____the Rafters Scriptorium

St. Cuthbert and the plague

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 17:20:00 +0000

The site at this link has A brief mention of St. Cuthbert and the plague of his day.

Tomorrow is his feast day. Please enjoy the posts and links on this site. Many will be useful for parents who are teaching their children about the saints at home, as we maintain social distancing over the current pandemic.

I think it is very interesting how Cuthbert was eager to join the monastic life but was told at first to go back to the quiet border country for a time first. Sometimes we can choose quiet and isolation, sometimes we are forced into it from the outside as we are now.

Later, after he was permitted to enter the monastery at Melrose, his spiritual father Boisil predicted a plague would take him from this world, but spare Cuthbert. Cuthbert did recover, but also suffered aftereffects all his life.

Yet though he took harm himself from the plague, Cuthbert is also known to have healed a particular child from the plague.

Cuthbert became the loving and beloved abbot of the monastery of Lindisfarne, but in his last years he longed for the solitude of a tiny nearby island where he could spend his time in prayer and in harmony with God's creation.

Strategic Retreat

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 16:44:00 +0000

"It started with a fire on the stove. A moment’s inattention to some oil and three kernels of popcorn in a pot. Never mind, clap the lid on, set the pot outside! The smoke alarm never even went off, but there was still enough soot to grime up the kitchen, and for the acrid smell to waft insinuatingly through some of the other rooms…."

Read the rest of my Lenten post at Orthodox Christian Network.

Doxacon West presentation now posted!

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 01:12:00 +0000

Now in podcast on Ancient Faith Radio:

My talk "A Spell for the Refreshment of the Spirit"

Without the slideshow, I hope it is still understandable. This was the version (mostly the same as the original) that I gave at the inaugural Doxacon Seattle recently.

My review of The Giver on The Sounding Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 21:13:00 +0000

Recently I re-read Lois Lowry's YA dystopia, The Giver-- as a result of having seen a trailer for the upcoming movie adaptation. If you are interested, check out my review on The Sounding Blog, where I have contributed a few other times.

But BE WARNED-- there are SPOILERS!

http://myocn.net/wonderful-world-review-lois-lowrys-giver/

Strange Coincidences?

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Tue, 08 Jul 2014 03:08:00 +0000

Wow. On the left, the poster for Extant, TV series starting this summer….and on the right, the cover of Universe 2, an SF anthology edited by Robert Silverberg & Karen Haber and published in 1992.

I happen to have had a story, "The Passing of the Eclipse", selected to appear in the book, which is why the Extant poster was so striking to me!

new review of Ravens of Farne

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Fri, 30 May 2014 23:50:00 +0000

This was so nice to come across. I don't know the blogger herself.

http://lessonsfromamonastery.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/book-review-the-ravens-of-farne-a-tale-of-saint-cuthbert-by-donna-farley/

"I have often found children’s books to be more rich in illustrations than in storylines. This is not the case with The Ravens of Farne. Donna Farley’s writing makes this sweet story of St. Cuthbert’s trouble with the ravens come alive. In soft, rhythmic prose Farley describes the temptations St. Cuthbert encounters when attempting to build his hermitage and guesthouse on the Island of Farne.

The Ravens of Farne is not only a pleasure to read but also offers us a peek into the life and style of Celtic saints and teaches us a good lesson about humility and asking forgiveness. I highly recommend this book for children and the young of heart and look forward to reading more books written by Donna Farley."

Conciliar Press (now Ancient Faith Publishing) BIG clearance sale.

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 23:46:00 +0000

It's not every day you get a THREE DOLLAR book sale!

Hop on over to the Ancient Faith online store and stock up for your church bookstore or to save for gifts!

All three of my Conciliar Press books are among those on sale, as well as Fr. Richard Rene's The Edge of Mysterion. A lot of the other sale books are also children's books.

A New Post on The Sounding Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 21:12:00 +0000

I'm an occasional contributor to The Sounding Blog on the Orthodox Christian Network. I happen to have a new post up today, "Seeing Icons and Being Icons".

Hop on over there, I hope you enjoy it…..and at the same time, you will find lots of great blog posts from other Orthodox Christian authors, as well as lots more resources including their audio programmes.

CICADA magazine reprints "Egg"

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sun, 15 Sep 2013 02:42:00 +0000

My story "Egg" first appeared in the pages of this well-known YA magazine, CICADA (from the Cricket Group) nearly a decade ago.

To read a teaser, see their website for the Sept/Oct 2013 issue.

TWO BOOKS I WISH I'D WRITTEN AND WHY

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sat, 07 Sep 2013 01:38:00 +0000

This is another of a series of articles I wrote in the nineties for Steve Stanton's Christian Vision newsletter for Christian writers (no longer publishing).

Since the movie of Ender's Game is about to come out, I thought now was a good time to post this. --DF

SPOILER WARNINGS for Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card and The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold

Everyone has their own lists of books -- books they would take to a desert island, books they recall fondly from childhood, books that first made them want to be writers. The game I'm playing in this article is just a little different. Much as I love Middle Earth, it could not have been engendered by any mind but that of a Roman Catholic Oxford philologist who lived through two world wars, so there woudn't be much use pretending it could ever be mine. Instead, I like to choose contemporary writers, with lives just a little closer to mine. And when I look at what their books have in common (and maybe even what they have in common with my beloved Tolkien), it gives me a clearer picture of what I want to strive for in my own fiction. Even if these books aren't yet on your personal list, or even in your preferred genre, I think if you try them you'll wish you had written them too.

Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. Anyone who's read the sequels to this novel can see how far Card has progressed as a writer since this early work. The disembodied voices that speak in the opening scenes of the first few chapters are confusing and annoying, like voiceover with nothing but a black screen, and no actors to distinguish which voice is which. Yet this book unquestionably deserved both the Hugo and Nebula it won.

Though it seems to have been the video game connection that won this book a following with the junior high crowd, the heart of the novel is found in sharp focus in the shower scene, where Bonzo Madrid has come to kill the smaller and apparently helpless Ender. The reader knows better than the arrogant Bonzo; we saw little Ender unknowingly kill a bully with his bare hands in chapter one. Yet the shower scene is no triumph. It closes with Ender in tears. "I didn't want to hurt him! Why didn't he just leave me alone!"

