Press Pause

by Anne White

One of Frederick Buechner’s last published books was titled The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life. Near the beginning, he wrote:

…art is saying Stop. It helps us to stop by putting a frame around something and makes us see it in a way we would never have seen it under the normal circumstances of living, as so many of us do, on sort of automatic pilot, going through the world without really seeing much of anything.

This passage is about the purposes of literature, but I think it also applies to the way the world suddenly seems to stop for Christmas.

Kermit: Yeah, life would just pass in a blur if it weren't for times like this. (A Muppet Family Christmas)

There's a rightness in that. 

For the little child is the true St Christopher: in him is the light and life of Christ; and every birth is a message of salvation, and a reminder that we, too, must humble ourselves and become as little children. This is, perhaps, the real secret of the world's progress––that every babe comes into the world with an evangel, which witnesses of necessity to his parents' hearts. That we, too, are children, the children of God, that He would have us be as children, is the message that the newborn child never fails to bear, however little we heed, or however soon we forget. (Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, pp. 281-282)

 Let's all make time to stop and see.

Turkey Soup

by Anne White

My husband was watching a video by Rick Beato, called "How AI will slowly destroy the music business." Beato did a little experiment with his teenage son, who said that he could pick out AI-created songs, because they just "sounded different." He put together a playlist of five AI songs, and five non-AI, and played them for his son and some friends. Beato's son was able to pick out the artificially-created songs, but the other teenagers could not. Beato's wife also said to him (on another occasion) that a song being played was "obviously" AI-created--she said there was a "weird sound" to it. Beato has quite a bit more to say in the video about the threat of our being flooded with AI content, but one of the most interesting, and ominous things is something else that his son said to him: that "in six months I probably won't be able to tell the difference." He meant that the technology will keep improving to the point where even a pair of good ears can't pick out the true, the original, and the soulful (I am using that word deliberately). The human from the mishmash-of-human that AI draws from, or, possibly in the future, the mishmash-of-AI-and-more-AI. Kind of like roast turkey that becomes a leftover dish and then another leftover dish until there's hardly any real meat left in it.

One of the commenters on Beato's video referred to this quote from George Orwell's 1984: 

The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.

What does Charlotte Mason have to do with any of this? I'm guessing that most of you reading this can already pick out several things. Here's one thought: if we are born Persons, our education needs to celebrate that Personhood which is not so much about our nature as individuals as it is about our status as human beings, and our relationship with the One who made us in His image. The books, the music, and the art that touch our human spirits must come from other whole human spirits, not from something run through the blender until it is unidentifiable.

For the matter for this intelligent teaching of history, eschew, in the first place, nearly all history books written expressly for children; and in the next place, all compendiums, outlines, abstracts whatsoever. For the abstracts, considering what part the study of history is fitted to play in the education of the child, there is not a word to be said in their favour... (V.1, p. 281)

No one knoweth the things of a man but the spirit of a man which is in him; therefore, there is no education but self-education, and as soon as a young child begins his education he does so as a student. Our business is to give him mind-stuff, and both quality and quantity are essential. Naturally, each of us possesses this mind-stuff only in limited measure, but we know where to procure it; for the best thought the world possesses is stored in books; we must open books to children, the best books; our own concern is abundant provision and orderly serving. (V.6, p. 26)

Like Rick Beato, we may worry that, first, our own senses may become dulled to the point where we can't tell what is real; and, second, that the blenderized versions of things might get so perfect that even the keenest eyes and ears can't tell the difference. And what then?

First, we learn to sing. With our voices. 

Second, I think, we learn to laugh. There is a deeply human (or deeply God-reflecting, if you prefer) understanding of humour that cannot be created by digital means. Why else would C. S. Lewis have titled a chapter in The Magician's Nephew "The First Joke and Other Matters?" Uncle Andrew and his magic rings don't understand the kind of laughter that fills newborn Narnia, that causes Aslan to say, "Laugh and fear not, creatures. Now that you are no longer dumb and witless, you need not always be grave. For jokes as well a justice come in with speech."

Third, we learn to cook. With real food. Because that sense of connection with the Real can carry over into a lot of other things we do. There's a difference between good turkey soup and a frozen turkey T.V. dinner.

