8 posts tagged “cs lewis”

So i have done next to nothing after my previous post. I suck.

What have i been doing with my time? Besides fighting the usual unspoken war with The Wife? Watching "Sleepless in Seattle" of course. I am a sucker for romantic movies altho it isn't something i advertise, as this does not enhance the manly man image i try to cultivate. Fortunately i am aware of this sentimental streak running deep and wide in my temperment. It is also fortunate that there are so few actually romantic movies to turn me to mush. There are even a few movies, rare and unusual movies, that are such a cut above the rest that i can't even watch because of how they connect to some kind of deep brokeness within me. Edward Sissorhands and 50 First Dates are at the top of that list of exactly that type of movie. For some reason, Winnona Ryder at the end of the movie, dancing in the snow, rips me to shreds. It is the magic of a well-told gnostic fairytale that crushes me. And the unconditional love portraid by Adam Sandler's character devastates me to such an extent that i simply cannot watch the thing all the way thru, it is as if there is only longing, an impossible, desperate longing. I can only compare it to Lewis's glimpses of joy, a longing beyond the object that brought the longing in the first place. The unconditional love and acceptance of God in Jesus Messiah... this is what i long for and is what i catch a glimpse of in these movies.

So its snowing out, and it is beautiful. Buti truly have to get something done tonight, so adieu.

When Jesus was asked by His disciples why there was evil in this world, He came up with a parable about the wheat and the tares. In this parable, the only answer jesus gave was that "an enemy had done this..." He gave no more information on the why, only some insight on the "then how shall we live" front. The hired hands of the farmer in the parable offered to go out and tear out the tares, a weed that looks very much like wheat till its time to produce fruit. But the "farmer," Christ Himself, said no, that in tearing up the tares they might damage the wheat. This parable pretty much should have put the kibosh on Christians holding their own little inquisitions, and to a large extent it did.

History shows us that it is often the ruling authority that subverts religion in a will-to-power, even if that authority happens to be pious. The Spanish inquisition was very much political, the Jewish wars against Rome was also nationalism clothed in religiosity, and pious Muslims have hijacked and subverted the the basic five pillars of Islam for political and personal gain and power. In every case, people who had been given temporal power turned their religion upside down in order to justify themselves and their true desires and goals. Americans are very fortunate in the fact that the founders saw this quite clearly, and instituted laws to save religion from the government and the temptation to will to power.

Christ instituted His own Kingdom, and it is in direct competitition against whatever people put their trust in to transform their lives. The authors of the Gospel and the apostle Paul used very distinct and challenging political words to directly challenge the Caesers, words like Evangel, liturgy, and Christ the Lord. Christians have challenged each country and political system over the years they have lived in. They directly challenged absolute monarchy by showing a King who washed the feet of His desciples. They challenged democratic capitalism by emphasizing God's Kingdom and God's soveriegnty. They challenged Communism by attacking the materialism the philosophy was based upon, and by emphasizing a Creator far greater than any dictator.

It is only the Holy Spirit that can transform a life set in this community of Kingdom living. I believe God allowed an enemy to sow the seeds of evil because the suffering produced gives opportunity for people to die so that they may live again. In my Offices I am reading John, when Jesus said that whoever believed in Him already had eternal life. One thing that Jesus emphasized was the fact that a seed had to die before it was planted in order to attain new life. That is Kingdom living in a nutshell. We are a company that finds themselves to be strangers and aliens in this place passing thru, looking for a country and a city made by God.

It is by recognizing that path, and then walking on it that we , and by "we" I mean myself, are transformed, changed by the power of God. CS Lewis once wrote in his book The Problem of Pain that God speaks only gently and faintly when times are good, but uses pain as a megaphone to grab our attention and be heard in a loud voice. The cure, altho painful, is not worse than the disease in this case -- suffering and death are certainly not the worse that can happen, and may actually be used as avenues to life and joy.

I have been challenged by Randy to begin a journal, but not the same type that I have been keeping since early 2002. I lately have looked over some of my early entries from years ago and noticed that they are remarkably similar to my most recent entries, in that I whine a lot about the same things over and over again. This does me no good. I am struck by how insistent Paul is upon the concept of the Christian being transformed from glory to glory, of becoming new creations, so I have decided to journal my Daily Offices in The Book of Common Prayer in an attempt to directly be transformed thru the renewing of my mind in Scripture and prayer. The actual journaling has been consistent, but It has been hit and miss over the last couple of weeks as to how to form, structure, and organize my thoughts and writing. However, if I continue to stay consistent I think it will sort itself out.

