books

The Divided Self (CDT #500)

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BLUF: The Divided Self

Text: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Mt 6:24, ESV).

Context, Context, Context: This occurs about halfway through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7). The context is straightforward: divided loyalties rip us asunder.

Illustration: When I was young, I developed a voracious appetite for reading. I spend way too much of my earned income on books (that’s my wife’s view, anyway), and one of my all-time favorite pieces of literature is Macbeth. It’s terribly bloody; it’s about the murder of a Scottish king (Duncan) by wicked Macbeth and his wife, the merciless and bloodthirsty Lady Macbeth. The main thrust of the play is the exploration of what unbridled ambition for power does to the human soul. Spoiler alert: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth devise and carry out the murder of King Duncan, and Macbeth becomes king. But in the interim, he and his wife essentially go mad. They can’t live with themselves and with their guilt. It’s more complicated than that, of course, but that’s the simple version of the play.

Encouragement: A root problem Macbeth and Lady Macbeth share is this issue: What are the costs involved in singular allegiance to the wrong things? It’s a lot like what Jesus was teaching in Mt 6:24. Jesus was teaching that all who follow him must have their allegiance pledged to him and his gospel, and to not be divided selves. We’re to be committed and devoted disciples, not half-hearted or lukewarm.

The Macbeths were not half-hearted or lukewarm in their allegiance, that’s for sure. They were laser focused. But that focus was upon power, and it entailed doing heinous evil to get what they thought they wanted. When they got it, however, it was their undoing. They were undone. And it was gruesome.

If you get a chance to see the play performed well on stage or on film, watch it. Read it. Learn from it. Shakespeare is not called the Bard for no reason, after all. He knew and understood more than a little about human nature. A divided self is not a person to be. There’s a peace that comes with being an integrated person, a person devoted to goodness to the One who is goodness himself. That’s what Jesus was teaching.

YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@jonpirtle2605

Writing ministry: http://www.jonpirtle.com

Church YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/@3cs-canton

Back in Catamount Country

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CJ and I drove with some friends back to where I spent much time in my late teens and twenties. We all took a few days off from work to come to Cullowhee and surrounding areas. We’re using the week to think and pray through the direction for the future of the church body we serve.

We’re taking in the waterfalls, some of the local bookstores and ice cream and chocolate shops, stopping by my old college stomping grounds where I did a couple of my degrees, walking the grounds of which I have precious memories with Ken, Wayne, Barclay, Sara, Cameron, and others.

The school’s much larger now. The student body has doubled in size from when I arrived many moons ago. And Sylva has lots of new shops, but some of the old ones are still around, just in new locations. There are small breweries and art shops, though, and it still has that lovely western NC feel.

From the cabin where I sit now, the clouds hang like carefree marshmallows above the mountains. Two hummingbirds dart to and from the feeder hanging from the deck. I can hear the creek running down below us, swift due to the morning’s heavy rainfall. As far as you can see, it’s mountains and memories.

We patronized City Lights Bookstore in Sylva. I purchased a WCU sweatshirt for my wife from the campus bookstore. I looked at the wonderful Ron Rash books for sale to fellow bibliophiles and literature lovers.

It all washes over me, and something deep within my soul returns to being a boy here, finding my way, cruising the Blue Ridge Parkway with my buddies, hiking, and dreaming of our futures.

It’s only Tuesday, and I am already excited about tomorrow, when we’ll take in waterfalls, trek Highlands, Cashiers, and perhaps drive on up to the Parkway one more time–to gaze, ponder, and feel the strings of the soul plucked by the beauty pervading this place.

Reflections Upon McMurtry’s Novel, ‘Lonesome Dove’

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Introduction: For years and years, I had heard about this novel. I even had it on a shelf in my library for years. Finally I resolved to read it. It’s not that I didn’t want to. It was that I have so many books on my TBR list that I’d simply not gotten to it. But the time came at last. And to give you an idea of how highly I found the experience of reading it . . . well, I’m blogging about it. It was spectacular. If you are a serious reader, perhaps you will follow me as I share some reflections below.

Published in 1985 by Texan Larry McMurtry, the novel earned the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1986.

The plot is simple but not simplistic. The story hinges upon the spectacular efforts to leave the tiny community of Lonesome Dove, Texas and ride horseback to Montana to herd cattle back to Texas, and become self-sufficient ranchers and leave Texas Ranger life somewhat behind.

The two main characters are Captain Augustus “Gus” McCrae and Captain Woodrow Call. But their group of friends and associates and women and drunks and a boy (Newt), and ex-wives, and a black man/friend/scout named Deets, et al, will leave you with characters in your imagination you’ll not quickly forget. There are also Dish and Pea Eye and Lorena and Clara. The cast of characters is large as the landscapes the story covers, but they all grip you. At least they gripped me. Profoundly.

