Expelled is really about refusing to let The System dictate your life. Even if I didn’t have any interest in evolution and intelligent design theories, I would want to see the movie. But I am interested in the beginning of life and especially interested in how we live, now, with freedom from dogma. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone should read. Reading makes you a bigger, better person. I love reading, but I must confess that I am very particular about what I read. I have strict standards: Read the rest of this entry »

Alex and Brett Harris wrote a book called “Do Hard Things” which I probably would know nothing about but for an excerpt in TPE, the magazine of my church’s denomination. (Yep, I’m one of those crrrrazy Pentecostals. Are you scared? Are you making assumptions right now? You are, aren’t you? That’s okay. I love you anyway.)

I was impressed. The book is directed toward teenagers, which, strangely enough, is a group that no longer accepts me as one of their own. (I am still a little hurt by this.) The book’s premise seems to be (understand, I have only read an excerpt, not the whole book, so I’m sailing a little blind here) that the “Myth of Adolescence” has turned a group that should be vibrant, energetic, unstoppable into a lethargic and rebellious one.

What a waste. As the book says, “We waste some of the best years of our lives and never reach our full God-given potential. We never attempt things that would stretch, grow and strengthen us. We end up weak and unprepared for the amazing future that could have been.”

I’m 26. My husband is 25. We’ve both been working since we were about 14. Of course, it was part-time during the school year, and some of my earlier jobs were just baby-sitting. But at that tender, adolescent age, our parents expected us to begin to take responsibility, to pay for stuff we wanted, to contribute. We didn’t have to put grocery money into the family pot or anything, but that probably wouldn’t have been a bad idea.

We’re not rich, by any means. But we have worked for and gained an independence that many of my peers seem unable to find. And we’re not talking teenagers! It starts then, back at 13, or before, maybe at 10, or 6, when the whole world revolves around a child’s happiness. At what point do you let the child know that the point of the world isn’t to make him happy? It’s a sad awakening, and I have friends who are still fighting that knowledge as hard as they can.

Some people manage to avoid acknowledging that truth their entire lives, and they are the ones who Alex and Brett describe on their blog as “ Peter Pans who shave.” (This article they wrote describes more about “adultescence.”)

I see that in my generation, now in our mid-twenties. I see that in the one coming behind me, the teens with shiny laptops and enormous libraries of music on their iPods, but with no vision for the future, no library of skills or knowledge or character from which to draw.

We’re going to be playing catch-up for a while. We better start getting over our own lies and pointing the way.

We scurry to the edges of our time

We (waste not, want not) save up all our dimes.

(A penny’s none too dear these days.) We strain

With waiting out, wading through the stain,

The ooze, morass, of one more tricky year

That’s what we say, in case the neighbors  hear.

And oh the tricks we turn; when rainbows fade,

We pull ‘em down and sew ‘em up. (Fair trade

Certified, of course.) And clouds we use -

diverse in black and white and all gray hues.

Ingenious Business rolling up her sleeves.

“They must be fed and clothed,” she says, “And please

Don’t tell me it’s their future that I’ll take.”

A pause. “To gain the present, I will stake

Tomorrow.”  And she moves back to her work.

…

Stuck on the last line. Suggestions?

Edna St. Vincent Millay, first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, produced poetry with a simplicity that eases you into its tangible emotions. Her life choices were not what I consider admirable, but her poetry is full of grace. You can read more about her here, in a brief biography.  

God’s World

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
   Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
   Thy mists that roll and rise!
Thy woods this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour!  That gaunt crag
To crush!  To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
   But never knew I this;
   Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart, — Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me, — let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

She is best known for her poem Renascence; her poem The Suicide is more approachable (don’t be deterred by the title).

April is National Poetry Month. Read some poetry. It’s a lost art, it’s good for your soul, it’s better than chicken noodle soup!

One of my favorites, just to get you started:

E. E. Cummings - Read about him here. (Highlights: he was born in Massachusetts, studied at Harvard, was a volunteer ambulance driver in France during WWI, was imprisoned for suspected espionage, was anti-war, and in his writing he experimented with radical changes in grammar, punctuation, and form.)

When you read his poetry (especially the first time, especially if you’re not particularly inclined toward poetry-lovin’), read it aloud. The sound and rhythm of his lines are important. Don’t think in terms of dictionary definitions of the words he uses; think in terms of connotation, the feeling and memories evoked by a word. Poets often use a word’s connotation, but Cummings mastered the connotative qualities of words to the point that they overpowered the definition. He created a new definition for words by using them according to associations rather than formal meaning.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of allnothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Read more of his poetry here.

.

The book: Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine, published by Free Press; available as an Amazon Kindle Edition, if you’re so inclined.

The format: A month-by-month review of one couple’s year without purchasing anything more than necessities.
The review: A more accurate description might be a month-by-month foray into the life and mind of a writer totally taken in by anti-Bush, anti-capitalism, anti-republican, anti-war cultural popularisms.

Let’s not blame her. She is, after all, a writer living in New York City and New England. She has simply become what is accepted in her particular subculture. Honestly, when did you last hear of a pro-bush, New York City-based writer actually published?
I don’t critique her in order to defend Bush. Frankly, I’m not a great fan myself, but my aim here is not to dissect the politics of the thing but to review the part politics play in her book. I picked it up because I am interested in people trying to simplify, in a less consumer-oriented life, in the reality of trying to live a little differently than the culture around you.

Levine provides a statistically supported, well-researched critique of consumer culture and is fresh and honest about her place in it. Her personal struggles with buying and not buying, her changes in lifestyle, her experiences in the social sphere as a non-consumer: these are the essays that pique and tingle. She is honest about her less-than-ideal habits, her penchants for newness (to which we can all relate), her failures; she is humble and realistic about her success.

She loses me, however, when she attempts to define the failings of capitalism and the problems with rich (read: non-third-world) countries by applying cliches of the liberal leaning to problems of commerce, economics, and wealth distribution. Stereotypes just don’t do enough. The “bigger” issues, in this case, are not better for Levine.

Perhaps that’s because, on the political spectrum, I am far more Republican than I am Democrat. Maybe I can’t handle the criticism where it touches my party leanings.

Or maybe personal, real experience tells a story better than political musing. Where Levine remembers, and writes thus, the book is interesting no matter what your politics. When she doesn’t, however, which is a lot of the time, she inspires me to take the title advice in real application to the book itself.

More: Levine’s 2006 radio interview with Doug Henwood of Left Business Observor. (Downloadable or listen to streaming audio.)

Levine’s 2006 radio interview with Diane Rehm of the Diane Rehm show. (Listen to a segment or purchase the cd or transcript.)

An interview (text) about Levine’s 2002 book Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex from Salon.com. (There was a good deal of controversy about the book when it was published, which the introductory article summarizes.)

Levine’s blog, her other books, and an excerpt from Not Buying It.