First I was distracted by the blog (no time to get the program stuff sorted out) and then I went on two trips for teacher
training, so by now you have probably lost interest in checking out this blog. It's a shame, because I've had all sorts of super profound thoughts that I haven't been able to get down on e-paper. Now, of course, they are lost, and thus my chance at fame and glory are lost with them. You'll have to be content with the ideas that I am able to dig up from my mind this morning and see if they have any value.
Of course, the main thought that weighs my mind down is pretty simple. One word. One syllable. One great big abstraction: "ouch."
But on a more superficial level, I have been thinking since last Friday or Saturday night about a movie I was talked into watching by and with my beautiful 13 year old daughter who will turn 14 on November 14 (do you know what that is called when you have the birthday on the date of the age you turn?). The movie was What a Girl Wants and she had been taken to see it by her grandparents last summer.
Comedy, as the proverb goes, is serious money. No wait, it goes: Comedy is serious business. And indeed it is. Not just in the theatre, but also in the soul. At the beginning of possibly his most important book, The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis says, "I doubt whether we are sufficiently attentive to the importance of elementary text books." If that was true of England in the 40's, how much more true is it of US in the naughts? And if it is true of elementary text books, which children read only because they have to, how much more true is it of comedy, which children absorb without resistance because they want to laugh, because one of their highest priorities in life is to laugh, and because, frankly, they ought to spend a lot of time laughing.
I doubt, therefore, whether we are sufficiently attentive to the importance of comedies. But lest you conclude that this is some kind of reactionary over-reactive hyper-reaction to a simple little innocent movie, let me say that, in fact, I thought What a Girl Wants was a fairly well-crafted, clever movie with a few significant little sermonettes woven through it, in spite of the fact that it was a propaganda puff-piece for American pop culture and its irresistible force by which Hollywood is clearly and inevitably taking over the world because it is more powerful than God Himself.
One thing about successful comedy needs to be appreciated. It's funny. It would be good therefore to understand why it is funny. Why is it that a movie can play out the same basic plot as 2500 other movies and still make us laugh and even be delighted - if not surprised - by the altogether predictable ending. One reason might be that, as Northrop Frye expressed it in his magisterial Anatomy of Criticism, "laughing is partly a reflex, and like other reflexes it can be conditioned by a simple repeated pattern."
I think that's one reason. I think another reason is that we we don't laugh at the plot. The plot is the vessel that carries what will make us laugh. The plot is important. A tragic plot with comic characters might work as satire or irony, but it won't work as comedy. And the plot of a comedy is, in general, built on a simple formula that we should note because it has the key to understanding the moral implications of comedy and of a given comedy.
From before the dawn of history, the plot of comedy has been built around two societies that are in conflict with each other. These could be the Greeks and Trojans, the Athenians and Spartans, the aristocrats and the commoners, the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the male and the female, the French and the English, the city and the country, the east and the west, etc. etc. This social conflict is also sometimes true of tragedies like Romeo and Juliet, but that is why such works are often called tragicomedies.
In a comedy there is something unique about the relation of these two societies. One of them is an established society that has worked out its own internal order. The other is an upstart society that is not yet self-regulated and that is striving to avoid regulation of any sort. For this reason, lots of comedy is about fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, etc.
The established society that has established its rules for self-regulation is usually inhabited by imposters and hypocrites who fail to live up to these self-established rules. They are the people who want to interfere with the freedom of the comic hero. Frye calls them "blocking characters."
In this world of two societies, the hero is usually a young man who wants a young woman, but his desire is thwarted by the representatives of the oppressive society. The specifics can be easily altered and thus the story can become more complex, as it did in What a Girl Wants, where both the father and a young man desire the young woman, though in very different and appropriate, at least for the father, ways. What I mean is that the father wanted to know and love his daughter as his daughter while the young man wanted to romance her.
Most "chick flicks" follow this basic formula: Man wants woman, blocking characters interrupt, man gets woman and new society is formed. The end will be a wedding (Father of the Bride, Much Ado About Nothing) or a dance (What a Girl Wants, As You Like it) or sometimes just a kiss (Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail - Hanks and Ryan seem to prefer this sort of non-commital, non-social, individualistic ending). By the way, sometimes the hero and heroine can serve as the blocking characters themselves. This is increasingly common as movies turn inward and recognize less and less the claims of society on individuals.
