Snow!!

Church is cancelled due to snow and ice. This is the first time in my memory that this has happened and it is quite unexpected. A new experience to remember...

the beauty of nature

This seems to be the week for reading old poems and deciding to post them on my blog. In some of my spare time since I have been on break, I have been going through my old writings. Many of them are old and not very good, but a few I thought might be worth sharing with you. The following one is similar the previous one I posted in that it is a very irregular poem about my observations of nature. I wrote this one while sitting in my yard a couple years ago and looking up at the moon. I hope you enjoy it! Feel free to comment!

The clouds in their simplicity

Set us wondering all the day

The moon in its cool magnificence

Guards us through the night

The sun in its royal splendor

Awakes us to see each morning, bright

And guides us all the day

The seas are a picture of stillness

And in their shimmering beauty

They set us into peaceful reflection

The trees with their tall stature

Make us feel strong and bold

And let us see immortality in their

Look, both young and old

And in the mighty wind

Whispered and forgotten stories are told

The stars are perfect diamonds

That never fade, or grow old and die

And are the ladies in waiting

By their magnificent moon queen’s side

The rain is falling jewels that appear

As young fairies in their tinkling dance

And, by watching for very long,

Can set you into a wishful trance

But even in all this they but reflect

A small portion of their Creator’s beauty,

Wonder, magnificence, splendor, and awe

How can we not praise to the Creator then

For giving us this glorious creation

To ponder and to love

an observation of scenery

While watching the view out my window one day over a year and a half ago, I began to write what I saw in a very irregular kind of poem. I came across this poem again today and decided to post it here for you to read. It may not make sense to anyone but me, but it's kind of a neat description of outdoor occurrences.

Green trees, bending in the breeze

First bending, now tall, unshakeable

Leafless and harsh against the horizon

Red intermixed with browns and greens

Winter is fleeing and spring is coming

Leaves not yet strong enough to face the world

Still branches are firm in the cold and the wind

Ever shaking, never breaking

A patch of blue shows its face in the sky

Surrounded by white like a pool in the snow

Hope in the midst of a storm

The trees reach tall towards that patch of blue

Reaching, yet never far enough

Clouds chase the blue farther away

Trees bend as if trying to pull it back

Calm fills the outdoors

The atmosphere changes as the sun appears

Lighting the world below it

The trees shake and toss at its coming

As if waving to a long-lost friend

The shakings of the trees appear as excitement

Then calmly, they stand straight and tall

More blue appears, breaking free of its bonds

The white floats away faster still

Suddenly the whole day changes from winter to spring

As the sun reappears from the clouds

Blue replaces white and chases it away

The trees play catch in the wind

Young trees shake in excitement

While the old stand strong and firm

Some never move, uninfluenced by the surrounding changes

Then all grows calm in the lull

Thanksgiving Break!

It's been a long time since I have been able to share thoughts through this blog. In August, I started attending a private school for the first time and it has kept me incredibly busy. Starting this afternoon, however, we are on Thanksgiving break and it is an enormous blessing which I do not think I could begin to express enough gratefulness for. It's been a long stretch with no breaks and all of us, teachers and students alike, desperately need it. I have high hopes for times of relaxation, reading books, drinking hot tea, and spending time with family. I also hope to spend a little time at least writing on my blog. I have so many thoughts that come and go through my mind each day that I wish I could share with you but, alas, my memory is not as reliable as my good intentions. As a result, I will probably only get to share what thoughts come to me during this week-long vacation. Still, that is something I didn't have before and is yet another thing to be thankful for. Until next time, I hope you have a very blessed Thanksgiving week!

the first gleam of Dawn

The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day. – Proverbs 4:18

Driving to school each day between 6:15-6:45 in the morning, I have had the opportunity to watch the sun rise each day. It is pitch-dark when we leave, but by the time we arrive at school, it is light enough to see around. Soon afterwards, the sun will rise high over the earth and the latter's entirety will be filled with light. It has been one of the few good things about rising early and going to school. I enjoy watching the sun rise and fill the sky and clouds with its colors. It truly is a magnificent sight. When I read the above passage of Scripture, it reminded me of these morning sights and I wanted to share it with you.

