What should “classical higher education” look like in our times?

When I think of classical education, I think of Pierrepont or Dominion before college and perhaps St. John’s once there. But I want to ask, should the idea of and basic structure and goals of a classical education stay the same, while the curriculum adjusts?

This is just a quick post/question, the first of perhaps a few. My apologies of I did not frame the question exactly right. Yet, I truly appreciate any feedback any of you would be interested in offering.

Can you believe Google hired Ray Kurtzweil?

We almost never know the future. We almost always know that the grass isn’t greener elsewhere. And, we usually can figure out the next right thing to do. So “live the life that unfolds before you” is good advice. Stay the course. It is the advice I am most tempted to give others most of the times.*

So can I make a confession? I have not been so good at following my own advice. I have been reluctant to live the life unfolding before me. I have been reluctant to embrace my life as the “100 Thing Challenge guy.”

It is not that I lack passion for the message of the 100TC. I can rant for quite some time about the value of practicing simplicity. Recently I have even clarified the 100TC vision: to create better relationships of all kinds through the formative power of simplicity. The relationships 100TC advocacy will focus on are: family, community, God, and nature. I am very excited about where the 100TC movement will go and the ways in which it will grow.

Making the case from my blog for rejecting excessive consumerism and embracing a more simple lifestyle comes easy to me. Being viewed by others as a public figure who makes the case for simplicity has not come easy to me. Though I do not get stage fright, I get stage self-uncertainty. I am comfortable on radio and TV shows and in front of audiences delivering a message. I am not so comfortable thinking of myself as a message deliverer. And I have not done well confronting that discomfort and maturing past it. And honestly, I have not done well attracting mentors to help guide me through it. And yet despite my incompetence, the 100TC life keeps unfolding before me. Even though I have bumbled through the past few years, media keep calling and the incredible 100TC community keeps growing.

And so I just want to publicly say I am going to do my best to go with it––live the life unfolding before me, come what may. I am going to accept that, at least until media and you super inspiring fans lose interest in the 100TC, it is my role to be the 100 Thing Challenge guy who speaks out against excessive consumerism and speaks up for simplicity.

Truly, I might never get over my surprise that so many people are interested in the 100 Thing Challenge and the message of simplicity that accompanies it. But I am going to do my best to get over letting my surprise turn into worry or doubt or inaction.

Thanks to all you who have considered the 100TC an inspiration. There’s more to come…

*I would say the exception to this rule is if you are in an abusive relationship of any kind. Then it is best to get out as fast and as safe as possible.

At work we recently completed a project in which we evaluated our website with the help of an outside firm. They did a great job. Yet some of their recommendations came too close to assurance for my taste. For example, in reviewing our website’s navigation, they reported with a touch too much confidence that users expect navigation on the left side and not the right side of a website, and thus our navigation is confusing. They included studies from experts and explanations of user eye tracking. That’s fine. It is true that many websites put navigation on the left side. Does this mean that if a person goes to a website with navigation on the right side he will inevitably get confused and browse away until he finds a competitive website with navigation on the left?

Now, I would like to revise the navigation on the website I manage at work. Not because it is on the right side of the screen, but for other reasons. After nearly two years, we have learned some things about our site’s structure and our users’ needs that we did not know when we first designed the site. This new information does not add up to assurance. A couple years from now we will have learned more and need to make more adjustments.

We live in a time when it is trendy to speak both of rapid change and definitive solutions. “Twitter changes everything.” “You should tweet 5 times a day and retweet 10 people a week.” Go to almost any conference for almost any industry and you will hear a keynote speaker assure you everything is changing and then give you the rules to follow because of the change.

Do you want to be a standout in our times? Instead of being known for your assurance, gain a reputation for your level-headed patience.

Then I want to stress to you the meaning of freedom, for as we struggle for freedom in America there is a danger that we will misinterpret freedom. We usually think of freedom from something, but freedom is also to soemthing. It is not only breaking aloose from some evil force, but it is reaching up for a nigher force. Freedom from evil is slavery to goodness. And we must discover that freedom is more than a negative something. It is more than getting aloose from a negative, but it is becoming attached to a positive. I hope you will realize that. You know we talk a lot about our rights. That’s the glory of our Constitution: that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But not only must we become bogged down in rights, because if we stop there we might misuse our rights. We might use our rights to trample over other people’s rights. It’s not only rights that we are seeking. We not only have the right to be free, we have a duty to be free. And when you see freedom in sense of duty, it becomes greater than seeing it in terms of right, your right to be free. You have a duty to be free. And when you see that you have a duty to be free, you discover that you have a duty to respect those who don’t even want you to have freedom. That’s the sense of duty. You come to see you must respect even that man who doesn’t want you to sit next to him on the bus. Somehow, freedom is this duty to respect all people, even though they don’t love you, they don’t respect you, but you respect them and you feel somehow that they can become better than they are. That’s the meaning of freedom. You have a duty to respect those––I don’t mean you have to respect their opinions, I don’t believe in respecting everybody’s opinion. I don’t respect anybody’s opinion who thinks that I’m supposed to be kicked around and segregated. I don’t respect their opinion. But I respect them as a personality, a sacred personality with the image of God within them. And although that image has been scarred, terribly scarred, although they, like the prodigal son have strayed away to some far country of sin and evil, I must still believe that there is something within them that can cause them one day to come to themselves and rise up and walk back up the dusty road to the father’s house. And we stand there with outstretched arms. That’s the meaning of Christian faith. That’s the meaning of this thing. Our Christian religion says somehow that a prejudiced mind can be changed. And I’d close up my books and stop preaching if I didn’t believe that. I want to tell you this evening that I believe that Senator Engelhardt’s heart can be changed. I believe that Senator Eastland’s heart can be changed! I believe that the Ku Klux Klan can be transformed into a clan for God’s kingdom. I believe the White Citizens Council can be transformed into a Right Citizens Council! I believe that. That’s the essence of the Gospel.

