Thoughts on Saints and Villains

I finished reading Denise Giardina's Saints and Villains, a novel about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for my book club last weekend in a reading frenzy. I blazed through the last 200 pages of Giardina's book in about 2 hours. I was sitting outside in warm late afternoon sunshine while the kids were in the pool, so it was easy to lose track of reality for awhile, but my setting was a contrast to the book's setting in WWII Germany.

The Bonhoeffer book is a novel- I have not read his magnum opus The Cost of Discipleship, although it is now on my To Be Read list. Some years ago we watched a film about him, but I had forgotten the details. So I knew the outline of his story: German theologian killed in Nazi prison camp after being accused of being part of a conspiracy. Even though I knew the ending, I didn't want to put the novel down - proof of a good story line and character development.

I think what drew me in was the conflict Bonhoeffer feels about who he wants to be and who he is. Everyone struggles with this, but Bonhoeffer is from a well to do German family. He isn't nobility, but his father is a well-known psychologist and his mother is from an aristocratic family. So his family identity is very strongly rooted in expectations and responsbilities.  He breaks the mold a bit by becoming a theologian.  It seems his early work was very systematic, but during his time at Union Theological Seminary in New York, which is where the book opens, he is introduced to ideas of pastoralism and of social justice.  He is studies under Reinhold Niebuhr and meets Jean Laserre, a French theologian involved in labor issues. Laserre introduces himself by saying he wants to be a saint, which at first Dietrich scoffs at, but eventually realizes that is the calling of every Christian.

Dietrich also becomes friends at the seminary with a black theologian named Frank Fisher in real life, but Giardina creates a fictional friend named Fred Bishop, in order to create an episode that is probably the most fictional part, but that introduces another theme of the book - the potential for evil to flourish with government approval. After they finish their studies at the seminary, Fred is assigned to a church in West Virginia, which is not where he wanted to go. However, he hears about a mine where men are dying by the dozens. When Dietrich comes to visit before heading back to Germany, the two of them go to the mine and discover that the men are dying by suffocation from silicon. This mine and the dying men become Fred's new church - his mission becomes to try to save them and to minister to them.  Bonhoeffer never really visited this place, but the mine was real, and the company that owned it and the US government knew about the dangers and that men were being sent to their deaths every time they entered and many were buried in hidden graves. They were mostly poor, desperate men, many were minorities, and many didn't have families who could protest their unjust treatment.  Giardina draws parallels between the inaction of Americans on this issue and on racism to the way the German people turned a blind eye to the injustices of the Nazi regime.

Because that is the other issue that makes Holocaust literature so compelling - how did the German people allow such atrocities to happen? How was evil allowed to flourish?  Giardina paints a picture of the Nazi rise to power as a confluence of luck and of inaction.  The Bonhoeffer family seems to think that Hitler is a fluke and that his lack of background and education will eventually be evident and his rise to power stopped.  Also, the gradual restrictions of liberty and increase of atrocities towards the Jewish people happen slowly, almost imperceptibly, so that people accept one restriction, get used to it, and then turn a blind eye to the next one.  It is a process that could easily reoccur, even though everyone seems to think that such a thing is impossible.

The part of history I wasn't so clear about was the story of the resistance movement within the German Intelligence department, the Abwehr.  Most WWII fiction and movies focus on the heroes outside of the regime.  But the Bonhoeffer family early in the regime of Hitler become involved in a plot to overthrow him. Dietrich's brothers and brother-in-laws are involved in this movement, and initially don't reveal their connections to Dietrich because he early on is vocal in his criticism of Hitler and fascism and the rise of the nationalist church. He becomes a leader in the Confessing Church, which splits from the German national church when it becomes clear that it is under the control of people who support Hitler and are willing to take his direction.  German patriotism becomes the focus instead of Christian discipleship.  Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship critiques the union of religion and politics and points to the connection of all Christians in the city of God.

One of the inner conflicts Dietrich suffers which Giardina does a good job of illustrating is his acceptance of doing little to support his family's undercover resistance, instead of taking a stand. He is a supporter of nonviolence, and at one point almost goes to study with Gandhi, but he feels compelled to stand with his people, in the sense of those who need him in Germany. Giardina connects this conflict with his argument for "costly grace" in The Cost of Discipleship: "Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks' wares. The sacraments, teh forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices .. . In such a church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delievered from sin. . . . Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from teh toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves, Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without repentance, baptism without church discipline, absolution without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cros. . . . To endure the cross is not a tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ. When it comes it is not an accident,k but a necessity. .. ."

This passage is what makes me want to read the rest of Bonhoeffer's work. This is conviction and accusation.  How are we following Christ?

