I don’t intend to paint a target on my back by blogging on this subject, but by way of setting up this video for you, let me give you my summation of biblical manhood and womanhood. Many whole books have been written on this subject with ministries and study series to boot. You may know names of go-to people on this issue, and I don’t want to draw any fire from them or their tribal warriors. I just want to give a succinct summation of what I believe the Bible says about Christian men and women.
When people talk about biblical manhood or womanhood, they often want to know the distinctives, not what a biblically minded people look like, but what a distinctly biblical man or woman looks like. On these distinctives, the Bible says few little. Who of the two is to seek first the kingdom of God? Who is to build a house upon the rock and not the sand? Who is bear the fruit of the Spirit, walk as a child of light, and put on the whole armor of God? Both men and women should do this.
In short, both biblical men and biblical women should be maturing, faithful believers. That’s 90% of the subject in a few words. There’s a small handful of particulars to sort out in the remaining 10%, but in a context of mutual respect, these things should work out without much fuss.
But today, we have pastors composing lists on being a man that include inanities such as pulling your pants up and avoiding flip-flops. For many years, we’ve had teachers use the Bible’s instructions on wives being submissive to their husbands to say woman should submit to men in general, even to strangers on the street. That’s not biblical in the least.
Before I start ranting and committing the same sins I’m calling out, let me segue to this video, in which The Observer begins with comments on Galadriel’s presentation in the new Lord of the Rings series and continues with the essence of femininity and how feminists seem to hate it. She says the feminists are the ones asking why women can’t be more like men.
Disclaimer: The host, Galatea, isn’t defending biblical womanhood and gets profane at times, but the video’s amusing on the whole and her points are solid.
As the midges devoured them, they hummed and sang, and worked harder. They wandered like flocks of singers on their way toward some destination. In truth, it was more a lamentation than a song because the midges bit so terribly. And you needed two hands on your scythe. As in a pilgrimage, great peace attended them when they finished.
Of all the pilgrimage paths our Lord prepared, the one that runs through hay is the most beautiful. You pace with the scythe until you reach the neighbor’s fence, then you walk back. That route is the Lord’s way. The midges are a work of the devil.
Up until now, the greatest novel about the Norwegian immigration to America has been Ole Rolvaag’s Giants In the Earth. (It used to be kind of a big deal. I don’t know if anyone reads it anymore, except for my ethnic group.) I haven’t read GITE since college, but as I recall it, it’s depressing in a very Norwegian way. Everybody is unhappy until they die.
Now there’s a new great novel in translation about what we call the Innvandring – Edvard Hoem’s Haymaker in Heaven. I’m happy to report that, on top of being lyrical and captivating, it’s also somewhat less oppressive in tone than Rolvaag’s book. Wodehouse it ain’t, but it’s a brighter journey.
Knut Hansen Nesje is a poor cotter in Norway in the second half of the 19th Century, a widower with one son. Everyone just calls him “Nesje.” His great point of pride is that he’s the head haymaker on the big estate in the neighborhood. He works hard and long and with skill, taking pride in his work. When he’s finished at the estate, he has to work his rent out for his landlord. When there’s time left over, he works on clearing the parcel he rents high up on the mountain, which he hopes – eventually – to be able to purchase.
When a widow named Serianna shows up one day looking for work, they take an interest in each other, and eventually sleep together. Marriage follows after she becomes pregnant. They have several children, and cherish great hopes of all those young hands to help with the labor in the future. But the future will not be quite as they planned…
Serianna’s sister Gjertine eventually shows up. Gjertine is a “Reader” – that is, a Haugean, a pietist, one of my people (though these are apparently a later aberration of Haugeanism, which I have trouble recognizing. Gjertine dresses in a more provocative way than most Haugeans I ever knew would approve, and we’re told that she has been taught a “spell” by them – an incantation to magically stanch bleeding. I hope the author is exercising artistic license here).
