Wake-Up Call?

Ben points out that since that kid gave grade-school compliments to LeBron during the NBA playoffs, telling him he had a great game because he put in "good effort," James's teams have gone 19-1, and he has been the late-game powerhouse in many of them.

Double-spacing

There was an essay at Slate ranting that two spaces after a period is no longer necessary and just wrong.  As if.  It is left over from the age of manual typewriters, when all characters took the same space, yada yada yada.  He even notes that it's a convention, but it bugs him no end that it's an outmoded convention.  He pays attention to which of his friends persist in this solecism.  No, I'm not linking to it.

If my double-spacing after a period marks me as someone who was properly educated in the age of manual typewriters and paid some attention, I'm regarding that as a feature, not a bug.

Wishing For Pine Needles

I met knitblogger and simple-living attempter Kris Causton, who was the week's speaker at Pilgrim Pines.  I never go to those sessions myself, but several of you might like her blog Wishing For Pine Needles

The Negative Virtue of Unselfishness

Lewis starts right out hitting me between the eyes in his 1941 essay "The Weight of Glory".

If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness.  But if you asked almost any great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love.  You see what has happened?  A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance.  The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.  I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love...If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith

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Lurks?  Lurks?  Try overwhelms.  This root notion persists in me after decades of Christian belief.  I am enormously grateful that I read this essay early in my walk, before I had children, and was able to consciously work against it throughout their upbringing.  I believe I have had some, though not entire, success in teaching them that enjoyment can also be holy - that Fezziwig and King Smoit are worth imitating.

Yet the idea of drawing back from joy out of false modesty and politeness - waiting to be invited so as not to be thought grasping - remains.  I can make convincing cases who in my upbringing and instruction might be to blame for all this, but "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves..." Wm. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 1.

Spam

Gone for less than a week.  120 emails.  87 were reports of comments here.  81 of those were spam, mostly ads for xanax or valium.  It's what happens when you disable Captcha.

But I deleted all that and have dozens of things to write about.  A lot of CS Lewis.

Lewis On Not Rewriting

In his introduction to The Weight of Glory, Lewis reports why he declined to edit the essays for this edition, even though some of the ideas he had later improved and expanded on as he pondered them further.  He felt they belonged to an era, two decades earlier, and needed to be understood in that context.  He changed a word here or there for clarity's sake, but otherwise left the text as originally written.  He did not think he disagreed with anything he had said then, but would put it differently now.  He saw a faint deceit in doing that - he was a different age, and lived in a different culture.  The essays seemed to be by another person.

That rang true for me.  I have extended series and repeated themes from the earlier years of this blog which I have thought worth a little something.  I have sought ways to go back and collect them, repackage them, or revisit them.  I now think the distance is too great, even after only few years.  A year ago I would have thought that one did not really understand what is going on here without that background.  I no longer agree with that.  Blogging is more like old newspaper columns (or Letters To The Editor) than like collections of essays.  Only a few columnists get their Best Of's arranged between covers, and even then, all the other columns just slip away. Ephemeral does not mean "unimportant or worthless," though it has taken on that secondary understanding.  It means "for the day only."  Facebook and Twitter are even more ephemeral, of course, but that is their nature, and things should be what they are.

I might look things over and see if my understandings have changed in any way, and write up the changes if they seem important.  But they are what they are.

2(Weight Of Glory)

I have lent out or given away many copies of CS Lewis's The Weight Of Glory over the years, and thus have not reread it for some time.  "The Inner Ring," "Transposition," and the title essay have rung in my head for decades now.  "Why I am Not A Pacifist" was one of the most powerful single reading experiences I have ever had.  When I started the essay, I was a pacifist, and was quite certain that God and the scriptures demanded this POV.  When I finished the essay a few minutes later, I knew that belief was in ruins forever.

I just finished it, but will have to go straight back and start again.  I seem to have lost flexibility, or tolerance, or kindness over the years.  I read each essay and kept thinking how Other People really needed to hear this part or that - liberals, fundamentalists, mainstream denominations, young men - group after group of people who are Not I.

That can't be healthy.  I must read it again with attention to how it applies to me.

Lie

I lied when I said I care only about the theological connection when people reflexively prefer the natural to the artificial.  I also care about the poor logic that boils down to "Well it only stands to reason that..."

