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This summer, the Faculty Ministry Leadership Team (of which I’m a part) is reading two books: Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness by Eugene Peterson, and Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry.  Yesterday, I sat for a few minutes in awe of this passage from Jayber Crow, in which Jayber, the barber of a fictional Kentucky town, Port William, explain the origin of his name:

If you have lived in Port William a little more than two years, you are still, by Port William standards, a stranger, liable to to have your name mispronounced.  Crow was not a familiar name in this part of the country, and so for a long time a lot of people here called me Cray, a name that was familiar.  And though I was only twenty-two when I came to the town, many of the same ones would call me “Mr. Cray” to acknowledge that they did not know me well.  My rightful first name in Jonah, but I had not gone by that name since I was ten years old.  I had been called simply J., and that was the way I signed myself.  Once my customers took me to themselves, they called me Jaybird, and then Jayber.  Thus I became, and have remained, a possession of Port William.

I have experienced firsthand the confusion of names in small town Kentucky.  In Benton, where I grew up, “Hickerson” was not known, but “Henderson,” “Henson,” “Dickerson,” and “Nickerson” were, so I spent a fairly significant part of my childhood correcting my name on official forms of various sorts.

But notice what Berry pulls off here, with a quick series of bird images. “Crow,” of course, begins the passage.  “Jonah,” however, means “dove” in Hebrew, and “Jayber” is a derivation of “Jaybird.”  In case that was not enough, we learn on the next page that Jayber’s mother was Iona Quail.  After reading this, I sat for several minutes, letting the images come to me and imagining what they might portend for this book.

There was an ad in this morning’s paper that confused me.  It was for Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project, and the ad started with this scenario: “Your sons favorite ballplayer just got arrested.” There is then a looping, swooping string of possible advice to give your son - I’m not sure if it’s meant to be a variety of options or a single conversation - that read,

Say he’s an example of how NOT to act -> Athletes aren’t role models -> Keep your opinions to yourself. -> Life’s all about second chances. -> Who am I to judge?

I’m not really sure what “keep your opinions to yourself” is all about; I’m not familiar with any U.S. athletes being arrested as political prisoners.  But it struck me that we talk a lot about athletes being role models or not being role models, either as good citizens or bad seeds, as if a person was one or the other and could never change.  Here in Cincinnati in recent years, we’ve had our share of “bad seed”-type athletes (or so we think - more on that in a second).  Most of the time, they are either written off altogether as too much risk, or their athletic ability earns them a second, third, or fourth chance to be on the team. Our city has also had its share of  “role model” athletes, who are put on such a high pedestal that they seem almost like gods.

We’ve also been fortunate enough to have had a local athlete who has given us a glimpse of true reality: Josh Hamilton. Hamilton was a golden boy, the #1 pick in the baseball draft, who quickly turned into a “bad seed,” complete with drug addictions and scary-looking tattoos.  But then, so far as anyone can tell these types of things, Hamilton was converted to Christ, and, through the power of Christ, his life has been transformed and redeemed.  Praise God.

We tend to lump athletes (all celebrities, really) into “good guys” and “bad guys,” as if life were some sort of action movie or pro wrestling set-up. We tend not to take the time to think about athletes as human beings who happen to be extraordinarily gifted in one area of life, who are made in God’s image, who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and who are in need of Christ to redeem their lives.

The Liberty Mutual ad was not Christian, did not even suggest what the right way to approach their scenario might be.  (The ad’s tag line is “What’s the responsible point of view? Everyone has one.  Let’s hear yours.”  I don’t think I buy the idea that “everyone” has a “responsible” point of view.)  Yet it motivated me to pray for some of the local athletes who have gotten themselves into trouble.  They are usually young men doing the stupid, destructive things that young men tend to do.  I really don’t care if they get their athletic careers back on track, since the celebrity and wealth that come from those careers seems to be enabling their destructive behavior.  But I confess that, for the first time, I was moved to pray for them and their families, that Christ would redeem their lives, and heal both their wounds and the wound they have inflicted on others.

