Posted By admin on April 14, 2009
The following essays were first published between January and June 2008. The specific topics and literary references are listed in the “January to June 2008 Index.” The index will help readers find items of particular interest.
Essay One
The High Cost of Heart Surgery
by Teri Ong
We have a dear little friend in our church who is just past three and a half years old. In that short while he has had three major heart reconstruction surgeries. Two of the three have had touch and go moments. All of them have been life-or-death procedures for our friend. He has had a special friendship with my husband which we think might be due to the fact that since my husband was his pastor and not a doctor, nurse, or parent, he was about the only person never called upon to do anything that caused pain during any of those early visits.
We have witnessed the high levels of emotional distress, physical pain, sleepless nights, disruption to normal family life, uncertainty of schedules, specialized care and treatment, etc., not to mention the extremely high monetary costs involved. Jonathan’s family has faced all this with extraordinary grace and faith. They have been a bulwark of help to other families in similar situations.
From our biblical viewpoint, We know that God does not make any mistakes and that He has everything under perfect control. And since God WASN’T the one who said, “Ours is not to question why, ours is but to do or die,” we don’t believe He minds when we do ask why. Sometimes He chooses to let us know only in eternity, but often He is glad to give us some insights here and now when we can make good use of the information.
One thing is clear for all of us— Whatever physical and emotional suffering we experience here will seem like a very small thing when compared with eternity, and it has the potential to make us more fit for eternity. The Apostle Paul wrote:
“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal [think:time-bound, temporary], but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (II Corinthians 4:16-18)
This is true whether one is 3 or 33 or 63 or 93. Watching our little friend and his family, I have seen many parallels between his physical struggles and all of our spiritual struggles. All of us have diseased hearts in the spiritual sense. We are all dead men. There is no health in us. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick…” (Jer. 17:9) We are all in need of heart surgery.
I have learned many lessons from our tiny friend. This poem is dedicated to him and to the other young heart patients at Children’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado.
“Open Heart Surgery”
I was born in the dark of night,
A strapping babe at the start;
Rosy pink, I drew my first breath–
A breath? No, the rattle of deathཀ
For no one could tell by sound or sight
That I had a defective heart.
My heart was malformed beyond belief
(I was dead before I’d lived),
Twisted, weak, grotesque, and small;
Death undoubtedly soon would call.
Each passing hour brought no relief;
There was little hope I’d be saved.
For one dim chance to save my life,
I needed a Surgeon to find;
Only one Man could do the deed;
From my sentence of death I’d be freed.
If I could not go under His knife
I’d to certain death be resigned.
My Surgeon was found by and by;
And He graciously chose my case.
The price was high, the cost immense;
I could not bear such awful expense.
For me to live, someone else must die,
He said as He looked in my face.
But He was willing to pay my part,
And took great pains for my good.
He kept me long upon the table;
His gentle hands proved so able.
In the end I received a new heart,
Transfused with the Surgeon’s own blood.
I know that I’m indeed made new
Though recov’ry’s by fits and starts.
My Surgeon feeds with living bread,
I stronger grow, gone is my dread.
Daily I give Him praises true
And with diligence keep my new heart.
—TLO Jan. 2008
Jesus healed the physically sick while he was here on earth to prove that he had the power to heal the spiritually sick. (Mark 2:10-11) He is the Great Physician who said, “I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh; that they may walk in my statutes, and keep my ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” (Ezekiel 11:19-20)
Put yourself in His healing hands.
Essay Two
Utopian Spirit
by Teri Ong
I am going to play “connect the dots” again this week. Here are my dots.
–We have a wild bunny that lives in our backyard that our children have named “Utopia.”
– I am reading about the life of Louisa May Alcott this month.
–I was privileged to participate in a small way in the Greeley Chorale “Pops and Pasta” concert yesterday (Saturday, Feb. 23).
Dot One: We have observed a wild bunny in our yard for about a year now. Bunnies have previously taken up residence under our shed, but none have been such long term residents. We delighted in sitting in the swing under one of our backyard trees all last summer watching the bunny frolic in the yard in the early morning or at dusk. We are always worried that a desperate dog will discover “Utopia” and do him in. Actually we aren’t positive Utopia is a “him” and are prepared to rename him “Cornucopia” if needs be, since last summer we observed two bunnies in the yard at the same time.
Over the winter, there were long stretches that we didn’t see our bunny. But since he is a wild bunny, we figured he could get through the winter all right. He did, and we have resumed daily sightings. My husband sees him more than the rest of us do since he is the one and only person in the household that is usually up as early as the bunny is. He always announces, “ I saw the bunny; all is right with the world.” It must go with the bunny’s nameཀ
Dot Two: I have been very fascinated reading about the life of Louisa May Alcott. Louisa’s father, Bronson, was a utopian transcendentalist from Massachusetts, who lived as a neighbor to and who socialized with the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Bronson Alcott was a dreamer who believed that utopia could be achieved and maintained by encouraging groups of people to produce everything they need in self-sufficient colonies where all the work and produce would be shared alike. With financial backing from Emerson and a Englishman named Lane, who was impressed with Bronson’s progressive ideas about education, different colonies were attempted. Bronson, whose motto was “simple living and high thinking”, was an excellent gardener but a terrible farmer. He was a devout vegan who would not eat meat or any animal product. Milk belonged to the cows and eggs belonged to the chickens. He also believed that wool belonged to the sheep. And, also being a true humanitarian, he would not use cotton which in his day was produced with slave labor. That left linen, made from home-grown flax to cloth his family. There was never enough. On one of the farms the fields were sown with an enormous quantity of mixed seed— corn, wheat, and oats. What a messཀ There was nothing to wear and not much to eat.
What little grain came up from that disastrous crop had been cut and was laying on the ground one fall afternoon when all of the men decided to go to Boston for a Transcendentalists Club meeting. A storm was brewing, and bringing in the harvest, without benefit of beasts of burden, was left to Mrs. Alcott and Bronson’s four “little women.” Mom and the children bravely gathered in most of the measly crop before the storm hit.
When winter came and life in the colony was hard and cold, Mr. Lane, one of the backers, soon demanded that the property be sold. Mr. Lane’s philosophy of life was, “being is better than doing.” And he lived in accord with that philosophy, never doing much to contribute to the functioning of his colony. His philosophy and Bronson Alcott’s philosophy butted heads and the colony moved on. So much for Utopiaཀ
However, a lady journalist named Fuller was intrigued by Bronson Alcott’s utopian philosophies and spent time with the family. She took what she gleaned back with her to her job on the staff of the New York Tribune. Her boss was Horace Greeley, who was of a more pragmatic bent than Bronson Alcott. Greeley, however, was not totally unsympathetic to those utopian ideals. After all, he also had on his staff a man named Nathan Meeker. Meeker, his agricultural editor, had participated in several failed colonies himself.
Then in 1869, with help from Greeley and the Tribune, Meeker issued “the call” to form a new utopian colony that would “go west” and avoid the pitfalls that had stymied the attempts in New England. What sprang up from Meeker’s “call” is the city of Greeley, Colorado, where I sit this afternoon doing my writing, which in many ways has been a “utopia” to me, the ideal place to raise my seven children.
Dot Three: So how does all of this tie in to the Greeley Chorale? Oh, ye of little faithཀ
Nathan Meeker’s “call” was full of the ideals he believed were necessary for the development of the perfect town, a utopian society in microcosm.
…Whatever professions and occupations enter into the formation of an intelligent, educated and thrifty community should be embraced by this colony, and it should be the object to exhibit what is best in modern civilization.
In particular, should moral and religious sentiments prevail; for without these qualities man is nothing. At the same time tolerance and liberality should also prevail. One thing more is equally important: happiness, wealth and the glory of the state spring from the family, and it should be an aim and a high ambition to preserve the family pure in all its relations, and to labor with the best efforts life and strength can give to make the home comfortable, to beautify and adorn it, and to supply it with whatever will make it attractive and loved…
I make the point that two important objects will be gained with such a colony. First schools, refined society, and all the advantages of the old country will be secured in a few years… (Boyd, p. 33)
Meeker, though not entirely successful in bringing about his idealistic vision, was successful in larger measure than many other utopian dreamers had been. He had learned important lessons from prior attempts. Principally, he wrote, “I learned how much co-operation people could bear.” (Boyd, p. 15)
Family homes were built within months. Sermons were preached within weeks. School began the first autumn. Before the first year of the colony’s existence was over, literary and social clubs had sprung up. The Rocky Mountain News commented, “…of the entire population, three-fourths are members of clubs that are eternally in session.” (Historical Picture Album p. 101)
One thing that beautified our home town and provided for the “refined society” Meeker called for was music. The Greeley Silver Cornet Band was formed the first year, and singing was a feature of the lyceums that were held. It was not many years until the town boasted of two opera houses. By 1904 open air concerts were a regular summer feature in Lincoln Park with as many as 3,000 in attendance. The Fortnightly Musical Club was formed in 1907 and put on recitals and concerts featuring local talent as well as sponsoring world-class guest artists. The Greeley Philharmonic was formed in 1911 and is the oldest continuously operational symphony in the western half of the U. S.
