Interesting article in the Seattle Times about Christian-themed books, particularly fiction. Unfortunately, the author cites the Left Behind books as the primary examples.
Archive | August 2004
Homeschooled Olympic Athlete
Jennifer Nichols is a homeschool graduate, a Christian, and an archer. This quote is from her interview with a PBS reporter:
I want it to be like a worship to him. I give God my best, but if that doesn’t measure up to what other people are doing, I have offered my best. And that is all he wants.
It sounds to me as if she’s got it pretty well in perspective. Read more about Jennifer Nichols and her Olympic performance here, and here.
Jennifer Nichols only made it to the quarterfinals in individual competition at the Olympics, but I’m sure she and her parents and God are all pleased with her best. She still has the team competition on Friday. Oh, and for Dancer Daughter, J. N. is a dancer, too.
She says dancing is an outlet and has taken classes in ballet, modern, jazz, tap and Irish Step. She recently started teaching a “pre-dance” class to 4- to 6-year-olds at a dance studio in Cheyenne.
I Think I’ll Simplify My Life and Get a Job
According to Scripture, a married woman’s focus and orientation is required to be towards her home. But while the Bible teaches that a woman’s priority is the home (Tit. 2:11), the Bible most emphatically does not teach that a woman’s place is limited to the home. Her place is in the home (1 Tim. 5:14), real estate (Prov. 31:16), agriculture (31:16), evangelism (Phil. 4:3), philanthropy (Prov. 31:20), logistical support for ministry (Rom. 16:1,6), explaining theology (Acts 18:26), and more. In all of this, the central responsibility is of course the home. This priority on the home is not threatened by geographical location; it is threatened only by sin and disobedience. ?Douglas Wilson in Credenda Agenda, Vol. 7, Issue 3 Feminist Traditionalism
I’m not doing too well at my dominion over the home, but it’s not because my mind and my abilities are not being challenged enough. I’m just not very good at the career in which God has placed me. Right now a simple 9 to 5 job sounds boring, but at least possible. No, really, I’ll keep doing my best to manage my home, and pray for grace and wisdom.
Join Me in Glad Adoration
Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus
by Helen Lemmel
(1863-1961)
O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s light for a look at the Savior,
And life more abundant and free!
Chorus:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.
Through death into life everlasting
He passed, and we follow Him there;
Over us sin no more hath dominion?
For more than conquerors we are!
His Word shall not fail you; He promised;
Believe Him, and all will be well:
Then go to a world that is dying,
His perfect salvation to tell!
In 1918, Helen Lemmel, a teacher of voice at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, wrote these words and the tune to go with them. She was inspired by these words in a tract called Focused: “So then, turn your eyes upon Him, look full into His face and you will find that the things of earth will acquire a strange new dimness. ”
I desperately need to focus my attention and hope on Jesus Christ himself today instead of all the things that distress and distract me. Won’t you do the same?
Sin Leads to More Sin; Movies Lead to Catharsis?
Alfred Hitchcock: “”Seeing a murder on television can help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.”
Today is also the anniversary of the birth of Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (b.1899, d.1980). I have seven Hitchcock films on my 102 Best Movies list: The Man Who Knew Too Much, North By Northwest, Notorious, Rear WIndow, Rebecca, To Catch a Thief, and Vertigo.
So Hitchcock is my favorite director. He made scary movies that were not (usually) gory nor full of gratuitous violence. I don’t include Psycho or The Birds on my list because I watched them both ages ago and they scared the bejabbers out of me. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I do know that I plan never to see either one of them again. As for the others that did make the list, they are full of suspense, plot twists and engaging characters. I would have preferred that Hitchcock had cast someone besides Kim Novak in Vertigo, but as compensation, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart are about my favorite leading men.
Hitchcock, again, with the last word: “‘Once a man commits himself to murder, he will soon find himself stealing. The next step will be alcoholism, disrespect for the Sabbath and from there on it will lead to rude behaviour. As soon as you set the first steps on the path to destruction you will never know where you will end. Lots of people owe their downfall to a murder they once committed and weren’t too pleased with at the time ‘”
Charlotte Mary Yonge
Victorian author Charlotte Yonge was born on this date in 1823 (d. 1901). She was extremely prolific, author of over 120 books in addition to children’s stories, Sunday School materials, and other writings. She taught Sunday School for over seventy years to children of the village where she lived out her life. Her books are, I gather from my reading, too Victorian and Christian and didactic to be very popular nowadays, but they were enormously popular in Victorian England. She loved history and wrote many volumes of history, especially history stories for young children. I read a bit of one of her books online at Project Gutenberg, a book called Young Folks’ History of England. I thought it was delightful–even though I couldn’t agree with her characterizations of all the kings she writes about. Here’s an excerpt to give you a sample:
About Henry V The young King Henry was full of high, good thoughts. He was devout in going to church, tried to make good Bishops, gave freely to the
poor, and was so kindly, and hearty, and merry in all his words and ways, that everyone loved him. Still, he thought it was his duty to go and make war in France. He had been taught to believe the kingdom belonged to him, and it was in so wretched a state that he thought he could do it good. The poor king, Charles VI., was mad, and had a wicked wife besides; and his sons, and uncles, and cousins were always fighting, till the streets of Paris were often red with blood, and the whole country was miserable. Henry hoped to set all in order for them, and gathering an army together, crossed to Normandy.
Here are some titles of books by Yonge; I truly enjoyed reading just the titles, so evocative of a bygone era.
Aunt Charlotte’s Stories of English History for the Little Ones
Aunt Charlotte’s Stories of German History for the Little Ones
(and Greek and French and Roman, etc.)
