Category: Bring Them Up

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Bring Them Up

The Summer of Raggants

The following are my notes for my final assembly talk at ECS.

On the first day of school I declared this The Year of the Raggant. We’ve made it to the last day, and here is the other bookend. I don’t have a short story, but more of a pep talk as you enter the short summer. Let this be The Summer of Raggants.

We want you to be awesome Christians. We want you to be the kind of Christians that people who aren’t Christians look at and think, ‘Those people have something different than me.’ We don’t want all of you to be the same, not just because boys aren’t girls but because God made all His people to do different things. And yet, there are some characteristics that every Christian student should have. That’s why we refer to them as the “other graduation requirements,” or, what it means to act like a raggant.

Do they apply only to school at school days or also to summer days? Duh, they apply to all time, including after you graduate. But while we work on helping each raggant develop these six muscle groups while they are here, what can/should you do over summer to keep getting more ragganty?

I’ve got some feet on-the-ground suggestions (which is good, since raggants don’t like to let others see them fly). Mr. Sarr and Mrs. Pakinas also helped with some of the particular ideas, which include things that a new first grader could do and the new seniors, too. Mrs. Herr made the colorful raggant, and Mrs. Higgins cut out these reminders you can put on the fridge or use as a book mark.

Stout image-bearers. Human beings are not meant to “do our own thing” or “decide who we are.” We are meant to reflect the likeness of God who made us. When we “behold” Him we know more what we’re to be. We become like who or what we worship. This is one reason why our worship on the Lord’s Day not only is for the glory of God but for God to give us our shape and strength.

Of course we see more about God in His Word. What a privilege to have our own copies. Every one of you can read now, so you could read a verse a day, or some of you ought to read more. If your parents let you, listen to Scripture; it’s free, and it’s forming. God’s Word is spiritual food. If you don’t eat, you will get weak.

Go to church and worship God every week, read your Bible every day.

Be patient, gracious, forgiving. These are godly, and ragganty. And for a test of your stoutness and braveness, tell all gossips to STOP IT.

This is first, starting with the first day of the week, so first in priority, and first in the list of raggant virtues. This is the most obvious way of honoring Christ: worship Him.

Copious producers. A producer is someone who makes things, you take some raw materials and create something else. You cause something that didn’t exist to become a thing!

I’m not saying that there’s no place to wind down and enjoy watching some TV/movies/YouTube or play video games as your parents allow, but don’t let that suck all your minutes away.

The blessed man is like a tree planted by streams of water, and as you reflect God more and more you will bear more and more fruit.

Make: dinner, cookies, paintings, Lego castles, blanket forts, science experiments, your bed (every day!)

Generous disciples of Christ. To be generous is to show a readiness to give more of something than is necessary or expected. It’s a way to show kindness to others.

Generous might make you think of money, but most of you as students probably don’t have a lot of that. Christ didn’t give away money. He gave Himself.

We are Christ’s disciples, we are His students, His followers. So we follow the example that He left for us, and walk in His steps. We obviously can’t do all the same things Jesus did, but share the loaves and fishes you have. One thing we all have the same amount of is time. How will you be generous with yours?

Do the dishes (not just on your assigned night). Play with your siblings when they ask. Do something good for a neighbor.

Prodigious learners. Part of what we’re aiming to do is give you the skills and the exposures for sake of increasing interests to keep learning for the rest of your life. To be prodigious means to let it be BIG; Christ made a big cosmos, and He loves all that He made for us.

Reading is a way to do it, and it doesn’t have to be non-fiction. A good story can teach you lessons, even if it’s just some new vocabulary.

Read 3 (hard for you) books before September 4 (the first day of school, not that you want to think about that today). Learn a skill: guitar, drawing, volleyball, wood burning. Sometimes people say, Go big or go home. I say, learn big at home!

Thankful stewards. Thankfulness is appropriate, required, and good for you. There is nothing you have that you did not receive, from God directly or from God through another person.

As Mr. Sarr likes to remind us, thankful people are more fun to give things to anyway.

Handwrite a thank you note for every gift you get. Write a card for a gift you did NOT get. And you all are working on your penmanship anyway, right? This will give you a chance to show off your skills. Say “thank you” after every meal anyone makes for you. See if you can do it!

Jovial warriors. Jovial is a word that refers to being cheerful, like a king in his court, taking care of things without any worry on his face and gifting his people from his resources. He is glad and giving, even though all his projects aren’t finished. This is the kind of attitude to start the day with, not just to end when things went like we wanted.

Whether or not you are naturally so, call a T.O.: Try Optimism. When you’re assigned a chore you don’t like, when your plans didn’t work out, if you can do it without being snarky, throw your head back and say HA!

“Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:14-15)

Refuse to complain, about the weather, the boredom, getting sick, the Mariners losing again. Practice LOL!

Raggants are high discipline, low drama summer rockstars. Summer break starts today, so start your summer stage of carrying and advancing Christ-honoring culture. May the Lord bless the next few months as The Summer of Raggants.

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Bring Them Up

Dad Charge

Son, on your baby announcement, along with a tiny picture of your head (because, honestly, you weren’t really that cute of a baby), your mother put “May he shake the gates of hell.” It ended up becoming sort of a painful joke for the first few years of your life, as your mom and me regularly told people that we meant that you would eventually shake the gates from the outside, not immediately like a demon-baby from the inside.

But these many years later, by God’s grace, you have great love for God, great love for your people, and have already made a great impact everywhere you go. You are big, you are loud, you process out loud, and you generate a dizzying amount of ideas. And really, with usually just a tiny bit of refining, most of them are really great.

You are hard to ignore, and so you’ve often gotten grief from those who would like things to be a bit more quiet. They’d like to be undisturbed, and it seems to me, undisturbed in their apathy.

But while it’s true that you are a big presence, you have always had a big heart. Your aims and dreams for a professional sports career, even to build a castle, are for your people. If people held on long enough to listen to your castle de Marysville plans, they would have heard that your plans include a big parking lot and valet drivers to welcome your many guests.

You want to bring people in. You want to win them like Bricklebaum, with joy that looks better. You are a strong brother, a reliable friend, an attentive grandson, a fun uncle, an energetic teammate, and can make almost anything with cardboard and duct tape.

Of course you have more to learn, and only the Lord knows for sure what you will do and how much bigger you’ll get, but:

Son, don’t hold back.

Others may want you to dial it back. Some have already criticized and/or laughed at you. So be it, your legacy will be different than theirs. Fear the Lord, sacrifice for your people, hear feedback not criticism, keep up your walls like Babylon, and then don’t hold back.

May you never doubt that you are a blessing to your father and mother. You are my beloved son in whom I am very well pleased.

May you need a bigger hat to go with your cattle.

May your ideas be even bigger and your leading even louder and your work even more fruitful and your heart even more Christlike and your shaking of the gates of hell be even more effective.

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Bring Them Up

Tip More, Boldly

The following is my graduation charge to the class of 2024 at ECS.

Good evening to our graduate candidates, their parents and families, Headmaster and school board and faculty, and guests.

