My first short story, written in the spring of 1984 for my senior high school English class.
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Looking back, I can't remember a day when the three of us had not known each other and weren't just as close as any three neighborhood kids can be. In those days we did everything together. We used to crawl under the elementary school from one side to the other. Then, in the next breath, we would climb up on the roof and hide behind the air conditioners. In class we used to hide notes in reading books and then put the books back on the shelf for the next person to find. Once in awhile we would get caught but not often.
I was brought up in a sincere, Christian home; so when I grew older and became a Christian too, I had no desire to go to some of the places and do many of the things the others wanted to do. Other than that fact, I was just like any other boy, except that I loved books and would read them whenever I could. Once in a while a thought would strike me, and I would run to my room and write it down.
The second one of our trio was Rudcus. Rudcus had a strange metabolism that made him stronger than anyone I have ever known. He could have beaten up almost anyone in our neighborhood, but he wouldn't have because it was against his nature. Besides that, he was just as clumsy as he was strong. I didn't see Rudcus too often after his father died and he had to go to work. He had it real hard, and the fact that he had trouble keeping a job didn't help.
My best friend of all, though, was Vince. Vince wasn't like Rudcus or me. Vince was in a class all by himself. It was a very rare occurrence when someone could beat Vince at anything. Vince was a genius, but he was more than a genius. He was an athlete, a musician, a scholar, a working man; you name it, he could do it, and he could do it well. I always looked up to Vince.
As the years passed by, we all began to follow those lines that suited us best. Rudcus had to drop out of high school because he was the sustaining force in his family. I began to write in my high school years, and it was then that I decided that I wanted to write for a living. Vince, meanwhile, continued to excel. He held all the status positions a person could think of holding. He was a star football player, the valedictorian, captain of the debate team; in everything he excelled. In all his splendor I was his most devoted fan. I must confess that I was blinded by his brilliance.
During my high school years I had been dating a girl whom I met through my church. Her name was April, and she was the sweetest and most beautiful girl in all the world to me. After we graduated from high school, I'd finally decided that I was going to ask her to marry me. It would be a rough life, being married to a writer; but I was a hard worker, so we would survive. I have the night all planned, and I'd asked her father for permission to have her hand in marriage. Everything was set. The restaurant was the best in town, and I had bought her a beautiful rose. I was in a state of euphoria, and all I seemed to see was the bright reflection of the chandelier in her eyes.
When the time was right, I asked her. The answer was one that I had never anticipated. “I’m so sorry Dan. I thought you knew. Vincent and I have been seeing each other for quite a while,” she said. I had been totally blinded by the light of her smile and by what I thought was another one of Vince's many friendships. I begged and pleaded with her. I told her that her parents wouldn't be pleased. All was to no avail. She also was blinded by the incessant beaming of Vince. I don't know what else transpired that night. All I remember is thinking that my rose had withered and that I would never marry anyone if I could not marry her.
Vince and April were married the next spring; and, strangely enough, I was the best man. After all that had happened, Vince was still a good friend. He was going to college at this time and was majoring in business and finance. As usual he was a success. I often dreamed of how happy Vince and April must have been together. They really did make a glowing couple.
I too was happy. I continued to write and occasionally would compose something worth publishing. In the meantime I taught at the neighborhood middle school. It was within walking distance of my apartment. Each day I would walk home through the nearby park and enjoy the beautiful colors of the seasons and especially the fall. I then had only to walk a few blocks down to the corner where my apartment stood.
Around this time Rudcus ended up staying in the local firehouse where he was a volunteer. The official firehouse was on the other side of the city, so a volunteer system had been set up on this side of town. From what I could tell, he, too, was happy. Occasionally he would go to church with me on a Sunday morning. He would tell me how is work was going, whatever it was at that time. He had found a wife who lived with him in the fire station. As I said, he had it hard.
Several years later Vince and April had a daughter. She was a bright young girl and learned very quickly. I looked forward to the day that I would have a chance to teach her. Vince, meanwhile, had begun a new business deal, one which would give him more money than anyone could ever ask to have. It would be a modern resort complex that would be built by the lake of our section of town. In winter the lake would freeze over and the nearby hills would make for great skiing. Townhouses were to be built nearby out of all natural materials. Since the lake was separated from the town by a series of hills, the resort would be totally isolated from the town and, therefore, vacationers would feel totally isolated from the world if they were brought in from the right direction. Ski lift, security, sprinkler, and emergency telephone systems would all be controlled by the most modern computer system, hidden of course from families at the resort.
The concept took off as soon as it had been presented. The local economy was badly depressed at that time, so the city's merchants thought that it was a great idea. A few enlightened townsmen would be given an opportunity to buy a certain percentage of the deal. Vince even asked me if I wanted to become a part of this brilliant plan. The project was approved almost immediately, and planning began for building.
The project first ran into trouble on the third year after its initiation. The computers cost much more than Vince and the engineers had planned. It appeared as if this extra expenditure and an unexpected rise in inflation had drained the project's capital. Most of the townhouses had been finished already, all except for the massive cooling systems of the hidden computer room. The importance of these systems was tremendous. The computer room was to be placed in the side of a hill, so it would be hard to cool. If the computer blew, then the whole system would be out of commission. It was plain to all that this project would fail if more money couldn't be obtained in the near future; as for now there was no money.
Vince was under extreme pressure. Millions of dollars had been staked on his judgment. If he couldn't solve this problem, he would lose almost everything. A meeting was called for all those who had some part in the deal. I too was there. Several angry businessman cursed at Vince and told him that he was a failure. I'll never be able to forget all the hatred and anger that flew across that room. I was also at a loss. Vince had never failed before. I always thought Vince could do anything. Vince had always been a superman to everyone. Nobody ever thought he was capable of a failure this great.
I don't believe that even Vince thought he had really failed, for the next day he had a plan. It would make it hard for the resort to operate at first, but eventually the resort would pay for itself, and the loss would be eliminated. The plan was to postpone indefinitely the shipment of security devices. The amount of money left, then, would be used to account for the cooling systems. A few shortcuts would be made on the efficiency of the system, and there would only be one access to the computer room, thus, saving the money of dynamiting out further space for a safety access. The dynamiting process was scheduled to begin the next week, just before the computers arrived, so the plan could work.
Everybody thought it was a brilliant vision. Vince had come through for everyone, and everyone was again lost in Vince's radiance. For a moment I also was in a wild sense of euphoria, but then I realized the danger of what he was doing. The losses of efficiency and a second access were serious safety hazards. I protested, but my feeble protests for nothing against his brilliant plan. “The winter,” the businessmen argued, “will keep it cool.” It was truly hard for them to kick against the pricks, for he had saved the city. He was the savior. I promptly left the meeting.
The project was completed in time for the next winter, and it was a success. No one even missed the security system, as hundreds of tourists came in over the course of the winter. Vince was a success. He made over a million dollars that winter alone, and I wondered how happy he must have been. Everything did operate well, as Vince had said, until the second winter.
It was on a bright January noon that life hit Vince. It was a Friday; and school had been dismissed early, so I was walking home. Although it was snowing off and on, the sun seemed brighter than normal, and I had to wear my hat to shield my eyes from its blaze. The park was lifeless, as the trees had lost their leaves. As I stepped on the sidewalk, I heard the usual siren that signifies something is on fire. It was customary for me to look to the hills when that happened, and this time I followed the custom and wondered. Rudcus sold hot foods at the factories this time of year in a peddling truck. Suddenly this peddling truck came wheeling around the corner so quickly that two of its wheels went off the ground. It was Rudcus, and he was racing toward the firehouse. When the fire truck came out of the firehouse, I also jumped on it. Rudcus told me what happened. The computers at the resort at overheated due to an overload on the system. A transformer at the entrance had blown so rigorously that the passageway to the tunnel had caught on fire (being made out of all natural materials). Vince and his five-year-old daughter had been inside.
When we arrived, there was hardly any method of getting inside the computer room. Rudcus, wearing the only flame suit, practically ran through the flames in order to save them. Vince had efficiently blocked the entrance, so the fire had not yet reached the innermost part. I don't know exactly how Rudcus made it into the room but he did. The next thing I saw was Rudcus running out of the flames. He had the child in a blanket, and he was on fire. When the fire on him was extinguished, he stood there, badly burned, yet with his muscles just as strong as ever. In his arms was the small, frail girl, unconscious, yet unscathed by the fire.
The fire died down enough for second attempt, Vince was removed from the computer room. He was alive, but in a coma from severe burns and smoke inhalation. He was immediately taken to the hospital. I spent many hours there, trying to comfort April. She was very distressed to think that Vince could not conquer death. I took the time to buy a rose like the one I had bought so long ago, and she placed it at his bedside as a remnant of hope and light. For a while we thought he was going to recover. He seemed to be getting better. It was Sunday night when we heard the doctor being called to Vince’s room. Vince’s body could no longer function and he had died. No special lights, no extra privileges, nothing out of the ordinary accompanied his death. One moment Vince was alive and on the road to recovery. The next moment he was dead. There were no flowers for Algernon. His rose had withered and his lights had all gone out.
It was then that I realized that there are no supermen. There are some men who can do great things, but they are all human. They all make mistakes, and they all die. I was searching for an idealism in Vince that no man could attain. Sooner or later, we all must hit the immovable wall with an irresistible force. With men and life there is no respect of persons. Rudcus hit it early in life, and I had hit it sometime in the middle. Vince had really hit it. He was human. We are all human and are all the same. Real success in life is not measured by how strong one is, how intelligent one is, or how wealthy one is. Success is not even measured by how much position and a claim a person has, but a successful man is he who is most happy. I thought Vince was happy, but he really wasn’t. He had accomplished so much and moved so fast that he neglected to take the time to be happy.
The Monday after Vincent died I went back to school to resume my life. It had been the most shocking weekend of my existence, filled with a horrible realization of what life really was. As long as I had seen exception in Vince, it hadn't meant as much to me, but now I saw that there was no special glitter, no exceptions to life, only the happiness that one could have, that inward satisfaction that comes when one loves life and accepts it as it is. I had that happiness. My life would resume, and it would be a happy life.
Friday, December 27, 2019
The Ubiquitous Dialectic (high school poem)
A poem I wrote for high school, probably spring 1984
___________________
Oh why does man in isolation stay,
And many people find themselves alone?
When thousands in the street are crying loud,
And loneliness is there, when millions in
The world are dying so, but loneliness
Is there? What foolishness is this that men
Ignore their fellow man, that when they meet
They act as if the other is not there.
Decrepit men debase themselves, and in
Their loneliness continue on their way!
Oh why do I in isolation stay,
And I myself am found alone again,
When thousands in the streets are crying loud,
And loneliness is here, when millions in
The world are dying so, but loneliness
Is here? What right have I in loneliness
To live and separate myself from that
Which is within my grasp, the will to reach
Its height the only need. Decrepit I
Debase myself, continue on this road!
Yet lonely is this soul, who though it try
To enter in the fellowship of life,
Expires itself because it tries to hard.
What is the ill, that causes a retreat
From life? Is it a lack of courage, shy,
Or is it life's bombardments made us so?
Some yet are lonely with no knowledge of
This love to find its gentle touch, and some
Are lonely for the pride that they sustain.
E'en though a man bestride the world he may
Not be Colossus strong, for he who stands
Between two worlds no grasp in either has.
Two masters doth he try to keep, yet he
Cannot do so. When man mistaken sets
Himself above all else, he puts himself
Beyond the need of love from anyone.
True satisfaction in this life is not
On basis in exception from the rule,
But loneliness departs when man the rule
In general keeps, and love's true need upholds.
Now when a soul in loneliness is found,
The world he sees through different eyes, which know
The things of life before unseen. The trees
That he had never known, the sky so blue
Which never had stood out in boldness there.
Inside he looks, within, to find the cause;
So he can from this loneliness be purged,
So that which separates from unity
Of life be gone, and with withdrawal comes
The thrust which conscientious search will bring!
And all the love that man has seen from naught
Cannot be come, and its true Source is like
A magnet strong whose forces form closed loops.
True magnetism draws us toward the Source.
When it is sent to men, some don't respond;
But when a man responds, the loop has closed.
A magnet artificial doth he be!
You then become a source of love to man,
And send out lines which others send you back.
But when the lines aren't sent or aren't by men
Received, a man becomes a lonely soul.
When life's immortal time continues on,
Withdrawal from the world will once more come,
But if sincere a thrust will also forth,
And with each thrusting forth, a moment of
Reality from introspection reigns,
And understanding calms the raging seas
Of loneliness, a dialectic surge.
___________________
Oh why does man in isolation stay,
And many people find themselves alone?
When thousands in the street are crying loud,
And loneliness is there, when millions in
The world are dying so, but loneliness
Is there? What foolishness is this that men
Ignore their fellow man, that when they meet
They act as if the other is not there.
Decrepit men debase themselves, and in
Their loneliness continue on their way!
Oh why do I in isolation stay,
And I myself am found alone again,
When thousands in the streets are crying loud,
And loneliness is here, when millions in
The world are dying so, but loneliness
Is here? What right have I in loneliness
To live and separate myself from that
Which is within my grasp, the will to reach
Its height the only need. Decrepit I
Debase myself, continue on this road!
Yet lonely is this soul, who though it try
To enter in the fellowship of life,
Expires itself because it tries to hard.
What is the ill, that causes a retreat
From life? Is it a lack of courage, shy,
Or is it life's bombardments made us so?
Some yet are lonely with no knowledge of
This love to find its gentle touch, and some
Are lonely for the pride that they sustain.
E'en though a man bestride the world he may
Not be Colossus strong, for he who stands
Between two worlds no grasp in either has.
Two masters doth he try to keep, yet he
Cannot do so. When man mistaken sets
Himself above all else, he puts himself
Beyond the need of love from anyone.
True satisfaction in this life is not
On basis in exception from the rule,
But loneliness departs when man the rule
In general keeps, and love's true need upholds.
Now when a soul in loneliness is found,
The world he sees through different eyes, which know
The things of life before unseen. The trees
That he had never known, the sky so blue
Which never had stood out in boldness there.
Inside he looks, within, to find the cause;
So he can from this loneliness be purged,
So that which separates from unity
Of life be gone, and with withdrawal comes
The thrust which conscientious search will bring!
And all the love that man has seen from naught
Cannot be come, and its true Source is like
A magnet strong whose forces form closed loops.
True magnetism draws us toward the Source.
When it is sent to men, some don't respond;
But when a man responds, the loop has closed.
A magnet artificial doth he be!
You then become a source of love to man,
And send out lines which others send you back.
But when the lines aren't sent or aren't by men
Received, a man becomes a lonely soul.
When life's immortal time continues on,
Withdrawal from the world will once more come,
But if sincere a thrust will also forth,
And with each thrusting forth, a moment of
Reality from introspection reigns,
And understanding calms the raging seas
Of loneliness, a dialectic surge.
Knowledge 4
previous post
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19. I continue to marvel at what a great high school education I had. I've already indicated how wonderful my math and science teachers were. My English/literature professors were of the same quality. My college literature class was a breeze because I had already read half of the books in high school.
I will look up the name of my tenth grade English teacher, but I was remembering yesterday that we had a collection of short stories in a book called Point of View. In keeping with my personality, I was fascinated at the classification of fiction on the basis of point of view. First person subjective narration, third person omniscient objective narration.
A couple stories really struck me. One was called something like, "Going to Run All Night." The character, a former runner who finds himself as part of a company in a really bad spot, is asked to run forty miles in the middle of the night to inform another battalion that his company is surrounded and their communications are out. The short story is about him running, running, running to get help before dawn.
I loved the idea of being called upon to save everyone. This was a scenario I have always loved and, indeed, that I have to watch. When you grow up feeling like an unnoticed nobody, the idea of being called upon to step in and sacrifice yourself to be a hero has a certain appeal. The danger is that you come to like emergencies. You are less motivated to fix things for the long term or to build infrastructure because you find meaning in needing to be the hero.
The story also tapped into my increased love of running and my identification of myself as a runner. I would go on to run a couple marathons. I remember the first time I ran ten miles. It was about a mile from my house to the end of the elementary school to 26th street back down to sixth ave to my house. One summer I think in late high school I ran the loop 10 times. I saw it as quite a feat at the time.
20. There was another short story about a man who kidnapped people and hunted them for sport on an island. [1] If I find the book as I unpack I'll get the title. This would inspire one of my early novel ideas. In the novel, people are put into an internet world and hunted. My novel title was Domain of Consciousness. The kidnapped people realize that they can do all sorts of superpowered things if they only believe enough. Meanwhile, those who cannot imagine enough beyond what seems to be die in that world.
The hero wins by tapping into the subconscious of the hunter and arousing the God of his childhood, who destroys him. I never decided whether the novel would end with them stuck in that world, their bodies hooked up to machines, or whether someone would eventually find them in the real world and let them out. By the way, I had this idea a few years before The Matrix.
21. In the eleventh grade I had Mr. Hatley for what amounted to an American Literature course. He was spectacular, although I was annoyed with him on a test when he took off a point every time I misspelled the word versus. My Christian upbringing led me to spell it verses. Suffice it to say, I have never misspelled that word again... ever. It does highlight that I think phonetically. I often type homophones and have to correct myself.
That class had what had become my people, my closest circle of high school friends. Facebook came out right at the juncture when memory might have threatened to lose high school. I enjoy being Facebook friends with many of those from those years. We are all now in our early fifties. I think it was my junior year that Mary Jo Hamil found out my parents were out of town and came over with a boom box playing Adam Ant's, Goodie Two-Shoes.
In Mr. Hatley's class we read Emerson, Thoreau, Whitfield, Melville, Cooper. He was a gentle, soft-spoken man. I remember him as a quietly devout Presbyterian. At least he had the demeanor of a Presbyterian. :-) As I remember other things I read in high school I'll add them here.
21. Senior year was the epilog. As valedictorian I received a number of awards. I mentioned the RPI award for science. I won the Voice of Democracy contest with an essay. I was surprised to be nominated for the Mr. FLHS contest, although I didn't come close to winning. I was an officer in the Key Club and we went to a Key Club convention in south Florida that year. I would get a scholarship from them that helped in college and even beyond.
I was president of the National Honor Society and was officer in several clubs. There was "Night of Joy" at Disney World, where high school students spend the whole night there having fun. Casey Walker and I, who had perhaps become my best friend, went on an academic trip to Washington DC. I remember meeting him the summer after graduation and him saying, "Just think of how much smarter than us the people will be that we are about to meet at college." I wasn't real keen on the comment. :-) Of course life has nicely pointed out my place in the scheme of things to me.
