There's real estate law and tax law and criminal law. There's the Constitution and courts, from the one downtown to that one in the marble hall in Washington DC. There are defense attorneys and prosecuting attorneys and defendants and convicts and prisons. And they are all found right here, in 340-349. I could have read any number of books about sensational trials or notorious attorneys, and, sadly, there was almost a whole shelf just for people who were convicted but later discovered to be innocent.
I brought home a book about the constitution called Me the People: One Man's Selfless Quest to Rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America by Kevin Bleyer, but it was very snarky and silly, so I didn't read it. I also brought home a book surveying cases that test the relationship between church and state, Holy Hullabaloos, by Jay Wexler, but it was also weirdly snarky, and in these troubled times, I didn't think I needed to be *more* cynical about our federal government.
But Jay Wexler is not just a joke cracker-- he's also a number cruncher who, apparently, at one point combed through transcripts of Supreme Court hearings counting the incidents of Justices getting laughs (Scalia won). This factoid and a reference to it at Elena Kagan's confirmation hearing find their way into the book I actually did finish, Sandra Day O'Connor's Out of Order. The link will take you to a review so accurate that I will not repeat all the criticisms contained therein. I can only say in defense of this book that I did not read it as such. I got the audio, read by O'Connor herself. She is from Texas, and her reading voice reminds me very much of that of the highly intelligent, pioneering, professional women in my family, so it was very pleasant to let her tell me random stories while I drove to work. I do not think I could have finished this book on paper!
However, I'm glad I did get through it, because it certainly was interesting to get some perspective on the history of the Court. The main thing I learned is that the role of the Supreme Court has really changed over the years, and that a few Justices have been pretty obviously incompetent-- highly partisan, possibly even corrupt-- and yet, the Republic has survived some kind of way. There is hope for us yet!
Saturday, December 17, 2016
Monday, November 28, 2016
A Cheerful Take on Economics: How We Got to Now, by Steven Johnson
As Jerome K. Jerome said, "I like work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours." I concur and heartily recommend Steven Johnson's book based on the PBS show of the same name. How We Got to Now is an opportunity for you to watch other people work, with no obligation whatsoever to do anything yourself. After all, air conditioning and microscopes and the War on Poverty and sewers have all been invented already!
It was truly an unmitigated pleasure to listen to Johnson trace the development of, for example, the technology of glass from its accidental creation in the deserts of North Africa to the experiments involving crossbows that resulted in fiber optics. The ingenuity displayed, the hardships suffered, the sleepless nights and fortunes won and lost that enabled us to read small print and live in Arizona and not die of childbed fever and associate iced tea and lemonade with the summer even though there is no naturally occurring ice at that time... all this and more fits into one slim volume, seven CDs, or 6 episodes on PBS, and is a great relief from these anxious times.
It was truly an unmitigated pleasure to listen to Johnson trace the development of, for example, the technology of glass from its accidental creation in the deserts of North Africa to the experiments involving crossbows that resulted in fiber optics. The ingenuity displayed, the hardships suffered, the sleepless nights and fortunes won and lost that enabled us to read small print and live in Arizona and not die of childbed fever and associate iced tea and lemonade with the summer even though there is no naturally occurring ice at that time... all this and more fits into one slim volume, seven CDs, or 6 episodes on PBS, and is a great relief from these anxious times.
Saturday, November 12, 2016
330-339: Economics
Economics... famously called "The Dismal Science." Turns out it includes not only boring but important works by Alan Greenspan, but also lively personal finance authors like Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman.
And very entertaining books about human motivation, probably the most famous of which is Freakonomics. This book became a cultural nine days' wonder and the title of a website, blog, podcast and overall cash cow for its authors. They have names --Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner-- but they are really more of a rock duo like the White Stripes or the Black Keys. They eventually issued a book/audio "Greatest Hits" compilation from their blog, meaning that I can catch up with their latest thinking while driving. And did I mention they are VERY entertaining? After all, the book is called When to Rob a Bank.
Speaking of entertaining and audiobooks, memoirs and bios are also available in this section. Disrupted, by Dan Lyons, is sort of the anti-How Starbucks Saved My Life, by Michael Gates Gill. Older white-collar white guy gets the boot, ends up at an entry-level job surrounded by people younger than his children, has some kind of epiphany. Only where Gill's epiphany was that money isn't everything and young people work hard, Lyons' seems to be that startups are ridiculous and so are the young people who work at them. He gets 50 pages or one disc, and if he's too mean-spirited, I'm going to give him the boot as well.
Second-best to the stunt memoir is the sensational biography, and American Heiress, by Jeffrey Toobin, fits that bill. If you are one of Lyons' or Hill's young co-workers, you may not recognize the name "Patty Hearst," but us old folks can never forget that enigmatic photo.
Hearst was the disconnected 19-year old daughter of a newspaper magnate when she was snatched from her apartment by a group of about 6 people calling themselves "the Symbionese Liberation Army." She accompanied them on some bank robberies and eventually released this picture and a statement to the effect that it was her choice to join the group and that she believed in their goals (whatever they were). She changed her name to Tania. She went on the run, but eventually was captured by the FBI (I guess she should have read the Freakonomics book and timed her exploits better). She was tried and convicted, but her sentence was commuted by Carter, and she was pardoned by Clinton. If you're confused by now, you are in good company-- as this story unfolded on the national news, no one could figure out what in the world was going on!
And who said economics was boring?
And very entertaining books about human motivation, probably the most famous of which is Freakonomics. This book became a cultural nine days' wonder and the title of a website, blog, podcast and overall cash cow for its authors. They have names --Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner-- but they are really more of a rock duo like the White Stripes or the Black Keys. They eventually issued a book/audio "Greatest Hits" compilation from their blog, meaning that I can catch up with their latest thinking while driving. And did I mention they are VERY entertaining? After all, the book is called When to Rob a Bank.
Speaking of entertaining and audiobooks, memoirs and bios are also available in this section. Disrupted, by Dan Lyons, is sort of the anti-How Starbucks Saved My Life, by Michael Gates Gill. Older white-collar white guy gets the boot, ends up at an entry-level job surrounded by people younger than his children, has some kind of epiphany. Only where Gill's epiphany was that money isn't everything and young people work hard, Lyons' seems to be that startups are ridiculous and so are the young people who work at them. He gets 50 pages or one disc, and if he's too mean-spirited, I'm going to give him the boot as well.
Second-best to the stunt memoir is the sensational biography, and American Heiress, by Jeffrey Toobin, fits that bill. If you are one of Lyons' or Hill's young co-workers, you may not recognize the name "Patty Hearst," but us old folks can never forget that enigmatic photo.
 |
| Patty Hearst |
And who said economics was boring?
Saturday, October 29, 2016
Advocacy 101: Citizens in Action, by Stephanie Vance
The first legislator I ever met with was a United States Congressman. We had expected him to be friendly to our cause, but the meeting was not going well. He seemed to be impatient with my teammate's attempts to remind him of their previous connections through a mutual friend. He had questions about our seemingly innocuous bill--questions we had not anticipated and could not answer. He was offended that we were not aware of his previous efforts on the same issue. And, if I remember correctly, the bill was not even up for a vote at that time, so he couldn't vote for it as we asked.
And then I handed him a stack of postcards signed by members of our advocacy group-- 50 or 60 sort of virtual attendees of our meeting. Surely that sheer volume of interest would convince him to support our bill when it did come to the floor! But as we prepared to leave, he said something that made my heart sink:
"I look forward to reading these."
Why was that the most ominous sentence of the whole meeting? Because I knew, and he was about to find out, that every single one of those postcards was identical except for the name and address on one side. There was nothing to read-- just the prefabricated message of a group that had, in the process of trying to make it easy for us, actually made our task almost impossible.
Stephanie Vance bills herself as the Advocacy Guru. Her central message is that elected officials run on constituent service. They want to know what we want from them! And I myself have seen that persistent, personal, relevant communication, with clear "asks" and consistent follow-up, can change the direction of individual legislators and create unstoppable momentum on whole issues. But that first postcard campaign and in-district meeting certainly had none of those components. We were asking the wrong person at the wrong time for the wrong thing in the wrong way!
The first step is to make sure we are reaching out to the right branch and level of government at the right time. Do we want a local ordinance, a state law, a Federal law, a favorable judicial ruling, a zoning variance, a veto from the Governor or President, or what? Once we've determined that we are contacting the right person, we still should pay attention to the strategic moments in a piece of legislation. It's not very helpful to contact our lawmakers asking them to vote for a bill that hasn't been introduced yet, or asking the President to veto a bill that hasn't even passed.
Then we must know what we want. The Bible tells us that "we have not because we ask not," and indeed, if we just contact our legislators with a message for or against an issue without a specific action point, we can hardly blame them for doing nothing. After all, nothing was what we asked for!
According to Vance, effective lobbying is NOT, surprisingly, driven by facts and logic. Legislators get inundated with facts every day, and, as we have all been learning on social media during this nightmare election of 2016, facts can be arranged and edited to tell any story. Anecdotal evidence has to frame --or maybe even replace-- whatever facts or statistics we want to present. If this makes our legislators sound like shallow thinkers, consider that many studies show this is actually how all humans are wired to think. So, contrary to what so many "Action Alerts" have led us to believe, our best bet is not to inundate our lawmakers with facts and figures about why they should vote our way, but to tell a story about how we constituents have been personally affected. And if we can connect our stories to our lawmakers' stories, so much the better.
