Book of Love

Family fun: We write our own book.

My middle child turned six years old this week. She's a very bright and sweet girl, self-assured and quiet. Like me, she's a homebody and an introvert. I have looked  closely at her this week. Her growing up fills me with more emotion than I think I can handle.

I get nearly as emotional concerning my two other children, but our relationships are different. The older girl is, by virtue of being first-born, the one whose growing up is most comfortable for me. As she grows, so do I: it's like we are on an adventure together. My boy, now four, is a wonder because of his autism. Although he's the baby of the family, I think of him as a little man and see his growth as just filling into what I know he will be.

Then there's the wife. She and I are getting older. We feel middle age coming on. Our lives are not monotonous or boring, but rather stable and muted. This is good. In her, I still see the girl who used to link arms with me when we walk, the girl who got a certain twinkle in her eye whenever she saw a baby. She's come a long way in managing her depression and setting herself up for a transition from stay-at-home mom to working woman. She's as beautiful as ever.

I've become all meh on religion. There's too much God and Jesus stuff in the house, but I have more important matters to think about than the biblical blah-blah. I know everyone in the family but me is a believer and a Christian, but I won't be surprised if the religiosity slowly tones down to nothing in the coming years. My presence in the house must pose questions everyone has either to ignore or face:

• Why isn't there any evidence in favor of God's existence?
• Why don't facts about the world/universe lend themselves to God as an explanation?
• Why is there no good evidence of miracles?
• Why is there no good evidence of the extraordinary events concerning Jesus, such as his birth, miracles, and resurrection?
• Why do the so-called proofs of God's existence and the apologies for Jewish and Christian doctrines fail to complete what ought to be clear slam-dunks?

Besides, all the "God loves you" and "Jesus wants you to bleh" stuff butts up against the reality of Christian doctrine: You are a sinner who better beg for forgiveness. The more polite expression of the doctrine is that humanity is fallen and needs grace to be reconciled, but my formulation is no less accurate and may be the truer representation of attitude.

In short, I have the luxury of being meh about religion. Eventually, everyone will have a WTF moment on this. If anyone cares to share the WTF with me, I'll be ready to listen.

Why I Love Jazz and Why You Should Too

The first jazz album I really liked was Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. "Blue Rondo a la Turk," the opening number, sold me. It was exciting, playful, shifting, artsy, adventurous, smart, swinging, and crisp. Like the album, that tune was a picture in sound: group sound, yet individual sound, too.

The balance of group and individual, of vision and sound, is what makes jazz special. The group plays together, yet each one has a unique, foundational role. Each musician listens to the others, responds to them and lifts them. Any one may also have a turn (or more) to step out as an individual and explore the boundaries of song, sound, and group cohesion.

As a listener, I traveled these boundaries with Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Archie Shepp, Evan Parker, and other innovators of the avant garde and free jazz movements. Their music was not always my favorite, but I heard beauty there. I heard effort. I heard space. I heard myself waiting for the next step.

When I was a teenager, I gravitated to the big, classical guys: Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Errol Garner, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum, Dexter Gordon. Their cassette tapes would go into my alarm clock, and they would play me to sleep. To me, theirs was Kerouac's night music, the music for those of us who wanted more...more night.

Of all, the piano players were my favorites. I collected a ton of Keith Jarrett, whose solo concert album from Bremen and Lausanne changed me profoundly. How a man walked out and played and went on the way Jarrett did was amazing. So many of the pianists also moved me, and they continue to do so: Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Bobo Stenson, Marilyn Crispell, Irene Schweitzer, Paul Bley, Horace Silver, Vijay Iyer, Esbjorn Svensson, Ethan Iverson, Michel Petrucciani, Marcin Wasilewski, Hiromi, Brad Mehldau, and many others. All of these musicians are superb alone, yet they also mesh in group contexts.

Jazz, to me, has never been about sitting to receive a work of art delivered by musicians. Instead, it is about witnessing and maybe even being part of a process. In ensemble settings, the players communicate with one another. They don't just play the number or present it. They don't just imitate the song as it is on an album. They don't give a packaged product. No, jazz musicians build a song. They pass it amongst themselves like a beach ball in the bleachers, but seriously enough. They dialogue. They converse. They elaborate. They customize.

I love jazz because nothing else is so creative and diverse. I love jazz because it is what it is, and it lets me be what I am. Other music, which I love too, is not the same as jazz. Rock is image, ideology, and performance. Classical is architecture. Blues is real. Hip Hop is a relentless beat that can become anything from a heart to a gun to a sob to a confrontation. Disco is escape. Funk is wild and fun. Folk is private.

But jazz is democratic. It's not a spectator sport for either the player or the listener. Indeed, the listener is a player in a way that simply is not so for other musics. In my opinion.

I love jazz for the democracy, for the opinions it offers, and for opinions like mine it allows. If you don't love jazz, you don't love participation.

But if you want to hear and be heard, you must love jazz.

(For Eric Jackson, whose weeknight radio program on WGBH Boston has recently been scaled back.)

Happy Anniversary, Baby

I am married 12 years today. A nice thing it is to be married, but especially to my wife. She has progressed so much in managing her depression. I enjoy seeing her be the funny, easygoing, loving person she naturally is.

Some gifts for her. First, a song. The Blood, Sweat and Tears version of "You've Made Me So Very Happy":

Next, a DiNozzo:

Happy anniversary, baby.

Bone Stories

Dem bones.

My oldest daughter is nine years old. When she was a toddler, she became fascinated that people's bones could break. In fact, she was nervous about it and wanted to know how people broke bones and what it was like.

To answer her anxiety, I began telling what we have come to call "bone stories," bedtime tales about different bones I broke when I was younger. There are four stories, one for each bone I've broken. When I was seven, I broke my left arm, near my elbow. At 12, I broke my collarbone playing a neighborhood game called "bike tag." I broke a bone in my hand when I was 15. Finally, at age 20, I broke my nose.

I told my girl bone stories to make her laugh. I hoped she would realize it wasn't easy to break a bone. Something extreme and sudden had to happen, often something dumb. I wanted her to know that even though breaking a bone hurt, it wasn't totally unbearable. Other hurts are far worse.

