When war broke out the various nations that would play a part in the conflict began mobilizing their forces. Germany's entire war plan counted on a quick strike. In order to ensure victory, they had to seize victory in the west before Russia could mobilize and strike in the east. Russian mobilization was expected to take longer than six weeks. Thus, Germany's plan called for victory over France in 40 days.
A few obstacles to this goal arose. First, was Belgium. Belgium was a newer nation, small in size and not able to fight against one of the continental powers. Thus it was protected by the other powers, including England. Strategically, Belgium was hugely important to Germany. If they occupied Belgium they could strike directly south to France. The German war plan called for the rightmost soldier to brush the channel with his sleeve. In order for that to happen, Belgium's neutrality and sovereignty would have to be violated. German leaders were not concerned about the military threat posed by the Belgians. If anything they expected them to roll over. The timetable for swinging its right flank through the country neglected to account for any Belgian resistance at all. The problem with invading Belgium, from the German perspective, was that once Belgian sovereignty was violated England would be treaty-bound to enter the war. The British military, especially the British Navy, was of concern to the Germans.
When German boots crossed into Belgium they did not find a compliant people or a feckless king. The Belgians resisted, decimating the German army in an early series of battles. Victory by the Belgians was never a possibility, but their fierce resistance slowed down the German advance. Moreover, it emboldened the world to speak out against Germany's aggression. News of German retaliations against Belgian citizens was broadcasted to the world, and the world turned against Germany. England, goaded by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, declared in favor of the Allies and dispatched an expeditionary force to occupy the left flank of the French forces. Though poorly led and mostly retreating the first month of the war, the French rallied the English to their cause when von Kluck exposed his right flank and the BEF was a key part of the battle of the Marne.
Another obstacle to the German timetable was Russia. The Russian behemoth mobilized much quicker than was expected. Spurred on by the French, the Russians sent armies into the field that were grievously unequipped for war with Germany but even 1,000,000 poorly-equipped soldiers is something that has to be dealt with. Germany dispatched two key battalions to the eastern front. Russian losses were staggering, but they accomplished the goal of making Germany fight a two-front war.
In a sense, then, Russia and Belgium are responsible for saving Europe. England might not have entered the war had Belgian neutrality not been violated and popular opinion so enamored of the conduct of the Belgians. If that hadn't happened the Germans would have enveloped France and taken Paris by the middle of September. If the Russians hadn't sacrificed thousands of men in an ill-fated early attack on Germany, the two German battalions called away might have given the Germans all they needed to overrun both the French and the British forces in the west. All of this three years before the U.S. entered the conflict.
The Battle of the Marne was waged over a week in early September of 1914. It falls out of the purview of Tuchman's book, which keyed in only on the first month of the conflict. In that week, though, 500,000 soldiers were killed or wounded. It was the bloodiest-per-day battle of the conflict. While it was ultimately an Allied victory and the Germans would never get as close to Paris as they had been in August of 1914, the victory also set the stage for four years of trench warfare and the madness and killing and senselessness of that war. With victories like that, who needs defeats?
24 August 2014
17 August 2014
The Guns of August
In August of 1914 the world erupted into the conflagration that came to be known as the Great War. After the European powers repeated the steps less than thirty years later, the Great War was amended to World War I. It is a conflict about which I know very little. Its brutality and pointlessness do not make way for glory in the same way as its better known child. There is little glory at the bottom of a trench, nothing rousing in a pile of young bodies rotting in no man's land.
Attempting to rectify my ignorance of the conflict I spent the past month or so reading Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, her account of the first month of the war. Superlatives fail. It was a fascinating read. Even though the Europe it conjures is scarcely a century past (there are people in your town who were alive during the conflict), it is an entirely foreign world--a world of princes and kings and archdukes and detente and entente and confusing treaties and the vast progeny of Queen Victoria. It was an era that still believed in honor, that took a nation's right to dominate whatever was within its power to control as a piece of natural law, that saw Europe as a continent of competing powers and not some panEuropean utopia.