Today, a little over a hundred years later, we are still beautified and refined by that utopian vision. The Silver Cornet Band lives on in the Kiwanis Silver Cornet Band and Marching Society that still plays every summer in Lincoln Park. The opera program at the University of Northern Colorado, plus the other fine musical departments and groups at the school, harken back to that earlier time when a very small town had two opera houses. The Philharmonic still plays in a concert hall just across the street from Lincoln Park.
And I have to believe that the spirit of the Fortnightly Musical Club was hovering thick in the air Saturday night as the Greeley Chorale performed their concert at St. Mary’s Hall. Fittingly, the evening began with the theme song from Brigadoon, a song that celebrates the search for utopia.
“Pops and Pasta” of 2008 was something like Broadway Melody of 1938 Meets High School Musical. I mean that in an entirely flattering sense. There were no babes or studs, but there were singing nightingales and cats, sisters and brothers, grown-up hippies, wanna-be rockers, torch singers, a nerd named Seymour, and a whole bunch of spectacular tenors. There was a touch of opera, a helping of Broadway, and more than a sprinkle of vaudeville, served with a heaping bowl of creativity and talent. Mostly there was a group of truly beautiful people, young and old, with beautiful voices gathered together to make and to have some wholesome fun that, with the exception of the wine on the tables, would have made Nathan Meeker proudཀ
Bronson Alcott’s Transcendentalist Club would have appreciated the first two lines on a t-shirt I saw once:
“To be is to do” — Plato
“To do is to be” — Aristotle
The group Saturday night would have resonated more with the third line:
“Do-Be-Do-Be-Do” — Sinatra
Kudos to Dr. Gerbrandt and the Greeley Chorale. Here are my best wishes for many more years of that kind of philosophizing. And long live Utopiaཀ
Resources of interest:
(1)Boyd, David. A History of Greeley and the Union Colony. U.S.A.:Kendall Printing Company, facsimile edition, 1987.
(2)Greeley, Colorado: The Historical Picture Album. Portland, Oregon: Pediment Publishing, 1997.
(3)Stern, Madeleine. Louisa May Alcott. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950.
Essay Three
Unjust Criticism
by Teri Ong
I am preparing a new literature course comparing the literature of three women authors who wrote in the 19th century; Charlotte Bronte (English), Louisa May Alcott (American) and Lucy Maud Montgomery (Canadian). I have purposely not chosen their best known works to examine but works in which each of the authors looks at prevailing social conditions of their day through the eyes and lives of their characters.
We are beginning the semester with Shirley, by Charlotte Bronte, a book I read for the first time this past year. I was immediately struck by the similarities between that book and North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. Both stories deal with the social growing pains caused by the industrial revolution. I was not surprised to learn that Bronte and Gaskell were friends, and that Gaskell wrote the earliest biography about Charlotte Bronte, a biography that was admired by C. S. Lewis.
In researching for this course, I have read a number of critical articles about all three of the Bronte sisters and about their particular novels. The critical perspectives have ranged from Marxist to feminist to Freudian, but none have been Christian. This is sad, considering that the Brontes were professing Christians raised by a father who was a Cambridge graduate and evangelical “low church” Anglican minister. His daughters were raised in a highly intellectual atmosphere of religious and social dissent shaping their prevailing worldview, which was decidedly Christian.
Marxist critics see Shirley as an examination of the evils of capitalism, feminists see the evils of masculine oppression, and Freudians see an examination of psycho-social problems associated with Victorian class-conscious marriages. Christian critics should see an examination of social ills brought on by sinful, unbiblical attitudes such as pride, greed, lack of human love and kindness, and unbiblical attitudes about marriage and family.
Religious and social dissent have always been the proper activity for prophets and reformers. Biblically we know that humans are flawed by sin and, therefore, society is likely to magnify the effects of the sin nature. It is the role of prophets and reformers to speak out against such evils, wherever they are found. The Brontes were not primarily radicals promoting social upheaval; they were prophets exposing unchristian attitudes and practices in the midst of a so-called Christian society.
How do the critics get the picture so wrong? I agree with the four problems C. S. Lewis identified as prevalent in modern literary criticism ( “Undergraduate Criticism” Cambridge University Broadsheet, 1960). 1. Adversarial critics seem “more anxious to wound the author than to inform the reader”; 2. Radical interpretations are most quickly adopted in spite of historical improbability; 3. Most critics lack understanding of the Biblical and classical backgrounds that form the allusive context of pre-20th century literature; 4. Critics read diverting and entertaining pieces as being serious statements of philosophy, psychology, or religion.
Some modern literary critics are openly hostile to Christian thought. Lewis pointed out the problem of critiques by persons hostile to a particular genre. In this case he was writing about the science fiction genre, but the limitation applies to all genres.
“For one thing, most were not very well informed. For another, many were by people who clearly hated the kind they wrote about. It is very dangerous to write about a kind you hate. Hatred obscures all distinctions… Many reviews are useless because, while purporting to condemn the book, they only reveal the reviewer’s dislike of the kind to which it belongs.” (Essay— “On Science Fiction”)
Non-Christian critics, no matter how much background they have in Biblical literature and theology, will unavoidably lack full understanding of the Christian mindset and of what motivates the Christian artist to produce works of prophetic value. In up-coming articles, I will seek to examine the issues in Shirley from a Christian worldview. They are surprisingly relevant to our own age. The book is set during the Napoleonic wars and against a backdrop of technological advancement that was shaking economic and societal norm, a setting not unlike our own. The prophetic voice of Charlotte Bronte should still be heard.
Sources of Interest:
(1)Bloom, Harold (ed.). The Bronte Sisters. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2002.
(2)Bronte, Charlotte. Shirley (in The Bronte Sisters) London: Octopus Books Limited, 1980.
(3)Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Bronte. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1975.
(4)Lewis, C. S. Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1994 ed.
(5)Thaden, Barbara Z. Student Companion to Charlotte and Emily Bronte. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001.
Essay Four
Unjust Criticism, Part 2: a Case Study
by Teri Ong
In a previous post I introduced the idea that while it is the role of literary critics to critique, it happens not infrequently that critics find fault with materials that they cannot fully comprehend because they do not understand, agree with, or appreciate the worldview of the author. This is particularly true when a Christian author is being critiqued by a non-Christian critic. Every artist’s work is infused with ideas and elements that flow out of their personal philosophies, ideas, and presuppositions. If a work of art is not flowing with the very soulish life-blood of the artist, it is either dead or entirely artificial. Good literature written by Christian authors, though not preachy or teachy, is infused with their spiritual ideas and insights. And while non-Christian critics may accurately analyze the technical excellence (or lack thereof) of the Christian author’s craftsmanship, they will have trouble understanding and appreciating spiritual insights that must be spiritually discerned. The Apostle Paul wrote about this spiritual phenomenon in I Corinthians 2:14-15: “But a natural (non-believing) man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things…”
One such Christian author, who has suffered much misunderstanding over the past century, is Charles Dodgson, known to most by his pen name, Lewis Carroll. Carroll was the author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, two children’s classics that shaped fashions in children’s literature for 100 years.
Carroll, born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), was the son of an Anglican clergyman. He grew up in a very normal and very happy family. His father’s parish was out in the English countryside, and Charles and his siblings experienced the joys of nature first hand, even living on a canal houseboat for a time. There was nothing twisted or warped about his childhood.
He was a gifted intellectual and became a fellow at Christ College, Oxford, where he took a first in mathematics, a second in classical moderations, and a third in “Greats.” He obtained a master of arts in 1857. After completing his own education, he became a lecturer in mathematics at Oxford. While a student, he had written satires and had drawn cartoons that were printed in student publications. Although he had a speech impediment that kept him from being a glib entertainer, he was known among fellow students as a sharp wit.