But Giardina illustrates how even Bonhoeffer himself struggled to discern what this looks like in practice. Bonhoeffer wants to stand up to Hitler; he doesn't want to run away from the problems and escape, although he is sent overseas a couple of times in an effort to try to connect with church leaders around the world to let them know what is happening. Sadly, his efforts are ignored by the political establishment in England and America for some time.  But his family asks him to stop speaking out.  Because he has been an outspoken critic and has gone to an international convention seeking support of the Confessing Church instead of the national church, Dietrich's family is reluctant to let him know about their involvement in the secret plot to overthrow Hitler. However, eventually he is drawn in. Giardina does a good job of dramatizing Dietrich's struggle with his conscience in this section - he must decide whether to moderate his calls to stand up to Hitler with his desire to help the resistance, which means he cannot draw attention to himself.

Also, his involvement in the assassination plot means Dietrich cannot help the Jewish people as he would like. Giardina creates a fictional Jewish love interest for Dietrich (the biggest creative license perhaps), who becomes his conscience and helps him move from inaction to action and to see he must sometimes compromise transparency to stand up to injustice.  A quote from his unfinished work the Ethics hints at this "Being evil is worse than doing evil. Better for a lover of Truth to lie than for a liar to tell the truth.  Which is worse? To stay clear of political conflict for fear of compromising the church, or to become involved out of love of neighbor and sin greatly in the process? To escape sin may be the ultimate guilt."

This is a shift from his earlier writings, and I can see why Giardina created a love-interest to explain Bonhoeffer's development. Another timely quote: "When a successful figure becomes especially prominent and conspicuous, the majority give way to the idolization of success. They become blind to right and wrong, truth and untruth, fair play and foul play. It is not even seen that success is healing the wounds of guilt, for the guilt itself is no longer recognized."

The image I had in my mind before reading this book was of a Bonhoeffer who seemed much more heroic than the main character of Giardina's book. Her Bonhoeffer is plagued by depression, unable to make decisions promptly, hesitant to make commitments, angry about the Nazis but ineffectual, not heroic enough to make a difference, and a theologian of intellectual capacity, but not exactly deep faith or a loving demeanor. It isn't exactly a flattering book, but Giardina's Bonhoeffer is very human, and the combination of intellectual curiousity and rigor, his desire to have faith, and his frustration with his inability to be effectual made him easy to relate to.  I had thought of him as nearly a saint, and he decides after hearing his seminary friend Jean Lasserre declare his intention to be a saint, that he also wants to live like one. He begins to reevaluate his own understanding of faith, but he must continually confront his own human weakness. It's a common problem - we make progress on the journey to sainthood until our humanity edges in.

In the end, when he is imprisoned for his suspected involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler, Dietrich is allowed to again unify who he wants to be with how he lives.  Eventually, he becomes the minister to the other prisoners.  He is gradually given more freedom to roam around the prison as the Nazis grow weaker and disorder begins to infiltrate the system.  In prison, Bonhoeffer is interrogated, and Giardina creates a doppelganger out of a Nazi officer who eventually has something of a conversion experience at the end of the book, partly through his questioning of Bonhoeffer and their joint love of music.

What seems a great tragedy for the world is Bonhoeffer's death just weeks before the war ended.  It seems at one point he is going to escape death, but he is hanged along with other traitors to the Reich as the Allies are drawing nearer.  But although it seems wrong to suggest that his death may have been a blessing, it may be that the blood of martyrdom did more to spread the growth of his teachings on grace and discipleship than if he lived.

As I have been reviewing the book as I write this, I see more themes I'd like to weave in - one being the power of art to further political agendas on both sides of the spectrum. The conflict between the Nazis and communists set up a common enemy that allowed other nations to accept Hitler, as did his use of Christian rhetoric.  The conflict between the desire for beauty and comfort vs. the practice of asceticism is another inner battle for Dietrich. And so on. The subject, the setting, the plot, all make this a very absorbing book.

More on discernment

Last week we watched Bishop Barron's movie about St. Catherine of Sienna because she is one of our youngest daughter's patron saints.  The kids whined about it, but then they settled in and paid attention and even asked questions like, if she hardly ate anything why does she look pregnant in that painting?

What stood out to me was a section from the second half of the movie when Bishop Barron talks about her understanding of growing in holiness and discernment. There's a tension between loving the self and loving others and loving God.  Bishop Barron paraphrases St. Catherine's idea of a "cell" of self-knowledge.

"To obtain real charity, we have to dwell constantly in the cell of self-knowledge. ... The cell is also a well where we find both earth and water, that is knowledge of our sin and knowledge of grace ... our nothingness and God's fullness."

To love others requires we know ourselves to be in need of grace and mercy.  Love is willing the good of another, but sometimes this good is something they don't want - particularly children - but how do we offer this in a humble way?

Barron goes on to describe what St. Catherine says about humility.  Here is my paraphrase of his description of her words (transcribed by a priest):  Humility of the foundation of all spiritual growth. Obedience is tied to this. But charity is at the center because God is love. We should love God first and then love all things because of God. Our business is to work for everyone's good.  The law of love is accompanied by the law of suffering ... Suffering and sorrow increase in proportion to love. When love grows so does sorrow . . .  all love is a participation in the cross.

