Dickens on the cares of childhood

Here is how Charles Dickens conveys the whole compass of a child's concerns. In the scene, young David Copperfield is playing with Em'ly, the orphaned niece who lives with Copperfield's housemaid:

"As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty in our way, little Em'ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no future. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for growing younger." (Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chapter 3, "I Have a Change")

Reflections on reading David Copperfield

I've just finished reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, a monumental undertaking that took me four months. Not because David Copperfield was difficult or dull, mind you, but because it was long. Exceedingly long. (And because I read it in chapter increments after midnight most of the time.)

Among other things, I learned that it's best to read David Copperfield on a Kindle. Not only does this make you look exceedingly cool, it also keeps you from knowing exactly how big the book really is. You blithely begin clicking "Next Page" on your Kindle, and you feel like you're flying. Before you realize it,  you've clicked yourself 78 "pages" into a Dickens novel and you're only 1% through the book. But you're hooked. The only consolation is that you don't have to carry around a Penguin Classic paperback that's roughly the thickness of a cinder block. (And the people on the bus assume you're reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest or The Wall Street Journal.)

David Copperfield is one of the finest novels I've ever read. As I begin to reflect on the significance of the book (a process that generally takes me a day*), I set it alongside other Dickensian productions like Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities**. I am struck by Dickens' portrayal of:

• the uplifting power of love between man and woman
• the strength of the lex talionis (the law of retribution in kind) in the universe
• the beauty of personal integrity
• the worth of each individual
• the distortion unrighteousness introduces on the soul by small degrees
• the possibility of noble sacrifice (or the blessedness of bearing necessary hardship)

I think I could go on, and I think I probably should. This short list, however, will help me arrange my thoughts for the future as I run back over my marginal notes and highlights.

For now, let me say that I think all people with a love of literature, Dickens, life, or humanity should read David Copperfield. But not before reading a shorter work by Dickens (let it be A Tale of Two Cities), and not before purchasing a Kindle so you look cool while being ... not cool.
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* The process generally only takes me a day because I begin reading another book and stop reflecting altogether. 

** I put it alongside those two books because they're the only other Dickens novels I've read. (Unless you count the Muppet rendition of A Christmas Carol.)

A Servant's Uniform

Katie and I are in Zambia right now with two of our kids and ten students from the IL/IN region. We're living in host homes and working together with the Zambian Navigators.

Charles and Priscilla Mpundu are our host parents. They live in a spacious house with more quarters -- and more people living in those quarters -- than I have counted. Nieces, nephews, kids, in-laws, dogs, guards, etc. are all around this place. It's a great kind of bustle.

This morning, when I came out of my bedroom, I noticed the new housemaid cleaning the floors. She had on a purple vest, and I assumed she worked for a cleaning service of some sort. It wasn't until later on that I took the time to read the logo on the back of her vest. It read, "To Know Christ and To Make Him Known."

Those in the know realize this motto has been with The Navigators from the organization's earliest days, and sure enough, the new housemaid was wearing a Navigators shirt. (She probably got it from Priscilla.)

Once again, a metaphor jumped me. Here we are, 14 Americans, on a missions trip in Zambia. How are we to make Christ known? Perhaps by getting on the floor and serving the families we live with.

"For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." (Mark 10:45)

As I've thought about this metaphor, I've been thinking about our team. Just last night, Stacy and Lindsey finished dinner and washed all the dishes for our (sizeable) family. (They are living with the Mpundus, too.) Just this morning, Kyle told me that he and Andrew did the dishes for their host family and the young boy in the family joined them. "This is my first time washing the dishes," he announced to Kyle.

Imagine that, our team is serving and it's already making a difference. Tomorrow, we leave for the bush for three days (four nights) to dig a septic system for a village 100KM to the west of Lusaka. Why? To know Christ and to make Him known.

When we get back, we'll be meeting students at the Ridgeway Medical Campus, sharing the gospel where there is interest, sharing our lives no matter what. Why? To know Christ and to make Him known.

