The Kimyal people of Papua, Indonesia receive the Bible in their own language:
What a celebration. Do we even begin to know what precious truth God has entrusted to us? “To whom much is given, of him much shall be required.” We in the West are abundantly blessed. God forgive us for the misuse and waste we have perpetrated with the blessing He has given us.
And won’t heaven be grand as we all worship the Lamb together, from every nation and tribe?
My American History class has reached the era of the Great Depression, the 1930’s, and we’re reading Nothing To Fear by Jackie Koller. This read is going much better than the last book they were asked to read, Christy by Catherine Marshall. Christy is one of my favorite novels, but had I known when I wrote the syllabus that I would have a class of nine fourteen-fifteen year old boys, I might have chosen a different book to exemplify the early twentieth century.
Back to Nothing To Fear. All of the boys were enthusiastic about this one. It’s the story of a boy, Danny Garvey, who lives with his Irish American family—father, mother, and little sister Maureen–in a tenement apartment in New York City in 1932. Like all of the men in Danny’s neighborhood, Danny father is out of work and feeling desperate about providing for his family. Danny’s mother does laundry and ironing from her home for Miss Emily’s Hotel for Young Women. Danny shines shoes to make a few extra pennies.
But when Danny gets in with the wrong crowd and a window gets broken at old man Weissman’s store, Danny learns just how important his good name is to his father and eventually through the course of events, Danny also learns to value his own name and reputation.
Some bad stuff happens in this book, but it ends on a note of hope and perseverance. Danny and his mother trust in God and President Roosevelt to get them through the Depression, a trust somewhat misplaced in my opinion, but it’s true to the era and matches the stories that I’ve heard from people who lived during the 1930’s. Danny and his mom and all their neighbors are ecstatic when Roosevelt is elected, and even though, again realistically, the election of Roosevelt does nothing to improve the Garveys’ lives, they still cling to the hope that FDR will do something to end the Depression and return the country to prosperity. It reminds me of people nowadays who still maintain that President Obama will get our economy going again, except that I don’t think we’re as desperate as people were during the Great Depression. Therefore, we have a little room to see clearly that Obama is not our rescuer. FDR was any port in a storm and too much of a last chance for people to give up on him, even when he didn’t/couldn’t deliver.
I would recommend Nothing To Fear for boys ages 12-16 who are studying the Depression era in history or who just enjoy history and historical fiction. A few other recommended fiction books set in the same time period for children and young adults:
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor. Cassie Logan lives with her family in rural Mississippi and experiences the family closeness and racial tensions of the 1930’s time period.
I like these Dear America diaries:
Christmas After All: The Great Depression Diary of Minnie Swift. Indianapolis, IN, 1932 by Kathryn Lasky.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: The Diary of Bess Brennan, The Perkins School for the Blind, 1932 by Barry Denenburg.
Survival in the Storm: The Dust Bowl Diary of Grace Edwards, Dalhart, Texas, 1935 by Katelyn Janke.
Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck. Winner of the 2001 Newbery Medal. Fifteen year old Mary Alice is sent downstate to live with Grandma Dowdel while her Ma and Pa stay in Chicago to work.
Bud, not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. Bud, not Buddy, Caldwell is an orphan who thinks he might just have a dad, Herman E. Calloway, bass player for the Dusky Devastators of the Depression. Will he find Calloway, and is Calloway really his father?
Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool is the story of a girl, twelve year old Abilene Tucker, whose father, Gideon, is a hobo. Abilene and her dad have been riding the rails together for as long as she can remember, but now (summer, 1936) Gideon has sent Abilene to live with an old friend of his in Manifest, Kansas while Gideon takes a job on the railroad back in Iowa. 2010 Newbery Award winner. Semicolon review here.
Ten Cents a Dance by Christine Fletcher. For older teens and adults. Semicolon review here.
William S. and the Great Escape by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. William escapes his abusive home along with his little sister and brother, but can the three fugitives find a place to call home in a time when home is hard to find? Semicolon review here.
