Intellectuelle   Sherry

Hi all! Thanks to Bonnie and to whomever for inviting me to join you here. I'm looking forward to posting some scintillating prose; however, I'll have to see if inspiration comes. If not, you'll just get regular old plodding thoughts from the mind of a girl who's perpetually surprised to find herself on the downhill side of this journey of life.

Name: Sherry Early

Birthdate: July 28, 1957

Birthplace: San Angelo, Texas

Current Residence: Houston

Languages: English, Spanish

Ethnic heritage: Heinz 57 varieties; some Indian, some German, some Scots-Irish, all mixed up

Family stats: I have a wonderful husband and eight children, ages 5 to 21

Education: I have a Master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Texas and a Bachelor of Science degree from Hardin-SImmons University in Abilene, Texas in Spanish and English.

Occupation: Homemaker, homeschooler, former librarian, reader.

Hobby: reading, teaching, reading some more, writing

Denomination: I am Southern Baptist by upbringing and conviction, but my family and I are now members of an Evangelical Free Church.

Testimony: I entered consciously into the Christian life at age seven. I've looked back many times, unfortunately, but I stand with Peter: "Where else can I go, Lord? Only you have the words of life." (Sherry's paraphrase)

Favorite book: Les Miserables

Favorite author: Tolkien

I posted this short review of Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh on my blog about a month ago. Atlantic was exploring over there and read it and had a comment:

I was just having a look at some of the posts at your blog and I really like it. To answer a question you posed last month, Brideshead Revisted is pro-Catholic. :) I'm fascinated that it could be perceived as anti-Catholic. Shall I pop over to your blog? Or maybe it would be fun to discuss it here.

So here's a copy of my original thoughts on the book. My disclaimer is that I've only read this one book by Waugh, and I don't know much about the author except that he was Catholic and lived and wrote in the early twentieth century. It did seem to me that he was either trying to exorcize his Catholic upbringing or reclaim it. I'm glad to hear that "reclaim" is the correct term.

Last year about this time of year, several bloggers I know were busily listing the books that had defined their life's journey. I couldn't resist, so I made my own list. Looking back at it a year later, I'm not sure which ones I'd change, although I can think of others that have influenced me, too.

The challenge is to make a list of ten books that have "shaped or defined you," "a list that reveals something about you." Or as SFP asks, "Can you timeline your life with books?"

1. The Severed Wasp by Madeleine L'Engle. Why did this book impress me so much when I first read it several years ago? It's about real people attempting to live authentic lives in New York City. It's about community and how that community is formed. I'm very interested in how families interact, how intentional communities are formed and sustained, especially artistic communities and Christian communities. I think there's something more there, too, but I can't put my finger on it.

2. A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Van Auken. Van Auken tells the story of how he re-lived his life with his wife, Davey, after her death, by listening to the music they listened to together and re-reading the books they read together. It may sound maudlin, but it's not. He also comes to terms with his loss and with the flaws in their relationship and with priorities, how marriage partners who find their ultimate security in Christ and His love can grow closer to each other. But those who hold onto each other jealously and possesively lose the thing they most want to preserve. I think I'm married the way I'm married, very happily I must say, partly because of this book.

3. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. C.S. Lewis talks about "joy" as an elusive longing for Something that is just out of reach. Tragedy is also an elusive feeling that depends on just the right combination of circumstances. Paton's book about South Africa under the apartheid system and about the power of forgiveness to redeem, sometimes, is truly tragic. I also think this is what life is like: essentially hopeful, but tragic in the short run. Sometimes the Good is too little , too late.

4. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Life-changing. Lewis puts into words what I believe and why I believe. Definitely part of my mind's landscape along with the Narnia books, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and Till We Have Faces.

5. My first homeschooling book was John Holt's Teach Your Own. This was before I had any children. Even though I use workbooks and curricula with my children, the unschooling, easygoing, let them teach themselves, philosophy is a part of my homeschool, too. I do want them to learn to learn and to enjoy learning, to be self-educators. I'm also drawn again to the sense of community that is present in Holt's books.

6. The book that most shaped my life as a young Christian teenager was The Edge of Adventure by Keith Miller and Bruce Larson. I haven't re-read this book in a long while, and I suspect it's full of what I would now consider psycho-babble. But at the time the emphasis, again (note the recurring theme), on Christian community and basic Christian disciplines was exactly what I needed to hear. A lot of my ideas about prayer and discerning God's will and following Christ in obedience came from this book.

