The path of a tune...

One morning last week I was droving home from taking Matthew to his driver's ed class. I had the radio on and heard this musical interlude between Morning Edition stories. (I hope you'll follow the link, scroll down to the song titles and listen to If I Know a Song of Africa, Karen's Theme III). That's the melody that made me almost pull off the road as stears stung my eyes, remembering....

The music is from an old favorite movie of mine, Out of Africa. The movie won the 1985 Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Original Score, and a host of other awards. Because we had just returned from living in Kenya for three and a half years, the movie meant a lot more to us than it would have if we had never lived there. We had become familiar with the story of Karen Blixen, for whom a town, Karen, on the outskirts of Nairobi was named. We had visited her lovely home, now a museum, on the "farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills." We had hiked and picnicked in the Ngong Hills and even had American friends, still living in Nairobi, who were extras in the movie. Karen Blixen's story is quite sad, really, and the movie of course portrays a time in colonial history that is not particularly admirable. Nonetheless, the sweepingly beautiful cinematography and lush, romantic musical score make the movie worth seeing.

Hearing that music made me think of Kenya, of morning drives to the Nairobi Game Park, the pungent smell of burning garbage mixed with the sweet fragrance of bouganvillea blossoms, the sight of acres and acres of tea across the hillsides at Limuru, Kawangware market, our friend Mary, riding the train at night to Mombasa, and so much more. Sometimes my heart just aches to go back to Africa.

After hearing the music that morning, I decided to reread the book, Out of Africa, which is Karen Blixen's memoir of living in Kenya. (Her pseudonym was Isak Dinesen) The movie is loosely based on the book, and as is usually the case, the true story in the book is more compelling than the movie. I am still reading and marking favorite quotes.

This one, in which Blixen relates her experiences as a doctor to the native people on her farm, captures an understanding of God which we moderns quite often miss. I didn't remember this quote from reading the book long ago and was intrigued with the way in which Blixen arrived at the truth it communicates:

I knew very little of doctoring, just what you learn at a first aid course. But my renown as a doctor had been spread by a few chance lucky cures, and had not been decreased by the catastrophic mistake that I had made.

If now I had been able to guarantee my patients a recovery in each single case, who knows but that their circle might have thinned out? I should then have attained a professional prestige...but would they still have been sure that the Lord was with me? For of the Lord they knew from the great years of drought, from lions on the plains at night, and the leopards near the houses when the children were alone there, and from the swarms of grasshoppers that would come on to the land, nobody knew where-from, and leave not a leaf of grass where they had passed. They knew Him, too, from the unbelievable hours of happiness when the swarm passed over the maizefield and did not settle, or when in Spring the rains would come early and plentiful and make all the fields and plains flower and give rich crops. So that this highly capable doctor...might be after all a sort of outsider where the real great things in life were concerned.

Just coming out of a few days of personal distress, I have been thinking on God in the drought and the rain, the grasshoppers that land and those that pass over, the trial and the triumph, the difficult and the delightful. To see Him and fathom the "real great things in life" I must embrace them all, declaring with the Psalmist, "Whatever the Lord pleases, he does,in heaven and on earth,in the seas and all deeps. Blessed be the Lord from Zion,he who dwells in Jerusalem! Praise the Lord!" Psalm 135:6,21

Didn't know that's the place I'd be going when that haunting melody filled my car the other morning. God led along the path of a tune, through an old memoir, to timeless truth and gave me balm and courage along the way. Yes, praise the Lord.

Quiet

The last few days have been quiet here on the blog. Last Monday, I was riveted to the radio to hear the unfolding story of the tragic Virginia Tech shootings. At one point on Monday afternoon, I had to hear my college son, Jonathan's, voice. I was listening to an interview with a student who spoke of calling her parents on her cell phone in the midst of the chaos. In that moment, like many other parents of college age students, I imagined receiving such a call or one even worse. My throat tightened and tears welled up in my eyes. Irrational as it was since my son is far, far from Virginia Tech, I needed to hear his voice. I called and got his voice mail. He very sweetly called me back as soon as he heard my message and we spoke for a few minutes. That was all I needed...just to hear him.

In his weekly email to the church, Coty wrote:

On Monday, Cho Seung-Hui methodically killed 32 people at Virginia Tech before killing himself. This mass murder is disturbing in part because it doesn’t fit into any of our normal categories of thought. Race, class, age, nationality, religion – none of these factors made a difference to Cho. He was an equal opportunity killer. His victims include both professors and fellow students. Ranging in age from 18 to 76, nine of the 32 were born outside the fifty states. Their home countries include China, Indonesia, India, Egypt, Romania, and Peru. Young, old, black, white, foreign, native, Moslem, Christian – there was no pattern. Their only link: a public university in the Virginia mountains.

Thus, for those of us with children studying at colleges and universities away from home, the news was particularly chilling: Such institutions seem relatively safe. Were we wrong to think so? The rush to find some error, some flaw in the university administration’s response to Cho’s earlier behavior and the early-morning murders is driven in part by this desire to isolate the case, to say, “My college, my university, my son’s university, is different – this could never happen there.”

