Children of Angels

“…a sudden, sun-bright glow burst from inside Jeremy, turning him white-hot to look at, fading as quickly as it came. Jeremy shaded his eyes and glanced at the sun, wondering if the sudden light came from a sunspot or something.”

In this passage from the opening to Kathryn Dahlstrom’s new work, Children of Angels, the life of thirteen-year-old Jeremy Lapoint changes forever. With his father in prison and his mother battling to make ends meet, the hope and joy that Jeremy once knew have vanished. His peace is also robbed by the hateful remarks of bullies like Sid Lundahl, Chad, and others at Anoka, Minnesota, Middle School. He is altogether too accustomed to hearing himself called, “the son of the sleaze ball.” However, on the day that Ms. Dahlstrom’s readers first meet Jeremy, something is different. It is as if some long dormant part of him has been roused by the taunts and jeers of the bullies. He suddenly has the urge to stand up, to fight back, and to…fly. With a leap and a bound he soars through the air – half terrified, half ecstatic – like a teenaged Superman. It is only later at school – when he is chased by a vicious demon and rescued from the seeming peril by his guardian angel, Asiel – that Jeremy realizes his “superpowers” operate on a level entirely different from Superman’s. Asiel informs him that he is a Nephilim – part human and part angel – connected to the “heroes of old” described in Genesis chapter six.

Asiel, however, does not reveal the entire history of the Nephilim to the newly enlightened Jeremy. Instead, he responds to his ward’s frenzied questions, saying: “Seek the truth at the proper time – and the One who gives it. The angel in your kind longs to serve Him. The human … has a fight on his hands.” These words signal the beginning of Jeremy’s journey: his search for the truth about himself, his quest for the faith he has never known, and his pursuit of the peace that transcends understanding. His early steps along this road take him to the Higher Humanity Institute – a school for children who share Jeremy’s special powers, headed by “commandant” Louisa Prouse. But, the school is literally crawling with demons that only Jeremy can see. Daunting questions begin to swirl through his mind. Why is the presence of evil so strong at a school for the children of angels? Why do none of the other pupils know about the Nephilim? What will be the outcome of what Asiel dubs “the war for truth”?

The world Kathryn Dahlstrom has created within the pages of Children of Angels is an epic battleground pitting good against evil, truth against falsehood, and faith against doubt. In the midst of the action, some of the most pressing questions that may arise in the minds of men are examined:

“Where was God when they took my aunts to the gas chambers?”; “Why had Dad made drugs more important than Mom, Dana, and his son?”; “Do you really love me, Lord Jesus?” 

The writing style is both gripping and entertaining – aimed at young people, but appealing to readers across the age spectrum. The intensity of the action is enjoyably tempered with the type of lightheartedness and banter that only well-crafted characters in their early teens can provide. Also, the imagery that Ms. Dahlstrom uses is remarkably solid – the scenes vividly playing across the picture screen of the reader’s imagination. In fact, it would be wonderful if this story was adapted for the silver screen, bringing a fresh mixture of faith, fantasy, mystery, and excitement to movie-goers who crave what the back cover of the book calls, “adventure with a life-changing message.”

 [A special thanks to guest blogger Anna Gant for this review of Children of Angels! Also thanks to WinePress Publishing for this first book in the exciting New Nephilim series.]

Not to Itemize but to Generalize

Michael J. Lewis, in an article on architecture entitled The Decline of American Monuments and Memorials, gives his opinion of why American art is uncomfortable with itself and unable to approach coherent greatness. Speaking of both the plastic arts and the written, he says:

"Allegory requires an imaginative act, and is literary, whereas our culture is uncomfortable with figurative language. This began around 1977, the moment the language censors began to attack phrases like “Man does not live on bread alone,” asking “What about women?” A painful literalism set in, which is hostile to figurative language in speech and to abstract allegory in art. Nowadays we tend to think literally rather than literarily, which explains why Frederick Hart had to portray the American military experience in Vietnam by means of three men of three distinct races—and why a women’s memorial was subsequently added. [Even though to the 58,000 male soldiers killed there were only 7 women killed.] The fear of leaving someone or something out is hostile to the allegorical impulse, which seeks not to itemize but to generalize, and to speak not specific truths but great truths. It is not surprising that a culture ill at ease with the notion of absolute truth would find it very difficult to make monuments that show urgency and conviction."

