Blog on the Lillypad
Saturday, July 24, 2004
 | Cody
Cody is one of five cats that live with my yoga teacher. He weighs in at 24 pounds, and he is the only one of the five cats who likes to stay for yoga class. Our Thursday sessions meet in the teacher's home, in a bare room in the front of the house, with a hard wood floor. There's a carpeted alcove in the back where the mats and blankets are kept in a tall cupboard, and the alcove is also furnished with a desk and a cat stand. After lying on the floor among the sweating, straining, gasping students, Cody will make his way back to the cat stand, leap lightly to the top, and curl up for a good snooze. |
Cody is also blind. You don't notice this at first because he swivels his face towards you as soon as he hears or smells you. And he navigates around the house and even around the yoga students and their equipment just fine. His magnificent nose is his guide, and he is so adept that even as he approaches a rolled up yoga mat that has been stood up on end and leaned against the wall, he gives merely a brief pause and then navigates around it.
If you speak to Cody, he perks his ears forward and appears to look up at you with eyes whose pupils never vary from their fixed width. That's the first clue that he is blind. Those pupils, usually so variable in a cat, stay at about 75% dilated and never alter.
One night as the teacher swept a long handled dust catcher back and forth, the swishing noise got Cody's attention. Face intent, ears forward, he lowered himself to the ground and his head moved back and forth after the sound, his nose pointed at it, chin low for stealth. I was about to insist that surely he was seeing the dust catcher, at least dimly, because his head was darting one way and then the other in perfect time to the sweeps. But then I saw that even though his head darted the other way to follow it, there was a moment when his sightless eyes were fixed on nothing. He could not see it.
I'm so allergic to cats that I cannot pet Cody. I speak to him very kindly, and I can see that he doesn't understand why I don't pet him, especially when he arches up so invitingly with his head. But the others will give him a good petting for me. He greets us all and then drapes himself graciously at the head of the class or against one of the wall. Soon enough, as we strain and stretch and breathe, he dozes off for a nice nap before he transfers himself to the cat stand in back.
 | The IT guys and the Dolphin pose
On Friday I explained the Dolphin post to the IT guys. I told them that I am still on the first level of the post, just working on lowering to a resting position on my forearms and then lifting straight up on my hands again. Harris and Jeremy were both immediately intrigued by my description of the posture. At first Harris was unsure about trying it right in the cubicle. For being a guy with a tongue stud, he's pretty conservative about some things. But Jeremy really wanted to. |
Jeremy is tall and thin, a former high school athlete and avid bicycler. Right in the cube, he managed to go down and lift up, but his arms flared out at the elbows as he had to rely on shoulders more than triceps to help him in the sticking points. Then Harris tried and I was amazed. He lowered from a hands down position to forearms and then lifted again almost with no effort, but he added that it works the triceps really well.
It's nice to have at least some common ground with these guys; Jeremy and Harris are keen on weights and fitness and exercise. If you put any strength challenge in front of them, office environment or not, it's a pretty sure thing they will try it. Ah! Youth!
 | The Last Year of the War by Shirley Nelson is far more a character study than anything else. Yet it holds reader interest and follows a plot. Fundamentalists and former Fundamentalists will recognize "types" that we have encountered at Bible school. Nelson's accuracy in depicting the thinly disguised Moody Bible Institute (rendered Calvary Bible Institute) indicates either a lot of research or first hand experience. |
Set in 1942, the story follows the first semester of Jo Fuller, recently saved from an agnostic family, whose older brother Loring has been declared Missing in Action in the war in Europe. It details the gentle, grieved oppositon of her family to her newfound belief and her increasing sense of guilt over her brother's disastrous decision to enlist in the Air Force. It's also a sort of travelogue of the old Moody Bible Institute campus and Chicago in 1942.
Jo lives in her mind a great deal: lonely, dreamy, reserved, shy, sorrowful, curious, and intelligent. The quick, glib Christianity that exists side by side with a deep, more honest Christianity at the Bible Institute confuses and misleads her. Nelson's depiction of the subtle manipulation, intrusions, and well-meaning judgements of others that occur on any Christian college campus will be quite familiar to graduates of any school from BJU to HAC to Pensacola.
