Mansfield Park by Jane Austen ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Henry and Fanny by Sherwood Smith (e-book) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Emma by Jane Austen ⭐️⭐️⭐️
12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Guernsey and Literary Potato Peel Pie Society ⭐️⭐️
The Gifts of Imperfection ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Soul of Shame ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Saturday, June 22, 2019
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen and Henry and Fanny by Sherwood Smith
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen and Henry and Fanny by Sherwood Smith
Fanny is taken from her home of meager means at age 10 to live with her wealthy aunt and uncle at Mansfield Park. There she is mistreated by all but her elder cousin Edmund. Fast forward to when the cousins are of marrying age and Sir Thomas is away, and a sophisticated, charismatic brother and sister duo comes to the nearby parsonage: Henry and Mary Crawford. The young people decide to put on a play together, which could be seen as either a delightful occupation or a shameful excuse to be inappropriately flirtatious. Henry shows himself to Fanny to be untrustworthy as he trifles with the affections of two of her cousins, and Mary tries to win the affections of Edmund, whom she is falling for. Shortly after, Henry decides to pursue Fanny, first carelessly, but then finds himself quite in love with her. Fanny not only can't trust him, but is in love with Edmund, her only friend and protector from childhood. In the end, Henry shows himself to be truly unsteady as he has an affair, and Mary proves to be morally reprehensible as she only faults Henry for being caught, so these two are clearly no longer marriage candidates for Edmund or Fanny. Fanny, who has never hesitated in her devotion for Edmund, eventually does get to marry him.
Many say that Mansfield Park is more social commentary and criticism than romance, and seeing it in this light has helped me warm up to it. The first few sentences of MP reveal Austen's main focus in this work, namely the wiles of the class at the time, selfishly seeking wealth and status, often discarding the very morals they claim to
support. The same people that pressure Fanny into being morally upright and meek also fault her for being so. Today's readers see Fanny as proud, prude, and priggish, but I think Austen found her to be an admirable woman steadfastly committed to her principles.
Fanny may be a dull hero compared with, say, Elizabeth Bennett, but when you consider that she is a product of her circumstances, repeatedly told how low she is, living in very real fear of punishment for doing something considered morally questionable by anyone, it becomes rather impressive that she is able to cultivate any of her own opinions, and I'm rather proud of her not meekly accepting Henry's hand under the pressure. She stayed true what she believed was right all throughout the book, and I love the idea of her being proved right at the end, and getting what she always wanted, namely Edmund for a husband.
But I have to admit, Austen's ending did not satisfy. The fact that Edmund calls Fanny "my sister" right up until the very end while still carping about Mary Crawford, does not make me think he could ever be good for her. The abrupt change in the narrative at the end of MP, where Austen goes from showing to telling in summation, did not do enough to convince me that Edmund could ever deserve Fanny, or that Fanny would truly be happy with him.
Enter: Smith's alternate ending. I enjoyed Smith's defense in her prologue of Fanny and the need for a different ending. And while, despite efforts, her voice was very different from Austen's (of course!) she did a good job continuing the personalities of the characters, while showing that people can change. Part of me is still a little anxious that Crawford will be bored with Fanny and be unfaithful, but I still far prefer her being with Henry to being with Edmund.
Still, my strongest, and apparently most culturally unacceptable belief regarding this work is that Fanny is a worthwhile heroine. Also, I think she's an enneagram 9. So maybe I can see her perspective so well because I am too.
Monday, June 10, 2019
12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke
12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke
"...life in the digital age is an open invitation for clear, biblical thinking about the impact of our phones on ourselves, on our creation, on our neighbors, and on our relationships to God. Thoughtlessly adopting new technologies is worldliness" (37).
"I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber...Hence it comes than men so much love noise and stir; hence it comes that the prison is so horrible a punishment; hence it comes that the pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible."--quoting Pascal. "Pascal's point is a perennial fact: the human appetite for distraction is high in every age, because distractions give us easy escape from the silence and solitude whereby we become acquainted with our finitude, our inescapable mortality, and the distance of God from all our desires, hopes, and pleasures" (45).
"It is difficult to serve God with our heart, soul, strength and mind when we are diverted and distracted and multi-tasking everything"--quoting Doublas Groothuis, philosophy prof at Denver Seminary (47).
"From the onset of this study, we must die to the idea that a distraction-free life is possible--it is not, and it never has been. the holy life is piously complex, meaning we must learn how to apply distraction management in every situation" (50).
"If anger is the viral emotion of online disembodiment, then joy is the Christian emotion of embodied fellowship" (59).
