Why We Read Old Things

Many people talk about relevance in the world of education.  In particular, there is much discussion about choosing reading material that is relevant to the lives of students, and quite often this leads to two false assumptions.  The first is that relevant material must be immediately accessible by students, and the second, which is related to the first, is that it must be in their vernacular and therefore of recent origin.  If these two assumptions were accepted, however, students would not experience anything outside their native language or antedating their own birth by more than a few years.  The exploration of my Latin I students into the world of Roman paleography suggests to the contrary that there is much value in reading that which is old.

Paleography in The Modern Classroom

Paleography is the study of ancient forms of writing, and I have explored this for many years with public and private school Latin students.  This year my students, as they usually do, took a look at ancient writing and ancient writing materials through a website hosted by the University of Michigan (here, here, and here).  After this, they practiced reading and writing Old Roman Cursive before making their own imitation sheets of papyrus and reed pens.  With these they copied their choice from texts that we had read and became Romans for a day.  What was most striking, however, were their reflections on the experience.

Instructional video on making imitation papyrus sheets and reed pens

Fun "infomercial" about using ancient writing materials

What Students Have To Say

As part of a reflective component of this project, the students discussed why they chose the passages they did when using the writing materials they had made.  Whether it was a verse from the Bible or lines of from the Latin poets and philosophers, these texts touched the students in profound ways.  Their words are proof that relevance should not always and automatically be equated with what is colloquial and new.

"Tui animi compotes es ne quid fraudis stuprique ferocia pariat."

"Be master of your soul, lest your untamed spirit bring forth something deceitful and shameful."
Appius Claudius Caecus (355-275 B.C.)

When we first learned this quote I was extremely frustrated with myself, other people, everything.  After hearing this I truly took into consideration how being like this would not help anyone and would only bring shame like the quote said.  The quote helped me change my perspective when I needed it, so that's why I like it.

"Ab infantia sacras litteras nosti, quae te possunt instruere ad salutem, per fidem, quae est in Christo Iesu."

"From the time you were a child you have known the sacred scriptures, which are able to instruct you for salvation, through faith, which is in Christ Jesus."
2 Timothy 3:15

I chose this quote because it reminds me of my grandma and my dad and them being very religious and very persistent in making sure me and my other siblings/cousins have a strong faith.

"In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum."

"In Him was life, and that life was the light of people."
John 1:4

The Latin text I used to complete my papyrus was from John 1:4.  I chose this passage because I found it so fascinating that God's view of his life is our life.  It seems almost like he's saying that the point of his life is to give us life.  God is putting us as human beings before his own life.  This is just one example of his love for us.

"Homo sum.  Humani nil alienum puto."

"I am a human being.  I think nothing human alien to me."
Publius Terentius Afer, 195-159 B.C.

I picked this because I like what he says.  I like how he said I am hum but nothing human is alien to me.  I think it is cool that back then not normal stuff was not that weird to people, but now if you do something weird you are like alien to people.

"Maledicus a malefico non distat nisi occasione."

"An evil speaker differs from an evil doer in nothing but opportunity."
Marcus Fabius Quintillianus, 35-100 A.D.

I chose this quote for my papyrus because it was my favorite quote we've had for this class.  I see the results of this quote all the time throughout my day, and in school.  People who talk bad about one another are no better than people who are actually mean through their actions.  Changing the way we hurt people is no different from the action itself.  An evil speaker is no different from someone who actually does evil.

"Et verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis."

"And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us."
John 1:14

I chose this verse of the week because it was one of the first that we had ever learned in Latin class and this is one of the first things that we ever said in Latin, too.  So that part was pretty cool.  But I also chose this because it shows how God was talking about the word for a while and we were not sure what that word was until Jesus was born and we realized that the word was our salvation to get to heaven one day, and even though God loved His Son, He sent Him down to a cruel world and made Him just like us because He also loved HIs creations.  We were very blessed to have Jesus walk down here among us.

"Ego veni ut vitam habeant, et abundantius habeant."

"I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly."
John 10:10

I sometimes imagine what the world would be like if Adam and Eve never sinned in the Garden of Eden, and honestly I can't imagine it.  When we first went over this verse in class it was almost like God was speaking to me through it and telling me that instead of wondering what I can't have I should be grateful that He sent His Son down to die for us so that one day we all would hopefully make it to heaven and be reunited with Him again.

"Labor omnia vincit."

"Work conquers all."
Publius Vergilius Maro, 70-19 B.C.

