Reflections on Reading After Graduation

Intro: Although I attended a graduation ceremony just the other week, I teach year-round and so have almost forgotten that most people are off of school at this time. Most of you are (I hope) inveterate readers. This week, I want to explore what and how people read during and after school, each year and after one has completed one's formal education, with some ideas from my experience on what to read. This post is from a United States perspective, and I welcome readers' international perspectives!

What's My Story?

Like Husband, I enjoyed the academic stimulation of school, so much that I kept going to school until last year. After high school, I completed an associate's in science, then a bachelor's in biology. At that point, I couldn't decide between a master's in biology and a doctor of physical therapy (DPT), so I went with the DPT for several reasons that turned out quite well. After earning the DPT, I worked in the clinic for several years before starting a part-time PhD program that I completed a few months after Child was born. Through it all, I was reading.

Education and Reading

After high school and the associate's degree, I focused my reading on textbooks, mostly required and some recommended. Although I had read quite a few novels and miscellaneous leisure-time books through high school, the time I had for this went down somewhat when full-time classes were in session. This memory may be slightly inaccurate because I wasn't documenting my TBR list completion at that time (and of course, Book It! during summers was a big incentive!).

Once I started the DPT program, I distinctly remember reading both Anna Karenina and War and Peace in full during year 1 of the program, which was immensely satisfying (and probably meant that I could have worked more hours without adverse effect on grades). Following graduation, I had no more textbooks to read, but still wanted to read and keep up knowledge. This ended up consisting mostly of journal articles, semi-systematically gathered via subscriptions to journals' tables of contents and a curated science article subscription service (Amedeo).

For the years between DPT and PhD, I read quite a few books in my leisure time that trended toward the informative. During the PhD program, there were both textbooks and inches of printed articles, a few of which I still have in a binder. This meant a lot of 4:30 mornings! After the PhD, I have been trying to get back into varied reading. It trends toward nonfiction, theology, philosophy, and education-related material. A couple of novels are in progress (and I'm happy to have finally knocked out and understood the Space Trilogy!), but that depends on the time of school year.

Blogging Topics

If you look back in the archives of this blog, The Renaissance Biologist was born on October 14, 2007, once I was in community college. The first few years of topics included lots of news article commentary about biology, sermon notes, (il)logic, typical young-Republican snark from which I have long distanced myself. I had too much time on my hands, so was putting out multiple short posts each day, linking to a news article of interest.

Once in university, I transitioned to a slightly lower posting frequency of chapter-by-chapter commentaries on books I was reading for class or apologetics interest, and of course more sermon notes. The blog went silent for the first half of the DPT program, due to me burying myself in classwork. Thereafter, I returned to book commentary and sermon notes.

After this brief resurrection, the blog hibernated again for almost 3 years. Finally, in 2019, I had half a mind to resurrect the blog and refocus it on what I had always loved, reading and writing about reading. In late 2022, I took Lisa Bass's Create Your Blog Dream course (affiliate link also in the sidebar) and started blogging regularly again, more thoughtfully this time with best practices. I haven't had the inner impetus to migrate to Wordpress yet, but that may be coming soon.

I covet your feedback on the blogging content and style, since I've been working on improving the best practices one by one. According to this article, the only reason I see for a potential reader not finishing a post of mine is the long sentences. Oops...especially since Strunk and White has been one of my long-time favorites which I do try to put into practice.

Reading During School

Now that you know a little more about my background, let's explore what happens at the population level regarding in-school reading.

How Reading is Taught

I'd like to start with a slightly different question: how reading was taught, specifically in the ancient world around the time of the earliest days of Christianity. In this vein, I can't get very far without citing N. T. Wright (this time from Paul: A Biography, pp. 425-426):

"In the same way, education in the ancient world was almost entirely for the elite. Jewish boys were taught to read and write; they would, after all, need to study the Torah. But a great many ordinary pagans were either functionally illiterate or able only to read what was required for daily tasks. Some estimates put the level of literacy at between 20 and 30 percent; some of the older Greek cities and islands had a tradition of elementary education for citizens, but for many people, again especially for women and slaves, this would have been minimal. The early Christians, however, were enthusiastic about education, and particularly reading. When we ask ourselves what the 'teachers' in Paul's communities were teaching, I suspect that part of the answer was 'reading,' since if they were teaching the converts (as they surely were) the scriptures of ancient Israel, this would have involved basic skills that many of those converts had hitherto lacked."

Stop and re-read that quote. Christianity was revolutionary in a number of ways, but the connection of evangelism to reading instruction was a new one for me. I won't get to the Pauline epistles for a few months at the rate I'm going, but now there's yet another facet to look forward to.

Now, let's return to the present-day United States. You don't need to look far for sad data about the state of literacy in this country. I'll look at that in the next section, but right now I think it's important to examine how reading is being taught (here's my source article). Standardized testing occurs at certain grade levels in public schools; recent data indicate that a minority (< 50%) of 4th graders are "proficient" readers. 

How is reading taught? Starting in kindergarten or thereabouts, the most common method is 3-cue. This involves the child guessing a new word by context in the text, any associated pictures, and potentially the apparent pronunciation. This method downplays the role of phonics--but research keeps coming back to supporting phonics, so hopefully the tide will start to turn toward phonics-congruent practices. Despite the noted irregularities of the English language, pronunciation on the whole falls into definite patterns, teachable by phonics. I learned something new about phonics: that phonemic awareness isn't the same as letter/sound correspondence.