"All writing that is remote--like the ancient letter, the modern text message, or this book--is more like ghost-to-ghost communication than person-to-person interaction. Yes, there is something of us in written words, but not everything in true fellowship can be typed out on phone screens...This is the reality of communication. Joy is a precious emotion of our integrated existence" (60).
"We easily settle into digital villages of friends who think just like us and escape from people who are unlike us. Our phones buffer us from diversity"..quoting Alistair Roberts--although"generational differences are fundamentally constitutive differences for the human race...new media is one of the may ways are elders are rendered invisible." "And it's not only our elders, but also the impoverished, the cognitively disabled, children, the less educated, the less literate, the less cosmopolitan, and non-Westerners. In effect, our online communities 'render invisible the majority of the human race'" (71).
Again quotes are from Roberts: "In fact, our online communities of like-minded friends are often marked by a 'positive feedback loop,' where 'affirmation and assent merely reinforce existing prejudices. In such contexts, communicties become insular, echo chambers of accepted opinion, closed to opposing voices,' which means they breed a 'homeostatic stifling of difference'" (72).
"The literacy problem we face today is not illiteracy but aliteracy, a digital skimming that is simply an attempt to keep up with a deluge of information coming through our phones rather than slowing down and soaking up what is most important" (85).
"God's word demands our highest levels of literacy concentration because it requires relational reading: not the superficial chitchat of a cocktail party, but the covenantal concentration of marriage vows. God's word is an invitation to orient our affections and desires. Our challenge is to use social media in the service of serious reading" (89).
In a footnote quoting Douglas Wilson: "Creation is a gift meant to bring glory to the Creator. All Christians agree here. But Christians throughout the ages have put their suspicions in different places. Take C.S. Lewis and Augustine. I love them both, but I would rather have a beer with Lewis. Lewis would order us a really good beer, just because it was a really good beer, with his understanding of God suffusing the whole. For him, while the thickness of creation can become an idol, a rival to God, it is intended for us as a sermon by God about God. And you cant't honor the preacher by ignoring the sermon. But Augustine would perhaps think that a thin beer would help us think of Jesus more, not distracting us quite so much, and that when we had really advanced in grace, we might be able to get the same effect with water. I say this in the full recognition that I am not worthy to have been Augustine's boot boy. So then a right approach to a thick creation honors the Creator more fully; we honor his work as he gave it, instead of trying to dilute it in misguided zeal for his glory." Reinke says: "Intended or not, Wilson's illustration of alcohol density coincides with the display of diving glory echoed in the first miracle of Jesus (John 2:1-11). He did not flex his sovereign power by turning party wine into water, but by turning ceremonial washing water into dark, undiluted party wine--the 'good wine' that caught attention. Not only did the water-to-wine thickening of creation not cloud Christ's glory, it manifested it" (95).
"...We must humbly admit that we are targets of digital mega-corporations that can make us into reckless consumers with strategic intermediated content. We cannot be naive here. Our attention spans have been monetized, and getting us hooked on our phones is a commercial commodity measured in billions of dollars, not kiosk change" (99).
"...We must celebrate. We cannot suppress our souls' appetite for what is awe-inspiring. The goal is not to mute all smartphone media but to feed ourselves the right media. We are created to behold, see, taste, and delight in the richness of God's glory--and that glory often comes refracted to us through skilled artists. Our insatiable appetite for viral videos, memes, and tweets is the product of an appetite for glory that God gave us" (100).
"Social media has become the new PR firm of the brand Self" (109).
"In the digital age, we idolize our phones when we lost the ability to ask if they help us (or hurt us) in reaching our spiritual goals. We grow so fascinated with technological glitz that we become captive to the wonderful means of our phones--their speed, organization, and efficiency--and these means themselves become sufficient ends. Our destination remains foggy because we are fixated on the speed of travel. We mistakenly submit human and spiritual goals to our technological possibilities" (115).
"Friction is the path to genuine authenticity, and no amount of online communication can overcome a lack of real integrity. We must be real with the people God puts in our lives....We are authentic believers who are committed to replacing easy relationships with authentic ones" (126).
Sherry Turkle: "The capacity for empathic conversation goes hand in hand with the capacity for solitude. In solitude we find ourselves; we prepare ourselves to come into conversation with something to say that is authentic" (126).
"Every morning we must take time to stop, to be still, to know that God is God and that we are his children. Digital technology must not fill up all the silent gaps of life" (129).