So what does this have to do with the moral implications of a comedy? Simply this, if you can recognize the two societies that are in conflict, ask yourselves these questions:
Which society is being caricatured as absurd and which is being caricatured favorably?
Which society does the hero represent?
Which society comes out on top in the end?
What are the values/beliefs/habits of the triumphant society?
What does each society sacrifice in order to form the new society?
What are the principles of order in this new society?
How have the characters grown (who has grown?) throughout the plot?
Comedy is necessary and good, in my opinion, because it is a perpetual attack on hypocrisy. But what the story teller regards as hypocritical and what he wants to replace it with matters a great deal. Comedy is based on the perpetual struggle of young people to assimilate themselves into a regulated society without giving up their individual souls. It's the eternal tension of submitting without joining in the hypocrisy. For that reason it needs to be practiced correctly and morally.
When the triumphant society is an untransformed, unrepentant, unadjusted society based on adolescent values, when there is no resolution of the two societies into a healthy third society (i.e. a new family), when the movie relentlessly attacks the values of the established society instead of the hypocrisy of its members, then you have drifted from honest comedy into propaganda and preaching.
As well as What a Girl Wants is constructed, I believe it traps itself into a narrow and small-minded worldview that is most clearly expressed in two key scenes. The first key scene might be better expressed as a conclusion. The young lady makes an honest effort to join her fathers world and to be submissive to its standards. We watch her disintegrate into unhappiness (for what girl would want to have to wear beautiful dresses and be appreciated by those around her) in her attempt to fit into a supremely artificial and one-dimensional polite society. Hollywood, and especially Walt Disney, is notorious for not understanding any society that doesn't share their values, so this was to be expected.
Her boyfriend sees her and utters one of those insanely sage oracles that movies like to put into the mouths of their silliest heroes: "What happened to the real you?" is the essence of his question. The implication, of course, is that by trying to fit into a society that was more refined, which is to say, that placed more noble demands on its members, and consequently had a great deal more potential for visible imposture, she was being forced to stop being herself.
The Latin word for mask is persona. There is a reason we call people "persons." This poor young lady was being told, as we tell all our young men and women, that she did not have in her soul the elements that could fit into this society. All she could ever be was a somewhat sleazy, unregulated, passion-driven girl of her age. She could fit into the amazingly rigorous, if highly manipulative for being beneath the surface, American pop-culture. And by not knowing she was being controlled by her boyfriend and by the demands of this truly vain society she could even enjoy it.
But she could never fit into the much simpler and easier to read British aristocracy of the movie. In short, she would be permitted to wear only one mask. This is too sad for words. When she acknowledges the justice of her boyfriend's childish and unreflected statement, we know that youth has served to destroy youth yet again and that, while the movie will seem to have a happy ending, we are in fact watching a tragedy unfold before our eyes.
The second scene is the one in which the father is told by his mother (the sage within the society of hypocrites who sees the truth of the other side) something like this: "For 600 years our family has been giving parts of itself (she is referring to hands, limbs, etc. lost in battle) for queen and country. Don't continue in that glorious tradition." She later continues, "They gave their body parts. You are giving your heart."
This is an evil and abominable conclusion, both morally and dramatically. It mocks the tradition of honor and self-sacrifice. And it eliminates the possibility of resolution. At the end, we have a dance. We have father and daughter, boyfriend and girlfriend, lover and beloved, all dancing together. But what we don't have is any trace of the old English aristocracy that Hollywood seems intent on destroying. It has been left behind. England is no more.
The audience is granted a superficial, sentimental satisfaction (has the contemporary audience been conditioned out of anything more?) in knowing that the father and daughter are together again (this is the profoundly positive message of the movie) and that two pairs of lover and beloved will live happily ever after, and that the evil imposters get their comeuppance (though we aren't given the pleasure of watching it unfold), but the full resolution of the two societies for which our souls and our world craves is not given us. And the judge within leaves the trial (for every comedy is ultimately a trial) feeling that one of the parties in this civil suit was not given a civil defense.

