Ah, Senior Semester 1

It was crazy, it was different, it was hell, it was a mountain, it turned itself inside out 3+ times, it was my best semester yet.

"When you've got enough mistakes behind you, and enough life ahead of and on top of you, you don't have time to worry about what was and what will be." -- Laura

Margaret Fuller and the Liberal Arts

Once upon a time back in the day, I asked my mom why it was OK for me -- or any woman -- to go to college. This, you must understand, was a very serious question -- we were close friends with a family who didn't believe in sending their girls to college, and there is a whole Christian homeschool sub-subculture out there that agrees with them. (There is also a more mild sub-subculture that thinks college is OK as long as the girl is still living at home, and an even more liberal variant that thinks it's OK as long as the college is very near by).

I rather wanted to go to college, wanted to go to one that would probably end up being a good distance from home, and desperately hoped there was some solid Christian, biblical reasons for doing so.

I asked several people the question, "why is it OK for women to go to college?" And received in every instance one of the following answers:

• "A woman is supposed to be a helper to her husband. And one can be a better helper by having a higher level of education, closer matching to the husband's" (This was my mom's answer, and the one I took the most seriously at the time)
  
• "What if the husband dies? A woman needs some practical means of supporting herself and her family if worse comes to worse."
  
• "One is better prepared to make and enrich a home if one has an education. People who try to force a dichotomy between "learning to be a homemaker" and "pursuing an education" are wrong."

I wasn't entirely convinced, but for better or for worse, I bought the arguments, and went to college.

Where, in my junior year, I took Artes Liberales -- a study of how different historical periods have defined a "liberal arts education," and a discussion of what a "liberal arts education" should consist of and aim towards.

One of the main themes of the class was the distinction between a liberal arts education as a "means" and an education as an "end in itself." A basic conclusion of the class was that, yes, a liberal education is useful for many, many things. But that shouldn't be the main reason one pursues that education. The main reason to pursue it is that human beings were created by God with an intellect that can apprehend reality, and a desire use that intellect to understand reality. Developing these faculties is a part of fulfilling what God designed us to be -- part of fulfilling our telos as human beings. Though the hows and whys are subject matter for another post, I ultimately came to agree with this position (at least so long as it always includes the words "part of" when discussing telos and fulfilling).

Jumping further ahead: This semester, we had to read a portion of Margaret Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century for American Intellectual History. And I was rather surprised -- and a bit delighted -- to find in her writing echoes of Dr. Whalen's argument for a liberal arts education. Moreover, she applied them specifically to the question of why women should pursue higher education -- a question I still had not managed to resolve in my own mind:

So much is said of women being better educated that they may be better companions and mothers of men! They should be fit for such companionship, and we have mentioned with satisfaction instances where it has been established. Earth knows no fairer, holier relation than that of a mother. But a being of infinite scope must not be treated with an exclusive view to any one relation. Give the soul free course, let the organization be freely developed, and the being will be fit for any and every relation to which it may be called. The intellect, no more than the sense of hearing, is to be cultivated merely that Woman may be a more valuable companion to Man, but because the Power who gave a power, by its mere existence signifies that it must be brought out toward perfection.

It's unfortunately a rather convoluted quote -- Fuller wasn't known for her scintillating prose. Rephrased a bit better: "A woman's intellect is no more to be cultivated to make her a more valuable companion to man than is her sense of hearing. Both are to be cultivated primarily because the Power who gave that power desires His gift to be brought to perfection."

And this is now the answer I'd give if someone asked me why women should be able to attend college (especially a liberal arts college). It's not, at root, for the end of "better helping one's husband" or even "making a better home" -- it's because God created us as beings with the capacity and desire to understand reality, and that capacity ought to be developed, both for its own sake and to prepare us for ANY role we undertake later in life. I can see the value of the other arguments people offered me; practical considerations about specific later roles in life do have a place. Indeed, most men are told to go to college for similarly utilitarian reasons. (E.g. -- "You will need to support a family later on." "You will be a more competent intellectual and spiritual leader of your household with an education.")

But, at root? I'm with the strange bedfellows of Dr. Whalen and Margaret Fuller.

Blog Rating

So...due to the rather violent nature of my last post, parents are strongly cautioned:



This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
* dead (7x)
* kill (3x)
* crack (2x)
* death (1x)

Zombies, Ants, and War

Yes, this is my killer week of exams, papers, practices, guest lectures, and classes. So what do I do? Hahaha -- I decide to write a blog post. The first one of the semester. Oh, lovely time management, where hast thou flown?

But, yes. I want to rant about ants. I hate them. Especially the mutant-exoskeleton-zombie variety that we have here at The Strand. Normal tiny black or red squishy ants have nothing on these fellows. Our house's ants are giant, and black, and come back from the dead, and have NO squishy parts whatsoever, and enter the inside of our house by means of a crack in the paneling near the door of my closet.

We've deduced that they have a nest either under our house or in the walls. Maybe both. I wouldn't put it past them.