ECS is less than a week from finishing our 12th year. Two of you have been here all twelve years (you are the majority of Muckle Eejits); only a few of the current juniors will be able to say by the time they’re done that they were here longer. It certainly seems like all four of you belong here, and it seems hard to imagine what it will be like next week without you all.

We are all here tonight because you have completed the work we asked you to do. You have read the pages, written the papers, sang your parts. And all of that is just a small portion of what you’ve accomplished.

As we celebrate what you’ve finished, my final charge to you before you move your tassels is to tip more, boldly.

Tip is the key word. I don’t mean tip as in give an extra 20% or 30% on top of the bill, though I do believe in generous gratuities. I definitely don’t mean tip in terms of giving little simplistic life-hacks; we could all use less of those tips. When I say — tip more, boldly — I mean, don’t leave whatever room you enter the way it was. Think of a Saint Bernard running into a tiny kitchen and stepping on the water bowl; you can’t ignore that.

Make a dent. Leave a mark. Tip the status quo over, and over.

This is not the same thing as destroying the good, but don’t hold back when you see how to make something better. Go ahead, poke holes in superficial stuff.

Here’s an example from your senior year. Together you all turned the school’s annual Reformation Day into Reformation week. Not only that, you added the school at home day and called the raggants to regroup for most of a Friday at a property 45 minutes away. You saw what had been done in previous years and thought that you could try something different, something bigger.

While a lot of that project was enjoyable, edible, and edifying, it was exhausting. Come to think of it, it probably was too much. Your ideas helped to clarify ideas from staff and teachers that, as it turns out, one day is actually enough, and keeping the costumes and competitions, the booths and bonfires on campus is a reasonable restraint. I don’t know how many more opportunities you’ll have like that. It gets harder to risk things as you get older. But, go ahead, and make people dial you back. Do things that make others write policies after you. Make them realize that they could do more, more is possible.

Tip more, boldly.

We could use some more people with ideas. An idea in this sense is different than opinions about how other people should do something, or stop doing something, or do what they’re doing differently. Ideas are thoughts about a course of action, an aim to make something, to do some good for others.

In the movie “The Darkest Hour” there’s a scene that tickles me where two old men are walking through government halls fretting about Winston Churchill as the newly appointed Prime Minister.

First man: “He’s an actor, in love with the sound of his own voice.”
Second man: “I love to listen to him. But we must never take his advice. He has a hundred ideas a day, four of them are good, the other ninety-six downright dangerous.”

But without endorsing everything he did, Churchill had conviction, which was crucial 80 years ago during WWII. All of you stood at Point Du Hoc together; you walked on the beaches in France. We remember the men. And we remember D-Day as one of the tipping points in world history and certainly for western civilization. Graduates, go ahead and have some more ideas with conviction.

I have been referring to this year at ECS as the Year of the Raggant. It didn’t take off in all the ways I hoped it would, but, one of the things that did not disappoint was how all of you acted like raggants. As seniors, you were an elite rumpus within the rumpus, making noise and causing commotion for the benefit of us all.

We talk about six characteristics of a raggant. We didn’t write them with you in mind, but top to bottom as a class you have modeled them the best so far.

Stout image-bearers, not stepping lightly like kittens, but with meaty paws like lions. Seniors, you have refined your rhetoric of roar and reflected a God who cares as you have cared.

Generous disciples of Christ, and here where it would be fine for you to leave big tips, as well as to cause big tips. But you have been generous with your time to hang out with underclassmen, to decorate for events, to give yourselves to others in Jesus’ name.

Copious producers, which you have done, not just in writing parodies about copious production. Go ahead, keep making baskets heavy, and write big books, annoy others that you know so much that it took so many pages and they just couldn’t put it down.

Prodigious learners, because we don’t always know what the next thing to tip is going to be, or even where the pressure point is. I want to come back to this in a moment.

Thankful stewards, and this has been a big part of why you’ve made such an impact, as Mr. Sarr noted in his comments. You’ve done your work with gratefulness, not grumbling. You’ve probably been given more things because it was more fun to do so.

And jovial warriors, laughing so that the other tables get mad, they’re bored and they’re made uncomfortable because you’re having such a great time. This isn’t being cheerful as a way to ignore problems, it’s being cheerful as you address them.

As I’ve considered your quad-rumpus, for all your ideas and big plans and finished projects, what really stands out, looking back, is that while you are not easily tip-able, all of you have been teachable. Mr. Sarr pointed out that your thankfulness has been evident, and teachability is like open hands to thankful’s overflowing heart.

You have been teachable, and so you are teaching others. You have received, and so you have things to give. You have listened, and so you have things to think about and more substance to your own thoughts. Even up to yesterday, you were seeking wisdom and willing to update your ideas.

Those who would be great leaders must know how to be ready listeners, eager learners, prompt followers. Those who would advance Christ-honoring culture must not only not reject it, but take the handoff. Your class has killed it in terms of impact on younger students and even on the faculty, because you never acted like you were being held back.

God has blessed you because of that, blessed you with hard-earned unity as a class as well as with deep influence on the school.

Go into every room, not like you own the place, but like you know the Lord who does. You are raggants. You are part of the rumpus. Be teachaBOLD. Tip more, boldly.

“Lives and generations and history are there for the tipping. You have hands. You have words. You have something. Touch the scales. Touch the least of these.”

—N.D. Wilson, Death by Living, 145

Turn the world upside down (Acts 17:6). Don’t leave it the same, you have not left ECS the same.

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Bring Them Up

Get Rich

The following are the notes from my talk at our school’s 11th Fundraising Feast last Friday.

There’s a story about my relationship to the school that I’ve never told in public before. It took place within a month or two of starting ECS.

Another family invited our family over for dinner, I think it was a Sunday evening, and it seemed like it would be a relaxing time of food and fellowship. Mo and I loaded up all four kids, at the time Maggie was in 5th grade, Calvin was in 1st grade, and while Hallie and Keelah weren’t old enough for school just yet they tagged along with Mo every day for the few classes she had to teach.

We arrived at the host’s home, shared some greeting pleasantries, and began eating after a short while. Not too far into the meal we found out the real agenda for the night. For the next couple hours Mo and I learned a variety of things that we were doing wrong, previously unknown to us. The criticisms were unpleasant enough, and showing no signs of slowing down, that Mo texted her mom to come and pick up our kids, which the hosts didn’t even realize until Mo and I were leaving.

The chief accusation, which also functioned as main heading that included a full magazine of bullets under it, was when they said, ”You just started a school to get rich.”

It wasn’t just the Higgins, but also the Sarrs. Both families were partners in greed. Since everyone knows if you want to get rich just start a private Christian school, how could we justify following the well-worn, almost-certain path to financial success?

I am here tonight to tell you, that after almost a dozen full years of ECS, I have never been more rich in my life.

If I had known heading into dinner that night what I know now at this dinner tonight, I would have tried a completely different defense. I would still start with laughter, of the head-thrown-back guffawing kind, and not just because risus est bellum. But I don’t think I’d try to make any arguments from the tiring histories of private school budget strains, let alone the many painful, even brutal experiences of school closures due to budget collapses. I wouldn’t try to draw any capital from my character account as a leader, asking what about my person made it seem like I was money hungry. If I could go back to that table again, instead of saying “Get real,” I’d say, “You’re absolutely right.”