Tuchman begins with a vision of old Europe. The death of King Edward VII of England was attended by nine kings, five heirs apparent, forty imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens, and numerous ambassadors. The Kaiser of Germany, William II, rode in attendance; the new King of England, George V, rode in the front row; King Frederick of Denmark was there, as was Alfonso of Spain and Manuel of Portugal and the soon to be famous Albert of Belgium. Franz Ferdinand was there, accompanied by the old Emperor Franz Josef. Crown Prince Rupprecht, who would lead the German army in battle, was there. Edward had broken England's isolation, uniting the nation with France and Russia, two old enemies and the upstart Japan.
The unity with France unsettled the Kaiser and prevented him from pursuing a better peace with England. The Kaiser longed for the acclaim of France, dreamed of being paraded through the streets of Paris. Tuchman notes, "it is perhaps the saddest story of the fate of kings that the Kaiser lived to be eighty-two and died without seeing Paris." The rapprochement was not to come. The new Germany, united by Bismarck, emboldened by the victories over France in 1870, chomped at the bit, straining to assert itself in a continent that openly derided its parochialism and provinciality. Germany would soon get its chance.
England's unity with Russia was even more of a blow to the German people. Alexandra, Czar Nicholas's wife, was German. Nicholas and William were cousins. But Alexandra hated William and the czar was constrained by his more evenhanded ministers from signing an entente with Germany. Germany was, for all intents and purposes, surrounded. France to the west, Russia to the east, England on the seas. Their alliance with Italy was suspect and Austria could not provide enough protection against the hulking beast of Russia to give Germany freedom to fight only on one front in the west. A two-front war haunted Germany's military minds.
However, much of this was subliminal at the death of Edward. Peace seemed to be the order of the day. Germany could pontificate and quotes its Nietzsche and thump its chest, but the balance in Europe seemed to be stable. In 1910, the year of Edward's magisterial funeral, Norman Angell published The Great Illusion, which "proved that war had become vain." Given the economic interdependence of the nations, no country would be foolish enough to start a new war. A cult grew around the book and optimism seemed to replace predilections of war.
But at the end of June, Gavrilo Princip's shot rang out in the Sarajevo morning and the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire choked to death on his own blood in the back of his motorcar. Austria declared war on Bosnia, Bosnia was defended under treaty by Russia, Germany came in for Austria under odd pretenses. Thus the war in the east began. Inventing a threat from France, Germany violated Belgian neutrality in order to invade France from the north. Treaty-bound to defend Belgium, England declared for the side of the Allies and dispatched an expeditionary force to France. Thus the war in the west began.
Four years later, after 16 million people had died, the madness was put to bed for a time.
In my next post I will take a brief look at how that first month played out and how it served as a harbinger for the horrors to come. I would love to have more time to engage with the book, but tomorrow morning I start teaching and will be pretty busy for the next several months. My posting has fallen off the map since moving to Colorado, but I anticipate being able to post once per week during the school year. I should have a follow-up post by the end of next weekend.
Attempting to rectify my ignorance of the conflict I spent the past month or so reading Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, her account of the first month of the war. Superlatives fail. It was a fascinating read. Even though the Europe it conjures is scarcely a century past (there are people in your town who were alive during the conflict), it is an entirely foreign world--a world of princes and kings and archdukes and detente and entente and confusing treaties and the vast progeny of Queen Victoria. It was an era that still believed in honor, that took a nation's right to dominate whatever was within its power to control as a piece of natural law, that saw Europe as a continent of competing powers and not some panEuropean utopia.
Tuchman begins with a vision of old Europe. The death of King Edward VII of England was attended by nine kings, five heirs apparent, forty imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens, and numerous ambassadors. The Kaiser of Germany, William II, rode in attendance; the new King of England, George V, rode in the front row; King Frederick of Denmark was there, as was Alfonso of Spain and Manuel of Portugal and the soon to be famous Albert of Belgium. Franz Ferdinand was there, accompanied by the old Emperor Franz Josef. Crown Prince Rupprecht, who would lead the German army in battle, was there. Edward had broken England's isolation, uniting the nation with France and Russia, two old enemies and the upstart Japan.
