The League of Bearded Catholics

Foxfire Books

 

Cool! I remember these books from my youth, my parents having had them in their library. These are a couple of the once well-known Foxfire books, a series of 12 anthologies published in the 1970s, from articles published in the Foxfire magazine. I borrowed these from my Mom.

Wikipedia describes the series;

The Foxfire magazine began in 1966, written and published as a quarterly American magazine by students at Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, a private secondary education school located in the U.S. state of Georgia. An example of experiential education, the magazine had articles based on the students' interviews with local people about aspects and practices in Appalachian culture. They captured oral history, craft traditions, and other material about the culture. When the articles were collected and published in book form in 1972, it became a surprising best-seller nationally and gained attention for the Foxfire project.

I remember being fascinated with the articles and the Foxfire project itself. It's an entirely different educational paradigm from what we see in most institutional schools (public or private) that is based on learning traditions, history and culture first-hand (or as close as possible) from previous generations.

The Foxfire books are still as helpful as ever for learning how to, for instance, build a log cabin or butcher a hog (though one could recently have learned a good deal about hog butchering just from reading Gilbert magazine!). They would no longer be the best resource for this kind of knowledge, however, since we have the internet, now, and through it a whole universe of useful, esoteric information. I've gone to the internet recently to get instruction on everything from knife-sharpening to fixing our washing machine. Video makes these things that much easier to learn, too. But the books are still neat and fun to browse. The article format makes them great for bedtime reading, and the whole outlook of the books makes them inspirational. Seems like they would be a great supplement for home-schoolers or scouts.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. - G.K. Chersterton, The Observer, 1924

(NOTE: Foxfire is not to be confused either Firefox, the popular internet browser, or Firefox Starfox, the awesome video game, wherein I beat the evil Andross and saved the entire Lylat system. You're welcome...).

England's Vanishing Inns

Ovar at the St. Austin Review, Joseph Pearce laments the sad demise of the English Pub, and points to this article in The Economist that goes into greater detail. Read it and sob;

"More than half the villages in Britain now have no pub at all"

This is no mere cultural footnote, either. It's a Big Deal. Slow, unseen tectonic plates of history have been grinding away under our feet and this is a sign, the surface manifestation of a deep fault. As Joseph Pearce quoted Hilaire Belloc;

"When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England."

It reminds me of when I was a teenager in the 1970s, and there was a great deal of attention given to the loss of the "family farm". It happened before  our eyes and we, as a people, apparently didn't feel the family farm was worth saving. Oh, we were a little sad to see it go, perhaps, but these things happen. Time marches on. That's how it struck me. It was far more momentous than we knew. And so with the pubs of England.

Why? I think one could realistically look at a loss of the sense of community, of local patriotism. We simply feel no natural attachment to these things. We are therefore, I think, un-naturally detached.

In the words of John Kassaian,"What a revolting predicament!"

Leaf it To Me

 
Oak Leaf - Oil on Panel - 24" x 24" - ©copyright 2010, Timothy Jones

 

A Tale of Applied Distributism

 

A few weeks ago, our kind neighbor across the street saw me out raking leaves and offered the use of his riding mower and trailer. I thanked him and said that I was nearly finished for the day, anyway, but I'd sure think about it, and that was true. I never have gone to ask him for it, though. We in the nation of Squirrelandia are an independent breed.

I have thought about his offer. The entire sovereign nation of Squirrelandia (all 2 acres) is covered with or surrounded by tall oaks. One may be tempted to think of an oak leaf as insubstantial, but when one begins moving them by the thousands, one sees this is not true. They have weight and take up space, and this, well... matters. They are also tough, as tough as the trees from which they fall. An oak leaf, undisturbed on the ground will be there the next spring. In my experience, they take a couple of years to break down.

I like our oak leaves. If it were only a matter of aesthetics, I would leave them as they are. There is something soothing and appealing about leaf-covered ground. But in practice, letting them lie means letting them kill what little grass still grows amongst our moss, rocks and weeds. This would lead to erosion (we live on a hill) and would also somewhat justifiably irritate the neighbors. So, every year leaf disposal becomes a duty that can't be altogether ignored. I let a few remain. I like the look. It says "country". I want to clear them away, but not with the cold efficiency of a hireling at Versailles.

