Across the Page

Reflections on the Psalms

By Janet 19 September, 2009 Bible, Essays

I have to be honest: the book of Psalms has never been a favorite of mine. It’s been praised so often by others that I’m quite willing to accept that the fault is in me. There are a few individual chapters that I love. In general, though, where others find the Psalms give voice to deeply-felt feelings and prayers, I am much more affected by some of the rousing stories of the Old Testament, the prayers in the Epistles, and the parables of Jesus.

I’m not sure why this is. But reading C.S. Lewis’s Reflections on the Psalms laid a gentle hand on some things in the these poems that have bothered me, even though I’ve never really addressed them myself: the cursings, the self-righteousness, the rapturous love for the law, the way the writers think of death as simply the end. In this book Lewis works out his own thoughts about these and other matters over which he stumbled initially. I can’t say that Lewis has illuminated my hitherto unknown reasons for having only a polite interest in the Psalms, but he does soften the guilt I feel over it. If someone so erudite has struggled too, then it must be neither unpardonable nor insoluble.

My reading of these essays was uneven; I wasn’t equally interested in all of them. (I’m sure this will be a useful reference that I’ll return to in future seasons, though.) My favorite essay by far is #11, “On Scripture.” It bothers me sometimes to hear what sounds like Bible-olatry in Christians. The implication is that it’s the only revelation we have, all questions are answered there, and that’s that.

I like Lewis’s way of seeing the Bible. He acknowledges that it includes many literary forms, writers with different levels of awareness of inspiration, interference in its canonization and editing, an evolving (and flawed) human consciousness filtering it all. He acknowledges that the human personality through which the Bible comes to us is “an untidy and leaky vehicle,” rather than one that can give us “ultimate truth in systematic form — something we could have tabulated and memorised and relied on like the multiplication table.” Instead of what we might have thought would be best, we have what God apparently thinks is best:

The total result is not ‘the Word of God’ in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its overall message.

He goes on to make the point that it’s the very departures from our desired “perfect” vehicle that give the Bible a unique power. Because it’s not easy prey for our “systematising intellect,” it demands a response from the whole person.

I’d like to quote more, but that gives a taste. The rest of the essays are well worth reading. For those who criticize Lewis for approaching universalism, there’s ample ammunition here to accuse him again. At various points he expresses the hope that some of the ancients who anticipated Christ (Akhenaten, Plato) may be saved despite being outside Jewish or Christian tradition. I don’t read this as universalism, or in any way undermining the primacy of Christ claimed in the gospels. God is gracious, and I expect we will find surprises in Heaven like the vineyard workers in Jesus’s parable found. Overall in these essays there is a generosity, a sanity, and a willingness to face the uncertainties with both faith and reason that I found very nourishing.

The Wheel on the School

By Janet 17 September, 2009 Chapter Books

At last, we’ve finished The Wheel on the School.

The chapters are longer than we’ve typically tackled in a read-aloud: 20-25 pages or so. This means bedtimes have slid a bit later, and we’ve had just this one option (rather than this plus a picture book or two) each night for the whole of its fifteen chapters. It was well worth it.

I read this as a child, but I didn’t remember much beyond the basic storyline: it was about storks. Recently it was recommended in both For the Children’s Sake, and the activity guide that goes along with The Story of the World. I decided to give it a try.

As promised, it’s quite suspenseful. Lina, a little girl in the 6-student Shora school, reads an essay one day about a subject of interest to her: storks, and why storks no longer nest in Shora. It triggers an imaginative speculation that eventually draws the whole village into a plan to attract storks back to their rooftops.

This is a book that deals in big subjects: having a dream, and the courage to believe in it; cooperative enterprise; bridging age gaps; faith; nature; education; the sea. It gave us a glimpse of Dutch culture; every time we opened the book, I almost felt the salt spray and the chill of Shora. The character development is more leisurely and detailed than other single books we’ve tried as read-alouds, and the cast of characters encompasses all ages.