And, finally, we try (at least we can try) to turn off the full-powered faucet of all that's coming at us, and spend our time listening, maybe, to fewer (but better) tunes; reading fewer (but better) books--you know what I mean. When "almost pleasant sounds" make up most of what we hear, maybe it's just time to turn them off. Maybe less is going to have to be more. 

May your holidays be seasoned with all these good things.

A Tune We Have Not Yet Heard

Music in art: poster found at a flea market

by Anne White

In his address The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis said:

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” (emphasis his)

Yes, the pile of books can betray us.  A book can disappoint. It can have a terrible ending. It can make us angry. It can bore us. It can leave us in tears or give us nightmares.  The whole pile could (literally or metaphorically) fall on our heads and kill us.

The music we love can suddenly become insufficient. A few among us may remember the ratings-busting finale of M*A*S*H* (in 1983, further back now than the actual Korean War was when we were watching it).  Near the beginning of the episode, Dr. Charles Winchester discovers that five captured Chinese soldiers are musicians, and he begins teaching them to play a Mozart clarinet quintet, using their own instruments. Later, the prisoners are taken away as part of a prisoner exchange (playing Mozart as they go). But just as a ceasefire is being announced, they are killed in a last round of enemy attacks.  When Winchester hears this, he goes to his tent and tries to listen to the Mozart record, but ends up smashing it to pieces. It is not only the music that betrayed him, but everything else in which he put his trust and which it represented.

Charlotte Mason also warned us about seeking beauty too much for its own sake:

The Beauty Sense adds so much to the joy of life that it is not easy to see what danger attends it...[We may think that] that the joys of Beauty are so full and satisfying that nothing else is necessary to complete the happiness of life...The person who is given up to the intoxication of Beauty conceives that Beauty and Goodness are one and the same thing, and that Duty is no more than seeking one's own pleasure in the ways one best likes. People, too, become excluded. (Ourselves Book I, p. 54)

We are fully allowed to value poetry, visual art, music, plays, and the natural world (including its tastes and textures). But we can love the scent of the flower, the echo of the tune, the rhythm of the sonnet (as Mason says) without becoming intoxicated by them. When they show themselves (as the Greek philosophers said) as only shadows of the true and wonderful things yet to come, we can understand and not grieve for what they are not, knowing that it is what comes "through them" that really matters.

And as our friend Lynn used to say, that enables us to enjoy every sandwich.

Blood-sucking Monkeys from West Mifflin, Pennsylvania (how not to be one)

 

Illustration of pygmy marmoset and giant toad from Sarah Saw a Blue Macaw, by Jo Ellen Bogart, illustrations by Sylvie Daigneault

by Anne White

Charlotte Mason drew a line between people (famous, infamous, and not-so-famous) who lived with Will, and those who did not. This was not about their moral behaviour, but about whether they lived their lives, first of all, with an object outside of themselves; and, second, with an ability to choose and act, rather than merely to react. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre wrote that the difficult part of ethics is deciding not between the good and the bad, but between the good and the good; and this is where we touch on the idea of our vocation being a “bit of the world’s work,” requiring that we say “no” to opportunities and ideas that would sidetrack our chosen path.  Christians would say it’s the path to which God has called us, but we still need to continually choose to stay on it. (Look at what happened to Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress when he tried to take a shortcut.)

A third hallmark of Charlotte’s “Will” people was that they understood self-denial, at least when their personal comfort or desires stood between them and the larger goal. Charlotte warned us not to be “That Person,” in whatever life situations we might be getting into, as much as we can help it. That rude customer, or passenger. That tiring person whose five-minute request always stretches to half an hour. That driver who endangers others by their recklessness or carelessness; or just someone who makes others have a worse day.

Now, if Charlotte was trying to illustrate those same principles today, she might start at a different point. I can imagine her drawing a line between people who bring oxygen into a room, and those who suck it out. Or, if you want to get a bit messier, those who act like “blood-sucking monkeys from West Mifflin, Pennsylvania.” (Credit to Joe Flaherty as Count Floyd on SCTV.) Even the Bible contains images of things that take life rather than giving it back: ““The leech has two daughters. ‘Give! Give!’ they cry” (Proverbs 30:15 NIV).