In 1861 he was ordained as a deacon in the Anglican Church and never shrank from performing religious duties whenever called upon, though he did not volunteer to do extra preaching because of his speech problem. His nephew and first biographer, S. Dodgson Collingwood wrote of him,
“He disliked being complimented on his sermons, but he liked to be told of any good effect that his words had upon any member of the congregation… In a letter to his sister, he wrote, ‘It is not good to be told (and I never wish to be told), ‘Your sermon was so beautifulཀ’ We shall not be concerned to know, in the Great Day, whether we have preached beautiful sermons, but whether they were preached with the one object of serving God.’” (1- p. 77)
He taught mathematics for his entire career, but he was also a talented artist as a writer and as a photographer (a relatively new and experimental art form in his day). He wrote and published a math textbook, An Elementary Treatise on Determinants, but that was not how he formed friendships with the literary elite of his day. He loved being with children and loved to entertain them with made-up stories. Other authors in that Victorian age, such as Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame, and George MacDonald were experimenting with new forms of imaginative stories for children. Carroll became a great friend of the MacDonald family, and particularly of the MacDonald children. He practiced his “Alice” stories on them and was encouraged by their father, who was himself a best-selling writer of that day, to write them down and publish them. Without such “family” ties, it is unlikely that we would have the “Alice” stories in published form.
Carroll knew, socialized with, and photographed many of the literary greats of his day; Christina Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Sir John Millais, Charlotte M. Yonge, Tennyson, Thackeray, and John Ruskin. The best photographs we have of the MacDonald family were taken by Carroll.
I remember being taught that Carroll was obviously a drunkard or a drug addict— his tales were so full of weirdness and the absurd. Notice how the characters in his stories experienced time and space distortions because of eating and drinking unknown substancesཀ The Oxford Dictionary of Children’s Literature even raises suspicions of some sort of moral twist in him because he liked the company of children, though the writer of that article does admit that he probably never married simply because he was refused by the parents of the one woman he loved. Some have even hinted at some form of schizophrenia; that sometimes he was Carroll and sometimes he was Dodgson.
Because of the unusual and unique qualities of his stories, children were enthralled and grown-ups suspicious. The rumors started in his own lifetime. Collingwood relates the following humorous story.
“Once he [Carroll] was in a [railway] carriage with a lady and her little daughter, both complete strangers to him. The child was reading Alice in Wonderland, and when she put her book down, he began talking to her about it. The mother soon joined in the conversation, of course, without the least idea who the stranger was with whom she was talking. ‘Isn’t it sad,’ she said, ‘about poor Mr. Carroll? He’s gone mad, you know.’ ‘Indeed,’ replied Mr. Dodgson, ‘I had never heard that.’ ‘Oh, I assure you it is quite true,’ the lady answered. ‘I have it on the best authority.’ Before Mr. Dodgson parted with her, he obtained her leave to send a present to the little girl, and a few days afterwards she received a copy of Through the Looking Glass, inscribed with her name and ‘From the Author, in memory of a pleasant journey.’” (1 – pp. 407-8)
Is it so hard to believe a man of Christian upbringing and character could like children with no twisted or ulterior motive? Is it so hard to believe that a mathematician would find outlets for his creativity and sense of humor in nonsensical word play, cartoons, and fantastic stories? Is it hard to believe that a serious minded math teacher and Anglican deacon would choose to use a pseudonym for publication purposes and not to express a twisted alter ego?
Admittedly, sometimes family members who become biographers have a vested interest in protecting the family name. But on the other hand, family members are in a position to know best the inside scoop on their subject. Collingwood wrote, “His diary is full of such modest depreciations of himself and his work, interspersed with earnest prayers…” and that his life was “full of good deeds and innumerable charities, a life of incessant labor and unremitting fulfillment of duty.”
I close with these examples showing the extent to which Carroll was and is misunderstood. Collingwood stated,
“I have dwelt at some length on this side of his life, for it is, I am sure, almost ignored in the popular estimate of him. He was essentially a religious man in the best sense of the term, and without any of the morbid sentimentality which is too often associated with the word; and while religion consecrated his talents, and raised him to a height which without it he could never have reached, the example of such a man as he was, so brilliant, so witty, so successful, and yet so full of faith, consecrates the very conception of religion, and makes it yet more beautiful.”
“It was a writer in the National Review who, after eulogizing the talents of Lewis Carroll, and stating that he would never be forgotten, added the harsh prophecy that ‘future generations will not waste a single thought upon the Rev. C. L. Dodgson.’ If this prediction is destined to be fulfilled, I think my readers will agree with me that it is solely on account of his extraordinary diffidence about asserting himself. But such an unnatural division of Lewis Carroll the author from Rev. C. L. Dodgson the man, is forced in the extreme. His books are simply the expression of his normal habit of mind, as these letters show. In literature, as in everything else, he was absolutely natural.” (1 – pp. 387-8)
. If you or your children read the “Alice” stories again, read them in a new “light.”
___________
(1) S. Dodgson Collingwood. The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1899.
Essay Five
Feminist or Feminine?
By Teri Ong
From the very day that God made humankind, “male and female created He them”, there have been two complementary but different views of how things work in the world. Until the late 18th century there were few significant women’s voices to present in a concrete and permanent form the issues that impact women’s lives differently from men’s lives.
One of the earliest voices was Charlotte Bronte. In her novel Shirley she explores the lives of women from several social classes and of differing marital status and age. She demonstrates that one thing women hold in common with each other and with men is the desire to do something meaningful with their lives. She draws a distinction between biblical servanthood and being servile. The difference was expressed by Bronte as having purpose in life. Bronte paints a picture of women who believe there is no purpose for a woman’s life apart from marriage and those who have found fulfillment as nurturers apart from marriage. She successfully shows that there are happy and unhappy married women just as there are happy and unhappy single women. Their level of contentment is more related to their sense of purpose than to their “lot in life.”
Separated by about 40 years and the Atlantic Ocean, Louisa May Alcott, nonetheless touches on similar themes in An Old-Fashioned Girl. Alcott presents upper class women, young and old, who are bored and tired of trivial lives of leisure. On the other hand, she portrays “working girls” who have developed more strength of character and more satisfaction with their lot because they have been involved in meaningful labors.
Moving on another 25 years, and removed from the big city to the Canadian countryside, Lucy Maud Montgomery once again touches the same themes, only through the eyes of children, particularly one child in Emily of New Moon. In her close knit village, based on real life situations, she explores the lives of various women such as the maiden aunts who must raise Emily, eccentric widow ladies who seem to find meaning in goading and annoying one another, a mother who finds all significance in relation to her only son. Montgomery explores more fully the difference between duty and delight by contrasting Aunt Elizabeth who has lived her whole life finding purpose through doing her duty with young Emily who finds delight in developing her writing skills.
All three of these authors acknowledge that the “duty” of women centers around the home. It is a proper role of wives and daughters to meet the domestic needs of the family. Cooking and cleaning and mending are part of the necessities that women, who God designed to be helper-nurturers (Genesis 2:18), can find some satisfaction in doing. Lack of ultimate satisfaction for the characters portrayed in these three novels came from two basic directions.
One: Failure to do the basics
The young ladies of “good families” in An Old Fashioned Girl are not expected to perform any significant domestic duties. Such things are handled by hired help. The young ladies have entire freedom to pursue leisure activities while they wait for marriage. Self-gratification easily turns to boredom, and emptiness is felt if not acknowledged.
In Shirley, poor women were hindered from doing “the basics” domestically because they were pressed into hard labor outside the home, often in terrible working environments in mills and factories for twelve to fifteen hours a day, in order to provide financially. Middle class women took more respectable situations as governesses. Upper class women sometimes had a level of oversight of the domestic servants, but did little meaningful work for themselves.
Two: An unfilfilled desire to go beyond the “basics”
The character Polly in An Old-Fashioned Girl would be content taking care of herself and her brother, but she is mentored by an older woman who teaches her the virtue of caring for those less fortunate. She also meets a group of women who desire to hone their creative skills so they can provide for themselves through their own creativity. Polly later influences other young ladies to develop their skills and put them to meaningful use for the benefit of others.
Similarly, Caroline in Shirley can relate to a family of sisters who are willing to do their duty and learn how to do domestic chores but then want “more” out of life, such as the expansion of the mind through education and travel. Bronte unabashedly appeals to the characteristics of the “virtuous woman” in Proverbs 31 as a woman who fulfills her duty to family and neighbors, but then finds purpose and fulfillment in creativity and commerce. She states unequivocally that men who restrict their wives and daughters to the boredom of a few perfunctory household duties are acting unbiblically.
Montgomery portrays women who are marginally content with their lives because they have been raised and inculcated so thoroughly with a sense of family duty. But through the child, Emily, she shows us the youthful longing for more. Emily describes her longing as a desire to be famous as a writer, but when pressed, she admits that it is the perfection of the writing skills themselves that holds her captive.
Twentieth century British author, Dorothy L. Sayers makes a case that the reason modern women have fled the home is because now they can; and one motivating factor is that all of the creativity has been stripped from domestic work. We buy clothes, we buy food, we buy gadgets and appliances to do the housework, we send our children off to be educated and cared for by others. She argues that a key factor in all humans finding satisfaction in life is creative, meaningful work. Why would that be? Because a primary attribute of God is creativity, and creativity, therefore is an outworking of the image of God in humanity, male AND female. She argues convincingly that women would be happy to work at home if all of the good parts hadn’t been taken away.
