Job Interview, Psychological Assessment or Kindergarten?

Jul16

One of my teenagers went in for a job interview a few days ago. This interview was a “group interview” for a large chain retail establishment. Ten or twelve people sat around a table. Most of the people being interviewed were full grown adults, not teenagers. (This age note will become important later.) At the head of the table was the interviewer, and at the other end sat two people with pen and paper, taking notes.

The interviewer began by describing how this store was a wonderful place to work, how the employees were not really employees, but rather “partners.” After this spiel was over, the interviewer pulled out a basket of crayons and a stack of construction paper. She intructed my child and the others to draw a picture of how they imagined themselves working at this store. (OK, at this point I would have lost the job because my hysterical laughter would have convinced the interviewer that I was not partner material.) After they drew their pictures, each person at the interview shared his picture with the others, telling about what he had drawn and why. Then, the interviewer pulled out a basket of exotic fruits and vegetables. She gave one piece of fruit or one veggie to each person and asked them to sell the food item to the rest of the group. They were to tell the group what they thought was good or attractive about this particular food item. All the time the people at the end of the table were taking notes.

I haven’t interviewed for a job in a long while. Is this a typical interview nowadays, or am I justified in wondering whether or not I want my young adult to work at such a nutty place?

WAW

Jul15

Let your mercies come also to me, O Lord–
Your salvation according to Your word.
So shall I have an answer for him who reproaches me.
For I trust in Your word,
And take not the word of truth utterly our of my mouth.
For I have hoped in Your ordinances.
So shall I keep Your law continually,
Forever and ever.
And I will walk at liberty,
For I seek Your precepts.
I will speak of Your testimonies also before kings,
And will not be ashamed.
And I will delight myself in Your commandments,
Which I love.
My hands also I will lift up to Your commandments,
Which I love.
And I will meditate on Your statutes.

So where is the line between simply trusting in the mercies of God through Christ, speaking of God’s works before important people without shame, finding my hope in the word of God and not in the wisdom of men—-and simplistic trust which says “Jesus is the answer” before anyone gets a chance to ask the question? I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes (Romans 1:16); however, I am sometimes ashamed of the way that gospel is communicated. Following Jesus is not a formula: say a prayer, believe in Jesus, and go to heaven. Being a Christian is a lifetime of meditating on God’s statutes, delighting in His commandments, trusting in His word, and walking at liberty. Having been a Christian for more than forty years, I’m only beginning to understand how to do some of those things, but I keep stumbling in the right direction. I would invite anyone who’s interested to stumble along with me because even feeble progress in the direction of the Light is much better than standing around in the dark too proud to admit that I haven’t any light of my own.

Friday Blogamundi

Jul15

Themes revolving around the persistent conflict with Islam crop up in the oddest places, it seems. They intrude on William Shakespeare’s plays and Walter Scott’s novels. They make prominent appearances in the great poetic works of Dante, Milton, Chaucer. They form the backdrop for the stories of Robin Hood, Richard the Lionheart, Wallace and Bruce, Don Quixote, St. Francis, St. Louis, El Cid, Marco Polo, Henry the Navigator, Columbus, Magellan, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. They even make appearances in Pilgrim’s Progress, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Huckleberry Finn, Moby Dick, The Talisman, Greenmantle, and Ivanhoe. George Grant at Grantian Floregium

What does Islam have to do with King Arthur or with Pilgrim’s Progress? I’m sure I just don’t remember.

Much of the British public is snorting with derision every time a senior public figure repeats the mantra “it’s nothing to do with Islam.” Apparently, Islam has nothing at all to do with the global terror camaign. It’s just a coincidence. If one points out the fact that millions of Muslims believe things about Jews, women, and the rest of us infidel humans that would make any self-respecting English liberal blush, then there must be something wrong with you. George Miller at London Calling

Barbara from Mommy Life is posting this week from the Christian Retailers’ Convention in Denver.

Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost writes about Lessons of a Recovering Statistics-Addicted Influence Seeker . He has the right perspective on this whole blogging thing.

Waterfall on the birthday of poet John Clare. Waterfall is going to be teaching English literature and writing this next year, and I’m looking forward to reading about her adventures in teaching.

The guys at In the Agora celebrated Bastille Day by engaging in a favorite American pastime that dates back to the time of Ben Franklin—French-bashing. Sixty Million Frenchmen Must Be Wrong?

