Category: Books Page 12 of 19

I have been asked by a friend to recommend a book for him and his fiancé that would be good for them to read as they prepare for their first year of marriage. That’s an interesting question which I would like others to weigh in on. I have certain books I recommend for marriage, but have not thought about any that would be particularly helpful in the early going. (For me, my first year of marriage was ⅓ of a century ago.)

Any suggestions?

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post which referenced the scandal regarding Greg Mortenson, I found wisdom in this, again from Megan McArdle. We look for Messiahs who can do anything and fix everything. But mere men are mortal and the problems of the world resist instant, overnight, single-handed solutions. And yet we look for such.

If we refuse to fund anything but the most ambitious products, we are vulnerable to con men, or starry-eyed optimists who don’t understand what they’re up against. We can’t transform the lives of the global poor overnight. We can make them better. But only if we are clear-eyed about the projects that we undertake.

There is great work being done in the world. But it will tend to be small scale, limited in scope, and incapable of grand claims of success. But there the kingdom of God is being built.

For sober thinking on development, I encourage people to go here.

Years ago I read John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley in Search of America and remember enjoying it greatly. Never did I imagine that it was fiction posing as travel essay. Recently, journalist Bill Steigerwald retraced Steinbeck’s travels. Though he did not set out to undermine Steinbeck’s credibility, he did not get far before he realized that the pieces of the story simply did not fit in the way that they were told. Steigerwald concludes, “Virtually nothing he wrote in ‘Charley’ about where he slept and whom he met on his dash across America can be trusted.”

Bummer. I like memoirs. I am a fan of thoughtful people reflecting on their lives lived. And I like to believe that when someone records a thrilling story that it is, in fact, true.

A few weeks ago my brother gave me a book that had become a favorite of his, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time, one which tells the tale of an adventurer whose travels bring him into a village in Pakistan. The kindness of the villagers leaves such an impression upon our hero, that he returns to America, founds a massive charity, and begins building schools all over that troubled region. CBS’s 60 Minutes then has to come along and play spoiler to the whole by exposing his inspirational tale as riddled with untruth.

“Upon close examination, some of the most touching and harrowing tales in Mortenson’s books appear to have been either greatly exaggerated or made up out of whole cloth.”

That’s pretty damning, if you ask me. Worse than Charley, Mortenson seems to be profiting from the charity that his books have championed.

Huck Finn told us that Mr. Mark Twain told the truth, mainly. But even Twain did not then ask that his book be shelved in the ‘non-fiction’ stacks.

Journalist Megan McCardle had some interesting reflections on the Mortenson revelation:

This sort of thing just mystifies me. I have nightmares where a false story has gotten into one of my stories by accident; I wake up with a sick start, and the relief when I realize that it was just a dream is sweet indeed. I cannot imagine the thought process that would lead you to do this on purpose. Leave aside the morality of it for the nonce–aren’t people afraid of getting caught? In this day and age, how can you hope to get away with passing off a photo of an Islamabad think-tanker as a terrorist who kidnapped you?…

Perhaps Mortenson’s exaggerations started by just playing with the edges of this uncertainty–sexing up his quotes and the characters he met. Then as nothing happened, he got bolder. Especially since he was probably rewarded for his creativity–lightly fictionalized characters are usually livelier and more compelling than actual people, who tend not to speak in well crafted dialogue, or make exactly the perfect point upon which to pivot our story.

Her analysis, while perhaps accurate for the way sin (and I do consider passing off untruth as truth morally aberrant) ordinarily enters into our experience, fails to take into consideration the impact of arrogance upon the human heart. At some point, some of us just believe we are too important to be bothered by ordinary restrictions.

I just wish those who come to that place would not expect me to read their books.

This makes me smile. A lot. I don’t know whether his research or argument is sound. But there is something about the “just enjoy your child” spirit that resonates with this Earthworm Father:

Parents can give themselves a guilt-free break. Children cost far less than most parents pay, because parents overcharge themselves. You can have an independent life and still be an admirable parent. Before you decide against another child, then, you owe it to yourself to reconsider. If your sacrifice is only a fraction of what you originally thought, the kid might be a good deal after all.

Perfect parents scare me. Honestly I consider nearly every parent beside myself to have far greater wisdom and judgment than I, and they scare me because next to their perfections my own weaknesses, mistakes, misjudgments, and oversights seem legion. I’m working on my sixth child, who is now ten, so I should know what I’m doing. But I don’t, and I never will. And standing next to perfect parents reminds me of that.

Yesterday I was struggling with parenthood. I was lamenting how hard it is and how lost I feel. I was feeling the weight of the myriad of irreversible decisions with life altering implications. Parenting offers so little margin for error, it seems, that each decision is magnified beyond proportion.

I would not trade any of the 136 years of parenting God has given me (that’s what it adds up to) nor any of the six children who have so deeply wedged themselves into my heart. But that does not mean that it is easy. If I were to write a book about parenting, the best I could do for a title would be Battle Hymn of the Earthworm Father for all the strength I bring to the matter. Tiger Mom and Dragon Father live in a different universe.

Consequently, when I can find them, it is refreshing to hang out with other parents willing to speak what it feels like to parent. Anne Lamott has been my companion recently thanks to my wife via a friend. She puts the weight of this into words which resonate with me.

Once her seven year-old son wanted to go paragliding, in tandem, with an expert, but still off a 1500 foot cliff. Perfect parents, of course, would have no second thoughts and no inner struggle. They’d know just what to do and when and how. The rest of us struggle with such things.

“What confused me, however, what how much freedom I was supposed to give Sam. I’m unclear about the fine line between good parenting and being overly protective. I get stumped by the easy test questions….”

I feel comfortable with someone willing to say that the easy questions stump her. They do me, too. The fine lines disappear for me. I don’t know the rules.

She was told that she needed to pray about the question. I identified with her here, too.

“Here are the two best prayers I know: ‘Help me, help me, help me,’ and ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.'”

Parenting often reduces me to such simplicity.

Later, when Lamott talks about her angry response when after asking her son to go without TV for a day he turned it on anyway, I realized I’d met a parenting peer.

I wish I were a perfect parent. But if I were I guess I’d look at my children as the product of my own righteousness. As it is, God continues to remind me that they are gifts of his grace, not my own competence.

Earthworm father needs to hear that.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.