HT: Hillsdale College Imprimis

"My heart warn't right"

“It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing... but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie—I found that out.”  --Huckleberry Finn

In this scene, Huck Finn has an excellent grasp of what is required for a relationship with God. Not only does he realize that a person “can't pray a lie,” but he also knows that, “I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all” (1383). Huck is verbalizing one of the worst problems with prideful man's condition: repenting in word but not in deed. Wanting to have the cake and eat it too. Huck Finn realizes that this won't work. God requires true repentance, not a halfhearted or faked repentance. It is not surprising that Mark Twain picked up on this double-dealing by many people and embodied it in one of his most famous characters. Twain had an ever observant eye out for hypocrisy in every aspect of life. Huck eventually makes the intellectually honest decision not to pray what he doesn't feel inside. How many times, if we looked at our own lives, would we find that Huck is more honest with God about his heart's true condition than we are.

Twain, Mark. Huckleberry Finn. The Norton Anthology of America Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. Shorter 6th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. Print

Ayn Rand On Healthcare

Ayn Rand, writing some 50 years ago in her masterpiece of political philosophy—Atlas Shrugged—makes some uncannily astute observations about the future of American society. While only a weak sampling of the profundity found in other passages of this epic novel of a nation's devolution into senility, the following quotation on health-care is timely in light of the issues facing the US. The heroine of the novel asks the greatest surgeon living why he suddenly quit his practice and went into hiding.

“I quit when medicine was placed under state control, some time ago,” said Dr. Hendricks. “Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation?... the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men considered only the 'welfare' of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only 'to serve.' [...They] proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind—yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims... Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it—and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn't.” --Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. New York, Signet Classics. 40^th edition 1957. pg. 692

Some Reflections On Bad Writing and Imperfect Churches

The artistic black and gilt designs flowing over the green cover of a volume published in 1869, led more than anything to my reading of Westbrook Parsonage. This appalling Christian romance novel by Harriet B. McKeever confirms the old warning not to judge a book by its cover. The writing was atrocious.

The ho-hum story follows the entire history of a family at Westbrook Parsonage. The plot (if it had one; I don't remember) was boring. I don't usually disparage writing styles—one monkey should not deride another monkey's fleas—but this was painful to read. Here is a specimen of the author's abrupt, present tense style (if style it can be called):

“Warren is impetuous and self-willed, daring in his nature... He is standing at the gate, with Alice, his darling pet: she is a beautiful child, with deep blue eyes, and a profusion of golden curls; she is a sparkling little girl, very fond of brother Warren, who is proud of his lovely sister.”

Imagine an entire book that goes on like that. The world would be a better place if some of those punctuation marks were omitted, a few periods substituted, and lastly, a wholesale alteration of tense and syntax were effected. The character's conversations are little better. They too are abrupt and and contain none of that small talk expected in a normal exchange. Take this artist's rendering of a typical dialogue:

Question. (Serious and troubled).

Answer. (Compassionate and fatherly).

Reply. (Relieved and at peace).

End of conversation. As can be seen, such dialogues are short and to the point.

As if this defect in writing were not enough, the heated defense of protestantism is enough to make one cringe. While it claims to defend Protestant freedom from Roman Catholic ritualism, what it really does is defend one type of ritualism from another type. I was rolling with laughter when one of the heroines asked where such popish formality was to be found—no, not in the Bible—in the Book of Common Prayer! After thus repeatedly invoking the authority of the Book of Common Prayer and Protestant church tradition (not Biblical tradition), I lost all remaining respect for the book.