Normally they confine themselves to their nest, and to my closet floor. Every other day a lone adventurous soul trails his way across my carpet, and I promptly squish him (this is harder than it sounds). But most of the time I ignore them, and they ignore me; I seal and box the contents of my closet, and they hide in the walls and under the closet carpet, and we maintain toward one another a relative truce. But whenever I decide to do laundry, and clear out all the boxes from the closet in the process...aha, then all bets are off. They run like mad around the closet and boxes and floor and clothes, and I grab my roll of paper towels and squanch them one by one. (And, yes, "squanch" is the correct technical term. "Squishing" is too wimpy a description of the necessary killing action. Squashing+ quenching is more accurate).

Also a field of confrontation: the mail. Sneaky fellows -- if a box or package left by the mailman has any sort of rip or gap of any sort, they invade by the score. I opened one of my book orders from Amazon, and THIRTY of them started crawling out over my hands and bedspread. So I screamed and ran back outside with the package, and stomped as many of them as I could. Half of them looked dead. But looking dead is no guarantee.

Because you can't kill them. You think you've ground them down, and sqanched them into a pulpy oblivion under your foot or inbetween the folds of the paper towel. But you haven't. Unless you literally rip them in half in the process, they will twitch and buckle for a bit, then gingerly unfold themselves, and scuttle away. Sometimes you have to re-catch them three times before they're safely dead.

I've declared a jihad against them. I keep a kill tally above my door. I've murdered nearly twenty the the past three days.

And I've finally acquired TERRO.

But I haven't used it yet. It seems to damnedly unsportsmanlike. We've been through a lot together this past month, and it seems like springing modern chemical weaponry on a band of Hoplite warriors. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth. (Metaphorically, that is. Though I suppose it tastes pretty bad physically, too).

Actually, I probably would have used it anyway by now. In a far less romantic consideration, I just don't envy myself a giant, crusty pile of dead ants spilling out of my closet.

But Lydia says I should just get over that mental aversion and go for it. Because they breed a lot faster than I can kill them one by one, and sooner or later they'll find the kitchen and the food... :-/

I am busy

I am back at Hillsdale, and I am very busy.

- music major
- history major
- accompaniment
- piano-violin-cello trio
- teaching piano lessons
- piano juries
- living off campus
- cooking
- grocery shopping
- keeping the house in order
- senior thesis
- joining SAI
- killing ants

Do I have time to put any stray thoughts into a publishable semblace of order? Um...no. Posts will be sporadic. Very.

Harmony and Poetry

Exercises in harmonic progression and voice leading resemble sonnets. Or any other strict form of poetry. There are weak chords and strong chords; there are chords that rest and chords that tend to push forward. For any given melody line, you have to write a sequence of strong, weak, moving, and unmoving chords that makes sense of the phrasing and ends of phrases. There's standard rules for how to match harmonies with melodic notes, and how to shift certain chords into others, but they can be broken for emphasis. At the beginning, there's many possible harmonizations for each note of the melody -- but the more of the form you fill in, the more limited your options become for the remaining measures.

The workbook I'm using gives an increasing number of chordal options each chapter, making the process an increasingly more creative endeavor than a mechanical one. Toward the beginning, you're pretty much limited to I and V...but throw IIs and VIIs and IVs and all their inversions into the mix, and it's possible to call the even the standard two-line workbook exercises "art."

Children's Church

If I ever, ever said anything against children's church in the past, I recant fully. I'm sure it can be abused. But so can any good thing.

The "families should always be together for the worship service -- we don't believe in children's church" is a lovely idea in theory. And STUPID in practice. Until the kids are old enough to sit still, and not pull their sister's hair, and not babble about sunshines and trains and cars during prayer time, or loudly declare that the lights are on or off during the next prayer time...nursery and children's church is a good idea.

And I'm not saying this because I give a damn about the people sitting next to the kids...they're not really the ones suffering from this. The one bearing the brunt of it is the mom who wants to be able to focus on God, and prayer, and worship for one hour out of her crazy week, and CAN'T because she's having to police her kids every two seconds to keep them from disrupting everybody else.

Most kids are not perfect little angles by the age of two and three.

I've decided I'm fortunate that I'm not a mom yet, and have the leisure of (theoretically if I were perfect) giving God undivided attention during a church service.

And, yes. This was spurred by the fact that I had to play mom for the neighbor's kids during church in church this Sunday. :-P

Maybe a caveat: if it were a cultural norm for kids to always be along in the service, and no one -- especially the pastor -- blinked when the kids cried and babbled and laughed, we just considered all that a part of what HAPPENED when the family of God got together to worship him...well, yeah. Then it would work. And maybe that more relaxed and communal atmosphere is what we should strive for. But it sure isn't what exists right now.

Fluke of History (Feminism and Progress)

"Hurrah for women's lib, eh?"

"The lib?" Impatiently she leans forward and tugs the serape straight. "Oh, that's doomed."

The apocalyptic word jars my attention.

"What do you mean, doomed? ... Come on, why doomed? Didn't they get that equal rights bill?"

