My new favorite books!

Two thousand thirteen has already given me three beautiful and mind-expanding books about life with God. These three books examine widely divergent topics but share one huge similarity: they all cite tons of Scripture to back up their points and newly illuminate it with their ideas. I highly recommend for every Christian:

1. Men and Women in the Church by Sarah Sumner, which I borrowed from my well-read parents. Main points: Most Christians of both sexes need to repent of sexism, and the Bible affirms women's value and capacity to teach, preach, prophesy and lead.
2. Miracle Work by Jordan Seng. I think O. likes this one even more than I do. The main premise: Just like other forms of ministry like preaching and sharing the gospel, supernatural ministries like prophecy, healing and deliverance ministries require effort and preparation. God empowers us to do "miracle work." Also, God works to ensure that his power always flows in ways that also demonstrate his love and compassion.
3. Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth Bailey. O. bought this book at Urbana 2009 (but hasn't read any of it) and it caught my eye on our bookshelf last week. Honestly it's been a page-turner for me! I have never learned so much about the Bible from one book before. It's very exciting!! All I can say to summarize is that the Gospels really come alive with color and meaning when the cultural context is illuminated.

What I love most about these books is their explanatory power. Reading any of these books unveils the reason for and the implications of seemingly irrelevant or inexplicable events and details in Scripture. Miracle Work and Men and Women especially provide frameworks for a new kind of understanding--alternative paradigms, if you will. Another shared characteristic is the brilliant combination of personal testimony with exploration of Biblical principles and texts.

But enough from me! Go read one of these brilliant books. You'll be glad you did.

P.S. One last note: All three books also share the theme of sacrifice. Sumner highlights the pairing of sacrifice with submission in Ephesians 5:22-33. Seng states that "Sacrifice is the currency of love" in his discussion of consecration (one of the factors through which God empowers us to do miracle work). Bailey speaks of Christ's "costly demonstration of love" to the sinful woman in the house of Simon, for example, and ultimately on the cross.

New Year's Resolution (2)

In the first six months of 2013, before we begin another cross-country journey and move (this time together), I want to finish reading certain books. It will be like a semester of pre-grad-school--only more like high school, because the subject matter is not well-focused well-rounded.

Here are the books, all of which I started reading at least six months ago:

1. Gesture and Thought by David McNeil -- has the most interesting ideas
2. Adger's Core Syntax -- this will be the hardest read by far; it's so technical that I only made it 5 or 10 pages in during my junior year after my introductory syntax class made me think I loved syntax.
3. The Barbarian Invasion -- This book I bought on impulse after Tim Keller said in a sermon that it was a great read. I never liked history class but I'm enjoying this book, although I'm sure I'll like it better if I read it more consistently so that I don't forget all the names between readings.
4. Old Testament Theology -- got this book exactly three years ago, started reading it this summer but haven't gotten out of the introduction. Non-fiction takes so much discipline for me to read.
5. Teach Yourself Turkish -- now that O. is home all the time, I think I can make good progress on this one!

I'll put links in another time, right now I need to power through five more blog posts to meet last year's resolution ;)

Two books

Late last night, I finished reading The End of Sexual Identity, a slim volume by cultural anthropologist Jennell Williams Paris which taught me the history of the concepts homosexual and heterosexual, and argued that the concepts in themselves are deeply problematic. We have made sexual desire into a primary identity marker, thereby consigning ourselves and each other to categories based on feelings. Paris suggests that we leave behind the categories of heterosexual/homosexual and ground ourselves more deeply in the identity of being beloved (of God).
Today, I started reading Ursula K. LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness, the account of a alien male ambassador on a planet where all the humans are androgynous hermaphrodites five-sixths of the time, only becoming male or female during estrus for reproductive purposes. Here there are no homosexuals or heterosexuals or even men and women, because sexuality does not enter into identity at all. It is strictly compartmentalized into the brief period of kemmer (estrus), rather than influencing every aspect of life and social interactions as it does for us.

Quite the juxtaposition. Paris speaks of settling into being a woman or being a man, regardless of particular desires. LeGuin describes the what-if of not having a man/woman distinction in the first place. The ideas are strikingly similar in some ways but at the same time deeply opposed to each other.

Remember, remember [an eclectic post]

I write this with a lap snuggled full of rabbit and a belly laden with pumpkin gnocchi. I made the gnocchi from scratch following this genius recipe and they were delicious! and easy to make though a bit time-consuming.

The rabbit is here because he was chewing on the filing cabinet.

O. separated the egg for the gnocchi for me, and then decided to make meringues with the whites. They are still in the oven because they are supposed to bake for three hours.

We were planning to re-watch "V for Vendetta" tonight (it is the fifth), but it has been postponed due to pumpkin deliciousness.

We were remembering, over dinner, where we were a year ago: living in a small, moldy apartment--misunderstanding each other all the time--just getting over a brief pregnancy scare--my sinuses chronically infected. We still have a long way to go, marriage-wise, but we have learned so much in a year. Thank God.

O. washed the dishes while I was cooking dinner, without being asked. That, more than anything, feels like a sign of change to me.

I am reading Anatomy of the Soul, wherein the Christian neuroscientist author discusses remembering at length. I had one of those "aha!" moments, reading the chapter "Remembering the Future," because he cited Psalms and discussed the moral dimensions of remembering--which is something I've been thinking about for a while. I even blogged about it (posts months in the tweaking). And then he goes beyond everything I had thought about and talks about the neurological consequences for remembering, and it's awesome. I will write about it sometime soon.

Book reflection: From Bondage to Bonding

Nancy Groom's book From Bondage to Bonding is summarized succinctly by its subtitle: Escaping Codependency, Embracing Biblical Love. (I've got the 1991 edition. It's from NavPress.)

