Clearing the List

 I have a list on my phone notes of potential blog topics. Today I empty that list. 

There are occasional short-term guests (something funny that the kids said or did) that will get written up right away, but today we are dealing will all of the multi-year tenants. These are ideas that I've thought "I should write about this" for years. But then I never do, because it would either involve a lot more research, or it's way too controversial, or I'm not sure what to think about it. 

I'm spring cleaning my phone (goodbye, duplicate pictures of old rehearsal schedules) and this is what's finally going to make it happen.

PRIMING

Priming is the psychological phenomenon (I think I first read about it in Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow) whereby one stimulus influences (usually unconsciously) the response to another stimulus. (A classic example is the greater support for propositions to support school funding increases when the polling station is physically located within a school.) Priming is exactly the sort of unconscious and semi-rational thought that steers us without our being aware of it. J and I had a conversation where we reverse engineered an entire morning's worth of conversation and action with the question "in what contexts was this thought/action primed?" And it turns out that everything is primed by something. The effect might be extraordinarily miniscule, but it's there. Then we did the same experiment with a typical worship service flow...

EVERYTHING IS THE FEAR OF DEATH

Drugs are a way of escaping your fear of death. Sex is the ultimate biological insurance against death. Feeling busy (and thereby important) is a compensation for your anxiety about death. The habitual avoidance of restful sleep is a fear of death. My struggle against meaninglessness is a fear of death. Just like everything can be partially explained by priming, so can nearly every human action (especially destructive and irrational ones) be explained by the fear of dying. I think that one of the healthiest things a person can do is to look himself/herself in the mirror and acknowledge, "I am going to die. I am mortal. I am aging, growing weaker, and the time in my hourglass is running out. I don't know what will happen when I die, and I will not know. I do not know when I will die, and I cannot control it." This is why the Ash Wednesday service is (in my opinion), one of the most beautiful moments of the Christian year. We grasp that nettle in hand and are told "From dust you came, and to dust you shall return." It's like taking a swim in cold water. It's horrible, but it reminds you what being alive for this moment really is.

THE BOOK OF JOB

The Hebrew word that we usually translate "God/god" is actually plural...elohim. (Masculine plural hebrew words form the plural with an -im ending, feminine words with a -oth ending.) There are a few obvious sentences in the Psalms where you clearly have to translate the "elohim" as gods, because of the the syntax of the rest of the sentence. Most of the rest of the old testament uses a plural noun but a singular verb. 

There are 58 instances of the singular form of God/god, which is eloah. 42 of these are in the book of Job. 

Why? (Like most questions raised about the book of Job, lack even the beginning of a useful answer.)

ADULTHOOD

The biggest difference between adulthood and young adulthood is that nothing ever happens. Or, rather, almost everything (good or bad) happens in tiny/incremental ways. Sure, every once in awhile there is a 9/11 or a global pandemic. But most of the things that matter most to you are like how you gradually put on 10 lbs over the winter. (Or you work out every day for six months and gradually lose 10 lbs.) Or get slightly better at wrapping gifts. You don't learn six new sonatas every semester like you did when you were in college. You work on one sonata over two years, and you gradually can play it at level 88 instead of level 85. (Or you don't really practice much for two years and then you find out that you can no longer play the sonata at level 85.)

You make sourdough bread over and over again, and each loaf gets 1 percent better.

It's neither a good thing nor a bad thing that life is like this. But it is definitely what your life is now. It's mostly the same thing every day, and as you look back over the sweep of time you see the tiny changes, but you hardly ever notice it in the moment.

TE KALOU KAI KAKOU

Sometimes an idea is conspicuous by its absence. One idea that is conspicuously absent in scripture is the binary division of people/things/ideas into straightforward good and evil. This idea (which is central to the neoplatonism that so profoundly challenged and influenced the church of the 3rd/4th/5th centuries) still has powerful assumed resonances in many pockets of modern Christianity. But where in the Bible can you find any of the authors splitting people into "good people" and "bad people." Or good ideas and bad ideas? There's the parable of the sheep and the goats, but that becomes more complex with cultural and scriptural context. The closest thing you get in philosophical terms (thinking about the theory of forms and ontological goodness/badness) is a one-liner in Hebrews 5. 

GIVING YOUR CHILD A SWORD

I recently re-read the foundational text for our classical education efforts. For one thing, I'd read a strong critique of liberal arts education in general and was working through my own response to that book. For another, we needed some updated recommendations for curricula, since the edition of the book (Well-Trained Mind) that we own is almost thirty years old now.

Here's what I think about teaching a child Latin. It's like training them how to use a sword. Yes, it's a dead language. No, you would never use a sword in actual combat anymore. It's a ceremonial tool, one that's meant to evoke the past and does so with a certain panache. 

But there's more to learning swordsmanship than mere utility. A soldier who has been trained with a sword and is then handed a modern weapon is a more complete soldier than a solider who is handed a modern weapon straight off. Because the use of the sword requires greater sacrifice and discipline. Ultimately the sword is only as useful as the skill of the one who wields it. It is an extension of the soldier's own strength, grace, and courage, not a substitute for them.

A classical education (and learning Latin) is like training a soldier with the sword. The point isn't to train them to speak Latin. The point is to train them learn how to do any task (whether it's engineering, playing the piano, teaching science, or driving a cab) with the diligence, precision, and humility of a classical scholar.

They are learning swordsmanship.