Archive | August 2009

I Wanna GO!

Aug5

News bulletin from Mother Reader:

It is officially time to sign up for the KidLitosphere Conference taking place on October 17th, 2009 at the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel. The conference is open to bloggers – and wannabe bloggers – in children’s and young adult literature. Yes, this includes YA/Kidlit authors, illustrators, editors, and publishers who blog or would like to blog.

So what’s the conference like, other than awesome? The day starts with breakfast from 7:00 to 8:00 a.m, where you can catch up with old friends or meet new ones. The sessions go from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and will cover:
-The Blog Within: An Interview With Your Inner Blogger
– Building a Better Blog: Best Practices, Ideas, and Tips
– Split Reviewer/Author Sessions:
Better Book Reviews/Writing Ideas for Blogging Authors
– Split Reviewer/Author Sessions:
Social Networking for Fun (and Profit?)
– Authors, Publishers, Reviewers (and ARC’s): A Panel Conversation
– Coming Together, Giving Back: Building Community, Literacy, and the Reading Message (KidLitosphere CentralPBS/RIF/Literacy)
There will also be a Meet the Author time at the end where writers and illustrators can bring their books. A fun dinner to mix-and-mingle is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. to 10 p.m. with the continuing party moving to the hotel bar. The registration fee for all of this – including the breakfast and dinner – is only $100. It’s a total bargain.

Informal outings will take place on Friday and Sunday. We’re hoping to arrange a Library of Congress tour for Friday afternoon and we’ll gather for dinner near the hotel around 6:00 p.m. Sunday’s expedition may involve a local DC bookstore, Politics and Prose. If I can get some authors to register soon, we may even be able to arrange a reading.

Rooms are currently on hold at the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel for the amazing rate of $109 a night. They will only be held until September 16th, and if our block is filled before that low rate may not be available. Book soon. Since I’ve held rooms with two double beds, you could bring your family along to visit DC or share with a blogger buddy.

It should be noted that the hotel is a mile from National Airport and free shuttle service is available. A Metro Station is on the same block and goes to Washington DC in minutes. In fact, Downtown DC is only two miles away. The hotel is right next to the Crystal City Shops and a few blocks from the upscale Fashion Center at Pentagon City. If you want more information about the hotel, visit the website of the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel.

The registration form is available at KidLitosphere Central. There are a limited number of spaces available, so please sign-up soon.

Health Care, Reading Skills, and Responsibility

Aug5

I just sent the following questions to my congressman and to my two senators:

I have two questions:

1) Will you vote to require members of Congress to be included as participants on any bill dealing with health care? Please give me a yes or no answer.

2) Do you have a policy of reading any proposed bill before voting in favor of it? If so, will you vote against or abstain from voting on any bill that you are unable to read before a vote is taken?

Thank you for your time and for your service,

If you are interested in answers from members of Congress to either or both questions, I would suggest that you email your members of Congress or call them and ask the same two questions. I do not think it at all unreasonable to ask that members of Congress read the bills that they are voting to enact. And if the Congressional leadership does not give the members sufficient time to read the bills, they should vote “NO!”

I also believe that if the current health care bill is so great for the poor and the uninsured, Congressmen and their families should be happy to sign on to receive the same health care and have the same access to health care that their constituents will get.

Hymn #45: Immortal, Invisible

Aug4

Lyrics: Walter Chalmers Smith, 1876. Read more about Walter Chalmers Smith.

Music: ST DENIO from a Welsh melody arranged by John Roberts, 1839.

Theme: “NOW UNTO THE KING ETERNAL, IMMORTAL, INVISIBLE, THE ONLY GOD, BE HONOR AND GLORY FOREVER AND EVER. AMEN.” —1 TIMOTHY 1:17

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might;
Thy justice like mountains high soaring above,
Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all life Thou givest, to both great and small;
In all life Thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish, but nought changeth Thee.

Great Father of Glory, pure Father of Light
Thine angels adore Thee, all veiling their sight;
All laud we would render, O help us to see:
‘Tis only the splendor of light hideth Thee.

To do a study of this hymn in your homeschool, check out Hymn Studies: Immortal Invisible.

Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski

Aug4

I read this 2007 National Book Award finalist because Mindy Withrow said it was good. She was right.

End of review. Read it.

*****************

Just kidding. But you really should read the book before you read my thoughts about the book because there are many, many things to discuss here. But you should come to the book without preconceived notions. So go thou hence to the bookstore or the library, and then come back, and we’ll talk.

Martiya is an anthropologist and a murderer. How do we reconcile those two legacies? That’s a lot of what the book is about. How could such an intelligent, lively, promising, woman have first buried herself in a native village in northern Thailand and then killed a man in cold blood? Make no mistake, Martiya does bury herself. She goes to Thailand looking for a soul-changing experience, and she gets one. She can never go back to Berkley again, not even to Western civilization anywhere. She becomes a part of the Dyalo culture she is studying, then becomes an outcast, then when she tries to be reborn into Western Christianity, she is rejected again.

Looking at this novel from my own perspective, that of an evangelical Christian sympathetic to the missionaries, the Walker family, I read the story of a woman, unsaved and unprotected by the blood of Jesus Christ, who decides to take up residence with demons and becomes enslaved to them and to the evil that they represent. In the Walkers, especially Thomas and Naomi Walker, I see a family of Christians who make a crucial mistake in their dealings with Martiya, in not seeing her as sinner in need of salvation just as much as the Dyalos need liberation from demonic bondage. Thomas and Naomi Walker pay for that mistake with the life of their only son.