Turtle in Paradise by Jenifer L. Holm. Semicolon review here. Take one eleven year girl named Turtle with eyes as “gray as soot†who sees things exactly as they are. Plunk her down in Key West, Florida with her Aunt Minnie the Diaper Gang and a bunch of Conch (adj. native or resident of the Florida Keys) relatives and Conch cousins with nicknames like Pork Chop and Too Bad and Slow Poke.
A couple of years ago I started on a Madeleine L’Engle Project. My goal was to read or re-read all of Ms. L’Engle’s books in the order in which they were published. I didn’t get all that far, but I did re-read some favorites and post about them here at Semicolon. Then, I became distracted by other projects, and I haven’t read anything by Madeleine L’Engle in a while.
So, I am pleased the my participation in the Faith and Fiction Roundtable impelled me to read Certain Women again, one of Ms. L’Engle’s later novels. It’s the story of famous stage actor David Wheaton who is dying of cancer, attended by the wife of his old age, Alice, and by his daughter, Emma, who is also an actress. Alice is actually David Wheaton’s ninth and final wife, and he has nine children, the products of eight previous failed marriages. David Wheaton has always wanted to play the role of King David from the Bible, but the opportunity never came. As Wheaton reviews his life, he and his complicated family see the analogies between the life of David Wheaton, actor, and the life of David, sweet singer and King of Israel.
In the hands of another writer, this book would probably have been about David Wheaton, a man who married many wives and whose life experiences bore a certain resemblance to those of King David, with the similarities being left to the reader to discover. L’Engle chose to highlight the analogies by having Emma’s husband, a playwright, spend most of the novel attempting to write a play, specifically a vehicle for Wheaton to star as King David. By the opening of the novel, the play is a failed attempt that never was completed, and David Wheaton is much too old and sick to play the part of David anyway. But as the novel progresses the characters review scenes that were written about David and his many wives: Michal, Ahinoam, Abigail, Maacah, Bathsheba, Abishag, and others. And Wheaton and his family discuss the similarities between the Wheaton family and King David’s family and the differences. Somehow the Biblical stories give the characters insight into their own family dynamic and help them to reconcile with God and with each other.
I thought the first time I read the book, and I remembered again as I re-read, that this novel in particular, of all Madeleine L’Engle’s novels, has a certain soap opera quality to it. (Madeleine L’Engle’s husband was an actor and a long time character on the daytime drama, All My Children.) The characters move in and out of one another’s lives like soap opera characters, and there’s a lot of adultery, divorce, re-marriage, and other family drama (nothing terribly explicit or offensive). However, L’Engle’s people are more complicated and have more depth to them than the average soap opera witch or ingenue. The story this time around reminded me of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead in its portrayal of an old man preparing to die, reminiscing about his life, and trying to understand the decisions he’s made and their ongoing effect on his family members. Gilead is probably, almost certainly, the better written book, but somehow Madeleine L’Engle’s books always speak to me.
In this reading I was impressed by the importance of forgiveness for both the sinner and the one sinned against:
“He said that it was only after David lusted after Bathsheba, caused Uriah’s death, only after he had failed utterly with Tamar and Amnon and Absalom, only after he was fleeing his enemies, fleeing his holy city of Jerusalem, that he truly became a king.”
“Parents always fail their children. If we’d had children, we’d have failed ours. That’s simply how it is, and the kids have to get along as best they can. My parents were who they were. Dave is Dave.”
“Emma closed her eyes. There was a terrible empty space where Etienne and Adair should have been. ‘What is forgiveness?’
Chantal’s long fingers gripped the steering wheel. ‘It’s not forgetting. That’s repression, not forgiveness.’
Emma looked over at her sister.
‘Remembering,’ Chantal said, ‘but not hurting anymore.'”
What is your definition of forgiveness? And how do you forgive someone who is either absent or unrepentant?