7. All the Way Home by Mary Pride. I know that Mary Pride is a lightning rod for criticism and controversy, but her ideas about home and family being a center for economic, spiritual, and social influence were and are liberating for me.

8. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. Either I'm focused on the ideal of community tonight or else the theme of my whole adult life is community and how families come together to form real communities. I've wanted to live in Hobbiton, in a nice little hobbit-hole, ever since I first read Tolkien in the late 1960's.

9. No Graven Image by Elizabeth Elliot. A young missionary finds that God is trustworthy, but not necessarily fathomable. I find the same to be true in my Christian life. This novel and the book of Job are my mainstays in the time of suffering and difficulty.

10. Cheaper by the Dozen by Ernestine and Frank Gilbreth. Was it from this book or somewhere else that I got the idea that it could be fun to have a lot of children and to teach them things in my own home? I think some of the nonfiction I listed above (and life) fleshed out the details, but Cheaper by the Dozen planted the seed of an idea long before I even realized the idea was there.

The Mental Multivitamin list that inspired this one.

Hard task. I didn't even begin to list my childhood influences--the picture books that formed my imagination and the chapter books that made me think and made me grow. I'll save all that for another post, but the ten books above have definitely shaped and do continue to define who I am. What books made you who you are or confirmed your direction in life and work?

If you're involved in the homeschooling community or close to it, you probably know that in some circles at least the idea of courtship has become almost a corollary to homeschooling. "We homeschool, and we plan to use courtship as a model for our young adults as they become adults and enter into a relationship with the opposite sex." I've heard some variation on this statement many, many times, and I've even said something like it myself.

The problem is that no one seems to know what courtship is, but we all know know what it isn't ---it's NOT DATING. Now we have young adults in our home, four of them ages twenty-one down to fifteen, and it's past time for a little more definition and a little less waffling. I've read I Kissed Dating Good-bye and Boy Meets GIrl: Say Hello to Courtship by Joshua Harris. I've read Best Friends for LIfe by Michael and Judy Phillips. And I've read Her Hand in Marriage: Biblical Courtship in the Modern World by Douglas WIlson. I've also listened to some tapes by Jonathan Lindvall. All of these, except maybe the last, have some ideas with which I agree and others I question. All of them present a different model of courtship leading to marriage.

I'm vindicated, or as Napoleon would say, "Sweet! Lucky! Awesome!" Someone else thinks there's more to the movie Napoleon Dynamite than meets the eye.

"At the risk of elaborately describing the clothes of a perfectly naked emperor, I think that the underlying theme of Napoleon Dynamite is (though the movie was made by Mormons) consistent with the moral anthropology of Christianity: to show us how we become genuinely human."

We watched Akeela and the Bee the other night, and now Brown Bear Daughter wants to be in the Scripps Spelling Bee. It was a good story.

Semicolon family's favorite Christmas movie: White Christmas. (Engineer Husband really likes It's a Wonderful Life, but most of the urchins don't care for it.)

Since the movie version of Eragon by Christopher Paolini is supposed to be in theaters on December 15th, I thought I'd provide links to my reviews of Eragon and its sequel, Eldest. Nutshell version: I liked Eragon, but the near-parody and obvious borrowing of other fantasy classics got to be too much to take as I started into Eldest. Also the anti-religious scientism is much more obvious in the second book. On the other hand, I don't think anyone's faith is going to be destroyed or even challenged by the books or the movie; the arguments (against Christianity and against religion in general) are not sophisticated enough.

Semicolon review of Eragon.
Semicolon review of Eldest.

Jim at Stones Cry Out really, really didn't like the penguin movie, Happy Feet. I haven't seen it and probably won't --unless someone changes my mind in the comments and convinces me that this movie would be a good experience for the urchins.

Finally, you can go here for my very own list of the 105 Best Movies Ever. I need to make it 106 and add Napoleon Dynamite.

"For the last eighteen years I've gone to the Greek Orthodox Church. It was a relief to replace tyrannical simplicity with Byzantine paradox, tidy theology with messy mystery, smug certainty with forlorn hope. Nevertheless the old Calvinist preoccupations stick. God still worries me. And he probably doesn't like you either."