"The great term 'by faith' is a synonym for confidence in the unseen spiritual realities. Yet on what your heart loves, your eyes will linger." In a footnote on page 138, the great insight that "This is a recurring theme in the book of Isaiah, where the verb 'look to' is simultaneously applied to physical sight and spiritual sight (loyalty) in contrasting the categories of idols/God, visual/faith, and the immediate/anticipated" (138).
"...it is of the nature of technology to dislocate us historically. In principle, writes Craig Gay, 'the technological habit of mind is anti-teleological. It is largely uninterested, and indeed incapable, of appreciating the notions of final causality or ultimate purpose'" (180).
Future Reading:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/opinion/david-brooks-building-attention-span.html
Interesting because it's an opposing view to what most seem to have to say about technology turning our brains to mush: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17707600-smarter-than-you-think
https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/being-a-better-online-reader
http://www.reformation21.org/articles/the-seven-deadly-sins-in-a-digital-age-4-sloth.php
https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/s22-money-love-desire/creation-is-thick-i-tell-you.html
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22240772-the-things-of-earth?ac=1&from_search=true
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14568717-big-disconnect
I'll just read this instead of reading Turkle's new book: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/books/review/jonathan-franzen-reviews-sherry-turkle-reclaiming-conversation.html and https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/opinion/sunday/stop-googling-lets-talk.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/take-the-pledge-no-more-indulging-porn-1472684658
"...life in the digital age is an open invitation for clear, biblical thinking about the impact of our phones on ourselves, on our creation, on our neighbors, and on our relationships to God. Thoughtlessly adopting new technologies is worldliness" (37).
"I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber...Hence it comes than men so much love noise and stir; hence it comes that the prison is so horrible a punishment; hence it comes that the pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible."--quoting Pascal. "Pascal's point is a perennial fact: the human appetite for distraction is high in every age, because distractions give us easy escape from the silence and solitude whereby we become acquainted with our finitude, our inescapable mortality, and the distance of God from all our desires, hopes, and pleasures" (45).
"It is difficult to serve God with our heart, soul, strength and mind when we are diverted and distracted and multi-tasking everything"--quoting Doublas Groothuis, philosophy prof at Denver Seminary (47).
"From the onset of this study, we must die to the idea that a distraction-free life is possible--it is not, and it never has been. the holy life is piously complex, meaning we must learn how to apply distraction management in every situation" (50).
"If anger is the viral emotion of online disembodiment, then joy is the Christian emotion of embodied fellowship" (59).
"All writing that is remote--like the ancient letter, the modern text message, or this book--is more like ghost-to-ghost communication than person-to-person interaction. Yes, there is something of us in written words, but not everything in true fellowship can be typed out on phone screens...This is the reality of communication. Joy is a precious emotion of our integrated existence" (60).
"We easily settle into digital villages of friends who think just like us and escape from people who are unlike us. Our phones buffer us from diversity"..quoting Alistair Roberts--although"generational differences are fundamentally constitutive differences for the human race...new media is one of the may ways are elders are rendered invisible." "And it's not only our elders, but also the impoverished, the cognitively disabled, children, the less educated, the less literate, the less cosmopolitan, and non-Westerners. In effect, our online communities 'render invisible the majority of the human race'" (71).
Again quotes are from Roberts: "In fact, our online communities of like-minded friends are often marked by a 'positive feedback loop,' where 'affirmation and assent merely reinforce existing prejudices. In such contexts, communicties become insular, echo chambers of accepted opinion, closed to opposing voices,' which means they breed a 'homeostatic stifling of difference'" (72).
"The literacy problem we face today is not illiteracy but aliteracy, a digital skimming that is simply an attempt to keep up with a deluge of information coming through our phones rather than slowing down and soaking up what is most important" (85).
"God's word demands our highest levels of literacy concentration because it requires relational reading: not the superficial chitchat of a cocktail party, but the covenantal concentration of marriage vows. God's word is an invitation to orient our affections and desires. Our challenge is to use social media in the service of serious reading" (89).
In a footnote quoting Douglas Wilson: "Creation is a gift meant to bring glory to the Creator. All Christians agree here. But Christians throughout the ages have put their suspicions in different places. Take C.S. Lewis and Augustine. I love them both, but I would rather have a beer with Lewis. Lewis would order us a really good beer, just because it was a really good beer, with his understanding of God suffusing the whole. For him, while the thickness of creation can become an idol, a rival to God, it is intended for us as a sermon by God about God. And you cant't honor the preacher by ignoring the sermon. But Augustine would perhaps think that a thin beer would help us think of Jesus more, not distracting us quite so much, and that when we had really advanced in grace, we might be able to get the same effect with water. I say this in the full recognition that I am not worthy to have been Augustine's boot boy. So then a right approach to a thick creation honors the Creator more fully; we honor his work as he gave it, instead of trying to dilute it in misguided zeal for his glory." Reinke says: "Intended or not, Wilson's illustration of alcohol density coincides with the display of diving glory echoed in the first miracle of Jesus (John 2:1-11). He did not flex his sovereign power by turning party wine into water, but by turning ceremonial washing water into dark, undiluted party wine--the 'good wine' that caught attention. Not only did the water-to-wine thickening of creation not cloud Christ's glory, it manifested it" (95).