I feel I connected to this quote in a way because of my horrible work ethic.  I know that if I get all my assignments done on time, I will have straight A's, but because of my lack of production, I often struggle in this area.  If I could just get my work done on time, I'd be slaying my classes.  This logic also transfers over to my extracurriculars, like band or Tae Kwon Do.  If I just put in the time and effort into learning new techniques, songs, forms, I could become much better at what I do.  Putting in the work to do things would allow me to "conquer" in all aspects of my life.

"Esse quam videri bonus."

"To be good rather than to seem good."
Gaius Sallustius Crispus, 86-35 B.C.

I chose this quote because I was really inspired to be a better person.  I felt that this quote really helped me to start being a better person to my family and friends.  I wanted people to know the real me and know I am a good person.  Some people may think I am a good person because I am Catholic, but I want them to actually know that I am a good person.  I feel that I need to be nicer to people and help them out more when I hear this quote.

"In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum."

"In Him was life, and that life was the light of people."
John 1:4

I chose this quote because it has a personal meaning to me.  The quote talks about how Jesus is the life and he is the light of the people.  Jesus has been the light during some of my darkest and hardest times.  A few years ago I went through a difficult time where I had to have a lot of surgeries in a short period of time.  What was wrong with me was confusing and I had to trust God that he would light the path and show me the way out.  After my last surgery I remember feeling the biggest relief that it might have been over for now.  God showed me I can trust him and have faith that his plan is the true plan.

 

The Art of Discussion`

Sometimes a writer needs to step back and let someone else's words do the talking.  What follows are selections from Montaigne's essay "Of the art of discussion," written between 1585 and 1588.  They are taken from the translation by Donald M. Frame, and I will offer no further comment beyond that my recent reading and pondering of this essay made me think of two of my current students, Dominic and Addison, who have already tasted the fruits of philosophical thought and discovered that they are sweet.  May they and others take from Montaigne a model of how to discuss the breadth and the depth of human thought.

De l'Art de Conferer

The most fruitful and natural exercise of our mind, in my opinion, is discussion.

The study of books is a languishing and feeble activity that gives no heat, whereas discussion teaches and exercises us at the same time.  If I discuss with a strong mind and a stiff jouster, he presses on my flanks, prods me right and left; his ideas launch mine.  Rivalry, glory, competition, push me and lift me above myself.  And unison is an altogether boring quality in discussion.

As our mind is strengthened by communication with vigorous and orderly minds, so it is impossible to say how much it loses and degenerates by our continual association and frequentation with mean and sickly minds.  There is no contagion that spreads like that one.

No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own.  There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.

So contradictions of opinions neither offend me nor affect me; they merely arouse and exercise me.  We flee from correction; we should face it and go to meet it, especially when ti comes in the form of discussion, not ex cathedra.  At every opposition we do not consider whether it is just, but, right or wrong, how we can get rid of it.  Instead of stretching out our arms to it, we stretch out our claws.

I could stand to be rudely jarred by my friends:  "You're a fool, you're dreaming."   I like to see people speak up bravely among gallant men, and to see the words go where the thought goes.  We should strengthen and toughen our ears against this tenderness toward the ceremonious sound of words. I like a strong, manly fellowship and familiarity, a friendship that delights in the sharpness and vigor of its intercourse....

When someone opposes me, he arouses my attention, not my anger.  I go to meet a man who contradicts me, who instructs me.  The cause of truth should be the common cause for both.

I give a warm welcome to truth in whatever hand I find it, and cheerfully surrender to it and extend my conquered arms, from as far off as I see it approach.  However, it is certainly hard to induce men of my time to do this.  They do not have the courage to correct because they have not the courage to suffer being corrected.

[T]here is nothing which makes us so sensitive to contradictions as the idea of our superiority and disdain for our adversary.

It is an insipid and harmful pleasure to have to do with people who admire us and give way to us.

In fine, I receive and acknowledge any sort of blows that are straightforward, however weak they be, but I am only too intolerant of those that are out of order.  For me any answer is only too good if it is to the point.  But when the argument is confused and disorderly, I give up the substance....  It is impossible to discuss things in good faith with a fool.

We learn to argue only in order to contradict; and with each man contradicting and being contradicted, it turns out the fruit of the argument is to ruin and annihilate the truth.  Thus Plato, in his Republic, prohibits this exercise to inept and ill-born minds.

I love and honor learning as much as those who have it; and in its true use it is man's most noble and powerful acquisition.  But in those (and their number is infinite) who base their fundamental capacity and worth on it, who appeal from their understanding to their memory, hiding under the shadows of others [Seneca], and can do nothing except by the book, I hate it, if I dare say so, a little more than stupidity.

