90. Bigness

"It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile . . . That is not imagination. No, it kills it. . . . Your universities? Oh, yes, you have learned men who collect . . . facts, and facts, and empires of facts. But which of them will rekindle the light within?"  (E.M. Forster, Howard's End, p. 30)

89. Saturday Activity List

1.  Read Augustine.
2.  Read paper by T. Erdel.
3.  Ate three eggs and toast.
4.  Walk in the woods with Sydney and Morgan--Sydney saw and correctly identified a blue heron.
5.  King Gyros.
6.  Pumpkins at the pumpkin patch.
7.  Watched two episodes of American Colony Hutterites.
8.  Workout: (Bike 30 mins; tabata sets of push ups, sit ups, renegade rows; bike 15 minutes)
9.  Tigers baseball and ND football
10.  Blog

88. Minor ouch

Strained or pulled or--who knows, maybe tore?--a calf muscle playing basketball yesterday. Nothing major, just a little painful pushing off and landing.  Gonna go easy on it a little while.  Still, there's a lot of other body parts to exercise, so tonight's workout will be:

P90X Chest and Back + ab ripper X

Shouldn't cause any problems for my moderately sore calf.

87. Tuesday's WOD: Homegrown Filthy 50

We make up our own workouts patterned after actual crossfit workouts.  This was Tuesday's backyard workout for Jeanie and me.

Homegrown Filthy 50

50 wall ball shots
50 box jumps
50 push ups
50 squats
50 pull-ups (d.b. heavy pants for J)
50 double unders (100 regular jump ropes for J)
50 kb swings (25#/15#)
50 burpees
50 situps

J's time= 22:02  R's time= 17:24

86. Freaking Awesome Passage

By now Penelope, Icarius' wise daughter,
Had set her chair across from the suitors
And heard the words of each man in the hall.
During all their laughter they had been busy
Preparing their dinner, a tasty meal
For which they had slaughtered many animals.
But no meal could be more graceless than the one
A goddess and a hero would serve to them soon.
After all, they started the whole ugly business.

(Odyssey, 20.422-30,  Lombardo  trans.)

There's a lot of eating in the Odyssey.  And there's a right way to do it when you're a guest in someone else's house.  The suitors have violated the unwritten code of xenia badly, and thus, their final "meal" they will be "graceless" and "ugly."  What a freaking awesome final sentence.

85. W.O.D. - P90x

Did p90x workout tonight--shoulders and arms.

Played basketball at noon for an hour.  Won 4 lost 1.

84. W.O.D. - Helen

Today's physical exercise included:

14 mile bike ride in what I can only describe as perfect weather.  (Ok, it was a little windy at times, but who cares, really?)

"Helen"
3 rounds of
400 meter run (3 laps in my back yard)
21 KB swings (30# dumbell for me, 20# for J)
12 pullups (12 chair dips for J)

My time: 7:15 (shaved 41 seconds off my time from 8/2)
J's time: 8:30 (shaved 49 seconds off her time from 8/2)

83. "Your years are a single today"

"Perfect you are, beyond all change, and today does not reach its end in you, yet it does end in you, since all days are in you, nor could they have a course of transit not defined by you.  But your years never run out, your years are a single today; and our days, no matter how many--not only our own but those of all before us--run their course through it, with their own being and identity, while you alone are identical with yourself, so every tomorrow to come, every yesterday gone, is made in your today."

Augustine, Confessions, 1.II (Garry Wills, trans.)

82. On the Importance of Imagination

“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.”

    -Percy Bysshe Shelley

This is one reason to read great literature, or so I tell my students.  Literature isn’t going to make us better people necessarily, but exercising our imaginations by entering empathetically into the lives of characters, feeling their pains and pleasures, can be a good “Christian” practice.  It prepares us to do the same thing in real life.  But reading a lot of imaginative literature doesn’t guarantee that we will do what Shelley recommends when it matters most (in real life) or that we will respond with the appropriate and loving actions even if we do manage to use our imaginations empathetically.

Still, I suspect that–like the person who regularly practices anything–the person who regularly exercises the imagination in this way has a better chance of becoming more actively compassionate than the person who doesn’t bother with the practice.

81. Facebook

Spent fifteen minutes scrolling through Facebook feed, reading status updates and comments--something I almost never do.

What a colossal waste of time.

80. The tyranny of tyranny

"But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd — seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the ‘natives’, and so in every crisis he has got to do what the ‘natives’ expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing — no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at."

-George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant"

79. Belabor Day

Being the day when we celebrate wordiness, redundancy, and general wastefulness in an effort to purge it from our souls and go back to living simple, economical, and celebratory lives.  This would be the only day of the year Fox News and MSNBC would be allowed on the air, for instance.

78. Killing trees

And then someone went completely mad and decided to cut down all the trees that gave wonderful shade to the parking lot of the Bittersweet Library branch.  Tragic.

77. Of Childhood, Imagination, and Play

Child's Play

by Dan Liberthson

I play the World Series with marbles
on our vine-laced Persian carpet:
its palaces are bases,
its bowers become dugouts
where my heroes' cards wait
for their manager's hand.
I play both sides, home and away,
hitter and fielder—as always
no one on my team but me.

Adult shapes, fat and crooked,
bald and creased or worn thin,
edge around me,
pass through the house smiling
down as if to say dear child
you know nothing outside
your magic carpet, which
one day you'll find is only a rug
that will take you no place at all.

But I have just jumped
an impossible height, caught
Roger Maris' hot line drive to right
and brought it back over the fence.
The roar of the crowd
puts any doubt to rest:
in that moment I am blessed
and that moment is all there is. 

76. Missionary Church: Richly Flavored Stew or Bland Baby Pablum?

"The Missionary Church is a fascinating blend of five traditions--Anabaptism, Pietism, the Weslyan-holiness movement, the Keswickian-holiness movement, and evangelicalism.  It could be argued that the fifth one, evangelicalism, entails the other four.  But evangelicalism also includes many other traditions, some of which were historically opposed to the first four.  For example, if other evangelical traditions going back to the Reformation no longer persecute Anabaptists or burn them at the stake, they may still be antithetically opposed to Anabaptist viewpoints.  So evangelicalism both includes the four traditions, and yet also affirms other traditions that would strongly oppose them and, at a minimum, push them to the margins of the evangelical life and thought, if they could.

Within the United States, the evangelical movement faces a particular danger, that of confusing national identity with political interests with the Christian faith.  Traditions such as Anabaptism and Pietism have resources to illumine such matters and bring evangelical responses into line with biblical teachings on church and state.  But if other, self-proclaimed evangelicals effectively silence voices from their Anabaptist and Pietist wings, they risk an enormous loss of biblical insight.

So several questions remain for the Missionary Church.  Will she genuinely affirm those traditions which gave birth to her and shaped her for many decades?  Will the richness and insights of each tradition be celebrated?  Or will she cut herself off from her own roots in exchange for new ties with alien traditions from within the larger evangelical family?  Will the Missionary Church be driven primarily by biblical categories, or by the social, political, and cultural ones that have sometimes overtaken the evangelical movement in the United States?  The temptation may be to exchange the hard teachings of the first four traditions for a softer, generic evangelicalism.  The suggestion here is that it would be a tragic mistake for the Missionary Church to exchange her birthright, which is a richly flavored stew of thoroughly biblical traditions, for a bowl of bland baby pablum that bears the consumer-oriented "Made in America" brand of generic evangelicalism."

