Sola Christus

some advice

Sometimes you find something that someone else has written that describes you so well that you wonder if that person has actually been following you around for a few years. Or maybe the writer is your best friend, but through a selective act of amnesia you have forgotten.

I had a moment like that this morning when I cam across this post entitled "Date a Girl who Reads."

Excellent advice gentlemen. Now think about which kind of girl you want to date....

112

Happy birthday to one of my favorite authors, CS Lewis, born 112 years ago today.

In September, I went to Belfast, and got to see some of CS Lewis' childhood home. The home where he was living when his mother died is called Little Lea. He wrote about this house in Surprised by Joy:

 

In 1905, my seventh year, the first great change in my life took place. We moved house. My father, growing, I suppose in prosperity, decided to leave the semi-detachd villa in which I had been born and build himself a much larger house, further out in what was then the country. The 'New House', as we continued for years to call it, was a large one even by my present standards; to a child it seemed less like a house than a city.

I also visited St. Mark's Church in Dundela, where Jack's grandfather was the rector. This is the original front door to the rectory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notice the doorknob:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's a lion! One can only wonder....

 

 

Happy Birthday Jack!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the paper shadows

The Chronicle recently published an article purportedly written by a man who writes papers for students who hire him. Yes, he is a professional cheat. For those of you who are not in academia (and perhaps for those who are), plagiarism has become an increasing problem for years. I have taught at two different universities, both on the ground and online, and always found at least one (usually several more) plagiarised papers per term.

This article claims to be a tell-all about just what type of student would be willing to hire someone to do his or her work for them. I have seen (and taught) all three of his categories:

From my experience, three demographic groups seek out my services: the English-as-second-language student; the hopelessly deficient student; and the lazy rich kid.

For the last, colleges are a perfect launching ground—they are built to reward the rich and to forgive them their laziness. Let's be honest: The successful among us are not always the best and the brightest, and certainly not the most ethical. My favorite customers are those with an unlimited supply of money and no shortage of instructions on how they would like to see their work executed. While the deficient student will generally not know how to ask for what he wants until he doesn't get it, the lazy rich student will know exactly what he wants. He is poised for a life of paying others and telling them what to do. Indeed, he is acquiring all the skills he needs to stay on top.

As for the first two types of students—the ESL and the hopelessly deficient—colleges are utterly failing them. Students who come to American universities from other countries find that their efforts to learn a new language are confounded not only by cultural difficulties but also by the pressures of grading. The focus on evaluation rather than education means that those who haven't mastered English must do so quickly or suffer the consequences. My service provides a particularly quick way to "master" English. And those who are hopelessly deficient—a euphemism, I admit—struggle with communication in general.

 I agree with his assessment of the last two categories. The American higher education system is failing these students. Except, I would argue that part of the problem is because the teachers don't focus on education. It is tempting when administration pushes the teacher to churn out students with higher and higher grades to focus merely on the grade spreadsheet. But, that is not education. If a student fails a class, he or she still could have learned the subject, learned about him or herself, and learned something for the future. Yes, an F could still mean that the student has been educated. I think the larger problem is that students are not allowed to fail. Parents should accept that their children will fail--in fact need to fail. They need to realize that being a helicopter parent only helps themselves, not the students.

And, lest you think that your alma mater or your subject is free from this plagiarism plague, here is a particularly chilling section from the article:

I do a lot of work for seminary students. I like seminary students. They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model for others to follow. I have been commissioned to write many a passionate condemnation of America's moral decay as exemplified by abortion, gay marriage, or the teaching of evolution. All in all, we may presume that clerical authorities see these as a greater threat than the plagiarism committed by the future frocked.

 So what do you think?

Autumnal Beauty

One of the things I love about living in Scotland is the clear demarcation of seasons. My former home in the South didn't have these markers; December might surprise you with a 70 degree day.

In Scotland, Autumn is here. My sweaters and flannel pjs are out, and I am reveling in my favorite season. The only thing I miss is a pumpkin spice latte.

Here is a perfect poem just for October:

"Fall"

by Edward Hirsch

Fall, falling, fallen. That's the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer's
Sprawling past and winter's hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform.

Click here for the rest of the poem

Measuring

As a woman I struggle with diets and body image. Who doesn't?