Card has set up the ultimate personal conflict for Ender -- in his own nature, he is driven to win; but the very thing that makes him able to win is that it is also his nature to empathize completely with his enemy. This is what tears the reader's heart out as we follow Ender to the inevitable conclusion of the tale, in which the enemy he must fight is not just a macho bully, but the entire alien Bugger race, and the life at stake not just his own, but that of the whole human species --including his much-beloved sister.

Any one of Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan stories can have the spot next to Ender on my bookshelf, and it is no coincidence that these too are award-winners. For an example I will take "The Weatherman", which forms the first part of the novel The Vor Game.

Bujold first loads her protagonist with burdens to bear: the son of no less a person than the prime minister of Barrayar, a militaristic interplanetary Empire, Miles is handicapped by dwarfism and brittle bones, the legacy of an assassination attempt on his parents while he was still in utero. His brilliance and personal audacity have nevertheless won him a commission; his first military assignment is the less-than-thrilling position of weatherman on an arctic training base.

When the megalomaniacal base commander orders some trainees to clean up a mutagenic chemical spill, they mutiny; on Barrayar, the horror and fear of mutation are deeply ingrained. The commander orders the trainees, at gunpoint, to strip in the sub-zero night, and offers them their clothes back when they are ready to obey. Miles realizes they will die rather than risk mutation, and knows only he can prevent a massacre that could be covered up as the suppression of a mutiny, for Imperial Security will certainly investigate the death of the Prime Minister's son. But he risks the career he so desperately craves, and possibly his life, by stripping off his own uniform to join the trainees. *

I think it's no accident that the pivotal scenes in both these books have the protagonists naked. They stand without defenses, alone with nothing but the resources of their own characters, and their own consciences.

Such powerful key scenes are what make me wish I'd written a book. But such scenes can't be written in isolation. Carefully constructed threads of plot and character must lead up to them, like the threads of a spider web leading inevitably to its center.

Nor is it enough, for me at least, that the characters be put between a rock and a hard place and forced to act. They must act out of their character -- and that character must be one that ultimately I will admire and want to emulate. In other words, they've got to be a hero.

An old-fashioned attitude, perhaps, and it doubtless makes clear one reason why I am also so fond of Tolkien. But neither Tolkien, nor Bujold, nor Card makes the error of moralizing in their books: they just tell stories. Bujold's books are about honour, Card's about love. Lord of the Rings is about courage, which, Tolkien's friend C.S. Lewis wrote "is the form taken by any virtue at the sticking point."

That's the kind of book I want to write. That's the kind of person I want to be. If I can develop something like Bujold's wit, if I can learn from Card's vivd scene-writing, if I can try to emulate Tolkien's love of language, these will all be means to an end -- to write stories that maybe, some day, will make someone else say, "I wish I had written that".

* note 2013: Orthodox readers will recognize the scene in which Miles joins the prisoners on the frozen lake as having its precedent in the Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.

Doxacon story on Archdiocese.ca

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 21:41:00 +0000

Photo: Metropolitan Savas Zembilas (Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh) with Mat. Donna Farley (l, Archdiocese of Canada), Psa. Stephanie Subu, Fr. David Subu(Romanian Episcopate) & other participants at the first Doxacon

With the blessing of Archbishop Nathaniel and Metropolitan Tikhon (OCA), and Archbishop Demetrios (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese), Metropolitan Savas Zembilas of Pittsburgh served as keynote speaker at a unique conference at St. Mary's Romanian Church (OCA) in Falls Church VA this past July 19-21st. About a hundred participants came from around the continent to hear and discuss writers ranging from St. Basil of Caesarea to Chinese poets to the Brothers Grimm and C.S. Lewis.

Mat. Donna Farley of St. Herman's parish Langley BC was among other presenters at the weekend examining themes of Christian theology in literary science fiction, film, and popular culture. Mat. Donna spoke on the theme "A Spell for Refreshment: Myth, Fairy Tales and Faith". As St. Basil taught his students to value the mythology and philosophy of the Greek pagan culture, and find in them examples of virtue and truth, so also today we can apply Christian lessons from classic and contemporary popular culture.

The weekend included the Akathist "Glory to God for All Things", in which glory is given to God for the works of writers, artists and musicians, as well as works of nature.
After Saturday vespers, a fellowship meal was provided by St. Mary's parish, and on Sunday morning Met. Savas preached at the hierarchical divine liturgy.

The success of the conference has created enthusiasm to repeat the even next year and to initiate a west coast version at some time in the future.

2013-07-19 to 2013-07-21

My upcoming presentation at DOXACON July 19-21 Springfield VA

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 05:14:00 +0000

UPDATE: The con & presentation have come & gone, and you can read my report on my Storyspell blog.

I have just discovered the joys of PowerPoint. Wow. The new version on the Mac I got last year is way more easy to use and more powerful than the ancient version I had (and never really used) on my old PC.

The fun thing is, I am using it as I prepare my presentation-- not after I have it all done. I can move the slides around, and use bullets and illustrations to think on screen about how to structure the talk. At the same time I have my trusty pen and notepad in front of me, and as the structure emerges from playing on the screen I'm jotting it down the old-fashioned way.

The Title from the talk is taken from my other blog, A Spell for the Refreshment of Spirit, which is all about spiritually refreshing stories in various forms. If you haven't visited there before, please pop over and take a look!

Oh, and check out the updates for DOXACON-- exciting new guests have been added to the already-wonderful schedule!

James making music

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Picture thanks to Jacquie Pearce. This was the Vancouver Haiku Group's reading a couple of weeks ago at the Robson St. Chapters Vancouver. This is my godson the multi-talented James Mullin accompanying poet Kozue Uzawa’s tanka reading on his Asian flute. He did an amazing job extemporizing music that reflected the mood of the words.

I was honoured to be asked to take part as well. Such a diversity of presentations from a number of poets, but all appropriate to the spring theme, lent just the right atmosphere by the venue (and weather through the big windows!) Check out Jacquie's historical haiku in her blog post, she read these at the event and they were quite arresting.

Moms, Modesty, and Merida's Makeover

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sat, 18 May 2013 00:54:00 +0000

The post below appeared last week on The Sounding Blog at Orthodox Christian Network. While the petition to Disney seemed at first to have had some effect, this now appears not to be the case. Yet a petition that now has over 200,000 signatures does say something important. If after reading the article you feel you want to add your name, click the link at the bottom-- DF

On Mother's Day 2013, a storm is brewing over Merida's makeover. Yesterday, the main character of "Brave" was officially crowned a "Disney Princess."

