The Liberal Arts and the Christian Life: Why There Is Still Hope

     To speak of the decline of both the quality and presence of the Liberal Arts in the American academy is so clearly obvious that only the ignorant, apathetic, or contrarian would disagree. It seems about every year there are numerous books adding to the already mountain of works decrying the end of the Liberal Arts.

     While it may be true that the once esteemed place that the Liberal Arts held in the academy k-12 through graduate school has not seen darker days since the fall of the Roman empire, there are signs that some are still fighting the fight. Evidence for resistance fighters within Christian circles is found in the book Liberal Arts For the Christian Life edited by Jeffry C. Davis and Philip G. Ryken. This volume, while not entirely balanced in quality, is a fine example of Christians thinking Christianly about the Liberal Arts. More importantly, this book was assembled to honor Leland Ryken. 

    I have never concealed my indebtedness to Leland Ryken. His books on the Bible as Literature, the Arts, and Literature are all on my shelves and are throughly marked up as I have lifted quotes, and insights for lectures and sermons. While Dr. Ryken has written a few "scholarly" books, he has most often written or edited books that are accessible for any who might be interested in thinking about the Liberal Arts from a distinctly Christian worldview. Additionally, I was blessed several years ago when we invited Dr. Ryken to our campus as the annual Great Books Honors speaker and it was marvelous. 

     To finally put an embodied presence to his audio lectures I had heard, and all of his books I had read, I was able to meet Dr. Ryken several years ago. Dr. Ryken was gracious, kind, humble, encouraging, and professional. He is what is best understood in the terms of a "Christian gentleman." He is rare and as a leader in the battle for the Liberal Arts, he has served in an exemplary manner for decades and continues to equip others to join the ranks.

Seneca's On The Shortness of Life: Required Reading Before the Final Exam

     One does not have to jump into the Great Books by starting at the beginning. One does not have to start with the longest most difficult Philosophical work, or an 800 page literary masterpiece. It might be wise to begin with one of the shorter, richer selections. 
     A teaching found throughout the Great Books is the theme of a most insightful writing by Seneca. The idea is that life is short. However, Seneca takes a most unique perspective on this theme. "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested."
     Seneca elaborates, "so it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill–supplied but wasteful of it." There are a number of things Seneca suggests that add up to a terrible use of one's life, including, but not limited to, the slavish dedication to monetary pursuits, useless endeavors, sluggish and lazy behavior, idle preoccupations, constant distractions, being bogged down in expectancy, and engaged in indolent activities. One could only imagine what he would think of television and games.
     While some may read this essay and think that Seneca is reflecting on life and its brevity, the truth is Seneca is offering up a vision of a life well lived. Throughout the essay, Seneca calls the reader to engage in a life of leisure. Leisure does not mean simply lying around in a slothful manner, but rather an ongoing reflective contemplative notion of living the good life. 

     Throughout, Seneca also makes references to Liberal studies and the value of a liberal education and how this can lead one to wisdom by supplying a free mind.  Dealings with liberal studies allows one to become wise throughout one's leisurely endeavors. And this is the ultimate training for living a good, although, be it relatively short life (especially for the unwise). Similar to the modern existentialist, Seneca frequently distinguishes between a well lived life and a biologically long existence. 
     Of all of the relevant insights that Seneca offers in this essay, possibly the one most pertinent to the modern mind is Seneca's numerous reflections on time. He speaks wisely of our relationship to time: the past, present, and the hoped-for future. In more than one place, Seneca reminds us that time is a most precious gift and should be used wisely.
     The essay is replete with quotable quotes that one could post at one's work station, or on the refrigerator reminding one of the wisdom within this work. A particular quote that I have thought about a number of times over the last few days is this insight, "But learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die."

Why Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 Is a Great Book

     On numerous occasions, Mortimer Adler wrote about the criteria that was used to determine which books of all the books written in the West would be placed within The Great Books of the Western World.  Contrary to confusion and many misstatements I've read over the years, Adler says it was essentially three criteria and they are as follows:

1) Contemporary significance - Even though historically valuable, these works address “issues, problems, or facets of human life that are of major concern to us today as well as at the time in which they were written.”

