More on myth...

A good myth, like a good map, enables the wanderer to survive, perhaps even to flourish, in the wilderness.  To this end, classical education, like Hebrew education, carefully preserves the best myths within its tradition and insists that each new generation of students learn these myths, imprisoning them in their heart...[O]ne's chances of survival in a wilderness are greater when one is not alone...Myths provide each member of society with something dignify and lend coherence to his life, as well as something of quality he can share with the other members of the community...
~David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, pp.29-30

The uncharted wilderness of mythopoeic imagination...

I have experienced one of those lovely confluences in my reading this week. One of those times when two separate and seemingly unrelated things form a new whole in my little brain. First, here is a lovely quote from David Hicks: 

It has become almost commonplace to divide ancient consciousness thus between the logos and the mythos, but when fully understood, this division is recognized as timeless-- a precondition, as it were, of the human mind. No one exists who does not in some measure possess these complementary defenses against an unintelligible and hostile world.  The mythos represents man's imaginative and, ultimately, spiritual effort to make this world intelligible; the logos sets forth his rational attempt to do the same.  What is not hedged off in the severely symmetrical German garden of reason belongs to the uncharted wilderness of mythopoeic imagination-- well, perhaps not entirely uncharted, for even the most rational man spends most of his life wandering in this wilderness, learning its ways and doing his best to follow whatever rudimentary maps come to hand...
~David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, p.29

This put me in mind of something recently read by Paul Tripp:

The second thing that distinguished Adam and Eve from the rest of creation [after the fact that we were created to be revelation receivers] was that they were created to be interpreters.  people are meaning-makers; we have been created with the marvelous ability to think.  We are always organizing, interpreting and explaining what is going on inside us and around us...When we say that God designed human beings to be interpreters, we are getting to the heart of why human being do what they do. Our thinking conditions our emotions, our sense of identity, our view of others, our agenda for the solution of our problems, and our willingness to receive counsel from others. That is why we need a framework for generating valid interpretations that help us respond to life appropriately.  only the words of the Creator can give us that framework.
~Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change (Resources for Changing Lives), pp.41, 43

In some mythopoeic way, this gets to the heart of why I teach.  Since we are built to be interpreters, and we search for meaning, it seems important to guide the young in that important search.  What a calling it is to teach! (And what a lovely word: mythopoeic...)

The theoretical life...

Aristotle defends the theoretical life as the true end of education and the source of happiness. One does not require more than the bare necessities of life to achieve happiness in thought, nor is the active life of the mind dependent  upon  the inherently unequal endowments of nature. One need be neither strong nor handsome, well-born nor gregarious, nay, not even brilliant to participate happily in the theoretical life.  The theoretical life completes the individual, holding him against the warmth of the divine spark in his nature and making sense of an existence otherwise consumed by the infinite wishing of one thing for the sake of another.  indeed, the theoretical life is a life of virtue, so long as we mean by virtue all that the Greek arete expresses: the life that knows and reveres, speculates and acts upon the Good, that loves and reproduces the Beautiful, and that pursues excellence and moderation in all things...
~David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, p.21

Beethoven's 5th, Salsa style...

Which just goes to show you, Gentle Reader, that excellent music transcends culture and style...



HT: CB

And now for something completely different...

HT: TC

On memorizing Scripture...

HT: TC

Self-absorption and submission pondered...

In visiting with many friends in many places and looking at the struggles they face, I have been struck lately by how universally difficult relationships within Christ's church seem to be in this fallen world.  Why is it our most difficult situations are often not from enemies outside the church, but from brethren within?  As I have been pondering this, I can across this passage in what promises to be an excellent book: Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change (Resources for Changing Lives) by Paul David Tripp. 