It is my opinion that in Plato and Xenophon Socrates argues more for the sake of the arguers than for the sake of the argument, and to instruct Euthydemus and Protagoras rather in their own impertinence than in the impertinence of their art.  He takes hold of the first subject that comes along like a man who has a more useful aim than to illuminate it:  to wit, to illuminate the minds that he undertakes to manage and exercise.

For we are born to quest after the truth; to possess it belongs to a greater power.  It is not, as Democritus said, hidden in the bottom of abysses, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.  The world is but a school of inquiry.  The question is not who will hit the ring, but who will make the best runs at it.

Any man may speak truly; but to speak with order, wisely, and competently, of that few men are capable.  Thus it is not the falsity that comes from ignorance that offends me, but the ineptitude.  I have broken off many dealings that would have been useful to me because of the irrelevant bickering of those with whom I was dealing.

[I]t is always a tyrannical ill humor to be unable to endure a way of thinking different from your own; and then in truth there is no greater, more constant, or more uncouth absurdity, than to become worked up and stung by the absurdities of the world.

How many stupid things I say and reply every day, in my own judgment; and so assuredly how many more in the judgment of others!  After all, why can we encounter someone with a crooked and malformed body without being moved, when we cannot bear encountering an ill-ordered mind without getting angry?  Not only the reproaches that we make to one another, but also our reasons and arguments in controversial matters can ordinarily be turned against ourselves; and we run ourselves through with our own weapons.

I do not mean that no man should criticize another unless he is clean himself....  But I mean that our judgment, laying upon another the blame which is then in question, should not spare us from judging ourselves.

Nor does it seem to me an appropriate reply to someone who warns me of my fault, to say it is also in him.  What of it?  The warning is still true and useful.

[W]e see so many inept souls among the learned, and more than of the other kind.  They would have made good husbandmen, good tradesmen, good artisans; their natural vigor was cut to that proportion.  Learning is a thing of great weight; they collapse under it.  Their mind has neither enough vigor or enough skill to spread out and distribute that noble and powerful matter, to make use of it and derive help from it.  It can do nothing except in a strong nature, and these are very rare.  And the weak ones, says Socrates, corrupt the dignity of philosophy in handling it.  It appears both useless and harmful when it is badly encased.

Stupidity and senselessness are not curable by a bit of admonition.  And we may properly say of this sort of repair work what Cyrus replied to the man who urged him to harangue his army on the point of a battle:  that men do not become courageous and warlike on the spot by a good harangue any more than someone suddenly becomes a good musician by listening to a good song.  These are apprenticeships that have to be served before hand by long and constant education.

We owe this care to our families, this assiduity in correction and instruction....  But as for things that are said in company or among others, however false or absurd I may judge them to be, I never cut across by either word or sign.

Moreover, nothing vexes me so much in stupidity as the fact that it is better pleased with itself than areason can reasonably be.  It is unfortuante that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and trust yourself, and always sends you away discontented and diffident, whereas opinionativeness and heedlessness fill their hosts with rejoicing and assurance.  And besides, this arrogance of language and gaiety of countenance usually give them the victory in the eyes of the audience, which is generally weak and incapable of judging and discerning clearly where the real advantages lie.  Obstinacy and heat of opinion is the surest proof of stupidity.  Is there anything so certain, resolute, disdainful, contemplative, grave, and serious as an ass?

The Touch of Time

What happens when a family heirloom gets passed on to you?  In my case, it not only became part of my wardrobe, but connected me even more closely with a key event in our nation's history.

It Keeps on Ticking

One of the most famous advertising slogans is that of Timex watches.  The expression "it takes a licking and keeps on ticking" used to be everywhere, and although I would happily to attest to the accuracy of this blurb, it is a Hamilton watch from about 1908 that blew me away a few months ago when I received it from my mother, gave the stem a few twists, and listened as the mechanism happily ticked away the time.

At first, we did not know much about it, other than that it had been given to my mother's grandfather by his wife, had passed to one of his sons, and that his son had wanted me to have it.  After looking at its internal workings and hopping onto a Hamilton watch forum online, we discovered a bit more.

It is a Hamilton, grade 927, model 1, class 4 pocket watch.  It is a size 16s, 17 jewels timepiece, but what was of most importance to my mother and me was that it was manufactured around 1908, which means that at the earliest, my great-grandmother Della McClellan would have given it to her husband, Oatis McClellan, five years before his death in 1913.  Now, this article is not a family tree or the beginnings of my autobiography, but something of a bit more historical significance.

