Civil Math

My rate of reading is:

1. Faster than my rate of writing; and

2. Directly proportional to the number of crusts I cut in a day.

More reviews are coming soon, my friends.

Quiverfull, by Kathryn Joyce - Book Review #15

A few weeks ago, I was minding my own business in the New Books section of the library while peacefully searching for some mystery about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Alas. My peace was abruptly disrupted when my eyes fell on Quiverfull. I had not heard of the book, but I certainly understood the connotation of the word. Unable to resist, I picked it up and saw the subtitle: "Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement". I immediately looked for the author's bio and when I discovered that she was not of the camp about which she was writing, I decided to read it. I read a fair amount of theology books. I've made it a point to refrain from reviewing those books here for various reasons. However, I figured that I'm not breaking my own rules by reviewing a book about Christianity written by a non-Christian.

Kathryn Joyce is a journalist whose work has focused on religion. In writing Quiverfull, she examines the philosophies and motivations behind what she calls the "Christian Patriarchy"movement within Christian Evangelicals (sometimes known as ultra right-wing-conservatives). It is evident from the outset of the book that Joyce spent a considerable amount of time not only reading the philosophies driving this movement, but also countless numbers of hours interviewing its mavericks. She even attended weekend retreats for Christian women, doing so as a self-proclaimed non-Christian (at the retreats she was told that "she really should get saved.").

It is unusual for me to read a non-fiction book on a subject about which I am very knowledgeable. I've read a majority of the books Joyce references in Quiverfull. I was unfamiliar with about 5% of the people she references. I've heard many of their lectures. I've read their blogs. I've read their books. I've read their magazines. So, I can say, without a doubt, that Joyce's reporting was quite accurate. This is fair and balanced reporting from a journalist who doesn't agree with what her subject matter believes. That is so heartening, isn't it? But it is precisely her accurate reporting that is so disheartening to this Christian.

Joyce divides the book into three categories: wives, mothers, and daughters. She explains, in detail, how this Christian Patriarchy Movement is spreading through Evangelical Christian circles. She talks about how wives are to be submissive to their husbands, how women are to stay at home with their children, and how daughters are to refrain from higher education for the purpose of learning the art of housewifery so that the entire cycle can begin again.

Now, if you are not a Christian, you need not read further. But, if you, like me, call yourself a Christian, read on because I have something to say.

[Stepping on soap box]

Ahem.

Evangelicals, as of late, have done a lot of whining and complaining about how the media has taken their line of thinking out of context, blah, blah, blah. Here is a case where, for the most part, Joyce (the media) didn't take things out of context. What she shows is that the Evangelicals have taken things way out of context. Joyce paints a picture of a group of people who have a serious misunderstanding of the Bible. And I have a ginormous problem with that. My problem is that my faith in which I am a devout believer is sorely misunderstood by the very people who claim to share that same faith. In short, the Quiverfull/Christian Patriarchy movement has condensed the Gospel into a list of rules, including but not limited to: wives are to defer to their husbands on every matter (no matter how minuscule), wives are not to drive at night, women and girls are not allowed to wear pants, women are supposed to have as many children as possible, women are not supposed to work outside of the home, mothers are supposed to homeschool their children (public or private school is not allowed), daughters are supposed to be committed to helping their fathers' work in lieu of attending college, fathers are only supposed to work in their own small businesses, and the list continues. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with practicing any of the above. I am saying that it is wrong to think that a requirement of Christianity is to do all of the above.

A disturbing theme seen throughout the book is the claim by the Quiverfull followers that following these rules will fix the problems in our nation. Says Rachel Scott in her book Birthing God's Mighty Warriors: "When God's people are plentiful, we can come up against society going in the wrong direction, against wicked political systems, against immoral laws and antifamily legislation, and make them back down!" If this sentence weren't so horrific, it would be funny. "God's people" are messed up. They are not perfect. Their rules are not sufficient to clean up a "society going in the wrong direction". There is an attitude of perfection by the followers of this movement. Such an attitude is divisive, isolating, and simply incorrect.