What Children (Don't) Read in School

I wasn't able to find a source indicating a single set of books that most school-age children in the United States read, but there are definitely articles on why they stop reading.

• They're not read aloud to past kindergarten--interesting stories are not accessible to them in most school settings
• Standardized testing requires analysis that might otherwise happen spontaneously; Charlotte Mason had plenty of thoughts about this approach even before it became popular
• Higher grades in school include over-scheduling and less time for leisure reading/listening
• Good-quality, interesting juvenile fiction, a staple of classical and Charlotte Mason curricula, is absent in high schools
• Parents as a corpus don't model reading for pleasure

What (College) Adults Read in School

Mostly textbooks . . . if they actually do the readings. My university department moved to a blended curricular delivery format several years ago--which, incidentally, positioned it well when COVID hit--to incentivize students to come prepared to class. Currently, health professions students in the department complete pre-work ("entrance tickets") including watching pre-recorded lectures and completing assignments based on the readings, in-class discussion that assumes basic exposure to the content, and post-class work at a higher level of challenge.

Reading After School

Since reading levels, both amount and proficiency, are low during school years despite educators' best intentions, it isn't surprising that the downward trend continues after one graduates.

Leisure

One purported cause of the decline of reading for fun is the universal availability of electronic media (TV) and, introduced after TV, the Internet. Although higher education levels are positively associated with prevalence of literary reading, more people being college educated still do not read when they're not required to. Literary fiction increases empathy in readers, which prompts some curiosity in researchers to see whether this association is causative or not. Potential cognitive impacts of decreased reading at a population level include decreased IQ, but, interestingly, there is an inverted U-shaped association of IQ with creativity, with the peak of creativity around 120 (dropping off both below and above that number).

What, and how much, do adults in the US actually read, then (sources: Statista and the Pew Research Center)? They do still read books, both in print and digital. Rather than newspapers, social media is their main source for news. It is encouraging that 75% or so of adult read at least 1 book per year, which translates to about 20 minutes of reading "something" per day. The "typical" adult who doesn't read books regularly has less than a college education, a household income at or below $30,000, is over 50 years old, and has never been to a library.

Work

Certain jobs require more or less reading as a part of the work day. Here's a 2021 breakdown of types of jobs and the numbers/percentages of people who hold them from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. What stands out to me as the jobs that would require the most book reading include:

• Top executives and legislators (barring the "we need to pass it to find out what's in it" mentality!), 2.2% or 3.4 million
• Education administrators, 0.4% or 638,000
• Computer occupations, 3% or 4.7 million
• Scientists, 0.9% or 1.4 million
• Clergy, 0.2% or 245,000
• Teachers/librarians, 5.8% or 9.2 million

Jobs that would apparently require the least book reading include:

• Art/design-related occupations, 1.8% or 2.8 million
• Healthcare support occupations, 4.4% or 7 million
• Food-related occupations, 7.4% or 11.8 million

With that background, what are the literacy rates in adults today? In the US (2019 data from the National Center for Education Statistics), the working definition of literacy is “the ability to understand, evaluate, use and engage with written texts to participate in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential” (p. 61, OECD 2013). Level 2 literacy, which matches the everyday needs of most people, requires readers to compare, contrast, and make low-level inferences such as mentally filling in a missing adjective based on context. About 80% of adults do have at least this level of literacy; adults who had less include those with cognitive deficits precluding participation in the survey, those who were white or Hispanic, and non-US-born adults. 

Worldwide (Our World In Statistics data), literacy rates are comparable. This site doesn't give a working current definition of literacy, but notes that a common estimate of past literacy (before standardized tests) was the ability to write one's name on legal and other documents, and numeracy was the ability to state one's age correctly in years. Currently, the global literacy rate is 84% and has increased by roughly 4% in recent years. This global rate is much higher than in the 1800s, when the recent Enlightenment had marked a turning point in prioritizing literacy for all people. Poorer countries tend to have lower literacy rates, and younger people are more likely to be literate, potentially due to access to regularly scheduled education.

What is your take on literacy? Do you have a background in a typical or atypical educational system that affected your views as well as your personal literacy? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Gardening and (in) the Mind

Gardening has long been one of those things I've felt I "should" do, since I grew up doing it during early and middle childhood and gravitate toward homesteading YouTube channels now that Child is old enough to "help" me outside sometimes. However, I also don't like change, so adding that habit back in has some mental barriers.

Our house has some mulched areas and a small (untended-yet-fruitful) fenced garden. This week, I've been engaged in brush clearing, mulching, and very selective weeding. I don't pull all the weeds in the mulched areas (leaving grass and dandelions), but pick my battles against saplings, vines, buckthorn, and thistles. My gloves yet bear the memory of burdock seeds because I didn't recognize those plants until it was too late.

This week, in honor of No-Mow May, I'd like to look at gardening from a different angle, that of a metaphor connected with the mind, reading, and writing.

Gardening and Education

Common metaphors throughout the history of education have included the key-type or passport-type function of education, the children-as-blank-slates theory based on Enlightenment thinkers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the competing children-as-gardens analogy that I drew from reading Charlotte Mason, who specifically addressed the tabula rasa error.

