August 22nd, 2010
 The Hiding Place is the story of Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch woman best known as a participant in the Dutch underground during the second world war whose home had a hidden room to shelter those fleeing Hitler’s regime. Or so I’ve always had her classified in my mind. This book makes it clear that her life and impact include much more.
What probably struck me most was how full and rich the Ten Boom family’s Christian faith and practice were, long before the war. Like the biblical Rebekah, whose offer to water the camels of Isaac’s servant was simply an expression of a helpful character already formed, the Ten Boom family already had deeply ingrained habits of Bible study and prayer and service. They fed the poor outside their door. They took in orphans. They cared for one another in a way that attracted others to want to be with them. Corrie herself, in addition to caring for her parents and sisters and helping her father in his watch repair shop, ran a program for the mentally handicapped.
Habits of service and caring were so firmly in place that it seemed a natural next step to become involved in the underground. Even though it cost some family members their lives, and resulted in Corrie’s imprisonment in Ravensbruck concentration camp with her sister Betsie (who died there), it was never really a debate for this family whether to provide shelter and care for the oppressed.
Many of the characters are inspiring people. Caspar Ten Boom, Corrie’s father, is an unceasing flow of wisdom and simple love for others. I found Betsie to be so far out of my league spiritually that I couldn’t relate to her. In the darkest days of concentration camp cruelty, she continued to love her captors and long for them to respond to the power of Christ’s love to overpower evil. Corrie too is an amazing saint who survives the war and carries out Betsie’s vision to create a home for those damaged by its horrors to recover and find spiritual wholeness. But Corrie is a practical soul who somehow manages to be relatable even as she undergoes horrific experiences with grace. She underscores that even in the blackest of circumstances, the temptations and struggles of a Christian are the same: resisting selfishness, loving enemies, surrendering things impossible to understand or carry to Christ. And his love is powerful enough to reach even there.
This is the tale of a Christian who travels to the darkest heart of evil and returns with a faith strengthened and made more fertile and eloquent. It leaves me feeling totally inadequate and wraith-like in my faith, yet somehow manages to encourage and inspire — a sure mark of the voice of God, in my experience. Remarkably, this is not a book about “theodicy.” When in circumstances that would seem to make the question, “Where is God? How can he allow this?” most tempting, Corrie Ten Boom finds that her faith in fact gains an even stronger foothold. I’ll give Corrie the last word, describing here the power of God’s word, a copy of which she and Betsie manage to preserve through what seem at times miraculous means, in Ravensbruck:
Why others should suffer we were not shown. As for us, from morning until lights-out, whenever we were not in ranks for roll call, our Bible was the center of an ever-widening circle of help and hope. Like waifs clustered around a blazing fire, we gathered about it, holding our hearts to its warmth and light. The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the word of God…
Life in Ravensbruck took place on two separate levels, mutually impossible. One, the observable, external life, grew every day more horrible. The other, the life we lived with God, grew daily better, truth upon truth, glory upon glory.
Sometimes I would slip the Bible from its little sack with hands that shook, so mysterious had it become to me. It was new; it had just been written. I marveled sometimes that the ink was dry. I had believed the Bible always, but reading it now had nothing to do with belief. It was simply a description of the way things were — of hell and heaven, of how men act and how God acts.
August 20th, 2010
 I thought our beans were done for, but when I went out to pull them up yesterday, we discovered a good many beans still being produced. Though they’re larger than we usually would pick, I did cook some up for supper last night, and they were good. So we’ll let them be awhile longer.
I put bagfuls of tomatoes and cucumbers on the front porches of both our next door neighbors this morning. My father makes pickles out of his cucumbers, and my mother in law makes salsa out of her tomatoes. I only eat them fresh, though, and I’m getting a little tired of them. Probably I should think of something more creative to do with them.
This morning at breakfast we discussed Almanzo’s prize-winning pumpkin in Farmer Boy, and we pulled out the book and read his recipe for a milk-fed pumpkin. I investigated online and found this site, which elaborated on the instructions a bit more. I also found a few sources that say the idea of a milk-fed pumpkin is a myth — “hogwash,” one commenter remarked — but I tend to put more faith in Almanzo than in rude-speaking modern scientists. So we’re giving it a go.