My understanding of Christianity does not have these rules as a requirement for membership. The people who loudly advocate the following of such laws have misunderstood what the Bible says. They have reduced the Christian faith to nothing other than the various religions they criticize; they've turned it into religion that is centered on what humans are supposed to do. The Christianity I understand is the opposite of that. It is centered not on what I do, but on what someone else did for me. And that, my friends, is the only faith that fills this quiver.

A Sudden Country by Karen Fisher - Book Review #14

Collectively, my four children ask me an average of 413 questions each day. Apparently children in the mid-1800's were as inquisitive. They did not care that their mothers were walking next to a wagon that was carrying all of their earthly belongings to Oregon. They did not care that their mothers were, while walking next to the wagon, having to start life over again. They did not care that their mothers would really rather have stayed in their nice homes with furniture and plates. They did not care that their mothers were expected to cook, clean, do laundry and serve their husbands while walking across the country in their long, hot dresses. No, they didn't care. They still asked their questions.

Such truths are brilliantly described in A Sudden Country, by Karen Fisher. It is a historical novel about westward expansion in 1846. Fisher based the novel on a journal she read by real people who made the journey. It is a gorgeous story that reminded me of one big poem. The writing is lyrical throughout and takes some concentration. It is definitely not pool-side-with-children-dripping-popsicles-on-you summer reading. Lucy Mitchell and James MacLaren are the main characters in the novel. Lucy, still grieving the death of her previous husband, now finds herself in a marriage to a man for whom she feels no love. Furthermore, she nearly despises him for forcing her (and her five children) to pick up and move to Oregon. James, grieving the facts that his wife left him to return to her Nez Perez tribe and that all three of his daughters recently died from illness, now finds himself desperately trying to find his wife amongst the various Nez Perez tribes he encounters. When their paths cross, Lucy and James forge a common bond in their grief. This bond provides a poignant backdrop for a tale of the sacrifice, pain and labor it took to begin again during this time in America's history.

There are two reasons I loved this novel. Many books covering Westward Expansion detail how the pioneers pillaged the land of the Native Americans. This book describes how they harmed each other. As I was reading, I felt compassion for both groups, realizing that each was striving to do what they thought was needed for survival of their people. Karen Fisher provided this perspective incredibly well.

The second reason is that, as I labor in my home daily, I have the conveniences of modern appliances, running water, peaceful neighbors, furniture, and pants. Lucy's story includes most of the same responsibilities I face each day, excluding the appliances, running water, peaceful neighbors and pants. How dare I even utter a sigh in exhaustion as my dishwasher is running, I'm loading my dryer, and I'm answering the 413th question of the day?

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - Book Review #13

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho has been around for a while, and, as of late, has been popping up everywhere I look. The reason for this is that it is the 20th anniversary of its original release. My Bac Ninh friend sent it to me in April. I read it then, but I'm just now getting around to writing about it. The reason for this procrastination is not laundry or dishes or groceries. It is that I have approval issues. I don't want to disappoint my Bac Ninh friend by telling her I didn't like it. Additionally, a person for whom I care immensely doesn't like it when I post negative reviews. And furthermore, it is listed as one of the best selling books of all time. There are millions of people I worry about disappointing. Do you see my problem? Well, here at Civil Thoughts we are all about the truth and what follows is the truth, the whole truth, so help me God.

This is a fable about a shepherd boy who travels to pursue his destiny. On his journey, he encounters many people who provide words of wisdom. At the beginning, the boy thinks, "People say strange things, the boy thought. Sometimes it's better to be with the sheep, who don't say anything. And better still to be alone with one's books. They tell their incredible stories at the time when you want to hear them. But when you're talking to people, they say some things that are so strange that you don't know how to continue the conversation." That is exactly how I felt about this book; it was full of things so strange that I just didn't know how to continue in the conversation. Clearly, the author's intent was to inspire. I was completely uninspired. Since millions of people seem to have been profoundly moved by it, maybe there is something wrong with me.

The most significant reason I didn't like this book is because Coelho tries to pull facets of every religion into helping the boy reach his destiny. Last time I checked, all the religions of the world don't mesh real well together. Pick one. Stick with it. Don't try to merge them all together. It doesn't work in a fable, let alone in real life.

There you are. I hated the thing. And now all of you know it and I've disappointed my friend, my person-I-care-for-deeply, and the millions of people reading this blog who loved it. Maybe I'll try reading it in the original language (Portuguese). If change my opinion maybe you all will like me again.

Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout - Book Review #12

Elizabeth Strout is the author of Olive Kitteridge, Pulitzer Prize winner for 2009. As I have waited to get my literature-gluttonous eyes on it, I've read Strout's Abide With Me and Amy and Isabelle. Both are excellent. I'm anxious to see what her Pulitzer writing looks like.

Amy, a teenage girl with a "lack of commotion in her face", is Isabelle's daughter. Isabelle is a single mother and a secretary who spends lots of time in "fruitless conjecture, hours of wasted thought". She is confident that she is giving Amy the opportunities in life that she missed. Isabelle loves her boss, Avery Clark. This is a secret she has shared with no one. Just as she has convinced herself that she is doing all she can for her daughter, she is equally convinced that Avery's wife does not love him as she would. Isabelle thinks, "Now, if she were married to Avery (rolling sheet of paper into the typewriter and getting rid of Emma Clark with a heart attack that would carry only a few brief moments of panic and pain), Avery might say in response to some one's asking, A nasty bug, but Isabelle took wonderful care of me." In short, Isabelle is desperate to love someone. Well. Amy would have been a good place to start. Amy, desperate to be loved, receives some attention from someone (who has no business giving her attention) and does every thing she possibly can to keep that attention coming. Strout writes, "Amy had become desperate, crazy, somebody else." The decisions that Amy and Isabelle make in response to their desperation for love direct the remainder of the story, which will make you think and laugh and cry just a little.

The characters on the periphery of the story will make you laugh. These characters (Dottie, Bev and Stacy) point out just how rotten life can be because of the way we treat one another. In one scene, Strout writes, "Intermittently glancing at Dottie lying on the couch with the afghan pulled over her, Isabelle had to keep looking away, for she was struck with the extreme ease with which lives could be damaged, destroyed. Lives, flimsy as fabric, could be snipped capriciously with the shears of random moments of self-interest." And then, there is this poignant paragraph: "She gazed at the stupefied Dottie in her rocking chair and had the sense to visibly witnessing a disaster, a house left in shambles, as though an earthquake had struck. But it wasn't any earthquake, it wasn't any "act of God." No, you couldn't blame these things on God. It was people, just ordinary, regular people, who did this to each other. People ruined other people's lives. People simply took what they wanted..." Did you pause when you read that? If not, go back and read it again. Self. It can be a dangerous thing. Is there any place in your life where your self interest is simply taking what you want? Yep. I thought so.

Predictably, there are some strong mother/daughter themes in the book. When Stacy, a teenager adopted at birth and Amy's best friend, gets pregnant and decides to keep the baby, she pontificates the following point: "I wonder if I'm like my real mother...Because if everyone just turns out like their mother, then what's the...point?" Here are some lines that have no doubt been screamed in kitchens by mothers to their teenage daughters many, many times: " 'You go right ahead and tell yourself that your mother is an illiterate moron and that she's too stupid to know anything about real life, but I'm telling you that you are the one who doesn't know anything!' It has become that senseless and awful, yelling at each other about who was the most stupid."

Amy and Isabelle provides a profound portrait of the female teenage mind. It is this aspect of the novel that I appreciated the most. Teenage girls are delightful and unique. However, they - generally speaking - have an extreme desire to feel loved by their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, boyfriends, teachers, aunts, uncles, and third cousins. Time and again I've seen them make unfortunate decisions to obtain this love. While Elizabeth Strout doesn't necessarily provide solutions for the teenager, she certainly reminds us that as the adults, we have a responsibility to give love and attention to these young ladies. Because if we don't, they are going to go elsewhere to find it. And the elsewhere might not be so lovely.

Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson - Book Review #11

I fell in love with this book while sitting in the lobby of a hotel at midnight while my family slept peacefully in Room 226. I could not have loved it more had I been reading it on the beach at sunrise.

Housekeeping, written by Marilynne Robinson (Gilead), is the story of Ruthie and her mother's sister, Sylvie. Ruthie's mother kills herself when Ruthie and her sister, Lucille, are young children. Ruthie's grandmother raises them for five years and then she dies. Enter Aunt Sylvie, who arrives to take over the rearing of these two girls into their teen years. As with Gilead, the themes are so rich and so deep that everyone will take away something different from their reading. Grief is the most prominent of those themes in Housekeeping, and the story radically portrays what happens when grief remains untouched.

