Turkish Literature Students, Jane Eyre, and the Joys of Teaching

  Teaching - especially teaching adults - is, or should be, a process of learning. Sometimes a teacher learns content more deeply or fully; other times, they learn to express ideas or thoughts more clearly or accurately, or they may even learn to know humanity better through true encounters with their students and their students' needs. Then there's the more incidental learning due to hearing and reading about students' interests. (Virtually all the K-Pop I've listened to has been from students' homework-based recommendations. It's not my thing unless it's theirs.)

  Here's a brief philosophy of teaching, particularly language teaching and more particularly writing skills teaching. 

   Premise #1 - Students learn better when they are personally interested in the subject. 

    Premise #2 -Teachers are paid and expected to help students learn something better, faster, or more comprehensively. 

     Premise #3 - Learning is relational (or social). 

   Based on these beliefs, I design my classes to let the students have maximum choice of content as well as some choice in curricular goals and hopefully a meaningful voice, even in a large class. This means that students often choose the topics of the lessons which we use to practice skills. It also means that they choose the topics which they will be writing about in their homework, and sometimes even for their exams. My role is to help them to learn the needed academic language and writing skills while they explore their chosen topics. In other words, they get to learn some of what interests them while learning what they are 'supposed to'. Naturally the details are different from class to class, but my guiding philosophy has held pretty consistent for about a decade now. It's an attempt to balance standardization and personalization; it's an attempt to give each learner a meaningful pathway to engagement and growth no matter their starting point; it's an attempt to lure each learner into joy in their learning.

  All of this has a HUGE side benefit: students have a massive range of interests, which makes grading assignments far more enjoyable as a teacher! I consistently get to be a learner in my own classroom. This brings us to the Turkish Language and Literature students whom I've gotten to teach Critical Reading and Writing to for the last two years. They don't get a lot of classes in English, but most of them truly love literature. So, they introduce me to great books and make them sound fascinating. My students have helped to make books like Orwell's 1984 and Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Charlotte Brönte's Jane Eyre sound worth reading. 

  So, after a variety of promptings including from students, I have just completed Jane Eyre. I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially since my wife and one daughter read it at the same time, and we talked about it as we read. It has high-quality writing, unexpected plot twists, and so much vocabulary that was new to me. I have no doubt that I'll re-read it. Not being as good at writing book reviews as some of my students, I will leave you with a few quotes instead of a synopsis of the book. These samples are ones that I feel can be snatched out of context without losing most of their meaning; there are many other powerful sections which did not seem as meaningful extracted from their place.  

 As Jane must make a difficult choice filled with moral implications...

"Still indomitable was the reply—“I care for myself.  The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.  I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man.  I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now.  Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be.  If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?  They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs.  Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.” (pp. 221-222).  

 As Jane becomes a teacher...

"I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best-born.  My duty will be to develop these germs: surely I shall find some happiness in discharging that office.  Much enjoyment I do not expect in the life opening before me: yet it will, doubtless, if I regulate my mind, and exert my powers as I ought, yield me enough to live on from day to day. 

...  I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of all I heard and saw round me.  But let me not hate and despise myself too much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong—that is a great step gained; I shall strive to overcome them.  To-morrow, I trust, I shall get the better of them partially; and in a few weeks, perhaps, they will be quite subdued.  In a few months, it is possible, the happiness of seeing progress, and a change for the better in my scholars may substitute gratification for disgust." (p. 253). 

Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive. (p. 262).   

  Before quitting, I'd add a couple caveats. Without knowing what Brönte herself believed, I'd mention that her openly religious characters often talk in dualistic, 'escapist' terms that suggest that this world is not valuable and that only the next world is worth living for. The Bible would not agree. Secondly, it seems unfortunate that the only two characters who are non-European in the text are the two chosen to be (or expected to become) insane, with one of them being evil and the other weak in character. This typing and the dialogue surrounding it should offend us today even if it was standard two hundred years ago.

3 Quotes that have given me cause to ponder

The three quotes below have each been thought-provoking for me recently. The first is from a liberation theologian, much of whose writing will not be acceptable to many (most?) of my readers if I'm guessing right about who they are. The the second and third quotes are from Tozer, who I would guess is rather more acceptable to most.  

 No Salvation Outside the Poor (by Jon Sobrino, who in this context is speaking of Catholic educator-philosopher Ellacuria)

"Bearing the burden of reality" impacted me even more. Where I came from, it was totally new to hear-and perceive in the person of Ellacuría-that intelligence "has not been given to help people evade their real commitments, but to take on themselves the burden of things as they really are and with all that they really demand."6 This means we cannot fully grasp reality without bearing it at its worst, which I think we still fail to understand. 

  This message regarding intelligence and reality and burden-bearing is stark and feels worth careful pondering. 