Readability: Small margins and print, intensely sad anecdotes, and a lack of dialog mark this book as the product of the previous century (or should I say "millennium"?), and put it in contrast to How We Love. This book takes some serious contemplation. Every chapter does come with a summary and a diagram at the end, but you won't find easy-to-read bullet points in this book.

Ease of absorption: The hardest part of reading this book is thinking through how/whether the material applies to your own life. The tone of How We Love is very sympathetic, non-judgmental. Bondage, in contrast, does not hesitate to mark a behavior or attitude as sinful. Groom does discuss how codependency develops (Part 2), with a compassionate perspective as a recovering codependent and the child of an alcoholic herself, but she is very clear about placing the responsibility to change on the shoulders of the codependent (through the power and love of God, Part 3). Codependence is a disorder or addiction, not a "normal" or healthy condition, and so the decision to accept or reject the label of codependent is a much weightier one than identifying which insecure "love style" is yours, as in How We Love.

Key concept: Groom offers a (frightening and intense) definition of codependency on p. 21: "Codependency is a self-focused way of life in which

• a person blind to his or her true self 
• continually reacts to others 
• being controlled by and seeking to control their behavior, attitudes, and/or opinions, 
• resulting in spiritual sterility, loss of authenticity, and absence of intimacy."

(Bullet points mine, inserted to compensate for the minimal punctuation in the original.)

Groom does mention that "you can be just a little bit codependent," and our counselor D. prefers to think of codependency not as a bin but as a smooth continuum. "Everyone's a little bit codependent," D. says. I think this is a misleading way to put it, because codependent is a real and weighty label. What I'd say instead is that everyone has imperfect relationships and imperfect self-knowledge, and everyone uses certain strategies to protect themselves in the midst of their broken relationships. Those strategies, taken to an unusual extreme, render a person codependent--and so everyone follows the strategies of the codependent "a little."

Organization & Overview:
The first chapter explains how the definition of "codependent" evolved. "Codependent" originally described the spouse of an alcoholic, or the co-alcoholic, whose patterns enabled and reinforced the alcoholic's dependence on alcohol. Later, codependence was recognized as an addiction in its own right--an addiction to approval.

The other chapters of Part 1 unfold the various characteristics or manifestations of codependence:

• self-forfeiture,
• self-contempt,
• self-aggrandizement,
• self-sufficiency, and 
• self-deception. 

Each is illustrated with a character in the Bible who sinned in that way, and each concludes with an explanation of why Jesus' behavior as recounted in the gospels differs from the codependent pattern.

Part 2 consists of some chapters exploring how a person becomes codependent: A child's natural Fervent Longings for relationship are not met by parents, so the child suffers Painful Losses and goes on to develop Self-Protective Pretenses. In attempting to reverse the bondage of addiction to the approval of others, a codependent may turn to Autonomy, which Groom summarizes as a "refusal to trust or need," but autonomy does not actually offer freedom from bondage but only deepens the codependent's disconnection from true relationship.

In Part 3, Groom outlines the path a codependent must take to move "from bondage to bonding." These include grieving, accepting grace, and surrendering to God. She then goes on to describe what real bonding looks like, in Part 4. I haven't read Part 4 yet; I'm still in the last chapter of Part 3 ("The Freedom of Surrender").

My relationship with the book thus far, briefly: I'm a bit embarrassed not to have finished reading this book yet, since I started it over a month ago, and it's a slim volume (200 pp). I stalled after coming back from Turkey and found myself surrounded again by more pleasant books! Then we had a murky discussion about codependency with the counselor, in which I found myself totally overwhelmed and left with a number of misunderstandings of what she'd been trying to say. So I gave myself some time off to process subconsciously, and I'm only picking up the conscious processing again now... I'll write more in another post, but for now I'll say that the chapter that resonated with me the most was "Self-Deception: Committed to Denial." This one was an eye-opener, putting a name to some patterns of thought that I'd never even registered as artificial before.

More personal thoughts to follow, and eventually a summary of Part 4, on real love, real relationship, real Bonding.

Book Reflection: How We Love (2)

To follow up on yesterday's post, my major take-away from How We Love is that my coping mechanism of choice is avoidance.

It took me a while to come to this conclusion. But the fact is, I do a lot of avoiding! It's especially marked when I'm in conflict with my mom. But I do it all the time, which is why I don't have open conflicts with most people. For instance, I can't remember ever having a fight with a friend. A disagreement, sure, maybe a lively discussion--but not a fight. If it starts to look like a fight, I shut up or back down. The conflict just isn't usually worth it to me--the cure feels worse than the disease.

When I do get stuck in a conflict, when the tension can't just be ignored, the urge to get away is overwhelming. I want to walk out of the room, out of the house, spend the night somewhere else, not ever have to think about resolving the conflict or seeing the person whose words or actions are making me feel this way. I want to leave and never come back.

In actuality, though, the most I do is leave the room. And the next morning, things never feel as bleak.

If my tendency to avoid is so strong, why was it hard for me to identify myself as an avoider? I initially thought maybe I was a pleaser (seeking comfort through the approval of others), because I do care so much about making O. happy / meeting his expectations; then I thought I was a vacillator, because one of the markers is feeling, "My partner doesn't want to be as close to me as I want to be to them," and also because the book said vacillators tend to have a hard time identifying their own type. I knew I wasn't a Controller/Victim.

I also figured I couldn't be an avoider. Why? Partly because of the dynamics of my relationship with O., and partly because the portrayal of the avoider in How We Love was so extreme.

The dynamics of my relationship with O.
I recognized immediately I'd had a pattern of avoidance with O. during our dating. I wanted to take the whole relationship slowly, being on my guard against getting too close too soon. I wanted to protect myself by maintaining a degree of distance--after all, we were just dating, I reasoned. Friendship and school come first, then a boyfriend, because boys come and go but friends stay, and responsibilities don't go away just because they're inconvenient. O. on the other hand tended to take a "she loves me, she loves me not" view of the situation, and I believe he felt panicky when I pushed for more autonomy. (Pretty sure he's a vacillator!)