Charlotte Mason's Thought

Let's talk more about Charlotte. I just finished reading the Smidgen Press e-book version of Mason's Essay toward a Philosophy of Education which expounds on and repeats her basic principles. Although she has 20 principles of education, technically speaking, the most practical ones boil down to these three:

• Children are born persons. That is, they are people made to interact with other people and the world God made; they are not just blank slates or empty vessels to be stuffed with facts.
• Children are innately curious (unless this tendency is stifled), so they need to be fed knowledge deeply and widely. Many educators refer to this as the "feast of ideas."
• Narration, her core educational strategy, depends on focused, short-term attention. 
• Bonus 5/22/23: The Common Mom added a video on the rationale for using old books in classical and Charlotte Mason education because of the "soil" of the mind.

In narration, the child listens to (or reads) a passage which can be anywhere from a paragraph to a chapter. Children know at the start that this single reading is the only time they will be exposed to the material, so they pay more attention to it. Immediately afterward, they narrate or re-tell what they heard/read in their own words, orally or in writing. Consistently followed, this method allows them to remember, understand, and apply the material for months without further review. Here are two scholarly articles (second is a dissertation) that analyze her methods from a more contemporary perspective.

Other Related Thoughts

While reading Mason's work, I pondered the gardening metaphor and non-metaphor from my own perspective as well. Drawing from my own educational experiences and her method, the first thought was about nature study. I wrote a post incorporating this the other week--even if you're not doing nature study per her method, now is in most geographic regions a great time to read outdoors! If you are wanting to garden at the same time, consider an audiobook or twist someone's arm to read aloud to you.

On a homeschooling topic, there are several other applications and connections. Children, as "born persons" per Mason, can also be compared to gardens, fertile soil, or young plants, depending on what literary sources and Bible passages you're looking at. Like plants in soil within a garden, children and their minds need regular feeding, watering, and protection with developmentally-appropriate (and just-right challenging!) ideas, whole food, healthy liquids, prayer, and parental authority.

Another homeschooling application is the tendency of home educators to capitalize on real-life learning experiences. Again, this is consistent with Mason's methods. Garden-related examples include learning the names and parts of local plants (botany), practicing how to care for and keep plants alive for future consumption (agriculture), and developing responsibility for a part of the household.

Even if you're not homeschooling or planning to, I think you would agree that it's important to learn how to work with one's own hands. Social media posts complain about this on a regular basis--which can prompt a discussion on the role of school versus the role of parents versus the role of the family's support system(s) versus external parties' roles in teaching life skills to children as they grow. Gardening as a practice addresses life skills of diligence, food production, and property maintenance, to name a few.

Gardening and Mental Health

As we grow (like plants), we continue to need good physical, emotional, and cognitive nutrition. Not surprisingly, gardening can provide some of this nutrition both metaphorically and literally.

Metaphorically, at least one source (caveat: this one dives heavily into philosophy incompatible with orthodox Christianity) compares the mind to a mental garden: "You are what you choose to plant." True points in the article include:

• Attitudes influence other attitudes and behaviors.
• From a perspective of mindfulness meditation, mental "gardening" involves observing personal growth, removing weeds of bad habits, and planting flowers of good habits. Habit formation is akin to a season of gardening for plant growth.

A more biblical metaphor is of fertile soil. The reference that comes first to mind is the parable of the sower, where the soil refers to listeners' hearts (or inner selves).

Literally, gardening can improve one's mental health. A WebMD article states that gardening improves mood (via focus on the task at hand), self-esteem (if plants turn out healthy), attention span (via focus on the task at hand), physical fitness (if one observes proper form that won't injure), and social bonds (if one gardens communally). Hazards of gardening, which no medical article would see fit to omit, include poor plant growth and illness/injury risk. Growing plants indoors confers some of the benefits with minimal risks.

If you'd rather read a book on literal gardening and mental health, Sue Stuart-Smith explores this from a psychiatric perspective in The Well-Gardened Mind. I haven't read it, but it looks interesting.

Gardening and Theology/Philosophy

Now we get into the weeds (pun intended)! Honestly, I won't get terribly deep in this post, but will try to update it with cross-links as I continue to write.

No blog post on a reading/writing blog would be complete without a book list. I haven't read any of these, but the titles sound interesting, as far as recent works on the connections among gardening, theology, and philosophy.

• Homemaking guides, usually including growing at least some of one's own food. Revision of an 1800s book all the way to a recent book connecting theology to the homemaker's role or vocation
• Roman Catholic perspective on 100 plants related to Christian traditions and how to grow them
• Outdoorsy meditation on the theology of the Incarnation, with the metaphor of roots (John 15). Another meditation on gardening as a life-cycle metaphor as well as a spiritual practice.
• The list wouldn't be complete without a book connecting philosophy to gardening. How does gardening relate to philosophy? In order to have a good growing season the first time around, one needs to imagine the future conditions and needs, spend time thinking about one's actions, and do some preliminary research into what others have done before. The author calls philosophers-who-garden existentialist stoic quantum scientists. Chew on that for a while!

To wrap up the post, here is an unedited comment on a YouTube short video I watched recently. The video, from Coffee and Bible Time, was about resources for reading through a book of the Bible.

