Gotta Love Conferencing
The just-concluded New Hampshire (CHENH) conference was relaxing, though I seldom apply that adjective to my conference experiences. If I were at Ohio or CHAP or San Diego or NY (all of which I have attended before), I would be on my feet for 2-3 hours at a time, straight-spined and brightfaced, answering an endless stream of questions, fetching forms, explaining procedures, and acquiring progressively sorer feet as the two days wore on.
This was a much different conference. First of all, we didn't leave the house until noon. Since I had only arrived home from college the evening before, this was a much-needed respite--after all, I was trying to unpack my life and repack for a week in New England. We drove from noon to midnight, arriving at a ski resort in the White Mountains of NH sometime around 12:30 AM. At any of the big conferences, we would have fallen into bed knowing that the wakeup call was coming at 7 AM or earlier, since setup still had to take place.
Not this time. Mom and Dad are both speakers--ah, the blessings of being a "Speaker's Kid"!--and so we had a palatial suite of hotel rooms, complete with four king-sized beds. I didn't get up until 9 AM, and setup wasn't until noon. Bliss. Daddy and I took a walk around the resort, admiring their pristine alpine lake, towering peaks, and rushing water (the resort is built around several bends of the Mad River).
"I love New England." I sighed, happy. "I'm home now." It's true, too. I was born in Massachusetts.
We talked about the joys and struggles of serving, about what it means to give your life away for people, and about how to care for the conference attendees. This is a very small conference (under 500 people) and the state organization is struggling. We prayed for them and walked around until 11:45, then returned to pick up Mom and the girls for setup.
Setup was a breeze, inaugurating a day and a half of easy duty for my sisters and I. Everybody petted us, of course ("Oh, you three girls! You're so sweet! You all have the same color hair! etc.). On Saturday I met several interesting people, including a girl my own age named Sarah, and a 17-year-old named Brianna who belonged to the national debate organization that HSLDA started years ago. Brianna has debated (and beaten, I might add) many of my friends from PHC. I gave her all the news, including the fact that Mike Benavidez has bleached his hair... over which we tsk-tsked appropriately. Then she gave me the ten-minute speech which she had memorized to deliver at the conference, and we spent a few minutes refining her gestures during the part where she was describing the deaths of the apostles.
Brianna's speech was about heroes, and about how evangelism is the greatest heroism, because it means saving people's souls and not merely their bodies. I found her speech to be well-delivered and well-written, though somewhat unsophisticated as an argument. Perhaps it is because writing is my medium, but I prefer more dense logic and less pathetic appeal. I'm aware, however, that this inclination is largely due to the fact that written prose needs to be denser than a speech, because it will be read repeatedly.
The girl my own age, Sarah, belonged to a formerly ATI family. She was born in Maryland and moved to NH. How ironic; I was born in the north and moved to Maryland. Her 19-year-old brother, a dark-eyed young man named Stephen, stopped by the HSLDA booth to buy Dr. Farris' book on the Joshua Generation. He was the only person at the whole conference who wore--I kid you not--a cowboy hat. Having heard about the hat and the head under it from his sister, I asked him about it. It didn't hurt that he rides western.
"If you call that riding." I teased.
"It's better than looking like you're sitting on a teacup!"
I rebutted this slur. "English saddles develop leg muscles."
He protested, and I countered. It was then that I inquired about his cowboy hat.
"I like western stuff. It's manly."
"So are knights, but I don't see you in armor."
"That was a different culture!"
"I hate to break it to you, but the Wild West went out with the 19th century."
"They don't think so."
I laughed. "No, they really don't! There's this guy at school named Tex..."
Finally I asked if he wanted to cut the banter and debate the matter seriously. He said he would if I wanted, and I said that I didn't want to. "I lost interest in formal debate right about the time that I began to care about the issues," I said. "It's hard to really listen when you're just trying to make your point." To my surprise, he nodded.
"I know. Me too."
I saw that he did know. At that moment he was called away, and I turned back to face the accusing eyes of my baby sister, whom I have been teaching Latin and Shakespearian sonnet-writing on this trip.
"Quis erat ille puer?" She asked, instantly.
I had to laugh. "Cara, please. Don't tease me. It was a ten-minute conversation!"
Marjorie and I spent two hours working out the customs, characteristics, family trees, and natural habitats of Longaevi. She is an apt Latin pupil, and we were able to wander arm-in-arm through some of the other booths, discussing libri in lingua Latina. For twenty minutes we hovered over a pile of hardback classics, proclaiming this to be bene and that male. In the end, Burgee bought three volumes of Mark Twain, a copy of Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, a complete volume of Frost, and a commentary on Shakespeare. On my advice she avoided Tess of the D'Urbevilles. I'm not ready to have my darling exposed to iste liber, even if it is a classic. The bookseller was so amused at our antique language that he later gave us a small Latin dictionary. He and his wife were charming.