From The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. Volume III: Birth of A New Age December 1955–December 1956, Clayborne Carson, Senior Editor. (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1997)  pp. 428-429.

Such was the case today, nearly a month to the day after the evil Sandy Hook school shootings. These are Wendell Berry’s words, first published in 1995, regarding our culture’s care of children:

Whatever the reason, it is a fact that we are now conducting a sort of general warfare against children, who are being aborted or abandoned, abused, drugged, bombed, neglected, poorly raised, poorly fed, poorly taught, and poorly disciplined. Many of them will not only find no worthy work but no work of any kind. All of them will inherit a diminished, diseased, and poisoned world. We will visit upon them not only our sins but also our debts. We have set before them thousands of examples––governmental, industrial, and recreational––suggesting that the violent way is the best way. And then we have the hypocrisy to be surprised and troubled when they carry guns and use them.

Berry is quick to acknowledge there are many loving parents who do a good job caring for children. Please find this book and read the entire essay.

The prospect of a new year appeals to me. A new calendar year really should not be that special. Spring would be better for anticipating a fresh start. Even Pentecost. January 1? Not so much. But I cannot help myself and then I begin to consider what accomplishments I would like to achieve in the next calendar year.

With 2012 coming to a close, I have been hard at work trying to resist planning for too many achievements in 2013. Not that I have no desires to attain. It is just that the prospect of the New Year sometimes clouds my judgment until I desire too much, as if in the New Year I could achieve goals with the same gluttonous resolve that got me through Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Achievements are like hams and turkeys and chocolates, there is a point of diminishing returns. We can get fat on our successes. It is better to plan ahead not to.

Yet I am not a fan of making no plans at all; giving up goals; living entirely in the now. Sure the present can get lost in the anticipation of the future. The present also can seriously screw up our future. Best not to go to extremes.

I have about five plans for 2013. Anything else will be a bonus. This year I am not going to make my plans public, though. Quietly, I will achieve.

Have a blessed 2013.

The most appropriate response, I believe, is among the shortest, “Come Lord Jesus.” Yet, for those of us who cling to this cry, we must admit it is not the most comforting plea. To many people––to those poor grieving parents––Saturday must feel like Holy Saturday after Good Friday; there was death the day before and today there is no hope.

Is there no hope? Does evil ultimately triumph? It has never made sense to me when people blame God for injustice and with that indictment rest their case that God must not exist. There cannot be comfort in shaking their fists at a heaven they deny. But for those of us who profess a righteous and loving God, how do we explain ourselves when evil manifests itself?

The best answer I have ever come across is found on the closing page of M. Scott Peck’s challenging book, People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil. I will quote it at length, but first two points. First, the whole book is worth reading and I only quote the last page here with the hope that you will give time to the entire book. Second, evil––horrible, wretched evil––occurs in our world every single day. Even in the United States. Even in every state of the United States. Even in the city where you live. Can we please stop being shocked that there is evil? Can we name it? Can we believe that evil exists and that our excessive culture of amusement and denial is not sufficient to numb us to its reality? Honesty is the first step each of us must take in helping to overcome evil.

Now for M. Scott Peck’s words:

The healing of evil––scientifically or otherwise––can be accomplished only by the love of individuals. A willing sacrifice is required. The individual healer must allow his or her own soul to become the battleground. He or she must sacrificially absorb the evil.

Then what prevents the destruction of that soul? If one takes the evil itself into one’s heart, like a spear, how can one’s goodness still survive? Even if the evil is vanquished thereby, will not the good be also? What will have been achieved beyond some meaningless trade-off?

I cannot answer this in language other than mystical. I can say only that there is a mysterious alchemy whereby the victim becomes the victor. As C. S. Lewis wrote: “When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”

I do not know how this occurs. But I know that it does. I know that good people can deliberately allow themselves to be pierced by the evil of others––to be broken thereby yet somehow not broken––to even be killed in some sense and yet still survive and not succumb. Whenever this happens there is a slight shift in the balance of power in the world.

May it be said of us that we were willing to love sacrificially. Amen.