The stories involved in this tome include their heroisms, defeats, arguments, divorces, adulteries, friendships, betrayals, loyalties, love for the land, battles with Indians, a cowardly sheriff, tough-as-nails women, golden-hearted whores, grave diggers, and more.

So, What’s It Really About? It is difficult not to limit the book in answering that question. But among other things, it’s about friendship, about loneliness, about pride, about grit, about sacrifice, about freedom, about the need for others, about pity, about honor, about violence, and that’s just a start.

I have read hundreds of novels over my many years as a reader and teacher. I have never been one for genre fiction–Westerns, sci-fi, fantasy, etc. But this book, though certainly a Western, was not so much a book as a world.

Let me compare it this way: I love reading the great tragedies of Shakespeare. And each time I read Hamlet, e.g., I’m back in Elsinore. Well, in this novel, I wasn’t in Elsinore; I was in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, Fort Smith, Arkansas, and more. I was simply but profoundly there with them. The story was that good.

The Ending: It’s a long novel, by most people’s standards–just short of 900 pages. So, yes, it takes some effort to stick with it. But I can think of few novels where I wept like I did over this one’s endings. I say “endings” because we as readers see the ends of a host of characters. We come to understand Call in his pride, Gus in his courage, Clara and Lorena, and the beautiful boy, Newt. And when you see what becomes of them, McMurtry rips our hearts out–not in cruelty towards us as readers but in our love for these men and women. I cannot get over how much the scenes between Call and Newt eviscerated my soul. And the last conversation between Gus and Call was simply an example of the best of what great literature provides to us–beauty and pathos and a reminder of the power of love, pride, honor, and sacrifice.

If you will, I simply encourage you to pick up this book. Schedule time. Read it. It took me several weeks, but it was so worth it. I know this will reveal even more of my deep love of great literature, but this book does what great literature is meant to do–remind us of what Faulkner called “the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of [man’s] past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

And like so much that Faulkner wrote in his best novels and stories, McMurtry, too, earned his place among the greats with this novel.

Ruminations: Our Granddaughter, a Trip to the Store, and a Novel That Brought It All Near and Far

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We are blessed to keep our granddaughter this weekend. CJ is a natural at it all. I am not. What’s the ‘it’? Grandparenting a seven-month-old. CJ excels in feeding and bathing her. She burps her. She rocks her. She plays with her. It’s beautiful to watch. I’m less than graceful at it all. I can’t seem to ever get her comfortable when holding her. The times I do fairly well are when I take her with me outside to the burn barrel and hold her as I piddle in the yard. And she seems to like it when I water the trees. But I’ll take it all. It’s beautiful to see her smile when we sing ditties and nursery rhymes and see her eyes light up when we call her name.

I drove to the store in town to purchase a medication but the store didn’t have it, so I returned empty-handed. On the way down the hill, lots and lots of deer were munching on grasses that had turned a bright green after today’s rain. You can see the doe up close here, then another standing over her right shoulder, and see another one bed down in the trees behind them both.

I read Powers’ excellent novel Bewilderment over the last two days. It was one of those books that’ll remain with me. It’s a visceal tale of a father-son relationship in a universe that is indeed bewildering. The dizzying stupidity and greed of politics and government bureaucray, the destruction of the earth, the seemingly endless levels of human vanity and stupidity . . . and yet, the possibility of depth and of human connection. Truly a remarkable book. It reminds me of McCarthy’s The Road, one of the most powerful novels I’ve ever read.

I have another day’s events scheduled for in the morning. I have to drive to a faculty meeting for one of the universities where I teach English. But then, I long to return to see this beautiful granddaughter, to her amazing grandmother, and study more of Ecclesiastes before I herald the truth to the saints of Christ Covenant Church (3cs-canton.org) Sunday morning,

Views upon a Trip to a Florida Barnes & Noble

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Lonesome Dove is the main book I’m currently reading. But it is about 900 pages in length. 858 to be precise. And the font is, I’m speculating, about 10-point Times New Roman. I felt the need to get up and peruse some other books. Augustus and Deets and Call and the other fellas would be here when I got back.

“I’m going to go to one of the bookstores,” I said to CJ.

“Oh, you need another one?” she quipped.

“No, I just need to see what’s out there. There’s a Barnes & Noble and a Books-A-Million just down the way. I’ll be back in a few,” I said.

