We certainly wouldn't want an uncongenial habitat

"The cathedral was supposed to be a setting in which humans could glimpse heaven, thereby experiencing a taste of the hereafter. It served to draw people toward heaven. Durkheim's ideas about the sacred, however, suggest a different, almost opposite view of the cathedral's purpose -- in which the cathedral is a place designed to draw the divine down among people. We might say this is done by creating a congenial habitat for the divine."

The Gothic Enterprise by Robert A Scott, pg 153


I'm thoroughly enjoying this book on Gothic cathedrals and highly recommend it. Scott is working with a lot of the same ideas as Lewis' Discarded Image and is very interested in the connection between politics, medieval theology, and cathedrals. He gets into Scholasticism and Bishop Suger and all kinds of interesting stuff. For all that, I laughed really hard when he described cathedrals as a habitat for the divine. It's so... contemporary. He makes it sound like they were building hamster cages.

Also, he's kind of off-kilter due to not coming from an informed Christian philosophy himself. I would argue that one could, actually, describe the Tabernacle and the Temple as a "habitat for the divine" (if you dared!), but not so much churches anymore. The veil was torn in two, and now the Lord is building a new house out of living stones, which are His people. For that matter, the cathedral builders were off-kilter themselves on occasion.

Observation from the TV plots I review

Observation: the Sarah Palin-haters obviously don't think she's really violent, or they wouldn't bait her like they do. (A conservative politician who hunts bears and then murders her son's rape victim? Real subtle, guys.)

Seeing as George W. Bush has been out of the public eye for nearly a full presidential term, I suppose they feel the need for a new whipping, er, person. ::rolls eyes:: Gotta love modern tolerance.

Modernist design

Today's library haul got me really excited. I picked up Lisa Skolnik's Retro Modern out of the architecture and design section, and it pulled together so much for me. There wasn't a huge amount of text, just an introduction, a page or two of text per chapter, and the rest photos and captions illustrating the style in actual houses and other buildings. And I read the entire thing, and got so excited I read a good bit out loud to Jonathan (who was peacefully reading Chuck Swindoll and really mostly back in ancient Persia).

First: I had never realized how much of modernist style I had unconsciously inherited. Big airy windows, an emphasis on back patios, built-in shelves and other furniture, rooms that flow into one another, and front doors that open straight onto the main living area of the house -- classic modernism. I hadn't realized that the basic ranch-styles and split-levels came out of that tradition; I grew up in and around them, and I guess I thought they just naturally occurred? Like mushrooms?

Second: I am reminded of several more aspects of modernism which I've always disliked. Now I'm thinking of bare blocky shapes, sterile walls, odd (but theoretically "functional") architectural excrescences, cantilevering and hovering elements, a dislike of right angles in furniture (Eames chairs, anyone?), and the general impracticality and child-unfriendliness of it all. For instance. There was one hearth out in the middle of the room where the widest part, a layer of bricks, was about six inches up off the floor. It was very nice looking, but carefully arranged so that any adult walking through would bark their shins on it and any child would trip and crack their head on a corner. Yikes.

Also, in order to really be in keeping with the aesthetic, you can't have any junk in your house. Or dirt. Everything is clean and on display. You may have shelves, but the only visible things allowed are Art, such as bio-morphic glass vases or African masks. Mundane things like books and toothbrushes have to be hidden behind fiberglass shelf doors, except for one book on your coffee table. Obviously this would not work for my house.

Third: I found it fascinating how the rise of modernist design flowed out of broader history. The 20th-century opened with a few movements, such as the Arts & Crafts, rebelling against fancy Victorian furnishing. In Germany this took the "Werkbund" style, which emphasized good workmanship and machine-production. That's exactly what they were doing in other ways, like making "the finest artillery in Europe" (to quote Jonathan).

During the late twenties and thirties, the modern aesthetic slowed down due to Nazi preferences (Europe) and production and sales issues (the Great Depression in America). Some major designers fled the war to the US. But, after World War II, there were all these artists raring to go and factories ready to make non-military things and new little ex-soldiers' families getting new little houses and furniture - and whoosh! A style took off.* And now, seventy years later, it's so normal we barely notice it.