Now in Logic terms I’d be playing with verbal equivocation, a possible informal fallacy, but I’d play it hard. I’d be using the key word in their premise in a different way in my conclusion. But part of my argument would be that my definition is not just another option, not just a better option, but the right definition. Did we start a school to get rich? Not in any way to increase our personal collection of dollars. But starting a school has absolutely increased our wealth.

What does it mean to be rich? What does it mean to be wealthy? What does it mean to you?

I am not trying to spiritualize the discussion in a way that sneers at money. We call this event our Fundraising Feast. We are trying to raise funds. We have bills, we write paychecks, we want to provide financial scholarships for families that need aid, and we’d love to improve the only non-asphalt play-place on our campus with turf, especially for the 13 months a year that it rains.

But we are laboring to build and to enjoy that which doesn’t rust. Our treasure is not just in what we can see, where thieves break in and steal. And that does not mean that God only makes His people rich in heaven. I said, I have never been more rich in my life. That’s right here, right now.

Stuff as riches is a simple metric, but it’s a superficial one, and not a certain source of joy. For those whose life is lived only under the sun, they are busy wearing themselves out to gather and collect; cash comes and cash goes, but the monthly subscriptions remain forever. If that’s all there is, it’s a burden, it’s striving after wind, it’s vanity. How many “rich” people have accounts full of emptiness?

When God makes wealthy He adds no guilt. “The blessing of the LORD makes rich, and He adds no sorrow with it” (Proverbs 10:22). Again, this includes what we eat and what we wear and the shelter our Heavenly Father provides. But He gives so much more.

Maybe you’ve read (or wanted to say you’ve read) the book Antifragile by Nassim Taleb. Taleb makes his money as a financial investor, but he also plays the part of a know-it-all-philosopher. The principle of anti-fragility is being in a position to benefit when things get shaken. He is certainly aiming his advice toward making money, but even he knows that wealth is more. His list of “true wealth” include:

  • worry-less sleeping
  • a clear conscience
  • a good appetite
  • no meals alone
  • good bowel movements
  • absence of envy
  • reciprocal gratitude
  • frequent laughs
  • periodic surprises

Being “rich” is having an abundance, but it’s abundance of more than just possessions (or power).

I’m rich with an expanding while tightening network of likeminded Christian families; we love being with our kids and homeschooling is mostly awesome and yet for us it does not compare to the riches of this community. I’m rich with seeing the joy of teachers who call ECS their “dream job” not because of how the economics work out but because of the environment they work in, and then being in the educational trenches with them. I’m more rich because of personal learning and need-to-grow accountability as a parent, a teacher, and as a divine-image bearer in the great stream of Western Civilization. I’m rich with kids who aren’t just suffering through assignments, but who have their dumb ideas laughed at and their great ideas sharpened; they want IN and want MORE. I’m rich not just with kids who know the standard, but with kids who love the standard and the vision of helping others love and confess Jesus Christ as Lord.

I’m rich with a clear conscience and with consciousness of God’s abundant blessings on this big project.

A few months ago, the day that re-enrollment paperwork was due, I was out of town, and Mo started working through some of the online questions to apply for financial aid. One of them was, “What would you be willing to give up for sake of a private education?” Mo has trouble with these sorts of questions, because she’s curious and can get lost in the clouds at the 50-thousand foot level pretty fast. But this one was easy. What would we give up? Everything. And that’s because of what have we gained: Everything.

What’s amazing about this kind of wealth is that it’s not zero-sum. It’s not like a bigger piece of pie for me means burnt crust crumbs for you. We are creating new value, win-win wealth, generational wealth, non-linear wealth. Through cooperation and mutual exchanges and sweat equity, multiple families get multiple blessings. You do have to invest, but it’s hard to calculate the compounding interest. You do have to get skin in the game, but you get back more than you could give away.

“One pretends to be rich, yet has nothing” (Proverbs 13:7). But we are not LARPers: Live Action Rich Pretenders. We have the world and life and death and the present and the future. All are ours because we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s (1 Corinthians 3:22-23).

Friends, may you eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God is blessing us. And, may you aim for so much more than cash and comfort. Get rich, really.

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Bring Them Up

Plotting Imaginative Coordinates

On the Making of a Fully Ready Non-Fiction Rumpus

Here are the notes from my talk at the 2024 Raggant Fiction Festival. If you’d prefer to watch, here’s a link to the video.

Magic Words

There is a two-word combo that I have not been able to spin out of my mental orbit for at least nine years, a verbal pairing that has affected my reading, my teaching, my recommendations, and my vision. They’ve almost been magic words, making something that didn’t exist before.

I value those who demonstrate that good reading, including good fiction, shapes our loves and loyalties. We learn to react the right way, who to root for and who to run away from. Yes(!) to stories that deepen and direct our affections. And, also, stories expand our imaginative coordinates. They push our mental boundaries of what was possible, and in so doing expand our world-building ideas.

Coordinates are a way to find where you’re at, or locate a place you plan to travel to, or even describe the length and breadth of the area considered. Coordinates belong on maps, X and Y, and sometimes a Z. The word “ordinate” comes from the idea of arranging or setting in order, and the “co” means that it involves at least two components working together. To plot coordinates is to set a course, which works not only when navigating a trip but also when writing a story.

Plotting imaginative coordinates in this respect isn’t figuring out how Mr. Rogers’ trolly gets to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, but imagining that there could be different, even better, places that would be good to go than we previously thought.

I first read the phrase “imaginative coordinates” in Michael Ward’s book, Planet Narnia. He also partners “imaginative” with:

  • imaginative vision
  • imaginative palate
  • imaginative outlook
  • imaginative pleasure
  • imaginative access
  • imaginative difficulties
  • imaginative resting-place
  • imaginative point-of-view
  • imaginative engagement
  • and imaginative form

Imaginative here doesn’t mean imaginary, as if fake, but rather using one’s creative efforts to see an image not seen before.

Beyond the Page

This is lifeblood for world-building. The Festival’s title/focus this year includes: “reading and writing as world-builders.” Reading requires imagination to picture the world the writer describes. This is one point for books over movies, as movies leave little to your imagination. You’re still dependent on someone else’s imaginative effort since they’ve built the world so you don’t have to. And writing obviously requires imagination to see a story to tell.

But imaginative sub-creating as God’s image-bearers — as Tolkien called it — is not only good for fiction. These imaginative capacities are crucial for non-fiction world-building.

If you need someone to give you a list of everything you need to do, fine, but you won’t be better than a robot. Robots can follow instructions, and with less pouting. As I’m talking about imagination, I’m talking about going from good stories to better cities, from plot twists to new products and better businesses. My talk is sort of a thank-you letter to fiction for helping me go from good fiction to better non-fiction.

Ready Raggants

I’ve affectionately called this year at ECS “The Year of the Raggant.” This event, after all, is the “Raggant Fiction Festival.” The biggest problem is that there is no such thing as a raggant. Or is there? Well, turns out, raggants not only exist in the fictional stories of the 100 Cupboards series, the raggants have become a select group of flesh-and-blood students (who pay non-fiction tuition dollars). That is so real that the author added a plural noun for a group of raggants: many raggants are a rumpus.