"Good that you read on your own....but you have the spirit...you dont need commentary or otherd to tell you what it is saying...the spirit himself will teach you all things. You have been anointed by the holy one and need no man to teach you. For he will bring to rememberance all things he has said. Just listen on your own and be amazed, restored, and healed. He had you in mind when he wrote it. ;)"

Here are my thoughts on that comment:

• Correct observation that each Christian does have the Holy Spirit indwelling
• Blanket assumption of the perspicuity of Scripture. A more correct statement would be that the portions of Scripture necessary to our salvation (i.e., those proclaiming the gospel aka the lordship of Jesus Christ) are clear and that the other parts require additional context (the legwork of past generations of devout scholars and historians) to clarify.
• Incorrect formulation of the priesthood-of-believers/solo-scriptura concepts. As shown by other passages (because Scripture interprets scripture, as this commenter would likely grant), that's not what this text is saying. Plus, the earliest generations of Christians (the Church Fathers) repeatedly stressed the need for believers in congregations everywhere to submit to their bishops in theological matters.
• Scripture was written for us, not to us.
• God didn't dictate the majority of Scripture. Bible books had two authors--human and divine. Inspiration isn't a simplistic doctrine, and evangelism and apologetics suffer if we assume that it is.

Happy gardening!

Surprised by Wright: Reflections on Final(Something or Other)

This week is finals week at my institution and in many other places. So, what better to write and read about than final things? Since I finished N. T. Wright's rather addictive book Surprised by Hope last Thursday, which book addresses the Christian's hope of bodily resurrection after resting in heaven ("life after life after death"), I wanted to share some of the most impactful quotes from each chapter, along with my commentary as applicable. All italics in the quotes are in the original.

Wright's Key Questions

"What are we waiting for? And what are we going to do about it in the meantime?" (p. xi) That is, what lies beyond the "finality" of death?

Part I: Setting the Scene

Chapter 1: All Dressed Up and no Place to Go?

• p. 5 "As long as we see Christian hope in terms of 'going to heaven,' of a salvation that is essentially away from this world, the two questions are bound to appear as unrelated." This quote ties directly to the first quote I posted, above.
• p. 6 "I am convinced that most people, including most practicing Christians, are muddled and misguided on this topic and that this muddle produces quite serious mistakes in our thinking, our praying, our liturgies, our practice, and perhaps particularly our mission to the world." As a cradle Anglican, Wright has been trained in the habit of speaking enthusiastically and kindly.

Chapter 2: Puzzled about Paradise?

• p. 18 "Many Christians grow up assuming that whenever the New Testament speaks of heaven it refers to the place to which the saved will go after death. . . . But the language of heaven in the New Testament doesn't work that way. 'God's kingdom' in the preaching of Jesus refers not to postmortem destiny, not to our escape from this world into another one, but to God's sovereign rule coming 'on earth as it is in heaven.' The roots of the misunderstanding go very deep, not least into the residual Platonism that has infected whole swaths of Christian thinking."
• Platonist hymns include Abide with Me, It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, How Great Thou Art, I'm But a Stranger Here, and others. These express the basic message of "world = bad or fading away, heaven = good place for the disembodied soul."
• Great hymns: For All the Saints, Jerusalem the Golden, and others.
• p. 26 "Why try to improve the present prison if release is at hand? Why oil the wheels of a machine that will soon plunge over a cliff?" This question could be applied especially to environmental concerns--what is our proper role in relation to the physical world?

Chapter 3: Early Christian Hope in its Historical Setting

• p. 33 "It is a commonplace among lawyers that eyewitnesses disagree but that this doesn't mean nothing happened." Keep this in mind in YouTube comment section arguments . . .
• p. 36 "In content, resurrection referred specifically to something that happened to the body; hence the later debates about how God would do this . . . much modern writing continues, most misleadingly, to use the word resurrection as a virtual synonym for life after death in the popular sense."
• p. 41 "The early Christian future hope centered firmly on resurrection. The first Christians did not simply believe in life after death; they virtually never spoke simply of going to heaven when they died." (The next section of the book notes that Paradise = temporary lodging, and describes 7 modifications from Judaism's belief about this.)
• pp. 46-47 "We have a new [compared to Judaism] metaphorical meaning of resurrection . . . baptism (a dying and rising with Christ), and resurrection as referring to the new life of strenuous ethical obedience, enabled by the Holy Spirit, to which the believer is committed." Note the sacramental nature of baptism and resurrection. On a side note, the church fathers note that (1) baptism causes regeneration and (2) infants are regenerate. Put those two together, and you get efficacious infant baptism.

Chapter 4: The Strange Story of Easter

• p. 55 "Yet the [Gospel] stories also contain--and this marks them out as among the most mysterious stories ever written--definite signs that this body has been transformed. It is clearly physical: it uses up (so to speak) the matter of the crucified body; hence the empty tomb. But, equally, it comes and goes through locked doors; it is not always recognized; and in the end it disappears into God's space, that is, 'heaven,' through the thin curtain that in much Jewish thought separates God's space from human space."
• p. 65 "The problem with analogy is that it never quite gets you far enough. History is full of unlikely things that happened once and once only, with the result that the analogies are often at best partial." This is one of the easiest things to point out about those who use the fallacy of comparing one-time history to pattern-type analogy.

Part II:  God's Future Plan

Chapter 5: Cosmic Future: Progress or Despair?

