Findings

Today I learned that I need some rather extensive foot surgery on both feet. I have hard bumps developing on the inside/top of each foot near the big toe. Turns out they’re bone spurs that need to be removed to restore movement to my toe, correct the basic structure of my feet, and screw it into place. Another reason to regret the years of running. Very common for runners, I’m told.

I’m thankful if this foundational problem can be repaired. But I can’t quite imagine how to work in the two weeks of non-weight-bearing life, and the ensuing month of flat surgical shoes and taking it slow and easy. I have young kids. I just can’t quite figure how it’s all going to work.

The problem is the timing, certainly not my kids. Especially after watching the movie Children of Men tonight. (Spoiler alert.) What would the world at large — or my own world — look like without children? The one in this movie is a dark, dirty, chaotic world of humans that have lost their ability to reproduce, and all that children add – until. Into a slum in a state of war, a long-awaited child arrives, freighted with the hopes and dreams of the human race, and a path is carved for the child through great danger.

Sound familiar?

This is a phenomenal nature video. I caught the second Nature episode on television back in the fall, and this week I netflixed it. It’s a documentary made by Ginger Kathrens that traces the life of Cloud, a palomino stallion in the Rockies, from birth to fatherhood.

Ginger Kathrens’ photography is spectacular, and her commentary provides a fascinating interpretive lens for viewing animal behavior. She assembles 7 years worth of footage of several bands of wild horses in the mountains of Montana about 600 miles north of her home, tying it all together in a masterful narrative that’s packed with both information and wisdom about the psychology, the politics, and the social behavior of her subjects. Even if you’re not a “horse person,” this is captivating stuff.

This dvd contains two episodes of Nature, plus a segment in which Ginger Kathrens tells the story of her experience discovering and learning to film these “sensitive prey animals.” She also provides a window into her own purchase and training of Trace, a stallion captured in one of the roundups and auctioned off. Though she’d prefer that all of them remain free, this one was designated for sale, and he ended up in the best possible situation for a domestic horse.

I’m going to try and get my hands on the book, then decide whether to add that or the dvd to our library. Though I’m not normally attracted to animal books per se, this really drew me in, and I developed a great respect and liking for Kathrens, an independent and gifted artist. Any nature story will include its share of sadness, but one couldn’t ask for a more observant, sympathetic or knowledgable guide.

First of all, why did I do it? I’d read Jon Krakauer’s book probably 12 or 13 years ago, and even though it sits right beside my piano on the shelf, never once have I felt a desire to pick it up and leaf through it nostalgically as I do other books. I class it as finely crafted, powerful, but devastating.

So… Why did I do it? Why did I rent the movie? Once again, packaged in a different genre, I find the story finely wrought, powerful… and devastating.

Is it well-done? My answer would be, certainly. Constructed using flashbacks, lovely cinematography, convincing dialogue, and a respect (for the most part) for Krakauer’s book, this film is finely crafted, finely acted, finely accompanied by its soundtrack. The problem is the tale itself, a true one, and a tragic one. (Plot spoilers ahead…)

Some have linked this to the nature writing tradition as a tale of someone who withdraws from society and seeks a truer life experience in the wilderness. I guess I have no problem with that on the surface. Like Thoreau (one of this young protagonist’s heroes) who retreated into the (civilized) wilderness of Walden to “live deliberately,” Chris McCandless makes a wholehearted effort to carve out a meaningful niche removed from the banalities, materialistic illusions, and emasculating ease of his upper middle class city life. (I think the book reveals a fuller and more convincing picture than the movie of his motives, which were deeply personal and not just archetypal.)

I can relate to the desire to make an attempt to make a go of life in the wilderness, stripped of modern illusions. I can share the sense of adventure. Who can’t?  All of us can see the problems of our age, and we feel their effects at some level. We have those moments of feeling like a hamster trapped in its Habitrail, and want to break out and prove that we’re real. 

The tragedy is that he fails. He dies without harvesting the meaning he was looking for. His life never reaches the high point of its arc. It’s not that I wanted him to go back to the city and live a yuppie life. I just wanted him not to fail.

I don’t often review movies, but Freedom Writers is one I want to remember. It’s a retelling of the familiar tale: a teacher takes on a group of unteachables, inspires them to believe in themselves, and sets them on a new path in life. In this case, the teacher is Erin Gruwell, and she takes her freshman English class of unwillingly integrated students in Long Beach, California down an unconventional road: trips, real books rather than the ones prescribed, serious community-building within the class, and journalling. They call themselves the Freedom Writers in a hat tip to the Freedom Riders of an earlier decade, and their stories are preserved in this book. It, as well as this one, are going on my must-read list as a woman, a mother and a teacher.