Frank Schaeffer, the son of Christian apologists Francis and Edith Schaeffer, has had a hard time growing up in the shadow of his famous parents and seems to have spent his fifty plus years of life trying to overcome the negative effects of having had parents who taught him about God, the Bible, prayer, and the Christian faith. Pobrecito. He says, "Those of us with evangelical/fundamentalist backgrounds are doomed to a lifetime spent trying to re-imagine the divine." Maybe so, or maybe it's just those with such a background who fail to grow up and get over their childish rebellion and disappointment that are "doomed." I come from such a background, and I've certainly never felt doomed, nor could I say that I've ever believed that God doesn't like me or you.

In his blog posts, Mr. Schaeffer makes fun of his parents, of their mission to explain the Christian message to post-modern Americans, and of most things evangelical. It's all very bitter, as if Frankie Schaeffer takes it as a personal affront that his parents weren't perfect and some evangelical Christians make decisions with which he disagrees.

Last year Tulip Girl wrote about "the idea of a 'Mondo Beyondo List' for the new year. This is the list of all the wild and crazy dreams we have, the things that are so out there it is almost scary to write them down. This isn't a resolutions list of eating healthier and spending wiser. This is the mondo beyondo list, the ideas that tug at your heart and are almost out of reach even of day dreams."

I thought this idea was great, so Engineer Husband and I made our lists and talked about the dreams and totally unrealistic goals that we have and whether any of them could possibly, in the fulness of time, come true, or even partially true. I wasn't brave enough last year to post even a partial list on the internet.

But this year I think I'll do it. How about you? What are your "wild and crazy dreams"?
What ideas make your heart beat faster and your head immediately start listing reasons that make it impossible? Do you have any "mondo beyondo" hopes and fantasies?

I was once stuck in a house for two weeks, no library nearby, with only a box full of Harlequin romances to feed my reading habit. I read them all. I've never had any desire to read another. A couple of years later I had a friend who was hooked on "bodice-rippers," the books that have a picture on the cover of a beautiful young woman with a lowcut dress and a sexy tall-dark-and-handsome who looks as if he's about to rip it off. I read half of one of those and again never had any interest in reading another. If you like either genre, there are plenty of them out there. However, I'm a sucker for real romance, the kind of romantic story that shows both the difficulties and the joy of initiating and sustaining a loving male/female relationship, aka a marriage. Here are a few of my favorite intelligent and multi-faceted romances ---just in time for St. Valentine's Day:

The Love Letters by Madeleine L'Engle. Charlotte is running away from home, running away from her husband Patrick and from their very troubled marriage. She runs from New York City to a Portuguese retreat, and there she discovers a book of love letters written by a seventeenth century Portuguese nun, a nun who pursues a forbidden love to its bitter end. Charlotte struggles with her marriage vows as she reads about Sister Mariana's struggle with her vows.

Resurrection, Tolstoy's last novel, is the story of the nobleman, Nekludof and the prostitute, Katusha. Katusha is condemned to hard labor in Siberia for murder, but Nekludof, a member of her jury, recognizes her as the girl that he seduced and ruined as a youth. He feels responsible for her fate, and he works to redeem her, and then, eventually, recognizing his own sin and degradation, to redeem himself.

Quotations:

"Men are like rivers: the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is narrow here, more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same with men. Every man bears in himself the germs of every human quality; but sometimes one quality manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man."

"The interest of her whole life lay in searching for opportunities to serve others just as the sportsman searches for game. And the sport had become the habit, the business, of her life, and she did it so naturally that those who knew her were no longer grateful, but simply expected it of her."

The last quote describes Engineer Husband in some ways; not me, however much I might wish to a joyful and habitual servant.

On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suffering and shame;
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain.

So I'll cherish the old rugged cross,
Till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it some day for a crown.

O that old rugged cross, so despised by the world,
Has a wondrous attraction for me;
For the dear Lamb of God left His glory above
To bear it to dark Calvary.

In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,
A wondrous beauty I see,
For 'twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died,
To pardon and sanctify me.

To the old rugged cross I will ever be true;
Its shame and reproach gladly bear;
Then He'll call me some day to my home far away,
Where His glory forever I'll share.
Words and Music by George Bernard

Islam has its crescent and sword, Marxism its hammer and sickle. Buddhists have statues of the Buddha himself, laughing or serious, according to one's taste. Other religions and philosophies have their symbols of power and victory.

Christians have the cross. We may pretty it up and hang it on a gold chain, but at its heart Christianity is about an old rugged cross, an instrument of torture and death. A cross is not much of a victory. A cross is not about becoming powerful or defeating all one's enemies. A cross in Roman times meant only one thing: a slow and painful death.