Gjertine is beautiful and has many suitors, but insists on choosing her own husband. The man she chooses seems an odd choice — “the Saddle Maker,” who has a reputation with the ladies. She demands two years of continence from him before she will accept him, and surprisingly he complies. They seem to be happy together, but the world is changing…
Things are changing in Norway. Industrialization is coming in; labor and reward are now related in new kinds of ways. And the greatest change of all is the lure of America. It’s in the back of everybody’s mind. Lots of land. Wealth to be won. A more egalitarian society. Gradually, as families and one by one, people start departing for America, and we follow their various destinies on the North Dakota prairie. (It’s interesting to contrast the reaction of the wife in Giants In the Earth, who is oppressed to the point of agoraphobia by all the open space, and Gjertine, who’s delighted by the life and the colors.)
Nesje is a man perfectly attuned to the world he was born into. He’s not introspective; he takes life as it is. Which makes it all the harder for him to deal with a world that will never again be the way he feels it ought to be.
These are my people, of course, so Haymaker in Heaven may not speak to you as it did to me. I found it engrossing and deeply moving. Especially because Nesje, although physically very different, was almost a portrait of my father in his personality and character.
The translation by Tara Chace is good, but has some dead spots. I wish I’d had a chance to put my own hand to it.
Highly recommended. The author treats religious matters respectfully, in general, though I’m not sure he always understands. However, he doesn’t do a bad job of it either. The story, he tells us, is based on the lives of his actual ancestors. You may have trouble keeping the names straight.
The second book in David Chill’s Burnside series is Fade Route (I’m pretty sure all the titles come from football plays, but I’m fairly ignorant in that area). Once again he offers an engaging story about an interesting private eye looking into an intriguing mystery. Once again, some of the writing drove me nuts, but not enough to drop the book.
Burnside (no first name), briefly a pro football player, then a cop, and now a Los Angeles private eye, has time on his hands because his girlfriend is up in San Francisco studying law. So he’s taken to doing counseling work at a center for the homeless run by his friend, Wayne Fairborne. Wayne is a good guy who cares about helping street people learn skills that will make it easier for them to go back to work. He’s also running for mayor of Bay City (really Santa Monica; it’s an alias that goes back to Raymond Chandler), apparently as a Republican(!).
And then he’s murdered.
Who would want to murder Wayne Fairborne? Turns out there’s a fairly long list. His resentful brother-in-law. The string of women he’s had affairs with, or their husbands or boyfriends. And – not least – the incumbent mayor, who’s as crooked as a subdivision street.
Burnside will learn a lot about his friend Wayne, and much of it he doesn’t want to know. I followed the story with great interest, even in spite of lines like, “Dignity is a commodity that illuminates the trail.” And “Opportunities have a way of availing themselves to those who persevere.”
Recommended, as a fun read. Nothing terribly objectionable.
I am not reluctant, in my old age, to drop a book unceremoniously when I find the writing poor. Sometimes, if my sensitivities are outraged enough, I’ll tell you about it.
The case is somewhat different with Post Pattern, by David Chill. I found the writing very bad in places – especially in the area of word choice. However, I liked the character and the story enough to stick with it.
Burnside (yet another one-name private eye, in the Spenser tradition) is a Los Angeles private investigator. He was a star football player in college, and then became a cop. He was a good, by-the-book policeman until one day he gave a break to someone who didn’t deserve it. As a consequence he became a laughingstock on the force, and he quit to go private.
A wealthy young man, Norman Freeman, comes to Burnside’s office to hire him. Someone took a shot at him in his car the night before. Only he’s not sure the shot was meant for him. It could be – he’s a former pro football player who is heir apparent to a big auto dealership. He could have business enemies. But he also has a ne’er-do-well brother who hangs out with some sketchy people, and he was driving his brother’s car.
Soon there will be a real murder, and Burnside will wade into a whirlpool of personal motives, business motives, and dangerous dames. The world of ex-jocks is a major element here, which doesn’t do much for me personally, but it didn’t put me off. I liked that Burnside believes strongly in being armed at all times, and there wasn’t a lot of political correctness in view.
What author David Chill does well is create good characters. And good characters make up for a lot with me. I wish he’d had a better copy editor, but I still enjoyed Post Pattern, and went on to buy the next book in the series.