A “Disney Princess” is not just a fairy tale character who happens to appear in one of Disney’s films. A Disney Princess may or may not be of royal blood as such, or marry into royalty. Whatever she did in her film—scrubbed floors like Cinderella, saved the day like Mulan, or spent a lot of time with her nose in a book like Belle, what matters now for each of these characters is her look.

As long ago as 1996, Frederica Mathewes-Green wrote at length about the problematic portrayal of women (mostly the young leading ladies) in Disney animated feature films.

http://www.frederica.com/writings/the-women-of-disney.html

That article details a certain evolution in the kind of heroines portrayed—from the childlike Snow White in the 1930s through the conventional Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty in the 50s and 60s; to the more active princesses of more recent decades. But while they may have become more ethnically diverse and more personally assertive, their look has grown ever more removed from normal human proportions—and ever more sexualized.

Below, top, the Disney Princesses in 2009. The characters appear exactly as they did in their respective films. The second image is the 2013 lineup. You feel that each princess in the first set is someone who could be a little girl’s friend. But the newer group seem set on seduction. Open, pleasant gazes have given way to come-hither eyes, half-lidded with heavy mascara. Even necklines that were already off-the-shoulder, like Jasmine’s, are given a sensuous twist, and the girls stand in poses that highlight perky breasts and wasp waists. The first group’s attitude says to the viewer, “Hi! I like you!” The second group’s says, “Look at me, I’m fabulous, don’t you think?” Or, if the viewer is male, the message received is likely to be, “Come up and see me sometime!”

More than a character in an animated story, an official “Disney Princess” is one of the ones held up for emulation on the special line of money-making merchandise aimed at little girls from age two to thirty-two. Graduating from the film industry to a new working life as super models (so much for happily ever after!), the princesses now flaunt their figures on every imaginable kind of product, from backpacks to beach towels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Princess

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Franchise/DisneyPrincess?from=Main.DisneyPrincess

This is the company Brave Merida joins officially next week.

Mulan and Merida, as movie characters, could have been buddies, with their courage and athleticism and lack of affinity for the glitter that seems to be the identifying mark of a real princess in Disney. For lack of time, I won’t even get into the treatment of the non-European princesses here, which is a whole other thorny topic.

But now we have Merida—an actual princess, according to the storyline of the movie, but one for whom clothing is a serious point of contention. Tomboyish Merida wears the long skirt of the period, all right, but her wild fiery frizzy hair flies out behind her as she gallops her beloved horse. With the best of intentions, her mother has other plans for her—of course, a wedding match must be arranged, and it needs a restrictively tight corset, shiny dress, and smothering head covering to make Merida ‘presentable’.

But come the competition of the suitors, Merida herself jumps into the fray, bursting the seams of her dress when she draws back her bow for the bulls eye shot. Here are the two contrasting costumes from the movie:

For Merida’s character, the ball gown is not prince-bait, the means of transformation from hardworking ash-girl to pampered princess as it is for Cinderella—it is, rather, what Eowyn in Lord of the Rings feared, ‘a cage.’

Take a warrior princess like Merida and make her a super model? That’s what the Disney powers that be are planning ahead of crowning her as one of their glorified, glitterized sales girls….or is it girls for sale? Here’s her Disney Princess makeover:

Small tweaks in every aspect of her appearance add up to a large change. Merida appears to have aged about ten years, and poses coquettishly like the other 2013 princesses. She’s definitely skinnier—guess she must have gotten reconciled to that corset after all. The new dress is covered in sparkles, but apparently the sprinkle of freckles on her nose has been airbrushed away, or masked with Cover Girl. The wild frizzy hair gets a sexy flippiness. Her bow and quiver are no longer over her shoulder—and neither are the sleeves of the dress.

Of Merida’s ‘new look’ (Disney blog Inside the Magic has ‘updated’ the term ‘makeover’ with a strikethrough) Peggy Orenstein, author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter, says “…moms tell me all the time that their preschool daughters are pitching fits and destroying their t-shirts because “princesses don’t cover their shoulders”… (emphasis mine.)

http://peggyorenstein.com/blog/seriously-disney-im-trying-to-take-a-little-break-here-must-you

The bare shoulders particularly interested me. This is one of the no-nos you will see posted at the entrance to some Orthodox churches, or in brochures or pages on church websites aimed at wedding parties. (For some other churches, particularly Catholic ones, the bare shoulder issue is also a concern.) For the last couple of decades, the strapless glamour gown has been in the ascendant for weddings (to say nothing of the high school prom, the modern equivalent of the fairy tale ball). Brides in the modern era are older than they were in the fifties and sixties, and the strapless gowns reflect the sexual sophistication of these women.

The look of the Disney Princesses has moved in tandem with this trend, first in the general look of the characters in the films, but has accelerated in their merchandisable forms. Remember when I said the products were being marketed to girls aged two to thirty-two? Disney actually has a line of bridal gowns. The styles are of course named for the princesses—and every single one bares the shoulders.

http://www.disneybridal.com/bridalgowns.html

Merida stands apart from the other princesses as a young teenager who knows she is not ready for marriage, especially to someone she can’t even choose for herself (and even the competitors are certainly pretty poor excuses for males.)

Maybe Merida isn’t in fact a princess, by Disney standards. But she is the hero of her own story, as Dickens wrote in the opening to David Copperfield. She makes her choices—not all of them good, in fact one is a disastrous mistake. Merida’s story is about finding herself, not in relation to a love interest like most of the princesses, but in resolving the personality and agenda conflict with her mother. That only happens finally when both of them learn to listen to each other. The other Disney Princesses never have to learn this lesson that nearly every teenage girl in the world (and her mom) faces —because the moms of most of the other princesses are conveniently out of the way. Merida’s mom, not some prince charming, is her co-star in this rare movie story.