• p. 79 "This isn't a matter of ancient people being credulous and modern people being skeptical. There is a great deal of credulity in our present world, and there was a great deal of skepticism in the ancient world." C. S. Lewis also made this point in God in the Dock.
• pp. 81-88 "A the risk of gross oversimplification, we suggest that there are two quite different ways of looking at the future of the world. . . . The first position is the myth of progress . . . This utopian dream is in fact a parody of the Christian vision . . . The real problem with the myth of progress is, as I just hinted, that it cannot deal with evil . . . [The second position is that] the way you get rid of morality within this [Platonic/Gnostic] worldview is to get rid of the thing that can decay and die, namely our mortal selves."

Chapter 6: What the Whole World's Waiting For

• p. 93 "The early Christians did not believe in progress . . . but neither did they believe that the world was getting worse and worse and that their task was to escape it altogether." Christianity, orthodox at least, tends to be in a middle or third position between polar-opposite stereotypes that people think it teaches or should teach.
• p. 95 "Evil then consists not in being created but in the rebellious idolatry by which humans worship and honor elements of the natural world rather than the God who made them."
• p. 97 "Redemption is . . . the remaking of creation, having dealt with the evil that is defacing and distorting it." This is a subtly different phrasing than what I and many fellow Christians were taught. It is a key point to help reframe and refocus doctrines of salvation.
• p. 100 "Not all residents of Philippi [in Paul's time] were Roman citizens, but all knew what citizenship meant . . . so when Paul says, 'We are citizens of heaven,' he doesn't at all mean that when we're done with this life we'll be going off to live in heaven." I think he develops this thought elsewhere--inhabitants of Philippi tended to stay there for the rest of their lives rather than move back to Rome.
• p. 103 "The very metaphor [birth] Paul chooses . . . shows that what he has in mind is not the unmaking of creation or simply its steady development but the drastic and dramatic birth of new creation from the womb of the old."

Chapter 7: Jesus, Heaven, and New Creation

• p. 111 "The idea of the human Jesus now being in heaven, in his thoroughly embodied risen state, comes as a shock to many people, including many Christians." This, I think, should be part of the "sniff test" when you are visiting a new church.
• p. 112 "What happens when you downplay or ignore the ascension? The answer is that the church expands to fill the vacuum." Wright then points out that the church (the bridge of Christ) is not the same as Christ, so this expansion causes heretical or otherwise problematic teaching.
• p. 115 "The early Christians, and their fellow first-century Jews, were not, as many moderns suppose, locked into thinking of a three-decker universe with heaven up in the sky and hell down beneath their feet . . . As some recent writers have pointed out, when a pupil at school moves 'up' a grade . . . it is unlikely that this means relocating to a classroom on the floor above."
• p. 115 "The mystery of the ascension . . . demands that we think what is, to many today, almost unthinkable: that when the Bible speaks of heaven and earth it is not talking about two localities related to each other within the same space-time continuum or about a nonphysical world contrasted with a physical one but about two different kinds of what we call space, two different kinds of what we call matter, and also quite possibly (though this does not necessarily follow from the other two) two different kinds of what we call time." This is a hard point to think about the first time, but it may help to remember that since God the Father doesn't have a body, "at the right hand of God" doesn't denote a physical place.

Chapter 8: When He Appears

• p. 125 "The first thing to get clear is that, despite widespread opinion to the contrary, during his earthly ministry Jesus said nothing about his return." (Wright argued this in detail elsewhere.)
• p. 128-9 "The Greek word parousia . . . is usually translated 'coming,' but literally it means 'presence'--that is, presence as opposed to absence . . . In neither setting, we note, obviously but importantly, is there the slightest suggestion of anybody flying around on a cloud. Nor is there any hint of the imminent collapse or destruction of the space-time universe."

Chapter 9: Jesus, the Coming Judge

• p. 137 "Faced with a world in rebellion, a world full of exploitation and wickedness, a good God must be a God of judgment."
• pp. 139-140 "In particular (though there isn't space to develop this here) this picture of future judgment according to works is actually the basis of Paul's theology of justification by faith. The point of justification by faith isn't that God suddenly ceases to care about good behavior or morality. . . . justification by faith is what happens in the present time, anticipating the verdict of the future day when God judges the world." This allows "judgment by works" to not conflict with "justification by faith."
• p. 144 "Far too often Christians slide into a vaguely spiritualized version of one or other major political system or party. What would happen if we were to take seriously our stated belief that Jesus Christ is already the Lord of the world and that at his name, one day, every knee would bow?" Think of the phrase "Christian Right." Not a good idea to combine the two!

