March poem of the month

Here's another product of my "Poetry Writing in Baroque Forms" course this semester, very much inspired by Donne. Enjoy.

Counterfeit

Cast this selfness out of me, and mar
Me in Your form, that Your hard image raise
Its shining face, and mine, Almighty, raze;
Impressive and impressing Lord of art.

I ring untrue and hollow, like false coinage
Shaped from drossy silver, less than gold,
Slipped from Your saintly pocket-holes,
Creative and creating Lord of change.

Trodden, trampled, mired under shoes,
I lie effaced and formless, waiting grace:
Your crushing fingers and embossing face,
Renaissance and rebirth Lord of new.

Though my metal cannot bear Your weight,
And though it slay me, stamp me with Your shape.

~ Sørina





"Counterfeit" by Sørina Higgins is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. This means that you can copy and distribute the work if you will not receive any commercial gain; that you can use the work in a new creative way (song lyrics, dramatic production, visual display), again, if you receive no commercial gain; and any other use that does not make you any money--as long as you do not change any of the words of the original text. Also, the author would like to be notified of any uses of her poem. Thank you.

Amazing Grace: Really a Real Movie

Hooray! Three cheers, at least, maybe four or five, how about half a dozen, for Amazing Grace! I am amazed! I am very impressed. I loved this film. It’s got great acting (led by the very good-looking Ioan Gruffudd as William Wilberforce), gorgeous costumes, intelligent & catchy & well-paced screenplay (by Steven Knight), delightful & nicely peripheral love story, & all the passion of a man on fire to do good—on fire with the Spirit of God burning him up from the inside out. It’s directed in a lively, sometimes confusing present—flashback—future style by Michael Apted, dancing between powerful public speeches to luscious private moments: the Prime Minister & his best-friend MP racing barefoot through the garden; the beautiful red-headed Barbara Spooner (played by Romola Garai) snorting into her dinner because of a private joke about botany; John Newton (Albert Finney) wearing sackcloth as he mops the stone floor of his very chilly- & Medieval-looking chapel. Suffering is not held at bay; the stench & sweat & death of slavery ripple painfully underneath at all times.

Perhaps Hollywood is finally getting the message that there is an audience for beautiful, lush, challenging, wholesome, edifying films with messages of faith & human rights. Or maybe “we” are finally realizing that when such a movie comes out, “we” should jump to acclaim it, & not hide our heads & whine that it’s got some foul language or a bit of décolletage or not enough gospel, but rather applaud it enthusiastically as an important & artistic film. Because, my friends, that’s what we’ve got here. Amazing Grace is all of that and more. Most importantly: It’s a real movie.

Not some greeting-card sappy feel-good Bible cartoon. A real movie that real people are seeing & reviewing. & it’s a movie you need to see. Go and see it! Now! Don’t even stop to read the rest of this review! Go & see it first, then come back & leave your comments here. This is still the first weekend it’s available in many theatres, & the box office results from this weekend will say a lot to the powers that be about how many more theatres will get it & whether “we” are watching & whether “we” have enough buying power to warrant the production of valuable cinema. Or whether slop & trash & smash will make the big bucks. This is an important film about a great guy, & it does an excellent job of embodying him in his everyday life, in his brilliant Parliamentarian career, & in his historical context. Britain comes to life, as does the multi-faceted question of the abolition of slaves. It doesn’t shy away from the economic complexities that made Wilberforce’s opponents more than straw men. It puts the entire question squarely into the Revolutionary atmosphere of the day, with its fears & its heady freedoms.

It’s not a perfect movie. Although I can’t for the life of me figure out why not. At first I thought it was because the audience never actually comes face-to-face with slavery. All the accounts are second-hand. But then again, that’s how it was for Wilberforce. He never saw the beatings, the starvation, the degradation. He heard about them, he saw the empty ships—& that was enough to move him to action! So that’s not it. I thought maybe it wasn’t a big enough budget—but I don’t see any cut corners. There’s a string quartet playing Hayden, the evolution of wig styles over two decades, crowds in London streets, infuriating debates in a packed Parliament; I don’t feel anything is missing.

