The Art of Penmanship, October and Robert Frost

The other day a visiting aquaintance was bemoaning the loss of penmanship and the art of letter-writing in our email, send/receive, mouse-click-send, trigger-happy, copy/paste culture. As much as I share his lament I'm sorry to say I've been guilty of this as well. But after over a decade I sat down to actually write a letter I plan to mail out to India. The secret to this new-found enthusiasm is a font I newly discovered that is almost like my own handwriting (but much better than mine). And I have displayed it here. I think you will agree that it is worth writing a letter with.

The font is here for interested parties:

Angelina handwritten font

On another note, time was when I would, every October, print Robert Frost's memorable ode to October (beginning 'O Hushed October morning mild') only for myself to read and indulge in its familiar warmth in the crisp autumnal air as I watch the falling leaves outside.

Here it is, typed out in Angelina font.

For the impatient or the uncaring, here it is in Georgia:

Robert Frost (1874–1963). A Boy’s Will. 1915.
October

O HUSHED October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

Educating Ourselves to Imbecility- Contraceptives in Middle School

The availability of the pill to 11 year old kids in Maine without parental knowledge is creating furore across the US. The Baltimore Sun in this article represents, I think, the point of view of those who support the program.

Here's a quote from the article"

Dr. Laurie S. Zabin, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said she hates to hear complaints that contraception equals a free pass when it comes to becoming sexually active."I don't really think that the primary objection that the public has holds any water - that it encourages sex," she said. "It's sort of like [saying] the availability of seat belts causes more traffic accidents. The availability of contraception does not cause risky sex."

Nitpicking being my favourite pastime, let's deconstruct this for a moment: we wear seatbelts to prevent injury resulting from a collision, tipover or other such accidents. If the accident does not happen there is no injury. One doesn't need to wear a seatbelt after or during the accident in order to prevent injuries. Nor does one need to wear a seatbelt with the distinct objective of getting into an accident. A contraceptive user makes use of a contraceptive specifically in order to have "safe" sex. Contraceptive use is conditional- it is used on condition that the user takes part in sexual activity. The comparison between it and seatbelt-wearing is illogical and perhaps a little disingenuous in this context.

Let's stretch this argument a bit. The opposing camp could claim that the contraceptives are not being necessarily used, but simply distributed. It may or may not be used- and it is distributed with general parental knowledge of its availability if it is requested by a student. This is again a disingenuous argument. The knowledge that potential pregnancies could be avoided is a pretty powerful motivator to indulge in sexual activity. Besides, the message the school is sending out is that pregnancies that are underage and "unwanted"pregnancies are the greatest evil, not immorality or underage sex. So in conclusion- yes, it will encourage underage sexual activity, sexual experimentation, sexual promiscuity. Yes, it will (as it clearly has done) reduce teen pregnancies- no question about that. Yes, it is a postmodern line of thought that morality doesn't matter. That, more than anything else, leads to the destruction of a society.

Attempts to reduce the significance of this are ridiculous. We are indeed, as Neil Postman said, amusing ourselves to death; and as Muggeridge put it, educating ourselves to imbecility. Erotomania or megalomania- that's the choice for the world outside of Christ. I'm thinking of our 3-year old daughter: the more I hear about this the more I wonder where we could get her educated in a safe environment, away from these predators. People with no means to get kids educated outside of public schools are worse off for all this. I do hope we get Christians to take up better-priced, quality education on a larger scale.

Homeschooling is the other option, but I'm also a firm believer in the maxim that it takes a village to raise a kid. This is true in two ways- one, that the society's morals invariably get transferred to the individual, regardless of the particular morals that his/her immediate circle (such as parents) imparts to the person. Secondly, this influence of the society is not just inevitable, but desirable; and therefore, it must be encouraged. Therefore, homeschooling must be coupled with a lot of social activity in order to be truly well-rounded. Kids listen to authority in a peer environment more than in a one-to-one situation- if the peers are inclined to listen. Good company begets good behaviour. At the same time we have a responsibility to ensure that the society in which we and our kids grow is influenced positively.

India is no more the land I saw when we were growing up, but back then, teen pregnancies were almost unheard of. Sexual morality was stronger, abstinence or temperance never seemed to anyone to be foolish options to prevent sexual diseases. Why was this society so conservative, and more importantly, why is this community not so conservative today? Back then the kids were just as precocious as they are today. But the society at the time clearly considered sexual promiscuity as shameful and sinful. The society influences us and a precocious kid may rebel at school in many ways, but still maintain a relatively high standard of sexual behaviour. Like it or not, the village does raise us and we had better understand it. Parents' influence over kids is not the only factor in the equation.