Long hesitation. When she speaks again her voice is different.

"Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like—like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see."

Now all this is delivered in a gray tone of total conviction. The last time I heard that tone, the speaker was explaining why he had to keep his file drawers full of dead pigeons.

"Oh, come on. You and your friends are the backbone of the system; if you quit, the country would come to a screeching halt before lunch."

No answering smile.

"That's fantasy." Her voice is still quiet. "Women don't work that way. We're a—a toothless world." She looks around as if she wanted to stop talking. "What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine."

~ from "The Women Men Don't See" by James Triptree Jr.

After hammering away for a while at the brick wall of feminism, and femininity, and gender roles, and patriarchy, and all that jazz, I do have a handful of conclusions. This seems as good a place as any to start, as I recently ran across Triptree again, for the first time in several years.

I first came across her short story story sometime in high school, I believe in this sf anthology . I've probably run into additional, and perhaps better, articulations of her position at some point, but this one's been good enough to stick with me for quite some time. It was enough, 11th or 12th grade, at least, to make me question the inevitability and permanence of many recent developments in western civilization.

Anyone who's been at Hillsdale long enough will have probably been disabused by some professor or another of any confidence in "progress." (Or maybe just students who run into Dr. Stewart, who seems to make such disabusement a point of his courses). Many professors DO at least give the Enlightenment a pretty bad rap, and see its innovations (in large part) as detrimental to any true historical development. Far from seeing the Enlightenment as the "wave the future," they interpret it as a (mostly) dead end. As many of the recent developments in western civilization, including feminism, are deeply tied up in the Enlightenment, and as the Enlightenment influenced many of our narratives of human progress, introduction to the Hillsdale perspective probably counts as a "disabuse of any confidence in progress."

I probably need to define terms better. No one's going to deny that we've made advances -- "progress" -- in understanding of cause and effect in the material universe, and in applying these discoveries to make better tools. What is up for debate is whether we've made any advances in how we understand the human soul, or in the way we structure society, or in our framework of moral actions toward one another.

It is a kind of a frightening thought, the first time it sticks around long enough to be taken seriously. Wondering if democracy, republicanism, egalitarianism, libertarianism...all the things we've come to associate with modern western civilization, whether for good or ill, actually are inevitable and permanent. Things to which the rest of the world will come on board eventually, and we'll keep persevering from there.

So I do wonder, sometimes, if instead the 21st century will come and go, and people in the future will look at us like we were crazy, and wonder where we got our whacked ideas and ways of life. Including opening so many occupations and areas of life and influence to women. I wonder if our era IS just a fluke, and we aren't really pressing forward into anything new, just messing around for a couple hundred years until reality bites us from behind, and things go back to the way they always were.

It's a toggling of perspectives. Just like wondering if church history has 100,000 more years to go (instead of...say...100 - 5000, like most people seem to operate).

Maybe I just have a weakness for dystopian literature and falls of empires. :-P But sometimes I do wonder if one day a comparably "primitive" -- but more-true-to-human-nature's-deepest-motivations -- culture and society will overthrow a modern western society that's lost its chest.

Concrete example for those who like such things: I look at Islam creeping over Europe, and wonder if something parallel to that is what awaits the whole western world.

Some sort of drastic calamity probably WOULD do the trick... making brute survival the priority, and wiping out a lot of our technological infrastructure. Going back to the feminism issue...wealth, education, mobility, liberty, security, and lots of leisure all seem tied to the push for gender equality. WHAM some cataclysm into the mix, and all that could very well go down the drain.

I do think women are different than men, and tend to have different strengths (and vv)...but, yikes. It's oh so easy for this to tip over into "and what they are strong in isn't as important as what men are strong in" or "what they are strong in is properly applied only to this very limited sphere."

Probably because of inherent differences, sexism seems a nastily rooted thing. I don't want to use a word like "sexism," because it's very loaded. But reading Aristotle, talking about how the essence "woman" is inherently less perfect than the essence of "man," I think I'm somewhat justified. Or reading opposition to some of the early feminists, talking about how women's minds are lesser and weaker than men (just look at the poor dears!), and therefore shouldn't be permitted to engage in politics and higher learning and whatnot. Without the constant evidence that women CAN go toe to toe with men, and make accomplishments just as worthy in areas previously relegated to the male sex alone -- I can't see what's to stop a reversion to old ways of thinking.

Those are the bad days, though. On more hopeful days, I think that the change is pretty darn permanent, and that no calamity would actually send things back to ground zero. But we do a darn good job of forgetting and reinterpreting history when it's not to our liking. And, yeah. I have seen the fall of Rome blamed on relaxed gender roles.