In short, we're putting on our purple vests and serving as best we're able. That's what it means to be a Navigator. At least, that's what the morning metaphor from the housemaid told me.

G.K. Chesterton's Birthday

Today, I was apprised by a friend that May 29th is G.K. Chesterton's birthday. Following the example of some guy named Tim from the League of Bearded Catholics, I would like to propose my own list of things you might do on this day:

(1) Forget that it is Chesterton's birthday.

(2) Lie in bed tomorrow morning, drawing on the ceiling with a long, coloured pencil.

(3) Challenge a freethinker to a dual.

(4) Take a long walk in the woods, get lost, then write an essay about it. (And have it published.)

(5) Take everything out of your pockets, then write an essay about the contents. (And have it published.)

(6) Outline your understanding of the development of Western culture, or, if this seems too daunting, finish (in your own words) a shorter piece that begins: "In my forthcoming work in four volumes on the neglect of cheese in English literature ...".

(7) Walk about your downtown in a black cape and black hat, wearing a pince-nez and carryng a walking-stick (preferably a sword-stick), all the while reciting a nursery rhyme or fable from your childhood until a policeman comes up and tells you that you are jaywalking.

(8) Find a short-ish Catholic priest, and ask him to solve a mystery.

(9) Forecast accurately the development and devolution of Western culture during the next 100 years.

(10) Read something by Chesterton. This would be at once the most unique and counter-cultural thing you could do on this auspicious day.

{NB: If you are a Kindle owner or use the Kindle on your mobile device, you can download ridiculous scores of Chesterton's works at Amazon for free. Free + Chesterton + Books = Celebration!}

Magical Mowing

I have mowed my grass before the neighbors, a stupendous accomplishment for two reasons:

(1) My neighbors work in their lawns tirelessly. They roto-till, fertilize, mulch, and edge more frequently than the groundskeepers at Disney World. Periodically, I try to emulate them. More often than not, though, I try to distract them by walking over and talking about yard work (or gardening) I'll probably never get around to. The fact that they haven't yet mowed their lawns concerns me because it suggests (a) I shouldn't have cut mine yet for some inscrutable reason, or (b) the earth is passing through the tail of a comet and turning everything topsy-turvy.

(2) But on a deeper level, I am amazed there is grass to mow. After a brutal and bitter winter, with howling winds, snow, ice, and avalanches -- the latter not in Illinois -- the grass is still alive. (The trees are, too. Remarkable.) Scientists, no doubt, have an explanation for this, but I will not be distracted by empirical data. It is part of the good magic God worked into the world when He made it.

By mid-summer, I will be tired of the magic and ready for the grass to stop growing. Until then, I will do my best to foster the awe growing grass deserves. (I will also continue to stress about the clover and broadleaf weeds that survived the bitter winter. They are part of the dark magic in the world.)

Polar Illinois

I'm reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens and found this amusing. As young David approaches the city of Yarmouth with his nurse, he says, "I could not help wondering, if the world were really as round as my geography book said, how any part of it came to be so flat. But I reflected that Yarmouth might be situated at one of the poles, which would account for it."

Both for its enduring flatness and present canvas of snow, Champaign, Illinois might have been the subject of David's musings. I'm not sure how being situated at a pole would account for a place's flatness, but it does provide fuel for the imagination.

More insight from this book should follow, as I recommit myself to this hitherto dormant blog. (More expressions like "hitherto dormant" are coming, also, since I'm reading Charles Dickens, who is masterful beyond description in this book.)

When the Bible Goes Wrong

During the three years I worked on the eighth floor of Haley Center at Auburn University, my coworkers thought me to be more friendly than I really am. I would often be found wandering the halls of Haley Center, bidding everyone with an open office door good day. Truth be told, I was often lost.

The whole fault lay with the elevator (and the spell of relativism that lay around the English Department). I would often step off it and confidently turn right, only to find myself taking the long, circuitous route to my office, saying hello to everyone. Looking pleasant and purposeful, while feeling flustered and lost.

