A Distressing Spirit from God

Saul had been made king of Israel. After only a couple of years, he disobeyed God's prophet and took matters into his own impatient hands. God declared that the kingdom would be taken from him, and Samuel the prophet anointed David who would be the next king. At the end of 1 Samuel 16, immediately after we hear that the Spirit of the Lord came upon David when he was anointed to be the next king, we hear that the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a distressing spirit from the Lord came upon Saul. Lest we miss the point, it is said three times that this distressing spirit is from God.

What do we do with that when we consider depression and mental illness? Not only do we not say that depression may come from God, but we usually argue that it comes not from God but from Satan or the fact that there is trouble in the world.

But here, in Saul's case, the depression clearly came from God. Why?

To soothe Saul, his servants suggested a musician. They found David. And what did David do? He played the harp and sang psalms to Saul. At the start, before his impenitence grew greater, Saul loved David. He received comfort from the word of God that proceeded from David's lips and in his music. Saul had sinned. In His infinite love, God sent him the distressing spirit so that he would have a need to listen to one who could bring him the comfort of the gospel.

God does send distressing spirits. But He does not send them to punish. He does not send them to be cruel. He sends them so that we will have motivation to hear his word, so that we will be drawn to Him in face of our distress, so that we will find our joy and comfort in Christ alone and through faith in Him be saved.

And that's what happened initially for Saul; David's message of gospel brought comfort to the king and kept him in the faith for a while. And then there was that little incident with Goliath, and Saul became jealous of David. And then the distressing spirit from God came upon Saul again. God wanted Saul to need the sweet words which had previously comforted him. But when David played hymns and psalms for Saul, the king threw a spear at him and banished him from the court to the battlefield. After Saul got rid of the psalm-singer, it was pretty much all downhill from there, his sinful nature taking the upper hand.

This really ought to teach us something about depression and the medicine of God's Word.

Today's Laugh

An airliner was having engine trouble, and the pilot instructed the cabin crew to have the passengers take their seats and get prepared for an emergency landing.

A few minutes later, the pilot asked the flight attendants if everyone was buckled in and ready. "All set back here, Captain," came the reply, "except one lawyer who is still going around passing out business cards."

Change or Stability?

In the last chapter of More All -of-a-Kind Family, the family is preparing to leave their home, their extended family, their synagogue, their neighborhood, to move to a new neighborhood. On their last night at home, three of the girls are lying in bed quietly trying to hide their tears and distress, while another sister is hyped about the excitement of the move.

Charlotte's voice broke the stillness. "It'll seem funny living someplace else."

"Yes," agreed Gertie. "We've lived here our whole lives!"

"Well, it's about time we made a change," Henny said cheerfully. "Mama and Papa kept talking about it, but I honestly never thought we'd do it. I'm sure glad. I'm sort of tired of this old place. Doing the same old things and seeing the same old faces all the time."

Oh, thought Sarah, how could anybody ever grow tired of the things that were part of her? Knowing things and people so well made them dear to you. Taking on new ways and new friends, that was hard -- almost terrifying.


I know people who thrive on change and excitement. I don't understand, but I know and can accept that that's how they are. I expect those kind of folks can't understand the ones who find dearness in the "boring things" they know well and are used to. I wonder sometimes how many errors and ill motives are wrongly assumed to be in others when they differ from us greatly with regard to this personality trait.

Today's Laugh

Shamelessly stolen from Bekah because not all of you will see it:

Whatever you give a woman, she's going to multiply. If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby. If you give her a house, she'll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her. So if you give her any crap, you will receive a ton of s***.

APT

A four-minute video which captures some of why I love this place:

Taking the Book Along

Today some of us homeschoolers attended Henry V at APT. As Janelle and I were talking afterward, there were ideas and character-development and quotes we wanted to go back to and explore. But when we get home, do we remember what we wanted to look up? Do we bother to haul out the books or hunt on the internet, or do we just get to cooking supper?