Numerous critical reviews exist regarding Fahrenheit 451. One testament to its value is that it has been in print since 1953 and annually sells more than 50,000 copies. Many of the themes (and there are many) explored within the novel are timeless in their nature.
2) Rereadability - These are books “intended for the general reader that are worth reading carefully many times or studying over and over again...indefinitely rereadable for pleasure and profit.”
As I have confessed before in blogs and lectures, I have read Fahrenheit 451 over 30 times in the past several years. In truth, this work is rich in content and form and has enough thematic substance to sustain numerous readings and an enriching conversation. Most importantly is that all evidence points to the reality that this work is the most read, discussed, and researched work by Ray Bradbury, but it is the most universally misinterpreted.
3) Relevance- There is extensive relevance and something of significance to say about a large number of the 102 great ideas of the thinking and writing done by the authors chosen.
Of the 102 Great Ideas Adler explored, Fahrenheit 451 touches upon or explores in a meaningful manner the following: Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Courage, Custom and Convention, Desire, Duty, Emotion, Experience, Family, Fate, God, Good and Evil, Habit, Happiness, Honor, Judgment, Knowledge, Law, Life and Death, Love, Man, Memory and Imagination, Mind, Nature, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Pleasure and Pain, Prudence, Punishment, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Senses, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Soul, Temperance, Time, Truth, Virtue and Vice, Will, Wisdom, and World.
Additionally, Adler said that the list of Great Books needed to be regularly reevaluated. With this in mind, I hope that I have made the case for including this novel by Ray Bradbury and including it in the open and extended list Adler proposed.
As with other Bradbury writings, there is often an earlier life or version before the published date. While Fahrenheit 451 was published in 1953 (60 years ago and still in print), there were earlier kernel versions in short stories - "The Fireman," "Long After Midnight,", and the unpublished "Where Ignorant Armies Clash By Night."
     Fahrenheit 451 should be read as a companion story to "The Smile," "The Garbage Collector," "The Pedestrian," and "The Library." Readers can purchase the book, A Pleasure to Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories and see the rich thematic connections.  
     Certainly not to be read as a libertarian tract against censorship, but more as a cautionary tale of the way society can nurture anti-intellectualism, and daily inhumane behavior, this work should be removed from Jr High reading lists and moved to the Senior year of High school or possibly Freshman year of college. It would be essential to have a teacher who can read and see that the work is only in a minuscule way about censorship. Beyond being a masterfully crafted exploration of a dystopian society, the work examines numerous humane themes and offers a profound portrayal of the outcome of a society living the "unexamined life."

Being Civil in Mean Times

     We live in mean times. While many of us do not daily experience the kind of civic ugliness featured on the evening news, or common place in Op ed sections of national newspapers, if we simply look and listen, we catch the mean spirited discourse all too common. Forget that this is even an election year where both sides can be downright ugly. Uncivil discourse is pervasive and it is the kind of talk that would have gotten us a spanking or some serious time out as children. That makes me wonder....
     What prompted this blog was a recent social event where the religious convictions of a public figure solicited a "Support Day" by advocates and a "Kiss Day" by opponents. What is most troubling is that we are at a moment where a person's deeply held convictions solicit the response of "hate speech." Let me be more clear. We are in strange times when someone says, "I do not agree with ________" and the response is that "Not agreeing with _______ is HATE speech." Can you imagine where this may lead us? 
     One can well imagine neighbors talking across the fence and someone saying, "Well Bill, I think the City Council should restrict the amount of trash you can put on the curb." "How dare you, you are a HATE filled person to say that." So what are we to do in such an uncivil time? Our hope resides in the communities of character and our daily encouragement to be civil. 
     Os Guinness persuasively and passionately (not HATEFUL at all) in his The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends On It, says that a large part of the problem of a collapse of civility in America is that the religious norms historically providing a foundation for civility has now become contested soil.  
     Judith Martin, in a now dated work (dated because it was first published in 1996 and dated because incivility is winning the day) Miss Manners' A Citizens Guide to Civility says that we need to reestablish the mores of etiquette if we are going to stand a chance.
     Related to this reestablishment of mores is the delightful, but also dated work (see note above), Say Please, Say Thank You: The Respect We Owe One Another where Donald McCullough examines the power and transformative nature of the daily habit of deference and consideration. Small gestures of humility would go a far distance toward establishing the good society. T.S. Eliot once observed that there is a thin veneer that keeps us all from being savages. One would hope that the habits of the heart, manifested in gracious gestures and kind words may strengthen that eroding veneer.
     For those committed to a higher, more transcendent code of conduct, we are reminded of a unique juxtaposition found in the apostle's letter to Titus, who at the time of receiving this letter was living at Crete. While Paul mentions the fact that "One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, 'Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons,'" we must also remember that Paul says later, in Titus 3:2 "show perfect courtesy toward all people." We can know for certain that in any Cretan moment, we are also called to be courtesy toward all, even the liars, beasts, and gluttons and may God save us all.

