Study and Application

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. (Matthew 23:15)

In Susanna Clarke’s novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, set in an alternative version of early 19th century England where magic exists, the members of the society of magicians in the city of York are described thus:

They were gentleman-magicians, which is to say they had never harmed any one by magic — nor ever done anyone the slightest good. In fact, to own the truth, not one of these magicians had ever cast the smallest spell, nor by magic caused one leaf to tremble upon a tree, made one mote of dust to alter its course or changed a single hair upon any one’s head. But, with this one minor reservation, they enjoyed a reputation as some of the wisest and most magical gentlemen in Yorkshire.

Their sole occupation is the study of magic and the great magicians of the past, and to come together periodically to debate, or more likely argue, their various viewpoints. Although the question of why there is no more magic done in England is asked frequently by many people, these so-called magicians would never dream of actually practicing the craft — it is something that is just not done.

In contrast, the two title characters are magicians who actually do magic. Neither man is perfect, and sometimes their motives are entirely self-serving, with the aim of bringing fame and recognition to themselves. Even so, they use their powers to try to help, whether it is by bringing a young woman back to life or by manipulating the weather to give Wellington’s army the advantage over the French. They both study quite a bit, but then they put their knowledge to use.

When I first started reading the description of the “magicians” at the beginning of this book, I couldn’t help but think of the so-called “Christians” who spend much time studying the Bible and going to church but in the end only seem to use their knowledge to argue with others and lambaste those whose interpretation is different. They do not seem to actually practice Christianity by showing compassion or feeding the hungry or caring for the sick. Like the York society they have never done anyone the slightest good, and unlike those scholarly magicians, they might very well have done harm by militantly attempting to force their particular viewpoint on everyone else.

The Pharisees were the gentleman magicians of Jesus’s day, all study and no application, and these words of warning can be applied still. Woe to any of us who fall into the trap of endless study without practical application of our learning! Like Norrell and Strange, our actions will sometimes have unintended consequences and we may not always do them for the right reasons, but it is far better to make the attempt, heeding the words of James to be “doers of the word and not hearers only.”

Help!

I lift up my eyes to the hills-- where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. (Psalm 121:1-2)

Tristran Thorn is on a journey. The protagonist of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust promised anything in the world to the girl he thinks he loves, and she asked for the star that they had just seen fall from the sky, so Tristran takes off into Faerie in search of this treasure. When he reaches the place that he knows the star landed, he finds not a lump of molten rock and metal as he expected, but a beautiful girl in a sparkly dress whose leg was broken in her fall from the heavens.

He claims the star and begins to take her back to his home in the village of Wall, but she is not very pleased to be captured. When at one point she escapes, he fears he will never find her again, especially when sheer exhaustion forces him to sleep beneath a tree. When he wakes, he finds that the tree is talking to him and offering to help him, but having been warned to be wary of everything in Faerie, he is sceptical.

The tree rustled. 'Why don't you tell me your story so far,' said the tree, 'and let me be the best judge of whether or not I can be of help.’
Tristran began to protest. He could feel the star moving further and further away from him, at the speed of a cantering unicorn, and if there was one thing he did not have time for, it was the recitation of the adventures of his life to date. But then it occurred to him that any progress he had made on his quest so far he had made by accepting the help that had been offered to him. So he sat on the woodland floor and he told the copper beech everything he could think of…

I think the same could be said of everyone — we get by with a little help from our friends, to borrow a song lyric, but help is not always easy to accept. Pride gets in the way sometimes, or maybe, like Tristran, we fear the ulterior motives that might be lurking behind the seemingly kind gesture. In the end, though, we have to realize that we will never make any progress unless we accept the help that is offered to us — from family, from friends, from complete strangers, and ultimately, from God. We will never catch our fallen stars without it.

Who Am I?

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. (Ephesians 2:4-8)

The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Miss Saigon, Oklahoma!, Evita, Ragtime, Once On This Island, Sweeney Todd...these are some of the musicals whose soundtracks and sheet music grace my shelves. I enjoy these shows and so many more, but I always come back to Les Misérables as my most favorite. I have seen it on Broadway, in Atlanta, and in London. I own the soundtrack and can sing all the parts. It’s not the familiarity or the music that gets me, though. The thing I love most about “Les Mis” is its message of grace.

The main plot centers around two men, Jean Valjean, who finds that life as a parolee is not much better than prison, and Inspector Javert, who makes it his life’s mission to capture Valjean when he manages to escape from the eyes of the law. Both men experience grace and mercy in the course of the story; what fascinates me is how differently they respond upon receiving these gifts.

When Valjean is caught stealing the Bishop of Digne’s silver, the cleric insists to the police that it was a gift and gives the ex-con more valuables with which to start a new life. Valjean feels guilty when he is given this reprieve, this moment of grace. He takes what is on offer, however, determined to make good on the priest’s instruction to use it to better his life. He becomes a respected and wealthy businessman, and for a long time he is able to hide his true identity from Inspector Javert, who doggedly searches for the escaped convict. He stays out of trouble and helps the destitute Fantine by adopting and raising her daughter, Cosette. Just when Javert thinks he has found his man, Valjean steps forward and reveals himself rather than letting another man take his punishment.

