“Slice the world as fine as you like, an Artist has been there first.” NDW
By the way, check out N.D. Wilson’s Notes From the Tilt-A-Whirl for a round-trip adventure through wonder, joy, and gratitude. Wilson is a poetic, artful, and humorous tour-guide. It’s one of my favorite books. Ever. (There’s also a movie, which is very good as well.)
The wonder of the world goes down deep, to the microscopic level. Kids love to be wowed. I shared these with my kids and made them guess what it was. Fun.
“I’ve a shelf at home devoted to books about writing. I’d say I might even have two shelves devoted to those books now. I’ve read most of them and some are better than others. But the best writing advice I’ve ever received didn’t come from a book. It actually occurred to me one morning when I was lying in bed, not wanting to get up and do my job. Maybe it came from heaven, I don’t know. But the advice was this: Love your reader.
I love this. The Christian Doctrine of Vocation (vocation = calling) is the answer to so many questions. As Bob Dylan sang, “You gotta serve somebody.” Your calling, if you are a child of God, is tied up in serving the world (perhaps especially other Christians). I wrote a little about this here, and it has been on my heart for a while. It’s tied to the decisions I’m making and the disciplines I’m trying to achieve in my life right now. Especially creatively.
I wonder if this idea informs why so many great children’s novels have originated with a person telling stories to delight their kids? (I hope so.)
Who do ya’ love? Who do you want to serve?
I’m not exactly a mystic, but if you feel a strong desire to serve people who need to be loved the way you feel called to serve, then that might be an indication of the calling of God on your life. And ask wise people around you, especially people like a spouse, parents, pastors, and trustworthy friends. They’ll probably be saying the same thing.
I bet you’re thinking cuss words, right? Why the [redacted] would you think that?
No, these are worse than so-called cuss words. These are words that make me want to so-called cuss.
If I…were the king…of the foreeeeeest….no one would be allowed to say these words –without fear of being put in the comfy chair and poked with the soft cushions.
The Offending Words, Corporal, if you please!
Protip
Here’s a Protip: Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever say “Protip.”
Ancient
I used to be fine with this word UNTIL MY WIFE POINTED OUT THAT I DON’T KNOW HOW TO PRONOUNCE IT. Now, I feel like I’m six years old every time I say it.
Absofruitly
It’s like it’s Dr. Moreau’s island and they mixed fruit with absolute. A hideous beast!
Coolio
Like that show you never liked when it was originally on, but the reruns NEVER END.
Dealio
This so-called word makes the perfectly-fine word “deal” feel like a square. It’s like those Mac-snob commercials. You’re so cool with your hands in your pockets and you look so relaxed while the pasty guy with his shirt tucked in falls all over the TV screen. So your computers are awesome and fashionable, Leo. Great job, Leo. Big Deal, Leo.
Julio
I know, this is wrong. I actually love this word/name. But I wanted another –io-ending word. (Guilt by association?) You and no one down by the school yard, I guess.
Crave
I actually do hate this word and always have. “I’m craving a bag of potato chips.” It’s revolting, like communists.
Philanderer
I feel like I am one after I say it, it’s so gross.
OK, that was silly. I’m craving your participation. What words do you hate? How dumb is it to hate certain words? What’s the dealio on that?
My son plays happily. He flits easily between two worlds, the world that is and the world he imagines. His conversation assumes the extraordinary. His play is an adventure in make believe.
How like faith.
Perhaps nothing is more like faith than play. This “admission” would no doubt make Christians raised in an era of apologetic zeal begin to sweat. It may also delight anti-theist scolds, those champions of unhappiness and pretense.
But it is no great surrender to say faith is like play. If in a young boy’s imaginative play he sees himself brave and trustworthy in the good fight, then we are glad if he grows into a man who is like that in “the real world.” Likewise, if a little girl tenderly cares for a baby doll, devoting herself to its care while at play, then grows up to become a loving, tender mother, we are happy. And we should be. I call that good.
So child’s play is braided into the lifelong chords of faith. Part of life is anticipating, by faith, the right-side-up world. And it is deadly difficult when it feels like the ceiling’s coming down all around us.
Part of the Christian life, perhaps the heart of it, is praying “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This is holy imagination at work. This is a life of imaginative anticipation. Faith is play. It is playing at the most deeply true articles of the human charter.
Imagination is an essential capacity of faith.
Does our conversation assume the extraordinary? If it doesn’t, can we be Christians?
Jesus told us that children show us the way to the Kingdom. I believe he meant to commend both their lack of personal standing (they cannot cling to accomplishment as merit) and their capacity for deep dependence.
Children are suited for the Kingdom in their imaginative play. “Make believe” is one of the clearest avenues along the way to making us believers.
In an effort to zero in a little on what I believe is a particular calling on my life, I plan to devote Thursdays and Fridays (roughly) to the subject of Children and Imagination. I believe Imagination is an essential capacity of faith and that we need to foster playtime, imagination, and an appreciation of story for our children to be mature believers. I believe we are all called to child-like maturity and Imagination is crucial, I believe, to that end. More on this later, but today marks a bit of a launch for this focus. I hope it rings your bell.