Things that "only stand to reason" often turn out to be wrong.  It's called having a theory without evidence but applying it anyway.  It can be right, but there's just no guarantee. None. "Natural" things, by some definition, might also be superior to artificial ones in any individual instance. Or might not.

Chance thought: there are certainly plenty of conservatives and libertarians who lean in a whole foods/natural foods direction, but the main appeal for organic/vegan/alternative medicine types is among liberals.  Odd that they should prefer lots and lots of human intervention and control by large, distant entities when it comes to an economy, but not when it's food or medicine.  I imagine that's related to their dislike and distrust of corporations (because they don't understand how they work) contrasted to their trust and confidence in nonprofits and ahem, Public Servants.

This would bring me back to my Arts & Humanities Tribe discussions pretty quickly.

Elizabeth Warren - Content

Borrowing money to go to a school is not the same thing as education.  The one may lead to the other, but it isn't even a 50% overlap.  This misuse of the term is common in society - both parents and students have an emotional interest in keeping up the pretense - but none use it more than the government agencies that distribute the money and the politicians who want to be closely associated with such things in the public mind.

The money is used to 1) pay for part of a credential, which may never be completed; 2) maintain student status, whether one is learning anything or not; 3) provide entry into a program where getting an education might be more efficiently accomplished, because professionals who know what the goal and what the pitfalls are work there. Even this last, clearly the best use of the three, is not synonymous with "education."

One course at a prestigious university costs $5000, BTW. One.

Worse, Warren doesn't promise to actually do anything about this debt the students have racked up.  She simply notes it, expressing outrage and sympathy.  Feelings.  Whoa-oh-oh-feelings.

If someone pays X in taxes, you think they should pay 2X, but that's not the law and they still pay X, that is not a "tax break," nor is it the government "giving" you money. (Yes, even if they used to pay X + 20%.) The underlying assumption to that statement is that society really owns all that money and society can and should move it where it likes.  And as we all know, society means government.  There is not even much charade about this anymore, arguing that government is an arm or expression of society to do things efficiently.  When I listen to Democrats, I don't think they are making that distinction anymore.  Society should do X, government is in charge of society, so letting the government direct where it goes is only natural.

Things Have Changed

Reader and commenter Mark Stoler has his own interesting blog, Things Have Changed.  Current offerings include the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, a One-hit Wonder, Satchell Paige, a newscaster slip, and a few discussions of Cass Sunstein's Nudge. Not all in the same post, of course.

Natural

It is a staple of Bible studies to mention that the Gnostics thought spirit was good and matter bad, and how this common belief in general society created confusion and even heresies in the early church.  I often think we have something similar going in modern times with natural versus artificial.  Natural things are believed to be direct from the hand of God, and therefore good, while artificial things have been messed with by fallen humans, and are therefore always substandard.

I've been up a church camp, so hints of this come up more often.  The beauty of God's creation gets mentioned a lot, and I have certainly heard many over the years sigh that being among the trees, lakes, and mountains helps them get back to God.

The quick answer is lightning, floods, earthquakes, of course.  We don't like Nature so much as our taming of it and our relative safety in the face of powerful forces.  People who are more at the mercy of nature are less rhapsodic about it.  Also, we're on vacation, so wherever we are might look like good world versus evil, tainted work world. There are moral compromises we are no longer making, so it all feels a bit holier.

I don't say that it rises to the level of heresy in all its adherents, but the general term does apply.  It has nothing to do with the gospel and needs to be expunged from our thinking.  It creeps in when we think that some foods or medicines are on a better spiritual track - more in God's plan - because of their more primitive state.  It is certainly true that when we have to pack foods for shipping they lose something, and even that our choices of what varieties travel best influences this.  It is also true that when man can make something cheaply in quantity he tends to overdo it.  Commercial fertilisers come to mind.  But "natural" items are not exempt from this idiocy.  We associate the idea more strongly with things man-made, but they are not restricted to them.

There is also a significant problem, universally ignored, about the definitions we use for natural.  If a plant is cultivated, that is artifice; so too if it is dried, boiled, washed, or frozen anywhere along its journey to you. Vitamins in isolation do not occur in nature - those are thus artificial. Food storage and medicine decoction are labor-intensive, artificial acts, and have been for millennia. The modern idea that God gives us what we need naturally, with no need to go mucking about with humanly-tainted factories, laboratories, and corporate interests, would be rejected immediately by the writer of every book of the Bible.  Yes, even Daniel.