However, one could read the story as the saga of an anthropologist who is driven mad by her long exile from Western civilization and who is finally broken by the single-minded jealousy of a an offended woman (Naomi) who should be able to overlook Martiya’s sin if Christianity is really true. However, I am left with questions that make me want to re-read the novel to see what I missed:

Are all the characters in the novel possessed by their own particular view of the world such that they can’t see each other or love each other? Why does Martiya seem to be so happy in the end in the prison as she works on her ethnography of prison life? And if she is happy in that work, why does she commit suicide? Because she’s finished? Because Rice is finished with her? How do Laura and Thomas Walker reconcile their part in their son’s death with their continuing work as missionaries? Why does the author imply that it takes a supernatural experience of hearing singing angels in the sky to become a committed Christian? Does he believe that? Why does Martiya’s paramour Hupasha remain faithful to Christ even after others have fallen away? What is the significance of drugs, particularly opium in the novel? Martiya commits suicide with a ball of opium. The narrator smokes opium and says that he hears the final episode of the story from the lips of Martiya’s ghost. Is opium related to the demonic practices of the Dyalo, to the traditions that Christianity is there to destroy? Can one enter into the native’s point of view and still remain an impartial observer, a scientist? Once you’ve “gone native” are you a better anthropologist or a worse one?

I may have to add this novel to my list of all-time favorites. It’s absolutely fascinating on many levels. And as an added fillip to my reading of the novel, it bears some relation to things that are going on in my own family. Eldest Daughter’s boyfriend just left to go to Thailand with this group to live in a a poor section of Bangkok for four months as a missionary. I also think he’s trying to figure out the course of his own life, looking for a “transformation of the observer’s soul” in the perhaps overly dramatic words of the author of Fieldwork. We’ll see what he finds.

Hymn #46: The Church’s One Foundation

Aug3

Lyrics: Samuel John Stone, 1866.

Music: AURELIA by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, 1844.

Theme: For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. I Corinthians 3:11

Center for Church Music: “The Reverend Samuel John Stone . . . was concerned about people saying the Apostles Creed in a perfunctory manner, saying the words without a clear understanding of what they were saying. He wrote a series of twelve hymns, each explaining a section of the creed and defending the fact of the inspiration of Scripture. ‘The Church’s One Foundation’ explains the ninth article – ‘I believe in the Holy Catholic (Universal) church, the communion of the saints.’ This series of hymns was printed in Lyra Fidelium (Lyre of the Faithful) in 1866.”

The church’s one Foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is his new creation
By water and the Word:
From heav’n he came and sought her
To be his holy bride;
With his own blood he bought her,
And for her life he died.

Elect from ev’ry nation,
Yet one o’er all the earth,
Her charter of salvation
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food.
And to one hope she presses,
With ev’ry grace endued.

Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed,
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song.

The church shall never perish!
Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain and cherish
Is with her to the end;
Though there be those that hate her,
And false sons in her pale,
Against or foe or traitor
She ever shall prevail.

‘Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace for evermore;
Till with the vision glorious
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great church victorious
Shall be the church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union
With the God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won:
O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we,
Like them, the meek and lowly,
On high may dwell with thee.

Additional verses that were part of the original hymn text, but have been altered or omitted:

Yet she on earth hath union
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won,
With all her sons and daughters
Who, by the Master’s hand
Led through the deathly waters,
Repose in Eden land.

O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we
Like them, the meek and lowly,
On high may dwell with Thee:
There, past the border mountains,
Where in sweet vales the Bride
With Thee by living fountains
Forever shall abide!

Not a praise and worship hymn. Not a reworked psalm hymn. Not a gospel hymn. A teaching hymn. I like that. I may use this one as one of the hymns we learn in school this year.

The pictured book covers are some of my favorite books about The Church. However, as I chose books to be pictured, I realized that I haven’t read that many books that are specifically about the Church. Can you suggest any other must-read books about the Church (Baptist/evangelical/mere Christian perspective)?

Joy to the World: A Different Take

Aug3

It seemed almost sacrilegious to post this blast from the past along with the hymn from which it borrows a line and a title, but on the other hand, I couldn’t resist. So I’m giving the Three Dog Night version of Joy to the World, lyrics and tune by Hoyt Axton, its own post. It’s not praise and worship, but I’ve always been a sucker for a catchy tune with some silly lyrics.

By the way, Three Dog Night’s Joy to the World was the top hit single of 1971.

Hymn #47: Joy to the World

Aug1

Lyrics: Isaac Watts, 1719.

Music: According to Wikipedia, “The music was adapted and arranged by Lowell Mason from an older melody which was then believed to have originated from Handel [1], not least because the theme of the refrain (And heaven and nature sing…) appears in the orchestra opening and accompaniment of the recitative Comfort Ye from Handel’s Messiah, and the first four notes match the beginning of the choruses Lift up your heads and Glory to God from the same oratorio. However, Handel did not compose the entire tune.”

I didn’t know that.

Theme: No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. Revelation 22:3-5.

I don’t know what either Handel or Lowell Mason would have thought, but I like Mannheim Steamroller:

My urchins prefer the Jonas Brothers.

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the Earth! the Saviour reigns;
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

C.S. Lewis: “I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.”

Pope Benedict XVI: “But let us also think of those, especially young people, who have lost the sense of authentic joy, and who seek it in vain where it is impossible to find: in the exasperated race for self-affirmation and success, in false amusements, in consumerism, in moments of drunkenness, in the artificial paradise of drugs and of other forms of alienation.”

Louise Bogan: I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

Emily Dickinson: ‘Tis so much joy! ‘Tis so much joy! If I should fail, what poverty! And yet, as poor as I Have ventured all upon a throw; Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so this side the victory!”

Samuel Shoemaker: “The surest mark of a Christian is not faith, or even love, but joy.”