Thank You For Your Attention To This Matter

Truthing, Homeschool Anxiety, One Thing Matters, Children are People too, The New Orthodoxy, Blind to Reality, Song of the Week, Read the Comments

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seated_children_-_Bernhard_Keil.jpg

I’m both late and rushing this morning because I’m in the middle of concocting a capacious vessel of Bouillabaisse for the celebration of a birthday this afternoon. June into July is one of our intense birthday seasons, and every effort to pace myself has come to naught. For example, I had, unexpectedly, to give Portia the Puppy a bath after my walk this morning because she managed to cover herself in something foul smelling. On the plus side of the equation, it is rainy and cool and thus the perfect kind of day to sit on the porch before an ambrosial soup and heaps of bread to dip in melted butter laden with garlic. Let’s see, first, if there are just a few takes to launch us forth into the day.

one

I haven’t had anything to say about the “war” of the last two weeks, but I am much captivated by President Trump truthing out statements that conclude with the phrase, “thank you for your attention to this matter,” as though there were an obvious and actional task that it is my duty, as an American citizen, to perform. I’m happy to pay attention, and do whatever I can, and the very first thing will be to say “thank you for your attention to this matter” whenever I remember to. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before.

two

Last night I saw that Melissa, on X, had asked a pertinent and useful question I should have thought of years and years ago:

Homeschooling parents: If you could start your child’s education all over again with what you know now, what would you do differently? My thoughts on education keep growing as we go, so I’m curious what the rest of you have learned in the process.

I responded with a pithy, and slightly too honest, “I wish I had panicked less and enjoyed myself more,” for who wants to be seen as panicky and joyless? Certainly not me.

I had a particular blog post in mind, which I cannot now find, about how the only thing that works is to pray a lot and hope for the best because children will always dig in their heels and refuse to spell. Maybe some children will learn to spell, but mine did not. In noodling around I discovered that in my years over at Patheos I blogged about homeschooling almost exclusively on Fridays, and I often sounded fed up—like this extremely wordy and slightly unhinged post. I remember those past times fondly, now, but I also know that I was often too anxious in the moment to enjoy what I was doing, and that all the anxiety was wasted, because it turned out fine. I could have just slogged through each day without worrying at all, but then I would have never taken up blogging, so at least I got something out of it.

three

The odd thing, of course, which is true about everything in life, is that when you’re in the middle of it, it so often seems unendurable, because it is. The lack of control that I have over matters of life and death lends an air of hysteria to my daily existence, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. The mystery is that all the half-baked, faltering, anxious tasks that we take up in life, if they are done in the grace and mercy of Christ, end up being fine, usually better than fine, however painful they might be in the moment.

four

My own children, as you all know, are a little older—22, 21 (and married), 18, 17, 15, and 14—but I still spend a good amount of time with much littler people. I’ve never put the toys away in my house (though I hope to make a play room so that they can at least be corralled in between visits) and I’m used to answering lots and lots of questions that come out of the blue. One little person this week wanted to know why the word “soil” is used for the dirt that you dig in in the garden (the explanation we provided, from Etymology Online, was not quite what he was looking for), and another very young person was drawing a complicated design on a piece of paper and needed a particular color of pencil which I did not have, and so became frustrated, as anyone would be. And the nice thing to know, from this side of the parenting task, is that those small people grow like plants. Which is to say, they just grow up, there is almost nothing you can do about it.

And they will certainly face difficulties and tribulations that you, as the adult, shudder to contemplate. They will endure pain and suffering and disappointment and lack. They will be hurt by sin—their own and other people’s. They will encounter death. They will have to make impossible choices and endure baffling circumstances. It is very easy, as an adult, to imagine greater degrees of control and power than actually exist. The only thing that makes a difference, as far as I can see, is the mighty hand of God to direct and guide, to save and make whole.

five

I’m trucking through Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Lower Than Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity. I’m not rushing, for I have a little bit of time, and am also reading that book about Religion being Obsolete by Christian Smith, and trying to get up to speed on Bethel Church in Redding, California. I’m flitting and sipping, in other words. And the thing that occurred to me yesterday as I was tearing wall paper and listening to MacCulloch read his own deathless prose, is that there is a new fully formed orthodoxy, a true social imaginary, as it were. It’s been growing rapidly over the last thirty or so years, but with this book by MacCulloch, I think one may safely say that it has taken a shape that is readily identifiable and so deeply entrenched in the consciousness of most people that they can’t, and won’t question it. It is why someone can even declare that “religion” is obsolete.

What is this new orthodoxy? It is the Christian heresy that the Bible, though an interesting and influential book, is not only not the word of God, it is not understandable. Therefore, it doesn’t matter what you do with your body as long as you experience feelings of happiness while you’re doing it.

six

To illustrate this fact, here is Andrew Sullivan in the New York Times, complaining about how crazy everything is, but not being able to see why:

As I watched all this radical change, I wondered, was I just another old fart, shaking my fist at the sky, like every older generation known to man? Why not just accept that the next gay and lesbian generation has new ideas, has moved on, and old-timers like me should just move aside?

And some of the changes are indeed welcome. The greater acceptance of trans people is a huge step forward for all of us. But then, as I told my friends (gay, trans and everyone else), I’d always believed this and always supported trans civil rights. I was glad when, five years ago, the Supreme Court gave transgender people civil rights protection in employment. I’ve also long lived in a gay world that is skewed left, and, along with my fellow gay non-lefties, I’ve long made my peace with it, or tried to.

But this new ideology, I believed, was different. Like many gays and lesbians — and a majority of everybody else — I simply didn’t buy it. I didn’t and don’t believe that being a man or a woman has nothing to do with biology. My sexual orientation is based on a biological distinction between men and women: I’m attracted to the former and not to the latter. And now I was supposed to believe the difference didn’t exist?

Sullivan goes on to say that the trouble is that “the movement” went to far and started to go after the children:

But this illiberalism made a fateful, strategic mistake. In the gay rights movement, there had always been an unspoken golden rule: Leave children out of it. We knew very well that any overreach there could provoke the most ancient blood libel against us: that we groom and abuse kids. You can bring up your children however you like, we promised. We will leave you alone. We will leave your children alone.

So what did the gender revolutionaries go and do? They focused almost entirely on children and minors.

When I said, above, that there is almost nothing you can do about it—”it” being children growing up and being ok—there is a big caveat, of course. And that is that it is possible to wreck the life of a child. If you deliver said child up to the new social imaginary, you will wreck that child’s life. You have to give your children to Jesus, by any means necessary. They are printed with the image of God, and so you must never render them to Caesar, because Caesar will destroy them. To adopt the new orthodoxy is to destroy the soul and body. Don’t do it, even if no one can understand why you are so obtuse and strange.

seven

The song of the week is for my mother because it’s her new favorite:

Read the comments below the line! Have a nice day if you’re into that sort of thing.