tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327888232024-03-18T16:06:32.950-05:00One Eternal Day<i>"O’er all those wide extended plains / Shines one eternal day;<br> "There God the Son forever reigns / And scatters night away."</i>
Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.comBlogger6736125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-72530624934396877042024-03-18T15:54:00.001-05:002024-03-18T16:06:01.471-05:00A lucky life<div style="text-align: justify;">Joseph Epstein writes about <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/04/writing-my-autobiography" target="_blank">"Writing My Autobiography"</a> in the current <i>First Things</i>. I will happily read just about anything he writes:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">My own life has not provided the richest fodder for autobiography. For one thing, it has not featured much in the way of drama. For another, good fortune has allowed me the freedom to do with my life much as I have wished. I have given my autobiography the title <i>Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life</i>, with the subtitle <i>Especially If You’ve Had a Lucky Life</i>. Now well along in its closing chapter, mine, I contend, has been thus far—here I pause to touch wood—a most lucky life. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I have known serious sadness in my life. I have undergone a divorce. I have become a member of that most dolorous of clubs, parents who have buried one of their children. Yet I have had much to be grateful for. In the final paragraph of a book I wrote some years ago on the subject of ambition, I noted that “We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, or the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing.” In all these realms, I lucked out. I was born to intelligent, kindly parents; at a time that, though I was drafted into the army, allowed me to miss being called up to fight in any wars; and in the largely unmitigated prosperity enjoyed by the world’s most interesting country, the United States of America. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The older one gets, unless one’s life is lived in pain or deepest regret, the more fortunate one feels. Not always, not everyone, I suppose. “The longer I live, the more I am inclined to the belief that this earth is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum,” said George Bernard Shaw, who lived to age ninety-four. Though the world seems to be in a hell of a shape just now, I nonetheless prefer to delay my exit for as long as I can. I like it here, continue to find much that is interesting and amusing, and have no wish to depart the planet.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Still, with advancing years I have found my interests narrowing. Not least among my waning interests is that in travel. I like my domestic routine too much to abandon it for foreign countries where the natives figure to be wearing Air Jordan shoes, Ralph Lauren shirts, and cargo pants. Magazines that I once looked forward to, many of which I have written for in the past, no longer contain much that I find worth reading. A former moviegoer, I haven’t been to a movie theater in at least a decade. The high price of concert and opera tickets has driven me away. The supposedly great American playwrights—Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee—have never seemed all that good to me, and I miss them not at all. If all this sounds like a complaint that the culture has deserted me, I don’t feel that it has. I can still listen to my beloved Mozart on discs, read Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Dickens, George Eliot, Willa Cather, and the other great novelists, watch the splendid movies of earlier days on Turner Classics and HBO—live, in other words, on the culture of the past. .... (<a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/04/writing-my-autobiography" target="_blank">more</a>)</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/04/writing-my-autobiography"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Joseph Epstein, "Writing My Autobiography," <i>First Things</i>, April, 2024.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-47288710025709695492024-03-17T14:31:00.000-05:002024-03-17T14:31:53.697-05:00Politics in perspective<div style="text-align: justify;">I've been a political addict ever since I campaigned for candidates in the 1960s—and politics is what I taught for thirty years—but in this year's political environment I sympathize with <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/03/super-tuesday-and-the-apocalypse" target="_blank">John Wilson's intended behavior</a>:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">I am myself dismayed, to put it mildly, at the prospect of a choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, neither of whom I can vote for in good conscience. But I was more appalled and at the same time shamefully entertained by the excessive reaction, especially on the part of those for whom Trump’s candidacy—with a strong possibility of victory—is an occasion for apocalyptic pronouncements. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If Donald Trump is elected, it will not mean “the end of democracy.” If Joe Biden is elected, the world will keep turning. That’s not to say that no disasters may lie in store. The unthinkable can become reality overnight, as a look at the day’s news will remind us. But there is something shameful, something sickeningly bogus, in the huffing and puffing of those who claim, for instance, that “what happened in Germany in the 1930s is happening again in the US today.” ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I am not looking forward to the prospect of the next few months in this election cycle. I won’t be following the “news” religiously (but Wendy and I will be going to church each Sunday). I won’t be watching and listening to the candidates. I am myself a caregiver, and I have to take care of myself in order to do my job; I have to preserve my sanity. Neither will I be living in a bunker or a cabin in the woods. My wife Wendy and our daughter Katy and our dear, aging cat Nina will muddle along. Wendy and I will listen to Anonymous 4 and Anouar Brahem and the blues while we work on jigsaws. I’ll putter away on a review or a column. Via DVD (we’re primitives), Wendy and I, sometimes joined by Katy, will watch old episodes featuring Brother Cadfael and Miss Marple and Perry Mason, black and white noirs and slapstick comedies lovingly restored....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And each day, weather permitting, Wendy and I will walk in the neighborhoods nearby. Wendy will groan when, on a nearby street, we pass the house of a man who has a flagpole with two flags: the American flag and a Trump flag. And on another nearby street, we will laugh as we pass the house with a little white dog who likes to sit on the back of a sofa, and who literally flings himself against the window, barking furiously, as we pass. It’s a wonderful life.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/03/super-tuesday-and-the-apocalypse"><span style="font-size: x-small;">John Wilson, "Super Tuesday and the Apocalypse," <i>First Things</i>, March 8, 2024.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-30609437912840236492024-03-16T13:47:00.000-05:002024-03-16T13:47:49.420-05:00Christians in an anti-Christian culture<div style="text-align: justify;">From <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/04/antifragile-faith" target="_blank">Kevin DeYoung's review</a> of <i>Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture</i>:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNb9eeHCQ9W5hjhWwzCeAdw0PGIg9zjKSVgn0p9wiYpQd6tdDhtAgsw3PAh0DuSda5wWefnFNz1m2mDd9qn8c0c08BEPHKdWD04h33q8R81yvyXe5hmip9_kHDisTatwEdTc9RREerZwYjuJgfWNg5FXhViCB0BBoRgqhqfYTHPCLzcn3PgbVwrA/s741/renn.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="741" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNb9eeHCQ9W5hjhWwzCeAdw0PGIg9zjKSVgn0p9wiYpQd6tdDhtAgsw3PAh0DuSda5wWefnFNz1m2mDd9qn8c0c08BEPHKdWD04h33q8R81yvyXe5hmip9_kHDisTatwEdTc9RREerZwYjuJgfWNg5FXhViCB0BBoRgqhqfYTHPCLzcn3PgbVwrA/w270-h400/renn.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>...Renn’s “three worlds” thesis isn’t a way to grade the overall Christianity of the country. It’s a framework for understanding how society views the reasonableness of Christian truths, the validity of Christian arguments, and the obligation we all have to live up to a basic standard of Christian virtue. Renn claims that we are living in a negative world, one that is deeply suspicious of Christianity (especially when it comes to issues of sexuality). He makes a persuasive case. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Renn argues that none of the familiar models of Christian engagement works in the negative world. The “culture war” strategy, as he calls it, specialized in decrying the erosion of our moral character. This strategy is truly effective only if our views are in the majority. In the positive world, it might be possible to raise the standard of Christian virtue and hope that a winning coalition will rally to our side. By contrast, the “seeker sensitivity” strategy argued for maximum personal and ecclesial flexibility so as not to turn off the suburban would-be churchgoer. This strategy often functioned as if aesthetic style and personal relationships were all that stood in the way of non-Christians’ embracing Christianity. Meanwhile, the “cultural engagement” approach sought to alleviate the concerns of educated city-dwellers: a kind of seeker sensitivity for skeptical cosmopolitan elites. Today’s cultural engagers, Renn believes, have morphed into another form of culture warrior, except that their war is not against the world but against other evangelicals. Renn acknowledges that all three approaches have something to teach us (insofar as courage, kindness, and understanding the people we mean to reach are Christian values); but as all-encompassing strategies, they are outdated.