Meanderings, 24 August 2024

We have had some amazingly refreshing, cooler weather this week. We began our morning walks in enough cool that I wore jeans and jacket, but yesterday I braved the cool in shorts. The forecasters predict a return to Chicago’s usual heat this weekend. So, it was nice while it lasted. What wasn’t nice was that a skunk wandered into my rabbit trap, and since it’s a cage trap, releasing it required that I put my hands on the trap — and that I didn’t want to do. My kind neighbor has a heart for these critters, so he asked if he could cover it and then release it… which he did. The skunk, evidently, expressed some anger and then scurried off. We both agreed they can be cute. It was not an enthusiastic “cute” or agreement. Still, I thanked him and we’ve moved on, and now to Meanderings.

Photo by Elisa Stone on Unsplash

The Democrats were riding high this week with the DNC, and it was right here in Chicago. Todd Hunter reminds us not to lose our souls over the election, and I thanked him for the reminder.

The Oval Office is not a throne. Nor is the Speakership of the House or the Majority Leader of the Senate. God owns and resides upon the only true throne in the universe, and…

To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and forever.

Rev. 5:13

This is our vision from today through the inauguration in January: My soul is spoken for. It is dedicated and devoted to the One Who Sits On The Throne. It is passionately committed to the Great Commandment, to loving the Lord my God with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my mind and with all my strength…and to loving my neighbor as myself (Mark 12:29-31).

When a soul is full of love pointed in the direction of God and neighbor, it automatically rules out seeing our neighbors as rivals who we must eliminate in the cause of defeating an existential threat.

Don’t eat the baloney—you’ll lose your soul.

AI compared to spiritually formative Bible reading:

As teachers prepare for the approaching fall semester, questions surrounding artificial intelligence in the classroom are ramping up once again. Should we seek to integrate AI into assessments and assignments? How should we monitor its use? And how should we treat cases when students use AI on papers? While I have encountered numerous opinions about AI, both positive and negative, I must admit I have never been a fan of this technology in academic spaces—but I think there might be some appropriate uses elsewhere. Still, something seemed problematic to me about the technology, even outside the possibility of cheating or assessment design.

Amidst my summer reading, I was encouraged to reflect on methods for reading Scripture with the Christian tradition, and surprisingly, this clarified my previous caution about AI. Artificial Intelligence widely undermines how Christians have talked about formation throughout the history of the church. In other words, AI has non-Christian assumptions, which challenge formative practices.

The book that sparked this reflection is Hans Boersma’s Pierced by Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition. Therein, Boersma discusses the theological foundations and formational practices of reading Scripture throughout the medieval church. If you are unfamiliar, lectio divina, which Boersma calls ‘divine reading’, is an approach to Scripture that treats the word of God as just that—divine. A divine book requires divine reading. Origen, a theologian from the third century elaborates,

“Devote yourself first and foremost to reading the holy Scriptures; but devote yourself. For when we read holy things we need much attentiveness, lest we say or think something hasty about them. And when you are devoting yourself to reading the sacred texts with faith and an attitude pleasing to God, knock on its closed doors, and it will be opened to you… Do not stop at knocking and seeking, for the most necessary element is praying to understand the divine words” (Origen, Letter of Origen to Gregory 4).

Notice here that the key to understanding Scripture is not a comprehensive grasp of the historical context, nor a perfect understanding of the original biblical languages, but spiritual discipline. Of course, history and languages are very important (as Origen himself notes), but we must not forget this text is by God, and thus our reading requires conformity to God to understand it properly—it necessitates virtue. Further, we must note this is a process of devotion, attention, and prayer. It is not as if you can read one commentary and unlock all the Scriptures meaning—it takes time and effort.

Music and healing:

And is it possible that songs in our everyday life have benefits and capacities we take for granted, or maybe never give a chance to do their magic?

That’s almost certainly true.

If you were seeking healing sounds in other settings, the most obvious place to start is with the organized and patterned sounds of music. Prolonged exposure to drone music must have a significant biological impact. The same must be true of repetitive rhythms. And I have firsthand experience of what an hour spent absorbing the sound of singing bowls can do—I feel better, think better, and sleep better in the aftermath.

This isn’t just speculation on my part. A growing body of evidence confirms that music changes our bodies. Neuroscientists have probably done the most research on this. But I’ve now seen dozens of other studies that confirm music’s capacity to do everything from strengthen our immune system to improve our recovery time from injuries.

This is what healing music looks like in the 21st century. And the fact that it takes place in a hospital or clinic doesn’t change that fact. But maybe some healing happens at the concert hall and nightclub too.

I’d love to see these two worlds come closer together. I wouldn’t be surprised if that convergence turns into a entirely new field of inquiry and practice. Maybe the day will even come when we add another M (for Music) to STEM—and turn it into STEMM.

But my fondest hope is that my medical insurance will one day pay for visits to the jazz club. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

Do you care about local book banning?