I loved hearing my daughters burst out laughing at the antics of Janus, the fisherman who’s lost both legs and begins to emerge from his shell of bitter isolation to become the children’s champion. I loved the way comparisons to people in this story have emerged in conversation more than once as we’ve been reading it. I loved the way the girls begged for another chapter each night, even after a fairly long session just to get through one chapter. I loved the story itself, which brought me (I admit it) to tears at times as I read. (”Here, I’ll take a turn, Mommy,” said my 8-year-old finally, reaching for the book.) And I loved the way that when we finished it, my 5-year-old said reflectively, “I was thinking last night: just one little story — one little story by that one little girl — turned into a whole plan.”

Wide Sargasso Sea

By Janet 16 September, 2009 Novels

I was making supper one night last week when I heard a review of this novel on NPR. I’m not sure how I could have missed Wide Sargasso Sea till now. Written by Jean Rhys, it tells the tale of Mr. Rochester’s first wife, the “madwoman in the attic,” in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. When I heard Sara Paretsky’s recommendation that “you must read this,” I complied immediately. I went to the computer and put the book on hold at the library before the radio segment was even finished. I share Paretsky’s feelings about Jane Eyre, as well as her reluctance about “vampire novels” in general (books that depend on other books for their life). Yet she recommended this one. I simply had to read it.

Apparently, Jean Rhys had written a few novels in the ’20’s and ’30’s that had not been well received. Written in the same style as Wide Sargasso Sea (which has been classed as postmodern), they tapped into a sensibility not yet familiar to a wide readership. This book, which incorporates her firsthand knowledge of the setting from her own upbringing in Dominica, appeared in 1966, when she was 70. The adulation came too late, she said. She died a few years later.

My impressions: sad. Terribly sad. Lyrical. Evocative. Expertly crafted.

Expertly crafted: Wide Sargasso Sea is written from two points of view. The first section is narrated by Antoinette Cosway (who becomes Bertha Rochester). It establishes her as a Creole heiress in post-colonial Jamaica, living on an estate in decay. The second section places us inside young, British Mr. Rochester, who has been somewhat deceptively drawn into a marriage arranged by his father and Antoinette’s step-brother Richard Mason (who makes an appearance in Jane Eyre). Antoinette’s entire inheritance is transferred to Rochester upon their marriage. He narrates the book’s mid-section about their honeymoon. The short third section returns us to Antoinette’s perspective, bringing the book to its conclusion in the confinement of Thornfield, Rochester’s estate in England. Rhys works powerfully within the limits of these perspectives to create intrigue and suspense.

Evocative and lyrical: I could see the vivid colors and smell the fecundity of the tropical setting, all set forth with startling economy. The narrative is like a taut string, never a wasted word, every phrase spare and compressed, dialect and racial tensions and landscapes both interior and exterior conveyed vividly. In some ways it’s like reading a long poem.

Sad: So sad. The Eden is an Eden in decay. The beauty is preyed upon. The passion destroys. I guess the standard way of seeing this novel is to take a feminist reading and see Bertha as destroyed by a patriarchal society, but I have to say that I thought both parties in this marriage were victims. In this sense it’s consistent with the explanation Rochester gives Jane in Bronte’s novel. It’s beautiful in its way, rich and powerful. But I’m not sure I would say I enjoyed reading it. “Call me perverse, but I’ve always identified with heroines who suffer before they succeed,” writes Paretsky. Me too. The trouble is, this heroine never succeeds.

A story of courage

By Janet 15 September, 2009 Nonfiction

What would you do if your toddler stopped talking expressively, and began echoing your words? Or if he spent hours arranging his toys into intricate patterns only to stare at them? Or if she was unstrung by guests in the house? Or, finally, if the only diagnosis offered after a battery of tests was something as vague as “Pervasive Developmental Disorder not otherwise specified”?

A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage describes how Beth Kephart and her husband respond. It tells the tale of how the bright, remarkable boy encountered in this book’s sequel, Seeing Past Z: Nurturing the Imagination in a Fast-Forward World, overcomes a disability that bears some similarity to autism. I couldn’t put it down. It inspired me, moved me, motivated me. Love heals. I never tire of stories about how.

In A Slant of Sun, the professional counsel offered is helpful to an extent. It gives a vocabulary, a starting point for treatment, and some useful priorities and techniques. But providing Jeremy with the inner freedom and safety he needs, and finding the environments most conducive to his growth, take his parents down an uncharted, often lonely course. The strands that hold them together are their love for him, their willingness to learn to trust their intuition, and their faith in the amazing giftedness apparent in their son even when Jeremy is at his most troubled.