The writing is gorgeous. It is so beautiful that anything else I've read since seems choppy and ugly. Robinson's gift of sentence construction is astonishing. As Doris Lessing said of the novel, "...every sentence is a delight." To tell us that Ruthie's grandmother died, she says, "When after almost five years, my grandmother one winter morning eschewed awakening,..." And then, to provide insight into the family, Robinson writes, "Then, too, for whatever reasons, our whole family was standoffish. This was the fairest description of our best qualities, and the kindest description of our worst faults." I read the following sentence and melted as I could see the picture of what she was describing so vividly: "If one pried up earth with a stick on those days, one found massed shafts of ice, slender as needles and pure as spring water." And in my final attempt to convince you of her beautiful writing, I share my favorite lines of the entire book:

"We looked at the window as we ate, and we listened to the crickets and nighthawks, which were always unnaturally loud then, perhaps because they were within the bounds that light would fix around us, or perhaps because one sense is a shield for the others and we had lost our sight."

Entwined in the fabulous sentences is a poignant story. Ruthie's grandmother did not grieve the loss of her husband. She simply did not address the death with her children, including Ruthie's mom and Aunt Sylvie. She just went on with life. Ruthie's grandmother did the same thing with her grandchildren when Ruthie's mom drove off a bridge; she just didn't address the death with the children. Aunt Sylvie shows up and because of her unresolved grief, she neglects Ruthie and Lucille in a seriously tragic way. Sylvie feeds, clothes and shelters Lucille and Ruthie. The negligence is of the emotion, the spirit. In Housekeeping, ignored grief leads to mental health issues which lead to neglect of children. The cycle begins again, with some children choosing to get out of the cycle and others finding it most comforting to stay in it.

Because of my place in life, the neglect of children theme was my focus as I read. We all know that neglect of children is bad. And we generally give children credit for being resilient. But how resilient are they, really? Robinson so powerfully shows just how damaging adult self-indulgence is in regard to the nurture and care of children. Ruthie says this about her Aunt Sylvie:

"For she could regard me without strong emotion - a familiar shape, a familiar face, a familiar silence. She could forget I was in the room. She could speak to herself, or to someone in their thoughts, with pleasure and animation, even while I sat beside her - this was the measure of our intimacy, that she gave almost no thought to me at all."

As good writing always does, it encouraged me to think about the world, my life, my parenting, my children. Why are so many children throughout the world neglected? Where am I negligent in the care of my children? When am I so self-focused that I'm simply seeing them as familiar shapes, familiar faces and, in our house, familiar loud voices? How can I listen so that I am not mistaking important life questions for inconvenient queries? What can I do to parent so that my children don't reach adulthood with Ruthie's conclusion regarding mothers:

"Then there is the matter of my mother's abandonment of me. Again, this is the common experience. They walk ahead of us, and walk too fast, and forget us, they are so lost in thoughts of their own, and soon or late they disappear. The only mystery is that we expect it to be otherwise."

Hollywood Parenting - Book Review #10

Are you familiar with the books in the how-to section of the bookstore that promise to provide the secrets to raising the children of your dreams?  I began reading  these mothering/parenting/child rearing/family books eleven years ago.  I began parenting nine years ago.  Simple math will lead you to the conclusion that I'm more experienced in reading about child-rearing that I am about actual child-rearing.  Recently, I realized that I spent so many years immersed in the research of raising amazing children that I did not read on many other topics for a while.  A while?  I stuck to one genre for a decade, people.  The genre of Child-Rearing Non-Fiction.  Do you think I'm exaggerating?  I went to my closet to count the number of mothering books that line my bookshelf.  I scanned the impressive collection, realized that reporting a number would be embarrassing, and returned to sit in front of my computer.  Many - I'll say over 15 - of my prized books on mothering have pages falling out of them.  Several of them I've practically memorized.  Such extensive research should lead to flawless implementation, right?  Ahem.  Not quite.  This implementer is seriously flawed.