National Treasure

The 2004 movie National Treasure has grossed hundreds of millions of dollars with its adventure story centered around the Declaration of Independence, yet the real treasure for our nation is that document itself, along with our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and it turns out, my family has an intimate connection with them.

On December 13, 1952, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were moved from the Library of Congress to join the Bill of Rights at the National Archives, and Delmar McClellan, my great-uncle, was part of that historic moment.  He is the younger, dark-haired man in the following photographs and, along with Alvin Kremer, was responsible for preparing the documents for their transfer

Keeper of the Collections Alvin Kremer (left) and Assistant Keeper of the Collections Delmar McClellan (right) https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7873501

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/12167962

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/12167960

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/12167958

An entire album of pictures from that day can be found on Flickr, and a video with silent footage as well as audio with a speech from President Truman (starting 3:18) can be seen on YouTube.  Additional silent footage can be found at archive.org, and you can read an article on the event at the National Archives website.

What has this historic moment to do with a pocket watch?  Sometime between 1908 and 1913, Della McClellan gave that watch to her husband Oatis, and after he died, she gave it to one of her sons, Delmar McClellan, who would go on to play an important role in the moving our nation's most important documents.  He eventually gave the watch to his son, Denny, who then passed it on to me.  I wear the watch on special occasions, and now when I do, I will be even more keenly aware of the touch of time.

They Should Have Sent a Poet

Golf is a challenging game, but the perfectly hit shot, one that causes the ball to explode from the sweet spot of the club face, is one of the most satisfying and exhilarating of feelings.  No one needs to write one more piece about how challenging teaching is.  The internet is filled with such articles.  But when everything comes together in a day of stunning academic experience and student ability on display, that needs to be shared and celebrated.

To The Stars Through Antiquity

Apollo 1 Exhibit at Kennedy Space Center

Ad astra per aspera.  To the stars through difficulties.  The path to the stars has indeed been a difficult and a long one, perhaps longer than many realize, stretching back as it does to the age of classical antiquity.  We recently completed a unit in our Latin II classes that saw our high school students reading selections from Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero about space, along with parts of the first science fiction novel, True History, written by Lucian of Samosata in the second century A.D.  To get the full story on this unit, which saw students translating and discussing ancient works on outer space, being introduced to ancient technology through the Antikythera Mechanism and ancient mathematics through the calculation of the earth's circumference by Eratosthenes, and exploring the music of the spheres with NASA's discovery of the sound of black holes and the classical music of Gustav Holst, check out our short documentary.

One part of the unit about which I was particularly excited came at the end.  After three weeks of deep study in ancient readings on space, our students met a friend of mine via Zoom.  Neil Jenkins and I go back to first grade in our friendship, but I did not bring him in for us to discuss our fondness for '80s music and Miami Vice.  He holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Alabama and is an amateur astrophotographer, although you should not let the title "amateur" mislead you into thinking his work is second rate.  

IC 1805 The Heart Nebula in the Constellation Cassiopeia
Event Horizon Astrophotography (c) 2021

The Great Orion Nebula M42
Event Horizon Astrophotography (c) 2022

He talked with the students about quantum physics, laser physics, and astrophotography, along with how his Christian faith and work as a scientist fit perfectly together.  When students were asking for his email, asking me for copies of his slides, and staying after class to discuss further the wonders of space, I knew this had been a meaningful event.

Duces Discipuli Facti

As soon as the last bell of the day had rung, another small group of students came to the room for a leadership meeting about a Latin club event.  My intent was to let them handle everything, and I doubt I could have added much that afternoon anyway.  My mind and heart were already too full from the Zoom class with Dr. Jenkins.  As it turned out, I was not needed.  These student officers led with such efficiency they could have given a lesson to many adults.  They worked together, listened to each other's ideas, yet did not become stuck in the mire of indecision.  Just when I thought my heart could take no more of being impressed with students, I was overwhelmed by their display of leadership skills.  In Book 1 of the Aeneid, Vergil describes Queen Dido by saying, dux femina facti, the leader of the deed was a woman.  In this case, the leaders of the deed were students, and I could have offered nothing that would have made their work better.  On the drive home, I called my wife and more or less babbled.  I could not find the words to describe these extraordinary young people and was reminded of the a scene in Contact, the 1997 movie featuring Jodie Foster as Dr. Ellie Arroway, who takes a trip through a wormhole to another part of the universe.  Stupefied at what she sees, all she can say is that instead of a scientist, they should have sent a poet.