Icing that cake would require us to actually know something about our lawmakers, though. Even when they belong to the opposing party, they are, after all, human beings. They probably have families. They may have pets. They may have professional backgrounds in a field that pertains to our concerns. They are originally from some specific part of the state. They come to this party with areas of interest and expertise, and if we understand what those are, we can better help them understand our interests!
More shocking still, Congressional staffers are also actual human beings and not androids! Time and again Vance encourages us not to underestimate the value and power of a legislator's staff. They are accessible, they certainly have their employer's ear, and they may even be members of our own community. Many constituents tend to treat them like obstacles to the ultimate goal, but if the goal is to win the legislator's vote, they might actually be the most effective path to success.
We should also do these poor public servants the courtesy of knowing where they stand on our issue; after all, if the legislator wrote the bill, he doesn't really need five paragraphs encouraging him to vote for it. If the President has already vowed to veto the bill if it passes, our message should reflect that! In the age of search engines, there's really no reason not to have this information.
The most challenging part of the book for me was the discussion of follow-up. As a Shy Person, I am the opposite of a marketer. Just to ask strangers for something is painful; to actually follow up and see if they did it is almost unthinkable. Yet, like the children we told to clean their rooms, legislators juggling many priorities probably won't do what we expect but only what we inspect. So if I am going to drop off a handful of postcards --each one containing a different, personal, relevant message, of course-- I should put a note in my calendar to follow up with a quick phone call in a month or so.
The purpose of the legislative branch, as Vance points out, is actually not to just churn out legislation. It's not like a fudge factory! It is called a deliberative body for a reason-- its purpose is to "deliberate," that is, discuss and weigh the pros and cons of various courses of action. For that reason, the "gridlock" we all like to complain about is not a bug, it's a feature.
Oh, and that Federal bill we were advocating for? It never did pass, but with the help of some of the strategies outlined above, including a lot of high-quality letter campaigns, we have passed numerous bills at the state level that have been equally effective at addressing our concerns. Smart, persistent, patient lobbying can move the ship of state in the direction we desire.
PS Just ran into this series of interviews with staffers that really proves the points above!
And then I handed him a stack of postcards signed by members of our advocacy group-- 50 or 60 sort of virtual attendees of our meeting. Surely that sheer volume of interest would convince him to support our bill when it did come to the floor! But as we prepared to leave, he said something that made my heart sink:
"I look forward to reading these."
Why was that the most ominous sentence of the whole meeting? Because I knew, and he was about to find out, that every single one of those postcards was identical except for the name and address on one side. There was nothing to read-- just the prefabricated message of a group that had, in the process of trying to make it easy for us, actually made our task almost impossible.
Stephanie Vance bills herself as the Advocacy Guru. Her central message is that elected officials run on constituent service. They want to know what we want from them! And I myself have seen that persistent, personal, relevant communication, with clear "asks" and consistent follow-up, can change the direction of individual legislators and create unstoppable momentum on whole issues. But that first postcard campaign and in-district meeting certainly had none of those components. We were asking the wrong person at the wrong time for the wrong thing in the wrong way!
The first step is to make sure we are reaching out to the right branch and level of government at the right time. Do we want a local ordinance, a state law, a Federal law, a favorable judicial ruling, a zoning variance, a veto from the Governor or President, or what? Once we've determined that we are contacting the right person, we still should pay attention to the strategic moments in a piece of legislation. It's not very helpful to contact our lawmakers asking them to vote for a bill that hasn't been introduced yet, or asking the President to veto a bill that hasn't even passed.
Then we must know what we want. The Bible tells us that "we have not because we ask not," and indeed, if we just contact our legislators with a message for or against an issue without a specific action point, we can hardly blame them for doing nothing. After all, nothing was what we asked for!
According to Vance, effective lobbying is NOT, surprisingly, driven by facts and logic. Legislators get inundated with facts every day, and, as we have all been learning on social media during this nightmare election of 2016, facts can be arranged and edited to tell any story. Anecdotal evidence has to frame --or maybe even replace-- whatever facts or statistics we want to present. If this makes our legislators sound like shallow thinkers, consider that many studies show this is actually how all humans are wired to think. So, contrary to what so many "Action Alerts" have led us to believe, our best bet is not to inundate our lawmakers with facts and figures about why they should vote our way, but to tell a story about how we constituents have been personally affected. And if we can connect our stories to our lawmakers' stories, so much the better.
Icing that cake would require us to actually know something about our lawmakers, though. Even when they belong to the opposing party, they are, after all, human beings. They probably have families. They may have pets. They may have professional backgrounds in a field that pertains to our concerns. They are originally from some specific part of the state. They come to this party with areas of interest and expertise, and if we understand what those are, we can better help them understand our interests!
More shocking still, Congressional staffers are also actual human beings and not androids! Time and again Vance encourages us not to underestimate the value and power of a legislator's staff. They are accessible, they certainly have their employer's ear, and they may even be members of our own community. Many constituents tend to treat them like obstacles to the ultimate goal, but if the goal is to win the legislator's vote, they might actually be the most effective path to success.
We should also do these poor public servants the courtesy of knowing where they stand on our issue; after all, if the legislator wrote the bill, he doesn't really need five paragraphs encouraging him to vote for it. If the President has already vowed to veto the bill if it passes, our message should reflect that! In the age of search engines, there's really no reason not to have this information.
The most challenging part of the book for me was the discussion of follow-up. As a Shy Person, I am the opposite of a marketer. Just to ask strangers for something is painful; to actually follow up and see if they did it is almost unthinkable. Yet, like the children we told to clean their rooms, legislators juggling many priorities probably won't do what we expect but only what we inspect. So if I am going to drop off a handful of postcards --each one containing a different, personal, relevant message, of course-- I should put a note in my calendar to follow up with a quick phone call in a month or so.
The purpose of the legislative branch, as Vance points out, is actually not to just churn out legislation. It's not like a fudge factory! It is called a deliberative body for a reason-- its purpose is to "deliberate," that is, discuss and weigh the pros and cons of various courses of action. For that reason, the "gridlock" we all like to complain about is not a bug, it's a feature.
Oh, and that Federal bill we were advocating for? It never did pass, but with the help of some of the strategies outlined above, including a lot of high-quality letter campaigns, we have passed numerous bills at the state level that have been equally effective at addressing our concerns. Smart, persistent, patient lobbying can move the ship of state in the direction we desire.
PS Just ran into this series of interviews with staffers that really proves the points above!
Sunday, September 11, 2016
320-329: Political Science
Now we are going to dig through the fuzzy studies one by one, starting with PoliSci. (PS 310-319 is supposed to be "general statistics," but I couldn't find any books in this category. Fortunately.) Here I can read Arthur Miller On Politics and the Art of Acting, which, as it happens, is available almost in full as the 2001 NEH Jefferson Lecture, presented in March of that year. The "recent" election he is analyzing is 2000's Bush/Gore contest, which, some of us may remember, seemed at the time to be the most ridiculous Presidential election in history, with its dynastic candidates and its hanging chads... sigh. The election of 2016 makes 2000 look like a model of civility and rationality. And that date, March 2001, reminds us that even though a presidential election plays like a TV show, the consequences can be very real. If we had known in November of 2000 what was coming in September of 2001, how many of us would have voted differently!
Ugh, maybe I'd rather read about a specific issue, like immigration, that I can actually do something about. Let Them In, by Jason Riley, dates from 2008, when the issue was simmering but not boiling. Reviewers on the right and the left found a lot to like in this defense of increased legal immigration, and apparently Riley addresses a lot of the concerns that people are now heatedly debating. Even though, or because, he is a conservative, he presents research to dismiss fears about job loss, wage depression, increased crime, and difficulties assimilating.
Speaking of doing something, there's a book for that, too: Citizens in Action, by Stephanie Vance. She offers this brief (111 pages), breezy "guide to influencing government" that, so far, really has me believing that I can do it. This checklist serves as a great outline of the book. If you understand and implement the checklist, you will be in the 1%... the 1% of people who effectively use their privilege of citizenship to affect the course of our country! Extra credit: how cool is this directory to the federal government, so you can FIND the person you want to lobby??!
I have a lot to say about advocacy in general and my role in particular, so stay tuned!
Ugh, maybe I'd rather read about a specific issue, like immigration, that I can actually do something about. Let Them In, by Jason Riley, dates from 2008, when the issue was simmering but not boiling. Reviewers on the right and the left found a lot to like in this defense of increased legal immigration, and apparently Riley addresses a lot of the concerns that people are now heatedly debating. Even though, or because, he is a conservative, he presents research to dismiss fears about job loss, wage depression, increased crime, and difficulties assimilating.
Speaking of doing something, there's a book for that, too: Citizens in Action, by Stephanie Vance. She offers this brief (111 pages), breezy "guide to influencing government" that, so far, really has me believing that I can do it. This checklist serves as a great outline of the book. If you understand and implement the checklist, you will be in the 1%... the 1% of people who effectively use their privilege of citizenship to affect the course of our country! Extra credit: how cool is this directory to the federal government, so you can FIND the person you want to lobby??!
I have a lot to say about advocacy in general and my role in particular, so stay tuned!
Sunday, July 31, 2016
300-309: The Varieties of Human Experience
The 300s, "Sociology," is where we find the familiar "fuzzy studies," or soft sciences: political science, economics, education, and, sadly that this is necessary, military science. The task of 300-309 is to introduce these topics, and it's a lot to cram into 10 little digits.