I have a certain selective stupidity. In some ways I seem very smart. In other ways very stupid. In my youth, my frequent stupidity did not allow for much pride. I didn't really realize how much easier many things are for me than others. But of course they see the reverse on other things.
One obvious thing that didn't really dawn on my in my early days is the fact that being smart isn't just about being able to understand something eventually. Real geniuses understand things with which I struggle immediately. I might be able to understand about anything if I work hard enough at it. Geniuses understand so many things immediately without any effort or explanation.
22. Cathy Edwards and I had some strange thing going with the names of Russian leaders. She called me Yuri; I called her Andropov. Then she called me Konstantin and I called her Chernenko. We lost touch with each other soon after Mikhail... Gorbachev.
Perhaps it was Modern European History that inspired that exchange. We had a teacher just out of college. She was a nice lady but at times we felt like we knew more than she did. As I would later be my first year teaching, she was quite manipulable. I think I got a 4 on that AP exam, surprisingly. Central probably shouldn't have, but between my 4 on the American History AP exam and my grade on this one, they gave me something like 12 credit hours of history. I didn't have to take any history in college.
23. My twelfth grade English teacher was Mrs. VanRoo. It was hard to follow Mr. Hatley, but she did a good job. If his course was oriented toward early American literature, hers was more like a course in British literature. I seem to remember reading Shakespeare and Jane Austen. I was not culturally aware enough at the time to realize fully how little differences between the United States and England made some of these works hard for me to understand. And what exactly is a marsh?
I wrote my first fiction in her class, a short story titled, "The Light of the Withered Rose." I'll slip it into this series if I find the time. I was quite proud of it. It made me want to write a novel some day. I've started well over fifty. The first one I finished wasn't until about two years ago. I also wrote some poetry I was proud of that year. My grandfather Shepherd wrote poetry.
24. One of the highlights of my senior year was Mr. Stock's Humanities class. He said at the beginning of the year that he regularly had students come back and tell him how much his class helped them when they traveled Europe. I had the same experience. At the time, I never imagined that I would live and travel in Europe the way I did.
His course was a mixture of history, world literature, art, and philosophy. We read The Republic and Machiavelli's The Prince. we saw pictures of the Mona Lisa and flying buttresses. I would later live three years in Durham under the shadow of a cathedral that started construction with Romanesque style but ended in the Gothic period. What a spectacular high school education I had! I have ridden those fumes to today.
25. For science, I had Chem 3AP and Physics my senior year. The physics teacher was Ms. McGuire, a former nun as I recall. I enjoyed her very much. I would get a 4 on the physics AP exam and 4 hours of college credit from it. The fact that I had gone through most of the Navy Basic Electricity and Electronics course with Mr. Brandt certainly helped. And we had Mr. Pickett for Calculus at the same time as well. So even though Ms. McGuire did not assume calculus, we were looking at some of the same material from two different perspectives.
I don't know exactly how my interest in quantum physics started. I ended high school thinking I was going to become a chest surgeon of some sort. But it wasn't real. I wasn't practical enough to succeed at something like that. It was an idea. I did get a full tuition scholarship to the University of Miami into their 5 year honors med school program. The Isaac Bashevis Singer Scholarship.
Before the doctor idea, though, I had thought of becoming a nuclear physicist, which must have been either late middle or early high school. To this day I love physics and have on my bucket list finally understanding quantum physics. I am not far from understanding Schrödinger's equation. One of my unfinished novels is about a quantum physicist who is in a bad car accident and forgets almost all of his past knowledge. One of his goals in the novel is to understand this equation again. He fails.
I think it was my friend Paul Herman who introduced me to a book called Gödel, Escher, Bach my senior year. I still haven't finished it. I bought a number of books in those years, some of which I finished much later. Thirty Years That Shook Physics, Einstein's Relativity. Sometimes I absorbed the key ideas of these sorts of works without fully finishing them.
Gödel's incompleteness theorem would later be of interest to me from the standpoint of hermeneutics. It basically states that no set can completely describe itself. There has to be at least one key outside a set to identify a structure to the set. I'm probably massacring the concept. Gödel pretty much undermined the life work of Bertrand Russell in trying to reduce all mathematics to a set of self-contained axioms, as I understand it.
But it relates, I believe, to the notion of sola scriptura. As a set of books from varying time periods and authors, the Bible cannot cohere as a set without bringing to bear on it some organizing principle or principles from the outside. In other words, something outside the Bible has to make it a canon. All of this of course fits with history, as the early church collected the Bible as a canon and, as it were, provided organizing principles for its coherency by way of orthodoxy.
In short, sola scriptura, taken in its most restrictive sense, is incoherent. The Wesleyan quadrilateral and the notion of prima scriptura is thus a far superior hermeneutical model.
26. I did not want people outside my group to know I was a nerd. In a discussion with David Riggs at IWU in recent years, I mentioned that I realized back in middle school that most people just weren't interested in the same things I was. I would later resonate with Juvenal's sense that what most people want is, "bread and circuses." We read Tale of Two Cities in Mr. Hatley's class. I understood what happens when the majority turns on the so called intelligensia.
This pessimistic sense of real human interest in truth has only been confirmed through life. Haidt's The Righteous Mind fit very well with my sense that, although we humans play intellect games, we are by and large not really interested in truth. Ideas and intellect are games we play to make ourselves feel justified to be who we are by invoking something greater than ourselves. Religion largely has functioned this way in human culture on the highest scale. We use God to justify what our tribe thinks and wants to do.
I hope it's obvious that I don't think true religion or intellect is like that. It is just the way of most humanity. Indeed, there are many people far smarter than I am in many ways who, nevertheless, only use their intellect to reinforce what they already want to think. My advantage is that I am a true truth seeker, not someone using the "truth" as a tool of their tribe.
If you are not willing to change your position based upon the evidence--or at least aren't willing to admit to yourself that you are taking a leap of faith in the face of current evidence, then you really aren't interested in the truth. You're just a tribalist, maybe a very smart one.
So, as a former VPAA at IWU once said, "Students don't come to IWU to learn the liberal arts. They come hoping for a career that will give them a job. We have to trick them into the benefit of the liberal arts." For most colleges and most students, I fear this is the case. You won't attract most students by advertising yourselves as a liberal arts school.
A good education has a bit of subversion in it. The person enlightened from the journey is glad they took it. But they might not have chosen the path of knowledge if they had known what it would mean from the front end. All education involves some unlearning of our unreflective starting point.
I was quite happy one time when a fellow track athlete asked me if I had passed all my classes. He had no idea I was a nerd.
[1] Diana (Fernandez) Baker remembered that the short story was "The Most Dangerous Game." Another story that resonated strongly personally for me was "Flowers for Algernon." For some reason I resonated with this poor soul who, for a time, went from very low intelligence to very high intelligence and then back again to little.
_____________
19. I continue to marvel at what a great high school education I had. I've already indicated how wonderful my math and science teachers were. My English/literature professors were of the same quality. My college literature class was a breeze because I had already read half of the books in high school.
I will look up the name of my tenth grade English teacher, but I was remembering yesterday that we had a collection of short stories in a book called Point of View. In keeping with my personality, I was fascinated at the classification of fiction on the basis of point of view. First person subjective narration, third person omniscient objective narration.
A couple stories really struck me. One was called something like, "Going to Run All Night." The character, a former runner who finds himself as part of a company in a really bad spot, is asked to run forty miles in the middle of the night to inform another battalion that his company is surrounded and their communications are out. The short story is about him running, running, running to get help before dawn.
I loved the idea of being called upon to save everyone. This was a scenario I have always loved and, indeed, that I have to watch. When you grow up feeling like an unnoticed nobody, the idea of being called upon to step in and sacrifice yourself to be a hero has a certain appeal. The danger is that you come to like emergencies. You are less motivated to fix things for the long term or to build infrastructure because you find meaning in needing to be the hero.
The story also tapped into my increased love of running and my identification of myself as a runner. I would go on to run a couple marathons. I remember the first time I ran ten miles. It was about a mile from my house to the end of the elementary school to 26th street back down to sixth ave to my house. One summer I think in late high school I ran the loop 10 times. I saw it as quite a feat at the time.
20. There was another short story about a man who kidnapped people and hunted them for sport on an island. [1] If I find the book as I unpack I'll get the title. This would inspire one of my early novel ideas. In the novel, people are put into an internet world and hunted. My novel title was Domain of Consciousness. The kidnapped people realize that they can do all sorts of superpowered things if they only believe enough. Meanwhile, those who cannot imagine enough beyond what seems to be die in that world.
The hero wins by tapping into the subconscious of the hunter and arousing the God of his childhood, who destroys him. I never decided whether the novel would end with them stuck in that world, their bodies hooked up to machines, or whether someone would eventually find them in the real world and let them out. By the way, I had this idea a few years before The Matrix.
21. In the eleventh grade I had Mr. Hatley for what amounted to an American Literature course. He was spectacular, although I was annoyed with him on a test when he took off a point every time I misspelled the word versus. My Christian upbringing led me to spell it verses. Suffice it to say, I have never misspelled that word again... ever. It does highlight that I think phonetically. I often type homophones and have to correct myself.
That class had what had become my people, my closest circle of high school friends. Facebook came out right at the juncture when memory might have threatened to lose high school. I enjoy being Facebook friends with many of those from those years. We are all now in our early fifties. I think it was my junior year that Mary Jo Hamil found out my parents were out of town and came over with a boom box playing Adam Ant's, Goodie Two-Shoes.
In Mr. Hatley's class we read Emerson, Thoreau, Whitfield, Melville, Cooper. He was a gentle, soft-spoken man. I remember him as a quietly devout Presbyterian. At least he had the demeanor of a Presbyterian. :-) As I remember other things I read in high school I'll add them here.
21. Senior year was the epilog. As valedictorian I received a number of awards. I mentioned the RPI award for science. I won the Voice of Democracy contest with an essay. I was surprised to be nominated for the Mr. FLHS contest, although I didn't come close to winning. I was an officer in the Key Club and we went to a Key Club convention in south Florida that year. I would get a scholarship from them that helped in college and even beyond.
I was president of the National Honor Society and was officer in several clubs. There was "Night of Joy" at Disney World, where high school students spend the whole night there having fun. Casey Walker and I, who had perhaps become my best friend, went on an academic trip to Washington DC. I remember meeting him the summer after graduation and him saying, "Just think of how much smarter than us the people will be that we are about to meet at college." I wasn't real keen on the comment. :-) Of course life has nicely pointed out my place in the scheme of things to me.
I have a certain selective stupidity. In some ways I seem very smart. In other ways very stupid. In my youth, my frequent stupidity did not allow for much pride. I didn't really realize how much easier many things are for me than others. But of course they see the reverse on other things.
One obvious thing that didn't really dawn on my in my early days is the fact that being smart isn't just about being able to understand something eventually. Real geniuses understand things with which I struggle immediately. I might be able to understand about anything if I work hard enough at it. Geniuses understand so many things immediately without any effort or explanation.
22. Cathy Edwards and I had some strange thing going with the names of Russian leaders. She called me Yuri; I called her Andropov. Then she called me Konstantin and I called her Chernenko. We lost touch with each other soon after Mikhail... Gorbachev.
Perhaps it was Modern European History that inspired that exchange. We had a teacher just out of college. She was a nice lady but at times we felt like we knew more than she did. As I would later be my first year teaching, she was quite manipulable. I think I got a 4 on that AP exam, surprisingly. Central probably shouldn't have, but between my 4 on the American History AP exam and my grade on this one, they gave me something like 12 credit hours of history. I didn't have to take any history in college.
23. My twelfth grade English teacher was Mrs. VanRoo. It was hard to follow Mr. Hatley, but she did a good job. If his course was oriented toward early American literature, hers was more like a course in British literature. I seem to remember reading Shakespeare and Jane Austen. I was not culturally aware enough at the time to realize fully how little differences between the United States and England made some of these works hard for me to understand. And what exactly is a marsh?
I wrote my first fiction in her class, a short story titled, "The Light of the Withered Rose." I'll slip it into this series if I find the time. I was quite proud of it. It made me want to write a novel some day. I've started well over fifty. The first one I finished wasn't until about two years ago. I also wrote some poetry I was proud of that year. My grandfather Shepherd wrote poetry.
24. One of the highlights of my senior year was Mr. Stock's Humanities class. He said at the beginning of the year that he regularly had students come back and tell him how much his class helped them when they traveled Europe. I had the same experience. At the time, I never imagined that I would live and travel in Europe the way I did.
His course was a mixture of history, world literature, art, and philosophy. We read The Republic and Machiavelli's The Prince. we saw pictures of the Mona Lisa and flying buttresses. I would later live three years in Durham under the shadow of a cathedral that started construction with Romanesque style but ended in the Gothic period. What a spectacular high school education I had! I have ridden those fumes to today.
25. For science, I had Chem 3AP and Physics my senior year. The physics teacher was Ms. McGuire, a former nun as I recall. I enjoyed her very much. I would get a 4 on the physics AP exam and 4 hours of college credit from it. The fact that I had gone through most of the Navy Basic Electricity and Electronics course with Mr. Brandt certainly helped. And we had Mr. Pickett for Calculus at the same time as well. So even though Ms. McGuire did not assume calculus, we were looking at some of the same material from two different perspectives.
I don't know exactly how my interest in quantum physics started. I ended high school thinking I was going to become a chest surgeon of some sort. But it wasn't real. I wasn't practical enough to succeed at something like that. It was an idea. I did get a full tuition scholarship to the University of Miami into their 5 year honors med school program. The Isaac Bashevis Singer Scholarship.
Before the doctor idea, though, I had thought of becoming a nuclear physicist, which must have been either late middle or early high school. To this day I love physics and have on my bucket list finally understanding quantum physics. I am not far from understanding Schrödinger's equation. One of my unfinished novels is about a quantum physicist who is in a bad car accident and forgets almost all of his past knowledge. One of his goals in the novel is to understand this equation again. He fails.
I think it was my friend Paul Herman who introduced me to a book called Gödel, Escher, Bach my senior year. I still haven't finished it. I bought a number of books in those years, some of which I finished much later. Thirty Years That Shook Physics, Einstein's Relativity. Sometimes I absorbed the key ideas of these sorts of works without fully finishing them.
Gödel's incompleteness theorem would later be of interest to me from the standpoint of hermeneutics. It basically states that no set can completely describe itself. There has to be at least one key outside a set to identify a structure to the set. I'm probably massacring the concept. Gödel pretty much undermined the life work of Bertrand Russell in trying to reduce all mathematics to a set of self-contained axioms, as I understand it.
But it relates, I believe, to the notion of sola scriptura. As a set of books from varying time periods and authors, the Bible cannot cohere as a set without bringing to bear on it some organizing principle or principles from the outside. In other words, something outside the Bible has to make it a canon. All of this of course fits with history, as the early church collected the Bible as a canon and, as it were, provided organizing principles for its coherency by way of orthodoxy.
In short, sola scriptura, taken in its most restrictive sense, is incoherent. The Wesleyan quadrilateral and the notion of prima scriptura is thus a far superior hermeneutical model.
26. I did not want people outside my group to know I was a nerd. In a discussion with David Riggs at IWU in recent years, I mentioned that I realized back in middle school that most people just weren't interested in the same things I was. I would later resonate with Juvenal's sense that what most people want is, "bread and circuses." We read Tale of Two Cities in Mr. Hatley's class. I understood what happens when the majority turns on the so called intelligensia.
This pessimistic sense of real human interest in truth has only been confirmed through life. Haidt's The Righteous Mind fit very well with my sense that, although we humans play intellect games, we are by and large not really interested in truth. Ideas and intellect are games we play to make ourselves feel justified to be who we are by invoking something greater than ourselves. Religion largely has functioned this way in human culture on the highest scale. We use God to justify what our tribe thinks and wants to do.
I hope it's obvious that I don't think true religion or intellect is like that. It is just the way of most humanity. Indeed, there are many people far smarter than I am in many ways who, nevertheless, only use their intellect to reinforce what they already want to think. My advantage is that I am a true truth seeker, not someone using the "truth" as a tool of their tribe.
If you are not willing to change your position based upon the evidence--or at least aren't willing to admit to yourself that you are taking a leap of faith in the face of current evidence, then you really aren't interested in the truth. You're just a tribalist, maybe a very smart one.
So, as a former VPAA at IWU once said, "Students don't come to IWU to learn the liberal arts. They come hoping for a career that will give them a job. We have to trick them into the benefit of the liberal arts." For most colleges and most students, I fear this is the case. You won't attract most students by advertising yourselves as a liberal arts school.
A good education has a bit of subversion in it. The person enlightened from the journey is glad they took it. But they might not have chosen the path of knowledge if they had known what it would mean from the front end. All education involves some unlearning of our unreflective starting point.
I was quite happy one time when a fellow track athlete asked me if I had passed all my classes. He had no idea I was a nerd.
[1] Diana (Fernandez) Baker remembered that the short story was "The Most Dangerous Game." Another story that resonated strongly personally for me was "Flowers for Algernon." For some reason I resonated with this poor soul who, for a time, went from very low intelligence to very high intelligence and then back again to little.
Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Knowledge 3
previous post
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10. In my sophomore year I had Mr. Atkinson for chemistry--Uncle Mel as they called him. He would become my favorite high school teacher, although he was almost everyone's favorite teacher. As a teacher he was ok. Mr. Pickett, who taught upper math, was actually a much better teacher, I thought, and I was very fond of him too. But Mr. Atkinson was the one who inspired so many students, including those who couldn't get chemistry.
He spent a fair amount of time in class, as I recall, talking about life. "Uncle Mel's story time." He had a dry sense of humor. One time he found amusing the question, "Can Ken come out to play?" He said it from the podium while giving me an award. I still don't get it. Maybe he thought I was too serious?
I remember once when a brilliant classmate of mind lost his temper because he was being razzed by some other student. He exclaimed in a loud voice, "Silence, all of you!" Mr. Atkinson replied in a calm voice, "Now, x, I'm disappointed in you."
He told once that he used to put a hot dog into a rubber glove and stick it into liquid nitrogen and then pretend to break his finger off. But apparently a girl on the front row fainted once and he stopped doing that.