May God make it so.

There is a nice article today on the InterVarsity website about InterVarsity’s commitment to discipleship of the mind and the importance of reading to both mental and spiritual development: Leaders Who Are Readers.  It discusses a little bit of InterVarsity’s history with books and reading, including the formation of InterVarsity Press, our ministry’s publishing arm.

Here is an example from the article showing reading in action within campus ministry:

“To encourage reading in the InterVarsity chapter on campus, I have required reading that all student leaders must complete in discipleship each semester and over the summer. The Leadership Team is reading A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society by Eugene Peterson, (InterVarsity Press),” said Tim Borgstrom, campus staff member at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.

I am encouraged by hearing this.  Peterson was a strong influence in my early Christian formation, and, along with J. I. Packer, was one of two authors that led me to consider Regent College for graduate school.

One final note about InterVarsity and reading: the first time I ever considered joining InterVarsity staff was when I discovered that staff received a discount on IVP books.  InterVarsity has an “auto-ship” program by which staff can elect to have every book published by IVP sent directly to them (you can also choose to receive a “best of” selection or only academic and reference books).  I was at our staff David McNeill’s house, and he opened up a box simply stuffed with brand-new books - I think Philip Johnson’s Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds was included.  Soon, however, I came to see that a desire to get a great discount on books was not a good reason to enter campus ministry.

Today, I read two passages that bookend well together.

The first, Psalm 125, which begins:

Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion,

which cannot be shaken but endures forever.

The second, is from Luke 5.  After beginning his public ministry, Jesus calls Simon Peter, James, and John to follow him. After addressing a crowd from Simon’s fishing boat, Jesus commands Simon to put out his net.  Simon responds:

Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything.  But because you say so, I will let down the nets.

The nets are lowered, an enormous number of fish are caught, and Simon falls at Jesus’ feet, leading to this exchange:

“Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!.”  For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners.

Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

Psalm 125 promises that those who trust in the Lord (lit. YHWH) will be like Mount Zion, and Luke 5 depicts Simon - who would be called The Rock - trusting in Jesus.

A couple of side notes.  I appreciate the egalitarian spirit of the TNIV, which I am currently using in my personal reading, but “you will fish for people” simply doesn’t have the rhetorical strength of “thou shalt catch men” from the King James. Also, did Simon’s entire fishing company disband and follow Jesus?  The text has an interesting change of person: Jesus calls Simon to follow him, then concludes “So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything, and followed him.” The change of person is also their in both the King James and NIV.

How does it change our perspective of this scene to think of any entire company of men - a small business, really - following Jesus together?  Were they following Jesus, or were they following Simon Peter, their boss, who was following Jesus?

When I was a child, I visited my town library quite a bit - at least once a week, sometimes more.  I have always been a book lover, and discovering new books was one of the joys of my childhood.

Libraries back then used cards to record who had checked out the book.  When I found a new book, I could see who had read it before me, or if I had already read it and had just forgotten.  Because it was a small town, the same names kept popping up, people who shared my same interests.  Seeing their names created a virtual community.  At first, it was only other students a few years older than me; I remember when I started seeing the names of some people a couple of grades behind me.  It was both nice to see others with my interests, but also annoying to see that “some kid” had beaten me to the book.

I like used books for the same reason, especially used books in which previous owners have written their names.  While at a training event for InterVarsity last month, at our National Service Center in Madison, WI, I had the opportunity to pick up some used books that people the NSC no longer wanted.  Two of them, I found, had belonged to Pete Hammond, a gentleman I had the good fortune to have lunch with shortly before he retired.  I feel privileged to carry on the community of these books.

In a related note, Slate.com recently published a story about original editions of Shakespeare’s First Folio, which have been catalogued and tracked for hundreds of years.  Samuel Johnson apparently dribbled food on his copy.

