Relief 5.1 Presales Sale

via reliefjournal.com

Still time to get the latest in spiritual poetry, fiction, and CNF at a discount - and to help keep Relief bringing you great lit.

William Cronon and the American Thought Police

The hard right — which these days is more or less synonymous with the Republican Party — has a modus operandi when it comes to scholars expressing views it dislikes: never mind the substance, go for the smear.

What’s at stake here, in other words, is whether we’re going to have an open national discourse in which scholars feel free to go wherever the evidence takes them, and to contribute to public understanding. Republicans, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, are trying to shut that kind of discourse down. It’s up to the rest of us to see that they don’t succeed.

via nytimes.com

Chalk another one up for intellectual discourse in our country.

Wendell Berry on Wm. Carlos Williams & The Use of Poetry

“What use is Poetry, Really?”

A Review of
The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford
By Wendell Berry

Reviewed by David Johnson

The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford
By Wendell Berry
Hardback: Counterpoint, 2011.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Wendell Berry has written a thoughtful book-length meditation on the poetry of William Carlos Williams titled, appropriately, The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford. But let us be honest with one another: with the United States fighting two wars while governments fall throughout North Africa and the Middle East, with the economy still in shambles and almost one in ten Americans out of work, and with the rising of the oceans and the temperature of the planet, what use is poetry, really? And what is there for us in a book by a farmer-poet from Kentucky about a doctor-poet from New Jersey? In a passage from his poem “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower,” Williams writes, “It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.”  But what exactly can be found in poetry?

Spirited defenses of poetry have been raised throughout history (of note, Sir Philip Sydney’s in the sixteenth century and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s in the nineteenth), and though he does not claim anything so bold, Wendell Berry has written his own defense for our time. Readers familiar with Berry’s work will not be surprised that Rutherford, New Jersey would be of interest to him. Except for the years Williams spent in medical school at the University of Pennsylvania and his subsequent internship in New York City, he lived, practiced medicine, and wrote in the place of his birth. His decision to settle in Rutherford is echoed in the life of Berry, who returned to his native Kentucky after finishing his formal education to live and farm and write. When Berry writes of Williams, “He lived by the terms of a community involvement more constant, more intimate, and more urgent than that of any other notable poet of his time,” he could also have been writing about himself.

By choosing not just to live in Rutherford but to make it the focus of his work, Williams engaged in a lifelong struggle to find a “locally appropriate language.” This led to a distinctly embodied poetry consistent with a philosophy Williams summarized as “no ideas but in things.” Or: flesh made word. Unlike that of his contemporaries T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens, Williams’ poetry was not born out of abstractions, but, as Berry writes, from the “details of geography, of daily work, of local life and economy, and of course the details of an imposed industrialism and its overwhelming power to uproot, alienate, and corrupt.” Throughout his own body of work, Wendell Berry has explored how a worldview that generalizes local particularities into abstract principles is able to reduce living, interrelated ecologies into their constituent parts, which may be auctioned off to the highest bidder. For example, what we offhandedly refer to as our need for “energy” provides the emotional and intellectual distance necessary for us to tear off mountaintops for coal and drill into the earth for oil without an honest accounting of how these actions damage the health of the land, our communities, and future generations.

A companion to locality in the work of William Carlos Williams (and, of course, Wendell Berry) is the value placed on limits. Berry addresses this most directly in two chapters in the middle of the book titled “Economy and Form” and “Measure.” By valuing both limits and the local, Berry finds himself at odds with the prevailing culture. We are nation that believes in reinvention through relocation and in a pursuit of happiness that is synonymous with more. But we have found the pursuit unsatisfying and hollow, just as we know—although often only intuitively—that “there is pleasure, and there is beauty too, in any work with an exacting sense of enough.” Berry is writing here about poetry, but he could just as well be talking about a type of life lived, as he could when he writes:

What has been included is brought within measure, made eloquent, even musical, by being freed of the burden of all that has been, has needed to be, excluded.

Yes! We know this to be true, even though we rarely, if ever, practice it. Reading this book makes me want to go through my house with boxes and bags for a trip to Goodwill. It also causes me to examine how I spend my time: how can my life be made eloquent, even musical, by being freed of the burden of things that should be excluded?

Of course this what you might expect from a book by Wendell Berry, but what does it have to do with poetry? First, it is important to recognize you will not find truth or meaning in a poem if you are not willing to stop, be still, and listen to what it has to say. The dynamic between poem and reader is in many ways similar to (though certainly not a substitute for) the relationship between religious faith and the believer. Both require a present and active participation—a partnership—in order to realize their transformative power (although this age of distraction we are losing our capacity to enter into this kind of relationship). Also like religious faith, poetry exists at the “convergence of the eternal and the present;” it provides an opportunity to reach out toward a reality that is just beyond the limits of ordinary language.

