Doing Life With Your Adult Children by Jim Burns

I decided to read Doing Life With Your Adult Children by Jim Burns because, well, I have adult children. And it seemed an appropriate read. 

Ever since first becoming a mother, I would say my main identity was "mom." Once it hit me that my oldest would be going off to college, I wondered if I counted as "mom" anymore. Was there still a role for me going forward? Turns out there was, but it was different. It was mostly limited to scheduling flights back and forth to college over breaks, and writing tuition checks. Check-ins over the phone provided a connection, but it was not the same.

Then came marriages and it felt like the final tie to "mom" was severed. I know, I know. I'll always be a mom, yada, yada, yada... But not really.

So how, after 20 + years of being "mom" does one become someone's "mother"?

Burns response is to "keep your mouth shut and the welcome mat out." Welp. 

Burns is highly encouraging for moms like me struggling with the next stage. One of his most helpful statement is that we didn't screw up our kids! We need to see them as differentiated adults; they are not simply reflections of us. 

"But what about..." I hear some saying. Burns has a chapter for that. Whether its children who walked away from the faith, are making bad financial and personal decisions, have in-law troubles, or have generally failed to launch, Burns has words of wisdom. It makes me grateful that the worst thing I can say about my kids is that they grew up to become independent, fully-functioning adults. 

It's a good reminder that we as parents are only on the job full-time for a season. Our job, as I often told my own daughters, is not to raise children, but to raise adults. 

It doesn't mean I don't miss the "Mom!!!" cry once in a while.

Jefferson's Daughters by Catherine Kerrison

I do love history, especially American history, and I'm partial to the Revolutionary and Civil War periods. A friend thought I might like Jefferson's Daughters by Catherine Kerrison because it is such a little known aspect of history and involves women. Unusual. I did like the book. It gave a unique look at Thomas Jefferson. But I did have one problem with it. It made far too many assumptions concerning Sally Hemings and her children. I, personally, am not convinced that Jefferson did father her children. Although most historians concede his paternity, there is evidence to the contrary. 

That said, even if he did father Heming's children (which Kerrison takes as undisputed fact), Kerrison admits to a lot of speculation. As there is almost no historical information on Hemings or her children, Kerrison is forced to make assumptions and say what "could have" or "might have" happened. Also, Sally Hemings was only 1/4 black and her children would have been 1/8. From what I've read in other sources, most went on to become part of white society after Jefferson's death. This complicates the narrative, I think. Generally Jefferson is thought to have basically repeatedly raped a very young slave (Sally) and then neglected the resulting children. If the children are his, this is a bad story. If they are not, Jefferson was very generous with what were possibly his philandering brother's offspring, setting them up to eventually go on to lead lives as they chose. 

So those assumptions bothered me.

But the parts that were more definitive, about his daughters with his wife, were much more interesting. I especially loved reading about the education they received and the desire they had to pass that education onto their children. As much as possible, he wanted them educated like boys when in America and then with the finest female education France had to offer. While Jefferson may not match up to our standards today for a female-affirming man, he definitely displayed some traits that were most likely rare in those days. 

His friendship with Abigail Adams was also touched on vis-a-vis his trips to Europe. Having read a book before about Adams, his relationship with her and her sentiments rang true. 

The book is worth reading, if only for a different glimpse into Thomas Jefferson.

Life with a Capital L by Matt Heard

My headmaster, Mr. Hinton, asked the staff to read Life with a Capital L by Matt Heard over the summer. He wanted us to reflect on the ways we can lead with love when it comes to our students. Then he asked our brand new Seminar team to lead the discussion. 

Talk about trial by fire!

The book begins with a discussion of a painting Calle There is Life Everywhere by Nikolai Yaroshenko. The painting depicts several people trapped in a train freight car marveling at the birds eating just outside the barred window. Yet on the other side of the car, another cellmate looks out the opposite window, apparently heedless of the life just outside the car. 

Heard uses this painting as a discussion jumping off point: Even in the midst of extreme hardship, life and love remain. 

To begin, Heard defines what it means to be human: “My humanity is my capacity to embrace the significance of my existence – and yours – as images of God in his creation” (10). This understanding definitionally puts us into relationship with others in order to be fully human. 