Why The Phantom Tollbooth is a Gateway to Great Books and Great Ideas

     This past summer, among the various books we read on our own and reported to one another, my wife and I read a "children's book" neither of us had read before. Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth. Of course, we had both seen it before and we had people at different times recommend it, but we went on through the Tollbooth together and it was a most enjoyable and edifying experience.
     We both laughed out loud as we traveled with Milo and Tock and met King Azaz.  We traveled with the Mathemagician and other guides to strange but enchanting lands such as Dictionoplois and Digitopolis, the Valley of Sounds, the Forrest of Sights, and the quest to restore Rhyme and Reason with the ultimate goal of the establishment of the Kingdom of Wisdom. 
     There are many memorable moments and lots of great quotes, but my wife and I agreed that our favorite is a conversation between Canby, Milo, and Humbug. On the edge of the Sea of Knowledge, the reader reads,
     "Isn't there even a boat?" asked Milo, anxious to get on with his trip.
     "Oh, no, " replied Canby, shaking his head. "The only way back is to swim, and that's a very long and a very hard way."
     "I don't like to get wet," moaned the unhappy bug, and he shuddered at the thought.
     "Neither do they, " said Canby sadly. "That's what keeps them here. But I wouldn't worry too much about it, for you can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and still come out completely day. Most people do."
     If one thought long and seriously about potential for learning in class or in life, the stark truth is that most people do swim in the sea of knowledge and leave the sea as dry as if they had never jumped in for a swim. Related to this truth is the reality that many swim for too long in the shallow end of the sea of knowledge, by staying close to the shore and not wading out out to the deeper waters.
     I have only one reservation with this work, and it is mild because I may be wrong, but there is a reference to The Terrible Trivium that is less than favorable. If indeed, Norton Juster is referring to "the trivium," which is central to Classical education, then he is simply, but terribly illformed. If he is merely using "trivium" as a synonym for trivial, then I apologize and retract my only mild reservation about this work.

My Summer Vacation in Green Town, Illinois

     Most of us had the childhood experience when returning to school after summer break having to write the mandatory, "What I Did This Summer" essay. Of the range of things we rarely wrote "slept a lot more," "nothing," or "stayed in trouble." We would often write about the summer vacations.
      Anyone who knows earthly geography, knows from the title of this blog that my summer vacation was spent in the sub-creation of Ray Bradbury. While this is true, it does not make the grandness of my vacation any less fantastic. Vacations should be about leisure, rest, laughter, reflection, and fine conversations. Additionally, one should return from vacation a better person.
     While I have read Dandelion Wine many times before this summer's read, I had never read this wonderful work with Summer Morning-Summer Night, and Farewell Summer. Enough good cannot be said of these summer works by Bradbury. It would be impossible to read these works together and not be thrown into memories of one's own summers past. Of all the reasons to read Ray Bradbury's stories, the distinctly human act of introspective reflection and reminiscence of years ago is a main motivation.
     The people we meet on the streets, in the shops, and in the homes of Green Town are easy to connect with despite the gap in historical setting. We understand these people because we can see ourselves in them. Our longings, fears, secrets, pains, and joys are here in these characters. Possibly one of the best reasons to read is not merely to escape, but to see our lives more clearly.
     Anyone who travels to Green Town will also be reminded of what really matters in this world, this gift of life. The various rituals, ceremonies, discoveries, illuminations, and the particulars of life to savor. Many of those who inhabit Green Town, also call us to live. They call us to better see this life that we are called to live. While there are elements reflecting a world that is not perfect, there is much there to enjoy.

