Tag Archives: quotes

This Boy’s Life

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I enjoy  reading a well-written memoir.  I’ll pass on the smarmy ghostwritten celeb autobiography and I’ll skip the snarky exposé.  Just walk on by, as my brother says.  I picked up This Boy’s Life at a huge book sale because, frankly, the cover drew me in.  I didn’t know the author but his name sounded to me like some obscure 18th century writer.  Silly me, they didn’t have cars in the 18th century.

I read the first two pages and was completely drawn in.  With Amazon’s Search Inside feature you can read them. I highly recommend that you do.  This is the story of a boy whose father is absent, whose step-father is abusive, and whose mother is trying to make the best of a grim life.  That should make for a sympathetic reading; however, I didn’t like Toby/Jack much at all. 

He is a habitual liar, a fighter, a shoplifter, a sneak–well, you get the idea.  He didn’t do drugs because they weren’t available and he didn’t “do” girls.  He managed to find many other avenues full of trouble. I wondered as I read, how we could know we’re getting the truth from the adult when the boy lied all. the. time.  I listened to an interview on Wired for Books and that very question was raised.  Tobias Wolff’s reply was that if he wanted to lie in writing the book he would have cleaned up his childhood, would have presented himself in a rosier light.  He explained that one of the survival mechanisms he used was creating an alternate persona that in some degree he believed was a real person.  One of the most engaging episodes near the end of the book involves Wolff’s receiving a scholarship to attend a tony prep school in the east based entirely on transcripts and letters of recommendation that he himself wrote. 

The prose is pretty good.  I was regularly delighted by the vocabulary and his ability to pack so much meaning into so few words.  The analysis of his childhood choices and actions, the understanding of some of the undercurrent of his life is absorbing. Life was raw and he doesn’t smooth any edges.  This is a heartbreaking book, in the way Angela’s Ashes is a heartbreaking book. 

It was springtime.  The earth was spongy with melted snow, and on the warmest days, if you listened for it, you could hear a faint steady sibilance of evaporation, almost like a light rain.  The trees were hazy with new growth.  Bears had begun to appear on the glistening granite faces of the mountainsides above us; at lunchtime people came out onto their steps and watched them with upturned, benevolent faces.  My mother was with me again.

* * * * *

I declined to say I was a football star, but I did invent a swimming team for Concrete High.  The coach wrote a fine letter for me, and so did my teachers and the principal.  They didn’t gush.  They wrote plainly about a gifted, upright boy who had already in his own quiet way exhausted the resources of his school and community.  They had done what they could for him. Now they hoped that others would carry on the good work.                ~     ~     ~     ~         I wrote without heat or hyperbole, in the words my teachers would have used if they had known me as I knew myself.  These were their letters.  And on the boy who lived in their letters, the splendid phantom who carried all my hopes, it seemed to me I saw, at last, my own face. 

 

How to Teach by Bronson Alcott

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Bronson Alcott’s Maxims on Education

GENERAL MAXIMS: By which to regulate the instructor’s practice in instruction

1. To teach, with a sense of accountableness to the profession
2. To teach, with reference to eternity
3. To teach, as an agent of the Great Instructor
4. To teach, depending on the Divine Blessings for success
5. To teach, as the former of Character, and the promoter of the collective happiness of Man.

These are the first five of 58 maxims that were found in Bronson Alcott’s Journals.  I bought a calligraphied copy on my visit to the Orchard House and it is hanging on my wall.  From time to time I will post groups of five for your perusal.  While I differ with Mr. Alcott’s transcendentalism, veganism, and other things, I am sure, there is so much to be gleaned from these maxims. 

That reminds me about a book: Fruitlands, Louisa May Alcott Made Perfect by Gloria Whelan.  This book was a howler!  It is a fictionalized account of the Alcott’s experiment with transcendentalism and a vegan lifestyle.  What is so funny in the book is Louisa’s two diaries: One for public consumption which parrots the thoughts she is supposed to have.  The other, private diary reveals her true thoughts.  Whether she meant to or not, Whelan exposes the fallacies of the philosophy behind the utopian experiment.  If I were the mother of a nine year old girl, I would read this book together, or together separately, and discuss it.  There are many things to ponder.

