The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make his face to shine upon you,
and be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you,
and give you peace.
"Mr. Shapard explains absolutely everything. He restores the proper contemporary meanings to word like “condescending” (polite to inferiors) and “vicious” (inclined to vice). “Fun,” it turns out, was a vogue word, the “awesome” of its day, which is why the flighty Lydia Bennet — the foolish sister who runs away with the despicable George Wickham — uses it a lot. Mr. Shapard sorts out the differences among a phaeton, a gig, a chaise and a curricle, distinctions as clear to Austen’s readers as the difference between a Volvo and a Porsche is to us."
"My dad and I were as different as could be (I made sure of that), but his life had a clarity that I can find in poetry. He was a carpenter, and if I close my eyes, I can see him, thirtyish , handsome, sawdust in his dark hair, running a 2x4 through a circular saw, trimming it, holding it up to the studs...This simple act, repeated a thousand times as he built the house up over our heads, had the cadence and fervor of poetry. He didn't earn his daily bread sitting in a conference room, manipulating people, moving big wads of cash around, spinning a web of hogwash; compared to that, his life was poetry. When he bowed his head and gave thanks before a meal, it was always the same words, the same cadence. When he took a chicken by the legs and laid its neck against the block and lifted the ax and chopped off its head, there was a plain cadence to that. I hear that whack in poetry. Comedians are the children at the upstairs window, amused by the hysteria of the chickens trying to escape over the fence, waiting for the hammerer to pound his thumb so they can imitate his pain, hop around and howl. Comedy is a predatory sport, closer to the lynch mob than to church. Poetry is church. What animates poetry is faith, the same faith that moves the builder and the butcher... (P)oetry is about driving the nail into the pine, killing the chicken, mowing grass, putting luggage into the car, gratitude for food, the laughter of a little girl, about our common life."
"This is a book of poems that if I knew you better and if you were in a hard passage I might send you one or two along with a note, the way people used to do, believing in the bracing effect of bold writing."
"My school years were so stressful, when I think back on them I cringe. If you took away Tom Sawyer, and replaced it with a technical manual...well, I hate to even think about it. Tom Sawyer, Diary of Anne Frank, Adam of the Road, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, those were the things that got me through my grade school, middle school years. Also being in Chorus in 7th grade. It's hard to argue with the general idea of standardized tests, the concept is good, but if it means losing music, art, PE, and TOM SAWYER, well...it just makes me sad. And reading a good book that you like makes you a better reader. It motivates a kid to read because they like it. That is so obvious, it's almost stupid to write it. What's motivational about a technical manual? I feel for J., and for his students as well."
"It is a wonder and a delight to be led by Eva Brann through the Socratic conversations. She begins from first impressions and moves through perplexity to clarity, without losing the thread. Those who do not know the Republic will be initiated into its treasures. Those who believe that it is a great book will understand better what they already know."-Ann Hartle, Emory University
Today I saw your brief post on how adhering to state standards if leaching the joy from teaching for your husband. I'm a middle school teacher (21 years and counting) and I'd like to say bless you for acknowledging the frustration so many of us teachers feel these days. I just crossed off another fun and creative activity from my lesson plans because it will take time away from test prep. . .what a shame. Before I came home yesterday, I had to cover up any bulletin boards or classroom displays that might "help" the kids with the upcoming standardized tests--SIX days starting Monday. . . one test per day. Please tell your husband I'm sharing his pain.
Part of the reason for the appeal of Mere Christianity is of course that—like virtually everything Lewis wrote—it remains a splendid read. Lewis is feisty and lyrical, funny and moving, full of brilliant images, similes, and extended metaphors.
Even when they don’t work as well as they might (he regularly uses maths, or “sums” as he calls it, as an illustration, and I found myself wondering whether theology and maths are really the same sort of thing), they take our minds darting to and fro, leaping over hedges and ditches, constantly glimpsing the countryside from new angles and with the fresh air of intelligent argument in our lungs.
Touchstone is a Christian journal, conservative in doctrine and eclectic in content, with editors and readers from each of the three great divisions of Christendom — Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox. The mission of the journal and its publisher, the Fellowship of St. James, is to provide a place where Christians of various backgrounds can speak with one another on the basis of shared belief in the fundamental doctrines of the faith as revealed in Holy Scripture and summarized in the ancient creeds of the Church.
"When I was a high school junior, our English teacher assigned a term paper on the theme of blindness in Oedipus Rex and King Lear. We were supposed to go through the two tragedies and circle every reference to eyes, light, darkness, and vision, then draw some conclusion on which we would base our final essay.
It all seemed so dull, so mechanical. We felt we were way beyond it. Without this tedious, time-consuming exercise, all of us knew that blindness played a starring role in both dramas.
Still, we liked our English teacher, and we wanted to please him. And searching for every relevant word turned out to have an enjoyable treasure-hunt aspect, a Where's Waldo detective thrill. Once we started looking for eyes, we found them everywhere, glinting at us, winking from every page.
Long before the blinding of Oedipus or Gloucester, the language of vision and its opposite was preparing us, consciously or unconsciously, for those violent mutilations. It asked us to consider what it meant to be clear-sighted or obtuse, shortsighted or prescient, to heed the signs and warnings, to see or deny what was right in front of one's eyes. Teiresias, Oedipus, Goneril, Kent - all of them could be defined by the sincerity or falseness with which they mused or ranted on the subject of literal or metaphorical blindness.
It was fun to trace those patterns and to make those connections. It was like cracking a code that the playwright had embedded in the text, a riddle that existed just for me to decipher. I felt as if I were engaged in some intimate communication with the writer, as if the ghosts of Sophocles and Shakespeare had been waiting patiently all those centuries for a bookish sixteen-year-old to come along and find them."
Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.
“We need to stop endlessly repeating ’You’re special’ and having children repeat that back,” said the study’s lead author, professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. “Kids are self-centered enough already.”
I read other blogs where they read piles of books, comment far more intelligently on them than I could, and I wonder how they do it. They might have fewer children than I do, they might need less sleep or read faster, they might...etc.etc., but I have come to realize this is not a comparison game or a competition to see who can read more. I post the books I have read on my blog as a way of remembering what I have read; I find it much too easy to forget what has influenced me, thus I blog.
... I will go to my grave defending the idea that one book, well read, can be enough to change an entire life, so it doesn't really matter how much we read. What matters is the way the reading causes us to grow.
COVID:2 Collage Four years ago today we all came home for the lock down. Middle school classes conducted by zoom on the deck, college cours...