This suffering in proportion to love is obvious to parents, but it also is evident during emergencies. But sometimes it is the suffering of letting go:

"Love is a steady stripping away of our self love, our preoccupation with the self. Turning toward God in a sinful world is especially painful. That's why you find the cross in all the great Christian mystics."

Barron goes on to paraphrase: The more love grows in us, the more the oneness with God increases.  The more we participate in love, the more we grow into oneness with God. We are always moving forward or moving backward. Always restlessly seeking. The death of self will and union with the divine will is the direction.

One of the sorrows of life is that to say yes to one thing is to say no to another, even when that is a good thing. That is when "divine will" is perhaps most difficult to discern.   I woke up this morning feeling sad that we have crossed living overseas off our list of places we would want to be sent to work. This decision is not the kind of big sacrifice that St. Catherine is talking about, but it is a decision where we are saying no to something I desire because it appeals to me more on a superficial level than because I am devoted to the idea that the real benefits to travel as education will be realized.  The two kids who would be a senior and a sophomore have been very clear let about not wanting to go overseas. They want to stay here. I imagine they would get used to living abroad, and perhaps grow to love it. But they might also stew in anger and resentment for a long time.

I have had a hard time letting go of the hope though. I like the idea of doing the hard thing.  But there are hard things everywhere.  I often have to remind myself that the place where we are is not so important as what we do while we are there.

Poetry and politics

I've been meaning to incorporate more poetry into our days during the month of April, but that hasn't really happened.  Now that the month is drawing to a close, here are a few nods to the art.

A new poet to me is Kayo Chingonyi, whose work I just was introduced to by a fellow teacher. Here is one of his pieces. The title comes from a Zambian word for initiation.

Kumukandaby Kayo Chingonyi

Since I haven't danced among my fellow initiates,
following a looped procession from woods at the edge
of a village, Tata’s people would think me unfinished 
– a child who never sloughed off the childish estate
to cross the river boys of our tribe must cross
in order to die and come back grown.

I was raised in a strange land, by small increments:
When I bathed my mother the days she was too weak,
when auntie broke the news and I chose a yellow suit
and white shoes to dress my mother’s body,
at the grave-side when the man I almost grew to call
dad, though we both needed a hug, shook my hand.
what would he make of these literary pretensions,
this need to speak with a tongue that isn’t mine?

If my alternate self, who never left, could see me
what would he make of these literary pretensions,
this need to speak with a tongue that isn’t mine?
Would he be strange to me as I to him, frowning 
as he greets me in the language of my father
and my father’s father and my father’s father’s father?

I mentioned the Beth Ann Fennelly article about the role of literature in increasing empathy.  Chingonyi's poetry is a good example of how poetry also shares in that ability to shift perspectives and provide insight into another's life. The teacher who shared the info about Chingonyi interviewed him as part of a series of interviews with Dylan Thomas Prize winners. Here is a 10 minute clip of Kayo Chingonyi talking about his writing life. https://soundcloud.com/user-588915112/kayo-chingonyi-2018-winner.  More about his work: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/28/kayo-chingonyi-poet-dylan-thomas-prize

Another good clip I have been meaning to share isn't about poetry per se - and maybe I shared this before? - but this video called "Nihonga: Slow Art" touches on the way faith forms art.  This video features the work of abstract artist Makoto Fujimura who was scheduled to speak at University of Dallas for their McDermott Lecture series, but the lecture was cancelled.
  https://www.makotofujimura.com/

Meanwhile art-making happens around here in small ways - pictures for elderly neighbors. Potholders. Painting old wooden ornaments. Painting rocks. Sidewalk chalk designs. Baking. Lots of hair braiding and nail art. I have a large stash of craft supplies leftover from co-op and VBS and CRE.  Might as well use them up.  My intentions to incorporate more art and music into our days are largely still intentions and not actions, a small failure to move from concept to product, but I need to remind myself to focus more on the small successes.

There were a number of small successes and failures yesterday.  A failure was spending too much time responding in my head to a Facebook post that touched a nerve. A success was restraining myself from actually responding. A success was spending a pleasant hour in the afternoon sunshine on opposite sides of the sidewalk from a friend as we let our little girls play charades - a good non-touching game. A failure was letting slip that we had made a little field trip back in late March to the mountains and another trip to the military beach about an hour north last weekend.  I'm afraid she was a little shocked. I have tried not to talk very much about our little illicit excursions because, even though our interactions with others were very limited - and masked and gloved - they really aren't in the spirit of "Stay home" orders.