::grins:: And the rambling nature of this entry proves my inherent irrationality and intellectual inferiority, no doubt. :) Though I'd prefer you chalk up any confusion to the fact that...

a) I think here ARE difference between men and women, and that historical gender roles (and occupations) aren't some grand conspiracy, but in a part arise out of these different tendencies. (Hence the "more-true-to-human-nature" comments)

b) But I'm bloody glad a lot of those roles got shattered, because by them women were confined and limited in their range of vocation and action far more than men. I hope that during the next 300 years we can learn what it's like to be womanly professors, womanly musicians, womanly businessman, womanly leaders, womanly journalists, womanly academics, womanly theologians...because, dagnabbit, I think there is such a thing as a valid and womanly way to embrace these occupations, and we've never really had a chance to try it.


An endnote: Apparently "The Women Men Don't See" is Triptree's most famous story. So I suppose it has a lot going for it, even though I don't really care for the thing as a whole (I just like a passage or two here and there). I personally like "Love is the Plan the Plan is Death" better. Definitely won't appeal to everyone, but it's one of the most successful attempts I've seen of an author writing from the perspective of an alien consciousness.

Summer Reading

Harry Potter
Harry Potter 7 is very good....I think the best of the series. It's tightly written (unlike 4-6), and deals with deeper themes than the earlier books. Rowling keeps deus ex machinae to a minimum this time, and even gives decent explanations for several events I had previously labeled as machinae. In addition, the book is replete with occasions in which plans and clues go wrong, plunging the characters into deeper confusion and trouble. (A helpful reality check and counterbalance to any potential d.e.m's).

I didn't think she'd be able to pull of a "quest" story. But creating a mention between Hallows and Horcruxes made the the characters' search far more complex, and I hardly even noticed there WAS a quest going on.

Finally: othrs may disagree with me on this, but I think Harry GREW UP in the second half of the book. I've found that this is a main difference between people who find chapters 35-37 powerful and moving, and those who see them as melodramatic whiny angsting.


Jonthan Strange and Mr. Norell
Better than Harry Potter. Rowling's writing style tends to be fairly banal; Clarke's sparkles and dances across the page.

I found a hardcover copy the book for $7.00. The prices at Barnes and Noble are usually atrocious...but their bargain table is amazing (assuming you can actually find a book you want).

It's a wonderfully delightful book, set during the Napoleaonic wars in an alternate universe where most things are parallel to our own. But in this world, magic existed in England during the middle ages and disappeared sometime before the Englightenment and scientific revolution. When it reappears in the 1700s, it's initially analyzed and treated like science by the man who revives it.

Susanna Clarke has a wry sense of humor, employs vivid language and descriptions, and creates utterly believable characters. (I usually dislike insane villains...but she's written one of the best antagonists I've seen).

Also refreshing is her determination to write her characters in line with the spirit and perspective of the Augustan era, rather than make some of them walking talking propagators of 21st century values. Her responses to her critics are often an exasperated, "I wanted to write a story about English identity and the return of magic, not about feminism and woman's suffrage! Yes, I rather wish there were more women in the book myself...but how I've written it reflects the era, where women had a less prominent public role."

I don't know what the book would be rated...probably PG-13 for graphic and eerie violence. Her faerieland is NOT a safe or pleasant place...it's unearthly, dangerous, eerie, unhuman, and reads like a horror story. There's also plenty of madness, darkness, ravens, and dismemberment throughout the book, especially toward the end. It WORKS, and very well..but this isn't a kiddie story.

On the other hand, she also shows that you don't have to write like GRR Martin to publish cutting-edge fantasy. In terms of sex, there's some discussion of various extramarital affairs, and an illegitimate child or two. In terms of language..."d--m" appears twice (maybe thrice), always written with those dashes.

Films and Links

Fantasy Films
I need to read The Dark Is Rising sometime soon...it's apparently one of the few books prominent in evangelical subculture that I haven't read, and now they're making a movie of it.

New Line (wow!) is doing The Golden Compass. Here's a wikipedia link about the books, the official site, and me mentioning the books two years ago. The girl they've got for Lyra feels spot-on...the site says they said looked at 10,000 girls, and I believe it. The rest of the characters I'm not as sure about.

Interesting thing -- the cinematography doesn't feel right. Too clean? Bright? Cartoony? Lyra's world has a bit more soot and grime and grittiness to it. And gobblers and soul-eating spectres lurk in unlit alleyways, preying upon the unwary. It's a bit of a grown-up place, and would be better off losing the antiseptic computer-animated feel.

I only notice this, because, recently, a lot of movies seem to have done a good (or good enough) job capturing the tone of their source books. This is the first one that's struck me as very wrong. One of the first things I noticed about the books was their "tone" -- hard to define and describe, but just as the diction of Lewis's Narnia laces the books with a sunlight and childlike joy, and Harry Potter keeps a tongue-in-cheek absurdity even as the books grow darker -- Pullman's style is a sober and achingly beautiful. I don't know if this selection illustrates it well, but it might.

I also think it's strange how many big-budget epic fantasy films have been made recently. And how many series are being tackled. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Narnia, Eragon, Golden Compass, The Dark is Rising...and just the other day I ran into Stardust, and have no idea how many other films are in the works out there. I know studios produced fantasy films made before, but they seem to have been few and far between, largely forgettable, and hardly ever given a blockbuster level budget. Big-budget (and/or memorable) sci-fi films have been going on for a long time; this seems like the first real corresponding wave of fantasy films.