9-30-3
Daily dose of analogies (only a couple more day's worth!):
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree. Jack Bross, Chevy Chase
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease. Gary F. Hevel, Silver Spring
Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as
something like "Second Tall Man." Russell Beland, Springfield
9-28-3
Amazing (from ETR):
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in
waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the
frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses
and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid
deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Don't use this on little kids!
More great analogies:
Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center. Russell Beland, Springfield
Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets
T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake Ken Krattenmaker, Landover Hills
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. Unknown
9-27-3
Your daily analogy treat:
She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever
you banged the door open again. Rich Murphy, Fairfax Station
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't. Russell Beland, Springfield
From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another
city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30. Roy Ashley, Washington
Howl away!
9-26-3
I often read an E-mail publication called Early To Rise to help me focus my thoughts on improving our ministries here at the CiRCE Institute. While one must read any success literature with a bushel of salt, the writer of this E-letter has a refreshing realism that makes it often valuable. He also uses a lot of good quotations. Recently he included this one, which is both funny and, to the degree that it is true, sobering:
"So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work." Peter Drucker.
If you would like to receive this daily E-mail service, click on this link and sign yourself up. It's free, but I feel bound to let you know that the man's expertise is marketing. http://www.earlytorise.com/SuccessPartnership.htm
More light-hearted material, this from a friend in Boise, Leslie Gorin, who sent it to me by E-mail after receiving it from her daughter who got it from a friend in England, who was sent it by a relative in the Soviet Union (this is old stuff) who received it from a navy captain in the Air National Guard ...
I'm just kidding after Leslie's daughter. This is funny stuff. In fact, it's so funny that to include all of them would ruin the effect, so I'll add one or two every day or so over the next couple weeks.
What are they, you ask. They are a collection of "the worst analogies ever written in a high school essay" for a Washington Post contest. Enjoy!
McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup. Paul Sabourin, Silver Spring
 