I'm afraid I'm not a great team player.  It doesn't help that I don't firsthand know anyone who actually has the virus, although a neighbor thinks she had it. A friend of a friend's sister had a bad case and was really sick and in the hospital a few days.  Our acquaintances on the Theodore Roosevelt were among the 4/5ths of sailors who tested negative.  I am not sorry to have the kids doing school at home, and I don't mind the restrictions on shopping and dining out, but I am inordinately gladdened by the report that the beaches and some parks have opened for exercise.  On the other hand, I am sorry to hear about thousands of gallons of milk being poured into the ground, chickens and pigs being slaughtered, and fields of vegetables being plowed under because farmers don't have a market for their food with all the restaurants closed, and they can't afford to nurture, harvest, or process, package, and transport it to the groceries. Meanwhile people are going hungry because they are out of a job and the stores are out of food.  How many kids aren't getting their online schoolwork done because they don't have motivation, they don't have access, or they don't have someone to explain concepts clearly? I tend to sympathize with the governors who think there must be a safe way to start reopening the economy now that more masks are available, and people are accustomed to wearing them, and the six feet rule is mostly followed.  We shall see.

Enough of my partially formed political thoughts for now.  I have been meaning to turn more to reading and research.  A success yesterday was I did look up some conferences and literary societies and graduate programs that focus on environmental humanities.  A failure is that I have not drummed up enough motivation or time to write up ideas for abstracts. On the other hand, I am loving Saints and Villains,  the novel about Dietrich Bonhoeffer I'm reading for my book club.  And success: I finally finished Pico Iyer's The Lady and the Monk about his year in Kyoto and his developing relationship with the young Japanese woman who eventually becomes his wife. I checked it out from the library a week or so before everything shut down. The book is a travel narrative. It rambles slowly through the streets and through different encounters. Sachiko, the young lady, is unhappily married and unhappily restrained by the expectations demanded of her by the culture.  She gradually spends more and more time with Pico, ostensibly to practice English and to show him Kyoto and the surrounding areas, but also because he represents the freedom she desires.  I really like Iyer's writing, but it does not move quickly. It is perhaps akin to the "slow art" that Fujimura describes.

Back to poetry. I learned via social media that Irish poet Eavan Boland died.  The poem of hers most familiar to me is "Becoming Anne Bradstreet," but her passing led me down the rabbit trail of reading more of her poems.  Here is "Becoming Anne Bradstreet," a fitting poem for Poetry Month about the influence of poets and their words and the power of imagination.

Becoming Anne Bradstreet    EAVAN BOLAND

It happens again
As soon as I take down her book and open it.

I turn the page.
My skies rise higher and hang younger stars.

The ship's rail freezes.
Mare Hibernicum leads to Anne Bradstreet's coast.
 A blackbird leaves her pine trees
And lands in my spruce trees.
 I open my door on a Dublin street.
Her child/her words are staring up at me:
 In better dress to trim thee was my mind,But nought save home-spun cloth, i' th' house I find. We say home truthsBecause her words can be at home anywhere—

At the source, at the end and whenever
The book lies open and I am again

An Irish poet watching an English woman
Become an American poet.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55336/becoming-anne-bradstreet

Shakespearean Feasts and Glowing Dolphins

Although we don't seem to be doing much, time is flying by. I tend to spend a lot of time fiddling - I have cleaned out a couple of drawers in my dresser and desk, and although I didn't pick out much to get rid of, everything is nicely folded. Same thing in the garage - tidied the stacks, but the give away pile only grew slightly.  I went through all of our DVDs and organized them into categories - animated, religious, action, drama, live action kid movies, documentaries. We don't watch DVDs very much anymore, and we have some that we haven't ever watched (notably The Bible documentary made by PBS and a collection of The Wonder Years and Seventh Heaven  that a friend dropped off. The kids did watch a season or two of Seventh Heaven, which was show I never watched. It starts off promising but is dated and the mediocre acting/sit-com cheesiness make it easy to put in the give away pile.)  I have a whole stack of DVDs I got for 10 cents each at a sale at the NEX, but most of them are mediocre, too. With the advent of streaming movies, watching DVDs is becoming outdated. In addition to the give away pile, I have a pile of "If we don't watch these by the time the shutdown ends, I'm getting rid of them."

What has been worth watching? I still have the Divine Mercy movie and The Two Popes on my list to watch, although I wonder if the free streaming has ended on the Divine Mercy movie.  I think I mentioned that I've tried to motivate the kids to balance meaningful movies with series like The Office, which the teens just finished, and Parks and Rec, which they just started, and the old TV series Criminal Minds, which has caused the thirteen year old to come into our room a couple of nights after nightmares woke her up. It was made for TV, but the criminals are pretty heinous. I can't remember if I mentioned the movies that were worth watching: Just Mercy, Peanut Butter Falcon, and Freedom Writers. There are some language issues in these, but the themes were powerful, and the films well made.  I made the mistake of putting on Shakespeare in Love the night after Shakespeare's birthday, which won a lot of awards and remember thinking I loved, but it starts off with a lot of adult content. . . oops. Had to fast forward a bit, and then the kids all got frustrated and went to bed, but I stayed up and loved the second half, when the players begin to work on performing Romeo and Juliet. It is a fun film, but much too graphic for family viewing. Star studded cast.