One fun thing was that some Chem 2 students occasionally were doing experiments on the sides of the room while we first years were in the middle learning the basics. I thought a lot of the classes ahead of me. A number of really cool girls. :-)
11. I would take three years of Chemistry, but only get a 3 on the AP exam. The second year was a lot of experimentation. I remember a fun experiment where we somehow got oxygen trapped in a flask upside down under water. Then we put magnesium in the oxygen and watched it flash as it became magnesium oxide. Really bright reaction.
That reminds me of Mr. Atkinson helping us remember the name of a Florence flask by comparing its shape to a girl named Florence he once knew. We did titrations, the whole nine yards. I remember being annoyed that the state had required him to stop doing experiments with benzene because it was a carcinogen.
Those were the days where I thought government rules like that were stupid. No doubt my family poo-pooed the Democrats' attempts to stop us from using lead in our paint and gas too. Of course the studies had long been conclusive. There are interesting documentaries now about how businesses--especially big oil--used their money to prolong the use of lead for decades even though it was a proven health hazard, especially to young children.
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12 It was because of Mr. Atkinson that I started out college as a chemistry major. Frankly, I was more interested in physics. But I had a really hard time saying no. I was so embarrassed to tell Mr. Atkinson that I was going to Central Wesleyan College when I had the offer of full tuition to the University of Miami honors med school program. I was also accepted at Florida State, Rose Hulman in Indiana, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. I had an award in fact from RPI and at least some scholarship to these other universities.
He was so disappointed. I tried to tell him that I would have full access to everything at Central. I felt less comfortable telling him that it was where I felt God wanted me to go. It was one of those moments where my religion and the outside world came into sharp tension.
When it came to the science project I did my senior year, once again I let him talk me into a chemistry oriented experiment. I wanted to do something with quantum physics. I don't know what I would have been able to do. Instead, I did an experiment meant to contribute something relating to Alzheimer's disease.
It was a ridiculous experiment. I had three aquariums full of leeches (my poor dad). The water in one was normal. The other two had varying concentrations of aluminum sulfate in the water (just got rid of the AlSO4 in this move). We had snails in the water for them to eat.
The idea was that I would eventually dissect the leech brains and see if they had any neurofibrillary tangles. But of course, without assistance and a much better microscope, I wasn't able to find squat. I wasn't even sure I found any of their brains at all, let alone being able to see on the level of tangles. All I could say is that the leeches in the aluminum water didn't like it.
I think I got an honorable mention. Didn't hardly deserve that.
Chemistry is an interesting subject. It seems to me both harder and easier than math/physics in some respects. I think it's because it involves a lot of memorization of what seem to be arbitrary details until you get really deep into it. Ultimately the details follow from the quantum physics, but they seem more random as you start into the subject.
Another Christmas gift--the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.
13. My sophomore year I also had Mr. Atchison for Algebra 2. He was a little gruff, as I recall. We did the deed. We learned the stuff. By now Christina and I were back with the advanced group and would travel with them through to Calculus.
At the moment I can't remember the name of the English teacher for my sophomore year. I remember that we studied a lot of etymology and learned a lot of words with a view to the SAT. I also remember that she had us bring in a favorite record. We only had classical and gospel records, so I brought in Peer Gynt by Edward Grieg. Not that it was a favorite. It was just available.
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14. Without question, my junior year was my favorite. I was in Latin 3 and Electronics 3, my final years in these. I was in Chem 2 where we did a lot of experiments. I was never great at experiments, although I got As. My natural giftings were always toward the theoretical side, not toward those of an experimentalist.
For Trigonometry and Analytical Geometry I had Mr. Pickett. He was a spectacular teacher, the best perhaps I have ever had. He was a devout Protestant, although he did not talk about his faith in class. His foundations were so good that I was able to ride them into college math. I would get a 5 on the calculus AP exam, and Central would give me 8 hours of calculus for it.
We got through enough material my junior year that he spent a little time at the end of the year dabbling into number theory. At least one of my compatriots, David Alyea, would go on to study math in college (at Davidson). At one point I hoped to add a math major in college to a chemistry major. I remember one breakfast at Dennys at 4am with David finishing up something for some math contest my senior year.
I remember him talking about the asymptotes I think of the tangent graph. I remember him musing that perhaps if you go to a positive infinity you find yourself then coming back up from a negative infinity, a little like if you were to head east long enough you would eventually find yourself coming back from the west.
15. At some point in these years I began to develop a line of thinking I have used in philosophy and other contexts ever since. I was always intrigued by the fact that you cannot divide by zero. God, I wanted to say, can divide by zero. God can get something out of nothing.
In a couple novels I never finished, there is an omega button an angel presses that gets one out of zero. 1/0 = Ω. If you can invent i for the square root of negative one, why can't I invent omega as the solution to the problem of 1/0?
I was also intrigued by the notion of empty set being different from 0. At some point it occurred to me that creation ex nihilo is not really creation out of zero. It is creation out of empty set. The line of thinking here relates to Einstein's theory of general relativity, where space itself can expand and contract. That means that there is something more empty than emptiness.
I have used this notion often in talking about creation. God does not simply put stuff into empty space. God creates the empty space itself. God does not merely work within the rules of the universe that already exist. God creates the rules themselves. This is in part why, when I first taught ethics in college, I was drawn to Divine Command Theory (DCT). Good is good because God says so in this universe. We have no point of reference to know what God says in other universes.
Some of this line of thinking was also sparked by Henry Morris' book Scientific Creationism. In it he connects God's omnipotence to the fact that he has to have all power if he is to create all the power of the world. God must have all knowledge to design all the laws and aspects of our existence. Perhaps I will have occasion to talk more about this later.
16. I had Mr. Pickett my senior year for Calculus as well. I remember him telling us not to worry about the "epsilon-delta confusion" at the beginning of the book. He said the only person he knew who actually understood it was a fellow math major at Florida State who was always falling down the stairs. They'd yell, "You alright, x?" And he would respond back that he was.
The summer after high school I read through those sections of a calculus textbook. They weren't really important to people who aren't math professionals, but I understood it. I came to believe that Mr. Pickett must have actually understood it. He was just making us feel good and helping us focus on what was more important.
17. I learned to think like a scientist. Maybe I always had. When I was Dean of the School of Theology at Indiana Wesleyan University, John Lakanen (a chemist) used to say that I didn't think like a theologian, but like a scientist. John Drury once likened me to Friedrich Schleiermacher, who saved theology in the universities in Germany by treating it like a kind of science.
[I will return to this issue later. There are two different ways of thinking, both of which are valid, I believe. It is similar to the question of how analytical and phenomenological philosophy might fit together.]
But math and science are incredibly reliable. There are edges, of course. After years of assuming that parallel lines never meet (although it was always acknowledged that it was not proven), suddenly we had the rise of non-Euclidean geometry. But that development did not prove that prior geometry was wrong. It really just supplemented it.
There are aspects of science that are changing as we get more information. I will talk about Thomas Kuhn soon enough. But the rules of physics and chemistry have pretty much remained the same on the macro-level. The edges are in flux, but these are the edges or the underlying dynamics.
Religion has not been as reliable as science. Christianity as an institution has not been as reliable as math and science. Obviously I believe Christ is absolutely reliable, but the people who believe in Christ and the systems of which they are a part are frequently unreliable. Churches are regularly unreliable. Interpretations of the Bible are countless and varied.
What I am saying is that math and science are God's natural revelation. They are revelation of a sort. They should be respected and should be dialog partners as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Those who reject science might as well turn in their cell phones, labtops, and automobiles.
18. The summer after my junior year was spectacular. I went to Boy's State in Tallahassee. I touched the door of the magisterial theoretical physicist P.A.M. Dirac (he would die the next year in 1984). I was elected as a representative, coming out of "Coast Guard County."
I went to Rose Hulman for a 10 day laser camp. For solving a problem I was given a Physics textbook from Harvard that I still have. I have always been struck by the fact that it taught calculus as it was needed to do physics. This model of teaching has stuck with me and even impacted the original design of Wesley Seminary. We learn things best when we need to know them to do things, not as far removed theoretical prolegomena. Or as John Dewey said, "We learn by doing."
When I taught New Testament Survey at IWU, I always did flashbacks to New Testament background. I did minimal introduction so we could get into the material as soon as possible. My New Testament introduction is laid out this way. So many teachers want to cover all the background first because that seems logical. Sometimes it seems like the course is a third (or more) over before you ever look at the actual subject of the class! Drives me crazy!
There is a spectacular introduction to relativity that uses this principle--A Most Incomprehensible Thing. I want to do one on quantum mechanics but I don't know enough yet. I believe there is a way to teach math and science in the inner city using an integrated approach something like this. I would love to try it in Buffalo for Houghton. But there are so many things to do in the world, and most people can't see what I see.
I was also a camp counselor for junior camp that summer, with Stacey and Stephanie Bodenhorn. Along with God, Stacey played a role in me going to Central Wesleyan College as well. I slept very soundly and the first night some of my kids snuck out of the cabin. The next night I slept in front of the door.
One evening a boy decided to walk home because someone had made fun of his weight. We found him, stopped him. As we hugged him, it was clear to me that he really didn't want to run away. He just wanted to be loved. He pretended to resist us, but it was an act. I felt God's presence in a way I had rarely felt in my life. It was a special moment.
I also remember running across the camp running an errand. I was running so fast. I never remember ever feeling such speed at any other time in my life. I caught a glimpse of what it must be to be so good at something. How exhilarating it must be to be an Olympic runner or swimmer, to be so awesome at something! How fantastic it must be to be an artist who can create a masterpiece.
I have felt this at times with writing or singing. There are times that I have sung in a certain acoustic situation where the sound is exhilarating. There are times I have cried at my own writing or poetry. Perhaps no one else would feel that way. :-)
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10. In my sophomore year I had Mr. Atkinson for chemistry--Uncle Mel as they called him. He would become my favorite high school teacher, although he was almost everyone's favorite teacher. As a teacher he was ok. Mr. Pickett, who taught upper math, was actually a much better teacher, I thought, and I was very fond of him too. But Mr. Atkinson was the one who inspired so many students, including those who couldn't get chemistry.
He spent a fair amount of time in class, as I recall, talking about life. "Uncle Mel's story time." He had a dry sense of humor. One time he found amusing the question, "Can Ken come out to play?" He said it from the podium while giving me an award. I still don't get it. Maybe he thought I was too serious?
I remember once when a brilliant classmate of mind lost his temper because he was being razzed by some other student. He exclaimed in a loud voice, "Silence, all of you!" Mr. Atkinson replied in a calm voice, "Now, x, I'm disappointed in you."
He told once that he used to put a hot dog into a rubber glove and stick it into liquid nitrogen and then pretend to break his finger off. But apparently a girl on the front row fainted once and he stopped doing that.
One fun thing was that some Chem 2 students occasionally were doing experiments on the sides of the room while we first years were in the middle learning the basics. I thought a lot of the classes ahead of me. A number of really cool girls. :-)
11. I would take three years of Chemistry, but only get a 3 on the AP exam. The second year was a lot of experimentation. I remember a fun experiment where we somehow got oxygen trapped in a flask upside down under water. Then we put magnesium in the oxygen and watched it flash as it became magnesium oxide. Really bright reaction.
That reminds me of Mr. Atkinson helping us remember the name of a Florence flask by comparing its shape to a girl named Florence he once knew. We did titrations, the whole nine yards. I remember being annoyed that the state had required him to stop doing experiments with benzene because it was a carcinogen.
Those were the days where I thought government rules like that were stupid. No doubt my family poo-pooed the Democrats' attempts to stop us from using lead in our paint and gas too. Of course the studies had long been conclusive. There are interesting documentaries now about how businesses--especially big oil--used their money to prolong the use of lead for decades even though it was a proven health hazard, especially to young children.
*
12 It was because of Mr. Atkinson that I started out college as a chemistry major. Frankly, I was more interested in physics. But I had a really hard time saying no. I was so embarrassed to tell Mr. Atkinson that I was going to Central Wesleyan College when I had the offer of full tuition to the University of Miami honors med school program. I was also accepted at Florida State, Rose Hulman in Indiana, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. I had an award in fact from RPI and at least some scholarship to these other universities.
He was so disappointed. I tried to tell him that I would have full access to everything at Central. I felt less comfortable telling him that it was where I felt God wanted me to go. It was one of those moments where my religion and the outside world came into sharp tension.
When it came to the science project I did my senior year, once again I let him talk me into a chemistry oriented experiment. I wanted to do something with quantum physics. I don't know what I would have been able to do. Instead, I did an experiment meant to contribute something relating to Alzheimer's disease.
It was a ridiculous experiment. I had three aquariums full of leeches (my poor dad). The water in one was normal. The other two had varying concentrations of aluminum sulfate in the water (just got rid of the AlSO4 in this move). We had snails in the water for them to eat.
The idea was that I would eventually dissect the leech brains and see if they had any neurofibrillary tangles. But of course, without assistance and a much better microscope, I wasn't able to find squat. I wasn't even sure I found any of their brains at all, let alone being able to see on the level of tangles. All I could say is that the leeches in the aluminum water didn't like it.
I think I got an honorable mention. Didn't hardly deserve that.
Chemistry is an interesting subject. It seems to me both harder and easier than math/physics in some respects. I think it's because it involves a lot of memorization of what seem to be arbitrary details until you get really deep into it. Ultimately the details follow from the quantum physics, but they seem more random as you start into the subject.
Another Christmas gift--the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.
13. My sophomore year I also had Mr. Atchison for Algebra 2. He was a little gruff, as I recall. We did the deed. We learned the stuff. By now Christina and I were back with the advanced group and would travel with them through to Calculus.
At the moment I can't remember the name of the English teacher for my sophomore year. I remember that we studied a lot of etymology and learned a lot of words with a view to the SAT. I also remember that she had us bring in a favorite record. We only had classical and gospel records, so I brought in Peer Gynt by Edward Grieg. Not that it was a favorite. It was just available.
*
14. Without question, my junior year was my favorite. I was in Latin 3 and Electronics 3, my final years in these. I was in Chem 2 where we did a lot of experiments. I was never great at experiments, although I got As. My natural giftings were always toward the theoretical side, not toward those of an experimentalist.
For Trigonometry and Analytical Geometry I had Mr. Pickett. He was a spectacular teacher, the best perhaps I have ever had. He was a devout Protestant, although he did not talk about his faith in class. His foundations were so good that I was able to ride them into college math. I would get a 5 on the calculus AP exam, and Central would give me 8 hours of calculus for it.
We got through enough material my junior year that he spent a little time at the end of the year dabbling into number theory. At least one of my compatriots, David Alyea, would go on to study math in college (at Davidson). At one point I hoped to add a math major in college to a chemistry major. I remember one breakfast at Dennys at 4am with David finishing up something for some math contest my senior year.
I remember him talking about the asymptotes I think of the tangent graph. I remember him musing that perhaps if you go to a positive infinity you find yourself then coming back up from a negative infinity, a little like if you were to head east long enough you would eventually find yourself coming back from the west.
15. At some point in these years I began to develop a line of thinking I have used in philosophy and other contexts ever since. I was always intrigued by the fact that you cannot divide by zero. God, I wanted to say, can divide by zero. God can get something out of nothing.
In a couple novels I never finished, there is an omega button an angel presses that gets one out of zero. 1/0 = Ω. If you can invent i for the square root of negative one, why can't I invent omega as the solution to the problem of 1/0?
I was also intrigued by the notion of empty set being different from 0. At some point it occurred to me that creation ex nihilo is not really creation out of zero. It is creation out of empty set. The line of thinking here relates to Einstein's theory of general relativity, where space itself can expand and contract. That means that there is something more empty than emptiness.
I have used this notion often in talking about creation. God does not simply put stuff into empty space. God creates the empty space itself. God does not merely work within the rules of the universe that already exist. God creates the rules themselves. This is in part why, when I first taught ethics in college, I was drawn to Divine Command Theory (DCT). Good is good because God says so in this universe. We have no point of reference to know what God says in other universes.
Some of this line of thinking was also sparked by Henry Morris' book Scientific Creationism. In it he connects God's omnipotence to the fact that he has to have all power if he is to create all the power of the world. God must have all knowledge to design all the laws and aspects of our existence. Perhaps I will have occasion to talk more about this later.
16. I had Mr. Pickett my senior year for Calculus as well. I remember him telling us not to worry about the "epsilon-delta confusion" at the beginning of the book. He said the only person he knew who actually understood it was a fellow math major at Florida State who was always falling down the stairs. They'd yell, "You alright, x?" And he would respond back that he was.
The summer after high school I read through those sections of a calculus textbook. They weren't really important to people who aren't math professionals, but I understood it. I came to believe that Mr. Pickett must have actually understood it. He was just making us feel good and helping us focus on what was more important.
17. I learned to think like a scientist. Maybe I always had. When I was Dean of the School of Theology at Indiana Wesleyan University, John Lakanen (a chemist) used to say that I didn't think like a theologian, but like a scientist. John Drury once likened me to Friedrich Schleiermacher, who saved theology in the universities in Germany by treating it like a kind of science.
[I will return to this issue later. There are two different ways of thinking, both of which are valid, I believe. It is similar to the question of how analytical and phenomenological philosophy might fit together.]
But math and science are incredibly reliable. There are edges, of course. After years of assuming that parallel lines never meet (although it was always acknowledged that it was not proven), suddenly we had the rise of non-Euclidean geometry. But that development did not prove that prior geometry was wrong. It really just supplemented it.
There are aspects of science that are changing as we get more information. I will talk about Thomas Kuhn soon enough. But the rules of physics and chemistry have pretty much remained the same on the macro-level. The edges are in flux, but these are the edges or the underlying dynamics.
Religion has not been as reliable as science. Christianity as an institution has not been as reliable as math and science. Obviously I believe Christ is absolutely reliable, but the people who believe in Christ and the systems of which they are a part are frequently unreliable. Churches are regularly unreliable. Interpretations of the Bible are countless and varied.
What I am saying is that math and science are God's natural revelation. They are revelation of a sort. They should be respected and should be dialog partners as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Those who reject science might as well turn in their cell phones, labtops, and automobiles.
18. The summer after my junior year was spectacular. I went to Boy's State in Tallahassee. I touched the door of the magisterial theoretical physicist P.A.M. Dirac (he would die the next year in 1984). I was elected as a representative, coming out of "Coast Guard County."
