Short Story

This is the first of several installments of a short story. It takes place in the Dandyweather world, but you needn’t have read the book to read this.

Juniper Dandyweather Makes Her Way

Juniper was born with the twin honors of being both the youngest child and the singular female among the brood concocted through the union of Eric and Sarah Dandyweather. This would have been all well and good had not Juniper (or ‘Juni’ as her intimates sometimes referred to her) been especially aware of her auspicious position and decided at an early age that she was jolly well going to milk it for all it was worth. Thus, at age five young Juniper could be found squeezing extra toys and candies from her obliging father, by age ten she had successfully annexed her brother Theodore’s room, and by age fifteen she had, most egregiously, managed to steal her eldest brother’s motorcycle and take it for a fling over state lines.

It wasn’t that Juniper was bratty or such. Her doting parents simply let the leash run a little long, and this extra space naturally produced a personality to fill it. But as Juni approached her twentieth birthday, her father, a fairly strict man when it came to the matter of his sons, felt that perhaps his accommodating behavior had resulted in a few negative personality traits fermenting in his daughter.

“It is time,” he said to himself, “to pull back on the reigns a bit. Teach the girl the concept of responsibility before it is too late.”

So the law was laid down.

And that’s when all the trouble started.

***

Juniper walked into the common room of her dormitory and flung herself into the lumpy fourth-tier couch that lined the western wall. She crossed her arms and looked over at the nearby boy reading a book entitled Manatees: Our Blubbery Neighbors.

“Well, Felix,” she said with a sigh, “it’s all over. My parents have cut me off.”

Felix laid the book down and stared at her.

“They’re not supporting you anymore?” he said with surprise.

“I’m as good as destitute.”

“Dear heavens, how will you pay for school?” Felix was the kind of boy who often thought about school.

“Oh, they’re still covering that,” Juniper said with a wave of her hand.

“Ah, well, they’re making you pick up your housing bill, then?”

“Not as such, no.”

“Food?”

“Oh, Felix! My father absolutely refuses to pay my monthly allowance set aside for miscellaneous fun!”

Most boys would have scoffed at such a weighted response to such a light loss, but not Felix. At least, not when it came to Juni. For the poor blighter had loved her ever since he laid eyes on her a year earlier, when they were both freshman. Now Felix’s heart lub-dubbed to the incessant beat of ‘Juni-Per, Juni-Per, Juni-Per…’ He was under her spell, and, as such, all of her frivolities and eccentricities passed through his corneas unseen.

“That is a tough loss,” he incorrectly concluded.

Juniper nodded solemnly.

“These last few months have been wretched. First the boy I love runs off to California to take over his grandfather’s hotel, now this. Oh, George…” she moaned. “I’ll tell you, Felix, if you love somebody just let it out. It does you no good to hold it back, because the next thing you know your beloved is off to some distant coast or married or something and you’re left alone, penniless and miserable.”

Felix tried to gulp his least noticeable gulp. As so often occurs in young men, Felix had difficulty expressing the tumultuous love boiling inside of him. He had tried, of course, many times, but the words always seemed to get stuck somewhere in the larynx.

“Juniper…I…I…”

“Yes?”

“I…nothing…never mind,” he croaked. “What do you plan to do about your money problem?”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do,” she said with a sudden flare of spirit. “I’m not going to sit around here bemoaning my tribulations and going on with all this ‘woe is me’ jazz. It’s time to pick myself up and forge a path through my troubles. All I need is a plan.”

“What about getting a job?”

“Felix, please, if you’re not going to offer serious suggestions I’d rather you offer none at all. I -” From across the room a bulletin board suddenly grabbed her thoughts. Pinned to the board was a large red flyer, emblazoned with the words ‘Talent Show’. Juniper rushed over and scanned the notice with the feverish speed of a girl who needed easy money.

“Felix,” she announced once she had finished, “You need not worry about my situation any longer. A thousand dollars goes to the winner of the university talent show, and I, as I believe it is generally know, am simply bursting with talent. It’s only a question of picking the right mode through which to express it.”

“Perhaps you could sing?” suggested the helpful Felix.