The unity with France unsettled the Kaiser and prevented him from pursuing a better peace with England. The Kaiser longed for the acclaim of France, dreamed of being paraded through the streets of Paris. Tuchman notes, "it is perhaps the saddest story of the fate of kings that the Kaiser lived to be eighty-two and died without seeing Paris." The rapprochement was not to come. The new Germany, united by Bismarck, emboldened by the victories over France in 1870, chomped at the bit, straining to assert itself in a continent that openly derided its parochialism and provinciality. Germany would soon get its chance.
England's unity with Russia was even more of a blow to the German people. Alexandra, Czar Nicholas's wife, was German. Nicholas and William were cousins. But Alexandra hated William and the czar was constrained by his more evenhanded ministers from signing an entente with Germany. Germany was, for all intents and purposes, surrounded. France to the west, Russia to the east, England on the seas. Their alliance with Italy was suspect and Austria could not provide enough protection against the hulking beast of Russia to give Germany freedom to fight only on one front in the west. A two-front war haunted Germany's military minds.
However, much of this was subliminal at the death of Edward. Peace seemed to be the order of the day. Germany could pontificate and quotes its Nietzsche and thump its chest, but the balance in Europe seemed to be stable. In 1910, the year of Edward's magisterial funeral, Norman Angell published The Great Illusion, which "proved that war had become vain." Given the economic interdependence of the nations, no country would be foolish enough to start a new war. A cult grew around the book and optimism seemed to replace predilections of war.
But at the end of June, Gavrilo Princip's shot rang out in the Sarajevo morning and the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire choked to death on his own blood in the back of his motorcar. Austria declared war on Bosnia, Bosnia was defended under treaty by Russia, Germany came in for Austria under odd pretenses. Thus the war in the east began. Inventing a threat from France, Germany violated Belgian neutrality in order to invade France from the north. Treaty-bound to defend Belgium, England declared for the side of the Allies and dispatched an expeditionary force to France. Thus the war in the west began.
Four years later, after 16 million people had died, the madness was put to bed for a time.
In my next post I will take a brief look at how that first month played out and how it served as a harbinger for the horrors to come. I would love to have more time to engage with the book, but tomorrow morning I start teaching and will be pretty busy for the next several months. My posting has fallen off the map since moving to Colorado, but I anticipate being able to post once per week during the school year. I should have a follow-up post by the end of next weekend.
01 August 2014
The Key to Paradise Lost, or One Nominal Theory on the Issue of the Hero of the Epic
I do not know that I have found the key to understanding Paradise Lost. Maybe. The title of the post is a nod to the wonderful pedantic Edward Causabon of Middlemarch, whose life's work was to be The Key to All Mythologies. Unfortunately for the world, Dr. Causabon died, victim to the harshness of George Eliot's pen, before he could complete his tome and enlighten the world.
In general I am leery of theories or claims that are as absolute as "the key to this" or "the until now overlooked aspect of that." People who make claims like that are mistaking boldness in rhetoric for boldness in thought. That large caveat aside, in my Scripture reading the other day I did come across a verse that can function, while perhaps not the key, at least a very useful lens for adjudicating the great Satan debate in Paradise Lost.
For those of you further down on the nerd scale, the debate basically centers around the hero of Paradise Lost. PL is an epic and all epics come equipped with a hero. The Iliad has Achilles. The Odyssey has Odysseus. The Aeneid has Aeneas. But Milton doesn't have a straightforward hero. People who enjoy controversy and quite literally playing the devil's advocate claim Satan as the hero. William Blake, a great reader of Milton and wonderfully visual poet, wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that "Milton was of the devil's party without knowing it."
A straightforward, maybe simplistic, reading of the poem can lead to this conclusion. Satan has all the best speeches. He is defiant and brave. "To reign is worth ambition though in hell/ Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." That is a great line. He refuses to accept defeat after literally waking up in hell. In other words, of all the characters in the epic Satan most embodies the classical traits of the hero.
But maybe Milton didn't want a classical hero. Maybe, in fact, he was sending up the ideals embodied by the classical hero. I have long sensed this as I have engaged with the poem, but in reading Romans 2 the other day it was brought home in a different way. Here is the text:
"He will render to each according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury." (Romans 2:6-8 ESV)
The classic course of the hero was to seek glory and honor and immortality. It was why Achilles went to Troy. But there is nothing more antithetical to the classical notion of heroism than the idea that glory and honor and immortality are achieved through "patience in well-doing." Glory and honor and immortality, for the ancients, had to be grasped at, struggled for; you had to do bold things and risk daringly, like Satan in Paradise Lost. But for the Christian we live patiently and do the good works God has prepared for us in Christ. A bit less grandiose. Not too many three hour blockbusters made about a Christian businessman living a patient life of good works in his suburban community.