Shortly after receiving the diagnosis, Kephart spends days (and sleepless nights) reading everything she can find on the subject. She finds nothing helpful in the way of professional consensus, nothing hopeful or even certain about the prognosis for someone with PDD. Finally, in the pre-dawn solitude of a silent house, she reaches a decision:

…I pound the books, the Xeroxed pages with my fist. I pledge to the boy and to his father, both sleeping above me, that I will not, no matter what, confuse my child with a label. I will not be taken down by false constructions, empty forecasts. I will not lose sight of the gift that my son is, will not let go of my expectation — my surety — that Jeremy will find his way into this world.

It’s a key moment that sets the parameters of the story. And it illustrates how part of what makes this tale so powerful is its universality. It speaks as a meaningful personal story about a unique case, but at the same time it articulates the struggles of all parents and all children, with or without an official “disability.”

For instance, don’t all of us worry about things we observe in our children? As one school principal quoted in this book says, “Every kid has his left or right of center.” But how will we choose to see them? As problems — or gifts? Will we see their sometimes worrisome preoccupations as symptoms of something wrong — or part of their promise, their amazing and unique offering to the world? This is a story of parents who don’t lose sight of their son, who respect the integrity of who he is and leave him intact. As a result he develops the courage to “find his way into this world.”

I also appreciated the honesty of A Slant of Sun, especially in its depiction of the sometimes crippling self-doubt that was part of parenting this child. Most of us have wondered at one time or another, how much is it our fault when our children struggle? We’re flawed people; there’s no other kind. Will we trust ourselves — or take refuge in the experts? The question can arise in so many contexts: how to discipline, to educate, to “socialize” our children. So much in our conventional understanding, and our public institutions, is geared toward creating sameness, sanding off the rough edges that make individuals stand out. But wisdom aims to encourage wholeness. Sometimes this means striking out in a different direction. It takes bravery to resist the expert advice, a bravery that feels pretty audacious in the face of our glaring imperfections.

The path the family in this story chooses requires courage. But there is no arrogant claim in these pages that parents always know what their children need. There is a hard-won faith, not in parental clairvoyance, but in love. Love assures that even in the toughest seasons, a child is not alone. Love can cover a multitude of sins, missed opportunities, tried and failed attempts. This is what gets me out of bed in the morning. I’m thankful for this hopeful book that bears witness to it.

Routine Exercise vs. Real Desire

By Janet 9 September, 2009 Bible

My Bible-reading has been progressing slowly through the Old Testament. It’s taken me about two years, but I’m at last up to Haggai, so it’s safe to say the end is in sight.

Lately I’ve been reading in Streams in the Desert too — to sort of prime the pump before I open my Bible in the morning. I was struck by today’s juxtaposition between a Streams meditation on the shallow soil of Jesus’s parable, and my own reading of the Bible. “From the context of the teaching of the parable,” reads Streams, “it seems that we must have something to do with the depth of the soil.”

My soil isn’t very deep when it comes to the prophets, I guess. How different my reading of these books is from my reading of the other books that fill my hours. If you ask me about a library book I read last week, you could expect me to give you a decent basic summary. I’d remember the plot. I’d remember the main characters. I’d remember the general mood and central preoccupations.

But ask me about my Bible reading ever since Isaiah, and all I can give you is a vague, dreamlike impression of ocean waves: wrath and judgment, alternating with lavish promises and reassurances.

Somewhere along the line in this reading, I’ve simply given up. The mentality of these books is so foreign to my whole experience. There are spots of recognition for me, but no true comprehension. It bothers me that my heart is so cold toward God’s word. What do I expect? That God should not only manifest himself in nature, the written word, and the Incarnation, but should make himself easy and comfortable to my lazy modern mind?

A friend observed this week that the phrase “undivided heart” appears only a few times throughout scripture, and every time, it’s depicted as a gift from God, something God does.