The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson

Jul14

I just finished reading this book that I picked up at the library because of the author. I remember reading Mr. Dickinson’s scifi/fantasy trilogy, The Weathermonger, Heartsease, and The Devil’s Children, when I was a teenager. At the time, I really enjoyed those books. I also realized at some point that Peter Dickinson is married to one of my favorite YA authors, Robin McKinley, author of Beauty and Rose Daughter, separate retellings of the story of Beauty and the Beast.

The Ropemaker was OK, not fantastic, just OK. Mr. Dickinson tells a good story, but after I was done I felt . . . unsatisfied. It’s as if there were no substance to the story, no real reason for telling it. Some people go on a quest, manage to get through all the attendant dangers and pitfalls, evil is defeated, and everyone gets home in the end. The heroine comes to some kind of self-knowledge or self-realization, but I’m not sure what it is she realizes. The storyteller leaves a lot of loose ends. Who is The Ropemaker and what will he do next? What is the difference between The Ropemaker and the other magicians in the story? Why do we have any reason to believe that The Ropemaker will remain uncorrupted by the power of magic? Is the magic in the story ultimately good or evil? Are the people in the story able to wield magic for good purposes or not? Why did the world start to change at the particular time the story takes place? What is the meaning of all this sound and fury?

At any rate, I looked at this bibliography of children’s and young adult novels by Peter Dickinson, and I thought several of them looked worthy of addition to The List. The Ropemaker wasn’t on The List. Of course, that’s the problem with my list; I find books that look interesting at the library while I’m getting some of the books I planned to read, and The List just grows and grows.

Bastille Day

Jul14



France French National Flag .

United States of America



Flags courtesy of this site
Do French people wish each other a Joyeaux Bastille Day? I don’t know, but today is that day, the day that Parisian citizens stormed the Bastille, a prison and a fortress, captured the weapons stored there, and began the French Revolution. Ever since a few days before the Fourth of July, I have been reading several books that illuminate the French/American connection and the revolutions that made those two countries what they are today.

1. Great Improvisations: Franklin, France, and Birth of America by Stacy Schiff. I’m still not through with this one. Although it won a Pulkitzer Prize, I find the level of detail in this book a little more than I can take except in small doses. Still, it’s fascinating to see how human Benjamin Franklin and the other American revolutionaries were, how it was only by God’s grace that we were able to gain our independence from England. It was just as touch and go as Iraq is today. We could easily have been forced to make peace with the British on their terms–or been forced into an unfavorable alliance with France that made us practically French vassals. Although Schiff never mentions the hand of God in all the diplomacy that Franklin and John Adams carried on in France, I see it clearly. The founding of this country truly was a miracle, due to God’s mercy and the prayers of many Christians who lived in the colonies at the time. I do not believe in the demonstrably false idea that all our Founding Fathers were Christians (Franklin was certainly unorthodox, to say the least), but many were committed Christians and praying men.

2. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini. Sabatini tells a good story set during the French Revolution; it reminds me of Star Wars, the “Luke, I am your father” motif. Why are young adventurers in swashbucklers always looking for their missing fathers?

3. The Glorious Cause: A Novel of the American Revolution by Jeff Shaara. I’m starting this one tonight. It’s fiction that covers the same time period as Great Improvisations.

Homeschooling Tip of the Week #1

Jul14

Here’s the first post in a new weekly feature at Semicolon. I’m planning to post these tips on Thursdays since the Weekly Slump hits about then in this house/homeschool. This week Molly at My Three Pennies Worth gives a long and detailed answer to this question (worth reading):

“Help–I have a housefull of little children, my house is a wreck, I am totally overwhelmed–so what curruculum do you use to homeschool when you hardly have time to implement anything as it is?”

Her answer (which I have learned by experience): Focus on the three R’s, Readin’, Ritin’, and ‘Rithmetic.

Make sure younger children do some reading some writing, and some math every day, and add in the “extras” as you have time, energy, and inspiration. Really, it works, and the inspiration will come eventually.

HE

Jul13

Teach me, O LORD, the way of Your statutes,
And I shall keep it to the end.
Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law.
Indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart.
Make me walk in the path of Your commandments,
For I delight in it.
Incline my heart to Your testimonies,
And not to covetousness.
Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things,
And revive me in Your way.
Establish Your word to your servant,
Who is devoted to fearing You.
Turn away my reproach which I dread,
For Your judgements are good.
Behold, I long for Your precepts;
Revive me in Your righteousness.