 With fear and trembling, I nipped off all the blossoms, and all the little pumpkins but one, on our best vine. Our pumpkins were an afterthought this year, after the girls spied giant pumpkin seeds in the checkout at Lowe’s one day. We tossed them carelessly into the ground, and they’ve all come up. Only this plant produced actual pumpkins, though; the rest have only blooms. My husband told us we should help the bees by rubbing the blooms of different plants, but when we inspected them there were busy bees down inside almost every blossom this morning. So hopefully they’ll get the job done.
 I got some whole milk, diluted it a little, and added a tablespoon of sugar. Then I cut a slit in the underside of the vine, dug a little hole for the milk cup, put a string in it, and tucked the other end in the slit. We’ll see what comes of it.
Now there’s just one more fall project I’d like to do — if we could only find some monarch caterpillars! When I was a child, we’d find them every September on milkweed plants, put them in a jar, and watch the whole transformation process. We did it two years in succession with the girls, a few years back, and I’d like to do it again. But so far no luck with finding caterpillars.
I mentioned that it was a September thing when I was a child. Both years we did it here, it was in late July. (One year we had three caterpillars, and right around the time the chrysalises were due to “hatch,” my niece had a butterfly birthday party, and we gave her one. It opened the next day while she was having lunch. THAT couldn’t have worked out any better!) I’ve actually seen the caterpillar “turn into” the chrysalis, and it’s a much more writhey-scrunchy looking process than I ever would have expected. But I’ve yet to see the moment when one breaks out of the chrysalis.
Anyway, we’ve been looking since early July, and by now it’s probably too late. But on the chance that they may lay eggs twice in a season, I’m not giving up hope till early September. It’s such a neat thing to do, if we could just find one of these guys…
August 19th, 2010
 It’s Read Aloud Thursday at Hope is the Word, and I wanted to mention this little book by Charlotte Zolotow: If You Listen. Both daughters liked it. It’s about a little girl whose father is far away for some reason — perhaps in the armed services, perhaps in a profession that involves traveling — and she asks her mother, “How do you know if someone far away is loving you?… If I can’t see him, or hear him, or feel his hugs, how can I know he loves me when he isn’t here?”
The mother replies, “You have to stop when you’re lonely and listen.” The rest of the story elaborates on what she means, giving examples of times when you can hear things from far away, and you have to stop and listen to figure out what you’re hearing: a train, a foghorn, a dog barking in the hills. “If you listen hard you’ll feel someone far away sending love to you,” the mother concludes.
Several things I like — the delicacy with which Zolotow handles the question, the skill with which she handles intangibles, and the realism of the little girl, who agrees at the end to listen hard, but who still would prefer to have her father close.
The last time I read an admonition to “listen inside yourself” was in Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, when Lamott sought guidance from a priest friend on the subject of an unplanned pregnancy. Her friend advised her to pay attention to how she felt about getting an abortion, and, basically, do what feels right. This bothered me a lot. “Listen to yourself” seems like a singularly poor way to discover moral guidance.
But in this story, the emphasis throughout is listening to someone “far away sending love to you” — listening, really, to something without rather than within. The child has her memories of her father’s love, the ways she’s become convinced of it. But it’s her father, not her, who is the ultimate source.
One more related point: the pictures by Marc Simont in our library copy of the book complement this emphasis. Unfortunately, I had to scan the cover myself, because online the only cover image is of the apparent new edition of the book, which has this new-agey picture on the cover of a sad but serene child face with a glowing heart:
 Well-intentioned, I’m sure, but the implication is that the little girl is finding consolation in her own heart and her own imagination. The actual story makes a different point. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one, I think.
Now for a brief lurch into my personal reality. As a Christian, I find this story very suggestive. My heavenly father is, like this little girl’s father, not physically present. One of his great distinctives is that he sent his son into our physical reality at a given time and place in history, but that was a long time ago. Sometimes I feel the way she does: “If I can’t see him, or hear him, or feel his hugs, how can I know he loves me when he isn’t here?”
