Prague Week 4: Paris

Paris is always a good idea. ~ Sabrina

France had never been high on my priority list of European countries to visit: I reached Rome and London long before I even decided to go to France. Returning this summer, though, I wanted to visit someplace new and was inspired to see the City of Light. So, I arranged for lodging with a friend of a friend, bought a plane ticket from Prague to Paris and ordered a handy Rick Steves travel book. 


From the top of the Eiffel Tower, the city stretches almost as far as the eye can see, radiating outwards in all directions. Had I spent a month there, I would still be discovering new things about the city. I had three days. So, I made the most of it and saw as much as I could. Here is what I discovered:


The Effects of History
Probably I learned in high school that Paris was originally a tribal city, then conquered by the Romans. I forgot this, however, and so it was a surprise to me to reach Paris and continually discover Roman ruins tucked away in the museums. In one of the churches (St Pierre de Montmartre), Roman columns are used to support the structure. Near the Latin Quarter, an entire museum is built around an old Roman bath, its ceilings stretching upwards nearly two stories. Perhaps most interesting, Notre Dame sits atop a crypt with ruins from the Roman period, from the medieval period and even from the 1700 and 1800s. Ruins were mixed into ruins: Unlike today, the builders did not completely sweep away the old buildings but instead built on top of old ruins and sometimes simply used the old ruins in the new building. 

St Pierre-Montmartre

This mixture of ruins, spanning more than two thousand years, suggested visibly the integration of history. Today, divided from the past except as we encounter it in museums, we like to think that we are independent of history; we are less racist and more democratic than our ancestors and are free from their old sins. But the ruins of Paris suggest that it is perhaps more difficult to shake off the influence of our ancestors. The Parisian buildings were, quite literally, influenced by the buildings and decisions of past years: The avenue to the old Notre Dame church became a hospital and then a tourist attraction; the Roman baths became a medieval cellar, and so one age influenced the next. In the same way, the Parisians themselves, like anyone else, were shaped by the people who lived before them: We do not live in isolation, as a series of individual houses built on clean new ground, but in the great city of history, one house built on top of and influenced by the one in the age before it. 

A Roman bath; the street to Notre Dame once led on top of the bath.

The history of Paris also taught another lesson. Among the tourist attractions I visited, the Conciergerie was a surprisingly interesting one. I visited this prison simply because it was open, and the church next door which I had intended to see was closed for lunch. The Conciergerie began life as a medieval palace for the French kings; it was transformed into a holding cell for political prisoners, including Marie Antoinette, on their way to the guillotine; it finally oversaw the fall of Robespierre himself. Probably the French kings thought they were invincible in the splendour of their palace. The French Revolution leaders probably thought they were equally invincible, having toppled the monarchy and established a new government. Then they started killing each other, and a few years later, Napoleon came along. If the Conciergerie demonstrates anything, it is this: What we do in this world is temporary; very few human actions endure for all the ages.

Conciergerie; the old dining room of French nobility

Even what does endure for the ages is sometimes of no significance at all. Among the collection in the Louvre are ancient cuneiform tablets from Sumeria and Babylon. Some of these are important: the tablet that is the oldest announces a military victory. Some, however, are utterly unimportant: they give orders for managing the city latrines. The Roman ruins are also unimportant. A "Roman ruin" sounds exotic and fascinating, until you realize that what you're looking at is essentially a Roman toilet. Imagine a historian coming a thousand years from now and discovering our civilization. Although we might expect our technological advances (computers and tablets) and our drive for charity to be highlighted in museums and history textbooks, future generations would be just as likely to showcase the porcelain toilet in your bathroom or your grocery list. 

The hole is a Roman toilet.

Cuneiform tablets giving directions about the latrines

Art in Paris


I am not an art museum person. Some people can spend an entire day in an art museum, wandering slowly from painting to painting and feeling the emotional rush with each new artwork. This is not me. Excessive artwork is, to me, redundant: Hey, look! Another painting! And another! And another! And . . . 


So I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Paris's great art museums, the Orsay and the Louvre. If I were to describe everything for you, I would sound like a bad art history professor. So, I'll just touch on one item that I particularly enjoyed: the Oriental art.