Freed by the Cross

Freed by the Cross

Entrapped by sins, ensnared by idols,

In bondage, here I lie

Helpless against these self-made chains

On others my hope relies

The world composed of fellow prisoners

Offers little reason to hope

Growing despair against escape

Adds to this slippery slope

Suddenly before my eyes

Appears a quickening sight

My Savior nailed upon a cross

With no attempt at flight

All at once I look down

And am from my chains released

So long enslaved I now am freed

My despairing sorrow ceased

I raise my arms above my head

I run and dance with joy

Filled with gratitude that I am free

At last from Satan’s ploy

Running to the cross, I see

With unmingled shocked surprise

Buried in a pit beneath

The cross my crushed sin lies

At long last I’m free! My chains are buried

Deep beneath the cross

Now I serve a wonderful Master

Who has paid the cost

By Melissa DeLozier

3 August 2010

Gifts of Life

This morning as I was eating breakfast, I was pondering how all things - food, shelter, clothing, even the air we breathe, even the ability to breathe - are undeserved gifts from God. "I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man." (Ecclesiastes 3:12-13) "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." (James 1:17) His greatest gift to us was, of course, His Son - Jesus Christ, and His grace in sending His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. "For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith." (Romans 3:22-25) It occurred to me, not for the first time, how utterly ungrateful we are so much of the time for the countless gifts God has bestowed on us. Think if a friend of yours gave you a gift; it was not your birthday or a holiday or an anniversary, they just gave you a gift wanting to bless you. Think then if you just ignored that gesture and didn't even accept the gift, or you just grabbed that gift from their hands and then ran off to enjoy it without so much as a backward glance or a "thank you", or even worse, if you just took the gift from them with some comment like "About time!" as if you had in some way earned that gift and they had been previously "slacking off" by not giving it to you. "Like clouds and wind without rain is a man who boasts of a gift he does not give." (Proverbs 25:14) The thought of acting in such a way is repulsive to you, isn't it? Perhaps you're thinking, "Oh, that's dreadful! I would never act in such a ungrateful and self-centered manner." Yet that is exactly how we so often treat God and His gifts to us. We have done nothing to earn or deserve God's favor. As the Catechism teaches us, all men are worthy only of the "wrath and curse of God". Yet God was pleased in His grace and mercy to send Jesus Christ to live a perfect life, die a sinner's death, and take upon Himself the wrath and condemnation that we justly deserve so that we might inherit His reward. As if that was not enough to put us constantly on our knees in worship, and awe, and gratitude, God also daily blesses us with so many gifts: food, houses, family, friends, clothes, churches, schools, and the list goes on and on. "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8:32) Yet how often do we truly recognize God's goodness to us? How often are we truly grateful for each and every gift He bestows upon we who are so unworthy? Something to ponder as we go about the day. Our God is truly marvelous with His abundance of grace, goodness, and love!

"Now thank we all our God,

With heart and hands and voices,

Who wondrous things hath done,

In whom his world rejoices;

Who from our mother's arms

Hath blessed us on our way

With countless gifts of love,

And still is ours to-day.

O may this bounteous God

Through all our life be near us,

With ever joyful hearts

And blessed peace to cheer us;

And keep us in his grace,

And guide us when perplexed,

And free us from all ills

In this world and the next.

All praise and thanks to God

The Father now be given,

The son, and him who reigns,

With them in highest heaven,

The one eternal God,

Whom earth and heaven adore;

For thus it was, is now,

And shall be evermore."*

*"Now Thank We All Our God" from the red Trinity Hymnal*

Writing Compulsion

For me, writing is more a compulsion than an art.