Disney is poised to go ahead with the Princess as Supermodel transformation of Merida’s image. There’s a petition to stop it, which is gathering steam. I have my doubts it will have much effect, but I think it can do no harm to make our voices heard. Disney Princesses are a commodity, and parents of little girls are the targeted consumers. If we let Disney know we want–a different kind of princess on the pencil cases and friendship bracelets, the same one we saw and loved in "Brave"–they might just listen. As I write this, there are nearly 80,000 signatures. If all the signers actually refused to buy the sexed-up Merida products, that would amount to a lot of unsold beach towels and back packs.

https://www.change.org/petitions/disney-say-no-to-the-merida-makeover-keep-our-hero-brave

Meanwhile, Happy Mother’s Day! Perhaps you can watch "Brave" with your daughters.

http://youtu.be/gjtJCiOS0l

Appearances in 2013-- DOXACON and more!

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 23:54:00 +0000

UPDATE: Haiku event at Chapters Robson in Vancouver is changed to Thursday, May 23rd.

Every few years, it seems, I leave my cave and get out and about a little for a change. As of now I have no less than three outings scheduled for 2013.

First there is a May 17th 7 pm Haiku reading at the Vancouver downtown Chapters store. I think it is part of, or in sequel to, the Cherry Blossom Festival, but I'm not finding anything online about this reading just yet. I'll update as soon as I do. Better dig out my haiku files, and start writing a few new ones!

Next is a really exciting and unique SF Con, DOXACON in Springfield, VA July 19-21. Set up to be a kind of combination academic conference and fan gathering all in one, the motto is "Where Faith and Truth meet Science Fiction and Fantasy". Did you ever think you were going to see an SF Con put on by an Eastern Orthodox Christian parish? Well, you're seeing it now.

There will be presentations from Thomas Bertonneau, author of The Truth is Out There: Christian Faith and the Classics of TV Science Fiction; Metropolitan Savas of Pittsburgh (SVS Adjunct Professor who teaches courses in popular culture); and Dr. Alison Scott of George Washington University Library, who will bring with her some rare Tolkien first editions.

Additional session speakers and topics:

Leslie Banta--"Firefly: Browncoats and the Beatitudes."
Dr. Jonathan Chaves--"True Ladder to Heaven: The Writing of Christ in Chinese Fantasy Literature."
Jonathan Jacobson--"Battlestar Galactia as Preparation for The Gospel."
Caleb Grimes--"The Paradox of Faith in Star Wars."
Rev. Father David G. Subu--"The Golden Path: Frank Herbert's Dune as a Religious Fantasy"
Matthew Silver--"The Matrix & Inception: Objectivity and Transcendent Truth."

But it's not all serious scholarly stuff by any means-- costumes are invited for the meet and greet, and there will be a 'Fellowship of the Geeks' dinner put on by the parish. How can you resist?

I couldn't, even if I weren't going to be presenting a session myself. I'll be speaking on "A Spell for Refreshment: Christians Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy". This will be as much a why-to and what-to as a how-to session, with plenty of time for Q &A included.

Finally, looking ahead to the fall, I'm planning on taking part in V-Con, our local SF Con over the Oct. 4-6 weekend. It's too early for details, but I'll add those when they become available.

Pie Time

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 02:33:00 +0000

If you heard about the recent 'prank' pulled by teachers in a Windsor ON school, you may have noticed commenters calling for various strong responses, ranging from 'fire the teachers!' to 'quit coddling the students!' Predictably, some use the story as a stick with which to beat all teachers.

Meanwhile, a school board spokesman said he isn't sure he would call this prank bullying.

Read what happened here. and see if you can spot the bullying behaviour.

Or just read this summary: Several teachers conspired (including roping in some student teachers) to convince 60 Grade 8 students they would be taking a grad trip to Disney World. After an elaborate presentation involving brochures, the final slide in a Power Point presentation revealed they would insted be going to a local bowling alley. The teachers recorded first their excitement and then their disappointment on video-- and then showed that video to another class.

The purpose of this prank? Ostensibly, to smoke out ONE student that one of the teachers suspected of snooping in the teacher's desk. The story does not elaborate on whether the ruse succeeded in this aim, nor how pulling this trick on dozens of other students was meant to accomplish it. Nor was there any mention of why the teacher did not just have a locked drawer for anything that students shouldn't have access to.

The essence of bullying is in the imbalance of power to hurt someone else physically or emotionally

The teachers used their power to make their students feel bad. True, this is a one-time behaviour and not an ongoing situation; yet it was thought out over a period of days and seemed to have no real purpose but to upset the students. The school board called it 'poor judgement', and it was certainly that-- behaviour that might be expected of Grade 8 kids, but not of their teachers.

The school board has spoken its disapproval, and apologies have been made by the teachers. Parents and students are attempting to get back to their normal school routine. If we ignore the calls for firing or for just ignoring the whole thing, is there anything more that could be done to help improve the situation from this point? I made a suggestion in a letter to the Windsor Star:

The Disney-pranking teachers have already punished themselves. They should have realized that not only was there going to be a backlash from the parents but it would be all over the social media like Kanye West’s antics at Taylor Swift’s award moment.

More than any of that, they now have to spend the rest of the school year looking those kids in the face.

But I think there is a way to smooth things over. Have a school fun fair and make the star attraction a cream pie-throwing booth.

That might sound like a joke but I am in earnest. If the teachers step forward to let the kids even the score, it will show that they take seriously the offence of misusing their position of authority to make their students feel crappy.

It will also show that they have learned not to take themselves too seriously. For good measure, let’s have the school board spokesman who wasn’t sure this prank should be called bullying join the teachers as a target.

Proceeds can be split between the grad trip and an anti-bullying program.

Will it be humiliating for them to take a few pies in the face? Not for long.

If they show the kids they can be good sports about it, pretty soon the kids will be laughing with them, not just at them anymore. A catharsis for everyone now will make things easier for the rest of the school year and beyond.

Go on, teachers, I dare you. Prank yourself and take a pie in the face.

DONNA FARLEY, Surrey, B.C
.

plagiarising my own writing

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:12:00 +0000

..and adding a few extra ingredients I hadn't thought about for a while in order to cobble together

this blog post

for the Orthodox Christian Network's Writers and Artists Series.

Few and True

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 17:15:00 +0000

Image courtesy of ThistleDew

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver. Prov. 25:11

For some time I’ve been trying to keep my blogging and online discussion engagement to a minimum. So this post is a bit ironic—here I am, posting words on the topic of using fewer words…. and not only that, this is part of a synchroblog with several other Orthodox bloggers posting on July 1st on the topic of how we use our words. That makes for many words! (You can find the links to the posts by these other bloggers at the bottom of my post.)