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was also helped by Renn’s observation that Trump and wokeness are two key polarizers at work in re-sorting evangelicals. At least, if you take “Trump” to be less about voting for Trump (which some evangelicals may do while holding their noses) and more about an aggressive, populist, the-old-rules-don’t-work-anymore approach to cultural transformation, then Renn has hit upon an important point. Evangelicalism is being scrambled along those two axes: Are you opposed to wokeness, and are you opposed to Trumpism? It’s relatively straightforward to be opposed to one and for the other (or at least not terribly bothered by the other); the difficult space for Christians and churches is when you are opposed to both. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">...[C]onservatives need a new way to talk to men and a new way to relate to the Republican Party. With both critiques, Renn doesn’t provide many answers, but he is right to highlight (concerning the former) how traditional complementarian discourse was tailored to second-wave feminism. Regarding the Republicans, he argues that evangelicals have gotten little for their political loyalty except pro-life judges. As he points out, the base of the Republican Party is increasingly made up of non-Christians and post-Christians, and gathers its energy from the dissident right—and from the growing ranks of “barstool conservatives,” who embrace coarse language and a locker room bro culture as much as they oppose left-wing hectoring and nanny-state conformity. This presents a challenge for conservative evangelicals who will never vote for Democrats, but who may find themselves in a party that pays lip service to the Religious Right while becoming more irreligious. ....</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/04/antifragile-faith"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Kevin DeYoung, "Antifragile Faith," <i>First Things</i>, April, 2024.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-51932828681204522492024-03-14T13:05:00.001-05:002024-03-14T13:19:19.446-05:00Movies<div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.invelos.com/dvdcollection.aspx/standfast" target="_blank"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.invelos.com/dvdcollection.aspx/standfast" target="_blank"></a></div><a href="http://www.invelos.com/dvdcollection.aspx/standfast" target="_blank">I own a lot of movies</a>. I have always loved movies and once it became affordable, I started buying them, first as videotapes, and then DVDs. Even though I can now stream films online I prefer the physical media because it can't be messed with by corporations "updating" them and because they are always available to me. I have most of the films I really want and consequently, when I do buy, it is usually an upgrade of one I particularly like and am certain to watch again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbXfEauXPze3cOsYuwhNZW_LRAR5frdPtxfHu6RCgb8df95AAiRt9L3jpgEZvUWQYgOx1HgoSeKHK6BmUgT5LkuVloq5DNfRsPLxDX5LzjOymks6wh_jCWQCdJOSOaPa7FfAfEh8Aq0hvHw6iP-DjNCftWWeNRcoNYCVwkFtajgDJufBNheTqoKg/s710/shootist.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbXfEauXPze3cOsYuwhNZW_LRAR5frdPtxfHu6RCgb8df95AAiRt9L3jpgEZvUWQYgOx1HgoSeKHK6BmUgT5LkuVloq5DNfRsPLxDX5LzjOymks6wh_jCWQCdJOSOaPa7FfAfEh8Aq0hvHw6iP-DjNCftWWeNRcoNYCVwkFtajgDJufBNheTqoKg/w281-h400/shootist.jpg" width="281" /></a>Today I received a "Limited Edition" Blu-ray of <i>The Shootist.</i> It is one of my favorite John Wayne movies. It was his last. His character is dying of cancer as was Wayne. It had a great cast in addition to Wayne: Lauren Bacall, a teenage Ron Howard, James Stewart, Richard Boone, Hugh O'Brien, Harry Morgan, John Carradine, and more. The director was Don Siegel.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">From the description on the case:</div><blockquote style="text-align: justify;">John Bernard Books is the stuff of legend, a renowned 'shootist' whose reputation looms large. But it's 1901, and like the old west, John is dying and a reputation like his draws trouble like an outhouse draws flies. As word spreads that the famous gunfighter is on his last legs, the vultures begin to gather; old enemies, the marshal, newspaper men, an undertaker, all eager to see him dead. Other men might die quietly in bed or take their own lives, but J.B. Books will choose his executioner and face down death with a pistol in each hand.
</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">My program for the evening is set.</div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-68476394551078632302024-03-13T16:30:00.001-05:002024-03-13T16:30:12.113-05:00A peculiar people<div style="text-align: justify;">Reading through a <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/9843.Eric_Hoffer" target="_blank">collection of quotations</a> from Eric Hoffer, I came across one that seems especially relevant today:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese--and no one says a word about refugees.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Among the many countries excused for driving out people are Arab countries after 1948, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world" target="_blank">driving out Jews</a> in numbers approximating the number of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight" target="_blank">Palestinians who fled</a> Israel.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-eric-hoffer-on-israel-1968-1406761244?KEYWORDS=jewish&AID=15734583&PID=6167344&SID=ltqaf4q4u301bby90023z&subid=Sovrn+Inc&cjevent=0533308ee17d11ee83bac96f0a82b82a&tier_1=affiliate&tier_2=moa&tier_3=Sovrn+Inc&tier_4=2470763&tier_5=https%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fnotable-quotable-eric-hoffer-on-israel-1968-1406761244%3FKEYWORDS%3Djewish"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Eric Hoffer, "Notable & Quotable: Eric Hoffer on Israel, 1968," <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, July 30, 2014.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-22308355833159200452024-03-13T15:07:00.003-05:002024-03-13T15:09:52.222-05:00A refutation<div style="text-align: justify;">Today Patrick Kurp refers to one of my favorite <a href="https://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com/2024/03/cloudy-cloudy-is-stuff-of-stones.html" target="_blank">Samuel Johnson stories</a>:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">The best-known and still unchallenged refutation of the Irish Anglican Bishop George Berkeley’s theory of subjective idealism — he called it “immaterialism” — is recounted by James Boswell on August 6, 1763:</div><blockquote style="text-align: justify;">After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, ‘I refute it thus.’</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Dr. Johnson’s demonstration of common sense is at once amusing, convincing, and somehow quintessentially English, the sort of act Jonathan Swift would have applauded... Johnson’s critics have dismissed his logic as fallacious and dubbed his approach <i>argumentum ad lapidem</i> — “argument to the stone” — so freshmen in Philosophy 101 and other sophisticates can feel vindicated. For the rest of us it’s QED. ....</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com/2024/03/cloudy-cloudy-is-stuff-of-stones.html"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Patrick Kurp, "Cloudy, Cloudy Is the Stuff of Stones," Anecdotal Evidence, March 13, 2024.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-72733976012703934132024-03-10T13:25:00.000-05:002024-03-10T13:25:26.097-05:00"Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice"<div style="text-align: justify;">Douglas Murray's choice this week in his series, <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/things-worth-remembering-cs-lewis" target="_blank">"Things Worth Remembering,"</a> is a sermon delivered by C.S. Lewis soon after the outbreak of World War II:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">When I was at Oxford, I met the actor <a href="https://www.one-eternal-day.com/2017/08/robert-hardy-1925-2017.html" target="_blank">Robert Hardy</a>, who told me that, as an undergraduate, he was fortunate enough to have had Tolkien as his tutor in Anglo-Saxon literature and C.S. Lewis as his tutor in Medieval English.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Both men became most famous for creating their own fantasy worlds—Tolkien with the Middle Earth of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, and Lewis with his <i>Chronicles of Narnia</i> series, which are often thought of as children’s books, but which are much more than that. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Lewis was not only a writer of scholarly books and popular fiction. He was also, perhaps, the foremost Christian apologist of the mid-twentieth century. His books and lectures—<i><a href="https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/fern-seed-and-elephants_cs-lewis/648833/?resultid=f6d0fbe1-b28c-4264-b565-24ec72f9c60b#edition=3032998&idiq=6021456" target="_blank">Fern-Seed and Elephants</a></i> is a very good place to start—did something that very few people can do today.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Most professors, not least of literature, have no interest in communicating with a wide audience. They play games for other people in their field. They also seem to take exceptionally obvious or untrue ideas and try to spin them out in a way that makes really rather banal observations seem infinitely more complex than they are.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Lewis had the opposite skill—a real skill—which was to distill a lifetime’s learning and make complex and deep ideas not just understandable but relatable. ....</div>