But the quest for the Christian is different. What we need to do has already been done in Christ. Our job is to use the faith we have been given to endure. To finish the race. To continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that we heard. My ambitions when I was younger were for grand things. To change the world. To die a glorious martyr for Christ. Now my goals have changed. Life is long, the race is hard, and I just want to make it. When all hell breaks loose in this world and in my life, I want to stand.
I think Milton was on to this in setting Satan up as the most heroic character in the epic. If heroism leads to being Satan then what value is there in that type of heroism? Better to be patient. Better to endure. Better to live out good works. Better to, as Milton puts it in another poem, "only stand and wait."
In general I am leery of theories or claims that are as absolute as "the key to this" or "the until now overlooked aspect of that." People who make claims like that are mistaking boldness in rhetoric for boldness in thought. That large caveat aside, in my Scripture reading the other day I did come across a verse that can function, while perhaps not the key, at least a very useful lens for adjudicating the great Satan debate in Paradise Lost.
For those of you further down on the nerd scale, the debate basically centers around the hero of Paradise Lost. PL is an epic and all epics come equipped with a hero. The Iliad has Achilles. The Odyssey has Odysseus. The Aeneid has Aeneas. But Milton doesn't have a straightforward hero. People who enjoy controversy and quite literally playing the devil's advocate claim Satan as the hero. William Blake, a great reader of Milton and wonderfully visual poet, wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that "Milton was of the devil's party without knowing it."
A straightforward, maybe simplistic, reading of the poem can lead to this conclusion. Satan has all the best speeches. He is defiant and brave. "To reign is worth ambition though in hell/ Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." That is a great line. He refuses to accept defeat after literally waking up in hell. In other words, of all the characters in the epic Satan most embodies the classical traits of the hero.
But maybe Milton didn't want a classical hero. Maybe, in fact, he was sending up the ideals embodied by the classical hero. I have long sensed this as I have engaged with the poem, but in reading Romans 2 the other day it was brought home in a different way. Here is the text:
"He will render to each according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury." (Romans 2:6-8 ESV)
The classic course of the hero was to seek glory and honor and immortality. It was why Achilles went to Troy. But there is nothing more antithetical to the classical notion of heroism than the idea that glory and honor and immortality are achieved through "patience in well-doing." Glory and honor and immortality, for the ancients, had to be grasped at, struggled for; you had to do bold things and risk daringly, like Satan in Paradise Lost. But for the Christian we live patiently and do the good works God has prepared for us in Christ. A bit less grandiose. Not too many three hour blockbusters made about a Christian businessman living a patient life of good works in his suburban community.
But the quest for the Christian is different. What we need to do has already been done in Christ. Our job is to use the faith we have been given to endure. To finish the race. To continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that we heard. My ambitions when I was younger were for grand things. To change the world. To die a glorious martyr for Christ. Now my goals have changed. Life is long, the race is hard, and I just want to make it. When all hell breaks loose in this world and in my life, I want to stand.
I think Milton was on to this in setting Satan up as the most heroic character in the epic. If heroism leads to being Satan then what value is there in that type of heroism? Better to be patient. Better to endure. Better to live out good works. Better to, as Milton puts it in another poem, "only stand and wait."
30 July 2014
Tomorrow, I Teach
Tomorrow I start my training to be a high school English teacher. The road to this point I have already documented and you can read if you wish. I do not have much more to say on the topic right now. Only that I am very, very grateful.
We have been living in Colorado for just over a month now, out of suitcases in my parent's house. And it couldn't have been better. The weather, the mountains, our families, our friends. I have climbed mountains and run trails, sat outside on cool July evenings and slept under the stars at 11,000 feet above sea level.