Life's Rich Pageant

For many people, the phrase "life's rich pageant" is familiar because it is the title of R.E.M.'s fourth album, although it has a much longer history.  I reach for that phrase often, for it captures perfectly what is my typical experience of the academic and educational life.  Have I known the sorts of stories that are driving so many people out of the education profession?  I have, but they have never been the norm.  When given the opportunity, young people will astonish with the depth of their thought and their ability to do something with it, and I saw that once again just the other day.

Update

Two weeks after publishing this post, I came across an amazing, new discovery.  The star catalogue of Hipparchus, long thought to have been lost, has been discovered, in part, as a palimpsest at an Egyptian monastery.  The following images are from the article about this amazing find in the Journal for the History of Astronomy.

Detail of f. 53v, beginning of the first column of undertext (Syriac overtext in dark brown, and faint traces of a few letters of the undertext).

Courtesy Museum of the Bible Collection. All rights reserved. © Museum of the Bible, 2021.

Detail of f. 53v (multispectral image, by the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library and the Lazarus Project of the University of Rochester processed by Keith T. Knox: the enhanced Greek undertext appears in red below the Syriac overtext in black).

Courtesy Museum of the Bible Collection. All rights reserved. © Museum of the Bible, 2021.

Detail of f. 53v (yellow tracings based on full set of multispectral images).

Courtesy Museum of the Bible Collection. All rights reserved. © Museum of the Bible, 2021.

An excellent article in Nature puts this amazing discovery into context.  As we continue to learn more about the ancient world, we also find new ways to combine modern technology with fields of study such as archaeology, linguistics, philology, science, and more.  Putting together a passion for classical studies, computer imaging, and astronomy, for example, can lead to an exciting career, and as the Roman playwright Terence once wrote, "Homo sum:  humani nil a me alienum puto."  "I am a human being:  I think nothing human alien to me."  (Heuton Timorumenos, 77)

To Construe or To Collaborate

When is it right to remove the training wheels from the bicycle and let a child ride freely?  What is the appropriate stage for students to stop working with paradigms and established formats and begin to create?  Parents and teachers alike wrestle with such questions, and most adults working with children tend to cling too long to the one or to rush the other, yet both are needed in anyone's development in any endeavor.

Guiding a Child's Gait

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, 1553-1592

I have often quoted from one of my favorite works, Montaigne's essay "On Education," in which he wrote, "[I]t is the achievement of a lofty and very strong soul to know how to come down to a childish gait and guide it.  I walk more firmly and surely uphill than down," (Donald Frame translation).  Among the reasons why it is such a difficult task "to come down to a childish gait" is that teachers have moved beyond it.  We are excited about the breadth and depth and all the richness of our subjects and cannot wait to get into the good stuff with our students.  What teacher who loves writing and is an author wants to spend time on the structure of the three paragraph essay?  What Latin teacher in love with the pyrotechnic rhetoric of Cicero and the poetry of Vergil, whom Tennyson described as "wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man," wants to stay in endless verb and noun drills?

One answer to this is to forgo such elementary work entirely.  Throw students straight into the deep end of the creative pool, some would say.  Yet any coach will tell you that athletes must be taught the fundamental movements and rules of the game before it makes sense to run complex plays during practice.  Part of what teachers are called to do is to restrain their own yearning to get into the deep material before their students are ready for it.  They must learn to walk firmly and surely downhill as well as uphill and not feel that they are the less for doing so.

Beyond The Charted Boundaries

And yet, students must be exposed to the deep, rich matters of their subjects to inspire them and give them a vision of where they are going, else the elementary work becomes even more drudgery as it seems to serve no purpose.  I was reminded of this recently when I watched the 1951 film The Browning Version, starring Michael Redgrave.  The entire film is available at archive.org, and it is more than worth the time to watch, but the scene that struck me and stayed with me long after the film had ended was the following.

In this scene, Andrew Crocker-Harris (Redgrave) is giving a tutorial to one of his Greek students, a boy named Taplow, who is translating the Agammemnon of Aeschylus.

Taplow:  Oh, Clytemnestra, we're surprised at...

Crocker-Harris:  We marvel at.

Taplow:  We marvel at thy tongue.  How bold thou art that you...

Crocker-Harris:  Thou.

Taplow:  Thou can...

Crocker-Harris:  Canst.

Taplow:  Canst boastfully speak...

Crocker-Harris:  Utter such a boastful speech.

Taplow:  Utter such a boastful speech over the bloody corpse of the husband you've just slain.