I went to Rose Hulman for a 10 day laser camp. For solving a problem I was given a Physics textbook from Harvard that I still have. I have always been struck by the fact that it taught calculus as it was needed to do physics. This model of teaching has stuck with me and even impacted the original design of Wesley Seminary. We learn things best when we need to know them to do things, not as far removed theoretical prolegomena. Or as John Dewey said, "We learn by doing."
When I taught New Testament Survey at IWU, I always did flashbacks to New Testament background. I did minimal introduction so we could get into the material as soon as possible. My New Testament introduction is laid out this way. So many teachers want to cover all the background first because that seems logical. Sometimes it seems like the course is a third (or more) over before you ever look at the actual subject of the class! Drives me crazy!
There is a spectacular introduction to relativity that uses this principle--A Most Incomprehensible Thing. I want to do one on quantum mechanics but I don't know enough yet. I believe there is a way to teach math and science in the inner city using an integrated approach something like this. I would love to try it in Buffalo for Houghton. But there are so many things to do in the world, and most people can't see what I see.
I was also a camp counselor for junior camp that summer, with Stacey and Stephanie Bodenhorn. Along with God, Stacey played a role in me going to Central Wesleyan College as well. I slept very soundly and the first night some of my kids snuck out of the cabin. The next night I slept in front of the door.
One evening a boy decided to walk home because someone had made fun of his weight. We found him, stopped him. As we hugged him, it was clear to me that he really didn't want to run away. He just wanted to be loved. He pretended to resist us, but it was an act. I felt God's presence in a way I had rarely felt in my life. It was a special moment.
I also remember running across the camp running an errand. I was running so fast. I never remember ever feeling such speed at any other time in my life. I caught a glimpse of what it must be to be so good at something. How exhilarating it must be to be an Olympic runner or swimmer, to be so awesome at something! How fantastic it must be to be an artist who can create a masterpiece.
I have felt this at times with writing or singing. There are times that I have sung in a certain acoustic situation where the sound is exhilarating. There are times I have cried at my own writing or poetry. Perhaps no one else would feel that way. :-)
Monday, December 23, 2019
Knowledge 2
previous post
6. There were the assorted PE classes. I seem to remember taking swimming the first semester of my freshman year. FLHS had a great swim team that year. Went to state, as I recall. We would go to state in track that year I believe as well. The valedictorian that year was one of the swimmers that went to state.
So I learned CPR and how to fill your clothes with air if you are stuck out at sea.
It must have been second semester that I had Coach Hurley, a muscular black man who was also the track and cross country coach. Although I had planned to go out for the baseball team, he talked me into track. I had a hard time saying no to anyone unless it had to do with religion. This is a problem I would struggle with even until after I was married. My answer to anyone was almost always yes, even if I didn't want to, unless it had to do with a point of religion where I feared hell if I gave in.
So I ended up running track. Coach Hurley needed a hurdler, so a hurdler I became. Coach used to call me "the great white hope." But there wasn't much hope for me. When you put me next to the other runners, I was just average. Although I was lean by normal standards (especially compared to now!) I believe Coach used to refer to my "jelly belly," trying to motivate me to lose some weight.
I seem to remember being 128 when I started high school, but I had a spurt and was, I think, 165 at least by the end of my freshman year. About 180 when I finished high school, I think.
In my first meet, I ran the 120 and 330 hurdles. In my second race, the 330, I false started and was disqualified. From then on, my nickname was FS. :-) As I write some of this it sounds a little mean, but I remember it all with fondness.
I would run track all four years of high school. I mainly did hurdles, but coach stuck me into the two mile occasionally to help me lose weight. It didn't really work. I didn't have the killer attitude some other runners had.
Of course they could see their potential. Although I forget their names, I remember the four runners who went to state in the 400 that first year. They were spectacular runners. They could see a kind of greatness within their grasp. It drove them to push to a higher level that I could never have reached.
I remember in my second year, I think, coach had me train a new guy on the hurdles. Even with him knocking them all down, he was faster than me from the start. You really can't do anything you put your mind to. Ultimately, it comes down to the ratio of fast twitch to slow twitch fibers in your muscle and a whole lot more that is simply genetic. Anyone can improve, but in athletics you can only be born into greatness.
7. Having said that I was way faster than your average Joe. It was easy to run a quarter mile in under a minute and we ran them multiple times in a practice. The fastest mile I ever clocked was in a practice, 5.29. A life goal was to run one under 5 minutes but that was left behind about twenty-five years ago.
By the way, I forgot to mention with baseball that my dad bought me a "pitch-back" my first year playing farm league. I was a net with springs that, if you hit the target, it would bounce the ball back at you to catch. At some point, I decided that I would have to catch one more in a row than the day before. I don't know how far I got, but I spent every night in my back yard with that thing. If I missed, I had to start over.
I also had a book that was the Air Force fitness guide. Still have it somewhere. I tried to follow its regiment too with different kinds of exercises. Every day you stretched yourself a little bit further.
I remember watching the James Bond movie Skyfall at the beginning, where he is running and jumping across the rooftops of Istanbul. At any earlier point in my life I would have thought, "Man, that looks fun." But in 2012 it looked like too much for me. It's sad getting old.
I used to be able to run under 7 minute miles with no effort whatsoever. In seminary I would take the whole winter off and then jump straight into the Lexington 5K in the spring. But these last five years its been my goal to run three miles at least once each year under 30 minutes. Looks like I've failed 2019.
It seems like I have pulled something every year in the last four years. In 2016 I felt like I ripped my calf running some steep hills in Ohio at a camp meeting. In 2017 I felt like I had a minor hernia in my lower abdomen. In 2018 I pulled my calf again trying to run up a hill at my son's ROTC nationals. Then I ripped my knee this year the second week I was in Houghton. VERY annoying!
8. Coach Hurley talked me into running cross-country my sophomore year. I would run it the next three years. Again, I was not particularly competitive. I think I ran three miles in 17.39 once.
For warm ups, we would run 5 miles. We would run out to Oakland Boulevard to Federal Highway to Sunrise then back to the high school. I just remembered that my first Gatorade was a practice where, I think, we ran to Holiday Park. My first year in cross-country I think. There was a train there you could climb on that I loved as a boy. The church had a picnic there occasionally in the early days.
When it was raining outside, we trained in the high school auditorium. Coach would play Neil Diamond, "We Come to America." 1982 was the year that I really learned a lot of secular music. Chicago was my favorite, "Hard to Say I'm Sorry." But riding to meets I also learned "Eye of the Tiger," "Rio," and many other songs.
I am a child of the 80s when it comes to music. The 90s were torture as things turned lyrical. Give me a driving beat any time--"All I Need Is a Miracle," "Wang Chung." The slow, lyrical, guitar worship music that is so common right now in church kills me. Boring. I don't know how anyone with ADHD can stand most churches today.
9. While I'm on music, we had a special song in every church service in those days. From early on, I was in the rotation for special singing. My mother played the piano for me. My sisters had been the "Schenck Trio" before I was even born, singing in three part harmony as was common even in secular music in the fifties and sixties.
Over the years I did my share of duets, trios, and quartets with my family. Duet with my dad, trio with my sister Patricia or Sharon and others. My sister Sharon would be assistant pastor at Fort Lauderdale First Wesleyan for some of my high school. The pastor was Everett Putney, a school superintendent who agreed to pastor the church part time.
I'll confess that I often didn't pay attention to the words of the hymns and songs we sang in church because I was trying to sing the parts. If a hymn had four verses, I would try to sing a different part for each verse. I would develop a pretty good ear for music, although I do not have perfect pitch.
When accompaniment tapes came out, I found myself singing a lot with them. In college Steve Green was my man. I would do my best in my dorm room to hit those high notes. But I couldn't because I was a bass.
6. There were the assorted PE classes. I seem to remember taking swimming the first semester of my freshman year. FLHS had a great swim team that year. Went to state, as I recall. We would go to state in track that year I believe as well. The valedictorian that year was one of the swimmers that went to state.
So I learned CPR and how to fill your clothes with air if you are stuck out at sea.
It must have been second semester that I had Coach Hurley, a muscular black man who was also the track and cross country coach. Although I had planned to go out for the baseball team, he talked me into track. I had a hard time saying no to anyone unless it had to do with religion. This is a problem I would struggle with even until after I was married. My answer to anyone was almost always yes, even if I didn't want to, unless it had to do with a point of religion where I feared hell if I gave in.
So I ended up running track. Coach Hurley needed a hurdler, so a hurdler I became. Coach used to call me "the great white hope." But there wasn't much hope for me. When you put me next to the other runners, I was just average. Although I was lean by normal standards (especially compared to now!) I believe Coach used to refer to my "jelly belly," trying to motivate me to lose some weight.
I seem to remember being 128 when I started high school, but I had a spurt and was, I think, 165 at least by the end of my freshman year. About 180 when I finished high school, I think.
In my first meet, I ran the 120 and 330 hurdles. In my second race, the 330, I false started and was disqualified. From then on, my nickname was FS. :-) As I write some of this it sounds a little mean, but I remember it all with fondness.
I would run track all four years of high school. I mainly did hurdles, but coach stuck me into the two mile occasionally to help me lose weight. It didn't really work. I didn't have the killer attitude some other runners had.
Of course they could see their potential. Although I forget their names, I remember the four runners who went to state in the 400 that first year. They were spectacular runners. They could see a kind of greatness within their grasp. It drove them to push to a higher level that I could never have reached.
I remember in my second year, I think, coach had me train a new guy on the hurdles. Even with him knocking them all down, he was faster than me from the start. You really can't do anything you put your mind to. Ultimately, it comes down to the ratio of fast twitch to slow twitch fibers in your muscle and a whole lot more that is simply genetic. Anyone can improve, but in athletics you can only be born into greatness.
7. Having said that I was way faster than your average Joe. It was easy to run a quarter mile in under a minute and we ran them multiple times in a practice. The fastest mile I ever clocked was in a practice, 5.29. A life goal was to run one under 5 minutes but that was left behind about twenty-five years ago.
By the way, I forgot to mention with baseball that my dad bought me a "pitch-back" my first year playing farm league. I was a net with springs that, if you hit the target, it would bounce the ball back at you to catch. At some point, I decided that I would have to catch one more in a row than the day before. I don't know how far I got, but I spent every night in my back yard with that thing. If I missed, I had to start over.
I also had a book that was the Air Force fitness guide. Still have it somewhere. I tried to follow its regiment too with different kinds of exercises. Every day you stretched yourself a little bit further.
I remember watching the James Bond movie Skyfall at the beginning, where he is running and jumping across the rooftops of Istanbul. At any earlier point in my life I would have thought, "Man, that looks fun." But in 2012 it looked like too much for me. It's sad getting old.
I used to be able to run under 7 minute miles with no effort whatsoever. In seminary I would take the whole winter off and then jump straight into the Lexington 5K in the spring. But these last five years its been my goal to run three miles at least once each year under 30 minutes. Looks like I've failed 2019.
It seems like I have pulled something every year in the last four years. In 2016 I felt like I ripped my calf running some steep hills in Ohio at a camp meeting. In 2017 I felt like I had a minor hernia in my lower abdomen. In 2018 I pulled my calf again trying to run up a hill at my son's ROTC nationals. Then I ripped my knee this year the second week I was in Houghton. VERY annoying!
8. Coach Hurley talked me into running cross-country my sophomore year. I would run it the next three years. Again, I was not particularly competitive. I think I ran three miles in 17.39 once.
For warm ups, we would run 5 miles. We would run out to Oakland Boulevard to Federal Highway to Sunrise then back to the high school. I just remembered that my first Gatorade was a practice where, I think, we ran to Holiday Park. My first year in cross-country I think. There was a train there you could climb on that I loved as a boy. The church had a picnic there occasionally in the early days.
When it was raining outside, we trained in the high school auditorium. Coach would play Neil Diamond, "We Come to America." 1982 was the year that I really learned a lot of secular music. Chicago was my favorite, "Hard to Say I'm Sorry." But riding to meets I also learned "Eye of the Tiger," "Rio," and many other songs.
I am a child of the 80s when it comes to music. The 90s were torture as things turned lyrical. Give me a driving beat any time--"All I Need Is a Miracle," "Wang Chung." The slow, lyrical, guitar worship music that is so common right now in church kills me. Boring. I don't know how anyone with ADHD can stand most churches today.
9. While I'm on music, we had a special song in every church service in those days. From early on, I was in the rotation for special singing. My mother played the piano for me. My sisters had been the "Schenck Trio" before I was even born, singing in three part harmony as was common even in secular music in the fifties and sixties.
Over the years I did my share of duets, trios, and quartets with my family. Duet with my dad, trio with my sister Patricia or Sharon and others. My sister Sharon would be assistant pastor at Fort Lauderdale First Wesleyan for some of my high school. The pastor was Everett Putney, a school superintendent who agreed to pastor the church part time.
I'll confess that I often didn't pay attention to the words of the hymns and songs we sang in church because I was trying to sing the parts. If a hymn had four verses, I would try to sing a different part for each verse. I would develop a pretty good ear for music, although I do not have perfect pitch.
When accompaniment tapes came out, I found myself singing a lot with them. In college Steve Green was my man. I would do my best in my dorm room to hit those high notes. But I couldn't because I was a bass.
My Role in Upholding the Constitution (high school essay)
This was a piece I read on the radio my senior year of high school, 1984, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as the winner of a contest called, "The Voice of Democracy," put on by the Daughters of the American Revolution.
________________
"My Role in Upholding the Constitution"
Walton H. Hamilton, the author of "Constitutionalism," has written, "the genius of constitutions, written and unwritten alike, lies in usage." This statement, plain as it may be, is really the basis for my role in upholding the Constitution. I must insure that my Constitution is used in the proper way; and I must support my government and its Constitution, so that the structure does not fall but is sustained.
It is quite plain that before I can uphold the Constitution, I must know how it can be upheld. It also follows that before I can know how to uphold it, I need to know what I am upholding. The first step I must take in order to sustain the Constitution, therefore, is to learn the Constitution. I must know the Constitution before I can support it. I must know the ideology that spurred our forefathers to battle, such as the right of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I must know the principles of democracy seen in the Constitution, that is, rule by the people and for the people. Once I have accomplished this first step, I also have initiated the fulfillment of my role.
When I have learned the inner workings of my Constitution, I can support its theory and ideology, but remember that the genius of a constitution lies in its usage. It is, then, for me merely to know the Constitution. I also must know the applications of our Constitution, the first of which is our government. Once again, I can only uphold my government if I know what my government is and what it is involved in doing. The second step in upholding our Constitution, then, lies not only in learning how my government functions in and of itself but also in learning how it functions with the world. It is my duty, therefore, to keep informed on current local, state, national, and international issues. When I have learned these I have moved one step further in fulfilling my role.
Once I have learned what there is to be sustained, how can I sustain it? I can uphold the Constitution by living it! I must take the knowledge of the government and its issues and apply the Constitution to it; then, I must show this knowledge to the world.This duty compels me to participate in town and community meetings and speak out on what is right. It compels me to be willing to defend my country and die for its principles. Most importantly, it compels me to vote; for my vote is my voice, my voice of democracy that sustains my government and its Constitution. By being involved in all these things, I let my voice be heard fulfill my role in upholding the Constitution. Henry David Thoreau in speaking of slavery said, “if one honest man ... We're actually to withdraw from this copartnership ... it would be the abolition of slavery in America.” This statement is very similar to my role in upholding the Constitution. I must be that “honest man” who speaks out, and the Constitution consequently will be sustained.
If I fulfill these responsibilities, our nation will remain a living, breathing body. The Constitution is the mind of this body. It directs all of the body's activities. The upper part of the body is the government, using its arms and senses to react with its surrounding governments and with its voice speaking out to the world on behalf of the whole body. Finally, the people are the lower part of the body and the legs, supporting the weight of the entire body, holding up the government and the Constitution. If the nation is to move forward, they must lead it. We the people must lead it. Each person, no matter how small, must speak out with his “voice of democracy.” By being that one “honest man,” I can bring out the “genius” of our Constitution and fulfill my role as a citizen of the United States of America.
________________
"My Role in Upholding the Constitution"
Walton H. Hamilton, the author of "Constitutionalism," has written, "the genius of constitutions, written and unwritten alike, lies in usage." This statement, plain as it may be, is really the basis for my role in upholding the Constitution. I must insure that my Constitution is used in the proper way; and I must support my government and its Constitution, so that the structure does not fall but is sustained.
It is quite plain that before I can uphold the Constitution, I must know how it can be upheld. It also follows that before I can know how to uphold it, I need to know what I am upholding. The first step I must take in order to sustain the Constitution, therefore, is to learn the Constitution. I must know the Constitution before I can support it. I must know the ideology that spurred our forefathers to battle, such as the right of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I must know the principles of democracy seen in the Constitution, that is, rule by the people and for the people. Once I have accomplished this first step, I also have initiated the fulfillment of my role.
When I have learned the inner workings of my Constitution, I can support its theory and ideology, but remember that the genius of a constitution lies in its usage. It is, then, for me merely to know the Constitution. I also must know the applications of our Constitution, the first of which is our government. Once again, I can only uphold my government if I know what my government is and what it is involved in doing. The second step in upholding our Constitution, then, lies not only in learning how my government functions in and of itself but also in learning how it functions with the world. It is my duty, therefore, to keep informed on current local, state, national, and international issues. When I have learned these I have moved one step further in fulfilling my role.
Once I have learned what there is to be sustained, how can I sustain it? I can uphold the Constitution by living it! I must take the knowledge of the government and its issues and apply the Constitution to it; then, I must show this knowledge to the world.This duty compels me to participate in town and community meetings and speak out on what is right. It compels me to be willing to defend my country and die for its principles. Most importantly, it compels me to vote; for my vote is my voice, my voice of democracy that sustains my government and its Constitution. By being involved in all these things, I let my voice be heard fulfill my role in upholding the Constitution. Henry David Thoreau in speaking of slavery said, “if one honest man ... We're actually to withdraw from this copartnership ... it would be the abolition of slavery in America.” This statement is very similar to my role in upholding the Constitution. I must be that “honest man” who speaks out, and the Constitution consequently will be sustained.