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it. Joseph Romm, Washington

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze. Chuck Smith, Woodbridge
Some things are better left unsaid. And then there are high school essays.
9-23-3
An interesting consideration: no Christian has ever developed a full-blown educational theory. That means EVERY Christian school or teacher that has ever taught has either done it without a theory (ie. he imitated the way educators around him did it) or he did it using theories developed by people who were not Christians. What a bind this puts the Christian educator in!
St. Augustine came closest with his On the Teacher and On Christian Doctrine, but he was obviously leaning heavily for guidance on Plato and Aristotle (the latter more indirectly). The modern Christian school tends toward Dewey, Rousseau, and Bacon. And Descartes. Yikes.
So who do we look to for our theories? Those whose thoughts are most in line with reality and with the gospel: the ancient Greeks and Romans, especially Aristotle. Plato's educational theories are a little harder to figure out, because he is always so ironic. In addition, we look to whoever else has demonstrated over time that he knew what he was talking about. But first we need to ask about the purpose and nature of education or we won't be able to evaluate any theory or practice.
I spent the hurricane up in Baltimore. When it hit I was fast asleep and it didn't hit terribly hard. The harbour flooded, but my car was on the fourth floor (the van parked illegally in valet parking on the first floor can be expected to have learned its lesson!). I was attending a conference put on by the Leadership Institute, a vital organization I recommend to any conservative group.
Visit their website at www.leadershipinstitute.org.
9-17-3
A list of movies set in Ancient Rome:
Ben-Hur Quo Vadis
The Robe Gladiators
The Gladiator Spartacus
Masada A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum
Cleopatra Cleopatra: The First Woman of Power
Julius Caesar (multiple versions of Shakespeare's play - I love Marlon Brando as Antony)
Fall of the Roman Empire
The many movies about Jesus, especially Jesus of Nazareth.
Know any more? E-mail us at info@circeinstitute.org
9-16-3
An old friend of mine called Matthew Staudinger came to our summer conference this year. In fact, Matthew is a young friend of mine. He's 25. But he's an old friend because when I started my teaching career in 1993 Matthew was in my class. He was an eighth grader with a great mind and a wide curiosity - two things that are sure to interfere with a teen's education. He stayed out of trouble, but we always knew he was up to something.
Now he teaches at the school where I was one of his teachers (Providence Academy, Green Bay, WI). He's in the small army - a guerrilla movement really - of young men and women who have been classically educated and now are using their experiences to teach the next generation. The dream is growing. He's so far ahead of where I was at 25 it's embarrassing to think about. Thank God!
Matthew told us the conference was "transcendentally practical." What a perfect phrase. It fits something another teacher told us at our teacher training here a few weeks ago. She said, and this isn't a direct quote so I hope I'm representing her accurately, that after you get a few methods and techniques down, there are still a lot of unanswered questions. At that point, you don't need methods, you need to know how to think about education. She said our teacher training helped her do that. Methods are very practical, and we teach them here at CiRCE. But what really matters is knowing how to think. And that takes discretion.
And discretion is "transcendentally practical." Thanks, Matthew, for a great insight.
9-15-3
Over the past five or six weeks a young lady called Elizabeth Robbins has been helping us with office work, running, organizing the move, and just about a million other little details and big projects. She'll be moving on to a more permanent full-time position beginning next week and I want to use this space to publicly thank her for all she has done.
Thank you Elizabeth!
Terry Lindvall from Regent University has just finished writing a book called The Mother of all Laughter. Looks like a good read. I like this: "Many people use the word serious as though it is the antonym of comic. But it's not. The opposite of comic is tragic. What isn't happy and humorous is horrible and heartbreaking. Serious--meaningful, momentous--is the antonym of trivial--unimportant, inconsequential, minor." A nice distinction and one we should remember. The solemnity of humor is forgotten to our loss. Publisher: Broadman and Holman: ISBN 080543019-9
We moved our office over the weekend (starting Friday). I'm going to Baltimore for a conference on fund-raising Wednesday. The hurricane should hit shortly after I do. Can't wait.
I'm revising that pathetic 9-11 poem below, so hope to have an improved version within a week or so.
9-12-3
You will be excited to know that I have decided, just this very morning, to become an expert in acyrology. To initiate the process, we will be eating alfresco for lunch today.
9-11-3
In Memoriam
Thus ends the age of smoke and mirrors
The heaving wave of insubstantial style
The moving shade of self-created worlds
   Thus dawns the world of standing stones and fire
Of meaning words
and infinite measures
Of Melodies sung in due proportion
Heavenly Rhythmns and balanced Harmonies

Of real duty
Of real pain
Of no longer deniable being
Oh to deny this luxuriating anguish
Telling me I am 
9-10-3
Can you see a Yoda type figure looking back on thought in the 20th and 21st centuries? What would he say? Of course sages are sages because they are wise, so we mortals can't really imagine what they would say. In fact, one of Tolkien's most audacious moves in his Lord of the Rings is precisely his daring to put words in the mouths of the wise.
Nonetheless, in the spirit, if without the wisdom, of Tolkien, I present for your ponderment a 25th century sage (e.g. Yoda or Gandalf) talking to one of his disciples. The topic is the mental habits of the west since, say, Locke, but accelerating violently with Freud. Lets drop some eaves:
Disciple: Master, why did the writings in the west become so incomprehensible and trivial after the Enlightenment?
Master: Ah, grasshopper, you ask good question. Let me reveal to you truth, that you may be enlightened.