Since we got married, though, I've often been the one feeling too much distance, demanding more of O.'s attention, and pushing for greater togetherness. During our honeymoon, for instance, I felt ignored when O. would stop talking to me or looking at me to look things up on his shiny new smartphone, as if he had disappeared into this black box, into which I wasn't invited. This particular problem was quickly fixed when O. and I discussed it and he promised to be more mindful. Nonetheless, it's a good example of the small things that easily leave me feeling ignored, wanting more time together, better time together, better togetherness. These are not the characteristic feelings of the avoider but of the vacillator.

So I figured I wasn't an avoider anymore. But what I eventually figured out is that I am still an avoider, it's just that I'm not as extreme about it as the book's examples, probably because I had a fairly secure attachment to my parents. I just had to observe myself more carefully and more candidly, and think harder about the key ideas behind the book's somewhat extreme presentation.

The book's extreme examples:
My greatest criticism of How We Love is that it didn't make any concrete mention of less extreme cases. An early chapter discussed what it looks like to have a secure attachment style, but then secure attachment was hardly mentioned in the rest of the book, almost implying that if you are securely attached, you'll never employ the unhealthy strategies that mold the relationships of those who are insecurely attached. How We Love is packed with anecdotes and case studies that paint clear and vivid pictures of what each "love style" quintessentially looks like, but fails to give examples of these negative patterns working in more subtle ways, or to explain whether the securely attached can also fall into these traps. A greater range of examples, or at least some commentary on what a less extreme manifestation of each imprint might look like, would really have helped clarify the ideas for me. Precision! It's key!

Conclusions
I did eventually recognize my own pattern, though, and now it seems obvious. I seriously doubt I would have realized how often I feel like escaping or hiding without reading this book and thinking hard about which love style I tend to fall into. Equally important, I probably wouldn't have realized that not everyone feels that desire to escape in the midst of conflict.

In sum, How We Love has already been helpful to me in seeing myself more clearly and thinking in a new way about my important relationships, especially about my marriage. The greatest insight for me was recognizing my avoidance, but there are some other good take-away points too, such as the following:

• Comfort is key--we're all seeking comfort (in our different ways) and the provision of real comfort is what changes the dynamic.
• Comfort comes from being heard and being held.
• The ability to identify your feelings, to name them and talk about them, doesn't come naturally. I'm blessed to have parents who taught me "soul words," asked me about my emotions, talked me through difficult feelings, etc. O. on the other hand is from a family which, though loyal and loving, does not so much discuss feelings as act them out. I can't expect him to be in the same place as me with listening, asking questions, naming his feelings, etc., when I've had years more practice. That's just setting both of us up for frustration.
• O. doesn't have to figure out for himself what to ask and how to listen; there are resources--like the lists of questions and of emotions in this book--that can make learning so much easier.

Book Reflection: How We Love

I remember taking a trip to visit friends in Japan when I was about eleven, and bringing a dozen books with me for the two week trip. Books were always the heaviest thing in my suitcase, and they still are. I've tried to cut down on the volume and weight of reading material I bring on trips, though--usually by bringing intellectually denser books that will take me longer to get through. It's been a successful strategy.

But I definitely took my Dense Book strategy too far on this recent trip to Turkey. My reading list:  

• How We Love by Milan and Kay Yerkovich--A book on attachment theory
• From Bondage to Bonding by Nancy Groom--On codependence, this was a disturbing read.
• Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder--The one novel I brought, this was also an introduction to Western philosophy, an Alice in Wonderland meets Gödel, Escher, Bach.
• Rose by Li-Young Lee--a slim volume of poetry, this book lasted me the whole trip because I seldom read more than one or two poems at a time.
• And of course, my much-battered NIV Student Bible.

I finished reading Sophie's World a few days in, at which point How We Love became my light reading. Absurd: a book of psychology that examines childhood emotional wounds and necessarily calls up painful memories, as my "fun book"? I decided to bring more fiction with me next time I travel.

To be fair, though, How We Love is very readable (as soul-searching books go). It's full of examples and dialogs from struggling couples, and almost every chapter ends with a list of bullet points. O. wasn't reading it on the trip and still doesn't seem to be interested in reading it all the way through, but he could get a sense of what I was reading and thinking about in a few minutes, thanks to the bullet points.

And what was I reading about? The premise of How We Love (subtitle: Discover Your Love Style, Enhance Your Marriage) is that our patterns in adult relationships are deeply shaped by the strategies we adopted to protect ourselves as children. This influence comes into play with special force in that most intimate adult relationship--marriage. The strategies we adopt as children to cope with our parents' imperfections are called imprints, attachment styles, or (in this book anyway) "love styles."

The authors introduce early in the book the metaphor of marriage as a dance. Spouses who have different "love styles" are, in effect, dancing to different music. Perhaps the husband is dancing a waltz, while the wife tries to tango. Inevitably, they step on each other's toes, and each thinks the other is dancing wrong. (It's a useful metaphor the first time the Yerkoviches introduce it, but a few chapters in I started skipping the paragraph that reappears every chapter to remind me that spouses with different love styles are like dance partners listening to different music.)

According to How We Love, there are five* insecure attachment styles or relational coping strategies. These strategies are the patterns of:

1. the Avoider, who seeks safety by avoiding conflict and even avoiding intimacy
2. the Pleaser, who seeks safety by working hard to please the beloved and thus avert conflict
3. the Vacillator, who seeks safety in intense intimacy and is angry when that intimacy is blocked or threatened
4. the Controller, who seeks safety through control
5. the Victim, who seeks safety through passivity.