The book has its good guy, Doctor Peckham, whose brief sermon on the victorious Christian life is the apex of the Christian teaching of the book. Here is an excerpt:
We want to be like Christ,....free from the tyranny of self,
flesh crucified, all in our places, with sunshiny faces....
[But] to be a Christian ... may mean to live on the edge...
shocked and dismayed at our own weaknesses, failure, and
evil....Only God can keep us safe on that wild frontier....
[So] how will I know?... How can I tell when I'm filled with
the Holy Spirit? I don't think we will know. I don't think
we'll even ask, or give it much thought. We won't say, "I've
got it!" or ...."At last I am godly!" That will never occur
to us. [197-198]
Doctor Peckham's point that victory may not mean deliverance, and that success itself in the spiritual life will keep a person too concerned for others to reflect on his own powerful stature, is lost on most of the student body. As young people usually do, they run after easy answers, clear decisions, and instant victories. The fact that their glib self-assurances keep blowing up in their faces does not deter them, and it does unmake one or two of them.
This isn't a book that dismisses Christianity outright. It does show that the thoughtless reassurances and catch phrases that abound on Christian college campuses are just that: thoughtless reassurances and catch phrases. And the veneer of positive thinking and constant smiles can drown out the realities of the genuine struggle of the Christian life.
For the outwardly reserved but inwardly hungry and needy Jo, there is not enough of the type of humble, honest, transparent and well-studied Christianity of Dr. Peckham, and entirely too much of the catch phrases and meaningless assurances that the dorm girls around her spout all the time.
This story is also an analysis of the decline of those who cannot keep up with the high energy demands of the Calvary Bible Institute culture. Far more than being a story of finding faith or losing faith, this is a story of psychological development and decline. It's about the ways that people cope: with grief, with loneliness, with shame, with fear. And it's about those who cannot cope.
The book doesn't really address who is right or who is wrong in matters of faith. It does show that some people who become agnostics do so simply because some Christian at some point really harmed them. But it also shows that some people who "surrender to Christ" may do so because somebody at some point really manipulated them and played on their emotions. The book also shows that some Christians are quite sincere and genuinely loving. And it shows that some agnostics are too.
As for WHO should (or should not) read this book. It includes some upsetting (but realistic) scenes from Chicago and a distressing series of mental images from the main character as she teeters towards a breakdown. I wouldn't hand this book to a teenager. It would be a great book for a Christian reading club to discuss. It really does belong on campuses like BJU and Moody, so that people can address the problems inherent in the cultures of those places. And if I ever walk into a pub and find some FFF'ers inside, I do hope that each of us has a copy of this book tucked under an arm. But even though it is a pretty fast read, it's a sad read.
Friday, July 23, 2004
| A difficult session with new lessons
Everybody has "on" nights and "off" nights, and last night was definitely an "off" night for me, perhaps because of the dental work the day before. I had a headache; then I had a stomach ache, and I felt exhausted in the heat of the class. Our yoga classes are conducted in rooms that reach 90 degrees. Wisely, our instructor recognizes that staying chilled while stretching to that extent creates a greater risk of injuries to muscles and tendons. (My first Taekwon do master shared this philosophy.) But last night the heat made me dizzy and light headed. |
I just focused on the present moment and did my best. I think she could see that I was in some distress. I struggled a lot in the second hour of the class. As the others practiced their headstands, I went against the wall in my usual stretch and got my breath back.
 | After I had recovered, the teacher began working with me on bending over backwards---a posture that will take a long time for me to do, perhaps years. And then she started me on my way to the Dolphin pose, which is like a head stand, but you do it on your forearms. You start to learn the pose by taking the downward facing posture and then going slowly onto your forearms. The difficult part is to then lift off of the forearms and rest only on the hands in the downward posture. I tried this a couple times.