 Wearing horses, watching horses, dreaming of horses Yesterday, I got one of those hit-you-over-the-head blessings that make the point obvious. The girls and I went with my in-laws to the county fair where they live. There were all the usual high points: animals large and small, rides, funnel cake. The girls’ grandma had made them matching tee shirts with horses on them, so they were easy to keep in view. But the reason we chose yesterday was that it was kids’ day. The rides were half-price. And they were giving away 150 brand new bikes that had been donated by various individuals and businesses.
It took about two and a half hours of sitting or standing in the grand stand before everyone was signed up, and my father-in-law estimated that there were about 2,000 kids. Amazingly, Younger Daughter’s number was called! She and her grandpa headed down to claim her new red mountain bike while her grandma and I stayed in the bleachers with her big sister.
My older daughter got stormier and stormier looking with each number called. “Just keep listening,” I encouraged. “There’s hope till they’ve read the last number.” But in my heart, I thought, “Ohhh boy. This is either going to be a character-building exercise on being happy for someone else when they win and you don’t. Or it’s going to be an incredible miracle.” I looked down and could tell that my father-in-law was praying as he stood there with Younger Daughter and her bike, so I decided to do the same thing. Normally I wouldn’t pray to win a contest, but what can I say? It just seemed, suddenly, so important for my daughter.
Then, amazingly, they called her number.
 We came home with not one, but two, brand new bikes. What are the odds of that?
This is a shaft of abundance beaming down into a time of unrelenting material “carefulness” and wondering about the future. I can’t really put into words what an impact it has. It is, to all of us, an impossible-to-miss evidence of “Someone far away sending love to us.”
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. (James 1:17)
August 17th, 2010
 1.) Even dozen: We celebrated 12 years of marriage a few days ago. My in-laws took the kids for the weekend, and we were able to refresh and reconnect. It was really good. God has brought us a long way since I walked down the aisle, wishing everyone would stop staring. We feel more than ever that the verse on our wedding bulletin is true.
2.) Excellent: My youngest was more aware that she was going to be away from us for a few days this time. She left her picture facing the hamster cage so her hamster wouldn’t forget her. She cried a little, though bravely, when it was time to say goodbye. And the night before leaving, as I was drying her hair in the bathroom, we had this conversation:
- Her: I like this house. I wouldn’t want to live in any other house.
- Me: This is a special place. This is where you took your first steps. Ate your first Cheerios. Said your first words.
- Her: And this is where I have an excellent mommy!
It’s shameless to put such a thing on one’s blog, isn’t it? But I have to admit, it touched me. 
3.) History geek: I started reading The Hiding Place last night. I don’t think I ever have, though I remember seeing a movie version in junior high. My Older Daughter is reading The Singing Tree, a book about a family in World War I Hungary. I mentioned to her that I was reading a book about World War II, one that focused on some people that hid Jews in their house, and this conversation ensued:
- Her (excited): Is it The Hiding Place?
- Me (startled): Yes.
- Her: Oh! Wowww! That’s about Corrie Ten Boom!
- Me: That’s right. How did you know that?
- Her: It mentioned that book in my history book. Coooool! Is it… just for grownups?
- Me: Yeah.
- Her: Ohhhh. I wish I could read it.
I love having a history geek in the house! Susan Wise Bauer’s books have really hit the mark with our family.
4.) Perspective: I liked this excerpt in THP because it comes against the assumption that you should study your past to try to figure out why you’re the way you are:
Childhood scenes rushed back at me out of the night, strangely close and urgent. Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do.
5.) Harvest: We have a bumper crop of tomatoes this year, and we’ve been awash in cucumbers for several weeks. The lettuce and beans have come and gone and been thoroughly enjoyed. All in all it’s been a much better year for gardening… Last year was cold and wet and the blight struck.
August 16th, 2010
 Till We Have Faces is C.S. Lewis’ retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. As he explains in a note at the end, he alters the tale somewhat. The resulting story explores the themes of faith, jealousy, love, and the deceptiveness of words.