*A note on terminology: I'd read a little on attachment theory before, in my favorite relationship book, The Highly Sensitive Person In Love (by psychologist Elaine Aron). Aron identifies three insecure attachment styles by a set of names that is, I believe, more standard: avoidant, ambivalent, and chaotic. Avoidant maps to Yerkovich's Avoider; the Pleaser is also a subtype of the Avoider. Ambivalent maps to Vacillator, and the two manifestations of the chaotic style are the Controller (active) and the Victim (passive).

The book has a chapter on each attachment style, some helpful chapters on common combinations of partners (ex. "The Avoider Marries the Vacillator"), several chapters on how to change the dynamic of your marriage by learning to comfort each other, and lists of "soul words" and listening questions in the Appendix. I didn't have any immediate "Aha!" moments while reading it, but it's definitely a useful book, and I recommend it to any one whose parents weren't perfect. :P

More next time on how How We Love applies in my life!

Catchup

Dear Reader,

I have been absent from this blog a long time. Many things have transpired:

O. and I had some huge arguments, settled back down, then finally sought out a counselor. My best friend stayed with us for two weeks, commuting into the city to work at a publishing company. I read a book on attachment theory and another on codependence.

I went to Turkey with O., his parents, my parents, and my sister. We swam in the Aegean and the Mediterranean, we touch marble columns and walked under arches in the ruins of Ephesus, we ate meat every day for two weeks. I picked up more Turkish. I met O.'s grandparents and his cousin and her husband and her two small boys, one of whom had chickenpox.

We came back home. My sister stayed with us for ten days. The girl rabbit was discovered to be a boy. O. and I went camping for a weekend. The anniversary of our wedding arrived, and we watched together a rom-com ("The Holiday") that O. had watched to mend his broken heart when I cut off our friendship three and a half years ago, in the days before our worlds meshed.

I started a part-time job for our church; my title is Communications Coordinator. I sent out some emails. Then I came down with chickenpox and we went to the ER.

And now finally here I am, re-acquainting myself with this blog, with the internet, with writing at all. Normally after a long absence from blogging, I just pick up wherever I am and continue my reacting-to-the-moment blogging. This time, I want to actually write about the things that happened in the past couple months. I feel willing, for the first time, to let this blog be more of a story, a comprehensible narrative, and less of a series of fragments. This time I want to bind the fragments together, and let a whole scene come into view.

This post is going to be the itinerary. I have a lot of things to reflect on and I want to do a lot of the reflecting here, at least one post per paragraph. This is the beginning, or a beginning, since life and reflecting on life seem to require beginning again and again. This is another beginning.

And here we go.

Sabbatical Me (Pt. 3)

Last month, I wrote a couple of posts about the Sabbath in response to a friend's questions, but I left this last set of questions unanswered:

I'd be even happier if you would also reflect on/write about the role of Sabbath in your life, in general...perhaps including (but by no means limited to) what you do/don't do on that one day of the week, what your conception of Sabbath is and how/why this has changed for you over the years, etc.

Essentially, S. is asking me to tell the story of my relationship with the Sabbath. I started writing a reply to these questions three weeks ago, but the post kept getting longer and longer. The more I wrote, the more I felt that I do not know and cannot say all there is for me to write: that the story of me and the Sabbath is still "coming to a middle" (to quote the captain of Serenity). And now it's the middle of March, and I think this is destined to be a post without a conclusion. With that prelude, here it is.

When I was very young, my parents read me the Little House on the Prairie books, as well as various accounts from the Puritans, in which the characters took the Biblical mandate to rest on the Sabbath very seriously and strictly. They construed "rest" and "holy" to mean no play as well as no work. As far as I can recall, this was my earliest picture of Sabbath: something austere, defined by all its negatives. Later, my parents took up a habit of fasting on Sunday at lunch time, and I think this also played into my perception of Sabbath as a time of deprivation.

When I was ten or eleven, I began to be concerned about my relationship to fiction, novels in particular. I don't recall what triggered this--perhaps a sermon on idolatry? teaching in my Sunday school class? I do remember talking to my dad about it. He was not as hard on me as I was on myself. Thus it was entirely my own decision (I'm not sure I even told my family about it) to stop reading fiction on Sundays. I kept to this practice for years, with varying levels of stringency; to some extent I still follow it. I don't feel good about watching Firefly or reading Anathem on Sunday. This Sabbath practice represents a seeking of holiness and godliness by turning away from worldly things, and a prioritization of God and God's values (for instance, love for other people) by setting aside pleasures that I sensed to be worldly/fleshly.

This version of the Sabbath wasn't the austere and empty time seen in Little House on the Prairie; the void left by not reading was filled by games or cooking or hiking with my family, and by lively time in my church small group. Nonetheless, it was a negatively defined Sabbath: Sunday as the day I don't read.

Another dimension to my observation of the Sabbath came into play in middle school when my workload at school increased. My middle school forbade weekend homework assignments (thank God), but was big on projects which one inevitably ended up working on during weekends: posters, research papers, art projects, book reports, ... It only got worse in high school. I--probably with encouragement from my parents--decided any schoolwork I needed to do over the weekend should get done before Sunday (if possible); if necessary there was always Monday morning. (I was the kind of kid who did better finishing an assignment at 6am Monday than at 11pm Sunday, or even 10pm. Definitely a lark, not an owl.)

Not doing homework on Sunday reflected the day-of-rest aspect of the Sabbath. Still a negative-space definition of Sabbath (no homework day), but moving toward something more positively defined (rest day).

At some point in middle or high school, I heard John Ortberg preach a sermon on the Sabbath, and he called it a joy day. (A cursory search on mppc.org didn't yield the sermon in question so I leave it to you to seek it out if you're interested.) I think this was the first positive definition of Sabbath that I encountered. He spoke of using the day of rest to focus on relationships, beauty, anything that brings joy. I think this is a much-needed perspective, and a lovely picture, if an incomplete one. But if there's anything I've learned from thinking about Sabbath and other things God-related, it's that no picture is complete.