Eusebius – A Story of Restoration

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Eusebius of Caesarea

Unless you’re among theology wonks, church history isn’t bound to start a stimulating discussion at the coffee klatch.  My teenaged son and I are reading the Great Books as outlined by Veritas Press’ Omnibus II.  The first book we are studying, out of the blocks, is The Church History by Eusebius of Caesarea (c.265 – c.339).  Why? As Christianity spread from the Middle East to areas throughout Europe and beyond it effected the culture, the music, the art, the literature of all those lands.  Studying Western Civ inevitably involves studying the imprint of Christianity on the culture. 

What has surprised me is how much I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read so far.  Even more, how much my son has enjoyed it.  The dinner table talk usually involves said son recapping the day’s reading and discussion to his dad.  “Did you know…?”  is a common  introduction. 

Eusebius quotes Clement of Alexandria: a wonderful story about the apostle John, sort of a reverse prodigal son, and well worth your time.  My little grandson’s favorite book at our house is The Lost Sheep.  Someday I will read this account of a lost sheep to him. Do you remember another time when John ran as fast as he could? This was the week’s teaching highlight.

Listen to a story that is not a story but a true account of John the apostle preserved in memory. After the tyrant’s death, he returned from the island of Patmos to Ephesus and used to go, when asked, to the neighboring Gentile districts to appoint bishops, reconcile churches, or ordain someone designated by the Spirit.  Arriving at a city near by [Smyrna], he settled disputes among the brethren and then, noticing a spirited youth of superior physique and handsome appearance, commended him to the appointed bishop with the words: “I leave this young man in your keeping, with Christ as my witness.”

When John returned to Ephesus, the churchman brought home the youth entrusted to his care, raised him, and finally baptized him.  After this he relaxed his oversight, having put the seal of the Lord on him as the perfect safeguard.  But some idle and dissolute youths corrupted him with lavish entertainment and then took him with them when they went out at night at night to commit robbery or worse crimes.  Soon he joined them and, like a stallion taking the bit in mouth, he dashed off the straight road and down the precipice.  Renouncing God’s salvation, he went from petty offenses to major crimes and formed the young renegades into a gang of bandits with himself as chief, surpassing them all in violence and bloody cruelty.

Time passed, and John paid another visit.  When he had finished his mission, John said, “Come now, Bishop, return the deposit that Christ and I left in your keeping with the church as witness.” At first the bishop was dumbfounded, thinking that he was being dunned for funds he had never received.  But John said, “I am asking for the young man and his soul.”

“He is dead,” groaned the old man, in tears.

“How did he die?”

“He is dead to God.  He turned out vile and debauched: an outlaw.  Now he is in the mountains, not the church, with an armed gang of men like himself.”

The apostle tore his clothing, beat his head, and groaned, “A fine guardian I left for our brother’s soul! But get me a horse and someone to show me the way.” He rode off from the church, just as he was.  When he arrived at the hideout and was seized by the outlaws’ sentries, he shouted, “This is what I have come for: take me to the leader!” When John approached and the young leader recognized him, he turned and fled in shame.  But John ran after him as hard as he could, forgetting his age, and calling out, “Why are you running away from me, child — from your own father, unarmed and old?  Pity me, child, don’t fear me! I will give account to Christ for you and, if necessary, glady suffer death and give my life for yours as the Lord suffered death for us.  Stop! Believe! Christ sent me.”

The young man stopped, stared at the ground, threw down his weapons, and wept bitterly.  Flinging his arms around the old man, he begged forgiveness, baptized a second time with his own tears but keeping his right hand hidden [as unworthy of forgiveness for all the bloodshed it caused].  John, however, assured him that he had found forgiveness for him from the Savior.  He prayed, knelt down, and kissed that right hand as being cleansed through repentance.  Then he led him back and did not leave him until–through prayer, fasting, and instruction–he had restored him to the church: a great example of true repentance and regeneration, the trophy of a visible resurrection.

