Sermons on Mark

For those interested in studying the Gospel of Mark (we are studying Mark 9 under the insightful Peter Dietsch at our own church this month)... here are some sermons on the Gospel of Mark, from my brother, Scott Redd, who is a professor of Old Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary:

Mark 2: Felt Need, Deepest Need

Mark 4-5: Sea Storm and Man of the Tombs

Those are audio links.

Homeschooling, in SALON

We are back in the new school year, and here in a new town, so I find myself answering some familiar questions about home schooling from people I meet.

I am glad they ask, it means they are open and curious. Sometimes people seem disapproving, and there are certainly some assumptions made by people about home schooling. But most people seem genuinely curious.

The main questions I hear when we move to a new place and make new friends are: "Why do you home school?" "What about socialization?" and something along the lines of, "How do you do it? Do you start in the morning and go all day like in regular school?"

I thought I'd do a blog on these 3 questions at a later date. But first in this blog I'd like to link to two interesting perspectives on homeschooling from the left-of-center home school crowd, in links below.

For my more traditional friends, also want to add I am not advocating taking your children to bars late at night or "un-schooling."

But I digress...

There are some interesting points and perspectives in these links, especially about socialization (most famously and capably handled by Susan Wise Bauer in the homeschooling classic, The Well-Trained Mind, intended for non-sectarian home schoolers as well as Christian ones) and also specialization.

Home schoolers are a group of diverse people. After all, people rarely fit rigidly into one mold. There is a spectrum of people involved on home schooling -- politically, financially, and culturally -- and they overlap in areas. Going to a home schooling convention or meeting or support group can mean sitting next to people you would otherwise never cross paths with, and enjoying it. It is good.

I know of a home schooling mom whose children wear school uniforms and sit in a row in little desks. I have met moms whose children wear their pajamas until noon and do their school sprawled across the floor.

Most of us fall somewhere in between. Both of these approaches would make me a little crazy, though when we moved here before our furniture did, we had no choice but to do our workbooks on the carpet. (And you know, the good news is that the kids were able to do it. An unintended consequence of home schooling can be flexibility -- mentally and physically -- cue wry smile.)

I saw this diversity among home schoolers more in China than in anywhere else, where, due to the exorbitant cost of private schooling and the Mandarin and communist nature of public schooling, many expat. women home schooled who otherwise wouldn't.

Confessions of a Homeschooler

Sour Grapes

Top 10 Reasons to Home School

10. Pajamas and pancakes during memory work and devotions.

9. You can safely doze off during afternoon SSR (sustained, silent reading)

8. I get to go on every field trip. Heck, I get to pick every field trip!

7. It is socially acceptable to cuddle during read-alouds.

6. The kitchen crew is available during morning hours.

5. My human encyclopedia, Will, is always at the ready with scientific data.

4. Three little words: Done By One.

3. No need to flatten down cowlicks except on Sundays.

4. Owning lots of good Kingfisher and DK books!

3. The town library, the nature preserve, and Starbucks are satellite locations.

2. Vacations in the off season!

1. The learning never stops...for mom, too.

Matthew Henry quotes

Quotes from Matthew Henry

I have a brand new Matthew Henry commentary on the Bible ("Nelson's Super Value Series!") which I got from Borders this summer.

From Romans:

"And we all know how soon a man will contrive, against the strongest evidence, to reason himself out of the belief of what he dislikes"

From Exodus:

"It is a sign of guilt to be angry at reproof."

"Sometimes the Lord suffers the rod of the wicked to lie very long and very heavy on the lot of the righteous."

About our attitude towards the church and the foibles of its members: "But we must take heed of being set against the ways and people of God, by the follies and peevishness of some persons that profess religion."

On Moses faithful mother and his little reed boat, "And if the weak affection of a mother were thus careful, what shall we think of Him, whose love, whose compassion is, as himself, boundless? Moses never had a stronger protection about him...than now, when he lay alone, a helpless babe upon the waves. No water, no Egyptian, can hurt him. When we seem most neglected and forlorn, God is most present with us."

Genesis and Dysfunctional Families

The kids and I just finished Genesis in the mornings, and we noted the following repeating themes coming down through the generations of God's people, starting with Cain and Abel and moving on down through the ages. Faith marks this family -- many of them have great faith in acting as God commands, and following His commands to move great distances, but there are some markers of dysfunction we took as a warning for all of us today.

* Brothers as rivals and competitors
* Jealousy and/or favoritism, as a partial cause of the above, and always simmering under the surface
* Trickiness! "Parsing" words
* Marital infidelity

Escape from Presence

Here is an amusing and insightful excerpt from an old Cary Tennis column in Salon. It is about the increasing inability of all of us -- in this virtual world -- to achieve Absence. (And here I am, blogging on it. Rich.)

...The problem is compounded by the fact that the very definitions of presence and absence have changed; absence has become contingent; presence has become inescapable. No matter where we are, our virtual selves remain under surveillance.

Until recently, one could actually achieve absence. One could go somewhere and be gone. The traveler would send postcards. The postcards would have pictures of beaches or statues. They would be eagerly awaited and gratefully received. Absence was simple. It was an absolute condition, soon relieved by presence. Presence was also an absolute condition.

No more.

Now absence and presence are contingent and variable, matters of degree and form. A person may cease responding to e-mail and achieve a sort of absence although he or she remains in place. Or a person may go to India and yet be as present as always.

A version of us is always present. We are over-connected. We spy on each other from afar.

The quality of our absence is thus degraded. Absenceness is a precious resource we are fast running out of. Soon there will be nothing but presence. We will wish we could go away but will not be able to. The pain of constant presence will be too much for some to bear; it will be a torture like that of sleep deprivation. There will be a rash of virtual suicides, in which people disconnect themselves and appear to be dead. We will have virtual funerals for them. This will all come in time...

Poetry readings, a photo film negative

I acquired from Borders a cd on sale of modern poets reading their own poetry in scratchy worn recordings -- Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Yeats (!), Dylan Thomas.

I am struck by how, generally speaking, to be a poet is NOT to be a stage entertainer. The few poems I have listened to so far are read hurriedly, abashedly by poets who seem shy to be reading their own work. Frost fairly flies through his great poems, and dismisses his famous "Two Roads" poem with a hasty muttering at the end: that's "an easy poem."

After a few of these, I skipped ahead to Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" where pain enters the production and the broken anger of a daughter does scratch in her voice.

It is painful to hear, to listen to, painful to read. Dark, tragic, lost, pitiful soul. The poem is a wretchedly truthful portrait of the wretched state of mind a bad father bequeaths to his daughter, the inclinations to patricide (metaphorically if not literally), the heavy-hearted plodding in and out of relationships with bad men looking for one pitiful chance to redeem -- to win -- paternal love. We've all know women who have been burdened in life by a harsh or distant or tragically neglectful father -- girls born to pillagers (emotional or physical) instead of the shepherd.

This poem is a negative -- like on photo film; in displaying what can be wrong, it divulges the importance of fathers in viewing life, self and the divine..."a bag full of God," as she says.

And who could redeem a broken soul from this, but God himself?

"Daddy"
Silvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one grey toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du. ...

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through. ...

1899 Farmhouse

Some friends of ours here in North Texas, a fun and talented couple, just opened their new business. It is a facility for events like weddings, reunions, parties, and so on in a lovely country setting with an historic old farmhouse and large covered area and pool on the property.

Locals, check it out if you are looking for such a venue! Here is the link!
1899 Farmhouse