I recalled to her how Pastor Wiest took along a copy of the play. One evening he and his wife took me and Gary and another couple out to "Merry Wives of Windsor." It wasn't a terribly good production, but we were with people we loved. Afterwards, Steve said we should go out and discuss the play. So, well after our bedtime, we headed to a diner for coffee and talk. He had his copy of the play, so he could look up exact quotes, refer back to them, or make theological points.

As I was thinking, "Hmmm, maybe that's something we should do next year when we come to APT," I recalled that today is St Michael's, and it was six years ago today that Steve went into that hospice room. And then it was time to shut off my thoughts before the tears flowed, and divert the conversation back to something more Shakespeary and less memory-ish.

Unschooler Meets a Schedule

For twenty years of homeschooling, we looked at "school" as part of life. People read. People solve problems. People learn what they need to know. All those educational activities (the fun ones and the not-so-fun necessary ones too) just had to fit into real life. "School" was done during summer, during Christmas break, on weekends, in the evenings, just as frequently and easily and naturally as it was done during typical school-day hours.

Now Gary is working away from home during the days Monday through Friday. Now we are attending chapel each M-F morning that our congregation's academy is in session. Now the kids have schooled friends, and homeschooling friends who operate on a Sept-to-May, M-F, 8-3:00 calendar. Their free time affects our schedule. My youngest two students also need more help from me with their schoolwork, be it cracking the whip motivational encouragement or some hand-holding. So this year we are trying to be more schooly, more organized, more scheduled, etc.

I'm dyin' here.


What's really getting to me is the priorities. When there is a list of daily textbooky and workbooky school assignments, it seems that the checklist takes priority over real-life needs which are actually more important. I resent it when I feel naughty to work in the garden instead of grade a math lesson. I get cranky when I think that taking the car in for an oil change is detracting from history or logic class. Mowing and supper-prep should not be seen as "interferences" with schoolwork. I could never understand homeschool moms who didn't have time for a fieldtrip because they'd get "behind" in their schoolwork. But now, even though I know better, those illogical feelings have become my own thoughts.

Getting on a schedule and sticking to it presents its own struggles and benefits. But the part that is super-hard is how it messes with my mind, how it rearranges my whole view of what things in life are Most Important and need to be tackled as top priority each day.

And then, on top of that, I find that it almost gives us permission to unplug our brains on days the conventional schools aren't in session.

There must be a middle ground. Somewhere.

How does a person commit herself to a schedule intended to serve good ends, submitting to the schedule's demands when she doesn't feel like it, and yet not let the schedule become task-master, keeping it in its place as a mere servant to the goals?

Jogging Again?

One day down. Only 160 or so to go.

I need to jog. Outdoors, not on a treadmill. When the sun is up, not before chapel or after Gary gets home. I jogged for four years, and I had more energy, more lung capacity, a better outlook on life, and didn't feel so chilled during the winter. A year ago I was forced to quit for health reasons. But now I'm looking at the impending arrival of winter and short days, with no garden or lawnmower enticing me away from the kitchen sink and the laundry room, and I'd best git to gittin' on reestablishing the jogging habit.

I seriously doubt my ability to keep at this. The time-crunch seems crunchier than ever. But now I've said it right out loud, in front of y'all, so maybe I'll keep at it (except Sundays and Thursdays) so that I don't have to hang my head in shame when asked how it's going.

Hey, at least I could keep going for the whole mile today. So even after the year off, I'm still in way better shape than I was five years ago!

a la Psalm 136

Oh, give thanks to the Lord,
for He is good,
and His mercy endures forever.

Psalm 136 is the one where the psalmist rehearses the history of Israel, with every phrase followed by the litany refrain: for His mercy endures forever. It is important to see that line not as a simple refrain, but as an explanation or elucidation on the words immediately preceding it.

But you know what? You can do that with the rest of the liturgy too. It's cool. Try it.

"Glory be to God on high ..."

for He is good,
and His mercy endures forever.

"This is the word of the Lord,"

for He is good,
and His mercy endures forever.

"Create in me a clean heart, O God,"

for He is good,
and His mercy endures forever.

"and renew a right spirit within me,"

for He is good,
and His mercy endures forever.

"Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,"

for He is good,
and His mercy endures forever.

