Yearly Archives: 2018

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Be It Resolved

 

Every year your pastor or priest, if you have one, or your Rabbi, or your Imam will take a few minutes, to quip on, allude to, or at least make mention of New Year’s Resolutions.  They will probably tell you the latest statistic, that the average sincere resolution maker quits within two weeks of making that resolution.

Saint Francis of Assisi

I will not pretend here to be able to suggest precisely why we, as a species, so quickly lose our resolve, so quickly walk away from a personal commitment. I can say generally why, though: we are not perfect.  (Okay, maybe that’s pretty obvious.) And we are weak. We don’t like hearing that or admitting that, but we are. We can be tempted beyond what we think we can endure by our own strength. We can be misled by our own desire—desire for a cookie, a new car or even a new job, or even a child.

A long time ago a couple named Sarai and Abram were so misled. They wanted a child—one promised to them, mind you—so badly that they were willing to go rogue to get one. Sarai induced Abram to sleep with their servant Hagar to achieve their desired goal. The result was a never-ending rivalry that sprung up between two brothers—half brothers, at least—a rivalry for the affection of the Father that goes on, one might even argue, to this day. The point is this: our desires can make us do some pretty stupid things, things that harm others and treat others like commodities. Hagar was merely a vessel, one could say, for that couple’s desire for a child and, perhaps, the recipient of Abram’s private lust. So strong are our desires for that cookie, that car, or that relationship, or that goal, even the “good” goal of having a child. So strong.

At the end of one conference that my philologist friend goes to year in and year out there is a committee that makes resolutions about the place the conference has been held. That committee begins each statement playfully with the affirming, “Be it resolved….”  Maybe instead of personal resolutions, like resisting cookies or cars or paramours we should, this year, start a few sentences with “Be it resolved.…”  I offer a few examples:

  • Be it resolved to treat people kindly, the way I would like to be treated.
  • Be it resolved that I should deepen relationships.
  • Be it resolved that I be a better listener.
  • Be it resolved that I should be compassionate to those in need, whatever that need might be.
  • Be it resolved that I give more money to the poor than ever before.
  • Be it resolved that I have a better sense of humor and not look for offense in the words of others.
  • Be it resolved that I not do everything by my own strength, but I recognize my weakness, and trust God to fill in the gaps.
  • Be it resolved that I be all I was created to be, humbly, gently, and bravely.

May 2019 make you a bit more resolved. Happy New Year!

 

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Remembering

Christmas is a lot of things to a lot of people. For some, perhaps for most, it is some sort of recognition of the birth of the baby Jesus. Some may think of Him as a sweet child born to a poor couple when they were engaged in a long journey, who found shelter in in a stable and used an animal trough as the infant’s first crib. They would, of course, at some level be right. Others might think of that baby as the King of Kings come to earth to begin the mission of redemption. Those who believe this have embarked on their own journey, the journey of faith. For others—thought they are not others per se, since they can indeed be a part of either of these groups—Christmas is a time to remember. It encompasses the recollection of bygone Christmases, special rituals or practices that our parents or grandparents, were we lucky enough to have them, carried out.

Perhaps they built a Christmas yard and, as my mother Elaine would do, make up a story to suit the way she constructed the yard that year. Perhaps Christmas for them involved inviting someone over for Christmas, an older couple or a single old man, like Mr. Charles Miller, who lived across the parking lot from us in New Hope (see pp. 108-114 in the Curious Autobiography; Billboard Magazine, Oct. 29, 1938, p. 12). He loved coming to our small apartment for Christmas breakfast, loved having the fellowship and conversations with us. He had been famous for composing Raggedy Ann’s Sunny Songs, which had been a Broadway score. He was, when we knew him as our neighbor, a pensioner, a widower, I imagined at the time, probably in his early seventies, though he seemed older than that, as he suffered from some degeneration of the spine and was slightly hunched over. Mr. Miller seemed old, even smelled old to me, though I was but a lad at the time. As far as I could tell, he was more or less a recluse, or at least reclusive. He rarely had a visitor, rarely went out. But Christmas morning was something he truly looked forward to, and for at least four or five Christmases in the late sixties and early seventies, Mr. Miller was a fixture at our Christmas breakfast. He loved to recall his days as a musician, composer, and, oddly enough, as a professional baseball player for the St. Louis Browns baseball team of 1912. I don’t think Mr. Miller spoke to too many folks so, when he made his annual Christmas morning visit, it was for him truly a joyous day.