But back to my neighbor. I have been reluctant to take him up on his offer because, for one thing, my leaves are my duty and not his, and if he let me borrow his mower, he would also insist on helping (he's a terrific neighbor) and he's of retirement age, with his own house and grounds to worry about. I'd feel a little like a freeloader allowing him to work up a sweat over my leaves. Incidentally, the reason we don't have a riding mower with a big grass catching trailer is that the investment seems a bit extravagant for our needs. Because we're heavily shaded, we need hardly mow much at all. I'm of (partly) Scotch descent and I'll be blowed if I'm going to drop a grand on a machine to suck up leaves one day a year. It would be unjust to let the fact that I won't buy a riding mower become my neighbor's problem.

But, truthfully, there is another reason for refusing his invitation to bring my leaf removal system up to post WWII standards. I have learned to enjoy it. Yes, I do somewhat relish grumbling about it every year to my family, and go through the motions of a debate with myself about finally geting a riding  mower, but I won't until I have to. The ritual has become a Zen thing to me. I begin, actually, to look forward to it in a weird way. I don't want a machine to do it. These are my leaves. In the words of General George S. Patton, "I love it. God help me, I do love it so.".

This brings me to a kind of Philosophy of Work that I have been ruminating upon as I rake, but that will be for another post. This one is already, well, long in the leaf.

Taming Aslan

I like the Lord of the Rings movies. Sure, there is plenty at which devoted Tolkien fans may legitimately chafe and grumble, but overall, a very respectable piece of work, and - for a major motion pictute based on a book - very faithful to the source material. Thumbs up, and all that.

The Narnia movies, though, I have found personally underwhelming. I was just not whelmed, at all. The first movie started strongly enough, but I lost interest by the middle. The White Witch is defeated and Narnia is set free in the end, but somehow... Meh. What bothered me seemed to be more than just the watery Disney-fication of the story, but involved something off key.

I could not at the time put my finger on any one reason for my ambivalence, but have just found a dandy article by Steven D. Boyer at Touchstone that I think sums it up, or begins to. In short, the modern world (and so the movie) rejects the very idea of hierarchy;

 

We can see Lewis’s strategy at work if we just think for a moment about what his original stories are like. Narnia is a great repository of hierarchical images and relations—of good kings and noble knights, of laborers who are not disgruntled and servants who are not demeaned, of Aslan the great Lion who rules over all, who is never safe, but always good.

One can hardly turn a page of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or of Prince Caspian without encountering compelling images of royal authority and knightly virtue—and we see now that both of these themes are intimately connected with Lewis’s positive construal of hierarchy, which in turn is foundational to his distinctively Christian vision of reality.

A Strange Sign of Maturity

...the movie as a whole consists in Peter learning to think and act independently... By (the end of the movie), he has grown enough to realize that receiving orders and following them is a sign of immaturity and weakness, whereas independent action, especially when it involves not doing as you’re told, is the sign of strength, maturity, and success.

Note well: disobedience is the sign of real maturity. This quiet, unobtrusive devaluation of humble submission to rightful authority is a significant omen of things to come in the later film.

...One could look at Caspian himself, who is transformed from a noble and honorable young king in Lewis’s telling, into a tortured warrior whose unchecked desire for personal revenge against his father’s murderer leads to the deaths of scores of his Narnian subjects. Or again, one could look at the virtuous Red Dwarf Trumpkin, whose cheerful, good-humored embrace of obedience in Lewis’s story is quietly dropped from the film, replaced by the more modern virtues of sarcasm, irony, and cynicism.

(emphasis and italics mine)

In addition to the problem with hierarchy, there is a general chipping away, or erosion, of the story at a myriad of points. For one, the Narnia in which the children find themselves is just... smaller than the one in the books. Not geographically, but less grand, less noble. Lewis' Narnia was suffused with spiritual and moral energy and significance. Something in the Narnian air made the importance of every action (or inaction) somehow closer to the surface. Courage grew more courageous, friendship more dear, sacrifice more costly, there. The Narnia of the films is... an admirably worked-up fantasy world, but where the most important thing is the children - that they have a Big Adventure and come out safe by the end of the movie. Whew! Now, wasn't that fun?