If that is the case, then why should we as Christians not try to pro-actively influence and change the society according to what we believe to be true? When a Christian public servant does this, is he/she in danger of going against the grain of Church-State separation? Well, all actions are motivated by a worldview- and each worldview has institutions that support and spearhead it. Our convictions must motivate our actions- a politician who claims otherwise is clearly in denial.

The incredibly unthinking response of some people to the developments in Maine- that it's allright to reduce teen pregnancies by distributing contraceptives because kids who would choose abstinence would not be affected anyway- is flawed in its understanding of human nature and the significance of the village in raising a kid.

I hope this doesn't turn into a polarizing votebank in the elections although it would be interesting to see how the candidates respond to it. My concern is that they will end up politicizing morality- and the issue is sacrificed at the altar of political mileage.

The Age of Cacophony

PG Wodehouse once wrote in his 1952 novella 'Pigs have Wings', "silence had come like a poultice to heal the blows of sound." Each time I read that sentence I think of how true and incisive that is in my own life. I rarely watch television. Unlike the old days I don't like heated political debates any more either on TV or in person. It's not because I dislike being challenged in my views. There's actually nothing I like better than thinking through differing opinions and arriving at the truth, or often the 'why' of the 'what' that I do. It's sheer pleasure to put it in a few crisp words and realize the world of truth behind them. No, the reason I dislike debates, TV news and contentious discussions is because ours is not an age of reason, but one of soundbytes masquerading as reason.

Let's put this to test. What would you like to prove? Let's assume you would like to prove Jesus did not exist. There are a number of books out there that reject outright the historicity of Jesus, all of them considered less than scholarly by true experts in the field. See Wikipedia for details. But these books are not meant for people seeking the truth- they are meant for those who already want to believe Jesus did not exist. Some who oppose Christianity, some others who have a political agenda in trumping Jesus' historicity, others who are caught in behaviours considered sinful by Christians... the list could include many persuasions, but these all find fodder for their cannon in such books. Among these are people who are only casually looking and are prepared to be dismayed or shocked or set right- but they aren't hungry enough for the truth. These are the ones to whom soundbytes appeal more and more- and I think these are what most of us are, or are about to become. Instant news, instant knowledge, instant decisions on matters that have taken lifetimes for wise people to dwell on.

Let's assume that you want to prove that the crusades were misunderstood as acts of hatred, that in reality they were labours of love. Or, that the crusaders did not include at least some real Christians. Or, you want to justify the terror the British government and the East India Company unleashed on Indians by citing some scientific progress that came along in the wake of the industrial revolution that they passed along to India. Or, more far-fetched, you want to prove that the Nazi holocaust may have had a positive effect because it eventually produced the nation of Israel.. Or, assume you are someone who interprets all evil acts to have been 'worth it' because great people have been produced by them- Gandhi, Bonhoeffer, Solzhenitsyn. The more I see things on TV or in print, the more I'm convinced that all of it is possible. Anything you want to prove can be written or said- and people will believe it if it makes enough noise.

Thus an atheist calling his community of God-denyers 'the brights' appeals to people to trust them because they are intelligent and anyone who disagrees with them isn't. A homosexual rights activist equates his/her struggle to the civil rights movement and gains sympathy for the cause. A Hindu fundamentalist in India decries any silence on the part of a Muslim when a Hindu is murdered, and in the same breath justifies the murder of a Muslim by a Hindu as something that happens when minorities are appeased. An American nationalist is certain that anyone who does not fight the war on terror alongside the US is against the US, while their own sympathies are far away from terrorist attacks in faroff countries, especially those of the Third World.

I like Google News because I get to read one point of view and deliberately look for something that is opposed to that view. It's possible to get the truth somewhere in between- if you look hard enough. I like Wikipedia because, though it may be biased, its discussion pages contain real debate on arriving at the truth. I truly hate TV because it commands us what to think. Take the recent Ann Couter controversy on Jews vs. Christians.

