Run. And don’t look back.

Whenever a Christian follows authority figures who don’t allow questions about themselves or their direction or teaching, get out and don’t look back. Whenever someone says he knows what’s best for your life, better than you do; whenever someone says that she speaks for God; whenever someone pretends to be anything other than a flawed human being who makes mistakes and sometimes gets it wrong — that person is sitting on a pedestal of his or her own making, and if you don’t destroy it, God will. So many freedom-destroying things we do are connected to an irresponsible decision to allow others to be to us what only God is supposed to be.

Steve Brown

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

by Alexander McCall Smith

READ IT! 

If you know you won’t read it, read these pieces I pulled from this book to add to my commonplace book. 

In a very short time, he knew, there would be men wanting to marry her.
  He would never deny her that, of course.  But what if the man who wanted to marry her was a bully, or a drunkard, or a womaniser?  All of this was possible; there was any number of men like that, waiting for an attractive girl that they could latch on to and whose life they could slowly destroy.  These men were leeches; they sucked away at the goodness of a woman’s heart until it was dry and all her love had been used up.  That took a long time, he knew, because women seemed to have vast reservoirs of goodness in them. 
  If one of these men claimed Precious, then what could he, a father, do?  He could warn her of the risk, but whoever listened to warnings about somebody they loved?  He had seen it so often before; love was a form of blindness that closed the eyes to the most glaring faults.  you could love a murderer, and simply not believe that your lover would do so much as crush a tick, let alone kill somebody.  There would be no point trying to dissuade her.
 
 
…nothing, nothing, that was what her country was so rich in–emptiness.
 
She made it sound so simple that he found himself convinced that it would work.  That was the wonderful thing about confidence–it was contagious.
 
…they [lawyers] set themselves up as experts on everything.  What did they know of life?  All they knew was how to parrot the stock phrases of their profession and to continue to be obstinate until somebody, somewhere, paid up.
 
She did not like his voice.  It was sandpaper rough, and he slurred the ends of the words lazily, as if he could not be bothered to make himself clear.  This came from contempt, she felt;  if you were as powerful as he was, then why bother to communicate properly with your inferiors?
 
Women can’t be bothered with all this fighting.  We see war for what it is–a matter of broken bodies and crying mothers.
 
Mma Ramostwe smiled at her old friend.  You can go through life and make new friends every year–every month practically–but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years.  Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.
 
There was so much suffering in Africa that it was tempting just to shrug your shoulders and walk away.  But you can’t do that, she thought.  You just can’t.

The Heart of the Matter: a Christless novel.

A few months ago I picked up The Heart of the Matter in order to give Graham Greene a second chance.  I had read Greene’s novella The Tenth Man, and despite the intriguiging plot, I could not like it. 

I couldn’t like this book either.  I hate to start off the summer reviews with such a negative, but it’s true.  You may have noticed that I mentioned beginning this book months ago.  That is partly because Greene is so detached from the story and characters.  Perhaps Greene has a pervasive cynicism in his writings, which makes it difficult for a reader to attach interest (let alone affection or empathy) to his characters.  Evelyn Waugh was a contemporary of Greene, and he asserts Greene’s writing to be “not a specifically literary style at all. The words are functional, devoid of sensuous attraction, of ancestry, and of independent life.“ 

The characters of The Heart of the Matter are set in the stifling heat and drenching rainy seasons of Sierra Leone.  Two minor characters add some interest to the first half of the book by making cockroach hunting a sport.  The plot centers around a policeman who is about to be passed over for commissionership. 

Throughout the novel, Scobie struggles to maintain honesty in his work relations in the midst of a corrupt, diamond smuggling area. 

Into the second half of the book, things got interesting.  The main character, Scobie, begins an affair with a young lady who was shipwrecked in Sierra Leone.  What attracts him to her is the pity he feels for this poor girl who has been shipwrecked on her honeymoon and is now a widow.  His sense of responsibility to his wife urges him to keep his affair private.  In the midst of a lovers’ quarrel, Helen, his lover, says furiously, “I don’t want your pity.”

But it was not a question of whether she wanted it–she had it.  Pity smoulered like decay at his heart.  He would never rid himself of it.  He knew from experience how passion died away and how love went, but pity always stayed.  Nothing ever diminished pity.  The conditions of life nurtured it. 