I think too of Thomas Merton’s words, as quoted in Sacred Pathways:

Contemplation will not be given to those who willfully remain at a distance from God, who confine their interior life to a few routine exercises of piety and a few external acts of worship and service performed as a matter of duty… God does not manifest Himself to these souls because they do not seek Him with any real desire.

Lord, forgive me. Give me an undivided, receptive, understanding heart.

Rebecca

By Janet 6 September, 2009 Novels

I’m not sure what made me choose Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca. I was looking for a page-turner, and that’s what I found in this suspenseful tale of an innocent bride, the wealthy nobleman who marries her, and the mystery and emotional charge that overshadow everything associated with his first wife, the deceased Rebecca.

I seem to have a weakness for Gothic romance: Jane Eyre, Watchman’s Stone, The Red Castle Women. All of them have working class heroines drawn into a world of Gothic castles, noblemen with mysterious pasts, and malevolent or mad women that come with the bargain. Is my life too prosaic? Do I have latent anxieties that there are hidden passages in my 70’s vintage ranch?

Or is it just that I can’t resist revisiting this plot that can be varied in so many ways?

The narrator heroine of DuMaurier’s novel is… more of a ninny than those of the other books I mentioned. Jane Eyre is terribly smart. The other two heroines are depicted as intelligent, yet they unaccountably do foolish things that get them into strange situations: locked into the keep of a castle, kidnapped, all manner of things. DuMaurier’s narrator (whose name we’re never told) spills things, trips, knocks things over, and can’t seem to put two and two together to save her life. Yet somehow, I found myself drawn in and held in suspense as the mystery unfolded.

After I finished the book, I searched for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1941 film version, his first American movie, which won Best Picture in the Academy Awards. It stars Laurence Olivier as Maxim deWinter and Joan Fontaine as the novel’s narrator. Despite its fame, I couldn’t find it anywhere but in one branch of our four-county library system.

I loved seeing the sumptuous Manderley, the deWinter estate on the coast of England. Even in black and white it gave my imagination a boost in picturing the setting. Olivier’s portrayal of Maxim deWinter made him much more appealing to me than the moody, grim figure I pictured from the pages of the book.

Hitchcock made some key changes in the story’s plot, partly to simplify and condense the novel for the screen, and partly (perhaps) to soften some of its harsher elements. But Mrs. Danvers, the malevolent housekeeper at Manderley, is played with absolute brilliance by Judith Anderson. She’s terrifying! And she does it all with her eyes.

I enjoyed experiencing the novel and movie in sequence like that. I felt I got acquainted with two artists and two classic works at once. Despite Hitchcock’s genius, though, I came down on the side I always do: I liked the book best.

Reading matters

By Janet 4 September, 2009 On Reading

I’ve often wondered how much money we save by using the library so much. Apparently, its value to us is somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000.00 a month! Of course we’d never spend that much on books every month, but I guess the point is that the library permits extravagant habits.

Try this calculator to find out the value of your library use. It’s from a spreadsheet developed by the Massachusetts Library Association, adapted for the web by the Chelmsford Public Library.

Speaking of books, I’ve been musing over the question of how to teach reading, now that my 8-year-old has the basic skills.

Vision-casting: Yesterday, I posted this as my “food for thought” quote:

If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

How do I do that with reading? How do I teach longing for “the endless immensity” of the imaginative world? It’s really not about loving books, but loving certain things that books afford:

  • private, timeless, inward reflection;
  • who we are, against the different backdrops books provide in ideas and situations;
  • submissiveness to, and respect for, another’s train of thought.

I could go on and on, but these are at the top of my list at the moment.

We’ve always read lots of stories aloud, and I continue to do so. There’s a love for stories successfully taking root in both kids. The question is how to begin fostering some reading independence in Older Daughter. Last year, I enforced silent reading for 30 minutes a day in the afternoon, then again at bedtime. She could keep the light on, as long as she was reading.

Free vs. required reading: I’m thinking maybe I should use that daytime reading period to “assign” a book — or offer a group of books for her to choose from, maybe ones that relate to what we’re doing in history or science…? Everything I’ve read stresses the importance of giving students a choice for their “free reading” time, and not assigning books. But maybe the bedtime reading should be “free,” and the daytime reading “assigned.” This would ensure that during some of her reading time, she’s getting something that will stretch her and build some skill, and not just reading the simplest picture books. It would also give me a chance to make sure she’s really reading, not skipping through and reading only the interesting parts.