You might think I exaggerate to say this went on for three years. You do not know me well if that is what you think. If I am given the freedom to lose myself in thought, I am perfectly capable of losing my way home from within my garage. There were even times I would find myself wandering around the sixth or seventh floors of Haley Center wondering where my office had gone.

The only thing that could save me (and seldom did since I rarely looked up as I strode off the elevator), were the brown signs that pointed the way to the offices on each hall. At times, I would step off the elevator with the determination to go right, and the signs would point me left. Often, I would balk at the thought of going left, when I felt so sure I should go right. Sometimes, I would even test the accuracy of the signs and go right, only to find I had gone wrong.

I needed the brown signs of Haley Center because I was often inclined to go wrong. It is for this same reason we need the Bible ... all of it.

In fact, it is probably the passage of Scripture that seems most wrong (offensive, illogical) to us that we need most. There, we doubtless draw nearer to the thoughts of a God whose ways and ideas are vastly higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9), and we're confronted with the decision whether we will prefer His revelation to our best instincts.

Perhaps an example will help. A friend asked me recently what I thought about the tension between predestination and free will. I commended to him J.I. Packer's wonderful (and brief!) book entitled Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, and I tried to represent Packer's position, now my own.

The Bible teaches that God has elected some to salvation and they will surely be saved. Yet the gospel message must be preached to all, and all will be held accountable for whether they believe it. There is divine sovereignty and human accountability in the Bible.

The same position can be seen illustrated in Luke 22:22 where Jesus says to Judas, "For indeed, the Son of Man is going as it has been determined; but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!" Judas was doing what God had predetermined and announced he would surely do; nevertheless, Jesus pronounced a curse on him for doing it. Divine sovereignty and human accountability.

I don't mean to settle the question of predestination or free will in a single blog, I only mean it as an example of following the Bible where it leads. Perhaps you prefer the way predestination answers to the demands of human logic or the way free will answers to the demands of human dignity. What you must not do is prefer one at the expense of the other. You must accept what the Bible says (and, please note, I have under-represented what the Bible says on both these subjects) even where the Bible does not seem to harmonize the two. They are not logically contradictory positions, but they are never nicely conjoined in the Scriptures.

The inclination of the heart or mind must not turn to the left when the Bible is pointing right. The Bible must be reckoned right even when we feel it to be wrong, if, indeed, it represents God's revelation of His thoughts and ways to us.

Other examples could be offered, perhaps many others. (Think, for example, about the Bible's instruction on sexuality, singleness, and divorce.) I only mean to raise the question: What will you do when the Bible seems to confront a belief, desire, or behavior you're inclined to, or to commend one you disapprove of?

The Reason Aliens Haven't Visited Earth Yet

Since I have cast in my lot with the bloggers and tweeters of the world, I have noticed a distinct trend in my thinking: I have become overly critical of the gratuitous, vain, narcissistic, self-congratulatory style of expression blogging and tweeting promote.

(See what I mean.)

I was reminded of it again yesterday when I spied someone wearing a shirt with the iconic Twitter bird exclaiming, "Who cares?"

I really feel the way this bird feels. Deeply.

Even so, I was raised by a mother who is remarkable for her civility and who instilled in me a deep reverence for the Ancient Words, "If you don't have nothing nice to say, say nothing."

I haven't been saying nice things about bloggers and tweeters; yet, I can't simply say nothing. (After all, I have a blog and Twitter feed to keep up.) I was vexed by this problem until the Muse of Clean Poets and Philosophers met me in the shower this morning.

People may blog about the poor condition of wintry roadways. They may tweet (endlessly) about the previous night's basketball loss. They may fill up a status update with news about the great bargain they found at the department store. And if they do this day after day, they might just save us from the madness we now know as The News.