306, just to pick a random example, ricochets from pop culture to regional culture to the culture wars to consumerism to work to slavery to retirement to the media to... well, you get the idea. I picked the embarrassingly titled Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs because its author, Chuck Klosterman, is having a moment right now. Klosterman is a very funny guy: "breakfast is just the time for chewing Cocoa Puffs and/or wishing you were still asleep." But ultimately, a little of him and his excessively abrasive language was enough for me.
I also selected The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, by Alain de Botton, because, oh my gosh, that title! I got it on audio, because I thought it would be superawesome to be driving to work listening to some kind of pep talk about how it's worth it. But no. As it turned out, it seemed to be about different people's jobs, just, you know, what's involved in catching a tuna or making a biscuit. Which could also be interesting in its own way, but proved(possibly due to the performer rather than the author) to be dangerously soporific. After I arrived at my destination in an audiobook-induced stupor not once but twice, I realized public safety demanded I give up on this one.
James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son was in 305, but, Langston Hughes' recommendation notwithstanding, I just couldn't. Something about the writing style that I just couldn't get through. I could see myself having better luck with Rich Benjamin's Searching for Whitopia, a sort of Black Like Me with an actual person of color, except that it was just so sad to realize that I myself might be part of the problem. See, my dream retirement home is in Ocean City New Jersey. The beaches... the jolly families... the beautiful homes and gardens... the strong church heritage and influence on the city's vibe... and the 92% white population. 92%! Maybe I will stay landlocked...
As noted last time, 290-299 included books about what Muslims believe, but 305 offered me at least one book about what it's like to be a Muslim: Laughing All the Way to the Mosque, by Zarqa Nawaz. How could I pass up that title? And when I found out she was the creator of "Little Mosque on the Prairie," that charming sitcom about Muslims in Saskatchewan, I was all in. The book is full of incidents that illuminate as they entertain... for example, in the process of telling us about how she self-arranged her marriage, I have learned that a Muslim can be an atheist and that if you believe the Qu'ran but not the Hadith, that's a dealbreaker. This one, I'll see through to the end.
306, just to pick a random example, ricochets from pop culture to regional culture to the culture wars to consumerism to work to slavery to retirement to the media to... well, you get the idea. I picked the embarrassingly titled Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs because its author, Chuck Klosterman, is having a moment right now. Klosterman is a very funny guy: "breakfast is just the time for chewing Cocoa Puffs and/or wishing you were still asleep." But ultimately, a little of him and his excessively abrasive language was enough for me.
I also selected The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, by Alain de Botton, because, oh my gosh, that title! I got it on audio, because I thought it would be superawesome to be driving to work listening to some kind of pep talk about how it's worth it. But no. As it turned out, it seemed to be about different people's jobs, just, you know, what's involved in catching a tuna or making a biscuit. Which could also be interesting in its own way, but proved(possibly due to the performer rather than the author) to be dangerously soporific. After I arrived at my destination in an audiobook-induced stupor not once but twice, I realized public safety demanded I give up on this one.
James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son was in 305, but, Langston Hughes' recommendation notwithstanding, I just couldn't. Something about the writing style that I just couldn't get through. I could see myself having better luck with Rich Benjamin's Searching for Whitopia, a sort of Black Like Me with an actual person of color, except that it was just so sad to realize that I myself might be part of the problem. See, my dream retirement home is in Ocean City New Jersey. The beaches... the jolly families... the beautiful homes and gardens... the strong church heritage and influence on the city's vibe... and the 92% white population. 92%! Maybe I will stay landlocked...
As noted last time, 290-299 included books about what Muslims believe, but 305 offered me at least one book about what it's like to be a Muslim: Laughing All the Way to the Mosque, by Zarqa Nawaz. How could I pass up that title? And when I found out she was the creator of "Little Mosque on the Prairie," that charming sitcom about Muslims in Saskatchewan, I was all in. The book is full of incidents that illuminate as they entertain... for example, in the process of telling us about how she self-arranged her marriage, I have learned that a Muslim can be an atheist and that if you believe the Qu'ran but not the Hadith, that's a dealbreaker. This one, I'll see through to the end.
Sunday, July 24, 2016
290-299: World Religions
Don't be too hard on ol' Melvil. From his perspective, there was a lot to know about Christianity, and a cursory understanding of other religions was adequate for life in his world. Besides, the beauty of the decimal system is that you can just keep adding digits! So there's plenty of room not only for the big ones, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, but also for the ancient and lesser-known belief systems. I played it kind of safe and picked from three of what are usually called "the world's major religions."
The Ox-Herder and the Good Shepherd seeks to syncretize the Zen Buddhist illustrations and meditations known as The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures with the Christian's quest for God. I really want to be interested in Buddhism, but this presentation, like that of Karen Armstrong, just ended up irritating me, so I didn't get far with it.
Have a Little Faith, by Mitch Albom, was a very different book that somehow also wound up being inexplicably unreadable. It interwove the stories of a Christian pastor and Albom's own childhood rabbi, and really should have held my interest. It was a memoir. It was about my two favorite religions. It was pretty short. It had been made into a Hallmark movie, for crying out loud! But maybe that was my problem: too much tell, not enough show, and an oversimplification of what Muriel Spark called "the only problem."
Desperately Seeking Paradise is the volume I might have actually read all of if life hadn't intervened. Ziauddin Sardar seems to have assigned himself a sort of odyssey through the Islamic world, evaluating different mazhab (ways; we would say denominations) and ultimately deciding that what is needed is a rebuilding of Islamic culture from the ground up. What little I was able to read of this book before I had to return it gave me an interesting snapshot of one man's experiences growing up Islamic in England, and then of his great ambitions as he got older.
I can sympathize with his concerns: while we might look at the Islamic world and see people who refuse to adapt to modernity, he sees people who have adapted in all the wrong ways. One interesting example mentioned in the part of the book I could get to was science. The Arabic world famously gave us much of modern mathematics, including algebra and the powerful concept of place value, but of late, according to Sardar, intellectual inquiry has been abandoned in favor of Western technologies for resource exploitation. He fantasizes about an Islamic science that would focus on a stewardship approach to the problems of the Islamic world. Not an idea I ever would have thought of on my own, but an obviously good one as soon as one hears it!
I notice that the one book I read with real enjoyment wasn't easy or short or full of pretty pictures, and more importantly, it didn't try to tell me that someone else's experience and beliefs were similar to mine. It actually assumed that someone else's experience and beliefs were completely foreign to me, and let me make my own connections if I could. I didn't need to be told that some devout Muslim intellectuals are like some devout Christian intellectuals, seeking renewal not just of their ethics but of their whole approach to culture-- Sardar just shared his own journey, and I noticed the similarity to Francis Schaeffer all by myself. Whether this makes Sardar and Schaeffer both right, both misguided, or locked in an eternal combat of ideas, is another discussion....
The Ox-Herder and the Good Shepherd seeks to syncretize the Zen Buddhist illustrations and meditations known as The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures with the Christian's quest for God. I really want to be interested in Buddhism, but this presentation, like that of Karen Armstrong, just ended up irritating me, so I didn't get far with it.
Have a Little Faith, by Mitch Albom, was a very different book that somehow also wound up being inexplicably unreadable. It interwove the stories of a Christian pastor and Albom's own childhood rabbi, and really should have held my interest. It was a memoir. It was about my two favorite religions. It was pretty short. It had been made into a Hallmark movie, for crying out loud! But maybe that was my problem: too much tell, not enough show, and an oversimplification of what Muriel Spark called "the only problem."
Desperately Seeking Paradise is the volume I might have actually read all of if life hadn't intervened. Ziauddin Sardar seems to have assigned himself a sort of odyssey through the Islamic world, evaluating different mazhab (ways; we would say denominations) and ultimately deciding that what is needed is a rebuilding of Islamic culture from the ground up. What little I was able to read of this book before I had to return it gave me an interesting snapshot of one man's experiences growing up Islamic in England, and then of his great ambitions as he got older.
I can sympathize with his concerns: while we might look at the Islamic world and see people who refuse to adapt to modernity, he sees people who have adapted in all the wrong ways. One interesting example mentioned in the part of the book I could get to was science. The Arabic world famously gave us much of modern mathematics, including algebra and the powerful concept of place value, but of late, according to Sardar, intellectual inquiry has been abandoned in favor of Western technologies for resource exploitation. He fantasizes about an Islamic science that would focus on a stewardship approach to the problems of the Islamic world. Not an idea I ever would have thought of on my own, but an obviously good one as soon as one hears it!
I notice that the one book I read with real enjoyment wasn't easy or short or full of pretty pictures, and more importantly, it didn't try to tell me that someone else's experience and beliefs were similar to mine. It actually assumed that someone else's experience and beliefs were completely foreign to me, and let me make my own connections if I could. I didn't need to be told that some devout Muslim intellectuals are like some devout Christian intellectuals, seeking renewal not just of their ethics but of their whole approach to culture-- Sardar just shared his own journey, and I noticed the similarity to Francis Schaeffer all by myself. Whether this makes Sardar and Schaeffer both right, both misguided, or locked in an eternal combat of ideas, is another discussion....
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Something for Everyone: Jesus Freak, by Sara Miles
Here we are all- again!- signing petitions about gun control and sending money to service organizations. Here we all are again talking about prejudice and about what kind of fear and rage would lead anyone to plan and carry out a mass murder targeting a specific minority. Finally, here we all are talking harder than ever about what in our American atmosphere makes people think that prejudice is okay, and that our beliefs about any one issue put each of us on a team that is in a fight to the death with all the other teams, and and that disagreement is hate. Like all our talk is going to make a difference apart from divine intervention...