Don't get me wrong, any believer is transformed over time because they simply have no choice in the matter. If the Spirit of God lives in them, and if they have faith, transformation happens. I would challenge anyone who is not a Christian to look back and not be able to see change in their lives. They may not be transformed, but to be human is to experience some change. Just for me, tho, I just would like to be a bit more purposeful and self-aware as I am transformed into the man God wants me to be...

My first temptation was to write a short little commentary/devotional for each Office. Altho I think it will turn out to be something like that, I found I had to beware as I was so used to doing this for others when I was a youth pastor. I also had to beware making each entry doctrinal and abstract, supporting some type of propositional truth statement. It will be very challenging to be honest and transparent and not rely on just how I am such a kool guy when it comes to theology. Pride is crouching right outside my heart's door, just waiting for my writing to turn smarmy. Hopefully, if this shakes out into something I can do, I might be able to share a few entries with my family, friends, neigbors, and even strangers.

This has been a great week, a week that has been basically down time, rest and recuperation. I have a confession to make: My ambition in life is to be able to read, uninterupted without any responsibilities, forever on a summer day in western Nebraska. Thats it. There is a reason why I like reading Jack Lewis. Jacobs, in describing the end of The Last Battle, wrote:

This conclusion is, of course, a learned Christian's homage to Dante, who also ends his vision of Paradise with the image of a great Book, but far more than that, it is a dream come true of a small boy alone in a house full of books in Belfast, who wanted nothing more than to be set free from all drudgery and responsibility and pain and loss so that he could sit in a window  overlooking the sea, reading the stories he loved hour after hour by the bright calm light of endless day. p. 301

My cherished ambition will never ever happen for me except for when I do experience the bright calm light of endless day, but its a nice day dream to have in the midst of my circumstances here as I walk thru the valley of darkness.

I finished reading Jacobs's Jack Lewis biography, and I really, really liked it a lot. For once there is a biographer that didn't have an agenda, either to saint Jack or to swing a sledgehammer at a human being's feet of clay. In other words, it isn't a biography by Walter Hooper or A. N. Wilson. This approach of Jacobs only makes Jack more special, as it is ordinary people that Jesus saves, not so-called "saints."

I dunno what really to read next. I only have four more days of watching the house and walking these fucking dogs, and everyone said, 'Let my people go!' I have some books that I have bought but haven't read, so I think I'll try to read some of them. Garry Wills has translated Augustine's Confessions, and has wrote four books corresponding to the four critical books of Confessions: Childhood, Memory, Sin, and Conversion. I grabbed each one of these hardcovers up at the B&N bargin table for $4. My only problem is that I'm not really in the mood for that kind of book. It is great -- Wills does an introduction, a commentary with the text as well as at the back of the book, and adds a little something extra in each edition. I guess I'm just gonna have to discipline myself and read.

I took an incomplete in my methods class, so january is gonna be a busy month. I'm also going back to hell to visit my sister-in-law at the end of the month in Indiana. Just thinking about revisiting that godforsaken piece of real estate pretty much just makes me wanna vomit. There are circumstances that just in and of themselves are simply unsurvivable on several levels. We happened to do two in secession there in Indiana. Most of the misery I have experienced in the last five or six years has roots running directly to these experiences. But oh well, I love my SIL.

My next blog will be the usual yadda yadda yadda about the end of the year and the beginning of the new, and all the lists. I think an interesting list might be all the cool things that went to shit in '06.  Hmmmm.... so much happens because that is what happens to anything original in this plastic culture here in 'Merica. Gotta take advantage of the down time.

Every Christmas ends like this, ever since i was a little kid; Christmas Day turns out to be dull and boring. It happens because, a) I have family obligations more important than my own circumstances, and b) i have yet, even with my immediate familiy, to experience a relationship where i am loved as much as i love back.