I've been telling bone stories for maybe five years. At one point, the stories were a nightly bedtime ritual. I now have two daughters, and they both like me to tell the stories to them. Of course, the stories bore me now, so I occasionally jazz them up. I'll go into cartoonish detail about how fast I was running, or how many times I somersaulted in the air, or how many tackles I evaded. The stories get ever more outlandish. I like to watch the girls' faces in their bunk beds as I hop around or whirl my hands to describe the moments leading up to the fracture.

My son, who at four years old already has broken his arm, does not hear bone stories at night. Instead, he and I wrestle in his bedroom. Yet, the same principle is involved from wrestling to bone stories: I want the kids to remember the feeling of having fun with me, the feeling of being loved by me. The wrestling and bone stories are unique gifts. I'm the only one in the world who understands the way my boy likes to wrestle. I'm the only daddy with the special stories that involve their uncles and their grandparents.

I cherish the feeling of having unique gifts to pass along to my kids again and again. I'm not always in the mood to wrestle or to tell a bone story. I usually go on despite my mood because I understand the time for gift-giving is finite--that is, the kids will grow up soon enough and not want either to wrestle or to hear my stories--and I believe the offices of love make gift-giving my responsibility. In other words, these kinds of interactions with the kids are part of my obligation as a loving parent.

My wish is that these gifts, my gifts, will be appreciated in the lasting memories of my children. A poem like Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" expresses something like what I hope for:

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

I've taught the poem for many years, and I confess it's a personal favorite. Some students mistakenly interpret the poem to be about an abusive, alcoholic father. But the battered knuckle of the father is from his day-labor, as is the dirt-caked palm. There is some violence in the poem, falling pans and scraped ears, yet these are inadvertent. At the same time, I know a parent's love can be "violent"--by which I mean not aggressive or destructive but rather messy and unstable: we parents struggle to hold ourselves and our lives together while also caring for the children. Sometimes we can't hold on or we hold on too tightly.

The poem's final image, the sleepy boy who doesn't want to let go, tells everything: the boy holds his father against bedtime, against sleepiness, against growing up, against the inevitable loss of the father to death.

The poem's speaker remembers that he wanted to remain with his father, that he wanted his father to stay. I want my kids to remember that for me. And I want them to know that I would stay if I could.

The Suffering Spouse: A Story of Religious Melodrama

Woe is me! How much I suffer!

I consider myself a "New Atheist" because when I assess the effects of mainstream religious beliefs on the world, religion more often than not appears to be harmful.

The harm shows not only in criminals like the pope or in the violence of religiously motivated groups, but also at a very basic, everyday level. At Spiritually Unequal Marriage, a website for Christians married to "non-believers," a woman writes an open letter to the community:

I remember when I came across your site. I was so thankful that I was not alone! I think the most powerful thing that you and Dineen [i.e., Lynn and Dineen, the site owners] have done lately is to post honestly and transparently. Women in these marriages WANT to have hope but they also don't want to necessarily hear that others in "unequal" marriages are thriving and joyful etc. That may sound strange but for the most part unequal marriages suffer, greatly.

This woman wants to be part of a community...of suffering! She will hear nothing of couples happy and satisfied in "unequal" marriages but prefers to dwell in sadness and difficulty.

As the woman continues, see how religious beliefs give her life a context with a narrative based on war/struggle and characters such as the devil:

And truthfully if the marriage is unequal the home has a constant open doorway for the devil. He is always welcome and WE must do battle continually. We may get "breaks” the fog may lift to some degree but the battle is continual. For those of us in marriages where there are serious addictions the battles are that much more intense. The need to cling to the Lord is that much more necessary. I think your honesty lately is revealing more Truth than ever. Because the truth is, we may live our entire lives with our spouse and they may never be saved. The hardest thing to grasp in these relationships is that it is not God's WILL that ALL be saved. It is His desire and He woos and calls people to Himself but He gives them the free will to love Him in return.

This poor woman imagines herself a solitary warrior in her own home. She mentions "addictions," so perhaps she or a loved one (likely) has substance issues. True enough, plenty of people never shake their addictions. More than anything, this woman seems trying to cope with the uncertainty of the addict. Her reality is an allegory of the religious: one may not be saved from addiction as one may not be saved religiously. The final result is beyond her ken and control, even beyond--to some extent--her loved one's control. The woman invokes God because she wants SOMEONE to be in control. The idea of God covers over the unpleasant scenario of no one having intelligent governance over her affairs.

Yet, the idea of SOMEONE being ultimately in charge, even if that someone is God, does not comfort the woman. It costs her to feel part of a purposeful universe, and that cost is separation from her loved one:

This is so difficult for us who have loved ones who are unsaved. At times, I find myself with a lump in my throat, my spirit crying out, and pain that goes deep beyond description, as I watch my loved ones walk further and further away from the Lord. Yet, at other times, there is great peace and there is a sweet surrender. It is then that I realize the peace that Christ had. He mourned those who are lost but pressed forward into God's will, trusting the entire world to God's sovereign care. Jesus prayed that God would "make another way" but prayed nevertheless, that God's WILL be done. God's will called for Christ to die. This side of the Cross we don't argue with God's decision. On the side of the Cross where Jesus' mother Mary kneeled God probably seemed to be failing His people in more ways than they could imagine. But, He knows what He's doing. We must remember that Jesus said . . .Matthew 7:13-14:

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

My great peace has not come from giving up hope.
I cling to the Promises and I declare:

"But I will keep on hoping for your help; I will praise you more and more"
Psalm 71:14

In each successive paragraph, the woman toggles between grief and sad resignation. True, the notion of God keeps her from falling into an emotional abyss. However, she would do much better to discard the idea of God altogether.

God and Bible quotes give her consolation, but the potential for happiness lies outside of God and the Bible. If she were not so preoccupied with the "spiritual warfare" scenario, she would have no worry of the saved/unsaved problem. This problem would not exist. She would own her life and her life choices. She would understand that her decisions and actions would be able to help her feel better about her life. Although she would never be able to control her loved one's addictions or know if he would re-lapse, she would be able to adopt a proper "we'll deal with it if it comes up" attitude.To ditch God would be to claim her life in the present.