One day Western man decided that learning did not exist. Learning was only a name.
Next, they wished so they said that purpose was a myth and that nothing had a nature. All knew and lived as though all did have purpose and nature. They knew learning was more than name. But they would read those who took unto themselves the name "philosopher" and they would become clouded. They loved their darkness, for in the light you see the stone that will break your toe.
They called their studies learning, but truly their learning was sham. It was a self-contradictory attempt to redefine themselves. They did not confess that their endeavor was to invent a new nature for themselves. This they had to do, for it is the nature of the human spirit to believe in its own purpose and nature. But having repudiated purpose and nature, redefinition became a game. For many it became power play. They became obsessed with psychology. In their folly they tried to measure the human spirit. They sought redefinition without definition.
Their theories were so self-evidently wrong that only those they called educated could believe. Their contradictions became a badge of honor. They paid artists to express their contradictions in art. Relative taste became absolute, for standards of propriety, determined by purpose and nature, were angrily spurned. Angrily, because propriety brought light. And light brought fear.
They left themselves no means of persuasion but force and manipulation. Thus, those who could used government institutions to implement their ideas. Others used the electronic media. People contorted themselves trying to obey and believe things they knew to be false. Above all, they were taught that they enjoyed their childish freedom, but their freedom tormented them. They knew themselves to be more than sexual animals, but they were forbidden from believing in what they were.
They became slaves because they did not realize that the only true freedom is the freedom to perfect one's nature in order to fulfill one's purpose. Nor could they believe it, having rejected purpose and nature. It was not until Enlightenment man was annihilated that we could return to the real task of learning: to pursue wisdom.
Disciple: Ah, master you speak so wisely.
Master: Yes, son, it is because I frequently visit CiRCE blog.
Disciple: Sounds slimy. And what, oh master, is wisdom?
Master: That is a lesson for another time.
9-9-3
A shepherd once turned his gaze from his flock and looked out to sea. According to Aesop, he saw that the sea was placid and welcoming, so he decided to sell his flock and invest in dates. He did so, but, while he traveled with his cargo, a tempest arose and threatened to sink the ship. He ex-cargoed his ship

9-30-3
Daily dose of analogies (only a couple more day's worth!):
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree. Jack Bross, Chevy Chase
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease. Gary F. Hevel, Silver Spring
Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as
something like "Second Tall Man." Russell Beland, Springfield
9-28-3
Amazing (from ETR):
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in
waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the
frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses
and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid
deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Don't use this on little kids!
More great analogies:
Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center. Russell Beland, Springfield
Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets
T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake Ken Krattenmaker, Landover Hills
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. Unknown
9-27-3
Your daily analogy treat:
She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever
you banged the door open again. Rich Murphy, Fairfax Station
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't. Russell Beland, Springfield
From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another
city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30. Roy Ashley, Washington
Howl away!
9-26-3
I often read an E-mail publication called Early To Rise to help me focus my thoughts on improving our ministries here at the CiRCE Institute. While one must read any success literature with a bushel of salt, the writer of this E-letter has a refreshing realism that makes it often valuable. He also uses a lot of good quotations. Recently he included this one, which is both funny and, to the degree that it is true, sobering:
"So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work." Peter Drucker.
If you would like to receive this daily E-mail service, click on this link and sign yourself up. It's free, but I feel bound to let you know that the man's expertise is marketing. http://www.earlytorise.com/SuccessPartnership.htm
More light-hearted material, this from a friend in Boise, Leslie Gorin, who sent it to me by E-mail after receiving it from her daughter who got it from a friend in England, who was sent it by a relative in the Soviet Union (this is old stuff) who received it from a navy captain in the Air National Guard ...
I'm just kidding after Leslie's daughter. This is funny stuff. In fact, it's so funny that to include all of them would ruin the effect, so I'll add one or two every day or so over the next couple weeks.
What are they, you ask. They are a collection of "the worst analogies ever written in a high school essay" for a Washington Post contest. Enjoy!
McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup. Paul Sabourin, Silver Spring
 