</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">The selection that Murray has chosen is from a sermon Lewis delivered in 1939, <a href="https://www.gw.edu/misc/radio/articles/CSLewis_LearningInWar-Time.pdf" target="_blank">“Learning in Wartime.” </a> Murray:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">It is a profoundly important message. Essentially, it is this: do not put off what you have to do in your life until the times are optimal. Because they never were optimal, and they never will be.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Human life, he notes, was always filled with distractions, alarms, panics, and tragedy. That is not what makes it remarkable. What makes life remarkable is that we get on with what we have to do in spite of these things. Alone among the creatures, we have the capability to understand the world around us and to have some sense of where it might be going. That could push us into despair and despondency. But the history of mankind is not that. It is that we did and do remarkable things, in spite of such knowledge. .... (<a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/things-worth-remembering-cs-lewis" target="_blank">more</a>)</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/things-worth-remembering-cs-lewis"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Douglas Murray, "Things Worth Remembering: C.S. Lewis on Keeping Calm in Chaos," The Free Press, March 10, 2024.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-25594416435344970782024-03-09T11:41:00.002-06:002024-03-09T11:45:48.899-06:00Growing old<div style="text-align: justify;">A <a href="https://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com/2024/03/he-does-not-make-nice-old-man.html" target="_blank">blog I read every day</a> sends me looking for an essay by Samuel Johnson in <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43656/43656-h/43656-h.htm" target="_blank"><i>The Rambler</i> (1750)</a>:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">.... Yet, however age may discourage us by its appearance from considering it in prospect, we shall all by degrees certainly be old; and therefore we ought to inquire what provision can be made against that time of distress? what happiness can be stored up against the winter of life? and how we may pass our latter years with serenity and cheerfulness?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If it has been found by the experience of mankind, that not even the best seasons of life are able to supply sufficient gratifications, without anticipating uncertain felicities, it cannot surely be supposed that old age, worn with labours, harassed with anxieties, and tortured with diseases, should have any gladness of its own, or feel any satisfaction from the contemplation of the present. All the comfort that can now be expected must be recalled from the past, or borrowed from the future; the past is very soon exhausted, all the events or actions which the memory can afford pleasure are quickly recollected; and the future lies beyond the grave, where it can be reached only by virtue and devotion.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religious hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulph of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper, and where he finds only new gradations of anguish, and precipices of horrour.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43656/43656-h/43656-h.htm" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Samuel Johnson, "The miseries and prejudice of old age," <i>The Rambler</i>, November 13, 1750.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-54550474693957331772024-03-07T12:39:00.007-06:002024-03-12T12:49:22.126-05:00Holocaust<div style="text-align: justify;">I watched <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/World-War-Ultimate-Restored-Collectors/dp/B003IN7YPU/ref=tmm_blu_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.L8e6NR6aMuoJRTz9gJcPefbTV3Ix0y67g2U7Xs7vUqqZ53dqhsbx89vA92NS2oOerh8PDQH3BBgirR4soqLYWjB1gWu3-SCZWRcxpcRgahKuhA6qIeeB74lF8Le6Ogu6VoErBtOVcOnW5XYlEg0u8F8MfrJvH6FRn5kBFDn8LoIpaw6udf_9u0In4r69zOFVJs9jwsOMRoBQIKYXX9rfWkb2Z5_P3xsjMrM-grFkETA.AAqxKe7DJhjKavsjmG-c0mmzzSjFYCC9u6GUee49Wn0&qid=1709834533&sr=1-1" target="_blank">The World at War</a></i> as it was being broadcast on PBS in the 1970s and later purchased the DVDs. I used several episodes in my US History classes when teaching the Second World War. The toughest one for students to watch—and for me to watch again and again—was titled "Genocide." It first screened fifty years ago and was one of the first films to document the Holocaust. <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/world-war-and-holocaust-50" target="_blank">From <i>History Today</i></a>:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgifyF859lKMQDbDe0UmtBBx36CK0Ogw673ciZOz-xyI4-xp-wXN0nZGIcWwZZ2f-xtg2syFls7QDBUsMjKvwzNrr9QDHNbgTYmYmYvhxawiJRtFb3rm9_VbB9itp6qUAzFGE8v2bevpi-qCnMJu9q_UP5LbAi2KkPxqm2SQziyWH72Cz9ZNMbQyQ/s644/war.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="644" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgifyF859lKMQDbDe0UmtBBx36CK0Ogw673ciZOz-xyI4-xp-wXN0nZGIcWwZZ2f-xtg2syFls7QDBUsMjKvwzNrr9QDHNbgTYmYmYvhxawiJRtFb3rm9_VbB9itp6qUAzFGE8v2bevpi-qCnMJu9q_UP5LbAi2KkPxqm2SQziyWH72Cz9ZNMbQyQ/s320/war.jpg" width="248" /></a></div>First broadcast on 27 March 1974, "Genocide" is credited with introducing the Holocaust (a term still not yet in common use) to the British public. It helped to inculcate an awareness of the Nazi "Final Solution" as a crime directed against a specific group. The episode was screened over four years before the US-produced television miniseries <i>Holocaust</i>, often cited as the televisual milestone promoting Holocaust awareness on both sides of the Atlantic.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Genocide" provides an account of the Nazi persecution of Jews and the Holocaust that is succinct and accessible, yet not oversimplified. This is even more remarkable given that it preceded much of the foundational scholarship on the subject. It included themes such as the influence of racial science and eugenics on Nazi ideology, the rise of the SS, the role of the Einsatzgruppen ("special task forces" – mobile killing squads) in perpetrating what became known as the "Holocaust by bullets" in the eastern occupied territories, and the "Aktion Reinhard" death camps – Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Genocide" was directed by British filmmaker Michael Darlow. <i>The World at War</i>’s producer, Jeremy Isaacs, had initially wanted to direct "Genocide" but, given that members of his family had been murdered in the Holocaust, decided against it, fearing that he would be too "emotionally involved". ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Genocide" succeeded in its aim to educate a British public still largely ignorant about the nature of the Holocaust. It would also be unfair to judge "Genocide" by the standards of present-day Holocaust scholarship and memorial culture. In some respects, it was a product of its time, but in many, it was far ahead. The episode’s most significant achievement was to clearly explain who the Nazis targeted and why, and how this persecution developed from exclusion, to expulsion, to extermination. However, "Genocide" also inadvertently encouraged a degree of understanding, perhaps even sympathy, for those who perpetrated the Holocaust. These men were allowed to position themselves as mere "cogs" who had been placed in an impossible situation by a brutal, totalitarian regime; a regime in which the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" was conceived, masterminded, ordered, and approved of by a tiny coterie of the most senior Nazis.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">This episode of <i>The World at War</i> can be seen on YouTube but, as you can see, <a href="https://youtu.be/1nnlc-yTyMk?si=xv7_5lKfoDLtdpRq" target="_blank"><i>only</i> on YouTube</a> as it is age-restricted:</div><br />
<center><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1nnlc-yTyMk?si=P7vDDoeXLO6XQvKe" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></center><br /><a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/world-war-and-holocaust-50"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Joseph Cronin, "Holocaust at 50," History Today, March 3, 2024.</span></a>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-81567603738917286362024-03-07T09:38:00.000-06:002024-03-07T09:38:53.705-06:00You can run, but you can’t hide
<blockquote><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #cc0000;">ALMIGHTY God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love Thee, and worthily magnify Thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. <i>Amen</i>.