From the Book of Common Prayer (Canada):

Almighty God, of whose only gift cometh wisdom and understanding: We beseech thee with thy gracious favour to behold our universities, colleges, and schools, that knowledge may be increased among us, and all good learning flourish and abound.  Bless all who teach and all who learn; and grant that in humility of heart they may ever look unto thee, who art the fountain of all wisdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I was never much into traditional young adult books when I was a young adult.  Instead, I spent a lot of time reading fantasy and sci-fi paperbacks cast off by my dad after he finished them, and also way too many UFO and Greek/Roman/Norse mythology books from the library (everything about my personality is now explained).  So, five or six years ago, I started reading more “young adult” books, including some classics, like Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

Last week, it was RLS’ Kidnapped. Originally published as a serial (which means lots of cliffhangers), it tells the story of 16-year-old David Balflour, a Scottish orphan who begins the novel seeking his wealthy uncle, whom he has never met.  Well, as you might guess from the title, not all goes well for young David.  His uncle, who turns out to be a miserly recluse, sells David to a ship bound for North America, where he is to be sold into slavery.  (The novel is set in 1752, pre-Revolution, but was written in 1886, so even then it had an air of historical fiction.)  But before they even leave the coast of Scotland, the ship is wrecked, and David finds himself thrown in with Alan “Breck” Stewart, based on an authentic historical figure, a Highland Jacobite rebel.  Balfour himself is a Lowland Whig, which means they are on opposite sides of both cultural and political fences.

If you don’t really know what a “Highland Jacobite” or “Lowland Whig” is, don’t worry: neither did I when I started the book.  But the edition I was reading included excellent historical notes, and part of RLS’ genius is his ability to flesh out political and cultural concepts in interesting characters, situations, and plot turns.  I enjoy both reading good stories and learning new things, and Kidnapped gave me both.  I gained an appreciation for Scotland as its own country, and for the cultural, religious, and political divisions in 18th-century Scotland.  If that sounds abstract, believe me, it was not: many in Kentucky are of Scots-Irish descent, and I belong to a church tradition founded by a Scots-Irish minister, so I gained a greater appreciation for the cultural roots that gave birth to both Kentucky’s culture and the Christian Church.

My wife and I recently welcomed our first son into the world, and I look forwad to sharing with him the joys of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure novels.

Some excellent advice from Robert Peters in Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student’s Guide to Earning a Master’s or a Ph.D.:

If you decide to go to graduate school, don’t do it just because you don’t know what else to do,

A little later down the page:

Recognize that students who enter grad programs for specific career goals are more likely to graduate than those with vague plans.

And finally:

If you aren’t yet certain what career you want, grad school might give you insight, but there are certainly more cost-effective ways of figuring out your life.  You might be better off working for a conservation organization, teaching English overseas as a second language, or joining the Peace Corps until you’re sure what you want to do.

This year is John Milton’s 400th birthday, and Stanley Fish has written a post about Ninth International Milton Symposium in London, which touches on the many things to appreciate about Milton.  Here are a couple of good quotes.  First, about why Milton matters:

Rather than being employed for its own sake, the poetry is always in the service of ideas and moral commitments, and it is always demanding that its readers measure themselves against the judgments it repeatedly makes – judgments about the nature of virtue, about the proper mode of civil and domestic behavior, about the true shape of heroism, about the self-parodying bluster of military action, about the criteria of aesthetic excellence, about the uses of leisure, about one’s duties to man and God, about the scope and limitations of reason, about the primacy of faith, about everything.

Apparently, the ghost of Shakespeare hangs over Milton studies constantly.  Another good quote, about the difference between Milton and Shakespeare, referring to the debates over who wrote Shakespeare’s plays:

Jonathan Rosen was getting at something like this when he said in a recent New Yorker piece, “No one would ever wonder whether Milton was really the author of his own work.”

Milton went blind in his mid-forties, prior to writing Paradise Lost: the magnificent epic that Milton is best known for was composed mentally and dictated to a series of secretaries, including one of his daughters and the poet Andrew Marvell, who wrote the poem “To His Coy Mistress,” a standard of English textbooks.

His blindness led him to compose one of the greatest poems in the English language, “On His Blindness,” which I memorized while I was unemployed following graduate school, wondering whether my long education would ever result in productive employment:

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny’d,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly.  Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’re Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.