At the end of the day we were exhausted, and pleased to return to the room. Mom and I lounged on her bed, listening to Daddy read Northanger Abbey aloud. The speaker banquet at this conference was, mercifully, dress-down. I threw on jeans and a favorite blue oxford. We found a sit-down dinner with cloth napkins, water glasses, and all that. I joined my new friend Sarah at her all-girl table, and proceeded to ask her views on Bush and his foreign policy (about which I know practically nothing, and neither did she). Eventually we found out our mutual ignorance, laughed, and turned to religion as a more suitable topic. I saw Mom and the girls leave, and went to Daddy's table to inquire of him how much longer we were staying.
"A little while. Join us? And did I see chocolate cake over there?"
"What are you talking about?"
"We're discussing Les Miserables and Dostoevsky."
I grinned. "I'll be right with you."
I fetched Daddy a sliver of chocolate cake, got my iced tea from the other table, and invited Sarah to join us if she liked. She did eventually, but not before the fun got rolling at Daddy's table. Stephen was there, and we exchanged verbal blows all through the merriment which prevailed. Daddy, ever the cleverest person present in my eyes, told lawyer jokes. Wit flashed, laughter flowed, and it was all so enjoyable that, when Daddy rose to leave, I asked to stay with Sarah. I knew that Mama intended to watch a movie, and that the girls would probably be too tired or distracted for conversation.
"Sure, honey."
Sarah's family was supposed to meet up with another couple for conversation, but they never came. I wound up walking back to her room with herself, Stephen, and her parents. I had hoped to pick Sarah's brains on several topics, but this is the sort of family that does everything together. As soon as we were comfortably situationed in their hotel suite, the gentlemanly father asked me, jokingly, "How does it feel to live in the shadow of your father?"
I smiled, and responded to the effect that it is more like basking in the sun. They asked me questions about the family, to which I responded enthusiastically and tried to keep my answers brief. Knowing that they were former ATI, I next set myself to learn something new, and asked for a summary of ATI teachings and lifestyle. The father gave it, with support and commentary from his wife, and occasional interjections by Sarah. Then he was called away--it was now about 9 o'clock in the evening--by my father, with whom he had a meeting.
Sarah, Stephen, their mother, and I sat up until 10:30. Our conversation was one of the most stimulating I've had all week, centering mostly on the question of intellectualism and its place in the life of a Christian. I explained about reading Nietzsche and the Western Canon, and how, in my Sophomore year, I came to refer to such texts as "poison" with Scripture as my "antidote."
"Surely there must be some way to avoid the poison and still get what you need to interact with the culture!" Sarah exclaimed.
I looked at her, and saw myself five years ago. "I find it easier to take it from a guy who's been dead 150 years than from one who is standing in front of me saying 'God is dead.' It's in the air we breathe." I explained. "It is hard. It hurts. It breaks my heart. Yet..." I explained to them about the reading that I've been doing recently in 1 John, and about how it seems to me that holiness and loving others are directly related, in fact, symbiotic. "You can't run from the world if you're called to love the people in it. At the same time, we have to be so incredibly careful. Pride and love of knowledge are such dangers."
In the end, we all agreed that it is a matter calling for the most profound Christ-centeredness and balance. This is true. "I never wanted to be an intellectual," I told them. "It is what I was given, through my parents." I smiled wryly. "I guess you could say that I was called to be a Paul, in that sense of having a Greek education. It isn't that you can't share the Gospel without being a Paul. It's just that some of us are called in that way."
We discussed the pains and blessings of living for others, and the joy of living for Christ. We talked about a gem with many facets, and compared Scriptures on the Gospel, describing our favorite aspects of Christ's incarnation, life, death, and ressurection, and what we have to look forward to in Heaven. We were still talking when Sarah's father returned from his meeting. He and Stephen and Sarah walked me back to my room. On the way, Sarah and I exchanged expressions of gratitude for the evening and our conversation.
I went to bed thinking about the terrible burden of being "a Paul." Oh, my Lord, it does hurt. It does break my heart. Would that I had never had to read the words of Zarathustra the madman. I wept over Nietzsche. I will weep over many more books, by many more madmen. How long, O Lord? When will you return and silence all these lying tongues? No, Sarah, you need not say that being a Paul is "exciting." I think that you would like to be a Paul. I never had a choice. I never wanted it, and I'll never, God willing, underestimate the awful responsibility that comes with it.