If I fulfill these responsibilities, our nation will remain a living, breathing body. The Constitution is the mind of this body. It directs all of the body's activities. The upper part of the body is the government, using its arms and senses to react with its surrounding governments and with its voice speaking out to the world on behalf of the whole body. Finally, the people are the lower part of the body and the legs, supporting the weight of the entire body, holding up the government and the Constitution. If the nation is to move forward, they must lead it. We the people must lead it. Each person, no matter how small, must speak out with his “voice of democracy.” By being that one “honest man,” I can bring out the “genius” of our Constitution and fulfill my role as a citizen of the United States of America.
The World of Knowledge 1
previous post
1. I loved high school. If middle school was a somewhat lonely time on the margins, high school would bring only positive memories. "Here's to you alma mater, Fort Lauderdale High!"
While my mother generally drove me to school in elementary and middle school, my dad generally drove me to school in high school. We used to joke about him dropping me off a little away so that he could give me a kiss on the cheek. I really didn't care... that much.
I seem to recall that I needed to be there at 7:40. We had a tight schedule. Get up. Shower. He would have a bowl of cereal waiting with mom still sleeping. He would ask me things. In my grogginess I wouldn't always answer the first time. Then I would blurt out, "YES!" to his question. Then I would apologize for raising my voice.
2. As I recall, I was in honors English and Biology. I would graduate valedictorian of my class with all As for every semester in every class (I did get some Bs in the quarters but pulled them out for the semesters, by God's grace). There were a lot of AP and honors opportunities, so my GPA was something like 4.6. If I find out I'll correct this.
For honors English I had Mrs. Gauss. My mother and I went to an open house with her the first week of class. Mrs. Gauss basically said, "This class is hard. If you aren't willing to work and can't cut the mustard, you should get out now." I took it as a challenge. I believed I could rise to the challenge.
It was a tough class. This was before the internet. The book she used was New Building Word Power, a book I still have although it is in tatters. Interestingly, my sister Debbie had Mrs. Gauss with this same book as a senior some four years earlier. Debbie mostly did high school at Hobe Sound Academy, but she did the first semester of her senior year at Fort Lauderdale High.
What made the class/book so hard was that we didn't really know where to find the answers to some of the questions. My mother and I at times spent hours trying to track down questions like, where did the word bedlam come from, or the expression to "carry coals to Newcastle." Ironic that I would spend three years of my life later just a half hour from Newcastle!
I've sometimes wondered how much more I might know now if Google had been around in high school. On the other hand, it's just as likely I would have been distracted by social media and a host of other things. When I started blogging, you might argue that my scholarly writing decreased, although my popular writing increased. Perhaps in the end I should be grateful that my life was so boring in the early 80s.
We studied English grammar too, as I recall, in Mrs. Gauss' class. I had found English grammar difficult in middle school, but it began to click the second time around. Having Latin also helped. I heard once of a school that taught grammar by teaching Latin and I see the value of the thought. You probably do indeed learn English grammar the most by studying another language. To learn the categories of a new language, you often fill in gaps in your knowledge of English categories.
At the moment I am only remembering one book that we read in Mrs. Gauss' class, Watership Down. It was a social commentary based on a rabbit community. The rabbits who could think abstractly were viewed as a threat to the community. :-)
2. Another class I took was Geometry. The future salutatorian, Christina Carusi, was in the class with me. It was interesting because we were not in the honors section of geometry. We were in class with tenth graders. I've always wondered why. The teacher was very nice, but Christina told me once that she had mostly learned geometry from the questions I asked in class.
I've had a theory for many years that there are geometry people and there are algebra people. I was an algebra person. Algebra came extremely easy for me. I did well in geometry but it was much more challenging. I think it is, to some extent, the difference between a more inductive subject (geometry) and a more deductive one (algebra).
In my mind, these general skills also map to other subjects. Differential calculus was very easy for me, like algebra. Integral calculus was more like geometry--much more difficult. It seems to me that Greek is a lot more like algebra too, and Hebrew more like geometry.
3. I had a very nice teacher, Mrs. Nixon, for honors biology. We dissected a fetal pig, as I recall. The smell of formaldehyde still lingers in my memory. I was never a huge biology fan. I have warmed up to it a bit in more recent days as I tried to help my daughter in biology at Pepperdine. They cancelled the twelfth grade AP biology class before I got there. They dissected a cat. But it was not meant to be.
I believe I had American history with Mr. Packard my freshman year., although it could have been as a sophomore. In those days I had trouble getting history to stick in my mind. I think the main problem was that I had no real point of reference. I'm now in New York and I had the same thought this week that I've had before. How much easier it must be when you study American history and live in the northeast, where all these things took place. I thought the same when I was in England and Europe. How much easier it must be to remember these things when you can go and visit the places they took place.
I am not a detailed person by nature. I need a system, a structure to put minutia into. I remember the structure, the connections far beyond most people. The names for things have always been much harder. I am an off the chart N by Meyers-Briggs. I am a savant at the big picture. I must work hard at the details, and there is a rush when I have assimilated or processed them, as you would expect of what they call the "inferior function." Of course once I have assimilated a detail to the structure, I almost have it forever.
4. My uncle Paul would die in November 1980, my first semester of high school. His mother, Grandma Shepherd, had died the year before in a nursing home in Rossville, Indiana. Paul had developed myocarditis after an infection and had not given his body the proper rest thereafter. My last memory of him was in August of that year after Frankfort Camp. He was mowing tall grass on the site that was to become the new Trinity Wesleyan Church in Indianapolis. Why was he doing that when he had a heart condition?
He died Thanksgiving day. He ate Thanksgiving meal, laid down on the couch for a nap, sat up with a start and then died.
I remember studying for a test over the Civil War, I believe, on the trip to his funeral, the whole way up and back. The Battle of Bull Run. It was so hard to get the minutia to stick. I hadn't seen much snow in Florida. There were a few traces on the ground during the trip.
My uncle Paul's death was hard on my mother. They had been close. In fact, until we moved to Florida, he and his wife Betty had largely moved around Indianapolis as my parents moved. He had such a great heart. He was a selfless soul.
5. One of the final segments of Mr. Packard's class was required by law to be about the evils of communism. I remember him somewhat mocking the requirement. It seemed somewhat antiquated by that time. But it was the first time, I think, that I was exposed to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
We still lived under the threat of nuclear holocaust at that time, but it didn't seem as urgent as it might have in previous years. My family was exuberant at the election of Ronald Reagan, who seemed to make a lot of Americans feel better about the world. In keeping with the Republican background of my family, they had been fans of Richard Nixon and had believed him right up until he resigned. In fact, they almost believed he was innocent after he resigned. We see the same pattern now with the current president.
Similarly, Jimmy Carter was not really considered a Christian by my family. This was before Roe v Wade was fully fused with the Democratic party and the anti-abortion movement had not really taken off yet. It had mostly become tribalism. Republicans are Christians. Democrats are evil. There was a historical basis for it, I believe, in the Civil War, but those origins were now long in the past. It had mostly become a matter of tribe rather than issue, in my opinion.
There was the movie, The Day After, which came out in late 1983, my senior year. It was a pretty scary movie that tapped into my apocalyptic fears. It produced feelings not too dissimilar from those after watching the rapture movies. To this day, apocalyptic series like The Walking Dead get in my head. I dream them while I'm awake.
I wrote a piece at some point for Mr. Packard arguing that the American form of government was the best form of government because it combined all the strengths of the other forms. It had a president, which brought the strengths of a monarchy. The people voted for their representatives, which had the strength of a democracy, but it used representatives, which was far more efficient than everyone voting on everything. Mr. Packard wrote on the paper that I should try to have it published.
In my senior year, I entered a contest with the Daughters of the American Revolution called, "The Voice of Democracy." The winner would read his or her piece on the radio and get a small scholarship. I entered and won the contest with my essay.
6. There were electives I was able to take that I loved in high school. I took two and a half years of Latin in high school with Ms. Mrozek. Little did I know that I would end up getting an MA in Classical Languages and Literature about ten years later. When I entered the University of Kentucky for that program, I had not had any Latin from high school so had to get back up to speed on my own using Wheelock's Latin.
I remember some English test, maybe in the tenth grade, where I had done fine on my exam essays but couldn't remember the title of the book. One of my "friends" who was also in Latin asked Ms. Mrozek what it would tell her if a student didn't know the title of a book over which someone was taking an exam. She said it would tell her they hadn't read the book.
Well, I did read the book. I read every last book I was required to read in high school, even if I had to stay up half the night to do it (and I often did because of procrastination). This is an indication of my mind. I often know what's in a box but I can't remember the name of the box. You might say I have trouble with random access memory. I have never forgotten my mother's name, but it could happen on a really bad day.
I also signed up for electronics with Mr. Brandt. He was a jolly old soul who was quite large. In retrospect I would say it was a vocational training class. We made progress on our own working through the Navy Basic Electricity and Electronics workbooks. They were very simple and very great. I was learning physics from a practical perspective.
I would take three years of it. The final year I built a power supply that would convert wall current to the kind of current that could be used for a circuit board. In those days Radio Shack sold transistors, diodes, capacitors, transformers. It was just as everything was beginning to be put on integrated circuits. Integrated circuits would put thousands of transistors on a small wafer. They would make possible tremendous technological advances... and take all the fun out of electronic hobbying.
The Christmas of my senior year, my parents bought me all the parts to build a hexidecimal computer, including a central processing unit. I went through a Radio Shack book on Digital Electronics. Those things were so stimulating. But as usual I would never build the computer. And what would have been the point?
As a graduation present, my dad bought me a Commodore 64 computer. I never really learned how to use it, unfortunately. All I could do was some BASIC programs like the loop.
10 Print "Eat me."
20 Go to 10
Mr. Brandt had a good sense of humor. I remember him saying, "You know you're in trouble when, your senior year of high school, your dad starts telling you what a nice den your room is going to make."
1. I loved high school. If middle school was a somewhat lonely time on the margins, high school would bring only positive memories. "Here's to you alma mater, Fort Lauderdale High!"
While my mother generally drove me to school in elementary and middle school, my dad generally drove me to school in high school. We used to joke about him dropping me off a little away so that he could give me a kiss on the cheek. I really didn't care... that much.
I seem to recall that I needed to be there at 7:40. We had a tight schedule. Get up. Shower. He would have a bowl of cereal waiting with mom still sleeping. He would ask me things. In my grogginess I wouldn't always answer the first time. Then I would blurt out, "YES!" to his question. Then I would apologize for raising my voice.
2. As I recall, I was in honors English and Biology. I would graduate valedictorian of my class with all As for every semester in every class (I did get some Bs in the quarters but pulled them out for the semesters, by God's grace). There were a lot of AP and honors opportunities, so my GPA was something like 4.6. If I find out I'll correct this.
For honors English I had Mrs. Gauss. My mother and I went to an open house with her the first week of class. Mrs. Gauss basically said, "This class is hard. If you aren't willing to work and can't cut the mustard, you should get out now." I took it as a challenge. I believed I could rise to the challenge.
It was a tough class. This was before the internet. The book she used was New Building Word Power, a book I still have although it is in tatters. Interestingly, my sister Debbie had Mrs. Gauss with this same book as a senior some four years earlier. Debbie mostly did high school at Hobe Sound Academy, but she did the first semester of her senior year at Fort Lauderdale High.
What made the class/book so hard was that we didn't really know where to find the answers to some of the questions. My mother and I at times spent hours trying to track down questions like, where did the word bedlam come from, or the expression to "carry coals to Newcastle." Ironic that I would spend three years of my life later just a half hour from Newcastle!
I've sometimes wondered how much more I might know now if Google had been around in high school. On the other hand, it's just as likely I would have been distracted by social media and a host of other things. When I started blogging, you might argue that my scholarly writing decreased, although my popular writing increased. Perhaps in the end I should be grateful that my life was so boring in the early 80s.
We studied English grammar too, as I recall, in Mrs. Gauss' class. I had found English grammar difficult in middle school, but it began to click the second time around. Having Latin also helped. I heard once of a school that taught grammar by teaching Latin and I see the value of the thought. You probably do indeed learn English grammar the most by studying another language. To learn the categories of a new language, you often fill in gaps in your knowledge of English categories.
At the moment I am only remembering one book that we read in Mrs. Gauss' class, Watership Down. It was a social commentary based on a rabbit community. The rabbits who could think abstractly were viewed as a threat to the community. :-)
2. Another class I took was Geometry. The future salutatorian, Christina Carusi, was in the class with me. It was interesting because we were not in the honors section of geometry. We were in class with tenth graders. I've always wondered why. The teacher was very nice, but Christina told me once that she had mostly learned geometry from the questions I asked in class.
I've had a theory for many years that there are geometry people and there are algebra people. I was an algebra person. Algebra came extremely easy for me. I did well in geometry but it was much more challenging. I think it is, to some extent, the difference between a more inductive subject (geometry) and a more deductive one (algebra).
In my mind, these general skills also map to other subjects. Differential calculus was very easy for me, like algebra. Integral calculus was more like geometry--much more difficult. It seems to me that Greek is a lot more like algebra too, and Hebrew more like geometry.
3. I had a very nice teacher, Mrs. Nixon, for honors biology. We dissected a fetal pig, as I recall. The smell of formaldehyde still lingers in my memory. I was never a huge biology fan. I have warmed up to it a bit in more recent days as I tried to help my daughter in biology at Pepperdine. They cancelled the twelfth grade AP biology class before I got there. They dissected a cat. But it was not meant to be.
I believe I had American history with Mr. Packard my freshman year., although it could have been as a sophomore. In those days I had trouble getting history to stick in my mind. I think the main problem was that I had no real point of reference. I'm now in New York and I had the same thought this week that I've had before. How much easier it must be when you study American history and live in the northeast, where all these things took place. I thought the same when I was in England and Europe. How much easier it must be to remember these things when you can go and visit the places they took place.
I am not a detailed person by nature. I need a system, a structure to put minutia into. I remember the structure, the connections far beyond most people. The names for things have always been much harder. I am an off the chart N by Meyers-Briggs. I am a savant at the big picture. I must work hard at the details, and there is a rush when I have assimilated or processed them, as you would expect of what they call the "inferior function." Of course once I have assimilated a detail to the structure, I almost have it forever.
4. My uncle Paul would die in November 1980, my first semester of high school. His mother, Grandma Shepherd, had died the year before in a nursing home in Rossville, Indiana. Paul had developed myocarditis after an infection and had not given his body the proper rest thereafter. My last memory of him was in August of that year after Frankfort Camp. He was mowing tall grass on the site that was to become the new Trinity Wesleyan Church in Indianapolis. Why was he doing that when he had a heart condition?
He died Thanksgiving day. He ate Thanksgiving meal, laid down on the couch for a nap, sat up with a start and then died.
I remember studying for a test over the Civil War, I believe, on the trip to his funeral, the whole way up and back. The Battle of Bull Run. It was so hard to get the minutia to stick. I hadn't seen much snow in Florida. There were a few traces on the ground during the trip.
My uncle Paul's death was hard on my mother. They had been close. In fact, until we moved to Florida, he and his wife Betty had largely moved around Indianapolis as my parents moved. He had such a great heart. He was a selfless soul.
5. One of the final segments of Mr. Packard's class was required by law to be about the evils of communism. I remember him somewhat mocking the requirement. It seemed somewhat antiquated by that time. But it was the first time, I think, that I was exposed to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
We still lived under the threat of nuclear holocaust at that time, but it didn't seem as urgent as it might have in previous years. My family was exuberant at the election of Ronald Reagan, who seemed to make a lot of Americans feel better about the world. In keeping with the Republican background of my family, they had been fans of Richard Nixon and had believed him right up until he resigned. In fact, they almost believed he was innocent after he resigned. We see the same pattern now with the current president.
Similarly, Jimmy Carter was not really considered a Christian by my family. This was before Roe v Wade was fully fused with the Democratic party and the anti-abortion movement had not really taken off yet. It had mostly become tribalism. Republicans are Christians. Democrats are evil. There was a historical basis for it, I believe, in the Civil War, but those origins were now long in the past. It had mostly become a matter of tribe rather than issue, in my opinion.
There was the movie, The Day After, which came out in late 1983, my senior year. It was a pretty scary movie that tapped into my apocalyptic fears. It produced feelings not too dissimilar from those after watching the rapture movies. To this day, apocalyptic series like The Walking Dead get in my head. I dream them while I'm awake.
I wrote a piece at some point for Mr. Packard arguing that the American form of government was the best form of government because it combined all the strengths of the other forms. It had a president, which brought the strengths of a monarchy. The people voted for their representatives, which had the strength of a democracy, but it used representatives, which was far more efficient than everyone voting on everything. Mr. Packard wrote on the paper that I should try to have it published.
In my senior year, I entered a contest with the Daughters of the American Revolution called, "The Voice of Democracy." The winner would read his or her piece on the radio and get a small scholarship. I entered and won the contest with my essay.
6. There were electives I was able to take that I loved in high school. I took two and a half years of Latin in high school with Ms. Mrozek. Little did I know that I would end up getting an MA in Classical Languages and Literature about ten years later. When I entered the University of Kentucky for that program, I had not had any Latin from high school so had to get back up to speed on my own using Wheelock's Latin.
I remember some English test, maybe in the tenth grade, where I had done fine on my exam essays but couldn't remember the title of the book. One of my "friends" who was also in Latin asked Ms. Mrozek what it would tell her if a student didn't know the title of a book over which someone was taking an exam. She said it would tell her they hadn't read the book.
Well, I did read the book. I read every last book I was required to read in high school, even if I had to stay up half the night to do it (and I often did because of procrastination). This is an indication of my mind. I often know what's in a box but I can't remember the name of the box. You might say I have trouble with random access memory. I have never forgotten my mother's name, but it could happen on a really bad day.
I also signed up for electronics with Mr. Brandt. He was a jolly old soul who was quite large. In retrospect I would say it was a vocational training class. We made progress on our own working through the Navy Basic Electricity and Electronics workbooks. They were very simple and very great. I was learning physics from a practical perspective.
I would take three years of it. The final year I built a power supply that would convert wall current to the kind of current that could be used for a circuit board. In those days Radio Shack sold transistors, diodes, capacitors, transformers. It was just as everything was beginning to be put on integrated circuits. Integrated circuits would put thousands of transistors on a small wafer. They would make possible tremendous technological advances... and take all the fun out of electronic hobbying.
The Christmas of my senior year, my parents bought me all the parts to build a hexidecimal computer, including a central processing unit. I went through a Radio Shack book on Digital Electronics. Those things were so stimulating. But as usual I would never build the computer. And what would have been the point?