And yet . . .

Old World Cross I

Zeitz, Mary Beth

When I survey the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of Glory died;
my richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
save in the death of Christ, my God;
all the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his blood.

See, from his head, his hands, his feet,
sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,
or thorns compose so rich a crown.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were an offering far too small;
love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.
Words by Isaac Watts
Music by Lowell Mason

This hymn may be my favorite of all the hymns about the cross of Christ.

What if it were True? What if the God of the Universe really did become man, live among us, endure the pain of living and even the pain of death, an ignominious tortured death on a cross? What if He did it for the sake of love, love for His very torturers? Would it not demand your soul, your life, your all?

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

Sometimes I see no everlasting hills either. In fact, a lot of my days this past year have been like the tone of this poem ---dry, frozen, tedious, numbed.

But I nevertheless believe in a better resurrection.

"Forgive us, O Lord, we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man,
Of the men and women who shut the door and sit by the fire;
Who fear the blessings of God, the loneliness of the night of God, the surrender required, the deprivation inflicted,
Who fear the injustice of men less than the justice of God;
Who fear the hand at the window, the fire in the thatch, the fist in the tavern, the push into the canal,
Less than we fear the love of God." T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Hebrews 10:31

Everlasting Calvary by Amanda at Wittingshire.

Amanda writes, "The bottom is sound, because beneath everything--no matter how far we fall, how deep we plunge--beneath everything are the everlasting arms of that "everlasting Calvary," holding us, bearing us up."

I've always thought of the image of a tunnel, that there is a "through". No matter how dark or long Friday's tunnel, there is a Resurrection Sunday coming.

Jesus' disciples weren't so sure about that "through". They left the scene of Jesus' passion and hid themselves for fear.

But John says, "On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them . . . " (John 20:19)

Then the disciples saw "through" to the other side, the end of the tunnel that is Eternal Joy. Because of God's Everlasting Calvary.

Hot cross buns Hot cross buns One a penny Two a penny Hot cross buns If you have no daughters Give them to your sons One a penny Two a penny Hot cross buns

Recipe for hot cross buns.

In her book Celebrating the Christian Year Martha Zimmerman suggests that we use part of the afternoon on Resurrection Sunday for an Emmaus Walk.

On Easter Day, two disciples were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all the things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, "What is this conversation which you are holding with each other as you walk?" And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, "Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days:" And he said to them, "What things?" And they said to him, "Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since this happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb, and found it just as the women had said; but him they did not see." Luke 24:13-35

Take a walk together --you and your family, you and your spouse, just you and the Lord. Discuss the things He has done. Talk about all that has happened to you this year and about what you're planning for the rest of the year. Enjoy the company of Jesus as you walk and talk.

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Matthew 18:20

I Meant To Do My Work Today

by Richard LeGallienne

I meant to do my work today,
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.
And the wind went sighing over the land,
Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand,
So what could I do but laugh and go?

Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

I thought I'd give you eight eights:

1. When I was eight years old and in the third grade, my friends and I used to have boy-kicking contests out on the playground. I don't remember whether the winner was the one who kicked the hardest or who kicked the most boys, but I do remember that a girl named Vicky was the winner. I wonder whatever happened to Vicky, the Boy Kicking Champion of Third Grade at San Jacinto Elementary School?

2. I have eight children.

3. My favorite book by Louisa May Alcott is Eight Cousins; even though I like Little Women and its sequels, I like the family/community Alcott creates in Eight Cousins.

4. Eight foods I love: cashews, Danish wedding cookies, pepperoni pizza, Vanilla coke, milk chocolate, fettucini alfredo, hot chocolate, pecans.

5. I was twenty-eight years old when had my first child, Eldest Daughter.

6. I have been wearing the same pair of SAS sandals for approximately eight years. I need a new pair of sandals, but I can always think of something to else to buy instead.

7. 8 is one of the "Lost Numbers" on the television show, LOST, along with 4, 15, 16, 23, and 42. I like LOST and all its characters, especially Hurley who is my favorite.

8. When I was eighteen, I drove a white Volkswagon Beetle named Jojo. I always name my cars. Eight cars my family or I have owned: Calamity, The Maroon Marauder, The Magic Pickle Van, Nero, Bessie, Black Car, Joan, and Jojo.

Camille tagged me for this meme a long time ago, and Bonnie just did again.