"...We must humbly admit that we are targets of digital mega-corporations that can make us into reckless consumers with strategic intermediated content. We cannot be naive here. Our attention spans have been monetized, and getting us hooked on our phones is a commercial commodity measured in billions of dollars, not kiosk change" (99).
"...We must celebrate. We cannot suppress our souls' appetite for what is awe-inspiring. The goal is not to mute all smartphone media but to feed ourselves the right media. We are created to behold, see, taste, and delight in the richness of God's glory--and that glory often comes refracted to us through skilled artists. Our insatiable appetite for viral videos, memes, and tweets is the product of an appetite for glory that God gave us" (100).
"Social media has become the new PR firm of the brand Self" (109).
"In the digital age, we idolize our phones when we lost the ability to ask if they help us (or hurt us) in reaching our spiritual goals. We grow so fascinated with technological glitz that we become captive to the wonderful means of our phones--their speed, organization, and efficiency--and these means themselves become sufficient ends. Our destination remains foggy because we are fixated on the speed of travel. We mistakenly submit human and spiritual goals to our technological possibilities" (115).
"Friction is the path to genuine authenticity, and no amount of online communication can overcome a lack of real integrity. We must be real with the people God puts in our lives....We are authentic believers who are committed to replacing easy relationships with authentic ones" (126).
Sherry Turkle: "The capacity for empathic conversation goes hand in hand with the capacity for solitude. In solitude we find ourselves; we prepare ourselves to come into conversation with something to say that is authentic" (126).
"Every morning we must take time to stop, to be still, to know that God is God and that we are his children. Digital technology must not fill up all the silent gaps of life" (129).
"The great term 'by faith' is a synonym for confidence in the unseen spiritual realities. Yet on what your heart loves, your eyes will linger." In a footnote on page 138, the great insight that "This is a recurring theme in the book of Isaiah, where the verb 'look to' is simultaneously applied to physical sight and spiritual sight (loyalty) in contrasting the categories of idols/God, visual/faith, and the immediate/anticipated" (138).
"...it is of the nature of technology to dislocate us historically. In principle, writes Craig Gay, 'the technological habit of mind is anti-teleological. It is largely uninterested, and indeed incapable, of appreciating the notions of final causality or ultimate purpose'" (180).
Future Reading:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/opinion/david-brooks-building-attention-span.html
Interesting because it's an opposing view to what most seem to have to say about technology turning our brains to mush: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17707600-smarter-than-you-think
https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/being-a-better-online-reader
http://www.reformation21.org/articles/the-seven-deadly-sins-in-a-digital-age-4-sloth.php
https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/s22-money-love-desire/creation-is-thick-i-tell-you.html
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22240772-the-things-of-earth?ac=1&from_search=true
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14568717-big-disconnect
I'll just read this instead of reading Turkle's new book: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/books/review/jonathan-franzen-reviews-sherry-turkle-reclaiming-conversation.html and https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/opinion/sunday/stop-googling-lets-talk.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/take-the-pledge-no-more-indulging-porn-1472684658
Saturday, June 1, 2019
The Soul of Shame
"Shame is primarily an emotion that undermines us, not so much via our left-mode rational processing, but by eroding our felt sense of connection and safety, something that supersedes the linguistic, logical, linear, factual mode of mental activity. As such, in brain time, to be less than, to be inadequate, is felt, sensed, and imaged long before we think it."
"Isolation is one of shame's primary methods."
"When I am in the presence of another who elicits discomfort within me, though I easily point to the person outside my skin as the responsible party for my distress, the real problem is far more proximate. For it is ultimately within me.
"My 'problem,' as it turns out, is ultimately what I am sensing, imaging, feeling, thinking and doing. It is not my only problem, just my ultimate one...
"But beyond this, and even more important, my problem is not just what I am sensing but that I do not feel adequate to respond to it. I perceive, beginning at nonconscious levels of awareness, that I do not have what it takes to tolerate what I feel. I am not just angry, sad, or lonely. But ultimately these feelings rest on the bedrock that I am alone with what I feel, and no one is coming to my aid. Shame undergirds other affective states because of its relationship to being left. And to be abandoned ultimately is to be in hell" (109).
