Many thanks to Fugitive for the new banner.  It's Friday again.  The most glorious day of the week.  This is the day that we do school quickly in order to get out of the house for fun.  We will probably go out to lunch, hit the grocery store - maybe even go to CompUSA and replace the mouse that's beginning to fail.  (My clicker doesn't click like it's supposed to - when I click and drag it randomly rearranges my text - not an endearing quality in a mouse.)  And tonight we'll have family fun night.  Maybe we'll order pizza.  Maybe we'll rent a movie and have hot dogs and popcorn.  But, the point is that it's Friday!

The question of the day is whether Fridays are real or exist only as a figment of my imagination.  Think about it for a second, that's more profound than it appears on the surface.

It's analagous to whether mathematics represent something real.  Have you ever thought about that question?  Do numbers represent reality?  Or are they just figments of logical thought?  Once you leave the realm of integers, mathematics become impossible to demonstrate in the "real" world.  They deal with the ideal.  A point, for example, was defined by Euclid as "that which has no part."  Well, that sounds a whole lot like our definition of "nothing."  But, where would mathmeticians be without their points?

Did you ever set out to write a proof of the mathematical equation 1+1=2 that would conclusively deomonstrate to a strict materialist that the concepts under discussion were real?  Bertrand Russell did that.  It consumed two years of his life, and resulted in a book that would break your toe if you dropped it at the wrong moment.  But, in the end, Russell and other like minded persons are forced to admit that there is no intellectually coercive proof that any concept is real in a material sense.

Last night I was reading a book by John Polkinghorne.  He is an internationally known theoretical physicist who has made a second career as a theologian.  He is a pioneer in the recent dialogues between science and religion.  Dr. Polkinghorne included a little postscript to his work that has prompted my blog this morning.  He says that his views are based on "a generous and just view of the nature of reality, according as much significance to our [intuitive] experiences of beauty and moral imperative as we do our more objective encounters with the material world."  He goes on to say that "I find that if I am in a discussion with someone unwilling, at the least, to try to conceive of this wider view, there is insufficient common ground for us to meet upon."

In my communications theory classes we called this "being stuck on the ladder of abstraction."  The materialist reduces every discussion to a snapshot of a particular element at a particular moment in time.  (Of course, even if you were able to take an almost infinite number of photographs of the object from every conceivable angle, the photographs would never give you the same information you receive by holding it.  This is the difference in a nutshell between objective analysis and intuition.)  The abstract thinker must either agree to a constricted view of reality, or be content that no communication can take place.

I've given some thought to whether I could squeeze my mind into that box, and I've given up.  I'll just have to live with the knowledge that there are some topics that I can't discuss with everyone.  Faith, love, joy, transcendence, mathematics, and Fridays.  But if you are able to stretch outside that box a bit, there will be a slice of pizza at the Verrette Villa this evening for you.  Come on over.

Seeking Guidance

We live in a culture which so exalts the individual that we have a difficult time knowing when we need help and how to ask for it.  This is true in almost every area of American life.  We don't attend to preventive measures, we wait until we are in a crisis and then wildly react in hopes of dousing the fire before we are too badly scorched.

As I approach the topic of Spiritual Guidance I see multiple layers of this topic to consider.  First we have the issue of admitting that we could use a little help.  The transcendence of God is so vast and glorious that no one person should expect to receive full understanding of what God is all about.  The most basic idea that recurs across religions is that God is infinite or unlimited.  Christian theologian Paul Tillich held that we should not even say that God exists, since the term existence would be a limiting statement.  "The question of the existence of God can neither be asked nor answered.  If asked, it is a question about that which by its very nature is above existence, and therefore the answer -- whether negative or affirmative -- implicitly denies the nature of God.  It is as atheistic to affirm the existence of God as it is to deny it.  God is being itself - not a being."

(Tillich, of course, did not argue that the term "God" doesn't refer to anything real, but that the reality to which it refers is not merely one among many, not even the first or highest, but the source and ground of all being.) 