Ultimately, the Dolphin pose has the person upside down on his or her forearms, with an arched back, the head lifted. It is prepatory to the headstand, which rests on head and forearms. The headstand is prepatory to the handstand, in which the hands alone support the entire body. We have one or two students who can do the handstand. |
Thursday, July 22, 2004
 | A Separate Peace by John Knowles
One of my colleagues at work remarked that her son has to read this book for honors English in the Orange County school system. Prompted by guilt over never having read it, I decided I ought to get a copy and see what I have been missing. Her son has complained that the book is dull, and I was ready to bypass such a comment as being entirely typical of a teenagte boy. Well, I stand corrected. A Separate Peace *is* really boring. It has a point, and several qualities commend it. But the fact is, quick pacing and engaging narrative are not Knowles' strong points. |
Some novels begin with memorablel first lines: "Call Me Ishmael"; "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents"; "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times". But A Separate Peace isn't one of those novels. Indeed, the very worst chapter of the book is the first chapter. Get through that monolith of tedious description about a place you care nothing about, and things can only improve.
And they do improve. The primary saving grace of the book is the character Phineas. Its other saving grace is the commentary it offers on how we cope with tragedies, impending fears, and even our own personal responsibilities. And in terms of its constant selection as a classic for high school kids, A Separate Peace offers a strong theme of Redemption with echoes from the Scripture. Take a look at the clothing switches that go on in the book, and how each character begins to assume the roles or virtues of the character whose clothing he wears. This idea of putting on the righteousness of another, or putting off the old nature, or putting on a form of glory (as old as the story of Jonathon and David from the Old Testament) ties in strongly with redemption. At one level, Phineas is certainly a Christ-figure in the story. At another, he is a victim of his own efforts to live life so strictly on his own terms that he literally collapses before harsh reality. A good English teacher can do a lot with such simple and universal themes.
Regrettably (and I do feel for those high school kids who drag themselves through this), the book relies upon reference points that no longer exist. It's set in a prep school, where a certain culture lingers. But on modern readers, the horror of wearing the school tie as a belt will be lost; having tea with the masters will fail to convey the impending doom should any character make a false step.
No character in the story is wiley or clever or able to outwit circumstances. Even Phineas is far more creative and imaginative than outright heroic. His low-key approach to dismissing his own honors is not offset by higher aspirations. Phineas never does overcome the harsh realities of life.
And no character in the story is well drawn. The narrative emphasizes Phineas' grace and energy to the point that Knowles commits the crime of overwriting: the more he describes it, the less vivid and convincing it becomes. Leper is probably the most believable, but even his fall occurs without preface, preparation, or explanation. The trial scene that occurs among the boys appears from no where. Why the initiator of this final fiasco would even bother to put the two boys on trial is never explained. How he is able to corral a small mob to conmvey Phineas and Gene to the setting of the trial also remains a mystery.
Knowles was a Yale man. He wrote as a Yale man from another era. In his day, when a Yale man penned a book, people took the time to read it. Ivy League graduates had something to say. And there is a pontificating quality to A Separate Peace that cinches it as a dated book of another era. The descriptive passages fail to seize reader imagination; rather, they are simply layer after layer of description: adjectives piled onto each other in stacks of sentences.
Knowles is telling a story that has something to say, but he is a part of that "Separate Peace" that he describes. His book fails to be competitive and relies upon a certain outworn expectation that we will grasp the world in which he grew up. Yet, not knowing the typical American reader, Knowles fails to engage us, fails to reach over the walls of that ivy league school.
For readers willing to climb over the wall and work through this story, a solid introduction to theme in a novel rewards them. There are probably teenage readers who will experience an awakening of literary analysis skills as they read it and have a great experience with it. Knowles sets out ideas that young minds can grapple with and consider. But I think, overall, the book brings a self consciousness and pomposity of authorial presence that will keep it at arm's length for many, if not most, readers.
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
 | Natural anti-inflammatory
I went through the second phase of my three-phase, root-canal-get-a-crown procedure. I had the root canal a month ago and today was fitted for the crown and am sporting a plastic temporary that I will keep for a month until the porcelein crown is ready. Because of difficulties with the tooth, the dentist almost had to opt for an oral surgeon, but she managed to by-pass this more expensive alternative with a lot of gouging and digging into my gum. She warned me that my gum has taken quite a beating and will be sore for a week. When a dentist tells you it's going to hurt, you know it's going to hurt! |
"It's going to hurt for about a week," she warned me. "Advil or Aleve will help. Whatever you take, make sure it's an anti-inflammatory. An ordinary pain killer won't do it."