This is the third time I’ve read this novel, and I think I’m ready to give up on liking it. It is often praised as one of Lewis’ best, but even though it engages my mind, I can’t seem to enjoy it. Probably I am missing something. After all, that’s one of the themes of the novel — what we think we know vs. what we really know.
At one level, the story is about a conversion. Orual, queen of the fictional (and, unlike the Christian landscapes of Lewis’ other works, ostensibly pagan) land of Glome, is laying out her complaint against the gods — a complaint which, she thinks, centers on the “selfless” love she has poured out on her sister Psyche, and the pain and tragedy that result. It’s apparent pretty early on that Orual is at least partly deceived about her own motives, which are not so selfless after all. Jealousy, and above all possessiveness, characterize her treatment of all the characters in the story that she claims to love: Psyche, Bardia, and the Fox (her Greek tutor and a representative of rationalism). Even Orual has an inkling about the true character of her love. But it takes most of the story before she is able to acknowledge it and come to a kind of reconciliation with the gods.
At another level, part of what Lewis seems to be about in this tale is a critique of the feminine principle — the feminine as an orientation in the world, not just as a gender — of which Orual’s devouring love is one example. Ungit, the deity of Glome, is female — a version of the Greek goddess Aphrodite — and is insatiable in her thirst for sacrifice. She consumes everyone and everything, gorging herself on blood. When Orual studies the stone said to be Ungit in the temple, she describes it this way:
I have said she had no face; but that meant she had a thousand faces. For she was very uneven, lumpy and furrowed, so that, as when we gaze into a fire, you could always see some face or other. She was now more rugged than ever because of all the blood they had poured over her in the night. In the little clots and chains of it I made out a face; a fancy at the moment, but then, once you had seen it, not to be evaded. A face such as you might see in a loaf, swollen, brooding, infinitely female.
It’s the “infinitely female,” unchecked, that operates as a force of destruction in this novel. Orual as older sister, and Orual as queen, and Ungit as goddess, all become wrapped in one by the end, when Orual’s key insight is in recognizing that her style of love is really not love at all, but simply consumes the lives of those around her. There is no complementary masculine force to balance or check her.
There are aspects of the novel that I don’t understand. At the end, Orual has a series of mystical visions that help her to see how her fate and Psyche’s remain connected even after Orual’s treachery — only partly recognized as such — condemns Psyche to slavery to Ungit. That part was symbolic and I wasn’t sure of its meaning, except that it showed even a controlling love like Orual’s can be incorporated into a redemptive purpose.
I’m sure none of this is making any sense at all to anyone who hasn’t read the book. (If you’ve read it and have some thoughts to share, feel free!) However one theme I liked, and may even be able to discuss coherently, is the deceptiveness of words. The title, which resonates with the idea in I Corinthians 13 that “now we see through a glass darkly, then we shall see face to face,” comes from a passage near the end where Orual (in a vision — more on that in a minute) makes her complaint to the gods. She has been writing a book about it, but when she finally has a chance to express it she realizes the truth is different from what she thought:
When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech that has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?
I see two strands in this speech. One is that it takes a long time to gain a truthful glimpse of yourself. Another is that words, while they have a power to capture meaning, also can make it more elusive. What Orual is saying, and the reality she wants to express, are two different things. Lewis himself was by all accounts an excellent arguer, but at times he reflected that faith is less a matter of words than of deep inner orientation and action. “Having faces” in this novel means you see yourself as you really are, in a way that transcends your self-deceptions and your edifices of words.
I’m afraid this isn’t a very good book review at all. But if it says anything about Till We Have Faces, it’s that this story invites you to ponder and gives you lots to consider. Even though it’s not my favorite, it gives me lots to think about.
August 13th, 2010
 I learned so many interesting facts reading Alan Jacobs’s The Narnian that I wanted to share a few of them in a post. They might interest others just as much. I want to preserve them for future reference, too.