(Timothy Paul Erdel, "The Evangelical Tradition int he Missionary Church: Enduring Debts and Unresolved Dilemmas" in Reflections, Vol 13-14, 2011-2012).

75. Chest & Back

Tonight, I am proud.

Jeanie did p90x "chest & back" with me tonight, and did a great job attempting the six sets of various kinds of pull-ups that workout calls for.  No, she can't yet do a pull-up, but with assistance and jumping she did at least five "negatives" for each of the six sets.  Impressive.  Additionally, she surprised herself by getting off her knees for the push-ups and doing real ones.

There's no way she could have done anything like this in June.  Get your tickets for the gun show now.

74. When Learning Hurts

"Sometimes when a student tells me that being on campus is painful, that a course is too difficult, that an idea is too upsetting, that a program is too offensive, I respond by talking about my friend Jesper. Were Jesper to follow the easy, painless path with massive pieces of mountain, were he to limit his activity merely to the exterior, then the forms inside never would be revealed. To release the treasures hidden in a twenty-ton block of marble, Jesper has to break through the surface, cut into the interior, saw, strike, and gouge. It is only after that brutal, even savage process has been completed (during which a beautiful form gradually emerges) that Jesper can refine the work by burnishing its surface. It seems to me that the hard treatment Jesper inflicts on those rough blocks of freshly quarried stone is analogous to what happens to some of our most successful students as they learn. Students who take the familiar route, who choose to follow the path of least resistance, who avoid the difficult course or stay away from the controversial lecture, who never feel tension or pain, who never test the ideas or challenge the beliefs they carried with them to college not only miss the very point of education but also diminish their potential. For those willing to push themselves, to dig deep rather than skim along the surface, the rewards (at least in retrospect) can be profound. But while the heavy excavation is in progress, they may feel a lot of pain. 

On my wall hangs a small photo of an elegant, slender sculpture that Jesper named after me.When advisees tell me they are uncertain or confused, or that learning hurts, I reach into a cabinet to retrieve a picture of the artist standing next to the block of freshly quarried marble from which “Aaron’s Rod” may have emerged, note that students can be at once both sculptors and sculptures, and suggest that we get to work." (Aaron Shatzman, "When Learning Hurts")

73. bad poetry

trees hang limp in the sultry August mid-morn
damp from last night's showers
and I feel like they look

72. Localism

"If you understand your own place and its intricacy and the possibility of affection and good care of it, then imaginatively you recognize that possibility for other places and other people, so that if you wish well to your own place, and you recognize that your own place is a part of the world, then this requires a well-wishing toward the whole world. 

In return you hope for the world’s well-wishing toward your place. 

And this is a different impulse from the impulse of nationalism. This is what I would call patriotism: the love of a home country that’s usually much smaller than a nation." (Wendell Berry)

You can hear the entire interview HERE--well worth 56 minutes of your time.

71. Boyhood

"His mother decides that she wants a dog.  Alsations are the best--the most intelligent, the most faithful--but they cannot find an Alsatian for sale.  So they settle for a pup half doberman, half something else.  He insists on being the one to name it.  He would like to call it Borzoi because he wants it to be a Russian dog, but since it is not in fact a borzoi he calls it Cossack.  No one understands.  People think the name is kos-sak, food-bag, which they find funny.

Cossack turns out to be a confused, undisciplined dog, roaming about the neighbourhood, trampling gardens, chasing chickens.  One day the dog follows him all the way to school.  Nothing he does will put him off: when he shouts and throws stones the dog drops his ears, puts his tail between his legs, slinks away; but as soon as he gets back on his bicycle the dog lopes after him again.  In the end he has to drag him home by the collar, pushing his bicycle with the other hand.  He gets home in a rage and refuses to go back to school, since he is late.

Cossack is not quite full grown when he eats the ground glass someone has put out for him.  His mother administers enemas, trying to flush out the glass, but without success.  On the third day, when the dog just lies still, panting, and will not even lick her hand, she sends him to the pharmacy to fetch a new medicine someone has recommended.  He races there and races back, but he comes too late.  His mother's face is drawn and remote, she will not even take the bottle from his hands.

He helps to bury Cossack, wrapped in a blanket, in the clay at the bottom of the garden.  Over the grave he erects a cross with the name 'Cossack' painted on it.  He does not want them to have another dog, not if this is how they must die."  (J.M. Coetzee, Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life, p. 49-50)

70. Borges

Happy birthday, Jorge Luis Borges.

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."

69. Joy in Persecution

"Nothing has any value but the love of God and doing His will.  There is no happiness outside of Him.  The joy born from giving yourself totally to Him no man can take from you.  My only desire is to completely give myself up into the hands of God without any idea of turning back or of fear of what may happen to me."  (Jeanne Guyon, Intimacy With Christ, p. 13)

68. end of the season

Smalltown Fastpitch ended its season last night with a victory in the league tournament championship over the Twin City Gray Sox, 10-9.  With two outs in the bottom of the seventh, our pitcher took a hard one hopper off the face. While he split blood, we looked for the tooth, but didn't find it.  His brother came into the game to strikeout the final batter for the win.  Just before we snapped a picture, I asked B if the tooth was knocked entirely out or just broken off.  He said, "I don't know," proceeded to show me.

"Your tooth isn't missing," I said.

It was still very much there in his mouth, but there was a much larger gap than normal.  I suspect the tooth is pretty loose and may be fractured below the gum line, but no wonder we didn't  find the tooth in the dirt around the pitcher's mound.

In the last five days we took home a lot of hardware.  Church league tournament champs, NAFA world series A consolation bracket champs, NAFA world series AA-major 3rd place.

Final season record was 28-26.  The Gray Sox finished their season 25-2 and as the MASA D-state champions.  Not bad for their first season together to say the least.

67. "Jared"

They call this one "Jared."

800 meter run (6 laps around back yard)
40 pull-ups
70 push-ups

4 rounds

My time: 29:39

Jeanie substituted/scaled and did four rounds of 800 meters, 40 situps and 40 push-ups (on knees).  Her clock failed, but I would estimate her time to be 34 minutes.

66. Crossfit (but not officially)

I've never been to an actual Crossfit gym (or I guess its "box" not "gym").  I've only ever done one workout with the Pilot Crossfit  club at my college.  And I only occasionally do "official" Crossfit workouts from thee main website.  But I think I can fairly say that I do "crossfit" (lowercase).

One of the things the Crossfit cultists rave about is the "community" aspect.  I've never been that fond of working out with a bunch of other people, and have always preferred to grit it out on my own.  That's why I like P90X a lot.  You go to the basement, pop in the dvd, push play, and let er rip.  I've been doing these P90X workouts off an on for five years now, and they are still great.

This summer, J decided she wanted to get fit.  So we've been doing my own brand of "crossfit."  The other day, for instance, we did Chelsea, which is 5 pullups, 10 pushups, 15 squats, every minute on the minute.  It's good workout.  We scaled it for J, since she still doesn't do pullups (it's one of her goals--be able to do actual pullups), substituting "heavy pants" (a bent over back fly with dumbells) for the pullups.  Had I given her this workout two months ago I would have heard a series of "I can'ts" come out of her mouth.  But not anymore.  She's motivated.  Every day she asks me, "so what's my workout today."  I've enjoyed it this summer--working out in this fashion with J.  I'm proud of her.

So here's today's workout.