In the Orsay, one room was devoted to "Oriental" art: not Chinese art, but French paintings of Northern Africa and the Middle East. The painters included people such as these:

• Gustave Guillaumet, who painted Arabs praying in the desert, surrounded by their brown peaked tents, and the mummified skeleton of a camel lost in the Sahara desert
• Leon Belly, who painted almost exclusively Arab subjects
• Etienne Dinet, who painted this picture of a loving Arab couple. The Internet reproduction does not do it justice; in real life, the stars sparkle. 

The "Oriental" art was interesting because it represented the changing culture of the mid-1800s. In the 1800s, Europe was taking its first steps towards becoming a global society, something it had not been since the Roman era. The paintings, all set in otherworldly places, reflected this expanding interest.

What's Next
My last project before leaving for home is English camp. I have training from July 4-July 6, then English camp from July 7-July 14. "English camp" is a popular way here in the Czech Republic to reach out to the Czechs practically, giving them a chance to improve their English and perhaps one of the few chances they ever have to hear and learn about the Bible. I then fly home early in the morning of July 15. I do not expect to have Internet (or at least not easy access) after July 4, so likely you will not hear from me until I return Stateside.

Here are a few prayer requests for my last week and a half on this side of the pond:

• meaningful, enjoyable English camp lessons: I am in charge of teaching six lessons to lower-intermediate English camp students. I have lessons prepared, but please pray that they will run smoothly and that the students will find them interesting.
• good relationships at camp: I am not a camp person. I love living alone, not living with a hundred people for seven days and participating in endless activities and staying up late. Although I believe in the value of English camp, I'm worried that its busy schedule and close contact with people will turn me into a grouch. Pray for patience and a little bit of quiet time in the day (also sleep. I like sleep.)
• smooth travels: Camp is somewhere in the Czech boondocks. I leave the Czech boondocks on July 14, then take 3-4 trains back to Prague to arrive in the late afternoon right before a very early flight Stateside. Please pray that I will make all the connections smoothly and that I will not be stranded at a whistle-stop station where no one speaks English. 

Prague, Week 3

This week, I returned to Prague to pitch in with the end-of-year schoolwork.

My Week
Monday, I dived back into the files. I shuffled papers around, dividing "confidential" from "non-confidential" information, and both from "completely irrelevant" information (old algebra tests, notes about kids who stayed home with sore throats). The non-confidential, relevant information went into a stack to be scanned into a computer, backed up in case of emergency or fire. The confidential and irrelevant information went into a different stack, for a permanent school employee to sort again come August (Lucky them!).

Tuesday, the files were still unfinished, but I could not muster the energy to spend the day sorting papers again (Thank you, God, that I did not grow up to be an accountant or a lawyer!) Instead, I started in on a new and exciting job: revising the school's Crisis Manual. The Crisis Manual is critical document that spells out crucial information such as how to act in case of an emergency, such as a playground injury, an earthquake or a pandemic (bird flu, anyone?). Also included in this manual was the address for the school's "safe house" (a place where the students can go if the current location of the school becomes unsafe) and how the students will get there. Until Tuesday, I didn't even realize the school had a safe house. Every time I read the words "safe house," I felt like a character prepping for action in a Bourne film.

However, the manual did not read like a Bourne film or any other kind of spy movie. It read like a manual. For me, the revising project was still interesting because it was a revising project: very similar to the kind of projects and papers I produced for two years during graduate school. I re-organized the document to make better sense, found and marked inconsistencies in the document, and plugged holes in information.

A Serious Note
Probably the most important hole I filled dealt with child abuse. As any missionary will tell you, English-language schools that offer reduced tuition fill a crucial need in the community. But missionary schools are more vulnerable to certain abuses than similar schools in the US, which are subject to greater scrutiny; in particular, such schools are more open to the physical and sexual abuse of the students. African boarding schools in particular are known for a dark history. To avoid that history, today's missionary schools take extra steps to keep their staff accountable and to keep them watching for signs of potential abuse in the students they serve.

To that end, I created a new appendix within the Crisis Manual listing some signs of potential abuse. The appendix, of course, belongs to the school, and I cannot take it out and post it on the web for all to see. But I can include here a list of signs of potential abuse. Please do not think that abuse is only sexual, or that abuse only happens outside of the church. Abuse takes many forms (including emotional abuse and neglect), and it happens inside the church as well as outside. I urge you, especially those who work with children regularly, to read through the list and keep it in mind.