"For mine eyes hath seen Thy salvation,"

for He is good,
and His mercy endures forever.

"which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people,"

for He is good,
and His mercy endures forever.

Think about it.

Old Words with New Tunes

At chapel this year we are praying Matins (LSB pg 219) on Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, and using Service of Prayer and Preaching (LSB pg 260) on Tuesday, Thursdays. A couple of years ago, when Pastor began teaching us the canticles in Service of Prayer & Preaching, I liked 'em. We sang them for a few months. But when we stopped, I didn't miss them. It's nice to be singing/praying those Isaiah and Pauline passages again on a regular basis.

But you know what? I suspect that by the end of the year, I may have had my fill of them. (Not unlike how much I utterly adore garden tomatoes, but right now I'd rather see them go into the canning jars than into my mouth. Never thought I'd see the day that I didn't want to inhale tomatoes but would prefer to have a short break from them!) As much as I love these canticles, there's something about the Venite and the Benedictus and the Magnificat and the Te Deum (from TLH and now in LSB) that is transcendent. I can sing/pray those every day -- even multiple times a day -- and they grow more and more beautiful and precious.

And that's what got me to wondering. When I read about the new music being written for the church, good churchly music, I've wondered sometimes about the constant pursuit of new settings for hymns and liturgy. There's nothing wrong with the new things. Many of them are very good. Many of them become my new "fave" for a few months. But why the frequent desire for something new? Is it the difference between what's beautiful and what's exquisitely sublime? Do we eventually tire of the beautiful and well-written new church music, whereas the old (at least, the old that is still with us!!) never becomes tiresome?

Trip to California

Looking ahead to the day when Maggie will be grown-up and no longer covered by our health insurance, I have been looking into some options that other families use. If she were to apply for any government help for the disabled (or whatever the current PC term is), we have to show need and disability. Well, how do you do that when you've been homeschooling her in a safe environment? The government will want me to show them that she's failed at her schooling and needs special accommodations. Well, good grief, homeschooling IS the epitome of "special accommodations."

I have learned that we need to have some behavioral-developmental evaluations and at least one neuro-psych evaluation. They tell me that this is par-for-the-course for what the schools provide to special needs kids. But my kid isn't in school. Well, we need these evaluations, and they are mega-expensive. But .... ! There is a researcher at University of California who is studying VCFS and the way kids think. We've applied for Maggie to be a research guinea pig, and she's been accepted. The other vcfs families who've participated say that it's a fun experience.

So at the beginning of December, they will fly Maggie and me to Sacramento. For three nights, they'll put us up at the Kiwanis House (like a Ronald McDonald House) next to the hospital. Maggie will spend time with a psychiatrist and a behavioral evaluator. But mostly she'll be be playing video games and doing puzzles and things like that. They want to see which sections of her brain are busy while she's doing certain kinds of thinking tasks. Then they'll discuss the results with me and later send me the official reports.

Ahead of time, I have hours of evaluation forms to fill out. I've done quite a few already. I'm going to need to photocopy the long form which included all the history of Maggie's surgeries and hospitalizations and when she learned to walk and talk and dress herself; with all the work I put into gathering that information into one place, I want to keep a record of it myself. The only surprise to me on the forms was one aspect of Maggie's personality that I hadn't noticed until filling out the behavioral evaluation forms. I guess her obedience and cheerfulness and contentedness just kind of overshadowed that one aspect that I'd never before realized.

So Maggie is going to get her first plane ride. And I'm going to go west of the Rockies for the first time. It will be a short little girl-trip for us together. With lots of video games for Mag!

VCFS Pictures

A lot of people who google "vcfs pictures" or "vcfs photos" end up coming to my blog, and that post unfortunately has no photographs; it has only what I learned one day about the face-shape of kids with velo-cardio-facial syndrome. What if we help folks out a bit? Maggie and Katie have facebook pictures that may illustrate one example of what the "f" in VCFS looks like.

So we have here two sisters who look a lot like each other. Katie, the older one, does not have vcfs. Maggie does. In this picture, Katie is the one not sticking out her tongue.


