Education and Virtue

"Education is properly understood as the care and perfection of the soul. Excellence (arete) is not primarily excellence of skill but excellence of virtue." ~ Richard Gamble on Plato's view of education, The Great Tradition

Pooh's Profundity - Growing Up

Just more proof that A. A. Milne was a brilliant observer of human nature.

By the time it came to the edge of the Forest, the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, “There is no hurry. We shall get there someday.” But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late.
There was a broad track, almost as broad as a road, leading from the Outland to the Forest, but before it come come to the Forest, it had to cross this river. So, where it crossed, there was a wooden bridge, almost as broad as a road, with wooden rails on each side of it.

~ The House at Pooh Corner, by A.A. Milne

Austen characters on facebook?

If it were so...

HT Claire Escobar

Green Dolphin Street

I just posted on my friend Sarah's new blog that I had reviewed Elizabeth Goudge's Green Dolphin Street here, and then realized that I actually hadn't, only thought I had (not very uncommon for me these days). Anyway, in my current Elizabeth Goudge binge, I read this book for the first time. I think I started it years ago, but it didn't grab me, and I put it aside. Now I can't imagine why or how it didn't. I truly loved this book and would recommend it without hesitation. Like most of Goudge's books about marriage and family life that I have read, it is about real the demands of true, gritty, Christ-like love in unexpected ways and places, and in a self-sacrificing way that is definitely not hip or cool today, even among most Christians. Do yourself a favor and read this book.

Here are just a few of my favorite quotes:

"…what the world sees of any human creature is not the real life; that life is lived in secret, a reality that moves behind the façade of appearance, like wind behind a painted curtain; only an occasional ripple of the surface, a smile, a sudden light or shadow passing on a face, surprising by its unexpectedness, gives news of something quite other than what it is."

"There's much that goes into the makin' of a man or woman into somethin' better than a brute beast, but there's three things in chief, an' they're the places where life sets us down, and the folks life knocks us up against, an' – not the things ye get, but the things ye don't get."

And a most insightful quote on the ongoing battle with habitual and indwelling sin:

"By this time next week, such was her selfishness and pride, she might find herself once more a changeling, strayed again from home, with the door to unlock all over again. Yet once you had been home, surely, it was easier to get home again, and each fresh fight to get back to the water brook would bring one nearer its source, and that final coming home would be the satisfaction of every longing and the healing of every pain."

Who Shall Deliver Me?

God strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.

All others are outside myself;
I lock my door and bar them out
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.

I lock my door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall wall
Self from myself, most loathed of all?

If I could once lay down myself,
And start self-purged upon the race
That all must run ! Death runs apace.

If I could set aside myself,
And start with lightened heart upon
The road by all men overgone!

God harden me against myself,
This coward with pathetic voice
Who craves for ease and rest and joys

Myself, arch-traitor to myself ;
My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,
My clog whatever road I go.

Yet One there is can curb myself,
Can roll the strangling load from me
Break off the yoke and set me free

~Christina Rossetti

Prince Caspian?

I don’t pretend to be a movie critic. I’m not even a big movie fan. I’d rather read a book. But there are some exceptions, like To Kill a Mockingbird. Gregory Peck was the perfect Atticus, and there was little not to like in the movie.

Having read Prince Caspian (and all of Narnia) numerous times (say 15?) since I was twelve years old, the bar for me is admittedly pretty high. Overall, I liked The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and thought Adamson did a reasonably good job with it. So I was cautiously optimistic about Prince Caspian. I really wanted to like it. I did. Honest.

There were a few things that I really liked:

The river god was cool, very cool.

The trees “waded” through the earth admirably.

The scenery was awesome.

The last line was accurate: “I’ve left my new torch in Narnia!”

(Deep breath here) Now, with apologies to my friends who liked the movie, here a few of my many (to put it mildly) disappointments:

The very cool river god was never explained at all. If you hadn’t read the book, what in the world were you to make of that whole thing?

Reepicheep as a thinly veiled Puss-in-Boots from Shrek…Reep deserved better.

Aslan as a totally absent and detached diety (can’t even say Christ-figure), who has to be fetched by Lucy -- as opposed to followed by Lucy, as Lewis wrote it.

Peter as a sullen, angst-ridden, obnoxious teenager.

Caspian as a sullen, angst-ridden, obnoxious teenager.