</span></blockquote></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2024/03/no-secrets-are-hid/" target="_blank">Philip Jenkins on that prayer</a>:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">In its present form, it goes back to the brilliant English scholar Alcuin, who worked with Charlemagne in the late eighth century to create a Christian civilization in Western Europe. Let’s say around 790. There is some doubt as to whether the prayer has older origins, perhaps back to Gregory the Great, around 600. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the 1540s, Anglican reformer Thomas Cranmer took this Collect – as he did so much else from the medieval service books – and incorporated it into the regular liturgy of Common Prayer....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Several things come to mind about this collect, but above all the sense of rigorous and absolutely honest self-examination. It comes close to creating the mood of final judgment: whatever fronts or false faces you put up, God sees behind them. Or if you like melodrama, you can run, but you can’t hide. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is a near-perfect prayer for any and all Christian denominations. That is partly because it is so rooted in the Biblical tradition, and specifically the Psalms. See Psalm 139:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>You have searched me, Lord,</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> and you know me.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>You know when I sit and when I rise;</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> you perceive my thoughts from afar…</i></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Psalm 51 has also left its echoes. ....</div>
</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Jenkins on how the prayer illustrates the usefulness of liturgy: </div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li style="text-align: justify;">Like the best parts of any liturgy, the Collect takes essential points about the Christian approach to life, and puts them in simple and memorable form.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">
It says these things better, more comprehensively, and more concisely than we could ever do ourselves.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">
By saying the words repeatedly, week by week, we learn and internalize them, and learn how to approach our own mental processes. ....</li><li style="text-align: justify;">
And as we say the words, we are aware of a tradition that takes us back well over a millennium, and perhaps far longer. We say them together with Thomas Cranmer and Alcuin.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">
We see and understand the chain of continuity, and place ourselves within that continuity.</li></ul></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2024/03/no-secrets-are-hid/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Philip Jenkins, "From You No Secrets Are Hid," Anxious Bench, March 5, 2024.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-68656105759651515222024-03-05T10:32:00.002-06:002024-03-05T10:32:55.619-06:00IVF<div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/02/the-truth-about-alabamas-ruling-on-ivf" target="_blank">If Ryan T. Anderson is right</a>, everyone has gone bonkers over the significance of the Alabama Supreme Court's decision regarding IVF:</div><blockquote style="text-align: justify;">The media didn’t just overreact to a judge’s mentioning God as the source of the sanctity of life. They falsely claimed IVF was about to be banned—and Republicans fell for the claim. In reality, the Alabama civil (not criminal) case was brought by the <i>parents</i> of IVF children, not opponents of IVF. The clinic keeping their embryonic children in cryopreservation had not provided adequate protection, so a patient managed to wander in and remove several embryos, causing their deaths. The parents sued to hold the clinic accountable for the wrongful death of their children. And the Alabama Supreme Court held that a statute protecting minors (including, as precedent held, embryos in the womb) contained no exception for embryos <i>outside</i> the womb. Far from attempting to ban IVF, the parents who brought this lawsuit were trying to protect frozen embryonic children, and rightly so.
</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/02/the-truth-about-alabamas-ruling-on-ivf"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ryan T. Anderson, "The Truth About Alabama's Ruling on IVF," <i>First Things</i>, February 28, 2024.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-84288470366314562192024-03-02T11:16:00.001-06:002024-03-02T11:26:14.684-06:00Hypochondria of the mind<div style="text-align: justify;">A few days ago, in <a href="https://www.one-eternal-day.com/2024/02/worry-less-ruminate-less.html" target="_blank">"Worry less. Ruminate less..."</a> I quoted someone to the effect that an obsession with emotions is debilitating. <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/person/theodore-dalrymple" target="_blank">Theodore Dalrymple</a> makes a related<a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/its-time-to-eliminate-the-concept-of-mental-health/" target="_blank"> case here</a>:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">What is mental health? The only definition I can think of is the absence of outright lunacy. Unfortunately, it has come to mean any deviance from a state of perfect equanimity and satisfaction. A long time ago, I noticed that the word ‘unhappy’ had disappeared from the everyday lexicon, in favour of the word ‘depressed’. For every person now who claims to be unhappy there are a thousand who say that they are depressed, and this is irrespective of the conditions that are making them so. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But the semantic change from unhappiness to depression, in so many cases absurd and even laughable, is not without its deleterious effects. If you are unhappy, you seek the causes and, if you have what used to be called inner resources, confront them. (Unfortunately, there are circumstances, truly tragic, in which this is not possible.) But if you claim to be depressed, you pass the responsibility over to professionals who are expected to do something to or for you that will remove the depression as a diseased appendix is removed. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of course, there are fashions in diagnosis. A generation ago it was multiple personality – <i>The Three Faces of Eve</i> kind of thing – and the DSM 5 suggested that the prevalence might be as high as 1.5 per cent of the adult population, that is to say one in every 66 people. Multiple personality has since become very rare.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">These days it is gender dysphoria that is fashionable, with child gender-identity referrals increasing from 210 per year in 2011 to 5,000 per year in 2021. Either there must be something new in the water supply, or we are dealing with a socio-psychological epidemic. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The ever-expanding gamut of psychiatric diagnosis encourages the belief that all departure from a desired state of mind is a medical condition susceptible to medical or some other technical solution. This results in a propensity to hypochondria of the mind, with people taking their mental temperatures, as it were, as hypochondriacs take their blood pressure. But it precludes honesty or genuine reflection and leads to the search for bogus cures of bogus diseases. A corollary is the neglect of those who genuinely require care, who drown in a sea of inflated need. ....</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/its-time-to-eliminate-the-concept-of-mental-health/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Theodore Dalrymple, "It’s time to eliminate the concept of ‘mental health’," <i>The Spectator</i>, March 2, 2024.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-67112306981580606972024-02-29T13:37:00.000-06:002024-02-29T13:37:06.054-06:00"Human defectives"<div style="text-align: justify;">His name is all over Madison. The University has chosen not to remove it from one of its more prominent buildings but, instead, install a plaque. From the <a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2024/02/29/university-of-wisconsin-madison-considers-adding-plaque-to-van-hise-hall/72760258007/" target="_blank"><i>Milwaukee Journal Sentinel</i> this morning</a>:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir1kGGA-ufZLEjLWLgzmxPsZaUmIeUdEsCu0eDYJLITDYDeOyPvDU1C-u97RRPMfDUCALm1JfYuX8M1-MPD78veVvdxtLZ5KiuT5PVV7H-43KKv2C4wp3aCUdUqRITsZjHjSvTmKcphFksQm720J_ey1dQrIJkVoxHRYBS_VxaovXSh7mM3_XDIw/s647/vanhise6.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="647" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir1kGGA-ufZLEjLWLgzmxPsZaUmIeUdEsCu0eDYJLITDYDeOyPvDU1C-u97RRPMfDUCALm1JfYuX8M1-MPD78veVvdxtLZ5KiuT5PVV7H-43KKv2C4wp3aCUdUqRITsZjHjSvTmKcphFksQm720J_ey1dQrIJkVoxHRYBS_VxaovXSh7mM3_XDIw/s320/vanhise6.jpg" width="198" /></a></div>[Charles] Van Hise received four degrees from UW-Madison, including the first Ph.D. degree granted by the university. He is the university's longest serving leader, serving as president from 1903 until his death in 1918. During his tenure, UW-Madison established a graduate division, founded a medical school and increased its faculty from 200 to 750 professors. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">[Van Hise's] interest in [eugenics] came from reading Charles Darwin's book, <i>On the Origin of Species</i>. Letters between Van Hise and his wife show he was curious about how to apply the ideas of animal evolution and natural selection to the human race, according to Luccini Butcher.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Van Hise lectured on eugenics, gave public speeches and talked to legislators. In one of his speeches, he said “[h]uman defectives should no longer be allowed to propagate the race" and sterilization "might be the proper method."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In another speech, Van Hise said “[w]e know enough about the breeding of animals so that if that knowledge were applied to man, the feeble minded would disappear in a generation, and the insane and criminal class be reduced to a small fraction of their present numbers.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Van Hise wasn't the only academic espousing eugenics during this time. Edward Ross, a UW-Madison sociologist, also advanced the idea.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">UW-Madison in 1910 established the country's first department of experimental breeding, which was initially led by Leon Cole, another eugenicist. The department is today called the genetics department.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Academics gave the eugenics movement legitimacy and helped drive the Wisconsin sterilization law passed in 1913. The law forced sterilization for "undesirables" at the discretion of medical professionals. The state conducted nearly 2,000 sterilizations, the 11th highest in the country.<br /><br />