Two quotes from Tozer's booklet Paths to Power (which I was given by someone moving and trying to get rid of their excess stuff)

We are so hopelessly outclassed by the world's superior strength that for us it means either God's help or sure defeat. The Christian who goes out without faith in "wonders" will return without fruit. No one dare be so rash as to seek to do impossible things unless he has first been empowered by the God of the impossible. "The power of the Lord was there" is our guarantee of victory. (pg 7)

The advocates of antinomianism in our times deserve our respect for at least one thing: their motive is good. Their error springs from their very eagerness to magnify grace and exalt the freedom of the gospel. They start right, but allow themselves to be carried beyond what is written by a slavish adherence to undisciplined logic. It is always dangerous to isolate a truth and then press it to its limit without regard to other truths. It is not the teaching of the Scriptures that grace makes us free to do evil. Rather, it sets us free to do good. Between these two conceptions of grace there is a great gulf fixed. It may be stated as an axiom of the Christian system that whatever makes sin permissible is a foe of God and an enemy of the souls of men. (pg 26)  

The Name of the Rose & Saints and Sages

  About 3 weeks ago I began reading for ISRME's current class that I am taking, Saints and Sages. In it, we considering Muslim and Christian thinkers and doers many of whom I was familiar with in a very limited sense or not at all. Even most of those I was familiar with (Thomas Aquinas, Rumi) I had read little to none of their work. As with all of ISRME's classes, this one has been excellent.

  At nearly the same time, one of my daughters decided to get Kindle Unlimited for a few months. (It cost a dollar, I believe.) So, I checked my wishlist to see what books I might want to peruse for free. I didn't come up with much. Except The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Which I didn't know much about but had had highly recommended to me. So, I tried it. It's set in exactly the same time period and engaging many of the same ideas and authors - one character whom I assumed was fictional turned up in my reading about Catherine of Siena. An excellent coincidence in reading materials!

  A medieval, philosophical detective novel set in an abbey whose burning heart was a library! Multiple murders, inquisitors, and... VERY long discussions of philosophy and theology and medieval stuff that seemed a bit long. It was really good and kept me reading to the end, even if I skipped portions of the extended discussions.

 

  But the unexpected bonus benefit came after the very end! More than 500 pages in, in the author's postscript which was appended later, he speaks of writing and the writing process, and it's very insightful and gripping, at least for someone like me who tries to read about writing each year since I am tasked with teaching so much of it. Let me give you an example, which intersects with the story itself - no spoilers, though.

"Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told."

  This is true. Even within the postscript Eco has mentioned Poe's Philosophy of Composition, which I was unfamiliar with. Now I've downloaded it as another resource for learning and for sharing with writing students. But the magic... the magic is that Eco has used this insight within the narrative itself, books speaking of books. 

  By the way, it feels to me like a very European novel; the ingenious mixing of languages used in the text - and often unexplained - expects the reader to grapple with languages without fully grasping all of the meaning consciously. It's hard to imagine an American in America writing this, too little necessity for linguistic survival strategies. 

A few final quotes...

"Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?" 

"He is, or has been, in many ways a great man. But for that reason he is odd. It is only petty men who seem normal."

"I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly."

"The simple cannot choose their personal heresy."  

Cultural Change and Metaphors

Much of cultural change arises from the introduction of new metaphorical concepts and the loss of old ones. For example, the Westernization of cultures throughout the word is partly a matter of introducing the TIME IS MONEY metaphor into those cultures.

~ Lakoff & Johnson's Metaphors We Live By  

  This book has provided many insights along the way; but this one is of a different sort, one that talks about cultural change. The illustration is quite apt. Think of the many areas in which English-language speech is dominated by this particular metaphor. Look at how each of the following verbs can be followed by either 'time' or 'money';  spend, invest, waste, have, make, save, take, be worth, borrow, gain, lose, be out of ______. In other words, in English (not necessarily in England or America), time tends to be conceptualized metaphorically as analogous to money in many, many ways. Time is the abstract concept; money is the more concrete daily experience. Yet, what if we had a different dominant metaphor? What if we saw time as a gift or a river or a spring of water? We'd behave differently; we'd think differently. If time is a gift, being late to a meeting because you were giving that gift to someone who needed it more implies no disrespect to the person who had to wait a bit to receive the gift you were bringing to give them. 

  Explaining more, a bit later in chapter 21, Lakoff and Johnson say, "Each culture must provide a more or less successful way of dealing with its environment, both adapting to it and changing it. Moreover, each culture must define a social reality within which people have roles that make sense to them and in terms of which they can function socially. Not surprisingly, the social reality defined by a culture affects its conception of physical reality. What is real for an individual as a member of a culture is a product both of his social reality and of the way in which that shapes his experience of the physical world. Since much of our social reality is understood in metaphorical terms, and since our conception of the physical world is partly metaphorical, metaphor plays a very significant role in determining what is real for us." (all emphasis mine)

A book about rabbits... Watership Down

  I remember the book with a rabbit on the cover on my dad's shelf when I was a kid, Richard Adams' Watership Down. But it was long. It still is. But I don't really remember it ever being recommended to me. Now it was. A very nice book, very definitely about rabbits. 

A couples of highlights... one bit of wisdom and one bit of beautiful insight.