For this reason, I find that atheism better allows one to compartmentalize. In contrast, religion encourages an awful combination of ceaseless naval gazing and self-flagellation. This woman seems driven to see and open her own wounds:

I pray continually for the salvation of my husband and my loved ones but my hope is not in that outcome. If I hope in that I will find myself disappointed. But if I hope in God, trusting that HE knows best even if that means that He must allow some of my loved ones to turn away from Him then, I will not be disappointed. Just as Jesus' Disciples were not disappointed at the resurrection! So, I guess to make a LONG email short, haha. I just think that the more you share your struggles, the more power you will see in your ministry. God will not force ANYONE to love Him. If He did then the love He offers would not be love at all. You can't FORCE someone to love you. Therefore, each person may choose. Though it is difficult for saved spouses to watch, their unsaved spouse may continue to drift back and forth. It is the power of God moving. Yet, in the end it is the decision of their heart and yes, God allows it. Because of His great love.

Those who have engaged in any sort of discussion with religious people know the familiar fallback, "you must freely choose to love (or fear or submit to) God/Jesus." The fallback, again, says more about the woman's fear and need to cope.

Indeed, the woman says almost nothing of substance about her loved one. In the end, her message has nothing to do with her loved one or God/Jesus. It's all about her and her oh-so-valiant struggle to fight the devil. It's about her telling us to look at her and admire her being tied to the train tracks.

She's like the lyric from the Offspring's great song, "Self Esteem":

The more you suffer,
The more it shows you really care.

And this is where I have a real problem with this woman's outlook and the religious context from which she draws. All of her "suffering" is self-inflicted and totally unnecessary. Any moment she really wanted to, she could remove herself from her marriage and just get along with her life. She could, and she'd probably be happier. Look, I take marriage and divorce very seriously, but when the two people in the marriage are not happy they should separate.

It takes more than love to make a happy marriage. It takes attitude, communication, effort, flexibility, giving, reflection, teamwork, and more. In a happy marriage, no one is "suffering" because of the other partner. On a personal level, there is no freaking way I would ever want or allow my wife to suffer because of me--and I'm sure she feels the same way. We didn't get married to be sources of suffering to each other; we married to be constant sources of comfort, encouragement, and support. For this reason, marriage partners do not need to share the same religious beliefs any more than they need to support the same political candidates or parties.

But if your beliefs or your politics cause you pain if your spouse isn't in the same camp, then you need to re-assess those beliefs and politics. And if those beliefs and politics turn out to be more important to you than your spouse, then break away from the relationship. I doubt your spouse wants to be a pre-text for your suffering.

New Atheism looks at some types of religious narrative--such as that of a world engulfed in spiritual conflict--and religious characters--such as the devil--and argues that these are not only ungrounded but poisonous. The woman who wrote the email I've examined here is one case, but notice all the assent and agreement she gets in the comments section. Instead of advising the woman to chill out and then do something productive for herself, the comments are all of a "me too" variety (although there are some disagreements on bits).

If suffering is avoidable, it should be avoided. If happiness is attainable, it should be attained. These statements seem commonsensical, but in practice we often act against common sense.

Open Letter to the Spiritually Unequal/Unequally Yoked Communities

Dear Christian married to a non-Christian, agnostic, or atheist:

I'm writing this letter to try and explain what's going on with us, that is, with those of us who don't share your passion and devotion for Christianity. I can draw only upon my specific experience and attitudes, but I hope to shed light on what many of us actually think and how we all can move forward together...happily.

The first thing you should know is that, yes, we are hostile to religion, and Christianity in particular. One reason for this is your immersion in Christianity tells us you want more than us and more than our relationship. Your adoption of Christianity and injection of it into every facet of your life seems a clear message that our love is not enough. We don't make you happy, in other words. Our marriage doesn't fulfill you.

And there's an asymmetry here: we love you, just you. We're fine with only you. We don't need to love God or to love Jesus in order to love you. We don't need anything to enhance our love for you. Yet you need help to love us. You need strength to be with us. Now, you can talk about how much better your love for us is because you've found Jesus, but we know that we have become second place. Frankly, we don't get why this should be so. We didn't marry you to be second place in your life.

We're also hostile to Christianity because, honestly, you can be rather oppressive with it. Your declaration of KNOWING (in all caps) that God is real and Jesus died for your sins is made too confidently. The truth is you feel strongly, not that you know.

You believe. You really, really believe. But belief doesn't make facts. Every time you talk about what God really wants and what Jesus's true message is, we think you are acting arrogant and unfair. If God is who you say he is, then you cannot know his desires or will. His desires and will are beyond your ability to fathom. And if Jesus is who you say he is, then his message really could have been made more clearly. Surely, one part of the triune God could have made it so that his very important message was understood by all people in the way he intended. Yet, Christianity is fractured into tens of thousands of denominations, each claiming to have the authoritative reading of Jesus.

So yeah, we're a bit hostile because we feel hurt and we feel attacked.

What's more, you don't seem to treat our view seriously. You pray for us to find God or to have our hearts turned, which is insulting. You don't accept our non-religiousness, yet you demand that we accept your religiousness. You don't grant that skepticism of Christianity is reasonable and legitimate. You are as hostile toward our skepticism, maybe more so, as we are toward your Christianity.

We need you to accept and understand our skepticism as being our idea, as belonging to us. It's not the influence of the evil one. It's not our vanity or a desire to worship ourselves. It's not running away from a truth in our hearts. It's not rebellion, immorality, or parroting atheist blogs. It's what we actually think, and it's what we have learned after a long period of trying to understand these topics. We have read the Bible, and we know what it says. We understand the Bible no less than you do, and to us it appears to be a man-made book.

Please, understand that we are skeptical because we have studied and considered the relevant matters seriously, and we think atheism is probably correct. Please, understand that it's possible to know the Bible as you do and still conclude that Christianity probably isn't true.

If you can understand this, then we can certainly talk about religion without attacking each other. We can do other things, too. You can ask us to come with you to church as your companion. And we hope you will be willing to take some Sundays "off" and do things together with us.

We understand that your religion is important to you. We want to support you, and we want to be part of things that make you happy. We also want you to support us and to be part of things that make us happy. We're sorry that we don't agree with each other about religion. Maybe our lives would be a little happier or a little easier if we both believed exactly the same thing in exactly the same degree. Maybe not.

We love you, and the life we have with you. We want to spend the time making life better and better. Our differing views of religion don't have to be a cancer in our marriage. We already have differences: we like different activities, different foods, different movies, different political candidates, and so on.

Let's not just co-exist with different religious views. Let's flourish. We'll enjoy how happy your religious activities make you, and you can enjoy how happy our skeptical and non-religious activities make us. We can both embrace the fact of our difference.