My Social Life
Among the six weeks I have spent here, this has been the one in which I have caught up with old friends from last year. In the space of five or six days, I

• joined a friend and her new husband at the park after school to talk and eat peaches
• watched a number of old "Sherlock Holmes" TV episodes in the evenings with another friend
• joined yet another friend for lunch on Wednesday
• participated in a Wednesday night Bible study
• helped a friend carry her bags to the airport on Thursday

So it's been a busy week. 

As I've caught up with old friends, I've realized that one of the things I like the most about living in a community of expatriates is the proactive nature of the relationships. In the States, people have a set group of friends, and (except for college students), can be fairly certain that this group of friends will be around for five years or more. The stability of these friendships, and their potential to grow over time, is delightful, but such stable social circles have a hard time accepting someone else into the circle. People here describe how their friends move home (to the US or the UK) and spend years trying to make friends, because the social circles of small-town life are so set that it's hard to bring in another person. People aren't trying to be unfriendly; they're just not aware of it, because they are "stuck in their ways", so to speak. 

Expats, on the other hand, know that the relationships they have will not last long, a few years at most. So, they go out of their way to guarantee that they spend extra time getting to know the people that are important to them. There is no chance, no time, for them to get stuck in their ways. 

A story from church this morning illustrates how this works. At Bible study Wednesday night, I met a woman here from Zimbabwe. I saw her again in the bus leaving church, and I went over to say hello. She was sitting with a young man (a friend of hers, not a boyfriend) from the States. We swapped locations, and he turned out to be from my home state and a graduate of my alma mater in the exact same major. We spent the next three minutes swapping stories about favourite professors and telling the Zimbabwean woman that one of the English professors there looked just a little like the professor from Back to the Future. (It's the eyebrows.) Then, we got off the bus. I have no idea when I will return to Prague, so I am unlikely to see my Zimbabwean friend anytime soon. Nor will I see the young man from my home state: He is hoping to take a job in the Middle East next year. We said goodbye and left. 

Now, three minutes on a bus in Prague 5 does not make friends or really even acquaintances. But my point is that we had those three minutes on the bus and had to take advantage of it: Ignoring someone on a bus is a waste of time in a community where people sometimes move continents from year to year. I don't think this means people (especially introverts) need to be ultra-social and talk to everyone we see, all the time. That would work horribly for me, and in fact I ended the week rather tired. But I do think it's important to take advantage of the time we have and go out of our way to form relationships. Americans tend to approach love like some kind of accident: We watch movies, at least, where the characters fall in love with as much forethought as they would fall in a pit. And sometimes we do friendships this way, too. This is something we cannot do any longer.

Next week, I am taking a personal trip. Please pray for safe weather (there's "Rain / Thunder" predicted for the day my flight leaves, which doesn't sound good, but I have my fingers crossed!) and safe lodging. I'll update you when I return.

 

Prague, Week 2

Last week, I was on loan to a church in Hradec Kralove.

For those of you who don't speak Czech, the town name is pronounced like this: "HRAH-dets KRAH-loe-vae". Hradec is about two hours by train from Prague, in the the northeastern part of the Czech Republic. In Hradec, I joined a local evangelical church with a city outreach. We offered English conversation classes to the local elementary schools and to the adult community, all taught by a Native English Speaker: Me.  

What I Did
Essentially, I led elementary- and middle-school children and adults (thankfully not together) in conversations that ranged in topic from pastimes and the weather (yes, really!) to reviews of American literature and Czech politics. 


Much as I enjoyed the elementary students, I am going to tell you about the adult ones (I enjoyed the adult groups more). A little background: We formed two groups (an Intermediate group and an Advanced group), and each group met three times, each time at the church. The classes were always a mixture, perhaps half believers and half unbelievers; the goal was for the unbelievers to begin to feel comfortable with the church's presence in the community and with the church members, so that they would be willing to come again in the future. Especially with the Advanced class, conversation took off and directed itself, because the "students" were confident that they knew what they wanted to talk about, and so I often found myself ditching the beautiful lesson plans I had drawn up in favour of reviewing practical terms (in the case of the Intermediate students) or simply chatting with the students.