Fourth: It's telling that the new houses were oriented around the backyard to have a better view of nature. No more big front porches for chatting with the neighbors, no more parlor windows facing the street, but uncurtained floor-to-ceiling windows facing your own secluded garden. These were built in dramatic natural areas and in cookie-cutter subdivisions, but they were not, for the most part, built on busy town streets so you could walk to the store. Hello, New Urbanism.

Styles change. It's what they do. A lot of the modernist aesthetic is very practical in some ways. It's great for public areas like park visitors' centers and libraries. I think the Los Alamos library is a very cool modernist building - big, airy, light, relatively easy to clean, nifty nested windows to photograph people through, nice balconies to drop things off of.** It's even pretty in its way. But it's not... everything. It's not good for the in-between living. You go for the day.

I think Jonathan and I, if we get a chance to design a house, will value other things. For us, functional means "good for raising kids in" and "hospitable" and, oh, I don't know. Enough storage. Pretty. Respecting boundaries. Curtains on the windows, so we can close them at night and open them in the morning. Not enamored entirely with the last seventy years, and able to tolerate things that are fabulous just for the sake of it, like a Sculpey dragon in red and gold named Aethelthryth***, to reflect the crazy creativity of the God who came up with the common platypus. I mean really, what kind of God makes platypuses? And what does that say about human house design?

Modernism is more pervasive than I'd realized -- which is fine, but also why it's good to keep up with Epbot. Also, if anyone knows of a good design blog inspired by Art Deco, I'd definitely be interested.



*Obviously, it's more complicated than this. But what a fun overview.
**No, I don't recommend this. What were you thinking? ;-)
***Amelia R. sculpted her for our wedding, along with a marzipan dragon. We have awesome friends.

C.S. Lewis on the press

"One wouldn't hang a dog on newspaper extracts." Breakpoint linked this older paper on Lewis and the press. Bluntly: they're trying to form public opinion, and they're not trustworthy, so why do we keep buying their product? The author also talked about how the character Mark Studdock typifies that from That Hideous Strength.

I had a conversation with the people at our housing office the other day on this very subject. He was telling me about a recent local news story they were in, where the reporter didn't even name the right development or actually interview anybody affected. I shared my story about when we were evacuated for the wildfire in 2000, and that little gem that reported "fires raged in the streets of [town actually burned] and [town the fire never reached]." Incidentally, those of us in the second town spent quite a while worrying about our houses for no reason, which was unkind of the journalist.

If even in good faith they get it wrong on subjects we know something about, why trust them on subjects we don't know about? Especially on subjects they have an agenda on? I do make exceptions in my general distrust for journalists I know personally, such as my mother. ;-) But as usual with Lewis, it's food for thought...

Yes, Eureka, there is a real meaning of Christmas

I finally read Thrones, Dominations, the unfinished Sayers book the Jill Paton Walsh took in hand and completed a few years ago. It wasn't as good as a pure Sayers, but it was better than some of the mysteries I've been reading lately. She didn't so much ruin our beloved characters as flatten them out: everybody's characterization got less nuanced and more sledgehammer-like. The Duke of Denver and Lady Helen came off worst of all, although Peter became so sensitive as to be slightly henpecked (Peter!! Henpecked by Harriet??). She tried really hard to keep Sayers' contemporary attitudes and worldview, but a modern apparently just can't. Not on marriage: not on class. A pity. Also, the solution to the mystery was kind of perverted, so I wouldn't recommend it for young readers.

The long-awaited Eureka Christmas episode came out this week! Spoilers! It was called "O Little Town," and I think they'd been watching Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, because Taggart, in a life-long pursuit of Santa, has developed a shrinker-ray for presents that shrinks Eureka! Oh noes! So Jack and Taggart figure out how to take Dr. Drummer's (guest star) magic energy snowball thing and throw it at the EMP shield and reverse the shrinkage.

