on leaving the midwest

Our move from a little city to a big city is fast approaching. We’re not just changing towns; we’re changing regions. The people, cities, and landscape of the Midwest have nurtured me for most of my (brief) adult life … so I think some appreciative words are in order before I head “home” to the East Coast.

Wide-open spaces: (cue Dixie Chicks) The birds here stand out against the sky—there’s nothing to compete with their profiles. The robins love the tree beyond our balcony. But the hawks and crows I notice more often, circling and gliding over the interstate. Open sky means knowing where the sun is, and I watch its arc rise and fall with the seasons. At first, all this sky made me feel a bit insecure, and the land seemed so naked. For me, no hills or mountains made places seem like the “middle of nowhere”—even Chicago.

Honest, hard-working people: I know this sounds like a presidential campaign cliché (and boy, 2008 was a long year!) but in large part it’s true. People in the Midwest are friendly, and not just because they have to be. At my favorite little grocery, the high schoolers look me in the eye and say thank you after placing all my bags in the trunk. Both sides of my husband’s family hail from Iowa, and farming stories explain why hard work is still valued and expected.

A great public library: This is more specific, but the outstanding city public library is one of the things I appreciate most about where we live. It means free movie rentals on Friday nights, copies of new nonfiction, and a quiet place to spend a little time in between errands. For my friends who are moms, it’s a common outing. The playground and coffee shop next door make for a trifecta of fantastic gathering spaces. The community really treasures its library, and it shows. I’ll miss it!

There are many more specific things I love here: our active little church, every friend, the squash-and-peppers farmers market, conversations in coffeehouses, raindrops on roses...

tocqueville part two: the culture of disbelief

The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion, by Stephen L. Carter, is on my reading list—ever since I found it for $3 at our public library’s discarded-books-store. (Of course a book like this ends up in the dustbin in Iowa City.) It was published in 1993, but somehow I suspect it is still relevant today (like Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind).

Carter won a prestigious award for the book, and this excerpt is worth noting … and a good follow up to Michelle’s comment on the tocqueville post.

"In our sensible zeal to keep religion from dominating our politics, we have created a political and legal culture that presses the religiously faithful to be other than themselves, to act publicly, and sometimes privately as well, as though their faith does not matter to them."

(I know, I know, I should read books before commenting on them!)

is food the new sex?

I read a couple of interesting articles recently that discuss the increasingly strict obsession we have with what we do and do not eat. As a farmers-market-loving foodie, I’m wary of knee-jerk conservative reactions against “liberal elitist granola types” because they tend to be pretty pejorative—about both liberals and their granola. But the idea that food restrictions are taking the place of sexual mores is worth noting.

Chuck Colson wrote a brief column on the issue, and referenced a lengthier article by Mary Eberstadt. She summarizes the issue well:

“Just as the food of today often attracts a level of metaphysical attentiveness suggestive of the sex of yesterday, so does food today seem attended by a similarly evocative — and proliferating — number of verboten signs. The opprobrium reserved for perceived ‘violations’ of what one ‘ought’ to do has migrated, in some cases fully, from one to the other.”

Is this true? Yes, for many people. She also notes that these “verboten signs” do not just apply to personal choice; they are meant to apply in a more universal sense. In this vein, she adds, “Moreover, this reversal between sex and food appears firmer the more passionately one clings to either pole.” I don’t agree with that statement—my “crunchy con” friends and I are testament that you can uphold traditional morals AND pay attention to what you eat. But all values don’t hold the same weight!

Colson picks up on every person’s intrinsic need for a moral code:

“… as my former colleague Jim Tonkowich notes, ‘For all our relativistic talk’ about encouraging people to make their own moral choices, ‘we cannot get away from an inner sense of right and wrong and the desire to codify [it].’

Jim is right. As the apostle Paul put it, God’s law is written on our hearts. We can deceive ourselves into believing it doesn’t exist, but when we do, we find our God-given sense of morality breaking out in other forms. In this case, in food—though it would be better the other way around.”

I love enjoying the delicious food God gave us to eat (so many choices!), and I’m still trying to sort out which “food values” should transcend personal choice and impact the public. I wish these articles had discussed this more thoroughly ... Please help me think through this!

tocqueville today

I received a copy of Democracy in America during high school (as well as many a PoliSci lecture), and commentary referencing Tocqueville’s 19^th-century observations always piques my interest. This First Things article had a succinct description of what Tocqueville observed about religion’s role in the public square:

“Tocqueville calls religion “the first of their political institutions”—despite the fact that religion “never mixes directly in the government of society,” it “singularly facilitates their use of [freedom]” by making women and men moral.”

In large segments of the public square today, orthodox religion is seen as actually making men and women amoral and backward (there’s nothing worse than being called “traditional”). Morality is instead defined narrowly—and somewhat absolutely—by a set of politically-correct views. (“Politically-correct” is such a tired phrase, but I can’t think of how else to describe peer-pressured, media-sponsored public morality.)

“Separation of church and state” is quickly coming to mean “separation of religious-based morality and the public square.” In the process, we are losing our ability to “facilitate the use of our freedom” because politically-correct morality tells us we can define our own boundaries. But how are we to do so collectively, if each person’s views are equally valid? And how do we tackle societal ills, if we do not address moral choices? (see: “binge drinking, University of [X]”) Tocqueville realized how our country’s religious foundation—not an official church—enabled its citizens to use individual freedom constructively for the common good.

There’s so much more in this article—read the whole thing. (There’s a great section on what Tocqueville meant when he said American women were superior their European counterparts.)

on writing on trends

Do you ever read something and say aloud, “Only in America?” It’s one of my favorite phrases (thanks Mom), and I muttered it after reading about this yoga trend in The New York Times “Style” section. I love this part of the paper; it so perfectly encapsulates a certain kind of city lifestyle by noting various “trends” which do not occur anywhere else. As I read, I like to pretend it’s really an Onion-esque commentary on the faux-urbane. But the articles are actually serious.

After I read that article, I asked my husband: “Guess what you’ll only see in America?” Without missing a beat he said, “dog yoga.”

good friday

Justin Taylor has posted a prayer for today from “The Valley of Vision.”

Quiet, contemplative posts like these remind me to pause, but it’s hard to respond appropriately to the text when I’m reading it on a computer. How do I pray off a blog post? Maybe I should go read the hard copy …

once upon a time in the woods

Late October and early April days often seem the same in Iowa. With the green gone—or not quite back—the sun and the wind break all the way through barren limbs and it smells like dirt. The slanted light and earthiness remind me of similar days in New England. I miss the woods, and I miss the stone walls.

My sister and brother and I explored the walls all around our old, old house. We marched on top of the sturdier segments but mostly scrambled over the tired, misshapen, now-meaningless markers. We built forts around them, conquered them. The ants and beetles found refuge, and we found the edges of our wooded world.