"...we must remember, we are dust and breath, and healing shame will necessarily mean we act differently with our bodies. We will move when before we were literally unable to with our bodies. We will speak when before we were silent. We will demonstrate physical agency in the real world, as God did in Jesus..." (148).
"This is the story shame wants to tell. It is the story of fragility. It is the story of showering those who are smart, gifted and charismatic with approbations, and those are less so with, well, less. The story in which we have conflicts but are too afraid to face the emotions we anticipate will be waiting for us. These emotions have their source in the shame whose attendant tellls us that we are not enough and that Jesus is not enough for us to have this conversation. We won't be able to take it. Furthermore, if we ever imagined that Jesus would be present in that conversation, we might think he could take it, but we don't imagine that he's even there" (158).
"...unless leadership of an organization is open to curiosity, open to the idea that unless we are known, what we know doesn't matter, and open to seeking where shame hides, exposing the reality of our naked, vulnerable selves, and disregarding the shame that wants us to hide, we will continue to repeat the interaction that took place in Eden" (159).
"Paul then lists a number of noble things that we might do, but if they are not done lovingly, they mean nothing.
"I mentioned earlier that love and shame are the two fundamental affective states warring for our souls. Of course, this oversimplifies the case. It is not as if shame is the only emotion that gives us trouble, and love houses virtually ever emotion that leads to constructive, integrating behavior. The point here, however, is that in many respects life is not that complicated. In any instant it boils down to microdecisions we make that generally move us in one of two directions: a more integrated, resilient life of connection with God and others, or a more disintegrated, separated, chaotic and rigid life. Every minute of every day we choose between shame and love" (179).
"Isolation is one of shame's primary methods."
"When I am in the presence of another who elicits discomfort within me, though I easily point to the person outside my skin as the responsible party for my distress, the real problem is far more proximate. For it is ultimately within me.
"My 'problem,' as it turns out, is ultimately what I am sensing, imaging, feeling, thinking and doing. It is not my only problem, just my ultimate one...
"But beyond this, and even more important, my problem is not just what I am sensing but that I do not feel adequate to respond to it. I perceive, beginning at nonconscious levels of awareness, that I do not have what it takes to tolerate what I feel. I am not just angry, sad, or lonely. But ultimately these feelings rest on the bedrock that I am alone with what I feel, and no one is coming to my aid. Shame undergirds other affective states because of its relationship to being left. And to be abandoned ultimately is to be in hell" (109).
"...we must remember, we are dust and breath, and healing shame will necessarily mean we act differently with our bodies. We will move when before we were literally unable to with our bodies. We will speak when before we were silent. We will demonstrate physical agency in the real world, as God did in Jesus..." (148).
"This is the story shame wants to tell. It is the story of fragility. It is the story of showering those who are smart, gifted and charismatic with approbations, and those are less so with, well, less. The story in which we have conflicts but are too afraid to face the emotions we anticipate will be waiting for us. These emotions have their source in the shame whose attendant tellls us that we are not enough and that Jesus is not enough for us to have this conversation. We won't be able to take it. Furthermore, if we ever imagined that Jesus would be present in that conversation, we might think he could take it, but we don't imagine that he's even there" (158).
"...unless leadership of an organization is open to curiosity, open to the idea that unless we are known, what we know doesn't matter, and open to seeking where shame hides, exposing the reality of our naked, vulnerable selves, and disregarding the shame that wants us to hide, we will continue to repeat the interaction that took place in Eden" (159).
"Paul then lists a number of noble things that we might do, but if they are not done lovingly, they mean nothing.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poot and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)"In this sense, love is less a noun than an adverb (i.e., lovingly), a word that describes the action of a verb, action taken at wisdom's pace. And shame is all about stopping movement, shuttering conversation, crushing creative discovery, acting to quickly or too slowly for fear of making mistakes, and avoiding the repair of ruptures that re inevitable with the mobility of intersecting lives" (177).
"I mentioned earlier that love and shame are the two fundamental affective states warring for our souls. Of course, this oversimplifies the case. It is not as if shame is the only emotion that gives us trouble, and love houses virtually ever emotion that leads to constructive, integrating behavior. The point here, however, is that in many respects life is not that complicated. In any instant it boils down to microdecisions we make that generally move us in one of two directions: a more integrated, resilient life of connection with God and others, or a more disintegrated, separated, chaotic and rigid life. Every minute of every day we choose between shame and love" (179).
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