You read The News, don't you? Perhaps you even watch it on TV. If so, then you understand why aliens have never visited earth. They are intercepting our broadcasts of The Nightly News, and they do not want to come.

The earth appears to them one roiling mass of robbery, rape, intrigue, assassination, economic collapse, political stalemate, natural disaster, anger, lust, blame, and angst. Is it any wonder they maintain a safe space of several galaxies? I should not like to visit that world, either, and thankfully, I don't live in it.

I live in a world filled with bloggers, and I do hope our aliens obtain internet access soon. If they do, it will take quite a concerted effort for them to reconcile the cosmos of the blogger with the chaos of The Nightly News. Bloggers feel little need to inflate the mundane affairs of the world (Lat. 'mundus') into sensational reports.

The roads get somewhat icy, the team loses, and shirts go on sale. The blogger can report and reflect on the little things that make life, life. The news anchor, however, if he cannot find anything more sensational to report on must say it thus: "Icy Roads Becoming Increasingly Treacherous In Spite of Global Warming. Scientists Baffled. Local Government Officials Blame Lagging Economy and El Niño. Salt Mines in Southern Poland Reopened."

The whole point of the Nightly News is to present us with something new, something sensational, something out-of-the-ordinary. The Nightly News bears almost no resemblance to the night it purports to tell us about. We stare at a screen to discover what a weird and wild world we live in, when a glance out our window would show it to be a falsity or a farce.

Here's to the blogger, then, that looks out his window and tells us about his world. Here's to the tweeter who represents reality in 140 characters or less. And here's to the alien who'll be brave enough to visit us one day to settle once and for all whether our world is mad or mundane.

If You Have Yet To Donate To Relief In Haiti

If you haven't yet made a donation to the relief efforts in Haiti after the quake that hit Port-Au-Prince, please consider doing so. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and all reports suggest that pre-existing emergency response infrastructure in the country has been destroyed. In other words, the majority of supplies and personnel will need to be transported into the country from abroad.

Feel free to do your own homework on charities doing the most good immediately in Haiti (check out www.charitynavigator.org), but here are two organizations Katie and I recommend: Doctors Without Borders and World Vision. The links below will take you directly to their websites should you choose to donate to their Haiti relief efforts.



World Vision: Haiti Earthquake Relief

Crooked Pictures

Postmodernism offers asylum for all of us who are incapable of hanging pictures straight. After all, who gets to determine what is straight? Perhaps the walls are not straight, so who can be faulted for hanging a picture crooked under an uneven ceiling?

"But this presupposes some standard against which the straightness of ceilings can be measured, a concept anathema to postmodernism," you protest.

Well then, perhaps the picture only looks crooked because you have not tilted your head in the proper direction. Who is to say the picture is not straight and your head crooked?

"Ah, but there is that word 'proper'," you say, "which ill befits postmodern thinking."

Very well, then, you should tilt your head such that the angle of the picture pleases you.

"Did you just use the word 'should' as though I am subject to some objective, moral injunction regarding the disposition of my perspective toward pictures? And are you further suggesting there exists outside my own consciousness categories of 'angularity' and 'linearity' toward which my perspective should conform?"

Really, this has become quite bothersome. I only meant to suggest that people with no facility for hanging pictures find a philosophy friendly toward their limitations in postmodernism.

"You mean to suggest there is some discrete, discernable boundary of human capacities against which 'limitations' can be ..."

Hmph!

On the Neglect of One's Ribs

When someone asks, "How did you sleep?" an agreeable answer is, "I never moved." Agreeable, that is, unless you have broken your ribs and spent the night trying not to move. That is how I have spent the last several nights.

(Yes, I bruised or broke a rib the same fateful night I pitched off my snowboard and broke my wrist.)

I could sit around bemoaning my fate to myself, or, as an aspiring writer should, do it publicly.

The fact of the matter is, I am doing penance for the neglect I have shown my ribs for the past 38 years. In breaking or bruising, they have not meant to harm me, only to humble me in a Christian way. They remind me each night (and often during the day) that they have served me without complaint or compliment for nearly four decades.