Yes, we are still growing. Our views are never static and final. Who knows how our minds will change and grow? But let's agree not to try to change each other. Let's agree not even to want that. Let's agree to enjoy the people we are now, the people who are married and building something unique together.

Love,

Your non-Christian, agnostic, or atheist spouses

I Do Not Fear the Time

My mother and father are married 47 years today.

In their honor, and in honor of the occasion, I have two mournful yet appropriate songs for them. This is, of course, a day to celebrate and be extremely joyful--partly because we know that it won't last forever. And so the celebration and joy includes mourning over the sweet receding past and the inevitable parting yet to come.

Here's a beautiful song written by Sandy Denny.

And here's a lovely one by Richard and Linda Thompson.

Moment of Silence

The Eagle Nebula Messier 16 (M16), a region of active star formation situated in Serpens Cauda. The starforming nebula, a giant cloud of interstellar gas and dust, has already created a considerable cluster of young stars.

Beautiful Boy

Darling, darling, darling.

My 3-year-old son is sweet, lovable, and autistic. He can be hard to relate to and difficult to raise--more so for my wife, who is home with him while I'm away at the office--but he is a light in my life. More than anything, I want him to grow up safe and happy. There are moments when I wonder if it will be possible.

Veteran journalist Robert MacNeill delivers a heartbreaking report on his autistic grandson. The piece shows very well that autism affects not only children but entire families. Even in "mild" cases such as my son's, autism can be devastating. And I am only beginning to realize this.

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

Perhaps the most devastating realization of all is that "it will never get easier." My son and our family will always have to cope with and manage his autism.

Ah, but it really is all right. We'll not only deal but flourish. We'll just have to be patient, as Lennon sings.

Yet, I must make one more confession. Much of my son's behavior I see in myself. Perhaps I am only indulging in natural self-centeredness, the kind where we blithely assume that others see and feel things as we do. Yet I have always been a person of routine, sometimes rigid routine. I have never been one for socializing or easy with eye contact. Much of my life is internal--indeed, I blog partly to express this internal life! I am fascinated with transformations and little things much as my son enjoys watching his toy cars roll.

My son is making progress. He goes to a special pre-school and seems to enjoy it. He is surrounded by experts and family who love him. We are all learning to care for him and for ourselves. And we are all hopeful about a future that we know will have many rough patches but also a curious charm and intrigue that we would be hard pressed to trade.

Wednesday Comedy: What the World Needs Now

Yeah, baby! Let's help the people who are helping the people in Japan.

The situation in Japan remains grim. Millions of people desperately need food, water, shelter, and other aid. Please give what you can to the organizations you trust will bring relief.

But if you want something in the line of funny, here's Mike Myers:

Who Knows What's Next?

Images of Sendai, Japan, from before (left) and after the quake and tsunami.   AFP Photo/ GeoEye

The ongoing crisis in Japan is hardly fathomable. No words. I must, I must, turn to music.

And this.

I send love, good thoughts, as much money as I can, and perhaps a greater sense of urgency to help save our planet.

For Becky: Poems of War, Peace, Women, and Power by Suheir Hammad

La-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la....

Nothin' wrong with a little love on Valentine's Day.

But there's love, and life, and culture, and politics. They are all wrapped up together. Below, Suheir Hammad gives an interesting performance of two poems that trace this interrelatedness and show how love can be much deeper than the paternalistic sentimentalism that our culture usually vaunts as the romantic ideal.

To me, Hammad's performance exceeds the poems themselves, yet her articulation is strong and engaging. Her message is one of self-determining power.

More power to you, my spouse and partner. We've got a good love. La-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la, La-la-la-laaaah.

Autistic Son, Artistic Daughter

Spring 2003: Enjoying the time with my oldest girl.

I had a strange and wonderful weekend. It began on Friday afternoon, when I learned from my wife that the doctors at Children's Hospital in Boston had diagnosed our son as autistic.

I'm still reeling from this pronouncement because I hadn't expected it. My wife and I knew our son had some language delays and rigid behaviors. We understood that he was certainly on that autism spectrum. But we never thought he would be diagnosed as actual autistic. His intellectual, social, and behavioral patterns have always seemed just slightly away from where we thought they should be. And, thanks to Early Intervention, he has made great progress in the past year. So, we were surprised.

My son is now three years old. His birthday is today. I got to spend lots of one-on-one time with him yesterday, and I watched him play at his auntie's house this evening. He's a very sweet kid. He's funny and happy and adventurous. I worry about not parenting him right, about not pushing when I should or pushing too much when I should back off. But I believe in him, and I think he'll be able to continue his growth this year. And while I would never wish for anyone to be autistic, I am glad that my son is who he is. Autistic or not, it doesn't change how I feel about him. I know we all have a long and difficult road in front of us. I completely embrace the opportunity to travel it with my son, my wife, and our family.

My oldest girl turned eight on Saturday, that is, yesterday. She's a lot like my son: intense, energetic, occasionally acting inappropriately in social settings. She's become a big reader. She reads in bed every night. My wife and I worry that she perhaps has some autism spectrum disorder that's been overlooked. My son's condition is a bit more obvious and stereotypical, but perhaps in girls the signs present differently because of different social pressures and biological tendencies.

Although I won't be surprised if my daughter is confirmed to be along the autism spectrum more than most average people, I suspect that the truth is my daughter already wants more out of her life than we can give her at home. She wants attention, she wants to sing and dance, she wants to direct and lead. She has plans and schemes, and her family can't really help her realize them. She is essentially an artist struggling to find her medium and make her style. At some point in her journey, she'll have to leave her family behind.

I have an autistic son and an artistic daughter. It's a wonder, all right. It's a wonder. Hence, the title of this post.

My Shalom Bayis: A Birthday Wish

In Judaism, Shalom Bayis signifies an ideal in family life encompassing the spousal relationship and general tranquility in the home. In practical terms, the ideal is realized both through kind words and avoidance of harsh speech: more of the first, less of the second.

What I want most of all for my birthday--I am 41 years old today--is Shalom Bayis. This is my pet ideal for 2011. I want to to make more shalom, "peace," in my home and in my sphere of influence, my neighborhood, my work, my blogosphere, and so on. My birthday wish, therefore, is to practice and teach the peaceful arts better than I have before.