I grabbed my wallet, laced up my On Cloud running shoes, borrowed our daughter’s car keys, kissed CJ on the cheek, walked out the door, boarded the elevator, and walked towards her vehicle downstairs in the parking lot.

A summer rain had been on and off again throughout the day. The sky was that muggy FL haze common in summer. The traffic was light but constant on US HWY 98 between Destin and Panama City. I read the tags on the vehicles: TN, TX, KY, GA, and lots of local FL ones.

Fifteen minutes later I arrived at the Barnes & Noble. I walked in, eager to see how this one would be arranged book-wise. Again I was disapppointed to see there was no Classics section. Instead there were sections of Manga, Mystery/Thriller/True Crime, Romance and Fantasy, Bibles, New Age, Philosophy, a small Poetry section, and sections for what Barnes & Noble called Young Readers. And there was all manner of gifts–journals, coffee cups, bookmarks, stationery, pens, toys, etc.

Once I discovered that the classics would be hard to find, I went to the Fiction section and looked for what I took as the basics they’d surely have. I did at last find some Dickens, Faulkner, Hemingway, McCarthy, McMurtry, Powers, and Wharton, and Whitman. Hope, at last.

I pulled Powers’ Bewilderment off the shelf and read the first few paragraphs. Like his other books, I found them marvelous and instructive. Powers is focused on what’s being done to the natural world in the name of progress, and he has my ear.

A young man in his twenties appproached near where I stood reading. He kept getting closer and closer, such that I looked up to see if I was perhaps in his way, perhaps blocking his view. He never made eye contact. But he kept standing right next to me. It gave me what my deceased grandfather called the “heeby-jeebies,” so I reshelved the Powers novel and moved on to the Poetry section and perused some Whitman and other poets.

After the creeper moved on, I returned to the Fiction section and thumbed through some familiar literary friends’ books–Larry McMurtry, Edith Wharton, William Gaddis. I lost track of time. I knew CJ and the family would be making jokes of my being in a bookstore and likely would have wagered I’d return with a bag of purchases. But I didn’t give in. I simply made note of volumes I’ve yet to read, but that had caught my interest. There was one called Mailman by Grant that looked like a fun read. Plus I love the region that served as its primary setting.

Nothing really stood out to me–other than the fact that reading seems to be marketed to what sells, not necessarily what is actually lasting and good. Maybe that’s just the old codger coming out in me. That lament has probably been part of bibliophiles’ sentiment since Gutenberg blessed the world during the Reformation.

Back at the beach house now. The sun has popped out. And I’m back with McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and saddled in with Call and Gus and the boys en route to Montana, to see what happens.

We’re going out for seafood this evening. CJ will want some (no, many!) crab legs, and I’ll be on the hunt for grouper and shrimp.

Thoughts on ‘Confirming One’s Calling’

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When I was a boy, the house I grew up in had a black iron bell on the front porch. In the afternoons after school, and especially during summers, I would be outdoors most of the days if the weather was right. The other boys and I in our postage stamp of soil would be outside like little Huck Finns–building forts, making ramps on which to jump our bikes, fishing, camping, hunting, exploring the woods and the many fields, scouting for deer, trying to trap rabbits. On and on it went. A boy’s paradise in smalltown rural life. We didn’t have much money. I didn’t know that at the time. We were simple people with simple pleasures, and I was filling my boy soul with sights, sounds, and smells that shaped who I am.

Currently I’m away from home as part of my military duties, but at night I’m able to read Scripture and study. When I return to Christ Covenant Church (3cs-canton.org), I will resume teaching through Peter’s two epistles. The next text is 2 Peter 1, the opening chapter, where Peter writes about evidences of Christianity. He lists multiple qualities/characteristics of believers (2 Pt 1:5-7).

And then in verse 10, it struck me like Mom’s ringing the black iron bell on the front porch when it was time for me to come in. When she’d ring that, the sound would travel across the ponds, through the pines, across the fields. I knew it was time to get home. “Dark-thirty,” is the phrase that was used.

In verse 10, Peter writes, “Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.” There’s something about that calling that summons the soul, that brings me back to the clear sound of that bell I heard countless times as a boy.

Vignettes of Warfighter

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Another week has come and gone at Warfighter. The weather here has thus far been ideal. Daytime temperatures are in the 80s and the nights cool after the sun has descended. Our soldiers have discovered their rhythms. Many are operating on 12-hour shifts–daytime and nighttime. You can tell based upon the exposure, of lack thereof, to sunlight.

The sound waves carry the constant hmmmmm of the generators that power our military computers and electronic equipment. The intel and current operations shops in the tents are like walking into a big box electronics store, all aglow with monitors displaying maps with contour lines, lines of advance, bridges, roads, rivers, etc.