Poetry, according to Berry, is “the means of giving to realizations of the fleeting eternal moment a kind of permanent presence, so that amid the confusion of ever-accumulating mass of details they can be returned to, not as ends in themselves…but as reminders of an indispensable possibility, a wakefulness belonging to the highest definition of our humanity.” We need these reminders—each of us. Poetry does not belong to professors in universities or to “high culture,” and it does not exist on the sidelines of life, while the real game of economics and science and politics and education takes place on the field. Poetry is “part of the necessary conversation of a local culture,” and so it matters that William Carlos Williams’ poetry is formed from the language of his own community, a poetry of locality and limits.

Poetry is not a panacea for all that ails us, but I regret that it has been marginalized in our society, along with the importance of belonging to a place and the satisfaction found in enough. Skeptics may question the value of “local arts of poetry, storytelling, painting, and music,” just as experts question the efficiency of a local economics, agriculture, fishing, and forestry. However,

Without such rootedness in locality, considerately adapted to local conditions, we get what we now have got: a country half-destroyed, toxic, eroded, and in every way abused; a deluded people tricked into gauds without traditions of any kind to give them character; a politics of expediency dictated by the wealthy; a disintegrating economy founded upon fantasy, fraud, and ecological ruin.

Again, skeptics may question the usefulness of poetry and the prophetic voice of Wendell Berry. But as we face the rising consequences of our individualism, our displacement, and our exploitive consumption, it seems like the burden of proof is on them.

———–
David Johnson lives in Silverton, Oregon with his wife and cat.  He is a reader, a regular contributor to Relevant Magazine and a future farmer.  David also is also the irregular keeper of a blog at http://davidbjohnson.wordpress.com/


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This entry was posted on Friday, March 11th, 2011 at 6:34 pm and is filed under *Featured Reviews*, VOLUME 4. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

via erb.kingdomnow.org

I especially appreciate this: "Poetry, according to Berry, is 'the means of giving to realizations of the fleeting eternal moment a kind of permanent presence, so that amid the confusion of ever-accumulating mass of details they can be returned to, not as ends in themselves…but as reminders of an indispensable possibility, a wakefulness belonging to the highest definition of our humanity.'"

Temperament Family Portrait

So I've finally started reading Mary Sheedy Kurcinka's Raising Your Spirited Child, which Katie has been telling me is necessary if I'm going to live with the boy. It's definitely one of those broad audience books, written to be helpful to people of all stripes and educational background, but the author clearly knows her stuff, and I can skim the stuff I already know about (Introversion/Extroversion, for example).

The temperament scales are interesting for thinking about our family's fundamental dispositions to the world. Here's my rating of us (B, K, and M) on the nine scales Kurcinka describes:

INTENSITY	Emotional reactions are mild, low-key	1  2  3  4  5   B        K  M	Emotional reactions are intense, powerful; child is easily frustrated
PERSISTENCE	Easily stops; can be redirected; accepts “no”	1  2  3  4  5      K     B  M	Sticks with projects until they are done, doesn't give up, never takes “no”
SENSITIVITY	Not sensitive to pain, sounds, light, temperature; sleeps through noisy routines	1  2  3  4  5      B M,K	Highly sensitive to pain, sounds, light, temperature; needs quiet to sleep
PERCEPTIVENESS	Highly focused, not easily distracted, rarely notices things; can remember multiple directions	1  2  3  4  5      B     K  M	Notices things others miss, easily distracted; forgets multiple directions
ADAPTABILITY	Adapts quickly; easily changes activity; flexible with changes in routine	1  2  3  4  5   K        B  M	Adapts slowly; upset by changes in routine; may be upset by surprises
REGULARITY	eating, sleeping, and bathroom habits are regular	1  2  3  4  5  B,K    M	eating, sleeping, and bathroom habits are irregular
ENERGY	Quiet, stays put while asleep, plays quietly for long time	1  2  3  4  5      B  K     M	Highly active, always seems to be "on the go"
1st REACTION	Willing to try new things, comfortable in social situations, learns by doing	1  2  3  4  5      M B,K	Holds back before joining, learns by watching, distressed by novelty
MOOD	Usually positive, in a good mood	1  2  3  4  5      K  M  B	More serious, analytical

* Adapted from http://www.parentcoachplan.com/temperament.php and Raising Your Spirited Child.

Notice that Milo is only to the mild side of us on the scale on the 1st Reaction, and then only barely. I thought it was particularly interesting that I am to the spirited side of some things and Katie is on others. Note that Katie and I both score a 23, making us "Spunky Parents," the middle range of possibilities, while Milo gets a 36, placing him well in to "Spirited Child" territory. Note, too, that Milo and I are at opposite poles of Intensity and Energy, which we already knew but is interesting to see in color. That's why he wears me out so quickly.