Secret Sin

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It is a sober week in my small town.  The sin of a local youth pastor has been exposed and he has been arrested.  Some of the very people he was supposed to shepherd and nurture have become victims.  The church where he worked is shocked and distraught.  The consequences are far-reaching; the fall-out will be coming down for a long, long time.  Our hearts ache for our friends who are facing such a heavy, heavy thing.

Sin is so ugly. 

Secret sin is insidious.

In a letter of apology to the church this pastor said something like this: I thought I could control this.  But it controlled me.

It’s a mercy, really, that he was caught.  It’s always a mercy when a dark corner is exposed to light.  The opportunity to privately and publicly confess the sin can begin the healing that needs to take place.  James says that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.  Justice also needs to be served, and that is now in the hands of the judicial system.

We are humbled by the knowledge that none of us are immune to the temptations that brought this man down.  We are talking in our family about the need to seek help when you are struggling with wrong desires, no matter how shameful they may seem.  We’ve discussed  the trajectory  that  sin takes.  One does not wake up  out of the blue one morning and say, “Let’s see, I think I’ll go do _____ today.”  Jeremiah Burroughs put it this way:

Take heed of secret sins.  They will undo thee if loved and maintained: one moth may spoil the garment; one leak drown the ship; a penknife stab can kill a man as well as a sword; so one sin my damn the soul; nay, there is more danger of a secret sin causing the miscarrying of the soul than open profaneness, because not so obvious to the reproofs of the world; therefore take heed that secret sinning eat not out good beginnings.

Another warning about secret sins from Thomas Goodwin:

Go down into your hearts and take the keys to them and ransack your private cupboards, and narrowly observe what junkets your souls have hitherto lived upon, and gone behind the door and there secretly and stoutly made a meal of them.  As dogs have bones they hide and secretly steal forth to gnaw upon, so men have sins they hide under their tongues as sweet bits.

Lord, have mercy.

Concatenation

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Our Latin teacher was such a gift.  Even though he was a luminary in the classics world, a retired professor of graduate school, fluent in seven languages, he was living in our remote valley and willing to teach us the rudiments of Latin.  We jumped into Wheelock’s Latin and received more, so much more, than Latin.  He knew the stories behind the sentences we were translating; he knew the nuances and idioms of Latin; he knew innumerable references in English literature to this Latin phrase.  His memory was stunning – his ability to retrieve quotations, cite authors, remember character’s names was the stuff of legend.  When he introduced the “ethical dative” he would tell us how Jane Austen used it!

Regularly he would address the younger students saying, “Kids, this is an important word for you to know” and go on to introduce a word I had never once heard or seen.  In the arrogance of my ignorance I figured if I’d never run across it, these kids would never in a lifetime see it.  A little rolling of the eyes leads to a little crow on the dinner plate.  Inevitably, in-e-vi-ta-bly, I would come across that word within a week, and stumble over it several times within a month’s time.

One of those words was concatenation.  Chapter 2 of Wheelock’s had this sentence from Horace: Me saevis catenis onerat. He oppresses me with cruel chains.  Beloved teacher sees catenis (chains) and introduces this very important word:

concatenation kon-kat-uh-NAY-shuhn; kuhn-, noun: 
A series of links united; a series or order of things depending on each other, as if linked together; a chain, a succession.

Concatenation was the first of a series of obscure words that I learned from our beloved teacher and whenever I run across it now a special glow of remembrance, a delicious warmness works through me and I sigh a quite contented sigh.  That word is now an old friend which I gladly welcome to my hearth.

This week I read The Catnappers by P.G. Wodehouse and came to these words:

“What are those things circumstances have, Jeeves?” I said.

“Sir?”

“You know what I mean. You talk of a something of circumstances which leads to something.  Cats enter into it, if I’m not wrong.”

“Would concatenation be the word you are seeking?”

“That’s right.  It was on the tip of my tongue.  Do concatenations of circumstances arise?”