Journal: We make narration pages for about two books a week, though we read more than that. Maybe I could set a loose guideline that one of these can be a pure-pleasure book, perhaps a picture book, and the other needs to be a chapter book…? Or should I stay out of the way?

Reading aloud: I also wonder if she should be doing more reading aloud. Growing up in public school, this is what we did, at least through second grade. So far this year, I’ve been having her read aloud the texts in science and writing, which are written for a third grade level. Only once so far has she told me I’m torturing her. (Why? She reads beautifully.)

Seeing Past Z impressed on me the importance of giving kids space in these matters. Not everyone will become a book lover. But I’m unsure how that works out with a child who loves stories, but not necessarily wrestling her way through a book on her own. There needs to be encouragement and development of skill, but the question is just how to make it happen without transforming “longing for the endless immensity of the sea” into mere “tasks and work.”

Nurturing the imagination

By Janet 1 September, 2009 Biography, On Reading

Seeing Past Z: Nurturing the Imagination in a Fast-Forward World is a memoir. It offers Beth Kephart’s experience as a mother cultivating in her child a love of reading, reflection, and imaginative vitality. The book spans several years, and we come to know and respect her for her ability to stand back and give her son room to develop.

Those of us who value the imagination, and the need for children to have unstructured, undirected time for it to develop, feel we’re listening to a kindred spirit in this book. Besides appreciating this encouraging story of a gifted young man maturing, I liked Kephart’s gentleness with Jeremy. Even though it mattered to her very much that he would awaken to the magic of books, she allowed him to move at his own pace. She read to him, and, when he continued to prefer being read to rather than picking up a book himself, she continued to read to him. She even offered an extra-curricular literary group for him and his classmates, in fourth grade and for several summers afterward. (The back of the book provides ideas and resources for such an endeavor.)

I couldn’t help but remember the experience Sven Birkerts describes in The Gutenberg Elegies. He recounts a college literature class in which the students simply could not bridge the gap to read Henry James. How different the fourth graders in this story are! They’re a raucously enthusiastic bunch. I guess the moral is, get them young. And hope for someone as able as Ms. Kephart to step in and lend a hand.

There are a number of parenting definitions scattered throughout the book where Ms. Kephart recasts the aims and hopes of parents. A few examples:

My job as his parent is the job of every parent — to keep giving him more of the world. To thread it in and through, strand by annealing, instructive strand. To make room for him to marvel, shift, consider, and weigh; to enter other people’s stories and begin to tell his own.

I want Jeremy to grow up poking his fingers through the web of mysteries, hoping for the unexpected, taking pleasure or conviction or understanding from what he finds.

Parenting is fractionally commonsensical. The rest is improvisation and soul.

They’re like different pairs of glasses to try on and look at this chapter of life that I’m so immersed in right now, it’s easy to lose the big picture. I should point out, though, that you don’t need to be a parent to find these essays appealing. Anyone who’s protested the reconfiguration of childhood in America as a structured, scheduled phenomenon, and anyone who thinks there’s more to life than math and science, will find themselves nodding their way along.

I enjoyed the glimpse into writing and writing process as well. This, for instance, is an excerpt from a generous passage on wordcraft:

I tell [my son] I try to keep some words in mind when I write from life: Explore as opposed to trump. Suggest instead of prove. Protest, not pronounce. Propose, not demand. Discuss, not win. Record, not brag. I tell him that I think it all comes down to motivation in the end, to compassion, and that sometimes I know I fail at this, sometimes I worry…

The quietly lyrical writing throughout this book — what Lauren Winner describes on the back cover as Kephart’s “inimitable velvet prose” — testifies to the reliability of such sound insight. For an inspiring series of reflections that achieve their effect without preaching, Seeing Past Z is a nourishing read.

Dangerous Journey

By Janet 29 August, 2009 Christianity, Picture Books

“It seems just terrible that it doesn’t have a medal.”