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it. Joseph Romm, Washington

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze. Chuck Smith, Woodbridge
Some things are better left unsaid. And then there are high school essays.
9-23-3
An interesting consideration: no Christian has ever developed a full-blown educational theory. That means EVERY Christian school or teacher that has ever taught has either done it without a theory (ie. he imitated the way educators around him did it) or he did it using theories developed by people who were not Christians. What a bind this puts the Christian educator in!
St. Augustine came closest with his On the Teacher and On Christian Doctrine, but he was obviously leaning heavily for guidance on Plato and Aristotle (the latter more indirectly). The modern Christian school tends toward Dewey, Rousseau, and Bacon. And Descartes. Yikes.
So who do we look to for our theories? Those whose thoughts are most in line with reality and with the gospel: the ancient Greeks and Romans, especially Aristotle. Plato's educational theories are a little harder to figure out, because he is always so ironic. In addition, we look to whoever else has demonstrated over time that he knew what he was talking about. But first we need to ask about the purpose and nature of education or we won't be able to evaluate any theory or practice.
I spent the hurricane up in Baltimore. When it hit I was fast asleep and it didn't hit terribly hard. The harbour flooded, but my car was on the fourth floor (the van parked illegally in valet parking on the first floor can be expected to have learned its lesson!). I was attending a conference put on by the Leadership Institute, a vital organization I recommend to any conservative group.
Visit their website at www.leadershipinstitute.org.
9-17-3
A list of movies set in Ancient Rome:
Ben-Hur Quo Vadis
The Robe Gladiators
The Gladiator Spartacus
Masada A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum
Cleopatra Cleopatra: The First Woman of Power
Julius Caesar (multiple versions of Shakespeare's play - I love Marlon Brando as Antony)
Fall of the Roman Empire
The many movies about Jesus, especially Jesus of Nazareth.
Know any more? E-mail us at info@circeinstitute.org
9-16-3
An old friend of mine called Matthew Staudinger came to our summer conference this year. In fact, Matthew is a young friend of mine. He's 25. But he's an old friend because when I started my teaching career in 1993 Matthew was in my class. He was an eighth grader with a great mind and a wide curiosity - two things that are sure to interfere with a teen's education. He stayed out of trouble, but we always knew he was up to something.
Now he teaches at the school where I was one of his teachers (Providence Academy, Green Bay, WI). He's in the small army - a guerrilla movement really - of young men and women who have been classically educated and now are using their experiences to teach the next generation. The dream is growing. He's so far ahead of where I was at 25 it's embarrassing to think about. Thank God!
Matthew told us the conference was "transcendentally practical." What a perfect phrase. It fits something another teacher told us at our teacher training here a few weeks ago. She said, and this isn't a direct quote so I hope I'm representing her accurately, that after you get a few methods and techniques down, there are still a lot of unanswered questions. At that point, you don't need methods, you need to know how to think about education. She said our teacher training helped her do that. Methods are very practical, and we teach them here at CiRCE. But what really matters is knowing how to think. And that takes discretion.
And discretion is "transcendentally practical." Thanks, Matthew, for a great insight.
9-15-3
Over the past five or six weeks a young lady called Elizabeth Robbins has been helping us with office work, running, organizing the move, and just about a million other little details and big projects. She'll be moving on to a more permanent full-time position beginning next week and I want to use this space to publicly thank her for all she has done.
Thank you Elizabeth!
Terry Lindvall from Regent University has just finished writing a book called The Mother of all Laughter. Looks like a good read. I like this: "Many people use the word serious as though it is the antonym of comic. But it's not. The opposite of comic is tragic. What isn't happy and humorous is horrible and heartbreaking. Serious--meaningful, momentous--is the antonym of trivial--unimportant, inconsequential, minor." A nice distinction and one we should remember. The solemnity of humor is forgotten to our loss. Publisher: Broadman and Holman: ISBN 080543019-9
We moved our office over the weekend (starting Friday). I'm going to Baltimore for a conference on fund-raising Wednesday. The hurricane should hit shortly after I do. Can't wait.
I'm revising that pathetic 9-11 poem below, so hope to have an improved version within a week or so.
9-12-3
You will be excited to know that I have decided, just this very morning, to become an expert in acyrology. To initiate the process, we will be eating alfresco for lunch today.
9-11-3
In Memoriam
Thus ends the age of smoke and mirrors
The heaving wave of insubstantial style
The moving shade of self-created worlds
   Thus dawns the world of standing stones and fire
Of meaning words
and infinite measures
Of Melodies sung in due proportion
Heavenly Rhythmns and balanced Harmonies