4 rounds
One lap sprint (in the backyard--roughly 130 meters)
30 squats
One lap sprint
30 sumo high pulls
One lap sprint
30 chair dips
REST one minute

She may complain, but less than she used to.  She'll do it.  Tomorrow she'll ask me for a new workout.  We're going to keep right on doing these workouts we make up or rip off from the Internet (here's a really cool website called  "WOD shop") for as long as we are physically able. I feel great--maybe the best shape of my life.  She feels great--maybe a little sore.

Get your tickets.

65. Listen to my life

“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”

― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

64. On Mowing

This week was my week again to mow the grass at church.  We have an enormous property, and it typically takes five to six hours to mow it all on a very good industrial riding mower.  Of course, today and tomorrow will likely be the hottest days of the summer, which makes mowing miserable.  So rather than wait for things to warm up, I got started at 6:45 this morning. 

I remind you, we've not had much rain, and no one irrigates the lawn at church, so it's pretty much a parched wasteland of dead brown grass with enormous green weeds every so often.  It looked to me like last week someone didn't mow an acre or so behind the pond and another acre in the back of the property--my clue was not that the grass was long, but that those parts had been overwhelmed by deep purple clover.  So I mowed them, in the process awakening a zillion tiny bugs from their peaceful slumber to swarm my face, mouth, eyes, ears, and hair. 

Normally, I very much enjoy mowing. But today's experience was an exercise in frustration.  Between the ever increasing heat, the swarms of deer flies, those stupid shoot like weeds that were the only thing I was actually cutting--and even so, only about one in three of them actually cuts when you ride over them with the mower--I gave up after a couple hours and called it good enough.

We need some stinking rain.

63. Fourteen

This fall I will begin my 14th year of teaching English at Bethel.  I don't know where the time goes other than to say that the present has a way of becoming the past very quickly.That will be fourteen years worth of essays I've read.  Sometimes I wish I would have kept some stats.  Here are some estimates.

Essays read/graded: 25,000
Portfolios graded: 1400
times reading the Odyssey: 25
add/drop forms filled: 120
student drop in office visits: 4200
committee meetings attended: 260
lunch time basketball games played: 4680
photocopies made: enough to wipe out a forest
number of times I've worn a tie: 0
number of times I've taught Lolita: 2
number of  Speech (COMM 171) sections I taught in 1999-2000: 5
number of sections of COMM 171 I've taught since 2004: 0
Office moves: 1
Office rearranges: 16
times I've wanted to quit and become a peach farmer who writes nature poetry:13
plagiarism cases I reported: 30
plagiarism cases I dealt with myself: 200
Bethel softball games attended: 45
chapel speeches: 7
faculty retreat presentations: 5
dissertations completed: 1
number of visits Morgan has made to my office: 23
humanities major graduates: 6
humanities major graduates prior to 2010: 0
days of class missed due to sickness: 13
snow days: 3

62. On the education of teachers

"For when she was hardly more than a girl, Miss Minnie had gone away to teacher's college and prepared herself to teach by learning many cunning methods that she never afterward used.  For Miss Minnie loved children and she loved books, and she taught merely by introducing the one to the other."

-Wendell Berry, "A Consent"

61. Contact Lenses

I was fitted for contact lenses last Thursday and have been wearing them a bit each day since then as prescribed.  I have two complaints.

First, my eyes are a little gummy.  I don't want to say dry, even though I'm sure that is how they will want me to describe it when I have my follow up visit this Thursday.  Dry is what the lawns in my neighborhood are.  Dry is dusty.  My eyes feel more like mud and less like dust.  It isn't intolerable, and I'm sure the right kind of eye drops would make this minor complaing ever more minor in time.  If this were the only complaint, I don't think I'd be complaining.

Second, they don't help me see any better.  As a matter of fact, for things like reading, I see considerably worse than without them.  I don't have particularly bad eyes.  Slight astigmatism and a bit of near-sightedness.  Things at a distance aren't as sharp as they might be.  When I put on my glasses, I can see the individual grass blades at a distance or the leaves in the tree tops much more sharply.  I wanted contacts because I didn't want to wear glasses to play basketball or softball.  But now I'm thinking my eyesight is not that bad afterall, especially considering that it is obviously worse with the contacts. I will be telling the doctor this on Thursday.

60. Quirk

There may well be something wrong with me. Yesterday I was one of roughly 75 people watching a men's fastpitch softball game between the Argentina national team and the Hill United Chiefs of Kitchener, Ontario streamed live online. And all the while wishing I was playing. I suspect at least a few of the others watching were wishing they were playing as well.

Next weekend.

Jeanie and I did a crossfit workout called "Cindy" today. It's 5 pullups, 10 pushups, and 15 squats, as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes. One of my favorites. Jeanie doesn't do pullups (yet), so she did 5 pushups, 10 situps, and 15 squats. I'm proud of her.

59. Song of the day: "I am Blessed" by Mr. Vegas

58. Poem of the day: "When I Am Among the Trees" by Mary Oliver

When I Am Among the Trees

by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

"When I Am Among the Trees" by Mary Oliver, from Thirst. © Beacon Press, 2006. 

57. Poem of the day: "Silence" by Billy Collins

Silence

By Billy Collins b. 1941 Billy Collins

There is the sudden silence of the crowd

above a player not moving on the field,

and the silence of the orchid.

The silence of the falling vase

before it strikes the floor,

the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.

The stillness of the cup and the water in it,

the silence of the moon

and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.

The silence when I hold you to my chest,

the silence of the window above us,

and the silence when you rise and turn away.

And there is the silence of this morning

which I have broken with my pen,

a silence that had piled up all night

like snow falling in the darkness of the house—

the silence before I wrote a word

and the poorer silence now.

Source: Poetry (April 2005).

56. A family workout

This morning we did a "family workout"--Sydney, Jeanie, and me.  Here's what it consisted of.

 

Sprint 100 meters (from under the back deck, around the three huge oak trees in the backyard, and back).

20 push-ups

Sprint 100 meters

20 sit-ups

Sprint 100 meters

20 squats

REST 90 seconds

Five rounds for time

 

Jeanie scaled to 10 on each of the exercises.  Syd did pretty much whatever she felt like, but ran a lot.

 

It was fun. 

 

As a reward and to celebrate, Jeanie then refinanced our mortgage to a 3.25% rate.  Yowsa.

 

55. On exercise

I've been to so many chapel services at Bethel over the years and heard so many speakers that they all start to sound the same.  Occasionally someone says something that stays with me for a long time.  What tends not to stay with me is who said it.  So, somebody sometime at some Bethel Chapel service in the last fifteen years or so said this:

"We don't read the Bible to finish; we read the Bible to change."

I always liked that.  Even though I'm kind of fond of the "read the Bible in 90 days" or "a year" or other Bible reading plans, the problem with them is this: I don't want to get to day ninety and say, "DONE! Yay me.  Now I can get on with life now that I've read the Bible in 90 days."

Occasionally I tweet about some "P90X" workout I've done.  I like this workout program, even though I have never really committed myself to strictly following the program for 90 days.  I've been doing the workouts semi-regularly for almost five years now, and they're terrific.  I didn't want to get to the end of 90 days and say, "DONE! Yay me.  Now I can get on with life after P90X."

Which is why I like crossfit. It just sort of goes on forever and ever with constant variety with no end in sight.  But I've sort of used the Tony Horton workouts that way anyhow, so I was predisposed to liking crossfit before I even knew what it was or tried one of the workouts.  What I also like about the crossfit workouts is the insanely high level of intensity they typically ask of you and how short they are.  Most workouts are 15-20 minutes, but some incredibly great workouts take less than ten. 