As a graduation present, my dad bought me a Commodore 64 computer. I never really learned how to use it, unfortunately. All I could do was some BASIC programs like the loop.
10 Print "Eat me."
20 Go to 10
Mr. Brandt had a good sense of humor. I remember him saying, "You know you're in trouble when, your senior year of high school, your dad starts telling you what a nice den your room is going to make."
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Awakening 4
previous post
15. Until the summer before I turned 14, my pastor was my brother-in-law, Dennis Waymire, my sister Patricia's husband. [1] He is a smart guy and through him I grew up with the holiness preaching of the early twentieth century Pilgrim Holiness Church. By the 70s, a good deal of the Wesleyan church had been changing. Women were increasingly wearing pants and cutting their hair. Younger Wesleyans were going to movies even though it technically was against the rules.
I grew up with the values of the earlier Pilgrim Church. I felt like I had an old soul. I felt awkward around my own generation. My parents were older when they had me. Their friends and heroes tended to be older. Three of my grandparents were born in the 1800s. I have sometimes thought of myself as a religious bridge to the early twentieth century.
There were some older Wesleyans in my home church. Fort Lauderdale was a place where some Wesleyans were going to retire. There was Clayton Luce, who was the brother of the founder of the Bluebird Bus company. He was an old time Methodist pastor deeply connected to places like Asbury College and Indian Springs Camp meeting. It was a treat to go out on his boat once. From him I believe I inherited some old volumes of Adam Clarke.
There were the Bradleys, another old time Wesleyan Methodist couple. My dad would become the executor of his will. From him I inherited some of the old time Methodist classics by Daniel Steele and other holiness writers of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
My brother-in-law's preaching was the preaching that these retired preachers remembered from the days of their youth. His library, rooted in the texts of Frankfort Pilgrim College and then Hobe Sound Bible College, were the classic holiness texts. It was in his library, I believe, that I was first introduced to the three volume H. Orton Wiley series on Christian Theology. From my mother's library, who had herself a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Frankfort, I was first introduced to Ralston's Elements of Divinity.
Another couple that attended our church in their retiring years were Ken and Marceil Bostic from Indiana. They would end their days at Colonial Oaks in Marion, where I got to see them in a different phase of my life. They were long time benefactors and supporters of Indiana Wesleyan and were delighted when I went to teach there.
16. I remember my sister telling me at the dugout of the 13 year all star baseball game that she, Denny, and my two nieces were moving to Lakeland to pastor there. That was a little sad. We had every Sunday lunch together with them. Every Sunday night we ate together after evening church, often at our house. I have good memories of the nights my dad would deep fry tacos.
Of course I can also imagine it is nice to have independence. I can imagine it would have been nice to have some Sunday lunches when it was just them.
Baseball was my go-to sport from farm league to little league. It was four or five years of baseball. I was all star every year. My first year was in farm league, and I played catcher all year. Then I played little league for three years, I think. One of my coaches called me "lightning" because I could often make it to first on a line drive to the left side. If they bobbled the ball at all or hesitated in the slightest, I was on base.
At some point I played every position. I only did pitcher one game in farm league. I may have experimented with the infield my second year but I was mostly a left or center fielder. I could get anything anywhere in my zone. One time a ball bounced off the left fielder's mit and I caught it between my legs. Another time in left field I lost it in the sun and got hit in the head.
My mother has memories of her father playing baseball at the property of R. G. Flexon outside Russiaville with all the Frankfort Bible College students there. He apparently had played baseball at Wabash College in the 00s.
17. After Denny left, our next pastor was Bob Weaver. He didn't stay too many years, but our church grew significantly. And he modernized us significantly too. Those were the years of Evangelism Explosion out of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. Those were the days when John Maxwell began to dance with the Wesleyan Church.
I remember Maxwell coming to the Minister's Retreat while he was still in the Church of Christ in Christian Union. He made a joke about how much easier it was to say "Wesssleyan" than "churchofchristinchristianunion." We would use his materials that divided up the church into:
19. My final memory to mention in this period is my attendance of the 1978 youth conference in Urbana, Illinois. I hung out a little with the group from Trinity because my cousin Carl Shepherd was a youth sponsor. I remember Jimmy Johnson talking about what to do when you were tempted to lust after a girl. He suggested praising God. :-)
But as usual I felt rather alone for most of my time there. I think I rode over with the Trinity group and felt really out of place. My parents must have been in Indiana for Christmas, probably staying at my uncle Paul's house. He had a great house with woods in the back.
It seems to me I heard some more secular music I liked on that trip.
[1] For a short time, a man named Richner had been our pastor in Fort Lauderdale. I believe he was a Wesleyan Methodist originally who had been the founding pastor.
15. Until the summer before I turned 14, my pastor was my brother-in-law, Dennis Waymire, my sister Patricia's husband. [1] He is a smart guy and through him I grew up with the holiness preaching of the early twentieth century Pilgrim Holiness Church. By the 70s, a good deal of the Wesleyan church had been changing. Women were increasingly wearing pants and cutting their hair. Younger Wesleyans were going to movies even though it technically was against the rules.
I grew up with the values of the earlier Pilgrim Church. I felt like I had an old soul. I felt awkward around my own generation. My parents were older when they had me. Their friends and heroes tended to be older. Three of my grandparents were born in the 1800s. I have sometimes thought of myself as a religious bridge to the early twentieth century.
There were some older Wesleyans in my home church. Fort Lauderdale was a place where some Wesleyans were going to retire. There was Clayton Luce, who was the brother of the founder of the Bluebird Bus company. He was an old time Methodist pastor deeply connected to places like Asbury College and Indian Springs Camp meeting. It was a treat to go out on his boat once. From him I believe I inherited some old volumes of Adam Clarke.
There were the Bradleys, another old time Wesleyan Methodist couple. My dad would become the executor of his will. From him I inherited some of the old time Methodist classics by Daniel Steele and other holiness writers of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
My brother-in-law's preaching was the preaching that these retired preachers remembered from the days of their youth. His library, rooted in the texts of Frankfort Pilgrim College and then Hobe Sound Bible College, were the classic holiness texts. It was in his library, I believe, that I was first introduced to the three volume H. Orton Wiley series on Christian Theology. From my mother's library, who had herself a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Frankfort, I was first introduced to Ralston's Elements of Divinity.
Another couple that attended our church in their retiring years were Ken and Marceil Bostic from Indiana. They would end their days at Colonial Oaks in Marion, where I got to see them in a different phase of my life. They were long time benefactors and supporters of Indiana Wesleyan and were delighted when I went to teach there.
16. I remember my sister telling me at the dugout of the 13 year all star baseball game that she, Denny, and my two nieces were moving to Lakeland to pastor there. That was a little sad. We had every Sunday lunch together with them. Every Sunday night we ate together after evening church, often at our house. I have good memories of the nights my dad would deep fry tacos.
Of course I can also imagine it is nice to have independence. I can imagine it would have been nice to have some Sunday lunches when it was just them.
Baseball was my go-to sport from farm league to little league. It was four or five years of baseball. I was all star every year. My first year was in farm league, and I played catcher all year. Then I played little league for three years, I think. One of my coaches called me "lightning" because I could often make it to first on a line drive to the left side. If they bobbled the ball at all or hesitated in the slightest, I was on base.
At some point I played every position. I only did pitcher one game in farm league. I may have experimented with the infield my second year but I was mostly a left or center fielder. I could get anything anywhere in my zone. One time a ball bounced off the left fielder's mit and I caught it between my legs. Another time in left field I lost it in the sun and got hit in the head.
My mother has memories of her father playing baseball at the property of R. G. Flexon outside Russiaville with all the Frankfort Bible College students there. He apparently had played baseball at Wabash College in the 00s.
17. After Denny left, our next pastor was Bob Weaver. He didn't stay too many years, but our church grew significantly. And he modernized us significantly too. Those were the years of Evangelism Explosion out of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. Those were the days when John Maxwell began to dance with the Wesleyan Church.
I remember Maxwell coming to the Minister's Retreat while he was still in the Church of Christ in Christian Union. He made a joke about how much easier it was to say "Wesssleyan" than "churchofchristinchristianunion." We would use his materials that divided up the church into:
- Andrews - the evangelists
- Timothys - the disciplers
- Barnabases - the encouragers
- Abrahams - the prayers
I think I may have heard that this was originally an idea of Keith Drury. I could be wrong. I participated, going door to door evangelism with a mentor. "If you died tonight, would you have the assurance of going to heaven?" I don't know that we got a lot of results from that approach.
Weaver started a bus ministry. At its peak, we had two buses going on a Sunday morning. I became involved with one of them. We would do door-to-door visitation on Saturday on eighth ave. Eighth ave was a very poor, mostly black neighborhood at that time, as I remember. On Sunday mornings I was a runner. I would run to the door, knock. Then run back to the bus.
We sang all sorts of fun songs in those days. "Oh, you can't get to heaven... on a 747... oh, you can't get to heaven on a 747. Oh you can't get to heaven on a 747, aren't no airports up in heaven. All my sins are washed away I've been redeemed." We had a pretty vibrant children's church too.
I remember going skating once. Going to a skating rink was a little controversial, I guess mainly because of the kind of people there. I remember them playing secular music at the rink--"Kiss on My List." I remember one time he had a contest and the winning team--maybe whichever group of kids brought the most visitors--got to throw water balloons at him dressed up like a clown.
Bob was also CCCU and from Ohio. I have little doubt but that he had taken a few lessons from John Maxwell. There were of course comments about how the church declined in attendance after he left. Some would say you shouldn't build a church on gimmicks or around a personality.
Of course God gives us all different gifts. He had gifts. I don't think he did anything wrong. There are likely people in the kingdom of God today because of his ministry. He was probably more of a salesman than I would be as a pastor.
But there were other pastors after him under whom the church dwindled to almost nothing. Did they serve God better? Whether we like it or not, some people are more gifted at attracting people to church than others. That doesn't make them more or less spiritual, but their ministries will generally grow more.
"Principled" people often complain about them. "People shouldn't come to church to be entertained." No, but don't complain that no one comes to your church if it's boring. If your services are boring, chances are your church will dwindle. Just the facts, ma'am. Complain to God all you want as your church dwindles and dies.
18. My dad was a little off put by the fact that the pastor mowed his lawn in shorts, but he always cooperated as treasurer with whoever the pastor or district superintendent was. My dad was not someone who particularly liked change. As I've said, like his mother he was a book-keeper by personality. In the army he had ended as a Sergeant Major.
It was always amusing on trips when my mother would see something and suggest a side trip. He was much more interest in staying on task and getting to the destination. But he always did whatever she wanted. He might grumble about going to visit someone out of the way, but he was always glad after he did. In that regard my son Tom is a little like him, although Tom as yet is not a book-keeper. :-)
18. My education from middle school to high school was an incredibly exciting time of learning for me. In the next chapter I'll talk about how much I loved high school. I soaked up everything I could. My brain was a sponge, I remember such incredible stimulation with exciting new idea after idea. After the initial "I want to be a fireman." There was a brief "I want to be a nuclear physicist" then "I want to be a doctor, maybe even a thoracic surgeon."
My Christmas wishes were often books. Gray's Anatomy, The Anatomy Coloring Book, The Unabridged Webster's Dictionary, The Great Ideas set.
I worked in the office in the seventh grade at Sunrise Middle School. I did Junior Achievement (didn't enjoy it as much--we made and sold "frustration pencils"). In the summer after the seventh grade I took violin lessons at Sunrise. In middle school my mother continued to drop me off to school. They didn't want me to have to ride the bus.
Weaver started a bus ministry. At its peak, we had two buses going on a Sunday morning. I became involved with one of them. We would do door-to-door visitation on Saturday on eighth ave. Eighth ave was a very poor, mostly black neighborhood at that time, as I remember. On Sunday mornings I was a runner. I would run to the door, knock. Then run back to the bus.
We sang all sorts of fun songs in those days. "Oh, you can't get to heaven... on a 747... oh, you can't get to heaven on a 747. Oh you can't get to heaven on a 747, aren't no airports up in heaven. All my sins are washed away I've been redeemed." We had a pretty vibrant children's church too.
I remember going skating once. Going to a skating rink was a little controversial, I guess mainly because of the kind of people there. I remember them playing secular music at the rink--"Kiss on My List." I remember one time he had a contest and the winning team--maybe whichever group of kids brought the most visitors--got to throw water balloons at him dressed up like a clown.
Bob was also CCCU and from Ohio. I have little doubt but that he had taken a few lessons from John Maxwell. There were of course comments about how the church declined in attendance after he left. Some would say you shouldn't build a church on gimmicks or around a personality.
Of course God gives us all different gifts. He had gifts. I don't think he did anything wrong. There are likely people in the kingdom of God today because of his ministry. He was probably more of a salesman than I would be as a pastor.
But there were other pastors after him under whom the church dwindled to almost nothing. Did they serve God better? Whether we like it or not, some people are more gifted at attracting people to church than others. That doesn't make them more or less spiritual, but their ministries will generally grow more.
"Principled" people often complain about them. "People shouldn't come to church to be entertained." No, but don't complain that no one comes to your church if it's boring. If your services are boring, chances are your church will dwindle. Just the facts, ma'am. Complain to God all you want as your church dwindles and dies.
18. My dad was a little off put by the fact that the pastor mowed his lawn in shorts, but he always cooperated as treasurer with whoever the pastor or district superintendent was. My dad was not someone who particularly liked change. As I've said, like his mother he was a book-keeper by personality. In the army he had ended as a Sergeant Major.
It was always amusing on trips when my mother would see something and suggest a side trip. He was much more interest in staying on task and getting to the destination. But he always did whatever she wanted. He might grumble about going to visit someone out of the way, but he was always glad after he did. In that regard my son Tom is a little like him, although Tom as yet is not a book-keeper. :-)
18. My education from middle school to high school was an incredibly exciting time of learning for me. In the next chapter I'll talk about how much I loved high school. I soaked up everything I could. My brain was a sponge, I remember such incredible stimulation with exciting new idea after idea. After the initial "I want to be a fireman." There was a brief "I want to be a nuclear physicist" then "I want to be a doctor, maybe even a thoracic surgeon."
My Christmas wishes were often books. Gray's Anatomy, The Anatomy Coloring Book, The Unabridged Webster's Dictionary, The Great Ideas set.
I worked in the office in the seventh grade at Sunrise Middle School. I did Junior Achievement (didn't enjoy it as much--we made and sold "frustration pencils"). In the summer after the seventh grade I took violin lessons at Sunrise. In middle school my mother continued to drop me off to school. They didn't want me to have to ride the bus.
19. My final memory to mention in this period is my attendance of the 1978 youth conference in Urbana, Illinois. I hung out a little with the group from Trinity because my cousin Carl Shepherd was a youth sponsor. I remember Jimmy Johnson talking about what to do when you were tempted to lust after a girl. He suggested praising God. :-)
But as usual I felt rather alone for most of my time there. I think I rode over with the Trinity group and felt really out of place. My parents must have been in Indiana for Christmas, probably staying at my uncle Paul's house. He had a great house with woods in the back.
It seems to me I heard some more secular music I liked on that trip.
[1] For a short time, a man named Richner had been our pastor in Fort Lauderdale. I believe he was a Wesleyan Methodist originally who had been the founding pastor.
Saturday, December 21, 2019
The Awakening 3
previously
12. I remember at some point of middle school thinking about how far away the end of high school was. Six years seemed like an eternity back then. As an adult, six years flies like water down a fall. Now as a parent, the years of my children's lives have flown like a brisk wind. They were little and now they are gone.
I don't have detailed memories of many classes in middle school. I remember Mr. Dallas, a kind old teacher who seemed to have trouble seeing. The students would have all sorts of fun with him. They would ask him if he was going to the Marlin Beach hotel that weekend, a hotel near the beach that I guess had a particular reputation. He didn't seem to know what they were insinuating. Some favored student they called, "Mr. Dallas' boy" (JV King?). Mr. Dallas didn't seem to know they were poking fun at him.
Sunrise Middle School was well integrated. I had a number of African-American teachers--Mr. Dallas for social studies, Mrs. Carter for pre-algebra, my Algebra I teacher also. I remember being especially bored and spending a lot of time drawing and flying spaceships during class.
13. Star Trek was a favorite show to watch in reruns. I would identify with Spock. It wasn't just his interest in science or my love of knowledge. He had trouble managing his emotions. He aimed not to let them control them. He aimed to be perfectly logical and objective.
As good Wesleyans, we did not go to movies. The only movie I went to from birth to seminary was Cinderella as a fifth grade trip, and my mother went with me as a class sponsor, as I recall. When the 1979 Star Trek movie came out, I wasn't able to see it. In fact, I often didn't get to see those big event movies even when they came to TV, because we didn't watch television on Sunday.
Having a TV in the first place was a fairly big deal for my family. My dad's father had the old holiness position that Christians shouldn't have a "boob tube." My father long suspected that his dad didn't visit our home for a long time in Indianapolis because he thought we have a television hiding in my dad's huge stereo/record player. They did come to visit after I was born, I guess.
So we had a small black and white TV. There was a color TV that I ruined by sticking a huge magnet my dad had up to the screen. During high school they would let me watch MASH reruns from the dinner table after a certain point of the dinner.
There were strong anti-violence and language rules. My oldest sisters would turn the volume down if they sensed a gunfight coming on Bonanza or some such show. There's a story of my oldest sister running to stop my dad from turning off the TV when someone fired a gun. She was pleading--"It was in self-defense!" I guess that was a testimony to my father's mother's family, who were all quietists from the Old German Baptist Church. My uncle Eugene was a "man of peace" in WW2. He served in the military but was a conscientious objector to fighting.
But my father had a personal conviction against watching TV on Sunday. He believed he would spend all day watching television on Sunday, football and such. So to set the day aside for worship, we didn't watch TV on Sunday.
Not that there was the variety of options that we now have. There were only four or five channels. The down side was that the really big movies like Star Wars always debuted on a Sunday night. I didn't see Star Wars for many many years, probably into my married life, except perhaps in bits and pieces.
I didn't mind missing Star Wars so much. To me it was pure fantasy. Star Trek imagined a future that was actually possible through developments in science. When flip phones came out, it was not lost on me that this was an instance of life imitating art. Would we have had flip phones if there had not been communicators on Star Trek?