Jack Lewis once wrote,

My happiest hours are spent with three or four old friends in old clothes tramping together and puting up in small pubs -- or else sitting up till the small hours in someone's college rooms talking nonsense, poetry, theology, metaphysics over beer, tea and pipes. There's no sound I like better than adult male laughter.

I had that for the years I was actually an undergrad at Bible College, and when I was the resident director for the boy's dorms at that same college. I have never had it back home, or when i was in any of the churches that i served. People have been discipled so poorly that for edification's sake i could never talk about the thoughts that were going thru my mind, i didn't want to be the one that caused another Christian to overload and stumble. This sounds arrogant, no? It isn't, it is actually my lament. If Evangelical Christianity is in a place were basic questions about why there is sin and suffering in the world or what is it to have a free will cannot be asked or answered, then the Church indeed is in trouble.

Two summers ago Nate, a friend of mine, and I went to the coffee house almost evry day just to talk and to argue and to hang out. Those were some good days. But i have had no consistent fellowship like this, although this blog has been a nice avenue.

There other thing I enjoy is to simply watch movies. For years and years all i've really ever wanted to do was go and watch movies during Christmas afternoon and evening. A Christmas Day movie is probably the only semi-consistent tradition my family actually came close to establishing. I can still remember my shock when my Mom decided to come with us to watch Dances with Wolves on Christmas night. But i have truly never been with a group of people or with another person that actually intentionally made it their goal for me to be able to hit the theater and have my very special day.

Don't get me wrong, i like familiy obligations. I know it is much better for me to interact and relate with my family while i have the chance. We may not talk about the stuff that really would bind me with them, but it is important to get to know them, to find out what is important to them. It is important to physically be there, even if it is a day out of your life you'll never get back. I am a better person in community, when i care about others and don't make my desire paramount over others i care about. Even bored to tears i understand that it is important, that the time isn't really wasted.

But in the quiet part of my soul, sometimes i wonder if what i am looking for will only be found beyond this life.

Meanwhile, my mother in law and brother in law came in last night for Christmas Eve. It was a good time, the wife made lasagna, the italian dish Garfield likes so much. I thought it was a little strange for Christmas Eve, but it was one of their family traditions. I go a CS Lewis daily reader (which was nice), a $25 gift card to CiniMax, and $50 on a Visa card my BIL gave me. Not a bad Christmas. The Wife and I didn't exchange gifts, and i still don't know what to think of that. We went thru a lot of money for her gig, she bought a couple of outfits and all the food and drink for the evening. I would have got her something, but she is very picky, and anything i might have bought her she probably would have taken back.

As i have already written, today was a big waste. I walked the dogs all three times, fed em, and watched lousy movies on TV. The wife took off this afternoon and  "forgot the time" while she was at her friend's house. If she doesn't forget it again, i may actually get to watch a movie tonight. I am not crossing my fingers. Tomorrow i am back at work again, this week 7 AM to 3 PM. It should be very slow. I'm looking forward to getting some reading done...  

I've been waiting for the new Harry Potter book to be finished so I can sign up for the book release in july. I've been doing this for four years, and it's always a fun time to hit the Borders or B&N because they stay open till 1 or 2 AM and throw a release party. Its kool to watch the kids mess around the store, all dressed up and pysched about reading a book. Anyway, I was searching the net for the latest rumors on when the last and final book would be finished when I came across a web sight that turned me ice cold.

On this sight whoever ran it wrote that they thought it would be cool if the finish of the Potter series was like the finish of The Matrix, in that good, Neo, and evil, agent Smith, were reconciled at the end of the movie. They thought it would be quite the dramatic irony to have Harry commanding the Death Eaters... I figure the answer to the question of when will people quit trying to say day is night and night is day would be they never will, it is a flaw struck deeply into human nature since the failed coup attempt against God. To say black is white and white is black is the basis of the whole Hannible Lecture series by Harris, the guy who wrote Scilence of the Lambs. The whole ying and yang dualistic thing will eventually lead to some attempt at saying good and evil are just different sides of the same, exact coin.