I also knew a tea bag would help, but I wasn't sure how much it would help, as the gum really hurt while I was still in her office. However, I had a small box of Lipton tea bags in the car, put there in readiness for today's procedure. As soon as I got behind the wheel I pulled out a tea bag and blocked it against the painful gum and tooth. I held it in my mouth as I drove. Within minutes it became a suitably mushy poultice.
By the time I reached the office, the soreness was much decreased.
Almost 20 years ago, an elderly dentist told me to rely on an orange pekoe cut tea bag as a poultice after any dental work. The tannins in the tea are antiseptic, and the tea is also anti-inflammatory. I used it after getting my wisdom teeth out and nicely avoided dry socket. (But after a tooth extraction, it's essential to never suck onthe tea bag or let a vacuum build under it. You don't want to rip open the wound.)
So far today I have gone through three Lipton tea bags but have not yet needed an Advil or Motrin. I'll keep up the tea bag terapy as long as possible to try to reduce the inflammation without drugs. And the antiseptic nature of tea is a great protection against infections that can occur after dental work.
A wet tea bag is also an age-old remedy for stings or insect bites, even infected patches of sunburn, or any open wound if medical first aid is not handy. Experienced backpackers keep a handful of tea bags in air tight readiness for treating mild burns, poison ivy, poison oak, mosquito bites, etc. Old timers used a strong brew of tea, cooled, to poor over bandaged wounds if there were no doctors available. I always use tea bags after dental work. They are an inexpensive and effective remedy to get a quicker recovery from post-dental soreness and some insurance against infections.
 | Eight Hours Straight of MicroSoft Access
I was told a couple months ago at my new job that I had been picked to become the Access Guru. I was handed a huge book on how to use Access and a trouble ticket for something that needed to be fixed in one of our databases, and that was the beginning of my career. However, my main role is to write documentation. I spend most of my time creating "Requirements" documents for software applications. But intermittently I am pulled back to the Access work. The result of this is that I learn a lot of details about our databases and how to use Access, and then I forget it all as I am called back to writing documents for weeks at a time. So then I learn it all over again when I have to attend to trouble tickets. |
Harris, the 26 year old head of our IS department, alternates between being patient and impatient with me, but usually he manages to at least appear patient. All of this database detail work comes naturally to him, but he's busy creating applications to revolutionize clinical research management (and besides he hates Access). So he wants me to learn it and do it.
However, with several projects piled up on us over the last six weeks, Harris kept telling me to just store the trouble tickets and we'd get to them when we got everything else sorted out. I knew, in terms of Access and me, that this plan would have consequences, as once again I forgot most of my accrued Access lore while spending six weeks documenting the amazing "Smart Pen". This device, unlike me, remembers eveything it writes and can download exact reproductions of all that it has written.
So yesterday, Harris called in the new IS guys, Jeremy and Max, and handed them several of the trouble tickets. But I still got six of my own to work on. Meanwhile, Mark, who is expert in Access but also expert in VB, had to stay at his computer doing VB stuff while we took care of Access issues.
For the easy problems I would run into Harris's cube (which he shares with the other three IS guys. They have a huge cube that includes a mini-refrigerator and a sofa. Yes, a sofa in a cube.) and ask him to run a script to get the Access front piece to be updated through Oracle. Or I would ask him to check my work.
But for the big problems, I was in there every five minutes. Harris took it pretty well. He told me he was prepared to just help us all day long as we figured out the variety of ways to keep users up and running. Sometimes the users themselves get too smart for their own good and really mangle a report or form. And sometimes they need additional functionality that we have to create.
As Harris was in my cube trying to figure out one of the glitches I was seeing, he laughed at something I said, and I saw the telltale glint of metal in his mouth.
"Harris! Is that a tongue stud?" I was stunned.
He quickly closed his mouth and looked off to the side. "Yes," he said at last.
"You have a tongue stud?"
He nodded. I had my hand clapped over my own mouth. After a horrifed moment I asked, "Doesn't it hurt?"
He calmed down. "Uh-uh."
"It doesn't hurt when you chew?"
"No."
"What if you eat crunchy stuff. Does it hurt then?"
"No, I've had it for eight years."
"Did it hurt when you got it?"
"Not as much as you'd think."
