This is a Test; It is Only a Test

I've been reading this book, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church by James K.A. Smith, and I've sort of fallen in love with it. It's written for the layman, whatever that means, and for the practitioner, so it's written in language that anyone can understand if they feel like making the effort. There is one work he uses over and over again with which I am unfamiliar...

I'm lost for a moment in looking for the word, and of course, because I am looking for it, it is hopeless that I should actually find it, though I know it occurs the or four times per chapter. Which brings me to the subject of this experiment. I was looking for a quotation I read yesterday. It was a brief statement, seeming to me to sum up my heart-felt belief, and also my dilemma, concerning criticism (or should I say, argumentation?).

If we are going to do justice to postmodernism, our engagement with it needs to be characterized by charity--and charity requires time.

James K.A. Smith says this on page 36, just before he begins to examine Derrida's statement that there is "nothing outside the text" in careful detail, which I have understood from other sources is the only way one should ever read Derrida, that is "carefully and in detail."

On a side note, what the heck are inverted commas? (You'll notice I've just linked to a blog that references inverted commas, but the post isn't about inverted commas. I haven't even read the entire post yet, but I made a snap judgment the other day that I like this girl, so I bookmarked her site, and low and behold, this afternoon something she said springs to mind. Don't you find my randomness irresistible? Now, by the way, I am listening to The Civil Wars.) And how does one acquire them--I mean inverted commas?

Getting to the point, I wanted to find this quote, but in flipping through the pages I just couldn't find it, so I went on Google and did a word search. There's no particular reason why I tend to use Google, only that it is the first search engine that ever springs to mind, and there it is right in my web browser. I am in the habit of using Google products--such as Google Books, which is where I found the quote I was looking for, as well as a large portion of this text.

I was thrilled to find exactly the quotation I was looking for, pleased as well that I could see which page the quotation was on and turn to that very page in the library's copy of the book, and then I saw that I could either copy a link and link the the page, or embed something in my text elsewhere. That's when I got the idea that has unaccountably gotten me writing this afternoon.

What would it mean to embed this link into the text of a blog post? It doesn't help that I don't actually know how to use html, and so cannot work on the same page where the embedding is done. This is an experiment.



What will show up when I press the preview button? Better yet, what will show up when I eventually post it to my blog, as I have now decided to do? Would it actually make better sense for me to just put it in as a link considering that would simplify matters so very much? I won't get to find out until you do.

You have been party to an experiment. Thank you for your patience in following the twists and turns of my curious logic. The word I was looking for earlier was "kerygmatic," kerygama being the Greek word used for preaching of the Gospel used in the New Testament, or so one of the more convenient online dictionaries tell me.

Books Brought Home from the Library

They are like orphaned children. I realize that it is a horrible analogy to make, imperfect in so many ways. I say it because, even though in a rush of excitement I brought these books into my home, they probably will be returned to whence they came without my reading them. You never know. Maybe they are more like shoes that will be returned right before the 30 day grace period has ended. Yes, that may be a better comparison, as well as getting me into less trouble than the other.

No More Mondays by Dan Miller has come home to visit its brother, 48 Days to the Work You Love. Both books have been borrowed, each from separate sources. I have read the table of contents for each. I have confirmed with an independent source that No More Mondays is  more likely of the two to be the book for us, as neither my husband nor I intend to seek traditional means of employment. I almost wish we would, even knowing that the security there is to be had with an established business is no more than a false security, but we are better of now as we are.  The waiting builds character. It is an entrance into the faith I talked about in Monday's post. No More Mondays supposedly focuses more on non-traditional modes of employment.

Validity in Interpretation by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., because it caught my eye in the church library once again. The second time I've brought it home; the second time I shall probably pass on reading it. The book draws my eye because of an essay on genre I once read in my Theory of the Novel anthology collected and edited by Michael McKeon. The essay was about genre determination, and the fact that we have to adjust our ideas about genre as we converse and as we read, because we may start out thinking we are having one sort of conversation, only to find out that we are having quite another. As I write this I am imagining this applies to a surrealist novel I read months ago. Surrealist? Shades of Gray by Jasper Fforde? But it also applies to an imagined conversation with my husband in which he thinks we are speaking about feeding the dog, and he thinks we are speaking about feeding the family. I do not understand why Validity in Interpretation shows up in our church library, but I wish to read it anyway. It may provide a counter balance to the theories of Adler and Van Doren about reading which have consumed me recently.

Next to Validity in Interpretation on the library shelves appeared a book called How to Read the Bible as Literature...and Get More Out of It, by someone named Leland Ryken. Philip Yancey has talked about reading the Bible as though it were an adventure story, both in Disappointment With God and The Jesus I Never Knew. The insights he uncovers while reading it this way are insightful, accurate, and charming. I didn't understand a word of Job until Yancey had explained it somewhat to me. Since I am also reading through the books of the law these many mornings as well, and seeing them as I have never seen them before, I am curious to see what Ryken recommends. The other two books I have mentioned have at least been inspected by me. In this book I have only read the cover. Whether it will go beyond that before I take these books back remains to be seen. It isn't as though I had a shortage of things to read.

You can keep up with my reading through GoodReads, a website I have only recently begun to explore.

Book Review, and Three Books on Prayer

I wrote a review of the book The Papa Prayer: The Prayer You've Never Prayed by Larry Crabb on Good Reads on Wednesday morning, even though I read the book two or three years ago now. I'm not generally very good at book reviews these days, saying more about whether I liked the book or not than what the structure of the book was, what the author argued, whether I agreed. My book reviews have been sporadic over the years, inconsistent in their content, even though I was rather good at them in undergrad and grad school. It's as though writing about  a book as part of an assignment were easier than writing about the book in a responsible way for my own use. Make sense? If it doesn't, know it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. I hope that my work in Adler and Van Doren will cause me to improve.

Years ago a friend of mine gave me a book journal, a lovely little paperback thing she had picked up in California. She told me that I should try to capture my thoughts as best I could, but then I got out of the habit of thinking about books the way I once had, and when I tried to make notes about them in the book I too often felt that I was getting nowhere fast. Again, I hope that as I continue to build this habit of regular writing and careful reading into my life this will change as well. I'd like to fill that lovely little book with ink, the sort of thing I'll want to read in years to come.