For instance, as you may or may not be already aware, I write poetry as well as essays, papers, and observations. This being the case, I observed long ago that I cannot force myself to write a poem; the results will not be good. I never sit down without any ideas and decide to create a poem. That is not how I work. I write poems through the following method: I go about my daily life and occasionally something will strike me and usually about two lines, sometimes more, are put together in my brain. If I have paper and a writing implement available to me at that moment, I sit down, write down the lines in my head and from there, the full length poem works itself out. Usually within half an hour after the first lines came to me, the poem is complete. Because this is the way I write poetry, however, it means that I can go indefinitely without writing anything and then suddenly several poems will occur to me in a matter of days. For the most part, though, I write one every few months as thoughts occur to me.

My non-school related essays are written in much the same way. I will be reading a book, watching a movie, or just sitting in my room thinking or pondering something, and the idea of the essay will occur to me. Again, if paper and a writing implement are available, I sit down and write until the idea runs its course. Most of my blog posts have occurred to me in this way. Two in particular that came into being through this method were two posts entitled "Hobbits and Wizards: A Simple Life" and "Wisdom or Knowledge".

I enjoy writing in this way, although it can sometimes be annoying. For instance, when I was inspired to write "Hobbits and Wizards", I had just started watching the Fellowship of the Ring. Once the essay occurred to me, however, I stopped the movie and sat down to write. As a result of this, I did not watch any more of the movie that evening; I was too busy writing. Like I said - fun and annoying. The writing in itself is fun and I enjoy the flow of thoughts from my mind to the paper, but if I had really just wanted to watch the movie or read the book or do whatever it was that originally inspired the essay, it can be frustrating to have to pause to write the ideas down before I forget them. On occasion, I have not had access to writing implements when the idea occurred to me and by the time I do have access to them, I have forgotten or lost the flow of the idea. That can be frustrating and disappointing as well.

For the most part, however, I do truly enjoy writing. I get excited whenever the first lines to a poem or the original thought for an essay occur to me, and I am always pleased with the results. This inclination of mine is another reason I created this blog - so that when ideas do occur to me, I have a place to share them with you. I hope you are also pleased and intrigued with the results of my "writing compulsions". I am always thrilled to receive feedback on them from others.

Valedictorian's Speech Condemning Public Education

The following speech was delivered by top of the class student Erica Goldson during the graduation ceremony at Coxsackie-Athens High School on June 25, 2010

Here I stand :: There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, "If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, "Ten years . ." 
The student then said, "But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast -- How long then?" Replied the Master, "Well, twenty years." "But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?" asked the student. "Thirty years," replied the Master. "But, I do not understand," said the disappointed student. "At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?" 
Replied the Master, "When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path." This is the dilemma I've faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective. Some of you may be thinking, "Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn't you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible. I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer - not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition - a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I'm scared. John Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory schooling, asserts, "We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don't do that." Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt. H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not "to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States." To illustrate this idea, doesn't it perturb you to learn about the idea of "critical thinking." Is there really such a thing as "uncritically thinking?" To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth? This was happening to me, and if it wasn't for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is. And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us. We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren't we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still. The saddest part is that the majority of students don't have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. I will never be able to turn back these 18 years. I can't run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be - but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation. For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, "You have to learn this for the test" is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades. For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake. For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth. So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn't have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians. I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a "see you later" when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let's go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we're smart enough to do so!

Winter Yearnings

August - typically the hottest month of the year in the American South...

Each summer, I inwardly sigh in longing for the return of cold weather, wood stove fires, snowy afternoons with books and tea, delicious hot bowls of soups and chili, outfits that include boots and scarves... I feel like I should be singing "these are a few of my favorite things" for, indeed, winter is one of my "favorite things". Though I do not like sitting outside in the freezing cold, I prefer that to the oppressive heat of summer; and there are so many things about the wintertime that I do enjoy. On the especially cold days, I often bundle up and walk into our woods, admiring all the things that became frozen overnight. On such days, our creek is often covered with a thin layer of ice. Sometimes our hose starts dripping in the night and the water freezes before it falls, creating a humorous and lovely ice sculpture of sorts in the morning.