There were some genuinely funny moments, but I don't think the writers of this episode ever watched Eureka. Taggart's thing is hunting with big guns, right? And Jack is a huge baseball fan, right? So when the time comes for them to go up in the sleigh (I am not making this up), throw the snowball at the shield, and shoot it, what do the writers do but assign Jack to the gun and Taggart to the pitching. Huh? But then, the writing on Eureka this whole season has been lazy. They did get a bunch of new writers on, I know. The dialogue isn't that funny, the plots aren't particularly scientific, and the characters randomly do things totally out of character. Too bad. Also, I really wish they'd hurry up and get Jo and Zane sorted out, or at least advance their story somehow. That's the most interesting subplot at this point, now that the parallel world is more or less at an equilibrium. Sigh.

It's also a pity that Eureka is such a metaphysically empty world. It really is. They do a whole Christmas episode, leaving out even the vaguest hint of Christianity (of course), and this is what we wind up with:
- Christmas isn't about being with your blood family, but being with those you're with (and hopefully love) - Jack's, Jo's, and the nameless snowed-in kids' subplots.
- Everybody makes their own Christmas magic. Allison's subplot was she tries so hard to make things wonderful for her kids, because her parents were straight-up scientists and she never got a present from Santa.
- Growing up doesn't mean you have to stop believing in magic and eating candy canes (at least, so Dr. Drummer/Santa tells Jo).
- Science doesn't work on Santa. You can't capture him and study him, but he'll be back next year - Taggart's subplot.
-Fruitcake has like a million calories, especially when it's shrunk so a whole fruitcake is in one bite.

Seriously? That's the best meaning of Christmas you've got? They know science isn't enough, and there's a better myth, if you like. Imagine a world where a happy God invented people and parsley and astrophysics because He wanted to, and because having them was better and awesomer than not. Then imagine people messed it up. Then, imagine God Himself was born as a human person, to live here for thirty years, be murdered, but be so intensely full of life that He swallowed up death. And, if you want to, you can join this God, and He will swap your death for His life, and your depressingness for His happiness. Incidentally, this means you can investigate this world - i.e. do science - all you like and only learn more about this God because it tells you what He's like. Science has meaning; life has meaning; language even has meaning. Altogether a more satisfactory state of affairs.

Eureka ignores God, and in their metaphysical flailings they've lost science too. We get to wish for Santa and eat candy canes? Seriously? I really miss the scientific plots. Come to the light side. We have cookies! And a philosophical foundation for them!

Narnia and Israel

We just got back from a wonderful week marrying off my sister. I do mean to post about that, but but tonight I just wanted to link this article on "Why is there no Jewish Narnia?" The short answer: Christianity is inclined toward fantasy, with other worlds and redemption at the end, but Judaism is more sci-fi and here-and-now. The article also talks about a new Jewish fantasy trilogy in the works and discusses some of its peculiarities.

I think he's on to something. Christianity is Judaism fulfilled and transmuted. They have the promise and the shadow very much in earthly things: King David, whose throne will last; the Temple and the sacrifices; the Law, which manages everything. Christians, though, look to somewhere else. Here matters, but it's not ultimate. Our hope is for a Good like you can find on this world, and that has been here, but Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, I wouldn't have let you arrest me!" We've got villains, heroes, quests, terror, otherworldly landscapes, impending doom, and sudden redemption un-looked-for and beyond hope. So I suppose it's not that big of a stretch to arrive at your standard fantasy plot.

On the subject of fantasy generally, I'm reminded of a point someone made about Spenser, how he is the "poet's poet." His Faerie Queene has the knack of inspiring others to make poetry. I think Tolkien is similarly the fantasy-author's fantasy author. Everyone reads Lord of the Rings and says, "I can do that" -- and writes all the derivative fantasy currently on the market!

Maybe I should go re-read Tolkien and get motivated to work on that story I've got kicking around...

