Gold in the Grass

As World War II comes to an end, an injured Canadian veteran and his nurse fall in love, marry and purchase a worn out, run down 100 acre farm near Ontario; they dream of a quiet country life. Gold in the Grass: Rags to Riches Through Soil Reclamation and Sustainable Farming - A Back-to-the-Land Adventure from 1954 by Margaret L Leatherbarrow is their story. While their neighbors are making bets as to how long they will last, they transform a non-producing farm into their private Utopia using sustainable agriculture. It is a heartwarming story. I would have never picked it up. My husband purchased it. His review is here.

In my opinion, this book fails as a how-to book. It isn't written as a manual. It is an autobiography written by a woman passionate about the life she and her husband built together. What kept me reading was Leatherbarrow's wisdom. I felt like I was reading a book written by an older woman who was sharing a lifetime of knowledge. I was surprised when I got to the last page of the book. The book was written only 7 years after she and her husband began her adventure. Leatherbarrow must have still been fairly young. Much younger than I am now.

Yet, she has something to say about:

God:

"God said I am the Truth. He did not say I am what you choose to believe." (page 68)

It would e more correct to say Jesus said I am the Truth (John:6). Most Christians would recognize this as one of the "I AM" assertions of Christ. But, I believe Jesus is God incarnate, I fully agree with her assessment. A real God has real attributes and power. His activities are just as real. When I choose to make him little enough to fit in my brain or to my agenda, his attributes do not change to fit my mind picture. I am just not nearly powerful enough to control who and what God is. It is my responsibility to get to know the real God.

Human Nature: Early in their adventure, while still struggling, seasoned farmers refused to share their knowledge with them. Leatherbarrow writes:

"The secretiveness borne of greed, a common trait of man all through our civilization, keeps us grovelling like the miserable creatures our greed has made us become. We war with one another, be it the individual or the entire race, having lost faith to such an extent we can't trust one another any more. In church we pray for blessings individually. In or homes we seek the comforts we desire with no care for the individual or community good. We will take ever by force, yet give nothing." (page 128)

Disability Acceptance:

"There is no point in attempting something you are not physically capable of accomplishing. A healthy individual is one who, recognizing this handicap, accepts it and works according to his ability, not focing himself to do what is impossible, just because he'd like to be able to do it." (page 168)

It was her shared wisdom that made the book worth reading. My husband gave the book 5-stars. I would not. My rating scheme doesn't make allowances for giving every book a 5-star rating. That rating is saved for those books whose content makes me think about something a new way and changes who I am. Gold in the Grass did not. Neither would I give it 4-stars. In my economy this is a three star book, a book I would recommend you bring to read while you lie in the sun, wait for your car to be repaired, recover from surgery or escape from the stressors of your real life. A book that is entirely delightful but not life changing.

A Prayer to Our Father

When I read Meet the Rabbis: Rabbinic Thought and the Teachings of Jesus by Brad H. Young, I was introduced to the idea that the prayer Jesus taught his disciples, commonly called the Lord's Prayer, was very much like the prayer that ancient teachers of Judaism taught their students. I had read the Shemoneh Esreh and noted that, like the Lord's Prayer, it starts and ends with prais and worship. The Shemoneh Esreh also contains prayers surrendering to God's as King, requests for God's provision and care, prayers asking for forgiveness and guidance. This ancient Jewish prayer is indeed very much like the Lord's Prayer.

I thought that Prayer To Our Father: Hebrew Origins of the Lord's Prayer by Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson would complete or at least add to my initial investigation into the Jewishness Lord's Prayer. And, I was right. But, it did it in an entirely different way. Nehemiah Gordon is a Karaite Jew. For those unfamiliar with Karaitism, just think of them as Jewish men and women who have fully embraced the sola scriptura. Arguments about the value and place for traditions of man are not the sole property of the Western Church. Because Gordon is a scripturalist, the book focused on words, the history of words, and putting those words in the culture of the ancient Jewish man and woman. I love words!

"Matthew composed his history in the Hebrew dialect, and everyone translated it as he was able." ~ Papias of Hierapolis

St. Jerome testified that the Nazarenes used a Hebrew Matthew as late as the 4th century. Gordon and Johnson argue that the Shem Tov Matthew descended from one of these ancient Hebrew documents (rather than being translated into Hebrew from a Greek source). They then go on to analyze each phrase in the Lord's Prayer, or the Avinu (Our Father) Prayer. The style of writing is autobiographical. And, for those interested, there of photos on facebook of the sites that the authors visited in Israel while researching the book.