The signal guys are constantly monitoring communication assets and vulnerabilities. The future operations guys are wargaming how to react to anticipated enemy attacks. Fires and artillery are doing the same.

Our unit legal team is researching questions and answers related to queries from some of our downtrace units.

I walk amongst the troops, checking on everyone, engaging in small talk, trying to encourage them during these long days. Often they speak of their families and loved ones back home. Others are working through strains with their civilian employers.

I sit down to type a bit in order to clarify my thoughts. A few meters away is the tent entrance and the concertina wire surrounding our area of operations.

So far, so good–the long days and nights, the hmmmmm of the generators, the Chinooks and Black Hawks slicing across the sky above us, the guys leaning forward into their tasks.

As is often the case, we measure time based upon chow–hots for breakfast and supper, and MREs for lunch. Many of us are skipping meals. The chow here will keep you alive but no wise soldier eats more than is necessary. Hot sauce almost makes it edible. The coffee could double as diesel fuel.

“Hey, chappy. Services tonight?” a soldier asks.

“Of course, brother. I’m ready anytime.”

“See you at 1900, sir.”

“Roger that, brother,” I said.

And this is the way it goes.

I look over at my black notebook with my notes of what I’ll speak on this evening–anxiety and how to navigate it as a Christian.

I look over at a Hawthorne novel to my left that I’ve almost completed during the long nights–The House of Seven Gables. It’s my third time reading this one but I value Hawthorne’s insights still.

Missing my wife, I look at pictures of her I keep in my phone photos. She’s going to get her hair done today, so she’ll be prettier than ever–once again. I missed her birthday this week, and our son’s birthday, due to being away with my military unit. But they’ve endured my military absences for decades now, and are doing it again.

The days tick by, the generators hmmmmm, I type a bit more, and now it’s time to return to our guys.

Some Reflections on the Use of AI in Literature

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For many years now, I have taught literature. It is part of who I am, I suppose. I discovered a passion for reading when a teenager and that passion is unabated. I do not truck with much popular-level reading, like that which you’ll find in airport kiosks or on the tables at your town’s chain bookstores. I love the classics–most of them anyway. There are a few books considered classics that I just cannot seem to enjoy. There are some Austen books that put me to sleep. Give me Dickens and Hardy over Austen, any day.

But this is about Artificial Intelligence, not about my literary interests. Here are a few questions I’m thinking through:

  • Is AI to be welcomed in when it comes to literary analysis?
  • That is, is ‘close reading’ even possible if AI becomes the de facto medium for students’ literary analyses?
  • What happens to students’ intellectual development if and when they rely on AI to ‘do the reading’ for them?
  • Is it possible to inculcate critical thinking skills when AI is prevalent?

I was grading papers today and, after reading six or seven essays from my college kids, I discovered a pattern–almost the exact same lingo, quotes from short stories, and conclusions. Some overlap is understandable, of course. But when the pattern repeats again and again, “Houston, we have a problem.”

I concede that we should aim to learn the history of the best commentaries on the classics. I mean, if one’s reading is so ‘out there’ that it’s unhitched from the wisdom of the past, there may be good reason to be suspicious.

But what I’m seeing is just the opposite in today’s culture of AI, especially when it comes to my lane of the classics. The responses to questions I pose to students in literature classes grow more and more similar. It’s likely due to their almost complete reliance upon AI engines of their choice.

For those of us who love great literature, this is a dark cloud. It portends ominously over lands that should ideally be filled with critical thinkers. But when auto-generated responses, divorced from close personal reading, are the medium students rely upon, I cannot be confident that much learning at all is actually occurring. Just my thoughts.

Remembering Dr. Higgins

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One of the most influential professors I had in studying literature in younger days was Dr. Higgins. He was a master teacher. How so? Well, he was a master of clarity. His preferred way of teaching hinged upon the use of contrasts. He would put up a T-chart on the board that looked like this, for example:

Atheistic Writers (Secularists) vs. Theistic Writers (Biblical):

Crane, Stephen vs.Melville, Herman
Hemingway, Ernest vs.Faulkner, William
Sartre, Jean-Paul vs.Percy, Walker
Camus, Albert vs.O’Connor, Flannery

Then he would pose questions of us related to atheistic writers:

  • What worldview is espoused in Crane’s short stories?
  • How do Crane’s characters wind up?
  • What emotions characterize Sartre’s protagonists?
  • Why is the anti-hero part and parcel of the atheistic writers?