Manhattan Declaration

In case you haven't heard of it yet, the Manhattan Declaration was signed by over a hundred Christian leaders and released last Friday. It's long, but very good, and well worth your time reading.

A new low

I generally try not to think about Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Anglican church, but her speech from July 7 came to my attention. I do believe she's hit a new low.

The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God. ...That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention.

Ubuntu doesn’t have any “I”s in it. The I only emerges as we connect – and that is really what the word means: I am because we are, and I can only become a whole person in relationship with others. There is no “I” without “you,” and in our context, you and I are known only as we reflect the image of the one who created us.

As I read this, the great heresy is that individuals can be saved. She's right that we can only properly be known in relationship to God. She's even right that people properly come in relational clumps. But God pleases Himself to save people from every people-group. We've never been promised that communities will be redeemed in quite the renewed-earth-here-and-now sense she seems to envision.

Some of the ecumenists in here will twitch at this word, but we should be in the business of subsidiarity – the church as a whole should not be doing mission work that can be done better at a more local level. The budget and the resolutions we will debate here should be about those things that affect the whole of this Church, and the vision of a renewed creation for all of God’s handiwork. We should leave smaller things and more local issues to more local parts of this Church.

Apparently, missions work is a smaller issue, not something that affects the entire Anglican church or is worthy of its attention.

We Christians often think the only important part of the Jerusalem story is Calvary, and, yes, suffering and killing in that place still seem to be the loudest news. But Calvary was a waypoint in the larger arc of God’s dream – it’s on the way to Jerusalem, it is not in Jerusalem. Jesus’ passion was and is for God’s dream of a reconciled creation. We’re meant to be partners in building that reality, throughout all of creation.

Hmm... the cross is only a detail on the road to an earthly paradise, that we help make. No wonder missions is irrelevant.

Why is she even claiming to be a Christian, if she despises 1) the cross, 2) salvation of particular people, and 3) missions?

Moral philosophy vs. Twitter

I don't even do Twitter, and I found these hilarious. (Or maybe, and therefore I found them hilarious?) Augustine and Rorty... bliss.

Hat tip: The Point.

So that's what the Dream of the Rood is about

This evening I was catching up a bit on blogs, and came across this one from Brandywine Books talking about, of all things, evangelism methods used for the ancient Vikings. How on earth do you show the humility of Christ to warriors with no use for humility?

“Milk first, then meat” is the old formula. For the Vikings, the humility of Christ was meat that they had to be introduced to over time. ...

Warriors understood very well what it meant to go willingly to death. By emphasizing the courage of Christ in His self-sacrifice, the missionaries presented the Gospel story in a way that their listeners could begin to comprehend. The greatest warriors always die in battle. They fall and lie at their enemies’ feet, as if in submission. Their bodies decompose. What is that but humiliation? And yet they are victorious, celebrated in song, for they did not flee and they did not fail their oaths. In the same way (said the preachers) that which looks like defeat and humiliation in the eyes of our flesh can be true victory, if we turn our backs on our sins and turn our hearts to God, the great King who Himself bowed down to death.

The original post quotes a great passage from the Anglo-Saxon Dream of the Rood talking about the Master of mankind hastening to the Cross (the Rood) for death and great victory. It was very moving. I wonder, now, if we've got a copy of the whole poem.

"They're trying to tell me how to feel"

At first I thought she was just being dumb, but upon reflection, I think it's a cultural phenomenon. I was listening to Taylor Swift yesterday, to her new song "Love Story." It's basically a shameless rip-off of Romeo and Juliet, re-set loosely in contemporary times with a happy ending, and it's pretty cute. But there's this one line that ruins it. "Romeo, save me/ They're trying to tell me how to feel!"

There's also a scene in Sayers' Gaudy Night where Harriet and one of the professors are discussing proper feeling and knowing one's true calling. It doesn't matter so much what you feel, they conclude, "as long as you don't try to persuade yourself into proper feeling." Harriet concurs, noting that "trying to persuade herself into proper feeling" regarding her former lover is what got her into trouble. "You will only know what is of overmastering importance when you have been overmastered by it."