Our Father in Heaven.

May your name be sanctified.

May your kingdom be blessed.

Your will shall be done in heaven and on earth.

Give us our bread continually/daily

Forgive us the debt of our sins as we forgive the debt of those who sin against us.

Do not bring us into the hands of a test,

and protect us from all evil.

Amen.

This is an excellent book; I highly recommend it.

A Lion Among Men

"The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking." ~ Christopher Morley

I was disappointed in this book. I had hoped to learn more about what happened next... instead, I read the Cowardly Lion's back story.

Do you agree with the quote above? As an adult, I know I have deliberately used books to trap my mind into doing its own thinking. But, that is hardly the story of my life. I liked and indulged in a lot of fantasy books. I still do. I wasn't always a careful reader. Instead of thinking about what I was reading, I let the author's ideas teach me. When a story's characters, setting, and plot are pure fantasy, it is easy to just enjoy the story and not think too deeply about what is being said. The more fantastical the story, the easier it is not to think seriously about its contents. A Lion Among Men is a story that contains talking Lions, witches, magic books and is said to take place in a place that exists somewhere over the rainbow, Oz. It would be easy to thoughtlessly enjoy the books.

But, like the rest of the stories in this series, A Lion Among Men isn't purely fantasy. There is political posturing, wars and rumors of wars, ethical dilemmas, cultures and conflicts. The author's purpose in writing this series seems to be to educate his readers about the nature of evil, racism, class-ism and religious tolerance. He discusses the nature of man:

"We start out in identical perfection: bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief. Our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know: the price of living is corruption. There isn't as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness." (page 8)

In one short quote, the author has "taught" us something about what he believes to be true about the nature of man, the cause of evil and suffering the purpose of history and what happens to man after death. In the vehicle of a fantasy story, I doubt many readers critically examine whether or not the author is right. Does his thoughts agree with my thoughts? If not, upon what do I base my beliefs? Does what we observe about human nature, the behaviors of our own children, significantly agree with the author is asserting? Is my foundation sure?

I recently had a commenter write:

Those people who preface their remarks with, "Well, I'm a Christian and I think..." are officious and repugnant. What they're really saying is "I am worthier than you. My opinions carry more weight because I invoke the name of Christ."

I didn't approve the comment. I have a copy of the words in an email that was automatically sent to let me know someone had stopped by my blog. The same commenter left a series of negative comment on my blog. They all came from the same IP Address. In every case the commenter left a different name. So, I guess the comment was anonymous. There are a lot of very good reasons to write under an assumed name, including Internet privacy. But, if one is to assume a nom de plume, assume the same one. Did the commenter not believe enough in her words to stand behind them?

I do not mind people respectfully disagreeing with me, but the comment didn't add to the discussion. It was mostly just an indictment of me and my beliefs. But...

Well, I am a Christian and I think. I think a lot. Of the nature of man? My Bible, the foundation upon which I determine truth, teaches me that all humans are the crowning glory of God's creation, image-bearers. I am not worthier than you. When I preface my thoughts, it is only because I am communicating the tool I use for determining truth. Gregory Maguire is right, we start identical at birth, but it is our own nature that dulls and tarnishes our character. My history is not an accident; it is part of a divine plan. There is a pure light. It hasn't dulled, become distant or been extinguished. I just don't always choose to walk in it. And, I don't have any intention of spending eternity as an undifferentiated sameness. I don't have any intention of spending eternity as a disembodies spirit either. I plan on being bodily resurrected and spending eternity on this glorious, created Earth.

I challenge everyone, Christian or not, to read books thoughtfully.

Wicked

Readers, I have the feeling we're not in Oz anymore!

I will begin my review of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West with a slight disclaimer. I am already irritated. I had been wanting to read this book series for quite some time. My oldest daughter obsesses over musicals and had downloaded some of the music from the musical. I was intrigued by the idea behind the book. Every story has two sides, Wicked tells the story of Oz from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba. The story is told well. So, why am I annoyed? Well, I had waited and waited until I learned the last book of what I thought was a trilogy was released. I hate waiting until the end of the story! I like to be able to set one book down and immediately pick up the next book. I am one of those irritating people who sometimes reads the very last chapter of the book first. Apparently, the story isn't tied up and put to bed after the third book. There are rumors that there might be a fourth book. Annoying!