We all know that changing our culture starts with changing ourselves, and that's at least some of what this 0-999 project is about. Reading in general, and reading stories in particular, can increase our empathy for unfamiliar groups of people and ways of life. And increased empathy is what enables us to tolerate the discomfort that comes from difference, to disagree agreeably, and ultimately maybe even to find common ground across barriers. Or at least I'm hoping so.
Jesus Freak is a great example of a story that has the potential to do all these things. Sara is a mid-life convert who ministers through food to some of the most marginalized people in America. She's just the kind of person I deeply admire, but that some people find annoying and weird. She herself opens the book with this quote from the rector of her church: "You're such a freakin' Jesus freak, Sara." But then, she's also a universalist and a syncretist, so Jesus' more illiberal and exclusive teachings get short shrift from her.
Oh, and she's a lesbian. The Internet Monk tried to review the book positively for its focus on care for the poor in Jesus' name, but he realized that once his audience hit the phrase, "my wife Martha," they wouldn't be able to think about anything else.
Yup, something for everyone not to like, and therefore, something for everyone to learn from. It's hard for me to imagine the Jesus follower, Christian, believer, or person of faith of any stripe who couldn't find some way to identify with Miles and some point of irreconcilable difference, big or small. And that's what makes her book so worthwhile!
Miles's story isn't really a story so much as a string of long stories, short anecdotes and meditations all strung together and sparkling, more like rain on a nighttime window than a string of beads. I'll summarize one for you and finish with a quote, just to give you a sense of it.
A group of fourth graders had volunteered at the food pantry the week before, and now Sara is going to their classroom to answer their questions about what they have seen. They start talking about whether everyone who receives food there deserves it.
We all know that changing our culture starts with changing ourselves, and that's at least some of what this 0-999 project is about. Reading in general, and reading stories in particular, can increase our empathy for unfamiliar groups of people and ways of life. And increased empathy is what enables us to tolerate the discomfort that comes from difference, to disagree agreeably, and ultimately maybe even to find common ground across barriers. Or at least I'm hoping so.
Jesus Freak is a great example of a story that has the potential to do all these things. Sara is a mid-life convert who ministers through food to some of the most marginalized people in America. She's just the kind of person I deeply admire, but that some people find annoying and weird. She herself opens the book with this quote from the rector of her church: "You're such a freakin' Jesus freak, Sara." But then, she's also a universalist and a syncretist, so Jesus' more illiberal and exclusive teachings get short shrift from her.
Oh, and she's a lesbian. The Internet Monk tried to review the book positively for its focus on care for the poor in Jesus' name, but he realized that once his audience hit the phrase, "my wife Martha," they wouldn't be able to think about anything else.
Yup, something for everyone not to like, and therefore, something for everyone to learn from. It's hard for me to imagine the Jesus follower, Christian, believer, or person of faith of any stripe who couldn't find some way to identify with Miles and some point of irreconcilable difference, big or small. And that's what makes her book so worthwhile!
Miles's story isn't really a story so much as a string of long stories, short anecdotes and meditations all strung together and sparkling, more like rain on a nighttime window than a string of beads. I'll summarize one for you and finish with a quote, just to give you a sense of it.
A group of fourth graders had volunteered at the food pantry the week before, and now Sara is going to their classroom to answer their questions about what they have seen. They start talking about whether everyone who receives food there deserves it.
So I talked with the kids about the idea of 'taking advantage,' explaining that it was impossible to be taken advantage of as long as you were giving something away without conditions. 'If it's a trade, then it's fair or unfair.' I said. 'But if I'm going to give it to you anyway, no matter what you do, then you can't take advantage of me.'
...I had to add one more thing. 'In my church,' I said, 'we say that judgment belongs to God, not to humans. So that makes things a lot easier for us. We don't have to decide who deserves food.'Kind of like we don't have to decide whether Miles is in trouble for being too Jesusy, being a syncretist, being a lesbian, or saying a bad word. Not my problem! All I know is that she is a normal human being who gets annoyed and hot and tired and depressed but who nevertheless has discovered that, by the grace of God, anyone can be like Jesus and feed the poor, pray for the sick, lead the bitter in forgiveness, and sit by the dying. And that's hard to hate.
Saturday, May 28, 2016
280-289: Christian Denominations
I guess I'll stop complaining about the overlap with other Dewey categories. If you want a discussion of a specific denomination's more or less current status, this is probably where you'll go, and if you're me, you'll gravitate towards the memoirs describing people's current experiences with said denominations.
That's why I picked up Still, the latest installment of Lauren Winner's extended live-tweeting of her every life experience. Sorry not sorry if that sounds a little catty.... after all, I could have called her a "spiritual reality show," as did a commenter on another blog.
But I do feel that she writes as if a mid-faith slump has never happened to anyone else, even while discovering (who knew?) that it's a well-known phenomenon. After all, the famous phrase "the dark night of the soul" was coined by St. John of the Cross in the 16th century. (I myself prefer Douglas Adams' take on the experience, "the long, dark teatime of the soul," which I have experienced just about daily from 3-5 pm.)
Only the idea of writing a book to complain about how the life of faith (or any life at all) turns out to be a bit of a slog is a little rich from someone 36 years old. I am here to tell her that she does not yet know from slog, but also that said slog turns out to have its bright spots.
So that's why the book I'll actually finish (eventually; busy season at work right now) is by someone less like me, someone from whom I feel like I can learn something: Sara Miles. I loved Take This Bread, especially because I read it during a time when I was giving a lot of dinners and lunches to groups of people in the name of Jesus. Thus, the idea that food=love=gospel was a point of connection between me and someone I might not normally have found a lot of connection with.
Miles' new book is called Jesus Freak, so actually, I'm in pretty much no matter what happens next. But the fact that it opens with her annoying her food pantry colleagues by laying hands on someone as she prays is definitely a bonus point....
And, in case you are wondering what all this has to do with "Christian Denominations," well, in some ways your guess is as good as mine, but both authors are in the service of the Episcopal church, so I suppose that's why they landed here instead of anywhere else in the 200s.
That's why I picked up Still, the latest installment of Lauren Winner's extended live-tweeting of her every life experience. Sorry not sorry if that sounds a little catty.... after all, I could have called her a "spiritual reality show," as did a commenter on another blog.
But I do feel that she writes as if a mid-faith slump has never happened to anyone else, even while discovering (who knew?) that it's a well-known phenomenon. After all, the famous phrase "the dark night of the soul" was coined by St. John of the Cross in the 16th century. (I myself prefer Douglas Adams' take on the experience, "the long, dark teatime of the soul," which I have experienced just about daily from 3-5 pm.)
Only the idea of writing a book to complain about how the life of faith (or any life at all) turns out to be a bit of a slog is a little rich from someone 36 years old. I am here to tell her that she does not yet know from slog, but also that said slog turns out to have its bright spots.
So that's why the book I'll actually finish (eventually; busy season at work right now) is by someone less like me, someone from whom I feel like I can learn something: Sara Miles. I loved Take This Bread, especially because I read it during a time when I was giving a lot of dinners and lunches to groups of people in the name of Jesus. Thus, the idea that food=love=gospel was a point of connection between me and someone I might not normally have found a lot of connection with.
Miles' new book is called Jesus Freak, so actually, I'm in pretty much no matter what happens next. But the fact that it opens with her annoying her food pantry colleagues by laying hands on someone as she prays is definitely a bonus point....
And, in case you are wondering what all this has to do with "Christian Denominations," well, in some ways your guess is as good as mine, but both authors are in the service of the Episcopal church, so I suppose that's why they landed here instead of anywhere else in the 200s.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Christian Feminist Stunt Memoir: A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans
I was on a long walk with a Jewish friend the other day, and I asked her about what Christians know as Proverbs 31. She didn't recognize it by that title, but when I quoted a few lines, she said, "Oh, the Woman of Valor passage!" She was shocked and appalled to learn that many Christian women view it as a checklist of desiderata at which they will surely fail. She called it a poem and was very eager to explain to me that in Jewish tradition it is memorized by men, not by women, and used for the purpose of blessing their wives, not challenging them. That led into a discussion of Reformed Jewish exegesis, which emphasizes historical context and looks for transferable principles, and an informal poll as we walked of whether it would be actually be useful to our husbands for us to rise before dawn and prepare food for them (conclusion: her husband doesn't get up early, and even Jesus barely wants to talk to me before about 8 AM).
Around month four of trying to literally obey everything in the Bible (and some things that aren't) pertaining to women ( and sometimes to everyone) Rachel Held Evans had the same conversation with her Orthodox Jewish informant. She heard everything I did, and also learned that the poem's vocabulary lent triumphal overtones to the everyday tasks of cooking, providing, shepherding, planning, and maybe even working out, summarizing all these seemingly mundane activities with the phrase "eshet chayil," "woman of valor." This phrase may be sung by the husband to his wife at Sabbath dinner, or used by women to encourage each other upon any accomplishment. Cleaned your bathroom? Woman of valor! Earned a paycheck? Woman of valor! Stayed up all night with a colicky baby? Woman of valor!
Nevertheless, Rachel decided to dedicate one month to working her way through the poem the evangelical-Christian way, like a checklist. She tried to learn to sew. She got up at some imaginary hour of the morning. She cooked three meals a day. She worked out. She went to the city limit marker on a major highway and held up a sign that said "Dan [her husband] is awesome." Because when you are writing a stunt memoir, that is how you roll. And I do love me a stunt memoir.