Why is it such a massive crime to try and tell people what's right to feel in a certain situation? Especially if it really will make their lives easier? And in some situations, if there really is a right versus a wrong feeling?

So I propounded this puzzle to my true love about six this morning. We blame the Enlightenment, which knew all about reason but didn't have the foggiest idea what to do with emotion. The Romantics rebelled by making emotion their god and their drug. I think that's where Aeolian harps and the wind and the soul all get mixed up together. (I like that mental image--it makes me think of a pretty woods, with harp-strings going sproing! and flying in all directions.) I further think Postmodernism quietly usurped that line of thought--the Aeolian harp emotion bit, I mean. I suppose, if you're defining your own reality, your emotions are about your only guide and therefore it really is a tyranny for someone to dictate those emotions.

I would go about this entirely differently: in the beginning was God, and He set up reality for us. I keep thinking of phrases like, "Rejoice, O Israel!" and "Husbands, love your wives." Yes, love is a verb and all that, but if it's not a commanded emotion too, I don't want it. Emotion is no longer so important, so bloated, so all-encompassing, and so emotions too can be brought into their proper service.

I also think of Lewis' Abolition of Man and his discussion of Men Without Chests. They have Stomachs--meaning appetites of one sort and another--and they have Heads--meaning reason of one sort and another. It's the Chest, the seat of the emotion, that never gets trained. And when things get a trifle sticky, it's not the Head that says "I am about to get shot and therefore I will stay right here"--it's the Chest that says "Yeah I know I'm about to get shot, but there's this flag, you see," and stays.

I don't want to go overboard and say "Yes! People should dictate emotions to one another all the time!" But I do think that if there's a common reality, there's the possibility for right and wrong feelings in relationship to it. So. Taylor Swift wasn't just being dumb, but I do think she was incorrect. Opinions?

Prince Caspian

A bunch of us went to see Prince Caspian last Friday; in fact, our lot was nearly the entire audience for the 12:30 showing. It was great. :-) I sat with Rebecca and her sisters and Amelia.

I thought the movie itself was mixed. I liked it, but it's got nothing like the worldview or depth or charm of the book. But I'll buy it when it comes out, because it's still one of the best fantasy movies I've seen.

It didn't understand Aslan, heroism, manliness, womanliness, kingship, chivalry, romance, solemnity, or what dryads and river-gods are doing in Narnia at all. (Which is awkward, seeing as those are major themes.) The less said about Susan the better, actually.

But Adamson is a skilled movie-maker. It was funny. Reepicheep had a great introduction: he got to single-paw-edly take out an entire Telmarine troop, and his voice was perfect, even though I had serious doubts about casting Izzard. And the CG! Reepicheep ran like a mouse! I've never seen a movie mouse that ran like a live one. My own mousies Bing and Merry would run like that if they had the great gift of being Talking Mice.

Aslan was better than in Wardrobe. The voice of Obi-Wan coming from Aslan still disturbs me, but he didn't have many lines, so that was all to the good really. And you could sort of see why Lucy loved him.

The way they played the Hag and Wer-Wolf was suitably creepy. But I never did get a proper look at the Wer-Wolf. He was always in deep shadow, and I wonder if they skimped on his costume. And then having Edmund be the one to demolish the White Witch was so appropriate, though they felt the need to let Caspian in his angst go much further toward black magic than in the book.

But the very best parts of the movie were the woods and the Telmarines. I would go to that forest. Immediately. Lucy's dream-scene, with the forest in golden light, was heartbreakingly lovely. And when you realized it was only a dream, it was more heartbreaking still: because in the book it was real.

They played the Telmarines as the descendants of Italian-Spanish brigands, and it so worked. The architecture, costumes, props, actors, accents, even the gardens, everything suited the Telmarines, both in beauty and cruelty. Doctor Cornelius' library felt like something out of an Italian Renaissance/New World castle, which was gorgeous--like I would expect from the Santa Fe Palace of the Governors, if it had been stone instead of adobe. The lordly conniving worked very well in that setting; but then, I think Adamson understands Telmarine scheming better than Narnian loyalty.

