a song from the psalms, and then readings from the Gospels and the apostolic writings.  Yet it is a mistake to regard the Scriptures used in the liturgy as historical readings or even ethical lessons.  They are the Word of God, the voice of revelation that speaks to us in the present with creative and life-changing power.

Divine worship implies that we ourselves have become beings of the Word, that we conform ourselves to the creative Intellect.  But once more it is clear that we cannot do this of ourselves, and thus everything seems to end again in futility—until the day when the Word comes, the true, the Son, when he becomes flesh and draws us to himself in the exodus of the cross.  This true sacrifice, which transforms us all into sacrifice, that is to say, unites us to God, makes of us beings conformed to God, is indeed fixed and founded on an historical event, but is not situated as a thing in the past behind us—on the contrary, it becomes contemporary and accessible to us in the community of the believing and praying Church, in its sacrament:  that is what is meant by the "sacrifice of the Mass."

"Just reading [Scripture[ does not mean necessarily that we have truly understood the Word of God.  The danger is that we only see the human words and do not find the true actor within, the Holy Spirit.  We do not find the Word in the words.... We stop at the human words, words from the past, history of he past, and we do not discover the present in the past, the Holy Spirit who speaks to us today in the words from the past.  In this way we do not enter the interior movement of the Word, which in human words conceals and which opens the divine words.  We must always look for the Word within the words."

As one whose religious beliefs and experiences have been either atheistic or Protestant, I found it startling to read arguments about where Luther went wrong.  That's not at all the focus of the book, but the few instances caught me by surprise.  However, Pope Benedict's focus on Christ, his obvious knowledge of the Bible, and the marriage of his impressive intellect with his strong faith, make Covenant and Communion a book worthy of serious Protestant attention.  It's probably not a good place for an atheist to begin, unless he's seeking evidence that intellectual, rational, academic thought is not incompatible with Christian faith.

While Joseph was undergoing a secular baptism of sorts at the American Embassy in Bern, Grandma had no official business other than to receive the diaper bag when it was rejected at the door for possible terrorist connections.^*

After a little exploration, the weather—along with the uncertainty of when the party might be over—turned the waiting time over to Li'l Writer Guy, who discovered that a Swiss café is a delightful place to work.

Fr. 4.- may seem high for a cup of tea, but I figure it as:  cup of tea with cookie, Fr. 2-; quiet place to work, Fr. 2-; shelter from the pouring rain, Priceless.  A great bargain.