In her essay, “Are Women Human?” she points out that spinning, dying, weaving, brewing, catering, pickling, bottling, meat curing, and property management, which at one time were traditional domestic duties done by women, have been “handed over to big industry, to be directed and organized by men at the head of large factories… It is perfectly idiotic to take away women’s traditional occupations and then complain because they look for new ones. Every woman is a human being– one cannot repeat that too often– and a human being must have an occupation, if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.” (pp. 24-25)
Sayers explores the theme through the character Harriet Vane in the “Peter Wimsey” stories, who has developed a career as a detective novelist as a means of supporting herself. As the stories unfold, Harriet finally marries independently wealthy Lord Peter Wimsey. As Mrs. Wimsey, Harriet has to grapple with whether or not she will continue writing stories. She concludes that it was the writing itself, rather than the money she got for it, that gave her satisfaction.
Another 19th century American author who explored these same themes was Susan Coolidge in her “Katy” series. In the third book of the series, What Katy Did Next, Katy, who has faithfully been fulfilling domestic chores for her widower father and numerous brothers and sisters, is offered an opportunity to travel in Europe for several months. Everyone sees it as a wonderful educational experience. And after all, domestic duties are not “rocket science.” Katy’s sister well says,
“My dear child, I know a flannel undershirt when I see one, just as well as you do,” she declared. “Tucks in Johnny’s dress, forsoothཀ Why, of course. Ripping out a tuck doesn’t require any superhuman ingenuityཀ Give me your scissors, and I’ll show you at once. Quince Marmalade? Debby can make that. Hers is about as good as yours; and if it wasn’t, what should we care, as long as you are ascending Mont Blanc and hobnobbing with Michelangelo and the crowned heads of Europe?” (p. 190)
Biblically, is all of this cry for “more” in the way of purpose and fulfillment a sound thing? Is it just a precursor to the feminist movement? Aren’t women supposed to be “keepers at home”?
Biblically, the “virtuous” woman of Proverbs 31 is literally the “mighty” or “strong” woman. The Hebrew word, chayil, translated “virtuous” in regard to women, is the same word translated “mighty” in regards to David’s “mighty men.” God’s ideal is “strong” women, strong in character and determination in the carrying out of their domestic duties and “more.” “Keepers at home” in the old style English of the KJV is the same type of construction as we would use to describe the keeper of a jail. The keeper of the jail is the manager of the jail, not an inmate. A woman who is a keeper at home is the manager of the home, not a prisoner in it.
If we do not strive to become biblically “strong” women, we are destined to be “silly women” taken captive by all sorts of worldliness and wickedness. The “Christian Womanhood” movement has done much good in terms of reclaiming traditional household occupations and helping women find The Way Home, but there is a danger of becoming so reactionary to the sinfulness of American society at large that we are tempted to retreat to the days when the phrase “educated woman” was an oxymoron. Husbands who desire to reclaim education of children as a domestic duty will be happy to have wifely “helpers” who are suitably trained in more than cooking and canning. And since there seems to always be an over-supply of marriageable women and an under-supply of suitable men, there will always be a significant percentage of Christian daughters who never marry. How many women in a home does it take to meet the needs of one man after all of the sons have grown and gone?
God has given men and women gifts and talents to develop and to use for Him. Those gifts and talents are not all gender-specific; they are designed for the benefit of God’s Kingdom, not just “the home.” Sayers’ character Harriet Vane tells another woman, “I know what you’re thinking– that anybody with proper sensitive feeling would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well.” (p. 30) The proper education and development of women has to be the proper education and development of a woman, each one individually according to what God has given, so that each one will be suited to the good works that God has foreordained for each one to do (Ephesians 2:10). One may be a Dorcas, using her skills for all in her neighborhood. (Acts 9:36-42) One may be a Lydia, who was the head of her home. (Acts 16:14-15) Some may be Marys and Marthas, caring for their brother and their Lord. (John 11) Prayerfully, each one will be what God designed them to be.
References:
(1)Alcott, Louisa May. An Old-Fashioned Girl. Mineola, N. Y.: Dover Publications, 2007 edition.
(2)Bronte, Charlotte. Shirley. London: Penguin Books, 1974 edition.
(3)Montgomery, Lucy Maud. Emily of New Moon. New York: Dell Laurel Leaf, 1993 edition.
(4)Sayers, Dorothy L. Are Women Human? Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971.
(5)_______. Gaudy Night. New York: Avon Books, 1968.
(Photo caption)
Young ladies preparing themselves to be “suitable helpers” on the 2005 London Study Tour from Chambers College.
In the chapel at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
At a baroque concert at St. Martins-in-the-Field, London.
Essay Six
Energy Conservation, Horse Manure, and the 21st Century
by Teri Ong
I don’t remember many particulars from high school social studies classes, but I do remember one lesson in which the teacher, who was a rather crusty ex-Marine (though I don’t think there is such a thing as an EX-Marine), said, “If there had been computers in the 1800’s, they would have predicted that by now we would be waste-deep in horse manure.” The point he made was that when we try to extrapolate conditions into the future, we can do so only on the basis of known technologies and applications.
This is a problem for social and environmental prognosticators everywhere. Global warming gurus make their warnings on the basis of combustion engines and fossil fuels. Yet we know that something new and different is always over the horizon. God has blessed man with a great capacity for creativity and ingenuity. The horse-and-buggy people had to give the road over to horseless carriages. And the combustion engine horseless carriage is soon to give way to the ZAP (Zero Air Pollution) electric car that can actually run at over 100 MPH.
But when change does come, there are always some who face the pain of displacement in the change. Whale oil sellers had a hard time when kerosene became popular. Lamp oil and gas lights weren’t needed anymore when electricity became widely and safely available. And now my local paper, The Greeley Tribune, reports that Edison’s electric light bulbs will soon be found only in museums, replaced by energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs. Those, too, will be replaced by something better some day. The Pony Express only lasted a couple of years before it was replaced by telegraphy.
The novel, Shirley, by Charlotte Bronte, paints a picture of the social pains that were caused by the industrial revolution in the early decades of the 19th century. Skilled workers were replaced by unskilled workers running machines. Machines could produce so much more and in less time than ever before. Prices went down, which was a benefit to consumers, but wages also went down which hurt workers. Cheap labor was sometimes brought in from other countries (like Ireland and Belgium). Families lost their homes and properties because they couldn’t make ends meet on low wages. Investors made fortunes and lost fortunes on risky speculations. Family life suffered because dad, mom, and the children all had to work to keep a household going. Sometimes things turned violent and the law had to step in.
All of these conditions sound eerily familiar. Technology changes, things change, times change, but people don’t change. That’s why King Solomon could say, from his vantage point at least 10 centuries into recorded history, “There is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
How did they cope in Bronte’s day? Life was hard, and undoubtedly harder for some than for others. And in her day there were no “golden parachutes” or “golden safety nets.” Bronte portrays the contempt that the “haves” often had for the “have nots.” She was honest enough also to include in her novel the contempt the “have nots” had for the “haves.” In love and in war, there must be at least two parties involved. And class warfare bears this similarity with other types of warfare— a great many people get caught in the cross-fire.
Shirley is a “state of Britain” novel. The plot is loosely based on the Luddite rebellions that were sparked by difficult economic conditions caused by the intersection of the Napoleonic wars and the Industrial revolution. The characters represent people from the different strata of society in England at the beginning of the 19th century. It can be instructive for us in the 21st century if we can overcome our temporal snobbery and appreciate that all people of all times, since our first ancestors were cast out of the garden, have had to struggle to make a satisfying life for themselves, if not just to survive.
Bronte’s town is populated with a mill owner, Robert Moore, who wants to mechanize regardless of the humanitarian cost; workers who are willing to commit acts of violence and destruction to protect the only way of life they have known; a group of religious leaders of all theological stripes, some of whom understand their role in times of social upheaval and some of whom only want to protect their own interests; middle class merchants who are caught between their desire for the wealth of the upper class and their identification with the “little people”; women young and old who are unfulfilled in love and/or marriage; ill-cared-for and neglected children. You will find the happy and the unhappy, the complacent and the rebellious, the fulfilled and the restless, leaders and followers, selfish and altruistic. You will meet people you know. You will likely meet yourself somewhere along the way.
In the end, Bronte, who wrote from a Christian world view, hints at Biblical solutions to the problems in her tumultuous society. Respect and honor should be the basis for loving marriages rather than social and economic standing; children should be trained up in the way they are bent rather than pushed into professions that bring prestige; the “poor who are always with us” should be treated with dignity; and those who are blessed with the world’s goods should use their resources in compassionate ways for the benefit of others.
