November, 2018 | Janie B. Cheaney

November 23, 2018November 17, 2018

Divesting

“Divest, transitive verb: 1) To strip, as of clothes. 2a) To deprive, as of rights or property; b) to be free of. 3) To sell off or otherwise dispose of.”

The word leans both positive and negative. To strip, or to deprive: that’s harsh. To be free of—oh joy!

If we’re blessed enough to live into old age, it’s time to strip. And be free.

There’s a book called Material World: a Global Family Portrait. The author/photographer went around the

world persuading families to empty their houses of all durable goods: appliances, dishes, books, clothing, furniture. The Ukita family stack their possessions as compactly as their tidy apartment along the sidewalk in front of their building. The Natromos of Mali—nine kids and three adults—smile from their rooftop surrounded by earthenware pots and utensils. Most of their clothes are on their backs. In northern California, the property of Regan Ronayune and Craig Cavin and their two kids sprawls across their suburban lawn: tools, toys, and toddler ware, necessities and luxuries tumbled together.

Every American house is like a little American frontier: empty space to be filled.* We tend to fill up the space we have, and then some—observe the boom in separate storage units.

Periodic moves help to clear away some of the underbrush. My husband and I moved 23 times in our first 25 years. For our early moves we got all our stuff in a pickup truck and a VW bug. For our last move, we required one-third of a cross-country Bekins trailer. At every stop on the way to our current location we filled up more space.

As for our current location, we’ve been here twenty years—long enough for the tide of our lives to turn. What that means is, it’s time to divest.

Reason one: Stuff persists. As the years pass, a kind of stratus-layer buildup takes place. The file cabinets and understair storage areas and those closet shelves that aren’t easy to reach harden like anonymous stone. What’s in there? I don’t even know anymore. Maybe detritus from my mother’s estate, or mother-in-law’s, squirreled away before I could figure out what to do with it. Like bad cholesterol in the bloodstream it’s not going away and will make itself known at some inconvenient time.

Reason Two: My kids don’t want our stuff. The inconvenient time may be when I croak, or take a serious turn for the worse, like a debilitating stroke. That’s when my children, who now have lives and families of their own, get the unwelcome responsibility of divestment dropped in their laps. In the old days, family possessions were handed down through two or three generations. Daughters may actually have wanted a grandmother’s silver, but now—who uses silver? or much less, china? Not only is cheap merchandise readily available, but tastes have broadened. Don’t assume your kids want your four-poster or steamer trunk. Ask if they do. If the response is less than enthusiastic, dump it. Let them miss you for your thoughtfulness and personality, not for the job you saddled them with.

Reason Three: The direction is toward less, not more. Tiny houses may be a short-lived fad (easier to

admire than to actually live in), but the culture is scaling down, for reasons not entirely good. (It’s fine to want to get by with less stuff; not so fine to get by with fewer babies). For now, though, that’s the trend: digital vs. material, disposable vs. durable, temporary vs. permanent.

Reason Four: Freedom. Old age is the time to go deep rather than wide. To spend down portfolios and build relationships. To men what’s broken and appreciate what isn’t. To number the days and spend them wisely. Possessions become a burden the minute you no longer need them, or when your arthritic hands can’t wrangle the scissors or your fumbling brain can’t remember how to use the tools. I’m not that old yet, but it’s time to start loosening my grip, singer by finger. Soon enough I’ll have to let go.

Divest. Do it while you’re still able. Then enjoy your freedom.

*Meaning no disrespect to Native Americans; I know they were here first. But they didn’t fill up the place.

November 17, 2018

Thanks to Sarah

Sarah Josepha Hale—who remembers her? Actually, we all do, indirectly, for two reasons. One is our annual Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. The second I’ll get to later.

Even without Thanksgiving, she left her mark on American history, largely by having the sense to look around her, take stock of what she had, and be grateful for it. In time she gave hundreds of American women reason to be grateful too.

A girl growing up in the early days of the 19^th century didn’t have too many options, even in forward-looking, erudite New England. A smattering of education, if she was lucky. A considerate husband, if luckier still. Healthy children who lived past their infancy—jackpot. Though Sarah later wrote little about her father, she credited her mother with a strong mind and her Dartmouth-educated older brother with sharing some of his instruction. The rest of her education was the Bible and classical English authors, the base from which she started her own school for ladies in Newport, New Hampshire. A smattering of education? Check.

By all accounts, she scored well in the considerate husband department too. David Hale, a moderately successful lawyer, shared books with her and encouraged her to write for the local paper. In between babies, of course. So she was doing well with intellectual stimulation, spouse, and progeny—until her husband suddenly died, “as with a stroke,” mere days before the birth of their fifth child.