So here you go, exercise lovers.  Try one of the P90X workouts "crossfit" style.  I recommend the legs and back workout.  Instead of following the video (which you don't need once you've done the routine a few times; you can remember--and if you can't, it takes a whole two minutes to write the names of the exercises down on a little piece of paper), set your stop watch, say 3-2-1 go, and crank out the workout for time.  Here's how I do it.  Each pull-up set is 12 reps (96 pullups total for the workout).  Each leg exercise is 25 reps.  You do the wall sits for the time Tony prescribes.  And you complete the "sneaky lunge" sequence at a reasonable pace.  And when you finish the workout, you record your time.  Next week you try to beat the time.  It's fun and it reduces the workout to--well, lets say if you're in decent shape you can crank it out in less than 25 minutes.  It would be nearly impossible to do it in less than 20, but some stud might surprise me here.  When I do it this way I use 20# dumbells--and if that's too much for any of the exercises, I only use one of them instead of both.  Saves the trouble of figuring out how much weight is just right for the workout, since the goal here is not merely building strength but cranking your heartrate way the heck up.

You can do the same thing with the chest and back workout or the shoulders and arms workout.  Suddenly they become both strength and cardio workouts--in other words, more like crossfit.

I've also found that doing PlyoX "tabata" style (20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest; this will leave you in oxygen debt very quickly) while it shortens the workout--really increases the intensity.

I keep looking at the P90X2 videos on youtube and I'm tempted, but it's expensive for all those medicine balls and other crap you gotta buy.  The beauty of P90X was how minimalist it was in terms of equipment.  Pull-up bar and dumbells.  While the stability and core strength you'd get from this kind of training looks impressive to me--it looks like the kind of training professional athletes (NBA players, even) would do--I'm cheap.  What can I say.

So here's to one of the best things about summer vacation for a college professor: exercising.

Tomorrow, tune in  for my rant on the relationship between exercise and remaining semi-productive as a "scholar" (gosh, I hate that word).

p.s.  Today's workouts were P90X chest and back; ab ripper x. 

54. Memorial Day

Rhetorical question (which means I have a pretty definite answer in mind):

Is there something seriously wrong if on Sunday, May 27, 2012, everyone in your congretation knew that Monday (May 28, 2012) was Memorial Day and felt somehow that it was a Christian duty to celebrate America's military might, but in the mean time, no mention was made that it was Pentecost Sunday?

 "We all seem to be trying to live the American Dream with a little Jesus overlay."

- Tom Sine

I confess.  Guilty.

 We should remember that many citizens of this world have died senselessly in wars. BUT we Christians should remember the 50th day of the Easter season and the coming of the Holy Spirit.  I'm pretty sure I know which story I want to live my life by.

53. Neon Yellow Softballs

For some reason, most men's fastpitch leagues and tournaments refuse to use those easy to see neon yellow softballs they use in the women's games I'm watching hour after hour on television this weekend.  When they make me president of the world of men's fastpitch, I will declare that forever more these easier to see balls will be used. 

Having played in a few tournaments where these balls are used, I can say that major difference comes during the twilight hours in the field when it can be very difficult to see a batted ball.  And that's where the game is most potentially dangerous with third basemen and pitchers exposed to rocketed line drives. 

When I write my book about men's fastpitch softball, there will be a chapter dedicated to the ball itself, its evolution, its varieties, its color.  It will be a substantive chapter.  I'm serious.

52. 6

Sydney is six now.  Yesterday was her "Fancy Nancy" birthday bash with friends.  Let's consider the sugary things they ate.

1.  Fancy rainbow jello
2.  Fancy frosted sugar c ookies
3.  Fancy pink pearl chocolates
4.  Fancy chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting
5.  Fancy pink lemonade
6.  Fancy dippin dots ice cream

Needless to say there was not shortage of energy, which the little girls expended in the kiddie pool, the bouncy jump house, dressing up fancy, and painting their very own ceramic tea sets.

50. Opening night

Tomorrow is opening night for the Smalltown Fastpitch season.  We play in Bremen.  I look forward to seeing you all out at the ballpark supporting us this season.  Additionally, I look forward to monkeys flying out of my rear end, the day when Bethel College has a 5 billion dollar endowment, and a world where no one on the Fox News network ever says anything bombastic and asinine.

We'll have fun playing whether you show up or not.  I've been taking batting practice in my backyard since mid-March, and I got new batting gloves.

p.s. Morgan responded well to the 24" chicken wire and has lived to chase wiffle balls another day.

49. Chicken wire

When your dog can no longer jump at all (aged hips and arthritis in the hind legs) and when your real concern is not really with the rabbits or deer that might destroy your garden, the chicken wire need not be more than 24" tall.  You do not want your marigolds, watermelons, peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, beans, scallions, cantaloupe, or cucumbers destroyed, nor do you want to have to send your beloved almost 11 year old dog to an early grave, so you spend a few extra dollars on chicken wire and stakes to prevent unnecessary deaths. As an expense, it seems well worth it to you.

48. Fiction is good for you

“Is fiction good for us? We spend huge chunks of our lives immersed in novels, films, TV shows, and other forms of fiction. Some see this as a positive thing, arguing that made-up stories cultivate our mental and moral development. But others have argued that fiction is mentally and ethically corrosive. It’s an ancient question: Does fiction build the morality of individuals and societies, or does it break it down? …”

Read the rest here http://articles.boston.com/2012-04-29/ideas/31417849_1_fiction-morality-happy-endings

47. More Gratitude

I'm grateful that I live in a time and place where dentistry is practiced by trained doctors and not by quacks.  That I live in the age of ibuprofrin, vicodin, and antiobiotics.

I'm grateful, though I'm sure I will miss the healthy version of it, that next Friday I will be rid of this infected, fractured tooth forevermore.

I'm grateful that one bright day I will either have no need of teeth anymore OR that I will have teeth restored to resurrected perfection.

Pain is relative.  But there is no pain quite like tooth pain.

46. The Practice of Gratitude

"Gratitude ... goes beyond the "mine" and "thine" and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy."

-Henri Nouwen

 Research actually shows the habitual practice of gratitude can change one's brain chemistry.  By no means is this a cure for severe clinical depression, but speaking as one who battles the blues and finds himself struggling if not with depression, certainly with meloncholia, I can tell you that the spiritual practice of gratitude does help me.  I don't talk about it much; I do my best to cope.

Not to subject the world to my self-theraphy, but... okay, I'm going to subject the world--at least the tiny fraction of it that stumbles on this blog--with my practice of what Nouwen calls the discipline of gratitude.  It's discipline I'm trying to practice each morning when I wake where I intentionally express gratitude to God for big and small things.  Perhaps there's too much selfish motive in this--I really do want to change my brain chemistry. 

So, anyhow, practice number one is to remember that gratitude isn't primarily about me and what I get, but about God and who He is.

As a late colleague used to say through his long battle with cancer that eventually took his life, "inhale grace, exhale gratitude." 

To be continued...



45. Blister in the sun

Sydney likes playing the opening riff of this song on the piano.

44. Circle 8: Simple Fraud

Bolgia 10: Falsifiers.

Where the plagiarists are punished.

43. Mastered by Truth

"The act of knowing is an act of love." 

"The known seeks to know me even as I seek to know it; such is the logic of love . . . I not only pursue but truth pursues me. I not only grasp truth but truth grasps me. I not only know truth but truth knows me. Ultimately, I don't not master truth but truth masters me." (Parker Palmer, To Know as We Are Known)

What would happen if each day I prepared to teach I remembered this?