Perhaps the best way to give you an idea of these classes is a story: My Advanced group had been discussing Czech culture and history when suddenly one of the women leans across the table towards me. Irene was a middle-aged woman with dark hair, glasses and a passionate expression; she was an English teacher in Hradec, and so her English was quite good. Completely derailing the earlier discussion, she asks, "Do you like Twilight?" Being the blunt person that I am, I replied, "No." She then went on to describe why she, in fact, liked it: She thought Twilight was good reading for teenagers because Edward and Bella had a romantic relationship in which they postponed sex, which was a good example for the teenagers in the Czech Republic. (Incidentally, Irene is not a believer and lives with her boyfriend.) I countered that Edward is a controlling, manipulative and peeping-tom boyfriend, and valuable as postponing sex is, controlling people make bad boyfriends. Another night, we discussed unusual jobs, and one of the women told us about her position at a local hospital, testing for birth defects; Irene told us about working in the States at a hotel and accidentally saying something completely inappropriate to her boss because her English was still poor at that time (Thankfully, he was an older gentleman and responded kindly). 


What made these classes, Intermediate and Advanced alike, so valuable was the way that each one was an "icebreaker": building relationships between the women of the community and the women of the church. In a way, my role in Hradec was that of a catalyst. In a chemical reaction, the catalyst itself is unimportant; the catalyst is the matchmaker who brings two people together but herself is unmarried. In Hradec, my English classes and I were only of limited inherent importance; the church did not expect the English classes to end with or even include a full gospel presentation. English was the "matchmaker" between the church and the community, a way of bringing two people (or groups of people) together in what would hopefully become a longstanding and valuable relationship. 

Where I Lived
Although the original plan was for me to stay in a hostel in Hradec, I wound up staying with the family who originally invited me to help out at their church; I also ate several meals with other members of the church. It was a week of learning to be Czech, which can be summed up with the following stories:  

Perhaps the most delicious, representative Czech meal I ate was Friday lunch. I had spent the morning at the nearby elementary school, and then my Czech guide and I swung by this woman's house for lunch. Lunch began, as is traditional, with a soup. She served a variant of chicken broth, but I have also seen lentil soup, Mexican bean soup, and spinach soup served as the first course. Each one is served with a large soup spoon in a large, shallow bowl; the remainder of the meal is not served until everyone has eaten their soup. After we finished up the chicken broth, our host brought roasted chicken and potatoes to the table; there was also a bowl with washed lettuce. The bowl of washed lettuce sat untouched while our host piled potatoes after potatoes onto our plates (thankfully fewer on mine) and added a few pieces of chicken. And still the lettuce sat there ignored. Not until the chicken was completely eaten and the potatoes vanished did people help themselves to the lettuce.

Honestly, the food was delicious: The chicken was tender and not overcooked, with a sauce of rosemary and garlic and perhaps a little onion; the potatoes, covered in the same sauce, were equally delicious. But I felt like I waddled a little bit as I left the table, after a week of eating lunches of the same size and content as that one. In many ways, the Czech Republic is still "Old World Europe" and its eating habits have not adapted to the health food kick of the Western world; it prefers beef and chicken and rabbit (Yes, I ate rabbit while I was there; it tastes like chicken) to salad and vegetables.

Perhaps the most challenging part of my Czech experience was the shower. Czech bathrooms are often not as carefully constructed as American bathrooms, with their elaborate shower heads and clear shower doors. Most Czechs also shower in the evening. I chose to keep showering in the morning, but I learned to deal with the Czech shower while I was at it. Essentially, the "shower" is a bathtub with an extendable shower hose and head attached to the faucet; there is no shower door or even shower walls. My first morning there, I decided the best way was to put my face to the one bathroom wall and my back to the bathroom floor. The result was Lake American Traveler beside the shower, one that I used up more than two towels in mopping up. After that, I put my back to the one wall and directed the shower stream in the other direction; this was usually a more effective plan.

So many more stories remain of my week there. I talked about the Roma (Gypsy) people with my hosts, talked about Stargate Atlantis with the elementary students, met many believers eager to share their testimony, and so much more. But it's almost midnight here, and so I bid you a very fond, Dobrou noc

.