We students would discuss the novels and short stories and poems of said writers, and he’d ask still more questions, and force us to justify our responses based upon the many books we’d had to read. Then he would pose questions of the contrasting writers:

  • What worldview is espoused in O’Connor’s stories?
  • How do self-righteous people play out in her stories?
  • What emotions characterize Percy’s protagonists?
  • Why is nobility possible in Melville and Faulkner but not in Sartre’s fiction?

The hinge upon which his teaching turned was the inculcation of our understanding pattern recognition and contrasts. Not this, but that.

In Proverbs 19:1 Solomon writes, “Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool.”

Do you see the contrast and recognize the pattern?

Solomon contrasts two types of people–those of integrity vs. those of duplicity. One is honorable; the other is dishonorable. One person is honest; the other is dishonest. One is put together and straight. The other is a fool and is up to no good.

All these years later, Dr. Higgins, I still thank God for his putting you in my life. I have reread all of those long novels and stories more than a few times now, and they were just as you said. Thank you for teaching me. I hope I made you proud. You have since gone to your reward, and I hope to learn from you again one day. Until then, just know you made a good difference and a difference for good.

Tales from Travels: A Warrant for His Arrest

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Introduction: I had flown to Texas and then to Arkansas to minister to fellow soldiers. I was in my element–mobile, teaching military personnel, and teaching on topics near and dear to my heart: spiritual readiness and spiritual fitness. I was thrilled to come to see this set of guys again. It had been several months since I had been able to pour into them and to just be with them. They’re among my favorite soldiers–good ‘ole boys from Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma, mostly. Salt of the earth patriots. My kind of people.

A few hours later, the American flight landed in Dallas. I had an hour or so to kill until my next flight. I found an open chair and resumed the book I’d read on the flight. I only had a few pages left, and I finished the book.

I’d had to wake at 0130 back in Georgia in order to be at the Atlanta airport at 0330 for American’s first a.m. flight to Dallas. All had gone well so far, though. There was scant traffic at that hour, and I had no significant hassles to speak of, even at Atlanta’s airport.

Anyway, the flight had landed in Dallas, just as the sun was coming up. As far as you could see, it was flat and already hot, even at dawn. I’m not wired for July heat in Texas or much of July heat anywhere else, but that’s another story.

Closer than I Thought: When I took another flight to my final destination, I picked up my ride. My lodging was not ready yet, so I drove to a local bookstore to peruse the shelves. I found a book of Faulkner stories. I’ve read Faulkner for decades now, and respect him now as always. A giant of literature.

Anyway, I gripped the book of Faulkner stories in my right hand, retrieved my wallet with my left hand, and walked to the front counter to pay. A petite brunette with a ponytail and black Books-A-Million t-shirt rang me up.

“Could I interest you in a membership card?”

“No thanks.”

“How’s your day going so far?”

“Fine,” I said.

“Just relaxing, eh?”

I just smiled. I sometimes struggle to engage when the conversation is about drivel. Say something significant, or I’m likely to check out.

“Could I interest you in a gift card?” she continued.

“No thanks.” Honestly, I was starting to get annonyed. Just let me pay for the Faulkner book and be on my way, I thought.

“I had to park close to the store this morning,” she said.

“Sorry?”

She kept cutting her eyes to the left, signaling me somehow.

“My husband … he told me to park right in front of the store,” she said.

I was completely lost as to what she was driving at.

She whispered, “We found out. There’s a man with a warrant between us and the store next door. The cops are on their way. My husband told me to park close to the front of the store, so I did.”

“Oh,” is all I could think to say.

I looked down at the little black pad for me to pay. The total appeared; I tapped my debit card.

“Receipt?” she asked.

“No thanks.”

I walked out, the hot sun blaring down already, my Faulkner book in my right hand. I noticed a silver Nissan by the Books-A-Million, near the bookstore’s entrance. I assumed it belonged to the girl at the register. I sat in the car for a few moments. Waiting. For something. Cops to show? A criminal to become visible to me? I waited. Nothing. No cops that I saw. Perhaps they would come circumspectly, in unmarked clothes and plain clothes. I waited some more. Still nothing.

I sat in the driver’s seat, the A/C on blast.

Here I was, out here to teach fellow soldiers about spiritual readiness and spiritual fitness, and I’d just listened to a girl tell me that a criminal was steps away, a man with a warrant out for his arrest.

I got notice: my lodging was ready. I scanned the parking lot again. I think I was looking for a man to walk in the Books-A-Million, a shady-looking guy, perhaps, but no one entered the store since after I exited.

Reluctantly, I pulled out of the bookstore parking lot and onto the road that led to my lodging. But I am still wondering what happened/didn’t happen.