When we first arrived in town I actually got a head start on my teaching experience. My new school had a project starting this summer that my department head thought I would be a good fit for: a Great Books project, or a history of philosophy. We took critical Western thinkers from the past 3,000 years, read their works, and wrote a 4-5 page chronicle of their biography, the themes in their writing, and their legacy in Western life and thought. In my 2+ weeks on the project I covered the following thinkers: Milton (obvs), Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky, William James, John Dewey, Dante, Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Horace, and Edward Gibbon. In other words, I was paid well to do what I would have gladly done for free. The goal of the project is to have a Great Books elective for our students and hopefully to use the curriculum we develop in other schools as well. Thus far in my life it is the coolest intellectual project I have ever been involved in.
I am excited, which is why I am writing at what is typically my bedtime. It is not often in life that everything seems to align perfectly and you understand why it is that you have traveled the road that you have. I spent most of the past four years wondering what in the world I was doing with my life, and now it appears I have my answer: preparing for this.
We have been living in Colorado for just over a month now, out of suitcases in my parent's house. And it couldn't have been better. The weather, the mountains, our families, our friends. I have climbed mountains and run trails, sat outside on cool July evenings and slept under the stars at 11,000 feet above sea level.
When we first arrived in town I actually got a head start on my teaching experience. My new school had a project starting this summer that my department head thought I would be a good fit for: a Great Books project, or a history of philosophy. We took critical Western thinkers from the past 3,000 years, read their works, and wrote a 4-5 page chronicle of their biography, the themes in their writing, and their legacy in Western life and thought. In my 2+ weeks on the project I covered the following thinkers: Milton (obvs), Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky, William James, John Dewey, Dante, Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Horace, and Edward Gibbon. In other words, I was paid well to do what I would have gladly done for free. The goal of the project is to have a Great Books elective for our students and hopefully to use the curriculum we develop in other schools as well. Thus far in my life it is the coolest intellectual project I have ever been involved in.
I am excited, which is why I am writing at what is typically my bedtime. It is not often in life that everything seems to align perfectly and you understand why it is that you have traveled the road that you have. I spent most of the past four years wondering what in the world I was doing with my life, and now it appears I have my answer: preparing for this.
26 June 2014
Tim Keller on Miracles
The Coffmans have arrived safely in Colorado. We have settled into my parents' house while we look for a home of our own on the south side of Denver, so I am living with my parents for the first time since moving to college in 2002. They will probably let me stay out as late as I want these days, though my mom will probably still call to check on me if I am out past dark.
I have been preoccupied with the logistics of the move and have had little time for reflection or writing. So, I am pawning off someone else's thoughts on you. I am rereading Tim Keller's book The Reason for God and here is what he has to say about miracles:
"The most instructive thing about this text [the stories about Jesus' resurrection] is, however, what it says about the purpose of Biblical miracles. They lead not simply to cognitive belief, but to worship, to awe and wonder. Jesus' miracles in particular were never magic tricks, designed only to impress and coerce. You never see him say something like: 'See that tree over there? Watch me make it burst into flames!' Instead, he used miraculous power to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and raise the dead. Why? We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus' miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming." (99)
I find that beautiful, the distinction between suspension and restoration. One day our Lord will make all things new. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
I have been preoccupied with the logistics of the move and have had little time for reflection or writing. So, I am pawning off someone else's thoughts on you. I am rereading Tim Keller's book The Reason for God and here is what he has to say about miracles:
"The most instructive thing about this text [the stories about Jesus' resurrection] is, however, what it says about the purpose of Biblical miracles. They lead not simply to cognitive belief, but to worship, to awe and wonder. Jesus' miracles in particular were never magic tricks, designed only to impress and coerce. You never see him say something like: 'See that tree over there? Watch me make it burst into flames!' Instead, he used miraculous power to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and raise the dead. Why? We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus' miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming." (99)
I find that beautiful, the distinction between suspension and restoration. One day our Lord will make all things new. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
19 June 2014
On Leaving Kansas for What I Hope Will Be the Final Time
The first time I moved from Kansas to Colorado I was 10 years old. Nearly 11. Ten and three-quarters. I had just finished the fifth grade. I remember wanting to walk home from school that final day, enjoy one last slow amble with Joe Mabon and Brad O'Bryhim and whoever else walked with us whose names I have now forgotten, loping down the middle of the street in a town where that was still safe. But it was raining instead. Brad's mom met us at the school offering us all a ride home. I looked out the window of her minivan as the town flashed by us too quickly, chewing up in seconds what we could have stretched to minutes. And then I was home. Alone. Mom and Ty were still at the elementary school, mom wrapping everything up for the year. Tyler causing trouble, undoubtedly.