Here we have four pictures of Maggie. The vcfs experts tell us that the "look" to vcfs includes almond-shaped eyes, an elongated face (often heart-shaped), a wide nose bridge, and small ears.




For comparison, here's her sister from when she wasn't too much older than Maggie is now. (Katie is the one on the right. The one on the left isn't blood-family, though we'd love to claim her.)

And now we need a picture of Katie that shows off her deeper-set eyes and the bridge of her nose. (I'm sure she's just thrilled about Mom's comment here!) But, hey, for the sake of comparison...



The top one of this pair is Maggie handing out bulletins at her sister's wedding. The bottom one is Katie at her goddaughter's baptism.



And finally, a couple of pictures with Katie's daughter. The top picture is Maggie (who has vcfs) and the bottom one is Katie (who does not).

I Love the Law

Pr Petersen has a wonderful post on the law, and how it should and shouldn't be preached, and what it does. Amen to what he says, especially the middle paragraph. I find that the usual type of "law" in sermons does me no good; it doesn't kill my sinful flesh; it bolsters my self-righteousness. What I love and what I need is the law that isn't fun for either the preacher to preach or for me to hear. But it's what is true and good.

Homeschoolers Who Don't Do Anything

We occasionally hear complaints about homeschoolers who are goofing off, playing outdoors. And it crossed my mind today that the neighbors are seeing Andrew outside on a scooter. They don't know that he's doing schoolwork, memorizing chunks of the Augsburg Confession, rehearsing what he's learned. They don't know that Maggie, when she's out taking a walk or shooting hoops, is not just getting her exercising, but may be conjugating Greek verbs in her mind or making sense of the chapter of the story we read. A kid who's mowing during the schoolday is not being put to menial use as a child-slave, but may actually be writing a story while he's shoving the lawnmower around the yard. Just because it appears that a kid is "doing nothing" does not at all mean there's no schoolwork percolating in his head.

Graphic Content

You gotta wonder what's up with our society when a cooking show is doing a segment on barbecuing, including roasting a pig on a spit, and the show starts off with a parental advisory warning:

This program contains graphic content.


I thought Gary was joking when he told me about the warning. But he wasn't.
So, Erin, why didn't you have a warning on your Labor Day blogposts?

Education as a Means of Grace?

At a conference I attended last month, the Lutheran speaker told us that a classical education will better prepare the heart to receive Christ (or to be open to the gospel, or something on that order). Maybe EC has the exact quote jotted down somewhere?

So when Kerry commented here the other day, pointing out the CiRCE site on classical education, I was surprised to see a related statement there:
The classical Christian teacher asks God to use his teaching, dispositions, and actions as an instrument in His hand to cultivate the students' souls toward holiness. In this sense, learning can be a means of grace.
Thing is, the CiRCE site looks very Reformed.


If it is true that holiness is promoted by classical education, then classical education must not be about teaching Latin, or about grammar, logic, and rhetoric, or about a particular core curriculum, or about critical thinking, or about rigorous academics. Surely we would not say those things (good though they may be) are tools of the Holy Spirit to create and sustain faith.

So which is it? Is it wrong to say that classical education inculcates holiness and/or helps draw a person to Christ? Or is it that classical education isn't really about the things we usually speak of when we discuss the topic?

Drying Soap

In spring we noticed that the bars of my home-made soap lasted so much longer than store-bought soap. But when I made another batch in May and began using it in August, the soap was dissolving quicker than it had been. Eventually we noticed that a fresh bar of soap would lather and smell soapy, but as it was used and we worked our way further toward the middle of the bar, the soap wouldn't bubble so well, and it smelled more piggy from the lard. Apparently it hadn't had time enough to get good and dry all the way through the bar, but just on the outside.

The theory now is to rotate the bars. I can use the outside of all the bars, and then let them sit and dry some more. That should solve part of the problem.

The bigger problem, though, is making the soap far enough ahead of time that it can sit for at least half a year, preferably a year, drying thoroughly. That takes discipline. And forethought. And making something a priority even though you won't benefit from it for a full year. Yikesy!