The idea was to 'take all of the Bible's instructions for women as literally as possible for a year,' but I think she ran out of instructions, because she devoted whole months to Biblical practices that apply to everyone, such as the observance of Yom Kippur and the pursuit of just behavior. Now I'm curious about whether a man would run into the same problem, if he limited himself to commands just pertaining to men. His arms might get tired, depending on how long his prayer times were...
Evans also practiced mindfulness in everyday tasks, cut Martha a break, redefined modesty, waded into the Mommy Wars, called her longsuffering husband "Master" for a whole year, tried to submit to her husband in all things (until he ordered her to knock it off), and learned about Greco-Roman household codes. I don't imagine anyone would agree with every single conclusion she reached, but she sure was an entertaining and thought-provoking traveling companion.
I have spent my whole Christian life trying to figure out what my faith tells me about being a woman, yet I certainly heard some new ideas from this book. If it is crucial to your theology to believe that roles, tasks, duties and privileges vary greatly depending on your gender, you should skip this one, but if you are starting to think that out of the 31,102 verses in the Bible, a very small percent are specific to only one gender, this book may be of interest to you.
Around month four of trying to literally obey everything in the Bible (and some things that aren't) pertaining to women ( and sometimes to everyone) Rachel Held Evans had the same conversation with her Orthodox Jewish informant. She heard everything I did, and also learned that the poem's vocabulary lent triumphal overtones to the everyday tasks of cooking, providing, shepherding, planning, and maybe even working out, summarizing all these seemingly mundane activities with the phrase "eshet chayil," "woman of valor." This phrase may be sung by the husband to his wife at Sabbath dinner, or used by women to encourage each other upon any accomplishment. Cleaned your bathroom? Woman of valor! Earned a paycheck? Woman of valor! Stayed up all night with a colicky baby? Woman of valor!
Nevertheless, Rachel decided to dedicate one month to working her way through the poem the evangelical-Christian way, like a checklist. She tried to learn to sew. She got up at some imaginary hour of the morning. She cooked three meals a day. She worked out. She went to the city limit marker on a major highway and held up a sign that said "Dan [her husband] is awesome." Because when you are writing a stunt memoir, that is how you roll. And I do love me a stunt memoir.
The idea was to 'take all of the Bible's instructions for women as literally as possible for a year,' but I think she ran out of instructions, because she devoted whole months to Biblical practices that apply to everyone, such as the observance of Yom Kippur and the pursuit of just behavior. Now I'm curious about whether a man would run into the same problem, if he limited himself to commands just pertaining to men. His arms might get tired, depending on how long his prayer times were...
Evans also practiced mindfulness in everyday tasks, cut Martha a break, redefined modesty, waded into the Mommy Wars, called her longsuffering husband "Master" for a whole year, tried to submit to her husband in all things (until he ordered her to knock it off), and learned about Greco-Roman household codes. I don't imagine anyone would agree with every single conclusion she reached, but she sure was an entertaining and thought-provoking traveling companion.
I have spent my whole Christian life trying to figure out what my faith tells me about being a woman, yet I certainly heard some new ideas from this book. If it is crucial to your theology to believe that roles, tasks, duties and privileges vary greatly depending on your gender, you should skip this one, but if you are starting to think that out of the 31,102 verses in the Bible, a very small percent are specific to only one gender, this book may be of interest to you.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
The Man Who Destroyed America: Frank Schaeffer's Crazy for God.
Okay, I exaggerate. Even Frank Schaeffer himself doesn't claim that he is personally and singlehandedly responsible for the current election season. But the full title of his autobiography is, after all, Crazy for God: How I Grew up As One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. So he cannot be accused of underestimating his own importance -- or that of his parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, founders of L'Abri Fellowship.
The senior Schaeffers were vital to my experience of the Christian faith. In the late 60's, Francis Schaeffer, already a deep thinker, teacher and writer about the intersection of Christianity and culture, became very interested in the hippie movement that called into question "bourgeois" and "plastic" values. By the time I became a Christian in 1974, it was almost trite to say that authors like Samuel Beckett and musicians like Bob Dylan-- the artists who were the wallpaper of my secular upbringing-- were asking the right questions, maybe even doing God's work without knowing it. Everyone (except me; I could NOT get through it!) was talking about Francis Schaeffer's How Should We Then Live?The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture and its vision of the redemptive power of popular artistic expressions.
But Schaeffer also foresaw the limitations of this new peace culture. Frank quotes him as saying, "You wait; the hippies are going to wind up more middle-class, bourgeois and materialistic than their parents... If they are asked to make a choice between freedom and security, they'll choose security." Obviously it took 9/11 to bring this prediction to full flower, but by the time I was in college in 1978, it was already starting to happen. Hippies were long-gone, and the new fad was pink and green, Muffy and Biff, and "greed is good." My formerly radical church, that didn't even have a name and that taught a Christian version of "Turn on, tune in, drop out" that involved dropping out of college to evangelize the world ASAP (since Jesus could return at any moment, rendering your college degree pointless), suddenly adopted the "Church as Corporation" model and made us all Tom Peters disciples seeking to glorify God through the Search for Excellence.
Meanwhile, we had suddenly become aware of the abortion issue. This, too, was Francis Schaeffer's doing. He and Frank joined forces with C. Everett Koop, soon to become the Surgeon General of the United States, to put together Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, a critique of the "culture of death" they saw developing in America. Roe v. Wade was only a few years old when women-- and a few men-- began protesting it, and our campus movement was no exception. In 1980, we took a bus trip from Kansas to the Democratic National Convention in New York City (and, yes, that trip was exactly how you are imagining it) to ask for a pro-life plank in the platform. Frank feels that there was a critical moment where the Democrats could have owned life issues-- after all, they were already associated with the expansion of civil rights, so this was a logical extension for them. But that ship has sailed...
Also at this same time, Edith Schaeffer and her daughter, Frank's sister, Susan Schaeffer Macauley, were changing the daily domestic lives of evangelical wives. Edith wrote a book called The Hidden Art of Homemaking that explained how a woman could find a creative outlet and a ministry by making her home beautiful-- a practice that not even Frank can deny was extremely important to her at L'Abri. Macauley, who had been Frank's teacher for stretches of time when she was in her teens, had discovered that a homeschooling woman could find intellectual as well as artistic challenge even as she embraced a conservative definition of being a "keeper at home." Her exhortations to use the Great Books-- meaningful and beautiful literature that had withstood the test of time-- was the bedrock of all 11 years of my homeschooling career.
So whether Francis and Edith Schaeffer and their children, Frank and Susan, changed and/or ruined America, their activities certainly paralleled and possibly inspired all the themes of my youth. Even the way Frank resolved his spiritual struggles was almost stereotypical of my generation of evangelicals: he joined the Greek Orthodox church. Some of our fellow Boomers have also found that this ancient communion is the perfect antidote to the rapid change that can take place in newer movements.
Frank's account of these years is full of contradictions. Most spectacularly, there is Frank's obvious and deep ambivalence towards his parents. He can't quite seem to figure out whether he views them with deep affection and respect or considers himself to have been abused in some way. Os Guiness, a former L'Abri worker, strongly defends Francis from Frank's criticism-- if you can't get that article to open, some of the same thoughts are available from less personally involved sources that also address Frank's more general criticisms of the greater evangelical context of that period. Given that some of Frank's allegations just don't hold up to fact-checking, it does make one wonder whether Frank prioritized accuracy at any point in his writing.
Then there's Frank's attitude towards himself. He is by turns self-serving and self-flagellating, dropping names and painting himself as one of the key figures in the transformation of American politics in the 80's, yet also airing his own personal, political and spiritual dirty laundry throughout the book.
Finally, there's Frank's writing style. It's gripping. It's irresistible. It's like a big bag of potato chips-- you suspect it is bad for you, but you just can't stop -- until, all of a sudden, it's not, running aground on pages of name-checking or bizarre allegations or uncomfortably scatalogical reminiscences. All the reviewers agree that this is a (for the most part) fantastically well-written book that may or may not actually have anything worthwhile to say. What kept me turning pages through thick and thin, though, was this sense that I was getting a backstage tour to the backdrop of my life, and that was definitely worth the ride.
The senior Schaeffers were vital to my experience of the Christian faith. In the late 60's, Francis Schaeffer, already a deep thinker, teacher and writer about the intersection of Christianity and culture, became very interested in the hippie movement that called into question "bourgeois" and "plastic" values. By the time I became a Christian in 1974, it was almost trite to say that authors like Samuel Beckett and musicians like Bob Dylan-- the artists who were the wallpaper of my secular upbringing-- were asking the right questions, maybe even doing God's work without knowing it. Everyone (except me; I could NOT get through it!) was talking about Francis Schaeffer's How Should We Then Live?The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture and its vision of the redemptive power of popular artistic expressions.
But Schaeffer also foresaw the limitations of this new peace culture. Frank quotes him as saying, "You wait; the hippies are going to wind up more middle-class, bourgeois and materialistic than their parents... If they are asked to make a choice between freedom and security, they'll choose security." Obviously it took 9/11 to bring this prediction to full flower, but by the time I was in college in 1978, it was already starting to happen. Hippies were long-gone, and the new fad was pink and green, Muffy and Biff, and "greed is good." My formerly radical church, that didn't even have a name and that taught a Christian version of "Turn on, tune in, drop out" that involved dropping out of college to evangelize the world ASAP (since Jesus could return at any moment, rendering your college degree pointless), suddenly adopted the "Church as Corporation" model and made us all Tom Peters disciples seeking to glorify God through the Search for Excellence.