Unfortunately, Shalom Bayis also endorses a patriarchal ideal in traditional Judaism. The husband is always and only head of the home. The wife, although essential and esteemed, is always secondary. Husband and wife are partners and obligated to each other, but their roles and public positioning are distinct and never coequal.

For this reason, I hereby co-opt Shalom Bayis for my own sensibilities and will implement it in my own way. Neither Judaism nor Yiddishkeit stands above me (or below me) as an authority on Shalom Bayis. I say thank you very much for the concept, and I will now employ it as I see fit.

And, yes, this is a peaceful stance. I am genuinely grateful for the concept of Shalom Bayis. It focuses my mind on what a peaceful home might really be, on what makes peace, and on what I consider home. But Shalom Bayis is my responsibility and my work. It doesn't belong to Judaism or to Jews. It belongs to me, and so I have lots of work to do and little time to worry about how others define their world.

Fortunately, I already have much peace in my life and in my home especially. My lesson of the past year, however, is the realization that I can create peace. I can make more than I have done before.

• I can use the language of action to show my love and gratitude for my family.
• I can use my words wisely by speaking when I should and remaining silent when speech is unnecessary.
• I can work harder and longer.
• I can eat less and I can eat healthier.
• I can exercise more frequently.
• I can walk mindfully and purposefully.
• I can cook meals for the family.
• I can visit friends and family.
• I can laugh more and remember happiness.
• I can become slower to anger.
• I can reduce spending.
• I can read and write more, and with greater diversity.
• I can share new experiences.

Peace is one more lesson in a life that certainly does get better and better.

Permissive Versus Demanding Parenting

Amy Tan, whose story "Two Kinds" fictionalizes Chinese parenting and children who experience it.

Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, writes in the Wall Street Journal that high demands and an emphasis on academic achievement produce happy and successful children in the long run. Chinese parenting, she says, exemplifies this demanding model, which is contrasted with the more nurturing and permissive Western style of parenting:

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.

At the level of parent-child interaction, the contrast in Chinese and Western parenting styles is remarkable:

The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "Hey fatty—lose some weight." By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image. (I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage.) Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you." By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out.

Chua advises Western style parents to assume their children are strong and behave accordingly, rather than worrying about the self-esteem of the kids:

Western parents worry a lot about their children's self-esteem. But as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't.

She also says that "Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. The reason for this is a little unclear, but it's probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children." Finally, she observes that

Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences. That's why Chinese daughters can't have boyfriends in high school and why Chinese kids can't go to sleepaway camp. It's also why no Chinese kid would ever dare say to their mother, "I got a part in the school play! I'm Villager Number Six. I'll have to stay after school for rehearsal every day from 3:00 to 7:00, and I'll also need a ride on weekends." God help any Chinese kid who tried that one.

Chua sums up the difference as one of values:

Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.

Chua does not hide that she feels Western parenting is kinder but ultimately allows children to fail as adults. Western parenting leaves children vulnerable and bereft in a brutal world.

Of course, not everyone agrees that Chinese style parenting is as successful and superior as Chua claims. At The Last Psychiatrist, the writer criticizes Chua confusing awesome for crazy:

You/she'll say that the Chinese discipline is what makes the kids successful, but that's silly.  Given that her husband is a Jewish American equivalent to her Chinese Americanness, why isn't their daughters' successes the result of Jewish fathering? Chua would say that she's the one who made her practice, but she's at work all day just like he is, right? I get that she yells more, ok, mission accomplished, but as a technical matter she's not there all the time, the kids have to be self-motivated, and that self-motivation came not just from the mother, but from growing up in with those parents. Unless she's arguing that the father is pretty much irrelevant? Oh, that is what she's arguing. Sigh.

What Chua believes has made her kids succeed isn't just that she makes them work hard, but that she is allowed to yell at them.

And the money quote:

That's why it's in the WSJ. The Journal has no place for, "How a Fender Strat Changed My Life." It wants piano and violin, it wants Chua's college-resume worldview. Sometimes it has no choice but to confront a Mark Zuckerberg but they quickly reframe the story into the corporate narrative. "The Google boys were on to something, but to make it profitable they had to bring in Eric Schmidt..." The WSJ is operating well within the establishment, right wing, artists-are-gay and corporations-are-not context. It wants kids who will conform, who will plug into the machine (albeit at the higher levels), it wants the kind of kids who want the approval of the kinds of people who read the WSJ.

Amy Chua thinks she wrote an essay and published it. Wrong. The WSJ wanted this kind of an article and they chose one from the thousands available.  They chose hers-- a woman's-- because if this same article had been written by a man it would have been immediately revealed as an angry, abusive, patriarchal example of capitalism.

Which is where this comes full circle. Amy Chua thinks she's raising her kids the Chinese way, but she is really raising them to be what the WSJ considers China to be: a pool of highly skilled labor that someone else will profit from. On second thought, that is the Chinese way.

I'm mixed on the Chua article. In the abstract, her philosophy makes a lot of sense and I wonder if my parenting shouldn't take a more Chinese approach. On the other hand, the specific parenting and spousal behavior she describes is rather abhorrent to me. I'd be pretty pissed if my wife mimicked me sarcastically.

Ultimately, the article and the strong reactions to it touch upon many issues of modern parenting. But with parenting, as with most everything, there's no help but self-help.

My Goal's Beyond

John Milton, we all know, wrote Paradise Lost "to justify the ways of God to men." My goals in Textuality are slightly more modest than Milton's but exponentially more important: I write to explain my ideas and opinions to my children. I write to my wife, my brothers, my parents, my friends, and to anyone else who may be interested.

How many of us know what our mothers and fathers truly feel and think? How many get the chance to see the world through their eyes and approach ideas the way they do?

My goal for this blog is to make this knowledge and sight available to my loved ones, should they ever want to explore. I want them to know what I think and why. I want them to understand what I think, even if they do not agree with the thoughts. I want them to know that I think. I want them to realize that I am most comfortable writing and considering ideas.

I started Textuality in 2005, following the painful but necessary abandonment (temporary, it now seems) of my dissertation and my aspirations for doctorate in English. At that time, my aims for the blog were to to continue working, informally, in textuality:

This blog has been initiated and inaugurated to serve as a forum on textuality. Specifically, it is intended to support the analysis and understanding of current events, issues, and debates from the standpoint of textuality.