I share my review of The Papa Prayer below, with some added details, and perhaps more personal information:

I thought this book was terrific, life changing in fact. My Dad, and another friend of mine disagreed, not that it was life-changing. We didn't discuss it in that way. The disagreement was over whether the book was wonderful or not. She (my friend) said that it seemed to her to be one of those books that revolved around one central idea that could better be expressed in fewer pages. I don't remember what my dad said, but knowing him it may have been something similar. Or perhaps the kind of prayer that Crabb described doesn't fit his relational style. I've advocated elsewhere that we are each of us uniquely made, and that therefore the relationship between God and us will not be uniform. This book contained some things that were bread and meat for me.


What I liked best about this book was the form of prayer that Crabb describes. Instead of trying to guess what God wants in any given situation, or demanding what we want from Him, Crabb advocates a form of prayer that becomes a conversation like you'd have with someone who cares about you. You present your own anxieties about a situation before God, tell Him what you're thinking, express your hopes for a particular outcome if you have them, but in so doing relinquish your concerns to Him. I know this isn't a revolutionary concept, but the way that Crabb describes it is immanently useful. For weeks after I read it I was more aware than usual of how much God values my conversations with Him, which in turn made me so much more aware and grateful that He was near.


Richard Foster presents a different view of prayer in a chapter of Celebration of Discipline, which is also valuable, and contrary to this one. Foster says that in intercessory prayer, which is the form he concentrates on in this book, there is no room for praying "Thy will be done." He says that when praying for others we must discern the will of God first, and then pray that in expectation. I don't disagree. I look forward to reading Foster's book, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home, if I can ever get my hands on a copy. I think the contradiction springs from a difference in focus, and I recommend Foster's view of the subject as well. I also absolutely love With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray, which I read last summer. Andrew Murray's book reads like a devotional, a format that I have historically stayed away from. It's a terrific little book though, delving into scripture and teaching how to pray as Jesus taught and prayed. Each of these books is worth reading. Of the three, Larry Crabb's book moved me more to wonder at the glory and love of God and worship Him than it did claim my intellectual assent, and that is one of the reasons why I liked the books so much.

And now I'm one move closer to learning how to write a useful book review. For those books that I can remember well I now have the opportunity to re-review them, as the website I used to use for organizing my reading is in the process of shutting down. If I can make myself write about plot in the future, I may be able to start reviewing fiction as well, with something more than "I love this book," " I couldn't wait for it to be over but then it got better," and other such uninformative comments.

I tried to compose something about one of my favorite television shows the other day, but I couldn't get very far with it because I wasn't willing to explain the basic plot. It's something I shall have to continue to work on.

Note: I'll go ahead and publish the link below, but know that I have only written a couple of reviews on the goodreads website at this point, because I imported all of my books into their system only Tuesday. Reviews that I had published previously on living social could not be imported, and I had to give star ratings to many books that I had not read in years.


View all my reviews

A Consideration of Words

This afternoon as I was driving home from the library I was thinking about words. I described something as splendid this past week. On second thought, splendid probably wasn't the right word to use when describing your admiration for a regional vernacular. Something that is splendid is covered in splendor, is it not? Like the grass covered with the final glow of the sun as evening falls.

Sometimes I want to say that a thing is terrific. But then I pause because it isn't terrific. There is no terror associated with the crayon drawings that my son produces during his daily quiet rest time.

Doesn't fantastic mean that something is too much to be believed? It is a fantasy, which is the equivalent of what Napoleon Dynamite promised his classmates, that he would make their wildest dreams come true. I check with IMDB. Was it Napoleon who promised that, or was it Pedro? My hopes are dashed. I remembered it wrong. Pedro made the promise; Napoleon only suggested it to him.

Here's one that Napoleon actually did use. Copied from the famous quotes page on IMDB.com: “That suit, it's... it's incredible.” Doesn't incredible mean that something really is not to be believed? As in, my credulity can only be stretched so far?

Smashing? I know I'm getting really British here, but could smashing mean that all the matter in the universe is so overwhelmed that it explodes under the weight of existence? Something that is wonderful if full of wonder. Something that is overwhelming in actual fact cannot be borne.

Impossible? Well, I think impossible is pretty straight-forward, even though it is usually used to describe things that really aren't impossible.

Can you think of any others?

I was about to quote something familiar which was said by C.S. Lewis, and that I'm fairly certain I have quoted in these pages before about the death of words. A quick internet search finds references to an essay with that title which I have never read. Lewis also writes about “verbicide, the murder of a word...” in Studies In Words, which I have read. But in thumbing through the introduction to Studies in Words this evening (for it is Monday evening as I write), I find something else to quote instead.

After hearing one chapter of this book when it was still a lecture, a man remarked to me 'You have made me afraid to say anything at all'. I know what he meant. Prolonged thought about the words which we ordinarily use to think with can produce a momentary aphasia. I think it is to be welcomed. It is well we should become aware of what we are doing when we speak, of the ancient, fragile, and (well used) immensely potent instruments that words are. (6, Lewis's formatting maintained)

Isn't it wonderful how human Lewis is? That in the middle of a book that would seem technical to most people, he inserts something as regular as an anecdote, but an anecdote that ties in with the matter at hand? He goes on to describe something similar to what I have been describing in my own undereducated way above, by which I mean to say that Lewis speaks with the authority of study, while I speak only from the considerations of my own mind, not having taken the time or trouble to find authoritative meanings for any of the words I have been pondering.