Meanwhile, we had suddenly become aware of the abortion issue. This, too, was Francis Schaeffer's doing. He and Frank joined forces with C. Everett Koop, soon to become the Surgeon General of the United States, to put together Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, a critique of the "culture of death" they saw developing in America. Roe v. Wade was only a few years old when women-- and a few men-- began protesting it, and our campus movement was no exception. In 1980, we took a bus trip from Kansas to the Democratic National Convention in New York City (and, yes, that trip was exactly how you are imagining it) to ask for a pro-life plank in the platform. Frank feels that there was a critical moment where the Democrats could have owned life issues-- after all, they were already associated with the expansion of civil rights, so this was a logical extension for them. But that ship has sailed...
Also at this same time, Edith Schaeffer and her daughter, Frank's sister, Susan Schaeffer Macauley, were changing the daily domestic lives of evangelical wives. Edith wrote a book called The Hidden Art of Homemaking that explained how a woman could find a creative outlet and a ministry by making her home beautiful-- a practice that not even Frank can deny was extremely important to her at L'Abri. Macauley, who had been Frank's teacher for stretches of time when she was in her teens, had discovered that a homeschooling woman could find intellectual as well as artistic challenge even as she embraced a conservative definition of being a "keeper at home." Her exhortations to use the Great Books-- meaningful and beautiful literature that had withstood the test of time-- was the bedrock of all 11 years of my homeschooling career.
So whether Francis and Edith Schaeffer and their children, Frank and Susan, changed and/or ruined America, their activities certainly paralleled and possibly inspired all the themes of my youth. Even the way Frank resolved his spiritual struggles was almost stereotypical of my generation of evangelicals: he joined the Greek Orthodox church. Some of our fellow Boomers have also found that this ancient communion is the perfect antidote to the rapid change that can take place in newer movements.
Frank's account of these years is full of contradictions. Most spectacularly, there is Frank's obvious and deep ambivalence towards his parents. He can't quite seem to figure out whether he views them with deep affection and respect or considers himself to have been abused in some way. Os Guiness, a former L'Abri worker, strongly defends Francis from Frank's criticism-- if you can't get that article to open, some of the same thoughts are available from less personally involved sources that also address Frank's more general criticisms of the greater evangelical context of that period. Given that some of Frank's allegations just don't hold up to fact-checking, it does make one wonder whether Frank prioritized accuracy at any point in his writing.
Then there's Frank's attitude towards himself. He is by turns self-serving and self-flagellating, dropping names and painting himself as one of the key figures in the transformation of American politics in the 80's, yet also airing his own personal, political and spiritual dirty laundry throughout the book.
Finally, there's Frank's writing style. It's gripping. It's irresistible. It's like a big bag of potato chips-- you suspect it is bad for you, but you just can't stop -- until, all of a sudden, it's not, running aground on pages of name-checking or bizarre allegations or uncomfortably scatalogical reminiscences. All the reviewers agree that this is a (for the most part) fantastically well-written book that may or may not actually have anything worthwhile to say. What kept me turning pages through thick and thin, though, was this sense that I was getting a backstage tour to the backdrop of my life, and that was definitely worth the ride.
Saturday, April 2, 2016
260-269 and 270-279: Social Justice, Churches and Ministries Past and Present
At this point, I am starting to feel that Dewey felt that he had decades to burn under the rubric of Religion, aka, Christianity. As we have already seen, he assigns a full 10 (240-249) to personal observance of Christianity and 10 more (250-259) to ministers and ministries of the local church. Turns out he then goes on to assign a full decade (260-269) to "Social and Ecclesiological Theology," which in practice means, "discussions of current movements and ministries of the Church worldwide," and another (270-279) to Christian history, which in practice means, "discussions of PAST movements and ministries of the Church worldwide." That distinction, of course, becomes problematic since today' news is tomorrow's history. He wraps that up with 10 more digits (280-289, coming soon to a blog near you!)assigned to various specific denominations (just in case they hadn't been dealt with previously as local, national or international churches or movements past or present.)
Combine these categorizations that seem tidy on paper, but actually split hairs, with cataloguers who may not know much about the book in hand or the subject matter in general, and the overall effect is that various topics in corporate Christian life seem all jumbled up, and all the more so because interspersed throughout are memoirs of people who had specific experience with one of these topics. If you want missionary biography or the lives of the saints, they're around here somewhere (usually, but not always, in 266 and 270, respectively), as are stunt memoirs like A.J.Jacobs' The Year of Living Biblically (shouldn't that be in 220?) and all its spawn.
As it happens, I love stunt memoirs and even regular ones, so these two decades were a gold mine for me. They were a peek behind the curtain of my own personal Christian history. Crazy for God is Frank Schaeffer's highly readable, if not excessively accurate, take on his parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, who pretty much singlehandedly founded the approach to faith that I came into and practice pretty much to this day. Larry Norman, Steve Taylor, Donald Miller, Relevant magazine, Marilynne Robinson, Makoto Fujimura, all owe a conscious or unconscious debt to the work Schaeffer, Sr., did to give evangelical Christianity a respect for the arts.
Philip Yancey was the editor of Campus Life magazine, and Campus Life was how I came to Jesus, so of course I was interested in his story, Soul Survivor. Or rather, the story of the authors and thinkers who have influenced his faith most positively. From GK Chesterton to C Everett Koop, from Gandhi to Henri Nouwen, it's an eclectic bunch, and the fact that an evangelical leader can find common cause with all of them is, I think, a testimony to Francis Schaeffer's influence on Christian culture.
In college, I joined a campus ministry that defies brief description. One thing's for sure: many of the founding members came from the Plymouth Brethren movement. Thus it was with great interest that I picked up In the World but Not of It, by Brett Grainger. He confirms that it's from the Plymouth Brethren that my church inherited such distinctives as political and cultural activism, the fervent espousal of Creation Science, and the insistence on women covering their heads, at least during prayer.
Women covering their heads... by the time I had read through the Bible once, it was obvious that my newfound faith presented some particular dilemmas for a girl who grew up in a household where Ms. magazine was de riguer. So as I stood before the hot mess that is 260-279 in my local library, you bet I chose A Year of Biblical Womanhood, by Rachel Held Evans. (Did I mention I'm a sucker for stunt memoirs?) I've been curious about Evans for a while now, and anybody who's going to go mano a mano with the Proverbs 31 woman has my attention anyway.
Speaking of Biblical gender roles, various definitions of, brings me to my last selection: Quiverfull, by Kathryn Joyce. I kind of don't want to write about this book, because, gentle reader, if you are unaware of this extreme interpretation of traditional gender roles and family structure, it is unlikely that learning about it is going to make you happier. Apparently some celebrity family called Duggar may exemplify some of its elements, but I wouldn't know. What I do know is that actual people I actually was friends with in my homeschooling days actually completely believed every single thing that's described in the links. It's obvious how some of these beliefs are damaging to women; may I just say that they are also surprisingly damaging to men, at least to those who were not endowed by their creator with exceptionally bossy tendencies, and are therefore made to feel inadequate in communities where this teaching prevails.
By now I've visited, attended, belonged to, or known an evangelist for a variety of churches. I have attended a Latin mass and seen Pope Francis. I have clapped with the happy and stood up, sat down and kneeled on cue with the "frozen chosen." I have met in homes, elementary school auditoriums, buildings with tin roofs, and cathedrals complete with stained glass and statues. I have sat on folding chairs, pews and sofas. And often have I had reason to wonder what a nonbeliever would make of the experience I am having. Jim Henderson did not just wonder. He hired his atheist friend Matt Casper to come with him to twelve of the most well-known churches in the country and report his honest opinions, and then they wrote a dual stunt memoir: Jim and Casper Go to Church. This book promises to be wildly biased, highly entertaining, and as insightful as any conversation with someone who you really respect and with whom you almost completely disagree. Can't wait!
And that's my book haul from 260-279. Now, if you'll excuse me, I better get reading!
Combine these categorizations that seem tidy on paper, but actually split hairs, with cataloguers who may not know much about the book in hand or the subject matter in general, and the overall effect is that various topics in corporate Christian life seem all jumbled up, and all the more so because interspersed throughout are memoirs of people who had specific experience with one of these topics. If you want missionary biography or the lives of the saints, they're around here somewhere (usually, but not always, in 266 and 270, respectively), as are stunt memoirs like A.J.Jacobs' The Year of Living Biblically (shouldn't that be in 220?) and all its spawn.
As it happens, I love stunt memoirs and even regular ones, so these two decades were a gold mine for me. They were a peek behind the curtain of my own personal Christian history. Crazy for God is Frank Schaeffer's highly readable, if not excessively accurate, take on his parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, who pretty much singlehandedly founded the approach to faith that I came into and practice pretty much to this day. Larry Norman, Steve Taylor, Donald Miller, Relevant magazine, Marilynne Robinson, Makoto Fujimura, all owe a conscious or unconscious debt to the work Schaeffer, Sr., did to give evangelical Christianity a respect for the arts.