This year I’ve also been thinking about a word at the beginning of James 1, the Scripture about trials going to work on us, making us something. They test our faith toward our character arc of becoming “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” Perfect is related to telos, meaning the end it was made for, and complete is holokleros, sometimes translated as sound or whole. But one dictionary defined it as: “ready to meet all expectations.”

Trials push us beyond what we thought our faith could survive, they expand our imaginative coordinates of perfection and joy.

So how can we make a fully ready, non-fiction rumpus? That’s a twist on our school’s mission, that the next generation carry and advance Christ-honoring culture. How do we prepare the rumpus when we don’t know what will happen tomorrow, what exact challenges are coming in the next chapter, for when there is no exact script to follow?

Off the Edge

Before I give some actual points, I saw an interaction on my Twitter timeline a couple weeks ago that resonates with me. One guy asked: “What work of fiction changed your worldview the most?” Another guy, a guy who loves the Lord and loves the truth, said: “None. No work of fiction should ever change our worldview. As a Christian, my worldview is shaped by Scripture alone.” And, you know, here’s two thoughts about that.

First, okay, yeah, if you had to choose, the Bible OR Narnia, you know what to do. But remember how Nathan told David a made-up story to show David his own sin? Remember the made-up story about the prodigal son that Jesus told to show the Jews their rebellion? Each of those is a “work of fiction” that God inspired for sake of producing In-Real-Life change.

Second, maybe we could get hung up on the word “changed.” Okay, yeah, but there are ways that non-fiction explanations change the facts to distort, shape to cover, shape to deceive, and ways that fiction reveals higher or deeper or broader truths.

And again, fiction plots our imaginative coordinates further out on the page, maybe even off the edge of the map. We don’t advance without imagination, and so till we have fiction we won’t complete the mission.

A Trifecta of Stuck

Three characters won’t advance, at least not well. This is not to say that only perfect characters make progress. I really enjoyed following both Cora (in The Winter King) and Lio (in The Sinking City), and Cora in particular who kept choosing wrong things, not by accident, not due to naivety. They both had flaws, and yet they both went forward. But there are three traits that cannot see beyond their plight (not plot), and all three traits are temptations for all of us.

Victims Aren’t Ready to Advance

By victim I don’t mean someone who has something bad happen to him. Why would you read something where nothing bad happens; no conflict equals no concern. By victim I mean the slave to how the other people, and the circumstances, keep him from happiness, success, glory. If it is always someone else’s fault, if you can’t imagine that there’s something you can do to make things better, you will not advance.

Frodo was not just short, he was weak, and he was greatly tempted and greatly tired and greatly whining about it. And yet, for as much Elijah Wood’s sulky face is sadly burned into my mind, Frodo was not stuck because he believed enough in his calling/responsibility to leave the Shire.

I would summarize Till We Have Faces as Orual’s turn from victimhood. She did quite a lot for much of the story while convinced that she was the victim. But this is Lewis’ imaginative power providing a fictional mirror for us, and we are the ugly ones. Telling us the story through Orual’s perspective shows us that victims often claim their virtue, but victims are not more happy but angry as they claim their virtue.

Again, bad things happen, brutal things happen, unfair things happen, and all of that happens to characters completely out of their control. But is that all they can see?

“the thinking processes that lead one to assume that one’s life situation is in extremis are partially determined by the breadth of one’s horizons at the time—which, of course, correlates with one’s imaginative capacity and sense of adventure.” (A Failure of Nerve, Location 2952)

Victims are stuck without their imaginative coordinates expanding past blaming everyone else.

Faint-Hearts Aren’t Ready to Advance

Faint-heart is an actual fictional character in The Pilgrim’s Progress. Faint-heart joined the progress/advance with Christian and Faithful for a while, but abandoned the path and went back to the City of Destruction.

Cowards hide from conflict, and lose passively. Little-faiths lay down to get out of the wind and are, of course, caught in the wind longer. Lose-hearts lose heart, they give up.

Two things. One, again, the world is full of scary things as well as bad things, and even if you could avoid the scary and bad, there’s still gravity. Things are heavy, hard. Plus, the more imaginative you are, the more you may be able to imagine how painful something will be, the losses you could experience. Staying the course is more like crossing the English Channel with a kick-board; it’s within reach but it’ll be rough.

Two, being afraid is not just possible, some of it is quite reasonable. When O’Brien threatens to strap the cage of rats to Winston’s face in 1984, that’s only a visceral fear, when in fact, all of 1984 is a red-pill of dystopian anxiety that was bad when it was fiction, let alone when it turned 2020. It makes sense that the hobbits wanted nothing to do with the Nazgul, the Balrog, or with Shelob; watch out for Tolkien monsters with six letter names. The point is not that the next page is sure to have cuddly puppies, or a pot of gold, but that we’re willing to advance.

It’s not fiction, but Paul does plot some imaginative coordinates in 2 Corinthians 4.

“So we do not lose heart… For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16a, 17–18 ESV)

It takes faith, and isn’t one part of faith being stronger is faith seeing further? Your picture of glory is probably too small. In order to not lose heart you need your imaginative coordinates enlarged.

Faint-hearts are stuck without their imaginative coordinates expanding past the immediate difficulties and inevitable discouragements.

Cynics Aren’t Ready to Advance

A pessimist is just a baby cynic, someone who can’t see anything good. A full-grown cynic is more like a nihilist, who thinks there is no point. This is why there are less Crazy-villains and more Cynic-villains. When you’re reading, and then when you’re thinking about your own responses to things, complaints unchecked lead to souls undone, and that leads to destruction. Cynicism is a self-fulfilling chaos-maker.

The disillusioned have imagination that is twisted toward their own self-interest. In their mind there’s no reason to be honorable, in fact, the honorable should be exposed and brought down.

Scrooge was a cynic, the Grinch was a cynic. They not only had bad attitudes in private, their suspicious and scoffing attitudes wanted others to pay. It was the same with Denethor and Saruman, whose cynicism led to lust for power to cause pain. They couldn’t leave well-enough alone. Shift’s cynicism opened up Narnia to slavery, murder, and eventually to being devoured by the real Tash.

Cynics are stuck without their imaginative coordinates expanding past the vices and vanities surrounding them.

On We Go

Why be so negative if the emphasis should be on advancing by the expanse of imaginative coordinates? First, because these are challenges that I’ve run into while trying advance. Second, because there are prerequisites to advancing, like not tying your shoelaces to a table leg. Third, because maybe you are one of the stuck, and you can’t imagine not being stuck, but actually fiction shows characters like you can get unstuck! It might require repentance, it might require a change in mental diet, but it is possible.

Fiction is fun, it’s entertaining, sure. But it can change your mind, and that can change/build your world. Good stories are imaginative mirrors to appall the ugly out of you, imaginative protein for world-building muscle, and imaginative coordinates to explore beyond the visible map.

Good fiction helps you be ready to meet all expectations, plotting imaginative coordinates IS part of making a fully ready non-fiction rumpus.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. stated,

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”

Till you have fiction, you may be stuck on your rump.