Inflation is one of the commonest [forms of verbicide]; those who taught us to say awfully for 'very', tremendous for 'great', sadism for 'cruelty', and unthinkable for 'undesireable' were verbicides. Another way is verbiage, by which I here mean the use of a word as a promise to pay which is never going to be kept. The use of significant as if it were an absolute, and with no intention of ever telling us what the thing is significant of is an example.... (7)

This is exactly the sort of thing I have been thinking about this week, and it is exactly the sort of exaggerative usage that I am continually guilty of, almost to the extent that I am “afraid to say anything at all.” Is there a whole lot of chance that I am going to weed these superlatives out of my speech? No. Is there much chance that I will weed them out of my writing? Probably not. But I am still going to be caught up short whenever terrific or terrible are the words I feel compelled to choose.

A Story, and How to Fall Asleep With a Book

Many, many years ago when Michael and I hadn't been married very long I stopped sleeping. The attorneys who I worked for at the time had announced that they were going to take me shopping for a new desk, and I think it was on the same day we went shopping and picked out the item that all sleeping ceased.

That night I lay awake with visions of office furniture spiraling my brain, as though I were Alice falling through a cherry paneled rabbit hole. By morning my skull hurt. The next morning it was even worse.

About three days in my mom got me an appointment with a doctor. My doctor gave me a sample of a sleeping pill which I took that night. I slept for two hours until my husband came to bed, at which time he accidentally woke me up, and that was that for the night.

After six days I was in really bad shape. I lost all depth perception, couldn't drive, couldn't even dress myself, and that's when I got on a sleeping aid that actually worked. As it turned out, I was suffering from depression, and once I got on an effective anti-depressant, an effective sleeping pill, and started counseling, things became manageable again. At this point I averaged about four hours of sleep a night, but it was tolerable.

The funny thing was that the sleeping pill I was on only worked if I fell asleep while reading. If I closed my eyes without a book, sleep would never come. If I drifted off in the middle of a page the desired effect would be achieved. It was still a trying time, but things were better.

I have continued to have difficulty sleeping, and having tried every natural remedy I can think of, I find the only thing that works is getting up at 5:00 every morning.  If I get up at 5:00 I'm tired by the end of the day, and so long as I drink a cup of something hot (milk or tea will do) and read a bit, I manage to sleep for a reasonable amount of time.

But the morning and evening routine are only a late development. I cannot tell you how many times I've been told that reading a boring book might do the trick. I've wondered, both innocently and naively, how on earth could I ever find a book boring enough that it would make me fall asleep?

In fact Adler and Van Doren have a prescription for me to read myself to sleep:

The rules for reading yourself to sleep are easier to follow than are the rules for staying awake while reading. Get into bed in a comfortable position, make sure the light is inadequate enough to cause a slight eyestrain, choose a book that is either terribly difficult or terribly boring--in any event, one that you do not really care whether you read or not--and you will be asleep in a few minutes. Those who are experts in relaxing with a book do not have to wait for nightfall. A comfortable chair in the library will do any time (How to Read a Book, 45).

A book I don't care whether I read or not? Where could I find such a creature? In fact I know plenty of people who could provide me with books that I would find quite boring, though I'll tell you that I used to read a textbook on textiles just for fun, so that tells you something. Besides boring books, there are plenty of downright bad books on library shelves. Fortunately I have managed over the years not to encounter very many of those. On the other hand, the seventh chapter of the third part of Atlas Shrugged, '"This is John Galt Speaking,"' could probably do the trick. It's approximately sixty pages in small print of Ayn Rand sharing her philosophy, and even I, who read Les Miserables in full without neglecting the digressions, couldn't make myself read that one, so obviously the book that will put you to sleep can be found.

I offer an alternative strategy for reading yourself to sleep, one that I employed with some success this time last year before the early waking cure was found. Read a book you want to read but know you can't understand yet. Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard is the one I chose, for example. It was a book I knew I would have to read more than once before I could begin to get anywhere with it, and a page was all it took to prepare me to sleep. Yes, I could already follow it in snatches, but that was only enough to make it an interesting read to fall asleep to.

Reading and Re-reading; Please Tell Me You Don't Find This Too Terribly Dry

I took a break from George MacDonald for a few days as I got all caught up in How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. I finally got to the chapter in Adler on "How to Read Philosophy" and was disappointed to find that it wasn't one of the more encouraging chapters. Philosophy is difficult, and isn't commonly written for non-practitioners any more.

You may remember from last week that I was really happy to find that I could understand the essays in The Truth in Jesus by George MacDonald at last. There have been further developments in that area.  I have realized something. The reason I was able to understand the first four essays/sermons in the book was not because I had become accustomed to MacDonald's way of writing as I previously suspected. It was because I had read them before, without having much if any idea of what they were about. My reading of the last two weeks had all been second (and in a few cases third or fourth) readings. Since I am committed to finishing the book this time, and since I have been so pleased with the content of the first four essays, I have had to alter my reading strategy in a way that reinforces certain recommendations provided by Adler. I have to read the essay through once, without understanding it, knowing that on second reading his sentences and meanings will become clear.

This is not something I have had much patience for in the past. During my brief stint in graduate school it was something I had no time for. Admittedly, even though I read an excerpt from Foucault's The Archeology of Knowledge many, many times for the sake of a short writing assignment, and even with the help of Doctor Young, I never did get the hang of that one. Reading and re-reading doesn't always work, but when it does, it really does.

And may I say that reading and re-reading George MacDonald is totally worth the effort! Of course it might be of more use to you if I could tell you what the essays are about. All I can say is that most of them are really amazing, and I hope to take the opportunity, now that I know how amazing they are, to go back and really study them after I've done all the marking-up I've been engaging in this time through. At the very least it would be useful for me to write a little summary of each one, something I have been neglecting to do, although a brief summary could never do them justice.

A word of encouragement: in most cases I had read MacDonald years ago, and even though I had not spent very much time at all thinking about them during the lapse, the simple fact of multiple exposure is what brought them to life. Preferably you would take the time to read them once through, rinse and repeat immediately, but even if you don't you may find your initial, seemingly fruitless, effort rewarded. I hope that I will find this true of other books of a similar nature, though I'll also admit to you that I have not found it true of Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach by Michael McKeon.

Another Ramble. I look up words and terms. I talk about myself some more.