There was also a conference I went to with my family where the speaker (Mark Labberton?) addressed the Sabbath and exhorted us to observe it more conscientiously. He advocated never buying or selling on Sunday. My dad was not convinced, and talked to me about Romans 14:5--

One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.

--which remains the primary source of uncertainty for me about the present day significance of the Sabbath for Christians and the applicability of the Old Testament laws concerning the Sabbath to Christians. You can read more about his perspective here.

In college I tried to avoid homework on Sunday, but it didn't work out too well. Then for a while I tried to keep Sabbath from sunset on Saturday to sunset on Sunday, on the grounds that the Jewish model begins and ends the day at sunset. This was better than trying to cram all my homework into Saturday at the cost of staying up so late that church was painful the next morning; but it felt like I was cheating and I was never convinced that it was really the way to go.

Somewhere in there I read Lauren Winner's lovely book Mudhouse Sabbath. I don't remember what impression of the Sabbath it left me with, but it was a thought-provoking and life-enriching book. Anyone interested in tradition or spiritual discipline or Judaism and its relationship to Christianity should read it.

At present I keep the Sabbath mainly as a day of personal rest, not really focusing on the social justice aspect. I avoid buying things on Sunday mostly because that feels like work for me. But I don't have pangs of conscience about eating out on Sunday because that results in rest for me. But I don't have a good sense of whether that's God's plan for how I keep the Sabbath. The part I am more convinced about is that I need to avoid novels and movies on Sunday, to surrender that pleasure-source up to God, and spend the day loving my God and the people He has put around me (in this season, mainly O.)

So: that's where I am, and those are the places I've come from. I'm still on the journey, so feel free to check back with me in a few years on this topic! I hope you will join me in continuing to wonder and ask God about His good, pleasing and perfect will for the Sabbath.

"Voyage of the Dawn Treader"

My mother requested a blog post about the differences between the recent movie of "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and the original book by C.S. Lewis. I am simultaneously well-equipped to write about this, because Dawn Treader was my favorite of the Chronicles of Narnia, and ill-equipped, because it has been years since I read it... I might have to go read it now, actually... But I'll comment now on the biggest differences I noticed (and fact-check after I reread the book).

First, let me note that the reason I loved Dawn Treader the best is that it is one of those voyage/adventure books that feels like it could go on forever. The general structure is of traveling from island to island on the ship the Dawn Treader, sailing the uncharted seas on the outskirts of Narnia. In my recollection of the book, the various island episodes are fairly unconnected. In fact, in the book-on-tape version that I listened to (over and over) as a child, several of the middle islands were simply omitted, to be replaced by the line "And they had many more adventures." So when I eventually read the book for myself and discovered the Dufflepuds and other characters, I was thrilled to find more new story hidden inside this familiar book. This is perhaps the reason that I feel the book could just keep expanding, and why it is so clear to me that the island episodes in the book are relatively independent.

In the movie, however, this is not the case. To closely connect the islands and, I suppose, create a faster pace and more suspence (Heaven forbid there be a movie that actually takes its time in this day and age!), the movie added an overt villain: the Scary, Creepy Mist. At the first set of islands that Caspian and his crew visit, they find that the Mist has been menacing and kidnapping the Narnian inhabitants of these isles. Moreover, the Mist is getting increasingly powerful. The message of "Soon, it may be too late" hangs in the air. This discovery increases the urgency of their quest to find the Seven Lords, because the way to defeat the Mist (rather bizarrely, to my mind) is to lay their Seven Swords on Aslan's Table. They learn this and are commissioned by the sorcerer at the second island that they visit.

So at every island the Dawn Treader visits, and even while the ship is at sea, the Mist keeps tempting its crew. Lucy, Edmund, Caspian and especially Eustace Clarence Scrub are each tested (I won't say who passes and fails). Lucy's test has to do with envy; Edmund and Caspian are tempted by greed and status; and Eustace must outgrow his selfishness. Meanwhile, the themes of courage and self-acceptance keep surfacing. "Love yourself as you are" and "Have courage, take risks for the greater good" come across as the lessons of the movie.

Courage and self-acceptance are both good messages, but they are not the messages of the Dawn Treader that I remember. In refocusing on those two ideas, the movie reshapes many aspects of the book. The order of the islands is changed, two islands are combined into one; the Mist becomes the enemy to defeat; the voyage of the Dawn Treader becomes a quest to save the world, in which the actions of individuals hold great weight; and the power of Aslan is diluted.

That last assertion might seem like a bit of a leap. Let me explain.

Both the book and the movie explore the idea of transformation. The most powerful instance of this is Eustace's transformation, as physically enacted in his turning into a dragon and eventually regaining his humanity. The book and movie treat this episode very differently. In the book, as long as Eustace is a dragon, the whole crew is stuck at the island where he was transformed. He helps them repair their damaged ship during the day, and at night he mourns his plight. After many days (I believe), he is somehow led to a pool, and has an encounter with Aslan. Eustace scratches off his dragon skin, and wriggles out of it. He feels lighter, freer. But when he looks in the pool by the light of the moon, he finds he looks just the same. He is still a hideous dragon. So he peels off another layer. And another, and another. I can't remember how many he has to remove, but each time it feels less pleasant, though he can see himself shrinking and shriveling, getting closer to boy-size, leaving dragon-dom behind.

But at the last, he is still wearing a dragon-skin and he can't bring himself to score it deeply with his claws so that he can finally writhe his way out. In the end, he needs Aslan to lift his heavy paw, and slash this deeply hidden dragon-skin wide open. It hurts, it hurts, but when the skin peels back, finally, Eustace emerges as a human again. Victory has come to him, and victory has made him small and weak and naked. When he returns to life as a human, he lives differently. He has been humbled, and he has had to see that he needs Aslan.

So the lesson of the book's dragon-transformation is surrender and dependence and reliance on Aslan (God). Transformation takes time and pain and the deliverance of a higher power.