"A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, Hazel." (pg 138)

"We do not usually envisage the downs without daylight, even though the light is not a part of the down itself as the hide is part of the horse itself. We take daylight for granted. But moonlight is another matter. It is inconstant. The full moon wanes and returns again. Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight. Water is necessary to us, but a waterfall is not. Where it is to be found is ti something extra, a beautiful ornament. We need daylight and to that extent it is utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need. When it comes, it serves no necessity. It transforms." (pg 215) 

Sarajevo, Bosnia

  I recently had the chance to be in Sarajevo, Bosnia for about 3 days. A friend invited me along on a trip he was taking, and I was free to go. I read some of the history of the 1990s' war to learn some; we talked to several people from a variety of backgrounds, and went to museums and memorials. It's a lovely city, but it has a remembered history that will make your soul sad, though it will also leave space for hope. The Ottoman welcoming of the exiled Jews who had to flee Spain after 1492, the spot where the Archduke Ferdinand was shot which precipitated World War I, Serbian (and others') nationalism, the Balkan holocaust in the 1940s (and a wall detailing 'the righteous among the nations'), the Non-Aligned Movement (as part of Yugoslavia) trying not avoid the worst of the Cold War, and the massacres of the war during the 1990s.  

 There was a lot to see and experience, but I haven't had time to write about it in detail, so I think I'll just leave these pictures and comments here. I really enjoyed my visit, but I don't remember ever visiting another place that left me with such a heavy sense of humanity even among the good and lovely. Much of it seemed relevant to today's troubles of exiles, alliances, and ignoring violence and the oppressed. The stories of hope and resilience and courage and grace were also there then as they are also happening now. Horror and Hope.

 

Sarajevo

 

Cylinders inscribed with the names of the children killed during the war from 1992-1995.

 

The Latin Bridge

 

The streets of Sarajevo and the surrounding hills

 

The lower pistol is the one that killed Archduke Ferdiand and his wife Sophie. It was the second attempted assassination of him during that parade! 

 

A covered bazaar, from the Ottoman period

 

items in the Jewish museum, notice the candelabra on the far right

 

A sign in the Jewish museum

 

ceremonial circumcision  stuff

 

The Sarajevo Haggadah from the 14th century (replica)  

Passover materials

 

A very large old synagogue

a snowy street, the last day I was there

"The diplomats were useful because they realized that domestic politics was only one of the busted pistons of American policy. "It's not just the elections," Kenney explained over dinner. "If the situation was reversed in Bosnia, and a fanatical Muslim regime in Belgrade was slaughtering thousands of innocent Christians in Sarajevo, then America would have reacted by now. We would not watch Christians get killed by Muslims in Europe. Period. But we can watch Muslims get killed by Christians." The problem for Bosnia was larger than the fact that George Bush was getting clobbered by Bill Clinton in the polls. Bosnia was Islam." 

(Maas, Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War, pg 66, emphasis mine) 

 

[Unfortunately for all his sympathy with the Muslims here in the book, the author, a few pages later, seems rather inconsistent when he explains how these Muslims are not like those Muslims. Their humanity itself didn't seem to be enough, which was saddening in an otherwise helpful book.]

Rutledge's "The Crucifixion" - quotations

  I've been reading Fleming Rutledge's The Crucifixion for a while now, and I continue to benefit. Her earlier section on the irreligious and godless nature of the crucifixion as seen in its original cultural context was really helpful. Following that, her insights on forgiveness and the fact that real forgiveness cannot be easy or automatic is really valuable. Now, her discussion on Anselm has been insightful. I hadn't realized how controversial Anselm is though it makes sense as I read about it. She shows how in many ways Anselm is not understood well across the centuries, for reasons both understandable and not. So I'm including a series of quotations below. They are in three groupings, on three tracks. Each a peak into her thought. I highly recommend the book!

"'Honor' in Anselm's thought stands not for some imagined hypersensitivity by the Creator to his own dignity, but is a metaphor for the deep logic of reality, in which the balance of a universe is disrupted by the fact of death and by human alienation from others and from God, a situation which could only be rectifies by divine action."  ~ Eamon Duffy, as cited in Rutledge

~~~~~

In an important sense, the Bible is art rather than science or philosophy, and theology is a sort of art too, since it is largely based upon the narrative form of the Scriptures. (pp. 146-147).  

~~~~~

The wrath of God falls upon God himself, by God’s own choice, out of God’s own love. The “justice connection” may not be clear to those who are accustomed to privilege, but to oppressed and suffering Christians in the troubled places of the earth, there is no need to spell it out. God in Christ on the cross has become one with those who are despised and outcast in the world. (p. 143).

God’s righteousness leads him to all lengths to oppose what will destroy what he loves, and that means declaring enmity against everything that resists his redemptive purpose. This is the aggressive principle in God’s justice.  (p. 136).

The pervasive and monstrous nature of injustice around the world forces us to acknowledge that forgiveness alone does not give a true picture of God’s purpose. (p. 142).