Categories
Bring Them Up

Disturbing the Lives of Others

The following are notes from my talk at the 2024 Information Night for Evangel Classical School.

As we’ve been preparing for this evening, our thirteenth Information Night, Mr. Sarr has tongue-in-cheek penciled me in to speak something “mind-blowing.” I’m not prepared to deliver that, but I am prepared to tell you something disturbing. In fact have no reluctance in trying to disturb you.

ECS has been disturbing my life since before the school even had a name. My schedule, my wife’s schedule, my kids’ schedules, my reading plans, my comfort zone, my understanding of what matters, my vision for the next twenty years, my bank account, my summer breaks, my sleeping, my coffee consumption, my level of laughter have all been disturbed. ECS has been, and keeps on, messing with how I previously had arranged all my stuff. And I love it.

Not only that, I keep trying to disturb the lives of people I care about. Some of the people I love the most are more tired than they’ve ever been, feel more overwhelmed now than before, have had a bunch of their stuff interrupted or interfered with, and I think they would say that they absolutely wouldn’t have it any other way.

When I say disturbing, I mean disturbing like we are living in a barn with a metal roof and the BLESSINGS keep falling like jumbo, Honeycrisp apples; bang, bang, bang! Imagine blessings falling not like our typical lazy Western Washington sprinkles, but a Midwest sky-dump. We can’t walk outside comfortably in all the raining blessings; we need kevlar umbrellas.

Blessings are good, but often disrupting. If you got an unanticipated ten-million dollar inheritance (after taxes), it would disturb your week. God gives first time parents nine-months of low-level disruption before the major blessing of the kid’s birth, and BANG. Then we eventually get to the point where we realize we’ve got to educate this little blessing. That’s going to require rearranging whatever you had on the calendar.

And without trying to be dramatic, a good education will barge in on anyone trying to make sure their blessings never spill over their easy-to-carry mini-basket. There are a LOT of things to learn. If Jesus cares about it, we can care about it.

  • If He created it, He cares. “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3 ESV).
  • If He controls it, He cares. “[H]e upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3 ESV).
  • If He commands it, duh. Among the commands, we can go all the way back to the mandate for divine image-bearers: with His blessing, men are to fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion on it (Genesis 1:28).

Christ’s interests are comprehensive, which more than permits our increase of interests, it ought to provoke our increase (incrementally even though finitely) as we pursue Christlikeness. Our mission as a school is to commend all the works of the Lord to the next generation, educating them and laughing and laboring in order to carry and advance Christ-honoring culture.

And we are most certainly not living in broader culture that has any interest in honoring Christ. At best they are willfully negligent about honoring Jesus as Lord, and more so these days they express open rebellion against His exclusive preeminence and righteous standards. The nations rage and rulers take counsel together against the LORD and His anointed. As much as it’s ever been in our lifetimes, the division between two ways of life glares at us. It’s not a Red and Blue thing, but a God is God or men are wannabe-God thing.

Humanism has gotten us to the point where we think being a human being is a harmful-privilege that requires self-condemnation for how all us people are The Problem™️ on the planet. Humanism has gotten us to the point where we sacrifice the most vulnerable, unborn humans by redefining what it means to be a human; “Sorry, you must be on a different side of that muscle wall.” Humanism has gotten us to the point where our doctors won’t dare to identify male or female, our politicians create days and fly flags to celebrate perversity, and our government school (so-called) “teachers” teach students fictions as feasible (changing genders would just be one example).

Friends, that’s not only crazy, it’s disturbing. And that really points out that we’re in a battle for disturbing. Either Jesus is Lord and living for Him is worth having our lives disrupted by His blessings, or Jesus is not Lord and we can go about fiddling with distractions and trying to survive the insanity.

One of my favorite talks of all time was given by Abraham Kuyper in 1880 at the inauguration of the Free University in Amsterdam, “Sphere Sovereignty.” There will be Sovereignty, either of God or of man. If we recognize that God is sovereign, then our life is built on truth, our convictions resonate with truth. If we act like men are sovereign, whether represented by intellectuals or bureaucrats, then our lives are built on a “denial of the facts of life.”

“[T]he only two mighty antagonists that plumb life down to the root [are God’s sovereignty or man’s sovereignty]. And so they are worth people risking their own lives for and disturbing the lives of others.”

This is it. Our faith is in the living God or in fake news. And note that those living in their fantasy will risk their lives and make no apologies for disturbing the lives of others. What energy and endurance and dollars they devote to their cause! But those who live by faith in the Messiah, who are surrendered to Christ the King, will most certainly risk their own lives and make no apologies for disturbing the lives of others. Only one can be, only one is, the place of disruptive blessings.

Blessings are in the basics — phonograms and reading drills and math facts and Bible history — emphasized in the GRAMMAR stage. Blessings are in categories and distinguishing — practiced in the LOGIC stage. Blessings are in adornment — speeches and singing — embodied in the RHETORIC stage. The Trivium (Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric) are some of the tools of classical education. Blessings at ECS also come in laughter, especially when we laugh while trying to fix things rather than only laugh when the project/challenge is finished. Blessings most certainly come in sacrifices, offered out of love, for the life of others.

With Kuyper we say:

“To put it mildly, our undertaking bears a protest against the present environment and suggests that something better is possible.” (“Sphere Sovereignty”, 463)

The blessings are better at ECS, and they are too big for a reluctant person to pick up. The blessings here are disturbing like walking over a dune in the desert to find an orchard of fruit trees, planted by a stream of water, where leaves don’t wither, and blessings prosper. These blessings are worth your life, and lives of those you love, being disturbed.

Categories
Bring Them Up

The Year of the Raggant

The following are my notes from the ECS Convocation for the 2023-24 school year.

Welcome back to another school year, Raggants.

We think it is an extraordinary thing to be a raggant; we are the only school in the world with the raggant as mascot. The raggant is more than uniform embroidery, acting like a raggant is part of our vocabulary. I want to remind you of what it means. We include the characteristics on our grade cards, they are part of our other graduation requirements (and there are a few other uses). At least some have wondered why we make such a big deal about it; aren’t we supposed to be Christians? And of course following Christ what we’re about, but I hope to show that being a raggant is a particular and playful way to pursue being a Christian. I’m ready to say that this should be The Year of the Raggant.

Mr. Sarr is the one who first noted how the raggant perfectly embodies the center of classical and Christian education. Before ECS started we were reading The Case for Classical Christian Education in which Doug Wilson wrote:

Classical Christian academies teach all subjects as an integrated whole with the Scriptures at the center.

Christ is Lord of all He made (and “by Him all things were created” Colossians 1:16), and Christ’s Word is the special revelation for our worship and our worldview. We are to “let the word of Christ dwell in (us) richly” (Colossians 3:16). There is no other book like the Bible; the Bible gives us the standard by which we evaluate every other book, subject, class, conversation, and claim. The Bible teaches us about Christ and what it means to follow Christ.

Mr. Sarr was also reading through the 100 Cupboards trilogy by Doug’s son, Nate Wilson. And in the second book, Dandelion Fire, Nate describes the raggant:

The raggant didn’t have any extra senses. He only had one, and it interfaced everything into an amazingly complicated but entirely accurate caricature of whatever worlds were within his range.

