From the archives

Tuesday, Feb. 28, 1995 (Glasgow): “Dad!  Don’t make me smile, I told you!”  (Drew [turning four in two weeks], obviously.)

Wednesday, March 1, 1995: I pick Drew up from school.  She sees me, brightens, runs, then remembers herself.  “Drew!  What did you do today?”  As is her reticent custom, she is not prepared to say.  Later, she sticks her head through the bedroom doorway, waves a little heart cushion she’d gotten from school, pipes “I love you,” and is gone.

 

Saturday, Feb. 28, 1998:  Spencer (one month short of his second birthday) is making flatulent noises with his pursed lips.  He is also speaking very carefully, and sometimes quite understandably.  He’ll say long sentence-like things and pause markedly between each word-ish sound, concentrating quite hard (and with some evident pleasure) on fixing his mouth for the next expression.

Wednesday, February 28, 2001: Caitlin and Sarah go over to the Randalls’ to babysit.  Drew takes the boys downstairs.  Matt (turning three in June) thinks he hears something and scrambles up onto the top bunk extremely quickly.  His face is very animated.  “There’s a ghost out there!”   

Dr. Seuss, What Was I Scared Of?, 1961

Later Drew and I hear a kind of squeaking noise.  We listen carefully and suddenly realize that the ghost is actually Spencer (turning five in a month), singing carefully with a wide and almost solemn vibrato.  “Ri-ver, oh river, flow gently for me-e.”  Suddenly Matt has an understanding, reassured expression on his face.  “Oh.  That’s Prince of Egypt.”  The babysitters come back, having enjoyed their easy job of it.  We read some more.  I sneak Caitlin and the tell tale heart into one of the chapters.  “Dad!” they say, but smilingly. 

  

Friday, March 1, 2002: Sharon takes Matt (turning four in June) out on her errands, and I take Claire (just about eight months old) out on mine.  What a nice afternoon!  There’s an element of pride and showing off to my pleasure, as this mild, smiling, carefully crawling infant reflects extremely well on her parents.  But for all that worldly admiration the most pleasing part is that I got to hold this pretty child, waking and sleeping, for a good four hours.  Their struggles bring stretching and hard won, complex bonds, but when kids are as good as gold something disarming, affecting and simply special takes place.

Friday, February 28, 2003: I make a presentation at Ben Unguren’s after effects class, in the hope that the students will make some little animations for CMI (BYU/TMA's Children's Media Initiative).  During the break one cold-eyed student remarks that I’ve just trotted out my usual litany of terms—sparseness, transcendence, compassion—but that that very overfamiliarity, together with the icy intellectualism that characterizes most everything that I do or say, rather invalidates the whole exercise.

Spence (seven in one month) doesn't think much of the movies I'm bringing home.  “It’s not called half-of-the-family cinema, Dad.”

Saturday, March 1, 2003: Caitlin makes us dinner.  Carbon hot dogs, one of her specialties.  All the girls go to the mall, and enthusiastically.  Is there no way to resist this mercantile impulse?

Tuesday, February 28, 2006: The boys have their blue and gold (cub scout) banquet.  Richie Maughan (our Bishop) strolls up to a woman of about the same height and shape and hair colour as his wife.  He finds, after patting this woman on the bottom, that she was not his wife after all.  The stake primary will have something extra to report about this activity.

 

 

Things we love

Writing!

...I know such formulations (mandalas, or that which symbolizes the divine) remind one fatally of wild metaphysical speculations.  I am sorry, but it is exactly what the human mind produces and has always produced.  A psychology which assumes that it could do without such facts must artificially exclude them.  I should call this a philosophic prejudice, inadmissible from the empirical standpoint.  I should emphasize, perhaps, that we do not establish a metaphysical truth through such formulations.  It is merely a statement that the mind functions in such a way...

 I should not hesitate for a moment to suppress all speculations about the possible consequences of an experience as abstruse and as remote as the mandala, were this feasible.  But to me, unfortunately, this type of experience is neither abstruse nor remote.  On the contrary, it is an almost daily concern in my profession.  I know a fair number of people who have to take their experience seriously if they want to live at all.  They can only choose between the devil and the deep sea.  The devil is the mandala or something equivalent to it and the deep sea their neurosis.  The devil is at least somewhat heroic, but the sea is spiritual death. 

The well-meaning rationalist will point out that I am driving out the devil by Baalzebub and that I replace an honest neurosis by the cheat of a religious belief.  Concerning the former I have nothing to reply, being no metaphysical expert, but concerning the latter, I must point out that there is no question of belief, but of experience.

Religious experience is absolute.  It is indisputable.  You can only say that you have never had such an experience, and your opponent will say: "Sorry, I have."  And there your discussion will come to an end.  No matter what the world thinks about religious experience, the one who has it possesses the great treasure of a thing that has provided him with a source of life, meaning and beauty and that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind.  He has pistis (an inner certainty about God's existence, given by God) and peace.  Where is the criterion by which you could say that such a life is not legitimate, that such experience is not valid and that such pistis is mere illusion?  Is there, as a matter of fact, any better truth than the one that helps you to live?