Chapter 10: The Redemption of our Bodies

• p. 147 "There is no room for doubt as to what [Paul] means [in Romans 8:23]: God's people are promised a new type of bodily existence, the fulfillment and redemption of our present bodily life. The rest of the early Christian writings, where they address the subject, are completely in tune with this."
• p. 148 "The traditional picture of people going to either heaven or hell as a one-stage postmortem journey . . . represents a serious distortion and diminution of the Christian hope."
• p. 149 "This new life [in Colossians 3:1-4], which the Christian possesses secretly, invisible to the world, will burst forth into full bodily reality and visibility. The clearest and strongest passage, often ignored, is Romans 8:9-11."
• p. 150 "What does Jesus mean when he declares that there are 'many dwelling places' in his father's house? . . . The word for 'dwelling places' here, monai, is regularly used in ancient Greek not for a final resting place but for a temporary halt on a journey that will take you somewhere else in the long run." (Note that the Lutheran Study Bible note on John 14:2 directly contradicts this without a supporting reference. LCMS Cyclopedia, describing official beliefs, collapses heaven/paradise and eternal life, making no mention of the future resurrection in that document; resurrection is dealt with separately, as a last-thing. But why is eternal life separated doctrinally from being raised bodily?)
• pp. 151-2 "For a start, heaven is actually a reverent way of speaking about God so that 'riches in heaven' simply means 'riches in God's presence' . . . If I say to a friend, 'I've kept some beer in the fridge for you,' that doesn't mean that he has to climb into the fridge in order to drink the beer." Again, this makes much more sense when you think through the implications of God the Father not having a body.
• p. 153 "We've been buying our mental furniture for so long in Plato's factory that we have come to take for granted a basic ontological [nature-of-being] contrast between 'spirit' in the sense of something immaterial and 'matter' in the sense of something material, solid, physical."
• pp. 154-5 "What Paul is asking us to imagine [in 2 Corinthians 4 and 5] is that there will be a new mode of physicality, which stands in relation to our present body as our present body does to a ghost . . . [regarding the phrases about physical/spiritual bodies] Greek adjectives ending in -ikos, describe not the material out of which things are made but the power or energy that animates them."
• p. 161 "Why will we be given new bodies? According to the early Christians, the purpose of this new body will be to rule wisely over God's new world. Forget those images about lounging around playing harps." Whew!

Chapter 11: Purgatory, Paradise, Hell

• p. 169 "In the early Christian writings all Christians are 'saints,' including the muddled and sinful Corinthians."
• p. 174 "The two appropriate places for remembering the Christian dead, and for doing so in a way that expresses genuine Christian hope, are Easter and All Saints."
• p. 179 "In the justly famous phrase of Miroslav Volf, there must be 'exclusion' before there can be 'embrace': evil must be identified, named, and dealt with before there can be reconciliation." In conversations about what Christians (should) mean by "love," this is particularly important to remember and bring up.
• p. 184 "We find that the river of the water of life flows out of the city; that growing on either bank is the tree of life, not a single tree but a great many; and that 'the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.' There is a great mystery here, and all our speaking about God's eventual future must make room for it."

Part III: Hope in Practice

Chapter 12: Rethinking Salvation: Heaven, Earth, and the Kingdom of God

• p. 191 "Jesus' bodily resurrection marks a watershed . . . And, to put it kindly but bluntly, if you go in the other direction, away from the bodily resurrection, you may be left with something that looks a bit like Christianity, but it won't be what the New Testament writers were talking about." (i.e., it is a core Christian doctrine, 1st-rank)
• p. 193 "What you do in the present--by painting, preaching, singing . . . loving your neighbor as yourself--will last into God's future . . . They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom."
• p. 198 "Salvation, then, is not 'going to heaven' but 'being raised to life in God's new heaven and new earth.'" Another repetition or version of the key point that snaps things into focus! Our goal is not escape but renewed stewardship and praise.
• p. 203 "Part of the difficulty people still have in coming to terms with the gospels, read in this way [Wright proposes], is that kingdom of God has been a flag of convenience under which all sorts of ships have sailed."

Chapter 13: Building for the Kingdom

• pp. 209-10 "The image I often use in trying to explain this strange but important idea [that our work will last but we don't yet know how] is that of the stonemason working on part of a great cathedral. The architect already drew up the plans . . . When they're finished with their stones and their statues, they hand them over without necessarily knowing very much about where in the eventual building their work will find its home . . . But they trust the architect that the work they have done in following instructions will not be wasted."
• p. 214 "Within the first-century world of Jesus, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees, the doctrine of resurrection was a revolutionary doctrine." That is, they wouldn't have thought of it unless it actually happened
• p. 216 "We must therefore avoid the arrogance or triumphalism of the first [social justice] view, imagining that we can build the kingdom by our own efforts without the need for a further great divine act of new creation. But we must agree with the first view that doing justice in the world is part of the Christian task, and we must therefore reject the defeatism of the second [do-nothing] view, which says there's no point in even trying."
• p. 227 "The power of the gospel lies not in the offer of a new spirituality or religious experience, not in the threat of hellfire (certainly not in the threat of being 'left behind') . . . but in the powerful announcement that God is God, that Jesus is Lord, that the powers of evil have been defeated, that God's new world has begun."
• p. 229 "Seeing evangelism and any resulting conversions in terms of new creation means that the new convert knows from the start that he or she is part of God's kingdom project, which stretches out beyond 'me and my salvation' to embrace, or rather to be embraced by, God's worldwide purposes." (Other benefits include differentiation by new converts between the good world and the bad corruptions of sin, and new converts always viewing Christian behavior as integral to their new way of life.)

Chapter 14: Reshaping the Church for Mission (1): Biblical Roots

• p. 234 "The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom."
• p. 241 "Those who find the risen Jesus going to the roots of their rebellion, denial, and sin and offering them love and forgiveness may well also find themselves sent off to be shepherds instead. Let those with ears listen." The bishop of our ACNA diocese recently came to the church to perform confirmations and receptions into the denomination, with specific words for each of us.
• p. 245 "Even the striking occasional miracles that the early apostles performed didn't convince everybody at the time. This isn't just a cop-out. The difference between the kingdoms of the world and the kingdom of God lies exactly in this, that the kingdom of God comes through the death and resurrection of his Son, not through naked displays of brute force or wealth."
• pp. 250-1 "But in the Bible heaven and earth are made for each other. They are the twin interlocking spheres of God's single created reality. You really understand earth only when you are equally familiar with heaven."