I particularly liked this movie’s presentation of two feminine “types.” It reminded me of the choice set forth in A Room With a View, where the heroine must strike through the boundaries set by convention, scrambling out of the mold into an authentically human life. In this story I admire both students, for breaking out of racial hatred, and teacher, for moving beyond play-acting and into love. All parties grow up, in other words. That doesn’t always happen in real life.

Erin Gruwell’s character is contrasted by another teacher, a woman who’s been in the profession a long time, and who makes convincing arguments about surviving in an educational setting circumscribed by racial tensions, political agendas, and funding limitations. She’s tight-lipped, squinty-eyed, sure this young upstart has no clue. It’s not long before it’s apparent that she’s eaten alive by jealousy of Gruwell’s success.

I found the juxtaposition a fruitful one, and could feel sympathy for this older woman because I understand how easy it is to operate according to a philosophical framework, or a pedagogical theory, or a set of ideals listed on the page, rather than from the heart. It’s possible to believe that having the right set of goals will get you from point A to point B, but there’s really no substitute for self-giving. Gruwell had to start from scratch with this class, understanding that the right approach would involve throwing out the conventional wisdom, hearing this unique group of students, and allowing the relationship between teacher and students to grow organically from that particular situation. Pedagogy grew out of relationship. Perhaps at one time the older teacher knew this too, but had forgotten. She was a poignantly drawn character, and though of course I rallied behind Gruwell in her stance against the establishment, I found myself unexpectedly wishing for a better outcome for this other teacher too.

Pedagogy grows out of relationship. Instruction isn’t limited to the classroom. As a homeschooler, of course this is what I believe. But is it really what I practice? Or do I doubt my own creativity enough to rely more on book-wisdom about children than my knowledge of my own? Do I offer them information and skills, or myself? Do I allow lurking uncertainty over whether I’m the real thing or a mere poser to pave over genuine relationship, substituting a good syllabus for a willingness to dive headlong into the process? These are all worthwhile questions that the movie raises, and I appreciate the challenge.

I think everyone wonders at times whether we mean what we say, or whether we’re play-acting. I know that at some points in my life, I’ve meant what I said. As a teacher, I remember a student’s father attending my class and praising my relationship with the students, the quality of the instruction, the atmosphere of the class. I remember (because I’ve kept them) student evaluations that showed me that I was hitting the bull’s-eye, end-of-semester gifts from students, observation reports that confirmed good things about my teaching. But I also remember the semesters when I operated as if I had arrived at the right formula, and just had to keep everything in accordance with that same list of ingredients. That’s deadly in any human enterprise. I liked this movie because it returned me to that place in myself that knows this well. 

This isn’t so much a top ten list as a “ten things that occur to me” list. Nevertheless, a key part of Christmas is the ritual viewing of a short list of nostalgic movies and television specials.

Going My Way (1944), Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald. Young Father O’Malley is sent to revitalize a NYC parish in trouble, without stepping on the aged Father Fitzgibbon’s dignity. In the process he transforms local urchins into a boy’s choir, restores a young couple in sin to the narrow way, runs into an old friend-become-opera singer who helps out financially, and teaches the old priest to play golf (among other things). The ending is a real tear-jerker. (The Bells of St. Mary’s [1947, with Ingrid Bergman and Crosby] is a sequel, and there again Father O’Malley is a character that effectively and redemptively distinguishes between Christianity and mere religion.)

Holiday Inn (same era). Two song (Bing Crosby) and dance (Fred Astaire) men compete for the same women. The Inn, opened by Crosby, is only open on holidays, and I’m pretty sure the song “White Christmas” debuted in this movie. Lots of good song and dance from the elegant era, as well as some lighthearted but truthful wisdom about relationships.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Maureen O’Hara, William Powell, young Natalie Wood. An old man who believes he’s really Santa dissolves the enmity between major department store owners, softens cynicism in divorced women, teaches young Natalie Wood how to be a child, and ends up embroiled in a supreme court case to determine whether he’s really who he says he is. This story deals with the issue of belief, but unlike The Polar Express, faith in Santa isn’t made an article of religious faith; this movie successfully makes the point that faith in people you love is essential. 