It doesn’t matter what the social and economic prognosticators predict about our own day or about any future day— technology changes but the character of humanity does not change. And God does not change— He is the same “yesterday, today, and forever” and His solutions to our problems are the same as well. R. C. Sproul, Jr. observes, “The more things change, the more they stay the same. God’s people were sinners then [in Bible times], and God’s people are sinners now. The joy in the unchanging nature of reality is this: then and now, those who confess their sins, He is faithful and just to forgive their sins.”
Bronte shows us a picture of what life can be when lived in the framework of Christian obedience and God’s grace. At the end of the novel she advises,
“The story is told. I think I now see the judicious reader putting on his spectacles to look for the moral. It would be an insult to his sagacity to offer directions. I only say, God speed him in his questཀ” (p. 891)
References:
(1)Bronte, Charlotte. Shirley. in The Bronte Sisters. London: Octopus Books, 1980.
(2)Sproul, R. C., Jr. “The More Things Change,” Tabletalk, February 2008, p. 81.
Essay Seven
A Really Inconvenient Truth
by Teri Ong
Al Gore gave us an inconvenient truth which is inconvenient mostly because it is probably NOT true (i.e. human-caused global warming). Dennis Prager has voiced an inconvenient truth of a different kind; it is inconvenient precisely because it IS true. In fact it is “true truth,” as the Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer would say. What is that truth? That men must always fight to control their sexual natures, just as women must fight to control their emotional natures.
We have seen a graphic example this week of what happens when a man does not control his sexual nature and appetites as we witnessed the degradation of former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. We in Greeley, Colorado have been dragged through months of muck as we followed a murder trial which revealed a long history of adultery, abortion, sexual perversion, and revenge. Even today another public official in New York has confessed to a string of adulterous affairs based on the premise that his wife was unfaithful first.
Russian author Leo Tolstoy depicted the unhappiness generated by men who lack sexual control and women who lack emotional control in his epic novel Anna Karenina. On the very first page we are introduced to Stepan Arkadyevitch, who, as the novel opens, is agonizing about the fact that his wife has found out about his affair with their children’s governess. He is willing to take the blame for his wife’s unhappiness and despair, but he will not blame himself for giving in to sexual appetite. He rather blames the unhappiness on the fact that his wife found out about “the other woman” and that he then bungled the meeting at which he confessed.
Tolstoy astutely described the scene:
“There happened to him at that instant what does happen to people when they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed towards his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even– anything would have been better than what he did do– his face utterly involuntarily…assumed its habitual, good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile.” (p. 6)
After all– what was there to be sorry about? Arkadyevitch was just acting out who he truly was.
“He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife…He had never clearly thought out the subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her… He had even supposed that she, a worn-out woman no longer young or good looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view.” (p. 7)
Deep in his heart he knew that being unfaithful to his wife was wrong, but he did not want to take steps to reconcile. Reconciliation would require setting aside self-gratification.
“‘To go or not to goཀ’ he said to himself; and an inner voice told him that he must not go, that nothing could come of it but falsity; that to amend, to set right their relations was impossible, because it was impossible to make her attractive again and able to inspire love, or to make him an old man, not susceptible to love.” (p. 12)
As the novel goes on we see the destruction wrought by Stepan’s selfish desire for physical gratification, as well as that wrought by his sister Anna’s selfish desire to experience emotional passion. The problem is not so much “sex” as it is “self.”
Much of the public outrage over Spitzer’s immoral liaisons has been focused on his self-centeredness which has ultimately hurt not only his family, but all of the people he was elected to serve. That is why the private lives of public officials do matter. Someone who is quintessentially selfish in the most intimate of human relationships, that of husband-wife, has the potential for selfishness in all other relationships.
At Easter time, Christians celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ is the universal pattern of selfless sacrifice. The Apostle Paul said of Him, “…although He existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8)
We can read this and say, “So what? I still deserve a break today.” Or we can, as the Apostle Paul said, have Christ’s attitude in ourselves. “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:3-4) We could all be better public servants by being more like The Public Servant, Jesus Christ.
When we set “self” up as our god, “self” will become the demon behind our idol worship. Is this “true truth”? Just ask Eliot Spitzer.
Reference:
(1)Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina (Translated by Constance Garnett). New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003 edition.
Essay Eight
Reward Points for Nothing
by Teri Ong
We all like rewards. If we didn’t, big business wouldn’t be able to entice us with all of the “reward points” programs. I was just offered a plan through my bank a couple weeks ago. The sales and promotions lady who called me offered to give me “valuable coupons and discounts” if I spent enough on “qualifying purchases” and if I paid $25 to get into the “rewards program.” She could tell I wasn’t taken in when I accidentally snickered in her ear. She admitted, “I’ve been telling my boss that it isn’t much of a rewards program if you have to buy into it.” She realized it was as silly as the “major award” (a.k.a. “Leg Lamp”) from the film A Christmas Story. You could almost see the word “Frah-gee-lay” imprinted on the back of the rewards card.
I think in my life I have not thought so much about being “rewarded” as about just having a little something to show for the investment of my time and energy. I am a wife and mother, after all, and what do you have to show for doing a load of laundry? You have a basket of clothes that need to be folded and put away. What do you have to show for doing a load of dishes? A dishwasher full of dishes that need to be put away, that is, if you can get to them before they are put back out on the table for the next meal. What do you have to show for cleaning up the breakfast mess? Someone who comes in and asks, “What’s for lunch?”
This essay is dedicated to my good friend (and probably only faithful reader), Annie, who has discussed this topic with me from time to time. In the reflections that come when one is past age 50, I feel like I have done a lot of things but don’t have much to show for them. I told Annie once that someday I would write a book entitled A Failure for Jesus, but it wouldn’t matter because no one would read it. When I am brutally honest with myself, I can admit that I really would like my earthly labors to be rewarded with a little earthly “success.” Lurking inside is the idea that if I had a little bit of earthly success in some spiritual endeavor, maybe it would indicate that I had done something of some significance.
People who know me would respond to these musings, “You idiotཀ You have seven children who all love the Lord, two beautiful grandchildren, a nearly perfect son-in-law, and a still-happy 30 year long marriage– be gratefulཀ A lot of people would kill to have those things.”
I knowཀ I knowཀ And I am grateful.
But I also have a sympathy for the feelings expressed by George MacDonald in Phantastes. MacDonald’s character Anodos makes a journey into Fairy Land, “fairy” in the old Spencerian sense of the word– that is to say, a journey into the spiritual realm. While in Fairy Land, Anodos meets a great knight that has many qualities that allude to the character of Christ. Anodos says,
“This,” I said to myself, “ is a true man. I will serve him, and give him all worship, seeing in him the embodiment of what I would fain become. If I cannot be noble myself, I will yet be servant to his nobleness.” He, in return, soon showed me such signs of friendship and respect as made my heart glad, and I felt that, after all, mine would be no lost life, if I might wait on him to the world’s end, although no smile but his should greet me, and no one but him should say, “Well doneཀ He was a good servantཀ” at last. But I burned to do something more for him than the ordinary routine of a squire’s duty permitted.” (Emphasis mine)
I believe MacDonald captured a desire that many believers have– that burning desire to do something out of the ordinary for God. But God doesn’t often call us to do things that are “great” from a human standpoint. More often He calls us to do things that are hard. “Great” and “hard” are almost never the same thing. Remember what the servant said to Naaman when he didn’t want to go bath in the Jordan River? (II Kings 5:13) Many things that are humanly great have been accomplished through human exertion and will power. But the hard things God asks us to do can only be done through His power.
God has gone so far as to tell some of his greatest servants up front that they wouldn’t experience any human “success”; for example, the prophet Ezekiel. God said to him, “ Son of man, go and get thee unto the house of Israel, and speak with my words unto them… But the house of Israel will not hearken unto thee; for they will not hearken unto me: for all the house of Israel are impudent and hardhearted.” (Ezekiel3:4,7) Ezekiel offered up his successful career on the altar of obedience and spoke faithfully, even knowing that no one would listen.
This does not seem like a good “business plan” from our vantage point, but it makes perfect sense when we remember that God doesn’t NEED anything we have or anything we can do. He is all sufficient in and of Himself. He is blessed, however, when we demonstrate His worthiness by obeying Him when our obedience brings no fleshly benefit to ourselves, including the benefit of “success”. As C. S. Lewis points out in The Four Loves, “Need-love” does not flow from God to us, it can only flow from us to God. When we are doing hard things, hard because they are not great, our love grows because we have greater need for the loving provision of God’s grace.