As humans, formed for relationship, we experience a deep longing: “My longing can serve as a connection, a sort of breadcrumb trail that I can follow as I’m orienting myself toward Home. In my deepest longings I can gain clues regarding who I am in the universe” (25). As C.S. Lewis says, we long for something eternal that can only be satisfied by the eternal.

Yet we can easily use that sense of longing in a pursuit of inferior objects: “A superficial and therefore short-circuited engagement with my longings leads to a superficial and therefore short-circuited engagement with the gospel...A more substantive engagement with my longings has to be accompanied by an authentic, substantive engagement with the gospel” (33-34). Jesus message of Good News must center our deepest longings.

Yet even this focus on the eternal can lead us astray: “Something is dreadfully awry with the ways too many of us minimize and reduce the gospel: Receive forgiveness. Gain heaven. Behave morally in the meantime. Subscribe to a doctrinal statement. Go to church. Tell others about him” (47). We can and must begin that eternal life NOW.

The doorway to that life is Grace. To enter true eternal life we must come to recognize the grace that God does out extravagantly: "Grace is God lovingly giving me what I need instead of what I deserve. It's God lavishly giving me what I long for but not necessarily all that I think I want" (56).Truly understanding and living in gratitude for that grace allows us to enter in to the feast that life is meant to be.

Living Life with a Capital L richly rewards us in the here and now. We experience freedom: "If I'm going to actually experience freedom, I've got to learn to pursue Life by practicing righteousness--learning to walk righteously. That will involve--drum roll here--obedience" (83). Not obedience to human-made rules--that's legalism--but obedience to God's commands as a response in gratitude. Our rebellion to God creates our own prisons. Only obedience to God frees us.

We also gain protection for our hearts. Lewis describes "Men without chests." These are people governed by minds and bellies. "Full humanity means an engaged heart. An engaged heart means I am actively balancing my mind and my emotions, which will activate my will in a healthy way" (94).

We can truly appreciate beauty. "Beauty speaks to me, sings to me, welcomes me and summons me into the presence of something that is life saving, life affirming, and life giving" (107). True beauty points to the divine. All other forms of "beauty" are counterfeits designed to lead us away from Him. Life with a Capital L points towards God and therefore towards beauty. And beauty os the portal to abundant life.

We gain illumination. We naturally live in the dark. But the Word "is a lamp unto our feet." Jesus is that light, and that light shows me how to be fully human.

Our lives become part of bigger story. Our society is one of atomized humans each acting in his own story. We lack connections to anything greater than ourselves. But the gospel-centered life connects us with God's glory. We become "men and women who, with the turn of every page of their stories, discover new paragraphs of purpose as they echo God's significance and experience his enoughness in the drama of their everyday lives" (143).

We experience true worship. "Every activity of my life--my vocational calling, my recreation, my relation. ships, my education, my sacrificial service, and my communication of gospel hope. people whom God places in my life, even my intentional rest--every endeavor be comes a way of acknowledging God's worth in my life (156).

We learn to give life a way and truly love. "At any given moment, everyone of us is predominately more a bucket or ap pipe. I call it plumbing theology" (164). We are either bottling up God's love or we are a conduit. Living Life with a Capital L allows us to channel that love through ourselves and towards others, thereby experiencing more love ourselves. Oftentimes, "we're not enjoying Life or loving others as well as we could because we're not experiencing God's love as fully as we could" (170). Be a pipe.

We experience time in a new way. Psalms says, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom”(90:13). We often move through our days with little reflection or understanding of the gift that we have been given. “The average human looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odor or fragrance, and talks without thinking.” (Leonardo da Vinci). But a life lived in appreciation of the grace that has been given shifts our focus and time becomes the gift it was always meant to be.

And yet we are broken. Living Life with a Capital L redeems and makes room for that brokenness. “In the echo of explosions along our journey, it’s tempting to forget that Life with a capital L actually unfolds in the midst of the land of the shadow of death. It’s a place where broken hopes and shattered dreams happen more often than we could ever be comfortable with” (199). We can experience the redemption only the broken can participate in. And we can extend that grace to others.

