A Beloved Classic

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Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman by Anne Ortlund, originally published by Word Books, 1977, available in many other formats and editions.

Well!  After the Great Book Cleanout of several weeks ago, I couldn’t find my copy of this book and was very distressed to think that I might have thrown it out.  I do go back and re-read it periodically, and it means a great deal to me, so I was greatly relieved when it turned up.

I quoted Anne in the “eliminate and concentrate” post last week.  She was a tremendously talented and energetic woman who was a pastor’s wife, author, composer, and speaker.  I’m sorry that I never got to hear her speak in person, but reading this book is almost as good.  I would strongly urge you, if you’ve never done so, to get hold of a copy.  It’s quite short, only 132 pages in my edition, so you don’t have to make a major investment of time to read it.

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Some good news, but . . .

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. . . no free pass.

I wrote early in January about my higher-than-expected blood sugar levels and my intention to be very strict about sugar intake during the month and then get the further testing the doctor recommended.  The second test was done on Feb. 3 and I got the results later in the week.  Fasting blood glucose was 99, which is just one point below the 100-125 range that is considered pre-diabetes, so I’ve apparently moved back down out of the danger zone.  But not by much.  My insulin level was 2.6, which is apparently quite good.  If you have high fasting insulin levels, especially above 5.0, you almost certainly have insulin resistance; that is, your cells don’t take up glucose easily and so your pancreas has to pump out more and more insulin to get blood sugar down.  But of course you have to have enough insulin.  I’ve been finding it difficult to get a good take on how low is too low.  There was no indication in the report that anything was amiss with this number, though, so I guess I’ll take it as okay.

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Dear me, let us be elegant or die!

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You can’t accuse me of a boring consistency in the books I write about on this blog.  Last week’s book had a gun on the cover and talked about the logistics of killing someone; this week’s tells you why you should dress, eat and indeed live like an elegant Frenchwoman.  (Note to guys reading this:  the rest of February’s books are also going to be pretty female-centric.  Fine with me if you want to read the blogs or the books themselves.  I’m just a-sayin’.)

I can’t quite remember why or how I ran across this book, although I do know that I actually bought it, a rarity for me.  It was enjoyable and, I thought at the time, pretty lightweight, one of many memoirs about Americans going to France and finding out what they’ve been missing.  

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Eliminate . . .

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Image result for Anne Ortlund
image accessed from The Gospel Coalition website.

. . . and concentrate.

Great advice from Christian writer and speaker Anne Ortlund, who died in November 2013.  I’ll be doing a book club post on Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman, her 1977 classic, later on this month.

For now, though, I’ll just concentrate on these three words.  You may think, well, easy enough for her to say.  What on earth can I eliminate?  I’d love to concentrate just on what I love the most, what I feel most called to do, but hey!  What am I supposed to do with all this other stuff that’s been thrust upon me?

No easy answers here.  I do think, though, that sometimes we take on responsibilities that don’t belong to us.  Many years ago I read a statement in a Bible Study Fellowship commentary that would have saved me from some unwise commitments of my own had I followed it.  I can’t quote it exactly and can’t remember what we were studying at the time.  The general idea, though, was that if you take on something that really should be done by someone else, not only are you overextending yourself and probably therefore shirking your real obligations, but you are crowding out someone else who could and should do that job.  Isn’t that an interesting idea?  Your overcommitment is someone else’s deprivation.

 

A Lesson in Logical Thinking

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JFK Assassination Logic:  How to Think about Claims of Conspiracy by John McAdams, Potomac Books, 2011.

I freely admit it–I’m a JFK assassination junkie and periodically get drawn into the vortex of the massive amount of material that’s out there.  You could make a full-time job out of just watching all the videos on YouTube on the subject. (Not that I’ve done that–yet!)  I can tell you Oswald’s scores on his two Marine Corps rifle tests (“sharpshooter” and “marksman”–with scores of 212 and 191, respectively), how much he weighed (150 pounds), how tall he was (5’9″), the path of the single bullet that hit Kennedy and Connally (basically straight and slanting downward), the length of the brown-paper package of so-called curtain rods that Oswald brought to work the morning of Nov. 22 (38 inches), why he bought the rifle that he

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Plans are worthless . . .