Why do I find freewriting to be so myopic? And what does myopic even mean? I'll look it up online, since the dictionary is all the way in the other room, and whenever I bring it out it tends to stay out, though unused, for many, many days. According to wikipedia it originates in a Greek word having to do with shortsightedness. Funny that, because I remarked to my husband only this evening (I write this on Sunday night to be published at a later date, and in the morning) that so many things require you to take the long view about them, e.g. learning to play Yu-gi-oh! for instance, or getting a small business off the ground, or teaching the children to obey. None of these things are any fun in the short term. Well, maybe Yu-gi-oh! is, but only because Michael is taking the time to teach me to play using lots of open hands and the sharing of strategy. His training me to play these games (i.e. Risk, Yu-gi-oh!, perhaps even Dog Fight eventually) is part of our comittment to spend more dedicated time together, just the two of us.

I rely on Grammar Girl to straighten me out on the difference between i.e. and e.g. I can never remember how to use them for long. I'm happy to notice, after looking it up, that I didn't choose the wrong one in the wrong instance above.

Back to my myopia. Though freewriting is an incredibly useful exercise, I notice that what I tend to produce when I freewrite is gross. It's all about me and most of it is whining. And so I wonder what to do about that. Maybe it happens because I don't stick with it long enough to ever really get to the good stuff. I thought I noticed the same thing happening with Peter Elbow though when he shared, in Writing Without Teachers, examples of his own freewriting. So what does that mean? Maybe I don't stick with it for long because I get so very sick of myself when everything I write starts revolving around me, me, me.

One of the great struggles of my life, and there are many, revolves around recognition of my own self-centeredness, which then becomes a revolving door. The more I worry about it, the more focused on myself I get until I reach the point where I cannot possibly get out of it. My friend Damon, over at Greenhorn Gardening, calls this the death spiral. I notice that when I meet someone new, about all I can do is answer their questions about myself, and I have a very hard time remembering to ask questions of them, to get to know them. It's true that a factor of my personality is that I tend to get to know people over time, but geez, can't I at least start with a question? Can't I find a way to worry more about what they think (not about me, but in general) than I am about finding a way to express what I think? When I was in high school I used to go to the occasional party where I had no friends, because I felt that it was important to put myself out there, to risk myself in that particular way. My mother had told me to find someone there to make sure that they had a good time, by that method taking my mind off of my own social awkwardness. It worked at least two out of five times that I remember.

And in the organic and inner-dialogic nature of today's post, I now change the subject again, sort of, in a way, and draw attention to myself by saying that this is one of the reasons why I never became a journalist. Because I am lousy at asking questions. I tend to think that if there's something I need to know that someone will get around to telling me. I expect others to present not just what they want me to know, but also what I need to know, in which case there is no need for me to ask questions. And again, because of my personality, I often fail to think of my questions until later. Somehow I never managed to form the habit.

You'd think it might be because I never had it modeled for me, but that certainly isn't true. My Dad is the master of asking questions. We spent all my growing up years going from museum to festival to monument, with my Dad asking thoughtful and interesting questions all the while, and yet I never learned how to do it. For many years as I visited interior design installations during college, I expected my facial expressions to indicate my avid interest and sympathy with whomever was leading the tour or seminar or whatever it was. These days I am more aware of the way facial expressions can be misleading, speakers and docents don't always realize every detail the audience needs to have provided for them, and that if you don't ask people about themselves, occasionally they get the idea that you aren't even interested.

Do any of you reading this have a similar experience to any of those I have described above? Can you share strategies you've used to conquer your own social or literary myopia? What encouragement or caution or advice are you willing to give me?

For Jim; Finally I Share What I've Wanted to Share about C.S. Lewis

I have a craving for discipline of speech and discipline of thought. Where does the craving come from? I don't exactly know. There are certain influences. My daddy, who I adore, is a brilliant man with an opinion on everything, and usually with the evidence and reasoning to back it up. We spend hours at the dining room table at my parent's house discussing things of a Sunday afternoon. I attend his guest lectures whenever possible, and I often look to him for information when I have a question about philosophy, or natural science, or the food supply, or theology, or whatever else may come up. I tend to dominate his attention when we go to the swimming pool, because I need to desperately to run ideas by him. He answers many questions with a question, usually encouraging us to think things through a bit more thoroughly.

Another influence is, certainly, my lifelong admiration of C.S. Lewis. I love Lewis so much that no matter what I'm reading, whatever the book on whatever the subject, my eye always travels to the initials C. and S. together, whenever they occur on the page. I wish that I could have had him for a teacher, though I doubt he ever had any female students, and he probably wouldn't have been all that impressed with me. The closest I can come is reading his books.

Lewis wrote books about medieval literature, about language, about story-telling. I have a couple of his works of literary criticism in addition to the usual collection of amateur theology and fiction. Though in my circles he is known primarily as a Christian apologist, he was also a professor of English Literature, and a wonderfully accessible writer, which plays a large role in my devotion to him as one of my favorite authors. I was able to use him as a source many years ago when I was writing a small piece of textual criticism on Mallory's Le Morte D'Arthur for a class.

I notice sometimes, when I choose the wrong word or phrase, what that choice of words indicates concerning my state of mind. I would never be so critical of the language used by any other person, but as you know, I am constantly examining myself, looking for intellectual fairness and love and the meeting of duty. For example, several weeks ago I made a comment to my sister that it was foolish to dismiss a particular doubt as foolishness even if the resulting explanation was incorrect. I noticed after saying it that I was doing the same thing to the speaker that I had been accusing him of. Forgive me if that statement isn't as clear as I had hoped to make it. I wonder if this passage from Surprised by Joy, in which Lewis describes his first encounter with his tutor, Kirkpatrick, called Kirk, or The Great Knock, has to do with my self-criticism. You can also read a brief and illustrative passage preceding this one here.