We can live in the shadow of heaven. As Lewis so eloquently state, “There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else... It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our [spouse] or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work” (216). Heaven is the ultimate form of life lived with a capital L. And as we live that way on earth, we reach our hands towards heaven.

This book is a sweet and beautiful reminder of the goodness of God. Told largely through stories, it is an easy read but a difficult journey. Life with a Capital L is the "abundant life" promised by Christ. And it is ours if we desire it. 

 

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo

For our summer reading, Mr. Hinton asked us to read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. She is the same author who wrote Because of Winn-Dixie and the Tale of Despereaux. In short, her books are delightful and this one proved the rule. 

Edward Tulane is a stuffed rabbit of the finest quality and craftsmanship, wearing clothes of the most gentile fashion. And he knows it. Although his girl Abilene dotes on him, he could not bring himself to appreciate her in the same way. Only grandmother Pellegrina recognized the haughty spirit of the bunny. 

This story goes as stories must and Edward is separated from Abilene. Through a series of misfortunes he is accidentally thrown overboard into the sea. Of course toy rabbits cannot die and Edward had months to consider his plight while on the ocean's floor. He eventually lost hope that Abilene would come for him and began to suspect that Pellegrina was somehow behind his travails. 

A storm eventually results in tumbling Edward into the net of an ancient fisherman. In his joy at being rescued, Edward forgives the man for calling him an "it." Nellie, the wife of the fisherman, recognizes the marks of greatness in the naked, water-logged toy. Although to his shame, Nellie believes him to be a "she." Whose name is Susanna. Who wears frilly dresses. And yet... Edward found himself listening to Nellie's stories as he had never listened to Abilene's prattle. Nellie, in her simple way told him of her children she loved and those she had lost. Perhaps the ocean bottom had seeped into his brain.

It couldn't last. Fearing her parents were becoming too attached to the "rabbit child," their daughter Lolly sent Edward off to the dump. Edwards heart broke and yearned for Nellie and the old man. Contemplating Pelligrina's disappointment in him, Edward began to realize he had not loved, but only tolerated Abilene. Maybe his feelings towards Nellie were love. But it was too late.

Suddenly the dog of hobo sniffed Edward and fetched him as a prize for his master, Bull. And so Edward set off on the life of a tramp, Malone, a rabbit on the run, sleeping under the stars and contemplating his life so far: those he began to realize he loved and those he had lost. He lost Bull as well, tossed from the train by a cruel companion.

Eventually Edward is rescued by a boy named Bryce who believes Edward would make a fine present for his sick little sister, Sarah Ruth. Edward actually feels joy at the thought of being a child's toy again. Rechristened Jangles, Edward soon realized Sarah Ruth existed in a precarious situation of poverty, sickness, and abuse. After six months Sarah Ruth succumbs to her illness. Her neglectful and abusive father weeps as his loss. When Bryce says the man has no right to mourn, he replies, "I loved her." "I loved her too, thought Edward. I loved her and now she is gone. How could this be? he wondered. How could he bet to live in a world without Sarah Ruth?" (p. 150)

While on the run with Bryce, Edward chances to meet old Pellegrina. In desperation, he thinks, "Look at me. You got your wish. I have learned how to love. And it's a terrible thing. I'm broken. My heart is broken. Help me." Pellegrina walked away. But neither Bryce nor Edward will see his luck change. Edward's china head is smashed into pieces by an angry restauranteur. But Bryce, displaying sacrificial love, takes the rabbit to a doll mender. Given only two options, pay for the repairs or give up the rabbit, Bryce surrenders the only remaining tie he has to Sarah Ruth. Edward will live again. 

Sitting on the shelf with the other dolls for sale, Edward has decided he is done with love. It is simply too painful. And yet... he was haunted by the last words of an antique doll as she went out of the shop, "Someone will come; someone will come for you." Hope flickered, but the years passed. But the old doll was right; someone did come. In fact as little Maggie begged for the the rabbit, Edward recognized his old pocket watch around the neck of her mother. Abilene. 

And Edward went home.

Abigail Adams by Woody Holton

 

Our book club decided to read Abigail Adams by Woody Holton. I love American History so it seemed right up my alley. Being that it focused on a woman made the book unusual. 