“Yes, sir.”

Fine Art Friday – Degas

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This week I read The Monument, a young adult book by Gary Paulsen.  In it a recently adopted 13 year old girl encounters an artist, Mick, and it changes her life.  She looks at her small Kansas town through Mick’s eyes and sees everything in a new light.  Her leg brace and coffee-colored skin set her apart from the other kids her age so that a tag-along dog she adopted, Python, is her only companion.  Mick gives her a book about Degas to study.

But even with that, even with the beauty, I was still trying to work, trying to see the colors and the way Degas had drawn things until I turned the page and just stopped, stopped dead.

It was a painting of a group of young women practicing ballet, called The Dance Master.  The wall in the room was green and there was a big mirror on one side for the dancers to see themselves.  In the background there is a raised platform or bleachers for people to sit and watch and dancers are everywhere, practicing, stretching, fixing their costumes.  On one side there is an older man leaning on a cane–an instructor–and he is watching them, studying them, and still I would have been all right except for the girl.

She was standing to the side of the dancers but almost in the middle of the painting and she is watching them, worried about something, with her hand to her mouth, and I looked at her and started to cry.

She looked like me, or sort of like me, but that wasn’t it–at first I didn’t know why I was crying. Then I thought of what they were, all of them, dancers, and that all of what they were was gone.

The painting was done in the late eighteen-hundreds.  They were all gone.  All dead.  I wanted to know the girl, wanted to watch them practice.  I wanted to see the dresses move and hear the music, wanted to know which ones the dance master picked for performance and if the girl who looked a little like me was one of them.  I wanted to talk to them and ask them how it was to wear the costumes and dance and dance and dance without one stiff leg.  I wanted to know their dreams and hopes…


The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton

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Curt and I have been having a little tug-of-war with this book.  I started it and read two chapters before I left for Chicago.  While I was gone, he read five chapters. 

When I had returned and after our kids went back to college, we both reached for it one night. “I’m reading it,” he exclaimed. “Well, I’m reading it too, and I started it before you did,” I retorted. (I promise I didn’t stick out my tongue.) So we compromised: he went back to the third chapter and read it aloud but — alas! — I fell sound asleep.   A few nights later I had read through the fifth chapter and started to read the sixth chapter aloud to him.  Alas, he fell asleep!

Since I am quite simply a selfish person, I broke the unspoken covenant and read ahead. Last night I had one chapter left and he was occupied with his bow and arrows (archery hunting season begins today).  All day I enjoyed the anticipation of completing a good book.

What a quirky, wonderful, strange, charming, odd little book!  I wish I had the opportunity to re-read it this week, and catch more nuances and clues the second time through.  Chesterton has challenged me to think of the playfulness of God.  It’s a quite different way of thinking. I plan to pick this Chesterton gem up a few more times in my life. Random quotes:

The more his mother preached a more than Puritan abstinence the more did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the time the former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached the point of defending cannibalism.

I don’t often have the luck to have a dream like this.  It is new to me for a nightmare to lead to a lobster.  It is commonly the other way.

“I have a suspicion that you are all mad,” said Dr. Renard, smiling sociably; “but God forbid that madness should in any way interrupt friendship.”  [wouldn’t you like to make up greeting cards with this quote on the front?  I can think of several select friends who would get a hoot from it.]

“Who and what are you?”  “I am the Sabbath,” said the other without moving. “I am the peace of God.”

Coming Home

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One of my high school girlfriends coined the word ro-tic (pronounced ROE-tick) for all those situations and settings that were so romantic, minus the man.  You know, a boat trip, a sunset, or a lovely walk in the woods – that would be perfect if a man who loved you was participating, if you were a couple instead of a single.

That’s the word that came to mind when I arrived home yesterday afternoon.  My husband, three sons and some friends are on our annual backpacking trip; thus, I came home to an empty house.  The white board (the command center of our home) had a message waiting for me – lyrics to a song – that let me know, um, that my absent husband is looking forward to seeing me soon.