Below is a small section from an interview J.B. Cheany (World Magazine, etc.) conducted with Alan Jacobs (The Narnian, etc.) over at what certainly appears to be a delightful website called Raising Readers. (See full interview here.) I thought these answers very insightful.
“Insight,” by the way, is one of the words my kids brought me to explain from their Bible reading today. Another was “perverseness,” which was awesome to explain. -Sam
How would you suggest parents promote reading to their children? For instance, should they insist on a certain standard (whether low or high) or let the kids read pretty much what they want?
I think reading is one sphere of experience where variety is supremely the spice of life. People in general — and therefore kids in particular — ought to be free to read a wide variety of things. I tend to think it’s best for kids to get the habit of reading by exploring books that they enjoy — but then at some point it’s good for the parents to say, “If you liked that you might also this. Give is a try. It might be a challenge, but I bet you’re up for it.”
What’s your definition of “trash”? Or do you have one?
I don’t, really. I think C. S. Lewis was right in his Experiment in Criticism to place a lot more emphasis on what the reader brings to the book than on the book in itself. Even a great book can be read badly. I believe if you think about the kind of reader you want to be, the place you want reading to have in your life, then the question of what you read will largely settle itself and then you can think about how you read.
“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”
He gets the words wrong, but his heart is in it as he sings. Andrew Peterson’s “The Queen of Iowa” somehow becomes “The King of Ireland” when sung by our two-year old son. Talk about progressive. His version goes beyond gender-neutrality into categorical inaccuracy and also breaks up those long-held biases about geographic specificity.
I thank God our cute little boy doesn’t yet fully understand all the words he tries to sing. For this is a song about suffering and death. And, of course, life and light. I hope, as he matures, he does get it.
I hope I do.
This seems like a good song (and story –see video blow) for some context on what we see as struggles and suffering and how we see them. It’s perhaps good for our New Year hopes. Are we wishing for a pain-free, suffering-free New Year? I’ll admit that it’s a deep longing for me. Part of that desire I view as righteous, longing for the Kingdom to come all the way and the world to be made right again. The other part is selfish, wanting to be spared the troubles God intends to use as tools to work good in me. Pain is often an avenue to graceful maturity.
Two of the sweetest and most refreshing Christian friends I met this year had recently experienced the death of their only child. In the deep well of their suffering, they spoke of all the good God was doing in their lives. They did more than speak, though. They sang along to the God-tells-me-who-I-am songs of Jason Gray with passion. My friend wasn’t the greatest singer, didn’t hit all the right notes. But it was among the most beautiful singing I’ve ever heard. Jason never had better accompaniment. I couldn’t sing along for the lump in my throat. This couple, so outfitted with reasons to surrender to bitterness and anger, radiated generosity and grace.
Do miracles still happen?
That is the mercy of God. That is maturity. God wants his children to have maturity –childlike faith and maturity.
We will not always get the words right and we will not always sing on-key, but let us keep singing.
So, Almighty God, do your work in us, frightened as we are. For we would be mature and childlike. We would be as you want us, for you are what we want and all our hearts need.
Andrew says meeting the Queen “…helped me to believe the words of my own songs.”
Maybe a good prayer for the New Year is that God would give us experiences, even painful ones if he must, that cause us to believe, and believe more deeply, all that we confess.
Because sometimes we get the words right, but our hearts wrong. The reverse is better, I guess. But best of all would be both.
May our hearts and tongues be in harmony this year and in the years to come. May they sing the same song, for the glory of God, Most High.
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.
(Colossians 1:24-29 ESV)
This helpful story compares the famous brand, which gives a pair of shoes to the needy when you buy a pair for yourself, to a company which is working to support jobs and industry in Africa.
“At Oliberté, we believe Africa can compete on a global scale,” he says, “but it needs a chance. It doesn’t need handouts or a hand up. It needs people to start shaking hands and companies to start making deals to work in these countries.”
Oliberté shoes are stitched and assembled in Ethiopia with leather sourced from local free-range cows, sheep, and goats—the default in a country with many herders whose livelihoods depend upon ranging wherever grass may be. The livestock haven’t been injected with hormones to speed their growth, a common practice in other parts of the world. The result is a light, limber, yet sturdy upper.
The shoes feature crepe rubber soles made from natural rubber processed in Liberia and lined with soft, breathable goat leather. This spring, the company will expand its line to offer leather bags and accessories, some of which will be sourced in Kenya and made in Zambia. It produces woven labels and other branding materials in the African island nation Mauritius….
…“TOMS Shoes is a good marketing tool, but it’s not good aid,” agrees Saundra Schimmelpfennig, an international aid expert who blogs at Good Intentions Are Not Enough, where she aims to educate nonprofit donors about effective charity. She’s criticized TOMS for competing with local producers by handing out free goods and for being “quintessential Whites in Shining Armor.” “The idea of creating jobs that pay a fair wage and provide necessary benefits,” she says, “can have far more impact than aid.”
If you are interested in going beyond the “White people to the rescue with handouts” solutions (which are almost always well-intended and sometimes needful –let’s be fair), then this might be a good place to start.
A wonderful place to invest in the care of orphans where these kinds of ideas are being implemented is New Hope Uganda. I can’t recommend them enough.
