Archive | May 2005

Grace to the Humble

May21

Proverbs 3:34 He mocks proud mockers
but gives grace to the humble.

I was standing in line while shopping a couple of days ago, and behind me was a woman about my age whom I knew slightly. She works at the store where I shop, and she is mentally handicapped, how mildly or severely, I don’t know, but she does her job well. She was talking to a young lady about 20 years of age, and I wondered what the relationship was. The young lady was not handicapped as far as I could tell and the two were making plans to meet later after the older woman’s work was done. I couldn’t quite figure out what the two women had in common, until at last the older woman proudly introduced the 20 year old to the cashier.

“Have you ever met my daughter?” she said. “This is my daughter. She came to visit me.”

The younger lady smiled and nodded, gave her name to the cashier, paid for her purchases, and told her mother, “I’ll see you later when you get off work.”

It was not a very significant or unusual vignette. A mother introduced her daughter to her co-worker. Nevertheless, I was surprised. I was reminded of the book I read recently, Riding the Bus With My Sister by Rachel Simon. I was reminded that mentally handicapped adults have lives just like the rest of us. They have boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, and even daughters or sons. Developmentally disabled people ride buses and work in grocery stores and love their children and make dates to meet a friend. Sometimes they sin, and they need grace just as I do. They have relationships with other people who are developmentally disabled and with friends and family members who are not handicapped.

I liked reading the book Rachel Simon wrote about the time she spent riding the city buses with her mentally handicapped sister, Beth, because Beth is a real person. She is sometimes a pain in the neck. She’s not always lovable or cooperative. Beth wants to be a “good person,” but she’s also selfish, like the rest of us, and very interested in being the center of attention, again like many others I could name. I liked the movie Napoleon Dynamite for the same reason. Napoleon is not too bright either, at least borderline developmentally disabled. He’s also not always too easy to like. He’s abrasive, and he whines. He’s a real person, and the filmmakers never let viewers forget that. He likes girls, and he has a friend named Pedro. He, too needs grace, just as I do.

Lord, give me the grace to see others I meet , not as members of some artificially contrived group–the poor, the homeless, blacks, Hispanics, whites, middle class, rich, intelligentsia, mentally disabled. Help me to see people as people with families and needs and personality quirks and gifts to share. Give me the grace to be humble and to see Your grace in the humility of others.

Born May 20th

May20

Margery Allingham (b. 1904) wrote mystery novels featuring detective Albert Campion and his manservant Lugg. She was another one of those “British lady mystery writers of the 1920’s through the 40’s” like Dame Agatha, Dorothy Sayers, and Josephine Tey. I read one of her books a long time ago, The Fashion in Shrouds, but I remember being very puzzled as to what exactly was happening in the novel. I think I’ll try another and see if I remain confused or become a fan. Official website of the Margery Allingham Society.

Sigrid Undset (b. 1882) wrote Kristin Lavransdotter, a trilogy of novels set in the Middle Ages in Norway about a woman’s life, mariage, and death and her relationship to God and to the church. A good friend recommended this set of novels to me long ago, but I have never gotten around to reading them. They’re on my list. Undset “wove religious themes into most of her works” and believed that “motherhood is the highest duty to which a woman can aspire.” She sounds like my kind of gal. Sigrid Undset won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. She also joined the resistance when Norway was occupied by the Nazis and was eventually forced to flee to the United States where she lived in exile until the war was over.

Anne Boleyn

May19

On May 19, 1536, Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, was beheaded after being tried for and convicted of adultery and witchcraft. Lady Boleyn had an exta finger on one hand and a large mole on her neck–proof positive that she practiced sorcery. She was also accused of having an incestuous relationship with her brother and of committing adultery with several other men. And she had miscarried a deformed baby in a day and age when such defects were thought to be the result of witchcraft or gross sin on the part of the parent(s). Of course, neither the miscarriage nor the deformity could have been Henry’s fault, nor could he be blamed for Anne’s real crime, the failure to produce a male heir to the throne.

She only left behind a red- headed daughter, who became Elizabeth I, arguably England’s most famous and powerful monarch ever.

If you would like to learn more about the six wives of Henry VIII, I recommend: The Six Wives of Henry VIII (Miniseries).

These movies were originally produced for the BBC in 1970, and I first saw them when I was a teenager. I thought they were great then, and I still think they are very well acted and quite informative. They’re not documentaries, but rather dramatizations of the lives, and of course deaths, of each of Henry’s six wives. You can probably get them either on video or DVd from the library. Enjoy.