This is the reason why I take carefully into account the symbols produced by the unconscious mind.  They are the only things able to convince the critical mind of modern people.  They are convincing for very old-fashioned reasons.  They are simply overwhelming, which is an English rendering of the Latin word "convincere."  The thing that cures a neurosis must be as convincing as the neurosis; and since the latter is only too real, the helpful experience must be of equal reality. 

It must be a very real illusion, if you want to put it pessimistically.  But what is the difference between a real illusion and a healing religious experience?  It is merely a difference in words.  You can say, for instance, that life is a disease with a very bad prognosis, it lingers on for years to end with death; or that normality is a generally prevailing constitutional defect; or that man is an animal with a fatally overgrown brain.  This kind of thinking is the prerogative of habitual grumblers with bad digestions.

Nobody can know what the ultimate things are.  We must, therefore, take them as we experience them.  And if such experience helps to make your life healthier, more beautiful, more complete and more satisfactory to yourself and to those you love, you may safely say: "This was the grace of God."

The conclusion to C.G. Jung,
Psychology and Religion
1938 (paragraph breaks added...)

Paintings by Mark Rothko

Comayaguela, Morazan, Honduras, 1982-3

Looking out our front window

Above the market district, Tegucigalpa

Cerro Pastel

This photograph, or the fact that I took it, caused something of a stir.  Some of the neighbours were upset about the Gringos recording Honduras' ugliest images.  Do I recall taking some offense at this accusation, or claiming that it was not the case?  Alas, though my motives were probably not completely exploitative, the charge was probably more or less correct.  I was collecting dire souvenirs, but this was their home!

¡Feliz cumpleaños!

That's more like it.  The means are reduced, but reduced means can be quite sufficient.  An entire community brings its sincere good wishes; so often sufficiency rises to abundance.

You travel, you learn a bit.

Looking out our front window

Ronnie, by Claire

I’ve had four cats.  Their names were Patrick, Rita, Phoebe, and Ronnie.  This story is about Ronnie.

We got Ronnie when she was two months old.  She had the cutest face in the world.  It was split in half.  One half of her face was white and the other half was black.

Ronnie was a crazy kitty.  At Christmas time my brother got a nerf gun.  Ronnie hid all the balls under the Christmas tree.  One time she got into the yarn and she made a tangled yarn path that went through the whole house.  

When Ronnie was a baby she couldn’t go outside, but she really wanted to.  The first time she got out was when she was about three months old.  The doorbell rang and my Mum went to get it.  Ronnie must have snuck out when my Mum was talking at the door.  Late at night I was in my bed and I heard a faint meow at the front door. 

I went to open it and guess who was there?  Ronnie!  Everybody came to the front door.  “Ronnie— how did you get out there?”  “You must have been freezing!”  We brought Ronnie in and got her warm. 

The next morning we found little paw prints in the snow.

A few months later we were playing night games and that was the night Ronnie was killed.  I’m not telling you how she died.  We had Ronnie for only six months.    

From the archives

Saturday, Feb. 14, 1998: Drew is troubled.  “Everyone is driving around as if it wasn’t even Valentine’s Day.”  “Valentine’s day is meaningless,” I say knowingly.  “Dad!” says Sarah.  “Valentine’s Day means love.”  

 

Monday, February 14, 2000: Spencer prays: “Hea’nly Father.  Please bless me that I won’t die.  Please bless Mum that she won’t die.  Please bless Caitlin that she won’t die.  Please bless Matty that he won’t die.  Please bless Drew and Sarah that they won’t die.  Please bless Spencer that he won’t die.  I’m Spencer.”  (Did anyone notice that he forgot someone?)  

Thursday, February 14, 2002: I have an impression that I should get the kids some valentine attention, though I don’t normally approve of the day.  That’s why a poem in a home-made card would be helpful to them—they’d know that their pleasure takes precedence over my comfort.  Unfortunately I don’t get around to acting on that impression.  I guess my comfort takes precedence over their pleasure after all.

Wednesday, February 14, 2004: Parent/teacher conferences at the high school.  "I love having your daughters in class," says Mrs. __.  "Of course I'm on new medication, so I'm a bit confused right now..."

Monday, February 15, 1999: Nice night with the kids.  Guitars, Lincoln logs and playmobiles, Andersen and Aesop.  Caitlin works on her C.S. Lewis book report.  “Main characters are like the sun.  Everything revolves around them.”  That is a really good point.  We edge her just a little bit further; when you look at it from a certain angle the protagonist-centered universe is a bit like Ptolemy's model.  It's a rich idea, and has yielded poetical and aesthetical riches.  But what about Copernicus and Kepler?  Caitlin takes the hint and gallops ahead, noting that in Narnia, the main character is not necessarily the most important character.  “Hint: Aslan is not just a lion.”  