                                ~     ~    ~    ~

It’s good to be home.  Funny, both directions of this trip were home-comings.  The Chicago area will always be home to me, the repository of my childhood memories.  But the people, the places, even the most fixed of landmarks, change while you are gone and only part of it is the familiar place you remember. 

Home is this space where God has placed me. Home is the people I love, the jobs I’ve been given. It’s a good place to be.

                                ~     ~    ~    ~

The summer I was 18 was a betwixt-and-between summer.  I felt dislocated and dangling.  I was estranged from my father and step-mother, not welcome at their house.  I had a place to go in the fall, but three blank months before me. I was in California without transportation nor the money to go to a sibling’s house in the Midwest. I worked at four or five different summer camps, traveled to play the piano in friends’ weddings and filled in wherever there was a need –  really, wherever I could stay.

One week I was at a friend’s cousin’s mom’s house (a stranger to me) and broke down in tears, lamenting my “homeless estate”.  I cannot remember this woman, her name or her appearance; but her words are burned into my brain. “You are in such a great spot, Carol,” she began.  “You have nothing to hold onto but the Lord. Look at me – I have a nice home, a good husband,  my children, etc.  These are gifts but they can also be temptations to place my hope and my security in, instead of trusting God. God is your home, God is your refuge.” 
 
Now that I’m home, I need to catch up on many things.  My next year of school is sketched out, but I need to work on the details, type up schedules, revisit Algebra II, make sure I have all the books I need. Soon. Only after I sit on the deck with my man and talk and talk and talk and listen and listen and listen.

“The perfect journey is circular – the joy of departure and the joy of return.”
                                                                         ~   Dino Basili

Milne Goes Mysterious

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I finished A.A. Milne’s The Red House Mystery this morning (hat tip to Diane at Circle of Quiet). If you love P.G. Wodehouse, Sherlock Holmes and Winnie the Pooh this book is tailor-made for you and I promise that you will feel jolly glad you picked it up.  Humor is infused in this mystery: the take-offs on Holmes and Watson kept me smiling.

“My dear Watson,” he said, “you aren’t supposed to be as clever as this.”

“I love being Sherlocky,” he said. “It’s very unfair of you not to play up to me.”

Here’s another laugh – a brief jab at writers.

“Oh!” He looked round the room. “What d’you call this place, eh?”

“The office, sir.”

“The office?”

“The room where the master works, sir.”

“Works, eh? That’s new.  Didn’t know he’d ever done a stroke of work in his life.”

“Where he writes, sir,” said Audrey with dignity.

I nodded and almost said “Amen” aloud when I read:

Anthony could never resist another person’s bookshelves. As soon as he went into the room, he found himself wandering round it to see what books the owner read, or (more likely) did not read, but kept for the air which they lent to the house.

~      ~      ~

I’ve been thinking about music and memory this week.  My sister has lost much of her mobility (brain cancer and a stroke) but her memory is just fine, thank you.  We’ve had the leisure to amble around in the memory vault and pick out good ones to polish and shine.  Since I’m nine years younger, some of our memories don’t overlap; which happily means I get to hear new stories.  Any new story about my mom is a precious gem – another opportunity to better know the mom I lost when I was ten.

Old songs are like old stories. My spiritual pilgrimage from Plymouth Brethren to Presbyterian means I now sing much less Ira Sankey and Fanny Crosby and more Hans Shulz and Vaughan Williams. This week I’ve been hearing, singing, and playing songs from long ago. Revisiting obscure Plymouth Brethren hymns, and attending the chapel of my childhood has transported me back to the sixties – the whole family in one pew singing parts a capella in the Breaking of Bread service. It’s amazing how clearly it all comes back and how pleasant an emotion recognition is.

Madeleine L’Engle wrote about her mother in The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, 

“Music has always been part of the fabric of her life, so it is not surprising that it is the last thing to reach her.”   

Music can find areas inside of us that words can’t make it to. Places beyond language. The hows and whys of this fact is one of the interesting mysteries of life.