I HATE dualism. I hate it most of all because it is not true, with a capital T. I side with CS Lewis in saying that evil is only a parasite on the good, or a perversion of the good; evil cannot exist on its own while good can and always has stood alone. There can be no synthesis of the two while retaining any type of unique individual identity or any concept of the word "justice". Religiously, dualism has always been a way to try to find a reason to explain why the potential for evil exists in everyone. real Magicians/pagans, psuedo-scientists, and Eastern religions are actually very very pragmatic in finding a way for people to accomodate for when they do not live up to their own standards, let alone anyone else's.

I believe joy is found in the good. However, happiness is almost rarely experienced by the good. I do believe in paradox! Life is often lived in a kind of sleep walk thru a nightmare, execpt you can't wake up. So many things are actually beyong our control, regardless of what we have been taught to expect, that everyone knows the feeling of being back up against a wall in some type of last stand before what is overwhemlms what we think ought to be. Life is often very uncomfortable, bright, sharp, and hard. Try living your life in pursuit of happiness and watch it slip farther and farther out of your grasp.

Life is pointless here on this crazy, spinning orb. "Vanity of vanity, all is vanity." Yep, exactly. Most people would like to lead their lives like there is no tommorrow, they want to eat drink and be merry because sooner than they think, they are six feet under. Of course, the reality is very few people are brave enough to face life without meaning, without purpose, so most people are wired so tight in an attempt to control the circumstances and people around them that if you stuck a peice of coal up their ass they would shit diamonds. Even if the say they understand its all meaningless, they are generally a bunch of posers, because they try to control life to make it meaningful by making someone or something meaningful to them.  This never works, eventually the person or object implodes under the weight of such expectations placed on them, and the person is left stranded and disillusioned  in the ruined temple of their shattered false god. The life of a control freak is never a healthy or happy one. There are those, tho, who do this defiant, existential life and live as what life gives them. People like Hemingway, Jim Morrison, Hunter S Thompson, and Jack Kerouac did it -- altho it may be prudent to point out that the mortality rate with these guys are almost 100% before their time. Hemingway blew his head off with a shot gun, Hunter S. Thompson did the same, Jim Morrison ODed, and Jack Kerouac purposely drank himself to death. These guys weren't posers because they died younger than they should've and what they thought were on their own terms.

We celebrate Christmas because it is God Who rescues us from these fates. It is God who gives us joy, and makes life a dance. Jesus said that he had come to give life, and that more abundantly. Given the context of these words, that is a pretty bold claim. How can life be a dance? Christianity is pre-modern, and it has what we think are crude elements. Anyone reading this would never look upon a human blood sacrifice without flinching just a little, whether in distaste or just plain avoidance. Yet it is the brutally short life and death of Jesus, God incarnate, that enables us to dance with some joy in this life. Yeah, I said dance. It may be amidst the ruins, but it is a dance nevertheless. Christ was raised for our justification, and the Father sent the Spirit to make us His own. It is strange that in every day life any Christian, good oneswho do their best and bad bad ones who do not live up to the tite, in some way rennact this very pattern of death, ressurrection, and life and thus live in joy.

So today I take my day off and I do my sleep walk dance of joy and thank God for the birth of the baby jesus in a rundown cave/stable because God so loved me and the rest of the world. Joy to the world...

OK, so I am only a so so writer on my first draft. I reread my last post and saw I needed an editor and that I left out the reason for my title. Sigh.

So in reading this biography of Lewis, it struck me how many times that both the biographer and Lewis himself wrote that if only an event or circumstance had been different how much it would have effected who lewis eventually became. Some were big deals out of Lewis's control, like where he went to school and, say WWI, while and some were simply going right instead of left. What struck me especially was that Lewis said that if he would have had one more year with his first insane headmaster, he would have been a lot like his older brother Warnie, able to study with Kirkpatrick only as a means to an end and uninterested in academia.

In my life I sometimes think, "What if?" What if I would have had parents whose trials and tribulations had produced highly organized anal retentive behavior instead of a mostly laid-back disorganized chaos? Or if I had gone to a school that pushed their students intellectually? I remember drawing a lot at my desk in the back of the room. What if I had taken Bible College seriously, and had actually bought books and studied instead of playing b-ball and chasing cheerleaders and staying up to all hours doing nothing? Hmmm.

It is easy to say what if, because what was is fixed and set like concrete and there isn't any way to change anything in the past. It is hard to accept where you are on the path instead of rage, raging against the night. With me it is pride and the nagging, worried voice of my Mom. I often think that by the age of 42 I should have accomplished more and succeeded more materially. The voice only reinforces my pride.