If ever a man came near to being a purely logical entity, that man was Kirk. Born a little later, he would have been a Logical Positivist. The idea that human beings should exercise their vocal organs for any purpose except that of communicating or discovering truth was to him preposterous. The most casual remark was taken as a summons to disputation. I soon came to know the differing values of his three openings. The loud cry of "Stop!" was flung in to arrest a torrent of verbiage which could not be endured a moment longer; not because it fretted his patience (he never thought of that) but because it was wasting time, darkening counsel. The hastier and quieter "Excuse!" (i.e., "Excuse me") ushered in a correction or distinction merely parenthetical and betokened that, thus set right, your remark might still, without absurdity, be allowed to reach completion. The most encouraging of all was, "I hear you." This meant that your remark was significant and only required refutation; it had risen to the dignity of error. Refutation (when we got so far) always followed the same lines. Had I read this? Had I studied that? Had I any statistical evidence? Had I any evidence in my own experience? And so to the almost inevitable conclusion, "Do you not see then that you had no right, etc."

Some boys would not have liked it; to me it was red beef and strong beer (135-136).

Did I originally get the idea that words and ideas matter from reading Lewis and Surprised by Joy? What's more likely, did I get them from my father? As I read Adler this month I sometime wonder if I got my ideas from him, or whether the fact that so much of his theory of reading, emphasizing understanding before criticism, expresses things I already believe is only a happy accident and confirmation, even if it is incommensurate with our culture.

One of my favorite things about Lewis is the fact that not only does he say what he means, he has a wonderful talent for explaining what it is he doesn't mean. I admire him as a master of critical thought and of communication, skills that he must have learned under the tutelage of Knock.

VBS Frustration and Lit Crit

I have been sick all this week, which has made it nearly impossible to write. Fortunately I had the first half of the week covered with previously scheduled posts, and was able to fill in a couple even in the midst of feeling lousy. The week wasn't supposed to go this way.

I had envisioned getting all sorts of things done while the children were away at vacation bible school. I was going to have plenty of time to think and read and write. I was going to get some things organized in my bedroom and at my desk. I was going to make a dint in the level of dust that is always in my house. None of those things actually happened, and I started thinking that the week was over even when it had barely begun.

After dropping the boys off at the church each morning I would drive home with all sorts of ideas in my head about things I was going to write. Having gotten a voice recorder for Christmas last year, I neglected to bring it with me, and even if I had brought it with me, I wouldn't have been able to articulate all of the things I was thinking.

I think in both words and pictures, but even when my thoughts do take the form of words, it isn't always possible to articulate them. That's why I can read a stimulating essay and still not be able to discuss it with anyone. That's why I can have a lucid discussion with my husband, but still not be able to write a short essay on the same topic. I wish that these things would happen more organically, but they don't.

I get especially tripped up when I try to write. Writing and speaking are not the same sort of activity, although they do have elements in common. I was reminded of this fact as I was skimming Literary Theory: An Introduction by Terry Eagleton the other day. I had picked the book up in order to find something out about Jacques Derrida. Before you start thinking I'm being all pretentious and dropping names on purpose to impress you, either of my intellectual superiority, or my obsessive craziness, know that I desperately wanted to do a degree in English Literature. I also desperately wanted to read and understand theory. I have a philosophy crush, if it isn't inappropriate to say so. I have tried reading and understanding and, more often than not failed miserably. I'm still trying. The dream hasn't died because of failure. And I admit that it is a peculiar dream by most people's estimation. I guess in a way that it is and it isn't a pretension. One of the things they told me in graduate school is that everyone there feels like a fraud at some point, especially on their first job, and that there is some value in putting on the mindset of writer or critic, if that is the sort of activity you are trying to engage in. If you pretend to be a critic, maybe you can write critically.

I want to read Literary Theory: An Introduction, because when we read an excerpt from it's introduction in a 200 level lit course I took as an adult (as apposed to “as an undergraduate”), the teacher said it was a book read by all English Lit graduate students. I read several chapters of it right after giving birth to my first child, impressing my friend's professor-husband with my oddness, or dedication to abstraction, or something. In the preface to the second edition Eagleton says that it was written with the non-practitioner in mind. The book is full of detail, and I'm not certain how to read it profitably, even if it is written for the non-theorist. I had thought I might use Adler's instructions for inspectional reading, sort of as a proof text or experiment. Yeah, I kinda don't think that it's going to work, not because Adler's instructions aren't good, but because I don't think I'm actually willing to work hard enough to carry them out. We'll see.

Sometimes I speak sensibly to myself about giving up theory, but that is a deception that never lasts. I can not give it up, which I suppose in the end is a good thing. I can't give up trying to write either.

Rule Making & Assumption Setting

When I was in the library one day, taking notes on How to Read a Book by Adler, I made a mistake in my handwriting and made the move to scribble it out with that circular motion I regularly employ. This gets me thinking, and writing:

When I messed up that word and scribbled it out back there, I flashed back to being told in school to mark out errors with a single line, which I automatically codified as a universal rule. Was it for readability? or so they could check over our mistakes? maybe even so they could review our thought processes? or to train us not to obliterate our mistakes, instead to remain calm?

I imagine the truth was probably that student handwriting was generally so difficult to read that the ban on scribbling existed for the sake of teacher's sanity. I think it's interesting, though, how our young minds would tend to hear a recommendation like that, or even a rule, and think that it applied to all of life. Watch out for wrong assumptions. It isn't only young minds that make them.

Regardless of what the teacher's intention was, I am still trying to find an underlying principle in what I have considered above, and I think it relates to some of the other things I've been reading lately. Michael and I are participating in Financial Peace University this year at our church. It is the second time we have gone through the program in going on eleven years of marriage. Anyway, in one of his books Dave Ramsey talks about the fact that successful people are people who haven't let a fear of failure stop them. When they fail they see what they can learn from the failure, and then they try again. Personally, I hate failure. Though I am a recovering perfectionist, I still veer toward not wanting to try things if I don't expect to do them well. I also prefer to avoid cleaning up the resulting mess. Truthfully it is one of the reasons my bathroom doesn't get cleaned more often.

Peter Elbow says that in writing sometimes you have to go ahead and use the wrong word before the right word will occur to you. Sometimes you have to go ahead and write the wrong paragraph before you can make your way clear to the write the better one. It's a good tip. Sometime it's hard for me to follow. At 34 years old I'm learning still not to try and obliterate my mistakes, to stay calm.