If, when we see an injustice, our blood does not boil at some point, we have not yet understood the depths of God. It depends, though, on what outrages us. To be outraged on behalf of oneself or one’s own group alone is to be human, but it is not to participate in Christ. To be outraged and to take action on behalf of the voiceless and oppressed, however, is to do the work of God. (p. 143).

  From the standpoint of the gospel, however, every single one of us, rich or poor, is a complex mixture; we are all capable of injustice and we are all living on the edge of neediness at any time. (p. 150).

It is in the very nature of God, “the Holy One in your midst,” to step down from the bench and pour himself out in unquenchable compassion. (p. 136).

"Our sense of God is the shape of our wonder"

 

Our sense of God is the shape of our wonder, the yardstick of our values, the spur of our devotion, and the criterion of our adoration. That is why it matters so intensely. Any ‘prophet in history’ is in a vital way the clue to God in His heaven. What the word spoken authorizes, employs, develops, vindicates, and bequeaths, becomes thereby an index to its great commissioning.

~ Kenneth Cragg, pgs 29-30

 

  I recently finished up another class with ISRME in which we considered Kenneth Cragg's book Muhammad and the Christian at length. It was really clarifying. This quote stuck out to me even beyond the context of the book though. It reminds me of the Tozer quote, "What comes to our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us." Cragg, typically, speaks not only poetically but also with erudition.

the good news in a prayer

Here's a bit more from Clement of Rome. The second bolded portion (verse 4) reminds me very much of the terms Jesus used to declare 'the good news (or gospel) of the kingdom of heaven'. A truly beautiful prayer that reflects a certain universality of the compassion of God towards his people in every condition of need. In this sense, the Gospel offers no comfort to the need-less or sufficient; and yet, every type of human need is of importance to the Primal Source of all creation.