Chapter 15: Reshaping the Church for Mission (2): Living the Future

• p. 256 "Interestingly, most of the good Easter hymns turn out to be from the early church and most of the bad ones from the nineteenth century." I love older hymns; Wright prefers hymns all from different decades (i.e., no two from the 1870s) within a single service.
• pp. 256-7 "This is our greatest festival. Take Christmas away, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away, and you don't have a New Testament; you don't have a Christianity; as Paul says, you are still in your sins . . . This is our greatest day. We should put the flags out."
• p. 260 "But many are rediscovering in our day that there are indeed such things as places sanctified by long usage for prayer and worship, places where, often without being able to explain it, people of all sorts find that prayer is more natural, that God can be felt and known more readily."
• pp. 262-3 "Abuse of the sacrament does not nullify the proper use. Successive Christian generations have struggled to find language to do justice to the reality of what happens in baptism and of what happens in the Eucharist."
• p. 272 "Somehow the sacraments are not just signs of the reality of new creation but actually part of it. Thus the event of baptism - the action, the water, the going down and the coming up again, the new clothes - is not just a signpost to the reality of the new birth, the membership (as all birth gives membership) in the new family. It really is the gateway to that membership."
• p. 272 "Baptism is not magic, a conjuring trick with water. But neither is it simply a visual aid."
• p. 275 Similarly, "It [the Eucharist] is the breaking in of God's future, the Advent future, into our present time. Every Eucharist is a little Christmas as well as a little Easter."
• p. 282 "The Bible as a whole thus does what it does best when read from the perspective of new creation . . . The Bible is not, in other words, simply a list of true doctrines or a collection of proper moral commands - though it includes plenty of both."
• p. 288 "The point of 1 Corinthians 13 is that love is not our duty; it is our destiny."

Husband, as you've probably noticed from past posts, is a big fan of Wright because his scholarly perspective on New Testament and biblical doctrines in general helps everything snap into better focus, so that reason can be the proper servant of theology, not tossed out the window nor made to force all biblical doctrine into logical categories.

What do you think?

Outdoor Reading and Nature Study

In our part of this beautiful Midwestern state, it snowed on May 1. Over 3" (though none of it stuck). Needless to say, the incipient blooms were slightly shocked, and my outdoorsy heart was saddened at the more limited time outside I could spend with Child showing him things about earthworms, leaves, moss, and robins. To compensate, I want to weave together several threads on this topic, related to recent and less-recent reading I've been doing. These topics are Midwest-specific outdoor year-round reading strategies, home education with outdoor reading with littles, and book recommendations to maximize your positive outdoor experience.

What can a Reader do Outside in the Midwest? (Year-Round)

We joke that there are two seasons in several Midwest states: winter, and construction. The first part of construction season is also jokingly subdivided--in many states--into Fool's Spring, Second Winter, Spring of Deception, Third Winter, and Mud Season. Based on the weather, we're either in Third Winter or Mud Season. So, the first principle to thinking through this section is: count on needing extra layers and/or a wind shelter for a long time if you're bent on reading outside for the majority of the year.

In the spirit of nature study (as opposed to naturalism), there are books on paper, and the (figurative) Book of Nature (a theological concept from the Middle Ages). On the first topic, one of my favorite books is Anna Botsford Comstock's 1939 classic Handbook of Nature Study. This is a great, thick book to read outdoors and in preparation for outdoor time--what are the names of the living things you're finding? What did people in the 1930s know about them? Another book I stumbled across, which I haven't read but think looks interesting, is Tristan Gooley's How to Read Nature. 

On the second topic, I direct you to Psalm 8 to start! God has revealed aspects of His character in the present world that He created, and it is one of the pleasant duties of Christians, His adopted children, to study the works of His hands.

Spring Ideas

Often, in early spring, I need specific motivation to bring a book outdoors and try to read it. Olive Morales' Science Times article addresses a physiologic rationale on why to read outdoors. She notes that the contrast sensitivity, our eyes' ability to detect differences in colors and hues, depends on the amount of light that is present. So, on days when the sun is peeking through the clouds (even if it's cold and windy), there is generally more light outdoors than indoors. This makes our eyes more effective at seeing the text clearly on the printed page. For my fellow near-sighted readers, this is a boon.

What about dealing with the cold and mud and wind? Here are my tips, based on the idea that there's no bad weather, only bad clothing:

• Keep a book with you at all times. Ideally, one with thick paper so the wind is less likely to tear the pages. If it's small enough to fit in a coat or stroller pocket, even better.
• Layer on the gloves. I've found that a base layer of thin cotton gloves with thin, slightly oversized leather gloves on top, allows me to keep relatively warm fingers and still have the dexterity to turn pages with wind chills of down to about 20 degrees F.
• Find a spot out of the wind, no matter where it is. In my part of the Midwest, this can be quite challenging because the wind is a headwind no matter which direction I'm facing (I kid you not). A gazebo can be an "outdoor" compromise for this purpose.
• Obviously, spreading a blanket on the grass won't work. Be content with a chair or a bench (with blanket if needed) until the weather warms up and the earth dries out somewhat.

