Monthly Archives: August 2007

Let Them be Warriors

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I have often felt sorry for modern boys and young men. They have so few chances to kinesthetically apply their problem-solving skills.

So few opportunities to be a hero.

Watching Honey I Shrunk the Kids a few years ago was the first time I really thought about this.

The greasy teenage boy changed from lazy and purposeless into a confident leader. I had to wonder how many of the high school guys I knew could have been marvelous rather than eye-rolling if they’d had the opportunity.

It’s started a new point of interest in my folktale collecting:

I’d really like to find some über-manly tales of knights and princes. The type that dominate the scene, according to the authors compiling books of women-centered folktales.

I guess I haven’t been paying enough attention up till now, because most of the stories I find don’t raise men nearly to the level women reach in their corresponding tales (trickster tales being the exception).

Even Cinderella, Snow White and The Sleeping Beauty— castigated as being about passive women– are still just about the women. I’ve noted before that in these stories the man is merely the accessory. A part of the packaged fantasy played out in the fairy tale.

Granted, I’m familiar with a lot of tales where a youngest son or some poor young man who is all alone is kind to the right person, finds the right friends, follows the advice of the wise man (or woman), and gets the girl, the gold or the kingdom, but they only rarely feel heroic.

Bryan Davis, the author of the Dragons in our Midst series (and another) wrote a fabulous article about the heart of heroism in boys and girls, and how naturally it plays out in line with the roles God ordained: Champion and encourager. Protector and helpmeet.

Read it. It gave me goosebumps (if that’s any additional recommendation).

So far in my brief search I have found two noteworthy books that I expect to buy by the time Elisha is a pre-schooler:

The title story from Lady of the Linden Tree is another good example of what I’m looking for, and is among the half-dozen or so of Picard’s tales I’d love to see in picture book format.

The Black Falcon, changed from its original incarnation in the Decameron, becomes a tale of sacrifice, about loving a person over a possession. The other is about a fierce battle, with honor, faithfulness, and the happy ending.

I’m keeping my eyes open for more like these, because as nice as it is to see the triumph of “the little guy,” I think it’s good, too, to have heroes that are larger than life.

My girls love their picture books with the pages of beautiful ladies and journeys that they can see themselves on. I want to give my son the same opportunity to identify with men of honor and bravery.

Yes, I hope to teach my son gentleness, but I also want to equip him with stories and images he can admire; those showing the proper use of strength and power.

Know any Good Books?

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I know I have more readers than comment, so here’s a question for everyone:

Can you give me any titles of books where a character has a disability of some kind, but the book is not about that disability?

Just now I can only think of two:

  • Jip: His Story
    • Has a “madman” caged at the poor farm the title character lives on.
  • The Westing Game
    • One of the 16 major characters, Chris, has a musculoskeletal something that confines him to a wheelchair and limits his ability to communicate. I really liked how the author let us into his (very perceptive) mind.
    • Another of the 16 was the mother of a girl described as “mongoloid” because of the time it was written. I don’t think anyone would get away with publishing that now.

    The interaction of everyone with Chris was very revealing of character, but wasn’t the point of he story. That was bigger than just one person.

These are the types of stories I’m looking for: Disability is a part of who they are, but it doesn’t drive the whole story (like, say, What’s Wrong With Timmy?)

If you have any ideas, please leave a comment and point me in that direction.

Thanks!

Home Again…

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Was gone much of the last week for our last (immediate) family wedding.

Random “over-heards” from the weekend:

A tee-shirt on the groom:

No, I don’t have a girlfriend.
But a know a girl who would be pretty upset if she heard me say that.

After the wedding:

60-something uncle: So, [Groom] what are you planning on doing tonight?
Unbelieving stare from groom.
40-something uncle: Has it really been that long since you were married?

Of course the question was more about where they were spending their honeymoon than what they’d be doing.

And then there was the one on the drive home where my oldest asked,

Are we going to Fairbanks and real-Alaska, now?

And here we are, at almost 1400 miles of driving in less than a month, five in the Subaru Legacy.

Family 8/07

Do we look a little dazed to you?

Now, Lord willing, my goal is to really set up house and find a balance now that sickness, dog (yes, dog :( ) and crazy-fast weekends across the state are over for the present.

Modernizing an Old Warning

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The men’s Sunday school class at church is studying Mark, so I’m sure Nate (who is teaching the class) had this in mind when he wrote in an e-mail:

And remember: If your high speed Internet connection causes you to stumble, cut the wire. It’s better for you to enter life with dial-up than have 10 Mbps but end up floating face down in the sewer.

The Bear Trainer and his Cat– a Tuesday Tale

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A bear-trainer and his animal were lost in a blowing storm and begged shelter at the only cabin they could find in the mountains.

The householder did not seem at all frightened by the enormous bear but tremblingly warned the trainer that all the trolls of the hill were coming to his house that night– as they did each year– to eat him nearly out of house and home.

“And if I can’t stop them from starving me to bones, how can I offer you safety?”

The trainer assured the old man he’d look after his own safety if only he had a roof over his head, and the householder allowed him in.

As soon as he had laid out on the table all the food he had, the skinny old man climbed into the loft to hide. The trainer had his bear lie down behind the stove, and sat down beside it himself, to thaw the ice from his fingers and toes.

An hour before midnight the front door blew open and in came a swarm of wrinkly-skinned trolls, gray as the mountain and tall as the trainer’s waist.

Without seeming to notice him, they fell on the food at the table, quickly consuming a mound larger than their whole group. A young troll, satisfied sooner than the others, was playing with a long sausage in the fire when he noticed the bear behind the stove.

“Does kitty want a sausage?” he shrieked, poking the bear’s nose with the burning meat.

The bear rushed out with a roar and chased all the screaming trolls from the cabin. When another troll, larger than the rest, peeked in the door, the trainer called, “Sic ’em,” and the bear got rid of that one too.

A year later, the old man was working outdoors when a single troll asked from behind a rock, “Have you still got that big kitty, master?”

“Oh yes,” said the old man, thinking quickly. “And she’s had seven kittens since then.”

“Then you’ll never have us back for guests!” said the troll.

And the old man never did see them again.

What is Hope? Where does it come from?

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Random thoughts. Not a thesis.

My pastor suggested Sunday (while touching on the relationship between hope and faith) that hope (like faith) is evidenced by action.

And that got me thinking.

Hope is not a passive thing.

It is active. Whether we really hope may be shown by what we do.

It is also a type of dependency. We’re hanging on something outside ourselves (and probably outside of our control, or we would have made it happen already).

In contrast, despair is really a type of arrogance.

I’ve never heard a better definition than Gandolf’s in The Lord of the Rings: “Despair is for those who see the end beyond all doubt.”

It claims a completeness within one’s self, then is crushed when (surprise!) that source becomes inadequate for the task at hand.

Despair only reveals the smallness of the one despairing, and probably a lack of humility to look outside to greater resources.

When I was in high school I was taught that people once believed it was the eye that lit up what is saw.

Just now I cannot imagine how anyone could actually have believed this, considering the size of the eye, and what it supposedly illuminated (and the limitations of night and day…).

But taking it as an idea, I feel this is a good analogy/reminder about hope:

Hope is not something we produce. It is like light to the eye. The eye does not illuminate, it opens to receive illumination.

When we acknowledge our need and look outside ourselves (especially when we look to God) we are no longer limited to our own resources, and I think that is what enables us to hope.