I am reminded of Ecclesiastes 3 where we are told that "for everything there is a season". Though I do not believe the author was speaking of the physical seasons of the earth, it is appropriate for those as well. Knowing this as I do, I know that there is a season for heat as well as a season for cold. Perhaps the heat is given to us to make us appreciate the cold all the more when it comes, and vice-versa. All I can say is that I hope this "season" is over soon so that we may enjoy the beautiful ones of autumn and winter.

Democracy in "Screwtape Proposes a Toast"

In the copy of "The Screwtape Letters" which I was reading, there is also a copy of "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" in the back. A large portion of it was so appropriate for modern-day American citizens, that I decided I must beg your indulgence to allow me to post that section, even though it is quite long. Especially Screwtape's comments on the education system are so true, sadly, of America's public schools today that I wanted to share them. They reveal many of the problems of America's politics as a whole. Please take the time to read the following excerpt:

Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose. The good work which our philological experts have already done in the corruption of human language makes it unnecessary to warn you that they should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning. They won't. It will never occur to them that democracy is properly the name of a political system, even a system of voting, and that this has only the most remote and tenuous connection with what you are trying to sell them. Nor of course must they ever be allowed to raise Aristotle's question: whether "democratic behaviour" means the behaviour that democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to occur to them that these need not be the same.

You are to use the word purely as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power. It is a name they venerate. And of course it is connected with the political ideal that men should be equally treated. You then make a stealthy transition in their minds from this political ideal to a factual belief that all men are equal. Especially the man you are working on. As a result you can use the worddemocracy to sanction in his thought the most degrading (and also the least enjoyable) of human feelings. You can get him to practise, not only without shame but with a positive glow of self-approval, conduct which, if undefended by the magic word, would be universally derided.

The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say I'm as good as you.

The first and most obvious advantage is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the centre of his life a good, solid, resounding lie. I don't mean merely that his statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself. No man who says I'm as good as you believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.

And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: "Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I -- it must be a vile, upstage, la-di-da affectation. Here's a fellow who says he doesn't like hot dogs -- thinks himself too good for them, no doubt. Here's a man who hasn't turned on the jukebox -- he's one of those goddamn highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were honest-to-God all-right Joes they'd be like me. They've no business to be different. It's undemocratic."

Now, this useful phenomenon is in itself by no means new. Under the name of Envy it has been known to humans for thousands of years. But hitherto they always regarded it as the most odious, and also the most comical, of vices. Those who were aware of feeling it felt it with shame; those who were not gave it no quarter in others. The delightful novelty of the present situation is that you can sanction it -- make it respectable and even laudable -- by the incantatory use of the word democratic.

Under the influence of this incantation those who are in any or every way inferior can labour more wholeheartedly and successfully than ever before to pull down everyone else to their own level. But that is not all. Under the same influence, those who come, or could come, nearer to a full humanity, actually draw back from fear of being undemocratic. I am credibly informed that young humans now sometimes suppress an incipient taste for classical music or good literature because it might prevent their Being Like Folks; that people who would really wish to be -- and are offered the Grace which would enable them to be -- honest, chaste, or temperate refuse it. To accept might make them Different, might offend against the Way of Life, take them out of Togetherness, impair their Integration with the Group. They might (horror of horrors!) become individuals.

All is summed up in the prayer which a young female human is said to have uttered recently: “O God, make me a normal twentieth century girl!” Thanks to our labours, this will mean increasingly: “Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite.”Meanwhile, as a delightful by-product, the few (fewer every day) who will not be made Normal or Regular and Like Folks and Integrated increasingly become in reality the prigs and cranks which the rabble would in any case have believed them to be. For suspicion often creates what it expects. (“Since, whatever I do, the neighbors are going to think me a witch, or a Communist agent, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and become one in reality.”) As a result we now have an intelligentsia which, though very small, is very useful to the cause of Hell.

But that is a mere by-product. What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how “democracy” (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks.