But in the movie, Eustace is redeemed from dragonhood only after he saves the ship and its crew from the Mist, by fighting the seamonster/dragon that the Mist makes itself into. Eustace has to demonstrate that he has learned courage and confidence (largely from Reepicheep) before he can be returned to his true form. When he is changed back into his boy's body, the transformation does happen through Aslan's intervention, but the process is full of flashing light, fire, red and gold, and triumphant music, and brilliant daylight. It's not darkness and a hidden moonlit pool, it's not humility and pain and labor. Instead, it's magic. Aslan doesn't even actually touch Eustace; he just makes scratching marks on the sand and suddenly swirls of gold and bright sparks surround the dragon-Eustace and lift him up and spin him around. When the cloud of glory disperses, Eustace has become a boy again. Abracadabra!

In the movie, Eustace earns his humanity by fighting the dragon. Then, like clockwork, Aslan appears in the middle of the sunlit sandbar, draws runes on the sand and bam! Eustace is a boy again. Here, transformation or redemption is not initiated by Aslan/God, but rather by the good deeds of the one to be transformed. Moreover, the process is fast and sparkly, instead of slow and almost tortuous, as though it's just a superficial change in appearance, rather than a deep inward change created by Aslan's redeeming work.

This episode captures the fundamental difference between the book and the movie. In the book, everything depends on Aslan. There will be no fatal consequences if the humans fail in their mission to find the Seven Lords. Aslan is what really matters. In fact, I believe that in the book, a major reason for their quest is the search for Aslan's country. This does not feature at all in the movie as a motivation.

In the movie, you see, human effort is vital and effective, and transformation comes through willpower and courage, and you earn it, and ultimately it depends on you. Saving Narnia from the evil Mist also depends on you. If you fail, it could be the end of everything. Aslan has his table and his country, but he's not doing anything to help you out along the way. You are on your own.

Ok, that last might be an overstatement, but it's not far off. Let me just put this really succinctly: the book is about grace, the movie is about effort. That is the difference, and that is why Voyage of the Dawn Treader is one of my favorite books, but "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" is not one of my favorite movies.



p.s. Please comment and correct me if I got facts wrong!

Rhetoric, in global politics and in Paradise Lost

"Part of the problem is that as countries go their own way, they are each arguing that they are acting for the greater global good." (From the NYT, "Challenges Await U.S. at Group of 20 Meeting")

Isn't that what we always do? We need to claim we are doing the right thing to draw others to our cause; we need to claim to be doing the right thing even to fully believe in our own cause. Justification is the foundation for any rhetoric, isn't it? Today in my English class, we were looking at the first book of Milton's Paradise Lost, in which Satan is rallying the fallen angels to "awake, arise" from the burning lake, and he announces his purpose to never do any good, only evil. My professor pointed out that in using the pre-established language--English, in Milton's poem--Satan can't help undermining his own argument. The language reflects the position (the reality) that God is good and Satan is choosing evil instead. Satan would be more insidious if he camouflaged his goals. Deceptive idealism is more potent than honest evil, methinks.

There's another issue with Satan's rhetoric, too. Satan says he is choosing to be always "contrary." This undermines his authority: if your identity and decisions rest on doing the opposite of what the other side does, then you are effectively still passive. This is an idea I've thought about quite a bit on my own, so it was great to hear it articulated by a professor in connection with literature! (I believe I've made the point before on this blog, with regard to stereotypes. If I refuse to do something purely on the grounds that it fulfills a stereotype about women, then I am still being controlled by sexism.)

Aaaand I have to go back to working on my thesis and reading the newspaper and buying groceries so I will conclude this rambling commentary.

Bad for me

Over the course of our friendship, M. has lent me several books. The Viagra book felt vaguely slimy in my mind (and I never finished it). The Hunger Games trilogy twirled me around and swooped me up and down, and after several months of suspense, set me down in a sunny, spacious place. And now I've read the first book in a new trilogy: Life as We Knew It.

Like Hunger Games, it was hard to put down. The novel is written as the journal of Miranda, a Pennsylvanian sixteen-year-old whose name inevitably reminds me of the ravaged planet in the movie "Serenity." This is a fitting association for a book about the disintegration of life on Earth when a stray asteroid strikes our own Luna, sending her a shade closer to the planet. The moon looms grotesquely and menacingly large overhead, as though it is about to fall out of the sky. It is a relief to Miranda when the vast quantities of ash from the volcanoes that spring up everywhere on the destablized planet obscure the sky entirely. When the ash is thick enough, she can't see the moon's threats. Meanwhile, there are plenty of more direct physical threats wreaking havoc all over the planet: tidal waves, earthquakes, epidemics, food shortages.

This is a book about the narrowing of a life, the shrinking of the known world. This is a book about deprivation and death.

It's also a book about appreciating the little you have. But that appreciation comes only through resignation. Joy sprouts from accepting that things can't better, and in fact they are going to get much worse, so now is the time to extract the little life you can out of the shriveling, withering world. This is a book about hope that comes through blindness, about stripping away false faith, about salvation through asceticism.

Reading this book felt like drowning. When I rose to the surface--when I closed the book and opened my eyes to the clear blue sky and the sunshine streaming down like it would never ever run out--I gulped reality, gasping and heaving, and coughed up despair like water from my lungs. Drowning makes you appreciate air, but that doesn't mean almost drowning is good for the soul. I don't intend to read the sequels to Life as We Knew It. Despair is enough of a temptation in my own world of abundance and faith; living in the head of a teenager in desperate circumstances that cannot improve (in her world) does nothing good for my emotional stability. Distant as the moon is, I am enough of a lunatic.

Book Rates

I read this Question of the Day late last night and cringed:

How well does your pace of book purchases match up with your pace of reading? Do you read books as soon as you get them home, or do you have a growing stack of books that you're hoping to have time to read someday? If you had to guess, how many unread books are there in your house?