One thing has been made perfectly clear to me over the course of my life.  I am a finite being.  I have boundaries on my physical body, my intellect, my ability, and my opportunities.  There is no aspect of my existence that can reasonably be described as infinite.  As a human being, I am not capable of conforming my understanding to the infinite.  I dealt with the concept of approaching infinity just well enough to squeak through calculus.  Many praises to Caroline Melton, a much more excellent teacher than my mediocre performance revealed.

I have no problem admitting that there is much of God that I do not know.  I'm fascinated to hear other people recount their own experiences and responses to God, and I generally react with a deep sense of recognition and appreciation that they have been given an awareness that I have not.  By the way, I'd like to be very clear for a moment.  This is true regardless of the religious label of the individual I'm talking with.  I have been gifted with insights regarding God from people of almost every wisdom tradition.

Once I've acknowledged that there is much I do not know, I must take the next step and acknowledge that there are many people who have experienced God in a way that has prepared them to guide me further into understanding.  Working with a spiritual guide is both an exhilarating and frightening experience.

In corporate union, the members have the potential to far exceed the sum of their parts.  The beauty and the glory of a body of persons dedicated to the pursuit of spiritual truth is that they can each acheive so much more than any one of them would as an individual.  With the covering of grace, a body of people can stimulate one another to growth.  Without grace, there develops an unfortunate tendency to use the group as a way of manipulating and controlling others.  The group becomes a tool for straightening out deviant behavior.  Leaders become dictators and growth becomes impossible. 

The final thought I have on the discipline of guidance is the necessity of teachability.  It is a paradox of spiritual life that I cannot teach anyone anything unless I am first prepared to learn from them.  We have been conditioned by our experiences in school to consider our teachers to be those who are better informed than we are.  But in spiritual life, there is no better or worse, more or less.  An authentic experience of God is sufficient to qualify a person to speak the truth of that experience. A "teacher" who forgets this principle erects an insurmountable barrier.  Lack of teachability prevents the "teacher" from affirming the authentic in the "student" and both parties leave the encounter cheated of growth.

I pray for each of my friends that they are a part of a community that supports and encourages them.  I hope that grace and peace are the rule, and that your community is a safe place to be and to grow.  

We Interrupt This Blog For a News Update ...

This is Tim. I am posting this April Dinner Update here because more people will see it here ... <sniffle>

We had leftovers for dinner last night. The "cake" mentioned in the previous blog was out waiting for an encounter with the microwave when Tucker, our poster-child for short attention span disorders, walk by and says "Yum!" as he pulls his finger through the "frosting".

Have you ever accidentally stuck an angry skunk in your mouth? Me neither. But if we do we'll make a face like Tucker did last night!

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HEY!  This is MY Blog!  Grumble Grumble - I'm gonna HAVE to change my password, again.

April Fool's

What is it about parents that we just can't resist messing with our kids' heads?  As far as I'm concerned this is one of the top ten best reasons to have kids around - it's just fun.

Supper last night was April Fool's.  I told the kids that in honor of April and Spring we were having dessert (cake) first with dinner (stir fry) after.  They were thrilled.  They even asked for candles on the cake - so I obliged them.  We sang "Happy April to you, Happy April to you, the Winter is over, Happy April to you."

Then I served the cake.  It was meatloaf "frosted" with mashed potatoes.  The stir fry was made of cookies, cashews, and fruit roll-ups shaped to look like pea pods and peppers.  There are photo's on my Husband's site.  But we missed the best picture of all.  When Michael bit into the "cake" . . .

Someone on Fugitive's site was talking about establishing a "therapy jar" as a savings bank to pay for the therapy our kids will need . . . After I'm done laughing, I'll make a contribution.

The Most Important Book

Have you ever participated in one of those discussions on "What's the Most Important Book You've Ever Read?"  There's always someone in the crowd who maintains that the Bible is the most important book they've ever read.  Then there is the person who can't make up their mind and brings in at least a half-dozen candidates.  The intellectual insists that the complete works of Shakespeare changed his life.  And the discussion goes on.

The single most important book I've ever read was Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Mansion.  I was 8 years old when my Mom bought this book for me as an impulse.  I don't know if she would have given it to me if she could have seen it's full effect on me through the years.  It must have seemed a perfectly harmless and borderline educational type thing to give her child a book.