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First, the discussion of Lewis’s writing of the Narnia Chronicles. What was on his mind as he struck off into this new direction? Jacobs provides a few excerpts from Lewis’s letters that give us a window into his thinking. One is this passage, written in 1952:
I am not quite sure what made me, in a particular year of my life, feel that not only a fairy tale, but a fairy tale addressed to children, was exactly what I must write — or burst… Partly, I think, [the reason is] that this form permits, or compels you to leave out things I wanted to leave out. It compels you to throw all the force of a book into what is done and said. It checks what a kind, but discerning critic called ‘the expository demon’ in me.
I couldn’t help but think of another book that took up the question of what Lewis was about in the Chronicles, but that handled it more clumsily. The Land of Narnia, in which Brian Sibley attempts to introduce children to literary study of the Narnia Chronicles contains a chapter on “the hidden story” of the Chronicles. Such a title implies a picture of Lewis as intentionally disguising a “message” he wanted to put forth. But the passage above suggests just the opposite — that he was trying to avoid “exposition.” One further passage in his own words elaborates:
Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument; then collected information about child-psychology and decided what age-group I’d write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out “allegories” to embody them. This is pure moonshine. I couldn’t write in that way at all…
The seed that grew into the Narnia books was Lewis’s imaginative picture of a faun carrying a parcel through a snow-covered wood. It wasn’t a Sunday school lesson he had in mind. To suggest that he hid the spiritual theme there on purpose gives a false idea of the process of artistic creation — at least, of Lewis’s artistic creation, and I would guess many other authors’ too. It would also justify the feeling of betrayal someone like Laura Miller expresses in The Magician’s Book. I didn’t like the idea of “hidden stories” in The Land of Narnia because it suggests to children that books are really secret codes meant for the enlightened — which isn’t the way Lewis saw them at all. And it seems to put authors into the category of sneaky people — like the cook on the missions trip I took in high school who mixed leftover grits into all the other food. (Deeply traumatizing, I assure you.)
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Another question addressed in The Narnian concerns what happens to Susan in The Last Battle, where she is described as “no longer a friend of Narnia.” I’ve heard Lewis castigated for suggesting that she loses her salvation. Neil Gaiman calls it “the problem of Susan.” Philip Pullman has argued that her crime is that she’s gone through puberty, and her sexual maturation unfits her for Heaven. But Lewis himself, responding to a boy who wrote him in 1957 expressing concern for Susan, writes,
The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive at this world at the end, having turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end — in her own way.
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One other thing I want to mention. It’s always bothered me, the way Christians seem to let C.S. Lewis do our thinking for us. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it has seemed to me that he is seen as the one who’s taken care of all the hard questions, and our role is simply to recommend one of his books.
Apparently this bothered Lewis too. “People praise me as a ‘translator,’” he writes,
but what I want to found is a school of ‘translation.’
I am nearly forty-seven. Where are my successors? Anyone can learn to do it if they wish…. I feel I’m talking rather like a tutor — forgive me. But it is just a technique and I’m desperately anxious to see it widely learned.
It’s a bit of a call to arms, one that still resonates. It might seem like a contradiction to my comments on the Narnia stories, where I argued that Lewis wasn’t consciously trying to “translate” at all. But here, he’s talking about his apologetic writings, not his fiction.
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There’s lots more of interest in The Narnian, but this is a sampling — an appetizer for those who think they might want to read it at some point, too.
August 12th, 2010
 Alan Jacobs’s The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis has been recommended to me twice by commenters here. I’ve been working through it slowly and savoring its even-handed, discerning discussion of this much-loved writer. Jacobs tells the story of Lewis’s life with respect for its complexity and, for the most part, a willingness to acknowledge its mystery.
Over the course of the book Jacobs discusses a number of themes that run through Lewis’s thought and work: science and magic, joy, re-enchanting the world, cultural memory, suffering, and faith. He explores questions: why did Lewis turn to the writing of children’s stories? How did he see his role as a Christian writer, and how did his view of his own efforts at Christian apologetics change? How did his books reflect his main concerns, and how do those themes develop over time? I close the book even more aware than before of how Lewis’s life seems to repel all the expected stereotypes.