“Children,” says Mrs. Clinton, “are like the tiny figures at the center of the nesting dolls for which Russian folk artists are famous. The children are cradled in the family, which is primarily responsible for their passage from infancy to adulthood. But around the family are the larger settings of paid informers, secret police, corrupt bureaucracy, and a prison gulag.”
I added the last part for comic relief, something It Takes a Village doesn’t provide. Intentionally.
The late, lamented P. J. O’Rourke had something to do with my transition from liberalism to conservatism, back in the ‘80s. Not a determinative influence, but a step along the way. I would have become a conservative anyway, because liberalism was pulling its rug quietly out from under me, like Douglas Fairbanks in an old swashbuckling scene, though slower. But O’Rourke’s Give War a Chance was a book I picked up as I was coming to terms with the situation. I couldn’t buy his whole stoner-libertarian shtick, but a lot of the stuff he wrote made sense to me. And he always made me laugh, which counts for a lot.
CEO of the Sofa is a collection of his essays written around the turn of the millennium. He explains in his Acknowledgments that the title was suggested by Oliver Wendell Holmes’ classic The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, and he frames the essays with imagined vignettes from his home life, in which he cross-talks with his wife, his assistant, his godson (who apparently lives with them), their babysitter, their daughter (later two daughters) and the Political Nut (who is himself), along with occasional others.
It’s been a while since the early 2000s, and some of the material hasn’t aged well. And, of course, O’Rourke is himself gone now, which is a bummer. But it’s still a fun ride, touching on a miscellany of subjects from the UN to childbirth, from Hunter S. Thompson to the indignities of middle age. I didn’t always agree with the points, but it was always funny. Great lines were everywhere – “Two hundred and fifteen dollars for your story, ‘Chewing-Mouth Dogs Bring Hope to People With Eating Disorders.’”
I wish I’d written that.
Recommended, with major cautions for obscenity, drug humor, and general bad taste.
Penguin Books UK is releasing a new, cohesive audiobook series of all 41 books in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. The video here will show you who’s involved and how much work everyone is doing to pull this off.
“Softly and Tenderly” performed by the Altar of Praise Chorale
Today’s hymn published in 1880 by the composer himself, Will L. Thompson (1847-1909) of Ohio. A member of the Church of Christ, Thompson started his own business to sell his music and later pianos, instruments, and other sheet music.
This performance by the Altar of Praise Chorale skips the third verse, which may be darker than some ministers want.
Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing, passing from you and from me; shadows are gathering, deathbeds are coming, coming for you and for me.
Come home, come home; you who are weary come home; earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling, O sinner, come home!
All the faults of Jane Eyre … magnified a thousand fold
from The North British Review, 1847
A reviewer for a Scottish magazine, The North British Review, used the words above to dismiss Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. He didn’t believe the work would find a broad audience, but as the Narrator says, “Little did he know.”
The Examiner called it “strange.”
We detest the affectation and effeminate frippery which is but too frequent in the modern novel, and willingly trust ourselves with an author who goes at once fearlessly into the moors and desolate places, for his heroes; but we must at the same time stipulate with him that he shall not drag into light all that he discovers, of coarse and loathsome, in his wanderings …
The Spectator seemed to think it a well-written but ugly story. “The success is not equal to the abilities of the writer; chiefly because the incidents are too coarse and disagreeable to be attractive, the very best being improbable, with a moral taint about them …”
Book reviewing takes many forms today. A few weeks ago, an executive at Barnes and Noble noted upswings in sales according to the buzz on TikTok, which they call BookTok. Some authors have linked the success of a book to single BookTok videos.
On YouTube, reviewers call themselves Booktubers. Occasionally I think about recording videos or doing a podcast in order to boost this blog, but I have yet to justify the time. Anyone can jump into the video side of social media, and I think I have a good voice for it. But it takes a certain talent and good lighting to gain attention, not to mention all the visuals and actually having something to say.