Little did I know that I could have been reading Tolstoy for that decade.  All I really needed was David Gilmour's The Film Club.  It is a memoir of the three years that David Gilmour spent watching movies with his son.  And I have to tell you that it is one of the more remarkable books on parenting I've ever read. Don't look for it in the mothering/parenting/child-rearing section of the bookstore.  It won't be there.

David Gilmour is a writer, broadcaster and film critic in real life.  He is also a father.  And when his 15-year old son, Jesse, was failing every single class in high school, he knew he had to do something to help his son.  Gilmour says this about Jesse and school:  "To my nightly question "Is that all your homework?"  my son, Jesse, responded with a cheerful "Absolutely!" When he went to stay with his mother for a week that summer, I found a hundred different homework assignments shoved into every conceivable hiding place in his bedroom. School, in a word, was making him a liar and a slippery customer."

Gilmour tells Jesse that he can drop out of school with two conditions.  The first condition is that Jesse can not take drugs.  The second condition is that Jesse has to watch three movies a week of David's choosing and discuss them with him.  That's it.  No other academic work has to be completed, David will financially support him, he can have free reign of the house with no conditions on behavior other than no drugs.  And three movies a week.  Note that none of the  1,763 (not really) parenting books that line my shelves have a chapter titled "Let Your Teenager Drop out of High School and Watch Movies With Him for Three Years".

Gilmour doesn't describe much of a grappling with such an unconventional solution.  What the reader does experience is the intense, internal wrestling with how to parent a troubled teen.  Gilmour does this remarkably well.  Some of you won't agree with Gilmour's family values, if you will.  Some of you won't have a problem with them.  If you read this  book, I'd encourage you to try to take your focus off what Gilmour does or doesn't allow in terms of boundaries for his child.  The impressive thing is that he knows what he believes those boundaries are and he has to decide how to enforce consequences or, in some cases, give mercy.  He does an amazing job of deciding when to give advice and when to abstain.  As a reader we get to know what he, the parent, is thinking and then what he decides to say.  As a parent, I could certainly relate to that little dilemma.  Here is an example:

"I asked him about his evening; yes, all fine, nothing special, though.  Dropped over to see a friend.  Uh-huh.  which friend?

Pause.  "Dean."

I don't know Dean, do I?"

"Just a fellow."

Fellow?   (You hear language that out of character, you want to call the police.)  He could tell I was looking at him."

Films?  Oh, yes, they did  watch some films.  Gilmour chronicles what they watched. Often he explains the reasons for his choices and sometimes he doesn't.  The films he chose are absolutely fascinating, as are the highlights of the discussions that Gilmour chooses to include in the book.  The films he chose over the three year period are very much in line with the values with which he wants to instill.  Should you choose to allow your child to drop out of school and only watch movies, you'd likely choose different films.  The bottom line is this:  David Gilmour wanted to help him and found a way to spend time with him that would allow for dialogue, learning, and love between father and son.  It was profoundly inspiring.

A little Tolstoy aside before I close...  Gilmour finds himself in the precarious position of having to give his son advice about girls on a regular basis.  At one point, Jesse was hurt by a girl.  He asks his father what will happen if the girl hurts him again.  This occurs toward the end of the film viewing experiment and Gilmour responds with this:

"You know what Tolstoy says?" I said.

"No."

"He says that a woman can never wound you the same way twice."

A few days later Jesse sees the girl and reports to his father that after only speaking for a few moments, she whispers to him, "If you keep looking at me like that, I'm going to have to kiss you."  And this brilliant little line is what Gilmour thinks after listening to his son's recounting:  "(My God, where do they learn this stuff? Are they all at home reading Tolstoy before these parties?)"

Perhaps the greatest sentence in the book is the one Gilmour chooses to include just before the title page.  The quote from Michel de Montaingne reads:  "I know nothing about education except this:  that the greatest and most important difficulty known to human beings seems to lie in that area which deals with how to bring up children and how to educate them."

And then, there is this from Gilmour that captures the beauty with which he describes the love of a parent for a child: "Still, and I don't want to get maudlin here, some nights I walk by his bedroom on the way to my study and I take a peek inside.  The moonlight falls over his bed, the room is very still, and I can't quite believe he's gone.  There were other things we were going to do to that room, other prints, another clothes peg for the wall.  But time ran out."