There are hard thing in this like, bright and hard and and sharp like the blade of a razor. One of them is accepting that Christian baptism is only a symbolic action for a hard inward truth, that it is the death and resurrection of self on a daily basis. I have died with Christ, and I also rise again in the newness of His life; it is no longer me that is alive, but the life of Christ in me. I've heard so many sermons on this that these words seems like well worn and familiar friends, like some character in an aminated Disney cartoon. But the reality of death and life in this context cannot be Disneyfied or or sentimentalized, not if this is a lived experienced.

Think on these words, pal, and tell me if they do not bring both comfort and diis-ease at the very center of your being:

Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them. (Ps. 139:16 English Standard Version)

Even in this text there is an instinct to run from this kind of omniscience, "Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend into heaven you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even then your hand shall lead me, and you right hand shall hold me " (vv. 7-10).

Yet there is comfort here as well: "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well" (vv. 13, 14).

I guess sometimes I only see myself in my limitations, and it gives me a chance to engage my pride when I start whining about all the "should'ves" and "could'ves" and all the "oughts."

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, The Wife performed last night with the school chorale and the Jazz ensomble. She was the only featured solist for the chorale!  My heart broke watching her; her beauty and her talent are so stark and vivid, and she's so vulnerable... damn I love her Work suckedm as this is finals week here at the University. And when I walked the dogs this morning the dogs found a dead squirrel, and fought over a leg. Have i said "ewwwwwww" yet in the context of walking these dogs?

I've been reading Alan Jacobs The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of CS Lewis. It is the best biography I have read on Lewis, including The Inklings. It is simply so well written...

However, I have been having a problem that I have never had before, a problem I never ever thought I'd have. My wife and I went to a marriage retreat in Atlanta at the end of August and I was forced into facing up to a lot of things that had happened when I was growing up. It would be a touching, Hallmark kinda moment if it all came out for the best, but it really, really hasn't worked out at all for me. All I did was open open Pandora's Box, full of all kinds mostly dead shit that won't stay buried safely in the past.

My problem is is one that is not in any way isolated to only myself, it isn't in any special. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people grew up the way I did, which was mostly alone and by myself. I had what i thought was a pretty nice childhood. I grew up in Western Nebraska under big sky, in a small town on the banks of the Platte River, in an intact nuclear family. I'm the oldest of five kids, and when I go home to this day we are all very comfortable with one another. There are no fireworks or dramatics when we get together for the holidays. What I am saying is that there are a lot worst things you can do with your life than grow up in the shadow of chimney Rock on the historic Oregon Trail.

But when I remember growing up, I do not remember relationships with anyone except for my Dad when i worked with him in the summers. I spent literally hundreds and hundreds of hours by myself, wandering the fields and the country roads in and around my hometown. Even when I was in school I was alone in the crowd. I only connected with one other human being for the whole time I was in High School, my best friend growing up, DannyO. I had a learning disability when I was very young, but a very good local 4th grade teacher helped me to kick the problem and by the 6th grade I was reading 12th grade level, and bu Jr. High I was reading College level. How many 8tt graders you know who read and understood The Rise and Fall of the Third Riech?

I was never trained in any type of discipline. I just adapted quickly to whatever short term circumstances i found myself in. I never learned squat from anyone, except my Dad did teach me the bee keeping business. But nadda in anything else. There was structure, I wasn't raised by wolves; but there is a reason why I can fake almost anything for the short term, and can only begin but not end strong...

So my problem is this: unrealized and unrecoverable opportunity and potential. I had the mind, I think, to really excel academically. But there wasn't anyone to direct or push me, I was left to my own devices. I read shit till I was in college, and even then what I chose to read wasn't didn't exactly challenge me intellectually. I think I coulda learned Latin or Greek when I was a kid, I think I could have been read better than I did when I was a kid, but all I had was myself and I wanted to read Sgt. Rock, John Carter: Warlord of Mars, and Louis L'mour westerns. My teachers made me read Hamlet, McBeth, and Romeo and Juliet along with Ray Bradbury and edgar Allen Poe, and I will stay eternally grateful to them. I am not complaining about my imagination -- my reading proves I had a vivid one. But I needed something a bit heftier in the intellectual direction. Really, even when I read Shakespeare, it was taught by a little Mexican drunk who didn't understand these plays any better than we the students did. What about Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy for a teenage reading list? Was I completely asleep? Was I just ignorant? Why not Greek or Roman Myths? Why? Because I was left to my own devices, and I wasn't enough, that is why.