So maybe it’s a perfect movie after all. It’s certainly a movie I will watch again, & show my students, & recommend to my friends, & try to incorporate into my life as new passion. Passion for the integration of public & private life, passion for the unity of faith & action, passion for quality of both art & message. Hooray!

Useful links:
Official Movie Site
Articles in World Magazine
Wikipedia biography
BBC History
Interview with the director

Poetry for St. Valentine's Day; Love Poetry Challenge

A little while ago, Ariel posted a link to a great discussion of contemporary love poetry. It claimed that the stuff that passes for love poetry now-a-days is garbage compared to that which was written in, say The Renaissance.

Here's part of my comment:
I had a 17th. cent. poetry prof. who had a really compelling theory about why there's no good love poetry now. He said that all through the Renaissance, good old Petrarch & Dante & their cronies wrote out of the power & inspiration of frustration, from their unrequited love. Then along came the 17th century, when fat Ben J. & his "Sons" & the "Cavaliers" wrote their poetry of requited -- & consummated -- love. & that, this prof. thought, put an end to all the pent-up energy & poured out a whole lot of love poetry, & then ran out of ideas, ran out of inspiration. & here we are.

But I also agree with several other commenters who think that there's plenty of good love poetry being written right this minute! & my students are learning to do just that, among others.

SO I'd like us to take up the challenge! I charge you to post here, as a comment, an excellent love poem that has been written (by yourself or someone else) in the last 100 years. I'll start, by putting here my favorite by Edna St. Vincent Millay (perhaps the female Petrarch of the 20th century). I'd also love to hear some speculations on why love poetry has died, if it has.


Sonnet xxviii

I pray you if you love me, bear my joy
A little while, or let me weep your tears;
I, too, have seen the quavering Fate destroy
Your destiny's bright spinning--the dull shears
Meeting not neatly, chewing at the thread,--
Nor can you well be less aware how fine,
How staunch as wire, and how unwarranted
Endures the golden fortune that is mine.
I pray you for this day at least, my dear,
Fare by my side, that journey in the sun;
Else must I turn me from the blossoming year
And walk in grief the way that you have gone.
Let us go forth together to the spring;
Love must be this, if it be anything.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

February poem of the month

This semester I'm teaching an elective course entitled "Poetry Writing in Baroque Forms." Here's a Marvell imitation that emerged from our studies.


A Dialogue between Freedom and Fate
After Andrew Marvell

FREEDOM:
O, who shall take the blame or praise
For my unfettered choice of ways,
Since I must stand in self-made vices
Forged by uncommanded choice?
The Past was cluttered with all paths
When I was there, but now I cast
My sin-dimmed eyes ahead and find
One single road, uncurving, wide,
Carvéd straight from one set deed:
If only one, how was I free?

FATE:
O, who shall set me free from me,
From me, who is both chain and key
To lock the future up from ways
And into way; into straight
But deadly footpaths from the blessed
Eternal branching of the past?
If I condemn, in causing ill,
I am condemned; this would seem well
Were my nature free to doom
Or bless—but I am fated, too.

FREEDOM:
Then whom have I to blame, but you,
Encasing Fate, my bane and doom,
For preordaining me thus free?
If you, before you forged my grief
Had looked along the lines of time—
What will, before, what was, behind—
And seen my frozen, wretched hands
Tied with iron, icy bands,
Would you have set this path for Choice,
Which renders sovereign creatures void?

FATE:
If I had looked, as you enjoin,
I would have only seen the one
Un-time-bound bar of iron Now.
Look there now. Do you allow
The thing is done, was done, will done;
The agency, determined on;
The predetermination, picked;
For cosmic subcreators’ wish
In an eternity unverbed,
Unverbable, and beyond words?
The timeless loosed my destiny
And bound you to your agency:
The known and unknown balancing
In either hand of little men.

~ Sørina

(that's what comes of spending too much time
in the 17th century!)