Coulter claimed that Christians were perfected Jews, and that its not a hateful comment because Christians think of themselves that way and do not force Jews to become as they are. Her host on CNBC, Donnie Deutsch, was outraged and offended as he is Jewish. He felt this was anti-Semitic. Coulter clarified that she meant Christians consider the New Testament and the Old Testament to be true, while the Jews do not believe the New Testament. Deutsche, instead of responding to that, said, "You said - your exact words were, "Jews need to be perfected." Those are the words out of your mouth."

Now there is a public outcry for Coulter to be banned from TV. I really do not have a stake in this one way or another. But consider this for a moment. We all know that Ann Coulter has courted controversy all through her current career. Deutsche behaves like a typical talk show host- all soundbytes and no reason. Regardsless of how thoughtless Ann may have sounded, Christians consider Christianity as the logical extension of Judaism; they also believe that simply stopping at Judaism is not enough. To say that Christians are perfect is going overboard and certainly arrogant-sounding; but in our age of political correctness saying anything at all about one faith comparing favourably against another is unacceptable and persumably leads to violence.

We must remember that in the minds of TV's spin doctors all of this selective- for instance it doesn't (they presume) lead to violence if an atheist mocks theism, or the Hindu American Foundation mocks Christianity but fights textbook material in the US on Hinduism because they perceive the material to be offensive, or a Muslim in Saudi Arabia discrimnates against Hindus or Jews. It all depends on the context. The loudest soundbyte wins. There is no reasoning through the existential questions we face; we just want to see a good fight and set the winner up as we see fit.

What happens in this age of cacophony when truth is hard to find and the truth-speaker has to make himself heard above the din of voices? It's tougher, of course, especially for a Christian. You see attacks on the message and the messengers of the Gospel everywhere- some of it caused due to fallen pastors, others due to specious claims made by the contentious. Now more than ever it's time to let God be God, and realize that the mission to proclaim the Truth is first and foremost God's mission. If it can't be heard, it will always touch people the way it's always touched them- not through soundbytes but by experience. Perhaps this is what Simone Weil meant when she said truth needs to be experienced and not heard; only then does it become truth to the hearer. Remember Chesterton's words:

The Convert

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;

Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

Thirst No More

In Jesus' interactions with the woman at the well in the Gospel of John chapter 4, we find that the one who drinks the living water Jesus gives him shall never thirst; rather, the living water will become in him a wellspring of water springing up to everlasting life.

About a decade ago, in a church in New Delhi, a preacher talked about the fact that we continue to thirst after having tasted Jesus. He clarified that this is a thirst to have more and more of Him. The church being a charismatic one, he insisted that this meant being filled with the Holy Spirit with the mystical, almost tangibly cognitive experience it brings. The assurance that we will never thirst again, he clarified, meant that we will never lack the source for the water (my paraphrasing here- I've forgotten the exact words he used).

If a non-charismatic congregation were to be asked to clarify this, they may concur that the thirst to have more of Him in their lives is persistent- they may not agree on the precise way in which they are filled with the Holy Spirit, but they would agree that the thirst is present in their struggle with sin on a daily basis, in the leading of God on important decisions, in His word that refreshes their minds and hearts.

In a magnificent passage, Jill Carattini, senior associate writer at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, writes about the three stages of our experience with God (Second Naïveté). She writes that we initially experience the stories of creation, God's presence, provision and love as children and see God as the great adventurer who leads us through a great story, we see God at the centre of the universe, with everything else including ourselves surrounding Him. In the second stage we are clouded by the disturbing and disharmonious skepticism of the world around us which pressures us to live for ourselves, quesion God and puts us at the centre with God and others around us. The dissonance between these two stages is great as these are two different worldviews. The third stage that some of us experience is bigger than we know how to tell as God once again occupies the centre as we come to know the Person of Christ behind the Word that we came to hear as children. She writes:

Like God's response from the whirlwind to a questioning, anguished Job--"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?"--we rediscover the one at the center, and it isn't ourselves. In this stage of second naiveté, the Bible can be engaged with awareness and imagination, and a greater sense of devotion, because we have come once again to see the God to whom it points.

I think this passage captures nicely the difference between the existential angst keenly felt by the skeptic (the Thirst) and the desire to know Jesus more and more (the Longing). One is a cry for help, the other is an experience of a relationship, the difference between them being profound. The renewal of our minds by God's Word and His Spirit are ongoing processes and form the wellspring of water welling up to everlasting life, in turn flowing out and quenching others' thirst as well.