In other words, I should be making another batch. Or two. Or three. I haven't yet found a place to buy tallow and lard (other than where I used to buy it, which is now an 80-minute drive one-way). So I tried making soap from Crisco. I used one bar to see if my skin had an adverse reaction ... and so far, so good. I guess I'd better head to Aldi for some more shortening.

Touching the Ark

Remember in the story (in 2 Samuel 6) about David bringing the ark to Jerusalem? I always felt so bad for Uzzah that he was struck dead for trying to stop the ark from falling. After all, it was tipping off the cart; he wanted to prevent an accident.

In our story yesterday, Pastor pointed out that the ark wasn't even supposed to be on a cart. It was to be transported by its poles, carried by the priests. So if they'd taken God's word seriously about how to move the ark, the potential for an accident wouldn't have been there in the first place. How 'bout that?

Cinnamon Everywhere

Can a person have taste-bud hallucinations?

For the last year or so, I've been tasting cinnamon in Snickers. Never tasted it there before. Assumed they'd changed the recipe slightly.

Then I started tasting cinnamon in chocolate chip cookies. And I don't mean other people's choc-chip cookies, where somebody might've put a pinch in the dough. I mean my choc-chip cookies, that I baked, where I know there is no cinnamon.

And this morning I tasted cinnamon in the granola. The granola that I made. The granola that has no cinnamon.

At least I'm hallucinating cinnamon and not liver or kale.

Classical versus Progressive Education

Classical education seems to be a topic of interest to many people in the last decade or so. Try as I might, I cannot get a handle on what it is, though. Some say classical education is about the content of the curriculum. Some say it's about the methodology of teaching. Some say it's about teaching subjects such as Latin and logic and rhetoric. The one evaluation I heard consistently was that classical education is NOT progressive education.

Even this, though, I am beginning to wonder about. The self-proclaimed goals and methods of progressive educators seem to me to have a lot of similarities to the self-proclaimed goals and methods of classical educators.

Both camps say they value

• critical thinking and problem solving,
• de-emphasizing textbooks and instead using other resources,
• educating children who will grow up to be of service to the neighbor,
• life-long learning,
• seeing the interconnectedness of academic subjects, and
• evaluation methods that do not depend on standard testing procedures.

Even in some of the areas of greater difference, I still see similarities.

• Progressive educators greatly value learning by doing, hands-on projects, and experience. Most classical educators recognize that much book-learning is cemented in the mind by projects or experiments or experiences.
• Progressive educators value understanding over rote memory. Classical educators see great value in rote learning, but not for its own sake. Classical educators want children to use their rote learning to grow in understanding, to be able to reason with the information they have memorized.
• Some classical educators see great value in doing unit studies and learning-through-literature, connecting different academic subjects in the one project or one book. Progressive educators often present information in integrated ways such as unit studies.

There are differences. Progressive education puts more value on group work than does classical education. Progressive education will often set aside rote work altogether instead of ensuring that rote work is explained and understood and used later. Progressive education is more concerned with figuring out what skills and information will be necessary and practical in the future, and concentrates on imparting those, whereas classical education spends more time on reading the great books from ages past.

What's hard to take seriously is when each side accuses the other of the same things. Some say that we should all do classical education so that our children will learn to think critically; progressive educators accuse classical educators of failing to teach critical thinking. Progressive educators throw stones at classical educators for teaching separate academic subjects so that the children never learn the interconnectedness of it all; classical educators promote their view by insisting that children need to see how the subjects interrelate instead of studying many disjointed topics. Sometimes the two sides sound more alike than different. But there is a difference. What I can't figure out is just those differences are.

If the same thing is done in two classrooms, but done for different reasons, arising out of different philosophies, will one way be right and the other wrong? Will those philosophies show through in hard-to-pin-down ways?

What I can't take seriously is "Listen to my side because we value thus-and-such" while the opposing philosophy is saying the exact same thing. Surely there must be a way to get down to what the real differences are, and how they play out, and how the different aspects mesh or conflict with Christian doctrine. (The unfortunate thing is that when I ask these questions, the conversation usually resorts to name-calling, guilt by association, or knocking down straw men. This is not attractive amongst those who say they value teaching logic.)