As I understand textuality, it is the quality possessed by a tangible thing of being a text. To proceed further, a text is a tangible thing – such as a piece of paper, a book, a Web page or Internet site, an onstage or onscreen performance, a painting, a sculpture, a building, a location in nature, and so on – that is understood to be or to be comprised of one or more signs. Signs may contain one or more signifying elements, but their referents are conceived of as statements of thought intended to be communicated.

I had hoped to build a site that would become the foremost authority on textuality. In practice, however, I used the blog as a diary. The personal and rather whiny nature of the blog during these early days was one reason (there were others) I took the pseudonym "Larry Tanner," a nickname someone gave me in college. Recently I have flirted with the idea of "coming out" and using my real name, but I already have other blogs under my real name. "Larry Tanner" has become like a separate identity, and I enjoy playing this role. So for now, the pseudonym stays.

Early on in the life of the blog, I seemed to lose interest. In 2006, I posted only one entry, and it was a personal disclosure:

It's almost been one year since I last posted here. Let's see: one child, two marathons, and some marital beauty and ugliness later, now I'm posting again.

I don't know why, exactly, I would even think of coming back. I'm struggling with something. I'm just not satisfied. I'm losing confidence and feel like I'm running out of time.

Hmm ... isn't this kind of what I said last year too?

The post above sounds rather bleak and self-chastising. I do that much less now, for whatever reasons. I remember some of the days of 2006. Our family was strapped for cash, stressed with the new baby, dissatisfied with my workplace, bewildered by my wife's depression, and dealing with my dislike of the wife's new church. We had issues, then, but we also had lots of happiness and love, too. In any case, I suppose my attention was best directed elsewhere than the blog.

Although I posted intermittently in 2007, the great change for Textuality came in 2008. Precipitating the change was my accepting a ghostwriting gig. As I began the gig and the writing involved, I did not foresee any shifts in my personal views but I did sense trouble between my author friend/employer and myself:

In the writing, I am finding a lot of passion and struggle in myself. It's good, I'm learning a lot and swaying between almost complete atheism and firm religious belief. It's interesting. There are just so many great perspectives available online. I am glad that I am able to be swayed. I am not an easy sway, but my openness is partly what makes it all work. Now, it could be that my author is not happy with what I have drafted. If that's the case, then we surely will not be able to work together.

Partly as a result of this gig, I took sides in the larger cultural squabbles concerning atheism and religion. I posted a big admission in November of 2008:

Do I believe in G-d? The answer is no, but it’s not an unequivocal no. It is a no of belief: I do not feel sure enough to have the scales tipped toward faith. I have little confidence that I ever will...and I am OK with this.

The character of my posts changed slowly. Throughout 2008 and into 2009, I was writing reactive stuff: I'd read an article or another blog post and then respond. I don't think I struck upon a clearer identity for Textuality until October 2009, with one post on Bob Dylan and another on the debates of atheists and religious believers.

With these essays, I brought out (at last) my full voice. I sought to make my points personal, original, unambiguous, and unfiltered. I tried to quote liberally and in context. I wanted to work through quotes slowly, patiently, and in detail. I aimed to have posts work as part of a larger, ongoing conversation between myself and the world.

In July of this year, I thought I'd exhausted my thoughts on atheism and religion. I intended to post mostly on Walt Whitman to find other topics of interest. I said then:

I have interests in addition to Atheism that deserve fuller and more sustained expression by me. I want to explore other aspects of this wonderful world, such as the poetry of its people, the conflicts of its nations and civilizations, and the endeavors of its animal inhabitants.

This statement remains true, even if I have not done as much about it (so far) as I might like. Indeed, recently I've been quite focused on topics in and around atheism and religion. Yet I've been generally pleased about the posts on the Kuzari Principle and on ultimate meaning.

One day, I hope to gather maybe 25-50 posts, organize them, and self -publish a book of the best and most enduring posts in Textuality.This book will be for the kids, mainly, not for sale or money. My focus today is on addressing topics that interest me but that also allow me to express ideas and opinions I haven't said before.

I have much, much more to write in this blog--about atheism, religion, family, aging, poetry, jokes, work, politics, and more. I anticipate the days and years ahead. Perhaps a post already written or yet to come will serve as pre-text for one or more face-to-face discussions with my children and/or with my wife.

This is a core element of my thinking: anything I write should have an application in real life. My blog life as "Larry Tanner" is a reflection and premonition of the life where I am interacting with actual human beings in real space-time. I would never want a blog that was all and only "in" the blogosphere.

I expect that if I keep up with Textuality, it will continue to morph. After all, I am still growing as an intellect and as a person, and I have much to explain and share. I cannot say whether the future will be good or bad. I hope it's more of the good, but who knows? The writing is part of what I can do. Textuality is part of my pro-activity.

No One Cares

The universe doesn't care either. Buck up, already.

My mother was in the hospital almost a year ago. To my great disappointment, she received what I felt was unsatisfactory quality of care from what I thought was one of the best health care facilities in the U.S., if not the world. During her hospital stay (and then a stint at a rehabilitation center), my mother was in intense pain, and no one on the hospital staff seemed as dedicated to diagnosing the problem and solving it as I would have liked.

I don't usually watch TV shows like House or Grey's Anatomy, but perhaps I had harbored false preconceptions of doctors as tortured detectives who relentlessly pursue the truth about what's ailing patients and themselves. The reality of doctors, nurses, and patients was uglier and definitely less glamorous than TV medical dramas. The real-life hospital staff was overworked and distracted. They tried to make my mother's discomfort manageable, certainly, but basically wanted her to follow directions and be a good patient while they labored to perform their duties around the ward. 

After a particularly bad visit one evening, I recalled the words from Matthew Arnold's very well-known "Dover Beach":

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

My mother's situation--from which, thankfully, she later recovered fully--illustrates on a small scale the very real circumstances we are discussing when we talk about things like the universe, purpose, and meaning.

In the real world, if we are not looking out for the ones we love then they are at the mercy of people  with other priorities and forces without priorities. For every rainbow here is a devastating volcano blast there. For every deed of sharing and selflessness is one of intense brutality. But for the light we make ourselves, we live in a place that will be dark or light only according to its laws and without any ability even to register indifference to us.

The thesis I want to argue now is that we are fortunate to live in such a universe. It is a good thing for us, in other words, that our universe is blind, pitiless, meaningless, and pointless.

Consider the following quotes:

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

-Richard Dawkins

The great accumulation of understanding as to how the physical world behaves only convinces one that this behavior has a kind of meaninglessness about it.