Prague Summer: Week 1

I trust everyone. It's the devil inside them that I don't trust. ~ The Italian Job

Reflection

I was reminded of this quote on Wednesday, at a Bible study I used to attend and which I revisited. One of the women attending recalled this Oswald Chambers quote: "Our Lord never put His trust in any person. Yet He was never suspicious, never bitter, and never lost hope for anyone, because He put His trust in God first. He trusted absolutely in what God’s grace could do for others". In the Gospels, it looks like Christ trusts people: Again and again, He forgives them and releases them to the world, to their family and friends, to keep living life as the broken and sinful people that they were and still in part are. He trusts them to "be good" after meeting Him. But this is only partly true: Yes, the people who meet Christ will "be good", but they are not good because of some inherent will to change generated from their meeting with Christ. They are good because it is Christ who works in them, "both to will and to do". Christ knows this, and it is His good work that He trusts, not our imperfect righteousness. 


Essentially, this is the (ideal) attitude of the Christian educator (whether they are working at a state university or in a Christian school). An effective Christian teacher tries to give students grace in the middle of academic and personal struggles, whether that grace takes the form of make-up work or extended deadlines or even forgiveness for academic errors that the student has made. In the past, I always imagined this as me giving my students an opportunity to organize her life and meet her responsibilities: in other words, the opportunity to grow up. But hopefully, my students will do more than just "grow up"; hopefully, they will grow in Christ as well and let Him work in them. 


This is not to say, of course, that rules cannot be enforced. I do not, for instance, accept papers submitted willy-nilly at the end of the semester without explicit permission. But I do work with students who acknowledge that they're having trouble getting a paper ready to submit, and I will continue to work with them, because I expect them to grow in Christ and experience more of His grace in every trial, including the academic ones. 

Events
It's been a busy week here in the Czech Republic. On Monday, I toodled in to school and said my hellos to people. I got a lot of double-takes from people who didn't know that I was coming. On Tuesday, I headed in again and got put to work reviewing material for the school board manual. On Wednesday, I started reorganizing the student files, and after that, on Thursday, I brought my iPod into work for more files. 

The student files are stuffed full of, in some cases, seven years worth of records; the records include everything from excused illnesses to standardized test scores. It's a big job and will likely take several more days for me to complete the student files. But the fact that the files need reorganizing is in itself good news: CISP is reorganizing the files in preparation for beginning the process of ACSI accreditation. The school has been waiting to begin ACSI accreditation for years, and in fact, they've even started down that road a few times before running into new roadblocks. Hopefully, some of these roadblocks have been cleared away, and the school can begin the process in earnest this time.

So, tomorrow morning, I'm back to "doing my bit" and organizing some more files. I'll turn up my Avatar soundtrack and wade right in.

Future Events
Next week, I'm off to Hradec Kralove for some short conversational English lessons. Please pray for smooth travel and lodging (I believe, but am not sure, that I will be staying with local believers), as well as good connections to the other people in the town.

Back in Prague

So I find words I never thought to speakIn streets I never thought I would revisitWhen I left my body on a distant shore.

In "Little Gidding," Eliot envisions a poet he considered to be his master (usually identified as W.B. Yeats) speaking to him in a Purgatorial vision from beyond the grave. I find this line rather appropriate now, though I am admittedly taking these words out of context. 

I am back in Prague, in "streets I never thought I would revisit," less than a year after I left. 

Sorry I didn't let you know sooner! I meant to write a blog post the last week in May, but with all the packing, time slipped away, and I was boarding a plane and listening to automated reminder to turn off all electronic devices. 

So, here's what happened: Last year, I somehow did not use all the money that I raised for support; more was paid into my checking account by my sending organization than I actually used. In an effort to use the money (originally given for missions) responsibly, I set it aside and planned to take a short-term trip over the summer. I looked into going to China, India and Brazil, but it worked best for me to return to Prague and volunteer here. 

I will be here for five weeks (It's going to go by so fast. Five weeks is a blink of an eye compared to the six months that I stayed last time.) During that time, I will volunteer at the school where I worked last time (various organizational and clean-up projects, I believe). Also, I will spend time teaching conversational English at a church plant about an hour from Prague. In early July, I will spend about ten days working at an English camp with the same church plant. 