Understanding the Words on the Page At Last

It's Sunday morning as I write this and I am trying to reorient myself. I've been sick for the past two days. At first I thought it was because of some chemicals I had used to clean the bathroom. Then I thought maybe it was from the dust stirred up when I suddenly decided to pledge the house. I only got to two rooms with that one. I was all excited to vacuum next because I bought new vacuum bags for the first time in so many years I'm embarassed to say. The label suggests you replace the vacuum bag every thirty to sixty days. I'm assuming that's for people, like my mom, who actually vacuum daily?

I always think I'm going to do better with that, but then I never actually do. Getting sick this time doesn't help me to make the necessary committment.

While I've been sick I've been reading, and I find this really interesting.

I've had this book The Truth in Jesus: The Nature of Truth and How We Come to Know It, written by George MacDonald, with compilation, editing and insightful essays provided by Michael Phillips, for years. I was drawn to this book in the bookstore, well before Barnes and Noble came to Tuscaloosa, for many reasons, not least of which was the cover design. I've tried to read it numerous times, with varying levels of success.

So this time I pick it up to read it and, wonder of wonders, I actually find it making sense. It never did before. In the past it was always, and I mean always, too difficult for me to understand. I'd get through several pages before giving up. In the past Phillips's "Insights into" the essays didn't hold any insight for me. At most I could grab onto one or two sentences.

So what has changed? I don't exactly know. I also don't exactly know how to synthesize MacDonald's ideas with the other reading I've been doing. This may become another experiment for me in the days ahead, because a lot of what I'm reading in MacDonald fits in nicely with other ideas I've been grappling with, this idea of relationship for one. The idea of understanding and accepting my own being for another. It's as though God knew when I would be reading this book at last, what my other surrounding reading would be, what I would be writing in journal and in blog. Because what's cool about the reading this time is that it somehow cosmically appears to be fitting together. MacDonald has had me referencing Kierkegaard, Yancey, Adler, and even Rand as I've been reading him. Some of those associations have been positive, and some of them negative. Anyway, it is an exciting time for reading even as I am ill.

You Can't Just Use a Book Like That, Or Can You?

I read some lady's blog the other day and it pissed me off. If I felt like being nice about it, and considerate of my readers, I would say instead that it angered me. Poor lady. I'm certain, absolutely certain, that she is a very nice lady, but she unblushingly stated that she often doesn't finish reading books. Sometimes she just reads them until she's gotten what she wants from them. What she wants from them? I thoroughly disapprove.

I preceded to post on facebook that I don't like people, and have decided to become a misanthrope. It made my husband laugh, especially when I tried to use every form of the world I could think of. "Are you amused by my misanthropy? Isaac, I am going to put you down for your nap now because I am feeling very misanthropic."

Before you walk away in dread of incurring the wrath of Kelly because you don't finish every book you read either, I will tell you that I do not typically judge those people who I know and interact with in the same way as I would some nice lady I have never seen or corresponded with. I also acknowledge that there is such a thing as a legitimate reason for reading only part of any given book.

The thing that I think bothered me about this woman was the idea that she could start a book, presumably from the beginning and make the sovereign determination that she had gotten all she needed or desired from the author. It didn't for one moment occur to me that she may engage in careful examination before making the decision to move on. The way I interpreted what she said bothers me because it indicates certain assumptions about reading which I can neither agree with or condone, and because I have this peculiar conviction that I haven't really read a book unless I've read it's every word. "I've read that," I might say, but I have to add the qualifier that I read the abridged version, or that I only read the chapters on forgiveness, or that I skipped fifty pages of philosophy at the end. I'd have to explain why I'd read part but not all. I couldn't bear to give the impression that I knew the book if I hadn't taken the proper space and time to get to know it.

So now I have to talk about what I consider the legitimate reasons for reading only part of a book, and I have to explain what that underlying assumption was that I referenced before. I have to tell you that, yes, it is okay if you get half-way through a book and decide not to finish it, as if you needed my permission to do so. I have to confess that I have done the same. These will be the subjects of another day. Want to know how I know? Because I think that if I stopped trying to write about reading and writing I might combust, and that wouldn't be of benefit to anybody, though it might make an interesting experiment.

Rambling, I Like To Ramble. Sometimes I Even Do It On Purpose.

I got to pull out my trusty dictionary on Friday, as I started reading How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. "Hey, honey," I said, "this book was co-written by Charles Van Doren."

"Which one was he?" he asks. "The father, or the son?"

I've had the book in my possession for a couple of weeks, and because of it the name "Charles Van Doren" has been on the periphery of my thoughts. I think that it must be the same one. Teacher of literature. Lover of learning, from famously literary family. Man who was temporarily seduced by his own awesomeness, if the Hollywood version is to be believed. The Charles Van Doren of "21" fame. I even see in the appendix of the book that his father, Mark Van Doren, is referenced. Page 206:

"In poetry and in drama," the poet Mark Van Doren once observed, "statement is one of the obscurer mediums."

If you don't know what that means, I'm certainly not going to tell you, because I haven't read that part of the book yet, and so I don't know why he is being quoted, only that he is being quoted. And here I'm shoving you mentally around a bit just for the fun of it, and to see if it works.

The names of the Van Dorens jump out at me because of their association with a movie, Quiz Show, I saw and loved many years ago, starring Ralph Fiennes and John Turturro. Quiz Show tells the story of the quiz show scandals of the early days of television at which time it was revealed that the contests had been rigged for the sake of ratings. Some things change. Some things stay the same.

All three of the movie's lead are very good in their roles. And even though he is a secondary character, I absolutely fall in love with Mark Van Doren every time I watch the film. It may only be because I have a weakness for literary men with gray hair, but he makes me cry, especially when he is confused by the decisions of his son near the end.

At the time that I saw Quiz Show I think that I had never seen Ralph Fiennes before. In fact I had made some snide remarks concerning the pronunciation of his name. After seeing this movie I declared that he could pronounce his name in any way he liked. I was rather young at the time, you understand.