While I enjoyed getting to know her through her letters and other correspondence, the author seemed intent on relating each revelation to the extent to which she espoused feminist principles. While acknowledging that she was not a modern feminist, she definitely pushed back against a system designed to bring women and all their concerns under the authority of their husbands. Most notably, Abigail Adams had her own finances and invested her own money. While technically not legal, she made it work and became quite a financial wizard. She eventually left her substantial fortune almost exclusively to female relatives, thereby offering them a chance to do what she did and maintain financial independence.

More interesting than her "feminist" principles, I enjoyed getting to know her as a wife and mother. She and John spent most of their years apart. Yet they maintained a healthy and happy marriage. They watched their children grow, die, fail, and succeed. I related to this part so well. It's tough to have adult children whom you can only watch, but no longer directly influence. Although like any "good" mother, Abigail did call in favors when she felt it warranted to help her children. She particularly embarrassed John Quincy with that tactic. Yet her children seemed to love her and esteem her. None seemed to resent her interference.

I love the humanness of it all. She was a fierce patriot, sister, wife, and mother. Her interest in politics did not extend to necessarily wanting the vote for women or seeking higher office, but she definitely had opinions and believed women should be educated and literate citizens. She was fiercely loyal to John, who took a lot of abuse during his time. Yet she also kept secrets from him if she thought something would meet with his disapproval. Like any good wife, she knew exactly how to influence him and his decisions if she thought he needed prodding. Her constant correspondence with her sisters shows a loyalty that lasted her lifetime. They were always looking out for each other with Abigail playing the mother hen. But her role as a mom made the biggest impact on me. She so fiercely cared for her children. Although they were far away and communication was hard, she kept in close contact with each, offering advice and doing all she could to manipulate them to move closer to home. (That's where I relate.) As a mother, she took extraordinary steps to help her children in whatever way she could. Yet she often had to watch helplessly from afar. Marriages and jobs and disease distanced each of them at various times. I also loved that she was raising a child for almost her entire life. Her home was open and if a grandchild, niece, or nephew needed a place to stay, she would immediately volunteer. Time and again she offered her hospitality to all who would take it. It was remarkably easy to relate to her, her life, and her choices.

While the constant focus on the feminist aspect of her character was clunky at times, I truly enjoyed getting to know this opinionated, intelligent, and fiercely loyal woman. I think I would have liked her.

Live Not By Lies by Rod Dreher

I had just recently been introduced to the essay "Live Not By Lies" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This short essay, published just before Solzhenitsyn was exiled from Russia is so powerful that I needed to read it several times to fully imbibe it. When I heard that one of my favorite authors, Rod Dreher, had written a book of the same title, inspired by the essay, I had to read it. What a powerful read.

Dreher begins with a story of a little-known man, Father Kolakovic, who worked to prepare the Slovak Christians for the coming Soviet invasion. After World War II, he knew that the Russians would replace the Germans as an occupying force and felt the need to shore up the Christians in advance.

Dreher feels a similar mission in America. Not that America will soon be subject to the hard totalitarianism of Soviet Communism, but that America will soon fall under another destructive force he calls "soft totalitarianism." Following Kolakovic's dictum, Dreher wants Christians to "See. Judge. Act. See meant to be awake to realities around you. Judge was a command to discern soberly the meaning of those realities in light of what you know to be true, especially from the teachings of the Christian faith. After you reach a conclusion, then you are to act to resist evil." (p. 5)

Dreher believes that America, with its therapeutic, atomized culture, is a prime breeding ground for the soft totalitarianism he sees coming. We, as a people, are more lonely and separated than ever before. Hannah Arendt warned about the dangers inherent in that type of a society in the 1950s. "What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world, is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century." (p. 31) As we have moved away from the original American dream of a virtuous citizen, informed by Scripture, free to live as he pleased within godly constraints towards a materialistic and individualistic view of happiness, we have also become exactly the type of society Arendt warned about. Our hyper-focus on our own, individualized experiences and our ability to interpret our own reality has fractured our society and left us vulnerable to totalitarianism.