Crocker-Harris:  Taplow, I presume you are using a different text from mine.

Taplow:  No, sir.

Crocker-Harris:  That is strange, for the line as I read it reads "etis toin dep andri kompazeis logon."  However diligently I search, I can discover no "bloody," no "corpse," no "you have slain."  Simply "husband."

Taplow:  Yes, sir.  That's right.

Crocker-Harris:  Then why do you invent words that simply are not there?

Taplow:  Well, I thought they sounded better, sir.  More exciting.  After all, she did kill her husband.  She's just been revealed with his dead body weltering in gore.

Crocker-Harris:  I am delighted at this evidence, Taplow, in your interest in the rather more lurid aspects of dramaturgy, but I feel I must remind you that you are supposed to be construing Greek, not collaborating with Aeschylus.

Taplow:  Yes, but still, sir, translator's license, sir.  I didn't get anything wrong, and after all, it is a play, and not just a bit of Greek construe.

There it is.  To construe or to collaborate, that is the question:  whether 'tis nobler for teachers and students to suffer the necessary work of learning a craft or to take what has been learned to create.  Just as there are those who would move too fast to the more exciting projects of creation, so there are teachers who would linger too long in the stage of construal.  I addressed this at the end of an article I wrote years ago about a disputed passage in the textual tradition of Vergil's Aeneid.  Renowned Classics scholar G.P. Goold, who served as the chair of Classics departments at Harvard, Yale, and University College, London, over the course of his distinguished career had made a statement with which I profoundly disagreed.

"'An elementary teacher, to reach in due season the end of his curriculum, must every hour turn a Nelson eye to serious problems and refrain from pursuing truth beyond the charted boundaries of the textbook' (Goold, 115).  I would argue that the true magister can never be so bound, but must, along with the students, pursue the truth, no matter how anfractuous the path."

In the end, teachers must know what their students need, whether that be the acquisition of facts and basic skills or the development of creativity once those have been mastered.  Both are necessary for a student's complete education, and one should not be pursued longer than necessary, nor should the other be rushed before its time.

The Benefits of Formality and Pageantry

Funeral procession for Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II

In the middle of September in 2022, much of the world focused on the funeral rites of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, rites that brought formality and pageantry to center stage for many days.  As a Christian and an educator, I could not help considering formality and pageantry with regard to the life of faith and the life of learning and have begun discussing this with friends.  What follows are some early thoughts.

Both/And

Except in the areas of sport and entertainment, we in the 21st century United States seem generally opposed to any kind of formality and pageantry.  Perhaps it smacks too much of hierarchy, which in turn recalls images of oppression.  Yet the bland landscape of the lowest common denominator, while, perhaps, providing some corrective to the abuses of hierarchy, has led to its own, sad effects.  At this point in history, misuse and abuse of formality and pageantry hardly need to be described, nor do the benefits of level, egalitarian approaches to just about everything.  The former are simply accepted de facto as bad and the latter as good.  And yet, a garden hoe is a wonderful tool when it is used in planting vegetables.  It is horrible weapon when it is used in committing murder.  So it is with most things, most events, most systems, and most people.  Almost everything has its good and bad aspects.  In the course of this piece I want to examine the benefits of formality and pageantry and the less desirable consequences of the bland and the level.

The Text That Started It All

What follows is part of a text thread among some close friends and me.

Friend:  For what it’s worth, I wanted to share with you guys some thoughts I had while watching the Royals funeral yesterday. Typically, I’m totally not into any of that stuff. For the longest time, I ridiculed the monarchy, and questioned its relevance. Nevertheless, the pageantry and reverential respect I saw yesterday really moved me. My main impression was that God had somehow written royalty on our hearts. All throughout Scripture, from beginning to end, we see images of royalty. There are thrones, a Royal Court, crowns, scepters, etc. There are subjects who bow and lie prostrate before the King. God refers to us as “a royal priesthood.” In the Lord’s Prayer, there’s the line, “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.“ It seems to me that there are components in heaven that are duplicated here on earth. I believe the monarchy is one of those elements. I believe God has allowed it to continue even in our time as a reminder of our eventual home and eternal reality. It really moved me unexpectedly yesterday. The longing God has placed in our hearts is real and palpable in every way. May we be found worthy to be in the King’s Court!

Me: My brother, I heartily concur. In fact, those very thoughts had been going through my mind. I’m so glad you gave voice to them. And when I saw them returning her crown, scepter, and orb to the altar at St. George’s Chapel, I was struck by how that symbolized that all authority comes from God, just as Jesus said said to Pilate in John 19. That authority may exercised in accordance with or in opposition to His will, but it originates with Him. Thank you so much for saying this.