Of course, he escapes again after this, and Javert continues to hunt for him. This chase becomes his singular purpose and drives every move he makes. When he finally catches up with Valjean, there is a revolt in the offing. He disguises himself as a participant in the fight at the barricade where Valjean has gone to keep an eye on Marius, the would-be lover of now-grown-up Cosette, but eventually the fighters figure out who he is. They offer Valjean the chance to kill Javert, but he refuses, offering instead the same mercy and grace that the bishop had shown him years before - he gives the detective his freedom rather than the death he probably deserves.

Where Valjean accepted the priest’s compassion and turned his life around, Javert cannot accept that not only did his quarry escape yet again, but that the hunted did not kill the hunter when the opportunity was presented to him. Instead of accepting the gift Valjean gives him and finding a new, more positive focus for his life, he sees only his failure to accomplish his goal. Ultimately, he chooses to commit suicide as an alternative to having to live with his failure, rather than seeing Valjean’s actions for what they were--a precious gift and a chance to change.

We were all given precious gifts on a cross two thousand years ago, the gifts of God’s mercy and grace, and we have the choice to accept them or not. We can be like Valjean and repent, seeking to better ourselves and others, or we can take the death that we deserve for our sins as Javert did. Which one will you be? Given the options, I have to say (or rather, sing), “Who am I? I’m Jean Valjean!”

The Big Picture

This is God’s Word on the subject: “As soon as Babylon’s seventy years are up and not a day before, I’ll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I am doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. (Jeremiah 29:10-11, The Message)

Thirteen dwarves and one hobbit have been wandering around in Mirkwood forest, seemingly in circles. At their wits’ end, the hobbit, one Bilbo Baggins, being the smallest and lightest of the company (as well as the burglar under whose contract such tasks might fall), climbs a tree to try to get a handle on their location and the direction they should go. His head bursts through the leaves at the top of the tree into blessed sunlight and a flock of black butterflies, and as he looks around he sees…

Well, what he sees depends on whether you are watching the movie or reading the book, and out of all the changes and additions that Peter Jackson made when adapting The Hobbit for the big screen, this minor difference in the second film, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, is one of the things that bothered me the most. In the movie, Bilbo becomes excited because he can see the Lonely Mountain in the distance. He can then tell the dwarves the correct direction to go and that they are not far from the edge of the forest. It is a moment of hope after the despair of Mirkwood.

In the book, there is no such hope for Bilbo. It turns out that the tree he climbs happens to be in a low spot and all he can see is more trees on every side, even though they are actually quite close to the edge of the forest and all is not nearly as hopeless as it seems. What Bilbo lacks is the ability to see the big picture at that moment.

While a hopeful scene of seeing the goal and the way out makes you feel better in the midst of the movie drama, I think I like the book version better because it is much closer to how things work in real life. The truth is, we don’t see the big picture when we are suffering or making our way through a difficult situation. In fact, when I wrote about the book scene several years ago during my “blog through The Hobbit,” I too was near the edge of the forest but could not see it from my vantage point. I had spent two years looking for another teaching job with another summer of searching ahead of me but few prospects in sight. The only sign of hope was the sale of my house a few months prior, allowing me to expand my job search parameters, but even with new job listings to watch I didn’t know how much longer it would be. I did not know then that later that summer, I would have an interview with a principal via Skype. I did not know that, having chalked it up as one more interview without a job offer, I would be travelling five hours for a face-to-face interview the next month. I didn’t know that less than a week after that I’d be moving to another state and starting work (barely two days before the students started themselves) and living in a hotel while I tried to get a classroom set up and find an apartment!

So I hope you’ll excuse me if I’m not impressed with the touchy-feely, “oh look, there’s hope!” scene in the movie. I have been in the same position as book-Bilbo, looking around and seeing nothing but trees rising all around me, hoping that maybe the edge of the forest was somewhere just beyond, even though I couldn’t see it. And it turns out, in hindsight, that I was exactly in book-Bilbo’s position, and the edge of the forest was quite close, but the tree I looked from was still down in the valley and not up on the ridge. It turns out that it’s never as hopeless as it seems, for Bilbo or for me. I have learned through my experience that sometimes you can’t see the end, but it doesn’t mean there’s no hope, it just means that you cannot see the whole picture. It means that you have to trust. I pray I may never have to be in the same situation again, but at least now I know that there’s always hope, even in the most hopeless-seeming situations, and I won’t give up just because I can’t see what’s out there.

Musicals

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. (Psalm 42:11)

In addition to being a SF geek, I am also a musical theater nerd. I love to see live shows, but since that doesn’t happen very often, I do just fine with soundtracks; I can sing all the parts along with the best Broadway or West End cast, especially when I am in the car or doing some cleaning. Musical theater is traditionally seen as a happy genre - people would not be singing and dancing so much otherwise - so this article listing a number of “Surprisingly Depressing” musicals drew my attention when I came across in my Facebook news feed the other day.

