I wrote a review of three books on a common theme. The authors are Booth Tarkington, Harold Bell Wright, and the team of Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman.
The article is posted on my dotlove website, which is devoted to Christianity, love and the media.
The reason why so many false effects are credited to the moon is that there are some true, as the tide.
Blaise Pascal, in the Pensées
I got a copy (from a yard sale) of a beautiful book by Harold Bell Wright. Shepherd of the Hills was his second book, and was followed by others I haven’t read yet that sequel it. It’s a story of love, regret, atonement, but mostly, in my view, love. Of course I tend to see love everywhere.
I was amazed by the writing skill of this author whom I did not previously know much about. This book was originally published in 1907 and has become an important part of the story of the Ozarks and Branson area, where the story is set. Not that he was perfect—he had some wordy paragraphs that didn’t need to be so wordy and some flowery phrases that didn’t need to be so flowery, but his story-telling skill made up for these weaknesses. It held me closely attentive until I finished, particularly toward the end.
It had mystery, unexpected twists and turns, sorrow and grief and, of course, a beautiful love story.
Harold Bell Wright grew up poor in New York and Ohio, became a minister, then reached out to the wider world by writing novels.
You can read the story for free online or I would be thankful to earn a few pennies if you buy it (or anything else) through my amazon picture link here.
Here’s a quote I like from the character Dad Howitt:
“Here and there among men, there are those who pause in the hurried rush to listen to the call of a life that is more real. How often have we seen them … jostled and ridiculed by their fellows, pushed aside and forgotten, as incompetent or unworthy. He who sees and hears too much is cursed for a dreamer, a fanatic, or a fool, by the mad mob, who, having eyes, see not, ears and hear not, and refuse to understand.
“We build temples and churches, but will not worship in them; we hire spiritual advisers, but refuse to heed them; we buy bibles, but will not read them; believing in God, we do not fear Him; acknowledging Christ, we neither follow nor obey Him. Only when we can no longer strive in the battle for earthly honors or material wealth, do we turn to the unseen but more enduring things of life; and, with ears deafened by the din of selfish things of life; and, with eyes blinded by the glare of passing pomp and folly, we strive to hear and see the things we have so long refused to consider.”
Good quote, good character, good book, good author. I would like to be more like each one of them myself.
From Augustine’s Handbook on Faith, Hope and Love:
In this universe, even what is called evil, when it is rightly ordered and kept in its place, commends the good more eminently, since good things yield greater pleasure and praise when compared to the bad things. For the Omnipotent God, whom even the heathen acknowledge as the Supreme Power over all, would not allow any evil in his works, unless in his omnipotence and goodness, as the Supreme Good, he is able to bring forth good out of evil. What, after all, is anything we call evil except the privation of good? In animal bodies, for instance, sickness and wounds are nothing but the privation of health. When a cure is effected, the evils which were present (i.e., the sickness and the wounds) do not retreat and go elsewhere. Rather, they simply do not exist any more. For such evil is not a substance; the wound or the disease is a defect of the bodily substance which, as a substance, is good. Evil, then, is an accident, i.e., a privation of that good which is called health. Thus, whatever defects there are in a soul are privations of a natural good. When a cure takes place, they are not transferred elsewhere but, since they are no longer present in the state of health, they no longer exist at all.
Augustine’s Handbook on Faith, Hope and Love, chapter 3, paragraph 11. Full text here.
Of course, that was not really about yin and yang, but about good as reality and substance, and evil as an absence of that reality. Good comes from God and evil corrupts wherever that fact is forgotten.
I’ve been looking at some various discussions about whether God exists or not - arguments against His existence and arguments against the arguments. They always give the attributes of the God they are going to disprove—as if someone who doesn’t exist has attributes.
Anyway, it all reminds me of a little routine we used to do when I was a kid. My expanded version goes something like this:
Smith: I saw our old friend Microfiche a few days ago.