A widow’s options in 1822 were even narrower than a young girl’s. But if Sarah Hale had no funds she did have connections, and after a failed business or two she accepted the offer of an Episcopal clergyman to help start a women’s journal. The Ladies’ Magazine, published in Boston, had its ups and downs, but caught the attention Louis A. Godey, a Philadelphia publisher who was looking to mine the untapped reserves of the women’s market. He asked Mrs. Hale to come on board for a new venture, to be titled Godey’s Lady’s Book and American Ladies’ Magazine. The cumbersome second phrase was soon dropped, and Godey’s Lady’s Book became the voice of American women for the next fifty years.

Sarah had two conditions: first, rather than borrow (or steal) material from other journals, especially overseas, she wanted to develop the talents of American writers by publishing and paying them well. Second, she didn’t like fripperies or “high fashion”; her journal should be as high-minded as the editor. Mr. Godey was fine with paying extra for good writing, but his business sense checked her puritan tendencies. Women were interested in fashion, had always been interested in fashion, and always would be interested in fashion. Hence, the painstakingly hand-colored “fashion plates” that decorated each number of Godey’s. Sarah may have fumed, but got in her own licks by fulminating against tight corsets and encouraging women to pursue fresh air and exercise.

As the first successful women’s magazine ever, Godey’s Ladies’ Book used its popularity to do good while doing well—for instance, offering the first retail shopping service. Every issue featured items women could purchase to be delivered directly to them, prefiguring the mail-order catalogue, which in turn prefigured Amazon.com. While making money for the business, Sarah Hale used her influence to lobby for educational opportunities for women, including college, business schools, and normal schools (for training teachers).

She was very canny in the way she went about it, though: rather than castigating men for holding the fair sex back, she played to their interests: wouldn’t a husband come to appreciate a wife informed enough to share his business concerns? Don’t all fathers want their children to benefit from an educated mother? And if a woman chooses not to marry, it’s silly to think she will squeeze men out of their chosen professions. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman to achieve a medical degree, owed much of her support to Sarah Hale, as did the Female Medical School of Philadelphia and the Ladies’ Medical Missionary Society.

She always said—and sincerely believed—that a woman’s chief place was in the home, but she saw that place as a noble calling rather than thankless drudgery. She was, it’s fair to say, the Oprah of her day. Who can tell how many women felt lifted up and encouraged by the earnest editor of their favorite magazine?

That’s probably Sarah Hale’s greatest legacy, in spite of her many good works and institutions she helped establish. Still, she’s best known for is promoting Thanksgiving as a national holiday. She persisted through three decades and five presidents until Abraham Lincoln, who may have had fewer reasons to feel thankful than most, wrote out a proclamation establishing the day we’ve celebrated in November ever since.

Two picture books about Sarah Hale have been published in the last decade: Sarah Gives Thanks, by Mike Allegra, and Thank You, Sarah by Laurie Halse Anderson. The titles might give you a hint of the approach: the first presents a hard-working, determined woman growing old gracefully surrounded by her family. The second makes Sarah’s crusading spirit the focus: a feminist icon charging the bulwarks of masculine privilege. Just a guess, but I think the former description is more likely. Sarah Hale’s activism, if that’s the word, was quiet, firm, and tenacious. She worked with what she had and probably accomplished more actual good for women than other feminist firebrands.

Oh, and her other legacy: “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

November 13, 2018

The “Nothingness” of Idolatry

A deep dive into the etymology (history and development) of the word idol:

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Greek eido’lon (Latin idolon) encompassed the notion of

image in many forms: phantom, idea, fancy, likeness. The Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament, completed around 250 B. C.) appropriated the Greek word to refer to a carved representation, and that’s the usual sense in Hebrew. But the Hebrew word saw’, occasionally translated idol, means a falsehood, a vain thing, a “nothing.” An idol is, in the contemptuous Hebrew sense, “nothing,” and prophets like Isaiah had a lot of fun with the idea: cutting down a tree to carve it, cooking your food over the scraps, then bowing down to it (see Is. 44:12-17).

But an idolatrous “nothing” doesn’t seem like nothing to an idolater, and that’s the danger of it.

One intriguing use of the Greek applies the word to a reflection in water or a mirror. Other classical uses include an effigy, a counterfeit, an imitation, an insubstantial appearance (such as a shadow), a mental fiction or fantasy, a false conception. The wisdom of etymology subtly unfolds—who would have guessed this many shades of meaning for a word usually associated with crude images made from wood, metal, or stone?