What would happen if each day in class I reminded myself of this?

What would happen if each course I teach were designed with this in mind?

What would happen if each class session I taught I reminded myself and my students of this?

What would happen if I always read literature fully conscious of this?

Would my college have the truly "vibrant community" we say we're committed to in our Vision Statement if we embraced this notion of education as our communal pursuit of Truth--the Truth that (or who) pursues us even as we pursue it (Him)? 

How does one assess things like "content knowledge" if we embrace the fact that "to know something is to have a living relationship with it", and that "the act of knowing is an act of love"?

42. Happiness

"When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy." (C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 46)

41. Numbers

2/27 - 138
2/28 - 151
2/29 - 140
3/1 - 223

to be continued

40. Professor

"...the original and authentic meaning of the word "professor" is "one who professes a faith."  The true professor is not one who controls facts and theories and techniques.  The true professor is one who affirms a transcendent center of truth, a center that lies beyond our contriving, that enters history through the lives of those who profess it and brings us into community with each other and the world." [113]

-Parker Palmer, To Know as We Are Known

39. Break

Some people enjoy a coffee break.  I, myself, cannot stand coffee, its aroma, its effects on my stomach (I'm guessing here, since I never drink the stuff--but other high caffeine beverages have a "flushing" effect on my system that is more violent than I tend to like), its price. I suppose I could take up smoking and take smoke breaks.  One of my housemates when I was a student at Drew took up pipe smoking during his comprehensive exam year. He had no classes and it gave him a reason to go outside and have a smoke every couple hours to interrupt the endless monotony of study.

I have, from time to time, been in the habit of taking a "free throw break."  I stop what I'm doing, go outside (or to the gym), and shoot some free throws. 

Today, for the first time in many weeks, I took a free throw break.  Made 48 in a row and 64/67.  Wearing gloves. 

The breeze was at my back.

38. Exercise log

1.  30 minute bike interval (while watching "X-Files", of course)
2.  5 minute medicine ball (10#) ball handling drills
3.  10 minute speed rope intervals (50 seconds of jumping, 10 seconds of rest, 10 intervals)

37. Lunch Order

Sydney's lunch order:

• Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• apple slices
• carrots and dip
• and, if you happen to stop at McDonalds, some french fries would be nice.

One more good thing about Spring Break--eating lunch at school with my daughter.  And wife!!

36. Spring Break Workouts

I'm a relatively consistent crossfitter/P90x-er.  I'm not a fundamentalist/legalist when it comes to these workouts, so I don't really do everything exactly as prescribed or when prescribed, but I have followed Tony Horton fairly consistently (at leas the workouts--screw the diet; eating "whey" is for commies) through a couple of almost 90 day sessions.  I almost never do Kenpo.  I rarely do the entire YogaX workout.  But I like the program and the workouts work.

I started attempting some of the named crossfit workouts last summer and fell in love the high intensity of crossfit.  I've never fallen in love with Olympic lifting, mostly because Olympic lifting and I haven't really had a first date. Nor do I have the equipment at home to do them.

I know crossfit is designed to be done as a community, but my problem is the crossfitters at BC crossfit right when I'm playing basketball, and the reason I would do crossfit is to maximize my enjoyment of basketball, not because I have some desire to become a superstar at the crossfit games.  Excuses aside, I actually enjoy working out alone.

All that to say I did the P90x chest and back workout plus ab ripper x this morning.  I wonder if I've done this particular workout fifty times yet?  I wouldn't be surprised. I did it for the first time back in August of 2007.    I bet I've done it at least a dozen times a year since then.  If you follow the 90-day program you do this workout five times in 90 days.  I have not been through the 90 day program ten times, of course, but this is probably one of my favorite of the routines, thus my wondering about the 50 times in a little less than five years.

So what does tomorrow hold?  Were I following the 90-day program, tomorrow would be Plyometrics.  It's a great workout.  But I think I'm going to to a 15 minute interval set on the jump-rope and maybe some yoga and then shoot some hoops.  Maybe watch an episode of the X-Files on dvr while riding the stationary bike.

See--not a legalist.

35. Nothing

1.  Someone named Adele won a bunch of Grammy awards the other night.  I did not watch the show.  I had never heard of this person until the next morning when they mentioned she won a bunch of awards. 

2.  I am a professor of English.  Consider the so-called "classics" I've never read.  This is not an exhaustive list. 

• Every novel written by Charles Dickens except A Tale of Two Cities.
• Every play by Shakespeare except for Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Much Ado About Nothing .  (Note: I have a prejudice here.  I think Shakespeare wanted people like me--who cannot act--to see his plays performed.)
• Moby Dick.
• To date, I've never been able to finish a novel by Jane Austen.  I've tried.  She's funny, but after awhile I just don't care about the characters anymore and would rather watch X-Files reruns.
• Paradise Lost.  I know what it's about and I read "excerpts" in college.  Reading excerpts usually helps convince me that I don't really care to read something.
• The Faerie Queen.  Ditto.
• The Brother's Karamazov.  Once again, I tried more than once.  Then I read what Nabokov said about the author and agreed.  Here is what he said in an interview:

Interviewer:  Dostoevski, who dealt with themes accepted by most readers as universal in both scope and significance, is considered one of the world's great authors. Yet you have described him as "a cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar." Why?

VN:  Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevski as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous, farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment-- by this reader anyway.

• War and Peace.  Someday maybe.  Someday.
• Any novel by Faulkner or Hemingway.

I could go on.  Enthusiastic students sometimes ask me for a list of books they ought to read. I really have a hard time producing these lists, since lists like these already exist. I tell them I can make a list of books I've enjoyed, but that "ought" seems so dogmatically prescriptive.  And the truth is, there are so many good books to read, that I gave up trying to read the ones I "ought" a long time ago. If I'm not enchanted in the first fifty or a hundred pages, I put the thing aside and move on to one of the thousand  other good books waiting to be read.  It doesn't mean I won't come back to it someday in a different stage of life and give it another go.  I might. I've done this.  I couldn't tolerate Toni Morrison the first time I gave her Beloved a shot, but it was an assignment and I plodded through.  I read it again years later, and really liked it.  By the sixth time reading it, I was utterly in love with it.  I think it may well be the great American novel.  You should read it.

3.  I do not understand how NFL football, this barbarous, uber-specialized, ultra violent, war charade, which leaves young men crippled in body and mind later in life can be more popular in America than major league baseball, nba basketball, nhl hockey, wnba basketball, major league soccer, word cup soccer, champions league soccer, or even youth league soccer. Especially considering how many so-called "exciting games" end up getting decided by place-kickers. 

4.  In May of 2010 Glenn Beck, in his commencement address at Liberty University, said this:

 "It is God’s finger that wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. This is God’s country; these are God’s rights." 

Such "mormonic" (pun intended), jingoistic, American exceptionalism coming from this particular evangelical university should not surprise me, I guess. What does bother me is how many Christians still listen to this lunatic as if he speaks the very words of God.  I cannot begin to understand this, and find it, quite frankly, a little terrifying. American exceptionalism makes sense as a Mormon doctrine--it fits that narrative, and Romney and Beck are free to spout it all they like.  But for crying out loud, biblical Christians ought to expose it for the nonsense that it is. And then get busy with something more worthwhile like ignoring the two of them and reading War and Peace.  Or listening to Adele on Pandora. Or watching UEFA League soccer. 