  [Grant us, Lord,]* to hope on your name, which is the primal source of all creation, and open the eyes of our hearts that we may know you, who alone are highest among the high; you are holy, abiding among the holy. You humble the pride of the proud; you destroy the plans of nations; you exalt the humble and humble the exalted; you make rich and make poor; you kill and make alive. You alone are the benefactor of spirits and the God of all flesh, looking into the depths, scanning the works of humans; the helper of those who are in peril, the savior of those in despair; the creator and guardian of every spirit. You multiply the nations upon the earth, and from among all of them you have chosen those who love you through Jesus Christ, your beloved servant, through whom you instructed us, sanctified us, honored us. 4 We ask you, Master, to be our helper and protector. Save those among us who are in distress; have mercy on the humble; raise up the fallen; show yourself to those in need; heal the sick; turn back those of your people who wander; feed the hungry; ransom our prisoners; raise up the weak; comfort the discouraged. Let all the nations know that you are the only God, that Jesus Christ is your servant, and that we are your people and the sheep of your pasture.

~~~

 1 Clement 59:3-4 

*the very first 3 words are the editor’s emendation

Morning Grace

Inch Plant

 

  Last year an old friend sent me a copy of The Apostolic Fathers with a note saying how encouraging these ancient writings had been to him. (These writings are some of the oldest Christian writings that have been preserved outside of the New Testament.) On this quiet and beautiful spring morning, I have enjoyed a bit of 1 Clement. He had a a beautiful way with words. Chapter 32:4-33:8...

And so we, having been called through his will in Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves or through our own wisdom or understanding or piety, or works that we have done in holiness of heart, but through faith, by which the Almighty God has justified all who have existed from the beginning; to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

What then shall we do, brothers? Shall we idly abstain from doing good, and forsake love? May the Master never allow this to happen, at least to us; but let us hasten with earnestness and zeal to accomplish every good work. For the Creator and Master of the universe himself rejoices in his works. For by his infinitely great might he established the heavens, and in his incomprehensible wisdom he set them in order. Likewise he separated the earth from the water surrounding it, and set it firmly upon the sure foundation of his own will; and the living creatures that walk upon it he called into existence by his decree. Having already created the sea and the living creatures in it, he fixed its boundaries by his own power. Above all, as the most excellent and by far the greatest work of his intelligence, with his holy and faultless hands he formed humankind as a representation of his own image. For thus spoke God: "Let us make humankind in our image and likeness. And God created humankind; male and female he created them." So, having finished all these things, he praised them and blessed them and said, "Increase and multiply." We have seen that all the righteous have been adorned with good works. Indeed, the Lord himself, having adorned himself with good works, rejoiced. So, since we have this pattern, let us unhesitatingly conform ourselves to his will; let us with all our strength do the work of righteousness.

  Look at that description of how the Lord acted after the 'good works' which he did in creating the universe: he rejoiced! May we also do good works which give us cause for godly rejoicing!

******

  Other than this section, my favorite section has been his writings about hospitality, especially as seen in the Old Testament. That section is about a page long and can be found here, chapters 9-12.

Kalanchoes

The Drier of Tears

    And [the Lord of hosts] will swallow up on this mountain
        the covering that is cast over all peoples,
        the veil that is spread over all nations.
    He will swallow up death forever;
    and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces,
        and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
        for the LORD has spoken. (Isaiah 25:7–8, ESV)

The exalted title the Sovereign LORD calls attention to the fact that in all the dignity of his divine sovereignty, it is the Lord himself who will attend to our tears, moving from person to person until each eye has been dried. On the disgrace of his people cf. Joshua 5:9 where the rite of circumcision was renewed for the Lord’s people. It symbolized that the days of covenant abeyance were over and that the ‘disgrace of Egypt’ was gone – the disgrace to the Lord’s people of living in slavery, bondage and misery. So also, as long as life in this world endures, there are innumerable ways in which the people of God are under reproach and hindered, by circumstances and sin, from living according to their true dignity. All this will be taken away. The new nature will be given full and glorious expression in an environment where everything conduces to holiness (cf. Phil. 3:20–21). Covenant promise will have become covenant reality.(Motyer, 210, Kindle) 

 ‘The Drier of Tears’, of course, brings the Psalmist’s bottled tears to mind as well as the more well-known reflections of this passage in John’s Revelation. Imagine a loving parent as they comfort a child and wipe away the tears of their hurt child. They do not deny the pain, but they comfort and enter into it. They encourage the child with reasons that things will end okay and that the pain will not conquer. This Sovereign’s attentions are not the ‘be tough’ shushing of an impatient or distant parent to a child genuinely in pain, nor does the Sovereign unnecessarily comfort an emotional or manipulative outburst. 

 Instead the image given here is the Sovereign Lord squatting down before each child taking them in turn and re-opening all those bottled tears which have been stored up, not to re-live the pain but to engage its reality with empathy and bring resolution and full healing. Waiting with each tear till it has been dried, the Sovereign Lord stills and heals the heartbreak of all of His own: each loss, each grief, each pain, each betrayal, every agony of birthing, all the reproach which has been heaped on the child publicly or privately whether by themselves or others, each unfulfilled longing, every scarcely understandable cry of rage, each pang of guilt and insufficiency, every moment of teeth-gritting or of grinning-and-bearing-it, all the despair and disillusionment, in short, all the groaning and mourning and suffering which had been brought on by the curses in this cosmos. All of these heartcries will be engaged, even authenticated, and defanged by the One who values what may have, until that moment, been unseen and unacknowledged by any other in the universe. 

  Within this context, the sorrows of judgment must be mentioned; the tears which were mourned in the Lord’s comprehensive judgment of chapter 24 will also be dried. This One pauses for each tear till the heart that has held it is clear, the eye that it trickled from is dried. At that moment, nothing will be more important than these hurts and this healing. This is a key piece of the great salvation, and it will not be denied! Isaiah insists upon this point (Isa 30:19; 35:10; 51:11; 65:19). May hope in the Drier of Tears, who is also the Remove of Reproach, steady our hearts.