What about handcraft is so appealing? Handcraft is attractive on both ends: it is a joy to create something by hand and also we intuitively are drawn to those things that are handmade. This pleasure we receive from creating and enjoying a creation are primal. In the day to day of modernity, many of us are removed from creating altogether. Of course, we all receive benefits from things that have been created. Yet the vast majority of the objects we possess are layers removed from handicraft. Even if we take pleasure in modern objects, it is more likely we marvel at the engineering feat of the manufacturing process than that we delight in the craftsmanship. How many of us were impressed with chamfers before the release of the iPhone 5? Occasionally manufacturing and craftsmanship complement one another. The brilliance of LEGO comes to mind.

One aspect of creating linocuts appeals to me a great deal. To make a linocut, I have to remove what is unnecessary. When it is finished, all that is left is all that is required for the object I am creating, in this case a print. This is the exact opposite of the modern manufacturing process which requires the addition of the unnecessary. Modern manufacturers add many items that are not required to create objects. These additional items are used to achieve the goals of industry, usually efficiencies and quantities, but are unnecessary for the goal of creating the object itself.

This is not a harangue against modernity. I am grateful for the innovations even as I wonder about the simplicity absent from so many of them.

The linocut pictured was my second attempt at a birthday gift for my 14-year-old daughter. It comes from Luke 8, the story of Jesus calming the storm. “Suddenly the storm stopped and all was calm.” I had not thought about it until just now, yet perhaps the story offers some comfort for those who wonder if the hectic pace of modernity is a bit too stormy. In time there will be calm.

We flew United to get there, which got me thinking. Years ago when I was a Bible college student in Chicago, I flew United quite a bit. My father had a consulting business and he flew a lot. By visiting home frequently and taking occasional trips, when at home in San Diego, up to San Francisco to help with the business, I earned the coveted Premier Executive status. A twenty-two-year-old wearing a backpack looked out of place in the Premier Executive lines of the mid-1990s. Whenever I flew, well-meaning United employees would approach me.

“Sir, this is the Premier Executive line,” they would say.

“Yes, I am aware of that,” I would reply.

No longer patronizingly, but now condescendingly, “You are a Premier Executive?”

“Yes, I am.” I would say. “Would you like to see my Premier Executive card?”

Often these well-meaning United employees did want to see my golden Premier Executive card. Furthermore, they wanted to inspect it. I do not ever recall an apology after the verification process. Usually just a begrudging assent to the facts and then the back of a United employee walking away. Over the few years that I flew ORD to SAN and SAN to SFO, many of my fellow Premier Executives questioned my status while we waited in line together. Let’s just say there was never much camaraderie between a young, casually dressed college student holding a Koine Greek text and the forty-something crowd who at that time were high on the fortunes of Enron.

So a few weeks ago I was both surprised and not surprised to see that United was still at it. They now have a Premier Access blue carpet at their gates. The blue carpet is cordoned off by bollards on three sides. It is possible to enter the bollards and stand upon the blue carpet, but only those with the proper status may go further. With no uncertain terms, well-meaning United employees announced that those with Premier status may pass through the bollards, walking upon the blue carpet. Whenever this happened, a United gate agent would confirm that the person on the blue carpet was indeed Premier and then open the bollards to let him or her pass.

Honestly, these were not the swankiest blue carpets. They did not appear vacuumed, perhaps ever. If your child’s pacifier fell on one of these blue carpets, you probably wouldn’t wipe it off on your jeans and stick it back into your kid’s mouth. Over the course of our flights and layovers, we witnessed late-arriving Premier status fliers enter the bollards and stand on the blue carpet, despite the free flowing lines all around the bollards, and wait to be released through the special entrance. We saw an innocent, if not so observant, non-Premier status flier enter the bollards and step onto the blue carpet only to be rejected during the verification process and have to do a one-eighty to walk off the blue carpet and around the bollards to get into the jetway.

Interestingly, no one ever paid any attention whatsoever to the blue carpet at their destination. No well-meaning United employee guarded the bollards to keep commoners away at arrival gates. And I never once noticed a Premier make an effort to walk across the blue carpet while leaving the jetway, hurrying off to important business. (I did once, defiantly.)

For the last few years, Leanne and I have traveled (usually flying Southwest) to Nashville in order to attend Hutchmoot. People ask us what Hutchmoot is and it is hard to answer them. It is kind of like an airplane journey to a fairytale land where you get to hangout with the Premier Executives of the Christian singer songwriter and book publishing world and everyone who flies to this land gets to walk through the bollards and across the blue carpet though in our excitement we all forget to and just hurry onto the plane, bumping into each other like a bunch of nerds. Then when we get off, it’s blue carpet everywhere. We greet each other and talk about music and story and art. And we cannot help but walk all over the blue carpet and get it even more dirty than before we arrived. Andrew Peterson wets it with his tears and we smudge the wetness with our shoes. Everyone spills Evie’s food all over it. It’s the beautiful kind of mess that foreshadows the heavenly feasting and fellowship that draws us all together here on earth with anticipation on our hearts. And all day Monday poor Father Thomas vacuums.