Rolling out of bed this morning, I heard laughter from the other room, and went to cuddle with Mom and the girls on their bed. "Where were you last night, Chris?"
"She was out walking with a young man." Daddy said, teasing.
"Mmphf!" I expostulated into the bedsheet. "I was not!" I told them about my conversation with Sarah and her family. Mom and Dad were interested, but I soon lost the girls. Charity flopped off the bed and began to crawl into the other room, effectively breaking the serious mood.
"Whooops! She's gone!"
Marjorie and I removed ourselves from Mom's bed and followed our sister into the other room, where packing and dressing quickly became subordinate to an impromptu singing session. We began with "Sing Alleluia" and progressed through "Kyrie Eleison" to "Ora Dominum," trying different musical effects. Charity, especially, has a fine voice and powerful lungs.
"There's a sick man in Boston, honey!" Mom called from the other room. Translation: "Quieter, please."
"Did you enjoy the worship service?" I teased, trudling through to chat with her while she packed.
Mama's smile always warms me right down to my toes. "I love listening to you girls sing."
We packed the car in a light drizzle, and drove down to my uncle's house for lunch. Daddy read The Last Battle all the way, and I found myself in tears at the part where Jewel says, "we have lived too long, Sire." Strange how Christianity makes one more sensitive to beauty, joy, and pain, not less, as one grows up.
Nana was staying at my uncle and aunt's house for a day or two. After a few lively rounds of Uno with the young girl cousins, we got back into the car for a last two-hour jaunt to Grandpa's house. I ran down to the beach with Marjorie, aching for my Atlantic. I have been missing her so long.
"What do the Longaevi think?" Marjorie asked.
"They are all stunned, but Simile is pale with awe, and I have lost Litotes to rock-hunting already." I replied.
To own the truth, I was too caught up in my own emotions to worry much about the Longaevi. I ran through the surf, down the whole length of the beach, and said to Atlantic over and over, "I'm here. I'm here! I've come back." It being a grey day, I looked out at the green-grey sea, and felt that I would live forever. I listened to her tidal rhythms and thought them my very heartbeat. I felt the spray playing tag with my feet and wanted to laugh aloud for pure joy.
"I belong to this." I said in my heart. "Oh, my Lord, thank you for making the sea!"
For truly, the sea and the mountains together speak more to me of who God is than any other part of creation.
And tomorrow I shall run on that beach again, early, and see the sun rise.
This was a much different conference. First of all, we didn't leave the house until noon. Since I had only arrived home from college the evening before, this was a much-needed respite--after all, I was trying to unpack my life and repack for a week in New England. We drove from noon to midnight, arriving at a ski resort in the White Mountains of NH sometime around 12:30 AM. At any of the big conferences, we would have fallen into bed knowing that the wakeup call was coming at 7 AM or earlier, since setup still had to take place.
Not this time. Mom and Dad are both speakers--ah, the blessings of being a "Speaker's Kid"!--and so we had a palatial suite of hotel rooms, complete with four king-sized beds. I didn't get up until 9 AM, and setup wasn't until noon. Bliss. Daddy and I took a walk around the resort, admiring their pristine alpine lake, towering peaks, and rushing water (the resort is built around several bends of the Mad River).
"I love New England." I sighed, happy. "I'm home now." It's true, too. I was born in Massachusetts.
We talked about the joys and struggles of serving, about what it means to give your life away for people, and about how to care for the conference attendees. This is a very small conference (under 500 people) and the state organization is struggling. We prayed for them and walked around until 11:45, then returned to pick up Mom and the girls for setup.
Setup was a breeze, inaugurating a day and a half of easy duty for my sisters and I. Everybody petted us, of course ("Oh, you three girls! You're so sweet! You all have the same color hair! etc.). On Saturday I met several interesting people, including a girl my own age named Sarah, and a 17-year-old named Brianna who belonged to the national debate organization that HSLDA started years ago. Brianna has debated (and beaten, I might add) many of my friends from PHC. I gave her all the news, including the fact that Mike Benavidez has bleached his hair... over which we tsk-tsked appropriately. Then she gave me the ten-minute speech which she had memorized to deliver at the conference, and we spent a few minutes refining her gestures during the part where she was describing the deaths of the apostles.
Brianna's speech was about heroes, and about how evangelism is the greatest heroism, because it means saving people's souls and not merely their bodies. I found her speech to be well-delivered and well-written, though somewhat unsophisticated as an argument. Perhaps it is because writing is my medium, but I prefer more dense logic and less pathetic appeal. I'm aware, however, that this inclination is largely due to the fact that written prose needs to be denser than a speech, because it will be read repeatedly.