Jesus said of the prostitute who washed his feet, “Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven–for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.” Perhaps only those who know that they have sinned greatly can understand and experience the depth of God’s grace, mercy, and love.
Other participants in today’s discussion of Certain Women:
My Friend Amy: Certain Women, The Women in David’s Life
Heather at Book Addiction.
Book Hooked Blog.
Sheila at Book Journey
Jennifer at Crazy for Books
Carrie at Books and Movies
Ronnica at The Ignorant Historian
Thomas at My Random Thoughts
The 3r’s Blog: Reading, ‘Riting, and Randomness
Word Lily
Tina’s Book Reviews
Reading Unbroken(Semicolon review here) made me want to take a look at this WW II memoir about a man who was a deacon and a patriarch at my church when I was growing up in San Angelo, Texas. Mr. Matthews also survived imprisonment with the Japanese in Southeast Asia. As I remember it, my parents told me that Mr. Matthews had been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II but that he “didn’t like to talk about it.” So I was curious, but I never asked.
Apparently, Mr. Monday who pastored my parents’ church for a while after I had already moved away from San Angelo, did ask—and wrote this self-published book in 2004 to tell “the incredible true story of an American hero,” W.F. Matthews.
The most striking note in the book was Mr. Matthews’ almost dispassionate attitude toward his captivity.
About the Japanese treatment of prisoners: “They beat on us pretty good. It seemed like—you know most of them are short—seemed like they resented us being so much bigger than they were.”
About the New Testament BIble that he carried and hid from the Japanese all through his captivity: “I’d get down, boy, and I’d sneak out and get that thing out and sit there and read it for about 20 minutes, and boy I’d get pepped up again.”
About working near Bangkok during bombing raids: “It was pretty rough up there. The Americans started bombing us. They were bombing at River Kwai and all down through there.”
About his condition after the war’s end in hospital: “I was about 90 pounds when I got in there, and of course, I had that malaria and dysentery. And they put me in that hospital and treated me for that, and I got in pretty good shape. I started eating and I gained a little weight.” (He weighed 220 pounds when he left Texas for San Francisco at the beginning of the war.)
About his recovery from the emotional scars of the war: “People would hover around me and want to talk and I had to leave pretty quick.” “There was a creek right by the house there, and I’d go way down on that creek walking around and kind of staying by myself.”
What magnificent understatement. What a matter of fact attitude.
W.F. Matthews went on to marry and father two sons. He was, as I said a deacon in my Southern Baptist church, and I grew up with his boys. He never said much of anything about the war, certainly never intimated that he was a hero or a person to be admired. As far as I knew, until my parents mentioned something about Mr. Matthews’ war experience, he was just Randy’s and Tommy’s dad, just a good ol’ West Texas man who happened to drink coffee with my dad and some other men every morning at the Dunbar Restaurant.
I believe we are surrounded by quiet, matter of fact, humble heroes, not always war heroes, but all kinds of unheralded and unsung heroism, and we often know nothing about the stories that these quiet heroes never think to tell.
How W.F. Matthews said he wants to be remembered: “I’d like them to remember that we were Americans and that we had a little more to live for than the rest of ’em. That Bible and a few things like that made a difference.”
Life is just one d— thing after another. ~Elbert Hubbard
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. ~John Lennon
History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. ~Winston Churchill
Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects. ~Herodotus, The History of Herodotus
We are the prisoners of history. Or are we? ~Robert Penn Warren
Perhaps nobody has changed the course of history as much as the historians. ~Franklin P. Jones
Connie Willis writes some of the best books about time travel and history and epistemology and philosophy that I have ever had the privilege of reading. I first read her novel The Doomsday Book, about time-traveling historians from the future, in 2009. In that book Kivrin, a history student at Oxford in 2048, travels through “the net” back in time to the fourteenth century. After I finished The Doomsday Book, I immediately went out and found a copy of Ms. Willis’s next time travel history book, To Say Nothing of the Dog. It’s a delightful romp in which the fate of the universe may or may not be at stake. However, the course of history and the universe is “self-correcting,” shades of LOST, so the universe is never really in danger of imploding or careening off-track. Probably. I loved it even more than The Doomsday Book.