Prayer requests:

• Safe travels. I will be bouncing around the Czech Republic quite a bit, as you can tell, so please pray that I get from Point A to Point B (and sometimes Point C and Point D) without a hitch. 
• English lessons. In the years since I've started teaching, I've come to rely heavily on knowledge of my students to tell me whether what I'm teaching is profitable, or over or under their heads. In teaching conversational English, I know the ages and approximate ability levels of my students. Please pray that what I teach will be relevant to their level, not exceedingly dull or exceedingly difficult (Knowing me, I'm more likely to accidentally teach something exceedingly difficult.)

So far, the weirdest feeling has been how familiar the city feels. My first memories of new cities (Beijing, Berlin, and Prague the first time) always include a distinctly alien element: the script-like lettering of Chinese and the unusual signs, or the brilliantly-neon flashing ads in Berlin. Entering Prague this time, I recognized words, store names and places that I had been. 

About the blog: I plan to post more while I am here; however, with all the traveling, I'm not sure how often that will actually be. So bear with me: I promise to gather more stories and pass them along to you. 

Thank you for your prayers.

Every kid, as she is growing up, complains about what she considers to be the annoying habits of her parents, vowing to do things differently "when she's all grown up and has a house of her own". 

For me, this was frequent housecleaning. You know that old saying, "Vote early, and vote often?" My mother believed in cleaning early, and cleaning often. Before we left on trips, we cleaned. After we got home from trips, we cleaned. Before family came to visit, we cleaned. After family left, we cleaned. Before we set up the Christmas tree, we cleaned. After we took the tree down, we cleaned. (True, part of the reason we cleaned so thoroughly around the tree was because we had a real one and didn't want dead needles jabbing us in our bare heels as we walked across our own living room carpet.) But still.

At first, I was completely on board with my mom's cleaning. The first time Mom asked me to clean the bathroom, I bent low and buffed water stains off the bathroom faucet. I once spent an hour and a half cleaning the kitchen floor because I kept going back to get dry spots that I might have missed. 

And then my clean streak palled. I started to wonder why we cleaned so thoroughly before grandparents visited us. After all, they were family; we didn't need to impress them. Why buff water stains off the bathroom faucet? But, right over my protests, Mom assigned more cleaning duties, and so I buffed and scrubbed and vacuumed before every major event. 

I'm grown up now, and sure enough, my place is not sparkling clean. I do clean before my own mother comes, but this mostly consists of a quick vacuum and floor scrub. In fact, my mother actually scrubbed down my kitchen on a recent visit, just because. My mom is a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to her house. I'm not. Recently, my mother pointed this difference out to me and suggested that I was less of a perfectionist than she. Her observation took me by surprise. Outwardly, I agreed outwardly. Inwardly I was thinking, "Really? Really? I've always thought of myself as a perfectionist!

And I am, just not in terms of my house. My area of perfectionism is my accomplishments. 

Last Friday, the school year officially ended for me with a series of financial meetings. I started this week with high hopes of making big strides on some projects: I was going to plan two writing classes, write the rubrics and assignment guidelines for these classes, write a blog, work on another writing project, read a book about photography, and do some research on conversational ESL classes. So far, I've written a blog (you're reading it!) and created a rough draft for two writing classes, in large part due to a kind friend who squashed my grandiose schemes for a remedial English class. Now, I'm toying with another substantial change to the other class. That's all. I've made no progress on the other goals.

As an intellectual, as a producer of thoughts and of material things, I am caught in the Charybdis of perfection. Always thinking, "I can make that just a little bit better!" I look backwards to a previous project and do not make progress forwards. 

I hem and haw about grades before submitting them, reading most papers twice and some papers three or four times to get the grade perfect. I have spent an hour typing and retyping a question for Literature class, to get the wording just so. I spent four hours on my last blog post in order to get my reviews of the books razor-sharp accurate. Even if books are piled in neat little stacks across my living room and dining room floor, and there are five pairs of shoes scattered across my entryway, I want what I produce intellectually to be just so. 