I have walked with friends through anorexia and bulimia. I have seen one whither away and one grieve over the lasting damage that she did to her own body.

I absorb images of what I am supposed to look like, knowing I will never look like that. My fundamentalist background whispers that I shouldn't even think about it; thinking about it makes me vain. But with all of the shouting pictures that I see, how can I not think about it? So, I have finally decided, it is what I do with those thoughts that really matters.

Rarely is this societal problem discussed in a balanced way. Conversations seem to careen between narcissistic fascination and blithe ignorance.

Here is an excerpt of a beautiful poem that at least begins to look at the problem in an honest and balanced way.

 

June 1st, 1942: 927 calories, 63° Fahrenheit

by Meredith Kathryn-Case Gipson Hoogendam

what is it like, to measure time
in calories, each moment a caloric collection
of seconds, each month a record
of how many grapefruit eaten, how many
pieces of cake or slices of cheese denied,
days upon days stretching into the absence
of every fat gram you did not eat,
every desire you did not pursue,
every dream you did not have.

Go here to read the rest of the poem.

That's mine!

I attended a seminar on copyright issues this afternoon; all students have to submit their completed thesis electronically, which brings about all kinds of publishing and copyright issues. So, you may notice a few changes with the National Poetry Month postings. I would hate to infringe on copyrights, so you may see a link to some poems instead of the text.But, I still hope you will read, enjoy, and comment on the poems.

Minutes

Sometimes it is good to look backwards. So today, in the midst of an eleven hour day, I took a break and poked around my blog (I have been trying to clean some things up). And I found an old post from 2006, when I wasn't just writing about Foxe's Book of Martyrs, I was teaching it. I had a good laugh at Someone's divine sense of humor, and you might as well. Here is a day from my former life as a college instructor. 

Steeping Tea

A lovely poem to start your year:

Green Tea

by Dale Ritterbush

There is this tea
I have sometimes,
Pan Long Ying Hao,
so tightly curled
it looks like tiny roots
gnarled, a greenish-gray.
When it steeps, it opens
the way you woke this morning,
stretching, your hands behind
your head, back arched,
toes pointing, a smile steeped
in ceremony, a celebration,
the reaching of your arms.

Four hundred and one years young

December 9 was John Milton's birthday. Happy birthday John! Here is a snippet from one of my favorite poems (books?), his epic, Paradise Lost. I think I will celebrate his birthday by popping into the Paradise Lost reading at my university. People gather in a room to read this poem out loud. It usually takes all day, but we get through it.  A wonderful way to spend the day!

From Book I

Thus Satan, talking to his nearest Mate,
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream.
Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
With fixèd anchor in his scaly rind,
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wishèd morn delays.
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay,
Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence
Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enraged might see
How all his malice served but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn
On Man by him seduced, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.

A morsel of poem

I make my mother's cranberry relish that has lots of yummy things in it. Turkey just isn't turkey without this mouthwatering, tangy, sweet, tart, blood red spoonful on my plate.

When I heard this poem on The Writer's Almanac, I was glad to find that someone else had found this similar love. 

Cranberry Orange Relish

by John Engels

A pound of ripe cranberries, for two days
macerate in a dark rum, then do not
treat them gently, but bruise,
mash, pulp, squash
with a wooden pestle
to an abundance of juices, in fact
until the juices seem on the verge

of overswelling the bowl, then drop in
two fistsful, maybe three, of fine-
chopped orange with rind, two golden
blobs of it, and crush
it in, and then add sugar, no thin
sprinkling, but a cupful dumped
and awakened with a wooden spoon

to a thick suffusion, drench of sourness, bite of color,
then for two days let conjoin
the lonely taste of cranberry,
the joyous orange, the rum, in some
warm corner of the kitchen, until
the bowl faintly becomes
audible, a scarce wash of sound, a tiny
bubbling, and then
in a glass bowl set it out
and let it be eaten last, to offset
gravied breast and thigh
of the heavy fowl, liverish
stuffing, the effete
potato, lethargy of pumpkins

gone leaden in their crusts, let it be eaten
so that our hearts may be together overrun
with comparable sweetnesses,
tart gratitudes, until finally,
dawdling and groaning, we bear them
to the various hungerings
of our beds, lightened
of their desolations.