Writers have to learn the trick of reducing our word count. We can cut, polish, replace and rearrange to our hearts’ content, sometimes even consulting with others about the words, until the deadline comes and then our words have to go out into the world, there to hurt or heal as may be. At this final stage, if we are blessed to have a good proofreader and/or editor, we can often be saved from mistakes large and small.

But in our daily conversation we don’t get to make a second and third draft—once a word is out, you can’t really take it back. We can say we’re sorry for snapping at our spouse, correct a mistaken judgement about a friend, or try to disown a carelessly spoken opinion or offensive language in a group situation; but even the best result from these procedures is still second-best to what would have happened if we had just just kept our mouths shut in the first place. No wonder so many of the Church fathers praise the practice of silence. St. Theophan the Recluse sums it up well in his Unseen Warfare:

“When you have to speak, before expressing what has entered your heart and letting it pass to your tongue, examine it carefully; and you will find many things that are better to not let past your lips. Know moreover that many things, which seem to you good to express, are much better left buried in the tomb of silence.”

Still, there are times when silence is not possible. When someone needs encouragement, when tact is required, when injustice cries out for us to stand up, when our silence would be taken for assent or approval—then is when we need the kind of words spoken of in Proverbs: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.” This is a tall order, and a skill most of us will have to work hard at our whole lives—the right words can be spoken in the wrong manner or at the wrong time or even to the wrong person. They may still have a good effect, but not without complications.

Words fitly spoken

Gold apples, silver settings--

Make them few and true.
_____________________________________________________________
UPDATED Tues July 3rd: And here are the links to the posts by other participants this month-- enjoy!

Annalisa Boyd (Orthodox) of The Ascetic Lives of Mothers on Let the Words of My Mouth
Bev. Cooke (Orthodox Christian) of Bevnal Abbey Scriptorium on Words and their Use
Cristina Perdomo (Orthodox Christian — Orthodox Church in America (OCA)) ofReachingfromadistance on Cement
Dn Stephen Hayes (Orthodox Christian) of Khanya on What’s that you were saying?
Donna Farley (Orthodox convert) of The Rafters Scriptorium on Few andTrue
Elizabeth Perdomo (Orthodox Christian) of Living a Liturgical Life on What About Words?
Fr John D’Alton (Orthodox) of Fr John D’Alton on How we use our words- jihad or struggle?
Fr. Lawrence Farley (Orthodox Christian) of Fr. Lawrence Farley on The Limits of Verbal Communication
Katherine Bolger Hyde (Orthodox Christian) of God-Haunted Fiction on Eat Your Words
Susan Cushman (Orthodox Christian) of Pen & Palette on How We Use Our Words: “Christian” is Not an Adjective

Wings of Imagination

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Wed, 02 May 2012 03:18:00 +0000

another of my old column entries from the Christian Vision writers' newsletter published mumblety-something years ago. Hyperlinks added to bring it into the cyber-age-- DF

WINGS OF IMAGINATION

Donna Farley

Sometimes I wonder why God didn't give us wings, when everything in our being longs to soar like the birds. Those of us who work in the creative arts feel this especially keenly, but perhaps the reason we feel that way is in itself the answer to the question.

God didn't give us wings for the same reason He didn't give us gills to swim the seas or horse's hooves to run like the wind: He gave us instead the better gift, that of imagination. And with it we made centaurs and mermaids, which, Tolkien says in his poem "Mythopoeia", was our right, for "we make still by the law in which we're made."

Imagination is so potent that it has even brought some of our dreams into reality, even if only in the crude, mechanical forms of airplanes and scuba gear.

Imagination can even go boldly where no man, or even any other creature, for that matter, has gone before-- or at least, none that we know of. The summit of Everest is barren of life; likewise the space beyond our atmosphere. When we saw birds, we wanted to fly; when we saw fish, we wanted to swim. But we didn't need to see any creature traversing the heavens to want to go there too.

Our imagination can take us there; imagination went first, before Vostok (the first manned spaceflight) or Apollo or the shuttle.

Without imagination the engineers would have had nothing on which to build, and no purpose for building.

Imagination can do still more than this. A Kurelek painting can transport us to the past, to Calvary, or to the future, to Apocalypse. Dante's "Inferno" can take us to hell itself and back. And Handel can pull us along on his coattails as he soars to the very gate of heaven.

There are few things more powerful than this gift. And, to quote Spider-Man, "With great power comes great responsibility!" Our life is a pilgrimage-- a journey, a wandering from place to place. You have wings; don't be afraid to spread them. Set your face toward the Promised Land, and perhaps you too, like Handel and Kurelek, will find that others have come along with you.

Real Christians Don't Eat Each Other

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:56:00 +0000

I am moving some of my material from my shawwebspace page over here to the Rafters. This one is a Lenten article so I thought I might as well just post it up top-- MatD

This article of mine appeared in my column about the church year in The Handmaiden journal over ten years ago. Although it is a Lenten article, I already had filled all the slots in my book Seasons of Grace, so it was not included there. This is now available online for the first time, slightly updated for the age of Facebook and Myspace, with some links added to the end. (the title was a play on the then popular book Real Men Don't Eat Quiche)

Real Christians Don't Eat Each Other

There were dark whispers, in the early days, about what those Christians did at their secret meetings. Of course, mystic rituals were a denarius a dozen in the days of the Roman Empire. And orgies? Old hat. Financial scandals, then? Part of the landscape. But the rumours about this Jewish sect, these followers of one Jesus called Christ, were enough to shock even the jaded and decadent Romans: cannibalism.

It wasn't a bare-faced slander, everyone knew that. The Christians themselves talked very plainly about consuming Body and Blood. It was only later, when the days of persecution were over, that it became quite clear to all that the Body and Blood referred to were those of the Christians' Founder, eaten in a mystical sense, under the guise of otherwise ordinary bread and wine.

The charge of cannibalism sounds absurd to twenty-first century ears. The very word is the embodiment of all that is savage, inhuman, dark and cruel. It conjures up pictures of painted tribesmen in darkest Africa chanting and dancing maniacally about their captives. It's very hard to go beyond that cartoon image and imagine a real, smiling human being biting into the butchered and cooked flesh of a fellow member of his own species, perhaps savouring the flavour as it goes down, perhaps, in fact, thinking no more of it than we would think of eating a Big Mac-- less, probably, in these days after Super-Size Me.