When Oswald Chambers was struggling with the decision to go to Bible college or to stay in art school, he spent a night alone in prayer. He came away from that personal prayer meeting at the top of a bleak hill in Edinburgh with the sense that God had told him, “I want to use you, but I can do without you.” He can do without all of us. All we have to offer is to call Him Lord and do the things He says. That is the greatest thing to do precisely because it is the hardest thing to do.
For Nothing: A Failure for Jesus
Some days it seems I go no where fast
When a Voice asks, can I pass the “Job” test?
“Do you love Me enough to serve Me for nothing?
Are you ready and willing to pour out your offering?
If I ask you for hard things, will you do as I say?
Do you love me enough to bow and obey?
Would you write Me a book that no one may read?
Would you teach a lesson that no one may heed?
Would you sing a song that no one will hear?
Will you finish the race when no one will cheer?
Will you love as my bride in sickness as health?
Will you faithful remain in want as in wealth?
For no fleshly gain by Job was I served,
But even with that, he got more than deserved.
I give to you life and breath every day
And all that you need; what more can I say?
You may make a meal that no one will eat,
But you’ll earn a crown to lay at my feet.
I am a rewarder of those I have bought;
Your service for Me is never for nought.
I will give results you may never see
When you do what I ask obediently.
Pour out your offering; it’s what I desire.
Put all on the altar; and I will send fire.
—TLO March 2008
It is impossible to serve God for nothing. But God will test us to see if we are willing to get nothing for our flesh. Job was stripped of everything that could be construed as worldly success– his home, his wealth, his children, his posterity through those children, his standing in the community, and even the congeniality of his spouse. When God finally did speak to him toward the end of his trial by fire, Job came to understand that no one deserves anything particular from God. Everything we have is graciously given. In reality, God gives me everything; it is I who give nothing, nothing but obedience.
MacDonald understood this part of the spiritual life too. The knight explains to Anodos,
“Somehow or other,” said he, “notwithstanding the beauty of this country of Faerie, in which we are, there is much that is wrong in it. If there are great splendours, there are corresponding horrors; heights and depths; beautiful women and awful fiends; noble men and weaklings. All a man has to do, is to better what he can. And if he will settle it with himself, that even renown and success are in themselves of no great value, and be content to be defeated, if so be that the fault is not his, and so go to the work with a cool brain and a strong will, he will get it done…”
As our friends at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London pray, I pray, “Lord, bless us with instrumentality.”
(Caption)
This is the Congregational church building in Arundel, England where George MacDonald was a pastor. There is no longer any congregation that meets there. The building has been an antique store and a warehouse.
References:
(1)Lewis, C. S. The Inspirational Writings of C. S. Lewis: The Four Loves. New York: Inspirational Press, 1994.
(2)MacDonald, George. Phantastes. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2000 edition.
(3)McCasland, David. Abandoned to God. Discovery House. (A biography of Oswald Chambers)
Essay Nine
By the Sea, by the Sea, by the Beautiful Sea
by Teri Ong
My “current event” of interest for the last couple weeks is notable to me in that it was really a non-event. Our family went on a 3500 mile road trip from Colorado to South Carolina to visit my husband’s dad. While we were there we did not watch the news, we did not read the newspaper, we did not listen to talk radio; we devoted ourselves entirely to enjoying our time with family and friends. The children got to go bass fishing, take walks in the woods, learn how to paddle a canoe, jump on the neighbor’s trampoline, and most notably, go to the seashore.
We all got to go to the seashore.
There are a lot of wonderful things you can do in Colorado, but going to the ocean is not one of them.
Of course, when we came home, all of us also had a bad case of solar leprosy. But it was worth it. Our ocean day was gorgeous– blue skies, puffy white clouds, a cool breeze, a gentle surf. We got to the Isle of Palms just at high tide, so the beach-combing was great. We were even entertained by a flock of friendly seagulls as we ate our picnic lunch.
I have heard that there are places were the air is pleasant because it is heavy on negative ions. I don’t know if that is correct– it may just be some silly urban myth. But I could believe it of the ocean. As soon as I sat down and took a deep breath, there was no more tension in me. Of course, it could be the sitting and breathing, but I don’t think so entirely.
Charles Spurgeon, the famous English preacher, used to go to the south coast of France when his gout would flare up. Author George MacDonald would go to the Italian seaside when his tubercular lungs couldn’t stand any more of the English winter. It used to be common to go on a sea voyage for one’s “health.”
As I sat there, the words of a song I sang long ago came to me.
“Of breathing new air and finding it celestial.”
“Celestial.” Yes, that was the perfect word. Heavenly, without a doubt.
Then I had to wrack my mind to think of the rest of the words.
“Just think of stepping on shore and finding it heaven”
So far, so good. Yes, the picture was apt. The stretch of shore where we were was lined with enormous, beautiful beach houses. My husband observed, “I wonder how those work as rentals. They obviously aren’t just single family dwellings.”
He says that based on the fact that for 22 years we have lived in a 1200 square foot single family dwelling. After that much time, it is a little hard to imagine that people do live in single family dwellings that are less cozy than ours. But, from my extensive background reading decorating magazines, my guess was that most of them were designed for one family at a time.
Then I thought of the words from the Bible, “In my Father’s House are many mansions.” (John 14:2) Mansions lining the celestial shore– I could see it!
I thought of literary examples where the journey to heaven is compared to crossing a body of water. In John Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress, the Celestial City is on the far shore. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis, Reepicheep the mouse sails off in a little coracle across the waters to find Aslan’s country.
“Of touching a hand and finding it God’s”
That was another of the lines! That one fits too– The Apostle John described the very throne of God as being beside a crystal sea (Revelation 4:6), and the voice of God as being like “the sound of many waters.” (Revelation 1:15)
Even our gentle surf that day made quite a noise. It was restful and serene, but unmistakably powerful. A year and a half ago I made a crossing of the Irish Sea on a catamaran ferry boat on a particularly rough sea. Having been a pilot of small aircraft in the summertime, I didn’t think I would be all that susceptible to seasickness, but the continual lurching and heaving of the ship made me long for solid ground. Since we were crossing in November, it made me think of the Pilgrims and their perilous voyage on the Mayflower. The sight of the coast of New England must have been unbelievably welcome, compared with my joy at first spotting the port of Dublin after a voyage of only a few hours.
In The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis depicts heaven as being more solid than anything we have experienced in life. In fact, objects in the heavenly realm are so solid that they cause injury to beings who are not prepared to be there. He uses a similar picture in Perelandra where creatures live on masses of vegetation floating on the sea, and the spiritual ruler of the planet inhabits the “fixed land.”
It is at the seashore that everything comes together– the celestial air, the varying waves and tides, and the welcome sight of “fixed land.”
On a couple other visits to South Carolina, we had had opportunity to go to the ocean. I cannot imagine going that far and being so close and not going. I would have given up most other possible activities that we might have planned on our vacation in order to go to the seashore. Maybe some of it has to do with living in Seattle as a child and playing in tide pools at the Pacific coast on family trips to the Olympic Peninsula, or collecting driftwood on Camano Island in Puget Sound. Early experiences sometimes set us up for life.
I am very glad that my parents made sure I had a taste of life in Christ at an early age. Many people go all through life with the sense that what they have at the present moment is all there is. C. S. Lewis put it this way.
“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea.”
Back to the sea we go.
“Of waking up in glory, and finding it home.”
That’s it! The last line that I couldn’t remember.
References:
Poetic lines are from the song “Finally Home” – words by L. E. Singer
found in Majesty Hymns, Greenville, S. C.: Majesty Music, 1997.
The final Lewis quotation is from “The Weight of Glory” by C. S. Lewis
quoted in The Business of Heaven, New York: Inspirational Press, 1994, p. 300.
Photo captions
Mansions lining the coast of the Isle of Palms
My husband, Steve, breathing that heavenly coastal air.
Essay Ten
Solar Energy
by Teri Ong
My experience with the sun at the Isle of Palms a couple weeks ago has made me do a lot of thinking about the sun, especially with so much about “alternative energy” in the news lately. Our county recently became home to Vestas, which makes the large windmills for electricity generation. There has also been an ongoing controversy over a company that wants to mine uranium fairly close to the population center of our very large county. Since we get as much sun as Phoenix and more sun than Miami, solar panels have been popular here for a long time. With summer coming, we will probably again be asked to conserve on air conditioning in order to minimize the “rolling brown-outs” that our “aging power grid” is so susceptible to. And outrageous gas prices remind us how much of life revolves around that form of energy.
Energy and life are so inextricably linked that a clear line of demarcation is difficult. On an atomic level, if there is no electromagnetic energy, there is no atom. If there is no atom, there is no molecule. If there is no molecule, there is nothing of the material world as we know it.
