Thinking About Connotation

I thought it an irrational, embarrassing quality - one that I might, with luck, eventually outgrow. It seemed a betrayal of all the high virtues of the Stoics and Spartans that I had such regard for. It seemed fussy and frivolous.

I am speaking of a preoccupation with connotation - an insistence that things relate to one another in a particular way. And despite my misgivings I'm less and less apologetic about my quest.

"Connotations" are those hidden meanings that attach themselves to everything. They are the emotion behind the information. The quest is to find - and make - things that are cohesive and congruent: things that "flow."

It is a delicate balance - this flow - and at the same time reckless. In a sense it is the crown of the mountain that we must strain every nerve to reach. In another sense it is the cosmic rush and rhythm of the universe, requiring only that we whisper and tiptoe to avoid disturbing it.

Without getting sidetracked into a discussion on the philosophical category of aesthetics, it will suffice to point out that this quality - or its absence - is all around us; in colors, in words, in architectural proportions, in music, and even in meals. It is that unstated rule that pairs the subject and predicate - the trumpet and timpani.

Connotation is especially important in literature, which is a one-dimensional medium that stands or falls based on its inner coherence. Letters combine into words, words combine into sentences, sentences combine into paragraphs, paragraphs combine into chapters, and chapters combine into a book - all in a particular way. And then a book needs an index, a cover, a table of contents, and perhaps a few endorsements - all assembled with care and a respect for the whole. I have been known to make a duplicate purchase of a book in order to obtain the cover I wanted. Fussy and frivolous? Perhaps. Honest? Absolutely.

Beatrice Warde, a typographer quoted by William Zinsser in his excellent book Writing To Learn, lends wings to the idea:

If "the tone of voice" of a typeface does not count, then nothing counts that distinguishes man from other animals. The twinkle that softens a rebuke; the martyr's super-logic and the child's intuition; the fact that a fragment of moss can pull back into the memory a whole forest - these are proofs that there is reality in the imponderable, and that not only notation but connotation is part of the proper study of mankind.

People who love ideas must have a love of words, and that means, given a chance, they will take a vivid interest in the clothes which words wear. The more they like to think, the more they will be shocked by any discrepancy between a lucid idea and murky typesetting.

This passage pierced me immediately with its obstinate and obvious accuracy. We've all read books that deserved better bodies. (Harry Blamires's The Christian Mind and this C. S. Lewis boxed set from Harper come to mind.)

I don't normally use a buzzword until long after the buzzards are done with it, but I am wholly captivated by the term "holistic." The "holistic ideal" is a beautiful thing, and, as far as I can see, entirely Christian.

Image courtesy of stokessigncompany.com

Mountain Cathedrals

I've sung in mountain cathedrals

With steeples rising high
And altars made of evergreen -
Windows made of sky
And windows made of sky

I've dreamed of stars in the heavens
And starfish in the sea
And wondered how the heart of God
Could care so much for me
Could care - so much for me

I've never been a strong man
At least outside the skin
And I'm eager and afraid at the same time
To move from where I've been
To move - from where I've been

I've sung in mountain cathedrals
With steeples rising high
And altars made of evergreen -

Windows made of sky
And windows made of sky

-Bob Bennett

Image courtesy of princeton.edu

Reflections in a Cemetery

There have been a number of sobering events during the last several weeks among our circles, and particularly in our neighborhood. I am posting a piece I wrote several years ago concerning the death of a specific family friend but also containing some thoughts on death in general. Let us be careful to redeem the time; the days are evil.

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Death is a reality we prefer not to entertain at length. We stow it away, like old books in the attic. Infrequently some of us are confronted with the expiration of a chicken, or perhaps a dog. Observing this cycle among the animals is gentle preparation for seeing living, loving people succumb to the dust. There is a painful but necessary toughening of the mind and softening of the heart that must take place.

A cemetery is an eternally sobering place. It is history in its most grave attire. No piercing trumpet blasts, flashing swords or fluttering banners here; just stones, arranged in that melancholy orderliness, laden with a weighty significance. There is nothing different between these stones and others, except perhaps that they are engraved—some are polished. Who knows now where these stones once lay? Nature did not place them here in such a businesslike fashion. Maybe that one was a wind-blasted sentry on a mountaintop. Maybe this one was quietly listening to a brook washing over it, season after season. Maybe that one lay face up in a field, damp with the dew and seared by the sun. Whatever their silent history, they have now been brought here as undecaying monuments, meekly marking the resting places of a less hardy race.