34. out of touch

I do not understand "gaming."  At all.  And I don't care.

Perhaps that's how they--the obsessive gamers--feel about literature, sitting in the back of the classroom daydreaming about the gaming they are missing out on while they're stuck in class.

33. Three Things I Would Rather Be Doing

1.  Playing shortstop in a fastpitch game on a 70 degree Saturday in June.

2.  Eating a giant brisket and sausage sandwich and washing it down with a monstrously huge coke.

3.  Walking in the woods with Morgan--his legs restored to perfection.

Instead, I'm grading.  Nothing that horrible about grading.  It's just not as much fun as the above, or about three hundred other things I could list if I didn't need be grading.

32. For D.S.

A Meeting
by Wendell Berry

In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: "How you been?"
He grins and looks at me.
"I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees."

31. On Merton's Prayer of Abandonment (Part 2)

One thing I appreciate about the prayer is that Merton doesn't make bold promises to God; instead, he says "I hope."

I think I will continue to pray this prayer.  I hope my student's will, too.

30. Prayer of Abandonment

My students seemed to deeply appreciate this prayer from Thomas Merton's "Thoughts in Solitude."  It is sometimes called the "Prayer of Abandonment."  I like it, too.

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain
where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and that I think I am following your will
does not mean I am actually doing so.
But I believe
the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire
in all I am doing.
I hope
I will never do anything
apart from that desire.
And I know if I do this
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.
I will trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear,
for you will never leave me
to face my perils alone.

29. Odysseus and I Agree

"My Lord Alcinous, what could be finer
Than listening to a singer of tales
Such as Demodocus, with a voice like a God's?
Nothing we do is sweeter than this--
A cheerful gathering of all the people
Sitting side by side throughout the halls,
Feasting and listening to a singer of tales,
The tables filled with food and drink,
The server drawing wine from the bowl
And bringing it around to fill our cups.
For me, this is the finest thing in the world."
                                     -Odysseus, Odyssey Book 9

 If it were solely up to me, this quote would appear on all of our English department promotional literature.  I realize what students and parents want to know when they consider a college major is far more utilitarian, and I can probable make some reasonable claims about the utility and uses of literature, but for me, the reason to choose an English major has far more more to do with pleasure than with anything else. 

Let's play Jeopardy.

A = "So what are you going to do with that?"
Q = What is the question an English major gets any time they tell someone their major.

One good answer to the question is "whatever I would have done otherwise,  only better."  Another good response deconstructs the question and its reductionistically utilitarian assumptions about a college major and about college education, and  reveals the bankrupt theological anthropology of the questioner.

For instance, maybe a college major is about considerably more than training for some job.  And maybe a college education is, too.  Maybe the most important outcome of an education is most significantly a more educated person.  Isn't it better to be educated than not?  Shouldn't a good education in the liberal arts--especially one that is robustly Christian--enrich the whole person and serve as a catalyst for human flourishing?  Shouldn't that kind of education have a way of deepening all life experiences?   And even if a college education and a college major does prepare a person for a lifetime of work, it is quite likely that most of us will do a lot of different sorts of things with our lives after college and after majoring in English.  And maybe, and most significantly, people are created in the  image of God as human beings rather than mere human "doers" as the question implies.  And maybe a major in English--the study of the theory, history, consumption, and production of literature--teaches how to bear God's image and to be like God as creator (as sub-creators) as well as almost anything one could spend her time studying in college.  Maybe spending significant time for four years developing one's Christian imagination--significantly what reading and writing literature at a place like Bethel can do for us--can serve one for a lifetime.

But my best answer is still Odysseus' appeal to the pleasure we get from literature.  Call me a hedonist.  I'm in good company, I think.  Not just the company of Odysseus, but the company of the authors of the Bible, who created beautiful things, and intended not merely to edify us, but to delight us.  Consider Ecclesiastes 12:9-10 (ESV).

"Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. ¹⁰ The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth."

Why so  much poetry?  Why so much story?  Why so many delightful stories?  The Bible could have come to us as a series of inelegant propositional claims.  But it doesn't, thank God.  Instead, these author's reflected their Creator and made lovely things for us to enjoy, stories and songs that would enchant us.  Surely there was some of the pleasure in the composition of the pieces that make up this great anthology of literature we now call the Bible that we note in God's words when he paused and called his grand creation "very good."

"For me, this is the finest thing in the world."   Me too.

28.1. On Missing Jamaica

In my top ten coolest reggae songs of all time.



Gosh I miss Jamaica sometimes.

28. B7 Reconnect

At Bethel we have what are called "FYE" (Freshmen Year Experience) blocks--two courses blocked in a single time slot on Tuesday and Thursday of the fall semester that two professors teach teach. Cristian and I teach FYE together.  FYE is a sort of a misnomer because it only runs the first semester.  Nevertheless, since the program was begun eighteen years ago it has had a fairly dramatic impact on student retention and has enriched the overall Bethel experience.  While it is not a unique program--there are many similar across the country--it is one of the things that makes the Bethel experience unique. 

Often at the end of the semester our students have expressed their sadness that the block experience ends with the semester.  More times than I can count, students have told me during second semester that they "miss block."

We've been thinking a lot about SYE (Sophomore Year Experiences) that might build upon the FYE.  There are many things that could be done, but lets just say that at our institution curricular changes don't come easy.  One day driving into school I had a brainstorm about a way to "reconnect" with my block during second semester that wouldn't require any curricular change.  All it would require would be permission to meet one day per week during chapel (for chapel credit) during the second semester of sophomore year.  The VP for Student Enrichment liked the idea and gave our block permission to give it a trial run.

So yesterday Cristian and our two "block mentors" (Karli and Cassie--the best FYE student mentors in the history of the program) started brainstorming together about what this thing might look like.  We set a launch date, came up with a name ("B7 Reconnect"--FYE Block 7, reconnecting on many levels), talked about how to generate excitement about it, and discussed themes and topics that might be most helpful to sophomore's in college--something in the general neighborhood of life calling or vocation and our identity in Christ without using such tired and over-used lingo as that.  Anyhow, I'm looking forward to the many layers of "reconnection" that may be possible in a setting that is as "un-classlike" as possible.

I love my work.  It's the place God has called me--as Buechner says, it's the place where (my) deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

p.s.  This song just started on my Last FM reggae station, and I've been singing it to my wife. :-)

27. Advertisement

Free to good home:  two knees afflicted with mild patelar tendonitis from years of basketball.  As a bonus, I'm willing to throw in two achilles heels with chronic bursitis and two arthritic ankles. Left heel has noticable haglund's deformity.

Sometimes it's called "pump bump" because women who wear pumps a lot develop this "bump" on their heel.  I've never worn pumps, but I've got this.  And I have a feeling it's contributed to the achilles tendonitis and bursitis, and who knows, it probably hasn't helped my knees either.

I'm paying for the hours a day of basketball I played on the Kingston asphalt for two years straight.  No regrets--other than I sometimes wish I'd played even more and stayed even longer.


 

26. 150 Makes

Sometimes in the middle of the day I have to break the monotony of checking things off my "to do" list, take a walk over to the gym, and make 150 shots. 

And then I can go back to checking things off my "to do" list and it doesn't seem so tedious anymore. 

Just finished making 150 shots.  Just checked "write blog entry" off my "to do" list.  Next item on my "to do" list: "Make new 'to do' list."

25. Pro and Con

I'm considering the pros and cons of a standing desk or stand-up desk.