Anyway, there is a bit of a mystique in my mind concerning the character, Charles Van Doren, from the movie. I can only speculate as to what the original was or is like. I expect he didn't actually look like Ralph Fiennes.

I like the film because it shows the sort of mischief a personable and possibly well meaning person can get into when flattery and influence take charge of his will. I like it because he is eventually exposed, doesn't get away with it, and though coerced, he eventually manages to take it like a man, if you'll pardon the expression. I also like the film because Harry Connick, Jr. performs Jack the Knife during both beginning and ending credits. Turturro was terrific in it also, but his character didn't co-write a book I'm reading this week.

The movie represents an interesting little piece of show biz history, even if it is hard to tell the fact from the fiction. And believe me, I haven't done the research necessary to detect the truth when I see it emanating from my television screen.

All this is leading up to the fact that I learned a new word on Friday: desideratum. It does not mean, as I had thought based on the context, the deciding factor, which only goes to show you that contextual clues can lead you astray. Here's the sentence:

One constant [among changing theories about reading] is that, to achieve all the purposes of reading, the desideratum must be the ability to read different things at different-appropriate-speeds, not everything at the greatest possible speed (x)

Desideratum is something that is wanted or desired. What the precise difference is between wanting something and desiring it, I do not know.

Brain Barf: The Beginnings of Letters I Shall Never Write

Dear Heather, My parents met you this past weekend at a Christian Faculty Retreat, and suggested that I contact you with my questions about blogging. I have questions about blogging. Because all my life I thought I wanted to be a writer, but never really got to spend all that much time on it, and now I'm 34 years old and hardly know how to write more than a paragraph or two on any given subject. I have some natural ability, which has probably only held me back because I haven't had to develop the congruent discipline. Complain, complain, whine...

Dear David, If I ever find your email address, I may drop you a line and go into all sorts of rambling detail beginning with how I first started listening to your wife, Sarah's, music in college and thought it wasn't very good at first. The first time I heard her CD it was on a cheap CD player, the kind that plugged into a cassette player, a cassette player that had been inexpertly spliced into the wiring of my dad's car. It was a tape deck that was clamped to the underside of the hatch-back's center console, not sophisticated in any way and with terrible speakers. You know I was grateful to have it, the cassette player I mean, but I was on my way to a building site, the day I first heard your wife's CD, a building site where I was supposed to be taking photos for a photo journal, assigned in a class that was about Technical Drawing and Light Construction for Interior Design students. Only later did I realize that the reason I didn't think it was very good was because it was in fact very good, only something I had not been prepared by my other listening to enjoy, particularly that Victoria Williams song, "Love," which I don't mind telling you was strange the first half a dozen times I heard her sing it. Later my husband, a terrible music snob, and a jazz player, somehow agreed that of the music I listened to before I met him, Sarah Masen's second CD, Carry Us Through, was among the good ones. In other words, I read your book because of a vicarious relationship I have with your wife's music, and now I want to know why you do what you do, and maybe who else does it, because while I didn't much enjoy your political commentary, I liked your book very, very much.

Most of this came out of me in a rush sometime last week, and while these are messages I shall never send to the parties to whom they are addressed, I am glad I wrote them because they relieved some of the pressure I was feeling to communicate with others who are doing things that I may someday get the chance to do. Maybe someday I will actually write that letter to Lauren Winner that I've been thinking about ever since I first read her material on confession in Girl Meets God.

Kelly LOVES Books

I used to read this blog called Amy Loves Books until the author really started irritating me.  It was a personality issue I think.  But though I decided I didn't like her personally, I admit that I really enjoyed, and was inspired by, her writing.  She must have had something to do with my starting my very own blog.  She was the first ever blogger who I ever followed regularly.  She had an excellent set of posts describing her experience with post-partum depression.

I once commented to her that I thought it was much more interesting to read about what people actually were reading rather than what they would recommend for other to read.  I enjoy reading the occasional trashy novel myself, and I think that fact should humanize me somewhat for those who might be tempted to think I am too serious.  Not that I've read any trashy novels in a while.

I'll tell you what I am reading now, and someday I'll even share what else is on my bookshelf.

I have this awful tendancy to be reading three or four books at once, while simultaneously thinking of six or seven other books I would like to read.  This creates plenty of problems for me.  A typical problem is that I lose track of what in fact I am supposedly reading.

Right now I am reading:

The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodges Burnette.  I read this book when I was young (whatever that means), and I knew that I loved it, but I certainly didn't remember why.  I wondered what sort of power such a book might have now that I'm an adult.  The answer is that it is a wonderful, glorious, inspiring book.  It makes me want to have a garden of my own.  It makes me want to spend lots and lots of time outside.  I am troubled slightly by the racism of the period, but I have to lay that aside, because the rest of the book is spledid.  It makes you want to jump rope, and live an exceedingly healthy life.  Perhaps it romanticizes the purity and power of children to make the grown-up world right, but if it does, while I am reading it, I simply do not care.  I ordered the Norton Critical Edition because I wanted access to the historical information, as well as the critical essays, but I cannot promise that I'll read them before my neighbor's book club meets.

(And of course I wonder what we'll read next.  I have The Brothers Karamzov on my shelf, waiting to be read, but I've also borrowed some Walker Percy fiction from Patrick and Alina, and the latest Diana Gabaldon from my neighbor who has the book club.  I want to read Moby Dick eventually.  I'm less into fiction than usual at the moment, however.)

Studies in Words by C.S. Lewis.  This book is pure linguistics, and I think I've been working on it for a month already.  Honestly it's a bit beyond my comprehension, but it is an enjoyable experience reading some of Lewis's non-religious critical work.  The book is all about the meanings of words, and the ways that they have been used over time.  There's a difference between a word's meaning sometimes and the authorial meaning.  Lewis also indicates something he calls the dangerous meaning of a word, which is a meaning recognized by current readers that was unlikely to exist in the author's time, and the meaning with which a word is most likely to be misimbued. (This sort of writing perhaps makes me sound like an overeducated snob, but it is true that I am interested in such things, and reading this book has awakened me to the treachery of redefining words according to their accepted meanings.  It also makes me realize that I don't always truly know what a word means,even if I have used it a hundred times.)