The girl my own age, Sarah, belonged to a formerly ATI family. She was born in Maryland and moved to NH. How ironic; I was born in the north and moved to Maryland. Her 19-year-old brother, a dark-eyed young man named Stephen, stopped by the HSLDA booth to buy Dr. Farris' book on the Joshua Generation. He was the only person at the whole conference who wore--I kid you not--a cowboy hat. Having heard about the hat and the head under it from his sister, I asked him about it. It didn't hurt that he rides western.
"If you call that riding." I teased.
"It's better than looking like you're sitting on a teacup!"
I rebutted this slur. "English saddles develop leg muscles."
He protested, and I countered. It was then that I inquired about his cowboy hat.
"I like western stuff. It's manly."
"So are knights, but I don't see you in armor."
"That was a different culture!"
"I hate to break it to you, but the Wild West went out with the 19th century."
"They don't think so."
I laughed. "No, they really don't! There's this guy at school named Tex..."
Finally I asked if he wanted to cut the banter and debate the matter seriously. He said he would if I wanted, and I said that I didn't want to. "I lost interest in formal debate right about the time that I began to care about the issues," I said. "It's hard to really listen when you're just trying to make your point." To my surprise, he nodded.
"I know. Me too."
I saw that he did know. At that moment he was called away, and I turned back to face the accusing eyes of my baby sister, whom I have been teaching Latin and Shakespearian sonnet-writing on this trip.
"Quis erat ille puer?" She asked, instantly.
I had to laugh. "Cara, please. Don't tease me. It was a ten-minute conversation!"
Marjorie and I spent two hours working out the customs, characteristics, family trees, and natural habitats of Longaevi. She is an apt Latin pupil, and we were able to wander arm-in-arm through some of the other booths, discussing libri in lingua Latina. For twenty minutes we hovered over a pile of hardback classics, proclaiming this to be bene and that male. In the end, Burgee bought three volumes of Mark Twain, a copy of Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, a complete volume of Frost, and a commentary on Shakespeare. On my advice she avoided Tess of the D'Urbevilles. I'm not ready to have my darling exposed to iste liber, even if it is a classic. The bookseller was so amused at our antique language that he later gave us a small Latin dictionary. He and his wife were charming.
At the end of the day we were exhausted, and pleased to return to the room. Mom and I lounged on her bed, listening to Daddy read Northanger Abbey aloud. The speaker banquet at this conference was, mercifully, dress-down. I threw on jeans and a favorite blue oxford. We found a sit-down dinner with cloth napkins, water glasses, and all that. I joined my new friend Sarah at her all-girl table, and proceeded to ask her views on Bush and his foreign policy (about which I know practically nothing, and neither did she). Eventually we found out our mutual ignorance, laughed, and turned to religion as a more suitable topic. I saw Mom and the girls leave, and went to Daddy's table to inquire of him how much longer we were staying.
"A little while. Join us? And did I see chocolate cake over there?"
"What are you talking about?"
"We're discussing Les Miserables and Dostoevsky."
I grinned. "I'll be right with you."
I fetched Daddy a sliver of chocolate cake, got my iced tea from the other table, and invited Sarah to join us if she liked. She did eventually, but not before the fun got rolling at Daddy's table. Stephen was there, and we exchanged verbal blows all through the merriment which prevailed. Daddy, ever the cleverest person present in my eyes, told lawyer jokes. Wit flashed, laughter flowed, and it was all so enjoyable that, when Daddy rose to leave, I asked to stay with Sarah. I knew that Mama intended to watch a movie, and that the girls would probably be too tired or distracted for conversation.
"Sure, honey."
Sarah's family was supposed to meet up with another couple for conversation, but they never came. I wound up walking back to her room with herself, Stephen, and her parents. I had hoped to pick Sarah's brains on several topics, but this is the sort of family that does everything together. As soon as we were comfortably situationed in their hotel suite, the gentlemanly father asked me, jokingly, "How does it feel to live in the shadow of your father?"
I smiled, and responded to the effect that it is more like basking in the sun. They asked me questions about the family, to which I responded enthusiastically and tried to keep my answers brief. Knowing that they were former ATI, I next set myself to learn something new, and asked for a summary of ATI teachings and lifestyle. The father gave it, with support and commentary from his wife, and occasional interjections by Sarah. Then he was called away--it was now about 9 o'clock in the evening--by my father, with whom he had a meeting.