The jarring moment of getting a Spanish Caspian is when the young whatsit discovered Miraz killed his father. He went straight into Inigo Montoya mode. "You killed my father. Prepare to die!" Rebecca and I just rolled our eyes.

I was pleasantly surprised by--of all things--Queen Prunaprismia, Miraz's wife. She had a character, and a complex one at that, without being angsty. On the one hand, when she woke up to find her husband being menaced with a sword, she pulls out a bow and arrow. This strikes me as a perfectly reasonable and appropriate response, not Fiona-Xena-Warrior-Princess-Delusional at all (::cough, cough:: SUSAN). On the other hand, when she discovers said husband is a murderer and regicide to boot, she doesn't actually like it very much. She was great.

So there you have it. I liked it; it's not the best possible screen adaptation of Prince Caspian. Personally, I'm praying that in another generation or so, we'll get a director who can show the parts of the book that I loved: the kinds of goodness that moderns don't understand at all.

On knowing God

The Christian radio station (the grown-up one, not the teenager one) this morning played a song I'd never heard before. I didn't catch the title or band, but it started out, "I tried to write a song/Three minutes long/But God wouldn't fit into the lines..."

Well, yes, but no.

I think that song (besides being self-aware and insipid) is a good illustration of a church fad at the moment, namely that you can't know God. I think it comes from a couple sources. Eastern Orthodoxy has a good solid handle on mystery, which is closely related to not knowing and being okay with it. But then there's the Emergent emphasis on not knowing, which draws heavily on Postmodern wafflings whether knowing and communication are even possible. (That's true for you. I can't tell you who God is!)

God wants to be known, actually. He set up a universe where it was possible. We can't know Him fully, but we can know Him truly. We can also talk about Him truly. What did God say about Job's "comforters"? "You have not spoken of me rightly as my servant Job has." Here God assumes that it's both possible and important to speak of Him rightly.

I love Postmodernism because it asks the right questions, but then I think you've got to let Christianity answer them. :-D

Hank and the Story-Ruining Screenwriters

I just came across this essay from John Erickson about Hank's experience back in the eighties with being turned into a cartoon. Erickson comes out swinging at people who ruin stories by sneakily removing families from them. He's quite right: if you don't like families, you probably don't like kids all that much either, and shouldn't be writing for them. Go Hank!

And thanks to Wittingshire for passing it along.

More on Aquinas and just laws

This is a good essay by Dr. Esolen. I am confirmed in my suspicion that I oversimplified the purpose of law last Wednesday.

Worldview in our world

I was rather pleased to read this post by Gene Edward Veith because next week in Awana, we're going to be talking about politics in the six worldviews (Christianity, Islam, Marxism, secular humanism, new age, and postmodernism). I'm looking forward to it, but I'm generally in over my head. There's nothing like describing six views of biology in fifteen minutes.

For the last two times, we were discussing law. I didn't quite like the book's presentation of Christian law, so instead we talked about Aquinas' four principles for a just law. They are that it's a result ("ordinance") of reason, for the common good, by a proper authority, and published so everyone knows about the law.

On the one hand, I feel terribly awkward discussing Aquinas with my Protestant third through sixth graders, not to mention out of my depth; but on the other hand, that much is pretty straightforward and even if you disagree with him, he's a respectable source. It won't hurt them to at least be familiar with one thread of Christian thought. And now they've heard about Aquinas and can pronounce his name. :-)

I also found it helpful when we got to postmodernism, because we were able to do a neat little compare-and-contrast chart. Postmodernism pretty much denies all four of those criteria. I summed up that view as law being a result of power, for the subjection of minorities, by whoever can get the power, and communication of the law will be spotty at best. All of this, of course, is simplified and probably gruesomely oversimplified; I know it's a very slippery worldview, and of course no two postmodernists will agree entirely on anything. But I think it's worth teaching.