Scobie pities his wife, his coworkers, his lover.  But never himself.  The above paragraph ends with, “There was only a single person in the world who was unpitiable, oneself.”  As I read this novel, I realized that pity can be a form of arrogance.  Pity forces Sobie to set himself up as the redeemer of those he pities.

Scobie struggles to push aside his pride so that he can confess his sins to the priest.  Before the priest comes to the confessional, Scobie prays for a miracle:  “O God, convince me, help me, convince me.  Make me feel that I am more important than that girl.  …Make me put my own soul first.”  However, Scobie can not confess because he is not that selfish.  So he prays again, his stomach wrenching with nausea, “O God, if instead I should abandon you, punish me but let the others get some happiness.”

From this point on, Scobie lives in a state of mortal sin and continues taking communion.  He willingly damns himself in order to bring happiness and comfort to his wife and his lover (who are two different people). 

Scobie is a failure.   His lover points out his failed faith: 

“If there’s one thing I hate it’s your Catholicism.  I suppose it comes of having a pious wife.  It’s so bogus.  If you really believed you wouldn’t be here.”

          “But I do believe and I am here.”  He said with bewilderment, “I can’t explain it, but there it is.  My eyes are open.  I know what I’m doing.  When Father Rank came down to the rail carrying the sacrament…”

          Helen exclaimed with scorn and impatience, “You’ve told me all that before.  You are trying to impress me.  You don’t believe in hell any more than I do.”

 

 

 

 

 

His wife knew about the affair–that’s why she came back from South Africa.  He eventually was corrupted by the diamond smuggling mafia.  After his death, his archenemy figured out and announced Scobie’s suicide plans.  Even the faith he placed in himself failed, for he did not bring happiness to any of the people he pitied. 

Scobie never loved those around him.  That’s why he doesn’t cut it as a Christ-figure in this novel.  Christ is Truth.  Scobie would not believe the Truth, never mind speak it.  Christ rescues our shipwrecked lives in order to place us at a feast in the heavenlies.  Scobie took a poor shipwrecked girl to a deserted life.  Christ is faithful to his promises.  Scobie was not faithful to his wife or the ethical standards of his job.  I know that every Christ-figure in a novel breaks down at some point.  However, he is a wanna-be redeemer. 

Parties!

My mom turned 60 this year.  We had a party.  She said the thought of being sixty, was much worse than actually being sixty.  Good for you, Mom. 

Then we partied because

Theresa will be gone all summer.  Well, not because she will be gone.  We needed her to know we would miss her.  So we threw a party.  Sarah bought a grill; and we had great food, awesome entertainment by none other than Liz Jones, and some bug bites. 

p.s.  Click on the pics to see the rest of the album in flickr.

Books #1 & #2

  The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway started off my summer reading.  When I told several friends that I was reading this novella, I was warned about the agonizing hours I would spend finishing the book.   They were agonizing – but in a good way.  My first observation about the book was that there were no chapter breaks.  At first that annoyed me.  Then I realized Hemingway’s ingenuity in giving the reader no break, because this poor old man has no break from the sea.  I liked the book for its pathos.  Hemingway creates a pitiable, representative character whom I could root for through the book.  If you are looking for a quick read this summer, pick this one up. 

  Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting has a gripping story.  This children’s novel tinkers with the idea of eternal life in our own bodies.  I think we will have this for a literature title this year in my class.  What great discussions are to be spawned from this spring of everlasting life!  Babbitt takes this intriguing idea and weaves beautiful descriptions of a sultry August with the imagery of wheels and time turning–or standing still throughout the whole novel.  This is another quick read, but definitely more delightful than the Old Man. 

Please don’t shy away from it, just because it’s children’s literature.  Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said if a children’s book is worth reading while we are young, it is worth reading again when we are older.  I think he said something like that.  Anyway, check it out. 

Keep a commonplace book.

While in college, my professors required us to keep commonplace/idea books.  It was more than a book of quotes, it was an observation/sketch/quote/scrapbook.  Anyway, this morning I was reading through one and found this quote from when I went to have Thanksgiving with my brother one year.  At Thanksgiving dinner, a few people were already planning Christmas dinner.  And Ms. Loraine said,

“Janine, you gonna go and celebrate the Lord’s birth with canned food?  Naaw–I raised you better than that.”