I'd like to know eight random things about:

Cathy at Poohsticks.

Lars Walker at Brandywine Books.

Phil also at Brandywine Books.

Brenda at Coffee Tea Books and Me.

Mama Hen at At a Hen's Pace.

Mindy Withrow

Bittersweet Ariel.

De at Out of the Bloo.

A good friend of mine, Julie, just had her one year son die on Wednesday. He drowned in their backyard swimming pool. We're doing all the obvious things to help; praying, making meals, attending the memorial service tomorrow.

My question is: does anyone know, either from personal experience with such a tragedy or from observation, anything else that might be helpful to this family? Any suggestions at all? I feel so helpless and sad for them.

Also, as you read this note, would you please pray for Julie and her family?

I assumed that the oft-lamented statistic that says that evangelical Christians have a higher divorce rate than non-Christians was a result of the fact that evangelicals actually get married instead of living together, some of them precipitately without being prepared for marriage. However, The Wandering Heretic quotes from and comments on the recently published book, Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers by Mark Regnerus:

Evangelicals are more sexually impure than almost any other demographic group in the United States. Not only is the Evangelical faith ineffective in lowering pre-marital sex rates in teens and divorce rates in marrieds, it actually appears to be damaging to sexual morality. . . So it appears that atheists and liberals are not only better at keeping their knees together before marriage they excel over Evangelicals in keeping their partnerships intact after marriage.

Ouch. Is it true? Or am I missing something in the statistics? If it's so, why? And what do we do about it (assuming that you agree with me that it shouldn't be true)?

Read The Wandering Heretic's post and then come back and tell me it ain't so ---or how to make it different.

Thanks to John Piper, here's a little more insight on the whole issue of teen sexuality and chastity among evangelicals. It turns out that the book I mentioned (without having read it) distinguishes between teens who take their faith very seriously and those who claim to be evangelical Christians but admit that they don't adhere to key Christian doctrines. The former (16% of American teenagers) are for the most part living morally pure lives while the latter group are not doing so well in the same area.

The devil is always in the details ---especially with statistics. We still have quite a job to do in encouraging nominal Christians to discover the joy and the obligation of living a holy life, but the picture is not as bleak as I thought it was at first.

See also this follow-up post by Caine at The Wandering Heretic.

I usually avoid two topics in Christian circles: eschatology and evolution/creation. Neither discussion seems profitable, nor is the conversation likely to turn out well. However, I've been reading Genesis and Madeleine L'Engle, a dangerous combination. And I thought it might actually be of some practical use to write about my thoughts concerning creation and the first two chapters of Genesis. Note that I am neither a scientist nor a theologian, just a layperson who believes that all Scripture is "God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." In other words, I believe that the first two chapters of Genesis are in the Bible for a purpose and that they are given to us by God himself for our instruction. Those are my pre-suppositions.

I am thankful that Zondervan Publishers sent me a copy of Ravi Zacharias's new book, The Grand Weaver. I am a fan of Mr. Zacharias's work as a Christian apologist, if "fan" is the right word. I have heard him speak, via videotape, and I've read others of his books. I especially enjoyed and found useful a little book called The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks With Buddha. I was also impressed with Mr. Zacharias's wisdom and courage when in 2004 he accepted an invitation to speak at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. His topic was "The Exclusivity and Sufficiency of Jesus Christ," but still he received criticism from fellow evangelicals who accused him of syncretism and of lending legitimacy to the claims of Mormonism. So I was expecting a lot from this new book, the theme of which is the providence of God or seeing God's plan in life's events.

I tried reading the book straight through, but whether because my mind is a bit scattered and distracted these days or because the book itself is not as organized as it should be, I found it hard going. There were lots of pearls in there, but they were dispersed here and there among paragraphs and sentences that, frankly, didn't seem to say much at all. So I decided to read the book in a different way.

Asking for advice over the internet probably isn't the best idea, but I thought I'd try it anyway. I have two "issues" to ask about. Feel free to comment on either one or both.

1. My daughter, age 16, has a good friend (read: boyfriend, even though neither of them is old enough for a serious relationship) who told me the other day in the course of a history conversation that he's not "pro-abortion or anything, But I'm not like totally against it either." When I asked him what he meant by that, he said that if a fifteen year old gets pregnant, and she's not old enough to take care of a baby, then . . . (He didn't finish the sentence.) My daughter, who was present at the conversation, said, "But it's a baby." I was pleased with the daughter's response, but disappointed in her friend's position. Should I talk to him some more, talk to my daughter, drop it, or what? By the way, I like this guy, but I was surprised by his statement about abortion, since I AM "like totally against it." And I wanted to tell him that that fifteen year old girls don't just "get pregnant"; they have to do something with a guy for that to happen.