Jones: Microfiche, who’s that?
Smith: Swinburne Microfiche, surely you remember him.
Jones: Oh, Microfiche! The labmaster from the old school.
Smith: Yeah.
Jones: Old Swinney the Pooh.
Smith: Yeah. You remember him then.
Jones: You mean the guy who used to blow up a lab rat in the face of one unsuspecting freshman each year?
Smith: Yeah, he was notorious for that.
Jones: The one who lived over on the other side of the commons in the fieldstone house … with the lovely wild roses and Japanese lilacs.
Smith: Yeah, that’s him.
Jones:You mean Swinney Microfiche? The man who married the parson’s daughter Elena - what a lucky guy.
Smith: Yeah. You remember him. Just the other day I ran into him and he was saying …
Jones: Hmmm. Lemme get this straight. You’re talking Microfiche, the guy who always used to come to faculty evening functions in corduroys? His lack of evening attire always scandalized the dean’s wife.
Smith: Yeah, well …
Jones: You mean Microfiche the labmaster - used to tinker with Italian motorscooters in that shed behind his house. Knew how to relax, that fellow. Rare trait in one so thin.
Smith: Yeah, I think he did fool with motorbikes or some such. Anyway, as I was starting to say ….
Jones: Microfiche - Swinney Microfiche?
Smith: Yeah.
Jones: Microfiche, the rat-exploding labmaster?
Smith: Yeah.
Jones: Swinney the Pooh Microfiche, husband of Elena, the parson’s daughter.
Smith: Yeah, that’s him.
Jones: Microfiche, the scooter-fixer who you ran into the other day? The one with the wild roses and Japanese lilacs?
Smith: Yeah, you seem to remember him quite well.
Jones: Microfiche, Swinburne Microfiche.
Smith: That’s the one.
Jones: Never heard of him.
Since I started my other weblog, Open Source Love, I’ve been writing about four posts a week on it. (I don’t write that often here.) I don’t know that they are all of the highest quality but they are there and I am writing.
The original premise is that love is a universal constant with the human race, like natural law—really I think love is natural law. I am trying to get across the idea that we all know about love, to one degree or another, and that we all value it and try to apply it to our lives in whatever ways we feel we can.
I have been talking about various blocks and hindrances to love and the fact that we all struggle with these hindrances.
Here are some of the posts:
Love is First
Love: the Kernel of Natural Law
When Does Love Stop Loving?
And here’s the flagship post:
And Open Sourced Operating System for Humanity
So bookmark, syndicate it or put it in your networking system and watch this space.
Any pertinent feedback is welcome.
This post is way overdue. I first met Ken Rideout several years ago and have loved him ever since.
Ken spent many years learning about and learning to love the people of Thailand. He says, when asked, his calling is a teacher of God’s love. He learned to connect with folks who have no idea of Western culture or Biblical authority by appealing to their sense of natural law, or the law of karma. In this way, with non-judgmental love and personal approach, he led teams that helped change people’s lives individually and collectively.
Then, two or three years ago a heavenly match was made between Ken and the Henleys, Ralph and Karyn. Together they finished and published Ken’s book The Truth You Know You Know. This is a book aimed at Christians interested in learning how to share faith with others in different cultures, and in our pluralistic culture right here and now.
I was blessed to receive the Henley’s hospitality on more than one occasion, interacting with Ken about these lessons and others. [Those were good times. Thanks, Karyn and Ralph.]
One of Ken’s sayings is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is “self-validating,” which means that it rings true quite naturally in the hearts of persons, even though they might never have heard anything about it before. People take it in and accept it because it fits.
Here’s the web site: Ken Rideout: The Truth You Know You Know
Now for the rest of the story. While Karyn Henley was “sitting at his feet” as she says about the time she worked with Ken preparing the book for publication, she managed to internalize the teaching so well she decided, with Ken’s support, to write a second book putting forth the same ideas, but in a form more suited to youth (Karyn’s main readership).
