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.