Now, in 2010, Ms. Willis has published two more future-historians-travel-through-time books: Blackout and All Clear. In these some of the same characters reappear, and the universe or the space-time continuum IS in danger of going off the rails. The focal point of all the temporal disturbance and crisis is World War II, and of course, several of our intrepid historians are criss-crossing Britain through time and space, trying to avoid the temptation to interfere in history and do something that, however well-meaning, might actually change the course of the war and end up making Hitler and the Nazis the victors. It’s not easy to observe history without changing it, however, as Polly and Mike and Eileen find out. It’s also not easy to survive the Blitz in London, even if you know about when and where the bombs are going to drop. Nor is Dunkirk a safe vantage point from which to observe heroism, even though there’s a lot of it going on.
I have several things to say about these two novels. First of all, they’re not really two novels; it’s one novel in two volumes, just as The Lord of the Rings is one book in three parts. So be sure to have the second book, All Clear, on hand before you start the first one. And read them in order even though there’s lots of time travel involved so that events in the novel(s) don’t exactly appear in chronological order.
Second, read these books. If you liked LOST because of the mind-bending time travel and suspenseful and philosophical elements, you should like what Connie Willis has done with these two books. If you’re a WW II buff, you will find these books fascinating. If you just enjoy a good science fiction or historical fiction story, read Blackout and All Clear. And read all the way to the end. It’s worth the confusion that accompanies the 1000+ pages of the two books. (Time travel makes my head hurt—in a good way.)
Finally, I think these are what I would call Christian worldview novels. It’s not blatant or didactic or obvious, but if Ms. Willis is not a Christian, she has certainly co-opted Christian values and symbols and made the books breathe a Christian ethos in a way that is both attractive and entertaining. The central images and metaphors of the novels are Christian: The Light of the World, a painting by Holman Hunt, St. Paul’s Cathedral standing above bombed-out London, The Tempest by Shakespeare, a door that opens to another world. The themes are all about redemption and sacrifice and the power of obedience to what is good and noble even when you don’t know what the outcome will be. And this conversation, between a time traveler from the future and an elderly Shakespearean actor caught in the darkest days of WW II, toward the end of the second volume, clinches it for me:
“Was that your third question?” she managed to ask.
“No, Polly,” he said. “Something of more import.” And she knew it must be. . . .
“What is it?” she asked. . . .
He stepped forward and grasped the staircase’s railing, looked up at her earnestly. “Is it a comedy or a tragedy?”
He doesn’t mean the war, she thought. He’s talking about all of it–our lives and history and Shakespeare. And the continuum.
She smiled down at him. “A comedy, my lord.”
Surely, Christians are the ones who believe that life and history are ultimately a comedy that ends in the Great Marriage Feast.
I loved these books.
Guide to the Oxford Time Travel books at The Connie Willis.net Blog.
Content consideration: These novels are adult novels, not for children, and the characters sometimes use bad language. The character Mike, in particular, does take the Lord’s name in vain on numerous occasions.
Amazing story. If it weren’t so heavily footnoted and corroborated, I would find it difficult to believe such a miraculous survival story. Louis Zamperini, the subject of this riveting biography, was an Olympic runner. He won a bronze medal in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and he planned to compete in the 1940 Olympics. Louie, as he was called, was getting close to breaking the four minute mile, but World War II derailed Louis’s Olympic and world record hopes. However, the rest of the story which chronicles Louie’s experiences during and after World War II is even more astounding and transcendent than any world record in a sporting event. I don’t think I’ve ever read about anyone who survived the multiple ordeals that Zamperini was able to live through and then also managed, by the grace of God, to live a full and joyful life afterwards.