I don't mind at all people preferring whatever foods and medicines they want, nor their methods of growing them and preparing them for table.  Whatever you will.  Yet people seem unable to stop at mere preference.  We are bound, I fear, to regard our preferences as God's preferences almost automatically. I mention here again that the resistance to vaccinations, and the pointless desire to "space them out" for safety, seems related to the secret worship of the natural as God's Better Plan.

In this case, the belief in the spiritual superiority of natural things owes more to German paganism than to Christianity.  I think I will write on that shortly.

Monadnock

I had forgotten how bad the footing is, and how much harder that makes the hike.  I suppose I should be glad that steepness per se does not bother me as much as before, neither up nor down.  But the rarity with which one can take a normal-sized step and put one's foot down flat - I'm not asking for horizontal - got very wearing.

It is often repeated up here but likely less-known outside of NH that the geographical term monadnock, which is obscure but still used, comes from this mountain.

Reconsideration

I wrote the 100th anniversary congregational history for my Lutheran church in the 1980's. My grandmother had written the 75th and my great-great uncle John August Lindquist had written the 50th, so it seemed a natural.

In documenting the years of service of all the pastors, I noted that from 1951-78 the church had gone through 9 straight pastors at just about exactly 3 years each.  All had subsequently left parish ministry, as far as I could tell.  There was no pattern to that - one to retirement, one to teaching and farming, one fired for ripping off the congregation, one to a radio ministry.  But in all cases, Gethsemane was the last stop before leaving parish work.

At the time, I attributed that to the congregation, that it was particularly difficult or obstreperous, chewing 'em up and spitting 'em out.  I thought it was a very black mark against us, and may have been part of our decision to leave four years down the road.

I no longer think that.  I now think the congregation was very typical, an aging Swedish church trying to adjust but not knowing how, with the usual mix of gentle souls, irritable old codgers, and earnest young mothers willing to put in hours of work.  I don't know if the three-and-out track record is more an indictment of the denomination (LCA became ELCA), of secular New England or Scandinavian culture, or of the type of person who went into ministry in postwar Lutheranism.  But I assigned responsibility wrongly the first time around.

Lyrics

Whenever someone complains to you about the lyrics of music today.

Damned Statistics

Matthew Berry, "The Talented Mr. Roto," has an essay on fantasy football that has more general applicability.  Even if you don't like FF, i think you will appreciate his explanation that all facts presented to you, even if they are black-and-white, neutral items, are also opinions, because they have been carefully chosen by the author to illustrate his hypothesis.  Berry describes, for example, two running backs - one you would clear ly want to draft and another you would wish to avoid.  They are both Darren McFadden.  It depends on what you want to look at.

Bill James' Baseball Abstracts used to entertain me every year not because I was the least interested in the fortunes of the Milwaukee Brewers for the coming season, but because he would ask questions and try to answer them from the numbers.  Are there hitting streaks or slumps significantly greater than what one would get simply rolling the dice for a thousand players every years? (Answer:  Slumps yes, usually related to injuries.  Streaks - maybe.  But not a lot.)  Do some catchers reduce staff ERA's significantly? (Answer: Yes, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia is not one of them.)

Statistics don't really lie, but sometimes you have to grab them by the throat, shove them against the wall, and ask them where they have been and who their friends are before you get the truth out of them.

Read-Aloud

I am rereading "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" and find I am physically unable to read it to myself, however hard I try.  I cannot even merely mouth the words but must at minimum whisper dramatically, playing the scene.

And I must be Guildenstern.

And I must reread - respeak - sections that did not go as well as hoped, until I have the right sound.

My oldest son, when he was eight, nine, ten years old,  used to ask who I was talking to when we were driving in the car.  I'm accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, Jonathan...I'm arguing with your mother about vacations - I'm winning this time...I am preaching sermon to a group of fundamentalists who will never ask me to speak to them...

He stopped asking, after awhile.  I can't imagine this is likely to improve as I age.  It seems to be getting worse.