Of real duty
Of real pain
Of no longer deniable being
Oh to deny this luxuriating anguish
Telling me I am 
9-10-3
Can you see a Yoda type figure looking back on thought in the 20th and 21st centuries? What would he say? Of course sages are sages because they are wise, so we mortals can't really imagine what they would say. In fact, one of Tolkien's most audacious moves in his Lord of the Rings is precisely his daring to put words in the mouths of the wise.
Nonetheless, in the spirit, if without the wisdom, of Tolkien, I present for your ponderment a 25th century sage (e.g. Yoda or Gandalf) talking to one of his disciples. The topic is the mental habits of the west since, say, Locke, but accelerating violently with Freud. Lets drop some eaves:
Disciple: Master, why did the writings in the west become so incomprehensible and trivial after the Enlightenment?
Master: Ah, grasshopper, you ask good question. Let me reveal to you truth, that you may be enlightened.

One day Western man decided that learning did not exist. Learning was only a name.
Next, they wished so they said that purpose was a myth and that nothing had a nature. All knew and lived as though all did have purpose and nature. They knew learning was more than name. But they would read those who took unto themselves the name "philosopher" and they would become clouded. They loved their darkness, for in the light you see the stone that will break your toe.
They called their studies learning, but truly their learning was sham. It was a self-contradictory attempt to redefine themselves. They did not confess that their endeavor was to invent a new nature for themselves. This they had to do, for it is the nature of the human spirit to believe in its own purpose and nature. But having repudiated purpose and nature, redefinition became a game. For many it became power play. They became obsessed with psychology. In their folly they tried to measure the human spirit. They sought redefinition without definition.
Their theories were so self-evidently wrong that only those they called educated could believe. Their contradictions became a badge of honor. They paid artists to express their contradictions in art. Relative taste became absolute, for standards of propriety, determined by purpose and nature, were angrily spurned. Angrily, because propriety brought light. And light brought fear.
They left themselves no means of persuasion but force and manipulation. Thus, those who could used government institutions to implement their ideas. Others used the electronic media. People contorted themselves trying to obey and believe things they knew to be false. Above all, they were taught that they enjoyed their childish freedom, but their freedom tormented them. They knew themselves to be more than sexual animals, but they were forbidden from believing in what they were.
They became slaves because they did not realize that the only true freedom is the freedom to perfect one's nature in order to fulfill one's purpose. Nor could they believe it, having rejected purpose and nature. It was not until Enlightenment man was annihilated that we could return to the real task of learning: to pursue wisdom.
Disciple: Ah, master you speak so wisely.
Master: Yes, son, it is because I frequently visit CiRCE blog.
Disciple: Sounds slimy. And what, oh master, is wisdom?
Master: That is a lesson for another time.
9-9-3
A shepherd once turned his gaze from his flock and looked out to sea. According to Aesop, he saw that the sea was placid and welcoming, so he decided to sell his flock and invest in dates. He did so, but, while he traveled with his cargo, a tempest arose and threatened to sink the ship. He ex-cargoed his ship and survived, but not without great loss. Later a man passed him on the road beside the sea (which was calm again) and he said to him, "belike the sea is calm because it is hungry for more dates."
When I asked my family what the shepherd had done wrong, Katie, my 13 year old, said he should not have put everything in one load. Larissa, my 10 year old, said he shouldn't have risked so much. Then Andrew, my 7 year old, insisted that the shepherd should have known that life is full of risks so you need to be ready for them. My thoughts were more trivial: the sea was calm. It seduced him. He thought this career change would be, forgive the cliché, smooth sailing. Optimism lives by calm seas. But storms come. Inevitably. Relentlessly. Una

Of course, what frustrates one is the brilliant thoughts that are irretrievably lost when the computer demands more than 30 seconds attention.

I'll let you know how this works.

I'm trying to use Blogger to do my blog. It was not as easy as I thought to do it using ftp, so now I'm doing it on their own web site. We'll see if this works better and if people can find it.