Take “reflection.” Aside from the myth that gives “narcissism” its name, this form of idolatry is a cartoon image, the smitten individual gazing at himself in a mirror while surrounded by fluttering hearts. We’re too sophisticated for that, or almost. I’m old enough to remember a video that made the rounds during the 2004 election: John Edwards, the Democrat candidate for V-P, taking 14 minutes to comb his hair in front of a mirror just before his one televised debate. (To be fair, he possessed exceptional hair.)

Most of us don’t fall in love with our reflections. But we do project, and the things we love become part of us, and when we pursue them, we pursue that which feeds, builds, expands, and often flatters us. It’s possible to fall in love objectively—that is, for the object itself. An aspiring ballerina loves dance for its own sake, as an athlete loves the game, a reader loves literature, a hiker loves mountains. But in time the temptation to identify with the object of our affection can overtake us. We no longer pursue out of love, but out of pride, possessiveness, or position. Get two or more enthusiasts together and clock how long before arguments break out. The more vehemence, the greater the personal investment.

When does enthusiasm become idolatry? That’s hard to say. When life makes no sense without it, when it brings pain—even when it dries up, suddenly and completely, because it couldn’t sustain your passion forever.

Idolatry is tricky, twisty, and deceptive. And ultimately, an illusion—a “nothing” after all. The only sure remedy is Reality Himself.

November 3, 2018November 3, 2018

Establish the Work of Our Hands

Here’s a newsflash from the world of medicine.

A Professor of surgery at London’s Imperial College, with the delightful name of Roger Kneebone, reports that he’s concerned about the increase in surgical students who lack certain vital skills. Can you guess which ones? Not diagnostic acumen or imaging analysis—many of these students ace their exams and blaze through their diagnostic computer programs.

But they don’t know how to sew. And they aren’t too proficient in cutting, either—which, if you need to have your appendix out and patched up again, might be a skill you’d want your surgeon to have.

How does a bright young person get through medical school, all the way to the surgical theater, without learning how to stitch up a kitchen wound or dog bite? How did she even get through kindergarten without learning how to cut along a straight line?*

We see a similar decline in the States, too: even kids who aren’t aiming at brain surgery for a career find themselves stymied when it comes to doing laundry or even folding clean clothes.

Cooking? They can probably manage the microwave, but can they turn on an oven?

Changing the oil every 2000 miles? Forget it. In fact, they often do.

Yes, I’m pushing 70, so I’ve earned the right to rag on kids these days, just as my father used to rag on me for my taste in music and my mother for the way I wore my hair. But this looming scandal in the medical field, like the shortage of skilled craftsmen here in the U.S., is more than a cultural trend. It’s a symptom—one of many symptoms—of a shift in thinking that grew up with digital technology. It’s the idea that we don’t really need our hands any more. Just our fingers. Manual labor is a thing of the past, meaning manual skills are no longer necessary. Musicians, dancers, sculptors, and painters may follow their dream through the arts, but those who are not gifted in those pursuits can sit back and be entertained with a swipe of the screen.

This is a deeply gnostic belief, and it ties in with other popular contemporary illusions like transgenderism. It’s why some school districts have eliminated shop and home ec classes, pared art, music, and drama programs and cut back on recess time. We live in our heads, and “knowledge” is the only thing that matters. The future (supposedly) belongs to “knowledge workers,” not electricians and carpenters.

But no one lives in a virtual world, as much as some misfits and sociopaths may think they do. There’s no real disconnect between brains, hands, feet, and that incorporeal being otherwise known as Soul. God made us to be integrated beings, hand and mind working together. What he has joined, no man can pull asunder without great damage to both.

To work in this way is a tremendous honor, because in doing so we imitate Creator. God may not have “hands,” as we understand them, but he is so active in the world–making, unmaking, and recreating–that Bible writers can’t help but speak of “the hand of the Lord.” Even in an act as basic as turning over a row in the garden and planting seed, we follow in his metaphorical footsteps. Angels, so far as we know, don’t make anything, or certainly no material thing. That privilege belongs to us.

So put down the phone or tablet (as soon as you finish reading this!) and go make something. Take a pottery class. Draw a tree. Build a birdhouse, or paint one. If nothing else, figure out how to thread a needle and sew on a button. Apply the workings of your mind to the skill of your hands, then teach someone else to do the same. Ask the Lord to establish the work of your hands (Ps. 90:17), and rejoice in following his creative, productive ways.

*In Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis wrote of his own lack of ability to cut with scissors. It was a strange disconnect between his very acute intellect and the parts of the brain that controlled small motor activity. As a child, many a project begun hopefully had to be abandoned with tears. He never learned to drive or do math, either, which suggests an interesting connection between manual dexterity and figures. The Canadian writer Robertson Davies was the same way.