For me even as a child, that family tradition, even if somewhat short-lived, as we would move away in a few years and I never saw Mr. Miller again, gave Christmas day real meaning, a real sense of caring for another person. I remember the value of those days, the human value, itself analogous in its mercy to the mercy that the innkeeper must have shown for that young couple with a baby some 2000 years ago, and the mercy that the baby showed and shows to all humanity.

So, if you celebrate Christmas, I think you would do well, in whatever way you celebrate it, to remember. For that is a human thing, whose intrinsic value is highlighted by the transcendent mercy that showed itself in humility in a manger of old, far away, yet nearer, perhaps, than we might think.  Merry Christmas!

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Visiting Ukraine

Recently I found myself tagging along again with my friend the philologist as he visited Ukraine. The Catholic University there is an amazing place—the top academic institution in the country—with a vibrant teaching faculty, a vivacious coterie of students, and a caring administration. Behind it a strong driving force has been a Harvard PhD named Jeffrey who has helped to shape and guide the university to ever higher ground, including, for its improved location, some fresh ground—literally—next to Lviv’s central park.

The beauty of the town, the joy of the students, the vim and vigor of Jeffrey himself easily outstripped my own jet-lagged energy, and in a way contrasted with it. But a deeper contrast was in the acute awareness I and, I think, everyone had of the soldiers on the other side of Ukraine fighting and dying against the pro-Russian factions (and even Russians) just as we were enjoying a lovely “dark prune” tort with raspberry tea. The blood red tea made me think of the blood being spilt by the noble Ukrainian soldiers at that very moment, the prune cake of the mire in which their bodies might just then be lying.

And as we visited church upon church, I though in brief prayers about those soldiers and about a dear friend’s mother who was even as I was praying for her dying. I thought about the inevitability of death, and that death is all around us. “Lo, that we walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” And we do walk through that valley and beneath that shadow quite often in this life, all too often. Death is ubiquitous, too close at every moment.

Alcestis Triumphs over Death; Roman Sarcophagus from Ostia; Approx. 161-170 A.D.; Rome, Museo Chiaramonti

The ancients knew this. Euripides devoted an entire drama to it entitled Alcestis, the story about a husband, Admetus, losing his wife to death only because she chose to undergo death’s penalty that her husband might live. And then it struck me: Death is seeking us to pay something, to give something back. Does he require that in return for life? I don’t think so, or at least not precisely. If that were the case we would not be so outraged by death, would not weep so bitterly; rather, Death is asking us to pay for our sins. You can see it in the sarcastic and pitiless way he looks at us. He comes with no care for “timing,” no sense of decency. Rather, he comes to punish us—not the person dying, but the people left behind—abandoned, orphaned by Death. He has come to punish us for our sins.

Which is why Euripides, as if enjoying a vision of a spiritual sea change to come, portrays Heracles defeating Death, beating him mercilessly as he deserves. In that play, Heracles brings Alcestis back to life for Admetus. And I think I know another “mythology” that teaches this same thing, boldly proclaiming redemption and resurrection as a historical event. In light of which I think that the next line of the old Psalm then makes sense: “I will fear no evil, for thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” Now I get it: the Psalmist is saying “Go to Hell, Death, or at least go back to Hell, for I am in a good state: ‘my cup runneth over’.” Is that the reasons those religious students at Catholic University in Lviv seemed so vibrant and alive, so optimistic even with Death knocking at another, not-so-far-away Ukrainian door? I’m not sure, but I am sure they at least know the twenty-third Psalm and, when the time comes in their life that Death draws nigh, they’ll remember what it means.

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Thanksgiving and Other Arbitrariness

It is that time of the year to be thankful. At Christmas it is time to be merry. At Easter, a time to … well, that depends on your perspective. After all, these are arbitrary dates. Easter moves around every year, so its arbitrariness is self-evident. Actually, so does Thanksgiving.  But Christmas, well, that one’s nailed down at least.

But the fact that we attach a certain set of feelings to each one of these holidays, if we even celebrate them at all, well, that’s either nostalgia (e.g., my mother was, after all, always quite cheery at Christmas, or thankful on Thanksgiving, etc.) or it is merely the notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy: Black Friday is the day I always, like a lemming rushing to the sea, go out shopping for no real reason than force of habit.