There is something dimly ironic about a sunlit cemetery, when all the flowers lift their heads up bravely and the verdant green fairly sings with health. A cemetery is properly an overcast place, where the wind blows with a slight chill and the flowers flutter mournfully next to the cold stone. It is then that the visitor is properly confronted with the woes of existence.

I was there not too long ago, a suitably dreary day in southwest Missouri. We drove in slowly, a miniature procession, staring blankly out the windows. Some of the deceased had the fortune (or misfortune, as it may be,) of having a larger or taller chunk of granite placed over them than the ones over their fellows, but it is a pitiful game—a feeble attempt to extend the caste distinctions long after everyone knows they have ceased. Yes, here man’s vanity has finally been leveled, for he lies exactly four feet down, just like his neighbor, six feet over. Here men can no longer say they are better than their neighbors. (Not because it is the truth, but because they cannot speak. I am sure that if they could speak, they would be comparing caskets.)

The grave we had come to see was the freshest on the green, so fresh that you could still clearly see where the sod patch was seamed back in. A temporary marker was in place, a small plastic stand that lacked the solemn finality of stone and spoke of recent grief. There was a lone stand of flowers—yellow—his favorite color.

No doubt to many visitors, this man will seem ordinary, another faceless name amidst scores of others. But to those who knew him, or even knew of him, it is different. Death by disease must be the hardest way to die. In accidents, there is a sense of the heroic, and a merciful swiftness. To die by old age is peaceful, expected. But to be diseased in the flower of your age, at the best combination of your physical and mental power, is very agony. But he kept his faith to the end—“though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” In life and in death he was a striking testimony to the goodness of God, and left behind a legacy that is rarely equaled. We bowed our heads in reverence, thanking God, and asking that we might somehow be fashioned into worthy vessels to preserve the wine that had been spilled there at our feet. It is something to stand before the grave of a man who would never boast about his casket.

Somewhere a bell was tolling in its droning, metallic way. Some dogs were playing beyond the fence. A house on the corner was under construction, and suddenly it looked very fragile. Time seems both slowed down and sped up in a cemetery: slowed down inside, and sped up outside. I saw that house fast-forwarded through a hundred years, it’s paint peeling and cracking, it’s floors twisting and creaking. I saw its occupants coming and going, buying, selling, hurrying, all of them eventually silenced by the grave and some of them, no doubt, laid here in this quiet place.

By and by we left, as there is little inducement to relaxation in a cemetery. One feels outnumbered—out of place.

I have been called upon recently to explain cemeteries to an inquisitive four-year-old. It has surprised me how difficult an assignment this is; most of my answers seem unsatisfactory for her, though I have attempted to be as matter-of-fact as possible (without sounding flippant, of course). I guess to a four-year-old, it is hard to imagine anything ever being any different than it is right now. But it is the sober truth, and the sober will consider.

Images courtesy of danny.oz.au and ddickerson.igc.org

On Pouting and Pretending

There's such a freedom about children.

Today I watched a young friend of mine go galloping by on a "horse" she had found; it was, of course, a stick, although it had a clearly recognizable head, with two ears.

It is quite obvious that she adores horses, and no doubt would very much like to have a real one to ride back and forth to the sandbox, instead of a stick. There's not much comparison between the warm, breathing body of an Appaloosa and the gnarled rigidity of a discarded apple branch.

However - and this, to me, is the mystery - she matter-of-factly recognizes the unreality of experiencing "the real thing," and with hardly a second thought accepts what would seem to any reasonable grown-up a sad substitution.

Children possess a much more robust imagination than we do: we're too busy insisting on reality. (It's a stick, honey!) But I'm compelled to ask myself: who's got the better end of the stick, anyway?

I think about how frequently the things I don't have start to weasel under my skin and rumple up my contentment. Somehow I've worked myself up into thinking that it's more respectable to pout than pretend - (not that you necessarily must choose). Merely having no stomach for pretending is no license to pout - not when you can pray instead.

The Lord's encouragement is to be like a child, to walk in peace, to put a little spring in my step.

And maybe even find a toy horse to ride around.

Image courtesy of Rob Gonsalves

Inspiring Ireland

I don't know what it is about the place; I'm quite taken with it. I guess green grass, gray mist, and old churches just go together. Hark! - There's music pouring out across the lake!

Gougane Barra, County Cork, Ireland

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad:
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.

-G. K. Chesterton

Image courtesy of interfacelift.com

System or Spirit?