This totalitarianism will not come from a gun, but from the tears of social justice warriors. These members of "ideological motivated moral communities" seek to enforce their sacrosanct beliefs, which give meaning and purpose to their own lives, onto the surrounding populace. (p. 60) As they see the world as a series of power struggles in the Marxian sense—oppressors vs. oppressed—they seek power to upend existing structures. Identity is the key to which camp one fits in. Various identities are definitionally oppressed while others are definitionally the oppressors. They do not seek actual justice; they seek power and domination. They have harnessed the most influential of social institutions in order to command the conversation and demand language reflect their point of view. Believing that words construct reality, and he who has power controls the language, they have latched onto language as a way to dominate. Say the wrong thing and it's labeled "violence." While actual violence is justified in the name of upending power structures. 

Dreher sums up where we find ourselves today:

In the West today, we are living under decadent, pre-totalitarian conditions. Social atomization, widespread loneliness, the rise of ideology, widespread loss of faith in institutions, and other factors leave society vulnerable to the totalitarian temptation to which both Russia and Germany succumbed in the previous century. 

Furthermore, intellectual, cultural, academic, and corporate elites are under the sway of a left-wing political cult built around social justice. It is a militantly illiberal ideology that shares alarm ing commonalities with Bolshevism, including dividing humanity between the Good and the Evil. This pseudoreligion appears to meet a need for meaning and moral purpose in a post-Christian society and seeks to build a just society by demonizing, excluding, and even persecuting all who resist its harsh dogmas. (p. 93)

However, Dreher is not writing to send the reader into despair. He spends countless hours interviewing those who lived in the times of Soviet totalitarianism to glean hope and way to stand athwart the coming onslaught. One dissident states, "You will be surrounded by lies—you don't have a choice...If you want to live in fear, or if you want to live in freedom of the soul. If your soul is free, then your thoughts are free, and your words are going to be free." 

First, we are to immerse ourselves in history. Not knowing history is a perfect way to atomize an individual. The person who does not know where he came from and what came before is isolated and vulnerable to lies. Religion is also necessary to connect individuals to one another so that a person is not left to fend for themselves in a world bent on lies. Truth in Scripture can be used to counter the deception propagated by a system bent on destruction. Faith, not reason, may be the only thing onto which a person can cling. Families are also indispensable in grounding individuals and passing on a heritage. Within a family, truth can be spoken free of fear. "It's no accident that every dictatorship always tries to break down the family, because it's in the family that you get the strength to be able to fight." (p. 148) Finally, an education, backed by and infused with Christianity and historical knowledge is the best way to prepare students for the coming darkness. People can survive the leftist totalitarianism only if surrounded by those who will hold him to truth and push out the lies.

Like in his book, The Benedict Option, Dreher recommends small, like-minded communities to harbor and shelter people from soft totalitarianism we are seeing today. He's not sure pastors will be up to the challenge. It's in small groups—families, schools, Bible study groups—that people will find the strength to stand up. "We desperately need to throw off the chains of solitude and find the freedom that awaits us in fellowship...Only in solidarity with others can we find the spiritual an communal strength to resist." (p. 181)

Spurn fear. We are free. Our souls can remain free if we choose to Live Not By Lies. Suffering and persecution can be withstood by a solid faith in God and in the Truth. We have no choice.

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

Our book club chose 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff to read for January. I'd never heard of it. 

Unfortunately, I think I got the wrong version. The one I picked up from the library was a play version, "Adapted for the Stage."I think, however, I got the gist of it.

One thing I didn't understand initially is that it is based on actual letters between the author, Helene Hanff, and a bookstore in London. The play opens with Frank Doel, the procurer of books for the "antiquarian bookseller" reading a letter from Hanff, a poor struggling writer living in New York. The first letter is dated October 5, 1949. She is requesting "three Hazlitt essays" as well as a Latin Bible. He promises to do his best to fulfill her order and ship them out.

What follows is the slow, and all-too-real, development of a transatlantic friendship centered on the appreciation of fine, largely out-of-print, books. Not realizing the letters were real, I expected the story to go in certain directions. Surely a love story would develop or some major crisis would erupt, or each book requested by Helene would either foreshadow or relate to some circumstance in her life. None of that happened. Real life simply doesn't happen that way.