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. . but planning is everything.

This saying is attributed to Dwight D. Eisenhower, and to be honest it didn’t make sense to me at first.  Plans almost always go awry in some way, but that’s not the same as saying that plans are useless.

Substitute the word “preparation” for “planning” and the meaning becomes much clearer.  I was reminded as I worked on this post of a talk I heard many years ago at an educational conference by Dr. Jerry Tetreau.  He was speaking about the importance of being prepared to teach, using the Latin word praeparō, meaning “to make ready in advance.”  If you’re prepared, then a change in plans won’t throw you.  And there are always changes in plans, no matter how well thought out they may be.

Back in the mid-1970’s I saw a great illustration of this principle.  A fellow graduate student was doing her speech recital, a dramatic presentation on Catherine Booth, the wife of William F. Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army.  There she was, up on stage all by herself, costumed in a cape and hat, when suddenly something started flying around the stage.  She kept going.  Eventually, I think, the critter disappeared, but she never missed a beat, and she finished the recital to great applause.  Know what it was?  A bat.  How would you ever plan for such a thing?  The truth is, you wouldn’t.  You couldn’t.  You could only prepare.

Further small thoughts . . .

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. . . on the importance of small things!

I quote here an example given many years ago by Sparky Pritchard, then an associate pastor at my church.  He was talking specifically about Bible study, but this analogy could apply in many areas:

Sometimes people ask what they should do when they don’t feel like reading the Bible, or don’t feel as if they’re getting anything out of it.  I tell them that you don’t always enjoy it.  Sometimes your Bible study time is like taking your vitamins:  totally unexciting, but you know it’s good for you.  Other times your experience may be more like eating a bowl of cold cereal:  It’s nourishing and somewhat tasty, but not all that great.  But then you experience the Bible as if it’s peaches and cream.  Here’s the thing, though:  you never get to that dessert stage without being willing to go through the vitamins stage.  In other words, you have to be consistent:  do the (seemingly) small thing of being in the Word daily.

Just as I said a couple of days ago:  the small series of faithful actions adds up.

“All men seek happiness . . .

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Blaise pascal.jpg. . . This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”
Blaise Pascal

What do you think?  We’ve all said, “I’ll regret this tomorrow,” or “I’ll be sorry I did this.”  (I’ve said it recently about my giving in to the temptation of watching just one more episode of “The Great British Bake-Off”–of which more later.)  So, if we do something that we know we’ll wish we hadn’t, does that action refute Pascal’s statement above?

There is no elevator to success . . .

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 . . . you have to take the stairs!

This anonymous proverb embodies the rather timeworn idea that there are no shortcuts to achieving a goal; you have to get there step by step.  We all know that isn’t true 100% of the time; once in a great while there’s a so-called “overnight” success.  (Including, I guess, viral videos.)

I’ve been thinking for some time that there seems to be a paradox about what produces achievement.  The boring, repetitive actions, followed consistently day after day, tend to produce great results, while the dramatic actions often produce . . . nothing much.

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Clear the Decks!

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Now folks, this is a somewhat weird book.  I highly recommend it or I wouldn’t include it here, but there’s no question that Ms. Kondo has her own idiosyncratic view of how you should treat your possessions.  Being one of her clients must be quite an experience, as she insists that things be done her way or else.  (She has a three-month waiting list for her personal consultations, so people don’t seem to mind.) She has two central ideas.  The first is the one that’s the most problematic for me:  that you must do the tidying up of your surroundings all at once.  If you do it gradually, she says, you’ll never finish.  In an ideal world she’d probably be right, but most of us can’t really take a whole weekend to throw out stuff.  If we have to do it that way, we’ll never do it at all.

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