So said my 8-year-old, who prizes any book with an embossed gold medal on the cover, as we neared the end of this exciting tale of Christian’s trip along the narrow road to Heaven. Dangerous Journey: The Story of Pilgrim’s Progress is a retelling of Bunyan’s classic tale, penned in a prison cell and said to be one of the most widely read books in the English language.

It’s been years since I read the unabridged version. This is an abridgment, but it was glorious to read aloud, retaining much of the archaic vocabulary and stately King James rhythms. Neither my 5-year-old nor my 8-year-old asked many questions about word meanings; they were able to gather enough from the context, and were on the edge of their seats to know what would happen next.

My youngest is the one who always asks anxious plot questions: “Is he going to die?” “Is he going to win?” “What’s going to happen?!” She has a knack for asking at the perfect time, which tells me something about her (she’s an observant listener attuned to the pace of the tale) and something about the story (it’s a perfectly spun yarn). Of course I never answer. I always say, “I can’t wait to see!” or “It hasn’t told us yet. What do you think?” or “Let’s keep reading and find out!”

The illustrations by Alan Parry are spectacular. (Apparently, this was done as a television series, too.) You can inspect a few of them at the Google books version. Truth is, I’m dying to scan and post the illustration of Apollyon — who is, along with the other villains, breathtaking. But what kind of person breaks the rules with Pilgrim’s Progress? Surely I’d end up somehow magically sketched into the story as “Mrs. Worldly Plagiarist” or “The Copywronger.”

I’ve had this book since college, when I worked at a bookstore one Christmas break and my employer/friend presented me with it as a Christmas gift. I’ve waited to show it to the girls until the time felt right. I wondered, would they be scared by the vivid pictures? Would they be bored, or fail to catch on to the story? I needn’t have worried. Every chance they could get between reading sessions, the girls pored over the pages. They offered observations and questions and speculations about what was happening. (I never let them look beyond where we’d read so far.) My husband listened in and is now curious to read the complete version. All in all, this book is a huge hit in our family.

For the Children’s Sake: I am, I can, I ought, I will

By Janet 26 August, 2009 Home Education, Nonfiction

For the Children’s Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and School, published in 1984, represents an argument to rethink educational priorities in light of the ideas of British educator Charlotte Mason (1842-1923). Written by Susan Schaeffer Macauley, daughter of Francis and Edith Schaeffer, this book has two purposes: to provide an educational vision, and to re-introduce Charlotte Mason to a more modern age.

In the homeschooling movement, Charlotte Mason’s ideas are probably more familiar now than they were when this book was written. I understand that her writings have been published more recently, with introductions by Ms. Macaulay. Ambleside Online is a great resource for further reading on Charlotte Mason’s perspective.

I was somewhat familiar with the curricular aims of Charlotte Mason, but this book presents more of her philosophy. I appreciate the practical understanding of children, the respect for them as “persons” and not mere vats to be filled with facts (or computers to be programmed). I appreciate the gentleness and thoroughness of Ms. Mason’s approach to the mind and character of young children. As a (neo)classical homeschooler, I share her love of history, and her belief that good books don’t need the help of a lot of commentary or simplification; let them speak for themselves. And I love the progression forecast in the motto of some of the British schools modeled on her principles: “I am, I can, I ought, I will.”

Reflecting on our own home education experiences so far, it was reassuring to see that we’ve done a lot “right” (as defined by this attractive philosophy) without consciously trying. We keep our lesson time to about half the day, and the girls have lots of free time to be imaginative. We observe nature around us, garden, explore. We read plenty of “living books” (including the Bible), listen to music, encourage artistic and verbal expression, pay attention to art.

It was good, too, to spend some time thinking about the art of diversion, mentioned here as a tactic in the training and management of children. I tend to be a confrontational person. It’s good to have a different strategy to turn to in difficult situations. When a child is struggling with her own nature in some way, sometimes it’s better to just defuse the situation and turn her to a different activity than to talk about it in a tense moment. It sounds simple, but it’s not my natural tendency.

In any case, for an appealing picture of what education of the whole person can be, this book is an excellent read. It brought me back to some basics that are good to remember this first week of school. It reminded me of the amazing blessing of homeschooling my daughters, so full of potential and mystery, so able and so eager. It’s a journey made with fear and trembling, but also with joy.