Juni bit her lip. She seemed to recall a vague memory of once being politely (but firmly) asked to leave the church choir for matters chiefly (but not completely) aural.

“I find singing a tad lowly, don’t you? Peasant stuff, really…”

“I couldn’t agree more. What about a dance?”

The fiasco of Juniper’s prom, in which she managed to single-handedly take out an entire bandstand through her attempt at rhythmic movement, came roaring back upon her like East Asian typhoon.

“No…I…no.” She said with a shake of the head.

“Well, what do you have in mind, then?”

Juniper thought for a moment. “I was always quite good at magic shows when I was a child. I remember my parents bought me a splendid trick when I was eleven. Top notch illusion. It would be sure to win me the blue ribbon. But I lent it to my brother Theo a few years back and he lost it to -” She stopped cold.

“Come on!” she suddenly started up again, turning towards the common room’s door.

“Where are we going?” asked Felix, feeling more confused than he generally did when he was around Juni.

Juniper spun back around with a blaze in her eyes. “To avenge the family honor, bring humiliation to fraternity row, and, most importantly, get back my trick!”

[To Be Continued]

Meanwhile, a silence on the cross,

As dead as we shall ever be,

Speaks of some total gain or loss,

And you and I are free

-W.H. Auden

An Examination of the Relationship Between Morality and Freedom

This is an essay I wrote for a scholarship competition:

“Which virtues contribute the most toward achieving freedom, and how can the institutions of civil society encourage the exercise of those virtues?”

When you ask a question like the one prompting this essay, you, perhaps unintentionally,  open up the door to a very large rabbit hole. The whole thing becomes a matter of how far down it you are willing to travel, and whether or not you can accept the places to which you are led. I suppose the initial reaction to such a question is to say something along the lines that courage and charity and sacrifice are chief the virtues which support freedom, and indeed they are. But to phrase it like that belies the fact you are already heading towards shaky ground. You have taken virtue and made it into a mere stepping stone. The concern is shifted away from being virtuous to being free, and this presents us with a problem.

Freedom is, in of itself, good, but like most things it is corruptible. What I chiefly mean by this is in regards to the way in which freedom is achieved, and, once being achieved, how it is used. It is easy to use horrible methods to bring about freedom and easy (perhaps easier) to perpetuate such horrors once the objective has been obtained. To look on freedom as a primary goal is foolish. Make it your wife and you will soon find her a cheat. I am not, of course, saying that freedom should not be enjoyed or be disregarded as a paltry gift, but rather it must be viewed in its proper place.

Lewis hit the point square on the nose when he wrote: “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither (Mere Christianity, 2001).” If you want freedom, the thing you must certainly not do is say ‘I will have freedom, and I will have it at whatever the cost.’ And let’s make no mistake about it, that is really where our question is leading us to. We are setting our course to freedom, and virtue is simply the fuel that can get us there. Once we have our feet on dry land we can discard it, or if we find it useful in maintaining our political and social structures, let virtue stay. Do you see what the problem is? Virtue won’t be mocked is such a way. Treat her like that and all will remain of her is a dim shadow, a thinly veiled figure of vice.

The only way to truly follow virtue is to follow and love goodness for itself. And when we follow that path we are not always led to freedom, or at least, not the kind of freedom we may want and are chiefly focused on here. We may very well be called to suffer under tyranny, whether it be political, domestic, educational, etc. We may very well have to throw away our own personal freedom, and, what’s more, throw it away with a smile, without ever looking back. Of course, the opposite could also be true. In our following of virtue it is possible that political freedom may arise. Let us be grateful if it does, but let us not expect it, and let it certainly not be the reason why we follow.

But there is a second part to our question, and that concerns how civil society can go about producing virtuous actions. Let there be no confusion in the fact that I am a Christian, and when you ask a Christian such a thing, you are going to get a Christian response. For my part, I don’t think civil society, or at least the civil society in which we are now living in, can produce such virtues. We have become inundated with the message that all points of view are equal, and that right and wrong are simply matters of personal circumstance. We’re awash in a world of moral relativism, and you can’t neuter a dog and then expect it to breed.