Is this a repulsive scene to contemplate? And yet, on the spiritual level, there are similar scenes taking place all around us every day, and we are no more put out by them than the cannibal is by his macabre meal; in fact we often pull up a chair to join in the feast with no more significant remark than "Pass the salt".

For instance, have you ever heard church people laughingly refer to having "roast priest" for lunch? A rather grim joke. And it's not only the clergy who are eaten alive by their fellow Christians. Someone once remarked that the Church is the only army that kills its own wounded. You've seen it happen -- a brother stumbles, say into sexual sin, and at once the community descends like a flock of vultures, carves him into pieces and picks his bones clean. Far from repenting, the errant member abandons the Church altogether.

You notice I haven't used the word "gossip". That's because it's a slippery word, as slippery as the practice it names. "Gossip" can be conveniently redefined as "discernment", "keeping informed", “love and concern” or anything else that works. These days, the internet enables you to indulge in an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of spiritual cannibalism, twenty-four hours a day.

But besides that, there are lots of other ways of serving up Christianophagous cuisine.

One popular dish is "submission", served mostly to heavy-handed clergy, husbands or parents, and certain strong personalities who run the parish council or women's group. The meal is consumed slowly, but is very nourishing to the cannibal's ego.

You've probably eaten tenderized steak; many cannibalistic Christians like to pummel their meat before eating it. This is done very effectively, often by choir directors, committee chairmen or Christian Ed. supervisors, by belittling or (excuse the expression) chewing out the incompetent Sunday school teachers or flat tenors.

Then there's "seduction", a meal often considered too spicy for Christians, but more of us have a taste for it than you might think. It's not only of the sexual sort, either: there are clergy, for example, who will unabashedly lure away the charges of their neighboring shepherds in order to fatten up their own church rolls.

Most of us are not avowed cannibals; we only take an occasional bite of gossip, or the odd nip of cruelty, and then wonder afterwards why we feel nauseated. But there are those among us who feed on little else.

The good news about cannibalism is that it is a self-regulating phenomenon. The cannibal has a vampiric personality. Habitual cannibals go about devouring their neighbours long enough, and one of two things will happen:

In the first case, every victim whose blood he drinks begins to behave in the same way, and very soon you have a church full of people so preoccupied with preying upon one another that they are no longer able to reach out, and any newcomers who happen to wander in are nothing more than fresh meat. Like a colony of vampires, such a parish seems never to quite die, and yet remains constantly in an agonizing state that can't really be called living.

In the second case, the locals will become aware of what is happening in their congregation, and they begin to search for a safer church habitat, or, more rarely, gang up on the cannibal to force him or her to behave or leave.

Only this co-operation between potential victims will put a halt to this spiritual cannibalism. Actual physical cannibalism is virtually extinct because it is considered around the world to be the most revolting kind of obscenity. Only when we regard spiritual cannibalism with a similar horror will it cease to be such an overt feature in our churches.

Is there hope even for the cannibal? The Orthodox answer is a resounding Yes. The Great Fast is not really about bodily appetites, but spiritual ones. As the taste for human flesh is a physical perversion, so the taste for gossip and control of others is a spiritual perversion. To abstain from food is not an end in itself, but only a training method, to wean us away from our appetite for cruelty and selfishness.

Saint Paul warned the Galatians against this evil behaviour, and his words are still apt today as we once again approach the Great Fast: "If you bite and devour one another, take care lest you be consumed by one another."

--END--

Some jokes, quotes, anecdotes & articles about gossip:

I WAS AFRAID OF THAT (or, Blindsided by the Muse)

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 23:51:00 +0000

Did I ask for this? Well, maybe I did, but I never thought I'd get it, not like this. There I am, just sitting innocently in the rocking chair by the window with a fresh cup of tea, and BAM! Blindsided by the muse. Steamrollered by inspiration, and all I can think is, I don't want to start a new story right now!

For once, I am trundling along very nicely with my second novel, thank you, and it would be great to be a lot closer to the end of it by the time I hear back from the publishers about my first novel. Then if they take it, I'll be able to tell them the sequel is almost done. No ma'am, no stories today, thanks.

Writers should be careful about sitting by the window, where the muse can get a clear shot at them with a blast of white-hot inspiration.

On the other hand, writers aren't necessarily safe in their own beds either. I woke up one morning with a lightning-strike idea about a society where everybody wears masks all the time. That one went from the embryo of an opening scene to final draft in three feverish days. It sold first crack, too, to RobertSilverberg for Universe. So why does my most recent eureka! leave me less than thrilled?

White-hot inspiration. But the feeling of just wanting to close the curtain on it is new to me. Of course, you see that I'm trying to stall by writing about the experience instead of writing about the idea itself. After this, in fact, I'm going to call up one of my writer friends and ask her if she's ever had this problem. If she won't give me any sympathy, I can always write Dear Abby....

To wear the leek upon St. Tavy's Day....

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:31:00 +0000

FLUELLEN

Your majesty says very true: if your majesties is

remembered of it, the Welshmen did good service in a

garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their

Monmouth caps; which, your majesty know, to this

hour is an honourable badge of the service; and I do

believe your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek

upon Saint Tavy's day.

KING HENRY V

I wear it for a memorable honour; For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman.

--Henry V, Act 4 Scene 7

The leek is the Welsh national symbol, according to legend by the advice of St. David of Wales, who advised them to wear it in their caps into battle so as to distinguish friend from foe. The enemy must have thought them a bit daft with such adornment, too, which no doubt helped the Welsh catch their enemy off guard.

I don't know the original provenance of the leek-framed icon above, but it's quite nice. David was a great ascetic who didn't tolerate slackness terribly well, but I hope he'll forgive the Welsh for indulging in a few Welsh cakes and the like on his feast day. Myself, I don't think I'll follow the tradition of eating a leek raw-- rather slice and cook them up at dinner tomorrow!

I haven't got sound, but this little video looks pretty good:

The Breath of LIfe

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 01:41:00 +0000

Another post from my old column in Christian Vision writers' newsletter-- DF

THE BREATH OF LIFE

To write is to breathe. We breathe in experience, we breathe out words. In fact, we may be breathing the breath of life into others, by words that are just what they need at the moment; like a lifeguard giving artificial respiration. But what if, at the same time, we are breathing out some disease we have contracted ourselves, spreading its evil to others?

