Gardener

A few weeks ago I received my copy of the Calvin Spark which contained a wonderful interview with philosopher Alvin Plantenga. Among other things, Plantenga was asked what qualifications he would look for in a new president for Calvin College, and he mentioned three. One I've forgotten but the other two struck me as really significant. His second qualification was that the president have a thorough knowledge of and commitment to the Reformed tradition. His first qualification was that the president have "a deep love and respect for the life of the mind" (I'm quoting from memory). I felt a sort of thrill when I read this and thought what a wonderful thing it was that someone still recognized that colleges are more than institutes for job-training, that the most wonderful thing that can happen at a college occurs when a young person suddenly become genuinely excited about an idea, can't wait to dig into it more deeply. This morning I was reading a book called Beauty...

The eight of us sat around the table, our chili bowls empty, the salads gone, but still sipping wine as we waited for the old year to disappear. Someone mentioned favorite old hymns, so I whipped out the eight copies of the Old Blue Psalter we keep on the bottom shelf of a china closet, passed them around and our guests began calling out their favorites—most of them songs that are not found in the Gray Psalter (the one that helped kill psalm singing). We sang some of the psalms and hymns from Old Blue until someone suggested “Peace Be Still.” But, of course, that’s not in the Blue Psalter. It’s in the Let Youth Praise Him book. Now, if you are not familiar with the Let Youth Praise Him, it is probably because you are under sixty or over seventy-five or did not go to a CSI Christian School, for the LYPH was the songbook in Christian schools between 1950 and 1965. But if you are in that age-bracket and went to Christian school, you will probably be a little jealous of what ensued after ...

Here's a story from NPR that reveals a pretty bsic flaw in our system of government: "Corporations don't lobby Congress for fun. They lobby because it helps their bottom line. Getting a regulation gutted or a tax loophole created means extra cash for the corporation. But getting laws changed can be very expensive. How much money does a corporation get back from investing in a good lobbyist? It's a messy, secretive system so it was always hard to study. But in 2004, economists found a bill so simple, so lucrative, that they could finally track the return on lobbying investment. The American Jobs Creation Act benefited hundreds of multinational corporations with a huge, one-time tax break. Without the law, companies that brought profits earned abroad back to the U.S. had to pay a tax rate of 35 percent. With the law, that rate dropped to just over 5 percent. It saved those companies billions of dollars. In a recent study, researchers Raquel Alexander and Susan Scholz cal...

On Fridays I go to read with my friend Charlie, and this week we read through much of the poetry in Purpaleanie and other Permutations by Sietze Buining (English prof Stanley Wiesma), a minor Christian Reformed classic that came out in 1978. Purpaleanie was all the rage in CRC circles 30 years ago and eventually was shaped into a lovely play by Dordt theatre prof Vern Meyer. Purpaleanie is a collection of free (very free) verse poems told by a young Sioux County farm boy of the ‘40’s celebrating and critiquing the rural Christian Reformed Dutch-American folk of his time. One poem that I did not remember from my earlier readings of the collection (and viewing of the play) struck me as most profound. I find the “lesson” of the poem, the non-arguing acceptance of criticism by the pastor, to be a potent challenge to my own way of dealing with unfair criticism. It is titled “Diplomacy” but I would have called it “Grace.” Here it is: Diplomacy Prayer and fasting went into the critique ...