Boys to Men or Boys to Killers? A Home School Mom's Take

First Things has a nice little article on the gentle art of rearing boys - realities versus the pseudo/philosophical ideals of the experts of the last generation. It is entitled The Killer Instinct by Sally Thomas, a home school mom from North Carolina. Below are a couple of paragraphs from the article.

Girls may like weapons, but boys like the actions that weapons enable. They like shooting and slashing and stabbing at things, and if they don’t have anything to shoot, slash, or stab with, punching is good, too. Hand a girl a rock, and she will make a pet out of it. Hand a boy a baby doll, and—if no adult is looking—he will point its head at somebody and say, “Pow.”

The default mode of many parents is to be as alarmed by this proclivity in their sons as my friend was by the deer hunters. To be sure, it is wearying, sometimes, to live with a person whose way of greeting you is to line you up in imaginary sights. I can see that, after a while, if you didn’t just become oblivious to it, an obvious fascination with shooting things might come to seem like one of those warning signals we all read about: If Johnny does X, call Dr. Y. It used to be that parents waited for Johnny to start torturing the cat before they worried. My generation of parents seems to worry that owning a rubber-band shooter will make Johnny want to torture the cat.

From my own observation, I was perhaps of the last generation to be raised in the "boys will be boys" climate. The movement to 'equalize' boys and girls that has resulted in the documented stunting of young males' development over recent decades, was the result of a confusion between the materialistic parochialism that had developed in twentieth century Western society and the natural differences between males and females. This confusion influenced many areas of Western culture, particularly in anxiety that boys might actually behave like boys (a sort of 'cultural emasculation') and the consequent deforming of the 'ideal' of what young females should become (an equally healthy 'cultural defininization' of girls). As a former teacher, I have witnessed this unnatural exercise unfold in the classroom and on the playground, wherein boys instincts were stifled as 'aggressive'. To give food for thought, I recall it being raised as a concern when one year's class had only boys and members of the administration were desperate to remedy this potentially dangerous development. Of course, the boys did just fine; in fact, possibly becoming the highest achievers I ever had the privilege to teach.

Faith versus Religiosity

Hat Tip to Salt of the Earth for this all too accurate indictment of what passes for "faith" for too many. To learn more about Fr Alexander Men, check here and here.

Often what passes for Orthodoxy or another Christian confession is simply natural religiosity which, in its own right, is a kind of opium of the people. It functions as a sort of spiritual anesthetic, it helps a person adjust to his surrounding world, over which one can hang the slogan: ‘Blessed is the one who believes that it is cozy in the world.’ This is all wrong! …Your God is a consuming fire and not a warm hearth, and he is calling you to a place where all sorts of cold winds are blowing, so that what you imagine does not exist. You adapted and developed a completely different teaching to suit your own human needs. You transformed Christianity into a mediocre, popular religion. …Christianity can be authentic and it can be false. The false form is always more convenient. It always suits us better, which is why contemporary religious life is often characterized by a churchly falsehood when people prefer that which is convenient, calm and pleasant, conforms to their own ideas, consoles them, and which they enjoy. It is not at all to this that the Lord called us when he said ‘the gate is narrow’ and ‘the way is narrow.’ Again and again we need to understand that this Spirit is not warmth, but a fire. It is a fire.

Would that we all recognized the truth of this quote and took it to heart with seriousness and commitment. No one is immune from such temptations, the laity, the clergy, or the hierarchy.

Assisted Suicide? or Coerced Murder?

I know; the title doesn't really make the intended distinction clear. The various "assisted suicide" euphemisms when viewed with absolute objectivity all mean "coerced into letting a medical professional murder under the guise of empathy". MercatorNet features an excellent article on this topic by Michael Cook entitled "Is death better than disability?" In it, he reports on an even more insightful article from an important issue of the journal Disability and Health Journal by Dr Suzanne McDermott. Below are a few paragraphs from Mr Cook's article to whet your whistle. Read it, then read it, and then read it!

Several themes emerge from the articles.

First, the very existence of legalised assisted suicide leads to an expectation that the disabled, elderly and infirm should shuffle off their mortal coil a bit early to relieve the burden on their carers.

This fear has been ridiculed by supporters, who contend that all they want is choice at the end of life and that a lifelong experience of disability is different from the pain of seeing one’s life ebb away. They think that disability advocates are demonising euthanasia lobby groups and exaggerating their own vulnerability

Nonsense, says Diane Coleman, of the lobby group Not Dead Yet. She points out – quite eloquently -- that pity can be more dangerous than a mad doctor in a nursing home. We are, she says, "more frightened by the doctors who are out to help us but who see our lives as burdensome and who know little about options that make life with disability valuable."

Why should valuable resources be wasted on them, anyway? "Every week, I hear another person with a disability recount a disturbing interaction with a physician, nurse, or other health professional who clearly transmitted the view that life with a disability is inherently burdensome," she writes. "It does not feel safe to have one's life in the hands of someone who views that life as unfortunate, maybe even tragic or unfair."

As an aside: Whenever I pass an abortuary or "Planned Parenthood facility", I quietly make the sign of the cross and ask our Lord to close all abortuaries in our country and return our nation to a respect for the dignity of all human life from conception to natural death. I encourage you the reader to do so as well.

A Movie about [the real] St Nicholas

I came across information about an (apparently) still yet to be released movie about St Nicholas of Myra. I don't know much about it other than the trailers, etc., and the web page doesn't go into too much detail. I would be very interested to know if the First Ecumenical Council features in the movie, how the clergy are dressed, and how they portray St Constantine's participation in the Council. (Also, will it get a rating for violence if we get to see St Nicholas slapping Arios?)

Here's the trailer:

On appropriate Chanters' and Readers' attire

A picture paints a thousand words. The Great Church of Constantinople exemplified simple and demure choir dress for its chanters and readers. See the picture of members of the Romeiko Ensemble above for an image of appropriate chanter- and reader-wear from fourteen hundred years ago.

(And I thought my skouphos looked snazzy!)

What is that? (Τι είναι αυτό;) 2007

Thanks to a poster on one of the many forums I follow....



And a belated "Happy Christmas" to all following the Julian Calendar!

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

Wisdom from the Desert

Abba Agathon said, “I consider no other labor as difficult as prayer. When we are ready to pray, our spiritual enemies interfere. They understand it is only by making it difficult for us to pray that they can harm us. Other things will meet with success if we keep at it, but laboring at prayer is a war that will continue until we die.”

It was said concerning Abba Agathon that some monks came to find him, having heard tell of his great discernment. Wanting to see if he would lose his temper, they said to him, “Aren’t you that Agathon who is said to be a fornicator and a proud man?” “Yes, it is very true,” he answered. They resumed, “Aren’t you that Agathon who is always talking nonsense?” “I am.” Again they said, “Aren’t you Agathon the heretic?” But at that, he replied, “I am not a heretic.” So they asked him, “Tell us why you accepted everything we cast against you, but repudiated this last insult.” He replied, “The first accusations I take to myself, for that is good for my soul. But heresy is separation from God. Now I have no wish to be separated from God.” At this saying they were astonished at his discernment and returned, edified.

(The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetic Collection.