Caring For Words In A Culture Of Lies (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
Just as our natural world needs proper stewardship in order to thrive, so do words. She is a college English professor, but her dozen "stewardship strategies" apply to all teachers, parents, writers, readers and students. Although written from a distinctly Christian perspective, McEntyre's work is accessible to a wide audience by her avoidance of jargon, her references to a variety of literature (including that published in other languages) and her style that draws the reader into conversation. Read for preaching classQuotes:Steiner (George Steiner) makes two other points worth mentioning about the consequences of language abuse: as usable words are lost, experience becomes cruder and less communicable. And with the loss of the subtlety, clarity , and reliability of language, we become more vulnerable to crude exercises of power. (6)When a word falls into disuse, the experience goes with it. (29)Like food, language has been "industrialized." Words come to us processed like cheese, depleted of nutrient, flattened and packaged, artificially colored and mass marketed. (16)Certainly one of the most consequential areas in which imprecision is both commonplace and deliberate is in the justification of violence and injustice. (46)There are three very basic question I like to ask students as they embark on a new novel. What does this work invite you to do? What does it require of you? What does it not let you do? Because the nature of literary engagement is not, finally, detached. (69)Raising good questions, though, takes practice. There are only six basic question words: who, what, when, where, how, and why. At any point, in any situation, any of them may be posed. But posing them, rather than rushing to easy and swift closure, means forestalling the satisfaction of closure and taking a certain risk. (101)Good conversation is a courtesy, a kindness, a form of caritas that has as its deepest implicit intention binding one another together in understanding and love. (108)Pay attention to the story that lies behind every product you purchase, every system you rely on, every event you witness, every person you meet. (113)Stories are mirrors; they are windows; they are invitations that beckon us to enter into a new place that becomes curiously like home. Stories are safe spaces that offer refuge from confusion even as they involve us in their own complications, and even thought they may threaten our dearly held ideas in ways that are quire real and consequential. In both-- in providing refuge and in challenging us -- they are instruments of healing. (122) Noise insulates us from the silence that exposes us to encounters with self and God, and to the voice of the Spirit that groans within us in ways we may not control. To choose silence is to risk that encounter. But if we are to care for the work that words do, we must be willing to open up silences in our minds and our days. Our words matter only to the extent that they have been allowed to germinate and take root in silence. (224)
What do You think about Caring For Words In A Culture Of Lies (2009)?
The chapter on Practice Poetry resonates well with my own use and practice of "poesis".
—Paneinh
An inspiring book of depth and insight. Will definitely read again.
—asquaredancer
Wish we could all become better stewards of our language
—Eda