In the books, rather than being the Center of Everything, the Pevensie children play an important part in what they know is a story much bigger and more magnificent than themselves.

In the movies, Aslan's voice is not, as one might expect, the rumbling basso of a Giant Lion, but the velvety, soporific baritone of a kindly uncle. He seems not so much to have supernatural significance, but simply to have Super Powers. And he is very importantly, not known or referred to as the Son of the Great Emperor over the Sea - who as far as the films are concerned, apparently doesn't exist. The importance of that ommission is really difficult to overstate. Without God, there is no Son of God. Jesus becomes not the Maker of All Things and Savior of Mankind, but a great teacher... a kindly uncle. Without the Great Emperor Over Sea, Aslan becomes a kindly talking lion with super powers. He is shrunk.

In other words, the makers of the first two Narnia films, at least, just do not GET Lewis' story. They have never fallen in love with Narnia, though they may have read it fifty times. Like the wicked Uncle Andrew in The Magician's Nephew, they have only a surface understanding of Narnian events, and so they feel the need to juice the story up with invented rivalries, contrived teen romance, tone deaf melodrama and sturm und drang that not only gets in the way, but at times positively cuts against the grain of Lewis's story.

As Boyer observes;

 

In Lewis’s telling of all of the Narnia tales, the children’s experiences as kings and queens in Narnia consistently transform them into nobler, more virtuous people in their own world. They are not spoiled children wanting to be kings again; they are noble kings who carry that very nobility back into their non-royal roles as schoolchildren.

In the Narnia films, the children do not carry the spirit of Narnia with them into our world, but instead carry their childish pettiness into Narnia.

But, I mean, after all... you can't expect modern audiences to believe all that Pollyanna rubbish that Lewis put in there. So, we can dream of a place where the very land, the animals, the sky and the sea are better-than-real, but we must not do the same for people. People must always be portrayed with dull and cynical realism.

A Culture Against Culture - Continued Ramblings

This got too long for the combox.

Reader Artaban writes (in response to this post),

"I would argue there was a common religion--insofar as it was Judeo-Christian."

There was certainly a greater commonality of outlook, though I think both Jews and Christians would agree that "Judeo-Christian" is not a religion, but a kind of cultural penumbra. It was the culture that flowed from Christianity with its Jewish roots, but it was not The Thing itself.

There were always those who were agreeable enough with the moral assumptions and outlook of the Faith, but who also did not hold that faith themselves. They coasted, more or less, on the philosophical momentum of Christendom, with little complaint.

But there was no *official* provision made to maintain this Judeo-Christian cultural prominence. I think the founders assumed that it would continue, but they made no real provision to assure that it would. For instance, though the Ten Commandments are enshrined in stone on the great frieze atop the steps of the Supreme Court, they are nowhere in our founding documents.

This is not to say that a Christian basis for law and government would require that any individual profess the Christian faith. It is just a matter of stating plainly, "The laws of our land are based on the Ten Commandments and on Christian principles of natural law. You need not believe or practice any religion, but you will follow the law." I don't think any reasonable person could have much of a problem with that, just as any reasonable person would abide by the laws and customs of a foreign country when visiting (unless they flat-out contradicted one's own fundamental morals, or positively compelled one to do evil).

The founders were so skittish, so anxious about the effects of organized religion (most especially anything like the Catholic Church) on the state, that they insulated the Republic from any such direct religious influence. I don't think they could have imagined the full-frontal assault on religion that has taken place in the last century. The primacy of Christian thought was so secure, in their minds, that they believed they could get by without explicitly favoring it. They were counting on its continued influence. George Washington said, "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

But no official measures were taken to preserve religious principle. It was assumed. The elephant in our national living room.

It was Sola Scriptura, Enlightenment thinking. Every man his own magisterium. What could go wrong?

So... now we are reduced to battling it out among our various tribes, seeing who can get the upper hand politically from season to season, seeing who can sway the masses a little one way or the other. Morality by referendum, and principles that change with the weather.

A Culture Against Culture

Little time for blogging or much else, lately, as your humble blogmaster has been blessed with an abundance of paying work and has been keeping his beard to the grindstone.