I have said that to secure the damnation of these little souls, these creatures that have almost ceased to be individual, is a laborious and tricky work. But if proper pains and skill are expended, you can be fairly confident of the result. The great sinners seem easier to catch. But then they are incalculable. After you have played them for seventy years, the Enemy may snatch them from your claws in the seventy-first. They are capable, you see, of real repentance. They are conscious of real guilt. They are, if things take the wrong turn, as ready to defy the social pressures around them for the Enemy’s sake as they were to defy them for ours. It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss.

My own experience, as I have said, was mainly on the English sector, and I still get more news from it than from any other. It may be said that what I am now going to say will not apply so fully to the sectors in which some of you may be operating. But you can make the necessary adjustments when you get there. Some application it will almost certainly have. If it has too little, you must labor to make the country you are dealing with more like what England already is.

In that promising land the spirit of I’m as good as you has already begun something more than a generally social influence. It begins to work itself into their educational system. How far its operations there have gone at the present moment, I should not like to say with certainty. Nor does it matter. Once you have grasped the tendency, you can easily predict its future developments; especially as we ourselves will play our part in the developing. The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be “undemocratic.” These differences between pupils – for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences – must be disguised. This can be done at various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that children used to do in their spare time. Let, them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have – I believe the English already use the phrase – “parity of esteem.” An even more drastic scheme is not possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma -- Beelzebub, what a useful word! – by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval’s attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT.

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I’m as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers – or should I say, nurses? – will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.

Of course, this would not follow unless all education became state education. But it will. That is part of the same movement. Penal taxes, designed for that purpose, are liquidating the Middle Class, the class who were prepared to save and spend and make sacrifices in order to have their children privately educated. The removal of this class, besides linking up with the abolition of education, is, fortunately, an inevitable effect of the spirit that says I’m as good as you. This was, after all, the social

group which gave to the humans the overwhelming majority of their scientists, physicians, philosophers, theologians, poets, artists, composers, architects, jurists, and administrators. If ever there were a bunch of stalks that needed their tops knocked off, it was surely they. As an English politician remarked not long ago, “A democracy does not want great men.”

It would be idle to ask of such a creature whether by want it meant “need” or “like.” But you had better be clear. For here Aristotle’s question comes up again.

We, in Hell, would welcome the disappearance of democracy in the strict sense of that word, the political arrangement so called. Like all forms of government, it often works to our advantage, but on the whole less often than other forms. And what we must realize is that “democracy” in the diabolical sense (I’m as good as you, Being Like Folks, Togetherness) is the fittest instrument we could possibly have for extirpating political democracies from the face of the earth.

For “democracy” or the “democratic spirit” (diabolical sense) leads to a nation without great men, a nation mainly of subliterates, full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and quick to snarl or whimper at the first sign of criticism. And that is what Hell wishes every democratic people to be. For when such a nation meets in conflict a nation where children have been made to work at school, where talent is placed in high posts, and where the ignorant mass are allowed no say at all in public affairs, only one result is possible.

One Democracy was surprised lately when it found that Russia had got ahead of them in science. What a delicious specimen of human blindness! If the whole tendency of their society is opposed to every sort of excellence, why did they expect their scientists to excel?

It is our function to encourage the behaviour, the manners, the whole attitude of mind, which democracies naturally like and enjoy, because these are the very things which, if unchecked, will destroy democracy. You would almost wonder that even humans don’t see it themselves. Even if they don’t read Aristotle (that would be undemocratic) you would have thought the French Revolution would have taught them that the behaviour aristocrats naturally like is not the behaviour that preserves aristocracy. They might then have applied the same principle to all forms of government.