Summer Ideas

The internet seems to think that this is the only season in which it's truly easy to read outside . . . and I think it's right, with the exception of insects. My tips here are from a Scholastic Parents article and Honestly Modern's blog post.

• Keep an "outdoor bag" always at the ready. This bag should contain books (bonus points if nature-oriented), snacks, a blanket for the grass, bug spray (or daily garlic supplements if you don't want DEET), sunscreen, and hats.
• Allow books you're reading to inspire outdoor activities. This can be directly related (like bug identification guides) or indirectly (like tea parties described in Little Women, or battle scenes described in the Chronicles of Narnia).
• Engage neighbors, whether children or adults--yes, children typically have more time to read outside during the summer, but adults can and should get in on the fun! Vitamin D is good for everyone.
• Parents of children old enough to play with only general supervision can bring a good book to read on the bench nearby.
• Audiobooks are also quite helpful for when you're walking or running.

Autumn Ideas

Once autumn hits in my part of the country, it usually means wind and early snow. Therefore, my spring ideas come into play here (see section above)!

Winter Ideas

Since January 1, I've been focusing on getting as much outdoor time with Child as possible, every day. We've missed 2 days in February due to unsafe conditions (negative wind chills plus precipitation) that no amount of layers save a full-body 1" plastic coating could compensate for. Not much reading happened outside on those days, so I sat by the fireplace and thought about the next day's forecast in between reading aloud and silently.

Are Non-Paper Books Worth it in this Setting?

I can't speak from personal experience on this one, but there are definite advantages to having an e-reader, plus a few disadvantages, outdoors.

• Pro: pages won't blow away in the wind
• Con: strong sunlight may interfere with some screens
• Pro: lightweight and portable, rather than a big box of books (I'm looking at you, Husband)
• Con: temperatures may be too extreme for the battery to function properly
• Pro: newer e-readers have similar functions (dog-ear/bookmark, make a stylus note)
• Con: like a paper book, an e-reader will not function well with precipitation

What can a Mother-Teacher do Outside?

Since Child was born, I've been more cognizant of the need to expose him to oral language and orient him to the world of books. It's a slow road at the moment! However, I'm also reminded of my own experience being homeschooled and spending plenty of time outside. The method my parents used was loosely based on Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy and recommendations, hence my partiality to that method as I prepare for being a second-generation homeschooler.

Charlotte Mason's Recommendations

Mason had a series of 20 principles of education on which she based her writings. Most pertinent to this post (reading and the outdoor world) are 

#1 - "Children are born persons." That means they are curious about the world, inside and outside the house, before they are otherwise influenced.

#4 - Children need to be trained with daily habits rather than coercion. One habit is going outside and mindfully observing the world around us.

#5 - "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life." Again, this refers to going outside and watching things.

#6 - Use the natural surroundings. This refers to both internal and external home environments (as opposed to something that has had input of extensive instructional design). Even if one lives in a city, there are living things around to observe.

#11 and #13 - The curriculum should provide varied, appetizing ideas for children to feed on. That is, provide a wide variety of interesting, factual, "living" books.

In her commentary on Charlotte Mason homeschooling, Karen Andreola notes that the Handbook of Nature Study (by Comstock) is an excellent resource for the mother-teacher sitting or walking outside with her children, to have ready answers to children's questions about what they see, whether flora or fauna.

Today: Simply Charlotte Mason on Nature Study

Mason having written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, several educators have taken up the task of translating her philosophy into principles easily applied by today's homeschooling parents, considering the advances in technology. Simply Charlotte Mason is one excellent site with associated YouTube channel that I've come across in the last year or so, with a thorough exposition of what each principle looks like for various populations including special needs. The Classical Charlotte Mason podcast (by Autumn Kern, also a homeschooling mother) dives more into the philosophical ideas that are worked out slightly differently for each family, depending on the thought process of the parents.

What Should I Read to Make the Most out of Outdoors?

Not having read specific books besides the ones I've mentioned above, I would direct you to your own book preferences on each of these topics:

• Dressing for each season. Being warm enough, or cool enough, as the day may dictate, and having protection from dangerous outdoor elements (sunburn, malaria-bearing mosquitoes) can make each outing more pleasant and less unpleasant. You might be surprised at how much you can read (books and nature) with the right layers on!
• Identification of living and non-living things. These include flora, fauna, rocks, and man-made objects. Knowing how to name objects one sees is a thoroughly satisfying pursuit, especially for children.
• Outdoor-friendly foods. Though insects will be attracted to almost anything I make, I do try to think about the ambient temperature and moisture levels--can my snacks and picnic foods be safely and pleasantly edible after hours outdoors?
• Philosophy of creation and historical views on creation. In the past, I blogged extensively about young-earth creationism, which posits a specific mode of creation. As a Christian and a scientist, I strive to think Christianly about every subject while following evidence where it leads. Alvin Plantinga, one of the leading Christian philosophers, has shown that naturalism isn't a rational position to hold, but also that the current Theory of Evolution as a whole does not require a naturalistic worldview (thus removing the logical conflict between a belief in evolutionary processes and a belief that God created the world and its contents.

Happy reading outdoors!