(I have to go on facebook to see what else I am meant to be reading just now.  And this is one of the reasons why I keep a record on Visual Bookshelf.)

Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard.  This is a wonderful book and I am absolutely in love with it.  Kierkegaard looks at the story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac in the book of Genesis from every possible angle, and in this book he discusses the nature of faith.  I picked the book up because I have this question about what the scriptures mean when they refer to fear of the Lord.  I don't know whether Fear and Trembling will answer that question or not, but it does talk about what it means to live this life in faith, a subject with which I happen to be confronted immediately.  I have a question now, which I asked my husband just the other night.  Does appropriate fear of the Lord preclude fearing His works, or actions?  If anyone reading this has an answer to this question I would be grateful.

Esther: It's Tough Being a Woman, which is a Bible Study by Beth Moore. I've never before done a Beth Moore Bible study, so this is quite a  new experience for me.  A friend invited me to participate in one being held at First United Methodist downtown, and I agreed for several reasons. I like how Beth Moore takes an inductive study method, and breaks it down (or slows it down) into manageable parts for the lay reader.  This far (in week 1) I have enjoyed doing the study immensely, though I have never yet attended a Bible Study meeting at First United Methodist, for reasons of children's health, and even though I don't always agree with Moore's points of emphasis.  I borrowed an Esther commentary from my brother-in-law Wednesday night to supplement the study.

Unofficially I am also reading How to Study Your Bible by Kay Arthur, God Calling by "the two listeners" and publised by A.T. Russell, and I'm studying Esther and Hebrews (for Sunday School) on my own using The Inductive International Study Bible, in which the guiding materials were provided by Kay Arthur.  I've been doing lots and lots of spiritual reading and study recently, and today I found out one of the reasons why, which I may share with my readers ("if any," to quote one of my son Isaac's favorite movies, "The Wizard of Oz.") eventually.  Besides this I am trying to finish my reading of the Bible, and re-read the New Testament by the end of the year.

This is not like me normally, I swear.  There is so much I want to learn, which is a subject I will embark upon at a later date.  For now, Michael is waiting for me to watch a particular program with him before bed.

Parker Plays on the Quad

I simply haven't been in the mood to write lately, which is probably why I am reading a book right now on the value of non-reading. For some reason that seems ironic to me.

My Home in Lit

Brief moments of self-deprecating humor often appeal to me in the reading of non-fiction. This seems to be a hallmark of so many British authors, as I think Peter Elbow pointed out in one of his essays on composition.

Since I finished reading Orthodoxy over the weekend, and received my copy of Devotional Classics through the mail from Amazon, I decided to pick up Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis as my next continuous non-fiction read. I will revisit Larry Crabb's The Papa Prayer, and Piper's Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ later. (Devotional Classics is not meant as a continuous read; it is made to be read in fits and starts, and the very first selection in the text is from Mere Christianity. Thus my progression to Lewis.)

I was reading through the introduction to Reflection on the Psalms this morning, in which Lewis remarks, "There are some enlightened and progressive old gentlemen...whom no courtesy can propitiate and no modesty disarm. But then I dare say I am a much more annoying person than I know (8)."

Reading Triumphant, or Not So Triumphant Depending On Your Goal

I finally finished reading Chesterton's Orthodoxy this morning. You may remember that I had difficulty getting through the last two chapters. The reason for this had nothing to do with the quality of those two chapters.

I read the greater part of the book over the course of two months, and then I got distracted. I had started too many other things. There was too much fiction that I wanted to read. As a matter of fact I have read a lot of fiction since moving to this house. It's like a compulsion. And so I had left the non-fiction mindset. Now that I've finished the book, I realize that I've forgotten so much that was alive to me while I read. I can say that I've read the book, but that reading is less useful than it ought to be because I cannot reproduce it's content in my own mind. I wrote all over the book while I was reading it, and while that is a form of note taking, it may not be the most effective kind.

Michael says that I need to learn to read all over again; that there are habits of reading that will require effort to dispell. I argue that I never have learned effective note taking, that I need someone to teach me. I've read Adler's How to Read a Book.

You want to know how I finally made it through that last chapter? I took the book outside and read aloud to Parker. Reading it aloud helped me to read every word, paying attention to the emphasis implied by Chesterton's sentence structure.

Now that I "have read" the book, I fear that it is time to start it all over again.

Still Slogging My Way Through *Orthodoxy*

I've been reading Chesterton's Orthodoxy since October, and while I've really enjoyed the book, it's taken me about four months to attempt reading the last chapter. I seem to be terminally stuck.

For one thing, this is not a book you can read in gigantic gulps. There have been moments when I've been tempted to read a second chapter after finishing a first, and each and every time this has proven to be a mistake. Too much thinking is required. I'll make it through four or five pages of that second chapter, and then realize that I've no idea what I've just read, and this is rarely a good realization when it's a book you are reading voluntarily. I admit, I didn't understand much of what I read in Eagleton's Literary Theory, but that was a different sort of voluntary reading.

Michael recommends, quite sensibly, that I not choose such high intensity reading just before it's time to go to bed. This is why I never could have made it in graduate school. I've just about decided that I'm not the right kind of intellectual.

Reference? Can I Get a Reference, Please?

It bothers me that novelists occasionally will quote other writers without indicating where the quotation comes from. I'm not talking about quotations that preceed text necessarily, although it's nice to have sources for those as well, rather I'm talking about quotations appearing within the text. (Stephen King is very good about identifying his liftings, I've noticed.)

I mean nothing against Jan Karon, mind you, but here is an example from A Light in the Window that I asked my mother to find for me over the weekend:

"We are not necessarily doubting," said C.S. Lewis, "that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."
(240)

I really like this quote, but haven't read the book it was taken from. Is this from The Problem of Pain?

While I'm thinking about it, I thought it funny/odd/sinister that there is a character on Lost this season named Charlotte Staples Lewis.