My father, who was a physicist, delighted in finding all sorts of connections between discoveries in the realm of physics and information given to us in the Bible. In his seminars he taught that when God said, “Let there be light,” the phrase encompassed more than the creation of visible light. (See Confessions of a Rocket Scientist) We now know that visible light is just part of a continuous spectrum from invisible infrared to invisible ultra violet and beyond. What we call heat, light, and energy are all part and parcel of the same thing.
Light is an appropriate metaphor for the Trinity. The Apostle John wrote, “…God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” (I John 1:5) He also wrote specifically about Jesus, “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory.” (John 1:4, 14) The Triune God is Light, but Jesus is visible Light.
On the Isle of Palms we basked in the visible sunlight. It stimulated our eyes and we were able to see things clearly and sharply– like the wings of the birds silhouetted against the clear sky, and the ships going in and out of Charleston harbor, and the glint of the sun itself on the water. But at the same time we were being warmed by the invisible infrared and thoroughly burnt by the ultraviolet. The “burnt” part was imperceptible at first, and only later became excruciating. Parts of our bodies swelled up, became very sensitive to touch, and eventually patches of skin cracked and peeled off.
It just so happened that on our long road trip back to Colorado, we read aloud to each other The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis. In it, one particularly obnoxious, self-centered boy named Eustace, is turned into a dragon. Ironically, he is less odious to his companions as a fearsome dragon than he was as an obnoxious boy. But in his dragonly condition, he began to see himself for what he was. He later has an encounter with the great lion, Aslan, who will remake him as a new boy, but first he has to get rid of his dragon skin.
Eustace, at first, does not understand. But then he sees the possibilities of shedding outer layers of his skin in the same way as other snakes and reptiles do. He is successful at making little tears and pulling off several thin layers. But his efforts are not sufficient to remove enough skin so that his bath in Aslan’s pool will do him any good. Finally Aslan takes His claws and tears off everything– down to the very inner man and immerses Eustace in the pool. Eustace describes the experience,
“Well, He peeled the beastly stuff right off– just as I’d thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt– and there it was, lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then He caught hold of me–I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on– and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing, I found that all of the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again.” (pp.326-7)
Those of us who had been at the beach could all relate to peeling skin and tenderness underneath. Ours was physical pain caused by the physical sun. But there is good peeling and cleansing to be done to our spirits by our Spiritual Sun, the “true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.” (John 1:9)
But some reject the purifying and purging work of the Sun. “The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.” (John 1:5)
Yesterday I went, for the second time, to see the Ben Stein documentary Expelled. It is very well done, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is concerned with academic freedom. I am cheering Mr. Stein on because my own husband ran afoul of the accepted academic line in a public university and lost his job like some of those in Stein’s film. Those in his film who have rejected God, any god and all gods, have done so, according to their own words, because they want freedom from the sometimes searching and searing Light of God. Unlike Eustace, they do not want their dark, knobbly, dragon skin peeled off after a Divine Son-burn.
The Apostle John elucidates this condition of mankind,
“This is the judgment that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” (John 3:19-21)
Yet it remains– we must be reborn as new creatures in order to be part of God’s kingdom. We need the searching, searing work of God’s Spirit and the cleansing water of God’s Word to be part of God’s eternal kingdom. Jesus told Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God… Unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3,5)
If you haven’t yet– come to the Light. It will do you good.
“If we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.” (I John 1:7)
Sun of my soul, Thou Savior dear,
It is not night if Thou be near;
O may no earth-born cloud arise
To hide Thee from Thy servant’s eyes.
Abide with me from morn till eve,
For without Thee I cannot live;
Abide with me when night is nigh,
For without Thee I dare not die.
– by John Keble (1792-1866)
References:____________
(1)Lewis, C. S. The Complete Chronicles of Narnia. U.S. A.: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000.
(2)Swinney, Stanley I. Confessions of a Rocket Scientist. Greeley, Colorado: Chambers College Press, 2006.
Essay Eleven
Autumn Fruit
by Teri Ong
May seems like an unlikely time to write about harvest time. At our house we are still in the process of planting. In fact, we are still in the process of preparing the soil in some of our beds. But in one of the beds, we are nearing a harvest already– that is the strawberry bed.
My husband’s favorite dish in all the world is a bowl of crisp cereal with ice cold (and I do mean iceཀ) milk and fresh strawberries. We have more berries set on this year than any year previous, probably because of the excessively snowy winter we passed through. By week’s end we will start to pick beautiful berries, unless the squirrels get them before we do.
Strawberries are the first fruit of spring. They are gorgeous to the eye and luscious to the palate. But they don’t last long. Once they are ripe and picked they must be used within a day or two or they will quickly rot. Mostly they are the sweet promise that good stuff will be coming along all through the summer and into the fall.
On the other hand, I just cleaned out of my pantry three large squash that had been there since late October. They were still in fine shape. Each one easily could have provided a vegetable dish for my entire family– even after seven months in the larder. I remember reading somewhere about ཁsturdyཁ vegetables. Those squash were definitely sturdyཀ
Coming into winter I would rather have a pantry full of sturdy vegetables than a pantry full of strawberries. The veggies are not as pretty or as sweet, but they would give me the confidence that I would not go hungry during the cold months ahead.
I am coming up on my 52nd birthday. I am not exactly into the ཁcold monthsཁ of life, but a nip in the air every now and then lets me know they are ahead. I also know that the ཁstrawberry daysཁ of my life are past– not that I was ever very ཁluscious.ཁ Realistically I must now count on the sturdy fruit for the coming winter.
A work of poetry that has become one of my favorites is Psalm 92 from the Bible. We do not know who wrote this psalm. King David was perhaps the writer, but the author is to us anonymous. We do understand from the traditional heading given to the psalm that it was written as a song for the Sabbath day– that is, the day of rest.
I will quote only the last four verses– the ones that have become particularly hopeful for me.
ཁThe righteous man will flourish like the palm tree.
He will grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
Planted in the House of the Lord,
They will flourish in the courts of our God.
They will still yield fruit in old age;
They shall be full of sap and very green.
To declare that the Lord is upright;
He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.ཁ
Psalm 92:12-15 (NASV)
One can look at winter as being dark, cold, bleak, barren; with days that are at once both very short and very long. Or one can look at winter as a time of rest and refreshment– a time to enjoy the sturdy fruits of one’s labors.
We have friends who are organic farmers. They work extremely hard all through the spring and summer, often to the point of real exhaustion. For them, there is almost a sigh of relief when that first hard frost of the fall comes because they know that soon the winter provisions will be laid in and they can relax and enjoy them. It sounds almost like retirementཀ
But notice in this poem that the writer is comparing the people in old age to the tree– not to those enjoying the harvest. The fruit tree mentioned is a palm tree. Whether it is a date palm or a coconut palm, the fruit is sturdy. Palm trees also have a unique capacity to weather storms by their flexibility no matter how old they are. Notice also that the fruit produced by a tree is of little use to the tree itself. The fruit is for the nourishment of others and for the propagation of the life of that tree.
The American notion of retirement is to heap up as much material fruit as you can around your trunk to somehow protect yourself for the coming winter. But all you end up with is a rotten mess that hasn’t helped you or anyone else who might have been fed by your fruit. And we haven’t even touched on the idea that the better fruit is spiritual rather than material. In the physical realm a plant by the process of photosynthesis in very simplistic terms converts light into fruit. By a process of spiritual photosynthesis, if you will, we have the capacity to convert the Light of God into spiritual fruit as well.
Psalm 92 was written for a day of rest. The tree in old age does not retire from bearing fruit. The rest for the tree comes in that the fruit is produced and harvested, then there is no more responsibility for the tree. There is no more ཁworkཁ for the tree to do when the fruit goes out to nourish and provide life for others. More than anything, I want the life that is in me to spring out into sturdy, lasting fruit that can be sustenance for others during the winters of life.
Essay Twelve
Grow Like a Weed
by Teri Ong
One cannot pick up a newspaper or watch a news broadcast without being struck by the sordidness of everyday life. When I say “struck”, I do not mean the kind of blow you get from a low-hanging willow while lawn mowing; I mean the kind of blow you get when you’ve been stooping to retrieve something from the bottom shelf of the fridge and, having forgotten that the upper freezer door was also open, you stand up decisively.
I would tend to think that my jaded view is due to the kind of neighborhood I have lived in for over 20 years; a downtown neighborhood full of drug addicts, drunkards, gangs of neglected children, petty thieves, convicts on probation, and domestic abusers. Not all is bleak; there are many wonderful people there too. We have several fine neighbors, and we all look out for each other. Encounters with the media, however, make me believe that societal sordidness is not localized or limited to our neighborhood, but is as wide-spread as it is pervasive.