A well-known science fiction writer told me about how he had called into question certain horror writers, and asked them how they felt when they found things in their books were read by others who turned them into real-life violence. They hemmed and hawed and disavowed responsibility. The writer who told me this himself got an excellent idea for a horror story; he hesitated long before writing it and finally published it under a pseudonym. I cannot judge him; maybe the value in the story outweighed its dangers. I do not write horror myself, but many things happen in my stories I don't necessarily approve of or recommend to my readers; yet if I try to remove these things, I may destroy something important to the story.

Christian writers, more than any others, should be well aware of their own imperfection. Yet many talk of how the Lord "gave" them a story, as if He just downloaded it into their computer. In reality, if a story is "inspired", it is, literally, breathed into us by the Spirit. When we breathe it out again, it is no longer pure heavenly story, but something of ourselves--both the good and the bad--clings to it. Our stories reach our readers containing flaws, some of which we are not even aware of.

Being a Christian means accepting our own sinfulness. With that in mind, when we publish, we can only pray that, if we are doing artificial respiration, we will give our readers the breath of life; and, at the same time, we must pray that by God's grace they will not contract any disease, known or unknown, with which our breath is tainted.

HAVING SOME HONEST WORDS

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:41:00 +0000

This is one of several old entries in a column I had for the Skysong Press newsletter for Christians Writers, Christian Vision, in the 1990s. Some of the material in some of these articles may be a bit dated now, and if I have time I may re-edit some of them. Meanwhile, I think the question of taboo words is still very important-- and not just for writers. But that's a whole other post I am going to have to write when I have more time. --DonnaF

HAVING SOME HONEST WORDS WITH YOUR CHARACTERS AND YOUR AUDIENCE

Donna Farley

"God, I need a cigarette--and I don't suppose you have one do you, Mister Surgeon General." She roots around in her purse, looking.

"If you can ask God for a cigarette, why stop there?"

She scowls at him. "I was talking to myself, not God--it's on your no-no list, 'taking the Lord's name in vain'..."

"She" is a prostitute, and the other speaker in this dialogue is Jerry, a man who believes God has told him to marry her. The story is David Mehler's "Romance by the Numbers" in DREAMS AND VISIONS #7. Besides this taking of the Lord's name in vain, there are a few other instances of taboo words falling from the mouths of the prostitute and her pimp in this story.

I'd be willing to bet (though of course I don't believe in gambling) that at least a few readers were shocked to see a swear word on the lips of a character (even a prostitute) in a Christian magazine. And yet if this story had appeared in a secular publication, any reader who frequents a public junior high school, let alone the mean streets of L.A., would think the dialogue was too clean by half to even approach verisimilitude.

I loved the snippet of dialogue above because the writer has dealt honestly with both his characters and his audience. He, and his editor, have taken a risk of offending their Christian readership, but not to the extent they would do if the characters had talked exactly like real street people. Out of context, Jerry's reply to the prostitute's profanity may look flippant or sarcastic, but when you read the story, you see it is a completely sincere and natural thing for this character to say. No apologies are made for Jerry's simplicity, and I think even a skeptic must feel that even if God doesn't really speak to Jerry, Jerry himself is a refreshingly humble and honest individual.

My point here is that good dialogue flows from the characters who speak it. But if we write stories about the kind of characters who swear, like the prostitute, we are going to have to make decisions one way or the other about the use of objectionable words and expressions. It seems a little unrealistic to want to write honestly about sinners (can we do otherwise, if we are Christians who really believe the gospel?) and then clean up their language to the point where they all sound like they just washed their mouths out with Scope.

But let's look at the other end of the scale. Take the DIEHARD movies-- both are so thick with profane and obscene references, you'd think the end-title theme "Let it Snow" referred to swear words. (Never mind the graphic violence-- that's a related subject, but too big to cover here.) The films are still excellent suspense stories-- but the language quickly becomes distracting, to anyone who isn't used to hearing it quite so much. To military or police types, on the other hand, it might actually be no more than background noise.

There's the question of audience again. Elizabeth Scarborough, Viet Nam nursing vet and author of the award-winning fantasy novel The Healer's War remarked that it was strange to watch the TV series China Beach and never hear the "f-word" because it was omnipresent in Viet Nam. You know the word I mean. (Scarborough used the original, not a euphemism.) I won't write it here, and I'm sure Steve wouldn't print it, because it would shock people a lot more than the "Hell" and "goddamn" that appeared in David Mehler's story.

I think we ought to think about that-- why do even Christians find a crude reference to copulation more shocking than hell and damnation? Maybe we've bought into the secular view that sex is the most important thing there is, and that hell and damnation don't really exist. Sure, most evangelicals will deny it if you ask them-- but how many churches do you know where the Gospel is now soft-peddled, with no reference to the Last Judgement, and instead a big deal is made of things like marriage counselling, including getting God's blessing on your marriage bed (=exciting sex, but of course in the proper context)?

And why, too, is the word for what the prostitute does for a living harder to swallow than the mere idea of what she does? Is it because a euphemism lets us keep intact our illusions about what's really happening? If the obscene term is shocking, maybe there will be times when we should choose to use it for that very reason. There are some things we should feel shocked about.

All of this need not mean that we have to punctuate every other line with profanity, even if we are writing for a secular market. Some profanity still has enough shock value that a little goes a long way. But it's the devaluation of words like "Hell" and "damn" that really bothers me. Overuse by our unbelieving society has taken all the punch out of them, and I believe Christian writers, whether they are writing for Christian or secular markets, should do all they can to redeem them a little.

Here's an example from a fantasy story of my own, "Cold Hands, Warm Heart": The protagonist, Jack Frost, has fallen out with his boss, Old Man Winter, and instead has taken on a mission set him by Saint Nicholas. But Jack fails, and despairs, so Saint Nicholas berates him, "Winter was right-- you're nothing but a God-damned flower fay!" And Jack, who is narrating the story, remarks, "When Nicholas says 'God-damned', he means it."

The story appeared in a secular magazine, and I hope maybe the sentences will stick in the minds of one or two readers, and plant a couple of seeds: maybe there is such a thing as God. Maybe you can really be damned for not doing what God wants. Maybe I do need a Saviour...