This sidelined us into a discussion of how one gets a tongue stud, the mechanics of installing it. But Harris was more cagey on why he got it. I'm still adjusting to working with such young people who have such different mores from my own. Believe me, Harris, Jeremy, Max, and Mark are great teachers.
However, after this amazing diversion into the facts of almost-painless body piercing, it was back to Access. By days end, I was on my last trouble ticket, which Harris said he would finish for me, as it was time for me to leave. My mind is full of Access details again, ready for more work. But now that all the tickets are signed off, it's back to writing, and another six weeks of slowly losing all that knowledge as the experience oozes out again.
Monday, July 19, 2004
 | SECRET RADIO updated
I updated the existing SECRET RADIO v2.0 blog and archive over the weekend, adding more references to the "soul winning" culture that is/was so typical to the IFBx colleges. I'm sorry that updates, corrections, and changes are coming in both large and small increments, but that is the way a manuscript is revised. This week will see entries with minor updates from the previous version, but next week, Lord willing, readers of the first version of SECRET RADIO will see two new episodes with new characters introduced. |
Incidentally, I plan to update the SECRET RADIO v2 archive each Saturday, so if reading the entries one day at a time is driving you crazy, you ought to be able to read five new episodes at once each Saturday in the archive.
Sunday, July 18, 2004
 | Sinclair Lewis and Elmer Gantry
Until yesterday's news of The Last Year of the War by Shirley Nelson, the only novel that I knew of that addresses Fundamentalism is Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry. I started reading it about two weeks ago, as I was able to get to it. I just finished it. |
It's been twenty years since grad school, but I equate Sinclair Lewis' style with American Realism and American Naturalism. His characters operate according to drives and needs rather than by strength of will or sense of purpose. Writers of those two genres (and they overlap) depicted men whose motives and perspectives rest on sex, liquor, and luxury or status. So it gets depressing to read these writers, as even the alleged good guys in the story are good guys because they are smart enough to bring their drives and wit together, rather than because there is any transcendent quality to them.
Nevertheless, American Realism and Naturalism define early twentieth century American Lit and show the effects of early Darwinism on literature. Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, Jack London, even Mark Twain wrote in this genre, though they pre-dated Lewis by a decade or two. Their stories tended to be photographically accurate in details of setting, peopled with characters whose minds operate on a level one notch above the reasoning of very smart dogs. Indeed, in some stories, (Norris's The Octopus and London's "To Build a Fire" come to mind), the setting itself takes on the role of a powerful adversarial character.
The novel can be divided into three sections:
1. The Baptist Fundamentalism era of Gantry's life (college and first church)
2. The traveling salvation shows
3. The Methodist morality crusades (including his marriage)
In all three sections, the character of Gantry is a man hungry for what he wants. In true American Naturalist form, his senses are sharp. Colors, fabrics, textures, and the type of women around him profoundly affect his moods and aspirations. Previous writers of this genre did not depict religious men; naturalist characters usually have no more religion than a very good sled dog. But Sinclair Lewis adds a twist to this type of story by showing the lustful, restless, and hungry Gantry trying to fit his huge and powerful frame into a religion, without giving up his pleasures.
What Sinclair Lewis brings to the table is a relentless documentary style of writing. Elmer Gantry, documents some very real abuses in the Fundamentalist movement of that era, but the novel is not all that readable to modern eyes. Its powerful cynicism could easily injure new or inexperienced believers, but it is not much of a threat to the faith of vulnerable readers today, simply because the book is so detail-dense and difficult for the casual reader to enter. Getting through it is like pushing yourself through a brick wall of miniscule facts.
And Sinclair Lewis, though no longer credited as a major literary figure in this country, remains the sovereign ruler of getting the facts right. He did indeed live among church men for several months to gather data, and his knowledge of the sub strata of groups within groups in the Religious Right of his day rivals that of any church history teacher I have ever read or heard. He visited the saloons and brothels after large tent meetings and learned for himself the habits of corrupt preachers when he saw them enjoying themselves. He met with religious leaders in their own comfortable closed-door meetings and listened to them as some proclaimed their faith and others rationalized it away.