Our city is more of a large town than small city. It is a place where you can still get to know city and county officials on a first name basis, where the check-out people at the downtown grocery don’t have to look at the sales slip to know your name, and where the people in the post office don’t have to ask you for ID when you give them your credit card. I would like to believe that we are enough of a backwater that we are protected from the full force of America’s moral mudslide. But this week some of our local mud was raked on Dateline NBC when Josh Mankiewicz interviewed Ignacio Garraus.
Almost a year and a half ago Shawna Nelson shot and killed Heather Garraus. Heather Garraus was the wife of Shawna’s lover, Ignacio Garraus. The whole story unfolded into an episode of “As the Stomach Turns”, including adultery, perversion, lies, blackmail, and ultimately murder and mayhem. Our local whodunit quickly turned into a whydunit and then into a who helped, while the population of Greeley looked on in horrified fascination, the way people do when they see a bloody car wreck.
I don’t consider myself to be the slack-jawed gawker type. And I have never in my life read a People magazine. The murder mystery genre, however, is one of my favorite forms of lightweight reading, partly because of the number of heavyweight authors who have written such stories. In the last few weeks I have read The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers, Among the Shadows by L. M. Montgomery, and The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith. All of these authors dealt with the seamy side of life in ways that make the reader take a closer look at the dark side of human nature and possible responses to it.
The dark side of human nature has played a prominent role in history ever since Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden. Jealousy, murder, and cover-up followed soon on the heels of original sin. Human history since that time has been no picnic in a garden; it has been a fight for survival in a wasteland of depravity.
I’ve been thinking a lot about gardens and wastelands the last couple weeks. Number one– spring weather has finally arrived and I have been cleaning and planting my itty-bitty urban plots. Number two– my daughter asked me to give a devotional for a ladies’ tea on the theme, “Bloom where you are planted.” Number three– we discussed the nature of weeds in Sunday School last week. Someone even suggested that we as Christians need to be more like weeds, of all things.
Weeds certainly are hardy things. They grow fast, they grow large, they have incredible root systems, they seed themselves prolifically, they grow when there is a lot of rain, they grow when there is no rain, they grow when it is cold, they really grow when it is hot, they grow in sand, they grow on rock– In other words– THEY GROWཀ They grow in all conditions and when nothing else can.
Of the mystery stories I have read recently, two bloomed and one was barren. Lucy Maud Montgomery’s characters come away wiser for having seen evil. They frequently ask for God’s help and receive it in the form of circumstances guided and worked out in supernatural ways. Sayers, as always, brings her characters to closure and justice. Lord Peter Wimsey even declares to one of the characters, “My dear man, you were perfectly providential.” (p. 242) In The Sunday Philosophy Club the chief sleuth, Isabel Dalhousie, discovers that a fatal accident was no accident. The incident involved manslaughter, not murder. But in her philosophizing, Isabel sets herself above the law by declaring the law of Scotland “morally indefensible, and that was all there was to it.” (p. 246) The man who was responsible for sending his friend over the balcony rail to his death walks away with a “You’re sorry about it. We can leave it at that.” (p. 247) Biblically, God made a distinction between manslaughter and murder, but there were still consequences prescribed; the killer was not to get off with an “I’m sorry.”
On the hopeful side, Ignacio Garraus has recognized and admitted his culpability in the chain of events that led to his wife’s death. He called himself “a shallow adulterer,” and said that he loathed himself “because a beautiful woman’s dead for me having an affair… It’s on me.” Self-recognition is always a step in the right direction morally.
Human society is frequently a spiritual wasteland of selfishness and moral depravity. So what is our role, indeed, our duty in it as Christians? We should “grow like weeds.” Wherever God has let our seed take root, we can bloom. Weeds can withstand all sorts of abuse and privation. I was just noticing how dandelions have a remarkable way of popping back up to full height as soon as the lawn mower has passed over them. Weeds are the first thing back after a forest fire. Weeds are the first thing to take hold after a volcanic eruption. Some scientific report I read once declared that certain weeds would be the only life forms to survive a nuclear holocaust. I can believe it. Sometimes the greenest place on our property is the dirt parking lot between our house and our church building.
Our county extension office published a calendar this year that was distributed at our local farm show last January. It was a “weed calendar.” All of the floral landscape photos used month by month were of fields full of varieties of weeds. Most of them were prolific, tenacious, and impervious to human efforts to get rid of them. They were also beautiful in their own right and could provide sustenance and even healing. We can be like that too– no matter what kind of wasteland we find ourselves in.
References:
(1)Montgomery, Lucy Maud. Among the Shadows. New York: Bantam Books, 1990.
(2)Rodgers, Jakob. “Garraus to NBC: ‘I loathe myself’”, The Greeley Tribune. Satruday, May 17, 2008, p. A1, A7.
(3)Sayers, Dorothy L. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. New York: HarperPaperbacks, 2006 printing.
(4)Smith, Alexander McCall. The Sunday Philosophy Club. New York: Pantheon Books, 2004.
Photo Caption
Dandelions and assorted weeds thrive in the dirt and rock of the driveway.
Essay Thirteen
Eighty-Eight Bells
by Teri Ong
I have not written or posted for awhile because of other more pressing needs. A very good friend of mine lost the grandmother who had raised her. Grandmother had come to live with her for the last eighteen months of her life— eighteen months that were full of extreme challenges (physical, emotional and spiritual) for everyone in the household. In Donne-like terms, death held a proud grip on the household for many months, causing pain, upset, and uncertainty. There was little sleep, and there was little rest right up to the end.
In the end, the one whom Death thought to overthrow “died not” in her death. (1) Grandmother was a faithful believer and witness to the very end of her earthly life.
I was privileged last week to help in a few small ways with the funeral preparations. The service was beautiful, inspiring, and honoring. Grandmother had been a church organist from the age of ten. She officially retired at age 81, but kept playing for special occasions until cancer made it impossible to play any more. Her funeral was filled with glorious music provided by family members and a whole choir full of friends. The service was held in a small, historic Lutheran church near Boulder, Colorado. The all-wood interior and old-fashioned wood pews along with the high ceiling provided natural “mixing” for all of the otherwise unamplified music. It was gloriousཀ
Part of the service included an old tradition that is necessarily lacking from most modern funerals because of the modern lack of bells and carillons in most American churches. Grandmother’s great-grandson rang the church bell eighty-eight times to symbolize the eighty-eight years of her life.
When the bell began ringing, I instinctively began counting. After about 35 peals of the bell, I lost count, being lost in other thoughts. According to Moses, Grandmother had a very long life. “Normal” allotment is three-score and ten; any more than that is because of extra strength given by God. (Psalm 90:10) But as I was listening to the bells, I thought about how quickly even eighty-eight peals went by— more suggestive of the brevity of life rather than of longevity. The end of Psalm 90:10 says, “Soon it is gone, and we fly away.”
John Donne was the writer who admonished us that a funeral bell tolling for one is tolling for all of us. (2) Donne (1572-1631), was perhaps the most famous Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral ever. He was appointed by King James I and served from his appointment until his death. As a young man, he had been a somewhat wild and swashbuckling sort of figure, even sailing with Sir Walter Raleigh. After his Christian conversion, he gave up the prestige and power of a law career and turned to the church. His poetry lost its worldly and conceited tone and became deeply spiritual and symbolic. The sermons he preached at St. Paul’s were famous for their spiritual as well as their literary power. The written works fill ten volumes.
Sometime during the last ten years of his life, and some years after the death of his beloved wife, Donne was reflecting on death while confined to bed during a serious illness. It was during that confinement that he heard the church bells tolling for a departed soul. He wrote about his thoughts in Meditation 17 of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. His observations reiterate the thoughts of King Solomon who said, “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living take it to heart.” (Ecclesiastes 7:2)
Donne said,
“No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is a treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, Heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction will lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.”
Donne continued in Meditation 18,
“…[The bell] tells me he is gone to everlasting rest… I owe him a good opinion; it is but thankful charity in me, because I received benefit and instruction from him when his bell tolled.” (2)
Thank you, Grandmother, for the good instruction I received from the eighty-eight peals of your bell.
References:
(1) “Death, Be Not Proud” by John Donne
(2) Meditation 17 and Meditation 18 in The Literature of England, George K. Anderson and William E. Buckler (eds.), U. S. A.: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1966, pp. 991-3.
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I remember hearing, as a student at Tennessee Temple University in the early 1970’s, a particular speaker at a meeting of the Southwide Baptist Fellowship who decried the Southwide as being “too wide.” Obviously, their list of venerated saints was too long for him. On another “student” occasion, I was greatly blessed by a powerful sermon by B. R. Lakin. After Lakin, the congregation exuded a sense of spiritual energy and edification. Immediately following him in the pulpit was Jack Hyles. Hyles at that time was venerated by many fundamentalists because of his place in Elmer Townes’