But it could happen...anywhere...at any time. Coty continued by highlighting three Biblical mandates for us in the aftermath of the VT tragedy:

First: Weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15). A time will come for analysis, for figuring out if there are lessons for public policy or for other institutions of higher education. But now, those who suffer need our prayers, our comfort. So may we pray for those who are suffering now.

Second: Ask yourself: Am I ready to die? Not one of those 32 victims woke up on Monday thinking this would be the last day of his or her life. Not one anticipated that plans for the next week, for summer vacation, for graduation and retirement, would never come to pass. Life is precarious. We hang by a thread. We could die today, tomorrow, next week. We never know. So: Are you at peace with God? Have you kept short accounts with relatives and friends? What must you do before you die? To whom must you be reconciled?

Third: Remember the big picture. Do this in three ways:

a) Remember other, regular tragedies. The Virginia Tech shootings especially touch my heart, since I spent 18 years studying or teaching on college campuses, and since my oldest son Jonathan is presently at college. But these 32 deaths are only one small part of the daily tragedy of life in this sin-filled world. Consider:

* In the four days since the shootings, more people have died in the US as a result of underage alcohol abuse than were killed by Cho Seung-Hui.
* On average, 40 people are murdered every day somewhere in the US. We don’t hear about many of them, since they happen in ones and twos. But every day, families lose loved ones; people die senselessly.
* For the last four years, on average more than four times as many people die in Darfur, Sudan, every day as were killed at Virginia Tech. Every day. Men, women, and children. 140 people a day. In a region with a population about the same as North Carolina’s.
* Worldwide, on average more than 2500 little children die every day of malaria. And these deaths are largely preventable with a modest investment of money. (Coty read this aloud to us at the table the morning he wrote it and as he read these last two items, he and I were choked up with tears. When you've lived in Africa, as we have, you've seen the suffering of warfare and disease).

We live in a tragic world. Here in the US, we can go for long periods of time pretending otherwise. But that doesn’t change the fact of tragedy. Jesus Himself tells us, “In this world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). So use this unusual tragedy to open your eyes and your prayers for the victims of ongoing tragedies around the world.

b) As you remember other, regular tragedies, remember the greatest tragedy. Paul tells us, “To live is Christ, to die is gain.” Jim Elliott said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” As much sorrow as we feel when a loved one dies, if he or she is entering the presence of Christ, dying is gain. The greatest tragedy is for those who do not know Christ, and are thus objects of God’s wrath, without hope. So use this unusual tragedy as a springboard to take more seriously the command to be Jesus’ witnesses in your own neighborhood, in your workplace, in this city, and to the ends of the earth.

c) Finally: Remember the big picture by remembering Who is in control. The same Pilate who mingled Gentile blood with Jewish sacrifices condemned Jesus to death. He was responsible for this evil, unjust deed. And yet God had foreordained that Jesus must die (Acts 4:27-28). God was pleased to crush His Son (Isaiah 53:10). He could have stopped Pilate at any time. Yet He did not. He intended this evil act by an evil man for the very good purpose of redeeming those from every tribe and tongue and nation to Himself.

We continue to pray for the families of students and faculty who were slain, for the family of the shooter, and for the Virginia Tech community. May God bring comfort and healing for the hurting and strength and wisdom for those who are ministering to them.

I'm still feeling a bit quiet, but look forward in the next day or so to sharing some precious moments of peace and beauty in another beautiful garden that I visited last week. So...more soon.

Would you have stopped?

Yesterday morning instead of reading from our chapter book, Coty read this whole article from the Washington Post magazine online. I highly recommend that you read it and view the embedded videos. It tells the story of a Washington Post test to see what commuters in a DC metro station would do when confronted with beautiful music played in an unexpected setting by one of the world's finest classical musicians. The Post reports:

"There was never a crowd, not even for a second. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played (yes, Joshua Bell, who has won three Grammys, made his professional debut at age 14 with the Philadelphia Orchestra, who five years later, received an Avery Fisher Career Grant for promising American classical performers, and just now in April, received the Avery Fisher Prize, honoring achievement in a career—Joshua Bell who has played for crowned heads and whose talents can command $1,000 a minute) seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look."

All those people passed without stopping to listen to incredibly beautiful music. I keep asking myself, would I have stopped? Would you??

Andrew had a cello lesson that afternoon and we enjoyed discussing the incident with Janis, Andrew's always delightful and insightful teacher. She said that Bell is a very friendly and interesting person. He's played with the Charlotte Symphony a couple of times and she's had the opportunity to meet him. She hadn't read the whole Post article so we look forward to talking about it with her more next week.

In the meantime, we are going to enjoy some of Bell's music in our own home. If you want to learn and hear more, check out Joshua Bell's website.

Reading at the breakfast table

If you call our house before 9:00 AM, you will probably be sent to voice mail. Sorry about that, but we are reading. We gather around the table and while I finish fixing breakfast or getting out the cereal boxes, Coty starts reading our current chapter book. I sit down and eat and then pull out my knitting. After the chapter book, we read the Bible and pray. We talk a little about prayer concerns and everyone prays. For the last year or so, we've been praying through our church directory. When we get to the end of the list, we start over again...but this post is not mainly about prayer, but about our chapter book reading.