What a great parallel: Classical Christian schools where everything is integrated by Scripture and the raggant interfacing with all the world by one sense. So Mr. Sarr proposed the raggant as our mascot. On our school webpage he wrote:

That is a picture of how we want for our students to perceive Christ’s domain academically. We want their perceptions of the world to be less compartmentalized (like human senses) and more academically integrated like the blended, combined senses of the mighty raggant.

A few years later, in the spring of 2016, I needed something to talk about for an assembly. I came up with a list of characteristics for our students, showed it to my wife, and she wondered if I was okay. Ha. My first draft wasn’t impressive. I went back to the brainstorming, and ended up with six things. That talk got a good response, and later that summer the school board approved these characteristics as things to for ECS to emphasize.

At the time I didn’t use a lot of Scripture proof-texts. But all these virtues are driven by the Bible. When we talk about being raggants, it’s not really about taking on the shape of a small rhino with wings, we’re talking about integrated learning and living according to Scripture.

Stout Image Bearers

God made man in His image, blessed him, and told him to be fruitful and take dominion (Genesis 1:26, 28). In order to know who we are as human beings, we have to know in whose likeness we were created, and that comes from God’s Word.

As reflections of God we’re responsible to fulfill God’s mandate. Taking dominion is not for wimps, it requires stout/sturdy/strong image-bearers. So we take heart in what the Lord told Joshua at the edge of the promised land,

Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:7–9 ESV)

So “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might” (Ephesians 6:10). “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Corinthians 16:13).

Generous Disciples of Christ

Every Christian is a disciple, a word we got from the Latin word discipulus meaning “student/learner/follower.” Making disciples is the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). That requires learning and observing all that Jesus commanded, which we get from Scripture.

And disciples give, first of themselves following the pattern of Christ, then of their resources. They die to bring life (2 Corinthians 4:7-12), they contribute to those who need it and show hospitality (Romans 12:13). Liberal education, education that makes free-men, includes giving freely as we’ve received (Matthew 10:8 KJV). Wisdom teaches that “One gives freely, yet grows all the richer” (Proverbs 11:24).

Copious Producers

Copious means plentiful, overflowing. Raggants/Christians aren’t just consumers, they are big-time producers.

Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
(Psalm 1:1–4 ESV)

Fruitfulness is not like that of a machine, but of a living tree. This fruitfulness, like courage, comes through God’s Word.

Remember the sower and the seed (an illustration of the gospel Word), that which fell on good soil “produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold” (Mark 4:8, 20). When the soil is right the Word grows into a field full of good works.

Prodigious Learners

As copious means abundance, prodigious means enormous, vast. Christ is interested in a lot, so to be like Him we have a lot we can learn.

That includes about Christ Himself: “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). That’s a command, and we start with Scripture. So also, when we walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, we are “bearing fruit in every good work (copious) and increasing in the knowledge of God, being strengthen with all power (stout)” (Colossians 1:10).

Thankful Stewards

Thankfulness is how we learn, not just the end of our learning. We give thanks before and during our work, not only after it. “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:16–17 ESV, see also Ephesians 5:20)

If Scripture integrates all our learning, then thankfulness is like glue that holds together our attitude about it all. To whom much is given, much (gratitude) is required (see Luke 12:48).

Jovial Warriors

Since Genesis 3:15 humanity as been in a battle; there is enmity between two seeds, that of the serpent and that of the woman. That promised seed we now know is Christ Himself. Christians are enlisted as soldiers in a spiritual war (2 Corinthians 10:4) along with Him.

The good fight should be fought in a good way, so our motto is: laughter is war. It comes from Psalm 52.

The righteous shall see and fear,
and shall laugh at him, saying,
“See the man who would not make
God his refuge, (Psalm 52:6–7 ESV)

See, fear, laugh, all of which come from faith in what God’s Word says. The Word is our sword (Ephesians 6:17), and we wield it with joy.

Of course there are other great characteristics in Scripture. The Greatest Commandment is to love God, then we’re to love our neighbors. The Great Commission is, again, to make disciples not to make raggants. We’re not saying that these six qualities are an alt-fruit of the Spirit, another six onto the inspired seven. But in a school context, with the Bible at the center, with the goal of Christ-honoring education culture, these characteristics seemed playful and potent.

So put it all together. Raggants are high discipline, low drama students who see all the world through the Scriptures. May the Lord bless this 2023-24 school year at ECS as The Year of the Raggant.

Categories
Bring Them Up

What the Music Says

I wrote and read the following story for our school’s end of year assembly. It was inspired by one buttock playing.

Once upon a time—well, it was actually a week ago Wednesday—I was walking past the piano in our living room. In all her life this instrumental furniture has not once attempted to put the piano in pianissimo; she always sits upright and takes delight in high decibel play.

That afternoon no girls sat at her keys, but still, when I walked by, I heard noises. It sounded sort of like talking. From where I stood it sounded like secrets sound.

This was not the first time I’ve heard conversations in odd places around my house. Years ago I heard pinto beans in a bucket in our pantry, but if there are any other such little kingdoms, they have been living below my notice. Until that one Wednesday.

The words were coming out of the piano bench. I slowly bent down and took a knee beside the bench so that my left ear was at the level of the crack where the lid sat over the walls of the storage compartment. I’ve looked in that space a hundred times, usually when we were expecting visitors and I was putting away pages with titles like “Hot Cross Buns” and “Skidamarink” and “Let It Go.” But I’d never heard any talking.

I cautiously lifted the lid just enough to peek inside. On top, one of the books was open, and every good treble clef note was not fine. The notes were flustered! In my piano bench!

The notes had more than tone, they had voices. Each note had a life, an incomplete todo list, its own mission.

The note in the middle of it all was B. His full name, I regret to tell you, was Bruno. In this story, we do talk about Bruno, we can’t not talk about Bruno, and in this story Bruno was talking. Bruno had apparently gone out shoppin’ and gotten separated from his brother, Eric. The song they were in required Bruno and Eric to be together with their friend Gus, and though the chord they made was minor, their parting was no minor problem.

Imagine the scene: London, foggy and dim, drops of rain water falling off canopies in a haunting rhythm, so somber that even Mary Poppins would be sad. That’s exactly what it was like, except it was happening on a sheet of music in my piano bench.

Bruno called out. He looked down where he expected to see Eric, but Eric was gone, and Bruno’s heart started to beat so fast it would make a metronome sweat.

Then it got bad. The trouble alternated with a gang known as the 4/4 Cs: Carlos, Colton, Cody, and Cade. Bruno knew them well. At school they surrounded him in every class since the notes sat in alphabetical order and they only had first names because, after all, they were just musical notes.

Playing by themselves the Four Cs were harmless, but when they were around other notes they tried to discourage them, especially Bs like Bruno. They noticed that Bruno and Eric weren’t together and decided that they would have a little fun by making it no fun for Bruno, and try to knock him flat.

Carlos came up to him first. “Hey, Bruno, what are you doing?”

“I’m looking for my brother. Have you seen him?”