Susan as a pouty heroine with a come-hither look, who would NEVER have actually been allowed to fight in a battle by Lewis, only to lead the archers, away from the fray. Lewis didn’t subscribe to the idea of women in battle. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Father Christmas says as much, “…battles are ugly when women fight.” That line, of course, was axed in the first movie.

Trumpkin never did bow and truly submit himself to the Lion, he just gave Aslan a surly and half-hearted look. Trumpkin…one of the most noble characters in the book…where was he? In the book, Trumpkin was Chesterton’s “jolly atheist”…you couldn’t help but love him. Volunteering for a mission which he believed to be in vain, Trumpkin stoutly answered Caspian’s inquiry as to why he was willing to go and look for the expected help from the high past when he didn’t even believe the old stories: “No more I do, Your Majesty. But what’s that got to do with it? I might as well die on a wild goose chase as die here. You are my King. I know the difference between giving advice and taking orders. You’ve had my advice, and now it’s time for orders.” A noble fellow…nothing like the snide and surly character I saw on the screen yesterday. Trumpkin without “Cobbles and kettledrums!” , “Thimbles and thunderstorms!”, “Wraiths and wreckage!”, “Crows and crockery!”??? Only heard one “bedknobs and broomsticks!” or some such…the kids said he did say that same line one more time but I must have missed it.

Worse still, where was the real Caspian, the boy king in whom the old nurse and Dr. Cornelius instilled a love of the truth and the “old things” by telling him the stories of old Narnia, giving Caspian a sense of mission, and giving him the authenticity to make the old Narnians trust him and recognize him as Aslan’s chosen deliverer and rightful ruler? In the movie, I couldn’t help but wonder why in the world the old Narnians would trust such a jerk.

I was fairly certain one of my favorite lines from the book would be left out, but nonetheless, was disappointed to find it gone. Aslan to Prince Caspian, after Caspian voices his shame on learning that he is descended from a race of pirates: "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

My overall impression is that this movie succeeded admirably in being just what Lewis repeatedly criticized in his essays on literature -- a postmodern retooling of the author’s story, thinly veiled chronological snobbery: ”We know oh so much better than Lewis could how to “reach” teens and tweens…our new ways are so much better than your old fashioned ways.”

My teens’ and young adults’ descriptions of this movie mostly involved the word “lame”.

And all of us, quite crestfallen.

Jane Austen on the "mega-church"

In Mansfield Park, chapter 9, Fanny and Edmund are discussing the importance of the clergyman with the disdainful Miss Crawford. Miss Crawford has just observed that don’t have much influence over their congregations, even if they preach “two sermons a week, even supposing them worth hearing, supposing the preacher to have the sense to prefer Blair’s to his own (my footnote says that many preachers of that day would read the well-known and eloquent Rev. Hugh Blair’s sermons rather than preach their own...nothing new under the sun, hmmm?)

Edmund supposes she is speaking of large congregations in London, while he is referring to the rest of the nation.

“We do not look in great cities for our best morality. It is not there that respectable people of any denomination can do most good; and it certainly is not there that the influence of the clergy can be most felt. A fine preacher is followed and admired; but it is not in fine preaching only that a good clergyman will be useful in his parish and his neighbourhood, where the parish and neighbourhood are of a size capable of knowing his private character, and observing his general conduct, which in London can rarely be the case. The clergy are lost there in the crowds of their parishioners. They are known to the largest part only as preachers…”

Owen and Tennyson

well...long time, no post. I bet you've all been waiting with bated breath...

I'm reading Tennyson's Idylls of the King this summer for Book Tea. It's wonderful, although I might find it pretty hard going if I hadn't read James Knight's version for children of Morte d'Artur and Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain first.

I'm also reading John Owen's Mortification of Sin. These two, surprisingly, complement each other nicely.

When the fair Elaine falls in love with the dashing Sir Lancelot,

"The shackles of an old love straiten'd him,
His honour rooted in dishonour stood
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true."

He was faithful to his unfaithful love for Queen Guinevere. Consequently, Elaine pined away unto death and then dramatically (to say the least) made a point of letting Lancelot know. It's worth reading if you don't know the story...and you must read it to understand Anne's perilous river journey which ended with Gilbert's rescue in Anne of Green Gables.

Here's Owen on sin's effect on our judgement:

"Sin's loud voice darkens the mind so that it cannot make a right judgement of things...so that it does not rightly judge the guilt of sin."