Pro: No more sore rear end.
Con: Potentially sore feet.

Pro: Novelty. First person in my office wing to have one.
Con: Weirdo.  First person in my office wing to have one.

Pro: Apparantly standing is better for your back.
Con:  My back is in relatively good shape compared with my ankles and achilles heels.

Pro: Might be able to get rid of my current really ugly desk.
Con:  Current really ugly desk weighs slightly less than a dump truck.

Pro: I like to read and write standing up.
Con: I would have to purchase ($) and assemble the stupid thing.

Pro: Would have to reorganize office.
Con: Would have to reorganize office.

Decision:  Undecided.

24. On My Favorite Thing About Crossfit

The best thing about crossfit is that you can invent your own crossfit workout and call it a crossfit workout.  Here's the one I invented and then did today.

100 rep. jump ropes
10 wall ball shots with 25# ball
10 pull-ups
10 jump-knee tucks (a move borrowed from p90x)
10 sumo high pulls with 30 pood kettlebell

As many rounds as possible (AMRAP) in 15 minutes.

Exhausting.  Felt great!

23. On "Little Things"

I read this short story--very short story, really--by Raymond Carver yesterday, and now I can't get it out of my head.  It is quintessentially minimalist, and yet it managed to grab me at a gut level with its raw emotion.  The story is called "Little Things" (read it now!!).  It is getting dark outside, and inside, too--where a couple fights as he packs his bags. He wants to take the baby. She refuses him. They struggle physically, pulling at the baby, trying to pry the child from one another's arms.  The story ends ambiguously: "But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard. In this manner, the issue was decided."  As I read, Carver managed to make me feel for this couple, even though I've no idea what "little thing" has caused them to be so furious with one another.  And I felt for this little thing--this child caught in the middle, pulled two directions, somehow certainly harmed by the actions of these two wounded people. 

I guess I am reminded that there are little things that, over time, become--or will become--big things.

22. Five Guys Boogers and Flies

At first, Sydney cackled with joy when I called it this.  Now she gives me a look of disgust and says stop.  I shouldn't call it this, but I can't help it. I mean it as a term of endearment--I love this place.  It's perfect.  Sydney loves it, too.  Which is why I should not exasperate her with gross comments about boogers and flies.  She's a big girl now, and too mature for such things. . . .

Except for most nights when she asks me to read her a story, and to include my world famous embellishments--the gross-out references to bodily functions I'm sure those authors meant to include but left hidden between the lines.  It takes the eye of a literature professor to see them.  To point out that after supper Snoopy usually takes a poopy may require a doctorate in literature. She's particularly fond of the thunderous "toot" that peels the paint off the walls, especially when the source is some prissy princess.  All of her favorite literary characters have managed one of these, though they're authors forgot to spell them out for us.

Just doing my job as a father and a literature scholar to point them out to my five year old.

MMMMM..... burger.

 

21. Last FM and the Writing Process

Ya, I'm the guy who listens to "Keane" radio while he tries to think of something to blog about.  At least today I'm that guy.

It's not really working for me. In fact, all it's really doing right now is delaying me from what I could be doing: shoveling the drive, riding the stationary bike and watching a rerun of the X-Files (ya, I'm the guy who watches reruns of the X-Files 3 or 4 times a week while riding bike), or grading some papers.

So what I'm saying is that "Keane" radio on Last FM isn't really "muse" music--it doesn't much inspire creativity, as you are plainly witnessing right now.  Allow me to change the channel and let's observe what happens.

There. "Elton John" radio.  "Your Song." 

Kind of makes me feel like writing a blog entry called "Your Blog."

"I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind
that I put down into words
how wonderful life is
while you're in the world."

That didn't really inspire anything much after all, I guess.  Next song...

"Maggie May" by Rod Stewart.

That reminds of a summer job I had after my freshmen year of college.  I cleaned the floors at the Kroger at Broadmoor Plaza in South Bend, six nights a week from 11 p.m. - 5 a.m.  I would dust mop, then scrub, then buff, then dust mop again.  It didn't take six hours, usually, but my boss wanted me to put in six hours.  So I did.  Once a week they would shut the store down for three hours and I would wax the floors.

One of the night cashiers there was named Maggie--maybe thirty, thin, light brown hair, pretty smile.  Nice.  I remember one night this song came on the radio that softly played throughout the store all night.  One of the guys who stocked shelves started singing, and before long, all five of the guys who stocked shelves made their way to the front of the store, belting the song at the tops of their lungs at her, to her great embarrassment.  Only two of them really knew the lyrics, and none of them could sing. 

It was beautiful.  I scraped stickers off the floor in the produce section, and smiled to myself.  Smouched (Huck Finn's word for "stole") one of those ginormous gumballs from the bulk food section, and hummed along.

Thank you Last FM.  I'd forgotten.

20. Friday Nights at 9:00 p.m.

It's "Gold Rush" time. 

I'm not the biggest TV buff I know, but I do kinda dig Discovery Channel's reality show, "Gold Rush." Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but each week I watch the show hoping these guys hit the motherload somewhere deep in the bowels of Quartz Creek, Alaska.  Instead, I watch for an hour and discover that when it comes to gold mining, if it can break down, fall apart, or go wrong--it will.  The show could be called "A Series of Frustrating Events."  So why do I like this?

I'll never be a gold miner.  I'll never know what it is really like to rough it in the Alaskan wilderness.  I'll never drive gargantuan dump trucks, dozers, or front end loaders.  But the show does give the impression that its showing us a little of what it might be like to mine gold.  It's intoxicating.  It's maddening.  It's enough to make you thankful that no matter how bad of a day you're having, you probably didn't have as many things go wrong as these guys did in any one hour show.

Yesterday I quoted from Rasselas. Might as well go for it again, since it seems relevant here.  Prince Rasselas is bored in the Happy Valley--bored because he has everything he wants. While it might seem like happiness is getting everything you want, the prince points out that he is unhappy precisely because he has nothing to struggle for, nothing to strive after, nothing to desire.  Rasselas says, "I fancy that I should be happy if I had something to pursue."

I like this TV show because these guys are relentlessly pursuing gold. I'm not all that interested in relentlessly pursuing gold, myself.  But I do know that we all need something to pursue.  Every week I watch them endure disappointment after disappointment, and only occasionally a small triumph or a glimmer of hope.  And yet they press on.  They seem happy.  I think it's because they have something to pursue.  I need something to pursue, too.

So I keep on the lookout for little things that might awaken me from my contented slumber, and I pursue them.  A hundred free throws in a row.  Thirty unbroken pull-ups.  A doctorate.  A new humanities major. 350 blog entries in a year--one a day with a reasonable assumption that there will be a dozen or so days when I'm somewhere with no Internet connection. The entire Bible in 6 months.  That sort of thing.

There is that inevitable let down once you've reached some goal.  If these guys strike it rich by the end of the mining season, the show won't be quite the same for me any more.  I hope they do, but I also know that if they do, that's the end of the show.  I'll make a hundred free throws in a row again someday soon. Then what?  Do it again.  Hit 50 3 pointers in a row.  Who knows.  I just know I'm the kind of person who is happiest struggling and striving my way towards something.  Kind of like the guys on "Gold Rush," I guess. Call it restlessness if you want, but it beats the boredom of happy valley.