I tried to get festive for Shakespeare's birthday - although I was off by a day. For some reason, I had the 24th in mind, but realized on the 23rd my error - in part because my arts and leisure college student reminded me and crowed with delight via text when he was right and I was wrong.  We had a driveway socially distant social planned for Thursday with the neighbors, so I stuck with my initial plan to celebrate on Friday. We had scones and cream for breakfast, but though I looked up the recipe, I didn't make Yorkshire puddings for dinner because I made meat pies using frozen puff pastry and beef chunks stewed in beer.  The meat never softened up enough to be a good tender, shredded texture, so I was disappointed, but the boys liked them.  Roasted squash, potatoes, and beets accompanied them, along with rotisserie chicken because I went to the store that day, and the idea of chicken legs was appealing. I was supposed to save a bone for the bone -in-vinegar experiment because the girls were wanting to try it, but I forgot.  We don't eat a lot of meat with bones anymore.  Angel food cake with whipped cream and fruit was for dessert - It was going to be trifle, a nod to the sherry soaked pound cake trifle that I read about on a Renaissance cooking website, but went for the labor saving option.  An article on National Geographic's website had an inspiring description of making shaped foods, like deer shaped buns filled with red wine or currant jelly, so that when they were torn apart it looked like blood spilling forth.  Maybe next year! (this site was fun, too.)

I have not cooked much the past month - that has been the other favorite pastime for the girls. Particular successes: two different varieties of lemon tart - one filled with lemon curd, the other with lemon mixed with sweetened condensed milk kind of like Key Lime pie, naan, scones, different varieties of dinner rolls and biscuits, Nutella cookies (although Nutella is too precious to bake with...), homemade granola, and some nutritious cookies - one variety of ginger snaps and another almond flour/almond butter/chocolate chip delicious nugget. I still like the no-bake nutritious cookies made with peanut butter, honey, powdered milk, oats, and various nuts and seeds, all rolled in coconut, better, but these didn't last long.  A few recipes didn't turn out as well: The chocolate mousse needed more whipping, the covid cupcakes were dry, as were the hipcakes made with homemade cake rather than cake mix for the crust, and some of the bread experiments were less successful.  Have I gained a thousand pounds? I have only avoided excessive weight gain by being obsessive about averaging five miles on the step counter... (We've also polished off probably something like 10 gallons of ice cream since Easter.)

Other news: Today the beaches reopen in our area for exercising. No stopping, gathering, or sunbathing allowed. Of course, today is overcast after a sunny and warm weekend, so crowds probably won't descend. Opening on a Monday was as a wise strategy, I think. Meanwhile, the base beaches, which had remained open, closed during the weekend - perhaps because too many people were gathering.

Last night we drove down to the oceanfront to catch the bioluminescence.  The kids all complained when I made them load up in the car at 8:30, but I hadn't ever really seen it, other than little dots in the water in Guam during our one night snorkel that resulted in me almost being drowned by my younger children who clung to me in fear while the older ones swam off with Dad.  It was beautiful. You may have seen this video that was filmed off the coast of Newport Beach about an hour north of the dolphins swimming in it. They glow in the dark as they play in the surf. The effect is caused by certain algae in the water. During the day, the tide looks like it is dirtied by reddish mud, but at night the crashing waves glow electric blue. My iphone camera didn't capture it very well, but you can get the idea below.  Now I need to catch a grunion run...

Better quality photos are available elsewhere online, but this captures the effect

The kindergartner creates her own checklists for school

In an attempt to enlarge our home gym we bought a basketball goal.  It nearly caused a trip to the ER when one of the boys tore open a half inch gase on the bottom of his foot near a toe. He sliced it on the base of the goal after dunking a ball. We heatedly debated the merits and drawbacks of going to get stitches, but I won out with my appeal to field medicine. And we had some Nuskin on hand. So far it's holding together just fine.

Covid cupcakes

One of many tea parties. They are on the schedule.

Everyone loves angel food cake with whipped cream and fruit.

Not everyone loves reading a sonnet after dinner.

The pool is open!

My roses are thriving - but no flower show home judging this year.

fancy tea party

Online reading and online school

In addition to enjoying the books I wrote about last week, I've also run across some interesting articles that I'll share here for future reference.

First, in relation to the original sin discussion yesterday, there was an article about Martin Scorsese movies in the latest Notre Dame Magazine. Here is a director who has spent a career studying the darkness of the human heart. I haven't seen The Irishman and I've never been a huge fan of mob movies, although I always enjoy them when I am watching them. The article makes me want to take another watch with a more critical eye: https://magazine.nd.edu/stories/the-dark-gospel-of-martin-scorsese/

My favorite article in the magazine, though, is this one about the power of literature to teach, or at least to encourage, empathy: https://magazine.nd.edu/stories/what-good-is-literature/.  Beth Ann Fennelly's "What Good is Literature?" is a pertinent read during this time when reading more is a good antidote to surfing social media, which I would think encourages insular thinking, or whatever is the opposite of empathy. Fennelly, who is the poet laureate of Mississippi, or was, summarizes a few studies that seek to prove the affective power of literature, but it makes explicit what I try to explain to my literature 101 students when I give them Azar Nafisi's essay "Mysterious Connections that Link Us Together" and Gregory Orr's piece "The Making of Poems."  Both of these short essays are old now but have timeless messages that capture the imagination and the heart of readers, and pertinently reluctant readers, to show both how literature creates relationships between readers, characters and authors, and provides a way to heal from injury and still be compassionate and vulnerable.