But let me get back to the arbitrariness of the dates and the concomitant emotions adhering to those dates, or rather holidays. If the dates are more or less fluid and not really fixed on the calendar—indeed, most historians would not attribute the historical date for the birth of Jesus to December 25—I would here like to introduce an alternative way of thinking, and maybe even an alternative way of living. First, with all due respect to nostalgia—and I think it should sans doubte be accorded some respect—what if we really did decide to keep Christmas cheer all year round and try to be merry every day? And, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, try to be thankful every day? And what about Easter? Well, that’s not so easy to define, but one adjective that comes to mind is hopeful—so hopeful it is. And what if we should try to be so every day? That would actually require us to master our emotions and marshal them, each and every day, to address the circumstances of that day. And, I admit, that would be hard. It would require of us generous forgiveness, lavish kindness, faithful optimism.  

But just imagine, for a moment, the possible outcome? We could be fun to be around (merry), gracious and generous (thankful) and optimistic (hopeful), the last of these at least within realistic parameters. That might just make us pleasant, affirming, even likeable. Now there’s an idea for Thanksgiving this year. I, for one, am going to give it a try.

Happy Thanksgiving, today and everyday…

 

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Exploding Wedding Dresses

Fiber optic Christmas trees have not quite become all the rage, but there is a kind of rich quality to their kitsch-ness that, if only by assonance with Christmas, seems to work.  “At any rate,” your save-the-planet neighbor will officiously muse, “At least they didn’t have to kill a tree for the holiday.”  Also, the advantage of buying a fiber optic tree, especially one that changes colors, is that you can truly astound your spouse.  I remember doing this a few years back. My wife was out of town for a conference in November.  When she returned, I had the tree all set up and decorated—not just any tree, but a brand new tacky fiber optic tree that I bought at Walmart. Her jaw dropped, and if only for that moment of something like surprise and horror combined, it was worth saving the life, as it were, of a living pine.  And virtually all of our friends and neighbors were both shocked, even mystified when during that festive season they came to our house, the house of a writer, to find the kind of tree that they felt did not befit such an “intellectual” household. The shock factor was definitely worth it.

But what could be more amazing than a fiber optic Christmas tree?  I suppose a fiber optic wedding dress could be.  Yes, they’re all the rage—or maybe they’re not, but at least as much “all the rage” as fiber optic Christmas trees are. Still, they have the advantage of 1) offending no one in these times when practically anything can offend anyone. A fiber optic wedding dress can’t really offend anyone, even if it doesn’t sit well with their taste. Certainly “offend” would be overstating merely transgressing anyone’s taste.  Even grandma will have to say, “Well, dear, that’s very twinkly,” or something to that effect.  And advantage number 2) the groom will have no trouble identifying the bride as she comes down the aisle. “Yep, that’s her,” he will think.  Thirdly, the pastor can modify his question from “Who gives this woman?” to “Who gives this radiant woman?” or the like.  And she will literally be radiant, or at least her raiment will. Fourthly, after the ceremony everyone will say, “She just glowed, didn’t she?” And they will never have to lie about that, as they will certainly mean it.

But, if she divorces and has a divorce party and decides to light her dress afire,  then she will have to be especially careful, for fiber optic dresses burn, I would wager, much more quickly than traditional chiffon or lace gowns do.  Which is a fifth reason to opt for fiber optic dresses: divorce rates could well go down, as no doubt fiber optic dresses will bear the warning label: “IN CASE OF DIVORCE, DO NO INCINERATE OR EXPLODE.” And some will even add the further admonition: “RECOMMENDED: DO NOT DIVORCE.”

So that’s the moral of this enlightening story: save a tree at Christmas and surprise your spouse (if you have one already) and, at the very least, shock your extended family and neighbors by buying a fiber optic tree. If unmarried, using that as a spring board, when you do get married, buy a fiber optic wedding dress; finally, avoid an exploding dress simply by not divorcing.  Lesson learned.

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: What a Dog’s Bark Means

Ferdinand de Saussure

Words are powerful things. There are lots of theories as to why: a brilliant Swiss linguistic theorist named Ferdinand de Saussure suggested that they are significance bearers, and he distinguished between the signifier and thing signified. In as much as he sees the connection between the two as arbitrary, he never really explains the shape of words, like say why the word “bark” is used to describe the way a dog barks (where “woof” is obviously the onomatopoeic equivalent). But he did correctly talk about their capacity to carry a “sign” that points to the thing they are signifying.