I never read a Great Book until I was in my late twenties, and I didn't read Homer or Plato till just a few years ago. I have great potential, maybe. I've read Kerouac, King, James Lee Burke, and Hunter Thompson. I have the experience and the ablity and the literary muscle to pull off some interesting distinctly American creative literature. But I am still all alone by myself, kinda put on a shelf (that one was for any larry Norman fans out there, if there are any larry Norman fans left). I do not have the ability to begin something and actually finish it, to connect with people in a way that might make them interested in what i might have to write.

I am gratified for all the folks reading this that have made me a friend or neighbor -- it is strange to get feedback that is actually encouraging. But I still feel like Dr. Johnny Fever DJing for WKRP and being greatful for the ten or twenty people in the greater Cincinati area that listened to the station. I am completely caught up in The Drift now at the end of the semester, and I dunno how to actually break free.

I'm reading this biography and am continually reminded of my own childhood and how that formed and informed who I am now. I hate this kind of funge state, I hate that feel like I am just wasting my time away in futility. But mostly, I hate thinking I am doing this all  by myself.

One of my favorite CS Lewis books is "The Abolition of Man." It isn't just about education, but it is a book about education. He protested the teaching of subjectivity because he believed it produced people without hearts, without a universal core "tao" of ethics. He asks then what happens when these people are then called upon to act as if they had chests...

I was in my law and education class the other day when the subject happened to be the law and the personal lives of teachers. The Prof., wanting to get some discussion going, gave the following senerio: a teacher in a town consistently gets drunk on Saturday night in the downtown area. He isn't in the gutter by the end of the night, but hes not walking a straight line, either. Parents observe this and complain to the school. The administration calls in the teacher, and instead of calling him on the carpet offers him assistance. They mention voluntary AA meetings, or a paid absence to enter a detox center. The teacher, however, tells them to go to hell, this is his personal life and they have no right to interfere with his personal life. He points to many years of consistent attendence, the fact that he has never been accused of drinking during the school day, and the fact that drinking on Saturday night helps him cope with the stress of teaching. Question: can the teacher then be disciplined or even eventually fired for non-cooperation?

The discussion that followed truly made my heart fall into my colon. To almost a person, with great anger and indignation, almost everyone in the class couldn't believe that the school had the right to interfere in a person's off time except in the case of someone acting illegally. Everyone agreed that if he had been driving, the school would have had a case. The conversasion moved then on to homosexuality and about a morals clause in teacher's contracts. We were unable to finish because of time. We will finish this discussion next class period, but I was amazed by 90% of the classe's reaction. The question really boiled down to this: are teachers role models? The OVERWHELMING response was a resounding NO from a very large group of future teachers.

Just how self-centered have we, as a culture, become? To the extent that those who will be educating tomorrow's citizens reject their role as a role model?

I know its a bit more complicated than this, but I have to say that it isn't by much. Whatever happened to common sense? Paul says the world is condemned by the Law, whether it is written on stone tablets or in the consciences of people -- regardless, both are condemned because who can measure up? I mean really? I know I have my own expectations for myself, and when I am honest with myself I know I can't even live up to my own standards. But do you give up even trying? Do you just embrace the lowest common denominator and proclaim that everyone's just trying their best?

A very very good friend of mine is a bartender in a regional bar who for his day job works with young kids with disabilities in a local elementary school. He sells weed and a small amount of coke to people who he knows and trusts. He has a drinking problem, although he isn't drunk everytime I see him. I genuinely like the guy, and believe he has a real gift with kids. But until he can clean up his act, he shouldn't be within a football field of a school full of kids. He eventually was pulled ovcer and a small amont of drugs were found. He got off, but he lost his job. However, he is going back to school for his degree in child development and education -- he might very well find himself teaching again. Sometimes, at the thought of my not having any kids, I fall down to my knees and weep in gratitude....