First on the list, not surprisingly at all, is Rent, which is about people dying of AIDS and overdosing on heroin and living in squalid lofts. It is followed closely by Les Miserables, which, just as it says on the tin, depicts the struggles of some miserable people in 19th century Paris. Miss Saigon and its doomed love story in the middle of the Vietnam War, check. Chicago’s cast of homicidal women prisoners, yep, they’re in there too, just as you’d expect.

What I didn’t expect was to see shows like The Sound of Music or Fiddler on the Roof or Annie, all three of which appear on the list as well. While it is true, as the article reminds us, that they involve Nazis, antisemitism, and poor mistreated orphans, respectively, these are never prominent enough themes to label the musicals as blatantly depressing, unless, of course, you’re an internet writer who needs to fill in the gaps in your latest click-bait top 10 list.

It’s the music that makes it better, isn’t it? When the latest in a long line of governesses makes dresses from the drapes, covers for you instead of turning you in when you sneak in after spending time with your boyfriend in the gazebo, and teaches you and your siblings to sing while roaming around Salzburg, you know that everything will be alright even if you do have to sneak away from the Nazis in the middle of the night. When being a poor milkman in a poor Russian village is all you’ve ever known, you may sing about your wish to be a rich man but you also quite contentedly celebrate the ordinary milestones of life with your family and friends. And when you are living a hard knock life, at least you are able to sing about it as you scrub the orphanage floors with the hope that hard knocks aren’t all there is and life will get better one day.

This also holds true in the most depressing shows on the list.  The truly horrid conditions you’re living in don’t seem nearly so bad when you give your lifestyle a French name and sing about the best parts of it while dancing on a restaurant table surrounded by your friends. Likewise, the fact that you most likely won’t survive the night defending the barricade is insignificant next to the strong feelings of camaraderie and friendship between you and your compatriots as you sing with such conviction about the cause you all believe in so deeply.

It’s not a new idea, this desire to sing in order to lessen the effects of an otherwise depressing situation. In the Bible, Psalm after Psalm repeat a theme that goes something along the lines of, “I have enemies on every side and the outlook is really bad right now, but despite that I sing praises to God because I trust him and have hope that he will take care of everything.” It is a good lesson to heed, whether we take it from the Psalmist or our favorite stage actor: even when my soul is downcast and disturbed, I will yet sing, in praise my savior and God and to remind myself that life is never all bad.

You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. (Jonah 1:1-3)

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. (Jonah 3:1-3)

Joss Whedon’s TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer begins where the 1992 movie left off, as Buffy Summers and her mother move to the town of Sunnydale to start over after her vampire-slaying antics got her kicked out of school in Los Angeles. She starts out working to fit in at her new school, making new friends and attempting to leave her Slayer days behind her.

Buffy finds, alas, that her dream of being a normal high school student is not to be, because Sunnydale also happens to be the site of a Hellmouth, where vampires and other demonic creatures can (and frequently do) cross to the land of the living. There are also people around who know about her past as a Slayer and keep at her to return to vampire-hunting. Being a Slayer is her calling, and try as she might, Buffy cannot escape from it.

Like Buffy, Jonah tried to run from his calling. He went to great lengths to go anywhere but Nineveh, and it took spending three days inside a whale to convince him that God meant business. I guess it just goes to show, when you are called to do something, you can run but you can’t hide. You might as well embrace your calling, trusting God to equip you for the job, and face it head on.

Choices

Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshipped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. (Joshua 24:14-15)

As usual, the TARDIS has plopped the Doctor, Donna, and Martha down in the midst of significant events - in this case, a war between a group of humans and some aliens called the Hath. Part of the human contingent’s processing of the newcomers consists of taking a tissue sample from the Doctor. His DNA is then used to create a clone, in the form of a young woman (later dubbed “Jenny” by Donna) who is fully grown and already possesses the necessary military knowledge to join the other soldiers in the fight against the Hath.

At one point in the midst of all the running through corridors, Jenny prepares to stay behind and shoot at their pursuers in order to give the Doctor and Donna a chance to escape. The Doctor argues with her over her plan - despite the fact that she’s trying to protect them in what she sees as an “us or them” situation, he is vehemently against killing anyone. “We don’t have a choice,” Jenny tells him. “We always have a choice,” replies the Doctor.

Joshua had taken over leadership of the Israelites from Moses and had seen the people safely into the promised land and living prosperously for a number of years. He brought everyone together as his time in charge neared its end and reminded them that, in the words of the Doctor, “we always have a choice.” He laid out their story, enumerating all the things God had done for them, and declared that they should continue to worship this God that had brought them out of Egypt and through the wilderness and into such prosperity in this new land. But, he told them, they didn’t have to. They had a choice, and they needed to make a decision.

We still have a choice, and we are still asked to make a decision. So, whom will you serve this day?