2. Another daughter, much older (22), is very frustrated because all the guys she knows are very immature, unwilling to initiate a serious relationship with anyone, including her. I tend to agree with her that many of the young men I know at church and other places are unwilling to grow up, take responsibility, make a life plan, etc. I think some of this immaturity can be attributed to the "courtship culture" at our church in which guys who have never even had to screw up the courage to ask a girl out for a date are expected to suddenly be ready to ask a girl's parents for permission to court her. It's too hard, and the guys are too scared. So nothing happens, and some beautiful girls at our church are twenty-five and thirty years old, want to be married, but have no prospects of marriage unless the Lord pushes some guys kicking and screaming into maturity. And the guys are sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Any suggestions?

If you are a white person who would like to treat black people as equals in every way – who would like to have a set of associations with blacks that are as positive as those that you have with whites – it requires more than a simple commitment to equality. It requires you to change your life so that you are exposed to minorities on a regular basis and become comfortable with them and familiar with the best of their culture, so that when you want to meet, hire, date, or talk with a member of a minority, you aren’t betrayed by your hesitation and discomfort. –Malcolm Gladwell, Blink (2005), p. 97

I found this quote on the blog Fire and Knowledge written by Josh Sowin. Mr. Sowin often posts thought-provoking quotations from his reading, but this one hit home because of something that happened here in the old homeschool today.

My conversation with eight year old daughter who is just beginning to love reading:

Betsy-Bee: What should I read now? I finished that other book.
Me: Did you finish -------------- (insert title of a book that I checked out of the library about a girl who makes friends with a boy in her class after much difficulty and misunderstanding)?
Betsy-Bee: No, I didn't like that book.
Me: Why not?
Betsy-Bee: I don't want to read any books about black people. I don't like black people.
Me: Why not?
Betsy-Bee: Black people don't look good.

Yes, we had a further discussion of why this attitude was wrong, how would she feel about people who said they didn't like people with red hair, etc. But really the solution is more exposure to people who are different from her. Since we live in major (mostly white) suburbia and go to a mostly white church, this is a difficult proposition.

Any suggestions?

Les Miserables is my favorite novel of all novels. When I read Les Miserables for the first time back in college, I stayed up until 3:00 AM one night to finish it, and I had an 8:00 AM class that morning. For me, staying awake until 3:00 in the morning was an unusual occurence; my head usually hit the pillow at 10:00 PM every night. Only a very good book could keep me turning pages until the wee hours. Author Victor Hugo lived a life full of illicit sexual affairs and confused politics (he kept changing sides, not difficult to do in France in the 1800’s) and still produced a book like Les Miserables: God uses flawed vessels to produce great and true art.

So, when I read that blog friend Carrie was reading this great novel and looking for comrades-in-reading, I thought about it, prayed about it, remembered that I have a lot of reading to do this month for the Cybil Awards, and then decided to take the plunge anyway. I plan to use Les Miserables for my devotional reading for this month and maybe December, too, and I also thought it might be fun to share whatever insights God gives here at Intellectuelle. I got my copy at the library this afternoon, translated by Charles Wilbur, and I started reading this evening.

Hugo begins his novel with the character of Monsieur Myriel, or Monseigneur Bienvenu as he is nicknamed by his parishoners, the bishop of D----. The bishop is a good and humble man, given to charity, but also wise in the wisdom of simplicity. He is a hero.

Said the bishop:

"To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation."

"Ask not the name of him who asks you for a bed. It is especially he whose name is a burdent to him, who has need of an asylum."

"I am not in the world to care for my life, but for souls."

"After all, what is there to fear in this house? There is always one with us who is the strongest; Satan may visit our house, but the good God inhabits it."

The author comments on the character, actions, and philosophy of Monseigneur the Bishop:

"As we see, he had a strange and peculiar way of judging things. I suspect that he acquired it from the Gospel."

Would that I were suspected of such a motive for my actions!

If anyone would like to join Carrie and me as we read Les Miserables, you're welcome to do so. Leave a comment, and I'll link. Or if you're a fellow Intellectuelle, post your own observations, and we'll discuss.