YouTube
And now for two shorter clips...these guys are hilarious. Check out Rules of Sidewalk Etiquette and How to Give a Great Man to Man Hug.

Turkey and Twain

It started raining today, right after I finished watering our neighbor's flowers. :P

After my gushing about Turkey, Alisa Harris gives a more balanced picture. She's a much better writer than I; she's quoting Mark Twain half the time; it's well worth reading.

A Link and Some Initial Thoughts

This is a good post, concerning worldviews, intellect, imagination, and liturgy. One point of the article: logic and the intellect work within and "fine tune" the larger imaginative picture we already have of the world. Thus logic will not tend to get one out of a wrong view of the world, only an exercised imagination. Another key point: we're incarnate beings, not body-shells where the truly important thing is the mind.

I liked his thoughts on anemic "worldviews":

By working in terms of an anthropology that presumes the primacy of the intellect, Reformed Christians have often failed to develop and harness the power of the imagination. We talk a lot about ‘worldviews’, but worldviews are generally understood in very ideological terms. A ‘worldview’ is seen as a set of propositions or a conceptual construct that shapes the way that we view reality. However, such ideological grids do not play anywhere near as much of a role in our vision of reality as Reformed people generally presume. Mere reflection on our day to day lives should expose the weakness of the notion that our engagement with reality is primarily mediated by ideological systems...

If I am right in my claim that a true ‘worldview’ is practically identical to ‘culture’, it is worth questioning to what extent we can speak of a Reformed worldview at all. Reformed Christians have an ideological system, but an ideological system is not sufficient to constitute a worldview. If we do have a worldview, it gives us a narrowly intellectual and insubstantial vision of reality....

Oh, dear. I don't hate Reformed/Calvinist theology. Really. I've grown up in it; I've gotten rather beat up by it; I don't think it's the ultimate final answer to everything; I think it gets a HECK of a lot righter than a lot of other traditions. I'm grappling my way through its systemic strengths and systemic weaknesses, and trying to figure out what it is about parts of Reformed thought that make me react so strongly against it at times. I have not tended to be entirely fair and balanced in the process. Harriet Beecher Stowe -- of whom I will post later -- humbles me by her ability to walk the same path with deep compassion and understanding, and I can only hope to someday come close to her insight and humility.

In either case, this section here doesn't mention anything about Reformed theology, and I think it's the best part:

The Christian faith presents us with a beautiful story and a compelling vision of the world. Christianity’s hold on the Western imagination is great, even among those who try to reject the faith. The Christian message appeals to our imagination before it addresses our logic and reason. Unfortunately, the vision of the world that most Christians operate in terms of today is quite anaemic and lacks the fullness of classic Christian thought. This, I suspect, is one of the reasons why Christianity is becoming less and less of a force within our society. People regard Christians as ideologues rather than as people with a rich cultural vision and grasp of the ‘good life’. Christianity is seen as a set of disincarnate ideas, rather than as a world-encompassing story that we can truly be at home within, a form of renewed life and a fertile vision for culture and society.

Some running thoughts on the matter...Logical consistency of ideas is important for something to be convincingly true...yet I'm guessing that for most people (and I know for myself), mere logical consistency not what convinces, or what makes the true thing hit us deep, and "ring true."

Though I can't defend it at the moment, I'm going to step out on a limb and say that un-beautiful logic does not "ring true" to us at a deep level...and rightfully so. One can present a logically coherent system to a person, but if they feel that the system is all that there is -- that it's failed to catch up into itself the depth and messiness of reality and human experience -- it will not "ring true" to them. (And rightfully so.)

I should have the "rightfully so" part a bit better worked out eventually. It'll probably have something to do with George MacDonald and presuppositional apologetics and Job.

Hair, Reprise

For the record, I am now happily reconciled to my longer hair, now that it's stopped looking like a mullet.

Also a potential reason for the reconciliation: (female?) music majors can get away with long hair. In fact, they can do far better than "get away" with it: long hair is fitting for them, in a way it just really isn't for other majors and professions who are trying to look professional.

A final jumble of reasons: Erm...some marginal additional advantage in the mating game might not be so bad? (Why NOT maximize available external assets?)

Why TURKEY? Oh, boy...

The Danish Customs Official
On the way back from Turkey, our groggy and exhausted group passed through Danish customs as we switched planes in Amsterdam.

The inspectors questioned us most thoroughly: "where exactly did you stay?" "did you pack your own luggage?" "so your roommate had access to your luggage -- do you trust her?" "do you trust all the people you're traveling with?" -- etc.

The most amusing and revealing question, however, was my inspector's response to the answer, "We were on a senior trip with Hillsdale College Honors program."

"Ah," he said, "so why go to TURKEY?"

I mumbled through some kind of an answer. Something about a religion professor heading the trip, and early church sites. Which was indeed why our group headed out to Turkey instead of some other country.