I was familiar with Lewis’s basic biography through books like Colin Duriez’s Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, Laura Miller’s The Magician’s Book, and The Life of C.S. Lewis. I learned much that was new to me in this book, and I appreciated the depth of insight and thoughtfulness Jacobs brought to bear on the subjects I already knew about, such as Lewis’s relationships with his father, Janie Moore, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Each of these relationships bore its share of suffering, and Jacobs wrote of them with compassion as well as a respect for the limits of what is actually known. I learned about any number of other friendships too, as well as Lewis’s astonishing correspondence. Ruth wrote recently about the art of writing letters, and I couldn’t help but reflect on what a treasure trove Lewis’s letters are — to his family, to his friends, even on occasion to his fans.
I knew that Lewis wrote faithfully to his fans, answering every letter because he believed that once a writer puts his thoughts out there for public consumption, he remains responsible for them. But I didn’t know that many of these letters were from women simply complaining about their lives. I didn’t know that not one, but two, women set themselves up as his fiancee. (He hadn’t met either of them.) In fact, the only correspondent he stopped answering was a woman who believed his books were all love letters to her, written in code.
Jacobs’s remarks about Lewis’s books are engaging. He discusses them according to theme, rather than according to book. I couldn’t help but remember the comment of a British man I met last year who, when Lewis’s name came up, dismissed him as “merely clever.” Surely the man who read every single 16th-century book in the Bodleian library, and then wrote a scholarly book about it that sent shock waves through academia, was more than merely “clever.” Lewis was more well-read and learned at 17 than most of us will ever be. I found it interesting that in the grief-stricken and physically exhausted period after Joy Davidman’s death, concurrently with A Grief Observed, Lewis’s last “polemic” book was a work of literary criticism defending diverse reading: An Experiment In Criticism, a book I need to read.
One book I see that I’m going to have to reread: Lewis’s later novel Till We Have Faces. I’ve read it twice, not liking it very much either time. I think it’s because it has such a different narrative voice than Lewis’s other books — it lacks the voice Lewis might have described as his “expository demon,” maybe — and so when I read it I missed Lewis. But reading Jacobs’s comments about the novel as a working out of Lewis’s ideas on the division between words/argument, and the real cry of the heart, intrigued me enough to want to read it again.
Jacobs addresses the accusation of misogyny sometimes levelled at Lewis, and for the first time I understood it (though I still don’t agree with it). He takes issue with other biographers at various points, most notably A.N. Wilson, as well as other critics, and I found myself trusting Jacobs’s perspective as he defined his views in relation to these others. The only section I didn’t buy was in his discussion of Lewis’s marriage to Joy Davidman, where he expresses skepticism about Lewis’s account of the progression his feelings. It’s clear that both of Lewis’s main adult relationships with women — Janie Moore and Joy Davidman — were unorthodox. It doesn’t seem fair to compare his feelings to what we might expect or consider to be common.
This biography does justice to its subject, informing us and plumbing the depths of a life that shows the transforming power of “mere Christianity” on intellect and heart. In fact, I enjoyed reading it so much that I want to read another Alan Jacobs book, A Theology of Reading.
August 11th, 2010
When I reviewed Charles Williams’s Descent Into Hell, I mentioned one of the themes of the story that intrigued me: substitution. Apparently, C.S. Lewis was moved very much by Williams’s ideas on this score as well, as I read today in Alan Jacobs’s The Narnian. I quote it here because Jacobs explains it so clearly:
I noted many pages back that I had yet to mention the most important thing Lewis learned from Charles Williams. One of Williams’s most passionately held ideas involved what he called “co-inherence”: that is, to put it more concisely and directly than Williams was likely to, the ability of Christians, through the unifying power of the Holy Spirit that Christ had sent to his disciples, to dwell fully with each other and in one another’s lives. What Williams desired was to explore the most radical implications of Jesus’s commands to “bear one another’s burdens” and “weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice.” The “way of exchange,” he often called it — “dying each other’s life, living each other’s death” — a kind of moral economy in which prayer and love are the currency rather than money… Williams believed that if a Christian sees another person suffering, it is that Christian’s duty to pray to take on that suffering him- or herself: to become, in an almost literally Christ-like act, the vicarious substitute for one’s neighbor. On these grounds Lewis began to pray for Joy’s sufferings to be transferred to him.