Sarah, Stephen, their mother, and I sat up until 10:30. Our conversation was one of the most stimulating I've had all week, centering mostly on the question of intellectualism and its place in the life of a Christian. I explained about reading Nietzsche and the Western Canon, and how, in my Sophomore year, I came to refer to such texts as "poison" with Scripture as my "antidote."
"Surely there must be some way to avoid the poison and still get what you need to interact with the culture!" Sarah exclaimed.
I looked at her, and saw myself five years ago. "I find it easier to take it from a guy who's been dead 150 years than from one who is standing in front of me saying 'God is dead.' It's in the air we breathe." I explained. "It is hard. It hurts. It breaks my heart. Yet..." I explained to them about the reading that I've been doing recently in 1 John, and about how it seems to me that holiness and loving others are directly related, in fact, symbiotic. "You can't run from the world if you're called to love the people in it. At the same time, we have to be so incredibly careful. Pride and love of knowledge are such dangers."
In the end, we all agreed that it is a matter calling for the most profound Christ-centeredness and balance. This is true. "I never wanted to be an intellectual," I told them. "It is what I was given, through my parents." I smiled wryly. "I guess you could say that I was called to be a Paul, in that sense of having a Greek education. It isn't that you can't share the Gospel without being a Paul. It's just that some of us are called in that way."
We discussed the pains and blessings of living for others, and the joy of living for Christ. We talked about a gem with many facets, and compared Scriptures on the Gospel, describing our favorite aspects of Christ's incarnation, life, death, and ressurection, and what we have to look forward to in Heaven. We were still talking when Sarah's father returned from his meeting. He and Stephen and Sarah walked me back to my room. On the way, Sarah and I exchanged expressions of gratitude for the evening and our conversation.
I went to bed thinking about the terrible burden of being "a Paul." Oh, my Lord, it does hurt. It does break my heart. Would that I had never had to read the words of Zarathustra the madman. I wept over Nietzsche. I will weep over many more books, by many more madmen. How long, O Lord? When will you return and silence all these lying tongues? No, Sarah, you need not say that being a Paul is "exciting." I think that you would like to be a Paul. I never had a choice. I never wanted it, and I'll never, God willing, underestimate the awful responsibility that comes with it.
Rolling out of bed this morning, I heard laughter from the other room, and went to cuddle with Mom and the girls on their bed. "Where were you last night, Chris?"
"She was out walking with a young man." Daddy said, teasing.
"Mmphf!" I expostulated into the bedsheet. "I was not!" I told them about my conversation with Sarah and her family. Mom and Dad were interested, but I soon lost the girls. Charity flopped off the bed and began to crawl into the other room, effectively breaking the serious mood.
"Whooops! She's gone!"
Marjorie and I removed ourselves from Mom's bed and followed our sister into the other room, where packing and dressing quickly became subordinate to an impromptu singing session. We began with "Sing Alleluia" and progressed through "Kyrie Eleison" to "Ora Dominum," trying different musical effects. Charity, especially, has a fine voice and powerful lungs.
"There's a sick man in Boston, honey!" Mom called from the other room. Translation: "Quieter, please."
"Did you enjoy the worship service?" I teased, trudling through to chat with her while she packed.
Mama's smile always warms me right down to my toes. "I love listening to you girls sing."
We packed the car in a light drizzle, and drove down to my uncle's house for lunch. Daddy read The Last Battle all the way, and I found myself in tears at the part where Jewel says, "we have lived too long, Sire." Strange how Christianity makes one more sensitive to beauty, joy, and pain, not less, as one grows up.
Nana was staying at my uncle and aunt's house for a day or two. After a few lively rounds of Uno with the young girl cousins, we got back into the car for a last two-hour jaunt to Grandpa's house. I ran down to the beach with Marjorie, aching for my Atlantic. I have been missing her so long.
"What do the Longaevi think?" Marjorie asked.
"They are all stunned, but Simile is pale with awe, and I have lost Litotes to rock-hunting already." I replied.
To own the truth, I was too caught up in my own emotions to worry much about the Longaevi. I ran through the surf, down the whole length of the beach, and said to Atlantic over and over, "I'm here. I'm here! I've come back." It being a grey day, I looked out at the green-grey sea, and felt that I would live forever. I listened to her tidal rhythms and thought them my very heartbeat. I felt the spray playing tag with my feet and wanted to laugh aloud for pure joy.
"I belong to this." I said in my heart. "Oh, my Lord, thank you for making the sea!"
For truly, the sea and the mountains together speak more to me of who God is than any other part of creation.
And tomorrow I shall run on that beach again, early, and see the sun rise.
posted by Praelucor at 6:55 PM
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