Sunday, February 15, 2004: Caitlin has observed something about Claire (two years old).  “She calls me he, and she calls Drew and Sarah she!”  

 

Things we love

Film Post: some documentaries

Nanook of the North

Robert Flaherty, US, 1922

If you look closely there’s lots of scattershot here.  What are these family relationships, exactly?  Cobbled together, shaggy-dog elements kind of come through the cracks.  It’s partly because documentary isn’t invented yet, but maybe it’s mostly that this is a barnstormer’s independent film production, and a crazy gamble of a production at that.  No wonder it’s sloppy!  Other than that, great things abound.  Yes, there’s always the igloo sequence.  But the arresting, amusing, faked seal tug of war  (there’s the deep space Bazin was remembering) made me forget the more matter-of-fact, much more important aftermath.  Look at the detail on the carve-up!  He’s an architect, and artist, a holy man, a warm-hearted vocational instructor and then a terrific butcher to boot.  

So.  "Nanook" is a great character, but there’s more than just him here.  With all its fibs and fudges, this film still reaches back across industrialization and conquest to primordial antiquity, and in a way that few films have managed.  (Dreyer’s “Joan,” City of Gold, Heartland, Master and Commander, anything by Paradjanov.)  Here’s creation’s dawn.  And maybe, when the systems and principalities topple, it won’t be Mad Max after all.  Humans in a space, and all that follows.

Final connection: Abraham Maslow (A Theory of Human Motivation [a hierarchy of human needs], 1943) jumps out during the film's concluding half hour.  There’s a powerful, looming fatality to this whole project, or rather to the whole tenuous existence that the project seeks to preserve and honour.  Look at that amazing late shot as these people walk out of focus, cross that blasted space, become mere silhouettes.  Talk about direness!  They struggle to cover their physiological and security needs.  Nanook dies within two years of the production of the film; they ultimately don’t struggle all that successfully.  But the grace with which they eke!  How did they leap from the basics right up to self-actualization?  This is a punishing elemental saga that doesn’t result in Jack London-like naturalism.  Yes they eat raw meat, but compare the unforced, thoroughly infused cheerfulness of these subjects with those snarling savage dogs.  Flaherty showed what he wanted to show, and he was right.  

The best copy, obviously, is available through the Criterion Collection.

The Battle of Russia

Produced by the US Office of War Information

Directed by Frank Capra and Anatole Litvak, US, 1943

It’s kind of a false division, but what if you were to pit entertainment against education, and have this film represent the better part?  Based on doc student response, and their teacher’s too, there is overwhelmingly no contest.  This isn’t Hollywood rescuing and compromising dull information, it’s information rendered with the spirit it deserves, and producing the electricity native to it.  Blessings on the war department.  They’re motivating, and even propagandizing.  But this time they're doing so in the very best sense.  

Like those Stuart Legg/National Film Board films that precede and then accompany this series, emotion comes always and only after a proper and very detailed establishing of context.  Facts, two parts worth, selected and ordered and interpreted, are way more exciting than show biz can ever be.  First because they’re so much more important than frivolousness.  Second because they’re so much more interesting!  They even dispense with great men, in favour of acknowledging the Soviet collective.  They’d reap the whirlwind for that seeming miscalculation, but in fact they are right, anthropologically and morally.  The right thing to do is to tell their story, not your cultural or ideological take on their story.  And this is some story!  Watching this film is analogous to going through the Churchill Museum and the Cabinet War Rooms in London.  After the unspeakable hardship (not fully rendered, for modesty’s and decency’s sake) and incalculable loss of the Leningrad siege, and in the impossible stand at Stalingrad, this is that rare historical reduction, that rare historical simplicity.  This was the most important thing in the world, and this was the world’s salvation.  The result is so thrilling, and so moving.

Soviet victory banner raised over the Reichstag, Berlin, 1945

The Hutterites

Produced by Tom Daly and Roman Kroitor

Directed by Colin Low

Commentary by Stanley Jackson

Cinematography and editing by John Spotton

Canada, 1964

A perfect film.  Beyond the quiet virtuosity of every technical credit, it definitively embodies all of the institution’s--the National Film Board, that is--noble aims.  Revealing Canada to Canadians: affirming the necessity of the mosaic in the midst of the tempting oblivion of the melting pot; proving the primacy of the collective, which is both featured in the film and operational in its production; demonstrating that willing dutifulness, leavened by real interest—charitable cinema!—basically obliterates any commercial impulse.  If one more person says that communism (or public subsidy) is contrary to the gospel…

Available at http://www.nfb.ca/film/the_hutterites/.  Or, just go to http://www.nfb.ca/ for this, and hundreds of others of the world's best films.

Good books

Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936

"Oh, Miz' Scahlett!"

Sarah

Scarlett is annoying.  No wonder Rhett didn't give a damn.

Sharon

Pretty ridiculous.  Pretty awesome.

Drew

Calloway Park (two more sisters)

NCAA signing day...

In honour of Sarah's becoming, among many other fabulous things, a Ute, here is the greatest action shot ever:

Two sisters