But the question, "why Turkey, of all places?" was admittedly on my mind sometime before the trip as well.

Because...well...where do senior trips usually go? France! Germany! Italy! Greece! Plus this is Hillsdale, where we prize the Grand Old Western Heritage and Tradition. You'd think we'd end up at least in Europe. But, no -- we strike out for the Middle-Eastern just-pulled-itself-out-of-the-third-world Islamic country of Turkey.

It's a good question, "why Turkey?"

After two days in Turkey I had half an answer. After four weeks I have a fuller one, which I shall attempt to mangle my way through. Because, right now, I can't think of a better country to have visited.

Geography and Ancient-Modern History
Turkey is a difficult country to process, at first. For one thing, it possess vast geographical variety -- plus it's a got complex and layered interweaving of thousands of years of immensely varied history.

The geographical variety was one of the first elements that struck me. There are deserts, and fertile croplands, and hills covered with flocks of sheep. There are rocky coastlines, and mountains that continue row upon row...not just a chain, but a whole square region. There are regions with European architecture and red-tiled roofs, and regions with flat-top roofs where you swear you are in the middle-east.

Then you have layers of history: the ancient Hittite mountaintop capitol of Hattusa, stone-age settlements. The Greeks Hellenized large portions of Turkey, and the Roman empire layered itself on top of that. Combined with these, you have innumerable varieties of traditional Turkish cultures and customs; our tour guide, Arzu, listed at least five distinct regions, from the supremely hospitable eastern sheep-herders, to the blue-eyed fishermen of the Black Sea coast.

Then you had early Christianity flooding Turkey...it's full of hidden cave-churches, and monasteries, and the Hagia Sophia...the center of Eastern Christendom.

Then...WHAM! On top of all this came the Ottoman Empire! And with it Islam. Ottoman imperial castles (and Arabian architecture), every church turned into a mosque, stricter gender roles, the whole shebang.

Westernization
And then, in 1920, there was Ataturk. General, war hero, revolutionary, statesman...He united Turkey into an independent nation-state. He secularized the country. He made Ottoman-empire Turkey into a constitutional democracy. He changed the alphabet from Arabic script to western letters. He changed their numbers to western numerals. He made everyone wear western clothes. He transformed the economy. He instituted an education system, from elementary schools to universities. He established gender equality; women were elected to the senate a few years later.

So throw Ataturk into the mix that is Turkey as well. And with him throw in the eighty recent years of super-intensified industrialization and westernization. Turkey's done a heck of a lot in that time, turning itself inside out, and catching up to the rest of the world. It's pulled itself out of the third world into the first, and it hasn't yet completed the process. Walking through Turkey, one sees a constant juxtaposition of the old and the new. Rundown mud-brick houses, with laundry hanging in the wind...and a satellite dish on the roof. Snazzy commercial-district streets (you would swear you're in Europe) -- but go back a block or two and you're in third-world-ville. On a larger scale, there's the highly industrialized and westernized west...and the impoverished, ill-educated, underdeveloped east, into which the government is now crazily pouring money and college graduates.

Ye Olde Conclusion
I can't think of another country where such variety exists -- geographical, cultural, western/non-western, 1st world/3rd world, secular/Islamic -- in such a convoluted and complex and contented tangle. Turkey has weathered culture after empire after culture, and engrafted large portions of all of them into its rhythms of life. And, unlike many other third-world countries, it hasn't destroyed itself in the upheaval entering entering the 21st century.

For these reasons, among others, I've come to greatly respect the country and its people. GO visit it, if you have the chance. I shouldn't judge European countries, as I haven't visited any since I was five...but right now I personally think Turkey pretty much pwns them.

And, if nothing else, Turkish food is amazing. ;)

Hair

I hate having long hair. I know it's a woman's glory and all that. And that, according to Rachel S., long and unbound hair is (right after blue-jeans) one of the biggest turn-ons to the opposite sex.

But I do hate it. Especially right now in this medium inbetween stage, where the layers are growing out. It pulls down flat. It clings itches the back of the neck. It looks like a freakin' mullet. I want to take scissors and chop it all off in one fell swoop. Except that that wouldn't look so good, either -- the hairdressers all agree I need a layered cut to have a decently framed face, and my own experience confirms this).

Then there's the psychological impact of the whole mess. Aside from being damnedly uncomfortable, long hair says, "young and girly!" It makes me feel 14. And probably like a homeschooler, too. You notice how so many of the girls who graduated last semester got short haircuts? It's POWER, I tell you! I want my old haircut back, the clipped and layered one that makes me feel 22 and sharp and professional. :(

But keeping up a decent short haircut takes money, which I really don't have. So I'm bobby-pinning and headband-scarfing and clipping this whole mess into order as best I can, and hoping it gets a bit more manageable as it gets longer.

Hair, hair, and more hair...yay.