A quick explication: Milton despairs at going blind, feeling that his one “Talent” (his ability as a writer) is now wasted, and, referring to the parable of the talents, fears that Jesus will return and question him as to why he has not put his talent to work.  (The work “fondly” here means “foolishly” - Milton’s retort that he can’t work because he’s blind, in other words, is a pretty stupid thing to say to the Lord of Heaven and Earth.)  The poem turns as Milton comes to realize that God does not “need” his work or “his own gifts” (i.e. Milton’s talent was a gift from God to begin with).  Instead, what God demands is his readiness to serve.  The image changes to a royal court: thousands of courtiers speed to and fro in their service to God, but “They also serve who only stand and waite.” Milton’s readiness would soon be repaid; a few years after this poem, Milton began work on Paradise Lost.

There is a new essay called The Disadvantages of an Elite Education by William Deresiewicz in The American Scholar that is making the rounds in higher education discussions.  I think the subtitle of the article sums up its thesis well:

Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers

He is writing primarily about elite universities, the same ones that ESN is trying to transform.  Deresiewicz was on the faculty at Yale for 10 years, so he has some background in this.

His argument has several points, but here’s one that stuck out at me.

An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed. We live in a society that is itself so wealthy that it can afford to provide a decent living to whole classes of people who in other countries exist (or in earlier times existed) on the brink of poverty or, at least, of indignity. You can live comfortably in the United States as a schoolteacher, or a community organizer, or a civil rights lawyer, or an artist—that is, by any reasonable definition of comfort.  [snip]

Yet it is precisely that opportunity that an elite education takes away. How can I be a schoolteacher—wouldn’t that be a waste of my expensive education? Wouldn’t I be squandering the opportunities my parents worked so hard to provide? What will my friends think? How will I face my classmates at our 20th reunion, when they’re all rich lawyers or important people in New York? And the question that lies behind all these: Isn’t it beneath me? So a whole universe of possibility closes, and you miss your true calling.

I think Deresiewicz glosses over another reason why elite universities rob you of the opportunite “not to be rich”: student loans. I was accepted to Yale when I was a senior in high school, but even with financial aid, I would have need to take out something like $20,000 per year in student loans to make it work.  The University of Louisville offered me a full ride; between UofL and my master’s degree at Regent (where I also received a scholarship, and where my parents graciously paid for my thesis), I was able to complete my entire education to date with less than $10,000 total in student loans.  My senior year in high school, for some unknown reason, I was convinced that I wanted to be a high school principal (I still don’t know why), and the prospect of starting a career as a teacher with over $100,000 in student loan debt did not appeal to me.

Over at Slate.com, Meghan O’Rourke has a nice tribute to Anne of Green Gables, which has been published in a new Modern Library edition.  O’Rourke does a good job, but she starts her article playing devil’s advocate: why should Anne of Green Gables, of all things, receive this kind of treatment?

To some, this canonical promotion of a writer who would probably now be classified as a Y.A. (young adult) author might seem preposterous. To certain left-leaning cultural theorists who won’t embrace a heroine with a less-than-revolutionary CV—Anne, once the Island’s best young scholar, chooses to become a devoted wife and mother of six—the Modern Library’s decision may appear to be a reactionary cave-in to nostalgic sentimentality.

Compare this to Deresiewicz’s point about elite education: using a bright mind, or an elite education, to become something as pedestrian as a mother is, well, “wasteful,” when you could be doing the “real work” of becoming rich or “successful.”  There’s nothing wrong with being a banker, hedge fund manager, or what have you, but let’s be very careful here.  The Victorians elevated motherhood to an idol; we have lowered to a calling of last resort.  I had a feminist professor in college who liked to read aloud articles that described how much a mother would be paid if all of her jobs were added up (e.g. chaffeur, personal shopper, maid, etc.).  I think she thought she was being flattering to mothers by noting their worth.  And she was, but she was also buying into our society’s preoccupation with salary as a measure of importance.