-Richard Feynman

The more the universe seems comprehensible the more it also seems pointless.

-Steven Weinberg

People often argue that if evolution is true or if scientists such as Weinberg are correct, then the universe is a depressing place and our lives are but jokes. Not so, I say, not so at all.

If evolution is true and Weinberg is correct, then the universe is neutral. It is not for us, but it's not against us either. The natural events of the world happen because of the conditions out of which they emerge, not because we are being praised or punished by an overlooking, intervening moral judge.

The utter neutrality of the universe is liberating. Because the universe, and everything in it, is neutral with respect to us, we are free to make and to find meaning from within ourselves.

With this freedom comes the freedom to revise, re-create, and re-invent meanings. We are empowered to challenge the values of our parents, our mainstream culture, and ourselves.

We can question values, we should do so, and we should absolutely insist on the care and preservation of this power for all people. This power to challenge and to question, in reasoned discourse and in equitable political circumstances, should be inalienable.

If the universe is an instrument of some being's will, then our individual desires are in decidedly worse standing than in the neutral universe. If the universe is part of someone else's plan and subject to someone else's whims and judgments, then we are insignificant even to ourselves.

How did my mother begin to recover? We hired a private nurse to sit with her and to advocate for her before the hospital staff. We visited every day and stayed with her, along with my father. The nurse often stayed overnight. The nurse mediated between us, my mother, and the hospital.

Once we realized that we, like my mother, were among confused alarms, we were able to take simple actions to make things better. Once we accepted that we were ignorantly fighting by night, we focused on solutions that would bring us all better visibility into what was happening.

In the universe of judgment and partiality, we were powerless and immobile. In the neutral universe, we were able to seize our part of the day.

The Autumn of Our Content

Harvest: Picking apples and pumpkins.

WARNING: This will be a personal post.

I love Autumn in New England, especially with my family. We all recently spent a fantastic morning in our backyard. Our neighbors' kids were over, and we all (the wife and I, too) played at catching wind-blown leaves before they landed on the lawn. The morning sunshine, the colors of trees and grass and sky, the laughter of children at play with one another, the unbridled joy of living without worry for anything but this moment: at one point, I counseled myself to remember the day and what it was like to be present then and there.

Fall is often taken as a season of decline, and understandably so. Autumn's eternal place is between the free fullness of Summer and the powerful austerity of Winter. John Keats takes it upon himself to console sad Autumn:

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
        Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
    While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
        And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
    Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
        Among the river sallows, borne aloft
            Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
    And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
        Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
        The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
           And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Keats' Autumn is a downtrodden sibling, the one who never quite measures up to the other. Keats turns the lamentations of the Fall--presumably, for the dying of the year and so then for our own dying--into a sweet and self-possessed song. The poem redeems Autumn as a melange of sounds.

But what redeems my Autumn song, which emerges from the depths of happiness? Keats approaches Autumn one-on-one, the solitary man and the somber season. Yet my Fall season is more populated. Keats heard sounds; I hear those and also a human chorus.

I recall sitting on the grass recently with my two-year-old son. We watched the chickadees, robins and blue jays dart to the bird feeder for seed. I remember another Fall, back in 2005. I was recovering from Sarcoidosis. My oldest daughter and I walked together down to the lake. We held hands, and I became choked up inside at how glad I was that we had this time. I have a picture in my mind of my younger daughter, in pink hat and pink coat, chasing after her sister through the leaves. Later, I took an actual picture of her smiling face, one cheek reddened and the other with a fading painting that she had received on the town common. These moments are all a happy song that I cannot save.

Cherished moments float in and then fly away: optima dies...prima fugit. They'll never be back, so enjoy them and be immersed in them while it's possible. Today, I struggle to lift my oldest girl up above my shoulders, and one day I'll no longer be able to wrestle my boy. Soon, my younger daughter will outgrow her lisp and get her f's and th's straightened out. The children mature, and I am aware that I am aging. How many more Fall seasons will I get? How many Autumn days will I have with my kids?

Robert Frost faces this kind of question in his usual way, dramatizing a very human dilemma in terms of work:

Gathering Leaves

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

None of us knows the final fruits of our labors, Frost says. Our big-man work and big-man tools count for less than we think. All our efforts, a shed full of leaves, and "next to nothing" for weight or color. Yet, "a crop is a crop," suggesting the results of our efforts may indeed have value, even if we cannot recognize it at the moment.

I wonder what my children and I will reap from these happy Fall days. It's a nearly constant thought. I want them to remember. I want them to draw comfort, strength, and compassion from what we've done and the memories of what has passed. I want them to enjoy their own spouses and children.

For me, well, I want to remember it all. I don't want to forget the features of youth in my children. I want constant access to the feelings of being a father of young children. Mostly, however, I want my kids to know that because of them--that through them--their father knew joy in his life.

Joy commands the hardy mainspring
Of the universe eterne.
Joy, oh joy the wheel is driving
Which the worlds’ great clock doth turn.
Flowers from the buds she coaxes,
Suns from out the hyaline,
Spheres she rotates through expanses,
Which the seer can’t divine.

My Christian Wife

The real deal.

My wife is the most special and wonderful person. She is a Christian of deep belief. She enjoys being part of an evangelical church. She likes the people of the church, the community, and the many opportunities for participation.

She and I are very different in some respects, but together we work. We met in 1995 and have been building a life together ever since.

I figure some might be curious about the relationship of a hard-line Atheist and a fervent Christian, so I put together a self-interview. That is, I wrote some questions and answered them myself below. If folks like the subject and format, perhaps I'll ask the wife if she would be willing to answer questions from y'all.


1. Let's start with an obvious question: How is it that two people of such different--perhaps even opposing--beliefs get together and build an apparently happy marriage?
My wife and I actually share many beliefs in common. Our values are fundamentally similar, and our differences are often complementary rather than contradictory. Clearly, religion and religious belief are places of difference, but in most every other place we stand united.

I think people make more of religious difference than there needs to be. My wife and I are different people, and we always have been. We have different jobs and different backgrounds. We don't always vote for the same people. We like different foods. Our tastes in music and art can be way off.

As far as I can tell, religion is just another difference. It's something that each of us has and keeps in the household, but it doesn't really define our home. It doesn't dominate our relationship at all. Rather, our lives together are dominated by just living. We try to be together in the morning. I leave for work, and then I come home at night and we try to be together with the kids until their bedtime routine starts.