When the movie Star Trek came out, there was an elderly woman in our church who somehow recorded the movie on a cassette tape. I listened to that thing over and over again. I had a good deal of it memorized long before I ever saw it, some years later. "And I'll have you, doctor, as your continued predilection for irrelevancy demonstrates."
14. We did not buy or sell on Sunday. Occasionally my dad would have the opportunity to get extra money from working a disaster, such as one time when a hurricane hit New Orleans or when there would be a lot of hail damage somewhere. But he wouldn't work on Sunday.
He was an insurance adjuster in his early days in Florida and traveled all over south Florida with his Polaroid camera assessing car damage first for Motors Insurance Corporation (MIC) and then for GMAC. His office was initially on Federal Highway not far from the old Searstown and Port Everglades.
One time a man who was drunk walked into his office and asked for money. "What you need," my dad said, "was to stop drinking." The drunk man responded, "Thank you for those kind words." My dad immediately felt bad for the man, who clearly wasn't in control of his life. He took him to a diner nearby and bought him a meal.
We were allowed to stop at a restaurant if we found ourselves traveling to Indiana on a Sunday. I felt like my dad secretly enjoyed being able to eat out on Sunday. Early in my marriage, my wife and I always felt like my dad was disappointed when we actually cooked for him on Sunday. "If the ox is in the ditch" on the Sabbath the rule went, you could get him out. So my dad was not an absolutist on these old holiness rules. He made exceptions.
I also came to think the "free will offering" was funny at Frankfort Camp. They needed to provide meals on Sunday for the people, but they couldn't charge them because that would be selling food on Sunday. So they had a free-will offering. Sunday meals were free but there was a sign there with the cost so you could give a "donation." :-)
12. I remember at some point of middle school thinking about how far away the end of high school was. Six years seemed like an eternity back then. As an adult, six years flies like water down a fall. Now as a parent, the years of my children's lives have flown like a brisk wind. They were little and now they are gone.
I don't have detailed memories of many classes in middle school. I remember Mr. Dallas, a kind old teacher who seemed to have trouble seeing. The students would have all sorts of fun with him. They would ask him if he was going to the Marlin Beach hotel that weekend, a hotel near the beach that I guess had a particular reputation. He didn't seem to know what they were insinuating. Some favored student they called, "Mr. Dallas' boy" (JV King?). Mr. Dallas didn't seem to know they were poking fun at him.
Sunrise Middle School was well integrated. I had a number of African-American teachers--Mr. Dallas for social studies, Mrs. Carter for pre-algebra, my Algebra I teacher also. I remember being especially bored and spending a lot of time drawing and flying spaceships during class.
13. Star Trek was a favorite show to watch in reruns. I would identify with Spock. It wasn't just his interest in science or my love of knowledge. He had trouble managing his emotions. He aimed not to let them control them. He aimed to be perfectly logical and objective.
As good Wesleyans, we did not go to movies. The only movie I went to from birth to seminary was Cinderella as a fifth grade trip, and my mother went with me as a class sponsor, as I recall. When the 1979 Star Trek movie came out, I wasn't able to see it. In fact, I often didn't get to see those big event movies even when they came to TV, because we didn't watch television on Sunday.
Having a TV in the first place was a fairly big deal for my family. My dad's father had the old holiness position that Christians shouldn't have a "boob tube." My father long suspected that his dad didn't visit our home for a long time in Indianapolis because he thought we have a television hiding in my dad's huge stereo/record player. They did come to visit after I was born, I guess.
So we had a small black and white TV. There was a color TV that I ruined by sticking a huge magnet my dad had up to the screen. During high school they would let me watch MASH reruns from the dinner table after a certain point of the dinner.
There were strong anti-violence and language rules. My oldest sisters would turn the volume down if they sensed a gunfight coming on Bonanza or some such show. There's a story of my oldest sister running to stop my dad from turning off the TV when someone fired a gun. She was pleading--"It was in self-defense!" I guess that was a testimony to my father's mother's family, who were all quietists from the Old German Baptist Church. My uncle Eugene was a "man of peace" in WW2. He served in the military but was a conscientious objector to fighting.
But my father had a personal conviction against watching TV on Sunday. He believed he would spend all day watching television on Sunday, football and such. So to set the day aside for worship, we didn't watch TV on Sunday.
Not that there was the variety of options that we now have. There were only four or five channels. The down side was that the really big movies like Star Wars always debuted on a Sunday night. I didn't see Star Wars for many many years, probably into my married life, except perhaps in bits and pieces.
I didn't mind missing Star Wars so much. To me it was pure fantasy. Star Trek imagined a future that was actually possible through developments in science. When flip phones came out, it was not lost on me that this was an instance of life imitating art. Would we have had flip phones if there had not been communicators on Star Trek?
When the movie Star Trek came out, there was an elderly woman in our church who somehow recorded the movie on a cassette tape. I listened to that thing over and over again. I had a good deal of it memorized long before I ever saw it, some years later. "And I'll have you, doctor, as your continued predilection for irrelevancy demonstrates."
14. We did not buy or sell on Sunday. Occasionally my dad would have the opportunity to get extra money from working a disaster, such as one time when a hurricane hit New Orleans or when there would be a lot of hail damage somewhere. But he wouldn't work on Sunday.
He was an insurance adjuster in his early days in Florida and traveled all over south Florida with his Polaroid camera assessing car damage first for Motors Insurance Corporation (MIC) and then for GMAC. His office was initially on Federal Highway not far from the old Searstown and Port Everglades.
One time a man who was drunk walked into his office and asked for money. "What you need," my dad said, "was to stop drinking." The drunk man responded, "Thank you for those kind words." My dad immediately felt bad for the man, who clearly wasn't in control of his life. He took him to a diner nearby and bought him a meal.
We were allowed to stop at a restaurant if we found ourselves traveling to Indiana on a Sunday. I felt like my dad secretly enjoyed being able to eat out on Sunday. Early in my marriage, my wife and I always felt like my dad was disappointed when we actually cooked for him on Sunday. "If the ox is in the ditch" on the Sabbath the rule went, you could get him out. So my dad was not an absolutist on these old holiness rules. He made exceptions.
I also came to think the "free will offering" was funny at Frankfort Camp. They needed to provide meals on Sunday for the people, but they couldn't charge them because that would be selling food on Sunday. So they had a free-will offering. Sunday meals were free but there was a sign there with the cost so you could give a "donation." :-)
Friday, December 20, 2019
Awakening 2
The previous post
_______________
5. In the middle school years, the brain reaches a point of new development. I attribute the crazy behavior of middle schoolers to these brain developments. Abstract reasoning develops. Children are able to think in ways they haven't thought before. They have more strength than they had before. Their ability to exercise their own wills seems to reach new heights.
I suspect that middle schoolers sometimes think that, because they are having a thought for the first time, they assume no one else has ever had that thought. They assume their parents have never experienced what they are experiencing. They assume their parents don't know anything and have never learned what they are realizing and learning for the first time.
I have thought of this with cheating. A middle or high schooler (or even college student) might think, "I'm going to cheat in x way and the teacher/professor won't know the difference." Now sometimes a person might get by with it. But often a person gets caught, the thought not occurring to them that the same tricks have probably been tried on the teacher a thousand times by previous students... who also thought they were having the same bright idea for the first time.
I have found this with plagiarism even among adult students. If I might be frank, a professor usually notices if a paper suddenly starts sounding way more intelligent than the student's papers normally do. A beginner at a subject may think they know more or have greater insight than they do. An actual expert can spot the blind spots immediately. (Of course I shake my head at what I consider the blind spots of many scholars too, and I'm sure I have them.)
So when a paper from a student who does not typically have great insight suddenly becomes profound, a professor starts searching around to see if the student has stolen material from some other source. All it usually takes is a Google search. I can't tell you how often a poor thinker gets caught at plagiarism because their paper suddenly becomes uncharacteristically good. This reflects a lack of self-awareness on the part of the student.
This dynamic is true on every level. We often do not realize when our thoughts are defective. A more experienced or more insightful person can see it, but we often can't. This is always the case with God, who patiently endures our embarrassing yet arrogant ignorance.
6. Unfortunately, the middle schooler these days may be right that their parent doesn't know anything. A vast number of adults seem to be children with a bank account. They have not matured beyond their high school days. They just got old enough to have the freedom to do whatever they want with the money they have. No one is grading their papers, but they are still getting Ds without knowing it.
Many adults have forgotten what it was like to grow up and so simply repeat the mistakes of their parents. You occasionally come across a parent in a public store talking to a child as if the child is developmentally old enough to have a clue what the parent is saying. To the child it must amount to something like, "Blah, blah, blah, smack." Even pastors sometimes over-theologize the actions of young children and see carnal intent at resistance to a parent's will.
One of the most insightful classes I took in college was developmental psychology in May term at Southern Wesleyan with Hal Robbins. The brain develops. The way many Christian parents engage two year olds and the way they overlay it theologically with thought of sinful natures more likely reveals their own ignorance and parental inadequacies than the theological state of the child. It actually can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as they create wrathful children on the basis of their own lack of understanding. And they do it in the name of Christ.
7. So middle school is often rough. My year of substitute teaching (1996-1997) was a rough year as I mostly found myself in middle schools in south Florida. If you're a bully, middle school often goes fine. I still remember the names of the two middle school boys who, one Halloween night, forcibly extracted my candy and mask from me.
As I said, I did not particularly distinguish myself in elementary school. I got all good grades but I wasn't put with the gifted kids in the transition to middle school. My mother used to say that she was glad I didn't have that pressure. One of the brightest of my classmates burned out in early high school.
So they put me in the ordinary math class in the sixth grade. I had perfect scores. I also seem to remember some kid behind me using my ears as motorcycle handles from time to time. I seem to remember a lot of ear flicking in those days. Lunch often involved toe stomping contests amongst friends.
We came to a point of decision at the end of the first quarter. The math teacher thought I should be in the advanced math track. We came to a point of decision. I didn't want to move. I wanted the status quo. We fear change. But I wouldn't be on track for honors courses in high school if I didn't change ships now.
It was a hard decision for my mother, but they switched me. It was an important fork that completely changed my future. I got a few Fs initially, and then resumed As. Then it was pre-algebra in the seventh grade, algebra 1 in the eighth, geometry in the ninth, algebra 2 in the tenth, trig and analytic geometry in the eleventh, and calculus in the twelfth.
8. I believe it was during middle school that I was first exposed to scientific creationism. At some point Henry Morris would come to Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church for a creation-evolution debate. I was excited by the subject, disappointed by him. I felt he spent more time quoting people than actually presenting evidence.
I was being formed by both fundamentalism and the public schools to think like a scientist. Interestingly, creationism claimed to play on the same playing field as modern science. That is to say, it accepted the rules of scientific investigation but argued that science pointed to creationism. Josh McDowell would soon take the same approach to apologetics--Evidence That Demands a Verdict.
These days were long before I was exposed to Karl Barth or neo-orthodoxy, which rejected evidence or argument as a basis for faith. My faith-formation assumed the central role of evidence, logic, and the scientific method. Morris and McDowell argued that the evidence, following the normal rules of inductive and deductive reasoning, compelled faith. This was also the approach of C. S. Lewis, who wrote books like Mere Christianity with arguments for God.
I have retained this epistemology despite my exposure to Barth and then later post-liberalism. I do not believe that the evidence demands the verdict of faith, but I believe that faith is reasonable. I believe that, in general, we should follow the evidence to its most likely conclusion. In fact, I believe that evangelical Christianity, because it has so often taken contrarian positions counter to solid expert positions (often without expertise itself) has not only discredit its claims to be interested in truth but it has made evangelicals highly susceptible to charlatans selling conspiracy theories.
I remember in Mr. Nelson's eighth grade science class coming up with what I thought was a clever argument. [1] I remember thinking, "Wow, that's a really smart thought." It was like the first time I thought I had a really clever thought on my own.
The thought was, "If humans evolved from apes, why do we still have apes?" The classmate I was arguing with got the teacher's attention. "Mr. Nelson..." He responded in a pastoral tone. "Well, evolution doesn't really argue that we evolved from apes but that both apes and humans evolved from a common ape-like ancestor." My first clever thought turned out not to be very clever at all.
It was also in eighth grade science that I learned from the girl next to me the Rapper's Delight--"I said a hip, hop, the hippie to the hippie, the hip hip a hop and you don't stop a rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie the beat."
There was no secular music really in my home. My dad listened to country gospel (the Saturday evening radio show was called "God's Country" on Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church radio). The only secular music I really knew I heard in elevators and public spaces. We did not think positively of the Beatles (John Lennon's murder was not consequential in my home, nor the death of Elvis).
I remember the whole backward masking hype over Stairway to Heaven. Living in the shadow of Dr. D. James Kennedy's church, my teens were spent at one of the centers of the culture wars and the forging of the Moral Majority. I grew up in the shadow of the rising abortion movement, anti-globalism, scientific creationism, and fundamentalist apologetics.
9. I had shop, home ec, and art in middle school. In shop I learned how to use a band saw, how to sand things, what the basic tools were. In home economics I learned to sow and made an apron. In art I made a clay rhinoceros (and its baby) that I only threw out finally in our move to New York.
The art room, as I recall, had a dark room that was really neat. You went into a chamber whose door was cylindrical. You turned it to get in and it did not let any light into the dark room because by the time you could rotate the opening around there was no longer any opening to the classroom. I must have developed a picture in there, although I don't remember what of.
10. I had not participated in any of the summer teen camps of the Florida District. At twelve years old (1979), I finally did. My next street over friend Steve Corso went as well. My brother-in-law Dennis Waymire was in charge of the camp, which made it a more comfortable experience for a painfully shy boy.
I remember being alone. I was often alone. There were people around me. They were in groups talking to each other. A girl I had a crush on from my home church was there, with her boyfriend from my home church. I remember the last night. It seemed everyone was having fun with their groups. I was alone.
These days, I'm pretty good with alone. I am rarely alone. I have a wife and family. But I no longer have a problem with alone. In fact, it has been a little funny in the past when someone will find me sitting reading or writing at a restaurant by myself and feel the need to invite me to sit with them or feel like they need to join me. I am good with alone.
The last night of that camp was one of the more unique experiences of my life. The final worship service was interrupted because one of the teens was behaving strangely. The leaders of the camp, including my brother-in-law, were called to help. We were all told to pray.
The word that came back to us that the young man was demon-possessed. For example, he had shown an unusual strength to resist several men. He was particularly resistant to prayer. I would hear later that a doctor had also suggested that what was happening was not an ordinary mental event. I will not draw a conclusion on what was really going on, but it certainly was a memorable event!
11. That was also the summer we went to the Philippines to visit my sister Juanita. It was my first time out of the country. I was impressed by the squatter's huts and the missionary compound. The missionaries in residence were the Meeks and the Turners. We went up to the Bible school at Rosales--I remember how in just a couple days a creek went from something I could step over to a river you wouldn't want to try to cross. We went up to another Bible college at Sinipsip, where I believe it was mildly snowing because of the elevation.
By the way, the only time it snowed in Fort Lauderdale was 1974. I was in the second grade. We all went outside from class to see it.
We also traveled west to the China Sea. I remember the discomfort of peeing into a hole in the ground. Then I slipped and got a little poop on my three piece suit. I think it was a creamy green suit.
I remember talking about how culturally insensitive some visitors from the States were. They expected the standards of living that we have here. Some expected to be served, perhaps not even realizing that they looked down on the people as inferior. It's a kind of ignorant soft prejudice. You poor people. We have come to help you, in our greatness and benevolence.
This is, by the way, a danger of short term missions trips. First, Americans sometimes think that they are superior and are the great benefactors. Second, they have no real sense of what a burden they can be to the people they visit, how unreasonable their expectations can be. In the meantime, the people probably understand their visitors better in some ways than those visitors understand themselves. Issues of race are the same today--majority culture often is ignorant of its own ignorance although it is overwhelmingly obvious to the minority culture in its midst.
That trip was probably the beginning of an understanding of how culture works, and it set me up well for a life of travel and living abroad.
[1] I had Mr. Nelson in the sixth grade as well. I remember feeling grown up in the sixth grade when we changed classes every hour, as opposed to being with the same teacher in the same classroom most of the day.
_______________
5. In the middle school years, the brain reaches a point of new development. I attribute the crazy behavior of middle schoolers to these brain developments. Abstract reasoning develops. Children are able to think in ways they haven't thought before. They have more strength than they had before. Their ability to exercise their own wills seems to reach new heights.
I suspect that middle schoolers sometimes think that, because they are having a thought for the first time, they assume no one else has ever had that thought. They assume their parents have never experienced what they are experiencing. They assume their parents don't know anything and have never learned what they are realizing and learning for the first time.
I have thought of this with cheating. A middle or high schooler (or even college student) might think, "I'm going to cheat in x way and the teacher/professor won't know the difference." Now sometimes a person might get by with it. But often a person gets caught, the thought not occurring to them that the same tricks have probably been tried on the teacher a thousand times by previous students... who also thought they were having the same bright idea for the first time.
I have found this with plagiarism even among adult students. If I might be frank, a professor usually notices if a paper suddenly starts sounding way more intelligent than the student's papers normally do. A beginner at a subject may think they know more or have greater insight than they do. An actual expert can spot the blind spots immediately. (Of course I shake my head at what I consider the blind spots of many scholars too, and I'm sure I have them.)
So when a paper from a student who does not typically have great insight suddenly becomes profound, a professor starts searching around to see if the student has stolen material from some other source. All it usually takes is a Google search. I can't tell you how often a poor thinker gets caught at plagiarism because their paper suddenly becomes uncharacteristically good. This reflects a lack of self-awareness on the part of the student.
This dynamic is true on every level. We often do not realize when our thoughts are defective. A more experienced or more insightful person can see it, but we often can't. This is always the case with God, who patiently endures our embarrassing yet arrogant ignorance.
6. Unfortunately, the middle schooler these days may be right that their parent doesn't know anything. A vast number of adults seem to be children with a bank account. They have not matured beyond their high school days. They just got old enough to have the freedom to do whatever they want with the money they have. No one is grading their papers, but they are still getting Ds without knowing it.
Many adults have forgotten what it was like to grow up and so simply repeat the mistakes of their parents. You occasionally come across a parent in a public store talking to a child as if the child is developmentally old enough to have a clue what the parent is saying. To the child it must amount to something like, "Blah, blah, blah, smack." Even pastors sometimes over-theologize the actions of young children and see carnal intent at resistance to a parent's will.