The real problem of accuracy in Elmer Gantry is that Lewis writes from a premise that there is no God at all. So Gantry and his corrupt preacher cohorts are presented as men of too much virility to be able to endure the morality of the Bible or Baptist moral code. They preach on Sunday and seduce women, drink whiskey and rye, play cards, and smoke cigars every other day of the week. They lie and they steal, ruin lives of the gullible, and betray each other. Lewis portrays the sincere pastors as men of weak constitutions and unsteady nerves. In his perspective, they can live moral lives simply because they lack the physical drives of superior physical specimens and have no courage to seize what they really want.
But under his pen, all the men (except one) of the story yearn for more physical gratification: more sex (and with women more exotic than the ones they have), more intoxicants in larger and larger quantities, and more luxury and status. Sinclair Lewis suffered from all these sharp desires all his life. He was ruined by womanizing and alcoholism, so if you understand him, you see that he was truly writing about religious experience only as far as he could understand it. He did investigate real religious corruption and documented it, but when confronted with sincere faith, he had to find a rationale to explain it away.
He excludes one remarkable character from his dismissal of faith. Otherwise, the story depicts all Christians as hypocrites with a dreadful secret atheism beneath their protests of having faith. The one exception is a Methodist minister---Andrew Pengilly---who is what we would call a follower of the "Deeper Life." Lewis spares Pengilly from the pen of cynicism. I think this character may be based on Andrew Murry or one of Murry's American followers. Alone of all the characters, it is Pengilly who sees right through Gantry's false profession. After listening to Elmer ramble on about the benefits of true religion, Pengilly asks the younger man with some alarm and concern why it is that Elmer does not believe in God at all.
Any IFB person reading this story will see scenes all too familiar to us. And the depiction of Gantry's first rise in the estimation of his fellows is a genuine, honest depiction of a rushed salvation decision and the ramifications of easy-believism. The first quarter of the book was worth reading, to me. The Fundamentalists in the story focus on exterior signs of being right with God, and they rush people to make decisions and walk the aisle under waves of guilt and emotion. Bible reading is a heavy task that men must undertake in order to be preachers.
But Lewis appears ignorant of the emphasis that some Fundamentalism/Evangelicalism places upon a secret devotional life, a seeking of the Lord's presence in the humble labor of the day. When Lewis writes about the Deeper Life character, he is at his most respectful and yet his most distant. It looks like he documented what such a character said and did (and how astonishingly like Christ he is), yet Lewis never addresses the spiritual power that has made the man able to be so unfailingly kind and generous to others. What Lewis has entirely missed among those who profess Christ is that secret devotional life by which we learn to depend upon God through Christ. I really think he honestly missed it. Having hob-knobbed with the fallen and corrupt preachers of his day, he still documented at least one outstandingly good Christian man who wanted neither fornication, nor money, nor status, nor power. The man goes out of his way to befriend the town atheist and lives at peace with all his neighbors. Lewis apparently admires Pengilly but never perceives why such a man stays true to Christ when others fall away.
Within two or three pages this character passes from the book and returns briefly in a reprise towards the end. The cynical pen of Lewis halts and pays a brief homage to him, chronicling his daily habits, his clothing, his method of speaking, and his genuine goodness, then moves on with the story.
The final quarter of the book is the weakest section to the mainstream reader, as the story becomes predictable. Yet Fundamentalist readers would be astonished at the similarities of Elmer the Crusader to Jack Hyles. Some of the scenes were positively striking, though the typical (secular) reader would not see such starkly identical words, habits, excuses, and stratagems to IFBx church leadership today.
If Sinclair Lewis were alive today and went to Hyles-Anderson College or any of its clones, he would continue to miss the crucial importance of the secret devotional life to the Christian, our dependence on God, the everlasting saving presence of Christ in us, givign us access to God by His Blood. Instead, he would see the IFBx emphasis on numbers, on soul winning, on proper dress, on submissive women, the corruption, the hypocrisy, and he would likely pen the exact same book. In much of Fundamentalism today, young people are hammered and hammered to read the Bible and pray as their duty, and yet the example of true fellowship with God from the leadership is missing. Gantry's appalling ignorance of Scripture and lack of comprehension of a devotional life would be pretty well duplicated in Jack Schaap or Bob Gray or the late Jack Hyles.
So maybe Sinclair Lewis got it right about Fundamentalism after all....