One of my urchins says she doesn’t believe in miracles. I think she’s saying she’s never heard a Voice from on high or seen a person instantly healed or witnessed the sudden appearance of manna from heaven. However, if what happened in the life of Louis Zamperini wasn’t a series of miracles, I don’t know what to call it. First of all, Louis and the pilot of his B-24 bomber survive a crash in the Pacific and forty plus days on a raft without supplies in the ocean. And it only get worse when the two Americans land on the Marshall Islands and are “rescued” by the Japanese army.
But the greatest miracle of all comes after the war is over for everyone else, when Louie is still trapped in the prison of his own mind.
No one could reach Louie, because he had never really come home. In prison camp, he’d been beaten into dehumanized obedience to a world order in which the Bird (a cruel Japanese prison guard) was absolute sovereign, and it was under this world order that he still lived. The Bird had taken his dignity and left him feeling humiliated, ashamed, and powerless, and Louie believed that only the Bird could restore him, by suffering and dying in the grip of his hands. A once singularly hopeful man now believed that his only hope lay in murder.
The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird’s death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird.
This book actually brought me to tears, something that seldom happens to me while reading. I was reminded that as Corrie Ten Boom often said, “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”
I was also reminded of my conviction that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary evils. The Japanese were not planning to ever surrender to the Allies. In the book, Hillenbrand tells how the POWs in Japan saw women and children being trained to defend the homeland to the last person. And the Japanese had a “kill-all policy” which ordered prison camp commanders to kill all the prisoners of war if it ever became evident that they might be rescued and repatriated. This policy was carried out in several Japanese prison camps, and “virtually every POW believed that the destruction of this city (Hiroshima) had saved them from execution.”
Man’s inhumanity to man continues on into this century, but if we are to avoid and prevent future horrors, we must remember the past. And we must be presented with stories that affirm the possibility of redemption, even from the darkest of atrocities.
Bible:Children’s Fiction:
Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool. Semicolon review here.
Dragon’s Gate by Laurence Yep.
Young Adult Fiction:
After the Dancing Days by Margaret L. Rostkowski.
Heist Society by Ally Carter.
Split by Swati Avashti. Semicolon review here.
The Wager by Donna Jo Napoli. Semicolon review here.
The Life of Glass by Jillian Cantor.
Harmonic Feedback by Tara Kelly.
Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson.
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. Semicolon review here.
Adult Fiction:
The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy.
Valeria’s Cross by Kathi Macias.
The Identity Man by Andrew Klavan. Semicolon review here.
The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Alexander McCall Smith. Semicolon review here.
Mrs. ‘arris Goes to Paris by Paul Gallico.
Little Bee by Chris Cleave. Semicolon review here.
Nonfiction
You Are What You See: Watching Movies Through a Christian Lens by Scott Nehring. Semicolon review here.
The Eye of the Elephant by Delia and Mark Owens. Semicolon review here.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer.
Favorite Nonfiction Book of the Month: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. Inspirational, Thomas Edison-type story with much tragedy and questioning mixed in. Semicolon review here.
Favorite Fiction Book of the Month: Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi.
My Bible Reading Project is going pretty well. I’ve read through Genesis, on track to finish Mark this weekend, and several of the Psalms. I also read Galatians, mostly aloud to the urchins, but I can’t say I was very successful in explaining the distinction between keeping the Law for the law’s sake and keeping it out of gratitude for what Christ has done. The urchins stared at me blankly for the most part as I engaged in this lesson in theology for their benefit. Ah, well, push on.
I want to take my old Bible and do this project with it: Blank Bible Project. I can see how this would be really useful—and a way of passing down a legacy to at least one of my children. More detailed instructions on making a blank Bible.
I read Certain Women by Madeleine L’Engle for the Faith N Fiction Roundtable, and I found Ms. L’Engle’s work as satisfying and thoughtful as ever. Come here, or to one of the other participants’ blogs, in February for more discussion of the book and its implications.