But I would not end on that note. I would not – Hell forbid! Encourage in your own minds that delusion which you must carefully foster in the minds of your human victims. I mean the delusion that the fate of nations is in itself more important than that of individual souls. The overthrow of free peoples and the multiplication of slave states are for us a means (besides, of course, being fun); but the real end is the destruction of individuals. For only individuals can be saved or damned, can become sons of the Enemy or food for us. The ultimate value, for us, of any revolution, war, or famine lies in the individual anguish, treachery, hatred, rage, and despair which it may produce. I’m as good as you is a useful means for the destruction of democratic societies. But it has a far deeper value as an end in itself, as a state of mind which, necessarily excluding humility, charity, contentment, and all the pleasures of gratitude or admiration, turns a human being away from almost every road which might finally lead him to Heaven.

Cleanliness is Next to Godliness...?

Anyone who has known me for any real length of time, or who has been to my house, could tell you that I am by nature a very neat and organized person. This was not always the case; as often occurs, I believe, I was quite messy as a child, but as I have grown into my teenage years, I have become more and more clean. I believe this is a good thing and that organization is, in general, an admirable trait, though I do not take any credit for this trait in myself, as it comes naturally to me and is not something I have in any way worked on or earned.

One thing I have learned, however, in recent months, is that there is a point where "clean" crosses a line and becomes "sterile". In my own mind, I have often unconsciously considered the best-looking and neatest rooms to be guest rooms or those rooms that are uninhabited by either person or furniture, yet clean and bright. Yet when this thought occurred to me in full form recently, I realized that those rooms, though they truly are probably the cleanest and most organized of rooms, are lacking in personality and character...and life. And that is when another thought occurred to me: We must not become so clean that we wipe the color out of life. This is not in any way denouncing cleanliness or organization, since as I said before, I consider both to be good traits. I do not plan on trashing my room or even loosening my habits in the way of picking up after myself or dusting my room. What I am saying, what it is that occurred to me, is that there is a point when this can become extreme. The few nick-nacks, the books, the jewelry, the collectables, etc. that lay around my room are what make it "my room"; they are what give it character and personality, like myself. To a certain extent, I must restrain my organization so that my room does not become like a hotel room - clean and neat, but at the same time, sterile and empty.

Anyway, these are just some random thoughts of mine. I probably am "preaching" to myself here, as I am not sure if these thoughts of mine are applicable to anyone else, but I thought I would write them out regardless in the hope that you would get something out of them.

From Earth to Heaven

The last letter in "The Screwtape Letters" shows us Screwtape admonishing his nephew, Wormwood, for losing the soul of his "patient" to God (their "Enemy"). In it, Screwtape gives us a vivid picture of that man, that "patient", passing from earth to heaven. It is a rather remarkable description (though through the eyes of a devil), and I thought it was worth posting here to share with you. One thing that struck me after reading this section (especially the first paragraph) was how much I long and look forward to that day when I too will be rid of the clinging garment of sin forever! How blessed that day will be when we are welcomed into that Kingdom where there is no longer any pain or temptation or suffering! But now, for the excerpt:

How well I know what happened at the instant when they snatched him from you! There was a sudden clearing of his eyes (was there not?) as he saw you for the first time, and recognised the part you had had in him and knew that you had it no longer. Just think (and let it be the beginning of your agony) what he felt at that moment; as if a scab had fallen from an old sore, as if he were emerging from a hideous, shell-like tetter, as if he shuffled off for good and all a defiled, wet, clinging garment. By Hell, it is misery enough to see them in their mortal days taking off dirtied and uncomfortable clothes and splashing in hot water and giving little grunts of pleasure—stretching their eased limbs. What, then, of this final stripping, this complete cleansing?

The more one thinks about it, the worse it becomes. He got through so easily! No gradual misgivings, no doctor's sentence, no nursing home, no operating theatre, no false hopes of life; sheer, instantaneous liberation. One moment it seemed to be all our world; the scream of bombs, the fall of houses, the stink and taste of high explosive on the lips and in the lungs, the feet burning with weariness, the heart cold with horrors, the brain reeling, the legs aching; next moment all this was gone, gone like a bad dream, never again to be of any account. Defeated, out-manœuvred fool! Did you mark how naturally—as if he'd been born for it—the earthborn vermin entered the new life? How all his doubts became, in the twinkling of an eye, ridiculous? I know what the creature was saying to itself! "Yes. Of course. It always was like this. All horrors have followed the same course, getting worse and worse and forcing you into a kind of bottle-neck till, at the very moment when you thought you must be crushed, behold! you were out of the narrows and all was suddenly well. The extraction hurt more and more and then the tooth was out. The dream became a nightmare and then you woke. You die and die and then you are beyond death. How could I ever have doubted it?