My concern is not only intellectual accomplishments, but accomplishments in general. Several Christmases ago, I made a pan of cinnamon rolls. They were beautiful: deep veins of glistening dark cinnamon criss-crossing the top, their doughy frames golden in the oven. Then, coming out of the pan, they fell to pieces and started unrolling. My family didn't mind in the slightest; they picked the pieces up, slathered them with icing, and ate them happily. I was crushed: My beautiful accomplishment, the work of my hands, was not so beautiful any longer. 

The lesson from this? Every single one of us has an area that we want to be just so. I thought my mom was a perfectionist for wanting the house perfect. Turns out, I am subject to the same character tic. To some degree, this is healthy, a valuable character trait. That well-kept house I grew up in was wonderful! Taken too far, though, the quest for perfection, however each of us pursues this quest, is dangerous. I feel tonight (a Friday night) as though I have partially wasted a week, planning and replanning two classes that could have been pulled together in a day or two had I kept my mind on my task and not indulged myself in seeing how many different ways I could rearrange the calender or the exact wording of my plagiarism statement.  

In grad school, some of my fellow students had a saying: "Better done than perfect". It's a good saying, and relevant here: At times we (I) need to let go, remember that the project is done, and move on to the next one. 

 If you'll excuse me now, I need to go work on my fourth draft of the English Comp class.

As an English teacher, I can let no opportunity pass to share a good book recommendation with you all. So, it's that time again: book reviews!

This has been the "Spring of the Non-Fiction Book". A few months ago, I decided that I didn't really want to read Orson Scott Card for a third time and picked up Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven instead. I have tackled three non-fiction books since then, each one exploring a different aspect (and danger) of religion in society. Each of these three books is reviewed for you in this post.

Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer
In this book, Krakauer blends an exploration of Mormon Fundamentalism with the early history of the Mormon church. The result is a work that depicts the dangers of the fiercely independent brand of faith that has sprung up in America - an individualized faith often divided from tradition, and sometimes, from any real system of accountability.


Banner begins with an almost clinical description of a 1984 double murder, inspired when two Mormon Fundamentalist men acted on a "word from God" to kill those who opposed their religious excesses. He then details additional crimes inspired by faith, including the polygamist colonies of northern Arizona, their sister colonies in southern Idaho, and even the recent kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart. As story piles on story, Krakauer impresses readers with the lengths to which believers can go when they follow what they believe to be the voice of God.

Having described this behaviour, Krakauer traces its origin to Joseph Smith: at first a con artist and a dabbler in black magic, later the father of the Mormon church. Although Smith's "plural marriages" to the young women of the community are described, the book stresses Smith's belief that he and other Mormons heard directly from God and that any action which promoted the welfare of the church was permissible. It was this belief that gave birth to the Mountain Meadows Massacre in the 1800s, and it was this belief that gave birth to the abuses and murders described at the beginning of the book, each done in the name of God.

Krakauer is not a believer, so his writing must be taken with a grain of salt. Even for believing readers, however, Krakauer's work has great value. Above all, the work underscores the importance of accountability. Each believer is, of course, able to "approach God's throne of grace" individually as a priest. As the Old Testament priests followed specific guidelines for worship and for daily living, so we too should follow appropriate boundaries in order to avoid abusing our faith like the believers that Krakauer describes.

It is this, perhaps, that is the most unnerving lesson we take away from Banner: As each extremist Krakauer described started off as a normal, devoted worshiper, so we too, who consider ourselves 'normal', are not protected by our religion from doing equally awful things. It is not only Mormons who have their extremist sects; Christians too profit financially from their religion, conceal sexual or physical abuse in the name of their religion, and secure political power from their religion. Reading Banner, then, is a good reminder that we who believe are not immune to committing horrors in the name of our God, and to take action to prevent such horrors.

A Word to the Wise: Krakauer includes some language. Also, he describes various criminal activities (including murder and sexual abuse) in a detached way analogous to In Cold Blood. Sensitive people should avoid this book and read the other two on my list instead.

Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, by Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith

Emerson and Smith argue in this book that evangelical practices contribute to racial tension in America, instead of ending such tension which is the original and stated goal of evangelicals. The book opens with a description of the contrast between white evangelical and black evangelical attitudes towards race. The authors attribute this difference to what they call a "cultural toolbox": a set of assumptions that govern our interpretation of a particular cultural situation. Evangelicals, the authors point out, believe strongly in individual free will and accountability; therefore, they interpret the culture around them in terms of individual free will and accountability, even when such "tools" do not depict the situation accurately. For instance, the authors point out that white evangelicals are likely to attribute the lesser accomplishments within black circles to an individual lack of motivation or black culture in general, which is not always accurate or even fair to black Christians.