And, I would add, that the loss of such pageantry and majesty in our social and religious life has contributed to the results of that survey about evangelicals not believing Jesus is God. Yes, such pageantry can become empty of meaning and constricting of life, just as it did with the Israelites and has in many high church expressions through the ages. But swinging the pendulum to the far extreme of pole barn churches with everything sung and taught in the lowest common denominator has brought forth its own sad effects along with any restorative work it may have done to counteract the former.

Friend: Amen, brother. The days are dark and the time is short. This is the church’s last shot at impacting the world. Orthodoxy is dying. We need to stay connected and stand firm. Blessed to be doing it with you guys!

Pole Barns and Cathedrals

I wrote above that I would not rehash the negative consequences of formality and pageantry and the positive effects of the bland and the level, but so ingrained are they in the public mind and so quick are we to defend our positions, that I am led to acknowledge, once again, that I know all this.  I know the arguments, for example, against elaborate church architecture and in favor of multi-purpose worship spaces, and I would remind those who already are arming themselves for rebuttal by rehearsing those arguments that it is not necessary.  I know them.

What my friends and I were observing in our text thread is that there is something good, something salutary, something edifying in the architectural and artistic glories of a grand church.  Coupled with eloquent and poetic liturgies and rites, these glories in and of themselves teach something that is impossible, or at least quite difficult, to do in a bland, multi-purpose space, namely, the majesty of God and our relationship to it and Him.  A recent survey has revealed that in 2022, 43% of evangelical Christians do not believe in the divinity of Jesus.  It is not immediately clear what definition of "evangelical" the survey used, but any percentage of any group claiming to be Christian yet not acknowledging that Jesus is God is startling.  Neither my texting friends nor I would say that the sole reason for this is either the bland architecture, doctrinally shallow worship music, or less than robust biblical teaching and preaching of many churches, but combined, these have undoubtedly shaped how Christians understand and relate to their Lord.  Consider what is being said in the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and hymns such as "Holy, Holy, Holy," "The Church's One Foundation," and "O Worship the King."  Imagine those ideas being expressed in space designed to lift the heart and mind above the mortal coil and into the realms of the sublime.  Those steeped in such regular worship could certainly choose to reject Christ Jesus as God, but it would take a bit of effort.

Temple of Saint Sava, Belgrade, Serbia (photo credit:  Brad Mitchell)*

The Pink Floyd Effect

We don't need no education

We don't need no thought control

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teacher, leave them kids alone

Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

All in all it's just another brick in the wall

All in all you're just another brick in the wall

"Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" from the 1979 album The Wall by prog rock band Pink Floyd captures the driving force behind the lack of formality and pageantry in most schools today.  These are linked in the minds of many with rote, drill-and-kill methods that sucked the life from education more powerfully and completely than a black hole.  And yet, in an attempt to unleash the inspiration of Parnassus in our schools by doing away with such things and making student choice the order of the day, it is more often the case that Bedlam has been let out.  Bill Day, an award-winning teacher from Washington, D.C., discussed this in a podcast several years ago.  Routines and rituals are vitally important in a child's development and, if implemented well, need not be stifling and restrictive.

One of the first things visitors to our Latin classroom notice is the wall of bookshelves.  There are more than twelve hundred books in our room, and while all are available for anyone's use, they serve a function beyond research.  They, along with the various busts and works of art, send the quiet signal that this is a place of serious learning.  Certain rituals that start and end each class convey this as well, even as ebullient laughter is the sound most often heard within our walls.

In his 1983 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities titled "The Vindication of Tradition," Yale theologian Jaroslav Pelikan famously observed, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.  And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name."  Rich traditions with formality and pageantry can, when employed rightly, lead us beyond ourselves, which should be the goal of any act of worship or education.  Their absence too often leaves us in a bland, desolate landscape with little company other than the unholy trinity of me, myself, and I.

*My friend Brad Mitchell, credited above with the photograph of the Temple of Saint Sava in Belgrade, shared these pictures of from the Sinaia Monastery in Prahova County, Romania, as well.  Since they so beautifully complement the theme of this post, I wanted to included them.

Little Green Men From Greece?

A search for space aliens and antiquity will take you into some of the stranger parts of the Internet, but is the idea of intelligent life on another planet merely a staple of modern science fiction?  As it turns out, humans have been giving this some thought for more than 2,500 years.