How, for instance, can we say to a person that sacrifice is good if at the same time we say that there is no such thing as absolute good? It is very hard to understand why you should give yourself, or a part of yourself, to save a man if such an action ultimately bears no moral difference to killing him. Is this an extreme example? Certainly. But it shows us that relativism, stripped of its popular sheen, is nothing to be honored. It is an empty, pitiable thing, and we degrade ourselves by giving it our allegiance.

The only solution to the problem is to bring us back around to an objective standard of moral truth. And when you start talking about an objective standard, you’re forced to think about who creates such a standard, and that very quickly leads you to God. This is not a popular idea.

Indeed, we do not like the thought that there is a God from whom the standards of virtue flow. We enjoy our, if I may use the word without being coy, freedom. Why should I do it His way? I like being the captain of my ship, thank you very much.

When you start looking towards God you have to chuck all this sort of thinking. The world stops being about us and what we what, and becomes all about Him and what He wants. You are forced, in essence, to give up yourself. Of course, you will find yourself, your true self, in the end, but that is a topic for another essay.

Again I must mention Lewis, for he trod along this path long before me. In The Abolition of Man he deconstructs this whole notion of moral relativism, following the argument through to its end. The title, if you are curious, gives his destination away. Relativism breaks humanity of its basic understanding of how to live, and leaves us easy prey to those who would form us to their own images. Are concrete examples needed? The previous century, with its awful history of eugenical thinking, is full of them. In our own time we see how this line of thought has resulted in the in the rather common practice of terminating fetuses found to have Down Syndrome. And this is done, it must be quietly pointed out, often in the name of the mother’s and family’s freedom. These are rather physical examples, of course, but they need not always be so. Corruption may influence its victims in a thousand smaller, more silently insidious ways. The point is that without a belief in objective standards we become vulnerable to whatever subjective standards we are presented.

And let us not think for a moment think that our political freedom will somehow protect us against the corrosive effects of the current social climate. I fear it is often believed that, since the United States possesses various freedoms, such as that of speech and press and so on, it must therefore be inherently good, or, at least, inherently safe. But this is a mistake. A place may be free because it is good, but certainly not the other way around. As for safety, let us not assume that our laws are a shield against the attacks of subjectivity. Of moral relativism, Lewis notes: “The process which, if not checked, will abolish Man goes on apace among Communists and Democrats no less than among Fascists. The methods may (at first) differ in brutality. But many a mild-eyed scientist in pince-nez, many a popular dramatist, many an amateur philosopher in our midst, means in the long run just the same as the Nazi rulers of Germany. Traditional values are to be debunked and mankind to be cut out into some fresh shape at the will (which must, by hypothesis, be an arbitrary will) of some few lucky people in one generation which has learned how to do it (The Abolition of Man, 2001).” Our liberties and politics can not help us, for they themselves are merely the byproducts of our moral understanding, and we are well on our way to having no moral understanding.

What then are we to do? Believe in some abstract higher power, and, in doing so, incur upon ourselves the benefits of virtues? I’m afraid this puts us very much in the same boat that we are already in. We are using our own relative vision of God to support our own relative vision of right and wrong for the primary reason of achieving some outside benefit. The only way to break the cycle is to know the true God and love Him, or rather to be known by Him and loved by Him. Let us not forget that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick (Jer 17:9).” Left to our own hearts we will trample upon all goodness and virtue. We may rage like an inferno or smolder softly for years, but you can be sure when all is done we will have twisted and burned goodness into an unrecognizable form. We need new hearts, and the only place to find those is in the grace of Christ. It is through His love you will find virtues outpouring, and it is in His presence you will find all the freedom you could ever want.

References

Lewis, C.S., “Mere Christianity,” p. 118, HarperCollins, New York, 2001.

Lewis, C.S., “The Abolition of Man”, p.73-74, HarperCollins, New York, 2001.

Jeremiah 17:9, English Standard Version, Crossway Bibles, Wheaton, IL, 2001.