"A Dialogue between Freedom and Fate" by Sørina Higgins is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. This means that you can copy and distribute the work if you will not receive any commercial gain; that you can use the work in a new creative way (song lyrics, dramatic production, visual display), again, if you receive no commercial gain; and any other use that does not make you any money--as long as you do not change any of the words of the original text. Also, the author would like to be notified of any uses of her poem. Thank you.

All Truth is God's Truth

In the previous and penultimate posts, we’ve been talking about how to teach an introductory philosophy course in a Christian high school setting. An excellent topic has arisen, so I’d like to address it here. Several readers have pointed out to me the benefits—indeed, even the necessity—of teaching students multiple perspectives on issues, making them knowledgeable about the basic tenets of various religions & philosophies, or at the very least cultiviating broader minds by making them aware of conflicting interpretations & worldviews. I entirely agree, & wanted to talk about it a bit more now.

I mentioned that I’ll be teaching my philosophy class (if anyone signs up for it!) at a Christian school, so while I may make multiple perspectives available for consideration, I mayn’t teach those perspectives per se in so far as they contradict the Bible. And when we do discuss them, we’ll probably proceed to “debunk” worldviews contradictory to our own. But I’m having more thoughts.

Rosie reminded me that while my school “might have a policy that doesn’t allow you to let kids read any sections of the primary texts from other religions” [I don’t think it does], and “in such a short class you obviously don't have time to present more than just the bare minimum about other philosophies,” “if you do end up teaching the students to consider other religions, be thoughtful what secondary texts you choose.” I agree. Because, she says, lots of Christian books about other religions take cheap shots at them & debunk them too easily, by setting up the other guy’s arguments weakly & then tumbling them down. By making strawmen & then setting fire to them. That’s not real dialogue; that’s not true learning. Thank you for the timely words!

Because, just yesterday in one of my literature classes, my youngest students (ages 10-14), on their own, carried on a fantastic conversation about the Problem of Evil. The discussion leader, an 8th grader, led the class on a great romp through Nancy Willard’s The Tale of Paradise Lost, a prose retelling of Milton’s epic. Well, then this young lady asked, of her own accord, “I have a question. If Heaven was perfect, how could Satan even get the idea to choose evil over good? I understand the whole concept of free will, but how could there even be an option of evil? Where did it come from?” And off they went. I love these kids. And they talked, and debated, and came up with glorious ideas all on their own while I sat silent for a good 20 minutes or so. They made suggestions such as:

- The Bible says Heaven will be perfect in the future, when God makes a new Heaven & a New Earth, but maybe He didn’t make the first one perfect?
- Maybe God has to create balance, like the yin/yang: maybe He had to make even amounts of good & evil in the universe.
- Maybe “bad” isn’t so bad in the long run; at least, this isn’t God’s plan B, but He planned everything to happen the way it did, even Eve eating the fruit & all, & He will work it out for good in the end.
- Maybe God make a mistake when He made Lucifer.
- What is evil? Is it a thing at all?
& many more I cannot well recall. I loved it. & I tried not to offer any answers until the very end; even when I spoke once, I just added more questions or guided the conversation onto tracks not yet trodden. At the very end I offered Augustine’s solution, & reminded them that Christianity excludes dualism.

But I say all this to thank everyone for reminding me of the importance of open discussion. And to encourage myself along those lines as I think about philosophy.

As Rosie said, & Schaeffer said before her, “There are some bits of truth and beauty in other religions, and in all fairness, we have to acknowledge that, even if they are totally misguided about the central figure of our faith and of universal truth, Jesus Christ.” So part of my job is to point out the beautiful & true bits, while teaching my kids how to talk to those who see only the beauty & truth, & don’t perceive the error.

Proposed Philosophy Syllabus

In an earlier post, I requested help for putting together a syllabus for a little Introduction to Philosophy course I’ll be teaching in March/April. I was graced with many excellent comments & suggestions—thanks! So here I’ll post the course description & syllabus as they now stand (edited for brevity & relevance). I hope to use this blog as a forum for discussion once the class starts.