The only way a word can lose significance then, is to strip it of its meaning by endlessly adding meanings to it. When I was a much younger person, at the very inception of my career as a writer, I remember distinctly being at a conference at Rutgers University in New Jersey where I heard one of the speakers explain this phenomenon: he pointed to a chair in the room and said that it could be called a stool instead of a chair because it could be used as a stool. A chair, he said, could also be a ladder, if you’re changing a light bulb, or a night table, if you keep your water glass on it at night. A chair, he said, is not just a chair and, he added, it can be quite something other than a chair. The word chair, he said, therefore has no meaning. Words, he declared, simply have no meaning per se. They are arbitrary; they are so flexible that they have lost their elasticity.

But he wasn’t finished. He went further: nothing, he said, has any meaning. And, he added, as a result, there are no laws or rules that pertain to any individual. All rules, he boldly added, are, like words, artificial constructs devoid of meaning. Life, he concluded, has no meaning. Such a point of view may sound like a grand reductio ad absurdum, and in fact it is. I should, too, note carefully here that this speaker was not kidding around: he actually meant every word he said. To his credit, he had followed the path whither it in fact leads, into the great abyss of nihilism.

I wonder, though, if words did have real meaning, where the path would lead. Put another way, one can see that “bark” can mean both the skin of the tree and what my dog does when a burglar jiggles the lock on my door, or “love” can signify the passionate act that a young couple makes as easily as it can connote the compassionate act of hugging a disabled elderly woman whom you’ve only just met in a nursing home. Yet even though the words “love” and “bark” have remarkable range, that doesn’t mean they are devoid of meaning. The man burgling my house, unless he is hearing impaired, decides to rob another house; (I have a Great Dane with a very deep and ferocious-sounding bark). The young couple doesn’t need to be told what love is, nor does the person in the nursing home receiving the hug. They know. They know because words do in fact have meaning. They bear significance because the thing they signify has meaning. The life of the disabled person has meaning. The passionate love of the young couple has meaning. And any burglar can tell you that a Great Dane’s bark most certainly has meaning.

So, I’m sorry to have to report to the famous lecturer of many years ago, that he was simply wrong. A chair can be used as a nightstand or a ladder, but it is still a chair. Words have meaning because, in fact, life does, too. And that, in case you were wondering, is the real meaning of a barking dog.

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Miracles and Blessings

A 3-budded rose

Elaine Jakes always pronounced the word miracle “myuracle.” I’ve rarely heard another person do so, and I honestly can’t recall whether Lizzie Ann Jones Evans (Elaine’s grandmother and my great-grandmother) or Blanche Evans Jakes said “myuracle.” It has been too many years since Lizzie died (1968) and, I suppose, too many since Blanche passed away in 1982. But my mother’s pronunciation rings in my ears just as Lizzie Ann’s blessing does.

Lizzie Ann’s blessing was as simple one: “God,” she said to me when I was but five years old, “has chosen you for a very special purpose in this life.” I think that, though a five-year old may not remember how that person pronounced miracle, that same five-year old could hardly fail to remember, throughout his life, the blessing of his great grandmother only four years before her passing at the age of 94.

I suppose that blessing is, for me, writing, and that’s why I write. And part of why I write is because I wish simply to chronicle everyday miracles (or should I say myuracles?), for it was not only my mother’s pronunciation of the word miracle that was striking but rather it was her inclination to see miracles in everyday events. Someone, perhaps a proper theologian, might be annoyed by the practice of seeing miracles in practically everything, for he or she might argue that it debases the value of the term miracle. A miracle, someone might say, really should be a spectacular event, something, well, miraculous, like a child being rescued from a burning building, someone recovering improbably from a disease or other condition, or someone whose life situation changed so dramatically that no other word than miracle will do. While I don’t disagree that all those things are miraculous, I think, like my mother, that day-to-day miracles can be just as telling, maybe even more so.

Telling? Telling of what? That is the question for any miracle, big or small: what story is it telling? And, all this came up at a pub the other evening, just briefly, as I sat there having a beer with a famous archaeologist (who will remain nameless) about his improbable career and meteoric rise in the profession and just the many strange—in fact, were I to tell his whole story, surpassing strange—things that had to have happened for him to be the outstanding professor (for his command of the ancient languages outstrips nearly any other archaeologist that I’ve ever met) and stellar field archaeologist that he is. And while any one of those things could be fobbed off as mere coincidence, the sum of them, well, it amasses to a ponderance of circumstantial evidence of a miracle.