One line of thought has been bubbling on the back burner; TLBC is primarily about Western culture and how to save it... while having "a jolly time". Of late the following has been running through my brain;

1) It is impossible to maintain a healthy national life without a common culture.

2) It is impossible to maintain or develop a common culture without a common religion.

3) We decided - as a people, at the very inception of our republic - to have no common religion.

Discuss.

(In other words, we've been trying for centuries to cobble together a culture out of the tattered remnants of other cultures with no central organizing principle other than individual liberty. Can it be done? It doesn't appear so.)

"Morality is About Personal Profit..."

A bit nauseating to think that anyone could actually believe such swill, let alone have the cojones to actively promote it, but heartening to note that people in the street - even in our ethically numb generation - overwhelmingly recognize it as high-toned horse puckey (brought to you by the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights... which seems to be more about encouraging individual wrongs).

Paper, or Plastic?

There is nary a decision in life that is not a moral decision on some level, and no moral decision that is not black and white on some level. Facial hair, for instance. Culture shrivels where the manly cheek is bare!

As a graphic artist, I used to work with halftone sheets, which was just some nifty shading material made up of a pattern of very small dots (like in a newspaper... remember those?). I sometimes used those halftone sheets to demonstrate that what may appear gray to us from a distance will resolve itself into black and white if we will only take the trouble to look more closely.

Not that there aren't some damnably difficult moral questions, but it's all a matter of getting the right perspective. The difficulty of many moral questions doesn't lie in making the decision itself, but in dealing with the practical and emotional consequences of these decisions, which many people don't really want to do.

But I digress. This post really is about the ubiquitous "paper or plastic" controversy, and I will begin by saying that the question is more than a matter of taste.

If paper and plastic really are my only choices, reason demands I go with paper. Paper is made from wood pulp, which is a renewable resource. There are tons of fun things to do and make with paper bags. Paper is recyclable if you catch it up out of the trash. Even if you miss the trash and it ends up laying in a ditch, it is readily biodegradable. You could even compost it in the garden. No one ever found a sea turtle choked to death on a paper bag.

Besides, there is just too much plastic in the world, and anything that will reduce our addiction to fossil fuels is okay by me, too. They are trying to pass a law against disposable plastic shopping bags in California, and the chemical companies that make the bags are bankrolling a huge campaign against it. I've never been accused of being a tree-hugger, but so what if I am? I don't think Tolkien would have objected too strenuously to such a tag. Trees are good things, and even though paper is made from trees, I think paper will be better for the environment in the long run than plastic bags. Hug a tree, then, if you must, but just leave off worshiping the thing, please.

There is a third way, though, that our ostensibly benighted third-world brethren and sistren have wisely employed for a long time... BYOB; Bring your own bag. Neither paper or plastic, but maybe cotton or some other fiber. We have taken to keeping several stout, reusable shopping bags in our car, and use these at Aldi or Dollar General or wherever we go to shop (they don't work quite as well at the liquor store, where we normally require a heavy wood crate and a forklift).

These bags can also be used to carry contraband to dull business meetings, to smuggle rotten fruit into political rallies, or to carry books full of dangerous ideas to League gatherings. You could carry a picnic lunch for four, or a Chesterton-sized snack.

The idea of durability seems to upset some who see our economy (that phantom) as being built on disposable goods; "Why... make a really durable shopping bag and you rob your fellow citizens of jobs! Make an oak desk for the ages and you put Ikea out of business! What would all those Fischer-Price employees do if we all went around building our own playhouses? The World Economy is right now cringeing in a corner because Americans have selfishly decided to spend less and save more, and to even do without from time to time. This perfume could have been sold, and the sales tax given to the state legislature, and the gold under your floor belongs to Standard & Poors..."

Population Control One is Tempted to Support

In the words of G.K. Chesterton,

"Let all the babies be born. Then let us drown those we do not like."

- Babies and Distributism, GK's Weekly, 11/12/32

In a world as irrational as ours, The Onion, Colbert and The Daily Show seem the only news sources capable of grasping the scope of postmodern insanity. One must either laugh or cry, and laughter leaves more room for hope.