He's opposite Katie on Persistence, which matches our experience of how irritated she gets when he doesn't listen. But because she's high on Adaptability, she can actually put up with his focus and need for gradual transitions pretty well.

John Wilson on Rob Bell: What Happened to Heaven and Is Gandhi There?

By JOHN WILSON

Something strange has happened in evangelical churches over the past generation. Not in every congregation, but in the main, sermons devoted to the grim prospect of hell have become rare, and even talk of heaven is muted.

Many have noted this development without making much impact. Along comes Rob Bell, founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan. His "Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived" is now ranked No. 8 on Amazon.com, and it has been generating controversy since before its release earlier this week.

"There are a growing number of us," Mr. Bell writes on the first page—"millions"—"who have become acutely aware that Jesus's story has been hijacked by a number of other stories, stories Jesus isn't interested in telling. . . . A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell." Presumably this disquiet accounts for the reticence of many evangelicals when it comes to the afterlife.

So is Mr. Bell one more Christian liberal describing God as a mountain you can climb any way you want? Not exactly.

I first heard him preach in 1999, soon after he founded Mars Hill. The service consisted of about 20 minutes of music and then a sermon that lasted 70 minutes. I'd heard Mars Hill described as one of the so-called "seeker churches," disdained by some for softening the gospel to get people in the door.

Really? With sermons lasting 70 minutes? And about Leviticus? You could go to many evangelical churches every week for 10 years and never hear a single sermon on Leviticus. Mr. Bell—then still in his late 20s—talked about God's judgment in a way I'd not encountered.

His book, in other words, didn't come out of nowhere. It seems the measured culmination of his work as pastor and teacher.

Why, then, the bitter controversy? Consider this: In a promotional video about the book, Mr. Bell asks, "Gandhi's in hell? He is?" And: "Will billions and billions of people burn forever in hell? And if that's the case how do you become one of the few?"

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a leading conservative evangelical, wrote that in the video Mr. Bell "affirms what can only be described as universalism," the belief that ultimately all people are "saved." Most evangelicals find this position incompatible with scripture.

But anyone who carefully reads "Love Wins" will see that Mr. Bell is not a universalist. As C.S. Lewis did, he suggests that God grants free will to all, including those who do not want his divine company and therefore choose damnation.

Still, the account of heaven and hell that he rejects does sound a lot like what most Christians have taught and been taught for 2,000 years, with some modifications. The notion that heaven is the preserve of "a few select Christians" has never been normative. Though all too many Christians have strayed into that error over the centuries, most have not presumed to speculate about how crowded (or uncrowded) heaven will be. God is both perfectly merciful and perfectly just.

Mr. Bell's book is provoking an overdue conversation. Evangelicals—those who agree or disagree with him, and those like me who find much to praise and much to criticize—will find it worth engaging. And perhaps some who observe Christianity from the outside, whether warily or with a friendly spirit, will want to listen in.

Mr. Wilson is the editor of Books & Culture, a bimonthly review.

via online.wsj.com

Thank you, John Wilson, for actually reading this book and thinking about it before entering the "conversation," such as it has been. Have we learned nothing from just about every video clip or sound-bite controversy of the last decade?

Huffington Post article on how we still blame women for rape

Of Course She Was Asking for It
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keli-goff/of-course-she-was-asking-_b_835782.html
- sent by Brad Fruhauff

No Jail Can Hold Him

The bird has flown. Or is about to.

The other day I put Milo in his crib so he could scream at the air instead of in my ears. I told him to take a moment to calm down and I would come back for him. So I left, and when I came back he was sitting on the railing of the crib, crying now because he didn't know how to get down. Since his little blood-spurting spill on Sunday, and a subsequent tumble down a couple stairs on Monday, we've become inclined to think that he may just crack his head open on his bedroom floor, stain it with blood, and cost us our security deposit. Entonces, we spent this afternoon bolting the bookshelves to the wall and getting most things out of his reach and, finally, dismantling (not "deconstructing," mind you) his crib and putting his mattress on the floor.

[Cue dramatic music. Rapid zoom onto faces of Brad and Katie looking as though Gojira just rose from the ocean off the coast of Tokyo.]


We were pretty sure it would take the better part of this week to get him to sleep tonight. Katie walked him through his normal bedtime routine, then put him on his mattress like a little hobo and laid down next to him. After 20mins. of this I could still hear him talking and squirming, and then she sent me in to see what I could do. Long and short of it was that I put him back on his mattress still wide awake, but calm, and after a little shooshing from the floor next to him, my hand resting on his chest, I asked him, "You okay? Can I go?" and he said, "Doh," (which is, in translation, "Go"). I walked out while he was still looking up at the ceiling, but never heard another peep out of him.