I came inside our house and slinked out of my jacket and backpack and lay down on the couch and looked out the window and stared up into the gray sky through the branches of a tree that had yet to bloom in the late spring. My life was ending. A new one would begin. And I had no idea what that meant or what it would look like. I only knew I had loved what I had in that little town in that little school with my little group of friends and that I might never have anything so good again.
When you are 10 years old you have no conception of something like The Rest of Your Life. I remember wishing that we could be living in Kansas again in time for me to go to high school with all of my friends. Play football together. Drive to school. Kiss the girls who would allow it. But I was leaving and those dreams of mine were dying in a way I only half-understood.
Fifteen years later I moved back. Not to that little town. But back to Kansas. Chasing a degree and a half-discerned dream, trying to plant a church. Those were the intentions anyway. Mostly, God gave us two kids and the trial by fire that is a Master's program.
And now I stand on the cusp of leaving again. This time I am not stretched out on the couch, feeling nostalgic in the way only a sensitive pre-adolescent can, but as grateful as I am to be returning to Colorado, as much as it feels like answering a call and bringing my dreams to fruition, I would be remiss not to look out of our bay window at our chicken coop and the rabbit picking its way through our Bermuda grass and not feel something. To watch my son run through the yard, shirt covered in sweat from the humidity, laughing and playing and mowing the yard with me. Every time we leave a place we give up something, even if at the time we cannot discern what that may be. For as much as my life in this place wasn't all that I wanted it to be, it was a great life.
This is where I learned how badly I needed to be a parent. How wonderful contentment in the home can be. How true it is that happiness is largely a choice. Leaving a place you don't like very much (Salina, not Kansas itself) is like going to the funeral of someone you didn't like very much: still sad. And no time to be petty. I have great hope for the future, trusting that this is God's will for our family and his vocation for my life. I am not sad in the slightest to be going to Colorado, only sad to be leaving Kansas. And, I trust that is right.
To the next step, my friends, may it be the last for awhile.
I came inside our house and slinked out of my jacket and backpack and lay down on the couch and looked out the window and stared up into the gray sky through the branches of a tree that had yet to bloom in the late spring. My life was ending. A new one would begin. And I had no idea what that meant or what it would look like. I only knew I had loved what I had in that little town in that little school with my little group of friends and that I might never have anything so good again.
When you are 10 years old you have no conception of something like The Rest of Your Life. I remember wishing that we could be living in Kansas again in time for me to go to high school with all of my friends. Play football together. Drive to school. Kiss the girls who would allow it. But I was leaving and those dreams of mine were dying in a way I only half-understood.
Fifteen years later I moved back. Not to that little town. But back to Kansas. Chasing a degree and a half-discerned dream, trying to plant a church. Those were the intentions anyway. Mostly, God gave us two kids and the trial by fire that is a Master's program.
And now I stand on the cusp of leaving again. This time I am not stretched out on the couch, feeling nostalgic in the way only a sensitive pre-adolescent can, but as grateful as I am to be returning to Colorado, as much as it feels like answering a call and bringing my dreams to fruition, I would be remiss not to look out of our bay window at our chicken coop and the rabbit picking its way through our Bermuda grass and not feel something. To watch my son run through the yard, shirt covered in sweat from the humidity, laughing and playing and mowing the yard with me. Every time we leave a place we give up something, even if at the time we cannot discern what that may be. For as much as my life in this place wasn't all that I wanted it to be, it was a great life.
This is where I learned how badly I needed to be a parent. How wonderful contentment in the home can be. How true it is that happiness is largely a choice. Leaving a place you don't like very much (Salina, not Kansas itself) is like going to the funeral of someone you didn't like very much: still sad. And no time to be petty. I have great hope for the future, trusting that this is God's will for our family and his vocation for my life. I am not sad in the slightest to be going to Colorado, only sad to be leaving Kansas. And, I trust that is right.