Born May 18th

May17

Omar Khayyam, b. 1048. Last year’s post on the Persian poet.

Dame Margot Fonteyn, b. 1919, d. 1991. Celebrated British ballerina, her most famous role was Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty. (For Dancer Daughter–and anyone else who might be interested in The Dance.)

Pope John Paul II, b 1920, d. 2005. Karol Wojtyla was born in Wadowice, Poland. He was the first Polish pope. I like this papal quote: “Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.” And this one should be posted above my door because we all have much work to do in this regard: “To maintain a joyful family requires much from both the parents and the children. Each member of the family has to become, in a special way, the servant of the others.”

Lillian Hoban, b. 1925. Last year’s post on Lillian Hoban.

Born May 17th

May17

Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords — philosophy, art, poetry, politics, love, scandal, and the weather.
— Anna Brownwell Jameson (May 17, 1794-1860), Irish/English art critic, author; from Conversations, Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad; With Tales and Miscellanies, 1834

What strings would you add to the lyre? What do people really converse about? Men talk about sports. Perhaps that should be added, although not for my conversational tastes. Do people discuss poetry very much anymore? Maybe that “chord” should be changed to literature. I do think people talk about books. At least I do. What else? News? Celebrities? What would your seven chords of conversation be? How do you start a conversation with someone you’ve just met? What do you talk about after the introduction is completed?

Gary Paulsen, b. May 17, 1939, is the author of several wilderness survival and other novels for young adults, including Hatchet, Dogsong, and Brian’s Winter. According to his website, these are the things you really need to survive on your own in the wilderness:

The Essentials of Wilderness Survival
Don’t leave home without them!

• Matches (preferably waterproof)
• Food and water (make sure you have plenty for any emergency)
• Extreme weather clothing, such as a hat and mittens
• Waterproof outer layer
• Flashlight and extra batteries
• Compass

Hey, adventurous types, what, if anything would you add to this list? I wouldn’t have a clue since a walk around the block is about as adventurous as I get. I have a friend who calls me a “greenhouse plant.”

Picture Book Preschool–Second Week in May

May15

Picture Book Preschool is a preschool/kindergarten curriculum which consists of a list of picture books to read aloud for each week of the year and a character trait, a memory verse, and activities, all tied to the theme for the week. You can purchase an updated, downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.

Character Trait: Trust
Bible Verse: I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Psalm 23:6b

1. Tudor, Tasha, illus. The Lord Is My Shepherd: The Twenty-Third Psalm. Philomel, 1980.
2. McCloskey, Robert. Make Way for Ducklings. Viking, 1941.
3. Hoberman, Mary Ann. A House Is a House for Me. Viking, 1978.
4. DeRegniers, Beatrice. A Little House of Your Own. Harcourt, 1954. OP
5. Carle, Eric. A House for Hermit Crab. Picture Book Studio, 1987.
6. McDonald, Megan. Is This a House for Hermit Crab? Orchard, 1990.
7. Morris, Ann. Houses and Homes. Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1992.

Activities: Discuss different types of homes. Draw pictures of a house, a tent, a cabin, a castle, and other kinds of homes. What will our home in heaven be like? (See John 14)
Build homes out of blocks or LEGOs or other building toys.

Books Are Movies?

May14

I’ve read two recently published novels in the last few days, and as I was reading the second one, I realized something. Books nowadays are written in the form of movies. Either that or I read them that way, and I don’t think that’s it because I don’t see this movie formula in older books. Let me describe what I mean, and you see if you recognize it in the next novel you read.

1. Scene changes: The author writes a page or two or three about one set of characters in one setting; then he leaves some extra space or inserts a line or few dingbats and switches to another character or characters in another locale. The reader knows that all these separate stories and characters are going to come together by the end of the movie, er … novel, but no one except the scriptwriter himself knows exactly how they are related or how they will resolve into a satisfying ending. Older writers don’t switch scenes nearly so quickly. Tolkien has long sections about one set of characters before he moves to another set; Dickens has different sets of characters in different settings, but he follows David Copperfield, for instance, as he goes from one setting to another. David is the thread that ties everyone together.

2. Plot and action: Every short scene has to have some sort of physical action. Even when the characters are just talking or thinking at first, they’re almost always interrupted by some Event or Important Pronouncement. Someone jumps out the window; shots are fired; secrets are revealed; at the very least the love interest falls into the hero’s arms–or slaps him.