To this analysis, the authors add a general description of how church operates in America. First, they point out that the church operates according to entrepreneurial patterns. In America at least, believers attend a church that they choose themselves, usually because they perceive that church to fit their needs best. In order to thrive, therefore, individual churches recreate themselves to appeal to a "niche" market; churches that do not appeal to a "niche" market will not thrive, because people can go elsewhere to have their specific needs met. Thus, racially-integrated churches which appeal both to black and to white culture are unlikely to thrive, as examples in fact prove.

As a believer himself, Emerson serves up a healthy dish of "food for thought" for his fellow believers. Although politically conservative believers may not agree with his solutions, Emerson at least challenges them to rethink their attitude towards race and their participation in church. As someone who grew up in a socially-conservative household, I feel that his reminder that a racialized society does exist, that it is not a thing of the past, a good reminder and challenge for modern evangelicals. I know my students were challenged this semester, as I studied diversity with them, to avoid labeling the poor black community as "unmotivated" and to appreciate the social challenges that faced them.

More personally, I found it "convicting" (to use evangelical parlance) to read, and see exemplified in my experience and that of my friends, how often believers do go to church to have their needs met, rather than as a way to reach out to those around us. In fact, this is part of the reason that I even teach diversity to my students: I want them, as believers, not only to adhere to certain doctrinal principles but also to take action on their faith and care for the needy, as Christ himself taught.

Cautions: Nothing offensive. Emerson is a professor at Rice University, so sometimes the book is a tad academic. But he manages to avoid the deep charts and complex language of the ivory tower and appeal to the popular reader as well.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, by Mark Noll
I haven't finished this book yet, so this review will be briefest (Shhh! No cheering!). Noll argues that, in spite of the doctrinal strengths of the evangelical church, they retreat from culture instead of contributing to it. As one example (out of many he gives), he offers their overwhelming interest in End Times theology as opposed to understanding the situation of the Middle East and figuring out, from a Christian perspective, how to live now in this world. Noll spends the first third of his book, which is the part I've finished, tracing the origin of the atrophied evangelical mind. Beginning with the Revolution, he points out that believers argued that their doctrine was simply "common sense". Although this argument worked okay when most people were Christian by default, the secular attack after the Civil War caused the church to retreat from public culture, still assuming that belief was "common sense" but unable to defend it in the face of articulate and rational non-believers. He then turns his attention to the rise of fundamentalism in the early 1900s. Noll applauds the fundamentalist groups (like other scholars, he includes the Keswick movement, Pentacostal practices, and dispensationalism in this category) for their attention to doctrine and personal holiness. At the same time, he faults them for contributing to the anti-intellectual preferences. In part, he attributes this to the fundamentalist tendency to stress the eternal at the expense of the now; in part, to the literal fundamentalist hermeneutic. He then proceeds to explore the effects of anti-intellectualism in politics and science.

I have read reviews of Noll's work online, and so I know that as I go on, I will not agree with everything that he says about the evangelical church (still being an evangelical myself). That doesn't mean Noll is worthless, however. In fact, what I have learned from reading Noll has been similar to what I have learned from reading Krakauer. Under the Banner of Heaven is a warning against unchecked spiritual independence; Scandal of the Evangelical Mind; a check against that spiritual independence. Noll's detailed history of the evangelical mind reminds us that the ideas and doctrines we hold today do not come to us directly inspired from God, as we sometimes imagine from our limited perspective of seventy years. Instead, our ideas, however valuable and accurate as they are, are in fact our ideas: human interpretations of Scripture and tradition passed down over the last two hundred, and the last two thousand, years. This does not mean out entire faith is incorrect. Noll, like Emerson, is an evangelical himself and does not try to undermine the faith. All this means is that our understanding of our faith is sometimes faulty and should be held flexibly. And, most of all, we should seek to learn and grow in our faith and in our understanding of this world as much as possible.

Cautions: No cautions. Noll is an academic and his history gets a little long at times, but there's nothing offensive here either.