Here’s the book on Karyn’s site.
Here’s the amazon link: Love Trumps Karma, Uncovering the Truth You Know You Know
A few months ago I picked up the Stranger by Albert Camus. I had heard of him and the book so I wanted to see how the book was. I was somewhat prepared because of course I knew it was about the alienation of people from one another. But I was not well enough prepared.
The story was somewhat perplexing—mainly because many of the characters and occurences plus the thoughts of the main character were contrived. His apathy was just too much. I couldn’t believe a real person could be so apathetic. It seemed to me the author was writing more of a fable than a novel. He wanted to convey apathy and alienation so strongly that he would sacrifice any semblance to real humanity.
I suppose the only part of the story that approached a semblance of reality was at the end when the condemned man turned from apathy to hatred. I felt he was full of hatred throughout his whole life but it was only admitted at the end.
Was this Camus’ tool to make the thing more poignant? Maybe so.
But really I was left with the feeling Camus was saying the man was not responsible for his apathy or hatred because of everything that was put on him from the outside—by society.
It seemed like the reader was supposed to draw the conclusion the man didn’t deserve to die for his apathetic, almost involuntary crime. But my feeling was the man (and many real people besides) had committed murder many times before—inwardly if not outwardly. He did not love or care for human life, never did, and behaved accordingly.
For me the habit of rising late in the morning, turning on the television and sitting there ‘bone idle’ is just about the guiltiest-feeling things one could do. According to my anxious conscience, non-industriousness is one of the most shameful sins. Mind you, I’m not saying my conscience helps me be more industrious—it doesn’t. I’m just not driven in fact by the puritanical work ethic. That is, I am not driven to get out and get money six days a week. I do not wrack my brain trying to figure out ways to get other peoples’ money and get it into my bank account. Sometimes I wish I had more of that in my system.
But no, I usually just do the work that finds me. And it does usually find me. I am blessed to be on the first-call list at Measurement, Inc. We don’t work all the time, five or six months out of the year at the most. When they call I go. I work hard for them.
Then when the test-scoring season is over it seems like someone will usually call me to do some remodeling work. It’s not my favorite thing to do but I’m thankful to be asked and I always try to do a good job and not waste their money.
And so this year when the test-scoring season was over we were told there would be no more projects till February of next year. We asked again and were told sympathetically, there are absolutely no more projects in the pipeline for this year. And so I went home, deposited my last paycheck and paid as many bills with it as I could.
After that the bills started to pile up. I get a good feeling from paying living expenses with money I worked for. But if there is no money then there is no good feeling; just the opposite, there is anxiety.
Now, you are probably thinking, ‘where is your faith, Joe?’ And you very well should be thinking that because it is a pertinent question. But do me a favor and don’t be so quick on the draw, will you? I believe God is taking care of us but I don’t believe He guarantees to “show us the money” every time.
And so, on the morning of September 18 when I watched a movie on TV instead of attempting to do some work that might (possibly) bring me some income, I found the last thing I expected—a message from God. There is nothing like a message from God to fill one with a sense of meaning.
When I sense meaning I want to write. In this case the Dallas Willard writing was on deck in my mind so, here’s that last paragraph of the three:
Our hunger for significance is a signal of who we are and why we are here, and it also is the basis of humanity’s enduring response to Jesus. For he always takes individual human beings as seriously as their shredded dignity demands, and he has the resources to carry through with his high estimate of them.
And so, when it comes to our sense of significance, we are not satiated and never will be in this life—not by a long shot. For most of us and for most of our lives we will have to be satisfied with the hunger alone. But there is a greatness just in the hungering after a thing that comes from God.
For the significance, the meaning, the life, the love that comes from God is an eternal thing, and a heavenly thing. It is a substance that has to do with God’s kingdom. And hunger in the kingdom of God is like no other kind of hunger. For in the hunger is the food. And with God always—to hunger is to be filled.