Walking to See: Ray Bradbury's The Pedestrian

     Set in the city on an early November evening in the year 2053 at 8:00 pm, The Pedestrian is a powerful fable about the glories of walking as a human activity, but the perils of walking in an age that no longer walks, sees, listens, or thinks.  Walking “was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do.”  It has been during this “ten years of walking” “just walking" “every night” for “hours and miles” at a time that Leonard Mead has come to be a man that clearly sees his world.  In fact, Mr. Mead is a model for us all.  It is astonishing what Leonard has come to see in all this time of walking.
     Mr. Mead was at one time a “writer,” but now that “magazines and books didn’t sell anymore” he did not write.  It may very well be that where Leonard used to write to see, he now walks to see.  Mead lives in a time when most people simply stay at home with their “viewing screen."  It is on his many walks that Leonard observed the empty and alienated lives that people in 2053 were merely passing through.  Their homes are described as “tomb like building(s)” inhabited by “gray phantoms.” It is in this wasteland that Mead makes his daily “journey” on the streets overgrown with grass, due mainly to the non-use by any other pedestrians.
     Not all is hopeless as Mead walks. Once he thinks that he hears the “murmur of laughter” but sadly concludes that it is not. Even when the humane is absent, Leonard is still a human who is walking and who is seeing.  A scene of keen engagement occurs when the reader is with Mead as “he listened to the faint push of his soft shoes through autumn leaves with satisfaction,…occasionally picking up a leaf as he passed, examining its skeletal pattern in the infrequent lamplights as he went on, smelling its rusty smell.”
     It is in this world of alienation, loss of walking, where most have their viewing screen “to see with” that normalcy has been defined to match social behavior and Leonard Mead is simply odd.  On one particular evening, he is accosted by police.  Even Leonard is incredulous because police are “…a rare, incredible thing; in a city of three million, there was only one police car left…”  This story, as well as Fahrenheit 451, seems to make the case that social and cultural change came first, and then political and municipal changes followed.  In other words, there was no longer a need for police (except for the extreme oddities such as Leonard Mead) because with the decline of literacy, civility, and conversation, the masses were no longer good or bad citizens. In fact they were not citizens at all. It is in this barren world that Leonard Mead, the walker and seer, is ordered by the police to “Stand still. Stay where you are! Don’t move!” It is in this world that such misbehavior as walking merits a trip to the “Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.”
     Many of Bradbury’s stories blend both a dark realism with elements or hints of hope.  This story is of that type. The story ends with both a reference to “one particular house” that was brilliantly illuminated.  This house was Leonard Mead’s.  However, the story also ends with the police car that has Mead in it, headed toward Meads new destination.  Behind is left “empty riverbed streets…empty sidewalks, and no sound and no motion all the rest of the chill November night.”
     Throughout the story, light and darkness are contrasted.  In reference to people, we read of the artificial light of their televisions with “the gray or multicolored lights touching their faces,” on the streets of the “infrequent lamplights” and with Leonard’s arrest of the “fierce white cone of light” the police car shined on him. Apart from the stunning description of Leonard’s home all aglow, is an early reference to lights in terms of a simile. “There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside you; you could feel the cold light going on and off, all the branches filled with invisible snow.”
     It could be argued that The Pedestrian is a tale that celebrates one of the most human of endeavors.  The story conveys the activity of walking, with all of its possibilities for sight, and in Mead’s case, with all of its perils in a dystopian world.  It is walking that forces the walker to breathe deeper, and possibly breathe deeper of life, and potentially moves the walker to deeper reflection on what is seen, and heard and what might be known.