One of the most insightful classes I took in college was developmental psychology in May term at Southern Wesleyan with Hal Robbins. The brain develops. The way many Christian parents engage two year olds and the way they overlay it theologically with thought of sinful natures more likely reveals their own ignorance and parental inadequacies than the theological state of the child. It actually can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as they create wrathful children on the basis of their own lack of understanding. And they do it in the name of Christ.
7. So middle school is often rough. My year of substitute teaching (1996-1997) was a rough year as I mostly found myself in middle schools in south Florida. If you're a bully, middle school often goes fine. I still remember the names of the two middle school boys who, one Halloween night, forcibly extracted my candy and mask from me.
As I said, I did not particularly distinguish myself in elementary school. I got all good grades but I wasn't put with the gifted kids in the transition to middle school. My mother used to say that she was glad I didn't have that pressure. One of the brightest of my classmates burned out in early high school.
So they put me in the ordinary math class in the sixth grade. I had perfect scores. I also seem to remember some kid behind me using my ears as motorcycle handles from time to time. I seem to remember a lot of ear flicking in those days. Lunch often involved toe stomping contests amongst friends.
We came to a point of decision at the end of the first quarter. The math teacher thought I should be in the advanced math track. We came to a point of decision. I didn't want to move. I wanted the status quo. We fear change. But I wouldn't be on track for honors courses in high school if I didn't change ships now.
It was a hard decision for my mother, but they switched me. It was an important fork that completely changed my future. I got a few Fs initially, and then resumed As. Then it was pre-algebra in the seventh grade, algebra 1 in the eighth, geometry in the ninth, algebra 2 in the tenth, trig and analytic geometry in the eleventh, and calculus in the twelfth.
8. I believe it was during middle school that I was first exposed to scientific creationism. At some point Henry Morris would come to Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church for a creation-evolution debate. I was excited by the subject, disappointed by him. I felt he spent more time quoting people than actually presenting evidence.
I was being formed by both fundamentalism and the public schools to think like a scientist. Interestingly, creationism claimed to play on the same playing field as modern science. That is to say, it accepted the rules of scientific investigation but argued that science pointed to creationism. Josh McDowell would soon take the same approach to apologetics--Evidence That Demands a Verdict.
These days were long before I was exposed to Karl Barth or neo-orthodoxy, which rejected evidence or argument as a basis for faith. My faith-formation assumed the central role of evidence, logic, and the scientific method. Morris and McDowell argued that the evidence, following the normal rules of inductive and deductive reasoning, compelled faith. This was also the approach of C. S. Lewis, who wrote books like Mere Christianity with arguments for God.
I have retained this epistemology despite my exposure to Barth and then later post-liberalism. I do not believe that the evidence demands the verdict of faith, but I believe that faith is reasonable. I believe that, in general, we should follow the evidence to its most likely conclusion. In fact, I believe that evangelical Christianity, because it has so often taken contrarian positions counter to solid expert positions (often without expertise itself) has not only discredit its claims to be interested in truth but it has made evangelicals highly susceptible to charlatans selling conspiracy theories.
I remember in Mr. Nelson's eighth grade science class coming up with what I thought was a clever argument. [1] I remember thinking, "Wow, that's a really smart thought." It was like the first time I thought I had a really clever thought on my own.
The thought was, "If humans evolved from apes, why do we still have apes?" The classmate I was arguing with got the teacher's attention. "Mr. Nelson..." He responded in a pastoral tone. "Well, evolution doesn't really argue that we evolved from apes but that both apes and humans evolved from a common ape-like ancestor." My first clever thought turned out not to be very clever at all.
It was also in eighth grade science that I learned from the girl next to me the Rapper's Delight--"I said a hip, hop, the hippie to the hippie, the hip hip a hop and you don't stop a rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie the beat."
There was no secular music really in my home. My dad listened to country gospel (the Saturday evening radio show was called "God's Country" on Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church radio). The only secular music I really knew I heard in elevators and public spaces. We did not think positively of the Beatles (John Lennon's murder was not consequential in my home, nor the death of Elvis).
I remember the whole backward masking hype over Stairway to Heaven. Living in the shadow of Dr. D. James Kennedy's church, my teens were spent at one of the centers of the culture wars and the forging of the Moral Majority. I grew up in the shadow of the rising abortion movement, anti-globalism, scientific creationism, and fundamentalist apologetics.
9. I had shop, home ec, and art in middle school. In shop I learned how to use a band saw, how to sand things, what the basic tools were. In home economics I learned to sow and made an apron. In art I made a clay rhinoceros (and its baby) that I only threw out finally in our move to New York.
The art room, as I recall, had a dark room that was really neat. You went into a chamber whose door was cylindrical. You turned it to get in and it did not let any light into the dark room because by the time you could rotate the opening around there was no longer any opening to the classroom. I must have developed a picture in there, although I don't remember what of.
10. I had not participated in any of the summer teen camps of the Florida District. At twelve years old (1979), I finally did. My next street over friend Steve Corso went as well. My brother-in-law Dennis Waymire was in charge of the camp, which made it a more comfortable experience for a painfully shy boy.
I remember being alone. I was often alone. There were people around me. They were in groups talking to each other. A girl I had a crush on from my home church was there, with her boyfriend from my home church. I remember the last night. It seemed everyone was having fun with their groups. I was alone.
These days, I'm pretty good with alone. I am rarely alone. I have a wife and family. But I no longer have a problem with alone. In fact, it has been a little funny in the past when someone will find me sitting reading or writing at a restaurant by myself and feel the need to invite me to sit with them or feel like they need to join me. I am good with alone.
The last night of that camp was one of the more unique experiences of my life. The final worship service was interrupted because one of the teens was behaving strangely. The leaders of the camp, including my brother-in-law, were called to help. We were all told to pray.
The word that came back to us that the young man was demon-possessed. For example, he had shown an unusual strength to resist several men. He was particularly resistant to prayer. I would hear later that a doctor had also suggested that what was happening was not an ordinary mental event. I will not draw a conclusion on what was really going on, but it certainly was a memorable event!
11. That was also the summer we went to the Philippines to visit my sister Juanita. It was my first time out of the country. I was impressed by the squatter's huts and the missionary compound. The missionaries in residence were the Meeks and the Turners. We went up to the Bible school at Rosales--I remember how in just a couple days a creek went from something I could step over to a river you wouldn't want to try to cross. We went up to another Bible college at Sinipsip, where I believe it was mildly snowing because of the elevation.
By the way, the only time it snowed in Fort Lauderdale was 1974. I was in the second grade. We all went outside from class to see it.
We also traveled west to the China Sea. I remember the discomfort of peeing into a hole in the ground. Then I slipped and got a little poop on my three piece suit. I think it was a creamy green suit.
I remember talking about how culturally insensitive some visitors from the States were. They expected the standards of living that we have here. Some expected to be served, perhaps not even realizing that they looked down on the people as inferior. It's a kind of ignorant soft prejudice. You poor people. We have come to help you, in our greatness and benevolence.
This is, by the way, a danger of short term missions trips. First, Americans sometimes think that they are superior and are the great benefactors. Second, they have no real sense of what a burden they can be to the people they visit, how unreasonable their expectations can be. In the meantime, the people probably understand their visitors better in some ways than those visitors understand themselves. Issues of race are the same today--majority culture often is ignorant of its own ignorance although it is overwhelmingly obvious to the minority culture in its midst.
That trip was probably the beginning of an understanding of how culture works, and it set me up well for a life of travel and living abroad.
[1] I had Mr. Nelson in the sixth grade as well. I remember feeling grown up in the sixth grade when we changed classes every hour, as opposed to being with the same teacher in the same classroom most of the day.
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
The Awakening 1
For the previous post, see here.
_____________
1. It was a rather strange event, during a winter camp meeting at Brooksville in January 1977. We went to the morning service. We had lunch. I took a nap in the modular home of Lucien and Ruby Brown. I woke up in a start, terrified. It was an awakening.
The friendship of my parents with the Browns went back to Indiana. They were older than my parents, old time Pilgrims. They came and visited us in Fort Lauderdale a few times. My dad was a pretty busy man with his work (we used to joke about the old song, "When you coming home, Dad?" and then later, "When you coming home, son?") Lucien was retired and so had the time to work on a tree house for me.
The first tree house he built was in the birch tree in the front side yard. Later he would build a fort for me where my swing set had been.
I went to sleep blissfully ignorant. I woke up terrified for my soul. I don't know whether some brain connection finally connected. Some might say it was conviction by the Holy Spirit. I went to sleep fairly carefree. I woke up in a state of fear for my soul that would continue off and on into my time at seminary over ten years later.
2. It is probably not quite right to say that I did not have some terror prior to that day. In 1970, Hal Lindsey had published Late Great Planet Earth, the precursor to the Left Behind series of the 90s. We had watched two reel to reel films [1] at church on Sunday evenings in the 70s based on Lindsey's work--A Thief in the Night and A Distant Thunder. I found these apocalyptic films terrifying as a child.
In the first film, a wife is talking to her husband when he stops responding. His electric razor is still in the sink but he is gone. The rapture has happened. All Christians have disappeared from the earth. Those who are left now face the seven year tribulation.
I've already mentioned that my grandfather Shepherd was a dispensationalist prophecy teacher. This particular approach originated in the 1800s with a British man by the name of John Darby. It is quite ingenious in the way it stitches together disparate passages from across the Bible. I have often told students that I wouldn't dare tell God not to fulfill Scripture however God might want. After all, some of the fuller meanings in the New Testament are only tangentially related to what those passages originally meant in the Old Testament.
However, Darby's system has little to do with what those passages meant originally. There is no clear place where a seven year tribulation is taught. Revelation 7:14 does not say in Greek "the Great Tribulation" but these are they who have come out of great tribulation. You only get to the number seven when you add the 3.5s of Revelation 12 and then equate it to a supposedly missing week in Daniel 9.
Similarly, there is no singular "antichrist" in 1 John. The beast of Revelation is equated with the "man of lawlessness" in 2 Thessalonians, but is this correct? And are these figures from the first century rather than a yet unfulfilled future? The New Testament never says the temple will be rebuilt. The prophecies of a rebuilt temple in the Old Testament were fulfilled in 516BC and there is no place for a temple after Christ's atonement (Rev. 21:22).
This goes back to what I said about having a lot to work through when I began to study the Bible seriously.
3. The films terrified me. For a season I would not let my mother out of sight at Kmart, for fear she would be taken in the rapture and I would be left behind. Even playing outside on the sidewalk I would occasionally go back inside to make sure my mother was still there. One day in the sixth grade I was so fearful that they sent me home for the day (I may have had a slight fever too).
My mother gave me a little box of Scripture promises. There were verses like Joshua 1:9 and Jeremiah 29:11. They didn't help a lot but they helped a little. This is something I have come to believe about these sorts of mental states. No reason will help much. But perhaps these sorts of things help a tiny bit. They are greatly appreciated in retrospect.
My soul experienced great torment and fear off and on for the next decade. I was afraid to sleep by myself. I was afraid of the dark. I would pray over and over, "Lord, please forgive me if I've sinned. Lord, please forgive me if I've sinned." I could not think of any sin act I had done, unless it was a lack of faith shown by the fact that I asked God to forgive my sins over and over again.
What if I couldn't remember my sins? Then I couldn't ask forgiveness for them! If I couldn't ask forgiveness for them specifically, was I doomed never to find forgiveness and thus inevitably faced hell!!! These were the kinds of irrational torments of my soul in those days.
What if I didn't read my chapter of the Bible for the day? What if I didn't have devotions? What if I didn't pray before I went to sleep? I often failed at these and thus guilt heaped upon guilt.
4. I was obsessed with having a moment I could call "getting saved" for sure. There was a song at Frankfort Camp meeting--"It was on a Monday, somebody touched me." We were supposed to stand up on the day we were saved. I felt guilty for standing up on "It was on a Sunday," because I really didn't know. I figured it probably was on a Sunday... that is, if I was truly saved! Eventually they added a verse, "I don't know what day it was but somebody touched me."
I wreaked havoc even in college with this doubt. I horrified my girlfriend not only with uncertainty over whether I loved her or not--it was an intellectual question and I wanted to be honest. I did not know what love was. After we broke up I decided that I did. :-)
But I also horrified her with the question of my salvation. One day on the ride home from church I told her I wasn't sure if I was saved or not and spent the whole lunch time in the student center praying for some sort of assurance. A verse that didn't help much but helped (that my mother gave me) was "If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things" (1 John 3:20). I don't know if that's what John meant but I like the interpretation.
There was a moment in my teens, going up the outside stairs of the house in Fort Lauderdale, that I felt a peace. That's the moment I pegged my salvation on. Of course I now think I was saved the whole time. Theologically, I do not believe there has been a moment in my life when God would not have taken me into eternal life. Before I was awakened, God would have taken me in my ignorance. I have moved toward him every moment sense.
I will stop short of saying that all this torment was Satan, although it could have been. I suspect it was something developmental. I'm just glad it's over.
[1] I got certified in middle school to run a reel to reel projector. :-)
_____________
1. It was a rather strange event, during a winter camp meeting at Brooksville in January 1977. We went to the morning service. We had lunch. I took a nap in the modular home of Lucien and Ruby Brown. I woke up in a start, terrified. It was an awakening.
The friendship of my parents with the Browns went back to Indiana. They were older than my parents, old time Pilgrims. They came and visited us in Fort Lauderdale a few times. My dad was a pretty busy man with his work (we used to joke about the old song, "When you coming home, Dad?" and then later, "When you coming home, son?") Lucien was retired and so had the time to work on a tree house for me.
The first tree house he built was in the birch tree in the front side yard. Later he would build a fort for me where my swing set had been.
I went to sleep blissfully ignorant. I woke up terrified for my soul. I don't know whether some brain connection finally connected. Some might say it was conviction by the Holy Spirit. I went to sleep fairly carefree. I woke up in a state of fear for my soul that would continue off and on into my time at seminary over ten years later.
2. It is probably not quite right to say that I did not have some terror prior to that day. In 1970, Hal Lindsey had published Late Great Planet Earth, the precursor to the Left Behind series of the 90s. We had watched two reel to reel films [1] at church on Sunday evenings in the 70s based on Lindsey's work--A Thief in the Night and A Distant Thunder. I found these apocalyptic films terrifying as a child.
In the first film, a wife is talking to her husband when he stops responding. His electric razor is still in the sink but he is gone. The rapture has happened. All Christians have disappeared from the earth. Those who are left now face the seven year tribulation.
I've already mentioned that my grandfather Shepherd was a dispensationalist prophecy teacher. This particular approach originated in the 1800s with a British man by the name of John Darby. It is quite ingenious in the way it stitches together disparate passages from across the Bible. I have often told students that I wouldn't dare tell God not to fulfill Scripture however God might want. After all, some of the fuller meanings in the New Testament are only tangentially related to what those passages originally meant in the Old Testament.
However, Darby's system has little to do with what those passages meant originally. There is no clear place where a seven year tribulation is taught. Revelation 7:14 does not say in Greek "the Great Tribulation" but these are they who have come out of great tribulation. You only get to the number seven when you add the 3.5s of Revelation 12 and then equate it to a supposedly missing week in Daniel 9.
Similarly, there is no singular "antichrist" in 1 John. The beast of Revelation is equated with the "man of lawlessness" in 2 Thessalonians, but is this correct? And are these figures from the first century rather than a yet unfulfilled future? The New Testament never says the temple will be rebuilt. The prophecies of a rebuilt temple in the Old Testament were fulfilled in 516BC and there is no place for a temple after Christ's atonement (Rev. 21:22).
This goes back to what I said about having a lot to work through when I began to study the Bible seriously.
3. The films terrified me. For a season I would not let my mother out of sight at Kmart, for fear she would be taken in the rapture and I would be left behind. Even playing outside on the sidewalk I would occasionally go back inside to make sure my mother was still there. One day in the sixth grade I was so fearful that they sent me home for the day (I may have had a slight fever too).
My mother gave me a little box of Scripture promises. There were verses like Joshua 1:9 and Jeremiah 29:11. They didn't help a lot but they helped a little. This is something I have come to believe about these sorts of mental states. No reason will help much. But perhaps these sorts of things help a tiny bit. They are greatly appreciated in retrospect.
My soul experienced great torment and fear off and on for the next decade. I was afraid to sleep by myself. I was afraid of the dark. I would pray over and over, "Lord, please forgive me if I've sinned. Lord, please forgive me if I've sinned." I could not think of any sin act I had done, unless it was a lack of faith shown by the fact that I asked God to forgive my sins over and over again.
What if I couldn't remember my sins? Then I couldn't ask forgiveness for them! If I couldn't ask forgiveness for them specifically, was I doomed never to find forgiveness and thus inevitably faced hell!!! These were the kinds of irrational torments of my soul in those days.
What if I didn't read my chapter of the Bible for the day? What if I didn't have devotions? What if I didn't pray before I went to sleep? I often failed at these and thus guilt heaped upon guilt.
4. I was obsessed with having a moment I could call "getting saved" for sure. There was a song at Frankfort Camp meeting--"It was on a Monday, somebody touched me." We were supposed to stand up on the day we were saved. I felt guilty for standing up on "It was on a Sunday," because I really didn't know. I figured it probably was on a Sunday... that is, if I was truly saved! Eventually they added a verse, "I don't know what day it was but somebody touched me."
I wreaked havoc even in college with this doubt. I horrified my girlfriend not only with uncertainty over whether I loved her or not--it was an intellectual question and I wanted to be honest. I did not know what love was. After we broke up I decided that I did. :-)
But I also horrified her with the question of my salvation. One day on the ride home from church I told her I wasn't sure if I was saved or not and spent the whole lunch time in the student center praying for some sort of assurance. A verse that didn't help much but helped (that my mother gave me) was "If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things" (1 John 3:20). I don't know if that's what John meant but I like the interpretation.
There was a moment in my teens, going up the outside stairs of the house in Fort Lauderdale, that I felt a peace. That's the moment I pegged my salvation on. Of course I now think I was saved the whole time. Theologically, I do not believe there has been a moment in my life when God would not have taken me into eternal life. Before I was awakened, God would have taken me in my ignorance. I have moved toward him every moment sense.
I will stop short of saying that all this torment was Satan, although it could have been. I suspect it was something developmental. I'm just glad it's over.
[1] I got certified in middle school to run a reel to reel projector. :-)
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