Carlos replied, “No, and you’re dumb to think you’re going to find him now that it’s so dark.”

“Well,” Bruno said, “Eric is a note, so I don’t necessarily need more light to see him, as long as I can hear him.”

“You know you stink at playing by ear,” Carlos said, “you should just quit.”

About that time Colton approached and asked if there was a problem. Carlos said, “Bruno here says the dark is making him sad.”

“It’s not the dark,” Bruno blurted, “it’s that I’m trying to get to Eric, and we got separated a few measures back.”

Colton mocked, “You’re always so pitchy and blue. Besides, it’s been too long, Eric has to be on a completely different line by now. Don’t worry about it. No one wants to be in a chord with you anyway.”

Carlos and Colton laughed like Dodos, but Bruno shook his head and took off running. The other two Cs, Cody and Cade, were waiting for him on the corner Picardy and 3rd. Bruno thought he could relax, but it was just for a moment, as Cody grabbed Bruno and Cade started striking at Bruno with staccato punches. Bruno tried to break free but Cody was too strong.

Then Bruno saw his friend from the A family, Augmon, in the distance. He cried out, “Augmon, help me! Get me away from the Cs!” Augmon rushed over and got between Bruno and Cody and Cade, providing at least a brief rest from the depressing Cs. But the second verse was about to begin, worse than the first.

Bruno and Augmon moved forward a couple bars. They hoped to find their friend Gus. “Do you think Gus will know where Eric is?” Bruno asked.

Augmon replied, “I don’t know, but he’s a key note that we need to find anyway.”

Then the sound exploded, escalated, increased, crescendoed. Note after note was running up and down, halves and eighth and sixteenths, no time for whole notes at this point. As they went faster the volume kept getting louder, and Bruno in particular felt not just that he was getting further and further away from Eric, he thought for a second that he was going to get pushed off the page and out of the song altogether.

It’s not that Bruno needed to be in every song. He had been written into many melodies. His cousin Bs up and down the octaves sounded different but familial, and he was always happy when they got to play. But this particular prelude was his story. His tone began to be worn out.

Bruno held on as best as he could to his line, trying to avoid being shaken off the sheet altogether.

Augmon led Bruno down a step as they turned off Picardy to and they found Gus just in time.

Augmon handed Bruno off to Gus, and they sustained their energy for one final stretch toward the end where they all hoped Bruno would be united with Eric. “Reach out!” cried Gus, “If you don’t do it now we’ll never finish.”

Bruno saw his moment. All along Gus had been working his signature move and had been tilting the whole sheet of music to bring Eric within sight. Everyone could feel that the end was near. Bruno and Gus stretched, but they didn’t quite make it. They stretched again, and though they were very close, something was still off. So they extended one more time and landed right where they belonged, right at home on the bottom line, B-G-E together at last. The song was resolved.

I carefully closed the lid to the piano bench, feeling glad for Bruno, and thinking about how much better it is when notes play their part, especially when they do it in harmony with one another. It also made me think, maybe we should listen better to what the music is saying, even from piano benches.

Categories
Bring Them Up

Too Loved to Be Bored

These are the notes for my charge to the 2023 ECS graduates.

Good evening, graduates, their parents and families, school board and faculty, and guests. It is actually a blessing to me to have both the opportunity and the delight to speak to you tonight. There is no place I would rather be than right here, right now, with you.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t great places to go, other great places we could be. The post graduation get-togethers will be fun and your summers full and your falls and farther futures will take you to various and valuable fields for good work. But it’s not only appropriate to look back and thank God for what He has done, it is appropriate to look around and enjoy where God has you even in this moment.

It would be very easy to ruin our time by looking at the time, by counting down the minutes on the clock until we can get out. The minutes will pass, but we are filling the minutes with meaning on their way by.

Take a moment and mediate with me on the Aristotelian (probably) truism that you always are where you are, or more often phrased: wherever you go there you are. This is not sophomore dialectic, it is senior rhetoric. It’s life rhetoric. While it’s obviously true when the FBI is tracking the location services signal on your phone (unless your phone isn’t on you), the cliche is more about your character than your address. The cliche is so obvious that it’s a temptation to forget its force.

I asked ChatGPT to tell me about the phrase, “wherever you go there you are,” and the artificial intelligence explained it as being about “inner self awareness.” Really? Is that it?

Among the first few books I read about classical education is The Seven Laws of Teaching. I’ve read it a few times over the years, and it’s John Milton Gregory’s first rule that has left a deep groove in my mind. Gregory says,

“A highly effective teacher will love God, love life, love the students, and love the subject he teaches.”

A teacher thinking about what he teaches must start by thinking about loves. As C.S. Lewis put it, * docere et delectare, docere delectando*: “to teach and to delight, to teach by delighting.”

The great commandment is about love: love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength, then love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said these two commandments summarize all the law. Our character is seen in our loves.

These are not about internal awareness but about affections expressed. These are not loves of self-reflection or self-fulfillment. They are loves that light up our current location, our present situation.

Our loves are to be present tense, we are loving, not future (we will love) or subjunctive (we might love). We love now, we love this neighbor/classmate/customer, and extended, we love them in this minute and in this place. We are not always grasping for the intangible “later” or “elsewhere.” If a teacher can’t bring his loves into his work and into the room, it creates boredom, if not abhorrence in the students.

“The teacher, feeling no fresh interest in his work, seeks to compel the attention he is unable to attract, and awakens disgust by his dullness and dryness where he ought to inspire delight by his intelligence and active sympathy.”

Because we can disobey, we can actually get around the cliche. It is possible to not be where you are, to go through the motions with little or no heart in them. It’s possible for a teacher, it’s possible for a student. It is possible to put one’s attention on a future time or a different place; “Senioritis” is a diagnosis of division: the parts aren’t all together.

This doesn’t mean you can’t pursue goals; goals are great. This doesn’t mean everything must stay the same forever; it won’t and it can’t. But it does mean that the impact you make as you walk toward your future and your goals will be different.

One of my top-five favorite books, all time and any genre, is The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Capon. There is no other book I’ve highlighted more than this so-called “cookbook.” You all read it just a couple months ago in your Capstone class. Though I haven’t talked to any of you seniors about it directly, I have been directly impacted by your reading of it, and not only in the presentation feast you all hosted last night. The whole school has smelled different.

Capon is the kind of cook (and author) who makes you wish you could sit down at his table because he loves what he sets on it for the sake of those sitting around it. We can’t fellowship over bread and cheese and puff pastries and lamb, but we do imagine ourselves settled in his kitchen and seeing his wry smile and asking for another glass of whatever he’s pouring. We want to be there because he wants to be there. He has loved the food so that we want to love it.

Whatever the ingredients were, something started simmering among you seniors in a way that lifted the aroma of the whole school campus. You were like butter and cream that thickened the laughter. You were like a splash of wine that made Matins more bright. You were like onions, not making others cry, but revealing more layers of what raggants can do.

In some ways you’ve saved the best for last. You are leaving ECS better, not because you’re leaving, but because you spent your last days not trying to be somewhere else.

Allow me to commend this mindset, this way of loving where you are, and recommend it to you as a strategic and potent lesson as you go on to other “Wheres.”