This book's plots, its twists and turns and moralizing intrigued me. In fact, as soon as I finished reading it I went to the library to check out the next book in the series, Son of Witch. The themes of the books are related to the nature of evil, the fallibility of man (or beast as some of the Animals in the book talk), discrimination, marginalization, politics, betrayals and courage. These themes are woven into the fabric of the story and result in a meaningful story. Religion plays a central role in the book. When I read of the Unnamed God, I couldn't help but see parallels to Hashem, the Name. The word used to identify the God of Judaism. The God I believe came to Earth as the man Jesus. I don't know what Maguire's religious beliefs are, but I know what he thinks of Christians and Christianity. For the most part followers of the Unnamed God are presented as imbeciles at best. Powerful followers are hypocritical tyrants. Organized religion, far from being a vehicle of salvation, is presented as a means of oppression. Frankly, there are days I cannot muster the strength to argue this point. History records violence, wars and bloodshed all done in the name of Hashem. So many people who identify with Christianity have aligned themselves with the political extreme right and endorse laws decidedly aimed at creating a Christian Utopia. We are no longer known by our love but our politics.

Unlike the The Chronicle of the Imaginarium Geographica by James A. Owen whose books each stand alone as its own story, the books in the Wicked Years do not end when the last page is finished. There were unanswered questions from Wicked that were answered in Son of a Witch. Son of a Witch ended in a cliff hanger. The next book in the series is A Lion Among Men. The librarian put me on a waiting list. And, the fourth book? Unwritten. Unpublished. Not even a hint of a release date. I prefer, much prefer, an ending.

I suspect that many, if not most, of the people who read here identify themselves as Christian. I would guess that many of you homeschool too and might be looking for literature for your children. While this book could indeed be used as a basis for talking about worldviews or even to encourage your child to think about how Maguire's Oz is the different or the same as L. Frank Baum's Oz, I will leave you with a word of caution. If books had a rating system like the movies do, the Wicked Years would come with a parental advisory. There are explicitly described sex scenes, infidelity, drug and alcohol use. There is even an odd scene in which several characters have sex with a talking Tiger in a club while the rest of the patrons watch. The scene is not glorified at all. In fact one of the participants is driven to the brinks of insanity. It is his failing health that reintroduces him to Elphaba. It is through his influence that Elphaba begins to move forward from a traumatic event in her own life. So, while there seems to be a peripheral weirdness to having included a scene depicting bestiality, I suspect there are other ways the author could have brought the two characters together again. The same event also gives us a clue as to the nature of an odd crone who seems bent on protecting or destroying Elphaba (I haven't decided which. She is just around somewhere at every crucial juncture. Her presence is one of the story lines that is so far left unexplained.) Overall, with the exception of those sexual encounters that resulted in the birth of a main character, unless the purpose was to shock and repel readers, I didn't see the point. The book could have stood well without so many adult scenes, too bad really.

Not Letting Go

I have not given up on this blog. I simply did not have time to blog here last month. My oldest daughter has fetal alcohol syndrome. Like 94% of the people living on the spectrum, she is mentally ill. When she has a stable environment, adequate supervision, structure, routine and medications, she can be mostly stable. My daughter has not been stable this month. She was hospitalized on a locked adolescent psychiatric unit. Not every hospital has one of those. She was over 2 hours away. I drove to visit her, participate in family counseling and take her out on pass several times a week. I got home late, slept little.

I didn't get any reading done. Though I didn't have time or energy needed to read and digest a book, I didn't allow my mind to be uninspired. Luckily we live in a day and age in which there are other forms of media that can inspire us to think more clearly and live better lives.

When I realized I would be spending an enormous amount of time in my car, I headed for the library for a book on tape. I ended up checking out the audiobook Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant. Fascinating! Because I am a Christian, I try to build my worldview on the Bible. I believe it is the inspired word of God. At best the Durants were agnostic. Their worldview, or philosophy of life, was built on history. At some point the authors address all the major worldview questions including:

1. What is prime reality (God, gods, material universe)?
2. What is the nature of our external reality/the world around us?
3. What is a human being?
4. What happens to a person at death?
5. What is the cause of evil and suffering?
6. How do we know what is right and wrong?
7. What is the meaning of human history?

There was a part of the tape that seemed to attack one of my core values. The Declaration of Independence asserts, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Durant argues that we are not equal, nature loves inequality. He further asserted that freedom and equality cannot coexist. When I was young, I would have described myself politically as an anarcho-capitalist. I am still no fan of big government, but parenting a child with a developmental disability has made me re-think my political views.