My confession is this: no matter how hard I try to stem* the flow of books into my room, I can't. The tide of words keeps rising. The words flood in through armloads of library books, they rain down from the internet (stormbursts of blog posts, New York Times articles). The words keep flowing in, and I can't drink them all.

To answer the questions more literally: My pace of book-buying matches my reading pace all right now, because I pretty much stopped buying myself books a couple years ago. (This drastic step was only taken after I bought over a dozen books really really cheaply at various school library sales, didn't read most of them, and had to conclude that I have an addiction to buying cheap books...) However, people give me books, and I get books from the library, and then there are all those books available for free online. So my reading pace really does not match my book acquisition pace at all. I probably have at least 10 unread books in my dorm room (although to be fair, some of them are for class!), and then 20 or 30 more in my room back at home.

"Quot libris, quam breve tempore."

At least I can say I've read all 66 books in the Bible! as if that were relevant. I delude myself.

*I got distracted wondering what the origin of that expression is, and the OED informed me that the verb meaning 'To stop, check; to dam up (a stream, or the like)' shares a root with the verb "stammer." Cool!

Longer Books! [Question of the Day]

What's one book that you were sorry to reach the end of; one that you wish had gone on for twice as many pages?

Oh, I could list so many. But here are just a few:

1. The Hounds of the Morrigan
2. Watership Down
3. The Lions of Al-Rassan (Thanks, Tia!)
4. The Neverending Story (If only it would live up to its title! But its point is that life is the best story, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.)
5. A Man in Christ (the only non-fiction I'm seriously listing)
6. I almost want to list Anathem, but that book was definitely long enough (at 928 pages) even though I wanted the story to keep going. 1,856 pages would be far too many.
7. I also kind of want to list Letham's Trinity, because I got so much out of every chapter of that book, but as above, the book was long enough (800+ pages), and it would have been seriously demoralizing to take 8 years to finish a book. Four years is long enough.
8. Tia's novel!!! Only half of it was finished so of course when I got to the end of it, I was quite sorry, and wished for the other half of the pages...
   

Suggestions for fiction I should read are quite welcome!

(In which I demonstrate that I am totally infatuated with Annie Dillard and with the beach)

I don't mean to be an ascetic, but it's in my blood and bone somehow. I don't mean to be disillusioned or disaffected, I don't mean to expect nothing, but the fear of disappointment seeps into me, from the feet up, like water climbing something dry (paper, fabric). Soon I'm soaking wet, when only my toes were ever touching the sea.

I need to snap out, snap open like a sweet peapod bursting and showing its seeds into the light. I need to wake from the dreams of distance. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek speaks for me:

"Our God shall come," it says in a psalm for Advent, "and shall not keep silence; there shall go before him a consuming fire, and a mighty tempest shall be stirred up about him." It is the shock I remember. Not only does something come if you wait, but it pours over you like a waterfall, like a tidal wave. You wait in all naturalness without expectation or hope, emptied, translucent, and that which comes rocks and topples you; it will shear, loose, launch, winnow, grind.

I have glutted on richness and welcome hyssop. This distant silver November sky, these sere branches of trees, shed and bearing their pure and secret colors--this is the real world, not the world gilded and pearled. I stand under wiped skies directly, naked, without intercessors. Frost winds have lofted my body's bones with all their restless sprints to an airborne raven's glide.

Winter is the season for feeling that clean and cold, but the frigid Pacific and the chilling fog give me winter in the midst of summer. This purity is the prize, for surrender to the sea. This wakefulness is the reward, this out-of-body experience. The cold crashes over me, splashes in my eyes, tangles in my hair: every thought is washed out of my mind. I come running out of the waves, so awake that my body itself is a dream, dissolving in the bed of the world, when I am awake in the morning of joy.

Presence [Pilgrim at Tinker Creek]

Another quote from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

And what if those grasshoppers had been locusts descending, I thought, and what if I stood awake in a swarm? I cannot ask for more than to be so wholly acted upon, flown at, and lighted on in throngs, probed, knocked, even bitten. A little blood from the wrists and throat is the price I would willingly pay for that pressure of clacking weights on my shoulders, for the scent of deserts, groundfire in my ears--for being so in the clustering hick of things, rapt and enwrapped in the rising and falling real world.

In the copy I'm reading, my mother has marked exclamation points in the margin of this paragraph, as though the image is entirely alien, or the desire expressed is incomprehensible. But Dillard's words resonate in my ribcage. They curl around my wrists like bracelets: someone else has felt this way! I will gladly pay a penny of pain to participate in the world with my whole being--to know I belong on this planet--to step into the ceremony instead of watching from the pews, even if it means I must be the sacrifice on the altar.

And Dillard has a quote for that, too, at the end of the next chapter, after she has told us about the myriad parasites that are eating the world:

I am a sacrifice bound with cords to the horns of the world's rock altar, waiting for worms. I take a deep breath, I open my eyes. Looking, I see there are worms in the horns of the altar like live maggots in amber, there are shells of worms in the rock and moths flapping at my eyes. A wind from noplace rises. A sense of the real exults me; the cords loose; I walk on my way.

The wind is the body of mystery, and its breath is a benediction. I receive it with open hands and closed eyes, and like Dillard, the prophetess, I walk on my way.

Acceptance / Change

I found this book lying on my dining room table and started reading it: Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person. (So typical of me to start yet another new book when there are at least 5 that I am part way through...) It's the writings of a man who worked in counseling / professional psychotherapy for 30+ years, but they are directed towards the average person, rather than the professional, and towards growing what is healthy, rather than towards curing what is sick.