Philosophy and Science (Fiction)

Lactantius, c250-c325

While preparing for one of the most exciting units of study I will have ever entered into with a high school class (MUCH more on this here), I ran across a quotation from Lactantius, the early Christian author who was an advisor to the Roman emperor Constantine at the time of his conversion to Christianity.  A quick search for the Latin text at Documenta Catholica Omnia, one of the greatest text repositories on the Internet, turned up the quotation and a bit more.

Xenophanes...dixit, intra concavum lunae sinum esse aliam terram et ibi aliud genus hominum simili modo vivere quo nos in hac terra vivimus.  Fuisse Seneca inter Stoicos ait, qui deliberaret utrumne Soli quoque suos populos daret.  Sed, credo, calor deterrebat ne tantam multitudinem periculo committeret.  (Institutiones Divinae III.23)

Xenophanes said that there was another earth inside the hollow bosom of the moon and that there another race of humans lived in a similar manner as we we live on this earth.  Seneca said that among the Stoics was one who deliberated whether he should also attribute to the Sun its own peoples.  But, I believe, the heat deterred him lest he commit such a great number of people to danger.  (Divine Institutes, III.23, translation mine)

It is amusing how Lactantius dismisses the unnamed Stoic's idea of a population on the Sun by suggesting he didn't want even in theory to condemn a race of people to such burning heat, but pause to consider that someone was even thinking about this in the time of Seneca, which was the first century A.D.  Even more striking is that Xenophanes, a Greek philosopher who lived from about 570 to about 478 B.C. kicked around a notion of another planet full of human beings existing inside the moon more than two thousand, five hundred years ago.  Lactantius scornfully disregarded that idea as well, but what is striking to me is how imaginative these ancient thinkers were.

Research Rabbit Trails

One of the things I love about academic life, whether lived out principally in elementary and secondary schools or at the undergraduate and graduate levels, is the discovery that comes from research rabbit trails.  While preparing for a new unit in a second-year Latin, high school Latin class, I chanced upon a quotation in a footnote that caught my attention.  That quotation led me to the original text of a Latin author from the third-to-fourth centuries, which in turn revealed the amazing imagination of a man named Xenophanes, who lived two and a half millennia and half a world from my own time and place.  As I have said countless times in talks and in writing and as has formed my Twitter background for many years, education is a shared journey of discovery.

Three Johns

 

Our Latin students at Guerin Catholic High School explore a verse of the Bible in Latin each week, and this week the first-year students took a look at John 1:14, which reads, "And the Word became flesh and lived among us."  It is a verse that, especially when take with other verses from the Fourth Gospel, speaks to the divinity of Jesus, and we discussed that earlier in the week, but today we examined another aspect.

After the students spent some time reading the verse aloud to practice their Latin pronunciation, I told them to think back to the book of Genesis and then asked, "In whose image are we made?"  They quickly answered, "God's," and I pointed out that this was a pretty big deal.  After all, God could have created donkeys and then said, "Let us create man in the image of the donkey."  And then I suggested that what John 1:14 has to say is an even bigger deal than that.

From there we took a look at the work of another John, the English poet John Donne (1572-1631).  I pulled up on our large screen Holy Sonnet XV, and we spent a few minutes with the second half of the poem.  You can read the full sonnet at the link above, the but the lines on which we focused were these.

And as a robb'd man, which by search doth find

His stolen stuff sold, must lose or buy it again,

The Sun of glory came down, and was slain,

Us whom He had made, and Satan stole, to unbind.

'Twas much, that man was made like God before,

But, that God should be made like man, much more.

I invited the students to turn to the faith section of their notebooks and to jot down their thoughts on what it means to them that God became one of us.  Often this will lead to a sharing of ideas, but this time I told them that their thoughts would remain their own.  This was to be a time of private reflection.

After they had taken their time to ponder, I told them a story, one that came from a third person named named John.  In Season 2, Episode 10 of The West Wing, a character named Leo McGarry, played by John Spencer, encourages a colleague by telling him the following parable.

This guy's walking down the street when he falls in a hole.  The walls are so steep he can't get out.  A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, "Hey, you! Can you help me out?"  The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole, and moves on.  Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, "Father, I'm down in this hole.  Can you help me out?"  The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole, and moves on.  Then a friend walks by.  "Hey, Joe, it's me!  Can you help me out?"  And the friend jumps in the hole.  Our guy says, "Are you stupid?  Now we're both down here."  The friend says, "Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out."

Before moving on with the grammatical lesson of the day, I suggested to the students that when they are overwhelmed in life, they should reach out to the One Who has been down here, with us, before.  He knows the way out.