What does that have to do with Will? This: when we come into a situation, we view it with strength and determination (we want to get something done), but not with self-regard. We don’t use up the oxygen in the room; we try to replenish it. In a certain sense, each objective choice we make shoots the meter a bit more into the positive zone. You know that Christmas movie where all the people singing together create enough force to get Santa’s sleigh off the ground? Yeah, like that.

Which is a pretty long stretch from blood-sucking monkeys, but there we are. Let's aim for liftoff.

Eating all the cookies

by Anne White

There have been a lot of popular habit-themed books written in recent years, and one of them is Tiny Habits, by B. J. Fogg, Here are my takeaways from it: 

If you want to increase your chances of cementing or continuing a habit, you have to make it easier OR give the person a stronger motivation for doing it.

If you want to break one, you have to make the thing more difficult OR change their motivation. 

Fogg doesn't talk about Frog, Toad, and their difficulty in not eating cookies (in Frog and Toad Together), but that story comes close to what he's saying. By putting the box up on a shelf, they did make it more difficult to get at them, but they still had a strong motivation to eat the cookies, so it didn't work very well. Still, changing just one of those factors makes it more likely that you will change the habit, one way or another. 

Another example is something my husband mentioned: that people aren't giving blood as much these days, and the blood-donation places are wondering why. One reason may be that workplaces used to make blood donation super-easy, having clinics on site or giving people time off to go to them. Since people's internal motivation to donate blood can be very low or mixed (they know it's a good thing to do, but it might hurt), that's something that you have to counteract by making it as easy and painless as possible for them to do so. We're not describing a habit here, but it's the same sort of problem where, to see an action happen more often or more regularly, you have to make it easier to people to buy into it. Or harder for them not to.

B. J. Fogg claims that it is NOT necessary to do something for a month or a certain number of times in order for it to become a habit: the factors that really count in forming a habit are things like motivation and ease of doing the action. He offers the example of a young person who is given a smart phone which is immediately glued to them. There are certain habits we can pick up very quickly, but also some that we can drop just as quickly.

Charlotte Mason makes a great deal of the power of habit, and we usually focus on the word "habit" there, but I think we should emphasize the word "power" just as much. And this "power" is something that we can have over ourselves, if we have the right tools. One tool is the power of association, or what we might now call "triggers." The interesting power of recognizing "triggers" is that they can be turned on their heads. To break a habit, you need to purposefully change what that trigger tells you to do. I think it was in Fogg's book that I saw this example:. A woman was going through a bitter divorce, and every time she had to meet with her husband he would say nasty things. She created a cunning plan in which she gave herself little rewards (like watching an episode of her favourite show) based on how many whammies he threw at her. Sounds very odd, but for her it created a new sense of delight rather than resentment; the trigger of an insult gave her something to look forward to, rather than the urge to retaliate. (Disclaimer: this example is not meant to reflect on anyone's marital experience or to minimalize the pain of interpersonal conflict, it's just something that apparently worked for one person.)

Another part of the power of habits is our ability to chain them together--and many of us have seen this as we train children to go through a morning routine, where  they comb their hair, then brush their teeth, then make their bed. One action triggers the next. If we already have one good habit fixed in place, we can more easily load a bonus habit on top of it.

Which is, perhaps, a whole new side of the idea that "education is the science of relations."

What do you think?

To have is not to hold

A quilt made during WWII by a neighbourhood children's club. Hundreds of people donated ten cents apiece to have their names embroidered on the quilt, which was then given to a veterans' hospital.

by Anne White 

"And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity." (2 Peter 1:5-7)

In that first verse, the Greek word translated "add" carries a similar meaning to what a generous benefactor does to help another. If you want Latin roots instead, think of "contribute," which comes from con, with, and tribuere, bestow. Or the word "endowment," which comes from root words meaning "gift." As the public broadcasting station says before the concert starts, it is "made possible by a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts, and the financial support of viewers like you."

Bible commentators have pointed out that Peter's emphasis is on virtue being used for the good of the body or community, rather than to better oneself. You don't bestow something to yourself, or make a donation to yourself. Charlotte Mason talked about the danger of the "cult of the self" too, including the dangers of building up the mind, muscles, physical health, or even emotional or spiritual health, simply for our own good. Her emphasis was always objective, that is, having an "object" in view outside of ourselves.