"I wanted to understand why I could take my dreams and connect them to reality and make my dreams come true. What was different about my brother's brain such that he could not connect his dreams to a common reality and the instead became delusions?" ~ Jill Bolte Taylor in My Stroke of Insight (page 2)

My daughter was not created equal. While the US may be able to provide her equal access to education and training, she will not be able to utilize it to develop her talents or to pursue happiness. Counting on charity to assist her as an adult is unrealistic. Church-based organizations tend to see her behaviors as a sign of a sinful, unrepentant heart. Rather than helped by the church, she (and my ability to parent her) have been judged. Even secularist believe that she should just make better choices. There are times I want to tell her to just snap out of it. I have learned after years of being her primary caretaker that she cannot. Even the things she wants most in life, things she is motivated to get, are out of reach. I am no longer clear as to what I believe the role of "good" government should be. I don't know what I want it to do and what I don't want it to do. I still understand that government resources are scarce. I don't lose sleep over it, but neither do I believe a trillion dollar national debt is good for our country. I don't want to encourage an atmosphere of entitlements. Still, I know that as an adult my daughter will struggle to meet her basic needs. I would rather subsidize housing and provide job training and support to those people with demonstrated difficulty in adapting to our cultural expectations than some of the other things the government chooses to spend its money on.

In addition to the text of the book, the CD includes interviews with the Durants. I don't know if Ariel Durant was declining at the time of the interview or if she was just sitting back and allowing her husband to stand in the limelight. She talks very little. But, I was amused whenever she spoke up. I suspect she acted as her husband's gadfly throughout their entire marriage.

Then, after my daughter came home, she insisted that we watch a movie that she had seen while in the hospital. We rented The Boy in Striped Pajamas, the tale of an unlikely friendship between two 8-year old boys. One is the son of a commandant in a World War II concentration camp; the other is a young Jewish boy. The story ends in tragedy. I enjoyed this movie; however, I couldn't help but wonder if the book is not better. I found that some of the characters seemed poorly developed. Their back stories were left untold. I may have to read this book.

Finally, I rented a French documentary called Her Name is Sabine, the story of a woman with autism. I am not sure this film would have had the impact on me had it not been for my daughter's recent hospitalization. The video shows Sabine's life in her group home today intermixed with flashbacks to her life as a young woman. Her condition has obviously and tragically deteriorated. My daughter doesn't have autism, but many of her behaviors mimic those of people on the autism spectrum of disorders. The home movies of a young Sabine show a woman who is functional and talented. My daughter has days like that. But, those days get mixed up with days where anxiety, an altered mood and unclear thought processes result in odd and sometimes dangerous behaviors. As a mother, the days I chose to make a written record or a photographic memory are the good days. I wondered how functional Sabine really was a young woman. Having a video crew tape your every move obviously interferes with Sabine's normal, daily structure. I wondered how dysfunctional Sabine really is as an adult.

Sabine currently has a lot of tremors and she drools. While she was in the hospital, my daughter was started on Abilify to help control her moods. The first time I saw her after this drug was started I cried all the way home. She had tremors; she was drooling. Her gait was slow and deliberate. She looked almost like a toddler who had just learned to walk and had to think through how to accomplish that feat. This side effect is somewhat better. Before she came home, I talked with the staff at the hospital about my concerns. The medication time was changed so that it is now given at night. My daughter is asleep when the medication is first absorbed and the blood level of the drug is at its peak. She has another medication she can take to control the side effects when needed.

My daughter sees herself differently since the hospitalization. She identifies herself as a mentally ill person in need of help. Her fetal alcohol syndrome and mental illness have become a cave in which she can escape to and hide. She was hospitalized after a suicide attempt. She took a Tylenol overdose. I felt like I needed to get her help. But, my actions have caused a change. She is emotionally scarred. I wonder if I did the right thing. She didn't take enough Tylenol to cause any liver damage. Could I have taken her home and increased my supervision of her? Locked up all the medicine in our home? I might have done this if she was younger. She will be an adult in 6 months. I knew I couldn't protect her forever. This fall, I have enrolled my daughter in a Day Treatment School. She will be surrounded by peers with emotional and behavioral problems. What will she learn from her peer group?

Lori at When the Taptap's Movin' wrote a blog entry that has been stuck in my mind. The entry tells the tale of a boy whose father must rescue him from a hungry crocodile. It ends with a reporter asking to see the scars. "Then, with obvious pride, he said to the reporter, 'But look at my arms. I have great scars on my arms, too. I have them because my Dad wouldn't let go.'"

I am not planning to let go. Is there a way I can attenuate the harm done by "therapy?"