Burnt Out: A Story for Mother’s Meetings
Aunt Charlotte’s Evenings at Home with the Poets
How to Teach the New Testament
Stray Pearls
Given to Hospitality
Spring Buds: Counsels for the Young
The Penniless Princesses
The Crossroads, or a Choice in Life
The Patriots of Palestine, a Story of the Maccabees
Reasons Why I am a Catholic and not a Roman Catholic
Willie’s Trouble and How He Came Out of It
Don’t those titles take you back in time? The books themselves may be pure drivel, but I plan to add Yonge’s most famous novel, The Heir of Redclyffe to my legendary and growing Reading List. She may simply be too pious, in the best sense of the word, for our modern and post-modern sensibilities.
Frontier House
Computer Guru Son and I have been watching the PBS version of reality TV, the series Frontier House. I checked out a DVD of the entire series at the library, and we’ve watched all but the final episode. In the series, three families from various parts of the U.S. are asked to live on a homestead in Montana using only the tools and survival skills available to a family in 1883. I’m impressed with the amount of work, ingenuity, and just grit that it took to live on the frontier–even in the summer/fall of the year. I can’t imagine surviving a Montana winter. I told my son that I don’t think I’d last any longer than two days, but then even in my rather sheltered life I’ve found that people often can do whatever they have to do. In other words, if there were no choice, if I were “stuck” on a homestead in Montana in 1883, I might find that I could do what had to be done. I thought the historical aspects of the program were very interesting, and the concept is intriguing. However, I did find it amazing that at least two of the three families were willing to air so much “dirty laundry” in public. These families know that they’re going to be on TV, yet they feud and gossip and talk about divorce and about their private lives. I doubt if families of the 1880’s would have been anywhere near so open with their private affairs. But in our day and age we “let it all hang out.” I’m also amazed at what some people write on their blogs for all the world to see. Propriety is a lost concept.
Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
And now for something completely different . . . I finished reading this Wodehouse comedy. Here are some quotes to cheer you up, if you need cheering.
I have always found that in moments of heart-bowed-downness there is nothing that calms the bruised spirit like a good go at the soap and water. I don’t say I actually sang in the tub, but there were times when it was a mere spin of the coin whether I would do so or not.
It was the old, old story, I supposed. A man’s brain whizzes along for years exceeding the speed limit, and then something suddenly goes wrong with the steering-gear and it skids and comes a smeller in the ditch.
I was trying to think who you reminded me of. Somebody who went about strewing ruin and desolation and breaking up homes which, until he came along, had been happy and peaceful. Attila is the man. It’s amazing. . . . To look at you one would think you were just an ordinary sort of amiable idiot–certifiable, perhaps, but quite harmless. Yet, in reality, you are a worse scourge than the Black Death. I tell you, Bertie, when I contemplate you I seem to come up against all the underlying sorrow and horror of life with such a thud that I feel as if I had walked into a lamp post.
And since I can’t leave you there, in the company of death and gloom and Attila the Hun, here’s one more:
To say that Bertram was now definitely nonplussed would be but to state the simple truth. I could make nothing of this. I had left Brinkley Court a stricken home, with hearts bleeding wherever you looked, and I had returned to find it a sort of earthly paradise. It baffled me.
And there you are, nonplussed and baffled.
This book can be borrowed by member families from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
On this date in 1809, Alfred was born, the fourth of twelve children, and his father educated him at home. Also of interest, Tennyson couldn’t see very well; without a monocle he could not even see to eat. Therefore, he composed much of his poetry in his head, memorizing and working on the poems over the course of many years sometimes. Tennyson was enormously popular in Victorian England; his Idylls of the King sold more than 10,000 copies in one month. I can’t imagine a book of poetry being that popular in this day and time. Tennyson was a Christian, and he asked that this famous poem be printed at the end of any collection of his poetry:
Crossing the Bar
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho? from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
Tennyson died in 1892 at the age of 83.
Children’s literature is for everyone
Today is the day for birthdays of authors of “children’s literature.” However, I am in agreement with C.S. Lewis who once said the “it certainly is my opinion that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.” I also think there’s something to be said for adults who still have enough “childlikeness” to enjoy good children’s literature. So, these authors who have birthdays today are all three worth reading and enjoying–even for grownups.
Robert Bright wrote My Red Umbrella, the story of a little girl with an umbrella that expands to protect all her animal friends from the rain. Shouldn’t we all have just such an umbrella?
Maud Petersham (b. 1890, d.1971), along with her husband Miska, wrote and illustrated more than sixty books for children and illustrated more than one hundred books written by other authors. The Petersham book I like best is called The Box with Red Wheels.. I would love to own some of the Petershams’ other books, many of which are out of print. Maud was the daughter of a Baptist minister, and she and her Hungarian husband wrote and illustrated many retellings of Bible stories.
Ruth Sawyer (b. 1880, d. 1970) was a storyteller, folklorist, and children’s author. I need to re-read Roller Skates, the book for which she won the Newbery Award. It’s the story of a girl who explores New York City, or maybe her section of NYC, on roller skates. I found out when I looked for information about Sawyer that she started the first storytelling program for children at the New York City Public Library. Also, Robert McCloskey, author of Make Way for Ducklings and Blueberries for Sal, was Ruth Sawyer’s son-in-law! And my favorite Ruth Sawyer book, Journey Cake, Ho!, was illustrated by Robert McCloskey.
By the way, all the books mentioned in this post (except for Roller Skates which isn’t a picture book) are recommended in my self-published book, Picture Book Preschool.