Throughout the book, Helene expresses a desire to cross the ocean and meet those who share her love for fine literature. Alas, it is not to be. As Helene journeys through life, becoming increasingly successful, she is also thrown expensive curveballs, which constantly frustrate her ability to visit. As the years pass, she remains single, moves and changes jobs, various clerks at the bookshop marry and move on, some die, and finally, Frank Doel passes away. The last letter is from his wife, dated January 8, 1969. The twenty-year correspondence is ended. The final moments of the play depict Helene on a plane to London. 

It is certainly a charming book, told in a lovely manner. My only criticism is that I wish it had a bit more of a story. I would love someone to write a similar book, but include a plot. However, watching two people develop a long-term, platonic friendship over a shared love of beautiful literature is also a worthy endeavor. 

 

Liberty or Lockdown by Jeffrey Tucker

I was reading an article recently that recommended this book, Liberty or Lockdown by Jeffrey Tucker, as the best thing on our current Covid response. So I ordered it right away. It's a collection of essay published throughout 2020 at the American Institute of Economic Research. Some have not aged well, as most were written before September. The principles, however, hold. 

Lockdowns do not deter a virus. Trading liberty for the promise of safety nets us neither. 

Although I wouldn't say the book is a top ten or anything like that, it's worth the read. It's short and eminently readable. The first few essays alone are worth the price of the book.

The American Institute of Economic Research is free-market think tank, and as such subscribes to the theory of diffused knowledge being the best way to gather all the relevant information. Therefore, when the Covid virus hit our shores, the best thing would have to been to diffuse knowledge and let the aggregate determine the best course forward. Of course we know that is the opposite of what happened. The original sin in the Covid response was limiting knowledge and therefore seeking to avoid a panic. To this end, testing was only to be done at the CDC/FDA direction. Private companies were not allowed to develop and administer their own tests. Knowledge became a premium commodity available only to a select few if at all. Lack of knowledge coupled with the call to, "Do something" led to the hysterical and irrational initial responses. 

Ironically the knowledge we needed actually existed. Humans have been dealing with pandemics for all of history. "Somehow in the 21st century, we find ourselves in the awkward position of having to relearn the basics of immunology that everyone from 1920 to 2000 or so seemed to understand." (p. 20) There are only two ways to defeat a virus: to develop immunity through contracting the disease or through a vaccine. Somehow, the decision-makers in our society decided that they alone could pioneer a new way forward, which involved lockdowns and quarantining healthy people. We forgot what we knew. In thinking we were so much smarter than those of the past, we made ourselves stupid. "It was pure speculation that lockdowns would suppress this virus, and that speculation was based on a hubristic presumption of the awesome power and intelligence of government managers." (p. 24)

As one country after another copied whatever the previous leader did, the arrogance metastasized. Now all efforts went toward propping up a policy based on nothing and accomplishing nothing. To intentionally hurt people by destroying their businesses, throwing them out of work, decimating their mental health, stealing educational opportunities, and shredding the fragile social fabric that holds societies together takes a special kind of callousness. "The more pain you inflict on people, the worse of a person you become. Power is dangerous even when not used, but deploying it brutally and pointlessly rots the soul." (p. 33) Therefore the big lie becomes necessary. The leaders must double-down to justify their policies. 

Other than the obvious damage the Covid response has had on the world, Tucker makes an even more compelling point, "Once you lock down a population by executive fiat, based on obvious ignorance and fear, you send a signal that nothing much matters anymore. Nothing is true, permanent, right, wrong. Might as well tear it all down. You literally unleash Hell." (p. 34) Therefore the riots and rage seen all over the country is the predictable, and actually rational, response. "If we stay on the present course of hiding and futilely trying to suppress the virus, wee will end up making all of society poorer both materially and spiritually and also delivery a dangerous blow to our biological health." (p. 127)

The response to the Covid pandemic has not only failed to mitigate the effects of the disease, it has made it far worse. We now suffer not only the effects of the virus, but the effects of the cure. "From early in the lockdown days, it became clear that this crisis would not make us 'come together' and be 'better people.' It would not be like 9-11. Instead, it would shatter our lives and make us worse people. We would turn on each other, engage in dramatic deeds that would hurt and harm people we like and love, and push our political agendas ahead of basic humane values." (p. 176)

It's a good, yet depressing, read.