My aunt just sent me the link to the Harvard professor's rant against home schoolers that seems based on some imaginary ideal of home schoolers.  I suspect she wrote it before all parents became home school parents because of Covid closures.  I will say I have run into home schoolers who seem to want to outsource all aspects of home schooling or who seem to have jumped into home schooling without a lot of thought about how to home school, but the majority of home schooled children we've met are bright, cheerful, interesting kids. The relative number of odd birds is probably equal to the number of odd birds in the school system as well. And the number of wasted hours that school children spend looking out of windows or listening to their peers get in trouble or ask the same questions over and over probably outweigh the number of hours a home schooled child might spend playing or reading novels, activities with educational value. (Easy access to video games and vapid media might be the downfall of home schoolers, though, as our recent struggle in our return to home schooling has shown.) I have a horrifying memory of telling my high school history teacher when she got mad at me for reading Anna Karenina in class that I was learning more from that book than for her. My impertinence was unacceptable, but I can't help but agree with my 16 year old self. She was an older teacher who put old copies of notes on an overhead projector for us to copy and then spend the rest of the class trying to catch students who were exercising all of their creativity in coming up with ways to be naughty. "Slamming" was a favorite - the room was on the second floor, so students would lift their desks and let them slam down to disturb the classes below - and our own. The teacher was terrible at catching the perpetrators.

Meanwhile, my kids' teachers are sending them to Khan Academy and Quizlet and Discovery Channel videos, even Brainpop, for their assignments instead of crafting their own or having synchronous learning. All of these resources have been used by home schoolers for years, so if they are acceptable replacements for public school now, they should show that home schoolers have had comparable or better educational opportunities.  At any rate, the article seems to have mostly garnered negatives responses.

Time to disconnect and get back to life and trying to educate my children.

Miscellaneous thoughts

I went on a 10 mile walk the other day with a friend (wearing bandannas as masks! staying apart on the sidewalk and street!). We just kept walking and talking, and even when we stopped in front of our house, we talked another half an hour (about 3 hours altogether - a pretty good pace).  My husband had to cut us off.

Among the many topics we covered was original sin. My friend is reading Augustine's Confessions for the first time, and she said she had read or heard somewhere that the idea of original sin originated with St. Augustine, so she started reading with a combative attitude because she admitted to having theological problems with the idea that God created people predestined to sin.  While the idea of free will takes away some of that difficulty, if I understood her explanation correctly, the problem she has is with the understanding sin as something evil, so if people have original sin, they have this evil element.  I tried to explain how I understood original sin - and I'm not sure my argument is theologically sound or that it really removed the obstacle she had - but here goes. Original sin isn't actual sin, but that capacity to choose to sin, which is related to what I understand Augustine means by concupiscence. Concupiscence is usually related to lust or sexual appetite, but in a way I think you could expand the meaning to apply to any desire to possess for selfish reasons - so that concupiscence is selfishness. Our spiritual journey is from the tendency toward selfishness/self-centeredness of infancy to the capacity for selflessness/gift of self mature love that is exemplified by Christ. It's a constant up and down trek.  Just when we think we are capable of real selflessness, we revert back to the "what about me!" attitudes of youth. Or at least I do - I still have a long way to go toward selflessness.  Original sin is that capacity of human nature to put self first - an evolutionary/biological tendency? Or a spiritual problem? At a certain level spiritual and biological explanations of human nature should overlap.  If the way that we are in the image of God is that we have the capacity for love that overflows (as well as for creativity, for beauty, for magnanimity, for wisdom) rather than for lust that seeks to possess - as a sexual possession and as greed or power.  My friend also objects - as I often to myself - to blaming sexual longing for most sins, or for being the root of the most egregious sins, but there is a power to seeing sexual desire as a metaphor both for self-transcendence (as in the idea of a spiritual ecstasy) as well as for selfishness.  Certainly many of the best dramas circle around the conflict between love and lust and possession and power. (Another topic of conversation: If men have exerted power through dominance (symbolized by sexual possession), then women have let their desire for power be expressed through manipulation.)

So to circle back - being born with "original sin" doesn't mean being born with actual sin, but with freedom to choose selfishness over selflessness, pride over generosity, vanity over humility, etc.  To become like God is to let love and purity of intention guide our decisions.  The difficulty of doing this the source of many a crisis of faith.  And yet relying on a purely materialistic/biological explanation of human nature doesn't explain why we admire those people who exemplify altruism and self-sacrifice or why we take pleasure in doing something good for others.