To the next step, my friends, may it be the last for awhile.
17 June 2014
Book Review: The Fault in Our Stars
The Fault in Our Stars is blowing up both the bestseller list and the box office these days, as hordes of (mostly) adolescent (mostly) females rush to the cineplex in order to cry their freaking eyes out. I mean, we all know how hard it is to milk pathos out of (spoiler alert) kids dying from cancer. It takes a nimble mind to feel sad about such a thing. The author, John Green, was recently profiled in the New Yorker where he comes off as a dumbed-down Malcolm Gladwell for the millennial crowd (which is a complisult). I watched one of his videos and found it cute and it gives you the impression you just learned something. And he is just so derned earnest about the whole thing, messing up his hair and everything!
Typically this would not be a book I would read. However, seeing as I am going to be teaching some of our nation's youth starting in a couple of months I figured I ought to read the book that is currently most popular among that crowd. And believe me, I began fully intending to hate this book. I have written a cynical review in my head and it is awesome and hilarious. But to tear down a book written for 14 year-old girls is not much of a task, and besides my intent in reading wasn't to point out how silly a good chunk of the book comes off to an adult but to try and understand why such a book would mean so much to a 14 year-old girl.
And I think I get it. Green's book is so successful in the teen crowd because it takes teens and teenage ridiculousness seriously. In an infamous example of teenagey things, the protagonist Hazel (a cancer kid) goes on a lengthy riff to her parents about the injustice of scrambled eggs being relegated to breakfast alone and left out of other meals. I guffawed reading this section, but then of course I'm supposed to. I am an adult. If people in their thirties talked about stuff like that it would be even more stupid than a 16 year-old doing the same (which is still stupid).
But you are supposed to be stupidly earnest and tritely philosophical when you're 16 in the hopes that you're earnestness will one day be matched with intelligence and your philosophizing backed by actual thought. In other words, in the hope that you will grow up. I never said anything quite like the scrambled eggs business when I was 16, but I could imagine thinking something like that. I do remember conversations, multiple, with a friend on the comparative merits of Dr. Pepper versus Mountain Dew, a smackdown for the ages. A few years ago while camping by a lake I was even part of a discussion (sideline to a discussion, more accurately) in which college students were asked to ponder, and I so wish I was kidding, how the difference between a log that had fallen out of the firepit for roasting 'mallows and the logs that remained within the firepit reflected certain spiritual truths about our own spiritual fervor for God. The discussion lasted for several minutes. It was one of the first times in my life I remember feeling old. I just wanted to put the blasted log back in and move on.
Another natural complaint about the book is that no teenager in America talks the way the protagonists, Hazel and Augustus, regularly do in their intellectual banter. The characters are walking thesauruses (thesauri? These whip-smart teens would probably know). This complaint is probably true. But I want to say two things on this matter: first, this book is in a certain degree aspirational. Teens want to sound this intelligent, even when they do not or cannot. Hazel and Augustus, with their high-flown phrases and dictionary vocabulary are merely articulating what teens feel in a way the teens themselves are not yet able. Besides, this complaint seems misplaced and doesn't crop up in criticisms of other types of literature. After all, how many people have ever spoken like a Jane Austen heroine? How often in your life have you given a soliloquy? There is an emotional realism to this book even if it lacks, or seems to lack, linguistic realism.
The second thing to note is that teens confronted with death, as the main characters here are, will grow up and mature differently than teens planning to coast from high school into a six year college degree, drink a ton of alcohol and play video games and move back in with mom and dad. Hazel and Augustus stare death in the face and will view life differently for that experience. People who criticize the hyper-maturity of the characters are chronologically snobbish. For centuries before we invented adolescence 100 years ago real people regularly grew up quickly when forced to do so. They went to college at age 11, served as Prime Minister at the age of 24, wrote sonnets lamenting their lack of accomplishment when they turned 23, etc. Hazel and Augustus's disease plucked them out of the normal tenor of adolescent life and they matured quicker than their peers. That makes psychological sense.
I hesitate to even call this post a book review, because I am not really reviewing the book. It was not written for me. As a book it was fine. Two and a half stars, if you must know. I have spent five hours more foolishly in my past. But it is not something I will reread and I will not be joining the throngs at the theater to sob over the death of the young, heart-rending though it is.