Help! Murder! Police!

My wife fell in the grease!

I laughed so hard

I fell in the lard

Help!  Murder!  Police!

Have you heard that rhyme before?  My mom chants it–I don’t know in what kinds of situations, because she’s never witnessed a murder.

I digress.  This morning I was heading to the gym at 4:45 a.m., and as I approached the front door, it was standing wide open.  I was freaked out because I hadn’t slept well–which happens to me about once ever 5 years.  I put the two omens together and figured there was a perpetrator in my house.  My dad was at work, so my mom and I were alone. 

Before grabbing my weapon of choice (a red patent-leather spike high heel), I asked Mom if she had left the door open last night to let in fresh air or something.  After all, I didn’t want to lose my head in the possible noncrisis.  She declined.  I gave her a quick briefing of the situation. 

She sat straight up in bed and hurriedly whispered, “Stay right here. I’ll call the sherriff.”  I wondered if that was necessary, but you can’t be too cautious these days.  I held the phone when mom began to get dressed.  The dispatcher informed me that the deputy was at the house.  When instructed, I should go meet him at the front door.  She double checked, “Now, everyone that lives in your house is in that back bedroom with you, right?”

I quickly explained that my dad lived here, but there was no way he would be at home.  He wouldn’t be home until 7 or 8.  I double checked with Mom, “You don’t think Dad came home early, do you?”

Mom said she would call him.  She picked up her cell to call, right when the dispatcher told me to go to the front door.  As I approached the front door, I hear my dad’s cell phone ring.  I thought, I hope he just forgot that on the charger last night.  Then I heard Otis’s voice:  “hello?  …in the family room.”

My words rushed to save my dad’s life from the ready hand gun in the deputy’s hand.  “That’s my dad!  It’s okay!  It’s just my dad!” 

The deputy was rounding the corner of the kitchen as my dad was, and the man of the law shined his flashlight in my dad’s face.  “Is that your dad?”  I quickly assured him it was. 

All this while, my father had no clue why a deputy with a gun was at our house, let alone shining a flashlight in his face!  Poor thing. 

As the deputy and I walked outside (remember, I’m on my way to the gym), two other sherriff cars were there with lights flashing.  We let them no there is no actual perpetrator.  As I’m walking to my car, two more pull up.  Awesome. 

Five sherriff’s cars surrounding my house at 5:00 a.m.  What a fabulous way to start the day!

Flickr-ed out

Okay, so I did not follow directions.  I’ll post more pictures next month for you to see. 

*Note*  On flickr, You can’t recover any of your monthly allowance by deleting photos. 

Spring Fever and Bookworm Stew

I am VERY excited about the prospects of summer.  Today I’m making the recipe for my summer bookworm stew.  I’m trying to get 30 ingredients.  We’ll see how it goes.  I’ll be reading a combination of adult literature and literature that I can recommend to my students (both 5th graders and rhetoric students).

 So, I’m compiling a list.  I welcome suggestions.  Please let me know your favorites. 

1. Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton
2. His Excellency by Joseph Ellis
3. Confederacy of Duncesby John Kennedy Toole
4. The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
5. The Shakespeare Stealerby Gary Blackwood
6. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
7. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
8. Gileadby Marilynne Robinson
9. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
10. God Grew Tired of Usby John Bul Dau and Michael Sweeney
11. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
12. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
13. Snow Fallingon Cedars by David Guterson
14. The War of Artby Steven Pressfield
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Geniusby David Eggers
16. Poetry of Sylvia Plath
17. Wise Bloodby Flannery O’Connor
18. The Lovely Bonesby Alice Sebold
19. Everything is Illuminatedby Jonathan Safran Foer
20. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Closeby J.S. Foer

For now, that’s what I have on the agenda.  As you can see, I’m lacking some good biographies and non-fiction.  Specifically, if anybody has a big idea for historical books (preferably early American–up to 1812), I’d love to hear them.  I need 10 more.  Help me add to my list!

“I just always wanted to be a celebrity. That’s the only way I saw myself.”

This is too much.

 In case you haven’t seen the commercial…