There are girls of another pattern, who have no enthusiasms––other than a new "frock" excites; who do not "gush," have no exaggerated notions of duty or affection, but look upon the world as a place wherein they are to have and to get, but not, save under compulsion, to do, to bear, and to give––these three, which make up the ideal of a noble life, have no part in their thoughts. (Formation of Character, p. 237)

Our "enthusiasm," inspiration, and passion should indeed be to add or bestow virtue to our faith; and those other things too (though it almost seems virtue itself would be enough). But its purpose is not for us to increase our have and get (not only material possessions, but physical and emotional well-being), but our do and give, along with our bear, or courage and fortitude. Knowledge and temperance are lower on Peter's list than are the black-belt traits of patience and kindness.

But let's have the courage to start, no matter where we are. Because a diligent dime can go a long way.

But Sunday's Coming

Backyard barbecue, 1967. (The giant coffeepot was a must.)

by Anne White 

Our aim in Education is to give a Full Life...Thou hast set my feet in a large room; should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. (School Education, p. 170)

About two years ago, Malcolm Guite did a video in which he introduced viewers to the philosopher-critic-professor George Steiner, and read a passage from Steiner's 1991 book Real Presences. For the sake of brevity, I'm going to paraphrase it. "People of many beliefs understand something about both Good Friday and  Resurrection Sunday. The horror of the Crucifixion mirrors the deepest pain of their own lives. The hope of the Resurrection, no small thing even for non-believers, is symbolic of their own 'liberation from inhumanity and servitude,' no matter where they might be looking for that liberation. Friday is so terribly dark that 'even the greatest art and poetry are almost helpless.' And Sunday is so blissfully happy that such things will 'no longer have logic or necessity.' However, it is Saturday, stretching between Friday's 'suffering, aloneness, unutterable waste,' and Sunday's 'dream of liberation, of rebirth,' with which we need to concern ourselves here." In Steiner's own words:

The apprehensions and figurations in the play of metaphysical imagining, in the poem and the music, which tell of pain and of hope, of the flesh which is said to taste of Ash and of the spirit which is said to have the savor of fire, are always Sabbatarian. They have risen out of an immensity of waiting which is that of man. Without them, how could we be patient?

Did you get that? Even for Christians, who celebrate the joy of Sunday and feel the grief of Friday, this human life is made up largely of 

one

LOOOONNNNNNNNNG

Saturday.

And that's okay.

It's exactly because of Saturday that human beings need story, poetry, art, and music. These things arise out of our "immensity of waiting." They represent something we're longing for, hoping for, searching for. At their best, they combine the memory of Friday's suffering with the hope of Sunday's happy ending. 

And when Lucy was tired of eating the Faun began to talk. He had wonderful tales to tell of life in the forest...about feasting and treasure-seeking with the wild Red Dwarfs in deep mines and caverns far beneath the forest floor; and then about summer when the woods were green...Then to cheer himself up he took out from its case on the dresser a strange little flute that looked as if it were made of straw and began to play. And the tune he played made Lucy want to cry and laugh and dance and go to sleep all at the same time." (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis)

But don't scoff  at our need for this kind of play and poetry, for the wildness of imagining, for our Beethoven's Sixth Symphony ability to enjoy a picnic on the banks of the river but follow it up with a thunderstorm. The life of "born persons" anticipates the full-on light of Sunday (though seen only in glimpses), and includes the half-remembered darkness of Friday (though we must not succumb to it).

"It was about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill, I know that much. But I can't remember and what shall I do?" And she never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician's Book. (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C. S. Lewis) 

As Steiner said, without this sense of longing, how could we learn patience? (And without understanding that same sense in others, how could we learn empathy?) It is that same longing that makes us attempt to recreate the forgotten story, or to reproduce that beauty we have seen in glimpses.

No, we are not decadent on the whole, and our uneasiness is perhaps caused by growing pains. We may be poor things, but we are ready to break forth into singing should the chance open to us of a full life of passionate devotion. (Philosophy of Education, p. 336) 

(Me with my great-grandmother.)