My recent post regarding systematic theology evoked a few responses, both favorable and critical. Here I would like to clarify my meaning, answer some of Max's excellent observations, and somehow avoid being terribly boring.

I am all for reason and good sense in their proper place. Reason is, no doubt, a divinely-endowed capacity; but of course, the same God who created logic also created magic. Our primary calling is to be led by the Spirit, not to be led by logic necessarily.

Often there is no contradiction between the two. But God is mysterious, and "His ways are not our ways." Sometimes, if things don't make sense, it may very well be an indication that we're on the right track.

Max defines systematic, in part, as "how we study." This is true, and largely self-evident: we all tend to things in a more or less linear fashion. (If you doubt this, consider the route you take the next time you drive to town.) I am not however speaking primarily of the process of pursuing God, but rather the picture we are developing in the darkroom of our minds: what is our concept of God and the supernatural? Is God like a frog we dissect for 7th grade science? I think not.

One might suggest the analogy of a mountain. A mountain is not a product of calculation or imagination, it is just there; solidly and stubbornly there. As you repeatedly return to it and explore its paths and precipices, you realize that it is entirely other, an independent and robust reality that dwarfs your attempts to conquer it as if it were a mound of rubble in your backyard.

It is austere - awfully so. And yet it may become in a sense familiar; you recognize its shape and shadow, and you may well begin to learn the safest and surest ways of traversing its bulk. But you will never "figure it out," for the moment you begin to, it will whip up a biting squall and send you scurrying back down looking for a hot meal and a bed.

There is a vast difference between what we mean when we speak of "getting to know someone" and what we mean when we speak of "figuring something out." You can "figure out" a frog (a dead one, at least). But you "get to know," and that only very slowly, a mountain.

Max is correct in guessing that my main complaint against "systematicism" is its apparent claim to explain God exhaustively. He joins me in repudiating this idea (an exhaustive theology) and then goes on to provide several "systematic" examples. These examples are fine, though they seem to me more "logical" or "sensible" than "systematic."

"Systematic" - to me - implies a watertight inter-relationship - a concrete congruency - between all facets of the faith, while "logical" simply means that God designed the universe in such a way that 2 + 2 = 4. (Unless you're adding cream puffs: for some strange reason I always seem to wind up with only three.)

I am not saying we shouldn't have theological threads of real strength and substance, I am only protesting the viability of weaving them all into a seamless fabric to pull over the eyes of heretics and atheists. Atheists need fewer arguments, not more.

Max draws a cunning distinction between "contradictory" and "paradoxical," which I gladly accept. (In the line I quoted concerning Hobbits, I believe Tolkien was using the term "contradictions" in a "paradoxical" sense.) In the end, it does not seem to me that a comprehensively systematic theology would have much use for either.

It goes without saying that we desire to apprehend and appreciate the character and person of God as much as possible. But we must move beyond the facts and into the wonder. I do not suppose any of us would describe a lover like a robot or race car: "She's 5 feet 9-3/4 inches, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a birthmark under her nose." Sometimes we talk as if all that interested us was God's driver's license.

So I say my love is the fairest among ten thousand, and the systematicist responds, "Did you count?"

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The EduCore Project (2)

Amidst my many and varied duties, I have managed to continue plodding along on my self-inflicted journey through the high mountains and deep valleys of educational psychology. I have completed five chapters of School & Society, which, although it is not itself the subject of the essay, is proving useful as a road map, mainly because it contains study questions.

The subjects covered so far, following a historical progression, include Liberty and Literacy: The Jeffersonian Era; School as a Public Institution: The Common-School Era; Social Diversity and Differentiated Schooling: The Progressive Era; and Diversity and Equity: Schooling, Girls, and Women. It is all the sort of thing which is interesting once you get into it, though on the surface it seems an unbearable bore. (Rather like a jelly donut, come to think of it.)

School & Society is a dense and not altogether lively text, but there are some redeeming insights. Hopefully the verbosity is not viral; if my writing starts to seem like a wiffle ball in a north wind, someone please let me know.

I also checked off John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down, and found it engaging and on target. Gatto, though a teacher himself, gives no quarter to the institution and passionately decries the wreckage his profession has made of the human spirit. He quotes other social thinkers - from Aristotle to Wendell Berry - and presents a clear, if controversial, case for de-centralized, organic schooling.

"Whatever an education means, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges..." -Ch. 4, We Need Less School, Not More

Images courtesy of thejoyofshards.co.uk and skylarksings.com