Maybe if we had both been Catholic or Jewish when we started dating, things would be different today. But since we started out with difference, I think that religion quickly and necessarily became bracketed as a personal thing and not a universal thing.

When we first met, my wife was a practicing Catholic and I identified as Jewish. I don't remember the state of her belief then, or my own. When we moved in together in 1997, she took a spot teaching Sunday school at the local church, and I eventually got involved with my local Hillel house. I even taught the kindergartners in Hebrew school!

If we ever saw our religious differences as a problem, we didn't see it as a big problem or as a relationship problem. We wanted to be together; that was always the important point. We didn't even need to say it. From the beginning of our relationship, being together was implicitly understood and not being together never entered our minds.


2. You both went through changes in religious thinking, right?
Very much. In the 2001-2003 timeframe, my wife started to move away from the Catholic church. We were back in the Boston area by then, and the child sex abuse scandal had started to hit. The response of the Church to these horrific acts perpetrated by priests and then knowingly covered up at the highest levels of the institution--well, it was too much to take. The Church's position on homosexuality was probably also an issue for my wife. Our oldest daughter was confirmed Catholic--that was in 2003--but I don't think my wife went to church very much in those days.

It wasn't until 2006 that my wife found a Christian religious community that she liked. This community called itself non-denominational. She found many people there who were about her age and also having children. The religious message was personal and positive. The services were energetic and carefully crafted. I think my wife felt that this community had a lot of people who could understand some of her questions and problems in a way that I never could have.

I won't go over my changes here, since they are pretty well documented in this blog.


3. Surely, you and your wife must have strong disagreements about religion.
No doubt. We don't talk about it very much. In church and in her church activities, she has her space to express what she believes; in this blog, I have mine. We rarely talk face-to-face about these disagreements because I am not able to convey the sense that I take Christian belief very seriously. Now, I take it seriously to some extent. After all, my wife is sincere about her Christianity, and she seeks to bring our kids to services most every Sunday. Plus, I know that lots of people call themselves Christian, and I am familiar with much of the history and background of both early and established Christianity.

But I have limits to the deference I am willing to give ideas that have been demonstrated faulty. I cannot fake credulity for the story of a virgin-born-of-a-virgin who was impregnated by a ghost and who birthed a miracle-working human sacrifice destined to open the world's ultimate can of whoop-ass. I know the arguments around the story. I am aware of the paucity of genuine facts regarding the story's main character. I am familiar with the details of the story and their history, and I feel as though I've spent more than enough intellectual and emotional energy to give the story it's due. I have little interest in revisiting this particular story when there are, to my mind, more exciting and controversial questions to consider.

For my part, I have no desire to make Atheist arguments or to force Dawkins and Hitchens on my wife. What's the point? She's an intelligent human being and I've got my work cut out for me just defining the contours of my own thinking. We both have our own "spiritual" questions that we're pursuing, and it's enough that we support each other in our respective pursuits.

At the end of the day, our religious differences and our different rationalizations for our beliefs have very little to do with the practicalities of our love and our household. Maybe, after the kids have grown up and we're retired, we'll spend our days debating the lack of evidence for gods and the ridiculousness of all religious beliefs. I suspect we'll rather spend our days having more fun together, but who knows?


4. How do your differences in religion and Atheism apply to the way you raise your children?
In terms of how we raise the kids, I don't think there are any issues. I don't openly scoff at Christianity or Judaism in front of my children. I also don't push Darwin's Origin of Species or Dawkins's The God Delusion on them. The fact is that I don't need to do this. The reality of my Atheism will become apparent to my children when they are old enough to see it. They'll notice I don't go with them to church and that some of the books in my library make cases for Atheism.

Parenting is a practical art. It's hard to get kids to believe or to know things in the exact way you want. They develop beliefs and knowledge through their own doing and their own experiences. Neither my wife nor I is interested in controlling our children's intellectual environment to the extent that they can only have these-or-those thoughts or only come to such-and-such conclusions about the world. So, we both parent in the day; that is, we try to handle each day as it comes and enjoy it as best we can.

Honestly, I don't think personal religious or atheistic beliefs have much impact on what we parents need to do as parents. We need to be with our kids. We need to play with them, teach them, help them, encourage them, and show them we enjoy all that. To me, in marriage and in parenting, togetherness is the name of the game. It's all about being in the same place at the same time.

It's not about using the children as my personal social experiment. It's not about making the children live out my dreams and my ideas. It's not about coercing the children to think and act like me. It is about enabling and empowering them to grow according to their own reasoning and desires.

We parents are an extension of our children, not the other way around. We are their conscience until it becomes their responsibility to tell themselves what's right and necessary. We are their butlers until they are fully able to get the items they need and can clean up after themselves. We are their cheerleaders until they learn how to develop their own confidence and motivation. We are their counselors until they are able to take the lead in making the tough decisions that affect them.

My wife and I share this fundamental outlook in most ways, if not in every single way. We agree on the major things and differ in some of the details. We want the same seeds and are comfortable with however the flowers develop. This is why it has worked so far for us, and why I have no reason to be anything less than very optimistic about the future.

On the Run

Me in 2007(?) after a particularly hilly 10K.

Five years ago, I trained to run long distances. In 2006, I ran two marathons--Boston and Lowell.

Although my marathon days are probably behind me for good (but who knows?), I am back out on the road most mornings.

Two races upcoming:

The Harvard Pilgrim 10K at Patriot Place, 4 July 2010

The Run Gloucester 7-Mile, 22 August 2010

So far I seem to enjoy running even more than I used to. I don't talk to myself in my head as much as I once did--or at least I'm better at controlling it. Because I'm an introvert, a lot of my activity is thinking and dreaming. But when I'm out running, I give my mind a break and let it coast. I let it be an observing organ, an instrument for processing all that I see and hear and feel about me. This is one of the things I really enjoy about running.

Like many activities, running teaches. A runner learns about things like letting the mind coast. About just listening, about setting oneself tall and strong, and about getting to one's center when adversity strikes. About moving out and returning home.

Every runner has to run in her or his own unique way. What's more, every runner has to learn how to find this way. Every runner has to learn how to relate to the world: the weather, the terrain, the traffic, and the surprises.

There's no purity about running, in my opinion. Rather, running allows one to circumscribe purity--to enable a personal vision of how a purely human life might be lived.