Teach me . . . the way. So how does God teach me? I used to wish God would speak to me in an audible voice. I wanted Him to tell me exactly what to do next. “Now it’s time to wash a load of clothes. OK, now you need a a little rest and relaxation. Read that book you got from the library. You’ve read long enough. It’s time to start cooking supper.” Well, I don’t get those kinds of instructions. The teaching God gives is more challenging; He requires me to think and to apply what I read in His word and to follow the example of Christ as I make both large and small decisions about what to do next and how to do it. It’s the same way I teach my children, really. I give them general instructions, but I leave the decisions about how to implement those instructions more and more up to them as they become older and more responsible. I’m aiming for children who know how to take the initiative to do what is right even when I’m not stnding right behind them. Still I make them walk in the path sometimes when they stray. I try to incline their hearts to listen to me and, ultimately, to God. I turn their eyes away from worthless things. I “feed” them God’s word to “revive them in righteousness.”

Give me understanding. ‘Splain, please. Make it clear to me what I should do, and I will do it–with my whole heart.

Make me walk in the path . . . for I delight in it. Isn’t there a contradiction here? If I delighted in God’s path, wouldn’t I walk in it without having to be forced? Well, no. As Paul said, “For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. . . . O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God–through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:15b, 24-25)

Incline my heart Tip the scales in the direction of obedience to You, God. I need Your help to even want to do what’s right.

Turn away my eyes from worthless things. “I count all things loss . . . that I may know Him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Phillipians 3:8, 10-11) Blogs, worthless. TV and movies, worthless. Books, worthless. Stuff, worthless. If I can’t turn my eyes away from any of them, I am in danger of idolatry. All these things and more are gifts that God gave us to enjoy, but all must assume their proper place in submission to the Lordship of Christ.

Your judgements are good. Do I really believe that God is good all the time? That He knows what He is doing when my friend’s husband dies leaving five children behind to be cared for by a single parent? That He is good and merciful when He allows evil terrorists to murder thousands on September 11 or fifty on July 7? That His judgements are good in allowing children to suffer and die in Sudan and in Zimbabwe and in tsunamis in Asia and in hospitals here in the U.S.? When I see these things and ask why, I need to be revived in righteousness. I need Him to give me understanding.

More Reading Lists!

Jul12

School of Abraham. What a treasury of reading lists! I found the link at Writing and Living.

Poppins Classical Academy Grade 1 Read Aloud List

Lists of Classics, Eastern and Western by Robert Teeter

Lots of links to booklists on all sorts of subjects from Waterboro Public Library in Maine

A Year’s Illustrated Book Study for the Family at House of Literature. This list is similar to my Picture Book Preschool, not as many books and listed by the month rather than the week.

From Engineer Husband

Jul12

The Space Shuttle returns to flight tomorrow, July 13, after 2-1/2 years. Launch is scheduled for something like 12:51 pm CDT.

Please pray for the crew and their families, as well as those making late launch decisions.

Born July 12

Jul12

Johanna Spyri was born July 12, 1827 at Hirzel, Switzerland. She wrote the children’s classic, Heidi. Does anyone else remember reading Heidi Grows Up and Heidi’s Children, sequels to Heidi? I read both sequels as a child, and I remember that Heidi marries Peter the goatherd and that they have twins. I think there was some kind of mystery associated with Heidi’s ancestry, too, and something hidden under some tiles on the floor. I’d enjoy reading all three books again, just to see if they’re as good as I thought they were.

Other birthdays today:

Henry David Thoreau, b. 1817.

Bill Cosby, b. 1938. “In dealing with kids, no matter how little we understand their explanations, we must always remember that we’re the adults. What this means I have no idea. It certainly means nothing to the kids, who instinctively seem to know that adults are merely strange people who have dopey ideas like “Stop throwing peas at your sister.”

Pablo Neruda, b. 1904. Chilean poet whose real name was Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Il Postino, an Italian movie that won a couple of Oscars in 1996, features the story of a postman who learns to appreciate poetry while delivering the mail to Pablo Neruda’s country home. Unfortunately, both the real Pablo Neruda and the fictional postman in the movie ended up embracing Communism as a cure for all the world’s problems.