3. Romance: No modern movie or book is complete without at least one romance. Moby Dick would never make it these days. Where’s Ishmael’s love interest? No Huck Finn or Red Badge of Courage either. In fact one of the books I read is set during WWII, but the author can’t decide whether he’s writing a war novel or a romance. I guess it’s both at the same time. At least Henry V (Shakespeare) waits until the battle part is all over before he woos his lady love.

I’m not saying these rules don’t work to produce a readable story, but when did these become the rules? Do publishers or editors tell writers to write according to this formula? I’m really curious. Maybe there’s name for this kind of writing or a set of rules written down somewhere in Publishing Land, and I’m way behind because I just noticed the phenomenon. I so, go ahead and tell me. I’m used to being behind the times.

The first book I read, Improbable by Adam Fawer, was an absorbing thriller. It worked. I could have done without some of the more graphic violence, but I guess that’s part of the formula, too, so that your movie book will get at least a PG-13 or an R rating. (Actually, if I had to watch some of the stuff described in this book, I’d give it an X rating.) Lots of violence, plot twists galore, and little or no sex (but the obligatory love interest is there).

The other book is The Keeper’s Son by Homer Hickam, author of Rocket Boys which was made into a very successful movie, October Sky. This one, as I said, is set during WWII off the coast of North Carolina. Maybe Mr. Hickam writes movie-style because he’s already had one of his books made into a movie. However, the romantic interludes were just a distraction in the middle of a German submarine vs. US Coast Guard war novel. The novel focuses on Josh Thurlow, the captain of the Coast Guard boat, and on Krebs, commander of the German submarine that is sinking freighters with impunity just off the coast of Killakeet Island where Josh’s patrol and rescue boat is stationed. The duel between these two men and the details about life on a German submarine are interesting, but we keep on having other subplots and supporting characters stuck in the middle of it all whose presence is unnecessary. There’s a Preacher who’s lost his faith, a German who may be Josh’s long lost brother, a crazed-by-grief Navy commander who shanghais one of Thurlow’s sailors, etc.

I really read this book only because it comes before Hickam’s newest book, The Ambassador’s Son, which also features Josh Thurlow and is set in the South Pacific. I guess Thurlow got a transfer after the first book. I thought that The Ambassadot’s Son sounded interesting because it also has two fictional characters named “Shafty” and “Nick” who turn out to be none other than JFK and Richard Nixon, in their younger war years. I don’t know if I’ll read this sequel or not, though; as I read the blurbs it seems to me that again there’s altogether too much romance worked into the mix. Maybe I’ll just wait for the movie.

Shakespearean Questions, or Nobody Asked My Opinion, but Here It Is Anyway

May12

Someone with the initials K.B. challenged Mental Multivitamin to answer these Shakespeare questions. I thought it would be fun to borrow the meme/quiz and answer them myself. You can play, too, if you’d like.

1. Name the first five lines of Shakespeare that come into your head. (No fair looking them up or thinking too hard.)
To be or not to be; that is the question. —Hamlet

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time. —Macbeth

Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them,
But not for love.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. —As You Like It

Out, out damned spot! –Macbeth

2. The last Shakespeare play you went to see on stage.

At Shakespeare at Winedale last summer we saw The Merry Wives of WIndsor and The Tempest

3. The last Shakespeare film homage or adaptation you watched at home or at the movies.

It seems to me that we watched Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado about Nothing a couple of months ago.
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4. What Shakespeare homage/adaptation/plays are on your to be read/seen list?

We’ll go to Winedale again this summer (God willing), and we’ll see Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A group of home-schooled drama students are presenting A Comedy of Errors (set in the 1920’s?) in a couple of weeks, and I’m looking forward to that bit of fluff and fun.

5. Name a favorite Shakespeare-inspired work.

West Side Story

6. Why do you think Shakespeare’s plays are still popular?

MMV quotes Harold Bloom. I’ll just say that Shakespeare’s plays are still popular because Shakespeare knew about people and knew how to write plays about people and knew how to use words that people would remember and quote and use to define their own thoughts and feelings and situations.

Spy List

May8

Spy List by Spyriam aka Brown Bear Daughter (age 10)
1. A good spy never sulks.
2. A good spy never worries.
3. A good spy never panics.
4. A good spy is never desperate.
5. A good spy puts himself in the mind of his opponent.
6. A good spy never has to go to the bathroom in the middle of a mission.
7. A good spy reads all she can.
8. A good spy blends in; always wear black.
9. A good spy explores everything.
10. A good spy always completes his mission.
11. A good spy follows orders exactly.
12. A good spy is always ready.
13. A good spy is always prepared.
14. A good spy always has all the equipment he needs.
15. A good spy takes good care of his gear (never steps on his glasses).
16. A good spy is always sneaky.
17. Spies wear cool hats.
18. Spies are always serious besides when duty calls that they should be funny.
19. Spies do not think about the past; it distracts from the now.
20. Spies are always careful not to reveal their identity except to people they can trust.