I would think there is a lot of potential for sociological and theological research during this Covid quarantine (and environmental/economic research). My own reaction is a combination of optimism and pessimism - a mix between enjoying the simpler structure of life coupled with a desire to help serve the greater good and assist my neighbor. and being bothered by the closures, especially of things that don't seem to contribute much to the spread of the disease such as outdoor spaces, and fearing that the disease is worse than is being reported - or that the next pandemic is right around the corner and will be something more like a flesh eating bacteria that spreads more rapidly and causes a more painful, certain death.  More people seem to be turning to altruism and to prayer, to compassion and spiritual enrichment, to conversations with God instead of with the world; it seems like a lot of people are tuning into church online, but will there be a movement away from church/sacramental life when the restrictions are lifted? Will the strengthening of the domestic church result in a strengthening of the institutional church or a weakening?  I need to remind myself not to indulge in conjectures that lead to  pessimism, and instead focus on the positive outcomes - that homes are becoming more faith centered and the reduction in consumerism and environmental impacts are positives that hopefully have longlasting influence.

Recent Reads

During the first week or so of the stay at home order, I wandered the house flitting from one activity to the next with no real focus or finishing power. The kids and I had several discussions about ADD because we all had trouble staying focused. I'd walk away from things cooking, change topics in the middle of conversations, and put things down and be unable to find them minutes later. This isn't really atypical behavior for me, but I was a bit more foggy than usual.

This cloudy brain really manifested in my reading. I thought I'd get all this reading done, especially since my husband was gone, and I could leave the light on and read in bed. But I couldn't focus on the pages. I'd pick up one book and then another and read a few pages and forget what I just read or set the book down one evening and forget what was happening in the book the next.  I thought I would organize notes for school, too, since I'm not teaching. That still hasn't happened, but I did break through the reading block.

The book that did it for me was Jessmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing. Maybe the reading block was because what I was reading was dense and meditative, rather than plot driven (I still haven't finished Pico Iyer's The Lady and the Monk, about his year in Kyoto, or Beldan Lane's Backpacking with the Saints. I really like the writers' styles and their topics, but they, too, write in an unconnected way. Lane quotes almost too many saints and describes so many trails, I can't keep the epiphanies he has straight. And while Iyer's book is more narrative, it moves slowly, serpentinely, almost like the streets of Kyoto he describes.  (I really wanted to go to Kyoto when we visited Japan several years ago, but we didn't have enough time, and the cost of the bullet train was prohibitive for our group. Since we never summitted Mount Fuji, we are still due to return to Japan.)

Then last week I picked up Ward's book in a Little Free Book Box.  (I bless and curse those things. I can't pass them without looking in. Even though they are probably full of germs, they are also full of surprises.)  I haven't read anything by Ward, a National Book Award writer, nor was she really on my list of to-reads, but I picked this book up one night and never set it back down. Good thing I started around 10 and it was only about 1:30 when I finished.  Not as late as some nights.  It's the story of a family in Mississippi that is struggling against drugs, racism, poverty, and ghosts. The last part immediately recalled Toni Morrison's Beloved. The ghosts show up after the characters are very solidly real in your mind, although they are sketched in lightly, a testament to Ward's gifts.  The family retains their dignity and their capacity for love and to be loved despite some dark moments.  Ward makes empathizing with meth addicts possible. The narrative evolves around some dark moments, most told in flashbacks or as stories within the story, but the bonds of the family, particularly the love of the grandfather and grandson, hold them together.  This is one I want to sit with a while and come back to.

I also just finished T. C. Boyle's collection of short stories, Wild Child. The title story is the last in the collection, and it is different in style and content from most of the other stories, which are about contemporary characters who fail to make connections with others, who have stifled desires and dreams, who look for love and meaning in their small lives, usually without finding it, although some of them do. The story of a courier who rescues a woman's child stuck in a mudslide was notable for that brief heroism.  The title story is about a feral child in France from the turn of the nineteenth century. After being caught by villagers, he is turned over to an orphanage for deaf-mute children and comes under the care of a young doctor who sees his humanity and spends years trying to teach him to speak and communicate and wear clothes. The ending isn't entirely happy. But despite the comparative darkness of Boyle's stories, I do enjoy his writing. His settings are usually around Santa Barbara where he lives, so they are familiar. And his characters skirt around hard questions of faith and purpose and meaning. They usually fall short of finding answers, but they are haunted by the desire for something more to life. 

I slowly finished a few other things over the last six weeks. I'm in a Read Harder challenge book club, so I've been reading some atypical books for me to complete that challenge. One of the categories is to read a literary magazine - and the little Free Book box had an issue of The Sewanee Review, Summer 2019. Picked it up in a little free book box, of course. The Review is the oldest lit journal in the country, I'm pretty sure, and has been the first place of publication for many famous writers, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and reviews.  Favorites from this issue: Poetry: Garrett Hongo's "A Garland of Light" which is about a walk around Rome in honor of Robert Hayden. Also a war poem, "Collateral Rabbits" by Graham Barnhart. Fiction: "Family Oracle," by Celia Bell about a women who talks to the dead, and Michael Hawley's "Somerville," about a creepy woman who takes on her dead roommate's persona after she burned their apartment down. 