Soon thereafter, Joy’s bones began to heal, and Lewis’s began to weaken.
August 10th, 2010
Notice God’s unutterable waste of saints, according to the judgment of the world. God plants His saints in the most useless places. We say — God intends me here because I am so useful. Jesus never estimated His life along the line of the greatest use. God puts His saints where they will glorify Him, and we are no judges at all of where that is.
–Oswald Chambers
I’m a reluctant homeschooler. When my children were born, home education was nowhere on my radar. Not till spring of my older daughter’s year in public school kindergarten did it enter into my considerations at all. My husband had thought of it before that, but I, as a child of two retired public school teachers, had thought it was merely a weird idea, very limiting to children, and a little unhealthy.
So obviously my view has evolved. We’re homeschooling both daughters now. For the first two years, I second-guessed the decision on a weekly or monthly basis, but now, going into year four, I’m consistently sure that it’s the right thing for us to be doing.
But still, my view evolves. My view of my own role evolves. When we first began to consider the possibility of homeschooling, I thought that it would be a natural fit for me. I have a doctorate in English and a background in teaching, and this would be a way to share my love for learning and books with my daughters.
That is true enough. It is a way to share my love for learning and books with my daughters, and I see many positive fruits of that. So far, this enterprise is a success by any estimation: academics, social life, love for learning, faith and worldview.
All of this sounds like boasting. But there are some real challenges.
Yes, love for books and learning are a link to my previous experience as student and teacher. But still, much of that previous experience is — to use Oswald Chambers’ word — wasted. Irrelevant to the task at hand.
Yes, I was a teacher. But I taught college, not elementary school. I taught one subject, not all subjects. This teaching that I’m doing now is not in my “sweet spot.” (I have to do math again! Sheesh.)
Yes, I have a stronger relationship with my children than I would have if they were gone six hours a day. But it also puts the burden on me to see that they have opportunities to take part in a larger social world. This fall, for instance, it will mean participating in co-op after all, even though I have no idea how we’ll fit in all that we need to do in just four days a week at home. So much for the comfort zone.
It’s kind of a strange place to be. In a way, I’m in an area of strength. But in a more practical and pervasive way, I’m having to live out of my weakness — having to lay aside all I thought I knew about teaching, and much that I know in the subjects I’m comfortable with.
God has been working on me lately about leaving myself behind — abandoning myself and letting him worry about my needs, or choosing how he wants to incorporate me into his purposes — and offering myself to those he’s put around me. I am not here because I am “useful,” as Chambers says. Parenting and teaching young children are not things I feel are natural strengths. I jumped into home education thinking I’d be living out of my strength, but the tables are turned. I’m living out of my weakness. No doubt this was God’s plan all along.
August 9th, 2010
This week as I’ve been reading The Narnian, I’ve been thinking about joy. Lewis’ own biography was titled Surprised by Joy, and his life shows nothing if not God’s way of leading us along through the longings and inexplicable joys he plants in our hearts. What are yours? I’ve been realizing that one of mine is the thrill of being in a beautiful natural setting.
I thought of the time recently when we spent a day with my in-laws at their place. They are mountaintop-dwellers and gardeners and observers of birds.
Here are a few blurry photos of hummingbirds. I noticed that females can peacefully coexist on the feeder, but not males.
The one on the feeder is pointing his weapon at the other, who’s turning in midflight to flee — rightly suspecting that he’s about to be chased.
Anyway, the beauty and quietness of their home make something come alive in me. It’s nourishing to me to look around and feast my eyes, and the inner noise quiets down. Our own yard is very nice, but I would love it if one day we found ourselves in a more rural setting with a similarly reviving effect.
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Food for Thought: Coherence is not necessarily good, and one must question its cost. Better sometimes to remain confused. (Iris Murdoch)
Good words… Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.
(I Peter 1: 10-13)
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