One of the persistent themes to emerge from the ongoing nationwide surge in book banning is that the bans are being pursued by a vocal, politically motivated minority. This week, a new survey report from the Knight Foundation is offering more support for that conclusion, finding that public engagement with efforts to ban books in public school libraries and classrooms is limited, despite a dramatic surge in book challenges since 2021.

The survey, based on a sizable national sample of more than 4,500 adults, found that most Americans feel informed about efforts to ban books in schools. But just 3% of respondents said that they have personally engaged on the issue—with 2% getting involved on the side of maintaining access to books, and 1% seeking to restrict access. Overall, a solid majority of respondents expressed support for the freedom to read, and expressed high levels of trust in their local teachers and school librarians.

“Strong sentiment is lopsided, with strong opponents of book restrictions outnumbering strong supporters by nearly 3-1,” the survey report states. “In general terms, 78% of adults are confident that their community’s public schools select appropriate books for students to read. Additionally, more people say it is a bigger concern to restrict students’ access to books that have educational value than it is to provide them with access to books that have inappropriate content.”

And while most Americans see “age appropriateness” as a legitimate issue, “concern about exposure to inappropriate books is limited,” the survey found. Just 7% of parents with reading-age children reported that their child has accessed what they consider to be an age-inappropriate book at school.

Not surprisingly, the survey found that ideology is a major factor in attitudes on the issue. “Opposition to book restrictions peaks among liberals, Democrats, and LGBTQ adults,” the report states, while “support for restricting students’ access to books is highest among people who identify themselves as conservatives.” Conservatives are also “less confident in schools’ handling of topics including moral values, gender and sexuality, religious beliefs, and political views,” and are “particularly opposed” to “books that discuss topics such as non-traditional gender identities and sexual orientation.”

Nearly all adults think public school parents should be able to challenge books, but a majority also expressed concern about the “potential chilling effects” from book challenges. “About six in 10 are concerned that fear of complaints might deter public school districts from purchasing books with educational value,” the report states, and “two thirds think public school teachers and librarians should have a substantial say in deciding what books are available,” compared to just two in 10 who say the same for “state government officials or community members who are not pre-K-12 parents.”

Mildred Pope, tutor of Dorothy Sayers:

Miss Pope (as her students later called her) seems to have been deterred by nothing, taking her First and then going on to study philology at Heidelberg before returning to Somerville. Later she was awarded some sabbatical time to pursue her doctorate at the University of Paris under the guidance of the legendary medievalist and philologist Gaston Paris. She received her doctorate in 1903, though Oxford did not see fit to award her a B.A. until 1920, when other female graduates were so acknowledged — she would receive hers alongside Sayers.  

No matter. When she died the Times of London reported that the establishment and development of the teaching of medieval French at Oxford was almost wholly her doing. Further, “It would be fair to say that Pope effectively invented the discipline of Anglo-Norman studies.” Her recruitment of other dons to the cause of women’s suffrage in the 1910s was severely frowned upon by the university authorities; she was impervious to intimidation. Throughout the Great War she devoted her summers to intense and demanding relief work among refugees and displaced persons in France and Belgium. In 1928 she became the first woman to be appointed Reader at Oxford. 

She was, a historian reported, “the most beloved of all Somerville’s tutors,” and when she left the College in 1934 — to accept a professorship at the University of Manchester — a Gaudy in her honor was held. Sayers was asked to offer a tribute, and she did, calling particular attention to Pope’s “integrity of judgement” and “humility in the face of facts.” Above all, Sayers said, Mildred Pope exemplified “the generosity of a great mind … that will not be contented with the second-hand or second-best.” 

Here’s to the great Mildred Pope. 

Weeding libraries, and I’m hoping Kris doesn’t get this far down Meanderings. I don’t have a policy, but I do occasionally go through my stacks, pull some books off, put them in a box, and give them away. In the last month I have given away four boxes. The next box has a book or two.

Weeding, sometimes called deselection, is a standard practice by library workers. It is the systematic evaluation of materials in the collection that leads to discarding books that are no longer appropriate. Public and school libraries are not designed to be warehouses. They are thoughtfully curated to the needs of the community in which they serve. Weeding makes the collection easier to browse, ensures that it is up-to-date and that it is relevant to its users — having 16 copies of The Catcher in the Rye in varying degrees of torn apart when the book hasn’t been used in a school curriculum for a decade is a sign of poor library management. Two or three good-condition copies would be more than enough.

Public and school libraries should have their own policies governing their weeding process. This might include assessing items according to the CREW/MUSTIE method, assessing for things like Misleading/factually incorrect material/poor content; Ugly/worn beyond repair; Superceded/there’s a new edition or a better book on the topic; Trivial/of no discernible literary, scientific, or cultural merit; Irrelevant to the needs or interests of the library community (this, in particular, explains why some books are readily available in one library but may not be in a library in another community — the example of Catcher in the Rye fits here, as a school which still uses the book in the curriculum may indeed have a need for those 16 copies to remain on shelf); and finally, Elsewhere/the material is easy to obtain from another library for those seeking it out.