The C.S. Lewis Song

I confess, for something called "The C.S. Lewis Song", I was expecting this to be a little more, I don't know... jaunty? Something one could sing at the pub. But I do likes it. Quite a voice, this girl has.

Back when I was still a fairly new Christian Evangelical revert (after being raised Baptist, and then college educated into a mushy kind of Christian Agnosticism) I was for a while a great fan of Christian Rock/Pop. We have had a popular evangelical Christian radio station in the area for decades (out of John Brown University) and my radio dial was permanently welded there in the late 80s and early 90s.

I'm pretty finicky, musically, but I overlooked what I considered to be a lot of Christian Drek because I found it worthwhile to get to the Good Stuff. I was a big fan of Out of the Grey, I remember. and Brent Bourgeois. The link is to one of my favorites of his. Though I think this was before he declared as a Christian, the lyrics show he was thinking deeply about things.

It's the question of the hour,

How can I be sure of what I don't know?

She comes to me with poison in her flower,

And steals the miracle of life right out of my hand

After I became a Catholic, though (or perhaps I was just growing up), slowly, imperceptibly, Christian Pop - or Pop of almost any kind - failed to satisfy. I began to notice the extent to which Christian Pop Radio was increasingly a reflection of ordinary pop radio, and that mainly for the worse (though not totally). I also came to resent the extent to which Pop Culture had insinuated itself into the liturgy. Even the Sacrament of the Altar is not immune from the din of drum kits and electric guitars, and I say this as a great fan  - a sucker - for great guitar work. I loves me some Stevie Ray Vaughan... only not in church, please.

In the words of Hank Hill, "Can't you see? You're not making Christianity better... you're making rock and roll worse!".

I'm all for honesty and sincerity, but it seemed more and more of Christian Pop songwriting was becoming a festival of breast-beating, cathartic, sentimental introspection to the point of narcissism. Okay, we all struggle, but if I want to be depressed I'd rather listen to Pink Floyd... or Tool.

There seemed also to be an element of Christian Guilt bubbling up, not unlike the White Guilt so prevalent among hip progressives. Yes, Christians are often hypocritical. So is everyone. It's a remnant of The Fall that is part of the human condition. Yes, Christendom has had it's share of moral missteps throughout history. We should be aware of our hypocrisy, aware of our past mistakes and constant shortcomings... but can we leave off apologizing at some point and please get on with things?

I've always admired celebrities who have had the good sense not to believe their own press clippings. We ought to do likewise. We don't measure our success - or failure - by worldy standards. We are, in fact warned about conformity to the world. Why, then, do we now seem so all-fired concerned that the world "like us... really like us"?

This is part of the problem I have with what is called the Emergent Church. This movement seems to me very much in danger of being the Tragically Hip church, the Church as Fashion Victim. Clothes? Check (Hot Topic). Music? Check. Hi-Def Multimedia Worship? Check. Pop-culture references? Check. Hair gel? Check.

I understand the impulse. Shoot, I'm as embarrassed as anyone to be lumped in with Jerry Falwell and Oral Roberts and the old polyester suit crowd. But to bastardize C.S. Lewis, "Because our grandparents erred in one direction, does it follow that there is no error in the opposite direction?"

It's not good to try and freeze any moment in history (say, the 1950s) and set that up as The Good Old Days... to become stodgy and grumpy and interact with our unbelieving neighbors mainly by wagging our fingers and complaining of their godless music and their dungarees. But the opposite error isn't pretty, either. To court the approval of half-interested cultural agnostics (called "seekers") or to ape the fashions and attitudes (Watch me! I'm being ironic!) of a perenially bored and fickle generation is just as bad.

As irksome as it may seem, I think I might rather stand with Brother Falwell.

So, okay, let's admit our shortcomings and mistakes, our struggles, fears and doubts, but after that... well, do we have any Good News for these people, or don't we?

All that said, the song/video linked above - by New Zealander Brooke Fraser - does flirt a bit with depressing introspection, but she pulls it together into something very lovely and even powerful. She begins with what feels like an achingly agnostic perspective, but shows that there is hope for us all to "know as we are known" in the end. Behind everything, there really is Someone there.