Wisconsin repealed its sterilization law in 1978. ....<br /><br />
Eugenics was not widely supported when the law was in place, Luccini Butcher said. Many people saw it as an overstepping by the state. The Catholic Church, in particular, opposed forced sterilization. .... (<a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2024/02/29/university-of-wisconsin-madison-considers-adding-plaque-to-van-hise-hall/72760258007/" target="_blank">more</a>)</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2024/02/29/university-of-wisconsin-madison-considers-adding-plaque-to-van-hise-hall/72760258007/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Kelly Meyerhofer, "A UW-Madison building’s namesake supported eugenics. Campus reckons with legacy of Charles Van Hise," <i>Milwaukee Journal Sentinel</i>, February 29, 2024.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-49407580131104415452024-02-27T12:43:00.000-06:002024-02-27T12:43:34.110-06:00"Worry less. Ruminate less..."<div style="text-align: justify;">Introducing an excerpt from Abigail Shrier's new book, <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/how-bad-therapy-hijacked-american-schools" target="_blank">Bari Weiss writes</a>:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">American kids are the freest, most privileged kids in all of history. They are also the saddest, most anxious, depressed, and medicated generation on record. Nearly a third of teen girls say they have seriously considered suicide. For boys, that number is an also alarming 14 percent.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What’s even stranger is that all of these worsening mental health outcomes for kids have coincided with a generation of parents hyper-fixated on the mental health and well-being of their children.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What’s going on?...</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/how-bad-therapy-hijacked-american-schools" target="_blank">From <i>Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up</i></a>:</div><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnQ6C9F_y_Ml1-YrVrQLtiak5J6PCvQzQPnlvfd2Cib_h0fBERaEDxkys-vVfnb5nsDyZztUmh5DkeIn-ulnogEeUNE5cSDz-AuV4pshKAOIG_is_nMEYr_fSrJle-_Qu_O-KF5Wmnh-U5LyPcxD1W9w3WwOKeZSsqyHLXcE0Qcq1Q66HjBOaKdg/s604/bad%20therapy.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" data-original-height="604" data-original-width="400" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnQ6C9F_y_Ml1-YrVrQLtiak5J6PCvQzQPnlvfd2Cib_h0fBERaEDxkys-vVfnb5nsDyZztUmh5DkeIn-ulnogEeUNE5cSDz-AuV4pshKAOIG_is_nMEYr_fSrJle-_Qu_O-KF5Wmnh-U5LyPcxD1W9w3WwOKeZSsqyHLXcE0Qcq1Q66HjBOaKdg/w265-h400/bad%20therapy.jpg" width="265" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Most American kids today are not in therapy. But the vast majority are in school, where therapists and non-therapists diagnose kids liberally, and offer in-school counseling and mental health and wellness instruction. By 2022, 96 percent of public schools offered mental health services to students. Many of these interventions constitute what I call “bad therapy”: they target the healthy, inadvertently exacerbating kids’ worry, sadness, and feelings of incapacity. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">When I first heard the term <i>social-emotional learning</i>, I assumed a hokey but necessary call for kids to get a grip. Or maybe it was the new name for what they used to call <i>character education</i>: treat people kindly, disagree respectfully, don’t be a jackass. Proponents insist it arrives at those things, albeit through the somewhat circuitous route of mental health. .... Through a series of prompts and exercises, SEL pushes kids toward a series of personal reflections, aimed at teaching them “self-awareness,” “social awareness,” “relationship skills,” “self-management,” and “responsible decision-making.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Forget the Pledge of Allegiance. Today’s teachers are more likely to inaugurate the school day with an “emotions check-in.” ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I asked Leif Kennair, a world-renowned expert in the treatment of anxiety, and Michael Linden, a professor of psychiatry at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, what they thought of the practice. Both said this unceasing attention to feelings was likely to make kids more dysregulated.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If we want to help kids with emotional regulation, what should we communicate instead?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I’d say: worry less. Ruminate less,” Kennair told me. “Try to verbalize everything you feel less. Try to self-monitor and be mindful of everything you do—less.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There’s another problem posed by emotions check-ins: they tend to induce a state orientation at school, potentially sabotaging kids’ abilities to complete the tasks in front of them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Many psychological studies back this up. An individual is more likely to meet a challenge if she focuses on the task ahead, rather than her own emotional state. If she’s thinking about herself, she’s less likely to meet any challenge.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“If you want to, let’s say, climb a mountain, if you start asking yourself after two steps, ‘How do I feel?’ you’ll stay at the bottom,” Dr. Linden said. .... (<a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/how-bad-therapy-hijacked-american-schools" target="_blank">more</a>)</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/how-bad-therapy-hijacked-american-schools"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Abigail Shrier, "How Bad Therapy Hijacked Our Nation’s Schools," excerpted from her book, <i>Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up</i>, in The Free Press, February 27, 2024.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-22465587256659837472024-02-26T14:31:00.003-06:002024-02-26T14:33:36.972-06:00Breaking the rules<div style="text-align: justify;">This is about <a href="https://crimereads.com/90-years-of-orient-express/" target="_blank">three of Agatha Christie's best</a>, in each of which she broke <a href="https://the-line-up.com/the-detection-club-rules" target="_blank">the rules</a>. There are spoilers.</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVMP7jsOC0Mc_H0uc7P7ZP0Oi0MtJUaglHTJy_jUAufAIbBwr6o41IdrKpPvBmdtmHuTOQf-wErdw9MAJhAd6Lw0OyB7NVT43OVEoLQLtGIWp34wwunn8vNbUrK4xLoZ0SxMeOpEc255AUmxVax4KDnpfJ0tFPptgsLLi3QR4Lu2tSWTiMCaKuQQ/s609/orient%20express.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="609" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVMP7jsOC0Mc_H0uc7P7ZP0Oi0MtJUaglHTJy_jUAufAIbBwr6o41IdrKpPvBmdtmHuTOQf-wErdw9MAJhAd6Lw0OyB7NVT43OVEoLQLtGIWp34wwunn8vNbUrK4xLoZ0SxMeOpEc255AUmxVax4KDnpfJ0tFPptgsLLi3QR4Lu2tSWTiMCaKuQQ/s320/orient%20express.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>The most famous mystery novel of all time, <i>Murder on the Orient Express</i>, was published on New Year’s Day, 1934. In America, it was published as <i>Murder on the Calais Coach</i>, to avoid confusion with Graham Greene’s <i>Stamboul Train</i>, which had been published in the U.S. as <i>Orient Express</i>. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Christie had already upended the mystery genre eight years earlier with <i>The Murder of Roger Ackroyd</i>, in which the killer is revealed to be the one character who is typically not allowed to be the murderer. Now she was doing it again. The typical mystery is focused on one singular question: Which of these suspects is the murderer? Christie’s innovation in <i>Orient Express</i> was to contrive a solution — major spoiler alert! — in which <i>everyone</i> is the murderer.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To revolutionize a genre once is astonishing, but to do it <i>twice</i>? Now you’re just showing off. And Christie wasn’t done. In her best novel, 1939’s <i>And Then There Were None</i>, she came tantalizingly close to devising a mystery in which <i>no one</i> is the murderer. (I’m one of those cantankerous fans who pretend this book’s explanatory epilogue simply doesn’t exist.) ....</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://crimereads.com/90-years-of-orient-express/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Dann McDorman, "90 Years of Orient Express," CrimeReads, February 26, 2024.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-52754677458337874612024-02-25T11:51:00.000-06:002024-02-25T11:51:51.381-06:00Courage<div style="text-align: justify;">
