Gardener

C. S. Lewis writes the following in a letter to someone who had responded to his space trilogy, and especially That Hideous Strength: " When I've said that there is no allegory in it, and that there's nothing at all about the Second Coming in T.H.S., you may reply 'Well, that is what the books mean to an intelligent reader and what does it matter what you meant them to mean?--a point of view I wholly agree with." What startling words from an author, and especially one as opinionated and traditional as Lewis. Most authors, it seems to me, are far more critical of readers who don't see what they intended them to see or see what they did not intend to put into the novel. Yet here's Lewis saying he wholly agrees that it is the intelligent reader who creates the meaning from the text, and implying that the author surrenders any right to criticize the reader the moment he publishes the novel. I was just as surprised to hear my former colleague Jim Schaap ...

What is it? I don’t mean what do American corporations tells us it is, or politicians, for that matter. Nor do I mean what I in my most exalted or pious moments think it should be. But what is it when I take a deep hard look at what I most value in life. Well, here goes. It’s a spouse who loves you and shares her/himself with you, family—three and four generations, meaningful work, freedom from want, freedom to speak one’s opinions even when they conflict with these of fellow citizens, a church family and meaningful worship--especially preaching, a culture where justice and law make life more or less safe, a community where friendliness and courtesy happen as a matter of course, good books to read and movies to watch and music to hear and perform, good talks over good food and wine with good friends and family. That's it, off the top of my heart--and head. What would you say?

"Boys are now taught to regard Ambition as a virtue. I think we shall find that up to the XVIIth Century, and back into pagan times, all moralists regarded it as a vice and dealt with it accordingly." C. S. Lewis I have been reading The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, vol. 3, a book that goes to 1800 pages and provides, in addition to brilliant and startling statements, the opportunity for arobic exercise while lying on one's back in bed reading, holding the four pound volume in the air with both hands for about twenty minutes each night. The statement above made me sit up and take notice. Ambition a vice? It sounds positively unamerican. Have we turned morality upside down over the last two centuries? I checked what the Oxford English Dictionary says about ambition and found that every definition carried the notion of an ardent desire to rise to high position or attain rank, influence or preferment. W. R. Alger writes that "Aspiration is pure upward desire f...

In my last Plumbline I told some stories about people I had encountered who were adamantly opposed to the very notion of global warming and human involvement in it. In each case the reasons were pretty superficial or even ridiculous. Today I want to try to express as fairly as I can the serious reasons people give for being indifferent to global warming. I want to be fair to them, but I also will try to refute those reasons. As I listen to and read the arguments of those opposed to the idea of human involvement in global warming, I encounter two main arguments, one has to do with science and the other with business and lifestyle. First, the area of business and lifestyle. For those who have a strong commitment to capitalism, the “free” market system, and the lifestyle that we associate with this system, a war against CO2 emissions will be perceived negatively. Why? Because, they say, it will have a negative effect on American business. That’s why organizations like the American Enterpr...

I spent February of this year in Florida, hanging around with old folks most of the time—after all, I am 67 and an official member of AARP. One of the things I was told by an elderly acquaintance in Florida was that the whole idea of global warming had come from an 8th grader’s term paper. And he believed it. I asked him if he ever watched NASA launch spacecraft to go to the space station—since we could see those launches from our trailer park. Yes, he said, he had and they were pretty amazing: the huge ball of fire hurling the spacecraft into the heavens and then in no time at all disappearing, only to return from outer space precisely on time two weeks later after having traveled hundreds of thousands of miles and then landing as neatly as you might pull your car into the garage. Amazing! The precision of it, the marvelous science. Well, I said to him, do you realize that NASA, the same organization that put men on the moon and now sends them to the space station, is the organ...

It is no surprise to discover that two-thirds of American phlanthropy actually goes to institutions (whether museums, orchstras or churches) that primarily serve the rich--essentially, the wealthy underwriting their own cultural esperienes with the benefit of a tax deduction--or that the futililty of American urban life has given rise to misogynist, nihilistic forms of music that simply underwrites broken horizons of masculinity and femininity with the alleged credibility of "the street." It is also no surprise that most money is made on Wall Street providing financial services to people who already have extraordinary amounts of money, that most advertisements target a thin (literally and figuratively) slice of prosperous young people, and that much of the rich world's research into new medicines target the disorders that disproportionately affect the rich world. Nor is it a surprise that in the name of economic and political empowerment, dictators like Pol Pot and Robe...

Just about every year that we've lived here, I have been able to cut a bunch of pussy willow branches to bring as a bouquet to my wife--and every year she's thrilled with them. Those pictured here are past their prime for cutting, but beautiful in their golden fuzziness. For the rest of the year they will be absolutely ordinary, eliciting no wolf-whistles or ooh-lah-lahs, but right now they are lovely. Every year I cut them back so they do not block the sun from my vegetable garden, but they don't seem to mind. They come right back the next year. And these apricot blossoms, are so pregnant with blossoms I expect they will burst into blossom tomorrow if it stays warm. This apricot tree is about 10 years old and in ten years we have had about 4 apricots. Apricots need to cross pollinate, and our other apricot tree either dies every other year, necessitating our purchase of a new one, or blossoms later than this one. But we live in the hope of a lush crop some day. Maybe this ...