Of course I can't know for sure what will become of my words. But I've cast them, as it were, upon the waters, and must wait and see.

If I'd been writing the story for a Christian market, I might have left those words out, though, if their presence in the story was likely to offend so many readers that it would interfere with their appreciation of the rest of the tale. To me it seems a bit like Paul's advice not to eat meat sacrificed to idols if it is going to cause spiritual trouble for a "weaker brother". But we all have to be careful, whether we feel it is lawful or expedient for Christian writers to use any of the taboo words or not, that we do not condemn those who differ with us, daring to judge another man's servant.

It's a tricky business, but I believe in the case of David Mehler's story it was the right decision to leave the words in. They were so clearly engendered by the characters who spoke them--and they were enough to impress those characters on the minds of the intended audience, without using other words that might be more "realistic" but would prevent the readers being open to the story.

Choosing the right words is something like doing a juggling act while walking a tightrope, and those taboo words aren't just pins like the rest of the words, they're flaming batons. When you finally reach the platform, you toss them to the editor, and he has to do the act all over again. The only way to keep your balance is to have a prayerful commitment to be honest and respectful to both your characters and your audience.

--END--

Be exactly like me and you can be my Valentine

noreply@blogger.com (Donna Farley) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:40:00 +0000

Be exactly like me, and you can be my Valentine! That’s the message of this year’s Valentine Google doodle. Never mind the discussions about same-sex marriage-- I am closing comments on this post simply because I do not want that incendiary topic to distract from a deeper issue that is illustrated here.

The rude and self-centered little girl continues skipping regardless of the succession of highly creative gifts presented by the young boy.

True, it takes him way too long to figure out that choosing just the right material present is not the key to her heart. But why does she ignore his efforts so steadfastly? Is she too convinced of her own specialness to have the grace to accept the typical gifts of flowers and candy? She gives him a disdainful look when he presents those, but the next gift is a dinosaur sweater—why isn’t she squealing with delight at his originality? Does she figure it’s kinder to pretend not to notice him at all, rather than attempt to let him down easy?

But when he finally, a bit dejectedly, decides to imitate her at the (typically feminine!) activity of skipping rope, she at last takes note. In a gender-swapped version of the Narcissus myth, she now sees in him her own reflection, and happily ‘falls in’ with him.

Narcissus woodcut by Irving Amen

Seems to me it’s all about me-me-me: Love me on MY terms, or I don’t even deign to notice you! I will only partner you if you will BE just like me!

I do suspect there is something here related to the politically-correct montage of various ‘atypical’ couples at the conclusion of the animation, though I am not going to get into that issue here. Still, we should remember that at one time it was a given that opposites attract.

Opposites Attract? Not according to this interesting short piece in Scientific American. They found that

“…we are twice as likely to be attracted to someone when we agree on six out of 10 issues than we are with someone who we only agree with on three out of 10 issues…”

Note how the researchers referred to in this article define ‘opposites’—in terms of opinions and interests.

Why is it a surprise that people want to find a mate who shares most of their views about life and how it should be lived? By definition, a lifemate is someone with whom you will travel for the rest of your life. If you don’t agree on the destination, why are you together at all? This is why the Apostle Paul remonstrates with his flock about being ‘unequally yoked’ with unbelievers. (2 Cor. 6:14.) This agricultural image is of two oxen pulling a plough. When they are of similar size and strength, they pull the plough straight ahead, forming straight furrows for the planting of the crop. Or if they are pulling a cart to market, the cart will move directly down the road without becoming easily sidetracked or upset. The journey together has good results with the least effort, least wear and tear on the animals themselves, and least potential for disaster. But place an ox in yoke with say, a donkey, or a warhorse, and you will find your work and life goals, if you accomplish them at all, are likely to be done with considerable heartache.

So in terms of beliefs and values, of course like attracts like and is a good bet for the long haul. But there is still a sense in which ‘opposites attract’ when it comes to personality, background and life experience.

The most obvious and typical way men and women in general complement each other is ‘mere’ biology—generally speaking, men have got the upper body strength and the aggression and protective instincts to fight off the sabretooth that comes prowling round the family campfire. Meanwhile women have got the naturally-provided nutrition to get baby off to the best start in life. To acknowledge this (very) general reality about men and women doesn’t have to provoke us to go all knee-jerk terrified of every couple being squeezed into a 1950s stereotype of the little woman spending her days as the perfect homemaker with a demented smile on her face while dad goes out to work at the office with his newspaper under his arm and his pipe between his teeth.

How often do people complain of their spouse who is the neat freak or the messy, the one who wants to sleep with the window open or keep it closed? And yet something about these personal quirks adds spice to a relationship. How could we ever be challenged to practice love, to learn to be patient, to stop looking at ourselves in the mirror all the time, if we marry someone exactly like ourselves? A couple’s strengths and weaknesses can complement and support each other as they journey together. If you are agreed on whether the destination is Everest or the Grand Canyon, you can manage the hiking trip without every available gadget in your own backpack as long as your partner has the essential items that you’re missing.

The general idea that a would-be lover must come to us on OUR terms in the Google Doodle is bad enough. Sure, in one sense mating is a game and always has been. But it was a game where, when played correctly, both players were winners in the end.

The Google Doodle mating game is rigged, and it’s rigged in a sexist manner in the girl’s favour. I don’t think it’s accidental that the little boy in the Google doodle is the one who has to change to be exactly like the little girl to win her approval. When Henry Higgins moaned “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” everyone laughed at him, even in the pre-feminist time when My Fair Lady made its debut.

But Professor Higgins was simply being what he is, a man. Certainly he needs to bend a little, open his mind a titch, if he wants eventually to reach a true rapprochement with the opposite sex. But these days we try to short circuit that process of understanding the other, of opposites attracting. We are training our boys—or at least attempting to train them-- to be imitation girls. And the result is that boys are doing badly in school, where the education methods are now better suited to girls:

“Boys will pin you to the wall like a moth. They want a rational explanation for everything.”

Folks, that doodle is not so cute. It takes for granted a certain view of men and women that disrespects the strengths of both and their ability to be equal, but different. It doesn’t understand the need of a partner on a journey—indeed, it is all about skipping in place, an endless game in which the boy is only allowed to play once he suppresses not only his masculinity but also his personal creativity.