In our self-absorbed culture, we need to see the grandeur of this [God's] kingdom.  We cannot shrink it to the size of our needs and desires.  It takes us far beyond our personal situations and relationships. The king came not to make our agendas possible, but to draw us into something more amazing, glorious, and wonderful than we could ever imagine...
~p.4

This left me pondering my own self-absorption, and wondering how many of my relational problems with my brothers and sister in Christ are more a matter of self-absorption and personal agenda than they are matters of the glory of Christ and His kingdom.  Tripp continues:

As we listen to eternity, we realize that the kingdom is about God radically changing people, but not in the self-absorbed sense our culture assumes.  Christ came to break our allegiance to such an atrophied agenda and call us to the one goal worth living for. His kingdom is about the display of his glory and people who are holy. This is the change he came, lived, died, and rose to produce.  This is the life and work he offers us in exchange for the temporal glories we would otherwise pursue.  This kingdom agenda is intended to control our hearts and transform our lives.
~p.5

And as I pondered this, I came across the following video with Randy Alcorn that just seemed to dove-tail with all these thoughts.  The darkest time we experience is the alienation of losing the support and love of our brothers and sisters in Christ, but that is not an excuse for abandoning them and moving on.  There is submission and lack of self-absorption to be learned there.

I will keep pondering these thoughts, and working out my salvation with fear and trembling.  May you be on that same journey, Gentle Reader.


What is the darkest or most difficult experience you have had to date? from Randy Alcorn on Vimeo.


HT: TC

Happiness is....

The purpose of education is not the assimilation of facts or the retention of information, but the habituation of the mind and body to will and act in accordance with what one knows...According to Aristotle, the perfect end of education will be an activity that is engaged in for its own sake, complete and sufficient unto itself.  Aristotle calls the activity for which education prepares man-- happiness.
~David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, p.20

Christ as treasure...

HT: TC

Dogma as art...

...[A] classical education presents the right way, not with the intention of stifling future inquiry, but as a necessary starting point for dialogue.  In this sense, dogma can resemble art: it confronts man with some truth about himself, a kind of truth that might have taken him a lifetime of error and misdirection to arrive at for himself, but ultimately, a truth he must test in his own experience of life if he is to appropriate it for himself and benefit from the confrontation.
~David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, p.19

Wrestling, demons and the gospel...

HT: TC

An inconceivable montage...

Read the whole article here: a must for us The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure or The Princess Bride (Special Edition) fans.

HT: JH

9-11 remembered

HT: JS

Lord Jesus, comfort me...

HT: TC

Good thoughts for a new school year...

HT:  CR

Real men...

HT: TC

Infinite...

This morning I take a break from Mr. Hicks's worthy tome, and share instead something I read in my quiet time this morning.  It brought me up short and found me wanting.  It is a from a book entitled Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions.  The portion of the prayer that really caught my attention this morning said:

Thy blood is the blood of incarnate God, its worth infinite, its value beyond all thought.  Infinite must be the evil and guilt that demands such a price.
Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions p.41

I am only a little part of that "infinite evil", but how often I go through my days without ever a thought to my corruption being the cause of Christ's suffering, or the costliness of my redemption.  But this prayer ends with the hope that gives me a place to stand:

Yet thy compassions yearn over me, thy heart hastens to my rescue, thy love endures my curse, thy mercy bore my deserved stripes.  Let me walk humbly in the lowest depths of humiliation, bathed in thy blood, tender of conscience, triumphing gloriously as an heir of salvation.
~Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions p.41 

May we indeed, Gentle Reader, walk in this way.

Modern education in a nutshell...

Whatever his reasons for rejecting the classical curriculum, [the modern educator's]  classrooms suffer from its absence in three notable ways. in them, human experience tends to be dealt with narrowly and reductively, broken down into isolated, unconnected units; students ignorant of what questions to ask are presented with uninvited and consequently meaningless informtion; and there is no basis for making moral and aesthetic judgments or for attaching learning to behavior.
~David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, p.19

Competent to judge...

Classical inquiry possesses three essential attributes. The first of these is general curiosity...Second, one responds to these questions by forming imaginative hypotheses...Third, one completes the inquiry by devising methods for testing the hypothesis...This bent of mind allows the educated man to go on educating himself or extending the realms of knowledge for his fellows...This is the person competent to judge what the experts say without being an expert himself.
~David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, p.18

Classical education is not, preeminently, of a specific time or place. It stands instead for a spirit of inquiry and a form of instruction concerned with the development of style through language and of conscience through myth. the key word here is inquiry. Everything springs from the special nature of the inquiry. The inquiry dictates the form of instruction and establishes the moral framework for thought and action...
~David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, p.18