And that is what this blog is about: it’s the small “myuracles” that really add up that are, in many ways, far more spectacular than the big ones. Of course, we all rejoice when trapped miners are rescued from deep in the bowels of the earth. Or when a child falls three stories and survives, or when our friend recovers from an aggressive form of cancer. And we should, for those miracles are wonderful things, and I always feel sorry for the atheist who says to me, “If I only saw a miracle first hand, I’d believe there is a God” and then often adds, “but I haven’t seen one, and I never will.”

My response isn’t, “Well, I have, many times.” I think that, but I don’t say it. Rather, I say, “Have you ever seen a baby nestled in its mother’s arms? If that’s not a myuralce” (and here I deliberately mispronounce the word in honor of Elaine), “I simply don’t know what is.”

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Mahler Maul

One of the more delightful notes that my mother, Elaine, the subject and in many ways principal author of The Curious Autobiography of Elaine Jakes, wrote on the small chalkboard in the kitchen of her lovely house that she dubbed the “Lizzie Ann” in honor of her grandmother, was the short and simple “gone to maul.”  Of course, she meant “gone to mall,” specifically the Oxford Valley Mall. I was in high school then, and I chuckled thinking about the fact that she was a teacher and a part of her daily repertoire was to teach fourth graders spelling.

And I thought of that incident when this week I read a piece by Isaac Stanley Becker in the Washington Post on a surprising fracas that occurred in Malmo, Sweden during a performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. A woman, so it seems, was eagerly unwrapping some gum during the performance and this enraged the person next to her who then yanked the bag from the woman’s hand.

Gustav Mahler Œuvre d’Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) Vers 1909 Bronze.

At the end of the Adagietto, which, Becker divulges in his article, was one and the same as that conducted by Leonard Bernstein at RFK’s funeral in 1968, the woman struck back, slapping the man on the face. Her male friend then slugged the bag grabber, too, and a skirmish ensued, fortunately to be swiftly broken up by those nearby.

And this incident befits, it seems to me, the work of Gustav Mahler, for he was a deeply passionate human being. In his article for the Guardian entitled, “Big Bang Theory: Discovering Mahler” (10 Jan. 2010), Tom Service writes of his experience as a 12 year old lad discovering and, at first hating, Mahler. Later, however, a more mature Service falls in love with the composer and writes, “A Mahler symphony is an experience that should be as disturbing as it is life-affirming. That’s what we need to remember … as we all immerse ourselves in thrilling, terrifying, dangerous and occasionally consoling Mahler-mania.” The last hyphenated word here, I think, really says it all, for music, particularly that of Mahler, really can stir one’s emotions.  

But so can candy wrappers. Witness the Malmo mauling. But I know this personally, too, because, getting back to Elaine, she, it seemed to me, was often that person who was digging through her purse desperately seeking a mint. And had some man knocked her purse from her hand in a similar situation, I imagine that I might just have taken a poke at him. And in that case, I would have been no less aggressive than the mauler of Malmo, with or without the emotive inspiration of Mahler.

 

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: A World without Kids

In California especially but also, if to a degree less-pronounced, throughout America a new trend is arising: deferring or permanently putting off, i.e. not having, kids. I am writing about this trend for two reasons: first, a world without kids scares the life out of me. Second, I wish to advance the notion that a child is not a thing, like a house or a car or a Ski-Doo, that one expects to be able to accessorize at a certain income level. Those items are useful or, in the case of the Ski-Doo amusing. A kid, conversely, is a remarkable blessing and a constant reminder to do better.

My thinking about this all started in roughly 1990 in the backseat of a car. I was sharing a cab with a new acquaintance who then taught at Rutgers University in New Jersey.  A German with perfect English, she minced no words. “So, I see” [but she meant ‘hear’] “that you have children, qvite [so she pronounced quite] a lot of them.” (We had three at the time.) “They must be very pleasurable.”  Now kids are a lot of things, but pleasurable is not exactly at the top of the adjective pile used to describe them. They are challenging, delightful, cute, mischievous, even highly innovative. They bring joy and, sometimes, sadness, hope and disappointment, laughter and tears. But pleasure? And no, the acquaintance in question did not then, obviously, nor did she ever, to my knowledge, have any kids. And if she were looking for pleasure, perhaps it is good thing she never did have kids, for pleasure is, more or less, what a Ski-Doo is for.