Advice is still requested!

INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY
This discussion, reading, & lecture class will look at the major concerns of philosophy in an engaging, entertaining, & enlightening way. We will ask What is philosophy? and examine the five foundational fields of philosophy: ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, & political philosophy. In other words, we’ll talk about how to determine right & wrong, sources and methods of knowledge, the nature of reality, the qualities of beauty, what is art, how to create the ideal state, what is the best form of government, & other topics of perennial interest. Through lively conversations, varied readings, & examinations of relevant selections from popular culture, we’ll attempt to bring the ideas of the ancient & timeless philosophers to life & to our own experience. We’ll be reading selections from Introducing Philosophy by Dave Robinson & Judy Groves & Republic by Plato. We’ll view selections from The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Life is Beautiful & other films, & listen to Also Sprach Zarathustra (the theme music for 2001), Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, “Eleanor Rigby,” “Bridge over Troubled Waters,” “American Dream” by Switchfoot, & other songs/pieces of music that illustrate the application of these big questions. We will spend some class periods working in hypothetical situations & applying the principles we’ve learned to them. These might include role-playing as a doctor, pastor, president, senator, teacher, etc. in ethical situations; creating an imaginary ideal society/government; enacting scenarios of absolute power; and so on. Parents should be aware that the class will regularly interact with big questions & controversial issues. We will plan to close each class with a Biblical evaluation of that day’s discussions, & apply at least one Scripture passage to each topic. The ideal class size would be no more than 15 students—but is there any such thing as an ideal class, & is it achievable in this sublunary sphere?

Week one: What is philosophy?
Definitions of the five foundational fields of philosophy: ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, & political philosophy.
Listen to “Eleanor Rigby,” talk about the meaning of life
Role-play scenarios of absolute power.
Watch selections from "The Man Who Could Work Miracles”
Listen to “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes & Loreena McKennit, talk about what you would do in this situation.

Week two: How to determine right & wrong
Read ___ from Introducing Philosophy
Read Gyges’ ring from Republic by Plato
Selections from Lord of the Rings
Readings from Neitzsche
Listen to Also Sprach Zarathustra
Role-playing as a doctor, pastor, president, etc. in ethical situations
Read Ten Commandments from Exodus 20; talk about the need for an absolute.

Week three: Sources and methods of knowledge
Read ___ from Introducing Philosophy
Define a priori & a postiori styles of reasoning; presuppositions, evidentialism & rationalism, etc.
as you can see, this week is still a little skimpy…

Week four: The nature of reality
Read Allegory of the Cave from Republic by Plato
Selections from The Matrix

Week five: The qualities of beauty, What is art?
Read __ from Introducing Philosophy
Selections from Life is Beautiful
Readings from My name is Asher Lev
Listen to “Bridge over Troubled Waters”

Week six: How to create the ideal state; What is the best form of government?
Listen to selections from Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony
Listen to “American Dream” by Switchfoot
Role-play creating an imaginary ideal society/government

Intro to Philosophy help required

Dear readers:

In March & April I'll be teaching a six-week intro to philosophy course to high school students, & I'd love recommendations on popular culture media that would be relevant. We'll look at selections from The Republic & some Aristotle & I don't know what other primary texts, but the idea is to make this appealing & "FUN" for teenagers. What thoughts have you?

I'm planning to use The Matrix when we discuss reality & the problem of perception; The Lord of the Rings for I'm not sure what, but I have a book entitled The Lord of the Rings & Philosophy at home to read; & I'd like to add a couple more movies, some songs, & maybe one or two novels or other media. What suggestions do you have? Anybody have thoughts on Sophie's World? What other books/movies/songs most explicitly deal with the the five foundational fields of philosophy: ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, & political philosophy? I'm thinking of My Name is Asher Lev for aesthetics, but it might be too long for such a short course. Any thoughts on the "ideal society" question?

All recommendations welcomed! Thanks very much.