Eruantale

We’ve more or less been snowed in for the past week here—on the beach, strangely enough. We had enough snow to make a six foot tall snowman for the first time since I moved here at four years old. Because of the snow, the entire county decided to go Christmas shopping during today’s break in the weather. After enduring the zoo at the store while picking up some presents for my family’s Secret Santa gift exchange, the cashier happened to say to my dad and me: “Happy Holidays!” Seeing as I celebrate Christmas, I replied, “Merry Christmas!” I actually barely thought about it at that moment.

During December I tend to wish everyone a merry Christmas. However, after I had done my wishing, she wished me a Merry Christmas, too, and informed me that she was now allowed to say that because I had said it first. Strange rules. I’m no fan of political correctness. The incident reminded me of a letter I wrote one Christmas to vent out some frustration about all the fuss and fretting that goes on about Christmas and ‘holidays’. This letter deals with a choir having a ‘Holiday’ program instead of a Christmas program. Sometimes people worry so much about offending non-religious people that they, in turn, offend the religious. Enjoy. (more…)

Go to college. That’s what the world tells young people these days; at least those who live in countries where college is readily available. So, that’s what we plan to do. We make it through twelve to fourteen years of school*—or at least, some of us do, for many drop out of that system, and I don’t blame them. We earn our credits, we do senior projects and portfolios and whatever else is required of high school students these days, we make the grade, we write papers, we do extracurricular activities so that we look like a well rounded person, we take the SAT, we try to pick out what we want to do with our lives, we write scholarship essays and fill out applications, we fill out the FAFSA, we pull our hair when we learn how much aid we’re actually getting vs. the cost of going to school, we cry at graduation, and we show up on campus sometimes unsure if we’re going there because we truly want to or because we have been told that we must. How many students drag themselves to school and pay to take classes that they hate in order to get a little piece of paper so that they may get a job? Why are we here? What on earth are we learning anyway, and what for?

College is not about becoming a smart, educated person. In this day and age, college graduates are not always the brightest crayons in the box. College is a ten-week** marathon which you must run three or four times a year for two to four years (at least). College is not about completing the reading, getting a thorough understanding of the subject you are studying, or being able to discuss the subject with wisdom and understanding. College is about identifying objectives which you must complete (the essay, the group project, the midterm, the term paper, and the final exam) and completing them on time in the manner specified by your teacher. College is about learning to cope with the annoying characters in your class (History-Channel-Girl, Irrelevant-Comment-Boy, Obnoxious-Interruption Girl, Chitter-In-The-Back-Of-The-Class-Girl & friends, I-Still-Act-Like-A-High-School-Student-Boy and I-Never-Do-The-Assignment-Boy), learning to deal with unpleasant teachers, and learning to stay awake during the dullest class of your day. College is about making lists of deadlines and calibrating your day planner accordingly. College is about calculating how many points you need on assignment A + paper B to earn the final grade C. College is about multiplying all of these objectives by X amount of classes and learning to balance the workload. The workload? Oh. College is about work. (more…)

From Reflections on the Psalms, we have C.S. Lewis (again), on praise:

“But the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or any thing—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game—praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least…

I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?” The Psalmist in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value.

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.” ~ C.S. Lewis

Susanna Wesley, in a letter to her son, John Wesley:

“Whatever weakens your reason, whatever impairs the tenderness of your conscience, whatever obscures your sense of God, whatever increases the authority of your body over your mind, whatever takes away from your relish for spiritual things, that to you is sin, no matter how innocent it is in itself.” ~ Susanna Wesley