NOTE: There is no destruction of the human emotional capacity here; this is a making well of heartache. In the context (notice Isaiah 26), there is a full range of emotions during and following the ‘healing of sorrows.’ This is about healing and wellness, not simply or superficially about tears; tears are foregrounded as the powerful symbol summarizing the need for comprehensive healing. So, it is about tears; they are vitally important, but they are not ultimate, they will pass at the right time.

Real Unity and Humility

So unique and so God-like a thing is real unity on earth, absolute disinterested agreement in heart and motive, that its occurrence is not, and cannot be, anything short of the presence of God Himself. We know the agreement of the Triune God: earthly agreement is its manifestation.

This, then, cuts at the root of all envy, jealousy, petty irritation, personal dislike, contempt, conceit, self-assertiveness.

It is often more a sign of grace and love and humility to say "Amen" to another's prayers than to lead in prayer oneself.

~ Temple Gairdner (cited in Temple Gairdner of Cairo by Constance Padwick, pg 126-127)

 

 

Change that Matters

 Addressing systemic injustice will look different in each specific context. But change that truly matters will always manifest as tangible acts of justice that help people and communities thrive and flourish. This will require working together with people in your local communities who are being adversely affected by unjust systems and structures. Those people are the experts on what issues need to be addressed and what would really solve the problem. 

~ Brenda Salter McNeil, Becoming Brave, pg 190.

The promise and the paradox of the resurrection is that if you lose your life for the sake of the reconciling work of the gospel, you will find it. I can't promise that it will always be easy. I can't promise that you will be victorious in your pursuits on this side of heaven. But I can promise that God will bring life out of what you lose and will ultimately restore all things. There is much to be hoped for, despite the inevitable setbacks. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope." (192)

  Having finished the above book now, I'd recommend it for those who believe in reconciliation and justice as a key part of the work of God on the earth today. And, I suppose that if you don't believe in that, I'd recommend the book anyways since it presents compelling reasons why Christ-followers should. 

Justice, Storytelling, and a tiny fraction of God's magnificent enterprise

I recently heard Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil speak and was deeply challenged by her message. So, I decided to read her book Becoming Brave: Finding the Courage to Pursue Racial Justice Now. (Check your library or bookstore!) In it, she chronicles parts of her own journey in pursuing not only reconciliation but also justice, and she interacts with the biblical narrative of Esther. It's not a simple book to summarize, so I'm not going to try. 

However, what I have probably appreciated most about it is that she discusses justice across great swaths of humanity, not just one or two selective groups or 'races'. She is concerned with those you might expect and with those you might not. Here are two small excerpts that I want to share from her book, one of which is actually from someone she quotes.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long​ ​view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they​ ​hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further​ ​development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our​ ​capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of​ ​liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

(by Ken Untener)

THE STORY a person tells about other people really​ ​matters. I've learned to be much more careful and conscious of the stories being told to me about others. I pay attention to who is telling the story and their purpose in telling it. I also know that where someone begins the story shapes the overall narrative being told. (Pg105, emphasis added)

After the second quote, she tells the story of Haiti’s independence and how other nations ostracized it out of fear and greed. If you're not familiar with the story, you can get an introduction here: Investigating Haiti's 'Double Debt'.

Cragg's 'Call of the Minaret'

  Early in his classic work, The Call of the Minaret, Kenneth Craig surveys Islam at the current time; I am reading in the third edition published in 2000. In the first section, as he recounts different aspects of the Islamic (and Muslim) encounter with modernity, his thoughts - in many ways - apply to more than just Islam. They speak to the larger encounter of religion with the technological age. (All emphasis added to the quotes below.)

"For these [who see the Shari'ah and tradition as unchanging] there is no option between chronic permissiveness and the strictest literalism. Nor is this simply a male verdit or an authoritarian tyranny. Secreted in the home and behind the veil, Muslim womanhood finds no immolation or feminist restlessness, but devoted fulfillment of authentic Islam in a role positively undertaken. Sociologists may explain the phenomenon as they will. Religion has as great a capacity to resist modernity as to survive it. Only the opinionated would identify which is the truer Islam." (pg 17)

"There are those who cannot find the ancient reality in the new thoughts, others who cannot identify the ancient reality without them. In the strange but indispensable interaction of the faith and the faithful, the structure of belief and the participant believer, Islam and the Muslim, change is absorbed and continuity attained. That it is so is the genius of the partnership." (pg 26)

"Certainly a monotheism so tremendous as that of Muhammed and Islam is through and through a divine-human encounter. As such we must strive to know it. Whenever we study or confess doctrines of God we proceed upon parallel affirmations about humanity. So inseparable are the two realms that every theology is inevitably also a view of the human." (pg 38) 

  This book came highly recommended to me through the classes on Islam and Christianity that I have taken in the last couple years, and indeed this has the same sort of caring insight that Cragg is known for, being himself Christian but an accepted scholar of Islam. (previous post)

'Pollution and the Death of Man' - an odd title for a helpful book

  Books that speak to the real issues of humanity have a way of enduring. About 2 years ago when I posted 'Wasteful Wardens of the Planet', one of you readers suggested 'Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology' by Francis Schaeffer. Excepting the appendix, his words fill only about 80 pages and were published in 1970 with deep concern for both the destructive human habits towards our world and the lack of a biblical mindset on the topic by those who claim the Bible as their guide. The book can still be read with benefit as a valuable guide to where we're [still] at, where we should be at, and where others are [still] at around us. Schaeffer, as normal, is gracious, perceptive, and unafraid to say when he believes others are more biblical in their thoughts or actions than Bible-claimers are.