According to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_virtues" target="_blank">Western tradition</a>: </div>
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<blockquote>
"...the seven Christian virtues or heavenly virtues refers to the union of two sets of virtues. The four cardinal virtues, from ancient Greek philosophy, are prudence, justice, temperance (or restraint), and courage (or fortitude). The three theological virtues, from the letters of St. Paul of Tarsus, are faith, hope, and charity (or love).</blockquote>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Peter Kreeft:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUd2xysXj-F7oB9ozNajEVu4prUXDaoXIOk3lk4vCm27Kwhwxo0KP2sVpSN7zGAawIg33-QEY3QbAFLM0LSOX7DtS2TlRXWJ2fePv5JHsNt7uI-JZHLvr3nlGe8o13QliJ7glARg/s1600/strong+and+courageous.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUd2xysXj-F7oB9ozNajEVu4prUXDaoXIOk3lk4vCm27Kwhwxo0KP2sVpSN7zGAawIg33-QEY3QbAFLM0LSOX7DtS2TlRXWJ2fePv5JHsNt7uI-JZHLvr3nlGe8o13QliJ7glARg/s1600/strong+and+courageous.jpg" width="317" /></a></div>
The four cardinal virtues – justice, wisdom (prudence), courage (fortitude), and moderation (self-control, temperance) – come not just from Plato or Greek philosophy. You will find them in Scripture. They are knowable by human nature, which God designed, not Plato. Plato first formulated them, but he did for virtue only what Newton did for motion: he discovered and tabulated its own inherent foundational laws.<br />
<br />
These four are called "cardinal" virtues from the Latin word for "hinge." All other virtues hinge on these four. That includes lesser Virtues, which are corollaries of these, and also greater virtues (the three "theological virtues"), which are the flower of these. </blockquote>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Courage may not be the greatest of virtues but it is the necessary one:</div>
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<blockquote>
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality.<br />
— C.S. Lewis<br />
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Courage is the greatest of all the virtues. Because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.<br />
— Samuel Johnson<br />
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Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.<br />
— Winston Churchill</blockquote>
</div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-10045837769408776312024-02-24T14:35:00.002-06:002024-03-14T11:57:36.504-05:00Hell<div style="text-align: justify;">I enjoy browsing through books of quotations, collections from many sources like H.L. Mencken's <i>A New Dictionary of Quotations </i>(it was new once), but I also have books of quotations from individual authors who have proven to be eminently quotable, for instance, Samuel Johnson, Chesterton, and C.S. Lewis. One of my favorite quotable authors is Dorothy L. Sayers, who never minces words, especially regarding Christian doctrine. Today I was looking through a book of Sayers' quotations, <i>A Matter of Eternity</i>, published by Eerdmans in 1973, and came across this:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">...there seems to be a kind of conspiracy, especially among middle-aged writers of vaguely liberal tendency, to forget, or to conceal, where the doctrine of Hell comes from. One finds frequent references to "the cruel and abominable mediaeval doctrine of hell", or "the childish and grotesque mediaeval imagery of physical fire and worms"....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But the case is quite otherwise; let us face the facts. The doctrine of Hell is not "mediaeval": it is Christ's. It is not a device of "mediaeval priestcraft" for frightening people into giving money to the Church: It is Christ's deliberate judgment on sin. The imagery of the undying worm and the unquenchable fire derives, not from "mediaeval superstition", but originally from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was Christ who emphatically used it. If we are Christians, very well; we dare not <i>not</i> take the doctrine of Hell seriously, for we have it from Him whom we acknowledge as God and Truth incarnate. If we say that Christ was a great and good man, and that, ignoring His divine claims, we should yet stick to His teaching very well; <i>that</i> is what Christ taught. It confronts us in the oldest and least "edited" of the Gospels: it is explicit in many of the most familiar parables and implicit in many more: it bulks far larger in the teaching than one realises, until one reads the Evangelists through instead of merely picking out the most comfortable texts: one cannot get rid of it without tearing the New Testament to tatters. We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Originally from <i>Introductory Papers on Dante</i>, 1953.</div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-39853438705111405082024-02-23T14:27:00.002-06:002024-02-23T14:50:31.884-06:00Tolkien has endured<div style="text-align: justify;">From <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2024/04/the-enduring-appeal-of-j-r-r-tolkien/" target="_blank">a review</a> of <i>Tolkien's Faith</i>:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN8x-79TnPmwa-oljdl9LbW76ghNwpg4baasbOYVR9t6d-bZyl3E-Mh3gFE35KznFxhAKBa0mq-LsehaVD4RfcIyTv6GJHX2BGbDnTC63YGRGemryyx7-ebzlmV7isIKnklsidAlFHGi0cAE8iz5XIAFfJZYLUs8LNzGFNK8zpVWDHzwHffRuWhg/s600/tolkiens%20faith.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="400" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN8x-79TnPmwa-oljdl9LbW76ghNwpg4baasbOYVR9t6d-bZyl3E-Mh3gFE35KznFxhAKBa0mq-LsehaVD4RfcIyTv6GJHX2BGbDnTC63YGRGemryyx7-ebzlmV7isIKnklsidAlFHGi0cAE8iz5XIAFfJZYLUs8LNzGFNK8zpVWDHzwHffRuWhg/w266-h400/tolkiens%20faith.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>The year 2023 marked 50 years since the death of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, and 2024 will mark 70 years since the publication of the first volume of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, which holds the title of the best-selling novel ever written. Fantasy and science-fiction authors mostly come and go, but Tolkien has endured. Why is this so? What is different about him?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For answers, we would do well to look at the recent work of Holly Ordway, whose 2023 biography <i>Tolkien’s Faith</i> constitutes a significant breakthrough in Tolkien scholarship. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fantasy novels will typically feature a muscle-bound alpha with a bikini-clad babe on the cover. At the very least they will exalt the smart, or the fast, or the lucky. Tolkien’s hobbits aren’t like that at all: He celebrates small, decent folk. Frodo, the Ringbearer himself, doesn’t even really get to be extraordinary: At the end, he succumbs to temptation and fails in his quest, which is saved only by the mercy he has shown to Gollum, a creature even more miserable and lowly than himself. In other words, his premise is based on the Christian values of humility and mercy. As Tolkien himself wrote, “<i>The Lord of the Rings</i> is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Tolkien was not ignoring the modern world by writing of a world of handicraft, virtue, nature, friendship, and, ultimately, religion. He was saying that <i>these represented the answers to our problems</i>, the enduring and true answers. <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> is just as much about modern war, totalitarianism, global surveillance, and the dangers of technology — our “smartphones” grow daily more similar to the Ring in their power over us — as it is about the medieval world.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Modern thinkers such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali have recently made the case that without Christianity there will be no resistance to the forces of disintegration operating in our culture today. ....</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2024/04/the-enduring-appeal-of-j-r-r-tolkien/" target="_blank">John Byron Kuhner, "The Enduring Appeal of J.R.R. Tolkien," <i>National Review</i>, April, 2024, pp. 62-63.</a></span></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-28113242340864219032024-02-22T12:01:00.000-06:002024-02-22T12:01:02.089-06:00Doing the right thing<div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2024/february-web-only/alexei-navalny-russell-moore-putin-russia-moral-courage.html" target="_blank">Russell Moore</a>:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Russian president Vladimir Putin murdered another Christian this week. It was just another day in Putin’s supposed project of protecting “the Christian West” from godlessness. After all, they tell me, one can’t create a Christian nationalist empire without <a href="https://twitter.com/mmfa/status/1758481296177733756" target="_blank">killing some people</a>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Before the world forgets the corpse of Alexei Navalny in the subzero environs of an Arctic penal colony, we ought to look at him—especially those of us who follow Jesus Christ—to see what moral courage actually is.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Navalny was perhaps the most-recognized anti-Putin dissident in the world, and he is now one of many Putin enemies to end up “suddenly dead.” He survived poisoning in 2020, recuperated in Europe, and ultimately went back to his homeland despite knowing what he would face. Speaking of his dissent and his willingness to bear its consequences, Navalny repeatedly referenced his profession of Christian faith. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“The fact is that I am a Christian, which usually sets me up as an example for constant ridicule in the Anti-Corruption Foundation, because mostly our people are atheists, and I was once quite a militant atheist myself,” Navalny said (as rendered by Google Translate). “But now I am a believer, and that helps me a lot in my activities because everything becomes much, much easier.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“There are fewer dilemmas in my life, because there is a book in which, in general, it is more or less clearly written what action to take in every situation,” he explained. “It’s not always easy to follow this book, of course, but I am actually trying.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Specifically, Navalny said, he was motivated by the words of Jesus: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” (Matt. 5:6, NASB).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I’ve always thought that this particular commandment is more or less an instruction to activity,” Navalny said. “And so, while certainly not really enjoying the place where I am, I have no regrets about coming back or about what I’m doing. It’s fine, because I did the right thing.” .... (<a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2024/february-web-only/alexei-navalny-russell-moore-putin-russia-moral-courage.html" target="_blank">more</a>)</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2024/february-web-only/alexei-navalny-russell-moore-putin-russia-moral-courage.html"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Russell Moore, "What a Murdered Russian Dissident Can Teach Us About Moral Courage," <i>Christianity Today</i>, February 21, 2024.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-83367215847414420512024-02-19T15:55:00.002-06:002024-02-19T15:55:37.313-06:00"How rich God is in mercy..."<div style="text-align: justify;">In 1944 Sheed & Ward, a Catholic house, published <i>The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ</i>, translated by <a href="https://www.christianity.com/wiki/people/things-you-need-to-know-about-ronald-a-knox.html" target="_blank">Ronald Knox</a>. Knox was a very interesting person. He was Catholic chaplain at the University of Oxford in the 1920s and '30s. He was a classical scholar, broadcaster, apologist, and author of several mysteries, a founding member of the <a href="https://www.one-eternal-day.com/2020/02/the-detection-club.html" target="_blank">Detection Club</a>. C.S. Lewis called him "the wittiest man in Europe." I recently got a copy of his New Testament translation. This is from his version of the second chapter of Ephesians:</div><blockquote style="text-align: justify;">HE found you dead men; such were your transgressions, such were the sinful ways you lived in. That was when you followed the fashion of this world, when you owned a prince whose domain is in the lower air, that spirit whose influence is still at work among the unbelievers. We too, all of us, were once of their company; our life was bounded by natural appetites, and we did what corrupt nature or our own calculation would have us do, with God's displeasure for our birthright, like other men. How rich God is in mercy, with what an excess of love he loved us! Our sins had made dead men of us, and he, in giving life to Christ, gave life to us too; it is his grace that has saved you; raised us up too, enthroned us too above the heavens, in Christ Jesus. He would have all future ages see, in that clemency which he shewed us in Christ Jesus, the surpassing richness of his grace. Yes, it was grace that saved you, with faith for its instrument; it did not come from yourselves, it was God's gift, not from any action of yours, or there would be room for pride. No, we are his design; God has created us in Christ Jesus, pledged to such good actions as he has prepared beforehand, to be the employment of our lives.
</blockquote>
Ronald Knox, <i>The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ</i>, Sheed & Ward, 1944.Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-71951659438774243912024-02-18T15:07:00.001-06:002024-02-18T15:08:58.995-06:00"An outer light, fair as the sun..."<div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/orthodoxy/5/" target="_blank">G.K. Chesterton, <i>Orthodoxy</i>, Chapter 5</a>:</div><blockquote style="text-align: justify;">Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Anyone who knows anybody knows how it would work; anyone who knows anyone from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. .... Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognised an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.</blockquote>
Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-66034093396425953012024-02-18T10:52:00.004-06:002024-02-18T10:59:07.296-06:00"The only guide to a man is his conscience"<div style="text-align: justify;">On Sundays, <a href="https://www.thefp.com/" target="_blank">The Free Press</a> publishes Douglas Murray's "Things Worth Remembering," essays about things he has memorized. For the past twelve months, he chose poems. For the next twelve, it will be speeches. His first entry is from a speech delivered by Winston Churchill, a eulogy for Neville Chamberlain delivered in the House of Commons. Chamberlain had advocated the appeasement of Hitler. Churchill had vigorously disagreed. Events had proven Churchill right. But Churchill's eulogy was nevertheless, Murray writes, a <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/winston-churchill-douglas-murray" target="_blank">"Gracious Farewell."</a> The portion Murray quotes:</div><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvXePFYBJidg6IlHz_myUrtXDO5AANz4SYI42_pMuHKOO5yZ0Dfpr695lAkugiKBtzUaKUy8zTifAYdpcjiGC5LoIGDayAzY_m2GcxC2rhw8xROVK5bazOd-iurXmw6O_cw71zbH-pg_MjfEeOzNcrQ2o-2RtxrvzryCldYXoP-tUSukhgrnVDTA/s620/Winston-Churchill.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="400" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvXePFYBJidg6IlHz_myUrtXDO5AANz4SYI42_pMuHKOO5yZ0Dfpr695lAkugiKBtzUaKUy8zTifAYdpcjiGC5LoIGDayAzY_m2GcxC2rhw8xROVK5bazOd-iurXmw6O_cw71zbH-pg_MjfEeOzNcrQ2o-2RtxrvzryCldYXoP-tUSukhgrnVDTA/w258-h400/Winston-Churchill.jpg" width="258" /></a></div>It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise, life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events. In one phase men seem to have been right, in another they seem to have been wrong. Then again, a few years later, when the perspective of time has lengthened, all stands in a different setting. There is a new proportion. There is another scale of values. History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.
</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/winston-churchill-douglas-murray"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Douglas Murray, "Things Worth Remembering: Winston Churchill’s Gracious Farewell," The Free Press, February 18, 2024.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-13191628375403547182024-02-17T13:16:00.006-06:002024-02-25T11:51:22.129-06:00Seven Christian authors<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg86TONRsudmPxd2oXC2L2eazCq560_27qnDrpRS_Mj_HG0DBkj-Kz6PbzHeGFXIN-DBuL94u3L-JtWQULggwuJLwK6qpgl1hjCnnPRW7lFP90DDOslu4cHGxLwc45SuwHRLbXX4pjIYP8XDJYX83vqfKMpkDELRB2X3kkH1SIYtRGul-ydz2AhYA/s774/kilby.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="774" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg86TONRsudmPxd2oXC2L2eazCq560_27qnDrpRS_Mj_HG0DBkj-Kz6PbzHeGFXIN-DBuL94u3L-JtWQULggwuJLwK6qpgl1hjCnnPRW7lFP90DDOslu4cHGxLwc45SuwHRLbXX4pjIYP8XDJYX83vqfKMpkDELRB2X3kkH1SIYtRGul-ydz2AhYA/w259-h400/kilby.jpg" width="259" /></a></div><a href="https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/academic-centers/wadecenter/" target="_blank">The Wade Center</a> is on the campus of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Its purpose: "We emphasize the ongoing relevance of seven British Christian authors who provide a distinctive blend of intellect, imagination, and faith: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy L. Sayers, George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams." <br /><br />I visited there sometime in the 1970s with a friend and haven't been back since. One memory is having seen <a href="https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/academic-centers/wadecenter/plan-your-visit/museum/featured-museum-artifacts/" target="_blank">the wardrobe</a> that had been owned by Lewis and may have been the inspiration for <i>the</i> wardrobe that provided access to Narnia. There are also Tolkien's writing desk and a chair and desk that belonged to Lewis. But the main attractions of the Center are its <a href="https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/academic-centers/wadecenter/collections/" target="_blank">collections</a>. The materials are non-circulating but there is no charge and the Reading Room is open to the public. <br /><br />