As he saw you, he also saw Them. I know how it was. You reeled back dizzy and blinded, more hurt by them than he had ever been by bombs. The degradation of it!—that this thing of earth and slime could stand upright and converse with spirits before whom you, a spirit, could only cower. Perhaps you had hoped that the awe and strangeness of it would dash his joy. But that is the cursed thing; the gods are strange to mortal eyes, and yet they are not strange. He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and even doubted their existence. But when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realised what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not "Who are you?" but "So it was you all the time". All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories. The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained; that central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at last recovered. Recognition made him free of their company almost before the limbs of his corpse became quiet. Only you were left outside.

He saw not only Them; he saw Him. This animal, this thing begotten in a bed, could look on Him. What is blinding, suffocating fire to you, is now cool light to him, is clarity itself, and wears the form of a Man. You would like, if you could, to interpret the patient's prostration in the Presence, his self-abhorrence and utter knowledge of his sins (yes, Wormwood, a clearer knowledge even than yours) on the analogy of your own choking and paralysing sensations when you encounter the deadly air that breathes from the heart of Heaven. But it's all nonsense. Pains he may still have to encounter, but theyembrace those pains. They would not barter them for any earthly pleasure. All the delights of sense, or heart, or intellect, with which you could once have tempted him, even the delights of virtue itself, now seem to him in comparison but as the half nauseous attractions of a raddled harlot would seem to a man who hears that his true beloved whom he has loved all his life and whom he had believed to be dead is alive and even now at his door. He is caught up into that world where pain and pleasure take on transfinite values and all our arithmetic is dismayed.

On Our Journey Home

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

This morning as I was reading through the book of Ephesians and came across the above passage, I was struck with a thought.

Having just returned from a visit to my grandmother in Tennessee, the subject of vacations and trips is still in the fore-front of my mind. While going on trips to various places is often very enjoyable, after a time, there often stirs in me a sort of restlessness - a discontentment with being away from home in a place where most of my belongings and furniture are not. Upon my return, even after a fun and memorable vacation, I am happy to be home - where I belong at least for the time-being.

Though it is not quite the same, it occurred to me that we (that is, believers in Christ) should always feel a similar restlessness when we are on this earth. We were not created for this world. (John 15:18-19) We belong to a world, a culture, a city outside this universe. This is not our home and, though it can sometimes be pleasant and enjoyable, we should always have an inner longing for our true home. We are "fellow citizens of the saints" in Heaven and are a part of "God's household". Only there, in Heaven, will we be truly content; only there will we be truly "at home". That is where we belong and we should never desire to get too comfortable with this foreign land. We are travelers on our way to a distant land. On our way, our speech, our customs, and our actions should distinguish us from the citizens of this world. We may tarry here awhile, but we should never forget our eternal destination. We must keep walking day by day, each step one step closer to Heaven and to our Father.

Change

In my earlier reading, I had come across another excerpt that I thought revealing in this culture especially and worth sharing with you here. In this second excerpt from "The Screwtape Letters", this one taken from the twenty-fifth letter, Screwtape is teaching his nephew, Wormwood, how to use and distort for wickedness the natural "change" and "permanence" instituted by God in Creation.

This demand [for change] is valuable in various ways. In the first place it diminishes pleasure while increasing desire. The pleasure of novelty is by its very nature more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns. And continued novelty costs money, so that the desire for it spells avarice or unhappiness or both. And again, the more rapacious this desire, the sooner it must eat up all the innocent sources of pleasure and pass on to those the Enemy forbids. Thus by inflaming the horror of the Same Old Thing we have recently made the Arts, for example, less dangerous to us than perhaps, they have ever been, "low-brow" and "high-brow" artists alike being now daily drawn into fresh, and still fresh, excesses of lasciviousness, unreason, cruelty, and pride. Finally, the desire for novelty is indispensable if we are to produce Fashions or Vogues.