I Went To Turkey

For the past few years, the Hillsdale Honors Program senior trip has been a (highly subsidized!) monthlong visit to Turkey. We criss-cross all over the western two-thirds of the country, visiting early church sites, ruins, more ruins, museums, mosques, (nightclubs!), and beaches.

I went this year.

It was pretty sweet.

You can find a basic itinerary of the trip here.

Many of my posts over the next few months will probably involve some thoughts on Turkey. This post here is just to give y'all a heads up about the whole deal, so that when you stumble across something like, "as we were dozing off on the bus in Turkey..." no one is befuddled and confused.

Back, Maybe?

Let's see if it sticks this time.

Artes Liberales

One of my central classes this semester is a study of the "artes liberales" ideal of education. ("The history and literature of a liberal arts education," according to the syllabus). We read selections from Plato to Cicero to John Henry Newman (and everyone inbetween), get a good bit of historical context and secondary sources thrown at us, and discuss any questions, big or little, that arise from the readings and lectures. It's quite a bit of work -- technically a 3-credit class, but people to say to consider it 4-6 credit hours of work. The profs inform us that it's basically a course with graduate-level reading requirements, but with (thankfully) undergraduate-level writing requirement.

I'm pretty much hooked, though -- mostly because the class raises and attempts to deal with some pretty important questions. Aka...

• What should an "education" look like? Vocational? Learning how to learn? For it's own sake? Proper proportion of "book learning" to "practical learning"?
  
• What makes a "wise" and/or "well rounded" individual?
  
• What is the relationship between education and life in the "real world"?
  
• What's the proper relationship between reason, experience, and revelation?
  
• Not everyone gets a liberal arts education...or wants to. Most people go the vocational training route. How does one avoid "elitism" -- or CAN we or SHOULD we?

Some main themes that keep showing up in the course:

• "Wisdom must be married to eloquence." Or "the true philosopher must be an orator, the true orator a philosopher." It is important both to know what is true, and to communicate what it true. Well-ordered speech shows a ready and well-ordered mind.
  
  
• A "liberal education" develops man's capacities for speech and reason -- both distinctly human characteristics, separating men from animals (and thus important). A "liberal education" also satisfies the distinctly human "desire to know." (Especially the desire to know the "ends" of things, and the "why" of things).
  
  
• A "liberal education" is both useful for many things -- and also good for it's own sake (in that it develops the uniquely human parts of man).

Women in the Church

Some additional thoughts concerning this point from my last post:

We need the strengths of women just as much as we need the strengths of men. When women's strengths -- such as dialog, communication, bridge-building, hospitality -- aren't seen as necessary and valuable to the life of the church, and given freedom to be exercised -- the church suffers.

If men and women really are different, then the tendencies of women have an important "fleshing out" role to play in the life of the church. Our proclivities for dialog, communication, bridge-building, hospitality aren't things to be afraid of and corralled into narrow limits, but important balancing factors to men's proclivities for confrontation, wall-building, aggression. I don't mind at all calls for the "masculinization": of the church - but people seem to forget in the mix that, just because the church needs a strong masculine element, this doesn't mean it doesn't need a strong feminine element as well. That the absence of "feminization" is just as much a problem as the absence of "masculinization." I have problems when "masculine" elements are associated with "good", and "feminine" with "bad." I have problems with it being fine and good for the life of the church when men are men -- but bad and damaging to the life of the church when women are women.

When our tendencies aren't valued, we have to become like men to get heard. And that's just not good for anyone.

It's much like John Henry Newman's view of education and reality. If we only get the ethicist's + chemist's perspectives on reality, we get a skewed and incomplete picture of the world. We need all disciplines and "ways of knowing" to contribute to the image. Likewise...if there really is a root difference between men and women, and if we only get the perspective of men on things, we've got a skewed and incomplete picture of reality. If men and women ARE truly different in how they approach and understand and value things in life -- and if those "ways of knowing" are indeed both necessary and important (equal, even?) -- if it is "not good that man should be alone" -- then kicking out (or treating as second-rate) what the women have to say on things gives us only a partial picture that will be eventually disastrous.

I just want my work to be seen as valuable and important, not dangerous. I want my proclivities for dialog, communication, bridge-building, and hospitality to be respected and valued as necessary aspects of the life of the church, in a necessary tension with more "masculine" proclivities. I damn well WANT to be a woman - but it's rather difficult when everything feminine and womanly is looked upon with suspicion as "unchristian" and "syncretic" and "weakening to the doctrine and life of the church." It's very difficult when, in one's life and theology, one has to act like a man to be seen as a true Christian, a defender of the faith, and "like Christ."

Of course we need aggression and defense and firm-standing and who knows what else. But give those free reign unchecked and unbalanced, an you'll have problems.

Women

So. I've been thinking a lot about the "role of women in the church." Partly because my friend Alisa is writing her honors thesis in defense of evangelical feminism and egalitarianism. Partly because I've heard about 50 gazillion sermons on Tutus 2, I Timothy 3, and Ephesians 5, all of them from a complementarian persepctive. Partly because I wonder from time to time whether God is angry at me for going to college. Partly because I have no freaking CLUE what it looks like to be an academically inclined Christian woman.