The USPS and the NHS

In the discussion of the Olympic opening ceremonies, Dubbahdee mentioned that Brits are quite fond of the NHS – something we don’t often appreciate here.  I couldn’t think of a good equivalence at first, but I wonder if it is similar to how Americans used to look at the postal service, before competing services came in.  We knew and liked our letter-carrier.  More of the mail we received was from relatives, girlfriends, friends traveling to far places.  We sometimes waited anxiously for the mail to come, and knew the appointed time.  There were bills, sure, but those weren’t Mr. Cohen’s fault.  There was a charm to small-town post-offices, especially the older ones, which suggested something quintessentially American. They got used as movie sets or in still photos to evoke a place or an era.  And the big city post-offices – whew – they were impressive marble edifices, which included other rich-people services such as passports, and long rows of PO Boxes with secret codes for locks.

We rather marveled that they could get cards and letters such great distances so quickly – most of the time, anyway.  We complained about them losing things or mashing them up, dropping them in the wrong box occasionally or returning them for teeny postage due, but we liked them.  They mostly got it right, after all.  We heard from time to time how much money they lost and groused about the rate increases. We laughed that some cranks thought it could all be handled privately.  We knew that was crazy!

Until it started to happen - with some specialised, larger business mail at first, and then with personal shipping and packages. Then we got angrier with the USPS, even as they improved, because we discovered that someone else can do the job – it’s not magic – and there’s no need to lose money on it.  Especially now, as our mailboxes have more catalogues and fliers, and less actual personal mail, we see the USPS as rather hollow.  An irony, that we loved them when they were far less efficient and dislike them now.

European health services came in at about the same time as actual improvements in medicine came in, especially pharmaceuticals and medical devices.  In England, the contrast is between the bad old pre-NHS days, when doctors couldn’t do much for you -  and bright, shiny modern times, with antibiotics and valiums and cancer treatments that actually worked.  Look at the era that they costumed the NHS to evoke:  not only the childhood of all but the oldest Brits, but just as national care came into being in the 1950’s.  They rode the wave of the great successes of the evil pharmaceutical companies and corporate manufacturers of medical devices and diagnostic equipment.  But the association remains.  Avant moi, le deluge.

So no wonder they love their systems and think we are crazy not to have them.  Without realising it, they have no standard for comparison.

Baby Update

Finn Cecil McGoldrick, 7lbs 3,  7/30/12 @ 5:53PM at Tufts Medical Center. Everyone fine.

Sessil, or Seesil?

Parenting Priorities Reminder

To parents, civilization is just a job.  Where it's going and what it's doing are of only distant interest. Garrison Keillor.

Outcast, Rejected, And Scorned

In the Chick-fil-A brouhaha, I am running across a fair number of Christians, and Christian sites, which put forth the idea that because gay people are outcast, downtrodden, and rejected that they thereby should attract support and sympathy from Christians.

The idea that Jesus's ministry is formed around some vast anti-bullying campaign is amazingly silly, yet common. That the scriptures teach that some reasons for ostracism are invalid and an offense to God I fully grant. That the righteous are sometimes, even often, rejected and scorned I likewise acknowledge.  It does not follow from those truths that all ostracised people are objects of God's special concern, nor that Christians have special obligations to them.

I note this with no especial reference to homosexuality.  The wooly-headed Christians have picked them as an example, not I.  I merely note that their reasoning is poor.  To claim that Chick-fil-A management should not, as Christians, be going out of its way to hurt a people who are already oppressed reveals a fairly thorough misunderstanding of the Gospel.  From Genesis through Malachi, the Old Testament is very big on ostracism, even emphasising it in places.  Paul is quite clear in the Epistles that certain behaviors deserve ostracism from the church, and others give us a deservedly bad name among the unbelievers if we tolerate them.

And Jesus was pretty damned clear who he was not associating with now, and who he would not be in the future.  Having been rejected is no guarantee of specialness, and is sometimes considered entirely meet in the Bible.

By the way, I encourage Christians who think this way to trace back over the last decades to see where this idea that because Jesus was not afraid to associate with the downtrodden, that the downtrodden are therefore always his faves - actually comes from.  It has overlap with some Christian ideas, but is essentially quite secular.

The giveaway that these Gospel of Niceness people really do understand the principle is their immediate willingness to ostracise Cathy and others they disagree with.  He's being scorned and rejected by some, but no sympathy for him, because those are the right people kicking him. And besides, he has other people (bad people) who support him, so he's not really, really outcast, not like...

Not like who, then?  Who are these other outcasts that fuzzy Christians do support, who have no one else on their side? 

Who is favored and who is not is entirely predictable along entirely nonreligious lines.