Can I say that about my feet, which always cry out for new coverings and stink to high heaven if I neglect them? Or my knees, which put in 30 years of service and now have decided to buckle at the most inconvenient of times. Or my teeth? (I will not even remark on the care and expense poured out on these nasty little creatures that promised early on to serve me but quickly turned to torturing me for little bits of silver and gold.)

And where were my ribs during all this? Right there, under my very nose, quietly carrying on their vital ministry, ministering to my vitals. But I never acknowledged them or gave due thanks, so one of them broke. Now I cannot ignore them.

I don't consider my rib's breaking to be peevish misbehavior or outright rebellion but a warranted, Christian complaint like the psalmist who cried out, "How long? Will you forget me forever?"

It is the purpose of this essay to keep their plaintive cry from becoming an imprecatory one. (I have read the Psalter.)

So here is my public acknowledgment of the service my ribs have rendered me these many years. They have been faithful and sound. They have never failed to rally around me. They have discharged their duty with humility, diligence and circumspection. Had all my body's parts the character of ribs, I would be the happiest man on earth. Indeed, if I could exchange all my teeth for ribs, I would do so, save that I would look very menacing to small children.

I accept my lot wholeheartedly and turn it even into a parable. May the temporary pain my noble ribs have caused me flower into the fruit of full appreciation for those who tend to my well-being faithfully and quietly, especially for that one whose origin can be traced back ... to a rib.

Legislating from the Bench Seat

Yesterday, I pulled up to a four-way stop behind a lady who must be seeking appointment to the Supreme Court. She sat upon the bench seat of her car and, rather than observing the rules of the road, decided to direct traffic with her hand.

I believe Justice Gesture-You-Through was well-meaning. Rather than insist upon her own right to drive through the intersection first – she had arrived before the other car, after all – she was attempting to think of others before herself. Perhaps she was even meditating on the Golden Rule.

One thing is certain, however. She was not meditating on the Rules of the Road. So, her noble gesture created delay and frustration. When Our Lady of Justice failed to accelerate through the intersection as she should have, the other driver looked her way to see what was the matter. His look was somewhat less than benign when he perceived the Lady gesturing him through.

For my part, I placed my hand upon the horn and thought to administer a little justice of my own. But I relented. (The Golden Rule, you know.)

Instead, I waited my turn and drove through the intersection after Lady Justice, who was no doubt blind to all the frustration she had caused.

There are rules in this world, you see, both civic and spiritual. Life generally flows along better for you and those around you if you heed them. There is no sense – and generally no profit – in deciding to flout them temporarily for the good of your fellow-man.

Take the Habit of Gravity, for instance. You might wish very much to help your elderly neighbor reach her second floor apartment without having to use the steps. With the noblest of intentions, you might issue a temporary restraining order on the Habit of Gravity, grasp your neighbor by the waist, and toss her toward her balcony. I have no doubt the next restraining order will be issued against you.

You can't ignore civil statutes, the Habits of Nature, or the Rules of God without causing harm to yourself and others. Better to understand and abide by them.

I've Already Broken Something This New Year

The New Year greeted us again last night in its habitual fashion, by arriving precisely at midnight. We all hailed its arrival with silly toasts and garrulous good cheer. Then I promptly went to bed. (Each passing year seems to find me commensurately older.)

As fate would have it, though, I am bearing into the new year a burden from the old: I broke my wrist on December 30th. While somewhat painful and humbling, I can proudly say I broke it falling off a rail (or "box") on a snowboard just two days after I learned to stand up on one.

One could argue a 38-year-old cream puff like me should not be trying tricks on a snowboard when he's barely learned to get down the hill on one. I say, "Bosh!"

If you're not falling down, you're not getting better … though it must be admitted that falling down offers no definitive proof you are getting better. Even so, with broken wrist and indomitable spirit, I resolve again to follow this maxim in the new year: Fail Big!