Gardener

One of the issues in the just past election that concerned me most was the Iowa Water and Land Legacy Amendment, an amendment that would allocate three-eights of one percent of sales tax to the conservation and maintaining of Iowa's grasslands, wetlands, waterways and forests as well as the conserving of its agricultural soils. To me it seemed like a no-brainer(and apparently to the Iowa Senate also which approved it by a 49-1 vote) since Iowa ranks 47th out of 50 states in conservation spending, has extremely polluted water ways, and is likely to lose more than 230,000 acres of habitat by 2012. Thankfully, the amendment passed, but the majority in my county opposed the amendment. And I can only think of two possible reasons, neither of them very persuasive. Perhaps some voters were opposed to any possible increase in taxes, even 3/8ths of one per cent of sales tax, and even if the money is used for the common good--things like hiking, fishing, hunting, health, and flood protec...

I'm still reading the third volume of C. S. Lewis's Collected Letters (on page 300 with about 1100 pages to go.) Many of the letters are thoughtful responses to his readers--but not necessarily interesting to me. But occasionally one comes upon a letter that is sheer poetry, as this one to a Nell Berners-Price: Dear Nell, I am sorry to hear about your Mother. In a way you were most fortunate to have had her so long (mine died when I was a little boy), yet in another way it probably makes it worse, for you have lived into the period when the relationship is really really reversed and you were mothering her: and of course, the more we have had to do for people the more we miss them--loving goes deeper than being loved. But it must be nice for her. Getting our of an old body into a new life--like stripping off tiresome clothers and getting into a bath--must be a most wonderful experience. And here's another Lewis quote I ran into reading a book on imigration by Soerens and...

Major league baseball has given us two morality tales this season, one heart-warming, one unsettling, both profound. The first was the almost “perfect” game thrown by Detroit Tiger pitcher Armando Galarraga. With two outs in the ninth inning of that game, a hard hit ground ball resulted in a close play at first base and umpire Jim Joyce called the runner safe. So Galarraga lost his perfect game. However most observers saw that the runner was clearly out—and TV replays gave concrete visible evidence to the fact. Here was a situation ripe for harsh language, bitterness, and recrimination on one side and stonewalling defensiveness on the other. But it did not come—at least not from the two key players in this little drama, Galarraga and Joyce. Galarraga’s immediate response was a shy, incredulous smile, followed a short time later by the comment that nobody’s perfect and everybody makes a mistake from time to time. Joyce admitted he had blown the call, apologized personally to Gala...

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...