I wasn't thrilled.  Then I took it off into a quiet corner (on the floor behind my bed as I recall) and started reading - for fun.  And it was FUN!  This was a story about KIDS!  Kids who were really cool kids.  Kids that did things that I wanted to do.  They solved mysteries and went on trips.  They were kind and compassionate, (they had a millionaire parent who played Santa Claus to the lot of them) it was FUN!  I was hooked.

Nowadays, my Mom just sighs in resignation when I show up at her house.  I bring a fully loaded van on every trip.  Two kids, a dog, my bread machine and a laundry basket full of books to be read while I'm there on "vacation."  She wonders aloud what she was thinking when she taught me to read.  (My Mom was a first-grade public school teacher.  She didn't know about Homeschool, but she applied the basic principles of homeschooling with her own kids.  I don't think that any of us entered school without already knowing how to read.)

I have read so many thousands of book in my life that I wish I'd kept count just so I could impress myself sometimes.  There is no doubt that I'm widely read.  I can talk with almost anyone about whatever style of books they enjoy because while I may not have read the very latest, I've almost certainly read something that fits their interest.  But in recent years, I've started fretting over the difference between being widely-read and being well-read.

And this leads me to the second most important book in my library.  How to Read a Book.  I own the revised and updated edition of the 1940 classic. Mortimer Adler is joined by Charles Van Doren in laying out the "rules" for dissecting a book, understanding it, and making it your own.  They insist that the reader who doesn't bother to uncover the structure of a book hasn't really read it. 

I know that to some people the discovery of structure, the underpinnings of an enterprise, somehow ruins the experience for them.  I used to have a roommate who had lived in Orlando and worked at Disney World for a time.  I head often that seeing the "behind the scenes" aspect of the Disney dream took away the magic.  But, I've never been able to relate to that.  It's never once occurred to me that the Disney Imagineers were magicians who conjured rides and attractions out of ephemeral essence.  To me part of the magic is my appreciation of their skill in utilizing structure and form to create the experience.

It's the same with books.  I know that there are elements of structure that build a great book.  Finding the structure isn't a surprise and it doesn't ruin the experience for me.  If anything, it enhances my enjoyment of the book.  I'm able to say "ah ha!" I see what you've done here!  I'm able to ask whether the way that author chose to structure his or her story is the best way to have presented it.  Would I have combined the elements differently?  What's the effect of the way that the author chose to do it?

In many respects I see writing a book in the same way that I see figure skating.  A skater has certain required elements for an Olympic or World Championship competition, but no two skaters have ever combined those elements into identical programmes.  The skill and the majesty of the performance comes in structuring a programme such that the required elements not only look easy, but also seem to "fit" in the programme in exactly that place.

For this reason, I believe that some of the most difficult books to write and have published are genre fiction.  Readers of genre have rigid expectations of the elements that will be incorporated into the story, and tend to be unforgiving of authors who handle the elements awkwardly.  A good writer of Romance or Mystery is able to make it look easy when it is anything but.

I have strayed a bit from my original intention to recommend Adler's book to my friends.  (And I'm curious as to how many of you already own a dog-eared copy of it.)  I don't write in my books - ever.  If I feel a need to follow Adler's advice on notetaking, I buy a spiral notebook and make my notes there.  But this particular book is loaded with notes. 

It contains a list of books that are the "Great Books" of Western Civilization.  Over the past several years I've been slowly working my way through these books to fill in the gaps of my education.  I would not go so far as to state categorically that a person is UN-educated if he or she hasn't read these books.  But, I think it's safe to say that anyone who hasn't been exposed to a significant portion of them is missing pieces of the puzzle.  You might still be able to see the broad outlines and guess at the picture, but you don't have the details.

Adler's list (one of many similar lists) is heavy on history, philosophy and science.  I think it could be much improved.  Oh, he includes, Dickens, Joyce, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Melville.  Certainly these fellows are important.  But, there has to be a broader representation of the human experience available.  So if you are working your way through the list - I suggest that you add Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Mansion, or Heidi, or the Hardy Boys, or whatever book it was that first lit the fires of your imagination.  Because that book deserves inclusion on any list of the "Greatest Books."