I also finished Alice Walker's newest poetry collection, Taking the Arrow of the Heart, and since I heard her read from it in February, I included it in the category of Spoken Word poetry, in case I don't get around to listening to a whole book.  

A short read I finished: A collection of essays by Rebecca Solnit called Men Explain Things to Me, which came out in 2014 and most of the essays were previously published essays in response to earlier issues that became the Me Too movement. I'm a fan of Solnit's other books: Wanderlust and A Field Guide to Getting Lost are the two I've read.  The title essay begins with an anecdote about a party she attended with a friend where the host, a wealthy businessman, discovers she's a writer, asks what she has written about (Eadweard Muybridge, the pioneer of movement photography, which paved the way for movies), and then tells her all he knows about Muybridge, because he read a review about an important book about this man -- which is Solnit's book, of course! It's a funny anecdote about a all-too-common occurrence, but Solnit writes fairly, in my opinion, and doesn't indict all men, while still critiquing a culture that has a long way to go towards equality. On that same theme, I'm also finished Ta- Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me - it was eyeopening.  

I also finished George Saunders's Tenth of December, which I started probably a year ago. I really liked this collection of essays better this time around - they are a bit dark and perhaps suit the season better than when I started them and couldn't get into it.  Saunders's characters. like Boyle's, are misfits and losers and bad things happen to them, but there are a few bright spots of hope - a skinny kid who gets beaten to death protecting the popular girl next door from getting raped, a participant in a clinical study of mind-morphing drugs who smashes his head in rather than watch another participant get killed because he condemns her, a boy with mental disabilities accidentally comes across a man who is trying to kill himself, and then he falls in a freezing lake and the suicidal man has to save him - they both walk half-naked through a wintry woods to return to the road.  Saunders's writing is spare but creates unforgettable visual images. The endings were more hopeful overall than Boyle's. Loved it, but not one I'd recommend to everyone.

Anne Bogel's Don't Overthink It  is self-help book I finished, a genre that is often fine, rarely great. This is also a fine book, which I kind of expected. I usually don't buy these kinds of books, but I like the author's blog - and I am definitely an overthinker, so I bought it from her local bookstore in a moment of NOT overthinking. I thought it had some good advice, but some of her personal anecdotes were familiar from the blog.  

   

More fun were a couple picture book stand outs: Under My Hijab by Hena Khan (who notes in the afterward that she does not choose to wear a hijab, although she is an observant Muslim) is a fun way to introduce the younger set of non-Muslims to the tradition of wearing a hijab. It's told in rhyme with brightly colored, simple illustrations from the viewpoint of a young girl who notices how each of the women among her family and friends wear their hijab differently in a way that expresses their personalities.  One page shows them as professional women (a doctor, an art teacher, a scout leader, a baker, a teenager) in public and the next page shows them at home with their hair down and uncovered. 

Then Jim Ottaviani and Maris Wicks' Primates was another good read: a graphic novel about Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas (who studied orangutans) and how all these women were linked through Louis Leakey. I learned a lot about these women and primates from this book - started a rabbit hole of research for us.  Highly recommend!

For my Catholic women's book club I finished The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen. We held a Zoom meeting for this book that went pretty well - fun to see everyone's faces although the lag time between comments slowed the conversation a bit. My favorite part of the book was the last section on the Father. Nouwen comes to realize he must see himself not as the younger son, or the elder brother, but like the Father in the parable of the Prodigal Son (and in the painting by Rembrandt that inspires the reflections on the parable and the painting.) At the time, Nouwen was moving from his work in academia to his role in L'Arche, a major shift in the practice of his vocation. Reflecting on how we are called to love like the father, forgiving, merciful, welcoming, helped him move away from the desire to be loved to the ability to give love. 

For my rosary group's Lenten reflection we read Fr. Looney's  A Lenten Journey with Mother Mary, which got a lot of good reviews. I found it fine - a nice mix of hard and easy daily "goals."  Not especially profound, but our group was inspired to do more research on some of the lesser known visions of Mary that he mentions, and that was educational. 

So now that I've come to the end of this summary, I realize I have finished a few things in the last six weeks or so. Next project: Organizing photos and trying to decide whether to replace or repair the desktop that just died. I don't really like working on a laptop, and now we are playing musical chairs with devices. I took the desktop in to the local repair guy, and he can retrieve data and install a new driver but my husband thinks we have everything stored in the googleplex and that the computer is outdated, so that it should be consigned to the electronic graveyard. (I think we bought it in 2014) and not worth repairing. Sigh. I hate ewaste and planned obsolescence.)