HP and Me

A quick thought:

I re-read one of the ending chapters (“The Prince’s Tale”) of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows today. It hit me that it was pretty much a microcosm of all of Rowling’s creation. The chapter is essentially a series of Snape’s memories, starting from his childhood and skimming through his life, all focused on his relationship with Harry’s mother. It’s a very sad, very beautiful story. And it provides a glimpse into why Harry Potter is so successful, while so many other fantasy stories (or stories, period) crash and burn.

Harry Potter is usually painted as epic fantasy, yet it’s really more of a domestic drama with epic fantasy encroaching on its edges. Rowling is interested in how Harry stops Voldemort, sure, but she’s more interested in how the quest to stop him effects the characters and how they relate to each other. She gets you to care about her characters more than whatever MacGuffin they happen to chasing in each particular book. So when she finally lays out the whole tragic story of a character’s life (in this case, Snape’s) it has a solid impact. Say what you will about her flaws, but there’s not a lot of authors that can do that.

“For The Time Being”

Ah, late night writing (at least it’s late night for me), the time when my crap-filters are rendered barely effective and all manner of bilge spills out. My topic tonight is a segment of a long poem by W.H. Auden. The poem is “For the Time Being”, Auden’s ode to Christ’s birth, and the segment which occupies me is entitled “The Temptation of St. Joseph”. It’s not without it’s flaws, but it’s a great piece, and there are lines found within that will stay with you a long time. There’s a particular bit, especially, that seems to often rattle around in my head. It’s one of Joseph’s lines:

“The bar was gay, the lighting well-designed,

And I was sitting down to wait

My own true Love:

A voice I’d heard before, I think,

Cried: “This on the House. I drink

To him

Who does not know it is too late;”

When I asked for the time,

Everyone was very kind”

There’s something so haunting about it. The unsuspecting Joseph sitting down at a bar, waiting for his girl, thinking life’s going just as he wants it, then suddenly here comes the ominous “I drink to him who does not know it is too late”. Life isn’t going to be easy. It’s not going to smooth.

And the natural question is ‘Why?’

Auden’s answer, I think, is rather silly. That is, Joseph must go through the gut-wrenching doubt about Mary’s honesty and God’s goodness in order to atone for the sins of masculinity. Joseph, of course, can’t and doesn’t atone for a thing, that’s up to his adopted son. Yet Auden’s treatment of the moment still offers us something. It catches the truth that sometimes God is working the most in us when he seems most absent. It is through the trials and difficulties we face that He matures us. And what a perfect picture of Christ’s, if I may respectfully say it, intrusion. We go along with all lives thinking we have everything under control, and then Christ shows up and points us down a road we never would have chosen otherwise, to goodness we could never have expected.

Polygamy in the African Church

Christianity Today recently had an interesting article on their website regarding the issue of polygamy in African churches. The main issues were the way this particular social condition has acted as an impediment in people’s acceptance of the Gospel and how the church has attempted to respond. There’s no simple solution to the problem. Having a new convert send away all but his first wife puts the rejected women (and their children) in a precarious situation both socially and economically, which is clearly unbiblical. Yet at the same time Scripture outlines monogamy as the ideal.

Apparently many African churches have gone about addressing the difficulty by allowing polygamous men to become members, while at the same time withholding various aspects of membership, such as Communion. I’m not terribly sure this is the best answer, yet I can’t come up with a wholly satisfactory one myself. Part of me, though, wants to draw a parallel to Christ’s teaching on divorce. That is, when he told the people that divorce had been allowed due to their hardness of heart, but now a more perfect rule was being instituted. Would it be best to allow polygamy to exist within first generation Christian families, at the same time making clear to the young and unmarried that polygamy should not be continued? I think I tend to lean towards the position that the greater sin would be for a man to divorce his wives and leave that portion of his family high and dry.

Again, no easy solutions pop up here. Your thoughts?

P.S. Incidentally, the largest moral question at play here was left unraised by the Christianity Today article, and that is the selfishness of the polygamous men. I mean, there are some guys in this world without any wives. I say once you get one you back off and give someone else a shot.

My First Blog

So, following my usual trend of being technologically eight years behind everyone else, I’m starting a blog. It’s mostly going to be reviews on books and music and such, plus an assorted collection of random thoughts. Hope you enjoy it.