 Below I just want so share some of the quotations that I found thought-provoking although these quotations won't form a full comment on the book. (Bold emphasis added; italics original.)

Psychologically I ought to "feel" a relationship to the tree as my fellow creature ... we should realize, and train people in our churches to realize, that on the side of creation  and on the side of God's infinity and our finiteness-we really are one with the tree. (pg 54)

So the Christian treats "things" with integrity because we do not believe they are autonomous. (pg 54)

God makes a promise here [in Genesis 9] that embodies  all creation. God is interested in creation. He does not despise it. There is no reason whatsoever, and it is absolutely false biblically, for the Christian to have a platonic view of nature. What God has made, I, who am also a creature, must not despise. (pg 61)

[Citing Romans 8], The blood of the Lamb will redeem man and nature together, as it did in Egypt at the time of the Passover, when the blood applied to the door-posts saved not only the sons of the Hebrews, but also their animals. 

It is interesting that almost the whole "curse" in Genesis 3 is centered upon the outward manifestations. It is the earth that is going to be cursed for man's sake. It is the woman's body that is involved in the greatly multiplied conception and pain in childbirth. (pg 67)

On the basis of the fact that there is going to be total redemption in the future, not only of man but of all creation, the Christian who believes the Bible should be the man who -with God's help and in the power of the Holy Spirit- is treating nature now in the direction of the way nature will be then. (68-69)

Killing of animals for food is one thing, but on the other hand they do not exist simply as things to be slaughtered. ... Many men fish and leave their victims to rot and stink. But what about the fish? Has he no rights -not to be romanticized as though he were a man- but real rights? On the one hand it is wrong to treat the fish as though it were a human baby; on the other hand, neither is it merely a chip of wood. 

It is always true that if you treat the land properly, you have to make two choices. The first is in the area of economics. It costs more money, at least at first, to treat the land well. ... The second choice involved is that it usually takes longer to treat the land properly. And these are the two factors that lead to the destruction of our environment: money and time- or to say it another way, greed and haste.

[Regarding certain people's explicit call to pantheistic belief as an aid to ecological responsibility,] Pantheism gives you an answer for unity, but it gives no meaning to the diversity. (pg 30) [This philosophical question of unity and diversity is also important in his discussion of the Trinity elsewhere.]

Mañana - insights from Hispanic theology

 Years ago, I first heard of Justo Gonzalez when I was assigned to read his two-volume The Story of Christianity, which is still far and away the most engaging work of Christian history I have read, as well as likely the most comprehensive since it goes beyond European and North American history. At some point, I also became interested in reading Christian theology written by those from non-European cultural backgrounds like Toyohiko Kagawa. I believe that's when I came across Gonzalez's book Manana. I'm finally reading it now, and it has been very insightful in spite of being over 30 years old, likely because it includes much of the historical perspective which Gonzalez is so good at writing. Some excerpts...

  In short, biblical history is a history beyond innocence. Its only real heroes are the God of history and history itself, which somehow continues moving forward even in spite of the failure of its great protagonists. Since this is also the nature of Hispanic history, it may well be that on this score we have a hermeneutical advantage over those whose history is still at the level of guilty innocence, and who therefore must read Scripture in the same way in which they read their own history.
  To those who think of their own history in terms of high ideals and purity, this may seem to detract from the power and inspiration of Scripture. This, however, is not the case with Hispanics. We know that we are born out of an act of violence of cosmic proportions in which our Spanish forefathers raped our Indian foremothers. We have no skeletons in our closet. Our skeletons are at the very heart of our history and our reality as a people. Therefore, we are comforted when we read the genealogy of Jesus and find there not only a Gentile like ourselves but also incest and what amounts to David's rape of Bathsheba. The Gospel writer did not hide the skeletons in Jesus' closet but listed them, so that we may know that the Savior has really come to be one of us--not just one of the high and the mighty, the aristocratic with impeccable blood lines, but one of us. (77-78)

  A book of "Bible stories" usually includes the story of David and Goliath, but not of David and Bathsheba; the story of Solomon's wisdom in threatening to divide the disputed baby, but not of Solomon's idolatry. This is a subtle way of disparaging the Old Testament, for it amounts to improving on it. (78)

  This semi-Marcionism holds that since Jesus is the final and supreme revelation of God, the whole of Scripture is to be read and interpreted from the viewpoint of his message. This is true as far as it goes. But it forgets that since the Old Testament is the history of God's revelation and action in preparation for the coming of Christ, the message of Jesus must also be interpreted in the light of that revelation and action. In other words, the argument of the new semi-Marcionites fails in that it takes for granted that without the preparation of the Old Testament, we know what Jesus' message is. History shows that this is not true, for in the early church, as increasing numbers of Gentiles began to join the Christian community, it was clear that these Gentiles needed the background of the Old Testament in order to understand what the message was all about. Otherwise, they risked viewing Christianity as the gnostics and Marcion did. (81)

  Thus the "apolitical" Christianity that many advocate is in truth a Christianity that supports the politics that exist, that is, the power of those who are presently powerful. (83)

(All emphasis is added.)

  Anyways, I've just gotten to the more theological section, so maybe I'll have more later, but the first half of the book is very insightful whether one agrees with all of it or not.

Ruth: Overturned expectations

  I'm doing some studies in the books of Judges and Ruth, and I am currently reading a commentary written by a Jewish scholar on Ruth, Yehoshua Bachrach; it's called Mother of Royalty. It's got a variety of helpful insights, but two that I found particularly interesting come from Ruth chapter 2.