Unselfishness

As promised, here is an excerpt from "The Screwtape Letters" that I wanted to share with you. This particular excerpt is taken from the twenty-sixth letter where Screwtape is writing to his nephew Wormwood on the subject of "Unselfishness".

When once a sort of official, legal, or nominal Unselfishness has been established as a rule—a rule for the keeping of which their emotional resources have died away and their spiritual resources have not yet grown—the most delightful results follow. In discussing any joint action, it becomes obligatory that A should argue in favour of B's supposed wishes and against his own, while B does the opposite. It is often impossible to find out either party's real wishes; with luck, they end by doing something that neither wants, while each feels a glow of self-righteousness and harbours a secret claim to preferential treatment for the unselfishness shown and a secret grudge against the other for the ease with which the sacrifice has been accepted. Later on you can venture on what may be called the Generous Conflict Illusion. This game is best played with more than two players, in a family with grown-up children for example. Something quite trivial, like having tea in the garden, is proposed. One member takes care to make it quite clear (though not in so many words) that he would rather not but is, of course, prepared to do so out of "Unselfishness". The others instantly withdraw their proposal, ostensibly through their "Unselfishness", but really because they don't want to be used as a sort of lay figure on which the first speaker practices petty altruisms. But he is not going to be done out of his debauch of Unselfishness either. He insists on doing "what the others want". They insist on doing what he wants. Passions are roused. Soon someone is saying "Very well then, I won't have any tea at all!", and a real quarrel ensues with bitter resentment on both sides. You see how it is done? If each side had been frankly contending for its own real wish, they would all have kept within the bounds of reason and courtesy; but just because the contention is reversed and each side is fighting the other side's battle, all the bitterness which really flows from thwarted self-righteousness and obstinacy and the accumulated grudges of the last ten years is concealed from them by the nominal or official "Unselfishness" of what they are doing or, at least, held to be excused by it. Each side is, indeed, quite alive to the cheap quality of the adversary's Unselfishness and of the false position into which he is trying to force them; but each manages to feel blameless and ill-used itself, with no more dishonesty than comes natural to a human.

I believe this is often unconsciously practiced among many today, myself included to my shame, and I found it interesting and eye-opening to hear it discussed here as a means of stirring up bitterness and resentment among families or friends. I thought it would be a helpful excerpt to share.

The Screwtape Letters

Over the past few days, I have been reading "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis. If you have not read it, I highly recommend doing so. I am often amazed, as I read, at the brilliance and insight of Lewis in the writing of this book. It seems like a very real collection of letters between two devils. It helps me to be on my guard against the temptations that Satan uses to deceive believers. Actually, I have found that reading "The Screwtape Letters" is somewhat overwhelming when you see how many ways Satan uses to trick and trap Christians. He, that is, Satan, is no fool and is very clever in his temptations. As we read in Genesis 3:1, "Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made." However, I have to remind myself that the fight against him is not hopeless; that he has, in fact, already been defeated by the death on the cross and resurrection on the third day of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

One thing that has been impressed upon me through reading "The Screwtape Letters", is that I should be reading and studying the Scripture as well as engaging in prayer and worship as much as possible. These are the main helps against Satan and his temptations. Just as Jesus resisted Satan in the desert (Luke 4) by quoting Scripture, so also can we refute his temptations through Scripture. However, to do so means we must have a deep and ready knowledge of the Bible and an abiding faith in God. Hence, one of the virtues of the practice and habit of Bible study and prayer.

There is much to be learnt from "The Screwtape Letters" and much I could still say about it, but I will end here for now. Soon I am sure I will be posting sections from the book to share with you. I also again recommend that you read it for yourself if you have not already done so. It is excellent and a wonderful resource!