Philip Yancey was the editor of Campus Life magazine, and Campus Life was how I came to Jesus, so of course I was interested in his story, Soul Survivor. Or rather, the story of the authors and thinkers who have influenced his faith most positively. From GK Chesterton to C Everett Koop, from Gandhi to Henri Nouwen, it's an eclectic bunch, and the fact that an evangelical leader can find common cause with all of them is, I think, a testimony to Francis Schaeffer's influence on Christian culture.
In college, I joined a campus ministry that defies brief description. One thing's for sure: many of the founding members came from the Plymouth Brethren movement. Thus it was with great interest that I picked up In the World but Not of It, by Brett Grainger. He confirms that it's from the Plymouth Brethren that my church inherited such distinctives as political and cultural activism, the fervent espousal of Creation Science, and the insistence on women covering their heads, at least during prayer.
Women covering their heads... by the time I had read through the Bible once, it was obvious that my newfound faith presented some particular dilemmas for a girl who grew up in a household where Ms. magazine was de riguer. So as I stood before the hot mess that is 260-279 in my local library, you bet I chose A Year of Biblical Womanhood, by Rachel Held Evans. (Did I mention I'm a sucker for stunt memoirs?) I've been curious about Evans for a while now, and anybody who's going to go mano a mano with the Proverbs 31 woman has my attention anyway.
Speaking of Biblical gender roles, various definitions of, brings me to my last selection: Quiverfull, by Kathryn Joyce. I kind of don't want to write about this book, because, gentle reader, if you are unaware of this extreme interpretation of traditional gender roles and family structure, it is unlikely that learning about it is going to make you happier. Apparently some celebrity family called Duggar may exemplify some of its elements, but I wouldn't know. What I do know is that actual people I actually was friends with in my homeschooling days actually completely believed every single thing that's described in the links. It's obvious how some of these beliefs are damaging to women; may I just say that they are also surprisingly damaging to men, at least to those who were not endowed by their creator with exceptionally bossy tendencies, and are therefore made to feel inadequate in communities where this teaching prevails.
By now I've visited, attended, belonged to, or known an evangelist for a variety of churches. I have attended a Latin mass and seen Pope Francis. I have clapped with the happy and stood up, sat down and kneeled on cue with the "frozen chosen." I have met in homes, elementary school auditoriums, buildings with tin roofs, and cathedrals complete with stained glass and statues. I have sat on folding chairs, pews and sofas. And often have I had reason to wonder what a nonbeliever would make of the experience I am having. Jim Henderson did not just wonder. He hired his atheist friend Matt Casper to come with him to twelve of the most well-known churches in the country and report his honest opinions, and then they wrote a dual stunt memoir: Jim and Casper Go to Church. This book promises to be wildly biased, highly entertaining, and as insightful as any conversation with someone who you really respect and with whom you almost completely disagree. Can't wait!
And that's my book haul from 260-279. Now, if you'll excuse me, I better get reading!
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Extra Credit: I Was Blind (Dating), But Now I See, by Stephanie Rische (248.8432)
How could I say "no" to this stunt memoir that was so temptingly close to the section I was actually looking for? I Was (Blind) Dating, But Now I See actually does a lot more than catalogue eight bad dates, because, after all, what's to say about one disastrous hour? Stephanie actually invites us into about 10 years of her life, as she marries off all her friends and relations and starts annoying God about her own single status. In our society, it's hard to be unattached, and in the Church, it might be even harder (even though, as All the Single Ladies, the very popular new study by Rebecca Traister tells us, it's increasingly common). But, really, Stephanie's story could be for anyone who's waiting... and isn't that most of us?
My first clue that I didn't have to be a 30-something single girl to relate to this book came on page 24, when Rische referenced Simeon, who was "eagerly waiting for the Messiah." He had been waiting all his long life... and his people had been waiting for hundreds of years before him... but he was still eagerly waiting for something he knew God wanted to do. Oh, I have a list of things I'm waiting for!
In my opinion, there are two kinds of waiting. There's the kind Simeon was doing. He was sure he would see the Messiah before he died, because he had received a specific promise to that effect, so his waiting was an exercise in faith and patience. Abraham could have waited patiently for Isaac to be born. Daniel could wait and pray for the Babylonian captivity to be ended. But the other kind of waiting, the kind Rische is talking about, also has an element of suspense in it. It's like being an older kid waiting for Christmas-- you know what you asked for, you know what you want, but you also know, from previous experience, that it might not turn out the way you are hoping, so you careen between wild expectation and trying to protect yourself from disappointment.
That's where Rische brings in the parable of the persistent widow --the obnoxious prayer of the believer who just won't take a hint. But at one point she asks, "How long do you have to be annoying before you realize you're just banging your head against concrete?"
What I have found is that annoying prayers may or may not "get results." But when I am having that conversation-- or some days, that argument, or that one-sided harangue-- with God, when I am engaged with the Most High, eventually it's not about getting what I want any more. It's about starting to see the situation in a new way that might be closer to God's way. I have prayed and I have fasted and I have been as daring as the woman-- the woman!-- who couldn't stop bleeding and who pushed her way through the crowd just to touch Jesus, but I haven't always gotten what I was asking for. But I have always, always, gotten what I needed-- peace with the outcome, and strength for the journey.
So I Was Blind Dating turned out not to be so much of a stunt memoir and more of just a story about someone else's life that was different from mine, only not, actually. I guess by now Rische has discovered that marriage doesn't end your waiting. We will always be annoying God about something. We will always be ping-ponging between hope and expectation management. But knowing others go through the same things makes it a little easier.
My first clue that I didn't have to be a 30-something single girl to relate to this book came on page 24, when Rische referenced Simeon, who was "eagerly waiting for the Messiah." He had been waiting all his long life... and his people had been waiting for hundreds of years before him... but he was still eagerly waiting for something he knew God wanted to do. Oh, I have a list of things I'm waiting for!
In my opinion, there are two kinds of waiting. There's the kind Simeon was doing. He was sure he would see the Messiah before he died, because he had received a specific promise to that effect, so his waiting was an exercise in faith and patience. Abraham could have waited patiently for Isaac to be born. Daniel could wait and pray for the Babylonian captivity to be ended. But the other kind of waiting, the kind Rische is talking about, also has an element of suspense in it. It's like being an older kid waiting for Christmas-- you know what you asked for, you know what you want, but you also know, from previous experience, that it might not turn out the way you are hoping, so you careen between wild expectation and trying to protect yourself from disappointment.
That's where Rische brings in the parable of the persistent widow --the obnoxious prayer of the believer who just won't take a hint. But at one point she asks, "How long do you have to be annoying before you realize you're just banging your head against concrete?"
What I have found is that annoying prayers may or may not "get results." But when I am having that conversation-- or some days, that argument, or that one-sided harangue-- with God, when I am engaged with the Most High, eventually it's not about getting what I want any more. It's about starting to see the situation in a new way that might be closer to God's way. I have prayed and I have fasted and I have been as daring as the woman-- the woman!-- who couldn't stop bleeding and who pushed her way through the crowd just to touch Jesus, but I haven't always gotten what I was asking for. But I have always, always, gotten what I needed-- peace with the outcome, and strength for the journey.
So I Was Blind Dating turned out not to be so much of a stunt memoir and more of just a story about someone else's life that was different from mine, only not, actually. I guess by now Rische has discovered that marriage doesn't end your waiting. We will always be annoying God about something. We will always be ping-ponging between hope and expectation management. But knowing others go through the same things makes it a little easier.
Friday, February 26, 2016
Eldercare as Pastoral Work: Caring for Mother by Virginia Stem Owens
Caring for Mother by Virginia Stem Owens was my obvious choice for this Dewey decade. Caregiving is that form of pastoral work defined as "true religion" by James, and Paul says the absence of caregiving is the mark of someone who has, for all practical purposes, denied the faith. It also happens to be a rather all-consuming ministry, whether one is caring for a small child or an aging parent.
My mother is 74 years old. She can barely stand, and walking is out of the question. She has open wounds on her toes that are still not healed after more than a year of almost weekly visits to the podiatrist. She was in the hospital four times last year and moved from an "independent living" senior apartment to a "personal care home." So far 2016 has been quiet, but every time the phone rings I wonder if it's going to be inviting me back on the merry-go-round. I am in counseling and on anti-depressants, but I'm doing better than some people I know, who have lost the battle and altogether given up to depression, or disappeared completely into the demands of caregiving and lost their jobs, their friends and pretty much their identities. It's hard to believe there isn't a better way to walk this road, and that 21st century Western medicine isn't pretty much the worst way to die ever known to man, virtually indistinguishable from torture.
No one I talk to and no book I read dares to sugar-coat the long goodbye. We watch the most honored figures in our lives, bar none, descend slowly into dependence and, in most cases, some form of madness, and we know there is nothing we can do that can stop this from happening, and that it only ends one way. We drive, we call, we visit, we cajole, we cram up our evenings and weekends with obligatory trips to doctors and hospitals, or, on the rare week off, with outings to the movies or a museum so that our poor impatient patient will remember why life is worth living in the first place, and when the day or the week or the journey is done, "what never goes away, doesn't wear out or disappear, is the feeling-- no, the certain knowledge-- that I could have done more, could have done better" (p. 93). And this from Owens, who hung out at the nursing home for hours every day. I have friends who quit their jobs and moved in with their moms to keep them out of nursing homes. Listen, I just get together with my mom once or twice a week and problem-solve as needed, but I still feel both that I am taxed beyond my capacities and that I could do more, could do better.