One day last week, we finished A Tale of Two Cities. Over dinner on the deck that evening, we were talking about it and our discussion led to memories of other Dicken's novels we've read and then on to other books. I proposed starting a list. I grabbed paper and pen and began jotting down titles as fast as the boys mentioned them. The conversation lasted all evening. We moved from the deck to the screen porch and made phone calls to our two oldest, who are far away, to probe their memories. One recollection led to a string of others and the list grew. It continues to grow. I've been keeping it on the hutch in the kitchen and adding to it as we remember more titles. A word to the wise here - if you are a reading family, go now and buy a hard bound journal and start recording the books you read together. You will treasure that little record. I sure wish I'd done that long ago!

I am not including homeschool read-alouds in this list. This is simply the breakfast table list. These are the books that Coty reads to us. He is, in fact, the driving and sustaining force, the guardian of breakfast reading in our home. He eats early so he can read to us while we eat. And what a reader he is! We get accents, voices (he almost went hoarse doing Magwich from Great Expectations), and correct pronunciation of difficult words, unless they are French, and then Andrew helps out.



We have read novels, biographies, great literature and children's books. We have been encouraged, inspired, enlightened, and taught. We have learned history, geography, science, and even a little math. We 've had a few flops and a few books that we wondered if they would ever end...whew, glad that's over!

Mostly, we have grown as individuals and woven our lives together as a family with this reading. It was extremely precious the other night to hear the boys talking about the books - ones they loved and ones they didn't - and to hear someone say something like, "Oh, yeah, I remember that. I loved that book!" and to have five voices concur. Yes, this reading weaves our family fabric together tightly. You might not laugh if someone mocks anger and shouts "Guts!!" at you, but we will all chuckle because we know Ramona thinks its a bad word.

I could go on about how much better this has been for us than television, the computer, or even good movie adaptations of great books. I could tell you how much they have learned to think and how their imaginations have been nurtured by reading aloud. What in their mind's eye does Madame Defarge look like as she sits in the wine shop knitting? How do they think John Paton felt up in that tree all night as he listened to angry cannibals hunting for him? Why do some of us always cry when we read Patricia St. John?

Here then, is the list. It is far from complete. It is heavy on books from recent years and heavy on novels. It is light on historical fiction and biographies of famous Americans because we read those aloud in our school time. I have only categorized it broadly and not always listed authors. If you are curious about a particular book, leave me a comment. The list will continue to grow and we will continue to read. I expect that even after our children are all grown and gone, you will find Coty and me at the breakfast table reading, and the phone ringing on....

Novels - what you would call literature:
Great Expectations; David Copperfield (twice); A Tale of Two Cities; A Christmas Carol; The Lord of the Rings trilogy; The Hobbit; The Talisman; Fair Maid of Perth; Ivanhoe; The Heart of Midlothian; Alice in Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass; Pilgrim's Progress; Pilgrim's Progress:Christiana; The Holy War (also by Bunyan); Red Badge of Courage; The Old Man and the Sea; the first book of Les Miserables; Tom Sawyer; Huckleberry Finn; Silas Marner

Children's chapter books:
Call it Courage; Strawberry Girl; Roller Skates; Lyddie; Johnny Tremain; Heidi; Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates; all the Haffertee Hamster books; The Jungle Books; The Jungle Doctor books; Treasures of the Snow; I Needed a Neighbor; Three Go Searching; Twice Freed; The Tanglewood Secret; The Secret Garden; The Railway Children; Five Little Peppers and How they Grew; My Side of the Mountain; all the Narnia books; Ramona books by Beverly Cleary; The Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome; several books by Madeline L'engle

Missionary biographies and autobiographies:
Bruchko; The Good Seed; And the Word Came with Power; The Autobiography of John Paton; Mountain Rain; The Little Woman; Green Leaf in Drought Time; Mrs. Howard Taylor's biography of the Stams in China; Shadow of the Almighty; William Carey; Adoniram Judson

Other biographies:
Never Give In (Winston Churchill); Carry a Big Stick (Theodore Roosevelt); biographies of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson; The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin; selections from the John Marshall biography by Smith; Aim High, Dave Johnson's Story; Ed Viesture's No Shortcuts to the Top

Doctrine, devotion, and the like:
Redemption Accomplished and Applied; Don't Waste Your Life; A Godward Life Book 2; The Moral Compass; The Book of Virtures

Miscellaneous:
Ring of Bright Water; Eats, Shoots, and Leaves; Haroun and the Sea of Stories; The Royal Road to Romance:Travel stories by Richard Haliburton; Longitude; short stories by various authors including Poe, Flannery O' Connor, O'Henry and others

The current breakfast chapter book is Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, perhaps the most well known Nigerian novelist. Never heard of him. Now you have! And after that?? Well, suffice it to say that the list will grow on...