Anyway, I am obviously not a professional psychotherapist, but I am really excited because what I have read so far resonates so well with ideas that have been slowing blossoming in myself. In the poetry anthology I'm reading, Helen Vendler says that the greatest joy that comes from a poem is finding your own thoughts and feelings expressed by someone else; I think the same can be true in other genres of writing. In particular, here is an insight (or "upsight," in the language of Anathem) that expresses something I have been fumbling towards for years but have never grasped well enough to name or express:

I find I am more effective when I can listen acceptantly to myself, and can be myself. I feel that over the years I have learned to become more adequate in listening to myself; so that I know, somewhat more adequately than I used to, what I am feeling at any given moment--to be able to realize I am angry, or that I do feel rejecting toward this person; or that I feel very full of warmth and affection for this individual; or that I am bored and uninterested in what is going on; or that I am eager to understand this individual or that I am anxious and fearful in my relationship to this person. All of these diverse attitudes are feelings which I think I can listen to in myself. One way of putting this is that I feel I have become more adequate in letting myself be what I am. It becomes easier for me to accept myself as a decidedly imperfect person, who by no means functions at all times in the way in which I would like to function.

This must seem to some like a very strange direction in which to move. It seems to me that have value because the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change. I believe that I have learned this from my clients as well as within my own experience--that we cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed. (p. 17)

I think this "acceptance" isn't about tolerance, that it isn't about accepting that this is how it is and therefore this is how it must be. I think it is simply about seeing: this is how it is, right now. I see this as being about integrity, in its original sense of wholeness, because if I don't see or accept or recognize something in myself, even though it is there, then I am cutting off that part of myself. I am dividing myself. Division is the opposite of unity or wholeness or integrity. Dishonesty, even to myself, leads to a fractured soul...

Another way to frame this: Life is a journey, right? and sometimes we get lost. Suppose I get lost, but I have a map so I can figure out where I should be. But suppose that I refuse to accept where I am on the map, because it is not where I want to be. Then when I plot my route from the place that I claim to be, to the place I actually want to go, that plotted route will be useless, because it has an inaccurate starting point. If I don't accept where I actually am, I can't even figure out how to go anywhere else, much less how to arrive at some particular other destination.

So I am really happy to see this articulated, especially by someone other than myself. Something I want to add, though, is that in my life such honesty and acceptance has been most fruitful and least painful when it takes the form of confession--just a brief prayer to God saying "This is how I am feeling, and I don't want to feel it. Help!" And then freedom comes, to replace guilt and fear.

In the words of Sara Groves: "Oh honesty / the truth be told / for the saving / of our souls."

[Quote of the Day:] Sparks of Souls

Fantastic quote courtesy from Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

For that forty minutes last night I was as purely sensitive and mute as a photographic plate; I received impressions, but I did not print out captions. My own self-awareness had disappeared [...] I have often noticed that even a few minutes of this self-forgetfulness is tremendously invigorating. I wonder if we do not waste most of our energy just by spending every waking minute saying hello to ourselves. Martin Buber quotes an old Hasid master who said, "When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you."

I love this image of sparks that fly off of souls and cling like static, like burrs on your clothing, like a child in your arms. And as for wasting my energy, and scattering my soul to shards, by saying hello to myself: Yes. I would like to stop. How, I don't know. But stop: stop. Stop chewing the inside of my lip, stop picking at my fingernails, stop holding my jaw tight. Stop running back and forth like a squirrel, and learn to stand in the wind like a pine tree. Then the sparks will land on me and set me aflame like the burning bush, and I won't have any sandals to take off on the holy ground, because each foot will be a buried root.

Fairytale Gods

I reread Pat O'Shea's The Hounds of the Morrigan last week. I love this book for many reasons, but mainly because it is 674-pages of Irish fairytale. Epic struggle of good against evil, but even more than that, of innocence against corruption.

Pidge and his little sister Bridgit have no idea what they're doing, but help always shows up, because they are under the protection of the Dagda. While there are several gods and goddesses in this story, not all of them good (i.e., the Morrigan, the goddess of battle and destruction and rot), the Dagda seems to be a class above the rest.

In fact, it's easy to read the Dagda as simply God... I don't recall noticing much about the character of the Dagda, or about Pidge and Bridgit's relationship with him, when I read this book before, but on this reading (2nd? 3rd?), I paid more attention to the writing style and the themes and characters and such, which was all quite lovely. Anyway, I wanted to type of a scene from the beginning, when Pidge first meets the Dagda, whose voice whispers to him:

Pidge froze into a statue of himself. He didn't dare move. He sat with his eyes staring straight ahead not seeing anything, but feeling with the back of his neck. After a long, long moment of this, he tried to make his head vanish inside his body like a tortoise pulling into his shell.
It was as though he were getting ready to receive a blow on the head.
Don't be afraid, said the Voice. I am your friend.
Oh, what'll I do, thought Pidge fearfully.
Am I hurting you? the Voice asked with infinite gentleness.
"No."
Believe in my friendship.
"But, I'm afraid."
Listen! said the Voice.
Music flooded down the chimney as if it were water surging over the edge of a fall. It hushed--and there was a down-pouring of perfumed light, in accord with the clear and perfect notes of a solitary flute, in which the light rejoiced and danced.
It all faded and whispered away.
Look up!
Pidge looked up and saw the night-time. It was filled wiht glittering stars.
I write my name, said the Voice.
Out of the multitude, the biggest and brightest of the stars formed the word: DAGDA.

This scene is lovely in itself, and even better in the context of the story. But I think it's also a great depiction of what our interactions with the real God can or even should be like at times. It's so easy to lose the sense of wonder and pleasure, and get caught up in duty and guilt.

But the truth of the relationship, the heart of the matter, is the music and the mystery, the stars rearranging and the world seeming safe, beyond all reason. It's the quest and the questions, and not needing the answers because you know the Person is with you.

Wow

I just finished reading A Man in Christ. This took several months since I've been digesting it slowly, but it is my new favorite book. It is better than C.S. Lewis. (!!!)

That's all for now! I think I'll be typing up some long chunks of it though for further digestion and general spreading of insight and understanding and amazingness.