One of the first books I read about (as opposed to by) C.S. Lewis was <i>The Christian World of C.S. Lewis</i> (Eerdmans, 1964) by <a href="https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/academic-centers/wadecenter/about/history/biographies/wade-directors/clyde-s-kilby/" target="_blank">Clyde Kilby</a>, the first curator of the Wade Center. Kilby had met Lewis and corresponded with him until Lewis died in 1963. He was responsible for beginning the collections. The Kilby book is available, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Christian-World-C-S-Lewis/dp/0802808719/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1708195155&sr=8-1" target="_blank">second hand, or on-demand</a>, at Amazon. I still have the copy I bought in 1968.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Wade Center <a href="https://journals.wheaton.edu/index.php/vii" target="_blank">publishes <i>VII</i></a>, a journal about its seven authors. Readers of this blog will know that four of them have been of particular interest to me: Chesterton, Lewis, Tolkien, and Sayers.</div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-74389688673541117002024-02-16T11:12:00.003-06:002024-02-16T11:12:48.517-06:00Learning to enjoy books<div style="text-align: justify;">Yesterday I came across a site called <a href="https://teaandinksociety.com/" target="_blank">Tea and Ink Society</a> and I've been exploring it. It introduces itself as "a bookish haven in the internet sea. Bookworms from around the world have been enjoying Tea and Ink Society since 2017." One of my discoveries there is the <a href="https://teaandinksociety.com/classic-read-aloud-chapter-books/" target="_blank">"50 Classic Chapter Books to Read Aloud with Your Kids</a>" page. <span style="text-align: left;">From the introduction to the book list:</span></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6er-zL7D4l6OxBNYyfapNkwHgJSlctls6mlBzJN7iPphyTY8kIG-qVk6T55c7rIadQn4bqeZFemZpuao9IRSBhck4S6Powf8ihefTdlVyx_b3GnNQnMDwcErJptnvrPRAssNpcdBSyFxg298CKBBkKEn4LKNystsiZINPIVGwYJyIp-8KnxTH7g/s601/Milne%20-%20Winnie-the-Pooh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="601" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6er-zL7D4l6OxBNYyfapNkwHgJSlctls6mlBzJN7iPphyTY8kIG-qVk6T55c7rIadQn4bqeZFemZpuao9IRSBhck4S6Powf8ihefTdlVyx_b3GnNQnMDwcErJptnvrPRAssNpcdBSyFxg298CKBBkKEn4LKNystsiZINPIVGwYJyIp-8KnxTH7g/s320/Milne%20-%20Winnie-the-Pooh.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>One of the best gifts you can give your children is a love of reading. And reading aloud classic, time-honored chapter books will build that foundation. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There are many fantastic children’s chapter books published each year, but I’m not an expert in those. I’ll recommend what I do know, and that’s classic children’s literature.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was blessed with a large family of six kids growing up, and we read aloud daily: a chapter book with Mom in the mornings, a different chapter book with Dad after supper. We read a variety, not just fiction or classics, but many of our favourites–our repeat read alouds–were classics. That’s the book list I’m giving you today. This is a sampling of some of the excellent classic chapter books we read as a family, with a few mixed in that I discovered or read on my own. ....</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li style="text-align: justify;">
Most of the authors on this list wrote multiple chapter books for children, so if you like a book you read by them see what else is in their bibliography. I just chose one book or series per author, because this list was getting rather extensive!</li><li style="text-align: justify;">
Since some of these classic chapter books are quite old (some almost 200 years old), you’ll find a lot of differences in the way we think today. I believe it’s healthy for children to put themselves not just in someone else’s place, but in someone else’s time, and differences in worldview make for excellent conversation.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">
Don’t be afraid of “big” or dated vocabulary. Children can comprehend a lot through context.
</li></ul></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://teaandinksociety.com/classic-read-aloud-chapter-books/" target="_blank">The list</a>. (it's pretty good)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://teaandinksociety.com/classic-read-aloud-chapter-books/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Ultimate List of Classic Chapter Books to Read Aloud with Your Kids (or to read on your own…)," Tea and Ink Society, March 16, 2020.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32788823.post-50001877663102413232024-02-15T13:35:00.000-06:002024-02-15T13:35:06.672-06:00"We would have hated each other in middle school"<div style="text-align: justify;">From Russell Moore on <a href="https://christianitytoday.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=543378fb36a83810ded2d725f2b6c883.15738&s=f7fdc271f313b2f488a307a9e377958b" target="_blank">"Us and Them and CCM"</a> (Contemporary Christian Music) responding to a new book:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5fUSkC7Jr90MN8RiGWX57nxTmXRb1pohxsZyHL2TJw2D4vyLVlEVDnjgE02A4PcURu_hWxjK8tQ7z_NmH9GN7J6gz4uj9Iu3dun1APtgPDrEnWsktkDMx5oAcfzodaCW5rSxCfRQsa3j_lElPVmkHvSo8jKtEqIsxDLr7Ka3iq70jiO1M05QDfA/s608/CCM.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="608" data-original-width="400" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5fUSkC7Jr90MN8RiGWX57nxTmXRb1pohxsZyHL2TJw2D4vyLVlEVDnjgE02A4PcURu_hWxjK8tQ7z_NmH9GN7J6gz4uj9Iu3dun1APtgPDrEnWsktkDMx5oAcfzodaCW5rSxCfRQsa3j_lElPVmkHvSo8jKtEqIsxDLr7Ka3iq70jiO1M05QDfA/w264-h400/CCM.jpg" width="264" /></a></div>A friend and I were talking once about the first concerts we ever attended. His was Van Halen; mine was Amy Grant.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Okay, second concert?" he asked.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Him: Mötley Crüe. Me: Petra.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After a minute or two of silence, he said, "You realize we would have hated each other in middle school, don’t you?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One of us was part of a sheltered subculture quickly passing away. The other listened to music that was a gateway drug to what some say led to riots and rebellion. Turns out, my musical taste, not his, was the dangerous one. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Should conservative Protestant teenagers and college students be rightly equipped for the fact that they will be out of step with their peers in modern American culture? Yes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The problem, though, is that Augustine’s <i>City of God</i> would not sell very well in a 20th- or 21st-century American Christian market. The nuanced truth that "You will be made to feel strange at times for following Christ, but you’re not under persecution (and, by the way, you’re not nearly strange <i>enough</i> in the ways Jesus actually called you to be)" isn’t nearly as exciting as, "This is the terminal generation. The elites are out to destroy you, and you are the only thing standing between Christian America and the New World Order."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"God wants what you want (for you to be happy and healthy and flush with cash)" sells. So does "You’re the real America and everybody else wants to kill you." Messages of actual cross-bearing and a cruciform life, however, do not sell well at all. ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To some degree, that’s to be expected. The music business is, after all, a <i>business</i>. But, as Payne points out, some reformers (including my now CT colleague Charlie Peacock) warned of ways the business model could be at cross purposes with the teaching power of music—and many artists (such as the late Rich Mullins and Michael Card) charted a different, more theologically grounded and biblically holistic course.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">When the consensus determines what’s acceptable as a Christian and what’s not, one cannot help but end up with what <i>The Guardian</i> identified as a "market-driven approach to truth," in which a group ends up "finding most hateful to God the sins that least tempt its members, while those sins that are most popular become redefined and even sanctified." ....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Contemporary Christian music, flawed as any human endeavor is, was a positive force in my life. The music of Amy Grant and Rich Mullins went with me through an adolescent spiritual crisis and are probably part of the reason I came out of it more Christian than I went in. I’m amazed by how much of my incipient theology—convictions I teach to this day—was taught to me by Petra lyrics. I have never, not once in 30 years of ministry, preached Romans 6 without hearing their "Dead Reckoning" song in my mind.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I learned how to read biblical narrative Christologically, how to understand parable and poetry and paradox, from the lyrics of Michael Card. I might be embarrassed to tell you how often, in the middle of dark times, what strengthens me are words like "Where there is faith / There is a voice calling, keep walking / You’re not alone in this world" or "I’ll be a witness in the silences when words are not enough" or "God is in control / We will choose to remember and never be shaken." None of that may be rock-and-roll, but I will die believing that God gave that to me. .... (<a href="https://christianitytoday.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=543378fb36a83810ded2d725f2b6c883.15738&s=f7fdc271f313b2f488a307a9e377958b" target="_blank">more</a>)</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://christianitytoday.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=543378fb36a83810ded2d725f2b6c883.15738&s=f7fdc271f313b2f488a307a9e377958b"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Russell Moore, "How Contemporary Christian Music Explains American Christianity," <i>Christianity Today</i>, February 15, 2024.</span></a></div>Standfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18181764095358321088noreply@blogger.com0