SpyMom says that, except for #16, these sound like good rules for anyone. Even #16 can come in handy sometimes.
May is Get Caught Reading Month. Who will be next?

Thanks to Someone

May6

The Flame Tree by Richard Lewis tells the story of Isaac Williams, the twelve year old son of American missionary doctors in Java, Indonesia. His best friend is Ismail (get it–Isaac and Ishmael?), a Muslim boy who is beginning to be caught up in Nahdlatul Umat Islam, a fundamentalist Islamic group with terrorist ties. Isaac is at first confused when Ismail says that they can no longer be friends unless Isaac submits to Islam. Then things get even worse when a faction of the Nahdlatul Umat Islam captures Isaac and holds him as a hostage. Finally, after facing malaria, cruelty, fear, and degrading treatment, Isaac is released, but then he must decide what to do about his captors and about his bitterness toward God for allowing him to suffer at the hands of evil men. The entire book is an interesting lesson about what can happen when Islam and Christianity clash, and the characters in the book demonstrate that people are complicated and difficult to understand. The Islamic hostage-takers are not one dimensional, stereotypical evil terrorists, but rather men, and women, who are sometimes kind, sometimes very cruel, caught up in a religion that allows fanaticism to grow and at the same time preaches peace. Isaac himself is not sure who he is after his captivity. “Maybe, just like he was neither a Javanese nor an American, he was no longer a Christian, but not quite a Muslim.” Later, he comes to see that, unlike Muslims who have no choice but to submit to the will of Allah, he has choice, and he chooses, by the grace of God, to be a Christian and to forgive. This is a difficult book in the sense that the author describes Isaac’s treatment during his captivity in more graphic terms than I was comfortable reading, but I realized after reading about the cruelty of some of the terrorists that perhaps I needed to be made uncomfortable in order to appreciate the miracle of forgiveness that comes in the ending.

At first I didn’t think that the second book I read this week had much in common with The Flame Tree. The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer is historical fiction/fantasy set during the 8th century AD on the coast of England and in Scandanavia. It includes Viking raids, trolls, dragons, talking animals, and magic spells. However, there are at least a couple of points of similarity. Jack is eleven when the Northmen, berserkers, raid his village. He, too, learns that people are not all bad nor always to be trusted. Jack, like Isaac, is a captive, and any time he begins to trust and even admire his captors, he is reminded of their cruelty and otherness. Jack is Saxon, and his village is Christian. The Northmen are worshippers of Odin and believe in seeking a glorious death in battle which will send them straight to Valhalla, a “heaven” that sounds a lot like an everlasting drunken feast. Jack remains a Christian, mostly because he doesn’t seem to think he has any choice, but he does learn to care about the Northmen even though they are not to be trusted to act in accordance with Christian morality, but only to act as their own pagan religion tells them to in order to maintain their honor. Jack, like Isaac WIlliams, returns home at the end of the book. Unlike Isaac, Jack doesn’t deal with the choice between bitterness and forgiveness; he just feels happy to be home, although he does wonder if he should have given kindness to one of his enemies when he was a slave to the Northmen. His teacher reassures him that “no kindness is ever wasted, not can we ever tell how much good may come of it.”

It seems to me that both of these books teach the same lesson: peace and forgiveness and understanding, as important as they are, can only go so far. At the end of the day, if those who follow a different god are determined to be obedient to their own evil desires and to revel in cruelty, we must defend ourselves and our families and villages even as we forgive and try to understand their blindness (there but for the grace of God go I). Hell is real because some people choose it. Not even God forces forgiveness on those who do not believe they need it, those who believe they have done nothing wrong, those who practice cruelty and sin in the name of Odin or Allah . . . or Jesus.

I have a problem. I’m getting lots of good recommendations for books to read from bloggers, too many ideas for the time in which I have to read them. However, that’s not the problem. I just finished these two books that I saw recommended somewhere maybe a month or two ago. I have no idea who recommended The Sea of Trolls nor The Flame Tree. Thank you, though, and be sure to comment if you gave me the tip on either of these.