Disney Nightmares: Speaking of fantasy, Helen Freeh talks about reasons parents should have been wary of Disney long before now.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s excellent essay, “On Fairy Stories,” addresses the very problem that Disney had from its inception: the notion that fairy stories are exclusively children’s stories. They are not. They are stories allowing adults to examine the world from a new perspective to find a better way to live. Tolkien asserts that people connect “the minds of children and fairy- stories,” but “this is an error; at best an error of false sentiment, and one that is therefore most often made by those who, for whatever private reason (such as childlessness), tend to think of children as a special kind of creature, almost a different race, rather than as normal, if immature, members of a particular family, and of the human family at large.”
Elsewhere in shared videos, a view of the side of Glastonbury Tor in Somerset.
Consumer warning: I’m about to do a think piece. The management assumes no responsibility for any mental damage that may be sustained by those who rashly read on…
Gene Edward Veith posted about “God as a poet” today on his Cranach blog (I’d link to it, but it’s behind a pay wall). I commented about my own theory, becoming a conviction (wisely or not), that God is a storyteller.
In my case, the idea goes back quite a long time, to when I was learning to tell stories (something I learned relatively late in life). How a story involves taking a (usually likeable) main character, giving him (or her. Or it) a problem, then having them try to solve it. Their attempt not only fails, but makes the problem worse. Repeat as needed, escalating at each stage, until they either a) succeed, or b) fail in a significant way.
And then I noticed that that is precisely how life works (something I haven’t actually learned yet, in practical terms). We face problems, we keep trying, learning what works and what doesn’t as we go, until we find something that works. Or else we die.
And I thought, “Hey, life is like a story. I’ll bet that’s why stories are such a universal human phenomenon.”
And then I got all metaphysical. “Maybe stories reflect reality because God is Himself a storyteller. Scripture certainly presents the history of salvation as a narrative. A narrative with a Hero and a plot.”
And then I thought, “Maybe that answers the ancient question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” If God has shaped all creation as a story, then bad things would have to happen to good people. Because that’s how stories work (see paragraph 3 above). Every writer knows the struggle of creating a character you like, and then subjecting them to torture – for the sake of the story.
Another commenter at Cranach suggested that this trivializes suffering. I can see how they might think that. I seem to be saying that God lets children die of cancer, or live in abuse, just to tell a story.
But that objection depends on two assumptions:
One is that stories are trivial things. If, as I am coming to believe, the creation itself is a story, then it’s the farthest thing from trivial. I’m not deprecating reality – I’m exalting Story.
Secondly, it all depends on what you think of the Storyteller. Whether He’s going to tie all the loose ends up in the end. Whether He created His characters in love, or just to amuse Himself.
I believe that the Storyteller began His story – “Let there be light” – with loving purpose. And He’ll wrap it up by fulfilling His loving promise: “Yes, I am coming quickly!” And then comes the Wedding Feast, and they live happily ever after.
He has a long, double-barreled English name, but is generally known as “Squigs.” He is very tall and thin, has big feet, and is extremely awkward with girls. He studied Alchemy at an English university, which led him, through complex circumstances, to find himself on a watery planet called Zoar, where he’s completely out of his element – and he was never all that at home even on earth. Also, his right hand is missing. He finds himself rescued by a beautiful young girl in a boat, with whom he falls immediately in love. She finds him beneath contempt. Now, Crum the Barbarian, big, blond, dumb and handsome – that’s a guy she could go for.
The girl’s big, pugnacious father is looking for help hunting poachers. Zoar is inhabited by dragons, and dragon teeth are a coveted natural resource. But unfamiliar, interstellar vehicles have been showing up recently and killing dragons way over the hunting limits. Eager to impress the girl, Squigs volunteers to help pursue the poachers. He doesn’t seem well equipped for the quest, but he has qualities nobody has ever appreciated, and he acquires a faithful friend in a fearless dwarf. And the new hand he acquires – black, with eight serpentine fingers, turns out to be useful in surprising ways.
Save the Dragons is by Dave Freer, and showcases his punning, likeable, and satirical style. Lots of fun.