But again that is not the point with a book like this. For me it has helped remind me of the sublime awfulness of being a teenager. And hopefully it has given me a window into the world of the students I will be teaching in the near future. And, more importantly, a greater degree of compassion for their plight. You will get through it teenagers. It gets better. And you don't have to die to figure that out.
Typically this would not be a book I would read. However, seeing as I am going to be teaching some of our nation's youth starting in a couple of months I figured I ought to read the book that is currently most popular among that crowd. And believe me, I began fully intending to hate this book. I have written a cynical review in my head and it is awesome and hilarious. But to tear down a book written for 14 year-old girls is not much of a task, and besides my intent in reading wasn't to point out how silly a good chunk of the book comes off to an adult but to try and understand why such a book would mean so much to a 14 year-old girl.
And I think I get it. Green's book is so successful in the teen crowd because it takes teens and teenage ridiculousness seriously. In an infamous example of teenagey things, the protagonist Hazel (a cancer kid) goes on a lengthy riff to her parents about the injustice of scrambled eggs being relegated to breakfast alone and left out of other meals. I guffawed reading this section, but then of course I'm supposed to. I am an adult. If people in their thirties talked about stuff like that it would be even more stupid than a 16 year-old doing the same (which is still stupid).
But you are supposed to be stupidly earnest and tritely philosophical when you're 16 in the hopes that you're earnestness will one day be matched with intelligence and your philosophizing backed by actual thought. In other words, in the hope that you will grow up. I never said anything quite like the scrambled eggs business when I was 16, but I could imagine thinking something like that. I do remember conversations, multiple, with a friend on the comparative merits of Dr. Pepper versus Mountain Dew, a smackdown for the ages. A few years ago while camping by a lake I was even part of a discussion (sideline to a discussion, more accurately) in which college students were asked to ponder, and I so wish I was kidding, how the difference between a log that had fallen out of the firepit for roasting 'mallows and the logs that remained within the firepit reflected certain spiritual truths about our own spiritual fervor for God. The discussion lasted for several minutes. It was one of the first times in my life I remember feeling old. I just wanted to put the blasted log back in and move on.
Another natural complaint about the book is that no teenager in America talks the way the protagonists, Hazel and Augustus, regularly do in their intellectual banter. The characters are walking thesauruses (thesauri? These whip-smart teens would probably know). This complaint is probably true. But I want to say two things on this matter: first, this book is in a certain degree aspirational. Teens want to sound this intelligent, even when they do not or cannot. Hazel and Augustus, with their high-flown phrases and dictionary vocabulary are merely articulating what teens feel in a way the teens themselves are not yet able. Besides, this complaint seems misplaced and doesn't crop up in criticisms of other types of literature. After all, how many people have ever spoken like a Jane Austen heroine? How often in your life have you given a soliloquy? There is an emotional realism to this book even if it lacks, or seems to lack, linguistic realism.
The second thing to note is that teens confronted with death, as the main characters here are, will grow up and mature differently than teens planning to coast from high school into a six year college degree, drink a ton of alcohol and play video games and move back in with mom and dad. Hazel and Augustus stare death in the face and will view life differently for that experience. People who criticize the hyper-maturity of the characters are chronologically snobbish. For centuries before we invented adolescence 100 years ago real people regularly grew up quickly when forced to do so. They went to college at age 11, served as Prime Minister at the age of 24, wrote sonnets lamenting their lack of accomplishment when they turned 23, etc. Hazel and Augustus's disease plucked them out of the normal tenor of adolescent life and they matured quicker than their peers. That makes psychological sense.
I hesitate to even call this post a book review, because I am not really reviewing the book. It was not written for me. As a book it was fine. Two and a half stars, if you must know. I have spent five hours more foolishly in my past. But it is not something I will reread and I will not be joining the throngs at the theater to sob over the death of the young, heart-rending though it is.
But again that is not the point with a book like this. For me it has helped remind me of the sublime awfulness of being a teenager. And hopefully it has given me a window into the world of the students I will be teaching in the near future. And, more importantly, a greater degree of compassion for their plight. You will get through it teenagers. It gets better. And you don't have to die to figure that out.
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