Young people are tempted to think they are wasting their lives if they aren’t where they think they could be. But it is more likely to waste your life that way, consumed with constantly thinking about where you’re not. Young people are tempted to think that their parents, and sometimes their teachers/school, are holding them back from something better. It is more likely that they are trying to give you beloved resources so that you can have something better. Those days of preparation aren’t wasted any more than the third inning of a nine-inning game, no more keeping you back from the “important” than dinner ruins dessert.

“There are more important things to do than hurry.” (Capon, Location 922)

It’s true with smoking meat and with some meals. You must not be chintzy with your proteins, or your presence. This is a kind of unreasonable hospitality, unreasonable because being a great host is about the heart, not the venue.

You are the class with the most years under their ECS belt, some of you for as long as ECS has existed, so 11 of your 13 years of school. Now you are done. You can get out and finally do what you want. And you will find that wherever you go, you will take some of here with you.

During your senior presentations one line was quoted from Capon more than any other. I love it as well.

“boredom is the fertilizing principle of unloveliness.” (Capon, Location 83)

So with that in mind, here is my charge to you. Last year I urged the seniors that they were too blessed to be stupid. To you, class of 2023, you are too loved to be bored. And not being bored is the same as loving where you’re at, which is the same as being where you are. Wherever you go, you know the the fertilizing principle of not trying to be somewhere else before it’s time. You have made ECS more lovely, and yourselves as a class, by being here. That is a potent, and delightful, lesson to love.

Categories
Bring Them Up

Raggants Aren’t Normies

Here are my notes from our ECS Fundraising Fiesta last Friday.

A principle is a first thing (derived from the Latin word princips which means “first, chief”) that serves as a foundation; you build on a principle, a (good) chain of reasons starts with a (good) principle. I learned a principle that started snowballing for me around the time that ECS started: thanksgiving is not something we fight for, thanksgiving is something we fight with. Thanksgiving isn’t the win, thanksgiving is a weapon in the war. It’s true with feasting as an expression of joyful gratitude. We share bread and wine, or tacos and cerveza, not because we’re finished, but as part of the fight. Laughter is not for when the battle is over; it’s not risus post bellum but risus est bellum.

So here’s the principle that we should keep in mind tonight: ECS is not something we fight for as much as something we fight with. We’re not simply trying to preserve the institution, we’re trying to spend it.

Of course I don’t mean that we are trying to go bankrupt and get out of the education business. Our fiesta tonight is a party to increase our resources, more locked arms and a more stocked arsenal/bank account. But we do need to know what we’re doing enough so that we never forget what we’re doing: commending the works of the Lord to another generation so that they will carry and advance Christ-honoring culture.

A couple significant things have happened in the life of our school since the last time we feasted in this room. The Lord has provided us with owned space, our own classrooms and a not-closet-office where the headmaster can sit down with interested families or double check-marked students without banging kneecaps. We also found out that sprinklers would be almost twice as much as the quote we raised money toward, but there are still holes in our ceilings that give evidence of progress.

The second thing is that we arrived on the State’s radar, provoked by a pressing plea to the city council to deny our facility use permit. As word got around, the State Board of Education was not impressed that we had not secured their approval. As our school board agreed to help purchase a place that needed loving into more loveliness, so we agreed to submit to a over-reaching and bureaucratic process for sake of playing a longer game.

We know where we’re going to have classes next year, we know what immunization records are required and where to keep chemicals in the closest, and these a helpful because we have a lot of fighting left to do.

There are afflictions at every turn, antagonists without and apathy within. We haven’t come this far to put our feet up on the desk, we’re putting them down on the gas pedal, both of them.

One of our temptations as an institution is to get complacent and comfy because little kids in their mostly put-together uniforms are so darned cute. They are cute. It’s a hoot to hear Kindergarten sound-offs (and almost as much of a hoot to watch the army of proud parents in the back with phones out taking video of said sound-offs), to watch penmanship improve, to see their red-faces near the end of the Liden Mile run during first recess. And when they earn their marble party pajama read-in day, we smile widely and say, Well done. But this doesn’t mean we’re done. The age-appropriate reading speed and comprehension skills equip them for reading new WA state legislation 35 years later. You remember how it goes: “See Jay run. See Jay ignore science and data.”

There’s a derogatory term I’ve seen thrown around, at least on my Twitter timeline, about the “normies.” Normies are those who want to go back to the how it used to be when (it seemed like) everyone got along, when “boys will be boys” meant that they got their pants dirty not that they were groomed into buying tampons. But what so many so-called “normies” don’t seem to see as clearly, which we need to fix for sake of the following generation, is that “normal” is a theological category. Normal and natural depend on God who created nature and defines what is normal; if we don’t give Him credit He will give us up to folly and dishonor.

I do believe in what’s called common grace; God sends rain and sun on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). Non-Christians can (and do) get married, have kids, go on vacation, play sports, build bridges because they know 2+2=4. But they can only have those things and enjoy them if God is kind to them, and they will be judged by the Lord if they don’t thank Him. They are accountable for every good thing He gives.

But it was Christians who got all kinds of good and squandered their blessings as Christians. Christians received good without acknowledging Christ’s kindnesses or kingship in public. Christians acted indifferent about education, whether or not Jesus—as the One who made and who sustains it all—was named. Christians got complacent, we got fat in our feasting rather than using our feasting as fighting. The crazy all around us is because we didn’t honor Christ.

So ECS continues to press forward to the glory of Christ. The young kids are cute, but we’re not teaching raggants to be normies. They are not NPCs (non playable characters in the game). Each raggant is being equipped for his or her vocation/calling. We educate them so that when they are grown they can stand with their fathers, shoulder to shoulder, against enemies in the city gates. It’s why we have arrows on the ECS seal, not just because the headmaster likes archery.

“Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!”
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
(Psalm 127:4-5).

Mrs. Hall’s husband, Ryan, recommended a book at the beginning of the year, a book that our board chairman, Chuck, then read multiple times, and then Jonathan and Jim read it. Providentially most of our upperclassmen visited Canlis, a fine dining restaurant in the Queen Anne neighborhood, run by brothers, one of whom is mentioned in the book, Ureasonable Hospitality. Anyway, among many, this line stood out to me as a conscious concentration of our mission:

”the legacy we had charged ourselves with defending and extending.” (Location 1676)

We’re trying to do something unreasonable, not as in irrational, but as in exorbitantly special, which does include enjoying normal things giving explicit thanks to the Lord. We are not trying to be Christian normies, if that means being satisfied with cozy and covert rather than carrying and advancing Christ’s name.

We need more funds to do it. Playground equipment is fun, as it is a reset for memorizing science facts. We don’t want any student to mix up XX and XY because they didn’t get their wiggles out. It’s not so we can have our own little isolated safe-space to play, but for play and laughter as war. We’re all paying our taxes and tuition to try to pay teachers better, among a multitude of other costs.

Invest with us in the culture that honors Christ, everything else is crazy. We cherish the blessings of God to ECS, and may God bless ECS even more, not just by preserving her (as we fight for), but by making her formidable and potent in the fight (as we fight with).