  This chapter starts out by introducing Boaz, the wealthy, "mighty man of valor" and relative of Naomi's dead husband, whom one might naturally expect to take up the slack and fill the needs of Naomi and Ruth which were known to the town and which Boaz can intuit from what he has been 'fully told' (2:21). Yet, he does nothing apparently. Then 'by chance', Ruth ends up gleaning in his field, and when he speaks to her, he allows her to continue as one of the poor who glean in the corners of the field and offers her water. Her response to him contains a rebuke: "I am a foreigner. Why do you even care about me?" (2:10) He should have already cared and shown it:

Ruth’s remarks contained an unintentional reproach – a rebuke to the kinsman, the redeemer, who had ignored his own relatives and had allowed Naomi to sit at home, alone and hungry. Here was Naomi’s daughter-in-law. She had come to gather food for her aged mother-in-law. […] Was she not instead crying out in protest at all the humiliation inflicted on the entire house of Elimelech, so cruelly treated in Beth-lehem? (pg 85, emphasis mine)

  Whether or not the reproach is intentional, Ruth is suddenly rebuking the 'mighty man of valor' who has not taken responsibility for his aged relative's poverty and has instead allowed a foreigner to do so! Indeed, Ruth's being a Moabite almost certainly told against her being socially accepted in Bethlehem according to the understanding of the Mosaic Law, but did it require others' inaction to care for her poor mother-in-law? Here was a 'foreign woman' who had acted upon YHWH's Law better than YHWH's people.

 A bit later (2:19-20), we find another reversal of our expectations regarding this 'man of valor'. Instead of the wealthy man blessing the two widows, it is the two widows who have here blessed him, and one of them is a Moabite! Citing Yalkut Shim’oni, Ruth Rabba 5.9, Bachrach quotes:

More than the householder does for the poor man, the poor man does for the householder, for so Ruth said to Naomi: “The man’s name for whom I wrought.” She did not say “who wrought for me” but “for whom I wrought.” I wrought him many benefits in return for the one morsel of food which he gave me. (94, emphasis mine)

 Even if Ruth is not quite as bold as the above comment suggests, this is still a remarkable set of verses as the order of blessing is unexpectedly overturned. Over and over in the LORD's system, we see that the weak, the poor, the unworthy, or the unknown are only so labeled in the eyes of those who don't see clearly. May we grow in seeing and being properly, as the One does!

from Augustine's The Teacher

Somehow Augustine's The Teacher made its way onto my reading list. This afternoon I took the time to read it. It's interesting, but what follow are not organized quotations, just notes and quotes that I wanted to preserve somewhere. The early discussion in the book about words and meanings is also interesting, but the discussion on the difficulty of actually 'teaching' mirrors  something I've talked about often with my students: demonstrating that learning happened is much easier than demonstrating that teaching has. I've heard it said that 'teaching' cannot be demonstrated to happen, only learning. Anyways...

from Augustine's The Teacher. trans by Robert Russell. 1968.

- pg 42 - Adeodatus, Augustine's son, touches on just how hard it is to define teaching. At the beginning of the dialogue, they have already pointed out that speaking in pursuit of learning is a method of teaching what one wants to know. 

- pg 44 - " Then it has been established that nothing can be taught without signs, and that we should value knowledge itself more highly than the signs which lead us to it, though it maybe that some of the things signified are not superior to their signs." 

pgs 45-46 - Augustine goes on to show how one can teach through real example the way to do something for an intelligent observer, not just through signs.

- pg 45 - "It is hazardous to mistake what is not known for what is known."

- pg 49 - "Certainly, when I learned to know the reality, I did not rely upon the words of another, but upon my own eyes, though I did possibly rely upon words to direct my attention, that is, to see what there was to see by looking."

- pg 49 "But the man who teaches me is one who presents to my eyes or to any bodily sense, or even to the mind itself, something that I wish to know."

- he then goes on to demonstrate how hard it is to use words to teach words; if we know what something means, we can't learn it. If we don't, we can't say we know what it is until we know the meaning.

- pg 54-55 - When one is asked a question and answers in the negative but then led to answer positively through a series of questions, this is still not teaching. It is simply that he is being led to perceive the problem more completely. They are helping the person to see things more clearly with their 'inner light'.

Then he discusses that questions must be matched to "that Teacher who teaches from within" apparently referring to Christ, who had been mentioned earlier.

When someone hears something I express with words... "In none of these cases, therefore, does he learn. It follows, therefore, that one who does not grasp the reality after hearing our words, or who knows that what he heard is untrue, or who could have given the same answer, if asked, has learned nothing by any words of mine."

pg 59 - "Do teachers ever claim that it is their own thoughts that are grasped and retained, rather than the branches of learning themselves which they purport to transmit by their speaking? What foolish curiosity could ever prompt a man to send his child to school in order to have him learn what the teacher thinks? But when teachers have made use of words to explain all those branches of learning which they profess to be teaching, including even those dealing with virtue and wisdom, then those who are known as pupils reflect within themselves whether what has been said is true, contemplating, that is, that inner truth according to their capacity. It is then, therefore, that they learn. And when they discover within themselves that what has been said is true, they praise their teachers, unaware that they are not so much praising the teachers as they are praising those who have been taught, provided, however, that the teachers also know what they are saying. But, men make the mistake of calling people "teachers" when they are not that at all, because there is generally no interval of time between the moment of speaking and that of knowing, and because their coming to learn from within follows quickly a upon the suggestive force of the speaker's words, they think that they have learned externally from him who spoke those words."

pg 60 - "Words merely stimulate a man to learn."

pg 60-1 - "He alone teaches who made use of external words to remind us that He dwells within us."

a thought on sabbatical, from pre-sabbatical reading

 We've been encouraged and enabled to take a time of sabbatical soon. Along with that, we've had various reading offered to us. The following quote comes from one of them in which Eugene Peterson compares academic and ministerial sabbatical's purpose and methods. The quotation below caught my attention in the former context.

The life of the mind, teaching and thinking, is strenuous. The mind tires, grows stagnant, begins to repeat itself. The annual invasion of students, their curious and questioning minds strangely mixed with ignorance an sloth, constitutes a formidable challenge to a professor.

~ Eugene Peterson, "Sabbatical is not Study Leave"