But why is a world without kids scary? Here’s why: kids are the only sensible people left on the planet. They are, it seems more and more these days, the only folks who will actually admit they are wrong when they are and say that they are sorry. They express love the right way. They are sincere, cute, and affectionate. They know how to play appropriately. They genuinely like each other. They don’t see color or think in terms of race or other ethno-socio-political differences. They are great. They are adults’ best role models.

Yet people want children less and less. Or if they want them, they want them like they want a Ski-Doo. They want them for the wrong reasons. And, I am sorry to say, they treat them like a Ski-Doo, too, pulling them out from time to time for fun, but then just putting them back on the shelf—in the case of the Ski-Doo a rather sturdy shelf, I suppose—until the next time. The idea of a family qua sacred bond, nurturing trust, blessed haven—that ideal is fading fast. And it is doing so in the name of economic prosperity, aka lucre, filthy lucre, and, ultimately, pleasure. Money can’t buy you love—I heard that somewhere—but it can buy you a Ski-Doo. A kid can do, and indeed is, much more.

 

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: The Things You Hear at Conferences

It will be a great disappointment to you, I’m sure, to know that I finally went to a conference without my friend, the philologist, whom I often accompany to philological congresses. I enjoy going with him to those meetings in no small part because every time I do something exciting happens. I would write about that now, but frankly you would probably not believe me if I did write about it, as the events that follow him around are, frankly unbelievable. There has been gun fire, mad pursuits in swiftly driven automobiles, occasional fisticuffs, vel sim. And, add to that, an acute awareness of what vel sim. actually means.  One can guess based on etymology; and one does guess, of course, for rarely would one hazard looking up such an abbreviation in a dictionary, as 1) there’s a decent chance it won’t show up there; and 2) even if it did, there’s a better than decent chance it will be exactly what you thought it was: “or similar” or “or the like.”  But having him around obviates the need for a dictionary or even guesswork, and obviates, too, the need to look up the word “obviates.”

But that is off the topic of my particular congress, one that I went to quite on my own, one for writers; thus, to return to that topic. I am writing to respond obliquely to one of the papers that address the YA (young adult) audience.  I’m not even sure now why I wandered into that session, but I did; and when I got there I got an earful about Generation “Z”.  That’s the latest generation, the one that was born in the year 1995 or later. And what I learned was that they are a generation that expects service, particularly individualized service, and a generation that has a deep sense of solidarity.  The speaker saw this as a strength; could it not be argued that it is as indicative of a herd mentality? Populist movement? Probably the latter is, admittedly, going too far.

The speaker disapproved of, for example, the University of Chicago, where there has been, on the part of the administration, a deliberate move to coddle students no longer. His point had some validity: if students of Gen Z are expecting certain things—individualized treatment (what used to be called, disdainfully, “special treatment”), then it is a rather stark slap in the face not to give them what they are used to.  And he might be right.

Conversely, might it not, someone could ask, be good for them?  But this is not why I am writing about this topic. Rather, it is the fact that I think that what I’m concerned most about is the idea that, as they are used to being affirmed, we need to act around them and, more germane to me as an author, write YA Afiction that affirms them in whatever position they might wish to adopt.  In short, we should encourage them to believe something, even if it is something we don’t agree with.  Just “believe.”  And act on that belief. That’s enough.

But it is, I’m afraid, not enough.  If we write just to affirm having an opinion about something qua telos in and of itself, we are no different than the fifth-century sophists who said that what really counted was the ability to argue any side of an issue. Put simply, they affirmed style over substance.  The issue itself meant nothing compared to the capacity to argue for it.

The great anti-sophist, Socrates, however, held quite the opposite point of view.  He argued that what you say is more important than how you say it.  He chose questioning via dialogue (the “Socratic method”) because he felt that driving an argument like a lawyer was, in the end, less convincing. You might gain a temporary victory—convince your listener for a season—but in the end, the issue that you “convinced” him does not become his own.  It only does so when he or she dialogues about it and understands it from the inside out and, in the end, makes it his own.

Okay, where does that leave us with the things you hear at conferences, spAecifically about Gen Z? The same place as with the Millennials, Gen X and the Boomers, and, I suppose the Silent Generation and anyone else who will listen.  Let’s dialogue about something real.  Let’s challenge, not coddle, and love on but not simply cheer on each other of any generation.  And, as different as the generations might be, let’s remember this. We’re all in this together.

Tan y tro nesaf…  (“until next time…” [in Welsh])…