Why did I waste time reading the entire thing? I have no idea. Sadistic curiosity I suppose. But here is the thing, this author, unknowingly, is a very great teacher. Looking at a long forgotten doctrinal conflict about ritual from a 150 years away can shed light on the dubious traditions of our own churches. McKeever has her fictional characters react to the obviously unspiritual practices of her time but is strangely blinded to her own extra-biblical additions to the faith. It is worth pondering what there is in our Christianity that is merely inanity and not Christ. Even though it looks different from 19^th century ritual, we are not exempt from extra-biblical tradition either. We may take pride in boasting we are not like Rome or like the unknowingly hypocritical characters in a 19^th century didactic novel, but have we really reached the true core of God-centered spirituality? We peal away and discard those things that it eventually becomes clear are absurd, but underneath? Like Eustuce the-boy-turned-dragon of C.S.Lewis's Narnia story, we may peal off dragon skin after dragon skin only to find a smaller version of the same dragon underneath. Only with the help of Aslan is it possible to get down to the real boy within and discard the heavy exterior that only gets in the way. But beware, his claws are sharp, and his clause is that we obey only him.

“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” Col. 2:8

The Konkans

You might ask why I picked a book with a 2008 publication date to read when there are so many from 100 or even 500 years ago to choose from. The answer is I didn’t pick it: my English teacher assigned it.

The Konkans opens with the first person narrator describing his American mother and Indian father in their new home together. As the story progresses, frequent flashbacks reveal how his mother went to India in the Peace Corps and met his father and their subsequent move to America. These elements of the story parallel the author, Tony D’Sousa’s own life and heritage in many ways.

D’Sousa talked of this autobiographical element at his reading and book signing at Shasta College. While the book is fiction and should be considered as such, things like his Peace Corps mother, Konkan father, two uncles emigrating to America, and the pig incident are all true to the history of his family (although the squad cars and helicopter at the supermarket to investigate the squealing from the trunk must be artistic license, or what D’Sousa called family legend). How far this personal history could be compared to the incidents in the book is hard to tell and, really, irrelevant to the artistry of the book.

The repetition of certain stories and frequent flashbacks lend an interesting structure to the book. When a story is repeated with a slightly different spin or when motives are revealed, it changes the way the story is received. One is often left seeing supposed heroes to be not so magnanimous as originally presented. What if other stories not retold are equally distorted, or at least, could be told differently.

Probably you are wondering what or who the Konkans are. They are native Indians who were converted to Catholicism in the 1500s by Francis Xavier. This early acquaintance with western culture left the Konkan people open and friendly to further western influence, particularly the British during their rule of India.

An interesting view on cultural transitions is presented in the book. Never is it explicitly said that leaving one culture for another is damaging but one is struck by the consuming desire of Lawrence to fit into American life. This desire puts stress on his wife and family, while the inevitable letdowns and failures to fit in lead to alcohol and pent up anger. Everything Indian “reminded him in an uncomfortable way of where he was from and who he in fact was” (6).

Sam, too, it appears, is conflicted within himself over whether he is an Indian or an American. He blames his struggles on his sister-in-law Denise, asking, “Why have you done these things, Denise? Why did you go to India? Why did you bring us here? It is you. Everything that has happened has always been because of you” (205). If she had not married his brother and brought them all to America, he seems to be saying, he would have lived and died a set, predictable existence in India.

This inner turmoil reaches a climax when he must choose to marry an Indian girl his father has picked for him or continue dating American girls. He chooses the former and is “‘unhappy since I stepped off the plane’” (204). Yet the question is: if he had chosen an American girl would his state of mind be any different or would he still be torn by regret over his choice. The conflict is not so much over two girls, as over two cultures. I probably would not have noticed this aspect of D’Sousa’s story if I were not simultaneously doing a comparison paper on two stories that deal with this theme of cultural identity.