The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (animated version).

A Charlie Brown Christmas.

The Little Drummer Boy. I know, the clay-mation seems hokey to our sophisticated age, as does the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the background. But it’s an imaginative look at the nativity that rightly makes you realize Jesus was born a king; his divinity didn’t wait till his public ministry began. And it’s moving to me, maybe because it takes me back to my simpler childhood heart. 

This week I’ll be watching The Nativity, which I haven’t seen before. Not sure if it’ll make the list, but it looks good.

I read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” while walking on the treadmill this morning. It took less than an hour to read, but it was time deliciously spent.

What a creepy tale! It’s a masterful account of a woman sinking into insanity under the care of her husband, a physician (and control freak). It’s Gilman’s commentary on treatment she herself underwent for “nervousness,” and it leaves little question that the cure is far worse than the illness if you’re a woman in the 1890’s.

The story opens with the narrator and her husband’s arrival at a rented colonial estate in the country. They’re there so that she can recover from her “temporary nervous depression.” “John is a physician,” she writes in her diary, “and perhaps–(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this dead paper is a great relief to my mind–) perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see he does not believe I am sick!” Diagnosing her problem as “a slight hysterical tendency,” he (with the full concurrence of her physician brother) prescribes rest, isolation, tonics, and “air.” She is absolutely forbidden to work, and only writes in her diary on the sly.

She is confined in the old house’s former nursery, in which the bed is nailed down, bars cover the windows, and the walls are covered–except where someone has tried to peel it off–with horrific yellow wallpaper. Slowly the wallpaper becomes the obsessive central concern of her diary. She believes it sees; its pattern is filled with violence and hidden meanings; gradually she becomes convinced that a woman is creeping behind its busy pattern. By the end of the story she has been reduced to crawling around the room herself.

I’m sure much criticism has probably been written about the enclosure as a mind symbol, as well as the story’s marital politics (the only power the narrator achieves is the subversive power of madness) and the subordination of women. But wow, was it provocative.

Here’s a thought: X-Men III. Jean Grey, the female character who’s the most powerful of the X-men and has telepathic powers and control over other minds, goes postal in the movie because she’s tired of being told she has to rein in and control and discipline her gifts. She believes she’s being managed and thwarted by others who feel threatened by her. I almost think she’s a modern-day sci-fi version of this narrator from ”The Yellow Wallpaper,” who wants to write, to visit friends, and to be involved in “congenial work.” But her husband refuses all these desires, keeping her contained and repressed until her imaginative side boils over into insanity.

It sounds strange to me to be saying this (because I’m not a “feminist.” I’m a stay-at-home, evangelical Christian, homeschooling mom!). But I’ve had that feeling of being kept in my place at times, especially in settings where those in authority fear the unpredictable. It can become pretty confusing. I’m not sure if its part of being female, or just part of being human, that it takes a long time in life to feel like you’re free to be firing on all cylinders. 

In any case, as neither a mutant nor a late nineteenth century invalid, I found this to be a gripping story–but not one I’ll want to reread any time soon. It almost had me checking the walls for unexplained shadows. Uggh.

Still trying to make sense of my experience of belonging to a big church for the last 9 years, only to find myself now searching for something very, very different.

There’s something about belonging to a mega-church that’s like being Jim Carrey in The Truman Show. When things don’t add up, no one seems to notice. Maybe it’s that there’s something appealing to people about being identified with a big, slick organization, and we respond the same way we respond to a commercial: “I want it.” We don’t ask the hard questions, and we don’t stop to figure out whether the product delivers on its rhetoric. That’s the choice we make (once again a choice reflecting the “having” orientation in life), and it ends up shaping us into the strange, giddy, sloganized people smiling brightly and surrounding Truman in his artificial world.

So I’m not that. I’ve chosen to belong to the true Kingdom, and a recent assertion of that choice was to follow God out of a place that had begun to seem more image than substance. While I’m certain God is guiding, I’m not sure I can claim to be the princess in George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin–following the protective, guiding thread given her by a grandmother no one else can see, and perceptible only to her own fingertips. And though I hope God’s plan in this chapter includes others (like my children), I’m not sure I can claim to be valiant like she is, led along through dark caverns and saving other heroes. 

At the opposite extreme, I’m aware of the danger of becoming a goblin like the ones in the story–driven underground, bitter, disfigured, proud, disconnected from the daylight world and the reality of others.

I’m somewhere in between.