And mostly because I think there must be a resolution to all this that is true and good and beautiful, and doesn't do violence to revelation. Or experience or reason. :P

There's several ways I've come to resolve the matter in my own mind. Probably not entirely right or complete, in any way -- but I do believe they ring a bit truer than most of the flack flying around in these debates.

Important point #1: Men are women image the relationship between Christ and the church. The relationship between husband and wife was put in place by God in large part to provide a visible image of this deeper reality. Maybe I'm just crazy, but this rationale for gender roles strikes me as deeply beautiful, and though I may chafe sometimes at some of the implications, I can live quite happily with it.

Important point #2: We need the strengths of women just as much as we need the strengths of men. When women's strengths -- such as dialog, communication, bridge-building, hospitality -- aren't seen as necessary and valuable to the life of the church, and given freedom to be exercised -- the church suffers.

Important point #3: God is on the side of the weak and the oppressed and the helpless. Which is where a lot of women throughout a lot of history have found themselves.

Important point #4: The current era really is a "new day" for women. We have areas of life and work and study open to us that we never had before. We have the opportunity to do things unthinkable before. And we also have few guides or role models for what it looks like to do these things qua "women."

I DO think a woman will -- or ought to be -- an academic, a manager, a scientist, even, in a different way than a man. I don't know what it looks like. I'm hoping that in 500 years, maybe we'll get some idea. Especially of which parts of how those things are studied and pursued are fundamentally necessary to do the discipline well...and which parts are distinctly suited to more "male" tendencies and "ways of knowing." Which parts are up for debate, and which parts have to stay fundamentally the same.

These four points aren't fully developed by any stretch of the imagination. But, needing some guideposts to steer by in this mess, they're what I've currently ended up with. More on them later, I suppose, as I keep working with them in the back of my mind.

Alas

So...this was not the time to start back up. ::sigh::

Fare thee well internet (and IM, too) for another few months. Hello, Shakespeare and Artes and History of England class and piano.

Also -- if I start introspecting and philosophizing, laugh at me, and tell me to go cook something or go dancing or tutor a kid. Throwing me in a convenient snowbank tends to work as well.

See y'all at the other side.

Reintroductory Post, Part 2

Yay for bullet-point overviews.

Last semester:

• I started getting a handle on this whole "English major" business. Mostly through total immersion (three classes at once!). Huzzah for "close readings," low(er) grades, and DOOM.
  
  
• There's many, many incarnations of the Christian life. And many takes on what "in the world, not of it" looks like. I figured out where I fall, and what camp I want to live in. "Let every man be firmly convinced in his own mind" -- I'm glad I finally am.
  
  
• Rootedness.
  
  
• Old friends. New friends. A very dear friend.
  
  
• Trusting God about the present and the future. One of those easy things to know theoretically, and hard to know practically.
  
  
• Why do you say, O Jacob,
  and speak, O Israel,
  "My way is hidden from Yahweh,
  and my right is disregarded by my God"?
  Have you not known? Have you not heard?
  Yahweh is the everlasting God,
  the Creator of the ends of the earth.
  He does not faint or grow weary;
  his understanding is unsearchable.
  He gives power to the faint,
  and to him who has no might he increases strength.
  
  
• Figured out which church I'm attending up here, and why.
  
  
• Figured out (erm...as much as one can) the proper relationship of reason, experience, and revelation.
  
  
• I figured out what I want to do after I graduate. Or at least narrowed it down.

Christmas break:
I got a job working the cash register at Chic-Fil-A. The employees there are great people (though sometimes a bit crazy :)), and I had a blast. If you ever go there, get the chicken breakfast biscuit and a cookies and cream milkshake.

I also took a lot of long walks around the Air Force Base (some of them in possibly off-limits places). I saw a way of Christian living work and validate itself. I learned to understand and appreciate my church back home. And I got some cool presents.

This semester so far:

• "Virtue is in action." (Cicero)
  
  
• Wise men are slow to speak. They don't get angry easily. And I think they walk slowly, too, and take notes slowly. ("They know how to think about time," as Michelle says). All of these, I need a lot of work on.

Reintroductory Post, Part 1

So...yeah. It's been a while.

I took a good semester off. And a Christmas break. 'Twas a most beneficial and necessary thing.

I'm sure I had some good thoughts about something during that time. It's all pretty much a blur, though, and I wish I'd kept a better record of it than scattered longhand scribblings.

I'll let my sister Emily help summarize the situation:

Emily: "So...Ree! What have YOU been doing at college (besides exams and stuff)??"
Me: "Mmm...growing up, mostly."
Emily: "That sounds rough."
Me: "Yeah -- it kinda is."
Emily: "Well -- just think. In February you'll be 21, and able to DRINK! And that will be the biggest step of all."
Me: "I love you, Em."

So -- hey y'all (again), and hopefully I'll occasionally have something somewhere worth saying here. ;)