All the reviewers agree that the most poignant and meaningful chapter of the book was "Thanksgiving at Fairacres." Owens' mother's nursing home sounds no worse than any other and better than some, so her description of it rings true to every caregiver. From the preschool-teacher-esque forced cheer at holiday events to the ring of wheelchairs around the nurse's station (they call it the concierge desk at my mom's place, but they're not fooling me) to the fact that almost every single person in that building is mad about something, I guess care homes are pretty much the same everywhere. And the caregiver's task is always the same: stay on the good side of the staff, because you need them more than they need you, but never give up and never surrender when it's your parent's health and happiness on the line.
There are weeks I have a vision of my responsibilities to my mother as a high calling. And there are weeks that I know for a fact I am doing a crap job of coming alongside at a time that, while it may not be a blast for me, is certainly her darkest hour. But I sure appreciate authors who have been able to share their stories of similar journeys. When I see their little ships in the distance through the fog, I know I am not alone.
My mother is 74 years old. She can barely stand, and walking is out of the question. She has open wounds on her toes that are still not healed after more than a year of almost weekly visits to the podiatrist. She was in the hospital four times last year and moved from an "independent living" senior apartment to a "personal care home." So far 2016 has been quiet, but every time the phone rings I wonder if it's going to be inviting me back on the merry-go-round. I am in counseling and on anti-depressants, but I'm doing better than some people I know, who have lost the battle and altogether given up to depression, or disappeared completely into the demands of caregiving and lost their jobs, their friends and pretty much their identities. It's hard to believe there isn't a better way to walk this road, and that 21st century Western medicine isn't pretty much the worst way to die ever known to man, virtually indistinguishable from torture.
No one I talk to and no book I read dares to sugar-coat the long goodbye. We watch the most honored figures in our lives, bar none, descend slowly into dependence and, in most cases, some form of madness, and we know there is nothing we can do that can stop this from happening, and that it only ends one way. We drive, we call, we visit, we cajole, we cram up our evenings and weekends with obligatory trips to doctors and hospitals, or, on the rare week off, with outings to the movies or a museum so that our poor impatient patient will remember why life is worth living in the first place, and when the day or the week or the journey is done, "what never goes away, doesn't wear out or disappear, is the feeling-- no, the certain knowledge-- that I could have done more, could have done better" (p. 93). And this from Owens, who hung out at the nursing home for hours every day. I have friends who quit their jobs and moved in with their moms to keep them out of nursing homes. Listen, I just get together with my mom once or twice a week and problem-solve as needed, but I still feel both that I am taxed beyond my capacities and that I could do more, could do better.
All the reviewers agree that the most poignant and meaningful chapter of the book was "Thanksgiving at Fairacres." Owens' mother's nursing home sounds no worse than any other and better than some, so her description of it rings true to every caregiver. From the preschool-teacher-esque forced cheer at holiday events to the ring of wheelchairs around the nurse's station (they call it the concierge desk at my mom's place, but they're not fooling me) to the fact that almost every single person in that building is mad about something, I guess care homes are pretty much the same everywhere. And the caregiver's task is always the same: stay on the good side of the staff, because you need them more than they need you, but never give up and never surrender when it's your parent's health and happiness on the line.
There are weeks I have a vision of my responsibilities to my mother as a high calling. And there are weeks that I know for a fact I am doing a crap job of coming alongside at a time that, while it may not be a blast for me, is certainly her darkest hour. But I sure appreciate authors who have been able to share their stories of similar journeys. When I see their little ships in the distance through the fog, I know I am not alone.
Friday, February 5, 2016
250-259: Pastors and What They Do
Dr. Tournier talked about how working people are sometimes too tired to pursue creative endeavors, and that's my situation right now in the busy season of my job, so I'm cheating on the 250s and doing my research remotely. Here's a peek at our church library's holdings in that category: mostly sermons and training for pastors and other church workers.
I have read my share of sermons, so I checked out my public library, found and ordered this instead:
Now that's something that I can relate to. A few years ago I was reading books about youth ministry; now it seems like I can't get enough of aging and death. Circle of life and all that!
I have read my share of sermons, so I checked out my public library, found and ordered this instead:
Now that's something that I can relate to. A few years ago I was reading books about youth ministry; now it seems like I can't get enough of aging and death. Circle of life and all that!Friday, January 15, 2016
Growing Old, Part II: The Importance of Acceptance (More about Growing Old)
In my last post, I mentioned that Paul Tournier alluded to the value of acceptance in enjoying old age, especially with respect to the illnesses and chronic conditions that may accompany it. Psychologists, natural health gurus, and Bible teachers all agree: The person who is continually striving for a cure, who is always trying the latest medicine, diet, or alternative treatment, is really no better situated for mental health than the person who continually rails against God and man looking for someone to blame for his or her condition.
The only people who live well with chronic illness, which is a hallmark of old age for many, are those who have accepted that pain or disability or limitations or discomfort is their new normal.
This sounds like bleak advice, but it's really quite liberating. I myself know that when I stopped chasing a "cure" for my thyroid condition and started just working with it, and when I accepted my susceptibility to depression, I was able to enjoy the life I had, rather than continually wishing for someone else's life.
I think Christians struggle more with this kind of acceptance than those of some other faiths or of no faith, because we know that there is always a possibility of miraculous healing beyond what science can provide. If Jesus appeared to us and said, as He did to the man at the pool in Bethesda, "Do you want to be made well?" of course we would answer yes. But if He instead appeared to us and said, "My strength is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness," as He did to Paul, could we accept that answer as well?
Paul Tournier, so many years ago, also advocated for acceptance in the context of old age. We must accept the limitations imposed on us by the 24-hour-day and by mortality-- only God, Tournier points out-- can say "It is finished" and sit down forever! We must accept our lives, our circumstances, our bodies and our age. Acceptance is different from resignation, and is more like consent-- we agree that what we are experiencing is acceptable. We live authentically in the reality we are experiencing rather than pretending that something different is happening-- that we are not ill or we are not old. Ideally, we will be able to focus on what we have rather than what we have lost.
Tournier believes that these habits of mind must be developed early in life. He believes that those who do not accept old age also did not accept adolescence, or young adulthood, or middle age. He believes that those who have spent their whole lives complaining about the responsibilities and limitations of their current situation and either nostalgically longing for a previous stage or looking forward to some supposedly more free future stage all their lives will be singularly ill-equipped to cope with old age-- even if, maybe especially if, it is the stage to which they were looking forward! Surely it is bound to disappoint, after all.
What a compelling point for me, surrounded as I am by high school students who constantly complain about how busy and stressed out they are, while what could be some of the most wonderful moments and opportunities of their lives pass them by.
Young mothers look forward to their children getting older... mothers of older kids look back with fondness to the simplicity of the preschool years, or look forward to their kids leaving. In middle age, perhaps we are still caregiving, or maybe the expectations of our jobs and community activities have become pressing, so we look to retirement for a relief of our pressures.
But why would these habits of discontent change when we turn 66? If we hope to enjoy our retirement, we must accept first that every age has its challenges and its rewards, and then seek to develop habits of contentment now, wherever we are, engaging with the world and with our lives as they are. Such habits of mind will empower us to live well during every age and stage.
The only people who live well with chronic illness, which is a hallmark of old age for many, are those who have accepted that pain or disability or limitations or discomfort is their new normal.
This sounds like bleak advice, but it's really quite liberating. I myself know that when I stopped chasing a "cure" for my thyroid condition and started just working with it, and when I accepted my susceptibility to depression, I was able to enjoy the life I had, rather than continually wishing for someone else's life.
I think Christians struggle more with this kind of acceptance than those of some other faiths or of no faith, because we know that there is always a possibility of miraculous healing beyond what science can provide. If Jesus appeared to us and said, as He did to the man at the pool in Bethesda, "Do you want to be made well?" of course we would answer yes. But if He instead appeared to us and said, "My strength is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness," as He did to Paul, could we accept that answer as well?
Paul Tournier, so many years ago, also advocated for acceptance in the context of old age. We must accept the limitations imposed on us by the 24-hour-day and by mortality-- only God, Tournier points out-- can say "It is finished" and sit down forever! We must accept our lives, our circumstances, our bodies and our age. Acceptance is different from resignation, and is more like consent-- we agree that what we are experiencing is acceptable. We live authentically in the reality we are experiencing rather than pretending that something different is happening-- that we are not ill or we are not old. Ideally, we will be able to focus on what we have rather than what we have lost.
Tournier believes that these habits of mind must be developed early in life. He believes that those who do not accept old age also did not accept adolescence, or young adulthood, or middle age. He believes that those who have spent their whole lives complaining about the responsibilities and limitations of their current situation and either nostalgically longing for a previous stage or looking forward to some supposedly more free future stage all their lives will be singularly ill-equipped to cope with old age-- even if, maybe especially if, it is the stage to which they were looking forward! Surely it is bound to disappoint, after all.
What a compelling point for me, surrounded as I am by high school students who constantly complain about how busy and stressed out they are, while what could be some of the most wonderful moments and opportunities of their lives pass them by.
Young mothers look forward to their children getting older... mothers of older kids look back with fondness to the simplicity of the preschool years, or look forward to their kids leaving. In middle age, perhaps we are still caregiving, or maybe the expectations of our jobs and community activities have become pressing, so we look to retirement for a relief of our pressures.
But why would these habits of discontent change when we turn 66? If we hope to enjoy our retirement, we must accept first that every age has its challenges and its rewards, and then seek to develop habits of contentment now, wherever we are, engaging with the world and with our lives as they are. Such habits of mind will empower us to live well during every age and stage.
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