Poetry Project: The poems are posting on Fridays for Poetry Friday, and I’m enjoying them, even though we are in the Romantic period right now. I think I’m becoming an anti-Romantic poetry reader.
Newbery Project: I read and reviewed the Newbery Award winner, Moon Over Manifest, this month. I liked it a lot.
Operation Clean House is going nowhere. I haven’t even attempted to put together an Exercise and Diet Project. If anyone know of a way to exercise without actual physical labor being involved, please let me know.
In February, I really want to do more posts for Texas Tuesday and Read Aloud Thursday (to link to Amy’s blog, Hope Is the Word). I also would like to continue my Africa Reading Project, which has gotten off to a good start this year with several posts in January.
Epic is right. Mark and Delia Owens first went to Africa in 1974 to study lion behavior in the Kalahari Desert. They lived in the desert for seven years and wrote a book about their experiences, Cry of the Kalahari. The couple then returned to the U.S. to complete their graduate work and then attempted to return to their work in Botswana. However, when the government of Botswana declared them persona non grata, they were forced to look for another place to carry on their vocation in wildlife management and conservation. North Luangwa National Park in Zambia and the preservation of the endangered elephant population there became their mission.
Mission, obsession, calling—all these words are somewhat inadequate to describe the dedication with which Mark Owens in particular approaches the task of protecting the elephants from poachers who are slaughtering the elephants for the meat and for the ivory trade. Mr. Owens literally endangers his own life while trying every trick, weapon, and argument in the book to stop the poachers. He flies daily (and nightly) “missions” to find the poachers. He begs and encourages and bribes the native Zambian game guards to do their jobs and arrest the poachers, without much success. He sends letters of appeal and sends radio messages to anyone he thinks might help. And all the while, the elephants are being killed at the rate of several thousand per year.
Finally, in October 1989, seventy-six nations vote to list the African elephant as an endangered species and to forbid trade in ivory and all other elephant parts. This action along with the Owens’ work in confronting poachers and educating Zambian villagers about the value of wildlife in attracting tourism dollars is instrumental in slowing to a near-halt the poaching of elephants on a large-scale basis.
Of course, after reading an entire book about the anti-poaching efferts of Delia and Mark Owens, I had to see what the couple is doing now and what the status of the elephants in North Luangwa is now. The Owens have returned to the U.S., but their conservation and education project in North Luangwa continues under the auspices of Zambian Hammer Simwinga and the Owens Foundation for Wildlife Conservation. The Owens have most recently been working on grizzly bear conservation in North Idaho. The elephant population in North Luangwa is said to be slowly increasing.
I’m not really an animal person. While I think it is a worthwhile goal to save endangered species, such as the African elephant, it’s not a cause I feel called to give my life to. Still, I am interested in Africa, and particularly in Zambia this year, so I found the adventures of Mark and Delia Owens fascinating.
Joan at Lines in Pleasant Places: “I didn’t plan on having you at age eighteen, but God did. He knew from before I was born, that I would have you at only eighteen. He knows now if you are a boy or girl, and He has a plan for your life, as well as mine.”
Keiki Hendrix at Wonder of Days: Since Roe v. Wade in 1973, “over 46 million children have died. Let that sink in – 46 million. This hits me at home because one of those 46 million is named Elizabeth and she was mine.”
Judy at Carpe Libris: “I don’t think we realize sometimes that the issue of abortion involves real people, men and women who are struggling to do the right thing. Whether it be the question of “Do I abort or not?” or “What is my family going to think?” or “How is all of this going to affect my life?”, there are some agonizing decisions to be made.”
Marcia Morrisey at Patheos: When you are struggling, and the medical people are so forceful, the idea of abortion blips through your mind, unbidden, because you’re told it is a real option, and when you’re emotional, it’s easy to fall for fall for rhetoric.
That Mom: As the crisp melodic phrases of Mozart danced off of her fingertips, my heart swelled with pride and a sense of the awesome God who created this child, choosing her as His own before the foundations of the world, and giving her life in my womb.