Attention all Hunger Games lovers or haters out there. Head on over to Trevin’s Wax’s blog at the Gospel Coalition site to check out my ND Wilson’s review. It’s drawn some lively responses on the great World Wide Internet.
One big take away is found at the end of the review.
“One final thought: never read or watch a story like a passive recipient, enjoying something in a visceral way and then retroactively trying to project deeper value or meaning onto the story you’ve already ingested. Such projections have been making authors and directors seem more intelligent than they are for decades. As you watch, as you read, shoulder your way into the creator’s chair. Don’t take the final product for granted, analyze the creator’s choices and cheerfully push them in new and different directions. As we do this, the clarity of our criticism will grow immensely. Which is to say, we’ll be suckered far less often than we currently are.
Lastly, Suzanne Collins can really write. It’s just that we can’t really read.”
That’s not my husband in the video, in case that was unclear. My husband was the thinker-upper of that little vignette. The director of the piece. The brilliant, or possibly diseased mind responsible for dreaming up that awesome moment with the five-toe shoes and the pen.
And anyway, you should come to the conference. It’ll be fun. And we’re doing another Femina mini-conference this year called Glory Makers. And you should all be there. You can wear your five-toe shoes and bring your Buddhist prayer flags.
Ahoy out there, all you people needing Mother’s Day ideas! Hot shopping tip! Here is a festive little bundle of books which Canon Press is selling for 50% off at the moment.
So there were a couple questions raised on the subject of girls being constantly told to “guard their hearts.” Ok yes, I know that the questions were actually addressed to Lizzie, but I am nonetheless horning in with two of my cents.
First: I’m sure all you girls are tired of hearing the older women say this. But as Lizzie astutely pointed out, once girls actually start listening to the advice the older ladies will no doubt stop offering it. The trouble, however, is that no matter how often people offer you this advice, it doesn’t actually make it any easier to do, does it? That’s where the real problem comes in.
Quick aside: If you don’t actually see the point of all this, if you’re thinking to yourself, “Guard my heart? Why on earth would I do that?” then hark back to the old truism about the tape. The first time you stick a piece of tape to something it’s good and sticky. If you then peel it off and stick it to something else it may possibly still stick. The third time, the corners are probably not staying down. Fourth time it’s only limply clinging on in a pathetic sort of way. Do this too many times and you find yourself with nothing more than a dirty, linty piece of cellophane. Similarly (in case you missed the inference), the more times you give your heart away, the less likely it gets that your heart will be capable of staying put. And it’s not just that something in you gets weakened each time this happens. As a matter of fact, something in you gets strengthened as well . . . your ability to switch the object of your affection. You have trained yourself to have a roving eye – and that habit will certainly not stop simply because you get married.
Right then. Having thus established my street cred as someone in favor of urging girls to guard their hearts, I am now going to promptly switch teams and take issue with the phrase “guard your hearts.” Continue reading ‘Heart-Guarding (and other ways to whitewash a tomb)’
Yesterday’s post on militant virtue inspired a lot of discussion, and rather than tag on a bunch of comments of my own, I thought I’d just follow up with another post.
First of all was a concern that I expressed the need for positive virtue, but then basically described it all as defensive. A couple things on this. First, there are a great many things that a young woman can and should do to be proactive about these things. They vary, however, very widely with her circumstances. There is no way to lay out a set of rules like “stop hanging out by the pop machine and looking needy,” although that would probably be good advice in some situations. Second, defensive responses do not feel like negative space when you use them. In other words, in actual practice it feels more like lobbing a water balloon into someone’s face. It isn’t invisible.
Another reason that I did not lay out specific responses is because these sorts of things vary widely by personality as well. My sister and I grew up in the same community, with exactly the same amount of protection and security. Continue reading ‘Militant Virtue, a few questions entertained’
A common problem that we all have when thinking or talking about female virtues is that of speaking in negatives as though female virtues were a sort of empty space. We think a gentle and quiet spirit is another way of saying vacant. We think modesty is simply the absence of inappropriate dressing. We think that chastity is the absence of promiscuity. We think that faithfulness at home is the absence of going out and doing other things. But scripture does not define virtues in terms of empty space; it is defined in terms of fruit.
Matthew 7:16 says quite simply “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?”
Painfully straight forward I know, but do you notice how it does not say anything about knowing it is a grape vine by the absence of thistles? It’s the grapes that really tell the story. In the Fairie Queene there is a female knight named Belphoebe, who represents chastity. What a wonderful image! Chastity is a militant virtue. It requires an active defense.
Continue reading ‘Militant Virtue’
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