19. On the Paralysis of Perpetual Analysis

"Nothing," replied the artist, "will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome." (Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson)

One my strengths--at the very least according to the StrengthsQuest assessment--is "strategy." I tend to be a visionary and a strategic thinker, I like imagining possibilities, and dreaming about what could be.  But another of my strengths is "context"--meaning I "look back."  I look back because that's where answers lie.  I tend to see the past as something of a blueprint for life as I move forward.  The past provides me with a frame of reference.

Anyhow, there's something about what the artist says to Rasselas in Johnson's book that struck last night when I read it.  I'm totally frustrated by an academic culture that insists that all possible objections must first be overcome before we try anything new. I don't know if it's in spite of my strengths or because of my strengths that I find the endless nay saying about moving forward with some innovation (a new venture, a new course, new curriculum, a new structure, etc.) until everything is in its perfect place and we've anticipated every possible little thing that could go wrong to be enormously frustrating.

Nothing is ever perfectly in its place.   There's not going to be a much better time for me to start writing that novel, to start that new workout plan, to start eating more helpings of vegetables and drinking less coke.  There will always be reasons why now isn't such a good time to move forward.

I am strategic--it's true.  But I've realized my best strategies are often only half-baked plans that I can adapt on the fly to meet unforeseen challenges.  Because if I sit around waiting until I've answered every possible objection, I'll never get a blasted thing accomplished.

This quote from Rasselas is not without irony, of course.  The artist who says it is at work creating a pair of wings so that he can fly.  Prince Rasselas questions him about the pitfalls and dangers.  The quote above is the artist's reply to him.  As it turns out, the artist does crash into a lake and nearly kills himself.  The chapter closes with this delicious little gem: "His wings, which were of no use in the air, sustained him in the water..." (ch. 6)

In life, there is the risk of crashing, but it sure beats the paralysis of perpetual analysis.  And you may not fly with those wings you've dreamed up, but they might actually save you from drowning.

I like that.

18. On Literature and Confession

Every semester I have to come up with some new idea for a literature seminar. Every semester I agonize over this decision--over choosing a topic to spend fifteen weeks with, over finding something that I'll be energized enough by to enjoy and to facilitate, and something that maybe a few students will find interesting enough to want to explore together. I'm not as successful in my choices as I'd like to be, and sometimes I'm surprised by the responses. There have even been times when I've feltl like something wasn't going so well, but it turned out by the end of the semester the students were expressing much more appreciation than I could had sensed throughout the term.

Anyhow, here's a list of seminar topics going back several years.

• Post-modernist literature
• Myth and Archetype in Literature
• Nobel prize winners
• Nietzsche and the novelists
• Clashes of culture
• Survival literature
• Love and friendship
• Literary Friendships
• Bringing life to literature
• Modern European masterpieces
• The Sermon on the Mount and Story
• C.S. Lewis, Samuel Johnson and the Great Conversation

A theme that has run throughout virtually every course I teach has finally surfaced in my mind and now I can't shake it.  This April I'm presenting a paper at a regional conference on Christianity and Literature up at Calvin College during the Festival on Faith and Writing.  The paper's title is "Bringing Life the Text and the Text to Life: Case Studies from the Literature Classroom as Confessional Space."

My own encounters with literature almost inevitably spark "confession."  And for a majority of my students who take the time to really engage the literature I assign for classes like these and others, it tends to have the same effect.  I'm not sure I know exactly why, but I aim to explore this in the paper I will co-write with a colleague. 

Meanwhile, I came up with a topic for the fall seminar in literature.  "Literature and Confession." 

So much for indirection.

17. What Sydney Ate After School

1 small bag of doritos
4 miniature reeses peanut butter cups
1 half glass of pink lemonade
9 baby carrots with ranch dip
Two thirds of a miniature ice cream sandwich
and... some baked goldfish crackers

She has put in a request for for mama to pick her up a "slurpee" on her way home from her meeting.

Ok. So am I a good papa for insisting that she eat some carrots--as if they would counterbalance all that garbage and ease my conscience a bit? Don't answer.

I do remember the feeling of being half starved at the end of a school day. I remember in middle and high school going home finally after a practice close to dinner time feeling woozy, grumpy, with a splitting hunger headache far too many times. I can't imagine that as the healthiest way of existence, either. I don't feel so bad that a famished little girl ate a bunch of junk food this afternoon. I suppose a peanut butter sandwich on whole grain bread, an organic apple, and some of those baby carrots might be a snack Dr. Oz would want my daughter eating, but I also don't think she's taken any years off her life today by eating all this junk. And she's happy as a lark. :-)

16. Happy MLK Day

I've seen them perform this song in concert five times, now, and every time its felt like the Kingdom was upon us.

15. On Writing, Practice, and Discipline

This book is worth reading for anyone who has to write a book length manuscript.  A lot of books get started and never finished.  Not that I have all that much experience with this, but having written one, I can tell you that it is as easy to procrastinate as it is to utterly exhaust yourself with marathon writing sessions.  It takes discipline to write every day.  It also takes discipline to STOP, even when things are going well.

One of the best things I learned from this book was this: park on the downslope.  Stop before you've exhausted what you have to say, so that you have some momentum for tomorrow.

No, you won't write your book or your dissertation in only 15 minutes a day.  But try writing for 15 minutes and only 15 minutes for a week, and see what happens. What I found is that I began to develop a writing habit, and in week two I gave myself permission some of those days to write for more then fifteen minutes.

Now I'm thinking about writing a book (in 15 minutes a day) called "Write Your Blog in 15 Minutes a Day."

14. In the Garden

"My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death." (Mt. 26:38)

"Through the prism of my tears I have seen a suffering God.  It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live.  I have always thought this meant that no one can see his splendor and live.  A friend said perhaps this meant that no one could see his sorrow and live.  Or perhaps his sorrow is his splendor."  (Nicholas Wolterstorff)

Did Judas see this face in the garden that night?  Not only did he see it, he kissed it.  But did he truly "see" it? That's a question that haunts me.  How could Judas live, gazing into the face of one overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.  Perhaps Judas saw the splendor of God--sorrow--and he could not live.  This, of course, doesn't justify Judas' actions.

I imagine that Peter, too, saw this sorrow when he caught Jesus' eye immediately after that cock crowed for the third time.  Did Jesus wear a splendorous sorrow on his face then--the sorrow over this denial? It is true that Peter can no longer live as he has to this point.  He dies, too.  And in dying, lives.

I want to acquaint myself with the the triumphant God, but I fear the way of triumph--for of course it means sorrow, defeat, death.  To know God, to see his face, is to acquaint myself with suffering, pain, and sorrow.  The only way to God is through Jesus in the garden.

 

13. On Visigoths (Part 2)

In blog entry #11, I commented on "Visigoths" and the visigothian idea of grades. See that entry here. http://robbyprenkert.blogspot.com/2012/01/11-on-visigoths.html

We asked the class whether they thought--considering their graduating class--the Athenians would outnumber the Visigoths. I suppose the value of a question like that isn't so much in the answer we get to the specific question, but to the discussion the question sparks and the perspectives it reveals.

I think it would be fair to say that most of them felt that the majority of their classmates were in the Visigoth camp, and seem to show few signs of relocating themselves.

Taking a bit longer view, I remain hopeful. My teaching partner and I think that seeds do get planted, and that sometimes--maybe even years later--students and former students slide on the scale and become a little less "V" and a little more "A."  Of course, the two categories are not Christian, but a robust faith will always push one toward the "A" and away from he "V."  t

Sadly, a superficial faith may very well slide a person deeper into visigothian territory.  But that's a thought for another time.