The most disappointing part of the book is the illicit affair between the narrator’s mother and his Uncle Sam. Although Sam starts out as the most fun-loving and likable character in the book, he ends as the most depressed and depressing. He wastes his life on pleasure and folly until he cannot even enjoy sin anymore. Yet this does not stop him up to the last page. Denise, too, is a listless sinner. Though she realizes “what she’d done with my uncle was a nasty thing” (113), she never does anything about it.

There is an inevitable monotony in their shared lives by the end of the story. No repentance, no epiphany one way or the other, not even any passion. When thought about this way the book could actually have some value in proving that “there is nothing so monotonous as evil.” No one reading through to the end of the book could want a life that drags on as Sam and Denise’s does. D’Sousa’s one flaw then is not finishing Ravi Zacharias’s statement about the monotony of evil by showing how “beautiful [is the] good.”

The Konkans, Tony D'Sousa (Harcourt, first ed. 2008).

Hawthorne As History

The pre-Civil War period in America was rife with new theories and movements. Transcendentalism, feminism, and socialism were some of the ideas being developed and tested. As my history teacher briefly described these “isms” and their principle advocates, she mentioned Nathaniel Hawthorne and his connection to Brook Farm. His involvement in this socialist experiment was the seed for his novel called The Blithedale Romance. As I thought back to this book I realized that all of the movements my teacher mentioned are touched on directly or indirectly in Hawthorne’s book. The relation between history and literature was magnified as I considered that probably I was the only one in that class who had read a writer from that period dealing directly with the issues our teacher was discussing.

With an eye to this historical aspect of Hawthorne, I dug up an old (well, o.k. a year or two old) review I wrote on The Blithedale Romance. While it is embarrassingly unpublishable in its entirety, I present the undeleted portion of an often wandering, sometimes incoherent sketch (But really, my readers should be used to a generous dose of bibble-babble by now).

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Was Hawthorne's seeming praise of communes real? He seemed to like them at least in theory, yet while praising them he did reveal their flaws (at least some of them). The members and visitors envisioned an agrarian community in which the arts would flourish, instead they found themselves too tired at the end of the day to do ought but eat and sleep. A situation I can sympathize with. Also, some members were just not cut out for certain tasks. For instance, Zenobia cannot cook. The individual is made an individual for a purpose.

Zenobia is the most absorbing character, a passionate, strong-willed, feminist. In many ways we want to say with Miles Coverdale (the poetic and sensitive bachelor from whose observant viewpoint the story is told) that here indeed is a woman. Yet in reality she is unfulfilled, isolated, and angry. The real tragedy is not that she dies but why and how she dies. Suicide is a selfish, prideful way to die. Rather than do what good she could do with her talents, she quite literally buried them in the ground.

Hollingsworth is impressively sketched and blamed for a bit too much if a purely realistic novel was the aim. I’m not sure it was. It is said that Dickens’s characters are sketched larger than life with certain traits exaggerated. Whether this is true or not of Dickens’s characters it is certainly true of Zenobia and Hollingsworth. He does repent in the end and Coverdale’s mockingly Caustic question on his dreamed reform of criminals is answered in a touching scene:

'Not one,' said Hollingsworth, with his eyes still fixed on the ground.
'Ever since we parted, I have been busy with a single murderer!'
Then the tears gushed into my eyes, and I forgave him.

Despite its seeming gloom, The Blithedale Romance is a brighter book than the other Hawthorne novels I have read. Though the presentation of socialism and feminism in a 19^th Century book may raise some eyebrows it was better than most books of a less controversial class. I have not brought myself to spoil this feeling by reading the introduction, written, I am informed on the cover, by a “distinguished” professor and recipient of the “Florence Howe Award for Feminist Literary Criticism.” I am old enough (not!) and wise enough (kidding again!) by this time (it took long enough) to not read everything that is written, or at the very least not to believe it

A good quote: “It is because the spirit is inestimable, that the lifeless body is so little valued.”

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For an equally short but more informative sketch of The Blithedale Romance try Wikipedia.